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

nytimes.com

251–260 of 290 posts

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

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only said it 3 times. I don't mean to say that everything should be authoritarian. But to maintain a good school for the students who go to a non-authoritarian school, there still needs to be some degree of punishment, or expulsions. Just like in a non-authoritarian government, people who commit violent crimes still need to be sent to jail for the safety of others. Once away from the others, they can be reformed an…

You've heard of the school to prison pipeline right? https://www.aclu.org/issues/juvenile-justice/juvenile-justic...

Yeah, I sadly only heard about it, not actually witnessed it. It doesn't really work anymore, unfortunately, and criminals are kept alongside normal people for far longer than acceptable.

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

#252
An important thing to take from this is that if you pay your teachers well, and also make sure that all the kids in school have a house (since military folk get housing for their families), and at least one parent is paid well, then the kids do well (and don’t write run on sentences like me).

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

#253

Public school teacher here. Public schools have been in a downward slide for decades. If you want to know what's wrong, just brace yourself and ask a teacher. Alas, many people want to believe it's the teachers' fault, and so rarely bother to ask the teachers. Or, failing that, people think it's just that teachers aren't paid enough and think more money will fix the problems (more money would be nice, but that's not…

So what is the real problem, pray tell?

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

#254
post #7

The article suggests several causes: 1. Bias in population - these students all have families where at least one parent has a stable job, which isn't true elsewhere. There could also be other factors, for instance maybe people who enter the military are more motivated on average and that genetically or through parenting is passed on to their kids. 2. Better funding 3. Frequent feedback to teachers and more methodical…

I spent time in the US military many years ago. From my sample size of one: 1) This is population bias and self-selection. Everyone I met in the service was extremely patriotic and wanted to succeed in everything. Many came from desperately poor backgrounds and saw the service as their way to the middle class. Those who joined for other reasons were quickly forced out. At the time, when people asked me what my job wa…

>3) Teaching. The military does things by the book. Many books. Thousands of pages. Most of which is bull shit. The military makes up for it through sheer determination.

>4) Racial integration. Hmmmm. The US military at least has a huge problem with racism, sexism, all kinds of isms.

There is something to be said for applying 3 to help fix 4 through, as you said, "sheer determination". Frank da Cruz, the creator of Columbia Kermit, tells in his autobiography online of how when he was in the Army in Germany in the 1960s he saw white sergeants lecturing soldiers in deep Southern accents on the evils of race prejudice.

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

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please also consider: removing the one or two severely disruptive students from a classroom results in drastically better education for the 20+ students who remain, which is likely a benefit to society at large. Based on my own education, a public school where every single day the same 1 or 2 students disrupted the lesson, assaulted nearby students and forced the teachers to waste hours on maintaining order rather th…

> Please also consider: removing the one or two severely disruptive students from a classroom results in drastically better education for the 20+ students who remain, which is likely a benefit to society at large. Charter schools aren't needed for that though. Public schools are supposed to already be doing it. Either in the form of escalating detentions/suspensions followed by expulsion, or by moving the most proble…

>Public schools are supposed to already be doing it. Either in the form of escalating detentions/suspensions followed by expulsion, or by moving the most problematic kids into emotional/behavioral disability classrooms/schools, or in the worst cases sending the children to hospitals and group homes.

The problem is that public schools can't do those things, for various political and social reasons. So the charter school thing is a workaround.

>If public schools aren't doing this, there needs to be changes in administration,

Again, this is a political problem, since administrators are picked by the local government. There's only so much administrators can do anyway. Ultimately, the whole thing seems to be a political and a cultural problem.

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

#256

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…

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 peers part is badly overlooked a lot is talked about how asian countries seem to have a better education system. But overlook the most important part of the education system in asia. The filtering that happens first by school where the top student go to particular schools then even in each grade the students are divided in class by how how good they are.

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

#257
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another factor is that the military parents have cleared a bar of pre-enlistment testing (ASVAB?) that has strong correlations with IQ testing.

maybe on the officer level, but you don't need a particularly high ASVAB score to drive a truck or be a cook.

The colloquial is "drive truck", interestingly!

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

#258

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…

> Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. This is going to require some backing.

Coleman report. Student outcomes are primarily effected by parents, then peers, then, as a distant third, schools and teachers.

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

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I don't understand why offering parents more choices in how their children are taught could be a bad thing. I am going to give my kid all the advantages I can, of course. But...personal optimization != societal optimization. Yes, I can put my kid in a better spot to succeed, but we aren't making progress as a society, things are getting very much worse actually (e.g. income inequality). > Yes, this does suck for th…

So basically the solution is to identify problematic kids very early, then take them away from their parents and put them in institutions to be raised by the state.

Because what you're expecting is for schools to take the place of parenting. If you're going to do that, you might as well just cut the parents and families out of the equation altogether.

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

#260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you kind of just explained why public schools aren't actually competing, at least in poor areas. The issue is that many of the families in these areas do actually care about education, but are unable fix their schools because of others apathy. What should they do?

Organize. Campaign. Reach out to other parents. Name and shame. Apathy is hard to overcome, but most people already want good schools. Even people without kids don't want to be surrounded by uneducated people and don't want to deal with the problems they cause. Making time for local politics is a hard sell, but I've become increasingly convinced that it's our best chance to enact meaningful changes and improve our da…

You need only look at the Moms for Liberty types to see what small but well-organised campaigns can do. If you don't make time for local politics, others will.
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