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From: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: corporal punishment in schools (
Message-ID: <722@cybvax0.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 3-Sep-85 11:06:07 EDT
Article-I.D.: cybvax0.722
Posted: Tue Sep  3 11:06:07 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Sep-85 02:29:40 EDT
References: <11254@rochester.UUCP> <7800424@inmet.UUCP>
Reply-To: mrh@cybvax0.UUCP (Mike Huybensz)
Organization: Cybermation, Inc., Cambridge, MA
Lines: 56
Summary: 

In article <7800424@inmet.UUCP> nrh@inmet.UUCP writes:
> I suggest, though, a compromise, I'm not sure who invented it, but I got
> it from Milton Friedman.  If we absolutely MUST tax people to pay for
> schooling (I doubt this, but if the votes are there....) then perhaps we
> should get the government out of the education-delivery system and
> instead issue vouchers, cashable at schools which graduate students
> capable of passing some standardized tests.

This system sounds too good to be true-- and is, once you consider the
economics from the school's point of view.  To maximize profits, a school
that depends solely on vouchers will try to:
1)  Select only students who can be taught with the minimum expenditure.
2)  Spend as little on subjects that aren't tested as possible.
3)  Teach as little about a subject as is necessary to get students to pass
    the tests.  (This would probably also discourage teaching understanding,
    since it is more difficult to test for understanding rather than rote.)

It's debatable how much competition would affect these: children are not
a tremendously mobile population, and tend to be sparsely distributed.
Many private schools would make the decision not to compete, but to rely
solely on the local (essentially captive) population because to improve
enough to attract other students would cost more than the increase in income.
You see these phenomena in many of commuter colleges, except that since
there are no standardized tests, their degrees may be worth less.

> Is there some reason the government has to run the schools?  Remember,
> it typically costs government twice as much as private enterprise to do
> ANYTHING, so private schools could probably make a profit and lower
> costs too.

It costs the government more because the government cannot simply focus
on the "profitable" groups: social goals demand that it provide comparable
services to all.

There is also the danger of forming a powerful industry, which would
lobby in its own economic interests, rather than in the interests of
the students or the public.  You would see the rise of industry giants,
as we see in automobiles, fast-food, hospitals, etc.  Do you want the only
nearby school to be as responsive as a McDonalds?

> As for the hard-to-educate (the folks your original article talked
> about), if the state can identify them it can offer heftier vouchers for
> their benefit, payable at a school with the ability to handle them.

Just what we need: social stratification into a caste system.  Because
the "hard to educate" will vary so widely in expense to educate, how will
a voucher system work?  The distribution of the hard to educate is even
sparser than that of other students-- the cost to segregate them into
institutions that consider them profitable will be high, if it is paid at all.

The fact is that privitizing education shows one major possible benefit:
economy.  It has many possible problems: overall decrease in quality of
education, social stratification, and neglect of the costly to educate.
-- 

Mike Huybensz		...decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!cybvax0!mrh