Hacker News Reader

Comment by _zskd | Hacker News Reader

I have a saying when my peers compare themselves to the Zuckerbergs and Gates and Musks of the world: How many hundreds of thousands of dollars did your parents spend on your education? Because you have to realize that is who you are competing with.

I went to a VERY RURAL high school. We had 3 math classes that everyone went through... none of them college level. My math class decided it was funny to rip up the floor tiles and smash them against the blackboard when the teacher's back was turned. Kids would just not do the homework and they would pass them so they didn't have to deal with them for another year.

No AP classes, no test prep to speak of. Top of the class were just the obedient kids who did the 7th-grade level homework assignments. We had a small band and it was tight-knit and fun.

I get really down on myself because I'm so far away from what I actually want to be. But did I actually have a chance? Yeah. But a small one. Much smaller than a lot of other people. And now the kind of jobs I can get are... fine I guess. Not great, just fine. I'm almost 30 and now I need to learn a ton of mathematics my peers have known for a decade.

I ended up going to whatever Chicago college would take me at an affordable rate ( DePaul ). College was hard. I worked 40 hours a week and went to night classes. I struggled through the "easy" classes and SCRAPED past on the hard classes.

Still, my early education wasn't SO BAD. At least I didn't have to worry about violence or a gang trying to draft me.

I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner.

Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade schools.

For most of the country, school is just child jail. Why are we forcing students who WANT TO LEARN AND IMPROVE deal with students who do not want to be there, and are going to end up working at a tire plant anyway?

"But but but.. the education!" They are not getting an education anyway. The schools do not have enough resources to teach these kids. They do not want to be there. They are torturing everyone around them because they are bored.

View on HN

I finally gave up comparing myself to them. Even Jobs. It's just a waste of time and a pointless exercise to feed/starve the ego.

No one in my family has been to college. I am a first-generation American from the Bible Belt, a state that is 49th in education. I was fortunate that I loved nature, books, music, sports, computers, creative service, big ideas. This helped me find a way out of poverty, out of a life of drugs and crime surrounded by cops and judges.

I am a minority but that is not my identity. I am a man but I respect women, hoping for equality for all. Yet, above everything, I believe in a meritocracy. I was in SF last fall, realized that I don't even want to move there anymore. I am visiting NYC this month for work/fun, maybe that's where I'll want to be. Maybe though, I'll aim even higher (live by some mountains like originally planned) because SF felt like it was too one-dimensional for me. NYC looks amazing but I may just see it a place I visit when I need to instead of moving there.

I was rejected from YC once and I felt bad about it. I still love HN but I've learned that SV isn't the gatekeeper anymore, the Internet as a whole is. If I keep chugging away every day and put myself in the best position to get my ideas out into the world, I believe that the best design and marketing will always beat out a team with better engineers that lacks good design/marketing.

I have no trust fund or inheritance, just the sweat of my brow, this brain aided by computers, and the vision inside my heart.

"Fortune favors the bold"

So basically everyone from where you came from is held back by poverty and lack of education, and you believe the world is a meritocracy?

No. I believe that I need to pick my battles and I can't win them all.

Can you point out where they said they “believe the world is a meritocracy”?

I misread his post.

If you are looking for a place to move, check out Reno NV. Cost of living is fairly cheap and only a few hours away from SV & SF. Tech scene is blowing up. Tahoe is 10 minutes away.

Thanks, this is a good place to keep in mind. I loved Oregon and Montana the most out of all the Western states I've explored. I have not been to NV or Tahoe yet, but I want to soon. Heard a lot of great things.

After growing up in the Bible Belt and living in Utah for a year, I realized just how much more I value mountains over skyscrapers.

Oregon/Washington is really nice if you don't mind the rain. :) Wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Oregon was perfect. It had it all but the biggest thing was the people. Very kind, enjoyed life, respected the environment, valued fresh/quality ingredients, not too 'busy' but still productive. It had the best parts of California and Washington without any of the stuff that annoyed me (I won't go into it because this is subjective). Plus, as a single man, I got a ton of matches on Bumble, a lot more than any other state. Made me feel very welcome.

Montana just felt WILD. Missoula had a vibe that is hard to describe. I just felt like I was at the edge of civilization but still had fast internet and a Target close by when I needed it.

>Plus, as a single man, I got a ton of matches on Bumble, a lot more than any other state. Made me feel very welcome.

Really? According to the statistics, the west coast cities have a surplus of single men, whereas the east coast cities have a surplus of single women. Of course, lots of single women in a place doesn't mean that there's a lot who will match you.

I'm in DC, the #2 metro area for surplus single women (NYC is #1), and interestingly, I do get a lot of dates, but the large majority of them are from Asia (as in born there, not just descended from there). The professional white women here all seem to want a guy from the cover of GQ who likes to go to bars and drink a lot, and I don't drink. Or they're conservative and religious. Maybe I need to move to Portland...

I'm headed up to NYC for the first time and I will find out for myself. I met a beautiful blonde woman from Melbourne while exploring SF, we were at Fisherman's Wharf and started laughing at the seals as they pushed each other into the water. She had just got stood up by some 'financial advisor' dude, so she had 2 tickets to the Aquarium. We spent a week together before going our own ways. Magic happens in big cities like SF and NYC. Yet, SF still felt like a pre-dystopia to me. NYC seems like the center of civilization now and for years to come.

The type of women you describe are not my cup of tea, I like women who love the outdoors, bookstores, and are into a mindful, peaceful way of life that challenges materialism and consumerism. They are out there, they tend to like weirdos like me because they don't want the GQ cover guy who loves to drink. I'm not much of a drinker either, even weed is not as appealing to me as it was a few years ago. I like clarity of mind and I value 'the lightness of being' more than anything external.

Portland - one of my favorite cities all around. Felt so clean, people were friendly, I felt welcome because I am a bit strange looking from the outside. Yet, 'creative weird' is cool in Oregon. Of course, 'sketchy weird' is a red flag most places in the world though.

Any tips for NYC? I'm a little intimidated but I'm gonna go anyways.

If you really like west coast cities like Portland where you can be "creative weird", I honestly don't know what you see in NYC. You're not going to fit in there at all; you need to learn to wear a black business suit and other all-black boring clothes, get involved in the financial sector, and spend all your waking hours at work. It's a fun city to visit now and then, but it's not like west coast cities at all.

The museums, history, architecture is what is calling me there. I will be there for about a week and it will probably be enough for me to last a few years at least.

More than anything, I see the next year or two as time to be nomad and explore as much of the planet as possible.

Wow, did more research on Reno and I see what you mean. It's got everything I want/need and is close to many national parks and major cities.

I love the idea of vandwelling too, so this would serve as a good central hub.

Boise, Idaho has a growing technology scene. There are many HP and Micron offshoots. Some big success stories too: Cradlepoint, Bodybuilding.com, T-Sheets (acquired by Intuit), ClearWater analytics, ClickBank, TruckStop.com, the list goes on.

A bit further of a flight to SF and Seattle, Salt lake, but also has a ton of outdoor access.

Thanks, I'll look into it. That region of the country is great because of the quiet life that is possible, the sight of the stars at night, without giving up creature comforts like fast wi-fi (which I need to feed myself!).

SLC is a great city too. I have some good friends there right now. Outdoor access is a higher priority to me than bars and clubs.

>Tech scene is blowing up.

Can you expound further on this? I keep hearing this, but it seems that the big names (Apple, Switch) just have datacenters in the area. I lived in the area from 2014 to 2016, and it seemed like not a whole lot was going on techwise. I know that the Gigafactory is therenow, but it's not really employing a lot of HN type people.

Sure. You are correct that Switch and Apple really only have data centers in the area. They employ very few skilled workers. The Gigafactory does employ a number of skilled engineers. If you are looking for SV & SF pay, you aren't going to find that, but the cost of living is not nearly as high. There are a number of old incumbents that most people don't think about. Microsoft Licensing, Intuit, Hamilton Company, IGT, Sierra Nevada Corporation (Think SpaceX), Arrow Electronics, TriNet, ITS Logistics, Server Technology, Panasonic. Then you have a lot going on with the startup scene. There is the Adams Hub for Innovation in Carson and UNR Innovation Center. Companies like cycle.io, Shortstack, Black Rock Solar, Filament, PeerIn. Marketing companies like Noble Studios, KPS3 and The Abbi Agency.

>Adams Hub for Innovation

I lived in Carson, and never in a million years did I think something like this would take off. A lot of these jobs seem more dev oriented (I'm a designer), but it's good to see more tech jobs coming to the area in general.

Shhhh keep it down man lol. I don’t want the techies to price me out

> I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner.

YES, YES, YES! As a teacher at a rural high school (the same one I went to and that I was blessed to have a few really good teachers and accelerated only classes with kids who wanted to be there), this is what's needed. Most these kids don't want to be here, and it's just frustrating everyone and lowering standards around the board.

I would also say that your first point leads to something else too -- kids from not-so-wealthy parents don't understand the importance of things like internships and networking; I sure as hell didn't, compared to many of my kids (at a "rich kid" college). I took my summers to go to Europe, for free on school funding, and didn't get the experience or connections I needed to go to other jobs; that's a big part of the reason why I'm teaching where I graduated from... There's a lot of stuff I wish I had done differently looking back, mostly things like that. And I can't blame my parents; they didn't really know it either -- mom was a teacher and dad worked for the family business most of my childhood. (Really, I kinda blame the school; I think they assume everyone knows it, when that's really not true at all...). That's part of where the issues lie as well...and, once you're behind, as you mention, it's harder to catch back up.

And to add to this - It only works for people if a few people are doing it.

Its a "meta" advantage that evolved after there was a stable state of people going to college and getting jobs.

Now that the economy has changed, the drop of pay power in other jobs make the well paying ones stand out - and more competitive.

IF everyone were to go to find connections, you would basically recreate the old boy networks and quid pro quo social networks of old India/China.

At least where I'm at, they already still exist. It's easy to tell who will move to superintendent of our schools, who will become principle etc. It's all a good ole boy club, even now.

I know this meme and argument is exhausted, but I also believe is true: Education in the US is broken. Everywhere.

We live in an excellent upper middle class area with excellent schools. And yet the same truth applies here as it does everywhere else in the nation: Kids graduating high school are only qualified for stacking boxes on shelves, making coffee or, maybe, applying for college. They know nothing useful and have trouble adding value above minimum wage.

Knowing this was the case I got my college-bound kid ready for the real world at various levels. He can work with his hands (woodwork, weld, manual and CNC mill, etc.) as well as his brain (programming, various MOOCs and a Nanodegree on web development).

By the time he left high school he could reach for jobs making 4x to 5x what his friends could land.

He also got an education on financial matters. He has, as a result, saved more money than many of his friends will see in five years and is getting ready to start investing some of it. All while he works on his university degrees.

Secondary education has become useless. We give our kids to these institutions until they are 18 and they come out barely ready to stack boxes in a warehouse. This is criminal. It is an incredible waste of over a decade of someone’s life.

Not sure how to solve this problem. It involved forces and interests that are hard to wrestle with.

"Let the kids leave sophomore year, or even earlier. Let them go to trade schools." Germany does this.

I think Norway has a similar program. 16 year olds go to school - it can be trade school or continuing education for university prep (or both, depending). It also isn't mandatory, even though most folks go.

Yes. Unfortunately trade school looks more and more like regular high school these days and apprenticeships in many trades is I low supply. :-(

Do you think there's a way we could run apprenticeships that makes them more attractive to adults seeking to retrain?

I wonder sometimes how much of the problem with switching careers comes down to the usual scapegoat - lack of humility - and how much of it comes instead from infantilizing the students.

If we're going to keep moving the workforce around every 15 years then we need a way for someone^W most people to comfortably have 3-4 fairly distinct careers in their lifetime.

Worked construction when I was younger. If you're in the electrical Union, you'll easily make 60k per year (even in southern States where average family incomes are often under 40k). After a few years, making over 100k is very possible. In addition, the benefits and retirement are very good.

But you'll be putting in 50-60 hour weeks in the cold and heat. On the bright side, the work isn't as physically demanding as some other jobs.

I've pitched the idea to a bunch of friends who seem to have an aptitude. They'd all rather with as delivery boys, waiters, or whatever low end job. They don't want a "dirty job". They want to hold out for an easy money desk job. Screw working in the cold, I'll just stick with my $7.25/he job.

Can we just go ahead and split computer programming into vocational and science-based tracks while we're at it?

There are a lot of people who can or could stitch together existing libraries to accomplish results. There are a lot fewer people (than are currently participating) who have any business writing those libraries in the first place.

My hope is that if we just acknowledged the difference in these two problem domains we might get more quality over quantity in the places where it really matters.

We already do. Its called junior web development. Which most of the time just involves installing wordpress plugins.

Sweden does this. You can either go to university and get a Computer Science or Computer Engineering degree in 3-5 years or go to vocational school and get a programming diploma in 1-2 years.

The college I went to in Eastern Canada does this, I'm employed after a two year diploma based program, rather than a 4 year CS degree

The U.S. has this, many Highschools have trade programs. You're still "technically" in school you spend your Junior and Senior year at a trade school and often working / making money.

Unfortunately, this is only true for places with trade schools nearby. I grew up outside of Chicago and every school had this option.

Looking back at my education,

Precalc and English were me 2 most useful classes.

"Science" "engineering" and "history" were actually useless. If you were going to get further education, college science eclipses HS science in 1 semester. My Engineering class was the most absurd, it wasn't engineering. History was basically propaganda.

High school needs to end sooner. AP classes are the sign of this.

For a long time I have had the opinion that science classes are really history classes and not conducive to actually performing science, unless the students are really paying attention AND highly motivated.

Here is a thing someone discovered at one point in time. Here is the conclusion. Now do this experiment. You didn't get the right answer? Do it again until you do. Or make up an answer that you think is right enough that you'll get credit. Sure, some people probably figure out what you're supposed to be learning, but I suspect most people just figure out that you should listen to authority and parrot what they expect you to say.

I was in the circle of friends that contained our high school valedictorian. She gave her real commencement speech in the lunch room, to us, because she wanted to say things fairly close to what you just did, and the school wasn't having it.

What do you feel made your history course propaganda?

Looking back at my Canadian (BC) high school history curriculum, it was well-sourced and written, but I think it could have been structured in such a way to encourage youth to understand modern politics better.

Where did you go to school? Mine (Victoria - Social Studies) was a joke. Literally the same Canadian history lessons over and over, they didn't even get into anything recent, nothing past the second world war.

Victoria as well!

I agree that the Canadian history post-1945 wasn’t emphasized enough; it should have been the center-focus. I had a good teacher in the eleventh grade that vocationally extended the curriculum to include things like economic and social issues, but they were a rare one. Honestly, if they spent as much time on The Quiet Revolution or Western Alienation as WWI, I think young British Columbians would be much better off.

I definitely don't blame my gr.11 teacher, he was an awesome, abet very strange dude. I don't know when you graded, but the curriculum that I had was bad. At least they could have gone into what the BNA acts meant.

In Nova Scotia, surprisingly our Canadian History classes did focus mainly on post-1945 Canada in the later years of our education (Highschool).

Pre-highschool Canadian history was extensively focused on pre-1945 events and pretty focused around Eastern/Acadian history

The curriculum doesn't have to be a problem, if the teacher wants to bias the lesson. For example looking back at it my history teacher, whom on the whole was one of my favorite teachers, was super pro-Israel. However I didn't realize this until years later and as result I was probably in my mid 20s before I started to get even a slightly nuanced picture of the whole situation in the Middle East.

Now there was nothing in the curriculum that said "Students must learn that Israel can do no wrong" it was just the way he chose to bias his presentation.

The problem is, you have no idea what you will pursue after HS. I didn't have any interest in history in HS. I ended up getting a BA in history in college because I fell in love with it. I never would have guessed I'd end up there while in HS, but in retrospect I'm grateful for the history classes I had to take.

Yep! I changed my major three (or was it four?) times, and my minor countless others. I wanted to learn it all, and, 5 years later still don't really know what I'm super interested in and want to do as a career (actually, I do, but I don't want to enter academia with its current model).

Which suggests that college is a better place to suss out an academic field you love or value than high school.

(I take the point, though -- I briefly taught HS math and one of my responses to the perennial "when are we going to use this" question was "most of you have no idea all the things you'll need or want to do yet, and we want to open doors for you.")

> I didn't have any interest in history in HS.

I blame your teachers.

Well, parents certainly come in ahead of teachers for failing to encourage interest in history. It's not just teachers that have to magically light the spark.

My message to my younger self re: high school would be to ignore all of the "advanced"/"college-track" classes and take all of the shop, welding, automotive repair, and drafting classes.

There's a host of skills I'd love to have now, don't have the time/energy to learn now, and could have acquired very easily in my rural high school, instead of taking a calculus class I'd already learned on my own the year before, because it was the highest-level math class offered and the one that all the "smart" people were taking.

And that mostly locks you into a certain constrained career path.

Having being shoved down that path in the UK due to dyslexia it does have its downside lots of bright kids where sent to secondary modern schools and left at 16 to work down the pits etc.

I agree with you. It's tough for many kids to figure out where they fit in in life, and I don't think setting that fork in the road too early is necessarily a good idea. Rather, I think it would be better to expose kids to what careers exist so they are able to make that decision when the time comes.

Myself, I left high school with high marks but no direction. I went to university for computer science the next fall, not because I knew that CS was for me, but because my brother went through the same program and I didn't know what else to do. That only lasted one semester, but six years on, after working various jobs and getting a college diploma in Graphic Design, I've landed on web design and development as a career. I had no idea this kind of work existed when I was in high school.

Australia does this too, at least in the ACT. It’s fantastic.

I think this is one of the reasons why people in Germany are so highly technically skilled. In India where I live (this is the same pretty much in all of Asia - r.g. China, S. Korea, Japan) students have to go through nightmarish entrance exams at the age of 17. I've often felt that students here don't have a feel for science, for us it's been just another hurdle to cross with 100 percent marks. This sense of enforced labor persists long into adulthood, and you lose a sense of enjoyment.

Your idea about ending school sooner is spot on. My wife has almost 2 decades experience teaching High School English. Your Junior & Senior years are fluff - they're not tracked with standardized testing of any sort in those last two years (at least in Washington State) and you've met all of the content requirements needed to graduate (just not the credit count). That's why running start exists - you're already "done" with your public education content by the time you've hit year 10 - go ahead and get your "credits" at local college/community college and get both the HS diploma and AA degree.

I'm not sure if this is true in your wife's school, but in my high school junior and senior year was when people loaded up on AP courses that would supposedly get them out of introductory math/science/writing in college.

I think that's what GP is saying. AP classes are supposed to be college level work. If high school ended after sophomore year, you could just actually just start your college education. It doesn't hurt AP kids at all, in fact it probably helps them immensely. It also helps the kids who don't want to be in school. These kids are likely taking fluff classes. The area that it hurts are the kids who aren't quite AP kids but want to learn. Some type of college prep would need to replace those last two years.

There's a cumulative effect too, in some cases. I took AP and "dual credit" classes in high school (and the local university) that got me out of some of freshman required classes. Near the end of my undergrad program, I had time in my schedule to take graduate-level classes.

11th and 12th grades should be for community college and starting to work. That is what kids will be doing!

I'm pretty sure you can take the GED before you're 18. You can likely enroll at a community college if you've done that. It's what I considered doing when I was 16, and now, a good long while later, wish I had. All the last couple years did was make me more discouraged and lazy. First ~3 semesters at No-Name State University were just a repeat of material from 7th(!) to about December of 12th grade, could have been working on that for college credit much earlier. Pointless. Could have had a better "story" to sell myself to a a nicer school, more time working the tech job I already had in high school and making money, and a bunch of college credit (transferable or not, at least I'd have it) to my name by age 18.

Bonus: once I went to college I found that 15hrs of 100-200 level college courses took up one hell of a lot less of my time than high school plus the ~2.5-3hrs of homework they assigned a night (I understand that part's even worse these days—what a joke). Like, under half as much. Waste of a couple good years. I'd strongly recommend giving that plan consideration, to anyone who thinks they can pass the GED and is having anything other than an outstanding time in high school.

On the one hand, if I could turn back time, I would like to have done that myself from a money perspective. On the other hand, that would mean that I never would have met my wife, which is something I wouldn't give up for anything.

You're correct but GED is definitely not an advertised option for current hs students. There's a lot of 'tricks' which can be unlocked just by being in the know. Unfortunately, that predominantly favors middle class +

We’re about the same age.

I agree with most of your statements.

Success is not only determined by how much parents spend on education, though. It’s a lot harder to start a Facebook or Apple in 2019 than it was in 1980 or 2004. Or to start a Snapchat or Twitter than it was in 2009.

That isn’t to say all the good ideas have been taken. Technology is just much more mature than it was in the early 2000s. Many of the ideas (which seem obvious now) have already been fulfilled by dominant, established players. I’m sure I’m not the only one who looks at someone like Dell and says “crap, if I was 20 years older, I could have definitely done something like that.”. Nope. Wishful thinking.

I was always a top-scoring test taker but I actually don’t like complex mental work that much. I wish “trade” jobs paid more, because honestly, it sounds much more relaxing to do electrician type work or mechanical work than sit and stare at a computer all day.

...an option for this is online high school usually run by K12.com. Usually it is your state curriculum but you can accelerate it. Our kids are both going through it. First one started college courses 2nd year, second one will start her freshman year. Suggest picking the cheapest "state school" town and moving close by. It works until it doesn't. Georgia modified the laws last year to limit number of yearly college credits. Alabama offers something similar. Can still take close to a full load though. Good luck. In Georgia, look for the Georgia Cyber Academy gca.k12.com, it is an online charter school. Your other choices are expensive housing in the suburbs (good public schools) or private school.

Competition to be the best is a zero sum game. But education isn’t. You speak of life before internet, youtube, wikipedia, github, bigquery. Things aren’t so bleak.

Competition to be the best is a zero sum game.

Of course it's not. Almost everything you own is better because the people who made it were trying to outcompete some other people.

I commented further down, but this is already the case.

The U.S. has this, many high schools have trade programs. You're still "technically" in school you spend your junior and senior year at a trade school and often working / making money (some as early as sophomore year)

Unfortunately, this is only true for places with trade schools nearby. I grew up outside of Chicago and every school had this option.

My school had this, a "trade school" that was basically day care for the kids who didn't care. Problem is they had a 10-1 student-teacher ratio while the handful of AP classes the regular high school offered were closer to 50-1.

None of these guys are really all the accomplished as programmers though. Sure smart guys, but Microsoft bought DOS. Zuckerberg was far away from programming by the time that facebook was actually making money, and Musk didn't actually build any of the products he's famous for (Rockets, electric cars, or paypal).

Gates was a pretty accomplished coder. He famously wrote the bootloader for his Basic interpreter by hand on the plane trip to Altair. Microsoft bought DOS out of expedience, not because they were incapable of developing it on their own.

Bill Gates also made some waves in the academic world when he came up with what was at the time the most efficient implementation of pancake sort [1]

[1] https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/papers/Bounds%20F...

Yeah, that was Paul Allen not Gates, and he wrote the bootloader on the plane. The interpreter was already finished.

Only full on Gates program I've ever heard of is Donkey.bas

Donkey.bas was most likely written as an educational exercise, although IBM ordered it. Microseft needed to show people how to code with their interpreters and compulers too, so Donkey.bas is not that sophisticated.

Gates was responsible for writing the first Altair Microsoft BASIC interpreter, except the bootloader, the software for the Kyotronic clones (designed in collaboration with Kay Nishi and licenced to Kyocera, Tandy and others).

Gates also had ample experience in programming minicomputers such as DEC PDP series together with Paul Allen.

You can read all about it in all the Bill Gates biographies out there.

Not to take away from your overall point, but "almost 30" isn't old. You still have time to learn everything you want in order to get involved with really interesting projects / jobs. But don't waste your time wallowing and start dedicating time each day / week now to filling your gaps.

Indeed. Thirty feels old ... when you're 30. Get another decade or two under your belt, and you'll look back and realize you had so much time.

Looking at the problem another way, we could just fund education properly and provide a better social safety net.

I also went to a "decent but not great" public school and saw similar behavior. Teachers were underpaid and overworked, and are basically just baby sitters with a lip service to actual teaching. Most of the kids went wild because their home life was so bad and had no rules once they left schools. This is because their parents were working poor, often working two jobs and with no time to properly raise kids. Or trapped in a cycle of poverty that causes all sorts of other home issues.

Most of these problems begin at the home and then cash strapped school systems have to deal with the consequences. Schools have become "child jails" because of broader societal problems.

The other big problem I see with these "cash strapped school systems" is that they're all locally-run, and mostly locally-funded. So poor counties have poor and crappy school systems; there's no higher level of government making and enforcing standards to any serious degree.

You don't see this at the college level because state universities are run at the state level (and are also funded in an entirely different way, but they do receive state tax funds for in-state students to my knowledge).

I grew up in one of the richest counties in the U.S. and the teachers were just as underpaid and overworked, the added money the schools got was spent on useless tech like putting smartboards in every classroom.

I had a friend in college who grew up in an even richer neighborhood, and his school inflated GPAs to the point where most top-tier schools threw away their applications.

Not saying you're wrong, but lack of money isn't the only issue in the public education system in America.

In some ways, it doesn't really matter how much we throw at the schools because they are expected to solve for very large societal problems such as the massive inequality that exists in this country.

In the US at least, schools bear the brunt of consequence of the lack of social safety nets. They are expected to not only teach but also raise kids that have no real parents (who are either working two jobs or the victims of a life time of poverty themselves)

If we want to improve education, we need to take a broader look at inequality and the cycles of poverty that feed into each other.

> Looking at the problem another way, we could just fund education properly and provide a better social safety net.

You missed the point. More funding won't help if you're placed with kids that do not want to learn. A perfectly reasonable solution is exactly like OP said, separate out at sophomore year the people who GAF. Germany does this, it works well, and it doesn't cost a fortune to try to give students a Stanford level education who just want to do nothing.

Kids don't want to learn because they see no benefit in learning due to a cycle of poverty, a complete mess of a home life and parents that are probably uneducated as well. They have also been indoctrinated from an early age that "school isn't for them". It starts way younger than high school. Dropouts actually start dropping our during middle school or even earlier. If you think that kids tune out at 17 because they are bored, you are missing a lot to the debate here.

While I agree that alternative programs should be available, it's a bit silly to chalk up most educational problems to "kids don't want to learn".

Germany doesn't have the scale of inequality the US has and shouldn't be compared strongly to our situation. We have bigger fish to fry.

> More funding won't help if you're placed with kids that do not want to learn.

There is very little kids inherently want more than to learn—if they've learned not to want to learn, either in general or in the particular venue of the school system, that's a failing of the school system or society more generally that needs to stop happening, rather than writing off those who have been failed.

Totally agree. Reduce school time. Let them train on the job. Education should be over by 14 or 15. Then learn to do a job or specific profession. By 21 they should be proficient in their jobs. It is better than going to college.

Why do you assume Zuckerberg had/has strong math skills outside of your grasp?

Your suggestion is an option, it's just not the path of least resistance. You can get your GED early (or graduate traditional high school early) and then go to college.

> I have a crazy idea around this: End high school sooner.

I have an even crazier idea: subsidize education so much that every school is as good as the ones Zuckerberg and Gates attended.

Other than healthcare and law enforcement, everything else can be 100% privatized.

Or like, federal funding for public schools instead of this property tax funding which basically means the only good public schools are in affluent areas.

Privatization ruins lots more than just healthcare and law enforcement.

Some states try to redistribute a portion of the property taxes, but it typically gets seen as a piggy bank ripe for raiding to fund various pet projects of the state legislature.

California does this. Seemed like a great idea. Instead the parents in Palo Alto band together to hire teacher's aides, add art programs, build the high school a theatre, all as "donations" (voluntary property taxes -- it all comes off your tax return you know!)

The neighborhood deltas got so bad that these donations themselves are pooled and spread around Palo Alto!

So what happens if you don't donate? Do you still get to reap the benefits if you live in the school zone?

Yes you do. People pay a lot of money to get into the Palo Alto Unified School District and some can't afford to donate. But there's apparently a lot of pressure to do so (according to my GF; my kid went to private schools).

But what this means is that the kids in, say, Lodi are still getting shafted even though the whole point of spreading the money around was to try to level the school spending difference between rich and poor areas.

How are the other kids "getting shafted"? They're still getting more funding thanks to the property tax revenue being spread around. Do you think they should be envious of the kids in Palo Alto who are benefitting from the extra donation money, or what? I mean, it's one thing to advocate for more funding of all sorts of underserved educational opportunities, but this rhetoric of envy and misguided entitlement is just not very appealing, even from that POV.

> They're still getting more funding thanks to the property tax revenue being spread around.

More funding relative to what? Certainly not relative to the funding Palo Alto schools are getting.

>that the kids in, say, Lodi are still getting shafted

So are the ones in a 200 person town in Alaska. What does proximity matter?

Because the point was to try to improve the educational opportunities for all the kids in California. California has nothing to do with school funding in Alaska.

>privatization ruins lots more than just healthcare and law enforcement.

In my opinion we need more private law enforcement. Too many cops are spending too many man hours as glorified security guards and the downside is that they're expensive and we can't fire them, sue the employer or not renew the contract if they screw up.

There's no reason to have "real police" standing around at city hall or a sports event and the benefits are marginal at best. Just hire security guards. They are just as capable in those situations and have far less downsides. Same goes for directing traffic, don't waste money paying cops to do it.

One of the (many) reasons education funding is local is that the economics and requirements of education vary immensely with locale, and local funding and policy adapt to that reality. I've gone to extremely rural schools (it covered three counties and my class still only had ten kids), sketchy urban schools that were mostly non-white, and wealthy suburban schools. These all had wildly different economics and requirements that reflected their unique needs, constraints, and student populations. Some parts of the US deliver a high-quality education for very little money.

Of course, I went to school long enough ago that the individual schools had almost unlimited latitude to tailor the schools to local conditions and needs. The forced homogenization of how schools are operated over the intervening decades is at least partly responsible for the rapid increase in operating costs without any improvements in educational results.

So... It costs proportionally more to educate rich parents' kids? Why? Do they need to sit in Eames chairs to pay attention?

All the workers (teachers, bus drivers, janitors...) have to pay more for housing or commuting, so yes.

In my mid-sized Midwestern city, the worst schools pay their teachers the best by a long shot. The best schools pay at or under average.

They still have trouble finding teachers. Probably due to all the lock-downs due to credible threats of violence, being cursed at and threatened by 7-year-olds on a regular basis, that kind of thing.

Send those kids out of their neighborhoods ? Mandatory school desegregation should be the norm.

IIRC you're right, and bussing's one of the only actually-effective tools we've found for solving this problem—but it's also an incredibly-unpopular policy among a pretty large set of the population. Like, get-people-out-in-the-streets-rioting unpopular, if you kept at it.

For racist reasons, yes, but also because home prices have become a proxy filter for schools (filtering for kids whose parents are able and willing to pay inflated prices to send their kids to school with other kids whose parents are able and willing to pay inflated housing prices—it's a feedback loop).

The premium's a good 20-25% around these parts for safe-neighborhood-good-schools versus safe-neighborhood-mediocre-schools, so not nothing, and the entirety of many home buyers' equity early in their mortgage. Harder to compare with neighborhoods where the schools are outright bad since the houses there are usually in much worse shape and in high-crime areas, but one must assume the effect would be far stronger still, if one could find an all-else-being-equal comparison.

Still worth doing? Maybe, but if you just tell those middle and upper-middle class folks (actually rich people unaffected, as usual) to screw off and eat a loss you're gonna have some difficulty. And that's before racism even enters the picture, which of course it would.

> subsidize education so much that every school is as good as the ones Zuckerberg and Gates attended.

You won't get that. The truth is that parental involvement is at least if not more important than the sort of school they go to.

I would guess that if Zuckerberg and Gates had been forced to go to public school, they still would have done well due to parental involvement. On the other hand, if you took a child in a single parent home in which the parent works 2 jobs and struggles to pay bills and put them in the same school that Zuckerberg and Gates attended, I would bet that they would do worse than hypothetical Zuckerberg or Gates at a crappy school.

Part of the reason why private schools score higher is that they select for parents who 1) Care about education and 2) Are well off enough economically to afford it. You put a bunch of students like that together and in aggregate they are going to do well. On the other hand, if you have a school (with mandatory attendance) where a large portion of the students live in struggling households where concern for education is behind putting food on the table and a roof over head, the school is going to struggle, even if you had the best teachers in the world with a vast amount of teaching resources.

I'm willling to bet real money that Mark Zuckerberg's and Bill Gates' parents also went to great schools...

You shouldn't make that bet. Zuckerberg's parents didn't attend Philips Exeter. Zuckerberg himself only transferred in.

But to the spirit of your point: yes, he did grow up in a household with two highly educated parents.

This point gets brought up a lot, but it's focused on individual situations; peers influence kids as much as parents, if not moreso (especially when the single parent works multiple jobs).

If the preponderance of a community doesn't value education enough, or can't at least take the time to act on feedback from teachers about how their kids are doing, then you're just going to end up with a self-fulfilling prophesy of failure. On the one hand, you've got kids being made fun of for "acting white" when they try hard, and parents laying into teachers for daring to criticize their children who are acting out.

Money can't fix any of that, and it matters a whole hell of a lot less than parents who at least put in some effort. My best friend- who I first met in college- grew up in near-abject poverty, raised by a single parent who worked a lot. His parent made sure to drill into him the importance of trying hard in school, and what the other kids he tried to emulate were doing wrong (even to the point of having him join a hockey team instead of a basketball team to break him of living up- or rather down- to stereotypes).

    > The truth is that parental involvement is at least if not more important than the sort of school they go to.

Sure, home-life makes a big difference, but there's a lot of kids for whom a solid education at a non-dysfunctional school would do wonders.

It doesn't even have to be private-school mastery-based education with a 6-1 student/teacher ratio to make a significant difference, nor do we need to use Zuckerberg/Gates or other unicorns as the role models here.

What would it take to reverse the downward spiral in public education? Teachers who are paid a decent wage and aren't overwhelmed with 40-1 or higher ratios, crumbling infrastructure and insane administrations. That's totally doable-- if our culture is worth a damn.

Well. I think a good school would provide a lot of resources. Sure some parents, especially the wealthy will provide those when they can but they may not even know about opportunities out there.

Some private schools offer scholarships and those have been shown to significantly help less well to do kids succeed. I think there's a private school in Oakland that does this.

I think, as a first order of business, we should have our schools providing 3 meals a day to the kids. That will help things tremendously.

I agree about parental involvement. My brother and I both went to a good (public) high school, but I attribute much of our intellectual curiosity to parents who 1) read a ton 2) read to us a ton 3) had books/newspapers/magazines around all the time. That was nurtured in us during high school and college, but was created well before then.

This will never happen.

I went to a private high school in Westchester with a $20k/year tuition. My high school was significantly better than most. But it was still "only" good, not extraordinary.

The schools Gates and Zuckerberg attended have tuitions of $35k and $50k, respectively. They also have endowments larger than those of most universities, at $130 million and $1.2 billion respectively.

There simply isn't enough money to fulfill your proposal. Educational achievement is strongly positively correlated with wealth. Wealth attracts itself; it centralizes and consolidates around more wealth.

There are different things you could do to make most public high schools approximately as good as most private high schools. Stuyvesant is an exceptional public school in NYC; better than my own private high school, in my opinion. With significant, nontrivial socioeconomic reforms you could probably make most public high schools in NYC as good as Stuyvesant. Even achieving this would require vast amounts of money, probably more than you could convince politicians to tax.

But you'll never get every single public school in the country to empower its students with the resources available to schools like Lakeside and Philips Exeter. It's infeasible. They may as well be research universities.

> But you'll never get every single public school in the country to empower its students with the resources available to schools like Lakeside and Philips Exeter. It's infeasible. They may as well be research universities.

They'll never have the same level of resources, but I bet top public schools are already at parity when it comes to quality of education. It doesn't cost $50k/year to provide a $50k/year education - it costs $50k/year to isolate your kid among others whose parents can afford to pay $50k/year.

In my country we don't have school funding provided locally, it's a state level funding. Poor schools still do poorly, even with more funding. One of the big issues is school culture. A bright student surrounded my low SES kids isn't going to perform as well as a bright student in a high SES room

There was an experiment in the USA about a school given unlimited funding. It didn't help grades or any other metric they measures. Look up the Kansas school district experiment.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com