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Kids are far behind in school

theatlantic.com

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Re: Kids are far behind in school

#211

Post by annyeonghada »

mschuster91 wrote: post #175
mattmcknight wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are correct that good schools are caused by good students, it's not strictly accurate to say that "statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income". Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness. Income doesn't cause intelligence or conscientiousness, although it may be partially c…

> Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness Only partially - only ~40-50% of a person's IQ are a result of parental genetics [3]. The rest is a result of the environment in which the child is raised - and there are very important factors at play that directly correlate with income of the parents: - Does…

>Does each child have their own, adequately sized, room with a study desk to work in and concentrate? During the pandemic it turned out to be a real problem that children who had to share rooms had issues following streamed lectures.

I had a small that I shared with two brothers. My desk was minuscule. I had top grades.

>Do the children, particularly those of working age (14 and above, but especially 16 and above) have to work actual jobs to make pocket money or contribute to household income?

My family was so poor at a time we didn't have the money to pay the mortgage and the bank wanted to take our house. I had top grades.

>Are the parents largely absent from their children's lives because both parents have to work full-time or worse jobs just to make ends meet?

My parents were and are apathetic to my existence. I had top grades.

>Can the parents invest time and money into furthering their children's education? Can they sit together with them in the afternoon/evening and work through homework problems? Can they afford side education, playing instruments or similar activities that have been shown to have a positive effect on education?

None of that existed in my house. Nobody helped me doing homework and nobody sit with me exploring my life path. I rented instruments and asked as few money as possible. I had top grades.

>Do the parents have enough money to feed the children? Hundreds of thousands of students alone in New York depend on schools handing out free lunches, which turned out to be a massive problem during the pandemic.

Admittedly, even in poverty we never were hungry.

>Poverty causes stress - not just from being cooped together in too small living spaces, but also in food insecurity, increased fights between parents over the stress, or in the worst cases from literally being homeless.

This I wholeheartedly agree, that's why the "money doesn't make you happy" is such a lie.

I know my tone was rather flippant but the relationship between money, stress and academics is so important to me. And by the way, even after all these top grades, and a Physics degree and speaking English, French, Italian and German and whatever I haven't escaped poverty. I'm back living to my parents at 27. It seems like the best way to make money in Italy is to inherit it.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#212

Post by brightball »

rufius wrote: post #110
brightball wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about football is that so many people are involved with it, it becomes a school wide event. You have players on the team and coaches, yes. But you also have cheerleaders, marching band, trainer assistants (usually students who want to go into medicine or physical therapy). There are homecoming pagents and dances plus the social event every weekend for the school that goes along with it. There’s no sport in…

> It’s helping to foster a sense of community and school pride. You forgot part: > It’s helping to foster a sense of community, school pride, *and brain damage*.

FWIW, the rules are so strict now that football's probably safer than it's ever been to play.

Additionally, I've read a ton of studies of this stuff and everything that I've found said the risk at the high school level is virtually nonexistent when compared with the general student body. In the college and professional level where everybody is bigger, stronger and faster it's an entirely different situation.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#213

Post by taeric »

brightball wrote: post #206
corrral wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Football's the reason I dropped band when I no longer needed an arts elective. I'd have stayed in all four years, otherwise. Being required to waste an entire evening at a football game to play for a few minutes here and there was insulting . I'm pretty sure it's also the reason the curriculum was built almost entirely around the microscopic musical niche of marching band, rather than instruments & skills that were m…

The more I keep reading replies to my comments the more I'm realizing what a great high school I must have gone too. Our marching band always got superior ratings every year in their own competitions and had a blast playing throughout all of the games. Everybody in our band seemed to have a great time with it, especially the drummers.

This is classic survivor and selection bias. You likely didn't notice all of the people sidelined by this.

I suspect selection bias also plays in to all of the negativity. But variety reigns and places that had more offerings almost certainly had more success.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#214

Post by annyeonghada »

throwaway95919 wrote: post #154
015UUZn8aEvW wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth The data show that causation mostly flows in the opposite direction. The main determinant of whether a school is "good" is the average academic ability of the students who attend the school. And that, statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income. Policy interventions based on the idea that school qua…

Quoted post unavailable.

Speaking of a statistical reality is not racism. It's just reality. One can debate of the causes - societal, genetics, single motherhood, whatever - but the fact remains that it is reality.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#215

Post by wellpast »

croon wrote: post #27
wellpast wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a worrisome line of reasoning -- that you can't act to protect children until you have 'all the data' about this or that narrow threat vector.

It's a worrisome dilemma, in which you are forced to reason. There is no win scenario, only varying degrees of unknown loss states.

Fair. The concern, however, is when the state forces everyone to reason one particular way. The other concern is that arguing from a who has 'all the data' position is seriously fraught ... but the state and its mandates get underwritten when enough people embrace this fraught & simplistic mentality.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#216

Post by kurisufag »

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…

>you have the "batshit insane" side which claimed that masks literally deprived you of oxygen, and then the "somewhat reasonable" side would over-correct and downplay any negative sides to having to wear a mask

this seems to be a false dichotomy. you can certainly fit all of the opinions into a binary if you'd like, but nowhere near enough people believed what you are calling "batshit insane" to constitute one side.

more reasonably, you could talk about how one side advised not wearing masks at all, proclaiming they were totally useless, and the other "over-corrected" by mandating wearing cloth masks, which we knew all along were practically useless.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#217

Post by brightball »

taeric wrote: post #209
brightball wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is. Other sports play a lot more games. Football has a predictable and consistent schedule, Friday nights in the fall. The limited number of home games (only 5 or 6 usually) also keeps involvement at a level that's not overwhelming for the student body. Additionally, football teams can support a lot more players than any other sport with rosters typically 50 players or more. Especially in smaller schools, this…

This is ignoring federated football. Rugby. Baseball and cricket have more games... But probably far fewer injuries and seem really able to muster fans. Don't get me wrong. I'm not fully against football. But praising the sport that has more money spent on it for reaping the rewards of said money feels... Not that charitable to other sports. Edit: I feel ashamed to have omitted basketball I'm my list. :(

This is a chicken and egg situation.

Football has more money spent on it because it became so popular that people started spending more money on it. I can't say for sure WHY it became so popular, but people in my area know college football history back 100+ years so well that it's a common topic of conversation.

Usually the 2 big state schools would play a football game at the state fair every year and it became a major social event. The games themselves were almost secondary to the social event.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#218

Post by leksak »

rkk3 wrote: post #158
leksak wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't imagine being two years older than the majority of your classmates at that time is going to have immediate effects on their social life at that time or that employers in the future will note that they graduated later in life and thus pass them over for a different candidate?

> or that employers in the future will note that they graduated later in life and thus pass them over for a different candidate? How would a potential employer know they were graduating college at 24 vs 22, and without knowing the reason for the difference why would they care. "I'm afraid we can't hire you at FAANG, it seems you had to repeat the first grade 15 years ago."

I was thinking more about graduating high school. At least in my country that is something you'd put on your resume.

A FAANG probably wouldn't care either way, but a Fortune 500 might, and numerous other places of employment might also pick the person that graduated "on time" if most other things are equal between two candidates.

_If_ they knew the reason it might matter less, but not all employers will take the time to figure out what the reason was, and not all reasons are necessarily something you'd want to share and offer up freely because it might be very personal. They'd have to trust the reason given as well. A person that graduated on time presents no such hassle, or unknowns.

I'm not saying it is correct to do this, it's just what I _imagine_ is likely to happen given how people tend to sometimes judge people on other inconsequential stuff.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#219

Post by lapcat »

jeffbee wrote: post #188
lapcat wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this actually a problem for music though? Who are the future professional musicians? "My most motivated, talented and best supported students are on schedule or slightly ahead." So it's not clear that we're losing any potential virtuosos here. If a generation of amateur musicians end up being a little less proficient in music, that's unfortunate, but hardly worth panicking, I think. I personally started playing gu…

I'm not really thinking of the health of the professional music class here, I'm thinking of the mental and social well-being of a generation of people who may never be even moderately proficient at music.

The guitar teacher said some students are "about a year behind where they would normally be after four years of studying". That seems a lot less extreme than "never be even moderately proficient at music".

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#220

Post by beej71 »

tfandango wrote: post #182

My wife teaches 2nd grade in a public school. She has kids this year who had not been in school since kindergarten. It is difficult to cover such an achievement gap when other kids in the class are on level. It's worse yet when our state has outsourced federal pandemic education fund distribution to 3rd parties which allowed people to purchase Xboxes and TVs. And even worse yet as her district is focusing on putting…

Over a decade ago my aunt taught 4th grade. She told me that a lot of kids were getting there who couldn't read and it was impossible to teach them 4th grade material.

This seems like that on greater scale.

More granular mastery-based progression seems like it would be a good start.

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