No one is allowed to hire any sort of private security. Do you also want to outlaw some people buying security systems, alarms and such, that give them any margin of greater safety than anyone else?
All lawyers must be public defenders? All acountants out of a public pool as well? Or are all required to use the same TurboTax program?
No one is allowed to spend more money on clothes or food than anyone else either I assume?
I make no apologies for my “me and mine” attitude, as abhorrent as you may find it. I won’t make my kids go hungry to fulfill some standard that they should not have more than the poorest among us. Dang, I will even make sure they and I eat well. I will buy at the local farmer’s market paying a premium because it tastes better. I will pay for a private tutor for my child when I think (s)he might need it. I will help my eldest be able to afford to go back to school several years after college to the degree I can mange to do so. My kids go to a diverse public school not because I believe it is better for the other kids there but rather out of informed self interest, because I believe it is better for my kids. If they were not able to get the educational experience there that I felt was as good as I could manage to get for them elsewhere I would send them elsewhere. Unlike a worker bee in a hive I am not motivated solely by the good of the hive. Apologies to Hillel but while I am not only for me and mine, I am for me and mine. My kids’ understanding of the advantages they have? They are obligated to use them to become the best whatever they are they can be and to find some way to try to leave the world a bit better than they found it whenever possible.
“Worse” is very subjective. What I am saying is that on average, they have significantly smaller budgets per student, use uncertified teachers who are paid less than public school teachers. Yet they are still attractive enough to get many parents to pay tuition to send their kids there instead of sending them to the public schools for free.
So the question is, why? That is where the debate comes in.
One explanation that I would reject, but which would be manna for a lot of those who believe the private sector beats the public sector in efficiently achieving desired outcomes, is that unburdened with red tape, private schools simply do more with less.
What I see as more likely is that, as I keep saying, sending children to a private school is like recreating at a country club instead of a public park or swimming pool: it keeps the riffraff out. Part of this is (and I’m sure most parents of kids in private school won’t openly acknowledge this) just the conspicuous consumption angle. Casually dropping a mention of where their kids go to school proves that they have the kind of status conferred on those who can pay private school tuition. But part of it is a genuine desire to not have their kids intermingling socially with a lower class of child.
I think a lot of them probably do think they are getting a better education for their children, and perhaps do not even know that the private school (other than a minority of schools that serve the very affluent) is relatively weakly funded. No doubt they would see the schools’ test scores and college matriculation as evidence for the “better” proposition. What I think is getting missed is that this is very likely to be conflating correlation with causation. That is, these kids would have done just as well at public school, but we can’t go back and rerun their lives both ways to show as much.
I won’t absolutely preclude the possibility of advantages for the private school, though (and as I say, if that is so it makes the separate tiers immoral on a more serious level). It is no doubt easier to run a school where you don’t have to account for those with intellectual or physical disabilities (and parents who send their first couple kids to private school and then get a Down’s baby can go “oops” and flip over to the public schools and put that big financial burden on them). And easier, when dealing with a kid who has serious behaviour issues, to just expel them rather than first having to go through many stages of intervention to try to help them succeed. Nice to just wash your hands of all society’s problems and live in a nice, cloistered, sanitised version where everyone is middle or upper class and abled and well behaved.
Yes, private schools can often (certainly not always) provide a higher quality educational experience with less money per child for precisely the reasons that you bemoan. The private school does not have to deal with lots that the public school has to deal with, from the consequences of teachers having to deal with issues related to poverty, to the public school’s obligations under Public Law 94-142 to children with disabilities of all kinds, and more. The private school has a selection bias which of course, as you state, accounts for some of the higher test scores and college acceptance rates, but which also means that a moderately intelligent and motivated student is more likely to gain by being surrounded by many of somewhat greater intelligence and equal motivation.
Please note however: the parents who send their kids to private school are still paying their fair share into the public school coffers through their taxes. If anything they are paying ore than their share as they are paying for a service and then not availing themselves of it, saving the public system the cost of educating that child.
I also see other motivations among some who choose private schools. Some are more concerned about who is in than who is out - I see some, especially among those who choose the prestigious Catholic schools, thinking that connections get made that follow their kids through life. And in my diverse (both racially and economically) community that feeds our High School, I see the upper middle class Black families (often one or two professionals as parents) concerned that their teen Black boys in particular will feel pressure to conform to expectations of some of the lower SES more urban Black youths and be told that peforming at high academic levels is “acting White.” These families have sometimes pulled their kids out of public and into private for High School. I judge them not.
This is a debatable point though, for three main reasons. As I have noted upthread, taking the (in most cases) higher performing students out of a school does a measurable disservice to the lower performing ones. And that is not something to care about just in terms of compassion for those individuals, but for how it harms our economy and increases social problems, even crime, that we have to deal with collectively one way or another.
Secondly, the kinds of parents who send their kids to private school would, if public school were the only option (as in some smaller towns), be very active in the school system. They would petition the school board or run for seats on it themselves (whereas if they do so anyway while sending their kids to private school, I would call that hypocritical or even sinister–see below), join the PTA, etc.
Thirdly and perhaps most importantly, it is a highly dubious proposition to say that if their kids were all in the public schools, the funding would be stretched even thinner. More likely is that, by the same principle as “poor people’s health care is poor health care”, if everyone’s kids were in the public system, the wealthier parents would make sure that public system were robustly funded. When the public schools contain mostly kids from lower middle class or poor families, there is always going to be temptation from everyone else (other than the most liberal minority of such families) to resist ample taxpayer funding. The example of East Ramopo, NY illustrates this principle well.
Yes, good point. Another example of how it can be a tacit caste system.
This is a good point. I try to temper my frustration with the Obamas on this issue by keeping this in mind. (Not only did they not send their girls to DC public schools, they did not send them to Chicago public schools either, yet they tapped that school system’s superintendent to become the Secretary of Education!) And I don’t want to paint with too broad a brush. If a school is truly overrun by gangs like in the This American Life story, unless and until extreme measures are taken like those I have advocated (to break up the student body and sprinkle them around the metro area), I can’t blame a parent with means enough to do so if they want to take advantage of the private school option.
But as I would hope the example cited upthread of my local high school’s valedictorian would indicate, that is not the scene where I live. Yet so many of the professors, doctors, and lawyers around here tend to just reflexively avoid the public school anyway. I really doubt they have any specific reason to eschew the public system, and in some sense it just becomes self-perpetuating, as their peers’ children are at the Catholic school so it would become socially awkward if their kids weren’t there too.
And the concern about who is in or out may not have anything to do with race, religion or even connections - there are a fair amount of Catholic parochial grade schools in NYC with a predominantly non-white, non-Catholic,lower middle-class- at-best student populations.The median household income is something like $27,000 in Brownsville, Brooklyn - certainly not an affluent neighborhood yet the Catholic grade school (which I’m sure does have to deal with issues related to poverty) has about 700 students. Some of the motivation is no doubt to stay away from the “riff-raff”- but the “riff-raff” isn’t defined by race, religion or income. It’s defined by behavior and motivation- of the parents as much as the kids. Some kids would have just as well in a public school, but not all will. There are some kids that have high standards for themselves and will do well anywhere. There are others who adjust their behavior to their surroundings- if you put them in a school where most students go to class and do their work, they will go to class and do their work. If you put them in a school where most students don’t go to class and drop out as soon as they legally can, then they will do the same.
Good point. While my kids were at the parish school, I was one of quite a few people in the parish who opposed lobbying efforts to gain a tax exemption for those of us who chose private schools. I firmly believe that making that choice should not exempt anyone, including me, from paying our fair share of the cost of public schools. I also actively support programs which provide school supplies and homework help to needy kids in area public schools.
Slacker is correct that some private schools are actually inferior to area public schools. That is not always the case. I chose public school when it was the better alternative, private when it was not.
The problem is, even those like huck who sound very compassionate about public schools and promote an idea of dedication to providing them the resources they need…sound exactly like a liberal do-gooder talking about a soup kitchen or a social welfare program to help the needy. But think about that. How would you feel if your children were basically treated as being part of a welfare program? There are not that many people in our society, although I would count myself as one, who wouldn’t feel like they were inferior, low class, etc. And if you sort of shrug and say “well that’s not my fault, not my problem”, think about the social ramifications of putting such a large portion of the population in the position of feeling like welfare recipients. Even most liberal people believe that welfare is something you should do if you have to, only for as long as you have to.
Isn’t that what you are trying to do with your suggestion that parents shouldn’t put their kids in private school, because it hurts the performance of the others?
“See, Rahman, that nice white boy next to you could be in private school. But his parents left him in this school so you could interact with your betters, and see how it is done.”
And conversely -
“See, Johnny, you are going to stay in this school, because everybody else is inferior to you, and your social duty is to show these lesser beings how a real student goes about things.”
The inferior classes should be grateful to us for our noblesse oblige, after all.
Well, I guess I am a liberal do-gooder and I have worked in soup kitchens and food pantries and homework centers for needy students (alongside my kids) so I can’t defend myself on that basis.
But since I don’t feel contempt for those who require that kind of assistance (I have found in interacting with these folks that most of them are as hard-working and intelligent as anyone else, others have physical and/or mental problems that make it impossible for them to perform a paying job) the idea that public schools would be looked on by anyone as a “welfare program” didn’t enter my head. So I honestly didn’t realize I was being offensive, for which I again humbly apologize.
If I could somehow make every kid have basic wants met and receive an excellent education, I would, just as you would. But sending my kids to a worse school than I can afford wouldn’t accomplish that or anything like it.
Don’t you see though that in a modern industrial democracy like ours, soup kitchens and food pantries and so on are intended to be for either the small percentage that is chronically poor, or for a somewhat larger but still minority of the population that finds itself only in a temporary state of financial distress at least once in their life?
To make something as essential and profoundly basic to a democracy and its economy into a kind of bleeding heart charity or welfare program is to make us into something more like an aristocracy with the masses as peasants, or like a third world country with what is middle class here being elite there. This is not what we should want for our society.
Honestly I think welfare programs are as basic to a democracy as public schools. In fact one puzzling aspect of the conservative disdain for “entitlement programs” that I hear all the time (I do live in the suburbs, remember) is why it’s wrong for a person who needs it to accept public assistance, but OK for them to send their kids to public school (as most of them do, although I live not very far from an area where home-schooling is popular among conservative Christians).
I’m not sure this is the case that often. Kids to private schools for reasons of religion and often for prestige, but in many cases (outside of Manhattan at least) private schools can’t afford to be all that exclusive.
I was involved in a support group for parents of gifted children for years, and no one ever talked about sending their kids to private schools. One of the high schools was public and top rated, and far more prestigious than any private school in our area. The parents in this area could afford private school, but public was better.
In NY there are public pull out schools. My high school was just fine - the best high school you didn’t need a test to get into - perhaps because we were about as far away from Bronx Science as you could get.
.
I buy this more - but again it depends on parents. When I lived in NJ our town was full of people from nearby research centers - the public schools had tons of volunteers and parental involvement.
Well, some of them do pay taxes–sales taxes, real estate taxes if not income taxes. And many more did pay taxes until they lost their jobs or the breadwinners moved out or whatever happened that resulted in them qualifying for assistance.
But you intrigue me strangely…so those who don’t pay taxes shouldn’t be able to send their kids to public school? Perhaps there is the solution to the economic woes and overcrowding of public school systems. Maybe we can reduce the student population by–what’s that number? Forty-seven percent!
Huh. Well, my kid’s school got an “Outstanding” on the last OFSTED report, so clearly quality isn’t too much of an issue. Of course, so did the public school she was accepted to so six of one etc etc.
You know, I took the train into town earlier today. I was going to take the car* but then I thought “No - why should I segregate myself from public-transport-riding hoi polloi? I should ride with them - it’ll be good for them to see a high-quality person such as myself on the train.” It felt good. Liberating, even.
*I don’t actually have a car at the moment since I’m spending all this money on the private school, but why waste a good opportunity for snark?
Well obviously housing the poor all together in gigantic concrete buildings doesn’t work, so maybe there IS something to having the poor dispersed amongst the middle class instead of ghettoized?
I was explaining something that you purported not to understand - the difference between entitlement programs, and sending your son or daughter to public schools. IOW your beliefs about conservative attitudes was mistaken.