Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
I definitely don’t want religious brainwashing. I also definitely do not want the indoctrination that is taking place in our public schools.
[flagged]
Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
161–170 of 816 posts
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#162Stuff 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.
The funding wouldn't be unlimited. Schools would have to figure out how to deliver services with the funds available. This is not totally different than how many public school systems are funded. My local government sucks $12,000 a year out of my paycheck. About 70% of it funds the pensions of local public school teachers, the remaining 30% pays for the actual schools, with a smidge left over for police and fire department, etc.
They can and do raise my property taxes, but it's much harder than colleges simply demanding higher and higher tuitions.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#163Is there anyone out there who disagrees with this? I have not seen a single person (aside from the few people actually implementing these changes) that agrees with it.
Read the article linked at the start: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/california-needs-real-math-edu... , and you'll find that there are quite a few people supporting this, importantly in school boards, and education departments and such. They don't care about the rest of the world, because they are "the experts."
> aside from the few people actually implementing these changes
That, though.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please elaborate on your equivocation. On first glance, you're comparing apples and oranges, and it doesn't make much sense.
[flagged]
Oh, so in a voucher system I would've had to choose between receiving a worthwhile education and being queer. Got it.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
[flagged]
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#166Math major here. Go for it CA. The current "STEM pipeline" is garbage and underserving. A larger populace not excluded from the pipeline (because it wont exist) and not being turned off by math before high school is actually a step in the right direction.
It will take an economy the size of CA to upend things, and they need to be upended. If it's progressive to have a larger base of the mathematically literate, then so be it.
The current system just hires who resembles the incumbents the most. I think that can be broken if enough students and resources go another direction.
Math is no different than any other subject at its core. So it needs to go back to being a regular subject, not among the few in the pipeline, which should never have existed. (Why do I need 3 sophomore level prerequisites, Applied Linear Algebra, Calc 3, Diff Eq's, for a junior level class, mathematical modeling? And there's worse examples at my university too, I followed the least pipelined path. That structure doesn't exist as directed for most subjects. The pipeline needs to go. Math doesn't have to be this way).
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#167Stuff 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…
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…
>the people elected to them are disproportionately ideologues who treat engaged parents with contempt for being "privileged."
There are grim economic shifts behind this. The majority of people are now priced out of raising their own kids to a good standard (i.e. stay-at-home mum). So, more and more people feel envy towards those who can, and various "equity" movements pop out (that all focus on bringing top performers down, rather than bottom performers up).
The only way to fight it is move to an area where most people can still afford kids, and in our generation it may mean moving out of U.S. entirely.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#168The 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…
I understand that grades matter for getting into college, but this mindset is viscerally horrifying to me. It almost reads to me as: "What if people were appropriately challenged and learned more? Wouldn't that be horrible?" Grade inflation is a terrible thing, even if it is likely an intractable problem because of the incentives that go into it.
Most people are at school because their parents need daycare, not to learn. Schools perform the important social function of sorting and ranking by academic ability and what students learn isn’t all that relevant to the sorting and ranking. One sixth of students in US high schools are bored in every class, every day and two thirds are bored every day[Highschool Study of Student Engagement].
Most people aren’t at school for learning.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
> I’m against vouchers because I don’t think I should have to pay with my taxes for religious indoctrination masquerading as private education. Uh huh. And if you are a homeschooler, or go to private school, you are taxed right now to pay for secular indoctrination masquerading as public education. /s But seriously, by this logic, what is the justification for using taxes paid by people who don't attend public school…
Your question reduces to "Why should my taxes pay for a public good, when I choose to have my kids not experience it directly?"
I think the answer becomes a lot clearer then.
Miss Manners has a quote something like "School taxes are what we pay to the future in hopes that it has things like nice young geriatric doctors in it."
Also, what precisely are you claiming is "secular indoctrination"? Evolution? The separation of church and state (in the US)? People who went to religious school have confidently told me that both are myths. They also told me that their school absolutely should have gotten tax funding.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#170Earlier 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]
Hilarious strawman that is not backed by real statistics. I went to a religious jesuit private school, i talk to coworkers about their highschool experiences and they talk about gang violence and drug dealing. Meanwhile the most interesting thing that happened for me is some kids got in a fight once.