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The actions that the California state education system towards Blacks and Brown kids are exactly what the most insidious racist person would do. If I hated Blac

The actions that the California state education system towards Blacks and Brown kids are exactly what the most insidious racist person would do. If I hated Black and Brown kids, I would lower the education standards so low that these kids would graduate high school being unable to compete at the city, state or country level. And this is EXACTLY what is happening. Half of the Black kids in SF are graduating high school and can barely read. Now with the gutting with math, Black and Brown kids will be even further behind on math than the rest of the demographics. It's horrifying. Anyone who has money will avoid all this by either sending their kids to private school, which is what we did, or getting enrichment classes after school. Both of those options are unavailable to lower income kids, so the gap between the haves and the have nots will only increase at an exponential rate. There is nothing more racist than the of lowered expectations in the guise of ruinous empathy for "the poor victims of white supremacy". You help undereducated kids by raising expectations, and pumping money into the system so that the student teacher ratio plummets in the poorest areas that need the most help. Instead SFUSD was spending millions to change the names of school instead of trying to get those kids to learn how to read.

no_butterscotch 3y ago
Nothing like the subtle bigotry of lower expectations - the best way to keep "those people" in the underclass is to lower the standards. I'm hoping the reversal of affirmative action will light a fire under this issue.
0xy 3y ago
People with money homeschool, with much better results. There's even small homeschooling groups that pool resources to hire the best tutors money can buy. Homeschooling is exploding exponentially, doubling from 2012 to 2023 and a large portion of the parents who pulled kids from schools during COVID simply aren't going back. Understandable, because the quality of education is extremely poor. Unqualified parents homeschooling literally produce better outcomes. Not to mention the violence in public schools (which is escalating), and the abuse from teachers that the major US teaching unions ritually cover up (the teacher's unions vehemently defend predator teachers). Teachers unions are in the business of protecting predators, financially and with predator-friendly policy like union-decided arbitration venues. [1] [1] https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/campbell-brown-teachers-unions-going-msna36251 https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/campbell-brown-teachers-un...
- astrange 3y ago
  > Homeschooling is exploding exponentially, doubling from 2012 to 2023 Two data points can't show something is exponential! Also, it can't possibly be exponential because the US population is not growing exponentially.
  - logicchains 3y ago
    >Also, it can't possibly be exponential because the US population is not growing exponentially This is completely wrong. The fraction of home-schooled students could e.g have been increasing from 0.02% to 0.04% to 0.08% to 0.16% even if the overall population wasn't growing at all, and that's considered exponential growth. Clearly there are indeed problems with US maths education.
    - astrange 3y ago
      And then after another 6 doubling periods it'd get to 10%, will it? Exponential till it's not isn't exponential, it's logistic.
      - denton-scratch 3y ago
        I had to look up "logistic" in that context. Almost anything that is described as "exponential" isn't really exponential, if the curve is describing a real-world quantity. Real-world quantities tend to be subject to limits. I'm an annoying pedant regarding the word "exponential", which is commonly used (especially by journalists) simply to mean "grows fast". I think it's fair to call a curve "exponential" if the relevant part of the curve approximates to exponential.
        astrange 3y ago
        It's odd to say you're a pedant about "exponential" when you don't know what a logistic curve is!
  - 0xy 3y ago
tlogan 3y ago
I have both of my kids enrolled in SFUSD and what you describe is exactly what's happening. Majority of “affluent” parents and immigrants are enrolling their children in Sylvan, Kumon, hiring Russian instructors, and so forth. Even school counselors will suggest this, as they also enroll their own children in such programs and subtly encourage you to do the same. However, if a child belongs to a disadvantaged group, then they're out of luck. There's virtually no assistance available for them. While the district does offer free after-school and extra classes through SF State, these require a significant amount of paperwork which, as you probably know, necessitates full involvement from both parents. Essentially, the system is set up so that disadvantaged children don't receive the help they need. It's a truly racist system. Yet, they can freely post on Twitter, touting how great and progressive they are.
- wisty 3y ago
  I think a major problem is that most education "experts" (the type policy makers listen to, not practicing teachers) are upper-middle-class kids who had their parents teach them the basics of phonics and times tables. Who else would get a PhD in education? They went to school, and found learning these things a massive waste of time, because their parents had already set them up to succeed, but they don't realise it was their parents doing all the work and it's not a waste of time or just "common sense" to the kids who didn't have the same home environment.
  - strix_varius 3y ago
    This is not supported by data. Across all universities, the education department represents the bottom of average SAT scores.
    - thechao 3y ago
      The bottom of the average of SAT scores of college attendees is the top 30%+ of students; Master's and PhD's are even more elite. This is like saying "the defensive line in the Cleveland Browns are the worst NFL players in the country": they're still NFL players.
hector125 3y ago
[flagged]

no_butterscotch 3y ago

Nothing like the subtle bigotry of lower expectations - the best way to keep "those people" in the underclass is to lower the standards. I'm hoping the reversal of affirmative action will light a fire under this issue.

0xy 3y ago

People with money homeschool, with much better results. There's even small homeschooling groups that pool resources to hire the best tutors money can buy. Homeschooling is exploding exponentially, doubling from 2012 to 2023 and a large portion of the parents who pulled kids from schools during COVID simply aren't going back. Understandable, because the quality of education is extremely poor. Unqualified parents homeschooling literally produce better outcomes. Not to mention the violence in public schools (which is escalating), and the abuse from teachers that the major US teaching unions ritually cover up (the teacher's unions vehemently defend predator teachers). Teachers unions are in the business of protecting predators, financially and with predator-friendly policy like union-decided arbitration venues. [1] [1] https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/campbell-brown-teachers-unions-going-msna36251 https://www.msnbc.com/morning-joe/campbell-brown-teachers-un...

astrange 3y ago
> Homeschooling is exploding exponentially, doubling from 2012 to 2023 Two data points can't show something is exponential! Also, it can't possibly be exponential because the US population is not growing exponentially.
- logicchains 3y ago
  >Also, it can't possibly be exponential because the US population is not growing exponentially This is completely wrong. The fraction of home-schooled students could e.g have been increasing from 0.02% to 0.04% to 0.08% to 0.16% even if the overall population wasn't growing at all, and that's considered exponential growth. Clearly there are indeed problems with US maths education.
  - astrange 3y ago
    And then after another 6 doubling periods it'd get to 10%, will it? Exponential till it's not isn't exponential, it's logistic.
    - denton-scratch 3y ago
      I had to look up "logistic" in that context. Almost anything that is described as "exponential" isn't really exponential, if the curve is describing a real-world quantity. Real-world quantities tend to be subject to limits. I'm an annoying pedant regarding the word "exponential", which is commonly used (especially by journalists) simply to mean "grows fast". I think it's fair to call a curve "exponential" if the relevant part of the curve approximates to exponential.
      - astrange 3y ago
        It's odd to say you're a pedant about "exponential" when you don't know what a logistic curve is!
- 0xy 3y ago

tlogan 3y ago

I have both of my kids enrolled in SFUSD and what you describe is exactly what's happening. Majority of “affluent” parents and immigrants are enrolling their children in Sylvan, Kumon, hiring Russian instructors, and so forth. Even school counselors will suggest this, as they also enroll their own children in such programs and subtly encourage you to do the same. However, if a child belongs to a disadvantaged group, then they're out of luck. There's virtually no assistance available for them. While the district does offer free after-school and extra classes through SF State, these require a significant amount of paperwork which, as you probably know, necessitates full involvement from both parents. Essentially, the system is set up so that disadvantaged children don't receive the help they need. It's a truly racist system. Yet, they can freely post on Twitter, touting how great and progressive they are.

wisty 3y ago
I think a major problem is that most education "experts" (the type policy makers listen to, not practicing teachers) are upper-middle-class kids who had their parents teach them the basics of phonics and times tables. Who else would get a PhD in education? They went to school, and found learning these things a massive waste of time, because their parents had already set them up to succeed, but they don't realise it was their parents doing all the work and it's not a waste of time or just "common sense" to the kids who didn't have the same home environment.
- strix_varius 3y ago
  This is not supported by data. Across all universities, the education department represents the bottom of average SAT scores.
  - thechao 3y ago
    The bottom of the average of SAT scores of college attendees is the top 30%+ of students; Master's and PhD's are even more elite. This is like saying "the defensive line in the Cleveland Browns are the worst NFL players in the country": they're still NFL players.

hector125 3y ago

[flagged]