"Schools to select pupils by lottery"

originaloog · June 19, 2007, 9:06am

I am a strong supporter of public schools and thus have an aversion toward public vouchers being used to finance private school enrollment.

HOWEVER, if all voucher students are selected using a lottery system I would be willing to bend with one additional proviso. No student could be prevented from entering the voucher lottery regardless of dissability, academic qualifiations or behavorial issuses. This would put the private voucher schools on equal footing with their public counterpart.

Now if a family wanted to guarantee enrollment of their student they would merely have to eschew the voucher. pay the full tuition and accept any enroll restrictions that the school wanted to use.

emeraldkity4 · June 19, 2007, 10:58am

ek4, I am stunned! You actually want the wealthy to buy BIGGER fancier more expensive houses, eat MORE caviar and filet mignon? Aren’t the wealthy spending enough on these things already?

Youre right NJres, I have a better idea.
Instead of making the top % spend the same percentage as everyone else on basics, I say, limit them to living on food stamps & food bank charity for a week every year- & no spending except on " necessities".

[The</a> over-the-top splurging is happening at a time when the income gap between the wealthy those making more than $350,000 and everyone else is the widest since the Depression era. And while the average U.S. worker’s income increased 4.6 percent in 2006, the wealthy have enjoyed double-digit gains.](<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003748716_luxuryspending15.html?syndication=rss]The”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2003748716_luxuryspending15.html?syndication=rss)

emeraldkity4 · June 19, 2007, 11:01am

that would be fine OOL except some public schools already restrict access by income and ability.
Part of the issue has been that wealthy districts and wealthy neighborhood schools have “better” teachers and more resources, and many schools as others have pointed out have qualifying testing to enroll students in public schools.
If you allow only “private” schools that do not have restrictions on enrollment to receive public money, then you must do the same for “public” schools.

For instance, we have a highly controversial public high school in Seattle, which nevertheless, doesn’t get much press, positive or negative.
It is in a building- that the district doesn’t own, even though we paid thousands to remodel and must rent. It doesn’t have a cafeteria, so can’t take FRL kids, no public transportation and although it is not a “neighborhood” school, assignment is by distance, so the fact that it is closest to high income housing isn’t irrelevant.They also have no special education services nor are they “accessible” so that limits students as well.

Laylah · June 19, 2007, 11:52am

I live in the UK and I went to a “good” state school - obviously there were no fees, but my parents paid a massive amount of money to move into the area to ensure my brother and I got places. There was no official selection, but you just had to look at the student body to know that our families were wealthy - otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to afford the hugely inflated house prices in the area.

Frankly, what the UK needs is as many students as possible to attend private schools. This will free up more resources for the state schools, and allow for smaller class sizes. I hope parents do get scared of the lottery and flee to private schools. It will mean smaller class sizes and more money spent per student on those who remain in the state system.

No, it’s not fair on parents who have paid massive amounts of money for houses in areas in good schools. But then, they could have spent that money on fees for private schools anyway.

emeraldkity4 · June 19, 2007, 12:15pm

the UK always confuses me- “public” schools are where the elite go, right?

I don’t agree that the students who are wealthy * or* the students who are not will be best served that way.

I believe in students & families getting to know each other through the schools, when else are they going to be on similar footing?

Students from rough circumstances, need more than money thrown at them, their “community” may not support education or have a history of being involved, and they may need the example & support of middle class families to get the most out of their education.

I also think that families who are “privileged”, benefit from sharing schools with those who are not.
Even if once they leave school students don’t interact, the elite may be hiring/advocating for or otherwise representing lower economic classes, and you can’t do that adequately if your exposure to the grittier side of life is limited to reading Dickens.

mommusic · June 19, 2007, 12:24pm

My 2 cents worth–the reason any kids do well is because their family values education. They may be immigrants and speak almost no English, or they may be dirt-poor tenant farmers, but if they insist the kids do well in school, in one generation the family becomes successful.

Good, demanding teachers are important, but those teachers will eventually give up in the face of the reality that no one makes their students do their homework and no one at home cares if they finish high school.

And I understand there are constraints on some families–single moms with many children and many absent fathers for a variety of reasons–but often these reasons are the result of poor judgement.

Giantredlobster · June 19, 2007, 12:57pm

Thank you mommusic!

I feel like everyone here is trying to punish those who value education. Why should someone who tries hard and then decides to use the money they have earned to move their family into a neighborhood with good schools be deemed the devil and the ones ruining the system for everyone else, because they aren’t. Just because families make over X amount of dollars people always assume way to much. Where they live, how many kids and many other factors don’t make systems such as those that people have been discussing so black and white.

I live in Silicon Valley, house prices are already inflated enough, but my parents still moved my family to a good neighborhood so all 4 of the kids in our family could receive a good public education. I had my stint at the private school, and yes I enjoyed it, but don’t tell me that traveling an hour to school each morning and being that far away constitutes as a healthy schooling experience. There was a time not too long ago when I went outside and played with the kids across the street after we walked home from school together and i believe the school and its association with the surrounding community are very important.

emeraldkity4 · June 19, 2007, 1:02pm

*My 2 cents worth–the reason any kids do well is because their family values education. They may be immigrants and speak almost no English, or they may be dirt-poor tenant farmers, but if they insist the kids do well in school, in one generation the family becomes successful.

Good, demanding teachers are important, but those teachers will eventually give up in the face of the reality that no one makes their students do their homework and no one at home cares if they finish high school.

And I understand there are constraints on some families–single moms with many children and many absent fathers for a variety of reasons–but often these reasons are the result of poor judgement.*

I agree that adults- whether parents or other community members- that serve as positive mentors to kids are critical for them to rise above their circumstances .

I keep coming back to this, because as someone who didn’t graduate from high school, and having sent one daughter to exclusive private schools including her demanding college, and one who attended private school, alternative public with many FRL students, and a sought after public that kids from the exclusive privates K-12 attend for high school, I feel I have “inside” experience, at least as far as my neck of the woods goes.

There are kids with a lot of potential, but they need adults around them to address that potential, not teachers who lower requirements to get more kids who get "A"s and then a more favorable teacher review, not parents who don’t want them to spend time on their homework because they need them to work to bring in income or to watch their siblings.

Although both of * my* parents attended the university of washington, “college” was never mentioned to me, and I never had a sense that school was at all relevant to my life, ( at times I feel I raised myself).
It has been invaluable to me, to have the friendship and example of the parents at my older daughters private schools.( Because they are 8 years apart, the private school environment was dominant for many years)

Not just the great teachers that she had, but learning from families who were involved in their kids daily lives, who had attended college for * generations<img src=“inc%20those%20HYPs%20;” alt=“/i”> ), that mentorship made a great deal of difference, particularly when people like my inlaws scoffed when we asked for savings bonds for the kids for xmas, instead of more Barbie stuff.

This experience gave me the perspective that I needed when my younger daughter ended up in public school, it kept me fighting to get her more help, better teachers, and eventually we moved on to a better school.

This is what I see with new immigrants. They are moving to the suburbs where the schools are considered to be 'better"- the suburbs not only have a higher percentage of minorities than the city, they have more students enrolled in the public schools.

I also know minorities ( immigrants), who live in the city, but their kids attend private schools- they do value education & their kids are doing well.
But there aren’t enough slots for private school spaces ( its even more competitive than college) & not everyone can move to the suburbs

I don’t know much about other major cities education systems, they mostly sound pretty horrific- since I would like to stay in the city & since I think that families ( middle class families) are critical to the backbone of the city, I am anxious that the district improves enough so that families want to stay.

zoosermom · June 19, 2007, 1:12pm

"Not just the great teachers that she had, but learning from families who were involved in their kids daily lives, who had attended college for generations! ( inc those HYPs ), that mentorship made a great deal of difference, particularly when "

Does this really happen? I’ve never seen it in my life, but I won’t speak for everywhere. It seems to me that parents (myself included) are only interested in their own kids and wouldn’t mentor or befriend other kids. We do, however, have a huge number of businesses that provide money AND mentoring to public schools here. Partnerships between corporations, law firms, accounting firms, etc. are fairly universal and enormously beneficial to the schools involved.

emeraldkity4 · June 19, 2007, 1:50pm

The community of parents at my Ds private school was perhaps unusual.
That was all I had experienced so I didn’t know.
( It was unusual for her to end up at private school at all I realize, but that was a result of being in a follow up study due to the circumstances of her birth, and the psychologist making strong suggestions about private schools combined with the neighborhood public school teacher also making strong suggestions about looking elsewhere )

Our income was “erratic” and when my husband was involved in a lengthy strike, the director of the school approached me and told me another family had offered to pay her tuition. ( she was on scholarship, but it was still a big chunk), luckily, we didn’t have to take them up on that ( it was anonymous but I have my suspicions), but I was very touched at the generosity.

Perhaps we were a social project, for one of the last “hippie” families, ( who happened to come from old money- old for the west coast anyway- but so much money that they are able to live off investments), but to their credit, I didn’t feel that way.

It helped that D is very personable and amazing-, which made our whole family more popular :D

In high school, where I didn’t know quite as many parents, it wasn’t unusual for someone to come up to me and really gush " you’re Janet’s mom? , wow, I just love her! " and go on and on about how much they enjoyed talking to her about this or that.

It was a little strange, because I was getting all this credit for being an amazing parent- when all I did was water her occasionally ( and maybe a little mulch)

emeraldkity4 · June 19, 2007, 2:01pm

In the Seattle public schools we don’t have a history of accepting help well.
<a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2003406277_rainier12m.html[/url]”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/education/2003406277_rainier12m.html</a>

Which is really a shame.

Here we had an African American Microsoft millionaire who is already running a successful program to address disparity in technology knowledge for especially minorities ( my daughter worked there as part of her CityYear program), she wanted to expand it to reach more kids and help support a struggling public school.

The district mishandled the process and the community angrily rejected it.
<a href=“http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/291030_rainierbeach03.html[/url]”>http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/291030_rainierbeach03.html</a>

It doesn’t exactly inspire more businesses to get involved

jonri · June 19, 2007, 3:43pm

Yes, Hanna, the Japanese have some things going for them that we don’t. But I still think it would help if the schools which are the worst performing got more money. In the US, with locally funded education, the poorest schools USUALLY have the lowest funding per capita. I think that’s a mistake. We CAN do something about that even if we can’t change cultural attitudes overnight.

BigAppleDaddy, don’t believe everthing you read in NY Magazine. My “favorite” example of its excellent journalism was the article that said the Central Park murder committed a few years back was committed by three students at prep schools. It named one of them-- “The Wagner School.” This was a reference to Wagner, a public middle school. If you’ve ever seen the school, the idea that its an elite prep school is hilarious. The fact that this article actually made it into print was a disgrace.

Having said that, I think the article proves my point–that admissions based on a single test is less subject to being distorted to admit certain kinds of people where the certain kinds are defined by color ,class or parents who excel as advocates for their kids than the sort of wholistic approach you advocate.(And reality is it’s not a single test score. Kids from bad middle schools who are disadvantaged but come close to the score are sometimes offered a chance to go to summer school and retake the Sci High exam. If they pass they get in. At least that has been done. Hunter reserves 15% of the class for disadvantaged kids. You get certified before taking the test. If not enough disadvantaged kids make the cut off, kids below the cut off are admitted in order until the 15% is met. Or at least that’s how they did it a couple of years ago.)

Again, I’m not arguing that there aren’t problems with NYC high schools. But lets take a regular old city school in a not great neighborhood serving a minority population. DeWitt Clinton H.S. in the Bronx has lots of problems. However, the Macy’s scholar program and especially the Einstein program give first-rate opportunities to disadvantaged kids. It’s always up there when the NYTimes hands out its annual scholarships. And, every year there are kids from that high school heading off to top colleges. If it still has the same counselor it had a few years ago, the man should be cloned. He really, really pushes the kids to dream big. There’s another school–the name is something like Manhattan Math and Science-- which has the “GE Scholars” program, which also does a great job with smart kids.

I don’t like Jay Mathews list of the best US high schools in Newsweek, but if you look through it you’ll see some regular old NYC public high schools. Cardozo, Midwood, Forest Hills, John F. Kennedy, Long Island City,the High School for Arts and Business, Port Richmond. Yes, some of these are historically mostly white, but some aren’t. (Despite its location, Forest Hills draws a lot of minority kids–or at least did a few years ago.) All of these are included in Mathews’ list. I’ve heard good things about Baruch College High School, Central Park East, Upper Lab, Humanities, the Museum School, and School of the Future. I’ve heard mixed things about Art & Design , Beekman, and Professional Performing Arts. (Nobody should take my comments as a rnaking of these high schools; all I know about them is from parents and kids I happen to know who have attended/are attending them.)

And, of course, there’s Stuy, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Staten Island
Tech, Hunter, Townsend Harris and the top academic track at LaGuardia.

In addition, there are the summer and weekend programs, including the one at Columbia College. Stuy has let some of the top kids at one of the charter schools near it take some classes at Stuy–even though the kids didn’t pass the entrance test. (They don’t take all their classes at Stuy, just those that the charter school doesn’t offer.)

And, I’m a parent who never had to search for options. I’m sure that if I did, I’d know about more about good high schools and programs.

Again, I freely admit the system isn’t perfect. I am NOT claiming it is. I have seen kids who have lost out. I think you and I probably aren’t that far apart in our thinking and that, to the extent we differ, it’s probably because of our own personal experience with the system.

zoosermom · June 19, 2007, 4:01pm

"And, of course, there’s Stuy, Bronx Science, Brooklyn Tech, Staten Island
Tech, Hunter, Townsend Harris and the top academic track at LaGuardia. "

I would love to see the demographics of those schools and the top programs at other public schools. I’d bet they’re populated by mostly white/Asian middle class students, as in my daughter’s school. She will have less contact with minority students than did my older daughter at an expensive private school. Which comes back to my assertion that in many cases, the presence of these special programs doesn’t do anything for anyone else. As far as money goes, I’m not convinced. We spend a lot of money per capita here and there is a stubborn subset of students that is simply not going to succeed. My daugter’s school has, I think, had a great deal of success, but it’s not perfect. The school, which is huge, is broken into individual “houses” based on interests or academics and each has a guidance counsellor and an administrator, so nobody gets lost in the shuffle, and the college push begins on day 1 of freshman year. There are still a great many kids who don’t graduate and I don’t think there is any amount of money that will change that.

jonri · June 19, 2007, 4:36pm

The racial make up of the specialized high schools is a publicly reported fact. Google any of them and you’ll find the information quickly. Economic class is a different matter, of course.

zoosermom · June 19, 2007, 4:39pm

“The racial make up of the specialized high schools is a publicly reported fact. Google any of them and you’ll find the information quickly. Economic class is a different matter, of course.”

BUt the makeup of the top programs in the other public schools is not available, so it’s not possible to really know.

emeraldkity4 · June 19, 2007, 5:29pm

In NYC- according to 2005 data
overall FRL rate is 63.7% and SPED is only 7%.
Limited English proficent is 15.7 and 29% are overage ( I assume this means they haven’t yet met graduation reqs?)

For the 8 competitive schools, FRL rate is 40%, SPED is 0% as we might expect, and Limited English proficent is 0.8 and something I thought was illustrative, meeting math exam standard for the competitive schools is 97.7, but the overall rate in NYC is 30.8.
( The competitive schools also only have 4.7 students who are overage)
<a href=“http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20050428/5/1395[/url]”>http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20050428/5/1395</a>

Hanna · June 19, 2007, 5:31pm

jonri, I certainly agree that inequitable distribution of funds is a problem and ought to stop. I’d like to see, at a minimum, statewide pooling and distribution of school funding.

But ultimately, this is just a good first step, and by itself, it would do little or nothing to improve low-performing schools.

Laylah · June 19, 2007, 5:52pm

emeraldkity, I agree with so much of what you’ve said. The problem is that in the UK, there just doesn’t tend to be economic diversity in state schools (and you’re right, ‘public’ schools are the very top private schools, e.g. Eton), and so while I absolutely agree that it would be beneficial for kids from all economic backgrounds to mix together, this just doesn’t happen at the moment. The wealthy kids go to private schools or to ‘good’ state schools. The less well off kids either go to the local state school, regardless of how good it is, or get lucky and get a scholarship to a private school.

Because of this, you just don’t get ‘nice middle-class kids’ at your average state school - their ‘nice middle-class parents’ don’t let them go there, even if, as you say, they would be a model for their peers. That’s why I think the more kids in private education in the UK the better - since the wealthy kids don’t go to the same schools as less well off kids anyway, the less well off kids may as well benefit from smaller classes and more academic resources.

higherlead · June 19, 2007, 9:57pm

“jonri, I certainly agree that inequitable distribution of funds is a problem and ought to stop. I’d like to see, at a minimum, statewide pooling and distribution of school funding.”

The only problem with this is that there is virtually no correspondence between spending and eduacational outcome. The District of Columbia is at the top nationally in per student spending. Utah is at the very bottom. Utah outcomes based on standardized tests are as high as their spending is low.

The problem with our schools are the problems with our families. I’m not so nieve as to think that money can never solve problems but it is not going to solve this one. Until we have healthier families we are not going to have healthier schools. Being the child of a single parent all but guarantees poverty. Being the child of divorced or separated parents all but guarantees emotional instability.

If you want to look and see what is diferent in those competitive schools what you are going to find is a disproportionately high percentage of intact families.

ricegal · June 19, 2007, 11:25pm

“Meanwhile back at the ranch the kid stuck with Pedro, Muhammad, and Alexi in his cooperative learning environment is busy trying to teach Pedro, Muhammad, and Alexi how to speak English and add, subtract, and divide while the rich kid is taking differential calculus. Then when he applies to college he finds out his SAT’s suck, his course work hasn’t prepared him, and oh yeah he hasn’t done the right community service. I haven’t even touched on Pedro, Muhammad, and Alexi’s problem with this screwed up system yet. But at least folks have a vague notion that they might be underperforming.”

Wow! I have only read the first page, so sorry if someone else has already said this… It’s impossible to make a school good by spreading the wealth. Schools are good BECAUSE of the STUDENTS who attend (and their socioeconomic background), not because of the money spent on the school or the quality of the teachers. If you try to spread the good students around it won’t mean that “Pedro, Muhammed and Alexis” will be doing differential calculus. Having a classmate who can do this stuff won’t mean that all students will be able to do it. You have to have a critical mass of students able to do it before you can structure the class at a higher level. EVERYONE in the class has to be able to handle most of the material presented before a teacher can teach at a particular level. The main problem is that a school only has the students 6 hours a day. Much of the learning goes on in the other 9 waking hours. It’s just impossible to make up for the enrichment provided by good parents, even with after school programs or an orphanage. You are wasting the potential of a good student if you throw him/her in a school with students who are behind him/her in most subjects.

"Schools to select pupils by lottery"

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