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The problem with schools in a place like Newark is that they serve as a rare source of economic opportunity in an otherwise shithole neighborhood. Schools are

• primitivesuave 12y ago
  There is a real discussion over this by education reformists, and for 100 million dollars you could make two or three of these.
• javajosh 12y ago
  This comment is ignorant beyond belief! Have you ever been to Newark? It's a huge, bustling city - actually, New Jersey's largest city. When you make absurd claims like "[schools] serve as a rare source of economic opportunity in an otherwise shithole town" how can anyone take anything you say seriously?
  • TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    I go by what I see. I should probably have said "neighborhood" not city. Do you see how people cling to those fucking administrative jobs, while screwing over kids, like those jobs are the last life preserver on a sinking ship. Every school district has teacher's unions that are a pain in the ass ... but only in Newark do you see an utterly corrupt organization defended tooth and nail by entire neighborhoods, without regard for how the children are effected. Its ridiculous. People treat the firing of clerks like its a genocide of a colonized people.
    • throwaway0010 12y ago
      The objectionable part is that it's not a regional issue. Vampires chasing money are everywhere and will relocate to follow the cash teat. This would've happened anywhere in the USA.
      • TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
        Okay, I own up to my post being unfair in that way. This could be the case in Oakland too. I have to admit I am channeling some childhood angst about a different school system altogether ... not Newark.
    • danielweber 12y ago
      Not every state in the union has teachers' union. (In the traditional sense. Some have "unions" but participation is completely voluntary so they more like professional organizations.) My kids' time in a public school without these unions have had mixed results. The teachers seem good, but the administration seems utterly incompetent. Which is kind of the failure mode I would expect. Bad teachers cannot continue to hide, but what can I do about an administration that takes 3 years to conduct an IEP? (The answer to that last question is one of "fight to fix the system" or "use legal recourse." Option 1 is incredibly irrational: these insiders know the game better than me and have a lot more invested in it than me. Option 2 is what my spouse and I are doing now, but it doesn't feel at all like it's improving the situation for anyone but our immediate child for the immediate time frame.)
• cbr 12y ago
  Give admission based on a lottery ... not on the basis of an examination ... so no one can accuse you of taking only the best kids. It's better than that: if you admit based on lottery you're providing the randomization for a randomized controlled trial. Either you or someone else can measure the difference later in life between applicants that are and aren't admitted.
  • edtechdev 12y ago
    Except it's not random who applies for the lottery. And also charter schools are notorious for rejecting students for various reasons that public schools are not allowed to use, including rejecting special ed students, all in the name of making their test scores look better: http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/05/tcr-dirty-dozen http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/05/tcr-dirty-dozen
    • vonmoltke 12y ago
      > Except it's not random who applies for the lottery. It's not, but you can randomly choose an equally-sized comparison group from the population who apply and are not selected. > And also charter schools are notorious for rejecting students for various reasons that public schools are not allowed to use, including rejecting special ed students, all in the name of making their test scores look better: http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/05/tcr-dirty-dozen http://nepc.colorado.edu/newsletter/2013/05/tcr-dirty-dozen Now you are changing the stated starting conditions. The plan is based on admission by lottery. Period. What other, selective private and charter schools do in admissions is irrelevant.
• bradleyjg 12y ago
  An out of state boarding school starting with six year olds? Doesn't that sound an awfully lot like an orphanage to you? I don't think many parents would go for it. Even Eton in its heyday waited until 11 or 12.
  • TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    If I was a poor parent in a neighborhood with no other options, I would send my kid to the boarding school. Kids would be sent home for holidays, and weekends even (if the parents want to pick them up). I think some parents would leap at the chance to have the week free, so they can work. Childcare is a big problem in the inner city. People I know would be taken care of by grandparents, old neighbors, trusted older kids, etc., while their mothers would work (in the case when father was absent). Might as well trust an institution.
    • PakG1 12y ago
      Absolutely. I've lived for 3+ years in Shenzhen in China. Every Sunday night, you'd see a ton of school kids lining up at the subway and bus stations lugging suitcases to go spend the week at school. They'd have dorms and everything. If this is a social norm in an entire city with millions of residents (albeit with a different culture), why wouldn't that be a possibility in other cities in the US too (albeit with different cultures)?
• Lavery 12y ago
  At the end of their 12 years of boarding school, is it still fair to say that these are kids from an inner city failed neighborhood? Much of the challenge with education in poor (inner city or rural) communities is that, at the end of the day, the kids still have to navigate the stresses and risks of home life. Eliminating that for all or most of the year (depending on your school calendar) would stack the deck hugely in your favor, and by the end of their high school abroad it would strike me as dishonest to refer to these kids as being "from Newark". In my limited experience with kids from elite boarding schools (which tend to draw from already wealthy communities), graduates of these programs seem to tend more towards the culture of the school than that of their hometown. I think this effect would be even more pronounced in your proposed system.
  • damon_c 12y ago
    Who would you say would be the losers in this scenario?
    • Lavery 12y ago
      I'm not saying there would be losers. But his scenario proposes, essentially, "I'll bet that if I take a random group of at-risk kids, move them to a system where they spend 100% of their time living, studying, and playing in a well-staffed, well-resourced, safe program, that those kids will perform better than their once-peers." To which the answer is "Of course."
      • TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
        Then lets close half the inner city schools and replace them with boarding schools. Obviously its not "of course" enough to change policy in this country.
        • sanderjd 12y ago
          You aren't talking (only) about policy change, you're talking about a financially untenable utopian solution that doesn't bother with the actual constraints of the problem. It reminds me of the old physics yarn "consider a spherical cow..."
• 2arrs2ells 12y ago
  Schools like this - proof points that low income students can succeed - already exist today! For example: Summit Public Schools in California, FirstLine Schools in New Orleans, Excel Academy in Boston - just to name a few I've seen first hand.
• Jugurtha 12y ago
  This is exactly what I had in mind. I'm thinking about the school I'll build when I'll be a billionaire. And no, it's not an orphanage. These kids are a burden for their poor parents who try to provide for them, and fail, and have their heart torn apart failing that. And the kids see their parents' misery, and have their heart torn apart, too. It's a convolution of sadness with itself. I had this exact same plan, starting at the youngest possible age, so they grow with you. The school teaches them everything, so they become normal human beings and not ghetto people. I don't think there's a single parent who'd like his child to grow up in misery, and if there's a way to shield that child from this shit-hole, I think any parent would be willing to do almost anything.
  • deleted 12y ago
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  • Loughla 12y ago
    "The school teaches them everything, so they become normal human beings and not ghetto people. I don't think there's a single parent who'd like his child to grow up in misery, and if there's a way to shield that child from this shit-hole, I think any parent would be willing to do almost anything." Who decides what 'normal' is? What makes your upbringing better than 'ghetto people'? You're walking a very, very fine line between what is best for children, and what is just cultural indoctrination. Do you see how easy it is to slip between the two? What you're operating under is called cultural relativism. Melville Herskovits said it best, "Judgements are based on experience, and experience is interpreted by each individual in terms of his own enculturation." In other words, while you may believe that a 'ghetto' upbringing is worse than what you had, you came to that conclusion under a biased observation. Yes, there is a higher crime rate in 'ghetto' areas, but that has less to do with culture, and more to do with opportunity. When you have 0 opportunity, you tend to become hopeless. So, we'll educate the kids, make sure they conform to our standards, then release them back into hopeless areas. What outcome is that looking for? And yes, there are parents who would prefer that their children not simply be 'white washed' into cultural conformity based on someone else's standards.
    • Jugurtha 12y ago
• badsock 12y ago
  Your thesis seems to be that education could be made better simply by making it private rather than public, and that it would be so obviously better that it could serve as a beacon. Given that there is evidence of very successful schools run by governments outside the USA (Finland is often used as an example, but it is certainly not alone), despite the fact that they have bureaucracy and unions, why do you believe this?
  • TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    No. My thesis doesn't care who runs the school outside the city. Only that it should be outside the reach of these dysfunctional city institutions and neighborhoods. Let anyone run them. A billionaire is necessary only because the current political system brooks no competition. The teachers will not allow it. Their cushy incompetence would be put in sharp relief if something like this were to succeed.
• JPKab 12y ago
  I'm guessing you don't have children. Putting children under the age of 12 in a boarding school isn't the best idea. Putting kids under the age of 8 in a boarding school is simply a terrible idea. They need too much care at these ages. If you're idea is done in the context of replacing foster homes for kids who are removed from their parents by social services, I suppose it can work.
  • TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    I disagree. There are many successful societies where boarding schools are the norm for the most wealthy and successful people. I don't just mean China and India, where it is extremely common. I mean also England, where it had been more common, and has now become less common; Wealthy WASPS in the North East of America have a few institutions where they send their kids; there is at least one public boarding magnate school that is highly regarded in the American South ... I don't remember its name, but a quick Google will provide I'm sure. There are many other examples. The idea that a child is best served at the bosom of his parents might be right in the best of circumstances. It is certainly NOT right in an American inner city neighborhood. Now if your goal is to say, I refuse the best solution, because I hold out for the dream of solving all inner city problems at once, and turning these neighborhoods into pleasant neighborhoods ... then I say, cheers. You are precisely the reason why we need a billionaire for this venture ... public money will never come to support something so radically different.
    • alexqgb 12y ago
      Take it from someone in a position to know: this arrangement is not as great as you make out to be.
      • TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
        The arrangement is not a mandate. Its an option when other options are clearly not working.
• ceras 12y ago
  > Let anyone apply. Give admission based on a lottery ... not on the basis of an examination ... so no one can accuse you of taking only the best kids. That doesn't fully counter the "creaming effect" argument unless you assume the applicant pool is a representative sample of the population.
• Blinkky 12y ago
  This is pretty much exactly what the Milton Hershey School does. "Today, Milton Hershey School is a cost-free, private, coeducational home and school for children from families of low income, limited resources, and social need. The School is funded by a trust established by Milton S. Hershey and his wife Catherine. Milton Hershey School offers a positive, structured home life year-round and an excellent pre-kindergarten through 12th grade education. Our vision focuses on building character and providing children with the skills necessary to be successful in all aspects of life." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Hershey_School http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Hershey_School