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Kids are far behind in school

theatlantic.com

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Re: Kids are far behind in school

#81

Post by lordnacho »

Being 19 weeks behind doesn't sound that bad to me. It sounds like one of those things you can measure but you can't notice otherwise. Sure, still a thing to think about. But haven't you all had a friend who got sick and missed a lot of school? Can you tell from meeting adults that they were ill for half a year during their childhood? Maybe the numbers will capture it, but it doesn't seem like enough to worry about.

What I can say is I'm not surprised if people get lower scores after missing school, because a lot of exams benefit from freshness. You sit there and memorize things that are only useful for the exam, you do the exam, and then you flush the double angle formulas from your cache.

What really matters is that you have some tools, both intellectual and psychological, to keep learning new things for the rest of your life.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#82

Post by [deleted] »

endisneigh wrote: post #66
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?

[deleted]

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#83

Post by philipov »

humanrebar wrote: post #79
philipov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

True, but a lot of people, including underage people, are motivated by reason. School ideally goes at an appropriate pace to challenge them. Partly so they pick up good study habits in a non-contrived scenario with obvious benefits. Saying busy work is important because they might need study habits in five years is not motivating.

> Being smart and understanding the material are the important endpoints.

This statement contains a serious misapprehension and requires revision.

My grandfather would often say that "understanding" swimming won't help you when you're drowning. You need to be able to swim. You can't get to a point where you can swim through mathematics without solving a lot of math problems. You don't become good at something by stopping when you obtain superficial understanding. You become good through practice.

I can go read a tutorial on Rust and "understand" the words on the page, and I may even be able to explain the borrow checker to you in my own words. But I won't be able to program in Rust until I spend a lot of time practicing it.

The important endpoint is not what you can understand, but what you can do.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#84

Post by spamizbad »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #33
usrn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that modern US public schools communicate the culture of the sounding community is honestly a little ridiculous sounding.

Apparently, national polling is showing that about 80% of parents are concerned about what is being taught in the schools, so it’s likely that this schooling system has decoupled from the values that the citizens want to uphold.

But if you dig deeper most people rate their own schools higher. It’s the other schools, or schools in aggregate that are the problem in the eyes of the voters.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx

For example, in 2021 only 46% were at least “somewhat satisfied” with the state of education. Pre-COVID numbers were only slightly better.

But if you ask a parent about their child’s education 73% are at least “somewhat satisfied” and pre-COVID the numbers are about 5-10 points higher, indicating the vast majority of parents are fine with the education their kids are receiving.

This is because of how public school works in the US. Yes, there are federal and state standards that dominate the curriculum but because so much of it is funded by local taxes, school boards do have some leeway in terms of how things get shaped. So maybe you’re appalled at what’s being taught in Texas schools, but why should you care if your kid goes to school in the Chicago suburbs?

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#85

Post by taeric »

nverno wrote: post #61
taeric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This variable seems easy to equate to wealth and access to technology, though?

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#86

Post by giraffe_lady »

nverno wrote: post #61
taeric wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is that their role? It's very common to see journalist-posited hypotheses used as the justification for dismissing concerns, on HN in particular. I think it's reasonable for them to relay the noticed effect and not try to guess why, if the research they're reporting on hasn't established a link yet.

Plus what does it change about our understanding, or responsibility? The effect is there, it's real. What are you hoping for, the reason will turn out to be "minority kids are just naturally dumber?" Something else that makes it not a problem we need to solve?

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#88

Post by cassianoleal »

mynameishere wrote: post #22

One thing I don't think I've ever seen in my life and never expect to see is a statement along the following lines: "Yeah, those cranks and 'conspiracy theorists' were right again." And this will stay true no matter how many times they are right. The credit will always go to some academic who discovers the obvious after the damage is done.

> the obvious after the damage is done

This is survivorship bias.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#89

Post by linuxftw »

> High-dosage tutoring—which educators define as involving a trained tutor working with one to four students at a time, three times a week for a whole year—is one of the few interventions with a demonstrated benefit that comes close, producing an average gain equivalent to 19 weeks of instruction

Yes, more anxiety inducing pointless education is what kids need. I like how they're trying to sell the idea of measuring students in 'weeks of instruction' as if they're mechanical objects.

More hours of education doesn't make kids smarter. It might make them more knowledgeable in certain subject areas (many of which are completely useless to both children and adults), but it definitely gives them anxiety. The education establishment is trying to encroach on ever more of our kids and young adult's lives, and to what end?

Let's get back to being human. Let's go outside for 7 hours a day, we can probably limit education instruction to just 3-4 hours 3 or 4 days per week, and we'll have more functional adults.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#90

Post by endisneigh »

lapcat wrote: post #75
endisneigh wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

> Huh? There's a typo: it should have said "a lot of students". Not sure whether that was the confusion here.

You're saying that you taught and felt people were not properly prepared, but also believe people are not behind?
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