Schools do in fact estimate the population of the children within their district, factoring those that will not attend public schools, and size their instructor staffing, facilities, supplies, etc to meet those estimates.
Originally Posted by Rudyard K
Only to the extent that the money they have to work with is fixed. In other words, the public schools are already underfunded. Vouchers will only make that worse.
There are not a whole bunch of empty desks sitting their fallow because the little Johnnys & Marys didn't show up this year.
That contradicts my actual experience in high school. For courses that everyone was required to take, the classes were generally larger than anticipated. In other courses, like AP math and physics, there were indeed quite a few empty desks. I was relegated to independent study for several of the advanced courses, because the courses went at too slow a pace and I was only accomodated because a few teachers bent the rules and let me do what I wanted without actually having to attend a class, so I was a class of one student. More students would have provided the impetus to create an actual course.
The university makes similar judgment also.
Using different criteria. Public universities slow their rate of enrollment by raising entrance requirements. They still have to accept everyone who meets the requirements and actually wants to attend. Private schools do it by limiting enrollment (which often means raising tuition). Universities (at least the one I attended and evey one I've visited) do have plenty of classroom space. If the enrollment is high, they also have a vast pool of instructors (known a graduate students) available to teach.
As an aside, I find it rather ironic that I was ``qualified'' to teach physics to university students, but if I wanted to teach high school, I'd have to go to a lot of additional effort to obtain a certificate that states that I'm qualified, not to mention putting up with being micromanaged by the school administration.
My alma matter actually accepts some 35% more students, each year, than they expect will ever attend.
That's because statistics work very well and the 35% overacceptance represents an approximately 1-sigma deviation from the mean (assuming the number of applicants is more than enough to use gaussian statistics, which is a good approximation if the number of applicants is greater than 100).
However, statistics also tell you that there is a non-zero probability that the outcome will not be within the 1-sigma deviation from the expected outcome.
But to reject the concept out of hand based on your premise is...well, not based on what happens on the real world.
My premise is that private schools have the luxury of limiting their enrollment to fit their budget, while public schools do not. Vouchers would not alter that fact. Vouchers would only increase the dependence on the predicted outcome being correct, which as I've already noted is not a sure thing. What is a sure thing is that where the real world out come doesn't match the statistical analysis closely enough. (see below), as in the previously described NYC case), the outcome will be a disaster.
It is an outcome based justification rather than looking at the facts and coming to a proper outcome.
What you call ``justification'' is merely a statistical analysis which gives the
most likely real world result and an estimate of how likely the ``real world'' result will deviate from the most likely case, which direction it might be skewed, etc. It's only ``justification'' if you include the rest of those details and everyone (or at least most everyone) agrees that the chances of being wrong are acceptable enough to base a budget on the analysis. That doesn't change my argument, it only means the public school system is already underfunded and has to spend some of its money to perform such an analysis, which if incorrect, will piss off a lot of parents and leave the school district scrambling. (See the NYC example already given.) Private schools never face this situation, since they can always accept as many applicants as they wish and limit their enrollment to some fraction of the applicants.
Consequently, (as you noted), everyone shares the cost of educating students, even those of us with no kids because we could not afford to educate every student if only those with kids who attended public schools paid for it.
As an additional point, even though I have no kids, the fact that I'm subsidizing the education of students in public schools means that I have the right to voice my opinion in how those students are educated (and I have a very strong opinion on quite a few aspects of education, especially where it comes to what is considered science).
Finally, public schools are obligated to try to educate the willfully ineducable whom no private school would accept. Just because your kids might not fall into that category doesn't mean you should not bear the same burden of educating them that the rest of us do should you decide to send your kids to private schools.
Vouchers amount to giving (an additional) tax break to people who decide to have kids. I really don't understand why having children should qualify for
any deduction at all. Having kids is a personal choice, not a public obligation.
-- which is shorthand for "I'm not really sure, this is just a theory."
