Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

joannejacobs.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 510 posts

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#411

Post by lokar »

UncleEntity wrote: post #320
lokar wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My school only offered one language and I wanted a different one. So I went to the nearby public university.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#412

Post by Invictus0 »

function_seven wrote: post #56
Invictus0 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is that supposed to prove? Any type of engineer or mathematician could pass that interview and still not know anything about coding.

I imagine the idea is that coding is easy to teach on the job, but the fundamental logic and analytical skills aren’t.

No, coding is not easy to teach on the job, especially if you have no knowledge of algorithms/data structures.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#413

Post by hintymad »

gramie wrote: post #409
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…

The real problem is the insane policy of the U.S. to fund schools locally. That way, you will always have better schools in the richer areas and worse schools in the poorer areas. In Ontario (Canada), schools are funded by the province. Schools doing worse can access addition funding and other resources. In 2020 teachers earned an average of $103,000/year including benefits. In Toronto, which has a high cost of livin…

> In Ontario (Canada), schools are funded by the province.

California too, yet California has one of the most corrupted education systems. Case in point, the Bay Area schools couldn’t even afford school buses

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#414

Post by michael_vo »

alex_sf wrote: post #315
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…

I meant rollback of a policy that performed poorly. It is an interesting point you bring up about rolling back a child that I haven't considered. That might be a good policy to have.

A question to ask is it better for a kid to score 90% in algebra and it takes 2 more years or is it better that they score 50% and then move on to calculus. That would be a good A/B test to compare their lifetime earnings. My hypothesis is that calculus is a pretty useless skill and basic maths is more important in life.

There could be ways of doing A/B tests if the standardized tests are the same between states that have different curriculums.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#415

Post by cptcobalt »

Are we still teaching math well?

I grew up with rote memorization of math concepts and applying that through memorized math tables. That doesn't work for my spectrumy dyscalculic brain. If I had more advanced math education that started with elements of computer programming & interaction (actually, even at the "basic" level too), I'd wager I'd actually be relatively good at math today, with a much better lower level understanding of concepts. Instead, I'm effectively helpless when it comes to math.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#416

Post by cptcobalt »

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…

I think it's moreso effective co-optimization between equity and meritocracy.

I went to private schools, and even kids of parents with money can wind up very unintelligent—placing them in the same classes as overachievers is good for neither. Same concept as bright kids from underprivileged families, let's bend over backward to get them in the same classes as the overachievers too.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#417

Post by cptcobalt »

echelon wrote: post #213
adamredwoods wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have two friends whose kids are in two different Seattle middle schools, and the anecdotes we hear are not going well. One middle school was considering getting rid of advanced courses entirely. We're in East Renton, which usually follows Seattle, but they have kept honor courses. In fact, honor courses are encouraged to take, open to everyone, and from what I understand, no one is rejected (possibly only for the…

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…

> Give them a score-based percentage of $200/mo for hitting certain criteria each month.

Yes, let's embed the fundamentals of wage-slavery at even younger ages.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#418

Post by pfannkuchen »

brianwawok wrote: post #374
pfannkuchen wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found the actual impact of AP credits disappointing. I ended up with no gen ed classes and started off in sophomore classes for math and physics. AP doesn’t count towards college GPA, and it turns out that others ended up with GPA padding that I missed out on. Still turned out fine overall, the GPA padding thing just didn’t occur to me in high school and no one pointed it out.

Who do you tell your GPA to? I stopped listing GPA after my first job. When I get a resume from someone that went to college 10 years ago and lists a 3.245 GPA, I laugh.

Yeah, today it doesn’t matter at all. The others I referenced in my post were other people in college, e.g. while I was applying to internships, not anyone today. Though I do still include it on my resume, I had kind of assumed that people will think it was very low if you omit it.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#419

Post by seanmcdirmid »

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…

Same boat. He is in SPS now, but as a kindergartener. We will kick the can down the road and do something if he gets bogged down in a watered down curriculum. I get the equalization goal, but when kids in China are starting calculus, not algebra, in 9th grade, we can't just ignore that.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#420

Post by seanmcdirmid »

com2kid wrote: post #267
40yearoldman wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Growing up in Seattle in the 90s, the school district was obviously racist and classist. Advanced programs were in the richer (whiter) neighborhoods and poor kids got to go to schools with police wagons out front. The district charter use to have a line in it saying they had to offer each kid the best education possible. My mother used that line to force the school district to send a taxi to every day to take me up t…

Now its sort of the opposite? We'd love to send our kid to Seattle's Chinese immersion program, but they only offer it in poorer South Seattle while we live in richer North Seattle. There was an effort to make elementary kids go to school before 8AM just to make some more bussing feasible, bussing that only applies to non-neighborhood kids attending the schools from poorer parts of the city.
Post reply on HN