one time warren buffet told michelle rhee he knew how to solve the crisis in public schools
(this was an anecdote related to us by michelle rhee in her speech at NYNP’s summer training retreat)
she asked him how, and he said: make private schools illegal, and set up kids to be sent to public schools by random draw. when you have upper east side kids potentially heading to school in the south bronx (a fairly reasonable commute for them by the way), probably suddenly schools will improve drastically in a shockingly timely fashion.
he is, i am pretty sure, more or less right, and it really bums me out that in the US giving families choice - not something i’m exactly against, mind you - is so AUTOMATICALLY, taken-for-grantedly considered a far superior method of combating the education crisis over FORCING it to become a TRULY COLLECTIVE problem, one in which the burden, and thus the responsibility and impetus to find a solution ASAP - falls on all of us equally because it’s all of our problem, which frankly, it SHOULD weigh on all of us equally, because JESUS FUCKING CHRIST, THESE ARE OUR CHILDREN WE ARE TALKING ABOUT, how people can be so blase about how absolutely shittily we as a country deal with our most vulnerable and helpless population, one which AGAIN HOLY FUCK YOU’D THINK “TRYING TO DO OUR BEST BY MOTHERFUCKING CHILDREN” WOULD BE KIND OF A NO-BRAINER TO SIGN ON TO (and ACTUALLY sign on to, not sign on to “family values” style)… it just boggles my mind, breaks my heart, etc. etc. etc.
This is actually more or less the system in San Francisco, minus the whole “making private schools illegal” thing, which I don’t think you could ever make happen, realistically. It’s a disaster, because everyone with the resources to do so sends their kids out of the city to private school, and so all of the public schools suck equally.
