The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. – F.A. Hayek
Posted in Education, Voluntary Society on Sep 3rd, 2010
I am a huge fan of the series Friday Night Lights. We just finished watching the past season and an interesting storyline emerged in the final weeks of the season. The quick story is that Tami Taylor, the principal of the local public high school (West Dillon) was put on administrative leave (effectively fired) because [...]
Posted in Education, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Aug 31st, 2010
Briefly consider a mantra of the progressive left: “that if people had to provide for the education of their own children, many children would go without schooling.” Regular readers know that the history of education in this country certainly does not bare this idea out. But what of today? We seriously cannot run any policy [...]
Posted in Education on Aug 17th, 2010
And we charge like we are #1! And per usual, my alma mater is #2 behind the evil empire.
Posted in Education on Jul 31st, 2010
The following chart shows the average total expenditures for the 697 government school districts in New York State.
Posted in Education on Jul 6th, 2010
Nor is union representation about representing their members. This on the Milwaukee Teachers Union:
The average pay for a Milwaukee school teacher is $56,000, which is hardly excessive. Benefits are another matter. According to a new study by the MacIver Institute, a state think tank, the cost of health and pension benefits now exceeds $40,000 a [...]
Posted in Education on Jun 21st, 2010
In my local school district there is a total population of 33,000 people. The school employs 569 “professional” staff and 596 “Support” Staff.
The school district therefore employs 1,165 people – 51% of whom are support staff (i.e. not involved in the education of the children). Furthermore, notice that they call non-support staff, “Professional” which means [...]
Posted in Education, Paternalism, You Can't Have it Both Ways on Jun 16th, 2010
I do not believe that it is possible to be both a paternalist (libertarian or otherwise) and also be a strong advocate of government schooling.
The argument that Thaler and Sunstein make in their book Nudge is that many individuals make bad decisions when left to their own devices because they are short-sighted, ill-informed, undisciplined, or [...]
Posted in Education on Jun 14th, 2010
I’d like to see data on the cost of constructing school facilities when undertaken by public schools versus private schools. Given the record of cost overruns and inefficient use of labor in the building of public projects like highways (e.g. the Big Dig), sports stadiums and the like and the fact that special interests stand [...]
Posted in Education, Market Failures on Jun 10th, 2010
Perhaps the most common justification for government support of schooling is that when individuals and families make choices about how much schooling (not education mind you) to acquire, they think only of the benefits to them of going and ignore the possible spillover benefits that accrue to society.
This argument is specious for lots of reasons. [...]
Posted in Education on Jun 2nd, 2010
I delighted in reading this:
The year of his divorce he moved on again … he stayed in the house of a well-known economist – and was a lonely and idiosyncratic man writing in the cellar …
…
He … summed up the perversion of centers of learning into high-powered public relations and football in the most stinging [...]
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