7 ms·

Why aren’t America’s students showing up?

24 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

smcg 3y ago
https://archive.ph/lsNRm https://archive.ph/lsNRm
happycube 3y ago
Well then, they should've actually done something about ventilation in 2020.
smcg 3y ago
The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame the kids. Never blame the kids. They're not the ones in control of this. Blame the adults.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  That's why we need school choice, give the working poor the same opportunity to abandon the public schools like the wealthy have.
  - CHSbeachbum420 3y ago
    False. Taking tax dollar funding away from public schools only exacerbates the issue. School choice is a scam to fund private Christian schools to brainwash the youth and maintain a conservative voter base
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      The cost per student in the US is higher than every country in the world (save Luxemburg if I recall correctly). The problem isn't a lack of money, the problem is the money is misused. Private schools are just better stewards of the students dollars. I mean the teacher's unions have been screaming about smaller class sizes for decades, let's give it to them.
      - lukev 3y ago
        The cost-per-student of private vs public education is not an apples-to-apples comparison because the public school system is also obligated to provide transportation and special needs education, both of which are very expensive and neither of which are in scope for most private schools.
        vorpalhex 3y ago
        The EU and Canada have those costs too... and are still spending way less per student than the US.
        lukev 3y ago
        Indeed, and it'd be worthwhile doing a comparison. My only point is that you have to make sure comparisons are accurate with respect to scope of services. Private schools in the US look artificially good in terms of both finances and performance because they end up selecting the more privileged students to start with.
    - DrThunder 3y ago
      Why do you assume the money would be taken away from the public schools? Is it because they suck? If so, you're right and it should be taken away from them. You don't improve if you aren't answering to anyone. If they're threatened with money loss you better believe they're going to start doing something to make their school more attractive and that's how it should be. Right now they can be absolutely abysmal at educating anyone and still receive tax dollars.
    - wholesomepotato 3y ago
      It's like some choice who brainwashes my kids. Are they going to learn about men being pregnant and go to a drag show or that god created earth 5 thousand years ago. Maybe i could even alternate every year so they are "well rounded".
      - seanw444 3y ago
        Did homeschooling just fall off the face of the planet? Stop sending your kids to these kinds of schools. Take the initiative to be learned enough to teach your kids at least the fundamentals, and then instill in them the drive to want to learn more. It's made much easier with the advent of the internet. And someone's probably going to respond "but muh socialization!" In what other real-life scenario are you going to end up with a bunch of people who are almost identical in age, with little to no responsibilities, regurgitating shit with no incentive other than that you have to be there, or else? You don't. After that, it's off to either real school (university) where people are all at various stages of their education throughout their life, chasing education in fields that actually benefit them and the rest of society; or they work a job where there's even more diversity and generally less interaction with people. Lower school is an alien place to be, and always has been.
        cbruns 3y ago
        But muh full time job and two-income economy..
        seanw444 3y ago
        I didn't say it would be easy.
    - seanw444 3y ago
      Having choices is bad. Today I learned.
  - cat_theorist 3y ago
    Did you miss the /s tag here?
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    In other words, replace it with nothing. That doesn't help the working poor. If you mean another private option, they aren't going to shell out for a "discount" school over public schools, and nothing prevents them from trying.
  - ToucanLoucan 3y ago
    The problem with "vote with your dollars" is that the more dollars you have, the more votes you end up with. The wealthy can already do this anyway: having those resources means you can live wherever you want, and thanks to the fact that school funding is primarily done via property taxes, the wealthy can move where they like to a school of their choice that will then benefit from that funding. Unsurprisingly this means schools with a lot of wealthy students already attract other wealthy students due to their successes largely brought about by funding, and poorer schools get even poorer as the few remaining people try their best to leave, because the school sucks. As I've gotten older I've become incredibly skeptical at the almost knee-jerk reaction to "give people choice and let them self select." What if the choice is difficult? What if it requires knowledge most people don't have? What if people don't need to live with the consequences of the choice? What if the choice affects not only them, but others who have no choice?
  - ballenf 3y ago
    How many strong WFH advocates are anti school-from-home? The anti-SFH sentiment seems to come from antagonism to which groups have been the first to adopt it, but I'm sure my bias affects my interpretation.
- mcntsh 3y ago
  I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too.
  - thrxio 3y ago
    Wealthy people don't like to pay taxes which funds the public education
    - slothtrop 3y ago
      Not exactly a choice.
    - mcntsh 3y ago
      According to the 2020 IRS tax report, the top 1% of American earners pay 42% of all income taxes, the top 10% of earners pay 74%. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf In California, property tax revenue has been increasing steadily YoY... a $3.2Bn increase in 2020 alone. https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf
      - ericfrazier 3y ago
        Because the middle class is shrinking. The wealthy also use their money to lobby against new taxes that would fund public education.
      - hobs 3y ago
        Hey look, numbers that don't mean what the person said. What percentage of their wealth do they pay? What are their effective tax rates compared to the working class? Why are capital gains taxes so much less than most income taxes? Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so? Which one of those groups can afford lawyers to structure their incomes to pay even less? The rich are not paying their fair share and generally have been paying less and taking more for decades, I don't know what you are on about.
- armchairhacker 3y ago
  So the solution is…not go to school, missing out on basically the main resource to defend yourself from oppression (education)?
  - seanw444 3y ago
    A primary source of oppression in some nations is the education system. To think that it's impossible to be wielded against us in kind, at some point in the future, is naive. You might think conservatives are stupid for homeschooling, but it's only a matter of time before the things being pushed in public school are things you morally/ethically oppose as well. Be the one to break the cycle. Be educated, educate your children to the best of your ability with the fundamentals, and show them how to want to learn more. That's how to set your kid up for success.
- simonsarris 3y ago
  > continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes This is so provably false that I'm amazed anyone could have this opinion. The US spends huge amounts on education. More than almost any country. Neither education spending nor property taxes have declined. Government current expenditures: Education https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA Personal Current Tax Receipts: State and Local Government: Property Taxes https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/S210400 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/S210400 US education spending is one of the highest in the world, and is also increasing 2010-2019 faster than almost any country: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
  - bannedbybros 3y ago
    >The US spends huge amounts on education... for rich people FTFY https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97916.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97916.asp
    - chung8123 3y ago
      That is from 1996. Not sure that is why all of the sudden kids aren't attending school.
    - simonsarris 3y ago
      That's from 1996 and definitely not true today. The $$ numbers there are also hilariously low now. Compare them to: https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-ranked-by-the-money-they-spend-per-student/ https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-ranked-by-th... Especially in inner cities, many of the better performing school districts spend far less than the places serving poor communities. Camden NJ is one of the highest spenders, so are a lot of city schools in Illinois. Famously "good" schools, like Stuyvesant which spends about $17,000 per student, don't even make the list. It's far below the average for NY!
    - cristiancavalli 3y ago
      A more recent report echoing similar findings: http://hechingerreport.org/a-decade-of-research-on-the-rich-poor-divide-in-education/ http://hechingerreport.org/a-decade-of-research-on-the-rich-... https://hechingerreport.org/new-data-even-within-the-same-district-some-wealthy-schools-get-millions-more-than-poor-ones/ https://hechingerreport.org/new-data-even-within-the-same-di... https://www.epi.org/publication/public-education-funding-in-the-us-needs-an-overhaul/ https://www.epi.org/publication/public-education-funding-in-... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/upshot/biden-school-funding.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/upshot/biden-school-fundi...
- Amezarak 3y ago
  America does have big problems with public education, but funding is not it. Even grossly underperforming schools are often funded at per-student rates well above the OECD average and even the US average. It's a frequent talking point in the US that underperforming schools are simply underfunded because they're in poor areas and thus don't get enough property taxes, but that's not what the data actually shows. For example, you may have heard of the mass-failure of Baltimore public schools, where not a single student in 23 of the district's schools exhibited even minimal math competency. It's the third highest-funded large school district in the US. Last year, the district was funded at 21k/student, compared with the OECD average of 12k. America spends enormous sums of money on education and gets less bang for the buck than probably any country in the world. https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/update-baltimore-city-now-americas-third-most-funded-school-system https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/update-balti... https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/state-test-results-23-baltimore-schools-have-zero-students-proficient-in-math-jovani-patterson-maryland-comprehensive-assessment-program-maryland-governor-wes-moore#:~:text=The%20Maryland%20State%20Department%20of%20Education%20recently%20released,percent%20could%20not%20do%20math%20at%20grade%20level https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/state-test-r.... https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-spending-per-student-2022-enrollment-performance-kirwan-new-york-boston-washington https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-ci...
  - beepbooptheory 3y ago
    Isn't occam's razor here that, in fact, these enormous sums of money are not going to education? Like that this is all strong evidence of bureaucratic misappropriation, corruption, text book companies, etc? Or at least, I struggle to think of what other reasonable point one could make about the insight.
    - Amezarak 3y ago
      Sure, there are a lot of factors like that. - Bloated school administrations and the employment of all kinds of semi-professionals that were not needed or did not even exist in the past, and which are not common outside of the US. - Excessive credentialist requirements that sometimes actively harm learning outcomes: for example, not only do degreed teachers not produce better learning outcomes, much education science is bunk that actively harms learning outcomes. If you employ only more expensive Master's in Education teachers who you have teaching three-cueing, you end up with worse results. - Grift and graft where various school contracts are awarded to enrich particular people; there was a video going around of an extremely nice school with a swimming pool, large auditorium etc compared to an absolute junkyard of a school elsewhere, but the nice school was actually built for much less money than the junk school. - Endless interventions that serve to do nothing but set money on fire, like the fads around filling classrooms with iPads and Chromebooks. All of my children's math education and homework takes places exclusively on computers. There was actually another recent story where Baltimore schools are buying every student a Chromebook. Lots of educators have a sort of cargo cult belief that handing kids computers makes them tech-literate and prepares them to be a SV programmer. - Discipline. Unfortunately there are some uncomfortable truths that people don't want to address and take serious action to remediate. A few dozen really bad students in a school can absolutely destroy learning. You can find myriads of videos of classrooms where teachers have been forced to totally give up. The only day they even bother to give a lesson is if the worst actors decided to take the day off. Relatedly, in many places, policy is to do everything possible to not hold students back, which compounds issues over the years. I am very sure there are many more items we could add to the list. Some items will apply much more to some areas than others. Unfortunately there is no one silver bullet solution. The point is that adding more money does not do anything to solve the real problems with American education. You just end up handing more money out for graft and waste to enrich people are not actually making a difference educationally.
- chung8123 3y ago
  Taxes have not gone down in any of the cities mentioned. In fact property taxes have been increasing a lot since the value of homes have increased. The other point is none of the issues need money to solve them: The advent of remote learning during the pandemic altered students’ routines and led many to conclude that in-person attendance was optional. School districts have eased grading policies that penalized students for missing class or turning assignments in late, further reducing incentives to attend. After years of Covid quarantines, parents are more inclined to keep kids home for minor illnesses or mental-health issues. Technology isn’t helping: There’s evidence that absenteeism had already begun rising in the years before the pandemic, coinciding with the explosion of smartphone and social-media use among children — which increased distractions and weakened students’ connection to school. Those problems only worsened while schools and other activities were shut down.
- fuzzfactor 3y ago
  >Why aren’t America’s students showing up? Thye probably just don't want to be there. >The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. Exactly more than ever. >draining education in order to have lower property taxes. Not exactly this. There is no lower property taxes. They are trying, not very successfully, to keep property taxes from increasing as exorbitantly as they would otherwise.
bigfryo 3y ago
Maybe they are tired of being brainwashed?
- smcg 3y ago
  are you saying children shouldn't go to school?
  - bigfryo 3y ago
    Yeah... What of it?
smcg 3y ago
Wow, what a surprise, the answer in the article is to pay teachers more and fund schools more. What do we do if funding increases are not approved? What do we do in poorer areas that have declining tax bases? What do you do in states like Florida where retirees without children flock and refuse to fund education?
- gaoshan 3y ago
  People refusing to vote for the greater good because they want to preserve their own wealth (well, their wealth wouldn't be at risk but for some even given up $10 is intolerable in the service of society at large) is a great argument for not allowing them this decision. Some things should not be optional and if you want to live in a certain society you should have to help support that society's civil function. Letting people opt-in or out of critical institutions like public education seems like a road to disaster to me.
- chung8123 3y ago
  I don't see how paying teachers more solves any of these issues: "The advent of remote learning during the pandemic altered students’ routines and led many to conclude that in-person attendance was optional. School districts have eased grading policies that penalized students for missing class or turning assignments in late, further reducing incentives to attend. After years of Covid quarantines, parents are more inclined to keep kids home for minor illnesses or mental-health issues. Technology isn’t helping: There’s evidence that absenteeism had already begun rising in the years before the pandemic, coinciding with the explosion of smartphone and social-media use among children — which increased distractions and weakened students’ connection to school. Those problems only worsened while schools and other activities were shut down." These are all solvable with parents and policy which should not cost any more money.
smcg 3y ago
Your local teacher's union is likely supporting policies that would improve these problems. If they have a contract dispute or a strike, please show your support for them.
maxsilver 3y ago
- We're 20+ years into a gun crisis in schools, such that "school shootings" are so common as to no longer be major news and are now just a punchline to a joke. No politician in the nation has put forward any serious plan to address this issue, and the kids are hyper aware of this. - There are no real mental health services for students, especially those with extreme mental health concerns. (and even if you as a child, or your own children, don't need those services, you'll be lumped in with other kids who desperately do need it) - Schools themselves are chronically mismanaged, generally due to funding issues. (some still don't have Air Conditioning, despite rampant global warming. Some still don't have any ventilation, despite being on year-three of a global pandemic, etc) - Teachers have some of the lowest wages of any white-collar profession. (average pay here is $55k/yr). Teachers are so underpaid, they often can't even afford basic housing in the school districts within which they teach. - Because of the last point, some of the teachers still willing to tolerate all-of-the-above are not necessarily folks who should be teaching. Some districts are heavily using/abusing substitute teachers as in-fill, which reduces the quality (and staff wages) even further. (google: Florida Teacher Shortage, and their plans to use unqualified military staff, as some kind of insane stop-gap plan) - School boards have become weaponized, such that right-wing-extremists are taking control of them via poorly-noticed elections, in an attempt to destroy public schooling and make life miserable for all teachers and students. (google: Ottawa Impact or Moms for Liberty, as some examples) - Right-wing extremists have demonized teaching as a profession, actively operate and fund hate campaigns against all public schooling, (and libraries, apparently), and they openly issue death threats or terrorism threats to any teacher who is kind to students. (see "Libs Of TikTok" and related) It is absolutely no shocker that kids who aren't forced to go, wouldn't want to go. Why would any reasonable person want to deal with all of this?
- DrThunder 3y ago
  No. Schools have MORE than enough money, they're just run by morons that don't spend it wisely and instead bolster admin pay and waste it on stupid seminars by grifters like Ibram Kendi. https://www.newsweek.com/public-schools-have-spent-21m-diversity-inclusion-programs-since-george-floyds-death-1672323 https://www.newsweek.com/public-schools-have-spent-21m-diver... Just because a social media account posted what they were doing and people got justifiably angry about it doesn't mean it's "right wing extremism". You seem to be having a bit of cognitive dissonance going on. You're pointing out that public schools are a failure while simultaneously saying anyone questioning how they're run is obviously a "right wing extremist". How about placing the blame on the actual people running the schools instead of the people who are telling you why they suck.
registeredcorn 3y ago
What kind of child wouldn't want to get up at an unreasonable early hour, to go to a building designed with factory work in mind, to memorize debatably worthwhile information, in a suffocating environment, around other children that they may or may not get along with? It's so strange to think that they would want to instead learn online, when that's not only possible, but feasible. Let's find someone/something to blame, and insist on shoveling massive sums of cash into a new football field. That will fix this horrible, horrible improvement to their personal lives.
- Auracle 3y ago
  Honestly, if they just started school later than would probably help more than any other factor. It blows my mind that people still don’t realize the teenagers are biologically wired to go to bed significantly later than everyone else. Just the other week I was at a combo preschool/parent education thing and they were talking about sleep. The educator complained about her teenagers not wanting to go bed at 9pm and blamed it on screens. That’s like telling adults they need to be in bed at 5pm or earlier. Can you force yourself to adapt? Kind of. Is it anywhere near ideal? Hell no.
  - registeredcorn 3y ago
    Pretty much! I do think that there should be a certain kind of need to learn how to wake up early when needed, but in my opinion, learning that skill is not something that should be insisted upon on a daily basis throughout an adolescents life. That goes doubly when the primary reasoning comes down to, "Well I did it when I was their age, so they should have to do it too!" There are other practical reasons that could even be helpful in this regard, too: Imagine for a moment a case where there are fewer school buses on the road (due to at least an option to Learn From Home (LFH)), and when they are on the road, it's not during peak commuter times. It's something that could help with things like emissions, and the overall safety of students and drivers. The idea of both morning commuters and school buses traveling around at the same peak hours reminds me a lot of how Moving Day [1] in NYC used to work, a breathtakingly stupid tradition, which apparently was only finally culled due to a mixture of labor shortage due to WWII, rent control, and a shortage of housing. I do realize that part of the reason why schools start as early as they do is to try and avoid some amount of that commuter traffic, but if that is the primary reason, it then raises the even stranger question, "Why then, are we putting the ease of commuters above a sane sleep schedule of the youth, when their physical presence in an antiquated building is on shaky grounds in the first place...?" Heck, we could take it a step further and ask even more pointed questions, "What sense does it make for children to be transferred to the care of complete strangers, who then are legally obligated to care for their safety on a short-term basis, when that same child could instead remain at home in the care of their own parents?" It just seems like there's plenty of reasons why children should be able to avoid this dogs breakfast of an in-person educational system, when there are glaring and obvious alternatives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(New_York_City) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(New_York_City)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dageshi 3y ago
Given the number of adults who will only wfh I imagine there's some percentage of kids who just can't imagine going back to school after they've tasted school from home.
flerchin 3y ago
Everyone feels it. In-person is not necessary with the online tools we have rolled out. My kids can do all, or almost all, of their schoolwork from their district issued devices. They're more likely to take a health day, or a trip with me, and still maintain their straight As. There's also a cohort that fell behind in pandemic lockdowns, and just has never caught back up. Those kids may decide to exit the school-system entirely.
slibhb 3y ago
Fully remote was a signal to parents and children that school isn't important. Both groups seem to have taken it to heart. Additionally, the dominant school of thought is that truancy is a systemic problem which in practice means that there are rarely consequences for truant children or their parents.
AndrewKemendo 3y ago
I have three kids in public school at one of the best school districts in America It’s some mix of the following: - Great engaged teachers - Overworked and under staffed administrators - Totally clueless substitutes - Increasingly impressive mental health focus - Standardized testing focus - Increasingly invasive spyware and “security” systems All of these are the result of the schools trying to balance: 1. Keeping parents not mad (as opposed to happy) 2. staying in line with district and state guidance 3. Graduating and matriculating the student body out of the school safely and “on time” for their peer groups The challenge is that there’s no super-structure that is measuring or interested in long term outcomes so it’s haphazard and leads to a chaotic system with decreasing utility to the modern world. My ex wife is an admistrator and previously a teacher and I don’t envy anyone who has to try and work in such a system
bannedbybros 3y ago
[dead]
DrThunder 3y ago
Because public schools are garbage and I say this as someone who has a wife that's a teacher and a mom that taught. They don't prioritize getting good staff in the schools. Instead they prioritize things like DEI, thousands on stupid professional development seminars about lgqbtq and pronouns, wasted money on needless tech etc. It has nothing to do with not having enough tax money. They get more and more every year and waste it on admin positions and useless teacher training. Additionally, they geared mostly towards girls and how they learn and not boys. By the time kids get near high school age they realize pretty quickly they're just in a daycare that's not really teaching them much at all.
thsksbd 3y ago
I never cared for attendance. If a teacher believes that parents and the the students are diligent I think the teacher should excuse the student absences. When I was a kid, my parents would have me skip school on Saturdays (we had 6 day/week classes) to go to the beach, or, go to an important cultural event (day my dad has a business trip to Florence, or Vienna). My teachers knew we were getting good grades and that my parents weren't having us play video games while absent. Whatever it was we were doing was as enriching as school. I believe the teachers have a duty to the weaker kids, but they shouldn't impose those kids controls on the others.
mikewarot 3y ago
My child doesn't see the point of high school, and I strongly fear for their future. Of course there's history, and a lot of psychological damage done by said institution... so that might have something to do with it. High school is an extremely cruel place.
- zingababba 3y ago
  I skipped a ton of high school because I was an extreme social outcast (still barely graduated) and never went to college yet still have a great job in high tech for a fortune 100 so it's not all bad. I believe if you are an autodidact (my saving grace - I read voraciously) you will always have a fighting chance.
  - soupfordummies 3y ago
    But if you're not... or even if you are but you struggle with motivation...
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  Well they are right. High School has no point in of itself. It's just a means to an end.
freitzkriesler2 3y ago
The unpopular truth that is spoken of in teaching circles is cultural. America is a diverse nation and the people entering it right now don't value the Prussian style education system we have or more aptly don't see the value in it. Couple that with public school administrative politics (as in office politics) and you see why high performing teachers flee out of those districts and into more highly rated ones. Education starts at home and if that isn't there for whatever reason then the whole system falls apart. What's even worse is devaluing an education to get failing students out the door. Whether intentional or not the implications are the same. You now have a massive under educated poverty class that can be cajoled by populatists and others into votes. This is how democracy dies.
im_down_w_otp 3y ago
Society hasn’t done a particularly good job of establishing the value proposition of school. Very, very few of the US’s cultural icons embody the value of education. The American workplace doesn’t obviously, overtly value education outside of in-group signaling from “elite” institutions, and the American workplace isn’t representative of what it means to achieve success in American culture. If you look around you and see nothing but carnival barkers being elevated through the ranks of society, then why would you value doing anything other than learning to do that?
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I remember the first time a co-worker told me that his kid wanted to be a youtube creator for a grown-up profession. I wasn't surprised in the slightest, but it was odd since that was never a thought when I was a child.
  - im_down_w_otp 3y ago
    Adults too. People’s hard earned money being funneled into self-styled “gurus”. That’s them spending their money on “education”, and it’s not to become a physicist or anthropologist.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
These aren't little children of course. Little children do what they're told. These are probably almost exclusively teenagers. I think they're not showing up because they don't want to be in school. And I think that's because school isn't a healthy place for teenagers. I don't think teenagers should be spending their entire day in a government administered environment, and they seem to feel the same way.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
> During the 2021-22 academic year, 28% of schoolchildren were “chronically” absent — defined as missing at least 10% of the 180-day school year, or three and a half weeks. That’s up from a rate of 15% in the last full year before the pandemic. The problem is most acute in urban public school districts: Chronic absenteeism topped 40% in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago; in Detroit, the rate was 77%. Peak COVID with everyone working and schooling from home. If you don't put them on a bus and put them around other kids of course they're going to fuck off and do other stuff.
jscipione 3y ago
American schools are filled with radical gender ideology, neo-Marxism, anti-white discrimination, and racial violence. I wouldn’t show up either.
lordfrito 3y ago
My 2 cents. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with my take, but I'm just sharing one father's experience raising kids in the early 2000s. I'll state upfront that I'm politically right of center, but nothing crazy. I'm live and let live. I probably would have been considered a moderate 20 years ago. Public schools have been on a downward trajectory my entire adult life (I'm 52). Most of the parents I know have been alarmed at the trend for a while (decades), but as progressive ideology has taken hold over most of our public institutions, the parents I know feel that their concerns and talking points are usually dismissed offhand. Maybe they feel ignored because they're "priveleged" and other more diverse voices need to be heard, or maybe it's because their "conservative values" are simply seen as part of the problem. I don't know. My point is that there are a lot of people who feel ignored and are tired of this. As a result, I've noticed that slowly, over the last twenty years or so, those that can have been pulling their kids (and themselves) "out" of the public system. We personally homeschooled our kids until 6th grade, then they went to public school. Many in my circle disagreed at the time with our decision to homeschool, but in time have come around as public schools continue to deteriorate. Those that can afford it (or are willing to sacrifice time/energy/$$$ in order to afford it) have been putting their kids in private school, where they have more say with an administration that's willing to engage the parents that are directly paying for the schooling. Point being is that more and more people don't feel the public system is meeting their children's needs, are tired of trying to engage the system while getting nowhere, and so have taken matters into their own hands. As parents find public schools administrations continuing to double down on ideas and ideologies that run counter to their own values, many are now more than willing to pull their kids out and go their own way. These are parents that are deeply concerned for their kids, and are putting a lot of time/money/energy to give their kids a better chance at success in an increasingly confusing and uncertain world. As parents with initiative pull their kids out of the public system, schools face an increasing percentage of kids from families that are not as committed/concerned/willing to getting involved in their children's education. This is creating a negative feedback loop. Less parental involvement means the bar is lowered for the performance of the average kid in public school. Worse, it also means less parental pushback on the administration, and so public schools continue to double down on failing strategies, all while patting themselves on the back for being so progressive. It leads to a monoculture, where everyone believes they're doing the right thing, so it can't be their fault, the problem must lie elsewhere. It's a big experiment on our kids, the impact of which is accelerating. The fact is that people are slowly checking out of the institutions we've built, hedging their bets against the future we're being forced into so to speak. Unfortunately this means that we're somewhat bi-furcating the future generation we're in the process of educating. Kids whose parents are involved will work to see their kids get a better education than what public school offers, and should therefore have a better than average chance of success at life. The kids that remain in the system continue to suffer as those with means/ability abandon it. It's not a pretty picture, but this is what things look like when our state institutions start failing us. It's slowly becoming "every-man-for-themselves". People don't want to engage, they want to argue, to blame, to point fingers, and cover their own ass. Few are concerned about the public good, they'd rather just feel good. So, those that can have given up trying to fix things, and are going their own way. The schools may be failing our kids, but as parents we can still help them. I don't think what's happening can be stopped at this point. I'm concerned that the rot has taken too deep of a hold at all levels of local and state administration, and academia. It's probably going to get much more dire before things bottom out and start getting better. Probably has something to do with, or is a symptom of, the coming "Fourth Turning" etc.

24 points by mfiguiere 3y ago

smcg 3y ago

https://archive.ph/lsNRm https://archive.ph/lsNRm

happycube 3y ago

Well then, they should've actually done something about ventilation in 2020.

smcg 3y ago

The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame the kids. Never blame the kids. They're not the ones in control of this. Blame the adults.

willcipriano 3y ago
That's why we need school choice, give the working poor the same opportunity to abandon the public schools like the wealthy have.
- CHSbeachbum420 3y ago
  False. Taking tax dollar funding away from public schools only exacerbates the issue. School choice is a scam to fund private Christian schools to brainwash the youth and maintain a conservative voter base
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    The cost per student in the US is higher than every country in the world (save Luxemburg if I recall correctly). The problem isn't a lack of money, the problem is the money is misused. Private schools are just better stewards of the students dollars. I mean the teacher's unions have been screaming about smaller class sizes for decades, let's give it to them.
    - lukev 3y ago
      The cost-per-student of private vs public education is not an apples-to-apples comparison because the public school system is also obligated to provide transportation and special needs education, both of which are very expensive and neither of which are in scope for most private schools.
      - vorpalhex 3y ago
        The EU and Canada have those costs too... and are still spending way less per student than the US.
        lukev 3y ago
        Indeed, and it'd be worthwhile doing a comparison. My only point is that you have to make sure comparisons are accurate with respect to scope of services. Private schools in the US look artificially good in terms of both finances and performance because they end up selecting the more privileged students to start with.
  - DrThunder 3y ago
    Why do you assume the money would be taken away from the public schools? Is it because they suck? If so, you're right and it should be taken away from them. You don't improve if you aren't answering to anyone. If they're threatened with money loss you better believe they're going to start doing something to make their school more attractive and that's how it should be. Right now they can be absolutely abysmal at educating anyone and still receive tax dollars.
  - wholesomepotato 3y ago
    It's like some choice who brainwashes my kids. Are they going to learn about men being pregnant and go to a drag show or that god created earth 5 thousand years ago. Maybe i could even alternate every year so they are "well rounded".
    - seanw444 3y ago
      Did homeschooling just fall off the face of the planet? Stop sending your kids to these kinds of schools. Take the initiative to be learned enough to teach your kids at least the fundamentals, and then instill in them the drive to want to learn more. It's made much easier with the advent of the internet. And someone's probably going to respond "but muh socialization!" In what other real-life scenario are you going to end up with a bunch of people who are almost identical in age, with little to no responsibilities, regurgitating shit with no incentive other than that you have to be there, or else? You don't. After that, it's off to either real school (university) where people are all at various stages of their education throughout their life, chasing education in fields that actually benefit them and the rest of society; or they work a job where there's even more diversity and generally less interaction with people. Lower school is an alien place to be, and always has been.
      - cbruns 3y ago
        But muh full time job and two-income economy..
        seanw444 3y ago
        I didn't say it would be easy.
  - seanw444 3y ago
    Having choices is bad. Today I learned.
- cat_theorist 3y ago
  Did you miss the /s tag here?
- slothtrop 3y ago
  In other words, replace it with nothing. That doesn't help the working poor. If you mean another private option, they aren't going to shell out for a "discount" school over public schools, and nothing prevents them from trying.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  The problem with "vote with your dollars" is that the more dollars you have, the more votes you end up with. The wealthy can already do this anyway: having those resources means you can live wherever you want, and thanks to the fact that school funding is primarily done via property taxes, the wealthy can move where they like to a school of their choice that will then benefit from that funding. Unsurprisingly this means schools with a lot of wealthy students already attract other wealthy students due to their successes largely brought about by funding, and poorer schools get even poorer as the few remaining people try their best to leave, because the school sucks. As I've gotten older I've become incredibly skeptical at the almost knee-jerk reaction to "give people choice and let them self select." What if the choice is difficult? What if it requires knowledge most people don't have? What if people don't need to live with the consequences of the choice? What if the choice affects not only them, but others who have no choice?
- ballenf 3y ago
  How many strong WFH advocates are anti school-from-home? The anti-SFH sentiment seems to come from antagonism to which groups have been the first to adopt it, but I'm sure my bias affects my interpretation.
mcntsh 3y ago
I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too.
- thrxio 3y ago
  Wealthy people don't like to pay taxes which funds the public education
  - slothtrop 3y ago
    Not exactly a choice.
  - mcntsh 3y ago
    According to the 2020 IRS tax report, the top 1% of American earners pay 42% of all income taxes, the top 10% of earners pay 74%. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf In California, property tax revenue has been increasing steadily YoY... a $3.2Bn increase in 2020 alone. https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf https://www.boe.ca.gov/legdiv/2021-2022/pub306.pdf
    - ericfrazier 3y ago
      Because the middle class is shrinking. The wealthy also use their money to lobby against new taxes that would fund public education.
    - hobs 3y ago
      Hey look, numbers that don't mean what the person said. What percentage of their wealth do they pay? What are their effective tax rates compared to the working class? Why are capital gains taxes so much less than most income taxes? Why does our "progressive" tax rate stop growing in the 150k range or so? Which one of those groups can afford lawyers to structure their incomes to pay even less? The rich are not paying their fair share and generally have been paying less and taking more for decades, I don't know what you are on about.
armchairhacker 3y ago
So the solution is…not go to school, missing out on basically the main resource to defend yourself from oppression (education)?
- seanw444 3y ago
  A primary source of oppression in some nations is the education system. To think that it's impossible to be wielded against us in kind, at some point in the future, is naive. You might think conservatives are stupid for homeschooling, but it's only a matter of time before the things being pushed in public school are things you morally/ethically oppose as well. Be the one to break the cycle. Be educated, educate your children to the best of your ability with the fundamentals, and show them how to want to learn more. That's how to set your kid up for success.
simonsarris 3y ago
> continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes This is so provably false that I'm amazed anyone could have this opinion. The US spends huge amounts on education. More than almost any country. Neither education spending nor property taxes have declined. Government current expenditures: Education https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA Personal Current Tax Receipts: State and Local Government: Property Taxes https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/S210400 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/S210400 US education spending is one of the highest in the world, and is also increasing 2010-2019 faster than almost any country: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
- bannedbybros 3y ago
  >The US spends huge amounts on education... for rich people FTFY https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97916.asp https://nces.ed.gov/pubs/web/97916.asp
  - chung8123 3y ago
    That is from 1996. Not sure that is why all of the sudden kids aren't attending school.
  - simonsarris 3y ago
    That's from 1996 and definitely not true today. The $$ numbers there are also hilariously low now. Compare them to: https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-ranked-by-the-money-they-spend-per-student/ https://www.aaastateofplay.com/school-districts-ranked-by-th... Especially in inner cities, many of the better performing school districts spend far less than the places serving poor communities. Camden NJ is one of the highest spenders, so are a lot of city schools in Illinois. Famously "good" schools, like Stuyvesant which spends about $17,000 per student, don't even make the list. It's far below the average for NY!
  - cristiancavalli 3y ago
    A more recent report echoing similar findings: http://hechingerreport.org/a-decade-of-research-on-the-rich-poor-divide-in-education/ http://hechingerreport.org/a-decade-of-research-on-the-rich-... https://hechingerreport.org/new-data-even-within-the-same-district-some-wealthy-schools-get-millions-more-than-poor-ones/ https://hechingerreport.org/new-data-even-within-the-same-di... https://www.epi.org/publication/public-education-funding-in-the-us-needs-an-overhaul/ https://www.epi.org/publication/public-education-funding-in-... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/upshot/biden-school-funding.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/upshot/biden-school-fundi...
Amezarak 3y ago
America does have big problems with public education, but funding is not it. Even grossly underperforming schools are often funded at per-student rates well above the OECD average and even the US average. It's a frequent talking point in the US that underperforming schools are simply underfunded because they're in poor areas and thus don't get enough property taxes, but that's not what the data actually shows. For example, you may have heard of the mass-failure of Baltimore public schools, where not a single student in 23 of the district's schools exhibited even minimal math competency. It's the third highest-funded large school district in the US. Last year, the district was funded at 21k/student, compared with the OECD average of 12k. America spends enormous sums of money on education and gets less bang for the buck than probably any country in the world. https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/update-baltimore-city-now-americas-third-most-funded-school-system https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/update-balti... https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/state-test-results-23-baltimore-schools-have-zero-students-proficient-in-math-jovani-patterson-maryland-comprehensive-assessment-program-maryland-governor-wes-moore#:~:text=The%20Maryland%20State%20Department%20of%20Education%20recently%20released,percent%20could%20not%20do%20math%20at%20grade%20level https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/state-test-r.... https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-city-schools-spending-per-student-2022-enrollment-performance-kirwan-new-york-boston-washington https://foxbaltimore.com/news/project-baltimore/baltimore-ci...
- beepbooptheory 3y ago
  Isn't occam's razor here that, in fact, these enormous sums of money are not going to education? Like that this is all strong evidence of bureaucratic misappropriation, corruption, text book companies, etc? Or at least, I struggle to think of what other reasonable point one could make about the insight.
  - Amezarak 3y ago
    Sure, there are a lot of factors like that. - Bloated school administrations and the employment of all kinds of semi-professionals that were not needed or did not even exist in the past, and which are not common outside of the US. - Excessive credentialist requirements that sometimes actively harm learning outcomes: for example, not only do degreed teachers not produce better learning outcomes, much education science is bunk that actively harms learning outcomes. If you employ only more expensive Master's in Education teachers who you have teaching three-cueing, you end up with worse results. - Grift and graft where various school contracts are awarded to enrich particular people; there was a video going around of an extremely nice school with a swimming pool, large auditorium etc compared to an absolute junkyard of a school elsewhere, but the nice school was actually built for much less money than the junk school. - Endless interventions that serve to do nothing but set money on fire, like the fads around filling classrooms with iPads and Chromebooks. All of my children's math education and homework takes places exclusively on computers. There was actually another recent story where Baltimore schools are buying every student a Chromebook. Lots of educators have a sort of cargo cult belief that handing kids computers makes them tech-literate and prepares them to be a SV programmer. - Discipline. Unfortunately there are some uncomfortable truths that people don't want to address and take serious action to remediate. A few dozen really bad students in a school can absolutely destroy learning. You can find myriads of videos of classrooms where teachers have been forced to totally give up. The only day they even bother to give a lesson is if the worst actors decided to take the day off. Relatedly, in many places, policy is to do everything possible to not hold students back, which compounds issues over the years. I am very sure there are many more items we could add to the list. Some items will apply much more to some areas than others. Unfortunately there is no one silver bullet solution. The point is that adding more money does not do anything to solve the real problems with American education. You just end up handing more money out for graft and waste to enrich people are not actually making a difference educationally.
chung8123 3y ago
Taxes have not gone down in any of the cities mentioned. In fact property taxes have been increasing a lot since the value of homes have increased. The other point is none of the issues need money to solve them: The advent of remote learning during the pandemic altered students’ routines and led many to conclude that in-person attendance was optional. School districts have eased grading policies that penalized students for missing class or turning assignments in late, further reducing incentives to attend. After years of Covid quarantines, parents are more inclined to keep kids home for minor illnesses or mental-health issues. Technology isn’t helping: There’s evidence that absenteeism had already begun rising in the years before the pandemic, coinciding with the explosion of smartphone and social-media use among children — which increased distractions and weakened students’ connection to school. Those problems only worsened while schools and other activities were shut down.
fuzzfactor 3y ago
>Why aren’t America’s students showing up? Thye probably just don't want to be there. >The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. Exactly more than ever. >draining education in order to have lower property taxes. Not exactly this. There is no lower property taxes. They are trying, not very successfully, to keep property taxes from increasing as exorbitantly as they would otherwise.

bigfryo 3y ago

Maybe they are tired of being brainwashed?

smcg 3y ago
are you saying children shouldn't go to school?
- bigfryo 3y ago
  Yeah... What of it?

smcg 3y ago

Wow, what a surprise, the answer in the article is to pay teachers more and fund schools more. What do we do if funding increases are not approved? What do we do in poorer areas that have declining tax bases? What do you do in states like Florida where retirees without children flock and refuse to fund education?

gaoshan 3y ago
People refusing to vote for the greater good because they want to preserve their own wealth (well, their wealth wouldn't be at risk but for some even given up $10 is intolerable in the service of society at large) is a great argument for not allowing them this decision. Some things should not be optional and if you want to live in a certain society you should have to help support that society's civil function. Letting people opt-in or out of critical institutions like public education seems like a road to disaster to me.
chung8123 3y ago
I don't see how paying teachers more solves any of these issues: "The advent of remote learning during the pandemic altered students’ routines and led many to conclude that in-person attendance was optional. School districts have eased grading policies that penalized students for missing class or turning assignments in late, further reducing incentives to attend. After years of Covid quarantines, parents are more inclined to keep kids home for minor illnesses or mental-health issues. Technology isn’t helping: There’s evidence that absenteeism had already begun rising in the years before the pandemic, coinciding with the explosion of smartphone and social-media use among children — which increased distractions and weakened students’ connection to school. Those problems only worsened while schools and other activities were shut down." These are all solvable with parents and policy which should not cost any more money.

smcg 3y ago

Your local teacher's union is likely supporting policies that would improve these problems. If they have a contract dispute or a strike, please show your support for them.

maxsilver 3y ago

- We're 20+ years into a gun crisis in schools, such that "school shootings" are so common as to no longer be major news and are now just a punchline to a joke. No politician in the nation has put forward any serious plan to address this issue, and the kids are hyper aware of this. - There are no real mental health services for students, especially those with extreme mental health concerns. (and even if you as a child, or your own children, don't need those services, you'll be lumped in with other kids who desperately do need it) - Schools themselves are chronically mismanaged, generally due to funding issues. (some still don't have Air Conditioning, despite rampant global warming. Some still don't have any ventilation, despite being on year-three of a global pandemic, etc) - Teachers have some of the lowest wages of any white-collar profession. (average pay here is $55k/yr). Teachers are so underpaid, they often can't even afford basic housing in the school districts within which they teach. - Because of the last point, some of the teachers still willing to tolerate all-of-the-above are not necessarily folks who should be teaching. Some districts are heavily using/abusing substitute teachers as in-fill, which reduces the quality (and staff wages) even further. (google: Florida Teacher Shortage, and their plans to use unqualified military staff, as some kind of insane stop-gap plan) - School boards have become weaponized, such that right-wing-extremists are taking control of them via poorly-noticed elections, in an attempt to destroy public schooling and make life miserable for all teachers and students. (google: Ottawa Impact or Moms for Liberty, as some examples) - Right-wing extremists have demonized teaching as a profession, actively operate and fund hate campaigns against all public schooling, (and libraries, apparently), and they openly issue death threats or terrorism threats to any teacher who is kind to students. (see "Libs Of TikTok" and related) It is absolutely no shocker that kids who aren't forced to go, wouldn't want to go. Why would any reasonable person want to deal with all of this?

DrThunder 3y ago
No. Schools have MORE than enough money, they're just run by morons that don't spend it wisely and instead bolster admin pay and waste it on stupid seminars by grifters like Ibram Kendi. https://www.newsweek.com/public-schools-have-spent-21m-diversity-inclusion-programs-since-george-floyds-death-1672323 https://www.newsweek.com/public-schools-have-spent-21m-diver... Just because a social media account posted what they were doing and people got justifiably angry about it doesn't mean it's "right wing extremism". You seem to be having a bit of cognitive dissonance going on. You're pointing out that public schools are a failure while simultaneously saying anyone questioning how they're run is obviously a "right wing extremist". How about placing the blame on the actual people running the schools instead of the people who are telling you why they suck.

registeredcorn 3y ago

What kind of child wouldn't want to get up at an unreasonable early hour, to go to a building designed with factory work in mind, to memorize debatably worthwhile information, in a suffocating environment, around other children that they may or may not get along with? It's so strange to think that they would want to instead learn online, when that's not only possible, but feasible. Let's find someone/something to blame, and insist on shoveling massive sums of cash into a new football field. That will fix this horrible, horrible improvement to their personal lives.

Auracle 3y ago
Honestly, if they just started school later than would probably help more than any other factor. It blows my mind that people still don’t realize the teenagers are biologically wired to go to bed significantly later than everyone else. Just the other week I was at a combo preschool/parent education thing and they were talking about sleep. The educator complained about her teenagers not wanting to go bed at 9pm and blamed it on screens. That’s like telling adults they need to be in bed at 5pm or earlier. Can you force yourself to adapt? Kind of. Is it anywhere near ideal? Hell no.
- registeredcorn 3y ago
  Pretty much! I do think that there should be a certain kind of need to learn how to wake up early when needed, but in my opinion, learning that skill is not something that should be insisted upon on a daily basis throughout an adolescents life. That goes doubly when the primary reasoning comes down to, "Well I did it when I was their age, so they should have to do it too!" There are other practical reasons that could even be helpful in this regard, too: Imagine for a moment a case where there are fewer school buses on the road (due to at least an option to Learn From Home (LFH)), and when they are on the road, it's not during peak commuter times. It's something that could help with things like emissions, and the overall safety of students and drivers. The idea of both morning commuters and school buses traveling around at the same peak hours reminds me a lot of how Moving Day [1] in NYC used to work, a breathtakingly stupid tradition, which apparently was only finally culled due to a mixture of labor shortage due to WWII, rent control, and a shortage of housing. I do realize that part of the reason why schools start as early as they do is to try and avoid some amount of that commuter traffic, but if that is the primary reason, it then raises the even stranger question, "Why then, are we putting the ease of commuters above a sane sleep schedule of the youth, when their physical presence in an antiquated building is on shaky grounds in the first place...?" Heck, we could take it a step further and ask even more pointed questions, "What sense does it make for children to be transferred to the care of complete strangers, who then are legally obligated to care for their safety on a short-term basis, when that same child could instead remain at home in the care of their own parents?" It just seems like there's plenty of reasons why children should be able to avoid this dogs breakfast of an in-person educational system, when there are glaring and obvious alternatives. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(New_York_City) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_Day_(New_York_City)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dageshi 3y ago

Given the number of adults who will only wfh I imagine there's some percentage of kids who just can't imagine going back to school after they've tasted school from home.

flerchin 3y ago

Everyone feels it. In-person is not necessary with the online tools we have rolled out. My kids can do all, or almost all, of their schoolwork from their district issued devices. They're more likely to take a health day, or a trip with me, and still maintain their straight As. There's also a cohort that fell behind in pandemic lockdowns, and just has never caught back up. Those kids may decide to exit the school-system entirely.

slibhb 3y ago

Fully remote was a signal to parents and children that school isn't important. Both groups seem to have taken it to heart. Additionally, the dominant school of thought is that truancy is a systemic problem which in practice means that there are rarely consequences for truant children or their parents.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago

I have three kids in public school at one of the best school districts in America It’s some mix of the following: - Great engaged teachers - Overworked and under staffed administrators - Totally clueless substitutes - Increasingly impressive mental health focus - Standardized testing focus - Increasingly invasive spyware and “security” systems All of these are the result of the schools trying to balance: 1. Keeping parents not mad (as opposed to happy) 2. staying in line with district and state guidance 3. Graduating and matriculating the student body out of the school safely and “on time” for their peer groups The challenge is that there’s no super-structure that is measuring or interested in long term outcomes so it’s haphazard and leads to a chaotic system with decreasing utility to the modern world. My ex wife is an admistrator and previously a teacher and I don’t envy anyone who has to try and work in such a system

bannedbybros 3y ago

[dead]

DrThunder 3y ago

Because public schools are garbage and I say this as someone who has a wife that's a teacher and a mom that taught. They don't prioritize getting good staff in the schools. Instead they prioritize things like DEI, thousands on stupid professional development seminars about lgqbtq and pronouns, wasted money on needless tech etc. It has nothing to do with not having enough tax money. They get more and more every year and waste it on admin positions and useless teacher training. Additionally, they geared mostly towards girls and how they learn and not boys. By the time kids get near high school age they realize pretty quickly they're just in a daycare that's not really teaching them much at all.

thsksbd 3y ago

I never cared for attendance. If a teacher believes that parents and the the students are diligent I think the teacher should excuse the student absences. When I was a kid, my parents would have me skip school on Saturdays (we had 6 day/week classes) to go to the beach, or, go to an important cultural event (day my dad has a business trip to Florence, or Vienna). My teachers knew we were getting good grades and that my parents weren't having us play video games while absent. Whatever it was we were doing was as enriching as school. I believe the teachers have a duty to the weaker kids, but they shouldn't impose those kids controls on the others.

mikewarot 3y ago

My child doesn't see the point of high school, and I strongly fear for their future. Of course there's history, and a lot of psychological damage done by said institution... so that might have something to do with it. High school is an extremely cruel place.

zingababba 3y ago
I skipped a ton of high school because I was an extreme social outcast (still barely graduated) and never went to college yet still have a great job in high tech for a fortune 100 so it's not all bad. I believe if you are an autodidact (my saving grace - I read voraciously) you will always have a fighting chance.
- soupfordummies 3y ago
  But if you're not... or even if you are but you struggle with motivation...
s1artibartfast 3y ago
Well they are right. High School has no point in of itself. It's just a means to an end.

freitzkriesler2 3y ago

The unpopular truth that is spoken of in teaching circles is cultural. America is a diverse nation and the people entering it right now don't value the Prussian style education system we have or more aptly don't see the value in it. Couple that with public school administrative politics (as in office politics) and you see why high performing teachers flee out of those districts and into more highly rated ones. Education starts at home and if that isn't there for whatever reason then the whole system falls apart. What's even worse is devaluing an education to get failing students out the door. Whether intentional or not the implications are the same. You now have a massive under educated poverty class that can be cajoled by populatists and others into votes. This is how democracy dies.

im_down_w_otp 3y ago

Society hasn’t done a particularly good job of establishing the value proposition of school. Very, very few of the US’s cultural icons embody the value of education. The American workplace doesn’t obviously, overtly value education outside of in-group signaling from “elite” institutions, and the American workplace isn’t representative of what it means to achieve success in American culture. If you look around you and see nothing but carnival barkers being elevated through the ranks of society, then why would you value doing anything other than learning to do that?

hotpotamus 3y ago
I remember the first time a co-worker told me that his kid wanted to be a youtube creator for a grown-up profession. I wasn't surprised in the slightest, but it was odd since that was never a thought when I was a child.
- im_down_w_otp 3y ago
  Adults too. People’s hard earned money being funneled into self-styled “gurus”. That’s them spending their money on “education”, and it’s not to become a physicist or anthropologist.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

These aren't little children of course. Little children do what they're told. These are probably almost exclusively teenagers. I think they're not showing up because they don't want to be in school. And I think that's because school isn't a healthy place for teenagers. I don't think teenagers should be spending their entire day in a government administered environment, and they seem to feel the same way.

red-iron-pine 3y ago

> During the 2021-22 academic year, 28% of schoolchildren were “chronically” absent — defined as missing at least 10% of the 180-day school year, or three and a half weeks. That’s up from a rate of 15% in the last full year before the pandemic. The problem is most acute in urban public school districts: Chronic absenteeism topped 40% in New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago; in Detroit, the rate was 77%. Peak COVID with everyone working and schooling from home. If you don't put them on a bus and put them around other kids of course they're going to fuck off and do other stuff.

jscipione 3y ago

American schools are filled with radical gender ideology, neo-Marxism, anti-white discrimination, and racial violence. I wouldn’t show up either.

lordfrito 3y ago

My 2 cents. I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with my take, but I'm just sharing one father's experience raising kids in the early 2000s. I'll state upfront that I'm politically right of center, but nothing crazy. I'm live and let live. I probably would have been considered a moderate 20 years ago. Public schools have been on a downward trajectory my entire adult life (I'm 52). Most of the parents I know have been alarmed at the trend for a while (decades), but as progressive ideology has taken hold over most of our public institutions, the parents I know feel that their concerns and talking points are usually dismissed offhand. Maybe they feel ignored because they're "priveleged" and other more diverse voices need to be heard, or maybe it's because their "conservative values" are simply seen as part of the problem. I don't know. My point is that there are a lot of people who feel ignored and are tired of this. As a result, I've noticed that slowly, over the last twenty years or so, those that can have been pulling their kids (and themselves) "out" of the public system. We personally homeschooled our kids until 6th grade, then they went to public school. Many in my circle disagreed at the time with our decision to homeschool, but in time have come around as public schools continue to deteriorate. Those that can afford it (or are willing to sacrifice time/energy/$$$ in order to afford it) have been putting their kids in private school, where they have more say with an administration that's willing to engage the parents that are directly paying for the schooling. Point being is that more and more people don't feel the public system is meeting their children's needs, are tired of trying to engage the system while getting nowhere, and so have taken matters into their own hands. As parents find public schools administrations continuing to double down on ideas and ideologies that run counter to their own values, many are now more than willing to pull their kids out and go their own way. These are parents that are deeply concerned for their kids, and are putting a lot of time/money/energy to give their kids a better chance at success in an increasingly confusing and uncertain world. As parents with initiative pull their kids out of the public system, schools face an increasing percentage of kids from families that are not as committed/concerned/willing to getting involved in their children's education. This is creating a negative feedback loop. Less parental involvement means the bar is lowered for the performance of the average kid in public school. Worse, it also means less parental pushback on the administration, and so public schools continue to double down on failing strategies, all while patting themselves on the back for being so progressive. It leads to a monoculture, where everyone believes they're doing the right thing, so it can't be their fault, the problem must lie elsewhere. It's a big experiment on our kids, the impact of which is accelerating. The fact is that people are slowly checking out of the institutions we've built, hedging their bets against the future we're being forced into so to speak. Unfortunately this means that we're somewhat bi-furcating the future generation we're in the process of educating. Kids whose parents are involved will work to see their kids get a better education than what public school offers, and should therefore have a better than average chance of success at life. The kids that remain in the system continue to suffer as those with means/ability abandon it. It's not a pretty picture, but this is what things look like when our state institutions start failing us. It's slowly becoming "every-man-for-themselves". People don't want to engage, they want to argue, to blame, to point fingers, and cover their own ass. Few are concerned about the public good, they'd rather just feel good. So, those that can have given up trying to fix things, and are going their own way. The schools may be failing our kids, but as parents we can still help them. I don't think what's happening can be stopped at this point. I'm concerned that the rot has taken too deep of a hold at all levels of local and state administration, and academia. It's probably going to get much more dire before things bottom out and start getting better. Probably has something to do with, or is a symptom of, the coming "Fourth Turning" etc.