12 ms·

> Further, don't underestimate the power of white flight. It's happened many a time before. I think it would be pretty surprising if this hyper-integration pla

by ashark 10y ago

> Further, don't underestimate the power of white flight. It's happened many a time before. I think it would be pretty surprising if this hyper-integration plan didn't result in a sudden and substantial drop in the quality of education in the nicer schools (more classroom disruption which is, anecdotally from the several teachers I know, a huge problem in lower-income schools, more teacher time spent catching the new students up, et c.) and I 100% guarantee that any parents, of any color, who could afford to leave those districts to unaffected ones or switch to private schools would do so ASAP. So yeah, white (and/or not-poor) flight, instantly. And probably some fairly intense protest action by any who couldn't afford to get their kids out.

duaneb 10y ago
So shame them for being classist and racist. Public education is a public investment.
- Kalium 10y ago
  You're welcome to shame people moving their kids to better schools as classist and racist. It might work! With that said, I have some doubts that such a policy would accomplish what you might hope for. Most people, even those who wish people wouldn't, understand and sympathize with parents trying to get the best possible education for their kids.
  - rayiner 10y ago
    "Better schools?" They'd be the same schools, just with some additional lower income kids.
    - Kalium 10y ago
      I am operating in the context of a *parent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12694649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12694649 I'm open to the possibility that the measured quality of a school does not change if you make significant changes to its constituent populations, but it seems like a large enough question to not be assumed in passing.
      - rayiner 10y ago
        Sure going from 1% low income to 10% low income will have the short term effect of changing the overall average test scores. But how will it change the quality of education for the existing students? It'll be the same teachers, same curriculum, same facilities, etc.
        Kalium 10y ago
        The educational experience of students is not dictated wholly by teachers, curriculum, and facilities.
        tptacek 10y ago
        You are coming dangerously close to implying that children in poorly performing school districts are intrinsically unschoolable. That can't be what you mean to imply, so I think maybe step back and examine how you've ended up in an incoherent position.
        Kalium 10y ago
        I don't think anyone is unschoolable. I do think that changing populations can mean changing how resources are allocated, and this can affect more than just the part of the population that has changed. For example, I've seen schools cut special needs education programs because populations have shifted and resources haven't.
        harryh 10y ago
        "intrinsically unschoolable" might be going to far, but I think it's generally agreed upon that children in poorly performing school districts are (on average) more difficult to teach. It's also generally agreed upon that students have an impact on their peers. This is the whole rationalization for better integrated schools in the first place. We can certainly debate how many (as a % or raw number) challenging students a "good school" can import before overall quality begins to degrade. But I don't think that it's especially controversial to say that degradation will happen at some point.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    First let me say that by moving my family with two young kids to Oak Park, I was almost definitionally participating in the phenomenon that turn suburban public schools into de facto private schools. People move to Oak Park because it's on the Green and Blue CTA lines; it's a suburb that feels like living in a particularly nice residential part of Chicago. You move to Oak Park because you want all the perks of Chicago without exposure to its school system. So with that having been said, and recognizing my own role: Why exactly should we sympathize with parents who react to problems in their school systems by using their economic leverage both to exempt their own kids from those problems and also, by altering the tax base for their original school system, making those problems worse? Why is that praiseworthy? It doesn't seem praiseworthy to me. It seems to me like just another of those little pragmatic immoralities we all undertake regularly. We have few problems seeing the problem when it takes the form of kids going to Choate and Bowdoin. But at the smaller scale we all deal with, we seem unable to recognize the same thing happening. We seem to believe can't possibly be a part of the problem. But, of course, we are. I don't mean to crucify anyone for doing it. After all, I did it too. But I think we can reasonably draw the line at rationalizing or valorizing the de facto privatization of good public education in our country.
    - Kalium 10y ago
      I don't know if I'd call it praiseworthy. I do think it's the sort of pragmatic immorality that a great many parents are happy to take on for the perceived benefits gained. As a result, it's easy to oppose for the large-scale effects but difficult to oppose as individual choices. I think we should be careful about the difference between rationalizing and understanding the decisions parents make. The two are readily confused on the best of days, and political discussions about school quality generally don't happen on the best of days.
      - tptacek 10y ago
        We all seem to have an enormous moral blind spot when it comes to our children competing with other children.
        10y ago
josho 10y ago
Have a listen to The Problem We All Live With[1] a podcast episode from This American Life. It speaks to this specifically and comes to very different conclusions. Ie. integration works. [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...
tptacek 10y ago
I live in a city-adjacent suburb in Chicago, Oak Park, directly butting up against Austin, the largest high-crime overwhelmingly black neighborhood in the city of Chicago. Oak Park is tiny and known for its school system. The western side Austin Ave, which divides Chicago from Oak Park, hosts an unbroken row of multi-family dwellings, many of them large apartment buildings. The occupants of those buildings are people who would otherwise live in Austin, but move to Oak Park to get their kids into Oak Park schools. This has been going on for decades in Oak Park, and we continue to have excellent schools, and continue to be a high-status magnet for professionals who want to live somewhere connected to the CTA trains but not part of CPS schools. It doesn't happen in Kennilworth or Wilmette, because those suburbs aren't directly adjacent to troubled neighborhoods in Chicago. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that the carrying capacity for lower-income students of those suburbs --- the majority of Chicago suburbs, which like Wilmette and unlike Oak Park, aren't city-adjacent --- is any less than that of Oak Park. So, no, I don't think your hypothesis about inner-city kids disrupting suburban schools is accurate, nor do I think "instant white flight" is going to happen. "White flight" was an irrational, racist reaction to housing integration. It's not a law of nature; it was/is a growing pain of the US getting over centuries of segregation.
- wyager 10y ago
  Multiple Houston suburban neighborhoods have been ruined by "integrative" public housing developments. The situation you're describing sounds rather different (more organic, in particular). We also can't expect uniform results across the board. > "White flight" was an irrational What's irrational about it? The suburbs created as a result of "white flight" are objectively vastly safer than the places the now middle-class suburbanites were fleeing from.
  - tptacek 10y ago
    The dominant economic power reacted to de jure segregation by creating a regime of de facto financially-enforced segregation. It's awfully nervy of you to blame the victims of that effort for its effects.

by ashark 10y ago

duaneb 10y ago

So shame them for being classist and racist. Public education is a public investment.

Kalium 10y ago
You're welcome to shame people moving their kids to better schools as classist and racist. It might work! With that said, I have some doubts that such a policy would accomplish what you might hope for. Most people, even those who wish people wouldn't, understand and sympathize with parents trying to get the best possible education for their kids.
- rayiner 10y ago
  "Better schools?" They'd be the same schools, just with some additional lower income kids.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    I am operating in the context of a *parent comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12694649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12694649 I'm open to the possibility that the measured quality of a school does not change if you make significant changes to its constituent populations, but it seems like a large enough question to not be assumed in passing.
    - rayiner 10y ago
      Sure going from 1% low income to 10% low income will have the short term effect of changing the overall average test scores. But how will it change the quality of education for the existing students? It'll be the same teachers, same curriculum, same facilities, etc.
      - Kalium 10y ago
        The educational experience of students is not dictated wholly by teachers, curriculum, and facilities.
        tptacek 10y ago
        You are coming dangerously close to implying that children in poorly performing school districts are intrinsically unschoolable. That can't be what you mean to imply, so I think maybe step back and examine how you've ended up in an incoherent position.
        Kalium 10y ago
        I don't think anyone is unschoolable. I do think that changing populations can mean changing how resources are allocated, and this can affect more than just the part of the population that has changed. For example, I've seen schools cut special needs education programs because populations have shifted and resources haven't.
        harryh 10y ago
        "intrinsically unschoolable" might be going to far, but I think it's generally agreed upon that children in poorly performing school districts are (on average) more difficult to teach. It's also generally agreed upon that students have an impact on their peers. This is the whole rationalization for better integrated schools in the first place. We can certainly debate how many (as a % or raw number) challenging students a "good school" can import before overall quality begins to degrade. But I don't think that it's especially controversial to say that degradation will happen at some point.
- tptacek 10y ago
  First let me say that by moving my family with two young kids to Oak Park, I was almost definitionally participating in the phenomenon that turn suburban public schools into de facto private schools. People move to Oak Park because it's on the Green and Blue CTA lines; it's a suburb that feels like living in a particularly nice residential part of Chicago. You move to Oak Park because you want all the perks of Chicago without exposure to its school system. So with that having been said, and recognizing my own role: Why exactly should we sympathize with parents who react to problems in their school systems by using their economic leverage both to exempt their own kids from those problems and also, by altering the tax base for their original school system, making those problems worse? Why is that praiseworthy? It doesn't seem praiseworthy to me. It seems to me like just another of those little pragmatic immoralities we all undertake regularly. We have few problems seeing the problem when it takes the form of kids going to Choate and Bowdoin. But at the smaller scale we all deal with, we seem unable to recognize the same thing happening. We seem to believe can't possibly be a part of the problem. But, of course, we are. I don't mean to crucify anyone for doing it. After all, I did it too. But I think we can reasonably draw the line at rationalizing or valorizing the de facto privatization of good public education in our country.
  - Kalium 10y ago
    I don't know if I'd call it praiseworthy. I do think it's the sort of pragmatic immorality that a great many parents are happy to take on for the perceived benefits gained. As a result, it's easy to oppose for the large-scale effects but difficult to oppose as individual choices. I think we should be careful about the difference between rationalizing and understanding the decisions parents make. The two are readily confused on the best of days, and political discussions about school quality generally don't happen on the best of days.
    - tptacek 10y ago
      We all seem to have an enormous moral blind spot when it comes to our children competing with other children.
      - 10y ago

josho 10y ago

Have a listen to The Problem We All Live With[1] a podcast episode from This American Life. It speaks to this specifically and comes to very different conclusions. Ie. integration works. [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t...

tptacek 10y ago

I live in a city-adjacent suburb in Chicago, Oak Park, directly butting up against Austin, the largest high-crime overwhelmingly black neighborhood in the city of Chicago. Oak Park is tiny and known for its school system. The western side Austin Ave, which divides Chicago from Oak Park, hosts an unbroken row of multi-family dwellings, many of them large apartment buildings. The occupants of those buildings are people who would otherwise live in Austin, but move to Oak Park to get their kids into Oak Park schools. This has been going on for decades in Oak Park, and we continue to have excellent schools, and continue to be a high-status magnet for professionals who want to live somewhere connected to the CTA trains but not part of CPS schools. It doesn't happen in Kennilworth or Wilmette, because those suburbs aren't directly adjacent to troubled neighborhoods in Chicago. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that the carrying capacity for lower-income students of those suburbs --- the majority of Chicago suburbs, which like Wilmette and unlike Oak Park, aren't city-adjacent --- is any less than that of Oak Park. So, no, I don't think your hypothesis about inner-city kids disrupting suburban schools is accurate, nor do I think "instant white flight" is going to happen. "White flight" was an irrational, racist reaction to housing integration. It's not a law of nature; it was/is a growing pain of the US getting over centuries of segregation.

wyager 10y ago
Multiple Houston suburban neighborhoods have been ruined by "integrative" public housing developments. The situation you're describing sounds rather different (more organic, in particular). We also can't expect uniform results across the board. > "White flight" was an irrational What's irrational about it? The suburbs created as a result of "white flight" are objectively vastly safer than the places the now middle-class suburbanites were fleeing from.
- tptacek 10y ago
  The dominant economic power reacted to de jure segregation by creating a regime of de facto financially-enforced segregation. It's awfully nervy of you to blame the victims of that effort for its effects.