Comment by itishappy | Hacker News Reader

Comment by itishappy | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, that's one of the main findings from the article.

> The extent of the decline seems to be driven by the lowest performing students losing more ground, a worrying trend that predates the pandemic.

> Scores for the highest performing American fourth graders were about the same as in 2019, but the lowest performing students — those in the bottom 10% — saw their scores drop by 37 points in math and by 22 points in science compared with similar students in 2019. The lowest performing eighth graders saw their scores drop by 19 points in math. One in five U.S. eighth graders scored below the low benchmark, meaning they lacked even basic proficiency.

> This gap between high- and low-performing students started to widen before the pandemic for reasons that are unclear. Since then, other research into post-pandemic academic performance has found widening gaps across race and income, even as many middle and higher income students are doing well.

What do we do with this info?

It's pretty obvious: our society, because it's based on representative government, requires a baseline of general welfare sufficient that as many citizens as possible have leisure time and are not subject to PTSD-inducing levels of stress. This is at odds with the increasing inequality and increasing cultural and class stratification within our society. As it is increasingly only possible for upper-middle class and up parents to care for children effectively, the rest of the child-age population will continue to be worse and worse off, while the upper middle class pull the ladders up after themselves out of concern and fear over the future welfare of their own children being completely zero sum.

The most urgent things that need to happen to stop this are:

- Ensuring sick leave, vacation time, and improving wages, especially on the lower end, such that 1.5 incomes are sufficient for 2 child homes so that parents can have time for their children.

- Policies that severely disincentivize vouchers, private, and charter education so that there are fewer incentives to try and create "tides that selectively lift boats."

- Increasing the housing supply.

None of that stuff is going to happen. Just look at the recent election results: Americans don't want any of that stuff.

You seem to be confusing "Wanting that stuff" and "Believing that solution can be implemented by the same people I do"

Americans, overwhelmingly, agree that things are not going in the right direction. What they are split on, is how to fix it, and what is the greatest driver.

No, I'm not at all. If you really think the GOP is going to promote legislation to "[Ensure] sick leave, vacation time, and [improve] wages, especially on the lower end", then you are seriously delusional. You'd have to be a complete idiot to think that GOP politicians are going to push for any of this stuff, because they've never done so in the past, and it certainly isn't part of their current platform. Those goes even more for disincentivizing private school, vouchers, etc., since those are things the GOP has been actively promoting for ages. They've also said nothing about wanting to increase housing supply.

This is a good analysis.

About #2 (disincentivize charter education): parents created charter schools because they disagreed on the choices that was made for them in public education. It is very hard to fight this, as 1- they see a huge difference in test results 2- they want to give their children the best chances in life.

> It is very hard to fight this

Finland solution was to ban all private education. Once rich kids were forced to go to public schools, then suddenly education became a larger part of the gov budget, those parents spent more time asking for reforms, volunteering etc.

They have one of the best performant school systems in the planet. And all it takes is not allowing a percentage of the population think of education as optional

> And all it takes is not allowing a percentage of the population think of education as optional

How does the existence of private schools enables this thinking?

Those who care about education, can leave to a private school instead, and not spend time trying to improve the public schools, just leave them to their fate: noisy school-is-boring kids sabotaging the classes for everyone.

Or that's how I interpret what GP said. Happening a bit where I live: richer families don't want their kids go to school in problematic suburbs.

> and not spend time trying to improve the public schools

> noisy school-is-boring kids sabotaging the classes for everyone.

It seems that those parents realize that if the system does not care about ensuring that kids in school actually learn things, then they better leave than trying to fix the kids of others (i.e., parents who does not care).

I would argue that it is a net positive for those public schools: those parents still pay local taxes while making sure that there are fewer students -> better student/teacher ratio.

Maybe depends on how hard or easy it is to improve the schools, on how much influence the parents can have? In Finland, apparently it was doable, but that's, in a way, a very different place than here.

I don’t that Finland is a good example: it is a small centralized country. In the US states can do whatever, so you can’t copy-paste finish approach.

There isn't much stopping individual states from adopting similar measures.

Well, they can't -- schools are funded by local taxes. Centralizing this across the whole state is a political suicide.

No, I'm proposing the opposite: that states try to act more like Norway/Finland by themselves, instead of hoping the federal government will do so (which isn't going to happen).

And yes, schools are funded by local taxes, but it doesn't have to be that way: if states really wanted to, they could take that power away from municipalities. The constitution gives the states broad powers to run themselves as they like.

> How does the existence of private schools enables this thinking?

Here is a simple example. There is a family with a combined 6k income, their expenses are 2k on rent and 1.5k on child private school, grocieries etc account for 500, savings another 500 and the remaining 1.5k goes on taxes.

Now the goverment proposes a 10% tax raise to improve public schools. Do you think this family would vote for or agaiinst that bill?

Now lets propose a counter example. Same salary, same expenses minus the private school, which gives the family 2k of savings per month. Now due to shortages in public schools they have volunteered at their kids school, helped with field trips, met other parents and families in their neighbourhood. Now the goverment does a 20% tax raise for public schooling. Would this family be more or less willing than the other family to vote yes?

By simply being involved you and your vote become resposinble for it. If you can pay your way away, specially if you stretch your finances to afford it, then investing in the system goes against your own interests regardless of the social externalities of your position.

We could have a society were parents of privately educated kids voted for a public school improvement, but psicologically and economically we know they by and large dont. Therefore the existance of private schooling comes at the expense of a fair, well resourced, and functional public education

Are the places that are doing better doing these things?

Yes

But capitalism and the people in power have no incentive to change any of those issues... so now what?

Your claim and the GP's are very different:

* Yours is that the bottom 10% are declining. That says nothing about who is in the bottom 10%.

* The GP says the composition of the population has changed, and blames immigrants.

> There was also a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and test scores. Students from higher income households and those who attended schools with more affluent students had higher scores.

That doesn't say the composition changed - that could have been true before - or that immigration status is any factor at all.

The question is what was the delta within that group (and within other groups). Given we know that those of higher socioeconomic status do better than average, did they improve compared to their past selves, stay roughly the same, or degrade despite still maintaining above average results?

If, for example, they degraded, then it would indicate there is a problem happening that even the higher socioeconomic status doesn't protect from despite all its benefits (well it might protect relatively better that other SES, but not enough to prevent the downward trend).

If, instead, they improved relative to their past selves, it would indicate the problem causing the overall trend is found entirely within other SES groups (well not entirely, as it is possible the impact still hit this group but that other factors more than made up for it, but to keep it simple, we can ignore such a possibility unless we see even better data that can parse out these more complex relationships).

The Simpson’s paradox part is factual, and has been known for over a decade courtesy Steve Sailer, who is an immigration restrictionist. A fairer critique of the poster is that they’re unoriginal (rather than that they’re blaming immigrants, which I didn’t see in this post).

> While US has excellent education, and immigrant children in America do better than their counterparts in their countries of origin, they don’t do as well as the modal group of white Americans, so as the composition changes...

it doesn't say the immigrants are to blame, it just strongly implies that this could be a likely reason, furthermore for some reason to be an immigrant is to not be white which certainly was not the case when I immigrated to America.

https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2020/08/20/fa...

American immigrants are no longer white, overwhelmingly.

Perhaps that is related to all the rationalizations of white supremacy.

A more plausible interpretation is that the education system is failing immigrant families currently. This has the benefit of both matching the evidence and not having racist implications.

> courtesy Steve Sailer, who is an immigration restrictionist

That doesn't make this argument credible. Is there any credible source?

> rather than that they’re blaming immigrants, which I didn’t see in this post

We know well that the talking points of racism are formed to create ambiguity and use dog whistles. That goes back half a century and probably much longer. These are the talking points.

I didn’t suggest this makes the argument credible. In fact, I fully expect that it should make one more skeptical of the argument, which is part of the reason I put that in there.

Make better policy decisions next time around? (Surprise, surprise, poor kids don’t do zoom classes).

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