From: leonard@mimsy.umd.edu (Leonard Dickens)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Re: Questions about the TEN POINT PARTY PROGRAM.
Date: 29 Sep 92 17:50:00 GMT
Organization: Deep Thirteen, Gizmonics Institute

Charles Isbell:
>[me:]
>|Top ranked private schools are kind of like top ranked restaurants...
>| [analogy]
>| ... chain and franchise restaurants do branch out
>|regularly as they succeed.  These may not have quite the quality, nor
>|near the atmosphere or snob appeal of a five-star exclusive, but they
>|feed a hell of a lot more people.
>
>I'm tempted to make a joke about McDonald's as school system, but I
>won't. 

Micky Dee's has a level of customer satisfaction that most businesses
envy.

>|Charles Isbell writes:
>|>I really don't see any reason for this to happen one way or the other.
>|>Unless you address the problem of where the kids who want to leave
>|>some school and go to a "better" one go while they're waiting, it seems
>|>to me that they'll just stay where they are and nothing will happen.
>
>|Obviously they will stay where they are, and for that year, they will
>|be frustrated.  Meanwhile, though, things may be happening!  For
>|instance, their parents may be down at the PTA railing about how
>|Exclusivity High teaches calculus and has a dress code, and gets
>|regular 1600 SATs... this may help to change the local system so that
>|eventually, the local students don't want to leave any more.
>
>Why doesn't that happen now?

It does.  What incentive does the school have to change, now?

>|Or, maybe the students will study harder because they know that
>|Exclusivity High requires straight A's for a year to get in.
>
>Hmmmmmmm.  Given the competition for MIT, Harvard, Stanford or
>whatever, I'm not sure why that doesn't happen now.

Money, primarily.  Why study hard if even if you do get in (nothing
assured here) you have no idea how you will pay for it?  College
funding is probably a slightly separate issue from school
vouchers/choice.

In any case, you have not answered my original point that even the
possibility of transfer into a better system may motivate students to
study -- and especially if the possibility depends on their current
grades/school performance.

>|Or maybe the students will start a petition to fire Joe Incompetent
>
>I dunno.  There are always complaints about teachers now.

Currently the teacher's union is an extremely powerful political
force, with enormous goodwill among the people in general (naturally).
I dunno about your home state, but in mine it was practically
impossible to fire a teacher; the jobs had tenure that had teeth.
Sexually abusing a pupil was basically the only thing heinous enough
to get you fired.

>The missing mechanism in all this, of course, is the Free Market(tm).
>I do not take this as a magic bullet that will automagically explain
>why all these things that can be done now, but aren't will happen
>under the voucher system.

It is the difference between social and individual choice, which I
outlined in my original followup.  (Nice oxymoron there.)  Getting
society to jointly undertake these sorts of actions in the polical
arena is slow, cumbersome, and more often than not just ignored.


>Perhaps the McDonald's analogy has merit:  with the taste of our
>citizens, I'm not so sure that giving them "choice" (which I think
>they already have for many of the important things in schools) will
>improve our system (that is the goal?).

The old state-knows-best argument.  I admit it is compelling to many
people, especially those in government positions who want to feel
useful.  But I think that people -- even uneducated people, even the
underclass (nice euphemism) -- can make just as good a decision for
themselves as the government can.  And I reject your parenthetical
assertion that people have true choice now in their schools.  I had
exactly one "choice" for my elementary school, my junior high school,
and my high school.  (There was one private high school around, but my
family could not afford it.)  How about you?


>|>If a good school is to "expand" it must find some faculty which are
>|>going to have to come from somewhere.
>
>|Sure, they are out there.  I fancy myself a good teacher, and I even
>|like teenagers.  But I can earn $30K starting easily in the private
>|sector.  I am not interested in being paid $15K to teach 7 classes per
>|day of 30 uninterested students each.  That is a hell of a lot of
>|work; if anyone doubts it, they should try it.
>
>Will the vouchers suddenly make them "interested students"? 

They won't.  But interested students could choose to go schools that
cater to them, thereby concentrating themselves.  Teachers might try
to interest uninterested students in unorthodox ways that would not
currently be allowed.

>If not, how will we attract new teachers?

Pay.  As I said, I suspect there are lots of people that would be
interested in teaching if the pay were more commensurate to what they
can get elsewhere.


>|I think that teacher salaries in general would rise.
>Where will the money come from?  Will you have to charge students more
>money?  

Taxes, I suppose.  (Let us be realistic.  Income taxes are not
vanishing in the forseeable future, especially with the huge deficit
the bastards have run up on us.)  I have seen estimates on this group
that public schools currently cost 6-9K/pupil/year, and private ones
are less.  Anyone have a pointer on real data on this?  

>Does the voucher, then, help the folx who seem to suffer most
>from our current system?

I don't know.  It is possible that making the wealth transfer more
explicit will only make it more likely to be cut by the short sighted
cretins the political system favors.  Hopefully though, people like
our business leaders and military leaders who need educated workers
will press the gummint to keep education spending high.  I think that
generally the support for education is good; the problem has been
getting the system to change flexibly.


>Is our problem more systemic than the really bad schools with gunfire?
>Who is the real target of the vouchers?  

The government, and the layers of useless bureaucrats that add nothing
to education but subtract pay.  The rigidity of the system.

>Whom will it help most? least?

We shall see.  Usually, it is the rich and poor, respectively.
However, as long as it helps the poor, it deserves support.  All of
our schools could use improvement, not just the poor ones.

>|And even teachers could use hope.  What incentive do they currently
>|have to think up innovative new ways to teach?  
>
>Love for the students?

Hard cold cash also has its effect -- but what I was really thinking
of as I posted that is that by changing the system so that innovative
ideas are actually encouraged and *implemented* because they are
innovative, you encourage people to develop them.  Why work hard on a
new teaching method if everyone else cares naught?


>|The point of vouchers is really choice,
>|and that can be done without vouchers.  We could choose to pay our
>|teachers more.  [We could choose ...]+
>
>|Will we?  Which, if any, of these prescriptions is correct?  The
>|strength of the voucher idea is that it implements choice at the level
>|where it matters: the individual student.  "Choice" at the societal
>|level always seems to leave out the 49% in the minority.
>
>I see this argument, but it sort of begs the question:  does it
>*really* in the way that matters, in the real world, empower the
>people who are least empowered?  

I don't know.  Let's implement it and find out!  Seriously, if the
analogies to other market mechanisms hold valid, it does.  And if the
timid steps that have been taken towards educational reform are an
indication, it does.  (I am thinking of magnet schools here.)

>If it helps the kids who already have
>access to good schools, private or public, but does little for the
>others, what's the point?

Well, even then I would say it is a good idea.  Only if it actually
hurts some people while benefitting other would I say it is a bad
idea.  And right now, I honestly don't believe there is any further
down a lot of schools can get.  Get desperate.  Try choice.  Maybe
you'll like it.

-Leonard