The following is a complete set of recent email exchanges between myself and a long-time liberal friend Ross. If you look back in our website you will find the first set of email exchanges.
In this current crop, I noticed the same theme played out yet again, namely, Ross immediately refutes any and all research, studies and statistics that I point to, and then proceeds with opinion and anecdote. If I had used such an approach in a debating environment in college, I not only would have lost on etiquette, but would have been called out on lack of substance.
You decide:
Hi Ross,
I know your kids go to public schools, but here is more evidence that when the free market is allowed to present an alternative, test results improve, costs go down, graduation rates increase, kids are happier and learn more, in short, everyone wins.
It’s not from Cato or Heritage. It’s a hands-on investigative study from John Stossel. If this link does not meet your requirements for quality refutation of your stated comments on public education, I’ll move on to another source, since in this matter, as in the others we’ve discussed, the evidence in support of the superiority of a free market alternative is inexhaustible.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
Scot
(As an added incentive, I also sent the following):
Ross,
In case U R too busy to read the whole link, here is an except which makes the same point I made in our original email exchange.
American schools don’t teach as well as schools in other countries because they are government monopolies, and monopolies don’t have much incentive to compete. In Belgium, by contrast, the money is attached to the kids — it’s a kind of voucher system. Government funds education — at many different kinds of schools — but if a school can’t attract students, it goes out of business.
Belgian school principal Kaat Vandensavel told us she works hard to impress parents.
She told us, “If we don’t offer them what they want for their child, they won’t come to our school.” She constantly improves the teaching, saying, “You can’t afford 10 teachers out of 160 that don’t do their work, because the clients will know, and won’t come to you again.”
“That’s normal in Western Europe,” Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby told me. “If schools don’t perform well, a parent would never be trapped in that school in the same way you could be trapped in the U.S.”
Last week Florida’s Supreme Court shut down “opportunity scholarships,” Florida’s small attempt at competition. Public money can’t be spent on private schools, said the court, because the state constitution commands the funding only of “uniform . . . high-quality” schools. Government schools are neither uniform nor high-quality, and without competition, no new teaching plan or No Child Left Behind law will get the monopoly to serve its customers well.
The longer kids stay in American schools, the worse they do in international competition. They do worse than kids from poorer countries that spend much less money on education, ranking behind not only Belgium but also Poland, the Czech Republic and South Korea.
This should come as no surprise if you remember that public education in the United States is a government monopoly. Don’t like your public school? Tough. The school is terrible? Tough. Your taxes fund that school regardless of whether it’s good or bad. That’s why government monopolies routinely fail their customers. Union-dominated monopolies are even worse.
Hi Scot,
Happy New Year. I hope you had a relaxing, peaceful and joyous holiday peroid. Thanks for staying in contact. I must be honest with you. I don’t have the time, interest or energy to respond to the John Stossels of the world. More to the point, I’m concerned about your well being if you are sending me this stuff at all hours of the morning. Are you doing okay? What are you doing day to day. How is your daughter? What are you doing for work? Are you exercising at all? What are you doing for fun? What makes you laugh these days? Are you in touch with Stu and how is that going for you? What about Jeanie?
Let me briefly reiterate some of the points I made earlier and then I have to move on, I have a lot of work to do today. To begin with, I’m quite familiar with John Stossel whose ideology and purpose, as reflected in his books, articles and reportage is to savage government in the service of pirivate power, greed and avarice. His ideology and priorities are in line with other “conservative” thinkers and activists, from Rush to Beck to Heritage, Hoover etc. Stossel chides the idea global warming, rails against government regulation of polluters, has campaigned for tort reform, hates unions and working people and poses as a scientist. He is not an honest broker that looks to spread light on an issue but to selectively marshall information in support of his right wing ideology. If Stossel had his way, every New Deal measure enacted to make life more bearable for the rabble, like social security, medicare, etc. would be trashed. He doesn’t give a wit about equality, fariness or justice. I do.
Public education in the well to do suburbs across the counrty functions very well– even with “dreaded” teacher’s unions. Do you think people in Dover, Weston, Wellesley, Hingham, Duxbury, Scituate, Newton, Brookline, Longmeadow, Hanover, Falmouth, Sandwich, Bedford, Harvard, Marion, Milton, Acton, Lexington, Lincoln, Norwood, Walpole, Nantucket or Martha’s Vineyard, etc., etc., are decrying the system of public education and teacher’s unions? The answer is an obvious “no”. Their schools are supported by a wealthy and stable tax base, the teachers are well trained, smart, accessible, skilled, motivated, creative and generally content. Why wouldn’t they be? The same can be said of administrators.
Students in those school systems can compete with any kids in any school system throughout the world. They go on to very good colleges and generally lucrative careers. People in those towns are able to exercise a wide measure of control over their local school systems through a democratic process, namely the election of a school board of education, aka School Committee and they value this piece of democracy. Students educated in these places have a huge and incalculable advantage over their urban counterparts. It is called cultural capital and I have mentioned it before. They are born into social and family circumstances which teaches them how to navigate all of the nuances of the dominant culture. They also have white skin. If you don’t think these advantages are not decisive in a competitve environment you are kidding yourself. I could elaborate on this for many pages. The answer is not private schools but a leveling of the playing field.
Stratification in this society has never been higher and it is growing as the good paying manufacturing jobs which a working class family could rely upon for a decent quality of life have been moved by capital to 3rd World Countries where there are no unions, environmental standards an where workers make marginal wages. Huge tax breaks for the rich during the Reagan/Bush era has worsened the situation. Exotic stock and security derivatives and unregulated securities have made the rich richer, crippled the economy and left the rest of us holding the bag- that’s capitalism where private power gets leveraged as political power.
You mentioned Belgium as an example of government run program where vouchers are used. Fine, if that system works for Belgium which has far less stratification than we do owing to generous social programs of redistribution. Though I haven’t researched it, I bet there are many well performing public school systems from China, to Japan to most sections of Western Europe and especially in Cuba which has a public school system which puts ours to shame. What all of these country’s have in common is far less stratification than that which exists here.
Social class is the best predictor and a very stable predictor for whether and how someone succeeds in this society. It trumps all other indices. Until we close the social stratification gap, don’t expect any urban educational system to succeed.
The bottom line Scot is that we have different moral and ethical values which underlie our perceptions, ideas and priorities and which cannot be reconciled.
Ross,
The reason why vouchers are so important, the reason private schools, charter schools and other free market education solutions are so important, is because they provide the disenfranchised an opportunity to an equal start in life on a par with those residing in the wealthy and largely white suburbs you mentioned. It is not fair that I received a quality public education while a poor person in a different neighborhood receives a sub-par education. You of all people should know this.
By attaching the money to the child rather than to the school, a poor, uneducated mother can use those funds to place her child in a high-performing school, rather than the current situation which provides her no options and indeed by its very design helps perpetuate what some characterize as a rigid caste system that favors wealthy neighborhoods. Vouchers give ALL people the ability to make their own choices for their children.
This free market solution stands in stark contrast to the current public school model, which prevents choice and relegates the poor to substandard schools. This inequality is not only wrong but immoral. It virtually guarantees that poor children will receive a sub-par education, which will forever perpetuate the inequalities that we all know stem from such an unequal start in life.
It all begins with a quality education, for everyone, not just fortunate white people in the suburbs! The system you support is utterly unfair. It favors wealthy, white neighborhoods where there is a large tax base, and penalizes poor neighborhoods with little or no tax base. Let parents decide where they want to send their kids, and provide them the vouchers to do so.
Providing vouchers and choice to everyone equalizes the playing field and forces all schools to improve, as they would now need to compete for students.
Equality of opportunity is the only way. I am surprised that you have taken a side which, by any measure you wish to use, removes choice, limits options and relegates the poor to attend the worst performing schools. I say give those parents the freedom and financial means to send their children to whichever school the vouchers will allow.
Remember, the bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.
God Bless!
Scot
Hi Scot,
Please tell me about how you are doing personally? How is your relationship with your daughter? What kinds of things are you doing togeher these days? What are her interests? What are you doing for work? What are you doing for leisure and laughs? Are you in a relationship? What is a typical day like for you? Are you working out? How are you feeling?
If only life were as simple as your free market solutions. Children from “poor performing schools”, voucher or no voucher, will not be able to compete with their higher performing counterparts until the underlying scourge of inequality, racism and lack of cultural capital are addressed. Do you think a kid that grew up in Roxbury or Dorchester will be able to compete with kids frm Newton just because they have a voucher and go to the same schools? It will be a disaster for the former, as many well meaning METCO programs have demonstrated.
METCO was a program which may still exist in some communities though I doubt it because it was a failed program. METCO enabled poor urban kids, often non white, transportion and enrollment to more afluent communities to go to school including such places as Neeedham, Newton, Wayland, Lexington, etc. However, the urban students were ill equipped to compete with their white and more affluent counterparts because of the nature and effect of social class and cultural capital. It became a very frustrating experience for all involved and created tension between populations. Vouchers will do nothing to remedy this condition. What’s needed is a diferent funding formula for schools, a masssive urban jobs program and a campaign to strenghten public schools and their teachers. Besides, there are many gifted, hard working, dedicated and skilled teachers in the urban public school system and the same can be said for many of the students. They are not agitating en masse for vouchers. Some improvements are occurring as measured by rising test scores. But until general conditions of inequality are addressed there will continue to be a chasm between more and less resourced communities.
Moreover, should religious institutions qualify for vouchers? What would be the effect on educational content? Who would decide what is appropriate educational content? Like our Founding Fathers, I beleive in the separation of church and state and that no public funds should be expended on the promotion of religion. Public vouchers which can be used for the benefit and promotion of private religious educaional schools violate the Constitution. I especailly don’t want any of my tax money to go for vouchers to religious institutions that are anti science, anti evolution and teach such nonsense as creationism. I would doubt that you would support your tax dollars going to Islamic Madress/Mahdras schools to promote the Koran. Nor for that matter would I want any of my tax dollars going to lunatic Hassidic Jewish schools to promote such nonsense as the notion that god divinely willed Palestine to the Jews.
I also think it is a very bad idea to introduce the profit motive into elementary and secondary education so that it becomes one more commodity for the rich to pillage as has occurred with such things as prisons and military servics. Will educational companies then get on standard and poor’s and the NY Stock Exchange, sell shares and be bought and sold and traded on Wall Street. Why not? How much money that is needed for the pursuit of education and educational resources will be siphoned off by investors, how much will go into marketing and lobbying? Pharmeceutical companies for example, who benefit from public expenditures for research and development and infrastructure spend more than twice as much on lobbying, marketing and advertising as they do on research and development into new drugs. Why would these educational corporations behave differently? Who will oversee the practice of false advertising by educational corporations inflating their performance to attract student vouchers and increase profit? How does fewer resources benefit the educational community? Why should my taxes accrue to the benefit of rich investors? Who will be left holding the bag should one of these institutions fail, make bad investments, pocket money that was supposed to go to teachers? Who do you think will have more power over these educational institutions, parents or shareholders? Of course it will be the shareholders. Will it then be a race to the bottom to see how little these educational instititions can pay their teachers and other professional staff in order to maximize profits and reward investors? Yes, of course. Will the educational institutions begin to replace living bodies, such as teachers with machines like computers for teaching and learning whenever possible? Why not, it cost a lot more money to pay a person over and over than to pay for a durable good which doesn’t need benefits like health insurance or a pension. Will the welll funded private educational institutions use their political power to import teachers from the 3rd world who can be paid as sub contractors or otherwise a marginal wage? Why not? This is all part of the history and logic of private enterprise which on a grand scale has far reaching consequences.
On another level, don’t you see that the downward pressure on wages and the attacks on teachers, unions, government and working people in general is politically motivated and ruinious to a consumer based economy. When middle class jobs are eroded who has the money to buy the goods and services needed to keep the economy humming except for the rich. General wages and living conditions continue to decline as has been occurring for over 40 years. More people work for WalMart now than any other employer. Forty-fifty years ago two of the biggest national employers were US Steel and General Motors. The number of people working for temporary agencies at temporary jobs has been inclining at a steady and alarming rate. Few temporary or services sector jobs pay anything near what it actually cost to live. This pattern has a disasterous effect on the economy and social living standard. It has ben facilitated by trends toward privatization and commodifying all services, as reflected in the movement for vouchers, which is a thinly veiled attack by capital against government, labor and public sector unions and works to further erode general living standards. This issue, again, is about values.
Scot, don’t you see that the educational process begins long before a child even enters school and that the gross social and economic inequality, tremendously exacerbated by Reagan and Bush, makes it nearly impossible for poor kids to compete with their better off counterparts and that until this underlying inequality is addressed, urban kids, mostly non white, can’t begin to compete on an equal playing field. Vouchers are a distraction and will do nothing to improve educational opportunities, quite the opposite.
I have said all that I have time for on this topic. Send me what you wish but I will not be able to respond. As is, I have spent too much time on this topic and as I indicated previously, our differences are largely about values.
Take care,
Ross
Ross,
Did you know you are right next door to some amazing charter schools which are so good and so effective in closing the education gap in urban settings that they have been used as national models. I really applaud what is happening in Massachusetts because it is just these kinds of solutions that begin to level a playing field that is too often neglected in this country.
Here, take a look for yourself:
http://www.pioneerinstitute.org/
As for Metco, it is neither a charter school, private school, voucher program nor anything resembling a free market solution, so I am not sure why you chose to use Metco as evidence that what I am advocating does not work. It is a grant program that began in 1966 and it is one of many efforts to help urban students (http://www.doe.mass.edu/metco/). It’s singular success or failure has no connection to what I have been discussing. While I applaud any attempt to equalize the playing field for disenfranchised students, I have been discussing the tremendous differences between the proven success we see when you allow people to choose and the dismal failure of a government-run school monopoly.
I realize from your email how much you appreciate the schools in all the locations you mentioned, but keep in mind that you are referring exclusively to wealthy, mostly white MA suburbs with large tax bases. Of course their public schools will be excellent. My concern is that other, less prosperous towns, suffer a corresponding decrease in education quality. It is this inequality that is unacceptable and we have seen the results of a government run monopoly.
Let people decide. Competition makes things better. Accountability and choice will always produce better results. Not because I say so. Because real-life, charter school test locations and voucher programs have proven themselves to be an excellent part of a solution and a refreshing change from the one-size-fits-all approach that centralized planning offers.
As to your point about what happens when disenfranchised, urban students are suddenly placed into a room of privileged, wealthy kids, that is a concern and it breaks my heart. It is especially distressing when you consider that these kids are just beginning their life, are not responsible for the situation they were born into, yet must immediately begin suffering from the inequalities we have talked about. So yes, of course there is more to this problem than simply offering choice. But that does not take away from the fact that real life evidence continues to mount that when you provide alternatives, more options instead of no options, and give power to parents and states, you get better results.
P.S. Thanks for asking about how I’m doing. Corina is great but also a difficult 16 year-old!, Lisa, Larry and I are all very close and spend a lot of quality time together. My magic continues going well, and I’m real excited about a couple of new routines I added to the show this past summer. During the winter months I do a considerable amount of writing for Cell Phones Etc., a website based in Canada for which I am the articles editor. Add in my own website, the new podcast and my amazing little brother Ian (Big Brother program), and it all keeps me pretty busy. As for exercise? Well, no I don’t get enough. Will try to work on that 
Scot
Editor’s Note: Ross did not respond further.
