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How Data Analytics In Education Could Create a New Class of Haves and Have-nots
mattydread23 writes "Every student learns differently. Some educators are starting to use data analytics to figure out how to tailor teaching techniques to individual students, rather than using the 'one size fits all' approach. But Alec Ross, a senior advisor on innovation at the U.S. State Department, worries this would create a new class of haves and have-nots. Speaking at the Schools for Tomorrow conference last week, Ross said, 'A lot of what I see is the ability to productize and commercialize very intensive assessments of individual limits. So what I imagine is parents getting their kids essentially a $30,000 educational checkup where they extract enormous amounts of data about the kinds of learners their children are, the kinds of education deficits they have.'"
I can only the see have and have not scenario when we decide to privatize the extra learning courses for students. If it becomes more A la Carte then analytics can help decide the overall costs for each student to go in a given direction. Ie anyone can be an engineer but it's going to cost more for some than for others to get them to be an engineer.
In other words, the parents that already are able to blow large sums of money on the education of their children will have yet another way to do so in future.
So nothing changes really.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Great, so someone laments the fact that some people may end up more educated than others. Wouldn't it be better if we taught everyone to their potential instead of holding back the more gifted students so everyone is equal? Lowest common denominator is "lowest" for a reason.
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Adapt or perish.
If we spoon-feed kids to meet their respective favored learning styles, how will they "learn to learn" in a world that isn't so accommodating? Yes, for basic skills it makes sense to adapt. For more advanced skills, it makes sense to teach the kids how to learn a variety of ways.
captcha: erasable
All children are capable of being Einstein, Leonardo Da Vinci, Rembrant, and Bill Gates all rolled into one. They just need to try. /not.
There is so much self-loathing out there among people not born gifted. Have some mercy and lower expectations a bit.
It's increasingly becoming the case, especially in the US, that the only real way to make money is to have money. Investment returns compared to work returns have skyrocketed, top marginal tax rates(and particular capital gains) have dropped absurdly, and mobility supporting institutions have been increasingly privatized, disestablished, or defunded.
Due to broken and even anti-democratic electoral processes, I can't actually see that trend reversing normally. It's not revolution-worthy yet, but it couldn't hurt to start planning a guillotine.
Or be born wealthy, that seems to inure you to most of this kind of thing, even if you're a terrible person.
Ve must make sure that no one person can excel above anyone else, no matter what the cost!
You, Citizen, are not allowed to show deviation from the norm. Intelligence is deviation. Non-Conformity is deviation. Beliefs not held by your leaders is deviation.
Carry on (without deviation).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Sounds like government approach. If a $30,000 version did appear, consider the hundreds of much lower priced alternatives which will appear.
So what I imagine is parents getting their kids essentially a $30,000 educational checkup where they extract enormous amounts of data about the kinds of learners their children are, the kinds of education deficits they have.'"
What the hell costs $30k? And if it can be done cost effectively, why not do it in public schools?
Hmmm...while going through college it became clear to me that I would be better off in the long run if I spent time learning how to learn from other teaching techniques. Even if they did cater to me learning style in college, I wouldn't expect the rest of the world to cater to my specific learning needs.
I wonder if he was advocating for Common Core at the time. It's an education standard which apparently attempt to create a system of K-12 education where schools are synched up so that a student could transfer across the country near seamlessly. Individual-based teaching, if it should take root on a large scale would screw that system up.
Desparate.
Da derp dee derp da teedly derpee derpee dum. Rated PG-13.
...Is for idiots. This is total US crap as usual, but it always ends up here where people like to claim to be engineers making a good living, but fail to realize they are the greedy ones. They are the haves, the establishment. We all need to be equally poor, come on you greedy bastards.
So?
Hitler ate breakfast! He breathed air too!
So let me get this straight... the "senior advisor on innovation" thinks that data analytics will pinpoint successful systems for an individual, and do so accurately enough that parents would pay $30,000 a piece for it. I think I see the problem.
Data analytics can't predict the future. It can, however, give a good indication of statistical probabilities, such that the average effect over many individuals will be predictable. This is much more suited to evaluating new general techniques, rather than specific curricula. Evaluate a few tens of thousands of students, analyze what worked and what didn't, and try that as a program for everybody. On a widespread basis, you'll get good results.
For individual good results, the old way still works best: Encourage students and teachers to work together to understand each other, and take the time to understand what the student wants or needs to learn effectively. While the teacher can create a good learning environment in the classroom, the parents should continue that at home. If you're looking for a way to ensure your kid has a successful education, $30,000 of specialized data analysis won't help, but an hour of parent-teacher conferences just might. Then take the extra $30,000 and add it to teachers' salaries.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I hear that it's never a good idea to let the rich dump the first chunk of money into something.
My Gawd! We've got to outlaw oatmeal AND respiration immediately! Think of the Children!
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
It is off course good that people finally recognize that pupils are different. For example, dyslectic people often have a good visual insight. So they would learn mathematics much easier if it was brought as Greek mathematics (drawing lines, squares, etc.) instead of as Arabic mathematics (i.e., in formulas). But I never met a mathematics teacher with such an insight.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
Let's just stop teaching all kids, burn the schools down, so everyone has an equal chance to learn the same way. Oh wait, what if the parents are teaching the kids? Let's get rid of the parents as well.
No, it is deeper than that. Some kids lean better using the whole word method â" others by using phonics or some other technique. Figure out what method the kid is better at and the kid can sprint ahead by 1 or 2 grade levels. Pick the wrong method and the kid will lag behind by 1 or 2 grade levels.
I am going to give myself and my sister-in-laws as examples.
When I was in middle school my parents paid for a expensive independent clinic. The examination took a full week, involved multiple specialist. I was diagnosed with dyslexia, dysgraphia, borderline ADD. From that my family and teachers were able to put together a plan. Writing papers were a issue for me but I learned how to compensate â" for example that after writing a paper I need to put it away for at least a day so I can revisit it with fresh eyes. I will never be a natural writer but I have mastered techniques so I am not at a disadvantage. My math and logic skills where high so efforts were made so I could focus on these areas.
My sister-in-law was struggling in high school so the school did some testing over 2 days by a teacher (i.e. no specialized training, no advance degrees) where she was diagnosed as having a generic learning disability. What was that disability? Donâ(TM)t know. What is the best tactics to compensate for that disability? Donâ(TM)t know. She struggled both in high school and college.
There's the minor matter of the cost of the evaluation in the first place. Those with an extra $30K get evaluated and get a tailored education, the rest get a one size fits all education.
Just to put $30K in the perspective of education: it's approximately the cost of one year of tuition private school in my area (Boston), or 1.5 times the public expenditure for a year of public school.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
He is worried that the assessments themselves will be very expensive. It is not the specialized classes that would cost extra, but the assessment that determines which classes to take make be more thorough if you can spend money for private testing. I am not commenting on whether I agree with him, but that is his contention.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
Some people might be smarter than others??? That completely conflicts with the Democratic party ideal of equality for everyone. Either we're going to have to tax people based on how smart they are and use the money in a futile attempt to increase the ratings of the lowest scorers, or we may have to go to more invasive means to lower the scores of those who are unfairly smarter.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
But Alec Ross, a senior advisor on innovation at the U.S. State Department, worries this would create a new class of haves and have-nots.
Please fire this advisor without delay. He apparently doesn't understand process optimization. This is nothing new; Educators have been aware for decades that everyone has their own learning style, and therefore curriculum is tailored to try and use as many of those methods as possible for mass education. However, it is highly inefficient -- someone who learns best from hands-on is sitting bored out of their skull while the teacher asks everyone to copy what's on the blackboard into their notebooks to help the people who learn best by doing that. And both groups are bored to tears during the Q&A where you invariably get those two people that need to talk their way through the material to understand it.
By tailoring curriculum individually and/or grouping students by learning style, the teacher wastes less time, the students remain more engaged and retain more of the material, and the overall program costs go down as the grouped students are able to learn faster. It's a dirty little secret that most of public education is busywork... homework doesn't work for many people, but because it helps "enough" people, everyone gets it.
So you have students being forced to learn in a way that is unnatural and awkward -- it's like forcing a left handed person to write right handed. Schools do this, and it causes neurosis and MRI scans of these people's brains a few years after being forced to use the wrong hand shows clear and unique changes to their brain. Now imagine we're doing that to everyone and it quickly becomes clear just how toxic our public education system is with its "one size fits all" approach.
Customized curriculum is a win for everyone. There are no losers in this; Everyone has a learning style, they're well documented, and we know what the percentages of each in the general population they exist in. Schools can plan for this. It's all statistics... and the larger the school, the more efficient it becomes, unlike the current model. Everyone talks about ratios of teachers to students, but that's the wrong model. We need to be thinking of ratios of types of students.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
For each pupil you've got $10,000 to service capital debt, maintain facilities, procure and maintain learning tools and resources, provide transportation, and hire educators and management. Direct contact with the instructor shall not be less than 1000 hours per year.
Go - tell me how you create and implement a personalized learning plan and provide full-time, tailored individual instruction for every student. You've got almost $10/hour to do it, I'm sure you can make it work.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Just like private universities can offer a lower priced education than public universities.
The author's arguing against finding effective teaching models for individual students because there's a cost involved in doing so. Yes, there's always a cost for new technologies. Over time, we find efficient ways to deliver technology and the cost comes down.
There's no set cost currently for applying data analytics in education anyway; if costs end up low, the author's point may be altogether moot.
That's one expensive assessment. I can't imagine that an educational assessment would cost $30,000. If they can manage to market that, good for them.
Here in NY we've given Pearson $4 million to give overly difficult tests to our kids. The result? 30% passing rate. To which the governor threatened to shut down schools who don't raise their scores. (He actually called it a "death penalty for schools.")
The quirk here is that charter schools and private schools are exempt from the testing. So if public schools are closed for not meeting ridiculous standards, more charter schools will be opened. Charter schools are run by businesses and - although they take public money - act more like private schools in that they can decide who attends. If your kids has ANY special needs at all, they can find themselves kicked out or rejected. So you'll wind up with the "haves" (students whose parents can afford private schools or who get into charter schools) and the "have nots" (students with special needs who are herded into the poorly funded remains of the public school system).
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
He is worried that the assessments themselves will be very expensive. It is not the specialized classes that would cost extra, but the assessment that determines which classes to take make be more thorough if you can spend money for private testing. I am not commenting on whether I agree with him, but that is his contention.
He works for one of the few organizations in the world that can legally force those who can perform the evaluation to it free. Not that I advocate that sort of thing, mind you.
Time Bomber the Book coming soon.
The more the stay the same. Using analytics to tailor education isn't new. In th 1950s and 60s, the analytics used were called IQ tests. Kids with high IQs were pushed into math and science, the rest took shop or home ec. Many countries, particularly in SE Asia still do this. So, the only thing that has changed is that today, we have more sophisticated analytics than before.
They don't even have to be all that low. Thousands of dollars per student would be an acceptable expense for a public school system if it meant students could graduate several years earlier than they otherwise would. It makes even more sense when you consider an individuals whole life, since the students who would normally slip through the cracks and end up in jail or on welfare would have a better shot at being accepted into society.
Much of the reason the cost of education goes up is the reaction to government-guaranteed student loans. If banks and others who gave out student loans had to depend on them being paid back in the same way as other loans, they would not be willing to loan huge amounts (especially for classes that don't provide marketable skills) and the colleges would not have raised their tuition to the sky in order to capture those large amounts.
1. The rich will always do better than the poor.
2. You can raise the minimum standards for the poorest, but you can't raise everybody to the maximum standard.
3. If you try to force everybody to the same standard, this necessarily implies pulling some people down.
4. If you try to pull people down, they will resist and you will expend resources fighting the resistance. This reduces the average productive output.
Please note that by "pulling down" I don't mean taxing. This isn't an argument against progressive tax. It's an argument against outlawing tactics that allow the wealthy to get ahead. A moderate program of taxation that aids the poor is quite OK, IMHO. It allows the minimum standard to keep rising as the maximum standard progresses. In some cases, the minimum standard of today ends up exceeding the maximum standard of yesterday. For an example, see today's air-conditioned houses in the projects vs. drafty castles of the middle ages. If they had attempted to take air conditioners away from wealthy people when they were first invented, the poor never would have had them.
I work for a company that does (among other things) online assessments and data analytics. We're all about the data and how we can use that to help teachers help their kids. How is this a bad thing? The more you know about how the kids are doing, the more you can help them. I don't know how they are getting this idea of something equivalent to an expensive full body physical scan that most people cant afford (besides the fact that over time such scans will get cheaper and cheaper...).
-- Senior Software Engineer, Attorney appearance services, locallawyerapp.com.
For heaven's sake:
Lean to spell better kids.
He is worried that the assessments themselves will be very expensive. It is not the specialized classes that would cost extra, but the assessment that determines which classes to take make be more thorough if you can spend money for private testing. I am not commenting on whether I agree with him, but that is his contention.
Yes, and he is worried that there will spring up an entire industry, whose focused on keeping these assessments proprietary, and expensive, when exactly the opposite is called for.
The assessments should be generalized and packaged so that they can be administered by teachers, evaluated by computer, with follow up by counselors.
Perhaps some retraining of school counselors, and teachers, is going to be necessary, but that is far cheaper than $30k evaluation sessions per child.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Forget standardized tests, they don't measure anything meaningful. The metric society should be looking at is of the graduating high school seniors who go on to a college or university, how many graduate with a degree withing five years? And for those who do not go on to college or university, how many are gainfully employed five years out?
If schools are turning out students that can get degrees or keep jobs, then they are a successful school. OTOH, if they aren't able to do that, then they aren't a successful school. There really is no need for another standardized test. Student results will tell us more effectively than any test will.
There was time, when a watercloset was a luxury only available to the rich. Or a personal automobile. Or air-travel. Or a telephone (first wired and then cellular). Or a personal computer...
If government blocks adoption of foo until even the poorest can afford it, we'll never have it at all. Fortunately, with all of the items I listed, the government was not really in a position to block adoption.
Unfortunately, with innovative education methods it is...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I remember in middle school there was a special 'gifted talent' class for the bright kids and a special ed class for the slow kids. I mentally kept track of who was who and as the years went by many of the slow kids went on to excel academically simply because the extra time they needed on the basics was taken and the class was always small so they received a lot individual attention. Many went on to graduate with honors and most went on to college. A lot of the so called gifted kids went on to become academically mediocre and most did not go to college and in some cases dropped out. I assure you it was not a matter of 'they were so smart they were board' - it was a mystery how some of those kids made it into the gifted class in the first place. In fact I later found out that the gifted class was self-learning with no structure at all so they basically learned nothing. Personally, I started college at 16 (didn't finish like an idiot) but was considered by the public school system to be mediocre in all subjects but science.
No opinion here, I'm just saying is all. Make of it what you will.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
The brain at births is not equal in all babies. The home is not equal for the first three years for all babies. After the age of three the outcome is already determined. Those born with ability and nurtured in a really good home will tend to do well and those that have a child that are not so great or an environment that is not so good will tend to fail no matter what. The only known programs that do well with the lesser children involve removal from the home and put in a very advanced learning environment. The parents and living conditions are the issue. Things like inadequate money in the home, parents who are not academic by nature, both parents working, are sufficient to ruin the life of a child. If the child is born with a better mind and nurtured in a better home then it still takes luck to produce an excellent outcome. A baseball to the head, an overwhelming teen romance or experimentation with dope can ruin a child's chances completely. The sad fact is that parents need to get used to the notion that most offspring will have a second or third rate life. We now have many top notch kids whoa re out of college and living at home due to vast economic failures in our society. Everything matters.
Like swimmer dudes with webbed feet super tall basketball dudes, super small jockey dudes, or female dudes (dudettes).
Will they be an tech school / apprenticeship track as in some cases can be that on both sides they are a better fit to learn some skills.
Congratulations on a rebuttal that didn't address my point at all - a performance worthy of a politician.
My wife handles a lot of the data analysis at a UK school. She essentially is there to track students and the schools progress throughout the year against the various national standards, so the school can intervene when something is going wrong.
From a schools point of view, it is primarily about the "value added". A student arrives at the school, with an education achievement history that sets a bar of expectation of achievement. The goal of the school is to improve the grades for the students as they progress and eventually leave the school.
When it is applied well, this approach works. Underachieving students get identified and intervention can take place. Coasting students are also identified and pushed. If you doing well, well than keep it up :) About the only real issue is that the national standards are a arbitrary, and keep getting changed by Michael Gove.
But this data is built up over months and years of internal and external assessments.
Thanks for sharing your insight. Doesn't your own wealthy (by his own admission) black president send his children to an expensive private school rather than subject them to the nation's Capital's public education system?
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The problem is that in the real world, you have to learn based on what is available. Knowledge acquisition is not just about the classroom, but about picking up skills and knowledge in the work-place from multiple resources and people. One needs to learn how to learn in messy and random environments because corporate-land will not spoon-feed you knowledge.
You shouldn't train for battle in the spring in San Diego, but rather in Alaska in the dead of winter, and Death Valley in August because the enemy attacks on their terms, not yours.
Bad teachers and convoluted books are often good preparation for dealing with future dumbass bosses and colleagues and retarded PowerPoint slides, and there will be plenty of them.
Table-ized A.I.
Fuck off, you pathetic SJW turd...
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Test what they know and how they learn? Easy, we know the what they know, perhaps make it exhaustive rather rather than adaptive and let them have all the time they need. Perhaps even include a section with difficult questions and allow library/internet access to measure students ability to research and evaluate information to come up with an answer. Need a learning evaluation for each know type and a way to quantify ability, perhaps attempts/speed. Learning fast and learning correctly are both important at times. Might even aid in detection of hearing. Make it part of our national health plan!
Improving education is bad, because the rich will be able to afford to do it first?
What haven't the rich been able to afford first?
Electrical cars are bad... sturdily constructed houses are bad... medicine is bad....
I think we are going to not do much if all we worry about is that the rich will benefit first.
$30,000 would pay for 600 hours of individual tuition from such a tutor.
What do you think would improve a student's learning outcomes more?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
The solution is still a negative income tax.
I live in a rich bubble where everyone has money, but not a lot of sense. I see kids all the time who suffer enormously because of bad parenting. Those kids have no chance against my kids. They won't learn to think, they won't learn to cope, they will wait for the helicopter to land. Lack of money causes all sorts of issues, but presence of money in no way makes issues go away. It just makes them more expensive.
Nobody was left unemployable by lack of a WC or at the times, air travel, telephone, PC, or car. That remained true until they had been affordable for quite a while. In the case of the telephone, the government did step in, but not to block it but to make sure everyone could get one.
Fortunately, with all of the items I listed, the government was not really in a position to block adoption. Unfortunately, with innovative education methods it is...
Private schools and home schoolers can do pretty much whatever they want, so long as they provide a decent education somewhere in there. Rich parents take advantage of this fact to ensure that their little angel goes to a top-tier prep school rather than a public school.
The government only has the power to adopt a particular technique or tool in public schools, which has everything to do with the fact that they write the checks in public schools. And even then, the local government usually has wide discretion in what they do, so you don't have to convince Congress, you have to convince 7 people at a local school board meeting just down the street from where you live.
So government doesn't prevent a method from being adopted at all. It only prevents a method from being adopted on somebody else's nickel.
I am officially gone from
The infrastructure for plumbing was paid for by the gov't. So where the roads that made cars more than interesting toys. And telephone lines. Most of the research that made the personal computer possible was done on the public dime. And then there's that whole "Internet" thing (please, no Al Gore jokes).
/.ers. If it wasn't, there's be no 'rich' because if everyone was rich the word wouldn't mean anything...
I think the problem we have with the $30,000 bill is that it's so high that the only way it'll ever be more than a toy and a curiosity is if the gov't steps in to fund it, and the rich have a long, long history of getting the gov't to fund their lifestyles and not everyone else's.
Also, let's not underestimate the amount of work that those $30,000 of tests represent. If research is focused on a few rich kids, it's being directed away from somewhere else. Supply siders like to point out that resources are limited until it no longer fits their world view. Then they trot out the old: "Economy's not Zero Sum" and call it a day.
Basically, instead of a vast amount of society's wealth and resources going to make a few rich kid's lives better, I'd like to see the focus on research that benefits the most number of people. Why? Because I'm not rich, and probably never will be. Statistically the same is true for all
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
that's the leftist mentality. Nice troll though. Sorry to come along and smash it with reason and stuff...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Did it ever occur to these "social justice"-obsessed academics and pinheads that the same forces in any market that could potentially lead to "haves and have nots" are the same forces that bring about improvements in customer (ie parent and student) satisfaction, quality, and efficiency? Want more individualized instruction? Want a higher teacher to student ratio? Want teachers who really give a crap about their students? Want some real competition to one-size-fits all state-run schools? Home school, and get out from under the edu-aucracy pyramid and the rent-seeking blowhards at the top who think they know best.
You racist -- breakfast doesn't necessarily mean oatmeal!!!
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
For heaven's sake: Fix the English spelling system.
There, FTFY.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
For heaven's sake: Lean to spell better kids.
How does leaning help you spell? And does it only work in italics?
I do so love Muphry's law.
So for $30K you can discover how you learn, eh? Wonderful. The problem is that this knowledge is useless, because no-one knows how to teach to it anyway. It's like a diagnosis of hypercortisomal pneumocerbrebodoma. We don't know what effects this condition has, and we don't know how to treat it, but we know you have it. Thank you, come again soon.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
More like "can" and "cannots". The question of how to handle the "cannots" doesn't go away just because you refuse to identify them.
Is make politicians take it. When a stupid test like that gets introduced and politicians think it is great and schools should just have to make students magically pass, then they have to put their shit on the line: They must take and pass the test, without reviewing it. Should they fail it they must agree that their high school diploma, and any advanced degrees that followed because of it, are forfeit. If they refuse, they have to STFU.
See if any of them are willing. My bet? Not a one.
I mean if the test really is a good general knowledge test, the kind of thing any high school student should be able to pass, well then clearly a successful adult should have no issue! Of course the problem is they aren't they are overly difficult, do not test subject material and often as not become intelligence tests more or less.
From chopping wood cranking the telephone and radio maybe...to today. Every innovation starts with an elite, either of money or of experimentation. The more attractive ones tend to spread, attracting people money ideas and tending to in these times where so little (besides outrageously expensive NECESSITIES) depends of things which tend to be both physical and scarce. And would you rather the big hats experimented on us po folk?
Whenever did THAT happen on Slashdot?
The state of education is comparable to the door of a demolition-derby car, in that a door ding on this ride is arguably a moot point.
Clearly there are some puzzle pieces missing.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
I get the impression you think that's bad.
Is you one of them there communists?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Given that it could contribute to the creation of an underclass, yes I think it's bad.
As for my economic views, I would be considered somewhat left libertarian.
Where exactly are private universities cheaper than public?
The local city governments paid for their infrastructure. But this is off-topic anyway — even ancient Romans built the viaducts to bring-in water, yet the water-closets made a leap from a rich-only item to mass-use within a generation. Thanks to the power of Capitalism...
Again, local governments (and private companies) built the roads — long before automobiles were even invented. And they were invented in Europe, but it required true Capitalism to make them affordable for the masses.
There were plenty of private telephone lines long before (federal) government decided to give AT&T the ill-devised monopoly (which they had to wrestle back through the courts some decades later). And, unlike with plumbing or roads, telephone wires were entirely privately-owned. For a while there were competing phone-companies (such as "Bell" and "Home") — a grocery store or a hotel would have multiple sets for the patrons to use (for a fee).
Ford-T cost $850 in 2013 which is over $20k in today's dollars. Had there been more people like you back then, the government might've stepped in to fund it, and the price would've remained the same — or climbed up slowly. Fortunately, the US was healthier back then and it did not happen — by the 1920s, the price had fallen to $260 because of increasing efficiencies of assembly line technique and volume.
Yes... If there are only 10 pairs of pants available to 20 people, then 10 people will be without pants, no matter, how you divide them — by race, creed, or by charging high prices. However, if you choose the latter model, charging the high prices will help paying the tailors to sew ten more pairs in short order. And it will encourage one or two tailors to come up with a more efficient method of making them too.
If, instead, you distribute the 10 pairs available by government decree (fixing the prices, of course, to prevent "profiteering"), the shortage of supply will remain for ever.
Darling, whatever you say. Until you can explain, reasonably and without name-calling, the existing fact, that public school education costs four times more than it did in 1962 (inflation-adjusted), with no measurable improvements in quality, your method of paying for public education shall remain as discredited as its results.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
And where are they going to get the stats on *how* to evaluate students, but by running a zillion students through the system?
The way this happens is by enrolling zillions of kids and taking stats. It won't be 30k, it will be free. See Khan Academy for details.
So Khan Academy is free?
Exactly. Rich parents... Because only the rich can afford to both pay for some other kid's public-school education and their own child's private schooling. The public school system does not have real competition because of this — and that is exactly why its cost climbed up four times in fifty years (inflation-adjusted — nominal increase is 25-fold), while the quality is, if anything, only worse.
Being the check-writers is an enormous power. Various rather restrictive and freedom-infringing federal laws begin with ".... receiving federal funds ...". Throughout the (short) history government having this power, it was (ab)used to enforce lower speed-limits ("States receiving federal funds to maintain public highways shall ...."), to coerce registration with "Selective Service", and, of course, quite a few details about schools.
It all seems perfectly fair — after all, if the recipient does not like the strings attached, he can refuse the things, they are attached to, can he not? Except that he often can't — the funds in question have already been confiscated from him (or her, or it) and the only way to benefit from the program is by complying with the additional rules. Or, of course, to forgo the benefits and pay for an alternative in addition. Which is why only the rich can afford it...
In this particular case, if this particular official's opinion prevails — that structuring the schooling based on individual child's (expensive) assessment is "bad", prevails, the check-writing authority (Department of Education?) can issue the same sort of directive, banning public schools "receiving federal funds" from using the program. And yes, they can do that, even if the new assessments themselves are paid for by other means. For example, religious schools already have problems getting public funds even if the actual classes on religion are optional and funded separately.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As a matter of fact, having a PC or a car — and knowing, how to use them — did make the owner more employable, but I see your point: let's keep all children worse educated, or else, heaven forbid, some of them may turn out more employable than others...
Yeah. And thus created the AT&T monopoly on phone service, that had to be broken-up through years of law-suits... Aren't we lucky, they didn't do it to cars, for example, which dropped three-fold in cost on their own instead...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Actually, the monopoly was for other reasons entirely. I was referring to the universal service mandate that required Bell/AT&T to provide service even where it wasn't profitable. You know those places that are still stuck on dial-up? Thy wouldn't have phones at all if not for that intervention.
Before you say something like "too bad, they should move", I'll remind you that if they move, nobody will be growing food anymore.
Having a PC or a car didn't matter at all until somewhat later in the game when they were already getting much cheaper.
One approach would be to make the tailored education universal like they did for phone service.
Yep, I know... And in order to pay for those unprofitable hook-ups, AT&T charged the others extra — because it had the monopoly power to do so. Thus it had no incentive to make services cheaper — no one could legally unseat it. Once again, America is lucky, the same thoughts were not applied to automobiles a few decades earlier — I doubt strongly, the Ford T's prices would've dropped three-fold in 7 years if they were.
You just don't get, how the markets work, do you? As some of them moved, food prices would've gone up, the incomes of the remaining farmers would've risen and they'd gradually become able to afford the phone service.
Better yet, some enterprising soul — without the shackled of AT&T's government-provided monopoly — would've figured out, how to make radio-based telephones. All the technology was already there — and widely used even before World War II. They didn't have to be portable radiophones (like cellphones today), no. But there was no need to install and maintain an actual copper wire either.
If we do that, it will forever remain costly and costlier — like the rest of public schools (four-fold increase in per-pupil annual costs since 1962!), health-care, or college education (where government-backed loans remove any incentive to lower costs), rather than ever cheaper (and better) like the aforementioned waterclosets, cars, or cellphones.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
As some of them moved, food prices would've gone up, the incomes of the remaining farmers would've risen and they'd gradually become able to afford the phone service.
And if that meant a bunch of people starving in the mean while, I say fuck'em if they can't take a joke.
But on a more serious side, you figure it's better to extract a not-so universal service fee from the population (even the population that has no phone) in the form of higher food costs than in the form of a small fee tacked on to the phone bill?
I know very well how the market works and doesn't work. Yes, I said the ultimate blasphemy and I meant it. The market doesn't always work. Hammers are quite useful, but the world is not composed entirely of nails.
Riddle me this. Private schools have been perfectly legal since forever. They have always been permitted to compete against the public schools. In some places parents have the option of applying all of the money that would have gone to the public school for their children and applying it to a private school instead.
So why hasn't that created an embarrassment of surplus funds? Why haven't those states seen a jump in standardized test scores? Where are all these kids who don't know about evolution coming from?
I find it amusing you claim health care. Laughable even. Did you know that in the U.S. we spend twice as much per-capita on health care as the UK with it's socialized medicine? We spend more than any country in the world, but we are only ranked 16th on measures of outcome. And meanwhile, other than a few who receive government based health insurance (medicare/medicaid) or veterans who use the VA system, healthcare in the U.S. has always been private and is to this day (Since the ACA mandates haven't kicked in yet).
The fact that you threw healthcare into the mix with public schools suggests that you haven't given this much real thought.
As a matter of fact, having a PC or a car — and knowing, how to use them — did make the owner more employable, but I see your point: let's keep all children worse educated, or else, heaven forbid, some of them may turn out more employable than others...
This is called "Equality of Outcome", and is the primary theology of the liberal left. You will *never* be able to convince sjames that it's wrong. It's nearly impossible to change a person's religion.