As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds • Hacker News Board

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#311

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:17 PM UTC

yc-kraln wrote: post #297

School-Cotton wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When the rubber hits the road (i.e. when it comes to spending money) the US as a country doesn’t care about things like early childhood education all that much. What countries fund education better per capita than the US? Can you give numbers? According to various sources, for example https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp , US per-student K-12 education funding is only behind four OECD countries: Switz…

US Averages for school funding are completely worthless because schools are funded with property taxes; i.e. wealthy areas have amazingly well funded schools while poor areas have underfunded, overcrowded nightmares.

No that’s not true. Only 50% of school funding comes from property taxes. The rest comes from federal and state sources that make up the gaps in property tax revenues. More states have progressive school funding (poor areas get more) than the opposite. (In the vast majority it’s +/- 5%.)

This is why liberal think tanks have shifted the goal posts to “equitable funding”: https://www.brookings.edu/research/how-progressive-is-school... (“ Someone expecting to find widespread evidence of “savage inequalities” will be pleasantly surprised to learn that, on average, poor students attend schools that are at least as well-funded as their more advantaged peers... But there are good reasons to believe that it is more expensive to provide the same quality of education to disadvantaged children—in other words, funding that is equal may not be equitable.“).

Which, to be fair, I don’t think is a flawed idea. If everyone can acknowledge that there isn’t a funding gap, we can have the conversation that poor kids actually need more money to even out inequalities.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#312

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

vesinisa wrote: post #289

kaesar14 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found the statement "how bad the US public education system is" and ones like it to be far too simplistic. It's a country of 350 million people, with perhaps the most staggering differences in educational outcomes of any developed nation on Earth. Where I grew up in New England and in many of the surrounding areas, public education was incredibly well funded, teachers were paid very, very well relative to…

So you're saying that the largest source of funding for primary and secondary public schools is the local government (state? county?), as opposed to the federal government? And that as such your place of living is the deciding factor for the quality of public education available to you? Areas with poor people in them also gather less tax money, meaning they can't provide the residents with quality education, meaning…

No. Even though school governance Halle s mostly at the local level, half of school funding comes from state and federal sources, to even out disparities in funding. This is the typical model pretty much in every federal country.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#313

Post by nostrademons » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

dehrmann wrote: post #269

nradov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better description of Florida would be "perfectly average". In deaths per capita they are right in the middle of US states. Obviously Florida could have done better, but many other states have done far worse. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

The big, open question is why Florida and California have seen such similar case rates despite radically different approaches.

There's less difference than their public policies might suggest. Reportedly lots of senior citizens in Florida voluntarily social-distanced themselves from everybody. The press reported on square dancing and packed beaches, but the anecdotes I heard were that vulnerable individuals were taking things very seriously (despite the lack of restrictions) and self-quarantining away from everyone else.

Meanwhile, in SoCal, basically nobody followed the mask mandates and social distancing restrictions. The rules were more like guidelines, and guidelines that were ignored. They also have a lot more problems with overcrowding, with immigrant populations that need to work, etc. So in terms of what people were actually doing, SoCal was actually engaging in significantly riskier behavior than Florida.

If you compare Bay Area, where people largely did follow the mask & social distancing guidelines, with Florida or SoCal, the death rates are not the same. SF and San Mateo counties had approximately 1/3 as many deaths/1M as the U.S. (and Florida) average; Santa Clara had about 1/2 as many.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#314

Post by rayiner » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:23 PM UTC

ls612 wrote: post #10

cassalian wrote: post #9

Anyone else find it strange that a country that has often fallen in line with "think of the children" arguments for hypothetical dangers appears to be completely uncaring about very real dangers of social isolation that are impacting our youth?

It’s almost like people don’t actually care for the children, they just know of the social consequences of crossing those who claim they do.

Or, it’s like education is a state and local issue and there is a US military sized budget line item called state and local education spending that’s not included in OP’s calculation of federal spending.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#315

Post by kaesar14 » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:27 PM UTC

vesinisa wrote: post #289

kaesar14 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found the statement "how bad the US public education system is" and ones like it to be far too simplistic. It's a country of 350 million people, with perhaps the most staggering differences in educational outcomes of any developed nation on Earth. Where I grew up in New England and in many of the surrounding areas, public education was incredibly well funded, teachers were paid very, very well relative to…

So you're saying that the largest source of funding for primary and secondary public schools is the local government (state? county?), as opposed to the federal government? And that as such your place of living is the deciding factor for the quality of public education available to you? Areas with poor people in them also gather less tax money, meaning they can't provide the residents with quality education, meaning…

Not exactly so simple. For one, like another commenter mentioned, funds are provided by the federal government specifically to level these differences out, but that's all it is, money. The administration of those funds is carried out at the lowest levels of government, with little to no accountability standards from higher up (obviously we've had reform attempts on this like NCLB).

The differences arising from living in a poorer district vs a richer district have more to do with factors outside of school, like I said. It has to do with the home environments provided by parents who are often much poorer and thus less able to provide care and tutoring outside of school. Less access to role models that can guide the way to getting to college and upward mobility. As our country's economy becomes increasingly competitive, these disadvantages ossify socioeconomic statuses for people and their offspring.

Obviously, more oversight of funds is a good thing, but it really isn't a lack of money that leads to these problems (for the most part).

Edit: Also, a poorer district usually has lower cost of living to weigh against lower property taxes.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#316

Post by kaesar14 » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:28 PM UTC

pmiller2 wrote: post #290

kaesar14 wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've always found the statement "how bad the US public education system is" and ones like it to be far too simplistic. It's a country of 350 million people, with perhaps the most staggering differences in educational outcomes of any developed nation on Earth. Where I grew up in New England and in many of the surrounding areas, public education was incredibly well funded, teachers were paid very, very well relative to…

Dozens? More like thousands. School districts tend to fall along city or county lines, and there are around 3000 local government units in the US. Cut that in half to guesstimate the number of school districts, and you’re still in the thousands order of magnitude. Edit: There are 3142 “counties and county equivalents” in the US. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_counties_by_U.S._state...

I was referring to states when I chose the word dozens because states have unified educational attainment standards. You're right of course, it's even more complicated than that.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#317

Post by orangecat » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

SkyMarshal wrote: post #272

cassalian wrote: post #9

Anyone else find it strange that a country that has often fallen in line with "think of the children" arguments for hypothetical dangers appears to be completely uncaring about very real dangers of social isolation that are impacting our youth?

Well the decision is to either send them to school and risk them all getting infected with and becoming superspreaders of a novel , fast-spreading virus that we don't fully understand yet, or keep them home and risk mental health issues from social isolation. We chose the less harmful option, it's not that complicated. There's no conspiracy here.

We chose the less harmful option, it's not that complicated.

Ron DeSantis would agree.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#318

Post by Izkata » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #103

croes wrote: post #77

What would it have been like if the schools had not been closed? If millions had been infected in a short time and the hospitals had been overloaded so that in addition to the deaths from Corona, the deaths from lack of capacity would have been added? How traumatic would that be for the children? Are there any studies on this from New York or Italy? Can the consequences of the lockdown be so cleanly separated from th…

Comparing regions where schools opened earlier or were open for longer doesn’t support this extreme claim that “additional millions would have been infected in a short time”

Not just schools, in general if you look at infection/death rates you wouldn't be able to guess if a country/state(US) was locked down or open.

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#319

Post by heavyset_go » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:33 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #68

monocasa wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were balancing it against what they saw in Italy: allowing the virus to get out of hand and overwhelm the hospital system and your death rate from covid jumps into the double digits. Kids would be pretty depressed being surrounded by a 8 digit body count in the US too.

Do you have any proof that that would have increased depression rates in children relative to what we see today? And an 8 digit body count would be impossible in the US for a disease with a >99% survival rate. So quit the hyperbole.

There's about a 3% death rate[1] when hospitals aren't flooded with sick people, and the death rate hits double digits when the healthcare system is DDOS'd by sick patients, as we've seen in Italy. The hospitalization rate is about 10%.

If everyone in the US got COVID, and 1% of them died, that would be 3.3 million people dead and over 30 million hospitalized. If the death rate is 3%, 9.85 million would die. I don't think there are 30 million hospital beds in the US, so that figure could reach over 10 million, which is 8 digits.

However, while you're busy focusing on digits, you're missing the overall point.

[1] https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Re: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds

#320

Post by dadjoker » Sun, Mar 21, 2021, 10:34 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #262

cassalian wrote: post #9

Anyone else find it strange that a country that has often fallen in line with "think of the children" arguments for hypothetical dangers appears to be completely uncaring about very real dangers of social isolation that are impacting our youth?

Anybody else find it strange that having students out of school for another few months for their teachers to be vaccinated is being painted as the most important thing in the world when they've already been out of school for a year? It's fine to mourn the damage that's been done from kids being locked up for a year. To act like the marginal damage from adding a few more months to that year is murder, that's political…

My daughter has been doing exactly that all year as a teacher in a private school. My son has been attending full day class in a private school long before vaccinations were available. This has been true for private schools all around the country (fortunately w we don't have teachers unions who think they deserve extra special protection, more than everyone else in society). And guess what? No problems. Wash your hands, stay home when you're sick and it's amazing how there are no dreaded COVID "superspreader" events.

I have been out on the front lines as a first responder since the beginning w/o a vaccination. And I would gladly be anywhere without vaccinations and masks, because I know the stats and probabilities, and I don't cower in the face of risk, as lockdown and mask proponents are.

People get sick. People die (2.8M in the US, per the CDC) It's happened since the beginning of humans, and it will always be that way. In past pandemics we never were paranoid cowards like this (smallpox, asian flu, etc), but somehow all of that wisdom was trashed last year because people are so afraid of risk and think they can actually "control" a virus. Good luck with that.

We need to accept that 3 million Americans will die this year and we can't keep everyone alive forever no matter how hard we try - And that our bizarre fixation on making every decision as if Covid19 deaths are the only societal outcome that matters is profoundly wrong.