Comment by insane_dreamer

Comment by insane_dreamer 5 days ago

24 replies

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Economics plays into this too. Housing in good school districts is often much more expensive, and private schools are ridiculously expensive.

COVID is another factor. Anecdotal of course, but I've only met two home schooled families since moving to our present city 3 years ago, and one of them started out of necessity during the pandemic and found that it worked well and so never went back -- but they're a one income family so one parent has the time (the only way it works, IMO, unless you co-op with another family or two, which can work if you're friends). I must say I was very impressed with their kids.

blackeyeblitzar 4 days ago

In Seattle schools have double the budget compared to the years ago, and spend more than 25K per student each year. The schools are worse than ever, which has convinced me that funding isn’t the problem. This might be a local issue though, with a very ideological school district that has ignored the basics of education.

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  • insane_dreamer 4 days ago

    OK, but the issue I was bringing up has nothing to do with funding for schools.

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    • blackeyeblitzar 4 days ago

      I was responding to the part about housing being expensive near good schools, and the idea of good schools in general. Expensive housing and associated taxes often affect local school budgets, and those budgets are often stated as the reason the school is good. But my experience has been that the budgets don’t change school quality, it must be other factors. Sorry it may have been somewhat unrelated.

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      • insane_dreamer 4 days ago

        Yeah, fair point.

        I don't know whether budgets change school quality, but there is a marked difference in most cities between schools with high and low performance outcomes as measured by test scores, graduation rates, etc. (not that test scores are the best measure of life in general, but they're what's available in terms of academic understanding). And if you look at the schools with high ratings and where they are located, you'll find that it correlates greatly with income, and even more so you'll find that schools with the lowest performance correlate greatly with low income. (These are averages; there are brilliant students at all these schools.)

        Families with higher income have more resources and more ability to support their child's education (after school activities, tutoring, a more academically-oriented environment, and most importantly, the absence of financial stress on the family unit which can greatly affect children especially if the parents (or in many cases a single parent household) has to work multiple jobs just to put food on the table much less be able to handle much else.

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bluGill 4 days ago

Where I live all the districts have the same funding per student across the entire MSA. The inner city schools still do much worse.

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  • insane_dreamer 4 days ago

    The economic situation of the parents is a greater factor than the funding of the school IMO

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    • bluGill 4 days ago

      I agree but many keep claiming that inner city schools just lack money despite evidence otherwise.

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cryptonector 4 days ago

Masking children was fucking cruel.

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  • insane_dreamer 4 days ago

    Not really. If you've grown up in Asia you're used to wearing a mask whenever you are feeling unwell or have a cold. We do that out of courtesy to others, and it makes a lot of sense (which is why the practice has continued at hospitals since COVID). My kids were both in elementary school during COVID and got used to it quickly and were just fine.

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    • cryptonector 4 days ago

      Many American parents did not consider masking their children to be OK. If you want to know one reason many more are homeschooling now: that's one reason. There's other related reasons too. All the covid reasons to homeschool:

        - schools were closed for too long
  - remote learning wasn't working
  - forced masking of children when
    schools reopened, both against
    the children's and parents' will
  - politicization of all things health
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      • insane_dreamer 4 days ago

        > remote learning wasn't working

        I agree with this one.

        > schools were closed for too long

        Probably, but what you're not factoring in is teachers being afraid of going "back to the office" (like most other people were at the time). Unless you're going to force them or fire them (and then where do you get new teachers from?).

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        • cryptonector 4 days ago

          I've seen enough pictures of mask-free politicians surrounded by mask-wearing children. Forcing children to wear masks was NEVER about protecting the adults. It was about petty tyrants up and down the power structure exercising power over the helpless and their equally helpless parents (helpless because they depend on schools being childcare). Protecting adults was merely the excuse they needed.

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    • cryptonector 4 days ago

      All the assholes who chose to force masking -without evidence!- on children don't get to cry now when parents choose homeschooling.

      (There was never any evidence of masking working. Fauci himself had written a paper about how masking didn't work in the Spanish Flu pandemic and instead caused problems. Today it's understood that masking never worked. There is no reputable science that shows masking working in any significant way, and certainly not enough to justify forcing captive audiences to wear the fucking mask. Never again.)

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      • insane_dreamer 4 days ago

        Like I said, it wasn't such a big deal for the kids. Were your kids traumatized by having to wear a mask, or are you just generally pissed off for no particular reason?

        > without evidence

        Of course there's evidence that masks prevent the spread of airborne diseases -- it's not that it protects the wearer from viruses penetrating the mask, but it greatly reduces the amount of viral load that is spewed out by a sick person, which in turn reduces the amount of viral load that others are exposed to especially in confined settings. This isn't specific to COVID.

        > Today it's understood that masking never worked.

        Not true. Masks can't fully protect you or prevent COVID but they do reduce the amount of viral load you're exposed to depending on the environment.

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    • cryptonector 4 days ago

      No sorry, this was full time whether sick or not. And if you're sick you just skip school. It was fucking cruel and wrong.

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ArtemZ 4 days ago

Are private schools all that ridiculously expensive though? I'm enrolling my kid into University School (a private boys only school in Cleveland) and the tuition is like 30k$ per year.

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