The free market can be good at optimizing for certain outcomes, but I don't think you're going to get a lot of buy in with the current political climate being what it is, and a lack of consensus around what kind of outcomes should be required.
Furthermore, making schooling a purely financial transaction? Where do you think that leads?
I'm not OK paying taxes to help Bobby Baptist send his kids to Jesus Is Lord Day School. Or kick in to rich parents' budget for Phillips Exeter. If we must have vouchers, let people keep their own tax money that would have gone to schools and use that for the vouchers. I'm not interested in handing people my cash to fund private education. I'm interested in having a public education system. That, I'll pay taxes for.
I spent years in both public and private schools. The worst part of public schooling was that everything was scaled down to the poorest-performing child's level. The worst part of private schooling was that a few underperforming kids were pushed/passed along with everyone else.
The latter outcome is _significantly_ better for society than the former.
No, I think you're missing the parent's point -- it's assimilating those students into a specific religious subculture whose beliefs and values may be at odds with civil society at large.
(If you have trouble seeing this, try substituting "Jesus Is Lord Day School" in your head for some other implied religions.)
Religious people are part of your community and have the right to their religious identity and to be a member of your community. If they want a school just for them, you don't suffer for it.
Religion is not at odds with society. We're not the USSR. Religious freedom is an enshrined right in this country.
Keeping religion out of publicly funded institutions, including schools, is done as much to safeguard free religious practice in this country as anything. The point is that the public institutions should be entirely civil and not under the sway of any one religion, because each religion once in control of society ends up discriminating against the others. That's why you don't allow them power in the civil sphere.
It is very actively 'trying to fuck us over'. And it's winning, hard, in both the 6-3 sphere, on the legislative bench, and in many others.
I also went to both. When I didn't have good enough grades they just passed me to public schools. Shocker, the private school passed off difficult children somewhere else. You know who else they didn't serve? Special needs? And who else? Anybody who couldn't afford it, or didn't believe in the holy trinity.
I realize that a lot of libertarians believe that everyone should fend for themselves and that there's some sort of natural selection that justifies poor outcomes for some based on "fair rules". As I've gotten older in life, nothing seems less true.
The worst thing that they did to me was add a course to the curriculum about religion so that I had an extra course to pass than the public school kids. And we didn't even learn exclusively about Catholicism in that class.
Are they? There are a lot of folks who would disagree (and many of those are graduates of such institutions) with that assessment[0]:
The city has determined that four Orthodox yeshivas are failing to provide
an education “substantially equivalent” to what’s offered in public schools —
and recommends the state reach the same conclusion for another 14 yeshivas
the city says are ultimately under state authority.
The findings are the results of a long-stalled and politically thorny
investigation that has stretched on since 2015.
The city found that just seven schools they investigated met standards.
That’s in addition to two it found were up to standards in 2019.
[...]
The investigation was spurred by a complaint from a group called Young
Advocates for a Fair Education, or YAFFED, headed at the time by a yeshiva
graduate who argued his education left him ill-prepared for the world outside
of religious studies. YAFFED and other critics argue many so-called ultra-
Orthodox yeshivas provide little to no secular instruction, particularly for
boys, and instead focus on religious studies. Representatives of the schools
have pushed back strenuously on those claims.
The schools are private, but do receive some state funding and, like all
private schools in New York, are required to provide children with an
education “substantially equivalent” to what is offered in public schools.
The investigation kicked off a debate of what exactly substantially
equivalent means, prompting the state to develop rules for determining it.
Public funding (and especially taking funds away from secular public schools) of religious schools is antithetical to the idea of a secular government and society.
[0] https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2023/06/30/new-yor...
The funding structure of every other thing in the US is totally backwards and so unless we solve cultural problems like xenophobia and tribalism we will be unable to solve socioeconomic ones. As such, I have basically zero faith that the US will last another 20 years in any recognizable form as a liberal democracy.
Money is part of the cause, but where it comes in is letting parents sort their families into expensive-to-live-in school districts with other parents who could also afford those expensive areas. Their kids tend to be easier to teach for a whole bunch of reasons—which does make the schools more effective, but is not because of extra money spent on the schools. The sorting enabled by money does matter, but the funding itself (received by the schools) does not appear to be a major factor.
Basically, a family pays for school quality in the US no matter what, either directly or indirectly—you pay either with tuition for expensive, good private schools if you're fairly rich, or with real estate and transportation costs if you're not that rich, with a sliding scale all the way down to "practically destitute". The extravagant spending of expensive private schools might result in better education (I'm thinking especially of the very-small class sizes, like 4-8 students per class, and the ability to pay for content-area PhDs as teachers in higher grades—we'd have to triple public school budgets to do that stuff, and that actually wouldn't even be enough because demand would so badly outstrip supply, should we try it) but beneath those relatively-few outliers with far-higher spending, moving spending/budgets up or down a (relatively) little doesn't seem to do much.
In fact, in impoverished areas probably the most important thing to do to improve educational outcomes after establishing a school at all isn't better schools but simply money at home - teachers are only responsible for 35% or so of the educational outcome of an aggregate population while something as simple as ensuring a child has reliable sources of meals and that the meals are with family is _way_ more important it turns out (insert correlation / causation caveats).
As such, my suggestion isn't to spend more money on schools in low performing areas but to direct funding toward better home lives for students in the districts essentially. What good is spending $100k on better teachers and equipment when the students are living in trailer parks with abusive parents that don't feed them properly? This is a problem _many_ teachers in low-opportunity areas have talked about as one of the top problems for them.
I used to support charter schools conceptually until I understood that the funding mechanisms cause a zero-sum game problem which takes funding away from schools that could use funding that would do better. At this time I'm convinced that almost any policy in education or health will fail without addressing the massive harms of large scale poverty in a capitalist system.
The core problem is that the effective route to massive improvements in equality of access to quality public education is basically "solve poverty, and concentrations of poverty", which isn't within the scope of schools' mission and is going to be far harder to sell, politically, take a long time, and be incredibly expensive.
We tried "bussing", which directly confronted parts of this, and it fucking worked, which makes it practically unique among attempts to address this problem, and it was relatively cheap compared to other things we might try that could work, but literally everyone hated it (yes, even the poorer families) so I guess that's out.
Much like the original architecture and UX of welfare in the US had assumptions like a family with a cook at home I don’t think education as an institution is really meeting the needs of the public to be better informed and critical thinking citizens invested in communities and society as a whole.
There’s a big cultural issue currently where people are resistant to move for better opportunities when much of the US immigrant population has thrived over generations specifically by migrating to opportunity areas. Now, many that try to leave impoverished areas are shamed and become pariahs for leaving basically job deserts and the social costs are horrific as people find less and less connection to others.
However when public education is not guided by improving meaningful outcomes, but by ideologues, it needs to be checked. Vouchers sounds like a good way to insert some market dynamics and to allow parents to walk away from schools that are on the path to fail to prepare their kids for the future.
My son is currently is in public elementary school here in Bay Area. If this idiocy persists, i dont believe i will keep him in non-STEM focused public school and will seek out better education for him that i will need to pay out of pocket.
I can afford it, but those who are less fortunate will remain trapped and thats a travesty of CA public education
As opposed to parental ideologues? By letting parents choose, we'll be letting them go to different schools championing different value system and the customers will be parents, not the children they ostensibly are charged with educating.
By grouping parents with like-minded parents, we'll amplify groups and clusters, leading to not only further stratification but also further decoupling society and greater inequality.
This effect is super obvious if you've ever sent kids to a private school. A big part of it is that you're opting in to a certain approach and set of attitudes and beliefs, even in secular ones. If you're not a fit for their program, you don't get to meaningfully agitate to change things as you might in a public school—they just tell you to go somewhere else, then pluck another candidate off the wait list to replace your family.
This can be awesome (though still risky, in some ways) if it's a good bubble, but of course they aren't all good ones....
What is an alternative? Forbidding parents to pull their kids from schools that are ruining their future by following a system with historically worse outcomes?
Most importantly, original articles here provide data that show that teaching math the way CA is trying to do has led to worse outcomes across the ethnic spectrum(unless of course parents had a financial ability to complement with private school/lessons).
So, we have the right to indoctrinate bullshit to children?
What is an alternative? Forbidding parents to pull their kids from schools that are ruining their future by following a system with historically worse outcomes?
We work by improving public schools. That's going to be easier said than done, but it's the right solution.
[EDIT] To make this more substantive: I think there's a distinct difference between collectively funding a public system, and redistributing money to folks to go toward private entities—this goes beyond not liking the values or environments of some of the schools private-school-preferrers might spend their vouchers on. That's why I suggested that if we must do vouchers, it ought to be limited to what a given person paid in themselves, not other people's money—I think there's a fundamental difference between funding a public good available to all and giving people cash so they can get past a private paywall to access a similar good.
Would you be okay with the exact same amount of your tax dollars being used to send his kids to public school? If so, then why the difference?
I'm also OK with taxes for public libraries, but wouldn't like my taxes going toward vouchers to help people pay for access to private libraries.
From what I have observed of the US's education system, the problem is that the public education system is assimilating children into values that are _not_ shared by society nor their parents.
That is to say: I'm a leftist and I'm worried about schools indoctrinating kids into a whitewashed, anti-LGBTQ+, jingoistic understanding of the world. However, I'm sure there are Republican parents that are concerned about kids being indoctrinated into a "woke" understanding of the world.
I don't know how you manage things when you have the country split down the middle with two completely separate worldviews.
The issue is, from my view, very much a problem of the Left-wing in the US, introducing victim/oppressor politics into schools, teaching children primarily to regard themselves as activists first, and students second.
I can also see it is causing a mental health crisis in students, who increasingly are under pressure to identify as an oppressed minority, in order to be marked out as an oppressor; victimhood conferring social status.
Where is this being done? What school districts specifically? What are the specific topics that "introduce victim/oppressor politics into schools?"
I'd really like to know, as I'm not aware of any of that stuff. Since you're obviously a "disinterested observer," without an agenda, I assume you've gathered actual evidence for your assertions.
My view (as an American "with an agenda") is very different from yours. If I'm wrong, I'd like to adjust my view. As such, please provide me with specific examples of what you're asserting.
Thanks!
An excerpt from the section "Trans as an intersectional shield":
> "“Of all of these badges of victim status, the only one that you can actually choose is ‘trans,’” Heather Heying, visiting fellow at Princeton University, pointed out to me. “All you have to do is declare ‘I’m trans’ and boom, you’re trans. And there you get to rise in the progressive stack and you have more credibility in this intersectional worldview.”
> In schools across America, kindergarteners are taught that biological sex and gender very often come apart; one has no essential connection to the other... As it is presented in schools, “cisgender” often seems to be a null set.
That doesn't answer the question I asked, nor does it show anything even close to encouraging a "victim/oppressor" environment.
No one is trans because its' "cool" or because someone mentioned that trans people (less than 1% of the population) exist. Do you know anyone who is trans? It's certainly not some golden road to peer/social acceptance and popularity. Quite the opposite, in fact.
In fact, trans folks are routinely subject to harassment, ridicule, threats and physical violence. Stopping such abuse is the goal, not creating more trans folks -- which is ridiculous on its face.
That you take your own trained-in prejudices for the laws of nature don't make them so.
None of what you posted makes your point, rather it just points up that you don't like what certain people have to say and you want such ideas and people suppressed. What are you afraid of?
I'm not claiming that "I just want to have a debate," nor did I "pursue" you (I made exactly one request to detail evidence of your assertions) and none of what I asked about was "tangential" or "previously addressed." And I'm not "feigning" ignorance. I know quite a bit about trans folks and the issues and discrimination they face.
What's more, the tired tropes (which you trotted out rather than have a substantive discussion) are more akin to the "Gish Gallop"[0] than anything I might have written being "sea lioning."
I have no interest in debating anything with you. You're just flat wrong.
Regardless, you have your ideas/beliefs and as a decent human being, I don't despise you for those beliefs, nor do I advocate for you to be silenced (as you do about others).
Please do speak your mind. It's an important part of having a free and open society. And I will do the same.
Have a good day!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop
Edit: Fixed typo.
Regulate voucher schools. Content requirements. Restrictions on religion. Maybe even standardized testing, or requirements that voucher students not be subject to extra fees.
The public is paying, after all. It can attach strings to its money.
The US no longer has universal shared values, it has many different sets of values that are all competing for survival. Schools have become the front line in this battlefield.
I disagree completely. Our shared values include belief in the rule of law, equality under that law, equality of opportunity and a whole bunch of other stuff that has always been the rhetoric, but much of which has only grudgingly been implemented for wider and wider swathes of Americans over the past 230+ years.
That some folks are at odds some issues most certainly does not mean we don't have shared values. It means that we don't share all the same values/ideas. Which is exactly how it's been here since well before the founding of the US.
Edit: Fixed prose.
You could literally rewrite history and language and program an entire generation of future voters. Imagine the possibilities
Instead, kids with engaged parents will flee to better schools. The other parents will either follow, growing the new school and model, or the other school will adapt in order to retain students.
Engaged parents are your early adopters. Without vouchers, most people can’t even afford to enter the market.