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

41–50 of 215 posts

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#41

Post by imtringued »

corty wrote: post #7

While I agree with the article about the problems of profit-driven schools, the whole situation (and the article in parts) points to a imho bigger problem in most education systems: Profit-driven schools cater to the more able, easier to educate and more intelligent pupils. Why can they do that? Because public schools almost everywhere insist on coeducation of the most and least gifted. This is severely holding back…

>This is severely holding back and limiting the development of gifted children and imho needs to be dealt with.

The article describes how for profit schools specifically pick "gifted" (aka easy to teach) children and then cut teaching staff to take the difference as profit. Yes, these students will still get better grades and thus make the for profit school look better than the public school but they absolutely fail to cater to the needs of "gifted" children.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#42

Post by germinalphrase »

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?

In the US, teacher to student ratios are generally not fixed. One wchool may have 25 to a class. Another 35.

If you can select only high performing students with fewer individual needs, you can increase the number of students without needing additional staff. Likewise, you can higher fewer or no language teachers, special education teachers, etc.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#43

Post by jschveibinz »

leecarraher wrote: post #4

The us has a similar profit driven model parallel to state funded schools. While private schools have always been available, only in the last few decades did they move from large monolithic institutions to national corporations. What we tend to call charter schools, profit off of government funding while sometimes putting corporate incentives over student well being. As with public schools, there is a spectrum of exc…

I would like to address some of the hyperbole in this comment.

The US has a majority of publicly-funded primary schools (K-12)—- 16,800 districts by a recent count —- that are primarily funded by local property taxes and run by local school boards. Only 9% of schools are private, and only 7% of public schools are charter schools (semi-private).

National funding for primary education in the US is relatively small (roughly 8%) and is mostly tied to special services. The US Dept. of Education is toothless: it is primarily focused on setting policies and administering Title 9.

If Sweden has a problem with profiteering in national primary education funding, it is difficult to draw an analogy to US schools just based on the facts stated above.

It is true that some US school districts suffer from funding shortfalls due to low local tax base, and the need to show passing grades does drive some schools to “cheat” in order to receive state and federal subsidies, but this is not a universal country-wide problem.

The magic solution to educating low-income, socially disadvantaged children who live in very difficult living situations with no assistance from parents has yet to be devised. Or has it? Check out what these folks are doing in Baltimore: https://www.thread.org/

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#44

Post by captain_price7 »

corty wrote: post #7

While I agree with the article about the problems of profit-driven schools, the whole situation (and the article in parts) points to a imho bigger problem in most education systems: Profit-driven schools cater to the more able, easier to educate and more intelligent pupils. Why can they do that? Because public schools almost everywhere insist on coeducation of the most and least gifted. This is severely holding back…

Assuming it's possible to find out "intelligent" vs not primary/middle schools kids.

We all here agree that finding talented developers is hard- meaning 22+ yr old adults. Isn't the job like 10 times harder for say 8 yr old kids?

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#45

Post by techpression »

boxed wrote: post #6
techpression wrote: post #2

Most people with a non-political agenda would agree that the problems with the Swedish school system began when it was handed over to the municipalities from the state, I don’t think there has been a successful migration of responsibilities like this ever in the history of the country. We then had to suffer years of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and choice superseded traditional curriculum…

This is the common wisdom in Sweden. It's also trivially false. Sweden made a bunch of changes at the same time. Why would this one thing be the only thing? And why is our neighbor Finland able to have the best school in Europe and they did the exact same thing? Logic seems to have little place in this discussion. The problem with the Swedish privatization in my opinion is that it managed to enable scientologists and…

Finland didn’t do the same thing at all, they modeled their system based of the Swedish one back when it was state driven and science based.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#46

Post by imtringued »

HPsquared wrote: post #15
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

Your equation misses an 'efficiency' parameter.

The whole problem is that private schools only take the best students, which makes them more efficient on paper but in reality they just shifted the problem around.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#47

Post by techpression »

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?

Proven false by Swedish schools, just this week a pretty thorough investigation showed that same result schools in certain cities had almost twice the funding per student compared to others, for no gain.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#48

Post by imtringued »

leereeves wrote: post #9
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

The author claims that "the corporation schools can reduce salaries, teacher density, resource staff." Though that claim makes me wonder how these schools attract students. The "independent students" and their parents must not be too happy with the municipal schools if understaffed private schools are an appealing alternative.

Because all the other "good" students are there and all the "bad" students are in the public schools. You don't want your kid to be surrounded by "bad" kids, do you? (I'm not serious)

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#49

Post by techpression »

bov wrote: post #3
techpression wrote: post #2

Most people with a non-political agenda would agree that the problems with the Swedish school system began when it was handed over to the municipalities from the state, I don’t think there has been a successful migration of responsibilities like this ever in the history of the country. We then had to suffer years of anti-scientific school regulations where student feelings and choice superseded traditional curriculum…

As is yours here.

Please do enlighten me about my agenda, this will be very interesting to say the least.

Re: The Shame of Swedish Education: J’Accuse

#50

Post by lr4444lr »

lordnacho wrote: post #33

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 ar…

Your supposition is logical, but the reality is, budget directors, chancellors, and politicians are all under tremendous pressure to stem education costs in the public sector, and it has a lot of impact in what's done or not done. That's why laws guaranteeing the right to education, particularly special education, are important.
Post reply on HN