Run schools off "user fees"

[thaiboxerken]

It's a typical, Conservative idea. They really don't care if the poor stay poor, as long as their children get the education they can afford to give them.

 

[Travis]

In my opinion a society lives or dies based on the quality of its public education. If you have lost faith in your schools then you have lost faith in that society. If you just don't care what happens there because your kids are in some expensive private academy then maybe society would be better off without you.

 

[Chaos]

Only in a modern first world economy. The goal here is to become the ruling class in a third world economy.

Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, eh?

 

[leftysergeant]

Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven, eh?

Ah, ya beat me to it.

 

[Ladewig]

In my opinion a society lives or dies based on the quality of its public education. If you have lost faith in your schools then you have lost faith in that society. If you just don't care what happens there because your kids are in some expensive private academy then maybe society would be better off without you.

Are you referring to losing faith in the quality of public education or losing faith in the concept of public education?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Are you referring to losing faith in the quality of public education or losing faith in the concept of public education?

How does this faith relate to evidence? I have posed the following questions in other education-related threads on this forum:
1. From a government presence in what industries does society as a whole benefit? You may imagine either a dichotomous classification, A={x: x is an unlikely candidate for State (government, generally) operation}, B={x:x is a likely candidate for State operation} or a continuum...
(highly unlikely)-1_____._____+1 (highly likely).
2. What characteristics of an industry determine its classification or position on the continuum?
In abstract, the education industry is a highly unlikely candidate for State operation. Inputs (individual students' interests and abilities, individual teachers' knowledge and ability to inspire) vary greatly and the success of the match between the student, the curriculum, and the teacher depends critically on local knowledge. Further, the outputs, the career paths that a modern economy offers, vary enormously. Further still, while school may be expensive education is potentially cheap. It does not take 12 years at $12,000 per pupil-year to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. Industries that "scale up", such as structural steel and plate glass, tend to have uniform inputs and outputs, and high initial capital costs or seriously decreasing per unit costs of production.

Fruther still, State provision of History, Civics, and Economics instruction is a threat to democracy.
George Orwell
"Review of 'Russia under Soviet Rule' by N. de Basily"
Essays (Knopf, 2002)

The terrifying thing about modern dictatorships is that they are something entirely unprecedented. Their end cannot be foreseen. In the past, every tyranny was sooner or later overthrown, or at least resisted because of "human nature," which as a matter of course desired liberty. But we cannot be at all certain that human nature is constant. It may be just as possible to produce a breed of men who do not wish for liberty as to produce a breed of hornless cows. The Inquisition failed, but then the Inquisition had not the resources of the nodern state. The radio, press censorship, standardized education and the secret police have alterted everything. Mass suggestion is a science of the last twenty years, and we do not know how successful it will be.

Several lines of evidence support the following generalizations:
1. As institutions take from individual parents the power to determine for their own children the choice of curriculum and the pace and method of instuction, overall system performance falls, and
2. Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents.

Albert Einstein
"Force and Fear Have No Place in Education"

To me the worst thing seems to be for a school principally to work with methods of fear, force and artificial authority. Such treatment destroys the sound sentiments, the sincerity and self-confidence of the pupil. It produces the submissive subject. . . It is comparatively simple to keep the school free from this worst of all evils. Give into the power of the teacher the fewest possible coercive measures, so that the only source of the pupil's respect for the teacher is the human and intellectual qualities of the latter.

Albert Einstein
"Autobiographical Notes"
Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, Paul Schilpp, ed.

It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wreck and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry, especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.

Marvin Minsky
Interview
Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery 1994-July

...the evidence is that many of our foremost achievers developed under conditions that are not much like those of present-day mass education. Robert Lawler just showed me a paper by Harold Macurdy on the child pattern of genius. Macurdy reviews the early education of many eminent people from the last couple of centuries and concludes (1) that most of them had an enormous amount of attention paid to them by one or both parents and (2) that generally they were relatively isolated from other children. This is very different from what most people today consider an ideal school. It seems to me that much of what we call education is really socialization. Consider what we do to our kids. Is it really a good idea to send your 6-year-old into a room full of 6-year-olds, and then, the next year, to put your 7-year-old in with 7-year-olds, and so on? A simple recursive argument suggests this exposes them to a real danger of all growing up with the minds of 6-year-olds. And, so far as I can see, that's exactly what happens.
Our present culture may be largely shaped by this strange idea of isolating children's thought from adult thought. Perhaps the way our culture educates its children better explains why most of us come out as dumb as they do, than it explains how some of us come out as smart as they do.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(thaiboxerken): "It's a typical, Conservative idea. They really don't care if the poor stay poor, as long as their children get the education they can afford to give them."
a) The policy that currently prevails in most US States, which restricts parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' age 6-18 K-12 school subsidy to schools operated by State (government, generally) employees, dates to the early decades of the 19th century. How long does a policy have to be in place before its defenders merit the label "conservative"?
b) Why suppose that a State-monopoly education industry will better serve "the poor" than would a voucher-subsidized competitive market in education services? Why suppose that a voucher-subsidized market in education services will better serve "the poor" than would an unsubsidized competitive market in education services that included on-the-job training in the definition of "education" (i.e., repeal compulsory attendance laws, child labor laws, and minimum wage laws)?

Clive Harber,
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review V. 54, #1

"...It is almost certainly more damaging for children to be in school than to out of it. Children whose days are spent herding animals rather than sitting in a classroom at least develop skills of problem solving and independence while the supposedly luckier ones in school are stunted in their mental, physical, and emotional development by being rendered pasive, and by having to spend hours each day in a crowded classroom under the control of an adult who punishes them for any normal level of activity such as moving or speaking.

Clive Harber
"Schooling as Violence"
Educatioinal Review, V. 54, #1

Furthermore, according to a report for UNESCO, cited in Esteve (2000), the increasing level of pupil-teacher and pupil-pupil violence in classrooms is directly connected with compulsory schooling. The report argues that institutional violence against pupils who are obliged to attend daily at an educational centre until 16 or 18 years of age increases the frustration of these students to a level where they externalise it.

 

[tyr_13]

Are you referring to losing faith in the quality of public education or losing faith in the concept of public education?

I believe Travis was talking about the concept of providing quality universal public education.

The idea that, 'public schools aren't doing as well as they could, let's fix them,' has generally led to better outcomes historically than, 'public schools aren't doing well, let's get rid of them'. The 'lets get rid of them,' crowd likes to use all the fallacies and run around that other 'woo' thinking modalities such as anti-vax and Truther movements such as proof by verbosity, red herring, non-sequiter, statistics of small numbers, and appeal to authority. Any specific criticism they have of any specific public school system may or may not be valid, but the conclusion, 'therefor, get rid of it and replace it with xyz' never gets the actual supporting evidence it needs. Gaping and obvious problems with 'xyz' simply get handwaved.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Travis): "In my opinion a society lives or dies based on the quality of its public education. If you have lost faith in your schools then you have lost faith in that society. If you just don't care what happens there because your kids are in some expensive private academy then maybe society would be better off without you."

Correct me if I misread you here, but it seems to me that you equate "school" to "education", "public education" to "government-operated schools", and "government" to "society".

In Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, and the Netherlands, most students take tax-funded tuition subsidies to parochial or independent schools.

In a voucher-subsidized competitive market in education services, a compulsory attendance statute implies the existence of a school that is required to accept students that all other schools reject. Call these default-option schools "the public schools". I expect that jobs in the other schools, where students and teachers meet by mutual agreement, would be more attractive to teachers, and so the default-option schools would have to offer higher salaries to attract qualified staff. Why not offer tuition vouchers to all children and put the contract to operate the default-option schools out to bid periodically? The current legal environment and institutional structure has created a well-coordinated constituency for ever-rising budgets and zero performance accountability.

 

[leftysergeant]

Correct me if I misread you here, but it seems to me that you equate "school" to "education", "public education" to "government-operated schools", and "government" to "society".

Well, DUH! Government, in a democratic society, is the manifestation of society.

In a voucher-subsidized competitive market in education services, a compulsory attendance statute implies the existence of a school that is required to accept students that all other schools reject. Call these default-option schools "the public schools".

Better yet, let's call them schools that are available to all regardless of ecconomic or geopgraphical situations. You are basicly saying that a large part of the population is notworth educating and you do not want to spend your tax money on them because you are only worried about your larvae.

I expect that jobs in the other schools, where students and teachers meet by mutual agreement, would be more attractive to teachers, and so the default-option schools would have to offer higher salaries to attract qualified staff.

And just where would the money for the increased salaries of public schools come from if it is all siphoned off to fund the academies for yupppie larvae?

Why not offer tuition vouchers to all children and put the contract to operate the default-option schools out to bid periodically? The current legal environment and institutional structure has created a well-coordinated constituency for ever-rising budgets and zero performance accountability.

Not as reasonable as you think it is.

Eventually, it would lead to the development of corporate schools accountable only to the shareholders of the corporations. BAD idea.

 

[eeyore1954]

It's a typical, Conservative idea. They really don't care if the poor stay poor, as long as their children get the education they can afford to give them.

This may be a view held by a few conservatives , especially on forums, but it is not a typical conservative view. How many conservatives do you think pay to have their kids go to private schools?

 

[Travis]

Are you referring to losing faith in the quality of public education or losing faith in the concept of public education?

The concept. It disturbs me how many politicians don't have their kids in public schools leaving them with no real incentive to care what happens in them. "We need to cut their budget again to give billionaires tax breaks? Sure, why not? It's not like the important people need it anyways."

For that reason my kids will damned well be in a public school until I deem society as no longer worth participating in. Of course by that point I'll probably be in my redoubt in the desert printing rambling newsletters only tenuously connected to reality.

 

[eeyore1954]

I believe Travis was talking about the concept of providing quality universal public education.

The idea that, 'public schools aren't doing as well as they could, let's fix them,' has generally led to better outcomes historically than, 'public schools aren't doing well, let's get rid of them'. The 'lets get rid of them,' crowd likes to use all the fallacies and run around that other 'woo' thinking modalities such as anti-vax and Truther movements such as proof by verbosity, red herring, non-sequiter, statistics of small numbers, and appeal to authority. Any specific criticism they have of any specific public school system may or may not be valid, but the conclusion, 'therefor, get rid of it and replace it with xyz' never gets the actual supporting evidence it needs. Gaping and obvious problems with 'xyz' simply get handwaved.

I have never met any one in real life who believes in public schools aren't doing well get rid of them. I do know a few give all the power back to the state/local school people.
I have heard the I do not have kids why should I pay taxes for the school statement many times over the last 30 something years since I moved to Long Island, NY. That I believe is the product of living in an area with such high property taxes. I even hear the my kids are now grown argument. I have not noticed it being party specific though.

 

[Donal]

Being a single non-spawner, I can think of 3 advantages off the top of my head to a publicaly funded and maintain school system.

1) I have a small business and the more educated the general populace is, the easier it is for me to hire quality employees

2) More educated people out there means more educated people working in the service jobs that are vital to the community at large as well as in places that I utilize

3) If they are sitting in a class room, they aren't breaking into my car

 

[Beat]

When I hear people spew the nasty idea that schools should have user fees for those who attend, my response is always something like this: "fine, if you want it that way, you cannot benefit from anything these children contribute to society when they are older, because you didn't help them."
Shuts them up every time.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

...It disturbs me how many politicians don't have their kids in public schools leaving them with no real incentive to care what happens in them. "We need to cut their budget again to give billionaires tax breaks? Sure, why not? It's not like the important people need it anyways."

For that reason my kids will damned well be in a public school until I deem society as no longer worth participating in. Of course by that point I'll probably be in my redoubt in the desert printing rambling newsletters only tenuously connected to reality.

"Again"? When? a) Inflation-adjusted US K-12 budgets have increased over the last forty years.
b) Beyond a rather low level, there is no relation between resources devoted to schools and school performance.

Surveys find higher support for vouchers among blacks than among whites. Surveys find support for vouchers is inversely related to income. Across the US, poor and minority kids get a wretched deal from the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's schools (the "public schools") and their parents want options. The most effective accountability mechanism humans have yet devised is a policy that gives to unhappy customers the power to take their business elsewhere.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

(Donal): "...I can think of 3 advantages off the top of my head to a publicaly funded and maintain school system.

1) I have a small business and the more educated the general populace is, the easier it is for me to hire quality employees

2) More educated people out there means more educated people working in the service jobs that are vital to the community at large as well as in places that I utilize

3) If they are sitting in a class room, they aren't breaking into my car"
1. Why suppose that State (government, generally) operation or subsidies make a positive contribution to school system performance? Are we naked because the State does not operate cotton farms, textile mills, and clothing stores?
2. See #1.
3. In Hawaii, juvenile arrests for burglary, assault, drug possession, and drug promotion fall when school is not in session. Reported house burglaries fall (auto burglaries rise) when school is not in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma fall when school is not in session. Schools do not prevent crime, they cause it.

Hyman and Penroe
Journal of School Psychology

Several studies of maltreatment by teachers suggest that school children report traumatic symptoms that are similar whether the traumatic event was physical or verbal abuse (Hyman, et.al.,1988; Krugman & Krugman, 1984; Lambert, 1990). Extrapolation from these studies suggests that psychological maltreatment of school children, especially those who are poor, is fairly widespread in the United States....
In the early 1980s, while the senior author was involved in a school violence project, an informal survey of a random group of inner city high school students was conducted. When asked why they misbehaved in school, the most common response was that they wanted to get back at teachers who put them down, did not care about them, or showed disrespect for them, their families, or their culture....schools do not encourage research regarding possible emotional maltreatment of students by staff or investigatiion into how this behavior might affect student misbehavior....Since these studies focused on teacher-induced PTSD and explored all types of teacher maltreatment, some of the aggressive feelings were also caused by physical or sexual abuse. There was no attempt to separate actual aggression from feelings of aggression. The results indicated that at least 1% to 2% of the respondents' symptoms were sufficient for a diagnosis of PTSD. It is known that when this disorder develops as a result of interpersonal violence, externalizing symptoms are often the result (American Psychiatric Association, 1994)....While 1% to 2% might not seem to be a large percentage of a school-aged population, in a system like New York City, this would be about 10,000 children so traumatized by educators that they may suffer serious, and sometimes lifelong emotional problems (Hyman, 1990; Hyman, Zelikoff & Clarke, 1988). A good percentage of these students develop angry and aggressive responses as a result. Yet, emotional abuse and its relation to misbehavior in schools receives little pedagogical, psychological, or legal attention and is rarely mentioned in textbooks on school discipline (Pokalo & Hyman, 1993, Sarno, 1992).
As with corporal punishment, the frequency of emotional maltreatment in schools is too often a function of the socioeconomic status (SES) of the student population (Hyman, 1990).

Karen Brockenbrough, Dewey G. Cornell, Ann B. Loper
"Aggressive Attitudes Among Victims of Violence at School"
Education and the Treatment of Children, Aug., 2002

Violence at school is a prevalent problem. According to a national survey of school proncipals (National Center for Educational Statistics, 1998), over 200,000 serious fights or physical attacks occurred in public schools during the 1996-1997 school year. Serious violent crimes occurred in approximately 12% of middle schools and 13% of high schools. Student surveys (Kann et al, 1995) indicate even higher rates of aggressive behavior. Approximately 16.2% of high school students nationwide reported involvement in a physical fight at school during a 30-day period, and 11.8% reported carrying a weapon on school property (Kann et al, 1995). Research on victims of violence at school suggests that repeated victimization has detrimental effects on a child's emotional and social development (Batsche & Knoff, 1995; Hoover, Oliver, & Thomson, 1993; Olweus, 1993). Victims exhibit higher
levels of anxiety and depression, and lower self-esteem than non-victims (eg., Besag, 1989; Gilmartin, 1987; Greenbaum, 1987; Olweus, 1993).

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

When I hear people spew the nasty idea that schools should have user fees for those who attend, my response is always something like this: "fine, if you want it that way, you cannot benefit from anything these children contribute to society when they are older, because you didn't help them."
Shuts them up every time.

Cyrus McCormick and Thomas Edison were homeschooled. You are free to quit eating bread and using electric lights.

 

[AlBell]

Maybe I'm weird but I'd rather be part of a productive upper\middle class in a prosperous city then a small island of decadence in a sea of misery.

I also prefer the bolded part, but IMO a vote for Obama will not get it for us. Sorry.

As to schools, taxation like death is part of life; I do wish the funds were better spent (way too many Administrators) and accounted for.

 

[Ladewig]

In Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, and the Netherlands, most students take tax-funded tuition subsidies to parochial or independent schools.

I wonder if a government-subsidized tram and bus system makes it easier for students to enroll in parochial or independent schools in the Netherlands.