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Comment by dcre | Hacker News Reader

For a counterpoint, read this scathing review by Moira Weigel of his book The Coddling of the American Mind:

Like Trump, the authors romanticise a past before “identity” but get fuzzy and impatient when history itself comes up. “Most of these schools once excluded women and people of colour,” they reflect. “But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence. They don’t. They leave it as a rhetorical question for “common sense” to answer.

Their narrow perception of history severely limits the explanations Lukianoff and Haidt can offer for the real problems they identify. Can you understand the “paranoia” middle-class parents have about college admissions without considering how many of their children are now downwardly mobile? How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages?

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/20/the-coddling-o...

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I have never been thoughtful enough to realize that the exclusions mentioned (women, POC) throughout US history fit the definition of 'identity' or 'identity politics' so well. I'm always impressed when someone comes up with such a rock solid example that points out _specific_ hypocrisies. Normally, using hypocrisy to counter someones argument is a logical fallacy, but the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account when discussing these issues philosophically, especially when dealing with those who suggest that this is only a contemporary issue.

This issue is only contemporary in the fact that we are still burning far too much energy knocking down these doors in the first place, or trying to keep them open, when it comes to women's rights, and the issues present in "The Color of Law". I'm impressed.

the omissions present, and the effects of historical politically enforced inequalities must be taken into account

I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son.

As was mentioned in the Watergate scandal, always "follow the money." (Or eyeballs. Or fame. Or votes.) Who benefits from disadvantaged neighborhoods? Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?

> I say this as a lifelong Democratic party member and voter. (Until recently.) In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods. I know that such choice is an important issue for inner city parents. I've been approached by an inner city mother asking how she could get a coding education for her son.

One, this is completely off-topic for this article.

Two, and this is important, I find the "I, an anonymous person, used to believe X, so you should believe me when I espouse political beliefs that are antithetical to X" school of debating incredibly tiring. Just make your case, skip the "as a ...." introduction.

Third, and this is important -- almost all school voucher programs are designed to take public money and put them into subpar schools with few to no standards. Voucher programs with standards get support, voucher programs that exempt private recipients of funds do not.

> Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?

Most democrats and public education supporters are for integrated education. Most voucher supporters are not.

One, this is completely off-topic for this article.

Not at all. If you want to look at how disadvantage is propagated, that is exactly what it is in the US.

I find the "I, an anonymous person, used to believe X, so you should believe me when I espouse political beliefs that are antithetical to X" school of debating incredibly tiring. Just make your case, skip the "as a ...." introduction.

Then just take my advice and start "following the money." If you believe there is systemic discrimination which has lasted decades, there must be a reason for it. Start ferreting out the incentives. Who profits in terms of money and power?

https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-o...

Feel free to link some articles about this. Standards could be used as a political tool to repress competitors, or there could be real concern about standards, or there could be a mixture of both.

Most voucher supporters are not.

Many voucher supporters are the very disadvantaged people we are supposed to be helping!

Politics isn't always about profit. A lot of times its simply apathy or a lack of resources.

In the case of disadvantaged minorities, it's often about cultural isolation and a corrupt minority elite.

> ...the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods...

Hmm, in my city (LA), one Republican (Riordan) and later Democratic mayors (Hahn and Villaraigosa) have strongly supported charter schools, and the results (after two decades plus) are decidedly mixed. I used to be a moderate supporter of charters, basically for the reasons you mention, but the experiment has generally failed.

Basically, oversight of a network of charter schools is really hard, so there will be bad charter schools that "look good" from the outside. It's hard for parents, even involved parents, to understand this before their kids graduate, so there's no good corrective for charters that are siphoning money off, or providing poor educational outcomes.

This seems to be a case where market pressures suffer from a too-long feedback loop, and information about outcomes is too hard to acquire.

So there was some success and there was some failure? Urban public schools seem to be a failure overall. Shouldn't we see an experiment that yielded some successes as a success in gaining information?

This seems to be a case where market pressures suffer from a too-long feedback loop, and information about outcomes is too hard to acquire.

I think this applies to schools, period. No, there's no good corrective which guarantees a parent can use to put their kid into the right school, outside of moving to a good neighborhood. (And even there, there's no guarantee.) The information loop is going to take generations to work out. So long as the institutions last over several generations, that will at least be possible.

> ...Urban public schools seem to be a failure overall....

This is just not true. My kid, now 13, goes to an LAUSD school and it has worked for her and her classmates. (We left a higher-"rated" [and there's another topic] suburban district by choice, in fact.) A lot of people in LA view the charter experiment as generally a failure and a distraction from actually improving the schools we have.

This overview (https://laist.com/2018/07/22/do_not_publish_-_ref_rodriguez_...) provides a good run-down of the sorry end of the "pro-charter" majority that prevailed in the LAUSD board.

The pro-charter board president was directing public funds to a private charter organization he was separately paid by. He had support of Reed Hastings, the Gates Foundation, and a host of well-meaning billionaires (and some not so well-meaning).

> ...So long as the institutions last over several generations...

This kind of stability isn't going to happen in LA or any significant city. I really think that my point about the difficulty of informed "choice" by parents in this "market" is important, and your comments on it (like this one) are ludicrous.

In general your comments on this topic seem rather un-grounded in either experience or research. You must be aware that many former charter supporters (e.g., Diane Ravitch) are now strongly against them?

I'm opposed to school vouchers because I feel like the most likely outcome is to move private schools from the 1% to the 10%, and as upper-middle class parents abandon public schools, the political will to improve them will decline.

I've seen cases where school choice was marginally improved, and what happened was that the parents who had the largest combination of motivation and time moved their kids, which caused what was left of the school to become ghettoized, because those were the same parents who would volunteer in the classroom, run the PTA, seek out donors for particular programs &c.

It's possible that larger changes would result in improvements even though smaller changes result in serious problems, but I don't see larger changes coming soon, and school voucher programs do not appear to be large enough to accomplish this goal.

We may be stuck in a very pessimal middle ground right now; it seems likely that significantly increasing school choice would improve things from where we are, but also seems likely that the exact opposite approach of banning private schools and assigning kids to public schools by lottery would also improve things, as that could motivate the wealthy and connected to improve schools that poor kids are equally likely to end up in.

but also seems likely that the exact opposite approach of banning private schools and assigning kids to public schools by lottery would also improve things

Can you imagine if that were done to you?

Arguing over the morality (or even constitutionality) of such a measure was not the point of me bringing it up. It's obviously a complete political non-starter in the US (it's within the Overton Window in Britain, but still highly unlikely).

The point was that there are compelling arguments to make that both greatly liberalizing school choice and greatly eliminating school choice would improve things for those who are economically disadvantaged. That says a lot about how badly things are working now.

Arguing over the morality (or even constitutionality) of such a measure was not the point of me bringing it up.

So what? I was asking how you would feel.

The point was that there are compelling arguments to make that both greatly liberalizing school choice and greatly eliminating school choice would improve things for those who are economically disadvantaged.

Eliminating choice is generally about centralizing control.

>> Arguing over the morality (or even constitutionality) of such a measure was not the point of me bringing it up.

> So what? I was asking how you would feel.

To me how I feel about it is tied directly to the morality of it.

>> The point was that there are compelling arguments to make that both greatly liberalizing school choice and greatly eliminating school choice would improve things for those who are economically disadvantaged.

> Eliminating choice is generally about centralizing control.

I disagree with this. Eliminating choice generally causes a centralizing of control, but that does not mean it's generally the motivation for it.

One factor that gets buried in the abstract debate around school choice is the practical consideration of transportation. If you want to give families real choice in choosing among schools for their children, you have to remove transportation costs from the family's decision making. Otherwise, there is a “choice” of one or maybe two schools for the families who are ostensibly most in need of choosing a school other than the closest one.

We see this in my kids' focus option school. Families from anywhere in the city can enroll their children in a lottery for admission. The lottery is actually weighted to favor lower income families, yet the school is in the top tier for median income. There are a number of factors that play into why this is the case, but among the most frequently cited is that lower income families have fewer resources to get their kids to school and back. Yet these are the families that by and large live in areas where the neighborhood schools tend to fail to deliver quality education, the families who would benefit from having a real choice.

Unless a municipality is willing to convey a child from any home to any school and back (and in a timely manner), vouchers will never meaningfully address education quality. Rich families will send their kids to the handful of high performing schools, and everyone else gets stuck with the closest choice.

Yet these are the families that by and large live in areas where the neighborhood schools tend to fail to deliver quality education, the families who would benefit from having a real choice.

So you're of the view that a real choice is better than no choice?

Unless a municipality is willing to convey a child from any home to any school and back (and in a timely manner), vouchers will never meaningfully address education quality.

What of the cases where the charter schools are close to or essentially co-located with the public school? There are some charter schools which are in the same building as the public school.

Charter schools are first and foremost a tactic for weakening unions. There's nothing stopping experimental “sub-schools,” using public school teachers from developing within an existing public school. That's in fact how my kids' aforementioned school started. It was just a couple of classrooms within a larger K-8 public school. Eventually its program became so popular that it took over the building.

That does fit a certain limited notion of school choice, but it's not in my experience what most people have in mind when they talk about voucher programs. Choosing between two neighborhood schools isn't a marked improvement over being assigned to one. This is especially the case since demographic factors strongly tied to geography are prevailing influences in school success.

Charter schools are first and foremost a tactic for weakening unions.

If those unions are presiding over schools that are catastrophically failing, I don't see what's wrong with that.

There's nothing stopping experimental “sub-schools,” using public school teachers from developing within an existing public school. That's in fact how my kids' aforementioned school started. It was just a couple of classrooms within a larger K-8 public school. Eventually its program became so popular that it took over the building.

Also sounds good to me.

If one school can exclude troublemakers, then this is one tool to help create a positive learning environment in spite of geographic and demographic factors. Some choice may well be better than none. It's the situations where there's no choices, where corruption comes in.

For the record, I'm also of the view that a real choice is better than no choice. I just feel that vouchers tend to increase choices primarily for those who are already fairly well off.

Transportation is a big part of the issue; if transportation is not provided, then only those with both a reliable car and an adult available to transport the child can attend a school that isn't nearby.

For most proposed implementations I've seen of school voucher programs, money is also a big issue. If you give each kid say $8k in vouchers, the bottom 50% or so of families financially will choose between schools costing $8k per year. Middle class parents (particularly those with only 1 or 2 kids) will now have the option of sending their kids to schools that cost say $12k per year, which would not have been affordable before. Upper middle class parents now have many options of where to send their kids. Rich parents were already sending their kids to private schools, so they get a $8k per kid discount on the tuition. By increasing choice for the middle of the income bracket, you've decreased the wealth diversity of many schools, and that "urban kid in a crappy public school" is now an "urban kid in a crappy private school"

I just feel that vouchers tend to increase choices primarily for those who are already fairly well off.

Anything that increases choices tends to increase choices primarily for those who are already fairly well off. This also applies to Affirmative Action. The beneficiaries of Affirmative Action tend to be kids who are already in the Upper Middle or Upper classes.

That may well be $8k more choice than they would have had otherwise.

By increasing choice for the middle of the income bracket, you've decreased the wealth diversity of many schools, and that "urban kid in a crappy public school" is now an "urban kid in a crappy private school"

The difference being that the 2nd school can exclude troublemakers, so at least those kids aren't in a constantly disrupted environment.

>> I just feel that vouchers tend to increase choices primarily for those who are already fairly well off.

> Anything that increases choices tends to increase choices primarily for those who are already fairly well off. This also applies to Affirmative Action. The beneficiaries of Affirmative Action tend to be kids who are already in the Upper Middle or Upper classes.

School vouchers appear to be particularly bad by this measure though. For anyone already sending their kids to public school, it's subsidizing a behavior they already do. It's $8k per kid that could be spent on improving other schools.

For those who just-barely can't afford to send their kids to private schools better than the public schools, it's a huge gain, but I am of the opinion (though I admit without sufficient data) that this gain comes at the expense of the quality of the public schools (or in a zero-public-school, voucher scenario, the 0-added-tuition private schools) that those poorer will be relegated to.

[edit]

I guess my point is that I think vouchers are likely to be a net-loss for the poor, and even if I'm wrong about that, I'm struggling to think of ways in which they could be a net-gain.

Saying "not everyone can give their children better opportunities, so no one can give their children better opportunities" is one of the crappiest arguments against charter schools. It's pure and simple envy and a desire to hurt those more fortunate.

The entire goal of basic schooling is to ensure all children are given equal opportunity and resources to grow into good citizens.

Separating out people into haves and have-nots at the lowest level is a great way to grow economic stratification and further fuel discontent among the general population.

If putting everyone together means that no one has an opportunity, then that's obviously not going to help.

Except the reason why no one has an opportunity when put together is because of groups fleeing school systems (see: white flight) due to other issues like racism or religious reasons.

The solution isn't to further punish the poor by essentially defunding public schools. It's to increase the quality of public schools and increase opportunity for people to go to school. And make no mistake, the entire point of school vouchers is to punish the poor.

Except the reason why no one has an opportunity when put together is because of groups fleeing school systems (see: white flight) due to other issues like racism or religious reasons.

That makes no sense, given there are charter school successes located in those neighborhoods. There are also other initiatives that have focused on the whole environment of the children. The problem isn't racism. The problem is a self-perpetuating cycle of an environment that prevents good education.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem_Children%27s_Zone

And make no mistake, the entire point of school vouchers is to punish the poor.

When I put myself in the shoes of that woman who approached me about her son, I find that I would want that school voucher! The entire point of opposing school vouchers is to preserve the urban bureaucratic status quo. Why not give those parents a choice? Do they currently trust the public school to provide their children a good education? My impression is that a lot of them don't.

The entire point of opposing school vouchers is that the people pushing them and their implementation of school vouchers would devastate local school systems. There are some charter school successes, but that also ignores the many charter school failures [1] and the fact that again, they are barely beholden to any scrutiny. Charter schools also have a financial incentive to expel underperforming students in order to raise their average test scores rather than accommodate and improve their curriculum.

And again, the problem is racism. White flight exists. It is why public schooling in those neighborhoods is so bad to begin with and to ignore the history of racism in the public schooling system does a disservice to your argument.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_"Superman"#Educa...

The entire point of opposing school vouchers is that the people pushing them and their implementation of school vouchers would devastate local school systems

Just because particular schools close, doesn't mean something bad is happening. In a market that actually works, no one is too big to fail.

And again, the problem is racism. White flight exists. It is why public schooling in those neighborhoods is so bad to begin with

Thomas Sowell remembers attending a very good school in Harlem, and that the neighborhood was safe enough for him to sleep outside on the fire escape, if it was too hot on a summer evening. The key difference has been effect of the welfare state on those neighborhoods, and the resulting degradation of the social fabric there, not the flight of white people.

https://youtu.be/mS5WYp5xmvI?t=996

Not wanting to subsidize a wealthy parent's child's tuition is a desire to hurt them?

Not wanting to subsidize a wealthy parent's child's tuition is a desire to hurt them?

Not wanting to subsidize a poor parent's child's education just because a wealthy parent's child might exploit it seems either spiteful, or desiring of too much perfection in a complex system.

> In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments.

This is not accurate, and has been covered in excruciating detail in books like "The New Jim Crow" and "The Color of Law", so I don't feel like I need to argue the case at extreme length.

> Who benefits from disadvantaged neighborhoods?

People who want cheap workers. People who want to make sure that they don't have a voice. People who don't want to pay taxes.

> Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?

People who want to make sure racists vote.

People who want cheap workers.

Employers want good workers, at any price. Employers want socialized and dependable workers, and many schools don't manage to support this.

People who want to make sure that they don't have a voice.

I have no idea who that might be, unless it's people who de-platform, namecall, and denigrate people for "wrongthink," even if it's not anything bad and just asking questions and thinking differently. If people are to have a voice, they need to be free to "fire" their representatives. It doesn't seem like the media and the political machines of the cities actually want that.

People who don't want to pay taxes.

People who are concerned that government is too big would rather such neighborhoods didn't exist. The incentive structure of aid would seem to propagate the very conditions it's supposed to help.

> Who benefits from encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?

People who want to make sure racists vote.

The people who talk in terms of race and identity for votes are the unsavory part of politics, on both the left and the right of US politics.

This is a nation based on race and identity, almost it's entire history.

We only started calling it identity politics when people who aren't in power try to achieve justice.

Here is why we shouldn't do the private school voucher thing, unless we take away the right of private schools to select their students:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/03/29/...

> It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education for disadvantaged neighborhoods.

I would recommend taking a slightly broader view of the politics involved, and reading more from education policy experts.

Charter schools are being pushed predominantly by folks with an agenda to (a) break the power of teachers’ unions (and organized labor more generally), so that they can reduce teacher pay, benefits, social respect, and job security, (b) reduce overall education spending as a means to cut taxes on the wealthy, (c) give resources to schools which are less publicly accountable and can more easily kick out struggling or problematic students, spend money on dubious corporate programs, etc., (d) personally profit off the partial privatization of the education industry and outsourcing of education functions , (e) for some wealthy people, use donations to charter schools as a massive tax dodge which also brings them positive publicity.

Many Democrats have bought in fully to the school choice / charter school message, such as e.g. the Obama Administration education department, which was run by people (like Arne Duncan) with no teaching experience and little education or policy credibility among experts. Of course the lack of qualification, corruption, and bad faith of Betsy DeVos puts all of the Obama people to shame.

It has been a massive bi-partisan swindle decades in the making, and the results are bad so far and only getting worse, especially for most poor children in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Teachers are justifiably extremely angry, but have remarkably little influence considering their expertise and position. (Though recent successful teacher strikes around the country have showed that they still can have some effect if they are willing to fight hard.)

(a) break the power of teachers’ unions (and organized labor more generally), so that they can reduce teacher pay, benefits, social respect, and job security

Wouldn't an education market that worked do precisely that for schools that are failing catastrophically?

(b) reduce overall education spending as a means to cut taxes on the wealthy

As far as I know, no one outside of libertarian absolutists actually has a goal like this. As far as I can tell, this is a strawman, a fiction.

(c) give resources to schools which are less publicly accountable and can more easily kick out struggling or problematic students

If "publicly accountable" means less micromanaged by a centralized bureaucracy, I don't see how this is necessarily bad. The point is to diversify the education market. Also, isn't the whole point to be able to easily kick out struggling or problematic students? If the social climate in a school makes it a disaster, but you can put some of the kids in a "lifeboat" with a better climate for learning, why wouldn't you?

(d) personally profit off the partial privatization of the education industry and outsourcing of education functions

If the results are good, then they should profit.

(e) for some wealthy people, use donations to charter schools as a massive tax dodge which also brings them positive publicity.

I think that wealthy people donating to schools is one of the best ways any society can do wealth redistribution. Again, I see nothing wrong with that.

> > (a) break the power of teachers’ unions (and organized labor more generally), so that they can reduce teacher pay, benefits, social respect, and job security

> Wouldn't an education market that worked do precisely that for schools that are failing catastrophically?

(1) Education is not a good with the kinds of features which allow approximating rational choice, and so there's little reason to expect that a market would work.

(2) Even leaving aside (1), no, there's no reason to expect that; among the errors that appear to be implicated in that conclusion is confusing schools with teachers.

> As far as I know, no one outside of libertarian absolutists actually has a goal like this.

Plenty of Republicans at all levels have openly advocated for this and even advanced bills for it. Whether they are all libertarian absolutists I'll leave to.you, but it's a real viewpoint with substantial support in the political sphere.

> If "publicly accountable" means less micromanaged by a centralized bureaucracy, I don't see how this is necessarily bad.

If they really believed that excessive central regulation was the problem, then rather then promoting charter schools exempt from the bureaucratic rules along with greater central accountability and regulation for traditional public schools, advocates would instead simply reduce central control and increase local (district and even site-level) control of traditional public schools. They don't, because what they really want is a subsidy for private, for-profit entities while engineering maximized paralysis in traditional public schools to drive an exodus to the subsidized private providers.

(1) Education is not a good with the kinds of features which allow approximating rational choice, and so there's little reason to expect that a market would work.

The school has a good reputation, so we'll pay money to send our kid there. Sounds like a rational choice to me.

(2) Even leaving aside (1), no, there's no reason to expect that; among the errors that appear to be implicated in that conclusion is confusing schools with teachers.

I suspect there is a granularity problem here. Discerning comics fans follow creators, not titles. Maybe the future of the education market will involve dis-intermediation and a more direct connection between students and teachers.

If they really believed that excessive central regulation was the problem, then rather then promoting charter schools exempt from the bureaucratic rules along with greater central accountability and regulation for traditional public schools, advocates would instead simply reduce central control and increase local (district and even site-level) control of traditional public schools.

This is a bit of a non-sequitur to me. "Promoting charter schools exempt from the bureaucratic rules" is a perfectly reasonable step.

along with greater central accountability and regulation for traditional public schools

If those schools are failing catastrophically, I don't see what's necessarily wrong with that. So long as there are some schools more independent of the central bureaucracy, there is more choice in the market. Again, your "logic" relies on false dichotomies and doesn't logically hold up.

They don't, because what they really want is a subsidy for private, for-profit entities

What if there was a more direct way to divert funds at the behest of the parent to private for-profit entities? There's a "subsidy" for public education. What's wrong with empowering parents to redirect those funds? It's beginning to seem like you're just restating the whole point of the proposed idea, just wording it so it sounds bad to you.

while engineering maximized paralysis in traditional public schools to drive an exodus to the subsidized private providers.

I many cases, the traditional public schools are already "paralyzed." The whole point is to enable an exodus to private providers, if the parents so choose. Would you support such initiatives if they didn't come with "engineering maximized paralysis in traditional public schools?" Why is a for-profit school necessarily bad?

> The school has a good reputation, so we'll pay money to send our kid there. Sounds like a rational choice to me.

Well, no. It's clearly a choice, but a rational choice is one where he costs and benefits are born by voluntary participants in the transaction who decide to accept or reject them based on maximization of their personal utility function with complete knowledge of all costs of and utilities that will be derived from the decision with an infinite time horizon.

No real decision actually did this, but many reasonably approximate it. But childhood education fails hard and almost every aspect. Opacity of impacts and the downstream effects and the fact that where here is choice, its third party choice on behalf of a party who is not in a good position to weigh the effects of a decision against heir own utility function are the main issues.

> . "Promoting charter schools exempt from the bureaucratic rules" is a perfectly reasonable step.

If the problem is too many rules, then you don't need limited special providers exempt from the rules, you need to remove the unnecessary rules entirely.

> > along with greater central accountability and regulation for traditional public schools

> If those schools are failing catastrophically, I don't see what's necessarily wrong with that.

If, as is the justification for diverting funds to private schools through vouchers and charters, the traditional public schools are “catastrophically failing” because of excessive central micromanagement, increasing central micromanagement of traditional public schools is exacerbating, not alleviating the problem. OTOH, if traditional public schools are “catastrophically failing” because of inadequate central management and accountability in the use of public funds, diverting public funds to private schools with less accountability and centralized management through vouchers and charters is monumentally stupid. But the same people advancing charters and vouchers have also been behind moves to increase centralized accountability and management of traditional public schools, and in fact have specifically linked those efforts to charter/voucher programs.

> The whole point is to enable an exodus to private providers, if the parents so choose.

Which would be problematic, even if it didn't involve policy designed to increase both the actual and perceived failings of traditional public schools, because it rests—even further than is already the case—quality of education on parental skill in evaluating quality of education, even if the vouchers were restricted to institutions which took them as full-cost with no supplemental required payment (which is sometimes not the case; voucher programs, and even more often tax credit systems, are often partial tuition subsidies which drive market clearing tuition up at private schools but don't make it an equal cost choice with public schools l), thereby entrenching inequality from generation to generation.

But in the real world, that's not the goal; the “if the parents so choose” isn't part of the goal, the goal is to in the near term deceive parents into the choice, and in the long term collapse public education entirely so that there is no choice.

Well, no. It's clearly a choice, but a rational choice is one where...

Sorry, that sounds like a bunch of ideological gobbledygook to me. As you say, "No real decision actually did this." Parents already choose schools for their children, often doing their best to be rational based on incomplete information. That's a situation called "life."

If the problem is too many rules, then you don't need limited special providers exempt from the rules, you need to remove the unnecessary rules entirely.

Nope, you're strawmanning here. Again, you can have more rules for the failing incumbent players and fewer for the new experiments. No contradiction there, if the increased rules are determined by the failing track record. If the new experiments start to fail, they can have the same rules as well.

because it rests—even further than is already the case—quality of education on parental skill in evaluating quality of education

Parental skill in evaluating quality of education worked well enough in the 1st half of the 20th century. (Granted, public schools also worked better.) Polish, Italian, Hungarian, and many other immigrant groups arrived and scored lower than the US median on IQ tests, but had caught up and surpassed the US median by the 1950's. There were similar gains in socioeconomic status. A big difference is that there were no perverse government subsidies applied to those groups to enable 73% of children to be born out of wedlock. A big difference is that there wasn't a glorification of antisocial and anti-learning attitudes and behaviors throughout the media, making it uncool to study hard and get good grades.

I think your example here of “rational choice” is a great example for the problem of treating the school ecosystem like a market. Only those with means to participate will benefit. If there is someone with no means to pay for better, what is the default? You quickly end up with a system where those who need access to quality education the most (the poor) have the least access, or only access to the worst.

Furthermore, markets require demand to drive pricing. In k-12 education, demand is completely inelastic - school attendance is compulsory. Who services those who can’t afford to participate but are required to do so? And how does the entity serving those have motive for quality? There’s no competition.

I think your example here of “rational choice” is a great example for the problem of treating the school ecosystem like a market. Only those with means to participate will benefit.

So why not give people the means to participate?

You quickly end up with a system where those who need access to quality education the most (the poor) have the least access, or only access to the worst.

That's where we are right now.

Furthermore, markets require demand to drive pricing. In k-12 education, demand is completely inelastic - school attendance is compulsory.

Non-sequitur again. If it's still possible to choose which school to attend, there's a choice. Eating is compulsory. There's still a market for food.

Who services those who can’t afford to participate but are required to do so?

We already have this entity.

And how does the entity serving those have motive for quality? There’s no competition.

We already have this problem, just that there's no way out for a lot of people, and we could enable a few people to get out.

> We already have this problem, just that there's no way out for a lot of people, and we could enable a few people to get out.

Actual studies of choice programa generally show that in the short term they hurt outcomes and in the long term that goes away to about even; some of the worst student outcomes in the US are in the systems with most extensive availability and use of school choice. The evidence does not suggest that school choice is a solution to any actual problem in public education—which has real problems—no matter how much both those with money at stake in the private education business and religious devotees of free-market fundamentalism want us to believe it is; it's certainly a powerful distraction from efforts to find real solutions, though.

>Why not give people a means to participate?

Sounds great. How? Show how you can provide everyone the means to participate and doesn't just raise the bottom line on the cost to participate, returning to the normal equilibrium that you'd expect from a market where there are always those who are priced out. How does it avoid the pitfalls of things like UBI?

>Non-sequitur

A non-sequitur would be talking about the reproductive life of penguins. "Inconceivable!" The concept of "you're free to choose" always sounds great but glosses over reality: choosing schools is not like choosing apples in the grocery store. Choice comes with cost, and the costs of attending different schools can be enormous. Not all schools are right outside your door. Since socioeconomic groups are frequently geographically concentrated (sides of the town/tracks), you'll end up with terrible schools in poor neighborhoods and good schools in good neighborhoods far away. Sounds like what we currently have, right? How does a "market" improve on this situation? It would seem that it provides incentives for schools to work against integrating student populations. Schools are disincentivized from enrolling poor kids, because poor kids are much less likely to perform well. A rational school will do everything legally possible to avoid accepting kids from populations statistically less likely to perform well in school.

So maybe you try to solve that problem with regulation? Schools are... what, required to do all acceptance via random lottery if they want to be eligible for payment through federal vouchers so they can't discriminate against poor applicants? Well, now school-choice isn't much of a choice anymore, it it? Maybe you have better suggestions on ways to force a rational, privately run school to accept kids they don't want to accept.

> We already have this entity.

I'm tired of people wanting all the benefits of "markets" for themselves and hand-waiving all the problems away back to the government. The public school system cannot exist in its current capacity if there is a massive shift to school privatization. So no, you can't just assume it will exist, you have to support your case with how you think it will function, and how it will be more likely to provide better outcomes than the current system.

Fundamentally, you have to be able to justify the merits of your proposal in real terms, and not in terms of "markets make everything better." Markets are awesome, and for so many of the goods and services in life, using and acquiring them through a free market with good competition to establish true market prices is really optimal. But market's are not a panacea. Roads do not work well in a universally private market. If every user of a road had to deal with transaction costs for every road they used during the day it would be a nightmare. The entire society is better off when people are free to move around. The federal/state ownership of roads funded by taxes is part of what makes the entire economic market work. Education, I believe, is the same: when everybody has access to education, funded by taxes, the entire economy is better off. Privatization will only lead to worse disparity for the vast majority who cannot afford to participate.

The current ecosystem is more like road vs air travel. You can go across the country by car, on public roads. Nobody will stop you. But if you want a better/faster experience, you can pay private companies for that service, but in so doing, you do not get a tax rebate for the road you didn't use. Private schools are great - It's all I've ever been to - but attending a private school should not free you from supporting the system that is universally beneficial.

We have major problems in our current school ecosystem, yes. And they do resemble many of the problems that a market-based system would have: the "best schools" are full of wealthy kids. But unlike a market system where this that outcome is optimal, it's a secondary effect of the residential clustering of socioeconomic strata, AND the reality that the quality of the school is driven less by the quality of its teachers and administration, but the quality of it's students. Student performance is most strongly tied to factors related to the poverty/wealth. So instead of trying to tread the symptom, we need to address the cause: poverty, and poor social mobility.

>> "1) Education is not a good with the kinds of features which allow approximating rational choice"

Sure it is, and it's well exemplified at the post-secondary level.

>> "advocates would instead simply reduce central control and increase local (district and even site-level) control of traditional public schools."

Intellectually, sure, but pragmatically, it's a canard; big, complex systems generally do not re-organize themselves. The IRS will not 'simplify the tax code'. Bureaucracies do not trim themselves, rather, they get replaced.

While I'm a big fan of public schools, the fact remains that there are legitimate 'libertarian' arguments to be made here. Decent charter schools might offer an opportunity to shake off some of the cruft and allow entrepreneurial thinking to lead the way.

Almost all of the arguments on this thread ignore the libertarian arguments at face value, and instead imply some kind of nefarious 'dark motivation' behind everything. It's not entirely unreasonable to bring up such factors, but it's intellectually a little shifty.

There are reasonable grounds for charter schools. Most of the 'possible dark patterns' might even be mitigated by decent regulation, for example, maybe they have to hire union teachers, or maybe schools have to have open enrolment for local kids, maybe tuition has to be graduated etc. etc..

>> "1) Education is not a good with the kinds of features which allow approximating rational choice"

Sure it is, and it's well exemplified at the post-secondary level.

Post-secondary education has somewhat less obscure results and at least the main participant is actually the decision maker, but even post-secondary education doesn't well approximate rational choice, which is why the private for-profit segment is rife with predatory actors.

>> "advocates would instead simply reduce central control and increase local (district and even site-level) control of traditional public schools."

> Intellectually, sure, but pragmatically, it's a canard; big, complex systems generally do not re-organize themselves. The IRS will not 'simplify the tax code'.

Well, no, because it can't, Congress controls the tax code.

But, in any cases your argument is the canard—any faction with the power to dictate policy can just as easily dictate an increased local control of traditional public education policy as one of increased centralization of traditional public education with public subsidies for private alternatives. What a bureaucracy is inclined to do for itself is irrelevant when we are talking about alternative rules that can be imposed on the bureaucracy, where either alternative requires the power to impose rules on he bureaucracy independent of what it would choose for itself.

My own belief is that it's a combination of your C) (the subpart:) "more easily kick out struggling or problematic students" as well as kicking out students that honestly don't want to be there because they either don't understand the importance or have been failed by society too many times and weren't given proper support to reach where their age would normally place them. (Sometimes also those like me who were far enough ahead that we spent half the lesson doing 'homework' at school in a class we didn't need to pay attention to.)

With respect to this topic, I think that a more European combination might produce the desired results.

  * School includes more health checks (including eyesight) and nutrition assurance.
  * More career exposure and education
  * Multiple paths from about middle-school on (trade skills/college/etc?)
  * More aptitude and class of knowledge tests
  * Less teaching to 'tests'; like none.  Tests should measure basic comprehension and ability.

> failed by society too many times

Well yes, it is a big problem when kids don’t have adequate food, shelter, healthcare; live in violent, polluted, socially broken neighborhoods with hostile public authorities; are raised by overworked (often single) parents; etc.

Policy changes to reduce poverty would go a long way toward improving schools.

> In 2019, inequality is propagated through differences in access to effective educational environments. It's the Democratic party which opposes school vouchers and funding increased choice in education

Because both exacerbate educational inequality and reinforce the degree to which traditionally disadvantaged groups remain consistently on the disadvantaged side of that inequality, which, as you note, is an important problem.

School choice (at best, but real programs, particularly voucher programs, tend to be far worse than “at best”) amounts to accepting failure and abandoning systematic efforts to root it out in the public school system but maximizing the degree to which parental skill, attained largely through the education, determines whether or not students are subjected to that failure.

By the way,

> encouraging large populations to refuse to assimilate into their host society?

In my experience this kind of argument is originated and pushed predominantly by socially sheltered racists and nativists (or those pandering to them), as a fear-based rhetorical cudgel, with little factual basis. Literally the same arguments were made about every generation of immigrants in the past, including my own Irish ancestors, Germans, Swedes, Italians, Poles, etc., all of whom successfully “assimilated”. My friends who are 3rd generation Guatemalan or Chinese or Egyptian or Pakistani are largely culturally indistinguishable from the 5th generation Italians or the 7th generation English.

The rhetoric happens to now focus on Latin Americans and Muslims, as those are the groups currently trendy for the right to demonize.

Of course African Americans have been getting heaps of abuse for centuries now, and down to today have faced more systematic racism than other groups, so there are various entrenched policy problems involved in helping their communities succeed (but it’s definitely not because they “refuse to assimilate”).

Here's a reply to this so-called "review", which amounts to little more than name-calling[1].

https://quillette.com/2018/10/14/moral-pollution-in-place-of...

The book actually contains a footnote anticipating exactly this kind of response:

"44. In fact, we can make a prediction right now, while writing this book in 2017: Most of the negative reviews and responses to this book will at some point note our race and gender and then directly assert or vaguely hint that we are racists or sexists who are motivated primarily by the desire to preserve our privilege. We will then respond in the spirit of Mark Lilla, the author of a critique of identity politics titled The Once and Future Liberal. Lilla, an avowed liberal who wrote his book to help the Democrats start winning elections, responds to repeated name-calling by saying, essentially, “That is a slur, not an argument. Make an argument and I’ll respond to it.”"

The reply goes on:

Instead, the rhetorical approach exemplifies precisely the aspects of the moral culture we identify and criticize in the book, and the tactics are ad hominem: guilt by association, and misrepresentation.

And so on...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_of_D...

That's not what the review does at all. That's one or two sentences of it.

Hmmm

“Lukianoff and Haidt share some benefactors and allies with the well-established right that funded Bloom and D’Souza. (Lukianoff works at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a nonprofit group that receives funding from the Scaife and Olin families.) But, reading The Coddling of the American Mind, I was more struck by their points of proximity to the newer Trumpist right.”

“Lukianoff and Haidt quote “Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the Brookings Institution””

“The rhetorical appeal, here, shares a structure with the appeal that carried the enemy in chief of political correctness to the White House”

“This is the incredulity of people who have never feared being stereotyped. It can turn to indignation, fast.”

“the two-step from shame to rage about shame may be what brings it closest to the Trumpists”

“Nassim Taleb, whose book Antifragile Haidt and Lukianoff credit with one of their core beliefs and cite repeatedly as inspiration, is a fixture of the far right “manosphere” that gathers on Reddit/pol and returnofkings.com.”

“The commonality raises questions about the proximity of their enthusiasm for CBT to the vogue for “Stoic” self-help in the Red Pill community,”

“Lilla admits to envying the effectiveness of the “right-wing media complex”. It is hard to imagine that Haidt does not feel some such stirrings about Peterson, who is, after all, selling more copies of self-help books ”

“Lukianoff and Haidt quote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago as an epigraph and key inspiration; Peterson, who frequently lectures on the book, wrote the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition Penguin will publish in November.”

This is a kind of anti-fallacy. You take the mere presence of these comparisons to undermine the rest of the substantive argument that their claims are wrong.

Just a couple of examples:

the framing leaves no room to consider how historical and social change might legitimately change institutions or individuals, or that individuals might want to change their world. (This framing also explains how they can write hundreds of pages about what’s wrong with contemporary higher education and not mention debt or adjuncts.) The authors cite the “folk wisdom” “Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child”. They call this attitude “pragmatic”. The prospect that a group of children might get together to build a new road themselves is not one they can countenance.

Or the quote in my original comment, which if you remove the apparently distracting "Like Trump", is entirely substantive:

the authors romanticise a past before “identity” but get fuzzy and impatient when history itself comes up. “Most of these schools once excluded women and people of colour,” they reflect. “But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence. They don’t. They leave it as a rhetorical question for “common sense” to answer.

And:

They argue that intersectionality theory divides people into good and bad. But the scholars they quote do not use this moral language; those scholars talk about privilege and power.

> Anti-fallacy

What's an anti-fallacy? Seems to be the opposite of a fallacy, so that's a good thing, I guess.

> You take the mere presence of these comparisons to undermine

No, I take the fact that the text is full of these sentences to "undermine" (aka: disprove) your incorrect assertion that

"That's not what the review does at all. "

and

"That's one or two sentences of it"

That is exactly what the review does and that's a lot more than one or two sentences. Alas, there's a limit to post length on HN and just pasting the entire review gets old.

Interestingly, the fact that your claims turned out to be utterly and completely false did not change your conclusion one iota (see: motivated reasoning[1]), you just switched to other "reasons".

No, I do not find the rest of her ranting in any way "substantive". For example, you quote:

"The prospect that a group of children might get together to build a new road themselves is not one they can countenance."

Well, here's what the reply I referenced has to say to that exact sentence:

"Far from this being something the authors are unable to countenance, encouraging children to build new roads themselves is exactly what the authors hope to achieve. But this can’t happen if adults prepare roads rather than children."

And of course, "not one they can countenance" is not language that has a place in a serious review. You can say what's in the book or not, you just don't have access to the authors' state of mind. But the ad-hominem is what this is about, so "can't countenance" it is.

The rest is, again, unsubstantiated ranting. The authors "romanticise" the past. Where? How? Is this bad? Why? Nothing. Where do they get "fuzzy"? This is not a history book, saying they did not research something they neither intended nor claimed to have researched seems somewhat silly.

> "good and bad" vs. "privilege and power"

That seems a very slim "error" to hang your critique on. If, in fact, it is an error.

Some of the terminology used: "matrix of domination", "vectors of oppression and privilege", "oppressive measures", "domination always involves the objectification of the dominated; all forms of oppression imply the devaluation of the subjectivity of the oppressed."[2]

Now you can try to claim that all these terms do not carry any moral judgement whatsoever. I think you'll have a hard time with it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersectionality#Key_concepts

Nobody is 'romanticizing a time before identity' and it's frankly absurd to suggest so.

The 20th century is full of identitarian issues such as women's suffrage, desegregation, a holocaust, racial issues galore etc.. I mean, the most traumatic event in American history, a civil war which nearly broke the Republic and in which more died that in any other war was about slavery after all.

Also, the attempt to lump the book in 'with Trump' is an indication right off the bat that the critique might be playing ideology. (I suggest Trump is utterly oblivious to even the least nuanced of the issues at hand anyhow)

And: "How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages?" - this isn't related to the argument at hand. It's an attempt to 'wedge in' another possibly important issue, but it's rhetorical smoke as it's applied.

There is a middle ground of recognizing serious systemic issues in both gender and race and being concerned by some of the issues around intersectionality, speech and feelings.

There is too much indignation, hysteria and manufactured outrage of the thou doth protest too much variety that only create further suspicion of not good faith engagement but dismissal based on privilege. This only entrenches extreme suspicions of ideas from places of privilege as predictable reaction to loss of status.

We have one side that are tone deaf with constant appeals to an imagined counter reality that is ahistorical and 'data-centic' that anyone with historical knowledge can immediately dismiss as wishful thinking masquerading as truth, and the other that have identified stubborn pervasive social, mental, physical structures of systemic victimization but seem unable to articulate the way forward outside the identification and demonization.

No one gives power, its always taken. The intersectionality architecture of feminism is impressive intellectual work even if you do not agree and the counter to this is very weak, simplistic and basic lacking any kind of intellectual plank, rigour or serious thinking beyond the same kind of sterile 'free markets meritocracy' narrative that is being dismantled in the economic sphere outside these movements, name calling and appeals to tradition. This has sent one group down a dangerous path of a 'glorious past' and complete regression in every facet of human thinking and enlightenment of the Bannon, Urbit variety and other advocating a 'nothing is really wrong status quo' of plain jane Peterson conservative and libertarians.

These issues should have been solved generations ago but they still persist and its time to let newer generations and newer thinking give it a go.

>Like Trump

I stopped reading the review there. Instead of reviewing the book at hand, it goes for facile comparisons, to elicit an emotive knee-jerk response -- in the first sentence...

It's like an 8000 word review. Ironically it's you who refuses to read.

A fish rots from the head down -- in this case the article rots from the intro. It put me off it, like a turd on the top of a cake that might otherwise be nice.

I don't doubt it might have some nice insights further down (or not, both cases are possible). But I refuse to applaud cheap manipulations like that.

“But does that mean that women and people of colour should think of themselves as ‘colonised populations’ today?” You could approach this question by looking at data on racialised inequality in the US, access to universities, or gendered violence.

The groups who succeed are all about integrating themselves into the current order. Sometimes by hook. Sometimes by "crook." Most often by both at once. This is what the Irish did, and the typical Irish peasant in the 1st half of the 19th century was about half as well off as the typical American slave. Chinese immigrant groups often arrived on the shores, poorer than the median poor of the new country, but still raised themselves up after a few generations. In fact, in the 100 years after slavery, this is also what African Americans in the US were doing. There was astonishing progress in areas like literacy. (There were also huge reversals, but many of these came after 1960!)

However, there are some historical patterns found in the study of immigrant groups that come with the continued disadvantage of a group. Many of these involve unfair laws. These were eliminated in the US civil rights movement. Another historical pattern involves the cultural isolation of a group while the group's own elites exploit the group's cultural isolation for their own relative wealth and power.

Always ask yourself, who benefits? Follow the money. Or eyeballs. Or votes. Who benefits from the poor urban districts? Who benefits from illegal immigration and disadvantaged hispanic neighborhoods?

https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/11/14/a-legacy-o...

How are college teachers supposed to confidently court controversy when so many of them have zero security in jobs that barely pay above poverty wages?

That is true. However, how is it that tenured professors are being hounded out of their jobs for asking questions and for pointing out a particular ethnicity's accomplishments? (I'm talking about the medieval studies professor who wrote the article about awesome things white people did.) What's been pointed out above is also valid, but without the freedom of thought and expression, what exactly is the solid wage and job security protecting?

This is what the Irish did, and the typical Irish peasant in the 1st half of the 19th century was about half as well off as the typical American slave

Citation needed

That is a very ... optimistic and a very inaccurate representation of the state of American law and law enforcement. Please check out: http://newjimcrow.com/about (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Jim_Crow)

Citation needed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHr9GRgRw_M

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