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Comment by brianwawok | Hacker News Reader

No child left behind.

It’s been ruled that it’s better that all students get to 20-80% knowledge then some get 100% and some get 0%.

Which is why many people choose to go to private schools if you want to not be limited by this.

Surely this can be solved by streaming? Here in the UK we had bottom sets for the kids that were struggling, and top sets for kids who excelled. This meant that the learning pace could be tailored for each group.

Still probably didn't stretch the top set kids as much as private schools could, which is why I am in favour of abolishing all private and grammar schools and making the resources available to those schools available to top set comprehensive school kids.

It is wrong that children get educations that don't really make the most of their brains because they have parents that couldn't afford it.

Also, I think the sociological benefits of having pupils from all backgrounds occupying the same space and learning from each other as opposed to being segregated is extremely important.

So many of the rich people in charge of the country have absolutely no understanding of poverty because they have not had the opportunity to grow up around it.

I chuckled at "pupils from all backgrounds benefitting from each other". I grew up in a dirt poor family. Some of my classmates in high school were criminal material and many did end up in prison (for murder, not weed) before their 25th birthday. Some classmates were quiet folks with ADHD, some were punctual learners who really valued good marks. All sorts of backgrounds. The only "cross background" learning was bulling lessons that the future criminals were giving to the quiet folks. Teachers were useless and powerless to straighten up the bad apples. Luckily, I correctly guessed what I need to learn on my own to get "segregated away" from that madness, so my college years were decent. My takeaway from that experience was that the cross-background learning happens only when the backgrounds differ only slightly and have something in common.

I grew up poor and have ADHD, so went to state comp. I will say that there were definitely unpleasant sides to it, but I feel like my compadriates and I have a much more rounded and grounded view of society and class than the friends I know that went to private schools. You simply can't expect someone who's never felt poverty, whether it's their own or the people they see day in day out, to be able to be able to truly understand it.

I can see how it would probably be a more difficult experience for introverts.

Funnily enough, I got bullied more by the rich kids - who knew how to push my buttons and wind me up to the point I'd lash out and get in trouble - than the poor ones.

In former times, European countries could do this, because you've had a homogenous pool to sort out by ability.

Attempts to do this in the US produce results that appear racist.

It’s almost as if genetic similarity is a predictor of social stability.

Yes, that statement is the one that appears racist, because it is.

Try "it's almost as if being societally excluded for centuries is a predictor of social instability," which is both more accurate and descriptive of the problem we're trying to solve here.

> and making the resources available to those schools available

How would you do this? It seems like it’s impossible to tax the group of people who would have sent their kids to private school had it been possible.

Equally it seems impossible to force the people who would have chosen teaching careers at private schools to work at comprehensive schools.

That, and the fact that one of the ‘resources’ that private schools have is flexibility to make decisions outside of the comprehensive school system.

> It seems like it’s impossible to tax the group of people who would have sent their kids to private school had it been possible.

Fortunately it is possible to do something very similar, though, which is to tax the group of people who have the level of income that would allow them to send their kids to private school had it been possible.

I suppose you're saying that some people currently are wealthy enough to send their kids to private school, but choose not to (or don't have kids at all). These people wouldn't have a choice about paying the extra taxes that enable these better-funded comprehensive schools. This isn't a new problem, though, as childless people already pay taxes that are spent on existing comprehensive schools.

As for "decisions outside the comprehensive school system", I think that needs to be considered in the context of the government's existing regulation of private schools and the trend of academisation:

https://www.bbc.com/news/education-13274090

> Fortunately it is possible to do something very similar, though, which is to tax the group of people who have the level of income that would allow them to send their kids to private school had it been possible.

Except it isn’t similar.

Saying ‘taxing the rich more and put more money into public schools’ may be a good proposal but it is a completely different proposition from ‘take the resources from private schools and give them to public schools’.

Money is not in fact educational resources.

The advantage of a private school is not the extra gym equipment or computer or any other resources, it is the social class that matter. If you don't pay for private school you will pay for location. There is no actual mixing, people just pay more to be around people similar to themselves and the cost of that will manifest in house prices instead of school prices.

I don‘t see the causal relationship between the 100%ers getting 80% and the 0%ers suddenly getting 20%

If you slow down the pace to help the "zero percenters" and only cover 80% of the material in the allotted time, the students who could have handled 100% of the material will be limited to 80%. And that slowdown still won't be enough to help the slowest learners much, so they'll still only learn, say, 20% of the material.

Right. In fact you can find studies to back this up.

In schools with blended ability levels, the worst students do better (pulled up by the higher students), but the best studends do worse.

Good if you are in the bottom, bad ify ou are in the top.

also spend lots of class time repeating background material students should already know.

> Which is why many people choose to go to private schools if you want to not be limited by this.

Familiar with expensive Private schools Household names send their kids too in CA. It's generally harder to fail a student, sometimes explicitly impossible & against school policy.

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