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In most major cities, affluent parents opt-out of the public schooling system and we end up with underfunded and failing schools. I'm consistently attracted to

In most major cities, affluent parents opt-out of the public schooling system and we end up with underfunded and failing schools. I'm consistently attracted to a system a la Finland: for K-12, tuition and selective admission are strictly prohibited[0]. I worry that this may seem to extreme to put into action, but it wouldn't be. Even Warren Buffet has pushed for banning private schools, and soon.[1] Any thoughts on why this may not be a good idea? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#Basic_comprehensive_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland#Basic_com... [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/warren-buffett-is-right-ban-private-schools_b_1857287.html http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/mehdi-hasan/warren-buffett-i...

sremani 10y ago
The Rich can carve cities, the Park Cities in Dallas are a classic example, the upper middle class cannot, so any fiat effecting private schooling will screw the upper middle class and middle class, and I am not sure it gives any leg up for poor kids. One reason to move to burbs is exactly this, you are still part of public schooling but the ISD is oh so better because of various factors including stable households(relatively speaking). edit: other factor that lot of people are not discussing is immigration - most immigrants are young and by American standards poor (not necessarily by their native country standards - but American standards), so this infuses into the student body, who are children of immigrants who are starting rebuilding life in a new country.
pm90 10y ago
You really can't ban things like that unless there is an agreement that it is, in General, a good idea. Keep in mind that Nordic countries have a low and very homogenous population so the solutions that work there won't always work in the US
- bufordsharkley 10y ago
  Isn't this a bit of a tautology? It isn't a good idea because there isn't agreement that it is a good idea?
Naritai 10y ago
That wouldn't solve what is essentially private schooling: small suburbs that maintain their own school boards and allow only local residents. Tuition for entry is owning a house in that city. See, for example, Piedmont CA, which has its own school district. The residents of Piedmont banding together to create their own school district is just as effective at segregating their children as private school would be.
- bufordsharkley 10y ago
  In California, at least, this is undercut by judicial decisions that limited how much local funding can affect local schools (Serrano v. Priest)[0]. And in general, this is only a problem insofar as exclusionary zoning is a problem. (Which is a problem, but which is solved through different means.) I'm in particular concerned about the viability of public schools in urban areas-- exclusionary zoning ceases to be a mechanism that the affluent use to keep their schools to their use, so other than opting-out (either by moving away from the city or using private schools), what other choices to they have? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest
  - Naritai 10y ago
    Serrano doesn't affect your classmates, though - a student who is surrounded by affluent, driven children who are provided with every tutoring and learning opportunity will do better than if surrounded by students without those advantages. None of that is affected by direct funding.
evanpw 10y ago
1. It looks like public spending on K-12 education in Finland is already quite a bit less than in the United States (adjusted for PPP) [a]. Spending more doesn't necessarily get you better results. 2. Private school attendance in the US is: small, decreasing, and mostly Catholic [b]. 3. The criterion for "low-income" is this article is access to free or reduced lunches, which for a family of 4 means an income of less than $45k / year [c]. That's pretty close to the median household income, so it makes sense that about half of kids would be "low-income". a. http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-system-and-school-organization/ http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-internatio... b. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp c. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.pdf https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.p...
- bufordsharkley 10y ago
  I'm not sure I'd call 6% "small," but it is encouraging that it's shrinking. I'd like to see more of this broken down between urban and suburban areas. For instance, in most major cities, the percentages are far higher[0] and the percentage of students left behind are far more likely to be poor: in Chicago, for example, 87% of students are low-income families[1]. [0] http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/chicago_fed_letter/2006/cfloctober2006_231.pdf http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/chicag... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/kristof-students-over-unions.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/kristof-students-o...
  - rayiner 10y ago
    Fun fact: In Chicago, the second largest school system is the Archdiocese of Chicago catholic schools (which has 40k students to CPS's 400k). They spent about half what CPS does per pupil.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      Though consider also that: * They benefit from the enormous selection bias of "parents who take financial pains to send their kids to Catholic school". * They have carte blanche to dismiss problematic and challenging students back to the public school system. * They generally don't offer programs for learning disabled and behaviorally disabled students. * They aren't obliged to honor the CPS students per classroom maximum. * Catholic school teachers take a pay cut to serve in that system. * They generally have poorer facilities than the Chicago public schools. I'm a product of Chicago Catholic schools, and I was pretty amazed to see what the local public school system offered my own kids.
dnautics 10y ago
Poor schools are not underfunded, they're mismanaged. Us k-12 spending has grown faster than inflation x population since 1980, and some school districts (with lots of low income students) spend more money per pupil than it would cost to send them to competitive private schools.
- gohrt 10y ago
  what about the (vast majority) school districts that spend less than private schools?
  - DrScump 10y ago
    Your data for this is... ? I would guess that a majority of private schools are parochial/religious in orientation and actually spend less per student than nearby public schools (partially due to payrolls).
  - dnautics 10y ago
    Most private schools are pretty expensive, so I would bet that most school districts, spend less than the median private school. But that's not my claim. My claim was that most of the crappiest public school districts (CPS, DCPS, NYPS, LAUSD) spend more than it would cost to send the students to a competitive [to the district itself] private school. CPS: Per-pupil cost, $14k. Archdiocese of chicago: $7k NYPS: Per-pupil cost, $19k DCPS: Per-pupil cost, $18k LAUSD: Per-pupil cost, $15k (official, 7k, a rediculous number, but independent McKenna college researchers estimate 15k) These costs don't include capital costs. An independent estimate including capital costs for LAUSD suggests $30k/pupil.
gedy 10y ago
> In most major cities, affluent parents opt-out of the public schooling system and we end up with underfunded and failing schools. Those affluent parents still pay taxes. If schools have lower enrollment, then they get less money (which makes sense: there's fewer kids). The problem is bureaucratic school administrations that will not reduce spending/staffing when there's fewer kids. That's not the affluent parent's fault.
- bufordsharkley 10y ago
  There's an analogy to dogfooding here-- when parents take an interest in the management of their children's schools, they're more likely to improve. Simply funding them is likely to be less meaningful than funding and also engaging with them.
  - gedy 10y ago
    Agreed, and from what I've seen, public schools could care less about parent involvement, at least compared to charter schools and private schools.
slavik81 10y ago
I attended a private school because public school failed me. I'd been suspended multiple times for fighting with other children who teased me. Frankly, the public school's administration didn't want me there anymore. The private school provided a much better learning environment. They helped me learn academically and emotionally. Eight years later, I graduated high school as a model student at the top of my class. Public schools didn't care about me, and I don't trust them to care about anyone else. Nothing would be fixed by forcing me to stay at a terrible school. You help a war-torn country by getting refugees out, not by forcing people to vacation there.
- bufordsharkley 10y ago
  I don't think it helps anybody to be forced to go to a failing school, but it only helps those with means. I'm not concerned with forcing children to go to public schools, but rather stopping an inability to pay from keeping children from going to private school.
  - slavik81 10y ago
    I agree. That's why I support school vouchers.
    - bufordsharkley 10y ago
      I could totally get behind a voucher-system, but I think it's important that ability-to-pay should not affect school choice. Do most voucher advocates agree with this?
areyousure 10y ago
(This is not a "response" to your comment.) In case anyone was curious, the original source for Warren Buffett's comment is the following: http://spotlightonpoverty.org/spotlight-exclusives/ending-poverty-through-education-by-michelle-rhee-chancellor-district-of-columbia-public-schools/ http://spotlightonpoverty.org/spotlight-exclusives/ending-po... Specifically, Michelle Rhee (then Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools) quotes Buffett as follows: > He said it would be easy to solve today۪s problems in urban education. “Make private schools illegal,” he said, “and assign every child to a public school by random lottery.”

sremani 10y ago

The Rich can carve cities, the Park Cities in Dallas are a classic example, the upper middle class cannot, so any fiat effecting private schooling will screw the upper middle class and middle class, and I am not sure it gives any leg up for poor kids. One reason to move to burbs is exactly this, you are still part of public schooling but the ISD is oh so better because of various factors including stable households(relatively speaking). edit: other factor that lot of people are not discussing is immigration - most immigrants are young and by American standards poor (not necessarily by their native country standards - but American standards), so this infuses into the student body, who are children of immigrants who are starting rebuilding life in a new country.

pm90 10y ago

You really can't ban things like that unless there is an agreement that it is, in General, a good idea. Keep in mind that Nordic countries have a low and very homogenous population so the solutions that work there won't always work in the US

bufordsharkley 10y ago
Isn't this a bit of a tautology? It isn't a good idea because there isn't agreement that it is a good idea?

Naritai 10y ago

That wouldn't solve what is essentially private schooling: small suburbs that maintain their own school boards and allow only local residents. Tuition for entry is owning a house in that city. See, for example, Piedmont CA, which has its own school district. The residents of Piedmont banding together to create their own school district is just as effective at segregating their children as private school would be.

bufordsharkley 10y ago
In California, at least, this is undercut by judicial decisions that limited how much local funding can affect local schools (Serrano v. Priest)[0]. And in general, this is only a problem insofar as exclusionary zoning is a problem. (Which is a problem, but which is solved through different means.) I'm in particular concerned about the viability of public schools in urban areas-- exclusionary zoning ceases to be a mechanism that the affluent use to keep their schools to their use, so other than opting-out (either by moving away from the city or using private schools), what other choices to they have? [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrano_v._Priest
- Naritai 10y ago
  Serrano doesn't affect your classmates, though - a student who is surrounded by affluent, driven children who are provided with every tutoring and learning opportunity will do better than if surrounded by students without those advantages. None of that is affected by direct funding.

evanpw 10y ago

1. It looks like public spending on K-12 education in Finland is already quite a bit less than in the United States (adjusted for PPP) [a]. Spending more doesn't necessarily get you better results. 2. Private school attendance in the US is: small, decreasing, and mostly Catholic [b]. 3. The criterion for "low-income" is this article is access to free or reduced lunches, which for a family of 4 means an income of less than $45k / year [c]. That's pretty close to the median household income, so it makes sense that about half of kids would be "low-income". a. http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-international-education-benchmarking/top-performing-countries/finland-overview/finland-system-and-school-organization/ http://www.ncee.org/programs-affiliates/center-on-internatio... b. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgc.asp c. https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.pdf https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-03-23/pdf/2016-06463.p...

bufordsharkley 10y ago
I'm not sure I'd call 6% "small," but it is encouraging that it's shrinking. I'd like to see more of this broken down between urban and suburban areas. For instance, in most major cities, the percentages are far higher[0] and the percentage of students left behind are far more likely to be poor: in Chicago, for example, 87% of students are low-income families[1]. [0] http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/chicago_fed_letter/2006/cfloctober2006_231.pdf http://www.chicagofed.org/digital_assets/publications/chicag... [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/kristof-students-over-unions.html?ref=opinion&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/opinion/kristof-students-o...
- rayiner 10y ago
  Fun fact: In Chicago, the second largest school system is the Archdiocese of Chicago catholic schools (which has 40k students to CPS's 400k). They spent about half what CPS does per pupil.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    Though consider also that: * They benefit from the enormous selection bias of "parents who take financial pains to send their kids to Catholic school". * They have carte blanche to dismiss problematic and challenging students back to the public school system. * They generally don't offer programs for learning disabled and behaviorally disabled students. * They aren't obliged to honor the CPS students per classroom maximum. * Catholic school teachers take a pay cut to serve in that system. * They generally have poorer facilities than the Chicago public schools. I'm a product of Chicago Catholic schools, and I was pretty amazed to see what the local public school system offered my own kids.

dnautics 10y ago

Poor schools are not underfunded, they're mismanaged. Us k-12 spending has grown faster than inflation x population since 1980, and some school districts (with lots of low income students) spend more money per pupil than it would cost to send them to competitive private schools.

gohrt 10y ago
what about the (vast majority) school districts that spend less than private schools?
- DrScump 10y ago
  Your data for this is... ? I would guess that a majority of private schools are parochial/religious in orientation and actually spend less per student than nearby public schools (partially due to payrolls).
- dnautics 10y ago
  Most private schools are pretty expensive, so I would bet that most school districts, spend less than the median private school. But that's not my claim. My claim was that most of the crappiest public school districts (CPS, DCPS, NYPS, LAUSD) spend more than it would cost to send the students to a competitive [to the district itself] private school. CPS: Per-pupil cost, $14k. Archdiocese of chicago: $7k NYPS: Per-pupil cost, $19k DCPS: Per-pupil cost, $18k LAUSD: Per-pupil cost, $15k (official, 7k, a rediculous number, but independent McKenna college researchers estimate 15k) These costs don't include capital costs. An independent estimate including capital costs for LAUSD suggests $30k/pupil.

gedy 10y ago

> In most major cities, affluent parents opt-out of the public schooling system and we end up with underfunded and failing schools. Those affluent parents still pay taxes. If schools have lower enrollment, then they get less money (which makes sense: there's fewer kids). The problem is bureaucratic school administrations that will not reduce spending/staffing when there's fewer kids. That's not the affluent parent's fault.

bufordsharkley 10y ago
There's an analogy to dogfooding here-- when parents take an interest in the management of their children's schools, they're more likely to improve. Simply funding them is likely to be less meaningful than funding and also engaging with them.
- gedy 10y ago
  Agreed, and from what I've seen, public schools could care less about parent involvement, at least compared to charter schools and private schools.

slavik81 10y ago

I attended a private school because public school failed me. I'd been suspended multiple times for fighting with other children who teased me. Frankly, the public school's administration didn't want me there anymore. The private school provided a much better learning environment. They helped me learn academically and emotionally. Eight years later, I graduated high school as a model student at the top of my class. Public schools didn't care about me, and I don't trust them to care about anyone else. Nothing would be fixed by forcing me to stay at a terrible school. You help a war-torn country by getting refugees out, not by forcing people to vacation there.

bufordsharkley 10y ago
I don't think it helps anybody to be forced to go to a failing school, but it only helps those with means. I'm not concerned with forcing children to go to public schools, but rather stopping an inability to pay from keeping children from going to private school.
- slavik81 10y ago
  I agree. That's why I support school vouchers.
  - bufordsharkley 10y ago
    I could totally get behind a voucher-system, but I think it's important that ability-to-pay should not affect school choice. Do most voucher advocates agree with this?

areyousure 10y ago

(This is not a "response" to your comment.) In case anyone was curious, the original source for Warren Buffett's comment is the following: http://spotlightonpoverty.org/spotlight-exclusives/ending-poverty-through-education-by-michelle-rhee-chancellor-district-of-columbia-public-schools/ http://spotlightonpoverty.org/spotlight-exclusives/ending-po... Specifically, Michelle Rhee (then Chancellor of the Washington, D.C. public schools) quotes Buffett as follows: > He said it would be easy to solve today۪s problems in urban education. “Make private schools illegal,” he said, “and assign every child to a public school by random lottery.”