[throwaway85825]

Almost no education research questions the quality of the students ability to learn. Students with an ability to learn will do so regardless of the resources expended, the ones that don't won't. Trillions wasted over the decades due to a preference to ignore reality.

[rfw300]

Well if only we had such thoughtful minds in the education space. How did no one ever think of "why don't we just give up on the children"?

[lurking_swe]

you’re measuring the wrong thing. Spending more on education if a child’s home life is garbage is a waste of time. That’s controversial because it doesn’t sound nice, but it’s a fact. The real problem is not at school and school can only help so much.

At a broad policy level, government should focus its effort in other areas of basic NEEDS first. Stable jobs for parents, housing and food needs met, etc. Being a successful student when your families basic needs are not met is an uphill battle.

[9x39]

It's just that politics outweighs systems thinking.

Selling a narrative that money can fix, getting funds, and then allocating funds is comically easy and less risky than trying to fix something broken. You're capturing sentiment into political momentum, when you're the one who allocates money you are very, very popular and interesting and can make many things happen.

You can do all of this and move on independently of any results in the problem statements that may or may not have been written to begin with.

Contrast that with telling people hard truths like deified educators aren't effectual, or that per-capita pupil spending doesn't correlate with outcomes, or how parents and home culture are stronger effects than whether you offer rich IEPs or adopted Common Core - you can be tarred and feathered for rocking the boat before you get to make any change.

It's not that anyone thinks we should give up on the children, it's that we should probably give up on direct democracy in some areas, and at best, these spending splurges are incompetence and at worst, outright wealth transfers to the PMC and NGOs or fraud.

[throwaway85825]

Success of student should be evaluated as that above an individual baseline. The false assumption that every student is equally capable is insane. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Every time funding is increased but the scores never rise.

[Ferret7446]

Because they're spending all their mental cycles thinking "how can I extract as much money from the system as possible". Like only asking students to attend when they'll be counted for funds allocation.

Not that I agree with GP, but the problem is that no one (in positions of power in the educational system) is thinking of the children (in SFW ways, given the recent release of the Epstein files)

[zozbot234]

It's about cultural preference not ability. School does a positively terrible job of making it easy and comfortable for kids to learn their stuff, and the more recent "student-centered", "progressive" or "constructivist" approaches to learning actually make this a lot worse not better since they heavily imply (as a matter of practical implementation, if perhaps not always in theory) that the teacher shouldn't even act to provide helpful guidance and direction. Many school pupils do the short-term reasonable thing (as they see it) and just do not bother unless they're motivated by some sort of independent interest, or pushed by their household environment to be more successful (the "tiger parenting" approach).

[nitwit005]

I don't believe you actually think this is true.

[elzbardico]

No. Actually the elephant in the room is the dismal quality of most teachers. But teachers are kind of a sacred cow of discourse, and nobody can state the screaming obvious.

[throwaway85825]

The quality of the teacher is less predictive than the quality of the student by far. A teachable student will be more successful with a mediocre teacher than a bad student with an excellent teacher.

[wffurr]

Seems to me like bad and mediocre teachers can make students less teachable as they mentally check out of the education system.

I think there's room for improvement on both sides; supporting families and students to create space and safety for them to learn and to improve teaching quality with evidence based training.

[zozbot234]

Teacher quality really does suck. The average school teacher may have a credential from an "Education" department but isn't even close to having the equivalent of an undergrad degree in the actual subject they're supposed to teach. We can hardly expect teachers to provide a good education when they don't even know their subject to a reasonable standard.

[9x39]

On top of teacher quality - we hire the cheapest, not the best - what students know when they enter school appears to be one of the better predictors of future behavior[1].

[1] https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-common-core-failed/

[AngryData]

That is what happens when their pay is crap. People that can make 4x as much in the private sector rarely choose to live in near poverty just to teach instead.