From: borden@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Dave Borden)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.clinton,alt.politics.elections,alt.politics.libertarian,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: The New Education President
Date: 8 Jan 93 22:54:10 GMT
Reply-To: borden@m5.harvard.edu
Organization: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, Cambridge, MA,  USA

In article <1993Jan8.184846.21795@walter.bellcore.com> nancyg@banshee.bellcore.com (Nancy Griffeth) writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.194924.16150@m5.harvard.edu>, borden@head-cfa.harvard.edu (Dave Borden) writes:
 
>|> You're right - a $1000 or even $2500 voucher wouldn't get most children
>|> access to a good education, public or private.  But look at how much some of
>|> the schools are spending - the New York City public school system spent
>|> $7414 per student in fiscal year '92; only 32 cents of each dollar was spent
>|> on classroom instruction (teachers' salaries, books, supplies, etc.).  Give
>|> every student in New York a voucher worth $7000 towards education, or even
>|> $4000 or $5000, and education will get better FAST.  

>I have a problem with this reasoning.  The idea seems to be to improve 
>education by making it more competitive, and perhaps allowing everyone to choose
>their own school would help somewhat.  But the impact will be reduced by the
>fact that the location of your home restricts your choice of a school.  So the
>competition is reduced to local competition, and in fact we already have that.
>It's reflected in the desirability of living in certain communities and in the
>housing prices.  Still, I expect that vouchers would provide for more direct
>competition between nearby schools, and so could provide marginal improvements.

Read the figures above one more time.  New York City spends only 32 cents on
the dollar on classroom instruction!  It's a very impressive figure in a
negative sense.  I don't think it would take a brilliant administrator to
double that figure in a private school.  (In fact the national average in the
public schools is about double - it should be no less in a private school.)
I've read about what things are look in many of those schools - horrible.  The
educational establishment would have us believe that the problem in the inner
city schools is that the children are problematic.  Sensitive teachers,
however, will tell you that it's not the children, it's the school system.
The children are imprisoned in a negative environment that makes them more
closed and depressed, rather than open and optimistic.  I'm in the middle of a
very good book right now, a teacher's experiences teaching in a school in
Harlem.  His main point is that the children wanted to make the class work as
much as he did, and given a positive environment in which to learn, which he
provided, they did learn as well as any white suburban sixth-grade class would
learn.

>But the use of vouchers would make more money available for education,
>thereby increasing its cost (thanks to supply and demand and a relatively
>inelastic demand curve).  So won't we wind up paying more for only marginal
>improvements in education?  In fact, won't the effect be to shift national 
>resources into education and away from other things?  This is not necessarily bad,
>but have we considered what other things we are going to be shifting the money 
>away from?  Shall we shift it away from the military?  from health care?
>from social security?

32 cents on the dollar!  It's an abysmal figure.  Get a small group of
devoted, competent teachers together, and give them $5000 a student, and
they'll double that figure and then some more, and the education that results
will be something to be proud of, whether it's in the poorest ghetto or the
wealthiest suburb.  The effect will be anything but marginal.  The idea is to
free the children from a failing system.  It's going to be incredibly
difficult, if not impossible, to fix a system like NYC's public schools -
there are too many vested interests, bureaucrats, older teachers with
seniority, unions, etc. - why not just jettison it?  If it's capable of fixing
itself, then it will when confronted with the possibility of closure due to
lack of enrollment.  If it's not capable of fixing itself, then it should be
closed.   I care about the children who are in the schools more than I care
about the schools themselves.  A $5000 educational voucher would enable the
poorest child from the poorest family to escape the clutches of the establish-
ment and attend a good school, public or private, whichever the parents and
child think are best.  The purpose of the voucher is to take power away from
the educational establishment, and put it in the hands of the parents and
children.  The competition that's talked about would be a result of that
shift of power, and the improvement would be anything but marginal.

As for how the vouchers are funded, there's already a lot money going into
the public schools that it probably wouldn't be a big increase in spending
overall.  In New York, it might be a decrease.  Local taxes could still pay
the bulk of the cost, which grants from the state and federal government to
help poor areas.  Or it could be done at the state level, or the federal level.
It's just a matter of how you arrange it.  It ought not to be a mind-bending
problem.

>Furthermore, why do you think education will get better FAST when
>there are so many factors other than educational quality that go into the
>choice of a school?  In Texas, for example, should we expect football teams to
>get better fast? :-)

Make an announcement now, in early January, that educational vouchers valued
at $5000 apiece will be given to all schoolchildren in New York City, good for
the school year beginning next September, at any public or private school, that
lives up to certain accrediting standards that we find necessary.  The schools
will be ready and waiting in time.  They'll be ready because there will be a
new market for investors, new opportunities for gifted teachers frustrated by
the politics and bureaucracy of the public schools, opportunities for
educational innovators, etc.  They'll be ready; I might be one of them.   If
that's not enough to time to get it together, make it a year from September.
That's still pretty fast, but it would also give the public schools more of a
chance to try and get their acts together.  The schools will have to be good,
or people will take their business elsewhere.

   - Dave Borden
     borden@m5.harvard.edu
Xref: sparky alt.politics.clinton:20042 alt.politics.elections:24841 talk.politics.misc:67093 alt.politics.libertarian:3347