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It's because of school privatization. Notice the sharpest declines in low performing students based on race and income. It's a disgrace. Idiocracy is boooooomin

It's because of school privatization. Notice the sharpest declines in low performing students based on race and income. It's a disgrace. Idiocracy is booooooming.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago
Specifically the problem is tax vouchers. It's fine to send your kids to a private school, but that shouldn't have any bearing on where your tax dollars go.
- whoitwas 2y ago
  I don't think there's a need to distinguish for those alive in USA. This has all happened in the past 10 years. It was accelerated with DeVos in DoEd ... which is literally the epitome of regulatory capture. Coincidentally, this push for privatization coincides with the time frames in the study. Correlation ... causation ... Who cares. Fuckem let's get rich.
  - whoitwas 2y ago
    There is also the loosening of education standards since covid. I think literally anybody can just say they're a teacher in Florida now. That might be an exaggeration, but slightly.
  - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
    I talk to many people who get excited about school choice and not having the state tell them how to educate their kids and totally gloss over the fact that your taxes are not for your kids, but for those of every other taxpayer, so I think it's an important callout.
    - whoitwas 2y ago
      There's room for private schools, but vouchers can't be a thing. I understand public schools can't accommodate every crazy religion, but public education is a necessity for a successful country. Once people get enough first hand experience with schools being horrible, constantly closing, uneducated children, etc. They'll blame whatever their social media tells them to. Inequality can't get much worse before there's a tipping point. People are reallllllly dumb now though so change won't be for better when it comes.
      - liontwist 2y ago
        > public education is a necessity for a successful country. Every time it’s studied it’s really hard to tell whether the system has any learning effect. Of all my peers you could pretty much identify their academic ability at age 8. When you push on this the answer is it’s actually for socialization and day care while parents work. That starts to sound like compliance training and seems like a weird thing to spend 40% of state budgets on in addition to local and federal funding. > People are reallllllly dumb now Is this the pro-democracy pro-public schooling take?
        whoitwas 2y ago
        You're right. Fuck everything. Let's reinvent the wheel. We don't need books either or roads.
        __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        > Of all my peers you could pretty much identify their academic ability at age 8. We're not funding education so that the talented ones can be identified and elevated. We're finding it so that the others can be helped to grow. Latent academic ability at age 8 is a pretty small slice of the task.
        liontwist 2y ago
        The ranking of academic performance at 8 years old remained stable for the next 10 years. Not just the top. If teaching had a positive effect then why would that be stable? That implies that there was no difference caused by course choices, nurturing by a better teacher, etc. so where is the growth? And that’s my anecdote. Some studies indicate you can probably skip a decade and show up to college and catch up to your peers in no time. I don’t think I believe instruction cannot give you useful information, but that the 3rd-12th grade knowledge is thin, artificial, and non-transferable.
        __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I see a lot of growth among high schoolers (my wife is a teacher and I volunteer in the math center at the public school where she works, so I have a lot of contact with them). I also experienced it myself. My shift from picking locks (with mischeif in mind) to an enthusiasm for math and science was mediated by four or five great teachers. > Some studies indicate you can probably skip a decade and show up to college and catch up to your peers in no time. That might be true, but it comes at a cost which is that the first two years of college are just high school again. I've been taking college classes for the last 20 years (most of it far less than full time). It's a bit of a hobby. Every time I switch majors I have to slog through this barrier of classes full of things I already know before I can get on to the good stuff. It's a really stark transition, after which the instructors start treating you like you're there to learn instead of like you're there to score points in some status game. I always end up with really close relationships with the instructors when I'm wading through highschool 2.0 because they're usually pretty happy to have somebody asking questions about the content and not about what's going to be on the test and when I talk to them about this problem they tell me that they've had to realign the curriculum downward because there's a bunch of stuff which they can no longer rely on high school to teach. So yeah, is broken. But it didn't used to be broken. Do you really think the way to fix it is to further lower our expectations about what can be usefully done in k-12? Exempting charter schools from curricular oversight and letting them figure it out (or not) amongst themselves is only going to make for an even wider band of preparedness among college freshmen, which correlates with an even longer slog through highschool 2.0 while the colleges now do even more of the level-setting work that the highschools used to do. That makes the classes more boring, which make college a less attractive option. Plus the taxpayers aren't getting what they're paying for. It's a lose lose scenario.
    - liontwist 2y ago
      I don’t understand. school budgets are based on the number of pupils. It’s pretty clearly something that can be divided. Of course there is some fixed costs, but those can be subtracted out of the pool before dividing which voucher policies do.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I pay taxes so that education will be available for the kids growing up in my community. Part of that deal is establishing a set of standards which their education must meet and periodically checking to see whether those standards are being met. It's got flaws, but there is at least some oversight over what that money is being spent on--oversight which is directed by elected officials which I get to vote for. You know, taxation + representation... democracy and all that. If an organization wants that tax money, it should have to do the work for the community that the tax exists to pay for. The most important part of that work is accepting students of all stripes. If a charter school is trying to set up some kind of exclusive k-12 ivy league then they're not doing the work and they therefore shouldn't be paid for it. And even if they aren't being exclusive, they still should only be paid if they submit to the same degree of oversight--something that charter schools don't do. None of this has any bearing on where the taxpayers decide to send their kids--the tax obligation is not individually about each taxpayer's kids. That's called tuition, pay it separately if you want. Those of us without kids are on the hook for making the system work for everybody, those with kids should be too, regardless of where their kids go.
        liontwist 2y ago
        This is kind of just a list of school related ideas where each paragraph doesn’t build on the next. Is this a bot post? > I pay taxes so that education will be available for the kids growing up in my community Vouchers give money to education for all kids. > a set of standards which their education must meet Voucher qualified schools meet the same state test standard and exceed public school performance on those metrics. That’s true of home school. Inb4 selection effects. Thats a good thing. If you know anything about metrics in large organizations you probably know that whether those standards mean anything is also questionable. > elected officials which I get to vote for Who did you vote for in the department of education? How many people did you vote for in your district? When was the last time one of these people found and corrected poor spending? > is accepting students of all stripe Your own public school doesn’t do this. What’s the difference between internal segregation and external, except external does more to keep them physically safe. And your phrasing implies it’s discriminating on something other than academic aptitude, or at least reasonable participation. > the tax obligation is not individually about each taxpayer's kids Yes it is. There is a fixed number of kids in the system. That’s how the budget is set. Let me repeat. If you subtract out the fixed cost from the pool before dividing by student number, than you get a voucher amount which should have no impact on the public schools funding. Because by removing your child you are only reducing the variable cost spent on them.

It's because of school privatization. Notice the sharpest declines in low performing students based on race and income. It's a disgrace. Idiocracy is booooooming.

__MatrixMan__ 2y ago

Specifically the problem is tax vouchers. It's fine to send your kids to a private school, but that shouldn't have any bearing on where your tax dollars go.

whoitwas 2y ago
I don't think there's a need to distinguish for those alive in USA. This has all happened in the past 10 years. It was accelerated with DeVos in DoEd ... which is literally the epitome of regulatory capture. Coincidentally, this push for privatization coincides with the time frames in the study. Correlation ... causation ... Who cares. Fuckem let's get rich.
- whoitwas 2y ago
  There is also the loosening of education standards since covid. I think literally anybody can just say they're a teacher in Florida now. That might be an exaggeration, but slightly.
- __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
  I talk to many people who get excited about school choice and not having the state tell them how to educate their kids and totally gloss over the fact that your taxes are not for your kids, but for those of every other taxpayer, so I think it's an important callout.
  - whoitwas 2y ago
    There's room for private schools, but vouchers can't be a thing. I understand public schools can't accommodate every crazy religion, but public education is a necessity for a successful country. Once people get enough first hand experience with schools being horrible, constantly closing, uneducated children, etc. They'll blame whatever their social media tells them to. Inequality can't get much worse before there's a tipping point. People are reallllllly dumb now though so change won't be for better when it comes.
    - liontwist 2y ago
      > public education is a necessity for a successful country. Every time it’s studied it’s really hard to tell whether the system has any learning effect. Of all my peers you could pretty much identify their academic ability at age 8. When you push on this the answer is it’s actually for socialization and day care while parents work. That starts to sound like compliance training and seems like a weird thing to spend 40% of state budgets on in addition to local and federal funding. > People are reallllllly dumb now Is this the pro-democracy pro-public schooling take?
      - whoitwas 2y ago
        You're right. Fuck everything. Let's reinvent the wheel. We don't need books either or roads.
      - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        > Of all my peers you could pretty much identify their academic ability at age 8. We're not funding education so that the talented ones can be identified and elevated. We're finding it so that the others can be helped to grow. Latent academic ability at age 8 is a pretty small slice of the task.
        liontwist 2y ago
        The ranking of academic performance at 8 years old remained stable for the next 10 years. Not just the top. If teaching had a positive effect then why would that be stable? That implies that there was no difference caused by course choices, nurturing by a better teacher, etc. so where is the growth? And that’s my anecdote. Some studies indicate you can probably skip a decade and show up to college and catch up to your peers in no time. I don’t think I believe instruction cannot give you useful information, but that the 3rd-12th grade knowledge is thin, artificial, and non-transferable.
        __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
        I see a lot of growth among high schoolers (my wife is a teacher and I volunteer in the math center at the public school where she works, so I have a lot of contact with them). I also experienced it myself. My shift from picking locks (with mischeif in mind) to an enthusiasm for math and science was mediated by four or five great teachers. > Some studies indicate you can probably skip a decade and show up to college and catch up to your peers in no time. That might be true, but it comes at a cost which is that the first two years of college are just high school again. I've been taking college classes for the last 20 years (most of it far less than full time). It's a bit of a hobby. Every time I switch majors I have to slog through this barrier of classes full of things I already know before I can get on to the good stuff. It's a really stark transition, after which the instructors start treating you like you're there to learn instead of like you're there to score points in some status game. I always end up with really close relationships with the instructors when I'm wading through highschool 2.0 because they're usually pretty happy to have somebody asking questions about the content and not about what's going to be on the test and when I talk to them about this problem they tell me that they've had to realign the curriculum downward because there's a bunch of stuff which they can no longer rely on high school to teach. So yeah, is broken. But it didn't used to be broken. Do you really think the way to fix it is to further lower our expectations about what can be usefully done in k-12? Exempting charter schools from curricular oversight and letting them figure it out (or not) amongst themselves is only going to make for an even wider band of preparedness among college freshmen, which correlates with an even longer slog through highschool 2.0 while the colleges now do even more of the level-setting work that the highschools used to do. That makes the classes more boring, which make college a less attractive option. Plus the taxpayers aren't getting what they're paying for. It's a lose lose scenario.
  - liontwist 2y ago
    I don’t understand. school budgets are based on the number of pupils. It’s pretty clearly something that can be divided. Of course there is some fixed costs, but those can be subtracted out of the pool before dividing which voucher policies do.
    - __MatrixMan__ 2y ago
      I pay taxes so that education will be available for the kids growing up in my community. Part of that deal is establishing a set of standards which their education must meet and periodically checking to see whether those standards are being met. It's got flaws, but there is at least some oversight over what that money is being spent on--oversight which is directed by elected officials which I get to vote for. You know, taxation + representation... democracy and all that. If an organization wants that tax money, it should have to do the work for the community that the tax exists to pay for. The most important part of that work is accepting students of all stripes. If a charter school is trying to set up some kind of exclusive k-12 ivy league then they're not doing the work and they therefore shouldn't be paid for it. And even if they aren't being exclusive, they still should only be paid if they submit to the same degree of oversight--something that charter schools don't do. None of this has any bearing on where the taxpayers decide to send their kids--the tax obligation is not individually about each taxpayer's kids. That's called tuition, pay it separately if you want. Those of us without kids are on the hook for making the system work for everybody, those with kids should be too, regardless of where their kids go.
      - liontwist 2y ago
        This is kind of just a list of school related ideas where each paragraph doesn’t build on the next. Is this a bot post? > I pay taxes so that education will be available for the kids growing up in my community Vouchers give money to education for all kids. > a set of standards which their education must meet Voucher qualified schools meet the same state test standard and exceed public school performance on those metrics. That’s true of home school. Inb4 selection effects. Thats a good thing. If you know anything about metrics in large organizations you probably know that whether those standards mean anything is also questionable. > elected officials which I get to vote for Who did you vote for in the department of education? How many people did you vote for in your district? When was the last time one of these people found and corrected poor spending? > is accepting students of all stripe Your own public school doesn’t do this. What’s the difference between internal segregation and external, except external does more to keep them physically safe. And your phrasing implies it’s discriminating on something other than academic aptitude, or at least reasonable participation. > the tax obligation is not individually about each taxpayer's kids Yes it is. There is a fixed number of kids in the system. That’s how the budget is set. Let me repeat. If you subtract out the fixed cost from the pool before dividing by student number, than you get a voucher amount which should have no impact on the public schools funding. Because by removing your child you are only reducing the variable cost spent on them.