From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian
Subject: Public schooling
Date: 6 Oct 1992 20:31:58 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <1992Oct5.041411.3497@genie.slhs.udel.edu> starr@genie.slhs.udel.edu
(Tim Starr) astounds us with his typical libertarian grasp of reality: not!

>USA's public school monopoly is a stagnant
>monoculture, the biggest socialist atrocity left on the face of the earth.

Wow!  Bigger than all of mainland China!  What a grasp of the FACTS!  Not!


Libertarians love to claim that $2500 vouchers will make schooling better.
I strongly doubt it.  Let's look at some of the "statistics" and claims they
like to trot out.

1) Private schools teach as well or better than public schools, based on
   standardized test scores.

This might be a telling argument, if only the students in private schools
were comparable to the students in public schools.  On the average, students
in private schools come from higher-income, better-educated families, two
factors which I'd bet were better indicators of success on tests than whether
the schooling was public or private.

And which students get tested?  Not the ones that did so poorly that they
left the schools.  And in some communities (mine home town for instance)
public schools encouraged everyone to take the SAT's to determine whether
they had college potential, while in the local private Catholic school,
only those who wanted to go to college were tested.  Thus, artifically
skewed results (and even that didn't bring the Catholic school up to the
ranking of the public school.)

2) "The average private school tuition is less than $2500."

First, tuition doesn't measure expense.  For example, in my home town the
Catholic schools were HEAVILY subsidized by the contributions of the
congregation to keep the tuition down.  This is significant: if you are
losing money with every sale, you can't make money by increasing sales.
The same is true of schools which rely partly on endowments from alumni.
Artificially low tuitions (which comprise a significant proportion) cannot
be expanded to meet the demand.

Second, I'd like a breakdown of EXPENSE of schooling versus test results
versus class of the students.  Alot depends on which meaning of "average"
is used above.  Median, mode, or mean?  Most private schools in this neck
of the woods (Boston) charge well over $6000 (and some over $12,000) per year.
Take a survery in your neighborhood: phone all the private schools in the
yellow pages and ask them their number of students and their tuition.

3) "Who's getting screwed the worst by the public schools?"

A classic divisive tactic: don't let people think about how to make public
schools work better, appeal to their individual selfishness.  Everybody is
screwed when public schools work poorly.  Yet there are lots of public schools
that work VERY well.  The alternative libertarians don't want you to think
about is making public schools work well.

What makes public schools work badly?  Libertarians like to demonize unions
and "bureaucracy", without any evidence but their accusation.  Yet numerous
studies show that inequities in funding due to local control of the purse
strings pitting property owners and businesses against parents and children
are a major factor.

Is choice a factor that would improve schools?  The libertarians themselves
proclaim experiments with choice within public schools: there is no need to
provide vouchers.

4) Private schools will be more efficient.

Right.  Sure.  What costs will they cut?  I suppose they'll jam more
students into a classroom.  But let's not forget the costs they'll add.
Marketing, advertising, exorbitant salaries of executives (yup, private
schools have bureaucracies too), profit for investors, etc.

But wait: the vast majority of private schools are non-profit.  Are they more
efficient?  Look at other non-profit institutions like charities, where it
is not uncommon to spend more than half the funds raised towards raising
further funds.  Libertarians are fond of claiming profit motives will make
private schooling efficient: but we don't see it because it is primarily a
non-profit industry.

5) Private schools will serve everybody.

Not for $2500.  Any student who requires extra resources will be discriminated
against.  Those with physical or learning disabilities, those who require
special treatment, those who are slower than the others, etc.  Private
schools are not known for shouldering their portion of the burden of
those who need special help (with the exception of specialty schools, which
certainly do not do it for $2500.)

A large fraction of public school students is well served: it's the other
fraction whose lot needs improving.  There's no evidence that private schools
will want to serve those students: they would be left with the shambles of
the public schools after libertarians enact their self-fulfilling prophecy.

There's more: I don't have the time today.

Mike Huben

"Utopias now appear much more realizable than one used to think.  We are now
faced with a different new worry: How to prevent their realization."
						Nicolas Berdiaeff
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.society.anarchy