Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 548 posts

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#241

Post by WalterBright »

yardie wrote: post #219
WalterBright wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chronically underfunding schools In Washington State, for decades there was a big push to "fully fund" the schools. They finally got their way a couple years back, i.e. just about everything they wanted. There has been zero improvement in results. There has been no further mention of "fully funding" the schools in the press since, but the demands for more and more money for the schools have not abated at all. Edit:…

A couple years back is 2019. I'm not sure you know how schools work but suddenly pumping money in doesn't dramatically increase test scores the next fiscal quarter. I think nearly everyone agrees public schools could use more funding, the debates tend to be about "on what and how much."

I looked it up, it was fully in place by summer 2018.

P.S. I didn't say "dramatically". I said "zero" improvement. Doing better than zero is as low a bar as possible. I fail to see that as unreasonable. There isn't even a plan for success.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#242

Post by beerandt »

renewiltord wrote: post #187
xyzzyz wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s exactly how the USA was originally designed to work, and how it originally worked up until early-to-mid 20th century. It was only then when a bunch of power grabbing politicians, along with a bunch of complicit elements in the judicial apparatus, have twisted the US into completely different system that we now get to suffer from.

It’s not just power-grabbing politicians. It’s what the populace desires. Look at the overwhelming support for something like universal health care. That is a massive expansion of federal power. A large number of Americans desire massive federal power.

Don't conflate the desired political goal with the political source.

There's no reason states couldn't implement it if they wanted to. And some did.

Which is part of why it's such a power grab. The "universal" part of it goes against the entire concept of tiered / federated / rupublic type of government.

It's dogmatic. Politics has become religion, especially to the non-religous, and most don't realize it.

"Catholic" means "universal". We can't allow States to have their own laws, when they might not align with the Truth. Praise Science!

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#243

Post by andrewjl »

robocat wrote: post #234
sokoloff wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For any given individual "do" is almost surely better than "not do". That's the choice facing an individual as they contemplate how to live their life.

I have just decided to be four inches taller than I am /s. I have depressed friends that I believe can’t reasonably be expected to just decide to “do”, and I have other friends that seem to naturally have an abundance of “do”. Yes, we can learn the skill, or we can be taught the skill, but otherwise your statement seems unrealistic to me.

IMO both you and GP are correct, ultimately whether the decision to "do" helps or not relies on individual circumstance and context plus on chance factors.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#244

Post by tomschlick »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #211
WalterBright wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chronically underfunding schools In Washington State, for decades there was a big push to "fully fund" the schools. They finally got their way a couple years back, i.e. just about everything they wanted. There has been zero improvement in results. There has been no further mention of "fully funding" the schools in the press since, but the demands for more and more money for the schools have not abated at all. Edit:…

Things like that puzzle me. Baltimore, MD high school graduation rate is under 70% [1]. They spend $18k per student [2] - more than 45 other states on average [3] Citizens of Baltimore even elected a black grassroot mayor who understands needs of the community [4] and Maryland's police brutality is among the lowest in the country [5]. Yet something doesn't work. WHY? [1] https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimor…

> WHY?

Because no matter how much better the schools / administration of it get, it all falls down if the kids don't have a culture at home of valuing education.

My sister taught in a few different low income school districts and each time it was the same thing. Probably 75% of the parents just don't care if their kid is misbehaving or straight up not attending at all. Discipline of those kids was met with accusations of racism by both the kid and the parent as a tool to stop the conversation all together. Phone calls home about performance were generally met with "its your job to teach them not mine". Almost no one showed up to parent teacher meetings. Kids who did want to learn were made fun of by other kids as "acting white".

All of this leads to administrations and teachers pushing under-qualified students through to get them out of the way. There is little incentive for them to personally invest in kids when there is no investment at home. Something has got to give.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#245

Post by sokoloff »

WalterBright wrote: post #240
sokoloff wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you expect a measurable improvement in results in 2 normal years, to say nothing of two COVID-impacted school years?

It was fully in place for the 2018-2019, and 2019-2020 school years. So yeah, I expect measurable improvement in results.

For a student who was educated for 10 years under funding level A and where funding level B was available for 1 full school year (2018-2019), resulting in some changes in the classrooms in the districts only after some time delay after funding was approved, I'd expect to see almost no change in the spring 2019 testing. Spring 2020 testing was impacted by COVID. It's fine that we have different expectations, though.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#246

Post by oh_sigh »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #211
WalterBright wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> chronically underfunding schools In Washington State, for decades there was a big push to "fully fund" the schools. They finally got their way a couple years back, i.e. just about everything they wanted. There has been zero improvement in results. There has been no further mention of "fully funding" the schools in the press since, but the demands for more and more money for the schools have not abated at all. Edit:…

Things like that puzzle me. Baltimore, MD high school graduation rate is under 70% [1]. They spend $18k per student [2] - more than 45 other states on average [3] Citizens of Baltimore even elected a black grassroot mayor who understands needs of the community [4] and Maryland's police brutality is among the lowest in the country [5]. Yet something doesn't work. WHY? [1] https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimor…

It's not really clear to me that being a "black grassroot mayor who understands the needs of the community" is a benefit without any kind of experience managing and operating large organizations.

The operating budget of Baltimore is approximately $4B/year. I can't imagine many companies with that kind of budget that would hire a CEO/COO with Scott's resume to run it.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#247

Post by romwell »

WalterBright wrote: post #240
sokoloff wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you expect a measurable improvement in results in 2 normal years, to say nothing of two COVID-impacted school years?

It was fully in place for the 2018-2019, and 2019-2020 school years. So yeah, I expect measurable improvement in results.

This is akin to expecting improvement of a building constructed on shaky foundation after increasing funding when the construction reached the 8th floor.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#248

Post by danielodievich »

kstenerud wrote: post #62

Education never was the "Great Equalizer". Its purpose has always been "to educate people in what they need to know." Now, "what they need to know" differs by caste. The high caste learn how they deserve their privileged position, how to perpetuate their position, and who are the key players. The medium caste learn how to set up or run business and merchant operations, how to be an exec, how power works, who are the…

Take a look at the https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/07/george-... for a similar viewpoint, articulated much more deeply, and check out the "elite overproduction" concept.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#249

Post by jhoechtl »

For Austria it has been an equalizer in the 1970 to the 1990 when Socialist parties guaranteed free quality education for everyone and parental leave (for woman back then) of more than a year.

Since then the educational system has been largely privatized, education by means of sheer oversupply completely devalued and turned into a money game. The more money you are willing to pay, the easier it will become to get a degree, mostly unaffected by the cognitive ability of the student. As this fact is increasingly tickling into society, the effect is that education is no longer an equalizer.

Re: Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

#250

Post by AnimalMuppet »

asoneth wrote: post #222
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I have not noticed a strong relationship between "the ability to DO THINGS" and someone's social or economic status. Are we talking status relative to others or relative to the starting position? There will always be the deadbeat child of someone wealthy who's still wealthier than you but all the "doers" I know have climbed the socioeconomic ladder at least a couple rungs in their adult lives.

The quoted statement was referring to absolute socioeconomic status. I agree that relative movement is possible and I also know a lot of extremely hard-working people (both rich and poor) who have been successful and climbed a rung or two in their lives. My point was more that the average wealthy person I know doesn't seem to have a particularly greater or lesser "ability to do things" compared to the poor people I k…

"Equalizer" was probably the wrong word. It's probably more like, you start somewhere, and do-ing is one of the biggest components in the delta between where you start and where you end. That doesn't mean that in one generation you overcome someone else's head start. But it's still a good, beneficial thing to strive after.
Post reply on HN