Weekend Discussion: Would you rather…

Brian BradyBrian Brady, Undesignated 21 Comments

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Would you rather…

Implement a voucher-type program, for all schools (public and private) in California?OR

Cut the number of state-licensed occupations in half?

 

A few rules:

1- you can’t answer “both”
2- you can answer “neither” but offer a credible defense
3- try to keep discussions on topic (why eliminating one is preferable to another)
4- try to remain in a state of curiosity rather than judgement–it’s possible that you might learn something
5- have fun

 

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Comments 21

  1. Cutting licenses. I like the Cal-Pell idea also. But my first preference for education would be breaking up large school districts and limiting their future size as a way of bringing back local control.

  2. I don’t think vouchers are a complete solution to the road blocks to a quality education. While I support unions, I don’t think they are appropriate for public employees. But that is secondary to my concern that the curriculum has been politicized and watered down. And there are options. And I support licensing for certain professions, or at least credentialing, but the state control over this has gotten so bad it is bordering on tyranny.

  3. Education vouchers for sure. Education tax credits (AZ style) even better. There is no easy magic bullet solution to our lousy education system, but this is the best and biggest single reform — choice/competition in education.

    Our awful urban schools are the biggest, racist impediment we have — intentionally or unintentionally designed to keep minorities in their place (lower income and strongly dependent on Democrat largess).

    That being said, it’s true that our CA licencing fetish is madness. From my “CA vs. the Other States”:
    CA needlessly licenses more occupations than any state – 177. Second worst state is Connecticut at 155. The average for the states is 92.
    http://cssrc.us/publications.aspx?id=7707

  4. As much as I pay in taxes and want an awesome future for our country, it can only be accomplished with choice for our children’s education (is it 50% of the funds go to ed?), then the newly educated will choose to have less licensing for skilled jobs when they either vote or get elected. Probably a pipe dream….anyway, that’s what I would think would happen with well educated voters.

  5. Cutting licenses.

    No matter what we do with education, without parents it will be a failure. No matter what the shortcomings of our system are, it can be solved by the involvement of parents.

    A greater impact will be felt by cutting licenses.

  6. Michael, when parents have choices for their kids, they get more involved. Without choice, too often parents sit back and assume the govt will do what’s best for their kids. Given their lack of real choice, it is understandable.

    Besides,.for the parents that DO want what’s best for their kids, why should they not have a say (the PRIMARY say) in their kids education.

  7. One other seldom considered advantage of vouchers/tax credits. It cuts the per student cost for taxpayers in half.

    And NO UNFUNDED LIABILITY!

  8. I prefer cutting licenses in half, waiting a year. then cutting them in half again. I think that would grow California in a huge way.

    A tuition tax credit or voucher program is much more politically feasible though.

  9. Brian,

    I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think your opinion would be much stronger if you could specify which licensing requirements you would eliminate.

  10. I would be just as happy to list all 177 occupations and do away with licensing on the even ones, HQ. That doesn’t seem like a very scientific approach so, to appear more thoughtful, I’d say liberate any occupation which doesn’t sell, prescribe, or advise individuals about ingesting anything.

  11. Brian,

    I guess that’s as good a place to start as any, but I would still like to see licensing of lawyers, financial planners and manicurists, just to name three others.

  12. I used to love the idea of vouchers because it fed into my love for the free market. Then I found it wasn’t much of a free market. Education isn’t a commodity, and vouchers assume that it is. Ultimately, the idea that it will be supply and demand relationship won’t work. Here’s why:

    My kids are in the high demand Del Mar School District. You pay a high premium to get into this school district and even though all the schools are good there is a lottery to get into OceanAir Elementary because there just isn’t enough teachers or space to accommodate everyone that wants to go to the best scoring elementary school in the county. The same will happen in a voucher system. If everyone got vouchers in San Diego County then those that don’t live near OceanAir would apply for admission as well (I’ll ignore the impact on real estate when you unhinge school’s to districts). So OceanAir would have either a bigger lottery for admission (a lottery is not a free market) or they would have to raise prices (eliminating the equality of the vouchers) or worse accept vouchers but give priority to parents that donate to the DMSEF.org (making it a rich school). In the end private schools would be gone as well.

    The book Freakonomics did a chapter on the voucher system in Chicago. It found that kids that didn’t win the lottery still performed well in the so-so schools. Why? Because they had the same kind of parents as the kids that won lottery – a family that valued education (like Michael said earlier). A voucher system can’t instill that.

    The bad news is that education is transitioning. Not only do unions not have a plan for getting rid of underperforming teachers, they also think the industrial era model of education shouldn’t be changed. This article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324635904578639780253571520.html shows how tutoring is on the rise. Why? Because we no longer need to educate an assembly line work force. Mass lectures with a 70% understanding doesn’t cut it. Each individual needs to be educated by how they best receive instruction. That’s why families that value education had better performing students because parents would take the time for one on one education. As the link shows South Korea is taking it to the next step where students are being taught by professionals and not just educated parents. The schools are becoming the place where material is presented and then assessed, in between with parents and tutors is where the real learning will be.

    I think vouchers would have been a great idea 50 years ago, but with education changing we need to find how the new tutoring system (and online classes) will create opportunity for all.

  13. I’m with Brian on licenses but I’d go a step further. Instead of making licenses a hurdle to have a business I’d prefer seeing it as a premium label.

    Similar to how “organic” food labeling brings a premium and known value to the product I’d like to see licensing handled the same way. So if I go into a restaurant or barber shop that blazes its state license then I will know that it adheres to a level of quality. Right now a license doesn’t do anything, yelp does a better job. I’ve had bad haircuts from licensed barbers – the license didn’t protect me but if I read the yelp review I would have gotten a heads up.

    I can also tell you a lot of illegal immigrants make good money driving around unlicensed businesses. Don’t believe me? Drive to Center Street in Oceanside and you see a converted moving truck with produce and a scale in the back. They aren’t licensed and I’m pretty sure they are not paying taxes (sales or business) either. But as usual the state prevents law abiding people from doing their job and doesn’t stop illegal ones.

    So let’s make a “state license” something of value that communicates a premium service and get rid of the barrier to entrepreneurship. If I want to take a chance with an unlicensed barber its my dollar and my hair.

  14. “I would still like to see licensing of lawyers, financial planners and manicurists, just to name three others.”

    So would the existing lawyers, financial planners, and manicurists 😉

  15. Elliott, if the Chicago public schools are as good as the private schools (providing essentially the same result), riddle me this:

    Why do 39% of Chicago’s teachers PAY to send THEIR kids to private schools?

    http://riderrants.blogspot.com/2012/12/many-public-school-teachers-pay-for.html

    MANY public school teachers pay for THEIR kids’ private education
    The teachers’ unions adamantly oppose letting parents have the right to choose private school with public money. Of course, the unions have no problem with mandating attendance in public schools with public money.

    It hardly bears repeating but I will anyway — opposition to school choice (education vouchers and tax credits) is all about maintaining the public school monopoly — it has NOTHING to do with what’s best for the kids.

    But you knew that.

    Where it gets interesting is when we look at the parental decision-making of public school teacher/parents — deciding where THEY want their kids educated. In spite of the fact that teachers often get special consideration when picking their kids’ public school or district, a surprising percentage of such educators are willing to pay good money for their kids’ private school education.

    Studies show that teachers pick private schools for their children more often than the general public. And there’s nothing wrong with that — that’s just responsible parenting, deciding what’s the best option for their kids. But through their unions, teachers want to deny that choice to the middle class and especially the low income parents — the height of heartless hypocrisy.

    Below is a recent article on this — showing that an astounding 39% of those 2012 striking Chicago teachers pay money to send their kids to private school. And no, it’s not about religion — it’s about getting a superior education in a safer environment.

    http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/15/almost-40-of-chicagos-public-school-teachers-send-their-kids-elsewhere-to-learn/

    Almost 40% of Chicago’s Public School Teachers Send their Kids Elsewhere to Learn
    POSTED ON SEPTEMBER 15, 2012 BY MATT VESPA

    EXCERPT: More than 1 in 5 public school teachers said their children attend private schools.
    In Washington (28 percent), Baltimore (35 percent) and 16 other major cities, the figure is more than 1 in 4. In some cities, nearly half of the children of public school teachers have abandoned public schools.
    In Philadelphia, 44 percent of the teachers put their children in private schools; in Cincinnati, 41 percent; Chicago, 39 percent; Rochester, N.Y., 38 percent. The same trends showed up in the San Francisco-Oakland area, where 34 percent of public school teachers chose private schools for their children; 33 percent in New York City and New Jersey suburbs; and 29 percent in Milwaukee and New Orleans.

    To read the rest of the article, go to the link above.
    ——

    RIDER COMMENT: Included in the article is another chart that shows how little time some urban districts are dedicating to actual classroom instruction. Chicago is terrible, but San Diego also fares poorly in the comparison.

    It’s always been a pet peeve of mine (based on decades of speaking in the classrooms of over 3 dozen public and private regional high schools spread across the last 30 years). I was always impressed that, when I spoke at a private school, I was “on stage” 3-5 minutes after the bell. In public schools, it was 8-15 minutes — as the teachers dealt with admin matters, disciplinary problems — and sometimes just meandered.

    “Time on task” is a critical aspect of quality education. Less time on task translates into a lower level of education — even for top quality teachers.
    Teachers understand this — which is one of many reasons so many responsible teachers pick private schools for their offspring. Even though public education is “free,” teachers often choose to pay their own money to get their kids a better, safer education.

    There is not more telling endorsement for the school choice option. Trust our public school teachers.

    Of course, we can also trust our D. C. politicians, who almost all send their kids to private schools and/or choose to live outside the district.
    It’s time we opened this option up to all. It’s time for real school choice.

  16. Elliot, let’s pretend that your study is indeed accurate — that the Chicago public schools are as good as the private schools. Okay — so why not contract out the public school function to the private schools, and cut the per student education cost in half?

    Yes, HALF. Indeed, MORE than half for the incredibly expensive Chicago public schools.

  17. Elliott, I’m delighted you “love” the free market, but you’ll love it even more if you find out how it works. You claim that education is “not a commodity,” telling that us that the law of supply and demand is suspended in the field of education.

    You are doing the classic government “static analysis,” assuming in this case that an increase in demand (private school choice) will result in zero increase in supply. If every kid had, say $7,000 to spend on education, not only would more private schools open, but they’d open where the market is strongest — minority communities least satisfied with their public school detention centers.

  18. http://open.salon.com/blog/richard_rider/2012/02/27/what_research_says_about_school_choice_-_nea_cta_angry

    FEBRUARY 27, 2012 10:46PM
    What Research Says About School Choice – NEA & CTA angry

    Below is a great summary of the many research studies concerning school choice. Most studies by those friendly to vouchers, etc. show modest to major improvement in student performance. Most opposition studies to school choice show little or sometimes no student improvement. Essentially NO studies show a DROP in results for students empowered with school choice.
    Given these facts, let’s take it a step further and consider per student education COSTS. Private school tuition averages $6K to $9K, depending on locale and grade level. Contrast that with TRUE total public education costs (including school district administration, county boards of education, state education bureaucracies and the U.S. Department of Education) and we find that the per student taxpayer outlay is somewhere north of $12K per student.
    So, given that private schools provide as good as and usually a superior education, and given that the cost to taxpayers is AT LEAST 30% less per student, why are we still so enamored with government-provided education monopoly?
    Sadly, the answer is that the public schools are run for the employees, with the kids’ welfare a real but secondary concern. And these employees have very powerful public labor unions spending hundreds of millions every year to sell the public and the politicians on the benefits of government education — and to oppose school choice options.
    BTW, the fun part of the article on which this summation is based is that it was published in EDUCATION WEEK, a slavishly pro-public school publication loved by teachers and their labor unions. The reader comments after the article can best be summarized as dazed disbelief that “their” publication would print such an analysis.

    http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=21641&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ncpadpd+%28Daily+Policy+Digest%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher

    NCPA Logo – National Center for Policy Analysis

    Daily Policy Digest

    Receive the Daily Policy Digest via Email
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    Daily Policy Digest Archive
    Education Issues

    February 27, 2012

    What Research Says About School Choice

    Last year there was an unprecedented wave of new school choice programs launched across the country. Following 20 years of heated debate, new programs reflect a growing sophistication regarding the design and implementation of school choice policies. In a report for Education Week, scholars and analysts who support school choice examine the track record so far of these programs. They find it is promising and provides support for continuing expansion of school choice policies.

    Among voucher programs, random-assignment studies generally find modest improvements in reading or math scores, or both.
    Achievement gains are typically small in each year, but cumulative over time.
    Graduation rates have been studied less often, but the available evidence indicates a substantial positive impact.
    Some high-quality studies show that charters have positive effects on academic outcomes; in other contexts, the findings are more mixed.
    In general, charters seem most likely to have positive effects on student achievement at the elementary level, in math, if the school is part of a well-established charter network, if the student has been enrolled for a while, if the student is disadvantaged, and if the school is in an urban area.
    In addition to effects on participating students, another major topic of research has been the impact of school choice on academic outcomes in the public school system.

    Among voucher programs, studies consistently find that vouchers are associated with improved test scores in the affected public schools.
    The size of the effect in these studies varies from modest to large.
    No study has found a negative impact.
    Fewer studies have examined the competitive effects of charter schools on achievement in traditional public schools, and the studies that do exist vary greatly in quality.
    A third area of study has been the fiscal impact of school choice. Even under conservative assumptions about such questions as state and local budget sensitivity to enrollment changes, the net impact of school choice on public finances is usually positive and has never been found to be negative.

    Frederick M. Hess et al., “What Research Says About School Choice,” Education Week, February 21, 2012.

    For text:

    http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/02/22/21campbell.h31.html?tkn=XRZFPe1bCETYq4lnHz%2BXTFwSPb83THXQHZBL&cmp=clp-edweek

  19. “I’m with Brian on licenses but I’d go a step further. Instead of making licenses a hurdle to have a business I’d prefer seeing it as a premium label.”

    Here’s how you do that; you abolish occupational licensing altogether and watch how quickly the economy recovers. Watch how important Underwriter Laboratories, Good Housekeeping, the Better Business Bureau, Yelp, etc, etc become.

    Or not. It really becomes your choice (and responsibility)

  20. A likely unnecessary clarification…I am not against vouchers.

    Seems like a good idea to me, generally. I was just saying that the license cutting idea would be more effective. It’s a broader idea with a more direct impact. Voucher kids with lazy parents may or may not benefit from their choice of schools. However every manicurist will benefit from getting rid of government red-tape in the manicure industry.
    The voucher thing might help some folks, but as Brian pointed out, the license issue puts the choices and responsibility back on us all. I was judging two good ideas based on breadth, not quality.

    You could say, “But Mike, the education of kids effects us all!” To that I would say two things:
    1. It is “affects” and not “effects”, my parents taught me that.
    2. Vouchers are still not as direct an affect as the license idea. The key word is “direct”.

  21. Richard, thank you for your replies. I have to say after reading your stuff for the last few years I’m really surprised you favor the school voucher plan. When the government doles out subsidies to farms or gives out food stamps or welfare or unemployment payments we all rightfully point out that its socialism. Yet when someone says the we should make a massive bureaucracy that doles out $7000 per child so they can pay for private school tuition we are supposed to believe it’s in the interest of free market economics. Even worse the vouchers would give liberals new tools for social engineering. They always add strings to what they dole out. Make a government program that gives people $7000 voucher or credits and Democrats would love to say “here’s your voucher BUT it can only be spent as a school that teaches [insert liberal agenda].”

    Now my MBA from UCSD doesn’t make me an expert on the free market but if you could point me to historical evidence where a government bureaucracy provided a subsidy and it made the market freer and more efficient I’d like to see it because I haven’t found it.

    ####

    On the point about public school teachers sending their kids to private schools. That absolutely happens and I know teachers that do that. I press them with the same questions you have. But I found that the answer wasn’t academics but it was the school environment. They didn’t want their kids to go to school with gang members and kids not interested in school and prefer that their kids attend a school with students who have like-minded parents. This may highlight the difference between the students at public schools and private schools. Private schools are filled with students who have parents that have a strong interest in their children’s academic performance, peer group, and environment. In contrast, public school students have parents that either can’t afford private school, support public schools (find them acceptable), or have no interest in their kid’s education. Two different populations for comparison. Private schools don’t guarantee academic performance but they do guarantee a unique education environment made of students that pass an application process.

    ####

    On supply or demand, again I’m no expert, but I do know that its more complex than “high demand means more supply” or branding, marketing, labeling, premium products, niche markets, and other facets of our advanced economy wouldn’t exist. I still contend that education is not a commodity per the investopedia.org definition. Education isn’t interchangeable widgets – no two teachers are alike, no schools are identical. They are more like diamonds and just because there is a high demand for diamonds it doesn’t mean they make more instead they create varying grades of diamonds to offer a variety of prices depending on purity (quality) or they just sell cubic zirconium.

    Now this may ultimately be better than the unionized mess we have now but I’m not convinced that with vouchers someone will say “hey let’s make a top school for these 100 families in the poor inner city who can only spend a $7K voucher per kid and make the same high quality school for 100 La Jolla families that can afford $20K+ but only charge them $7K!” I won’t give you studies that prove it, I’ll give you hard data. The real estate market is our free market for education – it’s just bundled with housing. If you want your kids to go to a good public school you have to pay the higher mortgage or rent in those good school districts. In a free market we know there are winners and losers and there is no way that in a free market for education that poor families with only $7K to spend are going to become the winners over families that can add their own money to it especially since some families pay $20K out of their own pocket now for private schools. And we know everyone can’t be winners because that’s what socialism (falsely) promises.

    Now just giving these poorer families the choice of mediocre schools may improve something but let’s not make the promise that a voucher system is going to give poor minority families the same chance of attending a school like affluent white or Asian families. If you know a way that could happen without the government imposing price controls please post a link.

    ####

    I’m trying to see where I said “Chicago public schools are as good as the private schools (providing essentially the same result)”

    I was addressing the impact of vouchers in the Chicago public school system and how they had to resort to lotteries because they couldn’t accommodate all the kids that wanted to go to a good school (failed to supply the demand). Here is a link that I think summarizes that finding:

    http://www.freakonomics.com/2007/10/04/more-evidence-on-the-lack-of-impact-of-school-choice/

    ###

    Ultimately, we both know that unionized schools are failing our kids and making Americans less competitive. I don’t believe creating a new government subsidy program will get us where we want to go.

    Again, thank you for your replies. They are pretty thorough. Please post anything that refutes my analysis. I’m open to learning.

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