Reply to Ward 3 - Wilson feeders meeting last night: did anyone attend?

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Reply to "Ward 3 - Wilson feeders meeting last night: did anyone attend?"

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Take this as a thought experiment.  Start at an extreme - like private school tuition.  Fund MacFarland at $40,000 per student operating funds, and use that money wisely to work on school culture and offer attractive programs - honors, small pull outs, extra-curriculars, etc.  I think you'd find a significant number of people would choose that over Deal.  Not all, but enough to help with overcrowding.

But that's clearly too much money.  So what about $30,000 per student?  What would that look like and how attractive would it be?  $20,000?  Find the sweet spot that reduces the pressure on Deal, and actually might benefit a large number of disadvantaged kids.  But we probably lack the political will to spend that much on kids.[/quote]

I agree with your thought experiment - there must be some hypothetical amount of programming money that DCPS could spend at MacFarland to make it attractive enough to peel off students from Deal.  If, for example, we offer every student a 5:1 ratio of students to teachers, steak and ice cream for lunch every day, and pony rides before school, then MacFarland will get filled.  The problem is that DCPS clearly doesn't know how to target programming to attract students.  So lots of that spending on programming has only marginal returns in attracting students (e.g., kids like ice cream but don't really care about the steak, so that's wasted money).  The cash-payout program is sort of the logical extreme of your own thought experiment: If DCPS just hands out cold cash instead of programming, how much cash is required to get students to join MacFarland?  While it may feel unsavory, I'm betting the cash is more of a motivator than the programming, and I'm betting it's also cheaper for DCPS.[/quote]

It's different because the end goal of DCPS is to educate kids.  Better educated students is a public good.  Paying people cash to move them around doesn't do that and it's just creepy.  At least paying ridiculous amounts of $$ for education could do some good.[/quote]

But most agree that there isnt' really anything wrong with Macfarland, except there aren't enough higher SES children to balance out the student body and make parents comfortable with teh idea of going there. The curriculum is the same at MacFarland and Hardy, the teachers have the same credentials. For all we know, the teachers may even be better than ones at Deal.

What this is about is what will actually make enough people take that leap. [/quote]

Believe it or not, some people aren't hung up on high SES, as if there's some kind of osmotic action going on that imparts education from high SES kids.  There are correlations between high SES kids and test scores, but that doesn't mean they are causing it.
For those of you who can't get over the high SES thing, stay at Deal.  I think enough people would be willing to go for a school with large numbers of low SES kids if the right culture and academics are there.  As long as I see a path for my kids to be safe and grow, I'll do it.  I'd absolutely bet that $40,000 per year would make that happen, and probably for something less than that.[/quote]

Wait. You really expect to get cash?[/quote]

Funding for the school.[/quote]

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