"The biggest revealed truth in American k-12 schooling history is that the rich will find a way to separate from the poor."
Yeah. Ultimately you have to find a way to separate the rich from their money first. Once that's done, banning private schools would be relatively easy.
In England, the notion of banning private education--while highly unlikely--has long been a part of the political debate entertained by major-party candidates.Not in the last 50 years, I would say - not major-party candidate standing in serious elections in constituencies where the party thinks it might win, anyway. Everybody's on the private education bandwagon.
I'm confused about Finland. Are private schools actually illegal, or have they simply withered on the vine because the public ones are good enough? In Swden, Denmark, Norway that was almost the case and may still be. If you said you were sending your kids to a private school, people would assume they had some very rare special needs or something.
She can rattle off twenty policies that have been implemented to address inequality, and how in each situation, the rich parents in the community gamed the system to end up with the most resources and best education experiences for their kids, at the expense of the rest.
This would be a very interesting post.
The whole premise of the article is wrong. That the public schools are "broken" and could easily be fixed if only people cared more.
The proposed solution is of course bonkers and will never happen. Supporting it is just a way of demonstrating that you really, really care albeit in a totally symbolic way.
It also has the effect of reinforcing the narrative that the public schools are hopelessly inferior to private schools. Most people will not react to this by wanting to ban private schools.
2: My (probably wrong) impression was always that the idea is perennially kicked around a bit, but always pro-forma and never with a serious expectation of implentation. Ditto with banning private health care services.
Albert O. Hirschman, in a 40-year old book that remains well worth reading, makes a similar argument. As did a young Joe Nocera.
Like all simple, elegant solutions to the complex problems of public schools ("Give everyone vouchers! Make all schools charter schools!"), this one founders on practical obstacles before you even get to the political impossibility of it all. If you banned private schools in, say, Boston, then Beacon Hill would be bereft of childbearing couples within a year, and real estate in Brookline and Newton would be a tad more expensive. Heebie's friend is right.
And those political obstacles we just elided? Holy utopian fantasies, Batman! Is there a better statistical predictor of political influence than private school attendance? I doubt it. Keep in mind, folks, we're not just talking about Choate here; there's the parochial schools and the all-white Christian academies as well. The phrase "massive resistance" came to prominence in this context not by accident.
5. Yes, it's kicked around a bit, but only by fringe parties and people in major parties who walk around with a bloody great sign pinned to their arse saying, "This person does not matter and has no future, but we let them out occasionally to encourage the minority that hasn't bought into the neoliberal consensus to vote for us anyway". The right wing does similar things with overtly racist policies.
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... Keep in mind, folks, we're not just talking about Choate here; there's the parochial schools and the all-white Christian academies as well. ...
Presumably you are also talking about the home schoolers.
Yes, it seems very ahistorical to talk about private schools in the U.S. as a strictly a rich/poor thing when the modal private school is Catholic and founded by people who were relatively poor. Obvoiusly the demographics have shifted, but not that much.
8: I consciously excluded them, actually. I suppose at some level they are politically influential, inasmuch as there is a fair number of them and they are organized, in a rudimentary way. But as individuals, I'm guessing they are not especially likely to be politically influential figures even in a purely local setting (leaving aside the Rick Santorums of the world). Also, I was envisioning the hypothetical ban on private schools as leaving an exemption for home schoolers*.
*Spinning it out further, this could be the loophole that enables the rich to flee from the unwashed masses: "governess" makes a comeback in the labor statistics!
Perhaps it is an indictment of contemporary liberal thinking that the only solutions it proposes to enthusiastic acclaim are vast, transformative, apocalyptic, impossible.
9: In my stomping grounds, it was the "Christian" "Academies", which while not generally rich, definitely skew UMC. They didn't seem to me to be much better academically than the public schools. Their main, real selling points were: 1) No black people, 2) No teaching of evolution, 3) No black people, 4) No black people.
12: Even now, those are a minority even among parochial schools.
Perhaps it is an indictment of contemporary liberal thinking that the only solutions it proposes to enthusiastic acclaim are vast, transformative, apocalyptic, impossible.
NUKE FUKUSHIMA! NUKE THE GULF! NUKE EVERYTHING!
#2 in my 12 s/b 'teaching of creationism'. Public schools in the deep south often don't teach evolution, either.
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8: I consciously excluded them, actually. I suppose at some level they are politically influential, inasmuch as there is a fair number of them and they are organized, in a rudimentary way. But as individuals, I'm guessing they are not especially likely to be politically influential figures even in a purely local setting (leaving aside the Rick Santorums of the world). ...
You might think they aren't influential but they have gotten a lot of laws changed to be more home school friendly.
... Also, I was envisioning the hypothetical ban on private schools as leaving an exemption for home schoolers*.
Kind of pointless then. You would also need to ban sending your kid to private school abroad. But of course this whole proposal is just a way of throwing up your hands and saying the problems are hopeless. While reinforcing conservative memes about escaping the public schools.
Maybe instead of banning private schools, we could simply bankrupt them by taking away their tax-exempt status.
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Maybe instead of banning private schools, we could simply bankrupt them by taking away their tax-exempt status.
Tax paying private schools exist. The tax exemption isn't crucial.
York, which now has 350 students in grades 6 through 12, and Dwight were two of the city's earliest for-profit schools -- schools that must pay taxes on their property and income, but need not have a board or disclose their financial statements.
Maybe instead of banning private schools, we could simply bankrupt them by taking away their tax-exempt status.
Now this is an idea that's occasionally raised in Britain. I think it's unlikely ever to pass, but if it did, the effect would be to shut down the private schools catering mainly to the effete middle class while leaving the elite tier (Eton/Winchester/Westminster/etc. I don't know what the US equivalents are) which would simply decamp to a tax haven somewhere.
Maybe we should just levy a tax on rich people and use the proceeds to fund an array of social programs.
20: Hey! This Spike kid is going places!
Alternately, we could tax poor people, which will make them go away.
Would the tax be paid by the poor people or by those who own or trade in them?
Alternately, we could tax poor people, which will make them go away.
Alabama has tried that, and it hasn't worked yet.
(Actually, Alabama doesn't have the most regressive tax system of U.S. states. In fact, it barely makes the top 10. The #1 position may also surprise you.)
10.2: Sure. The Makerfaires are explicitly working on private technical education for the skilled technical classes, so that (a) their sprogs will remain in the technical class and (b) the governess will be wearing a corset and buttoned boots. (And brass goggles! Progress!)
I agree with 3 -- I would love to hear what they had to say.
Slight topic shift, away from the banning of private schools and onto charter schools. I actually know very little about them (though I've just scanned the Wikipedia article).
I'm interested because I heard a union representative in the Chicago public school system recently point out that there's a larger issue at stake in the current strike: an increasing number of Chicago public school students are enrolled in charter schools, and the number in (regular) public schools is accordingly shrinking. Teachers in charter schools can't unionize; their salaries tend to be lower, and the teacher turn-over rate tends to be much more rapid, which affects the average level of experience of charter school teachers, which affects student outcomes. Conclusion: the Chicago teachers' strike amounts to a pushback against a much broader trend toward what amounts to union-busting in the public school system by pushing funds, students (and their parents), and teachers toward the charter schools.
So. How true is this? What I've read from Diane Ravitch in the NYRB says it's very much true. This one is particularly eye-opening: a review of this year's report on the state of public education, with recommendations, by a Task Force committee that was peopled by a myriad of those involved in ... the charter school movement, for-profit schools, and the like. Ravitch is very detailed here; it's worth a read.
(Corey Robin has a good post which links to four other Ravitch NYRB articles down at the bottom.)
The specific question that prompted this comment: is there a place to find statistics on the trend in relative enrollments in charter schools vs. public schools in Chicago?
Teachers in charter schools can't unionize
Why the hell not?
I don't know. Wikipedia says this. Certainly the Chicago union rep said so.
I would have thought it differed by state. More information is needed. Various links are provided in the wikipedia article - haven't looked at them yet.
The Wikipedia piece says charter school teachers are attempting to restore collective bargaining rights.
This NYT piece from 2009 adds information, sort of.