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Is education no longer the ‘great equalizer’?

nytimes.com

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

#291

Post by arminiusreturns »

The oligarchs have been working to detroy the middle class for a long time now (see the Norman Dodd interview or The Leipzig Connection), and education is a key piece of that work, because it truly can be a great equalizer. You will notice not just different curriculum, but entirely different methods being used at a posh place for the elite like Eton, vs a (US) public school or even most upper middle class private schools.

Class war is real, the rich are winning, and education is a key part of that war.

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

#292

Post by mcguire »

WalterBright wrote: post #272
mcguire wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Edit: the fully funding was in place in 2018 " How fast do you expect results? The Washington Supreme Court decision: http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/843627.opn.pdf " The State has failed to meet its duty under article IX, section 1 by consistently providing school districts with a level of resources that falls short of the actual costs of the basic education program. The legislature recently enacted sweeping…

It was fully implemented in the summer of 2018. See my cite.

You cannot produce a baby in one month by getting nine women pregnant.

Summer of 2018 is too late for the 2018/2019 year. That gives them 2019/2020 (half messed up due to the pandemic) and 2020/2021 (half messed up and ongoing).

Since this seems to be yet another issue of a state screwing low income districts, one wouldn't expect any change in high income districts, either.

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

#293

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

oh_sigh wrote: post #246
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The sky will fall before a greedy fat cat corporate CEO will be elected as a public official - no matter what his track record in managing other people's money is.

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

#294

Post by standardUser »

iammisc wrote: post #108
TrackerFF wrote: post #19

In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. Furthermore, strong labor laws have compressed salaries towards the mean, so people are not locking themselves into poverty by working low-wage / low-skill work, but there's a difference enough that people are incentivize…

> In a lot of European countries, a robust social safety net is the great equalizer. You don't get locked up to work in order to afford healthcare, food, etc. - and are thus more free to take chances. That is a great explanation in theory, but simply does not work out in practice. In order to support the safety net, the EU has to impose several regulations that remove the ability of people to 'take chances', such as…

Just because the European system isn't perfect doesn't mean we can't learn from it or try to emulate its strengths. For too long the American approach has been "other ways aren't perfect so we'll keep doing it our way". But I think its becoming clear that "our way" does not lead to better outcomes across a wide range of metrics. Not seriously entraining some major adjustments based on these learnings is borderline insanity.

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

#295

Post by mcguire »

WalterBright wrote: post #254
sokoloff wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is, the "fully-funding" issue has completely vanished from the agenda. It is never discussed anymore. It's back to the same old "we need more funding to make a difference" rhetoric. In fact, I recall the very day the legislation passed, the same advocates were demanding even more money. I've lived in Seattle for over 40 years now. Long enough to see innumerable funding increases based on demands that "this…

"The thing is, the "fully-funding" issue has completely vanished from the agenda. It is never discussed anymore."

The state was failing to provide funding to all of the school systems in the state. The legislature came up with a plan to fix that and the state Supreme Court agreed with it. There isn't much else to say there.

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

#296

Post by rayiner »

Jcowell wrote: post #136
rayiner wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elections? Healthcare? (Continuing to push Medicaid expansion onto states that don’t want it?) Child care? Education?

Honestly the first two should be a federal thing. I just don’t understand how a federal election has 50 different ways of doing and qualifying things and not one way for a position that affects the whole country. If we were to pull up on a Alien planet and see this kind of election style we would ridicule the ridiculousness that is the US election system. Don’t get me started on how it makes any sense that we don’t l…

We’re 50 different states that are, in theory, supposed to be quite independent of each other. (In some ways, even more so than the EU. For example, the EU has no equivalent of our anti-commandeering principle. The EU can direct national administrative organs to carry out task, while the U.S. federal government can’t direct state administrative units.

The issue of why taxpayers won’t pay doctors to deliver children is orthogonal to the point I’m making. If taxpayers in California or New York want to do that, they should do it.

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

#297

Post by dlp211 »

Ensorceled wrote: post #22
zozbot234 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while also chronically underfunding schools Schools are not underfunded in the U.S., they waste money. Big difference.

As with health care, the US spends near the top[1] per student and ranks among the worst for results. [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd

The fundamental problem with these types of analysis is that it is the aggregate and average of a large mostly sparse country with a large population. Between Federalism, local & state politics, wealth concentration, and geographic constraint leads to some interesting and costly quirks to our school systems.

It turns out that wealthy public school districts are extremely good and compete at the top of the world stage, and poor school districts are really, really, terrible and underperform on the world stage by a substantial margin.

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

#298

Post by tut-urut-utut »

WalterBright wrote: post #159
John23832 wrote: post #7

Two parts: First, I think the ability to DO THINGS is the great equalizer at this point. Being a do-er lifts you out of poverty (or at least out of poverty's worst resting state). Being a do-er expands your network. Being a do-er prolongs your life (people with jobs/daily activities tend to live longer healthier lives). The best part about this is that technology has made it easier to become a do-er. You don't need a…

> 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:…

Do you really expect that the effect of „fully funded“ schools is measurable after only a couple of years.

It takes decades for any society scale effect to become evident.

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

#299

Post by dlp211 »

xyzzyz wrote: post #282
renewiltord wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You could easily implement universal healthcare on a state-by-state basis. This is just another excuse for federalization by power-grabbers.

At great cost, yes you could. This is one of the reasons everything costs so much in America, because we insist on making 50 independent systems.

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

#300

Post by shadowoflight »

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.

I think one important thing that we, as a society, need to respect is that the amount of "do" it takes a given person to do a given task is very different from the amount of "do" it takes another person to do that same task.

For example, it may take somebody who's depressed the same amount of "do" to get out of bed and eat a yogurt as it takes a go-getter, "neurotypical" [0] person to get up, cook a healthy breakfast, go to the gym, take a shower, get to work, and get through their first couple tasks of the day.

[0]: I put "neurotypical" in scare quotes because I'm not sure neurotypical is even really a thing, it's just the term we use for people whose mental makeup fits well into our society and work culture.

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