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Comment by errcorrectcode | Hacker News Reader

Private schools. I went through a Challenger School in the US in the 80's, and that was pretty good. Specifically, they taught traditional phonics when California went to some ridiculous, untested nonsense (i.e., whole word method) because education academics have/had too much power to arbitrarily break education approaches and standards. Interestingly, the catchy "Hooked on Phonics" was a symptom of the widespread problem of the educational system failing students, not the students failing the system.

Climate change. Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). I frown on chemical and mechanical means because they can't scale inherently and would be very expensive. Farming oceanic life is likely the main answer to it, such as GM kelp or phytoplankton.

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> private schools

From your description, it seems like what would really help is better policies and approach to public schools. Assuming that private schools would tend to pick better educational approaches seems flawed to me.

That's not how the real world works, only an idealized one. And not all public or private schools are the same. In the US, private schools were motivated (but not forced) to adopt better approaches because they were often competing with widely-available free public schools. Some public schools were being ruined by inept education bureaucrats, so wealthier parents moved their kids into better private ones. This is because some states and school districts were overriding the wishes of the parents, so the said wealthier ones did was was easiest: change schools. This created a two-tiered system in some areas where public schools got worse because they lost money per student as students left, had to cut budgets and good teachers, and concentrated poor and inner city students within underfunded, failing school districts. There are good public schools in some areas and there are probably plenty of horrible private schools too. It's my experience in the US that the best private schools tend to be better than the best public schools because of the extreme differences in resources.

Some public schools are just fine. Some private schools are awful given who my kid is. I just want to know which one is which.

Where I come from is Almaden Valley of San Jose and Palo Alto, so YMMV depending on where you are. Barely-adequate public schooling doesn't work for my family. Many moons ago, the high school I attended was rich af and an overachiever mecca because of high property taxes and extreme property values. There are also excellent private schools, including some of the more specialized ones for higher gifted and genius kids that regular schools hold back.

In other countries like Finland, they have it right compared to US education system the genius W contributed to breaking: homework has no value, teaching answers to excessive standardized tests (NCLBA) has little value, and grading teachers on immediate performance of said standardized tests has little value.

To solve this problem of finding good schools, I believe word-of-mouth advice from more successful folks is more valuable than any website filled with sour grapes or unverifiable claims made by random, anonymous people. It also can be a problem that better areas tend to have better schools, so no website will be able to find what doesn't currently exist in low population or not-as-nice areas.

There are websites like USNAWR who attempt to rate K-12 schools, private and public. https://www.usnews.com/education/k12

How do you define success in a short term timescale to steer any adjustments though? If the goal is to educate children to become successful adults you have at least a 15-20 year time horizon. By the time you know if the methodologies are working or not, it has probably changed 3 or 4 times and most of the teachers have moved on, maybe if you're lucky there's an institutional "agenda" for lack of a better term that hasn't moved too far off course. And that's assuming that no external forces change in the intervening years.

it's a slow process but examples of better schooling do exist. it takes research and the willingness to look beyond your local region.

the problem has multiple aspects. funding is one, management another, actual teaching methodologies yet another. for all of those examples can be found. not everything is directly applicable and it takes some experimentation.

but a part of the problem is also the definition of success. the goalpost on that keeps changing too.

for adults to be successful the environment needs to be supportive too.

aren't there studies that show that children from poor families are less successful despite good schooling? so if we want children to be successful we also need to eliminate poverty. these things go hand in hand. and i suspect that some attempts at better schooling fail because other aspects like this are not being addressed.

I guess I definite success as going up in economic class or at least maintaining.

It's that word of mouth that I want to know! I agree that something Yelp-like isn't going to be useful. I just don't see a way of doing this successfully unless the government mandated surveys, or some other compulsory mechanism.

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