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

adamcadre.ac

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

#181

Post by nverno »

staticassertion wrote: post #166
WalterBright wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we do not take advantage of the more capable students because of equity, what will the future be without people who can do the sorts of things that require highly capable individuals? No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for example. Even the communists realized that when you've got smart students, take advantage and educate them as best you can. The third reich idiotically drove out their best scientists…

Is there any evidence at all that AP classes and high GPAs leads to success, when controlling for other variables?

GPA should be a result of mastering the material. Assuming that is roughly the case, if you ever go on to use any of the skills you were supposed to learn in school (math, computing, etc) you are asking if having learned those skills would help you perform those skills?

I doubt there will ever be a way to satisfactorily control for other variables when it comes to these sorts of real-life studies (there is a reason the majority of social science isn't reproducible[1])

[1] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/7/21/eabd1705

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

#182

Post by mmarq »

WalterBright wrote: post #164
mmarq wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about this particular Lowell High School, but selective admissions at the high school level achieve excellency by filtering out "bad" students, which are usually students from disadvantaged backgrounds. If a public school is of very high quality, selecting 10 year olds at random is not much less fair than choosing them based on their grades or extracurricular activities or an essay. Unless we as…

If we do not take advantage of the more capable students because of equity, what will the future be without people who can do the sorts of things that require highly capable individuals? No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for example. Even the communists realized that when you've got smart students, take advantage and educate them as best you can. The third reich idiotically drove out their best scientists…

> If we do not take advantage of the more capable students because of equity, what will the future of the country be without people who can do the sorts of things that require highly capable individuals?

> No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for example.

Do we have any data on the correlation between high-school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine or whatever?

We are not talking about taking advantage of excellence, which starts to become visible after highschool. We are talking about 10-year-olds who go to school to be taught the fundamental theorem of arithmetics.

> Even the communists realized that when you've got smart students, take advantage and educate them as best you can. > The third reich idiotically drove out their best scientists, who wound up working for the Allies developing the technology that defeated the reich.

I don't know what the communists and the nazists have to do with changing the admission criteria of a high school. I suppose it's a way of expressing disagreement in American English?

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

#183

Post by fumar »

jimbokun wrote: post #108
treis wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not mandating everyone be equal. It's allocating resources to those that need them most. Which is how I think we all do our jobs. You spend your time on the systems that perform poorly, not the ones that are working fine.

Or do you invest the most resources on the products, customers, and markets giving you the greatest return? Investing in the most talented can give society outsize returns in terms of innovation, skilled and talented public servants, captivating art, and scientific discoveries.

Do you have examples?

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

#184

Post by ALittleLight »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #163
rahimnathwani wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The board could have opened schools months ago, but chose not to. The board opened some schools for a single day at the end of the school year, just to qualify for state funding to pay teachers. The board spent time (whilst schools were closed) deciding how to rename schools, something which has zero impact on educational outcomes. The board has a member who made racist remarks on Twitter and, despite not losing her…

The teachers were worried about Covid. Kids weren't vaccinated.

Kids don't need to be vaccinated. Adults who are concerned about it, including teachers, should be. Keeping schools closed because children aren't vaccinated is irrational.

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

#185

Post by WalterBright »

siliconc0w wrote: post #88
analog31 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devils advocate for a moment, as grading works right now, a kid can quickly dig themselves into a hole that they have no realistic way to get out of, e.g., by utterly bombing on an exam or missing a few assignments early in the semester. The motivation for that kid to progress any further is zero, yet they are imprisoned in the classroom for the duration of the semester. This hits very close to home for me, a…

+1 I saw this a lot with friends who were less interested in school and would quickly bail on a class once they missed a test or assignment and I couldn't really blame them. For me the point of a Math class is to learn and demonstrate you understand certain concepts - it isn't to demonstrate some proxy of 'work ethic' because you sat in a desk somewhere on a regular schedule. So there should always be an avenue left…

Caltech did it right. Professors were not allowed to grade based on attendance. If you could pass the final, you passed the class. If you could pass the final without even taking the class, you would get credit (although very, very few managed that feat!).

I recall one student who flunked thermo. He filed a complaint that the Prof had it in for him, hence the F. The Prof provided evidence that he never did any of the homework, and flunked the midterm and final. Case dismissed. The student dropped out.

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

#186

Post by thaumasiotes »

treis wrote: post #147
kyboren wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So instead, let's put them with the high-achievers and force those high-achievers to do the teacher's job of tutoring them at the expense of their own educational opportunity. I can see why schools likes it. But it's terrible policy and hurts the higher-achieving students, who will be the backbone of our increasingly winner-take-all knowledge- and services-based economy.

That's quite the straw man you've built there. Nobody is talking about forcing the high achievers to do the teacher's job. The question is how we allocate the fixed amount of educational resources we have. You want us to choose the high achievers so that these early winners can turn that lead into even greater success later. Unstated in your post is what happens to those low achieving students. But it's pretty easy t…

> That's quite the straw man you've built there.

> Nobody is talking about forcing the high achievers to do the teacher's job.

On the contrary, people can be quite explicit about this.

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

#187

Post by dnndev »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #167
analog31 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devils advocate for a moment, as grading works right now, a kid can quickly dig themselves into a hole that they have no realistic way to get out of, e.g., by utterly bombing on an exam or missing a few assignments early in the semester. The motivation for that kid to progress any further is zero, yet they are imprisoned in the classroom for the duration of the semester. This hits very close to home for me, a…

If I could have skipped high school, and went straight to a community college, my life might have been different? I remember learning everything I should have in high school in 1 semester at a CC. Plus--I found high school painful, and their was so much wasted time. I was expected to work while going to high school, and remember thinking there's got to be a better way. In school all day felt like baby sitting, rather…

High school should completely be optional. Those who want to go will benefit from it and those who don’t won’t be there to simply make trouble.

Move the high school teachers to middle school and elementary for smaller classes.

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

#188

Post by dnndev »

Bostonian wrote: post #158
dnndev wrote: post #155

Public school is broken and we all know it - in general. We need competent administrators, more teachers and smaller classes. Parents need more time to teach their children what is not and should not be taught at school. Kudos to parents who can afford and decide to be more hands on with children’s education. It is heartbreaking when all a child has is public school.

"We need more teachers and smaller classes." That would cost more, and reading the blog makes me want to send less money to the public schools.

Another approach could be:

High school should be completely optional. Those who want to go will benefit from it and those who don’t won’t be there to make trouble.

Move the high school teachers to middle school and elementary for smaller classes.

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

#189

Post by akomtu »

WalterBright wrote: post #164
mmarq wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about this particular Lowell High School, but selective admissions at the high school level achieve excellency by filtering out "bad" students, which are usually students from disadvantaged backgrounds. If a public school is of very high quality, selecting 10 year olds at random is not much less fair than choosing them based on their grades or extracurricular activities or an essay. Unless we as…

If we do not take advantage of the more capable students because of equity, what will the future be without people who can do the sorts of things that require highly capable individuals? No iphones, electric cars, or covid vaccines, for example. Even the communists realized that when you've got smart students, take advantage and educate them as best you can. The third reich idiotically drove out their best scientists…

What's "equity" in this context, btw? Equal outcome?

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

#190

Post by Talanes »

lubujackson wrote: post #150
mmarq wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything about this particular Lowell High School, but selective admissions at the high school level achieve excellency by filtering out "bad" students, which are usually students from disadvantaged backgrounds. If a public school is of very high quality, selecting 10 year olds at random is not much less fair than choosing them based on their grades or extracurricular activities or an essay. Unless we as…

This kind of narrow thinking is what has caused schools in SF to suck for everyone. Because Lowell doesn't exist in a vacuum and the arguments that privileged people have a leg up doesn't really make a difference - it is similar logic to burning libraries because some folks can't read. So what happens when you dumb down the only decent public high school for students to aim for? The parents have three options: send y…

>So what happens when you dumb down the only decent public high school for students to aim for?

Vast swaths of the country get by without having any choices in high schools. The idea that need a selection of different schools with different levels of prestige and focuses is such an urban entitlement.

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