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> Schools are paid by property tax, but every public school in every jurisdiction I've ever lived in has been inferior to private while costing me almost as muc

> Schools are paid by property tax, but every public school in every jurisdiction I've ever lived in has been inferior to private while costing me almost as much via property tax. Former educator: This mostly comes down to being able to select for students from house holds that have large disposable income and care enough about their child's education to send them to a private school. This usually gets you a lot of benefits: 1. Less disruptive kids (get too disruptive and they kick you out) 2. More engaged kids 3. Parents with leisure time to volunteer 4. Easier fundraising (private school in my area rakes in ~$1ml/yr in fundraising, vs $500k for the public school). I really want to re-iterate how powerful the effect of being able to kick people out of the school is. Like in most things 20% of the families generate 80% of disruptions in public schools and private schools basically get to elide that by not being a public service.

notch898a 4y ago
Seems like this could be improved by mandating no more than 2x disparity between spending on kids in the same grade level. Disruptors can be kicked into the gladiator camps or emancipated if they think they're so independent on what they can do.
- Hermitian909 4y ago
  Actual measurement for most disruptions is really hard because it usually manifests in things like "Timmy was really distracting in class during the Math lesson". Quantifying that is difficult. Capping spending ratios would also be horrific for the US specifically because we implement many of our social welfare programs for kids through the schools: school lunches, speech therapy, etc. (incidentally, this overinflates our spending on students relative to peer nations). You'd be relegating poor kids to even worse outcomes than they already face which would have some seriously negative downstream effects once they become adults.
  - bell-cot 4y ago
    Last I heard, average American per-student public school spending was ~$10K per pupil per year. Do free school lunches and a few hours per week with a speech therapist (or whatever a kid needs) actually add $10K to the annual cost of a pupil? (And if "yes", could the problem mostly be fixed by (say) changing "2x" to "3x"?)
  - notch898a 4y ago
    My thought process is the rich kids are already going to private school, where by your own admission various factors present advantages to them. The poorer left competing at the public schools all have their various challenges and struggles. IMO the best we can do for them is afford them equality of OPPORTUNITY for use of numerical amount of public funds. Johnny gets 10k Billy gets 10k, maybe 20k at most. There's no guarantee you'll get equality of outcome, but at least you got equal shot at the public funds and one poor kid doesn't lose out a huge amount so the other kid gets 5x the money. At some point sure more money is almost always better than less, but we have to remember that comes at the cost of other poor kids. As for lunches... I don't know why those aren't just given to all kids in public school by default. That would make it equal and satisfy the criteria. >Quantifying that is difficult This sounds accurate but I have to point out you've expressed the private schools are finding effective ways to identify disruptors.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  IIR, the biggest barrier to that idea is the kids with special needs, and either the ADA or similar laws. And at least in some states, "Chris has really special medical needs" can be a license to bleed the school district to financial ruin.

notch898a 4y ago

Seems like this could be improved by mandating no more than 2x disparity between spending on kids in the same grade level. Disruptors can be kicked into the gladiator camps or emancipated if they think they're so independent on what they can do.

Hermitian909 4y ago
Actual measurement for most disruptions is really hard because it usually manifests in things like "Timmy was really distracting in class during the Math lesson". Quantifying that is difficult. Capping spending ratios would also be horrific for the US specifically because we implement many of our social welfare programs for kids through the schools: school lunches, speech therapy, etc. (incidentally, this overinflates our spending on students relative to peer nations). You'd be relegating poor kids to even worse outcomes than they already face which would have some seriously negative downstream effects once they become adults.
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Last I heard, average American per-student public school spending was ~$10K per pupil per year. Do free school lunches and a few hours per week with a speech therapist (or whatever a kid needs) actually add $10K to the annual cost of a pupil? (And if "yes", could the problem mostly be fixed by (say) changing "2x" to "3x"?)
- notch898a 4y ago
  My thought process is the rich kids are already going to private school, where by your own admission various factors present advantages to them. The poorer left competing at the public schools all have their various challenges and struggles. IMO the best we can do for them is afford them equality of OPPORTUNITY for use of numerical amount of public funds. Johnny gets 10k Billy gets 10k, maybe 20k at most. There's no guarantee you'll get equality of outcome, but at least you got equal shot at the public funds and one poor kid doesn't lose out a huge amount so the other kid gets 5x the money. At some point sure more money is almost always better than less, but we have to remember that comes at the cost of other poor kids. As for lunches... I don't know why those aren't just given to all kids in public school by default. That would make it equal and satisfy the criteria. >Quantifying that is difficult This sounds accurate but I have to point out you've expressed the private schools are finding effective ways to identify disruptors.
bell-cot 4y ago
IIR, the biggest barrier to that idea is the kids with special needs, and either the ADA or similar laws. And at least in some states, "Chris has really special medical needs" can be a license to bleed the school district to financial ruin.