7 ms·

I remember Linus Torvalds talking about this, getting a home in a good school district is difficult and expensive but not getting one has consequences. And when

by tehabe 10y ago

I remember Linus Torvalds talking about this, getting a home in a good school district is difficult and expensive but not getting one has consequences. And when you read this, you really understand the Finnish idea that all school should be equally good, a competition between them will lead to good, better, and bad schools.

velodrome 10y ago
One word: Gentrification. It affects other aspects of our society, not just education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
striking 10y ago
Linus' post: https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X
pkaye 10y ago
I live in a city in California where within the same school district, there is one school in the 99% percentile ranking while the others are in the mid range.
awoeifjs 10y ago
Another reason Finnish schools are so successful: Finland ethnic groups: Finn 93.4%, Swede 5.6%, Russian 0.5%, Estonian 0.3%, Roma (Gypsy) 0.1%, Sami 0.1% (2006)
- pyrale 10y ago
  I would be interested in a study establishing that this correlation is in fact a cause.
rayiner 10y ago
There is no such thing as a "good school district." In D.C. there is a neighborhood called Capitol Hill. The local elementary school is Brent. 5-10 years ago, rich people would never have sent their kids to that school. It was 80% low-income, and the test scores were terrible. The area has dramatically gentrified over the last several years, and now it's one of the best schools in the city (and less than 15% low-income). Nothing changed about the school or the teachers--what changed is how much money the students parents' have. The problem in the U.S. isn't that we have "good schools" and "bad schools." It's that we have extreme segregation along racial and economic lines. Our policies create pockets of schools that are 90% low-income (and usually a similar percentage black or hispanic). It's a symptom of a society with extreme segregation and wealth inequality, not a cause.
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  First off, I very much agree with you. I think "good school district" is coded language for what you're making explicit—a district comprised of schools and teachers with necessary and adequate resources to provide "good/better/best" education. I don't mean to detract from your point, because I think it is definitely key to education problems nationwide. Edit: My statement about coded language did not include mention of the segregation and amplified economic disparity/inequality. It was not my intention to omit this as a means of saying it is irrelevant. It most certainly is. I was hasty in my paraphrasing. My apologies to rayiner for detracting from his very important point, which was not what I meant to do.
  - littletimmy 10y ago
    I think the point of the post above yours is a bit different. A good school is one that has the best students. It is often your classmates, more than teachers, who create an environment that is conducive to learning. What seems to be the case is that rich people invest more in their kids, and their kids are simply better students. They are better behaved, with higher comprehension and math skills, and more likely to be better students. That is what creates a good school. So it is not that schools get richer with better resources (although that too is a factor), but that richer kids with higher parental investment are fundamentally more likely to succeed. That is the real divide.
    - bobwaycott 10y ago
      Certainly. My ultimate point was that because of the coded language, saying a "good school district" doesn't exist is, to me, equivalent to saying the problems rayiner made explicit don't exist. Just because it's a polite term doesn't mean people don't understand what it signifies, and also doesn't mean the good/bad school divide doesn't exist. I made my point poorly and wish I hadn't, as it has led to misunderstanding.
      - littletimmy 10y ago
        It is telling that whenever I hear the phrase "good school district", I automatically assume an upper-middle class nuclear white family...
clevernickname 10y ago
I see things the exact opposite way. Giving the state (for the purposes of the majority of taxpayers) a monopoly on education produces schools that are uniformly bad, with terrible standardized curricula, insufficient institutional motivation to improve, and stifling bureaucracy. We have insufficient competition at the moment because the majority cannot afford to get into the good districts or uproot themselves every few years chasing them; a district with a good elementary school might have a bad middle school, or a district that was good when you moved in could go bad as your kid ages. This is simply too much trouble for all but the highest achieving and most dedicated parents, which only furthers the achievement gap that comes from exploiting it. Instead, we could transition from a system of state run public schools to state funded private schools. Give each parent a tax credit that they can choose to spend on whatever school they like. Your school's funding is directly tied to the number of students that chose it, not the neighborhood it's in. Remove any restrictions on zoning or the number of schools allowed in an area. Remove the concepts of districts altogether. Get rid of mandatory curricula and give educators room to innovate. I think the majority of parents out there care about their children and want them to succeed, they just don't have the money or extraordinary amounts of time to ensure it. But with a tax credit system and an abundance of competing schools in every metropolitan area, finding the right school for your kid and actually getting them into it would be much more achievable for a much greater portion of society. Yes, the most dedicated ones that get their kids into a dozen extracurricular activities and help them with their homework and whatnot will always have an advantage over the latchkey kids, but it'd still be a significant improvement over the status quo.
- analog31 10y ago
  In my view, such a system will still need to be backed up by public schools, due to a number of possible failure modes: 1. Capacity shortages, which could be chronic and affect entire regions. 2. Who bails out the schools that fail? Who pays their creditors off? 3. Who provides seats to kids who can't get into a school, or who get kicked out due to issues that include behavior, special needs, or low test scores? An additional issue is the efficiency of transporting kids to school when nobody lives close to their school. How many minivan-miles per day are we willing to spend on the dream of privatizing the schools? I agree that majority of parents care about their kids, but educated parents are vastly better able to discern the quality of a school, and to advocate for the interests of our kids. The simple fact of having to transport your kids to school -- a burden for the working poor -- coupled with existing economic segregation, means that private schools will still be able to cherry pick which kids they want to serve, based on location.
ArkyBeagle 10y ago
They could all be good schools but we simply don't want that. We want education theater for the same reason we want security theater. In all subjects - but most especially history - it take decades to undo the damage from the public school system in America. We use it to spin old narrative yarns about what we'd wished happened.

by tehabe 10y ago

velodrome 10y ago

One word: Gentrification. It affects other aspects of our society, not just education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification

striking 10y ago

Linus' post: https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/J1NCgKQi55X

pkaye 10y ago

I live in a city in California where within the same school district, there is one school in the 99% percentile ranking while the others are in the mid range.

awoeifjs 10y ago

Another reason Finnish schools are so successful: Finland ethnic groups: Finn 93.4%, Swede 5.6%, Russian 0.5%, Estonian 0.3%, Roma (Gypsy) 0.1%, Sami 0.1% (2006)

pyrale 10y ago
I would be interested in a study establishing that this correlation is in fact a cause.

rayiner 10y ago

There is no such thing as a "good school district." In D.C. there is a neighborhood called Capitol Hill. The local elementary school is Brent. 5-10 years ago, rich people would never have sent their kids to that school. It was 80% low-income, and the test scores were terrible. The area has dramatically gentrified over the last several years, and now it's one of the best schools in the city (and less than 15% low-income). Nothing changed about the school or the teachers--what changed is how much money the students parents' have. The problem in the U.S. isn't that we have "good schools" and "bad schools." It's that we have extreme segregation along racial and economic lines. Our policies create pockets of schools that are 90% low-income (and usually a similar percentage black or hispanic). It's a symptom of a society with extreme segregation and wealth inequality, not a cause.

bobwaycott 10y ago
First off, I very much agree with you. I think "good school district" is coded language for what you're making explicit—a district comprised of schools and teachers with necessary and adequate resources to provide "good/better/best" education. I don't mean to detract from your point, because I think it is definitely key to education problems nationwide. Edit: My statement about coded language did not include mention of the segregation and amplified economic disparity/inequality. It was not my intention to omit this as a means of saying it is irrelevant. It most certainly is. I was hasty in my paraphrasing. My apologies to rayiner for detracting from his very important point, which was not what I meant to do.
- littletimmy 10y ago
  I think the point of the post above yours is a bit different. A good school is one that has the best students. It is often your classmates, more than teachers, who create an environment that is conducive to learning. What seems to be the case is that rich people invest more in their kids, and their kids are simply better students. They are better behaved, with higher comprehension and math skills, and more likely to be better students. That is what creates a good school. So it is not that schools get richer with better resources (although that too is a factor), but that richer kids with higher parental investment are fundamentally more likely to succeed. That is the real divide.
  - bobwaycott 10y ago
    Certainly. My ultimate point was that because of the coded language, saying a "good school district" doesn't exist is, to me, equivalent to saying the problems rayiner made explicit don't exist. Just because it's a polite term doesn't mean people don't understand what it signifies, and also doesn't mean the good/bad school divide doesn't exist. I made my point poorly and wish I hadn't, as it has led to misunderstanding.
    - littletimmy 10y ago
      It is telling that whenever I hear the phrase "good school district", I automatically assume an upper-middle class nuclear white family...

clevernickname 10y ago

I see things the exact opposite way. Giving the state (for the purposes of the majority of taxpayers) a monopoly on education produces schools that are uniformly bad, with terrible standardized curricula, insufficient institutional motivation to improve, and stifling bureaucracy. We have insufficient competition at the moment because the majority cannot afford to get into the good districts or uproot themselves every few years chasing them; a district with a good elementary school might have a bad middle school, or a district that was good when you moved in could go bad as your kid ages. This is simply too much trouble for all but the highest achieving and most dedicated parents, which only furthers the achievement gap that comes from exploiting it. Instead, we could transition from a system of state run public schools to state funded private schools. Give each parent a tax credit that they can choose to spend on whatever school they like. Your school's funding is directly tied to the number of students that chose it, not the neighborhood it's in. Remove any restrictions on zoning or the number of schools allowed in an area. Remove the concepts of districts altogether. Get rid of mandatory curricula and give educators room to innovate. I think the majority of parents out there care about their children and want them to succeed, they just don't have the money or extraordinary amounts of time to ensure it. But with a tax credit system and an abundance of competing schools in every metropolitan area, finding the right school for your kid and actually getting them into it would be much more achievable for a much greater portion of society. Yes, the most dedicated ones that get their kids into a dozen extracurricular activities and help them with their homework and whatnot will always have an advantage over the latchkey kids, but it'd still be a significant improvement over the status quo.

analog31 10y ago
In my view, such a system will still need to be backed up by public schools, due to a number of possible failure modes: 1. Capacity shortages, which could be chronic and affect entire regions. 2. Who bails out the schools that fail? Who pays their creditors off? 3. Who provides seats to kids who can't get into a school, or who get kicked out due to issues that include behavior, special needs, or low test scores? An additional issue is the efficiency of transporting kids to school when nobody lives close to their school. How many minivan-miles per day are we willing to spend on the dream of privatizing the schools? I agree that majority of parents care about their kids, but educated parents are vastly better able to discern the quality of a school, and to advocate for the interests of our kids. The simple fact of having to transport your kids to school -- a burden for the working poor -- coupled with existing economic segregation, means that private schools will still be able to cherry pick which kids they want to serve, based on location.

ArkyBeagle 10y ago

They could all be good schools but we simply don't want that. We want education theater for the same reason we want security theater. In all subjects - but most especially history - it take decades to undo the damage from the public school system in America. We use it to spin old narrative yarns about what we'd wished happened.