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If the goal is to help as many kids as possible it's easier to make public schools better by funding them properly and ensuring they are well run. That's effect
by hodgesrm 8y ago
If the goal is to help as many kids as possible it's easier to make public schools better by funding them properly and ensuring they are well run. That's effectively what happened where I live. Private schools were much more popular 20 years ago; several have gone out of business since then.
At the same time, that's not enough to help everyone, especially economically disadvantaged groups. We still have an achievement gap. Kids show up with vastly different levels of preparation--some of the kindergarten kids have visited Rome and know where it is. Others have never even been to the zoo.
- intarga 8y agoThe point of the article is that the surefire way to make sure schools are properly funded and run, is to make sure the children of the wealthy and powerful attend there too, not just poor.
- hodgesrm 8y ago"Surefire" does not not seem like the right adjective. Eliminating private schools would enrage a large constituency across the entire political spectrum, so just getting it into law would be a huge fight that would make it hard to focus on improving public schools afterward. The next problem would be to ensure that public schools are actually funded equitably across neighborhoods and that well-to-do parents don't turn their local schools into de facto private schools.