• @[email protected]
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    3 days ago

    Eh, some of those provide value:

    • land lords - good ones fix stuff
    • insurance - good ones pay out claims
    • private/charter schools - provide competition for public schools, and generally both get better as a result; we like our charter school, but we only went because our local admin was driving teachers away (since been replaced)

    I got nothing for the rest.

    • @[email protected]
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      143 days ago

      In another thread someone pointed out that there’s land lords and there’s property management. Sometimes one entity is both, but not always. Property management provides value for money- i don’t want to deal with maintaining the building myself, so I’ll pay someone to do it. Landlords just make money because they happen to own the place, but provide little to no value.

      Also private schools I think mostly are a vehicle for racism and undermining public schools. I don’t think they’re good.

      • @[email protected]
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        43 days ago

        Property management is a service a landlord could pay to handle maintenance, and they have an incentive to keep costs low because the landlord could always pick another management firm. Some are good, but I just can’t get over that conflict of interest.

        I was more referring to mom and pop landlords, who actually care about the property and don’t want to deal with vacancies, so they’ll sometimes actually lose money to keep tenants happy to just not deal with it.

        And I really don’t have a problem with private schools, as long as they don’t receive public funding. Vouchers are dumb.

        Charter schools are another beast entirely. They need to post good test scores to keep the charter, they often can’t pick their students (ours uses a lottery), they often can’t charge any fees or tuition (so 100% publicly funded), etc. So they end up being like public schools without bus service where the school has a little more choice on how they approach curriculum (though they need to cover the same material).

        • @[email protected]
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          23 days ago

          I was more referring to mom and pop landlords, who actually care about the property and don’t want to deal with vacancies

          This is a scenario where the landlord (owner) is also the property manager.

          I don’t know a lot about the details of charter schools, but “they need to post good test scores” sounds like fertile ground for perverse incentives.

          • @[email protected]
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            13 days ago

            Public schools do too, but for public schools it just impacts their funding, whereas charter schools could go out of business. So there’s absolutely a concern of teaching to the test in both scenarios, the stakes are just higher for charter schools.

            So charter schools need to simultaneously differentiate themselves to attract parents, while also doing as well or better then public schools. Ours:

            • teaches Latin - a bit of a gimmick, but my kid loves it
            • teaches math a year ahead
            • has two full-time teachers in every class - my guess is it’s because they don’t have the substitute system

            It’s annoying dropping off and picking up every day, but the teachers seem happy, unlike the local public school that has a ton of turnover.