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While I plan to do the same for my own children unless the system dramatically changes, this approach unfairly favors the middle and upper classes who have the

While I plan to do the same for my own children unless the system dramatically changes, this approach unfairly favors the middle and upper classes who have the time to do this. The lower classes simply don't have the time and money to do this. That said, if you do have the time and money, more power to you! No reason to disadvantage your kids because the government and bureaucracy can't do it right.

deleted 11y ago
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AlexEatsKittens 11y ago
Very true. It's a feedback loop as well. Schools perform poorly, so affluent people remove their high-performing children, which lowers the average performance of the school and gives it less funding. And so on. The thing is, you can't blame people for optimizing for their own children, but doing so drags down the quality even further for everyone else. It's a problem that requires some serious intervention.
- clavalle 11y ago
  I honestly think that is a 'treat the symptom' analysis. We need to think about why there are poor performers to begin with and it has very little to do with the few hundred dollars per student a school might lose because of not hitting performance targets.
clavalle 11y ago
> this approach unfairly favors the middle and upper classes who have the time to do this. Yes, that's the argument against it. And it is even worse than you might guess because they don't do just regular classroom stuff. They go on trips. They build things. They talk to experts. They use nice tablets and laptops. etc. Our local nice private school costs ~$20K a semester. We blow the doors off that cost just in lost wages alone. I'm a big believer in solving all problems at once -- we are solving this problem for ourselves and I think we are building a model for public schools to strive for if they ever care to look. We also need to try and solve the larger societal problem you mentioned. The key factor is parent focus and involvement. You can't reform schools alone to make that happen. The government is not getting it right, but not just because the schools aren't running as they should. We need to get to the point where people have the time and resources to care about their kids education on a day to day basis even at the lowest end of the socio-economic scale. We must get a better handle on poverty in this country.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

AlexEatsKittens 11y ago

Very true. It's a feedback loop as well. Schools perform poorly, so affluent people remove their high-performing children, which lowers the average performance of the school and gives it less funding. And so on. The thing is, you can't blame people for optimizing for their own children, but doing so drags down the quality even further for everyone else. It's a problem that requires some serious intervention.

clavalle 11y ago
I honestly think that is a 'treat the symptom' analysis. We need to think about why there are poor performers to begin with and it has very little to do with the few hundred dollars per student a school might lose because of not hitting performance targets.

clavalle 11y ago

> this approach unfairly favors the middle and upper classes who have the time to do this. Yes, that's the argument against it. And it is even worse than you might guess because they don't do just regular classroom stuff. They go on trips. They build things. They talk to experts. They use nice tablets and laptops. etc. Our local nice private school costs ~$20K a semester. We blow the doors off that cost just in lost wages alone. I'm a big believer in solving all problems at once -- we are solving this problem for ourselves and I think we are building a model for public schools to strive for if they ever care to look. We also need to try and solve the larger societal problem you mentioned. The key factor is parent focus and involvement. You can't reform schools alone to make that happen. The government is not getting it right, but not just because the schools aren't running as they should. We need to get to the point where people have the time and resources to care about their kids education on a day to day basis even at the lowest end of the socio-economic scale. We must get a better handle on poverty in this country.