[Copernicus]

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Some less obvious examples...the savings in number of police needed on the streets during school hours, reduced crime rates overall

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We could accomplish the same thing with concentration camps <font color="red"> true, but concentration camps dont carry the other benefits of education </font>
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the additional parents that enter the labor force helping to keep labor costs down

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Those labor costs would go down because of the increased competition for jobs. <font color="red">thats what i said </font> Competition tends to improve quality and reduce price. Computers and cell phones are better and cheaper than ever while education is weaker and more expensive. I wonder why. <font color="red"> are you implying a correlation? </font>

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I know that's what you said, but if you realize that free market competition in the absence of government monopolies works to improve quality and lower costs in labor, computers, and cell phones, why would eliminating the government monopoly on education not accomplish the exact same thing?

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Because education is not a "product" and the problems we have are not in the "system". The problems we have are in student and family dedication. Someone who is lazy about learning in a public school will be lazy about learning in a private school.

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Huh? How is education not a product? Every time I fly, the skymall catalog has ads for several different foreign language learning programs: Berlitz, Rosetta Stone, etc. Does not competition between such companies create a better product? If so, wouldn't competition between schools for students also create a better product?

Labeling a student as a "lazy" learner creates a false dichotomy between "good" and "bad" students. All students fall along a spectrum. A student who is bored and uninterested in class may never become a straight A student, but he can become a little more interested and learn a little bit more if he has a better teacher, smaller class size, different instructional techniques, etc. Competition between schools for that student's tuition dollars would drive such advances, as opposed to the current monopoly.

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What I mean by "education is not a product" is that it is a process. The provider of education services is helpless to produce positive results without the cooperation of the student. Obviously there is a spectrum of students, but it is not a false dichotomy. Students within any socio-economic class are heavily grouped at the extremes of motivation.

There is no current monopoly. There are numerous opportunities for private schooling. The previously posted study is consistent with every other study Ive seen. There is no significant difference between results in public and private schools.

and there is no evidence that class size and instructional techniques are significant indicators for success for children of normal intelligence. The most important indicator for educational success other than socio- economic status is parental involvement. Eg Asian students in California, where class sizes are significantly larger than most of the rest of the country, are no less successful than public or private school students elsewhere, based on non-legacy acceptances in universities.