What public schools need to do is get rich people to give them money to put their names on buildings around the schools, just the way private schools do. Milton Friedman said that campuses exist for three purposes: instruction, research, and monument erection. These days, private colleges are putting donors' names on each classroom and even each seat in the football stadium. Finding your way around a campus with a map is difficult because colleges insist on putting the key on maps alphabetically, and buildings are no longer ever referred to by their function, but by their donor. So, to find the Chemistry Lab on the map, you have to look in the key under Z for the Helda Zuffelump Chemical Sciences Center.
The amount of money spent on building palatial new buildings on private college and high school campuses in this decade has been enormous. (Fortunately, the new edifices appear to be in better taste than most built since WWII.)
The secret to academic fund-raising is to ask for money. And then ask some more. And some more. It's an odd job, one that can be hard to do right, because donors don't want you to look like Donald Trump, they want you to look like Mr. Chips, but you have to have your hand out all the time like Donald Trump. With his trademark bow tie and funny glasses. Bill Durden, who became President of then-ailing Dickinson College in Pennsylvania in 1999 and immediately started hauling in big contributions through the simple expedient of asking for them all the time, has the Chips-Trump combo down perfectly.
Lots of rich people are graduates of public schools, so they'd be easy targets. For example, junk bond pirate-king Michael Milken and his brother paid for the fancy High Tech High charter school on the campus of Birmingham High School in LA because Milken was a cheerleader, along with future actress Sally Field, the year Birmingham won the LA City football championship.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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Given the constant flux in demography, I don't see the opportunity for large scale donations to public schools. When donating money to a college, a donor reasonably assumes that future generations are likely to represent him in some characteristically important manner. On the public school level, the same cannot be assumed. I have seen many good schools turn bad with changes in neighborhood demographics. To donate money to a public school is to risk wasting your investment on people who will never achieve no matter what assistance you may offer.
Justin
This idea is DOA. The rich and powerful donate money to increase networking and buy access for their offspring and relations as much, if not more, than prestige. This is especially true of the neuvo rich who prefer the security of a functional return on their donor dollar.
The power networks are at HPY and Stanford and to much lesser degree at other Ivy’s, scrappy 2nd tier privates (e.g. Duke) and small liberal arts colleges. Some top public schools have more academic rigorous programs, but they don’t command much allegiance beyond local and professional or business classes (e.g. Berkeley/Michigan/Virginia Law, Michigan/Berkeley Engineering, SEC Football).
In addition, public schools don’t have as much flexibility in granting admissions and giving marketable degrees to borderline case scions. With grade inflation and a heavily student-centric business model, compare the marketability of a Stanford A- or a HYP any GPA English degree vs a B- Virginia or Berkeley degree. There is some justification because the average HYP/Stanford student is clearly better than the average Berkeley/Virginia/Michigan student, but there are undeserving in both classes. Finally, it’s the 2nd tier- private scrappers like Duke, Vanderbilt and Notre Dame that bend the rules the most for wastrel scions in order to build their alumni networks with the rich and powerful so their new building, rooms and chairs have names and benefactors.
The most successful public school graduates may go on to get a postgraduate or professional degree at a private institution and form more selective loyalties there. For example, a Michigan engineer getting a Stanford MBA or Berkeley English major getting a Harvard JD/MBA both go off to make a mint on Wall Street. When writing that check, are these Wall Street Titians going to think of their Analog Circuits and French Postmodern Film classmates or their MBA golfing buddies who are working in the firm down the street and the institution where they want to send their kids?
- JAN
Considering what's going on in a number of public schools at this point, I'm not sure anyone wants to give them anything. In Seattle, parents are pulling their kids out of schools and homeschooling them in record numbers.
Check out, for example, the only officially endorsed bibliographies for elementary, middle and high school students. If you suspect I'm exaggerating, I invite you to go to the SPS website and do a search for "books" (scroll to bottom for search bar, and enjoy the material while scrolling). You will find no other prescribed lists of books, only "examples".
I would call the SPS policies ethnic cleansing, because Christian and middle/working-class young white parents who can't afford private school tuition are essentially being forced out of the city to find safe schools for their kids. Why in the world would anyone give these schools a dime if they didn't have to?
Steve, While I can't disagree with your advice on simply asking for more moneys from wealthy grads, I can't imagine this will have much effect on the schools themselves. For instance, in my state of New Jersey we have some of the most expensive schools in the WORLD (Public or Private). And I am talking about Camden, Newark, Jersey City, Paterson, Trenton, etc.
If parents were forced to pay tuition to cover the current State and Local spending (with a little from the Feds as well) the parents would be spending well over $17,000 per child.
When you consider that many schools in Utah and North Dakota get rave reviews from parents and teachers alike for less than $5,000, well, I can't see how more money is going to affect things.
And, getting back to New Jersey, I happen to know that most of the Inner-City schools are actually more expensive than their suburban counter-parts because they are in "Abbott Districts". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_District).
Given the constant flux in demography
Yes, the flux.
Here is a Salon link and a lively discussion largely devoid of Sailer-type statistically detailed wisdom on the lingering importance of the white vote in the USA.
So Long, White Boy
You can see, hear, feel the glee in the Jewish, Hispanic, black, female, Muslim etc. constituencies. "Finally! We are coming to the end of White Male America."
If that link above doesn't work try following the link from realclearpolitics.com front page. Salon forces full page advertisement redirects -- which I don't mind, being a capitalist myself.
The point is that making whites a minority in the USA - and disempowering white males especially - will "lift all boats" and help bring about a solution to issues like public school finance.
So, Steve, why worry about all these issues? When a macro solution is "baked in the cake" as they say over at the WSJ editorial page.
Embrace the flux.
Just wanted to give one more snippet on the Aboott districts to provide some context: (from the New York Times)
"Now a growing number of New Jersey elected officials, educators and parents are calling for sweeping changes to this school financing system, saying that it has wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in the Abbott districts. For every success story like Garfield, where fourth-grade test scores have risen to the state average, there are chronic problems, like those in Newark, Camden and Asbury Park.
Today, the Abbott districts serve 286,500 children in kindergarten through 12th grade — about 21 percent of the state’s students — but get $4.2 billion a year in state aid, slightly more than half of all the state money given to New Jersey’s 616 school districts. The Abbotts are among the highest-spending school districts in the state, averaging $14,038 per student compared with $10,509 statewide. The vast majority of districts that fall between richest and poorest say they are increasingly bearing the burden of the Abbotts’ getting so much of the money."
Please remember that the $14,038 number only represents the State and Local Education spending. It doesnt count the federal spending and the "Support" spending. That is, all of the spending that the differnt gov'ts have to do to support the Schools, but, technically, is not Education spending. For instance, extra police at Newark High School football games.
This podcast I listen to had a great little discussion of race.
These guys are "skeptics" and the lead speaker is very smart but also very delicate when talking about controversial subjects.
He really does a good job of explaining that race does exist even though it is fuzzy around the edges and that our morality should be independent of science, as "moralists" might not like the conclusions science comes to.
In the discussion they needed to have the chart of the speed distribution of molecules in a 100 degree glass of water vs a 120 degree glass of water.
http://cache.libsyn.com/skepticsguide/skepticast2007-09-05.mp3
To some extetne this is a West Coast-centric suggestion, since West Coast high schools often consist of a small complex of buildings (or so I've heard, Steve or another West Coaster can confirm or deny). East Coast high schools (and, I think, Midwestern and Southern ones as well) are usuall one big building - although of course one can donate for the library, gym, football field, etc.
The Abbotts are among the highest-spending school districts in the state, averaging $14,038 per student compared with $10,509 statewide.
Sounds like the cost of trying to mandate the Lake Woebegon effect.
Lotsa luck to 'em.
Donations to public schools? Other than the typical senior class token gift to their high school, I think public schools should remain financed by tax dollars.
Instead, I think we should radically rethink education at the high school level or maybe go back to tracking students by ability/interest without feeling guilty about it. What schools do is focus on developing abstract reasoning which according to Steve and IQ pundits, a person's ability to develop the capacity for abstract thought is largely determined at birth unless extenuating factors cause a deficit.
I think our schools would be much more efficient and fiscally responsible if they didn't try to expend so much effort making concrete thinkers into abstract thinkers. Accept the difference, track the students accordingly, respect both types of abilities and be done with it.
I can see a place for certain industries to provide training centers for juniors and seniors to go straight into the workforce upon graduation. Most people in my parents' generation expected to go to work and start a family right after high school. College was expensive so often only elites attended unversities even in the 60s. I'm sure this is controversial but college consumes quite a bit of time and money and the end result the dean of a certain department seeks doesn't always jibe with what employers want.
Now that I'm on the topic, why not give all students practical career training while in high school? If a student is smart enough to make a good score on the SAT, then it certainly won't hurt to require some practical job training like typing, filing and bookkeeping to the high school curriculum. That way they can go straight to work or do as some do now and go to school part-time while working. I know there was a time when having good grades and making a good impression in an interview made a person "trainable" but now most people have to have specific instruction in a skill and/experience in order to get a job doing it no matter how easy it is to learn.
In the early 90s lots of college students were stuck in the awkward position of having to either get into grad school to ride out the job shortage or go further into debt to get training at a secretarial or electronics trade school in order to be employable. Most of these people never dreamed of not going to college or having to have a plan B but the economy took a drastic downturn and there people like me were simultaneously over and underqualified wishing we hadn't been so blindly optimistic about our futures.
I know this would destroy the traditions built by having people come in as college freshmen and going through a core curriculum along with their fellow classmates but I think this has to happen even if the Greek system goes by the wayside as a result. College degrees have largely lost their value as have high school diplomas and for similar reasons. I've personally known people who managed to get at least a few years of college behind them without being able to write a coherent paragraph which means of course that they didn't learn this basic skill in high school either. I don't think private donations will solve this problem but realistic expectations and accountability might.
"Given the constant flux in demography..."
No offense, justin, but your phrase makes the USA's radical demographic changes sound as random and capricious as the weather. But they are not. Constant flux in demography = permanent revolution.
In politics, everything happens for a reason. Darnell & Shaneequa weren't ethnically cleansed out of Compton, they were fluxxed.
"I don't see the opportunity for large scale donations to public schools."
The IRS will see to any necessary future "large scale donations to public schools". And apparently also will have to see to our mandatory health insurance premiums if Hillary gets (back) in.
In 10 years time, CA will have a governor on the psychic level of old whatshisname running the show in Venezuela. In 20 years time, the same guy will be running for el President de Estados Unidos.
Oh, dear. It seems that a couple of chubby liberal arts majors are monitoring your blog, Steve. These two were offended that I want high school students to have job training that qualifies them to work somewhere other than the local Wal-mart for their first job. Hmmm. I guess the logic is that I'm an evil racist, fascist, homophobe therefore any idea I have is evil and must be quashed at the earliest opportunity.
On a lighter note, one of the Wal-mart social workers/cashiers approves of my organic and low-calorie food selections now if my thoughts were just as wholesome as my meals...
On the high school level, I think the private schools are actually worse off today than they were decades ago. In the 1950's, Cornell would have been filled with people from Exeter, Andover, and other private schools. When I went in the early 2000's, most students were graduates of public schools.
In my hometown of Toledo, OH, the most elite private school of St. John's Jesuit is actually having trouble competing for the academically talented students, most of whom now choose to stay in their suburban school districts.
Steve
Did you have inside information on this:
Alumna donates 128 million dollars to her high school:
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/local/20070919_George_School_gets__128_5M.html
You are getting good at predictions
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