[natrius]

For some time, I've lamented the negative effects that the government's effective monopoly over primary education has had on our system. Eliminating choice eliminates the natural incentive to improve that results from consumers choosing better alternatives.

I found the monopsony problem you've pointed out on the employment end of the system quite insightful. Entering an industry with a limited number of employers generally isn't a great idea. However, there's a simpler solution to the problem than more unionization, which in practice requires non-voluntary membership to be effective. I think we'd all be better off if the government continued to fund education for those who can't afford it, but stopped actually running the schools themselves. I don't understand why voucher proposals find such limited support.

[_delirium]

> I don't understand why voucher proposals find such limited support.

A traditional stumbling block (though not the only one) is the question of religious schools. Voucher proposals have historically been seen as ways to get the government to fund religion, leading to various backlashes dating back to the 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaine_Amendment

A solution could be to only allow vouchers to be used for secular schools, but that runs into opposition from religious conservatives, and it's also unclear if it'd be permissible to exclude all schools run by religious organizations from an otherwise generally available program. I suspect conservative support for school vouchers that allowed religious schools would take a huge nosedive as soon as Islamic schools started taking advantage of them though, which is currently what's causing the Netherlands to rethink its voucher program.

[bugsy]

It's kind of bizarre. The government takes the people's money, using its militarized police powers, and then "gives it back" in the form of school funding. If the person then wants to CHOOSE which school they would like their children to attend, which is paid for with the money they had in the first place, then suddenly every lunatic crawls out of their cupboard and starts shouting "But the government is funding religion!"

News flash. The government isn't funding anything. The government produces nothing and their only source of income is theft from productive individuals who do produce things.

[_delirium]

Your theory of taxation and funding is quite far from the theory the founding fathers of the U.S. had, which might explain why you find the setup bizarre. I suggest reading some of Thomas Jefferson's writing for the explanation!

[caterping]

It's not bizarre. The kids who's parents wouldn't give a shit about choosing a school for them are the kids who need the most help.

[yequalsx]

Who is going to build a school in a poor neighborhood then? Who is going to transport the child to the good school? When the slots to the best schools are filled by children of wealthy parents then what?

We would end up with a worse two-tiered system than what we have now.

[anigbrowl]

If there is voucher money available, then the poverty of a neighborhood is a lower factor than it is for, say, retailers.

On the other hand, poor neighborhoods can be more dangerous and involve greater academic and social challenges. The solution is not to measure schools in poor areas against those in good ones and declare them worse because they perform more poorly (due to circumstances beyond teachers' control), but to measure students' baseline ability and then fund and reward relative improvement, rather than on the basis of absolute outcomes.

For example, say you go into a neighborhood on the first day of school and find that only 50% of 10th graders meet expectations for literacy. The best teacher in the world is not going to be be able to bring that up to the 95% level in a wealthy area on the other side of town, but if the proportion of students who are literate rises to 75% by the end of the 12th grade (correcting for dropout %ages), then that's a huge improvement. In economic terms, it's worth adding more funding right up to the point where marginal net gain falls below zero.

There are obviously willing and committed teachers willing to take on these important challenges. Maybe they would do better by setting up nonprofits and applying for funds to establish charter schools instead of abdicating their negotiation power to the national unions.

[yequalsx]

National unions do not negotiate salaries at the national level. Salary negotiations are done at the local level from district to district done by local union reps.

[anigbrowl]

Not all negotiations are about pay and benefits. Presumably there is some benefit in being organized at the state and national levels or unions wouldn't bother to do so.

[yequalsx]

Definitely there are reasons for having a national union. But you made a statement about not abdicating negotiation power to national unions. I assumed that by this you meant salary since that is the subject of the article about which all these discussions come from. Of course, things do get off topic and so I'm sorry if my assumption was incorrect.

[natrius]

The principle at play is the idea that where there is money to be had, there will be entrepreneurs that want to collect it. How effectively that would work is the subject of plenty of research that I'm not familiar with.

There is no system you can devise within the bounds of a capitalist society in which people with greater means don't achieve better educational outcomes.

[yequalsx]

But one can devise a system in which those without means have feasible access to quality education.

[natrius]

Agreed, and I think voucher systems can accomplish that.