Mixing Them Up at School

In India, people will send their kids to schools at the other end of town if that’s where the good schools are. And costs in good schools are high too. In the West, on the other hand, schooling is free provided you send your kids to the neighborhood school. That provision has led parents in the West to want to live in areas with good schools, which in turn drives up real estate prices in those areas.

But I am guessing you knew all that already.

That leads me to what Carl Chancellor and Richard D. Kahlenberg ask:
“Which sorts of investments in education give the greatest bang for the buck?”
In the West, due to the neighborhood school model I described above, the choices were:
a)     Increase spending in schools; or
b)     Increase economic integration in schools.
Option (a) is self-explanatory, so I’ll skip that. Option (b) requires making cheap housing available even in the more affluent/middle class areas. If you did that, (more of) the poorer kids would end up going to middle class schools.

So which option would produce better results? Montgomery County in the US tried option (b); and it has produced “far greater academic gains for poor children”. Why? Chancellor and Kahlenberg cite the following reasons:
a)     Peers: Having classmates who do their homework and generally value education has a positive influence on the poorer kids.
b)     Parents: Middle-class parents are more involved and come to PTA meetings. They are also the “squeaky wheel”, demanding the best for their kids from schools.
c)      Teachers: The best teachers don’t exactly seek out poorer schools. They tend to teach at the better/middle class schools.

So maybe the much reviled Kapil Sibal was right after all in trying option (b) back home. Having the poorer kids go to middle class schools does increase the odds for those kids. Of course, it is still essential that the middle class kids far outnumber the poorer ones; otherwise, the school flips and becomes a government school. And Sibal’s ratio does ensure that the flip doesn’t happen.

I never thought I would ever write a blog supporting anything Sibal ever did!

Comments

  1. Ramiah KumarJuly 24, 2017 at 3:54 PM

    I am not sure which Sibal scheme is referred in this blog. I am not very knowledgeable on this subject, I admit.

    There was one scheme in which Sibal directed schools to make students do many, many tests and keep the record of all performances, to the effect exam marks are no longer the criteria. Virtually a kind of "every week (or at best every fortnight) is one semester"!

    Who will do all the clerical drudgery involved became a big question. Government will only say, "Do it, will you". Helpless school managements will ditto these words to the teachers, for they are not allowed a 'say' on education. Anyway, what happened was teachers more or less became clerks. They were rendered dispirited with the profession, which by itself has the potential to offer job satisfaction and joy of teaching. At any rate, all the teachers we knew hated not only the scheme but also its perpetrator! All of them, I am inclined to believe, must have voted for BJP for just this reason alone! :-)

    If some other marvelous scheme of Sibal is being addressed here in this blog, maybe another blog can highlight its details and merits. I do not recall any, but do accept many good schemes are surely possible at policy making level and might have been promoted too.

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