Public Education is the single most important government program to promote economic prosperity and fight poverty.
That said, what is the best way to support public education?
A New York City charter school is trying something new:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/education/05charter.html?ref=education
When school vouchers and charter schools were proposed, I too reacted as most liberals do and opposed any changes to standard pubic education. Now, I must confess I am excited to see what the results of paying teachers higher salaries will be.
Even if the school itself is a failure, we will learn more about what it takes to establish the premier public education system in the world.
Nor is it clear to me that every child will be best suited by the same education methodology.
I now stand firmly in favor of the charter school movement. If schools who accept school vouchers are also required to meet similar standards, then I would be in favor of school vouchers too.
The economic analysis:
Education is an investment in human capital. The student gains skills and knowledge that will make him or her a more productive worker or investor. The returns on elementary, secondary, and undergraduate education are immense and if it were possible, a student would borrow to pay for schooling.
The capital markets however are not well suited to finance general education since there is insufficient visibility to the earning power of a student. Further, most grade school students are minors and are generally unable to make their own economic decisions. Nor are parents generally able to authorize borrowings on behalf of their children.
An educated populace additionally provides the state with many positive externalities. Educated citizens are more likely to obey the law and in voting, more likely to make wise laws. The reduction in crime due to the increased earning power of education reduces costs of enforcement and property insurance.
Mandatory free public education attempts to correct many of these inefficiencies in the competitive market for education:
1. Free public education provides a subsidy for the poor. Poor parents and families are most likely to be unable to afford to pay for their own education (through savings or borrowings) and are most likely to commit crimes of desparation if legal earning power is insufficient. A subsidy in kind can restore efficient consumption decisions by compensating for externalities. (Compensation for externalities is an exception to the general preference for subsidies in cash over subsidis in kind.)
2. Mandatory public education provides protection for children. As parents stand as agent to a child's principal, there may be an incentive for a parent to remove his or her child from school in order to force the child to work or otherwise fail to be educated. Mandatory education requirements (including for those children who are home schooled) protects children from unwise parental decisions.
Neither of these objectives however require that the government itself provide the education facilities.
In the early history of public education, when education was such a significant expenditure it may be impossible for the competitive markets to provide a sufficient amount, it may have been justified for the government to provide education. As the economy has grown significantly over the last century, we can transition to a competitive market education system. In suburban or rural areas with lower population density, there may still be a need for publically provided education.
This economy of scale, in that its more cost effective to teach many students together than each one individually, may create a trend towards a natural monopoly in areas of lower population. For example if an area only has 30 students per grade level, then a single teach per grade level is necessary and so a single monopoly school is necessary. If an area has 300 students per grade level, then perhaps 10 schools can operate and create competition.
It's not obvious whether a natural monopoly school should be run by the state or be contracted to the private sector.
The general observation here is that it is not a "free market" that is superior but a "competitive market". The market is generally able to provide higher quality goods and services at lower cost than a government monopoly provided that the conditions of perfect competition are met.
In the case of education, the government needs to compensate for financing and externalities, the principal/agent problem, and for the possibility of a natural monopoly. With these corrections, it becomes possible for the competitive market to assume the remaining tasks.
Dead rats and dopamine - a new publication
9 months ago
This is a complex topic, I will have to follow up on this later since it requires different analysis of different scenarios that arise from this topic and may be ignored, neglected, and overlook even in successful situations in educational performance, learning, financing,etc and results therof.
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree a bit because education is not contextually used properly.
ReplyDeleteEducation does not necessarily reduce poverty, and education is not tied proportional to earning power.
While college grads may earn more than their non-college grads that doesn't tell the story. The simple-fact of a college-grad or high school grad may not tell why earning power for that individual may increase.
If a person gets a major in educator, healh and nutrition, history, art, or women's studies even their masters in social work, I wouldn't expect six-figure salaries based solely on their degree unless of course they worked in a top position or had other connections/experience.
The author correctly points that education may lead to more civilized citizens, prompt greater quality of life, lead to more productive citizens that engage in problem solving, less crime, less teenage pregnancies and wrong decisions made by educating the individual,etc.
That is true but it doesn't mean that a person may have increased earnings or wage benefits which I referred to non-economic benefits, although it is true that that secondary economic benefits can result later on.
Wages and poverty is a result of economic, supply and demand. Its quite simple, manufacturing jobs used to pay very well, due to supply and demand and moving overseas they don't pay well anymore or that have simply vanished. While one can argue that education and skills may help the workers , its not the education and skills but the supply and demand.
How do we thus define education also, is it vocational or academic, vocations such as skills to do computer support, welding, network and cable technicans,etc may be in itself education , however some aspects may be skill as opposed to education.
Alex rodriguez and professional sports players earn money not on education but by skill and supply and demand by people who watch and play the sport, advertising, and the skills.
A recent article shedded light on how blue collar positions are still in demand, while a lot of these require vocational education, a few of them may not so much as one great with their hands.
Vocational education may omit not teach the student politics, psychology, or topics of health care and economic such as the author discusses , in this case an idea of "academic" education is the belief that students may or not but could use this to their economic advantage.
In the Bronx while minority students were learning vocational trades, more upper-class gradatues at harvard were being trained how to obtain and get high level positions in a company , illustrating academic v. vocational.
People learn their respective education in different ways, some may argue there is already too much funding and rightly blam unions and beaureacrats, others righly may blame conservatives for not funding education for the poor in certain states like alabama. Old school classrooms, overcrowding, hostile environemnts,etc.
One may argue for more strict schools and so on ,others say people may over react with the zero-tolerance policies that may be racist in rural black school districts such as Mississippi are based on stereotypes and not be conducive to actually educating.
Adding
ReplyDeleteIt may take the parents, in Fort Bend County with a large asian population the school district is one of the best performing in the state, but the funding isn't the highest in the nation. The study of course , viewed school districts with price to perfomance ratio, keeping in mind regional cost of living and pay difference were included in the study so a difference from a salary in new york and texas wouldn't affect the outcome. It said fort bend county was a best value, but a person of caucasion descent said in the 1980s fort bend was an average school district, proving asian american parental involvement with more value and emphasis via education, also they may be more affluent and have the educational background.
I could go on, recently I believe someone I know transferred to a charter school or an alternative school and did better who went to a inner-city public school, however it may have been learning style and instructor motivation that help the student, as his father himself valued education very highly and was of west indian descent (his father was here illegaly by the way).
I could go on and on, from studies that show low performance charter schools , to parochial schools not necessarily doing better than public schools since all public schools are not bad and some exceed parochial , there are children on the same boat even though they went to private schools.
Also, remember education is a business in cases, while more cost-effective education and competitive market may be great, running it as a business may not be the wisest idea, and corners may be cut.
One last point that is frequently disregarded is standard of living, politics, and geographic advatages, back in the 1970s when the tax code was more quote and quote progressive and globalization less so and then things turning around in the 1980s it is viewed unfavorabily.
However, there was no Internet, cell phones,etc back then, and keep in mind while educating people brough these things, a country is important, the politics of a country aka free speech, public policies may be important as opposed to middle eastern countries or many countries that supress innovation due to religion.
People may also trust their money in europe or the united states rather than china no matter how hard their citizens are educated. Educated citizens? There are many educated citizens in engineering and so on in arab nations where the bright students may be religious and be acceptive of hostile regimes and policies despite its economic consequences in the global enviroment.
Such variables leave many questions that beg to be answered, and really a debate as to education is needed and it must be tied to other factors and take into situations.