Knuckles Red
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Cool...when are we going to talk about how much Asian students cheat?
To Increase Equity, School Districts Eliminate Honors Classes
- Thread starter Dreamchaser
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You are oversimplifying to blame parents.It continues to perplex me that you think fukking gifted and talented programs are getting in the way of changing our asanine culture values.
Not the neglect and incompetent parents and broken families, not the street culture we valorize, not the ignorant music we listen to religiously, not the shifting of responsibility to "society", not all the coddling you so called progressives do for the neglect and incompetent parents, no, none of that is getting in the way.
It's those goddamn honors classes.
Regardless of outside variables affecting your student populace, all of that shyt stops when they enter the school building. You have to teach what comes through your door.
Schools have ENORMOUS potential to positively influence students they have for the majority of these students’ key developmental years. And they are failing across the board. Not just with black kids. Which is why literacy is a NATIONAL issue.
When even privileged white kids, who came from allegedly perfect two-parent families, are also failing reading assessments to the tune of nearly 60%, the idea that you can scapegoat a crappy educational system on struggling parents is a huge cop out.
If most of your students are failing, the institution is to blame. Core content, teacher preparation, teacher pay and talent retention, unengaging curriculum, racism, and nearly all white teaching staff are better predictors of educational failure than “dem sorry blk parents ain’t spending enuff time wit Dey kids” rhetoric.
I laid all the groundwork, but public school failed to teach my kids to read - Today's Parent
Pregnancy, baby, toddler advice for Canadian parents
Why aren't kids being taught to read?
Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don't know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.
www.apmreports.org
I’m not saying shytty parents don’t make the work harder. But ultimately, you could have even the most gifted child in your classroom and if you are teaching them to memorize sight words instead of building phonemic awareness…lol…yo baby ain’t gon read.That’s just a snapshot of the fukkery happening in these schools which is why: 65% of Public School 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading; 67% Not Proficient in Math
And
Once again, when the majority your your nation is illiterate, you need to look at the institutions. Stop scapegoating to individuals.
LOL that is classic TLR. You whine about dumbing down education and then bytch about a two-paragraph "dissertation."
Guess what - educational policy is complex and takes a lot to get right. Reactionary, impulsive answers are always wrong. This shyt is my life's work so I have put in the work to come up with meaningful answers. I'm sorry that it takes more than 144 characters to effectively explain educational policy.
And I have NEVER advocated for dumbing down education. My argument is that we should be raising the level of education for everyone, not siphoning off a tiny elite to learn right and fukking over all the rest. I can promise you that in my own classrooms, I can teach to the entire class and you would struggle to find any gifted kids who felt I "dumbed down" the material - a good teacher knows how to challenge everyone while facilitating improvement for even the lowest ability students at the same time.
Do you know what the model minority myth is? It's the claim that the system is working just fine because a few kids succeed, and thus use their existence as an excuse not to reform the system. I don't call the kids "model minorities", I criticize the people who use that myth as a wedge in order to fukk over everyone else.
I DO look for those solutions, do you not realize that is what my participation in this entire thread is about? I've described the solutions in detail while most of the other folk are either saying "fukk dem kids" or a vague "do better black people." And I've pointed out at least 3 times that one of the main solutions is keeping the "uninterested kids" exposed to other children who have it down better, rather than tracking immediately and then eliminating any positive role models from their lives right off the bat.
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I can't argue with someone who knows nothing about the subject and refuses to educate themselves. Go to ANY educational theorist, any research professor, heck even try a science professor in any field. Ask them, "Is it a valuable comparison to do a study where one group selects themselves for an intervention and the other is in their category just by default?" Your listing of the "major metrics" is irrelevant if one group is self-selected, because the self-selected group is going to differ from the default group in significant ways regardless of the metics.
There's no reason to engage with you further on the topic if you refuse to accept that. It's like arguing with someone why data matters more than anecdotes, if we can't agree on that much then it's a non-starter.
Let's try an analogy with a different subject.
Imagine there was a city-wide NYC basketball tournament. Not just for basketball players, but ALL students have to participate. Every coach is required to only use the students from his block, and he must play every kid. Except for one special coach. That coach can have any student for his team, even if they're not from his block, but they have to apply via lottery.
Who is going to get the best players, on average? EVERYONE knows the coach with the lottery is going to get the best players. The other coaches are stuck with random people who don't know anything about basketball, whose fathers never taught them the sport, who don't even know that there's this other coach out there they can apply for. While that coach is going to know right off the top that every single player on his team was engaged enough in basketball to make the effort to apply for his team. On top of that, he has the extra buy-in that they selected his team, that they want to be there, not just by default. As a result, he's going to have massive advantages over every other squad even if the lottery was random and even if the demographics are the same.
Do you see it now? If you don't, then please speak to any professor of education in the world and ask them to help you understand. Ask them if a lottery-selected student body is equivalent to an area-selected student body and see what they say.
I already pointed out - they could either default enroll every child in the lottery (so that it's not only the self-selected ones who apply) and then take the # they can handle, or they can shrink their geographical area until it's small enough that they can take every kid. I didn't ignore anything, I promise you I've been dealing with these questions in real life and thought them through longer than you have.
Can you cite these scores you keep referring to? What is the "whole" performance of charters in NYC compared to the public schools? How big is the gap? I'd love for you to substantiate the exact claim you just made.
I think there are many cases in which charter school children do better, and many others where they do worse. If you compare all charters, rather than just cherry-picking the outliers, the difference is much smaller than you suggest. And it can partially be explained by the self-selection factor.
But I have nothing against the idea that good charter schools can be better. My only issue is that charter schools should take the full distribution of students from an area, not the self-selected ones. Self-selection fukks over all the other kids by making the gap between haves and have-nots even worse.
There are already charter schools that implement these things, even in California that has one of the most powerful teacher's unions in the country. I already gave you an exact example of a charter school that does it. So I call bullshyt. They WANT a self-selected student population.
No one who has spent any extensive time in American schools thinks that "ability to fire incompetent teachers" is the fundamental issue with the school system. Give every inner city school in the nation the power to fire every teacher they don't like...and where the fukk would they get the replacements? These schools already have massive teacher shortages, these schools already have some positions that aren't even filled and many more that are filled by people who aren't qualified. A public school is free to fire any non-credential or non-tenured teacher, and yet they don't....because they have no one to replace them with.
Like @booksrain said, I don't know why some of y'all don't at least try to take other people's ideas seriously and get the perspective of those who actually work within and study the system. When it comes to school, suddenly everyone is an expert, regardless of how little time they've actually spent studying comparative education.
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I'm a firm believer in data > anecdote.
Also, my anecdote would support @Rhakim's stance. I did not attend high school in the US. Where I attended high school, I would say the rigor was higher (especially in science subjects). There was no tracking of gifted students but it didn't prevent talented students from going on to excel in university. And the less knowledgeable kids were uplifted by being in contact with gifted students who could break down hard subjects. The knuckleheads didn't bother no one else and eventually had to repeat classes or they got expelled.
I don't necessarily disagree with the arguments in favor of banning gifted tracks. I also abhor the idea of charter schools being funded with public money, siphoning resources from desperate public schools.
That said, the strategy of the CA public school system is backwards and will do more harm than good in the short to medium run.
Look, parents are selfish. It's easy to talk that talk until your child has to enter that system and you start looking up district test scores or how many students graduated to Ivy league... And parents want their children to be placed in challenging programs that will put them ahead of the curve. Some of this is unhealthy, i know. But it's just the reality of things.
Gifted tracks in public schools give parents some level of assurance that even in a public school, their smart kids are not learning at the "average" rate. That they are being kept engaged relative to their demonstrated ability. And aren't being distracted by "knuckleheads" who "would most likely impact them negatively" (that rarely happens but people have an irrational fear about this)
What happens when you remove these gifted tracks?
shyt, why do I enroll my child in a public school then? Let me find a charter school where "standards are higher" (in reality, the population is the upper quartile of the area population). The result is counterproductive to policy.
Why not aim at raising standards of education across the board first? Eliminate standardized testing evaluations. Put more money into teaching talent and training those teachers well. And in that training, include the ability to identify gifted students within a classroom, and keep them engaged both in learning and interaction with other students who may be less talented, without having to yank them from that environment.
Once you do that, THEN and only then, eliminate gifted tracks. At least give the parents the assurance their kids will be all right in public school. Oh yeah, ban charters that self select too
Anecdote: i loved calculus in high school (it was like a neurosis for me). We had a "Further Mathematics" class for those who were planning to study Engineering in University. We also had to take a basic "Mathematics" class that everyone took. I would have been livid if they banned the advanced class on the basis of equity without providing a means for those of us interested to learn math at that level within the basic class. But the advantage of both classes being held was that in the Math class, i could help fellow students who were struggling, as the material was so easy for me. And I still had the advanced class to keep me engaged.
I agree with the theory, don't agree with the approach.
Also, my anecdote would support @Rhakim's stance. I did not attend high school in the US. Where I attended high school, I would say the rigor was higher (especially in science subjects). There was no tracking of gifted students but it didn't prevent talented students from going on to excel in university. And the less knowledgeable kids were uplifted by being in contact with gifted students who could break down hard subjects. The knuckleheads didn't bother no one else and eventually had to repeat classes or they got expelled.
I don't necessarily disagree with the arguments in favor of banning gifted tracks. I also abhor the idea of charter schools being funded with public money, siphoning resources from desperate public schools.
That said, the strategy of the CA public school system is backwards and will do more harm than good in the short to medium run.
Look, parents are selfish. It's easy to talk that talk until your child has to enter that system and you start looking up district test scores or how many students graduated to Ivy league... And parents want their children to be placed in challenging programs that will put them ahead of the curve. Some of this is unhealthy, i know. But it's just the reality of things.
Gifted tracks in public schools give parents some level of assurance that even in a public school, their smart kids are not learning at the "average" rate. That they are being kept engaged relative to their demonstrated ability. And aren't being distracted by "knuckleheads" who "would most likely impact them negatively" (that rarely happens but people have an irrational fear about this)
What happens when you remove these gifted tracks?
shyt, why do I enroll my child in a public school then? Let me find a charter school where "standards are higher" (in reality, the population is the upper quartile of the area population). The result is counterproductive to policy.
Why not aim at raising standards of education across the board first? Eliminate standardized testing evaluations. Put more money into teaching talent and training those teachers well. And in that training, include the ability to identify gifted students within a classroom, and keep them engaged both in learning and interaction with other students who may be less talented, without having to yank them from that environment.
Once you do that, THEN and only then, eliminate gifted tracks. At least give the parents the assurance their kids will be all right in public school. Oh yeah, ban charters that self select too
Anecdote: i loved calculus in high school (it was like a neurosis for me). We had a "Further Mathematics" class for those who were planning to study Engineering in University. We also had to take a basic "Mathematics" class that everyone took. I would have been livid if they banned the advanced class on the basis of equity without providing a means for those of us interested to learn math at that level within the basic class. But the advantage of both classes being held was that in the Math class, i could help fellow students who were struggling, as the material was so easy for me. And I still had the advanced class to keep me engaged.
I agree with the theory, don't agree with the approach.
This is similar to rent control policies.
The most sensible way to make rent affordable is flood the market with supply. But so many cities ignore this and try and artificially hold prices down through rent control policies which just makes things worse for most of the population unlucky to snag a rent controlled apartment (that the landlord now has no economic incentive in maintaining)
Fix the supply. Make public schools better. Then the gifted classes will die out naturally. Don't do it ass backwards.
If I'm missing something, someone please point it out.
The most sensible way to make rent affordable is flood the market with supply. But so many cities ignore this and try and artificially hold prices down through rent control policies which just makes things worse for most of the population unlucky to snag a rent controlled apartment (that the landlord now has no economic incentive in maintaining)
Fix the supply. Make public schools better. Then the gifted classes will die out naturally. Don't do it ass backwards.
If I'm missing something, someone please point it out.
I'm a firm believer in data > anecdote.
Also, my anecdote would support @Rhakim's stance. I did not attend high school in the US. Where I attended high school, I would say the rigor was higher (especially in science subjects). There was no tracking of gifted students but it didn't prevent talented students from going on to excel in university. And the less knowledgeable kids were uplifted by being in contact with gifted students who could break down hard subjects. The knuckleheads didn't bother no one else and eventually had to repeat classes or they got expelled.
I don't necessarily disagree with the arguments in favor of banning gifted tracks. I also abhor the idea of charter schools being funded with public money, siphoning resources from desperate public schools.
That said, the strategy of the CA public school system is backwards and will do more harm than good in the short to medium run.
Look, parents are selfish. It's easy to talk that talk until your child has to enter that system and you start looking up district test scores or how many students graduated to Ivy league... And parents want their children to be placed in challenging programs that will put them ahead of the curve. Some of this is unhealthy, i know. But it's just the reality of things.
Gifted tracks in public schools give parents some level of assurance that even in a public school, their smart kids are not learning at the "average" rate. That they are being kept engaged relative to their demonstrated ability. And aren't being distracted by "knuckleheads" who "would most likely impact them negatively" (that rarely happens but people have an irrational fear about this)
What happens when you remove these gifted tracks?
shyt, why do I enroll my child in a public school then? Let me find a charter school where "standards are higher" (in reality, the population is the upper quartile of the area population). The result is counterproductive to policy.
Why not aim at raising standards of education across the board first? Eliminate standardized testing evaluations. Put more money into teaching talent and training those teachers well. And in that training, include the ability to identify gifted students within a classroom, and keep them engaged both in learning and interaction with other students who may be less talented, without having to yank them from that environment.
Once you do that, THEN and only then, eliminate gifted tracks. At least give the parents the assurance their kids will be all right in public school. Oh yeah, ban charters that self select too
Anecdote: i loved calculus in high school (it was like a neurosis for me). We had a "Further Mathematics" class for those who were planning to study Engineering in University. We also had to take a basic "Mathematics" class that everyone took. I would have been livid if they banned the advanced class on the basis of equity without providing a means for those of us interested to learn math at that level within the basic class. But the advantage of both classes being held was that in the Math class, i could help fellow students who were struggling, as the material was so easy for me. And I still had the advanced class to keep me engaged.
I agree with the theory, don't agree with the approach.
I agree with everything you're saying. The problem is that most of the solutions you offer are difficult to enact at the school level. The standardized testing is all federal or state requirements that they have to obey, the funding for teachers is out of their hands. They're trying to do the things which are within their power.
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Yeah that makes sense. Got me considering a move to Finland
I'd say that given the constraints on schools in terms of budget (basing school district budgets on tax base is disgusting) available teacher talent and national/state standards, removing gifted tracks is kind of like rearranging chairs on the Titanic deck. Unless there is some belief that this will work in the long run, supported by data...
Yeah that makes sense. Got me considering a move to Finland
I'd say that given the constraints on schools in terms of budget (basing school district budgets on tax base is disgusting) available teacher talent and national/state standards, removing gifted tracks is kind of like rearranging chairs on the Titanic deck. Unless there is some belief that this will work in the long run, supported by data...
I think that's fair. I believe that not having gifted tracks improves outcomes and is the correct way to go, but it's not the central driving issue.
Underrated reply here.
The whole damn system is wrong.
I can't even begin to tackle this subject, because I think the folks arguing pro-honors and anti-honors really think our system of schooling is good at all.
Lemme just say this. For what schools are "supposed to do" - take dumb kids and put them into elite universities
American schools don't even work for rich white people.
Hollywood Celebrities Charged In Major College Admissions Scandal
This is the largest college admissions scandal ever prosecuted in U.S. history.
www.forbes.com
Little Bethany is surrounded by rich white peers in lily white rich suburbs with all the access to tutors and other forms of educational supplementation. In tact, 2 parent family, lights on at home, safe neighborhoods, food on the table, clothes on their back, no disruptive kids, on and on and on - and the parents still gotta pony up a few milli to put their dumb ass kids in schools. Knowing full well, little Jamie Lee Curtis is just gonna coast into the entertainment business based on family connections.
As Black people, focused on Black Children, Black Boys in particular - we need to rethink what we want from these schools, from education.
Is the real goal for lil Malik to be nice with differential equations by the time he's a Senior? Is that what we're really trying to do?
Keisha got a great grasp on Hobbes and Locke, now she can start thinking more deeply about Middle Eastern politics? Is that the goal?
Are we just trying to be better fitting cogs for White America?
And let's be clear, creating millions of Malcolm's and Fannie Lou Hamer's (or Baracks and Michelle's) is also not a good answer either.
What vision do we have for Black America (or Blacks in America working with other people)?
Our schools, and our approach to "they schools" (c) dead prez - needs to take into account our long term goals. Goals that a lot of people in this debate have not contemplated, much less agreed on.
Honors classes or not, Black kids that go to elite schools do better lifetime/career wise than their black peers that didn't. I'll google for the studies if that's important.
But we know from other studies, that Black students do not not nearly as well as their white peers with those same elite degrees.
Is this the world you guys are fighting about?
The whole damn system is wrong.
I can't even begin to tackle this subject, because I think the folks arguing pro-honors and anti-honors really think our system of schooling is good at all.
Lemme just say this. For what schools are "supposed to do" - take dumb kids and put them into elite universities
American schools don't even work for rich white people.
Hollywood Celebrities Charged In Major College Admissions Scandal
This is the largest college admissions scandal ever prosecuted in U.S. history.
Little Bethany is surrounded by rich white peers in lily white rich suburbs with all the access to tutors and other forms of educational supplementation. In tact, 2 parent family, lights on at home, safe neighborhoods, food on the table, clothes on their back, no disruptive kids, on and on and on - and the parents still gotta pony up a few milli to put their dumb ass kids in schools. Knowing full well, little Jamie Lee Curtis is just gonna coast into the entertainment business based on family connections.
As Black people, focused on Black Children, Black Boys in particular - we need to rethink what we want from these schools, from education.
Is the real goal for lil Malik to be nice with differential equations by the time he's a Senior? Is that what we're really trying to do?
Keisha got a great grasp on Hobbes and Locke, now she can start thinking more deeply about Middle Eastern politics? Is that the goal?
Are we just trying to be better fitting cogs for White America?
And let's be clear, creating millions of Malcolm's and Fannie Lou Hamer's (or Baracks and Michelle's) is also not a good answer either.
What vision do we have for Black America (or Blacks in America working with other people)?
Our schools, and our approach to "they schools" (c) dead prez - needs to take into account our long term goals. Goals that a lot of people in this debate have not contemplated, much less agreed on.
Honors classes or not, Black kids that go to elite schools do better lifetime/career wise than their black peers that didn't. I'll google for the studies if that's important.
But we know from other studies, that Black students do not not nearly as well as their white peers with those same elite degrees.
Is this the world you guys are fighting about?
I agree with everything you said there, and trust me it's a subject i think about a lot. One of my shortcomings in discussions is that i tend to focus quite narrowly on the issue at hand and don't always address the bigger picture.
It's not just you. Everyone here is invested in keeping the Pre K - to PhD going, without realizing the end product is just a better fit for the white economy - most of them are probably products of honors and ap classes and hold degrees and good jobs.
Watch them have further opinions when you post up HS prom pictures, and all the boys are black, and all the girls are white.
Whole place is not serious about these topics.
If they were serious, the discourse would change.
But its the Locker Room, it's the Coli, it's the internet.
It's all a distraction in the first place.
ISO
Pass me the rock nikka
I know very well what I'm talking about.
The analogy you made is pure nonsense. The coach that you created is picking players outside of his geographical region, you are assuming that the Success schools are pulling students from different regions, students who are more driven because their parents had the where with all to apply for a charter school (its 2023 not the 90's, its a regular thing), that because of that the students are more capable or more intelligent on average than their public school counterparts, its pure bullshyt. No, the majority of the children attending the schools live in the neighborhood the schools operate in and for the lottery the majority of parents in that community apply which is why I told you that public schools in the city are losing enrollment to the point of having to downgrade their staff. These children are in-coming Kindergarteners, nothing is known of them, whether they have "drive" or are "high achievers". The parents of Harlem, the South Bronx, and Bed-Stuy know that these charter schools are academically superior to the public schools. The coach analogy is nonsense because you said the coach is handpicking players, these schools are not handpicking students it is a random algorithm that waitlists and accepts students. There is no difference in the students and at this point tens of thousands of pupils have sat in the classrooms of both the last two decades. All black and brown, economically disadvantaged, a large % being language learners and students with disabilities, coming in with all types of trauma. You know what would be hand selecting? If it wasn't a lottery, but rather an admission process, and a biased admission process that only accepted children that came from two family homes, students who excelled academically in pre-kindergarten, students with at least one parent with some college experience, etc.
The charters by law have to have a lottery. They don't have the money or spaces to accept every child and the system fights against them because its in their vested interest these schools don't grow. They don't want them to acquire more real estate so they can admit more students. Ideally, they'd like to take all the children, it would be in their interest to do so because ultimately it would mean more jobs, more money, and more recognition for them. This same system would fight tooth and nail to prevent any major educational reform especially the ones you're suggesting. If you can't understand this, there's no point in continuing to discuss.
This was the gap (click hyperlink) in 2019, also the gap is even more pronounced when comparing charter schools to the public schools they share buildings with which is different than comparing them to the district, city wide, or state wide where the demographics can differ but nonetheless the charters of NYC outperformed those schools too...
The charter in California you mention (this might be a problem in our debate since I'm speaking about my local context) must have large buildings to operate their schools in therefore they can accept more students than the average charter schools in NYC that is operating in smaller spaces. The teacher's unions of California must not be restricting where charters can build schools or whether they can take over empty buildings at least for the network of charters you are talking about, or the person running that network has long $.
Yes, there is a teacher shortage. That doesn't mean incompetent teachers should keep their jobs. Charter schools attract more teachers because they hire people who don't necessarily have education degrees and some attract people to the profession with higher wages and performance based bonuses not seniority pay like public schools (another issue that keeps incompetent old heads in the classroom padding their pension). They attract everyone from jaded public school teachers to young hungry professionals. Also, teachers aren't fired because they have nobody to replace them with. The biggest reason they aren't fired is because its a litigation process that takes years and is very expensive. NYC is infamous for its ATR pool and rubber rooms where teachers sit and get paid to do jack shyt in a central office. The department of education has burned hundreds of millions of dollars in these processes with all these incompetent teachers, molestors, abusers, etc.
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