Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Socialized Education - Is there abetter way? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (235)	11/5/2007 5:15:28 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1513

Some responses to criticisms of vouchers or proponents of vouchers made by one of the commenters responding to that blog post. -- Frances: "1. Complex markets fail on a regular basis. Megan can use children as her analogy; I'll use California's attempted deregulation of the electricity market." That was not deregulation; it was one of the most idiotic attempts to micro-manage a complex market by the state that one could imagine. Forbidding distributors to also be generators; Tightly regulating retail prices, while letting costs of generation float, and finally, and most idiotically, putting a state run market in the middle of the process and forbidding distributors from using their purchasing power to negotiate long-term contracts. Truly a scheme to make a bureaucrat's heart beat faster. "2. Markets require information to function. Since a key problem with public schools currently is unengaged parents, how am I as a taxpayer getting any assurance that a significant percentage of students will not be, in fact, worse off?" I fail to see the mechanism here. Unengaged parents will still be unengaged. But those who are engaged will have the means to do something. "3. In a time of increasing religious radicalism, I'm uncomfortable with vouchers going to fundamentalist schools. Should taxpayers really have to support schools that teach that violence against nonbelievers is acceptable?" This is a pretty poor straw man. Taxpayers are today supporting schools that teach a number of things that are offensive to me, and worse, fail to teach many essential things, such as history, science (as opposed to the sappy psuedo-enviromentalism that passes for science in all too many public schools). Yes, vouchers will help fund some schools that are poor, and some whose teachings I would abhor. But the present system is a failure. The time to try something new is long overdue. Just continuing to pour more and more money into a failed system is not progress. Posted by Bill \| November 3, 2007 1:05 PM meganmcardle.theatlantic.com One of the more schizophrenic aspects of the pro-voucher argument is that it suggest that public schools fail because there is no accountability for public school teachers due to the power of the teacher's unions. And yet at the same time, we are to believe that one of the fundamental advantages of the private model is that it is free of the red tape and bureaucracy that choke innovation and prevent change. I don't understand how there is at once too much accountability and not enough in public schools. Why are you equating "red tape" and "accountability"? No voucher proponent says that there is "too much accountability" in public schools, not in the sense that you are claiming here. Here's how the argument would run: Teachers' union contracts are often so loaded up with red tape that the public schools miss out on hiring good teachers (see, e.g., tntp.org ). Alternatively, union contracts sometimes have provisions that keep principals from retaining good teachers or that make it nearly impossible to fire a bad teacher. See, e.g., manhattan-institute.org Indeed, to the extent that this occurs, red tape is displacing accountability on the teachers' part. If private schools are able to avoid this red tape, they will be better able to hold teachers accountable for their performance and to hire and maintain a good teaching staff. Now, I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with that argument; I don't know enough about that particular area of the literature (to be sure, no one else that has commented here or on other blogs shows any sign of such knowledge either). Nonetheless, that's what the argument is, and it's simply wrong to suggest that voucher proponents are accusing public schools of having too much "accountability." Posted by Stuart Buck \| November 3, 2007 1:11 PM meganmcardle.theatlantic.com