In a lot of states it is conventional to have special classes and/or schools for the highest academic achievers (the “gifted and talented” (a.k.a., those who read books instead of play video games and watch TV)). Massachusetts, however, isn’t one of them. It doesn’t seem to be illegal to do this. This letter on massgifted.org (“MAGE”!) says that “We have 407 school districts in MA but only about a dozen of them have programs for the gifted…”
Our Boston suburb of Happy Valley wants to spend $50 million on a same-size replacement for the K-8 school building. If the experience of other towns is anything to go by, it will cost $100 million. There are roughly 600 students who use this building, which means that the $100 million cost amounts to $166,667 per student.
This is roughly comparable to the endowment-per-student at some of our nation’s most prestigious and richest colleges and universities, e.g., Johns Hopkins, Boston College, Tufts, Wake Forest, Brandeis, Bates, et al. It is substantially more than some great colleges and universities, such as Hanover, Barnard, Georgetown University, Carnegie Mellon, et al.
[It may actually be more than the real endowment per student. A money-expert friend who has served as a college trustee says “The dirty secret is that these endowment numbers are not net of debt. A college can boost its ranking simply by borrowing money and putting it in the endowment. Also, when the college invests in a leveraged private equity or hedge fund, the entire nominal amount of the investment is recorded as part of the endowment. The real numbers are typically at least 30 percent lower.” He cited RPI as one of the worst examples of a school using leverage (not a bad example from the point of view of the president, who gets paid more than $7 million per year).]
If we wanted to boost our property values, why not keep the old building (add a few Japanese split-system HVAC units) and use the $100 million to set up something in the academic realm? Property values in Lexington, Brookline, and Newton have been off the charts because of their schools’ reputations. Houses in those towns sell within days, oftentimes to Asian-American cash buyers.
Since, by comparison to Maryland, Florida, or Texas even those suburbs don’t have much to offer gifted and talented students, why not make the “something in the academic realm” a gifted and talented program? Childless homeowners in our town can pocket a $2 million wire transfer from Hong Kong each time the parent of an academically advanced child is drawn in by the offering.
Maybe our town is too passionate about mediocrity to do this, but if you consider that suburbs ringing a city compete with each other, isn’t it strange that none of the towns would try it? Massachusetts towns have a lot of independence in terms of how they fund and run schools. Why wouldn’t town property owners get together and vote to make their property a lot more valuable? Are they more passionate about mediocrity than about getting rich? Or is there a flaw in the above analysis such that this wouldn’t be a likely way to raise real estate values?
Related:
Isn’t it deplorable behavior to imply that some students are not gifted and talented?
In my neck of the woods, I’ve found it hard to correlate better outcomes for kids that went through “gifted” programs than those that don’t. And 2 of my 3 kids were in them.
I’ve come to think of them as wastes of money and really only good for complicating social strata (“gifted” kids all hang out together), allowing parents to brag about how smart Johnny is, and providing another thing for parents to argue with administrators about (“if you don’t put my Jane into the gifted program, I’m going to the school board!”)
Phil, you and MAGE are missing the possibility that essentially every kid in Massachusetts is gifted and talented, and hence the regular public schools are already de facto facilities for the G&T, leaving no possibility for differentiation between districts.
How sad that there are 12 districts in your state in which not all kids are G&T, so they need to have special programs for them!
I don’t really want to increase property values, I’m already paying through the nose for our current assessment.
@Henry, people in Massachusetts should not complain about higher taxes! Aren’t property taxes in Boston area only around 1%? Those in some deplorable neighborhoods of Texas are 2.5-3%. How can a great virtuous progressive neighborhood have only one-third tax?