[deleted]
Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
231–240 of 816 posts
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#232The author says > The idea that offering children fewer educational resources through the public school system will help the poor kids catch up with rich ones, or help the Black kids catch up with the White and Asian ones, is unsupported by any available evidence of which I am aware. I was wondering if some people are aware of studies supporting this strategy. I could try to dig them up, but I remember few studies de…
No-one does real intelligence studies in humans because it's such a third-rail in academia. Think "The Bell Curve". Some scientists seem to believe that intelligence is intrinsic. The analogy with dog breeds, with their different temperaments and capabilities, with individual variation, applies to humans as well.
See Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences | Lex Fridman Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hppbxV9C63g
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#233The author says > The idea that offering children fewer educational resources through the public school system will help the poor kids catch up with rich ones, or help the Black kids catch up with the White and Asian ones, is unsupported by any available evidence of which I am aware. I was wondering if some people are aware of studies supporting this strategy. I could try to dig them up, but I remember few studies de…
A goal that everyone can achieve is not learning anything at all. Let's set that as goal, right?
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
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]
What the hell is "trans ideology?"
This is just a nonsense sentence.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 doe…
Compare how much money US spends on average per student in public education verse other countries. How do students rank academically in US compared to other countries?
Consider this
If you look at the system without vouchers, there is no market mechanism to correct the situation everyone is complaining about.
There are no incentives. Each year, more and more money is dumped into the system.
If you introduce competition, then schools have to start fixing problems if they want to get the funding.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#236This 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…
> changes aren't "refusing to teach kids math", they are a better approach to math
Every mathematician disagrees. The Stanford professor pushing this policy has no math education. (She does have consulting gigs with school districts where they trade a teacher's annual salary for a few hours of Zoom calls [1].)
I grew up in Cupertino and am flying back to the Bay Area. Every friend who is a parent is planning on circumventing this policy by enrolling their kids in more tutoring.
California is dumbing down its poor to sate a private education and education-consulting industry.
[1] https://google.com/search?hl=en&q=jo%20boaler%20consulting
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
[flagged]
You should not make that point. Society works much better if you accept the wierd beliefs of as many people as you can. Fight againt cannibalism (does any of that even exist anymore?), but be very careful about even that.
Simply put: why does their religion get money from the state when mine does not?
I dont care if you have weird beliefs. I just don't want weird beliefs funded by the state. And that's also including my own weird beliefs.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
One of the key problems in the US funding system is that population clustering effects will cause exacerbating effects where people of increasingly similar socioeconomic and cultural strata all stick together - of course this will cause rising inequality and unequal outcomes. The people living in the gated communities fund their local school primarily, not the poor one on the other end of the street that can't get or…
[deleted]
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#239To me, it seems like the people who are pushing these policies are doing so to "juke the stats" and make it look like certain demographics aren't as behind academically as they actually are. Statistically, bipoc kids don't do as well in school as white/asian kids, right? I am not trying to make this about race, and I am not suggesting anything other than that statistical reality. But that sentiment seems pretty commo…
> To me, it seems like the people who are pushing these policies are doing so to "juke the stats" and make it look like certain demographics aren't as behind academically as they actually are. Statistically, bipoc kids don't do as well in school as white/asian kids, right? I am not trying to make this about race, and I am not suggesting anything other than that statistical reality. But that sentiment seems pretty common when I read about these "equity" programs. "We are doing this to reduce the inequalities between groups X and Y".
They're trying to make the schools fix poverty (whether caused by racism or anything else), in order to avoid directly fixing poverty. It's an endeavor doomed from the start because it rests on the religious belief that success is directly proportional to merit, and merit is best shown by achievement in school.
But we can't have a society of middle-class strivers, because no ditches will be dug, so all you end up with in the fantasy case is a bunch of well-educated ditch diggers who now have massive student loan debts. What you get in the real case is a bunch of people who realize that they can either A) be depressed baristas lamenting their failure to do better with the expensive degree that has given them a lifetime of debt, B) be depressed baristas who don't owe $100K for a useless degree.
It's not compulsory and free primary education that will fix poverty, and it's not the job of teachers to repair all inequity in society (although to the most egomaniacal, it's all they think their duty is.) Just like it isn't college's duty to fix racism. The way you fix these things is by directly addressing them, not explaining to children how to use a bootstrap.
Re: Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity
#240A common phrase of the "soft bigotry of low expectations" is at work here. Those held to lower standards will fall to lower standards, deprived of the resources and support to achieve. The article attached provides a fantastic explanation. https://www.educationnext.org/teachers-should-replace-the-so...
For those who think this is hyperbole, see [1] for a mathematician taking down the framework.
California's new standards were written by folks without a background in math nor neuroscience. They misquote neuroscience papers [2] while making mathematical mistakes in their policy paper.
[1] https://sites.google.com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/?ref=st...
[2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/17O123ENTxvZOjXTnOMNRDtHQAOj...