No, I’m not.

I would still ask whether the hypothetical Aboriginal student in rural SA will have the ‘choice’ that a child in Toorak would have under any voucher system. Unless we stop the Toorak kid from paying the huge fees at their ‘local’ school, then where does equitable education lie?

Does parental choice lead to better outcomes? The results are very borderline. http://cep.lse.ac.uk/centrepiece/v11i3/gibbons_machin_silva.pdf

You talk about de-centralisation - this is not the same thing at all, and requires neither vouchers, nor a privatised education system. This can be achieved by removing the raft of regulations from schools (especially government schools, and especially those accountability requirements initiated by the Howard government - flags anyone?) and allowing school leaders to contextualise their school for the children that do attend. Yes to parental input into schools, no to a system that maintains the priveleged position of the upper middle class.

Why would decreased funding result in higher admin costs? Aren’t the increased admin costs likely to be associated with vouchers because instead of having to administer one source of funding they now have to process lots and lots of vouchers?

“Declining enrolment and a comparative lack of community involvement in the school”

Is it due to a decline in community involvement or is the community involvement transferred from previous areas to now being involved in the committees?

Government schools do not treat kids or parents as ‘a number’ - they are caring and responsive organisations with caring and hard working individuals in them. But I am aware that many non-government schools treat kids as a source of income, and the school as a business.

I think that is a bit of a generalization. I’m not saying it isn’t true. But I must reiterate that I believe that schools private and public treat you as a number. This is part of the mass-based architecture of the state as originating in the 19th century. Yes private schools do treat you as a source of income. If you believe that I’m trumpeting on behalf of private schools please see my comment at #77 for a clarification. Also I’m hardly a ‘Libertarian Warrior’ one who regards himself as such referred to me as a “commie sonofabitch with the hippie dope smoking parents” just this morning. Hilariously inaccurate: my parents are not dope-smokers.
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Some of the individuals in schools are caring and hard-working. Some are not. This is my experience across a total of 9 different systems of education. My view is not to return to a 19th century laissez-faire approach to education but to go forward. I believe we have a range of technologies and knowledge that we do not apply. I’m not advocating a voucher system. I’m interested in it.
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Looking at your link it’s important to note the good and the bad and to make a proper account of both. Yes?
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There were gains reprted. These were:

New partnerships between boards of trustees and school professionals were usually working well and benefiting students.
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Boards were becoming more representative of parents. Women made up 52% of the members. For the first time, women were as likely as men to chair their board.
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Parent satisfaction remained high at around 80%, the same level as before the reforms.
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Those who worked for schools took enjoyment and pride in their work.
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This appeared to override the burden of higher workloads.
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There was a strong interest in continuing professional development and a growing focus on integrated school development

However there were drawbacks as you pointed out however you didn’t point out the reasons. These were:

- falling rolls (when primary rolls were generally rising)
- additional administrative costs
- fewer voluntary resources to draw on.

Now the second of these reasons is not detailed but I suspect that that has something to do with govt decline in funding per student over the same period. This is not inherently a part of a voucher system. I believe that Australia has suffered from the same malaise. This is a seperate issue. The voucher system is about how public money is spent. Not about how much public money is spent.
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The other two seem to stem from a social malaise. Declining enrolment and a comparative lack of community involvement in the school. Naturally a voucher sytem in which parents and community participation is essential to success will be detrimental to any school in which this does not happen. However even under a centralized system this will also be detrimental. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a problem. Obviously it is.
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Elsewhere the report notes that:

Competition increased markedly. In 1999 31% of principals felt their school was competing with others, up from 21% in 1996.

More parental choice led to increased ethnic and socio-economic polarisation, in primary as well as secondary schools. Māori parents were less likely than Pākehā parents to get their first choice of school for their child.

Interesting. You have, for reasons not stated, a situation where Maori kids are more likely to be alienated from the system less likely to enrol and with families less likely to get involved. If we consider low incomes as a factor I’d say that low income possibly equals longer working hours and therefore less time to get involved. There is obviously however some kind of alienation. But considering the satisfactions with the system amongst non-Maoris is it worthwhile trashing the whole thing? Or is it better to address the specific reason why the Maoris are disadvantaged?
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Don’t know.
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One thing however that does come into high relief is that if you’re less scholastically successful you may not get first preference at school leading to even less scholastic success: a negative feedback loop. Undesirable evidentally.
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But what is also evident is that the decentralized system of schooling where local communities have more say in the way their school runs seems to be satisfying. Now is it possible to consider policy approaches to this issue without recourse to secular theology? Can we instead look upon it as building blocks akin to Lego. Ask ourselves the following:
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What advantages and disadvantages are there in a decentralizing aspects of education systems? Can we gain the former and eliminate the latter? What role does competition play (if any)? Are there alternatives to the voucher system/status quo dichotomy?

An evaluation of the effect of school choice in New Zealand by the New Zealand Council for Education Research (http://www.nzcer.org.nz/default.php?products_id=133) found that “Schools in low socio-economic areas and with high Māori enrolment were likely to have gained least from the reforms, and may even have gone backwards.”

Governemnt schools do not treat kids or parents as ‘a number’ - they are caring and responsive organisations with caring and hard working individuals in them. But I am aware that many non-government schools treat kids as a source of income, and the school as a business.

Currently kids who are expelled for poor behaviour from public schools have nowhere else to go execept another public school. If we created a system for these kids which actually dealt with their problems, with a view to re-integrating them with mainstream schools, it could help the perception that ‘dangerous’ kids are being left in ‘normal’ schools.

Of course, there would be issues with the potential for these schools to be heavily stigmatised, which would be difficult to manage, and could mark out kids who have attended these schools as ‘problem children’ for a while…? Tricky.

I think this is, in fact, the answer, if by ’semi-selective’ we mean making learning more flexible and allowing students to move ahead in areas of learning where they are strong. This way the needs of so-called ‘gifted’ students are acknowledged and addressed, without moving towards segregation and the neglect of comprehensive schools.

I don’t agree about the ‘private lite’ option, if simply because I don’t think selective schools necessarily always serve people who could attend private schools if they wanted to. There is certainly some overlap, though.

The bind that most of us who support public education find ourselves in is that while in many ways we oppose the philosophical basis of selective schools, we also have to acknowledge that they have helped to stem the flow of students to private schools while simultaneously reducing the viability of comprehensive schools that should form the basis of public eduction.

Since we’re into anecdotes, in a previous lifetime I used to be a teacher at a non-selective high school, which was slowly dying through falling enrollments, low staff moral, proximity to private and selective schools etc etc.
After I left teaching, the school became selective, and now has rising enrolments, an influx of new staff, a majority of high achieving Asian students, and a positive culture. The incompetent middle managers remain of course, but that’s pretty common in any school, any occupation, and can generally be ignored by those actually doing the work.

The point is that it is the surrounding, non-selective schools that have suffered. Short of making every public school selective or semi-selective, I don’t know what the answer is. Certainly not vouchers.
Maybe economic imperatives will help sort it out as many have suggested.

Made for an excellent demographic mix, and a good education.

I understand there was some physical bullying, but I never witnessed it. Being teenage girls, there was some pyschological bullying. As a “smart kid” I was teased as being “a square”. By year eight I had my response down pat “what? you’re teasing me because I’m smarter than you? gee, I’m so insulted”. Worked a treat.

My school was not especially focused on academic outcomes, but our entire year twelve passed the VCE, and 15% achieved scores in the 90s, so we did okay. For the price to our parents, versus those who sent their kids to the local private schools, I think we got a better deal.

Well, my argument, which is based on anecdotal evidence (although not just from my own time at school, also from talking to other teachers and students as somebody involved in education), is not so much that bullying wasn’t an issue, but that physical violence at selective schools was (is?) virtually non-existent. I don’t know of many comprehensive students or teachers who have had the same experience.

In general, I support the move to integrating vertical curriculum into all schools and shifting away from the selective system in NSW. We have to blur the age cohort/ selected cohort approaches, and serve students according to their needs. I think the systems in other states, which function along different lines, could be quite instructive on this front. Also, there are already a number of very large senior colleges in Sydney that offer a broad range of options for students, so there is already a shift away from specialisation in some parts of the system.

But, if I were asked to give advice personally on how to handle the system as it stands in NSW, I would suggest a selective school for the academically inclined because a student will have opportunities to extend themselves that aren’t necessarily going to be available at a local comprehensive school. In specific schools, and depending on the principal and faculty, this may not be the case, but system-wide selective schools are where you go if you can’t afford a private school but you want to go to uni.

Yeah right, for “objective” read “subjective”. And yet strangely enough, my highest secondary school test scores were always in English Compredimension.

My own highly objective observations about school are:
A) pretty much about all what I learnt there which I’ve found valuable since was never on the official curriculum;
B) aside from the odd totally psychopathic exception, bullies are actually rather easily manipulated;
C) you have much more fun playing co-ed court sports rather than single-sex team sports;
D) get on the end of year School Concert organising committee. It’s amazing who comes out of the woodwork to surreptitiously audition for a moment in the limelight; and
E) acquire evidence of your Form Master, who was also the school’s head science teacher, having carnal relations with some of his charges. Which has no provable connection with my last year in school where I got a A- in Biology while only attending around a quarter of the classes.

But I was a dab hand though at dissecting toads and hacking bunsen burners into startling explosions (condoms were the secret ingredient for the latter trick) - some self-taught school skills I’ve carried over into the blogosphere.

Also I was the school go-to-guy on how get the wording right on forged sick leave, excuse and permission slips. The signature forging stuff was outsourced.

Then I got my hands on the school office cyclostyle machine. cyclstyle machne. yclosty achine. yclost mhine. clos ine. c h i…

And why yes “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is still one of my favourite films.

A good school may or not teach you much but it should be a place where you learn a lot. Some of that may be also what your parents learnt. Hopefully a lot of it won’t be what they were taught.