Interesting question.

To me welfare has never been remotely well designed. It never worked as intended and scrapping it altogether is the fastest way to correct the problem. And while it is only a single study, there is some evidence that the NIT would actually work as opposed to years of failure of existing welfare programs.

Public education has mostly worked throughout its history. The basic design is fundamentally sound, but is steadily being eroded by a variety of factors.

Most who advocate sending tax dollars to parents are those who are convinced that private schools are cheaper (they aren't) and better (again wrong).

In my community sending tax dollars to the parents would simply result in my writing a check to the local school district reincorporated. In many ways there would be little change.

At first I imagined my district free of State and Federal paperwork generating regulations. But private employers have plenty of paperwork to file. Private schools are subject to most (all?) of the State and Federal educational standards and requirements so I would expect no change in gov't intrusion into education. (Although in SoDak the home schoolers are largely free of standards and requirements.)

In South Dakota public employee unions have no teeth so problems with the public employee unions that are apparently common in large metro areas don't exist here. In fact, the examples of union related problems we see in the press are almost exclusively coming out of NYC. It isn't clear if there is some sort of national crisis or just isolated problems.

In larger urban areas we might see a rise in neighborhood/community school districts, which might address some problems in some districts. I am also fairly certain we'd very quickly see the merging of smaller urban districts to reduce administrative overhead.

In the long-run I see very little benefit from tearing down and rebuilding (privatizing) the public education system.

The risk, however, is considerable. Many of our worst schools exist in areas where parents are largely uninvolved in their children's lives. For many of these parents the gov't check would be cashed and the child would be "home schooled" with the cash going to drugs or consumer electronics.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

RE: welfare design. What is the key flaw? I think there are several, but the main one is the failure to reckon a way to motivate people to improve themselves. Give people a floor and then punish them for getting off of it, and they will stay there. More on this in a moment.

RE: Public education working as designed. I disagree. For ages in America (ever since the first public schools were establised in colonial New England) public school aimed at very simple educational attainments, most notably the ability to read the King James' Bible. Granted, that's no small feat, but it isn't much even in comparison to 18th century intellectual attainment. Public school was always left basic, with a reliance on private schools to provide higher education and college. To return this to our chess thread, Paul Morphy got his adolescent education at a boarding school in Tennessee. In the 1850's that was good enough. This design could not be expanded because of the paucity of talent.

When we tried, after World War II, to graduate everyone from high school, we only succeeded at that by watering down the cirriculum. We found that we had neither the talent to teach the courses nor the talent to take them. Once we embraced equality as our educational value the corrosion of education became not only inevitable, but constant.

So I can't say public schools have been either well-designed nor that they have worked.

RE: private schools being cheaper and better. I subscribe to no such illusions. Nevertheless I think there will be better "education outcomes" to use the eduspeak phrase. I want this idea implemented for two main reasons. First, I want the parents to have greater freedom in education. Pubilc schools cannot specialize enough for each child, nor can a school's administrative system, no matter how well designed, adapt to meet the needs of each student. Let the parents shop around. This will, I think, allow for better "outcomes". Second, I want to eliminate public education as an open running sore on the body politic. For years and years there was a fight here in Arizona over bilingual education vs. English immersion for non-English speakers. Untold dollars were spent in legal and political fights until finally the matter went to the ballot. English immersion won by 70% to 30%. So we went from a program with bilingual education oppressing the majority of parents to English immersion oppressing a minority of parents. That was years ago. Today there occasionally is a report that some teacher is being investigated for not applying English immersion. Now we have a new fight over ethnic studies classes in high schools.

Enough already. Cut the parents a check and let them put their kids in the schools they want. If little Johnny can't read, tough. It won't be the responsiblity of the crown--I mean, the state.

RE: rural districts. I don't imagine there will be much change in rural districts. There, however, the problem is not acute. In the cities it is a catastrophe, even a small city like Tucson.

RE: State and federal education requirements. Simple answer: abolish them. If they meant anything, they would already work. Plainly they don't. Get rid of them.

RE: neighborhood/community schools in cities. I think what you would see is the rise of micro-schools, eight or ten students for one teachers meeting in a private home. That will really cut down the administrative overhead.

RE: recreational drugs and consumer electronics. The same argument is made for food stamps. "If we give poor people cash they will blow it on drugs, liquor, cigarettes, and lottery tickets." Well, that's their decision. The more we baby these people, the more infantile will be their actions. Let them feel the cold air of reality--Friedman's plan for the NIT was to only provide about 80% of the poverty line, thus to give the recipients motive to improve themselves. I suspect the number that will neglect or abuse their children will be small, small enough that we could use law enforcement to address the problem. This as opposed to the schools in places like New York City or Los Angeles, where all the children are neglected or abused.

Also, by breaking up the huge public schools with their industrial ethos we will put an end to the breeding grounds for gangs and teenage pregnancy.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/member/magazine/how-bush-helped-spark-the-tea-party-20101111?page=1

A very thoughtful essay that exposes Bush as the phony he was and is.

Too true. I think this would happen even in some middle-class areas as well. Having education dollars simply given to parents is an outrageously bad proposal. It is much worse than the new health law. Obama's plan is simply innocuous and really won't cause that much harm. It won't do much good either though.

"Home schooling" is a crock. In an ideal world, it would just be illegal, like it is in Germany. (Obviously, there'd be a hardship exemption. For example, if a child gets cancer and has his parents tutor him in between rounds of chemo, but apart from extreme examples like this....)

The sad fact is that most parents are not qualified to educate there own children.

Makes you wonder even more about the road not taken re: the recount for presidency. Harry Turtledove could probably write one of his alternate history series around just that single event.

In the following commentary article from the Canada Free Press website, Joan Swirsky gives us many reasons as to just why that, in her personal and journalistic opinion, Barack Obama will NOT try for re-election as President of the United States of America in 2012.

This is some very interesting and informative reading: -- "Obama Won't Run...His Work Is Done"


Chess Fan

She's wrong. Obama will run and win. I will vote for him.

What reasons did she give for thinking otherwise?

You think I read the article?

Sorry, I guess that was silly of me.