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California needs real math education, not gimmicks

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Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#201

Post by xvedejas »

cjohnson318 wrote: post #146
ecshafer wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My solution to the education attitude issue in the us, which is very real: pay the families that perform best in school districts. Take the top grades on each years final tests and give the family money. The entire society will change overnight, as people will suddenly be asking kids why they aren’t studying.

I think we tried that in the form of scholarships. Basically, the students with the highest grades get discounts from different colleges. It's not exactly the same, but the effect is similar, and this system has been running for generations. I think one big problem is that low test scores are highly correlated to poverty. Parents who earn less usually don't have time to help kids with their school work, or don't unde…

Merit scholarships were already out of fashion by the time I was applying for colleges (circa 2010). Especially at more selective schools (those with lower admission rates), merit scholarships have been displaced in favor of diversity scholarships, which I suppose reflects the changing priorities of those schools.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#202

Post by solatic »

goolulusaurs wrote: post #25

In my younger years, particularly during my schooling, I held a deep resentment towards the educational system. It felt overtly clear to me, as a student, that schools failed to effectively foster learning and growth. However, my perspective has evolved over time. I've come to understand that the issues I observed are not unique to the school system but rather characteristic of large institutions as a whole. The perv…

> once an organization surpasses a certain size

This is precisely why the solution is to keep size small and allow consumers (in the education market, these are parents) to have a choice between many small providers who are forced to compete with each other. Governments should (with notable exceptions) constantly be pressuring large organizations to break apart into smaller ones.

There are some cases where this isn't feasible, particularly in natural monopolies and in the government itself. Here, I point to Pahlka's excellent "Culture Eats Policy", https://www.niskanencenter.org/culture-eats-policy/ for which no summary can do her piece justice.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#203

Post by sb52191 »

ecshafer wrote: post #171
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we did that, the money would mostly go to the well off already. They’ve already got a system in place, they are already deeply into what their kids are studying. It doesn’t sound like much would improve.

But school districts are already segmented by wealth. So sure money would go to some families in the wealthier school districts. But also families in the poor ones.

I think you might be surprised at the distribution in wealth even within schools. Only an anecdote but I went to a public high school in somewhat of an inner city, and there was a stark contrast in financial well being across my classmates and myself. The kids from upper middle class families were the ones in AP classes and who went on to great universities, while the more median student likely came from a household that were much closer to the poverty line.

If performance had come with a financial bonus, I'd guess 90% of the recipients wouldn't notice any difference in their lives/outcomes. Maybe even a higher percentage than that.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#204

Post by reverius42 »

WalterBright wrote: post #144
wrp wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I'm not completely against performance-based pay, there are some issues that would make this particular approach unworkable. One is that in dealing with children, personal compatibility matters a great deal more. Some teacher-student relationships will "just click" and others fail. Another is the dependence of the students' performance on their home environment. So, even an excellent teacher will get poor resul…

A proper proposal would be a lot more words than my little posting! It doesn't have to be perfect. It just has to be significantly better than the existing system, which has zero incentive for the teachers to get results.

> zero incentive for the teachers to get results

Except, of course, wanting to educate -- which is ostensibly the reason they got into the profession in the first place. It probably wasn't for the pay.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#205

Post by mkl »

ecshafer wrote: post #106
another_story wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also an increased distance between those doing the actual work and those making decisions about how it should be done. Bureaucratic depth keeps any real change from taking place, instead leaving those on the ground level to try and work within a set growing rules. Any attempt to affect change has to be filtered through so many levels and takes so long. As a longtime teacher, I don't think there are any soluti…

My solution to the education attitude issue in the us, which is very real: pay the families that perform best in school districts. Take the top grades on each years final tests and give the family money. The entire society will change overnight, as people will suddenly be asking kids why they aren’t studying.

Sounds like an excuse for parents to make their kids' lives hell. Such a policy would do a lot of damage.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#207

Post by _8j50 »

I think standardized tests are ideal. Make them very hard and don't be afraid to fail most of your students and have them repeat grades. Testing should not account for anything about a student other than physical disability needs.

The effects of these measures are seen decades after enactment. From what I have observed, the politicization of education and having metrics other than academic tests has gotten so bad, it should be discussed as a matter of national security. Relying on immigrants to fill in the gap and hoping they'll choose to remain in the US(despite societal hostility growing) is not a sustainable strategy.

This is the one area China, India and Russia can run circles around the US easily.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#208

Post by lordnacho »

tgv wrote: post #195
lern_too_spel wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't seen anything serious in the field of education. Education can and should be a science. There should be experiments to determine what works and what doesn't work. Instead, we have 5 different preschool pedagogies, 5 different elementary pedagogies, and 5 different secondary pedagogies, and nobody bothering to figure out what works at scale.

You're right-ish, but... the problems of educational sciences are plenty, but most importantly the impossibility to run proper experiments, and the almost complete lack of fundamental, reliable knowledge about human cognition and learning. The bottom line is that they have no idea how learning works, nor how teaching works. Their findings should not be used as evidence. Only the largest effects could be cautiously us…

There's 200 countries to examine. Should be plenty of ways to get data to analyse. For some reason it seems to be minimal how much comparison we get. Whether comparisons we do get end up being a kind of contest, like PISA.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#209

Post by wisty »

tlogan wrote: post #187
blindriver wrote: post #50

The actions that the California state education system towards Blacks and Brown kids are exactly what the most insidious racist person would do. If I hated Black and Brown kids, I would lower the education standards so low that these kids would graduate high school being unable to compete at the city, state or country level. And this is EXACTLY what is happening. Half of the Black kids in SF are graduating high schoo…

I have both of my kids enrolled in SFUSD and what you describe is exactly what's happening. Majority of “affluent” parents and immigrants are enrolling their children in Sylvan, Kumon, hiring Russian instructors, and so forth. Even school counselors will suggest this, as they also enroll their own children in such programs and subtly encourage you to do the same. However, if a child belongs to a disadvantaged group,…

I think a major problem is that most education "experts" (the type policy makers listen to, not practicing teachers) are upper-middle-class kids who had their parents teach them the basics of phonics and times tables. Who else would get a PhD in education?

They went to school, and found learning these things a massive waste of time, because their parents had already set them up to succeed, but they don't realise it was their parents doing all the work and it's not a waste of time or just "common sense" to the kids who didn't have the same home environment.

Re: California needs real math education, not gimmicks

#210

Post by saagarjha »

WalterBright wrote: post #182
donw wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only applies to small companies. Schools are equivalent to large companies, and large companies can screw the proverbial six ways from Sunday for years before it hurts their bottom line, for any number of reasons. Many Americans seem to have this mental disease whereby they think every problem can be solved with more money. This problem can't be.

Large companies still have plenty of incentive pay. Currently, teachers have zero incentive to get results. I bet you'll see results that follow incentives. Of course it won't be perfect - but I bet it'll be much better than the current disaster. People like money. Especially the people who say they aren't motivated by money :-)

I work for a large company notorious for shooting itself in the foot because someone’s personal incentives to ship a shiny new thing and get promoted causes long-term repetitional harm as older things get abandoned. We pay for performance too, and quite well at that :)
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