Schools are controlled primarily by state and local governments, which are not universally controlled by Democrats but split along typical red state/blue state lines:

https://www.ncsl.org/research/about-state-legislatures/parti...

Republican legislatures have shown they are quite capable of passing legislation about education that serves little purpose beyond a political agenda, as this year's crop of bills banning critical race theory shows (critical race theory being a graduate level discipline that is not taught in public secondary schools).

https://www.chalkbeat.org/22525983/map-critical-race-theory-...

And bills like the voucher program you describe have been shown to have mixed results at best. If you live at the poverty line that West Virginia bill does not provide you any additional choice in your child's education, unless there are numerous private schools in West Virginia that charge $4600 or less in tuition, which I would not expect. Otherwise it's simply a transfer of funds away from public schools to middle and upper class families who were already leaning away from public education and the private (largely religious) institutions they prefer. If the intent was truly to provide school choice to all, they could end enrollment based on residence and allow low income families to choose to place their children in high performing schools in high income areas, but that kind of choice is not the intent of these programs.

Well a couple things to note:

1. An entrepreneurial teacher/teachers could provide a service for these suddenly flush parents at $4600 per child.

2. Most politicians, from either side are either corrupt or incompetent, so these labels don’t matter much to me. But if you actually look at the people running most say schools/admins and even large chunks of the government bureaucracy it’s people who believe in large government and like that lifestyle. This is true even in deep red areas.

Finally, the argument “more money”/resources needed to improve the bad quality is something that has been going on for 50+ years and it’s gotten worse over time. At what point do you say, “geez guess more money isn’t the answer!”

I think Thomas Sowell said once something along the lines that the black schools in DC at about late 1800s-early 1900s was OUTPERFORMING those of the white schools in the region. If one is to look at the present day schooling in the same region, those children/teens are functionally illiterate.

So what needs to be done, is to give a voucher to every parent to decide where to go. Right now the system sends MORE money to a school if it’s failing, and or they allow the failing school to survive.

> I think Thomas Sowell said once something along the lines that the black schools in DC at about late 1800s-early 1900s was OUTPERFORMING those of the white schools in the region. If one is to look at the present day schooling in the same region, those children/teens are functionally illiterate.

There's a lot of quiet stereotyping going on where people assume that blacks have always underperformed whites in schooling, economic growth, etc.

In reality, this is a recent phenomenon. Well into the 50s/early 60s, black incomes were growing much faster than whites.

Yup! They assume today’s bad situation and apply it backwards, when in fact as time progresses, things have gotten worse not better.

> So what needs to be done, is to give a voucher to every parent to decide where to go.

So, we just say 'fuck all the kids who were born in the wrong zip code' and can't overcome the distance gate to go to a better school with the voucher?

Well seeing as how the biggest failing schools are in large metros this argument doesn’t hold much does it?

One of the biggest school system is in NYC and the average student graduating high school is reading at a 10 year old level or less.

One could also imagine some sort of large vehicle whose sole purpose is to provide rides for students to attend the schools.

Let me see if I can do some more research on such a scheme. Perhaps, one could paint them a vivid color, so that people could know they are “educational vehicles”. Maybe yellow? I think I’ve seen such a system before…

Lastly, right now you’re saying:

“Born in the wrong zip? And the school is failing? Sucks to be you! Not my problem”

Or what am I missing? At least provide the opportunity for someone rather than force them to a particular outcome

> Lastly, right now you’re saying:

> “Born in the wrong zip? And the school is failing? Sucks to be you! Not my problem”

No. That's the logical outcome of a voucher system that only rewards the most successful schools instead of fixing the others.

> Or what am I missing?

Everything, apparently.

It's a fallacy to think there are not good schools possible in poorer areas; they used to be quite common, and still are in many places: https://www.city-journal.org/html/irreplaceable-9836.html

Rich elites, which almost everyone on this forum is, imagine that the poor people in the inner city who want vouchers want to send their kid to some swanky rich kid school where everyone wears a blazer.... they don't. They want to send their kids to the ordinary private schools that would exist in their communities if they were able to afford non-public education.

> unless there are numerous private schools in West Virginia that charge $4600 or less in tuition, which I would not expect.

There seem to be quite a few: https://www.privateschoolreview.com/tuition-stats/west-virgi...

In general, Catholic school is per capita cheaper than public. In fact, according to https://educationdata.org/average-cost-of-private-school, $4600 would be enough to cover the average Catholic elementary school in the US as a whole.

> Otherwise it's simply a transfer of funds away from public schools to middle and upper class families who were already leaning away from public education and the private (largely religious) institutions they prefer.

That's not true. Vouchers are more popular with minorities: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/02/24/voters-str...

I also notice you use religious as a pejorative. There is little reason to do so. Catholic schooling for example provides better outcomes for low-income minorities than public schools, including when adjusted for poverty, parental behavior, etc. Thomas Sowell goes in depth in his book "education in america".

> If the intent was truly to provide school choice to all, they could end enrollment based on residence and allow low income families to choose to place their children in high performing schools in high income areas, but that kind of choice is not the intent of these programs.

Low income families do not want to place their kids in high performing schools in high income areas. That doesn't actually work. This typically leads to ostracization of the poor kids in school and the creation of two separate tracks.

My wife and I are in the best high school in our city ... if you're white or rich. If you're black it's the worst. It's in an extremely rich area, but it also includes a predominantly black poorer inner city neighborhood.

> I also notice you use religious as a pejorative. There is little reason to do so.

While I tend to agree that Catholic schools are good at teaching science (except for reproductive science!), evangelical schools often teach against evolution, climate change, etc. A popular Christian textbook refers to the theory of evolution as “a wicked and vain philosophy.” And many of these schools accept vouchers! That means taxpayer funds set aside for education are actively being used, by religious schools, to make students dumber, in an explicit attempt at religious and political indoctrination.

https://www.politico.com/story/2014/03/education-creationism...

> except for reproductive science!

People claim this with little evidence. At my conservative Catholic school we discussed contraception in great detail. More than my public school classmates. We learned about all the available options, how they worked at the chemical level, and why they were morally unacceptable. In fact, we had a whole full-semester class on this and on abortion. We learned about the various drugs used to induce abortion. The various methods of abortion. Our first sex ed curriculum was in the fourth grade. And yes, this was a very conservative catholic elementary school, with a very strict orthodox Irish nun for principal.

The real complaint here isn't that Catholic schools don't teach contraception, abortion, etc. It's that they teach that they are immoral. The morality of contraception and abortion is not a scientific argument.

Another complaint I hear about 'conservative' sex ed, is that they don't talk about sex as fun, but I literally never experienced this at my catholic school. We had our married teachers be incredibly candid about pleasure. In my all boys high school, I remember one in particular pointing out that sex without a condom felt way better. And guess what... he was right... thanks Mr Tory.

The last thing I'll say is my own experience as a newlywed. My wife when we first married had irregular cycles. She went to public school. She accepted this as normal (which it is certainly, but not the way she was having them.... 100 day long cycles followed by 20 day ones). I went to all boys Catholic school, where we learned about natural family planning. By the time we married as 21 year olds, I knew that the church taught a system of menstrual tracking that could be used to avoid or achieve pregnancy and fix cycle issues.

I encouraged us to sign up for an NFP class. My wife wanted to use the pill. I told her that based on her history of migraine, the pill may cause blood clots and lower libido (which newly wed wants that...). Anyway, she went on the pill and had all the typical reactions one would expect. She decided in frustration to take an NFP class.

Anyway, we did that, and my wife learned so much about her cycle. She said she wished she had learned it in school. Guess what? The girls at our all girl sister school did learn about it. Via NFP tracking, she learned her cycles were likely off due to her thyroid. A trip to the doctor later, she had normal cycles. Then we had a series of miscarriages, including some late ones. We visited a Catholic doctor who took her full history and looked at her menstrual charts. She immediately saw some more discrepancies that indicated some hormone things, but she also noted that her migraines could be a blood clotting problem, especially given her reaction to the pill. Anyway, some tests later, and some blood thinners and some supplemental progesterone, we had our first child after seven miscarriages. Now, after successful pregnancies, we know that it's likely a blood clotting problem. Man... if only she had learned that a bad reaction to the pill and a history of migraines is often indicative of blood clotting problems, she would have avoided all that unnecessary suffering. Thank goodness we learned about it in Catholic school.

That is to say, I credit my own Catholic high school education for being able to see what was obviously ailing my wife and she and I both wish she had had access to the same education in high school. It would have saved her a lot of unnecessary inconvenience over having an irregular cycle, and us a lot of grief over having lost those babies. Frankly, our experience of the science taught by the church, turned us from lukewarm Catholics (I had learned a lot of facts but disagreed with the church over its moral teachings) into pretty traditional ones.

> Schools are controlled primarily by state and local governments, which are not universally controlled by Democrats but split along typical red state/blue state lines

Fine, but the claim was about the teachers' union. In a red state, who does the teachers' union campaign for? I'd bet that there are few examples of the teachers' union campaigning for Republicans, even in a red state.

> Schools are controlled primarily by state and local governments, which are not universally controlled by Democrats but split along typical red state/blue state lines:

Looking at the uproar about Critical Race Theory, it appears that even the deepest red states have school hierarchies run by the blue. In addition, the Department of Education and other federal agencies are a thing.

> it appears that even the deepest red states have school hierarchies run by the blue

This is definitely not the case. Consider: unless consistently-"red" legislatures and governor's offices are putting "blue" people in charge of their educational departments, it couldn't be the case. Further, in many states, individual districts play a major role in deciding the course of education, so even if that were the case, "red" school districts would have to be electing "blue" school boards, and I can 100% confirm that, as one might expect, they do not do this, generally.

[EDIT] further—and I'm heading into speculative territory here, I admit—I'd guess that people holding school administration PhDs—so, qualified for superintendent-type roles—identify, on average, as farther right than the average of PhD holders, and probably than most individual PhD areas of study except maybe business-related ones. There are lots of very conservative school administrators out there.

I don’t buy this argument for a couple of reasons. The first is that you have to look at the percentage of candidates for the job from each tribe. Just like really blue cities are inevitably at odds with their really red tribe police officers who inevitably live in the suburbs. Similarly, public universities in red states have no choice but to hire really liberal professors because like 95% of professors vote Democrat and the remainder vote libertarian or green, etc. You could try convincing the professors to go be police officers and vice versa, but neither is actually interested in the other job.

Secondly, these sorts of policies often come from the bottom up, from students or teachers. Administrations often roll over out of self preservation or apathy.

Ah, higher ed. Yes, that may have a different dynamic. My comment was from the POV of primary and secondary education. For instance, it's definitely not the case that this:

> Secondly, these sorts of policies often come from the bottom up, from students or teachers. Administrations often roll over out of self preservation or apathy.

Is happening in any widespread or common way in k-12 school districts, with admin hired by "red" school boards elected by "red" voters capitulating to most any "blue" political inclinations of teachers. As for the students in those age ranges, for most of that span they have a strong tendency to very closely follow the political views of their parents, so that's mostly irrelevant as far as pressure goes.

>Schools are controlled primarily by state and local governments, which are not universally controlled by Democrats but split along typical red state/blue state lines

This isn't reality, schools are ran by school administrators and education leadership heavily skew leftist.

I'm not American, but the core flaw that I've never had explained away for me in voucher or "school choice" systems is how "bad" schools get better.

E.g., school in my district is bad. They don't have enough resources, or their teachers are bad. People begin taking their kids out of the school which means the school now has less money. Assuming they could fire teachers at will, they can't even now afford the "better" teachers who would likely cost more. They definitely can't afford more learning resources or an expansion to lower class sizes.

So how do you prevent schools either going into a vicious or virtuous cycle?

>So how do you prevent schools either going into a vicious or virtuous cycle?

I expect that you have to try it and add controls as necessary. Not only are these systems too complicated to model in any simple way, but have multiple players each with their own demands. It's a strategy problem as much as simply channeling some money.

It seems to me that the end game always becomes one of segregation of 'good' vs. 'bad' students. The teaching part isn't purely an aside, but matters less than you might think. So, you have to ask how important it is for the good to drag along the bad (or visa versa) and how detrimental it is to produce schools that are, in essence, jails.

I mean, take a look at how the non-voucher system works in SF. Lottery system and if you end up with a crappy school, you either put your kid in a private school or try and game the system to get them switched. The parents who are poor don’t have the bandwidth or knowledge to do it so they just get stuck with whatever school. So you end up with the same problem. Crappy schools have kids of parents who don’t value education or parents who don’t have an option.

At least with vouchers the parents, rich or poor have a choice where their kids go.

What exactly makes a crappy school? I went to the school dictated by my geography my whole life which online rankings don’t indicate as anything special - is this just a thinly veiled proxy for SES?

Percentage of time teachers spend on crowd control instead of teaching would be one good measurement, along with percentage of children performing at grade level.

In crappy schools, little learning occurs as the classroom resembles a zoo, and many/most students are several grade levels behind.

I went to both what people would consider "Crappy schools" and "good schools".

Crappy schools have an awful student body, many of which don't want to be there, are further behind in their learning than their grade indicates, are disruptive, and teachers have to spend large amounts of time calling security to have students removed or disciplining students. Often, the parents blame the schools and teachers for all their kids' problems.

In my experience, some of the teachers were still trying their best (usually young ones that weren't made cynical yet) but others were too burned out to care much since you only had to look around and see it was mainly hopeless.

The crappy school had fights every day in classes and in the hallways and were fairly violent places.

In the good school (last couple years of school) I wasn't sure the teachers were any more talented but the students showed up on time, listened, did their assignments, and were not violent or disruptive. Honestly, it was really strange to me the first few months and felt probably like when a prisoner is put back into society and they don't quite know how to act at school yet. Any slight I'd meet with threatening behavior to defend myself and intimidate, but I found it wasn't necessary after some time. I hated that school too but I think it was more I disliked a lot of the people there and the reason why was because I was initially resentful of their comfortable, happy life and civility, and just how functional things were. People listened to their teachers and wanted to succeed. I know that sounds crazy, but I was used to going to an insane asylum every day year after year and this was different. The friends I made at the crappy school are the best friends I've had but as the years have gone on many of them are dead from suicide or drugs or have had a really difficult go of it as adults. It all catches up.

I spent my entire school life in the public school system of a large city and I would never send my kids to those schools. It's not really that the schools that are "good or bad" per-se - it's the student body that determines that and that is largely decided by the parents and communities of those children. So much money has to be spent on security (my HS had 10 full-time staff) and discipline that there's not money for "nice things". But, the administration knows they need to hit numbers so kids are passed along if they show up and I knew more than a few kids who graduated and couldn't read past a 5th grade level.

Reading this it seems closer to peer group than school itself. I guess I’m part of the peer group that has to be avoided at all costs, to the extent of paying $30-$50k a year for private school.

So that’s the sad thing. So many of the kids did have potential and wanted to learn but the school environment was tainted with enough disruption to ruin it. Kids that could excel would be disruptive and I should know since I was one of them. It was anarchy at times and why not participate in it?

Kids are impressionable and will adapt to the culture they’re immersed in. I took on bad values because I was immersed in that. I’m only grateful afterwards I was able to figure it out. I lost a few years early on but was able to recover. I only wish I was immersed in a serious academic environment rather than prison training. My kids absolutely will not be immersed in that and I wish no parent that wants to surround their kids with likewise parents would have to settle for that. It’s why funding students and not schools is the best path. Poor, single moms would have the option of getting their kids out of these public school hell holes.

The failing schools will also get fewer students going for them. Money per student will be the same as it always was, and quite often with a better student/teacher ratio as well.

No. Schools benefit from economies of scale like almost everything else. If you have a school building designed for 2000 students and you have 600 attending, do you think it will be cheaper, the same, or more expensive per student to operate the building?

It will cost more per student, which leaves less money available for teachers so the student/teacher ratio would get worse. The facilities will not be kept up as required. Programs will be cut.

Also ignored in your analysis is that generally when school choice is available, the students most likely to leave a school are the high performers and the most likely to stay are the low performs and students with special needs, who are more expensive to educate and were previously subsidized by the high performers. If you compare the services provided to special needs students at a school in a wealthy area to the services provided to special needs students at a school in a poor area, there will be a massive difference in quality.

Yes because this is exactly what’s been happening for 50 years.

I’d understand this argument say in 1975, but in 2021 your argument needs some deeper analysis

You don’t. You kill the school at some point. Some organizations become so dirty they cannot be cleaned. So you allow people to select into better organizations and you let these die. Then you ensure that those administrators don’t all end up together in a new school.

Schools suffer from the same Too Big To Fail. We have to let them fail and let parents have free choice.

You haven't gotten an explanation because people who advocate for "school choice" systems don't want the bad schools to get better. They just don't want their kids to interact with people who go to the bad school.

That describes why people pay for private school more than it describes why people would support vouchers. The theory is that "school choice" would mean everyone would flee the worst schools and they'd be compelled to clean up their act or dissolve.

Ah, you mean like how the "free market" would police itself if they just got rid of those pesky regulations?

I don't exactly see how that's similar; no one is complaining that their school district is lousy because it's overregulated, they're complaining that it's mismanaged or corrupt and that without something like vouchers, only the wealthy can opt out, and poorer kids get trapped.

Ultimately I think pure free-market school choice in practice would fail not so much because of regulatory capture or a cash-grab, but because changing schools is disruptive and won't fix the problems of students with dysfunctional home lives.

Better than the current “sunk cost mentality” of public schools where poor schools have more money thrown at them until someone finally realizes its not a money issue.

It’s literally the opposite of efficient use of funds. You want to shift more money to the better run schools not the worst run schools.

Ahh yes, the hordes of San Francisco Republicans… oh wait, the city hasn’t had a Republican since the 70’s.

Yet magically, when the state has held a Democratic majority, the first time there's been a budget surplus since the dot-com boom.

The city is not the top level when it comes to funding, champ. It takes, literally in this case, a decade to start to undo the damage of Republican misappropriation and sabotage.

> Yet magically, when the state has held a Democratic majority, the first time there's been a budget surplus since the dot-com boom.

To be fair, that's probably as much due to a ballot measure lowering the budget threshold down from a 2/3 supermajority and thereby actually making the state governable.

OTOH, that measure was heavily pushed by the Democratic governor and legislature and opposed by Republicans, so...

In 1962. The repeal had been knocked down multiple times in proposition attempts thereafter.

Yet Republicans would campaign on preventing the repeal of such a measure and it didn't happen until Democrats had full control of the Capital again. Hmmm, curious. It's almost as if Republicans have a history of being unable or unwilling to work with others.

> oh wait, the city hasn’t had a Republican since the 70’s.

I’m pretty sure there is a word missing in this sentence that radically alters its meaning (I can think of several candidates, either before or after “Republican”, that might make it true), but SF definitely has some Republicans.

Haha no. Lots of regulations are just written in vegetable oil. The US regulated marriage between races using anti-miscegenation laws. Written in blood my ass.

There are two kinds of great fools in the world: those who say regulations are always good and those who say regulations are never good.

Alright. You rendered your entire point to "hurr, left wing bad" but with just many more words.

For anyone else, take a look at who keeps cutting funding to education and funneling funds to profit oriented companies before you let this guy play this kind of disingenuous game here.

Especially as Reason's positions often carry the Libertarian bent of "fuck you, got mine" as the motivation to further erode the equal playing field that education was supposed to be... often this is in the form of distance gating "good" schools away from the "bad" ones, and by proxy, the "bad" neighborhoods... whatever the cloak term of choice is these days, eg "underperforming", challenged, ghetto, etc...

No, they “f** you I got mine” attitude is exactly what a person like myself hates to see. It’s the same thing as FB pushing for social media/internet regulations, it makes you wonder why they are pushing for it.

When you create a department of X, the actual incentive is for that department to make things worse so they can get more funding.

The current system is not producing the equal playing field that education was supposed to be. So, you whine about those suggesting school choice, but what's your solution? Because the current system isn't working, and doesn't look like it's going to start working any time soon.