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In general, I like Freddie DeBoer's takes on education. There's a lot of poor thinking about how if only... teachers were better paid, or worse paid; students were tested more, or tested less; unions were weaker, or stronger -- then things would be better. Freddie's there to point out that American public education is exactly what one would expect, given that it is full of Americans.
Enter his newest essay. American schools are exactly what you would expect, given their demographics, there isn't much to be done about that, the teachers and systems are exactly what they need to be, given the constraints they're under, and so... well off parents are racist for preferring schools that are allowed to expel the very lowest performing children.
Wait, what?
My main impression is that when he hears "bad kids," he's somehow thinking of a well meaning black kid who uses AAVE and wants to play sports ball more than learn math, but is in general pretty normal. And in a lot of classrooms it does. But sometimes, in some classrooms, it means a kid freaks out, smashes the other kids' stuff, sometimes hits the other kids, screeches, thrashes around on the floor, and then when they eventually leave, they come back five minutes later with candy in their mouth. None of the other kids are allowed to eat candy in that classroom even if they have it. It doesn't matter, the teacher just mutters to finish the candy quickly and get on with it.
Maybe it's an overrepresented dynamic in schools I've observed, but in addition to outlier events like knife fights, if a kid has the misfortune to be assigned an all day elementary class with a "disregulated" classmate or two, there's literally nothing to do about it, other than changing schools. This is a Problem, actually. It is a Problem with the laws and court decisions, not necessarily individual decisions on a school or even district level, but Freddie is simply wrong in how he talks about the "hardest to educate students." Education Realist was more on track when he wrote about the topic a couple of years ago.
This isn't the same disregulation most parents are pulling their kids out for, since they're in segregated classrooms, but is in fact the "hardest to educate students" that public schools are dealing with. As I recall Freddie did teach actual school at one point, but it looks like he was teaching high school composition, and for all his research, still underplays what the bottom of even normal suburban public schools are like.
I am surprised that you are surprised. Freddie has always been able to look reality in the face but only up to a certain point. It's easy to forget sometimes, but he really is a literal Marxist, and that informs everything he writes. In the redistributionist world of his dreams, these inequalities would not exist because no one would have the option of selfishly providing a better education for their own children by removing them from environments with disruptive students and taking resources away from those students.
I don't necessarily have a problem with the argument that this is tax money, redistribution is the best form of distribution, and the Public doesn't care how aggravating your childhood is. Well, I'd rather have even more niche schools than charter friendly states currently have, but it's a valid preference. My main problem with the current article is:
Which is entirely unproven, and more snide than he usually is. What if it's not that the kids are poor, but that they're flailing around in the school entrance, screaming their heads off? (I've seen this) What if it's not that they're of color, but that they're pacing around relentlessly, stealing everyone's school supplies, tearing up their papers, for hours at a time? (I've seen this) What if your child has a disability, and their also disabled classmate keeps pulling her by the hair, and the staff are all wearing helmets and shin guards, because the classmate kicks them and throws things at their heads, but your child doesn't have those protections, and isn't able to protect herself because she's a six year child with Down's syndrome? (I've seen this)
I don't mind Freddie having his Marxist policy preferences, as long as he shows that he knows how disruptive the most disruptive 5% of children are.
This is going to sound messed up, but can we (if we update laws) reasonably not educate these children? As medical advances in life saving technology improve, we are investing more on a slim minority of children, instead of the education of all children as a whole. I have no idea about how this would be implemented, maybe a child would have to take a basic test of some sort to prove worthy of educational investment, I suppose. We are not a post scarcity society that can infinitely provide health care at taxpayer expense when our national debt is constantly increasing. It's just leaving a debt to future generations, kicking the can down the road.
It's a hard sell, emotionally and ideologically speaking. Education is meant to be for everyone, and the entire point of making it mandatory and free is so the children from the weakest backgrounds get a level playing field with the rich kids. Not educating the very weakest is counterproductive to this ideal.
Besides, you run into the problem that society is structured around school taking care of the kids for the majority of the workday. Forcing the kid out of school likely means the family has to take care of it, and a lot of parents simply won't be able to do this while also holding down a job. There just aren't enough hours in the day.
I do like the ideal that the opportunity of education is meant to be for everyone. But we lack the resources to sustainably achieve that ideal. When we made that educational promise, it was probably assumed that these children were relatively able-bodied. Children with extreme disabilities simply didn't survive previously as the medical tech and knowledge didn't exist. Children with behavioral problems were easier to separate from the group, because we were willing to enforce prosocial behavioral norms. We made that promise for education, and it is time to break that promise because the commitment is greater than our ability. It's not wrong to admit mistakes (just political suicide).
What the ideal should be changed to is, "education funding will be equally split among everyone". We would be tightening up the meaning of reasonable accommodation to be much stricter. So we can redirect funds spent on special education into job training programs and healthier school lunches. We will have better chances of generating healthier and more productive members of society. Decades later we may even generate a surplus with these early childhood educational investments, and we can reevaluate spending more on special education at that time.
My suggestion would have the families shoulder the cost, likely very high, of taking care of their own special-needs children. Will one parent need to quit their job to become a full time caretaker? Yes, that is likely unless their job pays more than enough to hire a caretaker in their place. Is that harsh? Yes, but only from the perspective of a currently-unachievable ideal, which is free public education for all no matter the cost. Perhaps those families should have a federal tax break as a refund of their taxes they paid into education that excludes them from the public system. Essentially a forced public education system opt-out with refund.
Is this politically realistic - no way it's just not happening. But I'm just tossing some ideas up on how we should approach this to maximize educational outcomes (as a society, unfortunately not on an individual basis) in a sustainable way. The result of my exclusion-approach would be that we would have more functionally illiterate, barely hanging to life children. But they were probably going to be a net drain of society anyway, even though we hired multiple full-time servants (special needs educators) to keep them minimally educated.
It's harsh in the same way not having insurance is harsh - people are terrified of being the one to hold the bag. Having a severely disabled child is bad enough with help, let alone when it completely wrecks your life. A lot of people fundamentally shoulder tax as a form of insurance, paying for the (sometimes fictional) feeling of safety that comes from knowing the state will step in if things ever get really, really bad.
I guess my proposed tax refund is like the home insurance company telling you - sorry because of (wildfire, flood, etc) risk your home uninsurable and we are refunding the balance of your policy. I have no doubt many lives will be ruined by the high costs of caring for severely disabled children. But having children comes with risk, and that risk was an individual choice unless a woman was raped and she was unable to access abortion. We spread the increasingly higher cost of special needs children over society instead of the primary responsibility which should be the parents.
I'm sorry, I didn't read your full post properly. My point was broadly that I think the number of takers for this policy would be very low even among the normal audience for 'callous but effective' policy. It would likely also further drive down birth rates - the modal outcomes are much more salient to people than the median.
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