Public Schools - Bad for American Students?

[Relambrien]

I was browsing YouTube the other day and found a video of an episode of 20/20 titled "Stupid in America - How we Cheat our Kids." You can see it for yourself here. Yes, it's over a year old, but the principles still apply.

For those who don't wish to spend 40 minutes watching the video, here's a summary of it. I can't offer the evidence these claims are based on in this summary, though. You'll have to watch the video to see.

Public schooling in America is in shambles. Our high schoolers are doing extremely poorly on international tests compared to other countries, and our children aren't learning. Teachers and schools say they need more money, but that isn't the case. For instance, Belgium spends much less money per student than America (it's almost $10,000 in America, much less in Belgium) and they beat American kids into the ground on an international test. The Americans got an average score in the forty percent range, whereas the Belgians got an average score in the seventies.

Why is this? The theory is that because state-run public schooling is a monopoly, there is little incentive to encourage excellent teachers or fire poorly-performing teachers. Besides that, teachers' unions are powerful enough to make it nearly impossible to fire a teacher under any circumstances; one teacher who admitted to having inappropriate sexual conversations with one of his students took years to fire, all of which he was paid for.

Instead of spending money on the schools, perhaps money should be tied to each individual student, with vouchers. This means the amount of money a school receives is entirely dependent on the number of students who attend it. Parents will want to send their children to better schools (which they can afford with these vouchers), so the better schools will have more students, resulting in more money. This eliminates the current monopoly aspect, where based on your residence, your child has to go to a specific school unless you pay another, private school.

Charter schools are another method to avoid being shackled to one school, as they are legally considered "public schools" (and so they do not charge tuition) but do not have nearly as many restrictions as public schools do. As a result, however, they are often given less benefits from the state and other groups.

That's about everything of importance that comes to mind from that 20/20 episode. Personally, I agree with most of what it states. Due to teachers' unions and schooling based on residence, there is little incentive for a school and its teachers to perform well. The school will still receive its money since students have to go there, and teachers will be able to keep their jobs regardless of how horrible they are due to the power of their unions.

However, by introducing something called "competition" into the school system, nothing is guaranteed. This is the essence of capitalism. If parents could freely choose which school they want their students to attend, and could pay for it by attaching money to each student instead of the school, then the school would have to perform well in order to receive students. And the school will only receive money based on the students that go there, since the money is "tied" to the students themselves. Just like in any other industry, in order to get someone to buy your product, you have to make it better than the competition.

Essentially, it goes like this. Schools are paid based on the number of students they have. In order to get more students, the school has to become more appealing. In order to become more appealing, the school has to be better than other schools in the area. So by the chain rule of logic, schools are paid based on how good they are in comparison to other schools in the area.

What's everyone's opinion on the current public school system? If you agree that it needs massive reforms, then what would you suggest? If you disagree, please state why.