College prep in the "earliest years"? Give me a break. Measuring the effectiveness of our schools by the percentage of students who go on to college is the wrong way to go.

Otherwise, I agree with Brown's comments wholeheartedly. Becky's experiences as a teacher near Palm Springs instilled an understanding of how big a role parents can play and how much a disadvantage an unsupportive family can be in a kid's education.

I don't disagree with your comments about college prep and actually I don't think that Brown does, either.

I would say, however, that have a college prep track available to students regardless of what school they go to is important.

He focuses a lot more on money than I do, and I disagree with the man a lot, but the post spurred thought and not merely reaction, so it gets good marks from me.

I found this statement horrifying. I translated it as "We must make sure that the worst students get the best schools money can buy, starving other schools as necessary so that they all finish even."

Yes, an unsupportive family is a huge disadvantage. But what evidence is there that any public school, regardless of how generously it is funded, can even ameliorate that disadvantage? Newark, anyone?

Sammler, I'm not thinking of net spending, specifically (I'm not in favor of spending more on education), but it did get me thinking about abstract spending distribution.

Abstractly speaking, is it better to spend money on a computer lab in a wealthy school district where all the kids have computers at home, or a poorer school district where that could be their only exposure? Which teachers should be paid more?

I'm not sure that school systems can substantially mitigate the disadvantage of disinterested parents. It's a really good point. I'm a firm believer that more money does not equal a better education in and of itself. I also believe, however, that a lack of funding is less likely to hurt a wealthy kid from the suburbs with a stay-at-home mother than an inner-city kid with one parent that has to work horrendous hours.

I definitely think teachers make the difference in education.

Example... my middle school. At the time of it's reopening, it was deemed the most technological school in the world. Governor Ann Richards (who mooned my sister) visited the school, as well as political officials from all over the globe. During those days the teachers made a bigger show of effort. But, underneath it all... well... the school was overrun with gang violence and drugs. The teachers feared many students, and quit after their first year. The school went downhill from there. The technology tended to get in the way more than it helped. There was so much focus on using all the technology that it usually trumped any real learning. At the start of each class, the teachers were required to submit their attendence records. This usually caused the network to die as every teacher did this. Not to mention that it ate up precious classroom time while they all did this. I don't think it ever worked right, and even if it did, it was SLOW. That is just one example, but practically every class had to use the computers and network in some way, even when it proved to be counterproductive.

Fastforward to highschool. Now I went to highschool with some of the richest kids in the country. The school on the otherhand, was free from gang voilence (mostly... there was an occassional scuffle involving weapons, but it was rare) and drugs.... well... there were drugs, but not many dealers. The one thing we did have a surplus of was rats. That, leaky roofs and broken AC units made for a fun time towards the end of the school year. Our computer lab was a joke. CompSci had one class, and about ten students using ten year old computers. The school did have an abundence of well educated teachers. Not all of them were top notch, but we certainly had more than our fair share. We even had teachers with Ph.D.'s. You don't see that often at the highschool level...especially not multiple teachers. Needless to say that our graduating classes had tons of college bound students (for more reasons than just the money their parents had). My graduating class had many students starting college at the sophomore or higher level. My sister's graduating class had 11 valedictorians.