Education

Lots of americans will tell you this is the land of equal opportunity. Everyone gets a fair shot at achieving the american dream, the house, the car and the picket fence. That's mostly true. There's a good chance for almost everyone to get at least a high school education, and at least education for a trade. The fairness and equality of our way of life depends on the equality of opportunity, since we have decided not to go the route of equality of results(and thank goodness for that).

Our education system is the cornerstone of fairness and equality in our society. Many people lament that certain demographic groups are overrepresented in high positions(namely, white males). Certainly there is some prejudice that accounts for the discrepancy. The various areas blamed are hiring, promotion and retention. I believe these to be account for only a small percentage of the discrimination. I think that in the corporate world, a large majority either no longer have, or no longer allow prejudices when making these kinds of decisions. Certainly, there are exceptions, and in particular, women in the workplace have difficulties with fairness in promotion and retention. However, most of the discrimination occurs at the level of preparation for a job. White, middle-class children come out of public schools(or private ones) better prepared for college, or an entry level job, than inner-city kids of any race. Kids in Japan are better prepared than either group here.

With that in mind, our education system needs improvement. It needs a fairer distribution of funds and resources, a more efficient use of those funds and resources, and just plain more money. Any solution to our problems should address all three of those issues.

Many conservatives advocate the application of market principles(through vouchers) to education in order to increase the efficiency of the system. They ignore or are ignorant of the importance of equality in education to the core equality of our society. It is possible that a free market approach to education would increase fairness, but by no means is it guaranteed.

Many conservatives want to use federal oversight to increase teacher accountability(no child left behind). The federal government is the wrong level of government to tackle this problem. Teacher accountability can only be determined in the classroom. It is a state and local problem. However, much of the money for education is federally controlled. This needs to change. In fact, it is a problem not specific to education. Many programs that are state-run, or should be state-run, are federally funded, meaning the federal government pulls the strings. To fix this, states need to raise taxes, and federal taxes need to be lowered. Same amount of money, but different allocation. States are more able to experiment and learn from each other, and as smaller beauracracies, are better equipped to change.

To fix our education system, we need experimentation. For example, there are studies that link effectiveness to class size, with smaller classes being more effective. Yet public schools have not adopted a smaller class size. Two reasons this is so:

1. Lack of money. It costs more to have smaller classes. It means more teachers per student, more classrooms, and possibly new schools.
2. Lack of motivation. Public schools have little motivation for change. Money is tied to test scores(due to no child left behind) and student attendance. Thus, those are the things they try to fix. Ask a teacher, and they'll tell you that getting good test scores means teaching to the test. And teaching to the test does not mean better education. In most cases, it means worse.

The reason conservatives want to apply market principles is that markets are designed to use resources efficiently. A side effect is increased research and experimentation in business models. Using resources more efficiently is one way to increase available money. But it only increases funding to the point that the current system is using the funding inefficiently. There may be need for further increases in funding.

But to preserve/enhance equality, vouchers should not be augmented by personal funds. This limits the ability of the rich to have advantages over the poor. They may still opt out entirely of the voucher system, but still are required to contribute to the taxes that fund vouchers.

That's the beginning of my thoughts on education. What do you think?