[duxup]

Some teachers I knew during COVID reported that in some cases nearly half the kids stopped attending online class and just never returned. Parents wouldn't respond to calls / efforts to get them back into class. Some school districts were faced with wondering what to do? Fail huge % of the students?

They chose not to fail them.

My son reports that his math classes for the last two years "are the same thing over and over again".

[Mountain_Skies]

During the first year of schools being shutdown, I was dating a middle school guidance counselor and her experience matched what you posted. She had a very difficult time contacting parents and if she was able to get in touch with them, most said there was nothing they could do about their child choosing not to participate in remote school. She was entirely powerless to do anything except offer remote tutoring services, which apparently no one accepted. I stopped asking her about work because it obviously distressed her to even talk about it.

[mrguyorama]

At the end of the day, if parents don't value education, there's nothing an educator can do to fix that. Even truancy laws can't force a kid to pay attention and do their homework.

[tssva]

It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with valuing education. Not everyone got to work from home during the pandemic. Those in the lower economic class had to continue to work 8 or more hours a day to put food on the table. It is hard to make a kid pay attention to school when they don't want to if you aren't there.

[StanislavPetrov]

Even if there's nothing an educator can do to fix it, what they can do is give the student a failing grade for failing to complete the course. It is a slap in the face to every student who shows up and does the work to "socially promote" kids who don't do the work. Combined with the ongoing elimination of standardized tests, we are left with no metrics to judge students. It is no surprise that our colleges and other "higher educational institutions" are filled with people who should not be there, because they don't even have a basic education.

[prottog]

Perhaps we can stop at least spending the public's money on parents who don't value educating their children.

[bsder]

Holy hell. Have some empathy.

Shitty parents are not the fault of a CHILD.

Offering a child a safe space, food, and possibly education is the least we can do as a society.

[prottog]

You're absolutely right that children are not to be blamed for the sins of their parents. But in order to advance society we must work with human nature to make incentives aligned between disparate entities.

One of the most fundamental parts of human nature is that parents want to see their children do well, and it's often the biggest reason why people toil and overcome great difficulties instead of settling for the minimum it takes to sustain themselves -- all so that their children might enjoy a life better than theirs. Once government steps in between that relationship and guarantees that children will be fine no matter what the parents do or don't do, you remove that important incentive.

Should we let children born to poor parents starve or dumb parents stay uneducated? No, let's do what we can to alleviate that. But how far will you go to ensure that your parentage has no effect whatsoever on your life? Clearly it's not my fault that my parents aren't Yao Ming (7'6") and Ye Li (6'3"), but nevertheless I shouldn't expect to have the same chance at making the NBA as their children. Then why should a child who was born to parents who don't value the qualities it takes to succeed be equally successful as one who was born to parents who did?

In other words, how high should your equalizing bar go, to remove the influence of parents on children, especially in the face of the fact that public educational outcomes in this country are stubbornly refusing to budge as the amount of money spent per pupil rises year after year?

There is legitimate debate to be had here, beyond just downvoting me and calling me an unsympathetic child-hater.

[blacksmith_tb]

That appears to be a false equivalency, Yao Ming doesn't "value" being tall, he is tall. Parents who don't value education may be crappy parents, or they may be hard-eyed realists who think nothing will better the lot of their children. But it's in the interest of a society to not have large numbers of uneducated and angry young people causing havoc.

[giraffe_lady]

We aren't spending the money on the parents though, we are spending it on their children, who deserve that attempt even if they aren't able to fully take advantage of it.

Ruthlessly optimizing use of "the public's money" is not inherently virtuous, but providing the universal opportunity for education is. If it is spent to offer an education, and that offer is not accepted, it is still money well spent.

[mixmastamyk]

A zoom call costs the same if 20 or 40 kids attend.

[prottog]

The last two years have proven that remote learning at the K-12 level does not exist.

[rasz]

>They chose not to fail them.

In Europe this isnt even a possibility. If you pass students without teaching them your school gets audited by state commission.

[maximus-decimus]

I'm seen the elementary math curriculum in Ontario. It is the same year over year, but with bigger numbers, so your son's not wrong, but that doesn't really say if it's because the kids are behind.