From: dermer@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Marshall Dermer)
Newsgroups: uwm.general,milw.general
Subject: Re: MPS PLAN HIRES THE WRONG WORKERS
Date: 12 Jan 1993 23:26:59 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
Distribution: milw
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.30

In article <1993Jan12.210429.7478@mixcom.com> daniel.offutt <daniel.offutt@mixcom.mixcom.com> writes:
>In <1iu22tINNhq2@spool.mu.edu> marcr@studsys.mscs.mu.edu (Marc Rassbach) writes:
>
>>In article <1993Jan12.010953.28946@mixcom.com> daniel.offutt <daniel.offutt@mixcom.mixcom.com> writes:
>
>>>Thus a simple way to improve the quality of education provided by the
>>>public schools would be to let each child's parents decide which school
>>>the child will attend, among all the available public schools.  The
>
>>And how does this system address 'everyone' trying to put all their
>>kids in 'the best school in Milw.?'  In a 'truly competative environment'
>>one answers excessive demand with excessive price.
>
>>Please address the situation of 'everyone' wanting to send their
>>child to school X.
>
>Well, if 'everyone' decides that Apple computers are the best personal
>computers, that will simply permit Apple Corporation to grow.  It would
>be the same for a good school.  Heavy demand for enrollment would create
>a huge prospective cash flow for the good school, enabling it to obtain
>financing for new buildings and staff. But let's cut to the crux of the
>matter here.
>
>Increasing competition in the education industry will not necessarily
>yield the same quantity of benefit to every school child.  But it will
>increase the average benefit across all school children -- by comparison
>to what the present public school system yields.

 The above paragraph gets to the core of the issue.  I think that we
 want to achieve two ends.  One is educationally equality and the other
 is educational excellence. I have been trying to address the former issue
 with my proposal.

 If schools earn money based on how well they educate children then they
 will attempt to achieve this end while minimizing costs.  They can do 
 this by only admitting the most educable students as I and others
 have noted above. (In this way schools can elevate the average level of
 achievment as well as reduce the variance.)

 It has been suggested that teachers rather than schools be paid in
 relation to how well children our educated in each classroom.  Here again,
 the teachers will try to skim off the best students.

 In all of the above, I make the assumption that people will work to the
 extent their work is rewarded.  In all of the above, I assume that if there
 is some "short-cut" to reward that people will take the "short-cut."

 I am concerned about under-motivated students.  Because the above
 "short-cuts" can defeat the relation between achievemet and reward when
 implemented at the school and classroom levels, I have argued that the
 relation between learning and reward be implemented at the level of the
 individual student.  This is the essence of behavioral contracting.  Now, of
 course, there are "short-cuts" at this level too. These include student
 cheating, teachers who curry student favor by liberally grading papers, etc.
 But these are old stories for which there are remedies.

 Finally, notice where this discusion has taken us.  We talk about pay for
 schools and pay for teachers, but are reluctant to accept pay for
 learning even thought it works!!

 --Marshall
>
>
>-- 
>Dan Offutt
>


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