[HN Gopher] The Biggest Disruption in the History of American Ed...
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The Biggest Disruption in the History of American Education
Author : enraged_camel
Score : 16 points
Date : 2022-06-25 18:18 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| giardini wrote:
| tl;dr please.
|
| All I see of interest in TFA is a very predictable request for
| more money:
|
| _" Curing the many harms that school closures have imposed will
| take money--a lot of it."_
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| Home schooling, Parochial and Private Schools. The only choice.
|
| All my best business partners and nerd friends were one of the
| above and rarely public school educated.
|
| And force state governments to pay for these as an option instead
| of public schools. Such school closures with nothing substituting
| combined with the recent SCOTUS ruling this week mean the door
| for that is wide open!
| lapcat wrote:
| > All my best business partners and nerd friends were one of
| the above and rarely public school educated.
|
| This seems extremely anecdotal.
|
| I went to public schools. Of course I'm not your business
| partner or friend, but most people on Earth aren't either.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| This reality was intentionally engineered so that ghouls like
| Devos can make their millions and billions in the inevitable
| privatization
| dc-programmer wrote:
| The purpose of no child left behind is to literally close
| schools in low performing areas. Leaving families no choice
| but to go with other options.
|
| This is the classic Republican playbook of tearing down
| institutions not in the name of small government but rather
| to replace core functions with private offerings. Doesn't
| hurt in this case they can also stick it to a union at the
| same time
| MisterMower wrote:
| If a public school has been delivering failing results for
| more than a decade, maybe shutting it down isn't such a
| terrible idea. What's the alternative? Continue to throw
| money and resources at teachers and administrators who have
| proven they can't effectively educate students?
| dc-programmer wrote:
| The answer is not sending them to a unaccredited strip
| center mall charter school like some people want. Or a
| bible thumping parochial that doesn't teach evolution.
| MisterMower wrote:
| So we should keep them in failing schools?
| dc-programmer wrote:
| If the school is truly rotten sure maybe let's close it.
| But the problem isn't the schools.
|
| Probably the best thing we could do to produce better
| educational results is to correct the damage done to city
| centers by rapid deindustrialization and the war on
| drugs, and invest in rural communities left behind with
| infrastructure like broadband. Obviously I don't think
| either will happen. But just shifting kids around isn't
| going to do anything (but there is money to made in
| sectors like edtech)
| rayiner wrote:
| Public schools are both bad and expensive and it's somehow
| Republicans' fault. :-/
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Unironically yes. The war on public schools started when
| the Feds wouldn't let southerners run their segregation
| academies. Conservatives have been trying to sabotage the
| system ever since
| wrycoder wrote:
| You are misinformed, if you think it was the
| "Republicans" who were running the "segregation
| academies". The problem won't be solved until the
| partisanship decreases.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| I said conservatives. I am adequately informed about the
| mid-20 century party re-alignment of the Dixiecrats. It's
| not the semantic gotcha you think it is because politics
| is not a team sport to me.
|
| These folks can't stand that they lost the civil rights
| battle, the Roe decision (till now), and less remembered
| the affirmation of the rights of the detained. Maybe
| there would be less partisanship if they just stuck to
| trying to lower taxes rather than wage an full assault of
| personal liberties.
|
| Moderates just want oppressed groups to lay down and take
| it so their prized stability is not jeopardized
| rayiner wrote:
| I love how Democrats like to claim there was a
| "realignment" of the parties in the civil rights era, but
| then claim The mantle of FDR, who was President decades
| before the civil rights era.
|
| Also, _Roe_ was decided by 7 Republicans, against the
| dissent of a Democrat, 40 years after FDR.
| seibelj wrote:
| You can only have shitty, dilapidated, extraordinarily
| expensive public schools for so long before the gravy train
| ends and parents rebel. In Boston we pay some of the highest
| per-pupil spending in the entire country (~$25k) and they are
| contemplating putting the entire system under state control
| https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/state-to-recommend-decl...
|
| It's completely insane how "jUsT GiVe ThE TeAcHeRs MoRe MoNeY!"
| is argued in good faith when what we have is so absurdly fucked
| and ruinous.
| zach_garwood wrote:
| To pick a nit here, when most people say "Give teachers more
| money," they mean exactly and precisely that, giving a higher
| salary to the boots on the ground in the classroom. What ends
| up happening though is that more money goes to the school
| system, and some paltry amount may trickle down to the
| teacher, but most if it get's eaten up by principals,
| superintendents, and an army of other administrators, who do
| not actually improve outcomes.
|
| It's my firm belief that most of the issues with our
| educational system would be rectified overnight if every
| school district halved their administration.
| lapcat wrote:
| One of the points of the article is that the schools are
| not just trying to deliver an education, they're also
| trying to deliver social services to kids.
|
| Why is that? Well, as a society we've decided that adults
| are generally unworthy of a social safety net, yet we still
| consider kids to be "innocent", and so instead of helping
| the parents of the kids, we insist on providing social
| services directly to the kids in school, bypassing the
| parents. This adds a lot of cost and layers of
| administration. And of course poorer kids are more in need
| of social services, so the poorer schools are often more
| expensive to run, even factoring in teacher salaries. You
| can say the schools are "failing", but they're also being
| asked to do too much.
| wrycoder wrote:
| There was no reason for this to happen. It was an hysterical and
| opportunistic response by the public health authorities and the
| teacher's unions.
|
| As the article stated, the schooling of the elites continued
| uninterrupted during the pandemic. COVID did not spread
| uncontrolled into those homes.
|
| Children aren't born civilized. It's the duty of families and the
| schools to civilize them. With the breakdown of the family over
| the last fifty years, more and more was dropped on the schools.
| They were supposed to provide education and increasingly many
| support services.
|
| When COVID struck, that responsibility was mostly abandoned for
| the lower and middle classes. Our institutions failed, for no
| good reason. People are trying to pick up the slack, but the way
| our society has been restructured, with both parents working,
| makes it very difficult to provide the education and supervision
| that the children need.
| lapcat wrote:
| > As the article stated, the schooling of the elites continued
| uninterrupted during the pandemic. COVID did not spread
| uncontrolled into those homes.
|
| That's not what the article stated.
|
| "Students with household incomes above $200,000, in contrast,
| lost about 54 days--still considerable"
| MisterMower wrote:
| And the very next sentence after that one:
|
| "Many elite private schools, meanwhile, avoided pandemic-
| related schooling loss almost entirely."
| lapcat wrote:
| And the very next sentence after that one:
|
| "Of the Forbes top 20 private schools, our research found
| that 14 met fully in person for the entire 2020-21 school
| year."
|
| So, 6 of the top 20 private schools did not meet fully in
| person for the entire school year.
|
| Also, that's talking about 14 schools in the entire county,
| which is a minuscule number of schools and students.
|
| Moreover, what's the evidence for the claim that "COVID did
| not spread uncontrolled into those homes"? I'm not saying
| it did or it didn't, I'm just saying there's no basis
| whatsoever for this claim.
|
| Anyway, the issue isn't just the homes, it's the teachers.
| Who wants to die for a job? Nobody signed up for that.
| wrycoder wrote:
| If there had been a plague in elite homes, we would have
| heard about it. (And there aren't all that many elite
| homes.)
|
| Teaching school during the pandemic isn't some kind of
| death sentence. Teachers mostly retire before 65, and the
| vast majority of COVID deaths is people over 65. Solution
| - stay open, and if a teacher wants to retire at 55 -
| fund that fully, with Fed help, if necessary.
| lapcat wrote:
| > If there had been a plague in elite homes, we would
| have heard about it.
|
| Why?
|
| > And there aren't all that many elite homes.
|
| Ok, so why is there any general lesson here? And
| approximately how many homes are you counting as "elite"?
|
| > if a teacher wants to retire at 55 - fund that fully,
| with Fed help, if necessary
|
| I eagerly await this policy. Though it's too late for
| anyone in the 2020-2021 school year. And how do you plan
| to deal with the resulting teacher shortage? There's
| actually already a teacher shortage, because many decided
| to quit in the past couple years.
| wrycoder wrote:
| > why
|
| Because we hear of everything COVID that helps to raise
| the fear factor.
|
| And, I don't count teachers paid to sit at home as
| "teachers".
| rayiner wrote:
| My kid goes to a private school. Not only was it closed less
| time than the public schools, but when my second grade
| daughter fell behind in reading (because distance learning
| doesn't work) she got private 1:1 tutoring every morning to
| catch up after returning to in person school.
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(page generated 2022-06-25 23:02 UTC)