Education in the United States
We have a thread devoted to academic freedom at universities, and we have a thread devoted to whether higher education should be subsidized. This thread is a landing spot for discussion of other issues related to education -- issues like school integration, pedagogy, the influence of politics on education (and vice versa), charter schools, public v. private schools, achievement gaps, and gerrymandering of school districts.
I'll start the discussion with two articles. The first deals with a major changes in the public school system in NYC.
NYC's public schools are highly segregated for such a diverse city. Last Friday, Bill DeBlasio announced the following:
Middle schools will see the most significant policy revisions. The city will eliminate all admissions screening for the schools for at least one year, the mayor said. About 200 middle schools — 40 percent of the total — use metrics like grades, attendance and test scores to determine which students should be admitted. Now those schools will use a random lottery to admit students.
In doing this, Mr. de Blasio is essentially piloting an experiment that, if deemed successful, could permanently end the city’s academically selective middle schools, which tend to be much whiter than the district overall.
DeBlasio also announced that:
New York will also eliminate a policy that allowed some high schools to give students who live nearby first dibs at spots — even though all seats are supposed to be available to all students, regardless of where they reside.
The system of citywide choice was implemented by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2004 as part of an attempt to democratize high school admissions. But Mr. Bloomberg exempted some schools, and even entire districts, from the policy, and Mr. de Blasio did not end those carve outs.
The most conspicuous example is Manhattan’s District 2, one of the whitest and wealthiest of the city’s 32 local school districts. Students who live in that district, which includes the Upper East Side and the West Village, get priority for seats in some of the district’s high schools, which are among the highest-performing schools in the city.
No other district in the city has as many high schools — six — set aside for local, high-performing students.
Many of those high schools fill nearly all of their seats with students from District 2 neighborhoods before even considering qualified students from elsewhere. As a result, some schools, like Eleanor Roosevelt High School on the Upper East Side, are among the whitest high schools in all of New York City.
Here is the New York Times article that describes the changes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/nyreg...
Obvious questions for discussion include:
- How large a priority should cities place on ensuring that city schools are representative of the city as a whole?
- Are measures like the ones that DeBlasio is implementing likely to be effective in making schools more representative?
- Will these measures have unintended (or intended) consequences that extend far beyond changing the representativeness of city schools?
What’s been shown is that when faced with public education as the only option, the wealthy pour their resources into those systems instead of private education and demand higher quality from their representatives which elevates the entire public system by proxy. It’s a curb cut effect, and it is very simple.
This assertion sounds logical but is simply not backed by data.
The overwhelming evidence, in the US especially, is families with good public schools will erect barriers to entry to these “public” schools and making them de facto private. There are suburban zones that actively discourage families from moving in and having school aged children.
And boarding schools exist. The US actually has one of the lowest % of children going to boarding schools in the OECD. In most of the world, if parents aren’t happy with local public, they either transfer, move, or send kids to private.
What’s been shown is that when faced with public education as the only option, the wealthy pour their resources into those systems instead of private education and demand higher quality from their representatives which elevates the entire public system by proxy. It’s a curb cut effect, and it is very simple which is why it works.
I have to believe that this phenomenon would depend on location. In areas where parents would have to change jobs in order to change school districts, the phenomenon probably would occur in the way you describe. In areas (like major cities) where it would be relatively easy for wealthy families to move to a better school district without changing jobs, I am skeptical.
What’s been shown is that when faced with public education as the only option, the wealthy pour their resources into those systems instead of private education and demand higher quality from their representatives which elevates the entire public system by proxy. It’s a curb cut effect, and it is very simple which is why it works.
I don't remember if you are American tbh.
But you fail to realize that in the USA, public school access is linked to your house address.
So yes you are right that if you can somehow ban private schools (which you can't under the current reading of the constitution) wealthy people will invest more in public schools. But not all of them, just those in their areas.
There is no reason to think poorer areas would see an improvement, rather the opposite as charter schools are the only thing that gives hope to parents in poor areas
Obviously districting and the legislation and metrics that govern public funding would still need to be addressed, but the most basic system of class discrimination when it came to education would be eliminated. The rest of it is re-workable via state grants and tax distributions for underfunded districts, and would be more urgently instituted in the aftermath.
Obviously districting and the legislation and metrics that govern public funding would still need to be addressed, but the most basic system of class discrimination when it came to education would be eliminated. The rest of it is re-workable via state grants and tax distributions for underfunded districts, and would be more urgently instituted in the aftermath.
The US already spends monstrous sums per pupil in poor area to no avail.
Barring some brave people who only last a couple of years, decent teacher will invariably move to schools where pupils aren't ultraviolet basket cases for example.
You would need to pay monstrous bonuses to teach in bad schools just to try to even the problems.
And the hell that rich people will agree to fund schools their kids don't attend to much more than those their kids attend.
Then you have the problem that if half the students live in a household where no one reads a book they will be an horrendous drag and you either give up on them entirely, or bring down the average so much normal students won't learn enough
are we all assuming with xnerd's suggestion that we would still only be funding the local school via taxes at the local level? that's part of the problem with the system now.
i grew up in a poor-ish public school where the teachers would immediately abandon the district for the one that started literally 3 streets over because the pay was double. if those two side by side districts had more combined funding from a higher level of governing body than local taxes, that isn't as likely to happen.
I doubt this described type of school funding still exists today.
are we all assuming with xnerd's suggestion that we would still only be funding the local school via taxes at the local level? that's part of the problem with the system now.
i grew up in a poor-ish public school where the teachers would immediately abandon the district for the one that started literally 3 streets over because the pay was double. if those two side by side districts had more combined funding from a higher level of governing body than local taxes, that isn't as likely to happen.
Even if the pay and budget were technically the same, parents fight tooth and nail to erect barriers to transfer, keeping real estate prices high and propping up budgets via donations, and creating statutory carve outs, sometimes straight up seceding to form a new municipality.
Even if you banned ALL private schools, you are just going to end up with parallel education institutions and statutory/economic barriers to enter certain schools. Something as simple as a gated community where starting home price is 1 million plus.
We have precedents for all the behaviors I am alleging too.
France created grand écoles after they made public universities basically barrier free.
NYC has special rules for designated schools (unsurprisingly, rich ones that has money on top of city budget and educating predominantly well off children) that makes it hard for people outside the district to transfer in.
A big chunk of Upper East and upper west side residents send their kids out of state and abroad for boarding school, enough of them some tutors offer IB (roughly Euro/UK equivalent to AP) classes.
LA straight up refused to to integrate the municipalities and got pockets of random towns with ultra rich public schools.
And all over the country you got rich neighborhoods trying to secede from their poor neighbors (and sometimes succeeding)
I have to believe that this phenomenon would depend on location. In areas where parents would have to change jobs in order to change school districts, the phenomenon probably would occur in the way you describe. In areas (like major cities) where it would be relatively easy for wealthy families to move to a better school district without changing jobs, I am skeptical.
They move or just stop putting resources into the local public system (stopping donations and campaigning for lower prop tax) and redirect the money to private schooling (as a replacement for or as a supplement to public)
This is very well observed behaviour and not really in dispute in the academic literature…
are we all assuming with xnerd's suggestion that we would still only be funding the local school via taxes at the local level? that's part of the problem with the system now.
i grew up in a poor-ish public school where the teachers would immediately abandon the district for the one that started literally 3 streets over because the pay was double. if those two side by side districts had more combined funding from a higher level of governing body than local taxes, that isn't as likely to happen.
Schools in the USA aren't only funded at the local level I am not sure what you are referring to.
Both states and federal funding are used in the USA on top of local revenue.
And this ends up being the highest per pupil cost in the world afaik, with abysmal results.
It’s fascinating that people will acknowledge that public schools are significantly worse than private schools and yet they think the solution is to ban private schools. Vouchers seem like the logically solution, but banning public schools seems far preferable than banning private schools.
They move or just stop putting resources into the local public system (stopping donations and campaigning for lower prop tax) and redirect the money to private schooling (as a replacement for or as a supplement to public)
This is very well observed behaviour and not really in dispute in the academic literature…
I was discussing Crossnerd's hypothetical world in which private schools were banned.
It’s fascinating that people will acknowledge that public schools are significantly worse than private schools and yet they think the solution is to ban private schools. Vouchers seem like the logically solution, but banning public schools seems far preferable than banning private schools.
Many people don't understand that a significant portion of what makes schools good is the pupils themselves btw, and that's not going to be fixed by money.
If the quality of the students has a wide range, self selection will shuffle pupils around until the good ones are mostly among good ones and viceversa.
The attempt to ban private schools is an attempt to ban that effect more than what "money can buy", becase there are plenty of k12 public schools getting 15k+ per year per pupil (which is kinda an insane amount) that suck terribly, so most people must admit it's not about money.
Children at 3 years old (three) already show monstrous differences in verbal skills depending on socio economic status.
I disagree with Luciom on mostly everything but he's not entirely wrong here. If a child's family and their immediate circle don't instill the benefits of a good education from a young age, that child is unlikely to do well in school. If 80%+ of the students in the school have that attitude, it makes it exceedingly difficult to impossible for the others to do well also. And it would be disingenuous to deny that the lower down the socieconomic ladder, the more prevalent those attitudes. I don't see how throwing more money at the school fixes that problem.
I disagree with Luciom on mostly everything but he's not entirely wrong here. If a child's family and their immediate circle don't instill the benefits of a good education from a young age, that child is unlikely to do well in school. If 80%+ of the students in the school have that attitude, it makes it exceedingly difficult to impossible for the others to do well also. And it would be disingenuous to deny that the lower down the socieconomic ladder, the more prevalent those attitudes. I don't s
it can also not be about "instilling benefits of good education", even more down to earth stuff like the number of words parents use with their kids, how many books are in the house and so on.
And of course having both parents at home which correlates with SES a lot
Yes, perhaps a more appropriate phrase would have been "hold learning to be of value".
Public education is a lot like many of the big issues we have (healthcare, gun control). We are never going to make it perfect, but we can sure as heck make it better. The conservative philosophy is always - it won't work so let's don't do it. The liberals say - we can do better. We can make public education better. A lot better. But it takes actually doing something other than throwing up your hands and saying we can't fix it.
That stuff would always exist, although convincing your kid to go to school after school is over has never been that easy.
boarding schools abroad
I don't think any policy change would result in a large number of U.S. students going to boarding schools abroad.
Public education is a lot like many of the big issues we have (healthcare, gun control). We are never going to make it perfect, but we can sure as heck make it better. The conservative philosophy is always - it won't work so let's don't do it. The liberals say - we can do better. We can make public education better. A lot better. But it takes actually doing something other than throwing up your hands and saying we can't fix it.
given there is already more than enough money spent on it, it must be something done within the resources already allocated.
And the proposed solution is vouchers as explained.
Not sure why you claim the "conservative philosophy is let's don't do it", they have been pushing for charter schools a lot.
Democrats solution is "let's teachers unions decide" , which is the same thing they tried for decades and which caused the horrid results you can see today, including the incalculable damage of school closures.
It’s fascinating that people will acknowledge that public schools are significantly worse than private schools and yet they think the solution is to ban private schools. Vouchers seem like the logically solution, but banning public schools seems far preferable than banning private schools.
i dont think people acknowledge this at all. i certainly dont. i've seen private schools that are significantly worse than well funded public schools.
vouchers just exacerbates the problems that already exists, that schools have such a wide range of funding disparities. private schools just select choice applicants and then people like you try to compare them directly. like of course the traveling recruiting u16 soccer team will crush the local team that can only take players in the district.
Garbage in, garbage out. The problem isn't in the machinery, it's with the ingredients. Schools can't fix broken families.
Private schools might be the only thing saving some of the borderline neighborhoods in America from going full ghetto hellscape.
I moved a short distance from my old Milwaukee address because for my oldest, private high school was going to be 3x as expensive as what I had been paying for all the kids to attend a private K-8 school to keep them out of MPS. It was cheaper to buy a new house at the time if you accounted for being able to take the other two out of private school as well. I still have the bullets whizzing by because I'm only a block away from the Milwaukee border, but technically my address is in a "suburb" now which unlocked access to those sweet sweet schools filled with suburban families who actually care about outcomes. This particular district literally does not have busing, which I didn't find out until after closing on the house, so that was not ideal. This meant that parents either had someone staying at home all day, or could afford to arrange private transportation if the school was too far to walk. I ended up paying the SAH wife of some doctor to shuttle my kids along with hers.
We still have a bunch of Milwaukee kids that use the voucher system to get a spot outside their assigned district, but that tiny added hurdle of making a parent drive them to school each day means you've got at least a modicum of buy-in from an adult in the room.
If private schools weren't an option, I don't know if my old neighborhood would've just been eaten up by the expanding inner-city blight, or if it would've become even more of a destination for people who had employment-related mandates to maintain a Milwaukee address. A fair few of my neighbors were cops or other government workers, because if you worked for the City, you had to live in the City, but obviously most people don't actually want to live in the City because it sucks, so you'd have tiny pockets as close to suburban areas as you can where all those City workers congregate.
Even if it's theoretically possible that you could "fix" these shitty districts by forcing everyone into public schools, I highly doubt those existing private school families would just volunteer their kids to be the guinea pigs while you figured it out. If it were me, I'd have just moved sooner. You haven't eliminated the benefit of having extra money, you've just raised the threshold from "Can I afford private school tuition for my child?" to "Can I afford to buy a new house in a district that doesn't suck?"
