People have been trying to do a lot of things - hasn’t been successful.

Instead of bring the public schools up to the level of private schools the solution is to get rid of private schools? That seems utterly ridiculous. If private schools do better than public schools should emulate them instead of banning the competition.

I am reminded of the Rush song The Trees

> Now there’s no more Oak oppression. For they passed a noble law. And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw

>Instead of bring the public schools up to the level of private schools the solution is to get rid of private schools?

It depends if private school superiority (or professional tutor superiority) is better in ways that can even be emulated in public schools. For one thing, a lot of their differences are due to exclusion.

On the face of it, I rather doubt that it's possible to raise public schools in the West to that extent.

Of course, there's more to it than that. Public schools in the US have achieved some degree of the nature of private schools purely by geographic segregation.

This is true, but I think there are ways we can mitigate this. A voucher system could help fix some of these issues and allow some kids in crappy inner city schools to get out and go to a better one.

An interesting angle to that is the continuous sorting that goes on.

You end up with some schools with the worst of the worst, and heaven help anyone stuck in there. How do you construct those places? Do they have a SHU?

Given our current infatuation with 'fairness' another issue arises. What happens when the good schools, given a voucher system, and the bad schools tend to have people who look alike within them. Should there be outrage?

We are already in the situation where some schools are better than other schools (regardless if they are private or public). This wouldn't change with a voucher system. It is impossible to have perfectly equal schools. Some teachers are better than others and that will always be the case.

Currently kids in the inner city are poorer and stuck in the crappy public schools. Even if their parents wanted to send them to a different school they couldn't afford it. It seems clear to me that the current system is not working for the poor and lower middle class.

The worst case situation would be nothing changes for kids in bad schools. They were going to bad schools and continue going to bad schools. The best case scenario would lead to some kids currently in bad schools going to better schools. This would allow them to get a better education which would be impossible in the current situation. I won't deny that some kids would still be stuck in bad schools, but I fully believe some will get out.

My point is more that a voucher system would tend to hollow out bad schools, taking out the more high-functioning kids. Perhaps they would hollow out the ranks of teachers as they'd prefer to work in a safer/less crazy-making environment.

Don't get me wrong, I don't hate the idea of vouchers.