6 ms·

One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not invo

by japhyr 11y ago

One thing "rich kid schools" do is filter out many students who are difficult to teach. Teaching and running a school is a lot easier if your goal does not involve teaching everyone who walks through your doors.

icelancer 11y ago
This is by far the biggest difference between the two.
- littletimmy 11y ago
  Well, no. There's also the small matter that private school teachers tend to be amazingly more qualified. I've heard of PhDs teaching at some of the very top private schools. By contrast, state school teachers are poorly trained and poorly paid.
  - jfoutz 11y ago
    Maybe in later grades it's helpful, I don't think it requires a phd to teach 8 year olds multiplication tables. Private school, as far as i can tell, have 18 kids with an aide per classroom. Public school will have 30-40 kids per class. I dunno. if it was easy it wouldn't be a problem. There are lots of dials to turn. As you say, qualification levels of teachers is is one, frequency of testing is another. I think the least effort improvement is just smaller classes.
    - mhuffman 11y ago
      The very highest pupil to teacher ratio seems to be California with under 25. The average seems to be 16. [1] From personal experience, my child goes to a public school and his classroom is about 25 students with a teacher and 2 assistant teachers, around 8 kids per. instructor. There seems to be differing research on class size anyway, with even the most liberal interpretation of results pointing to smaller class sizes only helping "troubled" children. Also, most of the countries that have larger average class sizes than the US do better than us in rankings.[2] The definition of "troubled" seems to range from poor to lower IQ. The US seems to do about as well as Latvia and Russia in education, and not much higher than Mexico, Turkey, and Thailand, despite spending more on education per student than nearly anyone else in the world. I wonder if we might just study (with an open mind) what other countries are doing and incorporate those findings, rather than guessing and just blowing cash hand-over-fist. [1] http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and-estimates-2013-2014.html http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and-estimates-2013-2014.htm... [2] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-around-the-world/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-arou...
logicchains 11y ago
If that's the case, it seems like it would be a pretty easy problem to fix: allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class. From a utilitarian perspective this would probably be a net win, in that whatever the disruptive students lost from being expelled would be more than made up for by what the students who actually wanted to learn gained from not having the disruptive students interrupting the learning process.
- douche 11y ago
  It's not just the disruptive students - you've got the special-ed students, and all the students that are what my mother (an elementary special-ed teacher) refers to as "dull-normals" - those who don't really have learning disabilities that would get them labeled, but are just not very smart (80-100 IQ). Then there are the ESL students, and all the other categories I can't think of at 3AM... Public schools have to service all of these students, until they graduate, drop out, or age out.
  - logicchains 11y ago
    Why don't private schools have to deal with these "dull-normals" too? Having rich parents doesn't disqualify one from having below-average IQ.
    - timpattinson 11y ago
      Private schools can choose who they want to admit
      - logicchains 11y ago
        Well there must be private schools somewhere that admit children of below-average intelligence, due to the profit to be had from rich parents with said children, so perhaps it would be instructive to look at how those schools handle it.
        11y ago
tsotha 11y ago
If by "difficult to teach" you mean kids who cause problems for the other kids, then yeah. I went to a Catholic high school, and they did not tolerate disruptions. That allowed them to have classes with almost 50 kids and still have better than 95% of the graduating class going on to a four year college.
- finance-geek 11y ago
  No, "difficult to teach" often just means kids who have not had a proper meal the previous night because their family cannot afford it. Try paying attention when you are chronically hungry and you understand one of many problems very easily.
  - tsotha 11y ago
    Uh huh. How many of those kids are there, you figure, on a percentage basis?
    - Kequc 11y ago
      I just did some wikipedia sleuthing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Poverty_and_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#P... > The US Census declared that in 2010 15.1% of the general population lived in poverty: 22% of all people under age 18 13.7% of all people 19–21 and 9% of all people ages 65 and older.
      - jonlucc 11y ago
        So if we take 2/10 children and subtract 2 kids from the denominator because their parents could afford to send them to private school, you get 1/4 of students in an average school. I imagine the ratio is even worse in most inner cities and certain rural areas.
      - tsotha 11y ago
        Poverty statistics in the US don't include government programs. How many of those kids are hungry after welfare and food stamps?
jessedhillon 11y ago
That doesn't account for all of the difference. I went to public HS in rural Sacramento county, while some friends of mine went to the public schools in nearby Folsom -- a very wealthy suburb. These were public, like I said, so they don't have that selectivity you mentioned: if you live in their district, you go there. "Just" the facts of very interested parents, investment from nearby Intel and HP, and massive spending on technology programs were enough to set this school apart. Sometimes the simple answer is the right one.
- waterlesscloud 11y ago
  I'm just amused that if you said "Folsom" to Americans, 99% would associate it with prison, or Johnny Cash for the same reason. But it's really a wealthy suburb.

by japhyr 11y ago

icelancer 11y ago

This is by far the biggest difference between the two.

littletimmy 11y ago
Well, no. There's also the small matter that private school teachers tend to be amazingly more qualified. I've heard of PhDs teaching at some of the very top private schools. By contrast, state school teachers are poorly trained and poorly paid.
- jfoutz 11y ago
  Maybe in later grades it's helpful, I don't think it requires a phd to teach 8 year olds multiplication tables. Private school, as far as i can tell, have 18 kids with an aide per classroom. Public school will have 30-40 kids per class. I dunno. if it was easy it wouldn't be a problem. There are lots of dials to turn. As you say, qualification levels of teachers is is one, frequency of testing is another. I think the least effort improvement is just smaller classes.
  - mhuffman 11y ago
    The very highest pupil to teacher ratio seems to be California with under 25. The average seems to be 16. [1] From personal experience, my child goes to a public school and his classroom is about 25 students with a teacher and 2 assistant teachers, around 8 kids per. instructor. There seems to be differing research on class size anyway, with even the most liberal interpretation of results pointing to smaller class sizes only helping "troubled" children. Also, most of the countries that have larger average class sizes than the US do better than us in rankings.[2] The definition of "troubled" seems to range from poor to lower IQ. The US seems to do about as well as Latvia and Russia in education, and not much higher than Mexico, Turkey, and Thailand, despite spending more on education per student than nearly anyone else in the world. I wonder if we might just study (with an open mind) what other countries are doing and incorporate those findings, rather than guessing and just blowing cash hand-over-fist. [1] http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and-estimates-2013-2014.html http://www.nea.org/home/rankings-and-estimates-2013-2014.htm... [2] http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-around-the-world/ http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/11/class-size-arou...

logicchains 11y ago

If that's the case, it seems like it would be a pretty easy problem to fix: allow schools to suspend/expel students who are repeatedly disruptive or violent in class. From a utilitarian perspective this would probably be a net win, in that whatever the disruptive students lost from being expelled would be more than made up for by what the students who actually wanted to learn gained from not having the disruptive students interrupting the learning process.

douche 11y ago
It's not just the disruptive students - you've got the special-ed students, and all the students that are what my mother (an elementary special-ed teacher) refers to as "dull-normals" - those who don't really have learning disabilities that would get them labeled, but are just not very smart (80-100 IQ). Then there are the ESL students, and all the other categories I can't think of at 3AM... Public schools have to service all of these students, until they graduate, drop out, or age out.
- logicchains 11y ago
  Why don't private schools have to deal with these "dull-normals" too? Having rich parents doesn't disqualify one from having below-average IQ.
  - timpattinson 11y ago
    Private schools can choose who they want to admit
    - logicchains 11y ago
      Well there must be private schools somewhere that admit children of below-average intelligence, due to the profit to be had from rich parents with said children, so perhaps it would be instructive to look at how those schools handle it.
      - 11y ago

tsotha 11y ago

If by "difficult to teach" you mean kids who cause problems for the other kids, then yeah. I went to a Catholic high school, and they did not tolerate disruptions. That allowed them to have classes with almost 50 kids and still have better than 95% of the graduating class going on to a four year college.

finance-geek 11y ago
No, "difficult to teach" often just means kids who have not had a proper meal the previous night because their family cannot afford it. Try paying attention when you are chronically hungry and you understand one of many problems very easily.
- tsotha 11y ago
  Uh huh. How many of those kids are there, you figure, on a percentage basis?
  - Kequc 11y ago
    I just did some wikipedia sleuthing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#Poverty_and_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States#P... > The US Census declared that in 2010 15.1% of the general population lived in poverty: 22% of all people under age 18 13.7% of all people 19–21 and 9% of all people ages 65 and older.
    - jonlucc 11y ago
      So if we take 2/10 children and subtract 2 kids from the denominator because their parents could afford to send them to private school, you get 1/4 of students in an average school. I imagine the ratio is even worse in most inner cities and certain rural areas.
    - tsotha 11y ago
      Poverty statistics in the US don't include government programs. How many of those kids are hungry after welfare and food stamps?

jessedhillon 11y ago

That doesn't account for all of the difference. I went to public HS in rural Sacramento county, while some friends of mine went to the public schools in nearby Folsom -- a very wealthy suburb. These were public, like I said, so they don't have that selectivity you mentioned: if you live in their district, you go there. "Just" the facts of very interested parents, investment from nearby Intel and HP, and massive spending on technology programs were enough to set this school apart. Sometimes the simple answer is the right one.

waterlesscloud 11y ago
I'm just amused that if you said "Folsom" to Americans, 99% would associate it with prison, or Johnny Cash for the same reason. But it's really a wealthy suburb.