Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Homeschooling hits record numbers

reason.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 878 posts

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#151

Post by buellerbueller »

Brendinooo wrote: post #91
mcphage wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It says something about a system dedicated to teaching children when parents think they can do as well or better. 6% of American think they can beat a grizzly bear in a fight. That says absolutely nothing about the bear, and says a lot about how misinformed people are.

This is why it's useful to look up stats when we have them. For example, homeschooled students do better on the ACT than public school kids. https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info... Obviously the schooling venue itself isn't the only factor here, but if you think homeschooling a kid is worth an analogy to fighting grizzlies, might be worth a reframe.

I suspect there is a lot of selection bias in that data. My hypothesis is that the homeschooled folks who take the ACT are more likely to do well on the ACT than the homeschooled folks who don't.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#152

Post by SauntSolaire »

csb6 wrote: post #96
csense wrote: post #7

Anecdotally, two factors at work here: - Schools have stopped educating in favor of test metrics, making sure the worst students pass, and pushing borderline indoctrination of controversial, left-ish values. - With remote education during the pandemic, people have more visibility into their school's day-to-day teaching. It's hard to fix the US education system by political means. If you have the ability to do so, it'…

[flagged]

> In fact, several states will soon require displaying the 10 commandments in public school classrooms, which seems pretty “right-ish” to me.

That tells you way more about the (current) politics of the local government than it does about the politics of the median teacher. It might actually indicate the opposite - no one would go to the effort of mandating pride flags at the school I went to, seeing as they were already hung in every single classroom.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#153

Post by whoaoweird »

bluecalm wrote: post #138
triceratops wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$28k doesn't go as far in San Francisco because of the insane cost of housing and everything else.

If an average class has 20 students it's $560k per year. If an average student gets 1000 hours of schooling per year you can pay 200$/hour and you have spent only just above 1/3 of your budget. It feels like there is more to the story that "$28k doesn't go as far in San Francisco".

[dead]

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#154

Post by buellerbueller »

sanktanglia wrote: post #136
BJones12 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An acquaintance of mine fought (got mauled by) a grizzly bear a month ago. He went to the ICU (since released), but the bear got shot and died. It was a pyrric victory, but he did win the fight.

What a horrible story to share.

I didn't see it as horrible. I saw it as a story of human triumph. And good fortune.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#155

Post by AlotOfReading »

broof wrote: post #78
biophysboy wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parents side with their kids all the time in pass/fail battles; they're not objective. Name the left values; don't beat around the bush. Observing remote education is not good visibility into pre-covid teaching. I think we have a responsibility to have educated citizens.

One example is in high school I had an excellent literature class that also covered a lot of philosophy. It wasn’t until later that I realized that the various philosophies we studied were the philosophies that are often foundational for Marxism, atheism, and general left of center academia. Probably the best class I had in high school but I wish it had also covered things on both sides, or been more transparent that…

It's pretty hard to touch philosophy without covering marxism in some way. Very little of it has anything to do with the family of political ideologies despite sharing a similar name. The question of God's existence is also fundamental to the history of philosophy. It's not particularly shocking that a course might cover people like Lucretius, Bentham, or Russell.

Most philosophy surveys will also include some of the other sides, which you might not even recognize as such. Descartes and Aquinas are fixtures, and Heidegger (notoriously conservative and also a literal Nazi) often features in university level classes. The point isn't to indoctrinate you with any of these viewpoints, it's to teach you how to analyze their arguments and think for yourself.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#156

Post by Brendinooo »

albedoa wrote: post #111
Brendinooo wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it's useful to look up stats when we have them. For example, homeschooled students do better on the ACT than public school kids. https://www.act.org/content/dam/act/unsecured/documents/Info... Obviously the schooling venue itself isn't the only factor here, but if you think homeschooling a kid is worth an analogy to fighting grizzlies, might be worth a reframe.

This is some fascinating insight. Do you think that the things being compared are [homeschooling] and [fighting grizzlies]?

Given the subject of the thread and the comment I replied to: yes?

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#157

Post by SabrinaJewson »

deepfriedchokes wrote: post #20

[flagged]

100%. The school and the Internet are the two places children can encounter opinions different from their parents’ for the first time. With an increase in homeschooling and recent pushes to ban social media for children, it’s clear that critical thinking is going to suffer most. I still have not met someone who was homeschooled who was remotely thankful for it.

Honestly, support for these policies that benefit, more than anyone else, abusive parents, makes me suspicious of people’s motives.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#158

Post by rahimnathwani »

triceratops wrote: post #106
rahimnathwani wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education is expensive and underfunded. Expensive yes. Underfunded depends on where you are. San Francisco's school district has an annual operating budget that equates to $28k per student. I've heard people in San Francisco say that schools here are underfunded. When I ask them how much we spend per student per year, their guess is usually less than half of the actual amount.

$28k doesn't go as far in San Francisco because of the insane cost of housing and everything else.

$28k per student is more than enough to run a school in San Francisco. Let's assume we cannot take advantage of the economies of scale available to SFUSD, and we're running a school with just one classroom: 22 7th graders. That would cost SFUSD $616k ($28k x 22). What would it cost us?

  Teacher (all-in cost):                            $150k
  Teaching assistant:                               $100k
  Rent for commercial space in SF (~1,200 sq ft):    $60k
  Curriculum, books, supplies:                       $23k
  Technology (22 Chromebooks, projector, software):  $18k
  Field trips and enrichment:                        $10k
  Utilities, internet, insurance:                    $27k
  Furniture and equipment:                           $20k
  Admin/legal/accounting:                             $8k
  
  Total:                                            $416k
That leaves $200k unspent.

AND ... these numbers are deliberately conservative. Teachers work ~40 weeks per year, not 52, so the $150k all-in is really $3,750/week - very competitive for SF. The $18k technology budget assumes replacing every Chromebook annually, but they last 3-5 years, so amortized cost is more like $5k/year. The rent estimate of $5k/month assumes market-rate commercial space, but you could find cheaper options in underutilized buildings or negotiate with a church/community center. Furniture lasts decades, not one year. The $1k per student for curriculum and supplies is also high - you're not buying new textbooks every year, and open-source curricula exist.

If you were trying to minimize costs rather than be conservative, you could probably run this one room school house for $350k/year ($16k/student/year).

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#159

Post by BeetleB »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #110
jmathai wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having put 2 kids (10th and 8th grade now) through a couple school options…the socialization in schools is pretty bad. Kids from home schooling families we know are as polite or substantially more polite than those in the school system.

I've always thought that learning how to deal with people who are not as polite, and even kids that are downright scary, is an important aspect of socialization. They'll have to deal with those folks when they hit the real world too.

> I've always thought that learning how to deal with people who are not as polite, and even kids that are downright scary, is an important aspect of socialization.

It is, but do we have any studies showing how well school kids are at this? From what I've seen, most kids in school do not learn those skills.

Re: Homeschooling hits record numbers

#160

Post by buellerbueller »

sparrish wrote: post #82
Yizahi wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor kids :( . Hope the damage won't be lasting for them, at least they did went to proper schools previously and have some basics taught.

I'll gladly stand up my 7 homeschooled kids next to any public school kids. All tested above grade level on state mandatory testing throughout their schooling. Two graduated early (some with college credits). My adult children (4 sons, ages 19-25) have gainful employment, living on their own (2 own their own homes), and standing on their own. One is married (I got a grandkid!), all have friends, communities they're i…

we are discussing on HN. The population of commenters here is likely very different than the homeschooling population.
Post reply on HN