7 ms·

Efforts like this are well meaning, but only treat symptoms. The major impetus for watered down curricula is the very rational fear that large swaths of the stu

Efforts like this are well meaning, but only treat symptoms. The major impetus for watered down curricula is the very rational fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. Schools are not prepared to hold back massive numbers of kids, drop out proclivity for students held back rises, and teachers will be poorly evaluated by virtue of their students' inability above and beyond reasonable expectations of what they can learn in a single year given prior failure to build a proper foundation. How we got to this point is perhaps a lot more complicated and politically fraught, but it has to be dealt with. Administrators and state education leadership are often simply responding to the incentives and avoiding dire outcomes suggested by the data. They have to craft palatable excuses for it, and it's ultimately a waste of time to engage those excuses on face.

School-Cotton 5y ago
This is a natural consequence of the American myth/narrative that everyone is suited for academic high school and university. Other countries simply sort people into different schools much earlier, and spend the high school years teaching meaningful vocational skills to those not on the academic track, rather than wasting everyone's time.
- sefrost 5y ago
  Which countries do that and which countries don't?
  - usrn 5y ago
    Germany famously does. Children are given a test and depending on the score they go to Gymnasium (in perpetration for university) or one of two other options which trains them for either trades or labor.
  - brummm 5y ago
    Germany splits students into different schools starting 5th grade and it's absolutely great.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      Deciding the future of your life in 4th grade (when students are evaluated in Bavaria, at least) is maybe not great. Was living in Munich for five years and I'm glad we left before our son got sorted. There's also a strong racial/class component to who gets into Hauptschule/Realschule/Gymnasium, surprise surprise.
      - Lev1a 5y ago
        Here in M-V I had to go through "Orientierungsstufe"¹ which I partly blame for my learning difficulties and anger issues later in school, since in those two years we later had to find out that we missed 1-1,5 years of material and/or learning methods depending on the subject. I mean... e.g. in Philosophy the teacher was absent for most of those two years resulting in us having to entertain ourselves for those "lessons". When we finally entered Gymnasium at 7th grade we received a culture shock when we had to learn the "Zauberlehrling" by Goethe in 1,5-2 weeks for recital in the first weeks. Realschule felt more like Kindergarten from the treatment by teachers like their attitude while teaching and them not being interested in bullying unless it turned really physical, then protected the bullies when the bullied hit back. What I'm saying is, as the slightly fat kid who also didn't get all the shiny new things from his parents I was bullied by a group of other students surrounding and harassing me almost every single day during breaks those incompetent "teachers" only had the "advice" to basically let the bullies tire themselves out from bullying but heaven forbid once trying to break out of the encirclement i tried to hit one of those bullying lowlives, the teachers descended like vultures isolating me in a room for the rest of the break questioning why I did that instead of "just ignoring the bullies". Those bullies never received any kind of discipline/punishment. Later in Gymnasium, I once had a very heated verbal altercation with a classmate within earshot of a teacher, we were taken aside, our parents called in for an evening sitdown that same week, there we resolved our differences with some guidance from a teacher and remain friends even now. Both schools were only staffed by older teachers with the youngest being late-40s/early-50s and several teachers retiring during my stay at the Gymnasium, so probably little to no influence from education during newer eras of teaching. Honestly I wish I could smack that idiot Brodkorb for all the stupid shit he did as education minister. ¹: no split after 4th grade, instead have everyone go through Realschule for 5th and 6th grade, only starting the split at grade 7.
  - morelisp 5y ago
    In Germany you can be sorted into a Hauptschule around age 10. At this point you will definitely not get a university education via any usual path. Increasingly even "the trades" are closed off to graduates and people expect a Realschule (HS/GED equivalent) degree for those. I don't think university is appropriate for everyone and I dearly wish skilled trades had a higher position in society, and generally don't believe in the idea of "unskilled labor". But the German system is ultimately as cruel as the American one.
    - TulliusCicero 5y ago
      I don't think either system is great right now. From an American perspective, I really wish that there were still trade-type classes in high school, and those were more accepted as a viable career path at that stage of life for those who want it. One path could be partnerships with local community/technical colleges. My high school participated in a program called "Middle College" where high school students took classes at a local community college (can't remember if it was all or just some) and that seemed to work well.
  - pmyteh 5y ago
    England mostly doesn't (though there's some local variation). Most secondary (11-16/18) schools are 'comprehensive', covering the full range of abilities. It is standard to set pupils by ability in most subjects, but uncommon to track/stream pupils by general ability across the whole curriculum. We previously ran a split system, with exams splitting pupils at 11 into academic ('grammar') and non-academic ('secondary modern') schools. Many grammar schools were good; most sec mods were awful. The exams also famously had pretty poor predictive power for underlying academic ability as an adult, so pathways had to be developed to allow bright pupils to go to higher education despite being mis-sorted in the original exam - which somewhat undermines the point of the system. Comprehensivisation has never been nationally mandated, but nearly all areas have now done away with academic selection at 11. The remaining holdouts are mostly suburban Conservative areas where political power is in the hands of the well-heeled upper middle classes who are strongly in favour of grammars (and expect their own children to go there). Interestingly, Margaret Thatcher (as Education Secretary under Heath) was responsible for more grammar school closures than Labour was. Vocational/academic choices are now being made at age 14 and 16 either within the secondary schools or by moving to local further education colleges (similar to US community colleges and trade schools). Vocational classes are low status. Britain no longer has a strong industrial sector to use such skills, and although both parties advocate for better vocational education essentially everyone who matters would be most unhappy if their darling children were diverted from a university track in the direction of trades. That's something they want other (poorer) people's children to do, not their own. We've never developed good vocational training for offices/services jobs, and although such courses do exist they're not taken particularly seriously by employers, despite several rounds of national reforms.
    - selimthegrim 5y ago
      I think Northern Ireland still does the 11+
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    France does.
- OnlyMortal 5y ago
  The Netherlands been an example.
- frostburg 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's merely that. Most vocational track high schools types (except the hotel / restaurant ones that are well designed) here in Italy are honestly bad, not really helping students reach their full potential, but the content of the courses isn't on-its-face farcical like that "data science" course. There are clearly decision makers detached from reality involved here.
- brightball 5y ago
  The approach makes sense. How are claims of bias within the process handled? That’s the only thing I can imagine from a similar system here.
  - frostburg 5y ago
    At least here you can just go to the school that you want. People that don't like math or the idea of studying dead languages do not pick the lyceums. Obviously indirect social stratification is still at work in the process.
- texaslonghorn5 5y ago
  It's possible this is a good thing. Though it's also possible sorting too early determines someone's life path before they are mature to understand their talents and abilities. So I don't think early sorting is superior to the American model because at least the American model can uplift late bloomers.
  - bigcat123 5y ago
  - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
    A famous example of this that absolutely blew my mind is Uğur Şahin. For those not familiar, he is the founder of BioNTech, the German researchers who developed Pfizer's SARS-COV2 mRNA vaccine. Uğur moved from Turkey to Germany at age 4. At the end of primary school his teacher had assigned him to 'hauptschule'. It was only because of a neighbour's intervention that he was later put through 'Gymnasium' i.e. on track to study 'higher' studies. The rest is history, after med school he did a doctorate in Imunotherapy, he founded a 18billion revenue biotech company and saved countless lives with what we now call the Pfizer mRNA covid vaccine. Had that primary teacher's decision been held it really would have been a 'butterfly effect' of catastrophic proportions for Humanity.
    - School-Cotton 5y ago
      You don't know the counterfactual, though: how many Americans' talent is wasted because they are forced to sit through watered-down school until age 18 before they can begin serious studies?
      - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
        Absolutely fair. This one example just stuck with me when I read it because of how serindipitous his mRNA research turned out to be during an all out worldwide pandemic.
      - Czarcasm 5y ago
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Unfortunately, tracking is awful for the low-track students because guess what, no self-respecting teacher wants to be stuck teaching underperformers. So the students are trapped in that situation, being taught by terrible teachers who don't actually care for their educational achievement, and unable to improve. You see those outcomes across the board, including in the celebrated German system of academic vs. vocational school tracks. Yes, there are ways to cross through to the highest tracks, but very few students can avail themselves of those practically.
  - alimov 5y ago
    > “…no self-respecting teacher wants to be stuck teaching underperformers.” If you look at people that are not academically inclined and call them under performers then maybe that’s part of the issue. I think everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and if someone is more inclined to do vocational training rather than the standard track I think their strengths and interests should be developed / encouraged. An educator teaching someone that is actually interested in what they are being taught sounds like a more rewarding experience than lecturing a class where maybe 5 of 40 (not an actual stat) students are actually engaged.
    - zozbot234 5y ago
      > If you look at people that are not academically inclined and call them under performers then maybe that’s part of the issue. It's not me doing that, it's education schools telling prospective teachers that their students will just be "learning their math by themselves", and the teachers can simply be facilitators. It must be a comfy job teaching math class to little Carl Friedrich Gauss and the like, but what about the remaining 99% of students - who will need actual teaching?
      - alimov 5y ago
        Sorry, I should have worded that better.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      It's not whether people are more suited for vocational or "standard track." It's our aptitude for judging that in children.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  I've talked to some high school students about going to college despite high costs, and there was a general fear (statistically backed) that they would make less over their lifetimes without a degree and that not going to college would put them in a worse position to do basic things like buy a house as costs continue to rise.
- Bostonian 5y ago
  Yes, but if you do sort students by academic achievement, you will send a smaller fraction of blacks and Hispanics to academic high schools than whites, and a smaller fraction of whites than Asians, since there are differences in academic achievement by race. I say so be it, but currently many people assume that disparate outcomes prove racism.
  - adamomada 5y ago
    The irony of course is that focusing on who they are not what they do has to be more racist by a rational definition
    - throwawayboise 5y ago
      If it's based on ability, it should not matter what percentage of advanced students are white, black, asian, or other. All that matters is that if you're good enough, you get in.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  That doesn't explain what has changed within American public education, if it's true what the parent commenter said: "large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor"
- ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
  How do they deal with the late bloomers? I didn't really find my academic ability, and programming until I was in my twenties.
  - saint_fiasco 5y ago
    How did they deal with you, if I may ask? Is there something you wish they had done differently?
frostburg 5y ago
They're avoiding dire outcomes for themselves while damaging society, however. A merely performative education is truly something awful.
- wonnage 5y ago
  I think the cause/effect is reversed. Society is damaged because parents cannot raise kids properly for a variety of reasons. You have kids who don't come to school, entire classrooms where 80% of the time is spent managing behavior, kids who receive zero parental support at home because the single parent is working two jobs, etc. That problem is hard to fix, whereas the curriculum is soft and malleable. You also have an entire industry of education PHDs who have never taught class for any appreciable amount of time who have a neoliberal fetish for minor policy tweaks as the path to heaven. Teachers have the same problems as police, random societal functions have fallen to them by default because there's no alternative. They're surrogate parents, social workers, mental health counselors, etc. and there's barely any time to do any teaching afterwards.
  - mrguyorama 5y ago
    >surrogate parents, social workers, mental health counselors, etc And they're paid dick all on top of it
adamsmith143 5y ago
This makes no sense even as a well meaning. "Some kids are going to fail so we need to prevent other kids from excelling." Obvious BS from California
- jimbob45 5y ago
  Okay but what if American children were subjected to the standards of Chinese schools? You'd see 70% failure rates overnight at every school in the nation. Surely, in that case, we'd see policies like these pushed even by white people. Likewise, the minority parents and schools simply see upper-class white schools in this country as we do the Chinese schools. I'm not saying that this is the best solution to the problem but I can at least understand where these parents are coming from.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    We're not talking about abruptly changing standards, we're talking about holding kids to existing standards for which our society is already calibrated. I don't think your analogy applies (also, are Chinese schools really so much more rigorous than American schools, or is this assumed based on performance of Chinese immigrants?).
    - apetresc 5y ago
      Yes, they really are. Look up example questions for the Zhongkao (national high school entrance exam) or Gaokao (national university entrance exam) and ask yourself how North American students at those respective stages would fare.
      - throwaway894345 5y ago
        I'm not necessarily surprised, just curious. Thanks for clarifying.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
civilized 5y ago
Rather than standing tall for universal high standards, education officials pass the buck to look good. The result will be an increasingly unproductive, stratified, and unequal society. You can pass and pass and pass people, but eventually an employer is going to need someone to do the job, and they will make sure they get that someone. So there will be a hard standard sooner or later. The only choice is whether we give all students a chance to meet that standard.
snowwrestler 5y ago
Is the curriculum being watered down? My reading on this the last time it came up on HN is that the sequencing of math topics is being changed, which results in classes not having the familiar names like Algebra 2, Geometry, AB Calculus, etc. That doesn’t mean the concepts will not be covered by the end. I remember the huge blowups over “Common Core” years ago, which included new ways of teaching math concepts. I got to see some of it in action during COVID as I sat in on elementary Zoom school with my kid. I have to say I was impressed; they used techniques I did not recognize, but they seemed to work well.
- wbsss4412 5y ago
  As someone with a math background I found the blow ups over common core to be ridiculous. Focusing on parents unfamiliarity in place of any actual discussion of effectiveness. If we are going to get anywhere with math education, it can’t be based on pandering to parent’s expectations.
dc-programmer 5y ago
I think America is going to have to take a hard look at its math education if it’s serious about re-industrializing. Where are all the extra engineers going to come from? I think you are touching on theory I have that Americans are becoming increasingly resentful that technical skills are becoming more necessary for middle class living. This is a huge driver of the pervading sense of precariousness. For some reason there’s a huge math phobia in this country
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
  > Where are all the extra engineers going to come from? Unfortunately, maybe where they come from now? India, China, and other immigration.
  - dc-programmer 5y ago
    The unstated irony is that there’s a large overlap in the anti-immigration and re-industrialization crowd. I think an interesting part of 20th century American industrial/scientific history is that many of the prominent figures were European immigrants (many Jewish) or children of immigrants. Maybe there is something exceptional about the environment itself. But the talented and privileged native citizens rarely aspire to be an innovator; they dream of being a leader or strategic thinker or mover of capital. That’s why I think hard math is so marginalized even in elite circles (“I’ve never been good at math”). Technical work is essentially blue collar to the upper middle class. Many of my peers are in this group, and the only time they were ever interested in math or programming, was due to its possibility as a conduit to a more prestigious position. This attitude is directly ingrained in undergrad institutions. They focus on general knowledge to serve as a justification to skip over front line work to become a leader (military officer, factory manager, investment banker). There are excellent American technicians no doubt but most of them don’t fit the typical WASP mold or are predisposed to obsessing over systemic topics (which describes myself, being ADHD, although I can only strive to be excellent). And the upper class? They have never aspired to much of anything really other than hedonism and protecting their position of status. At least in other countries, the upper class ideal is a renaissance man. Edit: some of these assertions are sweeping and maybe a little mean. But I do think the thesis is directionally correct. America will need to change the culture around education to succeed in the 21st century. Immigration has and will continue to be a boon; but we have to accept the possibility that America could become a less desirable immigration target
acchow 5y ago
> the very rational fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. Why is this a rational fear? It seems shocking to me that students can't perform at the same prior standards given their parents are more educated than the prior generation's parents.
- frostburg 5y ago
  Are the teachers as good?
  - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
    Hard to know. The public perception of public employment as a whole has gone considerably down since about the Reagan era. The pay is mostly not very good, and states and the feds have much more power over things that were traditionally local.
- falcolas 5y ago
  Potential reason it's rational: The shoulders of those giants are higher than ever before. Climbing to those heights is correspondingly harder to do. Speaking for myself, I had to worry very little about computers until late in high school (Senior year, specifically). There were no spreadsheet or word processing classes, and the typing classes were only for the girls. There was Algebra (up through Calculus as an optional course), but many others that my niece has that I didn't.
cortesoft 5y ago
Maybe I am missing something, but how would allowing some kids to take more advanced math cause other kids to fail? You could allow kids to graduate without taking the advanced math, but still let kids who want to/are ready take the more advanced classes.
poisonarena 5y ago
What happened in California over the last 50 years to make math scores plummet ?
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Declining math scores can be tied almost entirely tied to economic disparity (which unfortunately tracks with race pretty closely). Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far behind. Unfortunately I don't expect these changes to impact that. It will likely take more rich kids out of public schools and further widen the gap.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far behind The achievement gap is growing. Part of this is explained by union dynamics [1]. Part by California's elites caring less about addressing the gap than talking about it. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X211006357 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X2110063...
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      yuup > Altogether, this study provides some evidence that contract changes are associated with the educational opportunities of school districts’ diverse and economically disadvantaged students. Essentially, if you want to prioritize your child's education above all else, get them into the richest school district you can manage.
logicalmonster 5y ago
> How we got to this point is perhaps a lot more complicated and politically fraught, but it has to be dealt with. How many folks are really willing to do that? The problem is that actually discussing the perceived root causes of this issue will get you shunned out of polite society.
- solenoidalslide 5y ago
  Are you referring to all of the recent laws banning discussion of these topics labeled CRT? Those are the only topics I am seeing being outright banned from being discussed or taught.
legalcorrection 5y ago
When the utopian plans to elevate the masses fail, just bring down the elites instead. Equality achieved.
danans 5y ago
> The major impetus for watered down curricula is the very rational fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. I don't think the previous standards of rigor were ever so high for most students. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s in the suburban working class Midwest, the vast majority of the students in my high school didn't advance beyond algebra. This was in a well resourced school district. But that was a time when it was felt that most people didn't even need to know anything past basic math to be employable. Times have changed of course, but the vast majority of educational paths, even STEM paths, don't require calculus. However a great many do require basic data analysis abilities, so it's reasonable to emphasize those. This shouldn't be done at the cost of offering calculus as an option for students who are prepared for and motivated to do it, though. Of course in the end this is about cost. Assuming the same resources, to teach a broader set of students data science will require reducing the availability teaching resources for something else. I also recall that in the 1980s in some places there were programs that taught calculus at public community colleges for students who were on an accelerated academic path in high school. That is another option to consider.

School-Cotton 5y ago

This is a natural consequence of the American myth/narrative that everyone is suited for academic high school and university. Other countries simply sort people into different schools much earlier, and spend the high school years teaching meaningful vocational skills to those not on the academic track, rather than wasting everyone's time.

sefrost 5y ago
Which countries do that and which countries don't?
- usrn 5y ago
  Germany famously does. Children are given a test and depending on the score they go to Gymnasium (in perpetration for university) or one of two other options which trains them for either trades or labor.
- brummm 5y ago
  Germany splits students into different schools starting 5th grade and it's absolutely great.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    Deciding the future of your life in 4th grade (when students are evaluated in Bavaria, at least) is maybe not great. Was living in Munich for five years and I'm glad we left before our son got sorted. There's also a strong racial/class component to who gets into Hauptschule/Realschule/Gymnasium, surprise surprise.
    - Lev1a 5y ago
      Here in M-V I had to go through "Orientierungsstufe"¹ which I partly blame for my learning difficulties and anger issues later in school, since in those two years we later had to find out that we missed 1-1,5 years of material and/or learning methods depending on the subject. I mean... e.g. in Philosophy the teacher was absent for most of those two years resulting in us having to entertain ourselves for those "lessons". When we finally entered Gymnasium at 7th grade we received a culture shock when we had to learn the "Zauberlehrling" by Goethe in 1,5-2 weeks for recital in the first weeks. Realschule felt more like Kindergarten from the treatment by teachers like their attitude while teaching and them not being interested in bullying unless it turned really physical, then protected the bullies when the bullied hit back. What I'm saying is, as the slightly fat kid who also didn't get all the shiny new things from his parents I was bullied by a group of other students surrounding and harassing me almost every single day during breaks those incompetent "teachers" only had the "advice" to basically let the bullies tire themselves out from bullying but heaven forbid once trying to break out of the encirclement i tried to hit one of those bullying lowlives, the teachers descended like vultures isolating me in a room for the rest of the break questioning why I did that instead of "just ignoring the bullies". Those bullies never received any kind of discipline/punishment. Later in Gymnasium, I once had a very heated verbal altercation with a classmate within earshot of a teacher, we were taken aside, our parents called in for an evening sitdown that same week, there we resolved our differences with some guidance from a teacher and remain friends even now. Both schools were only staffed by older teachers with the youngest being late-40s/early-50s and several teachers retiring during my stay at the Gymnasium, so probably little to no influence from education during newer eras of teaching. Honestly I wish I could smack that idiot Brodkorb for all the stupid shit he did as education minister. ¹: no split after 4th grade, instead have everyone go through Realschule for 5th and 6th grade, only starting the split at grade 7.
- morelisp 5y ago
  In Germany you can be sorted into a Hauptschule around age 10. At this point you will definitely not get a university education via any usual path. Increasingly even "the trades" are closed off to graduates and people expect a Realschule (HS/GED equivalent) degree for those. I don't think university is appropriate for everyone and I dearly wish skilled trades had a higher position in society, and generally don't believe in the idea of "unskilled labor". But the German system is ultimately as cruel as the American one.
  - TulliusCicero 5y ago
    I don't think either system is great right now. From an American perspective, I really wish that there were still trade-type classes in high school, and those were more accepted as a viable career path at that stage of life for those who want it. One path could be partnerships with local community/technical colleges. My high school participated in a program called "Middle College" where high school students took classes at a local community college (can't remember if it was all or just some) and that seemed to work well.
- pmyteh 5y ago
  England mostly doesn't (though there's some local variation). Most secondary (11-16/18) schools are 'comprehensive', covering the full range of abilities. It is standard to set pupils by ability in most subjects, but uncommon to track/stream pupils by general ability across the whole curriculum. We previously ran a split system, with exams splitting pupils at 11 into academic ('grammar') and non-academic ('secondary modern') schools. Many grammar schools were good; most sec mods were awful. The exams also famously had pretty poor predictive power for underlying academic ability as an adult, so pathways had to be developed to allow bright pupils to go to higher education despite being mis-sorted in the original exam - which somewhat undermines the point of the system. Comprehensivisation has never been nationally mandated, but nearly all areas have now done away with academic selection at 11. The remaining holdouts are mostly suburban Conservative areas where political power is in the hands of the well-heeled upper middle classes who are strongly in favour of grammars (and expect their own children to go there). Interestingly, Margaret Thatcher (as Education Secretary under Heath) was responsible for more grammar school closures than Labour was. Vocational/academic choices are now being made at age 14 and 16 either within the secondary schools or by moving to local further education colleges (similar to US community colleges and trade schools). Vocational classes are low status. Britain no longer has a strong industrial sector to use such skills, and although both parties advocate for better vocational education essentially everyone who matters would be most unhappy if their darling children were diverted from a university track in the direction of trades. That's something they want other (poorer) people's children to do, not their own. We've never developed good vocational training for offices/services jobs, and although such courses do exist they're not taken particularly seriously by employers, despite several rounds of national reforms.
  - selimthegrim 5y ago
    I think Northern Ireland still does the 11+
- School-Cotton 5y ago
  France does.
OnlyMortal 5y ago
The Netherlands been an example.
frostburg 5y ago
I'm not sure it's merely that. Most vocational track high schools types (except the hotel / restaurant ones that are well designed) here in Italy are honestly bad, not really helping students reach their full potential, but the content of the courses isn't on-its-face farcical like that "data science" course. There are clearly decision makers detached from reality involved here.
brightball 5y ago
The approach makes sense. How are claims of bias within the process handled? That’s the only thing I can imagine from a similar system here.
- frostburg 5y ago
  At least here you can just go to the school that you want. People that don't like math or the idea of studying dead languages do not pick the lyceums. Obviously indirect social stratification is still at work in the process.
texaslonghorn5 5y ago
It's possible this is a good thing. Though it's also possible sorting too early determines someone's life path before they are mature to understand their talents and abilities. So I don't think early sorting is superior to the American model because at least the American model can uplift late bloomers.
- bigcat123 5y ago
- DoingIsLearning 5y ago
  A famous example of this that absolutely blew my mind is Uğur Şahin. For those not familiar, he is the founder of BioNTech, the German researchers who developed Pfizer's SARS-COV2 mRNA vaccine. Uğur moved from Turkey to Germany at age 4. At the end of primary school his teacher had assigned him to 'hauptschule'. It was only because of a neighbour's intervention that he was later put through 'Gymnasium' i.e. on track to study 'higher' studies. The rest is history, after med school he did a doctorate in Imunotherapy, he founded a 18billion revenue biotech company and saved countless lives with what we now call the Pfizer mRNA covid vaccine. Had that primary teacher's decision been held it really would have been a 'butterfly effect' of catastrophic proportions for Humanity.
  - School-Cotton 5y ago
    You don't know the counterfactual, though: how many Americans' talent is wasted because they are forced to sit through watered-down school until age 18 before they can begin serious studies?
    - DoingIsLearning 5y ago
      Absolutely fair. This one example just stuck with me when I read it because of how serindipitous his mRNA research turned out to be during an all out worldwide pandemic.
    - Czarcasm 5y ago
zozbot234 5y ago
Unfortunately, tracking is awful for the low-track students because guess what, no self-respecting teacher wants to be stuck teaching underperformers. So the students are trapped in that situation, being taught by terrible teachers who don't actually care for their educational achievement, and unable to improve. You see those outcomes across the board, including in the celebrated German system of academic vs. vocational school tracks. Yes, there are ways to cross through to the highest tracks, but very few students can avail themselves of those practically.
- alimov 5y ago
  > “…no self-respecting teacher wants to be stuck teaching underperformers.” If you look at people that are not academically inclined and call them under performers then maybe that’s part of the issue. I think everyone has strengths and weaknesses, and if someone is more inclined to do vocational training rather than the standard track I think their strengths and interests should be developed / encouraged. An educator teaching someone that is actually interested in what they are being taught sounds like a more rewarding experience than lecturing a class where maybe 5 of 40 (not an actual stat) students are actually engaged.
  - zozbot234 5y ago
    > If you look at people that are not academically inclined and call them under performers then maybe that’s part of the issue. It's not me doing that, it's education schools telling prospective teachers that their students will just be "learning their math by themselves", and the teachers can simply be facilitators. It must be a comfy job teaching math class to little Carl Friedrich Gauss and the like, but what about the remaining 99% of students - who will need actual teaching?
    - alimov 5y ago
      Sorry, I should have worded that better.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    It's not whether people are more suited for vocational or "standard track." It's our aptitude for judging that in children.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
I've talked to some high school students about going to college despite high costs, and there was a general fear (statistically backed) that they would make less over their lifetimes without a degree and that not going to college would put them in a worse position to do basic things like buy a house as costs continue to rise.
Bostonian 5y ago
Yes, but if you do sort students by academic achievement, you will send a smaller fraction of blacks and Hispanics to academic high schools than whites, and a smaller fraction of whites than Asians, since there are differences in academic achievement by race. I say so be it, but currently many people assume that disparate outcomes prove racism.
- adamomada 5y ago
  The irony of course is that focusing on who they are not what they do has to be more racist by a rational definition
  - throwawayboise 5y ago
    If it's based on ability, it should not matter what percentage of advanced students are white, black, asian, or other. All that matters is that if you're good enough, you get in.
tshaddox 5y ago
That doesn't explain what has changed within American public education, if it's true what the parent commenter said: "large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor"
ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
How do they deal with the late bloomers? I didn't really find my academic ability, and programming until I was in my twenties.
- saint_fiasco 5y ago
  How did they deal with you, if I may ask? Is there something you wish they had done differently?

frostburg 5y ago

They're avoiding dire outcomes for themselves while damaging society, however. A merely performative education is truly something awful.

wonnage 5y ago
I think the cause/effect is reversed. Society is damaged because parents cannot raise kids properly for a variety of reasons. You have kids who don't come to school, entire classrooms where 80% of the time is spent managing behavior, kids who receive zero parental support at home because the single parent is working two jobs, etc. That problem is hard to fix, whereas the curriculum is soft and malleable. You also have an entire industry of education PHDs who have never taught class for any appreciable amount of time who have a neoliberal fetish for minor policy tweaks as the path to heaven. Teachers have the same problems as police, random societal functions have fallen to them by default because there's no alternative. They're surrogate parents, social workers, mental health counselors, etc. and there's barely any time to do any teaching afterwards.
- mrguyorama 5y ago
  >surrogate parents, social workers, mental health counselors, etc And they're paid dick all on top of it

adamsmith143 5y ago

This makes no sense even as a well meaning. "Some kids are going to fail so we need to prevent other kids from excelling." Obvious BS from California

jimbob45 5y ago
Okay but what if American children were subjected to the standards of Chinese schools? You'd see 70% failure rates overnight at every school in the nation. Surely, in that case, we'd see policies like these pushed even by white people. Likewise, the minority parents and schools simply see upper-class white schools in this country as we do the Chinese schools. I'm not saying that this is the best solution to the problem but I can at least understand where these parents are coming from.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  We're not talking about abruptly changing standards, we're talking about holding kids to existing standards for which our society is already calibrated. I don't think your analogy applies (also, are Chinese schools really so much more rigorous than American schools, or is this assumed based on performance of Chinese immigrants?).
  - apetresc 5y ago
    Yes, they really are. Look up example questions for the Zhongkao (national high school entrance exam) or Gaokao (national university entrance exam) and ask yourself how North American students at those respective stages would fare.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      I'm not necessarily surprised, just curious. Thanks for clarifying.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

civilized 5y ago

Rather than standing tall for universal high standards, education officials pass the buck to look good. The result will be an increasingly unproductive, stratified, and unequal society. You can pass and pass and pass people, but eventually an employer is going to need someone to do the job, and they will make sure they get that someone. So there will be a hard standard sooner or later. The only choice is whether we give all students a chance to meet that standard.

snowwrestler 5y ago

Is the curriculum being watered down? My reading on this the last time it came up on HN is that the sequencing of math topics is being changed, which results in classes not having the familiar names like Algebra 2, Geometry, AB Calculus, etc. That doesn’t mean the concepts will not be covered by the end. I remember the huge blowups over “Common Core” years ago, which included new ways of teaching math concepts. I got to see some of it in action during COVID as I sat in on elementary Zoom school with my kid. I have to say I was impressed; they used techniques I did not recognize, but they seemed to work well.

wbsss4412 5y ago
As someone with a math background I found the blow ups over common core to be ridiculous. Focusing on parents unfamiliarity in place of any actual discussion of effectiveness. If we are going to get anywhere with math education, it can’t be based on pandering to parent’s expectations.

dc-programmer 5y ago

I think America is going to have to take a hard look at its math education if it’s serious about re-industrializing. Where are all the extra engineers going to come from? I think you are touching on theory I have that Americans are becoming increasingly resentful that technical skills are becoming more necessary for middle class living. This is a huge driver of the pervading sense of precariousness. For some reason there’s a huge math phobia in this country

TedDoesntTalk 5y ago
> Where are all the extra engineers going to come from? Unfortunately, maybe where they come from now? India, China, and other immigration.
- dc-programmer 5y ago
  The unstated irony is that there’s a large overlap in the anti-immigration and re-industrialization crowd. I think an interesting part of 20th century American industrial/scientific history is that many of the prominent figures were European immigrants (many Jewish) or children of immigrants. Maybe there is something exceptional about the environment itself. But the talented and privileged native citizens rarely aspire to be an innovator; they dream of being a leader or strategic thinker or mover of capital. That’s why I think hard math is so marginalized even in elite circles (“I’ve never been good at math”). Technical work is essentially blue collar to the upper middle class. Many of my peers are in this group, and the only time they were ever interested in math or programming, was due to its possibility as a conduit to a more prestigious position. This attitude is directly ingrained in undergrad institutions. They focus on general knowledge to serve as a justification to skip over front line work to become a leader (military officer, factory manager, investment banker). There are excellent American technicians no doubt but most of them don’t fit the typical WASP mold or are predisposed to obsessing over systemic topics (which describes myself, being ADHD, although I can only strive to be excellent). And the upper class? They have never aspired to much of anything really other than hedonism and protecting their position of status. At least in other countries, the upper class ideal is a renaissance man. Edit: some of these assertions are sweeping and maybe a little mean. But I do think the thesis is directionally correct. America will need to change the culture around education to succeed in the 21st century. Immigration has and will continue to be a boon; but we have to accept the possibility that America could become a less desirable immigration target

acchow 5y ago

> the very rational fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. Why is this a rational fear? It seems shocking to me that students can't perform at the same prior standards given their parents are more educated than the prior generation's parents.

frostburg 5y ago
Are the teachers as good?
- amanaplanacanal 5y ago
  Hard to know. The public perception of public employment as a whole has gone considerably down since about the Reagan era. The pay is mostly not very good, and states and the feds have much more power over things that were traditionally local.
falcolas 5y ago
Potential reason it's rational: The shoulders of those giants are higher than ever before. Climbing to those heights is correspondingly harder to do. Speaking for myself, I had to worry very little about computers until late in high school (Senior year, specifically). There were no spreadsheet or word processing classes, and the typing classes were only for the girls. There was Algebra (up through Calculus as an optional course), but many others that my niece has that I didn't.

cortesoft 5y ago

Maybe I am missing something, but how would allowing some kids to take more advanced math cause other kids to fail? You could allow kids to graduate without taking the advanced math, but still let kids who want to/are ready take the more advanced classes.

poisonarena 5y ago

What happened in California over the last 50 years to make math scores plummet ?

micromacrofoot 5y ago
Declining math scores can be tied almost entirely tied to economic disparity (which unfortunately tracks with race pretty closely). Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far behind. Unfortunately I don't expect these changes to impact that. It will likely take more rich kids out of public schools and further widen the gap.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Rich kids are on track, poor kids are far behind The achievement gap is growing. Part of this is explained by union dynamics [1]. Part by California's elites caring less about addressing the gap than talking about it. [1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X211006357 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.3102/0013189X2110063...
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    yuup > Altogether, this study provides some evidence that contract changes are associated with the educational opportunities of school districts’ diverse and economically disadvantaged students. Essentially, if you want to prioritize your child's education above all else, get them into the richest school district you can manage.

logicalmonster 5y ago

> How we got to this point is perhaps a lot more complicated and politically fraught, but it has to be dealt with. How many folks are really willing to do that? The problem is that actually discussing the perceived root causes of this issue will get you shunned out of polite society.

solenoidalslide 5y ago
Are you referring to all of the recent laws banning discussion of these topics labeled CRT? Those are the only topics I am seeing being outright banned from being discussed or taught.

legalcorrection 5y ago

When the utopian plans to elevate the masses fail, just bring down the elites instead. Equality achieved.

danans 5y ago

> The major impetus for watered down curricula is the very rational fear that large swaths of the student population will fail if expected to perform at the prior standards of rigor. I don't think the previous standards of rigor were ever so high for most students. When I was growing up in the 80s and 90s in the suburban working class Midwest, the vast majority of the students in my high school didn't advance beyond algebra. This was in a well resourced school district. But that was a time when it was felt that most people didn't even need to know anything past basic math to be employable. Times have changed of course, but the vast majority of educational paths, even STEM paths, don't require calculus. However a great many do require basic data analysis abilities, so it's reasonable to emphasize those. This shouldn't be done at the cost of offering calculus as an option for students who are prepared for and motivated to do it, though. Of course in the end this is about cost. Assuming the same resources, to teach a broader set of students data science will require reducing the availability teaching resources for something else. I also recall that in the 1980s in some places there were programs that taught calculus at public community colleges for students who were on an accelerated academic path in high school. That is another option to consider.