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While the science on smaller classes being beneficial towards raw academic performance is mixed, it absolutely has a huge impact on teachers being able to actually teach and prepare actual material for their students as well as have some ability manage behavior. There's undeniable proof that stable undisruptive students as well as higher student and teacher morale produce "better performing schools".
Introvert takes a shot at California and he's absolutely right...just that blaming teachers is real shitty because what do you expect them to do? Since most of America's urban centres make up most of America's economy + other socioeconomic problems like redlining historically jamming less stable, lower socioeconomic peoples together, you get the double wammy of:
- People with the means will purposely find schools that academically or financially gatekeep historically less socioeconomically stable people out.
- People without the means to send their children to academically or financially selective schools are all bunched together, creating a vicious cycle for all students and staff to endure. These schools are also underfunded so you get obscene class sizes.
The result of this is a two tier system of stable schools and extremely unstable schools. Just about every country with a huge for-profit education system has this problem. The UK and Australia have similar problems from memory.
While there are certainly rules on maxinum class sizes, a lot of the time they're not exactly followed due to the circumstances offered to staff. A lot of teachers have claimed to be teaching over 30 children at a time in places like San Francisco, one even claimed to be teaching over 40 in Denver.
With that many students, a teacher just cannot manage the behaviour of all students nor do they have enough time to prepare material for all students. And when good teachers burn out from poor morale and job satisfaction, they go do something else in the private sector. Its the education system version of extremely talented software developers wanting to make games for the passion but end up doing boring shit at Facebook after a couple of years because those companies are not crunching 1/3rd of the year on barely above subsistence wages.
Education is just another signal of the issues associated with wealth inequality. The constant request for funding is mostly to 1) ensure good teachers are retained and do not leave for the private sector (where they work less hours, earn more, and have a much more stable emotional environment) and 2) the hiring of more teachers so they can allow other teachers to actually be able to manage their classes and prepare material for their actual classes. But that isn't exactly a solution either because it doesn't really solve the economically stratified environment of the United States that is a major reason why America's public schools can be simutaneously huge money sinks and poor performers.
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I heard many times from different teachers that the most important factor in school/college performance is family support.
You can spend any amount of resources but if student doesn't value education (for whatever reason) most of it will be in vain. No amount of resources can replace supportive family that both help their children with exercises AND explain why these exercises are important/useful.
Without it you get bigger percentage of disruptive students who have not respect for teachers/subjects, and this disrupts other people learning. Teachers don't want to take it anymore and move to another profession or private schools. Schools are understaffed, students can't learn much in a classroom without good environment. Everyone suffers in the end.
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On March 03 2023 15:25 Introvert wrote:
i may reply to that over the weekend but in case i don't, my comment wasn't intended to say that blue states have crappy schools vs red states have good ones but that even in states where they spend more, there are still many crappy schools. I agree with both you and JimmiC that generalizing to all schools across a state is too broad for many metrics, locale is a very important factor. I am sure there are many fine schools in MA, just iirc they are not evenly distributed. we also have confounding factors like parental income which i think (?) has a correlation as well. And of course I have a bias because i am in CA. and finally i agree a good education is vitally important, and this something even the founders knew. i do also wonder if that New England ethos still has trailing effects. it's just not at all clear to me that what's needed is more money, as opposed to a systemic fix or reform of some kind.
I'm not sure what you mean by "a systemic fix or reform of some kind", especially one that doesn't include additional money for schools, but I'd be open to suggestions. While I'm sure there are occasional issues that could be addressed without an increase in funding, I think the vast majority of basic problems that affect most schools absolutely require an increase in funding. These basic problems include things like: having heating and air conditioning in classrooms; having decent food and transportation for students; having more classrooms and teachers; having enough books, basic school supplies, and technology; and having additional professional staff like nurses, counselors, social workers, special needs instructors, and tech specialists.
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On March 03 2023 22:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2023 15:25 Introvert wrote:
i may reply to that over the weekend but in case i don't, my comment wasn't intended to say that blue states have crappy schools vs red states have good ones but that even in states where they spend more, there are still many crappy schools. I agree with both you and JimmiC that generalizing to all schools across a state is too broad for many metrics, locale is a very important factor. I am sure there are many fine schools in MA, just iirc they are not evenly distributed. we also have confounding factors like parental income which i think (?) has a correlation as well. And of course I have a bias because i am in CA. and finally i agree a good education is vitally important, and this something even the founders knew. i do also wonder if that New England ethos still has trailing effects. it's just not at all clear to me that what's needed is more money, as opposed to a systemic fix or reform of some kind. I'm not sure what you mean by "a systemic fix or reform of some kind", especially one that doesn't include additional money for schools, but I'd be open to suggestions. While I'm sure there are occasional issues that could be addressed without an increase in funding, I think the vast majority of basic problems that affect most schools absolutely require an increase in funding. These basic problems include things like: having heating and air conditioning in classrooms; having decent food and transportation for students; having more classrooms and teachers; having enough books, basic school supplies, and technology; and having additional professional staff like nurses, counselors, social workers, special needs instructors, and tech specialists.
I think the best systemic fix would be to prevent rich people from isolating themselves and their children from the rest of the system. Make sure that everyone, including rich people, go to the same schools.
And suddenly a lot of the problems will quickly disappear.
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On March 03 2023 22:40 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2023 22:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 03 2023 15:25 Introvert wrote:
i may reply to that over the weekend but in case i don't, my comment wasn't intended to say that blue states have crappy schools vs red states have good ones but that even in states where they spend more, there are still many crappy schools. I agree with both you and JimmiC that generalizing to all schools across a state is too broad for many metrics, locale is a very important factor. I am sure there are many fine schools in MA, just iirc they are not evenly distributed. we also have confounding factors like parental income which i think (?) has a correlation as well. And of course I have a bias because i am in CA. and finally i agree a good education is vitally important, and this something even the founders knew. i do also wonder if that New England ethos still has trailing effects. it's just not at all clear to me that what's needed is more money, as opposed to a systemic fix or reform of some kind. I'm not sure what you mean by "a systemic fix or reform of some kind", especially one that doesn't include additional money for schools, but I'd be open to suggestions. While I'm sure there are occasional issues that could be addressed without an increase in funding, I think the vast majority of basic problems that affect most schools absolutely require an increase in funding. These basic problems include things like: having heating and air conditioning in classrooms; having decent food and transportation for students; having more classrooms and teachers; having enough books, basic school supplies, and technology; and having additional professional staff like nurses, counselors, social workers, special needs instructors, and tech specialists. I think the best systemic fix would be to prevent rich people from isolating themselves and their children from the rest of the system. Make sure that everyone, including rich people, go to the same schools. And suddenly a lot of the problems will quickly disappear.
That would certainly be helpful, but what would that entail? Banning the existence of private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling, so that 100% of all American children were in the public school system? I don't think that's realistic, and I think they'd be able to currently provide some sort of argument that the rich / non-public families are already paying property taxes that go towards funding public schools that they're not using.
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On March 03 2023 23:23 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2023 23:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 03 2023 22:40 Simberto wrote:On March 03 2023 22:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 03 2023 15:25 Introvert wrote:
i may reply to that over the weekend but in case i don't, my comment wasn't intended to say that blue states have crappy schools vs red states have good ones but that even in states where they spend more, there are still many crappy schools. I agree with both you and JimmiC that generalizing to all schools across a state is too broad for many metrics, locale is a very important factor. I am sure there are many fine schools in MA, just iirc they are not evenly distributed. we also have confounding factors like parental income which i think (?) has a correlation as well. And of course I have a bias because i am in CA. and finally i agree a good education is vitally important, and this something even the founders knew. i do also wonder if that New England ethos still has trailing effects. it's just not at all clear to me that what's needed is more money, as opposed to a systemic fix or reform of some kind. I'm not sure what you mean by "a systemic fix or reform of some kind", especially one that doesn't include additional money for schools, but I'd be open to suggestions. While I'm sure there are occasional issues that could be addressed without an increase in funding, I think the vast majority of basic problems that affect most schools absolutely require an increase in funding. These basic problems include things like: having heating and air conditioning in classrooms; having decent food and transportation for students; having more classrooms and teachers; having enough books, basic school supplies, and technology; and having additional professional staff like nurses, counselors, social workers, special needs instructors, and tech specialists. I think the best systemic fix would be to prevent rich people from isolating themselves and their children from the rest of the system. Make sure that everyone, including rich people, go to the same schools. And suddenly a lot of the problems will quickly disappear. That would certainly be helpful, but what would that entail? Banning the existence of private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling, so that 100% of all American children were in the public school system? I don't think that's realistic, and I think they'd be able to currently provide some sort of argument that the rich / non-public families are already paying property taxes that go towards funding public schools that they're not using. In the US do the private and charter schools get no funding, or funding but then extra private dollars? The fist thing the US should do is have at least at the state level each public school gets the same funding per child regardless of postal code.
Private schools traditionally get zero funding from the state (with a few exceptions), and earn money based on fundraising, special donors, and charging families annual tuition (usually between $10K-$40K per year).
Charter schools are essentially a hybrid of public and private, in that they receive public school funding (some of the money originally earmarked for public schools gets redirected to fund charter schools) but have more freedom and flexibility in how they operate than traditional public schools.
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On March 03 2023 23:23 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2023 23:05 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 03 2023 22:40 Simberto wrote:On March 03 2023 22:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 03 2023 15:25 Introvert wrote:
i may reply to that over the weekend but in case i don't, my comment wasn't intended to say that blue states have crappy schools vs red states have good ones but that even in states where they spend more, there are still many crappy schools. I agree with both you and JimmiC that generalizing to all schools across a state is too broad for many metrics, locale is a very important factor. I am sure there are many fine schools in MA, just iirc they are not evenly distributed. we also have confounding factors like parental income which i think (?) has a correlation as well. And of course I have a bias because i am in CA. and finally i agree a good education is vitally important, and this something even the founders knew. i do also wonder if that New England ethos still has trailing effects. it's just not at all clear to me that what's needed is more money, as opposed to a systemic fix or reform of some kind. I'm not sure what you mean by "a systemic fix or reform of some kind", especially one that doesn't include additional money for schools, but I'd be open to suggestions. While I'm sure there are occasional issues that could be addressed without an increase in funding, I think the vast majority of basic problems that affect most schools absolutely require an increase in funding. These basic problems include things like: having heating and air conditioning in classrooms; having decent food and transportation for students; having more classrooms and teachers; having enough books, basic school supplies, and technology; and having additional professional staff like nurses, counselors, social workers, special needs instructors, and tech specialists. I think the best systemic fix would be to prevent rich people from isolating themselves and their children from the rest of the system. Make sure that everyone, including rich people, go to the same schools. And suddenly a lot of the problems will quickly disappear. That would certainly be helpful, but what would that entail? Banning the existence of private schools, charter schools, and homeschooling, so that 100% of all American children were in the public school system? I don't think that's realistic, and I think they'd be able to currently provide some sort of argument that the rich / non-public families are already paying property taxes that go towards funding public schools that they're not using. In the US do the private and charter schools get no funding, or funding but then extra private dollars? The fist thing the US should do is have at least at the state level each public school gets the same funding per child regardless of postal code.
For what its worth Minnesota already has this and it has produced great benefits for the state. not 1 to 1 but the formula for school funding was tilted almost entirely to state funding instead of local funding.
I still don't think its enough. There are clear costs to educate poor people that are greater than it is to educate rich kids. rich families can and do fundraise for their school and don't need anywhere near the same services as poorer people.
just look at FIRST robotics. They try to have an even playing field but in reality you have rich kids with mentors that know what engineering looks like at schools with engineering equipment for them to use. My school is near factories and we get all the scrap metal and metalworking tools we ever need but a majority of our lathes are pre-WW2 or from east Germany. Yes you don't need advanced tech for engine lathes but a school not that far from me has brushless motor robot arms to play with and another has a forge. FIRST literally teaches every STEM career there is that you want to move kids into but its a vastly different experience for rich kids than inner city kids.
One thing that I think everyone can agree on is a free breakfast and lunch program. Heck even after school programs where kids get a dinner. Nutrition isn't the silver bullet but it'll at least give them something to stand on.
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On March 03 2023 21:13 ZeroByte13 wrote:
I heard many times from different teachers that the most important factor in school/college performance is family support.
You can spend any amount of resources but if student doesn't value education (for whatever reason) most of it will be in vain. No amount of resources can replace supportive family that both help their children with exercises AND explain why these exercises are important/useful.
Without it you get bigger percentage of disruptive students who have not respect for teachers/subjects, and this disrupts other people learning. Teachers don't want to take it anymore and move to another profession or private schools. Schools are understaffed, students can't learn much in a classroom without good environment. Everyone suffers in the end.
I believe that family support and socioeconomic status are the two most influential factors in predicting academic success, and they're quite related. The lack of family support is generally due to the fact that parents/guardians don't have extra time to spend with their own children, as opposed to the adults simply being lazy. When parents need to work extremely long hours just to make ends meet, they're rarely available to make sure that homework is done, communicate with children or teachers, or take care of house chores that end up being done by the children (like when older siblings don't have a chance to study for tests because they're making sure their younger siblings are being taken care of, since their parent(s) is/are at work and not around to help).
I have kids who come in to school tired and hungry - which means they can't focus in class - and they ran themselves ragged the day/night before just getting done "normal" family stuff (forget about extracurriculars or socializing or having fun or getting to be a kid). I could be the best teacher in the world, and yet these disadvantaged students are already screwed before they walk into my classroom because the systems in place outside of the school are also affecting the systems within the school. These students are still expected to academically perform at the same levels as everyone else, which doesn't happen, and so more stress and finger-pointing occurs between parent-student, teacher-student, and parent-teacher relationships.
Not all disadvantaged students are disruptive, and not all disruptive students are disadvantaged, but whenever a student is acting out in class (i.e., whenever a teacher needs to focus on the behavioral side of classroom management), that ends up distracting and hurting all students within the classroom, and - as you said - really kills the spirit of the teacher. It's important to learn why the student is being disruptive as quickly as possible, for the student's sake + the teacher's sake + the rest of the class's sake, but sometimes there isn't an easy solution to whatever the problem is. There are many pros and many cons to teaching private school, as opposed to teaching public school, but one of the biggest pros is that there are very few classroom management issues, so in-class teaching and learning is often times much easier.
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On March 03 2023 17:28 ZeroByte13 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 03 2023 16:19 Mohdoo wrote:
It is cruel to children to not just give the poor area schools however much money they need. But no one ever will give any school "however much money they need" - it's not quantifiable amount, is it? How do you measure this? How do you measurably justify why this school needs 1 million dollars and that one school of same size needs 3 or 5? People might agree on something like "this school has 1.2x lower grades than average so they might need 1.2x more money that average per student to try and fix this". But not on "give however much money they need".
Perhaps I should have been more clear with my wording. What I am saying is that since parents can create an enormous deficit in a child's education, many schools need programs which augment general education to help get kids up to speed.
For example, a kid starting kindergarten may simply not even know what letters are. They may be vaguely aware that different letters exist and that reading is indeed a concept, but there are plenty of kids who start kindergarten and don't know the ABCs. Compare that to your standard middle class family where parents are researching parenting methods, making sure to teach their kids as much as they can as early as they can, and generally imparting them with philosophies that admire growth and learning. The variability is super huge.
So what I am saying is that we have people who are directly involved with assessing the needs of kids, and developing programs and methods for helping these kids do well. These programs often mean new stuff, equipment, and lots of other things that boil down to more money.
So when it feels confusing why a school would need more money, I am saying people should remember some kids are in a really bad spot because their parents totally suck ass. We ought to pity this child and realize that without external intervention, they are going to suffer. We as a society should be motivated to help children in any way we can.
When topics like this come up, it is common for people to indicate it is a parenting problem and that we need to fix society so that kids have a better parenting situation at home. This is all true. In the meantime, until that happens, the kid is still suffering, so we need to help them. A bad parent does not mean a child should suffer. We should feel internally motivated to care for all children rather than lump them in with the failures of their parents.
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For example, a kid starting kindergarten may simply not even know what letters are. They may be vaguely aware that different letters exist and that reading is indeed a concept, but there are plenty of kids who start kindergarten and don't know the ABCs. Compare that to your standard middle class family where parents are researching parenting methods, making sure to teach their kids as much as they can as early as they can, and generally imparting them with philosophies that admire growth and learning. The variability is super huge.
If pushing reading on kids as early as possible makes them read better in 4th grade is highly debatable. Sure, it is impressive if a 3yo can scribble something resembling their name, but at that age, learning abstract symbols is pretty pointless.
But yes, parents matter a lot, and schools in rich areas tend to be better everywhere in the world, regardless how the schools are funded. The US way of using property tax expands the gap.
A US based friend of a friend mine was lent a high value musical instrument for free. There was only one catch, to keep it insured, he needed to live in a "safe" neighborhood, but in that city, such a post code was so expensive, he could not afford to play the "free" instrument!
The fences around rich privilege are built very high.
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Early Literacy absolutely makes them read better later in life, it isn't so much about forcing children to recognise letters and words but having children engage with literature. Which has a huge impact on a child's cognitive skills for obvious reasons, since you're making them engage with the intricacies of communication and language.
This is a problem for parents who have to work multiple jobs just to keep the rent paid since they can't as consistently develop these skills with parental reading nor develop the foundations that will have a remarkable amount of improvement on a child's future learning.
The saying that being poor is the most expensive thing in the world is absolutely true. A lot of people like to shit on poor people for being lazy, undisciplined, or just being real shitty people. But flip that thought around: just think what those kids jacking Kias and Hyundais could do if the government (and ultimately population) actually tried to give them a proper outlet for their talents rather than just asking them to bootstrap themselves.
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Like most issues in the US, it's not a lack of an (objectively imo) better strategy or policy that holds us back, but the incapacity to implement them in a timely and effective manner because of how the US political system inextricably functions.
As an example: Universal background checks are objectively better than non-universal background checks. This is evidenced in part by the one-sided public (regardless of political affiliation) support for universal background checks. But the US doesn't have universal background checks because of inextricable core aspects of the system.
The same applies to education and a whole host of other issues. The issues aren't that we have no idea how to do it better, it's that the better ways to do it (and/or the steps necessary to effectively implement them) are largely incompatible with the status quo.
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United States43938 Posts
There’s a fascist dictator attempting to wipe out ethnic identities in Eastern Europe to form an empire and this asshole is really calling it a territorial dispute. Might as well call the unabomber’s attacks “mail related crime”.
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The US right wing is so weird.
Don't they usually love the military and fighting Russians? One would think that the Ukraine war is something that is totally up their alley.
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Fascists align with Fascists.
Republicans are well down the road on the fascist path. Time to stop pretending its anything other than that. CPAC in Hungary, bootlicking for Putin. Its everywhere.
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On March 14 2023 22:43 KwarK wrote:
There’s a fascist dictator attempting to wipe out ethnic identities in Eastern Europe to form an empire and this asshole is really calling it a territorial dispute. Might as well call the unabomber’s attacks “mail related crime”.
2 neighbors arguing over where the fence between their houses should be is a territorial dispute. That phrase is doing more work than an atomic reactor if you're going to describe Putin's war as a "territorial dispute". I mean, sure, the dispute is as follows: Putin thinks he should be able to eliminate and subsume the Ukrainian people in order to drum up nationalist support and stroke his ego, the rest of the world disagrees.
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On March 14 2023 23:53 Sadist wrote:
Fascists align with Fascists.
Republicans are well down the road on the fascist path. Time to stop pretending its anything other than that. ...
I have to wonder if people really believe Democrats can/are going to stop them?
It seems to me the Democrat party has no alternative to bargaining with said fascists. That doesn't strike me as a viable strategy to do so.
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EPT
