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Comment by foolfoolz | Hacker News Reader

we have a school system that rewards graduation and punishes punishment. our public school especially is geared around progressing the lowest common denominator forward at all costs. private schools can run how they want, public schools are paid to do 2 things: 1. get butts in seats 2. have kids move up when the year is over

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> private schools can run how they want...

This cuts both ways. Very well-known, competitive private schools conservatively financed have a waiting list a line around the block long and can enforce high standards. Private schools that are struggling for funding can find the compromises more tempting than they can bear. Finding that difference in the moment instead of as past historical anecdotes is surprisingly hard, though if someone has come up with a formula I’m all ears.

Something something about metrics ceasing to be a good measure. Texas has draconian measures for districts containing a failing school, even as they redistribute the majority of funding from cities to rural districts. No surprise the schools want to pass by any means.

There are no resources for those who don’t progress, as there already aren’t enough teachers for the existing K-12 workload, and existing teachers are overloaded in the aggregate.

This is the failure mode of a system exceeding its capacity with no ability to apply back pressure. Slowly failing as gracefully as possible, eventually passing everyone.

Nguyen, T. D., Lam, C. B., & Bruno, P. (2024). What Do We Know About the Extent of Teacher Shortages Nationwide? A Systematic Examination of Reports of U.S. Teacher Shortages. AERA Open, 10.

https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584241276512

There is something about devoting effort to maintaining the form of a thing while ignoring its essence.

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