16 ms·

The biggest disruption in the history of American education

21 points by enraged_camel 4y ago

giardini 4y ago
tl;dr please. All I see of interest in TFA is a very predictable request for more money: "Curing the many harms that school closures have imposed will take money—a lot of it."
FunnyBadger 4y ago
Home schooling, Parochial and Private Schools. The only choice. All my best business partners and nerd friends were one of the above and rarely public school educated. And force state governments to pay for these as an option instead of public schools. Such school closures with nothing substituting combined with the recent SCOTUS ruling this week mean the door for that is wide open!
- seibelj 4y ago
  You can only have shitty, dilapidated, extraordinarily expensive public schools for so long before the gravy train ends and parents rebel. In Boston we pay some of the highest per-pupil spending in the entire country (~$25k) and they are contemplating putting the entire system under state control https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/state-to-recommend-declaring-boston-public-schools-an-underperforming-district/2755752/?amp https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/state-to-recommend-decl... It’s completely insane how “jUsT GiVe ThE TeAcHeRs MoRe MoNeY!” is argued in good faith when what we have is so absurdly fucked and ruinous.
  - zach_garwood 4y ago
    To pick a nit here, when most people say "Give teachers more money," they mean exactly and precisely that, giving a higher salary to the boots on the ground in the classroom. What ends up happening though is that more money goes to the school system, and some paltry amount may trickle down to the teacher, but most if it get's eaten up by principals, superintendents, and an army of other administrators, who do not actually improve outcomes. It's my firm belief that most of the issues with our educational system would be rectified overnight if every school district halved their administration.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      One of the points of the article is that the schools are not just trying to deliver an education, they're also trying to deliver social services to kids. Why is that? Well, as a society we've decided that adults are generally unworthy of a social safety net, yet we still consider kids to be "innocent", and so instead of helping the parents of the kids, we insist on providing social services directly to the kids in school, bypassing the parents. This adds a lot of cost and layers of administration. And of course poorer kids are more in need of social services, so the poorer schools are often more expensive to run, even factoring in teacher salaries. You can say the schools are "failing", but they're also being asked to do too much.
  - lupire 4y ago
    If all the pubic student went private (and let's not forget the special ed students), are there private schools available to serve them? Private schools have the luxury of cherry-picking the easiest students.
    - seibelj 4y ago
      I would rather let those with the most potential have the best possible opportunities than lower everyone’s standards for special ed students. We can make vocational schools for those that can’t succeed academically, but for those that can we should provide them the best. I’d rather boost up the best than bring everyone down.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  This reality was intentionally engineered so that ghouls like Devos can make their millions and billions in the inevitable privatization
  - dc-programmer 4y ago
    The purpose of no child left behind is to literally close schools in low performing areas. Leaving families no choice but to go with other options. This is the classic Republican playbook of tearing down institutions not in the name of small government but rather to replace core functions with private offerings. Doesn’t hurt in this case they can also stick it to a union at the same time
    - MisterMower 4y ago
      If a public school has been delivering failing results for more than a decade, maybe shutting it down isn’t such a terrible idea. What’s the alternative? Continue to throw money and resources at teachers and administrators who have proven they can’t effectively educate students?
      - dc-programmer 4y ago
        The answer is not sending them to a unaccredited strip center mall charter school like some people want. Or a bible thumping parochial that doesn’t teach evolution.
        MisterMower 4y ago
        So we should keep them in failing schools?
        dc-programmer 4y ago
        If the school is truly rotten sure maybe let’s close it. But the problem isn’t the schools. Probably the best thing we could do to produce better educational results is to correct the damage done to city centers by rapid deindustrialization and the war on drugs, and invest in rural communities left behind with infrastructure like broadband. Obviously I don’t think either will happen. But just shifting kids around isn’t going to do anything (but there is money to made in sectors like edtech)
- lapcat 4y ago
  > All my best business partners and nerd friends were one of the above and rarely public school educated. This seems extremely anecdotal. I went to public schools. Of course I'm not your business partner or friend, but most people on Earth aren't either.
- lupire 4y ago
  How about funding the public schools at the same level as private schools, which cost 2-4x as much?
wrycoder 4y ago
There was no reason for this to happen. It was an hysterical and opportunistic response by the public health authorities and the teacher's unions. As the article stated, the schooling of the elites continued uninterrupted during the pandemic. COVID did not spread uncontrolled into those homes. Children aren't born civilized. It's the duty of families and the schools to civilize them. With the breakdown of the family over the last fifty years, more and more was dropped on the schools. They were supposed to provide education and increasingly many support services. When COVID struck, that responsibility was mostly abandoned for the lower and middle classes. Our institutions failed, for no good reason. People are trying to pick up the slack, but the way our society has been restructured, with both parents working, makes it very difficult to provide the education and supervision that the children need.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > As the article stated, the schooling of the elites continued uninterrupted during the pandemic. COVID did not spread uncontrolled into those homes. That's not what the article stated. "Students with household incomes above $200,000, in contrast, lost about 54 days—still considerable"
  - MisterMower 4y ago
    And the very next sentence after that one: “Many elite private schools, meanwhile, avoided pandemic-related schooling loss almost entirely.”
    - lapcat 4y ago
      And the very next sentence after that one: "Of the Forbes top 20 private schools, our research found that 14 met fully in person for the entire 2020–21 school year." So, 6 of the top 20 private schools did not meet fully in person for the entire school year. Also, that's talking about 14 schools in the entire county, which is a minuscule number of schools and students. Moreover, what's the evidence for the claim that "COVID did not spread uncontrolled into those homes"? I'm not saying it did or it didn't, I'm just saying there's no basis whatsoever for this claim. Anyway, the issue isn't just the homes, it's the teachers. Who wants to die for a job? Nobody signed up for that.

21 points by enraged_camel 4y ago

tl;dr please. All I see of interest in TFA is a very predictable request for more money: "Curing the many harms that school closures have imposed will take money—a lot of it."

FunnyBadger 4y ago

Home schooling, Parochial and Private Schools. The only choice. All my best business partners and nerd friends were one of the above and rarely public school educated. And force state governments to pay for these as an option instead of public schools. Such school closures with nothing substituting combined with the recent SCOTUS ruling this week mean the door for that is wide open!

seibelj 4y ago
You can only have shitty, dilapidated, extraordinarily expensive public schools for so long before the gravy train ends and parents rebel. In Boston we pay some of the highest per-pupil spending in the entire country (~$25k) and they are contemplating putting the entire system under state control https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/state-to-recommend-declaring-boston-public-schools-an-underperforming-district/2755752/?amp https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/state-to-recommend-decl... It’s completely insane how “jUsT GiVe ThE TeAcHeRs MoRe MoNeY!” is argued in good faith when what we have is so absurdly fucked and ruinous.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  To pick a nit here, when most people say "Give teachers more money," they mean exactly and precisely that, giving a higher salary to the boots on the ground in the classroom. What ends up happening though is that more money goes to the school system, and some paltry amount may trickle down to the teacher, but most if it get's eaten up by principals, superintendents, and an army of other administrators, who do not actually improve outcomes. It's my firm belief that most of the issues with our educational system would be rectified overnight if every school district halved their administration.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    One of the points of the article is that the schools are not just trying to deliver an education, they're also trying to deliver social services to kids. Why is that? Well, as a society we've decided that adults are generally unworthy of a social safety net, yet we still consider kids to be "innocent", and so instead of helping the parents of the kids, we insist on providing social services directly to the kids in school, bypassing the parents. This adds a lot of cost and layers of administration. And of course poorer kids are more in need of social services, so the poorer schools are often more expensive to run, even factoring in teacher salaries. You can say the schools are "failing", but they're also being asked to do too much.
- lupire 4y ago
  If all the pubic student went private (and let's not forget the special ed students), are there private schools available to serve them? Private schools have the luxury of cherry-picking the easiest students.
  - seibelj 4y ago
    I would rather let those with the most potential have the best possible opportunities than lower everyone’s standards for special ed students. We can make vocational schools for those that can’t succeed academically, but for those that can we should provide them the best. I’d rather boost up the best than bring everyone down.
dc-programmer 4y ago
This reality was intentionally engineered so that ghouls like Devos can make their millions and billions in the inevitable privatization
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  The purpose of no child left behind is to literally close schools in low performing areas. Leaving families no choice but to go with other options. This is the classic Republican playbook of tearing down institutions not in the name of small government but rather to replace core functions with private offerings. Doesn’t hurt in this case they can also stick it to a union at the same time
  - MisterMower 4y ago
    If a public school has been delivering failing results for more than a decade, maybe shutting it down isn’t such a terrible idea. What’s the alternative? Continue to throw money and resources at teachers and administrators who have proven they can’t effectively educate students?
    - dc-programmer 4y ago
      The answer is not sending them to a unaccredited strip center mall charter school like some people want. Or a bible thumping parochial that doesn’t teach evolution.
      - MisterMower 4y ago
        So we should keep them in failing schools?
        dc-programmer 4y ago
        If the school is truly rotten sure maybe let’s close it. But the problem isn’t the schools. Probably the best thing we could do to produce better educational results is to correct the damage done to city centers by rapid deindustrialization and the war on drugs, and invest in rural communities left behind with infrastructure like broadband. Obviously I don’t think either will happen. But just shifting kids around isn’t going to do anything (but there is money to made in sectors like edtech)
lapcat 4y ago
> All my best business partners and nerd friends were one of the above and rarely public school educated. This seems extremely anecdotal. I went to public schools. Of course I'm not your business partner or friend, but most people on Earth aren't either.
lupire 4y ago
How about funding the public schools at the same level as private schools, which cost 2-4x as much?

wrycoder 4y ago

There was no reason for this to happen. It was an hysterical and opportunistic response by the public health authorities and the teacher's unions. As the article stated, the schooling of the elites continued uninterrupted during the pandemic. COVID did not spread uncontrolled into those homes. Children aren't born civilized. It's the duty of families and the schools to civilize them. With the breakdown of the family over the last fifty years, more and more was dropped on the schools. They were supposed to provide education and increasingly many support services. When COVID struck, that responsibility was mostly abandoned for the lower and middle classes. Our institutions failed, for no good reason. People are trying to pick up the slack, but the way our society has been restructured, with both parents working, makes it very difficult to provide the education and supervision that the children need.

lapcat 4y ago
> As the article stated, the schooling of the elites continued uninterrupted during the pandemic. COVID did not spread uncontrolled into those homes. That's not what the article stated. "Students with household incomes above $200,000, in contrast, lost about 54 days—still considerable"
- MisterMower 4y ago
  And the very next sentence after that one: “Many elite private schools, meanwhile, avoided pandemic-related schooling loss almost entirely.”
  - lapcat 4y ago
    And the very next sentence after that one: "Of the Forbes top 20 private schools, our research found that 14 met fully in person for the entire 2020–21 school year." So, 6 of the top 20 private schools did not meet fully in person for the entire school year. Also, that's talking about 14 schools in the entire county, which is a minuscule number of schools and students. Moreover, what's the evidence for the claim that "COVID did not spread uncontrolled into those homes"? I'm not saying it did or it didn't, I'm just saying there's no basis whatsoever for this claim. Anyway, the issue isn't just the homes, it's the teachers. Who wants to die for a job? Nobody signed up for that.