So as to not keep you guessing, I suspect your private school was both better funded and had a larger percentage of middle to high income kids. You said your school took all economic backgrounds - but what was the breakdown, and how "low" on the economic ladder? At my public high school, about 66% of the students were on free or reduced lunch. (I was on my newspaper and I crunched the numbers one time.) Our school was also not, in general, a bastion of academic achievemnt.
For standardized tests like the SATs, there's a strong correlation between performance and household income.
Oh, and if someone at my school had physically attacked our principal in the cafeteria, the administrators would have restrained the kid very quickly, and the kid would have been expelled. It wouldn't have been instantaneous like in your school, but it certainly would have happened.
("Free or reduced lunch" means the kid's guardians have an income low enough that the state is willing to sell lunch to him/her for a reduced price or free.)
I came from a very poor school, we couldn't afford a lot of things other schools took for granted. We were a rural community and many kids had to do farming chores before going to school. My father had to drive 60 miles each way to get to a factory job. Yet our school excelled in SAT scores and the percentage of students going on to college was much higher than the state average. The reason was the community; parents were concerned about education, not just needing a daytime sitter. My mother was a custodi
So as to not keep you guessing, I suspect your private school was both better funded and had a larger percentage of middle to high income kids. Having attended a parochial school myself (even though I'm not Catholic), I'd say you suspect wrong. Most private schools spend less than half as much money per student than public schools! Most of our teachers were Nuns, Jesuits, or lay teachers that worked for little more than room and board. The janitorial work was all done by the students themselves, so we had o
The way you phrase this, it sounds like "rich people get better grades because they're rich" in a lefty-hippie-eat-the-rich way. I'd counter that the performance delta you see between high-and-low incomes in SAT scores is more accurately presented in the reverse: higher SATs indicates a greater liklihood of financial success.
In other, simpler, words, if you're smart, you're going to be more successful. No mater how much you wish that there were untapped geniuses in the ghetto, for the most part the people
Religion and Schooling (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Religion and Schooling (Score:3, Insightful)
For standardized tests like the SATs, there's a strong correlation between performance and household income.
Oh, and if someone at my school had physically attacked our principal in the cafeteria, the administrators would have restrained the kid very quickly, and the kid would have been expelled. It wouldn't have been instantaneous like in your school, but it certainly would have happened.
("Free or reduced lunch" means the kid's guardians have an income low enough that the state is willing to sell lunch to him/her for a reduced price or free.)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Religion and Schooling (Score:2)
Re:Religion and Schooling (Score:2)
Re:Religion and Schooling (Score:2)
The way you phrase this, it sounds like "rich people get better grades because they're rich" in a lefty-hippie-eat-the-rich way. I'd counter that the performance delta you see between high-and-low incomes in SAT scores is more accurately presented in the reverse: higher SATs indicates a greater liklihood of financial success.
In other, simpler, words, if you're smart, you're going to be more successful. No mater how much you wish that there were untapped geniuses in the ghetto, for the most part the people