Congrats on that. Of course, your odds overall were, in fact, about one in eight.

These are dependent events since once selected a child cannot be reselected, and so you use the additive rule to determine the likelihood of a good result.

Unlike the 2021 MLB draft it doesn't matter whether Elijah is selected first or 25th, just that he gets picked for one of 25 slots out of 190 available. This is about .1315ish, which is slightly better than 1/8 (.1250).

My son, Morgan, is 4 and he'll be going into kindergarten the same week as his fifth birthday. Morgan and public schools is a recurring fear. I just know that I'd sell my organs on the blackmarket to get the boy a good education.

OK, "Absinthe," but the odds of his name being pulled on any individual drawing was one in 190, 189, etc. The balls were not all pulled out at the same time.

This is true. But the odds of any one individual's ball being pulled by the end of the draw remain the same whether they're taken out all at once or one at a time. If they say at the outset, "we're going to pull twenty-five names," then the odds of Elijah getting tapped by the end of the draw are the same as for any other kid - 25/190 - and they're the same as if they had a 25-ball scooping device that sucked 'em out all at once.

It changes matters if they pull out ten balls and then call you and say, "15 slots left, but we haven't pulled Elijah's ball yet" - at that point the odds that he'll make the cut are 15/180. The absolute worst the odds can be is if they pull 24 balls and they haven't pulled Elijah's name yet; at that point his odds are 1/166. Which is only like three times worse than the odds that you'll get your dollar back on a lottery ticket purchase.

Don't make me start explaining fractional-series sums or factorial properties of combinations vs. permutations. Nobody wants that. Also probably we should stop talking about Elijah's balls.

mathochists, all of you. high5, NP.

the point is driven home by Drum at Washington Monthly today - why does the administration not back off the deadlines for NCLB since everyone knows they are unattainable? Because they want public schools to fail them, exerting pressure to send money and vouchers to their friends in the charter and church school business. it's a vicious circle, since because of NCLB, too many teachers and public schools have reverted to teaching from the handouts, instead of encouraging creative thinking.

Congratulations on finding a good one. last year, getting our kid into middle school was like applying to college - applications to 4 different schools, ranging from the "i guess they won't get killed there" to the "please oh please make it happen." And then hope your kid LIKES the good one, because chances are their friends will be splitting up between the schools available.

I think the notion that a good public education used to be broadly available is one that romanticizes the past. On the other hand, I would accept that public schools used to be safer than they are now, especially in Philadelphia as of late. Oddly enough, our commercial pop culture is probably the cause: kids are taught to put themselves and their desires first, not to respect age or wisdom (which are UNCOOL). There is a sense of entitlement that frightens me almost as much as the savvy many kids exhibit in consumption. Many parents just don't seem to care about their children learning to be consumers first and citizens second. To the contrary, they only "helicopter" in with threats of litigation if someone interferes with junior's enjoyment.

Anyway, good luck with the nomadic charter school. Given the school's philosophy, I'm sure E. will have an interesting peer group.

BTW, teaching English schools? ;)

"I think the notion that a good public education used to be broadly available is one that romanticizes the past."

Not so. We also used to be a majority middle class nation and the era of good public schooling coincided with that- post ww2 through to the 60's. It's an enormous fucking lie that you can't get good education by throwing money at the problem because that's exactly how we had a good public education system (broadly) for 30 years or so. The decline in public education tracks with the decline in money which tracks with the rise of the anti-tax movement, the rise of the civil-rights movement, and the rise of the modern movement conservatives. Education is largely regional, but the general trend has been real easy to plot and it all comes down to the money drying up due to... people being cunts.

Not romanticized at all. The top tax rate was 70% and we were putting good use to most of it.

Ryan,
You sound like my physist friend (seriously I have one). I'm an artist and I like to mess with him about odds and likelyhoods. With us it becomes this weird philosophical discussion. Sure you toss the coin a hundred times but...

I think it's great that E got into a great school. We're in the middle of a job hunt then move to Portland and so it's going to be hit or miss this first year.

Congrats, Neal. We had a similar experience with Rita, who got into a great magnet program here in New Rochelle through a lottery. It runs pre-K through second grade, and then she goes to our local elementary school (solid if not quite as spectacular). Adding to the good fortune, she had the school's best pre-K teacher last year and has the best kindergarten teacher this year. We couldn't be happier with the great start she's getting. Jake gets three balls in the lottery when he's ready, so with luck he'll get to go as well. But it is, indeed, a shame that this kind of excellent public education isn't simply a given for all kids.

Tim, I don't think "good" public schooling was really all that widely available from WWII to the 60s. Sure, tax rates were higher, but GDP was also much lower. Sure, teachers' unions hadn't crippled or paralyzed local districts then, and schools in many areas were segregated, but I don't think that equates to good public education. Teaching methods were much different, with a larger focus on rote memorization and conformity rather than on critical thinking and individual development. Education wasn't all Leave it to Beaver and Ms. Landers. Contrary to the way our popular culture imagines our history, there was actually poverty in the U.S.A. in the 1950s. Public schooling is a complicated task influenced by numerous complex social and economic variables. Although things are grim in schools in many urban areas, I don't think that putting more money into those schools will solve the larger social problems that make obtaining a "good" public education difficult, whatever a "good" public education means in any event. Anyway, rant over. At least E. will be attending a school that seems as if it will be a safe place to learn, which is the sine qua non of education.

It is way past the time for parents to step up and demand sound educational practices in the public schools. It is not rocket science. (Or factorial properties of combinations vs. permutations for that matter...)
I am so tired of hearing about the struggle to improve reading test scores, while actual reading is cut back to make time for test preparation.

I live in an Eastern US city. Private kindegarden averages $15,000 a year and I don't dare send my kid to a city public school. He is only 3.5 years old but I think about this already. I am thinking about going back to school to be a teacher since at the private schools especially the Quaker ones the kids of faculty go for free.

Congrats on crossing the hurdle.

The best guarantee of your kid turning out well-educated is more to do with the parents than whatever school they go to. The right environment at home is far more important than any school, no matter how high-powered it's curriculum is.

Parents stress about this far too much. A good kid will do well most anywhere, even in a shitty city public school (like the one I went to).

But my daughter is only 6 months old so I'm sure I'll be stressing about this myself at some point.

There are several reasons why public education was supposedly better in yesteryear: 1. Schools were segregated and good education was not guaranteed to anyone without white skin. 2. Education, of any kind, was not guaranteed to kids with special needs (i.e. kids with physical or developmental disabilities). 3. Kids who were unlikely to excel in school were forced out or "encouraged" to leave before even entering high school or soon after their freshman year.

PhillyD is correct. The notion that all middle and working class families used to be guaranteed an excellent education is a romanticized falsehood. It's possible* that standards and achievement are declining for the people who "matter" (middle class whites without disabilities), but, overall, more kids are getting educated and getting educated better than they were 50 years ago.

*I say possible because college enrollment is at an all-time high.

The "yesteryear" to which I refer is not the 1950s, when I wasn't alive, but the 1970s and 80s, which, I believe, came after desegregation. We're on our way back down, and I think we're fooling ourselves if we say otherwise.

Have you guys been to a public school recently? Anyone who thinks that they are not on their way down is not paying attention. Ask long-time teachers. Check out this post from a great public teacher on Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/3/17/63016/1916

No Child Left Behind is a dismal failure. Certain powerful folks in this country want it to fail. Uneducated masses are easier to control. Unless you live in a wealthy neighborhood (and sometimes even then) the public schools are failing.

On more thing, Wes Clark has an amazing understanding of this topic. I listened to him give a great analysis of why our industrial age designed schools were failing. We need change that will work, not a pathetic program that will guarantee failure.

No Child Left Behind is such a horrible idea. Schools with the children that need the most help are being closed down and teachers are being chastized for having kids with low test scores. So the schools with low scores are having trouble holding onto and getting experienced teachers.

No Child Left Behind has to go. It cant be and shouldn't be fixed, it should just be thrown out.

I feel like I'm preaching to the choir here but it's something that gets me so mad.

Have you guys been to a public school recently? Anyone who thinks that they are not on their way down is not paying attention.

I guess it isn't too useful to make general anecdotal statements about the schools without some definition of criteria that define what a "good" education is or why that is on the "way down."

I went to public school in a fairly affluent suburb of Detroit in the 1980s. I keep in touch with a few teachers who are still there. I don't hear anything about declining quality from them. Their concern is principally that students now bring numerous gadgets to class such that they're not interested in paying attention. They also report that students show less respect for authority now (i.e., class is more unruly). The issue, from their point of view, isn't how much money is going in. It's external social factors that make the traditional school format less effective, especially where kids are getting more and more used to getting their way. I can only imagine that things are worse in urban schools such as those here in Philadelphia, where teachers are brutalized if they stop students from disrupting classes with their video iPods. Money isn't going to solve those problems. Those problems are symptomatic of larger problems with the social fabric in our country. I've found some of Neil Postman's writings in this area to be interesting (e.g., Entertaining Ourselves to Death, Disappearance of Childhood, Technopoly). It isn't about being socially conservative. It's about seeing how the commercial culture and explosion of technology we've collectively adopted has affected us. Neil Postman was a public school educator before he became a professor. He has some interesting insights. I highly recommend his books, although they end up leaving me feeling depressed because we can't stir the jam out of the pudding at this point.

"The issue, from their point of view, isn't how much money is going in. It's external social factors that make the traditional school format less effective, especially where kids are getting more and more used to getting their way."

This is true, I'm sure, and I especially appreciate the part about the traditional school format becoming less effective. That's kind of my point. The schools don't work well in our current society - they can't. They seem mired in a bureaucratic swamp with no way to pull themselves out. Traditional public schools don't have the flexibility or the funds (and yes, i think money is part of the solution) to adapt to a model that can be more effective for the time we live in, now. That was Clark's whole point, too. Industrial age public education doesn't work when you're not in the industrial age anymore. It's obsolete. We need a new design.

We're sending Elijah to public school, but it's a charter school where they do have the resources to think outside the box and try something different. They raise a lot of private cash in addition to the public funds to help to implement this vision, which requires teachers with additional training, smaller classes, and more considered facilities. Also, they require a lot of parental involvement to create a school community. Many parents already do this at typical public schools, but here, it's required.

I feel also that there is a general American attitude that does not value education that much - or at least many of our kids seem to have that attitude. I was raised believing it was the most important thing a parent could give his/her child. I know Neal wrote a lovely piece a while back about John Adams writing about this topic to his son. Maybe it's snobbish of me, but I think education IS the most important thing I can give Elijah. Neal and I are perhaps a little over the top on this issue, but it's how we both feel.

Obviously, there are numerous problems and concerns with public education, and just as many "fixes". It seems very, very difficult to find an effective and safe public education in much of this country. Real estate prices are not helping. We could not even begin to afford to buy a house in any of the "okay" school districts, never-mind the "excellent" ones. And we're not poor.

That's pathetic, and makes me nervous for our (America's) future.

You're right that American (pop) culture doesn't value education much. Just watch the crap on MTV that is engineered for teens. It's just not cool to be smart or to try hard in educational topics. In coming decades, I expect that people from emerging nations such as China and India, who do value education and who are willing to work hard to get ahead, are going to be laughing at us as we grow increasingly lazy until we can no longer compete in a global marketplace. Janine Garofalo used to say that when her parents would get on her case because she was lazy she'd remind them of all the times they said that they'd worked hard so she wouldn't have to. That's endemic to many of us. To borrow a phrase from Tom McGuane, we're a declining snivelization.

Painting with my broad brush, I'd say that we Americans are too interested in entertaining ourselves and living comfortably to be bothered with anything that is intellectually challenging or tedious. That doesn't say anything about public schools in particular, but it does say something about how we seem to speak out of both sides of our mouths as a culture when it comes to education. We like to say it's important, but then many of us want it to be easy, so it won't give junior esteem issues, etc. In the long run, those who are willing to work harder and with greater dedication will surpass us. Valuing education and hard work unfortunately just isn't something that can be legislated. It's more of a grassroots effort a la E's charter school.

Well put, PhillyD.

OK, not well put Philly D! Pop culture, MTV, lazy parents and the youth today are not the reasons that we have failing schools.

Throwing money at the issue obviously WILL solve the problem. The proof is in the fact that the most affluent zip codes with the largest School Tax revenues have the largest percentage of high performing schools. It is not as though wealthier parents make better parents. It is also not the case that wealthier kids make better students.

If you would like to blame some group of people for the fact that schools in cities throughout many of our states are failing, please put the blame where it lies. Conservatives do not like the fact that the founders of our nation were pro separation of church and state. Because of that fact, God and the Bible were kicked out of the classroom and ever since the conservatives have been doing everything they can to kill public schools.

Another possible place to lay the blame would be on legislators. You see in cities all across America, children are not getting the education they used to because every time the State budgets fall, education is the first thing they cut. They don’t do it because they hate kids – they do it because they know that the voters love kids. If the voters love kids, then they are more likely to vote to pass bond measures to make up the difference in the budget.

Conservatives say we don't need funding for Head Start, and other programs that prove that even the poor can learn to read and write when given opportunities during the most important years of development. They would rather that parents have to go through the local churches for early childhood education. If they can’t mandate a biblical education, then they can at least make it the most affordable form of early education for working parents.

They create programs like NCLB to take all Federal Funding from any State that refuses to teach to the tests, in order to scare the people in to giving up on our "horrible public school system". The more of us who abandon the public school system in favor of private or otherwise privately funded endeavors, instead of devoting our time and efforts to adequate funding of public education for all, the easier it will be for them to succeed.

The truth is that the public schools are only as bad as each individual community allows them to be. Our Public Schools are actually exceptionally good where I live. This is mostly because I live in one of the most affluent zip codes in the state of Oregon. But it doesn't hurt that the people in my community vote to raise their taxes on education every two years. We also have a very active group of parents, educators and concerned citizens and businesses who have pooled our time and energies to make changes in our State and local governments to benefit all of our public schools.

Isn't it sad that anyone in this nation would be willing to blame electronics, and the children themselves, before the fact that we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars in Iraq instead of on the education of our children; just imagine what we could do with that kind of funding.