There have been school districts lately that have been getting rid of advanced math classes in the name of equality.
Parents of the more advanced math students in the grade requested some sort of more advanced math opportunities for their kids. School didn't provide any. When several of the kids used a more advanced math concept they had learned outside of school to solve a problem, the teacher told them to not do it that way because they hadn't learned it yet.
The school does provide extra classes for kids who they think are behind in one area or another. And if a kid has a lot of issues, a class will even get an extra teacher that just focuses on that kid.
Children who perform below grade level or have issues are getting extra attention from the school (great), but children who already know what's being taught are expected to just sit there quietly and waste their time (not so great).
Very few teachers take any interest in the students who do well in math. In fact, they'll often find them annoying.
Yes, there are some teachers who do take an interest and do their best for those students. They just aren't the norm, and they don't get much support from the administration.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/238733/expenditure-on-ed...
Tell that to people who faked athletic credentials to get into the college of their choice. Or who get in with full academic scholarships because they're good at football.
I'm not advocating ignoring 990 kids that can't read, not at all. What I am suggesting is ignoring the 10 geniuses and not taking advantage of them is both unfair and bad for society.
Consider that WW1 and WW2 were won in large part by smart people making more effective weapons. You see the same thing in the Ukraine war today.
Failing to nurture the 10 geniuses is a very bad idea.
I personally think ignoring the top 10 students is perfectly fine because they can clearly already manage. The rest of us can’t, but are still considered subhuman by your Bell Curve reading ilk.
1. take the honors track
2. 90% of the classes should be STEM
3. the STEM classes should be heavy on the math
4. avoid classes the stoners and cheaters take
5. classes should entail 2-3 hours of work for every hour of lecture
6. work towards getting As, not just passing
7. don't cheat, you'll be sorry if you do
8. be prepared to work your ass off
I also don’t think a world where 10 geniuses go untapped in any context is a positive. The reason so many people can read in the first place is that a small number of geniuses created the prerequisite understanding to shape the modern world. Everyone put in massive amounts of work to achieve all we have achieved, but the key ingredients were a small number of people spearheading foundational ideas. People underestimate the impact of a very small number of people on the massive quality of life benefits we enjoy.
You can’t create genius. The most you can do is create the optimal conditions for the geniuses to take advantage of/manifest and push themselves to that level. Highly intelligent and creative people that make breakthroughs often come from unpredictable backgrounds. In order for them to thrive, you need to provide as many open doors where competency and demonstrable ability is the only prerequisite for entry.
This idea that spending on students correlates with performance is I think entirely wrong and a consequence of the limited metrics we have and attempts to raise money for education.
Education could be WAY cheaper and WAY more effective if we had the proper cultural understanding of what it should provide, and were wise enough to differentiate the needs of different areas. Many areas where reading comprehension is garbage are really in need of like a secondary non-dysfunctional family and job opportunities that are relatively high status/relatively high paying even if you aren’t that smart and just work hard/learn basic skills. If people were sorted into groups based on what their needs were, you could create and advertise doors the smart kids would walk through, and keep it open to anyone who puts in the work regardless of where they’re at, while also serving the needs of people who don’t care about school and are cheaper to bring to baseline if you do it right and don’t force people struggling for basic reading comprehension to be educated by people with a masters degree.
Things are currently falling apart because we’re not willing to admit that people have different needs and abilities and have created extravagantly expensive metrics and interventions to pretend we can equalize all outcome with enough resources. We can’t.
I think we can in fact create better outcomes for everyone, but we have to admit that everyone is different. You can’t have a one size fits all pipeline. Especially if you don’t want to demoralize like 90% of the people in the country that can’t get to the top of that particular giant leaderboard. The internet exacerbates this, and has destroyed borders in which someone who might have otherwise had relatively high status in a particular easily achievable niche accessible to them is now seeing all the people miles beyond them.
The way in which the upper classes currently pity people who don’t have high academic achievement and want to equalize experience in the same pipeline they benefitted from sounds good superficially, but it’s really toxic when you think about it. It assumes people need to have the kind of success that those who’ve done well in that academic pipeline have had in order to be treated with respect.
I think all of this could be fixed with one relatively simple guiding principle: keep metrics in a voluntary, competitive school system for those who have the aptitude and desire to pursue advanced study. Remove most metrics and bureaucracy from a base, mandatory public education much more about civics, basic skills, and introducing people to career paths relevant to their particular local area. I think that principle would ultimately lead to MORE people getting benefits from a traditional pipeline than do currently, free teachers to let the needs of the students actually direct how class time gets spent, and require way less administrative overhead.
EDIT: I rambled way too much here. The current state of education in the US drives me crazy.
That doesn't mean there is a false dichotomy where we can't also achieve baseline literacy for all; that's a complex sociological problem which might take a genius to solve.
Personal side note; I’ve tended to find that exceptional people are more productive with the resources given. So I find it hard to believe the inverse would also be true.
The way schools are currently measured, the 5 are very, very important and the 10 are completely irrelevant. The only judgement is how many of the students are below the appropriate skill level. I don't believe anyone even measures how much in advance of the skill level students at or above the minimum are.
This is how schools are judged: what proportion of their students pass a minimum competency test.
Across American I'm sure it's the exception, and not the rule, to have a math department and a math team.
But in California, especially the Bay Area, they're not uncommon. All the public high schools, and many of the middle schools, in my city have them. Private schools will vary based on their priorities.
This is nothing new. Most teachers are more concerned with being able to manage their classes than they are with outcomes for individual students.
As a straw-man example - you could come up with a more advanced way to format your essay and maybe write it in a new language you learned, but if the teacher can't understand it then it doesn't really fulfill the requirements of the assignment.
The "new math" thing also isn't anything new, there's a song about it from 1965 and another from 2009
I do think there is a push not to equalize everyone but to actually address individual needs, and those may draw resources from areas like advanced courses. Boredom in school for bright kids can definitely be a problem but I’m not sure it’s the end of the world. The kids who want to excel generally will, and can often just be advanced a grade or two. The rigid structure of class groupings by age is anachronistic and maybe like 50% appropriate. There are better ways to structure education.
Their original proposal would ban all but remedial coursework, so your kids would get the same treatment as everyone else (by intentionally lowering everyone's achievement; especially the special needs and gifted kids).
I can only assume the people pushing this are trying to sabotage the school system, but they claim to have good intentions, and hide behind all sorts of woke double speak.
In other news, the schools no longer fund science or art classes. Instead, the parents pay the public school $1000's per year per student (tax deductible) so we can have those programs.
Also, the facilities are crumbling and have all sorts of obvious health and saftey issues. This is in an extremely affluent part of the state and a top ranked school.
My kids will be fine (the parents at the school happily throw money at the problems -- it's cheaper than private school, after all), but I don't see how kids in poorer districts will be able to pretend to have a middle school education, regardless of whether they earn a California high school diploma, or not.
In the Seattle school district, this is certainly not a cost cutting measure. It's an equity measure.
> The kids who want to excel generally will
That's true. Even though there's a complete lack of interest in them by the public schools, at least those schools don't make an effort to block them.
Having seen what the Seattle public school system has become, I'm planning to send my kids to private school. Most of my (largely Asian) friends here will do the same. As usual, people with the means to do so will pay to avoid these problems, but the lower/middle class suffers the consequences.
> I do think there is a push not to equalize everyone but to actually address individual needs, and those may draw resources from areas like advanced courses
This is a great point and reminds me of the quote "When you're accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression". I definitely got a lot of privileges in school my friends didn't because I got good grades - better choice of classes, counselors will listen to you more, and maybe most of all, teachers seem to care much more about teaching and engaging and not just getting a group of kids they don't think want to learn to pass so they can leave the class.
You try talking for an hour to someone on the train, and keep going when they put their earphones on and start scrolling on the phone… it's not that easy.
Until they completely lose the habit of learning. Which might come handy later on when the extra stuff they knew is no longer advanced.
Crab bucket mentality. It's real.
I think a better overall solution would be something like what Khan academy was going for - you can have a bunch of kids at different levels in the same class, and then you can also rely on them to help teach each other more. I think this was the main way schoolhouses were run before the industrial revolution. Then you're not limiting anyone, and you're also not encouraging the weird social effects that come from trying to section off people into discrete buckets
If you're opposed to Marxism you should also know "double-speak" comes from a book written in support of socialism[1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Orwell#Spanish_Civil_Wa...
LOL - whut? Did you read a different 1984?
Orwell's thoughts on governance was complicated, and changed over time, but in no way was 1984 some kind of endorsement of socialism.
Also, Marxism is not socialism.
https://www.thecoldwire.com/socialist-vs-marxist/#:~:text=Th....
A classic example was Orwell in the Spanish civil war saying he was super against Stalinism specifically and also seemed to know that it was not at all communism, but overall he seemed to primarily like democratic socialism.
Maybe this is because I'm from the US but here most people think Stalinism==Communism==Socialism==Maoism, so I think it's important to point out differences
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Also from your link
> This is different from Marxism which relies on a violent revolution
This is definitely not true so I wouldn't trust that source much. Some people think it's the only way but others don't
There is a poisonous ideology at work in the background but ultimately defunding schools comes from a desire for more inequality, not less.
That smacks of "good people support Policy X, even if it achieves the opposite of its goals in the long run. To acknowledge that and oppose Policy X, even on its own merits, makes you evil in intent."
Few people actually have desires like "I want more inequality", even if they oppose a policy which intends to decrease it.
> oppose a policy which intends to decrease [inequality]
Of course, there is very little discussion on whether said policies do actually end up decreasing inequality; much like how the Great Society "War On Poverty" arguably increased poverty.
It's dressed up differently. They talk about cutting "bloated" public sector budgets or the necessity of austerity.
Nobody calls themselves anti choice or pro death or pro war either but lots of people are.
Your political opponents believe what they say, not some nefarious strawman you think they're secretly thinking.
The superintendent, the school board, the city council or the voters?
> the reformed framework attempted to remedy achievement gaps by urging public schools to remove certain accelerated math tracks from middle school education. Boaler’s guidelines have become a basis for a statewide push to move these classes, specifically Algebra I, out of middle school.