[rayiner]

> No child left behind really screwed kids over that want to learn. We cant just let kids pass because of feelings

The whole point of no child left behind was to actually measure student performance instead of relying on feelings: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/no-child-left-behind-wo...

If you try to disaggregate the effects of e.g. immigration, you can see that American education is actually good: https://www.reddit.com/r/neoliberal/comments/18bzkle/2022_pi....

White students in the U.S. do comparably to students in Korea in the international PISA test, and better than students from western europe (excluding the immigrants in those countries).

You have to compare like with like. A huge fraction of American kids grow up to parents who are not native speakers of English. That’s not true in Japan or Korea.

[autoexec]

Over half of the adults in the US can't read at a 6th-grade level. They aren't all immigrants. Clearly American education is not actually good.

[rayiner]

Even looking at the entire population, the U.S. has higher reading scores on PISA than the big western european countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy): https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2019/12/pisa-2018-resul.... In reading, the U.S. was basically tied with Japan and the Scandinavian countries.

That is consistent with other international measurements: https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=1. For example, the U.S. is one of the top performers in the world in the 4th grade literacy--behind Hong Kong but ahead of Macau. In 4th grade math, the U.S. isn't as good, well behind Hong Kong, Singapore, and Japan. But still comfortably ahead of Germany, Italy, Spain, and France.

[jimbokun]

TLDR: Western Europeans are dumber than an American 6th grader.

[Fricken]

I read my first Stephen King novel in grade 6. That seems to me more than sufficient aptitude for reading the things an average person needs to read to get through life.

[autoexec]

Was it assigned to you in school? Just because you read something in the sixth grade doesn't mean it was written at a 6th grade level.

[Fricken]

The assignment was to read lots, and lots of 6th graders read Stephen King, because that was the cool thing to do. The size of a typical Stephen King novel is intimidating but the writing is usually straightforward and clear.

[almosthere]

They should have gone the voucher route many years ago - competition for the best schools.

[autoexec]

You don't want there to be good schools that some people can get into and and garbage schools for everyone else. What you need is a high minimum standard that every last school in the nation has to adhere to and it shouldn't be possible to graduate from any of them without being able to read at grade level.

[rayiner]

Whether you want that or not depends on what you're trying to achieve. China has pursued basically the approach you're talking about: focusing on key province to advance them to the cutting edge. The last time China participated international high-school testing, they published scores only four Beijing and three other wealthy provinces: https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/are-chinas-students-re.... And those scores were spectacular! Clearly that approach has some merit if your concern is competing with other countries rather than domestic equity.

[autoexec]

I do think it'd be smart to support programs for gifted students and to screen for them. Those programs should be available to anyone in the US who qualifies regardless of where they live or what kind of money they have. Every student should be allowed and encouraged to reach their potential.

[rayiner]

Your first point is in tension with your last point. A large fraction of the student population has a low ceiling of potential, and it’s very expensive to try and push them past that ceiling. The focus on doing so sucks up vast amounts of money and teacher attention that then gets pulled away from gifted kids.

That’s why sober and clear-eyed countries like Germany conventionally sort students into tracks starting around age 10.

[chaostheory]

The way it works now is that 20% of the bottom students eat up 80% of a teacher’s time and resources. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing depending on what your goals are. What I am saying is that you can’t have everything. You have to choose. This system this comment describes and the system your comment below describes cannot coexist.

[autoexec]

That just means that we need to move the bottom 20% of students into their own classes where they can get the extra attention they need. That means they can get a high quality education and so can everyone else. You do not have to choose. You can have both.

[alex43578]

No, you do have to choose because money for education (or anything) isn’t unlimited.

There’s a real question of how many resources and what kind of ROI you’d get from trying to educate that bottom 20% to the same level.

I saw this play out when I was in school: profoundly intellectually disabled students getting 1:1 or even 2:1 teaching, trying to get an 18 year old to be able to read 3 letter words, while AP classes were bloated to 30+ students.

[almosthere]

Yeah, actually you do. What you think Ivy Leagues don't exist? (even though they're crap now because they DEI'd everything)

[autoexec]

They're a good example of why we shouldn't have that. It wasn't DEI that made them crap it was letting people buy their way in and shifting the focus from education to networking for nepo-babies. George W. Bush is a prime example of a massively uneducated idiot who had no problems getting accepted to and graduating from Ivy Leagues.

[zbentley]

Or train (and appropriately credential) more teachers and pay them like the critical specialists they are.

[rayiner]

If teacher pay made a big difference in outcomes, expensive private schools would have very well paid teachers. But private schools typically have lower teacher pay than public schools.

[autoexec]

Teacher pay doesn't have as large an influence on student success as it does on how many people are willing to enter the occupation and stay there. Private school teachers typically deal with far fewer students in the classroom and in much better conditions. They also don't typically have to spend as much of their own money on basic school supplies. Improving conditions at public schools and lowering classroom sizes would help to attract teachers too.

[hunterpayne]

Washington state has the highest public school teacher pay in the country (over 100k/yr). It also has educational outcomes which are middle of the pack. That correlation doesn't hold in many cases. Oh, and the fact that half of the funding for the district goes to administration doesn't help either.

[zbentley]

You need to have both. Training/credentialing and pay. Just one is insufficient.

Longer/better educator training both increases skills/outcomes and is a gate for the poorly-suited. Higher pay makes the training seem worthwhile and increases stickiness/tenure.