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?
I guess vouchers and charter schools seem ok in theory.
One of the things that makes me leery of it is the fact the right wants it so bad. I can't help but to think I'm not hearing the nitty gritty from luciom. His railing against teacher unions give me a pause as well.
What do we do with those kids that can't/won't learn?
What do we do with the very challenging kids that might make it?
What do we do with the over-achievers?
the right wants it so bad because 1) the idea of the private sector doing stuff better than the public sector is a core tenet of the right-wing moral framework and when we can prove it (like we can with schools) we win morally on all other topics as well (Ie the public will be less in favor of public health care, if we win on private education), and 2) because public education right now is a core democrat power center so anything that weakens it is better for the nation definitionally.
2) is why a lot of people get that charter schools are better as an option but are against them, you can't give a win to the other side even with truth and reason are entirely on the other side, because it actually means a material loss on other stuff you care about.
so it's about do you actually care about fixing education a little and improving outcomes for students, saving money in the process, admitting that the public isn't necessarily better at serving the needs of human beings than the private sector even in core functions, or do you care more for democrats to win elections more often and you are willing to sacrifice students to that cause?
If the US went to vouchers what you are likely to see is a bunch of companies running schools that work their asses off trying to recruit parents/kids to their schools.
There are likely to be schools out there that will compete for the behavior challenging kids as well. Remember we are talking about guaranteed gov't checks every year as long as the kids/parents can keep the kids in school. If you think these behavior challenging kids are unattractive think about how there are some renters who ar
charter schools already exist in 45 states.
12 states have vouchers state-wide, 29 have at least a district with vouchers
In this brave new world, how would charter schools be measured, and would they be measured equally across the board? Who would oversee this?
Who decides curriculum?
My quick googling tells me that Florida has vouchers, but they don't pay the entire expense of most schools which leaves out the poor entirely.
Florida has a voucher at 8k, compared to approx 10k per pupil in public schools.
not sure why that doesn't pay for the entire expense in most schools, poor people with kids don't live in the most expensive areas usually
the right wants it so bad because 1) the idea of the private sector doing stuff better than the public sector is a core tenet of the right-wing moral framework and when we can prove it (like we can with schools) we win morally on all other topics as well (Ie the public will be less in favor of public health care, if we win on private education), and 2) because public education right now is a core democrat power center so anything that weakens it is better for the nation definitionally.
2) is why
meh, see you lose me on this gibberish talk.
In this brave new world, how would charter schools be measured, and would they be measured equally across the board? Who would oversee this?
Who decides curriculum?
states can decide how much to control recipients of public money, as per any other public money expenditure which gets supply from the private sector.
"who measures private sector construction companies when the public finances infrastructure" isn't a question that leads you to have public sector construction companies right?
every state will have it's sensibilities about how much command and control they want to have wrt recipients of public money, and btw the same is true for public schools. some states give local districts more decision space and viceversa
Back to the topic at hand, I have to say, Luciom is selling me on this charter school idea and I'm not really understanding the objections to it.
AFAIK we don't have charter schools in the UK, but we do have free (over here the term "public school" is counterintuitively used to mean a private, i.e. paid school - it's open to all members of the public who can afford it) "grammar schools" which have entrance tests and the student needs to get a high enough score to be accepted. The alternative to
cant speak on every city, but in boston you have two major exam schools. boston latin and boston latin academy. up until recently entrance was granted via a combination of grades achieved and scores attained on entrance exams.
of course this had to be adjusted to include race, because well, boston gonna boston.
So, it seems the consensus here is that our education systems is bad, but nothing can be done about it.
le sigh
i don't think our education system is bad, on the whole, just our public schools, specifically inner city.
i personally think the way schooling is done should be overhauled. if a child can't behave in school, they most likely won't behave in society. i can speak from personal experience on this one as once puberty hit i became a nuisance to all those around me trying to get an actual education. i wasted three years in an exam school where my seat could have went to a perhaps less brighter student, but one who was actually going to pay attention.
trouble students, those given multiple chances and refusing to change, should have their education path altered and entered into a more rigid environment, one more military like. instead of learning algebra, these kids should learn consequences of their actions. they should learn valuable trades and/or be put on paths for military service. basically, a hail-mary approach to save them from themselves. i would have been much better off gaining discipline rather than knowledge, as knowledge can always be achieved later in life.
of course, this will not happen as the socioeconomic breakdown of said schooling would have lefties screaming racism, despite it being better for society on the whole.
as for non-troubled students, once high school hits there should be a split based on testing. bright students are grouped together and less bright grouped together.
They should gamify it. Do well on tests, get paid. Do poorly, take a beating.
Sadly only someone like Bukele would have the courage to implement such a system.
Florida has a voucher at 8k, compared to approx 10k per pupil in public schools.
not sure why that doesn't pay for the entire expense in most schools, poor people with kids don't live in the most expensive areas usually
I've seen the books for 3 Milwaukee charter schools, and none of them received anything close to what the per-pupil spending at MPS is. None of them were allowed to ask families for additional money beyond standard extras like field trips or whatever optional activities kids wanted to do.
The private school I sent my kids to was less than half the cost of what MPS spends on a single child, but was also partially supported by the church, as it was a Lutheran K-8 school.
Very very few choice/charter schools are on the level of a Brookfield Academy or whatever your local equivalent of a rich kid's school is.
I've seen the books for 3 Milwaukee charter schools, and none of them received anything close to what the per-pupil spending at MPS is. None of them were allowed to ask families for additional money beyond standard extras like field trips or whatever optional activities kids wanted to do.
The private school I sent my kids to was less than half the cost of what MPS spends on a single child, but was also partially supported by the church, as it was a Lutheran K-8 school.
Very very few choice/ch
We'll give your kids a good education on the cheap as long as we can brainwash them about Adam and Eve and the winged elephants. So is that the Faustian bargain (see what I did there?) you had to take?
They should gamify it. Do well on tests, get paid. Do poorly, take a beating.
Sadly only someone like Bukele would have the courage to implement such a system.
the issue with this becomes one of honesty, however. if you look at trends whenever the government implements some sort of initiative to punish low performing districts, graduation rates suddenly increase.
isn't there some sort of theory that whenever an institution is formed to cure an ail, the ail becomes the secondary concern and survival of newly formed institution becomes the primary purpose?
We'll give your kids a good education on the cheap as long as we can brainwash them about Adam and Eve and the winged elephants. So is that the Faustian bargain (see what I did there?) you had to take?
I'm not sure i hate this if there's a choice.
FWIW, I attended an Episcopalian elementary school and I don't feel the least bit indoctrinated.
I'm not sure i hate this if there's a choice.
FWIW, I attended an Episcopalian elementary school and I don't feel the least bit indoctrinated.
My post was mostly tongue in cheek as I like to clown on Inso0 for being a creationist at every opportunity. I actually went to a Catholic school for a while, one with nuns walking around and ****. It was one of the best schools in the area, and all the religious stuff was entirely optional, at least for my age group (16+).
We'll give your kids a good education on the cheap as long as we can brainwash them about Adam and Eve and the winged elephants. So is that the Faustian bargain (see what I did there?) you had to take?
It was more like, let's sing songs with religious undertones instead of "Wheels on the Bus" in kindergarten. Wednesday morning is a 20 minute chapel service, and there's a lot of WWJD in the conflict resolution strategy.
When you hit 7th and 8th grade, you can do after school classes to prepare you for confirmation.
Some light sprinkling of religion into the daily vernacular is a small price to pay for having your kids be able to take a bunch of AP classes in high school because they're ahead of their peers. Thanks, Jesus, for scaring everyone into line so we spend all of our time learning instead of fighting and calling the teacher a ****waffle.
I had never heard the word "****waffle" but I shall be adding it to my vernacular for use in casual conversation and perhaps the odd job interview.
There's a 2p2er that has that as his undertitle.
Yeah I think it’s a U.S. thing .
Here in Canada public school is fine and not too expensive , especially college and university with good quality shrug .
I mean the U.S. have some big problem in education and health care , spending so much money while having such a bad results.
But seeing how the private sector goes in healthcare I doubt the private sector would be better in education .
But yes Luciom being on the right , they all think everything the public sector do is bad .
On the topic of american education, this is what happens when you have social justice warriors in charge of curricula in schools for decades, and a media complex that keeps the lie alive after you leave school.
https://www.skeptic.com/research-center/...
On a very significant topic (especially for people on the left, in theory, who often accuse the right of erasing native history and culture) for americans, the history of the populations living in that land before the arrival of westerners, people are told a complete, absolute, utterly undefensible lie about a purported lack of intra-tribal violence among natives.
As everywhere in the world across time and geography in human history, natives butchered each others a lot , well before europeans arrived.
Why lie extensively creating a narrative that denies that obvious (for anyone with any basic knowledge of history) objective reality?
And yes it is about the total occupation of cultural centers by the left in the last decades
On a very significant topic (especially for people on the left, in theory, who often accuse the right of erasing native history and culture) for americans, the history of the populations living in that land before the arrival of westerners, people are told a complete, absolute, utterly undefensible lie about a purported lack of intra-tribal violence among natives.
I don't know what you were taught in school in Europe. In the U.S., I certainly wasn't taught in school that there was minimal violence among native peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans. I've never heard my kids say anything to that effect either.
What is your basis for this statement?
I certainly don't think those charts support the idea that schools are promoting that idea. Maybe you weren't talking about education?
I also would note that this survey appears to be an internet opt-in survey:
All participants in this dataset passed attention, response time, fraud, duplication, and bot checks.
If so, you can throw the whole thing in the garbage.
I don't know what you were taught in school in Europe. In the U.S., I certainly wasn't taught that there was minimal violence among native peoples prior to the arrival of Europeans.
What is your basis for this statement?
The latter link , belief in "peaceful natives" is higher the younger the generation. And among millennials/z higher with more education.
In europe (in italy at least) we touch pre-colonization american natives very little in general outside of college, and in college only if it's linked to the major.
And what we study in high school about natives is most about central and southern american natives (maya/inca/atzec).
We are told about the imperialistic incas and so on
I was taught “trail of tears” was considered one of the darkest stains on American history.
