"But there is little reason to believe that choice will spread to purple or blue states by example."
I understand the point. But let me supply a little reason.
Pennsylvania is a reason to believe that bipartisanship through hyperpartisanship will break through to purple states. Even if the governor there says one thing and does another, saying something matters in politics.
I dove into state candidates appeals on education and Democrats adopted school choice rhetoric even if they opposed school choice policies. That's a recent change.
Besides, the Parents Revolution is recent, in policy change terms. No state before 2021 had a universal school choice program. Politicians are looking at the political reactions, the lack of political reactions, the rewards and punishments bestowed upon the actors.
In other words, I would be happy to make a bet that a purple state passes universal school choice. You have an impressive prediction record, but I'm sure we can settle on terms.
That means you've got to have a pretty strong Republican majority and a Republican governor to get over the finish line.
Keep in mind too that you're talking about UNIVERSAL school choice. Many of the new voucher programs are heavily restricted by income and/or by the performance of the students local school. To the extent you ever got buy in for Democrats, it would probably only be on vouchers that could mostly be used by poor black people, not middle class white people.
It would be interesting to get you take on school choice in Sweden. My impression is that the experiment hasn't turned out well. Grade inflation is rampant because grades are mostly up to the teachers who have every incentive to push grades higher. Pupils pick "lazy" low-quality schools that promises perks like laptops and restaurant lunches (if you think school is daycare this is less of a problem, it only shows the waste in the whole system). You need to queue your kid at birth to get into a "good" school and those schools also seem to discriminate against special needs or otherwise hard-to-manage kids, which causes a self fulfilling prophecy of segregation.
Most of these problems were predictable and could be fixed (if it wasn't politically unpopular): Have external grading and have lotteries instead of queues. The bribe-with-perks problem is harder to adress but maybe it isn't much of an issue if education is mostly signaling.
It sounds like you’re describing the public school system in the US, more or less.
But you hit on a good point that parents are a main driver of school quality. If the parents don’t care, the school probably won’t be that great. School choice is wonderful because it provides opportunity to the children and parents that *do* care. Without school choice, they’re stuck in an institution that doesn’t respond to incentives whether the parents care or not.
Isn't moving from no choice to universal choice a regressive fiscal transfer? The wealthy families were previously paying in taxes while also paying to send their kids to private schools. If they receive a voucher then either total tax revenue has to increase or spending per child has to go down.
As one way of creating a more competitive environment for private vs. public schools, I'd suggest requiring public schools to charge means-tested tuition. We're currently compelling taxpayers, including child-free taxpayers, to subsidize free schools for people who could well afford to pay tuition. By placing more of the burden of public-education funding on those who use it, we'd free up funds that could be used to provide means-tested vouchers for low-income students, thus reducing any tax increases that'd be necessary to finance such a voucher program.
I think a complicating factor is the role of federal funding vs. state funding vs. local funding. Seems like a lot depends on the mix of funding as well as the revenue source for the entity providing the funding.
I'm a retired teacher - 42 years in grades 7-12, mainly history, English, philosophy, some Latin. I loved what I did and think and hope I did a great job. Most of my colleagues were knowledgeable, competent, and deeply concerned about their students' success and futures. Two of my several principals were really good at both hiring and at removing inadequate teachers; the others not so much. I taught for most of my career in two neighboring schools - a high school and its feeder junior high. In the mid-South we had a nearly perfect demographic - 20% poverty, 5% wealth, 25% black, 10% new from other regions.
I taught and coached about 10,000 students, so maybe 18,000 parents. Most knew their children well but VERY FEW knew anything about curriculum, about pedagogy, about adolescent psychology or a large array of knowledge and skills that make for a good teacher. Very few thought they would make good teachers, especially of their own children. Many valued the opportunity to have other adults interact with their children and I often got favorable comments about my lessons, sponsorship of activities, tutoring after school, coaching and other typical school activities
Of course, I sat through thousands of parent conferences. Many of the parents were sharp, understood their children well and knew when to defer to my knowledge. Some weren't and would argue about idiotic things. Some pulled their children out of public school and expected that they could do my job better. Several returned after a semester - knowing little of what they should have learned. Of the hundred or more children I got in class who had been homeschooled most knew little - or they knew a lot about a few things, but were lacking in whatever the parent didn't know, didn't value, didn't approve of.... It was discouraging to be told I was an idiot or an incompetent and then find out that the child was learning little in the new environment.
I'm in favor of making parents active partners in education but when the least knowledgeable and least capable try to call all the shots, it's not fair to their own children or others'. And most of the home-schoolers I have known were exactly that kind. I don't ever recall a university professor homeschooling. They know how hard it is to teach.
I'm aware that curricula exist for homeschoolers, but my experience is that most of them have very narrow views of nearly every subject. Many are religious-based.
In the long run I had maybe a total of 800 students (about 15 each semester) arrive from homeschool, charter school, private school, parochial school. Few of them were up to snuff. Most had huge gaps in their learning. Many had very narrow viewpoints. The private school kids had often been expelled for non-payment of tuition, both private and charter kids for behavior problems.
One mother complained bitterly about my 2-day lesson on Islam in a World History class. She finally ended a phone conversation saying that 'at least I was helping her son to understand and watch out for the devil.'
Most of my students were bright and capable. Many students from home/private/charter/parochial schools told me, some subtly, a few quite bluntly, that the public school w/ a racial/regional variety, was like waking up late in the morning - abruptly rising to see the sun was out and shining bright and there were huge adventures ahead of them. That is a paraphrase of what once student actually said.
I have not taken on the parents who were negligent, abusive, or just plain mean. They're a problem for another day and another rant from me. School provided those students with a safe place, adults to learn from and interact with in healthy ways.
Finally, my public school mixed kids from multiple races, religions, ethnicities, regions and taught them how to appreciate and learn from people who were different from them. I worry about many of today's students who have no idea how to interact w/ people who aren't like them. It's one of the most important benefits of public schools.
A minor point relative to the primary post, but Bryan's characterization that "During Covid, America’s public school teachers received full pay to stop doing their jobs, often for over a year" can be a bit misleading. I would agree with the statement "But 'teaching' via Zoom was barely better than nothing" if "teaching" were replaced with "learning": most teachers I worked with had to suddenly work harder than they ever had; just as students were shaken out of their school routines, so were teachers. I do agree with his larger point, though, that teachers continued to be paid their full wages for not even the semblance of "learning" to occur.
"But there is little reason to believe that choice will spread to purple or blue states by example."
I understand the point. But let me supply a little reason.
Pennsylvania is a reason to believe that bipartisanship through hyperpartisanship will break through to purple states. Even if the governor there says one thing and does another, saying something matters in politics.
I dove into state candidates appeals on education and Democrats adopted school choice rhetoric even if they opposed school choice policies. That's a recent change.
Besides, the Parents Revolution is recent, in policy change terms. No state before 2021 had a universal school choice program. Politicians are looking at the political reactions, the lack of political reactions, the rewards and punishments bestowed upon the actors.
In other words, I would be happy to make a bet that a purple state passes universal school choice. You have an impressive prediction record, but I'm sure we can settle on terms.
I'm very skeptical. Typically these votes go:
1) Every single democrat against.
2) A majority but not all Republicans for.
That means you've got to have a pretty strong Republican majority and a Republican governor to get over the finish line.
Keep in mind too that you're talking about UNIVERSAL school choice. Many of the new voucher programs are heavily restricted by income and/or by the performance of the students local school. To the extent you ever got buy in for Democrats, it would probably only be on vouchers that could mostly be used by poor black people, not middle class white people.
It would be interesting to get you take on school choice in Sweden. My impression is that the experiment hasn't turned out well. Grade inflation is rampant because grades are mostly up to the teachers who have every incentive to push grades higher. Pupils pick "lazy" low-quality schools that promises perks like laptops and restaurant lunches (if you think school is daycare this is less of a problem, it only shows the waste in the whole system). You need to queue your kid at birth to get into a "good" school and those schools also seem to discriminate against special needs or otherwise hard-to-manage kids, which causes a self fulfilling prophecy of segregation.
Most of these problems were predictable and could be fixed (if it wasn't politically unpopular): Have external grading and have lotteries instead of queues. The bribe-with-perks problem is harder to adress but maybe it isn't much of an issue if education is mostly signaling.
It sounds like you’re describing the public school system in the US, more or less.
But you hit on a good point that parents are a main driver of school quality. If the parents don’t care, the school probably won’t be that great. School choice is wonderful because it provides opportunity to the children and parents that *do* care. Without school choice, they’re stuck in an institution that doesn’t respond to incentives whether the parents care or not.
Isn't moving from no choice to universal choice a regressive fiscal transfer? The wealthy families were previously paying in taxes while also paying to send their kids to private schools. If they receive a voucher then either total tax revenue has to increase or spending per child has to go down.
"regressive fiscal transfer"
So people should pay taxes to fund schools they won't even send their kids to?
If you want to tax the rich, tax the rich. Don't subsidize one particular form of education over any other.
As one way of creating a more competitive environment for private vs. public schools, I'd suggest requiring public schools to charge means-tested tuition. We're currently compelling taxpayers, including child-free taxpayers, to subsidize free schools for people who could well afford to pay tuition. By placing more of the burden of public-education funding on those who use it, we'd free up funds that could be used to provide means-tested vouchers for low-income students, thus reducing any tax increases that'd be necessary to finance such a voucher program.
I think a complicating factor is the role of federal funding vs. state funding vs. local funding. Seems like a lot depends on the mix of funding as well as the revenue source for the entity providing the funding.
I'm a retired teacher - 42 years in grades 7-12, mainly history, English, philosophy, some Latin. I loved what I did and think and hope I did a great job. Most of my colleagues were knowledgeable, competent, and deeply concerned about their students' success and futures. Two of my several principals were really good at both hiring and at removing inadequate teachers; the others not so much. I taught for most of my career in two neighboring schools - a high school and its feeder junior high. In the mid-South we had a nearly perfect demographic - 20% poverty, 5% wealth, 25% black, 10% new from other regions.
I taught and coached about 10,000 students, so maybe 18,000 parents. Most knew their children well but VERY FEW knew anything about curriculum, about pedagogy, about adolescent psychology or a large array of knowledge and skills that make for a good teacher. Very few thought they would make good teachers, especially of their own children. Many valued the opportunity to have other adults interact with their children and I often got favorable comments about my lessons, sponsorship of activities, tutoring after school, coaching and other typical school activities
Of course, I sat through thousands of parent conferences. Many of the parents were sharp, understood their children well and knew when to defer to my knowledge. Some weren't and would argue about idiotic things. Some pulled their children out of public school and expected that they could do my job better. Several returned after a semester - knowing little of what they should have learned. Of the hundred or more children I got in class who had been homeschooled most knew little - or they knew a lot about a few things, but were lacking in whatever the parent didn't know, didn't value, didn't approve of.... It was discouraging to be told I was an idiot or an incompetent and then find out that the child was learning little in the new environment.
I'm in favor of making parents active partners in education but when the least knowledgeable and least capable try to call all the shots, it's not fair to their own children or others'. And most of the home-schoolers I have known were exactly that kind. I don't ever recall a university professor homeschooling. They know how hard it is to teach.
I'm aware that curricula exist for homeschoolers, but my experience is that most of them have very narrow views of nearly every subject. Many are religious-based.
In the long run I had maybe a total of 800 students (about 15 each semester) arrive from homeschool, charter school, private school, parochial school. Few of them were up to snuff. Most had huge gaps in their learning. Many had very narrow viewpoints. The private school kids had often been expelled for non-payment of tuition, both private and charter kids for behavior problems.
One mother complained bitterly about my 2-day lesson on Islam in a World History class. She finally ended a phone conversation saying that 'at least I was helping her son to understand and watch out for the devil.'
Most of my students were bright and capable. Many students from home/private/charter/parochial schools told me, some subtly, a few quite bluntly, that the public school w/ a racial/regional variety, was like waking up late in the morning - abruptly rising to see the sun was out and shining bright and there were huge adventures ahead of them. That is a paraphrase of what once student actually said.
I have not taken on the parents who were negligent, abusive, or just plain mean. They're a problem for another day and another rant from me. School provided those students with a safe place, adults to learn from and interact with in healthy ways.
Finally, my public school mixed kids from multiple races, religions, ethnicities, regions and taught them how to appreciate and learn from people who were different from them. I worry about many of today's students who have no idea how to interact w/ people who aren't like them. It's one of the most important benefits of public schools.
Here is an example of how govt run schools work in India ...
https://x.com/timesofindia/status/1817797598755090629?t=JNboPJBsZVKpuhoPUCd5Ew&s=08
A minor point relative to the primary post, but Bryan's characterization that "During Covid, America’s public school teachers received full pay to stop doing their jobs, often for over a year" can be a bit misleading. I would agree with the statement "But 'teaching' via Zoom was barely better than nothing" if "teaching" were replaced with "learning": most teachers I worked with had to suddenly work harder than they ever had; just as students were shaken out of their school routines, so were teachers. I do agree with his larger point, though, that teachers continued to be paid their full wages for not even the semblance of "learning" to occur.
Great review.