Here’s a letter that I sent yesterday to the New York Times:
The writers of the eight letters you published today on how to improve teaching join Susan Engel – author of the op-ed that sparked these letters – in utterly misdiagnosing the problem with K-12 education.
Suppose that newspapers were run by government and funded by taxpayers, and that each American was assigned to read only the newspaper published in his or her local area. Clearly, the resulting quality of journalism would be atrocious.
Would anyone seriously suggest that this problem would be solved if only there were better schools of journalism, or higher pay for journalists, or more people who are “called” to journalism, or newspaper readers who take more active roles in digesting and interpreting the news? Surely not. All sensible people would understand that these fixes would all fail as long as newspapers faced no competition – indeed, as long as journalism is produced by the state.
Why, then, does not Ms. Engel or any of your letter writers see that K-12 education will continue to stink as long as it remains a government-run monopoly?
Sincerely,
Donald J. Boudreaux
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{ 179 comments }
With the growth of private schools and home schooling there is a voluntary separation a foot.
The purpose of government schools is the same as the purpose of national health.
Which is one system for elites and another for peons.
OK – but the justification for public schools bears no resemblance to any justification you could come up with for public newspapers. I’m not sure I understand how you equate the two. I have the same reaction when you compare education to the market for food. I don’t know if the comparison necessarily works. You and Engel are probably largely talking past each other because you don’t agree on an underlying justification for when a good or service should be publicly provided in the first place.
Daniel — My point is simple: competition keeps journalism better than it would be were it supplied monopolistically (especially by the state). For anyone to discuss how to improve education without ever mentioning introducing competition into the market for education is to utterly miss the elephant in the room.
And that’s a fair enough point – I definitely agree with that goal. But that could be accomplished simply by weakening the constraints of school districting, or promoting charter schools or weakening teachers unions. However, you also spoke to the fact that it is a “government run monopoly”, and when we consider that issue I think we need to acknowledge the differences between journalism and education or food and education. That’s all. I’m not disputing the more general value of introducing competition.
There are differences among all types of market goods. The question is: what makes education other than another market good demanded by consumers?
I think evidence points to a reality that it is dangerous to individual freedom and social harmony to have government provide market goods and especially dangerous to allow political control of education.
I urge you to peruse John Taylor Gatto’s website. As an awarded ex-government school teacher, he is an authoritative voice on the subject.
Well it is certainly another market good demanded by consumers. But I agree – there are always differences and it’s the differences that make it work talking about. Your link is broken, btw – but I remember the Gatto link from previous posts. I believe this is it, for others who are interested: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/
Sorry, looks like I copied/pasted the wrong link.
Sam,
“..it is dangerous to individual freedom and social harmony to have government provide market goods and especially dangerous to allow political control of education…”
Well said.
“My point is simple”
You’d think so…
“My point is simple”
Actually I’d say newspapers and news were much better years ago when the government oversaw it to a greater degree. We loosened the rules and now most towns have only one paper instead of two or more. And now instead of Walter Cronkite you have Bill O’Reilly. I’ll take the journalism found in NPR over what the free market offers any day.
Vell said, Komrade! Free people never tell zee truth! Only government speak truth!
Why am I not surprised, *shocked* that muirdog is for state-run media?
It’s your mean spirit.
What was your favorite? Pravda?
At least you’re comparing Cronkite to to a guy who openly proclaims himself to be the host of an opinion show.
Were that Cronkite had been so honest.
muirgeo: “I’d say newspapers and news were much better years ago when the government oversaw it to a greater degree.”
Other than during war time, when did government in the U.S. oversee newspapers, muirgeo. Please explain, because I really do not know what you are meaning.
He’s honest, you gotta give em that.
“You and Engel are probably largely talking past each other”
No, they are not. Don made a clear, valid point but you – in typical fashion, are ‘unsure’ about something: “I don’t know if the comparison necessarily works.”
“I’m not sure I understand”
More of the same…
Please, not today Mark. I agreed he made a valid point. That doesn’t mean on the fundamentals of the question they’re not talking past each other.
Dude you’re pathological. Don was on point.
Please pardon my protective instinct for Don. It’s just that when I watch you go at him like you do, raising issues and objections the poor guy has not even dreamed of, I feel like a bystander watching a two-year-old getting torn apart by a pit bull. I can’t just stand there, I must react, even if that means I too will get ravaged.
I hope you all understand.
Sincerley,
Mark
At lunch I decided on a new policy of just not responding to you, Methinks, or vidyohs anymore. But I’ll end our exchanges on this note – to tell you that I’m not “going at” Don. I am no pit-bull and he is certainly no two year old. I disagree with him often. And, in fact, I agree with him often. He doesn’t need anyone to defend him, and if I ever overstep my bounds I’m confident he’ll tell me and I’m confident I’ll apologize.
You and Engel are probably largely talking past each other Don isn’t talking to Engel, he’s talking to readers of the NYT, making the point that the discussion shouldn’t be limited to the box in which Engel dwells.
Eaxmple: When I ran for congress in Maryland way back when, I was interviewed by a reporter from the Montgomery County News. One question put to me was whether the government should promote/subsidize oil or coal.
Why should the question be framed that way?
The assumption in the question was that the government should promote/subsidize some particular form of energy production.
I certainly wouldn’t want to limit it to that, no.
Daniel, you always start saying the stupidist thing possible, then spend 30 comments all the way down the page equivocating, backtracking, apologizing, antagonizing others, and generally making people really sick of seeing your name.
Here’s an unsolicited tip: Just as an experiment, why don’t you wait 12 hours after a story hits the blog, see what others are saying. Try this for about a week.
Unsolicited tip #2: Get a philosophical basis for understanding life. Your beliefs are like a spinner from a childs game. Thump it and see where the needle winds up.
There is one and only one issue. What is the moral domain of the government. Governments have one and only one legitimate purpose, protect the rights of individuals by wielding a monopoly on force; punishing those who initiate force to violate others rights to action.
That’s it. Period. End of story.
Nothing else, no matter what cost-benefit Rube Goldberg argument you come up with is a legitimate function for the government.
Bravo Stevo, well said.
I wouldn’t describe daniel’s comments as “the stupidest thing possible”. But I agree daniel’s contributions would be better received if he would not get so defensive when others challenged his assertions and opinions.
Interesting letter for someone employed by the government at a state run school.
How would private-only education work for those on the lower end of the income scale? It would seem that public education has fueled the rise of many Americans from the ranks of poverty to the middle class. Wouldn’t a private-only education system tend to serve the well-to-do and keep the rest of us undereducated? My son has actually applied to attend GMU, but I’m not sure I could afford it without some level of state sponsorship.
How do privately run grocery stores work for those on the lower end of the income scale? I am not arguing that the grocery stores in inner cities are as nice as the ones in the suburbs but, and this is the key point, there exists an establishment at which to buy groceries. Period.
There will be a market in education in lower income areas and profit-seeking entrepreneurs are the ones most able to serve it.
We hashed this out a couple weeks ago… he got a pretty decisive stamp of approval, even from perennial skeptics
Metre,
Milton Friedman suggested publicly funded but privately run schools.
There is a difference between subsidizing and providing. You are expressing concerns about whether or not the poor can afford education but that’s not the issue at all. We can always subsidize the poor for things we think they ought to get, but the question is about state *provision* of schooling. The state should not be providing the schooling for many reasons, and the lack of competition driving quality is just one of them.
I’m not saying that private, competitive education can’t work, it just isn’t obvious how it would work in the real world. Yes, poor people can but groceries but they don’t eat as well as their more well-to-do citizens; and schools for low-income people would tend to keep those people undereducated and stuck in poverty.
Consider why so many immigrants come to the US (legally or otherwise). Yes, it’s because they can get better paying jobs. But it’s also because their children can get a free education, and can get better jobs and enjoy a higher quality of life than their parents. Otherwise, they too would end up as common laborers or housekeepers. A free, quality education is everyone’s ticket out of poverty, if they are willing to take it.
A free, quality education is everyone’s ticket out of poverty, if they are willing to take it.
But it’s not free, we pay dearly for it, but the cost is not apparent on a receipt.
This is rarely stressed well enough.
I got “free” indoctrination in my homeland. My parents were desperate to get me out of there.
I think you’re missing nmg’s point. He is saying the state running the schools is the problem, not the funding issue.
BTW, the education is not “free”. No incremental cost to you for primary education is not the same thing as “free”. Our taxes pay for it.
“Yes, poor people can but groceries but they don’t eat as well as their more well-to-do citizens; and schools for low-income people would tend to keep those people undereducated and stuck in poverty.”
I love this. Are you suggesting that government run grocery stores would allow the poor to eat as well as the rich. Also, your critique of what ‘would tend’ to happen to the poor under a privately run education systems sounds more like the current government run system.
“Consider why so many immigrants come to the US (legally or otherwise). Yes, it’s because they can get better paying jobs. But it’s also because their children can get a free education”
And this (free education) is different from where?
It is not obvious how a private, competitive computer, food, or travel industry can work. The beauty of the market is that we are not limited to what is obvious to any particular individual, but can harness tacit and dispersed knowledge to produce goods that no individual needs to understand how to make.
Exactly, Lee. It’s not obvious to the policy wonk, top-down planning types. So they content themselves with complaining about the shortcomings of the government schools whilst assuring the rest of us that parents and entrepreneurs could not do better.
Metre,
It sounds like you’re proceeding on the assumption that government-run schools that serve middle and upper-income neighborhoods are good.
They are better than schools in poor neighborhoods, but that doesn’t mean they’re good.
metre: “schools for low-income people would tend to keep those people undereducated and stuck in poverty.”
Why would that be the case? Why do you believe the free market would not provide quality education for low-income people? True, the facilities would not be as posh as those in wealthy suburban communities. But what makes you believe there would be no teachers willing to price their services at levels the so-called “impoverished” could not afford?
metre: “But it’s also because their children can get a free education,”
Where are these so many immigrants coming from? Which nation supplying us with immigrants does not offer public education to its children?
My son has actually applied to attend GMU, but I’m not sure I could afford it without some level of state sponsorship.
It can be difficult to apply the big picture view to one’s personal situation, but consider that a good part of the reason you have difficulty affording such schooling is the cost of government, at both ends, you income is reduced and goods and services cost more.
Interesting letter for someone employed by the government at a state run school.
How would private-only education work for those on the lower end of the income scale? It would seem that public education has fueled the rise of many Americans from the ranks of poverty to the middle class. Wouldn’t a private-only education system tend to serve the well-to-do and keep the rest of us undereducated? My son has actually applied to attend GMU, but I’m not sure I could afford it without some level of state sponsorship.
“Wouldn’t a private-only education system tend to serve the well-to-do and keep the rest of us undereducated?”
You really think the masses are being educated by public education now? Isn’t education mostly a personal responsibility anyway? If a person wants to be well educated, what is stopping them?
Sorry you can’t afford an to send your kid to GMU – but why should your neighbors be forced to help make up the difference for you?
but why should your neighbors be forced to help make up the difference for you?
That’s the essential moral point, but Metre needs to understand that the price of “free” education is subsidies to industry, higher cost of living, expensive empire, extensive (and expensive) bureaucracy, and doctrinal education that disables students intellectually.
The price of “free” education is much dearer than people realize.
Can we concede that most people that support public education understand that it’s not free? I know Metre has been using the term, but let’s not put too much emphasis on a point that is obvious. It’s quite possible that Metre understands this too, and was just speaking casually (ie – he may very well have meant something like “tuition free”, which it obviously is).
Can we concede that most people that support public education understand that it’s not free?
Of course they know that, theoretically, but they do not know the actual cost to themselves. If people had physical evidence of their share of the cost of government, they would likely behave differently in the voting booth.
This is why we have wars; via government borrowing, people are not able to appreciate the true cost of government, to themselves, and so are more willing to put up with government spending.
Metre, I have not read all the comments that came in the last 11 hours, but I think you (and no doubt others) are missing an important point. Society in general feels that it is important for children to be educated, and we tax people with no children to pay for the education of children. We can introduce competition to government (near) monopoly by giving each child’s parent $ to send kids to the school of their choice. Private education does “work for those on the lower end of income scale.” By introducing competition, we give choice to the lower income, not just to the Obamas and the Bushes and the Pelosis of the world.
Great letter. This is a tough hill to climb though. I’ve gotten my wife onto the anti-state bandwagon to a large degree. But schooling is one area where it’s hard to get people over the hurdle.
>>This is a tough hill to climb though…But schooling is one area where it’s hard to get people over the hurdle.<<
As an educator in a public high school, I'll vouch(er) for that.
75 years of federa0 government in control of K-1 thru K-12, the highest expenditures of money per student in the known universe, and this is what we got for it.
NO PARENT LEFT BEHIND…
These are real notes written by parents in the Memphis school district.
Spellings have been left intact.
1. My son is under a doctor’s care and should not take PE today Please execute him.
2. Please exkuce lisa for being absent she was sick and i had her shot.
3. Dear school: please ecsc’s john being absent on jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 and also 33.
4. Please excuse gloria from jim today. She is administrating.
5. Please excuse roland from p.e. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip.
6. John has been absent because he had two teeth taken out of his face.
7. Carlos was absent yesterday because he was playing football. He was hurt in the growing part.
8. Megan could not come to school today because she has been bothered by very close veins.
9. Chris will not be in school cus he has an acre in his side.
10. Please excuse ray friday from school. He has very loose vowels.
11. Please excuse Lesli from being absent yesterday. She had the shits.
12. Please excuse tommy for being absent yesterday. He had diarrhea, and his boots leak.
13. Irving was absent yesterday because he missed his bust.
14. Please excuse jimmy for being. It was his father’s fault.
15. I kept Billie home because she had to go Christmas shopping because i don’t know what size she wear.
16. Please excuse jennifer for missing school yesterday. We forgot to get the sunday paper off the porch, and when we found it monday. We thought it was sunday.
17. Sally won’t be in school a week from friday. We have to attend her funeral.
18. My daughter was absent yesterday because she was tired. She spent a weekend with the marines.
19. Please excuse Jason for being absent yesterday. He had a cold and could not breed well.
20. Please excuse mary for being absent yesterday. She was in bed with gramps.
21. Gloria was absent yesterday as she was having a gangover.
22. Please excuse brenda. She has been sick and under the doctor
23. Maryann was absent december 11-16, because she had a fever, sorethroat, headache and upset stomach. Her sister was also sick, fever an sore throat, her brother had a low grade fever and ached all over. I wasn’t the best either, sore throat and fever.. There must be something going around, her father even got hot last night.
——-
And no, I have no Memphisaphobia, you could get the same collection here in Houston, and there probably is one circulating. I just haven’t seen it yet.
haha – I love # 16!
I concur. Sixteen is by far the best.
If we are qualifying them, I rather thought #14 was the most illustrative of not only the ignorance but the refusal of responsibility. But, analysis like this just makes them less funny.
Puhhh-leeassse! I’ve seen those ‘excuses’ circulating for well over ten years now.
To believe that, we have to assume you could read ten years ago……no wait, we don’t either. Seeing them is not the same as reading them much less understanding them.
Well smartarse, I have a small book called “The Lighter Side Of News” (1995) where it contains five ‘real’ excuses that just happen to be on your list: #2, #3, #4, #10 #14. However the book claims these excuses came from Albuquerque, New Mexico.
I s’pose you’ll come up with a list of ‘crazy’ laws such as “it’s illegal to peel an orange in a hotel in California”.
lol one reason why I try not to go to Memphis, if it wasn’t for Krystal damn it ha ah
Those lists pop up all over, but in typical Statist fashion, they ask for more money for new programs or for more teachers or a bigger school administration, always failing to see the forest for the trees, like Don’s post.
I don’t know which newspapers Prof. Boudreaux actually reads, but the most read newspapers in most countries I know, are tabloids. I don’t see what he means by competition improving the quality of journalism. I see several formerly quality newpapers going more and more the tabloid way.On the schooling, in most countries with a good public schooling system, the private schools are exclusively there for rich guys, either dumb or lazy or both, that simply failed the public system. These schools form no competition at all – even though Prof. Boudreaux seems not open-minded enough to admit that or to even willing to try to understand that.And Prof. Boudreaux, you like monopolies and near monopolies so much (since you like to rant against anti-trust proceedings and laws against Microsoft etc), what is so bad about a high quality education system like in Finland? Why do you care whether it is Nokia funding it or the Finnish government ?
Well, unless you favour the crack journalism of Pravda over tabloids, I’d say you have nothing to complain about.
I don’t think Don is necessarily advocating private funding as a way to achieve a competitive market in education. Many European countries publicly fund schools but allow parents to choose which school their child attends. That creates competition among schools – even as they remain publicly funded.
A market determined monopoly (alcoa, microsoft, etc.) is different than one enforced by government decree. You can see that, right?
I would argue that the Microsoft ‘monopoly’ is largely propped up by copyright, patents and trademark, which are government-granted monopolies. Eg, the concept of ‘lock-in’ wouldn’t be sustainable without IP.
Point taken. Although, any other technology firm of its day would have had the opportunity to take advantage of the same laws that Microsoft availed itself. As opposed to the school system (or police / fire departments) where tax dollars are taken to run a service agency.
As opposed to the school system (or police / fire departments) where tax dollars are taken to run a service agency.
It’s a jobs program, citizen indoctrination agency, vote buying baby sitting service.
Still those patents and copyrights would be useless if the public didn’t want to buy their products. I could have a patent for a fart machine but it is worthless cause no one wants to buy it.
Yep, there’s still entrepreneurial skill involved in maximising the value of your particular IP monopoly as they are much more fine-grained than say a postal monopoly or a monopoly electricity provider. Plus, MS were first to market on a lot of this stuff so both established their brand and locked people in early. Their massive success over 30+ years would’ve been impossible without IP protection though as the value of their major cash cows (office/DOS/windows etc) couldn’t have been sustained without a dramatic shift in business model (to say, a service/support model.) IBM makes a lot of money that way but doesn’t come close to the margins MS (or itself) makes on boxed software.
geckonomist: ‘I don’t know which newspapers Prof. Boudreaux actually reads, but the most read newspapers in most countries I know, are tabloids. “
Which countries are those, geckonomist?
Here in the U.S., the newspapers with the largest daily circulation are the Wall Street Journal, the USA Today, and the New York Times.
The handful of widely read supermarket tabloids are only published weekly, of course. It’s not difficult to compare the number of times the Wall Street Journal is read per week (approx. 10.5 million) with the number of times the National Enquirer is read per week (approx 2.8 million).
Let’s not forget that while competition within the education system will increase the quality of the education system, it will also create a barrier to entry.
Those barriers to entry were the barriers that kept slavery in existence, the barriers that kept feudalism alive, the barriers that oppressed the poor and underpriveldged.
I won’t go as far as to say that government run healthcare or newspapers provides the same service. Newspapers are a poor excuse for true information dissemination. Government healthcare is a safety net (not a tool to enable people to look out for themselves).
Competition needs to be built into a system where everyone has an opportunity to get a leg up regardless of their family background. Things like charter schools where the school competes on a basis of accomplishment and a wide array of private schools where either vouchers are used or where the taxes collected are reduced.
Yes government run news would be bad, it’s arguable that the government influence is already large enough though that it wouldn’t make a difference. At any rate, it is different than education and healthcare, so let’s not confuse people any more than they already are.
First post, didn’t intend to reply to a single poster, but it showed up that way!…more of a general reply)
All good points. If I may humbly add a few:
1. Yes, publicly-run and publicly-subsidized are different things. We already spend $x per pupil. Why not just give that money to their guardians, with protections to the accessibility of that money to ensure that it does go to some school, and not in their pockets. These parents can them “shop” for schools and a publicly-funded school can be one option on the menu. Yes, they may be of lower-quality than others, but the problem already exists. The only difference in my scenario (that I can see) is that teachers unions don’t hold the power anymore.2. Education as a service is not the same as newspapers, food or even healthcare. It is not a passive thing you simply recieve from some provider, like a shot, a burger or a newspaper. Education is a process. Educators provide a service, but if a kid isn’t paying attention, all the money and libertarian-economic virtues in the world won’t mean he’ll actually learn anything. Look at the disparity of educational acheivements evem among siblings. I am one of six kids. Some of us excelled in school and went to great colleges, some didn’t. It is not as if our efforts were 100% equal and some of us are smarter/dumber than others, or that my parents were attentive and supportive of education when I was in school but not when the younger ones were. Some of that may be there, but, generally, the kids who studied and paid attention and did their homework learned more (amazing!). We went to the same schools (literally the same teachers for a few of us).I am hardly a convserative or Republican, but there is something to the argument of the “breakdown of the family unit” going on, and it is because education is not 100% passive, like other services we merely “receive.” And that is not, in my view, only an economics or resource allocation issue, but a cultural issue (oversimplification, I guess). Ecomonic concepts apply to the cultural issue, but so far no one has mentioned the cultural issue or the “active” role of the person/family receiving the service of Education, and that is a pretty big elephant in the room, in my opinion.
well put…
Ah, but imagine you go to school, and do want to study and learn, but the environment is so bad you cannot. Your parents cannot afford to send you anywhere else such as a safer school with a better environment. You are stuck in that school, with zero choice, and a government that cannot seem to fix broken schools. Teachers that refuse to discipline kids. Kids that physically punish you day in and day out. I know first hand, it happened to me. I had to spend a lot of time after high school developing myself, becuase it could not happen in those public schools. I did learn to fight, however.
Here in Baltimore kids beat up teachers, government does nothing. Kids are shot and stabbed in school, and government does nothing. 40% of kids drop out, and the government does not make changes to keep these kids in – they use teaching methods that are 60+ years old.
This is certainly a problem… Although I can’t see what this has to do with tax dollars funding an education. These are operational problems.
No, they are problems directly associated with the government monopoly on schools.
they use teaching methods that are 60+ years old.
McWop,
I think part of the problem is that they quit using teaching methods that are sixty years old.
Great points – I especially like #2 the incentives in education are much more complicated than the market for a newspaper. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what kind of returns you’ll get from an investment in education. In the earliest years, when a kid first makes decisions to invest in his or her education (when it is the most important to get a good start) they aren’t competent to weigh the value of that education in their future against the costs today. Ultimately that would mean that in a market their parents would make educational choices for the child – and the parents’ incentives won’t always match up with the incentives of their children. So why should a child’s future stream of earnings be dependent on a parent that may not be interested in making that investment on the child’s behalf? There are a lot of underlying problems with incentive in a market for education that deserve a deeper hearing. And by all means – use the market to discipline and improve public education. Contract it out. Establish charter schools. Provide vouchers where it’s feasible. Break the teachers’ union. There’s a lot we can do. But at the end of the day there is still reason to be very skeptical of purely relying on the market for this very different product.
“in a market their parents would make educational choices for the child ”
Horror! How dare a parent make a decision on behalf of a child! We can’t rely on those scoundrels to do what’s right!
And by the way – welcome to Cafe Hayek. We all hope to hear from you more often.
Thanks. I’ve been a “lurker” for some time, and get Don’s email blasts and all. I enjoy reading the comments here. I agree with you sometimes, not others, but I do like how you are quite respectful of other posters and tend to keep your responses substantive and not personal. Some people like to lecture others, rather than discuss. You seem like a “discusser” rather than a “lecturer.”On the barriers to entry – if point #1 of my post (which is probably overly-simplistic) were in effect, would the monetary aspect of any barrier disappear? If parents directly got $x to then “shop” for their kids’ school, than even poor kids can go, right? And maybe they can only go to sub-par schools, but don’t we in effect have that already with education primarily funded via local property tax revenue, which, obviously, is less in poorer neighborhoods? So, right now kids have what purports to be equal access to “education” but obviously that is not a reality, in that the “education” they receive (at least the passive, non-cultural aspect of it) is quite unequal, because property taxes are unequal?
I would definitely agree with your second paragraph. Vouchers, like you describe, are in my mind one of the best ideas out there to fix K-12 education. However, with respect to the DC vouchers (which have recently been canceled) I’ve heard people say that yes they seem to be working, but it’s impossible to scale it up. I don’t know the basis of that claim at all, but it might be something worth looking into if you’re interested in it.
Your logic seems very sensible on the property tax issue as well – especially since these are currently local taxes. It seems to me states have a lot of latitude to spread the cost across the state, and therefore not cede any additional control to the Feds.
georgebaxIV: “but don’t we in effect have that already with education primarily funded via local property tax revenue, which, obviously, is less in poorer neighborhoods?”
I don’t think that’s the case in most states. For example, Chapter 41 of the Texas Education Code requires that funds from school districts with the highest property values be reallocated to lower property wealth districts. Proposition 13 in California resulted in the governor and the state legislature determining how education funds are distributed in that state. The Florida Legislature long ago enacted the Florida Education Finance Program which equlaizes funding per student across the state, with adjustments for local economic factors (low income urban districts actually get more funds per student, not less).
Where unequal funding for education has persisted, the courts have taken strong steps to remove that inequality.
Well said…please don’t make this your last post. Keep em commin.
“while competition within the education system will increase the quality of the education system, it will also create a barrier to entry.”
What barrier to entry will competition create in education?
“Those barriers to entry were the barriers that kept slavery in existence, the barriers that kept feudalism alive, the barriers that oppressed the poor and underpriveldged. ”
??? Can you give examples here. Sounds kinda crazy.
If all students have to pay money to get an education, that is a new barrier to entry that didn’t exist before. Even for middle class families that live paycheck to paycheck, this would change the mix of students in the system.
In terms of the impact of those barriers, the impacts of uneducated peoples are littered in history and modern sociology books…
I think your definition of “barrier to entry” is a little off.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=barrier+to+entry+definition&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
nope….
Quote (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_to_entry) “In economics and mostly especially in the theory of competition, barriers to entry are obstacles in the path of a firm that make it difficult to enter a given market.[1]”
In the context of our conversation, the firm is the family and/or student, the market is the market of education. We are talking about the quality of the product in the market of education and how to make that product quality better. The proposals include ideas about changing who is producing the product, who is paying for the product, and how competitive the market is. If any of these changes make education harder to get, then there is a barrier to entry that didn’t exist before. In my examples I am referring to the capital costs as a barrier to entry (the same as the captial costs of machinery for a computer chip firm prior to them producing chips).
Does that clear things up?
“If all students have to pay money to get an education, that is a new barrier to entry that didn’t exist before”
Guys, do you realize what this means? That paying for something is a barrier to entry!!! I can’t believe I didn’t understand this until so late in life! Those price tags on the things in stores – THEY’RE BARRIERS TO ENTRY!!! Those stores are trying their best to keep us out, putting prices – barriers to entry – on everything.
I’m enraged! Incensed! HOW DARE THEY PUT UP BARRIERS TO ENTRY AGAINST ME!!!
I’M HEADING DOWN TO THE LOCAL BMW DEALER SHIP AND DEMANDING THEY REMOVE THOSE DISGUSTING, FILTHY BARRIERS TO MY ENTERING BMW OWNERSHIP!!!
Thanks for letting us know, Josh, that we don’t have to take it anymore!!!
And national healthcare? Why would you evil people be against removing a barrier to entry into health?!
Thanks again, Josh, for helping me see past those stupid college textbook definitions. I’ll be flipping axes from here on out!
Quite the cynic Mark… Yes the capital required to enter something is a barrier to you getting it.
Around the world in poor nations there are all manner of non-profit or small profit schools which parents send their children too. I reject the notion that is some sort of barrier. People find all sorts of ways to finance all sorts of things in this world, and I really do not think private financing of schools is any thing more insurmountable than any other good or service. The only way one could come to that conclusion would be to assume that all private schools in a free market system would resemble what private schools look like today.
Yes, poor nations around the world do get charity, yet they are not as wealthy as countries where education is provided by the tax base.
You are assuming that private schools would change if there were no public schools, if public schools are so bad – why aren’t the majority of students in private schools already?
I am sorry sir, but your comment tells me that you’re locked in to enculturated thought.
“while competition within the education system will increase the quality of the education system, it will also create a barrier to entry.”
How so? Entry to precisely what? A true user pays education system will create competition and even the lower tier competitors, as a result of responding to competition, will be towering over the publicly funded system we have today. Those schools that can not even make the scoreboard will be forced to close, thus improving the overall quality of the education system. Either new schools capable of competing will absorb those students left when a school closes, or those students will find a place in existing schools.
Students who choose not to compete will become parents who write excuse notes like those seen above.
“Those barriers to entry were the barriers that kept slavery in existence, the barriers that kept feudalism alive, the barriers that oppressed the poor and underpriveldged.”
That is just leftist toss-off nonsense. Barriers to entry did not create the concept or practice of slavery and it certainly did not prolong it. Unrestrained, arbitrary, accepted, and legal power and practice is what created slavery and what sustained it. Read the “Code of Hammurabi” and catch an eye into what slavery was in the city of Babylon when it was the first metropolis. Calling chattel slavery as was found in the USA in its early years “a barrier to entry” is insulting to a lot of people, mainly the slaves.
“the barriers that oppressed the poor and underpriveldged.”
It is a notable fact that prior to the industrial revolution and the resulting influx of European socialists spreading their disease here in America, such language was never heard or used. Pre-socialist America people understood that one’s wealth depended on ones decisions and efforts, not government programs. Did America have poor, oh yes, but on the whole a lot less percentage wise on a per capita basis than after the thumbsuckers brought that concept that governments should ensure that people be able to share a another man’s wealth while remaining distant from his efforts.
“Government healthcare is a safety net (not a tool to enable people to look out for themselves).”
Disingenuous tripe. Two things, government should not be in the business of providing safety nets, it is unconstitutional; and if the safety net is not a tool to enable people to look out for themselves, what is it? Very muddled thinking displayed here.
“Competition needs to be built into a system where everyone has an opportunity to”
Competition does not need to be built into any free system (no government involvement). Get government out of education totally and the system will instantly evolve competition as its natural state of affairs. Competition is as much a part of nature as is breathing.
“Things like charter schools where the school competes on a basis of accomplishment and a wide array of private schools where either vouchers are used or where the taxes collected are reduced.”
As long as any remote vestige of government control over education is retained (declaring this school a charter school and that one not, you get vouchers of so many dollars, where he does not, etc) then you do not have competition, you have control. No taxes, user pays. Control of a local school should be entirely in the hands of the local people who use the school. It worked in pre-socialist America to produce an astoundingly quantity of well educated average Americans, and it can work again.
“Yes government run news would be bad, it’s arguable that the government influence is already large enough though that it wouldn’t make a difference. At any rate, it is different than education and healthcare, so let’s not confuse people any more than they already are.”
Physician, heal thyself. Government run news, government run education, and government run healthcare are all equally bad for the common factor they share – government control.
The Americans that graduated from that locally controlled, non-federally directed and funded, school in the 1880s and 1890s were the same Americans that drove this nation from a minor participant in world affairs to become the wealthiest across the board, strongest, most productive, most innovative, most creative, and, yes even the most benevolent in the history of the world. Their America went through some of the most turbulent times in the history of the world and came through on top.
Those students who have graduated from federally funded and socialist controlled schools since the 1950 are the ones who are tearing all that down, denigrating it, degenerating the quality of education across the entire spectrum, and enculturating our children in socialism from birth since the 1960s.
To be honest, I don’t have the time to sort through the diatribe here…
I’d rather spend my time on a productive conversation, sorry.
Dan has replicated himself.
I think you’re right, hadn’t thought about it but the comment and his reply do seem awful Kuehnish or Kuehnesque.
Speaking of productive conversations…
I liked your point above about “barriers to entry”. While I would also quibble somewhat with your use of the term (ie – it is really a supply-side term and families are on the demand-side in this case), the point still remains. And one of the things that people don’t think about a lot is that there is a very problematic principal-agent problem in the market for education. Yes, the cost of an education will be a barrier to some families. But the more important point is that it is a barrier to PARENTS. Children enjoy the benefits of the investment, but parents incur the costs. For a lot (hopefully most) parents, this is still a worthwhile investment to make. But ultimately in a free market you’re forcing children to accept a future stream of income that their parents dictate to them by making these educational investment decisions for them. The parent is the agent of the child (who is the principal) – and there are very few mechanisms that a child can use to align the interests of the agent with his/her own interests. This is unlike the market for newspapers. In the market for newspapers, you don’t have a pre-adolescent depending on an agent they can’t control to make a major human capital investment on their behalf!
But ultimately in a free market you’re forcing children to accept a future stream of income that their parents dictate to them by making these educational investment decisions for them.
Are you referring to k-12 or are you including higher education (college and above)?
But the more important point is that it is a barrier to PARENTS. Children enjoy the benefits of the investment, but parents incur the costs.
This point is so obvious that it is neither important nor profound. When we choose to become parents, we understand that we must provide for our children and they will be the beneficiaries of the time and money we invest in them in a million different ways and for a million different things.
The same principal-agent problem which exists in education also exists in food, love, shelter, discipline and all the other things a child needs. All things, btw, that heavily impact a child’s ability to learn. Nominal “access” to education is the smallest hurdle in some children’s quest to learn. Where the state has interfered and become the child’s agent, it has often been a worse agent than the negligent or abusive parent.
The lives of children are frought with agency-principal problems.
Actually there is an incredibly odious principal-agent problem that exists today in public funding of education. Which is in part why publicly funded schools suck so much.
“Let’s not forget that while competition within the education system will increase the quality of the education system, it will also create a barrier to entry.”
How is that, Joshua?
“Those barriers to entry were the barriers that kept slavery in existence”
I don’t understand this. It was not the free market but rather laws which prevented most African-American children from being educated prior to the Civil War. In fact, about 10% of the children of slaves were receiving education from private but illegal schools.
Public schools work just fine at what they are intended to do. Which is to create obedient slaves.
Acolytes is more like it. The Catholic church at the height of its power educated the young to bring them closer to the kingdom of God which they had defined and controlled. The progressive church educates the young to bring them closer to the socialist state which they define and control.
Slaves is too harsh a word, I think docile and controllable are more apt. Your point is well taken though.
So simple. Don Boudreaux at his best!
It seems like a no-brainer. Privatizing schools will make things better. If we scrap the whole K-12 public school thing, and reduce the taxes so that people can educate their kids in private schools, it would be better. It reminds me of the health care system: Education too has a halo for leftists which does not allow them to see it as a business with competition being the best motivator.
In Indian cities, there is a government school system: but it is very poorly run, and hence used by only those who absolutely cannot afford to pay any tuition whatsoever. So, the private schools run the show: their tuitions range from cheap to expensive and people can get the kind of education they want when they’re prepared to pay the price.
In USA, I wonder why the most developed country in the world squeezes tax out of its people to force them to accept sub-standard education. I literally start fuming when someone suggests paying public school teachers more. When a tissue in the body turns into gangrene, we need to cut it off, not provide it more nutrients.
No, no. Read Daniel’s posts. We can’t trust the education of children to the private sector because (are you sitting down?) PARENTS would be involved. Someone other than parents (ick!) must be brought in to help make sure the kids are represented fairly.
Parents might not know the best for their children in some cases: but is there anyone in this forum who doubts that no one can care about the child’s interest more than his/her parent? Parents can use their limited knowledge, their affordability, and some benefit from the knowledge of their peers to decide on the best education providers for their kids. After that, the school can hire good people with expertise in children’s education to devise curricula. I am against homeschooling in that I believe that a child benefits from learning in a class with other children to interact with, but surely, the decision of homeschooling or choosing the right school must rest with the parents and no one else.
How can you make a blanket statement re: homeschooling? You continue the canard that homeschooled children are in some kind of social bubble and get no interaction with other kids. How do you know this? Sounds like bigotry to me.
not really bigotry: I have seen a lot of homeschooled kids, and I guess I should qualify my statement and make it: I am glad I wasn’t homeschooled and will not homeschool my kids. I do not judge anyone’s choice to homeschool their kids if they think it is right. It is none of my business
Why not also separate state from representation while we are at it.
Nothing like a tyranny in action and on display.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywgUCdefSW8
(This was meant to be a reply to Daniel – I am apparently too dense to do this correctly, bear with me until I learn!)
A child is not emotionally and intellectually mature enough to articulate “interests” and certainly not long-term interests. It is why, say, we, as a society have decided not to allow 8 year old kids to raise infants – they can’t do it. Every child is dependent upon their parents for all sorts of things that are different than immediate appetites and physical and emotional needs. Parents do more than console and hug crying children and feed them when they are hungry. They decided whether to vaccinate them, whether to circumcise, etc. Children are intrinsically going to be “forced” by a agent to do something the agent (in theory) thinks is in their best interest. Government-run or private only shifts the Agent from the person who – presumably – knows the child best to a government, who, among other glaring faults, has interests other than the child’s in play, such as the interests of the teacher’s unions and the fluctuations of the latest polls.Parents have “other” interests too. It is easier for lazy and immature parents to drink, party and be inattentive. Attentively helping a kid with homework, diligently researching schools, etc requires time, effort and a certain degree of acumen. And the “cost” to the parent is those things and money. But you are, in my view, incorrect in saying (assuming you are saying this) that the child is the only beneficiary. The parent “benefits” by seeing their child excel and raise the probability that the child will learn skills to live a happy, safe life. The whole “altruism doesn’t exist” thing can be taken to extremes, but, personally, as a parent, I feel happy when my kids learns something and I fell happy when I put a few bucks away in their Educational IRAs. They benefit, sure, but so do I. Their benefits can be measured, and mine cannot. But as Hayek has said, just because you can measure some things and not others does not mean those things are the only things worth measuring or even important ones. (Don’t mean to create a straw man out of your argument, if that is what I have done…I mean this respectfully)
I found it!
Yes, I definitely agree. You are clearly trading one agent for another – it’s true essentially by definition. Two thoughts on that – (1.) a parent that knows they can do better always has an outside option (with the understood opportunity costs of the lost taxes, of course). And there are lots of good ideas on the table (vouchers, etc.) for strengthening that outside option, and (2.) for the regretable instances where a parent doesn’t give a damn about making investments in their child, at least it’s something. The child isn’t quite as coerced by a neglectful parent as they would be in the absence of a public school system.
The point of my point isn’t that the state makes better decisions for parents, or that most parents can’t raise their children or anything like that. Let’s even assume a completely altruistic parent, but one that isn’t intelligent, isn’t strong, isn’t productive, and therefore doesn’t earn very much. The same logic applies. A child is constrainted by a parent’s circumstances. Coerced by prior generations, if you will. And since we know people generally marry at their comparable socioeconomic status, we would only expect this pattern to be preserved over time. Public education provides an equal opportunity to all children by being explicitly cognizant of the constraints placed on children by the unequal outcomes of their parents.
And I think your voucher/educational IRA’s can be supported by the same logic. Proponents of vouchers don’t particularly concern me. I like the idea of vouchers, if it works (and I see no reason to think it wouldn’t). The more problematic argument for me is the one that says you can’t coercively tax a population to provide public education (either through publicly run schools or through charter schools/vouchers). It’s THAT argument that seems to me to be complicit in the coercion of a child by the circumstances the child is born into.
“The point of my point isn’t that the state makes better decisions for parents, or that most parents can’t raise their children or anything like that.”
Sure sounded like it.
“A child is constrainted by a parent’s circumstances. Coerced by prior generations, if you will.”
Nice fatalistic viewpoint. And what will remedy this perceived problem? “Free” education for all. The utopian remedy: equal mediocrity for all (as if all public schools are equal!!!).
“Public education provides an equal opportunity to all children by being explicitly cognizant of the constraints placed on children by the unequal outcomes of their parents.”
Good post. But the “public” aspect of my proposal is the funding, not the system (with the exception of a public school option). Some schools can/should be public; my problem is with most of them being public. If a parent doesn’t care/doesn’t get involved, a child can still go to the public school, in fact, it could easily be structured that way, so that the “default” enrollment for any child is the applicable public school, and the monies would go directly there, if the inattentive parent neglects to sign up their kid to a different one with their “education” stipend. I think we have a bit of a chicken v. egg thing, because one of the second-order effects of having too much dependence on the government to provide, in effect, a substitute parent for “bad” parents, we reduce the incentive for parents at the margins to give a damn, since the government will, they don’t have to. It can end up being a type of “cultural moral hazard” effect, if you will. But that is a GIGANTIC issue, too big for this forum, I’m afraid.
I am not trying to be passive-aggressive or to lay a trap, but I am genuinely interested in the answer to this question, for intellectual purposes: Did you or your parents grow up poor or uneducated? I ask because my parents came from modest backgrounds and were among the firsts to attend college, etc. The “coerced by prior generations” in that sense does not frighten me much. Poor people, even stupid ones who care about their children, are, in my experience always at least smart enough to know what they don’t know. What I mean is, you don’t have to know how to do diffy-Qs or advanced biometrics to be smart to realize that education is important, and to seek others who do know those things, for your children. I’m not smart enough to diagnose and treat every ailment my kids have, but I am smart enough to know that and seek those that do…by talking to other parents, look at different doctors. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the rabble need to be told what’s good for them (not saying that is your intent – your intent seems quite benevolent and reasonable) because they are incapable of knowing. Unless a parent unfit – druggie, criminal, grossly neglectful, etc- In my experience (I did social work in Scranton, PA for a few years, before moving on to the investment mgmt industry) poor people are mostly ignorant, but not stupid, and certainly aren’t any worse or better as parents. The problem is that they most certainly are constrained by income and thus, absent vouchers, likely cannot provide for private school. My theory (a simplistic abstraction used mostly as a conversation-starter) is my clumsy attempt to channel that anecdotal observation into an attempt to empower poor parents (and their kids) a bit more. I think public education as currently structured, does not provide an equal opportunity for kids with parents who are poor and uneducated but “attentive.” I think we all agree that poorer kids currently go to worse schools than non-poor and there is essentially nothing their parents can do about it. At least in my hypothetical, there is potentially something? (I could be wrong!) BTW, what you are getting at is what Thomas Sowell has described quite eloquently as The Quest for Cosmic Justice. He has a book by that title and also a speech on his website you can Google. It gets to what we are talking about, if you are interested in the views of people more knowledgeable than me.
Regarding taxation and “coercive” taxation (is their any other kind? lol) – I think education is a legitimate state interest and since taxes don’t seem to be going away any time soon, I have no philosophical objection. I just want the money spent well. I’ll pay for education – I have, for example, voted often to “override” the town property tax limit in order for the town to spend more on schools – but I simply object to the idea that most of the money is wasted – to buy off teacher’s unions, various right and left wing interest groups promoting wedge issues and other silly nonsense like “self esteem” programs, or “new math” or the other Fad Du Jour. In fact, I’ll go one more – if my plan (give parents the $x we currently spent) were to go into effect, I’d GLADLY pay more in taxes for that!
RE: “Good post. But the “public” aspect of my proposal is the funding, not the system (with the exception of a public school option).”Yes, I understood that. And I’m certainly receptive to that option – I’m just not personally tying myself to it. And it’s an interesting point on the chicken and egg – I certainly imagine that’s there. To me, the voucher/public system question is wholly an empirical one. As for your question, I grew up in what I guess you would call upper middle class. I don’t imagine there would have been a problem sending me to private school, but neither I nor any of my three siblings were – we all went to public schools (and three of the four of us went to public colleges). We also weren’t any kind of “first college generation” either – that goes back quite far, at least for some branches. But I’m not trying to say that there is some helpless rabble out there. I’m thinking of this (as with most things) on the margin – not in a haves/have nots sense. Even in my family that values education, I still can’t expect my parents to represent my interests best (if for no other reason than that they had four of our interests’ to represent!). Identifying that problem doesn’t mean parents do a terrible job. There’s no need to put a black-and-white interpretation on it. And as you bring up – it’s not just intention or parental care. Often it’s simply ability to pay. Let’s say two equally altruistic parents with two equally intelligent children can pay for a $5,000 education and a $20,000 education, respectively. How will the market produce an optimal outcome here? It won’t. Consumer surplus is tied to a third party’s limited ability to pay, which is based on that third party’s productivity. If we’re talking about young adults that can take out their own loans to pay for further education, that’s one thing. But if we’re talking about a five year old it’s a very real problem, and it has nothing to do with “unaltruistic rabble”, which (if you’re fair I think you’ll admit) was never the basis of any argument I ever made.And all this comes back to your voucher point (giving parents $X). I have no problem with vouchers whatsoever. They address the problems that concern me very directly. For me, how to deliver the education is an empirical question. Weakening teacher’s unions, instituting merit pay, and charter schools are all no-brainers for me. Vouchers and basing school finance on the state property tax base rather than the local property tax base seem very promising but potentially problematic in a practical sense. But I don’t want to give you the wrong impression at all – your suggestion defintiely, in theory, solves what I’m concerned about.
Fair enough, good explanation. My only addition would be to comment on your hypothetical where all other things are equal, save for one family having $5k and the other $20k. In my view, “The market” doesn’t need to produce an “optimal” outcome, because such a thing does not exist. Imbedded even within the empirical data of the hypothetical ($5k and $20k) and non-empirical choices, or, the set-up is itself flawed. What I mean is that parents choose to pay $5k or $20k. Yes, in some absolue sense, there is a limit to what someone can pay. But the $5k parent can nly pay $5k and also live their current lifestyle. If the parent cut back on virtually all “luxuries” and/or got a second/third job, perhaps that $5k moves up to $10k? Maybe the $20k family works a bunch of jobs and cut coupons religiously each week. Or maybe they are heirs to the Hilton Hotel fortune, we don’t know. But “the market” is not a monolith, in fact, it only exists as a talking point for guys like us who like to wax on and on (and there’s nothig wrong with that!). We can quibble with how it is bound, regulated, etc. But “the market” is really a collection of individuals, each having subjective and unique definitions of “optimal.” As an observer, you may project a definition of optimal onto any market to evaluate its results, but that does not mean the process by which family X comes to spend $5k (or even only “have” $5k) and Family Y comes to have $20k is “flawed” in any meaningful sense, which means everybody simply agrees with you. Inequality – the “lottery” of birth can be a cold bitch. But it is a fact of life and cannot be removed by even the most intelligent, knowledgable people sitting around a table, trying to come up with “solutions.” There is no such thing as a “solution” as you know, only trade-offs. “Public” systems do not solve this, as I think you’d agree. So the question becomes, what’s the relatively superior option? And I think we largely agree on the broad strokes.
Thanks for your insights. I certainly didn’t want to imply that you are an elitist, snubbing your nose at the rabble. I just wanted to understand your point, and do know. My question was to just see what experience you have with poorer, less educated people. I have some and have found and experience firsthand tghe powerful difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance can be managed and reduced over time…stupidity, well, that’s a tougher problem!
Some people are born taller, healthier, smarter, wittier, more attractive and/or to families with more money, sometimes a lot more, than others. And it doesn’t seem fair, and isn’t in any cosmic sense. Equality under the law and equality of resources (which include money, acument, industriousness, good parents, productivity – all of which are highly related and circular, in my view) are different things. I don’t think some “system” or “plan” (government run or not) can provide an “optimal” outcome and in fact, I think focusing on the outcome is potentially misguided, since outcomes are influenced by personal, cultural, biological and yes, emprical and economic factors…things we barely can know enough about ouerselves, let alone a large society, and the “costs” in my view, of trying to understand and being wrong about it, can be worse than the purported problem of these inequalities themselves.
But yeah, it’s sad to think about how many kids in America – and crucially, in the Third World who have tons of potential, but, sadly, lost the “lottery” of life. And the flipside – lazy bums whose rich daddy lets them coast throughout life, is even more infuriating. But, to me, the question is not that these things are bad or lamentable or “suboptimal” to what I, personally, imagine to be a desirable result. The question, rather, is if this is worse or better in a relative sense to attempts to “rectify” things that I think (1) we don’t and can’t understand, (2) cannot be rectified even if we did and (3) that attempts to can only be done via coercion and will have costs that will be at least as bad, and likely worse.
Anyway, sorry for being long-winded – I’ll give you the last word…this has been fun!
“Public education provides an equal opportunity to all children…”
The difference between theory and reality is that in theory that’s true. In reality it’s total BS. Children in poor areas are the ones harmed the most by the government (near) monopoly on schooling – and they are harmed very badly.
Of course children are constrained by their parents. Alert the media, life isn’t fair! The problem with your position is government schools have done an exceptional job increasing the unfairness. You support a system of schooling that has unquestionably failed many millions of children because a small minority of parents might choose poorly for their kids. That may make sense to you, but I see it as extremely cruel.
In fairness, some of the things you’ve suggested would be improvements over the present situation. Unfortunately they don’t address the underlying problem of having somebody beside parents in control. If vouchers etc. can serve as a way to transition to the total separation of school and state we so desperately need, then they are a wonderful thing.
Oh hell, why not take the next step and separate Americans from their national sovereignty.http://www.examiner.com/x-2684-Law-Enforcement-…
Correction, this passed the house in 2008, but died in the senate. 11/6/09 9:20AM
On y last post, I meant to write “poor people are mostly NOT stupid, but may be ignorant.” Just trying to highlight the hugely important distinction between stupidity and ignorance….
“Why, then, does not Ms. Engel or any of your letter writers see that K-12 education will continue to stink as long as it remains a government-run monopoly?”
From all my reading and discussing today I think I can answer this: it’s because education is such a complex scenario that the market can’t cope with it. It’s so much more complicated than markets for ERP software, for psychotherapy, for entertainment, for pharmaceuticals, for baseball players, for used cars. Pretty much everything else can be created by free people and purchased by free people, but education is just way way too complex. Besides, most parents don’t love their kids enough and aren’t smart enough to get them started learning properly. I really like liberty and all that, but helping a child learn things is much too complicated to be entrusted to people without love or master’s degrees. Besides, if people had to pay for education, then it wouldn’t be free anymore and, well, that would be a barrier to entry now, wouldn’t it?
That’s what I learned today.
Anyone can slay a strawman (or 20). Is the point to lecture to us or discuss things with us?
It’s just a summary, George.
Strawman indeed. He said he got this from reading a discussion… I wonder if it was this discussion? It doesn’t seem to be this discussion. The point, as I have been reading it, has always been systematic underinvestment – not incomprehensible complexity. Oh well.
Count Danku, the intellectual Sith Lord speaks!
Yes, the problem with schools is underinvestment. Yes…all the schools need is more money.
It’s time to pull the plug on public schools….
Why not point out poor kids would be better working than losing 15 or so years of their most productive years?
The point of pulling the plug is to take that money and put it to better use. Find better teachers who are more prodctive and thereby lower costs. Let groups of people start their own schools. The current system is too wasteful, unproductive, rife with patronage workers, slackers, manipulators of the system, useless bureaucrats.
Run the school for nonprofit or profit or whatever….Set goals and achieve them..Develop performance measures…And tell the bureaucrats to go to hell.
You can’t talk about falling schools and not talk about grade inflation….but I don’t want to talk about it. So I’ll let Dr. Williams tell it way better than I could. “Today’s college students are generally dumber than their predecessors. An article in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 30, 1997) reported that a “bachelor of Arts degree in 1997 may not be the equal of a graduation certificate from an academic high school in 1947.” The American Council on Education found that only 15 percent of universities require tests for general knowledge; only 17 percent for critical thinking; and only 19 percent for minimum competency.According a recent National Assessment of Adult Literacy, the percentage of college graduates proficient in prose literacy has declined from 40 percent to 31 percent within the past decade. Employers report that many college graduates lack the basic skills of critical thinking, writing and problem-solving and some employers find they must hire English and math teachers to teach them how to write memos and perform simple computations.”I’d say grade inflation is more rampant in Middles Schools and HS than in colleges.
And some anecdotal evidence as well. I’m a Chemist and I’m a supervisor, and when I have to explain the metric system to other chemists who have B.S’s in chemistry…I’d say that their grades were just a bit inflated.
I am a grad student and I work at an economics help desk at a state university. On more than one occasion I have had a student from a principles class come in who had trouble with simple arithmetic. No wonder they say economics is so hard!
I read through the back articles, and I couldn’t get off this:
“If we really want good schools, we need to create a critical mass of great teachers.”
Maybe I’m dumb or drunk but what the hell does that mean? I have critical mass defined as:
“the minimum amount (of something) required to start or maintain a venture”
How long have we had public education?
Right on! Why is this point so opaque to our legislators?
It is not just standards although that is important. It is what is being taught and how. Having government fund schools and set the curriculum turns the education system into a quick and easy ‘fix’ for any political problem. Just add a new subject. No matter the opportunity cost on subjects that parents might actually care about there children learning. And when this does not work they pour money into it, set Stalinist targets for the kids and turn the teachers into bureaucrats. All at the same time empowering teaching & education worker unions unprecedented power within the government monopoly to empire build & push politically correct agendas.
Ed Balls (‘Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families’) recently suggested jail time for parents trying to get round the government rationing system. All of this is a good example of the main principle in the Road to Serfdom. Collectivist control begets more collectivist control.
Signed
a product of the UK comprehensive school system.
Nope….
In the definition you posted families/students are the customers, education is the market, and schools are the firms competing for the customers. “Barrier to entry” only refers to firms entering a market to compete for customers. If you really want to “clear thing up”, change the term, not the definition.
“In the context of our conversation, the firm is the family and/or student”
Let’s just make the family the firm, huh Josh? How bizarre.
Even using your convoluted terminology you’re incorrect: people are already paying for education via taxation.
Further, removing the education tax burden would help offset the ‘barrier to entry’ that ‘the poor’ encounter if education were to be 100% privatized. They already encounter what you call a ‘barrier to entry’ with everything they buy: their TV’s, dvd players, cell phones, tatoos, cars, toys, clothes and food. Interestingly, companies and charities have moved to serve low income folks in all these areas, regardless of how hard it is for others to imagine how they can do it.
“We are talking about the quality of the product in the market of education and how to make that product quality better. ”
And when talking about improving education, the schools are the firm. The family is the consumer.
I make that mistake a lot too…
The role of supply and demand are interchangeable depending on how you look at a situation. labor is both demanded and supplied, food is both demanded and supplied, students are both demanded and supplied…
Yes, I understand that on average the texts used to refer to things like students and workers refer to them on the demand curve and not the supply curve, but that does not preclude them from being referred to in this manner
A new policy! What an appropriately bureaucratic way to put it.
Please NEVER forget this pledge. If only it were legally binding….
>>I am no pit-bull and he is certainly no two year old…He doesn’t need anyone to defend him<<
Whoosh! It would be understandable IF Mark hadn't left the winking emoticon; but he did.
Nice try. No mistake here. We’re not talking about supply and demand. We’re talking about barriers to entry which is about “obstacles in the path of a firm that make it difficult to enter a given market.”
In the case the “market for education” schools compete in the market for student $$$, not the other way around.
If you want to talk about barriers to entry in the actual sense of the word. Today, govt. and only govt. decides who can establish a school. Talk about barriers to entry.
Is it the funding or the administration that’s the problem. I’m under the impression that it’s the administration.
There’s no doubt you’re trading one agent for another. Two thoughts on that – (1.) a parent that knows they can do better always has an outside option (with the understood opportunity costs of the lost taxes, of course). And there are lots of good ideas on the table (vouchers, etc.) for strengthening that outside option, and (2.) for the regretable instances where a parent doesn’t give a damn about making investments in their child, at least it’s something. The child isn’t quite as coerced by a neglectful parent as they would be in the absence of a public school system.
Another thought on this…in a completely free market system of education, the parents decide how much and what sort of education children receive.
In the current system, all of those decisions are made by self-interested politicians and bureaucrats.
The underlying assumption in Danny’s post is that parents are poorer agents for their children than faceless bureaucrats and that the cost of educating that child should fall on the people who didn’t make the choice to have him.
(don’t forget your promise above, DK).
Keep in mind that there are private schools now – no one ever said that private education is not allowed. It’s true that most people choose not to invest in a private education, perhaps they don’t think the return on that investment will be worth it.
So you disagree that an education is an investment in human capital that will result in a return on investment later?
So you disagree that education is an investment made by individuals and families that is applied to their future output in life? From the response you are positioning education as a disposable good, one that does not result in a return on investment. I’m not sure I agree with you on that…
You always have to keep in mind, though, that you have no choice about your tax dollars going to public school. I’m definitely with you on the value of public schools, but it doesn’t change that cost – which necessarily affects your decision (and your ability) to send you kids to private schools.
Umm, more like they don’t have any money left over after paying to support the wonderful, opportunity-offering, barrier-to-entry-nullifying government schools.
My opinion is clouded by a brief stint as a public school math teacher years ago, but I think not enough parents give a fig about their children’s education, full stop. That said…
The price of private schools is artificially higher because the parents are forced to pay taxes to support the public schools AND private school tuition. Weren’t you the one who was so interested in barriers to entry? Well, making education more expensive with this additional tax is a barrier.
If I am in the farming industry and need to acquire a quality tractor. I probably don’t care from whom I acquire the quality tractor from if there is a private firm offering a tractor and a public firm offering a tractor. What I do care about is that I get a quality tractor so that I can run my farm and turn a profit from crops I sell that the tractor enabled me to get.
If I am a student I need to acquire a quality education. I probably don’t care from whom I acquire the quality education from if there is a private firm offering an education and a public firm offering an education. What I do care about is that I get a quality education so that I can run my create output through making/selling products and turn a profit from products I sell that the education enabled me to get.
So strained. Oh well.
I’m not cynical. Your use of terminology is strained and stupid.
Josh and Dan – they deserve each other. Dan, I’m rooting for you here.
I never thought I would see an argument from dan so straight forward and simple.
Should we start talking about vouchers? I think the idea would blow josh’s mind
Is that really the best argument you have in response to this?
Here we have a real issue at hand, a good group of intelligent people discussing the issue, and the most value you can add to the conversation is calling me “stupid”?
If calling a price a barrier to entry isn’t stupid, I don’t know what is.
Sounds like you may have something of value to offer here and I’d love to learn it… If price has nothing to do with barriers… what does?
We’re not talking “barriers” in general, but “barriers to entry”. You’re trying to redefine the term barriers to entry, and it’s not working. Even Daniel disagrees with you. Keep trying though, it’s kind of funny/pathetic. Or stupid.
High entry costs – ie, prices of obtaining relevant capital – have always been considered a barrier to entry. Most definitely.
It’s still not a demand side concept, but I think this sidebar is distracting from your main points anyway.
I have no idea how you came to that conclusion. You are right on one aspect. Education is a “good”. Education is an investment similar to a home, a car, ect… It’s a product you purchase that hopefully will pay off in the future.
In a market for education, schools (firms) would compete for students’ (consumers) business.
Josh, you can try and reframe everybody’s argument any way you like. The fact remains that your use of the term ‘barriers to entry’ was/is flawed.
Education is an investment, but a product none the less, that is best provided when consumers (students) have a choice in terms of where they consume it as opposed to having it provided by one monopoly (the govt.)
Are you saying that acquiring goods are not barriers to entry? Acquiring machinery for farming, acquiring a store to sell goods out of, acquiring a patent or IP, etc?
Well, if you can’t provide any actual explanations/examples and can only offer name calling, I think I’ll move on and not waste my time. Thanks anyway!
That’s exactly what I’m saying (For the 4th time? I think…) The economic term “barriers to entry” refers to “obstacles in the path of a FIRM that make it difficult to enter a given MARKET”. This is from the definition YOU posted.
Those firms enter the market to SELL products, not consume them. Students/consumers CONSUME education, schools/firms provide it.
Once again to make sure you understand this time:
Barriers to entry – Economic, procedural, regulatory, or technological factors that obstruct or restrict entry of new FIRMS into an industry or market. Such barriers may take the form of (1) clear product differentiation, necessitating heavy advertising expenditure to introduce new products, (2) economies of scale, necessitating heavy investment in large plants to achieve competitive pricing, (3) restricted access to distribution channels, (4) collusion on pricing and other restrictive trade practices (such as full-line forcing) by the producers or suppliers, (5) well established brands, or (6) fierce competition.
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/barriers-to-entry.html
Go ahead and google “barriers to entry”. You will find nothing referring to consumers trying to purchase a product/good/service, ect, ect. Barriers to entry only refers to FIRMS trying to ENTER A MARKET to SELL its products.
It’s Josh “Makin’ It Up as I Go” Maher. What an auspicious debut!
I agree.
Because we middle-class people who would love to send our kids to private school are already being taxed to pay the teacher’s union to teach our kids. We can’t afford to pay for both
“poor nations around the world do get charity, yet they are not as wealthy as countries where education is provided by the tax base.”
The Soviet Union had an excellent publicly provided education system and we were still desperately poor. By comparison, the public education system in the United States is a sad joke. There is a correlation between prosperity and an educated population, but that in no way proves or even suggests that the education must be funded publicly or administered by the central authority.
You seem to contradict yourself. I’m assuming you support a publicly funded school system because the poor won’t be able to afford basic education for their children without public funds. Yet, you then ask why these same poor aren’t all sending their kids to private school. The answer to your question is that not enough people can afford private school and not all public schools are trash.
Public funding shouldn’t compell students to attend the school assigned by the central authority. Why shouldn’t students and parents be able to choose among publicly funded schools?
Spot on, Mark.
People like Josh don’t like to talk about the fact that while they are spending hard earned dollars to send their kids to K-1 thru K-12 in a private school, they are also being raped for more dollars in taxes to send Josh’s kids to public school, and Josh thanks you very much, and he certainly doesn’t want to see it stopped.
Kinda like that double jeopardy thingy we discussed recently.
georgebaxIV and I have been talking about vouchers in the discussion for quite a while at this point.
There’s nothing much to add to that – nobody should be under the impression that anything can be “solved” or that we can have an optimal solution. It is definitely always a trade-off between two imperfect scenarios. And the point is, it’s not a crazy tradeoff to at least consider – it’s a tradeoff that’s very much worth considering.
It is a sidebar, I’ll give you that.
Yea, but both your posts are so long and (sometimes) tedious, I didn’t read them. I was referring to bringing it up in our little “sidebar”.
Once again you base your view of homeschooling off of a few anecdotal cases. You have no basis to come to the conclusion that homeschooled kids are worse off that kids that go to a horrible public school. Now, you might have a point that kids who go to excellent public schools are better off then both of those other cases. But you didn’t quality it did you?
are you kidding me? I thought I made it pretty clear in my very first comment that I hate public schooling: I went to a good private school, and I believe that is the best thing. Parents paying well for children to learn from trained professionals in each subject. Below is my original comment:
“It seems like a no-brainer. Privatizing schools will make things better. If we scrap the whole K-12 public school thing, and reduce the taxes so that people can educate their kids in private schools, it would be better. It reminds me of the health care system: Education too has a halo for leftists which does not allow them to see it as a business with competition being the best motivator.
In Indian cities, there is a government school system: but it is very poorly run, and hence used by only those who absolutely cannot afford to pay any tuition whatsoever. So, the private schools run the show: their tuitions range from cheap to expensive and people can get the kind of education they want when they’re prepared to pay the price.
In USA, I wonder why the most developed country in the world squeezes tax out of its people to force them to accept sub-standard education. I literally start fuming when someone suggests paying public school teachers more. When a tissue in the body turns into gangrene, we need to cut it off, not provide it more nutrients.”
Hope this makes it clear.
Yeah but what’s the real point of scrapping public schools? Private schools still can’t discriminate.