By that logic, pizza is a public good. When I eat pizza, I become a much more pleasant person in my interactions with others, which benefits society. Most things that are good for an individual benefit society as a whole. It's a matter of degree. Education benefits individuals far more than it benefits society, which leads me to place it in the excludable column. Your justification for non-rivalrous is circular. Since education is valuable to society, we should be willing to pay enough for it to be non-rivalrous. I don't think that's a valid argument. It's irrelevant to my point anyway.
The whole point of vouchers is to reduce the constraint of money on one's educational choices. Poor people will still have limited choices, but they'll have more than one, which is a significant improvement.
I don't think a privatized school system would necessarily have more money in it. (It likely would at the higher end, but not at the lower end.) The benefit doesn't come from money; it comes from competition for that money. Money gets wasted on ineffective programs and teachers in public schools because there's little incentive to improve effectiveness. We're talking about an industry in which merit pay is a controversial topic! When there is a fairly direct relationship between the quality of education imparted and the monetary rewards received by teachers and principals, it seems pretty likely that performance will improve.
The whole point of vouchers is to reduce the constraint of money on one's educational choices. Poor people will still have limited choices, but they'll have more than one, which is a significant improvement.
I don't think a privatized school system would necessarily have more money in it. (It likely would at the higher end, but not at the lower end.) The benefit doesn't come from money; it comes from competition for that money. Money gets wasted on ineffective programs and teachers in public schools because there's little incentive to improve effectiveness. We're talking about an industry in which merit pay is a controversial topic! When there is a fairly direct relationship between the quality of education imparted and the monetary rewards received by teachers and principals, it seems pretty likely that performance will improve.
Good discussion.