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A Modest Proposal: Replace some of the "Gifted" schools with "Mature" schools. The former implies higher-than-average per-pupil spending. For the Mature schools, spend substantially below average per pupil. Only admit students who rate well in some combination of maturity, self-motivation, good behavior, etc. Increase the student/teacher ratio, and expect the brighter ones (in a given subject) to spend part of their time tutoring the less-bright. Have student government play a non-token role in running the school.

In other words, set up a new sort of school - which tags its graduates as mature, responsible adults. Not top-percentile test-takers, nor elite pampered princelings. Then see which type of graduate is preferred by colleges and employers.

7 comments

At the age where my, and my friends' kids are in schools, I've discovered that a big advantage that private schools have is that they educate the kids "at will."

Many private schools make it very clear to the parents, as well as the kids, that there are plenty of other students that want the slot the child has, which gives them leverage to educate how they want.

Public schools, at least in California, are beholden to the loudest, worst-behaved parents. There was a serious disciplinary issue recently at a local school that resulted in a multi-day suspension, which pretty much everybody involved agreed probably wasn't going to change the behavior. After digging a bit and having some frank conversations, the administration wouldn't pursue any other form of consequence because of fear of being sued by the parents. If expulsion were a legitimate option it would have given the administration bargaining power, but for anything which defending an expulsion is not a slam-dunk win in court, the only 3 "safe" options for teachers and administrators are:

1. Loss of playtime during recess/lunch

2. Detention

3. Suspension

I don't know how big of an actual problem torts are, but I see a lot of bad policies (in education and elsewhere) enacted due to fear of torts.

Public schools are also bound to serve special needs kids, which is incredibly expensive. Private schools don't have the same responsibility (even if they're under any similar legal obligation, they can and surely do try to minimize that through various means)

That's part (part!) of why per-pupil spending in public schools seems so high for the outcomes they produce, and part of why private schools have an advantage.

Even when they separate the special education vs regular spending it's still expensive in my opinion.

At least in my area there seems to be a huge preference for new or fancy infrastructure. Many of the buildings are only built to last 20 years or so. The new middle school around here has a 2 story by 100 foot glass front to it. The glass panes are massive. Who thought that was a good idea (hearing/cooling, cost, possibly safety)?

I went to school in buildings that were 50+ years old and made out of cinder block. No artificial turf fields or fancy stuff.

Edit: why downvote?

Turf fields are more than "fancy". They allow unlimited traffic, as opposed to grass which gets a low, set number of hours-of-use. At my old high school, only the varsity football team got to use the stadium. Then they put turf in and everyone got to use the stadium - even community sports - as the turf wouldn't turn to mud.

True. It depends on the area. That might make sense in higher density areas, or overy arid/wet areas. In more rural areas it's easier/cheaper to have one stadium field for games and a couple of practice fields to spread the traffic around. Either way, it's like $.75M-1.5M with about a 20 year lifespan ($50k per year). That's a good bit of money for something that has limited academic application.

> a couple of practice fields to spread the traffic around

Mostly true. The stadium was the only field with lights.

Right. Public schools are chartered to provide "Universal compulsory education" private schools only have to worry about the last word in that phrase. There's a patchwork of laws that try to ensure private schools provide some sort of equal-opportunity, but the success of that is very hit-or-miss.

If you think private schools actually punish the kids whose parents directly pay them, I have a bridge to sell you.

There's paying, and then there's "paying... and a donor". They absolutely kick out the former if they feel like it, or, in lesser cases, simply fail to invite them back. The latter, I dunno, maybe not.

This is quite true; I was also speaking to selective private schools. Around here the admissions ratio for many private schools is crazy low, indicating that they are turning away plenty of qualified students and that they can recoup the lost tuition by admitting another pupil at will.

In that situation it starts to approach "is there something on campus with your last name on it" levels of donations if you want to avoid getting kicked out...

Yeah, the ones around here have wait lists, and they're not impressed by daddy and mommy Mr. and Mrs. VP and MD, paying list tuition price. There are a dozen more where they came from. If they think a kid might make a few other families think twice about enrolling next year, and some reasonable attempt to make things work out falls through, that kid's gone. Maybe not immediately (though, sometimes), but they won't be back next Fall.

Can confirm, went to a school like that but without a namesake building. They can either always admit someone else, or more often, just not bother because educating kids is an expensive loss leader for the endowment even with full tuition. It definitely seemed like there needed to have already been a family building or two before you got to campus if you expected much immunity because of that...

Sufficiently misbehaving kids, not being properly handled, will drive away paying customers when their peers want to transfer out - or if they stop short of transfering out, merely shit talk the institution and it's failures, driving down it's reputation and turning away future business.

If you think private schools won't act on those pressures - either by getting the kids the help they need, or by kicking them out - I have a tunnel to sell you.

From my experience, they would still punish sufficiently disruptive misbehavior. But they would let minor things slide like ignoring uniform policy or poor grades if you were a high donator. One incident I remember was someone bringing a camera in to the change rooms which resulted in the student being immediately expelled. That kind of stuff they still punish because its harmful enough to outweigh the benefits of the donations.

It depends. They have more discretion in most cases. The public schools are stuck with more stringent adherence to procedures, specifically about getting police involved.

Exactly. I've seen chronically tardy students be "not invited back" at the end of the school year at private schools, which is a de-facto expulsion.

One of the most prestigious private all boys schools in the country asked my cousin to leave because he was causing too many discipline problems. His classmates were bullying him because he's gay.

Are you really going to get maturity or just superficial signs of maturity from immature kids? I think kids that more boldly explore social interactions (ie. naughty) at a young age may end up more mature as adults. Someone who's polite and well-behaved may doing that because they're too emotionally immature to know how to do anything more risky and are just performing "professional behavior" which is a kind of lowest-common-denominator for getting along with others.

In practice, I feel you're right. It will simply devolve into a superficial display of maturity being used as the right metric while real, deeper signals are buried or ignored in the face of superficial counter-signal.

Worked as something of a TA in several high school computer courses (MS Business Applications, Programming (Basic), Programming (Java)) with many students of varying levels and competencies. Was quite a fond memory in quite a lot of ways. Schools should encourage more of that sort of thing and less batshit test prep. Unfortunately, true well-rounded human beings don't solicit eyeballs and award shows and budget dollars.

We used to have such a concept in my school system, it was called "tracking." Sadly, they did away with it midway through my sentence. We had AP / IB track courses, but also so many students that we had a second, more mature level in terms of both behavior and intellectual pursuit (at least for AP, I only took one IB course).

This track was cancelled (10+ years ago) in the modern progressive fashion, being derided as some blend of discrimination. The end-result was students who were into school being put into the same pot of students in the rest of the courses (non-AP, AP - your choice). Unfortunately for the tracked students, we were hit with a one-two punch of the end of tracking and the administration's pursuit of glory and State recognition. Our guidance counselors aggressively recommended or, in some cases, forcibly placed students in AP courses for which they had neither the interest nor the proclivity.

Personally, I was forced into a high-tier Spanish course my third (and final) year of high-school, despite having no aptitude and lower-end grades (80-85%) for the language despite three years of study. Resulted in my skipping all courses and writing my "Kiss My Ass" in another foreign language I pursued during my free time. I rode into the sunset with a grade of 30% or so, a job waiting for me in the city as an apprentice software engineer and a full-ride to university.

Frankly, schools in the US just don't seem to exist to put out good, well educated thinkers but like many government institutions (and I say this as a former government worker) - to continue their own existence, find glory for those at the top, and if good things happen for the citizens this is a nice side-effect and typically at the expense of the soldiers in the trench rather than good, altruistic stewardship.

> For the Mature schools, spend substantially below average per pupil

This is already the case for gifted schools, though the critics may not say it out loud. Stuyvesant High School has a lower budget per student than the average NYC high school, and Lowell High School has a lower budget per student than the average San Francisco high school.

I'm legitimately uncertain if this is a bad idea presented as satire or a sincere idea.

heheh...“A Modest Proposal”. Kids, stay away from the free lunch, it’s made of people...

I think it might be in the genre of HaHaOnlySerious.

Why would you feel it's a bad idea and or satire?

"A Modest Proposal" is the name of famous satirical essay: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal It involved selling children for cannibalism.

As Wikipedia notes:

> In English writing, the phrase "a modest proposal" is now conventionally an allusion to this style of straight-faced satire.

Opening with that title, complete with correct capitalization, reads like an allusion. It's enough to make me think exceptionally skeptically about a proposal to turn gifted students into what is sometimes euphemistically termed peer educators.

What would this select for? All you would be doing is establishing a poor proxy for general intelligence though you would likely select for general intelligence on the whole by grading "maturity".

Also "good behavior" is a proxy for a healthy home life, which is to a great extent a measure of social and economic class.

Yes - but how many high-class (social or economic) parents would fight hard to get their kids into schools with bottom-percentile per-pupil funding?

Funding doesn't seem to do much to make a school desirable. By far and away the biggest factor that determines how good a school is is the socioeconomic status of the parents. A school doesn't need more money to be better at educating, it just needs better students. If they happen to form a critical mass at a low-funded school, then that'll become an elite school.

and household economic prosperity is generally corollary to what?

Inherited wealth?

Did you mean this as an absurdist satire? If not, calling it a "Modest Proposal" is a misstep.

I meant to be ambiguous, and start an interesting and wider-ranging discussion. I was, at best, modestly successful

No one seemed interested in the "what might be done, within existing resources and sensitivities, for the more promising poor & unwanted children?" angle. Admittedly, few folks on HN are likely to recall Dr. Swift's subtitle, or care much about helping the poor & huddle masses, yearning...