Education in the United States

Ok dude. That’s why private charter schools have such an amazing record right?

As I said "Most of us could...."

I've never done it, but sounds like a big job to pull off within a few months. ChatGPT tells me a small K-12 school will have 35-70 employees. I say that because its taken me much longer to staff things that were way way smaller.

That was more a response to what would happen if low quality charter schools became the norm. I don't think anything will prevent parents with at least some resources from providing their kids with a quality education. And as I said staring a school isn't rocket science.

Well the challenge of providing a high quality education to students gets considerably easier when the entire student body is AP, peddling as hard as they can to get into the Ivies and their parents are footing the bill.

You are a California resident? Get back to me when your kids are school age and figuring out how to maneuver your kid into a "good school" literally becomes the driving motivator for how your entire life is organized. Especially if you live in a a big blue city and the local public schools are completely unusable due to Democrat dysfunction.

Those are the types of schools progressives and teachers unions are trying to get rid of. They cut into enrollment in the generic public school programs, their grifting operations, and impact funding.

In California, progressives and teachers unions have been waging war against magnet/charter/public-private hybrids for a long time. But it is one of the few policies where people stand up to them and say no, because like I said that is where even progressive Democrats draw the line. Most progressives are perfectly fine when lower classes pay the price for their ideology, and will even live with some EV themselves; but they wont let progressives **** with their kids.

Ironically, in high GDP blue states an increase in private schooling will end up with more Waldorf type schools, as upper middle class white collar parents will demand accountability. Whereas in more rural, red states there is more likely to end up with the type of dysfunction you are envisioning.

No, I wouldn’t say I disagree with the article as a whole.

Yes.

As I said in my above post it will take a long time to feel the full effects of a voucher program. Where this is the most true is in poorer and more rural areas. It isn’t like a voucher system is announced and 3 private schools pop up the next day. Competition makes businesses better and education will be no different. Right now public schools have very little competition in many areas and vouchers will create competition over time and force public schools to improve or close which would be a great thing for the kids.

There is no better example of this in the US than public schools. All because they are free to the end user and their only real competition is expensive. Private schools have to work their butts off to provide value over and above the difference of their tuition and the free tuition of public schools.

Why do you think providing more completion via the voucher system would create monopolies? It seems the complete opposite would occur.

The problem with your theory is you are missing the idea of competition.

The govt gives poor people vouchers for food today yet groceries are some of the lowest margin businesses around. Education may not be all that different under a voucher system as there wouldn’t be just a few companies vying for these billions of dollars. Every school will compete every year to attract new student and keep the ones they have.

Maybe, just maybe, some things shouldn’t be treated like government.

When we have two options and one (private) is so much better in every single measurable way (less expensive, better education, less violence, less mass shootings, etc) why do you think we would be better off with more government run schools?

This answer basically replies to your other post also.
2 reasons pop into my head.
1. I agree in general with your free market/competition philosophy in the early stages at least. Problem is, once the public sector is decimated the private schools can do whatever they want and their goal is to squeeze as much profit as possible out of their business. They stop treating it as what is the best service and value we can provide to more like what's the minimum service we can provide and to keep our customers somewhat satisfied (see Microsoft windows). One teacher per 50 students, totally acceptable, teacher unions, what's that? What is the state going to do by then? Build up the education infrastructure again from the ground up? Impossible. We'll have to deal with education enshitifacation.
2. It will be as dunyain said. Will be a bigger gap between the haves and have nots. The highest performing schools will be the most desirable with the most applicants. How can the free market work any other way but for the best product with the highest demand not be able to charge a premium price and the poorer neighborhoods with less purchasing power get the inferior product and by a lot.
There will be some shining stars no doubt but overall will be the same **** show for most communities but shareholders will love it.

And edit
I forget who said it but it's like when people say zomg the postal service is losing money, they're not profitable. Yeah, some things are just a government service, they don't need to be profitable. Is the military profitable?

It's been the driving force since like the 70's. My single mom had to scramble to get me into a lol private religious school in the valley in 1st grade because that was the year they were starting the bussing experiment in LA.
It's been a fact for a long time that when you have kids, zip code is pretty much the only thing that matters. But I don't think that is unique to California.

By saying the "once the public sector is decimated" aren't you really saying every parent knows that private > govt run schools and if the cost is equal it means the end of govt run schools? If so, we may be agreeing with more than I thought.

The problem I have with your theory that at some point schools will invest the bare minimum completely ignores the idea of competition. Every school will know that if they slack off some other school is going to treat their kids better and the kids will transfer. For your example: One school decided to go 50/1 teacher to kid and pretty soon they won't have that option because they won't have 50 kids enrolled.

In regards to teachers union: I think teachers should not be allowed to unionize in govt run schools as unions were formed to compete against big bad corporations not taxpayers. I do think teachers unions should be allowed for private schools but each school should choose if they want unionized teachers.

Of course there will still be a gap between some schools under the voucher program in terms of quality of teachers/education but the lower quality private schools will still be better than the top group of govt run schools - just as is the case today (with a few exceptions). Remember schools aren't just competing to attract kids they are also competing for the best teachers - just as the private schools are today.

Nothing the govt does makes a profit. They are not producing cars, pencils, phones or toilet paper. They are taking some people's money and giving it to others - which to a certain extent is fine. That isn't the problem I have with govt run schools. My problem with the govt run schools is that they are (just like everything else the govt does) really bad at what they are trying to do - in this case educating kids.

Charter schools historically has, like traditional public schools, done better when there is actual accountability and oversight (including closing underperforming schools).

When there isn’t, the market doesnt really work. Parents struggle to tell good schools from the bad ones and often do not have a choice.

They also exploit a gap that it takes a year or two for you to fairly evaluate their performance and close them, by which time the unscrupulous actors would have walked away with millions of dollars already.

Yeah. Go tour some segregation academies in the South if you want proof that private schools can suck.

lol, ECOT charter schools defrauded Ohio taxpayers to the tune of over 110 million dollars, and that is by no means the only school system that got defrauded by charter schools. The notion that private entities are somehow more efficient at providing public services is just a persistent neo-Reagan mantra, it simply isn't true and even a basic investigation will tell you that charter schools are rife with corruption and grift, they're inevitably going to cut corners and screw over their customers at every opportunity because that's how corporations operate.

https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/06/28/ecot-owes-ohio-117-million-state-money-improperly-received/7756058001/

https://ncspe.tc.columbia.edu/current-events/content/250-tulsa-charter-leaders-charged-with-massive-fraud.php

The problem is that business competition usually ends with someone going out of business.

Suppose A puts B out of business competing for CA, but B also owns schools in AZ, which then shut down as a result. “Then C will come…” Rinse and repeat, basically forever, everywhere.

The problem I see with the efficiency argument is that it’s hardly the whole truth when it comes to business competition. A firm’s competitiveness often has less to do with quality and more to do with its ability to manage cash flow and structure debt. And when firms take on more debt to fend off competitors, they have to lower costs, not to increase profits, but simply to survive. Rinse and repeat, again.

At some point, I’m not sure anything short of a monopoly works everywhere. That doesn’t have to mean government-run but more like a regulated private utility model.

Yes, I said I agree with you but it will only last in the early stages. If their is a pile of money to complete for I believe the private sector outperform the legacy system for it and once they have the market cornered enshitifacation begins. Unless in your model the better a school performs the more money they are rewarded on an infinite scale. If they're capped on total revenue, basically the only way to increase profit is to cut operating costs.
I've been reading your posts for years, I know you'll never change your opinion on this. I can be swayed but in this case with how corrupt our govt is and beholden to doners/lobbyists, the few big companies who will inevitably own all the schools will set the rules of the game massively in their favor. Will be a huge gravy train for them.[/QUOTE]

In regards to teachers union: I think teachers should not be allowed to unionize in govt run schools as unions were formed to compete against big bad corporations not taxpayers. I do think teachers unions should be allowed for private schools but each school should choose if they want unionized teachers. QUOTE=bahbahmickey;59231900]

It's a fair point but given how unions have been decimated I'm going to side with the few that are left. I'm of the opinion that whatever costs are saved by breaking unions is siphoned upwards and little savings are passed on to the consumers. I'd rather see an overpaid janitor than bigger bonuses to executives.
Yes, I know in your world getting rid of unions opens up more competition for better employees, best man for the job, etc.... but in practice it's just grinding down the working class.[/QUOTE]

QUOTE=bahbahmickey;59231900]Of course there will still be a gap between some schools under the voucher program in terms of quality of teachers/education but the lower quality private schools will still be better than the top group of govt run schools - just as is the case today (with a few exceptions). Remember schools aren't just competing to attract kids they are also competing for the best teachers - just as the private schools are today.

Nothing the govt does makes a profit. They are not producing cars, pencils, phones or toilet paper. They are taking some people's money and giving it to others - which to a certain extent is fine. That isn't the problem I have with govt run schools. My problem with the govt run schools is that they are (just like everything else the govt does) really bad at what they are trying to do - in this case educating kids.[/QUOTE]

The lower quality schools will definitely not be better than they are today but that actually won't be the school's fault. Forget the poster's name, the Milwaukee landlord in the thread and I'm assuming Dunyain pointed out that the underperforming inner-city schools regularly are allotted more money per student than the suburbs and show much poorer results on average. So there is a bigger underlying issue that needs to be tackled, preferably before we have the luxury of the current debate.

I think we'll keep chasing our tail on this until we first decide if our education system exists to benefit the country as a whole or the citizens as individuals. Or maybe if there's a conflict of interests, which should we default to.

Maybe if we outsourced our govt to Singapore I could have confidence in the regulators.

We're thinking of letting ChatGTP take over our education system. Make a brief pitch.

This is a feature, not a bug of a free economy. It would be horrible if a really bad school doesn't get shut down.

The same can be said of teachers - if you continue to make bad teachers incredible hard to fire the school will underperform. Getting rid of teacher's unions for public schools would be a massive step in the right direction. Even setting up a survivor style competition at every school where the worst teacher every year gets fired would be a great thing for the kids or at least better than what is happening now.

In regards to teachers union: I think teachers should not be allowed to unionize in govt run schools as unions were formed to compete against big bad corporations not taxpayers. I do think teachers unions should be allowed for private schools but each school should choose if they want unionized teachers.

The lower quality schools will definitely not be better than they are today but that actually won't be the school's fault. Forget the poster's name, the Milwaukee landlord in the thread and I'm assuming Dunyain pointed out that the underperforming inner-city schools regularly are allotted more money per student than the suburbs and show much poorer results on average. So there is a bigger underlying issue that needs to be tackled, preferably before we have the luxury of the current debate.[/QUOTE]

I think I am missing your point on why you think a vouchers system would force competition early on and then at someone point competition would softens. It seems like a demand for private edu would go up fairly quickly from the start, but I don't see a reason why demand would dry up and if demand is still high there will be money to be made so more companies will try to get that business. If you are worried 3-4 companies will own all of the schools in the US then we should us the current anti-monopoly laws on the books and define what that means for schools (max of 1k schools throughout the country or you can't own 2 schools with X miles of each other).

I am not against unions for people who are paid by the govt because it costs taxpayers more money. I am against it because unions protect shitty workers (and in the case teachers) and I think we should take kids edu more serious.

You brought up inner schools costing more than suburb schools, but the good thing about vouchers is that private schools are cheaper than both.