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Unfortunately there is no incentive to wait. I would expect most people would like public schools to be better but have no expectation they can influence them t

Unfortunately there is no incentive to wait. I would expect most people would like public schools to be better but have no expectation they can influence them to be better in time for their kids to benefit so they'd separate the two issues. (1) send your kids to private school so you're not sacrificing them on principle (2) push for better public schools. I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC the USA is in the top 10 on money spent per student. Arguably a bigger issue is all the other problems in areas with bad public schools like poverty and all the problems that come with it.

eyerony 6y ago
> I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC "busing" is the most effective thing we've tried—wildly more successful than anything else—but approximately everyone (including a lot of people who weren't rich whites) hated it so we don't do it anymore. Given that selection bias is a big part of what makes a typical "good" school good it's a hard problem to solve without some kind of social-engineering thing like that that mixes everyone up, though that comes with its own problems, especially if it's still possible to escape the system (moving even farther from the city to areas that aren't doing busing; private schools). Very early (like... kindergarten or 1st grade) tracking or something like it would probably make mediocre schools more appealing for somewhat-well-off parents and counter the tendency of the rich-enough-to-leave but not-rich-enough-for-private-school set to flee the city when they have kids, since it'd isolate the good students from the bad to replicate some of what the suburban schools benefit from to let the "middle" and "high" cohorts do fairly well even at so-so schools, but there's pretty much zero chance the optics on that would be acceptable.
jacobr1 6y ago
In my area (urban, educated south) we moved from a the "busing model" for integration, into a "magnet school" model. If a school is failing, reboot it as a "charter-like" school, with some attractive theme. It is still a public school, but now offers something unique the community (like robotics programs or mandarin immersion, arts programs in partners with the opera or state symphony, IB schools etc). Then it "attracts" interested parents across the district and becomes self-sustaining. The local population gets access to the improved school, and others have a lottery (or by other means with special rules for siblings and more). It isn't perfect, but it seems like attracting interest via magnet programs works a lot better than throwing more money at failing schools or unequal access to charter schools.

eyerony 6y ago

> I wish I knew how to fix public schools. It certainly not with more money. IIRC "busing" is the most effective thing we've tried—wildly more successful than anything else—but approximately everyone (including a lot of people who weren't rich whites) hated it so we don't do it anymore. Given that selection bias is a big part of what makes a typical "good" school good it's a hard problem to solve without some kind of social-engineering thing like that that mixes everyone up, though that comes with its own problems, especially if it's still possible to escape the system (moving even farther from the city to areas that aren't doing busing; private schools). Very early (like... kindergarten or 1st grade) tracking or something like it would probably make mediocre schools more appealing for somewhat-well-off parents and counter the tendency of the rich-enough-to-leave but not-rich-enough-for-private-school set to flee the city when they have kids, since it'd isolate the good students from the bad to replicate some of what the suburban schools benefit from to let the "middle" and "high" cohorts do fairly well even at so-so schools, but there's pretty much zero chance the optics on that would be acceptable.

jacobr1 6y ago

In my area (urban, educated south) we moved from a the "busing model" for integration, into a "magnet school" model. If a school is failing, reboot it as a "charter-like" school, with some attractive theme. It is still a public school, but now offers something unique the community (like robotics programs or mandarin immersion, arts programs in partners with the opera or state symphony, IB schools etc). Then it "attracts" interested parents across the district and becomes self-sustaining. The local population gets access to the improved school, and others have a lottery (or by other means with special rules for siblings and more). It isn't perfect, but it seems like attracting interest via magnet programs works a lot better than throwing more money at failing schools or unequal access to charter schools.