Comment by mac01021 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mac01021 | Hacker News Reader

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It may be possible to make educational opportunity depend less on parents' wealth (as the GP wants us to do) while still avoiding the problem you raise here.

My public middle-and-high schools were attended by a very wide quality-range of students, and they did an excellent job segregating students within the school into different classes according to academic ability.

There was mobility in that students who performed very well in the B-level classes were able to join A-level classes in subsequent semesters while poorly performing students were advised to move downward. Most of the subjects had three ability levels (A, B, G). There were even some students who would excel in one subject and take AP english or history while remaining at a more normal level in the STEM subjects.

Most importantly, I am convinced that the A-level students at my highschool received just about as good an education as they could find at any public school in the country. At the same time that G level and some B-level students were preparing to graduate and not go to college, most of my classmates in the A group were graduating having completed college-freshman-or-sophomore-level calculus and many were receiving acceptance letters from Ivy-league universities.

I don't know for sure whether or not this type of arrangement is common, but it seems to me like it shows that having a mixture of academic abilities in the same neighborhood need not be a disaster.

There's much to like about this comment, and I thinking tracking within a school is a good idea that deserves to come back after some time in the wilderness.

That said, I'd quibble with your first sentence. While I'd certainly agree that making educational opportunity depend less on parents' wealth is a very good thing, that wasn't the thrust of my comment. The main point I was raising had to do with how coupling housing and schools makes the housing market inefficient and so collectively costs society. Imagine if what school a child went to was determined by what car his parents drove. People might well go out and mortgage their futures, as described in the article, in order to buy Ferraris so that their children could go to the best schools. And the price of Ferraris would increase in commensurate fashion. But even if a chunk of that cost was paying for the school access they want, they'd also be buying cars they might not necessarily want. It would make much more sense for all concerned if people could buy the thing they wanted directly, perhaps by paying for private school, than to have this proxy good.

I suspect part of the problem is that private schools seem too elitist for many American's democratic tastes, but what exactly is the difference between a private school and a "public" school where the price of admission is the purchase of a multi-million dollar home? As in so many policy areas if we could talk honestly about what we want and what's going on, we could have less convoluted and more straightforward policy arrangements to further our goals.

Interesting! I definitely didn't think hard enough while reading your last post.

You're suggesting that, if we switched to funding what-are-now-public schools directly through tuition payments made by the students attending them, then that might amount to a more just (or at least generally more satisfying) system than what we have now?

Or is there another policy you think would be better?

I wouldn't want to go to an all private pay system, that would leave children without means out of luck. I do think there is a role for private schools, I went to one myself for high school and was very happy with the experience.

Anyway, there are a variety of different ways we could imagine loosing the tight coupling between housing and schooling. I mention downthread that I think school choice / vouchers is a promising approach, but I am open to other ideas as well.

The difference is the tuition will be gone, but a house will still have its value. And since the house is in an area with a good school system, its value has probably risen :-).

It's certainly not a fair system.

Short of assigning cities to people via lottery, there is no way to make schools equal. Good schools are made by having good people (students, parents) and good people will pay a premium to be among other good people.

The fairness depends on what "fair" means. You seem to think it would be fair for the people who create good schools (primarily by providing good students) to get stuck with mediocre schools. They put in all the extra value, but get nothing much in return. That doesn't seem fair to me.

The mortgage interest on a million dollar home is more than private school tuition.

Many families buying these homes have several children. Property tax scales only loosely with family size, but tuition is typically linear.

Perhaps. Seems like the interest on an 800K loan would be about 30K in the first year, which is less then private school tuition around here. But you can't really compare the full amount as you've got to live somewhere, and you get a tax deduction as well.

And once you have 2 kids...

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