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I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education pro

I think this can be misleading in the same way some charter school results are. The easiest way to improve a school's results isn't to improve the education provided, it's to get rid of the worst performing kids. Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up. The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. Is the education better, or have they just selected better performing kids? The article touches on this. But I don't think takes it nearly seriously enough.

eYrKEC2 3y ago
Another factor is that the military parents have cleared a bar of pre-enlistment testing (ASVAB?) that has strong correlations with IQ testing.
- AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
  [dead]
- stonogo 3y ago
  The minimum ASVAB to enlist is 31, and there are waiver programs for that. This is not a good showing. I feel like people don't appreciate how little lower-enlisted people are paid, what terrible financial literacy abounds in the ranks, and how many kids live on base but are still very firmly living in poverty. There are a lot of advantages to living on base, but this thread is pretending that the military has its shit together in ways that it absolutely does not. "All the kids will be well-fed and socialized" is bizarrely out of touch, specifically. There are functioning gangs on some larger military installations. Troops PCS every few years, making it difficult for kids to establish social groups. Most bases have a unit of MPs basically acting as child services. I'd think a better place to look for filters would be entire schools -- BRAC has caused the closure of many schools, but I don't know how they select which schools to target for closure. I know of at least two larger bases which have no schools (students are bused to local civilian schools) but I know others who have kept their schools despite a lower overall population of families.
  - eYrKEC2 3y ago
    If you cut off the lower tail of an IQ curve, no matter how little, you've just raised the average IQ of everyone remaining. If they're in that low IQ tail and they go through the hoops for a waiver, you've just selected for a modicum of conscientiousness.
    - jmoss20 3y ago
      How certain are you that the upper tail is not impacted just as much, if not more?
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  maybe on the officer level, but you don't need a particularly high ASVAB score to drive a truck or be a cook.
  - idontpost 3y ago
    [dead]
  - kennedywm 3y ago
    Officers aren’t required to take the ASVAB. Scores affect available career field choices for enlisted soldiers.
  - rokkitmensch 3y ago
    The colloquial is "drive truck", interestingly!
- mynameishere 3y ago
  This is the correct answer. When you drop off the bottom 30 percent of the population via the AFQT requirement (the part of the ASVAB that correlates well with IQ) you are getting rid of 100,000,000 nitwits. Further to those, you also get rid of the criminals, and psychos, and junkies. This makes the military a kind of modest elite. Their children reflect that and do reasonably well in school. Are people with 125+ IQs enlisting? Not for the most part, but almost none of the 75 IQ people are enlisting, and they cause a wild disproportion of the problems in society.
HDThoreaun 3y ago
Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like they're only accepting kids with two parents, in fact they're doing a much better job of helping poor families in my district than the public school system, which forces all the poor students into the same schools with literal murderers attending. Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.
- colechristensen 3y ago
  The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care? By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of them are special needs and they at least have a path for what people want to do with them, even if special education doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least an answer to "what should we do?". But what should we do with the rest?
  - parineum 3y ago
    > But what should we do with the rest? The answer to that question is _something_ but I think the real question is "who is 'we'?"
    - colechristensen 3y ago
      Children's public education is an _everybody_ problem. How these bulk problems are handled is something everybody should agree on instead of acting like it's somebody else's problem.
    - black6 3y ago
      The parents. Offloading the responsibility of raising children is a large part of the problem.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up This would be a more effective filtering technique if inconvenient minimum days weren't common in regular public schools. The most effective filtering technique used by charter schools is... being a charter school. Because it isn't the default option public school based on residency and requires an active choice, it automatically filters for active parents. And because for most of the potential student base its farther from their default public school, it selects for logistical flexibility (loosely correlating to wealth and/or having a parent at home) as well.
ethbr1 3y ago
From the article, >> But there are key differences. For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job. >> “Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students.
- Spinnaker_ 3y ago
  From my comment, >> don't take it seriously enough. A serious comparison would be to schools in fairly well off neighbourhoods in the suburbs. But they don't do that.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    So, you think it's worth dismissing an article that clearly calls out its measures, because they didn't "take it seriously enough" to renormalize their data against categories they likely don't have access to? They're fully transparent about the measures of achievement they're looking at: >> Their schools had the highest outcomes in the country for Black and Hispanic students, whose eighth-grade reading scores outpaced national averages for white students. >> Eighth graders whose parents only graduated from high school — suggesting lower family incomes, on average — performed as well in reading as students nationally whose parents were college graduates. >> the military’s schools have made gains on the national test since 2013. And even as the country’s lowest-performing students — in the bottom 25th percentile — have slipped further behind, the Defense Department’s lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading. >> Despite their high performance, Black and Hispanic students, on average, still trail their white peers at Defense Department schools, though the gap is smaller than in many states. The Pentagon has also faced scrutiny for its handling of student misconduct at its schools, including reports of sexual assault.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  so is it because military folks are better, or that society is skewing to unemployed single parents?
willcipriano 3y ago
Military households and the dependas that inhabit them aren't the stable footing you are imagining. The worst marriage stories I've heard happen under those circumstances.
- Spinnaker_ 3y ago
  There are many schools where over 70% of kids live in single parents households. I'm sure you have bad stories, but it's not comparable overall.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jmoss20 3y ago
    The claim here is that the military families are /so much more stable/ that it explains their kids (collectively) performing better than every other state in the country. Obviously the military provides some sort of economic lower bound. But it also applies a pretty harsh upper bound, and has all sorts of other effects that you would expect to push the mean down.
abtinf 3y ago
> Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. You clearly have not had the pleasure of experiencing typical public schools in Washington state. The schedules seemed designed to maximize hostility toward working parents. Inconsistent start and end times through the week, weird half days every week or every other week, and numerous random non-holiday off days throughout the year.
exabrial 3y ago
Your point is spot on, except here: > There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms Plenty of poor single moms with well behaved kids. The eternal problem is the lack of discipline at home. Successful kids grow up with structure, not being told yes all the time, are held accountable, and have a soft place to land when they make mistakes. That is certainly harder to do with a single parent home, but it happens all the time in multi-parent homes as well.
oatmeal1 3y ago
Even if that is the case, it's better to have charter schools than none. Then at least the disruptive and/or violent kids that are unmotivated cannot disrupt the learning of kids that are motivated. That being said, the existence of competition will raise the performance of all schools.
sandworm101 3y ago
>> the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees. >> There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. Have you looked at what US Army privates are actually paid? And I can tell you that there will be LOTS of single-parent households too. Lots of drug addicted parents/kids. The army isn't what it seen in the recruiting posters. it is a large community of young people with basically the same problems as any other group. There are some differences, parents are generally "employed", but there are also specific difficulties like absent mother/fathers and near-constant movements to new schools as young parents bounce between postings.
- nitwit005 3y ago
  Even a very basic filter has an extreme effect. I used to take both public transport and a work shuttle. The difference was night and day. The filter of being able to hold a job eliminated all the problems you saw on the public transportation, excepting listening to music too loud.
ryan93 3y ago
You are purposefully avoiding the well known fact the military only draws from the top 70% of the intelligence distribution according to the AFQT.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
sokoloff 3y ago
Related, USAA was originally formed to offer insurance and later banking to military officers and their families. (They since expanded some offerings to enlisted and to civilians.) It turns out that selecting for military officers has a beneficial impact on auto losses, putting USAA in a good position to offer competitive rates and outstanding service.
- stonogo 3y ago
  USAA also isn't a typical insurance underwriter. It's essentially a giant self-insurance co-op, and for decades they would just terminate service if they decided you were outside their risk window, whether you otherwise qualified or not.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  not impressive pay, but decent, and regularly on the 1st and 15th. also adjusted for inflation, and has some other unique market facets, like having younger folks being generally fit and healthy, and older, retired military folks getting pensions. compare that with your average career bartender or construction worker
gustavus 3y ago
> The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. I grew up near a military base, and that describes very very few people. > no kids of poor single moms I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you make the claim no poor. As for single moms it turns out that divorce is a big problem and if your dad is stationed overseas for months at a time it's a lot like being a single parent, except with the constant wondering if you are going to get a letter saying your spouse has died. > All the kids will be well fed I'll give you that can be the case, if the MLM and the 30% interest on the new Dodge Charger didn't take all the money. > groomed and socialized It turns out that sending parents out of a child's life for long periods of time can cause lots of behavior issues, beyond often times people that make their way to the military come with a lot of baggage usually and although the military can be good at reforming people's lives into productive members of society it doesn't always translate to being a great parent. It sounds like the kind of thing postulated by someone who didn't spend a lot of time around the military culture.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  > I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you make the claim no poor....All the kids will be well fed to this point, there are a lot of military families on food stamps. plenty of hillbillys and hoodrats. plenty of bad areas near military bases, too. but living on base or around base leads to a pretty strong monoculture. you also have a motivated cadre of military spouses -- who are often nurses and teachers -- and who often have to work hard to get jobs at a local school or hospital. you often get qualified teachers and nurses far exceeding the level you'd normally find in the rural areas near bases.
  - jmoss20 3y ago
    Yes, in my experience rural areas around bases tend to be more well-off than rural areas not around bases -- the base stimulates the local economy quite a bit, if nothing else. (Otoh, the revolving door population is not great for stability.) But FWIW I do not think the effect is even close to strong enough to explain the results in the article.
HonestOp001 3y ago
Most schools have one day a week with early release. That is not a feature of charter schools. Additionally, kid’s are only as good as their parents can enable. Some parents see the schools as a babysitting service. Others see it as a reprieve from having their kids in the house. If you have never been to a school to volunteer, go do it. You will see quite quickly that there are students who disrupt the classroom beyond teaching. The teacher must devolve the class to the lowest common denominator and thus the group suffers
wolverine876 3y ago
The experts interviewed in the article agree with you.
idontpost 3y ago
[dead]
ubermonkey 3y ago
Yeah, came here to say this. My BIL is an educator who started with TFA and then stood up a charter school with KIPP before going into independent schools. Obviously and predictably, his startup charter succeeded -- wildly! -- but, to hear him tell it, a charter dropped into a struggling district absolutely will. It just does so at the expense of the district, because it pulls away the kids with motivated, supportive, engaged parents. Turns out: motivated, supportive, engaged parenting is one of the absolutely best predictors of student educational achievement. Who knew? So, sure, charters hurt districts, but the takeaway isn't just educational policy. It notes how intersectional these problems inevitably are. Poverty is going to make it super hard, for example, for a parent to be as involved and engaged as they might be with more of a safety net.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
m463 3y ago
This is so true. There is a school district in silicon valley, the cupertino schools, that have consistent high scores. This makes cupertino real estate valuable, because people can move into a good school district instead of sending their kids to a private school. But I found out how they do it. If you try to enroll a kid with bad language skills, say spanish is their primary language, the school district sends the kids to an "appropriate" school (which happens to be in neighboring sunnyvale) lol
fooker 3y ago
You are missing the second order effect. > get rid of the worst performing kids. The threat of this consequence is often enough to motivate kids to study.
dventimi 3y ago
From the article: "For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job." "Prudence Carter, a Brown University sociologist who studies educational inequality, said the Defense Department’s results showed what could happen when all students were given the resources of a typical middle-class child: housing, health care, food, quality teachers." The article author argues that multiple factors contribute to this outcome, without identifying a dominant factor. Are you arguing that the selection effects you describe are the dominant factor?
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
It's almost like it advocates for a fundamentally better support/welfare system in America. Because... that's what is basically happening in the military.

eYrKEC2 3y ago

Another factor is that the military parents have cleared a bar of pre-enlistment testing (ASVAB?) that has strong correlations with IQ testing.

AlgorithmicTime 3y ago
[dead]
stonogo 3y ago
The minimum ASVAB to enlist is 31, and there are waiver programs for that. This is not a good showing. I feel like people don't appreciate how little lower-enlisted people are paid, what terrible financial literacy abounds in the ranks, and how many kids live on base but are still very firmly living in poverty. There are a lot of advantages to living on base, but this thread is pretending that the military has its shit together in ways that it absolutely does not. "All the kids will be well-fed and socialized" is bizarrely out of touch, specifically. There are functioning gangs on some larger military installations. Troops PCS every few years, making it difficult for kids to establish social groups. Most bases have a unit of MPs basically acting as child services. I'd think a better place to look for filters would be entire schools -- BRAC has caused the closure of many schools, but I don't know how they select which schools to target for closure. I know of at least two larger bases which have no schools (students are bused to local civilian schools) but I know others who have kept their schools despite a lower overall population of families.
- eYrKEC2 3y ago
  If you cut off the lower tail of an IQ curve, no matter how little, you've just raised the average IQ of everyone remaining. If they're in that low IQ tail and they go through the hoops for a waiver, you've just selected for a modicum of conscientiousness.
  - jmoss20 3y ago
    How certain are you that the upper tail is not impacted just as much, if not more?
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
red-iron-pine 3y ago
maybe on the officer level, but you don't need a particularly high ASVAB score to drive a truck or be a cook.
- idontpost 3y ago
  [dead]
- kennedywm 3y ago
  Officers aren’t required to take the ASVAB. Scores affect available career field choices for enlisted soldiers.
- rokkitmensch 3y ago
  The colloquial is "drive truck", interestingly!
mynameishere 3y ago
This is the correct answer. When you drop off the bottom 30 percent of the population via the AFQT requirement (the part of the ASVAB that correlates well with IQ) you are getting rid of 100,000,000 nitwits. Further to those, you also get rid of the criminals, and psychos, and junkies. This makes the military a kind of modest elite. Their children reflect that and do reasonably well in school. Are people with 125+ IQs enlisting? Not for the most part, but almost none of the 75 IQ people are enlisting, and they cause a wild disproportion of the problems in society.

HDThoreaun 3y ago

Education is mostly about your peers. It's obviously true for prestigious universities but it's just as true for elementary schools. Charter schools kicking out problematic students isn't some loophole, it's the main point, and it absolutely can improve the education for those that remain. My district has a quarter of high schoolers in charter schools. Almost all of them under the poverty line. It's not like they're only accepting kids with two parents, in fact they're doing a much better job of helping poor families in my district than the public school system, which forces all the poor students into the same schools with literal murderers attending. Allowing poor students from families that value education to go to schools with like minded students is an unequivocally good thing compared to what the public schools currently do.

colechristensen 3y ago
The question is: what do you do about children with discipline problems whose parents don't care? By all accounts, there are many of these kids. A portion of them are special needs and they at least have a path for what people want to do with them, even if special education doesn't have all the resources they need... there's at least an answer to "what should we do?". But what should we do with the rest?
- parineum 3y ago
  > But what should we do with the rest? The answer to that question is _something_ but I think the real question is "who is 'we'?"
  - colechristensen 3y ago
    Children's public education is an _everybody_ problem. How these bulk problems are handled is something everybody should agree on instead of acting like it's somebody else's problem.
  - black6 3y ago
    The parents. Offloading the responsibility of raising children is a large part of the problem.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. So the only kids who go there have two parents, one who probably is stay at home and can pick the kid up This would be a more effective filtering technique if inconvenient minimum days weren't common in regular public schools. The most effective filtering technique used by charter schools is... being a charter school. Because it isn't the default option public school based on residency and requires an active choice, it automatically filters for active parents. And because for most of the potential student base its farther from their default public school, it selects for logistical flexibility (loosely correlating to wealth and/or having a parent at home) as well.

ethbr1 3y ago

From the article, >> But there are key differences. For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job. >> “Having as many of those basic needs met does help set the scene for learning to occur,” said Jessica Thorne, the principal at E.A. White Elementary, a school of about 350 students.

Spinnaker_ 3y ago
From my comment, >> don't take it seriously enough. A serious comparison would be to schools in fairly well off neighbourhoods in the suburbs. But they don't do that.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  So, you think it's worth dismissing an article that clearly calls out its measures, because they didn't "take it seriously enough" to renormalize their data against categories they likely don't have access to? They're fully transparent about the measures of achievement they're looking at: >> Their schools had the highest outcomes in the country for Black and Hispanic students, whose eighth-grade reading scores outpaced national averages for white students. >> Eighth graders whose parents only graduated from high school — suggesting lower family incomes, on average — performed as well in reading as students nationally whose parents were college graduates. >> the military’s schools have made gains on the national test since 2013. And even as the country’s lowest-performing students — in the bottom 25th percentile — have slipped further behind, the Defense Department’s lowest-performing students have improved in fourth-grade math and eighth-grade reading. >> Despite their high performance, Black and Hispanic students, on average, still trail their white peers at Defense Department schools, though the gap is smaller than in many states. The Pentagon has also faced scrutiny for its handling of student misconduct at its schools, including reports of sexual assault.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
so is it because military folks are better, or that society is skewing to unemployed single parents?

willcipriano 3y ago

Military households and the dependas that inhabit them aren't the stable footing you are imagining. The worst marriage stories I've heard happen under those circumstances.

Spinnaker_ 3y ago
There are many schools where over 70% of kids live in single parents households. I'm sure you have bad stories, but it's not comparable overall.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jmoss20 3y ago
  The claim here is that the military families are /so much more stable/ that it explains their kids (collectively) performing better than every other state in the country. Obviously the military provides some sort of economic lower bound. But it also applies a pretty harsh upper bound, and has all sorts of other effects that you would expect to push the mean down.

abtinf 3y ago

> Charter schools do this by various selection effects, and artificial barriers, like ending at noon on a Wednesday. You clearly have not had the pleasure of experiencing typical public schools in Washington state. The schedules seemed designed to maximize hostility toward working parents. Inconsistent start and end times through the week, weird half days every week or every other week, and numerous random non-holiday off days throughout the year.

exabrial 3y ago

Your point is spot on, except here: > There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms Plenty of poor single moms with well behaved kids. The eternal problem is the lack of discipline at home. Successful kids grow up with structure, not being told yes all the time, are held accountable, and have a soft place to land when they make mistakes. That is certainly harder to do with a single parent home, but it happens all the time in multi-parent homes as well.

oatmeal1 3y ago

Even if that is the case, it's better to have charter schools than none. Then at least the disruptive and/or violent kids that are unmotivated cannot disrupt the learning of kids that are motivated. That being said, the existence of competition will raise the performance of all schools.

sandworm101 3y ago

>> the Pentagon’s schools for children of military members and civilian employees. >> There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. Have you looked at what US Army privates are actually paid? And I can tell you that there will be LOTS of single-parent households too. Lots of drug addicted parents/kids. The army isn't what it seen in the recruiting posters. it is a large community of young people with basically the same problems as any other group. There are some differences, parents are generally "employed", but there are also specific difficulties like absent mother/fathers and near-constant movements to new schools as young parents bounce between postings.

nitwit005 3y ago
Even a very basic filter has an extreme effect. I used to take both public transport and a work shuttle. The difference was night and day. The filter of being able to hold a job eliminated all the problems you saw on the public transportation, excepting listening to music too loud.

ryan93 3y ago

You are purposefully avoiding the well known fact the military only draws from the top 70% of the intelligence distribution according to the AFQT.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

sokoloff 3y ago

Related, USAA was originally formed to offer insurance and later banking to military officers and their families. (They since expanded some offerings to enlisted and to civilians.) It turns out that selecting for military officers has a beneficial impact on auto losses, putting USAA in a good position to offer competitive rates and outstanding service.

stonogo 3y ago
USAA also isn't a typical insurance underwriter. It's essentially a giant self-insurance co-op, and for decades they would just terminate service if they decided you were outside their risk window, whether you otherwise qualified or not.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
not impressive pay, but decent, and regularly on the 1st and 15th. also adjusted for inflation, and has some other unique market facets, like having younger folks being generally fit and healthy, and older, retired military folks getting pensions. compare that with your average career bartender or construction worker

gustavus 3y ago

> The same type of thing is in play in military schools. There will be few-to-no kids of poor single moms. All the kids will be well fed and groomed and socialized. I grew up near a military base, and that describes very very few people. > no kids of poor single moms I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you make the claim no poor. As for single moms it turns out that divorce is a big problem and if your dad is stationed overseas for months at a time it's a lot like being a single parent, except with the constant wondering if you are going to get a letter saying your spouse has died. > All the kids will be well fed I'll give you that can be the case, if the MLM and the 30% interest on the new Dodge Charger didn't take all the money. > groomed and socialized It turns out that sending parents out of a child's life for long periods of time can cause lots of behavior issues, beyond often times people that make their way to the military come with a lot of baggage usually and although the military can be good at reforming people's lives into productive members of society it doesn't always translate to being a great parent. It sounds like the kind of thing postulated by someone who didn't spend a lot of time around the military culture.

red-iron-pine 3y ago
> I'd suggest taking a look at what the military pays before you make the claim no poor....All the kids will be well fed to this point, there are a lot of military families on food stamps. plenty of hillbillys and hoodrats. plenty of bad areas near military bases, too. but living on base or around base leads to a pretty strong monoculture. you also have a motivated cadre of military spouses -- who are often nurses and teachers -- and who often have to work hard to get jobs at a local school or hospital. you often get qualified teachers and nurses far exceeding the level you'd normally find in the rural areas near bases.
- jmoss20 3y ago
  Yes, in my experience rural areas around bases tend to be more well-off than rural areas not around bases -- the base stimulates the local economy quite a bit, if nothing else. (Otoh, the revolving door population is not great for stability.) But FWIW I do not think the effect is even close to strong enough to explain the results in the article.

HonestOp001 3y ago

Most schools have one day a week with early release. That is not a feature of charter schools. Additionally, kid’s are only as good as their parents can enable. Some parents see the schools as a babysitting service. Others see it as a reprieve from having their kids in the house. If you have never been to a school to volunteer, go do it. You will see quite quickly that there are students who disrupt the classroom beyond teaching. The teacher must devolve the class to the lowest common denominator and thus the group suffers

wolverine876 3y ago

The experts interviewed in the article agree with you.

idontpost 3y ago

[dead]

ubermonkey 3y ago

Yeah, came here to say this. My BIL is an educator who started with TFA and then stood up a charter school with KIPP before going into independent schools. Obviously and predictably, his startup charter succeeded -- wildly! -- but, to hear him tell it, a charter dropped into a struggling district absolutely will. It just does so at the expense of the district, because it pulls away the kids with motivated, supportive, engaged parents. Turns out: motivated, supportive, engaged parenting is one of the absolutely best predictors of student educational achievement. Who knew? So, sure, charters hurt districts, but the takeaway isn't just educational policy. It notes how intersectional these problems inevitably are. Poverty is going to make it super hard, for example, for a parent to be as involved and engaged as they might be with more of a safety net.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

m463 3y ago

This is so true. There is a school district in silicon valley, the cupertino schools, that have consistent high scores. This makes cupertino real estate valuable, because people can move into a good school district instead of sending their kids to a private school. But I found out how they do it. If you try to enroll a kid with bad language skills, say spanish is their primary language, the school district sends the kids to an "appropriate" school (which happens to be in neighboring sunnyvale) lol

fooker 3y ago

You are missing the second order effect. > get rid of the worst performing kids. The threat of this consequence is often enough to motivate kids to study.

dventimi 3y ago

From the article: "For starters, families have access to housing and health care through the military, and at least one parent has a job." "Prudence Carter, a Brown University sociologist who studies educational inequality, said the Defense Department’s results showed what could happen when all students were given the resources of a typical middle-class child: housing, health care, food, quality teachers." The article author argues that multiple factors contribute to this outcome, without identifying a dominant factor. Are you arguing that the selection effects you describe are the dominant factor?

AtlasBarfed 3y ago

It's almost like it advocates for a fundamentally better support/welfare system in America. Because... that's what is basically happening in the military.