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1 minute ago, indigoasis said:

No idea what you mean by school choice, but if it's about choosing a college to go to... I'm still working on that one.

Ah. Unfortunately no. School choice is about, like...not having to send your kids to the school whose district you live in, you can send them to a different school if you'd prefer. It's for K-12, and applies to charter/private/home schools as well.

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Just now, AnonymousSpeed said:

Ah. Unfortunately no. School choice is about, like...not having to send your kids to the school whose district you live in, you can send them to a different school if you'd prefer. It's for K-12, and applies to charter/private/home schools as well.

That makes more sense to me now, thanks for the clarification. Didn't realize what it was at first.

There have been a few other kids in my neighborhood that have been going/gone to another school that's just outside the high school zone my neighborhood is zoned for, so I'm not unfamiliar with it. It's typically so they can be in programs that other schools don't have. They have to drive/be driven there because the school bus that arrives isn't gonna be taking them to the school they're going to, but that's par for the course, I suppose.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I support it. I don't really see many issues with it.

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16 minutes ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Ah. Unfortunately no. School choice is about, like...not having to send your kids to the school whose district you live in, you can send them to a different school if you'd prefer. It's for K-12, and applies to charter/private/home schools as well.

Well, it seems like a fair deal, considering how schools are supposed to be funded by the property values of the surrounding neighborhood.

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Now, I'm no expert on this field about school choice, but I think this video list some serious concerns/issues regarding about school choice that requires serious consideration on how it works and how it applies to different families/community, especially those coming from poverty. The history of segregation is important to how 'school choice' typically plays out, along with how charter & private schools may not be better than public. I recommend a watch or listen, though it's almost an hour long.

EDIT: If you don't want to go through the entire hour of the video, you can jump to around the 36 minute mark. That's when it gets more direct about school choice, charter/private schools, and many of its potential pitfalls.

 

Edited by Clear World
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3 hours ago, Clear World said:

Now, I'm no expert on this field about school choice, but I think this video list some serious concerns/issues regarding about school choice that requires serious consideration on how it works and how it applies to different families/community, especially those coming from poverty. The history of segregation is important to how 'school choice' typically plays out, along with how charter & private schools may not be better than public. I recommend a watch or listen, though it's almost an hour long.

EDIT: If you don't want to go through the entire hour of the video, you can jump to around the 36 minute mark. That's when it gets more direct about school choice, charter/private schools, and many of its potential pitfalls.

 

So basically something that conceptually, nobody would really oppose because fundamentally it seems like the right thing to do but unsurprisingly, it's a veiled way for the assholes in the country to bring back segregation in some shape or form. Typical.

I'm fairly certain a majority of people and even among Democrats there is support for School Choice (hell, I'm not against it either, but now it makes sense why the Republican side wants to own that so much and pretend like only Republicans support it.

Edited by Dr. Tarrasque
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7 hours ago, Clear World said:

Now, I'm no expert on this field about school choice, but I think this video list some serious concerns/issues regarding about school choice that requires serious consideration on how it works and how it applies to different families/community, especially those coming from poverty. The history of segregation is important to how 'school choice' typically plays out, along with how charter & private schools may not be better than public. I recommend a watch or listen, though it's almost an hour long.

You can also use a transcript website to "read" instead, which goes by a lot faster than an hour.

With all due respect, the video is mostly irrelevant to the topic of school choice in the present age, or baseless accusations.

He dwells on origins of institutions without concern for the current effect of institutions. He argues that virtual academies are bad and points to examples of corruption- I agree that these are bad things, but virtual public schooling also sucks and public schools also have corruption scandals. He basically says, with no real evidence, that people want school choice or homeschooling or what have you, do so to segregate their kids. He says that's why, but he really has nothing to prove that. We're simply supposed to take him at his word, as if he had the ability to experience the minds of these parents directly.

He says school choice makes New York City schools more segregated than others- now, I'm no expert on New York City, but I do know it has some fairly segregated neighborhoods, so I find it hard to take his statement seriously without some serious evidence presented that this isn't the result of another factor. Also, New York actually limits school choice because it arbitrarily caps the number of charter schools through the New York Charter Schools Act of 1998 and its amendments. This is despite there being waiting lists for charter schools with tens of thousands of people on them, including many children who are ethnic minorities.

The argument that charter schools don't perform better than public schools is really saying "charter schools don't perform better than public schools in wealthy areas", but as we've established, that's much better than public schools in poor areas, which are the real beneficiaries of charter schools. He says people can't apply to them if they don't know about them, but if anything that means you should spread more awareness of the option.

I'd like to point you to the Success Academy schools in New York City. They're charter schools- that's the school choice subcategory I'm most familiar with, so forgive me for focusing on it- which produce remarkable academic results. I'll admit not every charter school is that good, but that's the great thing about school choice. If parents are dissatisfied with the school their kids are going to, they have the option to send them to another school.

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1 hour ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

You can also use a transcript website to "read" instead, which goes by a lot faster than an hour.

With all due respect, the video is mostly irrelevant to the topic of school choice in the present age, or baseless accusations.

He dwells on origins of institutions without concern for the current effect of institutions. He argues that virtual academies are bad and points to examples of corruption- I agree that these are bad things, but virtual public schooling also sucks and public schools also have corruption scandals. He basically says, with no real evidence, that people want school choice or homeschooling or what have you, do so to segregate their kids. He says that's why, but he really has nothing to prove that. We're simply supposed to take him at his word, as if he had the ability to experience the minds of these parents directly.

He says school choice makes New York City schools more segregated than others- now, I'm no expert on New York City, but I do know it has some fairly segregated neighborhoods, so I find it hard to take his statement seriously without some serious evidence presented that this isn't the result of another factor. Also, New York actually limits school choice because it arbitrarily caps the number of charter schools through the New York Charter Schools Act of 1998 and its amendments. This is despite there being waiting lists for charter schools with tens of thousands of people on them, including many children who are ethnic minorities.

The argument that charter schools don't perform better than public schools is really saying "charter schools don't perform better than public schools in wealthy areas", but as we've established, that's much better than public schools in poor areas, which are the real beneficiaries of charter schools. He says people can't apply to them if they don't know about them, but if anything that means you should spread more awareness of the option.

I'd like to point you to the Success Academy schools in New York City. They're charter schools- that's the school choice subcategory I'm most familiar with, so forgive me for focusing on it- which produce remarkable academic results. I'll admit not every charter school is that good, but that's the great thing about school choice. If parents are dissatisfied with the school their kids are going to, they have the option to send them to another school.

I watched that video when it first came out, haven't watched it since, but from what I remember of it, he also blamed the whole idea of honours levels on racial segregation. But it's just a plain and simple fact that segregating a class based on ability is better for all students involved. If you have a wide mix of levels in a class then the students who excell are going to get board and tune out while the students who struggle are going to be overwhelmed.  Higher and lower level classes are still a thing in countries with homogenous populations. Not everything is a secret racist trap.

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3 minutes ago, Jotari said:

I watched that video when it first came out, haven't watched it since, but from what I remember of it, he also blamed the whole idea of honours levels on racial segregation. But it's just a plain and simple fact that segregating a class based on ability is better for all students involved. If you have a wide mix of levels in a class then the students who excell are going to get board and tune out while the students who struggle are going to be overwhelmed.  Higher and lower level classes are still a thing in countries with homogenous populations. Not everything is a secret racist trap.

You're going to have to back up this claim.

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First, of course family and children should have options on which school to attend to. Being forced to 1 choice sounds awful, especially if the choice is bad. I'm not going to go hard on defending that video at every level and every detail, and also agree that some of its talking points are questionable and/or he doesn't provide scientific studies to back up his points or let alone how he doesn't bring up the topic that many public schools are in a crap state themselves.

3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

With all due respect, the video is mostly irrelevant to the topic of school choice in the present age, or baseless accusations.

Though, it being mostly irrelevant to school choice is something I would not call it. 

If a public school fails, there isn't really much of a means to fix & improve it. We could just let the bad school die since it's bad, but a larger problem may begin to arise when too many public school fail.

For one, just because a family has the ability to select the school the child goes to, doesn't automatically mean the school will allow them to go there. A topic mention in the video is that private/charter school do pick & choose who they allow in for whatever reason, and when a major form of 'fixing' public schools is just to convert them to private/charter schools, it can can create a situation in the future that make poorer families & communities in a worst state as the public schools these family can send the child will more likely have less funds (due to more money being diverted to private schools, thus in turn make the public option have a higher chance to fail even more), along with not really having an option to send the child to a better school because these private institutions doesn't want to take on a high 'risk' student (as already imply, schools with better 'results' will do better, so why spend more and risk lower results with kids who doesn't have a good outlook or situation).

And this is not taking account of US's segregation history that most likely still applies right now, if given the free pass to do so, bad actors will gladly attempt to segregate even harder and disadvantage those they dislike while improving those they desire. We currently are living in a period in which republicans in TX created a strange ass bounty laws against abortions just so they could prevent abortions without outright forbidden abortions. Giving them a wide path to allow them to easily exclude any minority group they detest from good (or even half-decent) education is something that heavily needs to be consider with ways to prevent it.

For another point, de-centralizing education has a lot of room of creating a environment in which people don't even have basic shared understanding. American schools overall already has issues teaching kids the share common knowledge like history. Heck, America right now already has a huge issue on agreeing what is 'reality'. Toss in potentially hundreds of different companies with their own profit driven and/or religious agendas teaching impressionable kids whatever they want & need them to believe in, and this mess will only grow far worst.

Lastly, as mention in the video, though I agree that not all private/charter schools are worst then public (which is a low bar as I consider the US public school system is rather bad overall... or at least within urban environments), school choice (without any meaningful method of regulation) would create an environment in which private/charter schools  focus nothing but being profitability; and being profitable does not automatically mean better education. Heck, when profitability is a big concern and poor students risk the profitability, it seems within reason that they will do what they can to reduce that risk. Like, what about students that doesn't have English as their first language, or those who are physically handicap. These schools aren't really getting more money if they accept a student who needs more assistance for basic tasks in their school.

-----

So, not to be that against what you're saying. Yes, we should be striving to get better results in education. I think family being able to have more options on how & where they kid get their education is a good thing. The issue I was hoping to bring up is, there are potential ramification that can easily harm the more vulnerable communities & families and if something says they may have an issue with school choice, they might have actual harmful reasons why they are concern. If government funds is being sent to private/charter schools, there might be a need for a more strict 'standers' to be placed on these private/charter schools

1 hour ago, Jotari said:

I watched that video when it first came out, haven't watched it since, but from what I remember of it, he also blamed the whole idea of honours levels on racial segregation. But it's just a plain and simple fact that segregating a class based on ability is better for all students involved. If you have a wide mix of levels in a class then the students who excell are going to get board and tune out while the students who struggle are going to be overwhelmed.  Higher and lower level classes are still a thing in countries with homogenous populations. Not everything is a secret racist trap.

In the video, he does bring up the topic that environment, culture, and situation does affect the student's ability level in school (which so happens to have racst lines).

One case is when he talks about different race excel or stuggle in school. He talks about how the environment Asian students grow up in tend to put a lot more emphasis in education & doing well in test, while a poorer community could even shun a gifted kid there grow due to expectations of how the kid from there should act.

Another is when he talks about are certain actions, like taking a test on a weekend could be barriers for families who both is too poor to take the kid to the location or is just completely unaware of the test. Or maybe how a family isn't chosen to go to a private/charter school because the parents didn't do that extra steps outside of register to get selected because they didn't know about it. 

It may not be complete racist trap, but it could easily have racist motivations baked in it. I mean, someone like Betsy DeVos (former secretary of education who was selected by Trump), companies like PagerU, or the republican party in general are 'extremely' for school choice... so, I think maybe racist implications should be considered a possibility (thought, I admit the biggest reason is fueled by privatization for corporations)

Edited by Clear World
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8 hours ago, Excellen Browning said:

You're going to have to back up this claim.

I'm a teacher. This is something I am literally dealing with right now. And I can tell you it fucking sucks to hand a an assignment back to a student who cries when they see the grade because they've been put in an advanced English course and they don't understand a word of English. I have students who have been set up to fail and it's completely unfair. Meanwhile having students that are literally falling asleep in class because they know everything already. And I want to help them both, but I can't because 60% of the class are at the appropriate level and they need the most attention.

7 hours ago, Clear World said:

In the video, he does bring up the topic that environment, culture, and situation does affect the student's ability level in school (which so happens to have racst lines).

One case is when he talks about different race excel or stuggle in school. He talks about how the environment Asian students grow up in tend to put a lot more emphasis in education & doing well in test, while a poorer community could even shun a gifted kid there grow due to expectations of how the kid from there should act.

Another is when he talks about are certain actions, like taking a test on a weekend could be barriers for families who both is too poor to take the kid to the location or is just completely unaware of the test. Or maybe how a family isn't chosen to go to a private/charter school because the parents didn't do that extra steps outside of register to get selected because they didn't know about it. 

It may not be complete racist trap, but it could easily have racist motivations baked in it. I mean, someone like Betsy DeVos (former secretary of education who was selected by Trump), companies like PagerU, or the republican party in general are 'extremely' for school choice... so, I think maybe racist implications should be considered a possibility (thought, I admit the biggest reason is fueled by privatization for corporations)

Culture is definitely a part of it. I come from a rather homogeneous country, I dare say one of the most homogeneous countries in the world, at least when I was growing up (I've also taught in Japan which literally is the third most homogeneous country). And growing up, almost universally children of rich parents excel in school. That's not because rich parents produce smarter children, it's because rich parents encourage (to be charitable) or push (to be uncharitable) education on their children. I have friends from my childhood who are not idiots, but who view themselves as such because they struggle in school, purely because they have no drive to succeed.

Edited by Jotari
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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

Culture is definitely a part of it. I come from a rather homogeneous country, I dare say one of the most homogeneous countries in the world, at least when I was growing up (I've also taught in Japan which literally is the third most homogeneous country). And growing up, almost universally children of rich parents excel in school. That's not because rich parents produce smarter children, it's because rich parents encourage (to be charitable) or push (to be uncharitable) education on their children. I have friends from my childhood who are not idiots, but who view themselves as such because they struggle in school, purely because they have no drive to succeed.

What you're saying is something I agree with, and something I think most people agree with, including what the video also agrees with... so, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here overall.

It just when you consider culture and financial situation here in America, schools in poor communities are often lacking in funds due to funds being dependent on the property value of these poor communities, and this starts having racial lines when there exist racial groups that has a history of being being pushed into poverty due to unjust treatment and denied access to useful tools to improve their own situation which includes not having adequate schools within their community, which in turn helped cultivate a culture that doesn't put much emphasis in exceling in school. And while these communities fail, certain other group of people like to use this as evidence on why we should divert more effort & resources away from them, which would more likely make the situation worse for these communities.

I don't remember the exact details, but I do recall sometime within this decade about a heated situation in one of the states near the Mexico border (not Texas or California, so I think it was either Arizona or New Mexico) in which there was a strong republican push to divert more of the education budget to schools that were performing the best over those that were near the bottom. But it just so happen, these 'top' school just so happen to be mostly white, while the 'lagging behind' schools often had a more closer majority of being Hispanic, many of which were probably first or second generation of immigrated families.   

Edited by Clear World
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12 minutes ago, Clear World said:

What you're saying is something I agree with, and something I think most people agree with, including what the video also agrees with... so, I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here overall.

It just when you consider culture and financial situation here in America, schools in poor communities are often lacking in funds due to funds being dependent on the property value of these poor communities, and this starts having racial lines when there exist racial groups that has a history of being being pushed into poverty due to unjust treatment and denied access to useful tools to improve their own situation which includes not having adequate schools within their community, which in turn helped cultivate a culture that doesn't put much emphasis in exceling in school. And while these communities fail, certain other group of people like to use this as evidence on why we should divert more effort & resources away from them, which would more likely make the situation worse for these communities.

Oh indeed that is the effect of it. But my main point is that this division happens in homogeneous countries too, only there it's between the rich and poor. It just so happens that in the USA that the poorest class of people is made up primarily by racial minorities (with the main exception of minorities being East Asians, which proves the point). My main point is that the concept of a higher and lower level class is not to be blamed, a cultural lack of value on education is the issue. Education should be tailored towards students, not students tailored towards education. And having it so students do material that is at their academic level (and do subjects that match their interests) is the way to do it.

I also reckon one of the biggest killers here is the cost of third level education. It's completely understandable that a poorer family would have no interest in education if the reality is that no matter how good their children are, actually affording third level education is outright impossible (yeah, sure, there are scholarships, but not a whole lot of 'em). I, personally, think education at all levels is absolutely vital, but I can't fault someone for completely giving up in secondary school if they know going in that they'll never be able to afford university. It just looks like a waste of time.

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4 hours ago, Jotari said:

I'm a teacher. This is something I am literally dealing with right now. And I can tell you it fucking sucks to hand a an assignment back to a student who cries when they see the grade because they've been put in an advanced English course and they don't understand a word of English. I have students who have been set up to fail and it's completely unfair. Meanwhile having students that are literally falling asleep in class because they know everything already. And I want to help them both, but I can't because 60% of the class are at the appropriate level and they need the most attention.

So back up your claim.

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3 hours ago, Jotari said:

I, personally, think education at all levels is absolutely vital, but I can't fault someone for completely giving up in secondary school if they know going in that they'll never be able to afford university. It just looks like a waste of time.

Well, having an high school diploma or an GED is generally better than just giving up because college is too expensive. But if you don't have the drive to actually improve yourself, chances are that you won't last long when it comes to employment.

Edited by Armchair General
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15 minutes ago, Excellen Browning said:

So back up your claim.

I actually had a classmate who was on the verge of failing Algebra I in high school (in fact, roughly a third of our class was failing). Our teacher actually forced him to solve an equation in front of the class and it took him a little bit more than 5 minutes to do so. Another thing that she did is that she periodically divided the class into 3-8 groups and people were fighting over who gets the nerds on their team because she never said who went where.

But  this was mostly from people not paying attention, half the time. Since she was going over how to solve whatever we were doing, that week and half of the class was getting Cs or worse.

Edited by Armchair General
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As far as I've ever seen, most of the school choice dialogue in the US has been people demanding that they be able to provide a proper Christian education for their children. And you can absolutely hold them back like that if you want. Nobody's going to stop you. I've never really considered it a "debate", it's just the same religious sect that wants morning prayer in public schools giving up on something they don't agree with. I've heard of the concept of charter schools and virtual schools, but only ever in the framework of pointing out how much worse that sort of education is compared to public schools. And that's impressive because I think most of us can point out some flaws with the public schooling system, having actually been there. All of us have only received one education. The only "experts" are the ones that have attended or taught at mulitple types of schools. And even those people would be a mess of disconnected anecdotes.

Edited by Zapp Branniglenn
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1 hour ago, Excellen Browning said:

So back up your claim.

Well if you dismiss my own professional assessment you're probably intent on rejecting any source I do provide. But here's one, just for the sake of it.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277971290_Teaching_Mixed-Level_Classes_with_a_Vygotskian_Perspective

Edited by Jotari
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19 hours ago, Jotari said:

I watched that video when it first came out, haven't watched it since, but from what I remember of it, he-

JOTARI.

Spoiler

unknown.png

My man.

As you are a teacher, I'm actually very interested to hear your take on school choice. I know we disagree on a few other points about education, so it'd be interesting to further compare.

Clear World stuff, put in spoilers for the convenience of anyone scrolling past this post.

Spoiler
20 hours ago, Clear World said:

We currently are living in a period in which republicans in TX created a strange ass bounty laws against abortions just so they could prevent abortions without outright forbidden abortions.

>Post about school choice because it's important and I think it will be a nice, benign, and uncontroversial subject.
>"This reminds me of abortion."

I invited this on myself.

I'm sorry, I just don't see the connection here.

20 hours ago, Clear World said:

If a public school fails, there isn't really much of a means to fix & improve it. We could just let the bad school die since it's bad, but a larger problem may begin to arise when too many public school fail.

For one, just because a family has the ability to select the school the child goes to, doesn't automatically mean the school will allow them to go there. A topic mention in the video is that private/charter school do pick & choose who they allow in for whatever reason, and when a major form of 'fixing' public schools is just to convert them to private/charter schools, it can can create a situation in the future that make poorer families & communities in a worst state as the public schools these family can send the child will more likely have less funds (due to more money being diverted to private schools, thus in turn make the public option have a higher chance to fail even more), along with not really having an option to send the child to a better school because these private institutions doesn't want to take on a high 'risk' student (as already imply, schools with better 'results' will do better, so why spend more and risk lower results with kids who doesn't have a good outlook or situation).

The fundamental mistake in this line of thinking is that you're looking at schools as something which simply "should exist" for the sake of existing, rather than existing for the purpose of educating students. There are schools in the United States passing kids with a 0.0 GPA, which do so unbelievably little for children that I can't fathom any reason it should be preserved.

A misconception which arises is the idea that poor families will be barred from charter schools, but charter schools don't charge tuition.

Another issue which is that it assumes parents taking their kids out of public schools and sending them to private and charter schools is a bad thing because it will decrease the number of public schools. I don't mean to go on about market forces, but it's worth considering that parents take their kids out of public schools because they see them as a bad product, which indicates the public schools are lower in quality and that their budget would be more effective if allocated to another learning institution, perhaps the one people are choosing to go to instead.

Also note that the budget per pupil often goes up when students leave to go to other schools, but that never seems to actually result in better performance.

I also think you're overemphasizing budget. The Success Academy schools (in addition to serving those underprivileged communities you mentioned) are not operating on higher budgets than their public counterparts. They're teaching students from the same population and doing so often in the same building, but are much better schools simply because of how they are run. Money correlates to "good schooling" but does not cause "good schooling", factors that make schools better in more affluent areas are cultural and therefore recreatable, but not purchasable. Throwing more money at a failing system is not going to solve the problem.

20 hours ago, Clear World said:

For another point, de-centralizing education has a lot of room of creating a environment in which people don't even have basic shared understanding. American schools overall already has issues teaching kids the share common knowledge like history. Heck, America right now already has a huge issue on agreeing what is 'reality'. Toss in potentially hundreds of different companies with their own profit driven and/or religious agendas teaching impressionable kids whatever they want & need them to believe in, and this mess will only grow far worst.

Give me one good reason I should trust the government to determine what reality is.

I legitimately hate this argument, I'm sorry, it just drives me nuts. Motherfuckers will say public schools will generate "shared understanding", but what the hell is shared understanding? Can you prove that public schools actually create it, or that even has the benefits you say it does? Then they have the gall to say a child shouldn't only be exposed to one religious or political worldview, no, they need a diversity of worldviews approached and taught from one curriculum. The state has the right to tell every child what they should be taught, parents do not have the right to tell their own children what they should be taught, there should be one governing body which says which ways of teaching are and aren't approved. How arrogant, how self-righteous, how utterly and indefensibly insufferably fucked in the head do you have to think of an idea like that? It's stupid. It's dystopian. It just makes no fucking sense.

Like...you know that giving the department of education greater influence over children is a bad thing, right? That it's inherently hostile to democracy? You are giving a bureaucracy the power to shape the minds of people who will one day vote on whether or not to expand the power and budget of bureaucracies. Do you not see the problem here?

20 hours ago, Clear World said:

So, not to be that against what you're saying. Yes, we should be striving to get better results in education. I think family being able to have more options on how & where they kid get their education is a good thing.

But all that aside, I'm glad to hear you support at least some amount of school choice.

 

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3 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

JOTARI.

  Hide contents

unknown.png

My man.

As you are a teacher, I'm actually very interested to hear your take on school choice. I know we disagree on a few other points about education, so it'd be interesting to further compare.

Clear World stuff, put in spoilers for the convenience of anyone scrolling past this post.

  Hide contents

>Post about school choice because it's important and I think it will be a nice, benign, and uncontroversial subject.
>"This reminds me of abortion."

I invited this on myself.

I'm sorry, I just don't see the connection here.

The fundamental mistake in this line of thinking is that you're looking at schools as something which simply "should exist" for the sake of existing, rather than existing for the purpose of educating students. There are schools in the United States passing kids with a 0.0 GPA, which do so unbelievably little for children that I can't fathom any reason it should be preserved.

A misconception which arises is the idea that poor families will be barred from charter schools, but charter schools don't charge tuition.

Another issue which is that it assumes parents taking their kids out of public schools and sending them to private and charter schools is a bad thing because it will decrease the number of public schools. I don't mean to go on about market forces, but it's worth considering that parents take their kids out of public schools because they see them as a bad product, which indicates the public schools are lower in quality and that their budget would be more effective if allocated to another learning institution, perhaps the one people are choosing to go to instead.

Also note that the budget per pupil often goes up when students leave to go to other schools, but that never seems to actually result in better performance.

I also think you're overemphasizing budget. The Success Academy schools (in addition to serving those underprivileged communities you mentioned) are not operating on higher budgets than their public counterparts. They're teaching students from the same population and doing so often in the same building, but are much better schools simply because of how they are run. Money correlates to "good schooling" but does not cause "good schooling", factors that make schools better in more affluent areas are cultural and therefore recreatable, but not purchasable. Throwing more money at a failing system is not going to solve the problem.

Give me one good reason I should trust the government to determine what reality is.

I legitimately hate this argument, I'm sorry, it just drives me nuts. Motherfuckers will say public schools will generate "shared understanding", but what the hell is shared understanding? Can you prove that public schools actually create it, or that even has the benefits you say it does? Then they have the gall to say a child shouldn't only be exposed to one religious or political worldview, no, they need a diversity of worldviews approached and taught from one curriculum. The state has the right to tell every child what they should be taught, parents do not have the right to tell their own children what they should be taught, there should be one governing body which says which ways of teaching are and aren't approved. How arrogant, how self-righteous, how utterly and indefensibly insufferably fucked in the head do you have to think of an idea like that? It's stupid. It's dystopian. It just makes no fucking sense.

Like...you know that giving the department of education greater influence over children is a bad thing, right? That it's inherently hostile to democracy? You are giving a bureaucracy the power to shape the minds of people who will one day vote on whether or not to expand the power and budget of bureaucracies. Do you not see the problem here?

But all that aside, I'm glad to hear you support at least some amount of school choice.

 

I don't think we ever actually have disagreed on anything. The extent of our conversation on education, from what I recall, is me posting "Another Brick In The Wall" and you stealing Norm McDonald's jokes. I mean we probably do disagree on some stuff, but we haven't had that conversation. 

The argument against school choices seems to be mainly "if you let people have the freedom to self segregate they will,  and segregation is bad". And sure, segregation is bad, I think integration and providing a diversity of perspectives to a person is important, but at the same time, if people want to self segregate shouldn't we let them? We do, globally, self segregate by splitting ourselves into countries and whatnot. Choice and freedom are important values too. Forcing integration seems as immoral to me as forging segregation (fun fact, there was a South American cou try rhat once band intra racial marriage, as in you couldn't marry someone of the same race! I'm not sure how people ultimately reacted to that, I've been meaning to do more research on it).

One thing I can say about the US system is that there seems to be a remarkable lack of standardisation. I remember once talking to a guy on the internet who was a fluent Spanish speaker, but was failing Spanish because he (probably it was a he) spoke Mexican Spanish while the teacher spoke Argentinian Spanish. I expressed surprise that Argentinian Spanish would be the standard (I expected it would be either Mexican or Castilian), and was told there is no standardisation. At least at state level. Basically every distract can just do what they want with their education which seems really unorganized and probably what allows all those you earth abstinence only education schools you hear about. Seems you can just stick school on your building and start teaching people anything. Really the solution should be that there are no good and bad schools to choose from, all of the schools should be of reasonable quality and going to the nearest school should be a no brainer. Of course such a state of things is an ideal and not easily achievable.

In Ireland we have a very different issue with school choice. Well school choice isn't the right term, people can choose to send their children to any school they want, the issue is wether the school will accept the children. The Catholic church has lost almost all it's power in Ireland (and it used to have a lot of power), the one place it still has control is in education. And while they can't expressly refuse to accept a student for not being Catholic, when school spots are competitive, especially in urban areas, that preference is shown. Which basically forces parents to baptize their children when they might rather leave such choices up to the child. I think it's pretty atrocious (the forcing of baptism that is), but it stems from the issue that the schools run by the church are just better than the alternative. If we left it entirely in the hands of the government then they'd probably fuck up 😕 and as someone who went through fifteen years if Catholic school education as a non Catholic I can say they actually do a good job. I'm sure this is an issue in the US too, only with more choice in your forced indoctrination (and more actual indoctrination). I recall a Malcolm in the Middle episode about it.

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1 hour ago, Jotari said:

And sure, segregation is bad, I think integration and providing a diversity of perspectives to a person is important, but at the same time, if people want to self segregate shouldn't we let them? We do, globally, self segregate by splitting ourselves into countries and whatnot. Choice and freedom are important values too. Forcing integration seems as immoral to me as forging segregation (fun fact, there was a South American cou try rhat once band intra racial marriage, as in you couldn't marry someone of the same race! I'm not sure how people ultimately reacted to that, I've been meaning to do more research on it).

I agree that this is a tough balancing act that most likely won't be an easy or quick fix, but we do have a history in which just allowing 'self-segregate' tends to also become 'forced segregation', which also tend to have long lasting negative impact in poorer communities and negative impact on providing a diverse perspective.

----

@AnonymousSpeedFirst off, you seem to think I'm like this hardcore centralization of education with your response, or at least, you seem to put a lot of emphasis with italics and bold. If anything, I'm more or less align with Jotari, base on what he has said so far. So, cool down man.

Spoiler


4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

>Post about school choice because it's important and I think it will be a nice, benign, and uncontroversial subject.
>"This reminds me of abortion."

I invited this on myself.

I'm sorry, I just don't see the connection here.

As much you don't see it as uncontroversial, it easily can be as America already has a history of doing this through education. I wrote the entire abortion bit because it's just a recent example that I could come up at the spot that demonstrates the willingness & length a certain religious group will go to ban something that is still technically legal by law. And the fact that this same group is extremely in favor of school choice does make me worry to a degree.

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

The fundamental mistake in this line of thinking is that you're looking at schools as something which simply "should exist" for the sake of existing, rather than existing for the purpose of educating students. There are schools in the United States passing kids with a 0.0 GPA, which do so unbelievably little for children that I can't fathom any reason it should be preserved.

A misconception which arises is the idea that poor families will be barred from charter schools, but charter schools don't charge tuition.

Another issue which is that it assumes parents taking their kids out of public schools and sending them to private and charter schools is a bad thing because it will decrease the number of public schools. I don't mean to go on about market forces, but it's worth considering that parents take their kids out of public schools because they see them as a bad product, which indicates the public schools are lower in quality and that their budget would be more effective if allocated to another learning institution, perhaps the one people are choosing to go to instead.

Base on the studies I've seen, overall, charters schools perform roughly the same as public schools, and I think that's extremely sad considering since I think our public school system sucks (a sentiment I've posted multiple times already). Though I do read that charter schools tend to get more favorable coverage compared to public schools. 

There are means to prevent a poorer family from selective charter schools that aren't directly tied to tuition.

1) Transportation - Not all state requires charter school to provide free transportation, like Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky. In addition, some Charter schools that do provide free transportation do it through methods that may make it not realistic to use for kids (include those in elementary school), like for a charter school in New Orleans, they tried to go through public transportation. Public transportation has its share of advantages, but it also has certain other disadvantages, like, certain areas required the kid to go through multiple different buses to get to school.

2) The enrollment process & access to that information - I don't actually know or have data to know if there is a difference between public schools and charter schools in the enrollment process. I just bring this up because, depending on how the charter school increase priority for which student gets to attend their school could be an issue. Like, let's say,  students who attend their open houses get a better chance at receiving admission to the charter school. Naturally, this would suck for families that: is unaware of this open house or can't make it to the open house.

3) Selective marketing - I don't know if this is a current issue or not, but this could easily become one if they decide to advertise themselves heavily in more 'favorable communities.

5 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

Give me one good reason I should trust the government to determine what reality is.

I legitimately hate this argument, I'm sorry, it just drives me nuts. Motherfuckers will say public schools will generate "shared understanding", but what the hell is shared understanding? Can you prove that public schools actually create it, or that even has the benefits you say it does? Then they have the gall to say a child shouldn't only be exposed to one religious or political worldview, no, they need a diversity of worldviews approached and taught from one curriculum. The state has the right to tell every child what they should be taught, parents do not have the right to tell their own children what they should be taught, there should be one governing body which says which ways of teaching are and aren't approved. How arrogant, how self-righteous, how utterly and indefensibly insufferably fucked in the head do you have to think of an idea like that? It's stupid. It's dystopian. It just makes no fucking sense.

Like...you know that giving the department of education greater influence over children is a bad thing, right? That it's inherently hostile to democracy? You are giving a bureaucracy the power to shape the minds of people who will one day vote on whether or not to expand the power and budget of bureaucracies. Do you not see the problem here?

I don't have a good reason to trust the government as a whole but handing it over to hundreds of different groups that clearly have deep contrasting & conflicting reality without placing any safeguards seems worst to me. I don't see this divide in understanding disappearing anytime soon, and being looser with current standers when America current standers are rather poor across the nation seems like it will create more leeway to make this issue far worst.

We currently live with a large section of the population thinks our presidential election was heavily rigged and that a former president is still president, while another large section of the population disagrees with that. Where one large population didn't think a pandemic didn't exist for nearly a year while another large section does. Where large sections of population claim they are patriots of America while unironically holding up the confederate flag as their heritage.  Brain-washing can be extremely bad and everything, but when large-scale events that affect most civilians can't even be agreed that it exists, some centralization is probably needed.

 

 

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3 hours ago, Clear World said:

I agree that this is a tough balancing act that most likely won't be an easy or quick fix, but we do have a history in which just allowing 'self-segregate' tends to also become 'forced segregation', which also tend to have long lasting negative impact in poorer communities and negative impact on providing a diverse perspective.

Yeah, but at some point you have to face the fact that self segregation, to some extent, is what people want, and that "fixing" that could only be done with hardcore authoritarianism. Like the example I gave before, imagine not legally being able to marry someone from your own race due to forced integration, I think most people would find that to be unconscionable, even if they're already in committed life long interracial relationships. Now that's an extreme example, but one that actually did exist. On a more benign level, imagine if there's a gym that gets frequented by a certain ethnic group, is that something that should be stopped? Should people only be allowed to register for gyms that are closed to their house no matter how convenient another place might be based on distance to work or other friends one want's to work out with? In the interest of avoiding self segregation, should the government be allowed to decide what gyms people are and aren't allowed go to? I think absolutely not, and I expect most people would agree with me. So long as the gym isn't barring any type of person, I don't see it as harmful if one group of people gravitate towards it. Hell to some extent I have partaken in self segregation. I've been living as a minority in different countries for over half a decade now, and the vast majority of my friends in that time have also been foreign expats. I've had local friends, of course, but the local friends I've made have been the ones that involve themselves with foreign social circles. The people I've gravitated towards are the people with a similar cultural and linguistic background. And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing, especially on the language side of things. Some people literally have no option but to self segregate because you just can't learn a language overnight.

And I didn't know how to work this in naturally, but the USA partakes in open segregation with its voting districts. Voting districts are drawn intentionally to include certain ethnic groups together to "ensure their voices are heard" (so long as those voices are voting for the one drawing the lines). So when the state can blatantly segregate people like that (which I think it shouldn't), I see no issue at all with giving people the freedom to choose and actually choose their own schools. The only major issue it leads to is that of underfunding minority schools. But that's happening anyway already despite decades of a lack of school choice, because a lack of school choice means forcing it based on registered abode, as people already self segregate based on where they live. Unless one wants to say the government can literally decide where someone can or can't live to fulfill ethnic quotas, there's just no way around it. Self segregation exists, and the only way to stop it would be to remove freedom of choice almost entirely.

And that's even accepting self segregation as a valid argument in the matter. I think the republican base is probably way more into school choice for the whole private corporation and general fuck the government aspects of it rather than any intentional racist plot.

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On 11/11/2021 at 12:26 AM, Jotari said:

I don't think we ever actually have disagreed on anything. The extent of our conversation on education, from what I recall, is me posting "Another Brick In The Wall" and you stealing Norm McDonald's jokes. I mean we probably do disagree on some stuff, but we haven't had that conversation. 

I did indeed steal those jokes. I'm not very funny on my own, and they were very factual jokes.

But yeah, I guess I just assumed we had it or something, I probably read something you posted, noted that I disagreed with it, and just figured you understood that we disagreed without actually telling you. To get it kicked off, I think college is an outdated scam.

On 11/11/2021 at 12:26 AM, Jotari said:

One thing I can say about the US system is that there seems to be a remarkable lack of standardisation.

[Other stuff cut for convenience]

Really the solution should be that there are no good and bad schools to choose from, all of the schools should be of reasonable quality and going to the nearest school should be a no brainer. Of course such a state of things is an ideal and not easily achievable.

I secondly disagree with this assessment, assuming I've read it right. Standardization is antithetical to choice. Even if such a state were "easily achievable" it would still be undesirable, since whether a school is of reasonable in quality or not should strictly be up to individual families sending their children to those schools and not bureaus or boards. That's one of many reasons that any family which can homeschool should.

You could just as well have a town of Argentinians with an Argentinian Spanish teacher as one Mexican kid with an Argentinian Spanish teacher, in which case standardized Mexican Spanish would make everything more difficult for everyone. Assuming most of the community was bilingual, offering Spanish at all would be unnecessary.

On 11/11/2021 at 6:37 AM, Jotari said:

Yeah, but at some point you have to face the fact that self segregation, to some extent, is what people want, and that "fixing" that could only be done with hardcore authoritarianism. Like the example I gave before, imagine not legally being able to marry someone from your own race due to forced integration, I think most people would find that to be unconscionable, even if they're already in committed life long interracial relationships. Now that's an extreme example, but one that actually did exist.

>tfw no state-mandated gf to combat racism

On 11/11/2021 at 3:22 AM, Clear World said:

I agree that this is a tough balancing act that most likely won't be an easy or quick fix

1) What does it mean to "fix"? Is there a metric which will indicate that you've "fixed" this?

2) If it's a tough balancing act, be wary of what happens when you fall off and come tumbling down either side.

On 11/11/2021 at 3:22 AM, Clear World said:

And the fact that this same group is extremely in favor of school choice does make me worry to a degree.

Ignoring the other problems with the paragraph you put this in, that's an association fallacy.

On 11/11/2021 at 3:22 AM, Clear World said:

I don't actually know or have data to know if there is a difference between public schools and charter schools in the enrollment process.

On 11/11/2021 at 3:22 AM, Clear World said:

I don't know if this is a current issue or not

Then why even bring it up?

On 11/11/2021 at 3:22 AM, Clear World said:

I don't see this divide in understanding disappearing anytime soon

The divide should remain.

I haven't seen any evidence that public school removes this divide either.

On 11/11/2021 at 3:22 AM, Clear World said:

I don't have a good reason to trust the government as a whole but handing it over to hundreds of different groups that clearly have deep contrasting & conflicting reality without placing any safeguards seems worst to me.

Alright, hear me out.

  • You do not have a good reason to trust the government "as a whole". We seem to be agreed here.
  • People have incompatible views. We seem to be agreed here.
  • People we disagree strongly with can achieve positions of power in government and education. I'm sure we're agreed here, but correct me if I'm wrong.

Where in this line of thinking does it become reasonable to say that we should have more standardization in how things are taught? How is it worse to let others wrongly educate their children if you can guaranteed rightly educate your own? Is it somehow better to potentially have your enemies in charge of education your children- not some nonspecific hypothetical person's children, but your own children?

As stated earlier:

On 11/10/2021 at 9:31 PM, AnonymousSpeed said:

Like...you know that giving the department of education greater influence over children is a bad thing, right? That it's inherently hostile to democracy? You are giving a bureaucracy the power to shape the minds of people who will one day vote on whether or not to expand the power and budget of bureaucracies. Do you not see the problem here?

The problem with a lot of homeschoolers is that they're concerned that the schools are not teaching the "right" thing in the "right" way, implying they would send them to public school gladly if they were "properly" teaching. Yet there are inherent conflicts of interest, even in a non-polarized society, which make this an impossible state of affairs.

On 11/10/2021 at 1:28 PM, Zapp Branniglenn said:

And you can absolutely hold them back like that if you want.

On 11/11/2021 at 12:26 AM, Jotari said:

the schools run by the church are just better than the alternative

Hm'st.

On 11/11/2021 at 12:26 AM, Jotari said:

Well school choice isn't the right term, people can choose to send their children to any school they want, the issue is whether the school will accept the children. The Catholic church has lost almost all it's power in Ireland (and it used to have a lot of power), the one place it still has control is in education. And while they can't expressly refuse to accept a student for not being Catholic, when school spots are competitive, especially in urban areas, that preference is shown.

To be entirely honest, I look down on the selection process for Catholic schools for easily compromising if the kid is good at Rugby. Religious homogeneity is a permissible goal. I may be generally anti-Catholic, but it's reasonable for Catholics to want to an environment aligned with their values.

Do people ever pretend to be Catholic to get into the schools? I find that idea spiritually objectionable. However, I don't image there would be many moral qualms for an atheist about getting water sprinkled on their kid's head and then never showing up to mass or reading the Bible, which is what actual Catholics do anyway.

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4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

I did indeed steal those jokes. I'm not very funny on my own, and they were very factual jokes.

But yeah, I guess I just assumed we had it or something, I probably read something you posted, noted that I disagreed with it, and just figured you understood that we disagreed without actually telling you. To get it kicked off, I think college is an outdated scam.

Certainly a scam when you need to pay over 20k a year for it. And it does lead to a certain level of classism. But at the same time actually knowing stuff is pretty great and having an educated populace is proven to be more beneficial to a state.

Quote

I secondly disagree with this assessment, assuming I've read it right. Standardization is antithetical to choice. Even if such a state were "easily achievable" it would still be undesirable, since whether a school is of reasonable in quality or not should strictly be up to individual families sending their children to those schools and not bureaus or boards. That's one of many reasons that any family which can homeschool should.

You could just as well have a town of Argentinians with an Argentinian Spanish teacher as one Mexican kid with an Argentinian Spanish teacher, in which case standardized Mexican Spanish would make everything more difficult for everyone. Assuming most of the community was bilingual, offering Spanish at all would be unnecessary.

Standardization is important because it provides a level of quality. Simply put, what we know about the world that lets us having all this engineering and advanced farming techniques (though I actually have a bit of an issue with modern farming, though that's for another time) and Fire Emblem games and the like comes from having a body of research that has accumulated over centuries. If there's no agreement upon what that knowledge is and how it should be applied, then it's lost. What you get is people unanimously declaring what is beneficial to know by a subjective decision leading to no one being on the same page.

Quote

>tfw no state-mandated gf to combat racism

Ah yes, the age old stance of "Authoritarianism is great if it improves my chances of getting laid."

4 hours ago, AnonymousSpeed said:

As stated earlier:

The problem with a lot of homeschoolers is that they're concerned that the schools are not teaching the "right" thing in the "right" way, implying they would send them to public school gladly if they were "properly" teaching. Yet there are inherent conflicts of interest, even in a non-polarized society, which make this an impossible state of affairs.

Hm'st.

To be entirely honest, I look down on the selection process for Catholic schools for easily compromising if the kid is good at Rugby. Religious homogeneity is a permissible goal. I may be generally anti-Catholic, but it's reasonable for Catholics to want to an environment aligned with their values.

A Foil Arms and Hog fan, how delightful. Good to see their reach is so widespread.

Quote

Do people ever pretend to be Catholic to get into the schools? I find that idea spiritually objectionable. However, I don't image there would be many moral qualms for an atheist about getting water sprinkled on their kid's head and then never showing up to mass or reading the Bible, which is what actual Catholics do anyway.

Not in Ireland. Almost everyone in Ireland under the age of 75 is only pretending to be Catholic.

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3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Certainly a scam when you need to pay over 20k a year for it. And it does lead to a certain level of classism. But at the same time actually knowing stuff is pretty great and having an educated populace is proven to be more beneficial to a state.

Standardization is important because it provides a level of quality. Simply put, what we know about the world that lets us having all this engineering and advanced farming techniques (though I actually have a bit of an issue with modern farming, though that's for another time) and Fire Emblem games and the like comes from having a body of research that has accumulated over centuries. If there's no agreement upon what that knowledge is and how it should be applied, then it's lost. What you get is people unanimously declaring what is beneficial to know by a subjective decision leading to no one being on the same page.

Nah fam, I don't buy it. I'm saying that even if it were free it'd be a waste of time. These places still pump out humanities majors that can't do basic algebra and self-important PhDs who can't think critically. Colleges give computer science degrees to guys that can't code. Anyone earnestly interested in learning about a subject is better served by the internet and backyard experiments.

That's why I didn't just say it was a scam, but outdated. Perhaps these things were useful a hundred years ago when they were used to foster further learning among legitimately intelligent and self-motivated people, but now going to college is so common that a bachelor's degree has been more devalued than the Iraqi Dinar, and self-motivated people don't need universities to learn and create. Want to make a Fire Emblem game? There's more FOSS and tutorials than you could ever need. I think a lot of people are finally waking up to this.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

A Foil Arms and Hog fan, how delightful. Good to see their reach is so widespread.

A friend showed them to me. They seem neat.

3 hours ago, Jotari said:

Not in Ireland. Almost everyone in Ireland under the age of 75 is only pretending to be Catholic.

That does bring a smile to my face.

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