Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education • Hacker News Board

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#51

Post by ameminator » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:03 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

HDThoreaun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like they're…

> Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. If you kick out the problematic students, the only students you have left are easy to teach non-problematic students. > and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so your results will…

I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. Maybe the public school system is failing its students. However, it always seemed unfair to trap parents who would otherwise have other options in a failing system. Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their obligation to their children?

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#52

Post by loughnane » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:04 PM UTC

I spent Kindergarten to 4th grade on Hanscom A.F.B. near Lexington, MA. I didn't appreciate it at the time, but it hindsight it had lots going for it:

- No such thing as unemployment

- A strong community (Hanscom was also a small, walk-to-school) neighborhood

- The schools were indeed good (had several computers in the 2nd grade classroom in 1992).

There is a self-selecting element to it though; if you lose your job you're out of the community. The line between personal problems and professional problems---I came to find out later---is much blurrier than in the "real world". Also health care is crazy cheap.

I don't know if it could, or should, scale society wide. The social benefits are nice, but the authoritarian bent isn't.

Neat article though, gets you thinking.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#53

Post by dwater » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:06 PM UTC

HDThoreaun wrote: post #29

colechristensen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care? By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of them are special needs and they at least have a path for what people want to do with them, even if special education doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least an answer to "what should we do?". But what should we do with the rest?

It's a very important question. I don't have the answer. What I do know is that forcing underprivileged students to attend schools that cause them to fear for their safety or even life is inhumane. Charter schools are solving that in my district.

Based on your previous comment, the remaining 3/4 of students are all murderers, criminals, deviants, disabled, or with parents who aren’t concerned with their education; or some of those 3/4 of students are somewhere in the middle but had their educations diminished by the removal of the better behaved students.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#54

Post by wnoise » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:09 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

HDThoreaun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like they're…

> Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. If you kick out the problematic students, the only students you have left are easy to teach non-problematic students. > and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so your results will…

It's partially selection bias, yes.

But that's not the entire story. It's also the fact that not having to deal with the terrible kids helps the remaining kids. Fewer class disruptions. Less slowing down the class to pretend to let the slowest and least motivated keep up. Etc.

This comes at the cost of concentrating the troublemakers in other places, making them far worse for normal kids stuck there.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#55

Post by nosequel » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

This got touched on by a few replies, happy to see there are some others here with actual military experience chiming in.

I grew up on military bases, and went to schools both on and off base for 18 years. All continental US bases typically have elementary-level (K-5) school, but you typically go to an off-base school for middle and high school. When you are overseas, this isn't the case, you would most likely go to school on base K-12.

I think the article gets right a lot of things, but as some other's mentioned there are also things it doesn't catch. There are still bad kids on base, who do tons of drugs, commit crimes, cheat, steal, whatever. These kids are in every population. One huge difference between on base schools and off, is if you got in trouble at school, your sponsor's (Mom/Dad whoever is the active duty in the family) CO (commanding officer) gets informed. This can lead to a tongue lashing at the least, and at the most your sponsor can get passed up on the next promotion list or demoted. Kids would get caught selling drugs, they would get suspended and then their Dad or Mom would usually make their life a living hell for a while. It would turn most kids around pretty quickly.

The worst one I know about first hand was a group of kids on base in California (a very remote base btw) had a little theft ring of the base exchange (BX, like target/walmart on base). The MP's found out about it, watched them work for a while, then arrested all of the kids. They were high schoolers, probably 15-17. I think 4 got caught. The result was each of their families were kicked off base, no longer able to live in free base housing. As stated elsewhere, military families aren't paid well at all, so now these families had to move off base and rent a house. Once again, this was a super remote base, and it was easily a 35 min drive from main base to the nearest housing off base. I will tell you the rest of our school suddenly got really well behaved for the rest of the year.

Once again, I think the NYT touched on most of the reasons schools were generally better, but to me discipline was a huge factor. You typically didn't have that one shithead in your class ruining it for everyone else.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#56

Post by zeroCalories » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:12 PM UTC

ethbr1 wrote: post #30

zeroCalories wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those have multiplicative effects. Good home/parents make students more motivated, good teachers are able to work well with motivated students, capable classrooms are able to handle more demanding classes. I don't suspect socioeconomic integration matters here though if everyone is getting the same treatment. Standardization is also good when we see wildly different results in different classrooms. Harder to d…

This. Mother and family spent careers in early childhood education. - In order for learning to happen, kids have to be non-disruptive. - In order for kids to be non-disruptive, they have to have their basic needs met: safety, food, stability, etc. - In order for a kid's basic needs to be met, there has to be a source of income and time to care for them. Absent that chain of dependencies, young children are in no stat…

Yeah I have family in education too and it's a sad reality that schools just can't help most students because they come from broken homes. There are marginal improvements you can make like providing free lunch and good after school activities, but an actual solution would require other fundamental problems to be solved in society, or a radical reimagining of public education.

On a more nutty note, for the possible reforms I've heard of everything from public boarding schools so kid don't have to spend time in their bad home, to firing all teachers and paying children for testing well.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#57

Post by tomohawk » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #22

HDThoreaun wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like they're…

The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care? By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of them are special needs and they at least have a path for what people want to do with them, even if special education doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least an answer to "what should we do?". But what should we do with the rest?

Maybe find something more effective than public schools at turning them around. Their track record certainly indicates a different approach is needed.

Just because the kids happen to be in government run schools, that doesn't mean that an effective intervention into their lives can be performed there.

Schools should be about education, not solving all of society's ills. It is intolerable that one child who disrupts the education environment should be able to prevent so many others from learning. Take the child out of the situation so the others can learn and then figure out what's going on.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#58

Post by sandworm101 » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #8

I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the worst performing kids. Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pic…

>> the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees.

>> There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized.

Have you looked at what US Army privates are actually paid? And I can tell you that there will be LOTS of single-parent households too. Lots of drug addicted parents/kids. The army isn't what it seen in the recruiting posters. it is a large community of young people with basically the same problems as any other group. There are some differences, parents are generally "employed", but there are also specific difficulties like absent mother/fathers and near-constant movements to new schools as young parents bounce between postings.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#59

Post by femiagbabiaka » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:17 PM UTC

ameminator wrote: post #51

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. If you kick out the problematic students, the only students you have left are easy to teach non-problematic students. > and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. It isn't mysterious: you selected the best students, so your results will…

I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. Maybe the public school system is failing its students. However, it always seemed unfair to trap parents who would otherwise have other options in a failing system. Yes, this does suck for the children of uncaring parents - but for the parents who DO care, shouldn't they have a means of meeting their obligation…

Simplistic arguments like this are one of the more annoying parts of the rhetoric of charter school advocates. It assumes that all charter schools are of high quality and that making education yet another thing that is economically stratified in the US is good. It’s ok to say that things that sound nice like choice in education can have knock on effects that are bad for society.

Very few things in this world are purely good.

Re: Schools for children of military achieve results rarely seen in public education

#60

Post by ryan93 » Thu, Oct 12, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

Spinnaker_ wrote: post #8

I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the worst performing kids. Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pic…

You are purposefully avoiding the well known fact the military only draws from the top 70% of the intelligence distribution according to the AFQT.