Reply to what do you say to neighbors about why you are choosing private vs the local public?

Forum Index » Private & Independent Schools

Reply to "what do you say to neighbors about why you are choosing private vs the local public?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]On this subject of whether someone sending their kid to private school helps/hurts the public school system, perhaps the issues become more transparent if we use a different hypothetical example rather than schools.  It's often difficult to think the issue through clearly when the subject is schools, because people are so emotionally invested in one model or the other.

But pretend we weren't talking schools here, but something like food or cars.  The government requires everyone to pay taxes and they all get the same  standard issue car.  At one point a bunch of citizens say, "We don't want this crummy car," and state that they are willing to pay extra to buy their own car from a private company even though they're still paying taxes to support the public car system. These citizens then stop sending orders to the government for their cars.

The first-order effects here are obvious.  The government loses no revenue from these citizens' decisions, but is relieved from having to fulfill as many orders for cars.  So a number of options arise; perhaps the government can invest more resources per car in the cars they make, and thereby improve them. Or they can give everyone a break on their taxes, reducing the cost per car for those still buying from the government (a third option, just running higher profits with the savings would exist if we weren't talking about the public sector).

The first-order effects of these citizens' choice to buy their cars privately are clearly beneficial for the purchasers of government cars.  And they're clearly beneficial for those workers who make the cars, as now they have additional employment options, creating more competition for their services.

Now, someone could argue that there will be negative second-order effects from this dynamic; those who simply believe that all car production should be done through the government will be concerned, and some more would be concerned if the government reacted by cutting taxes and reducing resources to its public car industry rather than by improving public car quality.

But these are second-order effects, and they don't change the fact that the first-order effects, both for the purchasers of the cars and for those who work on the cars, are positive.  And there's absolutely no empirical reason to believe that any cut backs in public spending on cars would exceed the amount of savings that comes from no longer having to send public-made cars to those citizens who chose voluntarily not to accept them even though they paid for them.  The private car purchasers are basically giving the government an additional subsidy through their choice, and it would be illogical that this would actually be a net minus for the public system.

In any case, the first-order effect of people voluntarily buying private services while still paying taxes to support public ones is unequivocally positive for those who receive the public services.  One argue about the extent to which negative second-order effects cut into this, but the first-order effect is clearly positive.  Similarly, the line that somehow people sending their kids to private school "hurts" the public school system focuses on the second-order effects while ignoring that the first-order effects are positive and have to be at least of greater magnitude (unless one believes paradoxically that providing an additional net subsidy to the government, as private school parents are doing, reduces its ability to provide a service).  It's basically a line that has become popular for political reasons, but contradicts the economics of the underlying transactions.[/quote]

This is all very interesting & I like the way you are thinking, but I don't think your analogy is completely apt, because school services are not just a consumer retail good like food or cars.  School services involve the participation of particular consumers -- students and their parents -- whose characteristics have a big influence on the actual service that ends up delivered to them and other consumers.  For example, the SES, academic abilities and language needs of the students have a big effect on the kind of education that can and is delivered, and there are many factors about parents that affect whether they are likely to be very involved in the schools, lobby for additional funding for schools, provide volunteer and financial support that has positive effects on the school, etc.  So in that way I don't think it's fair to assume it's a net good for the schools to have a lot of people opting out, even if there may be an immediate financial gain.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics