If you have too few good schools to service your population of kids, then that's the problem to address. Not replacing a mechanism that creates intense competition with a different mechanism.
But that's how we fixed our health insurance system!
If you have too few good schools to service your population of kids, then that's the problem to address.
That sounds easy. Let's fix that and then have lunch.
More seriously, vouchers are a dumb alternative to a robust magnet school system. Unless, of course, your real goal is to subsidize white flight into private schools.
I have a naive belief that if you threw a reasonable amount of money at school districts, 90% of them would produce quality schools. 5% would be totally disfunctional, and 5% would be located in communities with such serious problems that they require additional funding.
James would be here, except the intensity of the Shearer bat-signal overloaded his system.
My school district is up to $20,000 per pupil and the functinality is much lower than 90%. Part of the problem is that the high levels of funding came because of a huge drop in the number of kids so much of the spending goes to support a structure that can't easily be shifted to meet new needs. You can still get a good eduction, but you have to be connected/educated/involved enough to game the system, which is probably true anywhere.
5% would be located in communities with such serious problems
This sounds low to me.
6: Says the guy who lives in the suburban school district (as pointed out by the guy who sends his son to private school).
I like making all schools within a state presumptively lottery admissions for anyone who wants to go (if you want selective schools, you can have them, but no neighborhood schools). If there's no big difference between the schools in quality, everyone will go to the closest school. If there are big differences, everyone will apply to the good schools, and middle-class parents won't be able to count on not getting bounced to a lousy school. It seems to me to get the incentives in order for keeping all the schools pretty good.
8: Well, in my naivete, we're throwing reasonable amounts of money at a bunch of other social safety net and community growth programs, too.
I like making all schools within a state presumptively lottery admissions
Boarding schools?
12: Nah. You could work out busing for reasonable distance, but if you got into and wanted to attend a school at a distance where the schoolbuses couldn't make it work, you could, so long as you could work out transportation for yourself.
Doesn't solve all the problems, obviously: someone whose local school is lousy and where all the decent options are too far away is still stuck, but it's a start.
I never encountered the concept of a "magnet school" when I was in school, so I'd like more details on #3. How is a "magnet school" different from a "school which is clearly the best one around, and therefore everyone wants to get their kids into it"?
Oh, you mean what if someone got bounced into a school they hadn't applied to. Say, under those circumstances you'd get placed in the nearest school with space.
9: Sure, And if I had to do it again, I would've bought in the city. Complicated and possibly somewhat unique to our own family circumstances.
Another way to look at what I'd like to do is that it'd be the same as making all the schools into Durham-style magnet schools for admissions purposes.
This is probably a more useful link for quick info.
Pittsburgh has a mix of neighborhood and magnet schools for elementary. I do know that my neighbors were unable to get their kids into the elementary school that is down the street, but most of the people I know do have their kids in the school closest to their house. For high schools, I think that where you live is a determining factor excepting a couple of specialized schools (performing arts, honors). Anyway, the system is in flux and the enrollment drop is leveling off, so who knows what will happen next.
There's a big difference between vouchers, which are a subsidy to private schools, a sop to private- or home-schooling Republican voters and an attempt to effectively shut down already underfunded public school systems, and what lb's talking about, which MN calls open enrollment. The second can be combined with magnet, alternative and charter schools in any given district and can attract students who might otherwise be lost to private schools and parents looking to move back into urban centers. Yes, you also lose some kids to suburban school districts who are close enough to commute, and we'd all like to imagine that we'd be the parents down there in the trenches at the school board meetings working to fix the neighborhood school, but man that's a lot of work.
18: Durham magnet schools exclude the wealthiest kids because they live in Chapel Hill. Mushing those districts would be something, or even Chapel Hill with the rest of Orange County.
The elementary school near us was closed a couple years ago for being crappy. We're currently zoned to the desirable school way across town. I am not trusting this to be a stable zoning, and so we've bowed out of trying to game the elementary schools altogether. Also there are not quality private schools any closer than 45 minutes away, which I'm not willing to do. Our plan is to assume everything will be fine until proven otherwise. Also don't call my daughter "piggy".
Or did. Maybe it all changed in the past several years.
Ohio's experiment with charter schools ought be be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that vouchers are some kind of magical panacea for curing all that ails the education system.
21: Open enrollment. I knew there had to be a word for it.
25: Charter schools could, depending on admissions, be close to what LB is talking about. At the very least, they are different from vouchers.
When I went through Durham Public Schools, there was a decent county school system (roughly 70/30 white/black) and a city school system that was ~95% black and one of the worst performing systems in the state. I've rarely been more proud of Durham than when they voluntarily integrated the systems.
The funding disparity between the Chapel Hill-Carrboro school system and the Orange County system is striking and unfortunate, though better than what it was when I was a kid.
27: Charter schools might help, but mostly I want to blow up the safe schools that you can buy your way into by paying for an expensive house. If there's a good public school out there, it should be available to everyone, not to the people who paid a premium for the right address. (Also, that's why the 'statewide' thing is important. No defending your affluent little school district when there are other kids who could reasonably commute to your school.)
"Blow up" is probably an unnecessarily hostile term, there. This sort of thing:
I've rarely been more proud of Durham than when they voluntarily integrated the systems.
but statewide, is how I'm thinking.
29: I just wanted to be clear that charter schools are separate from vouchers, at least as I've seen the terms used. The nice one near my neighborhood has a lottery and, excepting sibling preference, I think every kid in the district has an equal shot.
30: Until you can manage that, I'm happy with the private school thing.
21: Yeah, the only problem with open enrollment is that, especially in combination with charter schools, and even with magnet programs, you get situations like North High, where nobody with a choice -- white, black, rich, poor -- wants to send their kid there, so you wind up with a school designed for 2,000 students limping along with only 400, the majority of whom come from backgrounds where they aren't going to get much support outside of the classroom. And then it takes 10 years to close the school. So you've got several thousand kids getting the crappiest possible education, most of whom are already coming from a pretty rough background.
Schools shouldn't be funded locally.
So why is where you live/send kids to school more important now? It's not like crime is higher now than it was in 1970.
Let's say there is a city that's 90% white and ten school districts. In that case, at least 9/10 school districts are going to be majority white. But if the city is 60% white, the whites may congregate in three or four school districts, driving up the prices in those areas. Of course, if you lived in Contra Costa county, you could send your white daughter to the local high school which is 70% Hispanic and 2% white.
charter schools are separate from vouchers
True. We also have some tuition-free public charters that are taxpayer-funded but not associated with DPS.
And then it takes 10 years to close the school.
That's a problem, but it's an execution problem; if the school can't be rescued, close it down faster.
So why is where you live/send kids to school more important now? It's not like crime is higher now than it was in 1970.
People's believed crime rates has risen dramatically, and their belief about quality of schools has tanked. According to the book.
36: I thought all charters were tuition free: that 'charter' meant 'public school, but self-run, outside the local school board structure'.
That's a problem, but it's an execution problem; if the school can't be rescued, close it down faster.
From what I've seen, no school is so bad that you can close it without a huge, long, nasty fight.
My limited experience in the US is that fixing problems in public schools (usually removing individuals, though maybe changing policy) is confrontational and full of insider politics. No surprise, that's true at most stable institutions.
This isn't viable for parents, so the end result is that parents flee from problems, both real and perceived ones. I don't think that there are institutional ways to make people realistic about problems that affect their kids, but informal change for the better is possible. Taking away the ability to spend to make your broken school and only your broken school better is a very bad idea. Per-student spending in many crappy districts is really high, it's not just a question of money.
34: In North's case it's not a matter of local funding, but of funding based on the number of pupils. Both lb and Natilo are right. Schools like North should be closed down a lot more quickly and then reopened after a reorganization (which is what will probably happen ultimately), but people fight this for a whole variety of reasons, neighborhood/civic pride not least among them. Folks know their local school sucks, but they still don't want the shame of having it closed.
35 is of course crypto-racist trollery.
I thought all charters were tuition free
Yeah, I suppose that's true. I'm a little ambivalent about diverting general funds to them when the traditional public system is so badly strapped for cash (unlike Moby's district, we can barely build trailers fast enough to house all the new kids and per-pupil spending is still
...<10K), but not strongly opposed.
the traditional public system is so badly strapped for cash (unlike Moby's district
Rustbelt depopulation: Making it work for you.
we can barely build trailers fast enough to house all the new kids
This. It's crazy when I'm in my hometown how much of the playing fields have been converted to portables - ie, mobile home classrooms.
I don't know, I thought I spelled out pretty accurately the nightmare that keeps plenty of parents from sending their kids to minority majority schools, and makes them spend an extra $200k for a "good school district," or a white majority school district.
I am pretty convinced that "good" schools just means schools with "good" student demographics. At least, as far as standardized testing will tell you.
If by "nightmare" you meant "racist fear fantasy based on isolated incidents," then sure.
47: You really do avoid a lot of problems with a growing system. The portable classrooms are less than ideal, but when you have a system with a dropping enrollment you get worse problems. The schools aren't hiring new teachers, so new ideas have to come in soley by chaning minds. Administrative positions don't open for often so teachers who want to do something else (or who really should do something else) are kept in the classroom.
You can't close buildings, because people don't want you to shut down the school in their area, so you spend more and more money to maintain facilties but never quite enough to keep them nice.
Eh, I spent 8th grade in a portable classroom, and not one of these fancy-pants new ones, either. This one was already 10 or 15 years old when I got there. Didn't kill me. In some ways, it was superior to a traditional classroom, as you didn't have all the noise from the hallways and what not. It did tend to smell funny sometimes.
You really do avoid a lot of problems with a growing system.
Growing and shrinking systems have different problems. Noah's kindergarten class this year was well over the state-mandated class size limit (as were all the other K classes), but it took until halfway through the school year to get a new class approved and a teacher hired.
I think I've already told my story of my local public school, which has 0% white enrollment -- none -- and where, based n a few reports. the teachers actively discourage white parents from sending their kids there out of perceived fear for safety.
I broadly speaking like LBs plan, but I wonder sometimes if LAUSD -- which has a mix of charter and magnet schools -- is so dysfunctional that blowing it up through a voucher program would be worth it. Probably not, since vouchers don't appear to actually work.
I can testify that over in the CH-Carrboro district some of the elementary schools are bursting at the seams as well.
I have a naive belief that if you threw a reasonable amount of money at school districts, 90% of them would produce quality schools.
8: Well, in my naivete, we're throwing reasonable amounts of money at a bunch of other social safety net and community growth programs, too.
I just don't buy that. Either individually or taken together.
I'm inclined to think (1) Have you met people? These might be true in a world in which people were generally sane, but that isn't the world in which we live. (2) educating people is difficult, and 90% seems like an unrealistically high number. (2) Part of what makes running a public school system difficult is the fact that it has an extremely broad mission. I think it's almost inevitable that most schools will be failing in some aspect of, "things we would hope for from a public school" because the list of things is long.
This isn't to say that I don't think there improvements from increased funding for schools and public services but I don't think that is a "get out of problem solving free" card for thinking about how to solve the real challenges facing public schools.
(And, of course, H-G probably has a much better sense of those challenges than I do, having contact with a much broader range of HS graduates.)
the teachers actively discourage white parents from sending their kids there out of perceived fear for safety.
That's a terrible stereotype. The vast majority of white kids never perpetrate massacres in their schools.
Although, of kids who've perpetrated notorious massacres in their schools, the vast majority are white.
Although, of kids who've perpetrated notorious massacres in their schools, the vast majority are white.
Though the person responsible for the deadliest attack was Asian.
No, there was clear evidence that he'd been inspried by Asian movie violence: far too balletic.
What about radially-drawn school district lines that combine suburbs with urbs? Has that been tried and found infeasible?
Well, Apo mentioned that the Durham area has the suburbs and the city in one district -- I'm sure it's been done elsewhere.
They just created a county-wide district. It isn't nothing, but it is a long way from creating a district like in 63, assuming that "combining suburbs with urbs" means something like creating a single district for a combined metro area.
63: It works just fine and turned Wake County (Raleigh) into a system with no failing schools. But then people like bjk move in from out of state and get freaked out that their kids have to sit beside non-white students. So they go fuck everything up during low turnout elections.
The point of 63 is to construct racially/economically integrated districts, right? The literal urban/suburban thing doesn't matter much, unless I'm missing something.
So why is where you live/send kids to school more important now? It's not like crime is higher now than it was in 1970.
My guess is that 40 or 50 years ago there were a hell of a lot more opportunities for stable reasonable paying jobs with only a high school diploma. The four year degree has been become the new minimum for a shot at middle class.
Right. It's not crime, it's economic security, and on that axis the world is a much scarier place than it was in 1970. (Or, at least, people perceive it that way. I look at young family members without college degrees and think "Man, they're just fucked," and I don't think that would have been a normal reaction in 1970.)
and on that axis the world is a much scarier place than it was in 1970
I knew everybody would love me when I'm gone.
Oops, I should have said school attendance boundaries, not districts.
A young lawyer in jeans and hoodie is having a long, loud cell conversation near me in the coffee shop featuring with a tremendous amount of wheedling.
Now dance for me, you hippies, and I'll make the economy better.
@72: stop turning in your grave, it is disturbing our vibe (and if you don't ask - we won't tell you about that either so you (and we) can get some rest)
Is no one else troubled by the fact that it's Elizabeth Warren who wrote the book? Her pedestal wobbles.
mobile home classrooms.
I know from some teachers that I work with that these are dispreffered by them (lack of space is a big issue), but man, as a student I was always thrilled to get them. They had a/c! Heaters! They were always sort of cozy!
on that axis the world is a much scarier place than it was in 1970. (Or, at least, people perceive it that way.
We hired a small class this fall, a dozen new cops. I heard we had over 1500 applicants. And supposedly we're at only 7.5 percent unemployment.
I bet the kids pay more attention to the tornado drill.
but man, as a student I was always thrilled to get them.... always sort of cozy!
My daughter transitioned from an obsolete (by our lofty local standards) school building to a brand new, state-of-the art facility. I was all, "Wow, this place is so light and airy and spacious." She found it big and frightening, and said she wanted to go back to her cozy little classroom in the tired old school building.
74:Is no one else troubled by the fact that it's Elizabeth Warren who wrote the book? Her pedestal wobbles.
Almost a bat-signal.
The FDL commenters have completely turned on Warren, cynical lot they are.
35 is of course crypto-racist trollerydrollery
FIFY
|?
The other day Alex questioned my moderate opposition to transfer payments. Here is Bill Mitchell MMT Guru on why he prefers gov't Guaranteed Jobs to Basic Guaranteed Income. Very very loooong, as is his style. It could apply tangentially to vouchers:give the people free services and gov't jobs (some can count pigeons in parks, tell stories, phone the infirm), not money.
This is pretty much bog-standard Post-Keynesianism. Part of the reasoning (only part) is that Job Guarantee or Employer of Last Resort (at much higher minimum wages, as in median wage rates) lifts wages up for all workers, especially those in the lower quintiles.
|>
OT: bob, really? A liberal? Say it ain't so!
I thought the book was interesting but flawed. Definitely some sample bias.
I agree with LB's point that open-enrollment ("vouchers" in their decade-old jargon) seems like it would have the salutary effect of increasing people's interest in the quality of schools in general. There are limits to distance, though (as someone who had a 100-mile round trip commute to high school). It seems like you could have an effect of bidding up prices near the "good" schools, as parents move there to have their kids attend, while less well-off kids who are lotteried in simply decline to attend because it's impractical.
You know it gets tough.
Here is Ezra Klein today trying to blame libertarians for everything, as if "liberalism" or welfare capitalism had nothing to do with free marketism. Roll over, Adam Smith.
They are really trying to write socialism completely out of the discourse, even on the farthest fringe. This is neo-liberalism.
signed, the disappeared invisible guy.
They had a/c! Heaters! They were always sort of cozy!
Ours in VT weren't so cozy, but we learned that we could turn up the heat by packing snow on the thermostats.
Ohio's experiment with charter schools ought be be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that vouchers are some kind of magical panacea for curing all that ails the education system.
Ohio's experiment with charter schools should be a reminder that fraud and corruption are always lurking, waiting to pounce on any plan that involves any kind of privitization.
88: Yeah, in our mild climate, the actual classroom buildings were basically built sans any heating or cooling (back in the 50s, I suppose). (And there were heaters, they were just totally ineffective.) It was tolerable, since, well, it was coastal California, but it always seemed a revelation to think that you didn't have to have the same temperatures indoors as you did out.
My school did (probably doesn't) have AC. If it got over 90 or so, we got out early. Heating was not optional.
The only "snow" day I ever got in semi-suburban Chicagoland was when it got so cold the heating broke in the old-ish school building. (Secretly, several of us wondered if the breakage was from a bunch of us melting crayons on the radiator.)
Secretly, several of us wondered if the breakage was from a bunch of us melting crayons on the radiator.
Caroline and Joey like to do their coloring by the heating vent, as if the house were some vast arctic waste and they were huddled near the fire. As a result, we have quite a build up of abandoned, melted crayons around the vent. So far, it has not broken the heating system.
Sure, but the feds came in and made them make non-toxic crayons. It's different now.
This is where I got aggravated, because that is an idiotic solution. If you have too few good schools to service your population of kids, then that's the problem to address. Not replacing a mechanism that creates intense competition with a different mechanism.
This is confused. What most people mean by a good school is one without poor and/or minority kids. (There is some justification for this as your peers are a greater influence on how well you do in school than your teachers.) It is obviously impossible for everyone to attend schools without poor and/or minority kids.
74
Is no one else troubled by the fact that it's Elizabeth Warren who wrote the book? Her pedestal wobbles.
Well Steve Sailer liked it:
A wise and readable new public policy book called The Two-Income Trap ...
If Steve Sailor jumped off a bridge, would you?
93: M&S spend a good deal of time on the heating vents, resulting in slag heaps in the ductwork of melted crayons, bananagrams tiles, beads, stickers, tiny toy parts and all manner of food. I'll put up a photo in the flickr pool when it comes time to clean them out.
My limited experience in the US is that fixing problems in public schools (usually removing individuals, though maybe changing policy) is confrontational and full of insider politics. No surprise, that's true at most stable institutions.
I will just note that it's true that getting people removed from their job is inherently confrontational, and has nothing to do with how stable the system is, how entrenched the teacher's union is, etc, but rather to do with the fact that you're trying to take someone's livelihood from them.
Personally, I'd nationalise all the schools, put each school under a board elected by the parents --- with quite large powers of discretion in setting the curriculum etc ---, and then fund based on a formula based around deprivation at the national level; in particular, with teacher pay set at the national level. (Or, if not national, largest possible unit.) School choice would be determined -entirely- by neighbourhood, but I'd make the neighbourhoods as gerrymandered as possible to be as diverse as possible while as small as possible. I'd also institute nation-wide exams at 16 and 18. Then, ponies.
I'd also institute nation-wide exams at 16 and 18.
Why? I was entirely with you up to this point.
I'm not entirely sold on it personally --- the idea would be to eliminate snobbery about school (at the university entrance level) as much as possible by establishing a nation-wide standard (the idea would be to give students from `bad' schools some recognition of their learning). At the same time, it's obviously a deeply flawed idea which still helps perpetuate inequalities, and yeah.
Also, I like the idea of crazy nationwide testing. It sounds hilarious. & it helps kill off the SATs and such, who are crazy things to let exist in a developed society.
I like the idea of crazy nationwide testing.
Compulsory Thunderdome for all university applicants!
It's not a U-turn, we always said we wanted 50% of kids to go to university. Two kids enter, one kid matriculates. That's 50%. We never said anything about what would happen to the other 50%.
82: Steve Attewell is a fan of "Job Insurance", and his arguments seem pretty solid. (But he's a liberal. Well, a progressive. Are you going soft?) That makes sense to me, although I would point out that it's still a transfer payment - a harsh critic might call it workfare on steroids. That would be unfair but it wouldn't be totally false.
Also, from FDL, this quote is right: Military families are often the most abused by lenders, many of them which position their services close to bases. I remember Holly Petraeus on a conference call when the Senate was trying to keep auto lenders under the oversight of the CFPB, talking about how military families were routinely ripped off by car salesmen. She has a passion for keeping fraudsters out of the pocketbooks of military families.
The British equivalent was when some horrible gang of bankers was allowed to offer (awful) financial products to the troops using the NAAFI's good name.
As far as the school stuff goes, I will say what I always say: there is absolutely no point arguing about how good the teachers are until you've decided what good teaching is. Otherwise it's like the story about Billy Wilder doing take after take after take until the actor turns round and says "What the hell is it, Billy? What is it that you want?" And Wilder says: "Just...just be better."
If you aren't proposing to do a lot more work trying to define what it is that the good teachers do, all you're doing is vacuous union-bashing guff.
99
... School choice would be determined -entirely- by neighbourhood, but I'd make the neighbourhoods as gerrymandered as possible to be as diverse as possible while as small as possible. ...
Cutting the value of someone's house in half by redrawing school district lines will be probably be confrontational as well. Westchester NY doesn't even periodically update property assessments (although I believe this is in theory legally required) because it is too controversial.
The courts are making us update property assessments. It's going to be great fun.
106
If you aren't proposing to do a lot more work trying to define what it is that the good teachers do, all you're doing is vacuous union-bashing guff
It's hard to feel too sorry for the teachers unions because they have opened the door by claiming (falsely) that teachers are an important component of variation in educational outcomes.
Cutting the value of someone's house in half by redrawing school district lines will be probably be confrontational as well.
That assumes that the difference in school quality between school districts will remain unchanged. The point of this scheme is to make this no longer the case. If School District A has schools that are pretty much as good as School District B, then the news that your house is now in B rather than A should make no difference to its price.
If you mean that there will be a one-off drop in price as the scheme is implemented, because your house won't be in Excellent District 1 but in Standard District A: possibly, but it should be accompanied by a similar increase in the price of houses that used to be in Terrible District 2 and are now in Standard District A.
108.2: That's why everybody should have several houses?
108
That assumes that the difference in school quality between school districts will remain unchanged. The point of this scheme is to make this no longer the case. If School District A has schools that are pretty much as good as School District B, then the news that your house is now in B rather than A should make no difference to its price.
The districts won't stay the same. If you don't periodically redraw the lines the current situation is likely to recreate itself.
If you mean that there will be a one-off drop in price as the scheme is implemented, because your house won't be in Excellent District 1 but in Standard District A: possibly, but it should be accompanied by a similar increase in the price of houses that used to be in Terrible District 2 and are now in Standard District A.
In the case of property revaluation the losers scream a lot louder than the winners cheer. And redrawing school district lines is negative sum. A lot of the students attending formerly "good" public schools are likely to flee to private schools rather than attend a "standard" public school meaning you are eliminating the good schools without doing that much for the poor schools.
Er, James, you missed point one: nationalisation of all schools. That is to say, all schools. So flight to private schools wouldn't be an issue.
Nobody ever said this was a recommendation for an electoral manifesto.
you are eliminating the good schools without doing that much for the poor schools
That wasn't the result here.
I'd suppose the effect of merging district would vary with local characteristics. When they merged many of the eastern suburbs here (court ordered, back in the 80s), it seemed the main result was to get development pushed out across the county line. I have no idea what the effect was on school quality.
111
Er, James, you missed point one: nationalisation of all schools. That is to say, all schools. So flight to private schools wouldn't be an issue
If people are allowed to move you will get the same effect.
We have a single, statewide public school system. It hasn't fixed either school quality (mediocre at best, lousy at worst) or price runup in desirable neighborhoods. No doubt there are a lot of Hawaii-specific factors to that, but I get more convinced all the time that there are some cultural things around public education in this country that are just fundamentally broken.