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Comment by ewmiller | Hacker News Reader

> valuing education means people succeed. So why didn't the parents succeed then?

Picture a first-generation immigrant family in America where the parents are older, don't speak English very well, and spend almost all their time working multiple jobs to pay bills and provide food and shelter for their kids. They then push their kids to do well in school because they know it's practically too late for themselves, but that their kids will be much better off than they were if they succeed in school.

Anecdotally, I knew several such families growing up.

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I watched a video of Geoffrey Canada[1] explaining that when parents would ask them what they could do for themselves he would respond with something like "Unfortunately, there's not much you can do to change your situation. Which is why it's so important to place a high priority on your kids." I'm paraphrasing and don't remember the exact words but that really had an impact on me. The platitudes that Americans grow up - "Be who you want to be" and "You can do anything you want" - really start to fall away once you're older and have responsibilities and don't have the time anymore to take risks.

[1] https://hcz.org/about-us/leadership/geoffrey-canada/

Unfortunately public schools in poor neighborhoods are getting shittier and parents need to pay for private tutors and summer school. Guess who can afford that?

Education doesn't fall out of the sky.

Yes, money makes stuff easier. I don't think anybody is disputing that.

But you can be in a great school district with parents who think education is pointless, and in a shit school district with parents who think (know) it's one of the only ways out, and the former will underperform the latter all things being equal.

And this isn't as simple as "dump more money on shitty schools and they'll become great." There are plenty of examples of poor areas with higher per-capita student spending than more well-off areas, and the schools burning giant piles are money are still worse.

If parents value education they don't need to pay for tutors or summer school. I grew up in district with shitty schools, but I saw some kids succeed only because they learned stuff on their own.

Those schools aren't necessarily shittier...they are filled with kids that don't want to learn (and their parents increasingly blame the teachers for their failure).

So, it's just a statistical reality that kids in poor areas don't want to learn, and that's why the results show poorer people doing worse in education that rich people?

Interesting hill to die on, but you do you.

Any teacher in a school considered "inner city" (i.e., poor, relatively high crime) will tell you that there is often an anti-achievement culture present (and it's not correlated with race or ethnic background). My wife teaches in such a school. Many kids consciously try to avoid appearing smart or like they don't hold school in contempt because if they don't, their peers or their parents will shame them or abuse them. It's considered a very serious problem in the field of education.

At the same school, several of her students have received large scholarships, including full four year rides to university. This is rare, of course, but does correlate very clearly with parents being involved in their children's education, encouraging them, and not having an anti-achievement peer group.

It's a statistical reality that if your parents don't value education, and don't impress upon their children its importance, that those children are incredibly unlikely to decide completely on their own that education is the way out of their impoverished lives.

But that's a little too nuanced for your straw man.

Yes it is. Kids in poor areas don't see education as they way out of being poor...how could they. They see drugs and gangs as a way to do that though. I went to a shitty school and did well and went to college (thanks to my parents pushing me to do so)...so many people couldn't fathom why I was doing that and why I wasn't going to just go get a job right away. Many of those people are still living in that same area and are just as poor as their parents were.

I was going to debate you further, but then I realized I don't care about poor people either, just want to appear like I do.

You don't need to "feel" something towards poor people to advocate in favour of them. It is practically impossible to really feel anything for people who are not in your very inner personal circle. But trying to help society progress and reduce inequalities is a net benefit for everyone.

I don't care about poor people either. All I care about is a system that sets everyone up for success. I know it's possible and I know it would help poor people, but we aren't there yet.

I would have phrased it like this:

Middle class kids (and above) get good education handed to them on a silver platter while poor kids will have to fight tooth and nail to scrape their own education together.

It's not impossible but if you were that determined you could learn even better in a good school so the relative downside for poverty still persists. What you are setting yourself up for is not becoming poor. That's good but it is clearly not fair.

A lot of parents of modest means, immigrant parents in particular, will move out to suburbs expressly because of the school quality relative to what's available in many city-centers. They're also willing to make much higher sacrifices for their kids' educations and enroll them in parochial or even private schools in spite of the cost. Sometimes, a good charter school or a magnet school is possible too.

That's very true. Widespread, high quality public education is a must.

It's not necessarily that the educators aren't high quality, but that the majority of students are there as a babysitting service and take up more time being disciplined than actually getting taught. We always say inner city schools have worse education...but I suspect it's more that the kids that attend those schools are disruptors and the system won't allow them to be disciplined in the way they should be (not that expelling them is the right thing either).

Below, you say

but at the school level what can they do?

Lots, actually, but it's very resource constrained, so once again, the relationship between money-poor schools and bad students plays out.

There are a variety of diversion programs that have been tried and shown great success with problem kids, but that requires staffing so that disruptors get more teacher attention than they otherwise would in a class of 35. Having competent, active counselling services in schools does a lot, too.

With that said, it's not my wife's experience (as an inner city high school teacher) that disruptors are the problem. They're a problem, but there are lots of ways to handle them, individually or in groups.

The way kids get shafted in poor schools is high teacher:student ratios that reduce or eliminate any individual attention a kid might receive, coupled with poor facilities and supplies. You rightly identify parental involvement as a key factor in school success, but the flip side is that kids lacking parental involvement are denied any individual attention in schools that are simply overcrowded and understaffed. And the kind of attention I'm talking about isn't substitute parenting, it's just following up with kids on assignments and attendance.

Sure, a class size of 35 is a problem. So are a lot of factors that can lead to kids not learning. However the city I currently live in has a 20:1 ratio...and there are plenty of kids not succeeding (better than average though). Another local school in Portland has a ratio of 19:1...and they are 22% proficient in math. Thornwood HS in Chicago...13:1 ratio, but 8% proficient in math. It's not always about staffing...

Staffing is a pipeline problem: a good ratio might not help a particular issue, but you'll never be able to address those issues without it.

To what end though...I'm sure 1:1 ratio would be a huge improvement, but at what cost. You always get diminishing returns in these cases which seems heartless...but like with anything there is only so many resources to go around.

Here is another data point...

https://www.usnews.com/education/best-high-schools/illinois/...

99.9% minority students, 94% economically disadvantaged. Testing scores are horrible...across the board. 2.8% percentile for their SAT scores...26% of the students took an AP exam and 3% those that took them scored acceptable (3). This brings up a lot of questions...like why is a school that can barely graduate kids (54%) focused on having 1 out of every 4 seniors take an AP exam?

In my city it's hard to separate the multitude of interrelated issues to say it's any one thing, but something I didn't realize until I moved here is that magnet schools pull out virtually all the competent and interested kids by the time they reach highschool.

Given that, it's less surprising to me that the bottom tier public schools in these areas wind up so much shittier than the average public school.

Can you really blame them? Why wouldn't you want to pull the good kids out so they can succeed? Seems like having tryouts for basketball...you take the best of the best to make the team strong.

What's the underlying factor that makes it possible to only poach the good students?

I'm thinking either it is externally visible or the factor is "solvable" for every student, meaning a school with bad students will receive more policies/measures to boost their performance as everyone is suffering from the same underlying problems. Of course this assumes that poorly performing schools get support at all.

On the surface it might look like it's just about "discipline" but in the kinds of school districts you're talking about the problems are very deep-rooted and multi-faceted. Discipline alone is not nearly enough to address what's going on.

Agreed...but at the school level what can they do? If the parents aren't engaged in their kids getting an education and behaving (for whatever reason)...it's not really the school's job to fill that gap.

At school level? Only so much.

Some school districts are now having a measure of success with having ONE school but tracking the kids into "accelerated" or "regular" programs and elevating the resources for both.

There was a whole podcast about it: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/podcasts/nice-white-paren...

This happened as a result of a large-enough number of well-to-do parents no longer being able to get their kids into very desirable and academically rigorous city-wide schools, so they effectively "took over" a neighborhood public/charter school by participating VERY HEAVILY in the PTA, the school's funding, and getting deeply involved with the ALL the kids, teachers and administration.

From what I can tell, it required a very uncomfortable and ongoing dialog about race and class. Not every school in every big city can do this, IMHO, but AFAICT it lead to better outcomes for all the students, including the at-risk students.

The quality of education is dictated innate ability, parents, and school system. I like to think of as a three leg stool. If one leg is missing, it's possible to balance. If two are missing, no amount of money will solve the problem.

The stool has a fourth leg: other students. It's tough to get a good education if many of the other students are violent or disruptive. Public schools can't easily expel problem students.

Hence why church and community structures are very important among immigrant communities.

I think there's also other cases where kids grew up without education (like myself) - but could have, but if i were to have kids now i'd value education immensely. Ie i'm not an immigrant, my lack of early education is a result of my family being poor and making poor decisions.

However now my values have shifted drastically. Ironically i would consider myself very lucky. Not wealthy by any means, but far better off than the average American household. Which then perhaps would put my children (which i'm not having, lol) in the position of being "children of well-off families".. maybe.

If you are far better off than the average American household you could definitely consider yourself wealthy.

I dunno.. these are loose definitions but i make enough that i'm confident i can pay off my mortgage, make meaningful contributions to my retirement and not be afraid of money (outside of job loss, at least). I also significantly budget for things like home repairs, car repairs, medical expenses, etc. I could lose my job tomorrow and be safe for 6 months, 12 if i needed to. I have no financial concerns outside of job loss right now.

My view however is that this isn't wealthy. Instead this is where the middleclass should be. I don't make enough to retire early (though i could probably extreme FIRE, but that doesn't sound enjoyable to me). I'm not by my definition wealthy, just safe, satisfied, happy. No fancy cars or homes, just a stable honest and predictable living. These are traits that, in my mind, America should strive to bring to all people.

Unfortunately i've not seen this spread. I've only seen it decrease. People far more and more on the edge of collapse, with no safety net in their bank, no budget for emergency expenses, no possibility of retirement.

Relative to the current state of America i am wealthy. To me that is very, very sad.

That's exactly how I would describe my own situation. From the outside looking in, people with less economic means think that my situation is "perfect", and that it equates to no worries(it does not).

Job loss is the only big worry, and even in that situation it wouldn't be difficult to find a similar job with similar pay. I know that is a comfort that not everyone(or most people) has. Knowing that this seems to be "as good as it gets" when compared to the majority of Americans is what makes me very, very sad.

I agree. If what I have is "good", then others must have it worse.

My dad has a friend who owns a bus-sized camper/RV in addition to multiple cars and a beachfront home, but doesn't consider himself rich because he can't afford a large boat.

Point being, I think people are more aware of the unattained wealth above them than the levels they've already surpassed. (Myself included). The comment you replied to strikes me in the same way, though not nearly as blatant!

I replied https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27516973 - curious what your thoughts are on it. But no, i have literally zero fancy expenses. My car is 10 years old, my mortgage is not paid off, i don't have retirement, but all of those things are being worked on, and i am quite financially stable.

"Remember when you wanted what you currently have?"

When I was a kid... I wanted a cabin in the mountains. I would imagine living there (forever), and being more or less away from society.

Fast forward... I own a house in a rural area and have a family. I'll likely never have that cabin in the mountains, and I'll never be free of having to support my family. That's my fault though..I took the path of least resistance and ended up where I'm at - I didn't take the path towards what I dreamed about having as a kid.

Do you regret your decision?

Every single day. I think about it when I wake up, and I think about it while I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep. Biggest regret so far in ~40 years.

Well that's unfortunate. In this cabin dream, do you have a family or was your intention to live in a cabin in the mountains in isolation?

Regardless, perhaps make it a goal to do this when you retire. It will give you something to work toward and possibly quell some of your regret.

If it's on your mind this much, and I'm no expert here, you might want to talk about it with a professional. You can't let this stuff bottle up and eat away at you from the inside.

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