Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

dianeravitch.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 215 posts

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#31

Post by rusabd »

viceroyalbean wrote: post #19
UrsaMedius wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you call "most and least gifted" is in my opinion better described as "most and least privileged". And coeducation of students of different levels of privilege just seems like a good thing, nothing that needs to be dealt with.

The issue, in my experience, is that you have to compromise somewhere. That means either leaving the higher performers to be bored, or leaving the lower performers not achieving the minimum. Neither seems like a desirable outcome.

Well, we can always f*ck up both groups. It seems this is the current approach.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#33

Post by lordnacho »

I've always been suspicious of for-profit schools. I put my own kids in "traditional" independent schools that you have to pay for, but they're run like charities where there's basically no money for someone to pull out.

With for-profit, you have the problems alluded to in the article. If something is up with your kid, eg they need more attention, it's in the school's interest to puff you out so they don't have to arrange that. If your kid is doing well, they could do less well than their potential, which might again require more attention.

Ordinary independent schools still have some of these pressures, esp wrt to booting out failing kids, but they don't have an expectation of leaving resources for profits.

What you're really buying with tuition fees is other parents. Other people who are also signalling, by burning a year's rent, that they value education and will make sure their kids are focused on doing things like reading and numbers.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#34

Post by kakoni »

acd wrote: post #32

Sweden has started to view pupils like a product of a private corporation. We should copy our nordic neighbor Finland which has very high Pisa results. For now a 1:1 copy of Finland would do fine for Sweden.

In Finland, Local ”moderats” and liberals managed to cut over 1.5 billion euros from education in the past 10 years.

Pretty sure they have private venture backed school system in mind.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#35

Post by iguy »

zelos wrote: post #14
brtkdotse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a mathematical agenda, I can’t get the following to balance: Municipal: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs = 0 Private: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs - cost_of_marketing = profit

I have no real view on public/private provision of services, but education is an area where I'm not sure how private 'efficiency savings' would exist. The bulk of the costs are salaries and the teacher/pupil ratio is roughly fixed for a given quality of education. Does anyone have experience of this? Are there actually areas that private enteprise can come in and save money in education?

I think "selection" is the short answer. If you can, by any means, arrange to have a class of better-behaved more-interested children, then you can save money. First, you can pay the teachers less, because the job is much more pleasant.

Second, you can avoid hiring special-ed non-teachers, who (IIRC) are quite numerous in some public school systems (like 1/3 the staff?) but aren't usually counted in the teacher/pupil ratio (because their jobs are different).

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#36

Post by silvestrov »

zelos wrote: post #14
brtkdotse wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a mathematical agenda, I can’t get the following to balance: Municipal: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs = 0 Private: Money_for_education - cost_of_teachers - cost_of_buiding - misc_costs - cost_of_marketing = profit

I have no real view on public/private provision of services, but education is an area where I'm not sure how private 'efficiency savings' would exist. The bulk of the costs are salaries and the teacher/pupil ratio is roughly fixed for a given quality of education. Does anyone have experience of this? Are there actually areas that private enteprise can come in and save money in education?

You have not visited an American school lately and seen the mindblowing numbers of administrators employed?

Baltimore: "For every student enrolled in City Schools, $1630 goes to administrators" [1]

Even universities have a problem with the administration growing wihtout bounds.

A profit motive can cut down on unneeded administrators. The "misc_costs" can be widly different for different school systems.

Why should a head of a public school each $+100k ? [2] What is it about a standard run-of-the-mill public school that can only be performed by such high earners?

1) https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-ci...

2) https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/elementary-school-princip...

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#38

Post by bjeds »

bjornsing wrote: post #29

> While schools and colleges are sounding the alarm about declining knowledge results, joy grades are rising, as grades have become a competitive tool on the market. This in my opinion is the main problem. Take this "marketing tool" away from the private schools, and the rest of the problems are fixable (e.g. with diversified pupil compensation). But when you let a private business both grade themselves and sell entr…

I sort of agree with what you are saying (I'm also Swedish) but I think the incentives are different, and due to the American dominance of Hacker News readers it's worth to clear up:

Swedish middle class parents do not choose "good schools" because they want a "great education" for their kids as a competitive advantage... in the sense of a well-off American parent want their kids to go to Harvard or MIT or similar.

Swedish middle class parents choose "not-bad schools" (not the same as "good schools") because they want to shelter their kids from trouble and from problems, for example from the social issues from failed integration of immigrants.

So it's more about avoiding trouble and "white flight", than the education itself.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#40

Post by logicchains »

bjeds wrote: post #38
bjornsing wrote: post #29

> While schools and colleges are sounding the alarm about declining knowledge results, joy grades are rising, as grades have become a competitive tool on the market. This in my opinion is the main problem. Take this "marketing tool" away from the private schools, and the rest of the problems are fixable (e.g. with diversified pupil compensation). But when you let a private business both grade themselves and sell entr…

I sort of agree with what you are saying (I'm also Swedish) but I think the incentives are different, and due to the American dominance of Hacker News readers it's worth to clear up: Swedish middle class parents do not choose "good schools" because they want a "great education" for their kids as a competitive advantage... in the sense of a well-off American parent want their kids to go to Harvard or MIT or similar. S…

The same is true in Australia: parents choose "not-bad" schools to minimize the chance of their kids being knifed or beaten up by other kids. But it's not due to immigration, instead just to "white trash" for lack of a better word raising violent, substance-abusing children.
Post reply on HN