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

Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

nationsreportcard.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

271–280 of 320 posts

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#271

Post by phil21 »

troosevelt wrote: post #98
zozbot234 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Labor compensation in the U.S. is also extremely unequal, which pulls the average up in a way that isn't very informative as to this particular issue. The average starving PhD would be a much better and more knowledgeable teacher to high school students in the subject she took her PhD in, than the typical high school teacher with nothing more than an Education credential. Are you sure that you need to pay such high w…

Here in my state teachers in good districts start at $60,000 per year and see minimal increases due to length of service; after 20 years they might be making $75,000 per year. You ever done the math on living on $60k per year? Hard to do a lot besides support youself on that income. I note that surrounding states (even higher cost states) have lower salaries. Teachers get paid peanuts.

Here average teacher salary is over $100k. Projected to be $120k by 2027 due to their new union contract.

Newbie teachers start around $70k last I checked, and hit six figures in 5-6 years.

This is roughly double median salaries.

That said, I think they earn every bit of it even with "summers off" and their relatively lucrative benefit packages. The work environment is utter shit. Basically zero ability to manage a classroom and get rid of any shitheads - with very little supportive parenting or administration having your back. Even if salaries were $500k/yr I wouldn't remotely consider taking such a job.

Pay itself though? Not an issue for one of the worst performing major urban school districts in the nation.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#272

Post by Tanoc »

ytoawwhra92 wrote: post #238
mothballed wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ask boomers they'll be far more likely to tell you dad was out working 16 hours in the oil field / carpenter for the housing boom or something like that. Mom has no time for you either, she is busy with the 4th baby. Kid gets a nice belting for bad behavior and other than that, be back before the street lights come on for a dinner conversation and then left to your own devices before bed. I think if anything p…

Another big difference is the amount of interaction between kids of different ages.

Yes. When I was ten I had friends ranging from age eight to fourteen that I regularly hung out with, and older people in their forties or fifties that I would drop by when I saw them outside to learn things from. There was a hierarchy of responsibility in our group where the oldest kept track of the ones younger than them, and those kids kept track of the ones younger than them. Beyond that we had no supervision because everyone knew someone who disapproved of something and would tell their parents, whether that be my same age peers disapproving of cursing or the eldest kids disapproving of everyone going to someone's house uninvited. That risk of strain on the friend group kept everyone in line.

Nowadays parents are very strict about the age gaps between their kid's friends, especially with how older kids usually know how to get into risque stuff online. They aren't exposed to differences of opinion and ability as much in real life, and that somewhat hinders their development. There's nothing that can teach you patience like trying to calm down one of the younger kids so you don't get kicked out of a friend's house during the basketball game. Just like there's nothing that motivates you to get better than your six foot two friend intercepting every single pass to your receiver.

And this isn't even getting into the hobbies, interests, and skills kids can learn just by watching adult neighbours. While this year I'm seeing more people outside doing things, for a long while everyone was inside. That meant there weren't older people outside working on cars, tending to their gardens, preparing their boats for fishing season, or just sitting around talking about activities from the past that might be interesting. Kids are more likely to take an interest in a new activity if somebody they know does that activity, because that person is much easier to ask questions and directly show problems to. If they see something online it will probably be a momentary passing interest that they'll forget by the end of the day because once that video's gone so is their interaction with it.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#274

Post by phil21 »

larkost wrote: post #232
empath75 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is on a school board in a large district that is trying to cut spending. The problem is not really how much money they have and giving them more money doesn't help. The problem at least in our state is: Public schools are subsidizing charter schools Public schools have many legal requirements to provide services that charter schools don't have to deal with. Charter schools also have a lot of freedom to refuse…

Public schools are not subsidizing charter schools. Rather per-student money travels with those kids to the school they are actually attending. So since the kids don't go to those schools, neither does the money. I don't know what state you are in, and there are a number of them where the charter systems are absolute messes and have become fraud paradises (looking at you Florida), but other states things are much bet…

> This one area is unfair to the public schools.

One could say it's the entire point of them existing to begin with. Self-selection of the student body is the only thing that actually matters. The rest is a bunch of minor details. Everyone more or less intuitively understands this point but doesn't want to admit it in public.

And no, I do not see that as a bad thing. I see it as a great thing. It's the closest thing to public school academic tracking as we are likely to get. Other western democracies have this one figured out. They don't throw endless amounts of money into bottomless pits with zero expectation of a payback to society.

I would be nothing today if my very working class parents didn't have the ability to opt me out of the local urban school system. I likely would be dead or in prison. What they had going for them was "giving a shit" and a still-functional system where motivated highly engaged parents could opt out of the status quo. Most of my peers would have had similar stories if not for tracking and academically based magnet schools and the like. The system I was able to use to get ahead has since been torn down.

If it had been the choice of "pay for private school" or "go to the local public school" I'd have been forced into the latter with almost zero chance to succeed in life. I ended up back in that system my final year I attended K-12, and the education offered was laughable and perhaps 6-7 year behind what I had become used to. Plus a moderately violent environment on top of it all.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#275

Post by troosevelt »

phil21 wrote: post #271
troosevelt wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in my state teachers in good districts start at $60,000 per year and see minimal increases due to length of service; after 20 years they might be making $75,000 per year. You ever done the math on living on $60k per year? Hard to do a lot besides support youself on that income. I note that surrounding states (even higher cost states) have lower salaries. Teachers get paid peanuts.

Here average teacher salary is over $100k. Projected to be $120k by 2027 due to their new union contract. Newbie teachers start around $70k last I checked, and hit six figures in 5-6 years. This is roughly double median salaries. That said, I think they earn every bit of it even with "summers off" and their relatively lucrative benefit packages. The work environment is utter shit. Basically zero ability to manage a c…

I'm planning on transitioning into teaching due to not being employable (apparently) in tech anymore. It's about the only career I can transition into. I wish I could make six-figures!

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#276

Post by phil21 »

troosevelt wrote: post #275
phil21 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here average teacher salary is over $100k. Projected to be $120k by 2027 due to their new union contract. Newbie teachers start around $70k last I checked, and hit six figures in 5-6 years. This is roughly double median salaries. That said, I think they earn every bit of it even with "summers off" and their relatively lucrative benefit packages. The work environment is utter shit. Basically zero ability to manage a c…

I'm planning on transitioning into teaching due to not being employable (apparently) in tech anymore. It's about the only career I can transition into. I wish I could make six-figures!

Move to Chicago and get a job in CPS - you'll be at ~$100k in 5-6 years!

The idea of it actually sounds initially fun to me, until I talk to friends who actually work those jobs. For my temperament I know better. At best I'd rage quit, at worst I'd end up in prison.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#277

Post by Tanoc »

bee_rider wrote: post #213
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There hasn't been enough said about the corruption of public life in the US. (And elsewhere.) It used to be this kind of thing was - maybe not exceptional, but certainly not expected. Now it's common but underreported. So there's a kind of dream world where "education" and "health" are still considered official public goals. But the reality is that government procurement is mostly grift and corruption. There's been a…

There’s probably a feedback loop: as people have become convinced that the government is only useful for corruption, that becomes an expected perk of the job. Unfortunately, I don’t see a way out of that loop. Move to a state that still has some civic pride I guess.

The way you get out of that loop is by creating immense pressure from the outside until the governing system breaks, then supervising the reconstruction as an outside power until it can function by itself again. The issue is that there's a very high risk of it suffering malformed development during that reconstruction, or even worse it's abandoned early and never even builds the functionality needed to sustain itself. The risk is so high that people prefer to let the system degrade with the hope that it will eventually halt or in the slimmest chance even regress to a better previous state. Meanwhile the success rate is so low that I can think of a myriad of failures off the top of my head including Panama, the Kingdom Of Italy, Albania, the American South during Reconstruction, and Indonesia with the only success coming to mind being Japan.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#278

Post by rich_sasha »

So here's a scenario for how AI takes over: instead of creating hyper intelligence, we are stuck around the current level. The average human stops thinking and reduces themselves to an IQ of 70, relying for everything on their phone.

Then AI takes over the world not out of calculated cruelty but by accident, then messes it up by hallucinating. Humans die out to being too thick. AI bumbles on for a bit but eventually model collapse and rusting electricity infra put an end to it.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#279

Post by nradov »

Teever wrote: post #262
nradov wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh how I hated having to learn cursive when I was in school. What an utter waste of limited instructional time that could have been better spent on mathematics or science or touch typing or creative writing or literally any other subject. If some students really want to learn calligraphy then make it an art elective but don't torture the rest of us.

Learning cursive serves a dual purpose which is to develop fine motor skills. https://macleans.ca/society/life/why-your-teenager-cant-use-...

So does robotics, wood shop, metal shop, pottery, etc. This interest that some people have in forcing students to learn cursive seems so bizarre and anachronistic.

Re: Scores decline again for 13-year-old students in reading and mathematics (2023)

#280

Post by nradov »

boringg wrote: post #259
nradov wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the homework assigned at my local public high school is repetitive busy work. I'm not surprised that students don't care. And some of it is a completely worthless waste of time, like literally making little arts and crafts projects that would be more suitable for elementary school. I know that teaching is a tough job but it seems like a significant fraction of them are putting in the least possible effort.

Math, reading and writing are all accomplished by repetition and building muscle memory. The adults in the room saying you don't need that in order to learn are doing a disservice to the next generation. There is also a lot of busy work but again work and being able to do work, sustain focus requires the development of that skill and muscle. Especially in this day and age where everyone is vying for your attention.

Nah, only the dullards need a lot of repetition. I've seen brighter kids pick those subjects up extremely quickly.
Post reply on HN