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Comment by jmye | Hacker News Reader

This is nuts. You don’t “easily” fix education by telling over-burdened parents that now they have to both evaluate every school they can find, hope that the voucher covers the education and that the act of providing it doesn’t shut down every neighborhood school, figure out how they’re going to get their child to it, and require them to do that every single year for 14-17 years.

Especially given competing education standards, especially given the insanity of trying to find childcare at all.

And advocating online-only education is a great way to ensure another generation grows up incapable of interacting with anyone.

But this kind of thinking is what happens when we let people who know literally nothing whatsoever about education feel like their opinion matters as much as an expert’s.

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Not all parents have to be unburdened enough to motivate public schools to improve.

Even if there's only a tiny minority of parents who are able to research and move their kids to a better school, their experience will motivate others, word will spread and the public schools will feel the pressure to improve their environment and outcomes. Even the threat of competition can be motivating.

I dare to believe that the majority of parents across the US do care about their kids and are willing to drive their kids to a different school if doing so means they'll achieve significantly better success in life.

But if I have no idea which school to pick, I’m left with the choice of either my now-failing public school, or a random pick of for-profit schools that may or may not educate my child.

You’re giving poor families appalling choices for no net benefit.

And again, you’re assuming all parents can drive their child across town to that one school that took them with no additional fees and had space leftover. That’s just not reality for a lot of people in this country who depend on the country at least trying to provide equitable education instead of finding new ways to lower the income burden on rich people.

When you can guarantee perfect access and perfect information, then sure, let’s talk about vouchers. Until then the only reason to advocate for them is to facilitate and speed up the creation of a permanent societal underclass.

> my now-failing public school

You're asserting vouchers would bankrupt public schools. How do you figure that? Maybe you're assuming that parents will move their kids to a better school, resulting in dwindling enrollment? If so, good! A public school that's not doing a great job should lose students. Let them feel the pain until they work to do better.

> When you can guarantee perfect access and perfect information, let’s talk about vouchers.

Your goalposts are unreasonable. Of course access and information will never be perfect. But they don't need to be.

When I started school, my parents were very poor. When they went on a date, they split a Taco Bell bean burrito (seriously). They had to sell a lot of stuff on the front lawn one month to make ends meet. My dad had to ride the bus to work for a while, and had to borrow money from his brother. But they still somehow managed to send me to private school (probably with tuition assistance), because they believed doing so was the right thing.

I understand a lot has changed since then; minimum wage is not a living wage anymore; many parents depend on free meals from public schools to make ends meet. But that doesn't mean the availability of other options is a bad thing or would be harmful.

My underlying assumption here is that public schools fail to educate kids primarily because they never feel the consequences of failure. If a private school fails, its attendance dwindles, funding drops, heads roll, and it closes if the problem isn't fixed. Not so for public schools -- the money just keeps on rolling in.

so your explanation for why schools in wealthy suburbs always do well and schools in poor urban areas do poorly is simply because somehow, suburbanites are holding their schools accountable while the urbanites are somehow not?

Really, the explanation is that suburban schools generally have a greater proportion of students from the socioeconomic and demographic groups that do better no matter where they are; typical metrics of school quality don't measure the effect of the school, but what the school is working with.

Yes, exactly. Suburbanites generally have more ability to move their kids to private schools if they want to. So the public schools have a higher bar to clear to keep attendance high.

That's very likely not true in the slightest. Only a very small percentage of suburbanites are close to a private school. And of that small percentage, most aren't close to being able to afford private school.

> Only a very small percentage of suburbanites are close to a private school.

I just used Esri geoenrichment tools to create maps of private schools (based on SIC code lookup) in the LA area, central Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Your assertion doesn't hold. There are multiple private schools in every local suburban area I've looked into. Or did you have a particular area in mind? (or maybe you meant to say "rural"?)

Southern California alone (south of San Luis Obispo) has 962 religious private elementary schools, and that's not counting the nonreligious, Montessori, preparatory schools, etc. Even charter schools in California (not counted either) often present excellent competition to traditional public schools, primarily because through them parents have greater choice (and no tuition!).

The assumption that public schools fail to educate kids is already erroneous and baseless.

That a public good, meant to ensure an equitable start for all children, regardless of their or their parents’ circumstance, is being treated like a free market asset is a bizarre failure to understand the fundamental difference between, say, Apple and your local elementary that must be prepared to educate kids ranging from G&T to barely able to read, and must often take the place of parents who are either incapable or unable to be present and continue the kids’ education outside school.

Your comments are case in point why people who don’t know anything about education shouldn’t have any input into how it’s delivered. I can’t tell if it’s Dunning-Kruger, or just an assumption that educators are idiots, but I can assure you the latter isn’t true.

Public school teachers certainly aren't idiots. I've personally known several as friends and acquaintances, for whom I'd vouch for their character and integrity.

Public school administration, public policy, and the content of education degrees is where I'd place the blame (and some curriculum publishers) -- the sort of people who write and listen to the kind of drivel TA is talking about.

This drive towards "equity" is creating even more disparate outcomes; and the notion being taught in some education degrees that a teacher's primary job is to make activists out of kids is hurtful to the kids, and to society.

Again, what is your expertise in education? Why do you think “equity” is driving disparate outcomes, let alone more disparate outcomes?

Do you actually think that any teachers are being taught that their primary job is to create activists (and do you have a source), or are you just repeating X memes because being angry feels good? What, specifically, do you think an education degree consists of, and what is your personal experience with that curriculum?

I can’t imagine you’re continuing to make sweeping pronouncements about something I’ve already asked you if you have any experience with.

> what is your expertise in education?

Expertise in a subject is not required to think rationally about it. Do you require those who agree with you to have expertise in order to form a rational opinion?

> Why do you think “equity” is driving disparate outcomes, let alone more disparate outcomes?

Because according to hard data, it is. For example, delaying Algebra 1 and the other "equity" programs in the San Francisco school system did not improve outcomes or even manage to bring down top performers. Everyone did worse except those with means to be tutored outside of the classroom -- that's a more disparate outcome.

> Do you actually think that any teachers are being taught that their primary job is to create activists?

Yes, I do.

> (and do you have a source?)

Many. Here are a few I just cribbed from Google. These demonstrate the ideas that are going around in modern liberal education:

- https://www.graduateprogram.org/2020/02/how-teachers-can-fos...

- https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED600797.pdf

- https://hechingerreport.org/opinion-educators-must-be-on-the...

> What, specifically, do you think an education degree consists of, and what is your personal experience with that curriculum?

Again, why is this relevant to the discussion? I have heard multiple sources I trust from multiple angles emphasize that today's educators must make activists out of the next generation.

I've also read that today's graduating seniors feel a massive emotional burden because of the beliefs that their education has (probably unwittingly) instilled in them -- namely, that it's up to them to fix society's problems through activism.

Internet comments and most public discussion doesn't have to be held to the same standards that academic papers do... I hope you don't require people you talk with in person to have expertise in order to have a rational opinion on a subject.

> A public school that's not doing a great job should lose students. Let them feel the pain until they work to do better.

This is such a lazy, uninformed take. Someone's sad? Keep physically abusing them until they're less sad. Public schools do a bad job because they are under-funded, and have to use the limited funding they do have just trying to get their standardized test scores up so they don't lose even more funding. Punishing under-funded schools by giving them less funding is exactly the bad-faith strategy of people who are trying to destroy public schools so they can rake in money with their private schools. Private prisons going well? Private healthcare? Private unregulated utilities? Why would private schools be any better? The obvious answer is to actually invest in under-funded public schools, not punish them for being bad by making them even worse.

Not every problem can be solved by throwing money at it.

The US spends more per student than essentially every other country in the world (besides the few statistical anomalies like Luxembourg), and most of the areas with poor-performing schools are funded at an equivalent level to nearby schools that are high-performing, thanks to large state and Federal subsidies to make up for lower local taxes.

What, specifically, are you counting in “education funding”? At least in my state, the vast majority of a given school’s money comes from a local mill levy, creating significant disparity from neighborhood to neighborhood, in day-to-day dollars. Facilities, on the other hand, receive most funding at the state level.

In neither case are we adequately paying teachers, which is generally the “funding” issue - if you want the best people to teach, you need to pay them like they have value. Currently, we pay them like 7-11 employees, make them buy their own supplies, and arm them with books chosen by lunatics in TX (if we’re not still recycling 30-year old books), and then wonder why they aren’t constantly turning children whose parents work three jobs into Rhodes Scholars.

Oh, and all of this while we yell back and forth about CRT and whether it’s ok for gay people to exist in schools and do nothing to address school violence.

No wonder people think our schools are failing - they’ve created a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Regardless of what one considers 'adequate' pay for teachers, the aggregate statistics show that many -- most -- other developed countries achieve far better results with less spending per student.

At least in my state and area, I've read through the budgets, and the typical canard of 'administration' making up the bulk of the spending also doesn't hold water. Around 70-75% of the spending was directly on teachers salary/benefits, and only 10-15% for administration, and 10-15% on facilities. That certainly seems like a reasonable allocation to me, and I'm not sure how one could adjust it further without creating a new obstacle.

What do other countries pay teachers? What benefits are included?

What does your district pay teachers? What benefits are included?

Is part of what you’re counting as teacher pay something that’s taken care of via other taxes elsewhere (pension, healthcare)? I feel like this isn’t at all apples to apples.

In general, when a teacher can make $50k/year, and someone with a 6 month boot camp can double that, you’re going to lose a lot of potential teachers to other jobs, regardless of what other countries pay their teachers and their software engineers. The US, frankly, isn’t Sweden (or wherever). Pretending that what works in one should work in the other is confounding a lot of things - do other countries force disruptive students to stay in the classroom? What measures are being used to indicate quality? Do other countries have similar numbers of parents unable to work with their children at home? Do other countries base funding on neighborhood taxes, and if not, how are you normalizing costs between them?

I tend to think any comparative analysis is going to be extremely lacking, if it’s not done hand-in-hand with people who actually understand educational challenges in each environment. Certainly, reading a budget is insufficient.

I agree with your point in this thread. Teachers in Finland, for example, are highly respected (like doctors in the US). They're highly trained, highly paid, highly trusted, and they really do a great job.

I wish that were the case in the US -- but we'd be talking about overhauling an entire profession, not merely increasing wages. I do think increased wages would be a great idea, but I think it would take more than that to achieve what Finland has achieved.

Evidence that they are underfunded? NYC spends much more per student than most private schools do.

Of course private schools spend less per student - they can selectively refuse to admit or kick out anyone they like, which eliminates all of the most expensive students.

They spend a lot on non special ed students with mediocre results. The only thing that matters is selection. Not money.

> Public schools do a bad job because they are under-funded

This too is a lazy, uninformed take.

Quite a lot of parents have to choose between driving their kids to school every day and working to keep their kids fed and sheltered. There's a real problem there, but it's not that they don't care about their kids.

one reason supermarkets keep their prices low is because of a motivated 8-10% that are avid coupon and price sensitive shoppers. They keep the supermarkets honest for the rest of us.

A 8-10% swing in topline revenue for the supermarket is a lot. Supermarkets can't afford to scare away those shoppers. We all benefit from that positive externality

Supermarkets aren’t judged on their ability to sell meat that has expired, or stale bread, or other suboptimal products. Public schools are required to educate everyone.

This is a bad comparison and another example of why “free market education” is nonsense.

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