"Inclusiveness is a good goal, but the conceptual anchor needs to be high-quality public services that most people want to use — then you can include people in that."
I like this phrasing. Inclusiveness is good, but if the underlying system (be it an education system or otherwise) is objectively bad, people won't want to be included in it.
University of Chicago is a special sort of place. The profs I know say that although you would think that the early classes would attract the motivated students, they actually attract the disorganized, less-motivated, or those with a lot on their plate. Because by the time those sorts of students get around to registering, all that is left is the early morning classes.
It's been 50 years of trying to fix public schools. While doubling per people spending after a conference later.You've had your chance it's time for school choice
Note I might change my opinion if you all actually implemented rolling friar's system
Great piece. My wife is a very experienced teacher who is retired but still volunteers and tutors a lot in an elementary school in FL. This is not a good school. Her reports from the front line are alarming and depressing. I agree with your position on ESA's and their impact. But I think you fail to mention another bad impact that may be the most troubling, at least to me. Specifically, they create great incentives for "educational entrepreneurs" to start new private schools that will, in fact, only charge the amount of the ESA benefit. These new schools will suck because there is no way that the ESA benefit will cover the cost of a quality education and a quality facility. But, the administrators will claim that they offer safety and quality (and other benefits) and parents will try them out for these reasons, and because their child's current school is obviously terrible, so why not? This whole dynamic seems particularly sinister and depressing because well-meaning parents will end up dooming their kids to mediocrity (at best) without realizing it, while, at the same time, the entrepreneur grifters get wealthy and rich, upper middle class parents get a nice subsidy to help them pay for the truly good private schools that they send their kids to.
Maybe I either haven’t been paying very close attention, or perhaps I’ve just badly misinterpreted what Freddie de Boer writes about education (both live possibilities), but I don’t think it’s fair to summarize his position as “schools don’t really matter.”
I think he makes a good case that overall increases in the quality of education are important and good on their own merits. Just that this is not sufficient to address or close achievement gaps.
I see scads of teachers complaining that they now exclusively teach to maximize scores on standardized grade-level tests. How does this fit into the current debate? Are these average public schools in average public districts?
Here’s the basic problem with relying on the engagement of higher resource parents to improve education for lower SES kids: you want the middle class to bring resources, but you pitch an absolute fit when they bring culture or policy. See for example “Nice White Parents.”
If all you want is more money for low SES programs, there’s no need to get bogged down in messing with the actual classroom operations for middle class kids. Just tweak taxes. But if you want to tap into the tacit, grassroots capabilities of middle class communities to make education work, you have to understand that what you are asking for is basically benevolent colonialism. If this is even possible, it’s going to have some colonial features. You can’t at the same time demand that we re-socialize your kids to be better students while also treating their existing culture and behaviors around school as sacrosanct.
My wife taught in Milwaukee Public Schools for 6 years. I cannot stress enough the impact that student behavior and safety (as in the old fashioned "physical safety" sense) have on the classroom. Disruptive kids can really derail a learning. My wife was better than most teachers at spending time with these kids and winning them over, but of course there are limits to this. For some of these kids, it's just near impossible to break through. They just don't give a sh*t and want to sew chaos. In the event that a student was being too disruptive and she had to send them to the office as a last resort, they would be back like 15 minutes later and just disrupt again. It was nuts. Don't get me wrong, these kids deserve a good education too but like, how do you solve that? She was able to win those kids over like 95% of the time because she cared and wasn't just collecting a paycheck but that 5% cost her and her other students A LOT of grief.
She taught at Milwaukee Hamilton on the south side before moving to Ronald Reagan which is a public charter (still administered through MPS). For context, Reagan also serves the south side which is a mix of working class and low income students. It was essentially a night and day difference. Behavior problems still existed but they were usually less violent and nothing that she couldn't mitigate. In the extremely rare event that she had to remove a student, administration took it seriously and the kid was out of class for the remainder of the period. Their parents were called and usually furious at their kid and the kid would usually be much less disruptive after their parents blew up at them.
This is very unscientific and rudimentary but I honestly think school is just very uncool to certain segments of the population. They don't see the value in it and their parents are disengaged or entirely absent. That cultural issue is maybe impossible to efficiently solve but I think would reap enormous benefits. There absolutely are unhelpful teacher unions and bad teachers, too much focus on DEI, etc. I don't contest any of that. My point is that there is a big cultural component that you are often immediately shushed for bringing up by the DEI crowd. If you find a way to start ameliorating that, I think it makes the other reform efforts easier.
It’s terribly simple. School need to have the right to suspend and if need be permanently expel disruptive students. That small minority possibly needs to be in special institutions, at least for a while. It’s doubtful if they will be served worse by it and the 95-99% who are able and willing to learn will certainly benefit enormously. Current orthodoxy borders on being an attack on the urban poor (not unlike pro crime policies).
Really a great point. I am fully aware that a lot of these maximally disruptive kids have lots of issues and don’t really know any better. It’s definitely a tragedy. Nevertheless, at what cost to other students and their teachers do we keep these kids in the classroom? You can’t teach while a disruptive student is loudly accosting other students, yelling threats, and moving around the classroom constantly. It’s just absurd and really unfair to the kids that are doing what they are supposed to. I’m glad Yglesias wrote this piece because I’ve always thought the behavioral/discipline issue in education is under discussed. My suspicion is that pro-reform people typically evade this topic because it could be spun as victim blaming. The victims are the other students and teachers that have to put up with these disruptive kids. Teachers should absolutely try to engage these students and try to get them to come around but there are limits to that. Acknowledging that doesn’t make you a bad teacher in the thrall of the union!
Incidentally, Lean on Me starring Morgan Freeman is kind of a crappy movie, but it's really interesting that the first thing his character does in the movie after becoming principal is put all the troublemakers on stage at the school auditorium and summarily expel all of them. This was seen as a very progressive film circa 1989! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SbkHgx6YIo
The state took over the school the year after Clark exited the job (to run a juvenile detention center) because their academic performance remained abysmal and the dropout rate doubled. While behavioral issues matter, if schools don’t have a plan for what to do afterward for the kids who stay and a plan for what to do with the kids you expel, what difference are your really making?
I'd say it was kind of viewed as progressive. I remember a lot of criticism even when it came out. Here's the conclusion of Roger Ebert's contemporary 2.5 star review: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/lean-on-me-1989
"Lean on Me" has been widely sneak-previewed, as part of the studio's marketing strategy, and I've talked with a lot of the people who have seen it. They all admit they're bothered by Clark's personality. But some argue that (a) Clark really exists, so this is a "true" story; (b) out-of-control high schools like Eastside need a strong administrator to whip them into shape, and (c) besides, Hollywood makes so few films like this that it's a duty to support them, no matter what we really think.
I've already replied to the first argument. The third is beneath contempt. But is it true that tough schools need mad-dog teachers? One of the sneaky, uneasy feelings I got while watching "Lean on Me" is that the movie makes a subtle appeal to those who are afraid of unruly, loud, violent black teenagers. As Clark takes a baseball bat and begins to whip them into shape (at one point even physically fighting a student), the audience is cheered, not because education is being served, but because Clark is a combination of Dirty Harry and Billy Jack, enforcing the law on his own terms.
A couple of years ago I gave a good review to "The Principal," a film starring James Belushi as a tough high school principal who took a baseball bat to the drug dealers. Why did I like that movie more than "Lean on Me?" Both movies are well-made and well-acted, but "The Principal" is more honest about its real intentions. It's an action drama, depending on violence, comedy and a showdown to get its job done. "Lean on Me" wants to be taken as a serious, even noble film about an admirable man. And yet it never honestly looks at Clark for what he really is: a grownup example of the very troublemakers he hates so much, still unable even in adulthood to doubt his right to do what he wants, when he wants, as he wants. How can he teach, when he's unteachable? His values have little to do with learning how to learn.
I hear you on most of this. I’ll just say that my wife is going for Ed. D and she’s not like that. Probably because she actually dealt with monster kids!
I sometimes wonder how The Wire season 3 would be received if it came out today. David Simon's present-day online persona is as an uncompromising progressive, but that wasn't exactly the perspective reflected in his show, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Q30scoG38
(I have seen some online lefties trash The Wire as "copaganda" so it's not like he's avoided retrospective discourse altogether.)
I think you're on to something here, and I also think that this is a manifestation of the conflict between "thinkers" and "doers" that has likely existed as long as humanity has, but is probably more salient today with the current education polarization at play. I can definitely see plenty of students and their parents, in some cases rightly, not seeing much advantageous value to pressing on with continued formal education, and to get cracking on some other path that might be more productive for them. I'm supportive of getting the people on the paths best for them, even if they may be different.
You are absolutely right. And here in Arizona we have open-ESAs, so the public schools can be captured by DEI groupthink and other interest groups who don't want to be serious about school discipline and safety with disruptive students. They can do that, but the result will be a mad dash for the door to charters and privates by high-SES households and motivated parents. It is already happening here. Public Schools need to wake up or else they will become a babysitter camp with a tax levy.
“When people say Princeton is a good college, they don’t mean Princeton students demonstrate large learning gains based on a value-added model. And they don’t mean that randomized controlled trials show that kids who attend Princeton do better in life than identical students who don’t attend Princeton. Princeton being a good college means that Princeton’s incoming first-year students have high SAT scores and perform well on other academic measures.”
No. They recognize Princeton as a famous school they have heard off. They also likely genuflect at the idea of the Ivy League.
The more sophisticated or cynical or simply privileged know that the Princeton name on a graduate’s degree is worth much more than one from most schools. And that students at Princeton will meet wealthy and connected people.
Finally, they recognize it will have impressive amenities (“classy!”) that, say, nearby Rutgers doesn’t.
Most people aren’t very intelligent, well intentioned graduates of elite prepschools and Harvard who now take pride in sending their own kid to a public school. I don’t mean to be snarky, but there is a level of naivety here that may prove to be a hindrance to greater understanding, The parents driving these discussions tend to be much more ambitious and perhaps even amoral at times in seeking what’s best for their kids than is acknowledged.
Just as a point of order- ivies don’t necessarily have better physical amenities compared to schools one or two tiers below them. If anything they can afford to spend less on dorms and sports stadiums etc
I went to Columbia (just grad school), but have family in NJ near Princeton. Despite its social justice aspirations, Princeton still seems pretty stereotypically F Scott Fitzgerald meets ‘Brideshead Revisited’ meets PGA golf tour country club somewhere in the south. Perhaps I’m mistaken or swayed by the prejudice of family.
1. How recent is your information? Princeton has undergone a kind of cultural revolution circa 2020 2. What you're saying doesn't actually contradict what I'm saying. Princeton always had a dubious reputation as being that nastier, waspier, sibling of Harvard and Yale. Now it is the woker sibling, but that does NOT actually entail necessarily a demographic shift. After all some of the nastier wokesters ARE super rich, mostly white (and of that mostly Waspish) private prep school types.
Btw, no personal offense to Princeton alums out here, some of my best friends etc. ;)
Sorry. I should have made it clearer, I was addressing the question of amenities, architecture & ambiance.
I am aware of their beyond-parody antiracism petition of a year or two ago.
That said, I don’t think the lurch into social justice alters my initial point. Namely, the appeal of Princeton — contrary to the quote I’m addressing — isn’t the SAT scores of their incoming class. Of course it isn’t. Rather Princeton is a coveted brand, one that inspires awe in many immigrant and ambitious middle class families. This despite its literally racist admissions policies, policies that adversely affect many of those families.
The competition to get into select highschools and colleges is fierce. NYC and SF are mired in controversies about select schools, admissions and racial representation.
The fact that this is the background in which public schools like the one M.Y. describes in Denver enact dangerous and appalling practices is very relevant. It’s also relevant to understanding racial politics in America, dangers the Democratic Party faces in the years ahead, “school choice” and where we’re going to find ourselves if the Supreme Court ends Affirmative Action.
I agree with much here, but still think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. Brands are coveted because they stand for something. In the case of Princeton the brand may partially stand for elite connections, sure, but ultimately it’s a *college* brand and what it stands for is the academic rigor, based on the intellectual quality of the professors and the students. If you lose that the brand will lose its luster sooner or later. Without academic freedom your intellectual project basically goes down the drain. Professors will be the first to be disillusioned. Grad students will follow. Eventually the undergrads will catch up. Princeton’s brand, and no less importantly, immense wealth, give them serious cushions. Rome wasn’t burnt in a day. So they can afford to be stupid, for a while. But if they persist they will eventually ruin their brand. The process has already started. At the moment it’s easily reversible, but that won’t be the case forever.
"And an Arizona-style ESA system drains a modest amount of money out of traditional public schools and cuts checks to a group of people who are mostly rich and mostly religious."
Matt has this mostly correct. I live in Phoenix. Right now it's not draining a lot of money from public schools because the existing private school students taking the ESA weren't enrolled in public school, so the state aid allocation wasn't going to the public school in the first place. It's basically a large expense to the state that is outpacing what was budgeted (the Republican Legislature oddly has no problem with this cost over-run). However, now that the ESA program is open to anyone, the ESA is becoming much more popular with families all over the political spectrum (who are not part of the private school system) and it's going to grow and the cost to public schools is going to be a lot more than a modest amount of money. In fact, I think it will lead to a point that the public school system will be completely hobbled. Layoffs, school closures, bankruptcies, defaulting on bonds/debt. This is going to be a mess and high SES households will be sprinting away from the wreckage. The only thing that could slow down the damage is the limited capacity of seats in private schools and how much they grow their tuition costs knowing that families have the ESA$. The public school system in Arizona has just been lowered a foot or two in the six foot grave.
It won't because the ESA$ for existing public school students is backpack funding, so eventually the ESA program won't be budgetary burden for the state, but rather the financial burden will land on public schools with declining enrollments. They will increase levies and ask the state for more $$$ and probably not get anywhere.
College is a great analogy: we already know that private universities are too expensive, but why is that? Because subsidies go to public universities rather than follow the college student. This makes it impossible for private schools to compete on price, so they have to compete on quality.
Same thing for K-12 schools: funding schools rather than students destroys the market for good, affordable private schools because in terms of affordability alone you can’t beat free and crappy. In contrast, backpack funding that follows the student allows private schools to provide a better product at the same price. So you see, the analogy holds but the implication is that college would be more affordable if the funds also followed the student.
Religious education can survive parents having to give up all government funds because as a business model it’s great: religious indoctrination is free to the school to provide on top of normal schooling! But if you want a higher quality secular education you’ll have to stop using public subsidies to destroy the market for it.
The majority of religious schools aren't doing anything like indoctrination. If a biweekly class on Catholicism was good at indoctrinating there'd be an increasing number of devoted, practicing Catholics.
Like I said, it’s low cost to the school to add a religious flavor that some parents value highly. Indoctrination does not mean that the students all believe what they’re told, that would be way more expensive!
I think it's important to observe here that allowing students prone to violent behavior to be in school without accountability or restrictions is not just bad for middle class students. Those families can usually leave or send their children elsewhere. The children without those options are stuck in a environment with high levels of violence. I have seen this dynamic play out at my school.
I love the series overall, but you really missed the main reason why conservatives are doing this _now_. It's an anti woke measure. Possibly the only really effective one conservatives have come up with.
Public education can't survive being coded as intensely left wing.
Part of me kind of hopes that Lyman Stone reads this and goes on one of his classic lengthy Twitter threads, as he is stridently in support of school choice and I think he'd have lots of disagreement with Matt on this that would at least be entertaining.
"Inclusiveness is a good goal, but the conceptual anchor needs to be high-quality public services that most people want to use — then you can include people in that."
I like this phrasing. Inclusiveness is good, but if the underlying system (be it an education system or otherwise) is objectively bad, people won't want to be included in it.
University of Chicago is a special sort of place. The profs I know say that although you would think that the early classes would attract the motivated students, they actually attract the disorganized, less-motivated, or those with a lot on their plate. Because by the time those sorts of students get around to registering, all that is left is the early morning classes.
It's been 50 years of trying to fix public schools. While doubling per people spending after a conference later.You've had your chance it's time for school choice
Note I might change my opinion if you all actually implemented rolling friar's system
https://www.econtalk.org/roland-fryer-on-educational-reform/
Great piece. My wife is a very experienced teacher who is retired but still volunteers and tutors a lot in an elementary school in FL. This is not a good school. Her reports from the front line are alarming and depressing. I agree with your position on ESA's and their impact. But I think you fail to mention another bad impact that may be the most troubling, at least to me. Specifically, they create great incentives for "educational entrepreneurs" to start new private schools that will, in fact, only charge the amount of the ESA benefit. These new schools will suck because there is no way that the ESA benefit will cover the cost of a quality education and a quality facility. But, the administrators will claim that they offer safety and quality (and other benefits) and parents will try them out for these reasons, and because their child's current school is obviously terrible, so why not? This whole dynamic seems particularly sinister and depressing because well-meaning parents will end up dooming their kids to mediocrity (at best) without realizing it, while, at the same time, the entrepreneur grifters get wealthy and rich, upper middle class parents get a nice subsidy to help them pay for the truly good private schools that they send their kids to.
K-12 nationally is too large and decentralized a system for significant reform. I prefer a slower, more boring approach.
I think Matt is saying that the consumer choice model of education doesn’t work because some parents don’t give a crap.
Feel bad for kids with bad parents but do you help them by constraining the good parents?
Maybe I either haven’t been paying very close attention, or perhaps I’ve just badly misinterpreted what Freddie de Boer writes about education (both live possibilities), but I don’t think it’s fair to summarize his position as “schools don’t really matter.”
I think he makes a good case that overall increases in the quality of education are important and good on their own merits. Just that this is not sufficient to address or close achievement gaps.
I see scads of teachers complaining that they now exclusively teach to maximize scores on standardized grade-level tests. How does this fit into the current debate? Are these average public schools in average public districts?
Here’s the basic problem with relying on the engagement of higher resource parents to improve education for lower SES kids: you want the middle class to bring resources, but you pitch an absolute fit when they bring culture or policy. See for example “Nice White Parents.”
If all you want is more money for low SES programs, there’s no need to get bogged down in messing with the actual classroom operations for middle class kids. Just tweak taxes. But if you want to tap into the tacit, grassroots capabilities of middle class communities to make education work, you have to understand that what you are asking for is basically benevolent colonialism. If this is even possible, it’s going to have some colonial features. You can’t at the same time demand that we re-socialize your kids to be better students while also treating their existing culture and behaviors around school as sacrosanct.
The original Serial was also pretty bad when you dig into it.
My wife taught in Milwaukee Public Schools for 6 years. I cannot stress enough the impact that student behavior and safety (as in the old fashioned "physical safety" sense) have on the classroom. Disruptive kids can really derail a learning. My wife was better than most teachers at spending time with these kids and winning them over, but of course there are limits to this. For some of these kids, it's just near impossible to break through. They just don't give a sh*t and want to sew chaos. In the event that a student was being too disruptive and she had to send them to the office as a last resort, they would be back like 15 minutes later and just disrupt again. It was nuts. Don't get me wrong, these kids deserve a good education too but like, how do you solve that? She was able to win those kids over like 95% of the time because she cared and wasn't just collecting a paycheck but that 5% cost her and her other students A LOT of grief.
She taught at Milwaukee Hamilton on the south side before moving to Ronald Reagan which is a public charter (still administered through MPS). For context, Reagan also serves the south side which is a mix of working class and low income students. It was essentially a night and day difference. Behavior problems still existed but they were usually less violent and nothing that she couldn't mitigate. In the extremely rare event that she had to remove a student, administration took it seriously and the kid was out of class for the remainder of the period. Their parents were called and usually furious at their kid and the kid would usually be much less disruptive after their parents blew up at them.
This is very unscientific and rudimentary but I honestly think school is just very uncool to certain segments of the population. They don't see the value in it and their parents are disengaged or entirely absent. That cultural issue is maybe impossible to efficiently solve but I think would reap enormous benefits. There absolutely are unhelpful teacher unions and bad teachers, too much focus on DEI, etc. I don't contest any of that. My point is that there is a big cultural component that you are often immediately shushed for bringing up by the DEI crowd. If you find a way to start ameliorating that, I think it makes the other reform efforts easier.
Anyways, let me know what you guys think!
It’s terribly simple. School need to have the right to suspend and if need be permanently expel disruptive students. That small minority possibly needs to be in special institutions, at least for a while. It’s doubtful if they will be served worse by it and the 95-99% who are able and willing to learn will certainly benefit enormously. Current orthodoxy borders on being an attack on the urban poor (not unlike pro crime policies).
Really a great point. I am fully aware that a lot of these maximally disruptive kids have lots of issues and don’t really know any better. It’s definitely a tragedy. Nevertheless, at what cost to other students and their teachers do we keep these kids in the classroom? You can’t teach while a disruptive student is loudly accosting other students, yelling threats, and moving around the classroom constantly. It’s just absurd and really unfair to the kids that are doing what they are supposed to. I’m glad Yglesias wrote this piece because I’ve always thought the behavioral/discipline issue in education is under discussed. My suspicion is that pro-reform people typically evade this topic because it could be spun as victim blaming. The victims are the other students and teachers that have to put up with these disruptive kids. Teachers should absolutely try to engage these students and try to get them to come around but there are limits to that. Acknowledging that doesn’t make you a bad teacher in the thrall of the union!
Incidentally, Lean on Me starring Morgan Freeman is kind of a crappy movie, but it's really interesting that the first thing his character does in the movie after becoming principal is put all the troublemakers on stage at the school auditorium and summarily expel all of them. This was seen as a very progressive film circa 1989! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SbkHgx6YIo
The state took over the school the year after Clark exited the job (to run a juvenile detention center) because their academic performance remained abysmal and the dropout rate doubled. While behavioral issues matter, if schools don’t have a plan for what to do afterward for the kids who stay and a plan for what to do with the kids you expel, what difference are your really making?
In case it wasn't clear, my comment was specifically about the highly dramatized film, not the real-life events it was based on.
I'd say it was kind of viewed as progressive. I remember a lot of criticism even when it came out. Here's the conclusion of Roger Ebert's contemporary 2.5 star review: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/lean-on-me-1989
"Lean on Me" has been widely sneak-previewed, as part of the studio's marketing strategy, and I've talked with a lot of the people who have seen it. They all admit they're bothered by Clark's personality. But some argue that (a) Clark really exists, so this is a "true" story; (b) out-of-control high schools like Eastside need a strong administrator to whip them into shape, and (c) besides, Hollywood makes so few films like this that it's a duty to support them, no matter what we really think.
I've already replied to the first argument. The third is beneath contempt. But is it true that tough schools need mad-dog teachers? One of the sneaky, uneasy feelings I got while watching "Lean on Me" is that the movie makes a subtle appeal to those who are afraid of unruly, loud, violent black teenagers. As Clark takes a baseball bat and begins to whip them into shape (at one point even physically fighting a student), the audience is cheered, not because education is being served, but because Clark is a combination of Dirty Harry and Billy Jack, enforcing the law on his own terms.
A couple of years ago I gave a good review to "The Principal," a film starring James Belushi as a tough high school principal who took a baseball bat to the drug dealers. Why did I like that movie more than "Lean on Me?" Both movies are well-made and well-acted, but "The Principal" is more honest about its real intentions. It's an action drama, depending on violence, comedy and a showdown to get its job done. "Lean on Me" wants to be taken as a serious, even noble film about an admirable man. And yet it never honestly looks at Clark for what he really is: a grownup example of the very troublemakers he hates so much, still unable even in adulthood to doubt his right to do what he wants, when he wants, as he wants. How can he teach, when he's unteachable? His values have little to do with learning how to learn.
Man, I've got to check out that Belushi movie.
I hear you on most of this. I’ll just say that my wife is going for Ed. D and she’s not like that. Probably because she actually dealt with monster kids!
I sometimes wonder how The Wire season 3 would be received if it came out today. David Simon's present-day online persona is as an uncompromising progressive, but that wasn't exactly the perspective reflected in his show, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_Q30scoG38
(I have seen some online lefties trash The Wire as "copaganda" so it's not like he's avoided retrospective discourse altogether.)
I think you're on to something here, and I also think that this is a manifestation of the conflict between "thinkers" and "doers" that has likely existed as long as humanity has, but is probably more salient today with the current education polarization at play. I can definitely see plenty of students and their parents, in some cases rightly, not seeing much advantageous value to pressing on with continued formal education, and to get cracking on some other path that might be more productive for them. I'm supportive of getting the people on the paths best for them, even if they may be different.
You are absolutely right. And here in Arizona we have open-ESAs, so the public schools can be captured by DEI groupthink and other interest groups who don't want to be serious about school discipline and safety with disruptive students. They can do that, but the result will be a mad dash for the door to charters and privates by high-SES households and motivated parents. It is already happening here. Public Schools need to wake up or else they will become a babysitter camp with a tax levy.
“When people say Princeton is a good college, they don’t mean Princeton students demonstrate large learning gains based on a value-added model. And they don’t mean that randomized controlled trials show that kids who attend Princeton do better in life than identical students who don’t attend Princeton. Princeton being a good college means that Princeton’s incoming first-year students have high SAT scores and perform well on other academic measures.”
No. They recognize Princeton as a famous school they have heard off. They also likely genuflect at the idea of the Ivy League.
The more sophisticated or cynical or simply privileged know that the Princeton name on a graduate’s degree is worth much more than one from most schools. And that students at Princeton will meet wealthy and connected people.
Finally, they recognize it will have impressive amenities (“classy!”) that, say, nearby Rutgers doesn’t.
Most people aren’t very intelligent, well intentioned graduates of elite prepschools and Harvard who now take pride in sending their own kid to a public school. I don’t mean to be snarky, but there is a level of naivety here that may prove to be a hindrance to greater understanding, The parents driving these discussions tend to be much more ambitious and perhaps even amoral at times in seeking what’s best for their kids than is acknowledged.
Just as a point of order- ivies don’t necessarily have better physical amenities compared to schools one or two tiers below them. If anything they can afford to spend less on dorms and sports stadiums etc
I went to Columbia (just grad school), but have family in NJ near Princeton. Despite its social justice aspirations, Princeton still seems pretty stereotypically F Scott Fitzgerald meets ‘Brideshead Revisited’ meets PGA golf tour country club somewhere in the south. Perhaps I’m mistaken or swayed by the prejudice of family.
1. How recent is your information? Princeton has undergone a kind of cultural revolution circa 2020 2. What you're saying doesn't actually contradict what I'm saying. Princeton always had a dubious reputation as being that nastier, waspier, sibling of Harvard and Yale. Now it is the woker sibling, but that does NOT actually entail necessarily a demographic shift. After all some of the nastier wokesters ARE super rich, mostly white (and of that mostly Waspish) private prep school types.
Btw, no personal offense to Princeton alums out here, some of my best friends etc. ;)
Sorry. I should have made it clearer, I was addressing the question of amenities, architecture & ambiance.
I am aware of their beyond-parody antiracism petition of a year or two ago.
That said, I don’t think the lurch into social justice alters my initial point. Namely, the appeal of Princeton — contrary to the quote I’m addressing — isn’t the SAT scores of their incoming class. Of course it isn’t. Rather Princeton is a coveted brand, one that inspires awe in many immigrant and ambitious middle class families. This despite its literally racist admissions policies, policies that adversely affect many of those families.
The competition to get into select highschools and colleges is fierce. NYC and SF are mired in controversies about select schools, admissions and racial representation.
The fact that this is the background in which public schools like the one M.Y. describes in Denver enact dangerous and appalling practices is very relevant. It’s also relevant to understanding racial politics in America, dangers the Democratic Party faces in the years ahead, “school choice” and where we’re going to find ourselves if the Supreme Court ends Affirmative Action.
I agree with much here, but still think there is a fundamental misunderstanding here. Brands are coveted because they stand for something. In the case of Princeton the brand may partially stand for elite connections, sure, but ultimately it’s a *college* brand and what it stands for is the academic rigor, based on the intellectual quality of the professors and the students. If you lose that the brand will lose its luster sooner or later. Without academic freedom your intellectual project basically goes down the drain. Professors will be the first to be disillusioned. Grad students will follow. Eventually the undergrads will catch up. Princeton’s brand, and no less importantly, immense wealth, give them serious cushions. Rome wasn’t burnt in a day. So they can afford to be stupid, for a while. But if they persist they will eventually ruin their brand. The process has already started. At the moment it’s easily reversible, but that won’t be the case forever.
"And an Arizona-style ESA system drains a modest amount of money out of traditional public schools and cuts checks to a group of people who are mostly rich and mostly religious."
Matt has this mostly correct. I live in Phoenix. Right now it's not draining a lot of money from public schools because the existing private school students taking the ESA weren't enrolled in public school, so the state aid allocation wasn't going to the public school in the first place. It's basically a large expense to the state that is outpacing what was budgeted (the Republican Legislature oddly has no problem with this cost over-run). However, now that the ESA program is open to anyone, the ESA is becoming much more popular with families all over the political spectrum (who are not part of the private school system) and it's going to grow and the cost to public schools is going to be a lot more than a modest amount of money. In fact, I think it will lead to a point that the public school system will be completely hobbled. Layoffs, school closures, bankruptcies, defaulting on bonds/debt. This is going to be a mess and high SES households will be sprinting away from the wreckage. The only thing that could slow down the damage is the limited capacity of seats in private schools and how much they grow their tuition costs knowing that families have the ESA$. The public school system in Arizona has just been lowered a foot or two in the six foot grave.
It won't because the ESA$ for existing public school students is backpack funding, so eventually the ESA program won't be budgetary burden for the state, but rather the financial burden will land on public schools with declining enrollments. They will increase levies and ask the state for more $$$ and probably not get anywhere.
College is a great analogy: we already know that private universities are too expensive, but why is that? Because subsidies go to public universities rather than follow the college student. This makes it impossible for private schools to compete on price, so they have to compete on quality.
Same thing for K-12 schools: funding schools rather than students destroys the market for good, affordable private schools because in terms of affordability alone you can’t beat free and crappy. In contrast, backpack funding that follows the student allows private schools to provide a better product at the same price. So you see, the analogy holds but the implication is that college would be more affordable if the funds also followed the student.
Religious education can survive parents having to give up all government funds because as a business model it’s great: religious indoctrination is free to the school to provide on top of normal schooling! But if you want a higher quality secular education you’ll have to stop using public subsidies to destroy the market for it.
The majority of religious schools aren't doing anything like indoctrination. If a biweekly class on Catholicism was good at indoctrinating there'd be an increasing number of devoted, practicing Catholics.
If anything, attending Catholic school is why I’m not religious!
Like I said, it’s low cost to the school to add a religious flavor that some parents value highly. Indoctrination does not mean that the students all believe what they’re told, that would be way more expensive!
I think it's important to observe here that allowing students prone to violent behavior to be in school without accountability or restrictions is not just bad for middle class students. Those families can usually leave or send their children elsewhere. The children without those options are stuck in a environment with high levels of violence. I have seen this dynamic play out at my school.
I love the series overall, but you really missed the main reason why conservatives are doing this _now_. It's an anti woke measure. Possibly the only really effective one conservatives have come up with.
Public education can't survive being coded as intensely left wing.
Part of me kind of hopes that Lyman Stone reads this and goes on one of his classic lengthy Twitter threads, as he is stridently in support of school choice and I think he'd have lots of disagreement with Matt on this that would at least be entertaining.