- • Because the sources of authorization and financial support vary across the sector as a whole, and within particular individual educational suppliers, the arbiters of the value being produced by the suppliers varies as well. All authorizers and financial supporters claim to be interested in and focused on providing high quality educational services, and efficiently and effectively achieving valuable educational outcomes for each child to whom services are supplied. And they may be entirely earnest in that goal.
- • But, their ideas of what constitutes a valuable educational process and result for each child may differ considerably from one another.
- o public, acting through the government, might be concerned about the aggregate o public, acting through the government, might be concerned about the aggregate social results of their spending across the society as well as the effects on individuals. Particular ideas of what role the distribution of educational services out to play not only in satisfying individuals, and building a strong economy, but also creating a strong civic and political culture can be important to the government if not the individual users of the educational services. They might also like to keep aggregate costs low.
- o individual users of the services (children and parents) might want highly customized o individual users of the services (children and parents) might want highly customized services tailored to ensure the best possible educational results for their child, and somewhat indifferent to what is being provided to other children, and what the aggregate cost and impact of the system is on society as a whole. They might also have somewhat short term and narrow ambitions that focus on low cost childcare to allow them to work, or the fastest possible transformation of their children into individuals who can share the economic burden of raising a family.
- o volunteers and philanthropists who shoulder the burden of paying for or working to o volunteers and philanthropists who shoulder the burden of paying for or working to produce the educational services they support without being forced to pay for it, and without necessarily internalizing all the benefits that come from their own efforts, might value a particular kind of education, for a particular population, that represents their ideas of a good education quite apart from what the public as a whole might want provided through government operations, or that the parents and students who want education would be willing to pay for on their own.

There can be, and probably is, significant overlap among the different dimensions of value that are used to assess the value being produced by any given educational supplier. But there also might well be some important differences – particularly if the government is particularly interested in advancing aggregate social objectives as well as satisfying the parents and students; or if the volunteers and philanthropists have their own ideas of a valuable education that depart from what the public believes should count as a quality education. This is the basic question that confronts any society when it decides whether to authorize and encourage schools that encourage the adoption of particular religious beliefs, ethnic identities, or the methods that will be used to discuss both values and facts in public discourse in general.