Given the dismal record of the government in running schools and improving schools with poor records, the answer should be instead to privatize all the schools.
Most private schools have lower per pupil spending that government run schools.
Most private schools have lower per pupil spending that government run schools.
Also, we should eliminate fancy restaurants, because that's where rich people meet other rich people.
And nice houses! Housing advantage is a clear indicator of classism.
Now that I think of it, pretty much everyone in the US does better than rural Somalis. We should equalize the class divide by reducing the US standard of living until we're all equal.
If the point is that any attempt to equalize an opportunities is conceptually the same, though, that's much less reasonable.
Education is often one specific focus because it's in the overlap of (1) a common and early place where inequality of opportunity presents itself (2) early maximization of individual potential has potentially cascading effects (3) baseline tractable social projects (raising the ceiling on outcomes for everyone may be hard, but providing a reasonable floor more most is one thing it already does) (4) seems plausible that everyone benefits the more educated the population is (especially in a representative democracy).
And while eliminating fancy restaurants may be absurd, if you're thinking about the question of when/why it might be important for poor people to meet rich people, then it may well be entirely worth trying to address that problem. To pick one issue near and dear to the heart of HN folks, access to capital is key for many entrepreneurial folks.
Do private schools do better because The Problem With Education™ is essentially who is administering/teaching and private schools are more effective at that? Or do (some) private schools do better because they select a demographic of students (directly by admissions or indirectly via who applies for various reasons) that's effectively less expensive to bring to positive outcomes?
From what I've heard about charters (which seems to be one good place to evaluate this) it seems that while some students who switch have better outcomes, as a whole, it's a wash at best, which suggests to me the problem is less a question of public vs private and more like student selection (maybe a question of scarcity of educator talent).
You have to wonder what would happen if college education was made mandatory and the Department of Education took over all of the universities and created a common university core curriculum.
(a) I'd ever encountered a credible case that common core is a driver of educational problems (most of what I've encountered seems like both sensible pedagogy and a convenient ad hoc test for big 5 traits like modest-to-low openness and high orderliness).
(b) It seemed likely to create a significant difference in the status quo. From my experience examining curriculum over half a dozen majors and universities, common baselines are already pretty, well, common, and where there's variation it's more about how much any institution exceeds the baseline. And I expect this is a function of the facts that the conception of the academy extends beyond individual institutions combined with the fact that there are already accrediting bodies that higher education has to reckon with. So, I don't see much that suggests public initiatives for baseline standards or accountability are likely key problems for secondary ed.
Do you mean "privatize" in the honest sense that would leave many people with no school at all, or in the other sense that would privatize only the profits while the funding still comes from taxpayer dollars? Usually when I hear about "privatizing" schools people mean the latter, with a side effect of shedding regulation and liability as well.
> Most private schools have lower per pupil spending that government run schools.
Citation needed, particularly a citation that accounts for factors like cherry-picking students, relying on a large private endowment from a more exclusive era, or failing to meet various standards - e.g. certification, curriculum, health and safety - that are applied to public schools.
Of four children in my household, one costs over twice what any other does to teach. Guess which one stayed in public school?
However, to balance it out, private schools generally do not take on children with IEPs because it subjects them to all kinds of overbearing regulation from the government. They don't have much freedom in acting differently than what the bureaucrats want. So, it is unlikely your child would be allowed to get a better education at the private school, as it would be dictated by the same people running the government schools.
Source: my mother had a career as a teacher of learning disabled children
However it costs over twice as much as https://www.vandammeacademy.com/home. And isn't as good academically.