Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

online.wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 147 posts

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#71

Post by pyre »

guard-of-terra wrote: post #34
LoveLinux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that in America is that allowing entrance to schools based entirely on tests scores results in large numbers of Asians and whites and very few black and Hispanics and you end up with this racial discrimination mess.

The solution is that you perhaps should be making bad schools less bad, instead of making the awesome schools more shiny and then digging moats around those.

Therein lies the problem. How? In general, bad schools suffer from a lack of funding and the political will to do something about it.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#72

Post by lurker19 »

burgerbrain wrote: post #49
LoveLinux wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with that in America is that allowing entrance to schools based entirely on tests scores results in large numbers of Asians and whites and very few black and Hispanics and you end up with this racial discrimination mess.

Efforts must be made to eliminate systematic biases in standardized testing. When we are reasonably convinced that has been done, as far as I'm concerned it's all just how the cookie crumbles. Make sure that you're acceptance policies are merit based, and damn the consequences.

Merit-based access to education is an extremely debatabe proposition. Should a quality education be limited only to the already brilliant? Is it a better outcome to make a high-potential kid very well educated or a medium-potential kid basically educated? Remember that both become voters in a democracy.

West Wing had a nice conversation about this with regard to Affirmative Action beteen the black intern and the conservativx supreme court justice.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#73

Post by JupiterJazz »

theoj wrote: post #70
JupiterJazz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be in the interest of private schools to hoard their products from me? I only make $18000 (about half the median wage) and food companies don't price me out of the market. Car companies don't either. Given that nearly every human being is in demand of an affordable education it makes no sense for companies to not accept low income students. The only reason private schools are expensive now is because the…

>> Food companies don't price me out of the market. Car companies don't either. Do you think that you get good nutritious food by paying bottom dollar? You think those nitrates and high fructose sugar and other junk are really good for your health? You think that a low cost diet that lacks "expensive" fruits and vegetables has no impact on your health? The problem with a cheaper second tier education is that it perpe…

There is only so high in quality a product can get. How much better is a $1,000,000 car vs a $1,000 car? They both get you from A to B. Sure one might be a little faster but in terms of function they both perform at roughly the same base. One is for smart consumers and one is for rich people to show off.

Keeping the government monopoly in place only serves the interests of the employees and unions of the public schools and no one else. Certainly not the students.

"Thinking that the market is a solution to everything is a popular fallacy nowadays."

Yeah because it works.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#74

Post by lurker19 »

toyg wrote: post #68
JupiterJazz wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be in the interest of private schools to hoard their products from me? I only make $18000 (about half the median wage) and food companies don't price me out of the market. Car companies don't either. Given that nearly every human being is in demand of an affordable education it makes no sense for companies to not accept low income students. The only reason private schools are expensive now is because the…

your analogy is apt: in your opinion, a poor person will never be able to afford a Ferrari or a Porsche, so they shouldn't be able to afford top-class education either. Ferrari will never be interested in "competing for the low income section of the market"; they'll happily keep making exclusive and expensive cars, reserved to top dogs, popes and the like. The "voucher" sort of scheme will inevitably result in the St…

One major problem with vouchers is that they are susceptible to fraud. Current voucher and charter schools are not posting greater successes than public schools. Government services are at risk for innefficiency due to non-incentives, but government-funded private services are at similar risk due to perverse incentives.

For example, higher education IS currently on a loan-integrated voucher system, and it is common knowledge that private colleges are a money pit these days.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#75

Post by maxxxxx »

lhnn wrote: post #61
potatolicious wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you seriously proposing we go back to pre-public schooling society - you know, the one where the vast major of the population was completely uneducated since education was strictly reserved for the wealthy? Laissez-faire brings out some admirable qualities in people, but it is also an extremely unequal system with many detrimental effects on society (including the rich). There's a historical reason why we invente…

Now that we have things like affluence, the 'primed pump' of an educated society, the NEED for an educated society, and finally, the Internet, I don't see why we need nearly the government involvement in education that we did 50-100 years ago.

You forget there are a lot of people who don't have the things you mention.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#76

Post by jxcole »

zeteo wrote: post #66

>Ms. Williams-Bolar last year used her father's address to enroll her two daughters in a better public school outside of their neighborhood. This is not civil disobedience, it's just plain old falsification of records. If she had falsified another crucial piece of information - say, income level on a scholarship application - would Ms. Williams-Bolar still get all of this "end justifies the means" sympathy?

Obviously not. The whole point of the article is that poor, intelligent children do not have any way to enroll in schools that would allow them to excel. Presumably if you lied on the income level on a scholarship application, you would have the funds to send your kid to a nice school but you wouldn't want to pay for it. Note that if you were very poor lying about your income on your scholarship application would not be necessary.

If you're still not convinced, let me ask you: Would you not lie about where you lived if it meant you could get a better life for your child? I am not sure you could be called a good parent if the answer to that question is no.

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#77

Post by lurker19 »

delinka wrote: post #64
jleyank wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If government is not involved in education "at all", then you have the situation that people pay $$ for schools and then have no say in how the money is spent. This would not go down well...

I suppose the Free Market would make sure that their 'customers' had input into how tuition money is spent. After all, if the government isn't involved and you're free (Free Market, remember) to move your student, then the school needs to cater to your expectations or lose tuition money.

Yeah so it turns out that the education consumer doesn't tend to spend the education dollar on quality education. Consider the current mess in privately-paid higher education.

Education is the vegetables on the dinner plate of life. I is a complicated long term investment to make good choices, but those choices have huge externalities. Parents make choices that affect their children (that is an externality) and those children grow up to affect society (another externality)

Re: The Latest Crime Wave: Sending Your Child to a Better School

#80

Post by Permit »

aik wrote: post #15

>> In case you needed further proof of the American education system's failings, especially in poor and minority communities, consider the latest crime to spread across the country: educational theft. I'm not sure if it is entirely fair to single out the education system here (once again), or at least batch it in with "yet another failing". I believe more is at fault here. Unless I'm mistaken, tax payers in a particu…

As a Canadian, I'm not entirely familiar with your education system. That being said, wouldn't schools receive funding based (at least in part) on the number of children enrolled at them?

I would have thought that would have made more sense than taking a percentage out of the incomes of the residents in a community and funneling that to the school.

The point I'm getting at is Ms. Williams-Bolar pays taxes. If schools receive funding based on enrollment, then her money essentially went to that school regardless.

Post reply on HN