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> my now-failing public school You're asserting vouchers would bankrupt public schools. How do you figure that? Maybe you're assuming that parents will move th

> my now-failing public school You're asserting vouchers would bankrupt public schools. How do you figure that? Maybe you're assuming that parents will move their kids to a better school, resulting in dwindling enrollment? If so, good! A public school that's not doing a great job should lose students. Let them feel the pain until they work to do better. > When you can guarantee perfect access and perfect information, let’s talk about vouchers. Your goalposts are unreasonable. Of course access and information will never be perfect. But they don't need to be. When I started school, my parents were very poor. When they went on a date, they split a Taco Bell bean burrito (seriously). They had to sell a lot of stuff on the front lawn one month to make ends meet. My dad had to ride the bus to work for a while, and had to borrow money from his brother. But they still somehow managed to send me to private school (probably with tuition assistance), because they believed doing so was the right thing. I understand a lot has changed since then; minimum wage is not a living wage anymore; many parents depend on free meals from public schools to make ends meet. But that doesn't mean the availability of other options is a bad thing or would be harmful.

TimTheTinker 3y ago
My underlying assumption here is that public schools fail to educate kids primarily because they never feel the consequences of failure. If a private school fails, its attendance dwindles, funding drops, heads roll, and it closes if the problem isn't fixed. Not so for public schools -- the money just keeps on rolling in.
- feoren 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - TimTheTinker 3y ago
    I've posited a reasonable mechanism that explains a phenomenon. We know stores fail if they don't provide competitive service - which means those that survive do a good enough job to survive... why shouldn't schools function similarly? No one (including school administrators) really tries hard to succeed if failure isn't a possibility. If you have an alternate explanation, I'm all ears.
  - dang 3y ago
    Yikes - posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- jmye 3y ago
  The assumption that public schools fail to educate kids is already erroneous and baseless. That a public good, meant to ensure an equitable start for all children, regardless of their or their parents’ circumstance, is being treated like a free market asset is a bizarre failure to understand the fundamental difference between, say, Apple and your local elementary that must be prepared to educate kids ranging from G&T to barely able to read, and must often take the place of parents who are either incapable or unable to be present and continue the kids’ education outside school. Your comments are case in point why people who don’t know anything about education shouldn’t have any input into how it’s delivered. I can’t tell if it’s Dunning-Kruger, or just an assumption that educators are idiots, but I can assure you the latter isn’t true.
  - TimTheTinker 3y ago
    Public school teachers certainly aren't idiots. I've personally known several as friends and acquaintances, for whom I'd vouch for their character and integrity. Public school administration, public policy, and the content of education degrees is where I'd place the blame (and some curriculum publishers) -- the sort of people who write and listen to the kind of drivel TA is talking about. This drive towards "equity" is creating even more disparate outcomes; and the notion being taught in some education degrees that a teacher's primary job is to make activists out of kids is hurtful to the kids, and to society.
    - jmye 3y ago
      Again, what is your expertise in education? Why do you think “equity” is driving disparate outcomes, let alone more disparate outcomes? Do you actually think that any teachers are being taught that their primary job is to create activists (and do you have a source), or are you just repeating X memes because being angry feels good? What, specifically, do you think an education degree consists of, and what is your personal experience with that curriculum? I can’t imagine you’re continuing to make sweeping pronouncements about something I’ve already asked you if you have any experience with.
      - 3y ago
- jjeaff 3y ago
  so your explanation for why schools in wealthy suburbs always do well and schools in poor urban areas do poorly is simply because somehow, suburbanites are holding their schools accountable while the urbanites are somehow not?
  - TimTheTinker 3y ago
    Yes, exactly. Suburbanites generally have more ability to move their kids to private schools if they want to. So the public schools have a higher bar to clear to keep attendance high.
    - jjeaff 3y ago
      That's very likely not true in the slightest. Only a very small percentage of suburbanites are close to a private school. And of that small percentage, most aren't close to being able to afford private school.
      - TimTheTinker 3y ago
        > Only a very small percentage of suburbanites are close to a private school. I just used Esri geoenrichment tools to create maps of private schools (based on SIC code lookup) in the LA area, central Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Your assertion doesn't hold. There are multiple private schools in every local suburban area I've looked into. Or did you have a particular area in mind? (or maybe you meant to say "rural"?) Southern California alone (south of San Luis Obispo) has 962 religious private elementary schools, and that's not counting the nonreligious, Montessori, preparatory schools, etc. Even charter schools in California (not counted either) often present excellent competition to traditional public schools, primarily because through them parents have greater choice (and no tuition!).
  - dragonwriter 3y ago
    Really, the explanation is that suburban schools generally have a greater proportion of students from the socioeconomic and demographic groups that do better no matter where they are; typical metrics of school quality don't measure the effect of the school, but what the school is working with.
feoren 3y ago
> A public school that's not doing a great job should lose students. Let them feel the pain until they work to do better. This is such a lazy, uninformed take. Someone's sad? Keep physically abusing them until they're less sad. Public schools do a bad job because they are under-funded, and have to use the limited funding they do have just trying to get their standardized test scores up so they don't lose even more funding. Punishing under-funded schools by giving them less funding is exactly the bad-faith strategy of people who are trying to destroy public schools so they can rake in money with their private schools. Private prisons going well? Private healthcare? Private unregulated utilities? Why would private schools be any better? The obvious answer is to actually invest in under-funded public schools, not punish them for being bad by making them even worse.
- ryan93 3y ago
  Evidence that they are underfunded? NYC spends much more per student than most private schools do.
  - crooked-v 3y ago
    Of course private schools spend less per student - they can selectively refuse to admit or kick out anyone they like, which eliminates all of the most expensive students.
    - ryan93 3y ago
      They spend a lot on non special ed students with mediocre results. The only thing that matters is selection. Not money.
- briHass 3y ago
  Not every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. The US spends more per student than essentially every other country in the world (besides the few statistical anomalies like Luxembourg), and most of the areas with poor-performing schools are funded at an equivalent level to nearby schools that are high-performing, thanks to large state and Federal subsidies to make up for lower local taxes.

TimTheTinker 3y ago

My underlying assumption here is that public schools fail to educate kids primarily because they never feel the consequences of failure. If a private school fails, its attendance dwindles, funding drops, heads roll, and it closes if the problem isn't fixed. Not so for public schools -- the money just keeps on rolling in.

feoren 3y ago
[flagged]
- TimTheTinker 3y ago
  I've posited a reasonable mechanism that explains a phenomenon. We know stores fail if they don't provide competitive service - which means those that survive do a good enough job to survive... why shouldn't schools function similarly? No one (including school administrators) really tries hard to succeed if failure isn't a possibility. If you have an alternate explanation, I'm all ears.
- dang 3y ago
  Yikes - posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
jmye 3y ago
The assumption that public schools fail to educate kids is already erroneous and baseless. That a public good, meant to ensure an equitable start for all children, regardless of their or their parents’ circumstance, is being treated like a free market asset is a bizarre failure to understand the fundamental difference between, say, Apple and your local elementary that must be prepared to educate kids ranging from G&T to barely able to read, and must often take the place of parents who are either incapable or unable to be present and continue the kids’ education outside school. Your comments are case in point why people who don’t know anything about education shouldn’t have any input into how it’s delivered. I can’t tell if it’s Dunning-Kruger, or just an assumption that educators are idiots, but I can assure you the latter isn’t true.
- TimTheTinker 3y ago
  Public school teachers certainly aren't idiots. I've personally known several as friends and acquaintances, for whom I'd vouch for their character and integrity. Public school administration, public policy, and the content of education degrees is where I'd place the blame (and some curriculum publishers) -- the sort of people who write and listen to the kind of drivel TA is talking about. This drive towards "equity" is creating even more disparate outcomes; and the notion being taught in some education degrees that a teacher's primary job is to make activists out of kids is hurtful to the kids, and to society.
  - jmye 3y ago
    Again, what is your expertise in education? Why do you think “equity” is driving disparate outcomes, let alone more disparate outcomes? Do you actually think that any teachers are being taught that their primary job is to create activists (and do you have a source), or are you just repeating X memes because being angry feels good? What, specifically, do you think an education degree consists of, and what is your personal experience with that curriculum? I can’t imagine you’re continuing to make sweeping pronouncements about something I’ve already asked you if you have any experience with.
    - 3y ago
jjeaff 3y ago
so your explanation for why schools in wealthy suburbs always do well and schools in poor urban areas do poorly is simply because somehow, suburbanites are holding their schools accountable while the urbanites are somehow not?
- TimTheTinker 3y ago
  Yes, exactly. Suburbanites generally have more ability to move their kids to private schools if they want to. So the public schools have a higher bar to clear to keep attendance high.
  - jjeaff 3y ago
    That's very likely not true in the slightest. Only a very small percentage of suburbanites are close to a private school. And of that small percentage, most aren't close to being able to afford private school.
    - TimTheTinker 3y ago
      > Only a very small percentage of suburbanites are close to a private school. I just used Esri geoenrichment tools to create maps of private schools (based on SIC code lookup) in the LA area, central Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Your assertion doesn't hold. There are multiple private schools in every local suburban area I've looked into. Or did you have a particular area in mind? (or maybe you meant to say "rural"?) Southern California alone (south of San Luis Obispo) has 962 religious private elementary schools, and that's not counting the nonreligious, Montessori, preparatory schools, etc. Even charter schools in California (not counted either) often present excellent competition to traditional public schools, primarily because through them parents have greater choice (and no tuition!).
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  Really, the explanation is that suburban schools generally have a greater proportion of students from the socioeconomic and demographic groups that do better no matter where they are; typical metrics of school quality don't measure the effect of the school, but what the school is working with.

feoren 3y ago

> A public school that's not doing a great job should lose students. Let them feel the pain until they work to do better. This is such a lazy, uninformed take. Someone's sad? Keep physically abusing them until they're less sad. Public schools do a bad job because they are under-funded, and have to use the limited funding they do have just trying to get their standardized test scores up so they don't lose even more funding. Punishing under-funded schools by giving them less funding is exactly the bad-faith strategy of people who are trying to destroy public schools so they can rake in money with their private schools. Private prisons going well? Private healthcare? Private unregulated utilities? Why would private schools be any better? The obvious answer is to actually invest in under-funded public schools, not punish them for being bad by making them even worse.

ryan93 3y ago
Evidence that they are underfunded? NYC spends much more per student than most private schools do.
- crooked-v 3y ago
  Of course private schools spend less per student - they can selectively refuse to admit or kick out anyone they like, which eliminates all of the most expensive students.
  - ryan93 3y ago
    They spend a lot on non special ed students with mediocre results. The only thing that matters is selection. Not money.
briHass 3y ago
Not every problem can be solved by throwing money at it. The US spends more per student than essentially every other country in the world (besides the few statistical anomalies like Luxembourg), and most of the areas with poor-performing schools are funded at an equivalent level to nearby schools that are high-performing, thanks to large state and Federal subsidies to make up for lower local taxes.