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Comment by rootusrootus | Hacker News Reader

But that's an upside if you're looking to be equitable.

Not necessarily. Wealthier parents are more mobile, and can move residences such that their children are in the top 10%.

If you ever find a case of a wealthy family moving to a rural area to improve their children's chances of getting into a state school, please let us know.

I went to high school in a science magnet program in Texas. Students from 3 high schools were eligible for the magnet program, and the magnet program was housed in one of the 3 high schools. Our math+science classes were in the magnet program, but our English/history/PE/art/all other classes were in the host school. The program made up about 10% of the host high scool, and students in the program were counted as part of the host school for purposes of university admission.

This understandably made people unhappy at the host school - ~7% of the class is academic high achievers from out of the school zone who take most of the admission spots reserved for the top N%.

I don't know of any cases of parents moving to avoid the extra competition, but I probably wouldn't have heard of that if it happened. I do know of some people set on going to UT who did not apply to the magnet program so they could have less competition.

The point here is you don't need to move to a rural area to decrease school competition. There are plenty of cases where you can move a mile to get into the zone of a less competitive school.

You're losing the forest for the trees. Wealthier parents most often send their children to good private schools, and their children have lots of options for college if they are talented and hard working.

Where I lived in Texas, no middle class family sent their kids to public schools.

That's a hell of an indictment of the local schools. Where I live (Portland, Oregon suburbs) most middle/upper middle class families send their kids to public school.

Idk Seattle for example is liberal as hell but 25% go to private schools. Likely because equity goals are not good for non target groups

Where was this? I highly doubt this is true.

It seems like you are arguing that wealthy parents move to places with worse schools to make it easier for their kids to be in the top 10%.

This is in fact exactly what happens in Texas. I've met many people who attended UT whose parents or friend's parents did exactly that for the explicit purpose of increasing their chances of their child being in the top 7% of their graduating class so that they could get automatic admission to UT Austin, a very good school to attend compared to the usual options for someone graduaitng #35 in a class of 500 from a public high school with low educational achievement rankings.

They'll often go straight for petroleum engineering if their career path is as calculated during college as it was in high school, and end up with a six figure salaxy at age 22 (not sure this still works as of 2020 given the problems with Houston's gas sector).

For some parents, making sure their child has a sure fire path to the middle class is what they consider their main responsibility, and will do things as crazy as move to a worse school district just to get them on the above track.

If you're as cynical about the value of education (to provide a "job") as the people described, you'll absolutely sacrifice the quality of your kids education (moving to a school with ostensibly less talented or credentialed teachers and possibly less academically gifted peers to learn from and larger class sizes) in order to game the system.

Well, assuming this also moves funding this may actually do wonders for balancing out the system. And there may be some benefits to all the students, in seeing how the other half lives, making more advanced classes available in poorer neighborhoods, etc.

Yeah I agree this improves diversity and combats school district segregation. I think this is exactly the intent and works as it should.

The equilibrium state in this scenario would be all public schools approaching equivalence, which would be a positive outcome.

Not positive at all; the only possible equivalence is when every school is equally bad

Eh, kids from rich/educated families probably get a much smaller marginal benefit from the quality of the school since they're getting tons of extra stimulation at home (stability, parents reading to them at night, parents encouraging academic pursuits). Meanwhile lower-achieving kids benefit just from having the higher-achieving kids in the same classroom.

In practice they want nothing to do with the poors so they cluster into "good" school districts.

Yeah I mean you always want the best for your own kid that’s normal

They can, but they don't, just like how Jeff Bezos can choose to live under a bridge, but doesn't.

Nobody with money goes out of their way to send their children to a school in a 'common' part of town, because they don't want their children to mix up with 'the wrong kind' of people.

You are making an implicit assumption that groups should be treated equitably. Some of us disagree with that--we feel *individuals* should be treated equitably and see these attempts to treat groups equitably as treating individuals *inequitably*.

Why should my chance of getting into college be hampered by where my parents live or what color skin they gave me??

Aiding one person is inherently discriminating against another.

> Why should my chance of getting into college be hampered by where my parents live or what color skin they gave me?

Why should theirs be hampered by the same?

It's all a hack job to try and work around the fact that we haven't yet figured out a good objective measurement. Things like SAT do the same in reverse, aid the wealthy students at the expense of the poor ones. It's not an easy problem.

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