It’s low-income students faring more poorly because they suffer from all the social pathologies that cause and are caused by poverty.
Much of the problem is that we don’t have many interventions that work for them. For instance, the idea of flexible class times for parents who work three jobs. About three quarters of poor people in the US don’t have even one adult who works fullt-time year round at one job, let alone three.
Because rich kids aren’t responding to interventions by the schools. They are responding to interventions from their parents, who set and enforce the standard where the student goes to school every day, behaves in class, and does his homework. Absent those “interventions” and enforcement of standards, we will see exactly the kind of issues we see right now in dysfunctional schools.
Witness the historical experience of Jewish people and Chinese of the last hundred years. They were just as poor as people are nowadays - much poorer, in fact, because of the far less developed welfare state of today. But they came from cultures that valued learning and education, and stigmatized family breakdown. And they are currently is the upper levels of socio-economic success in the USA. Not because of school reform - because the parents created and enforced a culture where success in school was emphasized.
I am totally with you about eliminating prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenses. I think this would have wide ranging positive effects. One of those however, is not going to make the drug user a good parent or good role model.
Like minded in this context to me means people who share similar values when it comes to education. I think this is likely correlated with socioeconomic factors. If it ends up resulting in socioeconomic segregation I’m totally fine with that, but it’s not a necessary condition.
But here’s the thing - I don’t recognize the responsibility that you would foist upon me. I like that my neighborhood and consequently my school system self selects based on income. I like that private an charter schools are available. I would go even further and go to a full on voucher system so that education funding is tied to the student. The very affluent can already afford private schools. This would help those who would be able to afford it if they didn’t have to cover both the private school tuition and the public school tuition through taxes, essentially paying twice. I think these things create environments in which children can thrive.
**Dangerosa **makes a very poignant post in #36. Social justice and diversity are wonderful ideas. I don’t care about them at all when it comes to maximizing the opportunity and advantages for my children.
Thanks for your whole post. I’m sort of in this position now, having just sent my oldest to kindergarten.
We live in San Francisco, with a public school system that works on a lottery system; where you live in the city has very little, if any, bearing on your school assignment. It’s a ridiculous system, and no one understands it. But, there are a set of parents who make an effort to understand the system the best they can, get their paperwork in on time, and those parents have a better chance of getting their kids into a “good” school. There are a set of parents who have no idea that there are deadlines or paperwork to file, and they end up in the “bad” schools.
I don’t want my kids in the schools with the kids or parents who couldn’t be arsed to hand in simple forms by certain dates; it doesn’t bode well for how those kids will view education. It’s not those kid’s fault, I get it. But, I’m not a good enough person to make a crusade out of it.
We lucked out, and he got assigned to a good school. By “good”, I mean “parents give a shit about education of the kids”. I have no idea what the income level is of the parents, but it’s probably above average. I’m definitely left leaning, but it’s hard to ignore that “parents who give a shit” often correlate with income.
The scores went up more than just the influence of the kids would predict. But that is not totally because the parents worked like hell - in fact this set of parents were more focused on their kids (tutoring, extra classes) than on the school.
I was on the board of the district wide GATE parents advocacy group for many years, and these parents were way under-represented among the volunteers. And when we surveyed them they wanted to see activities to enrich their children, which was not our purpose.
What very likely did happen was that there was critical mass for better classes. Before there weren’t enough kids interested to allow a wide range of AP classes, after there were, so kids who were there before and who were interested in AP could finally get it. Maybe (and I don’t know many in this school) academic success became more acceptable. That could help also.
BTW, the people in this school before were hardly poor. But the parents didn’t have the drive to make their kids have the best that the new parents did. I saw this in some of my kids’ friends parents also - the “you can get into a good college but go to a community college so we can have enough money to buy another car.” Again, not poor - one set pf parents I’m thinking of just sold their house for $1.2 million.
Just to be clear, the redistricting had nothing to do with this, and everything to do with the overcrowding of the source high school. There were other schools that got moved, but only this one caused a firestorm.
This was also not a case of busing - in some cases the new school was closer to the kids than the old one.
Socioeconomics does not rule. My parents did not exactly grow up rich in the Depression - my father’s mother lost all her money when his father died. But because of culture they both loved education. He couldn’t go to college, but he sure was ready to pay for me to go.
Around here there are plenty of parents with plenty of money who don’t give a crap about education. i went to an advisory meeting about selecting a new principal. After lots of talk about how important support for sport was, I offered that a commitment to academic excellence might be good. They looked at me like I was nuts.
So, how about sorting by academics at a young age, (GATE testing is done in 2nd grade) and supporting preschool to try to get all kids ready for the elementary grades. Maybe a good support group - of teachers and fellow students - might counteract parental lack of involvement.
A school culture that rewards prowess in intellectual activity as much as prowess in sports might help also. My school didn’t and we were close to a best case. Making the team gets a letter and fame - getting a really high score on the SATs is a deep dark secret.
People who choose to live in areas with good schools pay truly massive school taxes. I read a lot of property tax reports at work, and the differences are staggering. I’ve seen homeowners who pay more school tax in a month than I pay in rent (and my rent isn’t cheap). So naturally, there would be implications to spreading the wealth around. If all schools were equal, everyone would pay the same school taxes as everyone else. Poor renters and homeowners alike would suffer. People who can only afford to live in districts with low school taxes would be unable to pay the new higher tax, and would lose their homes.
There are workarounds, such as continuing to charge school taxes based on current assessments regardless of school district. But unless this were done nationwide, rich people would either move to an area that hasn’t enacted such legislation, or send their children to private schools. In a nutshell, it’s complicated.
:dubious: Under those rules it would be impossible for any public school to compete with a voucher-subsidized private school. Public schools become nothing more than a dumping ground children the private schools don’t want and rich parents can get a discount sending their kids to schools that most people couldn’t afford even with vouchers.
You want to make schools compete for students fine, but it should at least be a fair competition. Which of course would either that private schools have to accept anyone who applies or public schools get to set entrance exams and expel students. And no double dipping, in exchange for getting voucher money private schools waive the right to charge extra fees (voluntary fundraising to be allowed under the same terms as private school).
They fail because without a father figure to model appropriate adult behavior, provide income and parental time, and enforce discipline, the kids grow up to be delinquents. I’d argue that there is also a genetic component (e.g. some people simply have superior genes for achieving economic success in today’s society), but that’s not politically correct. Regardless, the surge in children born out of wedlock across all races since the 1940s is staggering, and is a huge area for improvement.
Money, unlike perishable food, doesn’t deteriorate in value in a low-inflation society like the United States. If school districts are wasting money, that’s a failure of will.
The idea that an opinion should be unspeakable is another example of the petty totalitarianism of today’s liberalism. Some schools are lousy. There’s nothing wrong with recognizing reality.
In Mexico middle class people (and higher) send their children to private schools almost exclusively. At the University level, though, the public universities are mostly pretty good and there’s competition to get into them.
In China quality depends on your hukou (household registration), and you have to own a house and live in it (subject to random home visits!) in order to attend the good schools. This drives a phenomenon called “schooling house,” whereby even the least desired apartments in good schooling areas are sold at prices that are inflated, even when compared to China’s already over-inflated housing prices. It seems that most private schools here are overwhelmingly for the rich, and for foreigners’ children when sponsored by our companies.
Isn’t this the basis for the Robin Hood programs we have in place now (Texas)
I do know that my “rich” district sends money to the state to fund the poorer schools.
It has been this way for as long as I have been a home owner (15 plus years)
If private schools have to accept anyone, we would be replicating the problems of public schools and losing the advantage of private ones, and if public schools can set entrance exams the loser students would have nowhere to go. You need a place for them. Not that they are likely to succeed any better, but that is the case now.
I don’t see the advantage in this. It’s basically price-fixing. Private schools charge more than the voucher amount are counting on parents who think the extra money is worth it. Private schools who only charge the same as the voucher attract parents who think the schools can provide a better education for the same amount, because they spend less money on discipline and extra effort for marginal students. Public schools are for the parents who claim to believe in the benefits of public education over private. Everyone gets to pick what they want.
Students with involved parents will do marginally better, because their schools will be less distracted with discipline and remedial education. Students with uninvolved parents will do marginally better, because in some cases they will be getting into a school with fewer disruptions and marginally more peer pressure to succeed instead of fucking up. And the bottom students will go to the school that accepts everyone, just like they do now. They won’t do any better, but at least they won’t drag anyone else down.
Not always. Everyone in my town has the same property tax rate as everyone else, no matter if the local school is at the top or the bottom of the list. Now, house prices are higher around the really good high school because home buyers bid up the prices of houses in the good area. (And they are also bigger.)
Now, this being California someone who has owned a house in this area for 20 years is paying significantly less in property taxes than someone who has bought the house next door and has just moved in.
And the case in Texas applies to California (and New Jersey) also. All the money gets sent to the state which divvies it up according to a not very fair formula. This is based on what the districts were charging when the law was passed. LA, which has most of the legislators, comes out well, and it ain’t never going to change.
So school quality is not directly related to property tax rates - though it is correlated to property tax payments in terms of house prices.
Consider our university system. Public universities like Southwestern Missouri State can’t compete against Harvard, and nobody expects them to. Any suggestion that elite private universities and ordinary public universities should have identical tuition and identical admissions standards would be dismissed as absurd. Obviously students with the academic skill and money necessary to attend Harvard and other elite universities get a better education than than the rabble.
If we readily accept such an outcome at the university level, then why shouldn’t we readily accept the same outcome at the high school level?
Harvard appreciates this and has scholarships for those who might not be able to afford it. And, in New York at least, there are public high schools (like Bronx Science) with competitive admissions standards. Nothing wrong with that.
There are plenty of private colleges which are a lot worse than public ones (in terms of admission standards) but which allow parents with money to buy their kids a diploma. I’m not talking the for-profit ones, I’m talking non-profit ones whose market niche is the kids who can’t get into good colleges.
Lots of private high schools and elementary schools are not all that picky about who they admit, though they may be quicker to toss problem kids out.
I agree. It used to be much more common to have housing of different types in the same blocks, or at least within short walking distance of one another. Poorly conceived zoning, unimaginative developers, and fear, have done a lot of damage to the diversity of neighborhoods and to the civic sensibilities they generated.
Because the low-income families do not thus disappear. Those kids are still in the larger community, if not the immediate one. They will grow up to fill vital functions, seen and unseen, in the society and economy around you. Or, you know, not.
Everybody ought to be interested in the quality of their local schools. Regardless where your kids go. Regardless whether you have kids.
It seems as though, in my area at least, that more “pocket schools” are being built. They tend to serve just a single neighborhood, even. The schools have such a small eligibility area that bus service is not needed (since nobody eligible lives more than a mile away from the school) and the overall student enrollment is fairly low, making attractively low class sizes.
Now, I can see where on paper, the “pocket” model might produce high test scores. Build a new school, in an up-and-coming suburb, staff it with teachers that live in the area (theoretically they’ll accept a little less salary if they can walk to work, I guess) and everything’s good. Not many rich families in the area, not many poor families in the area. It makes sense. Seems to work.
Of course this ignores the larger problem of how do you then turn around and help the other kids to succeed? Our system throws extra money at the schools with low test scores, invariably the ones with poor kids, ESL kids, non-white kids, the ones from unstable homes… but it doesn’t ever seem to actually help matters. And sure, you can blame it on the parents, maybe they’re not as involved, maybe they’re working two jobs, not willing to canvas the neighborhood and sell giftwrap to make money for the schools. But even the ones that DO are not going to see the same results that the pocket school kids are getting, because their kids are getting marginalized.
It’s one of the shitty realities that people face - most people who are making an effort to be informed on the matter simply shrug their shoulders and enroll their kid in a pocket school, or do what they can do to avoid the bad schools. Who wants to take a risk on their kid’s education? Who wants to be the one who admits, Yep, shoulda picked a different neighborhood in that house hunt, we done fucked up little Johnny’s education by living in this district where the schools suck. Nobody.