Folbre Chapter 6   The Robin Hood School

 

  1. Financing of public schools and use of vouchers to address poor quality schools; segregation replaced by de-facto segregation based upon income.

Some of Folbre’s Points: 

  1. Public $ to private schools would leave the truly needy behind in poorly performing public schools in the inner cities.
  2. More $ correlate with less quality schools because the time dimension is suppressed – more $ would always be spent on poorer quality schools because that’s where the need is the greatest.  The same is true of the relation between time parents spend on kid’s homework – the more they need it, the more they get it.
  3. Seven reasons why different schools spend different per-pupil expenditures. See p. 139.
  4. Standardized tests miss a lot that is important in a quality education – see quote at bottom of p. 141.
  5. School funding equalization – states took on the battle because Federal government said no such right of “equal educational opportunity existed in constitution.” Fact: Poorer districts pay higher per pupil expenditure for education.
  6. Families were willing to pay more per pupil, only if the money didn’t go to other kids – Judge McCown (Texas):

   …”it’s not our taxes. Businesses and people without children pay taxes too…[and] they are all our children.”

 

  1. “The greater cost-effectiveness of private schools has more to do with selectivity than with efficiency.” (better test: randomly assign students to both public and private schools.)
  2. Sixteen states shifted their educational funding formulas in a more egalitarian direction by 1999 (148). Although the majority of these states both equalized and raised the per-pupil expenditures, California suffered a “leveling down” as the taxpayers fought tax increases more vigorously.
  3. The European solution à national funding for education combined with setting national standards.
  4. Poverty is the best predictor of school success. Vouchers would leave behind those kids whose parents don’t have transportation, the motivation or the time to put them in better schools at a distance from their homes.
  5. Increased privatization of the school system encourages cost-cutting and leads to further economic segregation.  Private schools can refuse to accept some students (add #11 to this and this adds up to a polarized society).

 

Colleges and Universities 

  1. Even though external benefits apply equally here, there is a growing gap between the percentage of the kids of the poor and those of the rich who are college-educated. Eight percent of kids (by the age of 24) from the 25 percent poorest families received a college education in 1979. It was the same in 1994, but kids from the richest 25 percent who had a college degree at the same age rose from 31 percent in 1979 to 79 percent in 1994 (154).
  2. Some reasons: An increased amount of scholarship $$ going to students at private schools, while legislatures cut funding for public universities; Private colleges have shifted more toward “need-sensitive” as opposed to “need-blind” admissions policies (155).

 

Question

          Does Equal Opportunity simply mean absence of unfair discrimination?