
Incredibly low-priced private schools - robg
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/05/09/class_difference/?page=full
======
mml
I've lamented the fact that we are such small thinkers today. Our neighborhood
public school is among the worst in the state. Local private schools cost
about 1500/mo for gradeschool. I was looked at as a wild man for suggesting we
should start our own school.

20 kids' worth of parents can afford to employ a teacher at a very attractive
rate for both parties I suspect.

~~~
grellas
Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality
education.

The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle
class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were
widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did
not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping
kids to meet minimum proficiency tests by which educational results could be
measured with mirrors, and did not have to deal with unions whose goals seem
to be as much about promoting the interests of their members via ever-
expansive forms of public funding as they are about helping kids learn. The
public high schools I attended in California in the late 1960s were also good,
and it was naturally expected in that day that the vast majority of the kids
would not only graduate but would also be literate and reasonably taught once
they did so - there too, all funding was purely local.

The key is to have the schools, whether public or private, in the hands of
people who care really care about what the kids learn and that means local
people who know them and know their families. This element has largely been
lost in modern America's public schools, and it is a real tragedy.

It is nice to see the resourcefulness of parents who seek to overcome the
resulting mess but this is a struggle that is often just plain desperate in
light of the overwhelming problems that now beset the public schools. This
piece reminds us that there is always hope where people really care.

~~~
DrSprout
>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources

This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is
basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X
amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property
values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every
year due to inflation, and every 10-15 years the situation gets so dire that
the district has to put a ballot issue up for a tax "increase" to get funding
back up to the levels of 10-15 years ago.

In most areas of the Midwest, this poor voter understanding of how schools are
funded has resulted in a steady decline in school expenditures, even as actual
costs of education have outpaced inflation.

~~~
jbooth
++

In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a
ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking
relative to inflation.

You know what the most common complaint I heard was when these issues went to
ballot? "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're
holding these services hostage." What's the phrase about it being impossible
to make people understand something that they don't want to?

~~~
anamax
> In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a
> ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are
> shrinking relative to inflation.

Doesn't MA reassess on transfer? CA does, so property tax revenues grow faster
than the cap.

Note that CA also does "catchup" - the bill goes up by the cap whenever the
difference between the assessed and real value is greater than the cap, no
matter what's happened to the real value. That's why property tax bill is
going up this by the cap year even though the value of my house took a 30% hit
last year. It's the same for anyone who has owned for more than 5 years.

Note that housing inflation has been more than other inflation, so trailing
housing inflation doesn't imply that the local govt is losing ground.

> "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding
> these services hostage."

Since that's how govts actually behave....

Look at what they do and don't threaten to cut and ask yourself if those are
rational priorities. Or, do those two lists tell you that they're using the
"cut" list to keep funding for the "don't cut" list.

Note - you have to look at both lists, not just the "cut" list. And you have
to look at the amounts for the various items.

~~~
jbooth
Are you kidding me?

There was no money. It was a choice between raising taxes or cutting services.

And people like you respond to that with "You're such jerks for holding our
services hostage!"

Arithmetic is not a jerk. It's just a fact. Whatever happened to personal
responsibility?

RE: the percentages, the deal is that the total local property tax take goes
up by 2.5% a year. If your property increases in assessed value, you might see
personal increase of more than that but someone else saw an increase of less
to make up for it.

~~~
anamax
> > There was no money. It was a choice between raising taxes or cutting
> services.

0 money? Really? I'll bet that it was really just not enough to pay for what
the pols wanted to do.

If the latter, they could fund some services. That's why I said to look at
what they protected and what they said that they'd cut if they didn't get more
money.

If you do that, you'll discover that they're protecting some things that
should have a lower priority than things that they put on the "cut" list.

> And people like you respond to that with "You're such jerks for holding our
> services hostage!"

Since they're saying that they don't have enough money for police and fire
protection but do for lesser things, why is it wrong to characterize that as
"holding our services hostage"? What is an acceptable way to criticise that
behavior?

Or, are you claiming that they should always get enough money for whatever
they want?

> Arithmetic is not a jerk. It's just a fact.

Yup, it's a fact. If you have $100 and what you want costs $200, you need to
scale back your wants.

The "jerk" behavior is to spend the $100 on lower priorities and whine that
you don't have enough money to pay for higher priorities.

> Whatever happened to personal responsibility?

Huh? The fact that some govt wants to do something does not obligate me to pay
for it.

~~~
jbooth
I was one of the pols. I agonized over the budgets. What we "wanted to do" was
continue to pay our teachers. There wasn't enough money for that.

It was simple arithmetic, a choice between letting teachers go or raising
taxes.

What many people did for selfish reasons, and you're doing for ideological
purity reasons, is attempt to change the debate to some abstract notion of
"government spending my money". Hey buddy, it's your kids in the schools, and
you even get to vote on the tax increase. Just don't call me a jerk or a liar
-- I'm giving it to you straight.

Quote anamax : The "jerk" behavior is to spend the $100 on lower priorities
and whine that you don't have enough money to pay for higher priorities.

Which lower priorities was I wasting money on here, exactly? You're the
expert. And I'm sure there weren't any state or federal mandates involved,
legal obligations or anything like that. "jerk" behavior is refusing to
educate yourself on things and hand-waving away instead so you can keep your
nice simple universe. Mental shortcuts will always lead to uninformed
opinions.

~~~
anamax
> It was simple arithmetic, a choice between letting teachers go or raising
> taxes.

Somehow I doubt that teacher salaries were your only expense. I doubt that
teacher salaries were even your only not-mandated expense. (As to "mandated",
I've found that some of the "mandates" are an excuse. Yes, I've done this
exercise before.)

A 20% reduction in income can be painful, but in a world where lots of people
are taking a bigger hit....

~~~
jbooth
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, I guess.

~~~
anamax
Which reminds me, I like your assumption that govt spending, specifically
teacher salaries, are the most important priority.

Your tax base took a hit because people took a huge hit, yet for some reason
you think that teachers should be spared. Other folks take a pay cut and lose
jobs, but ....

Which reminds me, do those teachers have defined benefit pensions? Are they
fully funded? Few folks in the private sector have such pensions and none of
them have taxpayer guarantees.

And yes, I noticed that you ducked my questions about budget components. As I
wrote, I've gone through this before.

~~~
jbooth
You didn't ask a question, you threw out a bunch of assumptions, most of which
were so far off base that I need a stronger word than "wrong".

You're still doing it here. Did you read my earlier comments about how the
property tax is assessed and collected? If you had, you wouldn't be talking
about how the tax base took a "hit".

~~~
anamax
> If you had, you wouldn't be talking about how the tax base took a "hit".

You claimed that you didn't have enough money to pay teachers. There are three
ways to get into that situation.

(1) The amount of money that you're paying teachers (as a whole) has gone up.
(2) You have less money than you had last year.

(1) is dumb unless you have more money coming in, which leaves (2). Should I
have assumed dumb?

> Did you read my earlier comments about how the property tax is assessed and
> collected?

Yes, I did. The total amount of property tax collected can go down if the
total assessed value of property goes down. Of course, not all of that
property tax revenue goes for teacher salaries, so it's possible for the
teacher salary budget to go down when the property tax revenues don't change.

Anad that gets us back to priorities. When total tax revenues go down (or new
spending comes in that exceeds new revenues), govts make two lists - things
that they threaten to cut and things that they don't threaten to cut. The
composition of those two lists tells you want they think is valuable.

If your "teacher salary budget" got cut, it's because something else didn't
get cut. Why do I keep saying that? Because property tax revenues pay for more
than just teacher salaries.

------
arch_hunter
Even most private schools in America charge less per pupil than the government
pays to educate a student in a public school. Governments are rarely efficient
because they do not have to be.

~~~
ovi256
>Governments are rarely efficient because they do not have to be.

I'm starting to develop a theory that governments are efficient, even very
much so, except to another metric. The US Gov's Education Department metric
seems to be "pleasing the teacher's unions", not financial efficiency. And at
that, they are very good.

~~~
Avshalom
Because No Child Left Behind is just every teacher's favorite legislature, and
nothing makes teachers happier than 50 hour work weeks for low wages.

The two biggest problems any teacher I know can find with the current public
school system are:

1\. Over reliance on standardized test as the only metric of education. Making
it difficult to teach kids engaging material in various subjects (Nope, can't
cover history's 10 craziest revolutions, have to cover the civil war for the
tenth time) because there is so much that they have to learn specifically.

2\. A lack of any real power.

True story: My mom once gave a child an F in english, he had a course average
of 20%, the child's mom came in complained that her child COULD NOT go to
summer school because they had a trip to europe already planned and booked,
threatened a law suit and the principle made my mom raise change it to a D.

Another: in Florida at least it had become so difficult to hold a child back a
grade in middle school that freshman were coming into high school who hadn't
passed 5th grade reading tests. 14% of the freshman one year were functionally
illiterate.

Neither of those had anything to do with "government inefficiency." It's the
mandate to educate everyone. A private school can have very specific terms and
as long as they got a good lawyer to draw up the contract the parents don't
have a leg to stand on if the private school kicks their kid out, flunks them,
holds them back, gives the detention etc.

EDIT: note that when I a lack of power I mean over academic matters. Recently
the supreme court said strip searching a 14 year old girl in front of the male
principle because she had Tylenol in her purse was okay. That's some
terrifying power.

~~~
yummyfajitas
Teachers do not work 50 hour weeks. On average, teachers work 38 hour weeks.
That's 24 minutes less per weekday and 42 minutes less per saturday than the
average professional. They do this 9-10 months/year, the other 2-3 months a
year they work dramatically less.

<http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf>

Additionally, while their wages are low, their fringe benefits are excellent.
They often get defined benefit pensions, earlier retirement than other
professionals, tenure and 2-3 months vacation.

[http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_be...](http://web.missouri.edu/~podgurskym/articles/files/fringe_benefits.pdf)

Incidentally, while it may be the case that private schools don't educate
everyone, so what? If they can educate students in category X better than
public schools, but schools can educate category Y better than private, isn't
it best for everyone if private schools take the X students and public takes
the Y students?

~~~
patio11
I agree with everything in the above post except the one unevidenced claim:
that teachers' wages are low. Teachers' wages are not low in the United States
on average.

Quoth the BLS:

 _Median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary
school teachers ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008; the lowest 10
percent earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10 percent earned $75,190 to
$80,970._

You can scroll down the list of occupations and see some folks who get paid
less than teachers. It is an eye-opener in some cases (firefighters make less
than middle school teachers? _Really_? Whoa.)

~~~
amalcon
For the most part, wage is tied directly to the amount of education required
for a position. Teachers have similar education requirements to high-tech
fields (bachelors is not required, but not having it is considered a special
case; bachelor's is the low end; master's is typical). Which high-tech fields
are on that list?

~~~
Avshalom
In New York for instance as far as I know a Masters Degree is required. That
means that that top 10% $80,000 salary is being paid to a someone in the
middle of NYC with 30 years of experience and a Masters degree (at least,
probably a PHD).

Also yes firefighters earn terrifyingly low salaries, so do cops and a lot of
other government funded position necessary for the continued survival of
civilization

~~~
yummyfajitas
First, a masters in teaching is not hard to get. You basically just need to
show up.

Also, the base pay of a teacher in NYC with 20 years experience is $83,000
(with pay going up if they have degrees). $83k/year for 39 hours/week, 9
months a year is not bad, even by NYC standards. (It's equivalent to $99k/year
working all year.).

[http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolPro...](http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolProfessionals/Salary/Salary+Step+and+Differential+Schedules.htm)

They also get to retire at 55 with a full pension, assuming they started work
at 25. So you need to factor in the value of those extra years of pension, and
fewer years of work to get it.

<http://www.psc-cuny.org/PensionApermanentDecision.htm>

------
shaddi
This is very cool, but I can't help remembering that the Wahhabi schools in
Afghanistan and Pakistan (incorrectly called "madrassas", which is just a
generic Arabic word for "school") would also fall into this category of small,
private, low-cost schools. I wonder what can be done to ensure that schools
like this that are run by potentially less scrupulous proprietors provide a
quality education. I know that's not well defined, but I do not think we don't
want to go down the Wahhabi road of teaching only a corrupted
religious/political doctrine to advance political ends at the expense of
promoting reading, math, and science -- or any number of other educational
scams that one could devise.

It seems that one of the advantages that a public program could have in
volatile areas is some manner of centralized curriculum oversight. How are
private schools in the US regulated to prevent similar situations (if they are
at all)?

~~~
_delirium
> How are private schools in the US regulated to prevent similar situations
> (if they are at all)?

In practice, market forces do a decent (though not perfect) job: most private
schools want to produce students who have a chance of getting into a good
college, and one of the more effective ways to convince colleges you aren't
insane is to: 1) have your students do well on standardized tests like the
SAT; and/or 2) be accredited by an organization like the National Association
of Independent Schools.

~~~
amalcon
The caveat is that this works now because most parents who pay to send their
children to a private school do so to improve academic outcomes, and because
getting into a good college is considered a very positive academic outcome.

~~~
_delirium
Yeah, that's true, and there's also a possible negative feedback loop if
strongly religious colleges that weren't as interested in secular education
made a revival. Super-Christian private high schools feeding into super-
Christian colleges won't have the same sort of check on whether the student
got any sort of decent secular education, because right now, the need to look
good to a college with a mostly secular admissions process (even schools like
BYU look at secular academics in the admissions) is one of the main motivators
for religious high schools to do a decent job on their secular education.

------
sethg
If this were an article about poor people in India hiring their own militia
because they couldn’t get adequate protection from the local government-
sponsored police force, would anyone be considering this a model for the US to
emulate?

~~~
hga
No, because in the US the people _are_ the militia, and outside of a few
states and D.C. are allowed to provide their own protection.

And of course in those nasty state the powerful hire their own militia
(private security) anyway.

