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You are claiming that poor parents will changed their school choice based on the availability of parent-teacher conferences? And that the problem of poverty is

You are claiming that poor parents will changed their school choice based on the availability of parent-teacher conferences? And that the problem of poverty is overemployment, not underemployment?

saagarjha 7y ago
Poor parents often don't have a choice: they can't afford to take time off from their job(s).
- protomyth 7y ago
  Yeah, it's the easiest way to discriminate against poor people without getting into trouble. Hell, you can even point to papers that say parental participation in schools helps the children. All the while you know poor folks won't apply.
- tripzilch 7y ago
  Am I understanding correctly that this is in fact literally the same issue as the voter registration problem in the US? (or was it the voting booths. anyway, the problem of being too far away and during "working hours" strongly selecting against the underclass) Same thing right? There's a large underclass in the US that simply cannot take part in public society activities because they are indentured?
marcinzm 7y ago
This isn't about poverty, this is about those trying to move themselves or their kids out of poverty. The people who work hard at jobs and push their kids to go to good schools. Poverty is a complex issue that cannot be summarized in a single word.
hwbehrens 7y ago
I can't speak for the Bay Area, but my region exhibits similar patterns. Consider an example. A "good" school might have 100 slots for out-of-area kindergartners, distributed via a lottery system. However, the lottery system uses a biased distribution which preferentially selects from students who have been on the waitlist longer. This system is easily defensible by school administrators in the name of "fairness" to students who have waited longer. The unspoken desire, however, is to preferentially select students with a higher socioeconomic index, because such students tend to score higher on standardized tests (and therefore maintain the school's current "good" ranking). Asking for this information explicitly is, naturally, forbidden. Instead, the school waits for parents to come for site visits during working hours. These visits are attended overwhelmingly by stay-at-home parents, which correlate with socioeconomically-advantaged families, for the simple reason that they can afford to have a parent stay at home (the -economic side of socioeconomic). Underemployed parents cannot attend, because they are still working, but usually at jobs which do not offer flexible work hours. Unemployed parents can attend, but rarely do so, because the chronically unemployed statistically come from lower social backgrounds (the socio- side) that either do not value education as highly, or may not know that the concept of "school visits" even exist. Then, when these parents visit, the schools inform them of the existence of the waiting list. However, information about the wait list (and especially details about its biased selectivity) will not be available by phone or website until enrollment opens. Thus, parents who attend the tours will be preferentially selected, since they are on the waiting list first, and the school can put their finger on the socioeconomic scale without ever asking parents for sensitive information. For purely public schools which do not allow out-of-area students, this approach isn't relevant, because they are required to accept students from the local area and only the local area. These schools don't care, because the locations themselves correlate with socioeconomic factors, due to property values tracking school achievement. For charter schools, which pass all students through similar systems, it allows them to accept statistically-advantageous students across all levels, leading to better outcomes overall (and shifting the remaining disadvantaged students, and the correspondingly lower level of achievement they statistically will achieve, to low-income public schools).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- greedo 7y ago
  Perhaps I'm being naive, but most educators I've known are on the liberal side of the spectrum. Wouldn't barriers described here be more on the side of "never attribute to malice...?"
Spooky23 7y ago
People know when they aren’t welcome, and anticipate the passive aggressive treatment they will likely expect.
Hermitian909 7y ago
So the following is a true story: In a district in the bay area, one of the elementary schools was given a certain special designation that allowed them to accept kids from the district by lottery. The condition of entering the lottery was as follows: 1. A parent must take a 2 hour tour of the school, tour times were between 9 am and 3 pm. 2. A parent must sign an agreement to volunteer at the school at least 3 days a year. Number 2 was unenforceable, and many flouted it, but poorer (mostly non-white) families who actually managed to schedule the tour generally backed out upon hearing that requirement. Diversity plummeted, the school went from 60% white to 90% white in 5 years (though the district as a whole became less white). This lasted over a decade, and only recently was the system overturned by popular vote. Every incoming class since then has been significantly more diverse. -------------- The point is that those who can afford to live in the bay area and not work every weekday are the well to do. As a software engineer I can usually just tell my boss "I've got an important personal matter" and get the day off. People I know who work as janitors or barista's often get told "well, if you don't show up you're fired" for the same request.
- georgeburdell 7y ago
  Sounds like an elementary school in my Bay Area district. Lottery admissions. Parents are required to volunteer ~10 hours per year and pay for uniforms. The school is 90% Asian even though Asians make up 1/3 of the city. Another one that's more art focused and requires 4 hours of volunteering PER WEEK is majority white even though whites are 1/3 of the population.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    > and pay for uniforms It's bad enough that the school enforces a school uniform in the first place, let alone has the nerve to make parents pay for it.
    - jclulow 7y ago
      There are lots of benefits to uniforms. In NSW (Australia) public schools have uniforms, and parents pay for them. Low income families are generally able to obtain financial assistance through some grant, or fundraising programme; sometimes through donated uniforms. Uniforms actually help with socio-economic gaps: everybody dresses the same, regardless of whether you can afford more expensive status symbol clothing or not.

You are claiming that poor parents will changed their school choice based on the availability of parent-teacher conferences? And that the problem of poverty is overemployment, not underemployment?

saagarjha 7y ago

Poor parents often don't have a choice: they can't afford to take time off from their job(s).

protomyth 7y ago
Yeah, it's the easiest way to discriminate against poor people without getting into trouble. Hell, you can even point to papers that say parental participation in schools helps the children. All the while you know poor folks won't apply.
tripzilch 7y ago
Am I understanding correctly that this is in fact literally the same issue as the voter registration problem in the US? (or was it the voting booths. anyway, the problem of being too far away and during "working hours" strongly selecting against the underclass) Same thing right? There's a large underclass in the US that simply cannot take part in public society activities because they are indentured?

marcinzm 7y ago

This isn't about poverty, this is about those trying to move themselves or their kids out of poverty. The people who work hard at jobs and push their kids to go to good schools. Poverty is a complex issue that cannot be summarized in a single word.

hwbehrens 7y ago

I can't speak for the Bay Area, but my region exhibits similar patterns. Consider an example. A "good" school might have 100 slots for out-of-area kindergartners, distributed via a lottery system. However, the lottery system uses a biased distribution which preferentially selects from students who have been on the waitlist longer. This system is easily defensible by school administrators in the name of "fairness" to students who have waited longer. The unspoken desire, however, is to preferentially select students with a higher socioeconomic index, because such students tend to score higher on standardized tests (and therefore maintain the school's current "good" ranking). Asking for this information explicitly is, naturally, forbidden. Instead, the school waits for parents to come for site visits during working hours. These visits are attended overwhelmingly by stay-at-home parents, which correlate with socioeconomically-advantaged families, for the simple reason that they can afford to have a parent stay at home (the -economic side of socioeconomic). Underemployed parents cannot attend, because they are still working, but usually at jobs which do not offer flexible work hours. Unemployed parents can attend, but rarely do so, because the chronically unemployed statistically come from lower social backgrounds (the socio- side) that either do not value education as highly, or may not know that the concept of "school visits" even exist. Then, when these parents visit, the schools inform them of the existence of the waiting list. However, information about the wait list (and especially details about its biased selectivity) will not be available by phone or website until enrollment opens. Thus, parents who attend the tours will be preferentially selected, since they are on the waiting list first, and the school can put their finger on the socioeconomic scale without ever asking parents for sensitive information. For purely public schools which do not allow out-of-area students, this approach isn't relevant, because they are required to accept students from the local area and only the local area. These schools don't care, because the locations themselves correlate with socioeconomic factors, due to property values tracking school achievement. For charter schools, which pass all students through similar systems, it allows them to accept statistically-advantageous students across all levels, leading to better outcomes overall (and shifting the remaining disadvantaged students, and the correspondingly lower level of achievement they statistically will achieve, to low-income public schools).

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
greedo 7y ago
Perhaps I'm being naive, but most educators I've known are on the liberal side of the spectrum. Wouldn't barriers described here be more on the side of "never attribute to malice...?"

Spooky23 7y ago

People know when they aren’t welcome, and anticipate the passive aggressive treatment they will likely expect.

Hermitian909 7y ago

So the following is a true story: In a district in the bay area, one of the elementary schools was given a certain special designation that allowed them to accept kids from the district by lottery. The condition of entering the lottery was as follows: 1. A parent must take a 2 hour tour of the school, tour times were between 9 am and 3 pm. 2. A parent must sign an agreement to volunteer at the school at least 3 days a year. Number 2 was unenforceable, and many flouted it, but poorer (mostly non-white) families who actually managed to schedule the tour generally backed out upon hearing that requirement. Diversity plummeted, the school went from 60% white to 90% white in 5 years (though the district as a whole became less white). This lasted over a decade, and only recently was the system overturned by popular vote. Every incoming class since then has been significantly more diverse. -------------- The point is that those who can afford to live in the bay area and not work every weekday are the well to do. As a software engineer I can usually just tell my boss "I've got an important personal matter" and get the day off. People I know who work as janitors or barista's often get told "well, if you don't show up you're fired" for the same request.

georgeburdell 7y ago
Sounds like an elementary school in my Bay Area district. Lottery admissions. Parents are required to volunteer ~10 hours per year and pay for uniforms. The school is 90% Asian even though Asians make up 1/3 of the city. Another one that's more art focused and requires 4 hours of volunteering PER WEEK is majority white even though whites are 1/3 of the population.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  > and pay for uniforms It's bad enough that the school enforces a school uniform in the first place, let alone has the nerve to make parents pay for it.
  - jclulow 7y ago
    There are lots of benefits to uniforms. In NSW (Australia) public schools have uniforms, and parents pay for them. Low income families are generally able to obtain financial assistance through some grant, or fundraising programme; sometimes through donated uniforms. Uniforms actually help with socio-economic gaps: everybody dresses the same, regardless of whether you can afford more expensive status symbol clothing or not.