mbs: The problem with equalizing school funding and local control, both of which I'm for, is they are mutually offsetting. Politicians who give the money want to put their mark on things otherwise subject to local control.
I'm surprized nobody else blew up at my remarks about parents. Guess few bothered to read. I have a few friends who were in the Movement w/me from wa-a-ay back and went into teaching out of idealism, and who report to me the disinterest of parents. I did say lack of parental involvement had some 'good and bad' reasons, and my source is anecdotal, but with these caveats I'll stand by my remarks absent a reason not to.
The link between income and school performance is pretty incontrovertible. I think parental effort can supplement or substitute for income to some extent, but that cuts two ways.
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produced better schooling. but that info is from the early 90s and perhaps
max has better info than i. when i get a chance i'll look for the research.
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I don't think I said whether parochial schools did better or not. I would expect them to do better because they have the capacity to be more selective, they can offload some costs to the public system, and some aspects of their educational "product" -- that famous ruler-wielding nun -- are not measured. I also think that parents who are willing to pay extra for private schooling are, on average, going to be more effectual in furthering the kids education. Data on this could persuade me otherwise.
My suspicion that students in a voucher scheme (defined as only applying to a subset of all students) would do better than others -- often not borne out by data -- is NOT the same thing as saying a wall-to-wall voucher system would be better. The latter, I maintain, would be worse from the standpoint of equality, and in terms of the well-being of the worst-off students (however classified). The bottom 40% of students in terms of, say, educational attainment, might be a different group under 'choice,' but it would not be better off, IMO.
mbs