[obscurette]

Most of public schools over the world struggle with much more basic problems than methods or programs. The most important thing IMHO is a stable environment. You can use the very best methods and programs, but if teachers change frequently, like it become more and more a norm in public schools, all these don't matter much really.

[bityard]

Somehow most of my circle of friends are public school teachers. Sure, there are teachers who forgot their "why" and only still do it for the (not very impressive) paycheck and eventual pension. But most teachers really, REALLY care about seeing kids succeed. The problems they talk about frequently are:

1. Lack of support from parents. Many parents treat school as free daycare and are not invested at all in their kids. They don't care of their kid gets good grades, they don't care if they get bad grades. They don't come to parent-teacher conferences. When their kid gets in trouble, they either insist that their kid didn't do anything wrong. Or literally tell the school, "hey, after that morning bell rings, he's your problem, don't hassle me about it."

2. Lack of funding. Need I say more.

3. Lack of authority. If a kid is being constantly disruptive, the teachers are told they just have to deal with it. They can't eject a kid from the classroom for ANY reason except when physical harm is imminent. My son's class had several students who were pretty much allowed to be on their chromebooks all day every day because the alternative was constant verbal abuse toward the their classmates and teacher. My son thought this was deeply unfair. He wasn't wrong.

4. Many school systems have a kind of twisted version of "no child left behind." All the kids who have special educational, emotional, or behavioral needs get plopped into regular classrooms with regular teachers. This is bad for basically everyone. The kids with special needs aren't getting the specialized teaching they require. If they are disruptive (and they often are when they aren't getting what they need), the whole class falls behind in learning because the teacher has to spend 1/2 their time dealing with 1/30th of the class.

[spicyusername]

Or even more basic, if the parents don't have the time or temperament to properly participate in parenting, then the teachers or the school aren't really going to matter either.

[em-bee]

i believe some countries have a different experience. in a report about participating on online classes from home during covid in germany it was observed that kids with worse conditions at home were disadvantaged the most, which leads to the reverse conclusion that for these kids going to school did matter.

[spicyusername]

I think that anecdote leads to the same conclusion, no? Children with worse parents have worse outcomes?

All the kids with engaged parents who participated in online classes from home probably did just fine.

I'm not saying going to school doesn't matter, I'm saying that what kind of school you go to is going to matter a lot less if your parents can't do a good job. Or put another way, what kind of parents you have is the dominant influence in your educational outcome.

This matters because when thinking about what kind of policies are needed to influence educational outcomes, they may not need to directly have to do with school.

[em-bee]

that anecdote leads to the same conclusion

not quite. your claim was that with a bad situation at home, school does not make a difference. while i understand the opposite. the worse the situation at home, the more of a difference school makes for them.

i see it like this:

    good home + good school = good outcome
    good home + no school = good outcome
    
    bad home + good school = ok outcome
    bad home + no school = bad outcome

so for a good home school does not matter. for a bad home it does. (i am ignoring bad schools, they probably make things worse in either case)

[obscurette]

It's much more complicated than that. For example in my experience a school per se doesn't matter much for many kids from problematic homes. What matters is that they get a time away from home. COVID lockdowns killed exactly that – they didn't have to be away from home and it was very bad for their mental health.

Then there is a growing number of parents who are actively working against the school, undermine the child's trust against school and teachers etc. Most of the time a school can't do anything with these and outcome is always bad.

Then there is a growing number of children who don't do well in school no matter what. They can have a good home and good school, but because of some neurodiversity for example do very bad anyway.

I also don't agree that good home alone is enough for good outcome. It really depends from many things.

In short – education, outcome from school and home etc are hyperindividual and there is no hard rules.