Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

This is just classic right-wing propaganda. Larger districts are more redistributive, smaller districts mean rich neighborhoods keep their own money. 100% on-brand for WSJ opinion page, and Manhattan Institute. "School choice", vouchers, etc are all core Manhattan Institute goals.

View on HN

“But into the 1980s, Texas continued its notorious practice of tolerating small school districts, thus allowing affluent sections of a city to provide high quality schools for their children while poor whites, blacks, and Chicanos were obliged to tax themselves at a higher rate to provide even a minimal education. A dark leaf in modern Texas history was the state’s effort (until forbidden by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1982) to deny public school education to the children of illegal aliens— the very group Texas employers had been coaxing across the border for cheap labor for generations.” -The Book of America by Hagstrom and Peirce (1983), Page 132

Wrong. The money gets distributed from two sources: the state, and the county via property taxes. The size of the district has no impact on the money-distribution formula for either.

If a county, or a state, wants to send money to poorer areas, they can do it without regard to the organization of the school districts. Often, the formula is targeted at the student: if a school has X low-income students, then they get Y dollars.

Edit: my comment pertains to large school districts, aka city-wide or within large counties. The suburbs get organized differently.

Your comment does not apply to California, my state, and you did not qualify your statement with a given state. In California it’s acceptable and common for a district to have their own parcel taxes. See: Berkeley Unified and its BSEP parcel tax.

What’s the problem with school choice?

There’s no inherent problem. Usually opponents create hypothetical scenarios in which corrupt entities funnel money away from public schools, which is a valid concern, but isn’t an inherent property of school choice.

Hard to ”choose” a good school if you’re in an area with no good schools?

Drive your kid across town, when you’re already poor?

Been there, was worth it

Not an option for everyone.

Exactly! Not even for those who want it, and wold be willing to make the effort.

Nothing is an option for everyone. Must we always deny opportunities to everyone because there’s some person who can’t take advantage of it?

Education should not be denied.

School choice doesn’t deny anyone anything. With no choice you get whatever school your district is and that’s it. With school choice you can go somewhere else, but you still have the same option you had before. Nobody is being denied anything.

If you can’t access a good school because of distance you’re being denied an education.

If you can’t access a good school now because the one in your district is bad is that not also being denied an education?

Under choice fewer people would be denied an education by your definition.

Great that it was worth it for you, the discussion is about the difficulty of the task not the value

No choice makes something difficult impossible.

Parents dump the schools with teachers who are members of the union. Union has less money to pay the politicians of a certain party. Of course boards also get paid per student head, student who goes to a school that is not part of that farm (charter, private whatever..) is not bringing in the cash.

It is pretty straightforward economic self interest. I can recommend Sowell's book "Charter schools and their enemies" it lays out the setup quite well.

Literally no parent thinks “What I really want is a union busting school.” That’s not even a top 10000 concern.

Did I send my oldest kid to a charter school? Yeah, for one year. It was a bunch of Teach for America grads that warehoused the kids in front of computers for hours at a time, no PE, and sent kindergartens to detention. (Wtf?!)

So why did we choose this school? One reason: All day kindergarten. We had no idea how bad the school was actually run until like a quarter or two into it.

Fuck Rocketship Schools.

My son goes to a charter school. I have the exact opposite experience: small school, small class sizes, passionate teachers/administrators, strict dress and phone policies, involved parents.

There are downsides, small population = fewer extracurricular activities, with less participation (esp. sports).

Well, we get all those things except a dress code at the regular public school, but with extracurriculars.

In theory parents gain access to a better school to enroll their kids and bad schools bleed enrollment. It's not a magic solution to under-performing schools. And when it does deliver results it does so by undermining the "public" part of public schools. It increases time and transportation costs. Some parents prefer that the local school be improved instead of replacing it. Alternatives like charter schools use selective admission. When you don't have to accept disabled, non-English speaking, or misbehaving kids it's easy to show higher test scores, graduation rates, and post-graduation outcomes. This leaves the public schools with the bottom of the barrel students. The death spiral is complete once public schools no longer enroll a cross section of the area they serve and only function as a welfare service.

Everyone wants the best for themselves and their kid. That means buying housing in the best district they can afford. Once they're in they don't want lower socioeconomic status people to move into their neighborhood or the district to annex poor areas.

Religious education

They weaken public schools in exchange for a benefit most poor families can’t use.

All the students with uninterested parents end up in the same school have poor outcomes. These are the students that need the most help to succeed but school choice gives them the least. I don't want people like that in society, higher rates of criminality and lower useful output. Things work better when everyone works together.

What's wrong with vouchers? I did not track the issue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com