Should all public schools be privatized? Why or why not?

[battleknight24]

I just had a conversation with a friend of mine who believes that all public schools (not colleges or universities) should be privatized. She believes that American public schools are in such bad shape that they should be privatized so schools have to compete for students. She also believes in vouchers.
"Look at Charter schools!" she said. My response was, which ones? Here in Texas, we may have some good ones, but there are a lot of really, really , REALLY bad ones- I've seen the data, and my older sister taught at one. My friend said that the charter schools she is familiar with (I think she has family members who teach at them), there are lots of kids from the poorer parts of inner city Dallas. I asked her, "Do they accept all the students who apply?" She said that there is a waiting list, because so many kids want to go to that particular charter school. My response was, "Public schools can't really turn anyone away. They have to take everybody." "But it shouldn't make a difference who the kid is" she responded. I'm not sure how that refutes what I just said. She also said that she went to a private (Cahtolic?) school when she was younger, and she feels she got a great education. While private schools might not EXPELL lots of students, as some liberals claim and some conservatives deny, private schools do have a choice of who they ACCEPT and who they don't. Once again, public schools do not have that choice.
She also mentioned that "Restaurants have to compete for customers. Why not schools?" I didn't have a clear answer to that- except to say that running a restaurant and running a school are two totally different animals. My response to school vouchers is, the amount of money given in a voucher is still FAR below the cost needed to attend a private school. Also, depending on where you live, the next nearest good school might be very far away.
Most of all, and I say this all the time, while US public schools can do a lot better, the international comparisons you read about in the paper- where the United States ranks near the bottom- are misleading. Unlike the US, in many foreign countries in Asia and Europe, not every student has the opportunity to proceed to the next grade level, only students with the highest grades and test scores are. The rest are weeded out of the system and sent for vocational training. Many other countries also have much higher dropout rates than the US does. So if you compare test scores of American students- a very mixed bunch- with students from foreign countries, should we really be impressed with other countries performances compared to ours.
Of course not.

With all this said, why or why shouldn't schools be privatized?


Peace,

[Deja Q]

1. Are colleges currently for-profit?

Everyone complains how often their costs go up, with so little in return. (e.g. $40k for an Associates degree in the graphic design field, of which the average job pays $30k/yr, cost of living is roughly $25~30k/yr depending on where one lives, or more...) There's no way those colleges are public or non-profit. Can't be.

But I am ignorant...

All I know is, kids should learn in schools.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Privatizing is rarely a good idea in anything.

Education, prisons, airport security, social security, highways, hospitals, nursing homes, other healthcare... privatizing it into a for-profit system just makes it a mess.

I don't want our school system run by General Electric or Haliburton or any corporation.

[Mojambo]

3. Privatized enterprises first (and usually only) goal is to make a profit

Schools should have one (and only one) goal and that is to educate.

[Deja Q]

7. Agreed. 100%.

[Reverend_Smitty]

4. I agree with what you said...

When you privatize education, the bottom line is the most important thing and not the kids. There may be a lot of inefficiency and inequality in our public schools but it is not from them being public institutions...it's more or less our government not giving a shit about education. If we took 10% of the defense budget and put it towards schools, the quality of public schools would increase exponentially.

Our priorities may be screwed up in this country but I still wouldn't rather have a corporation teaching our kids

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. "Restaurants compete; why not schools?" Now there's a dumb comparison!

Imagine a society where only 10% of the population ever goes to restaurants. America was like that in the past. When I was a kid in the 1950s, we ate at restaurants only when traveling, never as a substitute for a regular meal. That means fewer restaurants in the society, but presumably the people who now own restaurants would have gone into some other business.

Now imagine a society where only 10% of the population has ever gone to school. There are places like that--in the bottom sector of the Third World, places like Haiti or Afghanistan.

Schools are a necessary public service if your society has any complexity at all.

[Deja Q]

8. Ah, but our own society is moving away from complexity.

From consumer products, to entertainment, complexity isn't what it used to be. :(

Especially regarding entertainment; a dilettante media historian and boring philosopher, it is rather interesting to compare - for example - television shows of yesteryear to now. How they were produced, their content, quality of content, their themes, beliefs, desires... their freedoms... their mores... then add in the ratings systems and it's amazing what could pass as "G" in 1968... but then there's the context within the ratings system too.

Or to adumbrate a long, dreary message, everything is gloss with no substance and that's universal to any genre. "Bread and circuses" indeed.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

24. Silly, they still have to read the label on the video game box

:eyes:

[Yavin4]

33. Because A Failed Restaurant Has Little Or No Impact On Society

Failed schools can literally destroy a community for ages.

[KitchenWitch]

6. I think we should keep the public schools public

That being said, there needs to be some standardization nationwide across ALL the public schools so that the people can be assured that a child going to school in the south side of Chicago, and a child going to school in the tiny rural districts will get a comparable education to someone going to public school in the well-heeled suburban school districts.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Agreed: most countries have a national curriculum

although they vary in how rigidly they enforce what happens in the classroom on a day-to-day basis.

However, most countries at least require that first graders should learn these things, second graders should learn these other things, etc.

The New York Times once actually wrote about rural schools in Japan, taking on a snide tone about the government funding schools in small towns with only a few students. But why shouldn't a child in a small mountain village have the same opportunities as a child in suburban Tokyo?

[alarimer]

21. I agree.

When we moved to Ohio in 1986, my sister was junior in high school. I had just graduated but she (with two years to at the school in Ohio- a small town) had enough credits to graduate, not that they let her graduate early. But the standards were so much lower there than in my suburban Cobb County, Ga. high school that it was a complete joke. People in that town in Ohio grew up to work at the Rubbermaid factory or at McDonald's. I swear these people (the ones I met) had no idea there were other things they could do.

Anyway, that is one reason there should be national basic standards. Mine would be this: 4 years of English, 4 years of history, 4 years of Math, AND 4 years of science, plus a minimum of 3 years of a foreign language (and not a dead one that no one uses like Latin -not that I think that there is no place for Latin but I am more interested in making students more in touch with the rest of the world as it is right now) and at least 1 full year of art and music and 3 years of physical fitness. Okay we can argue on some of the specifics because there should also be classes on basic money management, on how to write a resume and interview for jobs AND HOW TO WORK (mostly just learning how to show up on time and do what you're told- mostly just because it helps to learn to deal with the bullshit we all have to deal with sooner or later without being fired unnecessarily. Jobs generally suck and sometimes you can't quit just because it sucks or your boss sucks or something).

[Lydia Leftcoast]

39. The "how to work" part could be accomplished by teachers

using the same standards as employers use. For example, you must be on time for class, or you get a low grade for the day. You must complete all work on time, or it gets a zero. You get x number of days of sick leave.

[unpossibles]

9. you have already brought up many great points

1 - that private schools currently cater to families with money, therefore possibly skewing the results as these kids are less likely to be malnourished, working, or possibly worse.

2 - if there were no public schools, why would the private schools suddenly be any better? You'd have the same kids and the same teachers and large classes, as the private schools grew to accommodate the influx of new students.

3 - Private schools are not necessarily better educators; much like your comparison of other countries, simply by being able to be choosy, they can weed out the trouble makers and lower scoring kids.

I don't understand why people assume private for-profit industry is inherently better or more efficient than public or government-run industry. It all depends on who runs things as to how efficient and well-run their operation is.

Finally, the idea of privatizing schools means that there would no longer be a wall of separation for teaching religious dogma in schools. In short, it would not surprise me if places like the Discovery Institute were backing the push for privatization.

I don't have a problem with private schools existing, but I shudder at the idea of getting rid of public education. Sure, it needs some fixing, but when my car is broken I don't throw it out. Hell, I don't even have kids and I still vote for school levies because they benefit the society I live in, thus they benefit me.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. And furthermore:

1. Those countries where students do better than American kids, such as Finland and South Korea and Japan? Their school systems are overwhelmingly PUBLIC.

2. Schools in America are locally controlled by school boards elected by the members of the community. This is why college towns almost always have excellent public schools--college professors take an interest in their children's education and pester the school board to keep the quality high. (I've seen them in faculty lounges, discussing what they're going to say at the next school board meeting.) If local people don't like their schools, they should look in the mirror and ask themselves when the last time was that they voted in a school board election or attended a meeting to demand quality. More likely, if that ilk have attended a meeting, it's to complain that their taxes are too high.

3. Catholic and other religious schools are subsidized by their congregations or local authorities (diocese, etc.) Most of them cannot operate without such a subsidy, and if they lose their subsidy, they have to either find a wealthy benefactor or close.

4. The secular private schools that are more academically advanced than the public schools charge the same as a college for a year's tuition.

5. Most of these idiots who want to privatize the schools wouldn't know academic quality if it bopped them over the head.

[battleknight24]

17. (OPH) Finland has a good education system...

... but free education is only guaranteed to the ninth grade, not through all grade levels. Also, there is less income inequality in Finland than in the United States.
I'm not sure, but I don't think that public education is guaranteed through every grade level in South Korea and Japan. I've heard and read a number of stories about very young children in Japan suffering from depression and even committing suicide because they dissapointed their parents by not getting accepted into the best elementary school or junior high. No, not commong, but definitely not unheard of.


Now that I think about it, I could have told my friend this: I have worked both at Pizza Hut (for about six months) and taught at a public school (last year, for the first time). People, do not even waste your breath comparing the two (running a successful school is like running a successful restaurant?!?!?) They are two different beasts!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

19. Education is free through high school in Japan, but

you have to take an entrance exam to get into the one of your choice.

Entrance to elementary and junior high schools is automatic for residents of the attendance area.

[One_Life_To_Give]

11. Won't they all Cherry Pick students?

It will be great for the best and brightest 1%. We would probably put in enough mandated stuff to take care of the special needs kids as well. But the group in between will likely be lost and forgotten in the equation.

[Lyric]

12. With public schools, the poorest children have a chance

of attending a really good school. I grew up in a trailer park that just happened to be included in the same school district as the upper-middle class neighborhoods a few miles down the road. Because of this, I got to attend one of the truly "good" schools for free.

If schools are privatized, that will no longer be possible. The best schools will be priced out of the range of the government "vouchers", so that only the families who can afford to pay extra will be able to send their kids there. The poorer kids will find themselves funneled into poorer quality schools, because their cost won't exceed the value of the vouchers. Schools won't be competing for students--they'll be competing for parents.

Schools will become more and more segregated--both by race and by prosperity. The bus system will be a nightmare. How can anyone claim that families get a "choice", when the family in question doesn't have a car, and only one school sends a bus to where they live? In order to make "choice" a reality, they'd have to have endless bus routes to the same locations, all picking up and/or dropping off at different schools. Imagine the horrific expense of the busing aspect alone.

Another bad consequence is the notion of "elite" elementary, middle, and high schools. You know how infuriating it is when you apply for a job, but are turned down in favor of someone else because they went to a "better" college than you did? Imagine if you were turned down for a job because another applicant went to a "better" high school, middle school, or elementary school.

Privatizing schools will make the division between rich and poor exponentially larger and more oppressive to those on the bottom. I know that a lot of folks (even here on DU) don't think that welfare is a good idea, but the one thing that practically everyone agrees with is that all children deserve a good education. Privatizing will strip away that good education for a lot of poor students nationwide. Our public schools are not failing because of negligent and/or irresponsible government policies--they're failing because
the government simply is not funding them well enough. There are a lot of problems with public schools, but absolutely none of them will be solved by handing our schools to corporate America. Education is the last true bastion of equality in America--I pray for the sake of my own child that we keep it that way.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

16. They're also failing because of American mass culture,

where elitism in sports is considered an absolute good, and gifted athletes are treated as gods and goddesses, while elitism in academics is considered socially undesirable and academically gifted students are treated as dweebs.

[Lyric]

18. Yes, definitely.

My cousin Robin went to a high school that offered only one foreign language option (Spanish), had limited and spotty arts and music education, had absolutely no hands-on trade classes, and no "honors" or gifted programs. The administration claimed that it couldn't afford those things without "raising taxes". And yet, they seemingly had endless dollars to pour into the school's elite boy's football, basketball, and wrestling programs. Apparently state championship pennants to hang from the gym ceiling are more important than preparing young minds for college and work. *sigh*

(Yes, I realize that a lot of athletic program cash comes from alumni donors and parents. However, it's disgusting that the people in this community bitched about a school tax levy for academic improvement, but were willing to give hand-over-fist to the athletic department. Gotta win those dangly banners for the gym--to hell with that elitist "learning" crap.) :eyes:

[battleknight24]

20. A friend of our family once said...

... "we don't need more teachers. Just shove a bunch of kids in there with one teacher."

Brilliant! Who am I to argue with such logic? I know when I am out of my league.

By the way, he also has given me other nuggets of wisdom. We also once talked about high school football. I'm not sure what the exact subject was, maybe the poor performance of our hometown football team. He said something along the lines of "maybe they don't practice enough. Maybe our coach needs to work them harder and longer."
I responded with something like this: "well there is a law of diminishing returns. Athletes need to practice and practice hard, but there does come a point when they are worked too hard and don't perform as well because of exhaustion, etc, etc. There is such a thing as working young athletes too hard."
He responded "I don't believe that."

Like I said, how could I respond? I think I attempted to say something like "famous Championship Coach so and so tries to carefully gauge the number of hours he works his players so they are fresh for the coming gamem," but I don't think it effectively responded to his brilliant comment of "I don't believe that."

Like I said, he's a brilliant guy.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

22. A few years ago, a town in Oregon (Colton)

suffered severe budget cuts. They eliminated art, music, home ec., shop, and intervarsity sports.

The town held enough fundraisers to maintain...you guessed it, the football team! This was considered a "heartwarming" story.

I consider it a symptom of the basic idiocy of American mass culture: denying the entire student body opportunities for music and art just so a couple dozen students can play football.

[battleknight24]

23. But come one... football is important...

... I mean kids learn so much from football, right?

... Kids learn life lessons from the game of football, right?

... Football coaches share a lot of wisdom with their young players, right?

Right?

Right?

[LeftyMom]

14. Sorry, you appear to be lost. This is the lounge.

Serious political discussions go that way. :points at GD:

[ChoralScholar]

29. Maybe they want to talk to reasonable people?

:)

[KamaAina]

15. In particular, public schools must accept and educate students with disabilities

Public schools are bound by the requirements of IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, to provide all students with a free, appropriate public education (FAPE). Private schools, not so much. Charter schools, being publicly funded, are supposed to behave like public schools in this regard; however, I have heard anecdotal evidence from New Orleans, which has become the charter capital of the country since the Federal Flood, that it simply ain't so.

[MichiganVote]

25. "Restaurants have to compete for customers. Why not schools?"

Who says they don't?

But let's recall a few facts.

If a restaurant doesn't like the bad peach it purchased, they can throw it out. Can a public school do that?

If a restaurant wants to serve the best foods, it can be picky about what food it buys. Can a public school do that? In a private school its possible to only admit the fruit or vegetables that are unblemished. In the public schools, they take all comers. Isn't that democracy at work?

If a restaurant wants the best food prepared by the best chef's, they pay for it. In private school a teaching degree is not even always required. In Charter schools highly qualified teachers, so named by NCLB, are often unavailable.

If a restaurant wants to fill its restaurant, do they offer transportation to and from the eatery? Do they pay the patrons to eat for free? Do they provide hands on support for those who are disabled to dress, to eat, to use a restroom? Or maybe restaurants provide a curriculum to read a menu, pay for the meal, prepare for adulthood?

If a restaurant is having trouble with a particular patron can they call another restaurant to help them out? The public schools already assist private schools with special education services. Its the law.

Education is unlike restaurants. And for the record, I went to parochial schools. They have lower drop out rates because they can afford to seat who they want, where they want.

[Ellen Forradalom]

26. Privatized schools would not have the districtwide resources

to address student needs. Education is more than just teachers. When a student has a problem, the school needs psychologists, speech therapists, counsellors, and a host of other professionals to solve them.

[Orsino]

27. They shouldn't.

Privatization of schools lets parents opt out of free public education, and since these parents will be disproportionately wealthy, the interests of the rich will be fed at the expense of public education.

It's all a sham, anyway, to permit the wealthy to segregate themselves from us, the great unwashed. I would ask, rather, why any private schools should be allowed.

[battleknight24]

28. I'm fine with private schools existing...

... but I don't believe that parents who send their kids to private schools should be exempt from paying a school tax. There is a similar reason why I don't think vouchers make sense- because society as a whole benefits from public education. Everyday, people expect convenient store clerks, plumbers, electricians, auto mechanics, police officers, construction workers, computer technicians, cooks, truck drivers, etc, to be able to read, write, and do math, among other things. Did every single person in society learn these basic things in a private school?

Even if you send your kids to a private school, you are still benefitting from the public education system, because even if you did not attend a public school when you were younger, you are able to interact and communicate with people who did because they did.

[Orsino]

30. Agreed.

I don't really have a problem with the existence of private schools--but I am somewhat biased against them, having taught in one for a few years. :7

You don't get to deduct your share of the Coast Guard's operating expenses for living inland; you shouldn't get to opt out of supporting public education.

[raccoon]

46. Great post!

"but I don't believe that parents who send their kids to private schools should be exempt from paying a school tax."

Me either! As you said, society as a whole benefits from public education. Also, people who don't have kids or don't have school-age kids aren't exempt from paying school tax (not saying they should be).

[Fox Mulder]

31. Absolutely not.

[Yavin4]

32. The Term "Privitization" Really Means For Profit

And the only way to make a profit off of education is to raise the costs through the roof, lower class sizes by denying entry, and lowball the teachers.

[triguy46]

34. A free public education was a concept that built this country...

and might have been the second best thing of the 19th century.

"Privatized" usually means giving tax money to private groups to use as they wish. Your friend is wrong to offer charter schools as an icon, they have failed many times more than they have succeeded and there continues to be fraud and misuse of funds allocated to them.

Rather than blame public education as the source of failure, perhaps as a nation we should rededicate ourselves to be better parents. You cannot raise a kid on TV and fast food, not be a good example, and to not participate in their education and expect schools to 'fix' the kids or the problems. Kids without stable homes, without intact parents, with a three or fourth generation of economic failure as their heritage will challenge any educator, regardless of funding. Fix the parents, kids will follow.

Lastly, we see what privatized health care has wrought. And we want the same for education? Look elsewhere for examples of how public education, when well funded and supported, succeeds.

[spindrifter]

35. Where have we had any success with

privatization? It might sound great to think that competition for students would raise the quality of schools, but that doesn't really work. Who is going to compete for the average kid? Who is going to compete for the behaviorally disabled kids? Yes, there are some private schools that specialize in taking the less desireable behavior problems, but they cost literally a fortune.
We need to stick with public education as the framework for educating our kids. I guess my response to the friend's remark about restaurants is that a lot of restaurants open every day, and a lot of them go out of business. Do you want your kids in that kind of situation?

[SPKrazy]

36. Since this is the lounge, I'm gonna say that all schools should be privatized

and that all public officials should be flogged in town square :P

Hell no they shouldn't be privatized. That's a Repuke wagon to jump on. Line the pockets of greedy corporate types who will take advantage of our money.

I'd rather give it to the government and let them waste it than give it to some friend of Jeb Bush and make them richer.

Tax dollars don't belong in private schools.


JMO

[Gormy Cuss]

47. Absolutely agree.

All public officials should be flogged in the town square.
:P

[madeline_con]

37. Sure! They're not bad enough, they should be contracted out

to the lowest bidder! :puke:

[Connonym]

38. No fucking way

we definitely need to better fund our schools but no way should we privatize the lot of them. First of all I think we need federal input and standardization of what kids should be learning or we're going to end up with a bunch of fucking moran children who think that creationism is real, that science is bad, oh god therein lies the road to ruin. and by your friend's logic, we should have private fire departments, private libraries, private police because gosh shouldn't they have competition too? Besides, I think it's a myth that our public schools are so awful. My daughters are both in public schools and they're doing great. Our schools need to be better funded and parents need to be involved and know what their kids are learning. Those are the real problems facing our schools, parental inattention and lack of proper funding.

[Orrex]

40. Public Schools have been under funded and under organized attack for decades

And then Conservatives howl about the failure of the public school system, as if the system has ever been given a fair chance to work.

Unless the goal is to fuck everyone who doesn't hold stock in the company, then privatization is almost always a terrible, terrible thing.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

41. Privatization has worked really well for our utilities.

Not.

[Orrex]

48. I disagree

I used to have bunches of annoying cash on hand, but following the deregulation of my electrical service, this problem has vanished entirely. More than entirely, in fact.

Everybody wins!

[DuaneBidoux]

42. Here is another question: should the post office be privatized?

It is the same idea: there is no doubt that mailing a letter from NY to LA would be cheaper, because those routes subsidize Podunk, Alabama to Podunk, Montana. But then the question becomes why create a nation if we are not going to share risks and share rewards? Why have we decided that people in Podunk wherever should be able to send a reasonably priced letter to Podunk in any other wherever? Because they are Americans, and we have decided it is better to stick together as a country than to begin to pull apart as little enclaves.

It is exactly the same idea as education. If education is privatized then the schools will go only to where it is easiest and most profitable--and trust me that is not where the schools are most needed. We have made a choice as a society that it is better to attempt to educate everyone as equally as we can because society benefits.

To privatize education means for profit organizations will come along and pick off the low hanging fruit (suburban middle class kids) and leave to rot the fruit that is way up there (inner city kids for example). Inner city kids aren't hard to educate because the schools suck (although I will back away from that statement somewhat in that there is always, particularly here, much room for improvement). Instead, inner city kids are hard to educate because they are inner city kids and the issues stretch so far beyond the educational space that until systemic social issues are addressed then no school, public or private, will have much success.

[Chan790]

43. I'm going to go out on the limb here...

should schools be privatized? Of course not. There is no good reason to run schools like businesses, nor to deny every student and parent the right to the best education of their choice. That's just fucking absurd. I know I'm really out there on the limb now... the issue comes from the key phrase in that sentence which many of you probably glossed right over: "education of their choice".

Public education as it is run now is a "one size fits all" model. That model doesn't work. I'd argue it may never have really worked. It certainly failed me. The current education model is frankly a piece of crap; I'd like to see it smashed to the foundations, it fails students in many ways because it is broadly-ambitious where it should not be and too rigid everywhere else. Every student does not need to learn the same things at the same time. Frankly, not every student needs to learn the same things at all. I was forced to take calculus in HS. I have never used calculus outside of that class, I probably never will.(I never really learned Calc then even, I'm functionally low-numerate and had to cheat through the class in order to graduate.) My youngest brother is a computer science major in college and uses his advanced math every day. Man, he hated English class though. In the same fashion, I was forced to read Where The Red Fern Grows in 5th grade. Nevermind that by 3rd grade I had been reading Swift, Shakespeare, Dickens, Voltaire and Hugo; Red Fern, though a great book, was 6 or more reading levels below mine. Same said brother can barely stand to read anything he doesn't have to. Neither of us is in any way affected in the life or career of our choice by this. I'm a semi-successful writer and hold college degrees in Poli. Theory and NPO management. (I work for Starbucks, but it is solely because I love my job.) He has an offer to work TARU for the NYPD after graduation.(His #2 dream job after Predator drone pilot) So...what purpose did any of this serve? Not a wit. I'm autodidactic anyways...everything I needed to know until I was 18, I self-taught. School was a chore undertaken to keep my parents out of jail for neglect.

So...what do I think the system should look like? It should be designed with maximum flexibility in course load and subject, much like university education. By offering students the opportunity to study their interests, every student can excel, will excel because they are invested in and enjoy their schooling. I've never met a student who wasn't "gifted" when they were intellectually-engaged. Students wouldn't hold their classmates back because there would only be courses, not grade levels. If you belonged in AP English, debate, Greek philosophy, watercolor painting, geology and arithmetic at age 11, that's where you'd be. If you belonged in Calculus, CAD, auto shop and drama at age 6, that's where you'd be. If you never need or want to take physics, why should you?

[struggle4progress]

44. I want drive-thru schools! Grab a box of education while I'm out running errands!

A generous serving of world history, maybe a little packet of math to flavor it, and a side order of art!

[asteroid2003QQ47]

45. "Do we really think that a government-dominated education is . . .

going to produce citizens capable of dominating their government, as the education of a truly vigilant self-governing people requires?"
--Alan Keyes

That said, I have observed that the alternative far too often is infiltrated by purveyors of hate.

In a utopia schools probably should be privatized.

[OmahaBlueDog]

49. Let's look at the real reason this debate keeps coming up

Affluent white families (especially in the South) don't want to send their kids to puiblic schools. Ask anyone who lives in the affluent suburbs of Atlanta. It pisses them off that they have to pay taxes for public schools and pay private school tuition at the same time. Add to this mix the members of various religous denominations who want their kids in private school -- chiefly to get a worldview that demonizes Charles Darwin and sex-ed devoid of any really useful advice.

If we go down the privatization road, we will end up with an educational system looking a lot like England; the school you attend will reflect your economic level, you won't meet people from outside your economic level, and school will go from being an equalizer to a determiner.

I fully agree with the premise that government should not get into enterprises that can effectively be performed profitably and still serve the common good. I would not want to see our government in the media business, the railroad business, or the airline business. I would not want our government running steel mills or fast food restaurants. However, I do not believe that education can be run profitably and still serve the common good if we truly subscribe to the ideal that all are to be educated. I would assert that what the privatezers really want is to "privatize the profits, and govermentize the losses." Those supporting private schools would love to get vouchers to send their kids to the schools of their choice, which alleviates them of the responsibility of fixing or creating schools in areas where kids are not well served. Those supporting private schools would love to get vouchers so their kids don't have to attend schools with the burdens of mainstreaming kids with cerebral palsey and Down's syndrome. Those supporting private schools would love to get vouchers so their kids don't have to attend schools with poor American blacks, Mexicans,Africans, Haitians, Guatemalans, Hondurans, etc. and where their schools don't have the burdens of dealing with kids from one parent homes, or who need bi-lingual education.


<<Unlike the US, in many foreign countries in Asia and Europe, not every student has the opportunity to proceed to the next grade level, only students with the highest grades and test scores are. The rest are weeded out of the system and sent for vocational training. Many other countries also have much higher dropout rates than the US does. So if you compare test scores of American students- a very mixed bunch- with students from foreign countries, should we really be impressed with other countries performances compared to ours. >>

This is a very astute observation, and one that is a) overlooked and b) indicative of what I consider a deep flaw in our educaional system. Our public system, although it does have some provisions for vocational training, does a really good job of telling kids they should go to college and does a really bad job of making kids who are not college bound feel good about themselves. I'd like to see (as I would with our health care system)us become more like Japan and Europe. I'd like to see our educational focus shift to productivity in society and do a better job of preparing kids to enter the job market in high paying technial jobs instead of pushing kids toward college. There are many technical jobs in healthcare and computer support that don't require college, and need workers. I'd like our schools to start filling these jobs with 18 year-olds at a much better rate.