11 ms·

> IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead. Imagine your school district has ban

> IMO it’s probably a lot easier to fix this broken system rather than burn it to the ground and do homeschooling instead. Imagine your school district has banned teaching algebra to 8th graders, for reasons of equity. You're upset at this, since you have a child about to attend 8th grade. You go to a school board meeting, express yourself, and are at best ignored or more likely called names. What, from the perspective of a parent with a child who needs an education, do you then do? Fixing the system would be nice and all, but how do you do that before your kid becomes an adult, let alone make up for all the damage public schooling has been doing in the meantime?

otoburb 3y ago
If a family is willing and resourced to (deeply) consider homeschooling because of one subject (you mentioned Algebra for 8th graders[1]), then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. Both suggestions require extra time, while still keeping your child "within the system" through attending school and (presumably?) receiving a decent-enough education in other non-math subjects. If the malaise extends to (many) other subjects, then I could see how home schooling becomes a more attractive option. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653
- petertodd 3y ago
  > then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. ...so now after your child spends hours every day at school, they have to spend yet more hours learning what they should have learned in school. You can see why so many parents decide that for more effort, they can save their child a lot of wasted time, effort, resentment, and bad influences. Particularly families where at least one parent can stay at home (and these days, working from home makes that so much easier once kids are old enough to learn by themselves).
  - p1esk 3y ago
    You seem to imply that most parents who decided to homeschool actually do a good job at it. Is there any data to back that up?
    - Draiken 3y ago
      From what I've read, there's almost no data in it since it's all done in private with little to no oversight. This makes the comparison very hard, since one side is has all of its successes and failures critiqued in public, and the other side is only ever talked about with anecdotal data. Personally I believe there should be some sort of periodic standardized test for homeschooled kids too. Even if it's not for "passing" a grade, so we know in which level of learning they are compared to everyone else. If we can't compare them, how can we evaluate its merits and flaws?
      - scarmig 3y ago
        I'd be a fan of some nationwide objective test, given once per year, that tracks level of achievement of all students, homeschooled, public, or private. Sadly it seems we're moving away from that as a country, because no one likes to be objectively measured. For the SATs, homeschooled students score ~75 points higher than public school students. We can draw only limited conclusions from that, though. People self select into taking the SATs. And there's the the bigger issue of demographics: given the demographics of homeschoolers who take the SAT, you'd expect them to outperform anyway. Regardless, more data is better.
      - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
        All home schoolers are required to take state standardized tests annually in many states. They consistently score in the top 20%-30% on average.
        Draiken 3y ago
        That's good to hear! I would say that "in some states" is the key here. A lot can change depending on the state.
- ndriscoll 3y ago
  The math situation is a clear signal that school administration/education departments do not prioritize education, and in fact find it unfair that some students actually manage to learn something, and want to stop that. It's not that they don't have the resources or enough interest to fill classes; it's that they don't want kids to learn too much. It's fair to infer that this attitude is not limited to math. Ostensibly education is why the schools exist. If they're not going to do that, let's at least let the kids go play in the park or something. They'd probably get better socialization that way anyway.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
    > Ostensibly education is why the schools exist. Does anyone actually believe this? It would be more than naive to do so. On r/teachers just the other day, I was reading about one of them complaining that all they really are, are baby-sitters so they parents can work dayshift. Even they know what they're for. But if everyone were to suddenly be willing to speak this truth aloud, it'd be too absurd to continue. People are shamed and guilted into paying the taxes for education. No one could be shamed or guilted into paying for someone else's teenager daycare. > The math situation is a clear signal that school administration/education departments do not prioritize education, and in fact find it unfair that some students actually manage to learn something, and want to stop that. I was in first grade in 1980 (1981?). It was like this for me the entire run of it. Wanting to learn more, hungry for it, with them rationing what I could learn to tiny little crumbs a few times throughout the school year. Studies were paced out for the dumbest kid in class. I think I made it to my sophomore year of highschool before I gave up, and when I did, that was my fault too. It was bad even then, and at least back then they were still pretending that it was about education.
    - taway1237 3y ago
      >Does anyone actually believe this? It would be more than naive to do so. GP clearly believes it, since they wrote this. I believe it too, and I think this is a mainstream belief, not a "more than naive" one. Your one anecdote based on a Reddit rant (and, I assume, personal bias) is not nearly convincing enough to change my mind.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together But the objection is "inequity". Surely this extra effort creates more inequity?
- userinanother 3y ago
  It is and honestly we’re doing that right now with Seattles equity based schooling program but there is a finite number of hours in the day so you can only do 1 or 2 subjects. If you replace math with remedial math, science with social Justice and writing with unstructured scribbling there just isn’t enough time left over to teach that.
- Agingcoder 3y ago
  Or go to a private school ?
- surge 3y ago
  You're assuming kids have the extra time for that. Homeschooling also is much more time efficient. There's a lot of time eliminated even you're not trying to get a whole classroom on the same page (literally and figuratively), and leaves more time for play, extra curriculars or special interests and positive socialization, things that existed more prominently in education when there were smaller class sizes. You can also cater more to where the kid is at in a subject, moving faster in subjects they excel at and slower in subjects they struggle with, as well as accommodate any learning disabilities or idiosyncrasies as well as age specific level of brain development (huge differences in comprehension levels with just a six month age difference in certain subjects. It's also what the ultra rich and children celebrities effectively do, purchasing a bespoke individualized education plan just in a class of 4-5 in private school. I always laugh at the people insist it's best to let their kids be guinea pigs while public school systems which aren't even utilized but it's most vocal advocates for their own children are on a multi decade track of "figuring it out". The most likely place someone is to experience violence in their lifetime is in a school, sexual abuse and assault rates are higher than in the Catholic Church or BSA by population. You can't be mad at people for opting out while the rest of the advocates figure it out for the 5th decade of objective decline and empty promises when problems they've experienced when they were in school haven't even been addressed or have gotten worse. They may be voting for the right people and are active advocates for better education but their kids are in immediate need of a better education.
  - lobocinza 3y ago
    And we're just entering the catastrophic "find out" phase.
boredtofears 3y ago
Move to a different school district? Parents do this all the time, it's drastic but way less so than taking on homeschooling.
yterdy 3y ago
This reeks of a purposeful misinterpretation of a hot-button incident, and a dogwhistle.
- scarmig 3y ago
  Are you claiming that SFUSD did not, in fact, ban teaching algebra in 8th grade, and are you ignoring that the state of California proceeded to then make it part of its state recommendations? Your isolated "hot button incident" is the real lived experience of hundreds of thousands of parents. Your "dogwhistle" is itself a dogwhistle (your obvious implication being "only a racist Trumptard could support allowing students to take algebra in 8th grade"). Ironic, in that the people defending the decision implicitly believe that non-white people are less capable of learning algebra than white people. Which itself is stupid, from a historical point of view. Who, after all, first formulated algebra?
  - yterdy 3y ago
    I'm saying that the issue gets characterized (wrongly) by detractors as pulling down the smart kids so that the other kids won't feel bad, when it's actually a matter of pulling resources for a smaller (parent-driven) "gifted" cohort in order to free those resources for use in improving everyone else's performance. This makes sense because the latter are less likely to be able to place their kids in private tutoring. Here's my lived experience: algebra in 7th grade, black boy. I'd have been better off taking it later, and making it up with summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses /certs in between algebra, algebra ii, calc, and diff eq/calc ii in high school. If that meant my classmates could have a better chance of keeping up, all the better; being in the historically lily-white gifted track at my magnet high school didn't do much in the way of convincing my teachers not to give up on me at the first sign of weakness. Yet another nuance you either miss or refuse to acknowledge.
    - scarmig 3y ago
      That's a massive misrepresentation of what's going on. This isn't dedicating resources to students in need; it's removing opportunities for poor students to take algebra in 8th grade, which is necessary if you want to take calculus in high school. And you might have been rich enough to take supplementary "summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses," but ripping that opportunity from people who don't have those resources is obscene.

otoburb 3y ago

If a family is willing and resourced to (deeply) consider homeschooling because of one subject (you mentioned Algebra for 8th graders[1]), then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. Both suggestions require extra time, while still keeping your child "within the system" through attending school and (presumably?) receiving a decent-enough education in other non-math subjects. If the malaise extends to (many) other subjects, then I could see how home schooling becomes a more attractive option. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37741653

petertodd 3y ago
> then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together. ...so now after your child spends hours every day at school, they have to spend yet more hours learning what they should have learned in school. You can see why so many parents decide that for more effort, they can save their child a lot of wasted time, effort, resentment, and bad influences. Particularly families where at least one parent can stay at home (and these days, working from home makes that so much easier once kids are old enough to learn by themselves).
- p1esk 3y ago
  You seem to imply that most parents who decided to homeschool actually do a good job at it. Is there any data to back that up?
  - Draiken 3y ago
    From what I've read, there's almost no data in it since it's all done in private with little to no oversight. This makes the comparison very hard, since one side is has all of its successes and failures critiqued in public, and the other side is only ever talked about with anecdotal data. Personally I believe there should be some sort of periodic standardized test for homeschooled kids too. Even if it's not for "passing" a grade, so we know in which level of learning they are compared to everyone else. If we can't compare them, how can we evaluate its merits and flaws?
    - scarmig 3y ago
      I'd be a fan of some nationwide objective test, given once per year, that tracks level of achievement of all students, homeschooled, public, or private. Sadly it seems we're moving away from that as a country, because no one likes to be objectively measured. For the SATs, homeschooled students score ~75 points higher than public school students. We can draw only limited conclusions from that, though. People self select into taking the SATs. And there's the the bigger issue of demographics: given the demographics of homeschoolers who take the SAT, you'd expect them to outperform anyway. Regardless, more data is better.
    - MacsHeadroom 3y ago
      All home schoolers are required to take state standardized tests annually in many states. They consistently score in the top 20%-30% on average.
      - Draiken 3y ago
        That's good to hear! I would say that "in some states" is the key here. A lot can change depending on the state.
ndriscoll 3y ago
The math situation is a clear signal that school administration/education departments do not prioritize education, and in fact find it unfair that some students actually manage to learn something, and want to stop that. It's not that they don't have the resources or enough interest to fill classes; it's that they don't want kids to learn too much. It's fair to infer that this attitude is not limited to math. Ostensibly education is why the schools exist. If they're not going to do that, let's at least let the kids go play in the park or something. They'd probably get better socialization that way anyway.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
  > Ostensibly education is why the schools exist. Does anyone actually believe this? It would be more than naive to do so. On r/teachers just the other day, I was reading about one of them complaining that all they really are, are baby-sitters so they parents can work dayshift. Even they know what they're for. But if everyone were to suddenly be willing to speak this truth aloud, it'd be too absurd to continue. People are shamed and guilted into paying the taxes for education. No one could be shamed or guilted into paying for someone else's teenager daycare. > The math situation is a clear signal that school administration/education departments do not prioritize education, and in fact find it unfair that some students actually manage to learn something, and want to stop that. I was in first grade in 1980 (1981?). It was like this for me the entire run of it. Wanting to learn more, hungry for it, with them rationing what I could learn to tiny little crumbs a few times throughout the school year. Studies were paced out for the dumbest kid in class. I think I made it to my sophomore year of highschool before I gave up, and when I did, that was my fault too. It was bad even then, and at least back then they were still pretending that it was about education.
  - taway1237 3y ago
    >Does anyone actually believe this? It would be more than naive to do so. GP clearly believes it, since they wrote this. I believe it too, and I think this is a mainstream belief, not a "more than naive" one. Your one anecdote based on a Reddit rant (and, I assume, personal bias) is not nearly convincing enough to change my mind.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> then another less expensive/effortful path could be hiring an afterschool math tutor, or sitting down with your child to work through Khan Academy together But the objection is "inequity". Surely this extra effort creates more inequity?
userinanother 3y ago
It is and honestly we’re doing that right now with Seattles equity based schooling program but there is a finite number of hours in the day so you can only do 1 or 2 subjects. If you replace math with remedial math, science with social Justice and writing with unstructured scribbling there just isn’t enough time left over to teach that.
Agingcoder 3y ago
Or go to a private school ?
surge 3y ago
You're assuming kids have the extra time for that. Homeschooling also is much more time efficient. There's a lot of time eliminated even you're not trying to get a whole classroom on the same page (literally and figuratively), and leaves more time for play, extra curriculars or special interests and positive socialization, things that existed more prominently in education when there were smaller class sizes. You can also cater more to where the kid is at in a subject, moving faster in subjects they excel at and slower in subjects they struggle with, as well as accommodate any learning disabilities or idiosyncrasies as well as age specific level of brain development (huge differences in comprehension levels with just a six month age difference in certain subjects. It's also what the ultra rich and children celebrities effectively do, purchasing a bespoke individualized education plan just in a class of 4-5 in private school. I always laugh at the people insist it's best to let their kids be guinea pigs while public school systems which aren't even utilized but it's most vocal advocates for their own children are on a multi decade track of "figuring it out". The most likely place someone is to experience violence in their lifetime is in a school, sexual abuse and assault rates are higher than in the Catholic Church or BSA by population. You can't be mad at people for opting out while the rest of the advocates figure it out for the 5th decade of objective decline and empty promises when problems they've experienced when they were in school haven't even been addressed or have gotten worse. They may be voting for the right people and are active advocates for better education but their kids are in immediate need of a better education.
- lobocinza 3y ago
  And we're just entering the catastrophic "find out" phase.

boredtofears 3y ago

Move to a different school district? Parents do this all the time, it's drastic but way less so than taking on homeschooling.

yterdy 3y ago

This reeks of a purposeful misinterpretation of a hot-button incident, and a dogwhistle.

scarmig 3y ago
Are you claiming that SFUSD did not, in fact, ban teaching algebra in 8th grade, and are you ignoring that the state of California proceeded to then make it part of its state recommendations? Your isolated "hot button incident" is the real lived experience of hundreds of thousands of parents. Your "dogwhistle" is itself a dogwhistle (your obvious implication being "only a racist Trumptard could support allowing students to take algebra in 8th grade"). Ironic, in that the people defending the decision implicitly believe that non-white people are less capable of learning algebra than white people. Which itself is stupid, from a historical point of view. Who, after all, first formulated algebra?
- yterdy 3y ago
  I'm saying that the issue gets characterized (wrongly) by detractors as pulling down the smart kids so that the other kids won't feel bad, when it's actually a matter of pulling resources for a smaller (parent-driven) "gifted" cohort in order to free those resources for use in improving everyone else's performance. This makes sense because the latter are less likely to be able to place their kids in private tutoring. Here's my lived experience: algebra in 7th grade, black boy. I'd have been better off taking it later, and making it up with summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses /certs in between algebra, algebra ii, calc, and diff eq/calc ii in high school. If that meant my classmates could have a better chance of keeping up, all the better; being in the historically lily-white gifted track at my magnet high school didn't do much in the way of convincing my teachers not to give up on me at the first sign of weakness. Yet another nuance you either miss or refuse to acknowledge.
  - scarmig 3y ago
    That's a massive misrepresentation of what's going on. This isn't dedicating resources to students in need; it's removing opportunities for poor students to take algebra in 8th grade, which is necessary if you want to take calculus in high school. And you might have been rich enough to take supplementary "summer geometry, trig, and precalc courses," but ripping that opportunity from people who don't have those resources is obscene.