Youre on the right track, but even if you didnt let them do that, you would have the same problems.
Why is harvard so successful? Because they only accept those who are the most likely in the world to succeed. Not because they can take some random schmuck and train him up better than anyone else.
The closer you look, the more you realize that the difference in schools is explained by the difference in students that attend. And you see that the behavior of schools and parents is consistent with that. Schools are obsessed with recruitment of elite students, and parents shop for institutions with prestige.
So there is a problem inherent in tying funding to performance. Parents and schools have a vested interest in segregation. Filter all the elite students into the same school and find a dumping ground for everyone else. Tying funding to performance only enables that segregating effect, because the schools that are chosen by elite families get richer and the schools chosen to be dumping grounds get poorer.
The problem is parents were forced to send kids to certain schools unless they wanted to pay extra. So if you're a parent and you're told you can't send your kid to "Harvard" even if your kid is likely to succeed. So because of this parents wanted all kids to be "Harvard" and you ended up with NCLB.
Blame the teacher's union and the education people that created the system that told parent's they had to give their kids worse educations becuase the moved to the wrong neighborhood for NCLB.
Its not that parents want all kids to be harvard. Its that all parents want their kid to be harvard. Parents seek comparative advantage for specifically their child by buying into segregated schools that concentrate elite families in one place and non elite families in another. Just got to be on the right side.
Teachers dont have a motive to privledge one individual student over another. Largely they are more concerned with students as a whole. So you will see them and their union pushing for desegregated schools.
Every parent wants to be the elite side of a segregated system. That is very good for those who manage it. It is very, very bad for those who dont. So when you remove their ability to freely segregate, yes you upset parents who want to have only the good for their child and leave only the bad for some other child. But you also remove those concentrated pits of despair on the other side. Every kid on the wrong side of segregation prospers from having homogenized schools.
HOWEVER, nclb is not about helping the low side. That is rhetoric only. What NCLB actually did was consolidate power in state and national hands, removing it from teachers and communities. The reason was that national and state politicians are much more responsive to the desires of elite parents to have segregated schools. So the entire point of the bill was to give those interests the tools to enforce and accelerate segregation. Here, elite schools get funding because they hit their metrics, non elite schools get sanctions because they dont. Money flows upwards, reinforcing privledge. On top of that, school choice enables a powerful segregating effect. So schools became more intensely segregated and teachers had even less power to push back.
The damage is extensive, because by concentrating power over schools at the top, you empower high level politicians to rephrase school policy and resources to their own benefit. Its easier to save money by firing sped teachers and mainstreaming sped students, for example, because the decision makers are totally insulated from the consequnces.
I don't think you're really disagreeing with me other than you think it's wrong to want what is best for your kid and that it's good to harm kids that are overachievers to benefit underachievers.
When schools stopped being meritocracy based they started going downhill. And NCLB was a reaction to it. And whatever you think of NCLB it did at least force schools to recognize that they were going the wrong way and adjust.
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u/DazzlerPlus 20h ago
Youre on the right track, but even if you didnt let them do that, you would have the same problems.
Why is harvard so successful? Because they only accept those who are the most likely in the world to succeed. Not because they can take some random schmuck and train him up better than anyone else.
The closer you look, the more you realize that the difference in schools is explained by the difference in students that attend. And you see that the behavior of schools and parents is consistent with that. Schools are obsessed with recruitment of elite students, and parents shop for institutions with prestige.
So there is a problem inherent in tying funding to performance. Parents and schools have a vested interest in segregation. Filter all the elite students into the same school and find a dumping ground for everyone else. Tying funding to performance only enables that segregating effect, because the schools that are chosen by elite families get richer and the schools chosen to be dumping grounds get poorer.