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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.
My mom had a 40 year career in essentially Special Education. She spent the last 25 years in a niche Private School that was essentially designed as 'the special education school for upper-middle+ children between 5th to 10th percentile in educational capability plus those with behavioral issues that made them difficult to educate but not actively dangerous' to begin with. That niche was a great spot for the first 15 or so years she was there, and generally the school would get most students up to like a 5th-grade educational level which enabled them to work a minimum wage role and kinda acted as a finishing school otherwise to make it less socially obvious.
Then a combination of factors hit. Upper-Middle+ economy eroded a bit/started valuing private education less, so a lot of the name-brand good private schools who'd happily offload their lower kids onto the private school in the good times started dropping their bottom thresholds a bit and/or bringing special education classes into their schools. As a result, the selective school had to dig deeper on their waiting lists which started increasingly hit those that my mom essentially implied were just not productively educatable. There were also some legal changes that meant that schools had to actually trial all applications on the waiting list, which causes perverse incentives with special education since a lot of the issues that lead to you putting your 2 year old's name down for a high school slot are ones that are very apparent/major and tend to slot you into the very bottom tier.
This was due to some parents managing to sue another school for discrimination for dismissing their child out of hand where they'd essentially made a read that the child was absolute bottom percentile and that they'd be better suited for the lower tier of education (which is perfectly fine and well-resourced but most parents aren't really capable of understanding why/what their child is being filtered on) which suits the like 0th-5th percentile. The schools being able to largely sort this themselves saved a ton of stress and issues in the system previously. But in her experience parents are more interventionalist on behalf of the lowest tier of kids (which frequently isn't really to their benefit. If a person's mental is 3 and they're gonna be there for the rest of their life there's really not much you can do aside from keep them entertained and engaged which is what the lowest tier services are pretty good at doing) and the legal situation now makes it a lot messier to sort.
Seems like people will pay for the illusion that their child is not special needs, even if they are. Probably would be a better use of resources to save that money in an index fund managed by a trust, but maybe the children already have that and money is no object for some parents.
The Telepathy Tapes was one of the more popular podcasts in 2024 and it's obviously complete bullshit but for spiritually minded and hopeful parents/family of a severely autistic child it's something that takes a terrible situation and gives a shining ray of hope. The same thing with facilitated communication despite all evidence it's a hoax continues to pop up over and over.
It's emotional, and understandable. Accepting the tragedy that your kid can't talk or understand you and it's not fixable is very difficult. And telling these very emotionally driven and loving parents that it's too bad and education is a waste is an awful experience on its own, and that's if you even manage to convince them which you probably won't.
There are some snake oil salesman profiting from the unrealistic hopes of these parents, and in the kind of society I prefer they would be charged with fraud, the schemes exposed to the public, and lashed Singapore-style.
Maybe we can't educate all the children to the ideal, but we can try to protect them and their families from predators.
Good luck with that when a substantial portion of the population believes in the claims. You're not gonna be charging the psychics like Uri Geller or the Ghost Hunters or the Ancient Aliens people or chiropracters or "natural herbal medicines" or other psuedoscientific whack anytime soon because a substantial portion believes it. Just take vitamin pills for instance, the FDA tried to regulate them a few decades ago as medicine and consumer backlash forced them to stop.
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