When you go the multi-platform route you are now confined to the lowest common denominator of content types and sources that will work with all devices. So that means, websites, PDFs and generic epubs. The rich interactive textbooks in iBooks will be a no-go, iPad only education apps also a no-go. Android tablet apps are out the door too. Basically you have just invested in wikipieda machines and PDF viewers.
They just figured they drop a bunch of shiny, futuristic iPads in there and it would just "magically" work for everyone.
Apple marketing perhaps? This experience should show armchair CIOs that implementing and supporting iPads or Macs for thousands of people is completely different from using your own device at home.
When you go the multi-platform route you are now confined to the lowest common denominator of content types and sources that will work with all devices. So that means, websites, PDFs and generic epubs. The rich interactive textbooks in iBooks will be a no-go, iPad only education apps also a no-go. Android tablet apps are out the door too. Basically you have just invested in wikipieda machines and PDF viewers.
Even Apple sources components from different suppliers with varying levels of performance (Samsung vs. LG, SanDisk) sometimes within the same product model.
Aside from an overwhelming financial burden, the erstwhile project also failed to properly educate teachers on how to best implement Apple's tablets into classroom curricula, the report said.
Another sticking point is the apparent lack of an evaluation framework. The federal report notes the problem is ongoing, saying some schools "have not developed plans for how the devices will be used to support learning [...] As a result, there is no common vision for how devices should be shifting learning and teaching within schools, making measuring impact difficult, if even possible."
So they didn't spend any money to develop a curriculum on how to use the new tools. Developing curriculums are suppose to be what educators do best.
Quote:
It was later discovered that LAUSD misunderstood Apple's bulk purchase discount terms, which held that the district would become eligible for special pricing only after $400 million worth of iPads were purchased.
There has to be something wrong with this statement. Spending $400 million to get a discount is just insane.
who are you going to call at google when you have a problem, do you think teachers and such will post a question on a discussion board or read through a bunch of techie posts to figure out what is happening. Google is not set up to support Schools, they think everyone should solve their problems by doing a search on the web.
Apple has a similar problem, yeah you can call them and they know their products but they will not be able to deal with schools on a daily issue. Most schools use a local IT company to support them, thus the hidden cost to all these solutions, and we know Apple poses less issues for the end users.
When you go the multi-platform route you are now confined to the lowest common denominator of content types and sources that will work with all devices. So that means, websites, PDFs and generic epubs. The rich interactive textbooks in iBooks will be a no-go, iPad only education apps also a no-go. Android tablet apps are out the door too. Basically you have just invested in wikipieda machines and PDF viewers.
But but but the savings! Android tablets for $39! SD cards = infinite storage! Android 4.2 is not that old! Students need customization! You can't educate without it!
who are you going to call at google when you have a problem, do you think teachers and such will post a question on a discussion board or read through a bunch of techie posts to figure out what is happening. Google is not set up to support Schools, they think everyone should solve their problems by doing a search on the web.
"Phone support is available for customers who purchase Chrome device licenses or who have a Google Apps support PIN. Before you dial the number, please make sure you have your PIN ready.
Your support PIN can be found in the Admin console under Support > Chrome Management for Chrome device support, and under Support > Google Apps for Chrome browser support.
U.S. Toll Free: 1-877-355-5787
International: +1-646-257-4500
For local support contact phone numbers, see our worldwide phone numbers.
I am not sure if touchscreen keyboards are better than physical keyboards as far as eduction is concerned. Typing out notes and class reports is a lot quicker on a physical keyboard I presume.
Or maybe there may be a paradigm shift in how the human body adapts and touchscreen typing will become as quick as typing on a standard keyboard.
As of now, I find it a lot easier to do the major work on my Mac (as far as Pages and Numbers are concerned) and then fine-tuning it on my iPad.
Teachers can now use their iPhone or iPad to set-up/modify assignments or to even archive classes for use next semester. Students can create content in one app, say a drawing or photo, and attach it to an assignment for school using the Classroom app. Having a cross-platform solution does seem advantageous doesn't it?
It sounds really dumb because its simply not true. As someone who has experience purchasing with Apple EDU sales, discounts begin in quantities as few as 10 of the same unit off the standard educational pricing, which is already discounted. When numbers begin to get into larger volumes, Apple Sales reps can build proposals and request additional discounts based on volume. I would imagine that another layer of discounting was available after reaching that $400m mark, and to assume thats the only point of discounting for EDU is at that level is preposterous.
Teachers can now use their iPhone or iPad to set-up/modify assignments or to even archive classes for use next semester. Students can create content in one app, say a drawing or photo, and attach it to an assignment for school using the Classroom app. Having a cross-platform solution does seem advantageous doesn't it?
WoW. That's a whole lot of positive feedback there. While I would expect a feature like archive to be there from the get go, I really shouldn't be seeing the feature added now as a negative.
It sounds really dumb because its simply not true. As someone who has experience purchasing with Apple EDU sales, discounts begin in quantities as few as 10 of the same unit off the standard educational pricing, which is already discounted. When numbers begin to get into larger volumes, Apple Sales reps can build proposals and request additional discounts based on volume. I would imagine that another layer of discounting was available after reaching that $400m mark, and to assume thats the only point of discounting for EDU is at that level is preposterous.
I am not sure why Apple is taking all the heat for this. The other partner in this deal was Pearson, the humungous global educational software company that was supposed to supply the books, software, and I assume, the training to teachers. lt has also been minimized that Deasy's lieutenant in this project was a former Pearson executive.
A large part of the failure was Pearson's inability to figure out the Apple eco-system ... being a UK/PC based company with little understanding of the functionality or usability of the tablet ecosystem. They are as much if not more to blame for this fiasco as anyone.
Of course, with their long history within education and school boards, Pearson has probably paid off enough politicians and bureaucrats to avoid all the spotlight in this fiasco and will still get the contracts that they signed up for, with a mixture of inferior hardware.
Students teach themselves iPads well enough that within days they've bypasses the school's security checks. Their teachers are apparently able to nothing without expensive, lengthy, formal training.
Is there a more apt illustration of why our schools are failing?
Students teach themselves iPads well enough that within days they've bypasses the school's security checks. Their teachers are apparently able to nothing without expensive, lengthy, formal training.
Is there a more apt illustration of why our schools are failing?
It is much easier to break, destroy, and criticize than to build, teach, and support ... which is an illustration of why this type of thinking is killing the country.
It is much easier to break, destroy, and criticize than to build, teach, and support ... which is an illustration of why this type of thinking is killing the country.
LOL! Please. Public schools do an abysmal job of preparing kids to be competitive in the real world. Just ask Bill Gates. Steve Jobs had the same opinion.
It is much easier to break, destroy, and criticize than to build, teach, and support ... which is an illustration of why this type of thinking is killing the country.
LOL! Please. Public schools do an abysmal job of preparing kids to be competitive in the real world. Just ask Bill Gates. Steve Jobs had the same opinion.
"we do know how to provide a great education. We really do. We could make sure that every young child in this country got a great education. We fall far short of that. I know from my own education that if I hadn't encountered two or three individuals that spent extra time with me, I'm sure I would have been in jail. I'm 100% sure that if it hadn't been for Mrs. Hill in fourth grade and a few others, I would have absolutely have ended up in jail. I could see those tendencies in myself to have a certain energy to do something. It could have been directed at doing something interesting that other people thought was a good idea or doing something interesting that maybe other people didn't like so much. When you're young, a little bit of course correction goes a long way. I think it takes pretty talented people to do that. I don't know that enough of them get attracted to go into public education. You can't even support a family on what you get paid. I'd like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for, making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Why should they work at a school for thirty-five to forty thousand dollars if they could get a job here at a hundred thousand dollars a year? Is that an intelligence test? The problem there of course is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It's terrible.
I've helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world and I absolutely convinced that is by no means the most important thing. The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can. The elements of discovery are all around you. You don't need a computer. Here - why does that fall? You know why? Nobody in the entire world knows why that falls. We can describe it pretty accurately but no one knows why. I don't need a computer to get a kid interested in that, to spend a week playing with gravity and trying to understand that and come up with reasons why.
You need a person. Especially with computers the way they are now. Computers are very reactive but they're not proactive; they are not agents, if you will. They are very reactive. What children need is something more proactive. They need a guide. They don't need an assistant. I think we have all the material in the world to solve this problem; it's just being deployed in other places. I've been a very strong believer in that what we need to do in education is to go to the full voucher system. I know this isn't what the interview was supposed to be about but it is what I care about a great deal.
One of the things I feel is that, right now, if you ask who are the customers of education, the customers of education are the society at large, the employers who hire people, things like that. But ultimately I think the customers are the parents. Not even the students but the parents. The problem that we have in this country is that the customers went away. The customers stopped paying attention to their schools, for the most part. What happened was that mothers started working and they didn't have time to spend at PTA meetings and watching their kids' school. Schools became much more institutionalized and parents spent less and less and less time involved in their kids' education. What happens when a customer goes away and a monopoly gets control, which is what happened in our country, is that the service level almost always goes down. I remember seeing a bumper sticker when the telephone company was all one. I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell Logo on it and it said "We don't care. We don't have to." And that's what a monopoly is. That's what IBM was in their day. And that's certainly what the public school system is. They don't have to care.
Let's go through some economics. The most expensive thing people buy in their lives is a house. The second most expensive thing is a car, usually, and an average car costs approximately twenty thousand dollars. And an average car lasts about eight years. Then you buy another one. Approximately two thousand dollars a year over an eight year period. Well, your child goes to school approximately eight years in K through 8. What does the State of California spend per pupil per year in a public school? About forty-four hundred dollars. Over twice as much as a car. It turns out that when you go to buy a car you have a lot of information available to you to make a choice and you have a lot of choices. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Nissan. They are advertising to you like crazy. I can't get through a day without seeing five car ads. And they seem to be able to make these cars efficiently enough that they can afford to take some of my money and advertise to other people. So that everybody knows about all these cars and they keep getting better and better because there's a lot of competition.
And there's a warranty. But in schools people don't feel that they're spending their own money. They feel like it's free, right? No one does any comparison shopping. A matter of fact if you want to put your kid in a private school, you can't take the forty-four hundred dollars a year out of the public school and use it, you have to come up with five or six thousand of your own money. I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to get students. Secondly, I think you'd see a lot of new schools starting. I've suggested as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School, they have a public policy track; they could start a school administrator track. You could get a bunch of people coming out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college, very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they'd start a school. I believe that they would do far better than any of our public schools would. The third thing you'd see is I believe, is the quality of schools again, just in a competitive marketplace, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. A lot of the public schools would go broke. There's no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years.
But far less painful I think than the kids going through the system as it is right now. The biggest complaint of course is that schools would pick off all the good kids and all the bad kids would be left to wallow together in either a private school or remnants of a public school system. To me that's like saying "Well, all the car manufacturers are going to make BMWs and Mercedes and nobody's going to make a ten thousand dollar car." I think the most hotly competitive market right now is the ten thousand dollar car area. You've got all the Japanese playing in it. You've got General Motors who spent five million dollars subsidizing Saturn to compete in that market. You've got Ford which has just introduced two new cars in that market. You've got Chrysler with the Neon.
The market competition model seems to indicate that where there is a need there is a lot of providers willing to tailor their products to fit that need and a lot of competition which forces them to get better and better. I used to think when I was in my twenties that technology was the solution to most of the world's problems, but unfortunately it just ain't so. I'll give you an analogy. Alot of times we think "Why is the television programming so bad? Why are television shows so demeaning, so poor?" The first thought that occurs to you is "Well, there is a conspiracy: the networks are feeding us this slop because its cheap to produce. It's the networks that are controlling this and they are feeding us this stuff but the truth of the matter, if you study it in any depth, is that networks absolutely want to give people what they want so that will watch the shows. If people wanted something different, they would get it. And the truth of the matter is that the shows that are on television, are on television because that's what people want. The majority of people in this country want to turn on a television and turn off their brain and that's what they get. And that's far more depressing than a conspiracy. Conspiracies are much more fun than the truth of the matter, which is that the vast majority of the public are pretty mindless most of the time. I think the school situation has a parallel here when it comes to technology. It is so much more hopeful to think that technology can solve the problems that are more human and more organizational and more political in nature, and it ain't so. We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46 year old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn't be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer."
Giving out vouchers is not something you'd be happy with I'm sure and he highlighted the problem, which is that schools would just take the best students.
If you have vouchers for $4400, schools would set their entrance fees at $5400 to get rid of the poor people with deadbeat parents. When parents measure a school's performance, they base it on the results of the students. If a school filters the best students then their performance isn't entirely based on their own education standard.
Who sets the exams? A central public body would have to otherwise the reference points would be meaningless so they all work to the same education bar anyway.
The fantasy that multiple schools would open up in close proximity to each other and manage to attract the best students is precisely a fantasy. People choose schools based on where they live as well as how good they are.
The system you (and Steve Jobs) propose creates a class inequality and by extension a race inequality, which contradicts Steve Jobs' aim, which is equal opportunity. We know this because it's been done. Poorer people live in poorer neighbourhoods so the better schools would open nearer the rich kids.
Finland is ranked one of the best countries for education in the world:
Just like with healthcare and internet speed, the systems that went the private model performed worse in the real world while costing more - this isn't true of every field, some things work better private. Finland went the completely opposite route - all public schools. Get rid of private schools, religious schools and treat children the same. When every child drops out of someone's womb, they will have been born into more or less affluent, more or less pleasant environments but separate from those circumstances, they are all equally human and deserve the same opportunities.
The place for meritocracy is not between schools but within schools and the idea of the school being the sole point of failure is naive. Students are free to learn more if they have a drive to do that. This is true of some of the most successful entrepreneurs:
Take note, these people dropped out of private schools. Steve Jobs dropped out because the school was costing his parents too much and he wasn't gaining anything from it:
"I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life."
Hang on, an expensive private school not giving value for money! Lets leave it alone for the free market to sort out right? No, as another dropout suggests, the costs need to go:
The problem is the fact that they are private and the loan companies, banks and institutions want to milk students for all they're worth instead of giving them a decent education. They have no accountability for their worth relative to post-graduate earning potential. The debt should be gone, the main curriculums should be more condensed with fewer breaks and the education should be weighted towards preparing for real-world jobs.
Comments
They just figured they drop a bunch of shiny, futuristic iPads in there and it would just "magically" work for everyone.
Apple marketing perhaps? This experience should show armchair CIOs that implementing and supporting iPads or Macs for thousands of people is completely different from using your own device at home.
When you go the multi-platform route you are now confined to the lowest common denominator of content types and sources that will work with all devices. So that means, websites, PDFs and generic epubs. The rich interactive textbooks in iBooks will be a no-go, iPad only education apps also a no-go. Android tablet apps are out the door too. Basically you have just invested in wikipieda machines and PDF viewers.
Even Apple sources components from different suppliers with varying levels of performance (Samsung vs. LG, SanDisk) sometimes within the same product model.
Aside from an overwhelming financial burden, the erstwhile project also failed to properly educate teachers on how to best implement Apple's tablets into classroom curricula, the report said.
Another sticking point is the apparent lack of an evaluation framework. The federal report notes the problem is ongoing, saying some schools "have not developed plans for how the devices will be used to support learning [...] As a result, there is no common vision for how devices should be shifting learning and teaching within schools, making measuring impact difficult, if even possible."
So they didn't spend any money to develop a curriculum on how to use the new tools. Developing curriculums are suppose to be what educators do best.
There has to be something wrong with this statement. Spending $400 million to get a discount is just insane.
I don't think it's the problem you imagine it to be.
http://www.google.com/edu/products/devices/chromebooks.html
who are you going to call at google when you have a problem, do you think teachers and such will post a question on a discussion board or read through a bunch of techie posts to figure out what is happening. Google is not set up to support Schools, they think everyone should solve their problems by doing a search on the web.
Apple has a similar problem, yeah you can call them and they know their products but they will not be able to deal with schools on a daily issue. Most schools use a local IT company to support them, thus the hidden cost to all these solutions, and we know Apple poses less issues for the end users.
But but but the savings! Android tablets for $39! SD cards = infinite storage! Android 4.2 is not that old! Students need customization! You can't educate without it!
Your support PIN can be found in the Admin console under Support > Chrome Management for Chrome device support, and under Support > Google Apps for Chrome browser support.
U.S. Toll Free: 1-877-355-5787
International: +1-646-257-4500
For local support contact phone numbers, see our worldwide phone numbers.
Imagine all the money they're gonna "save" on PC repair.
The new superintendent probably "knows a guy"...
I am not sure if touchscreen keyboards are better than physical keyboards as far as eduction is concerned. Typing out notes and class reports is a lot quicker on a physical keyboard I presume.
Or maybe there may be a paradigm shift in how the human body adapts and touchscreen typing will become as quick as typing on a standard keyboard.
As of now, I find it a lot easier to do the major work on my Mac (as far as Pages and Numbers are concerned) and then fine-tuning it on my iPad.
Teachers can now use their iPhone or iPad to set-up/modify assignments or to even archive classes for use next semester. Students can create content in one app, say a drawing or photo, and attach it to an assignment for school using the Classroom app. Having a cross-platform solution does seem advantageous doesn't it?
http://googleforeducation.blogspot.ca/2015/01/A-Classroom-mobile-app-and-new-teacher-goodies.html
Sounds dumb from both sides.
It sounds really dumb because its simply not true. As someone who has experience purchasing with Apple EDU sales, discounts begin in quantities as few as 10 of the same unit off the standard educational pricing, which is already discounted. When numbers begin to get into larger volumes, Apple Sales reps can build proposals and request additional discounts based on volume. I would imagine that another layer of discounting was available after reaching that $400m mark, and to assume thats the only point of discounting for EDU is at that level is preposterous.
WoW. That's a whole lot of positive feedback there. While I would expect a feature like archive to be there from the get go, I really shouldn't be seeing the feature added now as a negative.
Now this is solid info, thank you for sharing!
I am not sure why Apple is taking all the heat for this. The other partner in this deal was Pearson, the humungous global educational software company that was supposed to supply the books, software, and I assume, the training to teachers. lt has also been minimized that Deasy's lieutenant in this project was a former Pearson executive.
A large part of the failure was Pearson's inability to figure out the Apple eco-system ... being a UK/PC based company with little understanding of the functionality or usability of the tablet ecosystem. They are as much if not more to blame for this fiasco as anyone.
Of course, with their long history within education and school boards, Pearson has probably paid off enough politicians and bureaucrats to avoid all the spotlight in this fiasco and will still get the contracts that they signed up for, with a mixture of inferior hardware.
Is there a more apt illustration of why our schools are failing?
Students teach themselves iPads well enough that within days they've bypasses the school's security checks. Their teachers are apparently able to nothing without expensive, lengthy, formal training.
Is there a more apt illustration of why our schools are failing?
It is much easier to break, destroy, and criticize than to build, teach, and support ... which is an illustration of why this type of thinking is killing the country.
LOL! Please. Public schools do an abysmal job of preparing kids to be competitive in the real world. Just ask Bill Gates. Steve Jobs had the same opinion.
Steve Jobs' ideas for schooling are here:
http://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/sj1.html
"we do know how to provide a great education. We really do. We could make sure that every young child in this country got a great education. We fall far short of that. I know from my own education that if I hadn't encountered two or three individuals that spent extra time with me, I'm sure I would have been in jail. I'm 100% sure that if it hadn't been for Mrs. Hill in fourth grade and a few others, I would have absolutely have ended up in jail. I could see those tendencies in myself to have a certain energy to do something. It could have been directed at doing something interesting that other people thought was a good idea or doing something interesting that maybe other people didn't like so much. When you're young, a little bit of course correction goes a long way. I think it takes pretty talented people to do that. I don't know that enough of them get attracted to go into public education. You can't even support a family on what you get paid. I'd like the people teaching my kids to be good enough that they could get a job at the company I work for, making a hundred thousand dollars a year. Why should they work at a school for thirty-five to forty thousand dollars if they could get a job here at a hundred thousand dollars a year? Is that an intelligence test? The problem there of course is the unions. The unions are the worst thing that ever happened to education because it's not a meritocracy. It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what has happened. The teachers can't teach and administrators run the place and nobody can be fired. It's terrible.
I've helped with more computers in more schools than anybody else in the world and I absolutely convinced that is by no means the most important thing. The most important thing is a person. A person who incites your curiosity and feeds your curiosity; and machines cannot do that in the same way that people can. The elements of discovery are all around you. You don't need a computer. Here - why does that fall? You know why? Nobody in the entire world knows why that falls. We can describe it pretty accurately but no one knows why. I don't need a computer to get a kid interested in that, to spend a week playing with gravity and trying to understand that and come up with reasons why.
You need a person. Especially with computers the way they are now. Computers are very reactive but they're not proactive; they are not agents, if you will. They are very reactive. What children need is something more proactive. They need a guide. They don't need an assistant. I think we have all the material in the world to solve this problem; it's just being deployed in other places. I've been a very strong believer in that what we need to do in education is to go to the full voucher system. I know this isn't what the interview was supposed to be about but it is what I care about a great deal.
One of the things I feel is that, right now, if you ask who are the customers of education, the customers of education are the society at large, the employers who hire people, things like that. But ultimately I think the customers are the parents. Not even the students but the parents. The problem that we have in this country is that the customers went away. The customers stopped paying attention to their schools, for the most part. What happened was that mothers started working and they didn't have time to spend at PTA meetings and watching their kids' school. Schools became much more institutionalized and parents spent less and less and less time involved in their kids' education. What happens when a customer goes away and a monopoly gets control, which is what happened in our country, is that the service level almost always goes down. I remember seeing a bumper sticker when the telephone company was all one. I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell Logo on it and it said "We don't care. We don't have to." And that's what a monopoly is. That's what IBM was in their day. And that's certainly what the public school system is. They don't have to care.
Let's go through some economics. The most expensive thing people buy in their lives is a house. The second most expensive thing is a car, usually, and an average car costs approximately twenty thousand dollars. And an average car lasts about eight years. Then you buy another one. Approximately two thousand dollars a year over an eight year period. Well, your child goes to school approximately eight years in K through 8. What does the State of California spend per pupil per year in a public school? About forty-four hundred dollars. Over twice as much as a car. It turns out that when you go to buy a car you have a lot of information available to you to make a choice and you have a lot of choices. General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Toyota and Nissan. They are advertising to you like crazy. I can't get through a day without seeing five car ads. And they seem to be able to make these cars efficiently enough that they can afford to take some of my money and advertise to other people. So that everybody knows about all these cars and they keep getting better and better because there's a lot of competition.
And there's a warranty. But in schools people don't feel that they're spending their own money. They feel like it's free, right? No one does any comparison shopping. A matter of fact if you want to put your kid in a private school, you can't take the forty-four hundred dollars a year out of the public school and use it, you have to come up with five or six thousand of your own money. I believe very strongly that if the country gave each parent a voucher for forty-four hundred dollars that they could only spend at any accredited school several things would happen. Number one schools would start marketing themselves like crazy to get students. Secondly, I think you'd see a lot of new schools starting. I've suggested as an example, if you go to Stanford Business School, they have a public policy track; they could start a school administrator track. You could get a bunch of people coming out of college tying up with someone out of the business school, they could be starting their own school. You could have twenty-five year old students out of college, very idealistic, full of energy instead of starting a Silicon Valley company, they'd start a school. I believe that they would do far better than any of our public schools would. The third thing you'd see is I believe, is the quality of schools again, just in a competitive marketplace, start to rise. Some of the schools would go broke. A lot of the public schools would go broke. There's no question about it. It would be rather painful for the first several years.
But far less painful I think than the kids going through the system as it is right now. The biggest complaint of course is that schools would pick off all the good kids and all the bad kids would be left to wallow together in either a private school or remnants of a public school system. To me that's like saying "Well, all the car manufacturers are going to make BMWs and Mercedes and nobody's going to make a ten thousand dollar car." I think the most hotly competitive market right now is the ten thousand dollar car area. You've got all the Japanese playing in it. You've got General Motors who spent five million dollars subsidizing Saturn to compete in that market. You've got Ford which has just introduced two new cars in that market. You've got Chrysler with the Neon.
The market competition model seems to indicate that where there is a need there is a lot of providers willing to tailor their products to fit that need and a lot of competition which forces them to get better and better. I used to think when I was in my twenties that technology was the solution to most of the world's problems, but unfortunately it just ain't so. I'll give you an analogy. Alot of times we think "Why is the television programming so bad? Why are television shows so demeaning, so poor?" The first thought that occurs to you is "Well, there is a conspiracy: the networks are feeding us this slop because its cheap to produce. It's the networks that are controlling this and they are feeding us this stuff but the truth of the matter, if you study it in any depth, is that networks absolutely want to give people what they want so that will watch the shows. If people wanted something different, they would get it. And the truth of the matter is that the shows that are on television, are on television because that's what people want. The majority of people in this country want to turn on a television and turn off their brain and that's what they get. And that's far more depressing than a conspiracy. Conspiracies are much more fun than the truth of the matter, which is that the vast majority of the public are pretty mindless most of the time. I think the school situation has a parallel here when it comes to technology. It is so much more hopeful to think that technology can solve the problems that are more human and more organizational and more political in nature, and it ain't so. We need to attack these things at the root, which is people and how much freedom we give people, the competition that will attract the best people. Unfortunately, there are side effects, like pushing out a lot of 46 year old teachers who lost their spirit fifteen years ago and shouldn't be teaching anymore. I feel very strongly about this. I wish it was as simple as giving it over to the computer."
Giving out vouchers is not something you'd be happy with I'm sure and he highlighted the problem, which is that schools would just take the best students.
If you have vouchers for $4400, schools would set their entrance fees at $5400 to get rid of the poor people with deadbeat parents. When parents measure a school's performance, they base it on the results of the students. If a school filters the best students then their performance isn't entirely based on their own education standard.
Who sets the exams? A central public body would have to otherwise the reference points would be meaningless so they all work to the same education bar anyway.
The fantasy that multiple schools would open up in close proximity to each other and manage to attract the best students is precisely a fantasy. People choose schools based on where they live as well as how good they are.
The system you (and Steve Jobs) propose creates a class inequality and by extension a race inequality, which contradicts Steve Jobs' aim, which is equal opportunity. We know this because it's been done. Poorer people live in poorer neighbourhoods so the better schools would open nearer the rich kids.
Finland is ranked one of the best countries for education in the world:
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/03/finnish-education-chief-we-created-a-school-system-based-on-equality/284427/
Just like with healthcare and internet speed, the systems that went the private model performed worse in the real world while costing more - this isn't true of every field, some things work better private. Finland went the completely opposite route - all public schools. Get rid of private schools, religious schools and treat children the same. When every child drops out of someone's womb, they will have been born into more or less affluent, more or less pleasant environments but separate from those circumstances, they are all equally human and deserve the same opportunities.
The place for meritocracy is not between schools but within schools and the idea of the school being the sole point of failure is naive. Students are free to learn more if they have a drive to do that. This is true of some of the most successful entrepreneurs:
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1988080_1988093_1988082,00.html
Take note, these people dropped out of private schools. Steve Jobs dropped out because the school was costing his parents too much and he wasn't gaining anything from it:
"I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life."
Hang on, an expensive private school not giving value for money! Lets leave it alone for the free market to sort out right? No, as another dropout suggests, the costs need to go:
http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/unaffordable-inaccessible-university-systems
The problem is the fact that they are private and the loan companies, banks and institutions want to milk students for all they're worth instead of giving them a decent education. They have no accountability for their worth relative to post-graduate earning potential. The debt should be gone, the main curriculums should be more condensed with fewer breaks and the education should be weighted towards preparing for real-world jobs.