I do kick around an idea. Student-Controls-The-Dollars Charter School. Take the $13,000 or so we get per student, spend the minimum ($8,000 per kid?) to deliver a product the state will sanction, and free up $5,000 per student to control.

Electives, educational travel, online courses, clubs and sports, tutoring, counseling, etc. Perhaps even college savings accounts.

In addition, if a student struggled in the “core” (ie, reading, math, which state requires or they’ll shut us down), the cost of tutoring is deducted from the $5,000….(no choice on this).

It’s a good question.

The pre-school market is a fairly capitalistic one.
I send my kid to a pre-school down the street, 3 mornings a week. I think it costs $40/morning.
We also have a nanny ($18/hr) and lots of help from Grandma and the uncles. There’s a ritzier pre-school a couple blocks up, costs 50% more. And Bright Horizons, a fairly sizable corporate daycare, not too far away.

I’m glad we’re consumers with choices. With that said, I am sort of surprised that the market has not generated very good choices in my area.

I agree with your point about “decline.” What Golden Age does he reference?

The larger point is that various efforts at markets and choice haven’t yet panned out great in American K-12. Generally better than status quo, for sure, but often so so so modestly better at least measured by test scores, with a few exceptions (like Boston and NYC charter schools). Adam Smith might say “That’s because you only add in SOME market features, but not all of them.” He might be right.

For example, a key limitation of our charter school is that — since we can’t raise our price — we can’t invest. That is, we can’t say to the Taxpayers of Massachusetts, if you’ll pay me an extra $1,000 per year per student, I will deliver to you a 20% better product as measured by such and such. If that were possible, I would probably make a one-time investment at upgrading our English curriculum, with the notion of recouping the investment over 3 or 4 years by raising price.

I lean liberal in terms of the value of wanting to help others.

But I’m more libertarian in ideas of how to help others.

My little brother argues that a third area should be the public sector infrastructure. I.e., do the $4 trillion deal, but Obama should fight for $500 billion of infrastructure spending in exchange for equiv cuts to Medicare/Medicaid.

What do you think about that?

You raise good points.

Finland story is complicated. A dominant feature, in my mind, is they reject most people who want to be teachers. We don’t. We set very low bar.

Also, there are low-performing nations that are like Finland in policies. Meanwhile, there are high-performing nations like Singapore which have different policies (like top-down curricula).

Many folks simply reject aspects of the Finland narrative that fit they preferred policies.

Imagine if charter school supporters pointed to a homogenous white charter school and proclaimed it as The Answer. Folks like Ken would, I bet, hoot with derision. “Nothing to learn here.”

Yet they embrace Finland….