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The most moving and informed coverage of the US education system I've heard have all been through This American Life.[0][1][2][3] Ok, there's an easy four hour

The most moving and informed coverage of the US education system I've heard have all been through This American Life.[0][1][2][3] Ok, there's an easy four hours of content to listen to. Enjoy! The short takeaway for me was basically that local funding through property taxes is a terrible idea if you want anything approaching fairness. If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school system is great, your kids probably go to a great school. If you are struggling to get by, though, living in an apartment? Your kids are usually banned from going to that same great school by law. It's like anti-literacy laws were too obvious, so we just made them more byzantine. [0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/t... [1] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-two http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/563/t... [2] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/house-rules http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/512/h... Significantly, on how redlining contributed to the achievement gap. The heartbreaking story of why a girl who wants to go to school down the road is turned away. [3] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a-not-so-simple-majority http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/534/a... A description of another poor high school where the kids basically have recess, lunch, or permanent substitutes all day, because it's failed by local control.

greghendershott 10y ago
> If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school system is great, your kids probably go to a great school Such affluent towns are effectively private schools by other means. They are a kind of boarding school where the entire family resides.
phd514 10y ago
The problem with that conclusion is that some of the highest-funded public schools in the country such as DC are among the worst performers. Funding is not the sole (or even most important) determinant of quality in education.
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  Do you have a breakdown for how much of DC schools funding makes it to the classroom and to teachers? It's my understanding that administrators soak up a huge amount of budget in many districts.
  - hawkice 10y ago
    Administration does take a lot of money, but instruction is somewhere in the 35-53% range. That may sound low, but that's still quite a lot considering it buys only ~60% high school graduation rates -- worse than, for instance, Chile, which costs ~10x less to administer. Suffice it to say, the operation of these schools is inefficient in the extreme by any way I can measure it. That's why a relatively poor country like China can even generate headlines like this. But the problem persists across private schools, too, largely, so I think it's fair to say this is a tough problem to solve. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba745 http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba745 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-... http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/high-school-graduation-rates-tick-u-s-still-lags-developed-countries/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/high-school-graduation-r... http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/images/publications/books/stewart2012_fig1.gif http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/images/publications/books/stewart20... http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Chile-EU_-_statistics_on_education#Educational_expenditure http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
  - aviator168 10y ago
    Don't about DC. In Long Island, New York State. Per student funding is $22K+. Our kids get very good educations.
- miles7 10y ago
  Some
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- brownbat 10y ago
michael_h 10y ago
Just to clarify: if you rent an apartment that is in an area with high property taxes, you still get to go to the same local school as the people who own their homes.
- sjg007 10y ago
  Yes but the rents are high!
- Symmetry 10y ago
  Yes, but these towns go to great lengths in their zoning codes to exclude affordable apartments. If we could decouple education from locale then maybe there wouldn't be so many municipalities trying to explicitly prevent affordable housing.
  - briandear 10y ago
    And yet those opposed to school choice are the very ones whose contituencies would benefit most. Being against school choice is almost a liberal mantra; likely because the teachers unions are major contributors to Democrat politicians. They also oppose charter schools for the same reason. Look at Elizabeth Warren's flip flop on charter school quotas in Massachusetts; it wasn't an accident hat she received significant campaign donations from teachers unions before she took her 'principled' stand favoring keeping quotas low.
    - mywittyname 10y ago
      I support free choice in education because it's fair and gives poor students with dedicated parents a chance to get a great education. I oppose private, for profit charter schools because they are notorious for corruption and poor education in both the college and K-12 sectors. There are regions where parents can choose the public school their kids attend. My home city does exactly that and is home to some top-notch magnet schools which have graduated several famous individuals.
      - 10y ago
hash-set 10y ago
Not true in MN--you can open enroll your kids in any district. You may not get the exact school you want due to demographics, but it's still a valid counter-example. By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? I'm all for trying to pull people up by their bootstraps, but we can't just level everything out in some misguided attempt at 'fairness.' You will never achieve that fairness. The wealthy will always find ways to gain an advantage. Sucks about that high school, but a lot of these areas need serious political reform first before anything else can get fixed.
- jschwartzi 10y ago
  > By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? He's not saying that. The idea he's espousing is closer to the idea that there are lots of talented kids in poor districts that get completely left behind because they live in a poor area. The only way to solve that is to provide some funding, and funding is scarce in poor districts.
- coldpie 10y ago
  > By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? When you're talking about fundamental education of your population, this is a pretty short-sighted argument. Under-education means fewer skilled workers and more bad decision making, both of which will have an impact on Mr. Rich. Mr. Rich has a personal interest in ensuring a good education for everyone.
  - throwaway729 10y ago
    That's assuming Mr. Rich controls capital. But a lot of Mr Riches aren't actually very rich -- they just happen to be well paid laborers in high prestige fields.
- Pharylon 10y ago
  > By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? Wealthy people will always have nicer cars and better vacations and bigger houses, but that doesn't mean the children of poor people should be relegated to terrible schools where they'll have no future.
lintiness 10y ago
property taxes in the suburbs of denver are on the order of .5% a year. compare that to the suburbs of chicago where they're north of 2% a year. the school quality and education provided are AT LEAST SIMILAR. the difference in cost is a product of two things: pensions and legacy costs (overly rich in chicago), and population growth. chicago has become a game of musical chairs where the last man standing has to pay the retired teachers. north shore property values reflect this reality.
kefka 10y ago
I listened to that last one.. It tells me how tenuous local government really is, and how usurpation of local government isn't really that terribly difficult. Yeah, in that case it was Hasidic Jews. I'm shocked that there wasn't more anti-semetic actions, primarily because the Jews there were trying to turn the local educational system into one for them. But I digress; it would, and has been the same for Christian control as well. So to discuss further; how does one prevent takeovers of simple majority trouncing the significant minority (technically 50% - 1) with onerous laws? How would one make a government that is resistant to takeovers, and still maintain democratic principles? Are those 2 ideas incompatible?
- kombucha2 10y ago
  >Are those 2 ideas incompatible? Well that is that the point of a republic/representative democracy/federalism?
- brownbat 10y ago
  The Federalist Papers have a few good ideas on this. Next best thing to finding a philosopher king is to try to create lots of warring interest groups that prevent each other from doing much at all. Or maybe make everything take supermajorities... In a small setting like a school district, it's not clear there's any way to protect the rights of a minor subset of the population without simply granting them disproportionate power and making the other subset of the population the maligned group. If group A wants x, and group B wants y, then you can either solve it by majoritarian or anti-majoritarian rules. Depending on the issue, I want majorities to decide in some cases, and not on others. I don't feel like issues of slavery, for example, are appropriate democratic questions. You could put a special court on top of the structure with the goal of looking out a sort of "Rawlsian fairness," trying to seek the outcome that both parties would agree to if they were both spending some time in each others' shoes. I'll admit I don't know what the fair resolution should be in a school district where a majority of parents prefer no school taxes and no public schools, just that people seem to get pretty unfairly hurt as this one unfolded.
devinhelton 10y ago
The most moving and informed coverage of the US education system I've heard have all been through This American Life What makes you think it is the most informed coverage? These episodes only give you one side of the argument. If you want the other side try reading The Long Crusade and/or The Burden of Brown by Professor Raymond Wolters. I also myself wrote a long blog post about integration/desegregation as it happened in Boston, a post based on very credible academic histories, which gives a very different take than the NPR/PBS take: https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston
- burkaman 10y ago
  This seems well-researched, and there are some reasonable points, but your section #4 and conclusion really discredit the rest of the article. Section 4 describes how racism (or tribalism or whatever you want to call it) is really natural and healthy, with no references except your own "common sense". > Now imagine growing up and looking forward to playing on the same football team as your elders in front a cheering hometown crowd. And then that dream is taken away from you by some unelected judge. At his order, another tribe invades, takes your spot on the football team and dates the girl you were wooing. You are not going to like that very much. You might want to join with your tribal brothers and brawl with this opposing tribe in the lunch room. And of course the other tribe is going to fight back. What the fuck? Why would I want to fight people for being better at football than me? Why would I start a race war because some guy with different skin than me is dating a girl I like? How can you possibly see this as acceptable? You can argue that it's natural, but natural doesn't mean good. Do you understand that not everybody thinks like this? If a black guy gets promoted over me, I don't get angry at the black tribe for invading my homeland. That line of thinking is, as you say, cartoonishly racist. And then in your conclusion, you correctly identify racial disparities, and then sort of argue that's the way it should be. The fact that black people do worse than white people in school is a problem worth solving, not a convenient method of grouping students, right? The only way this status quo could be acceptable is if you think black kids are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. Your article on racism does bring that up, but I can't tell if it's a belief you hold. If you do believe that, you should be more clear about it in this school segregation article, otherwise your conclusions don't make sense.

greghendershott 10y ago

> If you can afford to live in an area with high property taxes, the US school system is great, your kids probably go to a great school Such affluent towns are effectively private schools by other means. They are a kind of boarding school where the entire family resides.

phd514 10y ago

The problem with that conclusion is that some of the highest-funded public schools in the country such as DC are among the worst performers. Funding is not the sole (or even most important) determinant of quality in education.

jschwartzi 10y ago
Do you have a breakdown for how much of DC schools funding makes it to the classroom and to teachers? It's my understanding that administrators soak up a huge amount of budget in many districts.
- hawkice 10y ago
  Administration does take a lot of money, but instruction is somewhere in the 35-53% range. That may sound low, but that's still quite a lot considering it buys only ~60% high school graduation rates -- worse than, for instance, Chile, which costs ~10x less to administer. Suffice it to say, the operation of these schools is inefficient in the extreme by any way I can measure it. That's why a relatively poor country like China can even generate headlines like this. But the problem persists across private schools, too, largely, so I think it's fair to say this is a tough problem to solve. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba745 http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba745 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-states-that-spend-the-most-and-the-least-on-education-in-one-map/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2015/06/02/the-... http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/high-school-graduation-rates-tick-u-s-still-lags-developed-countries/ http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/high-school-graduation-r... http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/images/publications/books/stewart2012_fig1.gif http://www.ascd.org/ASCD/images/publications/books/stewart20... http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Chile-EU_-_statistics_on_education#Educational_expenditure http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/...
- aviator168 10y ago
  Don't about DC. In Long Island, New York State. Per student funding is $22K+. Our kids get very good educations.
miles7 10y ago
Some
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
brownbat 10y ago

michael_h 10y ago

Just to clarify: if you rent an apartment that is in an area with high property taxes, you still get to go to the same local school as the people who own their homes.

sjg007 10y ago
Yes but the rents are high!
Symmetry 10y ago
Yes, but these towns go to great lengths in their zoning codes to exclude affordable apartments. If we could decouple education from locale then maybe there wouldn't be so many municipalities trying to explicitly prevent affordable housing.
- briandear 10y ago
  And yet those opposed to school choice are the very ones whose contituencies would benefit most. Being against school choice is almost a liberal mantra; likely because the teachers unions are major contributors to Democrat politicians. They also oppose charter schools for the same reason. Look at Elizabeth Warren's flip flop on charter school quotas in Massachusetts; it wasn't an accident hat she received significant campaign donations from teachers unions before she took her 'principled' stand favoring keeping quotas low.
  - mywittyname 10y ago
    I support free choice in education because it's fair and gives poor students with dedicated parents a chance to get a great education. I oppose private, for profit charter schools because they are notorious for corruption and poor education in both the college and K-12 sectors. There are regions where parents can choose the public school their kids attend. My home city does exactly that and is home to some top-notch magnet schools which have graduated several famous individuals.
    - 10y ago

hash-set 10y ago

Not true in MN--you can open enroll your kids in any district. You may not get the exact school you want due to demographics, but it's still a valid counter-example. By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? I'm all for trying to pull people up by their bootstraps, but we can't just level everything out in some misguided attempt at 'fairness.' You will never achieve that fairness. The wealthy will always find ways to gain an advantage. Sucks about that high school, but a lot of these areas need serious political reform first before anything else can get fixed.

jschwartzi 10y ago
> By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? He's not saying that. The idea he's espousing is closer to the idea that there are lots of talented kids in poor districts that get completely left behind because they live in a poor area. The only way to solve that is to provide some funding, and funding is scarce in poor districts.
coldpie 10y ago
> By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? When you're talking about fundamental education of your population, this is a pretty short-sighted argument. Under-education means fewer skilled workers and more bad decision making, both of which will have an impact on Mr. Rich. Mr. Rich has a personal interest in ensuring a good education for everyone.
- throwaway729 10y ago
  That's assuming Mr. Rich controls capital. But a lot of Mr Riches aren't actually very rich -- they just happen to be well paid laborers in high prestige fields.
Pharylon 10y ago
> By the way, why do you think wealthier people shouldn't get more advantages in life? Wealthy people will always have nicer cars and better vacations and bigger houses, but that doesn't mean the children of poor people should be relegated to terrible schools where they'll have no future.

lintiness 10y ago

property taxes in the suburbs of denver are on the order of .5% a year. compare that to the suburbs of chicago where they're north of 2% a year. the school quality and education provided are AT LEAST SIMILAR. the difference in cost is a product of two things: pensions and legacy costs (overly rich in chicago), and population growth. chicago has become a game of musical chairs where the last man standing has to pay the retired teachers. north shore property values reflect this reality.

kefka 10y ago

I listened to that last one.. It tells me how tenuous local government really is, and how usurpation of local government isn't really that terribly difficult. Yeah, in that case it was Hasidic Jews. I'm shocked that there wasn't more anti-semetic actions, primarily because the Jews there were trying to turn the local educational system into one for them. But I digress; it would, and has been the same for Christian control as well. So to discuss further; how does one prevent takeovers of simple majority trouncing the significant minority (technically 50% - 1) with onerous laws? How would one make a government that is resistant to takeovers, and still maintain democratic principles? Are those 2 ideas incompatible?

kombucha2 10y ago
>Are those 2 ideas incompatible? Well that is that the point of a republic/representative democracy/federalism?
brownbat 10y ago
The Federalist Papers have a few good ideas on this. Next best thing to finding a philosopher king is to try to create lots of warring interest groups that prevent each other from doing much at all. Or maybe make everything take supermajorities... In a small setting like a school district, it's not clear there's any way to protect the rights of a minor subset of the population without simply granting them disproportionate power and making the other subset of the population the maligned group. If group A wants x, and group B wants y, then you can either solve it by majoritarian or anti-majoritarian rules. Depending on the issue, I want majorities to decide in some cases, and not on others. I don't feel like issues of slavery, for example, are appropriate democratic questions. You could put a special court on top of the structure with the goal of looking out a sort of "Rawlsian fairness," trying to seek the outcome that both parties would agree to if they were both spending some time in each others' shoes. I'll admit I don't know what the fair resolution should be in a school district where a majority of parents prefer no school taxes and no public schools, just that people seem to get pretty unfairly hurt as this one unfolded.

devinhelton 10y ago

The most moving and informed coverage of the US education system I've heard have all been through This American Life What makes you think it is the most informed coverage? These episodes only give you one side of the argument. If you want the other side try reading The Long Crusade and/or The Burden of Brown by Professor Raymond Wolters. I also myself wrote a long blog post about integration/desegregation as it happened in Boston, a post based on very credible academic histories, which gives a very different take than the NPR/PBS take: https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston https://devinhelton.com/busing-in-boston

burkaman 10y ago
This seems well-researched, and there are some reasonable points, but your section #4 and conclusion really discredit the rest of the article. Section 4 describes how racism (or tribalism or whatever you want to call it) is really natural and healthy, with no references except your own "common sense". > Now imagine growing up and looking forward to playing on the same football team as your elders in front a cheering hometown crowd. And then that dream is taken away from you by some unelected judge. At his order, another tribe invades, takes your spot on the football team and dates the girl you were wooing. You are not going to like that very much. You might want to join with your tribal brothers and brawl with this opposing tribe in the lunch room. And of course the other tribe is going to fight back. What the fuck? Why would I want to fight people for being better at football than me? Why would I start a race war because some guy with different skin than me is dating a girl I like? How can you possibly see this as acceptable? You can argue that it's natural, but natural doesn't mean good. Do you understand that not everybody thinks like this? If a black guy gets promoted over me, I don't get angry at the black tribe for invading my homeland. That line of thinking is, as you say, cartoonishly racist. And then in your conclusion, you correctly identify racial disparities, and then sort of argue that's the way it should be. The fact that black people do worse than white people in school is a problem worth solving, not a convenient method of grouping students, right? The only way this status quo could be acceptable is if you think black kids are genetically predisposed to be less intelligent. Your article on racism does bring that up, but I can't tell if it's a belief you hold. If you do believe that, you should be more clear about it in this school segregation article, otherwise your conclusions don't make sense.