5 ms·

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

by 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..."
      - waterlesscloud 12y ago
        What are the "actual constraints of the problem"? Why are they "actual constraints"? Are you sure they're "actual constraints", or are they ways of looking at things that need to be updated for progress to happen?
        malyk 12y ago
        Here are some constraints that I can come up with in a minute of thinking. 1.) Land costs. If you are building inside a major city land costs are huge, and you need acres of land. Outside of cities can be less expensive, but it's still a steep cost. 2.) Permitting/regulations/etc. I have no idea what it would cost to get the land you just built zoned to allow you to build a school, but I'm sure it isn't cheap or easy. 3.) Infrastructure costs. You have to build each of these new schools. The private boarding school that I went to[1] just built two new dorms after receiving a gift of $10m to house 98 students. They are probably really nice dorms, but it's not cheap to build. And that's just the dorms. You also need an academic center, library, gym, and possibly support buildings (like faculty housing, student centers, etc.). You also need to build roads, sewers, electricity, etc. 4.) You need to find and hire administrators and teachers. If you go with the chicago stats cited above then you'll need to pay each teacher ~$70k. One of the best things about private schools is the high teacher to student ratio. My biggest class was 14 students and most were in the 6-8 range. It's complicated to figure out the exact number of faculty off the top of my head, but you'll need at least 10 teachers. My high school had around 380 students and they have more than 60 faculty. So, for 100ish students you'd need 15ish faculty. That's $1m a year in funding. Chicago spends roughly $12k per student, which would cover faculty costs, but... 5.) You also have to pay administrators, janitors, lawn care, and a ton of other providers for service. Chicago administrators make roughly $120k a year. That difference has to come from somewhere. 6.) Oh, and you have to get accredited somehow so your students would be able to get into college. There's probably plenty more constraints that we could come up with. But the biggest one is cost. Who is paying for this? A billionaire could do it, for sure. But it doesn't seem like people are upset enough about the current situation to pay more taxes to support the schools we do have. I'm not sure how you could convince people to pay to create a private school from scratch...especially if their kids aren't going to be the ones eligible to go. [1] Westminster School, Simsbury Connecticut - Amazing experience! [2] http://chicagoist.com/2013/06/19/crains_chicago_business_and_how_to.php http://chicagoist.com/2013/06/19/crains_chicago_business_and...
- tomkarlo 12y ago
  Everyone else besides the selected students. You won't have created any kind of scalable / repeatable model that would work at the regional or national level; nobody is going to raise taxes enough to fund that and most people aren't going to sign up to send their kids off to boarding school for K-12.
  - TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
    I disagree that it isn't scalable and repeatable. Have you seen what the budget of these schools is like? A billion dollars is not a small amount of money, regardless of what Silicon Valley acquisitions make you think. If we spend that money on institutions that actually WORK, we could do a lot. If we need to build those institutions outside the city, to get them away from the clutches of the political machines in those cities ... then we do THAT.

by Lavery 12y ago

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..."
    - waterlesscloud 12y ago
      What are the "actual constraints of the problem"? Why are they "actual constraints"? Are you sure they're "actual constraints", or are they ways of looking at things that need to be updated for progress to happen?
      - malyk 12y ago
        Here are some constraints that I can come up with in a minute of thinking. 1.) Land costs. If you are building inside a major city land costs are huge, and you need acres of land. Outside of cities can be less expensive, but it's still a steep cost. 2.) Permitting/regulations/etc. I have no idea what it would cost to get the land you just built zoned to allow you to build a school, but I'm sure it isn't cheap or easy. 3.) Infrastructure costs. You have to build each of these new schools. The private boarding school that I went to[1] just built two new dorms after receiving a gift of $10m to house 98 students. They are probably really nice dorms, but it's not cheap to build. And that's just the dorms. You also need an academic center, library, gym, and possibly support buildings (like faculty housing, student centers, etc.). You also need to build roads, sewers, electricity, etc. 4.) You need to find and hire administrators and teachers. If you go with the chicago stats cited above then you'll need to pay each teacher ~$70k. One of the best things about private schools is the high teacher to student ratio. My biggest class was 14 students and most were in the 6-8 range. It's complicated to figure out the exact number of faculty off the top of my head, but you'll need at least 10 teachers. My high school had around 380 students and they have more than 60 faculty. So, for 100ish students you'd need 15ish faculty. That's $1m a year in funding. Chicago spends roughly $12k per student, which would cover faculty costs, but... 5.) You also have to pay administrators, janitors, lawn care, and a ton of other providers for service. Chicago administrators make roughly $120k a year. That difference has to come from somewhere. 6.) Oh, and you have to get accredited somehow so your students would be able to get into college. There's probably plenty more constraints that we could come up with. But the biggest one is cost. Who is paying for this? A billionaire could do it, for sure. But it doesn't seem like people are upset enough about the current situation to pay more taxes to support the schools we do have. I'm not sure how you could convince people to pay to create a private school from scratch...especially if their kids aren't going to be the ones eligible to go. [1] Westminster School, Simsbury Connecticut - Amazing experience! [2] http://chicagoist.com/2013/06/19/crains_chicago_business_and_how_to.php http://chicagoist.com/2013/06/19/crains_chicago_business_and...
tomkarlo 12y ago
Everyone else besides the selected students. You won't have created any kind of scalable / repeatable model that would work at the regional or national level; nobody is going to raise taxes enough to fund that and most people aren't going to sign up to send their kids off to boarding school for K-12.
- TheMagicHorsey 12y ago
  I disagree that it isn't scalable and repeatable. Have you seen what the budget of these schools is like? A billion dollars is not a small amount of money, regardless of what Silicon Valley acquisitions make you think. If we spend that money on institutions that actually WORK, we could do a lot. If we need to build those institutions outside the city, to get them away from the clutches of the political machines in those cities ... then we do THAT.