Quote:College professors aren't tied to the whims of parents.  They also have tenure, which means they're guaranteed wages.  Nobody will want to be a teacher if their job security is tied to what parents want.  You state that costs would be cut, which means wages would be even lower, because most of a school's funding goes to paying wages of teachers.  Which would drive desire to teach to rock bottom.  

 

What's wrong with creating a system where parents choose?  

Let's look no further than the middle east today to examine it.  My wife is doing her thesis on a similar issue.   In the middle east you have a phenomenon known as Holocaust Denial.  People who say that the holocaust is nothing but a myth.  That's because the education system over there doesn't teach it.  And for obvious reasons.  They don't want jewish people to seem sympathetic.  So they don't teach the holocaust in schools over there, and it's going to stay that way for a long time.  Given school choice, holocaust deniers themselves are going to choose schools that also deny the holocaust.

 

Heck, look no further than the United States.  The Tea party wanted to remove references from the founding fathers being slave owners.  It's not okay to remove these things just because it interferes with your beliefs.  Imagine the majority of schools glossing over things like slavery in order to conform to their beliefs.


Is it okay to leave out the fact that our founding fathers owned slaves?  Is it okay to say the Holocaust never happened?  Ignoring these things will only lead to history repeating itself.


Where are Robots coming from?  How else are you going to drive down costs?  You've got a couple of options:


-Tablets.  Sorry, but this increases costs, and one of the reasons that schools don't have these is because of lack of funding, not lack of innovation.

 

-Better Computers.  Again, this increases costs.  It doesn't decrease it.  


These things cost money.technology can make the costs of educating these customers very cheap

So how does this make it 'very cheap' for anyone?  The fact is schools would love to have better computers.  What they can't do however is afford them.  The only way it could make it cheaper is by having teachers have EVEN MORE students than they have now.  Which is problematic because class sizes are already too large.

 

There's plenty of incentive to improve methods. Do you think schools just say "You know what, we don't need new computers!  These work fine."  No, they don't.  They ask for funding for new computers, and then get denied it.  Which means that costs would be higher for these 'good schools' and lower for the 'for profit schools' that put all their money into marketing as I stated earlier would be the low cost options for those who don't have the money to send their kids to the best schools.  And of course you have enough parents that don't care about their kids education as it is, that will keep those places in business.  And marketing will make them look far better than they are.  Which is exactly how it is for for-profit colleges.

 

So you believe the only way to cut cost in education is to cut teachers salaries? That's ignore the colossal waste spent on things like standardized testing, extra circular activities, administrative cost, and so on. The reality is all the problems you cite exist today, poor schools are under funded and rich schools are over funded. The difference is I'd give parents a choice instead of demanding they be tied to poor schools because they live in poor neighborhoods. The poor schools (which who are we kidding do just enough to get by, I went to them all my life) wouldn't be competitive and would close. Leaving a demand for better schools in poor neighborhoods. Just like grocery markets still exist in poor neighborhoods so would schools, except now they have the initiative to improve and create innovation to stay in business.

 

There is today and under any system will always be good schools and bad schools. I prefer a system where parents and teachers can choose which to participate in. Let the bad ones close, why should we support them on the states dollar?

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