On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 21:12, David B. Shemano <[email protected]> wrote: > Sean Andrews writes. > >>> I think you're missing the point: the goal is not to increase the >>> choice of the individual schoolchild: it is to increase the quality of >>> schooling for all school children. The innovations of some charters >>> might help to do this, but the way it is set up, it basically takes >>> money from the system that is required to serve everyone equally and >>> funnels it into the system with no such mandates. > > I too very much appreciate what Sean Andrews writes, because it makes the > issue ever more crystal clear. I exactly get the point and want to stress > that, intentionally or not, you are agreeing/conceding/making explicit my > very point. That is why I am so surprised that Max Sawicky was so defensive. > > When you boil it down, it is your position that it is better not to give school choices to parents because if you give them choices, that will consequentially lower the quality of the schools that are not chosen. In other words, it is immoral/should be illegal/etc. for individual parents to make decisions that you admit are better for the individual parents and their children, if there is some hypothetical negative result for the other children and the neighborhood school. This is a naked utilitarian. cost-benefit argument that I personally find abhorrent. You cannot avoid the intent and effect of your position -- given the choice (pun intended), it is more important to you that little Johnny go to the neighborhood school to improve the neighborhood school, than little Johnny go to a school that will maximize the educational value for little Johnny. >>>>>>>>>>>
In your little scenario, little Johnny is an objectively superior Ubermensch and the fantasy private school is objectively superior to the objectively inferior local public school. The ****ONLY POSSIBLE**** solution to this hypothetical problem is for the rational maximizing parents to do everything in their power to make sure that they are able to secure, as consumers, the individual space for their future captain of industry. They have no idea what makes a good education; they have no sense of what makes a good school, but someone hands them some data, cooked by making sure that no "problem" kid ever stays in Objectively Superior school, and suddenly, like the big screen TV and luxury car, they must be allowed to purchase this objectively superior education for their objectively superior child. Since you've eliminated all the variables from the scenario that I mentioned, you can't imagine why this shouldn't be the most natural state of affairs. And, indeed, I'm at a loss to explain it to you--just as I am at a loss to give you any insight into the reasons why all the other Robinsonade fantasies libertarians have are equally banal and pointless as a guide for public policy. But what happens if the charter school itself is really just a big fat polished turd of a school that is run by people who have never even attempted to run such an institution. They had a lot of success marketing a horrid local pizza joint to the tasteless rubes around them now they're trying their luck in the education racket--can't be much harder to "sell" this? They talk a good game and, for a few years, manage to bungle their way through--some exceptional teachers who were well trained and had a good sense of what to do without any actual leadership managed to hold things together, much to the consternation of the administration itself, which thought that the real key was getting the right numbers to keep the money flowing. So Johnny gets into this fantasy school which, by the way, is loads worse than the supposedly inferior public school down the road--but dammit these parents know the importance of choice, and the innovative model (in this case, based on a 19th century Prussian military academy, complete with drill instructors kicked out of the local ROTC program) is just the thing for all of their objectively superior kids. They don't really have their shit together, but everyone gives them the benefit of the doubt--how could such a good idea go wrong? The scores the first year are okay because they have hired an expensive educational testing service to make sure that no duds are going to make it in; the exceptional teachers, though exhausted and exasperated by the administration, stick it out and are able to take their knowledge, mostly gained from teaching a variety of students in the public schools, to teach the exceptional students well enough. At the end of the year, however, half of them leave. THe administration manages to shill a handful of teachers, fresh out of college, into filling in for the following year, but they have no idea what they are doing. Assuming that Johnny actually got into this school at all--assuming, in other words, that he is actually one of these objectively "superior" (i,e, good test subject) students, has no learning disabilities or emotional problems--lets assume that his parents are equally innocent of the problems with the school, feeling proud of themselves for making the right choice, for sticking it to the man and keeping their superstar from having to associate with those public school retards. They reenroll him, ante up their voucher money, plus plus, and go on their merry way. Halfway through the year, the shit hits the fan. The new crop of teachers can't cut it and the ones who were patching things together the year before are incensed at the inept admin. The school has to close midyear and now Johnny has no school to go to--he other private charters nearby being full to capacity at this point in the year and the objectively inferior public school too awful to contemplate--isn't it full of all the "problem" kids? What are these rational maximizing consumers to do? They have no education to purchase: the market has not provided. What could have gone wrong? This is not really hypothetical because situations like this happen all the time in relation to experimental charters. It is only in the hypothetical that vouchers and/or public/private charters magically appear and are successful models out of the blue. >>>>>>>>>> > > Mr. Andrews' sketches a beautiful vision of a school system. The fact that > it does not exist and is not an option for little Johnny today is irrevant to > Mr. Andews. >>>>>> Actually I said that it does exist, that people are already working at them, and they are already successful: http://www.essentialschools.org/cs/schools/query/q/562?x-r=runnew But the issue--which, again, you seem to have no possible explanation of--is that these schools actually have a model that focuses on education, rather than just choice. > Mr. Andrews would apparently deny little Johnny a charter school today on the > hope that the lack of an alternative to today's > desultory neighborhood school would create political pressure to allow Mr. Andrews' idyllic vision to come to fruition. Where do you think a charter school would come from? Almost all of the actually successful ones--as opposed to the entreprenuerial ventures--are started by parents and community leaders with a clear vision for what their kids need. That same activity could--and has been--equally applied to public schools as well, when those schools are given the autonomy to make the changes in question, rather than being hamstrung by meeting federal standards cooked up by Entrepreneurial Texas testing gurus. The issue, in other words, is that these magical institutions won't appear out of nowhere just because you throw some cash at it--or take the cash from the public system. And, just to be clear, there AREN'T these magical, voucher funded charters either. It is a purely hypothetical system for which you have no empirical argument except to say that if there is a "better school" people who want to go to it should be able to go to it. But the problem is that this "better school" is a scarce resource--yet it doesn't have to be. Instead of fretting about whether your kids have a choice, why not spend some of that energy on making that choice possible. > This is not a conclusion that a traditional conservative or classic liberal > would reach. It is not the conclusion of the people in Los > Angeles who > (until recently) buy ridiculously overpriced homes 50 miles from their > workplace because they want to choose a > school. It is not the conclusion of people in poor neighborhoods who bus their kids two hours each way to go to a better school. Just to be clear, these buses are public buses, going to other public schools or are they private buses, going to private schools? My sense is that the people you are talking about most often move to be in a better public school district (i.e. in the district in the good part of town with all the ridiculously overpriced homes.) In which case, we aren't talking about public charters anymore. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
