2 ms·

Then you don't live in or near school districts failing to educate their students for decades: Detroit, Baltimore, even parts of Seattle fail to graduate young

by coryrc 3y ago

Then you don't live in or near school districts failing to educate their students for decades: Detroit, Baltimore, even parts of Seattle fail to graduate young people capable of reading and writing near grade level, let alone understand even algebra. Year-after-year they fail a new class.

soco 3y ago
And the solution would be to go to a tuition school, where the quality could be the same but grades higher because customer is king? No, it's not a solution, because there's no implicit causal relationship between tuition and quality - the Swedes just described their situation in the title. The real solution is to fix the failing school, whatever system it was.
- coryrc 3y ago
  Ah, thank you, I don't think anyone's tried to fix the failing schools before, so if they just get started on that this whole voucher thing is unnecessary.
  - kristopolous 3y ago
    I think a more honest analysis would not only look at other educational systems in other countries but use a unified metric, say, euclidean geometry or algebra comprehension, something that you can roll back the clock 60 years on and still get comparable data. There's a multi armed bandit problem here of course but the law of large numbers should allow you to isolate what effect marketization has. I'd be shocked if it was positive. Human motivation is sullied and distracted by profit so the actual goals become incidental. If the alignment is close, like in commodities, it's all good. If it's poorly related, such as in education, it seems to be a problem. Privatization works poorly as a blunt magical instrument wielded on all problems
  - littlestymaar 3y ago
    Sweden school system didn't particularly need to be fixed, especially if you compare it to peer European states. The voucher stuff was introduced for ideological reasons, and failed like things rooted in ideology invariably do, no matter if the inspiration is Marx or Adam Smith.
red-iron-pine 3y ago
these are in high-crime areas with very specific demographics. make of that what you will.

by coryrc 3y ago

soco 3y ago

And the solution would be to go to a tuition school, where the quality could be the same but grades higher because customer is king? No, it's not a solution, because there's no implicit causal relationship between tuition and quality - the Swedes just described their situation in the title. The real solution is to fix the failing school, whatever system it was.

coryrc 3y ago
Ah, thank you, I don't think anyone's tried to fix the failing schools before, so if they just get started on that this whole voucher thing is unnecessary.
- kristopolous 3y ago
  I think a more honest analysis would not only look at other educational systems in other countries but use a unified metric, say, euclidean geometry or algebra comprehension, something that you can roll back the clock 60 years on and still get comparable data. There's a multi armed bandit problem here of course but the law of large numbers should allow you to isolate what effect marketization has. I'd be shocked if it was positive. Human motivation is sullied and distracted by profit so the actual goals become incidental. If the alignment is close, like in commodities, it's all good. If it's poorly related, such as in education, it seems to be a problem. Privatization works poorly as a blunt magical instrument wielded on all problems
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  Sweden school system didn't particularly need to be fixed, especially if you compare it to peer European states. The voucher stuff was introduced for ideological reasons, and failed like things rooted in ideology invariably do, no matter if the inspiration is Marx or Adam Smith.

red-iron-pine 3y ago

these are in high-crime areas with very specific demographics. make of that what you will.