Merit pay for teachers?

Dick Whitman · May 12, 2011

YankeeFan said:

Dick Whitman said:

Study after study after study show that voucher kids don't do significantly better once they go to their Jesus school.
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Jesus school?

Come on, it's not about that.

Besides, many schools have no church affiliation and many more private schools would exist if their were vouchers.
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So to get back to the book passage point - which I think is that education should be completely privatized, because of MARKETS!!!11!! - when an industry is publicly run, whether it is Medicare or the armed forces or public education, you have ask why that is so. The answer is pretty much always that there would otherwise be either be: (1) Some reason for almost sure market failure (in the case of national defense, that is because it is a public good, so you have collective action problems if it were privatized); (2) Unacceptable externalities/spill overs.

I'm thinking that, for education, the second one is the reason. You think the gap between rich and poor when it comes to education is bad now? Privatize it.

93Devil · May 12, 2011

Bob Cook said:

YankeeFan said:

While special ed kids require more resources and money, they do not account for the difference in results between public & private schools.

Also, while an elite private school in Manhattan might "pick and choose" its kids, the average parochial school take all comers. (Though obviously not true, special needs kids.)

But even that could be addressed. Developers are often required to build a specific number of low income housing units in order to get permits or to build higher than zoning laws would normally allow.

Currently, most private schools are small and don't have the resources for special ed kids. (In fact, they also don't have the resources for really smart kids either. My brother had to move his daughter from the local parochial school to a public school program for advanced students.) But, if you gave parents vouchers, and parents with special ed kids received vouchers worth more money, private schools would be able to meet the these needs. Hell, they'd compete for these kids.

You could also force schools to take a percentage of special ed kids in return for allowing them to take kids with vouchers.
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There are two differences, as I see it, between private and public school (and I've sent my kids to both):

1. Private schools have more involved parents, mainly because they're paying extra for the privilege. So, already, you have a community of people who feel directly invested in their children's education.

2. Public schools have to take everyone, and come up with lesson plans for those who have special needs, whether it's severe autism, or emotional problems, or whatever. Private schools, meanwhile, can weed kids out who just don't fit their feel, whether they have special needs or not.

Two flaws in your plan:

1. Have you seen what happens in most communities when there's a required to build low-income housing? People freak the fuck out. When moderate- to high-end condos were being built in the downtown of my 'burb, a group reacted by getting a nonbinding referendum on the ballot against low-income housing. (That's because the developers, as a matter of course, applied for low-income housing grants, because of some units that would be geared to seniors.)

2. Private schools don't want the special-ed kids, or the troubled kids, or the kids out of their comfort zone, no matter how much the voucher is. Private schools, including Catholic schools, want kids whose families fit their worldview and are willing to shell out extra for extra support (not covered by vouchers, by the way). The tuition we paid to Catholic school was only a down payment to all the other fees we were constantly paying. If private schools don't market to a particular niche, they can't sell themselves as a better alternative to the public schools, and thus get people to pay extra for them.

If you forced schools to take a percentage of special-ed kids in return for vouchers, the schools wouldn't take the vouchers. It would be too expensive and time-consuming, and not a part of their mission, to take those kids.

I'm not against the idea of private schools. I'm just not sold that sucking kids out of the public school system into private schools through charters or vouchers ends up improving education for everyone, including those kids who are presumably benefiting with the charters or vouchers. Or maybe I'm biased because it turned out my public school district, which will never turn up on elite lists because of the number of poor, single-parent and otherwise not-wealthy people who feed into it, has been 1,000 times better that the supposed "better" Catholic school we started with.
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9030109

Bookmarked for when this voucher crap comes up again.

And if you don't think white/black come into play with some parents... well pay attention the next time school divisions redraw attendance lines.

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Merit pay for teachers?

Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

93Devil Well-Known Member

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Merit pay for teachers?

Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

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