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I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, hom

I’m sure every generation feels like the next is going to turn the world to hell… but what the hell? I find it absolutely bonkers that gifted classes, math, homework and objective performance assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality. Does our education system leave much to be desired? Absolutely! Let’s pay teachers more and improve access to quality education for all students, not cognitively handicap the next generation.

tmp_anon_22 5y ago
A decade ago my high school had two buckets: * students in mostly AP classes who were college bound * students in no AP classes who were mostly not college bound, or were at least limited to community colleges and state schools (Which are great choices! But often have lower success rates and career outcomes) For the AP students grades were a joke because all the teachers would happily give out extra credit to any student who wanted it, all in the name of college admissions. For everyone else grades were a joke because all the students cared about was passing, and teachers REALLY wanted students to graduate, and would give grade bumps to any student who needed it. I believe most schools suffer from this sort of grade inflation, to the point that grades are at best useful for loose categorization (i.e. A+ students, A-C students, F students) and thats it. It never was and never will be a true meritocracy at scale.
- throw9000 5y ago
  I knew so many valedictorians that flunked out at the state school I went to (University of Missouri - Rolla). High school is a garbage indicator for how well you'll do in life or further education.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    I was the school valedictorian. I never tried. I thought my casual ways would work in college. They didn't. I came within a hair of flunking out, until I realized that I had to attend all the lectures, do all the homework on time, and make sure I understood front to back every homework problem. I can understand other valedictorians not doing well in college.
  - ngc248 5y ago
    Raw talent will only get you some distance, its the people who know how to bend down and work hard who will go the extra mile.
- throwaway23451 5y ago
  That’s unfortunate. Twenty years ago I attended high school in a working class suburb. I was fortunate to get selected into a gifted program and had teachers who challenged me to work hard and overcome my surrounding. Changed my life and inspired a career as a data scientist and entrepreneur. I hope the younger generation can have the benefit of adults who care enough about them to challenge them to succeed, because the real world does not grade on the curve.
  - tmp_anon_22 5y ago
    Rising class sizes, a ever expanding college-industrial-complex, and income inequality necessitating very specific career decisions, stop this I think. Education-first initiatives don't seem to be popular in American politics.
    - throwaway23451 5y ago
      Great point. It brings to mind an aphorism from Charlie Munger: “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome”
      - grp000 5y ago
        That guy has shown up so many times recently in HN posts.
  - mek6800d2 5y ago
    Yes, the younger generation will not be prepared for the meritocracy that awaits them out in the real world.
    - vkou 5y ago
      Is this a joke? Because while the real world is not graded on the curve, it is the very opposite of a meritocracy.
- tomp 5y ago
  I was with you until your last statement. It extremely easy to make it a meritocracy: just impose an externally-graded exam at the end. Then, the students cannot cheat (because it won't be their teachers grading them), and the teachers don't have an incentive to cheat (because high grades with low final exam will reveal their fraud).
js8 5y ago
Noam Chomsky went to a Deweyite high school with no grading and turned out more than fine (he actually enjoyed it). I am opposed to grading, I would replace it with a levelling system - you would have to show certain proficiency to gain a level.
- throwaway23451 5y ago
  I think that’s a great idea. I’m not necessarily advocating for a strict grading scale, just an objective yardstick for gauging progress towards achieving proficiency in critical subjects like math, language arts, etc.
- azinman2 5y ago
  All exceptional people are exactly that — exceptions. What happened to his peers?
- spoonjim 5y ago
  There's almost nothing that can be learned from someone like Noam Chomsky that is applicable to the median student.
s5300 5y ago
Education in the U.S. has been systematically defunded/chronically underfunded and bureaucratically shitfucked by one of the two major political parties in the U.S. for the last 50 or so years. Our last secretary of education is the literal heiress to the largest MLM scheme in the nation. Truly, I cannot imagine why you're at all surprised that our education system is in shambles unless you've been living under a rock. I mean, we have kids that don't even get served lunch at school, for reasons quoted as "it would make them too used to communism" Can you imagine why kids that don't even get to eat might not be giving a single shit about caring about school?
- throwaway23451 5y ago
  It’s terrible that kids have to face challenges like hunger and poverty. I believe in universal free lunch, and find it abhorrent the way this basic human rights issue has been politicized. I find it abhorrent that there are disparities in access to quality education. None of that changes the fact that people need skills to be employable, get accepted to a legitimate college, etc. Making school easy with squishy standards is not doing anyone a kindness. It’s preparing people for a life of mediocrity.
mlyle 5y ago
> homework This is one issue that I'm passionate about. Research increasingly implies that homework is probably harmful in elementary; of dubious value in early middle school; and only valuable in high school and beyond. > and objective performance assessments I think some of these radical experiments are crazy. But, there's valid reasons to consider e.g. not grading missing absent assignments as a zero. A few of them: A) If our goal is for grades to reflect demonstrated student mastery --- a missing assignment doesn't indicate that proportion of mastery "missing." Especially if it has been demonstrated satisfactorily on an exam or by other measures. B) A couple zeroes on a gradebook can be an insurmountable hill to climb-- leaving no further grade incentive at all for students to work hard in the class. C) Grades are strong motivation for already-strong students with the most involved parents, but can actually be demotivating for the bulk of your class. An effective teacher needs to find other ways to motivate students. For many students, grades are something that can make one feel bad about oneself but not provide an opportunity for positive differentiation. The classes I teach are "easy A's" in the gradebook for most of my students... and are incredibly demanding compared to normal MS/HS fare. This requires buy-in from my students. I work to build genuine curiosity and in-class competition (on a variety of axes where all students can excel, not just the top couple dunking on everyone else).
- eyelidlessness 5y ago
  As someone who excelled early in school and damn near never graduated, the age grouping doesn’t line up for me. I should probably have never graduated high school because my scores were so low from homework not completed. Turns out I had undiagnosed ADHD and Autism, and makework was valuable for me early but useless for me as I grew into myself. Otherwise this resonates with me so much. Your kids are so lucky to have you.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    > the age grouping doesn’t line up for me Everyone's different-- what helps one student may harm a couple others. On average, homework looks bad for the young. One reason why is that there's no one there to enforce correctness, so you could easily have dedicated incorrect practice. There's some neat ideas about this, like flipped classrooms. (You send a video lesson home with 1-2 questions to enforce compliance with watching the lesson, and then have the practice happen in the classroom. But this is extraordinarily effort heavy for the educator and there are other drawbacks). > Turns out I had undiagnosed ADHD and Autism, and makework was valuable for me early but useless for me as I grew into myself. I had pretty rough middle school years, too. I'm trying to make it all better for my students. > Otherwise this resonates with me so much. Your kids are so lucky to have you. I'm a new teacher (previously an engineer/entrepreneur) and ... definitely one of the weaker members of faculty overall. I'm in awe of the teachers around me. But I'm definitely trying to understand as much as I can from research and my own observations of students.
bko 5y ago
The crazy thing is that the bar is so low in the US. Where I live, Hoboken, NJ, the high school math and reading proficiency rate are 8% and 44% respectively, while the graduation rate is >95% What the hell are they doing if they're not even teaching kids math and reading? And why are they graduating them? Grades aren't meant to be a feel good merit badge. They're supposed to be an accurate reflection of your level of knowledge relative to your peers. If it ceases to be that, then the selection just happens elsewhere. So now high school diploma isn't worth anything because everyone graduates. Hiring a high school graduate doesn't even guarantee you the person can read. Same thing happens in bachelors as schools become less selective and inflate grades.
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  How on earth do we de-escalate from here? I feel that in the US it is impossible to summon the political willpower to make it HARDER to graduate HS or go to college, even if these things would make society better off. My personal opinion is that the government should get out of education, just lower our taxes and let the free market handle the rest. Never gonna happen, however.
  - jimbob45 5y ago
    US HS has an impossibly high skillcap atm to the point of absurdity. One does not simply graduate US HS and come out as an equal to every other HS graduate. The meta these days is to become the most accomplished HS graduate achievable.
    - asdff 5y ago
      Only if you are going for the big guns in college admits. Everyone making ok grades gets into some state school. Might not be the main state school campus but its easy to transfer in from satellite campuses usually.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > How on earth do we de-escalate from here? You increase the chances to succeed at the same time you make it more difficult, to overwhelm that aspect. Reduce the binary outcome slightly so it's not just a cycle of fail and be thrown / throw yourself to the wolves (dropout). Dramatically increase vocational education training. Shift to a year-round school system. So you don't fail and abandon. Instead, you never stop until you succeed. High school et al stops being N year pegs/separations that you must pass each of to move on annually (start year / pass or fail / break / next year). Instead it's year-round, fluid, continual. You are failing at this thing, continue until you are not, no break, no year markers. The rigid year system is largely bullshit, it's an exceptionally idiotic approach. It's overly simplistic and lacks the nuance of an individual's context and needs.
dls2016 5y ago
Most of what you're saying seems reasonable... but then I see a statistic like this: "Black Americans receive about 7 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded each year across all disciplines, but they have received just 1 percent of those granted over the last decade in mathematics." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-mathematicians.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-math... And this is the current production! You don't want to see the statistics regarding the number of African American faculty members in mathematics! So what else is our current system perpetuating besides inequality? What exactly are we "weeding out" in calculus? Or college algebra? We don't let kids trust themselves intellectually in the classroom.
- jiscariot 5y ago
  There is a cult around intelligence we really need move beyond, given that it is predominately an inherited trait, speaking no more or less to any individuals self-worth. Proportional representation of various (tribal, ethnic, gender, religious, racial) groups would actually be the anomaly in nature, not what the parent is identifying as an issue. It is always math and but never nursing. That alone may shed a little light on our biases.
  - cbozeman 5y ago
    "It is always math" because math is the language of the 21st century. People who have mastery of mathematics will be as influential as the people who had mastery of language in the 20th century. > There is a cult around intelligence we really need move beyond, given that it is predominately an inherited trait Just because it's inherited doesn't mean we need to move beyond it. It's the most important predictor of life outcome and should be screened for and nurtured from the moment we find above-average individuals, because they are rare. What we need "move beyond" is allowing people with resources to advantage to their thoroughly average children.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  There are questions that are not allowed to be asked and addressed because they are (often rightly) deemed racist. There are also questions that need to be asked that despite the racism still need to be addressed. But because there is no one size fits all, it doesn't matter. The only answers that avoid the questions are those which cannot be answered for many, many generations, and which also require racist policies to be enacted in order to be considered legitimate questions.
ALittleLight 5y ago
I don't think pay is the issue. Teachers are already reasonably well paid considering their benefits (e.g. summers off). I think the problem is that we have to pay and fire teachers based on seniority instead of ability.
hyperpallium2 5y ago
oblig Vonnegut http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
azth 5y ago
It's a snowball effect, once the door has been opened and logic thrown out the window, what's happening is all but unexpected.
bedobi 5y ago
What you and people like you say it superficially true ("just grade on objective performance!") ...but also completely disingenuous. Student X is an only child, has educated and well paid parents who instill work ethic and have the means, time and ability to commit to helping X get the best grades, including hiring tutors for things they can't or don't have time to teach. X lives in a safe, affluent area and associates with similar peers. Student Y is one of n siblings to an illegal immigrant single mom with little to no formal education who works two minimum wage jobs so has no time to help her kids even though she desperately wants to. Y might even be working too just to enable the family to get by, leaving no time for studies at home or homework. (effectively having more work ethic than X, just not for school) Y lives in a dangerous area with sirens blaring and dogs barking all hours of the night and many of his peers are involved with gangs. Granted, these are obviously exaggerated and hypothetical stereotypes, which I don't really want to contribute to perpetuating, but they illustrate a point. You don't exactly have to be some kind of bleeding heart social justice activist to see how unfair it is to Z to be "objectively graded" as lacking "performance" when compared to X. A common objection is "well how are we going to indicate who is the best candidate for a given university admission or job if we don't have grades or other objective measure to filter out the best people!??!???" But... that's the point we're trying to make: current grades and other "objective measures" DON'T filter out the "best". To an overwhelming degree, they're just proxies for other things. Surely universities and employers can and will find better ways to assess candidates. (or, if that's what they want to insist on continuing to do, filter out underprivileged people, just like they do now) TLDR the delusion that grades are some kind of objective meritocracy is ridiculous the sooner it's done away with the better.
- dls2016 5y ago
  HN is full if the “homework doers” who scored well and got nice professional jobs. Hence the downvotes.
  - bedobi 5y ago
    Yeah, I'm one of them. And I too use to think it was all me and my aptitude and merit and hard work. Now, it makes me cringe how I could ever think that. With age I've realized how privileged I was, and how many people who really worked far harder than me and still didn't get ahead. To be clear, schools can't fix all the worlds injustices. Life is unfair and realistically we may never be able to fix that. But we can stop doing this that are making it blatantly more unfair than it has to be...
visarga 5y ago
> assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality But we all want and need the other people to be assessed. When we go to the doctor, we want to know they competed for and earned the right to be in that position. A lack of high standards would hurt every identity group. For example, COVID won't avoid or forgive people who are in discriminated groups, or be any easier to heal by a doctor in this group - nature doesn't care.
Burnafter186 5y ago
>objective performance assessments Can you be so sure? What are you really measuring come exam time? It's not an objective measure, that much is sure. Someone who is loaded with work, family, and various other considerations isn't given a due handicap, and even in the event that there is a curve in place, it's still not measuring much. We'd do better to recognize that the measure of man is almost always going to result in spurious data. A D student isn't necessarily dumb, but disinterested, or distracted, perhaps disenfranchised or something along those lines. And grading itself really isn't revelatory, it's easy to game. I just did it, open book quiz with a digital copy, I ctrl-F'd through it and found the answers with ease, I didn't read much of anything, but I did get a perfect score. What does it say, then? That a student can exploit Campbell's law, and the teacher can do the same, so the district can look good and continue receiving grants. It has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with sculpting the metrics to say that someone is intelligent. Grading wasn't always the case, mind you, it was an invention of the late 1700's - and frankly a bad one. But institutional inertia carried it to the present. What I assure you won't result from dismantling the systematic psuedo-objective measurement of humans is "cognitively handicapped" generations.
wwilim 5y ago
Just because a learning environment is lighter on the pressure than usual does not mean it provides you with less knowledge. Besides, you're making it sound like the ultimate goal of academic success is to get a better grade than your colleagues, which it is not - it's learning. You're right in the sense that moving away from grades might make it harder for universities to pick out the best students among applicants, but again, defime "best" - is the best student the one with the most knowledge, or the one who was able to systematically turn in homework just good enough to get an A-?

tmp_anon_22 5y ago

A decade ago my high school had two buckets: * students in mostly AP classes who were college bound * students in no AP classes who were mostly not college bound, or were at least limited to community colleges and state schools (Which are great choices! But often have lower success rates and career outcomes) For the AP students grades were a joke because all the teachers would happily give out extra credit to any student who wanted it, all in the name of college admissions. For everyone else grades were a joke because all the students cared about was passing, and teachers REALLY wanted students to graduate, and would give grade bumps to any student who needed it. I believe most schools suffer from this sort of grade inflation, to the point that grades are at best useful for loose categorization (i.e. A+ students, A-C students, F students) and thats it. It never was and never will be a true meritocracy at scale.

throw9000 5y ago
I knew so many valedictorians that flunked out at the state school I went to (University of Missouri - Rolla). High school is a garbage indicator for how well you'll do in life or further education.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  I was the school valedictorian. I never tried. I thought my casual ways would work in college. They didn't. I came within a hair of flunking out, until I realized that I had to attend all the lectures, do all the homework on time, and make sure I understood front to back every homework problem. I can understand other valedictorians not doing well in college.
- ngc248 5y ago
  Raw talent will only get you some distance, its the people who know how to bend down and work hard who will go the extra mile.
throwaway23451 5y ago
That’s unfortunate. Twenty years ago I attended high school in a working class suburb. I was fortunate to get selected into a gifted program and had teachers who challenged me to work hard and overcome my surrounding. Changed my life and inspired a career as a data scientist and entrepreneur. I hope the younger generation can have the benefit of adults who care enough about them to challenge them to succeed, because the real world does not grade on the curve.
- tmp_anon_22 5y ago
  Rising class sizes, a ever expanding college-industrial-complex, and income inequality necessitating very specific career decisions, stop this I think. Education-first initiatives don't seem to be popular in American politics.
  - throwaway23451 5y ago
    Great point. It brings to mind an aphorism from Charlie Munger: “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome”
    - grp000 5y ago
      That guy has shown up so many times recently in HN posts.
- mek6800d2 5y ago
  Yes, the younger generation will not be prepared for the meritocracy that awaits them out in the real world.
  - vkou 5y ago
    Is this a joke? Because while the real world is not graded on the curve, it is the very opposite of a meritocracy.
tomp 5y ago
I was with you until your last statement. It extremely easy to make it a meritocracy: just impose an externally-graded exam at the end. Then, the students cannot cheat (because it won't be their teachers grading them), and the teachers don't have an incentive to cheat (because high grades with low final exam will reveal their fraud).

js8 5y ago

Noam Chomsky went to a Deweyite high school with no grading and turned out more than fine (he actually enjoyed it). I am opposed to grading, I would replace it with a levelling system - you would have to show certain proficiency to gain a level.

throwaway23451 5y ago
I think that’s a great idea. I’m not necessarily advocating for a strict grading scale, just an objective yardstick for gauging progress towards achieving proficiency in critical subjects like math, language arts, etc.
azinman2 5y ago
All exceptional people are exactly that — exceptions. What happened to his peers?
spoonjim 5y ago
There's almost nothing that can be learned from someone like Noam Chomsky that is applicable to the median student.

s5300 5y ago

Education in the U.S. has been systematically defunded/chronically underfunded and bureaucratically shitfucked by one of the two major political parties in the U.S. for the last 50 or so years. Our last secretary of education is the literal heiress to the largest MLM scheme in the nation. Truly, I cannot imagine why you're at all surprised that our education system is in shambles unless you've been living under a rock. I mean, we have kids that don't even get served lunch at school, for reasons quoted as "it would make them too used to communism" Can you imagine why kids that don't even get to eat might not be giving a single shit about caring about school?

throwaway23451 5y ago
It’s terrible that kids have to face challenges like hunger and poverty. I believe in universal free lunch, and find it abhorrent the way this basic human rights issue has been politicized. I find it abhorrent that there are disparities in access to quality education. None of that changes the fact that people need skills to be employable, get accepted to a legitimate college, etc. Making school easy with squishy standards is not doing anyone a kindness. It’s preparing people for a life of mediocrity.

mlyle 5y ago

> homework This is one issue that I'm passionate about. Research increasingly implies that homework is probably harmful in elementary; of dubious value in early middle school; and only valuable in high school and beyond. > and objective performance assessments I think some of these radical experiments are crazy. But, there's valid reasons to consider e.g. not grading missing absent assignments as a zero. A few of them: A) If our goal is for grades to reflect demonstrated student mastery --- a missing assignment doesn't indicate that proportion of mastery "missing." Especially if it has been demonstrated satisfactorily on an exam or by other measures. B) A couple zeroes on a gradebook can be an insurmountable hill to climb-- leaving no further grade incentive at all for students to work hard in the class. C) Grades are strong motivation for already-strong students with the most involved parents, but can actually be demotivating for the bulk of your class. An effective teacher needs to find other ways to motivate students. For many students, grades are something that can make one feel bad about oneself but not provide an opportunity for positive differentiation. The classes I teach are "easy A's" in the gradebook for most of my students... and are incredibly demanding compared to normal MS/HS fare. This requires buy-in from my students. I work to build genuine curiosity and in-class competition (on a variety of axes where all students can excel, not just the top couple dunking on everyone else).

eyelidlessness 5y ago
As someone who excelled early in school and damn near never graduated, the age grouping doesn’t line up for me. I should probably have never graduated high school because my scores were so low from homework not completed. Turns out I had undiagnosed ADHD and Autism, and makework was valuable for me early but useless for me as I grew into myself. Otherwise this resonates with me so much. Your kids are so lucky to have you.
- mlyle 5y ago
  > the age grouping doesn’t line up for me Everyone's different-- what helps one student may harm a couple others. On average, homework looks bad for the young. One reason why is that there's no one there to enforce correctness, so you could easily have dedicated incorrect practice. There's some neat ideas about this, like flipped classrooms. (You send a video lesson home with 1-2 questions to enforce compliance with watching the lesson, and then have the practice happen in the classroom. But this is extraordinarily effort heavy for the educator and there are other drawbacks). > Turns out I had undiagnosed ADHD and Autism, and makework was valuable for me early but useless for me as I grew into myself. I had pretty rough middle school years, too. I'm trying to make it all better for my students. > Otherwise this resonates with me so much. Your kids are so lucky to have you. I'm a new teacher (previously an engineer/entrepreneur) and ... definitely one of the weaker members of faculty overall. I'm in awe of the teachers around me. But I'm definitely trying to understand as much as I can from research and my own observations of students.

bko 5y ago

The crazy thing is that the bar is so low in the US. Where I live, Hoboken, NJ, the high school math and reading proficiency rate are 8% and 44% respectively, while the graduation rate is >95% What the hell are they doing if they're not even teaching kids math and reading? And why are they graduating them? Grades aren't meant to be a feel good merit badge. They're supposed to be an accurate reflection of your level of knowledge relative to your peers. If it ceases to be that, then the selection just happens elsewhere. So now high school diploma isn't worth anything because everyone graduates. Hiring a high school graduate doesn't even guarantee you the person can read. Same thing happens in bachelors as schools become less selective and inflate grades.

uejfiweun 5y ago
How on earth do we de-escalate from here? I feel that in the US it is impossible to summon the political willpower to make it HARDER to graduate HS or go to college, even if these things would make society better off. My personal opinion is that the government should get out of education, just lower our taxes and let the free market handle the rest. Never gonna happen, however.
- jimbob45 5y ago
  US HS has an impossibly high skillcap atm to the point of absurdity. One does not simply graduate US HS and come out as an equal to every other HS graduate. The meta these days is to become the most accomplished HS graduate achievable.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Only if you are going for the big guns in college admits. Everyone making ok grades gets into some state school. Might not be the main state school campus but its easy to transfer in from satellite campuses usually.
- adventured 5y ago
  > How on earth do we de-escalate from here? You increase the chances to succeed at the same time you make it more difficult, to overwhelm that aspect. Reduce the binary outcome slightly so it's not just a cycle of fail and be thrown / throw yourself to the wolves (dropout). Dramatically increase vocational education training. Shift to a year-round school system. So you don't fail and abandon. Instead, you never stop until you succeed. High school et al stops being N year pegs/separations that you must pass each of to move on annually (start year / pass or fail / break / next year). Instead it's year-round, fluid, continual. You are failing at this thing, continue until you are not, no break, no year markers. The rigid year system is largely bullshit, it's an exceptionally idiotic approach. It's overly simplistic and lacks the nuance of an individual's context and needs.

dls2016 5y ago

Most of what you're saying seems reasonable... but then I see a statistic like this: "Black Americans receive about 7 percent of the doctoral degrees awarded each year across all disciplines, but they have received just 1 percent of those granted over the last decade in mathematics." https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-mathematicians.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/18/us/edray-goins-black-math... And this is the current production! You don't want to see the statistics regarding the number of African American faculty members in mathematics! So what else is our current system perpetuating besides inequality? What exactly are we "weeding out" in calculus? Or college algebra? We don't let kids trust themselves intellectually in the classroom.

jiscariot 5y ago
There is a cult around intelligence we really need move beyond, given that it is predominately an inherited trait, speaking no more or less to any individuals self-worth. Proportional representation of various (tribal, ethnic, gender, religious, racial) groups would actually be the anomaly in nature, not what the parent is identifying as an issue. It is always math and but never nursing. That alone may shed a little light on our biases.
- cbozeman 5y ago
  "It is always math" because math is the language of the 21st century. People who have mastery of mathematics will be as influential as the people who had mastery of language in the 20th century. > There is a cult around intelligence we really need move beyond, given that it is predominately an inherited trait Just because it's inherited doesn't mean we need to move beyond it. It's the most important predictor of life outcome and should be screened for and nurtured from the moment we find above-average individuals, because they are rare. What we need "move beyond" is allowing people with resources to advantage to their thoroughly average children.
jimmygrapes 5y ago
There are questions that are not allowed to be asked and addressed because they are (often rightly) deemed racist. There are also questions that need to be asked that despite the racism still need to be addressed. But because there is no one size fits all, it doesn't matter. The only answers that avoid the questions are those which cannot be answered for many, many generations, and which also require racist policies to be enacted in order to be considered legitimate questions.

ALittleLight 5y ago

I don't think pay is the issue. Teachers are already reasonably well paid considering their benefits (e.g. summers off). I think the problem is that we have to pay and fire teachers based on seniority instead of ability.

hyperpallium2 5y ago

oblig Vonnegut http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html

azth 5y ago

It's a snowball effect, once the door has been opened and logic thrown out the window, what's happening is all but unexpected.

bedobi 5y ago

What you and people like you say it superficially true ("just grade on objective performance!") ...but also completely disingenuous. Student X is an only child, has educated and well paid parents who instill work ethic and have the means, time and ability to commit to helping X get the best grades, including hiring tutors for things they can't or don't have time to teach. X lives in a safe, affluent area and associates with similar peers. Student Y is one of n siblings to an illegal immigrant single mom with little to no formal education who works two minimum wage jobs so has no time to help her kids even though she desperately wants to. Y might even be working too just to enable the family to get by, leaving no time for studies at home or homework. (effectively having more work ethic than X, just not for school) Y lives in a dangerous area with sirens blaring and dogs barking all hours of the night and many of his peers are involved with gangs. Granted, these are obviously exaggerated and hypothetical stereotypes, which I don't really want to contribute to perpetuating, but they illustrate a point. You don't exactly have to be some kind of bleeding heart social justice activist to see how unfair it is to Z to be "objectively graded" as lacking "performance" when compared to X. A common objection is "well how are we going to indicate who is the best candidate for a given university admission or job if we don't have grades or other objective measure to filter out the best people!??!???" But... that's the point we're trying to make: current grades and other "objective measures" DON'T filter out the "best". To an overwhelming degree, they're just proxies for other things. Surely universities and employers can and will find better ways to assess candidates. (or, if that's what they want to insist on continuing to do, filter out underprivileged people, just like they do now) TLDR the delusion that grades are some kind of objective meritocracy is ridiculous the sooner it's done away with the better.

dls2016 5y ago
HN is full if the “homework doers” who scored well and got nice professional jobs. Hence the downvotes.
- bedobi 5y ago
  Yeah, I'm one of them. And I too use to think it was all me and my aptitude and merit and hard work. Now, it makes me cringe how I could ever think that. With age I've realized how privileged I was, and how many people who really worked far harder than me and still didn't get ahead. To be clear, schools can't fix all the worlds injustices. Life is unfair and realistically we may never be able to fix that. But we can stop doing this that are making it blatantly more unfair than it has to be...

visarga 5y ago

> assessments are suddenly under fire as instruments perpetuating inequality But we all want and need the other people to be assessed. When we go to the doctor, we want to know they competed for and earned the right to be in that position. A lack of high standards would hurt every identity group. For example, COVID won't avoid or forgive people who are in discriminated groups, or be any easier to heal by a doctor in this group - nature doesn't care.

Burnafter186 5y ago

>objective performance assessments Can you be so sure? What are you really measuring come exam time? It's not an objective measure, that much is sure. Someone who is loaded with work, family, and various other considerations isn't given a due handicap, and even in the event that there is a curve in place, it's still not measuring much. We'd do better to recognize that the measure of man is almost always going to result in spurious data. A D student isn't necessarily dumb, but disinterested, or distracted, perhaps disenfranchised or something along those lines. And grading itself really isn't revelatory, it's easy to game. I just did it, open book quiz with a digital copy, I ctrl-F'd through it and found the answers with ease, I didn't read much of anything, but I did get a perfect score. What does it say, then? That a student can exploit Campbell's law, and the teacher can do the same, so the district can look good and continue receiving grants. It has nothing to do with intelligence, it has to do with sculpting the metrics to say that someone is intelligent. Grading wasn't always the case, mind you, it was an invention of the late 1700's - and frankly a bad one. But institutional inertia carried it to the present. What I assure you won't result from dismantling the systematic psuedo-objective measurement of humans is "cognitively handicapped" generations.

wwilim 5y ago

Just because a learning environment is lighter on the pressure than usual does not mean it provides you with less knowledge. Besides, you're making it sound like the ultimate goal of academic success is to get a better grade than your colleagues, which it is not - it's learning. You're right in the sense that moving away from grades might make it harder for universities to pick out the best students among applicants, but again, defime "best" - is the best student the one with the most knowledge, or the one who was able to systematically turn in homework just good enough to get an A-?