This comment is gold. Sample bias might be at play here and still that is encouraging.
Poor people do not love to be poor and are actively looking to get out of poverty. One of the ways they do this is by taking unusual risks and imitation. (Trust me I was poor). Public education system takes away both these tools from them. The school you will go to will be determined based on where you live and nothing else. Because of this stupid constraint you lose a very critical market signals that other schools could have used to filter out better kids and nurture them better.
I think poor children should have access to charter and private schools too but those schools should have 100% freedom to discriminate. Say for every certified poor kid that is admitted to private/charter school government gives a $10K voucher and you can admit only at max 25% of total capacity with such students. The poor kids and their parents line up outside the school. They have to prove that they are worthy of the seat by showing things that matter to the school. E.g. my kid is not a bully, parents of the kids have no criminal history, that parents are happily married, parent doing 2 jobs, parents have not done drugs etc. At least bare minimum parents willing to take efforts to enrol them into better schools and doing research of which schools are better.
Poor people do not love to be poor and are actively looking to get out of poverty. One of the ways they do this is by taking unusual risks and imitation. (Trust me I was poor). Public education system takes away both these tools from them. The school you will go to will be determined based on where you live and nothing else. Because of this stupid constraint you lose a very critical market signals that other schools could have used to filter out better kids and nurture them better.
I think poor children should have access to charter and private schools too but those schools should have 100% freedom to discriminate. Say for every certified poor kid that is admitted to private/charter school government gives a $10K voucher and you can admit only at max 25% of total capacity with such students. The poor kids and their parents line up outside the school. They have to prove that they are worthy of the seat by showing things that matter to the school. E.g. my kid is not a bully, parents of the kids have no criminal history, that parents are happily married, parent doing 2 jobs, parents have not done drugs etc. At least bare minimum parents willing to take efforts to enrol them into better schools and doing research of which schools are better.