Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion NYT opinion: No (rich) child left behind

Oh, I don't know. Maybe the prison industrial complex? the money spent on appropriate education and social programs, (oh, and perhaps comprehensive sex education and access to birth control) would be less than the cost to society of not investing in ALL children.

I agree that using the library with small children is a risk than many people really can't afford, and I think it's reasonable to suggest that people who are financially struggling probably stop going to the library as frequently after the first time they lose a DVD or book.

There is no way I would be able to check out the 20-30 books we check out at a time and keeping them in a spot my child has easy access to all day long if replacing them would be impossible for us. So far we've only lost one book, which was easy to replace used in good condition on amazon ($6) but for another family that one $6 book might have kept them out of the library for a long time.

I know that this is a common defense of why social program spending is "encouraging" this problem. I'm not disagreeing on philosophical terms, just to state that up front. I think that it has been addressed with research, however--

what that research shows is that if you make family planning methods free/affordable to poor WOMEN, then birth rates plummet in that cohort. More reliable birth control methods which the WOMAN controls... are expensive.

My apologies for not digging out the original article--

live-science review of research study on providing free contraception



That is a truly astonishing result. HUGE difference.

Hormonal methods are the most reliable-- but they are simply out of (financial) reach of many poor women.

But that is FAR cheaper than welfare for a series of accidental children, medicaid for the mom and those kids, and later, prison for some of them.

That sounds pretty stark, but it's also realistic.

So true.

Indeed. That's why I always find it so shockingly dumbfounding that the same people who so readily cast blame on people for circumstances they're totally unequipped to understand are the same people who are often arguing that government should be run as a business.

YES! Run it as a business, please! History has demonstrated that humans are a resource which, if you invest properly, pay off big!

The cost to incarcerate one prisoner in CA, as of 2008-2009, was $47k. That was roughly the median household income at the time. Factor in government subsistence now required by any dependents left behind, and the total cost to society goes even higher.

http://www.lao.ca.gov/laoapp/laomenus/sections/crim_justice/6_cj_inmatecost.aspx?catid=3

Slippery slope fallacy.

It's usually not just one book. My friend's kid lost her privledges because she lost five books. That's $30 even at the thrifty rate. And she's a reader. The kid reads books. But, for now she has lost her access to the library. What I'm describing is the grey area in between.
Here, people work. They are employed (oilfield). They are not well educated and many have large families starting as teenagers. Everybody has food in their belly and there's no homeless children. Two years ago less than half of the kids passed the math standards test for the year. They raised it to over 90% by afterschool tutoring at the school. That's probably waaay TMI, but these articles always leave it out that not everybody is going to college, or even thinks much of it. If the system is getting easier to "game" maybe it's getting better at sorting the people who want an education from those who don't. And from what everybody says there's not enough seats in the good schools for people who want theid kids to have a good education. Why not try to make the schools fit the peoples needs in stead of trying to make the people fit one idea of "a good education".
If a kid lives in the ghetto you need to make his school a safe haven and teach basic literacy. If a kid lives in the oilfield you need to teach him votech in case he doesn't finish school he has something to fall back on. If too many people are hyperfocused on gaming the system it's because you need to build more good schools in those neighborhoods.

You get no argument from me that, in an ideal world, life would be incentive compatible. I would be considered rather Draconian by many with respect to my views on enabling adults' dependent behaviour. But when the recipient is a child external to the decision-making process, I see no benefit to the taxpayer of having a child go hungry, be exposed to violence, or become unemployable. That child is an innocent bystander to a flawed decision making process. Why should his lot in life be cast in stone because of his parents' failures? Social security, disability, and prison are economically more costly than ECE for at-risk children.

I'm not aware of comparable US figures, but from a consulting engagement with Correctional Service Canada, I know annual costs of federal incarceration run over $105k for men, and upwards of $120k for females. I would rather see lower crime rates, greater labour force participation, and tax remittances by successful program graduates. That makes good economic and ethical sense when viewed as a lifecycle decision.

Sadly, politicians are elected on a much shorter term, and their success is determined by pandering to myopic interests on all ends of the political spectrum.

The reason that I think that the study I mentioned above is so important here isn't just the way that it addresses birth rates in particular.

I think (personally) that it can also be extended to suggest that if you give people without financial means the TOOLS to do so, they don't "make bad choices." Not when they have real options to make better ones. The thing is that "enroll in this program" doesn't present a real choice to a parent who NEEDS to work those hours.

If you're talking about taxes and social services you're talking about much more than just the school system.