7 ms·

Polemics gonna polemic. Yes, we should invest in gifted students. But, ignoring the larger context of how public education is funded in the United States and th

by gkop 5y ago

Polemics gonna polemic. Yes, we should invest in gifted students. But, ignoring the larger context of how public education is funded in the United States and the consequential giant gaps between school districts, where many poor ones don't even competently provide fundamental baseline services to their students, is not going to elevate the discourse.

mistrial9 5y ago
the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly. I have seen piles of new computers in a locked room with my own eyes, assisting a well-meaning engineer who placed the equipment. Meanwhile, I heard two middle-aged men talking on the bus alone at night, one was the driver. They both gave up as public school teachers due to lack of effort and interest by the students, year after year. The level of complacent sloth within administration is not to be underestimated, and outright graft does occur from time to time.
- gkop 5y ago
  You know what else ain't gonna elevate the discourse? Use of phrases like "ultra-ghetto".
  - dmpk2k 5y ago
    And yet replacing it with something that sounds harmless will not change the underlying reality.
    - SpaceManNabs 5y ago
      Coming with the right attitude and perspective definitely helps in coming with solutions and not complaints.
      - ldiracdelta 5y ago
        1788 - Retarded 1846 - Simpleton ~1876 - Feeble-minded 1910 - Moron 1900s Special Ed 1900s Intellectually Disabled The label is useful. The condition is lamentable. Changing the label every few years doesn't make children not use the new one as an insult. Using a new or old label doesn't positively imply that you hate the group or person you're applying the label to.
        SpaceManNabs 5y ago
        The context of this discussion was kids in "ultra ghetto urban districts" Not sure why we are talking about intellectually disabled kids. Someone else did this juxtaposition, and it is quite concerning that people tie poverty with lack of ability in this thread. > The label is useful. The labels have changed for a reason.
        slothtrop 5y ago
        That reason is largely the euphemism treadmill, but I would grant that saying "ultra ghetto" is deliberately insensitive and no professional would use it to describe impoverished areas.
        xanaxagoras 5y ago
        George Carlin - Soft Language (shell-shock bit) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n2PW1TqxQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n2PW1TqxQk
        slothtrop 5y ago
        1788? I thought retarded replaced moron in the 50s
        ldiracdelta 5y ago
        Origin was 1788 from my little research. Point is that all of these words start out as high-minded words from well-meaning people and then some ninny comes along and tries to change the word, telling everyone that their words are bad instead of looking at the problem square in the face, however ugly or bad the problem may seem.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    after you have a gun pointed at you, or a crowd of young men chasing you alone, you can correct my grammer
- thelock85 5y ago
  > the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly Any statistics or citations to back this up? In my experience, one cannot characterize thousands of schools this way because they have different governance and spending formulas across states, county lines, city limits, and even multiple districts within cities (which is especially true in urban cities).
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    yes, plenty of statistics.. the school administration is required to collect statistics.
    - Lascaille 5y ago
      >plenty of statistics I think you know very well that you're being asked to cite them, not merely say they exist.
- brimble 5y ago
  The very worst schools in my city pay significantly better than the ones out in the "good" districts. They can do that because they get a ton of extra funding from the state and (I think) feds. I think the only schools that pay better than them are a small minority of the private schools. It doesn't help much, because working conditions are so bad that anyone with options still doesn't want to work there. More funerals for kids. More 2nd-graders threatening teachers. More lockdowns over gun threats and such. More drug problems. More chronically-absent kids. More turnover among students. More horror-stories about home life. Most teachers who can afford to turn it down decide that their sanity & safety is worth more than an extra $8-12k/yr. Idealists who go in hoping to make a difference get their attitude adjusted fast. It's brutal, and money—at least, money spent on education per se—does not seem to be the solution. > The level of complacent sloth within administration is not to be underestimated, and outright graft does occur from time to time. Heh, yeah, and that's in most districts, not just the poor ones :-(
  - giantg2 5y ago
    "Idealists who go in hoping to make a difference get their attitude adjusted fast." I have a friend who completed his teaching degree. He said the policies at the school where he student-taught were so bad that he decided not to apply to teaching jobs. Stuff like you weren't allowed to give less than a 50% as long as they put their name on the paper, and ineffective discipline options. Basically, the school was just passing kids through the grades without the kids really learning and some kids wouldn't even try. I guess if you just graduate them, they're no longer the school's problem...
    - brimble 5y ago
      Yeah, kids don't fail grades anymore but are just passed ever upward, and many schools have incompetent admin (of all the things I was wrong about as a kid, turns out school administrators are, on average, even dumber than I thought they were back then—it's shocking, really) who insist on completely worthless discipline schemes, among other bad ideas. Can confirm all that's true. So then you're a teacher with a bunch of 6th graders, say, 2/3 of whom are one or more grade levels behind on at least one subject, but that material's not what will be on the test that'll be used to evaluate your performance. The right thing to do is to go back and fill in the gaps for those kids, but you don't have the time, and showing them enough of this year's material that they might at least get a few answers on the standardized test correct is safer for your career anyway. It sucks.
- Kharvok 5y ago
  It's because there is almost nothing that can be done. IQ is largely genetic, with a few social levers that can be pulled. We shouldn't expect from people what they are not capable of doing. This applies to everyone.
  - SpaceManNabs 5y ago
    The rationalist gwern-types once again overestimating the predictive power of IQ. Also coming in with assumptions that people in poorer districts cannot have members of "remarkable enough" IQ that warrant distinction and treatment. Disappointing thread all around. Enough HN for today.
    - Kharvok 5y ago
      You aren't trying. We know IQ is predictive of success. No one is saying an individual from a poorer community can't be intelligent/academically successful. What we're saying is that we shouldn't hold someone born without the ability to be academically successful to unreasonable standards.
      - SpaceManNabs 5y ago
        > What we're saying is that we shouldn't hold someone born without the ability to be academically successful to unreasonable standards. How does this relate to improving performance at schools in poor or de-stabilized districts? There are "high IQ" individuals there that merit attention. Yes we should address the amount of waste that these poor performing districts generate, but there is idea of a zero sum game in this thread between poorer and richer districts that encourages dismissal of solutions. Nobody has talked about intergenerational poverty yet in this thread. Just wild.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - akomtu 5y ago
      IQ is probably the most predictive factor of success in our knowledge-first society. The catch is that IQ is a fuzzy variable: its measurements heavily depend on one's mood, the particular IQ test, the food one's eaten that day, hours slept and so on. However the highest measured IQ in ideal conditions is pretty stable.
- SpaceManNabs 5y ago
  > ultra-ghetto urban public schools It is always disappointing, to come from one of these districts and then having obtained social mobility through talent and luck, to see what my new peers (since I assume most of us here have gone to a top tier school and work somewhere in tech/finance) think of my neighborhood. No care for how these situations happened.
  - giantg2 5y ago
    I can see that. The language choice is certainly distracting and inappropriate. I would hope that people discussing the issues in education would be some evidence that they do care. Maybe misguided in some instances, but at least trying to identify root causes and solutions. If we don't talk about the problems, then they won't get fixed.
    - mistrial9 5y ago
      my language choice is specific and well-earned; the city I am describing is consistently top ten in murder rates in the general population, and has some of the lowest graduation rates in the USA.
      - giantg2 5y ago
        Ghetto is generally derogatory. You could easily use other words to describe it.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    my advanced placement programs were evaporated and replaced with "no child left behind".. there were more than forty languages spoken at home in this school district. You can read for yourself the other parents' comments about the results. Good on you for getting the benefits of this society and escaping the slums and their ways.
  - xanaxagoras 5y ago
    It is always disappointing, to go into any thread anywhere on the internet, and have some language police clutch his pearls and feign offense where clearly none exists.
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Regressing the mean and shrinking the margins between high performers and low performers doesn't elevate the performance of the bottom. It just lowers the performance of the entire system. You could even argue it disenfranchises the lower but forcing more top tier talent into their employment tiers.
- zaroth 5y ago
  I think you said it better than me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30546204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30546204
- gkop 5y ago
  Yes! 100%. The argument in the article isn't wrong, but the way it's made is highly unlikely to win people over to the cause (and could actually deepen the disagreement).
giantg2 5y ago
In most places, the majority of the funding is at the state and federal level. And that generally uses policies that give a larger share of funds to underserved schools.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

by gkop 5y ago

mistrial9 5y ago

the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly. I have seen piles of new computers in a locked room with my own eyes, assisting a well-meaning engineer who placed the equipment. Meanwhile, I heard two middle-aged men talking on the bus alone at night, one was the driver. They both gave up as public school teachers due to lack of effort and interest by the students, year after year. The level of complacent sloth within administration is not to be underestimated, and outright graft does occur from time to time.

gkop 5y ago
You know what else ain't gonna elevate the discourse? Use of phrases like "ultra-ghetto".
- dmpk2k 5y ago
  And yet replacing it with something that sounds harmless will not change the underlying reality.
  - SpaceManNabs 5y ago
    Coming with the right attitude and perspective definitely helps in coming with solutions and not complaints.
    - ldiracdelta 5y ago
      1788 - Retarded 1846 - Simpleton ~1876 - Feeble-minded 1910 - Moron 1900s Special Ed 1900s Intellectually Disabled The label is useful. The condition is lamentable. Changing the label every few years doesn't make children not use the new one as an insult. Using a new or old label doesn't positively imply that you hate the group or person you're applying the label to.
      - SpaceManNabs 5y ago
        The context of this discussion was kids in "ultra ghetto urban districts" Not sure why we are talking about intellectually disabled kids. Someone else did this juxtaposition, and it is quite concerning that people tie poverty with lack of ability in this thread. > The label is useful. The labels have changed for a reason.
        slothtrop 5y ago
        That reason is largely the euphemism treadmill, but I would grant that saying "ultra ghetto" is deliberately insensitive and no professional would use it to describe impoverished areas.
      - xanaxagoras 5y ago
        George Carlin - Soft Language (shell-shock bit) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n2PW1TqxQk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n2PW1TqxQk
      - slothtrop 5y ago
        1788? I thought retarded replaced moron in the 50s
        ldiracdelta 5y ago
        Origin was 1788 from my little research. Point is that all of these words start out as high-minded words from well-meaning people and then some ninny comes along and tries to change the word, telling everyone that their words are bad instead of looking at the problem square in the face, however ugly or bad the problem may seem.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  after you have a gun pointed at you, or a crowd of young men chasing you alone, you can correct my grammer
thelock85 5y ago
> the ultra-ghetto urban public schools here have money upon money, and yet the teachers do not get funds directly Any statistics or citations to back this up? In my experience, one cannot characterize thousands of schools this way because they have different governance and spending formulas across states, county lines, city limits, and even multiple districts within cities (which is especially true in urban cities).
- mistrial9 5y ago
  yes, plenty of statistics.. the school administration is required to collect statistics.
  - Lascaille 5y ago
    >plenty of statistics I think you know very well that you're being asked to cite them, not merely say they exist.
brimble 5y ago
The very worst schools in my city pay significantly better than the ones out in the "good" districts. They can do that because they get a ton of extra funding from the state and (I think) feds. I think the only schools that pay better than them are a small minority of the private schools. It doesn't help much, because working conditions are so bad that anyone with options still doesn't want to work there. More funerals for kids. More 2nd-graders threatening teachers. More lockdowns over gun threats and such. More drug problems. More chronically-absent kids. More turnover among students. More horror-stories about home life. Most teachers who can afford to turn it down decide that their sanity & safety is worth more than an extra $8-12k/yr. Idealists who go in hoping to make a difference get their attitude adjusted fast. It's brutal, and money—at least, money spent on education per se—does not seem to be the solution. > The level of complacent sloth within administration is not to be underestimated, and outright graft does occur from time to time. Heh, yeah, and that's in most districts, not just the poor ones :-(
- giantg2 5y ago
  "Idealists who go in hoping to make a difference get their attitude adjusted fast." I have a friend who completed his teaching degree. He said the policies at the school where he student-taught were so bad that he decided not to apply to teaching jobs. Stuff like you weren't allowed to give less than a 50% as long as they put their name on the paper, and ineffective discipline options. Basically, the school was just passing kids through the grades without the kids really learning and some kids wouldn't even try. I guess if you just graduate them, they're no longer the school's problem...
  - brimble 5y ago
    Yeah, kids don't fail grades anymore but are just passed ever upward, and many schools have incompetent admin (of all the things I was wrong about as a kid, turns out school administrators are, on average, even dumber than I thought they were back then—it's shocking, really) who insist on completely worthless discipline schemes, among other bad ideas. Can confirm all that's true. So then you're a teacher with a bunch of 6th graders, say, 2/3 of whom are one or more grade levels behind on at least one subject, but that material's not what will be on the test that'll be used to evaluate your performance. The right thing to do is to go back and fill in the gaps for those kids, but you don't have the time, and showing them enough of this year's material that they might at least get a few answers on the standardized test correct is safer for your career anyway. It sucks.
Kharvok 5y ago
It's because there is almost nothing that can be done. IQ is largely genetic, with a few social levers that can be pulled. We shouldn't expect from people what they are not capable of doing. This applies to everyone.
- SpaceManNabs 5y ago
  The rationalist gwern-types once again overestimating the predictive power of IQ. Also coming in with assumptions that people in poorer districts cannot have members of "remarkable enough" IQ that warrant distinction and treatment. Disappointing thread all around. Enough HN for today.
  - Kharvok 5y ago
    You aren't trying. We know IQ is predictive of success. No one is saying an individual from a poorer community can't be intelligent/academically successful. What we're saying is that we shouldn't hold someone born without the ability to be academically successful to unreasonable standards.
    - SpaceManNabs 5y ago
      > What we're saying is that we shouldn't hold someone born without the ability to be academically successful to unreasonable standards. How does this relate to improving performance at schools in poor or de-stabilized districts? There are "high IQ" individuals there that merit attention. Yes we should address the amount of waste that these poor performing districts generate, but there is idea of a zero sum game in this thread between poorer and richer districts that encourages dismissal of solutions. Nobody has talked about intergenerational poverty yet in this thread. Just wild.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - akomtu 5y ago
    IQ is probably the most predictive factor of success in our knowledge-first society. The catch is that IQ is a fuzzy variable: its measurements heavily depend on one's mood, the particular IQ test, the food one's eaten that day, hours slept and so on. However the highest measured IQ in ideal conditions is pretty stable.
SpaceManNabs 5y ago
> ultra-ghetto urban public schools It is always disappointing, to come from one of these districts and then having obtained social mobility through talent and luck, to see what my new peers (since I assume most of us here have gone to a top tier school and work somewhere in tech/finance) think of my neighborhood. No care for how these situations happened.
- giantg2 5y ago
  I can see that. The language choice is certainly distracting and inappropriate. I would hope that people discussing the issues in education would be some evidence that they do care. Maybe misguided in some instances, but at least trying to identify root causes and solutions. If we don't talk about the problems, then they won't get fixed.
  - mistrial9 5y ago
    my language choice is specific and well-earned; the city I am describing is consistently top ten in murder rates in the general population, and has some of the lowest graduation rates in the USA.
    - giantg2 5y ago
      Ghetto is generally derogatory. You could easily use other words to describe it.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  my advanced placement programs were evaporated and replaced with "no child left behind".. there were more than forty languages spoken at home in this school district. You can read for yourself the other parents' comments about the results. Good on you for getting the benefits of this society and escaping the slums and their ways.
- xanaxagoras 5y ago
  It is always disappointing, to go into any thread anywhere on the internet, and have some language police clutch his pearls and feign offense where clearly none exists.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

Regressing the mean and shrinking the margins between high performers and low performers doesn't elevate the performance of the bottom. It just lowers the performance of the entire system. You could even argue it disenfranchises the lower but forcing more top tier talent into their employment tiers.

zaroth 5y ago
I think you said it better than me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30546204 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30546204
gkop 5y ago
Yes! 100%. The argument in the article isn't wrong, but the way it's made is highly unlikely to win people over to the cause (and could actually deepen the disagreement).

giantg2 5y ago

In most places, the majority of the funding is at the state and federal level. And that generally uses policies that give a larger share of funds to underserved schools.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]