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Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
111–120 of 816 posts
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Transportation is also essential. Why would we accept less going "private"?
As for not giving schools significantly more money for special ed, what is significant in your eyes?
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#113Stuff 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…
> No parent should be stuck without options when educational governance goes sideways like this.
You say this, but what you actually mean is no wealthy parent should be stuck without options.
The hoi polloi that can't afford the voucher plus mountain of money private school tuition will still be quite stuck without options, except that you've also created an explicit two-class system.
I hear those do wonders for social cohesion. As will opening a firehose of money into the insane fundamentalist indoctrination that so many parents wish to inflict on their children, but can't in public school.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#114Earlier 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…
> School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged." Not only the School Board but the Teachers Unions and the United States Government are anti parents attending School Board meetings to support their children. Red or Blue, 6 or 600, it doesn’t matter when the USG decides to make parent…
I dunno--if you want to see America's mental illness problem on full, public display, just do a YouTube search for "school board meeting outrage". It's great when concerned, non-ideological, rational parents show up to have a voice in how the school is run, but the flip side of that coin is ugly, belligerent, and counter-productive.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#115Earlier 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…
And if you could fix the system, it would have been fixed by now. If you have a kid today, you have 5-6 years to fix the system before it starts failing them. Your kid will be grown before any meaningful change is made, and any harms caused by the current system will be fully baked in.
If you have money, you have an escape hatch right now. Vouchers make that escape hatch available to more people.
Public education doesn't have to mean public schools.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#116Stuff 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…
I don't completely disagree with you, but where's the incentive for a government to give you vouchers to spend on non-governmental education, directly taking away funding from the schools the same government is responsible for managing? If it was a different pool of money, I get it, but -- speaking specifically about the Bay Area -- one of the reasons public schools have suffered is because of attrition toward paroch…
> where's the incentive for a government to give you vouchers to spend on non-governmental education, directly taking away funding from the schools the same government is responsible for managing
The schools are there for the kids. They aren't cattle to be used as a commodity input to a jobs and spending program.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#117Earlier 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…
> School board elections have very low turnout usually, and the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged." Not only the School Board but the Teachers Unions and the United States Government are anti parents attending School Board meetings to support their children. Red or Blue, 6 or 600, it doesn’t matter when the USG decides to make parent…
I’m confused, your comment talks about schools and the government making parents the enemy and being anti-parent but your linked articles are about parents making threats over things like Covid mask policies. What exactly is your point?
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can get remote tutors to teach your kid skills, yes. However, if your goal is to have your kid advance to higher math classes, it isn't enough to just know the skills. Schools erect extreme barriers to advancement (Palo Alto USD has been successfully sued on this point [1]), so what students really need is to enroll in outside courses that are certified replacements in order to get credit. Finding out about which…
The article you linked is incredibly confusing. I assume the issue is, which is typical of any advanced courses in school districts where helicopter tiger moms live, that little billy didn't qualify for the advanced math course because he's not smart enough but mom knows he's actually a genius. The pressure to let in little billy builds and builds until the districts relent and fill the classes with buffoons and the…
It sounds to me like there may have been an intermediate step, which was for little billy to be enrolled in some sort of third party course as a catch-up / qualifier for enrollment in the advanced class, and the district not accepting that.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#119Stuff 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…
What's your solution to stop runaway education costs in this 'voucher first' world? It's not exactly going well in secondary education.
> What's your solution to stop runaway education costs in this 'voucher first' world?
This assumes a lot of facts not in evidence. In general schools that accept vouchers generally operate on much smaller per-student budgets (especially if you include the capital budget -- buildings and facilities) than public schools do. In many voucher states, the public school gets some level of funding for a student even a parent gets a voucher and sends their child somewhere else.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#120Earlier 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…
There are still some grammar schools, but they are badly distributed, because it’s based on political views from past ages. For example, the city of Southend in Essex has about 7000 grammar school places. Entire counties of Norfolk and Suffolk have none.