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The real pity is that your local public school is likely spending a similar amount per student as the private schools![1] Our public school system spends a ton

The real pity is that your local public school is likely spending a similar amount per student as the private schools![1] Our public school system spends a ton and seems to not get a good value for that spending. You can believe in government funded education without believing in government run education. After all, we have a food stamp program but few would argue for a government grocery store chain instead of food stamps. Why is it that the cities in America have such great restaurants but such poor schools? [1] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2020/comm/school-system-spending.html https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2020/comm/scho...

majormajor 6y ago
> Why is it that the cities in America have such great restaurants but such poor schools? This isn't really accurate, is it? Food options for the poor in America are pretty notably terrible. Nutrition-wise, it's not great for most of the middle class either. If you have a lot of money, you can find people to help you in America, which is true for both food and school. But I'd much rather be poor in a public school - I went to one - than be poor and have to rely on the bottom of the barrel of the US restaurant and food system. I haven't seen evidence that the private or public school system is particularly GOOD at overcoming a lot of the challenges that many kids face with poverty, but I also haven't seen the free market in the US be good at providing the poor with quality options in other areas. (Note also that there are many many countries with much more socialized government programs that also have good restaurants too! Ones that might sneer at the chain-heavy state of American restaurants in most US cities!)
- tlear 6y ago
  Charter school outperform public schools in poor areas by orders of magnitude. Read Sowel’s Charter School and their enemies, it makes a very a strong argument about the situation https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50623786-charter-schools-and-their-enemies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50623786-charter-schools...
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Families with kids at charter schools choose to put their kids there. Kids left in bad public schools may have less parent support. So there may be some selection bias involved that can't be overcome with any amount of money.
    - mjevans 6y ago
      I have a hypothesis that most of the students causing problems at today's public schools are the result of problems at home; be that a lack of resources, parents whom society hasn't given the time to be parents, or a lack of knowledge about how to be a good parent. Better social safety nets and support for everyone should be an real investment in the future for everyone.
      - paulryanrogers 6y ago
        My SO has taught in some rough schools and home issues are part of the picture. It also seems like especially disruptive kids need to be moved into classes with increasingly smaller numbers of students. That way teachers can more fairly provide for the needs of everyone. Of course this would all be more expensive. So as a society we'd have to agree such solutions are worth investing in at a scale that will make a significant difference.
    - tlear 6y ago
      That is addressed in the book(this counter argument was my first reaction as well). Charter schools get kids from lottery(demand FAR outstrips supply) well they did research and tracked kids who were in lottery and did not get in. Their outcomes were far worse than those who got in. My own conclusion from reading it is that few things really make difference: 1. Charters have strict discipline, violence etc is not tolerated in any form. Public school in bad areas are chaos 2. Schools can easily fire teachers who do not perform well. In public school system you need to rape or murder someone to get fired. 3. Shitty charter schools lose their charter and go out of business
      - 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- barry-cotter 6y ago
  > Food options for the poor in America are pretty notably terrible. If you have middle class taste this is true. But the poor don’t have middle class taste. The market provides them with what they want. In areas where the poor are recent immigrant communities that’s cheap decent quality materials to cook at home including fresh produce. Where the poor have been in the US for multiple generations it’ll include a great deal more McDonald’s, KFC and highly processed convenience food. > The Geography of Poverty and Nutrition: Food Deserts and Food Choices Across the United States > We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts. https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/AllcottDiamondDube_FoodDeserts.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/AllcottDiamondDube_FoodDe...
  - unishark 6y ago
    Yes I lived in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood when I was in college, and there was the cheapest supermarket in town there, and great Mexican food joints that were open 24 hours and extremely cheap. I never understood why people line up at McDonalds at lunchtime when there's so much better food around.
    - mac01021 6y ago
      Mostly, i think, because when you see the mcdonald's sign you know immediately what is available there, what it tastes like, and how long it will take to get your food. If you live in a neighborhood, you'll probably get to know all the local joints, but if you're not familiar and you have things to do, McDonalds is probably the safest bet.
nineplay 6y ago
> Our public school system spends a ton and seems to not get a good value for that spending. Our public school systems spends a ton to support low income students and special ed. I don't blame them for being broke but I suppose at some point my egalitarian principles aren't enough and I should do what's best for my kids rather than what's best for our city.
- hnracer 6y ago
  I'd argue those two things are one and the same
- mar177 6y ago
  I thought most of the funding comes from local property taxes. That means there are little or no cross subsidies. I image special ed is a huge cost, specially for kids that need to be home schooled. But even that is unlikely to explain the high cost of public schools, and it definitely does not explain the increasing costs.
- AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
  I agree with your concerns, but my motivation would be slightly different. The brightest kids. They will be running this country in twenty years. They will be designing bridges, doing surgeries and writing our laws. We want to invest in them.
  - nineplay 6y ago
    I strongly believe that a lot of our brightest kids are languishing in bad schools due to poor family circumstances and I think it should be a source of national shame.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      I vote both hands for AP programs in poor schools. I'm just saying that if we can only retain one of "special needs" and "advanced", I'd pick advanced in a blink of an eye due to the reason explained above. Disclaimer: my kids don't qualify for either.
jimhefferon 6y ago
Many private schools do not provide the same set of services, such as the speech intervention that helped my oldest so much.
Steltek 6y ago
The pity is that public schools are now the backstop for real social services that have already failed. Much like police being used to combat drug addiction and mental illness. It's a burden/cost that private schools don't have to deal with. The solution isn't to go all-in on private or charter schools. It's to get real social programs back up and running so that public schools can just be schools.
- primrose 6y ago
  Like Denmark!

majormajor 6y ago

> Why is it that the cities in America have such great restaurants but such poor schools? This isn't really accurate, is it? Food options for the poor in America are pretty notably terrible. Nutrition-wise, it's not great for most of the middle class either. If you have a lot of money, you can find people to help you in America, which is true for both food and school. But I'd much rather be poor in a public school - I went to one - than be poor and have to rely on the bottom of the barrel of the US restaurant and food system. I haven't seen evidence that the private or public school system is particularly GOOD at overcoming a lot of the challenges that many kids face with poverty, but I also haven't seen the free market in the US be good at providing the poor with quality options in other areas. (Note also that there are many many countries with much more socialized government programs that also have good restaurants too! Ones that might sneer at the chain-heavy state of American restaurants in most US cities!)

tlear 6y ago
Charter school outperform public schools in poor areas by orders of magnitude. Read Sowel’s Charter School and their enemies, it makes a very a strong argument about the situation https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50623786-charter-schools-and-their-enemies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50623786-charter-schools...
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  Families with kids at charter schools choose to put their kids there. Kids left in bad public schools may have less parent support. So there may be some selection bias involved that can't be overcome with any amount of money.
  - mjevans 6y ago
    I have a hypothesis that most of the students causing problems at today's public schools are the result of problems at home; be that a lack of resources, parents whom society hasn't given the time to be parents, or a lack of knowledge about how to be a good parent. Better social safety nets and support for everyone should be an real investment in the future for everyone.
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      My SO has taught in some rough schools and home issues are part of the picture. It also seems like especially disruptive kids need to be moved into classes with increasingly smaller numbers of students. That way teachers can more fairly provide for the needs of everyone. Of course this would all be more expensive. So as a society we'd have to agree such solutions are worth investing in at a scale that will make a significant difference.
  - tlear 6y ago
    That is addressed in the book(this counter argument was my first reaction as well). Charter schools get kids from lottery(demand FAR outstrips supply) well they did research and tracked kids who were in lottery and did not get in. Their outcomes were far worse than those who got in. My own conclusion from reading it is that few things really make difference: 1. Charters have strict discipline, violence etc is not tolerated in any form. Public school in bad areas are chaos 2. Schools can easily fire teachers who do not perform well. In public school system you need to rape or murder someone to get fired. 3. Shitty charter schools lose their charter and go out of business
    - 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
barry-cotter 6y ago
> Food options for the poor in America are pretty notably terrible. If you have middle class taste this is true. But the poor don’t have middle class taste. The market provides them with what they want. In areas where the poor are recent immigrant communities that’s cheap decent quality materials to cook at home including fresh produce. Where the poor have been in the US for multiple generations it’ll include a great deal more McDonald’s, KFC and highly processed convenience food. > The Geography of Poverty and Nutrition: Food Deserts and Food Choices Across the United States > We study the causes of “nutritional inequality”: why the wealthy tend to eat more healthfully than the poor in the U.S. Using two event study designs exploiting entry of new supermarkets and households’ moves to healthier neighborhoods, we reject that neighborhood environments have economically meaningful effects on healthy eating. Using a structural demand model, we find that exposing low-income households to the same food availability and prices experienced by high-income households would reduce nutritional inequality by only 9%, while the remaining 91% is driven by differences in demand. In turn, these income-related demand differences are partially explained by education, nutrition knowledge, and regional preferences. These findings contrast with discussions of nutritional inequality that emphasize supply-side issues such as food deserts. https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/AllcottDiamondDube_FoodDeserts.pdf https://web.stanford.edu/~diamondr/AllcottDiamondDube_FoodDe...
- unishark 6y ago
  Yes I lived in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood when I was in college, and there was the cheapest supermarket in town there, and great Mexican food joints that were open 24 hours and extremely cheap. I never understood why people line up at McDonalds at lunchtime when there's so much better food around.
  - mac01021 6y ago
    Mostly, i think, because when you see the mcdonald's sign you know immediately what is available there, what it tastes like, and how long it will take to get your food. If you live in a neighborhood, you'll probably get to know all the local joints, but if you're not familiar and you have things to do, McDonalds is probably the safest bet.

nineplay 6y ago

> Our public school system spends a ton and seems to not get a good value for that spending. Our public school systems spends a ton to support low income students and special ed. I don't blame them for being broke but I suppose at some point my egalitarian principles aren't enough and I should do what's best for my kids rather than what's best for our city.

hnracer 6y ago
I'd argue those two things are one and the same
mar177 6y ago
I thought most of the funding comes from local property taxes. That means there are little or no cross subsidies. I image special ed is a huge cost, specially for kids that need to be home schooled. But even that is unlikely to explain the high cost of public schools, and it definitely does not explain the increasing costs.
AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
I agree with your concerns, but my motivation would be slightly different. The brightest kids. They will be running this country in twenty years. They will be designing bridges, doing surgeries and writing our laws. We want to invest in them.
- nineplay 6y ago
  I strongly believe that a lot of our brightest kids are languishing in bad schools due to poor family circumstances and I think it should be a source of national shame.
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    I vote both hands for AP programs in poor schools. I'm just saying that if we can only retain one of "special needs" and "advanced", I'd pick advanced in a blink of an eye due to the reason explained above. Disclaimer: my kids don't qualify for either.

jimhefferon 6y ago

Many private schools do not provide the same set of services, such as the speech intervention that helped my oldest so much.

Steltek 6y ago

The pity is that public schools are now the backstop for real social services that have already failed. Much like police being used to combat drug addiction and mental illness. It's a burden/cost that private schools don't have to deal with. The solution isn't to go all-in on private or charter schools. It's to get real social programs back up and running so that public schools can just be schools.

primrose 6y ago
Like Denmark!