Jesus ****ing christ...

So, how would the free market solve these issues?

And, guess what, people without any children and no plans to have them still pay property taxes too... ZOMG, how unfair is that?!?

Do you understand why that happens? It's not because Americans are welfare loving communists who just love to redistribute someone elses money. It's because ensuring that all kids get the best education possible has a huge impact on my personal welfare. It keeps me safer because well educated kids get jobs instead of stealing to make a living. It keeps my taxes lower by producing productive members of society who can get jobs and pay taxes instead of being in jail or collecting welfare. It makes my business better because I can hire well trained employees and I can find wealthier consumers for my product.

So, sure when it comes to video games, let the market decide all you want, but when it comes to education, I need a system where everyone gets some education, and frankly, none of the advocates of a voucher only system have shown that their system will guarantee access to everyone.

Now, maybe the people who support vouchers don't see that as a problem, but I do.

that's quite a different statement than saying "Private business is highly efficient."

private schools would be able to discriminate because the voucher would be in the form of a refund and thus no longer public money. taxes>gov>people>private business.

public schools would still exist if there was demand for it.

if there is low population density who cares? it's like asking, "Will there be a Mcdonalds in my town?"... if there is demand for it, if not you are stuck with the public school....if someone wants to open a boutique 50 student school, then all the power to them. back in the day schools used to be the size of courthouses.

if the kids parents cant come up with more money for a private school that charges more than a public school than the kid can go to public school, but remember, it is quite likely that many private schools will match the public school price.

not really

obviously there are exceptions.

there are also species that were poorly adapted for their environments and went extinct. Is that some sort of indictment of evolution in general?

it would be up to the private school. public schools seperate the dumb and smart kids anyways. it's not like saying 'oh the public school will only have dumb kids now and no smart kids to rub off on them'... however, i see no reason why private schools would not want to maximise profits and accept as many people as they can just like mcdonalds wants to sell as many burgers as they can.

the people against this seem to be just looking at private school in it's current form and unable to envision what would happen if people had an option of where to send their kid and how that would change the landscape of private schooling.

the goal would be providing the best product to as many as possible.

Say that I run a private school and the voucher is $5,000 and I can give a great product for $4500. Why would I only want 250 students? Why wouldn't I want as many students as I could attract?

Maybe because the quality of education drops as class sizes increase and teachers have less time to spend with each student?

Perhaps because getting more students might require you to lower admissions standards to allow in less intelligent or otherwise inferior students which would mean that (a) the best teachers might not want to work at your school any more (or would demand more money to stay there) (b) your test scores and other success metrics might fall enough that parents don't want to send your kids to their school.

Education is not a hamburger... It requires much more personalization/customization and doesn't necessarily lend itself to economies of scale in the same way that fast food joints do.

what about Google. think they could figure it out? or only the government is capable of such specialization?

Then it's a completely stupid and unworkable system, grats for advocating it I guess.

The people for this seem to just be looking at "OMGZ TEH FREE MARKET IS #1!" and not at the potential for abuse such a system would create.

If schools are "competing" for students, they are doing so by demonstrating how successful they are. The more successful they are (ie, the more "smart" kids they turn out) the more demand would be generated for their services. This is reason enough for private schools to turn away kids with learning disabilities because those kids drag down standardized test score averages which would ultimately affect the school's bottom line.

We're not even a full page in and it's clear we're dealing with a Friedman Holy Roller who is going to ignore any and all valid complaints and forge ahead undeterred by logic, facts, empirical evidence or even common sense.

FYP

Funny you should mention Google because they actually did get into the education business when it decided to provide day care to its employees... Not surprisingly, it built a very good school. But guess what, that school also cost obscene amounts (over 30k per child per year), and had to turn away hundreds of children (of Google employees mind you), because it didn't have the resources necessary to build schools of a similar quality for all children.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/business/05nocera.html?ref=business&pagewanted=all

So, here you have a great private company that is only attempting to provide day care to children of Google employees and it still ran into huge problems. Now imaging trying to educate all children (including ones whose parents are neither as intelligent, wealthy, or concerned with education as the typical Google employee) and doing it while spending less than a third of what Google was spending per child (public schools receive on average less than 10k per student).