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Unfortunately public schools in poor neighborhoods are getting shittier and parents need to pay for private tutors and summer school. Guess who can afford that?

Unfortunately public schools in poor neighborhoods are getting shittier and parents need to pay for private tutors and summer school. Guess who can afford that? Education doesn't fall out of the sky.

ewmiller 5y ago
That's very true. Widespread, high quality public education is a must.
- j_walter 5y ago
  It's not necessarily that the educators aren't high quality, but that the majority of students are there as a babysitting service and take up more time being disciplined than actually getting taught. We always say inner city schools have worse education...but I suspect it's more that the kids that attend those schools are disruptors and the system won't allow them to be disciplined in the way they should be (not that expelling them is the right thing either).
  - crispyambulance 5y ago
    On the surface it might look like it's just about "discipline" but in the kinds of school districts you're talking about the problems are very deep-rooted and multi-faceted. Discipline alone is not nearly enough to address what's going on.
    - j_walter 5y ago
      Agreed...but at the school level what can they do? If the parents aren't engaged in their kids getting an education and behaving (for whatever reason)...it's not really the school's job to fill that gap.
      - crispyambulance 5y ago
        At school level? Only so much. Some school districts are now having a measure of success with having ONE school but tracking the kids into "accelerated" or "regular" programs and elevating the resources for both. There was a whole podcast about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren... This happened as a result of a large-enough number of well-to-do parents no longer being able to get their kids into very desirable and academically rigorous city-wide schools, so they effectively "took over" a neighborhood public/charter school by participating VERY HEAVILY in the PTA, the school's funding, and getting deeply involved with the ALL the kids, teachers and administration. From what I can tell, it required a very uncomfortable and ongoing dialog about race and class. Not every school in every big city can do this, IMHO, but AFAICT it lead to better outcomes for all the students, including the at-risk students.
  - only_as_i_fall 5y ago
    In my city it's hard to separate the multitude of interrelated issues to say it's any one thing, but something I didn't realize until I moved here is that magnet schools pull out virtually all the competent and interested kids by the time they reach highschool. Given that, it's less surprising to me that the bottom tier public schools in these areas wind up so much shittier than the average public school.
    - j_walter 5y ago
      Can you really blame them? Why wouldn't you want to pull the good kids out so they can succeed? Seems like having tryouts for basketball...you take the best of the best to make the team strong.
      - imtringued 5y ago
        What's the underlying factor that makes it possible to only poach the good students? I'm thinking either it is externally visible or the factor is "solvable" for every student, meaning a school with bad students will receive more policies/measures to boost their performance as everyone is suffering from the same underlying problems. Of course this assumes that poorly performing schools get support at all.
  - fatbird 5y ago
    Below, you say but at the school level what can they do? Lots, actually, but it's very resource constrained, so once again, the relationship between money-poor schools and bad students plays out. There are a variety of diversion programs that have been tried and shown great success with problem kids, but that requires staffing so that disruptors get more teacher attention than they otherwise would in a class of 35. Having competent, active counselling services in schools does a lot, too. With that said, it's not my wife's experience (as an inner city high school teacher) that disruptors are the problem. They're a problem, but there are lots of ways to handle them, individually or in groups. The way kids get shafted in poor schools is high teacher:student ratios that reduce or eliminate any individual attention a kid might receive, coupled with poor facilities and supplies. You rightly identify parental involvement as a key factor in school success, but the flip side is that kids lacking parental involvement are denied any individual attention in schools that are simply overcrowded and understaffed. And the kind of attention I'm talking about isn't substitute parenting, it's just following up with kids on assignments and attendance.
    - j_walter 5y ago
      Sure, a class size of 35 is a problem. So are a lot of factors that can lead to kids not learning. However the city I currently live in has a 20:1 ratio...and there are plenty of kids not succeeding (better than average though). Another local school in Portland has a ratio of 19:1...and they are 22% proficient in math. Thornwood HS in Chicago...13:1 ratio, but 8% proficient in math. It's not always about staffing...
      - fatbird 5y ago
        Staffing is a pipeline problem: a good ratio might not help a particular issue, but you'll never be able to address those issues without it.
        j_walter 5y ago
        To what end though...I'm sure 1:1 ratio would be a huge improvement, but at what cost. You always get diminishing returns in these cases which seems heartless...but like with anything there is only so many resources to go around.
j_walter 5y ago
If parents value education they don't need to pay for tutors or summer school. I grew up in district with shitty schools, but I saw some kids succeed only because they learned stuff on their own. Those schools aren't necessarily shittier...they are filled with kids that don't want to learn (and their parents increasingly blame the teachers for their failure).
- pope_meat 5y ago
  So, it's just a statistical reality that kids in poor areas don't want to learn, and that's why the results show poorer people doing worse in education that rich people? Interesting hill to die on, but you do you.
  - pc86 5y ago
    It's a statistical reality that if your parents don't value education, and don't impress upon their children its importance, that those children are incredibly unlikely to decide completely on their own that education is the way out of their impoverished lives. But that's a little too nuanced for your straw man.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    Yes it is. Kids in poor areas don't see education as they way out of being poor...how could they. They see drugs and gangs as a way to do that though. I went to a shitty school and did well and went to college (thanks to my parents pushing me to do so)...so many people couldn't fathom why I was doing that and why I wasn't going to just go get a job right away. Many of those people are still living in that same area and are just as poor as their parents were.
    - pope_meat 5y ago
      I was going to debate you further, but then I realized I don't care about poor people either, just want to appear like I do.
      - 5y ago
crispyambulance 5y ago
A lot of parents of modest means, immigrant parents in particular, will move out to suburbs expressly because of the school quality relative to what's available in many city-centers. They're also willing to make much higher sacrifices for their kids' educations and enroll them in parochial or even private schools in spite of the cost. Sometimes, a good charter school or a magnet school is possible too.
dcveloper 5y ago
The quality of education is dictated innate ability, parents, and school system. I like to think of as a three leg stool. If one leg is missing, it's possible to balance. If two are missing, no amount of money will solve the problem.
- nradov 5y ago
  The stool has a fourth leg: other students. It's tough to get a good education if many of the other students are violent or disruptive. Public schools can't easily expel problem students.
threatofrain 5y ago
Hence why church and community structures are very important among immigrant communities.
pc86 5y ago
Yes, money makes stuff easier. I don't think anybody is disputing that. But you can be in a great school district with parents who think education is pointless, and in a shit school district with parents who think (know) it's one of the only ways out, and the former will underperform the latter all things being equal. And this isn't as simple as "dump more money on shitty schools and they'll become great." There are plenty of examples of poor areas with higher per-capita student spending than more well-off areas, and the schools burning giant piles are money are still worse.

Unfortunately public schools in poor neighborhoods are getting shittier and parents need to pay for private tutors and summer school. Guess who can afford that? Education doesn't fall out of the sky.

ewmiller 5y ago

That's very true. Widespread, high quality public education is a must.

j_walter 5y ago
It's not necessarily that the educators aren't high quality, but that the majority of students are there as a babysitting service and take up more time being disciplined than actually getting taught. We always say inner city schools have worse education...but I suspect it's more that the kids that attend those schools are disruptors and the system won't allow them to be disciplined in the way they should be (not that expelling them is the right thing either).
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  On the surface it might look like it's just about "discipline" but in the kinds of school districts you're talking about the problems are very deep-rooted and multi-faceted. Discipline alone is not nearly enough to address what's going on.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    Agreed...but at the school level what can they do? If the parents aren't engaged in their kids getting an education and behaving (for whatever reason)...it's not really the school's job to fill that gap.
    - crispyambulance 5y ago
      At school level? Only so much. Some school districts are now having a measure of success with having ONE school but tracking the kids into "accelerated" or "regular" programs and elevating the resources for both. There was a whole podcast about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-parents-serial.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren... This happened as a result of a large-enough number of well-to-do parents no longer being able to get their kids into very desirable and academically rigorous city-wide schools, so they effectively "took over" a neighborhood public/charter school by participating VERY HEAVILY in the PTA, the school's funding, and getting deeply involved with the ALL the kids, teachers and administration. From what I can tell, it required a very uncomfortable and ongoing dialog about race and class. Not every school in every big city can do this, IMHO, but AFAICT it lead to better outcomes for all the students, including the at-risk students.
- only_as_i_fall 5y ago
  In my city it's hard to separate the multitude of interrelated issues to say it's any one thing, but something I didn't realize until I moved here is that magnet schools pull out virtually all the competent and interested kids by the time they reach highschool. Given that, it's less surprising to me that the bottom tier public schools in these areas wind up so much shittier than the average public school.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    Can you really blame them? Why wouldn't you want to pull the good kids out so they can succeed? Seems like having tryouts for basketball...you take the best of the best to make the team strong.
    - imtringued 5y ago
      What's the underlying factor that makes it possible to only poach the good students? I'm thinking either it is externally visible or the factor is "solvable" for every student, meaning a school with bad students will receive more policies/measures to boost their performance as everyone is suffering from the same underlying problems. Of course this assumes that poorly performing schools get support at all.
- fatbird 5y ago
  Below, you say but at the school level what can they do? Lots, actually, but it's very resource constrained, so once again, the relationship between money-poor schools and bad students plays out. There are a variety of diversion programs that have been tried and shown great success with problem kids, but that requires staffing so that disruptors get more teacher attention than they otherwise would in a class of 35. Having competent, active counselling services in schools does a lot, too. With that said, it's not my wife's experience (as an inner city high school teacher) that disruptors are the problem. They're a problem, but there are lots of ways to handle them, individually or in groups. The way kids get shafted in poor schools is high teacher:student ratios that reduce or eliminate any individual attention a kid might receive, coupled with poor facilities and supplies. You rightly identify parental involvement as a key factor in school success, but the flip side is that kids lacking parental involvement are denied any individual attention in schools that are simply overcrowded and understaffed. And the kind of attention I'm talking about isn't substitute parenting, it's just following up with kids on assignments and attendance.
  - j_walter 5y ago
    Sure, a class size of 35 is a problem. So are a lot of factors that can lead to kids not learning. However the city I currently live in has a 20:1 ratio...and there are plenty of kids not succeeding (better than average though). Another local school in Portland has a ratio of 19:1...and they are 22% proficient in math. Thornwood HS in Chicago...13:1 ratio, but 8% proficient in math. It's not always about staffing...
    - fatbird 5y ago
      Staffing is a pipeline problem: a good ratio might not help a particular issue, but you'll never be able to address those issues without it.
      - j_walter 5y ago
        To what end though...I'm sure 1:1 ratio would be a huge improvement, but at what cost. You always get diminishing returns in these cases which seems heartless...but like with anything there is only so many resources to go around.

j_walter 5y ago

If parents value education they don't need to pay for tutors or summer school. I grew up in district with shitty schools, but I saw some kids succeed only because they learned stuff on their own. Those schools aren't necessarily shittier...they are filled with kids that don't want to learn (and their parents increasingly blame the teachers for their failure).

pope_meat 5y ago
So, it's just a statistical reality that kids in poor areas don't want to learn, and that's why the results show poorer people doing worse in education that rich people? Interesting hill to die on, but you do you.
- pc86 5y ago
  It's a statistical reality that if your parents don't value education, and don't impress upon their children its importance, that those children are incredibly unlikely to decide completely on their own that education is the way out of their impoverished lives. But that's a little too nuanced for your straw man.
- j_walter 5y ago
  Yes it is. Kids in poor areas don't see education as they way out of being poor...how could they. They see drugs and gangs as a way to do that though. I went to a shitty school and did well and went to college (thanks to my parents pushing me to do so)...so many people couldn't fathom why I was doing that and why I wasn't going to just go get a job right away. Many of those people are still living in that same area and are just as poor as their parents were.
  - pope_meat 5y ago
    I was going to debate you further, but then I realized I don't care about poor people either, just want to appear like I do.
    - 5y ago

crispyambulance 5y ago

A lot of parents of modest means, immigrant parents in particular, will move out to suburbs expressly because of the school quality relative to what's available in many city-centers. They're also willing to make much higher sacrifices for their kids' educations and enroll them in parochial or even private schools in spite of the cost. Sometimes, a good charter school or a magnet school is possible too.

dcveloper 5y ago

The quality of education is dictated innate ability, parents, and school system. I like to think of as a three leg stool. If one leg is missing, it's possible to balance. If two are missing, no amount of money will solve the problem.

nradov 5y ago
The stool has a fourth leg: other students. It's tough to get a good education if many of the other students are violent or disruptive. Public schools can't easily expel problem students.

threatofrain 5y ago

Hence why church and community structures are very important among immigrant communities.

pc86 5y ago

Yes, money makes stuff easier. I don't think anybody is disputing that. But you can be in a great school district with parents who think education is pointless, and in a shit school district with parents who think (know) it's one of the only ways out, and the former will underperform the latter all things being equal. And this isn't as simple as "dump more money on shitty schools and they'll become great." There are plenty of examples of poor areas with higher per-capita student spending than more well-off areas, and the schools burning giant piles are money are still worse.