I thought AP classes and a level of general competitiveness stopped stuff like this? Even if the in person classes are easy to pass, the AP scores should be consistent with the rest of the country and should make identifying the relative difficulty between schools pretty easy? ACT and SAT should also make grade inflated school very easily to spot. I think California has a rule requiring that at least X% of their stud…
UC schools no longer consider SAT or ACT for admissions or scholarships.
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 t…
So the answer is no.
I would lean more towards this is one of those truths that can be taken as self-evident. But, at the same time I would be skeptical that any published evidence would account for the infinitude of confounding factors.
My guess is it is similar to IQ results - does a good job weeding out people who know nothing, but does worse differentiating between students who are satisfactory and those who are exceptional
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.
"critical thinking" is what I think parents should teach to their kids. By that I mean giving cases of deception, gaslighting, etc. and asking the kid to discern the lie and the intent of the lie. I don't think schools teach this skill these days.
They punish this skill. I was literally expelled from my high school during senior year for arguing with a teacher over her misinterpretation of something stated pretty plainly in the textbook. The teacher got furious when I stated confidently that she was wrong, and within about 15 minutes I had been taken to the principal’s office and told to never tell a teacher that they are wrong, to which I said “even if they are wrong?” and she expelled me on the spot. The expulsion was overturned about a week later but it was a terrible week for me and my parents, and I got pretty behind in my schoolwork because of it. And to be clear the problem was that the teacher was saying something different from the textbook, so this was not a subjective matter, or a question of knowledge exactly. If she had just said “ignore the textbook” it would have been fine.
> 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…
> Do we have any data on the correlation between high-school admission criteria and inventing the Covid vaccine or whatever? Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission. Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high percentage of Nobel prizes. https://www.caltech.edu/about/legacy/awards-and-honors/nobel... BTW, I think the mRNA vaccine technology is worthy of a Nobel Prize. Don't you?
> Caltech requires good grades as criteria for admission. Caltech graduates have a disproportionately high percentage of Nobel prizes.
Caltech requires 10-year-old kids to write essays?
Again, are we talking about enrolling 10-year-old kids in highschool or are we talking about hiring microbiologists?
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 t…
>GPA should be a result of mastering the material. I know that personally my grades don't tend to correlate with my actual knowledge at all. I've failed things because I've been bored with them, and I've gotten perfect grades on things I don't understand at all outside the tested material.
Same, I think this is the assumption that doesn't always hold up. However, it often does, and how well it does depends on the teachers and school.
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.
No, public school in the United States is broken. They're quite functional in the majority of the OECD. If you are a parent and are in SF this should be a wake up call. The city is rapidly failing, it's in your best interest to get out now.
Public schools where I live in Texas are great. Much better than the $33k per year school we had in Silicon Valley. The places were they seem broken are in big city districts where certain political factions, specifically teacher unions, get outsized influence on policy. I saw this up close when I lived in Jersey City and was considering a run for school board on Mayor Fulup’s slate of candidates. After being warned about “crossing the unions” and getting into tiffs with the NAACP representative, I discovered that many of these groups don’t care a lick about education, only money and power. And it isn’t about funding: look at the per pupil expenditures in DC or New York, and compare them to Austin suburbs like Leander, or Houston suburbs like the Woodlands. Those suburban districts spend less than the districts that perpetually fail. There are policy problems, not financial ones.
You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. It'd mean the same thing it already means for 90%+ people - compulsory publicly funded education from 5-17 years old.
> You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. No straw man involved. I don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of ‘getting rid of private school’. The point is that to ban private schools you’d also have to ban homeschooling.
> The point is that to ban private schools you’d also have to ban homeschooling.
Why?
You can homeschool your children if you want.
They just have to be at state school during state school hours like anyone else. So you'll have to homeschool in your own time, like everything else you have to do in your own time.
(I'm not in favour of banning private schools, but your argument doesn't make sense regardless.)
During high school we had had an exchange program with a German college track high school. My family hosted a student for a month and then they hosted me in Germany. I was shocked at the difference in expectations and quality of education compared to an average American high school. I really wish we offered something equivalent of their combination Vocational Tech/High school with industry partnership as a viable career path compared to the 4 year high school only option I had.
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.
"critical thinking" is what I think parents should teach to their kids. By that I mean giving cases of deception, gaslighting, etc. and asking the kid to discern the lie and the intent of the lie. I don't think schools teach this skill these days.
It’s against their best interests to teach this. Imagine if they taught critical thinking about the Covid epidemic. The very logic unions used to keep schools closed would be unraveled if students and parents were thinking critically.
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.
No, public school in the United States is broken. They're quite functional in the majority of the OECD. If you are a parent and are in SF this should be a wake up call. The city is rapidly failing, it's in your best interest to get out now.
Are you aware that most of the San Francisco Bay Area is not actually in the city of San Francisco?