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Tangent that may be relevant here. I used to be involved in access work for those from underprivileged backgrounds. It's very difficult to get poor kids to ap

Tangent that may be relevant here. I used to be involved in access work for those from underprivileged backgrounds. It's very difficult to get poor kids to apply to University even if they have the grades, for reasons I expect are pretty similar (social environment, not 'fitting in', having few role models, etc). Going back further - tons of them simply don't have the grades or skills, because they weren't interested early on, or weren't supported, or whatever else. They fall behind at an early age. They're stuck in an environment that doesn't support them. Changing the statistical makeup of people at that sort of level - at the end of the funnel, after all of the filtering - is really difficult. You need good reason to do so. It's still not clear to me that it actually makes sense - is the world actually better off if half the Ivies are made of poor kids, or have you just shuffled around status (is it zero sum)? Do you get better results - what are the better results you're looking for? This stuff is difficult.

nikofeyn 7y ago
> This stuff is difficult. i don’t think it’s that difficult. the government finds a way to spends billions and trillions of dollars on tons of stuff that has no meaningful impact. if the government cared, they would increase the budgets of schools to fund good teachers’ salaries. if i could pull a six figure salary teaching, i would do it in a heartbeat. but there’s no way i would teach in this current educational environment. hyper focus on standardized testing and curriculum, which also needs to be changed, seems suffocating.
- mysterydip 7y ago
  How would you change the hyper focus on standardized testing and curriculum? That comes at the administrative or local/state/national political level, doesn't it?
- DannyBee 7y ago
  These are very complex systems with lots of variables and interdependencies/connections between the variables. Suggesting that simple, direct, change of the variable that has direct linkage to pretty much all other parts of the system, will achieve some specific result, is almost certainly wrong. In fact, pretty much every mechanism taught of how to effect change in large scale systems says not to do that. In this case, this is pretty easy to see - As an example - If you could pull six figures teaching, everyone would want to teach, regardless of whether they should or not. Solutions to this have obvious affects on other things (IE increasing credential requirements, or performance reviews ...). These in turn have effects on other parts of the system, ... If you really think this is just simple, i'd suggest looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system#Complexity_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system#Complexity_mana... and going from there.
  - neffy 7y ago
    Wanting to, and being hired to do it, are two very different things. Increasing the salary for teachers would mainly result in having better teachers, and a slightly higher tax bill. It's not incorrect to say that there can be unintended consequences. It has been argued that one of the side effects of emancipating women, has been a decline in teaching standards, since the days when that was one of the few jobs women were allowed to do.
  - tptacek 7y ago
    You can definitely pull 6 figures teaching, for what it's worth; the median comp at my kids' high school was over $100k.
    - JJMcJ 7y ago
      Top districts in Bay Area (Palo Alto, Saratoga, Cupertino in Silicon Valley, e.g.) pay senior teachers in that range. With a pension, lots of vacation.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
HarryHirsch 7y ago
to follow up on that: at the high end universities do make an effort to recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds, and they implement programs to bring them up to speed; there are pre-freshmen programs, summer classes, supplement lectures, peer mentorship, &c pp. It actually works. That said, what is the focus on individual diversity good for? It's the system that holds people back, and as the parent poster says, no amount of individual effort at the end of the funnel is going to make any difference.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  > recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds, A very serious question I've been thinking about lately, and may sound absurd at first: what about non-clever people? It seems that discrimination of less intelligent people is the last standing type of discrimination that is widely socially acceptable to the point of calling someone "stupid" being a very normal thing where nobody bats an eye. This is not intended as a troll post. Of course in the end society needs smart people in important decision-making roles, but does this mean that stupid and poor people don't deserve better?
  - esotericn 7y ago
    Ultimately this is what I mean re the "difficult" part of the other comment. I don't have strong opinions on "how to fix the world", because I don't think there actually are solutions that scale beyond small tweaks; most of the time, people define a problem first, and then go after solutions, without really articulating why it's a problem, or whether the solutions will create a world that's better.
- protomyth 7y ago
  high end universities do make an effort to recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds I'll believe that when I see recruiters from high end universities out on the reservations in the US, but I guess imposters are easier.
  - HarryHirsch 7y ago
gmueckl 7y ago
I agree that this stuff is difficult, but you are seeing things fron a US-centric perspective. Different societies and different cultures have different root causes and mechanisms that create similar inequalities.

nikofeyn 7y ago

> This stuff is difficult. i don’t think it’s that difficult. the government finds a way to spends billions and trillions of dollars on tons of stuff that has no meaningful impact. if the government cared, they would increase the budgets of schools to fund good teachers’ salaries. if i could pull a six figure salary teaching, i would do it in a heartbeat. but there’s no way i would teach in this current educational environment. hyper focus on standardized testing and curriculum, which also needs to be changed, seems suffocating.

mysterydip 7y ago
How would you change the hyper focus on standardized testing and curriculum? That comes at the administrative or local/state/national political level, doesn't it?
DannyBee 7y ago
These are very complex systems with lots of variables and interdependencies/connections between the variables. Suggesting that simple, direct, change of the variable that has direct linkage to pretty much all other parts of the system, will achieve some specific result, is almost certainly wrong. In fact, pretty much every mechanism taught of how to effect change in large scale systems says not to do that. In this case, this is pretty easy to see - As an example - If you could pull six figures teaching, everyone would want to teach, regardless of whether they should or not. Solutions to this have obvious affects on other things (IE increasing credential requirements, or performance reviews ...). These in turn have effects on other parts of the system, ... If you really think this is just simple, i'd suggest looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system#Complexity_management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system#Complexity_mana... and going from there.
- neffy 7y ago
  Wanting to, and being hired to do it, are two very different things. Increasing the salary for teachers would mainly result in having better teachers, and a slightly higher tax bill. It's not incorrect to say that there can be unintended consequences. It has been argued that one of the side effects of emancipating women, has been a decline in teaching standards, since the days when that was one of the few jobs women were allowed to do.
- tptacek 7y ago
  You can definitely pull 6 figures teaching, for what it's worth; the median comp at my kids' high school was over $100k.
  - JJMcJ 7y ago
    Top districts in Bay Area (Palo Alto, Saratoga, Cupertino in Silicon Valley, e.g.) pay senior teachers in that range. With a pension, lots of vacation.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

HarryHirsch 7y ago

to follow up on that: at the high end universities do make an effort to recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds, and they implement programs to bring them up to speed; there are pre-freshmen programs, summer classes, supplement lectures, peer mentorship, &c pp. It actually works. That said, what is the focus on individual diversity good for? It's the system that holds people back, and as the parent poster says, no amount of individual effort at the end of the funnel is going to make any difference.

bonoboTP 7y ago
> recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds, A very serious question I've been thinking about lately, and may sound absurd at first: what about non-clever people? It seems that discrimination of less intelligent people is the last standing type of discrimination that is widely socially acceptable to the point of calling someone "stupid" being a very normal thing where nobody bats an eye. This is not intended as a troll post. Of course in the end society needs smart people in important decision-making roles, but does this mean that stupid and poor people don't deserve better?
- esotericn 7y ago
  Ultimately this is what I mean re the "difficult" part of the other comment. I don't have strong opinions on "how to fix the world", because I don't think there actually are solutions that scale beyond small tweaks; most of the time, people define a problem first, and then go after solutions, without really articulating why it's a problem, or whether the solutions will create a world that's better.
protomyth 7y ago
high end universities do make an effort to recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds I'll believe that when I see recruiters from high end universities out on the reservations in the US, but I guess imposters are easier.
- HarryHirsch 7y ago

gmueckl 7y ago

I agree that this stuff is difficult, but you are seeing things fron a US-centric perspective. Different societies and different cultures have different root causes and mechanisms that create similar inequalities.