<p>Actually for public schools money matters very little. The family and other factors are much more important than the $$$ spent. Spending more does little to overcome the impact of uncaring parents and disruptive uninvolved students. Most states that rank very highly in their student outcomes spend only around the national average.</p>
<p>Tell that to the folks who send their kids to Andover. </p>
<p>"Spending more does little to overcome the impact of uncaring parents and disruptive uninvolved students."</p>
<p>Actually, we know that's not true, from the experience of the nation from 1910 to 1960, where the amount spent on white students was 3-4X the amount spent on non-white ones. We know the result.</p>
<p>But the hypothesis actually is testable, but no one will ever test it. Take a short time frame, say, three generations. And in that time frame, spend 3X as much every year, dependably, on low-income children as you do on higher income ones. Doesn't matter what the amount is, as long as it is 3X the amount (just as it was from 1910-1960). Once you know that you will have 3x the amount, consistently, for the next 50 years, then you can figure out how to spend it.</p>
<p>In other words, put Andover in East L.A. for the next 50 years, with free tuition for entering students, oh, and their entire endowment and buildings and grounds, and see what happens. </p>
<p>The rich would have us believe that it wouldn't make a difference (but in the case of prestige colleges - the opposite, 'cause that's where their kids go!). I think we all know better, once we can get past the ideological crap.</p>
<p>Mini, you've obviously never taught 5th grade in an inner city school. Is money an issue? Absolutely. But money thrown at schools doesn't take dysfunctional families and make them whole; doesn't make mothers marry the fathers of their children; doesn't get the older brother out of jail; doesn't prevent mom's boyfriend from abusing the pre-teens in the household. The folks sending their kids to Andover know all of this--you seem to have bought into the ideology that families will heal themselves if the libraries are bright and airy, and if the halls are kept clean and French and Japanese are taught to anyone who is interested. </p>
<p>I agree that many public schools are a disgrace. But there are public schools in places which are spending significant money on buildings and grounds and instruction and aides and enrichment who face the following:
1)Kids coming to school having eaten cheetos and a coke for breakfast;
2)Kids who own every Xbox and videogame known to man but where they've never seen a dictionary or a newspaper in the house
3)Kids who have been brainwashed that it's "selling out" to be respectful (or at least non-violent) to an authority figure such as a teacher.
And these are from the intact families, with at least one parent (or an aunt or grandmother) who is a continuing presence. Don't call me racist; this cuts across racial lines; don't call me an elitist-- it isn't elitist to avoid getting so high at night that you can't make your kid breakfast in the morning before school. You ought to talk to the teachers who face these kids every day and ask them if making pretty soccer fields is going to fix the pathology.</p>
<p>Mini is a one-note-johnny on this and other subjects. Hence this rerun from a year-ago thread:
<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=1244401&postcount=26%5B/url%5D">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=1244401&postcount=26</a></p>
<p>Hey, I guess I'm one of these others, these "rich". Well, I'm not really any more, but my Dad is, and his Dad was even more so.</p>
<p>And I would agree with mini. Bring up a generation of children with money and a generation of children without and the generation with will be better able to qualify for selective colleges. Or, at the very least, bring up two generations in a row with money and then for sure those kids will be better able.</p>
<p>Sure there are wealthy dysfunctional families. And children who suffer. But children suffer more in poor dysfunctional families because hunger and disease and cold are still worse than quarreling parents and verbal shaming. And while suffering can strengthen the character for many it just absorbs all coping capacity and they implode. If my mother chose to drink too much, she had 5 acres to wander around and no one apt to arrest her. The mom getting high at night in a one room apartment in the Bronx is in a different situation.</p>
<p>Not making apologies for jerks and bad parents, but it is a fact of human life that poverty is mostly brutal. Especially urban poverty. So don't "throw money at schools" but how about pre-schools? </p>
<p>Well, as one who had the quarreling divorcing parents and the verbal shaming, but nevertheless a family that fed its kids and sustained regular schedules and promoted intellectual achievement and had nice art in all the rooms, that's just my opinion.</p>
<p>"Mini, you've obviously never taught 5th grade in an inner city school. Is money an issue? Absolutely. But money thrown at schools doesn't take dysfunctional families and make them whole; doesn't make mothers marry the fathers of their children; doesn't get the older brother out of jail; doesn't prevent mom's boyfriend from abusing the pre-teens in the household."</p>
<p>Money thrown at them for 50 years, 3X times the amount of money thrown at higher income children, will do ALL of the above. It will provide funds for children to escape dysfunctional families through boarding, it will set new patterns for family life, it will provide round-the-clock activities for children, and classes for parents, it will provide educational social workers to work with families, and, most importantly, it will do that, dependably, for 50 years. </p>
<p>And how do we know it will work? It's simple. Look at the school spending on white schools - usually with large numbers of immigrants - 1910 to 1960. 3X as much as that spent on Black children. They often came from terrible conditions. Parents in jails. Alcoholic fathers and mothers. Parents who abused their kids. Etc. The result of the 3X spending became obvious after 50 years, didn't it.</p>
<p>You'll note that I said money is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. Obviously, you need to figure out how to spend it well - just like Andover figured out how to spend it well. But you don't get the chance to figure out how to spend it well unless you know that it will be dependably there - and over a period of generations.</p>
<p>Harkness Tables - you know what those are, right? It means that classes at Exeter don't have more than 12 students. And it means a lot more. <a href="http://www.exeter.edu/admissions/harkness.aspx%5B/url%5D">http://www.exeter.edu/admissions/harkness.aspx</a> Rich folks like that! I can't blame 'em. They know it works. They just have to convince the rest of us to believe that it really doesn't may any difference. (But they know better, don't they?)</p>
<p>I know what I got from my Williams education. Rich man's school. I saw how rich kids (and some of us poorer ones thrown into the mix) got treated differently. And I am very thankful for that education; very grateful, and will remain so. It opened up horizons, ways of thinking, and, most importantly, ways of "being" that I could never, ever have imagined existed. I expect that happens to many of your kids as well. We know it works. It don't come cheap.</p>
<p>Old, sexist?, saying:</p>
<p>It takes two generations of educated women to make an educated man.</p>
<p>Flip the argument--put the Andover kids at any public school and you will immediately see a drastic improvement in measurables.</p>
<p>Perversely, mini is elaborating my argument for spending top dollar on private schools. My sons are the fourth generation on both sides to attend private universities. </p>
<p>That heady, mind-expanding experience mini enjoyed at Williams, they have had since Junior K. It was worth every penny. </p>
<p>Who is in denial though? Perhaps rich talking heads deny the effect of generations of money for education, but I've never met anyone who denied it. Even my staunch father waxes wist-fully about the effect my sons' primary education would have on the world. He donates plenty to private school scholarship funds.</p>
<p>Just don't raise his taxes.</p>
<p>If you put the Andover girls at public schools, you might see a rise in stats, but boys tend to travel in packs. They aim for the average of the place. I doubt Andover boys would significantly raise stats--over time. Putting boys in a school where the average is very high is a proven method of raising the standards of a large group of boys.</p>
<p>Where is the money spent? I have to assume that the Andover kids come from families with money and/or education; they are not inner-city kids who have not seen a book prior to going to school. So money was spent on the Andover kids and the efffect of this spending will rub off on the kids in the inner city to which the Andover kids are being sent. In other words, money does not have to be spent on schools alone to make a difference in the achievements of different groups of students.</p>
<p>Mini, it's sweet to think that all these kids locked in these horrible situations will be saved by packing them off to boarding school, and therefore your spending prescription is the ticket. You might take a field trip to a juvenile lock up, a group home, or your local inner city classroom for a bit of a reality check. If you think money thrown at education can save many of these kids you are dreaming. Or, maybe you're just fortunate enough to live in a place which escaped the Crack epidemic of the early '90's (todays teenagers.... poor impulse control, severe neurological disorders, some with psychosis or just violent- many with a host of learning disabilities) and the current crystal meth epidemic. Try hearing from a pediatrician about the prognosis for a crack baby. Some of these kids have had tens of thousands of dollars spent on medical interventions by the time they go home from the hospital, then receive tens of thousands more in therapies and treatment. Money can't fix a 5 year old whose bedroom is a meth lab-- science and neurology and psychiatry don't know how to put these children back together again, and you think the answer is Andover?</p>
<p>The answer is not just money. It's culture and values, too.</p>
<p>My sister was a 2nd-grade teacher in an inner-city school. She saw that her students (none of whom came from two-parent families, almost all of whom had English as a 2nd language, and most of whom were being raised by aunts or grandparent) didn't even have the most basic school supplies.</p>
<p>She went out and bought everything they would need in the classroom. After less than a month, she realized she had to keep any supplies under lock and key. Instead of appreciating being given something they didn't have but needed to do the work in school, there was just no respect for having, using properly, or taking care of these supplies.</p>
<p>Culture and values do have some relationship with money. Kids who have not seen a book or ever owned a pencil have no reason to value them. It takes a while to change a "culture." It is also a bit much to expect second graders to value things. How often did my own kids lose their mittens? They sure needed them.</p>
<p>The town I grew up in spends something like $11,000.00 per child yet its the lowest performing school in the state....Why?</p>
<p>OK. dke, spending the money is necessary but not sufficient. But without spending the money, much much less change can be effected.</p>
<p>And I'm not per se advocating massive public spending. That policy creates its own dysfunctions.</p>
<p>But to sit back and say that if kids from poverty fail to succeed educationally and steal a pencil now and then it's all their fault, well, hmm. Not making a whole lot of sense to me.</p>
<p>The problem is not understanding that kids do better when money is spent on them well. It's understanding HOW to spend it well.</p>
<p>I'm really having a lot of trouble with the perceived premises here, which are that either it is all the po' folks fault that they aren't succeeding, and no amount of additional money will help (since it appears people think said po' folk just are a little too backwards to care about things, even as small as a pencil),</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>that those poor people do just fine and dandy in their public schools and the fact that some people can afford to spend $30K on high school doesn't really give their children any advantage at all, because after all, those po' folks kids can just study and work hard and make something of themselves, go to good colleges, anyway. Like, what's the big deal?</p>
<p>Do I have the score right here, or what?</p>
<p>(these are utterly bogus arguments, by the way, but I wanted to make sure I was reading people's comments as they were intended.)</p>
<p>
[quote]
Do I have the score right here, or what?
[/quote]
Hard to say. The glibness has stepped on the message. Why don't you give it another shot?</p>
<p>I think you have a pretty good reading on it allmusic
*Even my staunch father waxes wist-fully about the effect my sons' primary education would have on the world. He donates plenty to private school scholarship funds.</p>
<p>Just don't raise his taxes.*</p>
<p>I think it is great that he contributes to scholarship funds- but what about the kids who haven't yet reached the level of academic excellence that would be required to attend that school, and need support from the public schools?
Or are they SOL?</p>