4 ms·

Technically yes, but depending on your location your public school system may be chronically under-funded, to the point where sending your kid to a public schoo

Technically yes, but depending on your location your public school system may be chronically under-funded, to the point where sending your kid to a public school would put them at a big disadvantage in high school or college (and so then for the rest of their life). Yes, you could move, but as it turns out properties are more expensive in good school districts.

deltree7 4y ago
You could live in a shitty apartment in a good school district, if you are really determined to sacrifice and give a good education to your kids. 100% of the immigrants do that
- nyanpasu64 4y ago
  And raise traumatized children like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32946010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32946010.
  - lupire 4y ago
    That person would be traumatized at private school too.
- Bud 4y ago
  Those districts are very likely to have housing markets that include precious few "shitty apartments" and zoning that makes it impossible to build more of them. That's a fundamental fact of modern America.
gsk22 4y ago
I'm a product of one of the shittiest public schools in my state. While I attended, they were forced by the state to convert to an "international baccalaureate" school because the alternative was closing. I say that because yet, among my peers from that school, I count engineers, astrophysicists, doctors, IT workers, psychologists, pilots, and more. So I would vigorously argue against the idea that students who attend underfunded public schools are at a disadvantage for life. The biggest impact I noticed is home life and the involvement of parents. If you are a parent who cares and pushes your child, that is worth way more than the quality of the school as assigned by some ranking system. Additionally, my exposure to a rough-and-tumble school with people of varying backgrounds (i.e., not a single socioeconomic stratum) gave me empathy and social skills that are extremely useful in everyday life. I'm not saying your choices are wrong, but I strongly disagree with the premise that a less-than-ideal public school leads to lifelong negative consequences.
- yellow_lead 4y ago
  > The biggest impact I noticed is home life and the involvement of parents. If you are a parent who cares and pushes your child, that is worth way more than the quality of the school as assigned by some ranking system. Agreed. My comment is from experience as well though. A lot of my classes in HS had to be slowed down to the slowest student (no child left behind I guess), but the better students were frequently bored. I'm glad I was lucky enough to be able to take advanced classes, but I still think one's school has an impact. Exposure to certain topics or classes can certainly impact a student's life (in my opinion). For instance, high schools with a compsci class, I'm sure will have more students becoming SWEs than high schools without.
- abigail95 4y ago
  If school funding has no advantage on life performance then we need to drastically cut all funding and just save the money. That seems so unlikely to be true I can't be bothered reading the rest of your comment. A single example of a school spending program that has positive results would collapse your argument.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Providing an example would surely help your case. US schools are currently removing gifted education (which costs nothing extra, just has higher standards) or because they found that spending more on non-gifted students didn't close the achievement gap.
  - gen220 4y ago
    You’re setting up a false dichotomy. There’s no one input that’s responsible for 80% of a successful education. School funding is obviously dominantly important up to a point (they need books, rooms, teachers, etc.). Past that point, marginally more engaged and educated parents are worth much more than a marginal $X of funding per student per year. I went through a public school with a tri-modal distribution (that almost perfectly mirrored our county’s tri-modal income distribution). A handful of people dropped out functionally illiterate, most people came out “just fine” and went to a local community college or state school, and a handful of people went to top tier universities paid for by pell grants, scholarships and PLUS loans. The main variable correlated to which modality you fell into was a combination of the socioeconomic status of your parents, and how engaged they were in your education (i.e. not going through a divorce, not rich but working 100 hours per week, etc.). A passionate teacher or extracurricular sponsor (drama teacher, athletics coach) might have temporarily filled-in for or amplified this normally parental role for a year or two with a similar effect, but only for a couple students at a time. They would usually target their efforts on kids on the cusp of a modality (failing but with a lot of potential shown elsewhere, or very smart but from a troubled home). There’s a study on kids that just barely missed the cutoff to get into the #1 public school in NYC. Their post-HS outcomes were indistinguishable from those on the symmetrical other side of the divide. On either side of the divide, you had parents encouraging and pushing their kids just as hard. Interpret from that what you will. Basically, the world isn’t black and white. It’s damned complicated. Public school is complicated. Anybody who claims a simple solution, especially tied to funding or teachers, deserves suspicion IMO.

deltree7 4y ago

You could live in a shitty apartment in a good school district, if you are really determined to sacrifice and give a good education to your kids. 100% of the immigrants do that

nyanpasu64 4y ago
And raise traumatized children like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32946010 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32946010.
- lupire 4y ago
  That person would be traumatized at private school too.
Bud 4y ago
Those districts are very likely to have housing markets that include precious few "shitty apartments" and zoning that makes it impossible to build more of them. That's a fundamental fact of modern America.

gsk22 4y ago

I'm a product of one of the shittiest public schools in my state. While I attended, they were forced by the state to convert to an "international baccalaureate" school because the alternative was closing. I say that because yet, among my peers from that school, I count engineers, astrophysicists, doctors, IT workers, psychologists, pilots, and more. So I would vigorously argue against the idea that students who attend underfunded public schools are at a disadvantage for life. The biggest impact I noticed is home life and the involvement of parents. If you are a parent who cares and pushes your child, that is worth way more than the quality of the school as assigned by some ranking system. Additionally, my exposure to a rough-and-tumble school with people of varying backgrounds (i.e., not a single socioeconomic stratum) gave me empathy and social skills that are extremely useful in everyday life. I'm not saying your choices are wrong, but I strongly disagree with the premise that a less-than-ideal public school leads to lifelong negative consequences.

yellow_lead 4y ago
> The biggest impact I noticed is home life and the involvement of parents. If you are a parent who cares and pushes your child, that is worth way more than the quality of the school as assigned by some ranking system. Agreed. My comment is from experience as well though. A lot of my classes in HS had to be slowed down to the slowest student (no child left behind I guess), but the better students were frequently bored. I'm glad I was lucky enough to be able to take advanced classes, but I still think one's school has an impact. Exposure to certain topics or classes can certainly impact a student's life (in my opinion). For instance, high schools with a compsci class, I'm sure will have more students becoming SWEs than high schools without.
abigail95 4y ago
If school funding has no advantage on life performance then we need to drastically cut all funding and just save the money. That seems so unlikely to be true I can't be bothered reading the rest of your comment. A single example of a school spending program that has positive results would collapse your argument.
- lupire 4y ago
  Providing an example would surely help your case. US schools are currently removing gifted education (which costs nothing extra, just has higher standards) or because they found that spending more on non-gifted students didn't close the achievement gap.
- gen220 4y ago
  You’re setting up a false dichotomy. There’s no one input that’s responsible for 80% of a successful education. School funding is obviously dominantly important up to a point (they need books, rooms, teachers, etc.). Past that point, marginally more engaged and educated parents are worth much more than a marginal $X of funding per student per year. I went through a public school with a tri-modal distribution (that almost perfectly mirrored our county’s tri-modal income distribution). A handful of people dropped out functionally illiterate, most people came out “just fine” and went to a local community college or state school, and a handful of people went to top tier universities paid for by pell grants, scholarships and PLUS loans. The main variable correlated to which modality you fell into was a combination of the socioeconomic status of your parents, and how engaged they were in your education (i.e. not going through a divorce, not rich but working 100 hours per week, etc.). A passionate teacher or extracurricular sponsor (drama teacher, athletics coach) might have temporarily filled-in for or amplified this normally parental role for a year or two with a similar effect, but only for a couple students at a time. They would usually target their efforts on kids on the cusp of a modality (failing but with a lot of potential shown elsewhere, or very smart but from a troubled home). There’s a study on kids that just barely missed the cutoff to get into the #1 public school in NYC. Their post-HS outcomes were indistinguishable from those on the symmetrical other side of the divide. On either side of the divide, you had parents encouraging and pushing their kids just as hard. Interpret from that what you will. Basically, the world isn’t black and white. It’s damned complicated. Public school is complicated. Anybody who claims a simple solution, especially tied to funding or teachers, deserves suspicion IMO.