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If the government schools performed as well as the other institutions (well, maybe not the GPD) we'd all be happy. Good point though.

Isn't the appropriate comparison between public schools and private schools? I don't know how to compare a school to a police department. Of course, to make the public-private comparison, one would have to look at the total per-student cost, not the cost borne by parents, because obviously the public schools are much cheaper according to the latter measure. In addition, one would have to look at outcomes as well as costs. And in doing the latter, one would have to correct for the talents of the students at the two types of schools. Putting it all together, the right measure would be some kind of educational "value added." I'll bet there's a study or two out there that's done this. Doug, perhaps you could track them down for us?

You could never be a real conservative. I would have never guessed. Maybe a Berkley liberal. Not! You are much more left than that.

I'll never be a real conservative.*Doug

Don't worry about it Doug! The term conservative was invented in the middle 60's simply to fool people about the constitution on talk radio and in strange Republican party circles. Heck! even Hilter and Stalin were consider conservative by many liberal fools at one time. In fact the term Liberal was invented at the same time to fool talk radio listeners and Republicans that all Liberals were San Francisco Hippies smoking pot who work in Bathhouses. Meanwhile, the same dudes that invented Conservative and Liberal toss another ringer into the political debate by inventing the term "Left" and "Right" to really confuse the sheep out there in politics.

Frankly! You should have said! " I will be never a real fascist or communist when it comes to government schools" Or maybe you should have said " I will be a middle of the road guy, when it comes to government schools" Of course the down side to that term is that anybody who stands in the middle of the road in politics gets run over from both directions by zealots of both terms.

Two responses to Andrew:

(1) Would anyone really trust a study on the subject? I wouldn't, because I'd assume that the bias of the researcher would determine the outcome. If it came from a school of education at a U.S. university, I'd be fairly certain of this.

(2) The "value added" criterion is certainly defensible, but I'd offer that the primary reason people send kids to private schools is precisely what would be filtered out in such a test. Parents, that is, are paying to have their students in classes with more "talented" peers, since the "less talented" can't afford it. Parents are paying for the company their kids keep, and that's not a neglible concern, given the kind of problems the "less talented" can cause in a school.

I've never been to anything but a public school, and I would strenously resist shelling out for a private school for my kids--in fact, I've been pretty happy with GCS--but Guilford County is fairly close to a demographic tipping point. Whites in the county are an absolute majority, but GCS has only about 30-something% white kids. That's getting perilously close to an Alabama-Mississippi-style seg academy culture.

Doug, I think it's safe to say that public schools, as a whole, don't perform as well as most other government agencies. Plus, the connection to them is far more personal. It's frustrating if the DMV isn't doing a great job, for example, but when the schools aren't adequately serving our children, people take that much more seriously - and for good reason.

Charter schools provide an excellent model of how public schools can succeed. Charter schools bring competition and choice to the public school marketplace. They operate far more efficiently, as charter schools receive much less money per student than tradtional public schools.

Best of all, decisions are made by parents and students, not bureaucrats and politicians. If families aren't happy with a charter school, they can "vote with their feet" and go elsewhere.

This isn't the case with traditional public schools, where many school systems have a number of chronic failing schools (we've got some of those right here in Guilford County). The only "solution" for these schools seems to be pumping more and more resources into these money pits. And generations of students end up trapped in these failing schools.

Sadly, North Carolina's teachers' union and its allies in the General Assembly have conspired to stifle the charter school movement in this state. It's a shame, too.

I agree completely about charter schools. I also would like to see a limited voucher program launched to further expand options for parents. (We do it at the preschool and college level, just not K-12).

However, I suggest that schools do not perform worse by objective standards than, say, our criminal-justice system. We tend to excuse law-enforcement agencies and courts on the basis that they can't help how many truly sleazy, no-account or just plain evil people they have to deal with, while forgetting that our public schools get the children of these people.

That's a good point, Doug. Parents (and there's no shortage of bad ones out there) haven't been held accountable for the problems in the schools.

I actually think the rank-and-file teachers and other school employees generally do a pretty good job, all things considered. But many of the problems (at least here in Guilford County) seem to stem from the administrative and School Board levels.

Unfortunately, voters don't seem to care, as they return the same old crowd (or like-minded successors) to the school board time and time again.