
If you sacrifice your child for public education, you are a bad person. - jdbentley
http://jdbentley.com/if-you-sacrifice-your-child-to-prove-a-point-about-public-education/
======
edtechdev
If you look into actual research on education (it exists), private schools and
charter schools are no better at educating than public schools.* It is just a
matter of other pre-existing differences, like socioeconomic status (poverty),
etc. As numerous people have pointed out - you want to fix education, you need
to fix poverty and inequity. Sure, other things will help, too, like requiring
all teachers have masters degrees and paying them like other professionals, as
other countries like Finland do.

That said, the article that is the subject of the blog complaint states that
it is morally wrong to send your kid to private school. I disagree with that -
even people who send their kids to private schools pay taxes that go to
support public schools. It is a little more of a shame when parents send their
kids to (some) crappy charter schools, which DO take away money from public
schools, but sometimes it is because the public school really is bad, or
because the kid isn't doing well in the public school and the only other
alternative is homeschooling.

* [http://www.edline.com/uploads/pdf/PrivateSchoolsReport.pdf](http://www.edline.com/uploads/pdf/PrivateSchoolsReport.pdf) [http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670063,0...](http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1670063,00.html) [http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/are-private-sc...](http://voices.washingtonpost.com/answer-sheet/are-private-schools-better-tha.html) [http://www.nea.org/home/18142.htm](http://www.nea.org/home/18142.htm)

~~~
tokenadult
What actual research says is that cultural factors in the home and school
effectiveness factors in the school matter even more than poverty as such in
constraining educational outcomes. One thoughtful article on this point is
mathematician Patricia Kenschaft's article from the _Notices of the American
Mathematical Society,_ "Racial Equity Requires Teaching Elementary School
Teachers More Mathematics"

[http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-
kenschaft.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf)

Read the article, and see if you want any child from any neighborhood, rich or
poor, to have elementary school teachers as poorly prepared to teach
mathematics as the teachers Kenschaft found in New Jersey. Another interesting
set of research articles are those by economist Roland Fryer, such as

"Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City"

[http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/getting-
beneat...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/getting-beneath-veil-
effective-schools-evidence-new-york-city)

or

"Achieving Escape Velocity: Neighborhood and School Interventions to Reduce
Persistent Inequality"

[http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/achieving-
esca...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/achieving-escape-
velocity-neighborhood-and-school-interventions-reduce-persistent)

or

"Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City
Public Schools"

[http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/teacher-
incent...](http://scholar.harvard.edu/fryer/publications/teacher-incentives-
and-student-achievement-evidence-new-york-city-public-schools)

Yet another good author on education policy is Caroline Hoxby, whose
publications include

"Competition Among Public Schools: A Reply to Rothstein (2004)"

[http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11216.html](http://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/11216.html)

and

"Would School Choice Change the Teaching Profession?"

[http://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v37y2002i4p846-891.html](http://ideas.repec.org/a/uwp/jhriss/v37y2002i4p846-891.html)

 _Sure, other things will help, too, like requiring all teachers have masters
degrees_

Masters degrees in the subject taught, or masters degrees in "education"?
There is no evidence in favor of the latter.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/us/19gates.html)

"He suggests they end teacher pay increases based on seniority and on master’s
degrees, which he says are unrelated to teachers’ ability to raise student
achievement."

[http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-
content/uploads/issues/20...](http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-
content/uploads/issues/2012/07/pdf/miller_masters.pdf)

~~~
edtechdev
You do know that article is an opinion piece that you're using to back your
argument.

~~~
tokenadult
I reserve the right to add sources to my comment during its edit window, if I
feel like that, and meanwhile I invite you to back up the statement that
masters degrees add value to teachers, because there is definitely evidence to
the contrary.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Funny how the author doesn't live on the streets in order to be invested in
finding a solution to homelessness.

OR, she doesn't live in rural India to become invested in ending third-world
malnutrition.

Seriously, how can anyone take this moron seriously. Her basic argument is
that you should suffer the consequences of all world ills, so you will be
motivated to solve them.

Some people take every opportunity to preach as much as possible, even though
they are idiots.

~~~
joyeuse6701
Well, anecdotally, nothing like jumping off a cliff to see if you can fly
right? It probably will motivate the average parent to work harder for the
sake of their children and by extension others, but yes, you will end up
sacrificing a child in the process...for the glorious peoples republic of
america.

------
Alex3917
tl;dr Someone with no apparent expertise in education
research/theory/policy/history debates someone else with no apparent knowledge
of education research/theory/policy/history.

In a world where there are hundreds of high-quality research-based books on
education, thousands of academic studies on education, dozens of books on the
history of education, etc., these sorts of baseless opinion pieces get boring
really quickly.

~~~
tgb
Can you recommend a good review article or similar that gives an overview of
the state-of-the-art in terms of education research? I am somewhat interested.

~~~
Alex3917
Equality and Achievement: An Introduction to the Sociology of Education (2nd
Edition) - Similar to the above, but focusing on equality-related differences
(e.g. SES, class size, etc.) as mediating variables for achievement.

Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to
Achievement - Research on variables effecting achievement. The only book in
this list I haven't read yet, but it's slightly newer that the Riordan book
above and it has good reviews so it's probably worth checking out. IIRC
tokenadult recommends it also. The only caveat is I'm not sure how it deals
with the research that Ravitch is critiquing, so maybe read it after that one.

Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children -
Basically a book-length academic journal article on why the amount of language
spoken to children is the most important variable effecting their later
academic ability. A very good read.

Life and Death of the Great American School System by Diane Ravitch --
Exposing the fraudulent nature of the research behind Bill Gates' education
reforms. The second half of the book is especially good, the first half is
mostly about the history of failed school reforms by corporate leaders, which
is interesting but kind of dry. Not only is it a must-read, but it's also very
much worth going through all the footnotes and reading through the actual
methodology of all the studies she's talking about. It's pretty ridiculous,
and pretty much exposes Bill Gates as a complete mouth breather.

Anyway reading any of these books will be pretty much like dropping acid;
you're going to come back a different person, probably for the better, but
don't ask me to predict how.

~~~
tokenadult
Diane Ravitch is the person who thinks a high school diploma is credible even
if the possessor of the diploma doesn't know beginning algebra. Her argument
is that she, a professor of history, was not required to know algebra in her
generation (I would hope she at least took a course in the subject as part of
secondary education), so it's asking too much that young people in the United
States ought to be able to pass test that includes algebra item content as
part of graduating from high school. Having seen countries that do otherwise
in secondary education from how the United States does things, I have to
respectfully disagree with Ravitch on that point and on many other points.

------
unimpressive
My life turned around at a private school. I have on more than one occasion
thought in response to accusations that Christine Gregoire is trying to
collapse the public school system that it would likely be a positive event.

------
chreod
Mulder, Bowles, et al. 2009 (Science)
[http://www.hks.harvard.edu/inequality/Seminar/Papers/Bowles1...](http://www.hks.harvard.edu/inequality/Seminar/Papers/Bowles10.pdf)
"We explain this variation in inequality using a dynamic model in which a
population’s long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent
to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families
across generations."

------
breakyerself
In some Scandinavian countries private school is against the law. They perform
very well because the people who call the shots actually have a dog in the
race. How many governors, senators, mayors and business owners are putting
their kids in private school and then undercutting public school in some way
because they are disconnected from the consequences?

------
patmcguire
This wasn't what I hoped it might be.

I could see a defense of not sacrificing the wellbeing of someone you're
responsible for to appease your conscience and benefit some abstract common
good. That you have a duty to your own children above and beyond what you have
to other people is worth exploring, but the author focuses on whether public
school, as it exists, is worthwhile, which is a boring question. The thrust of
the original article was that the pressure valve of the private option meant
that those most likely to actually change anything in public education are
those most likely to have already abandoned the system. Of course public
education is terrible - all the richest left.

I feel like the HN hivemind underestimates the value of institutions - it's
the same concept as company culture. There is "a way things are done" that
people buy into that isn't explicitly defined, and it s just as real as what's
on paper. The rich sending their children to their own schools, and leaving
the rest to fend for theirselves is very, very new (at least at the primary
level) in the history of America.

------
dnautics
As someone who got an incredibly awesome public school education - seriously,
I breezed through Honors Physics exams at the University of Chicago (no slouch
of a school) because I had seen exam problems as _homework_ in my AP Physics
class - I have to say, if I ever have children, they will either be co-opped
or private schooled. The quality of public school education that I was
afforded -will never- be available in the public sector, ever, ever again. I
fear the system has become irreversibly captured by special interests which
are not aligned with the children's best interest.

In America, the state has to treat everyone equally (this is not a bad thing).
Yet, education is something where the ideal is not equal treatment. To launch
a student's future, that student's teacher has to provide opportunities,
identify the student's strengths, and play to them. This individualized
attention can never be equal. And the problem is, no matter what 'system' is
used, the outcomes will be different. As different outcomes get observed, a
special interest group (not just the poor, who will generally fare the worst
in attempts to capture special interest; but think of rich parents arranging
for their kids to be diagnosed as ADHD or dyslexic and getting special test
dispensation) will swoop in and demand changes to address their interest.
Repeat, until the effectiveness of education gets whittled down to a minimum.

This is required by law, because the state is required to treat everyone
equally, and the chosen metric is outcomes (this is maybe not a good measure
for equal treatment in any case). The asymptotic result is zero.

Bottom line, if you really are interested in seeing education equality as an
outcome, you should take the time to personally do research into where our
society has failed its citizens, and pay out of your own pocket to provide for
the education of people there. I've done it, I've made a marginal difference
in the education of people who have less access to it. It feels great. You
should do it, too.

There are other issues with public education as well, such as capture by other
groups that seek entitlements that are not necessarily in line with the
student's interests, conflation with municipal loans, which are backed
(+interest!) by the forcibly appropriated income of the very people it's
supposed to help, the questionable wisdom of letting municipal (or state or
federal) elected and unelected officials be at the helm, but I won't get too
deeply into those.

------
coldtea
> _As far as I can tell, based on what I experienced, public schools aren 't
> teaching anything worthwhile._

OK, the writer holds idiotic ideas, and/or dellusions of what's worthwhile.
Case closed.

~~~
aestra
Some are, no doubt, you haven't experienced a truly terrible idiotic public
school... like soul crushing bad...

~~~
coldtea
Well, I had my share of bad public school teachers. That said, tons of bad
private school teachers too.

And I've heard stories of horrible homeschooling that would give one the
chills (not to mentioning crushing any social skills the child could gain).

------
whbk
Thank you. I posted the original article earlier today hoping it would get the
treatment it deserved.

I've read the article quite a few times today and just can't fathom that there
are still people who believe that we should stomach 7.9% success rates [1] for
even another 5 years, much less multiple generations. I had the same visceral
reaction to this article that I had to the head of the Chicago Teachers
Union's celebratory declaration at the conclusion of their strike that,
"Cities everywhere have been forced to accept performance pay. Not here in
Chicago!"

People like Allison Benedikt are dangerous. The kind of intellectual laziness
that spawns an article like the one to which OP responded is hard to read, but
it's a nice reminder of why I'm working in EdTech and in all likelihood will
make education my life's work.

[1]
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732465940457850...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324659404578504761168566272.html)

------
sbov
Is this some weird kind of alternate reality? I've never even heard of people
claiming teachers and parents telling someone high school is the best time of
their life before this article. It's always the reverse: students think high
school is the end all be all, while adults let you know it's nothing in the
grand scheme of things.

~~~
aestra
Adults who had their peak experiences in high school say that. If I can be
judgemental for a moment, these people are usually very shallow, and were very
attractive and or popular. Think Al Bundy. Their features that were everything
in high school don't get them far in the real world, and their attractiveness
declines rapidly post high school.

------
RougeFemme
There ARE people who send their kids to private school because that's the best
option for their individual kids - especially if their public schools suck -
but still do all they can to improve the public schools, whether through
money, time, political advocacy, etc.

If I could, I would homeschool my kids, with liberal use of supplemental
outside resources.

------
smoyer
I'm on the school board of a small private school and I can (anecdotally) tell
you the factors that determine a child's success there are the same as they'd
be at the public school - engaged parent(s).

I can also tell you that the social environment at our school is dramatically
different from that of public schools.

------
at-fates-hands
Great premise, if it weren't for open enrollment. Now whatever barriers a
child has to get a good education are all but gone.

Can read about each state's open enrollment rules here:

[http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=268](http://mb2.ecs.org/reports/Report.aspx?id=268)

Oh sure, the parent has to sacrifice a little by maybe driving little johnny
across town to a better school, but if you value an education, these are the
sacrifices parents make.

Although like the author points out, no reason to have your well educated kids
going to a shitty school, just so they can help out a few kids who may or may
not want help. Maybe little johhny wants to deal drugs and carry a gun instead
of getting a high school diploma. No amount of smart suburban kids is going to
change that.

~~~
ScottWhigham
The district 3 miles from my house in Texas believes in open enrollment, at
$10,000 per child. Ha.

Look, it's all fine to buy into marketing materials and campaign promises but
at a certain point in your life you need to recognize those for what they
are...

~~~
at-fates-hands
This is where the parents have to figure out how valuable a good education is.
Some will make the sacrifices for their kids and some won't.

My parents weren't rich, but when we moved into a different school district in
high school, they paid tuition to the school district we lived in so I could
remain with my friends and finish at the same school I started. They drove me
to and from school everyday so that I could attend the same school before we
moved. They made sacrifices so I could still get a good education.

------
solistice
Thank you.

I read Benedikt‘s article earlier this evening, and it infuriated me on a very
primal level. Not because I‘m a parent yet, but because I had my run ins with
public education.

Especially him saying that ‚gifted‘ children will be just fine. Let me tell
you a personal story.

I was diagnosed as gifted in second grade by a local school psychologists. My
teachers recommendation was to send me to a school expressively tailored to
gifted children, which my parents at that point could not do, which is why I
stayed in the public school system. As I went through the rest of primary
school, I started to mark myself out as a troublemaker, and I was bullied,
both things my school didn‘t have sufficient resources to care for. By the
time I hit middle school, I was thoroughly disillusioned towards the prospect
of school, and my meager grades went from acceptable (B+ level) to hopeless (D
level). By 8th grade, going from one debacle to another, I fell into serious
depression. Since my future seemed so bleak, I was considering suicide or
getting back at everyone with a school shooting. To my defense, I was 13,
isolated and depressive, not just crazy.

Since then, I‘ve recovered. After grade 8th, I was offered by my family to
leave for a private international school out of the country, and offer which I
gladly took. Since I suddenly had a new slate to work from, things didn‘t seem
quite as bleak, and I‘ve become more resilient due to the stark contrast
between these two poles.

But when I read an article like Benedikt‘s, it brings me back to sitting in my
room with the blinds partially down, dreading going back to school the next
morning, contemplating whether I should fill my bag with fertilizer instead of
schoolbooks. And that article tells me „you should have stayed, for the good
of many“, should have perished for people that give half a damn about you if
you don‘t blow up, and if you do, they blame it on the games you play, or on
the specific school you went to, or on you being psychologically broken, or
any number of factors.

It‘s never on the system, it‘s the people who are broken.

------
gibbitz
I went to both private and public schools growing up, and I realized that they
have different goals. One taught me new and challenging subjects, taught me to
ask questions and think for myself. The other taught me how to deal with
bureaucracy, how to be in the right part of the building at the right time and
how to discern new information from reams of repetition. Public schools won't
get better, but they will go away. The internet has created a place where you
can go to learn whatever you want. Eventually the high cost of homes and the
subsequent high taxes will cause schools to be closed to reduce the tax burden
when all of the unnecessary programs have already been cut. We'll all be
homeschooling then. We'll have no choice.

------
meric
A child who is homeschooled compared to attending a school meet so much fewer
people in their lives - all else kept equal; This means they're more likely to
be socially awkward when they grow up. How to compensate for that?

~~~
dnautics
I would argue the opposite. A child who is homeschooled (typically homeschools
operate like co-ops, these days) interacts with a few individuals across a
broad spectrum of ages. This is a better model of adult social interaction
than schools where you are jammed in with a firehose of your near-exact-age-
peers.

~~~
mikeash
I'm always amazed at how artificial the school environment is. In the real
world, I interact with a diverse group of people of many different ages. I
have a lot of control over who I deal with, such that I can usually avoid
dickheads. If I can't avoid them and one of them causes trouble to the extent
of physical threats or attacks, I can get them hauled off by the police.

In school, everyone around you is the same age, you can't avoid the dickheads
no matter how much you might want to, and they can harass you with near
impunity.

I realize that some allowances must be made for children (can't give a
10-year-old total control over their lives the way an adult has it, after
all), but the massive differences in something that's _supposed_ to be
preparing them for adulthood are a bit crazy.

------
tokenadult
Hear. Hear. I saw the original article to which the author of the article
submitted here responds,

[http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/priva...](http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/private_school_vs_public_school_only_bad_people_send_their_kids_to_private.html)

and I thought, "What a shallow analysis." I'm glad that there has already been
a reply article, and I'm especially glad that it is gaining lots of karma here
on Hacker News.

Readers who like deeper analysis of these issues may be interested in reading
some of the books found in the online bibliography "Books on School and
State,"

[http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html](http://learninfreedom.org/school_state.html)

part of my personal website. For a long time, I have been studying education
policy, and indeed it was reading Paul Graham's essays

[http://paulgraham.com/articles.html](http://paulgraham.com/articles.html)

on education policy that drew me to participating here on Hacker News. We can
all come up with lots of ways to incrementally improve schools, and we can
best do that by exposing any one kind of school to competition from competing
providers.

I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Minnesota, where I
now live and where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for
public school pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made
most school funding come from general state appropriations rather than from
local property taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."

[http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...](http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.html)

Today most funding for schools is distributed by the state government on a
per-pupil enrollment basis.

[http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf](http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf)

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html)

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the
1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled
unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new
compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school
alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by
the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html)

and the opportunity for advanced learners to attend up to two years of college
while still high school students on the state's dime.

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html)

And Minnesota also has the oldest charter school statute in the United States.

[http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter...](http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter/dp/1592984762/)

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states.
That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment
for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing
children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district
(my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other
school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study
at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results
of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully
competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of
east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.

~~~
anthonyb
Not really a shallow analysis, but they don't make their point particularly
well. I think bringing in "sacrificing your kids to make a point" is
unnecessary linkbait.

The basic issue for me is that western democracies and the US are founded on
principles of equality (qv.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal)).

If public education is left to rot (as well as transport and healthcare and
everything else), but the rich are allowed to buy their way out, surely this
is a subversion of the principles that your country is founded on?

Edit: wow, you've added a hundred links since I replied. Perhaps you could
condense your point down into a couple of paragraphs?

~~~
briandear
The problem with public education is that it isn't typically shaped by free
market principals and there's little effective competition. Competition drives
innovation. Parents are generally the best arbiters of success because they
care about their kids more than anyone else. Adam Smith, when applied to
education can have dramatic results, yet public schools are typically about as
efficient as a Pentagon procurement office.

~~~
anthonyb
principles, not principals.

Which, thinking about it, is an even more condensed version of my argument
above.

Competition is all very well, but if you're talking about the education of a
country, you can't very well just chuck out half the students and/or schools
because they failed the competition, particularly when the competition is
"rigged" from the start:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/...](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/nyregion/nyregionspecial2/09Rparenting.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

------
rwg
Another response, this one from Ken White at Popehat:

[http://www.popehat.com/2013/08/29/this-is-no-surprise-to-
you...](http://www.popehat.com/2013/08/29/this-is-no-surprise-to-you-but-it-
turns-out-im-a-bad-person/)

------
Kudzu_Bob
If the good people who read the above article follow Allison Benedikt's
prescription then we will end up with a society in which their children are
poorly schooled in the name of egalitarianism, and only the children of bad
people receive the quality education and critical thinking skills that the
author so obviously lacks, thereby making society even less fair than it
already is. Talk about evil genius. Was it Lex Luthor who put her up to
writing this, or was it Senator Palpatine?

