[macspoofing]

Why not try a charitable interpretation of 'school choice'? People I know that support vouchers and charter schools do so because they genuinely care about quality education. Maybe they are misguided, but they certainly aren't doing it to create EVIL profit for the EVIL billionaire class.

As a general principle, decentralization is good.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

If they care about the quality of education then they should take steps to ensure that public education is higher quality. Perhaps starting by not voting for people who want to dismantle it.

[macspoofing]

As I said, that's a separate issue. All I asked of OP is to not impune motives on people who mean well.

Charter and voucher schools ARE public education, they just aren't part of the traditional monolithic bureaucracy. The ability to try different approaches and run different experiments to see if it results in different outcomes, and make fast adjustments, free from the existing hierarchy, is the quality improvement that proponents are striving for.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Charter and voucher schools ARE public education, they just aren't part of the traditional monolithic bureaucracy.

They also traditionally get to pick and choose who can attend, which often means excluding costly students like any that have disabilities.

> The ability to try different approaches and run different experiments to see if it results in different outcomes, and make fast adjustments, free from the existing hierarchy, is the quality improvement that proponents are striving for.

Great. Let's apply "move fast and break things" to education. What could possibly go wrong?

[macspoofing]

>They also traditionally get to pick and choose who can attend, which often means excluding costly students like any that have disabilities.

We both know that's not why you take issue with school choice because these kinds of issues can be easily adjusted through policy changes - but you're not proposing policy changes. You want to completely get rid of the entire thing.

And by the way, in the cases of kids with extreme behavioural issues, those kids are also routinely expelled from the public system schools. So again, what are you arguing?

>Let's apply "move fast and break things" to education. What could possibly go wrong?

Can you try and not distort arguments? Nobody except you argued this.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Can you try and not distort arguments? Nobody except you argued this.

Earlier:

>The ability to try different approaches and run different experiments to see if it results in different outcomes, and make fast adjustments

How is that not "move fast and break things"?

> And by the way, in the cases of kids with extreme behavioural issues

I specifically said children with disabilities. I think it says a lot about you that you're trying to re-frame that as kids with behavioral issues.

I don't think you're arguing in good faith.

[macspoofing]

>How is that not "move fast and break things"?

Here's an example of charter school: A school that runs their curriculum partially in a foreign language (e.g. French for social sciences, but math in English) so that children pick up a second language while doing regular studies. Is that an example of "move fast and break things"? Implementing something like this would be very hard in a public system. The inertia is too great. That's just one example of a charter/voucher school being responsive to local needs in a way that would be hard for the largely public system (and I'm not saying charters/voucher replace the public system).

What you did was purposely apply a term from programming and startups to my argument for charters and voucher schools. It doesn't apply. Education is never going to be run like a startup with a 20-something founder. EVER. No parent will let a school 'break' their kids' education. But within those constraints, you can try things a little differently to tailor how and what you teach.

>I specifically said children with disabilities. I think it says a lot about you that you're trying to re-frame that as kids with behavioral issue

No. It was an example that shows the public system is also struggling with kids with disablities (in this case, kids with behavioural issues). But that wasn't the salient point. Ignore it. The primary point was just above it: "We both know that's not why you take issue with school choice because these kinds of issues can be easily adjusted through policy changes - but you're not proposing policy changes. You want to completely get rid of the entire thing."

[EpicEng]

Right, except they have children already and things need to change very quickly to benefit them, and most of us just don't have the time or energy.

It's not reasonable to expect everyone to crusade for reform. I want what's best for my kids now, and if that's a charter school, that's what I'm aiming for.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

And it's that kind of short-term thinking that creates a lot of the world's problems in the first place.

[EpicEng]

Please. It's been decades, not months. These problems are still here. Voters are supposed to just hope it gets better instead of doing what's best for their children?

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

These problems are here because we keep electing people who's goal is to dismantle public infrastructure. We keep doing that because of the same narrow thinking that causes us to throw everyone else's children under the bus for the sake of our own.

We've inherited the world we deserve. If we want to make it better, we have to earn it. If you don't want to do that, fine, but then you don't get to complain about the results.

[EpicEng]

I don't necessarily agree with your premise, but I don't think it matters.

Who's "we" here? The people putting the politicians you're talking about into office are not likely the people who would benefit most by sending their children to charter schools. So what is that person supposed to do?