Re:What happened when Boston Public Schools tried for equity...
by SamBam on Monday September 24, 2018 @02:51PM
(#18060283)
One of the reasons that this would be a terrible idea is that the person who stands to make money by selling their good slot for a terrible one is not necessarily the person who has to wake up at 5:00 AM to bus across town.
Adding money into the mix, when there's a large difference of means between families, adds a level of incentive that shouldn't be there -- one that has nothing to do with the district's goal of providing an equal education to all its students.
When the district looks at the results at the end of the year, and all the poor kids have poor grades/attendance because they were all in the worst time slots, they can't say "well, at least the parents are slightly richer because of this, from the secondary trading market." Rather, based on the objectives they are concerned with, they may have just made inequality even worse.
Adding money into the mix, when there's a large difference of means between families, adds a level of incentive that shouldn't be there -- one that has nothing to do with the district's goal of providing an equal education to all its students.
When the district looks at the results at the end of the year, and all the poor kids have poor grades/attendance because they were all in the worst time slots, they can't say "well, at least the parents are slightly richer because of this, from the secondary trading market." Rather, based on the objectives they are concerned with, they may have just made inequality even worse.