8 ms·

One of the most radical beliefs I have is we should get rid of private schools, because it lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an incre

One of the most radical beliefs I have is we should get rid of private schools, because it lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed. Of course I say this as I seriously consider sending my kids to a private school because of articles like this.

rrss 5y ago
FYI private schools are not immune to these problems. The administration of some private schools choose to have similar policies (accept late work indefinitely, minimum grade of 50%, etc) at their school.
- mindvirus 5y ago
  Of course, but it is very much up to the parents which product they want to buy (another problem of private schools to be sure). There are several that focus on rigorous academics, language immersion and even world travel.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    They don't necessarily know what is marketing and what they are buying, and the few truly top schools are selective. Private school teachers are also paid less & have worse benefits. It would be great if the private system had it all figured out but they don't.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      The low pay does somewhat select for teachers who want to teach - as those who don’t can get more money elsewhere. The main advantage private schools have is they an expel problem students and let the public schools try to handle them.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        > The low pay does somewhat select for teachers who want to teach - as those who don’t can get more money elsewhere. It ends up selecting for people who are more transient and have less experience, who haven't gotten the better Public school job yet. > The main advantage private schools have is they an expel problem students and let the public schools try to handle them. They theoretically have more control over expulsions, but whether or not they use it really depends on the school.
- amha 5y ago
  Teacher at an elite SFBay private high school. Can confirm!
rcpt 5y ago
> lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed. I don't think voting homeowner retirees sitting on fat Prop 13 tax cuts are going to change their tune because their grandkids can't go to private school.
- mindvirus 5y ago
  I doubt that these problems are from a lack of funding. From a systems point of view though - why would businesses move to SF if it meant bad schools? The answer right now is because the leadership can opt out and go into the private system, but if that wasn't the case, I think there would be a lot of incentive on the city to fix these problems.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Majority of education budget goes to paying for pensions of retirees. There’s no budget shortage. There’s a mis use of funds. If you throw more money into the system we’ll just see even crazier pension packages and administration staff overheads.
zepto 5y ago
> get rid of private schools What does that actually mean? It seems like you’d have to ban homeschooling and severely curtail private tutoring too. The idea of the state providing basic schooling so that even the poorest people start with at least some intellectual capital and can participate in society seems like and a good one. The idea of the state limiting what education is available to everyone and making it illegal to try to organize education outside of its direct authority seems maximally dystopian.
- mindvirus 5y ago
  You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. It'd mean the same thing it already means for 90%+ people - compulsory publicly funded education from 5-17 years old.
  - zepto 5y ago
    > You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. No straw man involved. I don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of ‘getting rid of private school’. The point is that to ban private schools you’d also have to ban homeschooling.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > The point is that to ban private schools you’d also have to ban homeschooling. Why? You can homeschool your children if you want. They just have to be at state school during state school hours like anyone else. So you'll have to homeschool in your own time, like everything else you have to do in your own time. (I'm not in favour of banning private schools, but your argument doesn't make sense regardless.)
      - tbihl 5y ago
        Surely you recognize that you're being obtuse with this statement. Otherwise you're suggesting either a zero value for time, or that homeschooling students do their sleeping while at state schools (which is a good recommendation, if you're already stuck attending them.)
tomjen3 5y ago
Alternatively we should ban public schools and force parents to send them to a private school, which if the money that would otherwise have gone to the public school gets sent along with them isn't very expensive (here in Denmark something like 80-90% of the money follows the student). Then we would have a direct way for parents to improve the schools their kids attend.
stale2002 5y ago
The more likely result of your "solution" is that everyone simple gets a worse education. Things are usually not solved by making things worse for everyone. Instead, the solution, to most problems, is to try to help more people, instead of trying to stop others from being too good at educating their children.
verisimilidude 5y ago
You’re describing Finland. They outlawed private school funding for exactly the reason you’re proposing: to get the wealthiest and most engaged parents invested in fixing public schools for all. It worked. They have one of the best public education systems in the world.
- ALittleLight 5y ago
  This is a big oversimplification. There are many differences in education between Finland and the US. Pointing to a single one and declaiming it as the cause is unjustified. As a counter example, the OECD PISA ranking for education puts Estonia as just barely ahead of Finland[1]. Estonia has public and private schools[2]. So, it is at least possible to have Finland quality schools while maintaining a public and private system. Another thing to consider would be the population differences. The US has ~65 times more people than Finland. In this larger group of people there will be Finland sized subgroups that outperform and underperform Finland even though the US as a whole underperforms. Massachusetts, for example, one of two states in the US to perform and report their own PISA numbers, is pretty comparable to Finland in 2015 (1 or 2 points above or below on scores of ~500 for science and reading and 11 points below on math)[3]. I couldn't find the official OECD results for 2018, but I believe Massachusetts is slightly ahead by then. 1 - https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/ https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/ 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Estonia 3 - https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-2015-United-States-MA.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-2015-United-States-MA.pdf
  - spangry 5y ago
    Any idea what Massachusetts is doing to achieve such results, and could it be replicated in other states?
    - codemonkey-zeta 5y ago
      It's cultural. A school system can only be effective up to a point, but depends mostly on the stock of students/parents involved in the system. You'll see MA scores among the top states in most forms of human development, so it shouldn't be surprising that the schools reflect that trend. The MA school system is likely not doing anything particularly unique that will be the antidote to failing systems in other states. It's likely the best way to replicate their success in other states lies in policy not directly related to school systems.
akomtu 5y ago
You can't do that. Even in countries with hardcore marxist regimes, kids of the elite (the "party members") go to special schools.
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  I tend to agree. Money find a way. But let’s me add some counter example for the sake of it. here is public high school, with « famous »teacher and kids clearly coming from the wealthy élites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Henri-IV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Henri-IV The trick is that the selection process is so stringent that you basically have to be : - a genious in getting excellent grade according to the French system or … - have parents that coach you to get in there. Here is another similar public high school. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Louis-le-Grand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Louis-le-Grand Again, I mostly agree with you point. But dépending of the country, a private education can be seen of « bad taste »
- muyuu 5y ago
  or they send them abroad - the classic oligarch/despot kid path
  - 0xy 5y ago
    Like Kim Jong-un reportedly going to school in Switzerland under a fake name.
dopidopHN 5y ago
I think you are into something indeed. When rich / powerful people have to send their kids to the same schools, it became important to have the best one. In France folks send their kids to public school mostly. The best high school in the country are public. And usually it’s a sign of something weird if you do your high school in the private. All that being said. Money always find a way. Some optional curriculum become the key to get assign to the « right » high school. like learning Latin, Greek. Or picking less common language, outside of the Spanish/English classics. like Italian or German. I really hope we move back home before my kids are old enough to go to school.
- frenchschool 5y ago
  In France there is a mandatory "map" where you can only send your kids to the nearest public schools. So you've got "good" ones and "bad" ones depending on the neighborhood. So, yes, the best high schools are public, in areas with high rents and property prices. Additionally, the best high schools select their students on academics, proof of residence, cover letter, letters from former teachers, etc. [1] https://lycee-henri4.com/admission-2/ https://lycee-henri4.com/admission-2/
  - dopidopHN 5y ago
    Not that simple : back in the days the « carte scolaire » was design to avoid that. It’s been jerrymandered in the meantime. But for instance growing up, the big stink was that those poor projects kids we’re in the same middle school that middle class folks. The trick was to pick German to avoid that and be affected to another school.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
That describes a lot of the US. Rich people are creating their own country with nice schools and neighborhoods while they never have to interact with the country the rest of people are living in. That's why I am against things like congestion based pricing for toll roads or school funding based on property tax. They give rich people the impression that everyhting is wonderful and no change is needed.
muyuu 5y ago
people cannot opt out of the DMV and I hear it's still garbage for some reason, the US never mastered publicly run institutions and they seem to attract the kind of people who run them into the ground I do agree that the fact that lobbyists and major donors being able to remove themselves from the social consequences of the policies they help implement is a major problem in the American political system; cronyism is out of control and the political funding system is a scandal
- Lammy 5y ago
  > for some reason, the US never mastered publicly run institutions This is by design, sadly, because the "wrong people" might benefit from them. But hey we have MLK Day and Juneteenth now so we fixed racism :)))))
  - dntrkv 5y ago
    Yes, the California DMV is a shit hole because republicans want to keep black people down. Makes total sense.
    - Lammy 5y ago
      Wouldn't be the first time: https://www.history.com/news/california-once-tried-to-ban-black-people https://www.history.com/news/california-once-tried-to-ban-bl... I'm not trying to pressure you or anybody else to agree with me, but personally it was really shocking for me when I realized how segregated the Bay Area actually is: http://radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea http://radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea There's no way I can look at a divide like the one at the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge and not think that ease of access to irl mobility is an issue. Once Upon A Time it was imagined that Phase 2 of BART would run alongside that bridge. There is a bus, but it's not of much use for anybody who needs to work later than 9PM, like many service jobs: https://www.goldengate.org/bus/route-schedule/del-norte-bart-station-san-rafael-40/ https://www.goldengate.org/bus/route-schedule/del-norte-bart...
      - dntrkv 5y ago
kart23 5y ago
I don't know where you are in the US, but this won't fix the problem instantly. Even across public schools, there are competitive ones, and there are non-competitive ones. There are high schools where 25% of the class goes to top colleges, and there are high schools where most don't go to college at all. The presence of the 'good' high school drives up property values too. There are still huge discrepancies across public schools.
throwkeep 5y ago
I think a better solution is funding students instead of systems. Give everyone the ability to opt out of broken systems, force all schools to compete for students.
vl 5y ago
And my belief is that we should have educational vouchers that cover the cost of public schools. So parents can choose to send children to public school and apply voucher there, or to spend it as private school. Public schools with low sign-up rate are closed. Trust me, all schools will be reasonably good in the few years.
- thebigman433 5y ago
  And where do you send kids after schools are forced to close? Private schools will raise their rates past what vouchers cover, and the poor will be continually left behind while the rich talk about how great choice is.
SwanRonson 5y ago
The people most capable of changing schools are the boardmembers and well funded unions. Private schools are simply the best alternative right now. If you ban private schools, people will “group homeschool”. If you ban homeschooling, parents can pack cigarettes in their kid’s lunch sack until they are sent to continuation school where attendance isn’t required. Then the child is free to attend a “group tutoring academy”. The solution is to make public education easier to reform by the members of the community.

rrss 5y ago

FYI private schools are not immune to these problems. The administration of some private schools choose to have similar policies (accept late work indefinitely, minimum grade of 50%, etc) at their school.

mindvirus 5y ago
Of course, but it is very much up to the parents which product they want to buy (another problem of private schools to be sure). There are several that focus on rigorous academics, language immersion and even world travel.
- rkk3 5y ago
  They don't necessarily know what is marketing and what they are buying, and the few truly top schools are selective. Private school teachers are also paid less & have worse benefits. It would be great if the private system had it all figured out but they don't.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    The low pay does somewhat select for teachers who want to teach - as those who don’t can get more money elsewhere. The main advantage private schools have is they an expel problem students and let the public schools try to handle them.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      > The low pay does somewhat select for teachers who want to teach - as those who don’t can get more money elsewhere. It ends up selecting for people who are more transient and have less experience, who haven't gotten the better Public school job yet. > The main advantage private schools have is they an expel problem students and let the public schools try to handle them. They theoretically have more control over expulsions, but whether or not they use it really depends on the school.
amha 5y ago
Teacher at an elite SFBay private high school. Can confirm!

rcpt 5y ago

> lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed. I don't think voting homeowner retirees sitting on fat Prop 13 tax cuts are going to change their tune because their grandkids can't go to private school.

mindvirus 5y ago
I doubt that these problems are from a lack of funding. From a systems point of view though - why would businesses move to SF if it meant bad schools? The answer right now is because the leadership can opt out and go into the private system, but if that wasn't the case, I think there would be a lot of incentive on the city to fix these problems.
bushbaba 5y ago
Majority of education budget goes to paying for pensions of retirees. There’s no budget shortage. There’s a mis use of funds. If you throw more money into the system we’ll just see even crazier pension packages and administration staff overheads.

zepto 5y ago

> get rid of private schools What does that actually mean? It seems like you’d have to ban homeschooling and severely curtail private tutoring too. The idea of the state providing basic schooling so that even the poorest people start with at least some intellectual capital and can participate in society seems like and a good one. The idea of the state limiting what education is available to everyone and making it illegal to try to organize education outside of its direct authority seems maximally dystopian.

mindvirus 5y ago
You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. It'd mean the same thing it already means for 90%+ people - compulsory publicly funded education from 5-17 years old.
- zepto 5y ago
  > You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. No straw man involved. I don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of ‘getting rid of private school’. The point is that to ban private schools you’d also have to ban homeschooling.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > The point is that to ban private schools you’d also have to ban homeschooling. Why? You can homeschool your children if you want. They just have to be at state school during state school hours like anyone else. So you'll have to homeschool in your own time, like everything else you have to do in your own time. (I'm not in favour of banning private schools, but your argument doesn't make sense regardless.)
    - tbihl 5y ago
      Surely you recognize that you're being obtuse with this statement. Otherwise you're suggesting either a zero value for time, or that homeschooling students do their sleeping while at state schools (which is a good recommendation, if you're already stuck attending them.)

tomjen3 5y ago

Alternatively we should ban public schools and force parents to send them to a private school, which if the money that would otherwise have gone to the public school gets sent along with them isn't very expensive (here in Denmark something like 80-90% of the money follows the student). Then we would have a direct way for parents to improve the schools their kids attend.

stale2002 5y ago

The more likely result of your "solution" is that everyone simple gets a worse education. Things are usually not solved by making things worse for everyone. Instead, the solution, to most problems, is to try to help more people, instead of trying to stop others from being too good at educating their children.

verisimilidude 5y ago

You’re describing Finland. They outlawed private school funding for exactly the reason you’re proposing: to get the wealthiest and most engaged parents invested in fixing public schools for all. It worked. They have one of the best public education systems in the world.

ALittleLight 5y ago
This is a big oversimplification. There are many differences in education between Finland and the US. Pointing to a single one and declaiming it as the cause is unjustified. As a counter example, the OECD PISA ranking for education puts Estonia as just barely ahead of Finland[1]. Estonia has public and private schools[2]. So, it is at least possible to have Finland quality schools while maintaining a public and private system. Another thing to consider would be the population differences. The US has ~65 times more people than Finland. In this larger group of people there will be Finland sized subgroups that outperform and underperform Finland even though the US as a whole underperforms. Massachusetts, for example, one of two states in the US to perform and report their own PISA numbers, is pretty comparable to Finland in 2015 (1 or 2 points above or below on scores of ~500 for science and reading and 11 points below on math)[3]. I couldn't find the official OECD results for 2018, but I believe Massachusetts is slightly ahead by then. 1 - https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/ https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/ 2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Estonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Estonia 3 - https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-2015-United-States-MA.pdf https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-2015-United-States-MA.pdf
- spangry 5y ago
  Any idea what Massachusetts is doing to achieve such results, and could it be replicated in other states?
  - codemonkey-zeta 5y ago
    It's cultural. A school system can only be effective up to a point, but depends mostly on the stock of students/parents involved in the system. You'll see MA scores among the top states in most forms of human development, so it shouldn't be surprising that the schools reflect that trend. The MA school system is likely not doing anything particularly unique that will be the antidote to failing systems in other states. It's likely the best way to replicate their success in other states lies in policy not directly related to school systems.

akomtu 5y ago

You can't do that. Even in countries with hardcore marxist regimes, kids of the elite (the "party members") go to special schools.

dopidopHN 5y ago
I tend to agree. Money find a way. But let’s me add some counter example for the sake of it. here is public high school, with « famous »teacher and kids clearly coming from the wealthy élites. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Henri-IV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Henri-IV The trick is that the selection process is so stringent that you basically have to be : - a genious in getting excellent grade according to the French system or … - have parents that coach you to get in there. Here is another similar public high school. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Louis-le-Grand https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyc%C3%A9e_Louis-le-Grand Again, I mostly agree with you point. But dépending of the country, a private education can be seen of « bad taste »
muyuu 5y ago
or they send them abroad - the classic oligarch/despot kid path
- 0xy 5y ago
  Like Kim Jong-un reportedly going to school in Switzerland under a fake name.

dopidopHN 5y ago

I think you are into something indeed. When rich / powerful people have to send their kids to the same schools, it became important to have the best one. In France folks send their kids to public school mostly. The best high school in the country are public. And usually it’s a sign of something weird if you do your high school in the private. All that being said. Money always find a way. Some optional curriculum become the key to get assign to the « right » high school. like learning Latin, Greek. Or picking less common language, outside of the Spanish/English classics. like Italian or German. I really hope we move back home before my kids are old enough to go to school.

frenchschool 5y ago
In France there is a mandatory "map" where you can only send your kids to the nearest public schools. So you've got "good" ones and "bad" ones depending on the neighborhood. So, yes, the best high schools are public, in areas with high rents and property prices. Additionally, the best high schools select their students on academics, proof of residence, cover letter, letters from former teachers, etc. [1] https://lycee-henri4.com/admission-2/ https://lycee-henri4.com/admission-2/
- dopidopHN 5y ago
  Not that simple : back in the days the « carte scolaire » was design to avoid that. It’s been jerrymandered in the meantime. But for instance growing up, the big stink was that those poor projects kids we’re in the same middle school that middle class folks. The trick was to pick German to avoid that and be affected to another school.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

That describes a lot of the US. Rich people are creating their own country with nice schools and neighborhoods while they never have to interact with the country the rest of people are living in. That's why I am against things like congestion based pricing for toll roads or school funding based on property tax. They give rich people the impression that everyhting is wonderful and no change is needed.

muyuu 5y ago

people cannot opt out of the DMV and I hear it's still garbage for some reason, the US never mastered publicly run institutions and they seem to attract the kind of people who run them into the ground I do agree that the fact that lobbyists and major donors being able to remove themselves from the social consequences of the policies they help implement is a major problem in the American political system; cronyism is out of control and the political funding system is a scandal

Lammy 5y ago
> for some reason, the US never mastered publicly run institutions This is by design, sadly, because the "wrong people" might benefit from them. But hey we have MLK Day and Juneteenth now so we fixed racism :)))))
- dntrkv 5y ago
  Yes, the California DMV is a shit hole because republicans want to keep black people down. Makes total sense.
  - Lammy 5y ago
    Wouldn't be the first time: https://www.history.com/news/california-once-tried-to-ban-black-people https://www.history.com/news/california-once-tried-to-ban-bl... I'm not trying to pressure you or anybody else to agree with me, but personally it was really shocking for me when I realized how segregated the Bay Area actually is: http://radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea http://radicalcartography.net/index.html?bayarea There's no way I can look at a divide like the one at the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge and not think that ease of access to irl mobility is an issue. Once Upon A Time it was imagined that Phase 2 of BART would run alongside that bridge. There is a bus, but it's not of much use for anybody who needs to work later than 9PM, like many service jobs: https://www.goldengate.org/bus/route-schedule/del-norte-bart-station-san-rafael-40/ https://www.goldengate.org/bus/route-schedule/del-norte-bart...
    - dntrkv 5y ago

kart23 5y ago

I don't know where you are in the US, but this won't fix the problem instantly. Even across public schools, there are competitive ones, and there are non-competitive ones. There are high schools where 25% of the class goes to top colleges, and there are high schools where most don't go to college at all. The presence of the 'good' high school drives up property values too. There are still huge discrepancies across public schools.

throwkeep 5y ago

I think a better solution is funding students instead of systems. Give everyone the ability to opt out of broken systems, force all schools to compete for students.

vl 5y ago

And my belief is that we should have educational vouchers that cover the cost of public schools. So parents can choose to send children to public school and apply voucher there, or to spend it as private school. Public schools with low sign-up rate are closed. Trust me, all schools will be reasonably good in the few years.

thebigman433 5y ago
And where do you send kids after schools are forced to close? Private schools will raise their rates past what vouchers cover, and the poor will be continually left behind while the rich talk about how great choice is.

SwanRonson 5y ago

The people most capable of changing schools are the boardmembers and well funded unions. Private schools are simply the best alternative right now. If you ban private schools, people will “group homeschool”. If you ban homeschooling, parents can pack cigarettes in their kid’s lunch sack until they are sent to continuation school where attendance isn’t required. Then the child is free to attend a “group tutoring academy”. The solution is to make public education easier to reform by the members of the community.