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US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

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Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#791

Post by OhMeadhbh »

Aurornis wrote: post #764
OhMeadhbh wrote: post #755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> The purpose of education past 8th grade is to keep young people out of the job market. If not for that pesky education system we could all be hiring fully capable 14 year olds into our empty job postings! Of course, they might have trouble getting to the workplace. Or doing anything that benefits from a high school education. Maybe shuttle them to the mines?

There's no reason we can't give 9th graders drivers licenses. Shuttling them would cost money. They should drive themselves.

[As a reminder, this is a thread that is using sarcasm to advocate for a thing opposite of what is explicitly stated. Or at least I think it is.]

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#792

Post by [deleted] »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #785
fooqux wrote: post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume if AI does come in, it won't be replacing those "geniuses running things now". They'll be fine; it's all the teachers who will be replaced. They're expensive, and all that money can go towards more sports!

If you think education is expensive, you should try ignorance.

[deleted]

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#793

Post by [deleted] »

Spivak wrote: post #732
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt that most highschool football teams make a profit. I would be surprised if ticket sales even cover the cost of the staff working the game.

Then you didn't go to a football school. We had a multi-million dollar stadium that could hold a thousand-ish fans and it was packed every game. Most of them were season ticket holders. We also raked in $$ from other schools who wanted to host their events using our stadium. Also none of the people working the game are paid except for the ref (and the TV crew if you have one). It's all volunteers and students. Our pr…

[deleted]

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#794

Post by coryrc »

brewdad wrote: post #395
weitendorf wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racial achievement gap is probably one of the most significant problems educators in the US think about. I think one of the biggest obstacles to improving it (not causing the problem, but making solutions difficult or ineffective) is that low-performing urban school districts tend to correlate strongly with strong teachers' unions and big, mismanaged school administrations where things are too bureaucratic and in…

At least near me the biggest problems facing the "urban" district compared to suburban ones is declining student populations as long time homeowners age in place and the maintenance costs of 100 year old buildings compared to 10-20 year old ones in the suburbs. Teachers tend to get paid the same or less in the city district and administration counts are higher but fairly close on a per student basis compared to the b…

Every urban district I'm familiar with has higher per-pupil funding than ~90th percentile suburban areas. (Seattle versus suburbs, Detroit versus smaller towns)

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#795

Post by spogbiper »

scythe wrote: post #708
whoiskevin wrote: post #684

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

It's not that simple: https://archive.ph/wyFT0 >This year the federal government reimbursed most schools between 77 cents and $4.58 per lunch meal >[...] >“You’re wasting white milk and money,” wrote Ben, who identified himself as a fourth grader. “Another reason you should bring back chocolate milk is because students are super MAD.” Anyone who has ever bought a lunch knows that you can't get something that's health…

I could actually put together a lot of healthy great tasting meals for $4.50 a serving when cooking for 100s of students at a time. At $0.77, probably not.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#796

Post by growingkittens »

raincole wrote: post #667
Aurornis wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However,the United States, particularly in the last 50 years, seems to have fostered a culture averse to education. I always find it interesting that the anti-schooling mentality is so prevalent here on HN, too. It’s most obvious in threads about cheating, where a popular topic of discussion is to defend cheating as a rational reaction because school doesn’t matter, a degree is “just a piece of paper”, and you’ll l…

While HN users have various backgrounds, I suppose programmers make up quite a large proportion of this community. Programmers are generally more anti-schooling, at least anti-college for a good reason. It's one of the high-paying jobs where a degree is optional in modern days. It's also one of the few fields where the best resources are not gatekept.

They're anti-college because of general education classes, which get in the way of the making money part or seem useless to their specialty.

Einstein had a few things to say about this. [1]

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1952/10/05/archives/einstein-stresse...

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#797

Post by sleepyguy »

monkeyelite wrote: post #719
Rooster61 wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The joke about football is often made but they pay for it, because people use it. This is not a joke. At all. There are a LOT of high schools that actively prioritize football facilities over education. I grew up in one. It's very frustrating, and that's coming from someone who DID play football.

At my school the kids asked for donations to fund their equipment and they brought in money on the games for their budget. But once again… students and community use football. They do not use high school libraries.

The the big ironies of North Texas school districts — taxpayers foot the bill for those multimillion-dollar stadiums, turf fields, courts, and gyms, but the second class is out, the gates get locked like it’s Fort Knox. Meanwhile, kids are dodging cars in the street because they can’t set foot on the pristine facilities their parents literally paid for.

It’s not even just a summer thing — a lot of districts have blanket “no public use” policies year-round. They’ll cite liability, vandalism, or “preservation of facilities” as the reason, but the result is the same: empty fields, fenced-off courts, and taxpayers staring at what they bought but can’t touch.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#798

Post by fooqux »

monkeyelite wrote: post #716
inetknght wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why would the school entangle students with a task to be performed by professional vendors. Why pay a vendor to do it when you can get the students to do it for free?

Because of legal problems if the job is performed improperly or someone is injured. This is basic administration. Also once again, this sounds like what someone would imagine they did in wood shop if they never took wood shop.

> Because of legal problems if the job is performed improperly or someone is injured. This is basic administration.

You do know what goes on in wood shop class right? Some light demolition is nothing compared to the power tools they'll be using soon.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#799

Post by repeekad »

rayiner wrote: post #772
jmpman wrote: post #693

My son is taking a woodworking class in high school. First week, he came home and I asked him what he was doing in his woodworking class… “Disassembling the library bookcases”. “Why???” “Because they’re getting rid of the library”. Apparently the school board decided to save money by cutting the librarian, and then decided to just move the books out of the school library and into the “nearby” public library. In reali…

[flagged]

Stereotyping white students as already fine and thus undeserving of any attention contributed this cultural mess in the first place, JD Vance wrote a book about white American struggles and now he’s VP.

The school district might be primarily white, it’s more clearly likely poor and rural, and the electoral college values it more than dense educated rich cities.

Re: US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

#800

Post by Capricorn2481 »

somenameforme wrote: post #459
rayiner wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural low population states actually have pretty good test scores: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/profiles/stateprofile?sfj=...

That's an understatement. Sort that by at or above basic and the top 5 states in the US are: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Utah, Wisconsin.

You can almost guarantee test scores in Minnesota and Wisconsin are being carried by the cities and suburbs, not rural areas. They have some of the best (and most expensive) schools in the country, and the highest test scores.
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