It has, you just have to know where to look for it

Thanks for the link. Interesting article.

I should have been clearer: by free market, I mean where the government pays a set amount, say half what we are spending now, and lets the parents spend it on education however they wish (within reason), setting their own standards for how they want their children educated. In this case, it wouldn’t take long for the schools to start delivering a serious product the parents want. Much like a grocery store, where everyone starts with the same cash.

The schools in the link you provided are not paid for by the government at all…In each location, the private schools are run largely by proprietors, with very few receiving outside philanthropic support and none receiving state funding and they also are not in the United States, so it’s tough to know how the data correlates.

Interesting stuff, though.

It has, you just have to know where to look for it: http://tinyurl.com/ygyjfx

This is like Boxer in Animal Farm: I will work harder! But if my memory serves, he ends up overstraining himself, collapsing, and being carted off to be made into glue.

Just like the communism Animal Farm was mocking, public education cannot be fixed by working longer or harder. The system itself must be changed to a true free-market (something that hasn’t been done anywehre yet), or at best we will only see minor and temporary improvements, that quickly revert back to the status quo.

The Education Politburo didn’t get the 1989 Berlin Wall memo.

I do think substance is more important than people’s perceptions, but I also think that one of the salutary effects of school competition is that schools have to think about how to appeal to families, and how to position themselves in the market. So if people have this *perception* that there’s not enough art, schools do have to engage with that perception in some way, and insofar as they do so (especially traditional public schools, which tend to be less responsive to the idea of competition and marketing than charters or privates), I think that’s a good thing. Again, the substance is *more* important, but if schools are consciously appealing to community priorities rather than just taking it for granted that they get to educate everyone, that’s a good thing.