Debate: Teachers Wages

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
If you are just stating the fact that private school teachers make less then public (I don't know but I'll assume you are right) and that has nothing to do with the discussion then I don't know why you posted it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I posted it in response to this of yours:
"If teachers do contribute so much to society (I"m not argueing with you, I believe they do) then they should have no problem getting paid a good salary by private schools."

Though I did misread it the first time, as "Better than private schools" rather than just "a good salary".


[ QUOTE ]
As for how privatiztion would work, basically here is my theory- In free market capitalism, if people want a product that someone can create and make a profit off of, it will be created. Education is no different. If parents across an area want to send their kids to school, there is no reason not to expect eutrapreanuers or buisnessmen to see profit in creating private schools that basically operate like our colleges do now. There is also no reason not to expect to pay less money then we pay for public schools, being that they will be more efficent since they can fail (which is contrary to public schools). Some schools would be better and cost more, others would geared towards the mddle class, others for poorer areas.

So exactly what will happen? i could imagine a few scenarios, but I think it's impossible to tell exactly how it would happen. Perhapes Borodog or Hmk could say how they would believe it would work.
editted for some bad spelling

[/ QUOTE ]

Okay, now that I understand at least part of your model here are the problems I see with it:

1. Education (at all levels, although moreso pre-college) is paid for by society as a whole, not just by the "consumers". Since the education of children benefits society as a whole, I think that is appropriate, Im sure others dont. If that public subsidy is to continue then you can still tax and give vouchers, but you are still not in a purely in a free enterprise system, because there is a guaranteed total market, and the level of demand is fixed (in total, not necessarily equally distributed).

2.In a free market, competition is partly viable because the market can expand..not all sales are achieved by "stealing customers". In a free market school system there is no overall market expansion, total demand is fixed, largely regionally. Since product superiority cant be readily demonstrated the first entries into any market have close to a natural monopoly that will be difficult to break into.

3. There are geographical costraints on where most parents can send their kids to school, and there are social benefits to keeping neighborhood children together. Morevover, this natural districting of schools creates efficiencies of scale. A free enterprise school company can attempt to capture a regional market to take advantage of those efficiencies and natural affinities, but once a "chain" becomes established competition is again restricted because fragmenting that market destroys those efficiencies, strengthening the natural monopolistic nature of education.

4. Evaluation of a good "education" is problematic. Overall success or failure can take years to be clearly established. Therefore the response of the market is necessarily very slow and underperforming schools cant lose market share quickly enough to encourage free market competition.

5. In the transition from public to free enterprise schools, presumably the assets of the school systems would be sold to the highest bidder. However, once those assets are distributed, there are now constraints to competition. A competitor decides it can outperform the existing schools, but it needs to build a new school that is both large eough to accomdate its future market but small enough to not destroy profits during that slow growth period in 3.

6. Existing private schools dont have a track record of academic success over public schools with similar socio/economic student profiles. Charter school success is at best debatable, and they are subsidized. So over all the evidence is that "free enterprise" schools cant be expected to improve education.

7. Most school districts have at least some diversity in socio/economic status. A given cost level will be affordable for some, not affordable for others, adding to the need for taxation and wealth redistribution back in 1. Assuming that vouchers (or some other method of getting the schools paid) are set at a given level, only a portion of that market will be available for a higher cost/higher quality/higher profit school. The margins will be very thin, and entering a market very high risk given the above constraints. Thin margins plus a slow developing market generally dont lead to ROI that is attractive enough for capital formation.

Those are off the top of my head..Im sure I can come up with several more.