That is essentially the question. When public schools were started, it was because of the principle that an educated citizenry was better for everybody in the long run, including those who have no children. Of course I am talking about a real education, not the memorization of unrelated factoids for a standardized test.

Let's have a hypothetical. What if public schools were shut down at the end of this year, and the tax money earmarked for it was taken off the books, and everybody paid proportionally less in taxes?

First, the existing private schools would be overwhelmed with demand. They would be able to charge much more, and being good capitalists they certainly would. So that means the rich would get all the best that is currently available.

Of course, a massive number of private schools would begin appearing, with no history of stability and no oversight. At least they would be somewhat more affordable. All the good public school teachers would go to these new schools. And the parents who are smart and put all of their newly returned taxes (and probably much more since the burden isn't shared anymore) into their children's education would send their kids there. Hopefully the schools will be well run and won't fold up in the middle of a year taking all your money with it. Of course, after some growing pains, the quality competitive schools would stabilize, and those families who put a massive percentage of their resources into their children's education (think college-level investment here) would have good places to send their kids.

Of course there would still be a demand in the lower portions of the economic scale. Since children aren't allowed to work until age 16, they would have to do something during the day. The cheapest of the schools would get the teachers that the other schools didn't want, and with the lower pay scale and lower expectations these schools would be little better than day care centers.

Since most of our current population has no sense of personal financial management, the sticker shock of what good schooling actually costs would push more lower income parents to stick with the bargain basement level.

This is where comparisons to WalMart and McDonalds come in. They are cheap, so they are successful. Most people who support them don't know or care that their products are crap, they treat their employees like crap, and they are directly contributing to the destruction of the American economy and/or state of health. I don't buy their products, because I know better. But they are still wildly successful because they know how to work the capitalist system.

So what do you think would happen to the education level of the average citizen twenty years after some big corporate chain of bargain basement schools became the most successful school system? What kind of lessons will be taught by teachers who earn the minimum wage? Let's face it, those kids wouldn't even be qualified to work at WalMart or McDonalds. And there will be a LOT of them.

Well, hell, they're not your kids, why should you care?

This makes me feel a lot better about having not taken any art or animation courses. Though I know there are good schools out there..

Sniff.

First off, I'd like to thank you for your comment. You make very good points, and I appreciate you taking the time to write them.

I think of Paul because he supports moving from federal to states' rights, and under states' rights as he would like to have them, decisions are handed off from local politics to local regionally-based politico-educational power-brokers (district school administrators and, as you mention yourself, school boards). I disagree, because those guys happen to be even dumber than presidents and mayors. I want to go lower than that, I want teachers and school administrators to make decisions on what's taught in our schools.

I'd like that was well (keeping in mind that there's a limit to how low one can go down the hierarchy before things become a mess and neighboring schools no longer follow the same curricula).

The dumbness problem isn't specific to school boards. It also involves teachers and school administrators, simply because teaching jobs aren't paying enough to attract competent professionals. Gone are the days when engineers would teach math and science, because the government cut salaries and started regulating the profession. I agree that we should give more control to teachers and school administrators, but it would be a rough ride in a lot of places.

I'm on board for the market comparison. Currently, using the free-market as a model for education system development falls through when one evaluates the current US public educational system through that lens, because it is specifically not even close to a free market (yet).

And every day, the US public system moves further away from the free market concept.

Until college, students must attend regional public schools with very few exceptions. They are thus not free to take their education elsewhere without paying up the wazzoo or going to private school. This is why school vouchers are so important to me, allowing students to choose which school to attend and thus send their allocated money to is key to moving back towards a free-market model.

I agree with the voucher's purpose, but they would have unintended consequences by allowing government interference with private schools. This is why Ron Paul voted against them: http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul132.html

Parental demand is a poor way of regulating schools when my first point is true. Unintelligent and uneducated parents will often be unable to tell a good school from a bad one (...)

And this is the #1 reason why education is in bad shape. Kids with good performance nearly always have parents who are actively involved in their education. (I want to say ALWAYS, since I have yet to meet a counterexample, but exceptions are bound to exist).

The libertarian approach only works if people are willing to take responsibility and get involved. Ron Paul was hesitant to run again for president because he wasn't sure if the people were at this stage, and he was pleasantly surprised. The 18-29 demographic responds very well to this message, but unfortunately it's not nearly enough to get a majority in the polls.

Your examples are great cases of free market success. And in every one of them there always was an involved community of parents, students, alumni and very talented, well paid teachers. This is what made them great.

The US government is trying to compensate bad salaries and parental disenchantment with regulation and "research based" assessment (such as NCLB). I've seen this happen before my eyes during the last 10 years in Brazil, on a more aggressive level. It doesn't work because it's like trying to treat symptoms instead of underlying causes.

You've just made the case for the libertarian platform of limited government. Libertarians defend that the government should be shrunk down to the bare essentials because politicians are completely incapable of making competent technical decisions.

I'm well aware. Ron Paul is not the voice of libertarians everywhere, nor are his conceptions of libertarian education reform what I support. I didn't say I believe the federal government should stay completely out of education, I said that it should stay out of deciding educational topics. When I said I didn't like the idea of handing things off to states, I think of Paul because he supports moving from federal to states' rights, and under states' rights as he would like to have them, decisions are handed off from local politics to local regionally-based politico-educational power-brokers (district school administrators and, as you mention yourself, school boards). I disagree, because those guys happen to be even dumber than presidents and mayors. I want to go lower than that, I want teachers and school administrators to make decisions on what's taught in our schools. Also, federal funding is a different issue than curricula decisions.

Also, the market has ways of regulating quality and correcting bad decisions. One is criticism from outsiders. If that fails, low standardized test scores, rejection letters from colleges and job applications will make parents get the message and demand better quality.

I'm on board for the market comparison. Currently, using the free-market as a model for education system development falls through when one evaluates the current US public educational system through that lens, because it is specifically not even close to a free market (yet). And, since federal budgets are used to help finance schools, it is essential that the federal government get on board when it comes to distributing such tax money in order to force improvement in schools. Unless of course, you happen to believe that states will create improvement at the same pace when pressure is put on them. A free-market system can apply at both the federal and state levels.

1. Until college, students must attend regional public schools with very few exceptions. They are thus not free to take their education elsewhere without paying up the wazzoo or going to private school. This is why school vouchers are so important to me, allowing students to choose which school to attend and thus send their allocated money to is key to moving back towards a free-market model.
2. Parental demand is a poor way of regulating schools when my first point is true. Unintelligent and uneducated parents will often be unable to tell a good school from a bad one, which is why:
3. Regular, unbiased, quantitative and qualitative feedback on the success or lack thereof of students is essential. Free-market models also generally rely on informed decision-making, something that can't be attributed to American parents on the whole either. Where do they get feedback from? College acceptances are only applicable to high schools, and even then the path of blame can't be traced solely to them, poor pre-K to secondary school education also fall into the mix for screwing students over. Standardized test scores are ok, but then again, this creates a need for unbiased tests that are representative of the body of knowledge a student is expected to command at his or her particular age and education level. I studied and gamed my way (legally and on my own) into perfect scores on standardized tests repeatedly throughout my education. This is part of why the current No Child Left Behind act is failing: the tests don't represent the knowledge of the student, and so when schools teach to the test or when the student prepares for the test, the student misses out completely on certain sections of his or her education, and also results can't be counted on to judge the quality of the school's or student's performance. In addition to which:
4. Quantitative feedback is impossible without the creation of nationalized feedback systems. No matter what form, there needs to be standardized measurements. Thus, tests can't be limited by state, nor can they be limited to a county or to a district. In order to create such test, we need to have...well, national organizations to keep them regulated.

The US has a few success examples in education that I can think of offhand to demonstrate the principles I'm arguing for above:
The first is private high schools of a specific kind: Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, etc.
The second is magnet public high schools: TJ in Virginia, Hunter College in NYC, Stuyvesant, etc.
The third is the higher-education system, both undergraduate and graduate: Harvard, MIT, U. Chicago, etc.

In the three examples I've given, free-market-based attendance and thus improvement is pretty demonstrable, yet federal funding is also used to support these schools based on their performance as indicated by the students' attendance and performance. In the private and magnet high school examples, students are comparable to the best students worldwide. At the higher-education system, students are on average better than those at the same level of education in other countries. Nationalized education reform plans can be improved a lot from those ideas and those examples.

its not just the entire internets that are stupid, theo.

tribalism is looking to be the 21st century's downfall. when people don't 'believe' in global warming, or humanity's effects on biodiversity, etc., the non-stupids will only have themselves to blame for not understanding the stupids enough to convincingly make their point.

... oh, about Dr. Savage; nutritional ethnomedicine is shorthand for a person interested in old fashion medicines and botanical treatments from a specific culture. His PhD centered around the culture and ethnic medicines of Fiji. A strange PhD, but from a good school (Berkley).