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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

#201

Post by karaterobot »

JohnMakin wrote: post #44

I don’t know why this author needs to use this issue as a political cudgel against “progressivism” - I don’t see anything particularly progressive about this policy vs the Dallas one he also mentions - the goals are exactly the same, to bring more equity to disadvantaged and minority students. Here is what Jo Boaler has to say on the issue: https://patch.com/california/across-ca/lets-move-past-acrimo... she claims th…

To be fair to the author, he is not the one who framed this as a progressive issue, many of its proponents did that. I agree that it isn't progressive, or maybe just that it is an example of when something goes so far in one direction that it looks exactly like its opposite. In any case, it deserves to be called out as a dumb idea.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#202

Post by pessimizer »

threatofrain wrote: post #34
tapatio wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But now nobody can say whether any curriculum is better.

Language curricula are not any more effective (i.e. pretty terrible) at teaching language than they ever have been. So since these data-driven improvements haven't shown up yet, we shouldn't be worried about risking them.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#203

Post by rory »

vkou wrote: post #113
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…

> 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 soc…

> The hoi polloi that can't afford the voucher plus mountain of money private school tuition

What are you talking about? The voucher is supplied by the state, and charter schools are definitionally tuition-free to students and their families.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#204

Post by tru1ock »

bigbacaloa wrote: post #148
misterbishop wrote: post #125

This just is a total misunderstanding of what's being proposed, and a hamfisted excuse to dress up reactionary stupidity as a defense of "Math". The changes aren't "refusing to teach kids math", they are a better approach to math. Modern approaches emphasize number sense (aka actual understanding) over formulas. Algebra has historically been a kind of gatekeeping in middle school between kids who plug in the formulas…

It's moronic. Source: I'm a university math professor with a hell of a lot more experience teaching math well than you have.

Don't breathe the air, said the fish to the bird.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#205

Post by pessimizer »

tapatio wrote: post #31
jedmeyers wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people in positions of power are currently obsessed with achieving equality of outcomes (aka equity) and dumbing down to the lowest common denominator is an only working way to achieve that goal for large groups of people.

We practice equal opportunity in the USA. They should move to Russia or some other commie country to practice equal outcome.

We don't practice equal opportunity in the USA.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#206

Post by mfer »

KerrAvon wrote: post #176
nsxwolf wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 doe…

Actually, public education has to mean public schools. Vouchers are a band-aid invented by right-wing nutjobs to allow religious schools to be funded by public money; they do this by taking money away from secular public schools. If public schools are broken, we need to fix the public schools, not break them further.

> If public schools are broken, we need to fix the public schools

Who defines what fixed is? How do you call success on those fixes? The process is a problem today and it's similar to politics.

I'll give two issues of issues in fixing things...

First example, if there is a problem leaders can come up with a policy/process/thing to deal with it. And call success at having that in place rather than seeing results. If the policy/process/thing doesn't work success has already been called. They aren't going to walk that back. There is a lot of this.

Second example, schools are being used for social change. And the topics of some of the social change are not agreed to in society. Who gets to decide what's right? Should schools be agents for this change? This is being fought in society right now. It's not really discussed or debated but more fought if you look at the tactics and behaviors.

How do you fix things in this form of environment?

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#207

Post by javajosh »

dealuromanet wrote: post #143

If someone is blocking a child from learning more and moving faster than others because of “equity”…then some school districts need to start firing some bureaucrats. Take away teaching licenses if someone is unwilling to uphold an oath to do their best with each student even if it means some students are smarter and faster than others. You cannot escape reality. You will not stunt the brightest in the name of this fa…

>Harrison Bergeron is a dystopia, not a training manual

There are people, many people, who disagree with you. In good faith. They want the best for everyone, and they see inequality as the source of much suffering, and does it not make sense to address the core of the problem?

The problem with such people is that they lack the imagination and humility to understand the downsides to their proposed "solution". They choose to ignore the old addage about "the cure is worse than the disease". Ultimately the sin is hubris. They will read Harrison Bergeron and call it propaganda, hyperbole, designed to derail right-thinking, good people from pursuing utopia.

What then?

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#208

Post by kaitai »

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…

Disagree for a number of reasons.

1) A good public education should be available to all students, with reasonable transportation provided. This is an axiom for me.

2) Private schools do not seem consistently provide a better education, but they do enable siphoning and segregation of students. Students with disabilities of various types can be excluded; the education can be explicitly religious; private education can really enable exclusivity of many kinds. On one level all that is fine -- but I don't want taxpayer dollars to support it. Raise money thru your church to send kids to that stuff.

In addition, I think your premise is false. In the school district I live in, children can apply to attend any school in the district. Charter schools are available as well as public schools. Choice is available with a publicly funded model, and as a parent I am partaking in that and switching a kid from a high-scoring school that I'm nevertheless not fully satisfied with to another high-performing school that rivals the privates for about $30k less a year.

But in the end, I actually don't think competition forces improvement. The misalignment of incentives is too great. Individual teachers want to do their best for their kids, in general, and they also want to improve their income. To do their best, they try to help the visible high achievers if they can but they absolutely must take time on the kids acting out. Administrators have to deal with district edicts and teacher demands, but they don't have the money to support teacher development (which would be the #1 thing to help both teachers and kids). School districts/boards need to show they're "using technology" and "being equitable" and "being innovative" and all sorts of stuff that is not the same as improving outcomes. Everyone is supposed to do well on the tests, even when the tests are stupid (and whoo-hoo are some of them terrible). Schools have to deal with homelessness and hunger, because no other regional agency deals with all the kids in the area. Nothing lines up and so we end up with free lunch that's not so nutritious but does hit a calorie bar, attempts at equity without supports (putting kids with behavioral problems into crowded and understaffed classrooms), a bunch of teachers who are scared of math yet have to teach it, who would benefit most from upgrading their skills....

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#209

Post by rafaelero »

> But whatever you think about the morality of this idea, it simply will not work. The reason is that the strong hereditarian hypothesis is wrong; practically all kids are educable, with the proper investment of resources.

Yes, they are. But they won't be equally educable, and that's what matters to critics.

Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

#210

Post by busterarm »

persedes wrote: post #196
busterarm wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multiple decades of studies produced by the NAEP directly refute your argument. I would reference the confirming NAIS studies as well but they've got some self-interest in those results.

I was curious and only found: https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/studies/2006461.a... the data is very very old (20 years), but they did not find significant differences after adjusting for the schools / students characteristics. Unadjusted scores however do look better for private schools.

They release this very easy to find data every year (although items in the chart may be ~10 years old).

https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/dashboards/schools_dashboa...

Private schools outperform in nearly all subjects.

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