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Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

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Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#181

Post by barry-cotter »

dodo53 wrote: post #6

It's a very bad way of putting it - but I think there's a valid discussion needed around whether schools should enforce 'rounded' education - I think the question is essentially what should we do students who are at 10th grade maths and 5th grade social science? Should we allow earlier education specialization? (ie move them up grades but accept they'll be lacking in some areas) Or keep them in 5th grade until they a…

that's ignoring all the potential social advantages of being roughly grouped by age

Which are?

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#182

Post by derleth »

dkokelley wrote: post #64
jdvolz wrote: post #31

As the father of a near 3 year old the educational questions weigh heavily on my mind. While this is a great thought experiment ("How could we make it better?") it's scary when given a concrete example that is near and dear to your heart. I believe: [1] Each general subject has a core competency that you have to achieve at a minimum. It's broken into skills and subjects. Skills includes: programming, reading, writing…

Why is programming a basic skill? To me, programming is more of a trade than a basic skill. People get by just fine without knowing a thing about programming. When students can't read, write, and do simple mathematics, then they have trouble later in life. I believe logic and basic computing (this is a folder, that is a keyboard, etc.) are necessary. In fact, these form the foundation for programming later, but how c…

> Why is programming a basic skill?

For the same reason being able to write English[1] well is: If you can use English effectively, you can better influence the people you have to deal with. If you can write code effectively, you can often find ways to better influence the computers you have to deal with.

[1] (Replace 'English' with any natural language of your choice, if you want.)

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#183

Post by 18pfsmt »

_delirium wrote: post #176
jacoblyles wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Swedes have universal school choice (public or private). And I believe the Netherlands.

Sweden's is an odd hybrid, because it has private schools, but they're heavily regulated: they must charge exactly what every other school charges (which is the value of the school vouchers), and must teach the national curriculum. Schools aren't allowed to charge extra on top of the voucher, so there's no price discrimination at all; in effect they're government subcontractors providing alternate implementations of…

Hmm. So, it seem the definitions of public and private are skewing the ability to compare apples to apples?

There appears to be no way to "normalize" the data.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#184

Post by derleth »

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #136
maxharris wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

we need to erase the core assumptions of the public school curriculum Great, I agree. Why do you think these assumptions are so hard to change? Who are the people holding the assumptions? Why haven't they changed their minds already?

We run into problems not only with the established educators, but I think also from parents. A lot of people tend to get really edgy when you're discussing changing things like curriculum or pedagogy, because they're very risk averse when it comes to their children. Not all parents are like this, but a lot of them are. They're also generally bad at properly evaluating their kids' strengths and weaknesses since they t…

That, and there's the 'education as hazing' notion: "If I had to suffer through four years of high school bored out of my mind, so should the next crop of kids! It's good for the little buggers! Builds character!"

Frankly, the best way to deal with that mindset is to invent some crap for the people who have it to go through so they leave the rest of us alone. Maybe call it a team-building exercise.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#185

Post by grandalf »

jshen wrote: post #171
grandalf wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate your boisterous rejoinder to my comment. I think you are mistaken in your understanding of rationality. Emotion is part of rationality, not separate from it. To make a rational decision, a rational person ought to consider his/her emotional response as input to the decision function, not throw it away. Also, different individuals have different utility functions, and not all are practical, far-looking, m…

Check the study below, and think about the implications. "Anchoring Bias: Phone Numbers Used as Anchors When Estimating the Prices of Goods"

By that logic, you may have been duped into liking that article b/c the last word in its title is a variation of the word "good".

While those sorts of biases are interesting, the impact on human rationality of such techniques (used intentionally or by accident) is probably a wash. I'd be curious if there's a study that shows otherwise -- such as that people with certain phone numbers are more likely to declare bankruptcy.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#186

Post by derleth »

civilian wrote: post #177
chopsueyar wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't the more advanced children tutor the less advanced children?

Sounds great-- are you going to reimburse the advanced children for doing the teacher's job? I also think that, unfortunately, America kids have an anti-geek attitude that could make tutoring difficult. The statement that "this kid is better than you, and now you have to listen to him/her" might not be taken well by some of the poorer performers.

I don't think the anti-geek attitude is as universal as you think. All through high school, I was the stuttering genius (I am pretty convinced that's how everyone saw me) who was terrible in gym and everyone loved me. I helped bring home academic challenge (quiz bowl) trophies and nobody ever picked on me. (I was class of 2002. Maybe it's generational?)

(I also had a younger brother who'd beat on people who might otherwise have picked on me. Nobody told me at the time, though. Whole situation was kinda weird.)

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#187

Post by william42 »

khafra wrote: post #51
yummyfajitas wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the college level, private schools certainly do cater to the individual. I was fast in math, regular speed in everything else. They put me into grad level math and physics classes, while my writing/history/etc classes were still at the normal pace. I don't see much reason why the incentives would be different below the college level. Whenever you want to ask "what would a privatized primary education system do", y…

College level state schools also have many different levels of classes. I think there are other differences at work.

Namely, the increase in specialization as one advances.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#188

Post by grandalf »

jshen wrote: post #172
18pfsmt wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you aware that the Ivy League[1] schools are all private? So are the most prestigious high schools (the latter was attended by Zuckerberg, for example): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Academy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_Exeter_Academy [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_league

Can those private high schools deny problem kids? Are they a non random selection of students? Think about it. Edit: You are also being selective in your examples. Why not compare Berkley to the University of Phoenix? You have to consider the entire range of private schools, and the overall output. But I'm not as concerned with higher education, I think that is a different system with a different goal. Primary school…

Uh, it's not like "problem kids" are necessarily getting a good deal from the public system. Special ed kids are forced to learn "academic" style knowledge rather than the practical life skills they actually need... and behavior problem kids use way more resources than they deserve and harm all the other kids in the process.

Sadly, many kids in special ed programs and many behavior problem kids would not have problems in a different type of learning scenario... but the entrenched K-12 classroom, 30 students one teacher, hour long periods, boring books, exercises, silence, etc., is just a horrible fit for them.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#189

Post by grandalf »

hugh3 wrote: post #110
grandalf wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but many US colleges and universities are private and are the best in the world. I think your worry about someone starting a school that is actually a sham are very much out of proportion. In today's public schools, many kids can't read or do basic math, so it's hard to imagine something worse. Also, the monopoly system is the only reason parents can't easily switch their kid to a different school. If th…

I think your worry about someone starting a school that is actually a sham are very much out of proportion. The only concern I'd have would be with religious schools which might teach BS instead of real stuff. But an appropriate level of government intervention in setting the curriculum and standard examinations would hopefully negate this problem. "Final question for one million points: roughly how old is the Earth,…

Rather than requiring certain standards, the government would be more effective if it provided assessments of school quality to help consumers... but stayed out of the curriculum business.

Re: Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’

#190

Post by timsally »

Duff wrote: post #170
timsally wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100K+ and $150K+ /w pension are the salaries it takes to attract and retain excellent teachers and school administrators respectively (adjust for locality). These are the going rates at all the top public schools in the nation. With a fully staffed school, it works out to be about $15K per student per year if you include overhead. The results you get are a 99% graduation rate, average standardized testings scores in…

Read my comment. I specifically didn't focus on money. The point is throwing money and bodies at the problems of education has a proven track record of NOT working. Those results that you refer to apply to a suburban school in high-income area with few challenges. Those students have an edge because they have parents (note the plural) who can fill in the blanks left at school or have the resources to hire someone to…

What you describe is a school in a low cost area with a 42% graduation rate that compensates its teachers just as well as the best high schools in America. Even with an average teacher salary of 85K, a cost of $23,000 per student seems high by a significant amount (an average of 85K for teachers usually comes in at under $20K student/year by a fair margin). Also towns with a median income in that range usually have far better graduation rates. I'd definitely be interested in learning more about that school, because those numbers seem far different than those I have experience with.
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