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The one thing that I have not seen addressed -- or maybe I have missed it! -- is what happens if everyone is given their choice of schools and everyone selects the best schools? (Which would just make sense, of course, that they would do that, if they learn which schools are considered the best -- not everyone bothers to do research or they choose what school is closest to their home.)
That is why I think schools should be equal and RAISE the standards of the poorer schools. I think the case being addressed in this thread (the 17-year-old HS valedictorian) shows what happens when instead of expecting kids to meet basic standards, school officials and decision-makers simply lower the standards.
You are making that connection without backing it up with anything.
There is no reason why poor kids can't learn math, so your assumptions don't hold water.
The Trump admin and DeVos have had 3 years to improve the system, but have only made it worse.
The solution could be found by looking at how other nations handle education. Look at the Top-5 countries, and learn from them. The government may fund those systems, but it doesn't micro-manage it like our system does. They also don't rely on never ending testing.
there you go again.
You've automatically begged the ? - what did Obama do in 8 years?
Yes, they could choose a school 1000 miles away, but since the standard of the schools is the same they choose the one around the corner.
If all schools were the same, there would be no need for choice. Yet, Finland embraces government-funded school choice, public or private, and their left wing doesn't even throw temper tantrums over it, unlike here in the US.
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Your approach of having bad schools and good schools will not improve the education level in US, it will only redistribute some kids to good schools and rest to bad schools. Isn't it obvious that ALL kids would want to go to the better schools which would be impossible to accommodate.
The net effect is that we would have MORE kids that are better educated. How is that anything but a plus?
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Why do you think this is a solution to anything? What does it solve? It guarantees US, as whole, will continue to score poorly.
The one thing that I have not seen addressed -- or maybe I have missed it! -- is what happens if everyone is given their choice of schools and everyone selects the best schools? (Which would just make sense, of course, that they would do that, if they learn which schools are considered the best -- not everyone bothers to do research or they choose what school is closest to their home.)
That is why I think schools should be equal and RAISE the standards of the poorer schools. I think the case being addressed in this thread (the 17-year-old HS valedictorian) shows what happens when instead of expecting kids to meet basic standards, school officials and decision-makers simply lower the standards.
Admission would work like the college application process. Some schools would have higher admission standards than others, and the net effect of that is that students would be admitted to schools with their academic peer group instead of the current US schools situation we have that in any given 2nd grade class, there could be kids that don't even know the letters of the alphabet yet in the same class as kids reading at the 8th grade level. EVERYONE loses in that mixed-ability/skill level classroom. The struggling students don't get the support they need, and the kids already beyond the 2nd grade curriculum make little to no academic progress.
Last edited by InformedConsent; 12-06-2019 at 08:05 AM..
If all schools were the same, there would be no need for choice. Yet, Finland embraces government-funded school choice, public or private, and their left wing doesn't even throw temper tantrums over it, unlike here in the US.
The net effect is that we would have MORE kids that are better educated. How is that anything but a plus?
Nope. See my comment, above.
Why do people have to repeat things to you over and over?
I have asked you several questions, which you have dodged, and instead you just parrot the same thing.
If only some schools in Finland are good, and the rest are bad, then why do they rank #1 as whole? They rank #1, because the overall standard of their schools is good.
You say we should have bad schools in US, and some REALLY bad, while offering everyone the option to transfer to much better schools. Would there be any reason for ANYONE to stay in the bad schools, let alone the really bad ones?
The OBVIOUS solution is to improve the overall quality of all schools, which is what they have done in Finland. Then, and only then, would the school choice make sense. You think the schools choice was how they started? It wasn't. It was something they were able to add after the overall quality had been improved.
Then there is the fact that of the 32 Rhodes scholar winners in 2019, for the the third consecutive year, are majority minorities, and nearly half are first-generation Americans, according to the trust. So, using your pretzel logic--what's wrong with good old White Americans?
Admission would work like the college application process. Some schools would have higher admission standards than others, and the net effect of that is that students would be admitted to schools with their academic peer group instead of the current US schools situation we have that in any given 2nd grade class, there could be kids that don't even know the letters of the alphabet yet in the same class as kids reading at the 8th grade level.
Oh, yes -- the bold is SO true, although it might be something of an exaggeration. (I don't know of any second-graders who are reading at an eighth grade level who aren't in G/T programs.) But yes, I know there are many second graders who read at a fourth grade level, and that is why kids are separated into reading groups -- or at least they were 20 years ago in the states I have lived in. Perhaps the same thing should be done with math, but then the more advanced kids would end up with a huge advantage over the kids who were not as encouraged to excel by their teachers and/or parents.
But the fact that life is not fair has been proven over and over again.
Why do people have to repeat things to you over and over?
I have asked you several questions, which you have dodged, and instead you just parrot the same thing.
If only some schools in Finland are good, and the rest are bad, then why do they rank #1 as whole? They rank #1, because the overall standard of their schools is good.
Their students are able to match their educational need with the school they attend, public or private. The government funding follows the student. It's not automatically locked up by "the nearest school."
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You say we should have bad schools in US, and some REALLY bad, while offering everyone the option to transfer to much better schools. Would there be any reason for ANYONE to stay in the bad schools, let alone the really bad ones?
If it was meeting their educational needs and they were with their academic peers, yes. For example, a D GPA high school student with low test scores doesn't apply to Ivy League schools. Guess why?
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The OBVIOUS solution is to improve the overall quality of all schools, which is what they have done in Finland. Then, and only then, would the school choice make sense. You think the schools choice was how they started? It wasn't. It was something they were able to add after the overall quality had been improved.
We simply can't do that given the current environment of mixed-ability classes. Read the following, and you'll understand much more about it:
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"While students in the bottom quartile have shown slow but steady improvement since the 1960s, average test scores have nonetheless gone down, primarily because of the performance of those in the top quartile. This "highest cohort of achievers," Rudman writes, has shown "the greatest declines across a variety of subjects as well as across age-level groups." Analysts have also found "a substantial drop among those children in the middle range of achievement"
...The contrast was stark: schools that had "severely declining test scores" had "moved determinedly toward heterogeneous grouping" (that is, mixed students of differing ability levels in the same classes), while the "schools who have maintained good SAT [Stanford Achievement Test, for grades K-12] scores" tended "to prefer homogeneous grouping [ability/skill-level grouping, aka tracking]."
If attaining educational excellence is this simple, why have these high-quality schools become so rare? The answer lies in the cultural ferment of the 1960s.
THE INCUBUS OF THE SIXTIES
In every conceivable fashion the reigning ethos of those times was hostile to excellence in education. Individual achievement fell under intense suspicion, as did attempts to maintain standards. Discriminating among students on the basis of ability or performance was branded "elitist." Educational gurus of the day called for essentially nonacademic schools, whose main purpose would be to build habits of social cooperation and equality rather than to train the mind."
And what has been the damage to the US populace 50 years later? US schools are still dumbing-down our country's students:
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"This exam [OECD's PIAAC], given in 23 countries, assessed the thinking abilities and workplace skills of adults. It focused on literacy, math and technological problem-solving. The goal was to figure out how prepared people are to work in a complex, modern society. And U.S. millennials performed horribly...
But surely America’s brightest were on top?
Nope.
U.S. millennials with master’s degrees and doctorates did better than their peers in only three countries, Ireland, Poland and Spain...The ETS study noted that a decade ago the skill level of American adults was judged mediocre. “Now it is below even that.” So Millennials are falling even further behind.
Top-scoring US millennials – the 90th percentile on the PIAAC test – were at the bottom internationally, ranking higher only than their peers in Spain. The bottom scorers (10th percentile) also lagged behind their peers."
Either way, why is this a problem in US and not in other industrialized nations?
You're way off base. See post #32.
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