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?
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
Discussion
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.