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I'm trying to do a deeper dive into education and its outcomes on children's life success. This is sort of a rehash on a post i made before. However this time the speaker is Matthew Stewart, who documents the same class differences that Charles Murray wrote about. Particular focus on the 9.9%. These people essentially live in gated neighborhoods with zoning that excludes people with less overall wealth. Much of schooling is funded by property taxes, and so as a result of the 9.9%'s houses being expensive, their schools get more and better funding, but when i took a small look, ive come across information stating that poor and rich schools receive the same funding in many instances, bringing the better schools advantage into question. To be fair, these schools may still hold an advantage in other ways, perhaps they have students that are less disruptive for example. Ive noticed here that there are many who debate this issue as one of the chicken and egg. Is it that the people in the lower class simply do bad behaviors, and thus they are in the lower-class with bad schools, and their children have worst outcomes because of it (or the children themselves are bad, which makes the school bad as well since you have many bad children that disrupt well behaved children's ability to learn), (and vice versa - the higher class simply made the right decisions, and thus their children benefit.) or does already being in poverty cause the bad behaviors/poor schooling? It seems very clear that college education effects outcomes such as higher earnings. But Id like more information on K-12. Mainly because id like to give my offspring the best advantage possible, and select the optimal school district and educational system for him/her. Does this simply not matter as much as we thought previously? Or perhaps there is more in the power of parents to help with schooling, with educational activities such as reading and writing at an early age?
This is not so clear. The earning difference between college graduates and non-graduates is clear, but whether it's the college education that's primarily responsible for that difference is questionable.
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We know it's the former. "Dignified poverty" where there a low incomes but still good behaviour has existed at various times. It tends not to last as children move to other cities. Plus the feds always see those spots as the perfect place to put a bunch of Somalis.
As for helping your children, teaching them to enjoy reading is very good. But the most important thing is their friends. Teens copy their peers. Childhood friendships often last for life.
So if you have infinite choice, I'd recommend sending them to Cupertino High School. The connections they make will carry them through life. They'll grow up imitating and internalizing the behaviours of high functioning white collar workers.
But fundamentally "one bad apple spoils the whole barrel" is true. Make sure your child has a friend group who is on the right track.
Nah, dignified poverty only exists in poor countries or at poor times. In a very rich country like the US, being poor but having good behavior (timeliness, basic propriety, a work ethic) gets you at least into the lower middle class. Dignified poverty probably exists in Afghanistan or Cuba.
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Have you met anyone who went to Cupertino high school? I have met several, and while it's true they aren't smoking crack in the back of the bus, they are some of the most maladjusted individuals I've met who still function in society.
Absolutely no desires or aspirations, a dead look in the eyes, mania, depression, depravity, etc etc. Yeah, they make fat stacks of cash writing CRUD apps for big tech - but at what cost?
Yes, and those are the "successful" graduates.
My niece goes to Cupertino HS. She claims to suffer "trauma", like 50%+ of her classmates. Her psychologist agrees (just like the psychologists of those 50%+ of her classmates do).
The amount of pressure those students heap on themselves, on top of the high expectations of the parents, seriously distorts their perception of reality. What does it mean to be "successful"? Is it enough to graduate HS and get a job / start a family? No, of course not. A "successful" person successfully founds a start-up, or at the very least goes to one of the universities on The List, where they will successfully found a start-up (or, as a distant second, get a highly remunerative PMC career).
And the alternative? If you don't have it in you to write that killer app by the age of 15, if you gods-forbid don't get into any of the universities on The List... well, that's it, you failed. And indeed you did, if your definition of "success" is to have the means to continue to live in the Bay Area. And no, you didn't make those nice networking connections with the "successful" classmates--they are not interested in burdening their networks with failures.
Fortunately, the Bay Area culture also offers a ready alternative to owning your failure: you are a Person with Disability, it's not your fault. My niece is on all the trendy spectra.
My niece is a bright girl, and I have urged that she come live with me for a while in the Flyover Country and go to a regular school for a change. Recalibrating would do her a world of good. Alas, no luck so far.
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We live in a society with substantial economic mobility. Ergo, find out what rich people's parents did and copy them.
Now, is 'k-12 schools higher quality' the effective part? I doubt it. While K-12 schools in rich neighborhoods are probably higher quality, that's because teachers would prefer to work there(and they don't beat Catholic schools in any case). I suspect that K-12 schools for rich kids help the kids stay rich over the long term mostly by controlling their peer group at an age when peer pressure leads people to do stupid things.
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Home and homeschool.
This is heavily colored by my own experiences but barring getting your kids into a really good K-12 system I don't think you can beat homeschooling for purely educational outcomes. With the caveat that at least one of the parents is going to need to be heavily involved in running the show, at least during the early years up until middle school. Once you get to that point if your kids are motivated you can basically go autopilot, and once they hit 11th grade early college programs are a popular option.
One more caveat, extracurriculars that get your kids involved with peers and mentors outside the home are going to be critical for obvious reasons.
I was homeschooled, and... it depends. In general, I liked it. My mom is disposed to be a decent teacher, and went on to teach lower elementary in the public schools. I ended up very well educated in literature, because a Kierkegaard and Dostoyevsky book club is my parents' idea of a good time. Math didn't go so well. This is fine, since I don't necessarily want to be a Woman in STEM, but also very common among homeschoolers I know, even with engineer fathers. I think math just inherently requires more structure and pushing for a lot of teens than reading and writing do.
I can't begin to speculate on the overall picture, but for what it's worth I did great at math and I was homeschooled. At the very least it is possible to do well in math as a homeschooled kid.
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This tracks with my personal experience. Both my older sister and I had to retake a lot of math in college. I didn't realize it was so common given that @pairingheap is saying the same thing. Average parents are just generally going to be rusty with their own math by the time their kids are hitting the more advanced stuff I suppose. Not a universal issue as I can recall off the top of my head a least a few other fellow homeschoolers who have gone on to do quite well in STEM. Purely anecdotal of course...
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From the homeschoolers I've spoken with this seems quite common. Great outcomes in many different domains, but a real lack of mathematical maturity.
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On the issue of property taxes and school funding, this varies by state. The state I'm in puts everything into one budget, subsidized with oil taxes, and funds the Title I (low income) schools more, but the better off schools make some of it up in better parent-teacher associations and less need for things like social workers.
There's probably a dynamic where better teachers like teaching better students, and will move to the charter or private or high income schools disproportionately. I'm not sure how big the effect of that is. The teachers having to spend all their energy on disruption and children who are behind is something that happens, and I'm not sure how big of an affect it has at normal ranges of children.
This probably varies a fair bit by child. There are some children (I've heard it's about 40%) who will learn to read competently based on the kind of exposure that it's almost impossible to avoid in the current society. My mom says she learned to read at three by her father reading the newspaper to her. There are other children who need explicit instruction in phonics, though I think most schools are back to teaching that so it's probably alright. I am not sending my own child to the school I work at because I am involved in workplace drama there, and don't want to get my kids pulled into that. But they'd still make friends and learn to read and add there, probably.
There are schools that are kind of a drag on kids' natural curiosity, which might be more of a long term problem, though I'm not sure if there's any research on that, or how to go about researching it.
R/teachers indicates that there's a lot of this going on, but how much of an effect 'better teachers' actually has seems very up in the air. Like part of Catholic school's secret sauce is surely that if you just cannot behave you are asked to leave(nicely at first, but to be reframed as Not A Request if needed) and a single misbehaving student can ruin things for everyone. But they also have better teachers(more experienced mostly, but also higher percentage of in-subject graduate degrees for high school teachers) and better instructional curricula(phonics over whole word etc). I'm not sure you can really distinguish the two effects, either- experienced teachers with masters degrees in their subjects strongly prefer teaching positions which exclude the bottom quintile as students.
This reminds me that it's probably a good idea to optimize for different things in primary vs secondary education. As far as I can tell, in lower elementary it's fine to do Montessori or Waldorf or unschooling or whatever else will deliver a pretty good childhood experience. The teachers should teach phonics, but otherwise it's mostly important for them to be able to get all the kids settled and not constantly bothering each other. There are a few elementary students who are so wild even a decent teacher can't get them to cooperate, but it's pretty rare.
Then in high school the quality of peers and academic ability of teachers becomes a lot more important.
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