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California public school enrollment sees big drops

latimes.com

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Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#31

Post by andrekandre »

rayiner wrote: post #20
andrekandre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from chapter 1 of the book you linked: > At its core, the field of ethnic studies is the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, with an emphasis on the experiences of people of color in the United States. People or person of color is a term used primarily in the United States and is meant to be inclusive among non-white groups > Furthermore, considering that European American-centered history an…

> firstly, why the concentration on discrimination? Ask that to the people who put together the model ethnic studies curriculum! If you look at the sample lessons for Asians, almost all are about discrimination, exclusion, etc. > ethnic studies covers much more than that... In theory, yes, in practice, no. You can’t realistically expect white Americans to teach Indian or Chinese kids about their own cultures and expe…

thanks for the thoughtful reply

i mostly agree with the most of your reasoning, i guess for me i don't see it as a huge issue personally... i come from a mixed background so learning about how my ancestors were treated didn't make me feel victimized... but n=1 and all that

i'd like to see some studies about these things than just our personal experiences tbh

  > We didn’t cover German, Italian, and Irish immigration in K-12. Maybe we spent a day talking about Ellis Island. More importantly, we never learned anything about the discrimination against those groups.
its hard to discuss this because curriculum varies widely depending on where you went to school (for me these were quite thoroughly covered), again it would be good to have some studies/data

  > If you’re going to teach about the Chinese Exclusion Act, also teach the German American kids about when states banned the teaching of German. Teach Italian and Irish kids about anti-Catholic school legislation.
i think thats totally fair

  > My kids don’t need to learn Asian American history from some white lady.
while i can totally understand this feeling (i've thought this myself at times) how do you know a priori the teacher will be white? and furthermore, does it really matter in the end as long as they are fair?

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#32

Post by zzzzsleep662 »

Andaith wrote: post #2

As a none-american, can I ask: Are public schools in the USA bad? Like, I have such a negative view of them as underfunded, understaffed, filled with overworked & burned out staff. just somewhere that education goes to die, really. Is that view accurate? Or do I just have that view due to media bias(The bias being that there's no news story: 'Random School is well run, more at 11')?

There is not single answer to your question. In general, they are okay if averaged out. US schools get a bad rap compared to other rich countries mostly due to some very tragic situations that make it impossible for some schools to do their jobs. For instance, there is a not insignificant portion of the student population in some places that do not speak English as a first language and sometimes at all. This is not necessarily the worst problem with our schools, I chose it simply as an illustration of something that can lead to low performing schools even if the school and staff are otherwise doing their jobs exceptionally well.

On the other hand, the US also has some of the best public schools in the world. In a lot of cases, public schools beat out very expensive private schools in metrics like average AP score, average number of AP tests taken, average SAT, percentage of students at or above grade level, etc. At this high end, the US school system outperforms peer countries significantly. Its often the case that these high performing schools are relatively accessible for non wealthy people as well. You just need to rent an apartment nearby. You don't need to buy a property in Martha's vineyard. If these types of schools didn't exist, and the US public school system was as bad overall as it appears in the media, I suspect we would not have as many ambitious and highly educated immigrants wanting to live here.

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#33

Post by zzzzsleep662 »

rayiner wrote: post #17
nostrademons wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like others have mentioned, public schooling in the U.S. is heavily location-dependent. Many affluent suburbs with wealthy, involved parents have great public schools. You don't hear about them because of reporting bias: if the schools are good, the last thing you want is lots of other people coming to your town to take advantage of them, but if they're bad it makes for a good outrage piece.

I don't think it's so much about "affluent suburbs" having "great" schools and some places having very bad schools. I grew up in an upper middle class Virginia county that nonetheless spent less than the national average per student on education (back when Virginia was a red state), but had well regarded schools. I think in most of the country, if you live in a community where nearly all the kids parents are married,…

I also went to some very good schools and did not live in a rich area. It was a good area sure, you weren't going to hear gunshots on your walk to school, but it was not the "rich people" area. The rich people area actually had worse schools academically speaking. This makes sense when you think about it. We tended to have a lot of students whose parents were highly educated immigrants, whereas the rich part of town generally tended to be old money and not as focused on being hyper competitive academically.

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#34

Post by rayiner »

andrekandre wrote: post #31
rayiner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> firstly, why the concentration on discrimination? Ask that to the people who put together the model ethnic studies curriculum! If you look at the sample lessons for Asians, almost all are about discrimination, exclusion, etc. > ethnic studies covers much more than that... In theory, yes, in practice, no. You can’t realistically expect white Americans to teach Indian or Chinese kids about their own cultures and expe…

thanks for the thoughtful reply i mostly agree with the most of your reasoning, i guess for me i don't see it as a huge issue personally... i come from a mixed background so learning about how my ancestors were treated didn't make me feel victimized... but n=1 and all that i'd like to see some studies about these things than just our personal experiences tbh > We didn’t cover German, Italian, and Irish immigration in…

> while i can totally understand this feeling (i've thought this myself at times) how do you know a priori the teacher will be white? and furthermore, does it really matter in the end as long as they are fair?

80% of public school teachers are white, and outside majority-minority schools, it’s 90%+. And I think for this issue, it makes a difference. Parents of white kids have a fundamentally different stake in these issues than parents of minority kids. As a parent of brown kids, my concern is about ensuring their success in a society where they will always be visibly different. I don’t think it’s an especially racist society, but being different is always a liability. (And if it was as racist a country as many white people say it is, that would be even more reason to teach my kids to keep their heads down and their mouths shut!) By contrast, in my experience, white people overwhelmingly think of these issues in terms of what they want their white kids to learn about how to treat “other people.”

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#35

Post by rayiner »

gamblor956 wrote: post #22
rayiner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You might be mixing up your Germans with your Irish, were absolutely subject to discrimination when they first moved here. This discrimination was fundamental to the development of Irish American enclaves in many cities, including especially NY and Chicago. German immigrants were subject to some, but significantly less discrimination owing to their shared Protestant backgrounds with the majority English Protestant de…

There were under 150,000 Japanese Americans in the 1940s. There’s 1.4 million Japanese Americans, and despite being one of the oldest Asian American groups, the vast majority of those came here or are descended from people who came here in the latter half of the 20th century.

German Americans were treated better than the Japanese, though I think you’re overstating the significance of Protestantism. A large fraction of German Americans are Catholic. More significant is that Germans by then were a large, well established immigrant group. They made up almost 9% of the population in the 1790 census. By 1920 there were 9 million German Americans. Even still, the discrimination they faced was far worse than what say Muslims faced during the war on terror: https://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entries/german-ame....

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#36

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rayiner wrote: post #20
andrekandre wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from chapter 1 of the book you linked: > At its core, the field of ethnic studies is the interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, with an emphasis on the experiences of people of color in the United States. People or person of color is a term used primarily in the United States and is meant to be inclusive among non-white groups > Furthermore, considering that European American-centered history an…

> firstly, why the concentration on discrimination? Ask that to the people who put together the model ethnic studies curriculum! If you look at the sample lessons for Asians, almost all are about discrimination, exclusion, etc. > ethnic studies covers much more than that... In theory, yes, in practice, no. You can’t realistically expect white Americans to teach Indian or Chinese kids about their own cultures and expe…

> If you’re going to teach about the Chinese Exclusion Act, also teach the German American kids about when states banned the teaching of German. Teach Italian and Irish kids about anti-Catholic school legislation.

One of those things is much worse than the other two. Two are limitations in education, the other is not allowing people to come from that country at all.

We (well, I assume Californians and Washingtonians) are on the west coast, locally speaking, discrimination against Chinese and Japanese were local issues more than discrimination against Italians and Irish, which happened more on the east coast and perhaps Midwest. We teach the former because they are a part of our region’s own tragic past, not the tragic past of other regions in the USA.

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#37

Post by rayiner »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36
rayiner wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> firstly, why the concentration on discrimination? Ask that to the people who put together the model ethnic studies curriculum! If you look at the sample lessons for Asians, almost all are about discrimination, exclusion, etc. > ethnic studies covers much more than that... In theory, yes, in practice, no. You can’t realistically expect white Americans to teach Indian or Chinese kids about their own cultures and expe…

> If you’re going to teach about the Chinese Exclusion Act, also teach the German American kids about when states banned the teaching of German. Teach Italian and Irish kids about anti-Catholic school legislation. One of those things is much worse than the other two. Two are limitations in education, the other is not allowing people to come from that country at all. We (well, I assume Californians and Washingtonians)…

> One of those things is much worse than the other two. Two are limitations in education, the other is not allowing people to come from that country at all.

No, trying to erase the culture of people who are already here out of xenophobia is much worse than exercising border control over who can immigrate. More importantly, most German and Italian Americans are descended from the people who faced discrimination. By contrast, Asian Americans are most not descended from groups that faced discrimination. That history doesn't help those kids understand their own experience and place in American society.

That distinction is critical insofar as we consider the present effect of past discrimination. In structural terms, Asian and Hispanic Americans are the least disadvantaged of any non-British immigrant group. Life in America has been far easier for me as a brown guy with Muslim name who entered adulthood right after 9/11, then it would have been if I had been Italian in 1930. The California ethnic studies curriculum wildly misrepresents that state of affairs.

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#38

Post by rhacker »

rayiner wrote: post #9
Andaith wrote: post #2

As a none-american, can I ask: Are public schools in the USA bad? Like, I have such a negative view of them as underfunded, understaffed, filled with overworked & burned out staff. just somewhere that education goes to die, really. Is that view accurate? Or do I just have that view due to media bias(The bias being that there's no news story: 'Random School is well run, more at 11')?

American schools are fine. They are not underfunded: we spend the OECD average on K-12 as a percentage of GDP, and since we are so rich it ends up on the high end in absolute terms. Our class sizes are right around the OECD average, smaller than Germany or France: http://oecdedutoday.com/how-does-class-size-vary-around-the-... . The problem is that American kids are bad—poorly behaved and uninterested in education.

I am 43, definitely not my experience when I was growing up in CA. When did the kids go from "good - well behaved" to "bad -poorly behaved"? Honest question - I really don't know any kids.

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#39

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rayiner wrote: post #37
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you’re going to teach about the Chinese Exclusion Act, also teach the German American kids about when states banned the teaching of German. Teach Italian and Irish kids about anti-Catholic school legislation. One of those things is much worse than the other two. Two are limitations in education, the other is not allowing people to come from that country at all. We (well, I assume Californians and Washingtonians)…

> One of those things is much worse than the other two. Two are limitations in education, the other is not allowing people to come from that country at all. No, trying to erase the culture of people who are already here out of xenophobia is much worse than exercising border control over who can immigrate. More importantly, most German and Italian Americans are descended from the people who faced discrimination. By co…

You are ignoring the fact that education is local, that education in California is going to be biased to California history rather than New York's history. There is so much to cover, that educators prefer to prioritize local/regional topics. I never heard much about Japanese interment when I went to school in Mississippi, but I heard plenty about the civil war (over and over again, sheesh). But when I went to school in Washington state, it was the exact opposite.

That California biases to Asian and Hispanic history in the Americas is purely due to California being located in California rather than New York.

Re: California public school enrollment sees big drops

#40

Post by rythmshifter »

rhacker wrote: post #38
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American schools are fine. They are not underfunded: we spend the OECD average on K-12 as a percentage of GDP, and since we are so rich it ends up on the high end in absolute terms. Our class sizes are right around the OECD average, smaller than Germany or France: http://oecdedutoday.com/how-does-class-size-vary-around-the-... . The problem is that American kids are bad—poorly behaved and uninterested in education.

I am 43, definitely not my experience when I was growing up in CA. When did the kids go from "good - well behaved" to "bad -poorly behaved"? Honest question - I really don't know any kids.

Around the time cell phones and social media became prevalent.
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