The Other School Choice
When the Obamas sent their daughters to a private school rather than a DCPS school, it became the subject of much controversy. But as Dana Goldstein points out another, much more typical case of school choice, goes like this:
But a month later, another prominent family’s search for a school went largely unnoticed. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan moved with his family from Chicago, where he had been chief executive officer of the city’s public schools, to Arlington, Virginia. High-quality suburban public schools were “why we chose” to live in Arlington, Duncan told Science magazine in March. “It was the determining factor.”
She argues for more robust efforts to create socioeconomically integrated schools, including across district lines:
This doesn’t mean we should reopen the busing wars. Rather, we should foster regional partnerships between urban and suburban districts. The Obama administration and Congress, as they consider the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind later this year, ought to provide more funding for the creation of high-quality public magnet schools in urban districts. Magnet programs in the sciences and performing arts encourage affluent parents to keep their kids within the public system. And when enrollment at those magnet schools is open to suburban students, seats for city kids become available at traditional suburban high schools. Cities such as Hartford, St. Louis, and Milwaukee already have oversubscribed inter-district transfer programs that work in this way.
Actually helping DC students in this manner might pose special challenges since our suburbs are actually in different states. But this is still a good idea, and the evidence is really pretty compelling that poor kids do better when given access to a more middle class learning environment. On the other hand, there’s some research indicating that logistically speaking this would only work for 10-20 percent of students in high-poverty schools. Still, I wouldn’t sneer at that result, nor would I be surprised by the conclusion that no single change in education policy can produce sweeping, across-the-board improvements in student achievement. Meanwhile, Diane Piché says that study is underestimating the possibilities. One way or the other, I can’t think of any good reason for a governor who’s genuinely interested in improving opportunities for poor kids not to be trying something along these lines.
51 Responses to “The Other School Choice”
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May 19th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Retaining those 10-20 percent of families within the city, rather than forcing them to move to the suburbs, is probably good for the city’s culture and economy.
Even if it only works for a minority of the students, it’s a good idea.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
You’d have to require it–there’s no level (and I mean no level) of non-coercive encouragement that would persuade whiter, higher-SES (socioeconomic status) suburban districts to accept more than a token amount of browner, lower-SES students from urban districts. And that’s the “easiest” of the three aspects of “regional partnerships,” the harder two being the reverse flow of suburban students to urban schools and actual shared governance of a superdistrict. This is pretty close to solving the problem of poverty by “encouraging” wealthy people to send their wealth to poor people, and in fact it’s even less likely because sending money is less intrusive than sending and receiving children.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Yep, at this point it is pretty clear there are no silver bullets and we need a combination of policies. So helping 10-20% of students in need with a given policy sounds pretty good to me.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:13 pm
this is a terrible idea.
People move to Arlington to get away from those schools. If you make people in ARlington deal with the mess of DC schools, they’ll just move further away, beyond the “region” in “regionalization.”
May 19th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Recall Arne Duncan wants school systems put under Mayors for streamlined decision making and accountability. How would that impact these regional partnerships?
May 19th, 2009 at 1:18 pm
I was a 220 student from the Milwaukee burbs into the city for three years at a magnet elementary school. When it came time for junior high, I punted on the program. The magnet MPS school was no better than my local one, I wanted to get back to my old friends, and I was getting really tired of the bus ride. We had a good number of Milwaukee kids in our 6-12th grades, certainly a net flow into the suburban system.
I think they’re trying to gut the 220 program now? Can any current MKE residents give an update?
May 19th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Raise your hands if you’ll volunteer to send your suburban kids into the innercity to get an education. That’s what I thought.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Ike, are you saying that parents would not want their children to attend a school where students from DC, if they chose to do so, were allowed to attend schools in Arlington? Don’t you think that students should be able to go to school anywhere they want, to whichever public school best fits their needs?
May 19th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Raise your hands if you’ll volunteer to send your suburban kids into the innercity to get an education.
If that inner city school is Bronx Science or Stuyvesent, then you’re damn right I would.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:29 pm
People move to Arlington to get away from those schools. If you make people in ARlington deal with the mess of DC schools, they’ll just move further away, beyond the “region” in “regionalization.”
Say what? The proposal is basically to fund magnet schools in DC then let students in Arlingon make use of those magnet schools if they so choose. No one would be forced to leave Arlington schools if they didn’t want to.
Raise your hands if you’ll volunteer to send your suburban kids into the innercity to get an education. That’s what I thought.
My hand is up. We actually live right outside the central city limits (as in three short blocks), and just on the other side of the border (meaning within the central city) there is a charter elementary school where we are hoping to send our son. People living in the city district have first preference, but it is open to students in our district if space is available.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
By the way, if the magnet elementary schools in the city were open to our son, we would be considering some of them as well.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Once again we watch what people do while they want us to do what they say. Duncan is a fraud and this proves it. He’s all about how Michelle Rhee’s fascist programs to take away tenure from teachers and bust the union will lead to student improvements, but then he sends his kids elsewhere.
Sort of sounds like he doesn’t believe that the program will work to improve education, but he is hoping it will bust the union. One could say the same for Obama. The security issue for his kids is bogus. If the nearby schools aren’t safe enough for his kids then why are any kids going there?
The joys of hypocrisy.
I’ll say it again, if you want to improve the outcomes for lower SES students then give the schools more money, cut down on class size and mix the economic groups together. None of this is what the (white) middle class wants, so it doesn’t get done.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
DTM @ 10: that’s not the problem. The problem is that teh blacks will attend Muffy’s school, first bringing down test scores, and then housing values. They might also mingle with the white girls.
Judd @ 7: The school I attended was not in a particularly bad neighborhood, but the bus route went down a REALLY bad stretch of road. We kids must have been precious in our ironic detachment — imagine a bunch of 2-5th graders making jokes about stopping the bus and purchasing drugs on the way to school. That said, I never once felt unsafe. Also, being in the city meant regular field trips to museums and performing arts that my cohort in suburbia didn’t get.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:40 pm
In San Bernardino, CA where I grew up, it is a lower middle class city of about 200,000 with a large, concentrated poverty inner city and a few wealthy neighborhoods along the foothills. There was a reverse magnet program when I was growing up, where the gifted programs were located exclusively in schools located withing the concentrated poverty inner city core. The local population there is 99% black and Latino. These programs were excellent, and nearly all the highest testing kids from the entire district ended up getting bussed into those schools (myself included). This amounted to roughly two GATE classes for each grade spread across two or three elementary schools. A few parents refused to send their kids, but they suffered as a result because there were no good private schools and the neighborhood schools with no magnet programs sucked. But since these magnet programs were isolated classrooms within the larger school, there was not much integration or interaction between the middle class high performing kids and the rest of the students in the school. It was great for us, in that we had a special class with highly educated teachers and even special lunch rooms and recess times. And we got a little social consciousness from the mixing that did occur. But the masses at the school saw no benefit at all. So I think it’s possible to get well of families to buy in, it just depends on the quality of the program. But unless it is combined with movement in the other direction or in additional funds for the inner city host schools, it’s not clear to me how this benefits the kids most in need.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
DTM @ 10: that’s not the problem. The problem is that teh blacks will attend Muffy’s school, first bringing down test scores, and then housing values. They might also mingle with the white girls.
You may be right, but I suppose I was trying to see if Ike was willing to make that explicit.
By the way, I also think that if that was Ike’s point, he was likely wrong: maybe a few Arlington parents feel that way, but I suspect most really just want good schools for their kids, as opposed to wanting to exclude a few DC kids from sharing those schools with their kids.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
the masses at the school saw no benefit at all.
Not quite true. The masses benefited from the stable tax base that existed due to the fact that middle class families were comfortable remaining within the san bernadino city limits along with benefiting from a city that catered to middle class interests and infrastructure that the “masses” could tax advantage of. As well as being able to benefit from the magnet school itself if they chose to attend.
May 19th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
@DTM: What defines a good school? It’s not the architecture, and I don’t think it’s the faculty (how many parents are even qualified to evaluate the faculty, anyway?) It’s the socioeconomic status of the other students (ie your child’s prospective social peers), and as everyone knows, that’s related to their appearance.
Why are schools funded by local taxes in the first place? It’s precisely because that system benefits the children of the wealthy, who are the ones with the political power to maintain the status quo. If your child doesn’t get a better education than Those People’s children (let alone actually having to sit next to one), then he might not succeed in life the way you did, and then you’d be a failure as a parent, right?
May 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
@DTM: What defines a good school?
I think we agree this is more a matter of perception than definition. However, I disagree that for most parents it is a matter of directly observing socioeconomic status or ethnicity.
In talking with other parents about school choice, I’ve noticed a real variety of approaches. Some look at test scores, or other “objective” ratings. Some operate on word of mouth or direct research, and their considerations can include extracurriculars, academic programs and themes, rumors of safety issues, and so on. All that feeds into schools and districts getting a reputation as “good” or “bad”.
Now to be sure, I’m not denying that socioeconomic status isn’t playing a role in the background in all this (e.g., filtering through test scores). I’m just not convinced it is right in the foreground for most parents.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Good points, Tyro. One thing you did begin to see in the late 80’s was better off families choosing to move out of San Bernardino into neighboring towns like Highland,Redlands, and Yucaipa that had less socioeconomic diversity and better average schools with no magnet programs. I would imagine, though, that they would have moved out sooner if it weren’t for the great magnet program. So I can see Matt’s point, that programs like these can help mixed income cities stay together.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Why are schools funded by local taxes in the first place?
Sorry, I forgot to address this. In my view that is actually a very complicated question. Your answer–that it benefits the wealthy–is less obviously true then one might think.
First, many truly wealthy people end up sending their children to private school anyway, a point to which I will return below. Second, I think it is important to understand that this way of funding schools causes harm by constraining housing choices.
For example, say you are a professional couple, and you find a beautiful, well-priced home conveniently located to where you work. Sounds good–but oops, the local public schools aren’t very good, and you are thinking of starting a family. So, you end up looking at neighborhoods farther away from your jobs, where your dollar doesn’t get as much house. And then many years later, your kids have moved out, but you are still paying these high property taxes . . . so you end up moving back out of where you have been living.
My point is that I think the incentives for the wealthy to defend status quo really only arise in a straightforward fashion once they have actually bought into such a neighborhood. Then they suddenly have an economic interest in preserving the status quo: they paid a premium for their house, and they don’t want that premium to be eliminated. So they defend the status quo until they sell out and move on, and simultaneously a new set of wealthy parents buys into the status quo, and the cycle continues.
Note, by the way, that wealthy parents who wanted exclusive schools could still get them if this wasn’t the status quo–again, they could do so by paying for private schools. Really, all you would be doing is unbundling your choice about whether to pay extra for school from your housing choice, and that additional freedom of choice would likely be to the net benefit of most wealthy people–at least prior to them paying a premium based on the status quo.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
A lot of people are uncomfortable with supporting programs in cities that are going to disproportionately aid and cater to the interests of the middle class when those cities have so many poor people whose problems are much more severe. Building magnet schools that are going to attract middle class, perhaps even predominantly white and asian, students seems like a lot of people to be an initiative that short-changes the poor who don’t even have decent living conditions and whose schools could use much of that same money themselves.
However, maintaining a functional city depends on maintaining a thriving middle class who’s willing to live there for the long term rather than picking up and leaving for the suburbs once the kids hit school age. I don’t think it’s in the interest of cities to allow that brain drain and damage to their tax base to occur, and that means having the city spend money on initiatives that don’t just help the middle class but actively cater to their interests, even if they’re not typically things that will help the poor directly.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
My point is not that all city schools are bad, that’s clearly not the case. But the school district I live in was the top reason I chose to live where I live. I am not going to take a chance in education with my two boys, period. Nor would I want to send them to a district outside of my own, for the sense of community one gains from educating the children in the same cummunity they live in.
May 19th, 2009 at 2:53 pm
judd, you weren’t making a point about yourself. You were purporting to make a point about what you thought everyone else would do, which you were wrong about.
Plenty of people send their children to districts outside of their own when they send their children to private schools (or magnet schools, which aren’t “neighborhood” schools). Plenty of children send their children to districts outside of their “own” when they simply move to another district. So whatever your peculiar preferences are, they’re not universally shared.
I guess the interesting question, judd, is if your schools are so good, would you be willing to accept students from outside your district attending your children’s schools?
May 19th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I guess the interesting question, judd, is if your schools are so good, would you be willing to accept students from outside your district attending your children’s schools?
Absolutely.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
My children go to Arlington public schools. Arlington has 18,000 students, total, in its school system. I think D.C. has at least three times that and probably more, but it has declined in size so I don’t know for sure. However, note that Arlington’s schools are not lily white — they are integrated, especially the magnet school I send my children to. I think caucasian, non-Hispanics make up about 30% of that school, and maybe slightly less than half of the entire district.
Having said that, I think regional magnet schools are a good idea. The District has some magnet schools, especially the Duke Ellington School for the Performing Arts. Additional magnet schools focused on foreign language and science and math would also be great draws for all parents. Fairfax County maintains a regional science and math academy that draws from four separate counties, but not the District.
However, Matthew, the difficulty with the District of Columbia is not simply that it serves an economically disadvantaged population, it is also the embedded corruption in the administration of its schools that mayor after mayor appears powerless to stop or reverse. Also, the District has faced the same issues that many schools have with trying to consolidate schools so that it can spend less on expensive physical plant maintenance.
Maybe this is just par for the course when a school system becomes large enough, but there are problems in the District that simply transcend the ability of surrounding districts to help with.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Well, judd, it seems to me your clarified views are fully consistent with this sort of program. You wouldn’t be forced to make use of the city’s magnet schools, but other parents in your school district who didn’t share your preferences would have that option. Meanwhile, that would open up a few slots in your school to children from the city, but you have no objection to that. So, it seems like a win-win-win situation.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
judd, I think we’re more or less on the same page. We just have different ideas regarding whether the system would work or not.
I think MattY is overestimating the political will available to create something in DC of the caliber of Alexandria’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology that suburbanites would be willing to attend. If it did exist (like Stuy and Bronx science do), then I think you’d find suburbanites willing to go there. But just as the DC opposition to charter schools shows, there’s public skepticism in cities to building something that will disproportionately serve and benefit the middle class. But the truth is that if you want a functional city, that’s something you have to do.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Just to correct the image of the Arlington schools some people may have constructed: the global ethnic breakdown of the students, as or 2006-07 (latest data found on quick search) was White – 46.9%, Hispanic – 27.2%, Black – 13.8%, Asian – 10.8%.
It has been some years since my kids left the system, but my impression continues to be that all the schools in the system are considerably better than merely adequate. Including the ones that are majority-minority.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
And I do agree with what Tyro said. The chance that these academies would be viewed as “catering” to middle class parents is all too real. And yet, this is who the city needs to be part of the community, to help hold schools accountable for their performance.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
So, let me see if I have this right. What is being proposed is that New York City would open up Bronx Science to kids from Scarsdale, and in exchange Scarsdale High would be opened up to kids from the Bronx?
Yeah, that’ll work. Parents of high achievers in the City are going to be real happy that Scarsdale kids are taking slots for Bronx Science that their kids could have, and Scarsdale parents are going to be real happy that bunch of poor kids from the Bronx are attending their schools.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
You wouldn’t be forced to make use of the city’s magnet schools, but other parents in your school district who didn’t share your preferences would have that option
Yep, no problem at all. As long as it is voluntary.
May 19th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Al, Parents of high achievers could send their kids to Scarsdale high.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Arne Duncan did not decide to send his kids to better public schools, he decided to send them to whiter public schools.
I seriously doubt he looked at the disaggregated school data.
Arlington’s test scores were either below or right at Viginia’s test scores for all categories except for White students.
This tells me that it’s a mediocre school district that relies on the large number of upper middle white students to make it look good.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
Do any of you idealists actually have high school age kids in the system? I bet not. It is always refreshing to see such idealism unfettered by any semblance of realism. This is an idea that is dead on arrival. I can’t think of a single family in my overwhelming liberal leaning neighborhood here in Fairfax VA that would even consider sending their kid to school in DC in any circumstances. Nor do they (we) want any of their kids coming here. We worked hard to get the school where it is (boosters, PTO, etc..) We get to reap the rewards. Someday when your own kids get to the appropriate age, you too shall see the light. This whole conversation has been almost comical in its lack of understanding of human nature. You may not agree with it, but give me a break…..
May 19th, 2009 at 4:15 pm
It’s hard to tell which is worse- Matt’s endless quest for a gadget that will fix the schools without spending money, or the enablers in the thread who think that something that only works for 20% of the problem must be good, because we all know problems are multi-dimensional.
The problem, of course, is multi-dimensional. We have single mothers working two jobs because so many black men are in prison due to the ‘drug wars’, and naturally, these single mothers are subject to the discrimination against women that gives them lower paychecks. Solve some of those problems and add adequate funding for city schools and you’ll see improvements.
Most suburban districts, and in fact most urban districts, vote on levies for their district to pay for buildings and additional operating costs. Hard to see why they would want to increase their own taxes to provide additional classrooms for students from outside the district.
As for those ‘magnet schools’, this sounds like a potential boondoggle on the scale of a new fighter plane or tank. How long does it take for these special schools to become so great that people are clamoring for admission? When do you decide it isn’t working and pull the plug?
Nothing is more American than something for nothing. The best thing about this idea is that it’s so complex and obviously unworkable that it stands no chance of being adopted.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
argusx is right: there’s nobody in the country more bullheadedly selfish than suburban parents like himself.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
and you know the Golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules. A little idealism and a buck will get you a cup of coffee in this country kid… welcome to the real world … your ideas may seem good to you but you probably have nothing vested in the results… not your kid is it.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Isn’t it amusing how Barack Obama and Arne Duncan behave, when it comes to their own children’s welfare, as if I’m right about how the world works, but when it comes to spending other people’s money, they talk as if I’m wrong?
May 19th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
Like I’ve always said, there’s nothing wrong with Fairfax County that a few hydrogen bombs wouldn’t fix. I hope you die soon.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:09 pm
The anxiety that middle class parents feel about sending their children to low performing schools filled with the riffraff is a real and unavoidable phenomenon. The schools have to deal with it in a realistic manner.
I actually think that using magnate schools to attract middle class students is a good idea. My city has turned most of the low-performing schools (i.e., filled with hispanics, many of whom do not speak English until they get to school) into magnate schools. For example, one of the local elementary schools offers Mandarin immersion from kindergarten onward. This has been reasonably successful in gentrifying the school by attracting more Asian and White students, desegregating the school, and improving test scores.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Isn’t it amusing how Barack Obama and Arne Duncan behave, when it comes to their own children’s welfare, as if I’m right about how the world works, but when it comes to spending other people’s money, they talk as if I’m wrong?
How so? If you are accusing them of hypocrisy, explain what you mean.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:13 pm
argusx, are you saying that you wouldn’t continue to help improve your school if people from DC were allowed to attend it? Are you saying you wouldn’t want DC parents involved in your school? Why might that be?
May 19th, 2009 at 5:21 pm
Tyro, of course not. I’d still spend Friday at the concession stand for the boosters, help on trips, serve on the board…. What I don’t think is that the DC parents will contribute. I doubt they would drive all the way out here. Its hard for those who live here to make the time let alone have to drive for an hour to get here. It takes a village as they say. I help, the other parents help, the school gets better. We have a school up the road that has gradually increased its lower SES %. That took away money for programs that brought in higher performing kids. The more they left, the less help. Its a terrible but true cycle.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:27 pm
However, maintaining a functional city depends on maintaining a thriving middle class who’s willing to live there for the long term rather than picking up and leaving for the suburbs once the kids hit school age. I don’t think it’s in the interest of cities to allow that brain drain and damage to their tax base to occur
I think what cities *really* need is a way to reach out and tax the people who are technically living outside the city, but actually using city infrastructure and flying out of the city airport and checking books out of the city libraries and going to concerts in the city’s concert hall, etc., etc., etc. All those suburbanites are free-riding off the benefits the city provides. Cities need more long-arm tax authority, or an equivalent amount of redistribution in their favor at a higher governmental level. Once they have it, fleeing to suburbs won’t have tax benefits; and with the city’s ability to rebalance educational resources across its *whole* community, the schools might level out too.
This is particularly problematic for DC because its suburbs are in other states (and some other cities partially share this problem, such as NY and Chicago). But even cities located in a state are still often impoverished relative to the suburbs *that are created and sustained by the city’s economic and cultural attractions*.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
argusx, what about parents that live in Fairfax but don’t “help” because they have busy schedules or, more likely, don’t enjoy being harrassed by self-righteous parents with nothing better to do all day?
At the end of the day, your school is “public.” It might be in your interest to prevent outsiders from attending “your” school, but it’s in my interest to want my kids to go to the best school we can find. So we are sort of at an impasse. If I can offer a school people in your district want to go to, like TJHSST, then maybe we can arrange an exchange for anyone who wants to go to your school (since, after all, you can go to mine). Getting all indignant and territorial about FCPS, which has a huge number of students, sounds a bit disingenuous.
I think what cities *really* need is a way to reach out and tax the people who are technically living outside the city
You want the stick. I want the carrot.
May 19th, 2009 at 6:10 pm
Do any of you idealists actually have high school age kids in the system? [...] I can’t think of a single family in my overwhelming liberal leaning neighborhood here in Fairfax VA that would even consider sending their kid to school in DC in any circumstances.
Speaking as the parent of a DCPS high-school student, I’m impressed by the above remark’s lethal combination of selection bias (people who live in Fairfax didn’t end up there by accident) and ignorance (on what basis does someone in Fairfax conclude every DCPS school and student is failing?). Self-absorbed suburbanites disdain urban public schools? Who would ever have thought it?
May 19th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
[...] 2009 May 19 by Babbling Nomad Kevin Drum over at MoJo beats me to the punch regarding Matt Yglesias and Dana Goldstein on educating the urban poor and the choice of Arne Duncan (Secretary of [...]
May 19th, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Tyro, I buy your argument. As long as its equitable, I’m ok with the trade. I welcome more opportunities for our kids. As for the parents here who don’t help, they fall in the same category as all the rest, especially the ones who came here because of all the programs but don’t want to pitch in. Its the little red hen syndrome
May 19th, 2009 at 9:42 pm
Thanks for the links, MY. I’ve not read the research on this issue, so I have no real comment to offer. Off the top of my head, this seems to be a step in the right direction.
However, I would ask of you to expand your reading on education. You are a prime example of cognitive capture… All of your resources seem to come out of think tanks. Modern policy institutes are, for the most part, not honest brokers when it comes to research. Look for peer-review.
For a good read check out: Diane Stone’s “Trashcans, Recycling-bins, or Think-Tanks?” Good read.
May 20th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I live in the Milwaukee area and teach in an ‘upper’ suburban school. I contemplated sending my kids to several magnet schools especially spanish and french immersion schools that were taught entirely in those languages. The bus ride stopped me. Why don’t they locate these magnet schools right next to the suburb in an enticing fashion. OUr district has pretty much a bread and butter junior and senior high education, good, but fairly mundane. An engaging curriculum would be a draw for me. The biggest change I believe that could be made in MKE is to lift their residency requirement, and pay teachers 100,000K per year. I’ve been teaching 20 years and I’d go into some pretty tough schools for that money, personally.
May 23rd, 2009 at 9:16 pm
[...] Matt Yglesias responds [...]