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?
some places do this reversed. They test to make homogeneous classes.
when the number of "problematic students" is low, that's actually very very good for everyone. top students learn to deal with actual normal people, or people under average. and they get the chance to be in a group with far more resourceful people, and they can learn something in the process.
I can't remember right now how this system is called but it works, this is how my kid school makes classes.
but to be clear, the starting ma
i enjoyed my experience at this school. up until that point i was bored out of my mind because we had to wait for the mentally slower ones to catch up on everything.
I'm a product of the Boston system as well, and I can vouch that the units in Nashua St. and South Bay are still coded similarly. Floor number + letter.
are you being serious right now? both in that you went to BPS and that in jail that is how they do it?
i got locked up as a juvenile for a stretch but thankfully after turning 18 i made bail on my numerous misdemeanors before having to hit nashua street.
i enjoyed my experience at this school. up until that point i was bored out of my mind because we had to wait for the mentally slower ones to catch up on everything.
you can have extra (optional) classes for the bright students as they do have in my kid school, he does robotics, other people play with balls
are you being serious right now? both in that you went to BPS and that in jail that is how they do it?
i got locked up as a juvenile for a stretch but thankfully after turning 18 i made bail on my numerous misdemeanors before having to hit nashua street.
Yes on 1, not really on 2. Nashua St is floor-unit (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-1 etc.) South Bay has 5 buildings and they are numbered similarly except the building number is first and then another 1 or 2 numbers after that depending on the building. Buding 1 (the tall one you can see from far away) is 3 digits, the rest are two. So, e.g. 1-2-1 or 3-4.
Not sure what "BPS" stands for, when I was there Nashua Street was just called the jail and South Bay was called SCHOC - Suffolk County House of Corrections. That was 20 years ago though, they might have re-branded.
Yes on 1, not really on 2. Nashua St is floor-unit (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-1 etc.) South Bay has 5 buildings and they ate numbered similarly except the building number is first and then another 1 or 2 numbers after that depending on the building. Buding 1 (the tall one you can see from far away) is 3 digits, the rest are two. So 1-2-1 or 3-4.
Not sure what "BPS" stands for, when I was there Nashua Street was just called the jail and South Bay was called the SHOC - Suffolk County House of Correctio
bps is Boston public schools
Yes on 1, not really on 2. Nashua St is floor-unit (1-1, 1-2, 1-3, 1-4, 2-1 etc.) South Bay has 5 buildings and they ate numbered similarly except the building number is first and then another 1 or 2 numbers after that depending on the building. Buding 1 (the tall one you can see from far away) is 3 digits, the rest are two. So 1-2-1 or 3-4.
Not sure what "BPS" stands for, when I was there Nashua Street was just called the jail and South Bay was called the SHOC - Suffolk County House of Correctio
boston public schools = BPS
we called nashua street, nashua street and yes just a jail.
south bay we called "the bay," i know very creative.
any other prison we said, "he was sent upstate."
boston public schools = BPS
we called nashua street, nashua street and yes just a jail.
south bay we called "the bay," i know very creative.
any other prison we said, "he was sent upstate."
"Upstate" was specifically state prison. Nashua St. And South Bay are Suffolk County facilities. There are jails in other counties that are not "upstate". I was moved to one in Cambridge for a few months which is the Middlesex County jail.
"Upstate" was specifically state prison. Nashua St. And South Bay are Suffolk County facilities. There are jails in other counties that are not "upstate". I was moved to one in Cambridge for a few months which is the Middlesex County jail.
yep. had a drug dealer who lived across the street from MCJ and i used to peer out his window as i shot up, wondering when the shoe would drop and that would be home.
thankfully i GTFO of boston long enough to put my life on track.....somewhat anyway.
glad you've turned it around. knew a couple of guys who were in there around same time frame. d. greene and a kid named ryan with thunderbolts on his neck.
yep. had a drug dealer who lived across the street from MCJ and i used to peer out his window as i shot up, wondering when the shoe would drop and that would be home.
thankfully i GTFO of boston long enough to put my life on track.....somewhat anyway.
glad you've turned it around. knew a couple of guys who were in there around same time frame. d. greene and a kid named ryan with thunderbolts on his neck.
Good going kicking the habit man. Saw a tonne of young white kids were coming in straight off the street with trackmarks all over and strung out as ****. Don't know those names. I did have a cell mate who was a pretty big dealer in the street and was involved with that surgeon who was doing operations high on meth. Was a big story at the time, Globe and Herald ran a lot of articles on it IIRC. Cellie was looking at football numbers but I think he ended up pleading out to about 10. Charles Ghera (CJ). Searched him online a while back and found an obituary, guess he got out and went back to the life, no cause of death give so assumed suicide or OD. Not many people turn it around.
ETA: not sure if your use of "on track" was deliberate, but I chuckled.
Did you know Tony Ruberto (sp?) by any chance? Everyone in Boston involved with poker or pool around that time seemed to know him. There was a thread in NVG some years back about him playing a women's NLHE event lol.
Good going kicking the habit man. Saw a tonne of young white kids were coming in straight off the street with trackmarks all over and strung out as ****. Don't know those names. I did have a cell mate who was a pretty big dealer in the street and was involved with that surgeon who was doing operations high on meth. Was a big story at the time, Globe and Herald ran a lot of articles on it IIRC. Cellie was looking at football numbers but I think he ended up pleading out to about 10. Charles Ghera
same to you, whatever you were into.
AI and chatgpt will save education by having your own virtual teacher and class at home soon :p
I was half joking but if a student can’t even succeed with a private tutor full time just for himself , it ain’t the system that is facked , it’s the student .
Nothing can be done about that .
I was half joking but if a student can’t even succeed with a private tutor full time just for himself , it ain’t the system that is facked , it’s the student .
Nothing can be done about that .
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.
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.
Dude, coming up with the epiphany that you can get strippers to solve for how many tricks they need to turn to afford their meth habit, or whatever you had in mind now, probably getting "inner city" kids to work out the profit margin on buying powder in bulk and cooking it into crack, does not make you a "top 3% tutor".
Not many people know this, but I'm a top 3% poker coach. Check this out, Dave - don't go broke with kings in a limped pot. Why was the pot limped, some of you might ask? Well that was Dave's high level play on the 1/2 table. Get his book to learn more!
I have to say, this thread has me a bit disheartened. It's like we as a society just don't care.
I feel the same way about education as prison reform. Yes, there are definitely people that can't be rehabilitated/educated. I get that. But there are ton of folks/kids that, with help, can turn the corner. It not only benefits them, but it benefits us. One prisoner that doesn't get out and commit crimes means less victims. One kid that leads a productive life means one less drag on our society.
I dunno.
I have to say, this thread has me a bit disheartened. It's like we as a society just don't care.
I feel the same way about education as prison reform. Yes, there are definitely people that can't be rehabilitated/educated. I get that. But there are ton of folks/kids that, with help, can turn the corner. It not only benefits them, but it benefits us. One prisoner that doesn't get out and commit crimes means less victims. One kid that leads a productive life means one less drag on our socie
We live in a corporate aristocracy. Once you realize that everything else makes perfect sense unfortunately.
I have to say, this thread has me a bit disheartened. It's like we as a society just don't care.
I feel the same way about education as prison reform. Yes, there are definitely people that can't be rehabilitated/educated. I get that. But there are ton of folks/kids that, with help, can turn the corner. It not only benefits them, but it benefits us. One prisoner that doesn't get out and commit crimes means less victims. One kid that leads a productive life means one less drag on our socie
According to inso, to fix the 60-80 percentiles (with 1 top, 100 bottom) you have to completely give up the bottom 80-100 basically (change numbers if the quantitative assessment is different, but that is the qualitative idea).
That might be true for the USA, not sure tbh.
What's your take on that specifically?
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?
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?
The complete answer about Japan would get me banned but let's say it's POSSIBLE it's about ethnicity among other things
