Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Bacon Bits: Schools and Higher Ed

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by

James A. Bacon
in ,

bacon_bits

OK, people, you’re out of control. You’re generating way too much quality content that is disappearing into the ether because Virginia’s newspapers and bloggers simply aren’t equipped to cover it all. Once again, I find myself falling back upon the Bacon Bits format, just to ensure that readers know what’s out there.

Advanced placement credits. Virginia boasts the third-highest percentage of public high school seniors qualifying for college credit on Advanced Placement tests, according to the College Board’s 2104 report. Reports Virginia Business magazine: “28.3 percent of Virginia’s 2013 graduating seniors earned a grade of three or higher on at least one AP exam. Virginia’s seniors trailed behind students in Connecticut and Maryland, who earned the No. 1 spot.” Gains over the past 10 years have been especially marked for African-American and Hispanic students.

Fixing virtual school governance. Chris Braunlich, writing in the Jefferson Policy Journal, elucidates how Virginia lags the country in using virtual (online) schools to provide education to children with special needs or circumstances at home. More than 2750,00 students are enrolled in virtual schools nationally, and the number is growing 30% per year.  The number in Virginia: less than 1,000. Writes Braunlich: “It’s just one example of state law not keeping pace with a 21st century world in which students aren’t limited to their neighborhood school, but quite literally are ‘students without borders.’ The fact that the law hasn’t kept up with technology has badly hurt the growth of full-time virtual schools.”

University endowments kicking bootay. The University of Virginia endowment grew to $5.16 billion during fiscal 2013, up 7.9%, making it the largest endowment in Virginia and the 19th largest in the country. Runner-up was the University of Richmond, whose endowment surpassed $2 billion, followed by Washington & Lee ($1.345 billion) and the College of William & Mary ($698 million). Read Richmond BizSense’s recap here (the article lists all endowed Virginia universities) and read the report upon which it was based.

The end of higher ed’s golden age. A must-read essay by Clay Shirkey describes the dilemma facing higher ed today:

Decades of rising revenue meant we could simultaneously become the research arm of government and industry, the training ground for a rapidly professionalizing workforce, and the preservers of the liberal arts tradition. Even better, we could do all of this while increasing faculty ranks and reducing the time senior professors spent in the classroom. This was the Golden Age of American academia.

As long as the income was incoming, we were happy to trade funding our institutions with our money (tuition and endowment) for funding it with other people’s money (loans and grants.) And so long as college remained a source of cheap and effective job credentials, our new sources of support—students with loans, governments with research agendas—were happy to let us regard ourselves as priests instead of service workers. …

Golden Age economics ended. Golden Age assumptions did not. For 30 wonderful years, we had been unusually flush, and we got used to it, re-designing our institutions to assume unending increases in subsidized demand. This did not happen. The year it started not happening was 1975. Every year since, we tweaked our finances, hiking tuition a bit, taking in a few more students, making large lectures a little larger, hiring a few more adjuncts.

Each of these changes looked small and reversible at the time. Over the decades, though, we’ve behaved like an embezzler who starts by taking only what he means to replace, but ends up extracting so much that embezzlement becomes the system. There is no longer enough income to support a full-time faculty and provide students a reasonably priced education of acceptable quality at most colleges or universities in this country.

Our current difficulties are not the result of current problems. They are the bill coming due for 40 years of trying to preserve a set of practices that have outlived the economics that made them possible.

(Hat tip: Michael Cassidy.)

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28 responses to “Bacon Bits: Schools and Higher Ed”

  1. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Here’s the deal.

    we already have private schools and many attract enough paying customers to not only stay in business but to thrive.

    If they are truly “better” (pick your reason why), why do we still have a good number of college-bound students in the public schools?

    bonus question: why don’t we have private schools that SPECIALIZE in teaching at-risk kids?

    1. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
      LifeOnTheFallLine

      Because the parents of your average at-risk child can’t afford private school tuition. Ostensibly, charters and school vouchers are supposed to ameliorate that burden and provide that superior private education to those kids. The problem is, of course, that privates and charters don’t perform better than public schools.

      I would recommend “I Got Schooled” by M. Night Shyamalan if you want to look at school reforms that would actually benefit at-risk kids. His writing can be a bit precious, but the research is thorough and the method transperant.

      1. larryg Avatar
        larryg

        How do we know that at-risk kids are “benefited” ?

        1. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
          LifeOnTheFallLine

          Because they close the knowledge and performance gaps in English, math, etc. between themselves and their counterparts in more affluent, stable neighborhoods.

          1. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            How do we know they do that?

          2. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
            LifeOnTheFallLine

            We test them…? Is there some meta question in play here I’m missing?

          3. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            what tests?

            no meta question, just a honest one.

            how do we know they are not doing well right now?

            and how would we ascertain that a different kind of education program would do better?

          4. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
            LifeOnTheFallLine

            Skills assessment tests based on where we expect children to be by the end of specific grade levels. Again, is there a meta question in play here?

          5. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            the meta question – what tests? what kind of testing?

            do you have examples of the kinds of testing that would prove this that are in use right now?

            what standards are you using and testing for and how do you determine better success than public schools?

          6. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
            LifeOnTheFallLine

            Well, the Standards of Learning for one. The NAEP is another. There are others.

          7. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            okay.. good so far..

            what private schools do this right now?

            are their standards such as these for private schools in general right now?

  2. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
    LifeOnTheFallLine

    Private schools are not required to test using the SOL. And not every school tests with the NAEP, but there are other studies going on. The results of which have been analyzed and presented in a book I haven’t yet read, that purports to show that when demographic differences are taken into account, public schools perform as well or better than privates:

    http://www.bostonreview.net/us/snyder-public-private-charter-schools-demographics-incentives-markets

    ” The authors examined two main datasets—a longitudinal study of more than 20,000 students who started kindergarten in the fall of 1998; and the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress, which surveyed more than 300,000 fourth and eighth graders. (Known as the “nation’s report card,” the NAEP is widely regarded as the gold standard in student-achievement research.)

    Using sophisticated analytical tools with names that only a statistician could love—hierarchical linear modeling, multivariate regression—the authors conclude that the private-school effect is a myth. After accounting for the demographic differences among different school sector populations, traditional public school students performed just as well in math as did their private school peers. In grade four, public school students actually outpaced their demographically similar peers in private schools. Furthermore, the Lubienskis discover that even though private school children arrive in kindergarten a little bit more academically prepared than their public school peers, public school students make up the difference over the course of elementary school.”

    Which mimics results from a similar study by CREDO examining charter schools:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/charters-not-outperforming-nations-traditional-public-schools-report-says/2013/06/24/23f19bb8-dd0c-11e2-bd83-e99e43c336ed_story.html

    “But 56 percent of the charters produced no significant difference in reading and 19 percent had worse results than traditional public schools. In math, 40 percent produced no significant difference and 31 percent were significantly worse than regular public schools.”

    None of which is terribly surprising when you consider that neither charters nor private schools have the same certification and other requirements that public schools and their teachers have.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      I would support true apple to apple competition and equivalent testing.

      and if non-public schools can successfully teach the harder-to-teach demographic than public schools then by all means let’s do it.

      what I opposed is bogus backdoor proposals to take public tax dollars and to use it for private schools for the easier-to-teach demographics alone.

      I’m IN FAVOR of apple-to-apple competition and performance and accountability.

      the first step would be to certify non-public schools in accepting the same percentage of at-risk demographic kids as public schools and performing as well or better – not a promise or a claim – actual performance.

      If they don’t achieve then they lose their certification… just as public schools go on probation and/or can lose their accreditation.

      teaching the at-risk demographic is not easy .. and it often takes more resources such as title 1 teachers – teachers who have masters degrees in specifically teaching the at risk demographic.

      it’s a scarce and expensive resource that currently public schools themselves do not have enough of in some schools.

      how to private schools get the money to get more Title 1 teachers?

    2. DJRippert Avatar
      DJRippert

      I don’t know LOTFL … statements like this always make me wonder:

      “Private school students do, in fact, score better on tests, but the authors wanted to figure out if this advantage is a genuine marker of superior education in private schools or simply an artifact of the more privileged backgrounds of the students who attend them.”

      Determining the artifacts of the more privileged backgrounds sounds pretty arbitrary to me.

      Let’s try to work out some examples from Fairfax County. We’ll use SAT scores as a proxy for educational attainment.

      1. National average 2011 SAT score = 1,500
      2. Fairfax County 2011 SAT average = 1,654
      3. Highest “regular” Fairfax County High School = Langley: 1,812
      4. Lowest “regular” Fairfax County High School = Mt Vernon: 1,400

      Private schools generally don’t publish their average SAT scores but I happen to know the average scores of two pricey Fairfax County private schools – one is 1,869 and the other is a jaw dropping 2,025. Both schools cost well over $25,000 per student per year.

      Both of these private schools are better than the best “regular” public school. But are they better than Langley after adjusting for “the artifacts of privilege” (whatever the hell that means).

      Langley draws its students from McLean and Great Falls. Both are Census Designated Places (CDPs). McLean and Great Falls have a median family income of $182,500. So, the average family income of the families sending their kids to Langley is in the top 5% of all Americans.

      How can you be more privileged than that?

      Yet both private schools have higher average SAT scores than the best public high school in one of the best school districts in America.

      I know the study compared the average private school to the average public school after adjusting for “the artifacts of privilege” but I wonder about the validity of that adjustment.

      1. larryg Avatar
        larryg

        If you think the public schools are doing a bad job with at-risk kids and you want to use tax money to give to private (or quasi-private, or hybrid or Charter) schools on the premise that they will do a better job then that is the voucher argument ….

        then you need to be talking about the demographic that you claim you want to help and that demographic normally is not the one worried about SAT scores but instead being able to simply graduate , be functionally literate – and be able to attend community college and/or similar to get a certificate for a job skill… to become a non-entitlement burden – part of our workforce even if not a College graduate.

        that’s the demographic we are talking about.

        kids who are not at risk and have educated parents who can help their kids with their schooling – are NOT the demographic. Those folks largely have always done fine in both pubic schools and private schools.

        like so many other things today -we think in sound bites and we conflate issues – and we end up with narratives _like_ – kids are “failing’ because they have “bad” teachers and those bad schools and bad teachers are doing a disservice to the kids and the country so we should take away education from the public schools and give tax dollars to public school so these kids will be helped.

        that’s the general premise we hear.

        the demographic we are talking about.

        and I believe that public schools themselves do not critically focus on this demographic as much as they need to in the K-3 grades where kids either learn how to read – or they don’t and the ones that don’t spend a tortured life until they either fail to graduate or graduate with a “gimme” degree and they have no hope of anything more of a minimum wage job to earn a living and many end up on entitlements.

        that’s our problem.

        can we fix it by sending these kids to non-public schools ?

        how would we know that they would do better if we do not have an apples to apples ability to measure?

        are we assured that non-public schools would even accept that demographic and even if they did – that they would pay for the specialized teachers that are needed to be successful with that demographic?

        the current narrative is pro-voucher but unconcerned about accountability.

        the claim is that because many non-public schools have a demonstrated success rate with non at-risk kids that they will do just as good with at-risk kids (the voucher kids).

        I’m in favor of competition with the public schools but not vouchers without a true comparative and equivalent accountability.

        finally, there are existing public schools that have success with at-risk demographics – in spite of the anti-public-school narratives and there are some private schools that seem to do well with the at risk demographic.

        there are also studies that show that a good number of non-public schools don’t do as well or any better than public schools that are also not doing particularly well with at risk.

        what I advocate is that we not pretend here.

        if we’re going to use the excuse for vouchers that non-public schools will do a better job with voucher dollars – then I expect them to 1. take equivalent numbers of at-risk 2. be truly accountable..

        and one additional comment…

        one of the big difference between private schools and public schools in high school is that the private schools have much more limited non-core academic and extracurricular offerings because having those other things adds significant expense so the kids in those schools tend to focus more on core academics – like SAT preparation.

        In fact, many K-6 non-public schools don’t even offer K 7-12, the kids often come back into the public school system.

        1. DJRippert Avatar
          DJRippert

          The study claimed that private schools are no better than public schools once you adjust for demographics. So, I picked the Fairfax County public school with the wealthiest demographics (i.e. Langley) and compared their SAT results to two private schools. Assuming the private schools have roughly the same demographics as the people living in the Langley district I found that both private schools achieved better SAT scores than Langley. In one case, the private school had much better SAT scores than Langley.

          All of which (despite a horrendously small sample size) leads me to wonder if the authors really have a reliable basis for “adjusting for demographics”. With such a reliable basis we’re left with a simple fact (from the authors themselves):

          “Private school students do, in fact, score better on tests …”.

      2. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
        LifeOnTheFallLine

        So you’ve decided to replace arbitrary with anecdata…at least your post was sponsored by the letter A.

        The artifacts of privilege aren’t arbitrary and they’ve been well known for years. By age four children from higher income families have vocabularies twice that of their lower income counterparts (Hart and Risley). In a meta study of the summer learning loss effect, Harris Cooper found that students from middle class families improved their reading recognition over summer break while students from lower income families lost the equivalent of three months.

        Further, the effect extends to schools composed of wealthier students. A study by Rumberger in 2005 (Does Segregation Still Matter?) found that the socioeconomic level of the school had as much impact on student achievement as individual familial socioeconomic status. And the effects of being in a low SES is pretty well known (http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/factsheet-education.aspx), but in an interesting study in 2010 of schools in Montgomery County Maryland (Schwartz, Housing Policy is School Policy) found that after seven years of attending more affluent schools, poor kids raised their scores on standardized math tests by almost half a standard deviation.

        So when comparing lower income students and schools to their higher income counterparts, in order to get closer to a true comparison the positive effects of higher income have to be controlled for.

        1. DJRippert Avatar
          DJRippert

          I don’t doubt that what you say is true. I question whether anybody has a valid quantifiable means for making the adjustment. If you use educational attainment to make the adjustment then you are all but guaranteed to find that the populations come out equal.

          There is also a politically incorrect truth which I am sure that you and LarryG will hate. Some amount of economic achievement is based on intelligence and some percentage of inheritance is inherited.

          ” Although “intelligence” may be difficult to define precisely, most people have accepted that IQ scores seem to constitute a rough and measurable proxy for this trait, so Lynn and Vanhanen have collected a vast number of national IQ scores from the last 50 or 60 years and compared these to income levels and economic growth rates. Since experts have discovered that nominal IQ scores over the last century or so have tended to rise at a seemingly constant rate—the so-called “Flynn Effect”—the authors adjusted their raw scores accordingly. Having done so, they found a strong correlation of around 0.50–0.75 between the Flynn-adjusted IQ of a nation’s population and its real per capita GDP over the last few decades, seemingly indicating that smarter peoples tend to be wealthier and more successful.”

          “Thank your parents if you’re smart: Up to 40% of a child’s intelligence is inherited, researchers claim”

          http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2293861/Thank-parents-youre-smart-Up-40-childs-intelligence-inherited-researchers-claim.html

          I know that liberal dogma holds that rich people are only rich by luck, theft or circumstance of birth but some research says otherwise.

          Let’s assume there is some level of economic evolution whereby there is a relationship between raw intelligence and economic achievement. Let’s further assume that some level of raw intelligence is inherited.

          Flattering out all “demographic differences” as being purely environmental may mean that you are also filtering out real differences in raw intelligence.

          1. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            re: ” . I question whether anybody has a valid quantifiable means for making the adjustment. If you use educational attainment to make the adjustment then you are all but guaranteed to find that the populations come out equal.”

            the thing is – you have to WANT to KNOW that answer. You HAVE TO WANT to find VALID ways to quantify… to justify the alternative approach and to justify splitting tax dollars into the two different school choices.

            Most public schools – don’t allocate enough resources right now toward the lower disadvantaged demographic and they don’t staff the teaching of that demographic with their most experienced and skilled teachers.

            Would a non-public/quasi-public/charter/choice school 1. allocate more resources or 2. find more cost effective ways to have more/better success?

            we HAVE to WANT to FIND OUT that answer …. and that means you have to adopt a single, unified accountability measure so you CAN MEASURE.

            some of the folks who support the vouchers do not want to measure .. they just want to blame and harm, undermine public schools because they believe, they ASSUME that private schools will do better.

            I’m not at all as confident as they are but I’m willing to support competitive alternatives if we are going to truly measure and actually PROVE there are better approaches.

            at the end of this – remember – our goal is to produce a more employable workforce that is more able to provide for themselves and their families and require less taxpayer support and entitlements.

            I’m not convinced the anti-public-school folks even have this goal on their radar screens.

          2. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
            LifeOnTheFallLine

            I’m not opposed to either of those premises at all. In fact, let’s assume it’s true that there is a positive correlation between higher SES status and intelligence.

            If you want to see how schools are doing at the job of educating different kids then why in the world would you not want to flatten out IQ differences? Of course schools with smarter kids are going to produce better results when it comes time to test their kids. The question is are they better at doing the job of educating? Are privates and charters better at the job of educating or are they just skimming the cream? That’s what this entire discussion has been about. I know it’s liberal dogma to stay on topic, but we were not discussing whether those with higher SES are genetic ubermensch.

            But since you want to go there, the very study you site means that as little as 60 percent of IQ differences are the results of things other than heritability.

            Like, say, nutrition:
            http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/07/08/early-childhood-nutrition-may-influence-adult-iq/2570.html

            http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20121011133921198

            http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20041021205759data_trunc_sys.shtml

            Or stress:
            http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10578-005-0002-5

            http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11876674

            Or resource scarcity:
            http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/22/business/the-mental-strain-of-making-do-with-less.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

            And if education can raise IQ levels there’s one more variable to add to the list, and it looks like education can.

            The Abecedartian Early Intervention Project group its students/test subjects into two groups…those who got the early intervention education and those who didn’t. At the end of the test, the control group’s average IQ was 84 versus the test group’s average IQ of 101. Another, similar study called the Milwaukee Project found differences of 83 for the control group versus 110 for the test group.

            Now, you may want to hand wave that away because it’s not turning kids into geniuses, but those are still gains of more than an entire standard deviation.

            So, yeah, heritability of traits matters, and policy can’t control for that, but for the things that policy can aid (such as education) we need to be looking for schools and teaching methodologies that work instead of just turning to simple, cheap genetic determinism.

          3. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            stepping in… a little … “… If some schools do a better job at educating children from lower SES then we need to look at what they’re doing and see if it can scale up. If we can scale it up, will the resultant benefits be worth the cost of that scaling?”

            totally agree. and in order to be able to do that – we need to have a universal way to measure …between the different approaches, so we actually know …

            Our schools right now are scaled to the better off demographics – at the expense of the at-risk demographics.

            We talk about AP and Baccalaureate and other similar higher-end, higher-ed services – while we continue to have academic shortfalls in the at risk demographics..even in high-performing schools, even as we continue to see academic shortfalls – in the lower K-3 grades in fundamental core subjects like reading.

            If voucher schools and do this better.. I’m totally in favor of that approach and I’m totally in favor of them having the opportunity to demonstrate that they can but we won’t know – anything – if we don’t have a common way to measure the voucher school approaches vs the public school approaches.

            and I’m not willing to give voucher schools tax money on an unproven premise.. we need to see demonstrable results..

        2. James A. Bacon Avatar
          James A. Bacon

          I have a big problem with this “artifacts of privilege” concept, which attributes success to socio-economic status rather than peoples’ values, priorities and willingness to defer gratification for future reward. I remember living in Church Hill and getting to know (casually) a poor immigrant Korean family that ran a community store. Every time I patronized the store, the family’s daughter was either working or studying. I can still remember seeing her hunched over her books. That wasn’t a matter of income, for the family was not wealthy, it was a matter of values and priorities. Not only will that girl (a grown woman by now) be more successful than her non-Korean peers from Church Hill, I will wager she will be more successful professionally than most of her same-age peers from affluent white families in Richmond.

          I’ve had a lot of income ups and downs in my career, falling in and out of the top income quintile, but my commitment to the education of my children has never wavered. I am currently engaged in what seems to be never-ending, low-conflict warfare with my youngest son to up his game at school. It takes a commitment of time on the parents’ part, and it takes a lot of effort (more for some children than others) to inculcate the habits and values of success. Some parents don’t bother, some do.

          What I resent about the “artifacts of privilege” idea is that it implies that success is something that just falls in your lap if you’re raised in an affluent family. The underlying assumption is that it’s the income that makes the difference. I would argue that it’s the values that make the difference — the right set of values and attitudes lead to upward social mobility and higher incomes. I can assure you, there are plenty of kids born with silver spoons in their mouths who make a mess of their lives.

          1. larryg Avatar
            larryg

            I’ll admit there is a difference between the Asian culture and other cultures (beyond just blacks) with respect to education.

            but children who are 6-7 years old should not be doomed to a life of not being able to grasp opportunities because their parents were remiss either in capability to help or motivation to help.

            we harm ourselves. we harm our own kids when we abandon these kids because your kid is going to grow up to end up paying for those kids entitlements, crime and incarceration.

            it bothers us because some parents do the right thing and others do not and in helping their kids, we are somehow rewarding bad/wrong/unproductive cultural behaviors.

            This country was among the first in the world that the under-privileged an un-educated banded together to create public schools for the non-wealthy.

            this is not about the parents who are not doing the right thing.

            this is about children who will grow up to be adults and deserve the opportunity to grow up to be productive and contributing adults and not wards of the state.

          2. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
            LifeOnTheFallLine

            Why is it every time this comes up the bleeding heart conservatives come out with feel good talk about “values?”

            Whatever the reasons that the children of higher SES get better results from schools, the fact is they’re there and they need to be controlled for if you want to compare how good individual schools are at educating children. If some schools do a better job at educating children from lower SES then we need to look at what they’re doing and see if it can scale up. If we can scale it up, will the resultant benefits be worth the cost of that scaling? Shyamalan lays out a pretty simple five point method (fire the worst teachers, turn principals into curriculum managers instead of building managers, collect and analyze as much data as possible, get them into smaller, more closely located schools and extend the school day and year) and in his book makes a decently convincing case that the ROI would be worth it (we’re both in the Richmond area, I’d be more than willing to lend you my copy).

            What I resent is people like you talking about values and priorities and then acting like dropping in and out of the top quintile is the same thing as being stuck in the bottom quintile. Did you ever have to choose between getting your son school supplies or getting him food? Did he ever go to school in Army surplus supplies and have to endure the peer alienation that comes with that? Did his middle school gym have termites in the floor and cockroaches in the projectors?

            Since we’re trading personal anecdotes, I have one. I was failing miserably in around the fourth grade and the school was content to let me fail. Instead my mom – who has a masters in education – asked them to test my IQ to see if I had some sort of learning disability. It turned out my IQ was north of 140 and I ended up in the gifted program.

            Now, according to DJRippert I had that IQ because my mom and dad were both intelligent (even though dad was a high school dropout), but imagine that I had a mom who didn’t know the system, who didn’t know what tests to ask for. I would have ended up continuing to founder in regular classes, or worse ended up in special education classes. My mother’s status benefited me way more than any values or priorities.

            You are right about this, though:
            “I can assure you, there are plenty of kids born with silver spoons in their mouths who make a mess of their lives.”

            Some of them even get to be president.

  3. Lift Avatar
    Lift

    Wow, that Clay Shirky piece is an excellent distillation of how American higher ed got where it is now, and why it won’t work. Caused me to look him up, and found “The Shirky Principle: institutions will try to preserve the problems to which they are the solution.” Good stuff. Thanks for picking up on it.

  4. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    Personally, I never spent a minute in a private school. The Fairfax County High School I attended (Groveton) was the worst academic high school in the county when I went there. It subsequently merged with Fort Hunt becoming West Potomac and improved its academic standing somewhat through that merger. Plenty of my classmates lived in the sprawling trailer parks that still run along Rt 1 south of Alexandria. I slept on my divorced dad’s couch in his one bedroom apartment at Hunting Tower. I didn’t have to go to my school’s media room to find cockroaches, there were plenty at home.

    I sent my oldest son through the Fairfax County public school system and was disappointed with the results. I never felt the public school system pushed him to reach his potential. Fortunately, he was pushed to his potential in college, graduated with good grades and a great degree and now has an excellent job. I put my other four sons into private school and have been much happier with the results.

    So, for me, the debate about public and private schools is much more than an academic exercise or a longitudinal study.

    Aggregating all public and private schools from all over into one big ball of data seems almost simple-minded, especially to a parent like me who actually has to make decisions about my children’s education.

    Remembering that I am a graduate of the Fairfax County School System, let me state for a fact that the best private schools in the Washington, DC do a better job of educating children than the best public schools in the area. How anybody would “adjust” for the children of wealthy parents who go to Langley High School from the children of wealthy parents who go to The Potomac School is an absolute mystery to me. Personally, I don’t think any adjustment is possible or warranted. Is the child of a billionaire really better off than the child of a centi-millionaire?

    I also struggle with the analysis lower on the economic ladder. Poor kids don’t generally go to private schools because … they are poor. Their parents can’t afford the tuition. My Dad certainly couldn’t have afforded to send me to private school.

    So, how do you do this equalization? You’re telling me that if I take one of the kids from Anacostia High School in DC with advanced proficiency in reading and math (about 1.5% of the students would qualify) they wouldn’t learn any more if I moved them across the river to The Potomac School?

    No doubt the answer would be, “No. The study compared averages. Average public school to average private school.”. Therein lies the problem. With public schools you get average. I went to the worst academic high school in Fairfax County because I lived in that district. If my Dad could have afforded to send me to private school I would have picked a good one. I wouldn’t have gone to the worst available private school. Eventually, the worst available private school would attract too few students to stay in business. But the worst public school would still get its mandatory measure of kids forced to attend that school because they happen to live in that district.

    1. LifeOnTheFallLine Avatar
      LifeOnTheFallLine

      “especially to a parent like me who actually has to make decisions about my children’s education.”

      That’s great, and if I was talking about individual choice instead of policy geared towards moving public dollars around I swear to you I would care. Until then, you can leave your ratings over at GreatSchools.

      And, of course, you don’t need to make in-band adjustments to compare the children of the ridiculously wealthy against the children of the opulently wealthy since they have access to the tools and recourse to help ferry their children through their academic careers. Larry’s original question was about what we do for at-risk kids, and that’s when you need to make adjustments to see what is working and what isn’t. To see if it’s really worth it – from a policy perspective – to throw money into school vouchers that will go to private schools under the assumption they’re actually better. If they aren’t, then we shouldn’t do that.

      “If my Dad could have afforded to send me to private school I would have picked a good one. I wouldn’t have gone to the worst available private school.”

      How do you know this? What if he could only afford the worst available private school? What if you were lied to by the school before you signed up? How would you, as a child, have made the assessment on what made it better than the others?

      “Eventually, the worst available private school would attract too few students to stay in business.”

      Yeah, I see all the doors of those schools teaching kids the Earth is younger than the oldest tree that sits atop it swinging shut for good all the time. It also assumes that, socially, we don’t attach such a high sign value to private schools that people would send their children to them just because they are private schools. You’ve already shown this bias with the blanket statement “With public schools you get average.” Because I guess the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology doesn’t exist.

  5. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    “Now, according to DJRippert I had that IQ because my mom and dad were both intelligent (even though dad was a high school dropout) …”

    Not according to me. According the largest study ever conducted of children’s intelligence performed by The University of Queensland. And the hereditary percentage was 40%.

    My Grandfather was a high school drop out. Kentucky coal miner. WWI Army combat vet. Moved to Detroit in the 1920s and started his own company doing art for car company advertising. Maybe the smartest guy I ever met. Glad to have some of his DNA in me.

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