public schools?

[muon2]

GM,

I'm not saying charitable schools would pop up all over, just a few. I think more privately run, tuition based schools would occur, and would likely be subsidized for low income students at the least. Education is considered far more valuable than it was before public education was implemented, so I think enterprising capitalists would build private schools all over the place.

I also think we'd see an increase in community homeschooling.

Yes, and the logical extension of community homeschooling will be exactly what it was in the pioneer Midwest. Around here in the mid-1800's the first farmers homeschooled and banded together to homeschool. When a critical number became involved they mutually agreed to be taxed as a means to pay for a full-time teacher. Thus, school districts were formed.

And, anyone who bought land in the district they formed understood that the land was in a school district. The existence of the district added value to the land. This is in principle no different than any other contractual agreement that binds parties when they exchange land for money or other commodities. The land had restrictions known to the buyer - one of which was that the land was in a school district.

[muon2]

On Catholic School - well, like it or not, it's better than not learning to read or write.

Now, I'd like to say what I said earlier is not my actual position on what to do about our school problems, I was merely answering the posed question - it was what I thought would happen if public schools were abolished.

My actual position on what to do about the schools is much more realistic, and doesn't abolish them. What I think needs to be done is to get the federal government and to a large degree the state governments out of the process. Leave the school system to local(county) government. With the federal government out of the system, we don't get ridiculous things like No Child Left Behind, and other nonsense. The schools in one area are not the same as others, so you can't apply the same standards and practices to them, and the federal government is too large scale to do this. The state government should only serve to give a little extra funding now and then, but should not provide as much as they do(individual states will determine what basis this funding is given). Now, this leaves more to the local governments. The local governments are better able to micromanage their assets, so they can be more efficient with the money. Also, since federal and state government have been taken out of the process for the most part, local school board officials can be held more accountable for bad school performance(they have nobody else to blame it on), so they will have a greater motivation to make the system work, otherwise they get voted out of their jobs. Vouchers and other such things could be handled by the local governments, and intercounty voucher systems could be negotiated as well.

Actually John, that is an extremely realistic position. Based on my experience, I would have the business, planning, and staff contractual aspects in a region no larger than the region served by a typical community college. The region can't be too small, or business decisions become too costly, due to inflexibility of the resource pool. I would then create school board districts for each separate building to oversee the adminstrative staffing and curriculum implementation.

I agree that the state should have a role. I see two functions, one is to provide an insurance of financial stability, so that if a region has too few resources to draw on a foundation-level of support is guaranteed. I think there is also a role for the state (and perhaps the nation) in providing minimal equivalency standards. This is necessary since families move and there needs to be a way to transfer students from one school to another and have some sense that grade levels mean roughly the same thing.

[muon2]

My actual position on what to do about the schools is much more realistic, and doesn't abolish them. What I think needs to be done is to get the federal government and to a large degree the state governments out of the process. Leave the school system to local(county) government. With the federal government out of the system, we don't get ridiculous things like No Child Left Behind, and other nonsense. The schools in one area are not the same as others, so you can't apply the same standards and practices to them, and the federal government is too large scale to do this. The state government should only serve to give a little extra funding now and then, but should not provide as much as they do(individual states will determine what basis this funding is given). Now, this leaves more to the local governments. The local governments are better able to micromanage their assets, so they can be more efficient with the money. Also, since federal and state government have been taken out of the process for the most part, local school board officials can be held more accountable for bad school performance(they have nobody else to blame it on), so they will have a greater motivation to make the system work, otherwise they get voted out of their jobs. Vouchers and other such things could be handled by the local governments, and intercounty voucher systems could be negotiated as well.

I like most of that except for vouchers and lessening of federal money.  If we provide more money, then the schools will have more choices, no?

Not necessarily. Often, more money means doing more of the same. Creating choices requires people who are willing to think differently, and sometimes adversity can do that better than plenty.

[muon2]

<snip>
I agree that the state should have a role. I see two functions, one is to provide an insurance of financial stability, so that if a region has too few resources to draw on a foundation-level of support is guaranteed. I think there is also a role for the state (and perhaps the nation) in providing minimal equivalency standards. This is necessary since families move and there needs to be a way to transfer students from one school to another and have some sense that grade levels mean roughly the same thing.

Government doesn't need to set standards. Private schools would provide them because consumers would demand them. There are many things that industries standardize on their own, everything from the size of screws to the protocols that underpin communication networks.

Your analogy fails because education is a service to improve the person, not a commodity like screws or networks. When a commodity fails to meet consumer needs it can be replaced. When a service that directly affects people fails, there is little recourse for those who were adversely impacted. It's why both education and health care elicit such strong debates.

Don't get me wrong. Human service systems in this country are in need of a fix, and you'll note that my views on the needs of the education system aren't far from a libertarian view (at least not far from Dibble's )