Founding Father quote of the day

Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense, 1776

Education and Cappuccino Machines

I believe our public school system is probably the single biggest example of how the government so easily and so massively fails to do anything efficiently or effectively that the private sector could do in its place. Education is an incredibly important institution for the health and prosperity of any society, I think everyone agrees with that. We have seen a massive increase in the amount of money that is being spent per pupil in the US over the past few decades, and yet our avereage test scores are falling. What does this mean? It means that too many people don't understand the real problem. And you can't come up with solutions to a problem you don't understand.

The underlying problem, I think, with the public school system is a complete lack of proper incentives. To start with, schools and school districts don't even have to think about the way they spend money like every other private institution does. In the real world, you have sources of revenue and you have expenditures and the entire endevour of a firm is to make sure that the former is always bigger than the latter. This requires wise investment and allocation of resources. When firms malinvest, they either learn extrmemly quickly from their mistakes, or they die. When schools malinvest, they just whine and beg for more until somebody raises taxes. And malinvest they do. Just go to your local public school, walk up and down the halls and make a list of everything that seems unecessary- it might surprise you. If you get real lucky, you may even see an unused cappuccino machine. See this article for more.

Schools and school districts are simply alloted a budget and attack it like a wild dog being thrown some stray meat. They don't worry about making sure they are getting any type of a return and so they aren't incentivized to allocate their funds with the uttmost efficicency. Why would they even consider trying to spend less then their budget? But money is the problem, right? Schools are so poor they just need the funds to turn themselves around, right? Wrong. It is a fact that money spent on pupils and test scores of pupils are NOT correlated in this country. Go look up New York, Chicago, or Miami if you don't believe me.

Now, let's talk about teachers. Who would ever want to work for an institution that only rewards longevity and ignores performance? This is the 21st Century, for goodness sake. The days of firm loyalty by workers who stay with one firm their entire lives are long gone. As a student, did I ever rate a teacher based on how many years he/she worked? Never! I rated teachers based on competance, ability to teach, their passion for the subject, etc... If we want great teachers, we have to incentivize them properly. Having great teachers is not a matter of pumping more money into a flawed system, it is a matter of re-allocating the current money to the great teachers. Crazy! I know!

Finally, let's talk about students. The public school system is failing them tremendously by creating a psuedoreality that makes them belive that effort is the only thing that matters and that they are all equal and all special. No real world works like that. We are lying to our children and dilluting them if that is what we teach them. And studies have shown that the emerging generation is meeting considerable friction in the work force as they have to quickly learn that results are what matters, and people aren't equal- some poeple are going to outperform others. So whats happening? Our schools are wasting money promoting agendas that cripple students. Yikes.

I think it is extremely clear that the problem with our current school system has nothing to do with a lack of money. In my perfect world, it would be great to severe the tie between the government and the education system once and for all and let the private industry do what it does so well. In my perfect world, there still be room for government to subsidize private education, making it accessible to everyone. I know my perfect world may never exist, but can you imagine how much diffferent a school would operate if it knew that any unhappy parent could easily take their kids (and their money) to a competing school? Maybe they would rethink those cappuccino machines...

What do you think?