Kids are far behind in school • Hacker News Board

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#251

Post by lapcat » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:46 PM UTC

pjkundert wrote: post #210

lapcat wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, a concerned parent will wildly outperform a school teacher. A parent teaches maybe 2 students per day. A school teacher teaches maybe 200 students per day. It's an unfair comparison.

I'm struggling to find the purpose of this reply. Do you believe that saying "no fair!" invalidates the superior outcomes for home-schooled children? If billions of dollars of state funding and the teachers' aggregate decades of university education can't overcome this obstacle (which did not seem to be a problem when children in one-room schoolhouses routinely used to learn Latin), I'm wondering what other advantage…

> I'm wondering what other advantages anti-home-schooler central planners need, in order to force their sub-par solution on parents?

I'm not anti home schooling. Is home schooling illegal in some places? If it is, I wasn't aware of that. Otherwise, I don't see how there's any forcing of parents.

I'm not trying to invalidate the outcomes of home schooling. I'm merely suggesting that teacher training is useful and probably necessary if you have to teach a larger number of students and not just your own few kids.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#252

Post by sodality2 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #242

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…

Serious question, what are you learning between kindergarten and 2nd grade that's so important? I remember my time there being effectively day-care, I learned more outside of class than inside it. The only real benefit was socializing with kids my age but otherwise everything I learned in those 2 years could've been taught in a week.

It's not just those grades; I see the same in high school. To a lesser extent, but a lot of the classes that are non-advanced are, here's a 5 question quiz and 15 minutes of content every week, turn it in whenever.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#253

Post by a_f » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:48 PM UTC

w0m wrote: post #225

buildsjets wrote: post #64

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…

I'm curious how many schools this is actually true for. I played football 'back in the day'; but despite winning our district/traveling mid-state for playoffs; I never felt like the team got any special treatment. We showed up an hour before school for weights and stayed a few hours after every day + Saturdays; ~nothing mid-day at all outside of the Misc rally the entire school attended.

Presumably the space and facilities to train, both outside and inside, the time of dedicated teachers/coaches and travel costs (speculating) might all be considered special treatment.

I think physical activity in school is important; but you could definitely argue that these are special treatment.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#254

Post by itronitron » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #193

lapcat wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the same time there might be a very serious one as quite a few kids basically have missed proper school for about 2 years. Let's not even try to pretend that lockdowns have no negative effects at all. I'm not saying there are no negative effects. What I would say is this: even before the pandemic, many students were not sufficiently "challenged". They were already moving more slowly than they could have moved. I…

Human intelligence is distributed, like everything else, on a normal distribution. Students at either end will have vastly different experiences. The low-end students, sadly, will never catch up. The high-end students will catch up easily, and may even enjoy the challenge. The really bad outcome is if the average student (e.g. +/- one sigma) can't catch up such that when this generation reaches employment age, there…

>> Why didn't schools keep going during the pandemic, but outside or in very well ventilated buildings?

Possibly because the leadership of the associated organizations were raised in an educational system that doesn't promote critical thinking, creativity, or analytical reasoning.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#255

Post by em-bee » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:49 PM UTC

nemo44x wrote: post #194

jdmichal wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm going to repost a comment of mine from two years ago. This is not an unknown thing to school boards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012403 The wife of one of my good friends was on the county school board for 12 years. According to her, it was an unspoken secret was that parental involvement was the biggest predictor of / contributor to student success. The reason it was taboo was because you absolutely c…

The #1 factor in determining if a kid will have a desired outcome is if they have a mom and a dad present. It's really that simple. And that means parental involvement. It's sad one is labeled a racist or anti-feminist or w/e when you point this obvious fact out. ~70% of black kids are born to single mom's. That's a broken culture. White kids are at ~30% and rising and we see the same failure rates. That's a broken c…

but what to do about it?

we can't just expect parents to get involved. nor does it help to just blame their kids performance on them.

the focus really needs to be on a broader level. what changes to our society are needed so that families can thrive so that they can actually focus on the care of their kids?

things like higher minimum wage, parental leave, easy access to insurance, etc. all the general needs everyone has.

i believe what largely has gone wrong is the idea that in order for people to have a better life they need to start with better academic performance so they can get better jobs which ends in a better life.

but it appears that academic performance is not the start of a better life, it is the outcome.

That's a broken culture

what part of the culture is broken? and who's culture?

how about the broken american culture that doesn't provide adequate support and protection for parents? i don't think being a single parent is a problem in itself. it only raises the difficulty level. it would be less of an issue if parents had more rights against their employers that would allow them to care for their kids, or get enough financial support that they don't need to hold a fulltime job with hours that conflict with their kids schedule. or affordable childcare. there are so many things that could be done, but people just like to point at problems and not think about solutions.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#256

Post by tfandango » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

andreilys wrote: post #242

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…

Serious question, what are you learning between kindergarten and 2nd grade that's so important? I remember my time there being effectively day-care, I learned more outside of class than inside it. The only real benefit was socializing with kids my age but otherwise everything I learned in those 2 years could've been taught in a week.

Many people kept their kids "remote", which started a few years ago in response to the pandemic. Many of these kids did not attend any remote classes or do any of their assigned work over that time. Meanwhile this school reopened in-person almost immediately and many families sent their kids back. So you are talking about kids who don't know 1+1=2 or how to read a single word, when the rest of the class is reading intro chapter books and doing double digit math. Socially they are 2 years behind, which is another issue. Perhaps you are a quick learner, but that's really not the case for everyone.

In her school there is 1 math and 1 reading specialist, who are meant to focus on kids like this. Now they need about 5 more of each but the district has routed funding elsewhere like the Olympic quality weightlifting gym for the high school football team (which is used maybe 1hr per day). Better stop, feeling like I'm about to start ranting again...

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#257

Post by arbitrary_name » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

annyeonghada wrote: post #211

mschuster91 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) ha…

"I did it so there is no excuse for anyone else"

Your response appears utterly useless in this discussion except to highlight that even those who grew up in poverty cannot be expected to have any empathy for those who share a similar background.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#258

Post by sodality2 » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:52 PM UTC

izzydata wrote: post #177

mattmcknight wrote: post #119

Simply end social promotion. You shouldn't move up to the next level of a class until you've mastered the current level. (Levels can be much smaller than a year.) Being at a different pace isn't a problem if you can just make up the time. The side effect bonus is letting other students test out of levels they don't need, they can finish early while others end later.

They would have to end this concept of no child left behind. Also such a meritocracy system would likely be perceived as racist as the students with more time and financial support become more likely to succeed.

Race is just a proxied variable in this equation. The root issue is fundamental inequality in family support, which is shown to be influenced by race, age of parents, wealth, location, etc.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#259

Post by nemo44x » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

soderfoo wrote: post #240

virgil_disgr4ce wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "broken culture?"

The most charitable interpretation of "broken culture" would be America, across all slices of society, has trended towards selfish shallow values, less intellectual interests and value on hard work, more aggression and an empathy defecit. I think this has frayed the fabric of society by damaging the reciprocity that binds families and communities, and encourages divisive and antisocial, short-term behaviors over long…

An analogy I heard is that there is no single American culture. Or even an "American Culture" at all, and that there probably shouldn't be one. And that various powers/forces/etc have tried to homogenize America into a shared American Culture which can't possibly exist. So, the analogy is America is like a soda machine that has many different flavors of soda and each of them is different and unique and loved by different people. Some flavors disgust some people too and they don't want it. However, we've decided to mix them all together anyways and no one actually likes that. So instead we'd be better off leaving each other alone, allowing different communities with different values to do things the way they want to and to rely less and less on Federal government oversight into social issues. Give more power to the states and in turn the states give more power to localities.

Re: Kids are far behind in school

#260

Post by ryandrake » Mon, May 23, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

bigDinosaur wrote: post #15

mort96 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand exactly what you're complaining about. Has anyone ignored the cost of closing schools? My impression has always been that everyone has known about the high cost, but, well, millions more dead isn't exactly a small cost either. I mean you may disagree with the choices which were made, but surely you have to recognize that it's a bit more complicated than what you're suggesting?

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…

> people in favour of lockdowns

> from people who wanted long (the only effective) ones.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I think this kind of wording maybe sets up a straw man. Nobody _wanted_ lockdowns. I know hardly anyone who was genuinely excited and happy about quarantine and stay-at-home. Your wording sounds like there are some significant group of people who want everyone isolated in their homes (for what reason?), and when COVID came along, they could finally get their way! There is no mustache-twirling villain gleefully plotting to lock people in their homes just because.

I was in favor of sustained stay-at-home because it seemed like the only way to at least slow the pandemic from causing even more sickness and death, but that doesn't mean I liked or wanted lockdowns.