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You're using bad logic with regards to our epistemic position here. Just because we don't have a peer-reviewed empirical study (not saying such a thing doesn't exist) doesn't mean we shouldn't make the best decision possible with the information we have.
To rephrase your objection, you're really just saying that we shouldn't be unwilling to send our kids to a school made up of low-performing students because there's no long-term study saying our kids will have worse outcomes. You really thing that's good reasoning? Or should we open our eyes and use our observations of the academic world to note that academic competitiveness and peer influence are real things?
From some epistemic positions, like say researching a drug for human consumption, the risks are asymmetrical and we need strong evidence before proceeding. But that's not the position we're in here. Our kids are going to school either way, and we should use the best evidence or reasoning we have available, even if it isn't a long-term empirical study addressing this exact question. We don't require such a standard for nearly any other parental decisions, so I can't fathom why it would be required here.
Also - I am not saying anything specific about the PERFORMANCE level of the students. I am talking about the INCOME levels of the students' households, and perhaps the educational attainment of the parents. You have jumped right to student performance from income. And yes, I know that data show they are highly correlated. But at what income level of OTHER students should one be satisfied? It's obvious from comments in this forum that schools with a lot of student households below $100,000 annual income are to be generally avoided, and changes to land use or attendance boundaries that bring in said students to a previously affluent school are somehow bad. (I will note that some folks have stuck up for Plano West despite this having become the case.)
So the average home price / household income level (or maybe more accurately, the share of students from homes below a certain price / rent level - assuming you think any renters are OK - or below some household income level) of the school zone is a reasonable proxy for the quality of education and academic success your child (regardless of your own income) will get, or how well they will achieve?
It's a reasonable proxy for the performance of the average student in that school. It tells you what kinds of kids your student will be around. That is a relevant factor in assessing the educational environment. I'm not suggesting that this one factor is correlated strongly enough with my kid's academic future to say it's a proxy for it, but it's a factor. Something can have correlation without being a proxy.
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Originally Posted by LocalPlanner
This quickly translates into, well, of course you shouldn't buy the more affordable home in Grand Prairie (or similar suburb) because those students are middle class, you should spend more $ to buy a more expensive home (negating other alternative ways you could use the $ instead of housing) because otherwise you aren't doing right by your kids.
I do think my kid will get a better education in some places than they will in Grand Prairie. I don't even think this is a controversial claim. I probably think there's less difference between the "usual suspect" districts, like Plano, Frisco, Grapevine, Allen, Southlake, etc., than many people do, but Grand Prairie isn't a usual suspect district.
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Originally Posted by LocalPlanner
Basically, what society is doing is measuring an individual child's prospects for future academic and career success by the material / financial resources of OTHER children they would go to school with. Does that make sense? How many suburbs that aren't Plano / Frisco / Coppell / Southlake which would be perfectly fine and more affordable places to live are simply skipped over for that reason? How many times have we seen comments about, say, Grapevine schools, where the poster says "They fine, even good! But you know, there are some kids from working class households going there, so therefore you should really consider other options." Like, what?
Yes, it does make sense. Again, I'm not saying it's the only factor. But it's a significant factor. To turn this argument around, you're saying that the other kids a student attends school with don't make a difference in their educational outcomes. You really believe that? You don't think being surrounded by a student body of go-getters who are taking AP classes and going to good colleges helps a kid do better versus being surrounded by low-achieving students?
Quote:
Originally Posted by LocalPlanner
Also - I am not saying anything specific about the PERFORMANCE level of the students. I am talking about the INCOME levels of the students' households, and perhaps the educational attainment of the parents. You have jumped right to student performance from income. And yes, I know that data show they are highly correlated. But at what income level of OTHER students should one be satisfied? It's obvious from comments in this forum that schools with a lot of student households below $100,000 annual income are to be generally avoided, and changes to land use or attendance boundaries that bring in said students to a previously affluent school are somehow bad. (I will note that some folks have stuck up for Plano West despite this having become the case.)
Regarding the bold, these are effectively one in the same, at least when talking about averages.
My inability to draw a precise line in the sand has nothing to do with whether this effect is real. This is all a big shade of gray, so there is no such line. How tall does one need to be to play in the NBA?
It's a reasonable proxy for the performance of the average student in that school. It tells you what kinds of kids your student will be around. That is a relevant factor in assessing the educational environment.
You don't think being surrounded by a student body of go-getters who are taking AP classes and going to good colleges helps a kid do better versus being surrounded by low-achieving students?
So again, you're jumping right to using income levels of parents to assume that (1) students from low and middle income households won't be "go-getters" and (2) those students will have a negative impact on your child's academic performance and life prospects. Is that truly justified? Are there data that shows this?
My inability to draw a precise line in the sand has nothing to do with whether this effect is real. This is all a big shade of gray, so there is no such line. How tall does one need to be to play in the NBA?
You phrased your question incorrectly in relation to the matter at hand. It should ask, how tall do the other kids need to be for my kid to play in the NBA? That is your argument here.
So, is the quality of the education directly determined by the income levels of the students attending?
First, I don't think once you get to upper middle class it matters whether it is upper middle class or wealthy.
Secondly I would say not always. But the culture often is heavily influenced by income level.
There are exceptions. Back in the 70s/80s Duncanville was viewed as one of the top 3 districts (Richardson/Highland Park) in DFW and it was middle-middle class. Deer Park in the Houston area is blue collar and very good (of course they have a bunch of refinery money). The KIPP Academies do well.
There is some of the chicken or the egg effect. When you have good schools, it drives up home prices. You can easily have a 20-25% price difference simply because of the elementary school. See the West University Elementary premium in Houston. I imagine Highland Park has the same thing in Dallas. There was, when I went to school, a discount for the part of Richardson that was in Collin County and the Plano ISD (Plano is of course better now than it was back then).
When you have higher income, better educated parents, they tend to have higher expectations from their schools and they tend to get involved. On average, they will also have more intelligent children, both because of genetics and upbringing in the early years.
There is a lot of research on how much the first 3 to 5 years impact intelligence. The kids in higher income homes are more likely to have stimulation, exposure to more vocabulary and less likely to be exposed to violence and trauma. That is why the school districts have these Early Childhood Intervention programs, to help children who are at risk in those first 3 years. High quality early child care programs do make a difference, but it is very hard to do high quality care for the masses. Its why kids in Head Start often lose their advances by 2nd or 3rd grade.
You phrased your question incorrectly in relation to the matter at hand. It should ask, how tall do the other kids need to be for my kid to play in the NBA? That is your argument here.
You're misunderstanding the import of the example. You asked me how rich other families needed to be for me to send my kids to school with those other kids and expect my kid to have good outcomes. I said there was no line because this was shades of gray, similar to the height needed to play professional basketball. I can't draw a line and say that's the minimum height to play in the NBA, just as I can't draw a line and say that's the cutoff for minimum income needed for me to pick a school for my kids. But the impossibility of drawing such a line doesn't mean the effect isn't real. I thought the NBA height example was illustrative because we all know height is a big factor in playing professional basketball.
You make it sound like IQ is some sort of objective number like height or weight. It's a measure based on how a kid does on a particular day on a battery of tests designed with the best of intentions but with all kind of unintended biases and measuring very specific (not broad) skills/performance.
Doing well on these tests is one measure of "smart." Relying on it too heavily is probably a mistake. I'm not saying those tests aren't valid, I'm saying they don't measure all the ways a kid can be smart. Discounting that is how we waste potential.
Sorry for the delayed response........
1. According to psychologists IQ testing is either the first or second highest confidence testing in all of psychology assuming well administered testing.
2. Psychologists also tell us there are several important areas within intelligence as you noted. One of those is abstract intellectual ability which IQ tends to quantify very well and of course abstract intellectual ability is 1 for 1 crucial towards advanced study of anything.
3. Not understating our children's IQ is also a mistake. Pretending IQ does not matter is still pretending.
4. A friend is a psychologist who has worked with high IQ kids for many years. Parroting some of the things he's told me/us.....kid's IQ scores does not vary much per subsequent tests.
5. I'd certainly agree that multiple factors seem to matter most per successful educational outcomes and they are, at least until advanced studies, roughly coequal IMO
1. IQ....matters more as studies progress. Although probably sooner in high expectation schooling.
2. Hardheadedness/grit/drive/willingness to learn............insert your favorite term.
3. Stable/safe homeliest with parents who care...this fades towards and into college.
4. Solid teaching.
5. German parental success (educational attainment, professional successes, income) is another well known and tightly related factor.
6. Back to St. Marks. There is zero chance a regular group of varying but generally middling IQ kids could end up producing 15-25% of each class as NMSFs year upon year. The fact is CATs and other inbound testing and requirements narrow virtually all admits to the top few.
If a school has a truly terrible existing reputation (for academic or discipline dysfunction, or similar), I totally get why a parent with the means to would want to avoid it.
It's when affluent parents try to avoid having even middle class kids sharing their school (say, from a moderately-priced subdivision of 40-foot lots) that I get really concerned. One thing I didn't mention is that college-educated parents also seem to think their kids must also go to school with kids of college-educated parents, which is probably closely related to their need to cocoon their kids with other affluent kids. It's basically saying that the middle and working classes are poison to the affluent, or at least their children. You find this acceptable?
Related: I've heard about an interesting phenomenon where affluent suburban parents move to a rural area to live the country dream, and are dismayed by the fact that rural public schools actually encompass the entirety of the income spectrum - driving them to either create new private schools or to homeschool, because, well, we can't have that kind of mixing!
If I partially or fully responded to this elsewhere please offer me a hall pass.
FWIIW we sent our kids to Catholic schools through high school each was around kids from parents who ranged private jet rich to those whose dads pushed lawnmowers around all day.
1. According to psychologists IQ testing is either the first or second highest confidence testing in all of psychology assuming well administered testing.
2. Psychologists also tell us there are several important areas within intelligence as you noted. One of those is abstract intellectual ability which IQ tends to quantify very well and of course abstract intellectual ability is 1 for 1 crucial towards advanced study of anything.
3. Not understating our children's IQ is also a mistake. Pretending IQ does not matter is still pretending.
4. A friend is a psychologist who has worked with high IQ kids for many years. Parroting some of the things he's told me/us.....kid's IQ scores does not vary much per subsequent tests.
5. I'd certainly agree that multiple factors seem to matter most per successful educational outcomes and they are, at least until advanced studies, roughly coequal IMO
1. IQ....matters more as studies progress. Although probably sooner in high expectation schooling.
2. Hardheadedness/grit/drive/willingness to learn............insert your favorite term.
3. Stable/safe homeliest with parents who care...this fades towards and into college.
4. Solid teaching.
5. German parental success (educational attainment, professional successes, income) is another well known and tightly related factor.
6. Back to St. Marks. There is zero chance a regular group of varying but generally middling IQ kids could end up producing 15-25% of each class as NMSFs year upon year. The fact is CATs and other inbound testing and requirements narrow virtually all admits to the top few.
Generally speaking I think we agree - these tests are directionally correct but measure only a certain kind of intelligence - you seem to be expanding the criteria to include what might be called "success measures", which is a big part of the success of SMS kids for sure.
My understanding of intellectual development is that elementary aged kids (CATS) are not abstract thinkers yet (#1 on your first list). That's actually one of my beefs with this, along with creative thought which also isn't part of IQ testing. I do, however, think that every single kid at SMS is an abstract thinker by high school, and that's probably not the case with more than half of high schoolers in general (it's thought that only half of college students think abstractly.) The fact that they are operating at that level is in part a function of 3,4, & 5 on your second list. And it would happen whether those kids were at SM or Bryan Adams, because the kids are driven externally and internally.
The 15-25% of NMSF at SMS are a function of picking slightly above average to very above average kids and then nurturing the ever living heck out of them academically, creatively, emotionally, and in every other way. Spending all their time in an environment like that, reinforced all the time at home and at school - that's the secret sauce for turning mostly normal boys into academic and extracurricular powerhouses.
The 15-25% of NMSF at SMS are a function of picking slightly above average to very above average kids and then nurturing the ever living heck out of them academically, creatively, emotionally, and in every other way. Spending all their time in an environment like that, reinforced all the time at home and at school - that's the secret sauce for turning mostly normal boys into academic and extracurricular powerhouses.
Bingo, we have a winner.
This is literally the definition of any top Dallas private school's constituents.
NEVER underestimate the power of parents who will invest in bulldozers to push obstacles out of the way for their children. And that investment doesn't always mean $$, but realistically speaking for the most part it does.
And to be frank, "nurturing the ever living heck out of them" can definitely equate to some of the following for a significant portion of these students:
* private tutors
* college counseling consultants
* doctor shopping for medications and special accommodations
* therapists
We're not talking about insignificant amounts of time and money here.
It also filters into high achieving public school districts. If you've spent any time in the Park Cities, you'll know that there is an entire cottage industry of tutoring centers that literally cater to just HPISD students down to the specific class, and specific quiz/exam. Yes, you can enroll Bayleigh or Brayden in a tutoring course for a specific quiz in a specific class in HPISD.
The 15-25% of NMSF at SMS are a function of picking slightly above average to very above average kids and then nurturing the ever living heck out of them academically, creatively, emotionally, and in every other way. Spending all their time in an environment like that, reinforced all the time at home and at school - that's the secret sauce for turning mostly normal boys into academic and extracurricular powerhouses.
I disagree with the nature/nurture balance you are describing here. I think schools like this are starting with a population that is significantly better than "mostly normal."
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