The problem with vouchers is, quite simply, that they take public money out of the public schools. There's nothing terribly ideological about that–although the notion of religious schools getting lots of public-education dollars turns my stomach more than a little. Vouchers are no doubt great for the tiny percentage of public-school kids who wind up getting them–but what about the rest?

If you've removed, say, $2000 a head from a public-school budget in order to provide a private-school tuition voucher–not to mention removing a dozen or two high-performing students from the class rolls–then you've left the public school weaker both financially and intellectually.

What we need to do is find ways–including budgetary increases–to improve our public schools, not find substitutes for them for a small percentage of the kids.

BTW, anyone with kids in public school these days knows that there are NOT “multiple layers of people who don't add much value.” My kids' schools desperately need better science, art, music and phys-ed instruction, but the district can't pay the required specialists — for years now we've had parent volunteers running art and PE classes! Teachers routinely buy supplies for their classrooms out of their own pockets. And we live in one of California's wealthiest districts.

I have no doubt that innovation would, and does, work wonders — and I believe that the private sector (and its ideas) can add much to the quality of public education.

But the vast majority of American parents aren't interested in “efficiencies” when it comes to their kids' education. Sure, there are reforms to be made, some poor teachers to be fired, new technologies and teaching tools to be implemented — but in many parts of the country that civil unrest you're talking about is going to come from parents who have watched their schools' budgets get cut just a little bit too much in the name of keeping taxes low.

However, I seriously believe the principles of dime-a-day schooling are applicable here. You say public education here is more “developed” and that is just the problem. It has developed multiple layers of people who don't add much value where the rubber hits the road — in the classroom. Private incentives do force efficiencies. Government funding guarantees virtually guarantee inefficiencies.

Polls show that Americans are not strongly in favor or opposed to vouchers. Obviously the Democrats with their strong union base are vehemently opposed. They just killed a voucher-like system in DC, I heard. I would at least like to see a fair test of the idea in a few states. One reason I oppose nationalization of education is that it stops states from experimenting. (True, some experiments end badly, but ultimately better ways of doing things can be found and hopefully adopted on a widespread basis.) It seems to me that the opposition to vouchers is ideological. Perhaps a lot of the support for it is ideologically based as well — a “faith” in certain beliefs about human nature and incentives. A fair test over a broad area (a state, for example) encompassing all families and pupils could give us a better idea of exactly what advantages and disadvantages it has.

I don't believe we can have adequate education for a dollar a day. But I believe we could have better education for less dollars per pupil than we're now paying. But I do not believe the federal government has demonstrated any particular competence in moving us in that direction. And we are no longer a “rich nation” who can afford to dismiss the concept of creating efficiencies everywhere we can.

Taking direct lessons for American schools from dime-a-day private education in the developing world is a stretch, even for a Cato Institute let's-privatize-everything type. Private education's great, for those who can afford it (or get in on scholarship), but the U.S. has spent about 160 years developing a system in which the vast majority of students receive their education in public institutions. It's a rather…developed system, unlike in third-world nations where it's easy to imagine the pace of technological and capitalist advances far outpacing the ability of fledgling public education systems to keep up.

You sound like you'd change the whole U.S. system, if you had your way. Good luck with that!

Otherwise, the diversion of public funds from public to private schools (i.e., vouchers) can only result in 1) an increased disparity between the quality of education provided for the few (private) and the many (public) — and on the public dime, at that — or 2) the transformation of private schools into public ones. Neither of those options is acceptable.

Still, I encourage you to hang out a shingle and begin offering an education to your local kids for a dime — heck, go for broke and charge a dollar! — a day. You'll probably soon learn that the local parents expect more than that can buy.

So to pay for this plan, Obama will quadruple the budget deficit, but then promises to cut it in half by the end of his first term. (Thus making it only double the Bush deficits he complained bitterly of during the campaign.) How does this square with “ensuring all new tax cuts and spending are paid for”? It doesn't of course. Complete double-talk. To call the plan a “budget” is almost an oxymoron.

To spend on education requires real wealth, either produced (and taxed, naturally) or borrowed. But the budget is so far out of balance, talk of new health care and education funding almost becomes academic.

Your premise seems to be that good education must be government funded and directed, and can't be cheap. In the third world, parents in poverty scrimp to buy private schooling for a dime a day, and this private education is superior to the more expensive government education.

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200703/crook-sch…

Since Obama is steering us quickly toward total economic collapse, perhaps some lessons about the magic of private sector incentives in education will come in handy for those with children who survive the civil unrest.