While there is certainly self-selection occurring here, it would be a mistake for policy makers to dismiss the problems with public schools as just being due to that. They should introspect instead of seeking excuses.
Why is having competition among public schools, with parents having a choice as to which to send them, so bad? It doesn’t make any sense.
That is, I believe, misrepresenting the problem. Rather, it's more like
> It's fine for the small subset to self-select among many private schools. Apparently it’s only a problem when the masses similarly have choices.
And that makes sense, because 0.5% of people/funding/etc being taken out of schools isn't a big deal... but 20% starts to make a big impact.
Public schools in NYC spend yearly twice per child what the cost is for the average private school in the city. ($38k vs $19k). And on the private school side of the equation that average is skewed upwards by a minority of very expensive ($60k/yr) schools.
If you're spending more money for worse results, we SHOULD divert funding to better-performing alternatives.
The data doesn't really say this. Two things to know about education:
- A large percentage of school outcomes are dictated by home life. Interviewing parents or just picking from the population of people who can afford $20k a year allows you to pick from a higher achieving cohort.
- Private schools don't have to provide the same level of services to children who require additional care. This is a significant cost saving. Most schools I've worked at had multiple staff dedicated to the care of just a handful of children.
This is a language immersion school. Kids with IQ of 50 and lower are getting no benefit.
But siblings go there to so the parent doesn’t wanna make two stops.
My wife’s class was mostly shutdown for 6 months because she got six special needs kids and her kindergarten class at the beginning of the year. A mix of non verbal, Violent and or extreme low IQ.
It took that long to go through all the legal processes to get them moved to the proper rooms. She had quite a few injuries from it all. Lot of parents were unwilling to admit that kids had any issues.
Plus a lot of these issues were not caught in preschool since the pandemic had those shut down.
It gets worse. I've seen multiple staff dedicated to a single child, and not the sort of child you would think needs that much. It is mostly behavioral issues that result in some kids needs near-constant dedicated staff.
And we had plenty of braindead but normal kids too. Their parents paid out large donations to get their useless children passed through school and at least an attempt to educate them.