Bryan Caplan: belief

Transcript context

…Have K–12 vouchers underperformed? In general, how do you interpret that data? I would say yes. This actually barely appeared in my book because it was not really central to any of the topics I was talking about. But my understanding of research on K–12 vouchers is a lot of people thought that they would substantially raise standardized test scores. And it’s hard to see a big gain there. This is puzzling because it sure seems like there’s way better ways to improve test scores, starting obviously with just teaching the test. Many people say people are teaching the test all the time. Whenever I actually look at my kid’s schools, like, what are you talking about? There’s three practice tests. If I wanted to teach the test, there would be a hundred practice tests. That’s how I would handle it if you told me, “Get test scores up.” I think the main thing that we learn from this is that most parents don’t care about test scores. When you give them a choice, they aren’t looking around for the school that will raise kids’ test scores the most. They’re looking around for other things. Part of it is just convenience or location. Probably another big part of it is whether the kids are happy. I think we agree this is actually one of the most undervalued benefits of school choice, just giving kids some options so that kids that are crying and miserable at one school can go and take that money and go to another school. If there’s overinvestment in education, you talk about changing or getting rid of some subsidies. Could you imagine there being a role for government in making the signal more continuous or more convexified? For instance, you could allow federal funds for certificates rather than just degree programs. You could imagine governmental nudges to give people a three-year option, a two-year option. There are a lot of one-year alternatives to colleges popping up the way two-year community college could be treated. There seems to be a lot we could do but maybe aren’t doing to create or produce signaling options that waste fewer resources. What should we do there?…

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