[zozbot234]

> The "difficult" kids in school are the ones who need help the most.

Schools do very little to help these kids. There are ways to teach low-performers efficiently (they go under the general rubric of "direct instruction") but they go unused simply because teachers do not want to feel regimented in such a rigid structure, even if that's exactly what yields the best outcomes. (So, I'd definitely disagree with GP that "this segment is by its nature low ROI". It's not 'natural', it's pure dysfunction.)

[rmah]

Very little? In my town's school district, something like 30% of the school's budget is allocated to these "difficult kids". Who make up less than 5% of the student body. They get a LOT of attention and extra help. As far as I can tell though, it doesn't help much.

[zozbot234]

> something like 30% of the school's budget is allocated to these "difficult kids". ...

Much of that money and effort is simply wasted if teachers aren't going to adopt effective approaches towards teaching and helping these kids.

[throwaway210222]

0% should be wasted on the incorrigible. And yes, they exist.

[candiodari]

Even the incorrigible will perform (much) better given 1-on-1 instruction. Less kids per teacher yields better results.

The problem is that performance is exponential. That same 1-on-1 instruction will take a well performing kid to "surgeon".

It will take the incorrigible ... maybe ... to only quit school at 10th grade. Which does directly translate to money for the school these days.

What teachers/schools also effectively like about the incorrigible is that any (lowest wage) idiot that sticks to it will help the incorrigible. Not to surgeon levels, but better than before, sure. For obvious reasons you don't need much math. Some, yes, but not much. Whereas it takes a capable teacher to get good performers even higher.

Teachers are protecting the incompetent among them by doing this.

[dntrkv]

Many of these difficult kids are legit toxic to everyone around them. They make life hell for other students and any of the faculty that dares interact with them.

At my school of ~2,000 I'd say at any given moment there would be at least 30 of these kids (they didn't last long). They were violent. They hit teachers. They were regularly dragged out of classes by police officers. After a few of these interactions, they would be transferred to the problem child school. Our school actually had some great teachers that really cared about the students, but many of these kids were broken. Their home lives were just horrid. Most ended up in juvie and later jail.

Those were the worst of the bunch, but a good 20% of the school was beyond help. Daily fights, constant police presence, tons of kids brought weapons to school, lots of theft, vandalism every day, I could go on... That school was a nightmare, and it wasn't even the worst one in the city.

Point is, there is nowhere near enough teachers and resources to fix these broken kids. Their broken homes are what need to be fixed.

[candiodari]

> Point is, there is nowhere near enough teachers and resources to fix these broken kids. Their broken homes are what need to be fixed.

The problem with that is if you can't fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument's sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day ...

This is not going to work for those kids.

So it depends who you want to help. You want to help disadvantaged kids? This will, certainly in the short term, make it worse for them and make life better for advantaged kids.

[awillen]

Incorrigible literally means they cannot be helped, and the fact is there are kids for whom that is accurate. Giving them one on one instruction doesn't help, because they genuinely do not care. It does take up the time of teachers and burn them out, though, so they're less able to help the kids who are struggling but actually want help.

It's important to distinguish kids who just do not care at all from kids who are struggling, but it's also important to recognize that the former really do exist.

[candiodari]

That's true, but you can't expect these people to accept that, and we live in a democracy. This is not going to be a popular viewpoint in most places.