Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level • Hacker News Board

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#121

Post by jaywalk » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #103

fatcat500 wrote: post #68

A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties. We're h…

You really think the school system is bad because the entire cadre of school administrators are taking secret orders from shadowy politicians to keep kids dumb? I recommend you rethink the logical process that brought you to this conclusion.

Where was any of that mentioned? Complete strawman argument.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#122

Post by dsfyu404ed » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:32 PM UTC

fatcat500 wrote: post #68

A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties. We're h…

The solution is simpler. People are lazy.

Schools don't equip kids with literacy, life skills and critical thinking because highschoolers equipped with those skills are more effort to manage.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#123

Post by s1artibartfast » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

listless wrote: post #87

cm2012 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's not much the education system can do here. When you look into educational research its grim - its really really hard to move the needle even a few % on outcomes in a school system, even with large grants and volunteers and special projects. Kids on the bottom half of the bell curve, especially without parental support, are always going to struggle at school.

Malcom Gladwell covers this in Outliers. There is something that can be done, but it has to be done starting in pre-school and continuing through second grade. And that "something" is that you don't get a summer. You learn year round for those first few years. The reason why some kids excel and some don't is almost entirely because they don't get continuing education at home. And past 2nd grade, it's almost irreparab…

This is a bit of an aside but I wouldn't trust anything that Malcolm Gladwell says at face value. He approaches questions from a narrative perspective and Cherry picks studies or data to make a nice story. At the end of the day, he is a writer and not a scientist and that's where his priorities is lie

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#124

Post by troupe » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #99

xwkd wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to be an annoying pedant for a moment: Isn't that a bit tautological? The bottom half of the bell curve is below the mean in a normal distribution by definition. There's always going to be a lower half as long as we model statistics.

Not quite, since its theoretically possible to move the whole bell curve right with improved teaching methodologies, meaning the bottom half could then meet our current reading and math criteria. No one has found a way to do this though.

Pretty sure this would just reset what is normal. What children know how to do in 8th grade is going to be a normally distributed curve. Maybe you can move the curve to the right, but then what is normal just shifts to the right.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#125

Post by anoonmoose » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:33 PM UTC

goatlover wrote: post #35

anoonmoose wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One simple explanation would be that the problem just isn't as bad as you think it is.

What is your opinion on the NPR Reveal podcast episode about how the prominence of reading recovery instead of phonics has led to 1/3 of children by fourth grade reading at a substandard level?

The article being discussed here is "less than half of California students reading at grade level", so my opinion on "one third of fourth grade students reading at substandard level" is basically the same as my opinion on that, because they're not very different statements.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#126

Post by troupe » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #84

Scubabear68 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. There are known “good” and “bad” school districts. The known good school districts have better teachers and teaching methods. This is not about the bell curve, it’s about a lot of US schools not actually teaching students successfully.

Copy and pasting from elsewhere in the thread: Some schools being above grade level has nothing to do with teaching methodology, and everything to do with student composition. Smart people who raise their kids to do well in school move to neighborhoods with better schools, which raises the grade levels. Ex: I went to Bronx Science, a specialized high school in NYC where 98% of the students are above grade level and g…

> Some schools being above grade level has nothing to do with teaching methodology, and everything to do with student composition

While I mostly agree, we shouldn't underestimate the destruction that can be wrought by a bad teacher.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#127

Post by peterfirefly » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:35 PM UTC

Hermitian909 wrote: post #109

WalterBright wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When there's no incentive for the teachers and schools to get kids to grade level, they aren't. I've proposed before having a bonus to the teacher for every student that reaches grade level at the end of the year.

The general idea you're getting at, incentivize teacher performance, rests on the underlying assumption that a "great teacher" can have an outsized impact on students outcomes in the one year they're teaching the student. Much of the US tried to find evidence of this in the 2000s and failed. Past the basic "does the teacher understand the material?" level, outcomes on a year-long basis are dominated by: - Home life (…

Classroom size does not actually matter much. Teachers unions love smaller classrooms, though...

Your first item -- which is really many items -- does matter. Especially if we open about the fact that "socioeconomic background" is mainly a (poor) proxy for the students' IQ. We know this, because grades track the students' IQ better than their socioeconomic background or the IQ of their parents.

"Does the teacher understand the material?" is a low bar but one that many teachers don't clear. This is something that could actually realistically be fixed.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#128

Post by troupe » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:36 PM UTC

singlow wrote: post #30

bmitc wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's "normal", isn't the conclusion then that the normal is not good? The threshold is extremely low already, and that only 50% of students are hitting that threshold is concerning to me. It isn't that they aren't capable. It's that the social support structures are not there.

If nearly 50% of people perform below average is that bad?

If the average is what should allow you to succeed in the next grade, then the problem is that they are being allowed to go on to the next grade where they won't be prepared and will take resources from the kids that were prepared.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#129

Post by hervature » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #103

fatcat500 wrote: post #68

A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties. We're h…

You really think the school system is bad because the entire cadre of school administrators are taking secret orders from shadowy politicians to keep kids dumb? I recommend you rethink the logical process that brought you to this conclusion.

Although I don't agree with the conspiracy, it's more that the politicians can achieve the outcome by misdirecting funds (free iPads!) to achieve the "supposed" end goal (producing sheeple) while looking like they are achieving a nobler goal (educating the lesser off). This can be achieved with very few people interested in the former with the majority of the politicians believing they are accomplishing the latter.

Re: Less than half of California students read or do math at grade level

#130

Post by fatcat500 » Wed, Mar 01, 2023, 6:37 PM UTC

cm2012 wrote: post #103

fatcat500 wrote: post #68

A population of ignorant and illiterate peasants is great for maximizing political capital. They are receptive to propaganda. They are an energetic bloc of voters. They know something is wrong, but are too ineffective to correctly identify the problem, which means politicians will continually entice them with "solutions" that solve nothing but increase the political or financial capital of interested parties. We're h…

You really think the school system is bad because the entire cadre of school administrators are taking secret orders from shadowy politicians to keep kids dumb? I recommend you rethink the logical process that brought you to this conclusion.

Macroscopic politics is a phenomenon in its own right. Something that should be studied like one would study chemistry or physics. No one person or party controls the course of events.

I don't believe there is a grand conspiracy with shadowy bond-villainesque bad guys. It's simply that there is positive pressure in one direction (to have an easier-to-manage populace) and negative pressure in the other (to have a virtuous populace (harder to manage)).