The Libertarian argument isn't that public schools are a disaster. Their argument is that the federal government shouldn't be involved in education and it should instead remain a local or state issue where people have more direct control over the system.
They come to more or less the same conclusions, but for entirely different reasons. The former's argument appeals to the efficiency and productivity perceived to be afforded by a libertarian society. The latter has everything to do with whether or not the existence of, say, public schools is just. Either side will tend to argue that you, luckily, don't have to choose between prosperity and justice, but always fall back to their philosophical roots.
But what if the USSR had managed to keep a high standard of living, comparable to how it did quite well in science? And let's say it also avoided some of the worst bouts of mismanagement, like the large famines. Even libertarians who argue that central planning is inefficient might grant that it's at least hypothetically possible that the USSR could've turned out much better / less badly than it did, had a few things and personnel been different. What would people think of it then?
His guess (iirc) is that, unfortunately from his viewpoint, the USSR is as unpopular as it is basically because it "didn't work": it had a lower standard of living than the capitalist west, large famines, etc. If it were authoritarian but "worked", so East Germans and Muscovites had the same televisions and cars as West Germans and Parisians, he fears the anti-communism consensus would not really be strong at all.
My circuitous point is, the "hardline" libertarian/anti-communist answer to your question is that the USSR was fundamentally incapable of having turned out better. For them, the USSR failing is the same as the experiments that relativity: they are an inescapable result of a fundamental, unchangeable conclusion. You can't just ask "well, what if it had worked" for the same reasons you can't ask "well, what if the experiments disproved relativity?" Experiments can't disprove relativity because it's true, and communism can't work because it's fundamentally ill-founded. To ask what would happen in a world where communism worked is akin to asking what would you drink if hydrogen and oxygen didn't combine to form water.
Please note that I'm playing Devil's Advocate here. I, personally, think that the USSR could have turned out better if it were managed better, although I don't consider myself educated enough on the topic to say how much better. My personal opinions aside, my point is, asking "what if the USSR had worked out better?" is not something you can so easily just ask someone. For some axioms, functional communism is a false statement, and you can't introduce contradictions into an axiomatic system and result in anything coherent. Some people see the USSR failing as an experiment confirming a true statement, not data that serves as evidence for or against a statement.
As far as your hypothetical though, I do think that if the USSR's failing was a contingent, rather than fundamental, result, and if it had not failed or at least turned out less poorly, then that would dampen people's opinions against it. Consider that even with the weight of the evidence against it, there are still people who view it as a nice ideal (with varying opinions of attainability). As the practical evidence gets more ambiguous, that viewpoint looks more reasonable.
Plus, there are plenty of examples of capitalist governments that have had famines and such. India is a notable example.
If the quality of life of the USSR increased, we need to ask two questions. Would it have increased more or less under a more liberal regime? How are you factoring in the murder of tens of millions of people? Even low end figures show that 5% of the peak Soviet population was slaughtered or imprisoned.
Regarding India's woes, systems of government/economy are in no way a panacea. Besides, India's economy was extremely communist, almost explicitly modeled after the USSR. India only turned to liberalizing their markets recently, even later than China.
That experiment is currently being performed in China.
Capitalism is simply a way to harness people's natural selfish motives for the good of society. Neither system is morally superior to the other; it's just that in a state populated by humans, one works a lot better than the other.
This could well include even the decision of whether education is enough of a public good to be supported by taxes.
Personally, I think it is, so I strongly favor a system that allows parents to pay for private schools with public money, such as vouchers.
[1] I can't speak for the Libertarian Party, whom I consider a tad extreme, though I consider myself a small-L libertarian
[2] Involvement at all would be too all-encompassing a proscription.
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/chart-of-the-day-federal-ed-s...
I would be surprised if these international test scores showed any correlation to changing spending either.
He has a strawman argument for conservatives, too.
And, please, avoid ad hominem attacks.
I am all for standards, but never once brought up government controlled education or defended it. Please don't attribute an argument to me that I didn't make, which is exactly what the OP did by inferring that I defend liberal education policies.
There are massive problems in our education system, my mom's a teacher and tells me about them almost every time we talk, but they aren't problems that will be solved by the government stepping back and letting the locals take control. In fact, that'd make things much worse. Teachers are barely accountable for teaching and are pretty much glorified baby sitters for the most part (my mom says this). The kids who do well go to charter schools, or have parents who give them homework, or go to tutors, or go to private school. The kids who don't do well or perform below grade-level have single-parent families, probably living in poverty, and for the most part slip through the cracks in the "system."
I think the first step to the problem is stop throwing away money on things that don't work-- STAR, SAT9, etc standardized testing. The only people benefiting from this are the people who make/sell the tests. Teachers end up forming their curriculum around the tests and it becomes their singular goal to meet/exceed expectations which are based around the last years results. So what you lose are art, music, PE, auto-shop, computer lab classes-- anything that isn't specifically tested. So what happens? Kids hate school because all they're doing is memorizing a bunch of stuff that won't help them in life.
I think some steps in the right direction would be:
-make teachers more accountable for their students success and make tenure based on that
-bring back vocational schools or specialized school (people in the 70s who went to these types of schools could get jobs at Lockheed Martin and Boeing building planes)
-quit wasting time on standardized tests -make school fun -- music, art, photography, PE, computer lab are the classes I remember looking forward to, it keeps you going to school instead of ditching. Possibly even use these classes as an incentive.
-get rid of GATE, it's a self-fulfilling prophesy.
-Teachers should be paid according to how well their students perform/improvements made. This way the best teachers would have an incentive to take on those students struggling instead of the way it currently is where the best teachers teach "honors classes" and have kids with parents who also help teach them while at home or hire tutors.
That's my two-cents and I'll get off my soapbox, but I still think standards are generally a good thing and do more good than harm.
If you throw out the tests, how do you know if students were successful or not, or whether they improved?
I'm not sure about the solution to the specific problem you've raised but I'm sure there are better informed people who can solve this. There has to be some solution where kids progress can effectively measure, but also doesn't have the tendency to completely overshadow the curriculum.
Well, we'd first have to work out why they're there in the first place. Are we trying to maximize their income when they get jobs (in which case there are better metrics, but they'll take longer before you can use them)?. Are we trying to make them 'well rounded citizens' (define it, and then maybe you can test it)? Is it just tax-payer babysitting (school violence would be the only relevant metric than perhaps)?
You could just evaluate the teacher themselves, and as long as they seem to be competent and honest, you could just rely on their evaluations. A kind of 'web of trust' model for testing.
The biggest problem with this political will is that applying pressure to the teachers is politically easy. They get all this holiday, they just play with kids all day "how easy is their job??? zomg" /sarcasm. The real problems with most bad kids start at home and are best addressed with some sort of intervention from the very beginning of the kids life from social workers monitoring the family home and environment and various other early stage policies designed to create and mentor the parents into raising a good child, not a drain on society. But supposedly, policies like this ,which are normally far more effective than simple standardised testing, are "socialism" and therefore bad.
Tests are a huge waste of time and effort, but they also hijack the curriculum also which is even worse!