Should public schools be privatised? A bloggish debate

Two Australian econo-bloggers, Labor supporter Andrew Leigh and 'classical liberal' Andrew Norton, are running "a bloggish debate" over the next week or so on the topic: Should public schools be privatised?

The Day 1 post is by Andrew Norton. He writes:

People are used to the idea of state schools, so they don’t think about how uneasily government-controlled education fits with liberal democracy. If someone said that Australia’s media should be owned by the state, with journalists told by the state what they should say, with media audiences examined to make sure they had absorbed the official line, there would be predictable and justifiable outrage.

Yet public education means essentially that for Australia’s young people. The government owns most schools, employs most teachers, tells them what to teach through state-set curricula, and examines students to make sure they have it right—even kids escaping to private schools can’t avoid these last two aspects of state-run education. And unlike state-owned media, there are severe consequences for ignoring state education.

...Rather than fostering social unity, as some of its supporters claim, state-controlled education is a source of division and nastiness. Instead of allowing different groups to devise their own curriculum, and letting parents choose between them, we fight over a common curriculum. The public education lobby stirs class and sectarian resentment in its attempts to take funding from private schools.

And what is it, can you remind me, that makes public education worth preserving?

Not views that I share. but it's good to see them aired.

Comments

[Suvi]

"The public education lobby stirs class and sectarian resentment in its attempts to take funding from private schools"

I don't believe a word of that, except that private schools should be funded privately and not publicly.

Educationally, there seems to be no case for private schools, according to the OECD opinion of Brit-privates:

Once socio-economic factors are accounted for, public and private schools show no significant performance differences. Private schools in the United Kingdom outperform public schools by 86 score points, but they also have a significantly more advantaged socio-economic intake, as measured by the PISA index of economic, social and cultural status. Once the socio-economic intake of students and schools is accounted for, there is no performance difference between public and private schools

Why should anyone bother with private schools?

[junius]

Suvi asks why anyone should bother with private schools, but surely, if the performance is so similar the question should be: why should the state bother with public schools. Government intervention is almost always justified by the claim that the private sector would be unable to provide the service in question.

As long as private schools are capable of providing education, and a voucher system can be used to secure access for all, why should we tolerate a state-run school system at all?

[Arthur Eckart]

Suvi, "Once socio-economic factors are accounted for, public and private schools show no significant performance differences. Private schools in the United Kingdom outperform public schools by 86 score points..."

Students from higher social-economic backgrounds tend to be taught by instructors from higher social-economic backgrounds, while students from lower social-economic backgrounds tend to be taught by instructors from lower social-economic backgrounds. Also, classmates tend to have similar social-economic backgrounds. The free market, in general, tends to improve social-economic variables faster than government management to raise absolute scores faster.

[kelley]

trying to mandate 100% of anything is usually inefficient. Let both public and private schools drop up to 2% of less motivated students and create a separate track for those that don't fit in schools.

[Suvi]

junius:

"Government intervention is almost always justified by the claim that the private sector would be unable to provide the service in question"

It's true, privates couldn't be possibly trusted to do something as systematic as education on a national scale. They're too ramshackle, don't work together, and aren't accountable because if anything goes wrong, they can just declare bankruptcy and walk away.

I don't know anyone at all who'd allow the great tasks of government, such as defence, health, basic education, civil order and justice to be privatised. It runs against common sense, so why would anyone allow it?

[Arthur Eckart]

Suvi, many government schools should have went bankrupt, or ceased to exist, long ago. If government didn't exist, a private authority would take its place. It would seem, government intervention or control in education is much too large, i.e. suboptimal to a large extent.

[Suvi]

No Arthur, government schools can't go bankrupt, whereas privates can, so it's obvious who you can always trust, and who you might not.

Besides, private schools often teach religion as a serious subject, which is a major reason to avoid them.

[Arthur Eckart]

Suvi, that's why government schools should be run as private schools. So, the poorly run government schools can go bankrupt. It seems, the comment you disagreed with may actually be true: "The public education lobby stirs class and sectarian resentment in its attempts to take funding from private schools." Wasteful government schools are taking funding from private schools, e.g. through taxes.

Many religious and military schools are much better than government schools. So, why avoid or abolish them? Economics is considered a religion by some (since much of it evolved from moral philosophy). Should we avoid it also?