Chronology Current Month Current Thread Current Date
[Year List] [Month List (current year)] [Date Index] [Thread Index] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Prev] [Date Next]

Re: [Phys-L] Private schools



On 7/10/2012 8:14 PM, John Mallinckrodt wrote:
Ze'ev Wurman wrote:

Imagine you applied the same logic to restaurants. You would end up with
a pre 1989 Eastern-Europe type of establishments where there was
essentially no difference between government restaurants and "private"
restaurants. Except for those that operated under black market rules.
If so, then I would submit that the private sector would have demonstrated its inability to provide added value.

Not so. When you encumber non-government organizations with all the government's rules but without any of the government's advantages, it does not say anything about the added value they can or cannot provide. What you end up with is a caricature of private enterprise. The question should be asked whether all those rules are necessary in the first place. Nobody who saw that Eastern- European so-called economy first hand would ever express your sentiment. Or express a wish for its return.

First, let's remember that current voucher discussions in this country
peg vouchers at 20-50% of the public school per-student cost. In places
like Sweden or Belgium they are equal to a full per-student cost. Only
then you can argue that they must be acceptable as payment in full.
Perhaps I didn't make myself clear. The vouchers I envision would be "worth what we decide as a people we are willing to pay for one year of education at each level" and could be used at public or private schools. In either case they would constitute payment in full. Public schools would receive no additional funds from the government and private schools could not charge tuition over and above the value of the vouchers.
No issue then.

Second, if they *must* take students on first come first serve basis, it
defeats any idea of specialized schools. Why not declare the few things
that are not permitted (if any!) and let schools define themselves as
they want? Why force dance schools to accept people without any
selection? Or technology schools? As long as the vouchers are on the
order of public school cost, private schools will fight to get as many
reasonably qualified students as they can.
I suppose you have a theoretical point here, but I don't see why a non-dancer would apply to a school that emphasizes dance.

Third, why should the abide by all school regs? We already have such
schools -- the public ones. The whole idea is to relieve them of such
regulations. Except narrowly defined restrictions, similar to those
applicable to housing rental in the private market, I see no reason to
do more.
As I predicted, this is an argument against providing a level playing field for competition. You're free to attend a school that doesn't have to live by the rules that everyone else does, but don't expect me to pay for it. And if you don't like the rules, then work toward getting them changed via the democratic process.

Not so. The problem with our public education system is not that the rules are good but implementation bad, or vice versa. The problem is that it tries to regulate and dictate the personal lives and hopes of millions of families, and there will be always some families whose values and aspirations it will violate. Rather than try and provide a government restaurant with a uniform menu that is supposed to satisfy everybody but rarely truly satisfies anybody, let us allow the existence of many restaurants catering to different tastes. As they are private, they do not need all the thousands pages of ed regs that are supposed to satisfy everyone's interest (and particularly the rent-seeker's ones). Why should such school be allowed to hire only unionized landscapers? Why should it be allowed to buy books only through state-authorized channels? Why should it meet government quotas of diversity hiring? Etc., etc.

But what about the special ed kids or the ELL kids, one might ask. Well,
those should get a higher value vouchers based on the
"problem" -- essentially like today's discussion about "weighted
funding." There will be plenty of interest to provide these services at
a fair price, and still probably cheaper than today's public cost.
Further, public schools should be full participants in the new game of
attracting students. Berkeley, after all, is not less significantly
attractive than Stanford.
This seems like a fair point. No reason kids who require special services couldn't come with vouchers that reflect the additional cost.

Again, no issue then.