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Comment by havblue | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure if I agree with the premise that the gifted students keep all the resources to themselves. If anything they should require less mentoring, less discipling and their parents should be more likely to be involved financially and in PTA.

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> and their parents should be more likely to be involved financially and in PTA.

And when gifted programs become screeners of affluence then there are going to be financially involved parents in the PTA which benefits the whole school. But if all of those parents end up at the "good" schools then those schools have considerably more funding (on top of the additional funding from the DOE) to allow them to actually educate their students. It is all a self reinforcing cycle that benefits a few and disadvantages many.

Now you are talking not only about a redistribution of taxed dollars but charitable time and donations from parents that want to give them to their children to less advantaged children.

Putting limits on how much a parent can help and support their child is a much more difficult ethical and political argument to make

The goal of a lot of the redistricting and ending of accelerated programs seems simple: put higher performing students in the same class as lower performing students. Then make the parents of the higher performing students responsible for everyone.

Do you think public schools are underfunded? Any chart I've seen has shown the opposite, if you compare our schools to other countries'.

Having been in public school for most of my life I can say unequivocally: yes. It is not uncommon for teachers to purchase books and classroom supplies out of pocket since there simply is not enough funding.

Most estimates I've seen of funding for New York students is $25k to $30k a year though. I would think that's more of a sign of incredible corruption and mismanagement and not that there isn't enough money to go around.

To compare, Stuyvesant High School, the best in NYC, is $18k per student.

I would argue the point that Stuyvesant is the "best" but I don't disagree with your point. The problem is that a lot of the money ends up in the schools with the rich kids and for a lot a lot of students and schools they never see anywhere near that type of money.

Stuyvesant, like most good schools, raises a good deal of private funds. That actually accounts for good deal of the difference in resources between schools.

I think it's a combination. School districts are funded exceedingly well in our country. School classrooms are funded poorly.

The money evaporates before it reaches them.

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