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How do you suggest solving a problem that comes down effectively to 'some people have more money and free time'? Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring,

How do you suggest solving a problem that comes down effectively to 'some people have more money and free time'? Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores.

GhostVII 7y ago
After school programs, ensuring all schools have equal funding, getting better at determining which kids aren't succeeding, and spending more time with them to give them the one on one support they need. I mean it's a very hard problem, and maybe it's unsolvable, but I think we have a lot more things we can try before giving up and trying to put Band-Aids on the problem. I think if class sizes are sufficiently small though, at least in grade school, a teacher should know every student, and be able to identify those who aren't getting the support they need at home. If they are a good teacher, they can act accordingly, and maybe work with the parents to help the child succeed.
- Apocryphon 7y ago
  Those are all great ideas, but the disadvantaged children in the schools this mechanism is trying to help probably don't go to schools that offer those benefits.
  - newen 7y ago
    Well yes...the person you're replying to is saying that those schools should get enough funding (and whatever else) so that they can offer those benefits.
    - rexpop 7y ago
      And where's that funding going to come from? Currently, we're funding schools in proximity to household wealth. Perhaps increasing poor working families' wealth is the solution that fits in with our current setup.
      - devcpp 7y ago
        Or perhaps we should just even out the funding. Crudely redistributing wealth is a historically very poor way to solve inequality (assuming it is a problem), since it doesn't address the root cause. Investing in education, in particular trades, is an arguably better way. They are practical, have the most bang-for-buck value, and are not time-consuming or demanding.
- AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
  I'm not sure equal funding is the solution. "Bad school" is not the one without a freshly refurbished swimming pool. It's the one with poor discipline, parents who don't care and a principal who has no idea how to work with kids.
cpncrunch 7y ago
>Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores. There are a number of organizations offering free online tutoring, such as https://learntobe.org https://learntobe.org. https://weteachscience.org https://weteachscience.org used to provide free STEM tutoring to students in disadvantaged schools, but they recently shut down...I think it was difficult getting stable funding. There is no technical reason why high quality tutoring couldn't be offered to all these students. It's simply a matter of arranging the funding. I think a workable non-profit business model would be to arrange long-term funding from some government organization. If anyone is interested in setting up a business like this, feel free to email me and I can provide contacts and technology (I work with online tutoring companies, including the two listed above).
- hrktb 7y ago
  > There is no technical reason why [...] vs the article: > “growing up in a neighborhood with less violence gives you advantages in your academic work.” The score proposed is to adjust for societal issues, and technological solutions aren’t usually a good fit for those.
cm2187 7y ago
Actively pushing and monitoring children's education has probably a lot more to do with academic success than free time. I am not aware that the asian minority has much more money and free time than anyone else.
- Causality1 7y ago
  At the end of the day some children will belong to Culture X which is more compatible with academic achievement that Culture Y. My best friend growing up was a Korean kid whose parents almost tortured him and his siblings to excel in school. His pain and sacrifice deserve to count for something.
  - intertextuality 7y ago
    Or perhaps we can look into alternate systems that don't reward excruciating studying and working systems. Perhaps standardized testing like the SAT is fundamentally flawed and we need to figure out better assessment systems. > South Korea has the 10th highest suicide rate in the world. Note that this is also inflated due to an abnormally high elderly suicide rate due to some systemic factors. > Although lower than the rate for the elderly, grade school and college students in Korea have a higher than average suicide rate. One example alternative would be de-emphasizing the utmost need for a degree, and emphasizing trades as an alternative. Not everyone should need a degree, and from an academia standpoint it makes having a college degree relatively worthless and slowly turns universities into degree mills. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea
    - repolfx 7y ago
      What sort of fair system would not reward very hard work and study with very high rewards? If Koreans culturally want a life more tipped towards academic achievement, who are we non-Koreans to tell them they're wrong or that their achievements should be invalidated in the name of equal outcomes.
      - 7y ago
thatfrenchguy 7y ago
Reduce the maximum working week to 20 hours. Boom, lots of free time.

GhostVII 7y ago

After school programs, ensuring all schools have equal funding, getting better at determining which kids aren't succeeding, and spending more time with them to give them the one on one support they need. I mean it's a very hard problem, and maybe it's unsolvable, but I think we have a lot more things we can try before giving up and trying to put Band-Aids on the problem. I think if class sizes are sufficiently small though, at least in grade school, a teacher should know every student, and be able to identify those who aren't getting the support they need at home. If they are a good teacher, they can act accordingly, and maybe work with the parents to help the child succeed.

Apocryphon 7y ago
Those are all great ideas, but the disadvantaged children in the schools this mechanism is trying to help probably don't go to schools that offer those benefits.
- newen 7y ago
  Well yes...the person you're replying to is saying that those schools should get enough funding (and whatever else) so that they can offer those benefits.
  - rexpop 7y ago
    And where's that funding going to come from? Currently, we're funding schools in proximity to household wealth. Perhaps increasing poor working families' wealth is the solution that fits in with our current setup.
    - devcpp 7y ago
      Or perhaps we should just even out the funding. Crudely redistributing wealth is a historically very poor way to solve inequality (assuming it is a problem), since it doesn't address the root cause. Investing in education, in particular trades, is an arguably better way. They are practical, have the most bang-for-buck value, and are not time-consuming or demanding.
AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
I'm not sure equal funding is the solution. "Bad school" is not the one without a freshly refurbished swimming pool. It's the one with poor discipline, parents who don't care and a principal who has no idea how to work with kids.

cpncrunch 7y ago

>Not everyone can afford high quality tutoring, and high quality tutoring clearly has an impact on test scores. There are a number of organizations offering free online tutoring, such as https://learntobe.org https://learntobe.org. https://weteachscience.org https://weteachscience.org used to provide free STEM tutoring to students in disadvantaged schools, but they recently shut down...I think it was difficult getting stable funding. There is no technical reason why high quality tutoring couldn't be offered to all these students. It's simply a matter of arranging the funding. I think a workable non-profit business model would be to arrange long-term funding from some government organization. If anyone is interested in setting up a business like this, feel free to email me and I can provide contacts and technology (I work with online tutoring companies, including the two listed above).

hrktb 7y ago
> There is no technical reason why [...] vs the article: > “growing up in a neighborhood with less violence gives you advantages in your academic work.” The score proposed is to adjust for societal issues, and technological solutions aren’t usually a good fit for those.

cm2187 7y ago

Actively pushing and monitoring children's education has probably a lot more to do with academic success than free time. I am not aware that the asian minority has much more money and free time than anyone else.

Causality1 7y ago
At the end of the day some children will belong to Culture X which is more compatible with academic achievement that Culture Y. My best friend growing up was a Korean kid whose parents almost tortured him and his siblings to excel in school. His pain and sacrifice deserve to count for something.
- intertextuality 7y ago
  Or perhaps we can look into alternate systems that don't reward excruciating studying and working systems. Perhaps standardized testing like the SAT is fundamentally flawed and we need to figure out better assessment systems. > South Korea has the 10th highest suicide rate in the world. Note that this is also inflated due to an abnormally high elderly suicide rate due to some systemic factors. > Although lower than the rate for the elderly, grade school and college students in Korea have a higher than average suicide rate. One example alternative would be de-emphasizing the utmost need for a degree, and emphasizing trades as an alternative. Not everyone should need a degree, and from an academia standpoint it makes having a college degree relatively worthless and slowly turns universities into degree mills. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_in_South_Korea
  - repolfx 7y ago
    What sort of fair system would not reward very hard work and study with very high rewards? If Koreans culturally want a life more tipped towards academic achievement, who are we non-Koreans to tell them they're wrong or that their achievements should be invalidated in the name of equal outcomes.
    - 7y ago

thatfrenchguy 7y ago

Reduce the maximum working week to 20 hours. Boom, lots of free time.