Lumifer comments on Innovation's low-hanging fruits: on the demand or supply sides? - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Stuart_Armstrong 25 February 2014 02:58PM

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Comment author: Lumifer 26 February 2014 05:33:33PM *  6 points [-]

I mean, what sizes do you mean by “district”? 5 km? 50 km? 500 km? If the first, the kids can just commute to a different school

Oh, I see.

In the US school-level education is local -- it's run by towns via school boards and is paid for in large part by local property taxes. It is not run by state or federal government. Typically each town has its own school district or several small towns might have a joint school district. The quality of school districts varies a LOT, even for districts physically close to each other.

One consequence of this arrangement is that if you go to a public school you must go to the public school of the town in which you live (there are some exceptions, but that's the general rule). You cannot go to the school of the neighboring town -- it will not accept you.

That is why buying a residence in a town is simultaneously a choice of which public school your kids will go to.

Obviously if you are willing to pay for a private school your kids can go wherever.

Comment author: [deleted] 27 February 2014 07:30:30AM 1 point [-]

Thank you. Things make sense now.

For anyone reading this: The thread “Worth remembering (when comparing ‘the US’ to ‘Europe’)” is interesting. (I'd promote it to Main so that new additions to its comment thread are more likely to be seen.)