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'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

joannejacobs.com

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Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#311

Post by Erwin »

diordiderot wrote: post #289
elzbardico wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich will always have those outlets, and nobody is going to take them away from them, because they have the power. Now, with the disappearing middle class, "just call them the rich, and make them pay for it" has been the default for a long time.

> The rich will always have those outlets The Nordic countries have the best schools in the world. Private schools are banned. Well except for Sweden. They introduced vouchers in the 90s and as soon as they did, their rankings started rolling like dung down a hill.

Denmark has had a private school system for decades, and 15% of students go into the private schools (as a parent you pay a portion of the costs so it is not necessarily extremely expensive). "Private" mostly means that you still have to teach specific basics, but you can do it in your way like Montessori.

One advantage of the private schools is they can kick out students they cannot manage easily, while the public schools have to keep everyone. Some recent strutural changes in the public shools are said to have declined their quality, enough so that many government ministers, even of the left wing, are sending their children to the private schools.

I guess it's one of those Nordic myths -- like high minimum wage (there is none in Denmark).

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#312

Post by smaudet »

40yearoldman wrote: post #253
praxulus wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco, but we have some similar issues with our schools. I'd really prefer to send my son to our local public schools, but if they aren't challenging him appropriately then my wife and I obviously aren't going to just give up on his education. We'll either pay for extracurricular enrichment like the person in this article, move to a wealthy suburb, or send him to a private school instea…

> That's a much worse outcome from an equity lens Bingo, that is the issue, everybody is worried about equity. You can't have it, we need meritocracy, equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future. It is a recipe for driving society to the lowest common denominator. You should demand proper education or your money back. (Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have…

> equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future

Equality of outcome can be an undesired outcome, equality of opportunity is completely different.

The only trouble is getting the opportunities to be equal - there must be no advantage that can be unfairly given to one more deserving student than another, being able or willing to send your children to summer bootcamps must be an option for all children (who qualify), not whether you pay for it with time or money, e.g.

Free college is fantastic, but once again you confuse opportunity with outcome, and not even for the same individuals - parents are unburdened by cost, but in fact the opportunities are far from equal - money does not a quality education make, yet the majority or colleges are run as for profit institutions, not places that accept students based on their merits or potentials, nor do they actually try to actively shed students who are undeserving. Party culture does not need or require an expensive room and board situation, yet it pervades nearly every 'higher' education institution, only somewhat subsiding when graduate/doctorate programs become involved, and academics are once again taken seriously.

I.e. your meritocracy does not exist precisely because universities are busy making profits not teaching students.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#313

Post by dragonwriter »

ketralnis wrote: post #252
dragonwriter wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The state funding that student would have been bringing goes with the student to the private school No, it doesn’t. There was a proposed 2022 ballot initiative that would have done that with about 2/3 of the state funding, but it got less than 1/3 of the signatures required to be placed on the ballot.

Fair enough, I'm way out of date there. I went to a charter school for part of my high school and it was free to me. Their funding came from the funding the state would have have been sending to a public school had I gone there instead.

“Charter schools” are part of the public school system, whether publicly or privately operated. They are different from private schools, which are outside of that system.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#314

Post by [deleted] »

com2kid wrote: post #250
echelon wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not going to improve the lives of impoverished children by lowering the bar. It's absurd. The best solution I can think of is to pay children to succeed in academics or extracurriculars (STEM, clubs, sports, arts, etc.) A student wouldn't have to be gifted in math, just apply themselves to some interest that drives them. Give them a score-based percentage of $200/mo for hitting certain criteria each month. Pla…

> You're not going to improve the lives of impoverished children by lowering the bar. It's absurd. As a poor kid in Seattle, I am now no longer poor because of a high bar. In my high school (West Seattle High School!) we edited DNA. We spliced DNA, inserted a gene, closed it up, and made bacteria change color. It was awesome. > The best solution I can think of is to pay children to succeed in academics or extracurric…

[deleted]

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#315

Post by alex_sf »

michael_vo wrote: post #92

Why don't policies go through double blind trials or more A/B tests? And attach automatic rollbacks to policies based on metrics. I'm all for trying new solutions but they should be iterated on quickly.

Education is not a javascript app.

Even ignoring the consent and ethical issues, doing something double-blind in a government ran system impacting statistically significant number of children simply can't be done. You can't maintain the blinding.

'Automatic rollbacks' are, frankly, absurd. How do you 'roll back' a child in 8th grade that failed algebra? Your quick iteration turns into dozens of cohorts to be tracked and managed.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#316

Post by winwhiz »

jschveibinz wrote: post #2

Argh this grinds my gears. It’s the education SYSTEM that is wrong. We are working with a 150 year old way of educating kids that does not apply to our culture today. Kids aren’t going to work on the farm or in a factory. They need the math!!! For courses like algebra, etc. kids need support at home from parents. When that support isn’t available (for whatever reason), don’t water down the content for goodness sake.…

I bet farmers use waaay more algebra than I do as a fullstack web programmer. I love it I just don't use it. On the other hand farmers are thinking about slopes all day, every day: irrigation rates; fuel, fertilizer, seed rates; growth rates. They don't get paid once or twice a month like I do so their finance maths are much more sophisticated than mine.

I know, I know what about video game programmers? Okay, you got me there.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#317

Post by golergka »

praxulus wrote: post #32

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco, but we have some similar issues with our schools. I'd really prefer to send my son to our local public schools, but if they aren't challenging him appropriately then my wife and I obviously aren't going to just give up on his education. We'll either pay for extracurricular enrichment like the person in this article, move to a wealthy suburb, or send him to a private school instea…

I grew up in Russia, and education system at the time was mostly the same as it was in Soviet times.

Still, there was a whole system of special schools, both for high and low achievers. I have went to a “math/physics” grade school from the start, and subsequently changed schools two times, each time through hard entrance exams, to finally end up in the most challenging/prestigious school in the country.

It's completely mind boggling to me that a communist country has such a system, but a capitalist country is trying to bring everyone to common denominator.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#318

Post by ghusto »

> Test data from 2015 to 2019 shows that racial "achievement gaps have widened,"

I'm finding the statistics in the second article linked to in this sentence difficult to read (because I'm not smart). Can someone tell me if this is because the top achievers are doing better, or that the bottom achievers are doing worse?

If it's the former, then this could be considered a good thing. You could certainly look at it and say "well we haven't made things _worse_ for the people who weren't doing well, but we have made things better for those who were already doing well". I get that wasn't the goal, but it's another way to look at things that could be interesting, because then you could take that apart and see if there's anything to learn there.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#319

Post by alex_sf »

diordiderot wrote: post #289
elzbardico wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich will always have those outlets, and nobody is going to take them away from them, because they have the power. Now, with the disappearing middle class, "just call them the rich, and make them pay for it" has been the default for a long time.

> The rich will always have those outlets The Nordic countries have the best schools in the world. Private schools are banned. Well except for Sweden. They introduced vouchers in the 90s and as soon as they did, their rankings started rolling like dung down a hill.

This is often repeated when talking about education, and it is absolutely wrong. Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland all have private schools.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#320

Post by UncleEntity »

lokar wrote: post #215
prpl wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a hard time believing above average students (with parents with parents without engineering/science degrees) could take linear algebra and multi variable calculus at university rigor along any other courses they are required to take. Sure, maybe at Paly and Gunn there’s enough to fill a 20 person class, but those are still pretty steep courses which require math majors and not math education majors. If the stu…

At some point the answer should be to support students just taking a class or two at a local university. This is totally reasonable.

I went to community college in California and there were high school kids in some of my classes.

Not that I was taking particularly hard classes or anything so I think they were just getting a leg up on the prerequisites for later on.

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