I have so many mixed feelings about schooling that I’m glad I don’t have my own children to worry about. There is enormous potential for improving things, yet so little of that potential gets realized.
The thing about school choice is that funding is largely zero sum. Those with the means to choose better options than public schools take advantage of those means and leave underfunded public schools to serve the least privileged remainder. My public school teacher friends end up with disproportionately large fractions of children with special needs who need extra care and attention but don’t have the support to care for them effectively. As a result, all the students and all the teachers suffer. How do we do right by all these individuals? Private schools can largely avoid accommodating these students. The private schools can largely choose their students, but the public schools cannot. It reminds me of insurance companies choosing not to cover certain people, who then have no affordable coverage options. It’s not an unsolvable problem in theory, but reality is messy and politically fraught.
I have so many mixed feelings about schooling that I’m glad I don’t have my own children to worry about. There is enormous potential for improving things, yet so little of that potential gets realized.
The thing about school choice is that funding is largely zero sum. Those with the means to choose better options than public schools take advantage of those means and leave underfunded public schools to serve the least privileged remainder. My public school teacher friends end up with disproportionately large fractions of children with special needs who need extra care and attention but don’t have the support to care for them effectively. As a result, all the students and all the teachers suffer. How do we do right by all these individuals? Private schools can largely avoid accommodating these students. The private schools can largely choose their students, but the public schools cannot. It reminds me of insurance companies choosing not to cover certain people, who then have no affordable coverage options. It’s not an unsolvable problem in theory, but reality is messy and politically fraught.