Poll

Are you planning on paying/already paid for your child's college tuition?

Yes, paid all of it
88 (52.4%)
Paid half
21 (12.5%)
Paid a little
17 (10.1%)
No, paid none
8 (4.8%)
Didn't have kids or they didn't go to college or the got a large scholarship
34 (20.2%)

Total Members Voted: 168

Author Topic: Pay for child's tuition?  (Read 13235 times)

mm1970

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 10880
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #200 on: September 14, 2022, 02:22:38 PM »
Quote
I also find it really short sighted when posters act like other students aren't performing well because they are simply less intelligent.  That's ridiculous.  It's clear certain demographics are being left behind post-pandemic.  And it's clear that smaller class sizes, more money, and more intense academic intervention starting at a young age will bring most students up to grade level. If middle and upper class parents and citizens came together and demanded equity in education, it would happen quickly.  The truth is that, as StarBright suggested, there is little interest in raising up other people's children in any significant manner.  Like ending segregation, sharing resources, changing the system.
Yep

Quote
We've also told our kids to help out other people in their classes: if DS has a math question that requires help from parents, probably some of his classmates do to, and he should also help them out.

Sometime when we go into the boys' room when DS16 is on the computer, he quickly clicks away from what he was doing.

What was he doing that he didn't want us to know about?  Helping a friend with quadratic equations and math.  (Not a local friend, mind  you, a gamer friend who lives in another city.)  Dude, go ahead, help!

wageslave23

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1755
  • Location: Midwest
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #201 on: September 15, 2022, 07:09:01 AM »
I don't think volunteering in schools, while nice, is going to accomplish anything in an education system that is based on wealth.  I also don't think that anyone is realistically telling any individual parents not to provide their kids with enriching opportunities.  I pay for my child to receive outside tutoring because he's not getting as much intervention in school as he needs to succeed in school.  I do that knowing that the other kid in his reading group's parents might not be able to afford tutoring.  But I also know that by staying at the school and  pressuring it and the district to provide the necessary resources to support academic success, it helps more students than just my own. 

I also find it really short sighted when posters act like other students aren't performing well because they are simply less intelligent.  That's ridiculous.  It's clear certain demographics are being left behind post-pandemic.  And it's clear that smaller class sizes, more money, and more intense academic intervention starting at a young age will bring most students up to grade level.  If middle and upper class parents and citizens came together and demanded equity in education, it would happen quickly.  The truth is that, as StarBright suggested, there is little interest in raising up other people's children in any significant manner.  Like ending segregation, sharing resources, changing the system.

What we can do is stop fleeing from poor school districts/schools to "good school" districts and participate in organizations and support community leaders that encourage other parents to do the same.  I promise that there are organizations and academics in your area that have come up with very good ideas to create equity in education, if there was enough public support.

This is all great.  And I'm all for it.  But why do we let parents off the hook?  I would wager that parenting has a greater influence on child education than all the other resources everyone else can provide.  It doesn't cost anything to start reading to your children for 20 minutes everyday.  Or spending a half hour when they are older helping them with their school work.  Or not allowing screen time.  I have a friend who was home schooled up through high school.  He said he spent about an hour or two on school work daily.  By high school he was self taught and his mom had very little involvement.   He was done with high school and had a year's worth of college credits by the time his peers were juniors in high school.  He went on to major in engineering and is very successful now.  So it didn't take a lot of resources, just a stable home environment and supportive and encouraging parents.

StarBright

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3270
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #202 on: September 15, 2022, 07:44:43 AM »
I don't think volunteering in schools, while nice, is going to accomplish anything in an education system that is based on wealth.  I also don't think that anyone is realistically telling any individual parents not to provide their kids with enriching opportunities.  I pay for my child to receive outside tutoring because he's not getting as much intervention in school as he needs to succeed in school.  I do that knowing that the other kid in his reading group's parents might not be able to afford tutoring.  But I also know that by staying at the school and  pressuring it and the district to provide the necessary resources to support academic success, it helps more students than just my own. 

I also find it really short sighted when posters act like other students aren't performing well because they are simply less intelligent.  That's ridiculous.  It's clear certain demographics are being left behind post-pandemic.  And it's clear that smaller class sizes, more money, and more intense academic intervention starting at a young age will bring most students up to grade level.  If middle and upper class parents and citizens came together and demanded equity in education, it would happen quickly.  The truth is that, as StarBright suggested, there is little interest in raising up other people's children in any significant manner.  Like ending segregation, sharing resources, changing the system.

What we can do is stop fleeing from poor school districts/schools to "good school" districts and participate in organizations and support community leaders that encourage other parents to do the same.  I promise that there are organizations and academics in your area that have come up with very good ideas to create equity in education, if there was enough public support.

This is all great.  And I'm all for it.  But why do we let parents off the hook?  I would wager that parenting has a greater influence on child education than all the other resources everyone else can provide.  It doesn't cost anything to start reading to your children for 20 minutes everyday.  Or spending a half hour when they are older helping them with their school work.  Or not allowing screen time.  I have a friend who was home schooled up through high school.  He said he spent about an hour or two on school work daily.  By high school he was self taught and his mom had very little involvement.   He was done with high school and had a year's worth of college credits by the time his peers were juniors in high school.  He went on to major in engineering and is very successful now.  So it didn't take a lot of resources, just a stable home environment and supportive and encouraging parents.

This all ends up feeling like a very micro/macro conversation - The kids of people on this forum are probably going to be okay whether or not we pay for their college educations merely because we parents are having these conversations and we have resources. There was a study years ago that showed children whose parents entered them into the lottery for a great charter school were successful whether or not they won the lottery. This was attributed to having parents who cared enough (and had the resources!) to enter them into the lottery at all - these parents cared about education.

But at a societal level, do we just write off the children whose parents don't care about, or are too busy, to opt them into the lottery?

I read a great book by Dana Suskind earlier this year, Parent Nation. She is also the doctor who wrote 30 Million Words several years ago, about the importance of reading and talking to kids when they are babies/toddlers. She got a crap ton of funding to take her program into low income and at-risk communities. And once she started running her program, she found that it wasn't a lack of desire, or even knowledge, that was keeping parents from optimal child rearing - but all sorts of systemic barriers such as lack of child care, lack of community, work scheduling, US incarceration policy, etc. And she also found that these barrier extend well into the middle class (not just low-income families). 

At the micro level - sure, you can probably look at individual households and probably find ways that parents can be better. But at the macro level? It feels unjustified to lay it on the parents when so many things about our system throw up barriers to being good parents.

« Last Edit: September 15, 2022, 11:01:44 AM by StarBright »

charis

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3162
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #203 on: September 15, 2022, 08:09:25 AM »
I don't think volunteering in schools, while nice, is going to accomplish anything in an education system that is based on wealth.  I also don't think that anyone is realistically telling any individual parents not to provide their kids with enriching opportunities.  I pay for my child to receive outside tutoring because he's not getting as much intervention in school as he needs to succeed in school.  I do that knowing that the other kid in his reading group's parents might not be able to afford tutoring.  But I also know that by staying at the school and  pressuring it and the district to provide the necessary resources to support academic success, it helps more students than just my own. 

I also find it really short sighted when posters act like other students aren't performing well because they are simply less intelligent.  That's ridiculous.  It's clear certain demographics are being left behind post-pandemic.  And it's clear that smaller class sizes, more money, and more intense academic intervention starting at a young age will bring most students up to grade level.  If middle and upper class parents and citizens came together and demanded equity in education, it would happen quickly.  The truth is that, as StarBright suggested, there is little interest in raising up other people's children in any significant manner.  Like ending segregation, sharing resources, changing the system.

What we can do is stop fleeing from poor school districts/schools to "good school" districts and participate in organizations and support community leaders that encourage other parents to do the same.  I promise that there are organizations and academics in your area that have come up with very good ideas to create equity in education, if there was enough public support.

This is all great.  And I'm all for it.  But why do we let parents off the hook?  I would wager that parenting has a greater influence on child education than all the other resources everyone else can provide.  It doesn't cost anything to start reading to your children for 20 minutes everyday.  Or spending a half hour when they are older helping them with their school work.  Or not allowing screen time.  I have a friend who was home schooled up through high school.  He said he spent about an hour or two on school work daily.  By high school he was self taught and his mom had very little involvement.   He was done with high school and had a year's worth of college credits by the time his peers were juniors in high school.  He went on to major in engineering and is very successful now.  So it didn't take a lot of resources, just a stable home environment and supportive and encouraging parents.

Well no.  There are current barriers as StarBright mentioned. There's a lot of financial reasons why poor parents cannot home school and do not have the capacity/acumen to teach their children enough to educate through 6 grade much less high school.  I am highly educated and I would not be qualified to teach 6th grade math plus I have a full time job.  Moreover, in my urban area, the demographic most at risk of under education are descendants of the very same people that we forced to live in crumbling ghettos through redlining and other measures (thus denying generational wealth growth) and educated on only a part time basis (this was real) with shared, out of date textbooks, while keeping pay for the unskilled labor that they were allowed to work at the lowest possible levels.  This was only 2-3 generations ago.  If you can't see the fall out from this, you simply don't want to know.

There will always be parents that don't support their kids' educations.  Or don't do it in the same way that we think they should.  That doesn't mean we abandoned those kids, or under performing schools and districts.  Is that your idea of holding the parents accountable?
« Last Edit: September 15, 2022, 08:21:55 AM by charis »

wageslave23

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1755
  • Location: Midwest
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #204 on: September 15, 2022, 08:13:52 AM »
I don't think volunteering in schools, while nice, is going to accomplish anything in an education system that is based on wealth.  I also don't think that anyone is realistically telling any individual parents not to provide their kids with enriching opportunities.  I pay for my child to receive outside tutoring because he's not getting as much intervention in school as he needs to succeed in school.  I do that knowing that the other kid in his reading group's parents might not be able to afford tutoring.  But I also know that by staying at the school and  pressuring it and the district to provide the necessary resources to support academic success, it helps more students than just my own. 

I also find it really short sighted when posters act like other students aren't performing well because they are simply less intelligent.  That's ridiculous.  It's clear certain demographics are being left behind post-pandemic.  And it's clear that smaller class sizes, more money, and more intense academic intervention starting at a young age will bring most students up to grade level.  If middle and upper class parents and citizens came together and demanded equity in education, it would happen quickly.  The truth is that, as StarBright suggested, there is little interest in raising up other people's children in any significant manner.  Like ending segregation, sharing resources, changing the system.

What we can do is stop fleeing from poor school districts/schools to "good school" districts and participate in organizations and support community leaders that encourage other parents to do the same.  I promise that there are organizations and academics in your area that have come up with very good ideas to create equity in education, if there was enough public support.

This is all great.  And I'm all for it.  But why do we let parents off the hook?  I would wager that parenting has a greater influence on child education than all the other resources everyone else can provide.  It doesn't cost anything to start reading to your children for 20 minutes everyday.  Or spending a half hour when they are older helping them with their school work.  Or not allowing screen time.  I have a friend who was home schooled up through high school.  He said he spent about an hour or two on school work daily.  By high school he was self taught and his mom had very little involvement.   He was done with high school and had a year's worth of college credits by the time his peers were juniors in high school.  He went on to major in engineering and is very successful now.  So it didn't take a lot of resources, just a stable home environment and supportive and encouraging parents.

This all ends up feeling like a very micro/macro conversation - The kids of people on this forum are probably going to be okay whether or not we pay for their college educations merely because we parents are having these conversations. There was a study years ago that showed children whose parents entered them into the lottery for a great charter school were successful whether or not they won the lottery. This was attributed to having parents who cared enough to enter them into the lottery at all - these parents cared about education.

But at a societal level, do we just write off the children whose parents don't care about, or are too busy, to opt them into the lottery?

I read a great book by Dana Suskind earlier this year, Parent Nation. She is also the doctor who wrote 30 Million Words several years ago, about the importance of reading and talking to kids when they are babies/toddlers. She got a crap ton of funding to take her program into low income and at-risk communities. And once she started running her program, she found that it wasn't a lack of desire, or even knowledge, that was keeping parents from optimal child rearing - but all sorts of systemic barriers such as lack of child care, lack of community, work scheduling, US incarceration policy, etc. And she also found that these barrier extend well into the middle class (not just low-income families). 

At the micro level - sure, you can probably look at individual households and probably find ways that parents can be better. But at the macro level? It feels unjustified to lay it on the parents when so many things about our system throw up barriers to being good parents.

Tying back to the OP, this is why I don't feel its necessary or my responsibility to pay for my child's college.  By that time, she will have recieved hours of reading to her as a baby.  Many books from the library to read on her own in elementary school.  An adequate, safe school.  A stable, safe home environment.  Encouragement and also firm rules.  Everything she needs to be very successful in life if she chooses.

FWIW- After reading through this thread and talking to my spouse, I have changed my opinion on how much we will save for each child.  I orginally marked paying $0, but have agreed to about $40,000 per chilld.  This would cover tuition at a state school for two years.  So they would be able to graduate with very little debt if they choose to go to community college for two years and then a state school for two, while working summers to help offset additional costs.  Again, I don't think its necessary, but marriage is about compromise and the responses in this thread show that its reasonable and maybe even expected.

wageslave23

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1755
  • Location: Midwest
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #205 on: September 15, 2022, 08:27:27 AM »
I don't think volunteering in schools, while nice, is going to accomplish anything in an education system that is based on wealth.  I also don't think that anyone is realistically telling any individual parents not to provide their kids with enriching opportunities.  I pay for my child to receive outside tutoring because he's not getting as much intervention in school as he needs to succeed in school.  I do that knowing that the other kid in his reading group's parents might not be able to afford tutoring.  But I also know that by staying at the school and  pressuring it and the district to provide the necessary resources to support academic success, it helps more students than just my own. 

I also find it really short sighted when posters act like other students aren't performing well because they are simply less intelligent.  That's ridiculous.  It's clear certain demographics are being left behind post-pandemic.  And it's clear that smaller class sizes, more money, and more intense academic intervention starting at a young age will bring most students up to grade level.  If middle and upper class parents and citizens came together and demanded equity in education, it would happen quickly.  The truth is that, as StarBright suggested, there is little interest in raising up other people's children in any significant manner.  Like ending segregation, sharing resources, changing the system.

What we can do is stop fleeing from poor school districts/schools to "good school" districts and participate in organizations and support community leaders that encourage other parents to do the same.  I promise that there are organizations and academics in your area that have come up with very good ideas to create equity in education, if there was enough public support.

This is all great.  And I'm all for it.  But why do we let parents off the hook?  I would wager that parenting has a greater influence on child education than all the other resources everyone else can provide.  It doesn't cost anything to start reading to your children for 20 minutes everyday.  Or spending a half hour when they are older helping them with their school work.  Or not allowing screen time.  I have a friend who was home schooled up through high school.  He said he spent about an hour or two on school work daily.  By high school he was self taught and his mom had very little involvement.   He was done with high school and had a year's worth of college credits by the time his peers were juniors in high school.  He went on to major in engineering and is very successful now.  So it didn't take a lot of resources, just a stable home environment and supportive and encouraging parents.

Well no.  There are current barriers as StarBright mentioned. There's a lot of financial reasons why poor parents cannot home school and do not have the capacity/acumen to teach their children enough to educate through 6 grade much less high school.  I am highly educated and I would not be qualified to teach 6th grade math plus I have a full time job.  Moreover, in my urban area, the demographic most at risk of under education are descendants of the very same people that we forced to live in crumbling ghettos through redlining and other measures (thus denying generational wealth growth) and educated on only a part time basis (this was real) with shared, out of date textbooks, while keeping pay for the unskilled labor that they were allowed to work at the lowest possible levels.  This was only 2-3 generations ago.  If you can't see the fall out from this, you simply don't want to know.

The home school example was in reference to children not needing a lot of educational resources to be successful.  It was an unnecessary and apparently unhelpful tangent.  My main point was that children within the same schools are having different outcomes because of the parents (well I would say that genetics is also a factor, but others have shouted that down, so assuming that isn't a factor).  It doesn't take much to turn off the tv in the evening and read to your kid for 20 minutes.  Or enforce a reasonable bedtime.  I hypothesize that parents are more of a factor than schools, so the change/resources need to be focused there.  Unless there is a specific learning disorder or special unique circumstances, most kids don't need a lot from their parents, but they do need something.  Both of my parent's stopped being able to help me with my homework by about 3rd grade.  But they gave me what I needed, encouragement, love, rules, attention.

Captain FIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1176
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #206 on: September 15, 2022, 10:22:27 AM »
My main point was that children within the same schools are having different outcomes because of the parents (well I would say that genetics is also a factor, but others have shouted that down, so assuming that isn't a factor).  It doesn't take much to turn off the tv in the evening and read to your kid for 20 minutes.  Or enforce a reasonable bedtime.  I hypothesize that parents are more of a factor than schools, so the change/resources need to be focused there.  Unless there is a specific learning disorder or special unique circumstances, most kids don't need a lot from their parents, but they do need something.  Both of my parent's stopped being able to help me with my homework by about 3rd grade.  But they gave me what I needed, encouragement, love, rules, attention.

Except that for the single parent, the parent working two jobs, the parent with health challenges or family members with health challenges....yeah this is actually a BIG ask.

I have a friend whose husband unexpectedly flew away to help his ailing parents the past two weeks and she is juggling it all.  Now imagine if this was an every day situation where he needed to help all the time because there is no money to pay for care (because healthcare in the US is crap).  Or the divorced parents, the absent parent, the deployed parent.  The parent working minimum wage jobs to afford housing and food, the parents with alcohol dependencies, the parent with health care challenges themselves or a child with it. 20 minutes every day?  That honestly can be way too much for people without spoons (Short spoon theory explanation "https://www.webmd.com/multiple-sclerosis/features/spoon-theory")  There are way more of these people than you give credit for.  And that's without factoring in the added energy to check books out of a library/try to return them on time if you can't afford to have a library in your home as you seem to assume everyone must have.

People, as a parent of young kids during a pandemic I am EXHAUSTED.  All the time.  There is no respite.  This is an extremely common feeling I see all over the web.  And I have a (sometimes helpful) spouse, no major health issues, solid finances. My kids gets 5-10 minutes of books every day.  But I understand why many cannot do that much less 20 or more.  I don't disagree that parents are a significant factor - I'm the one who raised that point upthread - but I disagree that we need to change parents rather than the system.

mm1970

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 10880
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #207 on: September 15, 2022, 10:59:31 AM »
Quote
It doesn't take much to turn off the tv in the evening and read to your kid for 20 minutes.  Or enforce a reasonable bedtime.  I hypothesize that parents are more of a factor than schools, so the change/resources need to be focused there.

I mean, I know we've covered this before - but some parents don't know how to read.  They don't have books.  My kids have had homeless classmates, or those who have slept on the floor their entire lives.  The reason my kids are so smart (one of them anyway), is that even if we don't have family dinner every night, our house is dominated by discussions of history, books, politics, science, math...I mean, it's what we do.

My parents were poor when I was a kid, but my dad liked watching PBS and they both read books, so that's what we did.

Quote
People, as a parent of young kids during a pandemic I am EXHAUSTED.  All the time.  There is no respite.  This is an extremely common feeling I see all over the web.  And I have a (sometimes helpful) spouse, no major health issues, solid finances. My kids gets 5-10 minutes of books every day.  But I understand why many cannot do that much less 20 or more.  I don't disagree that parents are a significant factor - I'm the one who raised that point upthread - but I disagree that we need to change parents rather than the system.

The schools that have been successful here (elementary and JH) had enveloped families (and money) into their improvements.

Captain FIRE

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1176
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #208 on: September 15, 2022, 11:38:16 AM »
Quote
People, as a parent of young kids during a pandemic I am EXHAUSTED.  All the time.  There is no respite.  This is an extremely common feeling I see all over the web.  And I have a (sometimes helpful) spouse, no major health issues, solid finances. My kids gets 5-10 minutes of books every day.  But I understand why many cannot do that much less 20 or more.  I don't disagree that parents are a significant factor - I'm the one who raised that point upthread - but I disagree that we need to change parents rather than the system.

The schools that have been successful here (elementary and JH) had enveloped families (and money) into their improvements.

Yeah brand new kindergarten parent for my oldest here, so we'll see if it improves, but I'm not holding my breath. Already the school told us only a week before that they didn't have class on a scheduled day, and another day would let out early but SUPRISE, the after school care is not available.  And many dropoff issues.  My work wants 2 weeks minimum on time off requests.  You knew this earlier, you could have told us much earlier.

DadJokes

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 2360
Re: Pay for child's tuition?
« Reply #209 on: September 15, 2022, 11:39:53 AM »
Well this has gone way off topic.