How Covid Changed the School Choice Debate (with Corey DeAngelis) - Free Thoughts Podcast

[@jasonthompson7230]

Why, though, does no one ever acknowledge the logistics about choosing where to send your kids to school. Where I live, the big cities have insurmountable problems with bussing. Just getting kids to the schools in their region is almost impossible. In outlying areas, funding for schools in general is stressed and schools without high enrolment are consolidated despite the (mostly conservative) parents who advocate for these (public) schools staying open.

[@jasonthompson7230]

It has never been my experience that monopoly structures create bad teachers. The school boards maybe are not always comping to their responsibility within the community as part of the community. Your model I think would make that worse. And leave communities without the little resources they have access to for education and extra curricular activities.

[@jasonthompson7230]

The grocery store scenario you offered does exist. No one chooses their grocery store. The developer and monopoly retailers choose your grocery store for you. If you live in a patchwork of ethnic communities built pre-war and you can walk to Italian meat shops and polish bakeries, well good for you. But most now get their stuff from the warehouse on the edge of town like communists. And the government's roll in this isn't to dictate but to buckle to the developers just like the libertarians want. I just can't make sense of libertarians constantly shooting themselves in the foot and blaming others.

[@jasonthompson7230]

Why this constant argument about expanding the bureaucracy? These arguments persist despite public services taking longer and longer and all systems around us getting more and more complicated. One thing that libertarians are stupid about is that government is the one to take care of the margins, the tasks and constituencies for which there is no business case. This costs money. If you deny this funding, who takes care of these tasks. It’s wishful thinking.

[@jasonthompson7230]

This is about political power for fundamentalists. Why can’t education be a system? I don’t believe for a second the monopoly of distributed school boards creates poor outcomes. The incentives in that structure are not as they are in commerce monopoly. The argument is choice but the current so called conservative government here that is advocating for school choice, vouchers and charter schools, is at the same time taking power from local school boards. Doesn’t make any sense and anyone listening should be wary of the incentives to your arguments. Where I live we have a unique thing as I understand it. There is a catholic school system adjacent to public school system. A tenuous arrangement on paper, but lots of support for it even among a non Catholics. We also have charter schools and have for a while. Despite this our so called conservative government is taking power away from local school boards. They have also thrown out a decade long effort to update curriculum which was participated in by thousands of teachers and experts, and replaced with a mediocre curriculum draft that was written in haste by partisan experts and burocrats with suspect credentials. And these are the people who advocate for school choice. Don’t do it.