State funded education is a scam. You get teachers that are underpaid and don’t care about the kids because they can’t even take care of themselves. But to raise their pay would be self inflicting because everyone will just end up paying higher taxes and the cost of living goes up. This miniature example of socialism is why state funded programs never work
We need free market capitalism in the education system. Enough of this Marxist crap
To the liberty-loving mind, it’s tempting to think this… but no.
Private and charter schools pay teachers less and, after adjusting for student demographics, produce slightly worse outcomes than public schools. There’s a great study on this, detailed in a book called The Public School Advantage by Christopher and Sarah Lubienski: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo16956223.html
Salary, while important, is a smaller factor in teacher retention than admin support. A bad admin will drive you out faster than a bad paycheck. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ898889
I’ll take a look but you gave no clearly articulated examples to bolster your reasoning here.
How do you overcome the public school poor pay/low effort system without increasing taxes. That’s what I want to know?
So usually the problem you are describing is phrased as: how do schools attract and retain talented teachers?
The biggest factors seem to be: salary, support from administration, mentoring/induction programs, class sizes, and teacher autonomy. Source: https://t2m.io/XnpvUarY
It may seem like this costs money, but in fact, losing teachers is *more* expensive than providing these supports.
That’s interesting.. I’ll have to dive in further.
I do believe though that private schools competing with state subsidized public schools is the reason why public schools better perform. If you have a whole town funding a school vs a smaller wealthy class of parents paying out of pocket for their kids school it’s not much of a competition. I do want to differentiate between private schooling and free market capitalist style education system in that regard. That if everyone in a town were looking at all different schools and don’t need to pay for their in town public school these numbers would be totally different.
I agree that choice and competition are good things. Have you looked into the school choice movement? This is why I support school choice in the form of charter and private schools, as well as education tax credits and open enrollment. It allows low-income families to shop among schools.
A free-market paid school system, however, sounds like a recipe for inequality.
As a teacher, part of my job is to know what’s going on in my students’ home life. This can vary widely.
Some parents pay for school supplies; others send their kids with backpacks that have broken zippers and no pencils.
Some parents check their students’ grades regularly and email when there’s a drop; others don’t give a crap whether their child succeeds.
Heck, some of our students are homeless. We keep deodorant around to make sure they have some. I couldn’t imagine those kids paying tuition.
Truth is, kids are often born into disadvantages that are not their fault. A free education is often their only ticket to a marginally better life.
