Racism - Always and Forever

Very interesting. I've been thinking about the differences between the Dutch and USA situation on this matter, because I recently had a conversation with my cousin, who's a teacher. She works as stand in for teachers, who are absent for a longer period because of illness etc. and she was working in a school with pupils from a problem neighbourhood.

 

It's hard to resist cynicism but I think your approach is sound. Keep on keeping on, teach!

 

Dis



I was in the local dive bar with my bro & his GF when they interrupted the Knicks game with the dopey OJ chase

 

OJ kept 'em waiting because he wanted to see the end of that game..

 

I like the idea of common measurement on basic knowledge/concepts for two reasons:

1) in a global world/economy, the kid in rural wherever will still need the core skills acquired by the kid in Chevy Chase if that student would choose to relocate to those global hubs

2) you can’t “fix” what you can’t measure.

I think the problem with the common standards is precisely what you mention: we don’t contextualize the metrics. We could improve the measurement somewhat but that’s really a data interpretation problem.

I’m not an educator, but I view our problems in two parts:

1) we shoehorn all of the inputs (KG kids) into the same system and the US is a very unequal place when it comes to pre-K economic/educational support.

2) we standardize the process to a generic destination at 18 years of age. Outside of the lucky few who get a rigorous college prep education or the even fewer who get a proper vocational/apprenticeship style education, it doesn’t suit anyone particularly well.

35-40% of students are “college ready” because only 35-40% of students should probably be going the traditional 4-year college route. The vast majority who do/should are probably already in the college ready category by graduation, but there are many exceptions.

 

A day later...

 

agree, but the ship sailed. More so in the US than any country in the world, we have professionalized and credentialed our occupations. Traditionally, universities have been the domain of pumping out graduates interested in religious scholarship, teaching, the first wave of credentialed professions (engineering/arch, medicine/vet and law), philosophy, scientists discovering the mysteries of the universe and moneyed people looking to write in the woods. That was as recently as pre-WW2.

it has been oversold as a path toward upward mobility and as a status marker. It has value beyond occupational training, but the costs don’t justify it IMO.

The BLS has employment data by occupational category. You can roughly break those categories down into high “traditional academic” ed, low ed, and hybrid.

hybrid is mixed depending upon what you’re doing (sales of technical products/securities vs person greeting you at the GAP, arts/entertainment classically trained performer/artist vs people operating a carnival ride or stripping). 10% of total employment. High Ed = FIRE + STEAM + education/information science. 27%. Low can be anything from installation and repair, grounds maintenance, food line prep, production on a factory floor, utility lineman, trades, etc). 63%.

If we want to improve the lives of people, incorporate the positive aspects of a university education that are most applicable to the lives of that 63% into something that moves them up the value add scale from guy behind the counter at the BP station to the person who maintains pipelines or installs solar or wind farms for BP.

And for those who want to pursue a university ed who lack the SES benefits and lag their college classmates, maybe introduce a 1 year gap/prep program to shore up deficiencies, reduce college dropout rates, etc.

 

FIRE?

 

finance, insurance, real estate. BLS breaks those jobs out by occupational roles, so we’re talking about bankers, actuaries, fund managers, financial analysts, tax preparers, credit approval officers etc. Not accounts payable clerks, bank tellers, etc.

 

This is really the heart of the issue.

While everyone repeats the "the US has the lowest levels of education of any industrialized country" line, what most don't realize is that it's the working and lower classes that are dragging down this average. The middle classes and above do about as well as the other rich countries.

So you have to start drawing the connections. The poor in the US are also the ones that have some of the worst:

-health outcomes
-life expectancy
-infant mortality rates
-murder rates
-incarceration rates
etc, etc.

in the industrialized world. It'd be illogical that the same communities that face these problems, somehow produce high or even average-achieving students. All the school vouchers in the world aren't going to change that. Greater funding might alleviate some of it, but it won't cure it, either.

Education is just another institution that reflects the astounding inequality in the US.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...ducation,associated with higher voter turnout.

The strong correlation between education and voting is among the most robust findings in social science. We show that genes associated with the propensity to acquire education are also associated with higher voter turnout.

is this what you are talking about?

i've done my part, now can you confirm and expand (a little) on the correlation?

 

i don't know if you are doing this on purpose or its just reflexive

and what I am about to say has nothing to do with bias against over-education
you are getting lost in the minutia of the issue to the point of inaction

how long would it take you to have buy-in from all the sides necessary to make all these proposals and see actual changes on the ground?
and it seems to me that to have a pulse on all these different issues you would need a very local approach and not one from top down

and in the mean time, year after year waves of 'lost' students are making its way into and out of the current 'broken' system we have now

 

and it does not help your point to keep pointing out that non-educators are not as knowledgeable as you, an Educator

grade level has a common definition understood by students and parents... but at the Educator level, it seems that it has a different definition

how about we try this... have school districts remain local
the ones with the 'rich white' people will use their local taxes to establish or maintain their schools as they see fit

the remaining districts that are not fully funded, should get more help from the state or fed to make them as equal as possible to the school districts that are successful in what ever the Educators like yourself deems is necessary

 

its not an idea, is the reality
look at what is happening on the ground

if we think the education for the ... enter your favorite underprivileged minority... is not good enough, is that by purpose or accident

we've had a Department of Education, presumably staffed by knowledgeable, expert Educators for over 40 years... with the results being what?

 

Yes. This is the “inputs” problem baked in when children hit kindergarten. We are more unequal in that regard than just about anywhere in the most highly developed world.

I was looking at Pisa scores after you posted this. Pisa isn’t perfect, but it tells us something. Compared to other OECD members, we are actually pretty average. If we remove countries like Turkey and Latin American OECD countries, we are below average but not bottom of the barrel.

They also have an interesting metric where they look at the score difference between 95th vs 5th percentile and 75th vs 25th percentile SES within countries. The US score gap between upper and lower SES students is wider than everywhere else save Turkey, Mexico, Colombia, Portugal, Spain, Luxembourg and Germany. The first three shouldn’t come as a surprise. Luxembourg I think is due to the country being insanely wealthy as a tax haven. They have many ridiculously educated and extremely wealthy households managing those finance companies. Their lower SES aren’t doing terribly. The upper SES are doing extremely well. Germany is probably due to the legacy of reunification + immigration. Spain+Portugal, I’m not sure about. Probably their status as being toward the bottom of the most highly developed country list but having high levels of immigration and a pretty class based society.

Compared to most countries, the US spends a fortune on primary education (relative to domestic middle of the road wages if not GDP). This probably reduces the score gap to the extent that we aren’t worse than every European OECD member.

But it really goes back to the inequality you describe. Educators aren’t magicians. Healthcare, housing, mental health/social support, pre-K education is worth a lot more than the extra resources thrown at kids in primary school trying to get them “caught up”.

 

Should this discussion move to the Education Thread?

 

Interesting stuff.
Are there any data on kids from deprived neighbourhoods attending better funded schools in (adjacent) better off neighbourhoods and how these are faring?

 

I wonder, because there seems to be a relation between racial segregated neighbourhoods/areas and wealth and education results.