News of the day

[mzrowan]

The Senate has compromised its way to 60 votes, and is on track to pass its healthcare bill by Dec. 24. BBC version, Globe & Mail version.

The NYT looks at some of the hidden pork barrels in the Senate healthcare bill.

Results from cognitive neuroscience studies are beginning to change the way children are taught. In particular, children are

Comments

[curgoth]

I'm fairly consistently pleased to be represented by Dr. Bennett. She's pretty good on most things I care about.

[icedrake]

I'm curious about this phrase...
"Vivid illustration of the abandonment of the public system by those who can afford to bail."

Could you expand?

[horsetraveller]

White people with money aren't attending public schools.

9% of students in public school are white, compared with 30% of people in the population who are white.
Not sure how the math works out on that, but it looks like 60% of the whites aren't in public school. They are elsewhere.

Who's left: 85% of students come from low income families.
Not sure what percent of population are considered low income: is it the lowest 10 percentile, or is it half low income, almost half middle class, a little bit really rich, or what. But 85% is probably a skewed number as well.

[icedrake]

I wasn't asking for clarification on the meaning of the statement, but the reasoning behind it.

[horsetraveller]

Sorry to tell you the obvious.

The reasoning? Beyond the fact that parents who can afford to send their kids to private schools think they would do a disservice to them if they sent them to public schools?

It is a common argument in Ontario that schools depend on middle class parents to agitate to make the schools decent (decent funding, modern equipment and current textbooks and library books, appropriate limitations on bad teacher behaviour). When the government of the day wanted to give tax breaks to allow parents to send their kids to religious or otherwise private schools of their choice, this was seen as a bad thing for the quality of public schools. The argument was that if a critical mass of middle class parents did not have a personal stake in the public schools (ie their kids weren't there) then the quality of the schools for everyone would suffer.

[lightcastle]

The cognitive sci stuff is interesting.