"The Lottery" Film
Click arrow above to watch the trailer, and from yesterday's WSJ, an interview with the 27-year-old filmmaker, "Storming the School Barricades": A new documentary that could change the national debate about public education."
CARPE DIEM
Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Click arrow above to watch the trailer, and from yesterday's WSJ, an interview with the 27-year-old filmmaker, "Storming the School Barricades": A new documentary that could change the national debate about public education."
About Me
- Name: Mark J. Perry
- Location: Washington, D.C., United States
Dr. Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University near Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. In addition to a faculty appointment at the University of Michigan-Flint, Perry is also a visiting scholar at The American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C.
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7 Comments:
Whenever you hear the teachers union say: "It's for the children", they really mean "It's for us at the expense of the children."
I don't agree that schools are solely to blame for poorly educated kids. I also don't believe the teacher's unions are solely to blame either.
However, I would agree that the unions are not part of the solution.
Clearly, improvements need to be made. And I think a major step toward improvement would be for the unions to stop being a part of the decision process. They have an inherent conflict of interest where they exist to bargain for teachers. The schools exist, however, to educate kids. And the last time I checked, the kids had no union.
Universal educational by no means is universal access to “education”. Universal education suffers from the same problem of socialized/universal medicine: universal coverage by no means is universal access to health-care.
The problem lies in the universal/socialized aspect of education. The universal/socialized answer to education has long been more and more government and more and more spending. The problem is: if markets fail, so do governments fail.
As time has passed, the universal/socialized education system, like any other socialized monopoly organization, has taken on a very centrally planned aspect, a work force that becomes tenured government employees, an administration that acts as “the fourth branch of government”, and funding increasing at an increasing rate with output quality decreasing at an increasing rate.
The government, and consequently the universal/socialized educational monopoly, acts as the “transfer agent” of the transfer payment from the private sector to the public sector (education). The transfer payment becomes an entitlement for universal/socialized education. However the “transfer agent”, over time, begins to view the entitlement transfer payment as an entitlement to the transfer agent itself.
In other words, the entitlement transfer agent begins to view the flow of transfer payments as a flow that the transfer agent itself has a claim upon that leads to a entitlement mentality regarding the transfer payment. That is, the transfer payment represents an entitlement to education. The transfer agent itself then makes a claim of its own regarding entitlements that the transfer agent itself demands. The entitlement transfer payment flow then begets exogenous entitlement claims by the transfer agent.
Hence as more and more money is spent on education, this additional entitlement spending does not reach “education”, rather the additional money is sent to fund a second set of entitlements that are for the benefit of the participants, organization, employees of the “transfer agent”.
The entitlements of the transfer agent begin to grow larger and larger and begin to morph into unfunded entitlements (e.g. public employee pensions), wages above market level, expansive benefits such as Cadillac health-care plans, expansive vacation time, etc., etc.. Hence the “need” for more spending is really the need for more funding of entitlements for the transfer agent with a trickle reaching the ultimate recipient “education”.
See also "Waiting for Superman", another movie about the charter and voucher system. It's due out this fall. Rave reviews. We need some specifics on release of "The Lottery". The trailer says "Spring 2010" which is already passed.
"The Lottery" news story - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marshall-fine/charter-schools-public-ed_b_602550.html
Limited release due this Friday.
Charter schools can often offer a better education. You will notice the presence of men in the trailer. The problem is that an involved male in the child's life is almost completely NOT the case. The lack of commitment by males in the life a child results in a chaotic life for the child that even a charter school can't overcome.
Someone's getting a kickback for making all these documentaries about charter schools. Let's be truthful about why regular public schools are failing and why charter schools seem "better":
1. Public schools must accept every student, regardless of their attitude towards school, their behavior, and academic abilities. Charter schools pick and choose, through that "lottery," who they accept. Charter schools make parents and students sign behavior contracts so that should a student misbehave, BYE BYE - back to the regular public school. Public schools don't get to do that. They're stuck with rotten apples and teachers can't teach under those conditions.
2. If a student is looking to attend a charter school, it means there's an active parent in the background who CARES about their child's education. Student success is based on teacher effectiveness and home support. Not every student in the public school system has a home support system. But take a look at students in charter schools - they've got active parents. Not surprisingly, those students do very well.
As you can see, it has nothing to do with teacher effectiveness or even money (initially). It has EVERYTHING to do with being able to root out the "disruptive seeds" and choose family supported students who will ultimately succeed and make the charter school look good. This means more funding, more money, which equals better resources and better teachers. The achievement gap isn't closing...the rich get richer (those CEOs who run the charter schools) and the poor get poorer (poorly funded inner city school districts). Supporting a charter school continues that divide.
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