🚀 go-pugleaf

In <1iplreINNl0h@uwm.edu> dermer@convex.csd.uwm.edu (Marshall Dermer) writes:


>                       MPS Plan Hires the Wrong Workers

>    What is the single factor that could most enhance the performance of
>    children in the Milwaukee Public Schools?  Our school superintendent,
>    school board, and many Milwaukeans say we must improve facilities.  I
>    say we must improve student motivation.

>...
>    Paying children for learning can provide requisite motivation.  Instead
>    of educating Milwaukeans about the virtues of paying children for
>    learning, however, MPS is educating us about the virtues of paying for
>    buildings.

>    Although other improvements should be made in our public schools, I
>    doubt that there is another, single, practicable approach that could
>    more enhance the quality of education.  Pay for learning promotes
>    relations between work and reward characteristic of responsible adult
>    life.  This work, unlike much adult work, will result in children
>    acquiring new capabilities, values, and perspectives.

>    MPS should have long ago presented a comprehensive plan to enhance
>    student motivation instead of one to construct more buildings. On Feb.
>    16 I will vote against the school facilities plan, because there are
>    far more cost-effective ways to enhance learning.

Indeed there are.  One way that may be even more cost effective than
paying students to learn is introducing greater competition into the
public school system. 

The parochial schools produce better educated children than do the
public schools -- generally without resorting to expensive schemes like
paying children for learning.  Moreover, they do so at a lower cost per
student.  In other words, the parochial schools provide better education
for less money.  Innumerable economists have attributed this difference
to the artificial suppression of competition between public schools. 
Thus a simple way to improve the quality of education provided by the
public schools would be to let each child's parents decide which school
the child will attend, among all the available public schools.  The
government funds would then follow the child to the school of his
parents' choice.  And every public school adminstrator would know that. 
Just as children respond to the presence or absence of monetary rewards,
so will public school administrators: Each WILL do what he has to to
attract students to his school.  That entails finding ways to improve
such things as standardized test scores among students at his school. 
And that entails better teaching. 

Dan Offutt
-- 
Dan Offutt