7 ms·

The racial achievement gap is probably one of the most significant problems educators in the US think about. I think one of the biggest obstacles to improving i

The racial achievement gap is probably one of the most significant problems educators in the US think about. I think one of the biggest obstacles to improving it (not causing the problem, but making solutions difficult or ineffective) is that low-performing urban school districts tend to correlate strongly with strong teachers' unions and big, mismanaged school administrations where things are too bureaucratic and incompetent for anybody to be able to really effect significant change. I'm not sure I support charter schools as a universal good, but they've actually proven to be pretty consistently effective at improving the educational attainment of low-income black/hispanic students [0-1]. When the local school system is a political quagmire and objectively failing in its mission to educate students, it's probably the only way out. The meta-problem is that the people most actively involved in improving the racial educational achievement gap are precisely the type of people to reflexively dislike charter schools (because it's "right wing", although I see it more aligned with the centralization vs decentralization axis) and maybe even feel overtly threatened by them (because of their union job). Also, charter schools have to actually figure out how to get buy-in from low-income black and hispanic parents, figure out how to serve this community better, and can't hide behind the excuse of cyclical poverty + orwellian bureaucracy anymore. I think a lot of educators really would rather work in a system where bad outcomes are guaranteed and thus not their fault, than one in which they actually have the ability to make more than just performative progress in serving the needs of their underprivileged student body. [0] https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-charter-schools-have-improved-in-the-past-15-years-but-many-still-fail-students-researchers-say/ https://hechingerreport.org/proof-points-charter-schools-hav... [1] https://www.kqed.org/news/11953408/charter-schools-show-gains-in-reading-math-for-black-hispanic-students https://www.kqed.org/news/11953408/charter-schools-show-gain...

KPGv2 1y ago
[flagged]
- nradov 1y ago
  Please stop spreading misinformation. Public charter schools aren't allowed to kick out underperforming students.
  - lazyasciiart 1y ago
    Please don’t spread misinformation. Charter school law varies by state and you should not make blanket statements about what they are allowed to do.
    - 1123581321 1y ago
      They appear to be essentially correct. There is little variance by state in how they accept students from the public. Were you thinking of a particular state? Here's information on the admission laws for each state from Wested. https://wested2024.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/22111658/State-Charter-Laws-Lottery-Enrollment-1206-ADA-FINAL.pdf https://wested2024.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/upl...
      - lazyasciiart 1y ago
        In zero states can you show up at a charter school and say “I live next door, I want to enrol” and be enrolled. That is an enormous difference from public schools that immediately eliminates the most disadvantaged students from the applicant pool. Moreover, some charter schools require things like parental time volunteering, which eliminates more kids, or introductory essays - they don’t score the essays! They just require it to be done! By horrible coincidence this eliminates more cough lower performing children, who simply never submit a completed application for the lottery, so sad. This definitely happens in multiple states but here’s one specific example: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-charter-application-20160808-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-charter-app...
        Chris2048 1y ago
        > By horrible coincidence this eliminates more cough lower performing children If it's not scored it can't possibly eliminate low-performing children on that unconflated characteristic alone - a motivated underperformer will still get in. It eliminates the unmotivated, which correlates obviously with underperforming. While it can be a vicious circle, I'd say no-motivation -> underperformance is of much greater relevance than underperformance -> no-motivation. The obvious hint is how it tests the parents too. sure. maybe they are very motivated but just work so much they cannot volunteer or spare any time, but doesn't that also somewhat render their 'motivation' moot as well?
- weitendorf 1y ago
  I don't consider myself right wing, but I guess in this case I wouldn't care even if it were nominally right-wing, because it's more important to give students good educations than it is to perpetuate institutions (eg giant school systems with awful performance) that might ideologically better align with my beliefs but are clearly not working. Also, while I don't think students should be pushed out of charter schools purely for bad performance (if they are putting in the effort), I do think that poor minority parents should have the right to send their kids to schools that don't force students to share classrooms with disruptive or way-behind-grade-level students. When educational outcomes under the local public school system are really bad I think school-choice just makes a lot of sense as a way of figuring out what policies are popular/effective/unpopular/harmful.
  - cwillu 1y ago
    The implication seems to be that charter schools are superior, but does that jive with other countries' successes? A commonly given alternative explanation is that the public options in the US are deliberately sabotaged via budget restrictions, and then the resulting poor performance is used to justify further cuts—a similar dynamic has been fairly recently executed in Alberta with public health care.
    - nradov 1y ago
      There is very little correlation between per-capita student spending and student outcomes. We should fund our public schools adequately but no amount of funding can overcome a bad environment in a student's home or neighborhood.
      - enjo 1y ago
        And to be clear: we fund our schools at a higher rate than basically any other country in the world. We are fifth in the world in per-pupil student funding behind only Luxembourg, Norway, Austria, and South Korea. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
    - 1y ago
- monero-xmr 1y ago
  Why wouldn’t I want a school to be able to kick out bad kids? Violent and disruptive kids need to be warehoused away from actual future productive members of society, rather than forcing 90% of kids to have their education ruined by 10% of bad kids
  - brewdad 1y ago
    Prepare to build a fuckton more prisons then. Most kids can get turned around from a bad path if they get the right support early on. I don't want to live in a world where we write off 7 year olds forever.
    - monero-xmr 1y ago
      If anything we need to double the amount of money paid to build high-intensity “schools” for those kids, and then reduce the amount of money needed for the good kids, because honestly all of that money is wasted now on the bad ones. We should also imprison criminals but that goes without saying. If we don’t have enough prisons to house violent criminals then we simply need more prisons, or release them only into communities that vote for such a thing (maybe rich liberal communities only etc.)
      - Nevermark 1y ago
        > We should also imprison criminals but that goes without saying. Obviously we need effective justice. But since we are on the topic of ineffective schooling, there is an argument to be made that US prisons are more effective at punishment than rehabilitation. Which seems to please some people, but just adds another undertow to society. A loss for criminal inmates, and everyone they impact, family or stranger, after they are released. Education is worth looking at with respect to an entire culture, with many important contexts beyond/outside school. From before school age (huge), onward.
      - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
        There's a great early TED talk from a Lawyer trying to stop death row inmates being executed. He realises that the simplest and easiest intervention is to stop the violent crime happening in the first place, and the cheapest and easiest way to do that is to intervene in the future murderers childhood. The specific example he gives is a client with a schizophrenic mother who needed more support.
- phil21 1y ago
  The only reason I became anything today is because my parents who were poor but cared very much were able to "opt out" of the shit-tier local public school that pandered to the kids who would rather not learn before it was too late for me. Just a couple disruptive kids per class can ruin an entire generation of students for a grade level. And there were far more than just a couple. Not to mention kids who had no business being in those classes - when the class is half full of low-performers they drag the rest of the kids down with them as the environment completely changes. The focus these public school districts have put on the low performing and low achievers at the expense of those there to learn is astounding and perhaps civilization-ending if it continues. More resources should be spent on those there to help themselves vs. trying to shovel ever-more resources at people that will never provide a return on that investment. At this point the local district here spends magnitudes more on special education and catering to IEP students than they do any AP level classes or other high performer programs. In fact they continue to destroy any advanced track segmentation in the favor of equity, and the teachers union nearly killed public magnet schools off entirely recently. They will try again until they are successful. It's an obviously bad strategy, and apparently results don't matter. Dragging everyone down is not a plan for success. This is the single political hill I will die on. Removing the ability for poor but high functioning families to give their kids a chance to get out of their circumstances because it raises uncomfortable questions is downright evil. Other western countries everyone loves to champion so much have this figured out. Student tracks are a good thing. Put high achievers on an advanced track earlier than later and get them out of the general population of students before it's too late for them. And yes, it's obvious to anyone who's ever been to a decent number of different types of schools that the only thing that truly matters is the other students (read: parents) that go there. Anything else is a rounding error. As bad as it was 30 years ago when I was going to school, it's infinitely worse now from watching nieces and nephews attending their local public schools. Until they were able to transfer out to magnets at least.
  - Meekro 1y ago
    There's one slow-motion conservative victory happening that's getting relatively little news coverage (and that's a good thing, lest there be more pushback): allowing more alternatives to public schools, funded by taxpayer dollars. Charter schools are the most obvious example, but I expect this to eventually be expanded further. If 10 homeschooler families want to get together and hire a professional teacher, there's no reason why the state shouldn't pay for it (provided the kids pass grade-level standardized tests). Like you said, 99% of what makes a "good" school good is the quality of the other kids who go there. Since there's absolutely no political will for expelling the troublemakers (even in most conservative districts), the only remaining option is to build more lifeboats.
- cyberax 1y ago
  OK, here's a question. Should every sportball team in the US be prohibited from being selective? Everyone, regardless of their capability, should be able to play on the same field. Including paraplegics because it's not their fault. It's a lofty ideal, don't you think?
  - abenga 1y ago
    If playing sports was essential to living to everyone across the board, yeah, they would be prohibited from being selective.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Trans people in school/collegiate sports resulted in a lost US election for the Democrats (sports scholarships are a thing). That's how important it is. And no, I don't think that the advanced education is essential. General education is, but not advanced courses. And of course, everyone absolutely deserves a fair _chance_ to get the best possible education.
- lelanthran 1y ago
  > the schools are able to kick out any underperforming students Being able to kick out disruptive students has a pretty big influence on the remaining students. How do you distinguish between underperforming-non-disruptive students and under-performing-disruptive students, especially as the almost all the disruptive students are going to be underperforming anyway.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    You make it sound difficult. It's not. Schools are filled with security cameras. When a student attacks another, expell him. And none of that "the victim tried to defend himself so we have to expelled him too, we don't care who started it" horse shit. The schools have cameras, use them.
    - lelanthran 1y ago
      I agree with all of that. What I was getting to WRT to the GP's post about how charter schools kick out under performing students in order to "prove" that the public school system is inferior. I'm trying to determine how he distinguishes between kids that are kicked out to make the school look better and kids that are kicked out because they are disruptive. I already know how to do that (cameras, etc), I'm just wondering why he doesn't consider that school that kicks kids out might be kicking out disruptive kids.
brewdad 1y ago
At least near me the biggest problems facing the "urban" district compared to suburban ones is declining student populations as long time homeowners age in place and the maintenance costs of 100 year old buildings compared to 10-20 year old ones in the suburbs. Teachers tend to get paid the same or less in the city district and administration counts are higher but fairly close on a per student basis compared to the burbs. This is before you get into the socioeconomic factors that make one student population more susceptible to starting and falling behind.
- bandofthehawk 1y ago
  Wouldn't a declining student population mean more money per student? And it seems like it would often (but not always) be cheaper to maintain existing buildings vs building new ones? I'm also wondering how much of the new suburban buildings are financed with debt, and the costs just haven't really caught up to them yet.
  - _fs 1y ago
    A school's budget is tied directly to attendance. Less students = less budget.
- cyberax 1y ago
  > At least near me the biggest problems facing the "urban" district compared to suburban ones is declining student populations as long time homeowners age in place and the maintenance costs of 100 year old buildings compared to 10-20 year old ones in the suburbs The building maintenance is a red herring. I believe in my district, it's about 10% of the budget on average.
- coryrc 1y ago
  Every urban district I'm familiar with has higher per-pupil funding than ~90th percentile suburban areas. (Seattle versus suburbs, Detroit versus smaller towns)
rayiner 1y ago
Why do you assume racial achievement gaps indicate problems with schools? For example, Asian students perform much better than white students. We don’t say that indicates a problem with how schools educate white kids. Instead, most people see it as a predictable consequence of asian immigrants being filtered for higher education. By that same token, why would we treat Hispanic students having lower scores as indicative of a problem with the schools? The U.S. Hispanic population is subject to the same immigrant filtering effect, but in the opposite direction. Both immigrant groups largely arrived in the last 50 years. Why would we assume the effects of the initial filtering would disappear so quickly? Here’s a modest proposal: American schools are actually quite good across the board.
- atwrk 1y ago
  Why do you assume racial achievement gaps indicate problems with schools? GP didn't say that, but educators of course see schools as an important area to address the gap. The literature is pretty clear on this being a complex problems with schools being an important wedge to break the vicious circle.
- Loudergood 1y ago
  Schools are the only tool we have at hand to reliably solve it.
sapphicsnail 1y ago
I wouldn't trust any data about charter schools that came from the Hoover Institute. Plenty of red states with weak labor laws have awful educational systems.
lupusreal 1y ago
There is no shortage of young naive newly minted teachers who are eager to go into those low performing urban schools and help turn things around. But very few of them last more than a few years in those schools, they get badly burned by reality. The ones who last almost inevitably become callused and bitter, having lost all of the hope they had at the start. The biggest problem with those schools is the students themselves, and the families of those students. They're incredibly dysfunction and stymie all well intentioned efforts to help them. Insofar as charter schools can help, it's because giving enough of a shit to apply for and go to one weeds out enough of the lost causes that would only disrupt everybody else. In fact, I think the best ways to improve those public schools is even simpler; make attendance optional. Families who give a shit will still attend, while all the trash will voluntarily stay home.
- ACCount37 1y ago
  Hell no. Making attendance optional sacrifices way too much. It's like reducing incarceration rates by never jailing people for anything short of murder. Sure, it improves on that one metric. Obviously. But the adverse effects elsewhere make it a nonstarter. If you could trust self-selection to only ever stop the "lost causes" from attending? The absolute worst, most disruptive, least likely to ever benefit from education students? Then maybe. But in practice, for every student like this there would be ten more who would benefit from school education if they attended, but wouldn't attend if it was optional. And for those missing students, the difference between getting the classes and being left to their own devices might be the difference between becoming functioning adults, low in income but stable, and being locked in a vicious cycle of poverty, substance abuse, violence and crime. Which is bad for the students in question, and even worse for the society.
  - arcfour 1y ago
    But going to jail and getting an education are completely different things...nobody wants to go to jail.
    - llamasushi 1y ago
dan-robertson 1y ago
Some evidence that progress can be made within public school systems, though perhaps less bureaucratic than northern cities: https://www.the74million.org/article/the-last-reformer-houston-schools-chief-mike-miles-on-the-case-for-going-bold/ https://www.the74million.org/article/the-last-reformer-houst...

KPGv2 1y ago

[flagged]

nradov 1y ago
Please stop spreading misinformation. Public charter schools aren't allowed to kick out underperforming students.
- lazyasciiart 1y ago
  Please don’t spread misinformation. Charter school law varies by state and you should not make blanket statements about what they are allowed to do.
  - 1123581321 1y ago
    They appear to be essentially correct. There is little variance by state in how they accept students from the public. Were you thinking of a particular state? Here's information on the admission laws for each state from Wested. https://wested2024.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/22111658/State-Charter-Laws-Lottery-Enrollment-1206-ADA-FINAL.pdf https://wested2024.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/wp-content/upl...
    - lazyasciiart 1y ago
      In zero states can you show up at a charter school and say “I live next door, I want to enrol” and be enrolled. That is an enormous difference from public schools that immediately eliminates the most disadvantaged students from the applicant pool. Moreover, some charter schools require things like parental time volunteering, which eliminates more kids, or introductory essays - they don’t score the essays! They just require it to be done! By horrible coincidence this eliminates more cough lower performing children, who simply never submit a completed application for the lottery, so sad. This definitely happens in multiple states but here’s one specific example: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-charter-application-20160808-snap-story.html https://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-charter-app...
      - Chris2048 1y ago
        > By horrible coincidence this eliminates more cough lower performing children If it's not scored it can't possibly eliminate low-performing children on that unconflated characteristic alone - a motivated underperformer will still get in. It eliminates the unmotivated, which correlates obviously with underperforming. While it can be a vicious circle, I'd say no-motivation -> underperformance is of much greater relevance than underperformance -> no-motivation. The obvious hint is how it tests the parents too. sure. maybe they are very motivated but just work so much they cannot volunteer or spare any time, but doesn't that also somewhat render their 'motivation' moot as well?
weitendorf 1y ago
I don't consider myself right wing, but I guess in this case I wouldn't care even if it were nominally right-wing, because it's more important to give students good educations than it is to perpetuate institutions (eg giant school systems with awful performance) that might ideologically better align with my beliefs but are clearly not working. Also, while I don't think students should be pushed out of charter schools purely for bad performance (if they are putting in the effort), I do think that poor minority parents should have the right to send their kids to schools that don't force students to share classrooms with disruptive or way-behind-grade-level students. When educational outcomes under the local public school system are really bad I think school-choice just makes a lot of sense as a way of figuring out what policies are popular/effective/unpopular/harmful.
- cwillu 1y ago
  The implication seems to be that charter schools are superior, but does that jive with other countries' successes? A commonly given alternative explanation is that the public options in the US are deliberately sabotaged via budget restrictions, and then the resulting poor performance is used to justify further cuts—a similar dynamic has been fairly recently executed in Alberta with public health care.
  - nradov 1y ago
    There is very little correlation between per-capita student spending and student outcomes. We should fund our public schools adequately but no amount of funding can overcome a bad environment in a student's home or neighborhood.
    - enjo 1y ago
      And to be clear: we fund our schools at a higher rate than basically any other country in the world. We are fifth in the world in per-pupil student funding behind only Luxembourg, Norway, Austria, and South Korea. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
  - 1y ago
monero-xmr 1y ago
Why wouldn’t I want a school to be able to kick out bad kids? Violent and disruptive kids need to be warehoused away from actual future productive members of society, rather than forcing 90% of kids to have their education ruined by 10% of bad kids
- brewdad 1y ago
  Prepare to build a fuckton more prisons then. Most kids can get turned around from a bad path if they get the right support early on. I don't want to live in a world where we write off 7 year olds forever.
  - monero-xmr 1y ago
    If anything we need to double the amount of money paid to build high-intensity “schools” for those kids, and then reduce the amount of money needed for the good kids, because honestly all of that money is wasted now on the bad ones. We should also imprison criminals but that goes without saying. If we don’t have enough prisons to house violent criminals then we simply need more prisons, or release them only into communities that vote for such a thing (maybe rich liberal communities only etc.)
    - Nevermark 1y ago
      > We should also imprison criminals but that goes without saying. Obviously we need effective justice. But since we are on the topic of ineffective schooling, there is an argument to be made that US prisons are more effective at punishment than rehabilitation. Which seems to please some people, but just adds another undertow to society. A loss for criminal inmates, and everyone they impact, family or stranger, after they are released. Education is worth looking at with respect to an entire culture, with many important contexts beyond/outside school. From before school age (huge), onward.
    - ZeroGravitas 1y ago
      There's a great early TED talk from a Lawyer trying to stop death row inmates being executed. He realises that the simplest and easiest intervention is to stop the violent crime happening in the first place, and the cheapest and easiest way to do that is to intervene in the future murderers childhood. The specific example he gives is a client with a schizophrenic mother who needed more support.
phil21 1y ago
The only reason I became anything today is because my parents who were poor but cared very much were able to "opt out" of the shit-tier local public school that pandered to the kids who would rather not learn before it was too late for me. Just a couple disruptive kids per class can ruin an entire generation of students for a grade level. And there were far more than just a couple. Not to mention kids who had no business being in those classes - when the class is half full of low-performers they drag the rest of the kids down with them as the environment completely changes. The focus these public school districts have put on the low performing and low achievers at the expense of those there to learn is astounding and perhaps civilization-ending if it continues. More resources should be spent on those there to help themselves vs. trying to shovel ever-more resources at people that will never provide a return on that investment. At this point the local district here spends magnitudes more on special education and catering to IEP students than they do any AP level classes or other high performer programs. In fact they continue to destroy any advanced track segmentation in the favor of equity, and the teachers union nearly killed public magnet schools off entirely recently. They will try again until they are successful. It's an obviously bad strategy, and apparently results don't matter. Dragging everyone down is not a plan for success. This is the single political hill I will die on. Removing the ability for poor but high functioning families to give their kids a chance to get out of their circumstances because it raises uncomfortable questions is downright evil. Other western countries everyone loves to champion so much have this figured out. Student tracks are a good thing. Put high achievers on an advanced track earlier than later and get them out of the general population of students before it's too late for them. And yes, it's obvious to anyone who's ever been to a decent number of different types of schools that the only thing that truly matters is the other students (read: parents) that go there. Anything else is a rounding error. As bad as it was 30 years ago when I was going to school, it's infinitely worse now from watching nieces and nephews attending their local public schools. Until they were able to transfer out to magnets at least.
- Meekro 1y ago
  There's one slow-motion conservative victory happening that's getting relatively little news coverage (and that's a good thing, lest there be more pushback): allowing more alternatives to public schools, funded by taxpayer dollars. Charter schools are the most obvious example, but I expect this to eventually be expanded further. If 10 homeschooler families want to get together and hire a professional teacher, there's no reason why the state shouldn't pay for it (provided the kids pass grade-level standardized tests). Like you said, 99% of what makes a "good" school good is the quality of the other kids who go there. Since there's absolutely no political will for expelling the troublemakers (even in most conservative districts), the only remaining option is to build more lifeboats.
cyberax 1y ago
OK, here's a question. Should every sportball team in the US be prohibited from being selective? Everyone, regardless of their capability, should be able to play on the same field. Including paraplegics because it's not their fault. It's a lofty ideal, don't you think?
- abenga 1y ago
  If playing sports was essential to living to everyone across the board, yeah, they would be prohibited from being selective.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Trans people in school/collegiate sports resulted in a lost US election for the Democrats (sports scholarships are a thing). That's how important it is. And no, I don't think that the advanced education is essential. General education is, but not advanced courses. And of course, everyone absolutely deserves a fair _chance_ to get the best possible education.
lelanthran 1y ago
> the schools are able to kick out any underperforming students Being able to kick out disruptive students has a pretty big influence on the remaining students. How do you distinguish between underperforming-non-disruptive students and under-performing-disruptive students, especially as the almost all the disruptive students are going to be underperforming anyway.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- lupusreal 1y ago
  You make it sound difficult. It's not. Schools are filled with security cameras. When a student attacks another, expell him. And none of that "the victim tried to defend himself so we have to expelled him too, we don't care who started it" horse shit. The schools have cameras, use them.
  - lelanthran 1y ago
    I agree with all of that. What I was getting to WRT to the GP's post about how charter schools kick out under performing students in order to "prove" that the public school system is inferior. I'm trying to determine how he distinguishes between kids that are kicked out to make the school look better and kids that are kicked out because they are disruptive. I already know how to do that (cameras, etc), I'm just wondering why he doesn't consider that school that kicks kids out might be kicking out disruptive kids.

brewdad 1y ago

At least near me the biggest problems facing the "urban" district compared to suburban ones is declining student populations as long time homeowners age in place and the maintenance costs of 100 year old buildings compared to 10-20 year old ones in the suburbs. Teachers tend to get paid the same or less in the city district and administration counts are higher but fairly close on a per student basis compared to the burbs. This is before you get into the socioeconomic factors that make one student population more susceptible to starting and falling behind.

bandofthehawk 1y ago
Wouldn't a declining student population mean more money per student? And it seems like it would often (but not always) be cheaper to maintain existing buildings vs building new ones? I'm also wondering how much of the new suburban buildings are financed with debt, and the costs just haven't really caught up to them yet.
- _fs 1y ago
  A school's budget is tied directly to attendance. Less students = less budget.
cyberax 1y ago
> At least near me the biggest problems facing the "urban" district compared to suburban ones is declining student populations as long time homeowners age in place and the maintenance costs of 100 year old buildings compared to 10-20 year old ones in the suburbs The building maintenance is a red herring. I believe in my district, it's about 10% of the budget on average.
coryrc 1y ago
Every urban district I'm familiar with has higher per-pupil funding than ~90th percentile suburban areas. (Seattle versus suburbs, Detroit versus smaller towns)

rayiner 1y ago

Why do you assume racial achievement gaps indicate problems with schools? For example, Asian students perform much better than white students. We don’t say that indicates a problem with how schools educate white kids. Instead, most people see it as a predictable consequence of asian immigrants being filtered for higher education. By that same token, why would we treat Hispanic students having lower scores as indicative of a problem with the schools? The U.S. Hispanic population is subject to the same immigrant filtering effect, but in the opposite direction. Both immigrant groups largely arrived in the last 50 years. Why would we assume the effects of the initial filtering would disappear so quickly? Here’s a modest proposal: American schools are actually quite good across the board.

atwrk 1y ago
Why do you assume racial achievement gaps indicate problems with schools? GP didn't say that, but educators of course see schools as an important area to address the gap. The literature is pretty clear on this being a complex problems with schools being an important wedge to break the vicious circle.
Loudergood 1y ago
Schools are the only tool we have at hand to reliably solve it.

sapphicsnail 1y ago

I wouldn't trust any data about charter schools that came from the Hoover Institute. Plenty of red states with weak labor laws have awful educational systems.

lupusreal 1y ago

There is no shortage of young naive newly minted teachers who are eager to go into those low performing urban schools and help turn things around. But very few of them last more than a few years in those schools, they get badly burned by reality. The ones who last almost inevitably become callused and bitter, having lost all of the hope they had at the start. The biggest problem with those schools is the students themselves, and the families of those students. They're incredibly dysfunction and stymie all well intentioned efforts to help them. Insofar as charter schools can help, it's because giving enough of a shit to apply for and go to one weeds out enough of the lost causes that would only disrupt everybody else. In fact, I think the best ways to improve those public schools is even simpler; make attendance optional. Families who give a shit will still attend, while all the trash will voluntarily stay home.

ACCount37 1y ago
Hell no. Making attendance optional sacrifices way too much. It's like reducing incarceration rates by never jailing people for anything short of murder. Sure, it improves on that one metric. Obviously. But the adverse effects elsewhere make it a nonstarter. If you could trust self-selection to only ever stop the "lost causes" from attending? The absolute worst, most disruptive, least likely to ever benefit from education students? Then maybe. But in practice, for every student like this there would be ten more who would benefit from school education if they attended, but wouldn't attend if it was optional. And for those missing students, the difference between getting the classes and being left to their own devices might be the difference between becoming functioning adults, low in income but stable, and being locked in a vicious cycle of poverty, substance abuse, violence and crime. Which is bad for the students in question, and even worse for the society.
- arcfour 1y ago
  But going to jail and getting an education are completely different things...nobody wants to go to jail.
  - llamasushi 1y ago

dan-robertson 1y ago

Some evidence that progress can be made within public school systems, though perhaps less bureaucratic than northern cities: https://www.the74million.org/article/the-last-reformer-houston-schools-chief-mike-miles-on-the-case-for-going-bold/ https://www.the74million.org/article/the-last-reformer-houst...