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Comment by bobwaycott | Hacker News Reader

First off, I very much agree with you.

I think "good school district" is coded language for what you're making explicit—a district comprised of schools and teachers with necessary and adequate resources to provide "good/better/best" education.

I don't mean to detract from your point, because I think it is definitely key to education problems nationwide.

Edit: My statement about coded language did not include mention of the segregation and amplified economic disparity/inequality. It was not my intention to omit this as a means of saying it is irrelevant. It most certainly is. I was hasty in my paraphrasing. My apologies to rayiner for detracting from his very important point, which was not what I meant to do.

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That's not what I'm saying at all. Brent is in DCPS, the same as the terribly-performing schools just blocks away. DCPS doesn't assign it more resources just because the parents have money. And gentrification happened so quickly, the teachers are largely the same as they were five years ago when the school was awful. All that has changed is the makeup of the student body.

"Good school district" isn't code for "rich school district." DCPS is a terrible school district, and spends twice as much per student as the school districts in the surrounding wealthy suburbs. "Good school district" is code for "school district in which we've segregated-out the poor people and minorities."

I wasn't meaning to exclude that from the equation. Again, we don't materially disagree. I said it was coded language for what you made explicit. Guess I assumed you'd include all of it into the equation. I'd go back and edit, but whatever. My bad for not restating everything you said to avoid misinterpretation.

My point was that "good school district" is coded language, and gives people a polite way to wrap up all of that into a nice-sounding term that lets them avoid admitting the nastier things. As all coded language does.

I think the point of the post above yours is a bit different.

A good school is one that has the best students. It is often your classmates, more than teachers, who create an environment that is conducive to learning. What seems to be the case is that rich people invest more in their kids, and their kids are simply better students. They are better behaved, with higher comprehension and math skills, and more likely to be better students. That is what creates a good school.

So it is not that schools get richer with better resources (although that too is a factor), but that richer kids with higher parental investment are fundamentally more likely to succeed. That is the real divide.

Certainly. My ultimate point was that because of the coded language, saying a "good school district" doesn't exist is, to me, equivalent to saying the problems rayiner made explicit don't exist. Just because it's a polite term doesn't mean people don't understand what it signifies, and also doesn't mean the good/bad school divide doesn't exist. I made my point poorly and wish I hadn't, as it has led to misunderstanding.

It is telling that whenever I hear the phrase "good school district", I automatically assume an upper-middle class nuclear white family...

It is certainly no coincidence.

or in CA it is - 25% White American, 25% Indian, 25% Chinese, 25% European

There also is the effect that the grouping matters - other things being equal, your kid will succeed more when put in a class where other students have higher parental investment, rather than when put in class with a lot of poor students having issues with absenteeism and higher incidence crime and/or substance abuse.

In essence, people are willing to pay a premium in real estate prices just so their kids would not grow in a community of kids who cannot afford this premium.

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