Colleen Hroncinch of Cato Institute's Center for Education Freedom tried this week to plug one of the pro-public education arguments that the Libertarian think tank runs up against when pushing choice. Do public schools serve everyone, she asks. She does not make a convincing case for her answer.
Today I happened upon my daughter's (age 40) web site where there were photos from many of her earlier days -- as old as kindergarten. It reminded me that she got extra work designed to keep her from being bored (because she was quicker on the uptake than many of the others in her classes). This was true in K-6 after which she went into Junior High where the 7th and 8th graders were grouped by perceived abilities. She was in 9th grade when we moved to Texas and they made her take Algebra over because no one in their system taught it that early. She received a full tuition scholarship for all 4 years at a small, Midwestern, liberal arts type college. We still had to pay for room and board. She graduated cum laude.
My son, 4 years younger, had 5th grade in an elementary school then got transitioned into Junior High where he got in trouble because he had had enough from that jerk and punched him out. The principal was cook, he told us our son had to attend punishment classes after school but that he was actually proud that the jerk had met his comeuppance. When we moved back to where we started out, he was able to attend both the Vo-Tech computer management classes and get a special class with the head of the English Department because the only class available for his schedule was remedial English and the teacher immediately recognized he didn't belong there.
Bottom line is that public schools are able to accommodate individual students' needs. All it takes is teachers that recognize the need and that there be a way to accommodate it.
The other side of this is that the assumption that the parent is the only stakeholder that matters. Society as a whole has a stake in educating children, and the children themselves are also stakeholders. But Cato’s “every man is an island for themselves” approach doesn’t even consider this approach, because to that worldview education is a commodity, not a common good.
Another way to look at it is it’s not like comparing car dealerships—it’s like comparing the USPS to private package delivery companies. The USPS has an obligation to serve every last mile, and private companies do not. Everyone benefits from the existence of a functional USPS, even if some people use FedEx and UPS occasionally, because the existence of the reliability matters for all kinds of other things, like bank accounts, drivers licenses, and so on.
Today I happened upon my daughter's (age 40) web site where there were photos from many of her earlier days -- as old as kindergarten. It reminded me that she got extra work designed to keep her from being bored (because she was quicker on the uptake than many of the others in her classes). This was true in K-6 after which she went into Junior High where the 7th and 8th graders were grouped by perceived abilities. She was in 9th grade when we moved to Texas and they made her take Algebra over because no one in their system taught it that early. She received a full tuition scholarship for all 4 years at a small, Midwestern, liberal arts type college. We still had to pay for room and board. She graduated cum laude.
My son, 4 years younger, had 5th grade in an elementary school then got transitioned into Junior High where he got in trouble because he had had enough from that jerk and punched him out. The principal was cook, he told us our son had to attend punishment classes after school but that he was actually proud that the jerk had met his comeuppance. When we moved back to where we started out, he was able to attend both the Vo-Tech computer management classes and get a special class with the head of the English Department because the only class available for his schedule was remedial English and the teacher immediately recognized he didn't belong there.
Bottom line is that public schools are able to accommodate individual students' needs. All it takes is teachers that recognize the need and that there be a way to accommodate it.
The other side of this is that the assumption that the parent is the only stakeholder that matters. Society as a whole has a stake in educating children, and the children themselves are also stakeholders. But Cato’s “every man is an island for themselves” approach doesn’t even consider this approach, because to that worldview education is a commodity, not a common good.
Another way to look at it is it’s not like comparing car dealerships—it’s like comparing the USPS to private package delivery companies. The USPS has an obligation to serve every last mile, and private companies do not. Everyone benefits from the existence of a functional USPS, even if some people use FedEx and UPS occasionally, because the existence of the reliability matters for all kinds of other things, like bank accounts, drivers licenses, and so on.