5 ms·

The author says > The idea that offering children fewer educational resources through the public school system will help the poor kids catch up with rich ones,

by cauch 3y ago

The author says > The idea that offering children fewer educational resources through the public school system will help the poor kids catch up with rich ones, or help the Black kids catch up with the White and Asian ones, is unsupported by any available evidence of which I am aware. I was wondering if some people are aware of studies supporting this strategy. I could try to dig them up, but I remember few studies demonstrating that school success is more correlated to the socio-economical situation of the parent than to the child intrinsic capacities (I think one usual method is to compare success of twins adopted in different families to remove the naive argument "higher socio-economical situation means that these people are intrinsically smarter"). If it is the case, while avoiding the privileged ones to run ahead is not ideal, the alternative of doing nothing is even worse (which is in practice what a lot of people criticizing this measure prone: they did not have any plan to change anything before the subject was introduced). I think that the idea is not to "dumb down" the kids, but to have a goal that everyone can achieve instead of a goal that is impossible to achieve for some of the poor kids anyway. See under this lens, the proposal makes more sense: the lectures are given at the NORMAL pace, without assuming that extra learning is made at home while it is known that this extra learning is impossible to do for some. A bit like if your professor was saying "we have an exam on chapters 1, 2, 3 and 4, I will tell you the chapters 1 and 3, the chapters 2 and 4 are in the books but I'm going to give this book only to some students and not other". If a professor does that, people will obviously say that it is stupid, that the professor should teach chapters 1 and 2 to everyone and then do a test on chapters 1 and 2, and nobody will pretend that this is "dumbying down" the students.

light_hue_1 3y ago
They address that in the article: tutoring. One on one tutoring works amazingly well. I used to volunteer as a tutor. The students I worked with accelerated drastically. It's simply a matter of money. They do leave out some things: food + shelter. Many poor students have problems with nutrition and safe shelter, both of which make learning near impossible. The metro area I'm in is a perfect example of this. We have two small cities side by side. Pretty much the same socioeconomic makeup in both. One invests massively into education, tutoring, summer programs, etc. In the other the schools are literally crumbling, but hey, the police budget is at an all time high! The city investing into education ranks 9/10-10/10 on state tests, the city that allows its buildings to literally crumble (the library was off limits for a while because the ceiling tiles were falling so often they were injuring the children), ranks 2/10. We don't need to dumb down anything. We need to raise everyone up by investing in education.
- cauch 3y ago
  They don't really address it: tutoring is OBVIOUS, everyone knows that tutoring works. The reason they are applying this measure is because tutoring is not doable. > We don't need to dumb down anything. We need to raise everyone up by investing in education. And we can also give poney to every kids.That's a nice thought but that is so deconnected from reality, which means that you are pushing for something that will never happen and at the same time the unfair situation will stay the same.
  - cwkoss 3y ago
    We can tax corporations and billionaires. Building a functional education system isn't an unrealistic pipe dream, its an imperative for a well adjusted society.
    - pjscott 3y ago
      Billionaires aren't the unlimited money piñata that you might hope; their total assets are less than federal yearly tax revenues, and good luck getting even a tiny fraction of that per year. As for corporations, I assume you're proposing raising the corporate tax rate -- but we're already near the revenue-maximizing peak of the Laffer curve on that particular tax, and there's just not much room to get more money that way. (Also, only about a third of the incidence of corporate taxes falls on shareholders, with the rest being split about equally between lower wages for workers and higher prices for customers. It can be surprisingly regressive!)
      - cwkoss 3y ago
        The Laffer curve is a laughably poor model to inform tax policy: - There are many taxes, not a single tax rate - It completely ignores the idea of progressive taxation: rich individuals and giant megacorps can afford to pay higher tax rates without the same issues that would occur by applying those tax rates on lower and middle classes and small business. - It cannot be empirically validated without cherry picking data because it ignores many crucial factors. It's basically just propaganda paid for and promoted by the rich to convince the proles to let them keep more money.
zzleeper 3y ago
But then engaged parents will take their kids to Kumon, and rich parents will take their kids to private school. Their kids will then mop the floor against all other kids, including engaged kids without engaged parents, that would have benefited from more advanced classes. Is that equality?
- cauch 3y ago
  That does not make any sense: without this measure, the kids that you are trying to save from moping the floor will ... mop the floor twice. Without this measure, the kids that are not able to follow classes that needs things they cannot afford will just fail the lecture and drop from school, from THE WHOLE SCHOOL. Without the measure, you have people who drop out of school and get a mathematical education close to 0 and will compete with people of mathematical education of 10. With this measure, the same people will get a mathematical education closer to 5, and will compete with people of mathematical education of 10.
  - WillPostForFood 3y ago
    I think you might be misunderstanding the system. In California, you had standard track math, and advanced or accelerated track. This measure gets rids of advanced/accelerated, and forces everyone into standard. Without the measure you have 5s and 10s separated, with the measure, you have 5s and 10s together. But as the parent post points out, 10s either dominate the class, leave the class, or ignore the class and take math outside school. None of that help's the 5s, and all of it hurts, or is wasteful for the 10s.
    - cauch 3y ago
      Thank you for bringing my attention to that. Looking closer, I'm even more confused: it was never question to drop "advanced math", but to replace "advanced algebra" by "advanced data science mathematics". The program was even claiming (maybe incorrectly, but it's not the point) that they wanted to replace the boring memorization of formula by real life problems more challenging for students. So, I'm now not even sure where this "dumbing down" the students comes from. Maybe it's yet another moral panic.
stale2002 3y ago
> the lectures are given at the NORMAL pace Nobody has a problem with there being options for students to learn at their own pace. The problem is not allowing people to take more advanced classes, if they so choose. > nobody will pretend that this is "dumbying down" the students. If you prevent students from taking more advanced classes, if those students choose it, then yes it would be dumbing down their education. Just let them take the more advanced classes. Stop removing their options.
- cauch 3y ago
  > The problem is not allowing people to take more advanced classes, if they so choose. The article itself says that students who want to go ahead will get private lessons. The idea is not stopping people to get more advanced classes, the idea is to cancel more advanced classes as long as "normal pace" classes are not present. The way it works is that if you put an advanced class and no normal pace class, people who need the normal pace class will fail school over and over again and finally drop out of it, and people will just say "the advanced class is just a normal pace class" without realising it's not the case.
  - ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
    replace "normal" with "slow" and "advanced" with "normal", and you will discover: 1. Why this initiative is a problem 2. That simply rewording "slow" to "normal" and "normal" to "advanced" seems to constitute the majority of your argument, without which there isn't a good one
    - cauch 3y ago
      And replace "slow" by "terribly fast" and "normal" by "advanced" and, magic, now everyone gets advanced classes. Estimating if the pace is "fast" or "normal" is very very complicated. Only an idiot will pretend they know for sure that "this is too slow" (unless obvious extreme cases which don't correspond to what we have here) Also, apparently, the measure was to replace advanced algebra by advanced data science which was in fact more challenging than the initial recite-by-heart-the-formula algebra lessons.
javajosh 3y ago
No-one does real intelligence studies in humans because it's such a third-rail in academia. Think "The Bell Curve". Some scientists seem to believe that intelligence is intrinsic. The analogy with dog breeds, with their different temperaments and capabilities, with individual variation, applies to humans as well. See Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences | Lex Fridman Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hppbxV9C63g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hppbxV9C63g
- laichzeit0 3y ago
  Some people believe being homosexual is also intrinsic, despite identical twin studies showing contrary evidence. People like simple answers. It’s probably partly genetic, partly environmental. In other words, something worth studying further.
  - javajosh 3y ago
    "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" This generalizes. Good luck funding research into a question to which people really don't want an answer to. There's some valid reasons to not want an answer - eugenics was and is a real thing, and its terrifying. For a while we seemed to skate by on a kind of "gentleman's agreement" to not look into it too much. Just like there was a kind of "gentleman's agreement" to not point out the facts of sexual dimorphism in humans, as a paean to feminism. When feminists start claiming superiority of females to males, or extremist egalitarians start claiming we're all the same, I think an argument could be made that they have invalidated the agreement. Unfortunately.
  - achates 3y ago
    They've studied it extensively already. Twin adoption studies have conclusively proven that intelligence is mostly genetic with environment playing a small role.
- decremental 3y ago
  [dead]
- 3y ago
CrimsonRain 3y ago
A goal that everyone can achieve is not learning anything at all. Let's set that as goal, right?
toast0 3y ago
> If it is the case, while avoiding the privileged ones to run ahead is not ideal, the alternative of doing nothing is even worse (which is in practice what a lot of people criticizing this measure prone: they did not have any plan to change anything before the subject was introduced). > I think that the idea is not to "dumb down" the kids, but to have a goal that everyone can achieve instead of a goal that is impossible to achieve for some of the poor kids anyway. See under this lens, the proposal makes more sense: the lectures are given at the NORMAL pace, without assuming that extra learning is made at home while it is known that this extra learning is impossible to do for some. The NORMAL pace is too slow for some kids who aren't even doing any math at home. The solution to kids learn at different paces and some kids can learn at a faster pace if they have resources at home, but not all kids have resources at home isn't force everyone onto the normal pace. It's to make sure all kids have access to resources. If it's hard to get resources, then maybe you can free up some by adjusting class sizes. Instead of 60 kids, and 20 kids / class room all at the same pace; you can take the 30 kids capable of doing a faster pace and put them in the fast paced room, then have two classes of 15 kids at a slower pace and now they've got more time for individual instruction, and you didn't have to hire anyone.
- sandworm101 3y ago
  Let me get this straight. We're behind the rest of our class and we're going to catch up to them by going slower than they are? -Bart Simpson People who fall behind don't need a slower pace. They need to move faster. That means not just more attention but longer hours. But there is only so much time. A school wanting to maximize its graduation rate needs to spend less energy on teaching people who are good at a subject in order to divert resources to those who need more. That means, counterintuitively, that kids who are good at math should be spending less time on math, not more.
  - dmitrygr 3y ago
    Such a school fails its fast learners. Do you really want fewer scientists in the world?
    - 3y ago
kaitai 3y ago
You are on to something here. The thing I'd contribute is that then we need teacher training to improve math teaching in the US. Math teaching in the US is often of poor quality, as teachers may not be trained well and are often not confident in their own mathematical ability. Curricula are often haphazard. The US generally takes the approach that changing the curriculum or changing standards will change outcomes, but rarely invests in teacher quality, which would have very high impact (compare to Korea, Finland, etc.).
SoftTalker 3y ago
I don't follow this debate closely. In the late 1970s, I had the option to take algebra in 8th grade. I was stunned that I was selected, because I was terrible at arithmetic, and honestly I still am. I got Cs, maybe a B every now and then, in math up through 7th grade. My parents didn't apply any pressure (that I know of) to get me in. I remember taking the assessment test for algebra and I didn't even finish it. It was very stressful. But somehow I got in. And starting with algebra, something clicked. I could actually see how math could be used to solve practical problems. I got mostly As in math after that. More recently, my kids had the option to take algebra in the 8th grade. I don't see any good reason to not keep it available. Sometimes kids need a challenge (or at least need to see a point to it) to engage in a subject. My guess is that the districts that want to eliminate it are looking at poor math achievement and thinking that applying more resources to getting all the kids up to some minimal level of math literacy is better than diverting some of those resources to a smaller number of kids who are ready for more advanced topics. And yeah, sad to say but there are some teachers who are not themselves capable of teaching algebra or anything more advanced. So teaching it in junior high leaves a smaller pool of qualified teachers for high school math. So the problems they are trying to solve are really a scarce resource problem. They need more resources to try get the low performers up to some satisfactory level. The real answer of course is always the same whenever you have a supply problem: you need to pay more. Wealthy families will do this. They will hire tutors, either personal or virtual. For the rest of the kids who only have public education available, we've shown a consistent unwillingness to properly fund it. And I don't necessarily mean in terms of total dollars. We spend a lot of money on public education, but we spend it poorly.
yes_really 3y ago
> I think that the idea is not to "dumb down" the kids, but to have a goal that everyone can achieve instead of a goal that is impossible to achieve for some [...] You don't need to have a unified "goal". Just let the faster students learn more. Note California public schools started *removing* optional classes for faster students.

by cauch 3y ago

light_hue_1 3y ago

They address that in the article: tutoring. One on one tutoring works amazingly well. I used to volunteer as a tutor. The students I worked with accelerated drastically. It's simply a matter of money. They do leave out some things: food + shelter. Many poor students have problems with nutrition and safe shelter, both of which make learning near impossible. The metro area I'm in is a perfect example of this. We have two small cities side by side. Pretty much the same socioeconomic makeup in both. One invests massively into education, tutoring, summer programs, etc. In the other the schools are literally crumbling, but hey, the police budget is at an all time high! The city investing into education ranks 9/10-10/10 on state tests, the city that allows its buildings to literally crumble (the library was off limits for a while because the ceiling tiles were falling so often they were injuring the children), ranks 2/10. We don't need to dumb down anything. We need to raise everyone up by investing in education.

cauch 3y ago
They don't really address it: tutoring is OBVIOUS, everyone knows that tutoring works. The reason they are applying this measure is because tutoring is not doable. > We don't need to dumb down anything. We need to raise everyone up by investing in education. And we can also give poney to every kids.That's a nice thought but that is so deconnected from reality, which means that you are pushing for something that will never happen and at the same time the unfair situation will stay the same.
- cwkoss 3y ago
  We can tax corporations and billionaires. Building a functional education system isn't an unrealistic pipe dream, its an imperative for a well adjusted society.
  - pjscott 3y ago
    Billionaires aren't the unlimited money piñata that you might hope; their total assets are less than federal yearly tax revenues, and good luck getting even a tiny fraction of that per year. As for corporations, I assume you're proposing raising the corporate tax rate -- but we're already near the revenue-maximizing peak of the Laffer curve on that particular tax, and there's just not much room to get more money that way. (Also, only about a third of the incidence of corporate taxes falls on shareholders, with the rest being split about equally between lower wages for workers and higher prices for customers. It can be surprisingly regressive!)
    - cwkoss 3y ago
      The Laffer curve is a laughably poor model to inform tax policy: - There are many taxes, not a single tax rate - It completely ignores the idea of progressive taxation: rich individuals and giant megacorps can afford to pay higher tax rates without the same issues that would occur by applying those tax rates on lower and middle classes and small business. - It cannot be empirically validated without cherry picking data because it ignores many crucial factors. It's basically just propaganda paid for and promoted by the rich to convince the proles to let them keep more money.

zzleeper 3y ago

But then engaged parents will take their kids to Kumon, and rich parents will take their kids to private school. Their kids will then mop the floor against all other kids, including engaged kids without engaged parents, that would have benefited from more advanced classes. Is that equality?

cauch 3y ago
That does not make any sense: without this measure, the kids that you are trying to save from moping the floor will ... mop the floor twice. Without this measure, the kids that are not able to follow classes that needs things they cannot afford will just fail the lecture and drop from school, from THE WHOLE SCHOOL. Without the measure, you have people who drop out of school and get a mathematical education close to 0 and will compete with people of mathematical education of 10. With this measure, the same people will get a mathematical education closer to 5, and will compete with people of mathematical education of 10.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  I think you might be misunderstanding the system. In California, you had standard track math, and advanced or accelerated track. This measure gets rids of advanced/accelerated, and forces everyone into standard. Without the measure you have 5s and 10s separated, with the measure, you have 5s and 10s together. But as the parent post points out, 10s either dominate the class, leave the class, or ignore the class and take math outside school. None of that help's the 5s, and all of it hurts, or is wasteful for the 10s.
  - cauch 3y ago
    Thank you for bringing my attention to that. Looking closer, I'm even more confused: it was never question to drop "advanced math", but to replace "advanced algebra" by "advanced data science mathematics". The program was even claiming (maybe incorrectly, but it's not the point) that they wanted to replace the boring memorization of formula by real life problems more challenging for students. So, I'm now not even sure where this "dumbing down" the students comes from. Maybe it's yet another moral panic.

stale2002 3y ago

> the lectures are given at the NORMAL pace Nobody has a problem with there being options for students to learn at their own pace. The problem is not allowing people to take more advanced classes, if they so choose. > nobody will pretend that this is "dumbying down" the students. If you prevent students from taking more advanced classes, if those students choose it, then yes it would be dumbing down their education. Just let them take the more advanced classes. Stop removing their options.

cauch 3y ago
> The problem is not allowing people to take more advanced classes, if they so choose. The article itself says that students who want to go ahead will get private lessons. The idea is not stopping people to get more advanced classes, the idea is to cancel more advanced classes as long as "normal pace" classes are not present. The way it works is that if you put an advanced class and no normal pace class, people who need the normal pace class will fail school over and over again and finally drop out of it, and people will just say "the advanced class is just a normal pace class" without realising it's not the case.
- ImPostingOnHN 3y ago
  replace "normal" with "slow" and "advanced" with "normal", and you will discover: 1. Why this initiative is a problem 2. That simply rewording "slow" to "normal" and "normal" to "advanced" seems to constitute the majority of your argument, without which there isn't a good one
  - cauch 3y ago
    And replace "slow" by "terribly fast" and "normal" by "advanced" and, magic, now everyone gets advanced classes. Estimating if the pace is "fast" or "normal" is very very complicated. Only an idiot will pretend they know for sure that "this is too slow" (unless obvious extreme cases which don't correspond to what we have here) Also, apparently, the measure was to replace advanced algebra by advanced data science which was in fact more challenging than the initial recite-by-heart-the-formula algebra lessons.

javajosh 3y ago

No-one does real intelligence studies in humans because it's such a third-rail in academia. Think "The Bell Curve". Some scientists seem to believe that intelligence is intrinsic. The analogy with dog breeds, with their different temperaments and capabilities, with individual variation, applies to humans as well. See Richard Haier: IQ Tests, Human Intelligence, and Group Differences | Lex Fridman Podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hppbxV9C63g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hppbxV9C63g

laichzeit0 3y ago
Some people believe being homosexual is also intrinsic, despite identical twin studies showing contrary evidence. People like simple answers. It’s probably partly genetic, partly environmental. In other words, something worth studying further.
- javajosh 3y ago
  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" This generalizes. Good luck funding research into a question to which people really don't want an answer to. There's some valid reasons to not want an answer - eugenics was and is a real thing, and its terrifying. For a while we seemed to skate by on a kind of "gentleman's agreement" to not look into it too much. Just like there was a kind of "gentleman's agreement" to not point out the facts of sexual dimorphism in humans, as a paean to feminism. When feminists start claiming superiority of females to males, or extremist egalitarians start claiming we're all the same, I think an argument could be made that they have invalidated the agreement. Unfortunately.
- achates 3y ago
  They've studied it extensively already. Twin adoption studies have conclusively proven that intelligence is mostly genetic with environment playing a small role.
decremental 3y ago
[dead]
3y ago

CrimsonRain 3y ago

A goal that everyone can achieve is not learning anything at all. Let's set that as goal, right?

toast0 3y ago

> If it is the case, while avoiding the privileged ones to run ahead is not ideal, the alternative of doing nothing is even worse (which is in practice what a lot of people criticizing this measure prone: they did not have any plan to change anything before the subject was introduced). > I think that the idea is not to "dumb down" the kids, but to have a goal that everyone can achieve instead of a goal that is impossible to achieve for some of the poor kids anyway. See under this lens, the proposal makes more sense: the lectures are given at the NORMAL pace, without assuming that extra learning is made at home while it is known that this extra learning is impossible to do for some. The NORMAL pace is too slow for some kids who aren't even doing any math at home. The solution to kids learn at different paces and some kids can learn at a faster pace if they have resources at home, but not all kids have resources at home isn't force everyone onto the normal pace. It's to make sure all kids have access to resources. If it's hard to get resources, then maybe you can free up some by adjusting class sizes. Instead of 60 kids, and 20 kids / class room all at the same pace; you can take the 30 kids capable of doing a faster pace and put them in the fast paced room, then have two classes of 15 kids at a slower pace and now they've got more time for individual instruction, and you didn't have to hire anyone.

sandworm101 3y ago
Let me get this straight. We're behind the rest of our class and we're going to catch up to them by going slower than they are? -Bart Simpson People who fall behind don't need a slower pace. They need to move faster. That means not just more attention but longer hours. But there is only so much time. A school wanting to maximize its graduation rate needs to spend less energy on teaching people who are good at a subject in order to divert resources to those who need more. That means, counterintuitively, that kids who are good at math should be spending less time on math, not more.
- dmitrygr 3y ago
  Such a school fails its fast learners. Do you really want fewer scientists in the world?
  - 3y ago

kaitai 3y ago

You are on to something here. The thing I'd contribute is that then we need teacher training to improve math teaching in the US. Math teaching in the US is often of poor quality, as teachers may not be trained well and are often not confident in their own mathematical ability. Curricula are often haphazard. The US generally takes the approach that changing the curriculum or changing standards will change outcomes, but rarely invests in teacher quality, which would have very high impact (compare to Korea, Finland, etc.).

SoftTalker 3y ago

I don't follow this debate closely. In the late 1970s, I had the option to take algebra in 8th grade. I was stunned that I was selected, because I was terrible at arithmetic, and honestly I still am. I got Cs, maybe a B every now and then, in math up through 7th grade. My parents didn't apply any pressure (that I know of) to get me in. I remember taking the assessment test for algebra and I didn't even finish it. It was very stressful. But somehow I got in. And starting with algebra, something clicked. I could actually see how math could be used to solve practical problems. I got mostly As in math after that. More recently, my kids had the option to take algebra in the 8th grade. I don't see any good reason to not keep it available. Sometimes kids need a challenge (or at least need to see a point to it) to engage in a subject. My guess is that the districts that want to eliminate it are looking at poor math achievement and thinking that applying more resources to getting all the kids up to some minimal level of math literacy is better than diverting some of those resources to a smaller number of kids who are ready for more advanced topics. And yeah, sad to say but there are some teachers who are not themselves capable of teaching algebra or anything more advanced. So teaching it in junior high leaves a smaller pool of qualified teachers for high school math. So the problems they are trying to solve are really a scarce resource problem. They need more resources to try get the low performers up to some satisfactory level. The real answer of course is always the same whenever you have a supply problem: you need to pay more. Wealthy families will do this. They will hire tutors, either personal or virtual. For the rest of the kids who only have public education available, we've shown a consistent unwillingness to properly fund it. And I don't necessarily mean in terms of total dollars. We spend a lot of money on public education, but we spend it poorly.

yes_really 3y ago

> I think that the idea is not to "dumb down" the kids, but to have a goal that everyone can achieve instead of a goal that is impossible to achieve for some [...] You don't need to have a unified "goal". Just let the faster students learn more. Note California public schools started *removing* optional classes for faster students.