Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021 • Hacker News Board

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#41

Post by P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:39 PM UTC

geofft wrote: post #33

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that subtract from the value of the article? The question one might ask is, "did the author write this because they're racist, or are they just sharing their experience and no one else would dare publish it?" Given there are multiple ways of verifying the details, I'd go with "just sharing their experience".

It's p-hacking for prejudice, though. Let's say that there are two races, orange and blue. Alice is orange and goes to a majority-blue church and gets mistreated because of her race. Bob is blue and goes to a majority-orange church and gets mistreated because of his race. Alice and Bob are both upset about their experiences. They submit articles to "The American Truth," an orange-supremacist newspaper whose stated mi…

I like your explanation, but it seems you're arguing in favor of reading "The American Truth", since it will give you both perspectives if you're currently only reading blue-supremacist newspapers?

And you'll be fine as long as you recognize the biases on both sides and verify claims.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#42

Post by 11thEarlOfMar » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:40 PM UTC

The only aspect that is not distressing is that there is at least one public school teacher who can recognize the futility of trying to simultaneously accommodate students, parents and administration.

What educational outcome do these groups expect?

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#43

Post by sxg » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:41 PM UTC

schoolchoice wrote: post #31

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's responsibility is it to ensure that what is best for the management (state and district admin) is also what is best for student education? I'm not too familiar with the details of management here, but is it even possible for public schools (and other government operations) to have proper incentives given voters don't care about results? I suppose "school-choice", which happens to be vehemently opposed by Democr…

"School-choice" is great for optimizing local maximums at the expense of just about everyone else. Public education should focus on the lowest common denominators to maximize education per tax dollar. It's not the smart people with lack of opportunity that drag down society, it's the massive amount of undereducated adults that become dangerously suceptable to manipulation.

That may be true—the system may be better served by raising the floor on education. But voters are individuals, and the most passionate are likely the type of people who prioritize maximizing their own (smart) kids’ opportunities over raising the floor for everyone.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#44

Post by avanai » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:42 PM UTC

The umlauts for quotes thing is really interesting. I don’t know why the author went for “these kids haven’t seen enough ‘proper’ text” rather than, say “these kids weren’t taught typing and discovered a creative solution that communicates their intent well.”

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#45

Post by splithalf » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

The soft bigotry of different standards is talked about but rarely is the premise carefully examined. Can there be a single standard? Maybe the problem is expecting a good essay, composed in earnest, by a kid that can “barely string a sentence together.” We ought not be surprised when humans act human.

Maybe we should redefine public education to be a bit more exclusive, and not shame those that aren’t on a college track into pursuing mentally challenging work for which we are unfit. Give kids the money that would be spent on their education (loosely defined) and let them invest it, or spend on vocational training or seed money to start their own small business. Too much focus on producing som eidetic notion of the educated individual. People don’t wind up homeless because they weren’t exposed to Shakespeare. Some people will be lucky to attain enough basic skill to stay afloat. If such a person is able to fool plagiarism software, maybe that’s something to celebrate.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#46

Post by vladvasiliu » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #25

> Another initiative headed for mandate status is a school policy that no assignment can receive a grade of less than 50% > And my direct supervisor repeatedly demanded that I pace my classes for the benefit of the single student in each section who was struggling the most I don't understand school. Why do they do things like this? Who actually thinks this is a good idea? I've never met anyone who does. How have we g…

This looks like a classic "what gets measured gets managed".

If they have objectives like "X% of kids have to graduate", then either you improve the kids' skills, or you lower the requirements for graduation.

For example, in France, the recent governments are extremely happy of the improvement in baccalaureate's success rate (the exam at the end of high-school).

They never talk about the level, but older folks, who sat these exams a few decades ago, always lament that the courses have been dumbed down. Of course the government doesn't agree, but why would it?

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#47

Post by rjsw » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:43 PM UTC

nerdponx wrote: post #28

This sounds like something out of a surrealist novel. > consistently use umlauts in place of quotation marks and acute accent marks in place of apostrophes US-International keyboard layout, maybe. Maybe the student doesn't know what umlauts and acute accents are, so maybe they think they're valid equivalents to " and '.

Is that down to the pupil ?

Sounds like another MacOS "why not use random unicode characters that look similar to the one you really want" feature to me.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#48

Post by brighton36 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:44 PM UTC

fallingknife wrote: post #25

> Another initiative headed for mandate status is a school policy that no assignment can receive a grade of less than 50% > And my direct supervisor repeatedly demanded that I pace my classes for the benefit of the single student in each section who was struggling the most I don't understand school. Why do they do things like this? Who actually thinks this is a good idea? I've never met anyone who does. How have we g…

I've never understood school either. Now that I'm 40 years old, I understand it less. I think there was a generation of adults who were 'in on the rhetoric' at one point. Telling people that these are places of education, instead of a kind of reformation facility, akin to jail.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#49

Post by api » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

anm89 wrote: post #39

fallingknife wrote: post #25

> Another initiative headed for mandate status is a school policy that no assignment can receive a grade of less than 50% > And my direct supervisor repeatedly demanded that I pace my classes for the benefit of the single student in each section who was struggling the most I don't understand school. Why do they do things like this? Who actually thinks this is a good idea? I've never met anyone who does. How have we g…

No one thinks it's a good idea for the students. They think it's a good idea for their career.

In college a similar phenomenon is grade inflation where professors mark up grades to look like better professors or get better student reviews.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#50

Post by fallingknife » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 3:45 PM UTC

schoolchoice wrote: post #31

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who's responsibility is it to ensure that what is best for the management (state and district admin) is also what is best for student education? I'm not too familiar with the details of management here, but is it even possible for public schools (and other government operations) to have proper incentives given voters don't care about results? I suppose "school-choice", which happens to be vehemently opposed by Democr…

"School-choice" is great for optimizing local maximums at the expense of just about everyone else. Public education should focus on the lowest common denominators to maximize education per tax dollar. It's not the smart people with lack of opportunity that drag down society, it's the massive amount of undereducated adults that become dangerously suceptable to manipulation.

If you want to maximize education per tax dollar then you need to separate out the smart kids into their own schools. Benefits of education are not evenly distributed. It is heavily weighted towards the right tail.