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Comment by um_ya | Hacker News Reader

I like the school voucher idea a lot.

Give parents a voucher, as good as cash, for their child and let them choose the school.

Private companies will compete for those vouchers, aligning focus on satisfying the parents and the children, rather than the government.

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> Private companies will compete for those vouchers

"Send your kid to our school, and we promise they'll always score 100% on their tests!"

The parents choose where to spend the voucher.

Unless you think parents value "100% on their tests" more than receiving a quality education.

I trust a parent's judgment more than administrators looking to prop up their numbers.

Yeah, some parents do value “100% on their tests” more than receiving a quality education.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/22/colleg...

That's fine, let them care about that. Let the rest of us that care about the education quality find that where we may.

The assumption that accreditation and education must be done by the same organization is absurd, really. Public schools evidently have the exact same incentives. The answer is that third parties should be evaluating education, not administration making up numbers and giving themselves a pat on the back for doing so well.

Of course, teaching to the test isn't ideal. But it looks like the alternative isn't a well-rounded education, but not teaching at all.

That sounds like a great way to indirectly punish parents who can't afford commutes for their children, since they get stuck with whichever schools the wealthier parents pull their children from.

The idea is that schools would compete for as many vouchers as they could, meaning they'd be willing to send buses out to your area, or find other ways to accommodate the parents with before school programs, ect.

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