California needs real math education, not gimmicks

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I haven't flagged a single one of your replies. I even vouched for this one to reply to it. I don't think I'll do it again. Anyways, when did I say "bad white families" don't need to change? You're putting words into my mouth. It's just that there seems to be a lot more of the whole poverty thing going on with black people. Personally I wouldn't care so much about race and focus on poverty instead, except apparently that's not how a lot of people see it, so I'm focusing on black people.

It doesn't affect my self-esteem or anything but it's a bit sad that you're making wild accusations about Internet strangers. Chill.

I don't even know you're drawing these conclusions from what I'm saying.

Here:

Result I'm looking for: Decent baseline of financial stability among African-Americans

Objective: Get educational attainment and good employment up

Major factors I think are necessary (for relatively quick results, anyways):

- culture shifts towards focusing on education

- government funds public schools in terms of materials, transportation, teachers, etc.

- reduce college tuition somehow

- race-blind hiring/whatever policies

I'm just trying to justify why I think the culture is important. There is evidence that culture is important. Furthermore, I'm saying that there's currently a lack of that education-focused culture and that's why e.g. Baltimore isn't doing too great even with all the funding.

So you should at most have an issue with

- culture shift necessary (which embodies "current culture not working")

I don't see where your evidence that culture isn't an important factor here is. Also, I'm not here to talk about historic grievances and bias and all that. I'm trying to discuss a way out, not bemoan the current circumstances or hope the world magically changes overnight.

I've taught high school and college for more than 2 decades. Please ignore me while I rant.

Before we can fix public education, we need to admit that humans are inherently unequal. Not everyone is at the top of the class in math. It is a teacher's job to bring the kids at the bottom up as high as we can, but some of them will not get it on their first try. That is nature.

Then we need to motivate them. Stop grouping kids into math classes based on what grade they are in. That does not match the workplaces we are preparing them for. Instead, we need to group them by interests. Let me teach a class of kids who truly love cars. I'll bring an old engine in and start teaching them arithmetic, geometry, and algebra.

Let me teach a class of kids who want to be streamers and YouTubers. I'll use DSLRs and Premiere Pro to teach them arithmetic, geometry, and algebra. They will learn the same math as the future mechanics, but they will not use the same examples.

Let me teach a class of kids who love money to do the accounting for the auto shop kids.

The only problem with grouping them by ability is that most (85%) of public school students have the intellectual curiosity of tomatoes. They love only app games and music. They are vegetables. The fix to that is to kick them out and let them try to earn a living until they (the ones that survive) come home and beg for a chance to learn enough to earn a living. Then they will pay attention in class.

We need to incentivize the learning of these public schools students while we kick their inflated egos out from under them. They think they are smart enough to be the CEO of Intel. We need to call them on that. Let's see them earn their lunch money replacing the shocks on cars, creating marketing videos for Fiverr clients, or keeping track of the accounting for the other classes. I'll teach them what they need to know.

Above all, do not let anyone supervise a teacher who is not qualified to teach that subject. Public schools prepare principals to run high schools in 4 steps: First, have them teach kindergarten for a year. Second, be an elementary school principal for a year. Third, be a junior high principal for a year. Fourth, be a high school principal. Imagine if the head of OpenAI started doing tech support for Microsoft Word, then because a supervisor over Word Tech Support, then moved to be the head of developing Microsoft Office (without being able to code) then move to be the head of OpenAI (without being able to explain what a GAN is.) Seriously. I've had public school bosses who saw no reason to ask the kids to log into the PCs in a computer class. They wanted to see me "teach" meaning talk to the kids without them touching the PCs in a computer class. They were stuck in kindergarten.

> "Now let's look at what American students in your age are dealing with"

That's some top grade propaganda to indoctrinate children there, just like with the authorities suppressing news about the knife attacks on Chinese kindergartens and instead reporting extensively on school shootings in the US to show how safe China is compared to the US. Gotta love the CCP