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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? Contin

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)
    - MisterMower 4y ago
      So we should close failing schools, but schools aren't the problem? Just trying to make sense of your argument.
      - dc-programmer 4y ago
        The argument is the general problem is the negative synergistic feedback loop of poverty, over-policing, drugs, and local culture. These are the problems to solve. I don’t say never so I suppose a school could fail for endogenous reasons in which case action is needed. But there are less drastic actions than shutting it down, such as firing all the admins.
        MisterMower 4y ago
        Shutting a school down would be easier than firing the admins. Would you consider the possibility that the negative synergistic feedback loop you describe is actually caused by failing schools, instead of the other way around?
- jimmygrapes 4y ago
  Gentle reminder to steel man, not straw man, but whatever. You brought up a point I am curious about, since my own formal education was severely lacking in many many ways. Is the teaching of evolution really such a big deal? I was never taught creationism, nor evolution, nor anything even remotely touching those subjects. In High School, I was barely taught what a variable was; my math education capped out at rote solving of quadratic equations. I learned the atomic model. of the day, and memorized a quarter of the periodic table. I learned that Shakespeare existed and that sentences in English usually have an object and a subject. I learned that a blood cell contains a lot of little things that I can't do shit about. I was top 1% of my class.
  - dc-programmer 4y ago
    The argument would be that serious science educators would not stay long in a position where the curriculum is censured to that degree. Sure there are probably counter examples. But why risk hamstringing the development of future generations like this? Especially as the world gets more competitive. Other countries who take education seriously will have an advantage
    - jimmygrapes 4y ago
      Well on that I absolutely agree. Education all around needs to be better, and by better I mean more thorough, both in breadth and depth. I just don't think every human born is interested enough for that to work in the way the predominant one-size-fits-all public schooling pedagogy of today demands. If we must go to a core set of things that should be taught to all, I can't see much reason why the trivium and quadrivium have been so thoroughly abandoned, yet my niece knows exactly what gender she wants to be when she turns 7. And FWIW I'm sorry for bringing that last part up, and no I'm not joking or trolling.
lupire 4y ago
Build better facilities, hire more staff, expand hours, feed the children?
- MisterMower 4y ago
  My wife shared pencils with her peers when she was in grade school in Indonesia. They had one math textbook for her whole class. They copied their homework questions out of that book by hand so they could take them home. Four out of the fifty kids in her class went on to become doctors, 10 became engineers, two of which now work at SpaceX. Resources are not the problem. Discipline and motivation are. The solution is simple, but few people have the guts to implement it. Sad, but true. I think outcomes in a lot of these failing schools would be better if we took money away from them. Make them focus on what matters and give teachers and administrators the power to discipline or expel problem students.
  - dc-programmer 4y ago
    To be clear I am not talking about buying pencils, and I don’t disagree bureaucratic reform is badly needed in many institutions (which is the opposite of privatization). Unfortunately kicking the bad apples out is becoming increasingly more difficult in our hyper-individualistic culture where every parent views their kid as an extension of themself, and administrators care more about chasing statistics than real outcomes. But I digress. The solution that follows from your story is not that poverty breeds innovation/grit or whatever. It’s easy to come up with counter examples to this (affect of war and depressions on educational outcomes). The thing that your wife’s classmates had was hope. Hope that if they worked hard enough they would be successful. For many reasons, kids growing up in certain areas have very little reason for hope. And this is not irrational thinking: there parents likely are one of the millions of people left behind by the neoliberal era or they are part of a permanent underclass of society. This is what we need to address. And yes every kid should have a pencil. And not have to worry about breathing in Asbestos. If the answer was just cut funding to bad schools, no child left behind would’ve been a success (narrator: it was not a success).
    - 4y ago

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)
  - MisterMower 4y ago
    So we should close failing schools, but schools aren't the problem? Just trying to make sense of your argument.
    - dc-programmer 4y ago
      The argument is the general problem is the negative synergistic feedback loop of poverty, over-policing, drugs, and local culture. These are the problems to solve. I don’t say never so I suppose a school could fail for endogenous reasons in which case action is needed. But there are less drastic actions than shutting it down, such as firing all the admins.
      - MisterMower 4y ago
        Shutting a school down would be easier than firing the admins. Would you consider the possibility that the negative synergistic feedback loop you describe is actually caused by failing schools, instead of the other way around?
jimmygrapes 4y ago
Gentle reminder to steel man, not straw man, but whatever. You brought up a point I am curious about, since my own formal education was severely lacking in many many ways. Is the teaching of evolution really such a big deal? I was never taught creationism, nor evolution, nor anything even remotely touching those subjects. In High School, I was barely taught what a variable was; my math education capped out at rote solving of quadratic equations. I learned the atomic model. of the day, and memorized a quarter of the periodic table. I learned that Shakespeare existed and that sentences in English usually have an object and a subject. I learned that a blood cell contains a lot of little things that I can't do shit about. I was top 1% of my class.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  The argument would be that serious science educators would not stay long in a position where the curriculum is censured to that degree. Sure there are probably counter examples. But why risk hamstringing the development of future generations like this? Especially as the world gets more competitive. Other countries who take education seriously will have an advantage
  - jimmygrapes 4y ago
    Well on that I absolutely agree. Education all around needs to be better, and by better I mean more thorough, both in breadth and depth. I just don't think every human born is interested enough for that to work in the way the predominant one-size-fits-all public schooling pedagogy of today demands. If we must go to a core set of things that should be taught to all, I can't see much reason why the trivium and quadrivium have been so thoroughly abandoned, yet my niece knows exactly what gender she wants to be when she turns 7. And FWIW I'm sorry for bringing that last part up, and no I'm not joking or trolling.

lupire 4y ago

Build better facilities, hire more staff, expand hours, feed the children?

MisterMower 4y ago
My wife shared pencils with her peers when she was in grade school in Indonesia. They had one math textbook for her whole class. They copied their homework questions out of that book by hand so they could take them home. Four out of the fifty kids in her class went on to become doctors, 10 became engineers, two of which now work at SpaceX. Resources are not the problem. Discipline and motivation are. The solution is simple, but few people have the guts to implement it. Sad, but true. I think outcomes in a lot of these failing schools would be better if we took money away from them. Make them focus on what matters and give teachers and administrators the power to discipline or expel problem students.
- dc-programmer 4y ago
  To be clear I am not talking about buying pencils, and I don’t disagree bureaucratic reform is badly needed in many institutions (which is the opposite of privatization). Unfortunately kicking the bad apples out is becoming increasingly more difficult in our hyper-individualistic culture where every parent views their kid as an extension of themself, and administrators care more about chasing statistics than real outcomes. But I digress. The solution that follows from your story is not that poverty breeds innovation/grit or whatever. It’s easy to come up with counter examples to this (affect of war and depressions on educational outcomes). The thing that your wife’s classmates had was hope. Hope that if they worked hard enough they would be successful. For many reasons, kids growing up in certain areas have very little reason for hope. And this is not irrational thinking: there parents likely are one of the millions of people left behind by the neoliberal era or they are part of a permanent underclass of society. This is what we need to address. And yes every kid should have a pencil. And not have to worry about breathing in Asbestos. If the answer was just cut funding to bad schools, no child left behind would’ve been a success (narrator: it was not a success).
  - 4y ago