

The Sudden Charm of Public School - tokenadult
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/realestate/05Cov.html

======
iigs
NYT articles with a NYC focus are fascinating to me as an outsider. One thing
that jumps out at me, spending my entire life west of the Mississippi river,
is that NYC appears to just give their schools numbers:

 _Public Schools 6, 59 and 290 on the Upper East Side, and P.S. 87 on the
Upper West Side_

In the states I've lived in the schools have always had "friendly" names, and
are never referred to by their numbers, if they even have one.

Furthermore, the phenomenon described in the article reeks of "helicopter
parenting", and seems like it might be particularly easy to find in (nearly
unique to) NYC. I have no data to back up my prejudice, but between the
stereotype of overbearing New England parents and the probable variance in
school qualities in an urban area it's not surprising.

In the midwest where I grew up and in Seattle where I live now it's not
particularly common to stress over where your children go to school; you
optimize if convenient, but most of the choices are pretty good. Likewise, my
perception about life in Houston was that some of the schools were pretty bad
but given the low cost of living anyone who cared either already lived in the
suburbs or made so much money that they could easily afford to send their kids
to another school.

~~~
awad
Most, if not all, of our elementary and middle schools do have "friendly"
names, and as far as I'm aware all the high schools have and go by actual
names.

Examples: I went to PS 230 and 217, the names of which I never knew nor can
remember now, then to Cunningham IS 234, and graduated from Brooklyn Technical
High School.

And, having gone through the public school system in NYC, I can tell you first
hand that the right district can make all the difference, mostly because of
the environment. A smart student will always be a smart student, but a smart
student in a poor environment might well end up incredibly bored when he is
unable to move beyond the level that the school teaches at. The largest
problem facing the NYC school system has been, for years, the high student to
teacher ratio. When I was in elementary, the number was something like 32:1,
at one point I remember having 36 kids in my 4th or 5th grade class. The
benefit that 'good' schools and districts have are that they usually don't
have to abide by the same standards as the rest of the city in teaching and
course material. So, while class size might still be rather large (it's gotten
better I'm told), teachers are at least free to teach at a higher level and
hopefully make a bigger impact.

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joeyo
Public schools in the US are known to have uneven quality from state to
state-- something that is perhaps unavoidable since each state sets its own
standards, funding, etc. But why does school quality have to vary so much
within a city/school system?

I've always been suspicious that, "we can't live here, the schools aren't good
enough for little Johnny!" actually means something like, "We can't live here,
little Johnny might have to go to school with black people!". :(

~~~
briansmith
No, some schools really are better than others. Schools are paid for with
property taxes. If you have richer people living around the school, the school
gets more money. Additionally, you get rich people donating to the schools.

Also, you get better teachers. My friend chose to teach at a rich school over
a poor school because (a) she felt unsafe in the poor neighborhood, and (b)
she felt the rich school could support her program better. That is pretty
common, from what I've heard.

~~~
joeyo

      > No, some schools really are better than others. Schools
      > are paid for with property taxes. If you have richer
      > people living around the school, the school gets more money.
    

Is this actually true _within_ a school district? Is it common for the taxes
to apportioned geographically all the way down to the neighborhood level?
Police and fire services don't work like this, I hope!

~~~
briansmith
Yes. You can donate to a particular school in a school district, so you can
have somebody give one school 1,000 computers and a new baseball field while
the rest of the schools in the district get nothing. And, teachers usually
fight for the chance to work at the better, safer, richer schools; the poorer
neighborhoods will tend to have worse teachers and a lot more teacher churn.
Parents will use open enrollment or request exceptions to get their kids into
the schools in the better neighborhoods.

When my school district implemented open enrollment, the schools in the
richest neighborhoods nearly doubled in student population. To accomodate the
overflowing student population, they (mostly) centralized special education to
the poorest school. In turn, attendance shifted further as nobody wanted to go
to the "special ed school on the poor side of town."

------
noonespecial
Wow. Scary. I'd hate to think that _my_ children would end up in the same
school as all of those other schmucks paying $5500/month for rent. Thank
_goodness_ we can move to the $6500/month place and get in a better district.

 _sheesh_

~~~
joe_the_user
Yeah, it's funny how the NYT never mentions one important - get involved and
improve the school where you live!

~~~
tokenadult
I'd like to hear from people who live in New York City how readily the public
schools there accept parental involvement. My main volunteer work here in
Minnesota is leading an organization of parents concerned about gifted
education in this state, and local school districts here vary quite widely in
how well they encourage parental involvement. This state was the first in the
country to have statewide open enrollment for public school districts, the
first in the country to have charter schools, and the first in the country to
have a statewide program of dual enrollment (college-level study for high
school credit) for eleventh and twelfth graders, and all the hundreds of
parents I know locally have to continually think and rethink about how to shop
around for the best educational fit for their children. Some parents can make
meaningful changes in their local school district, and some cannot. But in New
York City parents have substantially less shopping power than parents in
Minnesota have, so the school districts may be correspondingly more inclined
to blow off parental concerns. What do those of you in New York observe about
the situation there?

~~~
joe_the_user
Hmm,

Since this is an article in the New York Times that is going to influence
behavior rather than just describe it, It seems like the various stages of
encouragement should be: A) Encourage parents to get involved with the public
schools that they will be sending their kids to. B) Raise enough ruckus to
make sure the parents _can_ get involved. This is the New York Times talking
(again).

I personally find Americans thinking in terms of "Better Schools" and "Worse
Schools" to be rather vile. There are two kinds of schools - schools where,
when the child puts into the effort, they can thrive and other schools. Once a
school reaches that point, it is up to the child and the _parents_ to make
sure their child thrives. But since of this implies some responsibility on the
parents' and children's the parts, it appeals not all.

