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Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

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Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#91

Post by declan_roberts »

okeuro49 wrote: post #38
scarmig wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's the theory that, by forcing the kids with the most engaged parents to go to schools with the kids of less engaged parents, the engaged parents will drive school districts to implement good educational policies. In reality, though, that doesn't seem to have worked. School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents wi…

I agree, and particularly this part > There's the theory that, by forcing the kids with the most engaged parents to go to schools with the kids of less engaged parents is really rough on the kids of engaged parents, forcing them to be responsible for "fixing" systems that they didn't create. In the UK, we used to have "grammar schools" that selected on ability based on a standardised test. They were responsible for m…

Also being treated like a privileged enemy of the school while trying to fix it.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#92

Post by mabbo »

It's hyperbolic and not a totally fair comparison, but reading this, I had to go find and reread "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut.

https://archive.org/stream/HarrisonBergeron/Harrison%20Berge...

When the means to achieve equality is to handicap the strong, we're going the wrong way.

It would be more expensive and harder to try instead to invest in and help those with additional needs. But nobody is interested in spending more to help others.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#93

Post by xxpor »

tapatio wrote: post #28
xxpor wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you know who's doing well then? Seems like eliminating quantitative measurements will only make things worse.

A kid takes a French class. Can he speak French afterwards? Can he read/write in French? I guess that's how you'd know if he learned it. Is that a test? I guess so but I'd like to see grades take a backseat to actual learning. Maybe that's a bad position to take.

I think we have the same idea: stupid grades that don't measure actual results are bad.

Not that I'm salty, but I always had poor grades because I rarely if ever did homework. But I aced the tests, so why bother?

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#94

Post by gjsman-1000 »

thebooktocome wrote: post #85
brightball wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hear that line a lot, yet many of the best schools are religious schools. It’s one thing if you’re forced into through zoning. It’s an entirely different picture if it’s a choice of parents.

[flagged]

Well, then I hate to tell you how bad public education is then. It is estimated that about 10% of public school students will receive sexual abuse from a teacher or authority at some point in their education.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2012/02/is-sexual-abuse-...

This was also backed by the US Department of Education in 2004. Since then they've been very hesitant to revisit the issue.

https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED483143.pdf

The New York Times was also admitting, way back in 1995, that about 5% of public school teachers are abusers. Considering how many teachers a child goes through, they'll probably meet a few.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/21/nyregion/teacher-student-...

I think that if it wasn't for the fact that it was school, sending your child to any place where there was a 1-in-10 chance of them being sexually abused would be a crime.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#95

Post by jelliclesfarm »

Yes, technically it will improve ‘equity’ by dumbing down everyone. I believe this is the script of the movie Idiocracy playing out in real time. We all laughed and now we will cry because politicians decided that they’ll be inspired by the movie.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#96

Post by SilasX »

thebooktocome wrote: post #48
brightball wrote: post #19

Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this. Pull your kid. Find them a school that gives them the greatest opportunity to succeed and use the funds earmarked for their education to ensure they receive it. Currently, options are restricted to parents who can afford to move to a…

[flagged]

Then you're against all the federal funding to help students attend religious colleges?

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#97

Post by distortionfield »

gnicholas wrote: post #5

The Dallas experiment is interesting, and it’s not surprising at all that the students actually learned more than if they had been in less-advanced classes. The question I have is what the grades look like for the kids who were somewhat involuntarily included in the class. In junior high, grades don’t matter all that much, but come high school it could be worse to have lower grades in more challenging courses, depend…

What is the Dallas experiment? I haven’t heard of this before.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#98

Post by pierat »

brightball wrote: post #19

Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this. Pull your kid. Find them a school that gives them the greatest opportunity to succeed and use the funds earmarked for their education to ensure they receive it. Currently, options are restricted to parents who can afford to move to a…

[flagged]

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#99

Post by busterarm »

bamfly wrote: post #81
altcognito wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the purposes of public education is also assimilating children into the shared values of society. In the US this has been forgotten despite guys like Jefferson talking about this exact thing. The free market can be good at optimizing for certain outcomes, but I don't think you're going to get a lot of buy in with the current political climate being what it is, and a lack of consensus around what kind of outcom…

Yeah, I'm OK paying taxes to get to live in a society with universally-available (mostly) fee-free primary and secondary education that aspires to some set of standards. I'm not OK paying taxes to help Bobby Baptist send his kids to Jesus Is Lord Day School. Or kick in to rich parents' budget for Phillips Exeter. If we must have vouchers, let people keep their own tax money that would have gone to schools and use tha…

But Bobby Baptist's kids going to Jesus Is Lord Day School is assimilating those kids into their society at large and Jesus Is Lord Day School still needs to meet the curriculum and testing standards that any other school in the state has to. And more often than not those private schools are _exceeding_ the standard of the public education system.

I spent years in both public and private schools. The worst part of public schooling was that everything was scaled down to the poorest-performing child's level. The worst part of private schooling was that a few underperforming kids were pushed/passed along with everyone else.

The latter outcome is _significantly_ better for society than the former.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#100

Post by Aloha »

jedberg wrote: post #68
brightball wrote: post #19

Stuff like this is why I will remain a proponent for true vouchers for the rest of my life. No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this. Pull your kid. Find them a school that gives them the greatest opportunity to succeed and use the funds earmarked for their education to ensure they receive it. Currently, options are restricted to parents who can afford to move to a…

This only works if you require all schools getting vouchers to accept all students. Otherwise you end up with all the special needs kids in the public schools that are required to take them and all the high performers in private schools. And even then you still have the problem of transportation. Only the more well off families have the time and means to get their kids to somewhere that isn't their closest home schoo…

The first part of your comment I think is key, we also dont give schools significantly more money for special ed, as we should.
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