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ANOTHER LOOK AT EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY.
It's one of the most stubborn ethical and personal dilemmas many affluent, politically progressive families face: The decision on whether to send one's child to public or private school. There's very little discussion in the American press of how families' decisions on this matter affect their communities and society at large. So I was heartened to see the Times of London attribute the rise in urban inequality, at least in part, to wealthy parents' choices, en masse, to enroll their offspring in independent schools costing an average of £11,000 annually, or $22,532. In the London boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, about half of all children attend private schools, but almost 40 percent are in poverty. And of course, there is almost no overlap between those two groups.
Last week when I participated in a TPM Café discusson on Daniel Brook's The Trap, I was ridiculed for suggesting that educated people might send their children to the Washington, D.C. public schools in order to avoid the temptation to leave jobs they love in exchange for an enormous paycheck. Many of the public schools in D.C. are troubled, and they are certainly not the best choice for all families living in all neighborhoods of the city. Yet quite a few wonderful, progressive, intellectual parents I know have their children enrolled in public schools here, all the way through high school. There's a disconnect between the fears of what will happen to the average privileged child in an integrated public school, and what actually does happen. Indeed, decades of research shows that children from affluent families have similar academic and life outcomes whether they attend private or public schools, segregated or integrated. Poor kids, on the other hand, are much more likely to land a good job after high school if they graduate from an integrated school.
In other words, we shouldn't be content with the assumption that rich, mostly white people in Washington, D.C., London, New York, or any other city will send their kids to private schools, while most public schools continue to look as they did prior to the civil rights movement. Last year in the Washington City Paper, Ryan Grim reported on a group of upper middle class parents in Dupont Circle who vowed together to send their kids to the neighborhood elementary school. After myriad frustrations with the school and its administration, most families backed out. But attempts like that to engage parents in the public schools are to be applauded. Public schools need to do more to offer something to all families in a district, and parents need to meet them halfway by seriously considering a public education. In the end, it's the children educated among diverse peers who benefit.
--Dana Goldstein
COMMENTS (7)
Dana,
This is an interesting post, but their is a lot of nuance to what happens in DC public schools. For example, if you live in Northwest DC, say north of Kalorama, the odds are that your kids are going to a decent school. Lafayette, Murch, Janney, Key, and Horace Mann, for example, are all excellent public schools by any standards. Folks who can send their kids to those elementary schools tend to and save the $20K tuition for 6-8 years...and some even further, as many of these kids do well in the Junior High and high School.
My point is that DCPS is a do it yourself school system. The schools that work have involved and active parents, dynamic principle, and, yes, children from families with higher than average incomes. But it doesn't mean follow that parents send theit kids to terrible DC schools cause they don't want to leave their jobs. Its more complicated than that
Posted by: Just another Apikores | October 22, 2007 11:51 AM
I agree with Dana, but for some reason, whenever anyone suggests that liberals should send their kids to public schools, it devolves into a discussion about school choice and how that issue is not comparable to proposals that might dismantle the public school system.
The truth is, whether we like it or not, there is more than a whiff of hypocrisy in the "public schools for thee but not for me" attitude. It is sort of like NIMBYism. And, in truth, smart kids with affluent backgrounds tend to do well in public schools as well as private schools (as long as we are not talking about failing schools where nothing at all works).
Posted by: Dilan Esper | October 22, 2007 2:32 PM
"And, in truth, smart kids with affluent backgrounds tend to do well in public schools as well as private schools (as long as we are not talking about failing schools where nothing at all works)."
Setting aside the public/private distinction (there are public schools that are better than all but the toniest private schools in virtually every state, and there are private [usually parochial] schools that would make run-down inner-city schools look like Andover), the fact is that very smart kids do well at all but the most miserable schools. It's in the nature of being very smart.
But that's not why affluent people send their kids to the best school available (either private school at $20k a pop, or moving to the suburbs with great schools for a similar financial cost, once property values are factored in). They send kids to the better schools because what if your child ISN'T very smart? What if they are in that group of above average kids who could either go to a lower-tier Ivy (if properly prepared by a rigorously excellent high school), or a local community college (if educated at a crappy school).
This isn't hypothetical. I went to the run-of-the-mill good-to-great high school in the near suburbs of a big city. The average kid there went to one of the two really good state schools. The top 25% could go almost anywhere except the tip-top Ivies (those were reserved for the top 10%). All but the bottom 20% or so went to a four-year college.
My wife went to a rural high school in upstate NY. Only the top 10% of her class could go to a good SUNY school (she was #3 in the class and went to an elitish state school in another state, but she also had non-academic skills that made her a lot more attractive than probably all of the other students). The top quarter maybe could go to the bottom tier SUNY schools, or one of the plethora of mediocre Catholic schools around the NY/Canada border. The rest? The factories, the army or the delivery room at the hospital.
There people weren't any less intelligent than the people at my high school. They were just less prepared to apply and go to college, and it shows. Heck, my wife has a PhD and is a tenured professor, and we'll still have a conversation where she'll let on that she doesn't get some literary or historical reference that I didn't know you could graduate from high school without learning.
When we recently moved from Gigantic City to Merely Big City, we moved to an area in the city with excellent public schools through 8th grade (and an OK public high school). But if they deteriorate before or while our kids are there? We'll yank 'em out and put them in private schools in an instant. Hypocrisy is one thing, but screwing up your kids' life to make a political statement is another entirely. And people who say otherwise probably don't have kids.
Posted by: Joe | October 22, 2007 3:04 PM
Hypocrisy is one thing, but screwing up your kids' life to make a political statement is another entirely.
You are assuming that public schools really do a bad job of preparing kids for college. They don't.
The effects you set forth are probably due to biases in the admissions process that favor people with certain kinds of connections that are easier to attain at a private school. That's fine, but it's not "screwing up your kid" to not take advantage of those connections. Left out of your comment is the fact that people who go to SUNY aren't "screwed up" at all; they get a fine education.
Really, when you get down to it, it isn't about screwing up your kid at all. It is about hypercompetitive parenting. And does THAT really outweigh our commitment to the public schools?
In any event, the other way to go would be to stop fighting school vouchers tooth and nail and come up with a program that really would get poor kids into the most selective private schools. But I doubt affluent liberal parents want that either.
Posted by: Dilan Esper | October 22, 2007 7:48 PM
"They send kids to the better schools because what if your child ISN'T very smart? What if they are in that group of above average kids who could either go to a lower-tier Ivy (if properly prepared by a rigorously excellent high school), or a local community college (if educated at a crappy school)."
hee, hee, What are you talking about? I've never encountered a kid from an affluent family who wasn't *absolutely brilliant* AND morally enlightened beyond anyone else you could ever hope to meet.
(You're going to get run off the site if you keep talking like that).
Posted by: Anonymous | October 23, 2007 10:48 AM
Oh yeah. And let's not forget how they write college admissions essays for their kids, their nieces and nephews, etc.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 23, 2007 10:56 AM
"There's a disconnect between the fears of what will happen to the average privileged child in an integrated public school, and what actually does happen."
I think that this is probably true for privileged white kids. I'm not sure it is true for privileged black kids. "You're not black enough" can be a strong downward pull.
Posted by: Joe S. | October 23, 2007 11:04 AM