Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Technique: Further down the Rabbit Hole

My original WATCO was centered around the idea of what would happen as more and more children leave the public school system for private schools. It was based on a simple economic model of competition, supply and demand, and free market principles. After several half hours of research apparently I'm talking about vouchers, although I saw the subject sounding a lot cooler in my head. The Voucher program got it's face blown off by the people of Utah in 07; so my immediate relevance has somewhat been shaken considering that Utah Legislators wont touch the subject at all this year. Perhaps I can find a state that is approaching a voucher related vote and position them as an audience. From my brief look at the Utah plan I think the majority of parents agree with the concept of free choice for education, but they don't think their public school systems are so far lost that they're willing to shell out more money for a voucher system.
As of now my position is that vouchers could, with the right regulation and negotiations be awesome, but the execution may be too costly and produce marginal benefits.

It's like unemployment or pollution. You will NEVER get below 3% unemployment and you will NEVER reduce emissions to 0, the cost would increase exponentially the closer you came to these limits; some kids are going to be failures, it's simple statistics. No matter how many computers, or teacher student ratio improvements, or standardize tests you throw at them, some will get "left behind". That being said, the effects that the mere threat of vouchers (a flawed system) has on parent and public awareness of public schools (a FLAWED system) in and of itself has tremendous benefits in reform. Monopolies are bad (public schools with teachers having virtually unlimited job security), unions are bad (NEA), and increased government intervention is bad. No wonder more parents are home schooling their kids (a flawed and naive system)




1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Grayson, You are a very intelligent person and I am impressed with your research and analysis of your paper issue. I hope you have written most of it so your President's Day isn't filled with paper writing as mine may be...