What would you conclude about the quality of product or service X under the following circumstances?I did not know this.
1. The employees of Airline X and their families are offered free airline tickets as an employee benefit. The employees refuse to travel with their families on Airline X and instead pay full fare on Airline Y when flying.
2. The employees of Automaker X are offered a company car at a substantial discount and they instead buy a car at full price from Automaker Y.
3. Employees at Health Clinic X and their families are offered medical care at no additional cost as a benefit and yet most employees of Clinic X pay out-of-pocket for medical services at Clinic Y.
In each case, the employees' willingness to pay full price for a competitor's product or service and forgo their employer's product or service at a reduced price (or no cost) makes a strong statement about the low quality of X. What makes the inferior quality of X even more obvious is that the employees at Firm X, since they work in the industry, would have better information about product (service) X and product (service) Y than the average person.
What then should we conclude about the quality of public education in the United States given the following facts? Public school teachers send their own children to private schools at a rate more than twice the national average--22 percent of public educators' children are in private schools compared to the national average of 10 percent.
In large cities across the United States, more that a quarter of public school teachers' children are attending private schools--50 percent in Milwaukee, 46 percent in Chicago, 44 percent in New Orleans, 36 percent in Memphis, and 30 percent in Baltimore and San Francisco.
In New York City, as of 1988, no member of the Board of Education and no citywide elected official had children enrolled in a public school.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Where do the Children of Public School Teachers go to School?
...the outstanding blog, Carpe Diem has the answer.
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2 comments:
I'm wondering if it is more true in cities.
My Dad was a high school biology teacher, my sister teaches 4th grade. My brothers and sisters had my Dad for bio. My sister actually has had all of her own kids in her class.
But we do have a fair number of public school teachers with kids in private schools. Funny thing is, when my kids transitioned into public school, they had some of them for teachers. And they were great.
Anyway, I think there may be alot of reasons behind this - one is that if the parent has their kid in class, they face the conflict of interest dilemma, may be perceived as playing favorites, or may actually be tougher on their own kid to avoid seeming biased. And, if the kids are in their schools, they may have to deal with trouble in ways that they really don't want to (if their kids get into trouble,)
'Course there's always the 'I know how bad it is so you are never going there' reason, too.
In the cases I am thinking of, the parent/teachers chose the private school because it was not as rigid, encouraged freer thought... alot of the just general parents in the private/alternative schools feel that their kids could never withstand public school. Probably the same reason.
Rose - great comment! I'm sure it's a localized thing. If you were a public school teacher in a good district, you'd send your kids to public school.
Perhaps the vitriol here is misdirected. It's not that these people are running away from their own product, it's that their product is hopelessly expensive and competetion faces huge hurdles.
Vouchers would solve all of that.
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