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Kids are far behind in school

theatlantic.com

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Re: Kids are far behind in school

#61

Post by nverno »

taeric wrote: post #41
nverno wrote: post #36

> In the districts that stayed remote for most of last year, the outcome was as if Black and Hispanic students had lost four to five more weeks of instruction than white students had. Is this referring to differences b/w students in the same schools, but of different ethnicity? I don't really understand the racial implications this article is making.

My guess would be yes. The implication seems that pushing the school burden home is hardest on the homes that are already heavily burdened, and that that is more true of minority families?

It just seems lazy, using race as a proxy variable without positing a hypothesis for what it means. It doesn't tell us, as readers, anything about why some kids didn't perform as well as others.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#62

Post by jaywalk »

mort96 wrote: post #38
bigDinosaur wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, people have stated that 'the kids will be fine' quite consistently. Also, all costs other than deaths have been underplayed by people in favour of lockdowns. Memory-holing this is literally insane (where insane = disconnected from reality). That's not to say that what was done wasn't the best of a suite of bad options. But I saw nothing but fairly extreme downplaying of the consequences of lockdowns from people…

It might have to do with the media enviroment we're exposed to; I'm from Norway, and I feel like the impact on children has been on the forefront of everyone's mind all the time, in domestic news, in domestic policy, and in my impression of international news. But the view from within the US might be completely different. One problem I've seemed to notice in the US is that you have the "somewhat reasonable" side and…

Let's not mince words: "batshit insane" are the people you disagree with, and "somewhat reasonable" are the people you agree with. You completely mischaracterize the side you disagree with, and then excuse the side you agree with as simply "over-correcting."

In reality, the "batshit insane" people were closer to the truth, which is that the shitty cloth masks that were considered acceptable and worn by the majority of people did little to nothing to stop the spread of Covid.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#64

Post by buildsjets »

Especially in high school, an astounding amount of time, money, space, and personnel are dedicated to sports, and this does not just impact the athletes. In many schools the entire day is structured around the football team's practice schedule. Make school sports a truly after-hours extracurricular activity and remove their impact from non-participants, and I'd estimate you could see around 20% improvement time spent on classroom instruction on core subjects.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#65

Post by philipov »

OscarCunningham wrote: post #60
mcv wrote: post #6

My oldest son started in secondary school last year, so his first two years were largely in lockdown. He's quite introverted (and by now extremely so), so he enjoyed not having to meet people, but his school discipline suffered enormously. I already caught him gaming instead of following classes during the lockdown, and he apparently never learned to finish his homework. He's got more failing than passing grades. Sti…

> Still, he's smart, seems to understand all the material, and he still has a couple of years to work on his problems before his exams, so with enough work from him, school, us, and the extra tutoring we fortunately can afford for him, he'll probably be okay. But there are probably tons of kids far worse off than he is. It's sad to me that this is the way things work. Being smart and understanding the material are th…

I thought so too, until I got to a point in my education where it actually required work to continue making process, and the discipline to do it wasn't there. Habits are hard to break, and forming healthy study habits early is as valuable a result of education as the acquisition of that day's knowledge. Maybe more important.

The school system often fails to do that effectively, but their failure does not invalidate the goal.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#66

Post by endisneigh »

lapcat wrote: post #55

What does being "behind" even mean? The dirty truth of the US educational "system" is that there is no system. Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth (i.e., the property tax base, because schools are locally funded). When I was a kid, my family moved from one city to another within the same state, and suddenly I was way behind in my new school, especially in…

> So I suspect that this problem is vastly overstated.

> It's not like the US educational system was doing a great job before the pandemic. I used to teach in college, and a lot of student were not properly prepared.

Huh? So you think the problem of being behind is overstated, but observed many students not being properly prepared yourself when you taught?

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#67

Post by scotty79 »

thejackgoode wrote: post #30

Wild speculation: interestingly, school's often underrated original function "to keep children off the streets" rephrased as "protecting against harmful influence of the world until your frontal lobe develops" means they might be reinvented to be digital limiting structures instead of physical limiting structures.

I think school is more about protecting parents working capacity from their children than protecing children from the world.

Children compulsively and under duress are exposed to so many horrible people and behaviors at school that the rest of the world seems mostly like sheltered, peaceful place by comparison.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#68

Post by giantg2 »

lapcat wrote: post #55

What does being "behind" even mean? The dirty truth of the US educational "system" is that there is no system. Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth (i.e., the property tax base, because schools are locally funded). When I was a kid, my family moved from one city to another within the same state, and suddenly I was way behind in my new school, especially in…

"i.e., the property tax base, because schools are locally funded"

Not exactly. Most states and the federal government adjust funding to send it to the schools that need it most.

https://www.commonwealthfoundation.org/research/school-fundi...

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#69

Post by Allower »

lapcat wrote: post #55

What does being "behind" even mean? The dirty truth of the US educational "system" is that there is no system. Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth (i.e., the property tax base, because schools are locally funded). When I was a kid, my family moved from one city to another within the same state, and suddenly I was way behind in my new school, especially in…

No post body was provided.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#70

Post by Cerium »

scotty79 wrote: post #57

I'd like to see how well the knowledge is retained in kids after let's say 3 years. I believe most of the knowledge the kids were taught that long ago is not present in their memory anymore as if it was never taught. I remember happily forgetting all information I learned and it took me just summer vacation to do that.

Most of the facts get forgotten, though I can conjure up quite a few on any class I think of having taken. The important part of education is not the facts, it is the skills. School taught me to think scientifically and critically, to write and to speak, as well as made me confident interacting in the society I live. Those skills have served me well.
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