4 ms·

Nope. Get rid of all of them. Private schools are just legal segregation. Forcing rich people's kids to go to school with poor and average kids will give their

Nope. Get rid of all of them. Private schools are just legal segregation. Forcing rich people's kids to go to school with poor and average kids will give their parents a huge incentive to lobby for the increased quality of public schools. Lottery systems would make it even better. Education and healthcare being made available to everybody at the exact same availability and quality level would majorly improve both systems.

bioemerl 4y ago
> Forcing rich people's kids to go to school with poor and average kids will ... Cause rich families to blanket refuse to live anywhere near neighborhoods with poor kids and contribute massively to the segregation between well off and impoverished neighborhoods. Just live in a place where every home in a 45 minute radius is over a million dollars to purchase.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Right—in my city all the rich people neighborhoods in the city proper only exist because of private schools. If you have some money, but not enough for an expensive in-the-city house in a non-terrible neighborhood plus private school, you do not live there—you live in the 'burbs. All the urban- and close-old-suburb dwelling rich people would pack up and leave within a year if they were forced to send their kids to public school. Or find some way to get themselves a weird-bordered carved-out new district all to themselves. That's the only possible way they'd stay.
- MisterBastahrd 4y ago
  That's why I said lottery systems. If they want to bus their kids 45 minutes to be stuck in the same school system, that's on them. I don't care.
yamtaddle 4y ago
This will only work if you also forbid rich people from homeschooling (= private tutors supplemented with sports & social clubs full of other rich kids—and very-well-funded rich-parent homeschooling support groups would probably start to look an awful lot like private schools themselves) and from sending their kids out of the country for school. Day school rates for good private schools (there are way, way more bad private schools than good ones) are in like the $20k-$60k/yr range. That's a lot of money to put toward avoiding public school, even if US private schools themselves are outlawed. You'd have to also mandate public school attendance, no alternatives whatsoever. You'd also have to do something to prevent rich people from effectively buying whole school districts and turning them into private schools. There are already districts kinda like this—unleash the entire upper-middle and upper class on the current public school system, and pretty soon there will be a few dozen districts nationwide where it's impossible to buy a house for under a million dollars and the schools may as well be private schools.
rcoveson 4y ago
What policy do you have in mind? Would it be illegal to pay for tutoring of any kind, or would it just be illegal to not send your kid to the local public school (illegalizing homeschooling as well)? And what about just moving to an area close to better schools, would you write laws to address that? As long as parents raise their own children, you're going to have crazy levels of inequality. If you also continue to respect personal autonomy and private property, you'll have ever crazier levels.
- wildrhythms 4y ago
  Students needing additional tutoring is normal, but it's also a signal that the educators need to reevaluate why students aren't meeting expectations from the existing curriculum. How many broken curriculum have been perpetuated because the top performing students had to spend hours after class filling in the gaps on their own dime? Wouldn't a better invested (not just money, but also socially) public school system support students so they don't need to seek outside tutoring like what you're describing? And I do believe homeschooling should be prohibited. Once again, a better invested (money, socially) public school system would solve whatever problem parents think they're addressing by way of homeschooling.
pjscott 4y ago
As a fun historical side note, I've heard this one before in a different context! "Make exit impossible so people will have to focus on fixing the broken system they're forced to deal with" was also the stated rationale for building the Berlin Wall.

bioemerl 4y ago

> Forcing rich people's kids to go to school with poor and average kids will ... Cause rich families to blanket refuse to live anywhere near neighborhoods with poor kids and contribute massively to the segregation between well off and impoverished neighborhoods. Just live in a place where every home in a 45 minute radius is over a million dollars to purchase.

yamtaddle 4y ago
Right—in my city all the rich people neighborhoods in the city proper only exist because of private schools. If you have some money, but not enough for an expensive in-the-city house in a non-terrible neighborhood plus private school, you do not live there—you live in the 'burbs. All the urban- and close-old-suburb dwelling rich people would pack up and leave within a year if they were forced to send their kids to public school. Or find some way to get themselves a weird-bordered carved-out new district all to themselves. That's the only possible way they'd stay.
MisterBastahrd 4y ago
That's why I said lottery systems. If they want to bus their kids 45 minutes to be stuck in the same school system, that's on them. I don't care.

yamtaddle 4y ago

This will only work if you also forbid rich people from homeschooling (= private tutors supplemented with sports & social clubs full of other rich kids—and very-well-funded rich-parent homeschooling support groups would probably start to look an awful lot like private schools themselves) and from sending their kids out of the country for school. Day school rates for good private schools (there are way, way more bad private schools than good ones) are in like the $20k-$60k/yr range. That's a lot of money to put toward avoiding public school, even if US private schools themselves are outlawed. You'd have to also mandate public school attendance, no alternatives whatsoever. You'd also have to do something to prevent rich people from effectively buying whole school districts and turning them into private schools. There are already districts kinda like this—unleash the entire upper-middle and upper class on the current public school system, and pretty soon there will be a few dozen districts nationwide where it's impossible to buy a house for under a million dollars and the schools may as well be private schools.

rcoveson 4y ago

What policy do you have in mind? Would it be illegal to pay for tutoring of any kind, or would it just be illegal to not send your kid to the local public school (illegalizing homeschooling as well)? And what about just moving to an area close to better schools, would you write laws to address that? As long as parents raise their own children, you're going to have crazy levels of inequality. If you also continue to respect personal autonomy and private property, you'll have ever crazier levels.

wildrhythms 4y ago
Students needing additional tutoring is normal, but it's also a signal that the educators need to reevaluate why students aren't meeting expectations from the existing curriculum. How many broken curriculum have been perpetuated because the top performing students had to spend hours after class filling in the gaps on their own dime? Wouldn't a better invested (not just money, but also socially) public school system support students so they don't need to seek outside tutoring like what you're describing? And I do believe homeschooling should be prohibited. Once again, a better invested (money, socially) public school system would solve whatever problem parents think they're addressing by way of homeschooling.

pjscott 4y ago

As a fun historical side note, I've heard this one before in a different context! "Make exit impossible so people will have to focus on fixing the broken system they're forced to deal with" was also the stated rationale for building the Berlin Wall.