[glenra]

> The voters vote these people in intentionally. They campaign on it.

Great, then let them! What's the matter, don't you believe in democracy? :-)

> And when people like you are willing to pay the full cost, including an externalities beyond just the price of tuition on everyone involved, sure.

What externalities? Private schools don't have tenure and cost on average about half as much per student as public schools do.

> It is alot like the USPS. Even UPS and Fedex don't want its unprofitable routes in rural areas because they can't be made profitable. The problem is, when you rip away the profitable portion of the process, it ends up costing the taxpayer just as much when the bill comes due.

UPS and Fedex aren't legally allowed to charge less than the post office does to deliver mail nor are they allowed to carry non-urgent mail or packages. The fact that they focus on high-priced delivery options is NOT because they're cherrypicking, it's because that's the only niche they've been able to wrest legal access to. (And they were able to do that because the post office was at the time losing money on package delivery - it was only seen as a valuable market niche after Fedex showed that it could be done at a profit!)

Get rid of the laws prohibiting competition with the post office, let the post office go broke if need be, and the private carriers would make money in rural areas too. Mail delivery would likely cost half as much if the private sector did it.

Incidentally, it has long been the case that in some rural areas the Post Office would deliver mail to the nearest "mail stop" (which could be miles away from a home) while UPS and FedEx would drive right up to the door.

>If you want vouchers, you need to fund every child equally...including the fact they may live in the wrong neighborhood. You don't get to say "Too bad, kid, you live in Compton. No one can get you to a good school on time unless we gave you more than every other kid."

Why would you expect there not to be good schools in bad neighborhoods? Absent the political incentive to centralize and bureaucratize you'd have lots of tiny schools all over the place meeting local needs rather than huge monolithic schools that folks have to be bussed over to.

[dragonwriter]

> Private schools don't have tenure and cost on average about half as much per student as public schools do.

Private schools should cost less per student because most of them systematically exclude the most expensive to educate students.

Public schools don't have that luxury.

[glenra]

That is a popular story, but I'm pretty sure it's not true. Do you have a source?

I suspect you're thinking of the sort of elite academy type schools that have tough entrance exams - but those are a very tiny fraction of private schools. There also exist private schools that that take anyone who applies and even private schools that specialize in special-needs students.

Also: in several parts of the US (including all of Florida, Ohio, Georgia and Utah as well as various municipal districts), special-needs students actually have their own separate voucher system which parents can use to attend private schools because the public schools aren't good at educating those kids.

[opendais]

> Great, then let them! What's the matter, don't you believe in democracy? :-)

It elects people who believe delusional things that are not grounded in reality sometimes, doubly so at the local level. I believe in checks and balances. There are no real checks and balances at the local level except in a timespan measured in years which isn't 'acceptable'.

> What externalities? Private schools don't have tenure and cost on average about half as much per student as public schools do.

Providing transportation with adult supervision for single parents who need to work and don't have a car to drop the kid off with. Providing food for those that can't afford to at lunch. Etc.

Things like that are part of the $13k figure. So, unless you are planning to drop all of that?

> Why would you expect there not to be good schools in bad neighborhoods? Absent the political incentive to centralize and bureaucratize you'd have lots of tiny schools all over the place meeting local needs rather than huge monolithic schools that folks have to be bussed over to.

1) Economies of Scale

2) People in wealthier areas can pay more and schools are partially funded through property tax...drum roll please...this means schools in richer neighborhoods have more money.

> (And they were able to do that because the post office was at the time losing money on package delivery - it was only seen as a valuable market niche after Fedex showed that it could be done at a profit!)

LOL.

http://www.indystar.com/story/opinion/readers/2014/05/13/pos... "Rising online shopping has sparked a jump in package revenue, while a gradually rebounding economy has stabilized mail revenue. That’s why the USPS forecasts a $1.1 billion operating profit this year. Quite simply, the package business is booming for the Postal Service."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fix-for-a-profita... "In 2006, lawmakers mandated that the Postal Service do something that no other public or private entity is required to do — pre-fund future retiree health benefits. That $5.6 billion annual chargeaccounts for 100 percent of the red ink."

That is simply was never true and has never been true. I'm not going to even bother reading the rest of your rant.

[glenra]

> Providing transportation with adult supervision for single parents who need to work and don't have a car to drop the kid off with.

Is this really necessary? Surely a substantial fraction of kids could walk, bike, and/or take a public transit bus to the nearest school like I did. Or if driving has to be involved (why?) they could organize/join an informal neighborhood carpool.

Anyway yeah, I'd probably drop most of that. Or pay for it out of a very small fraction of the money saved.

> People in wealthier areas can pay more and schools are partially funded through property tax...drum roll please...this means schools in richer neighborhoods have more money.

That would have been a fine argument to make in, say, 1970. Nowadays, not so much. Though it might depend on what state you're talking about. Today there is in most states quite a lot of redistribution of state funds to make up for local variation. And many of the worst schools and school districts spend the most money - they just spend it badly.

>> the post office was at the time losing money on package delivery - it was only seen as a valuable market niche after Fedex showed that it could be done at a profit!)

> LOL. [random links]

Your two articles are completely irrelevant to whether package delivery and urgent message delivery were profitable for the post office in the 1970s, which was when Federal Express (now FedEx) got started. (The "urgent letters" exemption to the postal monopoly was made official in 1979.)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_Express_Statutes

As for time-sensitive delivery today, FedEx is so much better at it than the Post Office that by 2000 the Post Office entirely gave up on providing that service themselves; they now subcontract to FedEx and UPS to carry most of the post office-branded urgent mail and packages.

(They don't do this just because they were terrible at delivering stuff quickly and reliably, but also due to a boneheaded post-9/11 rule change about carrying packages on commercial flights that broke their previous business model.)

(the post office also now subcontracts a lot of local rural delivery, fwiw.)

[opendais]

> Is this really necessary? Surely a substantial fraction of kids could walk, bike, and/or take a public transit bus to the nearest school like I did. Or if driving has to be involved (why?) they could organize/join an informal neighborhood carpool.

Did you do this when you were 5 and the nearest good school is 5+ miles away? No?

> Anyway yeah, I'd probably drop most of that. Or pay for it out of a very small fraction of the money saved.

At which point you aren't talking about school choice, but cutting the safety net for poor children.

Kay, well I'm dropping this since you seem to think "separate but equal" on a class basis is acceptable. We won't agree on anything.

Look, you can't say "Oh, private schools are cheaper because we can throw the poor kids under the bus by cutting their safety net". That isn't an acceptable solution.

[glenra]

The poor kids are the ones getting shafted by the status quo! They get "assigned" to schools that are terrible and don't even have the option to go somewhere better, even if it's just as convenient to get the kids there. School choice is a safety net for poor children.

Having more but smaller schools with more choice means shorter commutes and a better school experience for everyone, but most of all for the poor. (The rich can afford to either move to a better public school district or pay twice, once for a public school option they're not using and a second time for a private school option they are, so they're fine either way.)

So from my perspective you're the one throwing the poor kids under the bus. You're saying the poor kids assigned to terrible, unsafe schools should just suck it up and tolerate it (and hope that maybe the political system fixes it sometime far in the distant future) rather than just pick (or create!) a better option right now.

I agree that we're probably not going to agree. But to tie up one last loose end:

> Did you do this [travel alone] when you were 5 and the nearest good school is 5+ miles away? No?

When I was 5 I walked to a public grade school that was less than a mile away - one of 2 or 3 in the area that met that criteria. In middle school (grades 7-8) my morning bike commute was 4.5 miles - though another option was to walk or bike 1.5 miles a different direction and take a public bus the rest of the way.

[opendais]

> If you want vouchers, you need to fund every child equally...including the fact they may live in the wrong neighborhood. You don't get to say "Too bad, kid, you live in Compton. No one can get you to a good school on time unless we gave you more than every other kid."

I'm not sure if your didn't understand that bit or what the issue is. I'm fine with vouchers as long as they actually cover what is currently provided.

And you are assuming they all live in major cities [hint: 20% of the population is rural/small town america].

Look, your plan requires: 1) Preventing poor kids from eating lunch [because they have no money] 2) Preventing poor kids from having sufficient transportation to get to school in all areas of this country, not just major cities. 2b) You want kids to walk unescorted in terrible, unsafe [your words, not mine] neighborhoods to make it to "better schools".

In reality, my objection is the fact you won't pay for the above which you conveniently and consistently ignore. Instead, you claim you are trying to "help them" while simultaneously starving them and increasing the economic burden on their family to get all students to a good school.

The reality is you cannot magically cut spending and rely on the free market to fix things. If you want services to remain roughly the same, you have to spend roughly the same amount of money regardless of if it is the government spending it in the form of public education or vouchers.

Personally, I think vouchers that provide the same level of service as currently exists in an apples-to-apples way is perfectly fine. The problem is, people like you pretend these services are somehow a complete waste of money servicing an imaginary need. They aren't an imaginary need.

I know poor people who live in a rural area that literally have to cross a lake that is more than a mile across to get to a school that teaches K-12 because it is the only school in the area for about 50 miles in any direction. You pretend such people are imaginary and do not exist to come to your "solution".