malcolmkirkpatrick@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
>Bob LeChevalier wrote:
>malcolmkirkpatrick wrote:
>Pubkeybreaker wrote:
>
>(someone): "That is, private schools truly are Lake Woebegon, where
>all children are above average.Voucherswill do one of two things.
>Either it will accelerate this affect, because if private schools are
>allowed to keep their admissions criteria, they'll then be able to
>just take the top, say, 20% instead of the top 40%, or they'll lose
>many of the reasons parents want to send them there.
>
>(MK): "Flat false. Some independent schools today specialize in the
>care of severe sp-ed students."
>(Bob): "And operate primarily as government contractors to collect
>the
>government funding, so they aren't really "independent schools".
>
>The issue isn't he meaning of "real independence" but a matter of
>fact: will schools outside the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel accept low-
>performing students. The factual answer is "yes". Many do.
"Many" is a subjective number, just as "some" was in your previous
statement to the same effect labeled (MK). But that is not the issue.
The issue is whether either private schools will be allowed to "cherry
pick", in which case they will be Lake Woebegon, leading to a publicly
subsidized two class school system, or whether they will be forced to
take all comers equally like the public schools have to, in which case
they won't serve the desires of those parents who want private schools
BECAUSE they exclude the rabble, who constitute the primary market for
private schooling today.
I can't find the cite quickly, but I recall seeing that in Milwaukee
the second case holds. There aren't really any more private students
under vouchers - the growth of voucher schools has killed the market
for non-voucher private schools. I seem to recall that in Cleveland
also, the numbers of private schools has dropped since vouchers.
>(MK): "Why not suppose that schools would specialize in various
>dimensions (curriculum, theory of learning, religion, etc)?"
>(Bob); "Because the existing private school marketplace doesn't."
>
>The existing distributin of schools, by type, reflects the existing
>legal and financial environment.
which isn't going to change.
>(MK): "Likely, unless regulations impose uniformity, you'll see
>increasing product differentation."
>(Bob): "Reality proves you wrong."
>
>Been to a grocery store, lately? A shoe store? It's centralized
>bureaucracies which impose uniformity.
The question is whether private schools, serving a market of several
million kids in the near absence of regulation, have provided
increasing product differentiation. They haven't. There is somewhat
greater variety under the charter school movement than with private
schools, but even there your grocery store analogy fails.
The reason is simple - a grocery store purchase of an item is low
cost, and low time investment. A buyer can experiment, and the impact
is usually on no more than a single meal, and after that meal is over,
so is the experiment, and the buyer can try something else or go back
to what they were eating before. Furthermore, since all meals are
virtually interchangeable, one can directly compare the experiment
with the prior meal experience in making a choice.
Education can't be experimented with that way. At minimum with a
voucher you are stuck with the experiment for a full year. After that
year you may or may not know what the relative effect has been since
the effects of education are long term, and you can't compare, easily
because 2nd grade in one school and 3rd grade at another school aren't
the same thing and aren't supposed to be. Furthermore, even if the
schools allow you haphazardly continue to experiment by changing
schools each year, then either your kid will progress at a
non-standard rate (either slower or faster than the norm) or a major
potential variable in the school "experiment" has been surprisingly
uniform - how much of what material is covered in a school year.
>(Bob): "No regulations compelled all 50 states to end up with school
>systems having 12 grades and kindergarten, more or less similar
curricula. No
>regulations compelled the Catholic schools to adopt curricula that are
>quite similar to those of the public schools."
>
>Not directly. Compulsory arttendance laws and the policy which
>restricts parents' options to schools operated by State (government,
>generally) employees created a dominant player (the NEA/AFT/AFSCME
>cartel's schools). State-chartered agencies (accreditation agencies)
>mandate curricula. The State-dominated post-secondary education market
>sets admission criteria and Education major degree requirements. State
>chartered teacher standards boards set teacher credential
>requirements.
None of which constrained the private schools which in most states do
not have to use education majors. Catholic schools have become more
and more like public schools, because they lost customers otherwise.
In recent years, Catholic education costs have risen much faster than
public school costs because Catholic school parents started to demand
all the (expensive) services that the public schools provided, and
they couldn't make do with nuns teaching the cl*****.
And the state did not dominate the post-secondary market until
relatively late in our history. Furthermore, nothing forced state or
non-state postsecondary education in California to be like that in
Louisiana, North Dakota or Massachusetts, so that also doesn't explain
the uniformity of education among all of the states and all of the
private schools.
>(MK): "Why suppose that schools will turn away poor performers?"
>(Bob): "It isn't as lucrative and it is harder to achieve "success"
>which is a significant marketing trait."
>
>Yet, in Hong Kong and Ireland, about 90% of students take government
>subsidies to independent or parochial schools. In the Netherlands,
>close to 70%.
Tired argument, rebutted multiple times.
>(MK): "Some schools would specialize in enhancing these."
>(Bob): "Reality says that very few do so."
>
>In the US, in the current US legal and financial environment.
Which isn't going to change.
>(MK): "Most grocery stores allow incompetent cooks to buy steak to
>take home and burn."
>(Bob): "Very few grocery stores specialize in teaching incompetent
>cooks how
>to cook a steak properly."
>
>The point is, schools in a voucher environment can make money dealing
>with low-performing students as well as academic stars. Just as
>grocery stores can make money selling to incompetent cooks and expert
>cooks.
But in fact there are very few grocery stores that cater specifically
to a subset of the market.
>(Bob): "Ever heard of the 14th amendment "equal protection under the
>law"?
>(MK): " 'Equal protection' considerations currently do not bar
>selective government schools (Stuyvesant High, Bronx Science), so it's
unlikely
>that they'd apply to independent schools in a voucher regime."
>(BOB): "Reality (as implemented in Milwaukee) says that you are
>wrong."
>
>Bronx Science and Stuyvesant were still in operation, last I heard.
Equal protection applies to them as well, too.
>(Bob): "There are school qualifications in the Milwaukee voucher
>program."
>(MK): "Which make the results of the Milwaukee program only marginally
>applicable to estimates of a competitive market in education services.
>(Bob): "The Milwaukee program is likely to be a model (maybe the
>primary
>model) if any other place set up vouchers."
>
>How "likely" we will have to wait and see.
Since the odds are against any significant increase in voucher
systems, it won't be in my lifetime.
lojbab
Bob LeChevalier - artificial linguist; genealogist
lojbab@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Lojban language www.lojban.org
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