[HN Gopher] The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifte...
___________________________________________________________________
The case for expanding rather than eliminating gifted education
programs (2021)
Author : paulpauper
Score : 731 points
Date : 2022-06-08 16:45 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.teachforamerica.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.teachforamerica.org)
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Author cites the research on minorities being less likely be
| identified as gifted given comparable test scores, but
| selectively leaves out all of the research on the effects of
| eliminating gifted programs.
|
| I guess Teach for America assumes their readers are too dumb to
| notice?
| bloaf wrote:
| I notice you've not cited it either.
|
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/001698629303700...
|
| > Results indicated that parents perceived that their children
| were experiencing a decline in energy, curiosity, and intrinsic
| motivation to achieve at high levels and were beginning to
| disengage from the traditional curriculum [after elimination of
| the gifted programs].
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S10416...
|
| > This review also found that the needs of many gifted and
| talented students are not addressed in many regular classroom
| settings across our country... A large body of research
| supports the finding that various forms of acceleration result
| in higher achievement for gifted and talented learners.
| nofinator wrote:
| This 2021 article strikes me as mostly a straw man and a veiled
| sales pitch.
|
| It's rare that a Gifted Program simply gets eliminated due to
| inequity with no replacement. The school district almost always
| proposes an alternate program to replace it. (The author is the
| CEO and Founder of one, though he does acknowledge this near the
| end.)
|
| The author also links to two examples of districts with reduced
| or eliminated Gifted Programs. But one article says the Anchorage
| program was cut because of a budget shortfall, and the other
| (Boston) said they suspended their advanced learning program only
| at the city-wide level mainly because COVID made it hard to
| administer!
| derac wrote:
| Gifted programs are "unacceptably white". WTF does that mean? I
| had to pass essentially an IQ test to get placed into those
| classes.
|
| For me, it made a big difference in being engaged in schoolwork
| when every class consisted of reiterating content for days which
| I had mastered in minutes.
|
| Edit: I removed "I don't see what race has to do with it." I do
| see how race can affect this when the gatekeeper is a teacher
| with biases choosing who takes the test to be in the program.
| This does not however make it ok to say "unacceptably white"
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Just read what he wrote?
|
| > Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as gifted
| compared to white students with similar test scores. Black,
| Latinx, and Native American students are far less likely to
| attend a school that even offers a gifted program.
| concordDance wrote:
| Got a link to the specific paper and description of how it
| was done?
|
| Trying to chase it down just got me to this:
| https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-
| news/files/20190417222934/Gris...
|
| Which seems like it just is saying that the proportion
| assigned to gifted programs was lower than what the _average_
| test score would suggest (notable when compared to
| hispanics), but hispanics could have a wider distribution (or
| a bimodal one), so this seems like a shoddy test. The correct
| check of the hypothesis would be to find the test score
| threshhold above which 50% of students get into the gifted
| program and see if this threshhold varies by race... but I
| can 't find anywhere this is done.
| tpoacher wrote:
| And then also click the provided link, which leads to a
| summary of the report, claiming that "this is unlikely to
| reflect teacher prejudice, but availability of 'gifted
| programs' in predominantly black schools".
|
| In which case, the solution is "fund more gifted programs in
| schools that lack them", not "defund existing gifted
| programs".
|
| Which is kinda what the article's author started to argue but
| never quite got there in the end.
| karaterobot wrote:
| No fair actually reading the source material, we're just
| here to yell at each other fruitlessly and solely on the
| basis of our preexisting ideas.
| mmmpop wrote:
| So you're implying that the conclusion of "unacceptable
| whiteness" is self-evident by simple examination of these two
| points... or what?
|
| Perhaps "unacceptably lacking in Black students" is a less
| divisive way to say this, unless the decisiveness were
| intended and surely that's not the case.
| chernevik wrote:
| How is that an answer? If someone isn't meeting the
| qualifications they aren't in. What's "unacceptable" about
| that?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Because the systems which identify students and enable them
| to meet the admissions requirements are massively unequal.
|
| I'll give an example. I attended a gifted program starting
| in 3rd grade. I went to an elementary school for 1st and
| 2nd grade that was almost entirely white with some asian
| kids. Part of the mechanism for selecting students for the
| gifted program was a letter from the student's counselor,
| teacher, and principal.
|
| My mom noticed that some schools were sending way more kids
| to the GT program than others. Several schools basically
| _never_ sent any kids. No surprise, there were more black
| and hispanic kids at the schools. BUT these schools did not
| have a lack of students with high SOL scores or grades. It
| turned out that the process of identifying students and
| writing letters was letting these kids down. A few years of
| local activism to adjust the process and suddenly a bunch
| of kids from these other schools were being admitted to the
| GT program and succeeding.
|
| Activists recently tried to adjust the admissions criteria
| for TJHSST, a magnet school in the area, to be a "merit
| lottery." This says that you set some minimum qualification
| (minimum GPA and accelerated math coursework) and then
| select students at random from that pool. This proposal was
| called racist against south and east asian students and
| activists were called _enemies of excellence_ by various
| people like Scott Aaronson.
|
| I was personally identified as having potential for going
| to TJ at _age four_. My parents paid a lot of money for me
| to have tutoring specifically for the admissions test.
|
| In the above example, black and hispanic students with
| similar qualifications (test scores) are not receiving the
| same access to accelerated programs.
|
| The point is that the mechanisms by which we define
| qualifications and select students really really matters
| and can encode all sorts of inequities.
| concordDance wrote:
| For those interested in what what Scott Aaronson said:
|
| https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=4979
|
| > In a world-historic irony, the main effect of this
| "solution" will be to drastically limit the number of
| Asian students, while drastically increasing (!!!) the
| number of White students. The proportion of Black and
| Hispanic students is projected to increase a bit but
| remain small.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| The fun part about this is that TJHSST _did_ edit the
| admissions process so we can actually test Aaronson 's
| claim.
|
| From class of 2024 to class of 2025.
|
| * Economically disadvantaged students: 0.62% to 25.09%
|
| * Black students: 1.23% to 7.09%
|
| * Hispanic students: 3.29% to 11.27%
|
| * White students: 17.70% to 22.36%
|
| * Asian students: 73.05% to 54.36%
|
| The _raw increase_ in black students is larger than the
| raw increase in white students. But Aaronson predicted a
| "drastic increase" in white students and for the number
| of black students to increase by "a bit." Oops.
|
| You can slice stats further. The number of asian students
| who are also on free and reduced lunch increased between
| years.
| chernevik wrote:
| The answer would be to improve the development of those
| students who are underdeveloped -- not change criteria
| for the identification of potential.
|
| This is, of course, far more complicated, and involves
| difficult problems. Far easier to sweep it all under the
| rug by calling attention to qualifications
| "unacceptable".
| UncleMeat wrote:
| In my personal experience agitating for change in this
| space, it is _precisely_ the same people who resist
| change in admissions criteria and who resist change in
| grants for equitable early development resources.
|
| And in the example I listed for early GT admissions,
| there was no need for developing "underdeveloped"
| students. They were already developed. They just had
| systems that didn't enable them to get through the gate
| to the GT program.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Are there qualifications other than test scores?
| derac wrote:
| In my experience you are nominated to take an IQ-ish test
| and let in based on that score. I assume they mean test
| scores on regular coursework?
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Apparently race given the assertion of similar test
| scores
| wccrawford wrote:
| There are unwritten ones, at least.
|
| As I said in my other post, in my school you were taken
| out of regularly classes, but still had to learn those
| things and do that work. That means the student has to
| agree to work 20% harder, usually _at home_ , where they
| may not have that luxury. There are probably other
| considerations that aren't coming to mind at the moment,
| too, that also affect the number of children in Gifted
| programs.
| orpheansodality wrote:
| > compared to white students with similar test scores
| Robotbeat wrote:
| > with similar test scores
|
| > _with similar test scores_
|
| > _WITH SIMILAR TEST SCORES_
| fein wrote:
| I had to look around for the source of this, and I can't
| find the "with similar test scores" part in the
| Vanderbuilt site article on the Vanderbuilt study this is
| based on. It says 66% less likely, but the "similar test
| scores" part isn't in the same paragraph. I really
| dislike that it is so difficult to find the source of
| these statements in modern media, as the news articles I
| read didn't even cite the study, I had to go googling for
| it.
|
| What I found:
| https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2016/01/18/teachers-race-
| affects...
|
| and of course the link to the gov data source in that
| article is broken: http://https//nces.ed.gov/ecls/
|
| Edit: I see where they pulled the line from. Misleading
| at best as the "tests" they are talking about are not
| gifted assessment tests, but rather standardized testing
| which I don't think is that great of an indicator. I was
| in the gifted program during middle school, and that was
| predicated by a few admittance tests, one of them being
| IQ.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| If you read three paragraphs of the article you linked
| you can see the statement written in plain english:
|
| > However, controlling for math and reading scores did
| not have the same effect for black students. In fact,
| black students continued to be assigned to gifted
| programs half as often as white peers with identical math
| and reading achievement.
|
| If you read to the end, the paper is literally linked:
| https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-
| news/files/20190417222934/Gris...
| UncleMeat wrote:
| > Misleading at best as the "tests" they are talking
| about are not gifted assessment tests, but rather
| standardized testing which I don't think is that great of
| an indicator.
|
| I find this to be frustrating. _How many times_ have we
| heard from people defending the existing systems that
| standardized testing _is_ an appropriate method of
| stratifying people. When universities decide to minimize
| the relevance of the SATs we see howls of complaints. Now
| suddenly these tests are of minimal utility if they
| demonstrate that qualified black and hispanic students
| are being turned away?
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| The goalposts will be moved until the desired outcome is
| achieved.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| The test matters. You don't find the top 2% of ability by
| a test designed to measure competency, for example. This
| distinction may or may not be relevant in the context of
| gifted programs within a single school, but it is
| certainly relevant when comparing the utility of state
| competency tests and SAT tests.
| kube-system wrote:
| > Misleading at best as the "tests" they are talking
| about are not gifted assessment tests, but rather
| standardized testing which I don't think is that great of
| an indicator. I was in the gifted program during middle
| school, and that was predicated by a few admittance
| tests, one of them being IQ.
|
| Yes, a student who studies hard may get good academic
| test scores, but may do poorly on gifted admittance
| tests. They're testing two different things. The former
| tests ability to understand class content, the other
| tests the ability to solve problems which are not part of
| school curriculum.
| jaywalk wrote:
| I realize it's just a blog post and not a scientific
| paper, but the author didn't even cite a source for that
| statistic. My gut reaction is that it's probably
| incredibly misleading if not outright false.
| xienze wrote:
| Yeah, it's very easy to draw conclusions that suit your
| agenda when you use slippery terms like "similar." A
| score of 90 and a score of 100 are "similar" in the sense
| that they're both an A, but one is a bit more impressive.
| And that's not even getting into the possibility that the
| author is using an even broader range of test scores,
| like "students who make all As and Bs on tests." For all
| you know, he could then be comparing white students
| making all As (and being accepted into a gifted program)
| with black students making all Bs (and not being
| accepted).
|
| Having the raw data matters.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| The raw data is publicly available:
| https://nces.ed.gov/ecls/dataproducts.asp
| bgandrew wrote:
| I think at this point any statement coming from left
| oriented people needs to be double checked.
| femiagbabiaka wrote:
| Incredible. Not any statement, but left oriented, because
| of course lying and half-truths are limited to people
| with the political orientation you don't agree with...
| concordDance wrote:
| EVERY uncited statement needs double checking. Even on
| non-contentious topics.
|
| Cited statements also need double checking. Frequently
| there's a game of telephone going on and the original
| research has been distorted.
|
| This is not just a left wing phenomena, it's a phenomena
| anywhere you get people who aren't completely
| dispassionate observers (this excludes all advertiser
| funded media as they are incentivized to make things
| interesting and engaging).
| throwaway81348 wrote:
| Your point?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Presumably test scores are a not terrible proxy for
| qualification. So if black and hispanic students of
| similar qualification are not being admitted into these
| programs, then the programs are not actually equitably
| enrolling people.
| johndfsgdgdfg wrote:
| I have a very simple solution for LatinX group and it's also
| about equity. Like ALL other immigrants groups LatinX group
| should have to go through proper immigration process. Then we
| will see equity in immigration and equity in education.
| derac wrote:
| Unacceptably white is still a horrible way to phrase this. Is
| the NBA unacceptably black? Why don't we remove basketball
| courts from inner cities and cut off black kid's feet /s _eye
| roll_
|
| BTW, I realize he is arguing for the opposite of this.
|
| edit: If you think I am racist or something let me spell it
| out as I did in another comment: It is not unacceptable when
| white children have opportunities. It is unacceptable when
| black children do not.
| wfhordie wrote:
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| >Unacceptably white is still a horrible way to phrase this.
| Is the NBA unacceptably black?
|
| This statement is a textbook syllogistic fallacy.
|
| It ignores the qualification context for being gifted vs.
| being in the NBA. There are a number of historically
| exclusive systems, prejudiced on socioeconomic and racial
| standards, that are required prerequisites for being in a
| gifted school, which do not exist for being in the NBA.
|
| Put in simpler terms: open basketball courts != gatekeeping
| gifted schools
|
| EDIT: Nobody here is calling you a racist. Your edit above
| reads like, "I'm not a racist, but..."
| derac wrote:
| No. It is not unacceptable when white children have
| opportunities. It is unacceptable when black children do
| not.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| Nobody is saying "actively remove white children from
| gifted programs" they're saying, "when more people
| qualify for gifted programs than can fit in the program,
| consider including those who have fewer overall
| opportunities."
|
| Those white kids will get other opportunities to be
| successful, and the non-white kids will get fewer of
| those opportunities, because society is racist as hell.
| Therefore, when you have a chance to give a non-white kid
| a shot at excellence, and they're qualified, give it to
| them.
| sokoloff wrote:
| My experience suggests that "when more people qualify for
| gifted programs than can fit in the program, consider
| slightly raising the qualification level, so you get
| exactly the class size you're targeting and no one who
| qualifies was excluded" is the likely path to be chosen.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| That presumes some quantifiable, precisely and accurately
| measurable metric, which does not exist in any context.
|
| For example, there is no test in existence that
| accurately measures "giftedness" in children.
| sokoloff wrote:
| How is qualification _already being done today_ , such
| that the set of people qualified is larger than the
| available seats?
|
| Is there no adjustment whatsoever possible to that
| process? If the people running that process had had a
| slightly tighter set of criteria, would the outward
| appearance be dramatically different than the path they
| took to get to the "slightly too many qualified"
| condition?
| TameAntelope wrote:
| There is no adjustment whatsoever possible that will
| _accurately_ further qualify /disqualify students from a
| gifted program, that is correct.
|
| Simply "tightening" the existing fuzzy criteria will only
| further arbitrarily limit qualified students.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That's exactly my point. There's a system today that has
| some amount of arbitrariness to it. Tweaking that system
| slightly is almost surely arbitrariness-preserving,
| likely not increasing or decreasing it significantly.
| TameAntelope wrote:
| My point is that it's increasing the arbitrariness by
| further constricting the qualified students pool.
|
| Instead, accept they're all qualified insofar as they
| would maximally benefit from advanced lessons, and favor
| students for whom this may be their only opportunity to
| get ahead.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| That would work better if things were more continuous.
| Having gifted classes imposes several practical barriers:
|
| - Resource constraints (e.g. can only afford to teach
| sixty students)
|
| - "catching up"; entering an existing gifted class stream
| after missing the first few years
|
| - You'd want to select early in the school year. Joining
| a gifted class in the last few weeks of the year is
| pointless
|
| - Kids in gifted streams want or are pressured to remain
| there
|
| Modifications of the current distribution outside of the
| source and those factors above can result in zero sum
| outcomes. It's rhetorically useful to wave this off but
| still a practical concern.
| qgin wrote:
| There's two ways to equity.
|
| 1. Make sure everyone has access to opportunities.
|
| 2. Get rid of all opportunities
|
| People are going for the second one despite the fact that
| it doesn't actually improve anyone's life. Its like
| solving homelessness by burning down all houses.
| minsc_and_boo wrote:
| False dichotomy.
|
| It's like countering homelessness by enforcing that a
| portion of housing is accessible, affordable low-income
| housing. People sitting in high-income housing then make
| frivolous statements about all the houses being burnt
| down, or how we should also remove public basketball
| courts because of the NBA.
| qgin wrote:
| No, you're talking about option #1, which I also agree is
| better. That's not what's happening here.
|
| If you see a program that doesn't have equal access, and
| instead of doing the hard work to get to equal access,
| you just get rid of the program... that's the #2 option,
| the one I'm referring to, which is worse for everyone.
| munificent wrote:
| There were 49,400,000+ million children in public schools
| in 2020. There were 529 NBA players.
|
| Whether the NBA is unacceptably racially biased is a
| problem so tiny that it is not worth spending any societal
| attention solving. That is not true of public schools.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That is a bad analogy because the NBA is not the only
| accessible path to a stable middle class life while school,
| for many people, is.
| googlryas wrote:
| Not even close to true. Going into a trade is a great way
| to get into a comfortable middle class life. And in those
| trades, you'll commonly find people who did horrible in
| school, and thought they were idiots because of it.
| davewritescode wrote:
| Not everyone is cut out to be a plumber or an
| electrician.
|
| The ultimate goal should be to provide better education
| for everyone so that all students have as many available
| options by the time they're ready to pick a career path.
|
| Also, I hate these comments from white collar folks about
| blue collar jobs being the answer to everything. Yes we
| need them, but we also need to be honest that the average
| plumber is going to have a harder time working until 65
| than an office worker.
| googlryas wrote:
| I never said blue collar trade was the answer to
| everything. I said that the school system is _not the
| answer to everything_.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, some trades pay way more, have more available jobs,
| and have better working conditions (work hours, etc) than
| PhDs in a variety of sciences.
| bbarnett wrote:
| You used 'many' in your second part, which is the same
| 'not only'.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Qualitatively yes, but not quantitatively.
| bbarnett wrote:
| To me, "not only" can mean any quantity other than only.
| I have never heard it used any other way, though I fully
| admit you may have.
|
| So to me, many and not only equate.
| pc86 wrote:
| School is, gifted programs are not.
| chucksta wrote:
| So you have to be in gifted to have a successful life?
| rhexs wrote:
| IQ correlates extremely heavily with having a successful
| life by western civilization standards, yes.
| chucksta wrote:
| So you can't have a high IQ and not be in gifted?
| 0des wrote:
| any time you feel your hands touch your hips, and your
| sentence begins to start with the word "so", just stop
| what youre doing and go have a snickers.
| chucksta wrote:
| At least my post is relevant to the topic, not just
| critiquing someone for being hangry
| rhexs wrote:
| What?
| chucksta wrote:
| You changed the subject from being in gifted to being
| gifted. You can exist outside of gifted and still have a
| high IQ and be a successful person. So, no.
| [deleted]
| lupire wrote:
| So we should accept that 98 0+% of people can or gave a
| successful life, yet should support the gifted <10% in
| their journey to extract the world's wealth?
|
| I don't want to spend my tax money educating future
| bankers.
| robonerd wrote:
| If you're talking about the top 10% of kids, you're
| obviously not talking about [just] the hyper-elite future
| bank executives (who are probably what, the top 0.0001%?)
| The top 10% of students is quite large would include all
| manner of engineers, doctors, etc. People who play vital
| roles in keeping our civilization going, not just
| parasitically leeching off interest rates or whatever it
| is banking executives do.
|
| Most of those future executives are probably in private
| schools right now anyway.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| In our present economy? Yes.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| That helps a lot but not necessarily required. If you
| require/aspire for radical social mobility being gifted
| is extreme help. If you're looking to have a modest life
| with family outside of expensive cities being gifted
| isn't much of a help.
|
| As well, by definition, to be gifted you need to be an
| outlier. Most people get by and live a decent, if
| stressful, life.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| One need not be in a gifted program in school in order to
| achieve a stable middle class life. In fact, the vast
| majority of those with stable middle class lives didn't
| participate in gifted programs.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| Forgive me if this seems all too simple to me. The solution
| is very clearly _stop doing that then_.
|
| There's a lot of value in having a gifted track in schooling.
| Throwing that away because it is currently inaccurate at
| identifying students that are best suited to it is a stupid
| idea. Make it accurate at identifying the students that are
| best suited to it instead.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| That is exactly what the article says...
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yes, that is why the SP was written.
| bena wrote:
| The problem, as always, is people.
|
| You can't self-select to be evaluated. Your parents can
| advocate, but they ultimately don't decide either. Although
| I think they can turn down the evaluation, I'm unclear on
| that though.
|
| The first hurdle is getting the teacher to not only
| recognize that the child may be gifted, but to make the
| recommendation to administration. Then it is administration
| who ultimately makes the call on whether or not to evaluate
| the kid.
|
| And teachers are more likely to recommend white students
| than black students.
|
| And this may not even be something they're consciously
| aware of doing. Because a lot of this is based on the
| teachers' perceptions of students. If you have a good
| rapport with a student, you're more likely to recommend
| them to be evaluated. If you are constantly butting heads
| with a kid, or if the kid is just quietly doing their work,
| you're not going to be inclined to recommend them.
| Regardless of how well they are doing in class.
|
| I was not evaluated until partway through my freshman year
| of high school and the only reason I was was because the
| teacher who ran the Quiz Bowl team got everyone who made it
| on the team who wasn't already in the gifted program
| evaluated.
|
| Otherwise, I probably would not have been evaluated at all.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Are they less likely to be identified because they they are
| treated differently or because they go to schools that don't
| offer those programs?
| mikece wrote:
| Sounds like the problem might be with those who are selected
| to identify the "gifted" students. I am less interested in
| racial correlations to being identified as "gifted" and more
| interested in attributes such as whether the student is from
| a two-parent household, whether they are considered poor,
| whether they attend a local school or are transported to one
| outside of their neighborhood, etc. I suspect that we lose
| out on identifying many gifted children because issues at
| home and mere survival interfere with their ability to grow
| and develop academically.
| harles wrote:
| This assumes being gifted is something innate and simply
| needs to be brought out. I don't think that's the case.
| mikece wrote:
| A person with a latent talent which isn't identified and
| developed has no advantage over the person who doesn't
| have the talent at all. If we as a society can't do what
| it reasonable and prudent to identify and nurture such
| people then we all lose.
| [deleted]
| adolph wrote:
| That is not the quote from tfa. The quote is "The current
| population of students we identify as academically gifted and
| talented is unacceptably whiter and wealthier than the actual
| student population of academically gifted and talented
| students should be."
|
| The author's focus on a particular racial classification
| seems incongruent with facts, given that students with
| another racial group are also over-represented in "Gifted
| Programs."
| daenz wrote:
| I dug up the study, in case anyone is interested
| https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-
| news/files/20190417222934/Gris...
|
| What's interesting that is not mentioned is page 15: a black
| student with a black teacher is still much less likely to be
| identified as gifted. even less than a white student with a
| non-white teacher. internalized racism?
| tpoacher wrote:
| more like different schools, the difference reflecting the
| sociodemographics of the reflected areas rather than racial
| IQ differences.
| toyg wrote:
| Probably more like black teachers with black students are
| more likely to exist in poor areas where identifying
| "giftedness" is lower on the list of priorities.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| How conveniently that the writer omits Asians.
| baisq wrote:
| And Jews.
| paulpauper wrote:
| ppl keep overlooking this part. it shows how important it is
| to read slowly and carefully.
| TimPC wrote:
| When I was in grade 3 there was a standardized test for
| gifted. While standardized tests do have some racial
| disparity that disparity seems to be far smaller than letting
| teachers nominate students for a gifted evaluation rather
| than having it be universal.
| xwdv wrote:
| You know what it means.
|
| It has become acceptable in society these days for people to
| bring down the white race any way they can through these sort
| of micro aggressions.
|
| As a white person any success or benefit you enjoy can never be
| truly legitimate, it will always be stained by the original sin
| of your white ancestors. And if you happen to be straight, or
| male, or both you are even more guilty. The message is that the
| white race must not be allowed to progress any further than it
| has until all other races have caught up or even surpassed it.
| In the mean time, individuals suffer.
|
| The only time you can be truly understood and seen as a unique
| individual and not a stereotype is amongst other whites.
| dilatedmind wrote:
| philly school district schools are 14% white. the school
| district i went to in the philly burbs is 79% white.
|
| philly school district is in a bad place financially.
| https://www.inquirer.com/news/pa-school-funding-trial-
| philad.... A district with more money will have more resources
| for gifted programs.
|
| I imagine this has it's roots in the demographic and population
| shift the city has seen starting in the 50s. Philly's
| population in 1990 was 75% of what it was in the 50s. I'm not
| an expert in this area, but I'm sure there was overhead in
| maintaining infrastructure, paying pensions, etc as the
| population shrunk.
|
| At this point, maybe the federal government should just bail
| out city school districts in this situation. Why should an
| underfunded school district be paying a chunk of its budget on
| debts?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Gifted programs are "unacceptably white".
|
| You are only scratching the surface here. Some places had a
| hard time "proving" their gifted programs were "too white" so
| they started using the term "white and white-adjacent" to
| include Asian kids as well (often from impoverished background
| but that's another issue) in these stats [0].
|
| > I don't see why race has anything to do with it.
|
| Buckle up. The SF school district is trying to include a lot
| more racial content at school [1]. Now even math is considered
| racist [2]. I wish I was making this up.
|
| [0] https://www.asian-dawn.com/2020/11/17/school-district-
| catego...
|
| [1]
| https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/heatherknight/article/Sa...
|
| [2] https://equitablemath.org/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/2/2020/11...
| com2kid wrote:
| I grew up with a diverse group of friends.
|
| The way math is taught is quite often racist. I've seen
| entire math textbooks based around examples featuring
| American sports. If you don't know the rules of American
| football, you are not going to understand any of the examples
| in the book. I spent a _lot_ of time in school and college
| explaining various American sports rules to friends.
|
| That is the most trivial of examples, but it is a hugely
| impactful one for a lot of people. I have seen large amounts
| of frustration because some math book author couldn't keep
| his favorite sports jargon from littering the entire book.
|
| You have other biases as well that can make students feel
| like shit. Story problems about a working father and a stay
| at home mother, sounds like nothing for many people, but for
| quite a few kids being reminded again and again that "not
| having a dad" is unusual, well, why the hell is the math book
| doing that? Just stick to problems involving trains.
| [deleted]
| jl6 wrote:
| "Math is racist" is not what is being claimed in link #2.
| It's math instruction that they claim to be racist. I have no
| idea if this is true but it's at least plausible.
| bart_spoon wrote:
| You are correct, the general gist is they believe math
| instruction as racist, although they do at times make
| reference "Western math" and "Eurocentric math", whatever
| that is, and not math education, so it's a bit muddled.
| Regardless, take 15 minutes for yourself and you will see
| exactly how absurd the entire premise is. Here, on how word
| problems support white-supremacy:
|
| > Often the emphasis is placed on learning math in the
| "real world," as if our classrooms are not a part of the
| real world. This reinforces notions of either/or thinking
| because math is only seen as useful when it is in a
| particular context. However, this can result in using
| mathematics to uphold capitalist and imperialist ways of
| being and understandings of the world.
|
| Repeat that for 83 pages. It's utterly surreal.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > this can result in using mathematics to uphold
| capitalist and imperialist ways of being and
| understandings of the world.
|
| This explains why soviet mathematicians were (and still
| are) considered among the best in the world.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| The veneer is quite thin.
|
| There are even more radical proposals [0] they are trying
| to introduce in High School classes.
|
| It's hard not to see the real agenda past the shallow
| arguments against gifted programs [1]. This was an
| enlightening read to say the least.
|
| [0] https://criticallyconsciouscomputing.org/
|
| [1] https://unherd.com/2022/02/anti-racism-betrays-asian-
| student...
| jljljl wrote:
| What's the "radical" concern with [0]? Why wouldn't we
| want students to think critically about uses of
| technology and how they impact society, or make access to
| computer science more inclusive?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| If you read it you'll see it contains some gems "This
| focus on middle and high school, and on adolescents is
| intentional: 12-18 year olds are at a developmental stage
| where they are just beginning to comprehend their social
| worlds and their roles and positions in these social
| worlds. We believe that learning CS in social terms at
| these ages can not only help them integrate perspectives
| on computing into their new awareness of the world, but
| that the ideas in CS itself can help them better
| understand what it means to be human, to make decisions,
| and to have intelligence. Children in primary school may
| be too young for conversations about systemic social
| conflict. And while adults in postsecondary and beyond
| need to learn justice-centered CS literacy as well, many
| are less open to such learning, having hardened their
| political views as they enter adulthood. We likely need
| different methods for children and adults."
|
| They know adults will be skeptical of what they teach
| (with reason). So they try to jam it down children's
| throats where there's little parental oversight. Disagree
| with it? Enjoy failing the class and the hit it will have
| on your GPA for college. And they aren't even trying to
| hide it.
| jl6 wrote:
| What do you mean by the veneer being quite thin? You mean
| that the surface-level claim that math instruction is
| racist is actually cover for a deeper claim that _math
| itself_ is racist? Where do they come close to making
| that deeper claim?
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| > I had to pass essentially an IQ test to get placed into those
| classes.
|
| IQ tests are notoriously and historically pretty racist.
|
| They can be useful in certain contexts but they aren't very
| good as an academic gatekeeper or a measure of individual
| intelligence.
| victor9000 wrote:
| Ok, I'll bite, how are IQ tests racist?
| anthonypasq wrote:
| you could theoretically have questions that rely on
| cultural background info to understand it. i imagine there
| are questions that a chinese student would understand and
| an american would not, but IQ tests and most other
| standardized test are rigorously tested to avoid this
| stuff.
|
| they look for this and throw out offending questions on the
| SAT all the time
| com2kid wrote:
| Let's take a math story problem.
|
| Give an upper class white kid a problem involving tennis
| scores, no problem. The kid will be able to easily
| understand what is being talked about, there isn't anything
| mentally jarring going on.
|
| Give a poor black kid a problem involving tennis scores,
| boom, problem. Odds of a poor black kid knowing how tennis
| scoring works, much less likely.
|
| My, largely well to do, neighborhood has tennis courts. The
| more diverse, and poorer, neighborhood I grew up in,
| didn't. I am still not sure how tennis is scored, but I am
| pretty sure the kids in the house next to me understand it.
|
| Repeat this idea a few times with some of the other tests.
| Give some word recall lists using words poor/minority kids
| aren't accustom to. It is harder to recall words that you
| have never heard before, they are basically nonsense
| syllables, which is a very different test. If you had
| thrown "quiche" in the middle of a word list 8 year old me
| would have had no idea what you were talking about.
|
| Modern day IQ tests have tried to correct for these biases,
| but school administrators can choose an "older" test to
| purposefully get biased results.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| How about a poor white kid? My family certainly could not
| afford rackets so we never had an interest in the game.
| tester756 wrote:
| >Give a poor black kid a problem involving tennis scores,
| boom, problem. Odds of a poor black kid knowing how
| tennis scoring works, much less likely.
|
| Over around 18 years of having various maths topics in
| schools
|
| The only thing that required some "non-math" knowledge
| were cards related questions and maybe dice
|
| but what is that tennis counting example? do they
| actually appear on IQ questions?
|
| how about maths exams?
| com2kid wrote:
| I've seen plenty of problems involving scoring in various
| sports. I've seen stats taught using baseball batting
| averages and tons of problems involving football scoring.
|
| Oh and poker hands.
|
| I can easily imagine an IQ test 50 years ago involving
| scoring in bridge games.
| chongli wrote:
| _school administrators can choose an "older" test to
| purposefully get biased results_
|
| Do you have any evidence of school administrators
| choosing "older" tests with biased questions about tennis
| scores or whatever other cultural trivia rich white kids
| are most likely to know about? I took an IQ test when I
| was a kid (early 90's) and it was a bunch of abstract
| questions involving mental rotations of objects,
| determining the next number in a sequence, determining
| the missing object from a set of objects, and so on.
| There were no questions about vocabulary or trivia of any
| kind.
| com2kid wrote:
| You can look at the history of IQ tests to see that older
| ones were indeed biased. New tests are designed to
| counteract those biases.
|
| The point is that it is possible for corrupt
| administrators to bias test results, and the methods to
| do such are fairly easy to come across.
|
| I'm not objecting to IQ tests, just pointing out that if
| a school wanted to create a test that only admitted
| certain students, that it is very possible to do such.
| chongli wrote:
| I know that old IQ tests (and other tests) were biased
| and used in racist ways. What I asked is whether there is
| any evidence of school administrators using those old
| biased tests in recent times. Otherwise this is just
| speculation.
| [deleted]
| mpalmer wrote:
| There is no intelligence test I know of that can perfectly
| control for advantages and disadvantages in education / home
| life.
|
| Not everyone is as well-positioned as you might have been to
| excel at an IQ test. And to the extent that someone is
| disadvantaged, their race may indeed be an indirect cause.
| AMerePotato wrote:
| At my school, everyone was tested... but you needed a
| recommendation along with a high score to get in. I scored
| highly on the test year after year but was never given the
| recommendation necessary. I can't for sure say it was because I
| am a minority, but it definitely disenfranchised me
| [deleted]
| mistrial9 wrote:
| > every class consisted of reiterating content for days which I
| had mastered in minutes
|
| literally the same experience for me; many people in urban
| school never became literate in their entire adult lives, let
| alone math.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| So just schools in general, because the teacher has to take
| care for the whole class and can't cater to every student.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Gifted programs are "unacceptably white"
|
| Curious if they're also "unacceptably asian" - the author
| doesn't seem to think so, or at least didn't feel the need to
| say so.
| chipsa wrote:
| Asians are white when it's unhelpful to the narrative for
| them to be a minority. See also "underrepresented minority",
| which translates to: non-Asian minority.
| ge96 wrote:
| Hate to suggest this but I was wondering if I was diversity
| hire lol, since my skills are definitely subpar but I still
| got in somehow. I can do soft skills but yeah. -- anyway
| I'll take it, I need it.
| mnw21cam wrote:
| In my opinion the worst enemy of an intelligent student is
| boredom. Boredom causes underachievement and disillusionment.
| One reason to keep a gifted programme at school is to give
| intelligent students something to do that is actually
| interesting.
| dang wrote:
| That's just one two-word phrase, and putting torque on it that
| distorts the gist of the whole article is not a good direction
| for threads. That's why we have this guideline:
|
| " _Please don 't pick the most provocative thing in an article
| or post to complain about in the thread. Find something
| interesting to respond to instead._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| derac wrote:
| I appreciate the rule and that is fair. I do think putting
| extremely inflammatory racial language front and center is
| notable. Particularly when it is so casual and so many people
| feel like it is unobjectionable as can be seen in the
| replies.
|
| I will refrain from this sort of comment in the future
| though. Sorry dang!
| pvg wrote:
| It's only 'extremely inflammatory racial language' if you
| pluck it out of its context and misquote it.
|
| _The current population of students we identify as
| academically gifted and talented is unacceptably whiter and
| wealthier than the actual student population of
| academically gifted and talented students should be._
|
| This is pretty vanilla, nearly tautological stuff unless
| you believe academic talent is some sort of inherent
| property of wealth or whiteness.
| derac wrote:
| Yeah, that's fair. Maybe I was being overly sensitive.
| [deleted]
| mcculley wrote:
| I was in one of these programs in middle and high school
| (1985-1990). My experience was that only a very small subset
| were selected to be tested. Most of the "gifted" students were
| born to parents who knew how to advocate for them and get them
| tested. (Mostly white, mostly upper middle class, many children
| of teachers.)
|
| I am certain that if every student had been tested, the
| composition of the gifted classes would have been very
| different. Many students who fell through the cracks would have
| been put in the higher level classes and many at the lower end
| of the gifted program would not have made the cut (given fixed
| class sizes for the gifted program).
|
| We should test every student.
| mmmpop wrote:
| Well, I was a dirt poor child of a single Puerto Rican mom in
| eastern Kentucky and I was accepted in gifted education the
| first year I went to public schools (which was the first year
| it was offered--the reason I went.)
|
| But to your point, I was not able to take algebra until 9th
| grade due to reasons that felt a bit discriminatory as you'd
| described, but my mother was a maniac and no one liked her,
| so hard to say if that didn't add weight.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| There are always individual cases that work out. Even in
| systems with extreme oppression, members of oppressed
| groups succeed. But it is still a problem if there is a
| large and observable statistical disparity between groups
| for no compelling reason.
|
| Consider a toy admissions criteria where students go
| through the same process as today but students with black
| hair have to also win a game of rock paper scissors. There
| will surely be a large number of kids with black hair who
| are admitted and succeed. But the system would be plainly
| unfair and deserve to be fixed, despite many individual
| students with black hair being able to say "well I was
| admitted."
| mmmpop wrote:
| I think what I'm getting at is that the "rich White
| affluent people gave me a chance" and I "didn't behave"
| according to their standards, so they pushed me out. I
| was too young to understand, but perhaps they had a fair
| point?
|
| I was well-behaved and bright, but coarse I suppose.
|
| I was too poor to participate in the fancy science trips,
| couldn't afford class materials, constantly late, and
| homework never got done due to what I remember as "family
| issues". I was bright and gifted, but a high achiever I
| was not.
|
| I don't blame them for pushing me out of the system, I
| didn't play by the rules. But from what you're saying,
| that's part of the problem and I don't disagree... but
| allowing me to persist and annoy those gifted kids with
| resources, encouraging families, and ambition wasn't
| really fair now was it?
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I think it depends on what the rules are. A lot of rules
| encode social and class norms rather than actually
| achieve a pedagogical goal. Classic examples of this is
| forcing kids to use "proper" grammar rather than AAVE or
| forcing left-handed kids to write with the right hand.
| lmkg wrote:
| > I had to pass essentially an IQ test to get placed into those
| classes. I don't see why race has anything to do with it.
|
| Simply put, we don't know how to make objective IQ tests yet.
|
| The questions in IQ tests tend to bake in a bunch of cultural
| assumptions, often in ways you don't expect. So the test
| measures a combination of IQ, and affinity with a specific
| cultural background.
|
| First, let me be clear about this: The issue is _friction_.
| Even at the same difficulty, a question that 's more accessible
| is less stressful and less mentally taxing. Especially when
| you're dealing with kids. This matters more at the cut-off than
| the extremes of the bell-curve, but has statistical impacts.
|
| I just searched for "Fourth Grade IQ Test" and clicked a random
| link. Four of the ten questions are about sharing cookies.
| Baking cookies and sharing cookies are typical middle-class-
| white activity, but I don't know how that shakes out in other
| cultures. Maybe they share other foods? Maybe sharing food is
| offensive because it implies the other kids' parents can't
| provide for themselves? Maybe the kids aren't in charge of food
| division? The underlying math is, of course, objective. But the
| math is being framed through a perspective which is more or
| less familiar to different backgrounds.
| nabla9 wrote:
| The Cattell Culture Fair III (CFIT-III) is really good.
|
| If we are talking IQ scores within the same western country,
| we know now to make culture fair fluid intelligence test
| (it's not the same as future achievement score)
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| IQ tests are incredibly predictive nowadays.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Any further reading recommendations? It's unclear why the
| cultural example of baking and sharing food would cause
| significant differences in test results but that's picking at
| an example. Were the six other questions also stereotypical
| of white middle class families? I imagine they were more
| abstract (lacking cultural context?). Would the solution here
| be to remove cultural context, or have culturally tailored
| exams? It would be interesting to take IQ tests from other
| countries and compare results.
|
| I imagine other factors such as home life, economic status,
| and cultural emphasis on education would be much, much
| stronger predictors on IQ test performance.
| lmkg wrote:
| A few straight arithmetic questions, one about the
| alphabet, a few about parts of speech. These don't
| immediately jump out to me as cultured, although anything
| involving letters or grammar will be sensitive to the
| linguistic background of the students.
|
| Certainly home life, economic background, etc have an
| impact on educational outcomes. But I'm making a narrower
| claim here. A student with a poor home life is likely to
| test poorly regardless, although the difference might be
| larger in some tests than others. But a student with the
| same educational aptitude may test better or worse
| depending on if they're being tested on topics that are
| familiar or unfamiliar to them.
|
| Removing cultural context is certainly _a_ solution. I 'm
| not sure it's the _best_ solution. Excessively-abstract
| problems are only one aspect of intelligence. Anything
| involving reading comprehension is going to have some
| linguistic or cultural elements, but I 'm not sure it's
| valid to just remove reading comprehension altogether.
|
| If you want to see a standardized test from a different
| culture, here's one that's made the rounds a few times.
| This is for eight-graders in Kentucky in 1912. The sections
| on Geography & Physiology certainly stand out, but even the
| math section has a notably different emphasis than modern
| education.
|
| https://www.bullittcountyhistory.com/bchistory/schoolexam19
| 1...
| weatherlite wrote:
| How effective are those young gifted programs anyway? I'm
| somewhat skeptical of the whole thing, especially in the era of
| the internet.
| javajosh wrote:
| We should spend more on gifted programs, not less. These are the
| kids with the most potential push society forward, and they
| should get every opportunity to flourish to the greatest extent
| possible, even if they have the great misfortune of being born
| white.
| [deleted]
| omgJustTest wrote:
| I went 3 different high schools in several states as a child.
| Some schools had lots of money (ie gifted programs) and others
| were quite literally at risk of losing state funding due to low
| standardized test scores. I was the first person in my family
| tree to graduate college and only person to ever have a PhD.
|
| The teachers at the well-funded, near-apex "Magnet" school in
| North Carolina were generally better and had more time with
| students... especially in Science/Math. Teachers had more adult
| expectations of kids, but most importantly they were _consistent_
| with their expectations and cadence of material presented.
|
| Teachers at the under-funded, near-loss of state funding school
| in Tennessee were kind, "normal" people who happened to go to
| college at some point in the past. Primary detractors from the
| classroom were that student's low-expectations often led to large
| portions of uncontrolled "worksheet" tasks. Work was not graded
| well, inspected well or feedback given in a timely manner. I
| personally graded all the science teacher's Junior level homework
| as a Senior. She often didn't appear to understand the subject
| and was doing her best to not let the bottom students fall
| through the cracks.
|
| Elimination of gifted programs, in my opinion, is the best
| option. The best students will learn what they need to, their
| parents will make sure of it, and the best teachers need to work
| with the worst students at this age group.
| protomyth wrote:
| Equity matters for education, but not the sports teams? If the
| conversation about gifted and talented programs doesn't include
| the other activities the school sponsors, then its not fair.
| We've eliminated voc-ed and now g&t programs. I bet sports cost a
| bunch.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| I'd say I learned much more from the elementary school and
| middle school sports programs I participated in than I ever
| learned from the gifted/talented programs I participated in. I
| find it to be a terrible shame that high school sports are so
| often limited in participation by elitism (e.g. basketball
| limited to 10 players, volleyball to ~12, cheerleading to ~20).
|
| I would wholeheartedly support removing limits on high school
| sports participation. The free market can suck away the elite
| athletes if they don't feel that high school sports are
| adequate for their professional development - that's fine, high
| school should cater to the majority, not an infinitesimal
| minority.
| protomyth wrote:
| Regardless of the usefulness of sports in schools (and I do
| believe they are useful), you point out that they are "often
| limited in participation by elitism" much as I suppose the
| critics of gifted & talented programs would say of those
| programs. If so, then they must be studied to make sure they
| don't disproportionately exclude certain racial groups. If
| racial imbalance is a guideline for cancellation then it
| should apply to every program and activity.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| In your equivalence, the "sport" is studying math (or
| something) and everyone _is_ participating, simply on
| different levels. Your equivalence would only work if the
| non-gifted students weren 't allowed to study anything at
| all.
| protomyth wrote:
| No. Both sports and gifted & talented programs require
| students that are more "gifted" at the activity to
| participate. If this elitist selection is bad for one
| then it is bad for the other.
| erichocean wrote:
| ?
|
| Everyone in school studies math and reading. Everyone
| _is_ participating, simply on different levels.
|
| I guess I don't understand your comment at all.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| That's my point. Parent poster was saying that excluding
| students from high school sports was the same as
| excluding them from gifted programs. I countered by
| saying that, for the equivalence to work, the students
| wouldn't be able to study at all to be like exclusion
| from high school sports.
| dadjoker wrote:
| "Since when does equity mean everyone gets nothing?"
|
| Unfortunately, in Oregon, Kate Brown and her acolytes think that
| it is "equitable" to get rid of all basic learning requirements
| for high school graduation, because they are "white supremacy" or
| something.
|
| The soft bigotry of low expectations.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/dumbing-oregon-down-kate-brown-...
| whatevenisthat wrote:
| postfck wrote:
| giardini wrote:
| Gifted children are rare enough that they can be dealt with one
| at a time. I see no need for special programs. In contrast
| handicapped children may require special attention.
|
| OTOH I have seen students unwilling to attend a particular school
| b/c it has a reputation for behavioral problems and also low
| testing scores. So best spend money on improving education for
| all.
|
| I _would_ like to see more usage of an old tradition: better
| students helping others during class. This promotes cameraderie
| and provides different perspectives for both parties. It always
| helps to "stand in another man's shoes" and see the world from
| that new perspective.
| brunoTbear wrote:
| This is a tradition that can go the way of other great old
| traditions like catching polio. In my experience it did nothing
| but find a way for me to be forced to spend more time with
| bullies and suffer trying to explain something to them that
| they were decidedly uninterested in learning.
| iisan7 wrote:
| sometimes that can work but I have my doubts as to it being a
| good general policy. not at all guaranteed that it promotes
| camaraderie, over, say being called arrogant, teacher's pet,
| and ostracized by the others as 'too good'.
|
| Kids should be able to form friendships with those at different
| levels and help their friends, but shouldn't be asked to be
| their teachers or mentors. it's incredibly unfair to require
| students in the class to function as teachers. They are there
| to learn, and if they've learned everything on the curriculum,
| they should be able to learn more.
|
| Teachers used to handle this by letting the kids have 'free
| time' after assignments to go to the library, or whatever.
| Gifted programs do this even better by putting them in a class
| with kids at a similar level so they are less likely to need
| special treatment or to be called 'smart'. This can actually
| help them realize early in life that they aren't automatically
| special because they're at the top of their class.
| [deleted]
| bena wrote:
| So why not have the normal needs students helping the children
| with learning dysfunctions?
|
| Promote that camaraderie all the way down. Let them see what
| it's like in another's shoes. Etc. All of your arguments for
| putting the gifted in normal classes, but applied to normal
| students and children with learning dysfunctions.
|
| Gifted students _are_ special needs students. They exist on the
| entire other end of the spectrum than those with learning
| dysfunctions.
| giardini wrote:
| _> "So why not have the normal needs students helping the
| children with learning dysfunctions?"<_
|
| Sure, that's fine.
|
| _> "Gifted students are special needs students. "<_
|
| Gifted students can usually take care of themselves.
| bena wrote:
| This is how you demonstrate that you should not be making
| decisions about childhood education in two answers.
|
| What you are advocating is to essentially make _every_
| class a special education class serving the students with
| the lowest abilities. This won 't bring those with learning
| dysfunctions up, it will only serve to bring the rest down
| while also building resentment towards those with
| dysfunctions.
|
| And even gifted students need guidance. While they may be
| able to learn material on their own, knowing what material
| exists isn't something that is granted to one at birth. And
| it's not a guarantee that their interests will always align
| with what is necessary to learn.
|
| Your statements are also kind of contradictory. You want to
| eliminated gifted education and put those students in
| normal classrooms. When I ask if you'd be fine with putting
| normal students in classes with those with dysfunctions
| with the explicit goal of helping those students, you said
| fine. But then you said gifted students can take care of
| themselves. So why would they go to class in the first
| place.
|
| So, by your answers, you want to eliminate resources for
| children with learning dysfunctions and allow gifted
| children to skip school if they want.
|
| There's no way to reconcile the disparity between
| acknowledging that children with learning dysfunctions need
| additional resources and ignoring that gifted children are
| also a special case of student that need additional
| resources.
|
| Either you wind up advocating for the complete elimination
| of additional resources, acknowledging that not all
| students need all the same resources, or trying to pretzel
| yourself in a way where you can knock the gifted children
| down a peg while keeping the children with dysfunctions
| away from the general classes.
| giardini wrote:
| Nonsense. Don't put words in my mouth.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > My behavior challenges came from a lack of being challenged.
|
| I've heard this a lot - it's always someone else's fault. In my
| experience in school, the disruptive students were not the gifted
| ones. They were the ones who never experienced negative
| consequences for their disruptive behavior. Neither the teachers,
| administration, nor parents ever disciplined them.
|
| The unchallenged gifted students would read a book during class,
| or draw art in their notebooks, etc.
| indymike wrote:
| Intelligent kids are one of the most picked on and abused
| demographics in existence. Gifted programs for many is the only
| part of school that is positive for them.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| methinks someone is projecting
| alas_141 wrote:
| No child should be actively excluded based on a metric like race
| or gender, just like no student should be deliberately included
| because of race, gender, class, or any other metric that a parent
| could use to coerce a school to place their child in a
| gifted/magnet class. That should be common sense.
|
| Kids should be placed in the gifted/magnet track because of
| performance, and performance alone. I don't believe that a
| meritocracy is racist, sexist, or biased in an unfair way.
| Placing students in classes where they may under perform, and
| excluding kids who would perform well in an accelerated program
| are unfair, and a meritocracy mitigates both of these problems.
|
| The article raised a good point about schools that marginalized
| groups would attend don't have a gifted program, precluding them
| from even participating. That can be addressed a couple different
| ways. Either redirect high performers to a school where there is
| a gifted program present, or mandate the presence of a gifted
| program in all schools. There will, of course, be differing
| quality of the program from school to school, which would favor
| the former course of action.
|
| Having gone through the "gifted program" through elementary and
| middle school, I can say that the only real differences I felt
| weren't related to curriculum, we were taught essentially the
| same things, with slight differences.
|
| 1. Smaller class size. In a class of 4th, 5th, and 6th graders,
| there was maybe 25 kids. 2. Less rowdy/troublemaking classmates.
| Made for less distractions. 3. Less busywork. The routine of
| getting a packet every night for homework was not something I had
| to suffer through like many friends I had that weren't in an
| accelerated program.
|
| I don't believe you will ever truly eradicate inequities within
| public services, and the cost of private services, especially in
| education, preclude many from participating. That said, we should
| strive to mitigate them. My fear is that the steps taken to
| mitigate inequity will just move the availability of opportunity
| from one group to another, where the true solution is increasing
| the availability for all groups, and let performance be the
| selector of who is admitted to gifted/accelerated programs.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| >redirect high performers to a school where there is a gifted
| program present
|
| I am a bit hesitant of this. One valuable thing you get by
| having geographical schools is the same friends in and out of
| school. If you have friends at school but they are too far to
| hang out with or do homework with it can be bad for the kid
| learning social skills.
|
| Mandating gifted classes as you mentioned seems better.
| sbarbarian wrote:
| Another major issue in this discussion is the definition of
| 'teacher'. As referenced throughout these comments, a 'teaching'
| job varies dramatically on the district, age, etc. Students from
| a difficult home life need a social worker than an algebra
| teacher, yet the state mandates the class no matter how poor the
| delivery, content, outcome, etc. Meanwhile, teachers get stuck
| with responsibilities not in their job description...no wonder so
| many quit.
|
| Its antithetical to the American dream (i.e. an equal starting
| point for everyone) but we must provide different paths better
| suited to acknowledging reality and providing reasonable
| outcomes. Staff them with job descriptions fitting the actual
| need, and work from there.
| mikece wrote:
| Eliminating accelerated or gifted programs doesn't create
| equality any more than mandating a uniform maximum height will
| stop people from growing past 2 meters in height. All it does it
| rob society at large from the possibility of the exceptionally
| able from realizing their potential sooner. If we're willing, as
| a body politic, to eschew the possibility of an exceptional
| learner from discovering things like the cure for cancer in the
| name of equity then we'll reap the fruit of that collective
| decision.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Equity != Equality. Equity is semantically closer to equality
| of outcome than equality (of conditions/opportunities).
| TimPC wrote:
| But Equity also argues for treating people differently
| depending on their needs. Eliminating gifted programs so that
| all students are treated the same seems to me to be far
| closer to the equality bucket than any equity one.
| bendbro wrote:
| Comrade I see you have formed some misinformations, please
| allow me to reeducate you. The pupil-with-non-
| intrinsically-greater-test-performance does not need
| increased schooling, as she already has too much. To
| increase equity and goodwill in our society, it is best for
| the student to receive less education.
| mikece wrote:
| I will agree 100% that words and terms are being thrown
| around without adequate or agreed upon definition of terms.
| Without an agreement on the definition of the words being
| used it's pretty much impossible to have a cogent exchange of
| ideas.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| throwaway0x7E6 wrote:
| when I saw equitablemath.org a few months ago, I couldn't believe
| it wasn't satire
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I would have loved to continue reading this, but he immediately
| claimed that "Black students are 66% less likely to be identified
| as gifted compared to white students with similar test scores". I
| clicked the link that supposedly contained the paper to back this
| up. The link takes you here[0].
|
| That's a bit annoying since it doesn't take me directly to the
| source, but that's fine. Then I read the article and it says:
| "...found black students were 66 percent less likely to be
| assigned to a gifted program as white students. A black student
| whose test scores were on par with a white peer was still half as
| likely to be assigned to a gifted classroom." So, immediately the
| author of this original article saw the statistic 66% and the
| phrase "on par with test scores", and immediately conflated the
| two. According to this statement, it sounds like black students
| are _actually_ 50% less likely to be identified as gifted with
| similar test scores.
|
| I'm going to assume that's just an artifact of non-diligent
| research and not a blatant lie. Well, I'm still curious where
| these stats come from, so let's see where this article in the
| Tennesseean is sourcing this stuff from. They've got several
| links on this article and... every single link, with the
| exception of the link to a randomly named professor at
| Vanderbilt, lead to other articles on the Tennessean. Let's see
| if we can find where they obtained these stats from.
|
| Alright, it _looks like_ this is where they got it from[1], but I
| can 't be 100% sure. This actually has a link to the paper as
| well[2]. It also has a nice disclaimer at the bottom of the
| article:
|
| > One such additional factor impacting minority assignment to
| gifted programs is the availability of these programs in schools
| attended by minority students. Black students are less likely
| overall to attend schools that provide gifted programs. Ninety
| percent of white, 93 percent of Hispanic, and 91 percent of Asian
| elementary students attend schools with gifted programs, while
| only 83 percent of African American students do.
|
| In other words, when the researchers took test scores into
| account for Hispanic students vs white students, the differences
| in the probability of being selected for a gifted program based
| on race reduced to 0%. With black students, they (seemingly) did
| _not_ take into account whether a school even offered a gifted
| program. So they lumped together all the students who may not
| have had access to a gifted program, and then used that to
| conclude that teachers are racist and ignoring test scores.
|
| Right off the bat I'm done with this article. If you're going to
| cite research, then cite the actual paper first of all. Second,
| look at how they gathered the data. Once you take the anomalies
| into account, it looks like we may not have racist teachers, but
| rather incomplete data. I wish we could just have an honest
| conversation about this stuff instead of all this stupid
| indirection and trying to hide the actual research being done
| because it doesn't fully support your claims.
|
| The big issue here is a lot of black students don't have access
| to gifted programs, but instead we're fighting "racist" teachers
| that don't exist.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/education/2016/01/19/v...
|
| [1]: https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2016/01/18/teachers-race-
| affects...
|
| [2]: https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-
| news/files/20190417222934/Gris...
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > A black student whose test scores were on par with a white
| peer was still half as likely to be assigned to a gifted
| classroom.
|
| ... Which would indeed be explained by the lack of gifted
| program at schools (can't assign a kid to a class that doesn't
| exists).
|
| But there's also something the authors are omitting here:
| parental involvement. It's still the parent's decision to place
| their kid in a gifted program. And if there's no gifted program
| at the child's current school the parent will have to take the
| initiative to transfer his child to another school (and the
| child will probably object to it seeing as it means losing all
| his friends).
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I completely agree. There's definitely visible disparity in
| many aspects of life between different races in America, and
| I wish people would stop jumping to the conclusion that it
| must be because of racism. If we actually want to solve this
| issue and help our neighbors and communities, we need to be
| looking for the true problems.
|
| Parental involvement seems to be a large problem, as well as
| the lack of access to gifted programs in this case.
| lettergram wrote:
| Many people dont know what "equity" means. When people say
| "Equality" they mean it in terms of opportunity. Basically a
| meritocracy after controlling for racism or sexism or (some other
| -ism / bias). "Equity" is that everyone has an equal seat,
| regardless of merit. The idea being, people who were down trodden
| have less ability to produce. As such, they need a seat at the
| table (same "equity" stake) to make up for their upbringing,
| lineage, or some other historical / circumstantial factor that
| impacted them.
|
| "Equity" is a term used by marxists, to promote a Marxist
| ideology (critical race theory being a derivative of critical
| theory).
|
| "Equality" is a term used by liberals to promote equality of
| opportunity (ie civil rights).
|
| The vast majority desire a meritocracy. The intentional
| conflation these terms are diabolical. Confusing people into
| supporting something against everyone's interest.
|
| The intent of critical race theory was to view the US society as
| a race struggle as opposed to a class struggle in order to bring
| about social change (towards Marxism). I think it's largely
| succeeded because people haven't researched the terms.
| hintymad wrote:
| What's sad is that the US used to be the vanguard of modern
| civilization: science, technology, policies (making federalism
| work in a vast country like the US is an amazing achievement),
| and human wellbeing in general. And now we are debating common
| sense. Shame on the progressives.
| twirlock wrote:
| colechristensen wrote:
| Still bending over backwards to accommodate a racial equity
| narrative. How about you don't look at a child's skin color
| before you decide how they are educated and instead focus on
| doing the best you can for each instead of trying to make
| everything about achieving social justice goals. Anything else is
| racism.
| Kaze404 wrote:
| So simple! We just need to stop looking at color and all
| inequality will go away! I wonder why nobody's thought of that
| before.
| IAmWorried wrote:
| It's hard for me to tell how many of these "progressive" programs
| are motivated out of a sincere desire to make the world a better
| place, and how many are simply motivated by hate and spite, a "if
| I can't have it nobody can" kind of attitude. Certainly
| eliminating advanced classes seems to fall into the latter case.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| My issue with gifted programs, and this is the reality in many
| cities: wealthy kids with tutors and intelligent parents are the
| ones benefiting.
|
| This essentially creates a two-tiered schooling system, and since
| it's very tightly tied to income, this further exaggerates
| economic disparity, which is closely tied to race.
|
| My city's school system is comprised mostly of minorities (~80%
| black, hispanic, and asian) and the gifted programs are
| predominantly serving wealthy white kids (~50%).
|
| We also have exam schools. The most popular exam school in my
| area receives tens of millions of dollars in private donations.
| If you combined the private fundraising of the bottom 90% of
| schools in the district, it's still less than this _one school_.
| This school is also 50% white in a school system where only 15%
| of the kids are white. So we 've essentially created a private
| school in a public system.
|
| I understand why people don't want to eliminate gifted programs,
| but they are further exaggerating economic (and racial)
| disparities. I have not seen any good solutions for this, but it
| does feel incredibly unfair.
|
| Having been someone who was poor and happened to be in a gifted
| program, I personally don't think the benefit is worth the
| divide.
| rubyfan wrote:
| my hunch is that the hacker news crowd is not representative of
| the rest of the US on this particular topic
| bsimpson wrote:
| > Since when does equity mean everyone gets nothing
|
| This is why equity programs are controversial. When skeptical
| people hear "equity," they think of the allegory about crabs in a
| bucket. Too often, instead of helping more crabs escape the
| bucket, our society creates policies that make it harder for any
| of them to escape the bucket, or pick and choose which crabs get
| to escape the bucket.
| swader999 wrote:
| Gifted kids can be quite a force of good and bad. Probably better
| ROI to keep them on the path towards the good regardless of the
| amount of pigment in their skin.
| Animats wrote:
| The elephant in the room: In the US, average East Asian IQ is
| 105, average white IQ is 99, average black IQ is 85-95. Nobody in
| politics can afford to admit that.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| The highest IQ in US history belonged to a man that spent his
| life as a plumber by choice. According to
| several studies, the greatest predictor of early academic
| advancement is the financial status of the parents. While
| scientific hubris and narcissism tend to quickly dominate
| competitive environments in colleges, the irrational pretense
| of a meritocracy quickly degenerates when you enter the faculty
| area. Note that most academically successful students will do
| well regardless of the curriculum or instructor, and the
| funding they bring in later makes anyone popular with staff.
|
| Perhaps you are asserting that "intellectual gifts" are
| justification for inflicting misery or undue burden on the
| general community?
|
| I speculate one could likely outrun a one-legged physicist or a
| one-legged golden retriever just as quickly... but not escape
| their own cognitive biases.
| slothtrop wrote:
| > inflicting misery
|
| Is that what you suppose gifted programs do?
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| From one perspective, isolation or artificial peer group
| selection can lead to aberrant moral, social, and cognitive
| development. There is more to life than worksheets and
| exams.
| slothtrop wrote:
| There's no evidence that gifted programs are associated
| with those phenomenons. There is evidence that it helps
| students excel.
| ars wrote:
| This:
|
| "the irrational pretense of a meritocracy"
|
| and this:
|
| "most academically successful students will do well
| regardless of the curriculum or instructor"
|
| Are contradictory - if the smarter students do well
| regardless, then it's not something in the school, home, or
| environment, that are making them do better. They are simply
| smarter, and that's not something you can create in other
| people.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| You have omitted the temporal qualifier, then conflated
| academic and institutional career success.
|
| A paradox can be tricky... and makes our biases
| perceivable.
| jeandejean wrote:
| Very often equity at all cost means leveling down everybody. It
| also feels a bit contradictory to privilege already gifted
| students with a programme though.
| iisan7 wrote:
| I don't think it should be privilege to receive an education
| that challenges you. Punishing the kids for the sins of being
| born to "privilege" doesn't seem fair. And if kids of privilege
| are the only ones in the gifted program, you're not doing it
| right, which is the point of TFA.
| sharmin123 wrote:
| moth-fuzz wrote:
| I'm not sure at the end of the day there's such a thing as
| 'intelligence', in terms of how we talk about it, like some sort
| of RPG stat. In my experience, kids aren't really 'smarter' than
| other kids, they have learning styles and brain patterns that
| match up with how the courses are run.
|
| Anecdotes, I know, but I was terrible at math compared to the
| kids in high school who could all just memorize and regurgitate
| (I have ADHD & very poor working memory, and no random-access).
| These kids also regularly looked up answers to future quizzes
| they found online and bsed their way through. But, in college,
| which involves a more abstract and rigorous (and dare I say
| meaningful) understanding of the material, I excelled while many
| of my former colleagues fell behind as these were 'new problems'
| they couldn't just look up because they didn't _have_ answers.
|
| My point is intelligence is not a scalar axis in which some
| people are 'gifted' and some people are not, it's a
| multidimensional series of mental configurations that must be
| adapted to in the classroom and outside. Hire better teachers and
| pay them more is the only concrete thing I can think of. Gifted
| programs aren't the way as they're entirely arbitrary to a
| specific environment. The wrong teacher for the right student
| will ultimately make the student worse for it, and these programs
| don't account for how truly uninspired some teachers can be. Not
| to mention parents, or availability of learning materials,
| quality of libraries, etc etc.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| I think minimal standards are a pretty good idea, for both mental
| and physical education. The attitude that all children should be
| able to reach these standards, and if they don't that's the fault
| of the educational system, also makes a lot of sense. What those
| standards should be is a matter for debate, but if we look around
| the world (China ahem) we might get some ideas about what the
| competitive level is currently.
|
| To enforce this, you need to do two things: fire underperforming
| teachers, and their administrative overseers if the problem is
| pervasive, and pay teachers competitive salaries to attract the
| best talent to the job. Teaching is a skill, and highly skilled
| people should be well-compensated for their work. This is just
| labor market 101. If you don't value education, you pay low
| salaries to educators and you scrape the bottom of the talent
| barrel. If you do value education, then you make the job
| competitive by offering high salaries and eliminating
| underperformers.
|
| Of course, maybe the politicians and bureaucrats and corporate
| executives don't actually want a highly educated competent
| population? Perhaps they'd prefer dumb sheep who believe whatever
| propaganda they're fed and whose consumption habits can be easily
| directed by skilled advertisers and marketers. Herds of compliant
| consumers who do as they're told, that's perhaps what elite
| leadership is after. Might be a conspiracy theory but there's
| some truth to it I think.
|
| What it really looks like is one set of schools for the
| aristocrats, and another set of schools for the serfs, and it's
| more about maintaining a certain class structure, just as in late
| 19th / early 20th century British schooling systems.
| bfaviero wrote:
| I grew up as a dirt poor immigrant. The only reason I got into
| MIT, and am successful today, was because of the gifted programs
| that allowed me to stand out from the other mediocre students at
| the schools.
|
| Were most of my gifted classmates wealthy? Yes. But being among
| them did more for my social mobility than anything else the
| school ever did.
| erikerikson wrote:
| The problem is not privilege but its expansion. Continuously and
| responsibly raising the bar and the expansion of the tent should
| be the goal and will lead to contribute to the contributed
| expansion of prosperity.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| The bigger issue I see is the arbitrary separation of students
| into grades. Just because everybody is the same age does not mean
| they're at the same level in a subject. You should be able to
| take 8th grade math as a 7th grader. In fact it shouldn't be 8th
| grade math, it should just be Pre-Algebra. Montessori schools put
| three grades in one class which solves the problem somewhat,
| although talented students in the top grade quickly get bored.
|
| This stratified structure also impacts how students view social
| interaction. Each grade is separate and therefore a different
| social entity. Sure, there are interactions across grades but
| it's still quite funny to see a sophomore make fun of a freshman
| when they're 15 and 14 years old respectively. To this day I know
| people who find it weird that I'm friends with someone who's 18
| when I'm 23. I don't see why. We have the same interests and
| similar personalities. A few years difference doesn't matter.
| DAlperin wrote:
| Alright, I don't imagine this will be a common take here but here
| goes. I am a product of the New York City public school system. I
| have spent the majority of my life as a student in it. The New
| York city public school system is both the largest public school
| system in the country and the most segregated. The argument about
| removing gifted programs are built on the faulty assumptions that
| the students in those programs are "more gifted" than everyone
| else and that the work is truly more advanced. Neither of those
| are the case.
|
| Gifted programs are used to advance and maintain the status-quo
| of segregation in our schools. The correlation between medium
| household (of which Black americans are at a disadvantage) and
| acceptance into the gifted program is much stronger than the
| correlation between merit and acceptance. I've spent my life in
| this system and I can tell you with one hundred percent
| confidence that the reason many if not most of my black peers
| don't get into these programs is not due to any lack of merit or
| intelligence.
|
| Now lets look at the second assumption, that the gifted programs
| provide a higher level of education. This is not true. What
| happens is that gifted programs get significantly higher funding
| than other schools and so the gifted programs can afford to give
| a good well rounded education, which is a good thing! The problem
| is that so many of our schools, especially in Brown and Black
| neighborhoods) are completely underfunded, without enough
| teachers or resources. This of course perpetuates the systemic
| inequities that begun this cycle in the first place thus
| repeating the whole cycle.
|
| When we are calling for an end to "gifted" programs in New York,
| it is not because we "hate smart kids" but because we want
| resources to be evenly divided so that everyone can get a well
| funded well rounded education, not just the rich kids in gifted
| classes. This is not a single issue but is a larger component of
| an attempt to dismantle segregation in public schools. It drives
| me crazy to no end to see smart people fall into the ideological
| trap of believing gifted programs are something they aren't.
| slothtrop wrote:
| In other words you're arguing it's zero-sum, as though gifted
| programs take up a sizable chunk of funding rather than, you
| know, the schools.
| DAlperin wrote:
| > as though gifted programs take up a sizable chunk of
| funding rather than, you know, the schools.
|
| I am saying that. "Gifted" programs and the schools that
| house them eat up a sizable chunk of funding.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Then it's not enough to say it, show the numbers.
| Considering the tiny demographic it serves, I'd imagine the
| cuts on the basis of inequality are a convenient excuse to
| slash spending, and not increase it otherwise.
|
| There's no relationship between gutting gifted programs and
| either alleviating inequality or improving outcomes of all
| other students. If you want to do the latter, that requires
| it's own intervention.
|
| This basically apes the rhetoric of the right-wing on the
| part of social spending. "We can't afford it, it should be
| spent on other things". Same mentality.
| DAlperin wrote:
| A lot of this is a Google search away. Here's an article
| from vox that is well researched:
| https://www.vox.com/22841191/gifted-and-talented-
| education-p...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| This statement is contradictory
|
| >Now lets look at the second assumption, that the gifted
| programs provide a higher level of education. This is not true.
| What happens is that gifted programs get significantly higher
| funding than other schools and so the gifted programs can
| afford to give a good well rounded education, which is a good
| thing!
|
| You can't have it both ways. Is the education better or not?
| DAlperin wrote:
| Yeah I tripped on my words there a bit. My point is that the
| gifted programs have what is considered the necessities of a
| good well rounded education anywhere in the world. The fact
| that only the gifted programs have that is the flaw.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| This is where I think things are kind to vary wildly between
| different regions and districts so we have to be specific make
| sure we are comparing apples to apples. A gift program like you
| describe "by name only" isn't a gifted program at all, that
| doesn't mean "real" ones don't exist. It's like saying the
| funding for baseballs is not producing any baseball players
| meanwhile they only use the baseballs for playing tennis.
| DAlperin wrote:
| Sure but the issues faced here in New York are not unique,
| just particularly visible due to the size. The systemically
| racist systems exist everywhere and I would be willing to bet
| money that in the majority of districts and regions where
| gifted programs exist will have absurdly low percentages of
| brown and black students. And again, that is not because
| brown and black students aren't as smart. The systems of this
| country deals them a bad hand before they even know they're
| playing the game in the first place.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| How do you feel about gifted programs in school districts
| where black and brown student largely don't exist?
|
| OR for that matter, how about the inverse?
| coffeefirst wrote:
| This is actually a great example of the flaw in the debate. NYC
| has a unique and byzantine school system that's unrecognizable
| to basically all Americans outside of NYC.
|
| This means if you hear "eliminate this program because equity,"
| and you grew up in the midwest where the gifted program didn't
| function at all like you describe or require much funding at
| all, this sounds completely nonsensical because we're not
| talking about the same thing.
|
| I don't have an answer to this except that it's best discussed
| on a local case by case basis.
| wan23 wrote:
| Yeah, it's sad that there's no way to signal boost this.
| There's no way to convince people on this board to understand
| what is going on in New York. When you say "gifted program"
| people think that they are giving the smart kids opportunities
| that challenge them, but in New York it's not that at all. The
| screening process happens primarily before kids step into a
| classroom for the first time, and the divide between kids who
| get in and ones who don't is not innate intelligence, but
| rather preparation. The G&T program is the means by which the
| most motivated parents build a system within a system in which
| they can have good classes for their kids while neglecting the
| rest of the students, covered by a thin veneer of supposed
| meritocracy.
| twblalock wrote:
| > When we are calling for an end to "gifted" programs in New
| York, it is not because we "hate smart kids" but because we
| want resources to be evenly divided so that everyone can get a
| well funded well rounded education, not just the rich kids in
| gifted classes. This is not a single issue but is a larger
| component of an attempt to dismantle segregation in public
| schools.
|
| Ok, then that's what you should ask for. Ask for a more even
| distribution of resources.
|
| If you single out the elimination of a specific program as a
| proxy for what you really want, you shouldn't be surprised when
| the discourse fixates on your targeting that program --
| especially when it's a program for gifted students. By doing
| that you've made it very easy for your opponents to portray you
| as someone who would rather bring all students down to the same
| level than allow differences in ability to be cultivated.
| DAlperin wrote:
| > If you single out the elimination of a specific program as
| a proxy for what you really want,
|
| The problem is that in New York at least the gifted programs
| are the direct mechanism by which rich parents uphold the
| status quo of segregation. The gifted prgrams are not a
| proxy, they are a symptom. As I said elsewhere in this
| thread: we are looking for a fair allocation of resources to
| actually give schools the ability to meet every student where
| they are and to engage them wherever that is.
|
| The fact that gifted programs would be needed at all is a
| failure of our public school system. Every school should have
| the resources to adequately engage and educate every student
| regardless of their academic starting point.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Aren't poorer Chinese students the ones that dominate
| various gifted programs throughout the city? Rich parents
| send their kids to private daycares and schools like
| Collegiate.
|
| More funding doesn't solve the problem. If that were case,
| the whole country could have spent it's way out of special
| education. At an median of $24K per student, New York has
| plenty of funding. Kansas city once tried an unlimited
| funding model to disastrous results
| (https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-most-costly-
| educati...).
| joshuahaglund wrote:
| I was not in the gifted program but most of my friends and
| younger siblings were. I agree with this assessment. They had
| access to after school programs and opportunities that were not
| offered to the rest of us. Their classes gave a higher GPA for
| the same results in regular classes despite (in some cases)
| teaching basically the same thing as regular classes, from the
| same book. Regular classes were the same workload but less
| creativity, enthusiasm, and support.
|
| I later found out that test scores didn't entirely determine
| placement. Many of my peers were put in the gifted program
| after a parent advocated for them.
|
| So yes, I appreciate these efforts to equalize opportunity. I'd
| like that the lessons offered in gifted programs can be offered
| to all students
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this perspective.
|
| I was wondering why it seems to be such a big topic for the US.
| Where I'm from, gifted classes are for 1% of the kids and about
| socializing and keeping them engaged - their life outcomes are
| not statistically likely to be better than the "normal"
| children either way.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What is the point of gifted programs where you are from if
| they confer no benefits to the children engaged in them?
| Draiken wrote:
| I guess the problem is how the gifted programs are being
| executed rather than their existence then.
|
| When I read "gifted programs" I certainly would think that race
| or social background has zero influence on acceptance (even
| though they do influence kids access to education before
| getting there).
|
| Reading what you said it seems logical that removing these
| programs is overall a good thing. But the way I see it the
| discussion about supporting kids that are truly gifted
| shouldn't be dismissed.
|
| Maybe the solution would be to actually replace that program
| with something that's not perpetuating this segregation.
|
| Disclaimer: I don't live in the US, so take it with a big grain
| of salt :)
| DAlperin wrote:
| > But the way I see it the discussion about supporting kids
| that are truly gifted shouldn't be dismissed
|
| Sure! Yes! We are looking for a fair allocation of resources
| to actually give schools the ability to meet every student
| where they are and to engage them wherever that is. All
| teachers want to be able to meet kids where they are,
| wherever they are, but they don't have the resources to.
| havblue wrote:
| I'm not sure if I agree with the premise that the gifted
| students keep all the resources to themselves. If anything they
| should require less mentoring, less discipling and their
| parents should be more likely to be involved financially and in
| PTA.
| DAlperin wrote:
| > and their parents should be more likely to be involved
| financially and in PTA.
|
| And when gifted programs become screeners of affluence then
| there are going to be financially involved parents in the PTA
| which benefits the whole school. But if all of those parents
| end up at the "good" schools then those schools have
| considerably more funding (on top of the additional funding
| from the DOE) to allow them to actually educate their
| students. It is all a self reinforcing cycle that benefits a
| few and disadvantages many.
| havblue wrote:
| Do you think public schools are underfunded? Any chart I've
| seen has shown the opposite, if you compare our schools to
| other countries'.
| DAlperin wrote:
| Having been in public school for most of my life I can
| say unequivocally: yes. It is not uncommon for teachers
| to purchase books and classroom supplies out of pocket
| since there simply is not enough funding.
| kbelder wrote:
| I think it's a combination. School districts are funded
| exceedingly well in our country. School _classrooms_ are
| funded poorly.
|
| The money evaporates before it reaches them.
| havblue wrote:
| Most estimates I've seen of funding for New York students
| is $25k to $30k a year though. I would think that's more
| of a sign of incredible corruption and mismanagement and
| not that there isn't enough money to go around.
|
| To compare, Stuyvesant High School, the best in NYC, is
| $18k per student.
| DAlperin wrote:
| I would argue the point that Stuyvesant is the "best" but
| I don't disagree with your point. The problem is that a
| lot of the money ends up in the schools with the rich
| kids and for a lot a lot of students and schools they
| never see anywhere near that type of money.
| wan23 wrote:
| Stuyvesant, like most good schools, raises a good deal of
| private funds. That actually accounts for good deal of
| the difference in resources between schools.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Now you are talking not only about a redistribution of
| taxed dollars but charitable time and donations from
| parents that want to give them to their children to less
| advantaged children.
|
| Putting limits on how much a parent can help and support
| their child is a much more difficult ethical and political
| argument to make
| bluehackangels wrote:
| paulpauper wrote:
| The kids of elites and the rich will always have opportunities
| regardless of aptitude. Is it any surprise actor's kids tend to
| also have many opportunities in acting. Opposing gifted
| education, acceleration, etc. seems like another way of pulling
| up the ladder, even if it's framed as being well-intentioned.
| havblue wrote:
| I think a lot of the equity advocates fail to admit things just
| aren't working right now. So if you say you'll just pull your
| kids and send them private, they'll say that we need to force
| all kids into public schools. There's no middle ground.
| chitowneats wrote:
| Exactly. The people hurt most by this are lower income
| Americans, many of them immigrants, for whom these programs are
| a golden ticket out of poverty. Absolutely shameful what they
| are destroying here.
| slothtrop wrote:
| edit: misread, I agree
| yarg wrote:
| The fact that this case even needs to be made is insane.
|
| There's a degree of nobility in the ideal of "no child left
| behind" - but childhood potential is not democratically
| distributed.
|
| The smartest kids in schools should not be left to flounder on
| account of those who can't keep up.
| truthwhisperer wrote:
| [deleted]
| danans wrote:
| Moderators, please include a (2021) in the article title.
| frgtpsswrdlame wrote:
| >I agree that it is unacceptable to have eighth grade Algebra I
| classes and gifted education programs that disproportionately
| exclude Black and brown children. But if equity is the goal, we
| should be mandating that every eighth grader takes Algebra I--and
| then structure the entire pre-K to seventh grade student
| experience to ensure this is a legitimate possibility for every
| child. Since when does equity mean everyone gets nothing?
|
| I think this is the key. Obviously eliminating gifted programs
| and just tossing those resources into the wind is bad. But if
| instead we eliminated gifted programs, shifting those resources
| into remedial programs and then made the normal classes more
| difficult that seems like a solution that would satisfy almost
| everyone.
| PebblesRox wrote:
| 'If equity is the concern, we should also name the inequitable
| reality that parents with means will always find a way to ensure
| their children receive whatever out-of-school enrichment
| resources their children need. My greatest concern? The admirable
| but demonstrably false notion that school systems can fully
| implement an "all kids are gifted" framework that attempts to
| address the issue of eliminating the need for specialized gifted
| programming.'
|
| This sums up my concerns with detracking.
| beebee94kai wrote:
| I was a black child in the gifted program as a kid. At that age,
| there were other black kids too, it just depended on which school
| you came from. And I wasn't privileged, my classmates had way
| more money at the time and I could tell back then. But they were
| still my friends and treated me no different. I think its the
| parents that put the emphasis on it and use it as a status symbol
| for their kids. As a child, I had fun. But however, I do remember
| this one white girl, she was so stuck up and thought she was
| better than everyone else. I was in the 2nd grade and even then I
| could tell that. But I don't think it was because of the gifted
| program, she was just stuck up. But her mom was also a teacher,
| and her mom was super nice.
| kova12 wrote:
| > The case for expanding opportunities for brilliant Black and
| brown children
|
| Just black and brown, the rest of children are on their own,
| right?
| ken47 wrote:
| Equality of opportunity is impossible. Equality of outcome is an
| order of magnitude more impossible.
|
| Each of us was born into this world through a randomized process
| that was not created by humankind: the genes you were born with,
| the environment you were given before you could manage your own
| affairs, the accumulation of genetic mutations over the course of
| countless millennia that resulted in who you are today. This is
| the opportunity you were born with.
|
| To think that we can compensate for this random process with any
| level of precision is to wage war with nature, and I'd bet that
| nature will win.
|
| It is an admirable goal, and certainly we can take steps to
| reduce inequality of opportunity. But true equality of
| opportunity, or anything close to it, is unattainable in this
| universe.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Ironically, equality of outcome is actually easier to realize,
| because you can just drag everyone down to the same crappy
| level by state mandate and call it "equity". True equality of
| opportunity would require the admission that certain cultures
| glorify things which are not conducive to academic success. We
| accept that black culture values athletics (and that this
| creates outsized athletic success for black people), why can we
| not accept that that same culture would deprioritize academics
| over athletics?
| ken47 wrote:
| What you describe is not equality of outcome. If you impose
| some kind of lifestyle on different people, each of them will
| have different subjective experiences. Some will be
| completely content in state A whereas others will be
| extremely displeased. Are the outcomes equal? No. Simply the
| conditions.
| TimPC wrote:
| Gifted programs are extremely important and the width of American
| gifted programs is a virtue. Canada has a much higher standard
| for gifted, and in Ontario we generally admit roughly the top 1%
| of students (many American programs cater to the top 10%).
|
| There a number of large benefits to gifted, not the least of
| which is it changes the character of a program/school. If you are
| surrounded by bright students with nerdy academic interests it's
| suddenly acceptable to nerd out on things. This single fact may
| be more valuable to the development of the student than the
| entire program itself. Outside of gifted, schools have
| substantial challenges with creating environments where academic
| excellence is encouraged and rewarded not only by the schools
| grading system but also by social behaviour of peers. While
| bullying has gone down, and acceptability of geeky interests have
| improved in the past 30 years there is still nothing close to a
| gifted program from encouraging and accepting academic
| excellence.
|
| As someone who just barely missed the gifted cutoff, my schooling
| was much too easy and I basically never had to study for tests or
| exams. I ended up developing poor academic habits that ultimately
| hurt me when the difficulty got hard enough that intellectual
| horsepower needed to be combined with hard work. I think being
| challenged early and often would have changed this behaviour
| substantially. Even creating an environment where I wanted to be
| around other students enough to participate in more extra-
| curriculars could have helped. I worry that we are going to
| create a lot of bright but unmotivated students by offering years
| of programs that are too easy for them. There are consequences
| far beyond just having these students occasionally act out out of
| boredom and I think it's a very bad idea to create an educational
| culture that suggests bright people should be lazy. This is
| ultimately what the removal of gifted programs do because
| classroom teachers generally aren't given adequate prep time or
| other resources to properly offer enrichment. I've even known
| some principals who encouraged their teachers to not offer
| enrichment as it created problems in later grades when other
| teachers didn't offer similar enrichment and parents expected it.
| Supermancho wrote:
| > As someone who just barely missed the gifted cutoff, my
| schooling was much too easy and I basically never had to study
| for tests or exams. I ended up developing poor academic habits
| that ultimately hurt me when the difficulty got hard enough
| that intellectual horsepower needed to be combined with hard
| work.
|
| When you're little, you self-learn that if it's easy, it's not
| worth doing. If it's hard, it's probably impossible anyway.
| Your life is good and filled with fun. As you get older, when
| things get hard in school, you avoid or fail them with no
| strategies or habits around completing difficult schoolwork
| (which often feels as rewarding as easy schoolwork). Who would
| want to stop having fun? This is sometimes referred to as, the
| curse of the gifted.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Eliminating gifted programs is insane. It makes way more sense to
| concentrate education resources on the children who will benefit
| the most.
|
| Maybe more effort needs to go towards identifying these children
| earlier. A bright child is obvious, regardless of race.
| zjaffee wrote:
| Gifted programs, depending on where in the country they are
| located, are deeply related to equity. Things have gotten better
| over the past decade even without their total elimination, but
| for the majority of people who are of age to be posting here, if
| they were in a gifted program, it likely is because they had
| parents who helped them study for the tests to get in by spending
| money. Once in said program, fundraising through the PTA is
| easier done because the average student is better off financially
| than at the nearby public school.
|
| When I was growing up in NYC I was in a gifted program, and the
| average family was donating several thousand dollars a year per
| child. There were benefits such that if one child was in the
| program, other siblings automatically got in. This allowed us to
| have privately funded music program alongside privately funded
| teaching assistants in every classroom.
| lesgobrandon wrote:
| nscalf wrote:
| It's probably time to stop letting people in our society that are
| not building up systems terrorize the rest of us with scarcely
| hidden threats of slandering your name as a racist. There is
| nothing racist about having a merit based system within
| education. If the problem is that it is not entirely merit based,
| the solution comes from improving the on ramp, not from
| destroying the program. We should treat people who want to tear
| down systems like this as radicals trying to cause harm, not
| well-meaning individuals trying to build equality. We have been
| increasing equality for decades by building up systems, and to
| act like everything in existence now is racist and invalid is
| absurd.
|
| My experience with public school gifted programs was simple. The
| gifted program was not significantly better in what they taught,
| or how they taught it. The gifted programs only major advantage
| was that the people who were there wanted to be there, and worked
| to do well. This allowed us to move faster, and go deeper into
| topics. In non-gifted classes, students could not care less about
| what the class was doing that day and hated that they were
| trapped there. Some students definitely worked hard in non-gifted
| classes, but in my experience, that was the exception.
| jmull wrote:
| The general issue with merit-based systems is the definition of
| merit. In practice there are strong cultural aspects to it,
| favoring characteristics the dominant group likes. So merit-
| based programs end up conferring the most advantages to those
| best conforming to the ideals of the dominant culture,
| strengthening the dominant culture.
|
| It's debatable (at least) whether that's a good thing... if you
| consider the dominant culture racist (or bad in some other way)
| then it's natural to consider the merit-based programs that
| support that culture a form a systemic racism.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| > In practice there are strong cultural aspects to it
|
| Study, do your homework, behave? What "strong cultural
| aspect" do you see?
| mjburgess wrote:
| That's quite funny... do you really not see it?
|
| Study the topics we think are important in the ways we
| think are important behaving in the ways we think are
| important.
|
| No schooling in human history looks like the schooling
| you're describing, yet you treat is as some concequence of
| nature.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| English, math and history? Like liberal arts educations
| aren't THAT newfangled. I realize it's not sophist
| philosophy but maybe a bit more well rounded.
| nscalf wrote:
| No schooling looks like study, do your homework, and
| behave?
|
| So any selection of topics to study is unacceptable by
| your criteria. We live in a society, we have to have some
| form of education. In order to give students an
| education, we have to pick curriculum for them to learn.
| Some topics are not very important, so we shouldn't focus
| on teaching them.
|
| What system would you prefer to have in place? Or would
| you rather jut pick the topics that are taught?
| nscalf wrote:
| So your issues with this is merit in and of itself? Please
| explain a better system for outcomes than putting in the work
| and earning the outcome. What is the alternative? My point
| wasn't that merit based systems are inherently flawless, it's
| that it's the best type of system we use and we should focus
| on improvements, not blindly calling it racist. There have
| been cases of cultural bias in merit based systems (word
| problems that assume some knowledge), but those end up being
| fairly obvious and now that is taken into account when
| developing standardized tests.
|
| Even the use of the word racist here is nonsense. It implies
| malicious intent. For a test maker to not take into account
| every variation of culture is not racist, it's a negative
| side affect that can be improved on via iteration, not
| racist.
| jmull wrote:
| > Please explain a better system for outcomes than putting
| in the work and earning the outcome.
|
| You are not understanding my point. It comes down to the
| criteria used to judge whether or not you've "earned" the
| outcome. You're assuming these are fair and I'm pointing
| out they are actually significantly tilted to favoring the
| dominant group.
|
| Let's say my family runs the town and happens to be fast
| sprinters. The people of the town complain that they'd like
| some say in how the town is run and threaten chaos if they
| don't get it. We bow to pressure but we set the new rules,
| and say, "Fine. We'll have a town council to run things
| that anyone can be on. We'll hold a 100 yard-dash to
| determine the members." It's objective. It's based on
| merit. But it ensures my family says in control. If my
| family had been poor sprinters but strong long-distance
| runners we might have held a 20K race instead. Still
| objective. Still merit-based. You still "put in the work
| and earn the outcome". But it still ensures my family stays
| in control.
|
| > Even the use of the word racist here is nonsense. It
| implies malicious intent.
|
| It's probably useful to understand the distinction between
| "racism" and "systemic racism" here. Racism is the belief
| that one race is superior (or conversely, inferior) to
| another. That's someone's direct thought or intent.
| Systemic racism, on the other hand, is a system that hold
| one race down while holding another race above them.
| Systemic racism doesn't require anyone to have have any
| racist beliefs or intent. It's just a system that has a
| certain effect. However, once someone becomes aware of a
| system that advantages one race to the detriment of
| another, whether they decide to support it or look for a
| better way is where there is potential racism.
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| Math isn't racist. Whether you can pass an Algebra exam is
| not racist. If Asian kids who can barely read and write
| English can ace the exam, then so can poor minorities who
| were raised in the US. You can't claim word problems are
| suddenly racist when people who can barely read English are
| still acing them.
| jmull wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as
| gifted compared to white students with similar test scores.
|
| Anyway, I believe your observation about the relative
| success that Asian kids have in merit-based programs
| supports my contention that they are significantly cultural
| in nature, right?
| ceeplusplus wrote:
| If hard work and persistence at school is cultural, then
| sure. Can you describe exactly what you mean by cultural
| in nature? That 66% number can entirely come from
| differences in what each culture values - black culture
| values athletics and music whereas Asian culture values
| education. And you see that play out in the end product -
| black people are "overrepresented" in sports and music
| while Asians are "overrepresented" in academia and STEM.
| None of these differences make the merit program cultural
| in nature.
| jmull wrote:
| thegrimmest wrote:
| The thing is that _all behaviours_ carry cultural aspects to
| them. But clearly some behaviours lead to better economic
| outcomes than others right? Being sober, working hard,
| valuing education, cooperating well, these are cultural
| traits. This fact alone doesn 't mean it's wrong to prefer
| them.
| proc0 wrote:
| > programs end up conferring the most advantages to those
| best conforming to the ideals of the dominant culture
|
| The definition of merit for any given school, is transparent.
| School work is relatively straight forward, in that they are
| designed by the teachers for students to complete, and at the
| end of the year you can see how students were rewarded or
| punished with numbers. Also, not all merit-based systems are
| good, some may reward bad behavior etc., but the solution is
| not to get rid of merit, but rather adjust what you're
| selecting for.
|
| Also, I feel like "dominant culture" is an ambiguous term
| thrown around to justify the ideology of equity and how some
| groups of people are perpetually oppressed. Arguably the U.S.
| no longer has a dominant culture. There are many cities with
| neighborhoods where English isn't required (i.e. Chinatowns,
| Miami etc). This in turn affects the local schools and their
| curriculum, which means their merit-based system is for the
| most part under their control.
| mpalmer wrote:
| I always have the same question for people like this.
|
| What do you want the world to look like 10, 20, 50 years from
| now, and how would the changes you're pushing for making
| immediately get us all closer to that?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I want the world to look look like a place where superficial
| racial difference is no more importantly regarded than
| differences in hair and eye colour are today. It seems rather
| clear to me that _emphasizing_ these differences is taking us
| farther away from this world.
|
| How well-represented are blondes in executive leadership or
| government? Well, no one cares and no one is really counting,
| are they? That's the world I want to live in.
| [deleted]
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I have a question for people like you.
|
| Your comments sounds challenging to the parent comment. Why?
| The person is making pretty benign observations and opinions.
| Your comment seems to question their motives.
|
| We should all be asking the question you posed.
| mpalmer wrote:
| In the very first sentence, the parent comment refers to
| "people in our society". Those are the people I'm talking
| about.
| scarmig wrote:
| There are plenty of students (more than some) in non-gifted
| classes who genuinely want to learn and work hard.
|
| But there are two issues that make those classes terrible:
|
| 1) Teachers dedicate 80% of their instructional time to the 20%
| worst performers, and every incentive pushes them in that
| direction.
|
| 2) More than that, it only takes one or two kids with
| behavioral issues to reduce teachers' instructional time from
| near 100% to near 0%, and there's no way to move them out of
| regular classrooms to classrooms focused on their needs. So if
| you're a regular student in a cohort with a couple students
| with behavioral issues, you're pretty much screwed.
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm pretty nearly convinced that the primary signals derived
| from many private school interviews are "parents will pay the
| tuition" and "kid will not be a behavioral problem".
| bombcar wrote:
| Arguably the entire private school benefit can come down to
| "we can expel your kid".
| dottedmag wrote:
| This reminds me of a short story from Soviet times:
|
| Russia, 1917. A commotion on the street. A lady asks a servant to
| find out what's going on. The servant returns:
|
| - Revolution!
|
| - That's fabulous. My grandfather was a revolutionary too. What
| do they wish to achieve?
|
| - They want to make sure nobody is rich!
|
| - That's odd... My grandfather wanted to make sure nobody is
| poor.
|
| P.S: A sad irony is that Soviet education system was pretty good
| at maintaining gifted programs.
|
| (edit: formatting)
| TrackerFF wrote:
| But also pretty good at excluding for example Jews from certain
| prestigious schools, see: https://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
| spaced-out wrote:
| What revolution was the 1917 woman's grandfather apart of?
| somedude895 wrote:
| There was a peasant / worker revolt in 1905, which led to the
| Tsar implementing some democratic institutions:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1905_Russian_Revolution
| shp0ngle wrote:
| Will we get 2000 comments on this bad boy?
| shp0ngle wrote:
| 1000 comments easily, but is 2000 comments doable?
| burlesona wrote:
| One worldview is that progress is more important than equality,
| thus inequality is an acceptable side effect so long as life is
| genuinely improving for everyone. "Rising tide lifts all boats."
|
| Another is that equality is more important than progress. "Take
| from the rich and give to the poor."
|
| It seems mostly universal that we really want to raise the floor,
| not lower the ceiling. But so far history suggests that lowering
| the ceiling is easier.
|
| Since the decision to value progress or equality higher is
| ultimately a personal moral choice, I don't see this debate ever
| being resolved.
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| It will be resolved, if not by debate then by the hard hit of
| reality.
|
| Happily, we don't live in a "one world government". So, if a
| society insists too much on silly ideas, it will be left in the
| dust by others.
| guelo wrote:
| I have read so many of these types of arguments but why is it so
| hard to find the pro argument? Where are the proponent's
| rebuttals and counterarguments?
| dmeocary wrote:
| robonerd wrote:
| The gifted program helped me immensely in highschool, although
| the hour or two I actually spent in the gifted classroom was
| mostly wasted playing board games. However being in that program
| gave me the ability to switch classes/teachers whenever one
| wasn't working for me, usually because some teachers could
| maintain a civil classroom and other teachers let the students
| run wild and taught nothing. Because I was in the gifted program,
| the school permitted me to switch out of those classrooms into
| classes taught by competent/caring teachers.
|
| This suggests to me that the advantage of the program could be
| conferred to students who score low on IQ tests but are
| nevertheless behaved in class. A better gifted program would be
| one that differentiates on the basis of civility, not IQ. Of
| course, deferring measurement of IQ to some licensed
| professionals is easier than objectively quantifying a student's
| civility, so I don't know how this would actually be implemented.
| rockemsockem wrote:
| "Civility" sounds eerily close to a sort of social credit
| score. All it takes is one teacher to mark you down on civility
| and then you're ruined. This type of program sounds like it
| would lead to offering the best education and opportunities to
| the most docile and willing to accept authority.
|
| Not great attributes to select for in a world where we
| desperately need independent thinking and problem solving.
| robonerd wrote:
| As I said, I don't know how it should be implemented. I'm
| certainly not proposing the implementation of a social credit
| system. What I _am_ saying is that I 'm confident that the
| mechanism by which gifted programs help students is by
| allowing them to escape the poor classroom conditions of
| inadequate teachers and particularly, their misbehaving
| peers. Personally, I wasn't very good at learning when placed
| in classrooms with delinquient druggies who's idea of fun is
| to see how many times they can throw wadded paper at the back
| of my head.
| whatshisface wrote:
| If you let students attend any classes they wanted, I bet they
| would sort themselves appropriately. The rowdy kids won't
| _want_ to be in a classroom where everyone is quiet and the
| teacher is explaining the central limit theorem.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| but then the rowdy kids get left behind. You could argue that
| the rowdy kids are getting left behind either way.
| thorncorona wrote:
| That sounds like a parenting problem to me.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| I agree.
| anthonypasq wrote:
| a lot of rowdy kids simply do not have the underlying
| personality to succeed in a classroom setting and thats
| perfectly fine. we need to do a better job of sorting kids
| earlier like they do in Germany for example.
| toyg wrote:
| And even if that didn't happen, teachers can easily score
| "civility" themselves. They all know who the troublemakers
| are.
|
| The problem would become, though, that nobody really wants
| the rowdy crowd. Even the laziest teacher would nope out, and
| as much as self-sacrifice is probably more prevalent in the
| teaching class than in the general population, there are
| never enough willing to self-immolate for hopeless causes.
| Which, in turn, is why we get the Hollywood fantasies with
| exactly those heroic characters: because they're actually
| very rare.
| ARandumGuy wrote:
| That's basically what my high school did. Students had a lot
| of flexibility to choose the classes they wanted to take, and
| had a lot of leeway if they wanted to choose the advanced or
| standard version of a class. Combine this with a lot of
| optional classes, and students at my high school could tailor
| their class schedule to their own needs and wants.
|
| I recognize that my experience was no means the norm. My high
| school was large, well funded, and had a lot of resources at
| its disposal. And even then, there were absolutely students
| that weren't served well by the school. But its overall a
| system that seems to work pretty well, and I think its a
| model that more schools look at.
| robonerd wrote:
| I think this works well for college, but at the highschool
| level you have the complicating factor of parents being
| involved in the decision making. How would you account for
| the parents who think their little monster is a perfect angel
| and place their kid in the best classrooms, despite his
| desire and intention to misbehave?
| bombcar wrote:
| College shares the same benefit/tool that private schools
| have - they can kick a student out for misbehavior.
| athorax wrote:
| I had a similar experience, not necessarily with being able to
| move around to different teachers. In general, the teachers for
| the gifted classes were leagues ahead of the normal teachers.
| By having access to better teachers, I for sure received a
| better education than non-gifted students. And honestly, I can
| see why that is a problem. Ideally all teachers would be
| competent and caring, but as a society we tend to treat the
| position as a glorified baby sitter
| seydor wrote:
| the phrase 'luxury beliefs' is over- and wrongly- used , but it
| is useful in the sense that luxuries are one of the first things
| to dispense during crises.
| __abc wrote:
| I moved my family as the town I lived in did exactly this. They
| also removed support programs for those falling behind vs racing
| ahead. All under the equity banner.
|
| The New town we moved to is great. Oldest kid in accelerated
| programs, accelerating. Younger kid got the support she needed to
| catch up. :chefs_kiss:
|
| Taking a step back, I don't know how 'equity' got twisted into
| creating a lowering tide for all vs. a rising tide for all. So
| confusing.
| whatevenisthat wrote:
| matt321 wrote:
| If certain groups of students are excluded because of their
| ethnicity, that is wrong and should be condemned. If certain
| groups are excluded because they did not have a lifestyle that
| nurtured their talent and therefore do not meet the requirements
| to join, their lifestyle needs to be structed differently so that
| then next time around they do meet the requirements. In the
| meantime, holding Asian students back is not going to solve the
| problem of other student having parents who don't recognize the
| importance of their education.
| nikolay wrote:
| When people talk about Communism, they imagine everybody being
| equally rich. Well, the reality showed us that Communism can only
| make people equally poor and miserable. Similarly, liberalism
| tries to make everybody equally stupid, not equally smart! But,
| as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions!
|
| As a father of a decently-gifted son who gets bored to death at
| school and who's bombarded with brainless homework to stay "out
| of trouble" when not in school, I can tell the California
| education is the worst I can imagine in a civilized country!
| nova22033 wrote:
| If equity is the goal, schools should spend some $$ providing
| extra tutoring for kids when they are younger..especially for
| kids with potential. But we can't have that because that may
| require a little more tax $.
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are so many topics that are hard to talk about nowadays
| without getting into politics but politics and structural
| inequality are at the core of this.
|
| For the benefit of non-US readers, know that how the US funds
| public education (K-12) is rather unique. It's done through
| property taxes essentially. Depending on your state and city your
| property taxes can vary a lot with the same value property.
|
| But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax
| revenue and thus better schools. This can be a vicious cycle of
| improving property values by having better schools and thus
| generating more tax revenue and so on. I say "vicious" because it
| is absolutely exclusionary to lower-income people who cannot
| possibly afford to live in these areas. And that's _by design_.
|
| Twenty years ago Bush (43) passed the No Child Left Behind Act,
| which many dubbed the No Child Gets Ahead Act. A lot of this was
| also in the name of "equity".
|
| I know people who send their children to public schools in NYC.
| NYC seems to be in the mood to eliminate these "gifted" programs
| because of "equity" too. The result? Those who can afford to send
| their children to private schools will. For those who are left,
| there are no more gifted programs.
|
| How does that help anyone?
| car_analogy wrote:
| > how the US funds public education (K-12) is rather unique.
| It's done through property taxes essentially. Depending on your
| state and city your property taxes can vary a lot with the same
| value property. But what this means is the wealthier localities
| have more tax revenue and thus better schools.
|
| This is an oft repeated myth. In addition to property taxes,
| school funding is supplemented by state and federal budgets, in
| inverse proportion to property taxes, so that racial
| differences in per-pupil funding are negligible:
|
| _on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil
| expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by
| $229.53 and $126.15, respectively_ -
| https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...
|
| That's a ~$200 difference compared to $6000 per pupil, the 4th
| highest in the world: https://www.nationmaster.com/country-
| info/stats/Education/Sp...
| scythe wrote:
| In order to determine how school funding affects student
| outcomes, you probably want to consider the funding per pupil
| at equivalent CPI. $5k goes a lot further in Elko, Nevada
| than it does in San Francisco.
| raybb wrote:
| I don't have time to do it now. But it would be great to
| incorporate this info into the related wikipedia page https:/
| /en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_school_funding_in_the_U...
| twistedpair wrote:
| I'm not sure where the difference comes from, but it's there.
|
| When I visit some public high schools in suburban CT, they
| look nicer than my college campus.
|
| When I visit public schools in rural VA, they're a cluster of
| trailers and dilapidated structures that don't even have air
| conditioning, let less modern amenities.
|
| So, maybe it's the taxes, or the highly active parents, or
| donations, but there's a visible difference, more than "$200"
| per student. Of course, how far and effective each dollar is
| WRT to outcomes is a different matter.
| willcipriano wrote:
| I've taken a close look at the numbers for individual schools
| in my tri-state area, (NY, NJ, PA) and from my estimate it
| seems that lower performing schools far and away have the
| highest per student budgets.
| [deleted]
| TheMagicHorsey wrote:
| Yeah this is a fact. I moved from SF to a suburb of
| Sacramento. Our SF school was absolutely horrible (and the
| main reason we moved). Our suburban school has a much
| smaller per-student budget but the student body is mainly
| from families where the parents are skilled tradesmen,
| white collar workers (mainly Asian or Indian), and state
| government workers. These families instill very different
| values in their kids than we saw in San Francisco. Although
| the suburb is highly diverse, 35% White, 30% Asian, 20%
| Hispanic, 15% Black, the student body is excellent. The
| high school here regularly sends a couple dozen seniors to
| Ivy League schools, and another 30-40 students to the UC
| System.
|
| And though they have few resources and a bad football team,
| the students have a chess club, robotics club, various
| study groups and college prep groups.
|
| There is also a big difference in what the kids here are
| focused on. In SF there was so much chatter about politics,
| protests, gender identity, and sexuality. Out here kids
| just seem to be focused on studying and after school
| activities.
|
| I much prefer this environment
| zozbot234 wrote:
| This comment is such peak HN. Maybe the people in SF
| don't _care_ about these decadent bourgeois values that
| are so easily espoused, and would rather do their
| rightful part in fighting structures of oppression and
| injustice!
| tristor wrote:
| Let me translate:
|
| > decadent bourgeois values
|
| Values that produce measurably better life outcomes for
| participants.
|
| > would rather do their rightful part
|
| Refusing to participate thereby harming their own future
| and the community surrounding them. Or worse, actively
| encouraging others to reject values aligned with success.
|
| > fighting structures of oppression and injustice
|
| Fighting the most meritocratic system of governance we've
| had thus far in human history, whereby following values
| of success leads to success, whether you're born here or
| elsewhere, and whatever your color, creed, or gender.
|
| I am not sure if you're being serious, but if you are,
| you should know advocating for crab bucket mentality does
| nothing to help the impoverished.
| danans wrote:
| It is much more expensive to teach and support the children
| at lower performing schools than it is at higher performing
| schools. Lower performing schools are also providing
| significant front line social support services for the
| communities they serve, including food, trauma counseling,
| sometimes medical intervention, extreme behavior
| management. None of that is cheap.
|
| Students/families at higher performing schools have far
| lower need for support systems.
| ModernMech wrote:
| Also you tend to find daycare programs for teenage
| mothers at poorer schools. Rich parents get their
| children abortions, while poor children give birth to
| their babies.
| honkdaddy wrote:
| This is an oft-repeated myth, and in fact the opposite is
| true.
|
| "there are substantial disparities in abortion rates in
| the United States, with low-income women and women of
| color having higher rates than affluent and White women"
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780732/
| SgtBastard wrote:
| If the incidence rate of teenage pregnancy amongst low-
| income women is significantly higher, then women amongst
| this group can simultaneously have more abortions AND be
| teenaged mothers completing schooling vs other groups.
| brewdad wrote:
| The lower performing schools also tend to be older and
| require more maintenance and repairs than newer schools
| in wealthier areas. Not all of that additional per-pupil
| funding makes it to the classroom.
| car_analogy wrote:
| The study I linked (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full
| /10.1177/23328584198724...) addresses this in table 1,
| page 8. Surprisingly, Black pupils get on average $10
| less "infrastructure" expenditures, and $150 more
| "instructional" expenditures compared to White. The table
| breaks the spending down into 5 different categories, but
| in all of them, the differences are negligible. The $150
| instructional expenditure difference is the largest.
| danans wrote:
| > The lower performing schools also tend to be older and
| require more maintenance and repairs than newer schools
| in wealthier areas.
|
| Sure, that's a factor too, but I'd still call it a social
| service issue since it ultimately results from the
| historical disinvestment in the communities that today
| have low performing schools.
|
| There are reasons that the roofs didn't get repaired and
| the lead pipes didn't get replaced in those schools:
| because middle income people took their lives,
| businesses, and tax dollars out of those communities
| starting in the late 1960s, both by migrating to newly
| built suburbs, and also by ensuring their tax dollars
| never went toward the communities they left.
|
| Look up the opposition to "Robin Hood" school funding
| from the 80s and 90s. Where I grew up it was largely
| about keeping suburban tax dollars out of inner-city
| school districts.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Except that this whole movement is now reversing. These
| communities are starting to gentrify and grow rich - to
| the horror of progressive activists everywhere! Damned if
| you do, damned if you don't. You just can't win!
| 6502nerdface wrote:
| A difference in maintenance costs is not necessarily a
| consequence of disinvestment... it could simply be that
| lower performing schools are more likely to be urban, and
| in urban areas everything related to the construction and
| maintenance of buildings, whether old or new, is more
| expensive (not to mention admin salaries, etc.). Or it
| could be that plus what you say for a double wammy at
| some schools. I'm just brainstorming reasonable seeming
| hypotheses that you could imagine trying to rule out with
| the right dataset.
| 6502nerdface wrote:
| I wonder if another factor could be:
|
| - in higher performing schools, parents fund a number
| expenses directly through a very active PTA, so those
| expenses don't show up in the school's official spending
| per pupil, while
|
| - at lower performing schools with less active and more
| impoverished PTAs, those same expenses must be funded by
| school budgets, driving up their official per-pupil
| spending.
| mturmon wrote:
| Absolutely. Case in point, the La Canada (LA area)
| Educational Foundation --
| https://lcfef.org/endowment/our-story/
| danans wrote:
| Absolutely, but the PTA at the higher performing (higher
| income) school pays for additional educational programs,
| like art, second language, science, etc. This amount is
| referred to in the PTA language as "the gap" in public
| funding for basics.
|
| At the low performing school, the extra public funds
| received are often paying for support staff for serious
| social issues. There is little budget for the "nice to
| haves", and even when there is, the school staff has it's
| hands full managing the basics, so it's not always
| effectively utilized.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > It is much more expensive to teach and support the
| children at lower performing schools
|
| Blame education schools and their failing "every student
| can simply learn their math on their own!" approach.
| Total self-serving garbage, devised to cater to the ego
| of naive prospective teachers and their expectation of
| not doing any real _teaching_ work.
| corrral wrote:
| In my city, the worst schools tend to pay a good 20% better
| than the best ones, for teachers. They get _lots_ of
| federal and state aid.
|
| People still usually prefer not to work at them, if they
| have options, because the work environment is terrible.
| kube-system wrote:
| You have to pay more to hire people to do harder jobs.
| corrral wrote:
| Absolutely--my point is that these schools aren't behind
| the "good" ones, funding-wise, and even _pay better_.
|
| Past a certain not-that-high point, giving schools more
| money doesn't help them much.
|
| There's probably some astronomically-high level of
| funding that would help, past some tipping point, by
| enabling things like single-digit class sizes, tons of
| social workers and counselors, extensive home-outreach
| programs, et c., to the point that the staff-to-student
| ratio is 1:5 or better, but AFAIK no-one's tried that in
| public schools (that's not _too_ far off from how lots of
| elite private schools, operate, though, except that they
| don 't need the army of social workers or home-outreach
| or any of that)
| [deleted]
| bsuvc wrote:
| Why is the work environment terrible?
| zdragnar wrote:
| This is correlated with poverty, not race, per se- it's
| all about the culture of the students. A relative of a
| friend is a teacher in rural Iowa, an almost all white
| school. She teaches young students who have no concept of
| respect for authority or value in learning- getting
| cussed out by a kindergartener (ages 4-5) is not exactly
| an unusual thing she has to deal with.
|
| As kids get older, they fall into drugs and / or have
| kids of their own and / or are told they'll never get
| into higher education and / or they don't need higher
| education, they'll just get a low skill job like everyone
| else in town.
|
| Education for the sake of education really isn't strongly
| valued by a lot of parents, who have their own struggles
| and can't really help with homework much past middle
| school.
|
| Compare all of this with teaching in an area that is more
| middle or upper class- kids are usually more eager to
| learn, have fewer discipline problems, and as they get
| older many know they need to try so they can get into a
| community college or university.
| eggy wrote:
| Yes, poverty not race. I grew up below the poverty line
| in a bad neighborhood in Brooklyn. My neighborhood was
| the background in Hubert Selby Jr.'s, "Last Exit to
| Brooklyn". My friends were Irish, Italian, Dominican, and
| Puerto Rican mainly. There were gangs, drugs, violence,
| throughout my whole childhood in and outside of my
| family. My parents never finished high school. All of my
| inner core of friends did OK, because their parents
| instilled values in them regardless of all the crap
| around. BTW, without a phone, a TV in the early years,
| and of course decades before the internet, we were happy
| in our bubble. I didn't realize how bad it was until I
| started hopping on trains with my friends to NYC on the
| subway at 10 and 11 without our parents, and then the
| world popped open when I went to high school in NYC. Even
| my friend Junior's sister, who got pregnant at age 14,
| managed to finish high school there, and go on to college
| because of a two-parent household and grandma upstairs. I
| became an honor student, got accepted to major
| universities, and have been successful considering where
| I started. To me a lot is the negativity found
| everywhere. I still have friends from the baby carriage,
| and it just seems a lot of excuses are made when kids
| should be encouraged to rise up and try their best given
| the circumstances. I look at the preface of a book I
| still have, "The Boy Engineer: The Study of Engineering
| from Prehistoric Times to the Present (A Popular
| Mechanics Book Series)" (no gender wars please - the book
| is from the 50s!), and knowledge is seen as the key to
| the universe and doing anything you can imagine. I looked
| at my daughter's high school chemistry text and there is
| so much about the doomed earth, planet, life, which is OK
| to an extent given some real world issues, however, it
| dominates the narrative. Science is seen as limited and a
| point of view, not the wondrous thing that brought awe to
| me when I looked at the stars on my rooftop with
| binoculars with my Mom when I was 8 or 9. I shouldn't
| mention hearing gunshots one night with her on the roof,
| but I will for a bit of darkness for the doom-and-gloom
| types!
|
| PS: I think putting education on such a high pedestal has
| demeaned the integrity and honor of working with your
| hands. I also believe it was a panacea given to the poor
| as a carrot, and is not the only way out of poverty. Hard
| work counts!
| _-david-_ wrote:
| Not who you were replying to, but my grandmother was a
| teacher and specifically wanted to work in one of these
| schools to try to help the students in bad situations.
| She stopped teaching a while ago, but much of this likely
| still applies.
|
| Basically, the students frequently don't do their
| homework, students would just not show up to class or
| outright just drop out, students misbehave more
| frequently (including violent behavior), parents care
| less (or at least act like it). The schools also tend to
| be in more dangerous areas. They had to lock the
| teachers' cars in a special lot to prevent vandalism and
| theft.
|
| Basically it was demoralizing and dangerous.
| corrral wrote:
| IMO the central problem with US schools _isn 't the
| schools_. It's our broken policing and justice system,
| our bad social safety net, and our poor worker
| protection, among other things like the ongoing
| consequences of racist city planning. We will _never_
| move the needle very much, on school quality, by focusing
| on schools.
| dgfitz wrote:
| My pet theory that 2-parent homes make a world of
| difference. Maybe if there was reliable male birth
| control there wouldn't be so many single moms working 3
| jobs because dad left and the children don't have a
| second parental role model, or even a first because they
| never see mom.
| googlryas wrote:
| Condoms are a very reliable form of male birth control.
| And, it may be hard to understand, but there are certain
| fairly popular subcultures where men brag about how many
| different kids they have with different women.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Why would that be hard to understand?
| googlryas wrote:
| Because mainstream culture generally looks down upon
| "deadbeat dads" and doesn't celebrate impregnating
| multiple women?
|
| Certainly, the first time someone told me they had 12
| kids through 8 women, with more kids on the way, I was
| completely shocked. Even more shocked when I realized he
| was bragging about his masculinity, not lamenting "What
| have I done?!"
| dgfitz wrote:
| Oh, I guess it's me then, I wasn't surprised at all when
| I encountered this.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's a factor among many. The other POV is that single
| parenthood matters less than you might expect, because
| others in the broader family or community can contribute
| to raising those kids. Which might actually work if you
| _had_ that community orientation in the first place!
| dgfitz wrote:
| At least one resource disagrees [1]
|
| > According to Amato's research, sociologists warn that
| many children of single parents are born into undesirable
| circumstances. These children have a higher likelihood of
| being poor, committing crimes or using drugs. Many
| sociologists agree that childhood's adverse effects
| outlive youth.
|
| [1] https://www.everydayhealth.com/kids-health/what-are-
| effects-...
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I'm not sure the broken policing and justice system
| account for a culture which glorifies violence, rejects
| education, promotes drug use, and encourages
| irresponsible procreation. In fact these things are
| relatively recent changes in poor urban culture, this
| isn't the mindset poor people had in the 50's (when
| policing and justice were much, much worse).
|
| I'm not saying that these things are inherently "wrong"
| (save the violence), only that they can't be expected to
| produce the same outcomes as cultures which highly value
| education, nuclear family, sobriety, and hard work. This
| holds true no matter how much money you add. Any attempt
| to equalize outcomes without confronting this core reason
| is doomed.
| corrral wrote:
| It doesn't create a poor educational culture on its own,
| but excessive incarceration leads to more single-parent
| (even zero-parent, in a sense--think: living with
| aunts/uncles, grandparents, et c.) families, worse job
| opportunities, et c, while ineffectiveness at actually
| curbing crime (despite our high incarceration rate)
| leaves lots of these kinds of areas wracked with
| criminality and violence _on top of_ the damage that our
| policing and punishment approaches do.
|
| That and the school-to-prison pipeline are contributing
| to the overall problem of--at the heart of this issue--
| multi-generational, persistent slums. The justice system
| is _far_ from the only problem, which is why I listed
| others and left things open-ended to account for the huge
| list of other things that contribute, but it 's part of
| it. However, I don't think much can be done about it by
| addressing _only_ issues with the justice system, absent
| broader social reforms.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Single parent households are perfectly capable of raising
| children who value education, cooperation, sobriety and
| non-violence. I would know, I grew up in one, as did many
| of my peers. The key difference was and continues to be
| _culture_. The question is who is _accountable_ for
| culture? Is it "society", or the individuals who
| perpetuate that culture in their own households?
| corrral wrote:
| It can both be true that a particular single-parent
| household is very successful, and that if you study an
| entire population and control other variables, single-
| parent households are less successful than two-parent
| households.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| Yes it can, but it doesn't follow that these studies are
| justification for removing accountability from
| individuals, their households, culture, and practices.
| Nor does it follow that the solutions are not found in
| changes to individual behaviour.
| corrral wrote:
| > but it doesn't follow that these studies are
| justification for removing accountability from
| individuals, their households, culture, and practices.
|
| Cool. I never called for that, so we're not disagreeing.
|
| > Nor does it follow that the solutions are not found in
| changes to individual behaviour.
|
| This is one of those things that's both true and useless.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| I don't think you are correct. Parents not caring is
| probably one of the biggest issues.
|
| My grandmother would call a student's parents on their
| home and work numbers multiple times over multiple weeks.
| She would even provide her home number and say they could
| call anytime, day or night.
|
| Do you think she frequently got calls back? If you can't
| even take 20 minutes to call your kid's teacher then you
| don't care about getting your kid out of an area with bad
| policing and justice system, racism and bad jobs.
| raincom wrote:
| Good teachers prefer to work at schools where students
| are more responsive. Usually, this happens when parents
| of students involve in kids' education.
| [deleted]
| corrral wrote:
| Ever had a 3rd grader threaten to stab you, and look like
| they _really_ mean it? A second grader call you the
| c-word? That kind of thing happening basically every day,
| often multiple times a day?
|
| Credible threats of gang violence on a regular basis.
| School-wide lockdowns with some regularity due to threats
| of violence, or violence that has actually occurred.
| Admin with extremely limited options to deal with any of
| this, and having to triage their discipline pretty hard,
| plus having little to no support from home to back any of
| it up (this is why the stuff in the first paragraph
| happens constantly--no time or community/parental
| willpower to deal with it, given the rest of what's going
| on). Watching the kids suffering from the same shit day
| after day, plus all the usually-awful stuff they have
| going on at home, and not being able to do much about it.
| Seeing kids die or end up in the hospital with alarming
| regularity. Distressingly young kids plainly high or
| drunk in class.
|
| Not many people can do that without burning out or giving
| up and half-assing everything, _very_ quickly.
| ModernMech wrote:
| You didn't even get to the covid restrictions, and
| parents calling teachers anti-American and traitors and
| Nazis for supporting mask and vaccine mandates. Teachers
| were getting death threats after being told they were
| "essential workers" for a year. Meanwhile they have to
| use their own funds to buy their own body armor, because
| they have to buy that along with pencils and paper now.
| corrral wrote:
| Heh, I omitted that because most of that stuff happens
| often-enough in our _good_ districts.
|
| And yeah, it's a red state. Even the blue areas are red
| enough to get plenty of obnoxious assholes harassing
| teachers.
|
| [EDIT] Downvoters: go talk to some teachers about this
| topic. I'll wait. It may be a while, because they'll have
| a lot to say.
| nsxwolf wrote:
| Teachers are not always 100% sympathetic. When courts in
| Illinois shot down school mask mandates, teachers at a
| high school near me retaliated by sequestering unmasked
| students in a room and not teaching them.
| bsuvc wrote:
| Hmm, I can't imagine having to deal with those things.
| People don't act like that where I live.
| [deleted]
| DougN7 wrote:
| I've recently become friends with someone from the inner
| city "hood". It's just unbelievable. Like someone below
| said, it's not about race as much as poverty. The sad
| thing from what I've seen is the culture is self-
| destructive. Instead of trying to help each other up and
| out, many pull others back down (economically, socially,
| etc). I used to naively think I had answers, but after
| seeing the breath and depth of the problem I have no idea
| what would help.
| cupofpython wrote:
| Lowkey I think the current education system has evolved
| from communities that allowed teachers to beat their kids
| to teach obedience. that obedience was passed down
| through generations in those communities establishing a
| culture of obedience for teachers. The current system,
| although non-violent, is still heavily leveraging the
| culture of obedience from students. when a kid is
| disobedient, usually the above mentioned communities
| threaten to move the kid into an environment where the
| obedience culture is _even more_ strict as a result of
| _even more_ violent punishment historically. Early days
| Public school teachers might lightly smack you with a
| ruler, early catholic school teachers might spank you,
| and early military school teachers might straight up beat
| the shit out of you.
|
| So I think by extending the current system to areas in
| poverty that do not have an established culture of
| obedience means we have to either change the system or
| start beating kids again imo. I vote for the former,
| obviously.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The crab mentality goes hand-in-hand with widespread
| poverty and lack of community development. In schooling
| it shows up as bullying those who are most academically
| successful, for being "nerds" or "acting white".
| corrral wrote:
| Me neither, because I don't live in the part of town ~10
| miles away where this is the case.
|
| Why don't I live there, even though the location would be
| more convenient and has far more nearby parks and
| businesses, the housing is dirt-cheap, they have better
| access to public transit than we do, the area's more
| walkable/bike-able, et c? The schools are bad.
|
| Why are the schools bad? Because people like me (that is,
| people whose kids have a low-stress life outside of
| school) won't move there. Digging out of that hole is
| nearly impossible. It amounts to "gentrify things all to
| hell" (which just shifts the problem around rather than
| actually solving it) or "fix huge social and economic
| problems the US has".
|
| In either case, you can't do much about it by focusing on
| the schools themselves.
| lazide wrote:
| Sounds like you're enabling some structural inequality,
| or something.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Consider yourself lucky.
|
| Even worse, imagine being a child growing up in that
| environment. Actual fistfights were happening every few
| hours in school where I grew up.
| panda88888 wrote:
| From what I've heard one of the biggest reason is
| students and parents who don't care about education at
| all, who would actively disrupt others from learning and
| the teacher from teaching.
| [deleted]
| eli wrote:
| Sure. Title 1 schools, for example, get extra federal
| funding. They also have 40+% of students living in poverty.
| Some of that money goes to buy breakfast for kids who
| otherwise wouldn't have food to eat in the morning.
| 300bps wrote:
| That $6,000 per student figure is from 1998 according to the
| link you provided.
|
| Today, the crappy school district near me pays $15,900 per
| student and the good school district near me pays $19,800 per
| student.
| temp8964 wrote:
| If you give a business $15,900 per student ($1.59million
| per 100 students), they can run much better than most
| public schools, especially than those public schools in
| crappy school districts.
| bluescrn wrote:
| Maybe in a competitive environment a private business
| could do better. But if you're creating a local private
| monopoly, you're just pouring a large chunk of the
| funding into the pockets of overpaid bosses or
| shareholders
| Retric wrote:
| Private schools don't significantly outperform public
| schools in the US when adjusted for the differences in
| student populations.
|
| There are some world class private schools in the US and
| some terrible private schools it's really a mixed bag,
| just like public schools.
| temp8964 wrote:
| There's simply no private schools in poor districts to
| serve poor families. I am not sure how do you run the
| comparison.
| Retric wrote:
| Boarding schools exist, as do affluent areas next to poor
| ones.
|
| Anyway, there are several ways to compare systems, some
| private schools operate in whole or in part on a lottery
| system so you can track students who do or don't get in.
| But the most common method is to model parent education
| and income as a predictor of performance and then compare
| outcomes.
|
| As you suggest poor students are underrepresented in
| private schools, but some do get in. The important thing
| to remember is a student who received a scholarship isn't
| representative of the general population.
| wolfgangK wrote:
| The dirty secret of education is that no school
| outperform nor underperform much other schools when
| adjusting for differences in student populations :
|
| https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/why-selection-bias-
| is-t...
| nkrisc wrote:
| Why? The point of a public school is that they serve the
| public good, not shareholder value. The issue isn't that
| public schools are a money pit, the issue is whether
| they're educating students.
|
| A business will seek a profit. That should not be a
| factor at all in public education. The costs of public
| education should certainly be considered, especially the
| question of how much is spent and the quality of the
| education. That should always be under careful review.
| However the purpose of public education is to spend our
| collective money educating the populace. It should be a
| cost, it shouldn't make money. It's not meant to, it's
| meant to educate.
| lazide wrote:
| Many public schools are run as an administrative jobs
| program, not as a public good.
|
| Well, they do if public good is as a daycare to let the
| parents work. Which is something.
| nkrisc wrote:
| That's a separate problem, one that is not solved by
| making public education private.
| lazide wrote:
| Eh, private schools right now have the parents as the
| customers. The parents generally have their incentives
| oriented towards well educated, well behaving kids and
| want it for not be too expensive. And can judge quality
| and make individual purchasing decisions, and have no
| incentive to waste funds.
|
| If the public starts paying (blindly!) for it, the
| incentives change. Private schools would become more like
| private prisons probably, and we'd be back where we
| started.
| swatcoder wrote:
| How big is the business and how is it structured? How
| much administration is local and how much transparency
| into operations is given to the community?
|
| Does it have profit responsibilities that need to be
| extracted from the funding, or is it a non-profit? In
| either case, does it receive funding from other sources
| besides the school's own community? What do those sources
| of funding expect for their contributions?
|
| How big is the moat that allows or prevents competion
| from forming, and how healthy are the current forces of
| competition? Are there regulations that ensure market
| efficiency? Who's responsible for those regulations?
|
| Does it have a formal responsibility to operate a school
| even when it can no longer do so profitably? Or might
| communities just be abandoned without any school at all
| until a new vision is capitalized?
| kube-system wrote:
| They achieve this primarily because they often exclude
| low performing students... either directly or indirectly.
| arcticbull wrote:
| If that's true why do private prisons have such higher
| recidivism rates? This is simply false.
|
| > Mamun et al. (2020) report on studies that demonstrate
| that recidivism rates in private prisons are between
| 16.7% (Spivak & Sharp, 2008) and 22% (Duwe & Clark, 2013)
| higher when compared to public prisons. [1]
|
| When providing services, private companies do worse
| because their charter is not to provide services per se,
| it's to make money. These are antithetical in the world
| of social services.
|
| Private enterprise isn't a solution to every problem.
| It's a solution to a _lot_ problems. However police,
| fire, healthcare, education, regulation and so on are
| services in the public interest and should be provided
| therefore be provided by the public.
|
| [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.20
| 21.6721...
| atestu wrote:
| The incentives are misaligned. Private prisons make more
| money if people go back to prison...!
| scythe wrote:
| Private schools (assuming consolidation, which is common)
| make more money if students need continuing adult
| education.
| arcticbull wrote:
| This is true with all social services. The goal of a
| school is to educate. The incentive of a private school
| is to make money.
| temp8964 wrote:
| I am not sure how you can generalize from prisons to
| schools. Because private prisons are bad, so private
| schools are bad?
| arcticbull wrote:
| All sorts of past failed experiments:
|
| - Private fire departments that used to show up at your
| house and demand payment in order to put the fire out,
| otherwise they'd just let your house burn to the ground.
| In Rome, they'd literally show up at your house, and buy
| it from you for pennies on the dollar before putting it
| out.
|
| - Private prisons fail the people in the way I've
| described.
|
| - Private healthcare fails Americans each and every day.
| 45,000 Americans die each year due to lack of access to
| care. One person dies every 12 minutes. Their goal is to
| deny you cover because each treatment they avoid paying
| for pads their bottom line and benefits their
| shareholders. It costs twice as much per capita as
| Canada, 60% as much as Norway - and yet fails to cover
| everyone and yields worse outcomes.
|
| The generalization is simple: when your task is to
| provide _services_ to the public, then profit must be
| secondary. In private enterprise, profit is _primary_.
| You fail the people when you provide core social services
| via private enterprise because you have fundamentally
| failed to align incentives.
|
| Private social services are designed to fail the people.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > Private fire departments
|
| These are still definitely a thing. Though I expect they
| must be regulated so we don't end up in a Rome-style
| situation.
|
| Edit: Found it. If you're in an area with something like
| Rural Metro, they put out the fire either way. If you
| don't have an annual membership with them, then they will
| invoice you. Nobody offering to buy your home for pennies
| on the dollar or standing around waiting for your credit
| card to clear before hosing down the flames.
| arcticbull wrote:
| My understanding is there are very few, and each dollar
| profiteered off this basic service is not spent improving
| the fire department. Do you have statistics on this?
| corrral wrote:
| Difficulty: lots of private schools still manage to be
| pretty bad, while charging those kinds of rates.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Private school tuitions are much lower than public school
| funding.
| corrral wrote:
| Your survey of private schools is sorely lacking.
|
| Schools that charge under $15k/yr are mostly low-quality
| religious schools, with a few rare gems (mostly from the
| Catholics)
|
| Full tuition at schools that people mean when they talk
| about how good private schools are, starts around $40k on
| the coasts (day rates, not boarding), and $18-20k at
| lesser-but-still- _sometimes_ -decent schools in less-
| affluent areas.
|
| [EDIT] Of course, per-pupil spending and tuition aren't
| entirely connected--on the one hand, many students don't
| pay the full rate (much like with private colleges) but
| on the other, the better private schools usually have
| other sources of funding of various sorts. Endowments,
| scholarship funds, _lots_ of supplemental and sometimes
| quite-large donations from parents and alumni for various
| purposes.
| abirch wrote:
| > This is an oft repeated myth. In addition to property
| taxes, school funding is supplemented by state and federal
| budgets, in inverse proportion to property taxes, so that
| racial differences in per-pupil funding are negligible:
|
| This is not my experience. I chose a more expensive house
| with higher taxes because the schools are better. They are
| better funded than those in the surrounding areas. Sure the
| Federal Government gives free meals but my kids' books and
| chromebooks are always nice and new.
| jeffy90 wrote:
| I think sometimes we are quick to discount the affect that
| home life has on children's school performance. Part of the
| reason school's are better in wealthy areas is because
| children in wealthy areas tend to have better home life
| than children in poor areas.
| abirch wrote:
| What about differences in teacher salary? All of my kids'
| teachers have been superb. I agree with you that the
| outcomes of wealthy areas would be better due to many
| reasons outside of schools.
| logifail wrote:
| > my kids' books and chromebooks are always nice and new
|
| There's plenty of evidence that parental attitudes are a
| big factor:
|
| "Middle-class pupils do better because parents and schools
| put more effort into their education, according to a study
| [..] factors studied were the parents' interest in their
| children's education, measured by, for example, whether
| they read to their children or attended meetings with
| teachers"[0]
|
| (Full disclosure: my wife and I read - and have read - to
| our kids almost every single night)
|
| [0]
| https://www.theguardian.com/education/2010/oct/29/middle-
| cla...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| We no longer read to our kids, and it makes me both happy
| and sad. Happy because they are voracious readers on
| their own, but sad because damn, childhood goes by
| quick...
| rybosome wrote:
| Reading to my two-year-old every naptime/bedtime is one
| of my favorite parts of parenting. Appreciate this
| comment reminding me to really enjoy these precious
| moments!
| abirch wrote:
| Check out Numberblocks from the BBC. My kindergartner
| found it while she was in Pre-K and learned
| multiplication and division on her own.
|
| Much of our intelligence is from our parents.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
|
| I'm just stating that my kids' elementary school is nicer
| than those in our county and definitely from my hometown.
| They do receive a lot more money than what my hometown
| spent.
| logifail wrote:
| > Check out Numberblocks from the BBC
|
| Heh, our daughter (who doesn't start school until
| September) knows _all_ the Numberblocks and Alphablocks
| episodes...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Having done a similar analysis myself, here is what I
| found. Schools in wealthier areas have better results
| primarily because the support system at home is much
| stronger. I.e. A wealthy family's kids do better in school
| no matter where they go. Another factor, mostly in
| elementary school, is that wealthier areas get noticeably
| more volunteer activity from parents.
|
| State & local funding is less important, by far.
| lazide wrote:
| Many of the higher end schools in the area here (Bay
| Area) _require_ volunteer fundraising, bake sales,
| volunteer time contribution, etc. precisely because
| property taxes aren't enough and they get less than the
| other schools.
|
| And the parents do it because they can (they have the
| ability to get the time off), and because they know it's
| important in many ways.
| yucky wrote:
| >I chose a more expensive house with higher taxes because
| the schools are better.
|
| The schools are better, but if you look at per pupil
| spending I'm willing to bet it's not due to spending.
| Typically the worst schools get the most most money from
| federal and state sources, far outstripping any differences
| in property taxes.
|
| Better schools are a function of better parental
| involvement, everything else is a distant second.
| readams wrote:
| You can conclude from this that the schools are not better
| because of funding differences. You can try to come up with
| other reasons why this might be so, but don't point to
| funding.
| abirch wrote:
| The fact that my school provides chromebooks (while other
| schools in the same county do not) seems to be from a
| funding perspective. I'm not focusing on outcomes because
| I would expect people who can afford homes in my town can
| afford tutors and other resources.
|
| Teachers in my town make ~10% more than in the schools
| that are two towns over in a predominantly minority town.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| >my kids' books and chromebooks are always nice and new.
|
| It's interesting to me that you are using this as a proxy
| for funding.
|
| Schools in low income areas are going to have crappier
| books and laptops because they're spending their money on
| things other than books and laptops.
|
| Low income brings with it all sorts of problems. _That 's
| why it sucks to be poor_.
| bobkazamakis wrote:
| >This is an oft repeated myth. In addition to property taxes,
| school funding is supplemented by state and federal budgets,
| in inverse proportion to property taxes, so that racial
| differences in per-pupil funding are negligible:
|
| >on average, both Black and Latinx total per pupil
| expenditures exceed White total per pupil expenditures by
| $229.53 and $126.15, respectively - https://journals.sagepub.
| com/doi/full/10.1177/23328584198724...
|
| Difference in expenditure per is a particularly shit way to
| measure this.
| brian_cloutier wrote:
| What makes it so bad, and what would be a better way?
| iso1631 wrote:
| If funding was
|
| $6k for white pupil in NY $5k for black pupil in NY
|
| $3k for white pupil in Ohio $2k for black pupil in Ohio
|
| Clearly that's more money for white pupils regardless of
| location
|
| Now imagine that there's 60 black students in NY and 10
| in Ohio, but 10 white students in NY and 60 in Ohio
|
| That means total funding is 320k for 70 black pupils and
| 240k for 70 white students
|
| So you can spin the figures to say that black pupils get
| more funding, but the truth is the opposite.
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| I don't have a great alternative in mind, but here is why
| it's not a good measure: suppose I take any school, then
| give the teachers a pay raise or a pay cut of X%. Nothing
| has fundamentally changed about the school, but per
| student expenditure has gone up or down, respectively,
| depending on which direction the salary adjustment was.
| InitialBP wrote:
| If you increase or decrease the pay of the teachers, I
| would expect to see an outcome on student educations over
| the long term.
|
| For example, if District X pays better than neighboring
| district Z, District X will most likely have greater
| chance of hiring teachers in both districts, letting them
| choose the most qualified. Resulting in the school with
| higher salaries naturally getting more teacher candidates
| to choose from.
|
| While some expenditures might not have a direct impact on
| student educations, they still have some effect. Another
| one would be - a school investing in a new Air
| conditioning and filtration system, students are probably
| going to have an easier time learning when they don't
| have to worry about being too hot or too cold in their
| classrooms.
| rajup wrote:
| I mean hypothetically all the money given to a school
| could be used to build a giant statue but does that
| actually happen? In your example, are we sure giving
| teachers a pay rise does not make them more motivated and
| hence leading to better outcomes?
| actually_a_dog wrote:
| Okay, that's a fair point. Give the lunch room staff a
| pay raise instead, or build that statue lol :)
| sokoloff wrote:
| Or allow that school to recruit better teachers over time
| or have fewer students per teacher.
| robonerd wrote:
| How would you measure _" racial differences in per-pupil
| funding"_ if not with difference in expenditure per-pupil?
| rajup wrote:
| Well how should it be measured then?
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Myth or not, it's not all about money. But as Americans we
| love to always reduce it to this axis.
|
| My father was a very successful/loved elementary school
| teacher for 40+ years. For many of those he worked for the
| same school in the same district. In 25+ years he watched the
| demographics drift from the wealthier families in the
| districts to one of the backwaters. They got as much money as
| the other schools in the district. But financially stressed
| families provide a lot less support for their kids'
| education. They don't have stay at home parents who improve
| the room experience. They're not as able to provide the
| volunteer support to participate in extracurricular
| activities like field trips and competitions and after school
| enrichment things. Parents who are in "just survive" mode
| will telegraph that approach to their kids' schooling
| efforts. Parents who have discretionary bandwidth and
| appreciate that more education got them there, telegraph that
| to their kids.
| jmyeet wrote:
| From the abstract of the paper you cited:
|
| > Yet race remains related to funding disparities and
| schooling experiences in ways that raise concerns about the
| role of school finance in perpetuating racial opportunity
| gaps.
|
| What you are pulling out seems to be narrowly-focused and
| highly-contextualized.
|
| Consider [1]:
|
| > Property taxation and school funding are closely linked in
| the United States. In 2018-2019, public education revenue
| totaled $771 billion. Nearly half (47 percent) came from
| state governments, slightly less than half (45 percent) from
| local government sources, and a modest share (8 percent) from
| the federal government. Of the local revenue, about 36
| percent came from property taxes. The remaining 8.9 percent
| was generated from other taxes; fees and charges for things
| like school lunches and athletic events; and contributions
| from individuals, organizations, or businesses.
|
| [1]: https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/articles/2022-0
| 4-pu...
| retrac wrote:
| From the article you linked: https://www.lincolninst.edu/si
| tes/default/files/content/04.2...
|
| Compare California and Massachusetts. It seems to
| demonstrate the point of the poster you replied to. Despite
| MA relying nearly twice as much on property tax, as state
| revenue versus California, it seems to have better
| outcomes. Mostly because as the article discusses, MA
| appears to use targeted transfers from state revenue to
| poor districts.
| shagie wrote:
| Property tax in California has its own history and
| complications that makes it difficult to compare
| California's funding of things based on property tax to
| anywhere else in the US.
| rats wrote:
| can you link to an article detailing this issue? i'd love
| to dig deeper on this topic
| shagie wrote:
| https://www.kqed.org/news/11701044/how-
| proposition-13-transf...
|
| https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/california-
| props-...
|
| Late edit: the Wikipedia article would also be something
| to read up on - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_Califo
| rnia_Proposition_13
| ghaff wrote:
| And, as is often the case, there's a very loose
| relationship in Massachusetts between per-student spend
| and educational outcomes as measured by tests. It's
| common for urban districts in particular to have high
| spend and generally poor outcomes.
| car_analogy wrote:
| > What you are pulling out seems to be narrowly-focused and
| highly-contextualized.
|
| It's the most straight-forward and objective measure. That
| the main result of a paper would be omitted from the
| abstract and "highly-contextualized" is not surprising,
| given social science's bias. If a study gets the 'wrong'
| findings, it tends to be rejected:
|
| _The authors also submitted different test studies to
| different peer-review boards. The methodology was
| identical, and the variable was that the purported findings
| either went for, or against, the liberal worldview (for
| example, one found evidence of discrimination against
| minority groups, and another found evidence of "reverse
| discrimination" against straight white males). Despite
| equal methodological strengths, the studies that went
| against the liberal worldview were criticized and rejected,
| and those that went with it were not._ -
| https://theweek.com/articles/441474/how-academias-liberal-
| bi...
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Suggesting that the authors intentionally omitted the
| main result of their study from the abstract and hid it
| under layers of obfuscating details for sharp-eyed
| readers to uncover is basically a conspiracy theory. The
| far more straightforward explanation is that the authors
| saw it as one fact among many that contributed to their
| overall conclusion stated in the abstract.
| car_analogy wrote:
| It's not a conspiracy theory, but an empirically
| validated fact, as the study in my link showed. It is not
| the only one with such findings:
|
| _Ceci et al. (1985) found a similar pattern. Research
| proposals hypothesizing either "reverse discrimination"
| (i.e., against White males) or conventional
| discrimination (i.e., against ethnic minorities) were
| submitted to 150 Internal Review Boards. Everything else
| about the proposals was held constant. The "reverse
| discrimination" proposals were approved less often than
| the conventional discrimination proposals._ -
| https://jsis.washington.edu/global/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/...
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| This quote has to do with research proposals, not study
| results.
| car_analogy wrote:
| Yes, both are covered. Studies that specifically look for
| inconvenient facts don't get funded, and studies that
| accidentally find them don't get published.
| abeyer wrote:
| But study results are only published if the study is
| done, and the study is often only done if it gets
| institutional approval for the proposal.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Yes, but a study's conclusion isn't preordained. It's
| entirely possible for authors to end up disproving their
| hypothesis. So it doesn't follow that, because more
| research proposals about "reverse discrimination" were
| rejected, then more studies _concluding_ "reverse racism"
| (holding all else constant) would be rejected.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It's suggesting a disagreement as to what counts as "main
| result". That's quite normal and need not imply any
| conspiracy.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| OP confirmed in a reply that they meant the authors were
| doing this intentionally.
| uneekname wrote:
| In my county, the all white schools have extremely well-
| funded PTAs, parents willing to volunteer in the classroom,
| and students who receive at-home tutoring from an early age.
| A couple of miles away, Title I schools that serve
| predominantly underprivileged families do not have the same
| luxuries. The actual resources available to these schools
| remains significantly lower. Even in a county that ranks
| among the best-funded school systems in the country, federal
| funding does not bridge the gap between the north and south.
| condercet wrote:
| The conclusion of the study you linked seems to paint a
| slightly more complicated picture:
|
| "We found evidence that between-district racial segregation
| is associated with racial disparities in school district
| spending, while between-district racial socioeconomic
| segregation is not. We find that as Black-White racial
| segregation increases over time, total per pupil expenditures
| and other per pupil expenditures shift in ways that disfavor
| the typical Black student's district relative to the typical
| White student's district."
| hn_version_0023 wrote:
| Knowing nothing about this topic other than hearsay and the
| opinions of my elderly parents... both of them teachers in
| public high schools...
|
| Do these per-pupil funding numbers have any meaning when your
| home and community are broken and one or both of your parents
| is an addict or incarcerated? Because it seems to me we've
| been acting with intent as a society to keep the families,
| homes, and communities of everyone _not white and already
| wealthy_ a complete and utter shambles.
|
| How can we expect decent, equitable outcomes given that the
| home life of significant percentages of students is
| essentially a path right to prison?
| ryandrake wrote:
| My parents (and one step-parent) were also public school
| teachers, and after the first round of parent-teacher
| conferences, they could usually easily tell which students
| would sail through and excel, which ones would try but
| struggle, and which ones were going to actively harm the
| classroom environment--simply by meeting the parents (or
| for the latter group, observe that the parents never even
| showed up). This heuristic had nothing to do with school
| funding or the race of the student or parent.
| calculatte wrote:
| Every group claims the same targeting. "Everyone not white"
| is just being divisive. Go to a poor white area and you'll
| see the same drug addiction, broken home, incarceration
| problems. Is this your job to fix? Do you think the
| government has the inclination or the possibility of
| success in addressing these issues?
|
| All that shows is the natural tendency toward persecution
| complexes and blaming failure on factors out of your
| control. Finding ways to make society promote personal
| responsibility, atomic families, etc would actually help.
| But that is the opposite of current culture of hedonism and
| "smashing traditional family structure" that gets complete
| entertainment and political backing.
| swearwolf wrote:
| You see the same things in both places because people are
| poor in both places. Often due to structural issues that
| the government could absolutely influence. For example,
| they could not sign a deal like NAFTA and keep
| manufacturing jobs within their borders. The could also
| provide social housing, subsidize medical care and
| education, set a reasonable minimum wage, etc. The
| government has enormous potential to positively impact
| people's lives, but it doesn't. It used to, but not
| anymore, because we've all been infected with Reagan's
| "The nine most terrifying words in the English language
| are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help."
| brain worm. This mythology is bone deep in our national
| consciousness, to the point that we can't even imagine an
| alternative anymore, even though examples of other
| countries doing it are scattered around the world.
| Government intervention can absolutely address the
| nihilistic tendencies you'll often find amongst the
| multi-generational poor! It can do so by actually giving
| them an opportunity (en masse, not as the one person who
| made it out) to be participants in a world where they
| have dignity and inherent value, which is not the world
| they live in today. They won't be fixed overnight, but
| they didn't get that way overnight either! It took
| decades of disinvestment and neglect, and it will
| probably take a generation to make a meaningful impact.
| But it can and should be done.
| social_quotient wrote:
| I agree and it seems we are learning the cost and
| complexity of the state trying to fill the vacuum of
| parent/family responsibilities.
| dec0dedab0de wrote:
| _Do these per-pupil funding numbers have any meaning when
| your home and community are broken and one or both of your
| parents is an addict or incarcerated?_
|
| No, school budgets only help the schools, they don't solve
| any other problems.
|
| _it seems to me we've been acting with intent as a society
| to keep the families, homes, and communities of everyone
| not white and already wealthy a complete and utter
| shambles._
|
| Maybe I'm older, but it seems to me the exact opposite is
| happening. Over the last 40 years there has been an
| increasing number of minority families that have moved to
| wealthier, historically white neighborhoods. I think this
| is because of education, affirmative action, and a general
| shift of society to be less racist.
|
| _How can we expect decent, equitable outcomes given that
| the home life of significant percentages of students is
| essentially a path right to prison?_
|
| nobody has ever expected that.
|
| There is still a lot of work to be done, but things have
| been moving in the right direction for a while now. It took
| a few hundred years to get here, don't expect it to be
| fixed in just over half a century.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Do these per-pupil funding numbers have any meaning when
| your home and community are broken and one or both of your
| parents is an addict or incarcerated?
|
| It's a vicious cycle, which can only be broken by building
| strong communities in those places. And we've mostly
| forgotten how to do this, because "lifestyle anarchism" has
| been way more popular than a genuine community orientation
| among intellectuals and influencers, since the 1960s or so.
| School funding is a band-aid.
| smachiz wrote:
| You're excluding the fundraising capacity and ancillary
| services funded and paid for by the PTA.
|
| Wealthy neighborhoods have PTA budgets that are in the
| hundreds of thousands/millions. They pay for after school
| activities, language immersion programs, music, sports, you
| name it.
|
| It is _shocking_ the discrepancy between neighborhoods in
| NYC. Average donation per pupil might be $20 in a poor
| neighborhood and $5,000 in a wealthy one.
| MattGrommes wrote:
| We saw this first-hand in San Diego. We luckily found a
| place to rent in a pretty well-off area (Point Loma) and
| our kids elementary school regularly raised >$250,000 a
| year for the school (1st through 4th grades). When we moved
| to a more "normal" school in another state, we found their
| stretch goal was more like $30,000 and it took all year to
| get there. The first school paid for multiple extra
| teachers and aides, as well as lots of other benefits.
| The-Bus wrote:
| A single school in a rich district may have more funding
| than five or six entire districts in other parts of the
| city.
| mikeho1999 wrote:
| No, this is not a myth at all.
|
| At least not in California...
|
| "State-Provided" funds are calculated by the LCFF (Local
| Control Funding Formula), which is a _combination_ of _both_
| State _and_ Local funds.
|
| Depending on the district, if local funds is not enough to
| fund the district, then yes, state tax revenue steps in to
| provide the rest.
|
| However, for districts where local funds is enough or exceeds
| the district need, then these these districts (referred to as
| "Basic Aid" or "Excess Revenue" districts) aren't provided
| state revenue, and they _are_ able to keep the excess local
| revenue for their needs. (https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/
| and https://www.saratogausd.org/Page/519)
|
| For a more specific example, one of the top school districts
| in Silicon Valley is the Fremont Union High School District (
| https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1626711559/fuhsdorg/.
| ..)
|
| In 2021, their total revenue was $169M, where $156M (92%)
| came from property taxes. This resulted in spending per pupil
| of $23,491, far exceeding the state medium of $16,042.
| tzs wrote:
| > Twenty years ago Bush (43) passed the No Child Left Behind
| Act, which many dubbed the No Child Gets Ahead Act. A lot of
| this was also in the name of "equity".
|
| That was a very bipartisan bill. It was coauthored by Ted
| Kennedy, passed in the House 381-41, and passed in the Senate
| 87-10.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax
| revenue and thus better schools. This can be a vicious cycle of
| improving property values by having better schools and thus
| generating more tax revenue and so on.
|
| No. This is a complete red-herring. Every school in the US is
| good enough to provide quality education. Every school in the
| US is staffed by good, well-trained teachers. Every child gets
| free textbooks, notebooks, pens, pencils, paper, etc (which
| isn't as common in the world as you'd think). Sometimes free
| breakfast or lunch is provided as well.
|
| That some school district provides high-end iPads and another
| doesn't makes no material difference to a quality education.
| That some parents want to optimize their child's education by
| sending them to another district, makes no material difference
| to a quality education. Put another way, we're dealing with
| kids graduating being functionally illiterate - and that
| problem does not stem from school or teacher quality. That's a
| parent problem (as in, what kind of a parent allows their child
| to not be able to read by the time they are ready to graduate).
| scarmig wrote:
| > Every school in the US is staffed by good, well-trained
| teachers
|
| Unfortunately, this really isn't the case. There are many
| good teachers, and most teachers are genuinely passionate,
| hard workers. But many teachers get into teaching not because
| of a mastery of their subject matter or even teaching but
| because they want to be paid babysitters, more or less.
|
| E.g. in Canada, which has similar issues, Ontario recently
| axed its math certification test for public school teachers
| because too many teachers were failing it and because it had
| "a disproportionate adverse impact on entry to the teaching
| profession for racialized teacher candidates." And, for
| demonstrative purposes, a sample test that prospective
| teachers were failing:
|
| https://www.mathproficiencytest.ca/#/en/sample-questions/1
|
| But there's not an easy solution. ~25% of test takers were
| failing it (and more for "racialized" candidates), and most
| people don't want to become teachers because it's a terrible
| work environment.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >But many teachers get into teaching not because of a
| mastery of their subject matter or even teaching but
| because they want to be paid babysitters, more or less.
|
| You're missing the forest for the trees. We're graduating
| kids who are functionally illiterate. That isn't a teacher
| problem. That isn't a school problem.
| 0xBombadilo wrote:
| Except most of the money gets taken by robinhood.
| bnralt wrote:
| > But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax
| revenue and thus better schools. This can be a vicious cycle of
| improving property values by having better schools and thus
| generating more tax revenue and so on. I say "vicious" because
| it is absolutely exclusionary to lower-income people who cannot
| possibly afford to live in these areas. And that's by design.
|
| That's not really true. You can look at the per pupil spending
| in places like Washington, D.C. or Baltimore and they're well
| above the U.S. average (D.C. is one of the top spenders in the
| nation). A city's public school system sometimes largely serves
| lower income students even if it has a number of high earners
| in its tax base (urban yuppies with no kids, wealthy people who
| send their kids to private schools, etc. all paying into the
| system without adding to the load).
|
| If we look at funding levels vs. outcomes, we can see many of
| the best funded school systems struggling. That's because
| school is a complex problem that doesn't simply get solved by
| more funding.
| blatherard wrote:
| I'll add some additional color to the funding "uniqueness". At
| least in NYC, there are Parent-Teacher Associations that are
| private organizations that raise money for specific schools.
| These PTAs are, themselves, a great source of inequality within
| the public schools.
|
| For extreme examples the PTA at PS 87, an elementary school in
| the Upper West Side raised 2 million dollars in 2019 (the last
| number I could find numbers for) [1]; our son's school (also in
| the UWS, where we live) raised a little shy of 1 million that
| same year, via an annual campaign, auction fund-raiser, and a
| few other events.
|
| This money is used for many things, like capital improvements
| and enhanced services. At our son's school this was used to
| upgrade air conditioning in the building, pay for extra
| teaching assistants, and fund a library and librarian, amongst
| other things.
|
| Numerous schools have no PTA fund-raising at all or raise a few
| thousand dollars, because they serve less-affluent areas. This
| kind of inequality is vexing because there isn't any taxing
| going on, just very active parent bases with money to give.
|
| --
|
| [1] https://ny.chalkbeat.org/2019/12/2/21113658/find-out-how-
| muc...
| skyde wrote:
| is "PS 87 elementary school" a public school of private
| school ?
| yig wrote:
| Public School
| tootie wrote:
| This is closer to the core of the problem and honestly it goes
| even deeper. We very frequently look at poor outcomes when it
| comes to things like education and employment and then scream
| at schools or companies for not supporting equity. And not to
| let them all completely off the hook because they have
| absolutely been part of the problem, but the roots of this
| stuff go way deeper. Trying to find diverse candidates for
| knowledge jobs is made harder when there are fewer diverse
| candidates graduating from good colleges because fewer diverse
| students are getting into gifted programs because diverse
| children are raised in neighborhoods with fewer resources and
| on and on.
|
| We still have so much culturally ingrained bias that we can't
| update policy to set the stage for even the next few
| generations to close these gaps. And it's compounded by the
| current generation being asked to pay an unreasonable price (ie
| disappearing gifted classes) to put a band-aid on this gunshot
| wound of a problem which breeds resentment which sets progress
| back even further.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Education funding has very little to do with outcomes. Your
| peers and culture of their family matters most, which will also
| correlate with wealth/income levels.
|
| But it's correlation, not causation.
|
| There was a complete test case of this in NJ a few years ago
| where a poorly funded school got a huge amount of extra funding
| as a result of a lawsuit, and it made 0 statistical difference
| to outcomes years down the line. They did a study on it.
| https://edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-his...
|
| If you're surrounded by people who care and aim to excel,
| you'll probably care. And vice versa.
|
| In that sense, forced integration is an unethical but probably
| effective way of homogenizing educational results. I think
| Singapore actually forces some cultural integration like this
| with demographic requirements per neighborhood block/district.
|
| New York somewhat achieves this incidentally via their
| "affordable housing" being attached to expensive unit
| buildings, but most wealthy new yorkers send to private, so
| doesn't fix the cultural balance in public system.
| jdminhbg wrote:
| > For the benefit of non-US readers, know that how the US funds
| public education (K-12) is rather unique. It's done through
| property taxes essentially. Depending on your state and city
| your property taxes can vary a lot with the same value
| property.
|
| This is widely believed but no longer true. Federal and state
| funding have eclipsed local funding[0], and those funds are
| highly progressive. As a result, the highest-spending per
| capita schools are a mix of wealthy suburbs and failing urban
| districts. See this map[1] for examples, like the Philadelphia
| suburb of Lower Merion and the NJ city of Camden.
|
| 0: https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/an-overview-of-
| the-f... 1: https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-
| ranked-by-th...
| eric_b wrote:
| In Minnesota anyways, the schools in lower-income areas get
| more money per pupil than the "good area" schools. In some
| cases dramatically more. For example, the high school in north
| Minneapolis (a not-good part of town) get's $20k per student.
| Whereas the southwest Minneapolis high school (nice area) gets
| 13k. This is common across all grades.
|
| So the disadvantaged area schools get 35%+ more money per
| pupil, and the outcomes keep getting worse. And the politicians
| keep doubling down on the same policies and wonder why things
| aren't changing. Money isn't everything, or apparently even
| most things. What a mess.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax
| revenue and thus better schools."
|
| This is largely a lie. It works like this in some states but
| not most. Most states, and the federal government allocate
| their funds in a way that balances that out by allocating more
| money to the poorer districts. In my state, the various
| quartiles recieve essentially the same overall funding (19k-20k
| per student).
| mrexroad wrote:
| I've always quipped that the idea that the highest property
| taxes fund the poorest areas, and vice-versa. While not
| feasible, the current situation is absurd.
| genedan wrote:
| Where I grew up in Texas, this was called the Robinhood Plan
| where rich districts sent money to poor ones:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_plan
| toyg wrote:
| _> While not feasible_
|
| Well, that's effectively what happens in European systems,
| where schooling is basically run entirely by the State and
| funding is mostly distributed on a per-pupil basis - higher-
| income taxpayers effectively subsidize poorer areas. So it
| is, in fact, feasible.
|
| But Americans would probably call that illiberal or
| something.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > But Americans would probably call that illiberal or
| something.
|
| Most Americans would call that pretty much how things
| actually happen here, too.
| singlow wrote:
| That is what Texas does. Not 100 percent, but a majority of
| tax dollars for schools are paid to the state and
| redistributed to the districts based on
| attendance/enrollment. Rich areas might be able to use
| extra funds/donations for capital expenditures like fancier
| buildings or stadiums, but the tax money at largely
| redistributed.
| jayd16 wrote:
| In California a large percentage is state income tax not
| property taxes.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| In Arizona, all school funding is from the state. Then local
| school districts can pass school overrides via voting which
| then can be additional property tax in their district. Richer
| areas tend to have more parent involvement (both time and
| financially). AZ also has open enrollment which means you can
| enroll your child in any public school, not just your
| district assignment.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| In NYC they also flatten all Asians into one group and say the
| "gifted" programs aren't diverse enough because a high
| percentage are Asian. As if implying Chinese, Japanese,
| Vietnamese, Korean, etc. all have the same life experience,
| cultures, advantages, disadvantages...
|
| Also you nailed it on the property tax point. Often overlooked
| as the biggest issue with education. A similar sized home in a
| good school district can be 2 or 3x as expensive as one in a
| mediocre school district.
|
| Edit: when talking about property tax, I am referring to most
| suburbs, not NYC.
|
| Seems like a lot of people are posting evidence that the
| property tax point is correlated with better schools but the
| funding difference is made up for by the stare and federal
| government. Interesting.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Call me a radical, but to me "our race laws don't have the
| best categories" is the wrong level to deal with this.
|
| The US has never been without race laws, so I see how it's
| hard to imagine not having them, but that is what I think is
| needed.
| lazide wrote:
| I think it's pointing out how absurd the system is for the
| people actually in it. If you dig deeper though, it's just
| another way of trying to define blocs of power (or no
| power), and draw arbitrary lines to get benefits or avoid
| being singled out.
|
| There is no objective definition for race or ethnicity I've
| ever found for instance, but to quote a controversial
| Supreme Court justice, everyone goes 'I know it when I see
| it'.
| andrewla wrote:
| NYC schools are not funded by property taxes.
|
| The city and state fund the DoE and that money is disbursed
| to schools throughout the district without relationship to
| the geographic source of the funds. PTAs (especially in
| wealth neighborhoods) also contribute huge amounts of money
| to their local schools, often even paying for the salary of
| extra teachers or classroom assistants.
|
| NYC schools are terrible for any number other reasons, but
| the property tax argument does not apply.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| Sorry, the two comments in my one post were not related.
| You are right, I was referring to most suburb public
| schools.
| kazinator wrote:
| > "all have the same life experience, cultures, advantages,
| disadvantages..."
|
| Not to mention: 4th generation versus new immigrant.
| masklinn wrote:
| > In NYC they also flatten all Asians into one group and say
| the "gifted" programs aren't diverse enough because a high
| percentage are Asian. As if implying Chinese, Japanese,
| Vietnamese, Korean, etc. all have the same life experience,
| cultures, advantages, disadvantages...
|
| TBF that was originally something deployed by asian-american
| populations so they had enough of a cooperative block to make
| an impact: individual cultural groups were too small to be
| represented, but a pan-asian block had sufficient power to
| achieve representation and make political progress.
| jb12 wrote:
| More than that, they also lump "Pacific Islanders" into the
| same category as "Asian", as if the Pacific Islands aren't on
| an entirely different continent.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| > As if implying Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc.
| all have the same life experience, cultures, advantages,
| disadvantages...
|
| Though it's not as if Asian students are a perfect mixture of
| Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Filipino, etc. Given
| demographic trends most of them are going to be Chinese, with
| a smaller amount Korean.
| kingnothing wrote:
| By that same logic, they also flatten all Whites, Blacks, and
| Latinos into their own groups as well, even though all are
| comprised of people from many different countries and
| cultures.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I think the Asian and Pacific Islander one is interesting
| because it lacks a shared history of strife to support the
| amorphous grouping. (Latino should also be treated very
| differently, this post is about Asian-American and Asians
| in America)
|
| Asian-American, especially in New York City (but somewhat
| replicated across the nation), is kind of a burgeoning
| identity which has now somewhat of a shared distinctly
| American culture, but is only kind of a self-fulfilling
| identity because everyone pigeonholes them, domestically
| and wherever their heritage was from. This makes
| individuals forced to attempt a shared representation. But
| it makes less sense compared to "white", "black" and pre-
| colonial civilizations here, given the lower population and
| the large time gaps in migration waves, and the large
| difference in why people migrated to the US at all during
| those migration waves.
| paulcole wrote:
| > which many dubbed the No Child Gets Ahead Act.
|
| This is a good example of why Wikipedia doesn't allow this kind
| of statement.
|
| If you google this phrase, "No Child Gets Ahead Act", you get 4
| pages of results ("About 84 results", which I don't know if I
| would call "many" in a country of 300 million plus people.
| brianwawok wrote:
| The property tax leading to funding differences is part of the
| puzzle, but not all of the puzzle. In my random neck of the
| world we have roughly 4 school districts.
|
| 1) Public school 1. Covers most of the black and brown students
| of the area.
|
| 2) Public school 2. Covers most of the lower to middle class
| white students of the area.
|
| 3) Public school 3. Covers most of the higher class white
| students, especially families of a local high ranking private
| college.
|
| 4) Various private schools.
|
| Options 1-2-3 have pretty much open enrollment, you can send
| your kid to any of them even if they are out of district, it
| just means you need to drive them (they won't qualify for
| bussing service).
|
| If you look at public school 1, 2, and 3 - they have near
| identical spending per pupil. yes property taxes differ a
| little, but at the end of the day they are spending the same $
| per pupil. However the test scores are vastly different. Test
| scores highly corelate with the % of students receiving free
| lunch, a fairly accurate proxy for poverty. The more kids in
| poverty, the worse test scores.
|
| But because of this, many high achieving students that have
| money, are sent to option 4. Since this is the best education,
| if you can choose anything - you do this.
|
| The next bucket of high achieving but wanting to save money
| send their kids to public school 3. It's reguarded as a "very
| good" free education. But this means the best kids are pulled
| out of the disticts for schools 1 and 2.
|
| Schools 1 and 2 mostly just the people who are "left" in the
| district, without the inclination or money to go to choise 3 or
| 4.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > 3) Public school 3. Covers most of the higher class white
| students, especially families of a local high ranking private
| college.
|
| I live in a place like this, except its a mix of middle and
| higher class students. The secret is simple: the rich parents
| pay for tutors for their kids. I know many families who have
| paid for tutors for their kids since kindergarten.
|
| Be very wary of pursuing good school districts in rich
| neighborhoods. If you can't afford the price of admission
| into that neighborhood your kid is going to have problems
| keeping up.
| skyde wrote:
| you are saying school (1,2,3) get same funding per pupil. but
| test score for 1 is worse than 3.
|
| So why send you kid to school 4 instead of school 3 ? Is the
| test score at school 4 significantly better?
|
| I am a parent of a 4 years old, and we recently moved from
| Canada to USA. Option (4) in Canada is almost non-existent so
| this is new to me!
|
| I have been trying to compare test-score between private
| schools and public school to decide if private school is
| worth it.
|
| But found that most private school do not publish their test
| score and it's extremely hard to compare them side-by-side.
|
| Any idea how they could be compared in a data-drive way?
| annoyingnoob wrote:
| There are lots of reasons to choose a private school beyond
| test scores. Things like smaller class sizes, expectations
| about how students treat each other and staff.
|
| My kids started at private school. A new public school with
| a STEM/STEAM concept opened near our house. At the public
| school, the goal of the administration is to fill seats
| (they get paid based on attendance) and to provide a safe
| environment - education was at least 3rd on their list if
| not lower. When covid hit the public school pretty much
| failed my kids. So we went back to the private school where
| the kids could actually get an education. My kids were
| ahead when they transitioned from private to public, they
| were behind when they transitioned back from public to
| private. The kids are much happier and tell me that
| 'everyone at public school is a bully'.
|
| The private school uses different tests than the public
| school, so its hard to compare. A school where education is
| important and students are expected to be respectful seems
| like a great place to start from.
| brianwawok wrote:
| > you are saying school (1,2,3) get same funding per pupil.
| but test score for 1 is worse than 3.
|
| Yes, and in fact its petty big jumps. 3 >> 2 >> 1. We are
| talking like 95th, 50th, and 10th percentiles statewide
| (percentiles picked for effect, did not pull up the data)
|
| > Any idea how they could be compared in a data-drive way?
|
| Right, and that is the hard part. If they don't do the same
| tests, you cannot have this data.
|
| However, the more you look at layers of this data, you will
| find that the most important thing you care. Parents
| looking at school rankings have kids that perform much
| better than kids that have parent's who do not look at this
| data.
|
| For me, I knew that 3 or 4 would give my kids a fine
| education. So I toured both (and actually had an older kid
| already in #3). The reason I sprang for #4 was
|
| 1) Smaller class size. Something like 15 kids per class, vs
| 30. All else being equal, you get way more chances for
| success the closer you are to the teacher.
|
| 2) Likeminded parents. People send kids there because they
| want the best. They are the high achievers. The college
| profressors and doctors of the area. #3 wasn't too far off,
| but you still got to see stuff like parents smoking in the
| carline with their windows up and the kids locked inside
| (grrrr).
|
| 3) More opportunities. #3 school starts music class at like
| 6th grade. #4 starts like 2nd or 3rd grade. It is something
| not reflected in test scores, so not important to public
| schools. But something shown to be good, so it's available
| for parents.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| > Test scores highly corelate with the % of students
| receiving free lunch
|
| Nit: They don't highly correlate, they inversely correlate
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| I mean, they do highly correlate. It's an inverse
| correlation. Correlation tracks from -1 to 1.
|
| https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation
| brewdad wrote:
| Even when you have poorer families who value the better
| education their children could receive at option 3, the
| transportation hurdle can be huge. Often they may lack
| reliable transportation of their own or work at a job or jobs
| that don't offer the kind of flexibility in the workday that
| white-collar workers tend to have.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| It isn't just the flexibility that accounts for the
| differences in education. Time spent by parents, with
| children, on education helps account for test scores and
| grades. Lower income parents often have to work more hours
| to meet the basic needs and have a lower educational
| background to help their children with schoolwork.
|
| A study showed that even having a home library would be
| beneficial to children in a myriad of ways, which isn't as
| feasible to a low income family who isn't rent stable.
|
| https://www.jcfs.org/blog/importance-having-books-your-
| home#....
| brianwawok wrote:
| Yes for sure.
|
| You know who can easily transport their kids 30 mins to
| another school? Rich, stay at home moms.
|
| You know who can't transport their kids 30 mins to another
| school? A single mom working 2 jobs.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I've never been convinced that more money for schools produces
| better results. Sure, that means nicer buildings, but how does
| that improve education? In Washington State, the teachers
| finally got their "fully funding" proposal enacted, which was
| supposed to solve all the funding problems, including big
| raises for teachers.
|
| There's been zero change in results.
| thorncorona wrote:
| It's because wealthier parents more importantly spend more
| time on their kids education and put them in an environment
| where it's easier to learn.
|
| Can't solve behavioral issues with money, but you can solve
| behavioral issues of other kids by moving them out of the
| school.
| [deleted]
| bluGill wrote:
| No surprise, in des moines all schools in the area get the
| same funding per student. This includes inner city schools,
| suburbs, and rural schools. Yet there is still a large
| difference in results with the inner city schools doing worse
| than the suburbs by far.
|
| Either it is cities elect different people to school boards
| (seems unlikely but I can't prove it), or family background
| makes the biggest difference. Many others have pointed out
| family background as the key, I tentend to believe it.
| kadabra9 wrote:
| Careful, we're not allowed to point out that family
| background is the root cause.
|
| The answer is always more money!
| brewdad wrote:
| My kid's HS has teetered on the edge of Title 1 status over
| the years but lately has trended better. The top 10% of
| kids have upper middle class backgrounds and a stable home
| life. They tend to have exceptional outcomes. The bottom
| 40% of kids come from families living near the poverty
| line. They tend to get shuffled along until they barely
| graduate or dropout.
|
| The middle 50% have outcomes that are all over the place
| but tend to correlate with parental involvement and who the
| kids pair off with in their friends groups. Some get pulled
| upward to exceed expected outcomes and some get pulled
| towards the bottom. It's been fascinating to see how
| different two kids from very similar backgrounds can end up
| based on the randomness of who they sat with at lunch one
| day 4 years ago or who was assigned to be their lab partner
| in 10th grade.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > In Washington State, the teachers finally got their "fully
| funding" proposal enacted, which was supposed to solve all
| the funding problems, including big raises for teachers.
|
| Are you referring to when the state finally complied with
| court orders that they were illegally and unconstitutionally
| underfunding public schools? (A lawsuit started over a decade
| before and decided over a half a decade before action was
| taken). Where the governor announced victory as "Today's
| Supreme Court decision affirms that, at long last, our
| Legislature is providing the funding necessary to cover the
| _basic costs_ of our K-12 schools. Reversing decades of
| underfunding... "
|
| That basic level of funding? Or has something happened more
| recently.
|
| > There's been zero change in results.
|
| You mean the funding that impacted one year before COVID?
| Education funding isn't like spinning up a new instance in
| AWS. It takes time. And, given that educational results have
| slipped nationwide since COVID, I would say that "zero
| changes" should be interpreted as a victory.
| HardlyCurious wrote:
| To make a compelling case that funding matters to outcome
| you really need to detail how a lack of funding hurts the
| learning process.
|
| Are the teachers bad teachers, and more pay will recruit
| better teachers? I'm not sure how many teachers enter the
| profession for the money to be honest. I'm sure they would
| like pay, but I'm not really of the mind that the curre nt
| crop of teachers are on average bad.
|
| Do kids not have a suitable learning environment? Are they
| distracted by rodents, roaches, noisy equipment,
| uncomfortable temperatures, lack of seating or desks?
|
| Do the kids not have educational material? Books, marker
| boards and markers for them, paper, etc?
|
| If any of those things were lacking I would totally agree
| that learning could be impacted and change was needed. And
| I would be really curious how at current funding levels,
| which are not low compared to other countries, those
| deficits are occuring.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > are the teachers bad teachers, and more pay will
| recruit better teachers?
|
| Quality of the teachers aside, there are insufficient
| teachers. The number of teachers required to effectively
| teach K-12 would benefit from increasing between 50-75%
| of current levels before reaching diminishing returns
| according to test studies. So more pay will recruit more
| teachers, which, makes them better.
|
| Since you wanted to compare us to other countries, the US
| has the worst average classroom size in the western
| world. A decade ago we were closer to the middle of the
| pack. And it was the US classroom size that primarily
| changed, not a sudden drive in other countries.
|
| > Do kids not have a suitable learning environment? Are
| they distracted by rodents, roaches, noisy equipment,
| uncomfortable temperatures, lack of seating or desks?
|
| Beyond that, you should concern yourself with things like
| asbestos in the walls.
|
| Certainly, a lot of US schools use trailers. Those are
| noisier and have less comfortable temperatures, require
| going outside to change classes, etc. Half of the
| classrooms in some areas are trailers. Moving those to a
| real building seems obviously better.
|
| > Do the kids not have educational material? Books,
| marker boards and markers for them, paper, etc?
|
| What about chem labs, frogs to dissect, computers to
| program, etc? Not everyone is a kindergartner. But a
| surprising number of schoolchildren have trouble with
| internet access, which I would argue is a basic
| requirement for education.
|
| Further, the number of teachers required to spend their
| meager salaries on classroom supplies and the number of
| different nonprofits that popup if you search for "donate
| school supplies" indicates that even at a base level they
| lack educational material.
| phamilton wrote:
| > I'm not sure how many teachers enter the profession for
| the money to be honest
|
| Few enter for money, but many leave because of it.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| I have been teaching high school English for about ten
| years. My total comp (including pension matching, cost of
| employer healthcare contributions, etc) is about 52k.
|
| Money isn't the reason I will be transitioning into a
| different career after this school year, but I have
| friends and contacts floating opportunities that would
| offer me an immediate 50-80 percent bump.
|
| My wife and I have been saving aggressively to allow for
| a patient, intentional transition. I don't expect my next
| career to feed my values to the same extent, but I am
| excited to open a new door.
|
| Edit: if you work in Product and would be willing to do a
| brief informational interview, please reach out. My email
| is in profile.
| WalterBright wrote:
| The only resources needed are books and chalkboards,
| pencil and paper. These are cheap.
|
| My public high school installed a competition diving
| pool. Did that improve education there? Not a whit. It
| was nice for the diving team, though, which was 6 girls.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I wouldn't overlook people as resources. In addition to
| teachers, it's really valuable to have more adults around
| to help out. Otherwise keeping a room of 25 kids
| corralled is enough work on its own that it meaningfully
| reduces the time left to teach.
| deeviant wrote:
| It's fair to say more money doesn't _necessarily_ result in
| better results, but it would be absolutely incorrect to think
| that endemic budgetary shortfalls don 't drastically impact
| results.
|
| It's like money and happiness. Money doesn't make you happy
| but it damn sure does eliminate a lot of barriers on the way
| there.
| bluedino wrote:
| We spent $25 million on a new middle school (the existing
| buildings were 60+ years old). Still at the bottom of the
| rankings.
| citizenkeen wrote:
| My MIL is a teacher, and she's taught at wealthy schools and
| poor schools.
|
| Wealthy schools have more money, but they actually often have
| less - if a school's average socio-economic class drops below
| a certain point, there's a slew of federal funding available
| and she often had more resources in a poor school than a
| wealthy one. The poorest schools are often the middle-class -
| those too wealthy to qualify for the funding but not wealthy
| enough to be rich.
|
| The _real_ benefit to wealthy schools, in her mind (anecdata)
| was the number of single income households. Students _and
| classrooms_ do a lot better when there are a bunch of
| volunteers.
|
| Schools used to have Teaching Assistants. Dedicated, low-pay
| non-teachers who could help in classrooms. We don't have
| these (in my state) any more.
|
| But the wealthy schools do. Because there are a _lot_ of
| volunteer parents (mostly moms) who don 't work and are happy
| to come in one day a week. When my MIL taught at wealthy
| schools, she often had 2 parents in her classroom every day
| of the week helping prep. In the poor schools she had
| Chromebooks for every kid (before that was the norm), but no
| help so she didn't bother breaking them out.
| rsync wrote:
| "The poorest schools are often the middle-class - those too
| wealthy to qualify for the funding but not wealthy enough
| to be rich."
|
| That is a very interesting anecdote and conclusion - thank
| you.
| dixie_land wrote:
| This is also true in general, middle class gets squeezed.
|
| All of the lefts "tax the rich" and welfare state
| initiatives end up hurting the middle class.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| I grew up in a pretty wealthy area. The public school was
| good. The private school had this vibe of prestige but in
| practice performed a lot worse on things like AP tests
|
| A weird state. I don't think parents knew how to navigate
| it or even interpret the state of things. The marketing and
| formal dress code made it seem like the better choice.
| Suckers...
| somethoughts wrote:
| Anec-datally this rings true to me. I think in wealthier
| neighborhoods there is also a lot more competitiveness for
| PTA and school board seats from parents who are very highly
| credentialed (i.e. MBA, former product managers, lawyers)
| that have electively taken time off/early retirement to
| have more quality time with their kids. There's some sort
| of institutional knowledge coming from the business world
| on how to run effective meetings, run a fundraiser, etc.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| On the flip side, I have yet to see a really well-
| functioning PTA. Usually _because_ it 's a bunch of hyper
| competitive MBAs, CEOs, and lawyers who adore
| parliamentarian ceremony and only secondarily have any
| interest in marshaling resources in support of students.
|
| I think it might actually work better if it were just
| properly educated average people running that show.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Agree! It can become a but political. It should be noted
| though that while that is less than perfect...
|
| What I've observed in less well off neighborhoods is that
| in particular the school board becomes populated with
| professional administrators. Then the administrators get
| familiar with the process for procurement for supplies,
| facilities and contracted work and start getting cozy
| with the local providers of those services. And things
| start going down hill and there is little in the way of
| oversight since most parents/voters are too busy juggling
| multiple jobs, etc.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| So lets take your argument to the extreme and fund a 1000
| person school with 1 dollar. Would adding some more dollars
| to the budget help? Yes, because at some point you can afford
| to turn on the lights, and if you keep adding money you can
| afford to hire a teacher. More realistically, more money can
| do things like fund free meals for needy kids so they don't
| have to go to class hungry. It can reduce class sizes,
| replace textbooks, put more books in the library, and add
| gifted/special ed programs. There are certainly useful things
| the money can be spent on.
|
| At the other extreme, if we gave schools unlimited funding,
| you could afford to hire a teacher for every student in the
| school. Would that help learning outcomes? Probably. There is
| a huge space in the middle where admins eat up cash, sports
| teams eat up cash, for sure. But to say that "more money
| doesn't get better results" doesn't make any sense.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The most important thing money can buy is more teachers. I
| went to chicago public schools. In my elementary school each
| class had 32+ students and 1 teacher. I was accepted to a
| gifted high school which had very successful fundraising
| campaigns. That allowed the school to hire extra teachers,
| lowering the class sizes to ~25. Meanwhile private schools
| have class sizes < 20. It makes a huge difference. When there
| are 32 kids in a class there is 0 individual attention.
| aetherson wrote:
| https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/190/pdfs/class-size-
| doe...
|
| The idea that class size reduction is a highly effective
| educational intervention is at best ambiguously supported
| by the (many) studies of it. And it's a super expensive
| intervention.
| wongarsu wrote:
| One thing that clearly provides better results are smaller
| class sizes. That requires having enough teachers and enough
| rooms, both of which cost money.
|
| Just spending a lot of money doesn't guarantee good results,
| just like some companies manage to spend a lot of money doing
| very little. But not having enough money is a great way to
| make it very difficult to achieve good results.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I mean, even assuming they spend all the money on better
| buildings -- if the building is so poorly made that the heat
| or air conditioning don't work, then that will be
| distracting, resulting in worse education.
|
| The public school in the town I grew up in had lectures in
| these shitty trailers that were supposed to be temporary
| (spoiler: they became permanent). They couldn't afford to
| hire enough teachers to do small classes, but if they had the
| money for that, there wouldn't be enough rooms put them in.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I went to public school for a couple years in those
| trailers. It didn't make any difference. Went to public
| schools with and without A/C (in Arizona). Didn't make any
| difference.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-54c0IdxZWc&t=45s
| mymllnthaccount wrote:
| It's so funny to me that people treat businesses and
| government so differently.
|
| Want results from your start up? Find someone to invest in
| it.
|
| Want results from a government program? Well, we need to cut
| out all the wasteful spending.
| ouid wrote:
| Cutting out wasteful spending may make your shitty schools
| cheaper, but it will not make them better.
| chipsa wrote:
| Yes, but if you cut out the wasteful spending, you can
| redirect that funding to not wasteful things. What
| spending is wasteful is another question entirely.
| bluGill wrote:
| But it may free up money for things that will make the
| schools better. Maybe, it is easy to see a problem, hard
| to fix it.
|
| If nothing else a tax break (even if it is only a few
| cents per resident) is a better use than some programs
| jfk13 wrote:
| > a tax break (even if it is only a few cents per
| resident) is a better use than some programs
|
| Very likely so, but _which_ programs exactly? (Are you
| uniquely well-qualified to make that determination? If
| not, who is, and how can we know that?)
| bluGill wrote:
| That is an excellent question. I carefully did not answer
| it because as soon as I do, no matter how wasteful and
| useless the program someone will come to defend it and I
| don't want to get in that fight.
| ouid wrote:
| Identifying wasteful spending is expensive and
| inaccurate. An auditor will produce some number of false
| negatives (remaining wasteful spending) and false
| positives (useful spending that was cut). Both of these
| cannot be zero, and the closer you would like to get to
| zero, the more expensive the audit will be.
|
| Additionally, the relative value of false negatives and
| positives, in something with as high a force multiplier
| as education, seems like it will probably fall on the
| side of false negatives.
| temp8964 wrote:
| Of course businesses and government programs are different.
|
| If a business is not doing well, it will be defeated and
| shut down. If a government program is not doing well, it
| usually asks for more money.
| mulmen wrote:
| It alarms me that anyone treats them the same. Government
| programs are a last resort to correct market failures.
| They're completely different entities with different goals
| and structures.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > It's so funny to me that people treat businesses and
| government so differently.
|
| As we should. Businesses are rewarded for efficiency.
| Government is judged on effectiveness. It is a huge mistake
| to conflate the two and judge them on the same metrics.
| WalterBright wrote:
| business: when it doesn't get results, budget gets cut
|
| government: when it doesn't get results, budget gets
| increased
| aetherson wrote:
| You're about to see a bunch more interest in cutting
| wasteful spending at startups. The macro environment in the
| last 10 years basically let people (both startups and
| government) get a lot of money for free. That's no longer
| true, and cost-cutting is important now.
| xvedejas wrote:
| We can treat them the same: hold someone accountable when
| their project over-spends and under-delivers. Maybe even
| fire them. It would happen naturally in successful
| companies, but (at least in the US) there's often no
| accountability in government for setting money on fire.
|
| https://pedestrianobservations.com/2021/08/07/why-its-
| import...
| scarmig wrote:
| Well, take something like Google: considering its size and
| amount of money it invests into R&D, you'd expect it to
| generate more product and technological innovation than it
| has. It's a version of the resource curse: when you have so
| much money you don't know what to do with it all, there are
| no real competitive pressures and corporate politics and
| bureaucracy take over.
|
| Schools need more funding, but less on faddish well-paid
| DEI officers who focus their time on axing algebra because
| it's too hard, and more on providing healthy school
| lunches, well ventilated and comfortable environments to
| work in, and a variety of classes tailored to students'
| individual needs.
| [deleted]
| oliveshell wrote:
| How are you quantifying "results" here?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Pick any measure you like.
| cglong wrote:
| As an American, how is this problem avoided in other countries?
| yodsanklai wrote:
| In France, the problem isn't avoided. Public schools are
| _roughly_ the same everywhere in term of resources and
| quality of teacher. But for the most part, kids go to a
| school near their home, and if they live in a rich area, they
| 'll have better studying conditions than if they live in a
| poor area. It seems the government is always trying to
| improve this situation with very little success.
| Aardwolf wrote:
| School funding isn't as much determined by local property
| taxes, but larger scale
| mynegation wrote:
| Schools are funded by a State or Federation member (eg
| provinces and territories in Canada). Gifted programs just
| exist. In that sense - yes - rich areas subsidize less
| fortunate areas.
| anthonyshort wrote:
| Australian public schools are funded by state and federal
| governments, not local. So all public schools tend to be
| pretty similar. On the flip side the government also
| partially funds private schools, which is an issue at the
| moment.
|
| https://www.dese.gov.au/quality-schools-package/fact-
| sheets/...
| pvg wrote:
| Not necessarily a universal recipe for avoiding this problem
| but public education standards, curricula, funding, etc tends
| to be more centralized at a national level in many countries.
| It's much more decentralized in the US with many more points
| of friction for competing interests.
| tremon wrote:
| I don't really know many details as I've only ever interacted
| with the school system here as a pupil, but I think the three
| major differences between here (NL) and the USA are:
|
| Firstly, by not having extreme poverty. You can't solve at
| school the problems that exist at home. We have adequate
| housing and benefits systems, and a minimum wage that people
| can actually live on. In addition, we have local intervention
| teams (and budgets) that try to fix problems that children
| encounter in their home situations (such as violence,
| substance abuse, etc).
|
| Secondly, by banning private schools: all schools are funded
| directly by the government based on number of pupils. This
| makes sure that the rich don't withdraw their children from
| society, and thus makes sure they have a stake in public
| education.
|
| Thirdly, by investing heavily in teachers' education. Many
| teachers here have two degrees: one in their teaching
| subject, and one in pedagogy or psychology.
|
| That said, I've heard many people say that our education
| system isn't what it used to be either, mainly because of two
| changes:
|
| - a decade or so ago the government closed all special-needs
| schools (or at least the majority) and moved those children
| into the general school population. This put a lot of strain
| on the teachers, because they now had to deal not just with
| slow learners, but also children with learning disabilities
| and often behavioural problems. This put a lot of stress
| especially on the lower end of the spectrum.
|
| - the recent appearance of many after-school tutoring
| programs. Since these are privately funded and operated, they
| bring a touch of the US' problems: since the rich now have a
| way to focus their money on only their own offspring,
| inequality in school achievements is rising.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Even asking that question is a positive step.
|
| One polarizing topic at the moment is critical-race theory
| ("CRT"). There are a lot of false claims about what this is.
| Ultimately, CRT was something taught in law schools. Now CRT
| has become a catch-all for teaching the true (rather than
| whitewashed) history of the United States.
|
| A lot of people are opposed to this because they're mistaken
| about what the goals are or are opposed to people being
| educated about historical and current inequality. A common
| argument is that CRT makes children "feel bad". But take
| slavery as one example. Did you directly participate in
| slavery? Of course not. No one is asking you to feel
| personally responsible for this.
|
| But you can be taught the ramifications of slavery that
| continue to this day. Take something as simple as the GI
| Bill. This contributed to the White Flight. It allowed white
| Americans to build up generational wealth. In a system where
| property values are so entangled with educational outcomes,
| you should be able to recognize that slavery and segregation
| aren't just historical artifacts.
|
| You can recognize how you benefit from generational privilege
| without feeling personally responsible for its origins. An
| awful lot of people don't want that to happen however.
|
| So how did other countries avoid this? There are many factors
| here but ultimately the US founding is deeply tied to white
| supremacy. That continues to thi say. The language may have
| changed (eg propagandists might now use terms like "legacy
| Americans") but this belief has never gone away. We as a
| country have never had a serious reckoning with this past.
|
| 50+ years ago towns were racially segregated openly. The term
| "sunset town" came about for a reason. While those direct
| segregation laws might be gone they've been replaced with
| laws and institutions that have the same effect. For example:
| making housing expensive is exclusionary by design.
|
| I say all this to point out that local funding of education
| is part of a deliberately exclusionary system. It may not be
| the reason other countries fund things at a national or state
| level. But our inequality in outcomes through local funding
| is deliberate for those reasons.
| jylam wrote:
| "There are so many topics that are hard to talk about nowadays
| without getting into politics"
|
| I suppose everyone says that since politics exist. Life in a
| society is politics, that's the very definition of the word.
| Politics is not a bad word or something to avoid, stop being
| afraid talking politics. The less you talk about politics, the
| more others do it for you.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| > wealthier localities have more tax revenue and thus better
| schools
|
| This is not the issue. The real issue is that _some_ wealthier
| localities defund their public school system through anti-
| taxation measures and the wealthy send their kids to thriving
| (well funded, large student population) private schools and
| those who can 't afford the private school tuition (rivals
| private college tuition) are stuck with either parochial
| schools (middle class families, associated with their church)
| or public schools (poor kids, who graduate functionally
| illiterate if at all).
|
| Tier 1: private school kids, whose parents control the local
| government and economy
|
| Tier 2: middle class sending their kids to Christian schools
| where they can learn why the order of things is the way it is
| through divine writ
|
| Tier 3: public schools, radically underfunded, basically
| holding cells.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| Well why do you think those rich people are sending their
| kids to private schools?
|
| Getting rid of gifted programs _obviously_ makes the public
| school worse. Do people think that the wealthy are simply
| going to throw their hands up and say "Welp, guess my kid is
| getting a shitty education!"?
|
| Make the public schools good again.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > But what this means is the wealthier localities have more tax
| revenue and thus better schools.
|
| Poorer districts tend to have more industrial properties, so
| they are often better funded than wealthier districts.
| Especially since most state funding is distributed based on
| pupil units rather than pupils, and a low-SES student might
| count as something like 1.5 pupil units. (And a disabled
| student might count as 2.0 pupil units, etc.)
| smsm42 wrote:
| It's a hard topic, and it certainly is not made easier by
| repeating old cliches that has been proven false repeatedly.
| Throwing money at bad schools does not make them good. There
| are plenty of terrible schools spending as much money as the
| best ones, with no results. It's not a money question - at
| least not alone.
|
| Yes, there are correlation between academic success and living
| in a rich neighborhood. Because yes, rich successful people
| often pass on their success to their children. But it's not
| solved by just dumping money on poor schools and hoping that
| would solve everything. It has been tried. Unions love it. Kids
| don't get any better. In fact, the whole "structural
| inequality" thing was roped in to explain this phenomenon - why
| tons of money are being spent with no observable result? Oh, it
| must be the invisible and immeasurable "structural inequality"!
| Which means we should shut down the gifted programs (so rare
| students that manage to overcome the awfulness of their schools
| have no recourse now), introduce race-based school policies and
| let students that barely can (and sometimes can't) read
| graduate. That surely will make them successful.
| scarmig wrote:
| And, perhaps most unfortunately, it's schools in poor and
| disproportionately minority communities that are axing
| algebra and gifted programs in the name of equity, while
| schools serving children from more privileged backgrounds
| continue to offer them.
| masklinn wrote:
| > How does that help anyone?
|
| It doesn't, in ways which are _eerily_ reminiscent of America
| 's falling out of love with public parks and pools. Which
| completely coincidentally followed their desegregation.
| ge96 wrote:
| Didn't think about this much until later. The town I went to
| high school in they had two high schools about 2 miles apart
| and one had more minorities than the other (as in 80% vs. 20%)
| and yeah the former was poorer than the latter.
| robocat wrote:
| The same thing occurs in New Zealand, even though most schools
| are funded by the government (property taxes don't pay for
| schools).
|
| The government also tries to help poor students by boosting
| funding for schools that have poor parents. Schools are ranked
| into 10 deciles[3] depending on the income of the parents, with
| an equal number of schools in each decile. The government gives
| out more funding to schools with poor parents (decile 1), and
| less funding to schools with rich parents (decile 10).
|
| The academic results of students are strongly correlated with
| how well-off their parents are[1]. Attendance and other factors
| are correlated as well[2].
|
| [1] https://keithwoodford.wordpress.com/2012/09/24/socio-
| economi...
|
| [2] https://figure.nz/search/?query=Deciles
|
| [3] https://www.education.govt.nz/school/funding-and-
| financials/...
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I can't help being reminded of Harrison Bergeron.
| hash07e wrote:
| There is a darker Truth.
|
| Intelligence as tested by IQ by several govts and organizations
| is mostly genetic[1].
|
| It means that the "nurture" part is not so much important as
| people think.
|
| Heck you can even see with brothers / cousins the differences.
|
| When we say "gifted" it means we are selecting and optimizing
| for IQ. Thus the "inequality". You will always see more Asians.
|
| To make more equal we need to remove/disqualify asians.
|
| If a profession/skill is very related to a
| characteristic/feature as IQ then I want the best there.
|
| Not everyone is equal and not everyone has the same skills. If
| you check [1] you will see they studied TWINS adopted in
| families. There is no better "social intervention" than
| adopting someone, provide the same food/structure that all on
| family have.
|
| Then you can see here the confirmation in a soft way [2] and
| [3].
|
| _" and we consistently find that considering performance on
| the SAT/ACT, particularly the math section, substantially
| improves the predictive validity of our decisions with respect
| to subsequent student success at the Institute."_
|
| I am not gifted but I do benefit from gifted people work.
|
| [1] -
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016028962...
|
| [2] - https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-suspending-
| our-...
|
| [3] - https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/we-are-reinstating-
| our...
| cato_the_elder wrote:
| It is equity, it's just that equity is an incredibly ludicrous
| and impractical idea.
| skyde wrote:
| Wow as a white men that is completely against affirmative action
| I still 100% agree with everything in this article.
|
| Basically if only 2% of student taking algebra 1 are black then
| the solution is : 1- not to Remove algebra 1 completely. 2- not
| to force a % of the algebra 1 student to be black by accepting
| student that are not ready for this level of Math 3- not too
| invent a new (non-racist) version of algebra 1 that is easier to
| understand .
|
| The solution is simply to embrace asynchronous development!
|
| If one student test score below average in English and Geography
| but above average in math. He should still be allowed to take
| Algebra 1.
|
| Also algebra 1 should be offered as an option in all neighborhood
| (including poor one) even if only a single student in that
| neighborhood would like to take it.
|
| I see being allowed to take the class if you qualify as a Right
| similar to the right to Vote. So the parent should not be forced
| to drive the student to another school because the local school
| prefer to not offer the class.
| superb-owl wrote:
| I've never understood this approach of "eliminating gifted
| programs" due to equity concerns. Why not just implement
| something along the lines of affirmative action policies - make
| sure the demographics gifted programs roughly match the
| demographics of the school district?
| jaywalk wrote:
| How does shoving a student into a gifted program they aren't
| otherwise qualified for solely due to their race actually help
| anything?
| superb-owl wrote:
| This assumes that current admissions are purely meritocratic,
| when, as the article points out, they're not:
|
| > Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as
| gifted compared to white students with similar test scores
|
| But even if we supposed that the top 10% of Black students
| were slightly less qualified than the top 10% of White
| students (say, due to socioeconomic factors), the program
| would simply adjust towards the mean student. So maybe the
| program slows down a bit, but it's still an accelerated
| program, and now it's helping to correct those socioeconomic
| disparities.
|
| The only case where this argument would break down is if the
| top 10% of Black students were _severely_ less qualified than
| the top 10% of White students, in which case the program
| would likely fail. But it seems pretty clear that this isn't
| the case.
| MarkMarine wrote:
| As a "gifted" student in a tiny town, I had my 3rd and 4th grade
| math "class" in the hallway, where the teachers drug my desk and
| slapped down a geometry textbook and told me to teach myself. In
| other classes they tried to get me to help teach my classmates
| the concepts, which is not a great place for a 4th grader to be
| in.
|
| By high school I'd learned to read the textbook, ace the tests
| and do fuck-all for homework to the frustration of every educator
| at the school trying to teach me hard work alongside the actual
| material. There were actually AP classes in high school that I
| never qualified for because I never learned to actually work at
| school, and by high school I didn't really care. I was completely
| unprepared when Junior year in college, it actually got so hard
| that I had to study. I almost flunked out.
|
| I can empathize with the gifted kids that are just a different
| shade, not getting challenged, basically getting the small town
| experience I got. It is a ton of potential being wasted. I agree
| with the article, throwing away gifted programs and just lowering
| the bar is a mistake, but raising everyones bar to the gifted
| level... that's going to leave some of the most vulnerable behind
| which I don't think should be done either.
|
| Maybe working to shore up the problem of black/brown kids having
| equal test scores and not getting into a gifted program is the
| first hurdle, and then we can look around and see what to do
| next.
| havblue wrote:
| A lot of my friends in the city I went to college in would have
| been on the "equity" side of this debate as well, until they had
| kids themselves. It dawned on them that their kids in public
| schools may not be able to get algebra in eighth grade anymore.
| And good luck with long division. So after they realized their
| kids will get a worse math education than they had, they changed
| their tune.
| duxup wrote:
| >we should be mandating that every eighth grader takes Algebra I
| --and then structure the entire pre-K to seventh grade student
| experience to ensure this is a legitimate possibility for every
| child.
|
| Just "make" everyone qualified / good at algebra?
|
| I feel like that glosses over the ALL the challenges with
| education ...
| zen_1 wrote:
| Never let reality get in the way of ideology
| luxuryballs wrote:
| Every time I read this stuff I don't get it, it always feels like
| some form of missing the forest for the trees when you try and
| make determinations based off of percentages/ratios of groups
| rather than keeping it about the individual.
|
| Uplift the individual first, trying to tweak things just to pump
| your numbers up seems like missing the point. I would rather
| treat education on a more personal outcome level than to treat it
| like a retail shop where I'm just trying to boost sales to meet
| some number/category goals.
|
| (I think something similar can be said about this concept when it
| comes to politicians on TV recommending medical treatments or
| vaccines "for everyone" which I think is worth mentioning to help
| frame what I am getting at here but that's another story.)
| jugg1es wrote:
| We should not be punishing smart kids even if some of those
| smarts may be due to income inequality that may have some basis
| in racial inequality. It's not the kid's fault that their
| grandparents generation thought that lower taxes were better than
| good governance.
| atx42 wrote:
| My quick take on "gifted" programs. * These are really supposed
| to be for kids that learn differently, not necessarily "smarter".
| * The percentage of kids in these programs is higher than should
| be expected. * The number of kids that happen to have teacher
| parents or some possible inside track seems high.
|
| I think people hear "gifted" and think they are being left out,
| but that's not supposed to be the case. Sort of the difference
| between classroom and home school, sometimes one works better for
| a kid than the other, not that one is necessarily better than the
| other.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I hate this woke nonsense about equity in students. Man I
| probably would have been so bored in school and settled for the
| status quo if I had to be in classes where the lowest common
| denominator was the average American student. Luckily all we had
| to do was pass an assessment to get into gifted classes. They
| really should change the name though, but keep the classes. We
| are equal in our human rights, not in our capacity to learn
| certain things. That said, obviously students in less
| academically strenuous classes shouldn't be swept under the rug
| and they should get as tailored an education as possible. Trying
| to squash all kids into the same politically correct group won't
| work and hurts everyone.
| nlittlepoole wrote:
| Probably late posting here but going to post here to maybe offer
| some understanding to why it is people support policies like
| this. For the record, I'm not personally for it but there is a
| method to the madness. I'm black, take that for what it is.
|
| "unacceptably white" is probably the most triggering thing in
| here but it actually represents the core of this conflict. The
| people trying to eliminate gifted programs are recognizing that
| many forms of power in society are zero sum. There are plenty of
| ways to get a great education but there is only one Harvard.
| Access to higher education opportunities is not only a pathway
| out of poverty but also to power within the institutions that
| hire grads.
|
| The supporters of this form of affirmative action recognize that
| in a system where black/latino/indigenous students have
| structural disadvantages (poverty, prejudice, health, etc) but
| also operates as a pure meritocracy leads to a system where their
| racial group possesses disproportionately less power vs their
| population. Less kids in these groups in gifted programs means
| less of these kids going to top universities and on to top
| positions in government and business.
|
| Many of you may see this as tribal or even perpetuating divides
| on race. But I'd respond that you fundamentally are
| underestimating how much marginalized communities distrust
| communities outside of their own. I'll use the black community
| because I'm a member of it. There is very little trust (myself
| included) that the white individuals who attend these programs
| and (hopefully) go on to succeed in higher education will use
| their influence for the benefit of blacks. I don't believe that
| because I think white people are racist, just self interested
| (like most people). That thinking extends to other groups like
| east and south Asians.
|
| Personally my views on this are not to eliminate gifted programs,
| I benefited from one myself and know how important they are.
| Ideally we'd do what many others here suggested and just build
| more programs. If there is this much of a fight about it
| obviously there is a lot of demand for schools where Algebra I is
| taught in the 8th grade. So let's make more of those. That won't
| solve the issue at the college level though. There is a reason
| there are not 50 Harvards and its because the
| access/power/influence that degree offers is zero sum. Until we
| figure out a way to ration out that power in a way that people
| think is fair we're going to see constant contention over it.
| roody15 wrote:
| Somehow in last few years equity has been promoted and even
| equated with equality.
|
| They are different concepts.
|
| Equal Opportunity is a universal goal that as a society we
| continue to strive towards even though is impossible to fully
| achieve.
|
| Equalized Outcomes (Equity) Is a dystopian nightmare.
|
| The idea that all possible differentials between humans can and
| should have the same outcomes is ludicrous.
|
| I work in education and will give you an example of this
| nonsense. In a well to do district in Chicago they found that
| Black students do not do as well in AP Calculus. After years of
| intervention the district achieved growth and had a record number
| of black student now enrolled in AP Calculus. However after five
| years and despite the increase of black students it was still
| found that white and asian students got higher scores on the AP
| exam.
|
| The district solution was to cancel AP Calculus and now it is
| only offered as a third party online course not taught by the
| school district.
|
| Why was the goal for all groups to have the same test scores?
| Just absolute rubbish.
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| At my high school, they were able to get funding for advanced
| program (for above average students) by arguing that there was
| already funding for programs for students who were struggling
| (below average students). That is, that is was unfair that one
| group of students were having their special educational needs
| met, but that another group wasn't. They succeeded and the
| program was very successful. The result was three levels for most
| subjects which students could choose based on their goals and
| abilities. They were also able to keep the bar for the advanced
| classes high so students who enrolled but found them too
| challenging would soon drop down a level -- as most preferred a
| high grade in middle level class then a mediocre or low grade in
| a high level class. I took classes at all three levels as I was
| strong in math and science but less so in the humanities, for
| example. I thought it worked great.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| I'm not aware of studies showing that gifted programs have a
| positive impact on student performance.
|
| My hunch is that the typical school district is looking for a
| palatable excuse to reduce funding needs.
| aantix wrote:
| They were the only interesting classes.
|
| Project based learning.
|
| Being with other students that actually gave a shit.
| edrxty wrote:
| Can confirm, I went through several and they were all
| massively formative experiences. I wouldn't trade them for
| anything.
|
| If anything, children should be offered more opportunities to
| seek this kind of free form enrichment.
| wccrawford wrote:
| I would actually say that my gifted classes probably brought my
| grades _down_ , at least in those same years.
|
| But at the same time, they gave me a broader education and I
| learned more than I would have otherwise.
|
| At my elementary school, you were taken out of normal classes 1
| day per week. You still had to do all the work from that day,
| but you didn't actually attend those sessions for those
| classes. Instead, you spent the whole day in a different
| classroom that was solely for "gifted" students.
|
| Of course, this meant that it really was only the top students
| that could handle it.
|
| Prior to being tested and accepted into Gifted, I was a pretty
| constant disruption in my normal classes. I would finish all
| the work in class, even the stuff that everyone else had to
| take home because it took them so long. That left me constantly
| bored, and clued them in that I needed more.
|
| TBH, I probably would have said I preferred being given a book
| and let sit in a corner and learned or just read fiction. But
| instead I was forced to be social and learn about things not
| usually taught in school, such as puzzle solving. I'm still
| very much an introvert, but I have to wonder how much more
| introverted I'd be if it weren't for that? Perhaps cripplingly
| so.
|
| I'm a huge fan of gifted classes for obvious reasons, but not
| at the expense of other students. If there isn't enough budget
| to teach everyone to a basic level, gifted classes are not a
| great idea.
|
| In fact, we should probably restructure everything so that
| _everyone_ who isn 't being taught at their full potential can
| learn more in school. I'm sure there were students around me
| that were almost in my same situation, but they weren't in
| Gifted. They were probably also bored and could have been both
| educated and entertained during those times, if we had the
| programs for it.
| _3u10 wrote:
| I can't speak for everyone but they kept me from dropping out.
| thebooktocome wrote:
| But would you (and the statistical student like you) have
| been better served by a different intervention? That's the
| thing I'm curious about.
| gcfff wrote:
| I think a new intervention should be demonstrated to be an
| improvement before current interventions be cut.
| _3u10 wrote:
| Gifted programs and advanced classes were what kept me in
| school, the only things that got my grades up tho were
| classes with rigid rules. I had one class and where if you
| showed up late once / didn't hand in one assignment you
| failed.
|
| I got straight As that semester. The rest of school was
| just min/max'ing to average out with a C and not do any
| homework.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _I agree that it is unacceptable to have eighth grade Algebra I
| classes and gifted education programs that disproportionately
| exclude Black and brown children. But if equity is the goal, we
| should be mandating that every eighth grader takes Algebra I--and
| then structure the entire pre-K to seventh grade student
| experience to ensure this is a legitimate possibility for every
| child. Since when does equity mean everyone gets nothing?_
|
| I don't know whether Algebra I is above or below what eighth
| graders can be expected to do, but raising the difficulty of
| every class to what the most advanced student is capable of is
| not the answer either. Everybody knows someone else that is
| better at math than they are, and someone who is not as good. It
| is universal common knowledge that the ease with which one takes
| to math is different for different people. Why can't we just
| admit it and quit trying to make people who are unique the same?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Subject categories such as "math" are also very broad. I
| struggled with math in elementary school, because it was mostly
| about memorization. 3 + 5 = 8. 6 x 7 = 42. Learning and being
| able to spit out those facts as quickly and flawlessly as
| possible was most of what I remember about math as a young kid.
| I was never good at that. I still am not good at that. I got Cs
| and sometimes lower grades in math.
|
| Somehow, though, I passed a test in 7th grade to qualify to
| take algebra in 8th grade. Suddenly stuff started making sense,
| and I could see a point to it. You could actually solve an
| interesting problem. It wasn't just regurgitation of facts. It
| became more about thinking and connecting concepts and even
| being creative. I started getting As in math, and continue to
| do well in High School with geometry, trig, and calculus, but
| up until algebra was introduced I would certainly not have
| demonstrated a gifted ability in "math".
| zozbot234 wrote:
| You struggled with math in elementary school because of
| deeply flawed teaching. Even at that early age, it's not hard
| to understand that "3 + 5 = 8" is not something that you'd
| need to literally memorize. Of course, the fact that teaching
| quality can vary to such an extent is itself noteworthy.
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I don't think I agree. 3 + 5 = 8 isn't something you _need_
| to literally memorize, but if you don 't memorize such
| facts of basic arithmetic you're at a disadvantage when it
| comes to doing homework and tests. It's easier and less
| error-prone to memorize 8*7 than it is to work it out
| manually every time you see it until it sticks.
|
| For what it's worth, I struggled with math in elementary
| school and especially high school -- I failed algebra I,
| then passed it with a D; then I failed algebra II before
| passing _it* with a D. It wasn 't until I was forced to
| take a business calculus class in my 20s that it started
| clicking, and I assure you the quality of instruction
| wasn't any better at the college level than it was in high
| school. (I did eventually graduate with honors with a math
| degree.)_
| realfun wrote:
| Agreed. It does need memorization. Anyone who don't think
| so can try to add and multiply in hexadecimal, what is
| 0xA + 0xC and what is 0x8 * 0x6? It becomes quite obvious
| memorization is required when you try it in any other
| radix other than decimal(which is memorized already).
| zozbot234 wrote:
| It might be quite obvious that memorization is
| _convenient_ , but 'required' means "you can't do it any
| other way" and that's obviously incorrect.
| westurner wrote:
| IDK why we'd assume that there's a different cognitive
| process for learning mathematics with radix 10 than with
| radix 16?
|
| Mathematics_education#Methods https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Mathematics_education#Methods :
|
| > [...] _Rote learning: the teaching of mathematical
| results, definitions and concepts by repetition and
| memorisation typically without meaning or supported by
| mathematical reasoning. A derisory term is drill and
| kill. In traditional education, rote learning is used to
| teach multiplication tables, definitions, formulas, and
| other aspects of mathematics._
| generalizations wrote:
| I don't plan to ever need to do math in hexadecimal
| without a calculator. Far as decimals go, I actually did
| get away with solving the multiplication problems on the
| fly...so no, memorization isn't necessary.
| kgwgk wrote:
| > it's not hard to understand that "3 + 5 = 8" is not
| something that you'd need to literally memorize
|
| 'Literally memorize' as opposed to what? Counting your
| fingers?
| WalterBright wrote:
| Mentally count 5 6 7 8, sure. Why not?
| kgwgk wrote:
| Well, it would be 3, 4, 5 ,6, 7, 8 unless you have
| memorized the commutative property ;-)
| dontcare007 wrote:
| Heck, why even memorize the names of the quantities...
| WalterBright wrote:
| After going around the horn a few times, I expect the
| student would eventually learn to take the canal :-)
| michaelt wrote:
| Precisely.
|
| Our entire society is organised so that even university
| graduates are very rarely called upon to sum two single-
| digit numbers.
|
| Adding up purchases in a shop? The till does it
| automatically. Admittedly, the cashier will need to be
| able to make up change promptly - but a customer needn't
| check their change.
|
| Paying for parking? There will be a sign listing how much
| money you need to put in for 1 hour, 2 hours, 3 hours and
| so on.
|
| Picking 14 items in a warehouse? You only need to count
| one at a time. There's a chance to speed things up by
| picking 2 packs of 6 plus 2 singles? Then the computer
| will print that on the pick list. No computer? Then the
| boss will print a sign with a lookup table like "14 items
| -> 2 six packs + 2 singles" and tape it to the shelf.
|
| Trying to figure out whether you can get 9 people to
| lunch in two cars, one of which is kinda small? Add it up
| on your fingers, or keep your mouth shut and one of the
| other 8 people will figure it out.
|
| Just don't get into board gaming :)
| kgwgk wrote:
| > Paying for parking? There will be a sign listing how
| much money you need to put in for 1 hour, 2 hours, 3
| hours and so on.
|
| Then if the maximum parking time is 3 hours, it's 10:15
| and you want to know at what time you need to leave you
| take out a cardboard clock, set the current time, and
| advanced the small hand one, two, three steps. And to
| know whether you can afford both the parking and a coffee
| with the money you have on you you make two piles and
| keep the parking money in one pocket and the coffee money
| in another pocket. I got it. [I'm joking, our society is
| organised in such a way that you don't need to be able to
| read a clock or handle money.]
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Then if the maximum parking time is 3 hours, it 's
| 10:15 and you want to know at what time you need to leave
| you take out a cardboard clock, set the current time, and
| advanced the small hand one, two, three steps._
|
| Not at all - you simply count hours using your fingers.
| kgwgk wrote:
| Come on, use the right tool for the job!
| dpbriggs wrote:
| You need some amount of this sort of practice to build
| numeracy. It's great to represent things in more accessible
| forms but at the end of the day it's useful for citizens to
| instantly recognize 3+5=8.
| aqme28 wrote:
| Similarly, I got Cs in math in middle school and early
| highschool. Once I got to calculus something clicked. Now I
| have a degree in physics and am pursuing a graduate degree in
| applied mathematics. The math I do now is nothing like the
| math I was bad at in middle school.
| bradlys wrote:
| Puberty cannot be understated in terms of its effects...
| mrtranscendence wrote:
| I have a similar story, and puberty was definitely an
| issue. I didn't get good at math until I was old enough
| to buy alcohol.
| bombcar wrote:
| This could be read as "once I needed to figure out how
| much alcohol per hour I was earning, I learned math".
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Which means we just need to make kids play Factorio or
| Eve Online to instill the desire to be good at
| arithmetic. Granted, Eve Online would instill other
| behaviors that might not be so desirable...
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Probably both ways. Some kids backslide with academics at
| that age, others seem to gain traction. I didn't mention
| it but have considered that part of the reason that
| things became easier for me in the 8th grade is that I
| was starting to get the mental maturity to think more
| abstractly and deliberately.
| acchow wrote:
| > Why can't we just admit it and quit trying to make people who
| are unique the same?
|
| America keeps conflating equity for equality.
| eej71 wrote:
| The conflation is a very recent intellectual phenomena.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Why intellectual? It seems more political to me (both in
| the sense of wanting to change policy and wanting to
| acquire power)
| eej71 wrote:
| Certainly true - but the advocacy of the philosophical
| distinction and its promotion originates from various
| intellectuals. I wish it would go back to where it came
| from, but I see that we may be stuck with it for quite a
| while.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| I think it is part of an intentional replacement, the
| conflation is only temporary in order to muddy the waters
| and diminish opposition.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| I'll likely be lambasted for this... but it isn't America
| doing the conflating. It is a political ideological group.
| They are referred to as "woke, progressive, left-leaning" and
| a handful of other terms. Conservatives, except the far-right
| nut-cases and wackos are more likely to support equality of
| opportunity, but consider outcomes largely depend on the
| individual, their motivation, and luck.
| chowells wrote:
| And conservatives are flat-out wrong, as usual, because
| they're arguing against strawmen they've invented. No one
| is talking about individuals. The discussion is about group
| statistics. Individuals are irrelevant to the discussion.
|
| If there is a statistical difference in outcomes, why? Is
| one group inherently inferior? Or is there maybe not the
| equality of opportunity that they claim?
| sandstrom wrote:
| "Is one group inherently inferior?"
|
| It's reasonable to think that there is (A) some
| correlation between parental income and intelligence.
| Also, it's reasonable to think there is (B) correlation
| between parental intelligence and their children's
| intelligence, which in turn (C) correlate with school
| performance.
|
| Source on B:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ
|
| Sources on A and C:
| https://www.gwern.net/docs/iq/ses/2007-strenze.pdf
|
| So yes, maybe people in the low income group are
| "inferior" in the sense that they'll have a harder time
| in school, because they are (on average) less bright.
| Everyone knows that some kids have an easy time in school
| because they are quick-witted, and others will have a
| harder time.
|
| That's not saying we shouldn't try to help them, we
| certainly should! But I think we'll make less progress on
| that goal if we cannot admit that some kids will have a
| more difficult time than others.
| rhino369 wrote:
| They are talking about individuals because that is what
| they value. That's not wrong, you just don't see the
| value in it.
|
| They don't see the value in hyping up ethnic/racial
| identifies. It's a difference of values / philosophy.
|
| And inferior is loaded language. Success in something
| does not mean those that aren't are inferior.
| visarga wrote:
| .. groups might differ in how they set goals and what
| they consider valuable
| bendbro wrote:
| > No one is talking about individuals. The discussion is
| about group statistics.
|
| Sweeping group level decisions ultimately affect
| individuals.
|
| > If there is a statistical difference in outcomes, why?
| Is one group inherently inferior?
|
| Why not?
|
| Progress isn't exclusive to the left, and people offering
| progress often destroy rather than improve. Progress
| doesn't necessarily require sacrificing meritocratic
| ideals to satisfy some sludge of totally-not-marxist,
| totally-not-postmodern, totally-not-intersectional,
| totally-not-critical-theory thought. We can make
| everyone's life better through other methods. I'm happy
| to see the zeitgeist finally getting over this fixation
| that politics is described by "The Good Guys vs the right
| wing".
|
| My idea:
|
| Judge people on their individual merits and whatever
| happens is fair game. Implement a social safety net to
| prevent people from suffering. Reparate historical
| violations of the first tenet. Aggressively target
| monopolies. Increase environmental protections. Increase
| transparency in business and government. Increase
| education about our financial system, personal finance,
| and contemporary topics.
|
| These ideas can be easily composed onto the ideas we
| already have, will result in benefit for everyone, and
| the political distance between them and the common man is
| much less than it is between all the woke stuff.
| heretogetout wrote:
| The thing those conservatives don't seem to get is you
| can't know if you have equality of opportunity without
| monitoring and responding to equality of outcomes.
|
| For example, say you implement a literacy test for voting.
| Everyone has the opportunity to learn how to read, but as
| we all know those that grade the literacy tests can fail
| people for arbitrary (or rather intrinsic) reasons. You'd
| catch this by measuring the outcomes, not just blindly
| assuming that the opportunities are enough.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > Conservatives, except the far-right nut-cases and wackos
| are more likely to support equality of opportunity
|
| I have yet to hear any conservative advocate for more
| balanced education funding between school districts, more
| unified national standards for education, lowering tuition
| costs for public colleges or any other policy that suggests
| an "equality of opportunity" with regard to education.
|
| Instead, I tend to hear policies that advocate _in_
| equality of opportunity, such as favoring parents who want
| to and can afford the time to homeschool.
|
| Maybe I'm missing some, so please correct me.
|
| > consider outcomes largely depend on the individual, their
| motivation, and _luck_.
|
| Thanks for acknowledging "luck". Too many people refuse to.
| robonerd wrote:
| Algebra I at 8th grade would have placed you a year behind when
| I was in school. 7th grade was Algrebra 1, Algebra 2 was 8th,
| Geometry was 9th (first year of highschool). 10th grade had
| Trig, 11th had pre-Calc, and Calculus was the final year.
| raegis wrote:
| I took Algebra 1 in 9th grade, and Algebra 2 and Geometry in
| the 10th grade. The 9th graders in my Algebra 2 class (who
| took Algebra 1 in 8th grade) had holes in their algebra
| background because middle school algebra is taught at a lower
| level than high school algebra. But I wasn't behind, for I
| took AP Calculus in 11th grade successfully because of a
| strong foundation from high school level algebra classes.
| However, I'm struggling with placement choices for own
| children as we speak.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| At the very least it would be useful to offer supplements for
| the mathematically interested. If it's accredited we'll run
| into the same conversation but at least students will have
| access to more interesting material.
|
| In my experience tutoring remedial math students just had a
| hole somewhere or never practiced. Once both of those were
| addressed (with lots of hard work) they passed just fine.
| glerk wrote:
| As someone who didn't grow up in the American school system, I
| am a bit surprised that Algebra I in the 8th grade is
| considered "gifted education". If Algebra I is about solving
| linear equations with unknown variables, I am pretty sure I was
| taught this much earlier than 8th grade as part of the standard
| curriculum. But maybe this means something different in the
| United States.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's actually not. It's not clear from the way the article is
| written, but he's talking about two different things, both of
| which various reform bodies have proposed eliminating. The
| first is "gifted and talented education" programs, which
| involve additional coursework and activities on top of normal
| schooling. I'm not going to claim I remember super well what
| we did at this point, but I do remember learning how to make
| donuts from scratch, holding mock trials, learning computer-
| aided design at a time the regular school system didn't even
| have computers yet, and taking the SAT in 6th grade. All of
| these happened either after school or in the summer.
|
| The other thing is related to tracking. That is where Algebra
| comes in. Not all students will take it at the same time.
| Instead, students are segregated into separate tracks, one of
| which will start with Algebra in middle school and eventually
| end up taking Calculus by the end of high school. The other
| won't get to Algebra until high school and will never take
| Calculus at all.
|
| These are separate phenomena, but the author here is drawing
| an analogy between the reasons given for eliminating both
| GATE programs and educational tracking systems (as in, both
| are seen as being racially biased).
| lights0123 wrote:
| Algebra I also generally includes systems of (2 or 3) linear
| equations, quadratics (different equation forms, factoring,
| graphing, solving) and basic exponential functions (although
| usually just recognizing them and filling in Ce^rt).
| anthonypasq wrote:
| i dont think so, thats all algebra 2
| sokoloff wrote:
| That is not my experience. Systems of 2 linear equations
| ("intersecting lines") and quadratics were definitely
| part of Algebra I (and maybe even pre-Algebra).
|
| I'm 95+% sure that basic exponentiation was also part of
| Algebra I.
| glerk wrote:
| Ah makes sense then. I remember seeing stuff like 3x+2=11
| around the 4th grade, but definitely no quadratics or
| graphing functions until much later. Maybe the order the
| information is presented is just different and it doesn't
| make sense to compare.
| usrn wrote:
| No that's about right. People hate math here largely because
| it's unbearably repetitive.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > raising the difficulty of every class to what the most
| advanced student is capable
|
| The alternate view is that we should very much do this as a
| meaningful challenge to K-12 math _teachers_. People throughout
| the Western world, at all levels of underlying aptitude
| (whatever might be meant by that), manage to learn their basic
| intro to algebra in junior high. It 's not rocket surgery, FFS!
| lr1970 wrote:
| > I don't know whether Algebra I is above or below what eighth
| graders can be expected to do
|
| I went to school in Eastern Europe in the eighties. We had
| algebra (and separately geometry) since 7-th grade. Also
| physics, chemistry and biology. And it was an ordinary
| secondary school. Some kids were struggling, also depends on
| how good/bad the teacher was. But majority was coping with the
| load alright.
| bena wrote:
| Algebra I is right around what they should be able to grok.
|
| When I went to high school, the expected path from Freshman
| year (9th grade) to Senior year (12th grade) was Algebra I,
| Geometry, Algebra II, MATH ELECTIVE (IIRC, that last could have
| been Trigonometry).
|
| My middle school didn't have 8th grade Algebra I. But another
| middle school that fed the high school I went to did have it.
| And from what I remember, it was available to honor students as
| well as those in gifted programs.
|
| So I don't agree that it should be mandated, that seems a step
| too far, but it's probably a good option to have for those who
| can handle it. And the number of students who can handle it is
| probably greater than the number who it is being offered to
| currently. So I don't agree with removing it entirely either.
| ehvatum wrote:
| > Why can't we just admit it and quit trying to make people who
| are unique the same?
|
| Because this sentiment is exactly opposed to a dominant
| philosophical framework built upon the axiom that, because all
| people are exactly identical, any difference in outcome is
| necessarily the result of hidden power structures.
|
| The replacement of "equality" with "equity" is a dead giveaway
| that you're dealing with Marxism. Equality before the law and
| equality of opportunity are American principles, but they are
| fading as _equality of outcome_ is held up as the only
| acceptable standard.
|
| Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, an outspoken Soviet dissident, famously
| wrote: "Human beings are born with different capacities. If
| they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they
| are not free."
|
| Much greater energy and intelligence is required to advocate
| for equal opportunity as compared to equal outcomes, and much
| greater worldly experience is required to value equal
| opportunity as compared to equal outcomes. It will always be
| easy for politicians to set people against each other and
| dilute the common good by pushing Marxism. It is the path of
| least effort and greatest personal return for low quality
| leaders.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Algebra 1 is a low bar for 8th grade. There isn't any reason
| that shouldn't be the standard expectation
| hintymad wrote:
| > but raising the difficulty of every class to what the most
| advanced student is capable of is not the answer
|
| The most advanced students will find one way or another to
| educate themselves. I think our school systems should focus on
| the middle: the students who could realize their full potential
| if they are sufficiently challenged. They are the group that do
| not always get STEM naturally but can eventually get it if
| pushed enough with the right material and exercises. Watering
| down curriculum means the students in the middle would lose the
| chance to truly grow, or their parents resort to tutoring and
| we get back to the discussion of how social-economic status
| matters in education.
| lupire wrote:
| What if those most advanced students don't have rich
| connected parents to expose them to educational
| opportunities?
|
| If schooling doesn't matter for the brightest students, why
| does everyone think Caltech is such a great school?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| It is for grad school. Nobody in academia cares if you went
| there for undergrad.
| hintymad wrote:
| Fair question. My assumption is that the US schools offer
| students enough exposure and resources of advanced topics,
| to the point that top students will find their way. For
| instance, libraries, vast resources on the internet,
| community colleges, programs with local universities, and
| etc.
|
| The assumption can be challenged, of course.
|
| Case in point, this problem on Stackexchange was from a
| high-school homework. I think it's advanced enough for
| students: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/71117
| 4/calculati...
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Getting out of doing the "boring busywork" is part of the
| advantage of being in the gifted class too though. Just
| doing both sets of work isn't a solution.
| jaywalk wrote:
| So what happens when we decide "everyone is gifted" and teach
| all students at the level that would have been taught only to
| gifted students before? Seems like the obvious outcome would be
| _a lot_ more students who struggle, necessitating a slower
| track for them. So instead of regular and gifted classes, you
| have regular and "non-gifted" (for lack of a better term)
| classes.
|
| This is why equity is a bullshit goal.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _teach all students at the level that would have been
| taught only to gifted students before?_
|
| You just can't do that, no matter how much you want it. Some
| teachers are better than others, they can't all be elite. The
| teachers union wouldn't let you sack all the mediocre
| teachers, and even if you somehow could fire them, where
| would all the new elite teachers to replace the mediocre ones
| come from? If you just sacked the bottom 50% of teachers and
| doubled the class size of the better half, I think classroom
| conditions would certainly deteriorate.
| lupire wrote:
| Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the
| remedial student?
|
| Gifted students (at least up to middle school) don't need
| special teachers (an 8th grade math teacher could teach
| gifted 6th graders), they just need challenging material
| and _peers_ to keep them motivated and study with.
| sokoloff wrote:
| > Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the
| remedial student?
|
| What outcome are you seeking from schooling? The answer
| to that determines which student needs the better
| teacher, in order to achieve the desired outcome.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the
| remedial student?_
|
| The well-behaved students. Good teachers are wasted on
| troublemakers and class clowns, regardless of their IQ.
| And if a dim student who scores poorly on IQ tests knows
| how to sit quietly and behave themself, I think good
| teachers will help them a lot.
| jacobolus wrote:
| > Good teachers are wasted on troublemakers and class
| clowns
|
| It is entirely natural for children to "clown around" in
| a boring setting, and their lack of interest / trouble
| focusing reflects a societal (and school) failure to make
| school engaging and give them the appropriate challenges
| and direct feedback to keep their attention. Many of the
| greatest human breakthroughs were made by people who were
| squirmy and distractible as children, who had difficulty
| with the formal school curriculum, or who were ostracized
| by their classmates for one reason or another.
|
| Every child deserves attention from good teachers. Good
| teachers with enough resources can provide a significant
| benefit to these students and integrate them into a
| smoothly functioning classroom. Assigning troublesome
| students to weak or unsympathetic teachers is a
| tremendous "waste" of human talent.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| School was never meant to be "engaging". It's not
| recreation, it's work. The problem seems to be that we've
| lost the value of working hard and pushing through things
| we find dull and uninteresting, in order to attain a
| greater goal. Instead we expect everything to be
| engaging, stimulating and entertaining. Real world
| success is not like that - it's work - so better get into
| the habit early on.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > School was never meant to be "engaging".
|
| That's backwards. A school that doesn't engage its
| students has failed at its most important goals, and the
| very best schools have always striven to be engaging.
| Often this was done in unconventional ways, such as
| directing the youngest students to memorize their pre-set
| "lessons" word for word and be able to literally chant
| them back to the teacher. Similarly "direct" yet
| effective instructional methods were just as common wrt.
| practical exercises and problem solving. There was no
| space for the modern fashionable truism that
| "constructing" one's education from scratch, with
| practically no involvement from an outside educator, is
| the only possible source of engagement.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I guess we're circling around this question: Should
| schools bend to the natural tendencies of students, or
| should students bend to the rigours and structure of
| academic life?
|
| Given that society itself doesn't bend much, I'm inclined
| towards the latter.
| sealaska wrote:
| Do you think kids should have recess? If so, for what
| purpose?
|
| Or, what do you think of Montessori education?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| > _Do you think kids should have recess? If so, for what
| purpose?_
|
| Sure, for the same reason that adults take coffee breaks.
| This doesn't seem to contradict what I said. In fact it's
| a very clear delineation between recreation and work. The
| problem is when children (or adults) behave as though
| they're on recess when they're supposed to be working.
|
| > _Or, what do you think of Montessori education?_
|
| I'm no expert, but it doesn't seem as though the
| educator/pupil ratios required to make it work are
| scalable.
| SamPatt wrote:
| If school is work then we need to recognize the
| children's own agency in school, otherwise it it
| literally slavery.
|
| Forcing children to spend the majority of their lives
| working against their will leads to problems, especially
| among non-conformists.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I don't disagree with your characterization, but given
| children are not agents, and are subject to the whims of
| their parents, I think it's appropriate.
|
| Locking a child in their room is imprisonment, yet is
| widely used punitively at the whim of parents. Beating
| children is assault, yet operant conditioning is
| effective and also widely practiced towards children.
| It's also permitted in most jurisdictions if undue harm
| is not caused.
|
| > _among non-conformists_
|
| Why do we need these, exactly? What benefit are
| individuals who have not been appropriately conditioned
| to work, suffering, and self-sufficiency?
| vanviegen wrote:
| "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the
| unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to
| himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
| unreasonable man." - George Bernard Shawn
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _What benefit are individuals who have not been
| appropriately conditioned to work, suffering, and self-
| sufficiency?_
|
| This ideology sounds an awful lot like fascism to me, or
| maybe some kind of psychopathy.
|
| If you start looking around at the highest-leverage
| contributions to humanity throughout history, a
| disproportionate number of them come from people who
| weren't "appropriately conditioned to work, suffering,
| and self sufficiency" (typically without getting anything
| for their trouble beyond satisfying their own curiosity).
| So if all you care about is some kind of personal
| benefit, then someone (often a teacher) nurturing and
| encouraging those people has been directly responsible
| for a significant part of your material well being.
|
| But many of us recognize humans as ends in themselves,
| rather than tools for our personal aggrandizement or
| slaves to the collective.
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I don't think it's psychopathic or fascist to expect that
| individuals be able to sustain themselves. Nor do I
| believe it's right to enslave the collective in order to
| provide a cushion on which those who fail to do so may
| land. I don't think it just to mandate the protection of
| people from the full consequences of their own
| misfortune, failure, or inadequacy. This is the domain of
| (voluntary) charity.
|
| If you take a harder look at the disproportionate
| contributors you mention, you'll find that they were
| motivated to persist at problems for very long hours,
| often for many years without respite, and for very little
| reward beyond satisfying their own impulses. None of this
| indicates poor work ethic, or a reluctance to take
| responsibility for one's own actions and their
| consequences.
| sealaska wrote:
| We're on a forum called "Hacker News". Would you consider
| hackers to fit better into the conformist or non-
| conformist category?
| krapp wrote:
| Most hackers nowadays are extremely conformist,
| particularly within the SV startup culture from which
| Hacker News originates.
| dahfizz wrote:
| > It is entirely natural for children to "clown around"
| in a boring setting
|
| Murder, rape, and eating your children is natural. That's
| not a good justification. Perhaps there is a way to help
| children rise above these base instincts instead of
| giving into them?
| jacobolus wrote:
| You think 6-year-olds not paying attention to a boring
| classroom is comparable to rape and cannibalism?
| dahfizz wrote:
| No, I think "it's natural" is a bad defense of both.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Trying to prevent small children from squirming and
| getting distracted when they are bored and don't have
| enough active outlet for their energy is pretty well
| impossible. Even harder if the kids don't get enough
| sleep, aren't eating enough or healthily enough, have to
| deal with strong emotional challenges at home, etc. Kids
| are on varied biological rhythms, and some times a kid is
| in a place where they simply do not have the physical
| capacity to sit and focus.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Surely you had a class with a disruptive kid? They can
| suck the education value out of a lecture by forcing
| unnecessary context switches for the students who are
| paying attention.
|
| It would be ideal if each class was so engaging as to
| enrapture each student but that just isn't realistic.
| robonerd wrote:
| Even if you only hire "good teachers" and give them
| "enough resources", some of those teachers will perform
| better than others. And the attention of those teachers
| will be wasted on the students who don't want to be
| there; better to give it to the students who care.
| [deleted]
| jacobolus wrote:
| > Who needs a better teacher? The gifted student or the
| remedial student?
|
| Both "gifted" (well prepared) and "remedial" (poorly
| prepared) students benefit dramatically from expert
| teaching. The well prepared students can continue to
| progress very quickly through challenging material. The
| poorly prepared students can get help finding and
| correcting their weaknesses and misconceptions, and
| practicing underdeveloped prerequisite skills.
|
| The ideal is for everyone to get significant weekly 1:1
| attention from a dedicated tutor/coach, who can help the
| student to deliberately practice. This significantly
| outperforms even the best classroom, and students with
| direct coaching improve probably 2-3 times faster than
| students without. Essentially all world-class performers
| in competitive events (sport, music, chess, math
| contests, ...) have significant amounts of 1:1 coaching.
|
| Unfortunately as a society we don't have the
| budget/manpower to provide hours per week of skilled
| tutoring for every student for every subject. So we try
| our best to balance available resources with
| students'/society's needs.
| rand85632 wrote:
| It's disingenuous to try to call it well prepared vs
| poorly prepared. Some people are just naturally more
| academically gifted
| jacobolus wrote:
| Take almost any "academically gifted" student and start
| looking into their biography, and you'll find a shitload
| of preparation. As a general rule (to which, sure, you
| can find rare exceptions if you really hunt) the more
| "gifted" the student, the more hands-on help and
| attention from experts they had. Even for those without
| significant expert help, the "gifted" students are the
| ones who spent a ton more time thinking about the subject
| than their peers for whatever reason. The international
| math olympiad winners I took courses with in college were
| incredibly well prepared, and while clever and hard
| working, are by no means superhuman.
|
| Preparation is not the only relevant factor that goes
| into what gets called academic "giftedness", but it's the
| vast majority of it.
|
| It's similar for other fields. Nobody can compete in
| sport at a world-class level nowadays without significant
| amounts of excellent coaching. Etc.
|
| For instance, the reason my kid learned to read before he
| was 4 and most of his peers did not is because we spent
| many hundreds of hours reading books together aloud, and
| maybe 50 hours over 6 months on direct instruction in
| reading per se. Not because he's biologically any
| different than his peers. The reason he's really good at
| making stuff out of Legos is that he really likes it and
| spends hours per week doing it, not because he's some
| kind of Lego prodigy. He's not particularly skilled at
| drawing or dancing or playing the guitar or sewing,
| because those are things he did not practice very much
| yet.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| > So what happens when we decide "everyone is gifted"
|
| This doesn't seem to be much of a problem in countries like
| Russia, Ukraine, Hungary, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Korea,
| Japan, Hong Kong, etc. which have much tougher cirricula for
| their average students than the average American public
| school. And before someone makes the funding argument, the US
| pays about double the cost of education that Japan does for
| dismal results.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Equity isn't a bullshit goal.
|
| As is typical, the concept get confused because one assumes
| that gifted programs _correctly_ track students based
| primarily on ability, whereas in my personal experience and
| looking at the data, they primarily track students based on
| socioeconomic status.
|
| It's not about denying that some students have the ability to
| excel in subjects in comparison to their peers. The question
| is whether or not the current system actually achieves it's
| stated goals.
| merpnderp wrote:
| Socioeconomic status tracks with academic ability because
| more well off parents are more likely to read to their
| kids, participate in their education, and get them help
| when they need it. It's a lot like how being tall tracks
| with being in the NBA, it isn't a requirement but it sure
| helps.
|
| One of the hardest pills for education policy advocates to
| swallow is how important parental involvement is. Instead
| of bitching about equity, people should be hammering
| parents to be more involved and actively, daily,
| participate in their child's education.
| DaveExeter wrote:
| >Socioeconomic status tracks with academic ability...
|
| Wow. Wrong answer.
|
| Socioeconomic status tracks with academic ability because
| wealthy people are smarter then poor people and their
| offspring do better because academic ability is genetic!
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > people should be hammering parents to be more involved
| and actively, daily, participate in their child's
| education.
|
| And people shouldn't complain about the cost of gas, they
| should just buy EVs. The fact is, what you're asking for
| is really expensive. I imagine that the number of parents
| who would love to be reading to their kids or helping
| with homework but instead are working to feed and shelter
| them are quite high. In the US, I'd guess it's the
| millions or even tens of millions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| My parents' involvement in my schooling was when I'd get
| good grades, they'd take me out for ice cream.
|
| (People in those days didn't eat candy, cookies and
| desserts every day like today.)
| parkingrift wrote:
| Equity is a bullshit copout because actual equality is
| hard. Infinite can kicking while the actual socioeconomic
| problems go unsolved.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Gifted programs track students, accidental or not, based on
| prerequisites. If the circumstances required to allow a
| student to excel at study are not met, it doesn't matter
| what they look like or what their economic status is.
|
| Among the prerequisites for excelling at study are a stable
| home life and parents (or guardians) that value education.
| If the kids don't have that, they aren't going to do well.
|
| Historically, at least in the United States, one of the
| means of selecting for "parents who value education" was
| those parents scraping everything they had to move to a
| school district that provided a better education.
|
| In other countries, this was sometimes achieved by scoring
| students into tiered schools. The higher your score, the
| better the school you got to go to. High-achieving students
| landed in a peer group of like-minded students that were
| fellow high-achievers and school was _difficult_.
|
| Granted, that last solution was more typical of Asian
| education than Western education, and in some parts of Asia
| (China, for example) they have slipped into the location-
| based schooling to worse results.
|
| Aiming for equity with the assumption that we just need to
| teach harder is foolish. Aiming for equity in the form of
| outcomes is equally foolish, because again, various
| outcomes have various hard prerequisites that, if missing,
| no amount of effort can overcome.
|
| Solving for the prerequisites, not by attempting to ignore
| them, but by finding ways to help supply them can be far
| more productive in the long run. But it really starts with
| the values of the parents.
| rajin444 wrote:
| I think your point comes down to whether or not you believe
| we're all blank slates. If yes, then what you says makes
| sense. If no, then we would expect ability to somewhat
| dictate socioeconomic status.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Ability does affect socioeconomic status, I'm not
| disputing that.
|
| The question in a school context, though, is whether
| socioeconomic status _for children_ determines ability.
|
| As I stated in my original list, what I observed was that
| gifted classes were filled with children from high social
| status backgrounds. They certainly didn't create the
| conditions for their socioeconomic status, their
| inherited it.
| rajin444 wrote:
| Are you saying we need to genetically level the playing
| field? It makes logical sense but it's not a world I want
| to live in.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I certainly don't believe in genetically engineering away
| differences, to answer your question directly.
|
| But it begs the question, do you believe that racial
| disparities are primarily due to social factors or
| genetic ones? Because the whole point of equity is that
| advocates are arguing that it's due to social factors,
| and that we should seek to change that.
| lupire wrote:
| What's your point? That if a rich parent teaches their
| kid to read, the fair solution is for the school to
| unteach the kid, to level the playing field?
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I would imagine that the people who are pushing for more
| equitable systems would argue that would should give
| people who lack that kind of parental support more help.
|
| Why should a child suffer simply because they were born
| into a less supportive family environment?
| jaywalk wrote:
| No child should suffer, and I think everyone can very
| easily agree on that point. But children born into a less
| supportive family environment _are going to suffer for
| it._ So maybe we should focus more energy on figuring out
| why less supportive family environments exist in the
| first place, and work on fixing those issues?
|
| I don't know. I'm no expert and definitely don't have the
| answers.
| [deleted]
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| What if equal access to educational opportunities is a
| contribution to the problem of less supportive families?
| Hence why we are having this conversation.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| abfan1127 wrote:
| Equity of opportunity is acceptable. Equity of outcome is a
| bullshit goal.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Equality of outcome is not the goal of equity. That's a
| straw man argument created by its detractors.
|
| People point out disparities _as evidence_ that there
| aren't equal opportunities in society.
|
| The conservative position is simply to assert that
| equality of opportunity exists cuz America, and if you
| question that you are a communist who just wants everyone
| to be the same.
| hedora wrote:
| I'm all for equity of opportunity. However, the people
| California has chosen to set our curriculum are
| explicitly working toward equality of outcome.
|
| They say they don't believe that any children are more
| talented than any other children, and are advocating
| eliminating standard "advanced" courses, such as
| calculus, from the high school curriculum. The only
| classes that would be available in their proposal are the
| current remedial math track.
|
| I think you've confused "straw man argument created by
| its detractors" with "the actual concrete plan being
| established by its proponents".
|
| The (successful) proponents of equity based teaching are
| so far outside the mainstream that it's an honest
| mistake. (I made it, and now I'm furious.)
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I'm not intimately familiar with all of the details of
| what is being advocated in California. All I can speak to
| is my perspective on what equity is and how I think it
| should be applied.
|
| People who disagree with the basic concepts around equity
| tend to view the entire discourse as a monolith, but
| people are actually allowed to have different opinions on
| what is actually equitable and what isn't.
|
| Personally I wouldn't support doing away with advanced
| math courses either. But just because someone does that
| in the name of equity, doesn't mean I think equity itself
| is bad. I'm able to separate the two.
| rajin444 wrote:
| > People point out disparities as evidence that there
| aren't equal opportunities
|
| That's a very low bar if you take population level
| disparities and assume it's a lack of equity causing
| this. You're talking about having a deep understanding of
| incredibly complex systems layered on top of one another.
|
| Equality of opportunity is never possible. We're all born
| with different genetics. Anything less is just arbitrary
| line drawing as to what's ok and what isn't (ie
| tribalism).
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > That's a very low bar if you take population level
| disparities and assume it's a lack of equity causing this
|
| Are racial disparities socially determined or not?
| bendbro wrote:
| Can something be sticky to a race but not genetic?
|
| Obviously yes.
| MockObject wrote:
| What does "socially determined" mean, and what are the
| alternatives?
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| The best analogy I can think of is sports.
|
| In sports, the rules are whatever we say they are, that's
| the part that's socially determined. Lebron James is a
| amazing basketball player, due to a combination of his
| genetics and his hard work. But there's a parallel
| reality wherein basketball was never invented. And people
| enjoy sports like horse racing or marathon running, where
| he would never be able to be world class given his frame.
| What sports are popular is based on culture and
| happenstance, and up to the whims of society, not
| genetics or hard work of individuals.
|
| For several hundred years, America literally constructed
| a society where it was decided that white people were
| considered more valuable than black people. That had
| nothing to do with what individual black people did,
| those were just the rules of the game.
|
| You may say "but that's not how it is anymore", and yes
| things have certainly changed. But at the same time,
| there are people who are alive _today_ who weren't
| allowed to attend the same schools as whites, weren't
| allowed to drink from the same fountains as whites, etc.
|
| The argument that is being made, is that society
| _continues_ to favor people based upon the color of their
| skin. Certainly, individual talents and hard work
| contribute to one's place in life, _but that does not
| mean that the playing field is level_.
| MockObject wrote:
| Does social determination include culture? That's a
| greater determinant of outcomes than skin color, as the
| example of outcomes between African Americans and
| Nigerian immigrants indicates.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| Culture is socially determined in the sense that culture
| is simply the collective actions and decisions that a
| group of people make.
|
| Reading the intent behind that statement, though, that
| Nigerians have succeeded in America despite any
| hinderances they may have faced due to wider societies
| treatment of black people, that would be somewhat outside
| of the framework of what I am talking about.
|
| The construction here is, do Black Americans have worse
| outcomes, on average, because of themselves, or because
| of societies treatment of them. Culture would fall into
| the bucket of "they are the reason for their own
| problems".
|
| Obviously Nigerians do well on average, but they are also
| a small fraction of the population. Pointing to Nigerians
| and saying that race isn't a contributing factor is
| making an argument after having found the statistical
| outlier that proves your argument, how do Nigerians
| compare to the top cohort of white Americans based on
| ethnicity or whatever? Is it possible that Nigerians
| would actually be doing _better_ were there not racial
| barriers?
| MockObject wrote:
| Rewriting "culture" as "they are the reason for their own
| problems" seems rather uncharitable, and unhelpful to the
| discussion. Why are you doing that, given that it's not
| adding any clarity?
|
| > having found the statistical outlier that proves your
| argument
|
| Well, why are they a statistical outlier? If you ask
| Nigerians, they'll tend to credit their culture. Do you
| have a different explanation?
|
| > Is it possible that Nigerians would actually be doing
| better were there not racial barriers?
|
| I suppose it's more possible that they should be doing
| much worse than they are, because of the racial barriers.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > Rewriting "culture" as "they are the reason for their
| own problems" seems rather uncharitable, and unhelpful to
| the discussion. Why are you doing that, given that it's
| not adding any clarity?
|
| I was under the impression that it did add clarity, so I
| find your question odd.
|
| What would be the charitable interpretation of the
| statement "socioeconomic disparities between black
| Americans and white Americans are due to their respective
| cultures"?
| thegrimmest wrote:
| I mean, there's nothing "problematic" about having a
| different culture, with different values. There's also
| nothing surprising about the fact that different cultures
| and values produce people vastly differently suited to
| social and economic success. I don't see any issue with
| these facts in combination, nor do I need to reach for
| "marginalization" or racism to explain any of this.
| erichocean wrote:
| > _do Black Americans have worse outcomes [...]_
|
| Black Americans do not have worse outcomes.
|
| Specifically, given the distribution of individuals in
| the group "Black Americans" across all socially relevant
| dimensions--including culture--individual Black Americans
| have identical* outcomes to similarly-situated
| individuals of every other group in America including
| Whites, Asians, etc.
|
| As you would expect in a country with equal opportunity
| for all, both legally and culturally.
|
| *Black Americans actually do better than expected because
| there's an enormous cultural push to promote Black
| Americans whenever possible--college admissions,
| management, etc. not to mention Black Americans being so
| over-represented in media that most Americans think the
| country is around 40% Black whereas the actual number is
| ~13%, i.e. they're off by a factor of 3.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| To be very clear about it, this is all the more
| impressive because Nigeria is, by and large, still a pre-
| industrial society. The differences in basic worldview
| and outlook (including attitudes towards education)
| brought by industrialization and modern economic
| development (often misattributed to "Whiteness" in
| divisive political rhetoric) are absolutely huge and
| easily overwhelm any model where "skin color" or
| "genetics" exogenously determine these outcomes. This is
| easily ascertained by looking at how individual countries
| in the modern West industrialized over time and went
| through these very changes in culture. The skin color of
| English lower classes did not change much from the 17th
| to the mid-19th century, but their culture absolutely
| did.
| lliamander wrote:
| Thomas Sowell has a great book on the subject called
| _Discrimination and Disparities_. There are interviews
| where he goes over the high-level ideas in the book if
| you don 't have time to read it, but the basic punchline
| is that this: no two populations have ever been equal,
| and only sometimes is that because of some form of
| oppression or because of genetic differences. There are a
| multitude of cultural and environmental differences that
| cause disparate outcomes, and unless equality of outcome
| is your goal those differences shouldn't bother you.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| > unless equality of outcome is your goal those
| differences shouldn't bother you.
|
| I'm sorry, but this simply doesn't follow.
|
| The premise: that there are a multitude of things that
| lead to to disparities (even just random chance). If
| disparities are random then yes, that's not a problem I'm
| going to get tussled up about.
|
| But it's not a matter of "it could be anything". We have
| strong evidence that it is oppression, and when that is
| the case, that I do have reason to care about, and it's
| about opportunity not outcome.
| lliamander wrote:
| If it is actually oppression, then yes that is a valid
| reason to be concerned.
|
| But let's be clear, you just claimed that the mere
| existence of disparities is evidence of oppression. That
| only follows if group outcomes would be equal in the
| absence of oppression, but that is a completely invalid
| assumption that has no basis in historical fact.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I claimed that disparities are evidence, not that they
| are _proof_.
|
| It's not nor us it ever been about the disparities alone,
| but the disparities _in conjunction with_ the long
| history of racial oppression in America. People are alive
| _today_ who grew up under Jim Crow. People are alive
| _today_ who were threatened with violence for attending
| elementary school.
| someguydave wrote:
| No, differences in learning ability are largely
| heritable. Self-identified racial groups vary in
| statistical distribution of their mental abilities. I
| think generally in the West the chief cause of differing
| group outcomes on mental tasks is differing learning
| abilities.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > Equality of outcome is not the goal of equity.
|
| They actually say that it is - have you seen the famous
| comic where the three guys are watching the baseball game
| but the short guy can't see through the fence? They
| literally are saying the equity of outcome is the
| beginning and the end of their goals.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| We clearly have different interpretations of that
| metaphor.
|
| The point is to demonstrate agency over the systems we
| create. What's the flip side of that scenario? People
| aren't given stools to stand on and tall people get to
| watch while short people don't? Who built the fence? Why
| is it that height? Why aren't there bleachers?
|
| Is just sitting there doing nothing equality of
| opportunity somehow?
| MockObject wrote:
| That cartoon literally ends with the resolution of all
| three heads being at the same height. It's depicting the
| equality of their outcomes. And it's hailing it as the
| goal to be achieved. The point isn't that stools are
| handed out demonstrating agency, but that they're handed
| out with the goal of outcome equality.
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| What's the parallel of that metaphor wherein only
| equality of opportunity is sought, though?
| chromaton wrote:
| There's different versions of that meme, so please make
| sure you know which one you're arguing about.
|
| Edit: a long take on all the variations, by the meme's
| originator! https://medium.com/@CRA1G/the-evolution-of-
| an-accidental-mem...
| abfan1127 wrote:
| I disagree its a strawman argument. Its a clear
| delineation. Trying to get all kids to successfully
| complete gifted programs is a very challenging if not
| impossible goal. Not all kids will be successful in
| gifted programs. However, Equality of opportunity states
| that any kids its appropriate for have access. Its an
| important distinction. Now, its arguable that certain
| sub-cultures within America make success in school or
| gifted programming challenging (parents who don't trust
| schools, parents who don't engage in school for various
| reasons).
| wbsss4412 wrote:
| I don't have a problem with gifted programs in principle,
| but it's also fair to ask how they are working in
| practice.
|
| People in this thread are up in arms about the principle,
| but the reason that they are being challenged is based on
| how they operate in practice.
|
| Do all children have equal access? Nominally, maybe. But
| that's de facto not the case.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no, they closed the gifted programs in the urban school
| system I attended, at that time, right after Music
| Education. The emphasis went to "no child left behind"
| whatever that is, sports programs, armed guards (yes),
| and at high school, loans and grants for college
| admission. Advanced placement ? most gifted kids and
| almost every single girl from my neighborhood,
| disappeared in a blink at grade 8.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| not only is it entirely fair to ask how they work in
| practice, but we must do so. Do all children have equal
| access? maybe is your answer. The solution to get more
| access isn't to eliminate it. Its to educate parents in
| groups who "should" be in it but aren't.
| parkingrift wrote:
| >Seems like the obvious outcome would be a lot more students
| who struggle, necessitating a slower track for them.
|
| That is not obvious to me. It is a known psychological
| phenomenon that children will meet external expectations,
| high or low. In sports it's commonly referred to as playing
| up or down to your opponent. Other countries have much higher
| standards and have not seen an explosion in children
| struggling. What is most likely to happen is... nothing. The
| percentage of kids exceeding and struggling will stay largely
| the same.
| bsder wrote:
| > Why can't we just admit it and quit trying to make people who
| are unique the same?
|
| Because that would be an admission that we can't just pile 30
| students in the same class and in doing so would mean that we
| need more teachers and nobody wants to spend the money to do
| that.
| tyjen wrote:
| The state I occupy doesn't allow accelerated programs for
| students to help them advance to a higher level math than
| originally projected, they only allow it for students to catch
| up. This is the opposite of what the previous state I lived in
| which allowed motivated students to advance, but they're also
| turning gifted programs into lotteries versus achievement.
|
| My daughter is in the high school math club, so she frequently
| talks with math teachers and they reveal what state or county
| school districts are intending for future high school students.
| Earlier this week, a teacher was ranting to the club about new
| guideline goals that either the state/county was pushing, that
| all (most) incoming 9th graders take Algebra 1.
|
| I understand they're attempting to narrow the achievement
| bandwidth in public schools on the basis of race, but this
| appears to be creating societal inefficiencies and decreasing
| equity overall. Sort of like, how someone could have a PhD in
| physics and working as a middle school science teacher, they'd
| effectively be underemployed or underutilized in society due to
| lack of demand for particle physicists; however, unlike limited
| particle physicist positions, in the students case, they don't
| have to be limited or underachieving in classes. Further, the
| additional problem this push for public school equity is
| decreasing equity, without imposing the same limitations on
| private school, homeschool, or charter school students, this
| mechanism is increasing the divide between the haves and have-
| nots. Either lens you evaluate this from, either equity or
| utilitarian perspective, this is a poorly executed plan that
| isn't going to achieve success in equity; unless, equity
| strictly means racial categories and doesn't include
| wealth/income inequality.
| tonguez wrote:
| "...it is unacceptable to have eighth grade Algebra I classes
| and gifted education programs that disproportionately exclude
| Black and brown children."
|
| a definition of exclude is "deny (someone) access to or bar
| (someone) from a place, group, or privilege."
|
| no one is barring access to these classes on the basis race.
| can you even imagine that? "sorry, you're not allowed to take
| this class; you're black." it's like everyone who writes this
| lives in their mom's basement and has never gone outside and
| thinks if they just make the boring and tired declaration that
| non-black/non-brown people are evil/racist, that it absolves
| them of every other sin they commit, like not caring about
| homeless people or the fact that everything they own is made by
| chinese children. in reality it accomplishes nothing except
| complacency and it helps the people raping the world continue
| their work of exploiting everyone.
| lupire wrote:
| What you don't understand is that advanced classes have
| limited seats available compared to students who want them.
| _-david-_ wrote:
| And do they choose who gets into the class by race?
| brewdad wrote:
| Not really. Any teacher qualified to teach HS math should
| be able to teach anything up to pre-Calc. If you have more
| Algebra students ahead of grade level than usual, you shift
| a teacher away from pre-Algebra and into teaching Algebra
| I.
| rhino369 wrote:
| That's not what the progressive complain about. But if that
| is true, the obvious solution is to create more spots.
|
| If the same people wouldn't complain about disparate
| failure rates, I'd even support making them open
| enrollment, but weeding people out based on performance.
| But we all know, people would just claim the classes are
| racist.
| whatevenisthat wrote:
| > "Why can't we just admit it and quit trying to make people
| who are unique the same?"
|
| Because we are dealing with a group which is motivated by
| ideology. It's a religion to them. Some of them have doubled
| down on woke-speak around "equity" for so long, that they
| cannot backtrack and accept that merit and performance exist.
| Doing this would put them at odds with their current in-group
| and likely their only source of meaning and "friendship" with
| anyone.
|
| It's the same crowd of people who just lost their very
| progressive DA in San Francisco during last night's recall
| election outcome. They keep doubling down on their policing
| strategy (see: no policing strategy) and being soft on crime
| and consequently crime has increased significantly. The same
| group of people that plugs their ears to reason and reality on
| why policing is necessary are the same group of people that are
| always trying to drag everyone down to their same floor level.
| silicon2401 wrote:
| > Because we are dealing with a group which is motivated by
| ideology. It's a religion to them.
|
| There really is no simpler way to say it than this, and it
| raises the question: how do you even make progress with a
| group who bases decisions on dogma rather than reason?
| whatevenisthat wrote:
| chmod600 wrote:
| First, recognize that "reason" is somewhat narrower than
| we'd like to believe. Our own reasoning is applied when
| convenient and suppressed when convenient. And many times
| there is simply too much complexity and you must rely on
| wisdom instead.
|
| The reason that "reason" often wins is because it often
| works. Of course, sometimes it either doesn't work, or
| takes a long time to work, and we can conveniently ignore
| it. Eventually reality catches up, but not always in a way
| that illustrates the cause.
|
| The best way to make reason work is to expose people making
| decisions to reality, such that they benefit or lose based
| on the quality of their reasoning. The most unreasonable
| people will all of a sudden become very reasonable.
|
| Alternatively stated, prevent people from hiding from
| reality. There are many places to hide, and these are often
| the most unreasonable places. National politics is one:
| your ideas probably won't happen (even if you're in
| Congress), and if they do, and something bad happens, there
| are enough other factors to make it easy to blame something
| else. Academia is another such place. So is extended
| adolescence.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > There really is no simpler way to say it than this, and
| it raises the question: how do you even make progress with
| a group who bases decisions on dogma rather than reason?
|
| If someone were to not have read the above comments, this
| argument could be very easily used to support the opposing
| (political) stance as well. I suppose most humans are just
| emotion driven - though this need not be a bug.
| tqi wrote:
| > It is universal common knowledge that the ease with which one
| takes to math is different for different people. Why can't we
| just admit it and quit trying to make people who are unique the
| same?
|
| I disagree with this statement, especially at the level of
| arithmetic and basic algebra. While math "ability" is likely a
| bell curve I would wager that it is centered well above Algebra
| I, and whether a kid at that age is "Good" or "Bad" at math is
| much more mindset/perception.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Is math ability centered above Algebra I among 13 year olds,
| though? I would wager Algebra I is well above the center of
| the curve in that age group.
| nescioquid wrote:
| Math, chess, and music seem to be domains in which child
| prodigies are not infrequently found.
| chernevik wrote:
| "eighth grade Algebra I classes and gifted education programs
| that disproportionately exclude Black and brown children"
|
| The absence of "Black and brown children" doesn't mean they were
| _excluded_, it means they weren't _selected_, or never applied in
| the first place.
|
| If they were deliberately not selected because of their race,
| that's wrong and should be fixed pronto. And what are the odds of
| that? If they were not selected because they didn't meet the
| qualifications, well, that isn't the fault of the gifted program.
| Jarwain wrote:
| > Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as gifted
| compared to white students _with similar test scores_. Black,
| Latinx, and Native American students are far less likely to
| attend a school that even offers a gifted program.
|
| Emphasis mine. The likely thing going on is something
| subconscious or unintentionally discriminatory, or somehow
| related to the home family life.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| It took me two years to verify that I was gifted enough for the
| gifted program in middle school. In fact, they did so
| incredibly reluctantly because I achieved the highest math
| scores in my middle school on the state exams (two years in a
| row). It takes a lot of effort to be recognized as an afro-
| latino person that can be gifted even with higher scores.
|
| They also only placed me in the math/science gifted sections
| and would only be placed in the english/social studies gifted
| sections after much arguing as well.
|
| Guess what? I excelled there too. Now to get away from
| anecdotes:
|
| > If they were deliberately not selected because of their race,
| that's wrong and should be fixed pronto. And what are the odds
| of that?
|
| between 50 to 70% on an individual basis if some studies are to
| be believed.
| tejohnso wrote:
| > If they were not selected because they didn't meet the
| qualifications, well, that isn't the fault of the gifted
| program.
|
| But it could be the fault of the government, the school
| administration, and an entire culture of systemic racism.
|
| And so there could be several problems to address.
|
| Does removing the gifted program solve any of the problems? No.
| Does it make some people feel as though they're doing good by
| equalizing everything? Yes.
| _3u10 wrote:
| It's all Harrison Bergeron all the way down.
| slowhand09 wrote:
| Upvote for Bergeron reference.
| Bostonian wrote:
| "The current population of students we identify as academically
| gifted and talented is unacceptably whiter and wealthier than the
| actual student population of academically gifted and talented
| students should be."
|
| A typical IQ threshold for a gifted program is 130. The average
| IQ overall is 100 with standard deviation 15. For black Americans
| the average score on IQ tests is about 85, which explains why
| blacks will be under-represented in gifted programs unless racial
| preferences are used. The makers of IQ tests would like to reduce
| racial differentials while maintaining the predictive abilities
| of their tests, but they have not been able to.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Did you read the part where he pointed out that black/brown
| students are 66% less likely to be in a gifted program _with
| the same test scores_ ?
| flerchin wrote:
| He said similar, and he didn't provide the data. We surely
| would like to delve into why this might be happening. We can
| know for certain that there is no skin-color criterion in the
| program selection.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Is that because the program discriminates or because their
| family lacks awareness of such programs?
|
| Those have very different solutions.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Schools literally send home papers to parents and
| communicate with them directly about the programs. Most
| school districts require parental permission before
| children are pulled out of class to be tested.
| _gabe_ wrote:
| I just left a comment as a reply to this post because that
| statistic intrigued me. I had to go hunting for the actual
| paper, and when I finally found it it seems to suggest that
| discrepancy is because the study lumped students who have
| access to gifted programs with students that don't have
| access.
|
| Additionally it identified that 83% of black students had
| access to a gifted program as opposed to 91% or something of
| white students.
|
| Additionally the study cited says that they had several gaps
| in their data and used some statistical regressions to fill
| in those gaps. All this leads me to believe that we need to
| provide more access to gifted programs, and the problem isn't
| that we have a herd of racist teachers on the loose.
| paulpauper wrote:
| I depends. I think the threshold is more like 120, but IQ may
| not be used anymore as a criteria
| wccrawford wrote:
| It's probably not used as the criteria for a few reasons, but
| I'd bet it still correlates pretty strongly in the end.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| So leftist are producing inclusivity and equity by forcing
| everyone stay at the lowest common denominator. Instead of trying
| to help disadvantaged people climb the stair, they are breaking
| the stair to be sure everyone remains down.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The courts will let you eliminated gifted programs, but in many
| cases they won't let you enforce affirmative action on
| enrollments into them.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| Eliminating "gifted" programs because they offend the racial
| sensibilities of the managerial class is a blatant exercise in
| privilege and ladder-pulling.
|
| I think it's grotesque how many privileged people are happily
| destroying the lives of others (often, those they pretend to care
| about) so they don't have to think critically about or be
| uncomfortable thinking about race.
|
| Seattle is the epitome of "privileged White liberals hurt
| everyone for their comfort":
|
| The bourgeois have become the baizuo.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I'm pretty socially conservative, and the equality-of-outcome
| mindset is very unintuitive for me.
|
| It's very tempting (edit: _for me_ ) to lazily rest on the
| caricature, "I don't care how many people I hurt, as long as I
| can help just one!"
|
| Despite that, or maybe because of that, I make a conscious
| effort to understand where the other side is coming from. I
| figure there's little chance of finding a compromise if I can't
| even comprehend their viewpoint.
|
| So far I haven't been very successful. Maybe it's because the
| chasm is so large regarding values, understandings of human
| nature, predictions about how things will play out, etc. Or
| maybe I have blind spots that get in the way.
|
| I wish I were better at this. It seems like at a very zoomed-
| out level we want similar things.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > I figure there's little chance of finding a compromise if I
| can't even comprehend their viewpoint.
|
| I understand it just fine, but there's a fundamental
| disagreement, in that I don't support racism nor view people
| in terms of "racial tribes" -- while proponents of equity do.
| That's the frame they're working from when they say denying
| an Asian student a place at Harvard in favor of a less
| qualified black applicant is "good": that it's okay to harm
| that person because they're yellow and we need to balance
| between yellows and blacks -- to accomplish their Utopian
| vision. Collectivism when applied to race inevitably leads to
| institutional racism.
|
| I don't believe that's something we need to "compromise" on:
| institutional racism was a disaster when we tried it before
| and modern attempts (eg, Netflix and Disney catering to those
| views) show that bigotry is widely unpopular and a poor way
| to run a company.
|
| Sometimes you just have to say "bigotry is wrong and we're
| not trying it again -- no matter how you dress it up in the
| language of civil rights or how righteous you feel about
| being a bigot".
| nlittlepoole wrote:
| They aren't saying that. They are recognizing that many
| forms of power in society are zero sum. There are plenty of
| ways to get a great education but only one Harvard and a
| limited amount of power to be distributed via an
| institution like Harvard. You and many like you believe
| that access to these institutions should be gatekeeped via
| a meritocracy. The supporters of this form of affirmative
| action recognize that in a system where
| black/latino/indigenous students have structural
| disadvantages (poverty, prejudice, health, etc) that any
| pure meritocracy leads to a system where their racial group
| possesses disproportionately less power vs their
| population.
|
| The reason you see that as "racial tribes" is that you
| fundamentally are underestimating how much marginalized
| communities distrust communities outside of their own.
| Black people do not trust that if Asian students go to
| Harvard and gain positions of power that those adults will
| protect their interests. They want their own in those
| positions.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > The supporters of this form of affirmative action
| recognize that in a system where black/latino/indigenous
| students have structural disadvantages (poverty,
| prejudice, health, etc) that any pure meritocracy leads
| to a system where their racial group possesses
| disproportionately less power vs their population.
|
| You're describing why you believe it's okay to
| discriminate against that Asian student because there's
| "too many yellows, not enough blacks".
|
| You're also ignoring that they're choosing to engage in
| institutional racism rather than utilize programs such as
| meritocracy + individual aid, which automatically counter
| any "structural disadvantages" -- that is, they're
| choosing racism when better alternatives exist.
|
| > The reason you see that as "racial tribes" is that you
| fundamentally are underestimating how much marginalized
| communities distrust communities outside of their own.
| Black people do not trust that if Asian students go to
| Harvard and gain positions of power that those adults
| will protect their interests. They want their own in
| those positions.
|
| You just described racism and a belief in racial tribes
| -- exactly what I said was driving this.
|
| > They aren't saying that.
|
| You start off disagreeing -- and then go on to describe
| exactly what I said.
| nlittlepoole wrote:
| > You're describing why you believe it's okay to
| discriminate against that Asian student because there's
| "too many yellows, not enough blacks".
|
| Not really. If intelligence is equal between races and a
| system is an actual meritocracy, then the balance between
| groups should be the same. One group outperforming
| indicates a difference in circumstances. If you believe
| those circumstances aren't because of disadvantages then
| you either believe one group is inherently more capable
| than the other, one group works harder than the other, or
| that one group has a more effective culture. Generally,
| there is a lot of animosity within the black community
| toward Asian people who tend to believe any of the above
| (because it is pretty common amongst racist).
|
| > You're also ignoring that they're choosing to engage in
| institutional racism rather than utilize programs such as
| meritocracy + individual aid, which automatically counter
| any "structural disadvantages" -- and is in sharp
| contrast to their proposed racist system that rewards
| privileged blacks ahead of poor Asians. One of the many
| reasons such racist systems fail, in practice: they don't
| confront the issue you claim they address.
|
| Are you arguing structural disadvantages are not real?
| are you arguing that the issue in the black community is
| effort? if the issue isn't structural disadvantages, what
| do you think they are?
|
| > You just described racism and a belief in racial tribes
| -- exactly what I said was driving this ... You start off
| disagreeing -- and then go on to describe exactly what I
| said.
|
| I'm disagreeing with the policy as an effective way to
| address a set of issues. I never said I disagreed with
| the idea that there are tribes. Tribes are going to exist
| as long as we live in a society that offers members of
| different tribes different opportunities and experiences
| within society. The way to fix that is not to just
| pretend that doesn't exist. A meritocracy can't exist
| until everyone within a society believes they have a fair
| chance to participate in it and it is not controversial
| to say most black people do not believe that is the
| status quo. You are choosing to see this as people trying
| to take something away from you when its really a bunch
| of people lashing out over the fact that the system was
| never fair in the first place.
| MockObject wrote:
| > or that one group has a more effective culture
|
| > Generally, there is a lot of animosity within the black
| community toward Asian people who tend to believe any of
| the above
|
| In my experience, there is much, much discourse within
| the black community regarding culture, and how it affects
| success.
| nlittlepoole wrote:
| Absolutely there is but the way that those outside the
| group make it seem is that we're 100% responsible for how
| the culture that exists got to where it is. The
| mainstream culture has problems but a lot of those
| problems are the result of historical inequities. It
| needs to be fixed but all of American society needs to
| see it as something they are also responsible for fixing
| and not fixing by simply pushing people to adopt the
| cultural norms of another group of people.
| MockObject wrote:
| > all of American society needs to see it as something
| they are also responsible for fixing
|
| Responsibility for culture is an interesting issue. Very
| few individuals can claim any significant responsibility.
|
| People tend to look askance at outsiders coming in to fix
| their culture.
|
| Further, I don't think American mainstream culture is in
| any position to evangelize its greatness right now.
|
| > not fixing by simply pushing people to adopt the
| cultural norms of another group of people.
|
| I don't know, I see culture as evolutionary. Everyone
| should adopt the practices they see succeeding, and
| abandon they ones they see failing, no?
| thorncorona wrote:
| > If you believe those circumstances aren't because of
| disadvantages then you either believe one group is
| inherently more capable than the other, one group works
| harder than the other, or that one group has a more
| effective culture.
|
| The more blindingly obvious conclusion is study time
| among asians is far higher than all other races. [0]
|
| > Generally, there is a lot of animosity within the black
| community toward Asian people who tend to believe any of
| the above (because it is pretty common amongst racist).
|
| Congrats for outing yourself as a racist?
|
| [0]
| https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012026/tables/table_35.asp
| nlittlepoole wrote:
| just so we can be perfectly clear, is the point you are
| trying to defend, that the differences circumstances of
| black people in America as compared to Asians can be
| explained with work ethic?
| MockObject wrote:
| > There are plenty of ways to get a great education but
| only one Harvard
|
| We had only one Harvard when the country's population was
| quite a bit smaller. Perhaps, instead of the zero-sum
| struggle for Harvard attendance, we should be working to
| create new Harvards. We have the oversupply of academics.
| secabeen wrote:
| > Perhaps, instead of the zero-sum struggle for Harvard
| attendance, we should be working to create new Harvards.
|
| That takes not dis-investing in public higher ed to the
| degree we did during the 2008 recession. It takes decades
| to build a new R1 research institution, and a commitment
| of large sums of money over that time. Rockefeller
| created the University of Chicago, Leyland Stanford his
| namesake, where are Buffet, Bloomberg, Walton, Mars, and
| Gates Universities? That could be a good use of some of
| the modern billionaire money, if we're not going to spend
| tax dollars on new R1 institutions.
| MockObject wrote:
| It's hard to comprehend disinvestment given that tuitions
| have increased 10x over a few decades, but
|
| > where are Buffet, Bloomberg, Walton, Mars, and Gates
| Universities?
|
| That's a very good point.
| MockObject wrote:
| > underestimating how much marginalized communities
| distrust communities outside of their own. Black people
| do not trust that if Asian students go to Harvard and
| gain positions of power that those adults will protect
| their interests. They want their own in those positions.
|
| I can't adopt this level of cynicism, or else I'd have to
| conclude that multi-ethnic societies are doomed to fall
| apart like Yugoslavia, or remain together using synthetic
| means like the Lebanese National Pact0, which specifies
| power sharing with agreements like
|
| * The Prime Minister of the Republic always be a Sunni
| Muslim.
|
| * The Speaker of the Parliament always be a Shia Muslim.
|
| * The Deputy Speaker of the Parliament and the Deputy
| Prime Minister always be Greek Orthodox Christian.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Pact
| MockObject wrote:
| Equality of outcome simply isn't a rational value, because it
| can be achieved by bringing down the achievers, as well as
| bringing up the disadvantaged. When people call for that,
| they're most charitably engaging in very imprecise thinking.
| basedgod wrote:
| yeah fuck poor people
| natly wrote:
| There's usually gifted programs in poor schools as well. This
| isn't a private vs public education thing. It's more about
| keeping bright students stimulated and not bored to tears and
| have their potential stunted.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| From the article.
|
| "Black students are 66% less likely to be identified as
| gifted compared to white students with similar test scores.
| Black, Latinx, and Native American students are far less
| likely to attend a school that even offers a gifted program.
| These are just some of the issues with which the gifted
| education field must grapple. "
| basedgod wrote:
| you're right, there's absolutely no systemic bias in testing,
| and the tests themselves accurately measure intelligence and
| giftedness
| dontbenebby wrote:
| I wrote an essay about special education a while back:
|
| https://boingboing.net/2013/01/05/pedagogyofthedepressed.htm...
|
| Boing Boing never ended up importing the comments from back then,
| and when I reached out to a contact about writing a follow up,
| the entire site was DDOSed.
|
| Too many teachers purposefully abuse the gifted, then react
| irrationally to perfectly reasonable responses.
|
| (I wasn't paid, and they put it out without my opt in, though to
| be fair, the editor did quite a bit of editing and free graphics
| work when they could have thrown the text up as is - a few of the
| wording changes were probably a good thing, looking back with the
| wisdom of a 30 something.)
|
| On the other hand, never once have the folks who abused me ever
| apologized, and they continue to gaslight me and obstruct me to
| the point I'm considering moving to Italy.
|
| I'm really sick of rude people, and I know it's hypocritical
| given some of the comments I make on the internet, but from early
| on in life I've had perpetual issues with folks who have a very
| high standard for my behavior, but not their own.
|
| I have literal scars from some of what they did, but I also have
| enemies in the education and medical community who continue to
| engage in illegal, retaliatory behavior for my first amendment
| protected free speech.
|
| I cannot emphasize enough how badly it backfired that neoliberals
| engineered society around the idea that you can't interact with
| people without permission, then melted down when my response, due
| to COVID, was basically "Fine, you're right, I have anger issues.
| I'm also not your caregiver, so keep back six feet."
| tssva wrote:
| It has been decades since I was in school. I was in the gifted
| program and found it to be an utter waste of time. My daughter is
| now in a gifted program and we both find it to be an utter waste
| of time. I attended a school in a middle class area and my
| daughter attends a school in a fairly wealthy area. Is there any
| studies which show a benefit to gifted programs in schools which
| are adequately funded?
| chicob wrote:
| [...] _school systems are making the decision to contract or
| eliminate their gifted education and advanced academic offerings.
| On the surface, this seems logical. If I'm leading a system in
| which the population of eighth graders taking Algebra I has a
| disproportionate number of white and Asian students, then
| eliminating Algebra I as an offering for eighth graders looks
| like an obvious pathway to equity._
|
| This doesn't seem logical at all. It sounds like sweeping under
| the rug. I'm assuming that what is obvious here is that these
| programs _reproduce_ inequity, and are not a _cause_ of it.
|
| [...] _As these scholars argue shutting down gifted programs only
| deepens the inequities for brilliant, underrepresented students
| of color and adds another barrier to unlocking their genius._
|
| Does one really need scholars for this?
| walnutclosefarm wrote:
| _If I'm leading a system in which the population of eighth
| graders taking Algebra I has a disproportionate number of white
| and Asian students, then eliminating Algebra I as an offering for
| eighth graders looks like an obvious pathway to equity._
|
| Well, yes, if by equity you mean the race composition of every
| class equals the race composition of the school as a whole. But
| shouldn't equity in education mean that every student gets the
| instruction and support they need to achieve their potential,
| insofar as the school is able to provide it, without respect to
| their race, class or sex?
|
| There were no gifted programs or classes when and where I
| attended school (6 decades back, in a very rural part of the
| Great Plains). But there was a teacher in my school who took it
| upon herself to run a reading lab that you could get into with
| the blessing of the school principal. Mostly she taught remedial
| reading to those who needed extra help, but one of her 5 periods
| each day was called "advanced reading lab" and into that group
| she took students who showed exceptional or nascent exceptional
| intellectual capability. In the guise of teaching us to read
| better and faster, she exercised our brains with science,
| history, and even math. She's the only teacher I remember by
| name, and she did more to launch my success in life than any 5
| other teachers combined, behind only my parents. Because she made
| going to school worthwhile - interesting, exciting, and mind-
| expanding. (She also taught me to read 2000 words per minute with
| retention, which was a hell of a useful skill, but only a skill -
| the world of knowledge and thinking was her real gift).
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > But shouldn't equity in education mean that every student
| gets the instruction and support they need to achieve their
| potential, insofar as the school is able to provide it, without
| respect to their race, class or sex?
|
| You're taking about equality. Equity is always just a euphemism
| for equality of outcome. Which can only ever be achieved by
| lowering the outcomes of top performs to the same level as the
| lowest performers.
| ODILON_SATER wrote:
| Gifted programs as we know, are basically advanced programs for
| shape-rotators, which closely relates to IQ.
|
| The IQ distribution is different across race groups, therefore
| you expect to have more representation of certain groups relative
| to others.
|
| It's obvious that Asians --I am not Asian-- perform extremely
| well in IQ tests compared to other groups. Same with Ashkenazi
| Jews. These groups would have, relatively speaking, a higher
| representation. It would also be more male than your typical
| classroom.
|
| Just like we have "physically gifted programs" in sports, and in
| some Blacks are overly represented. People don't seem to bat an
| eye for such "inequity", because it is understood that, on
| average, Blacks have superior athletic ability in some sports.
|
| People really have a hard time understanding basic statistical
| facts, and they take these things personally. When we compare
| average heights across countries, nobody gets offended because
| everybody is aware of their own height. A 6'4 American is just as
| tall as a 6'4 Indonesian, so people don't take personally.
| Somehow average IQ is this thing that people take personally as
| if it was an indictment on their intelligence.
|
| Besides, there is much more than IQ. Plenty of people with
| average IQs are successful. Sure, the premium on IQ increased in
| our society, but there is so much variance in activities and
| other inherent or acquired characteristics, it is really not that
| big of a deal.
|
| With that being said, it is important for a nation to identify
| exceptional talents --including intelligence-- and nurture these
| individuals so they maximize their potential. It's good for them,
| it's good for society as well. Recognizing that people should
| have different educational experiences is the right thing to do.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It is worth noting that IQ is heavily impacted by environment
| and nurture, especially so at the ends of the spectrum.
|
| When different groups have different home and social
| environments, it is expected that there will be IQ differences.
|
| It is strange that people can be vocal about the harsh
| conditions difference groups are subjected to, but in denial
| about the damage done by those conditions.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When I was in 8th grade, the teacher was still teaching the times
| tables.
|
| I suspect some of the students who weren't "getting it" were
| sandbagging it so they wouldn't be taught new material.
| danielodievich wrote:
| So this is a topic I have all kinds of interest and experience
| with.
|
| I live in one of those top 100 zipcodes of USA with very small
| school district. It's plenty diverse racially but completely
| homogenous financially (i.e. pretty much everyone is rich). I
| have two kids just a year apart. One just barely didn't make it
| into gifted & talented program at grade 3, and another one
| definitely did, and has been in one since then. [Edit] oh and I
| was in gifted/advanced class myself from grade 7 on, but not
| here, but in Russia.
|
| Plenty of parents pushed very hard for the kids to test into the
| gifted program, getting kids tutors and repeatedly testing in.
| There was one kid I remember who was bright as all get out but a
| complete asshole in social circumstances that apparently tested 3
| times by his parents until he made it (2 highly focused doctors).
| My kid that tested in actually didn't start in it, but then about
| a month into 3rd grade complained that he was bored and we were
| able to move him in.
|
| We've been involved with the teachers on both regular and gifted
| track. We - and every parent with child in gifted class - are not
| happy about our school sunsetting it for the district. No
| teachers - certainly no teachers of advanced classes - were
| consulted on this effort. None of them are getting any additional
| help in now trying to teach to all levels, and result will be
| (already is) a dilution of quality all around.
|
| As with many schools everywhere, and with covid helping, there
| are some kids departing towards private education where your
| money talks and you do whatever. Where I live is increasingly
| unaffordable, too, so we have reduced enrollment because there
| are just less kids. I do fine but am not at economic place to
| afford private education, my offer to kids is where I live, which
| even with the dilution is still excellent education.
|
| We (and almost every parent around us) are very engaged with
| schools with volunteering and additional funding. In fact I am a
| treasurer of the schools foundation that donates up to a $1
| million/year to school for all kinds of things, mostly general
| funding. That tends to help but really, even our little district
| needs like extra ~$20mil to fund what we're supposed to.
|
| Anyhow, on cleverness nd equity, what it boils down to me is that
| the world is becoming just one big lake now with talent being
| increasingly able to accrue huge benefits. This talent needs
| education and people who want best for their kids (including me)
| will do whatever is necessary to get that. This is why there is
| extra tutoring in china and private schools in USA and fancy
| boarding schools in UK for $$$. If public schools do remove this
| equity stuff, it'll just float via money to those other areas. It
| isn't bad/good, it just is.
|
| Anyhow, a bit of a rant/laundry list, but here you have it.
| hawk_ wrote:
| > Latinx
|
| It's hard to take anyone who uses this term seriously. Latinos
| can't even pronounce it or care for it.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Latinos almost universally despise it. It was made up by non-
| Hispanic leftists because... I don't know, something about not
| forcing gender? It's utterly ridiculous.
| scarmig wrote:
| If we insist on mutilating Spanish to satisfy intellectual
| fads, something like "Latine" would be better.
|
| The broader issue is that having grammatical noun
| classes/gender serves an important purpose: not enforcing the
| patriarchy, but instead disambiguating different words and
| antecedents (basically adding an extra bit or two of
| information to a word).
| whatevenisthat wrote:
| googlryas wrote:
| Couple this with the fact that the whole "Latin[aeox]" terms
| aren't even inclusive to begin with. They are generally are
| used to broadly describe "a person from central/south
| America", except they are entirely Euro-centric, as if
| Latinos showed up to uninhabited open land. More than likely,
| the Q'eqchi' person from Guatemala, who barely speaks
| Spanish, who has 100% Mayan ancestry, doesn't self identify
| as "Latino".
| IshKebab wrote:
| It's easy to pronounce. Rhymes with womxn.
| derevaunseraun wrote:
| Why is this site becoming more and more infested with politics?
| It's going to end up suffocating anything actually worthwhile
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| It's always worse in (US) election years, and I think it's
| inevitable for _all_ online discussion sites. When people
| conflate their identity with their political beliefs,
| _everything_ becomes political.
|
| That said, HN has historically done a very good job in policing
| this through the vigilance of its admin team. I wouldn't be
| surprised if this discussion pales in comparison to the stuff
| they've axed.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I was told that Vonnegut wrote "Harrison Bergeron" as a satire of
| the fears that the right had of equality, not as a satire of the
| left's possible execution of it. And yet here we are, firmly in "
| _1984_ was not supposed to be a how-to manual, people! "
| territory.
|
| Of course, the shell game has continued. Recall how often you
| used to hear about equality and not equity, and yet somehow those
| goalposts have shifted in the last five years. Equity has somehow
| come to mean that you'll get "your share" of the pie even if you
| haven't contributed, or despite being completely untalented.
|
| We should sort (not segregate, never _that_ ) students by race
| (self-reported, of course), and then grade such that only a
| certain percentage in each bucket get As, a few more get Bs, and
| so on. This ensures a perfect equity balance. If we do this for
| each grade and each subject within a grade, well, we ought to
| have very equitable outcomes. Diana Moon Glampers will shotgun
| down the grades of the Asian "Schroedinger's Minority" group to
| be in line with everyone else's.
|
| Can't imagine that this won't work out.
| SpaceManNabs wrote:
| I went to a charter school because my designated high school was
| very prone to violence. I am an afro latino immigrant raised by a
| single mom. I truly understand that these public schools are
| losing their best performing kids to these charter schools which
| leads to worse aggregate outcomes. However, I am certain that I
| would not have been able to get into my ivy league alma mater
| without the support and isolation from chaos that my charter
| school provided.
|
| Why should I have a worse outcome just to raise the mean scores
| in a place where everyone else isn't capable (due to harsh
| environment) or willing to learn? In addition, I think it hurts
| arguments for affirmative action. When people think of
| affirmative action / need-based approaches, they think of these
| other kids and not me. (You wouldn't be able to tell that I
| benefitted from those programs if you met me given my high school
| achievements from over a decade ago).
| adverbly wrote:
| Gifted programs threads on HN are the new flame war
| battlegrounds... turns people into an armchair geniuses, ready to
| post solutions based on some anecdotal data.
|
| I pity the actual researchers in these fields. Must be tough to
| work in an area that everyone has an opinion on.
| dpbriggs wrote:
| Why exactly is that a bad thing? It's repetitive but most
| people here are
|
| - former children
|
| - attended public education
|
| - hated or loved aspects of that education
|
| Of course they're going to discuss ideas.
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| I don't know but I suspect given the comments that a
| disproportionate number of HN posters may have been in gifted
| programs.
| thorncorona wrote:
| It's easy to be passionate about education when it changes
| lives
| [deleted]
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| It really pains me to say this but I find it impossible to see
| how this is anything other than an attempt to address inequality
| by eliminating any and all objective measures and drivers of
| success, talent, and/or performance. The promise for a long time
| was that we weren't going to try to achieve equality by dragging
| down the high achievers but that appears to be exactly -
| _exactly_ - the goal here.
| whatevenisthat wrote:
| moron4hire wrote:
| > I do not doubt the good intentions behind the decisions
| educators make in the name of equity.
|
| I do. Or rather, I doubt the good intentions of the _decision
| makers_. I don 't think educators are making these decisions. The
| more I experience the public education system through my child (I
| did not experience it myself, as I was homeschooled), and the
| more stories I hear from parents, the more it looks like school
| administrators are politicians looking to cut costs and get on a
| track to end up in city council. The actual welfare of the
| children doesn't really look like it ends up a part of the
| equation.
| rflrob wrote:
| As a student who went through gifted programs in public
| elementary and in private middle and high school, but otherwise
| not plugged into the literature on it, what does the evidence
| look like that gifted/magnet programs actually provide
| significant tangible benefit to the students? One way to break it
| down would be to look at the relative number of students in these
| categories:
|
| 1. Students identified as gifted who do well because of their
| gifted program/who would have done well if they were in a gifted
| program. 2. Students identified as gifted who would do well
| regardless of whether they had a gifted program, even if they
| might do marginally better in a gifted program. 3. Students not
| identified as gifted who would benefit from additional
| resources/gifted peers in their non-gifted program 4. Students
| not identified as gifted who would not particularly benefit from
| gifted peers/already have adequately resourced classrooms.
|
| I would have a hard time believing that the number of students in
| any of those categories is negligibly small. So then the question
| becomes how do we, as a society, best balance the tradeoffs
| between them. For any given student, we don't generally have the
| ability to try it both ways and see what would have been better,
| and of course any given parent will tend to prefer to take any
| tiny marginal improvement in opportunity for their children,
| regardless of whether it's net beneficial for society. But some
| of the role of society is to not allow people to take actions
| with mismatched externalities.
|
| If there are more #3 students than #1 students (and/or the
| benefits to society are larger), and if we cannot distinguish
| between #2 students and #1 students, then yeah, let's get rid of
| gifted programs.
|
| For myself, I think I was probably a #2--I had affluent, educated
| parents, benefited from significant extra-curricular enrichment,
| and could probably have had more enrichment with several tens of
| thousands of extra dollars per year of saved tuition. At what
| point could my parents have known that I was a #2?
| EddieDante wrote:
| I'm OK with eliminating "gifted programs". I'm not convinced that
| "gifted" kids need them. I think that what they need is a library
| card and free rein to follow their curiosity wherever it leads
| them.
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