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> That's a load of fluff policy ideas that you have no possible reason to believe will be effective. Would you care to enlighten me why I have no possible reason to believe that my suggestions will be effective? Surely you know better than I.
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> That's a load of fluff policy ideas that you have no possible reason to believe will be effective. Would you care to enlighten me why I have no possible reason to believe that my suggestions will be effective? Surely you know better than I.
I think the person you are responding to may have forgotten they are no longer posting in the Reddit tab. I've been on this site for a long time - unfortunately these vitriolic types have been bleeding over into this forum more than ever the last few years.
This is the way. Teach kids more, not less. Ask more of them, not less. If you need to lengthen the school day and school year to do so, do it. Do it now. "So what should we do instead? Dallas came up with an answer: Teach kids more math instead of teaching them less. In 2019, Dallas Independent School District implemented a new equity policy that encouraged many more people to take honors math classes: Many capable…
> The move has dramatically increased participation among traditionally marginalized children This program may or may not be a fantastic idea, but "participation" is about the worst possible metric for measuring the overall impact of a mandatory program. Are these children having better overall life and educational outcomes from this? Are they taking time and energy away from classes they want to pursue to struggle i…
> Before the change, three times as many White students as Black students enrolled in honors math; after the change, it was less than twice as many. Not perfect equity, but progress in that direction.
> But did all these new students actually learn the honors math? Yes, indeed they did:
> And the policy has not led to a decrease in student scores as some speculated: Last year’s 8th-grade Algebra I students had similar pass rates as those in years prior, the district said, with 95% of Hispanic students passing the test and 76% meeting grade-level proficiency; 91% of Black students passing and 65% meeting grade level and 95% of English learner students passing the state exam and 74% meeting grade level.
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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?
I think you can ignore the transportation part, if for no other reason than impracticality - not all districts offer effective or workable transportation now. I'd suggest that additional funding for special education, on a per student basis could be based on some sort of disability index, whereas the more services they require gets the district more money. Ideally some formula that is a mix of numbers based on local…
No. Why should I accept less from a private school when the public school already guarantees it? This is incredibly important for special needs students and families.
> I'd suggest that additional funding for special education...
This already happens. In part, it depends on the state and county. Schools get more money for special needs students. I'm fine with them getting more money, but let's not pretend that the school receives the same funding for special-needs and non-special needs students.
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You've gotten a whole lot of replies that seem to miss your point, but I'd say that I've experienced that exact thing - to get to Calc in your senior year you needed to have gotten on a very specific track of math courses back in middle school, and likely your parents needed to know about it to make sure you got in. Otherwise, what appeared to be a very inconsequential choice at middle school actually decided your en…
> it's a pretty common joke how virtually inapplicable calc is to us If you think calculus is not important to software development than you are not bothering to look. Just a few examples: - Calculus was the first math class I took that gave a clear definition of what a "function" really is. Do you use functions? - Analyzing the properties of functions to see what operations made sense to do or not (e.g. continuous v…
Half of what you listed isn't really Calculus at all: for comparison my highschool taught functions, continuous vs discontinuous, rates of change, and topographic maps in Math classes which happened years before taking Calculus. Then the Calc class was like 70% memorizing "whats the integral of cosecant?", was which I think we should be able to agree is absurdly useless even for people who actively work in a math-heavy field.
I suspect this form of calculus is what people are responding to when they say calc is useless; they should be teaching the things you're saying (including how to think about functions) and e.g. introducing Euler's method getting into what happens when your step size become arbitrarily small are all useful things to a broader set of people, but the actual implementation of Calculus classes in practice is instead entirely useless trivia that provides almost no insights if you wanted to do any of the things in your comment.
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> The move has dramatically increased participation among traditionally marginalized children This program may or may not be a fantastic idea, but "participation" is about the worst possible metric for measuring the overall impact of a mandatory program. Are these children having better overall life and educational outcomes from this? Are they taking time and energy away from classes they want to pursue to struggle i…
If you would have read the article then you would know the answer to this: > Before the change, three times as many White students as Black students enrolled in honors math; after the change, it was less than twice as many. Not perfect equity, but progress in that direction. > But did all these new students actually learn the honors math? Yes, indeed they did: > And the policy has not led to a decrease in student sco…
> For instance, they claimed that "Last year’s 8th-grade Algebra I students had similar pass rates as those in years prior" but the word "similar" is subjective. How about showing all of the stratified data in chronological order to make that determination for oneself? Did pass rates for the state test go from say 99% and reduce due to this? They don't mention the White race pass rates before and after this change, for example.
> The racial groups listed are Black, Hispanic, White, and Other. What is other? Are they Asians? That seems like the only place they'd fit, but the participation of "Other" before and after this change seems low for that group.
> This data tells us nothing about how the teachers are approaching teaching their courses in light of this change. Do they stop going over valuable material solely to focus teaching kids how to pass a state test so their metrics look good? (Is that what matters for their funding, by the way?) Are class sizes increasing or decreasing to make this change logistically work?
> Additionally, as I am not an educator from Texas, I don't know for certain, but the test itself seems rather dumbed down if a large portion of kids are passing it, but aren't meeting their grade level. Doesn't it raise an eyebrow that 91% of Black kids are passing the test, but only 65% of them are meeting their grade level?
> The article doesn't clarify if all Texas students take this test or just honors students, but it would be illuminating to see pass rates of this test in that school district from different groups before and after that change. If 95% of Hispanic students in this honors program are passing that test in this district after this change, what was the pass rate of Hispanics before that change?
Again, I'm not saying that this is necessarily a bad program. It might be quite a good idea to really raise educational standards and force kids into tougher math programs. But the focus solely on "racial participation" makes this very suspect to me.
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They address that in the article: tutoring. One on one tutoring works amazingly well. I used to volunteer as a tutor. The students I worked with accelerated drastically. It's simply a matter of money. They do leave out some things: food + shelter. Many poor students have problems with nutrition and safe shelter, both of which make learning near impossible. The metro area I'm in is a perfect example of this. We have t…
They don't really address it: tutoring is OBVIOUS, everyone knows that tutoring works. The reason they are applying this measure is because tutoring is not doable. > We don't need to dumb down anything. We need to raise everyone up by investing in education. And we can also give poney to every kids.That's a nice thought but that is so deconnected from reality, which means that you are pushing for something that will…
Why? It's always appeared available on an opt-in basis as far as I can remember. It should be possible to drastically expand this through various means, outside of standard classroom hours.
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At it's very foundation liberal ideology cracks pretty badly if "Everyone is born equally capable" is false.
The entire point of liberal ideology is to gather a variety of viewpoints because we accept that everyone is not born equal. That doesn't make some people better than others, they just bring different skills to the table.
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Even better idea: Kids just work at thier own pace and don't graduate until they complete all work successfully. Anything else is just a diploma mill.
who is going to fund that? it's not just education its subsidized day care, and "it gets done when it gets done" is going to either result in a lot of 20 year old Seniors -- who are still on taxpayer funded schooling -- or else the bar gets lowered to push these kids through fast albeit at their own fast pace.
I could have graduated by 12 if they just let me go at the material, instead they had me drop out, in frustration at being forced to work at the pace of the stupidest and laziest, before returning to do exactly what I describe through an alternative education program which cost the system 5x as much per student as main track... and that without addressing that it would likely be cheaper due to fundamentally fewer teachers required per student as the teacher wouldn't be babysitting study hall like they are now but instead focused exclusively on the acts of teaching and grading.
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So shouldn't the solution be to get kids from lower economic groups into those classes? Rather than stop teaching anyone? The solution you're proposing takes away any chance of accessing these advanced classes for lower economic groups, and keeps the economic inequality moving. What happens when the low income kids test out of the remedial class? Oh well, they're just done with school then? > Every upper-class parent…
No, that would be focusing on the advanced poor kids who need less help. I'm OK with that and no it doesn't keep inequality moving. Yes, done with school. Read a book, or go to work, or just hang out. Read whatever you want, you're just concern trolling.