Thursday, October 07, 2010
"Our education system is broken," says the person who just came out of Waiting for Superman.
I hate to break it to you, but the education system is not broken. It is functioning EXACTLY as one might expect based on its design.
Education is a service, just like any other. There is a mechanism for enforcing that any good or service is of sufficient quality, and that is when the seller has to convince the buyer to voluntarily part with his own money to acquire it, and acquire it from him rather than his competitor.
When the service is paid for by a 3rd party, and the customer only has one choice, it is a sure thing that the service will be very poor quality. That is not broken, that is poorly designed.
Imagine if you could only eat dinner for free at one restaurant that was in your neighborhood, and the government paid the restaurant regardless of whether you liked your meal or even showed up. Does anyone believe this restaurant would have good food? The only reason restaurants strive to provide good food and service is because they have to convince you to come to their restaurant to eat.
You might be wondering why rich neighborhoods have good public schools and poor neighborhoods have terrible ones. It is most certainly not about the amount of money that is spent. It is because rich neighborhoods have a very inefficient but still functioning free market, in that rich people can move to a better school district. Poor people do not have this option and again as you would expect their schools are very bad despite the same or more resources being thrown at the problem.
Imagine how fast schools would improve if the state or locality gave every student a voucher for the $15K they annually spend and told them they could spent it on any school they wanted. The incremental cost would be zero. Milton Friedman was arguing for this almost 60 years ago. We haven't done it, because the system is not broken, the system is working exactly as the designers of it, the teachers unions, want it to work.
I hate to break it to you, but the education system is not broken. It is functioning EXACTLY as one might expect based on its design.
Education is a service, just like any other. There is a mechanism for enforcing that any good or service is of sufficient quality, and that is when the seller has to convince the buyer to voluntarily part with his own money to acquire it, and acquire it from him rather than his competitor.
When the service is paid for by a 3rd party, and the customer only has one choice, it is a sure thing that the service will be very poor quality. That is not broken, that is poorly designed.
Imagine if you could only eat dinner for free at one restaurant that was in your neighborhood, and the government paid the restaurant regardless of whether you liked your meal or even showed up. Does anyone believe this restaurant would have good food? The only reason restaurants strive to provide good food and service is because they have to convince you to come to their restaurant to eat.
You might be wondering why rich neighborhoods have good public schools and poor neighborhoods have terrible ones. It is most certainly not about the amount of money that is spent. It is because rich neighborhoods have a very inefficient but still functioning free market, in that rich people can move to a better school district. Poor people do not have this option and again as you would expect their schools are very bad despite the same or more resources being thrown at the problem.
Imagine how fast schools would improve if the state or locality gave every student a voucher for the $15K they annually spend and told them they could spent it on any school they wanted. The incremental cost would be zero. Milton Friedman was arguing for this almost 60 years ago. We haven't done it, because the system is not broken, the system is working exactly as the designers of it, the teachers unions, want it to work.
