We have a thread devoted to academic freedom at universities, and we have a thread devoted to whether higher education should be subsidized. This thread is a landing spot for discussion of other issues related to education -- issues like school integration, pedagogy, the influence of politics on education (and vice versa), charter schools, public v. private schools, achievement gaps, and gerrymandering of school districts.

I'll start the discussion with two articles. The first deals with a major changes in the public school system in NYC.

NYC's public schools are highly segregated for such a diverse city. Last Friday, Bill DeBlasio announced the following:

DeBlasio also announced that:

Here is the New York Times article that describes the changes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/n...gregation.html

Obvious questions for discussion include:

• How large a priority should cities place on ensuring that city schools are representative of the city as a whole?
• Are measures like the ones that DeBlasio is implementing likely to be effective in making schools more representative?
• Will these measures have unintended (or intended) consequences that extend far beyond changing the representativeness of city schools?

The second article deals with the aspirational goals of the teachers at The Dalton School in Manhattan. Dalton is a private high school that is usually described as elite or hoity-toity, depending on your perspective. Dalton has tons of celebrity alums, including Chevy Chase, Anderson Cooper, and Christian Slater. Tuition is $54K per year.

Last Saturday, the New York Post reported that dozens of faculty members had signed what has been variously described as a "manifesto" or a "a set of thought-starters" -- again, depending on your perspective. The document listed the following proposals/demands:

This article raises similiar questions to the first article, albeit in a very different context. How many of these measures are feasible at a private school that charges $54K per year for a second grade education? Would a school like Dalton be better or worse ten years from now if all these changes like these were implemented? If you don't believe that all the measures would make the school better, which ones would make it better and which ones would make it worse?

Here is a link to the New York Post article that describes the issue.

https://nypost.com/2020/12/19/facult...ism-manifesto/

I'm not sure what debate is to be had on the Dalton thing, that is just completely insane on a number of levels.

Abolishing high level academic courses at Dalton is all kinds of stupid. Among other things, it perpetuates a type of racism that expects less from minorities.

Some of the Dalton things are fine. And others struck me an insane. For example, there is no way that a school like Dalton could become representative of the socioeconomic background of the city by 2025.

Why not? It just means they're going to give out a hell of a lot of scholarships.
Will be interesting to see what happens with their paying enrollment numbers post 2025 if they reach their goal of socioeconomic representation.

There is more to it.

All the prestigious prep/boarding schools in NYC/NJ have been handing out scholarships like candy to economically disadvantaged/minority students that are academically competitive.

The problem they've run into is the academic achievement gap starts so early, and is so heavily reinforced by socioeconomic status of parents, by the time we get to high school years, you need to do a LOT of affirmative action to get socioeconomic/racial representation consistent with the demographics of the city.

You see an extreme manifestation of this with the strictly SHSAT based admissions (this is under attack) to NYC's magnet high schools such as Stuyvesant. The highly competitive (in the sense of college admissions) magnet schools of NYC in turn depletes the pool of academically competitive minority highschool students available to NYC/NJ boarding/private schools to recruit.

Then maybe they have to start with 3rd grade and less for their representation goals and it will take 8 years or so until all grades match the city's demographics.
They're smart people, they'll figure it out.

Tried with limited success. A lot of the kids at these schools have been on scholarships from very early on. But many kids with scholarships in early grades drop out for a number of reasons. Some parents just have to move. Many kids can't keep up (if nothing else, there are limitations on identifying talent so early). Some parents change their mind and want their kids in public school (logistics of sending kids to private school can be brutal). This is to say nothing of the myriad problems outside of school grounds that can cause a kid to drop out.

They have been trying to figure it out for years because it is good for their brand to have more diversity and more ivy league admits. But they are running into a lot of limitations that are frankly outside of their control.

I have a feeling it's all a facade and they're just trying to boost their rugby and lacrosse teams.

You're wrong.

I'll put it in the bluntest terms possible. At higher end boarding schools, (I don't even mean top top shelf schools like Phillips Exeter, just like top 200 or so private/boarding schools in country will do) as an underrepresented minority, you have to be near the bottom of the class to not get in an any ivy. For URM kids at these schools, Cornell is a safety school and Duke is an insurance policy.

Prep/private schools are keenly aware of this and consequently, actively seek out minority students that they think can boost their ivy league numbers.

They truly do view diversity as important, for marketing if nothing else. Furthermore, I've run into a lot of true SJWs in the ranks of admins, alumni, and parents of these schools.

It was an attempt at some light humor but thanks for your insight, it is interesting and hopefully they keep trying even if it is mostly for marketing/profit reasons.

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The issue in the first article is more consequential than it might first appear. Like many issues in NYC, this one circles back to property values. The ability of public schools in District 2 to give geographic preference to students applying from District 2 is one of many factors that drives housing prices in District 2, especially in areas that are very near the best schools. It is not unheard of for parents to fake residences in District 2, or rent in District 2 while maintaining residence in another district, in order to work the geographic preference system.

Some public schools in District 2 are de facto private schools. Many parents at these schools are extremely wealthy. The school fundraising auctions feature the same obscene items that you see at some private school auctions. And some parents who send their kids to public school in District 2 do so precisely because the public school is a de facto private school.

WRT to carveouts for highschools in rich districts. I'm not sure it matters as people may think at first glance.

1. Students will still be funneled and then siloed (segregated if you will) into different classes and even clubs.

2. In the past, school choice programs have been shown to exacerbate segregation in NYC. Bluntly speaking, URM parents simply don't utilize the school choices available to them as much. Some of that is language, some of that is cultural (more inclined to want kids to stay close to home), some of it is just lack of awareness, and some of it is economic.

3. Even if it worked to promote overall school diversity, there are easy ways to funnel fundraising money to specific clubs.

4. Parents will just end up fleeing to private schools or Long Island districts that function very much like private schools. There are tons of excellent districts along Long Island Railroad that have nationally ranked highschools.

WRT removing admission standards. I am always extremely suspicious of such proposals that seem to assume URMs are less capable. The proposal as it stands is beyond AA at college level where an URM can get in Harvard/Stanford/Princeton with SAT scores that are ~100 points lower than a similar candidate. The proposal is outright saying there is no admission standard at all. France tried that with their university system and they are now moving back toward more merit based systems.

PS: Incidentally, the democratization of access to all French colleges led to a watering of the degrees and a proliferation and growth of certain institutions have become even more aristocratic than Yale/Harvard in US. Look up the history of ENA, from which Marcon and a disturbingly high percentage of French leadership graduated from.

Is the SHSAT controversial? It seems like the most meritocratic school choice test in the US?

I never grew up in NY, but my understanding is that it is sort of a standardized test which tests middle schoolers on stuff they should have learned in the NY curriculum. On top of that, there is a fair amount of free resources to study.

I can get that BDB can rail against it as part of his SJW platform, but it is something that has actual political will in the city?

This completely ignores the fact that in many (most?) states, there is a huge statewide funding redistribution to school districts.

Shitty school districts is not a per-pupil funding problem.

The "obscene" fundraisers you're talking about here don't go toward education. They go toward building new million dollar locker rooms for the high school football team and other extra-curriculars.

The achievement gaps start and end at home. There's little to nothing school districts can do to solve this on their own.

I don't know what you mean when you say that it doesn't go to "per-pupil" funding. It certainly doesn't go to teacher salaries, but as far as I know, there is nothing that prohibits the money from going to facilities, labs, laptops, travel opportunities for kids, etc. If you think that the facilities are equivalent at the public high schools in the wealthiest areas of Manhattan and the poorest areas of the Bronx, I don't know what to tell you.

SHSAT has been very controversial for a few years.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox...-asian-protest

Asian Americans are extremely over represented* and URMs very underrepresented. Charges of racism against Asian Americans have been made while people like deBlasio have argued SHSAT discriminates against URMs.

If you think the difference in educational outcomes between the best and worst districts in any given area comes down to the quantity and quality of field trips and gymnasium accommodations, then I don't know what planet you live on.

The kids in the shittiest districts literally aren't allowed to bring their text books home. Take a moment to think about why we've gotten to that point, and what that might mean for everything else that goes into a positive educational outcome.

It's a truly sad state of affairs in some districts, but it's not because they're underfunded. In many cases, they actually receive more dollars per pupil, and the teachers are paid more (significantly so) than the ones in affluent districts.

But you're right, they don't have the best locker rooms and fully funded trips to D.C. for the debate team. That must be why they can reach high school with a 2nd grade reading level.

First of all, I never said, or came close to saying, that differences in educational outcomes were entirely attributable to per-student spending. In fact, I wasn't talking about achievement gaps at all. I simply was noting that wealthy public schools in New York are very similar to private schools. So I don't know what you are going on about.

You, on the other hand, seem to think that the money flowing into the wealthiest public schools in NYC has a minimal impact on the educational experience provided by the school because all the money goes to football uniforms or new lockers in the gym. That extreme position is just as wrong as the extreme position that you wrongly attributed to me.

The soft bigotry of low expectations.

Since this has become, unsurprisingly, an affirmative action thread, I would like to note that to the extent affirmative action could be truly effective it would have to start exceptionally early. If children (birth to three) and their families from impoverished communities were given a tremendous influx of resources and expertise it is not inconceivable that by the time they reached primary school they would be well-fixed upon the tracks of success.

Of course, starting to offer an artificial leg-up for graduate school or college or even high school is simply far too late to make any material difference in outcomes, it’s also rife with dubious motives and frankly an insult more than a compliment. It seems to me that if the gap provided by luck of birth and status could be bridged before primary school, that one could anticipate far greater outcomes, far less shame for the participants, and probably less of a legitimate rebuke from detractors.

I wish it were just about the resources. That would suggest it's a problem solvable with more money. Unfortunately, the research, and natural experiments we've conducted with NCLB and other programs (including charities), unequivocally say, past a certain point, it's not about money, at least not about money in spent on schools.

School spending, past a certain minimum (I don't remember the number), has virtually no impact on educational outcomes.

What does make an impact is spending OUTSIDE schools by parents. And it is not 100% clear if it's the spending itself or just the amount of care that spending indicates.

The theory is that funneling massive amounts of money and expertise to at-risk populations would allow for a greater degree of financial autonomy for parents that don’t have time for their kids’ needs because they’re working 80 hours/week or w/e.

I also expect that parents naturally “care” about their children’s welfare and would spend a lot more money on their kids if they actually had access to it.

School spending, again, isn’t exactly what I’m talking about. Of course my theory that even kindergarten spending is too late implies that where the funds should be directed, where they have never really been sent in volume, is to the literal crib.