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Comment by stringsandchars | Hacker News Reader

> Is it the system advocated by Milton Friedman or is it different?

I think Milton Friedman's idea, was that parents would actually receive education 'vouchers' and be free to use them in whichever education context they chose for their children.

This is slightly different, as the private/public system is wholly handled by the State system: parents simply choose between alternative schools, and the state channels taxpayer's money to whichever school the child attends.

Unfortunately, in many cases this has simply led to corporations or individuals who employ fewer or less qualified teachers, who in turn hand out 'optimistic' grades to the kids (attracting more parents), and extracting enormous profits from the State system.

At the same time, the normal State schools are being starved of resources; standards are falling, leading to more parents putting their kids into the private schools, leading to an inevitable downward spiral.

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This is basically the neoliberal story. I can't fathom for the life of me how people committed to historical concrete analysis can continue to advocate for these schemes. They always end up in exploitation.

People's commitment to ideologies seem to be stronger than any material evidence.

Then you don't live in or near school districts failing to educate their students for decades: Detroit, Baltimore, even parts of Seattle fail to graduate young people capable of reading and writing near grade level, let alone understand even algebra. Year-after-year they fail a new class.

And the solution would be to go to a tuition school, where the quality could be the same but grades higher because customer is king? No, it's not a solution, because there's no implicit causal relationship between tuition and quality - the Swedes just described their situation in the title. The real solution is to fix the failing school, whatever system it was.

Ah, thank you, I don't think anyone's tried to fix the failing schools before, so if they just get started on that this whole voucher thing is unnecessary.

I think a more honest analysis would not only look at other educational systems in other countries but use a unified metric, say, euclidean geometry or algebra comprehension, something that you can roll back the clock 60 years on and still get comparable data.

There's a multi armed bandit problem here of course but the law of large numbers should allow you to isolate what effect marketization has.

I'd be shocked if it was positive. Human motivation is sullied and distracted by profit so the actual goals become incidental. If the alignment is close, like in commodities, it's all good. If it's poorly related, such as in education, it seems to be a problem.

Privatization works poorly as a blunt magical instrument wielded on all problems

Sweden school system didn't particularly need to be fixed, especially if you compare it to peer European states.

The voucher stuff was introduced for ideological reasons, and failed like things rooted in ideology invariably do, no matter if the inspiration is Marx or Adam Smith.

these are in high-crime areas with very specific demographics. make of that what you will.

The commitment is pushed by those that materially benefit, so it shouldn't be a surprise.

> I think Milton Friedman's idea, was that parents would actually receive education 'vouchers' and be free to use them in whichever education context they chose for their children.

> This is slightly different, as the private/public system is wholly handled by the State system: parents simply choose between alternative schools, and the state channels taxpayer's money to whichever school the child attends.

I don't see the difference between those two situations. In your first sentence you talk about a “voucher”, but if it's a voucher, then there needs to be someone who emits the vouchers, and collect them in exchange for money, giving money back. And the “someone” is necessarily the state since it's financing the schools out of its own pocket.

Makes sense... parents (and kids) will tend to choose the schools where pupils have an easier time, good grades etc., not necessarily the schools which will give them a better education. So this is probably a case of misaligned incentives and another rebuke of the idea that "free competition benefits everyone".

Why do you think that? My experience is the exact opposite: parents choose the toughest, best schools, to great cost to them.

I'd argue in favor of decoupling schools from summative assessment in general. If anything, I'd just have each course in each institution have its own well-specified entrance requirements/assessment, and have learners decide what institution/course of study would best prepare them.

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