Privitazation of Schools - is the elimination of the government's hold from the school system the answer?

There is little need for a privatization of the existing public school system, since those who live in school districts with poor schools who have the means already attend the existing private schools. What you are actually contemplating is a system of vouchers for all those who remain in the public schools. The problem with all of the voucher systems is that there is never enough money in any state's pubic till to actually pay the private school tuition for a year for every public school student. Vouchers generally just help some students whose families had slightly higher incomes make up the difference between their incomes and the annual cost of Private school tuition. The result is that the poor become even more concentrated in the public schools that remain--thus further perpetuating the problems of public schools. The reality is that public schools can be improved in America if people start actually implementing true standards in subject matter and then use a nation-wide assessment of progress to see if the states are meeting those standards. The current system lets each state set its own standard and then judge for itself whether those standards are being met. The federal government checks up on the states every five years using something called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a nationwide standardized test given in reading and mathematics to fourth and eighth graders in every state. The results are then compared to the results the states say they got on their own standardized tests. The comparison is usually shocking--the students in every state score well below average on the federal test, even while each states says that its students have made marked improvements! The reality is that the states simply water down their standards with every passing year to make sure that their students always show "improvement." A national standard in at least reading and mathematics must be imposed--but instead of penalizing states for failure to meet standards as is currently federal policy, the government should offer inducements to gaining improvements on the federal test, such as increased federal money for teacher training, school construction, smaller class sizes, increased teacher salaries and so forth. The reality is that the current public school system in almost every state simply accepts that no student can ever truly fail--they simply move the goal posts on every assessment of progress to guarantee improvement. The same argument applies to teachers--many, many public school teachers are dedicated public servants who want to play a positive part in improving children's lives. But some are poorly educated ne'er-do-wells who are there to collect a basic pay check, enjoy the benefits of a civil service job and a three-month-long vacation. Standards must be applied to who becomes a teacher, though those standards don't necessarily have to be the ones imposed by the teachers' unions, who are, sadly, sometimes more interested in keeping their members' jobs than in improving the public schools. You should be required to have gotten a 3.0 GPA minimum in college in a subject area. In addition,masters' degrees in a subject area, not useless degrees in an amorphous subject like "education," should be required within five years of becoming a teacher.

Some critics of the standards movement will argue that this leads teachers to "teach to the test" and prevents students from receiving a well-rounded education in other subjects like history, science, music and art. However, there is nothing wrong with teaching to the test if it is the RIGHT test that actually requires students to master the real literacy and numeracy skills they need to live in an advanced economy. Additionally, history, art, and music are useless to students who are both functionally illiterate and cannot perform basic mathematic functions. First things first. Overall, the public education system will not be fixed easily or soon. But the key is an understanding that teachers, students and parents must all be held to real standards that are enforced and not watered down at the first sign of potential failure.

What you are proposing still requires providing massive federal grants. Not all people can afford private tuition, hence that's why we have public schools in the first place. If your argument is that you want to abolish all private schools then you need to explain how to pay for it without massively increasing the tax burden. The rich do not "give up" anything for free to the poor, and to do so would be patently unfair. Many nations in the Third World have exactly the system you are describing in which there are no public schools, only private. The result is that only the wealthy and middle class attend school. The system you are describing is not workable unless you can A) lower private school tuition so that everyone can afford it, which will make the system unworkable, or B) the public still has to pay the bills of those who can't afford it. As for raising teacher's salaries, some private schools like the best prep schools may pay more than most public schools, but many pay far less than even the poorest public districts--for instance most Roman Catholic private parish schools. In addition, some public school districts, such as those in the wealthy suburbs of New York and Los Angeles, like Westchester County and Orange County, can have average starting salaries of near $45,000 per year while 20 year teaching veterans can make as more than 100,000 per year. The result is that several of these public schools, such as Scarsdale High School in Scarsdale, New York, have levels of student achievement equal to that found in any private school. Why? They have both greater financial resources AND higher standards. Public schools can be fixed. But if you want to offer a completely private alternative you need to explain exactly how it will be paid for at all income levels, how you keep the tax rate the same, and how you subsidize poor familes to afford the tuition or prevent the quality of private schools from collapsing if you force the tuition lower. There is no panacea to this problem.

I disagree with you that No Child Left Behind does not work. In point of fact it works quite well when the National Assessment is used as the standard against which to measure achievement rather than the ones used by the states. Secondly,the majority of policy analysts have come to agree that the only real problem with NCLB other than the fact that it does not use a national standard is that the Bush Administration did not suplly the law with the required funding to carry it out. If your beef is with unskilled teachers, however, that is different in each of the fifty states. New York State has generally high requirements for public school teachers, for instance, while other states like Maryland have very few. There is very little national solution to the problem of improving teachers, other than getting each state to enact the best standards it can (see my above proposal). Raising pay alone will only do so much, as no educational salary is ever likely to be enough to get skilled professional people who are not highly commmitted to teaching for their own reasons to put up with the behavioral problems of teaching in most American schools.

Finally, while your initial plan may not have been exactly a vouchers plan, your second example, "There are only private schools, those from low-income familes that can't afford these schools are given grants from the government. This would lower educational taxes, while fixing the terrible education system we have in the US at the present time" is exactly how a voucher system works except your proposal would be enacted on a far more massive scale since it would affect every income level. And in INCREASING grants to ALL the poor to afford private school tuition, taxes, in one form or another, would skyrocket. As you noted, increasing benefits further only means everyone pays more. There is no free lunch. You want good education for all, you have to pay for it, publicly or privately and expecting people to just act on charitable instincts is never a good way to organize a society, unfortunately.

I wonder if I understood this part of your additional details right:

"Would this system work:

There are only private schools, those from low-income familes that can't afford these schools are given grants from the government. This would lower educational taxes, while fixing the terrible education system we have in the US at the present time.

Japan and Finland are based on similar principles (minus the giving grants to the poor), and they are ranked among the top schooling systems in the world for effectiveness."

If I did understand that right, you may have misunderstood something about Finnish schooling system. Yes, our system is ranked high, but we practically have no private schools. Vast majority of the children go to public schools; all the private schools are somehow "special" (like Steiner pedagogy schools or Christian schools or whatever), and it's extremely hard to get the license to run a school. Practically everyone goes to the same kind of schools, funded by taxpayers money. So unfortunately Finland is not going to work as a supportive fact to your argument.

I'm not too familiar with Japanese schooling system, but they sure as hell seem to encourage competition there. But I think it's more like a cultural thing anyways be so perfectionist in everything, and I also see several negative sides in forcing kids in kindergarten to compete in tests and practically decide their whole future (via the schools they get to) so early.

I think it would be a good idea because it would end the masses having an influence on what and how things are taught. The influence moves to the ones financing it. I attended a college prep school and we didn't have all of this BS that goes on now in the public school. When I went to college I had 2 semesters of credit and was better off than my counterparts who attended elsewhere.

My sister, who is very intelligent, loves children, and so she teaches. So, on that basis I find your question (well it sounds like something a 17 year old would say) is stupid. Privatization of education would only benefit the rich. But, not really because they would have no culture. You wouldn't have any respect for people that are different from yourself. That is what makes America so great, the different cultures.

Might work. We don't have all that much downside here.