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Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#511

Post by thot_experiment »

borski wrote: post #448
jobs_throwaway wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give teachers authority again. It shouldn't be their problem if a student wants to fail the class.

The problem is that just like students, teachers are not all created equal. My 3rd grade teacher wanted to fail me for “discipline” problems. In reality, she simply didn’t like me; I had no discipline complaints in other years. I had undiagnosed ADHD and was gifted. She did not know how to deal with that, and actively disliked me. Activist teachers are also a thing.

Crazy that such a load bearing job isn't better funded and more respected. Arguably the most important job in society and the level of respect, pay and to some extent training (at least a lot of places require a masters for what that's worth) is absolutely not commensurate with it's importance.

I dropped out of high school for the same reason, I had a teacher that failed me for writing an essay in three different styles of handwriting, and it just broke me. I wasn't a particularly good student, and I especially had a habit of just not doing essays, but I was making an effort to make it through the humanities and get my shit together, and to have that effort rewarded with a 0/100 just made me view the entire system as an absolute joke. I have a more nuanced take now, but it's still impossible to wrap my head around how comfortable people are with the education system here.

Society is made of people, people! You live in a society. Why do we not want the foundational atoms of it to be the best they can be? It just seems so obvious and simple and non controversial.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#512

Post by zahlman »

jazzpush2 wrote: post #157
kleiba2 wrote: post #28

I used to teach high school math. There was a big push for doing everything digitally. And admittedly, for some topics the use of technology in the classroom or at home can really be a benefit, for instance visualizations or interactive exercises. But having a digital device in class was the number one cause of distraction every time. For a lot of things, good old blackboards are just fine as are pen + paper exercise…

I had the opposite experience, as it were, teaching in the UC system. The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem. Most of the students were always great. But it seemed like every quarter, there would be 5-10 problematic students whose, for lack of better term, entitlement, resulted in far more hours of work than worthwhile. And don't get me started on the false disa…

> The politics were mostly fine, but the students, especially those post-COVID, were the problem.

I'm not sure this distinction can be made, really.

> And don't get me started on the false disability claims (see [0] for a taste). If you even verbalize questioning one, you're eligible for discrimination.

Case in point. It's exactly because of the politics both that the students feel empowered to make those claims, and that the culture suppressing that questioning exists.

> I had a student claim...

Again, this is the student expressing the politics in question.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#513

Post by kyboren »

eunos wrote: post #26

It's very astonishing that sometime I heard folks with very high SAT including math /science/programming accolades failed to get admission in UCs but you have severe math deficit like this.

But were those folks members of politically desirable racial groups? Or were they Asian?

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#514

Post by j_w »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #413
j_w wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the "sucky" schools are statistically where poor people go to school, which statistically is where minorities go to school. School choice is bad because the only people who benefit from school choice are already wealthy - they can afford to transport their child to the school of their choice.

I am all for helping the worse off. However, one of the most repulsive ideas is that you can cripple everyone else, because some people have less. This is slave morality and the logic of ressentiment and envy. It is also profoundly immoral. Never mind that this approach condemns everyone to a state of perpetual mediocrity, and the poor will always be with us. Mind you, how much you value education is to a large degre…

> However, one of the most repulsive ideas is that you can cripple everyone else, because some people have less.

When did I say that I'm in any way pro crippling other students? I'm simply pointing out the socioeconomic reality of school performance.

Comments like yours are vile. Brimming with vitriol.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#515

Post by undeveloper »

throwawaypath wrote: post #421
WarmWash wrote: post #159

Why do we have such an easy time accepting peoples intrinsic athletic ability and such a difficult time accepting people's intrinsic mental ability? To me this is a 1:1 comparison, but people lose their mind when I make the comparison. College isn't for everyone just like amateur league sport isn't for everyone. I feel like I am going to a minor league baseball game and seeing a shortstop on the field with the motor…

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#516

Post by firesteelrain »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #392
firesteelrain wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system is working as designed. If they don’t want to provide remedial then they need some pre-admission test to weed them out. The students can try again later after maturing more or taking community college classes.

Right? That's what the source article is about, the UC faculty would like to resume using the SAT and ACT as pre-admissions tests.

I am more saying that isn’t enough. You can get a sufficient SAT/ACT score and still need remedial training

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#517

Post by throwaway27448 »

tracker1 wrote: post #489
throwaway27448 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The bottom 75th percentile don't advance humanity to nearly the same level. Who do you think produces all the value in the world? It's not the people organizing the labor, it's the goddamn laborers. > Do you think you'd have the internet or iPads if everyone was capped to the 75th percentile? No. What do you think we would be eating if we left the world up to the rich nerds? We would have starved many millennia ago…

I said specifically "advance humanity" ... simple labor doesn't advance humanity. It's absolutely necessary, but it also doesn't require a college education. Advancing humanity is coming up with cures for disease, or inventing useful things. We manage to feed the world with a fraction of the labor it once took to do so. It wasn't the common laborer that came up with solutions that effectively eliminated food scarcity…

I'm not a big fan of the myth of progress, so your pleas are falling on deaf ears. I see no reason to prioritize the education of the rich in our public schools

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#518

Post by redsocksfan45 »

avidiax wrote: post #184
pseudalopex wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They defined equity as Fair outcomes, treatment, and opportunities for all students.[1] [1] https://www.cde.ca.gov/qs/ea/

What is a "fair" outcome? Is it easier to hold back talented students with a low bar or push untalented ones to a higher bar?

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Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#519

Post by Catloafdev »

freediddy wrote: post #412
Catloafdev wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is absurdly problematic. Your solution is basically handicapping the schools with kids that perform worse and then potentially closing them? That doesn't solve the problem, this is just pro-Charter School propaganda that ignores the real-world effects of these positions. You've identified a real issue with the 'equality' vs 'equity' concept, that doesn't lead to 'Close public schools and switch everything to Cha…

You don't live in the Bay Area. Schools around the Bay Area are closing, especially in rich areas like Saratoga and Cupertino. That's because parents who can afford it are moving their children to private schools because of exactly what the OP was saying. Schools are incentivized to focus on struggling kids because test scores are how teachers and schools are evaluated. The kids at the high end of the class are liter…

I'm not saying it isn't in your personal best interest to consider switching your kids out of public schooling. The problem is that the public schools need to be fixed, not abandoned.

There's a difference between "I choose to send my family to Charter schools because the public schools are in bad condition" and "we should close down public schools rather than fix them to make room for more profit in the child education industry"

Fixing public education is the boring, slow, difficult, real-world answer. Privatizing education further is just adding fuel to the fire.

Re: Citing 'severe' math deficits, UC faculty demand a return to SAT tests for STEM

#520

Post by throwaway27448 »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #456
throwaway27448 wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of them are in AP classes. let's not pretend our methods of sorting kids into castes makes any sense. Let's be honest: this is about money and attention, and you want to grind the poor kids into dust

It's not about money, you're the one who just thinks about money. Maybe, by your logic, if someone gave you $100 now, you'd become smarter and look wider... but probably not. Sorting into better highschools and worse ones, and better classes and worse was done even back in my times, in what used to be yugoslavia, with communism, red stars and a dictator. You want better kids to excell as much as they can, and you wan…

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