Suburban Schools and American Public Opinion on Education
Megan McArdle writes:
I find it maddening how many upper middle class parents energetically "support public education" against the depredations of vouchers and other reforms, while moving their own children into better school districts or better programs. Especially parents in Manhattan and a few areas of Brooklyn who proudly note that their experience shows how great public education is, while failing to note that their schools work because these comparatively affluent parents with a great deal of social and political capital fight like hell to divert as many resources as possible–including the best teachers–into a handful of schools in affluent areas. New York’s famed magnet schools are a big part of this dramatic inequality, and yet the middle class parents who sent their kids there somehow thought their kids had more in common with the kids at Samuel J. Tilden than at Dalton.
Graduation rates at Dalton and Stuyvesant are pretty similar. The 4-year graduation rate at Tilden was 37%.
Or as I said a couple of years ago: "Memo to suburban voucher opponents who ‘support public education’: you’re already sending your kid to private school. You’re just confused because your
