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Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

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Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#71

Post by mcntsh »

hobs wrote: post #49
mcntsh wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the 2020 IRS tax report, the top 1% of American earners pay 42% of all income taxes, the top 10% of earners pay 74%. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf In California, property tax revenue has been increasing steadily YoY... a $3.2Bn increase in 2020 alone. https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf

Hey look, numbers that don't mean what the person said. What percentage of their wealth do they pay? What are their effective tax rates compared to the working class? Why are capital gains taxes so much less than most income taxes? Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so? Which one of those groups can afford lawyers to structure their incomes to pay even less? The rich are not paying…

> Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so

I believe it actually stops at around 700k for married couples and 575k for singles.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#72

Post by Auracle »

registeredcorn wrote: post #19

What kind of child wouldn't want to get up at an unreasonable early hour, to go to a building designed with factory work in mind, to memorize debatably worthwhile information, in a suffocating environment, around other children that they may or may not get along with? It's so strange to think that they would want to instead learn online, when that's not only possible, but feasible. Let's find someone/something to bla…

Honestly, if they just started school later than would probably help more than any other factor.

It blows my mind that people still don’t realize the teenagers are biologically wired to go to bed significantly later than everyone else. Just the other week I was at a combo preschool/parent education thing and they were talking about sleep. The educator complained about her teenagers not wanting to go bed at 9pm and blamed it on screens.

That’s like telling adults they need to be in bed at 5pm or earlier. Can you force yourself to adapt? Kind of. Is it anywhere near ideal? Hell no.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#73

Post by IggleSniggle »

barry-cotter wrote: post #61
IggleSniggle wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that if they put the same money into their public school that they do into the private schools, they'd get even more superior outcomes than they do from funding private schools. I'm a comparatively wealthy parent, I've bothered to look at the data, and I'm sending my kids to public schools. I really don't believe it's about giving their kids a better education, because the studies pretty consistently show that…

> Except that if they put the same money into their public school that they do into the private schools, they'd get even more superior outcomes than they do from funding private schools. No, they wouldn’t. Schools have extremely small effects on student learning, if that[1]. Private schools buy a safer, more class homogeneous environment which is worth a lot but you can get the same effect by living in the right subu…

A great deal of the positive effect of a public school is that you end up with a less homogeneous group of peers, imho.

At any rate, I've seen that data and think it's perfectly applicable to what I was saying. My argument wasn't really about the spend on "the school" per se, but more that the resources could be better spent on the behalf of students if it wasn't directed to a private school, whether that's spend on the community environment or specifically on the students themselves (like with tutoring, or sponsoring a club). Directing money towards a private school is counterproductive to both the individual and the wellbeing of your own community. This does assume day-schools. Boarding schools are an entirely separate beast, and I don't have a strong sense of why parents choose them, despite having taught at one for a few years. Mastery learning can be applied in any setting. The thing that remains is, do you teach your student how the world is, or how act in order to be enculturated into an elite "in" group? I would argue that the former can confer the benefits of the later, but that the reverse is much harder.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#74

Post by beepbooptheory »

Amezarak wrote: post #28
smcg wrote: post #4

The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame…

America does have big problems with public education, but funding is not it. Even grossly underperforming schools are often funded at per-student rates well above the OECD average and even the US average. It's a frequent talking point in the US that underperforming schools are simply underfunded because they're in poor areas and thus don't get enough property taxes, but that's not what the data actually shows. For ex…

Isn't occam's razor here that, in fact, these enormous sums of money are not going to education? Like that this is all strong evidence of bureaucratic misappropriation, corruption, text book companies, etc? Or at least, I struggle to think of what other reasonable point one could make about the insight.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#75

Post by cbruns »

seanw444 wrote: post #57
wholesomepotato wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like some choice who brainwashes my kids. Are they going to learn about men being pregnant and go to a drag show or that god created earth 5 thousand years ago. Maybe i could even alternate every year so they are "well rounded".

Did homeschooling just fall off the face of the planet? Stop sending your kids to these kinds of schools. Take the initiative to be learned enough to teach your kids at least the fundamentals, and then instill in them the drive to want to learn more. It's made much easier with the advent of the internet. And someone's probably going to respond "but muh socialization!" In what other real-life scenario are you going to…

But muh full time job and two-income economy..

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#76

Post by tnel77 »

GoldenRacer wrote: post #24
mcntsh wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too.

> The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education They didn't say sending kids to private school was a way to actively defund public education just that wealthy parents do both which is true. What's your motivation to vote and support politicians that advocate for better funded public schools when it doesn't effect your kids but raises your taxes?

Do you participate in society? Do you interact with other people? Better schools could help make that a more pleasant experience.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#77

Post by EA-3167 »

simonsarris wrote: post #26
smcg wrote: post #4

The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame…

> continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes This is so provably false that I'm amazed anyone could have this opinion. The US spends huge amounts on education. More than almost any country. Neither education spending nor property taxes have declined. Government current expenditures: Education https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA Personal Current Tax Receipts: State and Local G…

In fact by the metric of "per student spending" the US is #2 in the world.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#78

Post by seanw444 »

cbruns wrote: post #75
seanw444 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did homeschooling just fall off the face of the planet? Stop sending your kids to these kinds of schools. Take the initiative to be learned enough to teach your kids at least the fundamentals, and then instill in them the drive to want to learn more. It's made much easier with the advent of the internet. And someone's probably going to respond "but muh socialization!" In what other real-life scenario are you going to…

But muh full time job and two-income economy..

I didn't say it would be easy.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#79

Post by zaphar »

GoldenRacer wrote: post #63
c22 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you'd like to see the public school system improve so your grandchildren can attend it? Maybe you just want assurance that the serfs flipping your burgers can accurately read the sanitization instructions on their equipment? People are all different and their motivations are complex. Not everyone is angling for ultimate personal advantage and maximum externalization of downside, even amongst the wealthy.

Sure, hypothetically. It's just not what I'm seeing the wealthy parents in the town I grew up in doing. Most of them are fighting for school vouchers so they can divert money from public schools into their private schools.

Continuing to poor money into a system that isn't working isn't a solution to the problem.

School vouchers offer the potential to poor that money into a system that is working instead. Maybe that richer parent is trying to help not hinder other parents. Public schools appear to be fundamentally broken in many communities. More money won't fix that brokenness. Firing a bunch of teachers and administrators might work but good luck getting that to happen with the current state of education unions. Enabling parents to put their money into systems that aren't broken is a reasonable alternative to that.

Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

#80

Post by ballenf »

willcipriano wrote: post #5
smcg wrote: post #4

The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame…

That's why we need school choice, give the working poor the same opportunity to abandon the public schools like the wealthy have.

How many strong WFH advocates are anti school-from-home? The anti-SFH sentiment seems to come from antagonism to which groups have been the first to adopt it, but I'm sure my bias affects my interpretation.
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