Thirty-One One Millions

Remember London? It was the same way only everyone seemed Indian/Middle Eastern.

Yes, we do need to drastically reshape public education, but I'm not convinced that money is really the problem. Those districts with the highest spending per student also tend to have some of the worst academic records. New York, New Jersey, DC, etc.

I had the very same experience when I was in Los Angeles back in March. I went to a conference and stayed downtown, and I was really amazed by the sheer amount of ethnic diversity. Mainly Asians, Middle Easterns, and Hispanics. It was really cool. I also, of course, loved the pedestrian nature of NYC. Now I just need to figure out a way to be a millionaire and I can live there and enjoy the benefits.

As for public education - I think that if we want public education to succeed (ie, increasing access to good schools to all Americans, regardless of their background), then encouraging greater experimentation is a good thing. That means trying more novel approaches like serious attempts at vouchers, magnet schools, charter schools, homeschools, and things like that.

The jury is out on the efficacy of vouchers, mainly because it's been difficult to get a serious voucher experiment up and running. But theoretically, that one has the potential to address many of the things that you you've (josiah) expressed an interest in - things like white flight from the city centers, for instance. Currently, if you want to pick your child's school, you have to pick your neighborhood, and that has set into motion a lot of sorting by families into neighborhoods where the schools are better. But, if you could break the education component from the residential component, then people could live wherever they wanted to live, and send their kids to a school that was best for them, given their preferences and transportation costs. This would cause less migration out to the suburbs, almost definitely (the theory that shows this seems fairly robust; I'll dig up the papers if you're interested in reading more about this).

One thing that could be done at relatively low cost would be to implement a voucher program for special education and/or special needs children. Special needs children use significant school resources, and create problems in an environment like No Child Left Behind where high stakes tests exist. So politically, a voucher that was targeted just at special needs children might actually have a chance, since it's probably in the interest of public school systems to outsource that. But education is heavily politicized, and except for that, it's a slow train coming getting the market for education to change. Very unionized, very politically connected (and protected). But I do think that for some segments of the population (mainly poor), the existing model performs poorly. For those who can afford to buy a house in a district where there are good schools, the public school system works pretty great.

That's my thought - more experimentation so that we can actually figure out better what works and does not work. That means more state autonomy over education.

I think we should start funding schools from the state level, possibly, rather than by property tax, which is inherently inequitable.

And where I live right now (Dorchester, MA) is like that in terms of white people - they're a rarity. Sometimes I see one and wonder, what's he or she doing here? Then I remember, oh yeah, I'm here too. Since my internship is at a black church, I hardly ever see a white person inside the doors of the church, except for people from Gordon-Conwell, who come for an urban ministry class. I like it - it's a good change from CovCol.