From: wicklund@intellistor.com (Tom Wicklund)
Subject: Re: =>School Vouchers (Amendment 7)<=
Organization: Intellistor, Inc.
Distribution: co
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 92 01:06:00 GMT

In <1992Oct9.053354@eklektix.com> rcd@raven.eklektix.com (Dick Dunn) writes:

>...  Because
>a voucher will only pay (very roughly) half the cost of a private school,
>you can only use the voucher if you're *not* poor.

Do you have a source for this data?  It contradicts a previous posting
and what I've seen on private school costs.  Some schools cost about
$5000, but most private schools are much cheaper.

Even for schools costing $3000-$4000 per year, it may be the
difference between a middle class family being able to get out of a
poor school system and being forced to watch their child fail.

>Something I don't know about (and would be glad to hear) is what sort of
>standards are required of private schools.  What is the "accreditation"
>process, and does it work reasonably well?

I think this would also be interesting (I'd guess the legislature can
set it up).

If there is an accreditation system, let's be consistent.  Force public
schools to be accredited and force a school, public or private, to
close if it can't meet standards.  Today there's no accreditation of
public schools, their quality depends on how well their run.  And any
school which doesn't meet standards can just complain they don't have
enough money.

>But to a good approximation, most low-income students *do* end up at public
>universities.  It doesn't seem to have hurt too much.

True, but public universities aren't monopolies.  Even if you discount
private universities, there are generally several public schools in a
state (or several campuses of a single school) which one may attend.
Students select K-12 schools by geography.  The only way to get out of
a poor school is to move or dedicate yourself to reforming it (which
may take 5 years).

>Two concerns here:  First, it's hard to use vouchers on a time scale that
>will make school districts listen.  People can't just leave on the spot;
>there must be private schools for them to choose instead, and you can't
>build/staff a school over the summer.

Why not?  Many private elementary schools have a small number of staff
members.  Quite common is a teacher per grade, part time secretarial /
principle / janitor, and a couple other teachers (possibly part time)
for music, PE, etc.  It would be easy to rent a building (or part of a
building) and hire a staff and buy equipment of this sort over a
summer.

Of course, a school of this sort won't have computers, fancy AV
equipment, etc.  But the problem with public schools today seems to be
that they aren't teaching kids to read, write, do simple arithmetic,
learn simple geography, etc.  You don't need computers to teach that.

Rapid change might cause planning problems for a public school (the
private schools would also have planning problems) but note that the
underlying assumption is that the public schools will lose students.
The basis of this is the assumption that public schools are than
private schools, and that the only way they can succeed is to force
parents to send their children to the (poorer) public schools.

There is the argument that private schools will skim off the best
students.  The only place this might hold up is if you only look at
elite college prep type schools.  Mainstream private schools (Catholic
schools being the largest component) don't have high admission
standards and the inner city street academies were setup specifically
to deal with average neighborhood kids.

There is a problem that a private school might throw out a disruptive
student, who would be forced on the public schools.  My first reaction
is that the public schools should have the same privilege.  But this
also opens an opportunity for private schools which deal with problem
children.

>Again, I can't see any evidence of the value of "competition".  It's a nice
>word, but what I see instead is splintering of resources and duplication of
>effort.

If competition caused splintering of resources and duplication of
effort, why is it that the large economy of scale Soviet system didn't
far outstrip the rest of the world in every industry, research, etc?
If you don't understand competition, we're talking past each other.

To a large extent the advantage of school choice is not competition,
but individualism.  Today's schools take all students and lump them
into a single classroom.  This even though education theory says that
different students may learn in different ways.  School choice lets
students who learn better in a structured environment attend a
structured school, those who learn better in an open environment
attend a school with little structure.

Part of school choice will also mean teaching students different
things.  A Catholic or Lutheran school will teach religion.  Some
schools may not teach evolution, or may whitewash American history
rather than teaching the truth, or even bend to opinion and teach
according to the current "correct" view of history (as todays public
schools do).  Note that correcting history is an honored tradition.
The British do it with King John and Richard III.

There have been a lot of school experiments in the past 30 years.  I
attended schools experimenting with open classrooms, modular
scheduling, etc.  My parents went through a backlash against these
reforms which pushed toward ignoring gifted students and concentrating
on those who failed under the reforms.  Under a single public school
system you pick one way to teach students and try to make the students
conform to it.  Under school choice students can move to the school
which teaches them best (under the guidance of parents).

Of course, many people don't think parents will make this choice.
This is the attitude that the general public is composed of morons who
drink beer, watch soap operas or football games (depending on sex) and
never have a thought in their life.  In that case you should be
pushing to amend the Colorado constitution to prohibit initiative and
referendum, and possibly take the vote away since people obviously
can't choose a good candidate.

>I don't object to people experimenting with private schools.  I object to
>spending *my* money on the experiment, the same way I object to the middle-
>school idea (massive expenditure just to relabel things and move students
>around).  I also can't see the point of a new approach, untried on the
>scale proposed by the voucher system, instead of simply trying to fix
>something that *did* work in the recent past.

So how do we get schools back to the way they were in the recent past
(assuming they did work)?  If the external changes of the past 30
years are the problem then we must:

- Cut their funding.  Money per pupil has been going up far faster
  than inflation.
- Eliminate the Federal Department of Education and much of its
  function.
- Put the disabled back in their institutions.
- Eliminate state departments of education, textbook selection
  committees, curriculum committees, etc, returning control to the
  local district.
- Fire somewhere around 75% of the administrative staff.
- Abolish teacher / union contracts.

Any bets on how far this will get?

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