Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

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If these are what makes poor children perform poor at school, then the strategy of making good schools to boost house prices is not viable -- we simply have no idea how to make kids facing the problems described above achieve good scores, because if we did, we'd already be doing this. Moreover, this wouldn't attract wealthy buyers, because their children don't have these problems in the first place, so they won't get any improvement.

The point here is that we have no idea how to make a school good, other than by kicking out bad students (whatever the reasons for them being bad might be) and getting good ones. If you knew a way to take a random bad performing school in the country, and bring its students educational outcomes to above national average, you'd make lots of money contracting out consulting to local government.

> The point here is that we have no idea how to make a school good, other than by kicking out bad students

I would disagree with any metric claiming to measure school quality that is not constant when the demographics of the school change. If our metrics simply gauge the socioeconomic status of a school's population, we need better metrics. We also need to develop interventions that overcome the educational costs of poverty, perhaps, dare I say, by eliminating--or at least attenuating--poverty.

Who are you arguing with? You don't like poverty? Neither does anyone else.

And if the metrics don't appeal to your preconceived notion of how the metrics should work, you want to change the metrics? You want metrics to not notice changes in demographics?

> If you knew a way to take a random bad performing school in the country, and bring its students educational outcomes to above national average, you'd make lots of money contracting out consulting to local government.

Converting them to boarding schools and essentially cut off contact with the rest of the world may work. It would also be both really expensive and creepy, reminiscent of the times when native American children were forced to attend English-only schools away from their families.

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