by Sazari » Tue Sep 18, 2012 8:39 am
Yea you are a retard if you think privatization would not lead to significantly better schools in the aggregate. The problem is that it will end up like healthcare or higher education, where most get a world class product while a significant minority just get f**k. I think that education, like healthcare, is something where it isn't socially optimal in the long run to simply exclude the bottom quarter, even if it means the other 75% get a significantly better product.
That said, the current public education system completely sucks balls for most students and desperately need a more competitive aspect to be injected into it. Notice how magnet programs and public schools that cater to the top 3rd of society are significantly better than most, in large part because they actually face competition from private schools. The kids of professionals etc who technically can afford private school get a better education in public school simply because public schools actually have to worry about their top performers abandoning them for a private school of they do not offer enough AP classes or have shit teachers. The poor and middle class kids who's families cant afford private school are stuck at the public schools, and public schools know this. They are the ones who really get the shit end of the stick.
There needs to be more vocational programs, public and private, to put some pressure on the idiots catering to 2/3rds of the students. Right now shit teacher x can teach shit student y and they can both blame their problems on each other. Give shit student y a choice to abandon the whole school thing and learn to be a plumber or a mechanic and now shit teacher x has no one to teach and either steps up her game to deliver more value to the student and lure them back, or gets fired. There is still a demand for skilled workers in many of these vocational fields and as a result i think you would see strong support from business and the community in helping to get such vocational programs off the ground. Of course the teachers unions will fight this at every turn because even their shithead 900 sat members can understand what's going on. This is why they are part of the problem because they will fight good ideas, like more vocational education, simply because it marginalizes them or reduces their power.