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I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice

by mcntsh 3y ago

I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too.

thrxio 3y ago
Wealthy people don't like to pay taxes which funds the public education
- slothtrop 3y ago
  Not exactly a choice.
- mcntsh 3y ago
  According to the 2020 IRS tax report, the top 1% of American earners pay 42% of all income taxes, the top 10% of earners pay 74%. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf In California, property tax revenue has been increasing steadily YoY... a $3.2Bn increase in 2020 alone. https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf
  - ericfrazier 3y ago
    Because the middle class is shrinking. The wealthy also use their money to lobby against new taxes that would fund public education.
  - hobs 3y ago
    Hey look, numbers that don't mean what the person said. What percentage of their wealth do they pay? What are their effective tax rates compared to the working class? Why are capital gains taxes so much less than most income taxes? Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so? Which one of those groups can afford lawyers to structure their incomes to pay even less? The rich are not paying their fair share and generally have been paying less and taking more for decades, I don't know what you are on about.
    - mcntsh 3y ago
      > Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so I believe it actually stops at around 700k for married couples and 575k for singles.
      - hobs 3y ago
        You're right, I mixed up when I moved to Cali my tax rate increased, but I wasn't making near there hah!
  - soco 3y ago
    For a different view under the line, check this calculator to see how much less the wealthy are taxed nowadays compared to pretty much any time last century except the wild 30s. All that money is not going into education, roads, healthcare, you name it anymore, an entire system of public funding collapses. https://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913 https://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913
- freitzkriesler2 3y ago
  Then why do wealthy people congregate in specific suburbs that have highly rated public schools?
GoldenRacer 3y ago
> The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education They didn't say sending kids to private school was a way to actively defund public education just that wealthy parents do both which is true. What's your motivation to vote and support politicians that advocate for better funded public schools when it doesn't effect your kids but raises your taxes?
- mcntsh 3y ago
  Everyone wants well-funded public schools because they produce safer and better communities. Can you think of many safe and affluent cities in the US that have poorly funded public school programs?
  - verall 3y ago
    People supporting voucher programs don't want well funded public schools.
- c22 3y ago
  Maybe you'd like to see the public school system improve so your grandchildren can attend it? Maybe you just want assurance that the serfs flipping your burgers can accurately read the sanitization instructions on their equipment? People are all different and their motivations are complex. Not everyone is angling for ultimate personal advantage and maximum externalization of downside, even amongst the wealthy.
  - GoldenRacer 3y ago
    Sure, hypothetically. It's just not what I'm seeing the wealthy parents in the town I grew up in doing. Most of them are fighting for school vouchers so they can divert money from public schools into their private schools.
    - zaphar 3y ago
      Continuing to poor money into a system that isn't working isn't a solution to the problem. School vouchers offer the potential to poor that money into a system that is working instead. Maybe that richer parent is trying to help not hinder other parents. Public schools appear to be fundamentally broken in many communities. More money won't fix that brokenness. Firing a bunch of teachers and administrators might work but good luck getting that to happen with the current state of education unions. Enabling parents to put their money into systems that aren't broken is a reasonable alternative to that.
spicyusername 3y ago
Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too. I very much disagree with the assumption that "anyone with the same opportunity would do it too". This is the kind of logic people use when trying to justify something to themselves they know might not be the moral choice, but they want to choose it anyways. Diverting resources, whether those resources are students, tax dollars, or parental volunteer time, away from public education harms the students who attend public education and harms our society. Rather than put the time and energy into building a proper community, those with means instead prefer to wall themselves off from the rest of society, which harms everyone.
- cafard 3y ago
  So we need to consider students as resources? That might be a difficult outlook to market to parents.
IggleSniggle 3y ago
Except that if they put the same money into their public school that they do into the private schools, they'd get even more superior outcomes than they do from funding private schools. I'm a comparatively wealthy parent, I've bothered to look at the data, and I'm sending my kids to public schools. I really don't believe it's about giving their kids a better education, because the studies pretty consistently show that public schools have superior outcomes when you adjust for socioeconomic status of individual students and special needs. The private schools of course don't accept these students. It's about exclusivity.
- chung8123 3y ago
  If we do dollar for dollar, spending more money on schools isn't going to help the outcomes either. The money would be better spent on the home life since that is what determines kids outcome the most.
- barry-cotter 3y ago
  > Except that if they put the same money into their public school that they do into the private schools, they'd get even more superior outcomes than they do from funding private schools. No, they wouldn’t. Schools have extremely small effects on student learning, if that[1]. Private schools buy a safer, more class homogeneous environment which is worth a lot but you can get the same effect by living in the right suburbs. [1] Education and Intelligence: Pity the Poor Teacher because Student Characteristics are more Significant than Teachers or Schools Education has not changed from the beginning of recorded history. The problem is that focus has been on schools and teachers and not students. Here is a simple thought experiment with two conditions: 1) 50 teachers are assigned by their teaching quality to randomly composed classes of 20 students, 2) 50 classes of 20 each are composed by selecting the most able students to fill each class in order and teachers are assigned randomly to classes. In condition 1, teaching ability of each teacher and in condition 2, mean ability level of students in each class is correlated with average gain over the course of instruction. Educational gain will be best predicted by student abilities (up to r = 0.95) and much less by teachers’ skill (up to r = 0.32). I argue that seemingly immutable education will not change until we fully understand students and particularly human intelligence. Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains. This evidence is reviewed. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-psychology/article/abs/education-and-intelligence-pity-the-poor-teacher-because-student-characteristics-are-more-significant-than-teachers-or-schools/F73D9839D7E1398C33A117CB37E084E8 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-p...

by mcntsh 3y ago

thrxio 3y ago

Wealthy people don't like to pay taxes which funds the public education

slothtrop 3y ago
Not exactly a choice.
mcntsh 3y ago
According to the 2020 IRS tax report, the top 1% of American earners pay 42% of all income taxes, the top 10% of earners pay 74%. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf In California, property tax revenue has been increasing steadily YoY... a $3.2Bn increase in 2020 alone. https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf
- ericfrazier 3y ago
  Because the middle class is shrinking. The wealthy also use their money to lobby against new taxes that would fund public education.
- hobs 3y ago
  Hey look, numbers that don't mean what the person said. What percentage of their wealth do they pay? What are their effective tax rates compared to the working class? Why are capital gains taxes so much less than most income taxes? Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so? Which one of those groups can afford lawyers to structure their incomes to pay even less? The rich are not paying their fair share and generally have been paying less and taking more for decades, I don't know what you are on about.
  - mcntsh 3y ago
    > Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so I believe it actually stops at around 700k for married couples and 575k for singles.
    - hobs 3y ago
      You're right, I mixed up when I moved to Cali my tax rate increased, but I wasn't making near there hah!
- soco 3y ago
  For a different view under the line, check this calculator to see how much less the wealthy are taxed nowadays compared to pretty much any time last century except the wild 30s. All that money is not going into education, roads, healthcare, you name it anymore, an entire system of public funding collapses. https://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913 https://qz.com/74271/income-tax-rates-since-1913
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
Then why do wealthy people congregate in specific suburbs that have highly rated public schools?

GoldenRacer 3y ago

> The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education They didn't say sending kids to private school was a way to actively defund public education just that wealthy parents do both which is true. What's your motivation to vote and support politicians that advocate for better funded public schools when it doesn't effect your kids but raises your taxes?

mcntsh 3y ago
Everyone wants well-funded public schools because they produce safer and better communities. Can you think of many safe and affluent cities in the US that have poorly funded public school programs?
- verall 3y ago
  People supporting voucher programs don't want well funded public schools.
c22 3y ago
Maybe you'd like to see the public school system improve so your grandchildren can attend it? Maybe you just want assurance that the serfs flipping your burgers can accurately read the sanitization instructions on their equipment? People are all different and their motivations are complex. Not everyone is angling for ultimate personal advantage and maximum externalization of downside, even amongst the wealthy.
- GoldenRacer 3y ago
  Sure, hypothetically. It's just not what I'm seeing the wealthy parents in the town I grew up in doing. Most of them are fighting for school vouchers so they can divert money from public schools into their private schools.
  - zaphar 3y ago
    Continuing to poor money into a system that isn't working isn't a solution to the problem. School vouchers offer the potential to poor that money into a system that is working instead. Maybe that richer parent is trying to help not hinder other parents. Public schools appear to be fundamentally broken in many communities. More money won't fix that brokenness. Firing a bunch of teachers and administrators might work but good luck getting that to happen with the current state of education unions. Enabling parents to put their money into systems that aren't broken is a reasonable alternative to that.

spicyusername 3y ago

Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too. I very much disagree with the assumption that "anyone with the same opportunity would do it too". This is the kind of logic people use when trying to justify something to themselves they know might not be the moral choice, but they want to choose it anyways. Diverting resources, whether those resources are students, tax dollars, or parental volunteer time, away from public education harms the students who attend public education and harms our society. Rather than put the time and energy into building a proper community, those with means instead prefer to wall themselves off from the rest of society, which harms everyone.

cafard 3y ago
So we need to consider students as resources? That might be a difficult outlook to market to parents.

IggleSniggle 3y ago

Except that if they put the same money into their public school that they do into the private schools, they'd get even more superior outcomes than they do from funding private schools. I'm a comparatively wealthy parent, I've bothered to look at the data, and I'm sending my kids to public schools. I really don't believe it's about giving their kids a better education, because the studies pretty consistently show that public schools have superior outcomes when you adjust for socioeconomic status of individual students and special needs. The private schools of course don't accept these students. It's about exclusivity.

chung8123 3y ago
If we do dollar for dollar, spending more money on schools isn't going to help the outcomes either. The money would be better spent on the home life since that is what determines kids outcome the most.
barry-cotter 3y ago
> Except that if they put the same money into their public school that they do into the private schools, they'd get even more superior outcomes than they do from funding private schools. No, they wouldn’t. Schools have extremely small effects on student learning, if that[1]. Private schools buy a safer, more class homogeneous environment which is worth a lot but you can get the same effect by living in the right suburbs. [1] Education and Intelligence: Pity the Poor Teacher because Student Characteristics are more Significant than Teachers or Schools Education has not changed from the beginning of recorded history. The problem is that focus has been on schools and teachers and not students. Here is a simple thought experiment with two conditions: 1) 50 teachers are assigned by their teaching quality to randomly composed classes of 20 students, 2) 50 classes of 20 each are composed by selecting the most able students to fill each class in order and teachers are assigned randomly to classes. In condition 1, teaching ability of each teacher and in condition 2, mean ability level of students in each class is correlated with average gain over the course of instruction. Educational gain will be best predicted by student abilities (up to r = 0.95) and much less by teachers’ skill (up to r = 0.32). I argue that seemingly immutable education will not change until we fully understand students and particularly human intelligence. Over the last 50 years in developed countries, evidence has accumulated that only about 10% of school achievement can be attributed to schools and teachers while the remaining 90% is due to characteristics associated with students. Teachers account for from 1% to 7% of total variance at every level of education. For students, intelligence accounts for much of the 90% of variance associated with learning gains. This evidence is reviewed. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-psychology/article/abs/education-and-intelligence-pity-the-poor-teacher-because-student-characteristics-are-more-significant-than-teachers-or-schools/F73D9839D7E1398C33A117CB37E084E8 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/spanish-journal-of-p...