5 ms·

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"

by 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.
rippercushions 4y ago
> I'm a product of one of the shittiest public schools in my state. ... yet, among my peers from that school, I count engineers, astrophysicists, doctors, IT workers, psychologists, pilots, and more. Are you serious? How did they manage to apply for and pay for the education needed to score those jobs? A friend of mine was also a product of one of the shittiest public schools in her state, and she was apparently the only person in her grade to continue on to university.
- lupire 4y ago
  US has public universities and college scholarships. And, you know, students don't pay for college out of their own income from high paying jobs they got based on high school education.
gen220 4y ago
One simple (and perhaps actionable) way to express this idea. Say you're two parents who are very conscientious about wanting your child to have "good outcomes" in life (i.e. have a good schooling experience, go to a good college, have a good job). It is better, for your kids, for the family to live in an environment in which you (the parents!) are living comfortably and with minimal stress, than it is to attend a top 50 high school, (assuming that means trading off against comfort & stress). By comfort/stress, I mean to say: money isn't a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly issue, jobs are low-stress, and you have a lot of spare energy/time to invest in your kids after school, on the weekends, and in the summer/holidays. There are plenty of schools in the top 500 or top 1000 in the US that are in geographies check these box for you, your spouse, and your family, that don't cost $1000/month/child. You might not be min-maxing your retirement accounts by taking jobs that allow you to work in-person/remotely there, but the compounding dividends paid by investing in your family and community carries much more value.
Ancalagon 4y ago
I think there are "shitty" schools, and then there are _shitty_ schools. A "shitty" public school is probably generally underfunded, but at least has the decent-enough quality of teachers/parents to lead the motivated kids to the right information. That way those kids can go on in their own time and study enough to make it to professional jobs in the real world, although most of these kids will never make it to top-tier colleges due to optics of their schools. A _shitty_ public school lacks even generally-caring teachers, and often suffers net-negative because of the parents. Kids in these schools grow up ignorant of what to learn, much less how to learn it.
M5x7wI3CmbEem10 4y ago
public schooling and low-tier education were undoubtably the worst experiences of my life. the criminal behavior (hard drugs, regular violence) and resentment of the teachers are the closest thing to hell I have experienced. you got out lucky.
P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago
The poster you're responding to is the poster child for the helicopter parent that plans their child's life and then bribes school officials to get them into an ivy league school. Little Johnny is better than the plebs around them who attend the public school in their district. The funny part is that school teaches you to do things "by the book" and that, itself, has its own downsides.

by gsk22 4y ago

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.

rippercushions 4y ago

> I'm a product of one of the shittiest public schools in my state. ... yet, among my peers from that school, I count engineers, astrophysicists, doctors, IT workers, psychologists, pilots, and more. Are you serious? How did they manage to apply for and pay for the education needed to score those jobs? A friend of mine was also a product of one of the shittiest public schools in her state, and she was apparently the only person in her grade to continue on to university.

lupire 4y ago
US has public universities and college scholarships. And, you know, students don't pay for college out of their own income from high paying jobs they got based on high school education.

gen220 4y ago

One simple (and perhaps actionable) way to express this idea. Say you're two parents who are very conscientious about wanting your child to have "good outcomes" in life (i.e. have a good schooling experience, go to a good college, have a good job). It is better, for your kids, for the family to live in an environment in which you (the parents!) are living comfortably and with minimal stress, than it is to attend a top 50 high school, (assuming that means trading off against comfort & stress). By comfort/stress, I mean to say: money isn't a weekly, monthly, or even quarterly issue, jobs are low-stress, and you have a lot of spare energy/time to invest in your kids after school, on the weekends, and in the summer/holidays. There are plenty of schools in the top 500 or top 1000 in the US that are in geographies check these box for you, your spouse, and your family, that don't cost $1000/month/child. You might not be min-maxing your retirement accounts by taking jobs that allow you to work in-person/remotely there, but the compounding dividends paid by investing in your family and community carries much more value.

Ancalagon 4y ago

I think there are "shitty" schools, and then there are _shitty_ schools. A "shitty" public school is probably generally underfunded, but at least has the decent-enough quality of teachers/parents to lead the motivated kids to the right information. That way those kids can go on in their own time and study enough to make it to professional jobs in the real world, although most of these kids will never make it to top-tier colleges due to optics of their schools. A _shitty_ public school lacks even generally-caring teachers, and often suffers net-negative because of the parents. Kids in these schools grow up ignorant of what to learn, much less how to learn it.

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 4y ago

public schooling and low-tier education were undoubtably the worst experiences of my life. the criminal behavior (hard drugs, regular violence) and resentment of the teachers are the closest thing to hell I have experienced. you got out lucky.

P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y ago

The poster you're responding to is the poster child for the helicopter parent that plans their child's life and then bribes school officials to get them into an ivy league school. Little Johnny is better than the plebs around them who attend the public school in their district. The funny part is that school teaches you to do things "by the book" and that, itself, has its own downsides.