[HN Gopher] Schools for children of military achieve results rar... ___________________________________________________________________ Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education Author : LastNevadan Score : 106 points Date : 2023-10-12 16:47 UTC (4 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com) | dannyphantom wrote: | https://archive.ph/PHFQ1 | Jtsummers wrote: | https://web.archive.org/web/20231010091419/https://www.nytim... | | This one worked better for me. | ericfrazier wrote: | If that's the case then we really are up the creek as a nation. | jjtheblunt wrote: | One counterexample: | | my grad school linguistics professor, an internationally | recognized scholar across several languages, credited the DoD | Language school at Monterrey CA as having been just amazing, | and who went back to teach for decades in a top five ranked US | university, not only linguists but engineering kids like me. | | He was the same age as my dad so had the avuncular thing going, | was personable, but most of all inspiring to decades of | students to look outside their curricula. | | Sometimes what sounds like up a creek turns out to be an | unpredictable kick ass river, I guess. | ericfrazier wrote: | I'm talking about K-12 DoD education abroad. | Afforess wrote: | clickbait headline, the real answer is in the article: | | > _For starters, families have access to housing and health care | through the military, and at least one parent has a job._ | | > _" Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the | scene for learning to occur," said Jessica Thorne, the principal | at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students_ | | Providing a stable home environment with access to at least one | parent, proper nutrition, and safety - all commonly missing in | the worst performing school districts. | jowea wrote: | That may be a bit simplistic since the article does mentions | other possible explanations for the better results beyond the | fact that essentially all students are above an economic floor. | | And I didn't get it from the article, but are those schools | better than the schools in wealthy districts? | WillPostForFood wrote: | What's unfortunate about the article is that it is so light on | data, and heavy on assumptions. So whatever your agenda is, there | is something to latch onto, but ultimately nothing to support it. | | e.g. Prefer more rigour? "Defense officials attribute recent | growth in test scores partly to the overhaul, which was meant to | raise the level of rigor expected of students." | | Prefer more money? "the Defense Department estimates that it | spends about $25,000 per student, on par with the highest- | spending states" | | For all we can tell from the article, it is just self selection. | joshhart wrote: | The article suggests several causes: 1. Bias in population - | these students all have families where at least one parent has a | stable job, which isn't true elsewhere. There could also be other | factors, for instance maybe people who enter the military are | more motivated on average and that genetically or through | parenting is passed on to their kids. 2. Better funding 3. | Frequent feedback to teachers and more methodical planning 4. | Excellent racial & socioeconomic integration | | Is there a way to tease out the contribution in each area through | controlling for variables. I suspect #1 is the largest by far, | but I think this could be statistically controlled for partially | by looking at children of parents who attend non-military | schools. Curious for thoughts from HN. | aynyc wrote: | No. #1 is your CO will chew your ass out in front of everyone | (which is a big no-no in leadership, yet it's accepted | regarding your children). I saw first hand my E6 got called to | battalion CO to answer why his son was bullying other kids (I | think some civilians from DoD). I still remember CO said, if | you don't fix this, I march the whole damn battalion to your | house and make you do push ups while your son watch. | | When your parents care, you will do. | pram wrote: | This is also the best reason to NOT use stuff on base! The | day I got pulled into my squadron commanders office because | my dorm "was a mess" was the same day I applied for BAH. | zeroCalories wrote: | All of those have multiplicative effects. Good home/parents | make students more motivated, good teachers are able to work | well with motivated students, capable classrooms are able to | handle more demanding classes. I don't suspect socioeconomic | integration matters here though if everyone is getting the same | treatment. Standardization is also good when we see wildly | different results in different classrooms. Harder to do in more | fragmented and less well funded school districts. | | But these are all well known factors. Not much to learn drom | here, but it's nice to see it confirm the theory. | ethbr1 wrote: | This. Mother and family spent careers in early childhood | education. | | - In order for learning to happen, kids have to be non- | disruptive. | | - In order for kids to be non-disruptive, they have to have | their basic needs met: safety, food, stability, etc. | | - In order for a kid's basic needs to be met, there has to be | a source of income and time to care for them. | | Absent that chain of dependencies, young children are in no | state to learn anything, and distract the kids around them. | And every minute of every week spent papering over | deficiencies there is one less minute devoted to learning. | | F.ex. in Title I schools, it's not uncommon to have families | where the only book in the house might be one a child is sent | home with. | | If teachers received tabula rasa children, results would be | much more even. | | But they don't, which results in kids at bad schools being | unable to focus, which means they don't learn basic material, | which perpetuates income disparities later in life, which | continues the cycle through lack of time and money. | | The military has many bad aspects, but a parent with a steady | job, housing, and benefits is a solid foundation for | childhood academic success. | zeroCalories wrote: | Yeah I have family in education too and it's a sad reality | that schools just can't help most students because they | come from broken homes. There are marginal improvements you | can make like providing free lunch and good after school | activities, but an actual solution would require other | fundamental problems to be solved in society, or a radical | reimagining of public education. | | On a more nutty note, for the possible reforms I've heard | of everything from public boarding schools so kid don't | have to spend time in their bad home, to firing all | teachers and paying children for testing well. | joshhart wrote: | I think these are good points, I am hugely in favor of | expanding food stamps and child tax credits for this reason. | One estimate is that every $1 spend on food stamps expands | GDP by $1.50, so this is really good for the overall economy. | I have heard of much higher estimates, but cannot easily find | the source. We definitely need to help poor families break | the poverty cycle. Schools should have free breakfast, lunch, | dinner, and after school programs as well to deal with lack | of food at home and 2 parents working full-time. | | https://www.ers.usda.gov/amber- | waves/2019/july/quantifying-t... | rawgabbit wrote: | I spent time in the US military many years ago. From my sample | size of one: | | 1) This is population bias and self-selection. Everyone I met | in the service was extremely patriotic and wanted to succeed in | everything. Many came from desperately poor backgrounds and saw | the service as their way to the middle class. Those who joined | for other reasons were quickly forced out. At the time, when | people asked me what my job was in the military, I joked that I | was a "bullet stopper". I was joking but I honestly believed | everyone in my team would take a bullet for each other. | | 2) Funding is questionable. Military pay is a joke. Many of the | enlisted I knew received food stamps and WIC (women infant | children supplement monies to feed themselves). The housing is | old, probably contain asbestos and lead, mold etc. But at least | its warm. Probably most important there was almost zero theft, | burglaries, or crime you see in troubled cities. Healthcare is | almost free. | | 3) Teaching. The military does things by the book. Many books. | Thousands of pages. Most of which is bull shit. The military | makes up for it through sheer determination. | | 4) Racial integration. Hmmmm. The US military at least has a | huge problem with racism, sexism, all kinds of isms. Sexual | assault is a taboo subject that happens under the surface and | commanders at all levels are at their wit's end. If my daughter | wanted to join the US military, I would actively encourage her | and secretly worry that she would be sexually assaulted. I | would try to warn her indirectly and tell her things like don't | go to private parties. Drink only in a public setting with a | designated person looking out for trouble. The service is an | honor but also has its own problems. | Spinnaker_ wrote: | I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter | school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results | isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the | worst performing kids. | | Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and | artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the | only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay | at home and can pick the kid up. | | The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will | be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well | fed and groomed and socialized. Is the education better, or have | they just selected better performing kids? The article touches on | this. But I don't think takes it nearly seriously enough. | eYrKEC2 wrote: | Another factor is that the military parents have cleared a bar | of pre-enlistment testing (ASVAB?) that has strong correlations | with IQ testing. | stonogo wrote: | The minimum ASVAB to enlist is 31, and there are waiver | programs for that. This is not a good showing. I feel like | people don't appreciate how little lower-enlisted people are | paid, what terrible financial literacy abounds in the ranks, | and how many kids live on base but are still very firmly | living in poverty. | | There are a lot of advantages to living on base, but this | thread is pretending that the military has its shit together | in ways that it absolutely does not. "All the kids will be | well-fed and socialized" is bizarrely out of touch, | specifically. There are functioning gangs on some larger | military installations. Troops PCS every few years, making it | difficult for kids to establish social groups. Most bases | have a unit of MPs basically acting as child services. | | I'd think a better place to look for filters would be entire | schools -- BRAC has caused the closure of many schools, but I | don't know how they select which schools to target for | closure. I know of at least two larger bases which have no | schools (students are bused to local civilian schools) but I | know others who have kept their schools despite a lower | overall population of families. | red-iron-pine wrote: | maybe on the officer level, but you don't need a particularly | high ASVAB score to drive a truck or be a cook. | HDThoreaun wrote: | Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for | prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary | schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't | some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can | improve the education for those that remain. | | My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. | Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like | they're only accepting kids with two parents, in fact they're | doing a much better job of helping poor families in my district | than the public school system, which forces all the poor | students into the same schools with literal murderers | attending. Allowing poor students from families that value | education to go to schools with like minded students is an | unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools | currently do. | colechristensen wrote: | The question is: what do you do about children with | discipline problems whose parents don't care? | | By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of | them are special needs and they at least have a path for what | people want to do with them, even if special education | doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least | an answer to "what should we do?". | | But what should we do with the rest? | parineum wrote: | > But what should we do with the rest? | | The answer to that question is _something_ but I think the | real question is "who is 'we'?" | colechristensen wrote: | Children's public education is an _everybody_ problem. | How these bulk problems are handled is something | everybody should agree on instead of acting like it's | somebody else's problem. | black6 wrote: | The parents. Offloading the responsibility of raising | children is a large part of the problem. | chowells wrote: | Absolutely 100% incorrect. If the parents aren't willing | or able to raise their children, _someone_ has to. | "Throw them away" is not a moral, ethical, or utilitarian | answer. | 9530jh9054ven wrote: | Why isn't it an answer? | | At least from a purely utilitarian point of view, cost of | educating and raising a child is exorbitant (teachers, | food, clothing, shelter, etc) compared to euthanizing | them (1 to 5 bullets, executioner pay, and burial costs). | Benefits are going to be somewhat iffy; yes they could | turn out okay but it's just as likely they could turn | into criminal offenders that will chew up resources of | the criminal justice system which is quite a lot more | expensive. | | I will emphasize that this is strictly from a utilitarian | point of view. I make no comments on the moral, ethical, | and legal issues. | HDThoreaun wrote: | I think you missed the "imprison them for 2 decades" part | of euthanizing them in your consideration. It's fun to | just make up how you think things should ideally work, | but we're bounded by how things actually work. | HDThoreaun wrote: | It's a very important question. I don't have the answer. | What I do know is that forcing underprivileged students to | attend schools that cause them to fear for their safety or | even life is inhumane. Charter schools are solving that in | my district. | dwater wrote: | Based on your previous comment, the remaining 3/4 of | students are all murderers, criminals, deviants, | disabled, or with parents who aren't concerned with their | education; or some of those 3/4 of students are somewhere | in the middle but had their educations diminished by the | removal of the better behaved students. | HDThoreaun wrote: | Well no, most of them are in the wealthier areas and | don't have to worry about the violence the poor schools | experience. There certainly still are deserving students | stuck in failing schools and I think that's a tragedy. I | don't see why that means we should undo a program that | has been helping though. | chung8123 wrote: | You don't let them hold the classroom and the rest of the | kids that want to learn hostage. Not every problem has a | 100% solution. | tomohawk wrote: | Maybe find something more effective than public schools at | turning them around. Their track record certainly indicates | a different approach is needed. | | Just because the kids happen to be in government run | schools, that doesn't mean that an effective intervention | into their lives can be performed there. | | Schools should be about education, not solving all of | society's ills. It is intolerable that one child who | disrupts the education environment should be able to | prevent so many others from learning. Take the child out of | the situation so the others can learn and then figure out | what's going on. | etempleton wrote: | In the US it used to be more acceptable to put students in | classes based on where they were academically and in terms | of behavior. Truly disruptive kids were also usually | suspended until eventually being expelled. | | Neither approach is considered appropriate anymore. It was | a central thesis of No Child Left Behind, which is/was nice | in theory, but not in practice. | | Now schools are data obsessed. Bad metrics like | suspensions, expulsions, etc are avoided because | suspensions are correlated to bad test scores and bad | future outcomes for students. So schools now measure | performance against that. The problem is obviously | correlation vs causation, but if that is how you are graded | as a principal that is what you are going to work towards | to keep your job. | | The reality is that if you want good schools you need to | cut your losses with the worst behaving kids. Slow learners | really aren't much of an issue because they don't disrupt | other kids learning beyond maybe needing more teacher | attention. | hospadar wrote: | > The reality is that if you want good schools you need | to cut your losses with the worst behaving kids. | | This kind of attitude is a wide-open door for racist and | classist attitudes to penalize kids of color, kids from | poor homes, kids with unsafe or unstable home situations. | Suspending and expelling kids almost always makes things | worse for those kids. | | There are HUGE racial and gender disparities in the rates | of suspension and expulsion[1]. | | Anecdotally, I know a lot of educators and child social | workers who are strongly opposed to suspension & | expulsion as a punishment or a "solution". None of them | cite "metrics obsession" as their reason, but rather the | fact that the kids who are getting kicked out of school | need more support, not less. | | Maybe it seems fine to kick [other people's] kids out of | school "for the good of the many", but happens next? What | if parents loose their job because they have to stay home | for childcare? What if folks end up homeless because they | can't pay the bills? What if those kids end up in prisons | (that our taxes pay for)? Just from a financial | perspective, school is an EXTREMELY cost-effective early | intervention compared to prisons, inpatient mental | health, welfare systems, etc. Well educated folks often | end up making money and paying into tax systems rather | than drawing from them. | | [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator | _rda.as... | HDThoreaun wrote: | There are huge racial and gender disparities in all sorts | of things. More than half of black children are in single | parent households compared to 20% of white children. You | can't just look at racial outcomes and determine | discrimination without asking whether priorities and | choices are also different between the groups. | red-iron-pine wrote: | > The question is: what do you do about children with | discipline problems whose parents don't care? | | This is relevant point to the military thing. If you screw | up at school, your military parents will be called -- and | it may impact them directly. As in, Sgt. X, your kid keeps | picking fights, and we're going to punish them, and you, | for it. | | Which means the parents care -- a lot. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | > Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some | loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve | the education for those that remain. | | If you kick out the problematic students, the only students | you have left are easy to teach non-problematic students. | | > and it absolutely can improve the education for those that | remain. | | It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so your | results will be the best. It is a direct application of | selection bias. Public schools will be left with whatever | students are not accepted into charter schools...those | "problematic students", and will...again...due to selection | bias have worse results. | | > It's not like they're only accepting kids with two parents, | in fact they're doing a much better job of helping poor | families in my district than the public school system | | That's great for your district, but parent pointed out ending | school at noon on Wednesday are going to apply selection | bias. Perhaps your district does it better. | ameminator wrote: | I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how | their children are taught could be a bad thing. Maybe the | public school system is failing its students. However, it | always seemed unfair to trap parents who would otherwise | have other options in a failing system. Yes, this does suck | for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents | who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their | obligation to their children? | femiagbabiaka wrote: | Simplistic arguments like this are one of the more | annoying parts of the rhetoric of charter school | advocates. It assumes that all charter schools are of | high quality and that making education yet another thing | that is economically stratified in the US is good. It's | ok to say that things that sound nice like choice in | education can have knock on effects that are bad for | society. | | Very few things in this world are purely good. | sokoloff wrote: | It seems like a charter school that develops a reputation | for low quality is a self-solving problem in a way that a | public school which develops the same reputation is | (currently) not. | | One goes out of business; the other goes along | indefinitely, with perhaps the wealthiest parents nearby | withdrawing their kids, but most families and children | are forced to endure it or move away. | linuxftw wrote: | If public schools weren't awful, there would be no need | for charter schools. | | The public school experiment has failed. | femiagbabiaka wrote: | Tell me you only follow policy in the US without telling | me: exhibit one. | | The public school "experiment" has been purposefully | sabotaged is more like it. | linuxftw wrote: | The article is about US schools.... so? | | How can one sabotage a house of cards? Failure was | inevitable. | femiagbabiaka wrote: | I don't believe that public schooling, an actually lindy | institution _worldwide_ , an institution that was working | quite well in the US up until about the 70s and 80s | (wonder what happened then hmm) that has produced world | renowned schools in the US in particular, is more of a | house of cards than the Potemkin village that is charter | and private schools. | linuxftw wrote: | You'll need to provide evidence that public schools were | working well in the 70s and 80s. Graduation rates today | are higher than those decades. High school was optional | for many parts of the country. | | The reason for the outcry now, is that we measure | everything, and even the wealthier areas of the country | are unable to perform to any reasonable standard. | HDThoreaun wrote: | My district spends $29k per student. More than almost any | other in the world. Yet some of its schools are so bad | that a quarter of high schoolers opted out. It's not | about funding. It's an overwhelmingly blue area, | politicians are not purposefully sabotaging the schools. | The government is just utterly incompetent, and worse, | corrupt. And unfortunately many of the students are from | households that don't emphasize the importance of | education. | pharmakom wrote: | > More than almost any other in the world. | | You should only compare to countries with a similar cost | structure. | HDThoreaun wrote: | Replace world with almost any place you can think of and | the statement remains true. | econonut wrote: | Your implication that conservative politicians are more | likely to be sabotaging schools than democratic | politicians is hilarious. I'm quite certain both sides | are equally adept at throwing good money after bad so | long as the present policy they pursue is fashionable and | focus group tested. They're incompetent, as you say, or, | perhaps, they just aren't willing to risk their own | political future because the changes that might make a | difference will be unpopular with voters. | HDThoreaun wrote: | My reading of "purposefully sabotaged" is that whoever | was in charge of the schools decided to make them worse | for political reasons, like not believing in public | education. I'm not aware of any dems doing this. I | certainly agree that they have accidentally sabotaged | schools through incompetence or corruption, but that's a | much harder problem to fix than "just don't vote for | people that don't believe in public education". | | My point was that elections here are almost always about | improving public schools, but the government has not been | able to over the course of decades. Call their | stewardship what you will. Purposeful sabotage, | accidental sabotage, whatever, doesn't really matter to | me. What matter is that the government is not capable of | enacting the voters will of having good public schools, | which is why charters are so popular. | femiagbabiaka wrote: | Spends 29k on what? School infrastructure is crumbling | around the country. Teachers are paid so little most of | them could get a raise working at Costco. This country | has engendered in every sector that matters a fleet of | middle managers and administrators whose purpose is to | extract value and provide little. Maybe we can start by | trimming that away, something teachers have been saying | for years. | | And as for the overwhelmingly blue thing, that's another | simplistic narrative. Substantive politics in the US has | very little to do with the party that you vote for, as | the parties agree on 99% of the particulars, if not the | rhetoric. Illinois is one of the bluest states in America | and Chicago one of the bluest cities, and yet Rahm | Emmanuel ran under a dem regime one of the most infamous | regimes of city-wide austerity in recent memory. The | Daleys were out and out corrupt racists. I could go on. | sgnelson wrote: | I don't think anyone is going to say "offering parents | more choices is bad." But the political reality is not | simply "offering more choices." The political reality | typically entails using funds set aside for public | schools for charter schools. In reality, what happens all | too often is that funding and resources are stripped away | from the already resource poor schools and given to | charter schools. | | And that's probably why people seem as if they're saying | "Charter schools bad." I'd argue they're really saying | "Taking funds away from public schools to give to charter | schools bad." We're creating a system where the already | struggling schools will then be put on a downward spiral, | unable to recover. | | But I think our educations system is screwed up and we | need to invest more resources into education at all | levels, so what do I know. | | There's also the moral question of your whole "it sucks | for children of uncaring parents" quote, which I | personally think is quite a selfish and uncaring | perspective, that is also probably grossly not the truth | for the variety of parents in lower performing schools, | but I'm not going to get into that. | sokoloff wrote: | > entails using funds set aside for public schools | | That's one framing. | | Another framing is "using funds set aside to educate the | children of the district". | | If you frame the funding as being _for the schools_ | rather than _for the children's education_ , you | naturally object to it being spent elsewhere. | | Are we trying to run public schools or trying to educate | children in the district? | | (My kids attended public schools.) | seanmcdirmid wrote: | Segregationists tried using that framing back in the | 1960s/70s, but it the argument was ruled invalid by the | Warren-led Supreme Court. Who knows what would happen | these days, however. | sgnelson wrote: | As to my earlier comment, I don't think anyone is saying | "We shouldn't educate students" (except the parent | comment that was like "only for kids whose parents | care.") And for me, public schools are for the education | of all the children in the district. In my head, I don't | really separate the two. I believe in education for all, | despite what resources their parents have. I'm going to | reject the premise that I'm just for public schools just | because. To me, it's one and the same. | | If public schools aren't for the education of students, | what are they for? To follow your question, if not public | schools, do we just change all schools to charter and | private schools and have the state fund them? (Well, then | don't they just become public schools with slightly | different administrations, that over time will surely | become just another public school system?) | | I should reiterate: I'm not saying that we shouldn't have | school choice, but my very real concern is that school | choice usually means that we take funding from one | school, to send it to another school. And this is what | happening* (* depending on the state/district you live | in, maybe not. But it's happening in plenty of other | locales.) | | I think for a lot of middle class parents, Charter | schools are very appealing. But I'm also talking about | the students who need the most help. So the real question | becomes "funds set aside for the education of _which_ | students in the district." | | Well, let's go back to the original post. Why do people | go on and on about how school choice is bad? It's not | about school choice. It's about school resources. It's | politics. Who gets what, where, when and how. If the | education system in America was so rich in cash that we | were paving the hallways of schools with gold bricks, we | wouldn't even be having this conversation. But they are | not. It's a question of resources and how to direct those | resources for the most good. And guess what, everyone is | going to have a slightly different opinion of what "good" | is. | | But back to your question: Why aren't we trying to | educate children in the district? | | Okay, if it helps students, and if your tax payer dollars | are there to educate that student, what's the problem? | The reality is, this typically leaves the schools that | are already struggling to fall further behind. | | Teaching is hard. Teaching students who don't want to be | there, don't care, have special needs, or a poor family | life is even more so. This is especially the case because | Teachers are asked to do a lot more than just teach | English and Math, but rather provide some of the | resources that may not be provided by their family or | society at large. | | All schools and school systems have their own needs and | issues. And largely what happens is that schools which | have the least resources need the most resources to be | successful. There's also a very real economy of scale | that can occur at schools, and once resources start | getting stripped, those economy of scales start falling | apart, and now those dollars you do have, don't go as | far. | | Getting teachers to work at Title 1 schools is hard. You | need to pay them higher salaries. You need more | resources, such as school psychologists, school resource | officers, teacher aids, etc. Even things like having | parents come in to volunteer is more of an issue, and if | you don't have those volunteers, where do you get the | replacement labor from? | | Not too many people are creating (good) Charter schools | to serve these students needs (not to say there aren't, | there are some good schools out there, but not enough of | them.) | | I work in education (but you couldn't pay me enough to | teach high school in America). I see the issues with the | system everyday. The system is broken. Teachers are | underpaid, overworked and leaving in droves. If you look | at the statistics for number of students in education | departments in colleges to become teachers, it has | drastically fallen over the past 15 years. (I literally | tell students of mine that are interested in education to | stay away.) That's not likely to change in the | foreseeable future. | | Students are not getting the education they deserve. | There aren't enough teachers. There are bad teachers. All | too often the bureaucracy is uncaring and unyielding, and | that's not a great way to educate individuals. Students | are getting passed through the system regardless if | they're learning or not. | | The issue I have with your question is this: Are we | trying to educate _all_ children in the district or are | we trying to educate _your_ children in the district? | Because if it's just your children, charter schools would | be great. If it's all children, we can't just rely on | Charter schools to solve all the inherent problems with | the system (because they're not just going to magically | fix things). We're going to have to reach deep down, work | harder, and make a lot of even tougher decisions to fix | the broken education system in America. | throwaway101223 wrote: | > In reality, what happens all too often is that funding | and resources are stripped away from the already resource | poor schools and given to charter schools. | | Where are you seeing this? D.C. has almost half of its | students in charter schools, and it also has public | schools that are funded more than almost anywhere else in | the U.S. | | Worth pointing out that the charter school enrollment is | highest in the poorest wards with the greatest percent of | the black population. It's lowest in the richest wards | with the greatest percent of the whtie population. See | for yourself[1]. | | Like with the claims of "underfunded public schools," a | lot of these conversations seem to stem from people | hearing talking points and assuming that they're true, | while not bothering to look at the facts that show the | opposite to be the case. | | https://dcpcsb.org/student-enrollment | dfxm12 wrote: | The philosophical issue is charter schools use public | resources yet are not accountable to the public. Adding | to that, having public education system that is available | to the public is kind of the key part here. So, the | practical issue is that if some students are being | excluded, that misses the point of public education | terribly (other practical issues involve profiteering by | the charters, just like with private prisons). | Additionally, having several overlapping choices with | government funding is an inefficient use of the money. | | As far as choice, there's nothing wrong with that, and | religious and other private schools (which didn't get | public funds) have co-existed with public schools almost | everywhere well before our lifetimes. So equating charter | schools (or vouchers) with choice in this context is | disingenuous. | logicchains wrote: | >The philosophical issue is charter schools use public | resources yet are not accountable to the public. | | They absolutely are accountable to the public in their | school district, who can choose to send their kids not to | that school if they don't like the school, depriving the | school of revenue. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | > I don't understand why offering parents more choices in | how their children are taught could be a bad thing. | | I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of | course. But...personal optimization != societal | optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to | succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, | things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income | inequality). | | > Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring | parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they | have a means of meeting their obligation to their | children? | | Again, those kids left behind...they are going to be | expensive in terms of prisons, homeless services, lost | productivity, etc...You can see this happening already, | it is just going to be much worse when our kids are | adults. And really, this is the only time we (or society) | will have much influence on these kids. It is much easier | to set a kid straight than try to fix an adult. | logicchains wrote: | >I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of | course. But...personal optimization != societal | optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to | succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, | things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income | inequality). | | Good intentions but empirically it doesn't work; forcing | troublesome kids to be in school with the kids who | genuinely want to learn drags down the score of the kids | who want to learn and doesn't improve outcomes for the | troublesome kids. Countries with school choice like | Sweden have much better educational outcomes than the US. | ethanbond wrote: | I suspect there are at least a few major confounding | variables when comparing Swedish to US schools. You know, | like... almost everything about how the society works? | wnoise wrote: | It's partially selection bias, yes. | | But that's not the entire story. It's also the fact that | not having to deal with the terrible kids helps the | remaining kids. Fewer class disruptions. Less slowing down | the class to pretend to let the slowest and least motivated | keep up. Etc. | | This comes at the cost of concentrating the troublemakers | in other places, making them far worse for normal kids | stuck there. | HDThoreaun wrote: | > It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so | your results will be the best. | | You're implying that individual results don't change by | grouping the good students together. In your vision the | good students stay good and the bad stay bad. I don't | agree. The good students become great by surrounding them | with other good students. | lukeschlather wrote: | If that's true then the converse is also true: bad | students become bad by surrounding them with other bad | students. | | And the charter school gets to take credit for the "good" | outcome while the public school gets blamed for the bad | outcome that is a direct result of the good outcome. | | Which, if we accept your premise, suggests that the | charter schools aren't providing any net benefit, they're | just taking credit. If this is really the way we want to | operate things we could just do it in public schools. | HDThoreaun wrote: | I do think that the students who don't get accepted into | the selective schools need better options. It's just when | the options are keep all the students together or | separate them and some will become better and some will | become worse I think providing the students who want to | succeed with a way to accomplish their goals is the | correct choice. Hopefully there will be another option | that isn't so exclusionary in the future. | | I'm not super interested in who gets the credit here. If | the public schools were able or willing to kick out | problematic students like the charter schools then I | think we should be doing that instead of charters. But | that's not the reality. So yes, I do think that outcomes | overall are better, at least in my district, because of | charters. | lukeschlather wrote: | You sidestepped my point. Segregating all the | underperformers into one place causes harm and you're | ignoring that harm, assuming that the benefit of | segregating the high performers is more important. | | And you are in fact crediting the charter school with the | benefit while ensuring that public schools receive blame | for any harm that results. | | I think you're actually arguing against universal | instruction, that we shouldn't educate all students. | Which we could do in public schools also! But you're not | suggesting that at all. | HDThoreaun wrote: | I don't think I'm ignoring the harm. I am accepting it. | We can get into the utilitarian calculus, but before even | considering that I don't think it's acceptable to force | students who want to succeed into classrooms with those | that don't. And really that's the end of the story for | me. Maybe the total outcome is worse because the kicked | out students cause much bigger problems than they would | otherwise but that doesn't mean we should force the other | students to suffer. I don't feel right dooming those kids | to a poor education. | | The public schools do deserve blame for putting all the | under privileged kids together. The charters deserve | credit for allowing them to separate themselves. I don't | think that's intrinsic to public schooling, it's just the | circumstance we are in. | SaintGhurka wrote: | > ending school at noon on Wednesday are going to apply | selection bias. | | That's not unique to charter schools. My daughter's public | elementary school in CA let out at 12:50 on Wednesday. | | https://wagonwheel.capousd.org/School-Info/Bell- | Schedule/ind... | ecshafer wrote: | > If you kick out the problematic students, the only | students you have left are easy to teach non-problematic | students. | | Maybe the negative effects of having problematic students | is enough that its a worthwhile endeavor? By Middle school | or high school "problematic students" involves people that | not only are noisy and disruptive in class, but people that | deal drugs, rob people, steal, join gangs, bring weapons to | school. Just calling them problematic is really | underselling the situation. And the effects of a student | that routinely swears at a teacher and causes fights | disrupts a large number of students preventing them from | learning things. | giraffe_lady wrote: | Wow they sound really undesirable. I wonder if there's | some place you could concentrate such people to reduce | their impact? Maybe some sort of camp, idk. | | In all seriousness once you start thinking of huge | swathes of _children_ as a problem in this way, the | "solutions" become clear and atrocious. You have to find | another path sorry. | ls612 wrote: | I'm happy to hear that you've agreed to teach them all as | the alternative path. Have fun! | Fauntleroy wrote: | When the actual fix (improving the lives, discipline, and | care provided by their parents) is untenable, other lower | effort solutions start to become more attractive. It's | unreasonable to expect schools to correct for a poor | upbringing. | pharmakom wrote: | > Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true | for prestigious universities but it's just as true for | elementary schools. | | This is going to require some backing. | jimhefferon wrote: | Serious question: you don't see a dilemma in kicking out | those who seem problematic? I absolutely hear you that a | parent wants the best for their kid. But historically | declaring that some students are an issue has been a frought | road. | HDThoreaun wrote: | Of course I see the dilemma. To be honest I just care more | about the students who want to succeed than the ones that | don't. Every student deserves a high quality education, and | that just isn't possible to provide when you're distracted | by other students. I care about the other kids too, for | ethical as well as utilitarian reason, and I do think we | need to think hard about how they can be best served. But | the status quo is not working, I don't think it's fair to | continue to deprive underprivileged students of the | opportunities they deserve. | SomethingNew2 wrote: | Let's assume there will be some % of kids that lack | interest in learning, have no parental or community | support, and despite schools providing them additional | support for years they show no improvement or desire to | improve. I think it's reasonable some % of these people | will always be in the population pool. What is the solution | for these individuals? | amalcon wrote: | _> Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn 't | some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can | improve the education for those that remain._ | | I'm provisionally accepting this as true, partly because | there's some truth in it and partly because I think it leads | to an interesting discussion. This is great for the remaining | students at the charter school. | | That problem student goes somewhere, though. That problematic | student still exist. They are now in another class, with | other students. Some of those students are problematic and | some are not, but per your premise -- that other class is now | worse than it was. You haven't improved anything, you've just | taken a disadvantage from one place and given it to another. | | One might consider a scenario where this happens repeatedly, | and you just get a class full of problematic kids. Those kids | don't learn anything, but at least the non-problematic kids | do. | | There are several problems with that scenario, but one such | problem is independent of ethical concerns: You just aren't | going to find the people to run that school or teach that | class for the amount society is willing to pay. Schools for | behaviorally problematic students exist. They tend to be | private, expensive, and full. They also tend to focus on | students who e.g. assault other students in the middle of | class, rather than on students who e.g. won't stop talking in | class even if repeatedly removed from class, or even students | with out-of-school criminal records. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and | artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the | only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is | stay at home and can pick the kid up | | This would be a more effective filtering technique if | inconvenient minimum days weren't common in regular public | schools. | | The most effective filtering technique used by charter schools | is... being a charter school. | | Because it isn't the default option public school based on | residency and requires an active choice, it automatically | filters for active parents. | | And because for most of the potential student base its farther | from their default public school, it selects for logistical | flexibility (loosely correlating to wealth and/or having a | parent at home) as well. | ethbr1 wrote: | From the article, | | >> _But there are key differences. For starters, families have | access to housing and health care through the military, and at | least one parent has a job._ | | >> _"Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the | scene for learning to occur," said Jessica Thorne, the | principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 | students._ | Spinnaker_ wrote: | From my comment, | | >> don't take it seriously enough. | | A serious comparison would be to schools in fairly well off | neighbourhoods in the suburbs. But they don't do that. | ethbr1 wrote: | So, you think it's worth dismissing an article that clearly | calls out its measures, because they didn't "take it | seriously enough" to renormalize their data against | categories they likely don't have access to? | | They're fully transparent about the measures of achievement | they're looking at: | | >> _Their schools had the highest outcomes in the country | for Black and Hispanic students, whose eighth-grade reading | scores outpaced national averages for white students._ | | >> _Eighth graders whose parents only graduated from high | school -- suggesting lower family incomes, on average -- | performed as well in reading as students nationally whose | parents were college graduates._ | | >> _the military's schools have made gains on the national | test since 2013. And even as the country's lowest- | performing students -- in the bottom 25th percentile -- | have slipped further behind, the Defense Department's | lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade | math and eighth-grade reading._ | | >> _Despite their high performance, Black and Hispanic | students, on average, still trail their white peers at | Defense Department schools, though the gap is smaller than | in many states. The Pentagon has also faced scrutiny for | its handling of student misconduct at its schools, | including reports of sexual assault._ | red-iron-pine wrote: | so is it because military folks are better, or that society | is skewing to unemployed single parents? | willcipriano wrote: | Military households and the dependas that inhabit them aren't | the stable footing you are imagining. The worst marriage | stories I've heard happen under those circumstances. | Spinnaker_ wrote: | There are many schools where over 70% of kids live in single | parents households. I'm sure you have bad stories, but it's | not comparable overall. | abtinf wrote: | > Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and | artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. | | You clearly have not had the pleasure of experiencing typical | public schools in Washington state. | | The schedules seemed designed to maximize hostility toward | working parents. Inconsistent start and end times through the | week, weird half days every week or every other week, and | numerous random non-holiday off days throughout the year. | exabrial wrote: | Your point is spot on, except here: | | > There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms | | Plenty of poor single moms with well behaved kids. The eternal | problem is the lack of discipline at home. Successful kids grow | up with structure, not being told yes all the time, are held | accountable, and have a soft place to land when they make | mistakes. | | That is certainly harder to do with a single parent home, but | it happens all the time in multi-parent homes as well. | oatmeal1 wrote: | Even if that is the case, it's better to have charter schools | than none. Then at least the disruptive and/or violent kids | that are unmotivated cannot disrupt the learning of kids that | are motivated. | | That being said, the existence of competition will raise the | performance of all schools. | sandworm101 wrote: | >> the Pentagon's schools for children of military members and | civilian employees. | | >> There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the | kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. | | Have you looked at what US Army privates are actually paid? And | I can tell you that there will be LOTS of single-parent | households too. Lots of drug addicted parents/kids. The army | isn't what it seen in the recruiting posters. it is a large | community of young people with basically the same problems as | any other group. There are some differences, parents are | generally "employed", but there are also specific difficulties | like absent mother/fathers and near-constant movements to new | schools as young parents bounce between postings. | nitwit005 wrote: | Even a very basic filter has an extreme effect. | | I used to take both public transport and a work shuttle. The | difference was night and day. The filter of being able to | hold a job eliminated all the problems you saw on the public | transportation, excepting listening to music too loud. | ryan93 wrote: | You are purposefully avoiding the well known fact the military | only draws from the top 70% of the intelligence distribution | according to the AFQT. | sokoloff wrote: | Related, USAA was originally formed to offer insurance and | later banking to military officers and their families. (They | since expanded some offerings to enlisted and to civilians.) | | It turns out that selecting for military officers has a | beneficial impact on auto losses, putting USAA in a good | position to offer competitive rates and outstanding service. | stonogo wrote: | USAA also isn't a typical insurance underwriter. It's | essentially a giant self-insurance co-op, and for decades | they would just terminate service if they decided you were | outside their risk window, whether you otherwise qualified or | not. | red-iron-pine wrote: | not impressive pay, but decent, and regularly on the 1st and | 15th. also adjusted for inflation, and has some other unique | market facets, like having younger folks being generally fit | and healthy, and older, retired military folks getting | pensions. | | compare that with your average career bartender or | construction worker | gustavus wrote: | > The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There | will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will | be well fed and groomed and socialized. | | I grew up near a military base, and that describes very very | few people. | | > no kids of poor single moms | | I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you | make the claim no poor. As for single moms it turns out that | divorce is a big problem and if your dad is stationed overseas | for months at a time it's a lot like being a single parent, | except with the constant wondering if you are going to get a | letter saying your spouse has died. | | > All the kids will be well fed | | I'll give you that can be the case, if the MLM and the 30% | interest on the new Dodge Charger didn't take all the money. | | > groomed and socialized | | It turns out that sending parents out of a child's life for | long periods of time can cause lots of behavior issues, beyond | often times people that make their way to the military come | with a lot of baggage usually and although the military can be | good at reforming people's lives into productive members of | society it doesn't always translate to being a great parent. | | It sounds like the kind of thing postulated by someone who | didn't spend a lot of time around the military culture. | red-iron-pine wrote: | > I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before | you make the claim no poor....All the kids will be well fed | | to this point, there are a lot of military families on food | stamps. | | plenty of hillbillys and hoodrats. plenty of bad areas near | military bases, too. | | but living on base or around base leads to a pretty strong | monoculture. you also have a motivated cadre of military | spouses -- who are often nurses and teachers -- and who often | have to work hard to get jobs at a local school or hospital. | you often get qualified teachers and nurses far exceeding the | level you'd normally find in the rural areas near bases. | jmoss20 wrote: | Yes, in my experience rural areas around bases tend to be | more well-off than rural areas not around bases -- the base | stimulates the local economy quite a bit, if nothing else. | (Otoh, the revolving door population is not great for | stability.) | | But FWIW I do not think the effect is even close to strong | enough to explain the results in the article. | relaxing wrote: | Now do the same for the underperforming kids in an | underperforming school. | | > I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before | you make the claim no poor. | | Less than public assistance? | | > As for single moms it turns out that divorce is a big | problem | | At least your divorced military ex-wife has a better chance | of actually collecting alimony and child support. | | > I'll give you that can be the case, if the MLM and the 30% | interest on the new Dodge Charger didn't take all the money. | | Think predatory finance and scams doesn't exist off-base? | | > It turns out that sending parents out of a child's life for | long periods of time can cause lots of behavior issues | | More than experiencing housing insecurity, food insecurity, | and never having that second parental figure in the first | place? | barryrandall wrote: | Enlisted military families with 2 dependents usually | qualify for public assistance programs. It's less of a | problem stateside, because jobs open to military spouses | are fairly easy to find. Families stationed overseas often | don't have this option, though. | HonestOp001 wrote: | Most schools have one day a week with early release. That is | not a feature of charter schools. | | Additionally, kid's are only as good as their parents can | enable. Some parents see the schools as a babysitting service. | Others see it as a reprieve from having their kids in the | house. | | If you have never been to a school to volunteer, go do it. You | will see quite quickly that there are students who disrupt the | classroom beyond teaching. The teacher must devolve the class | to the lowest common denominator and thus the group suffers | jeffbee wrote: | If your kid is absent at a DoD school your CO will hound you. | This makes a difference. There's also the slight difference that | the military has socialized health care. When your kid is sick | you take them to the doctor and that's that, while in civilian | life small medical and especially dental issues go untreated and | snowball into chronic absenteeism. Base life is really civilized | in so many various ways. People violating the speed limit (20 MPH | in housing areas) will be apprehended by armed MPs, so your kid | can walk to school. Housing is often provided, even if it sucks, | or subsidized, even if the allowance is below local market | prices, so homelessness among active-duty families with children | is practically nonexistent. | Kon-Peki wrote: | > There's also the slight difference that the military has | socialized health care. When your kid is sick you take them to | the doctor and that's that | | Reminds me of a past vacation. Had a friend that was a | pediatrician in the Army, based in Hawaii. We were all hanging | out at the beach, and a kid cuts his hand on something. The | friend walks over, says he's a doctor, asks if he can help out. | The kid has a very apprehensive look on his face, so the friend | smiles and says "I know, you're not sure I'm a doctor because I | haven't asked your parents for their insurance" | OrvalWintermute wrote: | > so homelessness among active-duty families with children is | practically nonexistent | | A Commanding Officer will make sure the kids get food & housing | for sure even if they have to force through allotments | adversarially. | Scubabear68 wrote: | It's not a high bar to beat, at least here in New Jersey. Nearly | all of our school boards are non-professional, non-compensated | elected officials, and a large percentage of Superintendents | started their career as gym teachers. | | The net result is schools that hire hoards of consultants to try | to meet professional standards, but fail anyway, while spending | vast sums of tax payer dollars. Covid funds earmarked towards | bridging the learning gap from closed schools during the pandemic | are spent on fancy laptops, new athletic facilities, sound | systems for auditoriums. Absenteeism is skyrocketing, and | teachers are not only not encouraged to enforce discipline, | they're actively told to let out of control students slide. | Social promotion is on the rise, and standardized test scores are | tanking. | | We finally gave up in my local district and ended up paying a | fortune to send both our kids to private schools. After an | initial many-months-long struggle to catch up with their new | private school classmates (because of the public school | deficits), they are both doing much better. Money well spent, but | I still send taxes to an ineffective district that spends money | like water, and where educational value is dead last in their | priorities. | | They even introduced a course in Graphic Novels at the high | school this year, while 75% of kids fail standardized science | testing, and 60% fail in math. | ecshafer wrote: | New Jersey also has the system of Magnet schools at the county | level, which have some of the best high schools in the country | (high technology highschool, middlesex academy for math and | science, union county magnet school, etc). They reasonably | require tests and maintaining of discipline. Discipline is key | to having effective schools, and if either students or parents | are undermining it, schools can't be effective. | nameless912 wrote: | It remains extremely strange to me that we have our school | boards be largely totally non-professional laypeople in the US. | Obviously there's no absolute requirement that you be a | "professional" for almost any elected position in the US, but | school boards are one of those situations, like judges and | comptrollers, where it seems like there should be some basic | qualifications for running. Especially because many of the | folks elected to school boards are either 1) crazies with a | bone to pick with a specific teacher/administrator/school or 2) | moderately ambitious ladder climbers hoping to launch their | political careers without having to work too hard. | mrguyorama wrote: | Are you voting out the bad and ineffective actors in your local | school system? | RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: | My feeling is that school performance is denominated by the | students and parents. | | If for example, you took the best performing school district and | the worst performing school district and swapped just the parents | and students keeping the school staff, administration, and | facilities the same, the previously best school district would | end up near the bottom and the previously worst school district | would end up near the top. | OrvalWintermute wrote: | > "The military isn't perfect -- there is still racism in the | military," said Leslie Hinkson, a former Georgetown University | sociologist who studied integration in Defense Department | schools. But what is distinctive, she said, "is this access to | resources in a way that isn't racialized." | | Racism in the military is a career ender for officers and | enlisted kind of like getting a DUI but worse. What is more in | the system is a "good ole buddy system", where high performers | often do favors for each other across racial, preference, and | gender lines. | | My parents both taught in California and I've been friends with | many from DoDEA and here is a TLDR; | | Please hold the downvoting for political reasons | | -Engaged parents, most are NCOs, officers and civil servants | | -Well Funded, like, $1M+ housing area school districts | | -Low ratios of teachers to students | | -All students are US citizens or foreign nationals from partner | nations | | -Great teachers, some overseas location have insane competition | for teacher slots, some professors jump to DoDEA slots | | -bilingual students that are smart seems the norm | | -no problems with illegal aliens, or ESL brand new to English | swamping 20% of the class particularly at higher grades like what | happens in some parts of CA | | -Some locations have DoDEA are the very choicest in the US | military, so they attract the creme de la creme of overachievers | competing for very limited slots | | I'd describe the DoDEA schools as similar to the very best public | schools in the US, but you can find other government schools that | run similar programs to DoDEA | | You can find eligibility for DoDEA at | https://dodea.widen.net/content/rlhgfasqfx/original/ai-1344-... | ryan93 wrote: | Are you purposefully not mentioning the IQ cutoffs the military | uses for soldiers. it has been as high as the 50th percentile | for the air force. | the_bookmaker wrote: | Steve Sailer makes a very good point about that [1]: | | > Because it's illegal by an early 1950s act of Congress for the | bottom 10% of IQ test scores to join the military and because | most times, the military bans the bottom 30% on the highly | g-loaded AFQT. For some years after the 2008 crash, the Air Force | and Navy only took top 50%. | | [1]: https://twitter.com/Steve_Sailer/status/1711759455283712281 | rat87 wrote: | Steve Sailer the white supremacist? Yeah, I wouldn't trust his | claims on anything related to education especially on IQ. | crackercrews wrote: | Ad hominem. He's making a simple claim about the world that | is easily verifiable. This site has information about the | testing requirements and current cutoff. [1] | | 1: https://www.sbe.wa.gov/our-work/graduation-pathway- | options/a... | Eumenes wrote: | The NYT is an apparatus of the intelligence agencies, and | coincidentally military recruitment is down ... this is | subliminal advertisement for recruitment. Coupled with war in | Ukraine and incoming war in the Middle east, in addition to new | recruiting tactics (https://www.military.com/daily- | news/2023/10/03/army-unveils-...), expect to see alot more praise | of the DoD/Military in MSM outlets like the NYT. | ethbr1 wrote: | It wouldn't be subliminal. It would be a blatant advertisement. | | Are you suggesting the NYT and/or military school system are | fabricating achievement results? | morkalork wrote: | When I think of 18 kids looking at their options in life and | weighing how tf they're going to pay for college and is | considering the military, I'm not imagining someone who | casually reads the New York Times. | genghisjahn wrote: | Seems like maybe the US Department of Defense is better at | socialism than the rest of the country. | 082349872349872 wrote: | agreed; see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37860853 | red-iron-pine wrote: | easy to be good at it when you literally own the | servicemembers, can dictate every facet of their life, and have | a never-ending cashflow | | i had a decent time in the service, given when i joined (2003), | but i did my 5 years and have 0 interest in living like that | again | anarticle wrote: | DoD schools person here, a major point left out of this article | is that if you do something bad enough in school your parent's CO | will be notified and this can have real career results. In a | foreign country you can get deported if you do something stupid | enough to warrant it. | | I went to several DoD and civilian schools, NC (dod), NJ (civ), | Erie PA (civ), Okinawa (dod), NJ (civ). I would say the standards | are higher in DoD, mostly because of standardized curriculum. In | civilian world, the variance is very high. In South NJ things | were more rigid, in Erie more lax. | | As for "not having social groups" this can be a plus, looking at | my civilian counterparts in high school. It has pluses and | minuses, but being an outgroup in high school let me leave that | stuff behind much easier on my way to college. It makes me an | alien to most of civilian world, but many benefits. | | Housing is provided in the military. | | AMA. I am anecdotal, but I have seen both sides at all three | levels split down the middle. | | Edit: I definitely received an education way above my parents | earning level, I am first to go to college in my family. I went | to a very good engineering school. | ethbr1 wrote: | Do you feel you faced any detrimental challenges your non- | military family peers didn't, as you made the transition from | high school to college? If so, what? | | Have a child soon to be in a similar situation, so any thoughts | helpful. | anarticle wrote: | The major benefit/challenge of being a military kid that | moved every 2-3y is that you make friends really fast and | resocialize very easily. This also means you don't have any | roots. My example is often that my friends in high school | were friends since kindergarten, something I have no frame of | reference for. It probably only hurt in high school for | sports and clique based activities. | | For going from highschool to college there is almost zero | negative, since it's the nth time you've moved and had to | rebuild a social structure. | | Consider the number of total school changes for an average | domestic student is 3. K-5, 6-8, 9-12, and in those cases | they keep their friend groups. | jmoss20 wrote: | Yeah, I had a similar upbringing, and this is my feeling as | well. There's a massive trade-off here, but I do feel like | the military kids I knew (and run into now) are radically | more adaptable and sociable. | | Another upside, in retrospect: you end up getting to see, | up-close, a huge range of the social/cultural/political | landscape. | | It's hard to demonize an outgroup much when you at times | were that outgroup -- or were at least, in the abstract, | some outgroup. You end up forced to confront (deep-down, | maybe mostly unconsciously) the arbitrariness | and...malleability of a lot of things. You end up with a | lot of tolerance. I'm thankful I had that experience, even | if it was at times not particularly fun. | alistairSH wrote: | According to the article, the Dod educates 66k students. That's | less than half the size of my county. Yet, the comparison is DoD | vs states, not the more useful DoD vs counties (or some unit | closer in size). | | I'd love to see how DoD schools compare against top-notch school | systems. And average school systems (in case the quality of | country school districts isn't a bell curve for some reason). | red-iron-pine wrote: | The #1 public school in the US is Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax | County Public Schools (FCPS). FCPS is a suburb of DC, and a | fantastic amount of the kids there are children of military | servicemembers and FedGov civilians. | | A lot of those well paid contractors are former military as | well. | jmoss20 wrote: | Yeah, this is along the lines of my comment. (Am a military | brat, attended some DoD schools, also attended a school in | FCPS.) | | The educational rigor across different districts is massive. | Many military kids get to sample from it a lot of times | (possibly even with a bias for FCPS in particular!); other | kids get to sample it ~once. There is probably some huge | reversion to the mean at play here. | loughnane wrote: | I spent Kindergarten to 4th grade on Hanscom A.F.B. near | Lexington, MA. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but it | hindsight it had lots going for it: | | - No such thing as unemployment | | - A strong community (Hanscom was also a small, walk-to-school) | neighborhood | | - The schools were indeed good (had several computers in the 2nd | grade classroom in 1992). | | There is a self-selecting element to it though; if you lose your | job you're out of the community. The line between personal | problems and professional problems---I came to find out later--- | is much blurrier than in the "real world". Also health care is | crazy cheap. | | I don't know if it could, or should, scale society wide. The | social benefits are nice, but the authoritarian bent isn't. | | Neat article though, gets you thinking. | nosequel wrote: | This got touched on by a few replies, happy to see there are some | others here with actual military experience chiming in. | | I grew up on military bases, and went to schools both on and off | base for 18 years. All continental US bases typically have | elementary-level (K-5) school, but you typically go to an off- | base school for middle and high school. When you are overseas, | this isn't the case, you would most likely go to school on base | K-12. | | I think the article gets right a lot of things, but as some | other's mentioned there are also things it doesn't catch. There | are still bad kids on base, who do tons of drugs, commit crimes, | cheat, steal, whatever. These kids are in every population. One | huge difference between on base schools and off, is if you got in | trouble at school, your sponsor's (Mom/Dad whoever is the active | duty in the family) CO (commanding officer) gets informed. This | can lead to a tongue lashing at the least, and at the most your | sponsor can get passed up on the next promotion list or demoted. | Kids would get caught selling drugs, they would get suspended and | then their Dad or Mom would usually make their life a living hell | for a while. It would turn most kids around pretty quickly. | | The worst one I know about first hand was a group of kids on base | in California (a very remote base btw) had a little theft ring of | the base exchange (BX, like target/walmart on base). The MP's | found out about it, watched them work for a while, then arrested | all of the kids. They were high schoolers, probably 15-17. I | think 4 got caught. The result was each of their families were | kicked off base, no longer able to live in free base housing. As | stated elsewhere, military families aren't paid well at all, so | now these families had to move off base and rent a house. Once | again, this was a super remote base, and it was easily a 35 min | drive from main base to the nearest housing off base. I will tell | you the rest of our school suddenly got really well behaved for | the rest of the year. | | Once again, I think the NYT touched on most of the reasons | schools were generally better, but to me discipline was a huge | factor. You typically didn't have that one shithead in your class | ruining it for everyone else. | jmoss20 wrote: | This sounds familiar -- I wonder if we were there at the same | time. | nosequel wrote: | I was there '94->'98 | 082349872349872 wrote: | The DoD is progressive in more than one way: unlike much of the | rest of the country they also started desegregating during the | 1948-1954 time period... | ForOldHack wrote: | Most very unfortunately, I have to reluctantly agree, but for | reasons that are completely hidden: My CS program design teacher, | would do three things: He would write the subjects he would cover | on the board, and then cover them, and secondly he would check | them off. When ever a question would come up from a past lecture, | he would ask if someone else had the notes to answer the | question, well. Guess who kept the best notes? I also ran the | study hall after class. Aced all classes. I finally got up the | nerve to ask him directly: "Where did you learn those three | things?" "Oh! The Military." Turns out that those three exact | things are used to 1) Write English essays, 2) Critique plays, 3) | and organize client therapeutic meetings. etc. etc. etc. 4) | organize code walk throughs and 5) multi team debugging sessions. | | Yes, Jeff Withe. Diablo Valley College. | relaxing wrote: | It would be great if you wrote some more on that 3 step process | and how it worked - sounds really interesting. | jmoss20 wrote: | I grew up on military installations and attended some DoD | schools. Some things unmentioned/underemphasized: | | Families PCS (move) extremely often -- sometimes every school | year, frequently every few years. Some places have DoD schools | "on base", some do not, with students instead attend the local | public schools. Some of those public schools are majority | military kids, some are not. | | DoD schools may have a consistent curriculum (not sure), but | public schools across states/countries certainly do not. Constant | moves mean students get a fractured, redundant curriculum. | (Comically, I recall learning about the "Explorer" in History | class no less than three times.) | | Some bases are located in well-off areas with great public | education, many others are not. Students might find themselves | one year learning algebra, the next back to basic multiplication. | Schools tend to be stubbornly inflexible and will not make | accommodations on their own. Extremely attentive and pushy | parents may get weak accommodations (e.g., letting students | moving full grade levels up/down; something difficult to explain | later), but it's rare. | | Added to this is impact of constant social upheaval + stress of | parents deployment, lack of lasting friendships, etc. | | This is all to say -- you would not expect this population of | kids to do well academically! The fact that they seem to (as | measured in these tests at DoD schools) should be really | surprising, and probably has little to do with the DoD schools | themselves. They're after all only responsible for part (often a | small part) of these kids' education. | | --- | | My main guesses at the real drivers here are: | | 1. (As mentioned in the article) It's a different world on base. | Parents have a massive stake in their children's behavior -- and | the students know this. No one wants their parent to get an | earful from their CO, and it does happen. (This is most | pronounced at DoD schools, but also extends off base.) | | Drug and alcohol use is exceedingly rare, due to the above + how | serious an offense it is on base. | | It's true also that there's a modest baseline of economic + | social support. Maybe not as much as the article suggests, but | it's not nothing. | | 2. Simple reversion to the mean. The DoD schools are full of kids | with a really diverse set of educational experience. Maybe some | of the good experiences are even a bit "sticky" -- habits and | skill learned transferring over to new environments, maybe even | bad ones. Maybe it's not surprising that that population wins vs. | the baseline (where kids only get a homogenous, mostly-good or | mostly-bad experience). - If the good skills and habits are | "contagious", maybe DoD schools even help spread them across this | population. | | 3. The tests are mostly measuring the lower portion of the | distribution. Well-off schools will have most students clipping | the top end of the measurement. Many DoD students attend those | schools! (At least for a time.) | | This is going to seriously amplify (2), but also (1) and other | things to the extent that they improve (or remove from the | sample) the worst-off students. | Simulacra wrote: | I went to school at Fort Gordon for two years, and the impression | I got was that if I got in trouble, my parents got in trouble, | and that would have been way worse. In public schools however, it | never crossed my mind that my parents could get in trouble for | something I did in school. | | With the military schools, there is a huge element of parental | responsibility and that's why I think it made them great. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-12 21:00 UTC)