Education, a response to a response

My sister's response. I've excerpted some of her responses.

I believe the inequality in opportunity starts even before the students reach school age. It seems that a huge problem is actually in the home. Many parents don't realize the importance of education, and children, because of their inexperience, don't realize the importance of education until it is too late (in their own mind at least).

This is true. The problem stems from parents who won't or can't help and monitor their kids' homework. Some parents have an adversarial relationship with teachers and schools. They want to protect their children, and feel that fighting the schools is how they can do that. Some parents feel that homework isn't a good use of their children's time, that extracurricular activities of the parent's choosing is more appropriate. Some parents work too much, and just aren't around enough to know what's really going on in their lives.

The problem is that Govertnment can't mandate parent responsibility. They might encourage it, but I don't even know how. (Melinda suggests tax breaks for PTA meeting attendance :).

As far as school and teacher quality, there are programs (see New York Teach and Teach for America) in place that attempt to put recent college grads or successful professionals in cities or schools that normally do not attract quality teachers. I do not know if this is enough.

Looking at Teach for America, they recruit for teacher to teach for two years in the inner city schools. They're trying to create a concerned community, who has experience with the problems in inner city schools. They're not trying to be the solution, but rather create a community which can find the solution. Which sounds like a very good thing. I think their concept is powerful, and could create the group of "experts" which will be needed to really guide the experimentation.

It could be possible that we should be looking towards private organizations and individuals to alleviate problems rather than trying to overhaul the whole educational system.

What kind of authority would you give these private organizations? How would they interact with our schools? Volunteer organizations can help, but I don't think they can make a difference on the scale that is needed. They can help a couple classrooms in each school(being optimistic), but they can't reach every child in every school. There's just not enough volunteers.

In regards to No Child Left Behind, in a recent statement to congress, Bill Gates (in speaking for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's research) stated that the program, though it had its faults, had greatly improved education. So it could be that No Child Left Behind just needs a few tweaks rather than throwing it out.

One of the biggest problems with NCLB is that it puts a lot of power in the Federal Government over education. The other problem is that the NCLB is designed to increase test scores. It does increase test scores. When you look at test scores, education is improving. However, test scores are not the only, or the best measure of education. Other good measures of education is college admission, job placement, where the graduate is 5 years later(income, job security).

By better choice however, I am not thinking about actual 'ranking in school' or test scores, but rather a choice in a variety of specialty schools. If a student is interested in music, they can attend a school that emphasizes music. If the student was interested in machinery, there would be a school that had a better mechanic program.

I really like the way this sounds. It would be important to make sure that there continues to be an emphasis on liberal education. Specialties should be secondary to the primary goal of a good basis in core subjects.

However, even then, I wonder if that would be the result of privatization. Privatization may only further divide schools and students from one another in equality of opportunity.

This is the biggest worry for me. It definitely needs some thought. I was hoping that denying the rich the ability to add to the voucher, we could create a level playing field where each child has the same amount of money. That is based on the assumption (probably false) that every child, in each location, requires the same amount of money to get the same quality of education. If you introduce different levels of allowances for different locations, and different learning disabilities, then you need an agency that makes decisions about which child gets which money. That's dangerous.

Students with low incomes would continually receive a worse education and school would continue to struggle with funding.

Two points. With privatization, schools should become more efficient. Markets drive innovation and streamline the supply of goods. Since vouchers don't actually take any money away from schools--the same amount of tax dollars go to schools, they just go through vouchers--schools should have the same amount of funding, but be more efficient. Even if the gap between poor and rich widens, the poor should get a better education than they do currently. That's if you believe(and I mean that in a religious sense) in Free Markets.

Second, where population is more dense, there is more voucher money. Where there is more voucher money, there is more incentive to build a school. In fact, there is more room in a high-demand market for niche suppliers. In theory, there should be more innovation in the inner city, where there will be more room for it. In theory, inner cities would be the first to benefit from privatization of schools. In practice, it might not work that way. In practice, the whole thing could go kablooey. It's a big step, so not one I would think we should take immediately, but rather work towards, so that if we see pitfalls, we can turn another way.

P.S. If vouchers work for education(a universal resource), could they work for Health Insurance?