City of Pittsburgh Schools showing its unsustainability (Duquesne, Houston: home, school districts)

[happywithbraddock]

There are many developing nations without public schools and their accompanying taxes. People aren't flocking to them. Why do you think people would flock to a Pittsburgh without public schools? Would the $6000 a year you save be worth it when large gangs of school-age children roam the streets all day long? Angry, bored, violent, uneducated children with no future because the adults in their lives don't give a care, and without public schools, they have no contact with anyone else who might give a care. Doesn't sound like paradise to me. Sounds like Rio.

[Caladium]

Originally Posted by happywithbraddock

Why do you think people would flock to a Pittsburgh without public schools?

Agreed. It would be a huge mistake, giving Pittsburgh a black eye as far as the rest of the country is concerned. It would be interpreted as "backwards behavior" and Pittsburgh would become the endless butt of jokes.

[Lobick]

Of course the actual A+ Schools report on PPS is actually pretty positive, given the financial constraints under which it is operating:

http://www.aplusschools.org/pdf/find/FINANCIALANALYSIS.pdf (broken link)

[Lobick]

Originally Posted by Caladium

Agreed. It would be a huge mistake, giving Pittsburgh a black eye as far as the rest of the country is concerned. It would be interpreted as "backwards behavior" and Pittsburgh would become the endless butt of jokes.

Not to mention that it's an awful policy both morally and economically. Public education is not provided for the benefit of parents of children; it is for the children themselves and society as a whole. Society has determined that it is to our collective benefit and interest to educate these young citizens so that they can be useful parts of the polity and economy moving forward. I've seen nothing that compels me to question the judgment of our predecessors on this basic point.

[Goinback2011]

There are problems with public schools all across the US and they aren't related to the number of children enrolled. Someone here noted that the schools started declining in the 1970's. This is the exact time when money started rolling in to public schools from the state and federal governments.

There was a time not long ago when local people funded local eduation 100 percent and had control of their school system. That was lost in the late 1960's and early 1970's in most places. Is it a coincidence that schools started declining at the same time that local control was lost?

[Caladium]

Originally Posted by Lobick

Not to mention that it's an awful policy both morally and economically. Public education is not provided for the benefit of parents of children; it is for the children themselves and society as a whole. Society has determined that it is to our collective benefit and interest to educate these young citizens so that they can be useful parts of the polity and economy moving forward. I've seen nothing that compels me to question the judgment of our predecessors on this basic point.

Hear hear!

[BrianTH]

Note that student test scores have been improving since the 1970s. See, e.g., here:

(Mis)Understanding the NAEP Results

Educational attainment also increased:

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=27

People have this idea of our school system being in an overall state of decline, but that actually isn't true.

[Goinback2011]

I know for a fact that SAT scores were continuously declining from the late 60's/early 70's until the tests were changed sometime in the 1990's to hide the fact.

[BrianTH]

The SAT doesn't have a constant population of test takers, and during the period before recentering the fraction of students taking the SAT increased. That is one of the many reasons the SAT isn't suitable for tracking educational outcomes over time.

NAEP, in contrast, is specifically tasked with providing such tracking data.

[MathmanMathman]

But are the NAEP tests basically the same? Even the SAT has changed over the years.