[HN Gopher] The Shame of Swedish Education: J'Accuse
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The Shame of Swedish Education: J'Accuse
Author : cloudfifty
Score : 123 points
Date : 2021-02-14 11:04 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dianeravitch.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (dianeravitch.net)
| einpoklum wrote:
| > In the rest of the world, it is unreasonable for limited
| companies to make unregulated profits on tax money
|
| I envy the author for living in a country where one can imagine
| that commercial companies don't make unregulated profits on tax
| tax money.
| [deleted]
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| Incredibly melodramatic. Comparing yourself to someone denouncing
| an anti-semitic persecution (and by implication your opponents to
| anti-semetic persecutors) is not really a good basis for
| discussion. I cannot find anything resembling an argument in this
| entire article. If the swedish education system is so uniquely,
| shamefully terrible, wouldn't we expect it to actually lead to
| worse results then that of other countries? Is there any evidence
| for that?
| mongol wrote:
| Swedish PISA results have fallen continuously in the past
| years. Last result showed a break from that but later it turned
| out that many students which could have been expected to test
| poorly were dissuaded from participating. So the result from
| that year is in question. There is huge concern in Sweden over
| the state of the schooling system. It is complex because so
| much have changed over the past 30 years. It is usually not to
| recommend when trying trying improve something to throw it all
| up in the air at once, but that is more or less what has been
| done.
| username90 wrote:
| > Last result showed a break from that
|
| Correction: The last two results.
|
| > many students which could have been expected to test poorly
| were dissuaded from participating. So the result from that
| year is in question
|
| You mean newly arrived immigrants. They would greatly
| decrease the results depending on how many were excluded,
| yes, but PISA makes a distinction between immigrants and
| natives anyway so just look at the natives results and you
| still see a strong positive trend.
|
| Also you could argue that immigrant performance isn't a good
| indicator of the school system of a country, only an
| indicator of what kind of immigrants they take in. So the
| only real number from PISA is actually the performance of
| students who grew up there and got their entire education in
| the country.
| mongol wrote:
| I don't think that distinction is valuable. Immigrants that
| come to live here will need to be well equipped for adult
| life just like native Swedes are. That is why the downward
| trend has been so worrying. If the young generation in
| average has faired less well than previous generations,
| then that is worrying for our society.
| FabHK wrote:
| Agreed, arrogating Emile Zola's battle cry for yourself is in
| my view overreaching. On the other hand, as Wikipedia notes,
| "J'accuse! has become a common expression of outrage and
| accusation against someone powerful", so I think it has become
| more generic, and doesn't contain the implicit accusation of
| anti-semitism anymore.
|
| > wouldn't we expect it to actually lead to worse results then
| that of other countries?
|
| It might take many years to manifest itself (at university,
| PISA study, etc.), though. As such, an early warning by a
| practitioner that has first hand experience with what's
| happening in schools right now strikes me as valuable.
| username90 wrote:
| Sweden has had private schools for decades now though, and
| results are improving since the last reform. Also I don't
| think private schools is a big deal, good students avoid them
| since they all have really bad reputation. Nobody will think
| "Wow, you went to $private_school?" instead it is more like
| "You went to that school huh, are you an idiot?". There are a
| few exceptions, but only for the few schools that were
| private before the reforms this article talks about and they
| take in so few students that it wouldn't show up in
| statistics.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > "You went to that school huh, are you an idiot?"
|
| Which schools have this reputation?
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Similar things are happening in the USA. Charter schools get to
| cherry pick docile students who would probably do well no matter
| what school they went to.
|
| Rich people of course send their kids to high end private
| schools, residential or day schools, and that's in an entirely
| different world.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > The business model is simple: you buy smaller independent
| schools and incorporate them into the growing groups and then
| make a profit by targeting marketing to easy-to-teach,
| independent students [...] With a sold-out, simpler student base,
| the corporation schools can reduce salaries, teacher density,
| resource staff
|
| > When the profitable students have been absorbed by the
| independent school, the municipal school is left with a more
| difficult student base
|
| This is the gist of the article, that private entities are
| driving up the government's cost of education by attracting
| cheaper-to-teach students and then claiming the government
| funding allocated to those students. The municipality is then
| left to teach the harder-to-teach students. The funding per
| student is presumably averaged, so this is similar to the concept
| of privatising the profits and socialising the losses.
|
| But is there anything stopping the municipalities themselves from
| competing in the same way? A group of municipalities could also
| pool resources to reduce costs and attract cheaper-to-teach
| students.
|
| I think the article focuses too much on private profit, with only
| a small paragraph each about how the independent schools are
| given an unfair information advantage, and how some of them are
| controlled by religious extremists:
|
| > National Agency for Education made all statistics about
| individual schools secret
|
| > a school system that increases segregation and allows jihadist
| schools run by people with links to Islamism and violent
| extremism
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Uh, are you suggesting the municipalities should just _deny
| education_ to the unprofitable students?
|
| Not sure how concentrating easy students would help if you
| still have to teach the complex ones too, and since the
| municipalities _must_ provide education to eveyone they can 't
| avoid them like the profit schools do.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| > Uh, are you suggesting the municipalities should just deny
| education to the unprofitable students?
|
| I did not suggest anything like that anywhere in my comment.
| Municipalities have to teach hard/expensive students in
| either scenario. Based on the article, they are leaving
| easy/cheap students on the table for the private sector, who
| can profit from scale and from the students being cheaper to
| teach.
|
| There will be independent schools that only accept easy
| students whether the municipalities like it or not. The
| choice municipalities have is whether to run their own
| schools attracting such students and socialise some of the
| profits instead of letting it all go to the private sector.
| distances wrote:
| I think the parent is proposing different municipal schools
| for easy-to-teach and hard-to-teach pupils.
|
| I don't see any way to achieve this politically, ever.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| In some sense it already exists, the kids with severe
| developmental challenges have their own schools for
| example.
|
| I guess the real problem is that nobody wants to send their
| kids to the "cheap" school, which is likely going to be
| filled with kids from affluent parents because study
| outcome is to first order just a function of parent income.
| Ottolay wrote:
| As someone who is not all that familiar with education policy, is
| this basically analogous to for profit charter schools in the US?
| bjeds wrote:
| Roughly: Education is tax funded so each kid has a pile of
| money in the local government budget. The school where the kid
| ends up, gets this pile of money. The kids (or rather the
| parents) can pick and choose between schools.
|
| This naturally leads to a bunch of complexities, for example
| marketing catering to what the kids think they want (iPads, 3d
| printers, whatever) instead of what they need. Also, there's an
| incentive from privately owned schools to use this money as
| efficiently as possible.
|
| (Note: when I say "as efficiently as possible" I try to mean
| that in a neutral way: if you are reading this and are left-
| leaning, feel free to interpret that as "the school will cut
| costs to make a profit" whereas if you are reading this and
| right-leaning feel free to interpret that as using the budget
| more efficiently than the government could).
| Grustaf wrote:
| > With the deregulation of the 1990s, the ambition was to create
| thriving, independent schools, foundations, parent cooperatives
| and small limited company schools with educational alternatives.
|
| Sure, and the purpose of privatising welfare institutions,
| railroads and electric grids is to benefit the citizens, not the
| cronies of politicians...
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| That's not the problem. The problem is having government
| partially funding private companies.
|
| Let the parents pay for private schools and the market will
| select schools that do the best compromise for their need. I've
| found some unverified results claiming that parents are more
| satisfied with Swedish independent school than public schools.
| If that's true, parents are still getting a better service than
| with the public offering.
|
| I'm pro privatisation in general because, in my experience,
| government-run institutions waste more money and provide a
| worse service.
|
| Of course if you get politicians underselling public assets to
| their friends, the loss on the assets is just going to be
| pocketed by politicians and you'll get a worse service.
|
| I don't blame privatisation though, I blame the politicians.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > I'm pro privatisation in general because, in my experience,
| government-run institutions waste more money and provide a
| worse service.
|
| Of course that is generally true, but some things are natural
| monopolies. For example the railroads. If there is no
| effective competition, private companies have no real
| incentive to improve service, but they do have an incentive
| to lower their costs, often leading to worse service.
| kryogen1c wrote:
| i dont know about the social political education politics of
| sweden, but the generalized issue is the unanswered question:
|
| what is education for?
|
| the problem with involving a free market (issues like regulatory
| capture and misregulation notwithstanding) is that if the product
| isnt clear, the market output may not be desirable and could be
| quite malformed. as yogi berra said, if you dont know where youre
| going, you might not get there.
|
| education serves at least 4 purposes:
|
| -socialized child care
|
| -socialized child feeding
|
| -vocational training
|
| -general education
|
| point four is not well defined and point three is often never
| defined (who's whole education track is special built for a job
| they are guaranteed?)
|
| given these parameters, what is the expected output of a free
| market optimization? as we'd say about bad calculations in the
| navy: garbage in, garbage out.
| atomicson wrote:
| When we put so much trust to the government, another type of
| organization of human being. We give them so much power to manage
| all things and we loose control of them. They hide something from
| us for their own benefits. Some of them run on their own personal
| or group interests. Take them down all over the world. These
| elites are the real parasites of civilization.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| Allow me to open the door so that the elephant may walk into the
| room. The swedish try something new to get kids educated, but
| problems quickly develop :
|
| 1) People don't like shareholders taking money from the public
| sector. 2) People don't like teachers being underpaid.
|
| So, let's level up this argument. What if teachers were making
| the profits ? Would that still be repugnant to you ?
|
| How about a system where anyone (and literally I mean anyone, not
| just someone with a Master's in education) can start a school out
| of their living room. Let's say a retired entrepreneur that used
| to run a factory in your town.
|
| 6 families agree to pay with a school voucher so this retiree
| will teach the kids full time, at her house.
|
| Public schools will lose the students, as will the certified
| teachers. The profit will instead flow to the retiree. She's
| making ~72K /yr and is happy because that is substantially more
| than the median teacher salary.
|
| Is this scenario still "Shameful" ? What if more teachers did it,
| they banded together and formed a collective ? Once the profit
| gets larger.. does it then become repugnant ?
|
| Lets take another step further. Lets say the collective teachers
| choose to retire. They worked hard, they taught many students,
| but now they are now done. They get to keep the stock in the
| collective they founded. We now have stockholders.
|
| What is then, the effective difference between the stockholders
| in sweden and the stockholders of my example ?
| bjornsing wrote:
| > While schools and colleges are sounding the alarm about
| declining knowledge results, joy grades are rising, as grades
| have become a competitive tool on the market.
|
| This in my opinion is the main problem. Take this "marketing
| tool" away from the private schools, and the rest of the problems
| are fixable (e.g. with diversified pupil compensation). But when
| you let a private business both grade themselves and sell entry
| to (free!) university, you will quickly have massive problems...
|
| Up until the 70-ties or so there was a separate government agency
| responsible for final exams and grades. If we want to keep
| private schools (and I think we should at least try), then we
| need to reinstate that separation of education and evaluation,
| urgently. Problem is we now have a large swath of middle class
| parents who feel that they've been very smart and ensured a great
| future for their children by choosing the right school for them
| (and at least subconsciously they understand that the main reason
| is the inflated grades). They don't want that privilege taken
| away. There is no limit to the hypocrisy many people can accept
| if they feel it benefits their kids.
|
| Source: I'm Swedish, but I don't have kids so not super
| knowledgeable. Just my impression after following the debate and
| talking to friends with kids.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Funny you should mention the schools grading themselves. I'm a
| student at an AcadeMedia school, and they gave us a form to
| rate our education experience, along with this instruction on
| how to rate. For non-English speakers, they are basically
| asking us to rate outside of a linear 1-10 scale an instead
| follow theirs (which is biased towards higher ratings)
| presumably to look good on internal reviews. If this is somehow
| shown to their investors, I think the media should take this
| up.
|
| https://imgur.com/a/XlyDudM
| FabHK wrote:
| Do you know what is meant by "joy grades"? Does it refer to
| grade inflation (ie nearly everyone getting very good grades)?
| bjeds wrote:
| If you are a glass-half-full person (I am), it's fair to call
| it grade inflation. In the sense of an unfortunate (or
| natural) the-standards-keep-chaning-over-time and suddenly
| people have better grades than 10 years ago, but the same
| knowledge.
|
| If you are glass-half-empty person, you can interpret is as a
| sort of implied "if you pick my school (which means I get
| money) I will make sure your kid get good grades".
| catears wrote:
| The two main ways to get into university in Sweden is through
| your grades or through a national test (Hogskoleprovet ~ The
| university test). From your grades you calculate a score and
| then people are accepted into programmes at uni based on that
| score.
|
| The grading has seen a lot of debate over the last 10 years
| or so from when it changed (IG/G/VG/MVG --> A-F scale). The
| way things were graded in the old system had national
| guidelines, but I think teachers were supposed to take a
| holistic view on the students performance. Essentially,
| teachers gave an overall grade. With the new system there
| were two things that were rather unintuitive. MVG was the
| highest grade in the previous system, but this does not
| translate well to an A. Under the previous systems a few
| programmes required MVG in every subject to compete with
| other students. So as far as I know the new system required a
| grade "above" MVG. So that is one thing that makes it
| different. But also, the new grading system should grade you
| high if you scored high in ALL criteria for that subject. You
| were only supposed to be able get one grade higher than your
| lowest criteria. Of course, a lot of teachers thought "Well
| IG should translate to F, G should be E-D, MVG should be A.
| And then I'll just grade like in the previous system.". I
| think this line of thinking has created a lot of joy grades
| and unfortunately locked a lot of hard working kids out of
| their fair spot at uni while letting less hard-working people
| in.
|
| I know some people who barely got into uni from their grades
| but turned out to be some of the best performers among their
| peers because they got fair grades while others got joy
| grades.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| Anecdotal but my relative is a teacher. The principal of
| their school just told them straight up that they need to
| improve the grades no matter what so they can compete with
| other schools.
|
| It's kind of a open secret that if you go to a bad school
| it will be easier to get a good grade to get into
| university but harder to pass university.
| bjeds wrote:
| I sort of agree with what you are saying (I'm also Swedish) but
| I think the incentives are different, and due to the American
| dominance of Hacker News readers it's worth to clear up:
|
| Swedish middle class parents do not choose "good schools"
| because they want a "great education" for their kids as a
| competitive advantage... in the sense of a well-off American
| parent want their kids to go to Harvard or MIT or similar.
|
| Swedish middle class parents choose "not-bad schools" (not the
| same as "good schools") because they want to shelter their kids
| from trouble and from problems, for example from the social
| issues from failed integration of immigrants.
|
| So it's more about avoiding trouble and "white flight", than
| the education itself.
| bjornsing wrote:
| I can agree to some extent, but wait until the middle class
| kids don't perform well enough to make it into the middle
| class... Problem is: in a fair system that will happen, and
| many of those parents will fight tooth and nail to prevent
| it.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Would that explain why my bachelor students were so
| unbelievable inept at emotionally dealing with and resolving
| conflicts when I taught at university there?
| username90 wrote:
| How could you learn that from teaching a course? Did you
| create conflict among student and note how everything
| became chaos? Or do you just mean that a few complained
| about grades?
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| If the course is interactive and not just a lecture where
| students listen silently then you can easily observe what
| is going on. In college we have something called
| "seminars" where the teacher or teacher assistant work on
| problems and projects with small groups of students, that
| is highly interactive.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Neither. It was a design bachelor with group projects.
| You get to see a lot of interpersonal dynamics, and you
| also have a lot of direct interactions with your
| students.
| bjeds wrote:
| Haha I don't know where you're from but Swedish people are
| often stereotypically bad at both dealing with emotions and
| resolving conflicts. "Van der" = Gonna guess you are Dutch?
| Well Swedish people are, as you know well yourself, the
| opposite of the Dutch in how to handle things.
|
| Source: My partner is Dutch.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| You guessed right! Yeah, I know the stereotypes but the
| thing is that I already had studied a master in Sweden
| for two years myself, and thought I had gotten used to
| communicate "like a Swede", but I still was surprised how
| much more fragile the bachelor students were than
| anticipated
| aerique wrote:
| Haha, could you elaborate on that? That sounds like a fun
| read.
|
| disclaimer: I'm Dutch.
| danielscrubs wrote:
| Dutch and Finnish are known for being frank and to the
| point which is why they are quite well regarded in
| Sweden. Swedish is more conflict averse, always trying to
| protect each other and often failing because what happens
| is that people read in between the lines instead, which
| is much worse.
|
| disclaimer: I'm Swedish.
| logicchains wrote:
| The same is true in Australia: parents choose "not-bad"
| schools to minimize the chance of their kids being knifed or
| beaten up by other kids. But it's not due to immigration,
| instead just to "white trash" for lack of a better word
| raising violent, substance-abusing children.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| As an Australian you must know that when the middle class
| are sneering at the working or non-working class the term
| is bogan.
|
| https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bogan
| hogFeast wrote:
| The same is true in the UK. One of the highest rates of
| bullying in Europe (the other big one is Finland). Somehow,
| one of the highest rates of sexual violence against girls
| in schools too (this is globally, so including developing
| countries).
|
| Obviously, this problem is multi-faceted, the best solution
| is everyone just going to a nice school. But part of the
| problem in the UK was that comprehensive education is very
| ideological, and the belief was: comp schools are so bad
| because all the good students go to grammar schools. This
| did not turn out to be accurate.
|
| But London (which is currently in the midst of a knife-
| crime epidemic) was one of the worst places, and got
| significantly better due to more investment, and more
| exclusions/discipline. For example, some schools will get
| teachers to walk at-risk students directly to their homes
| from schools. And ofc, the exclusions have caused outcry
| (funnily enough, there is a split on this between unions,
| who hate it, and teachers, who quite like it).
| Incidentally, Glasgow also used to have a serious knife
| crime problem, and they got over this with enhanced stop-
| and-search...unf, this is politically impossible in London.
| There are solutions to all these problems though.
|
| I grew up in the UK, and knew lots of smart kids now
| working deadend jobs who got chewed up and spit out by
| schools (almost always the issue was bullying, and schools
| not removing people who were behaving, in a non-school
| context, criminally). It is a seriously bad situation imo.
| sha1337 wrote:
| I would like to give some context to everyone who doesn't come
| from Sweden.
|
| >The following article [...] appeared in the Swedish publication
| Expressen.
|
| Expressen is a known right-leaning news publisher. They are the
| Fox News of Sweden, you should keep that in mind.
|
| Here is an example of the kind of trash you find in Expressen
| (taken from the article):
|
| >I accuse you, the Sweden Democrats [...] you support a school
| system that increases segregation and allows jihadist schools run
| by people with links to Islamism and violent extremism
|
| They're talking about muslim schools. What is said doesn't
| accurately represent reality nor is it non-partisan (obviously).
|
| Sweden Democrats are the most right-leaning party in the Swedish
| Parliament, they don't like muslims (to put it mildly). Yet the
| author is blaming them for not going hard enough on the muslims
| community in Sweden.
|
| It's a bit of a trend now with right-wing extremists in Sweden to
| focus on attacking muslim schools, as if having Arabic/Quran
| lessons apart from the regular school curriculum is equivalent to
| training a militia. This sort of language is not unlike what you
| would expect a neo-nazi to say about jews, that they are
| inherently a harm and seek to subvert society, because reasons...
| Grustaf wrote:
| Expressen might be as trustworthy as Fox News, but it's not
| right leaning in any meaningful sense of the word.
|
| As to islamism, you are aware that they recently closed down
| Vetenskapsskolan because after a number of islamist scandals.
| For example, it turned out they had been hiring people
| returning fighting for ISIS.
| sha1337 wrote:
| I think truthfulness is a bigger issue than right vs left, if
| they were truthful I would personally not care about their
| political leaning.
|
| Expressen is right-leaning though, they may not be far-right
| (like Avpixlat), but they're certainly leaning right.
|
| >For example, it turned out they had been hiring people
| returning fighting for ISIS.
|
| They(in plural?) had been hiring people (again in plural?).
| You have to be accurate here, especially when it comes
| articles that are demonizing an entire community. Even if it
| so happened that one employee had links to ISIS, it does not
| by default make the school administration responsible for
| what the employee did. For example, if a pedophile teacher
| gets caught, it's hardly reasonable to blame the school
| (unless the school administration knew and ignored it).
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Thanks for the context.
|
| I'm always wary of accusing people for having "links to" X or Y
| bad ideology. Links are so vague and often seem much more
| nefarious than they are.
|
| For example, if I went to high school with someone, does that
| "link" me to them? What if, like many people, we were best
| friends in high school but lost touch later? What if that
| person works in a business which my brother also works in? What
| if we sat next to each other at a charity dinner? All of these
| are "links" but none of them mean that I subscribe to the
| ideology of the person I'm linked to.
| [deleted]
| acd wrote:
| Sweden has started to view pupils like a product of a private
| corporation. We should copy our nordic neighbor Finland which has
| very high Pisa results. For now a 1:1 copy of Finland would do
| fine for Sweden.
| kakoni wrote:
| In Finland, Local "moderats" and liberals managed to cut over
| 1.5 billion euros from education in the past 10 years.
|
| Pretty sure they have private venture backed school system in
| mind.
| distances wrote:
| > Pretty sure they have private venture backed school system
| in mind.
|
| Would you have something to back this assumption up?
| kakoni wrote:
| Sure. These links are in Finnish
|
| [1] https://www.kokoomusnuoret.fi/kannanotot/2015/05/suomi-
| tarvi... [2] https://www.verkkouutiset.fi/pitaako-
| vanhempien-saada-valita...
| distances wrote:
| I can deal with that encryption. Thanks for the links,
| didn't hear before this being a discussion topic at all.
| kakoni wrote:
| Also from the past (again with Finnish encryption)
|
| [1] http://yle.fi/uutiset/3-5056120
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| There is their general intention to privatize everything
| possible because they oppose "big state"?
| distances wrote:
| Who is against "big state" in Finland, are you referring
| to the National Coalition Party?
|
| Specifically, I've never heard of anyone wanting to
| privatise the school system so I'd like to get something
| that substantiates these claims. Otherwise it's just a
| textbook example of FUD.
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Holy crap, the homophobic comments about shielding their children
| from immigrants children/issues. How dare you speak in the name
| of other people and get a grip and grow a pair. Jesus this is
| Sweden and Australia we are talking about, not a war zone. You do
| not know the really bad places on this planet. Let your children
| learn conflict resolution, they are not gonna be assassinated in
| school. Or well, pay for these useless schools ripping you off if
| you think the kids there are all saints and angels.
| techpression wrote:
| Most people with a non-political agenda would agree that the
| problems with the Swedish school system began when it was handed
| over to the municipalities from the state, I don't think there
| has been a successful migration of responsibilities like this
| ever in the history of the country. We then had to suffer years
| of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and
| choice superseded traditional curriculum.
|
| Invalid causality between free markets and segregation, it's
| dishonest at its best given all the other variables in society
| happening at the same time. Not that privatization was
| successful, with a lax hands off approach, but the agenda of the
| author is clearly shining through here.
| bov wrote:
| As is yours here.
| techpression wrote:
| Please do enlighten me about my agenda, this will be very
| interesting to say the least.
| illuminati1911 wrote:
| Proving logical fallacy in the article?
| brtkdotse wrote:
| I have a mathematical agenda, I can't get the following to
| balance:
|
| Municipal: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers -
| cost_of_buiding - misc_costs = 0
|
| Private: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers -
| cost_of_buiding - misc_costs - cost_of_marketing = profit
| timkam wrote:
| Private schools have more leverage on whom they will accept
| as pupils and hence can target an "easier to teach" part of
| the overall pupil population.
|
| To me the Swedish system is the worst of two worlds: in
| Germany, there are good public schools for well-performing
| students; the problem is that affluent parents typically make
| sure their children are classified as "well-performing"
| (roughly speaking; there is a lot of wiggle room). This is
| somewhat unfair, but facilitates to some extent the
| development of pupils with reasonably high potential. In
| other Scandinavian countries, the state provides enough
| resources to have small class sizes in which pupils of all
| abilities get educated together. This is fair but can hamper
| the development of high-potential children (teachers still
| have limited time and attention). In Sweden, the distribution
| of resources as criticized by the article facilitates that
| pupils in need don't receive special support and high-
| potential children get their education in for-profit
| institutions for pseudo-elites where a teacher is discouraged
| to give tough feedback because it can hurt the organization's
| bottom line.
| amadeuspagel wrote:
| That's a great argument for why the state should do
| everything and private companies shouldn't exist, but given
| the historical record of this arrangement, maybe there's
| something wrong with it?
| leereeves wrote:
| The author claims that "the corporation schools can reduce
| salaries, teacher density, resource staff."
|
| Though that claim makes me wonder how these schools attract
| students. The "independent students" and their parents must
| not be too happy with the municipal schools if understaffed
| private schools are an appealing alternative.
| cloudfifty wrote:
| They appeal to privileged students with well-educated
| parents. There's also a queue system in place to these
| schools which have many years waiting time, further
| segregating "active" parents from "inactive" parents. These
| students require less resources to educate and thus
| generate more profit.
|
| Also the students are now customers, and should ofc be made
| happy to give good ratings, which has caused grades to be
| inflated beyond the students actual results on standardized
| tests.
|
| Furthermore these schools generally market themselves as
| "international schools" with English as the primary
| language, making them able to use a loop hole in the law to
| employ cheaper non-licensed teachers from abroad.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| They weed out hard-to-teach students, the author says,
| which means it will drive down the cost of teaching in
| private schools (less "hand holding" of bad students means
| fewer teachers required) while raising the cost in
| municipal schools at the same time, because the municipal
| schools basically get all the "bad students" which require
| additional hand holding.
|
| Furthermore, if you outright reject "bad students" - where
| "bad" may mean intellectually bad, socially bad, bad
| economic background, disabled ("with diagnosis"), etc -
| then you can later claim in your marketing materials that
| students in your private school are performing above
| average.
|
| It probably will also lower administrative burden, as the
| "easy" students are less likely to get in major trouble,
| are less likely to need involvement of the school and child
| protected services in their lives, the teachers go to court
| as a witness in child abuse cases less, etc.
|
| And of course, you can always simply pay teachers less than
| in municipal schools - which is one of the claims of the
| author as well.
|
| And the last claim the author made is that a lot of these
| companies just hire some under-qualifiied teachers whenever
| they can get away with it.
|
| I have to admit, the author makes a lot of sense to me.
| imtringued wrote:
| Because all the other "good" students are there and all the
| "bad" students are in the public schools. You don't want
| your kid to be surrounded by "bad" kids, do you? (I'm not
| serious)
| brtkdotse wrote:
| See 'cost_of_marketing'.
| leereeves wrote:
| If the marketing is misleading, couldn't students just go
| back to their old schools?
| brtkdotse wrote:
| In theory, yes, but it's not like changing internet
| providers - kids have friends, commuting might be harder.
| Not something you do on a whim.
| boxed wrote:
| The municipality can set the rent. I know of cases where: -
| it's high to have lower taxes for the rich for no reason,
| making private schools very competitive because they can just
| change building. - it's zero, making it very hard for a good
| private school to compete because they can't never get the
| rent to zero on the open market.
|
| Both these are bad in different ways.
| zelos wrote:
| I have no real view on public/private provision of services,
| but education is an area where I'm not sure how private
| 'efficiency savings' would exist. The bulk of the costs are
| salaries and the teacher/pupil ratio is roughly fixed for a
| given quality of education. Does anyone have experience of
| this? Are there actually areas that private enteprise can
| come in and save money in education?
| techpression wrote:
| Proven false by Swedish schools, just this week a pretty
| thorough investigation showed that same result schools in
| certain cities had almost twice the funding per student
| compared to others, for no gain.
| iguy wrote:
| I think "selection" is the short answer. If you can, by any
| means, arrange to have a class of better-behaved more-
| interested children, then you can save money. First, you
| can pay the teachers less, because the job is much more
| pleasant.
|
| Second, you can avoid hiring special-ed non-teachers, who
| (IIRC) are quite numerous in some public school systems
| (like 1/3 the staff?) but aren't usually counted in the
| teacher/pupil ratio (because their jobs are different).
| silvestrov wrote:
| You have not visited an American school lately and seen the
| mindblowing numbers of administrators employed?
|
| Baltimore: "For every student enrolled in City Schools,
| $1630 goes to administrators" [1]
|
| Even universities have a problem with the administration
| growing wihtout bounds.
|
| A profit motive can cut down on unneeded administrators.
| The "misc_costs" can be widly different for different
| school systems.
|
| Why should a head of a public school each $+100k ? [2] What
| is it about a standard run-of-the-mill public school that
| can only be performed by such high earners?
|
| 1) https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-
| baltimore/baltimore-ci...
|
| 2) https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/elementary-school-
| princip...
| germinalphrase wrote:
| In the US, teacher to student ratios are generally not
| fixed. One wchool may have 25 to a class. Another 35.
|
| If you can select only high performing students with fewer
| individual needs, you can increase the number of students
| without needing additional staff. Likewise, you can higher
| fewer or no language teachers, special education teachers,
| etc.
| HPsquared wrote:
| Your equation misses an 'efficiency' parameter.
| imtringued wrote:
| The whole problem is that private schools only take the
| best students, which makes them more efficient on paper but
| in reality they just shifted the problem around.
| brtkdotse wrote:
| Ah, yes, the fabled "efficiency" of private companies.
| Where would you have me put it? On teachers salaries? On
| building costs?
| corty wrote:
| On teacher selection.
|
| In Germany, public school teachers are state officials,
| meaning they are completely impossible to get rid of
| (even after some kinds of criminal convictions). We
| literally had a teacher who wasn't allowed to teach the
| younger classes anymore, because he was prone to rudely
| abuse them. He taught the older pupils instead, who were
| thought to be more resilient to his abuse. Another
| teacher (biology and chemistry) was deeply religious and
| had a funny way (to say it mildly) of teaching evolution,
| procreation and sex ed. Which lead to her just being
| assigned chemistry classes, where she then had to limit
| herself to teaching photosynthesis "as the lord created
| it"...
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Place an efficiency factor on not only teacher selection
| but on the curriculum which I would argue is more
| important than quality teachers. A well implemented
| curriculum with good teacher support is the biggest
| quality differential between schools of similar
| demographics. When I say curriculum I mean everything
| from books, to teacher hiring, results monitoring, and
| teacher support.
|
| See what charter school CMOs like Kipp (targeted at
| underprivileged), Success Academy (targeted at NYC) and
| BASIS (targeted at students willing to work hard) are
| doing.
|
| Many schools just take whatever teachers they can get,
| throw teachers into the classroom with no support, use
| whatever curriculum has the best sales team, and does
| little adjustment based on results or outcome.
| [deleted]
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Well, the question is really how bad the government run
| agency is at cost control. Some of them are dangerously bad.
| Many education administrations waste lots of money on
| administration, to the detriment of actual education. Many
| education administrations are run by someone doing a resume-
| padding exercise. Just because the short-term profit isn't in
| the company's results doesn't mean no one is taking
| advantage.
|
| It's usually easy to bring in someone profit-oriented and cut
| those costs. The bad news is that this doesn't magically make
| the education provided any better.
|
| The principal-agent problem goes deep.
| mongol wrote:
| This assumes all the variables are the same between the same
| examples. Which they would not be.
| boxed wrote:
| This is the common wisdom in Sweden. It's also trivially false.
|
| Sweden made a bunch of changes at the same time. Why would this
| one thing be the only thing?
|
| And why is our neighbor Finland able to have the best school in
| Europe and they did the exact same thing? Logic seems to have
| little place in this discussion.
|
| The problem with the Swedish privatization in my opinion is
| that it managed to enable scientologists and real actual
| islamists (vetenskapsskolan) to open schools.
| techpression wrote:
| Finland didn't do the same thing at all, they modeled their
| system based of the Swedish one back when it was state driven
| and science based.
| mongol wrote:
| It wasn't at the same time. It was approximately at the same
| time, but parent is right: it _started_ with the handover to
| municipalities, the privatisation was a few years later
| lordnacho wrote:
| I've always been suspicious of for-profit schools. I put my own
| kids in "traditional" independent schools that you have to pay
| for, but they're run like charities where there's basically no
| money for someone to pull out.
|
| With for-profit, you have the problems alluded to in the article.
| If something is up with your kid, eg they need more attention,
| it's in the school's interest to puff you out so they don't have
| to arrange that. If your kid is doing well, they could do less
| well than their potential, which might again require more
| attention.
|
| Ordinary independent schools still have some of these pressures,
| esp wrt to booting out failing kids, but they don't have an
| expectation of leaving resources for profits.
|
| What you're really buying with tuition fees is other parents.
| Other people who are also signalling, by burning a year's rent,
| that they value education and will make sure their kids are
| focused on doing things like reading and numbers.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Your supposition is logical, but the reality is, budget
| directors, chancellors, and politicians are all under
| tremendous pressure to stem education costs in the public
| sector, and it has a lot of impact in what's done or not done.
| That's why laws guaranteeing the right to education,
| particularly special education, are important.
| Mediterraneo10 wrote:
| > they're run like charities where there's basically no money
| for someone to pull out
|
| In the United States, charities (501c3 non-profits) can indeed
| be run like businesses and there is "money to pull out". The
| non-profit status requires the organization to use all the
| money that it brings in, but it is free to use that money on
| paying high salaries to its management. Consequently, many non-
| profits become sinecures for their staff, a guaranteed source
| of a higher and more stable salary than they might find in some
| other job, and relatively little money is directed towards the
| charitable endeavours for which the money was ostensibly
| raised.
| Grustaf wrote:
| The best thing about the Swedish system is that it also ruins
| the public schools. All schools get paid per student, so public
| schools have also taken to using marketing and non-education
| related ways to attract students, such as "cool" designs, free
| ipads etc.
| leecarraher wrote:
| The us has a similar profit driven model parallel to state funded
| schools. While private schools have always been available, only
| in the last few decades did they move from large monolithic
| institutions to national corporations. What we tend to call
| charter schools, profit off of government funding while sometimes
| putting corporate incentives over student well being. As with
| public schools, there is a spectrum of excellent to failing
| schools. But instead of the students success determining profit,
| the school is often faced with the decision: chase test scores to
| get more government funding, or file countless, often borderline
| false IEPs for difficult students and profit off the extra "need
| based" government funding. This had the effect of replacing the
| natural spectrum of education with a pigeon hole, excellent high
| stress test driven school. Or failing, school whose goal is more
| that of a prison than educational institution.
| jschveibinz wrote:
| I would like to address some of the hyperbole in this comment.
|
| The US has a majority of publicly-funded primary schools
| (K-12)--- 16,800 districts by a recent count --- that are
| primarily funded by local property taxes and run by local
| school boards. Only 9% of schools are private, and only 7% of
| public schools are charter schools (semi-private).
|
| National funding for primary education in the US is relatively
| small (roughly 8%) and is mostly tied to special services. The
| US Dept. of Education is toothless: it is primarily focused on
| setting policies and administering Title 9.
|
| If Sweden has a problem with profiteering in national primary
| education funding, it is difficult to draw an analogy to US
| schools just based on the facts stated above.
|
| It is true that some US school districts suffer from funding
| shortfalls due to low local tax base, and the need to show
| passing grades does drive some schools to "cheat" in order to
| receive state and federal subsidies, but this is not a
| universal country-wide problem.
|
| The magic solution to educating low-income, socially
| disadvantaged children who live in very difficult living
| situations with no assistance from parents has yet to be
| devised. Or has it? Check out what these folks are doing in
| Baltimore: https://www.thread.org/
| username90 wrote:
| KTH tests engineering students math abilities by giving new
| students the same test every year. There is nothing gained or
| lost from this test so nobody studied for it. Anyway, this gives
| us a reasonable trend in how well students know the basics, and
| it shows that students are getting better and not worse right
| now. The worst class was the one starting 2007.
|
| https://www.kth.se/aktuellt/nyheter/trenden-har-vant-matteku...
| pfortuny wrote:
| So they have already been accepted... Not a truly random
| sample.
|
| "Nobody studies for it" is surely an overstatement. Do not
| underestimate the fear of tests.
| Gwypaas wrote:
| The only acceptance criteria is grades, or a local SAT/ACT
| like test but without essays or other harder to grade parts.
| It's language, logic and math. See more here [0]. You don't
| get in because you're good at sports, it's not even a
| consideration.
|
| I've taken a similar test at another university in Sweden and
| truly nobody studies for it, in the introduction week it was
| simply done at one point as part of the introduction
| curriculum, without even being mentioned beforehand.
|
| So, it's a fairly consistent sample of people aiming for a
| STEM education.
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_Scholastic_Aptitud
| e_Te...
| username90 wrote:
| Nobody studies for it since nobody knows they will take the
| test. It is marked as a blank spot on their calendar and
| people gets surprised when a test gets handed out. Then they
| quickly forget they ever took a test since so much happens in
| the first days of new students.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| Note that KTH is an elite institution so there is a selection
| bias. It's like saying education in America must be going well
| because new MIT students are getting better.
| bjeds wrote:
| Now you are exaggerating. KTH is of course a good school for
| Swedish standards but calling it elite is weird. In what way
| would you say that KTH is elite, because I genuinely do not
| understand how the word "elite" applies to this school?
|
| I'm a bit out of touch, but of all schools in Sweden, the
| only I'd call elite - by the common meaning of the word - is
| Operahogskolan (I think it's called, the Opera school) and
| possibly Stockholm School of Economics and the medical
| schools of the larger older universities + Karolinska. Those
| places are highly competitive.
|
| Everyone I know, from the little village I grew up in Sweden,
| who wanted to go to KTH, did so.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| > who wanted to go to KTH
|
| Here's your selection bias. Self-selection is also
| selection.
| bjeds wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are claiming here. Are you saying
| that I'm wrong in questioning calling KTH "elite" because
| I used one anecdote in a larger argument?
|
| You can look up the admission statistics yourself: it's
| very easy to get in to KTH. Maybe there are some programs
| that are more competitive than others.
|
| When I finished high school, the admission criteria for
| example Electrical Engineering was roughly "you need a
| non-failing grade in all high school courses". How is
| that "elite"? Compare with medical school where it used
| to be "you need the best grade in every single course
| otherwise you're not getting in". Or the Opera school
| where there's an admission test in front of an audience.
|
| I can guarantee that MIT is more difficult to get into
| than KTH.
| Grustaf wrote:
| When I entered KTH you needed top grades in all subjects
| to be admitted to engineering physics. Electrical
| engineering was probably not even the third hardest to
| enter.
| sobriquet9 wrote:
| You are drawing conclusions about Swedish education based
| on a biased sample (people admitted to KTH).
|
| It's true that looking at people admitted to elite
| medical schools would introduce even bigger bias, but it
| does not mean that the sample you chose is
| representative.
| JorgeGT wrote:
| Maybe elite is the wrong term, I'm not a native speaker...
| what I meant is that KTH is probably the best technological
| university in Sweden and one of the best tech unis in
| Europe overall, so the math level of its _admitted_
| students is not necessarily representative of the general
| level.
| Grustaf wrote:
| It is the best technological university in Sweden, but
| it's also one of the biggest universities, if not the
| biggest. It accepts a lot more than the elite, in any
| sense of that word.
| corty wrote:
| While I agree with the article about the problems of profit-
| driven schools, the whole situation (and the article in parts)
| points to a imho bigger problem in most education systems:
| Profit-driven schools cater to the more able, easier to educate
| and more intelligent pupils. Why can they do that? Because public
| schools almost everywhere insist on coeducation of the most and
| least gifted. This is severely holding back and limiting the
| development of gifted children and imho needs to be dealt with.
| captain_price7 wrote:
| Assuming it's possible to find out "intelligent" vs not
| primary/middle schools kids.
|
| We all here agree that finding talented developers is hard-
| meaning 22+ yr old adults. Isn't the job like 10 times harder
| for say 8 yr old kids?
| ihsw wrote:
| A good start is taking a harder look at students that go to
| school to raise hell, and there are many. They have an
| uncanny ability to destroy the teaching ability of teachers
| and the learning ability of students.
|
| A good start is taking those troublesome students out of the
| classrooms of public schools/district schools without regard
| to the inevitable protestations of "concerned citizens."
| username90 wrote:
| > We all here agree that finding talented developers is hard
|
| When people say that they mean it is hard to find a talented
| developer who is looking for a job paying significantly below
| what he is worth.
| red_admiral wrote:
| I think the thesis of Senator Warren's book The Two-Income Trap
| (2004) is that in the US, where you don't have the problem with
| profit-driven schools (or at least had it much less back then),
| you instead have the problem that the middle classes will flee
| to the suburbs to get their kids into good schools (or, as
| another poster has put it, "not-bad" schools). The schools may
| be public, but as long as you need a certain income to live in
| the district, that serves the same purpose.
|
| Book review by Scott Alexander here:
| https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/28/book-review-the-two-
| in...)
| japhyr wrote:
| This is not always the case. There's a growing number of states
| in the US that allow state education funding to follow a
| student wherever they go.
|
| Wherever these laws arise, profit-based schools appear and
| attempt to draw in as many students as they can. Often times
| it's the least educated, least privileged people who are pulled
| into these programs. There is little or no regulation on claims
| these schools make in their marketing materials, so they
| promise the world and then dump students into large classes led
| by gig-economy "teachers".
| lou1306 wrote:
| School should also teach kids that they live in a complex
| society, where people have different backgrounds and, yes,
| different skill sets. I'm afraid that relegating "more gifted"
| kids (whatever this means) into a world of their own is not
| only harmful to those who are left out, but to them as well.
| corty wrote:
| Getting beaten up by the differently-gifted jocks is
| beneficial?
| UrsaMedius wrote:
| What you call "most and least gifted" is in my opinion better
| described as "most and least privileged". And coeducation of
| students of different levels of privilege just seems like a
| good thing, nothing that needs to be dealt with.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| How is this a good thing? No parent would want their gifted
| child to be held back because there are other less gifted
| children in the class who will hold their child back. It is
| easy to understand their point of view. When you say 'just
| seems like a good thing'...it begs the question.. 'for whom'
| [deleted]
| viceroyalbean wrote:
| The issue, in my experience, is that you have to compromise
| somewhere. That means either leaving the higher performers to
| be bored, or leaving the lower performers not achieving the
| minimum. Neither seems like a desirable outcome.
| rusabd wrote:
| Well, we can always f*ck up both groups. It seems this is
| the current approach.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| No, you don't have to compromise at all.
|
| Personal experience: I had a great math teacher in mid
| school; he gathered the best students from the 5 classes in
| that year in one class and he set the baseline quite high.
| For the last 2 years half of our class was taking the
| prizes at all the inter-school competitions in the city and
| a few of us from the nationals. Most of that class went to
| the best high schools in the city and most are today great
| doctors (medical) or scientists. Imagine that did not
| happen in mid-school and everybody would be an average Joe
| - that is a loss for humanity, not just for us.
|
| Try to read Ender's Game (the book, the movie is terrible).
| This is very tough, but if you need great people you can
| help by creating the conditions to grow them. How many
| Einsteins wasted their lives achieving nothing and how
| earlier curing diseases and improving technologies was
| possible if that waste did not happen?
|
| The compromise is to waste the resources that we have in
| the name of equality; we cannot make everyone smart, we
| only can make them all stupid, so let's do equality.
| corty wrote:
| Of course higher intelligence is a privilege, as is higher
| sportive ability and other attributes given to you from
| birth. This includes your own personal attributes as well as
| the privilege that comes from your family's wealth and
| status. But actually, the word "privilege" muddles the
| waters, because those are two very different things.
|
| I agree that schools should not differentiate based on
| families' status and wealth. Schools should treat poor and
| rich children the same.
|
| However, schools should never treat stupid and intelligent
| children the same. Not everyone is cut out to be a rocket
| surgeon. But your argument means that we should hold back all
| future rocket surgeons and bring them to a lower level of
| privilege, i.e. dumb them down. This is neither in the
| interest of the children (stupid as well as intelligent ones)
| nor is it in the interest of society. We do need rocket
| surgeons...
| UrsaMedius wrote:
| _However, schools should never treat stupid and intelligent
| children the same. Not everyone is cut out to be a rocket
| surgeon. But your argument means that we should hold back
| all future rocket surgeons and bring them to a lower level
| of privilege, i.e. dumb them down. This is neither in the
| interest of the children (stupid as well as intelligent
| ones) nor is it in the interest of society. We do need
| rocket surgeons..._
|
| I agree that this can be a difficult balance to strike. But
| I think it's also important to keep the door open for
| children who mature a bit later. Stamping someone as "not
| gifted" by excluding them from a "gifted" group sure seems
| like it would cause problems, especially for younger
| children. Of course it's a difficult practical problem to
| solve; to give every child challenges on their current
| level.
|
| Also, while there are surely variations in intelligence
| that are "from birth", I do not know how that compares to
| all the variations caused by different educational
| privileges; having parents that have a lot of time to read
| for/with the child etc. It sort of comes down to "equality
| vs. equity" I suppose - and that is not a simple question.
| fabbari wrote:
| Schools do not treat stupid and intelligent children the
| same, teachers - with few exceptions - do. Not because they
| are evil, but because to be able to cater to the different
| levels of intelligence and the variation in interests that
| you will naturally find in a random sample of children they
| require the time and opportunities to do so. As
| long as we treat teachers as the least important workers,
| without acknowledging the critical work they do [0], have
| classes that have more pupils than a teacher can follow
| individually in a meaningful way and consider education "an
| expense" that needs reduction, rather than "an investment"
| we will not have a proper education system. On
| the flip side: an uneducated population is easier to sway,
| so there is not a lot of pressure on the political
| establishment to change things.
|
| [0] Lack of self awareness -
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Er2_n9pXUAMZnyq.jpg:large
| Aerroon wrote:
| How much of a difference do teachers make in the public
| school system? I don't mean teacher vs no teacher, but
| good teacher vs average teacher. The topics in the public
| school system are not set by the teachers themselves -
| they have to teach what has been decided elsewhere. A
| good teacher can engage students better, but how much of
| that is the teacher's ability as opposed to the teacher
| and students happening to get along? How much of it is
| good students self-selecting themselves into academically
| better schools, therefore having better peers?
|
| Asked in a different way: if we paid (all) teachers 3x as
| we do right now, would we observe significant long-term
| improvements in students?
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| Let's be clear: teacher of young children is not a job
| which requires a high level of intelligence. The main
| skill required is patience with children and ability to
| follow a standardized lesson plan.
| randompwd wrote:
| Please do not use code blocks just to draw attention to
| your comment. It is not clever or creative.
| corty wrote:
| Paying teachers more is beside the point. A well-paid
| teacher isn't suddenly a better teacher just because it
| earns more money.
|
| The things we should invest in are more teachers, smaller
| and more separated classes and better teachers'
| education. Only the last one correlates (somewhat) with
| teachers' salaries.
| gedy wrote:
| No, you can also be underprivileged and gifted/talented
| (assuming you mean economic or racial privilege).
| UrsaMedius wrote:
| This was basically the exact point I was trying to make.
| lukeschlather wrote:
| If you're underprivileged no test is going to detect your
| gifts. You're going to be hungry, have poor sleep, possibly
| abused, all sorts of things that will make you look like
| you're less capable than you are.
| username90 wrote:
| Most poor kids get fed and don't get beaten by their
| parents, so those factors can't be what explains the huge
| difference.
| yoelo wrote:
| Profit-driven schools don't cater to gifted kids. They cater to
| kids with rich and highly educated parents. The goal is to do
| less, to extract more profit.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Neither. Parents don't pay for schools in Sweden, so profit
| driven schools are just as free as other schools. Also, they
| are not elite schools in any sense, they are just slightly
| better organised and attract students that care enough about
| their education to select a different school than the
| default.
|
| Sweden is not the US, it's quite different.
| yoelo wrote:
| What you're saying, especially the part about "slightly
| better organised and attract students that care enough
| about their education" is talking point rhethoric and not
| anything substantiated in fact. The schools get a fixed
| amount of money per student from the state. If you have
| students with high socio-economic status, you can get away
| with having fewer teachers per student, as well has having
| teachers that aren't properly educated. One of the more
| prominent for-profit charter schools is the "International
| English School" (IES). They aren't only "English" for
| marketing purposes (because being an "English" school means
| you can do more marketing about teaching with "higher
| discipline"), they are also "English" because that allows
| them to get away with recruiting more teachers from abroad.
| This is what for-profit charter schools are about. You
| can't "optimize" what's essentially a service institution.
| You can only cut to better your margins. Or cheat, which
| they do. Not only by having fewer authorized teachers, but
| also by straight up inveting better grades for students,
| which is something that helps with marketing (see a pattern
| here?).
| Grustaf wrote:
| In the Swedish system, all schools cost the same: 0. So
| there is no reason to target specifically wealthy
| students, all students are worth the same to you as
| school owner.
|
| In fact, they can't even accept students based on grades,
| there are only 4 criteria they are allowed to use when
| selecting students: location, time in queue, siblings in
| the school and whether you went to pre-school there.
|
| So what you end up with are students with parents that
| have enough forethought to put your name down early on.
|
| > You can't "optimize" what's essentially a service
| institution.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by this, obviously you could
| in theory most definitely optimise the education. That is
| what private schools here in Denmark tend to do.
| bjoli wrote:
| Yes, but no:
|
| - The schools get a fixed amount of money per student.
|
| - The single largest predictor of school success is
| education level of the parents.
|
| - most for profit schools are in areas with higher
| education.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I'm not sure what you are arguing for or against here. I
| agree with all these points.
|
| But it is still the case that a lot of the students will
| not be local, and the majority of the local kids will not
| go to the school, they will go to the local public
| school.*
|
| The main reason these schools have better students is
| that you need to make an active choice to go there, and
| you need to do that a long time in advance. If you don't,
| you end up in a public school. This of course means that
| students from more motivated households go to these
| schools. Not wealthier students or even necessarily
| smarter students.
|
| * There have been cases recently where it seems that the
| private school has bribed the public school system to
| close the local school, but in general the public school
| will remain and most of the local kids will go there.
| bjoli wrote:
| Now go and have a look where the schools are located. For-
| profit schools are more often located in areas where
| education level is higher. Less money spent on educating
| kids means more profit ina system where each student gets a
| fixed amount.
| Grustaf wrote:
| I'm not sure what your point is. Putting a school in a
| middle class area rather than a ghetto doesn't make it
| "elite". Especially when any kid can go there, regardless
| of where they live.
| bjoli wrote:
| Not in theory. In practice however it is different:
| https://www.lararforbundet.se/bloggar/lararforbundets-
| utreda...
| Grustaf wrote:
| I'm still not sure what your point is.
|
| I am not saying that the demographics in free schools are
| the same as in public schools, or that there is no
| correlation between where the students in a given free
| school live.
|
| I'm sure they tend to skew locally, if that is your
| point, but in any case they skew much less locally than
| the local public school. So the reason a given free
| school has better grades than the public school down the
| street is not its location.
| bjoli wrote:
| What I am saying is that free schools end up with the
| easy students. It is not as easy as "anyone can go there"
| since we have the principle of proximity
| (narhetsprincipen). People living close to the school
| will have a higher probability of getting a place. In
| which areas are the schools of Engelska Skolan?
| Academedia? Kunskapsskolan? Look in areas above the 80th
| socioeconomic percentile.
|
| In a system where each school gets a fixed amount of
| money per student, this puts public schools at a
| disadvantage, yet the results do not reflect this. We
| have a school system that leads to more segregation, more
| costs (like the recent debacle about cities having to
| compensate free schools for rather inane things) - but we
| get very little for it.
|
| The equivalence ("likvardigheten") of the Swedish school
| system is at an all time low, and it has been getting
| constantly worse since the early 80s. The free school
| reform has done nothing but accelerate the problem.
|
| I don't mind free schools at all. I don't even mind that
| they are making money from it. What I do mind is that
| none of the promises of the free school reform has been
| delivered on. I am old enough to remember the promises of
| less segregation. Better schools driven by passionate
| teachers (these do exist). Schools where gifted students
| flourish.
|
| This seems to never have been evaluated. None of these
| things have happened.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > What I am saying is that free schools end up with the
| easy students.
|
| Of course they do, but isn't that sort of the point with
| competition? The good schools get the good students, that
| would happed regardless of who owned them.
|
| > In which areas are the schools of Engelska Skolan?
| Academedia? Kunskapsskolan? Look in areas above the 80th
| socioeconomic percentile
|
| You keep repeating this, I'm not sure why. Do you think I
| have disputed it? I certainly wouldn't want to start a
| free school in a ghetto, I'd definitely choose a nice
| area.
|
| Or are you repeating it because you think it's especially
| problematic?
|
| > In a system where each school gets a fixed amount of
| money per student, this puts public schools at a
| disadvantage, yet the results do not reflect this.
|
| Don't free schools have better results?
|
| > Schools where gifted students flourish
|
| Was this ever promised? Gifted students have never been a
| priority in Swedish schools.
|
| My problem with the free schools is not that it's unfair,
| because I don't think it is. You need to look at it from
| the students' point of view. If we had had ghettos in the
| 70s and you grew up there, you'd be forced to go to a
| school with mostly unmotivated children. Nowadays
| motivated children from problem areas have the option to
| go to schools in nice areas, together with other
| motivated students.
|
| No the problem for me is that they are publicly funded
| but run for profit, that's a crazy system that is very
| easy to abuse.
|
| The fact that parents don't have to pay just makes it
| worse, then schools can get away with marketing to
| students, they don't actually have to provide better
| education.
| imtringued wrote:
| >This is severely holding back and limiting the development of
| gifted children and imho needs to be dealt with.
|
| The article describes how for profit schools specifically pick
| "gifted" (aka easy to teach) children and then cut teaching
| staff to take the difference as profit. Yes, these students
| will still get better grades and thus make the for profit
| school look better than the public school but they absolutely
| fail to cater to the needs of "gifted" children.
| Grustaf wrote:
| Schools don't pick students. They can't even discriminate on
| grades.
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Yes and no. Many aren't less 'gifted' just less able - they
| don't have the right language background for school, dont have
| the easy ability to study at home, etc.
|
| 'Grammar schools' (or something similar of a different name)
| are reasonably common in UK and its colonies and attempt what
| you are asking for - with very well documented positives and
| negatives.
|
| There is definitely a massive issue of equality where children
| feel they aren't in the 'good' school this becomes an excuse
| for not bothering with school and then life. Equal education
| brings a lot of benefits to society at large.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| this is not out of the norm in NYC, especially at the low
| income level.
|
| Take exhibit A - success academies chain. There are about 47 in
| total , most around NYC. They are an independent school which
| only the poor can get into. So it is private but paid with tax
| dollars. Because it is taxpayer-funded, once you apply, they
| can't discriminate - the only requirement to acceptance is that
| you are poor.
|
| Yet the best students go there, and the school is so good that
| if it were a separate education system, it would be the best
| performing education system in the entire United States.
|
| How do they do it ? Simple - they screen parents. They make the
| bar really high so only the most motivated parents will jump
| all the hoops to get their kids in.
|
| And there is the problem - it is not the profit, but rather the
| fact that we refuse to accept that some kids are in a better
| situation to be educated than others. Whether due to better
| home environment, raw talent, good base, not sure. However,
| refusing to deal with this fact, only hurts kids.
|
| How ? Well, the alternative to Success Academies is no 10,000
| poor kids receiving elite education. Let us dump those kids
| back to the system of mediocrity where they were condemned
| until 15 or so years ago.
|
| That's what equality really means unfortunately - everyone
| getting equally mediocre government-sanctioned education
| japhyr wrote:
| For anyone interested in this issue in the US, there's an
| excellent new book out called _A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door_ ,
| by Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire. It traces the push and
| pull between the promise of quality education for the masses
| through public education, and the attempt to extract as much
| profit as possible from schools that's been going on for a very
| long time.
|
| They dispel many myths that persist about public education, and
| connect current privatization pushes to decades-long attempts to
| undermine public education.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Schoolhouse-Door-Dismantling-Edu...
| nearbuy wrote:
| What's confusing to me is it says the private schools are
| attracting more driven, independent and smarter students while
| increasing class sizes, reducing teacher salaries and reducing
| resource staff.
|
| So how are they attracting these students and why can't the
| public schools attract these students? Where I'm from, small
| class sizes is one of the first things parents want.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Public schools have to take in everyone. And this means the kid
| sitting next to your child could be a druggie or have a vile
| temper or tempt your child to 'go down the wrong path'
|
| Schooling is more than grades. It's a place ones children
| disappear for about 8 hours and you can't have access to them
| or what influences them. Private schools = a little bit of
| control you can exert on how one would want their children to
| be educated. This is especially true for religious parents.
| Grustaf wrote:
| In Sweden all schools have to accept everyone, you definitely
| can't discriminate on social or financial grounds or even
| based on grades.
| Clewza313 wrote:
| Something's lost in translation here: what do they mean by "joy
| grades"?
| ahendriksen wrote:
| Grade inflation: the same test outcome is rewarded with
| progressively higher grades as time goes on and pressure
| increases to improve grades.
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Colleges too, in the USA.
|
| Parents don't pay $60K/year for their kids to get Cs.
| [deleted]
| imtringued wrote:
| Running for profit infrastructure is so stupid I honestly cannot
| describe it in words. You want to minimize your costs, not
| maximize them.
| Grustaf wrote:
| No, you want to maximise the quality for the given cost.
|
| Profit driven schools in Sweden probably do minimize their
| costs, but that of course only benefits the private equity
| firms that own them, not the state or the students.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| I'm a student in one of the AcadeMedia for-profit schools. They
| have around 30 schools with the same brand name as mine and they
| keep on buying others. There's over 600 of them. There are of
| course other brands that they own but this one is focused on
| technology.
|
| Now let me tell you about my experience. First, this school is
| very focused on marketing. They keep on doing things that are
| only for seemingly attracting students. For example, they made a
| "maker space" with more 3d printers than anyone could ever need.
| I'm not against 3d printers but who needs 10 when only one is
| being used at a time. They also failed to mention their shitty
| secondary basement location on a showing of the school for
| upcoming students. They literally bought a second location to
| double the amount of students, and it had air quality issues for
| two years. No windows except a few ones in the roof. This
| location still isn't mentioned to students looking at the school.
| Wonder why.
|
| All of these marketing-focused efforts have real impacts for the
| students. For example, there isn't any room for a kitchen, so
| they give us lunch cards. These get loaded with 55kr each day
| (about $6.5). Then they have agreements with some local
| restaurants at which we eat. Problem is that normally those
| restaurants would change maybe $12. As a result very few of them
| allow us in and we get tiny portions. This is served to growing
| teens.
|
| Now I have asd and bipolar-2. Don't even get me started on how
| badly they're able to handle that. Nothing really ever improves.
| It's all talk. As a result, I'm about to drop out.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Wow, do you at least have as mc donalds nearby so you can get a
| few of their cheap "child sized" burgers?
|
| Hope you can find a better school!
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Most of us eat at subway pretty much every day.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| This is amazing. You recommend eating burgers from McD for
| lunch every day? Not fruits, not home cooked food, not simple
| sandwiches, not street food --- but _MacDonalds burgers in
| Sweden_
|
| Holy shit.
| tartoran wrote:
| Yes, eating McD on a daily basis is not only boring but
| downright unhealthy. I remember eating at McD when in
| college because it was perceivably cheaper and while I was
| enjoying the food when I was hungry I always felt not so
| good afterwards. I haven't touched any MCD in 10 years and
| won't do anytime soon unless there's an emergency
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| I find it weird that we have fast food restaurants on the
| list too. Even weirder is that they compensate with
| "healthier" restaurants that are so far away we don't
| have time to get there.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| I don't think its weird. Its just a function of supply
| and demand : vendors following the customers, not the
| other way around.
|
| In the US, Customers are college students, and they don't
| have money for restaurants. That's why you have pizza
| joints near campuses, and not healthy options instead. I
| suspect this is more of the same here.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| No, I reccomend changing schools as their lunch allowance
| isn't enough to cover even a full meal at McDonalds. If
| they just got cash the recommendation would be to get
| something from a supermarket, but it's locked to
| restasurants so single burgers is likely an upper limit
| outside of the cointracted restaurants that, as stated,
| sometimes denies service.
|
| I wonder what gives you the idea that hot dogs is much
| better than McD, as that's about the limit of what 55 SEK
| will pay for in terms of street food.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > No, I reccomend changing schools as their lunch
| allowance isn't enough to cover even a full meal at
| McDonalds
|
| You suggest - _please correct me if Im wrong_ - that a
| person should change schools because of lunch allowance?
|
| Jesus' feces. _Holy shit!_
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Well yes, if you go to a school that thinks so little of
| their students that they try to get away with not giving
| them proper food _there are other issues too_.
|
| And supposedly the _entire point_ of the private schools
| is to give you freedom of choice, so why would you object
| to a student changing schools?
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| We used to have the option of regular supermarkets, but
| they later banned it because they didn't want students
| eating inside the school at winter.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Do they have food trucks in Sweden? Maybe students can
| pool in money and hire a cook or contract with a food
| truck to provide meals on time.
|
| When I was in school back in India..and this was many
| decades ago...me and my cousins would get hot lunch
| delivered by my grandparents. But there was this group of
| kids who had working parents and from nuclear
| families...and a bunch of them hired a lady to cook meals
| for 10-12 of the kids to have hot fresh homemade lunches
| delivered. They felt it was better to feed them varied
| and fresh home cooked meals even if it had to be
| outsourced
|
| Because it's India and the cuisine is very regional, all
| the parents spoke the same language and had the same food
| habits.
|
| Also..it was usually a good side gig for housewives who
| had a little extra time and had cooking skills. They are
| not competing in the market or with restaurants. They
| just like cooking and kids. I knew that this lady
| sometimes made extra food for kids who couldn't afford
| homemade fresh lunches.
|
| Of course...there were no overheads like incorporating it
| as a business or paying taxes or working in a paid
| commissary kitchen or bookkeeping etc...the moms just
| paid one of their neighbours who was also their friend.
| It was trust and word of mouth. No one was going to write
| a bad Yelp review for over spiced curry. So there's that.
| It was just ingredients plus a profit margin as far as
| the housewife/caterer was concerned.
|
| Childhood eating habits shape healthier diets in
| adulthood. Maybe someone from Sweden in HN can run with
| this as a startup?
| Grustaf wrote:
| Swedish schools always have school cafeterias, free of
| charge, it's only in very rare situations like here that
| this is not the case.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| I was specifically suggesting for the non cafeteria ones
| that the the parent comment from a current student. Not
| to replace existing programs. I went to a private school.
| Public schools had free schools lunches in India too. But
| even then if parents could afford it, they always sent
| home cooked packed lunches.
|
| Because the population is so culturally and
| linguistically diverse, there were as many types of
| regional cuisines too. Especially in urban areas where
| people migrate for jobs.
|
| Indians can be fiercely protective about their language
| and cuisine because as cultural markers that are
| constantly under threat to be homogenized as a 'single
| Indian culture', parents liked to start early with food
| and language spoken at home. This was my observation from
| living in India many years ago. Perhaps this has changed
| now.
|
| Also making the weekly menu for the upcoming school
| lunches was the fun part of bonding with my grandmother.
| That was also how I learnt to love food and cooking. I
| don't think I would have first gravitated towards food
| and then later into farming if it hadn't been for the
| hours I spent with my grandmother planning those lunches.
|
| I realize that there is a little bit of nostalgia in my
| reply but it is also a good business opportunity with
| healthy side effect for hungry kids who must have access
| to nutritious and healthy meals. I am sure that opinion
| is global and won't change with time.
| Grustaf wrote:
| > I was specifically suggesting for the non cafeteria
| ones that the the parent comment from a current student
|
| And I'm saying that this category of school essentially
| doesn't exist. It's not that most schools have
| cafeterias. All schools do, except for a handful.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| Well. I guess my comment is for that 'handful' then.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > Maybe someone from Sweden in HN can run with this as a
| startup? I like the way you think.
|
| In my country the community would open tons of cheap food
| stalls that could get students decent food. It also
| happens that simple bean or chicken briyanis were a hit.
|
| I guess Im finding it difficult to _digest_ the
| suggestion of burgers as a lunch meal when food really
| shouldn 't be an issue in SWE. Maybe its embarrasing to
| not eat out?
| Grustaf wrote:
| 99.9% of Swedish schools have free school cafeterias.
| It's a deeply ingrained concept that I believe Sweden
| invented. This school is an extreme outlier.
| jelliclesfarm wrote:
| I can relate to this. We also had trucks and push carts
| that served quick take out meals near schools but because
| that was always discouraged by my grandparents. If food
| wasn't pre packed or made fresh right in front of our
| eyes(like dosa and idly in south of India), the general
| rule is to not to buy anything from food carts.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| The lunch cards are limited to companies that the school
| allows.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| We actually have McDonald's and Max on the list and there's
| a whole bunch of people who eat there very often.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Fyi, A big mac alone costs 48kr in Sweden.
| bjeds wrote:
| Thank you for your reply, I didn't expect I'd find a comment
| from an actual student of these schools here at HN. Your
| perspective is valuable.
|
| If you follow Swedish media you probably know there's a large
| discussion/controversy right now about high school students
| (and younger kids) changing their behavior to avoid
| crime/trouble. For example see this recent article at SVT:
| https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/man-maste-vara-pa-sin-vak...
|
| What's your take? Is this a problem in your school as well, or
| peer group? I'm genuinely curious: I'm old enough to never
| naturally meet people your age, but I'm not old enough to have
| kids or relatives your age.
| riffraff wrote:
| > a large discussion/controversy right now about high school
| students (and younger kids) changing their behavior to avoid
| crime/trouble
|
| Could you explain this? It seems people avoiding crime
| wouldn't be a source of controversy.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| I'm not one to go to parties drinking or smoking illegal
| stuff, although this is very common in certain groups. So I
| can't comment on that. I've actually avoided that on purpose
| because it would worsen my mental state with my diagnosies.
| But I guess that criminal stuff would happen in those groups.
| Grustaf wrote:
| It's not related to drinking or smoking, it's about the
| dangers of being outside in the evening in Sweden nowadays.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Actually the thing to do is stage protests one the dates that
| the schools have their information evenings. I'll bet you they
| will listen very quickly.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Problem is many have experienced even worse schools (and
| there are many) so they're comparatively happy with this. It
| won't happen. I've also experienced a non-profit teacher co-
| operative. It was leaps and bounds better than this.
| skybrian wrote:
| Is bringing a lunch you make at home an option? You might even
| be able to save up some money that way.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Only on the summer as the school does not allow eating
| anything other than what the cafeteria serves in the
| buildings. The lunch cards are restricted to certain
| restaurants only.
| skybrian wrote:
| Wow, banning people from bringing their own lunches to eat
| for lunch seems quite weird to me. Over-regulate much?
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Yes. But that's what they do. It's a trend. The
| programing teacher also forces one editor on all
| students. You can't even rest fruits in school.
| cycomanic wrote:
| That suggestion defeats the purpose. The thing is schools are
| supposed to provide meals to students (at no cost), so if
| you're bringing your own lunch you're not saving your money,
| you saving the school money.
| skybrian wrote:
| If you take the money that the school gives you and make
| your own lunch for less money than the restaurants charge,
| that's better than a free lunch, since you have more money.
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| The cards are locked to a few restaurants.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| I mean, the obvious solution would be to stop working so hard to
| educate the ineducatable.
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