From: nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle)
Subject: Re: Chelsea's school ...
Organization: Psych Department, Indiana University
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1993 17:23:47 GMT

mike@execu.execu.com (Mike McCants) writes:
>nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu (Nathan Engle) writes:
>>Under the situation 
>>you've described it sounds like we're still paying for students even 
>>after they've left the public schools, so the net savings to the taxpayer 
>>is zero.

>In the original post, I said: "If a public school student "costs"
>$4000 per year and he is paid $2000 to go to a private school, then
>why shouldn't the taxpayers pay less to the public schools."

    Well, I'd like to see a little bit more analysis of costs public 
schools face which are fixed (e.g. - building maintenance, operation of 
school bus routes, etc) as opposed to those that vary depending on the 
number of students each school serves. Something tells me that part of 
that $4000/year is padding to cover fixed operational expenses.

>Have you heard about the threaded newsreaders? Makes newslife much easier.

    Sure, I use a threaded newsreader. I'm just ot prepared to accept an 
argument based on super-simplified arithmetic when the education of 
thousands of kids is at stake.

>>By the time those 
>>non-motivated students have made it into school there isn't much that 
>>anyone could do to turn them into Rhodes Scholars.

>So let's talk about motivation.  Maybe we need special classes for
>"special" students that lack "proper" motivation.  Maybe special
>teachers for those special classes could make a difference.

    Both of those mechanisms already exist in some school systems. I'm 
all in favor of them, in precisely the same way as I'm in favor of letting 
public schools do the job we've hired them to do rather than trying to 
undercut them at every step. 

>  I'm
>not going to claim there's a solution to this problem and I'm not
>going to claim that "school vouchers" would really affect it much.
>Are you going to claim that "more money" would?

    No, I don't think I've ever tried to make that argument. Some school 
districts *do* need more money, but I'm not aware of any that are trying to 
solve motivational problems that way. The basic thing that I'm trying to 
do is to avoid drastic budget cuts for schools with large fixed-cost 
facilities that would suddenly look very empty if the student body gets 
up and walks across the road to the closest private alternative.

>>    I agree that there are problems with public schools, and some of those 
>>problems are things that cannot be fixed with any amount of money. However 
>>we have a basic disagreement over what to do about the situation. My first 
>>instinct is to do things to solve problems that exist with the system we 
>>currently have in place. Bush's solution, on the other hand, seemed to be 
>>that we should undermine the current system completely by plundering its 
>>funding and removing all the remaining motivated students from public 
>>schools. Thanks, but no thanks.

>If I may be so dumb as to claim I am stating the "Republican position":
>Some cities in some states should be allowed to "experiment" to see
>what the effects are.

    Great, I have no problem with that.

>As it is, no court will even allow any experimentation.  

    Well, that's only true if you discount the current magnet school choice 
experiment that's going on in Indiana. The court definitely sets limits on 
how far out on a limb publicly funded experiments can go, but I don't think 
that creativity has been completely stifled.

>Obviously it would be counterproductive in the short term to attempt to go 
>too far too fast.  But forbidding experimentation just because some money 
>would go to religious schools is the real point of contention here.

    That may be what many of the people who oppose Bush's plan are worried 
about, but it's not one of my concerns. My interest is in trying to help 
the current system heal itself so that it can work better, and I just don't 
see what Bush's plan does for public schools that will have any effect 
besides increasing the finnancial pressure they're already suffering. 
They're already sinking, and you want to throw them an anchor?

--
Nathan Engle                        Software Juggler
Psychology Department               Indiana University
nate@psygate.psych.indiana.edu      nengle@copper.ucs.indiana.edu
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