No Slapz is it true that you are not a teacher?

The principles I’ve written about are favorite subjects of Nobel Prize-winning economists such as Milton Friedman.

Perhaps you should read a little of his work. He’s one of towering figures in the field. He has recently published comments on vouchers and the condition of public education. His been studying the public school system in this country for more decades than either of us has lived.

What’s especially unfortunate for you is your hope for change in the state-controlled education system. Whether you are teaching thirty years from now or not, you will see, 30 years hence, that not much has changed in the school system.

Unless, of course, the state were to surrender control of funding schools.

You are seriously mistaken when you claim the “government” has a “constitutional” responsibility to educate the citizenry.

Your claim is simply nuts. Review the Constitution for evidence of your belief, which, by the way, would please the totalitarians of the world.

Meanwhile, you’ve even supported my claim that the public schools have been falling down on the job since you were a kid by mentioning your move from public to parochial school and then your return to a specialized NYC high school.

You mentioned subsidies. Second to the state-subsidized department of education comes the Catholic school system, which has long relied on the below-market labor of priests and nuns and further subsidies from the Church itself and further subsidies through property-tax abatements for the buildings in which classes are taught.

What still confuses you is the rather simple difference between the “right” of private schools to exist versus the power of the state to maintain the most unequal co-existence possible.

Many NYC private school charge tuition of $26,000 a year. Their market is parents who can afford that amount. The existing private schools have no interest in meeting the state head on because the private schools do not compete on price. They compete on quality.

And that quality is measured by results — in other words, the paths taken by the graduates.

The public school system long ago abandoned tracking its students after they left school.

If you ever find yourself inside James Madison High School, you will notice its Wall of Champions, outside the auditorium. The photos and brief biographies of famous graduates are posted. Chuck Schumer, who graduated in 1967 is the last notable student to pass through that school. But many well known people preceded him. Not least was Ruth Bader Ginzburg, supreme court justice. Robert Solow, famous economist and Stanley Kaplan of test-prep fame.

The state, meanwhile, makes it impossible to compete on price simply by charging tuition of $0.00. The power to distort a market — eliminate competion — through pricing is the defining characteristic of a monopoly. The government sets the tuition at $0.00 which results in a huge market distortion — underperforming public schools for the masses versus highly successful private schools for those who can afford the tuition.

On another note, Toyota and other carmakers are not subsidized by their governments. I don’t know where you got that nonsense. Meanwhile, Japanese carmakers have been manufacturing their cars here in the US for years. There are at least 60,000 autoworkers in the US building Japanese cars. The workers are not Japanese, though factory managers might be. However, they are not unionized.

Lastly, is it news to you that we have state-supported colleges and private colleges? They co-exist nicely. State universities charge state residents less tuition than private universities, but the quality of state schools is often high enough to attract excellent students. Meanwhile, there are state universities that attract mediocre students and those schools compete with private universities that appeal to the same average students.

And there are schools for dummies. But the public and private colleges compete for the same students. And they do well.

No such luck at the elementary and secondary level, however. The state has, in fact, created a vast gulf between students from prosperous homes and everybody else.

You are so right.

Last time I looked, we were still in America, you know, the one with a constitution. The America that says “We the people…” – yeah, that one.

Your ridiculous claim that the government does not permit the existence of competing schools is nonsense. Side by side, there are plenty of private schools for you to send your children to. Your beef is that our government won’t divest itself from its constitutional responsibility to educate our children. There’s plenty of competition. As an example, my father was not satisfied with the public elementary school I attended and transferred me to Catholic School. It was his choice (and trust me we were poor). I stayed in that school until I chose LaGuardia High School. We had a choice and we made it. You act like there are no alternatives unless the government coughs up vouchers for you to spend as you want. That’s not free market; that’s welfare.If you don’t like what you see, you can do two things: help us fix the problems or complain that the government won’t give you a check so that you can “choose.” If I’m Marxist, then the U.S. is Marxist because we buy into the “ridiculous claim-that government and its agencies belong to us.”

As for “competition” with regards to cars, you really lose the case with that one. Toyota and other foreign companies are heavily subsidized by their respectiver governments. Since we’re the only Western power with no universal health insurance, G.M. and Ford have much higher operating costs, thus less capital is available for research and development, “productivity,” etc. You know that it’s not a level playing field. For American car companies to compete, the U.S. will have to provide the same kind of subsidies that the Asians and Europeans get.

There is a more relevant example of what happens when you privatize a government responsiblity. Edison. These folks attempt to do what you want: private choice with public dollars. They’re failing miserably because they don’t (and you as well) understand the nuances of education. They lost their contract with Philadelphia and the pilot program with New York City.

What I find puzzling is your method of debating a topic. You tell me (as well as others) how ignorant I am. Nice. Then you offer nothing factual except that your “principles are well-understood” with no evidence to support any claim whatsover. Where have you seen in any educational setting a productive model in which the government does what you adamantly and so obsessively claim? Where is the research? Please cite your sources.

Finally, you (and I) are guilty of going grossly off topic. This post is about grading teachers. Let’s go back to that.

First, you have developed your own oddball form of economics.

You clearly have no grasp of the meaning of “corruption” and you refuse to accept the rather simple and well understood principles of monopoly.

You wrote that private companies report to their boards and investors. While that statement is not untrue, it is of secondary importance. Companies — first and foremost — exist due to the good will of their customers. If GM isn’t keeping its customers happy, the unhappy customres buy similarly priced cars from Toyota.

You should understand that the customer is king in the private sector.

Meanwhile, as you repeatedly state, there are a thousand problems with the public school system that are never remedied. This is an operating condition that separates monopolies from customer-sensitive organizations.

If parents discover that the private school to which they send their kids is doing a poor job of educating those kids, the word will get around and other parents will spend their tuition money at a school that’s doing the job right.

The poorly performing school risks having to shut its doors if parents are no longer willing to support it with tuition payments.

No such disciplining power exists in the public school system because the government does not permit the existence of competing schools — that is, schools who compete for public taxpayer funding by producing educated kids.

As you for most ridiculous claim — that the government and its agencies belong to us — well, if that’s true, try selling your piece of ownership and see how far you get. You’re a marxist at heart. Did you know that?

Private companies answer to their boards and to their investors, not to us. You just don’t get it: the government and its agencies are not monopolies. They belong to us. It’s that simple. SONY does not give Samsung “the power of the purse strings,” nor does any entity public or private need to sponsor another private enterprise. If any parent wants to send his/her child to “better school,” either work to improve it or transfer to another within the system. Again, it’s yours; you and I own it.

As I have stated, your knowledge of economics is lacking. You provided dictionary definitions of “monopoly” and “competition” and were still unable to recognize that the very examples you gave in support of the public school system were, in fact, excellent examples of monopolistic practices.

You wrote:

“Your adamant insistence that the DOE is a “monopoly” as opposed to a government agency providing a public service is illogical.”

But your preceding paragraph exlicitly demonstrates that you understand the DOE is a monopoly.

You wrote:

“As for “monopoly,” the exclusive control (money) of our “commodity” lies not in the City but in the New York State Board of Regents.”

You added:

“It is the governing body that sets the standards, tests, and AUTHORITY (money) to serve our children as a public service entity. They give the schools the AUTHORITY (money) to operate and they have the power to withdraw the stated authority (money).”

The power to control the finances of an industry says it all.

You wrote:

“You do, believe it or not, have every RIGHT to have your child educated in a manner of your choosing.”

The preceding sentence shows how you’ve confused the meaning of “right” with “monopoly”.

Even the poorest parent in this city has the “right” to send his kid to Dalton. But that poor parent doesn’t have the means. Thus, except in the event of a huge scholarship, that poor child has no choice but to attend a public school, and not necessarily the public school of choice.

You wrote:

“You, however, do not have the right to take OUR tax dollars and divert them where you want to.”

Yet another statement of monopolistic power. Your use of “our” is interesting. To whom are you referring with this word? In my view, “our” should refer to ALL the kids in the city. However, I’m pretty sure you think “our” refers to the employees of the public school system.

You also wrote:

“Our tax dollars belong in the NYC school system and we want to see every dollar well-spent.”

Says you. Obviously many parents and students disagree. However, those who disagree can only act on their disagreement if they have the money to finance an education at a school outside the public system.

YOu wrote:

“You asked me which school I would prefer to send my child. The answer is one in which I agree with the pedogogical philosophy of the institution.”

You dodged the question with an answer so vague as to be meaningless.

On the other hand, it’s obvious there are hundreds of schools in the public system with a pedagogical REALITY that no teacher or parent would praise. And those schools are filled with kids. Teachers at this site regularly admit their schools are underperforming.

Would you send your child to one of those schools? In the general population. No fair if you finesse your answer by finding a bad school with a decent gifted program in which your kid might be enrolled.

You wrote:

“We can make the administration of any school accountable; we can do precious little to a private entity except stop patronizing it.”

You must be joking. If it were possible to hold the DOE “accountable” — which is impossible when the organization is a government-backed monopoly — we wouldn’t have the school-system problems that plague the city.

Meanwhile, you once again nailed the mechanism that brings improvements — competition — when you added “we can do precious little to a private entity except stop patronizing it.”

Exactly. Stop financial support for an ineffective competitor. In other words, PARENTS won’t pay to send their kids to a private school if they believe they are not getting value for their dollars.

Parents do not have the power of the purse-strings when it comes to public education. Again, no choice, no competition.

Another interesting note about vouchers and competition, the schools you cite and most private institutions were never designed to serve the masses. I hate to say it but public education is the most segregated institution in America, second only to churches. Yes, there may be a very small number of children of color or poor whites in the elite schools, but they are far and few between. People who have the means will always live, educate, and worship within their own strata.

Even the black upper class in America, as noted by Lawrence Otis Graham in his best-selling book “Our Kind of People,” make sure that their children are not too close to their lower class brethren.

So now, you expect these institutions that exist for a certain population in our society to open their doors (with vouchers, no less!), embrace OUR children from Taft H.S., Jamaica H.S., Park West H.S., etc. with their Title One funding and lunch forms into Dalton? Park Avenue kids eating lunch and hanging out with my children? You don’t believe that nonsense yourself.

What you really pay for in private education is to control who is sitting next to your child. That’s why the specialized high schools are in such demand. You send your kids to a place in which the “right” kind of child is there next to yours. Even Parochial schools can and do separate the grain from the chaff. We, as public school teachers, work with everyone.

Even adults are not immune to class issues. I have friends who work in some of these private institutions, earning less than we do with inferior benefits. Why do they stay? They don’t want to earn a Masters degree and get certified and they want to work with a particular kind of student, one that has a solid middle-class or upper-class background, does not need “special” services, and knows how to behave.

If you believe that a free market system is in order and that it would produce viable schools for our kids, than you must as an economist accept complete laizzez faire policies; that means no government intervention in the market. Thus, no vouchers. Let the market decide. In reality, the market already has decided who gets what. WE take care of the rest!

It’s interesting to note that you deem it necessary to make negative comments about my character without even knowing me. Since this is where you want to take it, let it be said that my “ignorance” in economics is matched only by yours in education.

Competition: the act of competing; rivalry for supremacy, a prize, etc.; a contest for some prize, honor, or advantage.

Monopoly: exclusive control of a commodity or service in a particular market, or a control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.

Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, 1996.

Based on the above definition of competition, this goes against the collaborative nature of the educational process. We actually believe in fostering a collaborative relationship with our students, colleagues, and community. “Rivalry,” “supremacy,”
“prize,” etc. are antithetical to what we as teachers are trying to accomplish.

As for “monopoly,” the exclusive control of our “commodity” lies not in the City but in the New York State Board of Regents. It is the governing body that sets the standards, tests, and authority to serve our children as a public service entity. They give the schools the authority to operate and they have the power to withdraw the stated authority.

Your adamant insistence that the DOE is a “monopoly” as opposed to a government agency providing a public service is illogical. You do, believe it or not, have every right to have your child educated in a manner of your choosing. If you feel that we’re not good enough for your child, take your child to Dalton, Horace Mann, Spence, or Trinity and may God bless you and your child. You, however, do not have the right to take our tax dollars and divert them where you want to. Our tax dollars belong in the NYC school system and we want to see every dollar well-spent. That’s my obligation as a teacher, parent, and taxpayer. We can make the administration of any school accountable; we can do precious little to a private entity except stop patronizing it.

You asked me which school I would prefer to send my child. The answer is one in which I agree with the pedogogical philosophy of the institution. A free market system does not mean that things are free for you. If you don’t like what you see in a school, do something to fix it! In other words, WE OWN THIS MONOPOLY. It’s apparent that you obfuscate the issues with your obsessive and manic insistence in privatization. This leads me to my final comment: why are you posting in a UFT blog?

We are all teachers here discussing educational issues in our schools. We work hard to make a difference to the kids in our schools. To date, you have offered nothing constructive except to condemn the so-called “monopoly.” How about offering real solutions that we can use in our schools TODAY?