When People Say They Want to Send Their Kid to a Good School, They Usually Mean Schools Without "Bad Kids"

Freddie deBoer · 24 Mar 2026 · freddiedeboer.substack.com ↗

3 korrents from this piece

Freddie deBoer did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Putting the children most likely to succeed into one school is segregation, not educational excellence.

Their wordsSimply creating artificial separation between different students is not a strategy for “educational excellence.” It’s just segregation.

Interesting
Our reading
The best teachers, unlimited resources and every evidence-based intervention still fail on a student who does not want to learn.

Their wordsYou can staff a school with the best teachers on earth, give them unlimited resources, and wrap the place in every evidence-based intervention imaginable, and it still won’t work if students are resistant, disengaged, or actively hostile to the enterprise.

Interesting
Our reading
Education cannot be done to a person: without at least a minimal act of will from the learner, no method, resource or reform works.

Their wordsEducation is not something that can be done to someone; it’s something that requires at least a minimal act of will from the learner, and no reform agenda can engineer that away.

Interesting