Low quality can be the way a public good is under provisioned. However, schools are not public goods. They're what's known as a "club good", because they are excludable.
I'd argue they're pretty rivalrous too. Class size really does make a difference
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I think that's debatable, within certain class size ranges, but then education would just be a normal good.
Similar to your point about imperfect public goods, it's probably better to say that schools are like a club good.
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I don't think class size matters here,but the quality of education kids receive matters. In private schools for a teacher to keep his or her job,kids should perform well,but in public schools!?whether they perform well or not,teachers will still get their pay.
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That's true but not really pertinent to whether it's rivalrous or not.
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Public education is better than no education.
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31 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 23 Jul
No education is not really a thing. Humans are always learning no matter what, especially children. It just might not be what society or the government consider proper things to learn.
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That's not particularly clear from the available evidence. For that to be true, government schools would have to be producing about $20k in value per student per year. It's often hard to find any positive effect of government schooling, much less $20k worth.
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Isnt the 20k an investment for the future? Would you rather have a bunch of adults that arent educated? Wouldnt that bring even more of a social rift into our society?
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20k per student is a contribution for the teachers union pension
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I don't think most people retain any significant amount of knowledge from government school. You can basically see that in how kids who are unschooled often outperform kids who went to government school.
We judge investments on their return. If people don't measurably advance their knowledge because of government schooling, then it's an investment with a terrible return. For $20k you could pay for many hours of private tutoring. You have to think about what those resources could otherwise do.
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Im not sure. Basic life skills like math and science are somewhat important. Even english.
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If only kids were actually learning those things, beyond what they would learn on their own.
Education is great. School sucks.
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Schools make the education happen. You can rag on public education all you want, but it is needed in our society. Yes, it might be becoming bloated, and may need to be trimmed, but it is still needed.
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Schools are one way to implement education. Homeschooled kids outperform government schooled kids for much lower costs.
You can assert the necessity of government education all you want, but it doesn't make it true. Unless you simply mean the daycare function of schools and the facade of learning are needed to maintain society in its currently degraded form, because then I'd agree with you.
it's not right to waste taxpayer funds
Many students are deficient in math and reading based on their test scores
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You can basically see that in how kids who are unschooled often outperform kids who went to government school.
Unschooled or home schooled?
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Im pretty sure he is talking about homeschooled. Because people that are unschooled rarely succeed in life. I might be wrong, but that was my impression.
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I think so, to, but don't want to assume.
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No, I'm talking about unschooling, which is a semi-specific form of education. To my knowledge they don't do much worse than kids who go to government school. Maybe they rarely succeed at a high level, but that's true of government schooled kids, too, and for vastly greater cost.
Really? like Baltimore and St Louis?
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I am still under the belief that public school is better than no school.
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