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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

#431

Post by g9yuayon »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #89
g9yuayon wrote: post #24

> "Families with resources turn to fee-required online algebra 1 courses in eighth grade, outside the public school system, or enroll their kids in private schools," Isn't this obvious result? The Russian School of Mathematics could manage to teach 10-year old kids basic algebra. And there's AOPS, there's Think Academy, and slew of local tutoring schools who can teach kids relatively advanced maths. Let alone many pr…

What else could possible result? There are people who don't understand sociology and are only vaguely aware of pathological cultural factors (or possibly, though they are aware of them, wish to deny their existence) and demand that these problems be solved with bureaucracy. Bureaucracy is only able to crudely affect these, and only in the most totalitarian of regimes. Mao or Stalin might have been able to rid their c…

> Mao or Stalin might have been able to rid their countries of pathological cultural factors

Mao did rid of the meritocracy-based education system, replacing it with an identity-based system. That is, if you were born with the right identity (blue-collar worker, peasant (not farmer, mind you), and soldier), then you get to go to a university without even any test. If you were born with the wrong identity (the right, the anti-revolutionary, the farmer or any family who has property, the "rich", the "bad"), then you can't go to any college. The results? Just look at China in the 70s. What a fucking hell hole.

As a for Stalin or Soviet, they never gave up their elite education. In fact, elite officers had to be elite students as well. Those who are good at STEM could even get a little leniency when they made the so-called political mistakes.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#432

Post by com2kid »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #343
com2kid wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Extrinsic motivation works, for a decent percentage of people, as long as the reward keeps comming. Therein lines the problem. Pay people enough $ and they'll go to the gym and get in shape, but once the $ stops they'll almost universally stop going. Take people who have a regular gym habit, start paying them, stop paying them and most of them will stop going to the gym, adding in the extrinsic motivation will actu…

How can a public institution foster intrinsic motivation within an individual? Better to focus limited resources on what institutions have some competence at: throwing money at a problem.

> How can a public institution foster intrinsic motivation within an individual?

Honestly, it is part of the social contract that the government, or at least society, needs to maintain.

If you look at cultures where education is valued, where academic achievement is high, there is a very strong social contract in place that equates academic success to success later in life. China has had national exams for over a thousand years, with the same promise: Anyone who does well in school and succeeds can have their station in life elevated by doing well in school.

Rich or poor, rural or urban, everyone (or at least a large swath of people) in China has traditionally had this guarantee lying around.

Do good in school, and you will be taken care of after that. You can get a good spouse, a good job, and life will get easier.

America has actively worked to break such promises. Historically when a minority community worked together and excelled, their houses and businesses got literally burned down to the ground, or sometimes, less violently, just taken away from them.

That teaches a lesson right there, "work hard, and fuck you".

Rather recently, middle class white students in America studied hard only to find the social contract involved universities jacking up tuition fees to sky high levels, loading them down with tons of debt, and then leaving school for crap jobs and a life of constant interest payments.

A shit ton better than being burned out of your house, but it still shows how American society is willing to tear up social contracts so that powerful institutions can earn some extra $$$.

Housing then folds into this, it used to be American cities worked hard to expand the housing supply, they eagerly courted young families, now cities are actively hostile to anyone new coming to town.

But the fact is, maintaining that social contract pays for itself many times over with social stability, a lesson America has apparently forgotten.

Some parts of the government get this, some types of inefficient contracts (build/buy American) are in fact job creation programs, but we need to do a lot better.

Build more housing, a ton more, and force state universities to have much lower tuition by removing the obscene overhead. I rarely advocate for "just cut funding and make people figure it out", but honestly, pass a law saying State Universities aren't allowed to cut any faculty positions, then demand they cut tuition by 50%, and have their new budgets independently audited. Sure the student swimming pool may get shut down, but too bad.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#434

Post by LeanderK »

vietthan wrote: post #402
LeanderK wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are there no all-day schools in the US? My girlfriend went to one because of her mother being on her own and having to work and it was pretty involved compared to my "normal" school. They handled school, sports and homework. Your kid should come home with only very, very few things to do. It's a trend in germany to have it as an option at more and more schools but they have to build the infrastructure first (may scho…

This sounds like halfway to boarding school.

A little bit, but I am not sure whether it is really comparable. It's a relatively new trend here in germany (started 2002). Translating a recent article: "According to this, in 2007 only 16.2 percent of children attended an all-day school. In 2017, the figure was more than twice as high, at 42 per cent."

As I understood it (not a parent and it was not available when I was at school): You have all-day classes and "normal" classes at school. The kids in all-day classes stay together during the day and the kids in the other class go home, it is not an optional add-on. My niece is attending all-day school with a musical focus and likes it very much. All day classes differ between schools and classes, with school on 3-5 afternoons until 4 pm. Supervision is given for homework and studying for exams.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#435

Post by upsidesinclude »

ElFitz wrote: post #275
staunton wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is what we will get 10x with free college That seems quite different. First, lots of countries have free higher education and seem to do just fine. Second, lowering price of entry is orthogonal to lowering expected performance. Your argument does not apply.

Some countries even pay students to attend their highest ranking engineering schools.

>highest ranking engineering

By defintion some of the highest performing students who must compete for entry.

These are not apples alike.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#436

Post by upsidesinclude »

brianwawok wrote: post #373
com2kid wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> There is some fair arguments to make that mixing kids of different backgrounds together improves outcomes, if you take 1 kid from a poor background and surround that kid with a culture of success, there is a very large chance the kid will pick up on that culture of success and start doing better. My understanding is research shows this "evens" outcomes. The worst students do better (Teacher has more time to pay att…

>culture of success

There is the crux.

Bad cultures exist and we dont need to celebrate them. Bad culture drags everyone down and makes society worse.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#437

Post by forgetbook »

brianwawok wrote: post #388
firstlink wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but what about when their GPA is 3.254? Bet you're not laughing then! /s

Lol. I even had someone with like 8 years of work experience put a 2.5 GPA on their resume. I would have done a phone screen.. but with that low of a GPA, and the judgement to put it on your resume? Pass.

It could be the case that this person is attempting to show a rags-to-riches story of hard work in the 8 years since their experience in higher ed?

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#438

Post by foldr »

userbinator wrote: post #425
foldr wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but it's a debunking of a fairly long book (and associated claims by one of its authors), so probably not. While threads like this reliably attract HN's substantial contingent of so-called 'race realists', the consensus among experts is that Murray is wrong. Therefore I really think we should be putting the burden of proof on people who think this consensus is false. Murray's claims should be evaluated in…

among experts ...and the policies that lead to the situation in the article were also developed by "experts". The amount of political ideology surrounding this stuff is immense. The truth is black and white (pun intended) but people don't want to see.

So, a few comments down from a substantive comment by testfoobar, we've arrived at the inevitable comment saying almost explicitly that black people are dumb. If you want to just say this out loud, there are corners of the internet where you can do it. Hopefully this is not one of them.

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#439

Post by seanmcdirmid »

nordsieck wrote: post #67
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 live in Seattle Luckily, everyone in the area gets access to Running Start[1]. Doesn't address the earlier years of schooling, though. If your children are in HS, I'd really recommend sitting downing with a HS councilor to make sure that your kids take the classes that are required by the district for HS, but aren't required for a college degree (I'm thinking of speech here, but there may be others) in the first…

Running start applies to the entire state of Washington, and since 2013, all Washington state schools are pretty well funded (even if that means taking money away from richer Seattle area property tax districts).

Re: 'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco

#440

Post by brianwawok »

forgetbook wrote: post #437
brianwawok wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. I even had someone with like 8 years of work experience put a 2.5 GPA on their resume. I would have done a phone screen.. but with that low of a GPA, and the judgement to put it on your resume? Pass.

It could be the case that this person is attempting to show a rags-to-riches story of hard work in the 8 years since their experience in higher ed?

Not sure, but I wasn't buying it.
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