Incentive always does.
The United States justifiably celebrates its pluralism. The mandate to find unity in diversity—e pluribus unum—is predicated not on the premise that all peculiarities of creed or color must be washed away; instead, it insists that all such cultural and social differences must be respected.
e pluribus unum does not insist that all cultures must be respected.
Why in the world would we want to respect cultures that are so bad that they drove their citizens to seek a different culture in a far away land. His statement is pure intellectual nonsense.
I read articles like this and I always think that the system we have regarding school funding in Australia is a pretty good one.
Private schools receive a level of funding per student based on the average income level of parents (in actual fact, it’s based on the probable income given where the parents live for privacy reasons, but overall it probably works out pretty close). The wealthier the parents, the less the funding - but it’s always at least a couple of thousands per child per year, and for private schools serving less well off families, it’s considerably more.
But it’s still significantly less than government schools get per student.
Overall, on average, each child in a government school gets about $10,000 a year. Each child in a private school gets about $5,000 a year averaged out.
And remember private schools serving poorer communities get more and those serving the well off get less.
So a private school serving a poorer community might be getting $7,000 a year in government funding. While a wealthy school (and I teach in one so I should declare an interest) might get $2,000 or so.
What does this do?
Well, the most important thing it does is make cheap private schools viable. There are a few private high schools in Australia that have fees as low as about $1,000 a year, and quite a few with fees below $3,000. That’s a lot of money, but it’s achieveable by a lot of families. And that makes genuine school choice much more possible for far more families than if the funding wasn’t there - $1,000-$3,000 in fees +$7,000 in government funding giving $8,000-$10,000 a year per kid. A school can be run for that quite effectively.
And this means state schools - government schools - do have to lift their game and compete. Because if they don’t, they will lose students. Sure, there are some people who’ll never go private, and some who never can - but enough can that schools do have to take account of it.
It also makes it easier for interested groups to start their own schools. Religious groups, schools with particular ideas on teaching philosophy (Montessori, etc). People can get together and realistically start a school to serve their needs as a group. You’re not stuck with the state schools.
33% of Australian children are in non-government schools. A third. By the time you get to the last two years of school - the most critical in terms of a students future options - it’s 40%.
Genuine choice.
And here’s the best part. We’ve managed to convince the socialists it’s a good thing. Why?
Because when private school kids take $5,000 of government money and state school kids take $10,000, every single kid at a private school is saving the government $5,000. Money that can be put into the state schools to make sure that they are good enough that private education is a choice, not a necessity.
Years ago, during a funding dispute, the Bishop of Goulburn told Catholic families to pull their kids out of the Catholic schools and enrol them in the local state schools. Governments got the message.
Everybody who pays taxes helps pay for schools. Our system means that those of us who send our kids to private schools get some direct benefit out of that money.
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