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Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

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Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#171

Post by mwcampbell »

api wrote: post #17
throwanem wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why can't they extend this to their own country? Because they aren't a cohesive movement and, without someone to hate, could not manage even the rather poor pretense of unity with which they occasionally pretend to care to bother. If they were capable of taking your advice, they wouldn't need it.

You have a good point here, and I'm afraid it's a human universal: humans are tribal and have a hard time forming coalitions and movements without someone to hate. Being "universally woke" would mean not hating anyone, and that makes it hard to unite. We really need an alien invasion. Any Trisolarans listening?

> We really need an alien invasion. Any Trisolarans listening?

Except we shouldn't even hate _them_, because they're sentient beings too. I guess we should only hate the worst aspects of our own nature.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#172

Post by joshka »

pc86 wrote: post #115
aredox wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are strawmanning my argument as I didn't say anything like that. I said that if you are going to evaluate a policy with statistics, you need to compare apples to apples because statistics are easily biased. See this example of a paradox that applies a lot in educational settings: you can raise the average level of two classes just by shuffling students from one to another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Roger…

So explain to me what "eliminating bad data points" in this context means. Should MS schools not hold back failing 3rd graders?

An obvious comparison seems like it would be to compare age cohort rather than grade cohort. Your question confuses a comment on objective methodology with one a more subjective one on the response to that.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#173

Post by derbOac »

bombcar wrote: post #88
derbOac wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I think the phenomenon is interesting and important to be aware of, but the berating political take isn't really that helpful or productive in my opinion — even though it ostensibly attempts to be unbiased in its criticisms. It would have been more productive to dive into what is working and what might be irrelevant, and how it might or might not generalize to other places. There is a kind of implicit spin to it…

My repeated experience has been that the teachers on the ground (actually teaching the classes) know exactly what they'd like to do to improve things, but they instead have to implement whatever new policy has flowed down from who knows where this year or decade. (An actionable example of a policy that parents can implement today is "redshirting" where you hold a child with a late birthday back a year in pre-kinderga…

Yeah I didn't mean to sound condescending toward teachers or educational researchers for that matter. I just meant that I think usually when it gets filtered into policy or curricular discussions at a certain level I feel like the discussions start to be about other things, often unspoken, and things get oversimplified or misused one way or another. Teachers, students, and parents often get overlooked in that process.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#174

Post by hirvi74 »

ch4s3 wrote: post #127
aredox wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proven methods... For what? Acing standardised tests? There is more to live and success than standardised tests. Steve Jobs wasn't a brilliant student with top marks everywhere.

Phonics is well supported by evidence to be the best way to teach children to decode words in English[1]. [1] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/balanced-literacy-phonic...

I wonder if other languages receive greater benefits from phonics than English?

English is wild language with plenty examples of phonetic rules being broken.

Take a simple word like 'rough'. Learning the phonetics doesn't help with the word 'cough'. Neither help with words like 'though' and 'through'.

Words like 'read' and 'lead' cannot be properly pronounced without context clues. Not to mention all the odd-ball words in English like 'colonel'.

I also think location plays a role too. Where I am from, words like 'tin' and 'ten' are not pronounced differently at all [1]. In other parts of the US, that is not the case.

I do not doubt phonics is the best method method for learning to read. All I am saying is that the other methods must truly be abysmal for phonics to be the best.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Englis...

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#175

Post by ianbicking »

sepositus wrote: post #11

I'm still trying to pinpoint exactly why Oregon has some of the worst scores in the country (I believe it ranked dead-last this year when adjusted for socio-economic factors). When I see what's going on around me, I can only think it's somewhat related to broken family's and undisciplined kids. The stuff that my kids come home and tell me is happening in school is pretty mind blowing. I've also noticed a complete rev…

There's definitely a phenomena I've seen especially post-Covid where parents and schools just let a child... not learn. Not attend school, not attend classes. Substitute virtual education which is just a pretend education.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#176

Post by api »

hooverd wrote: post #117
armchairhacker wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's unfair to believe someone wants you dead just because of their origin. There are millions (probably tens of millions) of rural Southerners. Many don't want you dead, but vote red because they don't feel accommodated. Many vote blue. Moreover, when somebody grows up around people who hate a certain group, it's human nature that they'll also develop hatred. What do you do with those people? I believe the best…

Ok, what parts of rural Southern culture aren't being accommodated? The rural way of life is already insanely subsidized.

> The rural way of life is already insanely subsidized.

So is ours:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo

None of this would exist without probably trillions in DARPA, NASA, DoD, and government-funded university research on computers and networks.

We live in a complex internetworked and interdependent civilization. Everyone is subsidized by everyone else, and balancing the books is incredibly hard.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#177

Post by ch4s3 »

hirvi74 wrote: post #174
ch4s3 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Phonics is well supported by evidence to be the best way to teach children to decode words in English[1]. [1] https://www.sciencenews.org/article/balanced-literacy-phonic...

I wonder if other languages receive greater benefits from phonics than English? English is wild language with plenty examples of phonetic rules being broken. Take a simple word like 'rough'. Learning the phonetics doesn't help with the word 'cough'. Neither help with words like 'though' and 'through'. Words like 'read' and 'lead' cannot be properly pronounced without context clues. Not to mention all the odd-ball wor…

Maybe? I'm not as familiar with reading pedagogy for other languages. However there are generally 5 components[1] and one is vocabulary which is how you distinguish Lead and Lead and Led.

You're right, English is kind of wacky, but this exists in other languages as well. For example there's significant Gaulish influence in French[2] and the written and spoken language offer a number of surprises for learners.

[1]https://www.lexialearning.com/blog/a-full-breakdown-of-the-s...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_French_words_of_Gaulis...

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#178

Post by hooverd »

api wrote: post #176
hooverd wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, what parts of rural Southern culture aren't being accommodated? The rural way of life is already insanely subsidized.

> The rural way of life is already insanely subsidized. So is ours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTC_RxWN_xo None of this would exist without probably trillions in DARPA, NASA, DoD, and government-funded university research on computers and networks. We live in a complex internetworked and interdependent civilization. Everyone is subsidized by everyone else, and balancing the books is incredibly hard.

Sure, but I don't yap about being a yeoman software developer and how independent I am from it despite being totally dependent on a long petrochemical supply chain.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#179

Post by mrguyorama »

Duwensatzaj wrote: post #153
ajross wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have kids in Oregon public schools. The schools themselves (in the sense of classroom education) are fine, for the most part. But education is very underfunded (especially relative to the tax base). So kids like mine do just fine, but anyone who needs outreach or extra support tends not to get it. That hurts badly on aggregate test scores, but not so much on college acceptance performance. So it's hard to correct,…

> education is very underfunded Wrong. https://www.wweek.com/news/schools/2025/02/05/dramatic-incre... > Students in Oregon saw their reading and math scores decline over a decade when the state’s spending on schools rose by 80%, an analysis by Georgetown University shows.

Spending more on administration is not the same as spending more on education. It's the same problem as colleges right now: The superintendent making $250k a year in a school system where the teachers cannot afford to pay their rent.

The average teacher salary in Oregon is $45k. It has NOT increased by 80% in that time frame.

Nobody can afford to be a teacher, certainly not people with a valuable level of time, effort, productivity, and success.

Re: Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools

#180

Post by mrguyorama »

pc86 wrote: post #57

I am much less interested in why MS schools are doing so much better - which don't get me wrong, is great, and I hope studied and modeled in better-funded states - than I am in why other schools are doing worse . Taking that first chart into account, if Maine stayed around a ~225 for the last 20 years, and Mississippi went from 203 to 220, that's great for Mississippi but not necessarily an indictment of anything Mai…

I can tell you why with reasonable certainty. When my mom became a Maine teacher in 1990, the starting pay was $28k, for a part time position. By her first retirement in 2022, she was making $48k, for full time work, in a more expensive school district, with more responsibilities (including creating the entire lesson plan and running the department). What was inflation during that time frame?

So basically, Maine can't afford any teachers. It's been coasting on the same 65 year old teachers it had back then. The few new teachers you DO get in rural Maine are the ones that aren't smart enough to notice that they're getting fucked, or are morons screaming at 12 year olds that the vaccine is poison and masks will kill them, or are literal sociopaths who write 17 page (not exaggeration) manifestos full of spelling mistakes and grammar errors due to a perceived slight. Despite that man being an obvious wacko, the administration we spend so much on left my mom high and dry to fend for herself, and it could have destroyed her career and reputation as one of the best teachers in the area.

A school in the Kennebunkport area convinced her out of retirement with a cool $80k a year and strong agreements towards getting her (state program) retirement fully funded.

Everyone in the US loves to harp that "oh we've spent so much on education" but we have not. We have spent immensely on paying a bunch of MBAs to "administrate". Superintendents are politicians, and do not do anything useful for schools. That superintendent spent tens of thousands of dollars on "smartboards" while the teachers used VHS tapes bought in the 80s to teach things. Teachers want supplies, not gimmicks.

But don't worry, that Superintendent will use his political connections to assure everyone that the millions a dirt poor community has handed to him totally isn't a waste, and that buying a heated turf soccer field in fucking northern maine wasn't a waste, and the local numbnuts will continue to blame "woke liberals". It definitely has nothing to do with talented teachers who worked their asses off for 40 years getting jack and shit while their bosses drive Mercedes and buy their third house.

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