child labor, and public schools

Economics Economics Questions
, ,
21

We should first define what we understand by school vouchers. AFAIK Tuneman is arguing for some kind of education stamps, that government would hand out to poor parents, and a selection of schools would be able to redeem them in the form of the tuition.

As I understand it, that’s not what is usually understand as school vouchers. Not in a small liberal group that I am part of, at least. They argue school vouchers as a different system to finance schools, in order to introduce choice. That is, instead of having some ammount of the tax revenue allocated to the Education Ministry, they’d instead be used to issue school vouchers. Generally, they would be redeemable for the same ammount, but some argue vouchers for less populated regions should have higher convertability. Anyway, these vouchers would be sent to parents, one per each kid of course, and they would then use them to pay the tuition for their kids in the school of their choice.

Depending on the exactly details (like if government would force a specific curriculum, or simply a set of goals, that would be enforced through national exams), the advantage of school vouchers is that private schools would be integrated into the system (which I think is more sensible than simply privatizing public schools overnight). By having things de-centralized, we could see schools targeted for very bright kids, for kids with learning disabilities, etc. Schools would have the possibility of hiring teachers by using different standards, and parents could simply walk away, if they dislike a teacher, and the school doesn’t do anything about it. (Parents beating teachers, out of frustrating, is a big problem here.)

So, I think how well it works out, very much depend on the associated regulation. For instance, in my view, if you let schools, that adhere to the voucher system, to have tuitions higher than the voucher, then a lot of schools will just use it as a subsidy. I’m afraid parents don’t account for vouchers when they are valueing a school, so they will distorce prices, as schools will just ask for the voucher plus a certain ammount that parents are satisfied to spent.

22

It seems like Tuneman posted while I was posting myself, and that I misrepresented his position. Anyway, I disagree with him in that it vouchers is the ultimate goal, because vouchers will restrain schools. Schools would not be able to enrich their curriculum with more expensive chemestry experiments, or build a swimming pool, or whatever. And if you allow schools tuition to be higher than the school voucher, then it will just act as a subsidy, and it will defeat your purpose of giving poor schools equal choice. In that case, you’d be better off with programs like schoolarships.

Create this burocratic system to finance schools is foolish, when you could solve it through charity [1]. If a poor parent can’t afford a house to their kid, will you change the way the house market works just to accomadate for him? No, you have social programs to help them. Why should education be any different?

[1] btw, I don’t mean necessarly volunteer charity here. (though, I think it would work much better, but that would be an entirely different discussion.)

23

In my own country I see every night the children who are selling flowers, postcards and bookmarks at the bars and restaurants, and during the day at the buses. It hurts me to know these kids could be working at a bakery or a textile factory instead of suffering cold and hunger in the streets. Even if you assume they will be exploited (the socialist approach), they are going to be better if they are exploited indoors than in the outdoors and surely would be making much more money. But the truth is that they won’t be exploited very much, because they are not strong enough to spend long hours of hard work as an adult would.

The idea of public schools that give food, all the books and even housing to the poor children sounds good, until you realize that it would mean to take the children away from their parents. And then you see those schools working and only the faith in the all-mighty State would keep you from throwing stones.

24

Actually, telling the people that you are going for school vouchers to encourage competition is a much more potentially succesful way to convince them. Give them a few years after the system is working and then tell them we are eliminating the education tax (or the equivalent share of other taxes) and the vouchers at the same time, just giving scholarships to the poors. And even the scholarships might be unnecessary as most schools would gladly accept a few students for free or making some arrangement by which the student or the parents work a few hours for the school. In a jesuit school I attended they used to make those deals.

I just wished the catholic and jewish universities here did the same, I wouldn’t have entered the stinky public university.

25

I think it would be less disruptive too, than simply selling schools, or giving them to the oldest teacher, or whatever. :wink: But there might still be some complications. Of course, public schools would continue to exist and the Education Ministry would be financed by the vouchers, and then allocate budgets as it usually does. But central planning is brittle, so as private schools begin to prosper, and public schools loose students, it might be very troublesome for the Education Ministry to adjust the budgets. I know teachers directors and burocrats already spent a lot of time in meetings arguing and tweaking the budgets; imagine when the system is no longer static. I think we may have to force students to remain in the same school for the rest of the year, and only change between years. Otherwise, it might be chaotic…

With regard to scholarships, the lower taxes would result in more prosperity, combined with a larger pool of schools, there would be more generosity. I personally tend to incline for charity sponsership programs though. That is, social programs to broadcast and present the community about a new immigrant family or whatever. Someone would then agree to sponser their kid, monetary wise, paying his school tuition and an allowance, other family would help the wife, and so on. Both sides would be better off in such an arrangement: there would be more generosity, not simply monetary but with other difficulties. There would also be little fraud, which is very big right now, especially with coffee shop owners because customers obviously won’t ask the recipt for a cup of coffee or whatever, and since the donors are anonymous, and social workers have no incentive to hold the money (it is not theirs), fraud is abundant.

I also don’t see much harm in having kids that can’t pay their tuition to do some shores, like helping the librarian to put the books in place, or even clean stuff. In my public college, when it gets late, there will just be one security guard, so the buildings only open every half an hour. (They actually lock us inside while they do their ship. Don’t ask me what we are supposed to do in case of a fire. Burn, I guess.) Anyway, a few students could get paid to assist on this kind of things (and the compensation could be to have a room and the tuitions paid). I am really unhappy with the fact that just recently security guards managed to lobby their way to get an association bar, so that you now need a license to work as a security guard.

26

Tuneman, I’m afraid I may be getting off-topic, but let me put education in perspective to health care. Health care is unexpected and can be critical. You can’t plan every risk, and you may need treatment in the moment. I would much faster agree with the need for coerced health savings / insurance than education (and btw its crucial that insurance is a last resort, otherwise you distorce value terribly, and end up needing price controls).

Education is something that social workers can and should work out via volunteer charity (where the value is agreed on, so you’d have little waste in the system). And unlike in disease, parents can work while the kids studies, so I very much think that in a thrieving, productive society, where you actually fight unproductive waste, instead of patching it with money distribution, and where you don’t de-value people’s savings, you’ll have any significant unemployment and poberty problems. Of course, there might still be cases of poor people like someone that got impaired and can’t work now. Here, I’d personally rather have risk insurances or the retirement fund to cover it.

27

Yeah sorry I didnt clarify my positions. I meant school voucher like a food stamp is a voucher.

In my opinion school vouchers will have no negative effects on the reciver side. In other words, the educational system will benifit in every way with the extra competition. The only negative effects will come from the people that are taxed for the vouchers.

I think vouchers will actually allow schools to get chemistry sets, or musical instruments, etc… Because now you will have a huge percentage of the population choosing what type of education they want. So if kids want to concentrate on science, there will now be a demand for science-geared schools. Or if a kid wants to learn music, he will find a school that stresses musical learning.

If there is reasonable funding from charity to achive these objectives, obviously I would choose charity over government subsidy. However, in general, I think that as long as the money gets into the kids hands, on the whole, it will be just as efficient. If there are kids that aren’t covered through charity, I think it is necissary for the kid to recive govt funding. I wish the kids could work for their education, and I think past a certain age thats definitiley possible, however, I dont think we can force a elementary student to work for their education.

I agree that parents should work for their kids education, however I cannot force them to do that, nor can the government. I agree that everything should be done to have the parents pay for their kids education, and for 80% of the cases, I think they probably can, even though they aren’t. However there are some cases where the parents simply dont care enough for the child to make the child’s education their priority. And as painful as it is for me to say, I think the govt needs to step up and help those that cannot help themselves.

What do you mean by non-volunteer charity. Isn’t that the same thing as government subsity? By definition a charitbale donation must be made freeley. No?

So we should move towards vouchers right now, then try to let charity take over, and then have the govt pick up the slack.

28

School vouchers could easily work better than the total central planned system we have now. In fact, in the economics of corporatism, people may actually be worse off paying for it from their income. There just isn’t a strong middle class. It would need to be part of a general reform of government.

I already questioned some stuff about it there. Not going to re-iterate that.

With regard to the parents comment, yes, some are terrible parents. I know teachers, so I know some stories, like of one boy that at 7 years of age could barely speak or had any social manners (e.g. he hides himself under the chair a lot) because his parents had him locked in the room basically till school age. (Interestingly, his sister seemed well taken care of.) Such cases of neglect should be considered violence, and the parents put in jail. What the kid needs is a new family. I know social services have at least arranged them a new house, but last I knew of that, they were still failing to get him to school a lot. School is only part of one’s grow.

I didn’t know there were food stamps organizations that mainstream. Here in my city I know of a charity that uses food stamps. Supermarkets stock their store with goods they have in excess. And they do some calculation of how much each stamps “buys” for each family that is enrolled in it, and parternered charities give them for every hour or so of labour.