patrick.net
An Antidote to Corporate Media
1,197,143 comments by 14,102 users - AmericanKulak, B.A.C.A.H., richwicks online now
Why Pay House Premium "for Schools" Instead of Private Schooling?
invite response
2011 Jul 31, 3:24pm 34,130 views 147 comments
« First « Previous Comments 69 - 108 of 147 Next » Last » Search these comments
However, I know and work with a number of folks that went to "top" colleges, and they are working with me making the same money at a top-10 employer. Naturally, it seems that a lot of the richest folks out there came from "top" colleges, so there is likely some correlation in there. At the same time, it still seems like people put aside common sense & work fervently just to "get the name." In some cases it pays off richly, but as far as I can tell, in most cases it doesn't seem to really put someone way ahead. Really, learning to work hard, solve problems and apply common sense to life seems to be a bigger delimiter between success & failure.
Some of the recent studies suggest that success is better correlated with applying to a top school as opposed to going to one. Many of the people who applied have the drive, ambition, smarts, etc. and will generally do fine.
What private schools often have is better college guidance. At many public schools, you don't have dedicated college guidance staff, but at private schools, sometimes you do. Good private schools do well with this, but crappy private schools tend to appease the parents more than find a good fit for the child ("sure, your kid should apply to an Ivy League -- he has a great shot with mediocre SAT, mediocre grades, etc."). A good private school can give you a little bit of an edge in some ways, but sometimes that's more about giving you good advice, rather than the fact that sometimes they have lunch with admissions directors. Self-selection does come into play a little bit here.
while i do think that some parents are perhaps a bit overzealous about the school's ratings, and i do think that there are plenty of good public schools and that we don't all need to cram into the top schools, it's a bit laughable that people want to blame the RE whores for inventing the importance of a good school district.
The trend these days seems to be more about hyper-optimization. I don't quite understand it. If your kid is not motivated/ambitious, then it doesn't matter if he/she goes to the best school, private or public.
When people talk about a "good" public school they generally are talking mostly about test scores. But school is both an academic environment AND a social environment. There are 11 boys on the starting line-up of the football team whether the school has 250 students or 2500, and lots of parents are willing to pay for a small private school with "no cuts" athletics and school plays.
What does "no cut" really teach you? That if you suck, but really want to play football anyway, we'll make you feel special by letting you do so at a high school level against fellow inferior competitors, but never again? I'm not sure that teaches the appropriate lesson. People might be willing to pay for that, but I'm not sure it's completely wise.
I agree that private schools tend to be smaller and give you more opportunity to do more things, but is that really better than being an expert and doing more in-depth at 1 or 2 things? I'm not so sure. Colleges have also revised their desires -- they used to say "we want a well-rounded individual." Many now say, "we want a well-rounded class." You can see the difference with alumni interviewers too -- it's much more interesting to see someone passionate about something they do rather than just dabbling in a bunch of activities because they can and think it looks good on their application.
A teenager who feels that he fits in at school and is kept busy with extracurriculars causes fewer problems and is less likely to get in trouble than a teenager who tried out for several things freshman year, didn't get accepted to any of them, and now smokes dope in the park after school or while cutting school. If you think private school is expensive, check out the websites for teen rehab programs.
You're jumping to the other end of the spectrum without sufficient justification. If your kid was a slacker in elementary and middle school, chances are that your kid will be a slacker in high school. At some point, kids get beyond your parenting, and high school is generally beyond parenting. If you haven't put a good head on your kids' shoulders by then, sending them to an exclusive private school probably where they can't hack it won't do it.
Contrary to popular belief, there are definitely kids who smoke pot in the school parking lot at private schools. And because they tend to be better off, they can buy more expensive things than pot sometimes too.
At the 5th grade level, the inferior curriculum of the public school and the public schools' aversion to tracking by ability, combined with the low morals and lack of discipline of some of the kids and their parents makes the middle school years an absolute Hell.
...
The kids who have been to parochial school usually have a better work ethic, too, which helps enormously with the transition to high school.
But there's an element of self-selection here. Why can't you say that it's the kids whose parents are risk-adverse and who are already well-motivated are the ones who are going to private school in the first place? These are the kids who go to "academically gifted" programs within public schools in the first place. Putting them in a parochial school likely didn't cause that.
Elementary school can be easily supplemented as you said, with other things that enrich kids -- I agree. However, elementary school is also where foundations come from -- the value of a good kindergarten teacher is statistically much higher than the value of a bad one. The fault is thinking of elementary school as structured daycare -- those good habits come from a young age.
The thing about middle school is that you're bordering close to the point where your kids are more set in their ways. If they weren't motivated in elementary school, they probably won't be in middle school.
As a further benefit, at the parochial school your child stays at the same campus all day, while with the public school option there is the daily fear that little Tommy will miss the bus from public school to daycare and be stranded while you are at work. A lot of people just don't do the math, and end up paying more for something worse, especially since the public school invariably have more oneupsmanship with clothing, etc.
This isn't really a good reason for public vs. private -- it's more about your own insecurities than anything else. You could easily go to an uptight exclusive private school where clothing matters, and possibly more so because they can afford it.
Being the poorest family in a public school in a rich neighborhood is probably worse than being a full-scholarship kid to a swanky private school, because at a private school the kids are spread out geographically and don't usually know too much about where most of their classmates live. I personally experienced the former situation, and it was NOT pleasant. It is far better for your child to develop a real lifelong social network of middle-class kids than to be a bitter social outcast among the offspring of the rich and famous. You may think that your child is so gifted and outgoing that having the wrong car, wrong house, and WRONG CLOTHES won't stop him from being class president, but you are mistaken.
It can be just as bad to be the poorest kid at a private school, and the differences are more stark -- the range has more multiples. For private schools, cars, clothes, neighborhood, and other keeping up with the Jonses things can often matter much more because of the ability to afford them. I think you're focusing too much on your own personal experience. If you have neighborhood public schools, the poorest kids usually can't be that much worse off for elementary/middle than the richest. For high school, it's a different story because public high schools tend to be bigger and cast a net over a wider area, but a lot of the foundations are basically set by then anyway.
You can see a Freakonomics-type experiment about school prices in Santa Clara County.
Careful -- Freakonomics has NOTHING to do with experiments. Freakonomics is simply a backwards look at data and has more to do with chance and random discovery, than having good smarts and doing good thinking. I'd much rather have a clever thinker than someone who can pore through mounds of data just to find a random correlation.
Now we have "helicopter parents" that want to monitor everything 24/7.
It wasn't that long ago that students walked home from school, did not have cell phones, did not wait in a car at the bus stop, did not have "play dates" etc.
This is what I was getting at with the hyperoptimization. If you have motivated kids, they'll generally do just fine. The fact of the matter is (and it's not politically correct to say this), there are fewer motivated kids in poor areas and many more in rich areas, and that has to do with structural issues including nutrition among many other things. Those in the rich areas tend to be more risk-adverse and hyper-optimizing because they can afford to be so.
What I find really amusing is all this 'Tiger Mom' business which seems to focus entirely on credentialing the child rather than building a capacity for critical thought. You can see it in the adults they turn into. Great at math, poor at thinking.
Agree -- solely putting your kid in a hyperoptimized environment won't make your kid into a success. There are a lot of factors at play.
You can't always make your child motivated. You can push them towards new things and new opportunities, but the degree you push matters and the personality of the kid matters -- maybe they needed a slight push to realize they liked something, but maybe you pushed the wrong way and are just causing the kid to accrue therapy bills in the future.
we are living in Menlo Park and actually had to pull our three sons from the high API public schools here for those very reasons.
I'm curious -- what grades?
My daughter got a summer job at a local supermarket while she was in high school (she attended an out-of-state boarding school). A group of 8 or 10 young people were hired at the same time. My daughter and another girl the same age who attended a swanky local independent all-girls school were given "checker" jobs while all the others were "stockers." Coincidence? I don't think so.
As far as kids getting kicked out of public schools for no reason, I have heard some disturbing anecdotes in the past couple of years regarding public schools with large minority enrollments suspending white students who were victims of aggression for "fighting." Apparently, the public schools are under HUGE pressure to equalize the percentages of students from different racial groups who are suspended/expelled, and so the principals throw BOTH kids out whenever there is a "fight," even though quite a few of the "fights" involve one kid jumping another with no provocation. In one case that I know of, the parents decided to enroll their victimized-and-suspended daughter in a private school as the result of this, even though they really were not in a financial position to do so.
Both public school and private schools get better and worse over the years, with a change in principal often greatly improving or worsening a school. People often fight to get their child into a top school that really isn't that good anymore. Attendance zones get altered, neighborhoods change, school enrollments drop and the school district cuts programs rather than reducing surplus staff, etc.
The joke on education generally is that the value of schools, universities especially, is in their networking (who you meet) and their signalling value (somebody reading your resume in 45 seconds will see "Princeton 2008" and put you in a separate pile).
Not completely sure about that. I'd agree with leoj that the networking advantage diminishes if you are not already among the elite and possibly if you don't live in NY after graduation.
Seeing Princeton gives in an interview process gives you a couple things: 1) a second look no matter what, 2) an assumption that you probably were motivated/smart/etc enough to get into Princeton and probably still have some of that. But it doesn't get you the job without more. For anything other than an entry-level job, you still have to meet what they're looking for.
Even if you look a mid-career salaries, Ivy League grads are high relative to Podunk State but aren't that much higher than other good places where many students probably applied to Ivy League schools. There are studies on this: http://finance.yahoo.com/college-education/article/111664/collges-that-brin -- the top schools at mid-career include Harvey Mudd (engineering/science), and Colgate (northeastern school with a lot of people who didn't get into Ivy but are still highly motivated).
I don't think that the data backs up your point that "good" schooling is worthless, but from what I have read you are correct on the parenting aspect. The most important element of scholastic success is parental involvement.
Right, schooling matters, but parental involvement matters more. In poor neighborhoods, sadly, parental involvement can be lower because parents are busy keeping the lights on. In upper middle class neighborhoods, you're doing better than just getting by and can spend the time and effort.
The big advantage is from the people you went to school with suggesting/offering you positions without ever accepting resumes from anyone else. This social advantage is only available to those from families of the wealthy elite already. Your middle class student is very unlikely to make these types of connections.
Agreed, and your elite kid will get these opportunities whether he/she went to Harvard or Denison or Florida State.
The fact that a kid CANNOT get kicked out of a public school is a deterrent to attending, not a benefit, IMO. Definitely one reason we pulled our children from the local high API elementary and middle schools. There is no recourse for children of bad parents, so the bully keeps bullying, and the drug dealers keep dealing.
Still curious. Even the brown kids at Encinal, Oak Knoll, and Laurel elementaries have APIs at about 800 or more, and there are only about 150 of them out of a student body of 1150 or so. The situation at Hillview middle is not that different -- the brown kids are still near 800, and they are few in number. I don't know how the state determines "socially disadvantaged," but it's about 30 out of almost 700. All four schools are overwhelmingly white.
What specific things bugged you? Did you actually see drug dealers?
I have nothing against good schooling. I am against bad parenting. There are plenty of lost parents trying to find their own way today so they aren't really in the position to be finding the way for their children... like the schools most parents are not what they were 30 years ago either.
On schools, there are also a number of alternate options I know one guy who attended a very prestigious military academy and is doing his masters at a now well-known to the military (fully accredited) university that is online. He has told me it is harder than his undergrad study.
I know as a fact (in my opinion from personal experience over the years both delivering scholarly papers to them and reviewing their published materials) that many Ivy Leagues have turned into nothing but mass circuses today, including highly undesirables (with all these overpaid board members and millions in endowments they have to get that money where they can after all) again…. not what they were 30 years ago. Options are out there, and my point is that today private does not mean success or necessarily quality (there are plenty of liberal wacked out theories flying around the Ivy League these days in my view.) I will say it again in my opinion private today in the USA is what public was 30 years ago minus a very few headaches.
As far as kids getting kicked out of public schools for no reason, I have heard some disturbing anecdotes in the past couple of years regarding public schools with large minority enrollments suspending white students who were victims of aggression for "fighting."
Sounds like anecdotes to justify white flight. Does anyone have actual stats on this or proof that schools must equalize the numbers? I doubt it.
My daughter got a summer job at a local supermarket while she was in high school (she attended an out-of-state boarding school). A group of 8 or 10 young people were hired at the same time. My daughter and another girl the same age who attended a swanky local independent all-girls school were given "checker" jobs while all the others were "stockers." Coincidence? I don't think so.
Self-selection -- your daughter probably seemed more professional or at least as professional as you can be at a supermarket -- I worked at one too at that age, so not hating. My motivated co-workers at that store (a few of whom went to elite colleges) were not stimulated by the job, but found stimulation in silly things -- e.g. can I scan the most stuff per minute, and ultimately they were better job performers for that reason. The slackers smoked pot in the parking lot and stole stuff from the store, no correlation to public or private schools on this one. If those public school kids were really as well-dressed as you suggest, they should have been just fine in the interview process.
Sooo... no brown kids = no need for private school?
Generally speaking, yes. It's the same reason why those White liberals have unwritten rules of not even driving through certain 'neighborhoods' at any time.
"I wouldn't even drive near that part of town for the statistically speaking higher rate of assault and/or robbery."
This has been paraphrased by many white liberals since the late 1960's and cost them trillions of dollars trying to protect their families from the problem they created.
Everyone knows what the problem is and how to avoid it, but they are too scared of the 'scarlet letter' of "racist" to say it outloud.
I know as a fact that many Ivy League have turned into mass circuses today including undesirables …. not what they were 30 years ago.
Are you joking? Clearly you have never spent time at an Ivy League campus or are just hating selectively. The vast majority of people are above median income, and a good percentage are more well-off than that. Yes, it's not just Andover, Exeter, and Groton WASPs any more, but it's not any worse for that. I don't think anyone who has actually spent time at an Ivy League school thinks there are "undesirables" there.
Ivy League.. very interesting !!!
"Few institutions have been as crucial to Silicon Valley's success as San José State University, which trains many of the engineers, software designers and tech savvy business people who keep the Valley's technology machine rolling."
-- San Jose Mercury News
SJSU churned out tons of professionals before Silicon Valley was spotlighted on the national conscience. Not even Ivy League schools have cranked out so many in recent years.
"CSU officials say their system awards half of all bachelor’s degrees in California annually, including 54 percent of undergraduate business degrees. About 70 percent of San Jose State University’s graduates remain in the nine-county Bay Area, according to Patricia Lopes Harris, a university spokeswoman. Out of 7,800 degrees awarded to the class of 2010, more than 2,800 of them were earned by business and engineering students."p>
@corntrollio You clearly haven't read my other comments so before you have please don't make asumptions about me, because when it comes to me I respectfully say to you that you are wrong.
corntrollio,
We are technically a "brown" family, and the private school that I transferred my sons to has plnty of "brown" families. I never even mentioned a color in any of my posts. Jumping to conclusions?
We pulled our sons when they were in 3rd, 5th and 7th from the schools and yes, my oldest son actually saw (as did many other students) other boys smoking pot AT Hillview. During school hours. The kids were caught, and served a small detention.
Spoke with my friend whose son stayed at Hillview and the same bunch of kids were caught twice again this year. They all graduated in June.
SJSU churned out tons of professionals before Silicon Valley was spotlighted on the national conscience. Not even Ivey League schools have cranked out so many in recent years.
This is true of many local schools. If you're in LA, Pepperdine and Loyola grads do better there than they would in NY or DC. Santa Clara grads do quite well locally, but would likely do less well as a general group outside of the Bay Area (except perhaps the ones who are soccer players).
At the end of the day, it's about job skills primarily, but the favored university can help get your foot in the door, whether local or elite.
You clearly haven't read my other comments
You clearly didn't read my comments. I actually *agreed* with you that parenting makes a huge difference. I also took a quick look at your other almost 50 comments that aren't in this thread, and none of the were particularly instructive on this issue.
Saying "I know as a fact" when empirically it's not true, however, is silly.
I see that you modified your comment above with parentheticals:
(with all these overpaid board members and millions in endowments they have to get that money where they can after all) again…. not what they were 30 years ago. Options are out there, and my point is that today private does not mean success or necessarily quality (there are plenty of liberal wacked out theories flying around the Ivy League these days in my view.)
Those board members were always paid well. The endowments were always high (and are in the billions in some cases). You seem much more concerned about ideology than making a substantive comment here about whether the Ivy League has undesirables. The comment just seems uninformed and has nothing to do with whether the Ivy League schools produce good scholars and good workers.
We pulled our sons when they were in 3rd, 5th and 7th from the schools and yes, my oldest son actually saw (as did many other students) other boys smoking pot AT Hillview. During school hours. The kids were caught, and served a small detention.
So you didn't see actual drug dealers, like I thought. As I mentioned, private schools are not devoid of pot, and people often have the ability to buy more expensive things. They just do it in their expensive homes instead.
As I mentioned, at 7th grade, you're sort of past some of the stronger influences parenting can have. It doesn't appear that your kid was the one smoking, and it's likely that will transfer to the new school. It's the Bay Area after all, it's probably likely that some of your new school's parents' smoke pot -- they certainly have the time and can afford it.
tatupu70
2011 Aug 2, 7:49am
Careful -- Freakonomics has NOTHING to do with experiments. Freakonomics is simply a backwards look at data and has more to do with chance and random discovery, than having good smarts and doing good thinking. I'd much rather have a clever thinker than someone who can pore through mounds of data just to find a random correlation.
I think you need to re-read Freakonomics. It has nothing to do with random correlations or chance. It is the scientific method. Testing a theory based on the data. It is the opposite of random correlation.
The authors are clearly clever thinkers. Why do you think otherwise?
You seem much more concerned about ideology than making a substantive comment here about whether the Ivy League has undesirables.
Precisely, that is what I am focusing on ...ideology. This is all ideology, and frankly lunacy to a great degree.
I really should not be on this thread. I don't give a damn what school does what or which produces a failure or a success to be honest. I don't have children in school, nor am I here to discuss parenting or educational issues so before the future of society issues start up that's the end of my comments on this topic.
Corntrollio: Many people KNOW when their children are quite young that the children are headed for a state university, NOT THE IVY LEAGUE. There is no need to build a resume of extracurricular excellence, they just need the appropriate SAT score, or to be in the top 10% of their class. Under this set of circumstances, the child is free to choose whatever activities he likes, and most boys would like to be on a football team or basketball team at a small school rather than to be one of the kids on the chess team or in the Madrigal Society at Gargantuan High School. Similarly, a lot of girls would like to be cheerleaders at a small school than to be on some kind of third-string pep squad at a bigger school. It shouldn't matter so much, but 14-year-olds can be so immature! heh
Corntrollio said:
You're jumping to the other end of the spectrum without sufficient justification. If your kid was a slacker in elementary and middle school, chances are that your kid will be a slacker in high school. At some point, kids get beyond your parenting, and high school is generally beyond parenting. If you haven't put a good head on your kids' shoulders by then, sending them to an exclusive private school probably where they can't hack it won't do it.
If you read what I posted carefully, you will find that my chief recommendation was shelling out for private/parochial school from 5th to 8th, and using the public system for K-4 and 9-12. IMO, kids who "go sour" usually do so by becoming bored/alienated during the middle school years. People with dysfunctional kids often will try to tell themselves and others that everything was OK up until the child turned 15 and fell in with the wrong crowd, but in the situations that I have seen up close there were clear warning signs by 7th grade. Also, middle schools and junior highs that do not separate the kids by ability tend to run "everybody can be successful" classes that have little academic content. You, Corntrollio, should be adamantly opposed to this sort of mollycoddling. After several years of cut-and-paste activities, many bright children will REFUSE to take difficult classes at the high school level, because they know that they can coast through on a lower track cutting and pasting. In addition, when they get to the high school, they may be put into higher-performing classes based on IQ, and find that they are out-gunned by the kids who went to private or parochial schools through the 8th grade, and who actually know the different parts of speech, know how to write a five-paragraph essay, etc. They feel that they are behind and can never catch up, so they just give up.
I don't know whether you have children or not, but many people deeply regret having sent their child to the "wrong" school, regardless of why the school turned out to be "wrong." I have NOT suggested some rigid one-size-fits-all strategy for choosing a school. My suggestion is to choose carefully and get the best education you can with the resources you have.
leo707
2011 Aug 2, 8:32am
SJSU churned out tons of professionals before Silicon Valley was spotlighted on the national conscience. Not even Ivy League schools have cranked out so many in recent years.
OK, so most of the worker bees in SV come SJSU. Where did all the money people, and founders of SV tech go to school?
leo707
2011 Aug 2, 8:36am
So you didn't see actual drug dealers, like I thought. As I mentioned, private schools are not devoid of pot, and people often have the ability to buy more expensive things. They just do it in their expensive homes instead.
If there are drugs in a school there are drug dealers in the school.
In general people are kidding themselves if they think private or "rich" area schools will insulate their kids from drugs and violence. Those things can happen anywhere.
And, yes... richer kids means more disposable income for more expensive drugs.
I think you need to re-read Freakonomics. It has nothing to do with random correlations or chance. It is the scientific method. Testing a theory based on the data. It is the opposite of random correlation.
The authors are clearly clever thinkers. Why do you think otherwise?
Just to be clear, the prototypical examples of Freakonomics -- e.g. a drop in crime is correlated to an increase in abortions -- are not experiments and do not involve the scientific method. They are just as well known for their statistical errors in academic circles (e.g. the police/crime/election thing).
Are you saying there are examples in the book that strictly involve scientific method -- e.g. making a hypothesis, setting control groups, randomly assigning subjects (preferably double-blind if possible) and using statistical analysis to determine whether you can statistically reject the null hypothesis? I don't think that's the case, but you should be able to tell me quite quickly.
My impression of Freakonomics and Freakonomics-type research is that it basically does post-hoc analyses of vast mounds of data to find a correlative discovery. That is pretty rote.
Many people KNOW when their children are quite young that the children are headed for a state university, NOT THE IVY LEAGUE.
But if you read carefully above, I said it's not about the Ivy League. It's about having the kid that is motivated and curious such that he/she may apply to the Ivy League. "State university" is quite broad -- do you mean the Berkeleys, Michigans, North Carolinas, UCLAs, and Virginias of the world? Those state schools accept fewer than 50% of the applicants. Or do you mean Sacramento State (no offense intended), which accepts the vast majority of applicants?
Under this set of circumstances, the child is free to choose whatever activities he likes, and most boys would like to be on a football team or basketball team at a small school rather than to be one of the kids on the chess team or in the Madrigal Society at Gargantuan High School.
That seems to be conventional stereotyping. I'm not sure why that is necessarily the case. They could just as easily be confused as to why their tiny high school has no chess team or why their tiny high school doesn't take chess seriously. By no means are sports the only thing that can make someone well-rounded, even if we are to go with that theory. Similarly, I don't know why coaching people to be mediocre helps either.
After several years of cut-and-paste activities, many bright children will REFUSE to take difficult classes at the high school level, because they know that they can coast through on a lower track cutting and pasting.\
...
In addition, when they get to the high school, they may be put into higher-performing classes based on IQ, and find that they are out-gunned by the kids who went to private or parochial schools through the 8th grade, and who actually know the different parts of speech, know how to write a five-paragraph essay, etc. They feel that they are behind and can never catch up, so they just give up.
That's actually the opposite of what I've found typical, which is that the bright and motivated children will seek out more intellectual stimulation. They'll read more and try to learn more and do more academic things. I think this says more about motivation to start out with than anything else.
I'm not sure you gave great examples there -- grammar and writing "five-paragraph essays" are very rote and not always indicative of critical thinking or intelligence.
Also, middle schools and junior highs that do not separate the kids by ability tend to run "everybody can be successful" classes that have little academic content. You, Corntrollio, should be adamantly opposed to this sort of mollycoddling.
Which middle schools are these? Any old middle school in the area I grew up in (okay city school district, neither great nor horrible) realized, for example, that some kids would be more advanced or less advanced in math, and bumped the advanced ones up to pre-algebra, algebra, etc. before the less advanced ones who wouldn't tackle those until high school. Many states have an "academically gifted"-type program that they use for this.
I have NOT suggested some rigid one-size-fits-all strategy for choosing a school.
It seems like most of the regret you're talking about is mostly about hyper-optimization in one way or another. I don't think I'm suggesting a one-size-fits-all solution either -- I think you have to be able to respond to your kid. You might raise a slacker too and need to respond adequately to that.
Maybe our sole disagreement is the time period during which things go bad. I think it's earlier than you, but we can agree to disagree. A lot of studies I've read suggest that the foundations start early. The high school level is typically far too late, and it seems like we agree on that.
This topic seems to have jumped the track. Its simply about a subject that in my opinion has become perhaps a bit too obsessive: Parents putting too much emphasis on schools and sometimes paying way too much for a house in specific neighborhoods strictly because of a belief in faith that living in such and such place near such and such school will guarantee their kids will turn out to be geniuses and succeed in life.
Its luck of the draw no matter what and spending tons of money in an attempt to buy success won't necessarily have the desired outcome. As is life.
My impression of Freakonomics and Freakonomics-type research is that it basically does post-hoc analyses of vast mounds of data to find a correlative discovery. That is pretty rote.
This is a good criticism of Freakonomics and Freakonomics-type "research" that I ran across before:
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/freaks-and-geeks-how-freakonomics-ruining-the-dismal-science
Spend $200, once, for all children, on the Robinson Curriculum. It's self-teaching: little intervention by parents above grade 3. www.RobinsonCurriculum.com.
Use Salman Khan's free videos (1+1 = 2 through calculus): www.KhanAcademy.org. Bill Gates uses it for his kids.
That's all you need. Robinson's six kids all used AP exams to quiz out of the first two years of college.
dunnross
2011 Aug 2, 9:34am
Any public school in USA is still 100 times better than the public school system in 3rd world countries.
It depends on what you call a 3rd world country. I don't know much about African schools but, I can assure you that any public school in India, Russia or Argentina is 10 times better than any public school in the US. At least all these countries have a world map in their classrooms, unlike the US schools which only have a map of the state and teach students about local Indian tribes, before teaching them about WWII or the Persian Empire.
I can assure you that any public school in India, Russia or Argentina is 10 times better than any public school in the US. At least all these countries have a world map in their classrooms, unlike the US schools which only have a map of the state and teach students about local Indian tribes, before teaching them about WWII or the Persian Empire.
Nice strawmen all around. I'm not sure what backwater school you're talking about, but I don't think I've ever been in a US classroom of the appropriate type (e.g. history/geography or elementary school) that didn't have a world map, and that's in multiple states. Many curricula I've seen tend to include local history/geography/culture in some year of elementary school, sure, but that's not to the exclusion of more advanced topics as time goes on. I don't see anything wrong with learning local, national, and international history.
This is what I was talking about when I described getting into ideological critiques rather than substantive ones.
That's not to say that certain things could be more advanced here. I believe many foreign schools get deeper into things like multiplication and division at a younger age than is typical here.
leo707
2011 Aug 2, 9:57am
Robinson Curriculum
Robinson seems kind of like a crackpot.
Robinson's six kids all used AP exams to quiz out of the first two years of college.
...and... 3 got expelled from college... why? Robinson says because he is being "persecuted", but the college does not comment. My guess is that they were trying to push some of their fathers ridiculous beliefs, but who knows.
Use Salman Khan's free videos (1+1 = 2 through calculus): www.KhanAcademy.org. Bill Gates uses it for his kids.
This actually looks like a pretty good resource. I would use it for my kids. Not a replacement for "traditional" schooling though.
Robinson's six kids all used AP exams to quiz out of the first two years of college.
That's nothing impressive in itself. You can do this at most any school with AP classes.
Use Salman Khan's free videos (1+1 = 2 through calculus): www.KhanAcademy.org. Bill Gates uses it for his kids.
This guy has become somewhat of a sensation, and he provides a good resource. This can be used to supplement teaching for sure.
Harker was amazing for our kids. They DO have scholarships available.
Loved Harker, so challenging.
Would not want most, if any, govt schools!
We had the same debate/discussion when we lived in Sunnyvale.
Fortunately our children went to a public 'alternative' school for elementary school. For high school, Fremont HS was just not a consideration. We debated whether to move to Palo Alto - for the 'schools' but learned that there were 35-40 students in those classes. Fortunately they were accepted to Menlo School which is a very rigorous college prep school. And initial tuition was $11K - back in the day. I don't know how we could rationalize the expense today but they got an incredible education in extremely small classes. Do a calculation taking into every conceivable item - there are huge costs to moving not to mention the disruption. And check out the schools you'd be moving for in order to determine whether you'd be getting the bang for the buck that you were hoping for. I'm a supporter of public schools but forty students in a class is not a win to me.
do the math, 15K per year, so, 13 years of school at 15K per year.
that's 195K....
if you have 2 kids, it's almost 400K.
now, you have to do a NPV of that
-150K minus the interest on 150K
plus 15K per year, plus 150K out when you sell the house to pay
for the kids tuition.
it's basically 9K per year on interest on the better house or 15K per year
on tuition, but you can sell the hosue.
Home school is an inexpensive option.
There is a homeschool co-op called Pioneer Family Academy. Kids go two days a week, full day, tues and thurs all day. Given enough homework to do at home M, W, F.
Most of them at 16 go to West Valley or other Jr College.
Have AA at 18 years, BA at 20 years from SJSU
All very inexpensive.
Great kids to be around!
http://gothardsisters.weebly.com/
homeschoolers!
See also garynorth.com
He has a ton of info on home school and on many other aspects of education on a budget.
The house will maintain its value through most real estate cycles. People psychologically find it easier to pay for a house rather than having to write a check to private schools.
Check out these schools for example:
http://www.movoto.com/schools.aspx
do the math, 15K per year, so, 13 years of school at 15K per year.
that's 195K....
St Francis / Bell are only 4 years (HS) so your out 60K. You can transfer from public as many did in the past. You may well have over 15 years to save so start planning now. Save and contribute around 3K a year for 15 years earning 5% return and you get to 60-65K by the time kids get in.
Two kids ? .. should have tied the tubes after the first one!
Well, we've got 3 kids and another on the way and the house we bought when our oldest was 2 is in a pretty mediocre school district. (We live in a part of Richmond that has El Cerrito schools - the one near us has average test scores but will be under construction for the next 2-3 years and the students will be in portable classrooms.) Our oldest is starting kindergarten this fall, and we've decided to go with a private co-op K-5 school for $10k per year + substantial parent participation. The school has great teachers and offers music, Spanish, and other extracurricular activities. The parents do all of the administration, driving on field trips, supervision of lunch and before/after care, maintain and clean the buildings (leased from a church).
We're happy with this option for the upcoming year, but it isn't going to be such a great option in a few more years when our twins start elementary school. I'm not sure what we're going to do at that point, but even with parent participation and sibling discounts, private school costs will get out of hand with 3+ kids. We're considering moving into a better school district or homeschooling supplemented with extracurricular activities or lessons.
chip_designer
2011 Aug 2, 5:32pm
I can assure you that any public school in India, Russia or Argentina
you are an indian, who did graduate school in russia (kind odd, I thought all hindu comes to usa), and became a missionary in argentina. :D
if you ever lived in those countries, you would know for sure what kind of public school system they have.
I'm wondering about the parochial schools - what's the churches' interest in subsiding them?
This is of course a rhetorical question.
tatupu70
2011 Aug 2, 10:43pm
My impression of Freakonomics and Freakonomics-type research is that it basically does post-hoc analyses of vast mounds of data to find a correlative discovery. That is pretty rote.
This is a good criticism of Freakonomics and Freakonomics-type "research" that I ran across before:
http://www.tnr.com/print/article/freaks-and-geeks-how-freakonomics-ruining-the-dismal-science
That criticism is much different than yours. That article seems to be saying that Levitt is giving economics a bad name because he doesn't study the "traditional" economic topics. Sumo Wrestling and Weakest Link are not worthy of study in the old guards' mind.
I didn't see much criticism of his methods, however. Your definition of the scientific method is a little too specific. Here's from wiki.
1.Define a question
2.Gather information and resources (observe)
3.Form an explanatory hypothesis
4.Perform an experiment and collect data, testing the hypothesis
5.Analyze the data
6.Interpret the data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new hypothesis
7.Publish results
8.Retest (frequently done by other scientists)
Now, you're right that the data is historical rather than newly collected. So they have to be careful in their analyses, but they usually are. Their statistical techniques are usually spot on.
The best of Freakonomics work is questioning the status quo and letting data answer the question rather than conventional wisdom. Like women getting mammograms, for instance.
Done!
2011 Aug 2, 11:24pm
If "Bay Area" breaks off into the sea, then will Oakland become the new fortress?
The arguments about getting the money back from buying a house in an expensive school district vs. not getting it back when paying private school fees wouldn't work if people are economically rational. If they are rational then the extra price of housing in the good school districts should take that into account so that the net present value of the two paths is equal. Remember, that you pay a bunch of interest to buy that more expensive house that you don't get back. The total capital costs would add up to the costs of private school fees. Of course, the market might not be in this rational equilibrium, but the story is a bit more complicated than people are making out.
leo707
2011 Aug 3, 3:39am
That criticism is much different than yours.
Yeah, that was my take away from the article. Not quite sure why corn cited that article as a support for his/her criticism.
Your definition of the scientific method is a little too specific....
...Now, you're right that the data is historical rather than newly collected.
Yes! Archival data can be analyzed in much the same way that data collected just for the study.
I actually find archival studies to be some of the more interesting ones. That is because they often are:
tatupu70 says
questioning the status quo and letting data answer the question rather than conventional wisdom. Like women getting mammograms, for instance.
« First « Previous Comments 69 - 108 of 147 Next » Last » Search these comments
I am not a parent yet, but this has always sort of irked me. People get frenzied over which school district they are buying into and certainly, will seem to overpay for a house to get their kids into some school. Why is it that so many people take no issue with dropping an additional $100,000+ on a house to get at a school, but balk at the notion of private schooling? For $100,000 you could send your kid to a number of private K-8 schools and a college prep place like Bellarmine at $15k per year. It does not seem to compute. Thoughts?