I've read the things you have written previously on consolidated county school boards with regard to Maryland, even before I had children, and sit here in Florida asking myself why I have a consolidated county school district that I am relatively satisfied with. The answers I have come up with: in Florida it is against the law for public employees to go on strike. My property taxes are capped by state law to a max increase of 3 percent per year. Despite not having state income taxes there is universal Pre-Kindergarten at the state level and many churches with schools and daycares participate in this. Both my elementary school children have never been in a class with more than 23 to 25 students and have seen teachers hired and classes split when they get to this higher number. Florida Virtual school has been advertised regularly and was an option even before covid. There is open enrollment for any school in the district if there is room, so if I don't like the local school zoned for I can send my child to any school in the district and all that is required is 30 dollars and a single form filled out. There are many "exit" options within the given system. There has also been republican domination of the state legislature that is antagonistic to the already weak union.
Re: "parental incarceration has beneficial effects on children" -- 2021 article in AER.
My intuitions:
(a) The statistical finding very probably masks a mix of positive and negative effects.
(b) A substantial subset of children very probably experience more harm than benefit, if the father is incarcerated.
I don't say this in order to argue against incarceration (incapacitation) of criminals.
My point is that condign punishment of a criminal, who has children (or spouse, or others who count on him or need him), intrinsically involves risk of major harm to intimate *innocent* third parties. This is a tragic aspect of a substantial fraction of real-existing punishment. Perhaps this is an implicit message in the old saw, "A good man is hard to find."
An aside:
Perhaps this is one of many reasons why Dante's masterpiece, *Inferno,* captures the imagination. In Dante's vision of Hell, the damned experience incarceration/incapacitation in a variety of characteristic punishments. Their fates are metaphors of the specific wrongdoings, and so communicate: "This is *how* what you did is wrong." More to the point, the metaphorical punishments -- unlike worldly incarceration -- don't impose negative externalities on the wrongdoer's innocent intimates, because the punishment occur in the afterlife. Presumably, infernal punishments have a positive externality -- general deterrence -- insofar as the vividness of Dante's poetry inspires deeper comprehension of wrongdoing, and greater fear of a purportedly ineluctable punishment in the afterlife.
Reducing incarceration rates of the children 5% isn't much and it doesn't say how much it improves socioeconomic outcome. Given that, one should be especially careful drawing conclusions from one study.
There's a Freakonomics Radio podcast about an RCT study that found mentoring made outcomes worse. It seems a rather profound outcome that should not be ignored but it doesn't make it true.
Assume both are true. What does it tell us if a kid is better with parents incarcerated and no mentor?
Thanks for posting good sources. Yes, for many children, the quality of the father is more important than the presence. Incarceration of the father, then, is a blessing for the child.
My point (in this thread) is simply that another subset of children probably suffer more harm than good if the father is incarcerated. I guess it's a point about statistical generalizations. One wants a narrow, appropriate reference class, if possible.
School district consolidation is a small reason for the diminished participation of parents in local education policy. The big, big, big reason is that local school boards don't have much power anymore. Among other things, state laws and regulations tell them what the qualifications of their teachers must be and what courses they must offer and what those courses must contain (they can offer more but certain courses are required of all students). They can decide to build a new school and name it but the state government and regional accreditation agencies will significantly constrain what the school will include. They can negotiate a teachers contract but the state has probably already told them e.g., that after three years of employment, no teacher can be fired except as part of a reduction in force and lowest seniority teachers must be fired first. And, of course, there are a plethora of federal laws.
"One of Mangual’s recurring themes is how “hyper-concentrated” serious violent crime is in the United States—“both geographically (in small slices of metro areas) and demographically (among young, disproportionately Black and Latino males).” "
You realize that noticing that indicates you are guilty of crimethink. Forget you ever read it. Or at the very least pretend it doesn't mean anything.
1) Our school board responded to its failures by staggering elections. Since there can be no one wave election where you elect a majority that changes policy the natural tendency of the activists and unions to get turnout in low turnout elections tends to keep things in their hands.
2) Entrenched education interests tend not to split their vote in the general. By contrast I found that absent some coordinating figure (like De Santis) you often get two candidates splitting the non-teachers union vote.
3) Some school districts allow the existing board to appoint new figures after resignations, rather than going to a special election. They tend to appoint people just like the person who resigned even when they resigned in scandal.
I suspect that this is how a lot of COVID will get brushed under the rug. People with the taint of COVID school policy will resign but be replaced by other progressives that probably would have done the same thing and support all the progressive school policies, but can deny how they would have handled COVID if they were in charge.
4) The larger school districts tend to be in the South because population density was lower and it was natural for school districts to be run at the county level. By contrast, the smallest school districts tend to be in the northeast where each town could support a middle and high school.
Do you live in Florida? Asking because I do and am curious if my extrapolated local view is incomplete. I view local county conditions being very decisive and DeSantis as being a spotlight/amplifier of issues that already exist. So he contributes, but I don't view him as the leading coordinating force that he seems to be viewed as nationally, at least on county school boards.
What happened in my recent school board elections is that there was a single progressive candidate that got all the organized support and two non-progressives splitting the vote. So the progressive got like high 30s while the other two got low 30s. A second school board seat had the non-progressive win by like 12 votes with a somewhat similar distribution.
It it had been a head to head matchup I think the non-progressive would have done better. There was no coordination though. The non-progressive campaigns were just random people that were pissed at the school board running on their own dime with no organization.
What county you are in matters quite a bit with regard to both questions. In my county there are already free public charter schools if you don't like any of the public schools and there are a few religious private schools from 5K to 15K a year. From what I have seen both the charter and private schools seem to do an inferior job preparing kids for high school and they come in behind those that went to the public schools. The caveat of the null hypothesis and whatever your level of genetic determinism probably applies here with regard to whether being a little behind matters in the end. The county I am in is over 600K people, so not tiny, but the counties for Orlando, Tampa, and Miami are all at least 1.5 million or more. The voucher stuff might matter more for the larger cities because the private schools are a bigger deal there. There are also a couple of public gifted high schools in my county that you have to test into, so they have zero problem kids or issues. They also don't really have sports teams because they are so academically oriented. I have no idea if these exist in other counties without being charter or private high schools.
US citizen executives of tiktok in US have recently said China has no access to the data. I tend to believe them. If so, it is not spyware. Will that change? I wouldn't bet on it.
The data on Chicago murders is fascinating. Thx. I also liked the left brain, right brain part
I think you are off target on consolidation. I would bet very few large school districts grew by consolidation. They grow by adding population. Most of the consolidation is in the smallest school districts and often ones losing population and unable to sustain even one high school. Anyway, I don't think consolidation is the cause of school districts getting too big. At least not in central Illinois. Note: I've heard Illinois has more school districts than any other state
I've read the things you have written previously on consolidated county school boards with regard to Maryland, even before I had children, and sit here in Florida asking myself why I have a consolidated county school district that I am relatively satisfied with. The answers I have come up with: in Florida it is against the law for public employees to go on strike. My property taxes are capped by state law to a max increase of 3 percent per year. Despite not having state income taxes there is universal Pre-Kindergarten at the state level and many churches with schools and daycares participate in this. Both my elementary school children have never been in a class with more than 23 to 25 students and have seen teachers hired and classes split when they get to this higher number. Florida Virtual school has been advertised regularly and was an option even before covid. There is open enrollment for any school in the district if there is room, so if I don't like the local school zoned for I can send my child to any school in the district and all that is required is 30 dollars and a single form filled out. There are many "exit" options within the given system. There has also been republican domination of the state legislature that is antagonistic to the already weak union.
Re: "parental incarceration has beneficial effects on children" -- 2021 article in AER.
My intuitions:
(a) The statistical finding very probably masks a mix of positive and negative effects.
(b) A substantial subset of children very probably experience more harm than benefit, if the father is incarcerated.
I don't say this in order to argue against incarceration (incapacitation) of criminals.
My point is that condign punishment of a criminal, who has children (or spouse, or others who count on him or need him), intrinsically involves risk of major harm to intimate *innocent* third parties. This is a tragic aspect of a substantial fraction of real-existing punishment. Perhaps this is an implicit message in the old saw, "A good man is hard to find."
An aside:
Perhaps this is one of many reasons why Dante's masterpiece, *Inferno,* captures the imagination. In Dante's vision of Hell, the damned experience incarceration/incapacitation in a variety of characteristic punishments. Their fates are metaphors of the specific wrongdoings, and so communicate: "This is *how* what you did is wrong." More to the point, the metaphorical punishments -- unlike worldly incarceration -- don't impose negative externalities on the wrongdoer's innocent intimates, because the punishment occur in the afterlife. Presumably, infernal punishments have a positive externality -- general deterrence -- insofar as the vividness of Dante's poetry inspires deeper comprehension of wrongdoing, and greater fear of a purportedly ineluctable punishment in the afterlife.
Reducing incarceration rates of the children 5% isn't much and it doesn't say how much it improves socioeconomic outcome. Given that, one should be especially careful drawing conclusions from one study.
There's a Freakonomics Radio podcast about an RCT study that found mentoring made outcomes worse. It seems a rather profound outcome that should not be ignored but it doesn't make it true.
Assume both are true. What does it tell us if a kid is better with parents incarcerated and no mentor?
Thanks for posting good sources. Yes, for many children, the quality of the father is more important than the presence. Incarceration of the father, then, is a blessing for the child.
My point (in this thread) is simply that another subset of children probably suffer more harm than good if the father is incarcerated. I guess it's a point about statistical generalizations. One wants a narrow, appropriate reference class, if possible.
School district consolidation is a small reason for the diminished participation of parents in local education policy. The big, big, big reason is that local school boards don't have much power anymore. Among other things, state laws and regulations tell them what the qualifications of their teachers must be and what courses they must offer and what those courses must contain (they can offer more but certain courses are required of all students). They can decide to build a new school and name it but the state government and regional accreditation agencies will significantly constrain what the school will include. They can negotiate a teachers contract but the state has probably already told them e.g., that after three years of employment, no teacher can be fired except as part of a reduction in force and lowest seniority teachers must be fired first. And, of course, there are a plethora of federal laws.
"One of Mangual’s recurring themes is how “hyper-concentrated” serious violent crime is in the United States—“both geographically (in small slices of metro areas) and demographically (among young, disproportionately Black and Latino males).” "
You realize that noticing that indicates you are guilty of crimethink. Forget you ever read it. Or at the very least pretend it doesn't mean anything.
1) Our school board responded to its failures by staggering elections. Since there can be no one wave election where you elect a majority that changes policy the natural tendency of the activists and unions to get turnout in low turnout elections tends to keep things in their hands.
2) Entrenched education interests tend not to split their vote in the general. By contrast I found that absent some coordinating figure (like De Santis) you often get two candidates splitting the non-teachers union vote.
3) Some school districts allow the existing board to appoint new figures after resignations, rather than going to a special election. They tend to appoint people just like the person who resigned even when they resigned in scandal.
I suspect that this is how a lot of COVID will get brushed under the rug. People with the taint of COVID school policy will resign but be replaced by other progressives that probably would have done the same thing and support all the progressive school policies, but can deny how they would have handled COVID if they were in charge.
4) The larger school districts tend to be in the South because population density was lower and it was natural for school districts to be run at the county level. By contrast, the smallest school districts tend to be in the northeast where each town could support a middle and high school.
Do you live in Florida? Asking because I do and am curious if my extrapolated local view is incomplete. I view local county conditions being very decisive and DeSantis as being a spotlight/amplifier of issues that already exist. So he contributes, but I don't view him as the leading coordinating force that he seems to be viewed as nationally, at least on county school boards.
I don't live in Florida.
What happened in my recent school board elections is that there was a single progressive candidate that got all the organized support and two non-progressives splitting the vote. So the progressive got like high 30s while the other two got low 30s. A second school board seat had the non-progressive win by like 12 votes with a somewhat similar distribution.
It it had been a head to head matchup I think the non-progressive would have done better. There was no coordination though. The non-progressive campaigns were just random people that were pissed at the school board running on their own dime with no organization.
How have you found the school situation in Florida?
Do you think that the new voucher program will be fully funded? It would be pointless to pass it but everyone be on a waiting list.
What county you are in matters quite a bit with regard to both questions. In my county there are already free public charter schools if you don't like any of the public schools and there are a few religious private schools from 5K to 15K a year. From what I have seen both the charter and private schools seem to do an inferior job preparing kids for high school and they come in behind those that went to the public schools. The caveat of the null hypothesis and whatever your level of genetic determinism probably applies here with regard to whether being a little behind matters in the end. The county I am in is over 600K people, so not tiny, but the counties for Orlando, Tampa, and Miami are all at least 1.5 million or more. The voucher stuff might matter more for the larger cities because the private schools are a bigger deal there. There are also a couple of public gifted high schools in my county that you have to test into, so they have zero problem kids or issues. They also don't really have sports teams because they are so academically oriented. I have no idea if these exist in other counties without being charter or private high schools.
US citizen executives of tiktok in US have recently said China has no access to the data. I tend to believe them. If so, it is not spyware. Will that change? I wouldn't bet on it.
The data on Chicago murders is fascinating. Thx. I also liked the left brain, right brain part
I think you are off target on consolidation. I would bet very few large school districts grew by consolidation. They grow by adding population. Most of the consolidation is in the smallest school districts and often ones losing population and unable to sustain even one high school. Anyway, I don't think consolidation is the cause of school districts getting too big. At least not in central Illinois. Note: I've heard Illinois has more school districts than any other state