[HN Gopher] Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco...
___________________________________________________________________
Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in
2021
Author : rossvor
Score : 213 points
Date : 2021-06-19 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (adamcadre.ac)
(TXT) w3m dump (adamcadre.ac)
| DevKoala wrote:
| Depressing read honestly.
| fallingknife wrote:
| > Another initiative headed for mandate status is a school policy
| that no assignment can receive a grade of less than 50%
|
| > And my direct supervisor repeatedly demanded that I pace my
| classes for the benefit of the single student in each section who
| was struggling the most
|
| I don't understand school. Why do they do things like this? Who
| actually thinks this is a good idea? I've never met anyone who
| does. How have we gotten to the point where standards are not
| allowed?
| brighton36 wrote:
| I've never understood school either. Now that I'm 40 years old,
| I understand it less. I think there was a generation of adults
| who were 'in on the rhetoric' at one point. Telling people that
| these are places of education, instead of a kind of reformation
| facility, akin to jail.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I don't get it either. People have learning and thinking
| differences, we know that and have known it for years.
| Accommodating those differences is important. Living out a
| real-life version of Harrison Bergeron is not the only way to
| do it.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Harrison Bergeron
|
| Wow, I had never read that before:
|
| http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
|
| This really captures so much of the current thinking around
| "equity".
| api wrote:
| Yeah but a real life version of Harrison Bergeron may be the
| cheapest lowest effort easiest to bureaucratize way to do it.
|
| Actually understanding and then adjusting to differences in
| learning style, cultural background, etc. is really hard work
| and is really hard to scale. It's an art form not something
| that can be mass produced or reduced to a simple set of
| rules.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The problem is that "learning style" is not a thing. There
| are good students and bad students, and there are students
| who can understand the material but lack the ability to sit
| still. So it's not like if you change "teaching styles" you
| will be able to get the slower student the same information
| as the faster student. The only way to do that is to do a
| disservice to the faster student.
|
| What you can do, is create tracks so that everyone is
| challenged but not put in a hopeless in a situation, and
| the disruptive students you need to either expel so their
| parents handle them or put them into some kind of separate
| environment where they don't prevent others from learning.
|
| That's going to result in large inequalities in outcomes
| because there are large inequalities in how fast students
| mature and what their learning capabilities are. Neither of
| these things -- student intelligence or student maturity --
| is something that the teachers can influence.
| zepto wrote:
| > there are students who can understand the material but
| lack the ability to sit still
|
| These students would benefit from a different teaching
| style, no?
| rsj_hn wrote:
| If you define "teaching style" to mean things like being
| in the classroom, but that's not the usual definition.
| The usual definition is explaining things in different
| ways.
|
| The students around them (who can sit still) would
| benefit from not being in the same classroom as students
| who are disruptive, obviously. The disruptive students
| might benefit from something like shorter classes and
| time spent outside doing sports or other physical
| activities that don't require sitting. But let's not
| pretend that they will learn the same material. They will
| learn less material, at least until they mature enough so
| that they have more self-control and are able to sit
| still, which might not happen before they leave high
| school, or it may only happen in their senior year, etc.
| Thus you put them into a different high school entirely
| or at least a different diploma track.
| zepto wrote:
| > The usual definition is explaining things in different
| ways.
|
| By that definition, what you say is true, but I haven't
| heard anyone keep the definition that narrow for decades.
|
| Other styles for example, can include things like not
| changing subjects every hour, but rather continuing until
| the student is ready to change.
| mustafa_pasi wrote:
| Well, people are funding schools through taxes. Then they
| send their kid to school. Then the school decides their kid
| is too stupid* to do much, so they get relegated to dumb
| class and their future career prospects get nullified. This
| is how it works in many countries where schools are
| segregated by learning ability.
|
| I make no judgement on how good or bad it is, but I get why
| people would be upset by this system.
|
| *or has some mental issues like ADHD or whatever, which a lot
| of countries do not even recognize as a thing
| unishark wrote:
| So rather than putting students that learn slowly into
| classes that move slowly, you keep them in normal classes
| where they drag along lost behind everyone else, and
| possibly drag the rest of the class down with them. I don't
| see how that is better for anyone involved, unless you
| think the credential is all that matters.
| treis wrote:
| Because in practice concentrating the problem kids into
| one class tends not to help them. They get warehoused and
| fall further behind before being dumped onto society at
| 18.
| kyboren wrote:
| So instead, let's put them with the high-achievers and
| force those high-achievers to do the teacher's job of
| tutoring them at the expense of their own educational
| opportunity.
|
| I can see why schools likes it. But it's terrible policy
| and hurts the higher-achieving students, who will be the
| backbone of our increasingly winner-take-all knowledge-
| and services-based economy.
| treis wrote:
| That's quite the straw man you've built there.
|
| Nobody is talking about forcing the high achievers to do
| the teacher's job. The question is how we allocate the
| fixed amount of educational resources we have. You want
| us to choose the high achievers so that these early
| winners can turn that lead into even greater success
| later. Unstated in your post is what happens to those low
| achieving students. But it's pretty easy to assume that
| they're going to be the losers in the winner take all
| economy.
|
| The other option is to help the low achieving students so
| that more of them can participate in that winner take all
| economy. I'm not sure how to argue that this latter
| option is preferable since it seems so obvious to me that
| it's the right choice to make.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > That's quite the straw man you've built there.
|
| > Nobody is talking about forcing the high achievers to
| do the teacher's job.
|
| On the contrary, people can be quite explicit about this.
| treis wrote:
| It's not mandating everyone be equal. It's allocating
| resources to those that need them most. Which is how I think
| we all do our jobs. You spend your time on the systems that
| perform poorly, not the ones that are working fine.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Or do you invest the most resources on the products,
| customers, and markets giving you the greatest return?
|
| Investing in the most talented can give society outsize
| returns in terms of innovation, skilled and talented public
| servants, captivating art, and scientific discoveries.
| fumar wrote:
| Do you have examples?
| tomp wrote:
| Even for people who _do_ have this goal ( "helping those
| who need it most") in mind, this reasoning doesn't make any
| sense.
|
| There's only so much resources you can invest into a single
| person. Their time is limited, so if their leaning rate is
| slow, there's really nothing else that can be done beyond
| some point to speed it up. Forrest Gump will never be
| Stephen Hawking.
|
| The reality is that this equity movement is motivated
| specifically by pushing down high-performers. They're
| _removing_ (or _wasting_ ) resources just so that they
| don't get to the top 10-30%.
| brianwawok wrote:
| No child left behind.
|
| It's been ruled that it's better that all students get to
| 20-80% knowledge then some get 100% and some get 0%.
|
| Which is why many people choose to go to private schools if you
| want to not be limited by this.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > Which is why many people choose to go to private schools if
| you want to not be limited by this.
|
| Familiar with expensive Private schools Household names send
| their kids too in CA. It's generally harder to fail a
| student, sometimes explicitly impossible & against school
| policy.
| WanderPanda wrote:
| I don't see the causal relationship between the 100%ers
| getting 80% and the 0%ers suddenly getting 20%
| orn688 wrote:
| If you slow down the pace to help the "zero percenters" and
| only cover 80% of the material in the allotted time, the
| students who could have handled 100% of the material will
| be limited to 80%. And that slowdown still won't be enough
| to help the slowest learners much, so they'll still only
| learn, say, 20% of the material.
| unishark wrote:
| also spend lots of class time repeating background
| material students should already know.
| antihero wrote:
| Surely this can be solved by streaming? Here in the UK we had
| bottom sets for the kids that were struggling, and top sets
| for kids who excelled. This meant that the learning pace
| could be tailored for each group.
|
| Still probably didn't stretch the top set kids as much as
| private schools could, which is why I am in favour of
| abolishing all private and grammar schools and making the
| resources available to those schools available to top set
| comprehensive school kids.
|
| It is wrong that children get educations that don't really
| make the most of their brains because they have parents that
| couldn't afford it.
|
| Also, I think the sociological benefits of having pupils from
| all backgrounds occupying the same space and learning from
| each other as opposed to being segregated is extremely
| important.
|
| So many of the rich people in charge of the country have
| absolutely no understanding of poverty because they have not
| had the opportunity to grow up around it.
| thrower123 wrote:
| In former times, European countries could do this, because
| you've had a homogenous pool to sort out by ability.
|
| Attempts to do this in the US produce results that appear
| racist.
| golemiprague wrote:
| The advantage of a private school is not the extra gym
| equipment or computer or any other resources, it is the
| social class that matter. If you don't pay for private
| school you will pay for location. There is no actual
| mixing, people just pay more to be around people similar to
| themselves and the cost of that will manifest in house
| prices instead of school prices.
| zepto wrote:
| > and making the resources available to those schools
| available
|
| How would you do this? It seems like it's impossible to tax
| the group of people who _would have sent their kids to
| private school had it been possible_.
|
| Equally it seems impossible to force the people who would
| have chosen teaching careers at private schools to work at
| comprehensive schools.
|
| That, and the fact that one of the 'resources' that private
| schools have is flexibility to make decisions outside of
| the comprehensive school system.
| [deleted]
| anm89 wrote:
| No one thinks it's a good idea for the students. They think
| it's a good idea for their career.
| api wrote:
| In college a similar phenomenon is grade inflation where
| professors mark up grades to look like better professors or
| get better student reviews.
| cynicalkane wrote:
| The system giving these rules is set up so the two are
| indistinguishable. Some people can't even tell the
| difference. Others can, but they keep quiet so their career
| isn't destroyed.
| analog31 wrote:
| Playing devils advocate for a moment, as grading works right
| now, a kid can quickly dig themselves into a hole that they
| have no realistic way to get out of, e.g., by utterly bombing
| on an exam or missing a few assignments early in the semester.
| The motivation for that kid to progress any further is zero,
| yet they are imprisoned in the classroom for the duration of
| the semester.
|
| This hits very close to home for me, and I've read countless
| comments on HN from people who are successful in life yet angry
| and bitter about their K-12 experience.
|
| I don't know the answer to this, but meanwhile, messing with
| the way school works is not exactly messing with success.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| +1 I saw this a lot with friends who were less interested in
| school and would quickly bail on a class once they missed a
| test or assignment and I couldn't really blame them.
|
| For me the point of a Math class is to learn and demonstrate
| you understand certain concepts - it isn't to demonstrate
| some proxy of 'work ethic' because you sat in a desk
| somewhere on a regular schedule. So there should always be an
| avenue left open for for the student to learn and demonstrate
| the knowledge.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Caltech did it right. Professors were not allowed to grade
| based on attendance. If you could pass the final, you
| passed the class. If you could pass the final without even
| taking the class, you would get credit (although very, very
| few managed that feat!).
|
| I recall one student who flunked thermo. He filed a
| complaint that the Prof had it in for him, hence the F. The
| Prof provided evidence that he never did any of the
| homework, and flunked the midterm and final. Case
| dismissed. The student dropped out.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Nothing is going to work while everything is paced by year.
| In 7th grade, in the fall you are taught X, so if you miss it
| the only solution is to take it next time: next fall with the
| next year's 7th graders.
|
| In an ideal infinitely funded world, if you took 20% longer
| to learn X, you'd just go slower, not be left behind.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > In 7th grade, in the fall you are taught X, so if you
| miss it the only solution is to take it next time
|
| In my experience in elementary school, 3rd grade material
| is repeated ad nauseum in 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grade.
| Plenty of time to get it. (Being an Air Force brat, I
| attended 3 different elementary schools, even one in
| Germany run by the military. All the same.)
| tedd4u wrote:
| A great deal of research has gone into just this concept,
| often called "mastery-based learning." Sal Khan is one
| well-known proponent (look for the requisite TED talk).
| jimbokun wrote:
| How does a teacher instruct a class where every single
| student is learning something different at a given time,
| based on their progress up to that point?
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I went to a tiny mixed age school and basically each kid
| worked on workbooks at their own pace.
|
| The older kids helped out the younger ones and the
| teacher walked around the class and talked to each kid to
| help them along with thier work if they got stuck.
|
| There wasn't any lecture style teaching with the teacher
| explaining concepts to the whole class at once.
|
| We all worked on one subject at a time, but we were all
| at different points in it.
|
| When my family moved and I left that school I was
| multiple years ahead of where I was supposed to be in
| several subjects and normal school was very boring after
| that.
| analog31 wrote:
| This is a good point, but it highlights the fact that
| classroom education is a compromise -- economic and
| social -- and not a moral standard. Thus I think we
| should at least be conscious of its limitations, even if
| we can't immediately do anything about them.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| It is hard!
|
| But the folks making decisions about education in
| California (including the authors of the California Math
| Framework 2021) believe they'll achieve better outcomes
| that way, than they will by grouping students based on
| their progress in the subject.
|
| I heard recently from a 6th grade math teacher who has
| students who are 1, 2, 3 and even 4 grades behind.
|
| Imagine orchestrating a single class in which you're
| teaching some children about adding single-digit numbers,
| and others about long division.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Sorry, I tried to be clear that that scenario is an
| unrealistic ideal. Ideal in the sense of a spherical
| frictionless student in a vacuum with infinite funding as
| well as ideal in the sense of good. In that case one
| solution would be more teachers than students.
|
| Unless/until we figure out a feasible way to make
| progress not the same pace for everyone, progress will
| have to be the same pace for everyone.
|
| Colleges have a decent middle ground where if you fail
| this quarter, there are decent odds your class will be
| offered again before next year, especially for the
| earlier classes that really need stricter sequencing. But
| that's only really feasible when you have that many
| students (not to mention tuition $$$).
| ipaddr wrote:
| Why do we have grades at all? Every year you progress to the
| next year. At the end of high school everyone takes a SAT
| test and they go to colleges.
|
| If you school kept telling you you were doing okay when you
| weren't you will do poorly on the sat test or poorly in your
| first year and be forced to dropout.
|
| I think these policies push the unpleasantness to the future
| where it is too late to fix it.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Well, now many are looking to ban the SAT as well.
| rcpt wrote:
| Also in the name of equity the UCs are now ignoring the SAT
| ipaddr wrote:
| Doesn't that mean they fail first year instead?
| jimmaswell wrote:
| This short story shows where we're headed with things
| like this: http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
| bushbaba wrote:
| You can ban the sat and grades and still measure for
| academic rigor. For example those who placed in a state
| math competition are likely to have higher academic
| abilities. Or those who had an article published in the
| news...etc.
|
| All this does is make grades no longer a measure used.
| And allow the wealthy to better position their kids at
| the detriment of the middle class.
|
| California's strive to force outcome hurts the middle
| class the most. I just don't get it.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > You can ban the sat and grades and still measure for
| academic rigor
|
| It's harder to normalize performance across schools
| without a standardized test.
|
| > those who placed in a state math competition are likely
| to have higher academic abilities
|
| That sounds like a state-run math SAT that would have the
| same problems.
|
| > And allow the wealthy to better position their kids at
| the detriment of the middle class.
|
| The upper middle class is where it's actually
| interesting. There aren't enough wealthy people for the
| SAT to be a driver of mass inequality. They're already
| sending their kids to elite private schools, so as long
| as the Ivies keep favoring those schools, the status quo
| remains. The most important thing you can to to prepare
| for the SAT is do lots of practice tests. Those aren't
| that expensive. Anyone working class or higher can afford
| them. SAT classes help somewhat, but less than being
| somewhat familiar with the test. They're moderately
| expensive. Tutors are where it's interesting, and that's
| in upper middle class territory.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > The most important thing you can to to prepare for the
| SAT is do lots of practice tests.
|
| Oh phooey. I never prepared for the SATs, and nobody I
| knew did, either. (Back in the 70s.)
|
| Wanna know how to do well on the SATs? Pay attention in
| school to readin, ritin, and rithmetic.
|
| As for SAT prep books, I see them all the time in the
| thrift store for a couple bucks. The notion that only the
| wealthy have access to them is nonsense.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| If I could have skipped high school, and went straight to a
| community college, my life might have been different?
|
| I remember learning everything I should have in high school
| in 1 semester at a CC.
|
| Plus--I found high school painful, and their was so much
| wasted time.
|
| I was expected to work while going to high school, and
| remember thinking there's got to be a better way. In school
| all day felt like baby sitting, rather than learning.
|
| I went to three high schools. Two were public, and one
| private.
|
| All a bit different. The private one had way too many kids on
| drugs.
|
| If anyone has a responsible kid who is thinking about
| dropping out, certain schools allow kids to go to CC early.
| dnndev wrote:
| High school should completely be optional. Those who want
| to go will benefit from it and those who don't won't be
| there to simply make trouble.
|
| Move the high school teachers to middle school and
| elementary for smaller classes.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's not unreasonable.
|
| We don't want to fail kids consistently and put these huge
| marks in their psyche because they were not 'good at some
| thing'.
|
| HS needs to teach the basics of course, beyond that it should
| be encouraged and supported.
|
| My personal academic inclination didn't even start turning on
| seriously until I was very fortunate enough to get into a
| good Grad School and the fraternal competition sparked
| something I didn't know existed.
|
| Kicking kids out of school permanently is the best way to
| make sure they end up on the streets, rugs, crimes gangs
| etc..
|
| The funny part of 'On-Campus' suspension is that ... 'On-
| Campus' is the smartest thing in the article. Having to
| actually show up for school is much worse than not being in
| school! So that's a better 'punishment'. Maybe they should be
| required to read a book!
|
| Guys like to focus on projects and applied things, I suggest
| 1/2 of high school past age 15 should be applied learning,
| projects. Literally anything that people engage with and
| learn from. And as a non-athlete, terrible at sports klutz, I
| would say 'gym class every day' would be ideal as well. 20%
| 'training' type stuff and the rest just fun sports.
| professoretc wrote:
| > a kid can quickly dig themselves into a hole that they have
| no
|
| > realistic way to get out of, e.g., by utterly bombing on an
| exam
|
| > or missing a few assignments early in the semester.
|
| You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. The authors of
| _Grading For Equity_ spoke at my school and the reasoning
| they gave for eliminating 0-grading (i.e., not using 0 as the
| lowest possible grade) was because it's basically impossible
| to recover from. Ideally, a student who masters the material
| by the end of class should get the _same_ grade as one who
| masters it at the beginning; being fast or slow shouldn 't
| factor into your grade, but with 0-grading, like you say, an
| early test or assignment can tank your final grade, even if
| your _knowledge_ eventually catches up to what it should be.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > . The authors of _Grading For Equity_ spoke at my school
| and the reasoning they gave for eliminating 0-grading
| (i.e., not using 0 as the lowest possible grade) was
| because it's basically impossible to recover from.
|
| It's easy to recover from if you don't use a stupid method
| if aggregation, but that takes actually thinking about what
| it is you are trying to measure; for instance, if you grade
| by % in each of several competency areas throughout the
| year, and have a final grade catehory standards
| (cumulative, so you get the highest grade where you've met
| all the standards):
|
| D: median of competency area medians meets minimum
| proficiency standard
|
| C: median score within every competency area meets minimum
| passing standard
|
| B: median of competency area medians meets high proficiency
| standard or median in at least one competency area meets
| excellence standard
|
| A: median of competency area medians exceeds excellence
| standard
|
| (standards might be something like passing 70%, high
| proficiency 80%, excellence 90%, but the exact numbers
| aren't the point.)
|
| That will give you a measure of overall competence that
| isn't particularly sensitive to outlier scores on a single
| assignment, even if the assignment has components across
| many competency areas.
| nugget wrote:
| Grades traditionally measure mastery of material on an
| externally imposed timeline under some amount of externally
| imposed pressure. I support moving to simply measuring
| master of material in most cases, but it's important to
| recognize that you lose some signal from those other areas.
| In real life, sometimes it's better to maximize for mastery
| regardless of timeline (within reason) while other times
| it's better to maximize for the best job you can do within
| a certain fixed amount of time.
| listless wrote:
| I support this. My kids have had a single zero on occasion
| for a missed assignment and it demolished their grade. No
| way to recover. This is not a good measurement of whether
| you grasp the concepts. It's a good measurement of whether
| you made no mistakes in the process.
| kpozin wrote:
| Seems like the simplest solution is to specify that the
| lowest _n_ assignment or quiz grades will be dropped from the
| overall grade calculation. I recall taking a few classes in
| high school and college with such a policy.
| mmarq wrote:
| The point of school is not to produce geniuses, but to take a
| mass of illiterates and turn them into semi-literate persons,
| also giving them time to mature as human beings before they are
| allowed into university or work. If an 18 year old person can
| read, write, use basic math operations, know a few facts about
| the country they live in and speak in a way that doesn't
| require their fellow countrymen to use subtitles, we can call
| it a success. If they can say what time is it in a foreign
| language, they will end up in the school hall of fame.
|
| As a plus, school may introduce people to topics that may
| interest them and then allow them to find their way in life:
| from playing an instrument, to gymnastics, to computer
| programming.
|
| Grades are a fixation of the school system and of all those
| involved, but they don't measure knowledge accurately. Some
| companies may not hire you if you have low marks or studied in
| a less than prestigious school/university, but that has not
| necessarily anything to do with knowledge and is likely to have
| something to do with class segregation. So there's a point in
| making them up.
|
| Vandalism being tolerated is instead a very serious issue the
| school should address.
| somethingor wrote:
| > can read, write, use basic math operations, know a few
| facts about the country they live in and speak in a way that
| doesn't require his fellow countrymen to use subtitles
|
| This seems achievable by the 8th grade.
| HDMI_Cable wrote:
| Yeah, by this metric, school should stop when kids are 12.
| rizzom5000 wrote:
| It raises the question, what are we getting for our money
| (in the US)?
|
| > In 2017, the United States spent $14,100 per full-time-
| equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary
| education, which was 37 percent higher than the average
| of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
| (OECD) member countries...
| https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd
| shagie wrote:
| Part of this is in having schools bearing the brunt of
| other failures in society or by having schools be the
| ones trying to _solve_ those issues.
|
| Schools are often the safety net for youths with a wide
| range of problems. While schools are the catch all for
| such problems, they're more expensive than fixing _other_
| issues like fair wages for the parents of the students
| (e.g. having hischoolers needing to get a job to support
| the family rather than study for school).
|
| This high price tag is the result of shifting around
| other issues to the place where they're inefficiently
| handled.
|
| ---
|
| The flip side of this is the "schools are often funded by
| property taxes and areas that are able to collect more
| taxes are able to spend significantly more per student
| even if it doesn't result in a better outcome." Many of
| these areas already _have_ good student outcomes and the
| money is spent on on... whatever.
|
| Palo Alto spends $24.5k/student ( https://nces.ed.gov/ccd
| /districtsearch/district_detail.asp?I... ).
|
| Wyoming county schools spends $11.5k ( https://nces.ed.go
| v/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?S... ).
|
| When looking at those, compare the breakdown of revenue
| sources.
|
| ---
|
| So, I'll say "no, we're not - but it's not the fault of
| the schools."
| mmarq wrote:
| It does depend on what we mean by read and write. I don't
| mean just recognizing letters and being able to reproduce
| them. An adult should be able to read and understand an
| article from a decent newspaper (say the Financial Times),
| and write a 5 line summary. Definitely not all 12 year olds
| can to do that and, I'd argue, a large fraction of adults
| can't either.
| yaitsyaboi wrote:
| I think the 50% rule is okay. I get that it's annoying for the
| students who tried and got a 55%. But I suspect that the kids
| who would get score much less than a 50 are probably the least
| engaged and most disruptive.
|
| If a 50 can keep them statistically in the game, with a chance
| of turning it around and passing, that might be worth it. It's
| similar logic to not giving life sentences. People with no hope
| of a good outcome are harder to deal with. A kid with a 22%
| average that you have to deal with for 12 more weeks must be a
| nightmare. They have no incentive to try at all, or to let the
| class proceed in an orderly wat.
| refurb wrote:
| You're cheating that kid. They're going to get pushed into
| the next grade and fall further behind until they graduate
| and can't do basic math.
| yaitsyaboi wrote:
| I don't think theres a school district in the country that
| will advance a kid with a 50% average to the next grade.
| Idk if there's some arcane No Child Left Behind provision
| about kids who have been stuck for 3 years, but in general
| a 50% is a no go.
|
| And it's not like you can get 50s all year and get a few
| 80s and average it out. It takes a lot of really sustained
| effort to come back from that. Most kids won't. But at
| least it's mathematically possible for more of the year.
| csa wrote:
| > I don't think theres a school district in the country
| that will advance a kid with a 50% average to the next
| grade.
|
| You're half right.
|
| Most school districts won't let a student with a 50%
| average pass.
|
| That said, teachers will be pressed to give extra points
| for participation or extra credit or just to change the
| scores to get said kid over a passing level. Some
| teachers will do this unprompted just to make sure they
| don't have to see the kid next year.
|
| Not to mention that there will undoubtedly be calls of
| some sort of discrimination if failing grades are common
| in any given teacher's class.
| spangry wrote:
| Because standards would hinder "equity" in educational
| outcomes. The SF Board of Education recently voted to end
| selective admissions for Lowell High School in favour of a
| lottery, citing lack of diversity and "pervasive systemic
| racism".
|
| The board positions are elected so these sorts of policies are
| presumably what the people of San Francisco want.
| mmarq wrote:
| I don't know anything about this particular Lowell High
| School, but selective admissions at the high school level
| achieve excellency by filtering out "bad" students, which are
| usually students from disadvantaged backgrounds. If a public
| school is of very high quality, selecting 10 year olds at
| random is not much less fair than choosing them based on
| their grades or extracurricular activities or an essay.
| Unless we assume that high grades, extracurricular activities
| or essay tutoring are not correlated with family wealth.
|
| If certain demographics are heavily underrepresented (and I
| don't know if it's the case here), either we must assume that
| they are less smart (and so produce less "high school
| material") or we must acknowledge that there is some form of
| discrimination. The latter being almost certainly true,
| lotteries and quotas don't look like the dumbest ideas.
| yonran wrote:
| Did you read the article? Yes, selective admissions filter
| out "bad" students including the type of students who don't
| care about school who hold back students who do care; the
| problems of the article are virtually nonexistent at
| Lowell. I don't think Lowell was particularly selective (I
| think something like 50% of applicants get in) and there
| were plenty of poor students (including myself) who
| benefited from an academic public school that does have
| both wealthy and non-wealthy students who care about
| learning (as opposed to private and suburban schools which
| definitely do discriminate on the basis of wealth/income).
|
| > either we must assume that they are less smart ... or we
| must acknowledge that there is some form of discrimination
|
| The failure of schooling starts much earlier than the
| admissions test, and it is wrong to infer from disparities
| in test results that the test itself is racist (as the
| ringleaders of the SF Board of Education assumed).
| mmarq wrote:
| > Did you read the article? Yes, selective admissions
| filter out "bad" students including the type of students
| who don't care about school who hold back students who do
| care
|
| What do we do about these 10 year olds? We assume they
| are not "high school" material and we put them in the
| school for dumb kids? Do these 10 year old not care about
| school because there is something intrinsically wrong
| about them and so the school system can't do anything
| about it?
|
| > The failure of schooling starts much earlier than the
| admissions test, and it is wrong to infer from
| disparities in test results that the test itself is
| racist (as the ringleaders of the SF Board of Education
| assumed).
|
| The admission test is not racist per se, but if it
| results in, say, blacks not being admitted to an
| institution, it exist in a framework that materially
| enables racism. We are talking about a high-school, which
| enrols 12 year olds to teach them basic trigonometry and
| some basic notions of history and literature (in the best
| case scenario) and not about Hydra hiring PhD candidates
| to build a death ray. When properly motivated, everybody
| with a 80+ IQ can succeed in high school, one may argue
| that you could pick them at random.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > Do these 10 year old not care about school because
| there is something intrinsically wrong about them
|
| Each child, like each adult, has different motivations in
| life. Not all children are equally motivated for
| schoolwork.
|
| > The admission test is not racist per se, but if it
| results in, say, blacks not being admitted to an
| institution, it exist in a framework that materially
| enables racism
|
| No. You need to look at confounding variables, not just
| race. It could be that a large percentage of black
| children in this area come from poor families and must
| therefore work part-time jobs after school instead of
| studying. That's just one example of many possibilities.
| "Correcting" the problem by putting these children into
| this special school does nothing to change their poverty:
| they still must work after school and can't study. And
| that means they can't keep up with the other children in
| this privileged school. Your solution is probably to make
| the schoolwork easier and force everyone to suffer the
| same fate. My solution is to give that family money so
| their high school kid doesn't have to work to help
| support his family.
|
| In reality, your solution is the one that gets chosen
| because of the wokeness movement.
| tolbish wrote:
| What kind of 10 year old is in high school and works a
| part time job?
| mmarq wrote:
| > Each child, like each adult, has different motivations
| in life. Not all children are equally motivated for
| schoolwork.
|
| Ok, but you haven't answered my question
|
| > No. You need to look at confounding variables, not just
| race. It could be that a large percentage of black
| children in this area come from poor families and must
| therefore work part-time jobs after school instead of
| studying. That's just one example of many possibilities.
| "Correcting" the problem by putting these children into
| this special school does nothing to change their poverty:
| they still must work after school and can't study. And
| that means they can't keep up with the other children in
| this privileged school. Your solution is probably to make
| the schoolwork easier and force everyone to suffer the
| same fate. My solution is to give that family money so
| their high school kid doesn't have to work to help
| support his family.
|
| Children not being able to write a good essay when they
| are 10 because they have to work, is quite a degenerate
| case and I hope it is not the norm for those who are not
| admitted at this special school. The majority of 10-year-
| old kids, who aren't employed in violation of child
| labour laws, are smart enough to attend highschool
| without the need to make schoolwork easier.
|
| > In reality, your solution is the one that gets chosen
| because of the wokeness movement.
|
| This wokeness movement is not something I'm familiar with
| or affiliated to.
| WalterBright wrote:
| If we do not take advantage of the more capable students
| because of equity, what will the future be without people
| who can do the sorts of things that require highly capable
| individuals?
|
| No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for example.
|
| Even the communists realized that when you've got smart
| students, take advantage and educate them as best you can.
|
| The third reich idiotically drove out their best
| scientists, who wound up enthusiastically working for the
| Allies developing the technology that defeated the reich.
| mmarq wrote:
| > If we do not take advantage of the more capable
| students because of equity, what will the future of the
| country be without people who can do the sorts of things
| that require highly capable individuals?
|
| > No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for
| example.
|
| Do we have any data on the correlation between high-
| school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine
| or whatever?
|
| We are not talking about taking advantage of excellence,
| which starts to become visible after highschool. We are
| talking about 10-year-olds who go to school to be taught
| the fundamental theorem of arithmetics.
|
| > Even the communists realized that when you've got smart
| students, take advantage and educate them as best you
| can. > The third reich idiotically drove out their best
| scientists, who wound up working for the Allies
| developing the technology that defeated the reich.
|
| I don't know what the communists and the nazists have to
| do with changing the admission criteria of a high school.
| I suppose it's a way of expressing disagreement in
| American English?
| WalterBright wrote:
| > Do we have any data on the correlation between high-
| school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine
| or whatever?
|
| Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission.
| Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high
| percentage of Nobel prizes.
|
| https://www.caltech.edu/about/legacy/awards-and-
| honors/nobel...
|
| BTW, I think the mRNA vaccine technology is worthy of a
| Nobel Prize. Don't you?
| mmarq wrote:
| > Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission.
| Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high
| percentage of Nobel prizes.
|
| Caltech requires 10-year-old kids to write essays?
|
| Again, are we talking about enrolling 10-year-old kids in
| highschool or are we talking about hiring
| microbiologists?
| akomtu wrote:
| What's "equity" in this context, btw? Equal outcome?
| staticassertion wrote:
| Is there any evidence at all that AP classes and high
| GPAs leads to success, when controlling for other
| variables?
| nverno wrote:
| GPA should be a result of mastering the material.
| Assuming that is roughly the case, if you ever go on to
| use any of the skills you were supposed to learn in
| school (math, computing, etc) you are asking if having
| learned those skills would help you perform those skills?
|
| I doubt there will ever be a way to satisfactorily
| control for other variables when it comes to these sorts
| of real-life studies (there is a reason the majority of
| social science isn't reproducible[1])
|
| [1] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/21/eabd1705
| staticassertion wrote:
| So the answer is no.
| nverno wrote:
| I would lean more towards this is one of those truths
| that can be taken as self-evident. But, at the same time
| I would be skeptical that any published evidence would
| account for the infinitude of confounding factors.
|
| My guess is it is similar to IQ results - does a good job
| weeding out people who know nothing, but does worse
| differentiating between students who are satisfactory and
| those who are exceptional
| staticassertion wrote:
| AFAIK there's more evidence supporting that ~B students
| are the most successful vs A students.
| Talanes wrote:
| >GPA should be a result of mastering the material.
|
| I know that personally my grades don't tend to correlate
| with my actual knowledge at all. I've failed things
| because I've been bored with them, and I've gotten
| perfect grades on things I don't understand at all
| outside the tested material.
| nverno wrote:
| Same, I think this is the assumption that doesn't always
| hold up. However, it often does, and how well it does
| depends on the teachers and school.
| [deleted]
| lubujackson wrote:
| This kind of narrow thinking is what has caused schools in
| SF to suck for everyone. Because Lowell doesn't exist in a
| vacuum and the arguments that privileged people have a leg
| up doesn't really make a difference - it is similar logic
| to burning libraries because some folks can't read.
|
| So what happens when you dumb down the only decent public
| high school for students to aim for? The parents have three
| options: send your kid to school where they learn nothing
| (maybe get a tutor and self-learn?), send them to a private
| high school which costs north of $50k/year in SF (some are
| more like $65k... and that is IF you can get in!), or you
| move somewhere else. But there has been a country-wide
| effort to dumb down public schools combined with softer
| discipline (thanks to lawsuit fears), so you might simply
| end up at a private school anyway.
|
| Add this together and you can see how pushing equitable
| results by attacking merit-based options only widens class
| and economic divides.
| Talanes wrote:
| >So what happens when you dumb down the only decent
| public high school for students to aim for?
|
| Vast swaths of the country get by without having any
| choices in high schools. The idea that need a selection
| of different schools with different levels of prestige
| and focuses is such an urban entitlement.
| mmarq wrote:
| > So what happens when you dumb down the only decent
| public high school for students to aim for?
|
| Changing the admission criteria of a highschool is not
| akin to burning libraries.
|
| > So what happens when you dumb down the only decent
| public high school for students to aim for?
|
| Changing the admission criteria of a highschool is not
| the same as dumbing it down (whatever that is supposed to
| mean). In Europe children are not required to write essay
| or complete extracurricular activities to enroll in
| highschools or middleschools, and they are not generally
| dumber than the Americans.
|
| > Add this together and you can see how pushing equitable
| results by attacking merit-based options only widens
| class and economic divides.
|
| The admission criteria of a highschool do not necessarily
| reward merit. They are more likely to reward having been
| tutored on how to write highschool admission essays.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| There is an effort underway to recall members of the SFBOE:
|
| https://www.recallsfschoolboard.org/
|
| There is a father who has been out every weekend collection
| collecting petitions. On one occasion, someone tried to
| thwart the attempt by stealing some of the petitions.
|
| Even though there is clear video evidence and the public has
| identified the man, the police haven't arrested him, and SF
| politicians have not even mentioned the act. (Folks informed
| his employer, and he was fired.)
|
| I find this situation baffling.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| I am baffled why they are doing a recall? According to the
| site, the main reason states because their kids have not
| gone back to school. To me, that's not a good enough reason
| for a recall (recalls cost money). Public schools are under
| state and county health guidance.
| rahimnathwani wrote:
| The board could have opened schools months ago, but chose
| not to.
|
| The board opened some schools for a single day at the end
| of the school year, just to qualify for state funding to
| pay teachers.
|
| The board spent time (whilst schools were closed)
| deciding how to rename schools, something which has zero
| impact on educational outcomes.
|
| The board has a member who made racist remarks on Twitter
| and, despite not losing her position, is suing the school
| board: https://missionlocal.org/2021/03/alison-collins-
| school-board...
|
| These are other reasons to be dissatisfied.
|
| More concerning to some people is that becoming a member
| of the SFBOE is a common launching point for the SF Board
| of Supervisors.
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| The teachers were worried about Covid.
|
| Kids weren't vaccinated.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Kids don't need to be vaccinated. Adults who are
| concerned about it, including teachers, should be.
| Keeping schools closed because children aren't vaccinated
| is irrational.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Kids don't need to be vaccinated.
|
| A large unvaccinated reservoir population in constant
| contact with the vaccinated population is how you breed
| variants that are, e.g., more dangerous to young people
| (like Delta already is) and more likely to break through
| existing vaccines (which Delta also is, though not
| intensely so from the information I've seen.)
| saiya-jin wrote:
| What the heck are you talking about? Brazil variant for
| example is pretty brutal on kids, death is not so
| uncommon result. School is one of the worst places for
| spreading, since tons of kids lack will/discipline to
| behave consistently, and are cramped in various classes.
| Once 1 member of household is sick, the chance rest will
| get it is pretty high.
|
| Remote teaching sucks for many reasons for kids and
| should be used only when _really_ unavoidable, but to
| claim kids are a-OK and shouldn 't be vaccinated ain't
| based on science I've read so far.
| yonran wrote:
| The San Francisco Board of Education have made many
| displays of incompetence and malice this past year which
| have been covered by both local and national media.
|
| During the pandemic, the Board of Education announced
| that 44 schools were named after oppressors (many were
| justified, but the names committee also made numerous
| errors) and that principals and families needed to come
| up with new names for their schools over Zoom. Board
| member Gabriela Lopez defended even the egregious
| mistakes, demonstrating that she only cares about
| "uplifting" and "holding" people of color but not facts
| https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-san-francisco-
| ren... Unfortunately, Lopez is not up for recall yet, but
| her enablers are.
|
| Alison Collins led the resolution to remove academic
| admissions to San Francisco's magnet high school Lowell
| High. But instead of debating the pros and cons of having
| a magnet school, she caricatured the school as bed of
| "toxic racism" and dismissed the Asian parents who
| supported an admissions criteria as "a bunch of racists".
| https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/131658276095433113
| 6?l... Afterwards, people discovered her previous tweets
| stereotyping Asians and her pattern of abusing her power
| (https://twitter.com/hknightsf/status/1391039211747172352
| ). When her colleagues selected a different Vice
| President, she lashed out with a lawsuit calling her
| opponents racists
| (https://missionlocal.org/2021/04/alison-collins-strange-
| and-...)
|
| The other board members haven't done anything offensive
| but haven't shown any leadership either. They just
| enabled the radicals. We don't know exactly why SFUSD
| didn't open the schools this year (negotiations were
| behind closed doors), but I suspect it has to do with the
| board members' extreme deference to the teachers' union
| that endorsed them.
|
| I encourage anyone who is a San Francisco citizen to
| print out the recall petitions and mail them in
| https://recallsfschoolboard.org/
|
| See also this explainer The Case for Recalling the School
| Board https://www.engardio.com/blog/school-board-recall-
| case
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| This looks like a classic "what gets measured gets managed".
|
| If they have objectives like "X% of kids have to graduate",
| then either you improve the kids' skills, or you lower the
| requirements for graduation.
|
| For example, in France, the recent governments are extremely
| happy of the improvement in baccalaureate's success rate (the
| exam at the end of high-school).
|
| They never talk about the level, but older folks, who sat these
| exams a few decades ago, always lament that the courses have
| been dumbed down. Of course the government doesn't agree, but
| why would it?
| Yoric wrote:
| For context: "recent governments" == "every government since
| 1981", iirc.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| I learned more in two months of USAF Basic Training than any year
| of school, maybe any two years.
|
| As they told us repeatedly, it's a privilege to be here. Although
| they had the option to boot us out, no one was, and only one guy
| bailed out of 50.
| nerdponx wrote:
| This sounds like something out of a surrealist novel.
|
| > consistently use umlauts in place of quotation marks and acute
| accent marks in place of apostrophes
|
| US-International keyboard layout, maybe. Maybe the student
| doesn't know what umlauts and acute accents are, so maybe they
| think they're valid equivalents to " and '.
| fzimmermann89 wrote:
| or the text went through latex at some point, which can easily
| lead to a"->a.
|
| letter+quotation mark is a common way to write umlauts...
| rjsw wrote:
| Is that down to the pupil ?
|
| Sounds like another MacOS "why not use random unicode
| characters that look similar to the one you really want"
| feature to me.
| underseacables wrote:
| This is sad. It reads more as though teachers and school
| employees are doing whatever they can to keep/justify their jobs,
| but not to improve learning. It is almost as if a teachers first
| job is self-preservation. If students can't pass the test, then
| the test must be made easier, that way more students can pass and
| the teacher doesn't look bad.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > It is almost as if a teachers first job is self-preservation.
|
| That is simply the top priority of most employees.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| > Most teachers seem to take it as a given that of course half
| the class is going to wander in half an hour late during first
| period-- it's so early, you know!-- and during fourth period
|
| I don't know. What does this have to do with keeping teacher's
| jobs and not improving learning? Late start is, as far as
| "clinical outcomes" can be measured in education, like, the
| cheapest win there is.
| brandmeyer wrote:
| That's an incentive alignment problem. It is the responsibility
| of management (state and district admin) to ensure that what is
| best for the teacher's career is also what is best for student
| education.
| underseacables wrote:
| But which comes first, the teachers career, or the students
| education? I would contend that in the available evidence it
| is the former.
| Wistar wrote:
| Teacher's choice of curriculum and how, and when, subjects
| are taught are ever more regimented and regulated.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| Who's responsibility is it to ensure that what is best for
| the management (state and district admin) is also what is
| best for student education?
|
| I'm not too familiar with the details of management here, but
| is it even possible for public schools (and other government
| operations) to have proper incentives given voters don't care
| about results? I suppose "school-choice", which happens to be
| vehemently opposed by Democrats, would be the only way.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Parents who have money and care enough already pick the
| schools by simply buying a house in a slightly different
| place. Cupertino used to be the hot place for tiger parents
| in the bay area to go but I'm not sure if it still is. The
| issue is that then the rest of the schools get even worse
| which eventually results in bad social issues in 20 years.
| The kids from those schools grow up and everyone has to
| deal with them.
| schoolchoice wrote:
| "School-choice" is great for optimizing local maximums at
| the expense of just about everyone else. Public education
| should focus on the lowest common denominators to maximize
| education per tax dollar. It's not the smart people with
| lack of opportunity that drag down society, it's the
| massive amount of undereducated adults that become
| dangerously suceptable to manipulation.
| fallingknife wrote:
| If you want to maximize education per tax dollar then you
| need to separate out the smart kids into their own
| schools. Benefits of education are not evenly
| distributed. It is heavily weighted towards the right
| tail.
| JackFr wrote:
| Not clear what your argument against school choice is.
|
| Not sure what you mean by "optimizing local maximums at
| the expense of everything else". It almost sounds like an
| argument but there's no substance.
|
| You claim that public education should focus on the
| lowest common denominator so we can avoid an underclass
| susceptible to manipulation. That's both a weak
| justification to purposely damage public education and
| condescension shown by elites when poor people don't vote
| the way "they should".
| mobilefriendly wrote:
| School choice is still universal public education. It is
| just the government providers of education have to
| compete with private providers.
| sxg wrote:
| That may be true--the system may be better served by
| raising the floor on education. But voters are
| individuals, and the most passionate are likely the type
| of people who prioritize maximizing their own (smart)
| kids' opportunities over raising the floor for everyone.
| hypersoar wrote:
| School vouchers aren't really about aligning incentives.
| They're a backdoor to having the public fund the religious
| schools comprising a large majority of private schools.
| titanomachy wrote:
| It's probably a bit more complicated than that... if failure
| rates went way up because of COVID, it would probably be an
| honest representation of how little students learned, but it
| would also screw over a lot of kids and affect their futures.
| It's not really their fault that society didn't adapt well.
|
| I'm not saying they're right to just pass everyone, but it
| might not be purely selfish on the part of administrators.
| LanceH wrote:
| I would say most _teachers_ pass students so hell doesn 't rain
| down upon them in the form of administrators, parents, and the
| school district/city itself.
| [deleted]
| Yoric wrote:
| Let's rephrase this.
|
| If you had a choice between:
|
| a. doing your job as well as you can, then losing it (and being
| unemployable forever, quite likely);
|
| b. doing it somewhat worse, but keeping it (and hopefully
| having a chance to help more students).
|
| What would you do?
|
| Please blame whoever forced this conundrum on teachers.
| Nonsensical bureaucratic decisions like this are the reason for
| which I left the profession.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| I thought AP classes and a level of general competitiveness
| stopped stuff like this?
|
| Even if the in person classes are easy to pass, the AP scores
| should be consistent with the rest of the country and should make
| identifying the relative difficulty between schools pretty easy?
| ACT and SAT should also make grade inflated school very easily to
| spot.
|
| I think California has a rule requiring that at least X% of their
| students are from California right? Has that shifted the balance
| at CA to accepting lower quality students from their own state?
| almost_usual wrote:
| UC schools no longer consider SAT or ACT for admissions or
| scholarships.
|
| https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...
| nixpulvis wrote:
| > "you're legally required to assign this much homework, so make
| sure you do that, only don't, because the kids are overwhelmed".
| That too was in keeping with a theme.
|
| I think the underlying theme is that the parents themselves are
| overwhelmed and the schools that were ill-equipped to handle
| education before COVID-19 are crumbling.
|
| If I take this report at face value (which, frankly, I'm tempted
| to), it paints an even more broken image of the American school
| system than the dumpster fire I had on my wall already.
| jl2718 wrote:
| Just say no to this garbage. Your kids will only learn how to be
| like them.
| jdhn wrote:
| Stuff like this is why I roll my eyes every time I hear that
| schools are underfunded and how we need to give them just a
| little more funding, and surely things will get better. If
| they're just going to pass students anyways, what's the point of
| increasing the funding?
| kyboren wrote:
| That trope needs to die. California's schools are _not_
| underfunded. California spends a record amount on education[0],
| over $18k per child.
|
| "Reflecting the changes to Proposition 98 funding levels noted
| above, total K-12 per-pupil expenditures from all sources are
| projected to be $18,837 in 2020-21 and $18,000 in 2021-22--the
| highest levels ever (K-12 Education Spending Per Pupil). The
| decrease between 2020-21 and 2021-22 reflects the significant
| allocation of one-time federal funds in 2020-21."
|
| [0]:
| www.ebudget.ca.gov/2021-22/pdf/BudgetSummary/K-12Education.pdf
| mobilefriendly wrote:
| As a nation, US inflation adjusted, per-student K-12 spending
| has tripled since the 1960s.
| TMWNN wrote:
| New York City spends more per student than anywhere else in the
| US (<https://www.silive.com/news/2019/06/how-much-does-new-
| york-c...>). Baltimore, an incredibly poor and run-down city,
| spends the third most. #4-6 and #8 are all wealthy suburbs of
| Washington DC, but their schools are all far better than those
| of Baltimore or NYC on average, despite Baltimore spending
| slightly more per student and NYC spending 60-70% more.
| bradlys wrote:
| I mean, my school where I went could only afford four days a
| week. We had so many budget cuts that the school decided the
| only way to go forward was to cut the fifth day. This lasted
| for years and I don't know if they've ever returned to a normal
| schedule.
| pydry wrote:
| maybe because this isn't the only problem schools have and some
| of them absolutely will be fixed by money.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| Not quite as good as this one:
|
| https://www.amren.com/features/2020/05/after-twenty-years-wo...
|
| I'm a bit surprised that the Bay Area, one of the wealthiest
| places in the world, has problems with public schools too.
| "Public schooling is child abuse" gains more steam every day.
| astrange wrote:
| California can't fund any of its public schools properly
| because of Prop 13. None of the wealthy homeowners care about
| this, because they're all too old to have kids in school.
| unishark wrote:
| Prop 13 protects people who got in early. Median house prices
| in SF have been over a million for close to a decade. I'd
| think they have plenty enough suckers by now paying five-
| figures in property taxes.
| astrange wrote:
| The problem more applies to poorer places like EPA than SF.
| AFAIK the main problem with SF public schools is nobody
| wants to use them because they'll assign you to one across
| the city.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| you are utterly wrong here -- public school have gotten, do
| get, and will get, massive boatloads of money in most urban
| areas of California. There are many layers of money-consumers
| in each school system, especially in the Bay Area.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It's not clear to me how SF, the richest city in the country
| with the lowest percentage of children, and that charges an
| income tax on residents, doesn't have hands down the best
| public schools in the country.
| pjscott wrote:
| They certainly have money, but money doesn't seem to be the
| problem here. None of the things that the article talks
| about have any obvious connection with school funding, but
| with the culture of the school and how it's run. If the
| school's budget doubled tomorrow, for example, they still
| wouldn't be able to give a grade less than 50% because they
| would still have a policy forbidding it.
|
| (I went to a tiny rural elementary school located between a
| tractor supply store and a goat pen. Three teachers taught
| six grades, two grades per classroom. Compared to the SF
| schools, it was incredibly under-resourced -- and yet it
| was a Good School, academically much higher-performing. I
| think about this sometimes when people point at money as
| obviously the reason why Johnny can't read.)
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| It's not clear to me how funding plays a leading role in
| policies such as "let everyone pass".
| astrange wrote:
| Don't ask me, I was responding to "one of the wealthiest
| places in the world". Though I think schools with rich
| enough families attending do have attached foundations and
| just ask for charitable donations.
|
| The easiest way to live in the area as a schoolteacher is
| to marry an engineer or someone else with a home, too.
| rcpt wrote:
| Well, if you're an HJTA fanboy then you can justify any
| sickening anti education policy you want by pointing to
| "let everyone pass"
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| To be clear I've never heard of HJTA.
|
| Letting schools continue to suck with the excuse that
| they just need more funding is the sickening anti-
| education policy.
|
| Yes, an organization that is shitty due to bad policies
| won't improve, and might become worse, when given more
| funding.
| [deleted]
| mediumdeviation wrote:
| > American Renaissance (AR or AmRen) is a white supremacist
| website and former monthly magazine publication founded and
| edited by Jared Taylor.
|
| > The publication promotes pseudoscientific notions "that
| attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural
| superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed
| decline of American society because of integrationist social
| policies."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Renaissance_(magazine...
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| Does that subtract from the value of the article?
|
| The question one might ask is, "did the author write this
| because they're racist, or are they just sharing their
| experience and no one else would dare publish it?"
|
| Given there are multiple ways of verifying the details, I'd
| go with "just sharing their experience".
| brighton36 wrote:
| You can know the enlightenment is over, when you read
| summaries like this. When we choose social proximity to
| (evil thing) over veracity of content, you can see how
| tribalism forms, in lieu of meritocracy.
|
| The truth is probably racist. That's how the ship goes
| down.
| geofft wrote:
| It's p-hacking for prejudice, though.
|
| Let's say that there are two races, orange and blue. Alice
| is orange and goes to a majority-blue church and gets
| mistreated because of her race. Bob is blue and goes to a
| majority-orange church and gets mistreated because of his
| race.
|
| Alice and Bob are both upset about their experiences. They
| submit articles to "The American Truth," an orange-
| supremacist newspaper whose stated mission is to convince
| orange people that they'll never be happy in a society
| where blue people are treated as equals. Naturally, they
| publish Alice's article and not Bob's.
|
| Carol is orange and goes to a different majority-blue
| church and things are totally fine; Dan is blue and goes to
| a different majority-orange church and things are also
| totally fine. Eve, who is orange, and Mallory, who is blue,
| both go to the same church which has a good mix of folks
| from the two races, and they love it. "The American Truth"
| is of course totally uninterested in hearing any of these
| stories.
|
| If you read "The American Truth," you'll think that there's
| a problem with blue people being intolerant, and you won't
| be aware of problems with orange people being intolerant,
| nor will you be aware that, quite possibly, these are both
| exceptional cases and most orange people and blue people
| alike are quite tolerant and welcoming and they tend to get
| along with each other.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| I like your explanation, but it seems you're arguing in
| favor of reading "The American Truth", since it will give
| you both perspectives if you're currently only reading
| blue-supremacist newspapers?
|
| And you'll be fine as long as you recognize the biases on
| both sides and verify claims.
| geofft wrote:
| Not really, because the blue-supremacist newspapers won't
| publish any of the other perspectives - they're also
| going to say that the blue man cannot survive in a
| society with orange people. You won't hear any of the
| stories where things are fine.
|
| The problem with p-hacking is you need to honestly report
| the negative results too, not that you need to also find
| "statistically significant" results reporting the
| opposite effect.
|
| But yes, if you consciously make an effort to find
| extremist sources from all possible points of view (and
| in the real world, that's rarely the same as "both points
| of view"), and if you make a point of reading them all
| critically and skeptically, then that is likely to get
| you a more balanced perspective about things on the
| margins. Can you find a story about life as a black
| teacher in a majority-white school published by a black
| supremacist/separatist organization?
| [deleted]
| hypersoar wrote:
| This is a racist screed. The only information available about
| that author is that they write for the linked site, a well-
| known white supremacist publication.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| Only 2 articles by the author, so I wouldn't strongly
| associate them with the site.
|
| No information about author, and published on a site like
| that because such topics are forbidden, so I wouldn't say
| that's a good tool for judging the truthfulness/quality.
|
| Have to look at the details and see if they align with what
| is verifiable.
|
| Some of the claims can be verified by video footage that is
| widely available online. Many people will still dispute those
| claims.
| vore wrote:
| Ignoring the obvious white supremacist dogwhistling
| completely littered throughout their article, they
| literally allude to the 14 Words at the end!
|
| > But doing nothing means whites must condemn their own
| flesh and blood to the nightmare I've described -- and we
| have a duty to protect the future for our children.
| P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote:
| I don't see how that subtracts from the value of the
| claims that can be verified, just ignore biased claims
| like any other media.
|
| I'm not familiar with the idea that it's bad for white
| people to want a good future for their children? Seems
| quite racist to me.
| shoto_io wrote:
| _> And the plagiarism detection software was indeed fooled! What
| the student didn't realize is that teachers don't need software
| to be able to tell the difference between honestly composed
| sentences and computer-generated gibberish._
|
| Hilarious.
| linuxftw wrote:
| Wow, lot's to unravel in this one. First, the kids are trying to
| skip out on mindless work like book reports. Most of the students
| aren't bright enough to fool the teacher in the anecdotes, but
| probably there are some that do.
|
| Next, there's the discipline issue. Yes, they stopped suspending
| kids in a lot of places because they realized those kids would
| just be left alone at home all day, and the only reason those
| kids were at school at all was because it was in some way
| convenient for their parents.
|
| Finally, there's the homework issue. Yes, homeless is pointless
| busy work. If something is worth learning, make sure you block
| off enough time during classroom hours to teach it, otherwise
| most kids aren't going to learn it at all. Yes, the students are
| overwhelmed.
|
| We have millions of kids that are from completely broken homes,
| basic needs like food and housing aren't met, and this person is
| complaining about book reports? Society is broken.
| newbie2020 wrote:
| You think homework is useless? That's the main way to learn...
| throwaway17_17 wrote:
| I don't particularly agree with GP's comment, but homework is
| not the main way everyone learns. Maybe some individuals do
| learn that way, but others absolutely do not. I personally
| did not do a single homework assignment other than a senior
| term paper throughout all of high school and still learned
| the material presented. I think it's too broad to just assert
| that homework == 'way to learn'.
| LeegleechN wrote:
| Actually doing the material (as opposed to sitting in a
| lecture) is the way to learn, but that could be done in
| class.
| pacbard wrote:
| > With half the term remaining, teachers of seniors received a
| notification that they would not be allowed to fail students
| unless they filled out a form right then and there declaring that
| the student was certain to receive an F.
|
| I think that OP is misconstruing the reasons behind this
| notification requirement. This notification has to do more with a
| "cover your ass" policy than lowering expectations for seniors.
|
| The California Education code [1] requires school districts to
| develop procedures to notify parents of a failing grade. All the
| CA districts that I worked for had some procedures in place for
| when and how notify families of failing grades in response to
| this law. From a quick search, it seems that SFUSD policies 4.2.5
| [2] and 4.2.6 apply in this case. The policy clearly states that
| teachers have to notify parents of grades either 1 or 2 times
| during the semester (i.e., mid-semester report cards-if you went
| to school in CA you will remember receiving those).
|
| It seems that OP's school was on a 9-week reporting period,
| requiring teachers to notify parents of grades mid-semester and
| that their school added a requirement of filling out an
| additional form outlining that the student was in danger of
| failing the class specifically for seniors (probably because most
| families stopped looking at report cards for seniors). This form
| is required to be in compliance with the CA ed code as parents
| have the right to appeal failing grades and not being notified is
| probably an enough reason for the district to change a failing
| grade to a passing one in case of a lawsuit/complaint.
|
| I would imagine that failing a class is more "high stakes" for
| seniors than other students, so they have more paperwork involved
| for seniors if you want to fail them. Families might be more
| "litigious" if a student ends up failing a class required for
| graduation. It is simpler to complain to the board/suing that
| having to repeat a school year.
|
| The bottom line is that the CA ed code gives teachers final say
| in grades and even the superintendent cannot change a grade
| without the teacher's consent. On the other hand, the CA ed code
| gives some rights to parents to appeal grades and has some
| notifications guidelines so they shouldn't be surprised of
| failing grades. OP will be able to fail as many seniors as they
| want, but they just have to notify their families that they are
| in danger of failing the class at some point before the end of
| the semester. At the end of the day, if they have enough evidence
| for failing a student (that would stand up during a public board
| meeting/lawsuit), notifying the student's family 9 weeks before
| the end of the semester shouldn't be too much of a burden.
|
| Links:
|
| [1]:
| https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio....
| [2]: ]https://www.sfusd.edu/services/know-your-rights/student-
| fami...
| jessriedel wrote:
| > This form is required to be in compliance with the CA ed code
| as parents have the right to appeal failing grades and not
| being notified is probably an enough reason for the district to
| change a failing grade to a passing one in case of a
| lawsuit/complaint.
|
| If this were the reason for the new forms, why would the school
| only have teachers fill out the form if the student were
| _guaranteed_ to fail? I 'd think the schools would go the
| opposite direction and make sure to notify all parents whose
| kids _might_ fail.
| pacbard wrote:
| I dug up SFUSD board policy [1] around failing notifications.
| The policy reads:
|
| "Whenever it becomes evident to a teacher that a student is
| in danger of failing a course, the teacher shall arrange a
| conference with the student's parent/guardian or send the
| parent/guardian a written report. The refusal of the parent
| to attend the conference, or to respond to the written
| report, shall not preclude failing the pupil at the end of
| the grading period. (Education Code 49067)"
|
| The policy clearly states that the student has to be "in
| danger of failing a course" and not "guaranteed to fail a
| course". But, if a teacher knows that they might fail a
| student, they must notify parents by some reasonable deadline
| (again, it seems that OP's school sets it by week 9 of the
| semester or by the mid-semester mark). Without this
| notification, they might not be able to fail a student
| because they weren't in compliance with the CA ed code and
| district policy. This becomes even more of an issue when HS
| graduation is concerned.
|
| I don't know if the forms are new or not. The policy was last
| updated in 2017 so they are at least 4 years old. What what
| is worth, I filled out similar forms when I was a teacher 10
| years ago in another part of CA, so I suspect that they have
| been around for longer than that (and the forms were mass
| produced on carbon paper slips that seemed printed in the
| 70s). I am also wondering if the word "guaranteed" came up in
| response to COVID-related changes to grading policies and the
| district having implemented a credit/no credit grading
| system.
|
| Links:
|
| [1] Board policy 5121 cf. 6154 para. 4: https://go.boarddocs.
| com/ca/sfusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=AKG...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| So, this seems ludicrous and sad. What I am wondering is whether
| or not this is an accurate representation of the real situation
| in SFBay area schools? If we have any parents from the SF Bay
| area on HN who are sending their kids to public schools, I'd be
| interested in hearing their take on this.
| amha wrote:
| I teach at an elite private school in the Bay. We're a much
| better place than the school described here, with kids who like
| learning, and administrators who are well-intentioned. But many
| of the author's frustrations are, directionally, exactly the
| same as what I experience, namely:
|
| > .. The emails sent to me personally from counselors and
| administrators have overwhelmingly broken down along these
| lines: such-and-such a student is feeling stressed, so please
| excuse her from this set of assignments. This other student
| gets nervous about taking tests or giving presentations or
| working in groups, so please excuse him from work of those
| types. ... my direct supervisor repeatedly demanded that I pace
| my classes for the benefit of the single student in each
| section who was struggling the most, which quite literally
| would have meant putting students who had signed up for
| Advanced Placement into a remedial course
| bob1029 wrote:
| I have 2 close family members working public education in Texas
| - one is a principal and another a teacher. Stories like this
| are brought up all the time. Something really shitty is going
| on with how we are raising a lot of our kids and managing
| public school systems. It's not specific to one
| state/county/region from what I can tell.
|
| My brother in particular is desperately trying to get out of
| public education. He loves teaching, but they are making it
| impossible for anyone to do their jobs effectively. Pay is
| shit, especially since work practically doubled overnight, and
| you get virtually zero control over the curriculum or policies
| in your classroom.
|
| Then, at the end of the day, some entitled shithead of a parent
| thinks their little snowflake was dealt a bad hand and parent-
| teacher conferences ensue which further sap whatever life force
| remains.
|
| After hearing about all of this stuff over the years, I cant
| help but feel incredibly grateful that I have the kind of
| career that I do. Public education has been turned into a
| protracted daycare experience with the sole objective of piping
| the students into a college debt lifestyle.
| mindvirus wrote:
| One of the most radical beliefs I have is we should get rid of
| private schools, because it lets the people most capable of
| forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and
| so it doesn't get fixed.
|
| Of course I say this as I seriously consider sending my kids to a
| private school because of articles like this.
| rcpt wrote:
| > lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of
| an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed.
|
| I don't think voting homeowner retirees sitting on fat Prop 13
| tax cuts are going to change their tune because their grandkids
| can't go to private school.
| bushbaba wrote:
| Majority of education budget goes to paying for pensions of
| retirees.
|
| There's no budget shortage. There's a mis use of funds. If
| you throw more money into the system we'll just see even
| crazier pension packages and administration staff overheads.
| mindvirus wrote:
| I doubt that these problems are from a lack of funding.
|
| From a systems point of view though - why would businesses
| move to SF if it meant bad schools? The answer right now is
| because the leadership can opt out and go into the private
| system, but if that wasn't the case, I think there would be a
| lot of incentive on the city to fix these problems.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Alternatively we should ban public schools and force parents to
| send them to a private school, which if the money that would
| otherwise have gone to the public school gets sent along with
| them isn't very expensive (here in Denmark something like
| 80-90% of the money follows the student).
|
| Then we would have a direct way for parents to improve the
| schools their kids attend.
| zepto wrote:
| > get rid of private schools
|
| What does that actually mean? It seems like you'd have to ban
| homeschooling and severely curtail private tutoring too.
|
| The idea of the state providing basic schooling so that even
| the poorest people start with at least some intellectual
| capital and can participate in society seems like and a good
| one.
|
| The idea of the state limiting what education is available to
| everyone and making it illegal to try to organize education
| outside of its direct authority seems maximally dystopian.
| mindvirus wrote:
| You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything
| about tutoring or homeschooling.
|
| It'd mean the same thing it already means for 90%+ people -
| compulsory publicly funded education from 5-17 years old.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Or maybe you don't understand California law. Most
| homeschooling families stay legal by registering as a
| _private school._
|
| Source: I homeschooled my sons in California for several
| years and participated on various homeschooling lists at
| the time.
| zepto wrote:
| > You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say
| anything about tutoring or homeschooling.
|
| No straw man involved. I don't think you've thought through
| the implications of 'getting rid of private school'.
|
| The point is that to ban private schools you'd also have to
| ban homeschooling.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| > The point is that to ban private schools you'd also
| have to ban homeschooling.
|
| Why?
|
| You can homeschool your children if you want.
|
| They just have to be at state school during state school
| hours like anyone else. So you'll have to homeschool in
| your own time, like everything else you have to do in
| your own time.
|
| (I'm not in favour of banning private schools, but your
| argument doesn't make sense regardless.)
| josho wrote:
| It's my understanding that private schools play a minor
| role in other countries. Those same countries also have
| home schools.
|
| I don't quite understand how restricting a private school
| of several hundred students affects a parent teaching
| their children at home.
|
| Clearly rules could be in place to separate those
| concerns apart.
| stale2002 wrote:
| The more likely result of your "solution" is that everyone
| simple gets a worse education.
|
| Things are usually not solved by making things worse for
| everyone.
|
| Instead, the solution, to most problems, is to try to help more
| people, instead of trying to stop others from being too good at
| educating their children.
| rrss wrote:
| FYI private schools are not immune to these problems. The
| administration of some private schools choose to have similar
| policies (accept late work indefinitely, minimum grade of 50%,
| etc) at their school.
| mindvirus wrote:
| Of course, but it is very much up to the parents which
| product they want to buy (another problem of private schools
| to be sure). There are several that focus on rigorous
| academics, language immersion and even world travel.
| rkk3 wrote:
| They don't necessarily know what is marketing and what they
| are buying, and the few truly top schools are selective.
| Private school teachers are also paid less & have worse
| benefits. It would be great if the private system had it
| all figured out but they don't.
| amha wrote:
| Teacher at an elite SFBay private high school. Can confirm!
| verisimilidude wrote:
| You're describing Finland. They outlawed private school funding
| for exactly the reason you're proposing: to get the wealthiest
| and most engaged parents invested in fixing public schools for
| all.
|
| It worked. They have one of the best public education systems
| in the world.
| staticassertion wrote:
| School's so stupid. If you give people a grade and tell them to
| maximize it, with no meaningful rewards that they can understand,
| they're going to cheat. Duh. I regret not cheating in school,
| what a waste of time all of that shit was.
|
| The teacher is basically like "haha dumb kids, we know you're
| cheating" and "if only we could punish students more!". There's a
| lot of "the smart kids are suffering because of the dumb kids"
| attitude here that I find disgusting.
|
| > That too was in keeping with a theme. The teacher email I
| mentioned above was from one of the conference threads, but the
| emails sent to me personally from counselors and administrators
| have overwhelmingly broken down along these lines: such-and-such
| a student is feeling stressed, so please excuse her from this set
| of assignments. This other student gets nervous about taking
| tests or giving presentations or working in groups, so please
| excuse him from work of those types.
|
| Oh god, how awful that these students won't get to suffer through
| some idiot's assignment that I'm sure would greatly better their
| life.
|
| There's a lot wrong with school but I feel like this teacher
| doesn't realize that they're a part of that.
|
| > Wow, a 100% pass rate! What a successful school!
|
| Yes, it's cheating. They have an incentive, as your students do,
| to 'pass', and so they cheat.
|
| Give students a place to be during the day while their parents
| work. Give them real, meaningful incentives that matter to young
| people - money, freedom, social structure, a feeling of
| productivity - and align those with learning real, practical
| skills, like how to read, write, analyze context, etc.
|
| Hire non-idiots, pay them more, reduce class sizes. Yeah it'll
| cost more, but the obvious economic benefits will offset that. I
| can count on one hand how many teachers I had that I respected -
| the rest were obvious failures.
| um_ya wrote:
| I like the school voucher idea a lot.
|
| Give parents a voucher, as good as cash, for their child and
| let them choose the school.
|
| Private companies will compete for those vouchers, aligning
| focus on satisfying the parents and the children, rather than
| the government.
| crooked-v wrote:
| That sounds like a great way to indirectly punish parents who
| can't afford commutes for their children, since they get
| stuck with whichever schools the wealthier parents pull their
| children from.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| I cant help but think this is tied to the way government funding
| for schools is handled. Schools dont want to lose funding by
| having poor performance so the make the performance measures look
| better.
| mindvirus wrote:
| In the balance, from talking to teachers a lot of students are
| really struggling this year with COVID lockdowns, and so I wonder
| to what extent this is to dampen that. I suspect most will be a
| little bit behind next year, and it feels like we will have to
| lean into that.
| gregimba wrote:
| During high school we had had an exchange program with a German
| college track high school. My family hosted a student for a month
| and then they hosted me in Germany. I was shocked at the
| difference in expectations and quality of education compared to
| an average American high school. I really wish we offered
| something equivalent of their combination Vocational Tech/High
| school with industry partnership as a viable career path compared
| to the 4 year high school only option I had.
| kowlo wrote:
| It's sad but it's only going to get worse. UK universities are
| already worse.
| ivan_ah wrote:
| Yeah I remember being very surprised at the undergraduate level
| of math/phys at Bristol (I was there for one year on a student
| exchange). My classmates (2nd year and 3rd year) had trouble
| with basic calculus, because they didn't learn it in high
| school, and then their first year courses had to go easy
| (superficial) so that not everybody fails. The fact that you
| choose which questions to answer on the finals is also weird
| (answer any 3 out of 4 questions).
|
| It doesn't make sense to me that a whole nation skips math
| (unless you take math A-levels).
|
| I talked to a professor and he explained UGRADs are below
| level, but then when starting grad school they force everyone
| up to international level. He showed me a huge room with grad
| student desks and was like "look, we don't let them get out of
| here until they learn math properly."
| lordnacho wrote:
| This school sounds like some sort of weird Kafkaesque punishment
| for kids. Everyone is trying to game it: kids who don't want to
| write essays, administrators who don't want kids to fail.
| Teachers who want kids to both learn stuff and pass.
|
| Motivate the kids. Show them stuff about the world, and show them
| how to find out things for themselves. If you're going to test
| them, do it in a way that doesn't destroy all enjoyment of the
| subject. Try to get the kids to want to keep learning after they
| leave you.
| dehrmann wrote:
| No one's gaming anything; it's education theater.
| rajansaini wrote:
| In my experience anyone can be conditioned to love anything,
| and inspiring a love for learning _something_ is the only
| stable long-term solution.
| hintymad wrote:
| > And my direct supervisor repeatedly demanded that I pace my
| classes for the benefit of the single student in each section who
| was struggling the most
|
| All such effort in the name of equity will hurt the kids whose
| families can't afford proper education. Eventually there will be
| larger degree of inequity. The best students, namely the future
| elites, will be okay, as they will find ways to educate
| themselves one way or another. The worst students, those "single
| student who struggled most", will be okay too, as they got all
| the attention they need. It is unfortunately the students in the
| middle, the backbone of our society, who would get hurt, like the
| straight-A student reported by NYT who couldn't even pass city
| college's math placement tests. Or the intern who just got fired
| because he couldn't even understand that finding the values of
| two variables needs a system of two independent equations.
| pmichaud wrote:
| This is terrifying. How representative is this actually?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| In public school systems of coastal liberal cities? Very
| representative.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Im afraid it is widespread. My highschool in Alaska implemented
| a graduation competency exam around 2000. Less than half my
| class passed what I thought was an easy test. So... they made
| next years test easier to meet the desired pass target.
| nla wrote:
| I would give this 10 votes if I could. Great read!
| lightgreen wrote:
| You can create 10 accounts if you think you deserve more votes
| than others.
| fitzie wrote:
| if I was a teacher I would give an extra five points on any
| handwritten assignment, and an extra ten points if it is cursive.
| qihqi wrote:
| Too easy to game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvIvPARVRUQ
| [deleted]
| dnndev wrote:
| Public school is broken and we all know it - in general.
|
| We need competent administrators, more teachers and smaller
| classes. Parents need more time to teach their children what is
| not and should not be taught at school.
|
| Kudos to parents who can afford and decide to be more hands on
| with children's education. It is heartbreaking when all a child
| has is public school.
| Bostonian wrote:
| "We need more teachers and smaller classes."
|
| That would cost more, and reading the blog makes me want to
| send less money to the public schools.
| dnndev wrote:
| Another approach could be:
|
| High school should be completely optional. Those who want to
| go will benefit from it and those who don't won't be there to
| make trouble.
|
| Move the high school teachers to middle school and elementary
| for smaller classes.
| Bostonian wrote:
| For some reason my comment was downvoted. Does the system
| portrayed sound like one that is using resources efficiently
| to do important things? In some respects the school may doing
| harm, teaching students that they can be late and miss
| assignments without consequences. In the private sector they
| would be fired.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| If you think that giving less money to struggling public
| services is a way to improve those services, then you are
| part of the problem. Political opportunists rely on that
| line of thinking to put public services into a death
| spiral, and their failure becomes a self-fulfilling
| prophecy.
| Ivdg3 wrote:
| No, public school in the United States is broken. They're quite
| functional in the majority of the OECD.
|
| If you are a parent and are in SF this should be a wake up
| call. The city is rapidly failing, it's in your best interest
| to get out now.
| Popegaf wrote:
| > They're quite functional in the majority of the OECD.
|
| Functional isn't what should be aimed for: excellent should
| be the mark. Right now, the majority still forces their
| students into thought boxes (e.g if you fail maths at school,
| you're supposedly balls at engineering for the rest of your
| life), pretends that spending 12 years memorizing facts is
| the pinnacle of education, employs unmotivated teachers with
| below-average salaries, and teaches topics from the last
| century.
|
| My university experience was simply a continuation of
| highschool and being treated like a child. Exams we still
| about memorizing with no focus on understanding, attendance
| was obligatory, tech was sometimes >20 years old, and so on
| and so forth.
|
| Even the systems and curriculums within states (!= country)
| can vary pretty heavily. The bologna reform supposedly made
| comparing degrees between countries better, but a bachelor in
| mechanical engineering may mean something entirely different
| in Poland and Spain.
|
| Better doesn't automatically mean good.
| briandear wrote:
| Public schools where I live in Texas are great. Much better
| than the $33k per year school we had in Silicon Valley. The
| places were they seem broken are in big city districts where
| certain political factions, specifically teacher unions, get
| outsized influence on policy. I saw this up close when I
| lived in Jersey City and was considering a run for school
| board on Mayor Fulup's slate of candidates. After being
| warned about "crossing the unions" and getting into tiffs
| with the NAACP representative, I discovered that many of
| these groups don't care a lick about education, only money
| and power. And it isn't about funding: look at the per pupil
| expenditures in DC or New York, and compare them to Austin
| suburbs like Leander, or Houston suburbs like the Woodlands.
| Those suburban districts spend less than the districts that
| perpetually fail. There are policy problems, not financial
| ones.
| throwaway6734 wrote:
| >And it isn't about funding: look at the per pupil
| expenditures in DC or New York, and compare them to Austin
| suburbs like Leander, or Houston suburbs like the Woodlands
|
| Spending per pupil can be a deceiving statistic due to the
| vastly different needs between poor/middle-class/wealthy
| students
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Are you aware that most of the San Francisco Bay Area is not
| actually in the city of San Francisco?
| akomtu wrote:
| "critical thinking" is what I think parents should teach to
| their kids. By that I mean giving cases of deception,
| gaslighting, etc. and asking the kid to discern the lie and the
| intent of the lie. I don't think schools teach this skill these
| days.
| ryty wrote:
| They punish this skill. I was literally expelled from my high
| school during senior year for arguing with a teacher over her
| misinterpretation of something stated pretty plainly in the
| textbook. The teacher got furious when I stated confidently
| that she was wrong, and within about 15 minutes I had been
| taken to the principal's office and told to never tell a
| teacher that they are wrong, to which I said "even if they
| are wrong?" and she expelled me on the spot. The expulsion
| was overturned about a week later but it was a terrible week
| for me and my parents, and I got pretty behind in my
| schoolwork because of it. And to be clear the problem was
| that the teacher was saying something different from the
| textbook, so this was not a subjective matter, or a question
| of knowledge exactly. If she had just said "ignore the
| textbook" it would have been fine.
| briandear wrote:
| It's against their best interests to teach this. Imagine if
| they taught critical thinking about the Covid epidemic. The
| very logic unions used to keep schools closed would be
| unraveled if students and parents were thinking critically.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I think you are working in the right direction, but you have
| to include lies that are believed by the teller, semi-lies
| that were honestly conceived but lose their earnestness
| through determined avoidance of self-questioning, and even
| honest but harmful mistakes.
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| The only aspect that is not distressing is that there is at least
| one public school teacher who can recognize the futility of
| trying to simultaneously accommodate students, parents and
| administration.
|
| What educational outcome do these groups expect?
| arkh wrote:
| > Colleagues from programs where these moves happened earlier
| have pointed out what the results have been: kids wind up with
| stellar grade point averages and glowing recommendations, get
| into top colleges, and... drop out after about three weeks,
| saying that they feel like they're years behind everyone else and
| don't know what's going on, because they are and they don't.
|
| There must a good way to describe this "school to life in debt"
| pipeline. Doing everything to get young people to go to college
| where they'll have to get a loan which the state will gladly
| guarantee, the college will take the money and debt collectors
| will be happy to setup decades long plans to get some interest
| back.
| avanai wrote:
| The umlauts for quotes thing is really interesting. I don't know
| why the author went for "these kids haven't seen enough 'proper'
| text" rather than, say "these kids weren't taught typing and
| discovered a creative solution that communicates their intent
| well."
| Skunkleton wrote:
| That one left me scratching my head. A physical keyboard has a
| key specifically for a quote, and entering an umlaut isn't
| straightforward on iOS. International keyboard maybe?
| splithalf wrote:
| The soft bigotry of different standards is talked about but
| rarely is the premise carefully examined. Can there be a single
| standard? Maybe the problem is expecting a good essay, composed
| in earnest, by a kid that can "barely string a sentence
| together." We ought not be surprised when humans act human.
|
| Maybe we should redefine public education to be a bit more
| exclusive, and not shame those that aren't on a college track
| into pursuing mentally challenging work for which we are unfit.
| Give kids the money that would be spent on their education
| (loosely defined) and let them invest it, or spend on vocational
| training or seed money to start their own small business. Too
| much focus on producing som eidetic notion of the educated
| individual. People don't wind up homeless because they weren't
| exposed to Shakespeare. Some people will be lucky to attain
| enough basic skill to stay afloat. If such a person is able to
| fool plagiarism software, maybe that's something to celebrate.
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