ALaw - you're missing the point here.
ACists in this thread are aggressively and absolutely claiming that a privatized school system will be vastly superior, AND that it's the only solution to the problem, AND that centralization is the cause of the state of education in the US.
The burden of proof is on THEM to prove their God. I am not making these kinds of huge claims. I am saying:
- There is a lack of evidence that private education is greatly superior, in addition to some contradictory evidence.
- That centralization is not the main reason for the terrible state of US schools relative to other countries with far better education systems and outcomes;
- That the currently centralized system can indeed be improved.
These are my only claims. They are backed up by plenty of evidence. The claims of ACers in this thread are not and they appear unwilling to provide evidence for their position - just a lot of bluster and hyperbole.
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LOL. Do your friends help you out by bending over so you have new and exciting [censored] to pull [censored] out of when it's convenient to a particular argument? After the Ivy leagues, the US universities are mediocre compared to the rest of the world. What a claim.
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The US is the most powerful and wealthy country on Earth, with many nobel prize winning immigrants, a huge science and technology based industry, nearly a quarter of world GDP, and the largest middle class anywhere. Yet, according to the only rankings I can find, the US has only one quarter of the world's top 200 universities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educati..._status_ladder
I maintain my position that the US has a small clustering of elite universities at the top, and the others are fairly mediocre by Western standards.
Do I think that the elite universities have benefited from being private? Absolutely. The greatness of all of the ivy leagues is partly due to the freedoms of private ownership. But only partly...two of the top three universities in the world are public. It's obvious that the wealth and selection that goes into the pinnacle of any private system will produce elite outcomes that are superior to a public system.
The larger question, and the only one relevant to this discussion, is whether the average case under private ownership is significantly better than public. I do not see it in the case of universities and I don't see it in the case of schools. It may well be the case, but you guys haven't shown a shred of evidence that it is.
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BTW - the best of the US private high school system (mainly for the elite) blows everyone else away as well, which invalidates your point I think.
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It does!?
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It's about the elite vs the average case.
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I'd suggest that wealth is the key factor in both.
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I agree! It's almost like there's a rational order to it all. People with more money will always have more and better goods than everyone else. Oh well. Rather than bring everyone down to one level so that some people won't feel bad, I'd rather people be free to do as they please, so that we'll all be richer than we would be otherwise. I just want people do be happy, Phil. It might be nice to think we can close our eyes, say a wish, and manually solve everyone's problems at once. But when you're in touch with the reality that this mindset makes problems worse, you feel like sort of a dick when you support the idea of trying, even if you can myopically represent some piece of data to give a glimmer of encouragement to your position.
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It has nothing to do with bringing everyone down to the same level. Both you and Nielsio with his comments above about outlawing competition (wtf?) and choice are missing that people can already choose to send their children to private schools. And voucher systems have been tried, but they don't seem to have improved things much.
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It's clear that you don't like AC. I guess you'd be happier if your misconceptions remained unchecked....You assume I'm as interested in misrepresenting various pieces of data to defend deep rooted misconceptions as you are.
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What is the point of this? You assume that my objections to AC comments are due to "misconceptions". Pretty arrogant, no?
In reality, my objections to AC posts are the pathetic lack of evidence that accompanies bold assertions, the over-extrapolation of freshman economic assumptions that underly those assertions, and the unwillingness to examine the downsides. I'm entirely open to the idea that private education, and the competition/efficiency/experimentation it creates, may produce a vastly better outcome. But I can't find evidence for this position, and even the theoretical underpinnings are lacking in depth. So I'm disappointed that the subject isn't treated seriously, but instead blindly asserted from the most sophomoric of assumptions.