Dive Brief:
- The Buffalo Board of Education in New York is considering two proposals to bring charter boarding schools to the city's struggling school system.
- While round-the-clock schooling can be pricey (one proposal estimates that is would cost as much as $25,000 per student), advocates say boarding schools take students out of adverse situations like poverty and allow them to focus solely on learning.
- This model has already been put into place in Baltimore, Miami, and the District of Columbia via the SEED Foundation.
Dive Insight:
The Journal of Labor Economics published a study about SEED schools last year, finding that student achievement in math and reading spiked when students were living and learning at boarding schools. The idea makes sense when placed in the context of the arguments that achievement gaps are not a byproduct of schools and teachers, but rather bigger systemic issues like poverty.
That said, there are some issues with this idea. For example, boarding schools don't actually fix issues like poverty so much as remove children from the equation. It also seems unfair to assume family and the support received from family is not important if a family is low-income.