101–110 of 647 posts
Isn't GPA even easier to game than SATs? -- Private schools can curve more leniently so its pay to play -- Rich schools tend to have more AP/Honor courses which inflate weighted GPAs I went to one of the best public schools in America and it was not uncommon for someone to take 100% AP/Honors and get a 4.5+ GPA.
Having spent a lot of time doing MS admissions at a top-tier CS program, I never really cared that much about specific scores unless they were absolutely terrible. Tests don’t tell you much about an applicant, essays are more helpful to know if somebody can be successful. We did away with tests and I didn’t miss them.
I think the University of Texas has one of simplest and most egalitarian admissions policies that I have seen. If you graduate in the top 10 percent of your class, then you are guaranteed admission to all state funded universities. As a Californian I find it quite ironic that many policies in “conservative” Texas (ex. university admissions, property tax, income tax) are more much more progressive than what we have in…
https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...
All this gnashing over test scores and booster programs is just showboating. If states really want to fix poor schools they should make school funding occur at the state level, rather than whichever random zip code you’re born into. Seriously, you can’t justify a wealthier neighborhood being entitled to better schools when they’re public institutions receiving state and federal funds. Evening out this funding is the…
SFUSD's operating budget (excluding capital expenditure and maybe some other stuff) is $1.1bn. It normally serves 57k students. That's $17k per student per year. Funding is not the problem.
That brings $17k down to $8.5k. The average spend per student in K-12 schools nationally is more than $12k.
San Francisco may be significantly underfunded in a nontrivial number of its schools.
I think the University of Texas has one of simplest and most egalitarian admissions policies that I have seen. If you graduate in the top 10 percent of your class, then you are guaranteed admission to all state funded universities. As a Californian I find it quite ironic that many policies in “conservative” Texas (ex. university admissions, property tax, income tax) are more much more progressive than what we have in…
>> As a Californian I find it quite ironic that many policies in “conservative” Texas (ex. university admissions, property tax, income tax) are more much more progressive than what we have in “liberal” California. There isn't much that is progressive about property taxes. They affect the middle class much more than the poor (who often aren't homeowners) and the rich (who can afford high tax rates). Texas specifically…
For some states it is a flat rate, I know of one.
But to me is the largest issue is funding for public schools and quality. At one time you would leave high-school with an education that was similar to what you get now in a 4 year college.
These days all we are doing is running a kind-of day care until the public school student leaves to work at McDonalds in the afternoon once the School Day ends.
I also remember some Profs saying in many cases, the first year of collage is a re-education of what the student should already know.
All this gnashing over test scores and booster programs is just showboating. If states really want to fix poor schools they should make school funding occur at the state level, rather than whichever random zip code you’re born into. Seriously, you can’t justify a wealthier neighborhood being entitled to better schools when they’re public institutions receiving state and federal funds. Evening out this funding is the…
This already exists and it doesn't quite work. School funding and outcomes are less well correlated than you might expect. Some of the worst performing schools and districts are also the best funded. The top causal factor appears to be parental involvement: highly involved parents in even poorly funded schools is better than uninvolved parents in well funded schools.
For one eye-popping counterexample to the notion that redistributionary school funding policies are effective, it might be worth understanding what happened in Newark[0], where 75% of the school is paid for the state already.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Texas actually has a system like this - it's called recapture - or more colloquially, the "Robin Hood law". You can read more here on how it has actually played out in its implementation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Hood_plan
That’s a very interesting read, thank you. It’s a shame that the law only applied in full effect for 10 years. That’s barely enough time to fix a generation of students.
The spirit of the law remains in effect today. People like me who currently own a home in the Austin, TX area pay a lot of money via property taxes. School taxes very often make up over half of the property tax burden here, which is already quite high since there is no state income tax and the state has to make money somehow. Almost all of that money is effectively swept up and redistributed to the rest of the state due to the recapture laws.
Here's an article that discusses its current impacts in more detail: https://www.texastribune.org/2019/01/31/texas-robin-hood-rec...
All this gnashing over test scores and booster programs is just showboating. If states really want to fix poor schools they should make school funding occur at the state level, rather than whichever random zip code you’re born into. Seriously, you can’t justify a wealthier neighborhood being entitled to better schools when they’re public institutions receiving state and federal funds. Evening out this funding is the…
There's only a small number of wealthy areas (1% of the population perhaps) that have excess funding. Generally, the funding policies ensure worst schools get more funding. Here's how LA County looks: http://www.laalmanac.com/education/ed04m.php. -- poor performing LAUSD is easily in the top 10th percentile by funding, strong Arcadia and Pasadena are well below average.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> reducing its rank Do universities exist for students? Or do students exist for universities? I'm sure university administration believe the latter, but given that they're supported by the state (in UT's case, ~25% of their budget?) there's a pretty strong argument that they owe the people of the state education.
University Presidents and Trustees have this bizarre fixation on rankings. I have no clue why, especially considering the fact that that composition of the top 100 is fairly stable. Rarely does a university experience a big swing, up or down. Most universities are never going to dethrone the top 20, no matter how hard they try. And it's not like they are in desperate need for enrollment either.
All this gnashing over test scores and booster programs is just showboating. If states really want to fix poor schools they should make school funding occur at the state level, rather than whichever random zip code you’re born into. Seriously, you can’t justify a wealthier neighborhood being entitled to better schools when they’re public institutions receiving state and federal funds. Evening out this funding is the…
Moreover, some kind of equalization had existed since the 1980s as a consequence of both Prop 13 and Serrano vs. Priest.
It hasn’t fixed the problem.