From: nancy@genie.slhs.udel.edu (Nancy Lebovitz)
Subject: Re: Education (Re: Questions about the TEN POINT PARTY PROGRAM.)
Organization: UDel, School of Life & Health Sciences
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 22:31:36 GMT

In article <ISBELL.92Sep29135346@panther.ai.mit.edu> isbell@ai.mit.edu (Charles L Isbell) writes:
>mwilson@ncratl.AtlantaGA.NCR.COM (Mark Wilson) writes:
>|>Are you positing supermarket schools?  A school on every corner as a
>|>solution?  In the interim, how would you prioritize your criterion
>|>such that you rank each child to determine who goes where?  Charge
>|>more?  test four year olds?  their parents?  go by proximity?
>
>|In a word, yes.  The individual schools  get to choose where to locate,
>|the school also gets to decide what selection criteria to use.
>|Instead of the one size fits all schooling that we are currently using
>|(which has been shown to be an abject failure).  Individual schools
>|can and will experiment to find the best mix of rules and regulations
>|to govern themselves.  Yes there will be some problems converting
>|to a new system.  I obviously don't think the problems are as large
>|as you do.  But refusing to leave a sinking ship because the water
>|might be cold is not good logic either.
>
>
>Maybe I'm not asking the questions right.  One of the things that
>worries me is that some of the "choice"  proponents haven't really
>thought this thru:  evaluate, if you don't mind, how these various
>choices and approaches to the problems above will actually change the
>current distribution beyond "the Free Market(tm) will just make it
>work".  After ten years, will we basically have the same set of school
>options with the kids who have it worse now having it worse then?
>What are the short term costs?  The long term benefits?
>
>What are the *REAL* problems with our education system.  From where do
>they come?  Do vouchers, choice or whatever address all of these?
>None of these? Some of these?  Does it provide us with the same system
>at lower cost?  A better system for more money?  Will it in all
>likelihood increase the average but widen the range?

I believe that a lot of what's wrong with the present school system
is that it's compulsory and tax-supported so that there's very 
little feedback. What do you think are the fundamental problems?

>If the end result will be a more "moral" system that isn't much better
>than what we have now, then what's the point?  What is our real goal?
>
>This is, after all, alt.politics.liberterian, not
>talk.politics.theory.  As such, proponents must provide at least a
>sketch of the transition plan and the likely short & long term costs.
>
Hmm....would you have said the same thing about the abolition of
slavery?

>What are they?  In the real world, why would I care to vote
>libertarian if they are mroe concerned with the theory than the
>practice?  Ready to accept in free market approach as an end unto
>itself without worry of the impact or the methods for phasing the new
>systems in?

Actually, that's a tough question--the best I can say is that I can't
see serious problems with the theory in this case, and changes in the
school structure are going to be made on a small enough scale that it
should be possible to look at the outcomes.

How much care went into the decision to make schools tax-supported
and compulsory?

Is there any good reason to think that choice will make things worse?

>|>How does this affect change?  Does it really force improvement of
>|>other schools?  How does it address teacher quality?  Student quality?
>|>Etc, etc.
>
>|Under a market system those schools that do the best job of teaching
>|kids will attract more kids and become more profitable.  Other
>|schools will begin to adopt portions of the successfull schools
>|program.
>
>This is an assertion.  I don't mind it, but surely you have a more to
>support it?  I'd argue that for rural America this whole system will
>have no effect anyway--many areas only have one school and there's no
>real profit reason to start a new one.  In the case of some inner city
>neighborhoods, unless you provide for transportation costs, etc, some
>of the inhabitants are "trapped" in their immediate areas.  Why would
>the schools that are there be forced to improve (to take an earlier
>analogy, the curent supermarkets don't bother to improve service/lower
>prices because they have a captive market)?  Why would an enterprising
>school-maker want to set up shop for the presumbably high short-term
>costs when they can snuggle away in suburbia and charge prices above
>the vouchers and have to deal with less problems?

Some people like challenges, especially if they think they can do a
great deal of good. Alternatively, the inner city schools could be
run by Koreans. 

Actually, I think that a good bit of learning can be done electronically,
and it might make more sense to hook the inner cities and the isolated
areas (not to mention the suburbs) to the net so that people will have
more choices. It wouldn't be cheap, but neither is building schools.

>|Those programs that work will be propogated, those that don't will
>|be abandoned.
>|This is how quality of all involved will go up.
>
>I dunno, man.

What kind of proof/planning would you like to see? How predictable do
you think that the results of such changes can be?

                              Nancy Lebovitz

Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.society.anarchy