[praxulus]

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco, but we have some similar issues with our schools. I'd really prefer to send my son to our local public schools, but if they aren't challenging him appropriately then my wife and I obviously aren't going to just give up on his education. We'll either pay for extracurricular enrichment like the person in this article, move to a wealthy suburb, or send him to a private school instead.

That's a much worse outcome from an equity lens, but there's only so much you can expect people to voluntarily sacrifice for the greater good. Asking higher income parents to risk their children's future is a lot.

[40yearoldman]

> That's a much worse outcome from an equity lens

Bingo, that is the issue, everybody is worried about equity.

You can't have it, we need meritocracy, equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future. It is a recipe for driving society to the lowest common denominator.

You should demand proper education or your money back.

(Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have already driven it this way a bit more)

[com2kid]

Growing up in Seattle in the 90s, the school district was obviously racist and classist. Advanced programs were in the richer (whiter) neighborhoods and poor kids got to go to schools with police wagons out front.

The district charter use to have a line in it saying they had to offer each kid the best education possible. My mother used that line to force the school district to send a taxi to every day to take me up to a richer part of the city with better schools. That line of the charter has since been removed as from what I can tell kids now are at the mercy of their circumstances.

There is some fair arguments to make that mixing kids of different backgrounds together improves outcomes, if you take 1 kid from a poor background and surround that kid with a culture of success, there is a very large chance the kid will pick up on that culture of success and start doing better.

So, kernel of truth behind some of these policies.

IMHO the problem is, this plan only works if the vast majority of students are high achievers. If you have 10% of the students who are high achievers and you mix everyone together, after a few years you end up with no high achievers.

America in general needs to seriously look at how we as a culture approach education, until we fix that, there isn't much the schools can do to actually improve outcomes for underprivileged students en masse.

[brianwawok]

> There is some fair arguments to make that mixing kids of different backgrounds together improves outcomes, if you take 1 kid from a poor background and surround that kid with a culture of success, there is a very large chance the kid will pick up on that culture of success and start doing better.

My understanding is research shows this "evens" outcomes. The worst students do better (Teacher has more time to pay attention to them), the best students do worse (can not get into the really hard stuff, get bored).

If you are in the bottom 25%, you WANT integrated classrooms of all levels.

If you are in the top 25%, you WANT an elite classroom with ramped up work and less distractions.

[upsidesinclude]

>culture of success

There is the crux.

Bad cultures exist and we dont need to celebrate them. Bad culture drags everyone down and makes society worse.

[com2kid]

> Bad cultures exist and we dont need to celebrate them. Bad culture drags everyone down and makes society worse.

We need to ask why those bad cultures exist and take steps to remediate the underlying problems.

In Seattle, one of the richest cities in one of the richest countries in all of human history, some of the public schools still have leaded drinking pipes that "may be safe" for kids to drink from.

For the vast majority of working adults in America, a job means unreliable shifts, being treated with outright cruelty by management, and pay that isn't enough to cover health insurance premiums.

Given that, why is anyone surprised that kids don't "apply themselves"? What are their parents going to say? "Work hard and you to can be in debt and barely afford to pay rent!"

[v0idzer0]

People generally do what is expected of them. If you’re dropped into a class with higher expectations, you perform better. Lower expectations and you perform worse. We are all optimized to do what’s required of us and conserve excess energy.

[phonon]

Or you find the difficulty is too high, and you drop out.

[IIsi50MHz]

Or too low, and you mentally check out.

[gnicholas]

> Growing up in Seattle in the 90s, the school district was obviously racist and classist. Advanced programs were in the richer (whiter) neighborhoods and poor kids got to go to schools with police wagons out front.

I grew up in Sacramento in the 80's/90's, and the best schools were not in the rich/white areas. The top-performing schools were in so-so neighborhoods, and the schools were very diverse. Best of all, you could test in and enroll from anywhere. We literally had a kid in HS who drove down halfway from Tahoe each morning. It wasn't perfect, but it was much, much better than what we have now, as this article shows.

[adrr]

Wasn't Garfield the school that had the advanced classes and the smartest kids in the district that were bused in? Its in central district of Seattle which has the highest population of minorities of any other district.

[kridsdale1]

I live close to it, but don’t yet have school age kids and haven’t researched its reputation. This is good to hear.

[seanmcdirmid]

Now its sort of the opposite? We'd love to send our kid to Seattle's Chinese immersion program, but they only offer it in poorer South Seattle while we live in richer North Seattle. There was an effort to make elementary kids go to school before 8AM just to make some more bussing feasible, bussing that only applies to non-neighborhood kids attending the schools from poorer parts of the city.

[smaudet]

> equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future

Equality of outcome can be an undesired outcome, equality of opportunity is completely different.

The only trouble is getting the opportunities to be equal - there must be no advantage that can be unfairly given to one more deserving student than another, being able or willing to send your children to summer bootcamps must be an option for all children (who qualify), not whether you pay for it with time or money, e.g.

Free college is fantastic, but once again you confuse opportunity with outcome, and not even for the same individuals - parents are unburdened by cost, but in fact the opportunities are far from equal - money does not a quality education make, yet the majority or colleges are run as for profit institutions, not places that accept students based on their merits or potentials, nor do they actually try to actively shed students who are undeserving. Party culture does not need or require an expensive room and board situation, yet it pervades nearly every 'higher' education institution, only somewhat subsiding when graduate/doctorate programs become involved, and academics are once again taken seriously.

I.e. your meritocracy does not exist precisely because universities are busy making profits not teaching students.

[ALittleLight]

No, equality of opportunity is cruel and counter productive for exactly the reasons you mention. You cannot realistically achieve equality by elevating everyone, which means you need to focus on taking away from people.

The moral and practical thing to do would be focusing on improving objective outcomes. Focusing on equality degrades objective outcomes in favor of moral perversion - taking away from some to make others feel better.

Imagine the child of two millionaire college professors. What will you do to equalize this child's opportunity with a child in the inner city of (pick a bad city)?

[Cymrukicks]

To answer your question first you make sure that child has the same education resources available that the professors child does throughout all aspects of their life. You also make the professors available to children from those inner city areas widening the networking effects that the children of the professor gets. they won't be as good but you open them up.

Improving objective outcomes is some Krypton level shit, "Your a black doctor and were trained to be one from birth due to the outcome we wanted." "I wanted to be an artist."

[mlrtime]

"throughout all aspects of their life".

You meant at t0, the movement the baby is born to a parent optimizes education vs a baby that is born to a parent that cares much less. Impossible for government to "make sure" this happens.

[smaudet]

That is where the problem lies, yes, the inequality is as they "systemic", rooted in practical reality.

There is no real way to perfect this - but if an effort is made a good result can be achieved nonetheless. The fallacy with the professor example is that they will have the time to teach their child, and that their child must necessarily be receptive to their limited tuition.

Unless they quit their job, and thus are no longer professors, a majority of their time will be spent teaching multiple students, and while one on one coaching has it's merits there is also value in classroom peer experiences. If an effort is made to provide tutoring to all the kids, it may even be in the parents interest not to provide tutoring services, if the quality is good, because that takes away from their own time spent being able to provide the most effective teaching experience they can offer.

We can't build perfect bridges, but we can sure as hell mandate they are good enough, it's some nonsense to say we shouldn't try because we can't get it perfect.

[pandaman]

The child of the professors has the parents who are supposedly smart and teach him or her all the time at home, how exactly do you make this available to children from those inner city areas?

[Cymrukicks]

It's called a teacher you find them in schools. If you pay them properly and give them adequate resources they can achieve these goals. You also add in libraries and other places where kids can learn independently.

[staunton]

> this is what we will get 10x with free college

That seems quite different. First, lots of countries have free higher education and seem to do just fine. Second, lowering price of entry is orthogonal to lowering expected performance. Your argument does not apply.

[ElFitz]

Some countries even pay students to attend their highest ranking engineering schools.

[upsidesinclude]

>highest ranking engineering

By defintion some of the highest performing students who must compete for entry.

These are not apples alike.

[ElFitz]

This is what I was answering to:

> (Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have already driven it this way a bit more)

But perhaps good colleges in the US just accept anyone that walks through the door and can pay the tuition?

[upsidesinclude]

Effectively. US universities work on a growth model, expanding their student body and capital investment for tax purposes and to increase profits. There is always some school that will accept a student for the sake of those unforgivable government supplied student loans

[SideQuark]

Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US. Is that the outcome we want? Fewer educated?

[leoedin]

Maybe? The idea that "more formal education is better" is kind of silly when you dig into it. What value does it give society to have a huge percentage of people spend some of their most important years learning things which are completely perpendicular to whatever career they might do?

Education at this point feels like exploitation. We tell people that they can achieve greatness, they just have to pay huge amounts to a college to be educated, when the truth is that most of the value of college is networking and status signalling, and the value of those is pretty much directly related to how prestigious the institution is.

Yes, we should set up a system that allows all people, whatever their background, to pursue a liberal arts education if they're passionate about it. But a system that makes a pretty useless and very expensive degree a barrier for entry for completely unrelated jobs is just exploitative.

[SideQuark]

> Maybe? The idea that "more formal education is better" is kind of silly when you dig into it

If you believe that is true, then why would a country want to pay for it? After all, the world isn't limited to your strawmen.

The reason it's valuable to countries the world over, why so many want to pay for it, and why most all of them provide some level of public paid education, is it demonstrably results in a population that ends up with a higher standard of living.

Dont believe it? Simply check Google scholar.

[ElFitz]

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US.

Really? Says who? Because the OECD certainly doesn’t seem to think there’s any significant difference.

https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...

https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/adult-education-level.htm

[SideQuark]

From your data, median and mean among OECD with state paid tertiary education is 42% and 43%. US is 51.2%.

So the mean and median is around 20% less people with tertiary educations.

When you say no significant difference, what is your threshold? 50% less people educated? 20% is a huge difference.

[ElFitz]

Yes, but most countries in general have lower tertiary education rates.

If I too were to play the data cherry picking game, I could point out that Norway is at 55%.

How does that prove anything?

It just disproves your unfounded assertion:

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US

I really fail to see how any of this proves any causality between free college and lower or higher education rates.

But it seems you enjoy shifting goalposts, so perhaps we should end it here?

[yakubin]

Lithuania and Poland say hello: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_...>

[SideQuark]

That's 2014 data. Here's 2022 Poland data. https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/population-with-tertiary-educat...

Lithuania doesn't have free college https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

[yakubin]

> Lithuania doesn't have free college

My bad. I assumed free college is standard in that region.

[kahirsch]

> Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US.

That used to be true.

[elashri]

Do you mean per-capita or over all? Because a very few countries with a bigger number of populations than US have free-education. If the former, can you provide a data source?

[revelio]

They mean per capita. Countries with very cheap or free university allow very few people to go on such terms, relative to the size of the population.

[jpgvm]

Yes but they also generally don't offer bullshit degrees that people obtain and then end up working at McDonalds.

Germany, Switzerland, Belgium all come to mind as countries with free or near-free education that while they don't graduate the same % of their population through tertiary eduction it's not for lack of available opportunity but rather many people choose not to pursue tertiary eduction.

This is actually a good thing because they are often choosing alternatives like vocational education that is more suited to their career choices.

Baristas with university degrees is the outcome of pushing everyone to get a degree and is common place in both the US, Canada and Australia as a result as all 3 have this same notion that you need a degree to get a job. Atleast in Australia and Canada you don't also get saddled with crippling debt.

[throwaway71271]

looking at how things are going, why would you want more educated people?

[2muchcoffeeman]

Making tertiary education free doesn’t mean you lower your standards like they have done here.

[praxulus]

If anything free education allows you to raise your standards. The group of applicants who are academically qualified should be strictly larger than the group that's both academically qualified and willing to pay tuition. With a larger pool of qualified applicants you can afford to reject more of them.

(Caveat: This doesn't work if the point of your university is mostly to signal that its graduates came from a family wealthy enough to send them to your university.)

[eternityforest]

Without some level of equity, what exactly is the point of meritocracy?

A pure meritocracy wouldn't prioritize curing rare diseases or ending poverty, and might not reduce suffering as much as a more equitable society, even if that equitable society has less raw talent and education, so obviously there's an optimal point.

That optimal point may be a function of the current state of tech, as more and more of the stuff people need education for is done by AI.

It's not like they're ever going to have zero high achievers, even without school at all there's always going to be a few genuises.

On the other hand, the better AI gets, the less anyone outside the top 1% actually needs math, because AI may be able to do most of what an average person could learn without unrealistic amount of effort way beyond their motivation.

[cptcobalt]

I think it's moreso effective co-optimization between equity and meritocracy.

I went to private schools, and even kids of parents with money can wind up very unintelligent—placing them in the same classes as overachievers is good for neither. Same concept as bright kids from underprivileged families, let's bend over backward to get them in the same classes as the overachievers too.

[Der_Einzige]

That term "meritocracy" was coined originally in a book that was highly critical of meritocratic societies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy

[revelio]

And "woke" originally was used in a positive sense, but does it matter? Lots of terms change their meaning or get adopted because they are useful. Meritocracy is a useful shorthand for a system in which individual skill, effort and achievement are what matters for outcomes. If we didn't use that word we'd need another but what would it be?

[shrimp_emoji]

And apparently everyone thought the book was satirical and embraced the word as a positive concept. :p

(But then, of course, you realize that you've merely shifted the game of haves and have-nots to other kinds of "have" and feel the hubristic urge to socially engineer your way to equal outcomes.)

[Psyladine]

People bought into the seductive lie of fairness is what happened, even when the sentiment was the opposite.

Compare "blood is thicker than water", which was rooted in the opposite conclusion, that the blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb, i.e. your relationships and social bonds outcompete genetic ties.

The failing of meritocracy is that it is tautological; those who succeed did so because they must have been successful. It can't bear scrutiny because, as it turns out, we can have neither fair nor equal grounds for competition (if we're measuring results as comparative, which is the case here), but people secretly desire unfairness as long as there's a chance they will benefit, even if they are not the beneficiary of a given instance or result. See monarchies, lotteries, CEO pay discrepancies, etc... what matters is there was an arbitrary chance you're dealt out at the top.

[GoblinSlayer]

I think the problem is created by strong connotations of the word "loser", otherwise being poor would be no worse than inability to draw.

[adamredwoods]

We have two friends whose kids are in two different Seattle middle schools, and the anecdotes we hear are not going well. One middle school was considering getting rid of advanced courses entirely.

We're in East Renton, which usually follows Seattle, but they have kept honor courses. In fact, honor courses are encouraged to take, open to everyone, and from what I understand, no one is rejected (possibly only for the first year). I like this approach better than 'algebra for no one'.

Yes, the better school districts are east of Seattle, and this is why all those homes are retaining their skyrocketing value.

>> Asking higher income parents to risk their children's future is a lot.

We're not wealthy at all, so if the Renton school system follows Seattle, we're not going to waste our child's future on crap education.

[echelon]

You're not going to improve the lives of impoverished children by lowering the bar. It's absurd.

The best solution I can think of is to pay children to succeed in academics or extracurriculars (STEM, clubs, sports, arts, etc.) A student wouldn't have to be gifted in math, just apply themselves to some interest that drives them.

Give them a score-based percentage of $200/mo for hitting certain criteria each month. Playing for the school sports team, being in the band, getting involved in photography. Something positive in academics, arts, leadership, cooperation.

Paying kids would teach valuable lessons about finance and build up a reward system that would serve them later in life as they begin to associate action and achievement with positive outcomes. It should still work even if they don't have a suitable environment at home to discover this on their own.

Right now school is basically daycare. It can teach those that are properly prepared at home to pay attention, but it fails so many others.

[com2kid]

> You're not going to improve the lives of impoverished children by lowering the bar. It's absurd.

As a poor kid in Seattle, I am now no longer poor because of a high bar.

In my high school (West Seattle High School!) we edited DNA. We spliced DNA, inserted a gene, closed it up, and made bacteria change color. It was awesome.

> The best solution I can think of is to pay children to succeed in academics or extracurriculars

Unfortunately, extrinsic motivations mess people up and don't end well long term.

[HlessClaudesman]

Extrinsic motivation works, for a decent percentage of people, as long as the reward keeps comming. Therefore it would probably need to be coupled with more vocational training/ apprenticeships/ internships to ease passage into the adult world of extrinsic motivations.

[com2kid]

> Extrinsic motivation works, for a decent percentage of people, as long as the reward keeps comming.

Therein lines the problem.

Pay people enough $ and they'll go to the gym and get in shape, but once the $ stops they'll almost universally stop going.

Take people who have a regular gym habit, start paying them, stop paying them and most of them will stop going to the gym, adding in the extrinsic motivation will actually destroy the intrinsic motivation (and pleasure!) they once had around the activity.

With enough extrinsic only motivators, people stop feeling any actual joy in life, everything becomes a fight for an external reward.

[HlessClaudesman]

How can a public institution foster intrinsic motivation within an individual? Better to focus limited resources on what institutions have some competence at: throwing money at a problem.

[voidfunc]

This sounds nice but would quickly be abused by households with shitty parents (gamblers, drug addicts, alcoholics etc) that would take the kids money. Better to somehow subsidize higher education through some kind of credit system they can earn and then use to pay for college later on... of course the problem then is it would have to scale with the rising cost of tuition.

[supportlocal4h]

Why pay for college later on when you could pay for high school now? School districts charge thousands of dollars in fees per student directly to parents. Public school is not free even if it is greatly subsidized. Our state claims it costs something like $25k/year to educate one student. If taxes, etc cover 95% of that, the parents are on the hook for $1250 per child.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

>>> You're not going to improve the lives of impoverished children by lowering the bar. It's absurd.

I definitely agree with this

>>> Give them a score-based percentage of $200/mo for hitting certain criteria each month.

I would love if this would work, but unfortunately there is no easy answer. In fact, MacArthur Genius Award Winner and John Bates Clark medalist Roland Fryer managed to somehow persuade entire school districts to test your very assertion at scale, and the results were not straightforward as you seem to believe [1]

Incentives dont quite work like you expect them ...

[1] https://www.econtalk.org/roland-fryer-on-educational-reform/

[cptcobalt]

> Give them a score-based percentage of $200/mo for hitting certain criteria each month.

Yes, let's embed the fundamentals of wage-slavery at even younger ages.

[revelio]

Being given rewards for hitting specific targets is the opposite of wages. Wages come more or less regardless of what you do, as long as you don't get fired. This would be more like bonuses or self-employment. Also it's not much different to rewarding kids with pocket money for doing household chores. This doesn't mess kids up, more like the opposite: it teaches them that work leads to rewards.

[nordsieck]

> I live in Seattle

Luckily, everyone in the area gets access to Running Start[1]. Doesn't address the earlier years of schooling, though.

If your children are in HS, I'd really recommend sitting downing with a HS councilor to make sure that your kids take the classes that are required by the district for HS, but aren't required for a college degree (I'm thinking of speech here, but there may be others) in the first 2 years of HS. That way they get the most benefit out of their Junior and Senior years, if they decide to go that route.

I'm honestly not sure how the GPA thing works - I know AP classes can sometimes let kids increase their GPA above 4.0 for admissions purposes. But as someone who did both Running Start and AP classes, IMO, the actual college credit was way more valuable. But I also went to school in state, so those credits transferred nicely. May be a totally different story if you're shooting for Ivys.

---

1. https://www.k12.wa.us/student-success/support-programs/dual-...

[pfannkuchen]

I found the actual impact of AP credits disappointing. I ended up with no gen ed classes and started off in sophomore classes for math and physics. AP doesn’t count towards college GPA, and it turns out that others ended up with GPA padding that I missed out on. Still turned out fine overall, the GPA padding thing just didn’t occur to me in high school and no one pointed it out.

[Der_Einzige]

Good, gen eds were basically a waste, and getting them done ahead of time meaningfully reduces the university cost burden to students.

[brianwawok]

Who do you tell your GPA to? I stopped listing GPA after my first job. When I get a resume from someone that went to college 10 years ago and lists a 3.245 GPA, I laugh.

[pfannkuchen]

Yeah, today it doesn’t matter at all. The others I referenced in my post were other people in college, e.g. while I was applying to internships, not anyone today. Though I do still include it on my resume, I had kind of assumed that people will think it was very low if you omit it.

[nordsieck]

1. My understanding is that education is much more important in Europe than the US. From what I gather, people with long careers often still lead with their education credentials. Not sure why.

2. I think it really depends on the person's career. If they've had 7 jobs in 10 years, yeah - GPA probably isn't super relevant. But if someone's been at the same place for 10 years, maybe it's not the worst thing.

IMO, the 1 page (with large text) rule is more important. GPA should probably fall off before relevant job related stuff, but there's no harm in keeping it there if the resume has the space.

[firstlink]

Yeah but what about when their GPA is 3.254? Bet you're not laughing then! /s

[brianwawok]

Lol. I even had someone with like 8 years of work experience put a 2.5 GPA on their resume.

I would have done a phone screen.. but with that low of a GPA, and the judgement to put it on your resume? Pass.

[forgetbook]

It could be the case that this person is attempting to show a rags-to-riches story of hard work in the 8 years since their experience in higher ed?

[buildbot]

Running start is an incredible program - beyond offering far more advanced and faster paced classes, it also really helped me personally mature and see vastly different people and perspectives than where in my age group at high school.

[icelancer]

I did this in HS decades ago and had to fight guidance counselors to get it done. Fortunately, it's much easier now. I cannot recommend this program highly enough.

[seanmcdirmid]

Running start applies to the entire state of Washington, and since 2013, all Washington state schools are pretty well funded (even if that means taking money away from richer Seattle area property tax districts).

[bradlys]

They don’t generally transfer for Ivys. Running start is something you do if you have no intention of going to prestigious private universities as it’s completely pointless (credits don’t usually transfer) and they don’t have a great process for evaluating such students into their programs. You’d only do it if you plan to go to a school in your state since transferring credits out of state isn’t always easy going.

[oasisbob]

Running start credits, being based on community college credits, don't even transfer cleanly to state schools. When I did running start, this was the cautious advice.

There are plenty of other reasons to do running start, aside from transfer credits. Access to higher level subjects you wouldn't have access to otherwise.

Personally, I traded high school PE for scuba and yoga, a full year of A&P, college calculus, and an intro year of psych.

Transfer credits had very little to do with it - it was just a more fulfilling curriculum.

[nordsieck]

> Running start credits, being based on community college credits, don't even transfer cleanly to state schools. When I did running start, this was the cautious advice.

My understanding is that there are been a number of reforms to WA community colleges that mean that a larger portion of community college credits transfer to public universities now. Of course, going out of state is a roll of the dice as always.

> Transfer credits had very little to do with it - it was just a more fulfilling curriculum.

Very true. I loved taking Microbiology as a HS student. Def something I wouldn't have gotten the chance to do normally. And CC offers far more advanced math than HS.

[testfoobar]

Wealthy suburbs are cutting advanced classes too. Palo Alto Unified School District is dropping dual-enrolled Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra (classes taken after AP Calculus BC).

https://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2023/03/29/cancellatio...

[georgeecollins]

My kid is on this track exactly and I think it is a joke that some kids take multivariable calculus or linear algebra in high school. Enrichment and AP has become an arms race for the upper middle class to get their kids into good schools. Realistically, if you are STEM major you probably are going to have to retake these classes anyway. And if you aren't you probably won't need them.

I know some kids are really exceptional and maybe ought to take this much math that young. But I think a lot do it now to get into a college.

[desertrider12]

I did have to retake multivariable (calc 3) and linear algebra, but I'm grateful for that senior year HS class because: - the college versions were a breeze, which was a relief because the workload from other courses was high - having a good intuition about divergence & curl made physics (electromagnetism) easier, and linear algebra was used in differential equations before I actually took linear algebra

So I think for a high school student who knows they're heading for STEM, with room on their schedule, it can still be a good choice.

[tomp]

Math is a hard, abstract, mental discipline, so it’s very plausible that mere exposure to some concepts increases the subsequent understanding.

For example, I was one of the best students in class, yet it took me about a year to really get stochastic processes.

Taking advanced classes could be valuable even if you need to retake them.

[testfoobar]

Couple of points. 1) Colleges expect students to take the most advanced curriculum available. With grade inflation across the board, AP and Honors classes are not the distinguishing factor they used to be. 2) With the entire world's resources at their fingertips an ever larger cohort of kids is advancing to higher level math classes at earlier stages.

Frankly, Multivariable and Linear Alg. is on the low end of the ability of advanced high school kids these days. The ease of deploying tensor flow has gotten a lot of kids motivated to learn linear algebra.

[netjiro]

> I think it is a joke that

Standards change greatly with time and it is a joke to believe that applying the same standards to everyone will get a good outcome.

Anecdata: I would have loved to get the possibility to study higher math at high school level, at school. I had to dig it out on my own since the local school topped out after basic calculus, linalg, statistics. I was not alone.

Today I would estimate that top 5% could easily and happily handle multivariate, ode/pde, etc in high school given proper support and encouragement.

Top few percent learn several times faster than average. What is the point, other than ancient ideology, to slow them down and hinder their learning progress?

[seanmcdirmid]

I wish they would teach these classes with some context in high school. Rather than have a course on linear algebra, they could do something like Intro to Machine Learning or intro to writing a good physics engine, or perhaps computer graphics. Teaching linear algebra without context, especially to high schoolers, doesn't seem to be very useful, but adding in the context (at the expense of maybe depth) could be transformative.

[mlrtime]

I'll cancel your anecdote with mine.

I didn't take any advance math in HS and actually did quite average. By some miracle I was admitted a very good Electrical Engineering program. However they made me take these advance math classes before university to prove that I could handle the task.

Removing these options from HS just lowers the bar for everyone.

[LeanderK]

I wholeheartedly agree. Exceptions to the rule always exist and I don't want it to be impossible, but they should be entirely optional and non-standard. You are going to re-learn it anyway (and learn it better, from first principles instead of patched together).

It's also an arms race that's misplaced. STEM majors are learning math anyway, there really are diminishing returns in cramming more of it into your school curriculum. A lot of different subjects are way more useful, ideally some that do exactly not prepare yourself for a major of your choice, otherwise you end up with over-optimised education. You need some social studies and discuss current topics moving america and the world. You need to write essays about these difficult topics. You need a little bit of science and a little bit of history. And a foreign language. It's about the abstract ideals of education, afterwards you can choose the major you want.

[PhilipRoman]

I wish I had studied more math during highschool. University killed any free time I had and was so fast-paced that proofs were omitted, entire chapters skipped and I'm not even talking about building intuitive understanding of the subject.

In contrast, high school was three years of repeating the same equation solving with some calculus sprinkled on.

[prpl]

I have a hard time believing above average students (with parents with parents without engineering/science degrees) could take linear algebra and multi variable calculus at university rigor along any other courses they are required to take. Sure, maybe at Paly and Gunn there’s enough to fill a 20 person class, but those are still pretty steep courses which require math majors and not math education majors.

If the students are prepared enough for those classes, what’s the point in keeping them in High School anyway?

I had a strange experience where I had a bunch of AP courses lined up my senior year and then moved to a place which did not have nearly any of them. In hindsight, I should have really pressed for direct enrollment to college instead of faffing around my senior year in “communication skills”, AP english, and “Economics” - all three required by the school district but mostly useless.

[com2kid]

> I have a hard time believing above average students (with parents with parents without engineering/science degrees) could take linear algebra

Linear algebra is not hard. I had a math teacher who taught the basics of linear algebra in my middle school math class. While she was an exceptional teacher (incredibly good, we still talk over 25 years later!), I can attest that the concepts presented no great difficulty to any of the students (with the caveat that all of us were in an advanced learning program)

Now calculus, I feel that at least some high school students I've talked to really didn't "get it", even for single variable. Then again I get the feeling that most people who take calculus don't get it, which I find sad because IMHO calculus is absolutely phenomenal. For me, it was when math started really connecting to the real world and making an impact on how I saw things in my day to day.

[staunton]

> Linear algebra is not hard

Keep in mind that this term covers a huge range of math that can be introduced at very different levels of abstraction and generality. You might think linear algebra is mainly matrix multiplication and Gaussian elimination, someone else might think it's about the representation functor in Abelian categories.

[com2kid]

We're talking about HS intro classes, so my use of Linear Algebra was at the same level as saying, well, Algebra. E.g. Non-math major uses of those terms.

Almost any subject in math can go really deep!

[staunton]

Yes. However, I read your post as suggesting (given the quote you respond to) that significant numbers of high school students can/should take university level courses of the same name as their high school courses, presumably because it's the same thing.

[testfoobar]

For many advanced kids, math is not hard. It is a tool that must be mastered to solve the next set of problems. Profound understanding comes along the way.

[lokar]

At some point the answer should be to support students just taking a class or two at a local university. This is totally reasonable.

[jakeinspace]

My senior year math course (after Calc BC in grade 11) was discrete math at the community college across the street. Felt a little embarrassing for us to take up half the classroom, sitting next to adults, and realizing that most of us high schoolers were towards the top of the class. But other than that unfortunate situation, I think it was a good system, and if anything, cheaper for the school district than finding someone to teach in-house.

[testfoobar]

This is in fact how the programs are structured at many high schools with dual-enrollment. Most top high schools in the Bay Area offer such options for Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra. What Palo Alto is doing is dropping formal support of the program - in practice that has meant bringing college professors to school sites and providing these classes without fees for students. Without formal support, students have to pay and have to commute.

[UncleEntity]

I went to community college in California and there were high school kids in some of my classes.

Not that I was taking particularly hard classes or anything so I think they were just getting a leg up on the prerequisites for later on.

[lokar]

My school only offered one language and I wanted a different one. So I went to the nearby public university.

[testfoobar]

These courses are the next step after Calculus BC. Lots of kids take them with the support of their high school. Paly & Gunn combined have something like 90 kids who take Calc BC their junior year.

[gramie]

The real problem is the insane policy of the U.S. to fund schools locally. That way, you will always have better schools in the richer areas and worse schools in the poorer areas.

In Ontario (Canada), schools are funded by the province. Schools doing worse can access addition funding and other resources. In 2020 teachers earned an average of $103,000/year including benefits. In Toronto, which has a high cost of living, the average was $108,000.

That's not to say that school quality doesn't vary, often by household income. Poorer people often have language issues (immigrants) and can't afford to pay for extra help for their kids, or don't have free time to work with them. The system is still stacked against them, but not nearly as badly.

The American "I got mine" method of school funding seems like the worst possible choice.

[laverya]

This isn't a funding problem - SF's schools spend ~$17,500/student/year, while the California average is ~$14,000/student/year.

LA Unified is currently ~16,000/student/year.

It looks to me like SF actually gets significantly more money per student than people in the suburbs.

[hintymad]

> In Ontario (Canada), schools are funded by the province.

California too, yet California has one of the most corrupted education systems. Case in point, the Bay Area schools couldn’t even afford school buses

[golergka]

I grew up in Russia, and education system at the time was mostly the same as it was in Soviet times.

Still, there was a whole system of special schools, both for high and low achievers. I have went to a “math/physics” grade school from the start, and subsequently changed schools two times, each time through hard entrance exams, to finally end up in the most challenging/prestigious school in the country.

It's completely mind boggling to me that a communist country has such a system, but a capitalist country is trying to bring everyone to common denominator.

[say_it_as_it_is]

The greater good isn't dumbing down but wising up. The former is the current strategy. Don't play their game.

[seanmcdirmid]

Same boat. He is in SPS now, but as a kindergartener. We will kick the can down the road and do something if he gets bogged down in a watered down curriculum. I get the equalization goal, but when kids in China are starting calculus, not algebra, in 9th grade, we can't just ignore that.

[option]

in what universe sacrificing child’s education (even if the child is from wealthy family) leads to some greater good. It is a lose-lose proposition for everyone.

[bigbacaloa]

This is the essence of NIMBY reasoning.

[b59831]

And the kids who's families can't afford to move/go to private school pay for the rich family's idealism.

[icelancer]

The rich families are not the problem here. The public schools with the tyranny of low expectations are the issue.

[pseudostem]

I will have to disagree with both you and GP to a certain degree.

A developed country is not where even the poor have cars, it's where even the rich use public transport - a quote attributed to many including LKY.

Extrapolating this to the current argument (disclaimer: not read the article), if the same system is thrust onto the rich and poor alike, it should get better over a period of time, no?

This is a complicated question, thoughts welcome.

[supportlocal4h]

My child attends a small, arguably underfunded, rural public school. It does not have enough faculty to teach Chemistry or Physics every year. Spanish is the only foreign language taught.

The student body generally excels. A graduating class of 120 students might have a dozen who score 30+ on the ACT. And, of course, there is perhaps an equal number who fail to graduate.

They all go to the same school, but I wouldn't say "the same system is thrust onto the rich and poor alike." The most important system in the education of a child is not within the walls of a school. It is within the walls of their home.

It is simply true that a certain level of affluence is necessary to provide a stable learning environment * in the home *. Affluence does not guarantee that stability, but it increases the odds so dramatically that its affect should not be ignored.

[jonhohle]

That’s a very specific view of a mostly urban environment. Forcing an encumbered, Orwellian institution on a populace against their will does not seem very developed.

(I say that as a husband to a public school teacher, son of a public school teacher, and father of children attending public school.)

[celeritascelery]

No, it’s the school board of San Francisco who is making the poor kids pay. They can’t afford to get private schooling, and their school is actively preventing them from succeeding.

[keeganpoppen]

i'm curious in what sense you mean that they "pay"... public schools could easily just offer these classes, ex idealism, but they choose not to in the name of Equity. and it's not because the rich kids go and attend private school instead-- their rich parents still pay property taxes like everyone else, so i don't really know how that flight would shift an extra burden on to the kids that don't move schools. i guess school funding is tied in some formulaic sense to the number of kids that attend that specific school? but even that roundabout justification has the causality backward: the un-offering of the course is what leads to the rich kid flight in the first place-- seems to me that the only "idealism" that is being "paid" for here is that which is being promulgated by the Church of "Equity". but it is true that the non-rich kids are the ones stuck paying for it. (but where do the kids of these high priests of Equity go to school? i have a hunch...)

and beyond that, isn't the whole point of GP's comment that the idealistic rich people are trying to / would like to leave their children in public schools? what's idealistic about sending your kids to private school instead? seems like the exact opposite to me.

so other than "pay" not making any sense, "idealism" not making sense, and randomly swapping whose (not "who's") idealism is being paid for, your reply makes perfect sense.

like, when people make comments like this, do they think that they are saying anything in particular, or is it just about the words sounding good in a certain order, like music lyrics? it's like some sort of pathos DDoS. but, hey: at least "your heart's in the right place", right?