The Money Mustache Community
Around the Internet => Antimustachian Wall of Shame and Comedy => Topic started by: Bloop Bloop on February 08, 2020, 11:38:31 PM
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https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-s-private-school-fees-smash-40-000-mark-20200205-p53xxn.html
Damn, that's profligate. I thought spending on things like handbags and branded t-shirts was bad...now there are even branded schools that cost $500,000 over a 12-year education, per child!
And I know heaps of families who do send their children to such schools - including not very rich ones.
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I wonder if they still try to have the kids/parents participate in fundraisers if they're charging $40k per student?
Private school for our kids is $12.5k for four kids (K-8). Call it about $14k once you add in various application and other fees. That includes getting the 4th child free. This is a small Catholic school. The very nice, "name brand" private school here is about $20k per year if you don't get any tuition assistance. The other private high schools are generally $10-15k. Don't think we'll be paying for that when the time comes.
Tuition – Grades K-8
1st Child $5,000.00/year
2nd Child $4,000.00/year 20% discount
3rd Child $3,500.00/year 30% discount
4th Child Free
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I don’t get the private school thing. Okay, if I isn’t have a public language immersion option then I would consider private. But otherwise I’m colored by my own experience as a kid. We went to a private Christian school for four years where the kids were beastly mean and the education was decidedly sub-par. Going to public school was initially scary but in the end was a breath of fresh air.
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I don’t get the private school thing. Okay, if I isn’t have a public language immersion option then I would consider private. But otherwise I’m colored by my own experience as a kid. We went to a private Christian school for four years where the kids were beastly mean and the education was decidedly sub-par. Going to public school was initially scary but in the end was a breath of fresh air.
Same. I attended a private Catholic school for K-8 and begged to leave after being bullied straight through my 6th grade year. I wasn't allowed to switch until after two more hellish years during which I pretty much gave up academically because I was so miserable. The public high school was so much less stressful and had many more academic and arts options and many highly engaged teachers.
To be fair, we lived in a very good public school district (which makes it even more confusing why my parents nearly drove themselves broke keeping me in a Catholic school that I didn't like, at a parish that we all hated). I can understand exploring private/charter options in a poor school district.
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
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Are private schools like private colleges, in that the sticker price is really high but lots of people get financial aid and pay much less?
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I just don't get the private school thing.
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Are private schools like private colleges, in that the sticker price is really high but lots of people get financial aid and pay much less?
No.
In Australia, where Bloop and I live and where the article is written about, private p-12 schooling makes up ~30% of the schools. This is largely made possible by bizarre federal government education spending where ANY school will receive $x per pupil, regardless of if the school is public, private or independent. While the more prestigious schools each will offer scholarships this would be ~5% of the student base, maybe ~10% at the most generous schools.
I could literally talk for hours on this topic, and would be happy to go into granular detail, having worked in education for a decade I've got quite a bit to say!
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
AKA, low income children of color. At least in our highly segregated region.
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I don’t get the private school thing.
In Australia there is a website called MySchool (https://myschool.edu.au) offering stats on schools. Most significantly, they look at the school's demographics by ICSEA - a measure of the wealth and education of the child's parents. The mythical balanced school would be 25-25-25-25 in each quartile. In our area there is one school which is something like 55% bottom quartile and 5% top quartile, another the reverse. Which do you think has students do better?
When matched for demographics, private and state schools gets similar results. Private school fees are essentially you paying to ensure your children spend a lot of time with people from the upper quartile.
In some of the posher schools there's also the old boy's network getting you flash jobs right out of university. But that's a minority even of the posh schools. For most people it's just paying for demographics.
My children go to a bilingual state school. It's about 55% top quartile. However, even bilingual schools with mostly children from lower ICSEA demographics do well. Bilingual schools attract professional parents (high ICSEA) but also recent migrants, who tend to care a lot about education; thus historically decent results from Catholic (Italian) and Orthodox (Greek) schools, despite their parents sometimes having quite poor educations.
Of course, the other purpose of huge school fees is social signalling, the same as a lot of other kinds of spending. Gotta impress those people you don't like!
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
AKA, low income children of color. At least in our highly segregated region.
We hear a lot about poor minority segregated schools, but we know there are more poor white kids than poor minority kids. Where do the poor white kids go to school? Are they all concentrated out in the rural areas that are poor majority white and no one pays attention to, or are they spread out in the middle class suburbs trying to blend in?
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What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
It's correct, though. Children are influenced by their parents, and by their peers. It's snobbery, but it's also statistics: if you spend time with people smarter and/or wealthier than you, you are more likely yourself to end up smarter and wealthier.
Of course, there are things in life worth pursuing outside academic success and financial wealth. But if that's what you want your children to go for, then you need to send them to a place with a lot of kids whose parents are in the top quartile of educational and wealth advantage.
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In the US at least the best predictor by far of how well kids will do is the educational attainment and financial position of their parents. Not what school they went to or whether they rubbed elbows with the unwashed masses or not.
God forbid kids go to school with people from the bottom quartile and learn that there are different people in the world
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
Actually 100% necessary
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Given that the article is about Australia:
1. POSTCODE is the most accurate single predictor of school results, not parents' attainment levels - the lesson here is that poverty, in of itself, isn't that helpful a marker of attainment, but that postcode is a proxy fora bunch of other stuff. For example suburbs where the median income is low but the rate of immigration is high tend to do a lot better than where the income is low and the immigration is low (generally)
2. Minorities tend to do well in the education system here, with the incredibly notable exception of Indigenous Australians (who also tend not to get high marks even in schools.communities where they are not a minority, which is a huge failure and speaks to how badly we're failing reconciliation...)
3. Australia has one of the best education systems in the world for improving under-performing students and one of the worst for enabling high achieving students to do well (and that's across sectors, including the private sector and tertiary students), so the 'minorities bringing people down' is absolutely not a realistic line here (though it can be social signalling) it's more that our society/education systems do not enable students to get to A+ levels in (comparably) large numbers. If you're at a D or E level and want to get to a C or B level Australia is just about perfect. If you want to go from a B to an A+ Australia is set against you
4. To come back to the pricing - Private Schools are a classic Verbellen good - the higher they price themselves the more exclusive and elite they seem. To be exclusive and elite is to be seen as desirable and successful, even though in the context of education these things are unrelated.
5. I'm not sure Kyle would even agree with this point "then you need to send them to a place with a lot of kids whose parents are in the top quartile of educational and wealth advantage." - it's way too simplistic and ignores a lot of other options (selective government schools being a totally obvious example), but does capture the thinking of a subset of parents quite aptly.
6. One thing we've not mentioned is that Australia - and especially Victoria's - assessment practices are deliberately and institutionally regressive, that is they have been designed and maintained to make it easier to do better if you're from a high achieving cohort, even if your performance is not particularly good. In this way, attending an elite school IS buying marks.
More broadly, education in Australia is in a precarious place, we tend to do well globally, but with an increasing lack of quality teachers, a history of (largely) bad policy, rusted on industrial conditions and a parenting culture that's way different to the educational culture, as well as a massive over-reliance on shaky structures around international students and bizarre federal funding we need to get our act together.
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"Upwardly mobile middle class"
I don't really think that this exists anymore - does anyone? Wages are stagnant, wealth is increasing concentrated in the hands of older people, population demographics mean that young people can't vote in candidates that represent their interests with any consistency (while old people can much more easily), who is moving between classes (or more accurately ICSIA levels?), not too many people....
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
AKA, low income children of color. At least in our highly segregated region.
We hear a lot about poor minority segregated schools, but we know there are more poor white kids than poor minority kids. Where do the poor white kids go to school? Are they all concentrated out in the rural areas that are poor majority white and no one pays attention to, or are they spread out in the middle class suburbs trying to blend in?
Good question. I l live in an urban area so most of the urban students are black or Hispanic due to a profound history of redlining. Which of course gives us the present day suburban dweller's mythology that poor city folks don't care about their homes or their education. There are poor white students of course but many move to the lower income suburbs.
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What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
It's correct, though. Children are influenced by their parents, and by their peers. It's snobbery, but it's also statistics: if you spend time with people smarter and/or wealthier than you, you are more likely yourself to end up smarter and wealthier.
Of course, there are things in life worth pursuing outside academic success and financial wealth. But if that's what you want your children to go for, then you need to send them to a place with a lot of kids whose parents are in the top quartile of educational and wealth advantage.
But there is nothing to suggest that the snobbery gives any causal benefit to the students. The "benefit" (if that's what it is) of social branding to the parents is obvious, as is the related benefit of assuaging parents' anxieties about "not doing enough for their children". But I'm not aware of studies that show that the much better performance of rich schools is due to the schools themselves rather than a natural incident of the demographic of the schools.
In other words, I don't know that a child from intelligent, successful parents who went to a poor school would do any worse than that same child who went to a rich school.
Admittedly, it's hard to gain data because most children from intelligent, successful parents tend to go to rich schools. Hopefully my future children will buck the trend because I don't believe in paying privately for an education.
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I should remark also that here in Australia, our high school curriculum is extremely flat (all the subjects are relatively easy by international standards, our objective performance in literacy and numeracy is poor, and there is no widespread use of streaming). In a country like the U.S. where the rich schools might stream children heavily and teach them high-level content at an early age, there would be an objective benefit to going to a "great" school. In a country like Australia where our standardised high school curricula seem to be aimed at the lowest common denominator, I can't see any benefit whatsoever, other than snobbery and anxiety-reduction.
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To add on to LonerMatt's comments, there are huge structural problems with our educational system. In particular, I agree with his remarks that we are failing our bright students - we are stultifying their minds. No one seems to care though because our society is desperately anti-intellectual. At least in the U.S., parents, students and colleges care about SAT scores and academic achievement. No one cares about that stuff here. School is seen as only a route to get a university degree.
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Streaming doesn't work mate.
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My understanding is that streaming has been shown by most studies to have a positive effect on the highest-tracked children. There is no consensus about whether it has a positive, neutral or negative effect on everyone else. Some studies show that streaming causes worse outcomes in low and low-middle track children.
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But there is nothing to suggest that the snobbery gives any causal benefit to the students. The "benefit" (if that's what it is) of social branding to the parents is obvious, as is the related benefit of assuaging parents' anxieties about "not doing enough for their children". But I'm not aware of studies that show that the much better performance of rich schools is due to the schools themselves rather than a natural incident of the demographic of the schools.
In other words, I don't know that a child from intelligent, successful parents who went to a poor school would do any worse than that same child who went to a rich school.
So, to broadly answer your question, the answer is ' most likely they would do worse'.
To unpack that a bit there's a few things to mention:
- Kyle mentioned above that the degree to which someone learns can have something to do with their cohort (more specifically the efficacy their cohort imparts) - lower performing schools tend to have a lower efficacy around attainment, learning and progress, and tend to do worse (also one of the main reasons streaming makes education systems much worse, fyi) - this is the #1 effect on student progress (according to current research), so it cannot be under-stated. Students who believe they will do well, and students who are in an environment that makes that explicit, tend to progress significantly faster
- Additionally, I'm sure you're aware that ATAR is a highly attenuated mark, a lot of the attenuation relates to the results of your peers, it's deemed harder to get an 'A' if your class have a high level of 'A's' than if they don't (which is directly contradicted by research and common sense), so even if a student is achieving well their achievement can be attenuated severely (especially in VIC and NSW, much less so in WA)
- There are, always, exceptions. One of the tough things parents have to work out is whether their child will be exceptional or not. Every year there are some students from low income areas that do brilliantly, but they are few and, on average, extreme exceptions. How easily can someone determine if that's going to be their child? Additionally, something like a 99 ATAR doesn't realistically open that many more doors than a 95, etc, etc, it's a hot mess!
There's a bunch more that could be said, and I'm leaving stuff out for the sake of brevity, but we can delve deeper !
I should remark also that here in Australia, our high school curriculum is extremely flat (all the subjects are relatively easy by international standards, our objective performance in literacy and numeracy is poor, and there is no widespread use of streaming). In a country like the U.S. where the rich schools might stream children heavily and teach them high-level content at an early age, there would be an objective benefit to going to a "great" school. In a country like Australia where our standardised high school curricula seem to be aimed at the lowest common denominator, I can't see any benefit whatsoever, other than snobbery and anxiety-reduction.
1. I'd be interested in how you've arrived at it being flat - how did you come to that conclusion?
2. I think you mean our achievement within PISA/G20 - globally we are still quite high up, but that's a low bar
3. I don't think the curriculum is set at the lowest common denominator - have you read the Australian curriculum skill points?
4. More often than not Australia beats out the USA, I'd be very wary of deriving much from the USA's education system, there are a few good things, but they are largely not that successful
I suspect the fourth point will be something where we'll diverge. PISA/education system assessments are, by definition, looking at the success for an average student, parents often are interested in just the success of their child. These are, often, at odds. The countries that do very well at PISA tend to have great policy and pedagogy that lifts all students, often through very holistic/non-streamed methods (in fact European countries with split schooling systems have tended not to perform very well and the ones that shift away from those have tended to do better).
China, as always, is veryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy happy to stack their own deck here, but I suspect that you didn't need a reminder of that ;)
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My understanding is that streaming has been shown by most studies to have a positive effect on the highest-tracked children. There is no consensus about whether it has a positive, neutral or negative effect on everyone else. Some studies show that streaming causes worse outcomes in low and low-middle track children.
This is definitely correct. I think we're looking at it from an individual (ie, my kid) versus a systemic (ie, ALL kids) level.
Streaming can help kids at the top.
Streaming does make educational systems less effective (lower PISA rankings, etc).
So, perhaps to come back to some of your earlier comments, if you desired Australia's education system to be more competitive then you'd be staunchly against streaming. If you wanted your own high achiever to do well and didn't give a flying fuck about anything else, streaming would, potentially, be positive.
I do find it an odd practice to single out - there are literally dozens of more effective ways to increase student progress and attainment.
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At least in the U.S., parents, students and colleges care about SAT scores and academic achievement. No one cares about that stuff here. School is seen as only a route to get a university degree.
Except the Asian and Indian students and their families ;)
There are many routes to having a high performing system. Some countries (netherlands, poland, estonia, finland) do not emphasise scores and perform very highly. Some (Singapore, HK) emphasise scores but see little success in other areas (Singapore famously sent teachers here a few years ago to learn how to improve creativity and critical thinking).
Choices are compromises, we're just choosing which compromises we can live with.
Ideally I'd like to see an education system that:
- Defunds private school
- Has egalitarian but high challenge academic success as it's #1 priority for fewer, more specific subjects
- Has student safety and well-being as its #2 priority
- Rewrites a lot of the policy/industrial contracts around teaching making it a profession that can retain teachers like me who love the work but hate the job
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I'm not sure Kyle would even agree with this point "then you need to send them to a place with a lot of kids whose parents are in the top quartile of educational and wealth advantage." - it's way too simplistic and ignores a lot of other options
It does indeed ignore a lot of other options. But I would suggest that the sort of person who will toss half a million at each child's education lacks the imagination and time to think of them. They're too busy in their 60+hr pw job to worry about it.
As I hinted, I think other things are more important than simply academic success and money. For example, we know the Harvard Grant and similar studies that a warm supportive childhood is a big predictor of the child's happiness in their own old age, the warmth of the boys' relationship with their father (and girls' with their mothers) a predictor of how likely they are to have a happy marriage themselves, and so on. My household could earn more money and send our children to a private school, but at the cost of time with them. We believe the tradeoff will lead to a better outcome overall, the inequation being,
private school + distant parents < state school + close parents
Obviously if it were a really awful/good state/private school this might change. Here's the thing: my mother withdrew me from a state high school because she thought it was "too rough." In my first year at the private school I had my wrist broken, in my third year a kid was expelled after breaking a coke bottle and stabbing another kid in the belly and neck with it. But at that same private school I had one of the most inspiring individuals ever as an English teacher, and later an uninspiring but strict and effective physics teacher, and their lessons academic (both) and moral (one) remain with me to this day. And of course as the royal commission into institutional child abuse found, nasty things happened at private schools a lot more than state schools. Times have changed and much less of that stuff happens now, of course.
So we can look at trends only, and can't control everything. But I see the inequation as above; others will make different assumptions and set it up differently. That's up to them, it's their money and children. I don't want to be the last lines of Cats in the Cradle. I'd rather be involved as a father, which requires less work hours, which means less money. A man's place is in the home.
Good schools turn children into educated people. Good parents turn children into decent people. Together they make them into useful people. Obviously there is overlap since parents can also teach children things, teachers can be role models, and so on.
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
AKA, low income children of color. At least in our highly segregated region.
Yes, this put some things in perspective for me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregation_academy
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
Actually 100% necessary
Well let’s break down this snarky comment then.
The prejudice isnt really about “low income” is it? It’s about values that can (but do not always) go with household income, meaning parents who do not value the public school education their children receive.
This translates into a daily life of failing to get their children to school regularly, failing to work with their kids on homework and academic endeavors, feeding their kids junk or failing to feed them appropriately at all, failing to provide a secure home base, etc.
This means the kids fail too and create chaos and lags in their classrooms when they DO show up to school.
This all reflects values.
So sure, if you (the generic you) want your children associating closely with people who share your values, that seems reasonable to me. Wealth plays into it but is not the real issue.
Disparaging a set of values by incorrectly tying them to dollars obscures the argument.
I dont have kids. If I did I would want them at a school with peers. You can define peers however you like, but I wouldnt use dollars as the metric.
But we can all probably make fun of the $40,000 school for 8 year olds because it's ridiculous and is only valued by those East Coast princely leaders of society. I wouldnt want my decidedly middle-class children achieving in that mileau, unless perhaps they were extraordinarily brilliant and got scholarships (wouldn't happen with my genes.). But even then, I would think twice abput exposing them to those values.
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
Actually 100% necessary
Well let’s break down this snarky comment then.
The prejudice isnt really about “low income” is it? It’s about values that can (but do not always) go with household income, meaning parents who do not value the public school education their children receive.
This translates into a daily life of failing to get their children to school regularly, failing to work with their kids on homework and academic endeavors, feeding their kids junk or failing to feed them appropriately at all, failing to provide a secure home base, etc.
This means the kids fail too and create chaos and lags in their classrooms when they DO show up to school.
This all reflects values.
So sure, if you (the generic you) want your children associating closely with people who share your values, that seems reasonable to me. Wealth plays into it but is not the real issue.
Disparaging a set of values by incorrectly tying them to dollars obscures the argument.
I dont have kids. If I did I would want them at a school with peers. You can define peers however you like, but I wouldnt use dollars as the metric.
But we can all probably make fun of the $40,000 school for 8 year olds because it's ridiculous and is only valued by those East Coast princely leaders of society. I wouldnt want my decidedly middle-class children achieving in that mileau, unless perhaps they were extraordinarily brilliant and got scholarships (wouldn't happen with my genes.). But even then, I would think twice abput exposing them to those values.
I don't understand your point with this post. You seem to be saying that public schools are filled with students whose families that don't value their education. That's a lazy, but classic and wide spread belief held by those who would rather not take more than a superficial look at their intellectual "values". There are many reasons why the largest, poorest, under performing school districts in the country are comprised of urban black students. Hint, it's not because that population doesn't value education.
I did not read any snark in that comment.
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I read an article about many progressive parents wanting their children to experience diversity. Moving to diverse neighborhoods, sending kids to diverse schools, etc. But even in these most liberal and progressive areas (and mindsets), when it comes to THEIR kid BEING the minority, the parents balked. I live in one of these areas. I asked around and the parents of kids who started school before the new gentrified school was opened up sent their kids to private school. The ones after the new public school opened sent them there. BUT...they're all still saying they don't know what they'll do once their kids hit 5th grade.
I think it's two things: 1) some of these public schools aren't just open to the masses. They can be downright dangerous. and 2) Think about your own experiences being in an inclusive situation or actually being the minority yourself.
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But even in these most liberal and progressive areas (and mindsets), when it comes to THEIR kid BEING the minority, the parents balked. I live in one of these areas.
I see it too, well off white* families who want diversity but on their terms. A predominantly black (and/or poor population) school is seen as lesser right out of the gate. I'm guilty of this bias myself, which I finally realized by examining why I initially felt uncomfortable with the idea of my kid being a minority student. It was an ugly realization.
*Primarily
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
Actually 100% necessary
Well let’s break down this snarky comment then.
The prejudice isnt really about “low income” is it? It’s about values that can (but do not always) go with household income, meaning parents who do not value the public school education their children receive.
This translates into a daily life of failing to get their children to school regularly, failing to work with their kids on homework and academic endeavors, feeding their kids junk or failing to feed them appropriately at all, failing to provide a secure home base, etc.
This means the kids fail too and create chaos and lags in their classrooms when they DO show up to school.
This all reflects values.
So sure, if you (the generic you) want your children associating closely with people who share your values, that seems reasonable to me. Wealth plays into it but is not the real issue.
Disparaging a set of values by incorrectly tying them to dollars obscures the argument.
I dont have kids. If I did I would want them at a school with peers. You can define peers however you like, but I wouldnt use dollars as the metric.
But we can all probably make fun of the $40,000 school for 8 year olds because it's ridiculous and is only valued by those East Coast princely leaders of society. I wouldnt want my decidedly middle-class children achieving in that mileau, unless perhaps they were extraordinarily brilliant and got scholarships (wouldn't happen with my genes.). But even then, I would think twice abput exposing them to those values.
I don't understand your point with this post. You seem to be saying that public schools are filled with students whose families that don't value their education. That's a lazy, but classic and wide spread belief held by those who would rather not take more than a superficial look at their intellectual "values". There are many reasons why the largest, poorest, under performing school districts in the country are comprised of urban black students. Hint, it's not because that population doesn't value education.
I did not read any snark in that comment.
I live in the midst of a large, Urban underperforming and expensive-per-pupil public school district.
I see daily evidence “ that population” doesn't value education. Doesn't value it to the point of placing it as a priority. This is how we carry out values, living them, taking action based on values.
But the entire school system here isnt full of bad (to use a simplistic word) students. Each school has a different personality and vibe depending on its students. Plenty of schools here would be ok for my family if I had kids. Plenty would not be ok. I am including here the charters since they all serve the same population.
As for diversity, I dont see how children in my city can avoid diversity. That some parents wish to hold out their children from being social experiments just seems like good, protective parenting to me. Finding the best educational experience for your children is the responsible thing to do.
If ya’ll want to consider that elitist, you get to do that.
I went to public schools so have no first hand knowledge about private schools.
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I wonder if that $40,000 education is similar to the $20,000 educations here in flyover country. Bet they are because east coast real estate is expensive and drives up the costs of everything associated with it.
I said I didn’t have experience with private schools, but then I completely forgot that I have, for the past several years, participated in events at two private schools in my region so I have a little bit of exposure. One school is the most expensive school in my region by far with a tuition bill of tuition of $30,000+ annually. It is a school for special needs kids. Their art teacher is outstanding.
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It's "protective parenting" to avoid "that population" or else you are making your kid "a social experiment"? Stop hiding behind the word "values".
Those are your feelings. And a lot of people share them. But let us and them not pretend to be liberal, progressive, and inclusive while our values and the road to a good education and wealth is propped up by a history of redling, white flight, and housing segregation, among the other poorly keep secrets of the higher class.
"Elitist" is jargon that is basically meaningless now.
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
None of what you guys have written is that relevant to the article or Australia more generally.
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
None of what you guys have written is that relevant to the article or Australia more generally.
Sorry, didn't realize the discussion had to concern Australia.
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
None of what you guys have written is that relevant to the article or Australia more generally.
This discussion IS cool for highlighting what is going on in
Australia. I didn't realize the $40,000 private school was there. Probably there are elementary schools in NYC that exceed that is cost.
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I read an article about many progressive parents wanting their children to experience diversity. Moving to diverse neighborhoods, sending kids to diverse schools, etc. But even in these most liberal and progressive areas (and mindsets), when it comes to THEIR kid BEING the minority, the parents balked. I live in one of these areas. I asked around and the parents of kids who started school before the new gentrified school was opened up sent their kids to private school. The ones after the new public school opened sent them there. BUT...they're all still saying they don't know what they'll do once their kids hit 5th grade.
I think it's two things: 1) some of these public schools aren't just open to the masses. They can be downright dangerous. and 2) Think about your own experiences being in an inclusive situation or actually being the minority yourself.
I live in a fairly progressive area. The number of SHOCKED faces I get, or "OH" looks when they ask me where my kids go to school.
(Elementary district, 70% Latino/Hispanic, 48% English learner. Junior high school, 90% Latino/Hispanic, 45% English learner).
Like they just cannot IMAGINE sending their kids to THAT school. The HORROR. Many moved/ rented/ bought houses intentionally away. Others transferred (open transfers). Still others opted for private school.
(My kids are fine. My junior high kid got a perfect score on the ELA and math state tests last year.)
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It's interesting that many white/wealthier folks who have never stepped into a school that is predominately black or brown and/or students assume that it is either unsafe or insufficient. I know everyone here is well informed and more likely to think outside the box, but a lot of people do zero personal research, and avoid critical thinking even, when it comes to the idea that their kid might be a minority student. But that's the default, right - my kid deserves better. Never mind the research and the graduation rates for wealthy white students from educated families (generally the same as in wealthier districts and shows that integration helps poorer students). Democratic politicians can barely talk about integration with risking a backlash from their progressive constituents. It's the same as it ever was.
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
Americans tend not to know understand when they're irrelevant. Must be their education system.
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
None of what you guys have written is that relevant to the article or Australia more generally.
I am interested in how ideas of residential, economic, educational, and racial segregation manifest in Australia. Are race and income highly correlated there? Is there a strong desire for white Australians to avoid too high a concentration of Indigenous and other minority Australians in schools and neighborhoods?
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
Americans tend not to know understand when they're irrelevant. Must be their education system.
The structure of your first sentence being proof that the Australian education system is far superior!
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
Americans tend not to know understand when they're irrelevant. Must be their education system.
I admit it, this made me laugh!
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
None of what you guys have written is that relevant to the article or Australia more generally.
I am interested in how ideas of residential, economic, educational, and racial segregation manifest in Australia. Are race and income highly correlated there? Is there a strong desire for white Australians to avoid too high a concentration of Indigenous and other minority Australians in schools and neighborhoods?
Generally, schools with high Indigenous enrollment are rural or remote, in those cases parents don't actively avoid the schools as there aren't many options and the communities tend to be more integrated. I'm sure there's an element of it, but it's not too obvious.
There are some elements of white flight, though it's not prevalent. This usually happens when an area experiences an influx of new immigrants or new population and the schools become very different and very strained (due to rapidly increasing student numbers). This is not common.
Racial dynamics in Australia are not perfect and we have a lot of problems, however the issues that you've brought up are not common ones, IME, here in Australia.
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In other words, I don't know that a child from intelligent, successful parents who went to a poor school would do any worse than that same child who went to a rich school.
So, to broadly answer your question, the answer is ' most likely they would do worse'.
The question is, if they do worse, is that due to an inherent cohort effect (worse academic learning) or is it due to some other cohort effect (more advantageous scaling/better preparation for exams)? If the latter, then there might be a benefit solely for getting into uni, but there will be no benefit otherwise.
The current research suggests that private school children don't do as well as public school children with the same ATAR, which suggests that any cohort effect is likely to be a distortion.
https://theconversation.com/state-school-kids-do-better-at-uni-29155
1. I'd be interested in how you've arrived at it being flat - how did you come to that conclusion?
3. I don't think the curriculum is set at the lowest common denominator - have you read the Australian curriculum skill points?
Growing up, my family travelled around internationally and I had experience of multiple school jurisdictions.
Australia had the flattest schooling system. There is little variation up or down. Streaming here is discouraged, which means that the top students are brought down to the average level and the slow students struggle without being given remedial classes.
The lack of streaming means that tailored teaching is very difficult. In the U.S., for example, I was streamed to +4 grade years (and other, smarter children were streamed to +6 grades - the range was from -3 to +6). In Australia, I've never seen a kid get streamed more than 2-3 years ahead. Teachers won't allow it. If you're good at a subject, you're encouraged to get perfect marks rather than being encouraged to keep learning harder stuff until you fail and exhaust your ability.
Indeed, our VCE subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, History etc only have one tier. Besides mathematics and foreign languages, there are few subjects with multiple tiers for more advanced or less advanced students. This leads to the stultifying of those at the top of the class, and the neglect of those at the bottom.
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Can we go back to discussing Australia yet?
None of what you guys have written is that relevant to the article or Australia more generally.
I am interested in how ideas of residential, economic, educational, and racial segregation manifest in Australia. Are race and income highly correlated there? Is there a strong desire for white Australians to avoid too high a concentration of Indigenous and other minority Australians in schools and neighborhoods?
There is an interesting racial dynamic in that the expensive private schools are largely all-white whereas the public selective schools - which achieve just as good academic results since they draw in the elite performing students - have a huge number of Asian and Indian students. I have anecdotally heard that a lot of white parents prefer their children to go to an expensive private school even if the child is smart enough to get into the (much, much cheaper) public selective school, just because they don't want to subject their child to the perceived hot-housing that Asian and Indian kids go through.
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The lack of streaming means that tailored teaching is very difficult. In the U.S., for example, I was streamed to +4 grade years (and other, smarter children were streamed to +6 grades - the range was from -3 to +6). In Australia, I've never seen a kid get streamed more than 2-3 years ahead. Teachers won't allow it. If you're good at a subject, you're encouraged to get perfect marks rather than being encouraged to keep learning harder stuff until you fail and exhaust your ability.
Indeed, our VCE subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, History etc only have one tier. Besides mathematics and foreign languages, there are few subjects with multiple tiers for more advanced or less advanced students. This leads to the stultifying of those at the top of the class, and the neglect of those at the bottom.
My experience in school was maybe 1-2 years ahead at most, I don't think having an 8th or 9th grader in calculus or physics is common in the US. I was allowed to skip ahead one year in science and there was a significant amount of students (15-25% of the grade) who were in the various advanced classes. So the bulk of students would finish 12th grade with pre-calculus and those on the advanced track would finish with calculus. In science those on the advanced track would take Chemistry II, physics, and advanced biology, while everyone else would take lab science and either biology or environmental biology - maybe chemistry or advanced biology.
Where did you go to school in the US that there were kids going 3-6 years ahead of their peers?
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
What a snarky, unnecessary remark.
Actually 100% necessary
Well let’s break down this snarky comment then.
The prejudice isnt really about “low income” is it? It’s about values that can (but do not always) go with household income, meaning parents who do not value the public school education their children receive.
This translates into a daily life of failing to get their children to school regularly, failing to work with their kids on homework and academic endeavors, feeding their kids junk or failing to feed them appropriately at all, failing to provide a secure home base, etc.
This means the kids fail too and create chaos and lags in their classrooms when they DO show up to school.
This all reflects values.
So sure, if you (the generic you) want your children associating closely with people who share your values, that seems reasonable to me. Wealth plays into it but is not the real issue.
Disparaging a set of values by incorrectly tying them to dollars obscures the argument.
I dont have kids. If I did I would want them at a school with peers. You can define peers however you like, but I wouldnt use dollars as the metric.
But we can all probably make fun of the $40,000 school for 8 year olds because it's ridiculous and is only valued by those East Coast princely leaders of society. I wouldnt want my decidedly middle-class children achieving in that mileau, unless perhaps they were extraordinarily brilliant and got scholarships (wouldn't happen with my genes.). But even then, I would think twice abput exposing them to those values.
I don't understand your point with this post. You seem to be saying that public schools are filled with students whose families that don't value their education. That's a lazy, but classic and wide spread belief held by those who would rather not take more than a superficial look at their intellectual "values". There are many reasons why the largest, poorest, under performing school districts in the country are comprised of urban black students. Hint, it's not because that population doesn't value education.
I did not read any snark in that comment.
I live in the midst of a large, Urban underperforming and expensive-per-pupil public school district.
I see daily evidence “ that population” doesn't value education. Doesn't value it to the point of placing it as a priority. This is how we carry out values, living them, taking action based on values.
But the entire school system here isnt full of bad (to use a simplistic word) students. Each school has a different personality and vibe depending on its students. Plenty of schools here would be ok for my family if I had kids. Plenty would not be ok. I am including here the charters since they all serve the same population.
As for diversity, I dont see how children in my city can avoid diversity. That some parents wish to hold out their children from being social experiments just seems like good, protective parenting to me. Finding the best educational experience for your children is the responsible thing to do.
If ya’ll want to consider that elitist, you get to do that.
I went to public schools so have no first hand knowledge about private schools.
I went to a 'magnet program' in middle school that was purposefully placed in a school that has a primarily urban minority student population. I assume the motive was to bring up grades/funding but I don't know. I can say first hand that, outside of the magnet students, I saw approximately nobody who cared about education, had parents who did (I had many friends who were regular students), or got punished for failing grades. I still remember the first and last 'C' I got to this day because my parents were extremely disappointed in me.
My wife is a minority from this type of community, and while her direct family (mother, father) care about education, nobody else in her family does. The kids are constantly bringing home poor grades, getting teacher complaints, failing etc... and are treated no differently. They are also not taught good examples of being an adult and having a regular job.
I definitely wouldn't want my kid in the same classrooms as them, and they are my family.
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Australia had the flattest schooling system. There is little variation up or down. Streaming here is discouraged, which means that the top students are brought down to the average level and the slow students struggle without being given remedial classes.
The lack of streaming means that tailored teaching is very difficult. In the U.S., for example, I was streamed to +4 grade years (and other, smarter children were streamed to +6 grades - the range was from -3 to +6). In Australia, I've never seen a kid get streamed more than 2-3 years ahead. Teachers won't allow it. If you're good at a subject, you're encouraged to get perfect marks rather than being encouraged to keep learning harder stuff until you fail and exhaust your ability.
Indeed, our VCE subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, History etc only have one tier. Besides mathematics and foreign languages, there are few subjects with multiple tiers for more advanced or less advanced students. This leads to the stultifying of those at the top of the class, and the neglect of those at the bottom.
Can relate to this. I was the top student in maths, science and business. The only "streaming" that occurred at my school was for maths starting from Year 8 - advanced, intermediate and standard. In year 12, they were kind enough to allow me to do the extension 2 course.
There just wasn't enough resources to deal with the high achievers. The special-ed department was incredibly well stocked however. You had the kids with learning difficulties and those needing extra assistance getting quite a bit of special attention. The kids at the other end of the spectrum were left to their own devices.
It changed a little bit in the years following - opportunity classes where the top students were pooled together. But very very rarely were kids accelerated when arguably they should have been.
You only get that in the selective school system, and only for prodigies who are many years ahead of their peers.
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The lack of streaming means that tailored teaching is very difficult. In the U.S., for example, I was streamed to +4 grade years (and other, smarter children were streamed to +6 grades - the range was from -3 to +6). In Australia, I've never seen a kid get streamed more than 2-3 years ahead. Teachers won't allow it. If you're good at a subject, you're encouraged to get perfect marks rather than being encouraged to keep learning harder stuff until you fail and exhaust your ability.
Indeed, our VCE subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, History etc only have one tier. Besides mathematics and foreign languages, there are few subjects with multiple tiers for more advanced or less advanced students. This leads to the stultifying of those at the top of the class, and the neglect of those at the bottom.
My experience in school was maybe 1-2 years ahead at most, I don't think having an 8th or 9th grader in calculus or physics is common in the US. I was allowed to skip ahead one year in science and there was a significant amount of students (15-25% of the grade) who were in the various advanced classes. So the bulk of students would finish 12th grade with pre-calculus and those on the advanced track would finish with calculus. In science those on the advanced track would take Chemistry II, physics, and advanced biology, while everyone else would take lab science and either biology or environmental biology - maybe chemistry or advanced biology.
Where did you go to school in the US that there were kids going 3-6 years ahead of their peers?
I went to a Magnet high school and I did Pre-Calc in Year 9 and we had a bunch of elementary school kids in that class as well. But even the non-Magnet high schools in my county had an AP/Honors/Standard/Remedial system set-up for a lot of subjects.
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There are a lot of high level reasons listed here. For those of us in the great white north, specifically Ontario, the allure of private school is simpler: it actually takes place Monday to Friday and includes things like extra-curriculars and report cards.
Seem unbelievable. Read the union's own directives.
https://etfocb.ca/ Specifically the ETFO Strike action section for the lists of all the things teachers are ordered by their union not to do. This is just one of the unions on constant rotating strikes in Ontario. A local news agency reported a tipped off source that all schools will be closed with no notice this Friday, as yet another day with no classes. Depending on the area, only 2 out of 5 days this week will have all kids in the classroom.
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The question is, if they do worse, is that due to an inherent cohort effect (worse academic learning) or is it due to some other cohort effect (more advantageous scaling/better preparation for exams)? If the latter, then there might be a benefit solely for getting into uni, but there will be no benefit otherwise.
The current research suggests that private school children don't do as well as public school children with the same ATAR, which suggests that any cohort effect is likely to be a distortion.
https://theconversation.com/state-school-kids-do-better-at-uni-29155
It's definitely both, though how it'd be split is hard to say. Likely more cohort effect with not insignificant scaling - my guess would be 60/40, but that's so far a hunch I'd not want to wager on it.
That's not the most accurate summary of the research but it is an interesting trend, one has to wonder about qualities like determination, grit, etc, and how those are fostered through education. Though as a former teacher I don't love having to teach character, hopefully most parents know a bit of challenge is good for a kid.
1. I'd be interested in how you've arrived at it being flat - how did you come to that conclusion?
3. I don't think the curriculum is set at the lowest common denominator - have you read the Australian curriculum skill points?
Growing up, my family travelled around internationally and I had experience of multiple school jurisdictions.
Australia had the flattest schooling system. There is little variation up or down. Streaming here is discouraged, which means that the top students are brought down to the average level and the slow students struggle without being given remedial classes.
The lack of streaming means that tailored teaching is very difficult. In the U.S., for example, I was streamed to +4 grade years (and other, smarter children were streamed to +6 grades - the range was from -3 to +6). In Australia, I've never seen a kid get streamed more than 2-3 years ahead. Teachers won't allow it. If you're good at a subject, you're encouraged to get perfect marks rather than being encouraged to keep learning harder stuff until you fail and exhaust your ability.
Indeed, our VCE subjects like Chemistry, Biology, Psychology, History etc only have one tier. Besides mathematics and foreign languages, there are few subjects with multiple tiers for more advanced or less advanced students. This leads to the stultifying of those at the top of the class, and the neglect of those at the bottom.
Right, thanks for clarifying.
However, I think it's important to re-iterate that systems that are less flat tend to do worse. Generally, not always, so I'd still not be advocating for policies around streaming or the practice more generally. I think there are much better ways to develop capable students rather than streaming, methods that have a large wealth of evidence supporting their success (mastery learning, peer teaching, for example).
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Can relate to this. I was the top student in maths, science and business. The only "streaming" that occurred at my school was for maths starting from Year 8 - advanced, intermediate and standard. In year 12, they were kind enough to allow me to do the extension 2 course.
There just wasn't enough resources to deal with the high achievers. The special-ed department was incredibly well stocked however. You had the kids with learning difficulties and those needing extra assistance getting quite a bit of special attention. The kids at the other end of the spectrum were left to their own devices.
It changed a little bit in the years following - opportunity classes where the top students were pooled together. But very very rarely were kids accelerated when arguably they should have been.
You only get that in the selective school system, and only for prodigies who are many years ahead of their peers.
So, ok, there's a ton to unpack here. Yes, special needs students are often over-resourced compared to top performers. To some extent that makes total sense. Sick people get more healthcare money than healthy people too, but that's sort of the way it has to be sometimes.
Generally parents and non-teachers see things like acceleration and streaming as good solutions to common problems, but the thing is that they, generally, do not deliver on their promises. Things that seem simple and effective often fall down in a complex system. Streaming I've mentioned, acceleration is often successful in specific subjects but detrimental to well-being, development and sense of self (not unlike homeschooling in that way), rarely is progression linear and acceleration only works one way which can fuck people up if they hit a snag, slow their learning down or have a rough patch.
So, let's flip the situation a little:
What are the most effective ways Australia could better challenge, support and develop students who are performing well?
If we start with that question (rather than a conversation around particular methods, which tend not to work) we can start to make much better headway.
From my point of view there are a few things that would foster meaningful improvements:
1. Emphasise mastery and peer teaching in primary school (very effective, low cost and supported by research)
2. From grade 5 to grade 10 have electives that anti-flat, but not streamed (opt in, built on teacher strengths) - streaming falls down when it's systematic but student self selection tends to be more accurate and more effective
3. Recruit and hire teachers who are subject experts, especially at a primary level and HS science and maths - generally those of us who are subject experts tend to get excellent results across the board, those of us who aren't struggle to support top end students
4. Kill tall poppy syndrome across the country
5. Develop assessments that are not tests or exams (SO pointless, so poorly implemented, such a waste of time) and are often cross disciplinary (for example an assignment looking at war time economy changes very easily involves significant reading, writing, history, maths and research skills) - a broad taxonomy of capability would be surface (I can add), depth (I can add well), transfer (I know when to add and when not to) - it's the transfer that's very often missed in Australia
6. If anyone says 'back to basics' they are banned from having an opinion about education until they read some books on it
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There are a lot of high level reasons listed here. For those of us in the great white north, specifically Ontario, the allure of private school is simpler: it actually takes place Monday to Friday and includes things like extra-curriculars and report cards.
Seem unbelievable. Read the union's own directives.
https://etfocb.ca/ Specifically the ETFO Strike action section for the lists of all the things teachers are ordered by their union not to do. This is just one of the unions on constant rotating strikes in Ontario. A local news agency reported a tipped off source that all schools will be closed with no notice this Friday, as yet another day with no classes. Depending on the area, only 2 out of 5 days this week will have all kids in the classroom.
That is a good point. A coworker was talking about kindergarten for her oldest and is considering private. When I asked why she said it was because the hours are actually conducive to two working parents. That makes total sense. It is beyond ridiculous that school starts late, ends early, had these silly minimum days (why??), super minimum days, and are closed all the time for holidays that no one else gets or teacher this-or-that days. Seriously, what do they expect parents to do with their kids? Most of us have to work for a living. We are definitely not the norm being able to retire by the time our kids hit school age. It is especially galling in a HCOL area like where we live where most people need two incomes to stay afloat.
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There are a lot of high level reasons listed here. For those of us in the great white north, specifically Ontario, the allure of private school is simpler: it actually takes place Monday to Friday and includes things like extra-curriculars and report cards.
Seem unbelievable. Read the union's own directives.
https://etfocb.ca/ Specifically the ETFO Strike action section for the lists of all the things teachers are ordered by their union not to do. This is just one of the unions on constant rotating strikes in Ontario. A local news agency reported a tipped off source that all schools will be closed with no notice this Friday, as yet another day with no classes. Depending on the area, only 2 out of 5 days this week will have all kids in the classroom.
That is a good point. A coworker was talking about kindergarten for her oldest and is considering private. When I asked why she said it was because the hours are actually conducive to two working parents. That makes total sense. It is beyond ridiculous that school starts late, ends early, had these silly minimum days (why??), super minimum days, and are closed all the time for holidays that no one else gets or teacher this-or-that days. Seriously, what do they expect parents to do with their kids? Most of us have to work for a living. We are definitely not the norm being able to retire by the time our kids hit school age. It is especially galling in a HCOL area like where we live where most people need two incomes to stay afloat.
Interesting, in our region, private schools follow the basic public school calendar except that they actually have fewer in-school days - more days off during the year and longer breaks.
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There are a lot of high level reasons listed here. For those of us in the great white north, specifically Ontario, the allure of private school is simpler: it actually takes place Monday to Friday and includes things like extra-curriculars and report cards.
Seem unbelievable. Read the union's own directives.
https://etfocb.ca/ Specifically the ETFO Strike action section for the lists of all the things teachers are ordered by their union not to do. This is just one of the unions on constant rotating strikes in Ontario. A local news agency reported a tipped off source that all schools will be closed with no notice this Friday, as yet another day with no classes. Depending on the area, only 2 out of 5 days this week will have all kids in the classroom.
That is a good point. A coworker was talking about kindergarten for her oldest and is considering private. When I asked why she said it was because the hours are actually conducive to two working parents. That makes total sense. It is beyond ridiculous that school starts late, ends early, had these silly minimum days (why??), super minimum days, and are closed all the time for holidays that no one else gets or teacher this-or-that days. Seriously, what do they expect parents to do with their kids? Most of us have to work for a living. We are definitely not the norm being able to retire by the time our kids hit school age. It is especially galling in a HCOL area like where we live where most people need two incomes to stay afloat.
The obvious answer to your question is that school doesn’t primarily provide daycare services for your children. It’s not their primary reason to exist. If this sounds smart ass I’m sorry but to me it’s an obvious answer to the question “what am I supposed to do with my children when school closes?”
But sure it’s tough to find childcare when school closes or when your child is sick.
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I recognize that, however the reality is that most households are dual income, which means that most schools are not serving the needs of most of the kids they are there to teach. It doesn’t help anyone to set a school schedule that leaves parents stressed and struggling, and/or leaves kids with second rate options for how to spend a significant chunk of their day.
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It seems counter-intuitive to rag on a group who are striking so that they can continue to look after kids and educate them well.
There was a member of this board working in Ontario as an Education Support worker and had to quit - despite being excellent at it - because the salary topped out at something like $35k. So instead of continuing to help special needs students develop and learn, providing significant value in their lives and the lives of their parents, he left and (I believe) no works in real estate. Short term pain always irks parents, which sucks, but long term it's in our interest to retain skilled people and recruit new people based on excellent conditions and job prospects.
Ontario has a very high functioning education system and is, therefore, something worth fighting for.
Realistically, teachers who strike (me!) often hope affected families realise that we're hoping you get angry at the government bargaining team that often will deny us reasonable demands for months before strikes move things forward. If there was a better way it would be used.
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I recognize that, however the reality is that most households are dual income, which means that most schools are not serving the needs of most of the kids they are there to teach. It doesn’t help anyone to set a school schedule that leaves parents stressed and struggling, and/or leaves kids with second rate options for how to spend a significant chunk of their day.
Family life works better if you don't have 2 full-time equivalent jobs in it, but 1-1.5.
With less than 2 FTE jobs, there's less stress and drama in the household even without considering school stuff. And of course, this allows parents more time to supplement their children's formal education by anything from bedtime stories right up to homeschooling.
This means less income for the household, but not as much as commonly imagined, since a parent with less stress and drama in their day-to-day life is more likely to be able to improve their skills (my wife is doing a course this week, which she can only do because I'm here to do the dropoffs and pickups she usually does), is calmer and more focused at work so they can perform better and secure a raise, and so on. And of course, many of the things we purchase with money we can also purchase with time, eg eating at home vs eating out, etc.
And since everyone assumes this: no, this does not mean the woman does no paid work, it can be the man doing no paid work or only part-time, as in my household. And I think it's usually better for it to be the man.
It's not clear to me that it's the school's responsibility to make up for our lifestyle choices.
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That presumes that you live in an area and have jobs that pay well enough to allow a family to live on 1.5 incomes. It presumes part time work is available. It presumes that one parent is happy taking him or herself off the career track to care for kids.
All of that assumes a certain level of privilege that does not apply to vast swaths of people. I think of people I know here who live five people to a one-bedroom apartment and work three jobs between two parents to keep them afloat. Think of assortive mating where college educated are more likely than ever to marry each other, meaning it is more likely than ever that both people will want to pursue their careers.
Continuing a system that assumes or almost requires a partial SAHP is not only archaic and counter productive but, in my opinion, a little offensive as it still seems to be the women who end up downshifting more often than not when that is required.
I realize the point of this site is to get to the point of being able to choose not to work. But we should not assume that is what everyone else wants at every point in their family life.
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Sure, but schools' hours are always different to working hours (well, most working hours) - it's a tough call to ask schools to keep the same working hours as 9-5 jobs, or, in some cases (as is sometimes common) 8-6 or whatever increasing hours end up being.
I do think the States (and maybe Canada) where schools start at 7 (in some districts) is totally bonkers. Here school is usually 9-3.30 (or thereabouts) which I think is not too bad. Most schools have After Hours Care if needed as well. It's not perfect and, as you say, some people always have more options than others, and things change as kids grow up and are more independent, but it's also not the worst deal either!
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Sure, but schools' hours are always different to working hours (well, most working hours) - it's a tough call to ask schools to keep the same working hours as 9-5 jobs, or, in some cases (as is sometimes common) 8-6 or whatever increasing hours end up being.
I do think the States (and maybe Canada) where schools start at 7 (in some districts) is totally bonkers. Here school is usually 9-3.30 (or thereabouts) which I think is not too bad. Most schools have After Hours Care if needed as well. It's not perfect and, as you say, some people always have more options than others, and things change as kids grow up and are more independent, but it's also not the worst deal either!
I'm not aware of any Canadian schools that start at 7 am, although they may exist. My elementary school was 830-230 and my high school was 9-315. The schools where I live now mostly start between 830 and 9.
Do the American schools that start at 7 am do longer days, or do parents have to pick up their kids at 1 pm?
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I think longer days, from memory it's not uncommon for like 7.30-2/2.30. Though totally open to being corrected.
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That presumes that you live in an area and have jobs that pay well enough to allow a family to live on 1.5 incomes.
In Australia, the full-time minimum wage is AUD19.40ph, which comes to a bit over $38k. 150% of that would be $58k. The median Australian household income is $50k. Which is to say that a bit over one-half of Australian households already live on less than or equal to the equivalent of 1.5 full-time equivalent minimum wage jobs.
And of course, most people who are employed receive more than the minimum wage.
Area is key, yes. You couldn't keep a family going in Toorak on such a job. It may take a few years to organise yourselves so it can happen. But this MMM website is all about people taking a few years to build the sort of lifestyle they want.
It presumes that one parent is happy taking him or herself off the career track to care for kids.
I would suggest that if neither of you are willing to make sacrifices to have children, you don't really want children. Which is fine: there is no moral duty to have children.
The notion that our choices should cause us minimal or even no inconvenience is a peculiarly modern and middle-class one.
I think of people I know here who live five people to a one-bedroom apartment and work three jobs between two parents to keep them afloat. Think of assortive mating where college educated are more likely than ever to marry each other, meaning it is more likely than ever that both people will want to pursue their careers.
You live in an unfortunate country where people can be working full-time and still be impoverished, and where more privileged people are brought up to expect they need never make sacrifices for their chosen lifestyle. I feel for you.
Continuing a system that assumes or almost requires a partial SAHP is not only archaic and counter productive but, in my opinion, a little offensive as it still seems to be the women who end up downshifting more often than not when that is required.
As I said, I don't believe it need be women. In fact I noted that more often than not it should be the man who stays at home with the children.
Both men and women get post-natal depression, but women at several times the rate of men; part of the cause is hormonal, but a large part is feelings of imprisonment and social isolation. Men will lack the hormonal trigger, and in general have smaller social circles, so will feel the psychological impact of preschool social isolation (the isolation fades off once the kids go to school) less than women. For these reasons, it is better for the man to stay at home than the woman.
It's estimated that 5-10% of SIDS cases are actually infanticide carried out by the mother, and there's a strong correlation between SIDS and female postnatal depression. Almost all infanticide leading to convictions is carried out by mothers. For these reasons, it is better for the man to stay at home than the woman.
Children with absent fathers - whether entirely absent because they've abandoned them, or present in theory but absent due to longer work hours - are more likely to be involved in criminal activity and drugs, have mental health issues, fail to finish high school, engage in early and unprotected sexual activity and have unplanned teenaged pregnancies. The more present the father, the better the outcomes for the children. For these reasons, it is better for the man to stay at home than the woman.
Women face systemic discrimination in the workplace which is made worse by their taking years off to have children; men don't suffer this discrimination. Women have a wage gap which is made worse by time entirely off work, and this gap will carry on through to her old age with superannuation and so on, making her less able to provide for herself; if the man takes time off work, then the gap will disappear. For these reasons, it is better for the man to stay at home than the woman.
I could go on, but you get the point. Part of why women end up at home with the children isn't choice, but it's simply assumed. It's natural for the first 6 months or so as the woman recovers from childbirth and, if she is willing and able to, breastfeeds. But past birth and breastfeeding, there's nothing a mother can do that a father can't. So immediately after birth if the child is not breastfed, or starting from 6 months when it becomes more practical to express and the child is starting on solids (40% of children are not breastfed at all from 6 months on), and certainly after 12 months when most are weaned - well, the man can be the full-time caregiver.
But too often sheer momentum carries the couple through with the woman remaining at home, they don't sit down and discuss it. It should be discussed more. Likewise the household tasks; if when she wasn't doing paid work she was always the one who did household tasks X, Y and Z, even once she's back at full-time work she tends to continue doing X, Y and Z. It's not discussed. If we simply assume it'll usually be the woman, then it won't even occur to many couples to discuss it. Let's not assume, and let's more often raise the points above, or if you disagree with them, whatever points you think good. Let's encourage more couple conversations to happen. Don't assume.
I realize the point of this site is to get to the point of being able to choose not to work. But we should not assume that is what everyone else wants at every point in their family life.
I agree. For my part, I have every intention of doing paid work until I fall over. I'm puzzled as to why some people will work 40-60hr pw for 20-40 years so they can then work 0hr for 20-40 years. The first two years after a man's retirement are very dangerous, too often having depression, substance abuse and suicide. Why not just work 20-30hr pw your whole life? This accommodates children if you want them, and hobbies and study and leisure if you don't want children, or before and after children.
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"Upwardly mobile middle class"
I don't really think that this exists anymore - does anyone? Wages are stagnant, wealth is increasing concentrated in the hands of older people, population demographics mean that young people can't vote in candidates that represent their interests with any consistency (while old people can much more easily), who is moving between classes (or more accurately ICSIA levels?), not too many people....
I'm sorry, where exactly do you think you are?
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Static, decreasing purchasing power middle class?
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I recognize that, however the reality is that most households are dual income, which means that most schools are not serving the needs of most of the kids they are there to teach. It doesn’t help anyone to set a school schedule that leaves parents stressed and struggling, and/or leaves kids with second rate options for how to spend a significant chunk of their day.
Then lobby for day care services at the school. Cheaper than teachers with advanced degrees and etc.
Its like the hospital—do you want to pay for people who do not need skilled nursing care and advanced treatment options to lie around in bed for weeks recovering, when much lower level care could do that trick?
I dont.
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I recognize that, however the reality is that most households are dual income, which means that most schools are not serving the needs of most of the kids they are there to teach. It doesn’t help anyone to set a school schedule that leaves parents stressed and struggling, and/or leaves kids with second rate options for how to spend a significant chunk of their day.
Then lobby for day care services at the school. Cheaper than teachers with advanced degrees and etc.
Its like the hospital—do you want to pay for people who do not need skilled nursing care and advanced treatment options to lie around in bed for weeks recovering, when much lower level care could do that trick?
I dont.
As it is we pay for my kindergartener to be in an after school program that is taught by teachers. So she gets quality activities all day long instead of just a few hours in the day.
I suppose this kind of setup perpetuates the gap between the advantages and disadvantages kids. Those with means put their kids in quality after school programs to fill up the entire day while those who don’t have their kids in front of the tv, or whatever else they can cobble together.
It works well for my kid but it certainly leaves plenty of others in the dust. This isn’t fair.
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I suppose this kind of setup perpetuates the gap between the advantages and disadvantages kids. Those with means put their kids in quality after school programs to fill up the entire day while those who don’t have their kids in front of the tv, or whatever else they can cobble together.
It works well for my kid but it certainly leaves plenty of others in the dust. This isn’t fair.
Not necessarily. After all, homeschooled children are from all sorts of backgrounds, with parents of varying education and wealth, and they do as well or better than state schooled children.
https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/homeschooling-101/homeschool-demographics/ (https://responsiblehomeschooling.org/homeschooling-101/homeschool-demographics/)
https://www.homeschoolingdownunder.com/australian-homeschool-statistics/ (https://www.homeschoolingdownunder.com/australian-homeschool-statistics/)
Interestingly, the rate of homeschooling is slightly higher among poorer and less-educated families. Higher income and better-educated families pay someone else to do it for them, poorer and less-educated families are more likely to do it themselves.
Surveys of white collar workers usually show they spend only about 2.5hr a day doing productive work. Primary school is from my observation quite similar. Mostly they're just stuffing around or waiting on other kids for stuff. There's only 1-2 hours a day of actual learning and practising of things. This matches what homeschooling parents tell me - they only have to do a couple of hours a day of formal learning to get the children to or past the state schools' standards.
Our children don't necessarily need several hours a day of formal schooling.
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I don't agree with that. I got drilled about 4-5 hours a day throughout Years 6-10 and also did 3 hours a day of homework. Without that sort of tuition I wouldn't have gotten as good at English and maths as I did.
It may be that you only need 2 hours a day to get up to scratch in a general capacity. But if you want to be a top student it is going to take a lot more work than that.
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I've no doubt that if you want to be a "top student" you need more than a few hours a day of study and learning. Likewise, the people who report working productively for 2.5hr a day in their workplace are probably not the ones who are becoming manager, partner or whatever at record young ages.
Most people are content to do alright, or do well, without the need to do famously.
In one longitudinal study of men's health, they measured many things, including their fitness and strength, and then broke them into three groups - poor, middle and top endurance and likewise strength. They waited twenty years to see who dropped dead and of what. Having middle or top one-third of endurance reduced the chances of heart disease and some cancers; having middle or top one-third of strength made no difference to heart disease, but reduced the chances of other cancers, and other-cause mortality. But here's the thing: being in the top third did not lead to better outcomes than being in the middle third. You just didn't want to be in the bottom third.
It's much the same with education and income, in terms of how happy people are, how stable their relationships are, their finances and so on. People in the middle or top third of the class or of income are certainly better off than those in the bottom third. But top or middle third make little difference. Just don't be in the bottom third of education or income.
Looking here (http://shorturl.at/lDLS1), we see that you do need something beyond high school to get much about minimum wage and have a good chance of employment - a certificate or two, or diploma. A Bachelor's or more bumps up the employment a few percent, and the income from cert/dip to B.(something) takes you from ~$1,050 to $1,436pw average income. That's good, but of course it involves 3-4 years of study and a significant HECS debt. You may or may not consider it worth the trouble.
(https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs[member=9907].[/member]nsf/6630eff525d4cdc1ca25763e0075754f/053fd84ef5bcd777ca2581be0013d1c8/Body/21.4D1E!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif)
(https://i.imgur.com/vVwSS1v.gif)
(https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs[member=9907].[/member]nsf/6630eff525d4cdc1ca25763e0075754f/053fd84ef5bcd777ca2581be0013d1c8/Body/21.4D1E!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif)
In Australia, if you actually finish high school and then undertake some sort of further education, whether trade apprenticeship, diploma, some certificate in something - you're solidly the middle third. If you scrape through on a pass on a bachelor's degree than you're the bottom of the top third. More than that puts you well into the top third. Finish high school and do something and you'll be set up for a decent life.
You don't need to be a top student to have a decent life. Not everyone wants to be a neurosurgeon, a corporate lawyer or an architect.
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There's another aspect to consider, too. If multiple teachers did it, and/or it takes months or years for reports to be acted on, then it's systemic. It's a culture of abuse. We don't hear many instances of systemic sexual abuse at state schools.
It's like how in Afghanistan special forces have been implicated in war crimes but not regular infantry units. When you're constantly told you're "elite" and you run your own affairs without public scrutiny, you may get a culture of impunity. See also the culture of bullying which exists in surgery resident programmes at hospitals, but which doesn't exist in GP training.
Your child doesn't need to be a top student to have a good life, and there may be costs beyond the absurd fees.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-17/investigation-into-teacher-behaviour-at-st-kevins/11972138 (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-17/investigation-into-teacher-behaviour-at-st-kevins/11972138)
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Here in Washington, DC, private school tuition costs from about $26,000 to $42,000 (about AUD 39k to $63k).
My GF’s son has gone to public (government) schools, but he has been incredibly fortunate to have been zoned for an excellent elementary school and then won a lottery to attend a specialized math-and-science middle-and-high school with high academic standards. For most children here, the public schools are pretty terrible (I’m saying that having attended public schools myself in NYC and taught in an average NYC high school and tutored in the local DC school). Most folks here that can afford it (obviously, most can’t) put their kids into private schools, and many others look to flee to the ‘burbs when their kids get to school age.
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I don’t get the private school thing. Okay, if I isn’t have a public language immersion option then I would consider private. But otherwise I’m colored by my own experience as a kid. We went to a private Christian school for four years where the kids were beastly mean and the education was decidedly sub-par. Going to public school was initially scary but in the end was a breath of fresh air.
Same. I attended a private Catholic school for K-8 and begged to leave after being bullied straight through my 6th grade year. I wasn't allowed to switch until after two more hellish years during which I pretty much gave up academically because I was so miserable. The public high school was so much less stressful and had many more academic and arts options and many highly engaged teachers.
To be fair, we lived in a very good public school district (which makes it even more confusing why my parents nearly drove themselves broke keeping me in a Catholic school that I didn't like, at a parish that we all hated). I can understand exploring private/charter options in a poor school district.
Exact same experience as above! In fact, the similarities are uncanny.
I’ll also note that:
1) I got out just as a priest took over who was later accused of molestation.
2) Multiple elementary classmates (out of about 25) either died from suicide, became addicts, or went to jail.
3) I learned certain things for the first time in public schools, such as anything about evolution/reproduction, anything significant about the civil rights movement, and also that the Spanish conquistadors didn’t treat the indigenous populations so well as was implied by my earlier teachers.
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I've no doubt that if you want to be a "top student" you need more than a few hours a day of study and learning. Likewise, the people who report working productively for 2.5hr a day in their workplace are probably not the ones who are becoming manager, partner or whatever at record young ages.
Most people are content to do alright, or do well, without the need to do famously.
In one longitudinal study of men's health, they measured many things, including their fitness and strength, and then broke them into three groups - poor, middle and top endurance and likewise strength. They waited twenty years to see who dropped dead and of what. Having middle or top one-third of endurance reduced the chances of heart disease and some cancers; having middle or top one-third of strength made no difference to heart disease, but reduced the chances of other cancers, and other-cause mortality. But here's the thing: being in the top third did not lead to better outcomes than being in the middle third. You just didn't want to be in the bottom third.
I can easily agree with that, in a health context. But it's much more complex in an educational setting.
When it comes to health, for most of us the main goal is to avoid bad things happening. Therefore the extra exertion (on your muscles and joints) that comes with being a really good athlete is superfluous to the goal. Most of us aren't super interested in being a world class marathoner, but we want to be fit enough to jog 10kms.
When it comes to education, there are more discrete gains from being in the top third (as opposed to being in the middle third). Even leaving aside the intrinsic value of education, a higher degree of critical thinking ability and a greater facility with numbers/words will give you real-life benefits at work. That may or may not make you 'happier', but it will make you richer, and that's an important goal for many (including those on these forums).
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That's true, but there's a balance to these things. I know of a GP working 70hr weeks to put his children in private schools - and he's morbidly obese. So he's not with his family today, and he's sure as shit not going to be with them tomorrow. As Cats In The Cradle said, his son will grow up just like him. And then...
I would suggest that you and many others have misconstrued the purpose of the MMM philosophy. It's not to accumulate as much money as possible as quickly as possible, if that were the only concern we'd just become bank robbers.
It's viewing money as a tool to get us the lifestyle we want, rather than as an end in itself; thus MMM's referring to certain kinds of car "clown cars". Depending on the lifestyle someone wants, this might be accomplished with more money earned, or with less spent; and less spent may mean working less hours in a high-income job, or moderate hours in a moderate income job, etc.
With that in mind, a person may decide that endlessly ambitiously pushing themselves or their children isn't the best route to the lifestyle they want.
The 70hr pw morbidly obese GP dad is doing it wrong. And the parents who send their children to an overpriced school where they get molested are also doing it wrong.
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I don't see your points as really that divergent. Kyle's saying 'you don't have to be the best to have a good life' and Bloop's saying 'being better brings you more opportunities and options'. No disagreement here.
When educating someone you want them to be aiming as high as possible - even if they don't get there having a mindset or assumption of high achievement results in noticeable increases in learning and progress.
Though I'd definitely want there to be place and humane value given to people who are in the bottom third, one shouldn't have to achieve to live with dignity, similarly you're not going to get lauded for being average. I wonder how much correlation there is between something like career satisfaction and ATAR results or career capital and ATAR results. I'm not aware of any research around these topics (though there probably is some), an interesting consideration.
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There are a lot of high level reasons listed here. For those of us in the great white north, specifically Ontario, the allure of private school is simpler: it actually takes place Monday to Friday and includes things like extra-curriculars and report cards.
Seem unbelievable. Read the union's own directives.
https://etfocb.ca/ Specifically the ETFO Strike action section for the lists of all the things teachers are ordered by their union not to do. This is just one of the unions on constant rotating strikes in Ontario. A local news agency reported a tipped off source that all schools will be closed with no notice this Friday, as yet another day with no classes. Depending on the area, only 2 out of 5 days this week will have all kids in the classroom.
That is a good point. A coworker was talking about kindergarten for her oldest and is considering private. When I asked why she said it was because the hours are actually conducive to two working parents. That makes total sense. It is beyond ridiculous that school starts late, ends early, had these silly minimum days (why??), super minimum days, and are closed all the time for holidays that no one else gets or teacher this-or-that days. Seriously, what do they expect parents to do with their kids? Most of us have to work for a living. We are definitely not the norm being able to retire by the time our kids hit school age. It is especially galling in a HCOL area like where we live where most people need two incomes to stay afloat.
The obvious answer to your question is that school doesn’t primarily provide daycare services for your children. It’s not their primary reason to exist. If this sounds smart ass I’m sorry but to me it’s an obvious answer to the question “what am I supposed to do with my children when school closes?”
But sure it’s tough to find childcare when school closes or when your child is sick.
Also, partly the school system hasn't changed in decades, or longer, since it was set up. I mean, summers off (harvest), late start/ early release (matching the rising/ setting sun), random days off because: well doesn't everyone have a SAHM?
Well, no.
It was much like that when the whole system was set up, but it certainly isn't like that now. Good school districts adjust - our district has adjusted vacation/ holiday times over the last decade to align with families. When they realized that a good % of students were not coming back after Christmas until a week later (because they went to Mexico to visit family for 2 weeks), the schedule was changed to make it a 2 week break. Same thing with Thanksgiving when they realized a number of the middle class families were pulling their kids out for the full week, they changed the schedule.
As far as time of day goes, many of our schools now have before school care starting at 8 and after school care going until 5:30 or 6 for the families that have two working parents.
Let's not pretend that the whole system was set up ONLY for education and NOT for convenience of families, because that's not at all true. The fact that many kids come back from summer vacation having lost a lot of what they learned the prior year is pretty much proof of that.
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With that in mind, a person may decide that endlessly ambitiously pushing themselves or their children isn't the best route to the lifestyle they want.
The 70hr pw morbidly obese GP dad is doing it wrong. And the parents who send their children to an overpriced school where they get molested are also doing it wrong.
Yep. I agree with all of that. Even if you are one of those people who measures achievement by money or status, there is no sense burning yourself out to achieve it, or hating your work to achieve it.
And I also agree that within an educational setting, even if we decide we are going to push/stream/accelerate the most capable students, the worst way to go about it is to link it to ATAR scores, university entrance and the like. It has to be an intrinsic motivator, like learning for its own sake, or at least achievement for its own sake, that motivates the kids. When I was told to aim for a good ATAR rather than aiming for mastery of difficult content, my motivation as a student plummeted.
Which is why I think the Australian system is not good. We don't encourage mastery. In any sense. Except of the exam content, so that you can get into a university course. That sort of philosophy harms all students, both the more and less capable ones.
And the private school mindset is even more corrosive. If parents simply said "I send my children to private schools because the extra money pays for better teachers", I would have no problem with that (other than the fact that it might not be true). But few parents say that. Private school is not about better teaching. It's about better students, better facilities, better socialising, better outcomes - everything other than the actual education received. I think that says a lot about the cultural malaise and anti-intellectualism that affects our country.
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I think longer days, from memory it's not uncommon for like 7.30-2/2.30. Though totally open to being corrected.
Aye, my middle school (grades 7-8) is 7:30-2:15. With after school activities three days a week (late buses at 4:30).
Oddly, it used to be the high schools that had this schedule, with middle school being 8:10-2:55 and elementary school being 9:20-4:05 (with before and after care available on a sliding scale). Then the research came out that teens should start school 8:30 or later, so they *swapped* middle and high school times instead of moving them both back a bit. Somehow they justified that it'd be better to wake 13 year olds up that early rather than 16 year olds? I get that the logistics of busing in a large county can be a nightmare, but that cannot have been the only option.
Streaming I've mentioned, acceleration is often successful in specific subjects but detrimental to well-being, development and sense of self (not unlike homeschooling in that way), rarely is progression linear and acceleration only works one way which can fuck people up if they hit a snag, slow their learning down or have a rough patch.
I agree that streaming is not a panacea, and that it needs to be adjusted to allow for both forward and backward (and lateral) movement for any singular individual. Both from my memory and what I see in the school I teach at, streaming is done to the nth degree - kids only see the same ~60 other students in all of their classes, despite being in a graduating class of 500+. It creates huge problems for diversity/"gap closing" initiatives and creates some odd socio-emotional development in all groups - even the "honors" ones. The highest placement for math in 7th grade is for students who score in top 10% of their aptitude tests - yet the kids who got 90th percentile feel like they're slow because all of their classes are filled with these same kids. Its really weird to witness a 12 year old have an identity crisis that destroys their love for math because they aren't quite as quick to pick up Algebra as their neighbors. The anxiety and mental health problems I see in this group of kids is heartbreaking. And yet the 99th percentile kids are still chafing at the pace - I have one kid in 7th grade self-studying calculus!
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If teachers aren't givent he tools/capable at handling differing abilities there's no systematic change that will save them
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It seems like it’s getting more and more expensive to avoid sending your kids to school with a bunch of low income kids. And more and more expensive for wealthy people to insulate their kids from the upwardly mobile middle class.
AKA, low income children of color. At least in our highly segregated region.
The Catholic school that we sent our daughter to, in Iowa, was more racially diverse than the local public school. Income was about the same for the local private school and local public school parents in that town.
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We are debating sending our kid to my alma mater private non-religious HS that now runs ~$30k/yr. It's considered a "great" school and anyone with money tries to get their kids into there. But I think their intentions are misguided. Like someone else mentioned, I have no reason the believe the teachers are any better than public. What they're paying for is the environment of like minded kids (or parents at least), social influences, facilities, extra-curriculars, etc. Part of it too is a status symbol and to show you're a "caring" parent, imo. Outcomes of this school are great but studies have shown that parents and socioeconomic class are large predictors of student success. While we could probably afford it one has to wonder if that money would be better spent on other experiences, extra-curriculars, etc. while attending a public school, and/or invested on their behalf towards college, grad school, downpayment or even their retirement. Folks talk about investing in their kids education but arguably the ROI of a wad of cash could be more valuable and more reliable.
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https://www.betootaadvocate.com/headlines/30k-per-year-private-school-fees-still-not-able-to-guarantee-pedo-free-education/
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This is one of things I like about living here in Italy. Private schools don't really exist here apart from Catholic schools and international schools. A lot of wealthy Italians put their kids in international schools so that they can become native speakers of another language (usually English) but my kids are bilingual anyway so we don't need to worry about that. The "best" schools in the city where I live are all public and people consider private schools (mostly Catholic schools) to be of lesser quality and a place for kids who can't cut it in public school to go. There is no zoning so kids can go to whichever public school they want. Some schools are better than others of course but theoretically anyone can send their kid anywhere.
Anyway, I went to public school all the way through in the US and it was fine. I'm from a (white) middle class background and public schools taught me a lot as I mixed with a lot of kids who were way poorer and less privileged than me. We don't have the money for private school anyway but if we had that kind of money we'd just FIRE faster.
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I missed the past week's discussion in this thread sorry. But I think there are a lot of sensible ideas and suggestions coming out of it (obviously, because we are that sort of crowd that is sensible).
Lets break some numbers down. Because I do like maths and I've had a nagging thought that $40k is simply far in excess of what it costs to run a school.
$40,000 per student, and if you've got say 120 students per grade for 6 years in High school, means you are raising $40,000 x 120 x 6 = $28.8 million of revenue per year, prior to any government contributions.
A school of that size may require a teaching and administrative staff of about 70, give or take. If the average salary plus super plus payroll tax and on-costs is a generous $120,000 (it'll be less than that, but for arguments sake), you still have $20 million left over for buildings, insurance, power and water, maintenance, IT, school excursions, sporting events, subsidised uniforms and canteen etc etc...
Government and low fee catholic schools are doing all this on ~$15,000 per student. So yeah... there's an element that costs are higher because the private school needs to maintain its cricket ovals and swimming pools, but at some point the extra money is basically paying for the privilege of excluding your gilded sprog from the unwashed masses who are unable to pay for this.
https://www.betootaadvocate.com/headlines/30k-per-year-private-school-fees-still-not-able-to-guarantee-pedo-free-education/
Careful Kyle. Even among Australians, its amazing how many people don't realise this is satire.
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In the 2016-17 financial year, apparently the public spending amounted to (https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-data-portal/school-funding/government-recurrent-expenditure-on-government-and-non-government-schools)
$17,531 per student in government schools ($14,886 state + $2,645 federal)
$10,644 in non-government schools ($2,591 state + $8,053 federal)
It's interesting that it's basically the federal government keeping the private schools publicly-funded. Targetting those upper middle class voters, I suppose.
Now, comparing where the money goes, for government schools (https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-data-portal/school-funding/government-expenditure-on-government-schools) and non-government schools (https://www.acara.edu.au/reporting/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia/national-report-on-schooling-in-australia-data-portal/school-funding/non-government-schools-income-and-expenditure#View1),
Govt schools have $21.8 billion of $43.7 billion of public funding going to teacher salaries. Non-government it's $10.6 of $25.2 billion. Non-government schools get about 30% of all the students overall, so you see they have just slightly more spent on them in proportion.
There are a few differences, though, one of which that government schools spend $2 billion on "capital expenditure" (ie new buildings and grounds) and non-government $3.3 billion. So they have less than 1/3 the students, but spend 50% more on buildings and grounds; proportionally, they spend at least 5 times as much.
Well, you can see that when you visit the different schools. Now, it's obvious that a child will learn better in a classroom where they fix the leak where the rain comes in, and better where they have airconditioning than having to sit there on 40C days. But it's not clear they learn better in a magnificent building than a functional one, nor is it clear that they learn better if they have a new boatshed. I mean, I think we can do better than the cruddy old portables, but...
Essentially they just use the flash new buildings to impress parents on open days. Well, okay.
State grants to private schools amounted to $2.6 billion and federal $8.3 billion. So the states could stop funding private schools entirely (or the feds drop funding by about a third) and the private schools could balance the books by reducing their capital expenditure so it'd be in proportion with government schools. 30% of the students x government school capital spending of $3.3 = ~ $600 million, and current non-govt school capital spending of $3.3 billion - state funding of $2.6 billion = $700 million left.
The non-government schools have some higher ongoing capital costs, since it costs more to keep a fancy building maintained, lit and heated or cooled than a grungy old one. So they'd still need more money than state schools.
It's odd how it's all worked out. Still, I've yet to hear of a government school where they had to get rid of five staff in one week because of molestation and sexual harassment issues. Thinking of themselves as "elite" while having a tradition of "we deal with our problems ourselves"... well, egos plus lack of scrutiny leads to a culture of impunity - and crimes. We've seen it with the SAS and commandos, and we've seen it with St Kevin's.
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Govt schools have $21.8 billion of $43.7 billion of public funding going to teacher salaries. Non-government it's $10.6 of $25.2 billion. Non-government schools get about 30% of all the students overall, so you see they have just slightly more spent on them in proportion.
So the govt schools spend proportionally more on teacher salaries? Why would it be considered a luxury to send one’s kid to a place where the teachers are paid worse?
In my US city, we have a chain of charter schools where all the teachers are on one year contracts, although the pay is similar to our public schools. So if I’m a teacher, would I rather have a full time job or a one year gig? Full time job of course. So doesn’t that mean the charter school has more of the teachers who couldn’t get a job in the public schools?
Also, your notes about the culture of impunity in certain elite organizations is a good one. When I ask myself which type of school is more likely to engage in a cover up (thereby encouraging the pedos), I have to conclude it is the privately owned ones, where there is a financial interest in doing so. A public school principal who uncovers abuse will earn the same salary the following year, but the charter/private school principal has to consider the marketing implications and the attitudes of the owners.
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So the govt schools spend proportionally more on teacher salaries? Why would it be considered a luxury to send one’s kid to a place where the teachers are paid worse?
Other way around. Non-government pay more. But it's not huge. It's not like first year teachers get $55k at one and $110k at the other. There are other factors too, though, for a teacher choosing employment.
Obviously the non-government schools are generally more prestigious, and while the parents are demanding and entitled, they do care about their children's education, a situation which does not always occur at government schools. So they get more respect, and the children are easier to work with.
As well, the lack of scrutiny I spoke of is obviously bad for things like child abuse, but for the teachers it means a lot less bureaucratic bullshit and having to deal with stupid ideas from people who've never been in a classroom. For example, a decade ago it became fashionable to have "open classrooms", which meant that 3-4 classes would be in one long building with no walls in between. It was, of course, a total clusterfuck - but in theory it'd work great. Many teachers at government schools had to go through this, but it not tried at any non-government schools (except I think Montessori). So there's just less stupid shit for the teachers to deal with at a non-government school.
Also, your notes about the culture of impunity in certain elite organizations is a good one. When I ask myself which type of school is more likely to engage in a cover up (thereby encouraging the pedos), I have to conclude it is the privately owned ones, where there is a financial interest in doing so. A public school principal who uncovers abuse will earn the same salary the following year, but the charter/private school principal has to consider the marketing implications and the attitudes of the owners.
As with your previous comment, I think you're focusing too much on the money. This is natural on a site like MMM, but still. I think people do develop a sense of "team" and "us" and want to protect that little community or little empire. This is why for example our local councils spend far more money on things designed to prevent lawsuits than they ever would on simply letting them happen and paying them out. I mean they do dumb shit like cut down fruit trees put on nature strips, "because fruit might fall and injure someone." It'd have to be some fruit! Really they're just worried about bad publicity.