[esotericn]

Tangent that may be relevant here.

I used to be involved in access work for those from underprivileged backgrounds.

It's very difficult to get poor kids to apply to University even if they have the grades, for reasons I expect are pretty similar (social environment, not 'fitting in', having few role models, etc).

Going back further - tons of them simply don't have the grades or skills, because they weren't interested early on, or weren't supported, or whatever else.

They fall behind at an early age. They're stuck in an environment that doesn't support them.

Changing the statistical makeup of people at that sort of level - at the end of the funnel, after all of the filtering - is really difficult. You need good reason to do so. It's still not clear to me that it actually makes sense - is the world actually better off if half the Ivies are made of poor kids, or have you just shuffled around status (is it zero sum)? Do you get better results - what are the better results you're looking for?

This stuff is difficult.

[HarryHirsch]

to follow up on that: at the high end universities do make an effort to recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds, and they implement programs to bring them up to speed; there are pre-freshmen programs, summer classes, supplement lectures, peer mentorship, &c pp. It actually works.

That said, what is the focus on individual diversity good for? It's the system that holds people back, and as the parent poster says, no amount of individual effort at the end of the funnel is going to make any difference.

[protomyth]

high end universities do make an effort to recruit clever kids from underprivileged backgrounds

I'll believe that when I see recruiters from high end universities out on the reservations in the US, but I guess imposters are easier.

[HarryHirsch]

Earlier the year the wife interviewed for a learning support position at an Ivy, and her hosts for lunch were two students who grew up and went to school in an Hispanic ghetto in LA.

I do not know how school outreach works, but she said they do manage to enculturate people quickly once they are on campus, and the summer programs are grueling for the participants. They include the social parts about fitting in.

[protomyth]

A place in LA is a bit easier to get to then somewhere out where they put the reservations.

[gmueckl]

I agree that this stuff is difficult, but you are seeing things fron a US-centric perspective. Different societies and different cultures have different root causes and mechanisms that create similar inequalities.

[nikofeyn]

> This stuff is difficult.

i don’t think it’s that difficult. the government finds a way to spends billions and trillions of dollars on tons of stuff that has no meaningful impact. if the government cared, they would increase the budgets of schools to fund good teachers’ salaries. if i could pull a six figure salary teaching, i would do it in a heartbeat. but there’s no way i would teach in this current educational environment. hyper focus on standardized testing and curriculum, which also needs to be changed, seems suffocating.

[DannyBee]

These are very complex systems with lots of variables and interdependencies/connections between the variables.

Suggesting that simple, direct, change of the variable that has direct linkage to pretty much all other parts of the system, will achieve some specific result, is almost certainly wrong.

In fact, pretty much every mechanism taught of how to effect change in large scale systems says not to do that.

In this case, this is pretty easy to see - As an example - If you could pull six figures teaching, everyone would want to teach, regardless of whether they should or not.

Solutions to this have obvious affects on other things

(IE increasing credential requirements, or performance reviews ...).

These in turn have effects on other parts of the system, ...

If you really think this is just simple, i'd suggest looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_system#Complexity_mana... and going from there.

[tptacek]

You can definitely pull 6 figures teaching, for what it's worth; the median comp at my kids' high school was over $100k.

[JJMcJ]

Top districts in Bay Area (Palo Alto, Saratoga, Cupertino in Silicon Valley, e.g.) pay senior teachers in that range.

With a pension, lots of vacation.

[neffy]

Wanting to, and being hired to do it, are two very different things.

Increasing the salary for teachers would mainly result in having better teachers, and a slightly higher tax bill.

It's not incorrect to say that there can be unintended consequences. It has been argued that one of the side effects of emancipating women, has been a decline in teaching standards, since the days when that was one of the few jobs women were allowed to do.

[mysterydip]

How would you change the hyper focus on standardized testing and curriculum? That comes at the administrative or local/state/national political level, doesn't it?