Education in the United States
We have a thread devoted to academic freedom at universities, and we have a thread devoted to whether higher education should be subsidized. This thread is a landing spot for discussion of other issues related to education -- issues like school integration, pedagogy, the influence of politics on education (and vice versa), charter schools, public v. private schools, achievement gaps, and gerrymandering of school districts.
I'll start the discussion with two articles. The first deals with a major changes in the public school system in NYC.
NYC's public schools are highly segregated for such a diverse city. Last Friday, Bill DeBlasio announced the following:
Middle schools will see the most significant policy revisions. The city will eliminate all admissions screening for the schools for at least one year, the mayor said. About 200 middle schools — 40 percent of the total — use metrics like grades, attendance and test scores to determine which students should be admitted. Now those schools will use a random lottery to admit students.
In doing this, Mr. de Blasio is essentially piloting an experiment that, if deemed successful, could permanently end the city’s academically selective middle schools, which tend to be much whiter than the district overall.
DeBlasio also announced that:
New York will also eliminate a policy that allowed some high schools to give students who live nearby first dibs at spots — even though all seats are supposed to be available to all students, regardless of where they reside.
The system of citywide choice was implemented by former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2004 as part of an attempt to democratize high school admissions. But Mr. Bloomberg exempted some schools, and even entire districts, from the policy, and Mr. de Blasio did not end those carve outs.
The most conspicuous example is Manhattan’s District 2, one of the whitest and wealthiest of the city’s 32 local school districts. Students who live in that district, which includes the Upper East Side and the West Village, get priority for seats in some of the district’s high schools, which are among the highest-performing schools in the city.
No other district in the city has as many high schools — six — set aside for local, high-performing students.
Many of those high schools fill nearly all of their seats with students from District 2 neighborhoods before even considering qualified students from elsewhere. As a result, some schools, like Eleanor Roosevelt High School on the Upper East Side, are among the whitest high schools in all of New York City.
Here is the New York Times article that describes the changes:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/nyreg...
Obvious questions for discussion include:
- How large a priority should cities place on ensuring that city schools are representative of the city as a whole?
- Are measures like the ones that DeBlasio is implementing likely to be effective in making schools more representative?
- Will these measures have unintended (or intended) consequences that extend far beyond changing the representativeness of city schools?
Your post assumes private tutors are about equal. I would guess that well over half of those students who can't learn something like algebra from an average tutor could learn it from a top 3% tutor.
Well the premise was from AI with virtual classes , etc .
So I figure by default It would of been already in the top 1% .
You would always have the best and right information while being able to module the environment and the teaching on the individual basis of the student .
Pretty much top 1% for me and if a student couldn’t even succeed while I’m sorry but the student is just a failure .
FWIW I believe the cost of education is about to drop by a big margin in maybe a decade or so .
You don't need to completely give up on them, but you do need to get them away from everyone else while you un**** the current situation.
That cohort will shrink over time as the overall quality of the school environment improves and the younger ones see and emulate the behavior of the older students.
What does Japan do to have such an iron grip on their 10 and under crowd to the point where the kids themselves clean the school and wash their own lunch trays? Where you at, Japanese posters?
working, and not mentally masturbating like us.
We live in a corporate aristocracy. Once you realize that everything else makes perfect sense unfortunately.
A quick google tells me that
U.S. firms have increased their hoards of cash, reaching $6.9 trillion, an amount larger than the GDP of all but two countries.
But we can't spend another penny on schools. Or health care. Or anything else that might benefit society.
Well, babhba is happy at least.
A quick google tells me that
But we can't spend another penny on schools. Or health care. Or anything else that might benefit society.
Well, babhba is happy at least.
Healthcare is a completely different beast.
But the crux of the education issue is that the public school lobbies have been arguing we just need to continually throw more money at the problem; and the school choice advocates have been arguing that the system is broken and just throwing money at it isn't fixing anything, and they are offering an alternative with much better results at much lower cost.
And results vary dramatically by locale, but in many states (ironically, mostly blue states whose politicians are most resistant to charter schools) charter schools are in fact showing dramatically better results at much lower costs.
... because charter schools can kick the problems out.
Some people use that as a "Well, see, they aren't actually doing anything better, they just get to select a better pool" counter-argument against charter school effectiveness.
My contention is that we need to accept the reality that a relative few very bad apples are poisoning the entire barrel, and just quarantine them. If you've raised a godless psychopath, it's not the responsibility of every other child to sacrifice their education so your devil-child doesn't feel ostracized.
Typically, as people slowly start to accept that as the issue, they'll pivot to an argument about poverty or whatever distracts from addressing the problem.
Guess what, there are a LOT of poor kids out there who can behave themselves for 6 hours a day. Poverty isn't an excuse for not being able to sit the **** down and shut the **** up while the teacher is trying to show you how to improve your future.
A quick google tells me that
But we can't spend another penny on schools. Or health care. Or anything else that might benefit society.
Well, babhba is happy at least.
The economy is already over-hot there is no spare capacity. There aren't idle skilled people around you could activate for "the benefit of society".
If you spend more on something in this situation you get less of something else.
And given more money in particular wouldn't solve education why make everyone worse off?
My contention is that we need to accept the reality that a relative few very bad apples are poisoning the entire barrel, and just quarantine them. If you've raised a godless psychopath, it's not the responsibility of every other child to sacrifice their education so your devil-child doesn't feel ostracized.
But isn't this something you're just making up without solid data or even anecdotal evidence? Or whats your contention..... you woulda won a Fields Medal instead of turning into you, if only it wasn't for damn Billy in homeroom?
I don''t think there is much doubt that the top 1, 5 and 10% of public high school students are much better than ever. If you go back 20 years and look at statewide contests in math and programming that had multiple rounds of qualifying, they are so easy by modern standards, you could go to any non rural high school and find a classroom of kids that could compete.
Imagine also spending even more than the already world record the USA spends on health care thinking that would help people, as if there were idle doctors that you could activate by paying them more.
But isn't this something you're just making up without solid data or even anecdotal evidence? Or whats your contention..... you woulda won a Fields Medal instead of turning into you, if only it wasn't for damn Billy in homeroom?
I've witnessed it with my own eyes during visits, and my wife was a teacher in the inner city of Milwaukee for 15 years, is featured in two books about empowering black youth scholars, won a pair of state awards for her work in charter schools before moving to a union job at MPS for a few years, only to be chased out by the chaos. She's a highly empathetic, emotional person and washed out like countless others before her. A big reason she finally came home in tears on an October Thursday afternoon and never went back again is because she was picked to take over a position at Keefe Ave Elementary class that had gone through THREE other teachers and a slew of PAs in the year prior. She became another casualty just 6 weeks into the school year. Mind you, these were third graders in her final year. Up to that point, she had mostly taught 7-8th grade. It was always a mentally challenging job, and I had ignorantly told her that she's moving down to the 9 year olds: how bad can they be?
The mental stress builds up over time and eventually you break. Some break to the outside and quit, never to return to the profession. Others break and turn into apathetic babysitters. Put in the minimum effort and wait for early retirement. You do sort of get to choose your assignments based on seniority, so if you can survive long enough to get transferred to one of the slightly less awful schools.
Between the stories at the dinner table and countless other anecdotes when out with other couples from her work, it's pretty obvious what represents the largest challenge in these classrooms.
And no, I didn't have to deal with any of this in my own education. I went to a private school instead of MPS. Same thing I did for my own kids when we lived in the City.
You can Google dozens, maybe hundreds of articles written about pleas for help from MPS teachers, describing an extremely toxic culture of disrespect, violence, and abuse.
First hit for me was this from a school near my house:
Referring to students, she went on to say: ”Teachers at Grantosa are in abusive relationships that are only escaped by quitting. ... We see the individuals committing these abusive acts return to our classes repeatedly without consequence. We struggle to make contact with parents as many of their phone numbers change weekly.” And when they do make contact, “some teachers are not met with support, but blame and further verbal abuse.”
The letter continued, “Today I have a student who I’ve developed a great relationship with cussed me out and threatened me for stopping her from watching Netflix” in class. The students had found a way to get around the system in place to block that.
“These examples have become ‘the small stuff.’ Teachers are trying to put out the ‘bigger fires;” the fights, the furniture being flailed, protecting their students from bodily harm, and preventing property damage. I’m seeing my colleagues give up. They have come to the point where they are hopeless, therefore go on enduring the toxic environment they are in.”
...
A first grade teacher wrote, “In my classroom, there are several students who are disruptive to the point where other students’ learning and, oftentimes, safety is hindered.” She said that when she calls for a safety aide to help, the phone often goes unanswered. “I have gotten punched with no consequences for the student,” she wrote. Some of her students wander the hall and “lately, since they know nothing is being done and I am spread immensely thin, more have joined in with this behavior.”
I picked out the bolded part above because this is exactly what I hear over and over again. She's sugarcoating it a bit to soften the words or maybe make herself look less impotent, I'm sure. A few kids literally preventing anyone else from receiving an education, and absolutely nothing is done about it.
Oh, and don't forget how vital it is to build a proper educational foundation in a world where you cannot be held back until the material is mastered. If these first graders aren't learning the basics of reading because the teacher spends most of her day breaking up fights and preventing chromebooks from being thrown at people, what do you think that does for their ability to succeed in future grades? By the time they hit 4th or 5th grade and still can barely write their own name, it's over.
Look at the proficiency rates in MPS compared to nearby districts. People are graduating high school without the ability to read. Even with such a low bar, MPS was barely graduating 50% of the kids as late as 2015. Ten years later, I doubt it's much better. If so, great, but how much of that is better outcomes as opposed to lowering the bar?
Imagine also spending even more than the already world record the USA spends on health care thinking that would help people, as if there were idle doctors that you could activate by paying them more.
Yeah, it's way better funneling this country's wealth into corporate bank accounts and the top 1 %.
I've witnessed it with my own eyes during visits, and my wife was a teacher in the inner city of Milwaukee for 15 years, is featured in two books about empowering black youth scholars, won a pair of state awards for her work in charter schools before moving to a union job at MPS for a few years, only to be chased out by the chaos. She's a highly empathetic, emotional person and washed out like countless others before her. A big reason she finally came home in tears on an October Thursday after
Btw to be clear because maybe I wasn't, I am not minimizing the existence of these kind of problems.
I am saying that even if you somehow managed to fix them entirely, you would still have a decent number of public schools where large numbers of students wouldn't be able to reach basic proficiency in literacy and math
Yeah, it's way better funneling this country's wealth into corporate bank accounts and the top 1 %.
Corporate bank accounts are how the retirement of a significant portion of people (typically those to did the most for society during their working years) is funded, it's not only the "1%".
And please understand that if you increase expenses in real resources when there is no idle capacity in the economy what you get is inflation, which damages the poors more than the rest of the population
I've witnessed it with my own eyes during visits, and my wife was a teacher in the inner city of Milwaukee for 15 years, is featured in two books about empowering black youth scholars, won a pair of state awards for her work in charter schools before moving to a union job at MPS for a few years, only to be chased out by the chaos.
Apologies, I guess your case is anecdotal..... I guess we can blame Billy again for your insistence on anecdotal evidence over something more convincing? We currently are or at near all time highs in graduation rates and all time highs in performance among top 1, 5 ,10, 25% slices of public school students ex-rural. If what you're saying really is a dominant/major problem in school resource allocation and explanatory for why people aren't getting good educations it's hard to for both data points happening simultaneously.
Corporate bank accounts are how the retirement of a significant portion of people (typically those to did the most for society during their working years) is funded, it's not only the "1%".
And please understand that if you increase expenses in real resources when there is no idle capacity in the economy what you get is inflation, which damages the poors more than the rest of the population
I have no idea wtf your inflation argument is.
Its about our priorities.
The bottom line is that this country values jeff bezos having the largest yacht far more than it does creating a top notch education system.
Yeah, it's way better funneling this country's wealth into corporate bank accounts and the top 1 %.
US expenditure on healthcare, which is double the per capita rate for Western Europe, mainly goes into corporate coffers, hence the insane per capita cost due to price-gouging both for drugs and for professional services.
I've witnessed it with my own eyes during visits, and my wife was a teacher in the inner city of Milwaukee for 15 years, is featured in two books about empowering black youth scholars, won a pair of state awards for her work in charter schools before moving to a union job at MPS for a few years, only to be chased out by the chaos. She's a highly empathetic, emotional person and washed out like countless others before her. A big reason she finally came home in tears on an October Thursday after
what you see with your own eyes is not the truth.
what they tell you is the truth.
liberals abhor reality and anecdotes. if your personal experiences do not jive with their rhetoric, don't worry, they have an expert study to show you the light.
Apologies, I guess your case is anecdotal..... I guess we can blame Billy again for your insistence on anecdotal evidence over something more convincing? We currently are or at near all time highs in graduation rates and all time highs in performance among top 1, 5 ,10, 25% slices of public school students ex-rural. If what you're saying really is a dominant/major problem in school resource allocation and explanatory for why people aren't getting good educations it's hard to for both data poi
The top slices are better at utilizing the resources they're given. While the top 5% is getting a new fancy 3D printer and computer lab, Milwaukee is still trying to budget for replacing all the Chromebooks that were used to smack a bitch and are now broken.
I have no idea wtf your inflation argument is.
Its about our priorities.
The bottom line is that this country values jeff bezos having the largest yacht far more than it does creating a top notch education system.
the idle money in corporate accounts doesn't generate inflation.
if it gets taken by the state and spent it does.
if it's about priorities you need to cut something that real resources are currently spent upon. Bezos consumption would be the same anyway even if you tax him a little more.
The top slices are better at utilizing the resources they're given. While the top 5% is getting a new fancy 3D printer and computer lab, Milwaukee is still trying to budget for replacing all the Chromebooks that were used to smack a bitch and are now broken.
I guess we've entered the apologetics phase. But yeah, nothing you've said makes much sense with more objective measures.
I guess we've entered the apologetics phase. But yeah, nothing you've said makes much sense with more objective measures.
have you ever considered that the statistics you've provided have been the result of school districts doing some, um, creative accounting in order to meet certain criteria?
US expenditure on healthcare, which is double the per capita rate for Western Europe, mainly goes into corporate coffers, hence the insane per capita cost due to price-gouging both for drugs and for professional services.
The excess is mostly accounted for by higher salaries for medical professionals and, in distant second, higher costs for drugs and patented devices.
The hospital operators and insurers themselves make abysmal margins.
But it’s not popular to tell doctors they are overpaid and/or that they need to make it easier to become doctors. The AMA fights tooth and nail against making it easier to become doctors and are quite possibly the single biggest reason for the current shortage in medical professionals (especially doctors) now.
Apologies, I guess your case is anecdotal..... I guess we can blame Billy again for your insistence on anecdotal evidence over something more convincing? We currently are or at near all time highs in graduation rates and all time highs in performance among top 1, 5 ,10, 25% slices of public school students ex-rural. If what you're saying really is a dominant/major problem in school resource allocation and explanatory for why people aren't getting good educations it's hard to for both data poi
i am not sure why you cite good public schools doing great as an answer to the claim that bad public schools are doing terribly (even with a lot of money spent on them).
good public schools don't have many poor students.
the more public schools self sort the student population, which happens more with real estate prices and rent at ATH and a quarter/third of the population doing better than the rest more and more, the more the best schools will do better and the worst do worse even if you never change the funding, even if you believe the funding has a significant effect, because no matter the effect of funding, students inherent qualities matter more.
The excess is mostly accounted for by higher salaries for medical professionals and, in distant second, higher costs for drugs and patented devices.
The hospital operators and insurers themselves make abysmal margins.
But it’s not popular to tell doctors they are overpaid and/or that they need to make it easier to become doctors. The AMA fights tooth and nail against making it easier to become doctors and are quite possibly the single biggest reason for the current shortage in medical professional
you can't practice as a physician if you didn't do residency in the USA lol, that matters as well.
but no, the excess isn't only because of bloated nurse/physicians wages and insane drug prices (although both things matter).
the admin load is beyond belief, fraud is extremely rampant, and the system is set up to over prescribe procedures for several reasons.
medicare/medicaid fraud alone is around 100 billions/year but that's only the most conservative estimate possible of the extent of fraud.
