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>Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth The data show that causation mostly flows in the opposite di

>Different school districts offer vastly different levels of education, depending mainly on wealth The data show that causation mostly flows in the opposite direction. The main determinant of whether a school is "good" is the average academic ability of the students who attend the school. And that, statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income. Policy interventions based on the idea that school quality determines student performance have consistently failed to show significant results. These interventions include local and regional busing. Putting lower-achieving students in close physical proximity to higher-achieving students doesn't make much of a long-term difference.

lapcat 4y ago
> These interventions include local and regional busing. Busing raises a host of problems that are independent of school quality. I can only offer my anecdotal experience here, but I was able to thrive in my new school, after I caught up. My inherent ability didn't change simply by moving, but more was given to me and more expected of me after I moved. But I wasn't bused in, I lived in the same neighborhoods as my friends and peers.
lern_too_spel 4y ago
The article you're commenting on mentions several interventions with significant benefit: "High-dosage tutoring—which educators define as involving a trained tutor working with one to four students at a time, three times a week for a whole year—is one of the few interventions with a demonstrated benefit that comes close, producing an average gain equivalent to 19 weeks of instruction." "One option is voluntary summer school, which, according to prior research, has yielded about five weeks of instructional gain per student. Another option is an extra period each day of instruction in core subjects. A double dose of math over the course of an entire school year has been shown to produce gains equivalent to about 10 weeks of in-person instruction, although the evidence on reading is weaker." https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/5-lessons-education-policy-newly-minted-nobel-laureates https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/5-lessons-e... lists a few more studies that consistently show the opposite of what you claimed. School quality matters, and more schooling matters.
- bombcar 4y ago
  Summer school, being about 5 weeks, adding 5 weeks of gain is ... kind of expected.
  - lumost 4y ago
    Which begs the question… why don’t we do it? Summer break is fun and all, but far to long for most students.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I am a fan of switching to school years with 10 weeks on, 3 week off quarters. I think a couple of the summer breaks staggered across the nation would be even better so that not all kids are on vacation at the same time.
mattmcknight 4y ago
While you are correct that good schools are caused by good students, it's not strictly accurate to say that "statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income". Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness. Income doesn't cause intelligence or conscientiousness, although it may be partially caused by them.
- 015UUZn8aEvW 4y ago
  Agreed, this is a more precise way of stating it, albeit using traits that are more difficult to measure at scale.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  Income can have a huge effect on observed "conscientiousness". If a student is having to spend effort on looking after their siblings, or their parents, or worrying about how they're going to eat then it's going to be much harder for them to focus on school.
- lijogdfljk 4y ago
  I've always believed, though i'm unsure of specific studies that back this claim up, that income is dominant in defining these traits not because wealth translates to intelligence but that poverty inhibits it. Stressors make everything difficult, of which poverty is a massive one.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness Only partially - only ~40-50% of a person's IQ are a result of parental genetics [3]. The rest is a result of the environment in which the child is raised - and there are very important factors at play that directly correlate with income of the parents: - Does each child have their own, adequately sized, room with a study desk to work in and concentrate? During the pandemic it turned out to be a real problem that children who had to share rooms had issues following streamed lectures. - Are the living conditions actually healthy? Poor people are often forced by their poverty to live in decrepit conditions: noise from highways or rails, toxic emissions from nearby factories, general issues with toxicity (paint, lead water pipes, mould). All of this has direct outcome on performance of students. - Do the children, particularly those of working age (14 and above, but especially 16 and above) have to work actual jobs to make pocket money or contribute to household income? - Are the parents largely absent from their children's lives because both parents have to work full-time or worse jobs just to make ends meet? - Can the parents invest time and money into furthering their children's education? Can they sit together with them in the afternoon/evening and work through homework problems? Can they afford side education, playing instruments or similar activities that have been shown to have a positive effect on education? - Do the parents have enough money to feed the children? Hundreds of thousands of students alone in New York depend on schools handing out free lunches, which turned out to be a massive problem during the pandemic [1]. - Poverty causes stress - not just from being cooped together in too small living spaces, but also in food insecurity, increased fights between parents over the stress, or in the worst cases from literally being homeless [2]. [1] https://www.foodandwine.com/news/new-york-city-school-children-free-food-coronavirus https://www.foodandwine.com/news/new-york-city-school-childr... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/nyregion/nyc-homeless-children-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/nyregion/nyc-homeless-chi... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#Molecular_genetic_investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#Molecular_g...
throwaway95919 4y ago
- richwater 4y ago
  Academic ability does not mean inherent intelligence based on genetics. You're the one being racist.
- annyeonghada 4y ago
  Speaking of a statistical reality is not racism. It's just reality. One can debate of the causes - societal, genetics, single motherhood, whatever - but the fact remains that it is reality.
jdmichal 4y ago
I'm going to repost a comment of mine from two years ago. This is not an unknown thing to school boards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012403 The wife of one of my good friends was on the county school board for 12 years. According to her, it was an unspoken secret was that parental involvement was the biggest predictor of / contributor to student success. The reason it was taboo was because you absolutely cannot expect anything from the parents. It was political suicide. I would put dollars on the table that such is already happening for every parent that is willing and able to do it, because they were already doing it before too.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  The #1 factor in determining if a kid will have a desired outcome is if they have a mom and a dad present. It's really that simple. And that means parental involvement. It's sad one is labeled a racist or anti-feminist or w/e when you point this obvious fact out. ~70% of black kids are born to single mom's. That's a broken culture. White kids are at ~30% and rising and we see the same failure rates. That's a broken culture. Asian's have 2-parent families and have success. Even the lower class ones, suggesting income/class shouldn't be a factor in having kids with 2 parents. So of course the next step is to demonize the nuclear family. The trends keep getting worse.
  - virgil_disgr4ce 4y ago
    What do you mean by "broken culture?"
    - nemo44x 4y ago
      That's it's considered acceptable for kids to be born into situations like this. This is "broken" because it reliably leads to failure and undesirable outcomes.
      - wbsss4412 4y ago
        You’re making a lot of strong assumptions when you say that it’s considered acceptable. I strongly doubt that it is normal for anyone to want to be a single parent (there are of course anecdotal exceptions to this, but not on a cultural level).
jcranberry 4y ago
What data?

lapcat 4y ago

> These interventions include local and regional busing. Busing raises a host of problems that are independent of school quality. I can only offer my anecdotal experience here, but I was able to thrive in my new school, after I caught up. My inherent ability didn't change simply by moving, but more was given to me and more expected of me after I moved. But I wasn't bused in, I lived in the same neighborhoods as my friends and peers.

lern_too_spel 4y ago

The article you're commenting on mentions several interventions with significant benefit: "High-dosage tutoring—which educators define as involving a trained tutor working with one to four students at a time, three times a week for a whole year—is one of the few interventions with a demonstrated benefit that comes close, producing an average gain equivalent to 19 weeks of instruction." "One option is voluntary summer school, which, according to prior research, has yielded about five weeks of instructional gain per student. Another option is an extra period each day of instruction in core subjects. A double dose of math over the course of an entire school year has been shown to produce gains equivalent to about 10 weeks of in-person instruction, although the evidence on reading is weaker." https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/5-lessons-education-policy-newly-minted-nobel-laureates https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/5-lessons-e... lists a few more studies that consistently show the opposite of what you claimed. School quality matters, and more schooling matters.

bombcar 4y ago
Summer school, being about 5 weeks, adding 5 weeks of gain is ... kind of expected.
- lumost 4y ago
  Which begs the question… why don’t we do it? Summer break is fun and all, but far to long for most students.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I am a fan of switching to school years with 10 weeks on, 3 week off quarters. I think a couple of the summer breaks staggered across the nation would be even better so that not all kids are on vacation at the same time.

mattmcknight 4y ago

While you are correct that good schools are caused by good students, it's not strictly accurate to say that "statistically speaking, is largely a function of race and income". Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness. Income doesn't cause intelligence or conscientiousness, although it may be partially caused by them.

015UUZn8aEvW 4y ago
Agreed, this is a more precise way of stating it, albeit using traits that are more difficult to measure at scale.
nicoburns 4y ago
Income can have a huge effect on observed "conscientiousness". If a student is having to spend effort on looking after their siblings, or their parents, or worrying about how they're going to eat then it's going to be much harder for them to focus on school.
lijogdfljk 4y ago
I've always believed, though i'm unsure of specific studies that back this claim up, that income is dominant in defining these traits not because wealth translates to intelligence but that poverty inhibits it. Stressors make everything difficult, of which poverty is a massive one.
mschuster91 4y ago
> Being a good student is largely a function of intelligence and conscientiousness, which is largely a function of parental intelligence and conscientiousness Only partially - only ~40-50% of a person's IQ are a result of parental genetics [3]. The rest is a result of the environment in which the child is raised - and there are very important factors at play that directly correlate with income of the parents: - Does each child have their own, adequately sized, room with a study desk to work in and concentrate? During the pandemic it turned out to be a real problem that children who had to share rooms had issues following streamed lectures. - Are the living conditions actually healthy? Poor people are often forced by their poverty to live in decrepit conditions: noise from highways or rails, toxic emissions from nearby factories, general issues with toxicity (paint, lead water pipes, mould). All of this has direct outcome on performance of students. - Do the children, particularly those of working age (14 and above, but especially 16 and above) have to work actual jobs to make pocket money or contribute to household income? - Are the parents largely absent from their children's lives because both parents have to work full-time or worse jobs just to make ends meet? - Can the parents invest time and money into furthering their children's education? Can they sit together with them in the afternoon/evening and work through homework problems? Can they afford side education, playing instruments or similar activities that have been shown to have a positive effect on education? - Do the parents have enough money to feed the children? Hundreds of thousands of students alone in New York depend on schools handing out free lunches, which turned out to be a massive problem during the pandemic [1]. - Poverty causes stress - not just from being cooped together in too small living spaces, but also in food insecurity, increased fights between parents over the stress, or in the worst cases from literally being homeless [2]. [1] https://www.foodandwine.com/news/new-york-city-school-children-free-food-coronavirus https://www.foodandwine.com/news/new-york-city-school-childr... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/nyregion/nyc-homeless-children-pandemic.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/08/nyregion/nyc-homeless-chi... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#Molecular_genetic_investigations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heritability_of_IQ#Molecular_g...

throwaway95919 4y ago

richwater 4y ago
Academic ability does not mean inherent intelligence based on genetics. You're the one being racist.
annyeonghada 4y ago
Speaking of a statistical reality is not racism. It's just reality. One can debate of the causes - societal, genetics, single motherhood, whatever - but the fact remains that it is reality.

jdmichal 4y ago

I'm going to repost a comment of mine from two years ago. This is not an unknown thing to school boards. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23012403 The wife of one of my good friends was on the county school board for 12 years. According to her, it was an unspoken secret was that parental involvement was the biggest predictor of / contributor to student success. The reason it was taboo was because you absolutely cannot expect anything from the parents. It was political suicide. I would put dollars on the table that such is already happening for every parent that is willing and able to do it, because they were already doing it before too.

nemo44x 4y ago
The #1 factor in determining if a kid will have a desired outcome is if they have a mom and a dad present. It's really that simple. And that means parental involvement. It's sad one is labeled a racist or anti-feminist or w/e when you point this obvious fact out. ~70% of black kids are born to single mom's. That's a broken culture. White kids are at ~30% and rising and we see the same failure rates. That's a broken culture. Asian's have 2-parent families and have success. Even the lower class ones, suggesting income/class shouldn't be a factor in having kids with 2 parents. So of course the next step is to demonize the nuclear family. The trends keep getting worse.
- virgil_disgr4ce 4y ago
  What do you mean by "broken culture?"
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    That's it's considered acceptable for kids to be born into situations like this. This is "broken" because it reliably leads to failure and undesirable outcomes.
    - wbsss4412 4y ago
      You’re making a lot of strong assumptions when you say that it’s considered acceptable. I strongly doubt that it is normal for anyone to want to be a single parent (there are of course anecdotal exceptions to this, but not on a cultural level).

jcranberry 4y ago

What data?