[tyoma]

I think the core issue is that we expect institutions like schools to do multiple, often conflicting tasks. In the US, schools are expected to:

* Provide instruction to the median student. * Provide support services to those with learning or other disabilities. * Empower gifted students to learn to their potential. * Serve as an amateur sports league. * Distribute food to the hungry via the school lunch program * Serve as a point of preventative medical care (e.g. vision and dental screenings) * Screen children for abuse and neglect * Be a place children can be left while parents are at work

Some of these goals will be prioritized over others. The stated goal (education) is not always the goal taxpayers are most supportive of, via revealed preferences on the ballot when it comes to local school funding decisions.

[kaitai]

Yes, agree, and this dovetails with a sibling comment by a long-time teacher. I have a child in the US and have family close in age and demographics in non-US countries. The pressure of school-as-childcare is unique to me in the US because of the amount of paid time off I get, which is substantially less than my peers in Europe. In addition, the financial pressures of childcare and education in the US are quite different than Europe. I certainly earn more money in the US than I would in Europe in the same job, but the logistics of arranging childcare and the pressure of teaching my child both math and English outside of school, despite 7+ hours of school a day, are not insubstantial. As has come up elsewhere in these discussions (on HN and in the article), 15 minutes a day of worksheets has done wonders. While I appreciate what Kid has learned in school, and very much appreciate that Kid's classmates get a nutritional baseline no matter what, it is striking that I must provide this additional instruction and practice. It's this very out-of-school intervention that leads to the inequality of outcomes I so clearly see at the school my child is departing -- one in which the kids with college prof parents score top in the state and kids whose parents are English-language learners or work several (non-adjunct-instructor) jobs score in the 30th percentile. (The kids of all the PhDs, whether well-compensated or not, do fine academically.)

Dumbing down the standards doesn't help anyone. I actually like the idea of a data science class, seems like a great motivation/way to teach algebra, but the way it's being operationally proposed in the CMF does not help. And back to my observation about the worksheets above, “This pathway leaves students unprepared for quantitative four-year college degrees via a newly proposed pathway for teaching mathematics that lacks essential content." “Instead of reducing the gap, the CMF proposal will worsen disparities as students from affluent families will access private instruction and tutors while under-resourced students will be left behind.” -- Dr. Jelani Nelson, absolutely correct.

For interesting discussion of the shoddy research underlying many of the citations in the CMF, see Mike Lawler's Twitter threads (username mikeandallie).

[rainsford]

I tend to agree and I think public schools, at least in the US, have the same basic challenge as most government services. The consumer/parent/voter has direct control over the inputs to the system (funding, policy, etc) as well as expectations on the output (the goals you mentioned), but doesn't actually behave as if they're at least partially responsible for those outputs. I actually think taxpayers are generally supportive of education as a goal, but they think that's achieved by shouting at the school district instead of voting as if education was their priority.

Government bureaucracy absolutely produces less than optimal incentives and priorities, but the responsibility voters have in creating those incentives seems underappreciated, especially when it comes to public schools.