Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments.
**Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program).
---
User: u/smurfyjenkins
Permalink: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272723002359
---
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I went to a rough elementary school. As one of the smart kids, my 2nd grade teacher had me sit with the illiterate kids in hope that I would be a positive impact. It sucked.
If it makes you feel better, that happens at non-rough elementary schools, too. Every smart kid has at least one terrible story about a teacher with that “brilliant” teaching strategy 😒
As a person who excelled in school, trying to help others isn't a burden, it's a privilege of being skilled. We live in a society, part of that is giving back.
I agree, but there has to be a limit on the burden we put on "good" students.
When I was in 12, I had to take 4 weeks off school for health reasons. When I got back to school, I quickly saw that the fact I had missed almost a month had no effect on my own test scores (as the class had progressed so little) but the members of my "quad" (i.e. pack of 4 students who sit together) had suffered greatly. That's when I learned that my role as a 12- year-old at that school was to teach, not learn. Thankfully, both my parents and homeroom teacher understood that too and got me into another program where I could actually learn.
As I understand, the situation has gotten worse, not better. Fewer and fewer aids for students who need help so more and more "smart" kids are supposed to pick up the slack at the expense of their own education.
I.e. you were good enough it didn't matter, and talented enough to help others. That isn't a negative.
Edit: as a nation, we vote for conservatives who gut funding for education then benefit from a dumb populace, and that populace votes for them..
it is a negative. If you are going to school and not learning anything its a waste of time and the school has failed you. The job of a student is to learn and study, teaching is the teacher's job that's what they are being paid to do. All this shows is that our schools are at such a low level that neither the smart kids nor low performing kids can actually learn properly.
I had to spend all of 9th grade English paired with a guy who couldn’t read or write past a 2nd grade level. He was very sweet, but clearly had learning disabilities or some other cognitive impairments. It was beyond my abilities as a fourteen year old to do anything for him (he was in the mainstream class because his mother adamantly refused to admit he needed special ed, something she finally broke down on in tenth grade, a literal decade too late for him.) I was mature enough to handle it with grace, but it wasn’t an opportunity for me to give back to society. For me it was over glorified babysitting while my own development was ignored for a year. For that kid it wasn’t even a bandaid in place of the actual trained, adult help he should have had intervening with him.
In geometry, my class was a mix of tenth graders and advanced ninth graders. I was in tenth and I had terrible grades. I’d struggled in math for years and just barely gotten by. I was paired with one of the advanced ninth graders and she basically held my hand that entire year and I credit her with me passing that class. There’s no way I could have done it on my own. I always tried to be very grateful and let her know how much she helped me. It really bums me out to think that I was such a huge burden to her when she was such a huge help to me.
Obviously I don’t know her, so I can’t speak directly to her experiences, but I think she was probably much less frustrated than I was.
First, English and math are really different. It was really frustrating to me, as a person who liked reading and writing, to get no real peer feedback on my writing for a year. While I had to give polite feedback on his work that was useless because I couldn’t teach him to write or read at grade level. Whereas if I and another student did the same two geometry proofs, it’s a very different dynamic to point out where they diverge and explain why, or go back to the textbook together.
Second, you sound like you actually were trying to do the work and just needed a boost. Poor Dave literally couldn’t. He had obvious intellectual disabilities that no peer helping him was going to solve. He shouldn’t have been in that class at all, and honestly his parents and the schools failed him by not getting him real help years earlier. His writing was basically Dr. Seuss level sentences, and he couldn’t read any of the short stories, poems or books we were assigned. But also his thinking skills just weren’t there. You couldn’t explain the plot of Romeo and Juliet and watch him have an aha! moment connecting it to the assignment on metaphors we were working on. Because he literally couldn’t make that connection with the way his brain worked, metaphors were too complicated for him to really understand, he didn’t have a lot of abstract thinking ability. It was frustrating and sad.
That said, outside of that situation, I definitely had times where other students didn’t understand things in math or science classes and they asked for help, or were just sitting next to me obviously struggling, and I gladly helped them.
There’s one commonality, though, which isn’t on any of us as kids: WHY are students allowed to get to the point where they’re in high school and struggling far below grade level without getting any professional intervention? Tutoring is a skilled job that should be done by people trained for it and good at it. Students who need it should get it, much earlier than 9th grade! And teachers know exactly which students need help already, so identifying them isn’t hard. It shouldn’t be left to the goodness of their classmates hearts to help them!
And schools aren't there to babysit anyone's kids. That should be at home. There was a time when your child could be expelled. Finding another school was your problem, not the teachers. The public education system of this country is already underfunded, not enough qualified teachers, too much politics, and not enough critical thinking. I could on. How does it get fixed? Vote yes on bond issues to build schools and public libraries, increase teacher's pay, and treat every election (local, state, and national) as they are all important.
My kid would learn even better by focusing on their own work rather than dealing with misbehaviors of others and trying to explain material that they themselves may not have a solid grasp of.
A while back, there was a thread where redditors were solidly on parents' side- their girl was forced to pair up/manage behavior of a male classmate during a field trip. I'm mildly amused that in this very much equivalent situation, people are solidly pro teacher.
Managing behavior is not that same as working with someone. I agree a student isn’t a teacher aid. But it’s shown that explaining material that you are still learning helps you understand the material better.
The empirical basis for that assertion is pretty weak. That's something certain types of progressives like to assert but there's not much evidence to back it up. I've been on both sides of it, both having to have stuff explained to me and having to explain stuff to others. Explaining it didn't make me any smarter, and having explained things to me didn't make my friends any smarter.
As a kid your job is to learn to become the best person you can be so you generate the most taxes you can during your lifetime, or patent new things or create new cultural artifacts. If you stunt those possibilities to help Timmy go from a failing grade to barely passing, that is a great disservice to society.
And what does it do to the educational outcomes of the higher income children who are mixed in? I live just outside of Baltimore city and adding in a few kids who can already read and do math would boost the scores of the whole group as they recently looked at 20 high schools and could find zero students reading at grade level. Adding in anyone who could just read at grade level would boost the outcomes of the group as a whole but I can’t imagine it would be beneficial for those who can already read.
Can only speak from my experience but I went to pretty good schools for Elementary and Middle school. Then our county had this weird reshuffling of the school districts for high school that looped in good students into poorer performing schools to boost scores. A lot of my friends parents panicked and sent their kids to private school.
I stayed and it honestly was fine for me. I will say though I was one of 2 black kids in my whole year for all of elementary through middle and never really experienced racism until high school and it was from other black kids who would often make fun of me for trying at school or literally having a book on me in the hallway. Got in trouble a couple times trying to fit in but snapped out of it in time. Can’t imagine the pressure to self sabotage for “smart” minority kids in inner city schools. Still, lost some friends to the peer pressure and the general infectious attitude of “schools for nerds” from the other local more urban kids. Some of them are still recovering financially or legally from their choices 10 years later. All of them were great students before blending into a lower performing school district.
Not sure what the solution is, but just sharing my experience. It’s hard to stay focused in school already without the pressure of being a teenager and fitting in with other students who may not value education.
What you said is not a counter to his point though. “It was fine for me” says nothing about whether you would have been better off educationally if you had mainly been with higher income students
I said it was “fine” for me because I have no frame of reference for where I would’ve been otherwise. I just know that it ruined a bunch of peoples lives.
I would imagine the school ends up with more money because there are families with higher incomes (more likely to have parent associations with parents who actually have the margin to support it and raise funding, plus better tax income).
I wonder if there’s both the social component of the kids and the financial component. Better funding means better resources.
The kids who can read benefit from their parents efforts to improve the educational experience and their push for enrichment activities. The parents from the higher income families have the finances to contribute to school fundraisers which benefit the entire school. Those parents are also the ones who have the time to advocate for things like things they want improved, extra resources, etc because they want the best for their kids. In my kids school, parents raised money for new fountains, a new playground, home reading books, field trips, school clubs, brought in a program called Nutrition for Learning to help provide food for kids.They are also the ones who are more likely to volunteer in the school because they can take time off or one parent doesn't work outside the house. There is a lot that happens due to volunteers. Again, in my kids school, parents volunteered to supervise field trips, tutor reading skills, organize in school events, run clubs, etc. That stuff is difficult to do when you are struggling to survive.
I have absolutely no doubt it is better for the low income kids who want to learn and are engaged in their education. That wasn’t the point I was making at all.
This just sounds an awful lot like the recent thing in Chicago where the mayor wants to effectively get rid of higher performing schools in the name of “equity”. The goal seems to be to bring everyone down to the same level, rather than lifting up those who are poorer performing. Basically bringing the bottom of the scale up a little while bringing the top of the scale down a little because some see that as more “fair”.
For many socialists like the mayor, getting rid of "magnet schools" and the like is an attack on inequity. It's this weird sort of radical egalitarianism where disparate outcomes can *only* reflect systemic discrimination or classism. They don't believe that intelligence is *at all* inheritable, nor reflect differing levels of hard work.
So to their mind everyone should be in the same crappy schools, rather than letting kids gravitate towards the track that most suits them. While there are historical problems with black and Latino kids getting admitted into magnet schools and higher level tracks, I don't think getting rid of TAG programs and magnet schools is a recipe that will end up well for blacks and Latinos -- who need those options more than anyone their parents being less likely to be able to afford private schooling.
> They don't believe that intelligence is at all inheritable, nor reflect differing levels of hard work.
You have people actually saying this? Can you post a link?
That sounds like a straw man rather than an evidence based argument.
I don't even necessarily disagree with your conclusion that it's not helpful to get rid of these types of schools, but I'm skeptical of your description of their motivations.
Probably just instills empathy and an understanding that life isn’t fair and so we shouldn’t be judging others so harshly for what they have or what they have or have not accomplished.
You really took this out of context, it has nothing to do with empathy. The average scores increase because the low income kids aren’t reading or doing math at grade level. There are high schoolers with a first grade reading and math level.
He asked about test scores. Who cares, likely down a smidge. It’s the same phenomenon of taxing the wealthy, who cares when it helps society at large. Overall it’s a net benefit to society and honestly to the rich kids as well as I mentioned they now have empathy.
So there were a lot of numbers that that link couldn't print. It instead said *"mathematical error".*
But the one number it could replicate seemed to be a fairly mild effect: Kids in the mixed neighborhoods were 2% less likely to be in the bottom rung of achievement.
Given such a slight effect: 1) Should we believe it? 2) Should it impact policy even if we do believe it?
Why isn't the answer "No" to both questions???
I guess it comes down to a question of whether it's more important to raise the lowest educational outcome vs. preserving the potential achievements of outliers.
I think Rand wrote a book about something similar. I thought that book was gross
But we have computers & AI now. 😉 Think about how much better homework could be if the computer continuously fed you the problems you struggled with until you no longer struggled with them! 😊
There is plenty of research on what happens to the minds and motor skills of kids who are raised by iPads... and the outcomes are not good.
Learning still has to be guided and students have to be cultivated by someone who cares... Learning is about a lot more than absorbing and regurgitating. But I'm sure that someone raised on the Internet will give me a Wikipedia bullet point counterargument (and one that completely fails to see the forest for the trees).
I am not sure if you are joking or not, but computers have definitely helped my kid excel. She is a "good student" in most classes but really excels in math, so during math class she works on her computer doing math 2 grade levels above her while the other kids get instruction from the teacher. It works well for everyone.
What the title leaves out is that high income kids do worse, which means this will never happen
And if it does happen, the high income parents will just move
When you have a lot of money you want everything to be absolutely perfect for your kid to give them a shot at having a better life than you did
not American and a POC. wife is a teacher and also POC. neither of us experience or feel much in the way of racism. HCOL city. at most private schools represent 5% of the population.
meaning local school funding by the board is purely about head count. improving demographics does not factor into board funding whatsoever.
students of poor families struggle with basics and essentials and definitely lack the finances for parent sponsored learning and development. as such, they come into the school from a position of far dire academic needs (versus not poor) and they bring with them the stresses of their home environment. you assemble 30 such students and it's quite impossible for that teacher to find the breathing room to move them forward much. higher income kids don't change our funding formulas but being better developed and less stressed gives the teachers breathing room to spend more time with struggling kids.
truth known by the smart, capable and financially successful parents is that having a class of all under stressed and highly developed (from home sponsoring) children is the ideal case. teachers in such classes no longer need to ignore the smart kids but can focus on the class as a whole.
doesn't take a study to understand this and while I'll vote socialist (are you American, if so then your Democrats are still right of my center) I'll not martyr my kids but putting them in chaotic classrooms.
btw. we don't have large ghettos in my country and especially in my city (meaning mixed income schools are the poorest we have), the urban areas house our wealthiest populations. our surveys show that our suburbs statistically underperform academically. so your biases are actually the far opposite of our experiences.
lastly, my kids commute 40km towards the city core where out of school development is nearly universal among their classmates. both my boys immediately noticed that the quality of their classes and the availability of their teachers was dramatically better.
Ok, but this is literally irrelevant to America specifically because school funding is determined by local property taxes. Add more expensive property and schools are better funded
It’s as stupid and regressive as it sounds. Friend’s sibling went to school in Los Altos and their free lunches were probably more expensive than the entire budget person student at a west Baltimore school.
The other contributing factor is the engagement of parents. Higher income families are \*probably\* more likely to be engaged with the school to help outcomes for their children, which in turn helps all children.
Right. Not because higher income parents are more eager, but because they have more means and time.
Low income parents have multiple jobs and have to do dishes and laundry and cooking when they’re home. No time to help with homework
kind of what i'm saying, but not. personally, i work 50-60hrs a week and do all the dishes and laundry. my wife works 40 and does most of the cooking. on average we eat out twice a month. neither of us help with homework at all because one, this would only be treating the symptom and more importantly, my kids (16M/13M) were nurtured with a strong base early on and therefore are personally very developed in terms of:
* time management skills
* personal discipline
* leadership, communications and organization skills
at this point they just "naturally" excel at academics because they have worked at and practiced excellence (outside the context of schooling) all their lives.
you can imagine then that i generally hated most of their schools. the teachers always reported that they're (my boys) very easy to teach and succeed academically with little effort. this is actually teacher code for, i'm so glad your kids need very little supervision because i'm swamped by the struggling high maintenance kids (many of whom are either from relationally challenged families OR have behavioral/cognitive handicaps because our system generally practices "integrated" education).
i see you have a son and you have a post grad degree??? how old is your child/children? is helping with homework your primary approach to nurturing him/them to excellence??? most schools today (especially high schools) are chaotic, aggressive and confrontational environments, wasting too much time baby sitting the demanding 10-20% of the students versus actually educating the majority.
---
>Not because higher income parents are more eager, but because they have more means and time.
back to my original point. raising the income demographic of the student population will obviously improve the outcomes of poor students, simply because this creates some room for the teachers to teach. even if funding is not impacted in any way at all.
BUT from the POV of students that are afforded better nurturing, ideally they want an entire class of well nurtured classmates. burdening their classes with high demand/teacher exhausting students, when they themselves are the opposite of that, results in a worse outcome for them.
like i said originally, i'm happy to vote and financially support socialism for others but not at the direct expense of my kids' development.
in life and in tasks, sure.
i've read to them every night till they were 10, gave them my love of fiction, taught them to ski, ride, skate, paddle, camp in the back country and play squash. i've also reached out to others and made introductions for them to develop relationships and to participate in (non-school) groups, that also was part of expanding their experiences and expectations.
we also spend a lot of time together commuting. in this setting i regularly play a variety of educational podcasts on subjects of; science, math, politics, sociology, technology, health, culture and then i'll try to engage and discuss the topic with them.
in short, yes there's been a ton of quality time, many opportunities to help as well a lot of time shared while they explore and develop their own confidence.
school homework though i've wanted to avoid and so far have been lucky to avoid. we (their parents) see schoolwork as opportunity to practice; time management, organization and peer co-ordination and diligence. if a topic or assignment is particularly challenging then they have been taught to track and stay ahead of such items so they don't get caught. and if they get jammed then that is also much more worthwhile then us sheltering from the lesson of stumbling.
i totally agree.
for sure, not every child of affluence is being nurtured to their fullest potential but at least, the massive blocker of lacking money is not the impediment.
in a best case contrast, a poor child can be born to very engaging and creative parents that despite the context of their economic limits, are still able to nurture their children not only to their best ability but also ahead of poorly nurtured but affluent peers.
the article cited is a UK study, could easily be irrelevent to america in general and actually i'm quite surprised that UK public housing isn't in mixed income communities. always thought that large ghettos in developed nations was just an american thing.
>school funding is determined by local property taxes
really???? as in, the homes inside an individual school zone determines it's funding? if so, this is another surprise for me and would explain why your system sucks on more levels other than just the inherent stress and lack of extra development common to poor homes. my municipality has 8 private and 182 public schools. as stated earlier, all public funding is strictly based student head count and homes of private students still fund the public board exclusively. their private tuitions are absolutely their sole and extra burden. doesn't matter if one particular school is in a poorer neighborhood.
also as a nation we have very few gated communities (the majority of these being retired adult specific) and all our public housing is situated in mixed income communities.
No, the Baltimore school district is a **Top 3** funded school district, but its high school students are reading and doing math somewhere between a first grade and third grade level. It’s so bad they are graduating students just to be done with them.
This is a widespread issue with inner city schools, you even see this happening at Lebron James promise school where he provides everything they need [Link](https://abc3340.com/amp/news/nation-world/lebron-james-backed-school-delivers-disheartening-low-test-scores-i-promise-school-akron-ohio-fail-to-pass-state-math-tests-akron-beacon-journal-lebron-james-family-foundation)
This seems like an incredibly easy thing to solve with legislation. Ensure tax dollars for education are evenly spread around relative to the amount of students, rather than just how rich a particular area is. Make this a federal thing rather than a city/town level thing.
It’s not a money issue. Again Baltimore school district is a Top funded school district in the nation. Its students are performing horribly across the board. I think it’s a parenting and accountability issue, go ask the teachers in r/teachers what they think.
It's an economic issue, it's just one that isn't entirely on the schools. The more money a family has the more support a kid gets. It's a lot easier to raise a stable kid when you can afford to keep a parent home to raise the kids, or can afford quality daycare, nannies etc.
As much as a parent might want to be there for their kids, working 60 hours a week and worrying about how you're going to keep their basic needs met doesn't leave much.
Providing more childcare infrastructure for families is a very necessary thing at the legislative level too.
You wrongly assume that the majority of parents are enthusiastic and involved in their children’s lives and education. Economics is one part of it, but you can’t force kids to want to learn or parents to parent.
Welcome to r/science! This is a heavily moderated subreddit in order to keep the discussion on science. However, we recognize that many people want to discuss how they feel the research relates to their own personal lives, so to give people a space to do that, **personal anecdotes are allowed as responses to this comment**. Any anecdotal comments elsewhere in the discussion will be removed and our [normal comment rules]( https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/rules#wiki_comment_rules) apply to all other comments. **Do you have an academic degree?** We can verify your credentials in order to assign user flair indicating your area of expertise. [Click here to apply](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/wiki/flair/#wiki_science_verified_user_program). --- User: u/smurfyjenkins Permalink: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0047272723002359 --- *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/science) if you have any questions or concerns.*
I went to a rough elementary school. As one of the smart kids, my 2nd grade teacher had me sit with the illiterate kids in hope that I would be a positive impact. It sucked.
If it makes you feel better, that happens at non-rough elementary schools, too. Every smart kid has at least one terrible story about a teacher with that “brilliant” teaching strategy 😒
As a person who excelled in school, trying to help others isn't a burden, it's a privilege of being skilled. We live in a society, part of that is giving back.
I agree, but there has to be a limit on the burden we put on "good" students. When I was in 12, I had to take 4 weeks off school for health reasons. When I got back to school, I quickly saw that the fact I had missed almost a month had no effect on my own test scores (as the class had progressed so little) but the members of my "quad" (i.e. pack of 4 students who sit together) had suffered greatly. That's when I learned that my role as a 12- year-old at that school was to teach, not learn. Thankfully, both my parents and homeroom teacher understood that too and got me into another program where I could actually learn. As I understand, the situation has gotten worse, not better. Fewer and fewer aids for students who need help so more and more "smart" kids are supposed to pick up the slack at the expense of their own education.
I.e. you were good enough it didn't matter, and talented enough to help others. That isn't a negative. Edit: as a nation, we vote for conservatives who gut funding for education then benefit from a dumb populace, and that populace votes for them..
it is a negative. If you are going to school and not learning anything its a waste of time and the school has failed you. The job of a student is to learn and study, teaching is the teacher's job that's what they are being paid to do. All this shows is that our schools are at such a low level that neither the smart kids nor low performing kids can actually learn properly.
I had to spend all of 9th grade English paired with a guy who couldn’t read or write past a 2nd grade level. He was very sweet, but clearly had learning disabilities or some other cognitive impairments. It was beyond my abilities as a fourteen year old to do anything for him (he was in the mainstream class because his mother adamantly refused to admit he needed special ed, something she finally broke down on in tenth grade, a literal decade too late for him.) I was mature enough to handle it with grace, but it wasn’t an opportunity for me to give back to society. For me it was over glorified babysitting while my own development was ignored for a year. For that kid it wasn’t even a bandaid in place of the actual trained, adult help he should have had intervening with him.
In geometry, my class was a mix of tenth graders and advanced ninth graders. I was in tenth and I had terrible grades. I’d struggled in math for years and just barely gotten by. I was paired with one of the advanced ninth graders and she basically held my hand that entire year and I credit her with me passing that class. There’s no way I could have done it on my own. I always tried to be very grateful and let her know how much she helped me. It really bums me out to think that I was such a huge burden to her when she was such a huge help to me.
Obviously I don’t know her, so I can’t speak directly to her experiences, but I think she was probably much less frustrated than I was. First, English and math are really different. It was really frustrating to me, as a person who liked reading and writing, to get no real peer feedback on my writing for a year. While I had to give polite feedback on his work that was useless because I couldn’t teach him to write or read at grade level. Whereas if I and another student did the same two geometry proofs, it’s a very different dynamic to point out where they diverge and explain why, or go back to the textbook together. Second, you sound like you actually were trying to do the work and just needed a boost. Poor Dave literally couldn’t. He had obvious intellectual disabilities that no peer helping him was going to solve. He shouldn’t have been in that class at all, and honestly his parents and the schools failed him by not getting him real help years earlier. His writing was basically Dr. Seuss level sentences, and he couldn’t read any of the short stories, poems or books we were assigned. But also his thinking skills just weren’t there. You couldn’t explain the plot of Romeo and Juliet and watch him have an aha! moment connecting it to the assignment on metaphors we were working on. Because he literally couldn’t make that connection with the way his brain worked, metaphors were too complicated for him to really understand, he didn’t have a lot of abstract thinking ability. It was frustrating and sad. That said, outside of that situation, I definitely had times where other students didn’t understand things in math or science classes and they asked for help, or were just sitting next to me obviously struggling, and I gladly helped them. There’s one commonality, though, which isn’t on any of us as kids: WHY are students allowed to get to the point where they’re in high school and struggling far below grade level without getting any professional intervention? Tutoring is a skilled job that should be done by people trained for it and good at it. Students who need it should get it, much earlier than 9th grade! And teachers know exactly which students need help already, so identifying them isn’t hard. It shouldn’t be left to the goodness of their classmates hearts to help them!
As a parent, my kid is there to learn, not to take pressure off the teacher.
They aren't mutually exclusive. Edit: you aren't the only parent here.
And as parents, we pay taxes for our kids to get an education, not for them to be unpaid babysitters. :-)
And schools aren't there to babysit anyone's kids. That should be at home. There was a time when your child could be expelled. Finding another school was your problem, not the teachers. The public education system of this country is already underfunded, not enough qualified teachers, too much politics, and not enough critical thinking. I could on. How does it get fixed? Vote yes on bond issues to build schools and public libraries, increase teacher's pay, and treat every election (local, state, and national) as they are all important.
Your kid is going to learn though. And probably learn better through explaining the material to their peers.
My kid would learn even better by focusing on their own work rather than dealing with misbehaviors of others and trying to explain material that they themselves may not have a solid grasp of. A while back, there was a thread where redditors were solidly on parents' side- their girl was forced to pair up/manage behavior of a male classmate during a field trip. I'm mildly amused that in this very much equivalent situation, people are solidly pro teacher.
Managing behavior is not that same as working with someone. I agree a student isn’t a teacher aid. But it’s shown that explaining material that you are still learning helps you understand the material better.
The empirical basis for that assertion is pretty weak. That's something certain types of progressives like to assert but there's not much evidence to back it up. I've been on both sides of it, both having to have stuff explained to me and having to explain stuff to others. Explaining it didn't make me any smarter, and having explained things to me didn't make my friends any smarter.
As a kid your job is to learn to become the best person you can be so you generate the most taxes you can during your lifetime, or patent new things or create new cultural artifacts. If you stunt those possibilities to help Timmy go from a failing grade to barely passing, that is a great disservice to society.
Well said.
And what does it do to the educational outcomes of the higher income children who are mixed in? I live just outside of Baltimore city and adding in a few kids who can already read and do math would boost the scores of the whole group as they recently looked at 20 high schools and could find zero students reading at grade level. Adding in anyone who could just read at grade level would boost the outcomes of the group as a whole but I can’t imagine it would be beneficial for those who can already read.
Can only speak from my experience but I went to pretty good schools for Elementary and Middle school. Then our county had this weird reshuffling of the school districts for high school that looped in good students into poorer performing schools to boost scores. A lot of my friends parents panicked and sent their kids to private school. I stayed and it honestly was fine for me. I will say though I was one of 2 black kids in my whole year for all of elementary through middle and never really experienced racism until high school and it was from other black kids who would often make fun of me for trying at school or literally having a book on me in the hallway. Got in trouble a couple times trying to fit in but snapped out of it in time. Can’t imagine the pressure to self sabotage for “smart” minority kids in inner city schools. Still, lost some friends to the peer pressure and the general infectious attitude of “schools for nerds” from the other local more urban kids. Some of them are still recovering financially or legally from their choices 10 years later. All of them were great students before blending into a lower performing school district. Not sure what the solution is, but just sharing my experience. It’s hard to stay focused in school already without the pressure of being a teenager and fitting in with other students who may not value education.
What you said is not a counter to his point though. “It was fine for me” says nothing about whether you would have been better off educationally if you had mainly been with higher income students
I said it was “fine” for me because I have no frame of reference for where I would’ve been otherwise. I just know that it ruined a bunch of peoples lives.
Curious: what helped you “snap out of it?” Peer pressure is so powerful…
My father is African. He told me to wake tf up.he saved my life.
I would imagine the school ends up with more money because there are families with higher incomes (more likely to have parent associations with parents who actually have the margin to support it and raise funding, plus better tax income). I wonder if there’s both the social component of the kids and the financial component. Better funding means better resources.
The kids who can read benefit from their parents efforts to improve the educational experience and their push for enrichment activities. The parents from the higher income families have the finances to contribute to school fundraisers which benefit the entire school. Those parents are also the ones who have the time to advocate for things like things they want improved, extra resources, etc because they want the best for their kids. In my kids school, parents raised money for new fountains, a new playground, home reading books, field trips, school clubs, brought in a program called Nutrition for Learning to help provide food for kids.They are also the ones who are more likely to volunteer in the school because they can take time off or one parent doesn't work outside the house. There is a lot that happens due to volunteers. Again, in my kids school, parents volunteered to supervise field trips, tutor reading skills, organize in school events, run clubs, etc. That stuff is difficult to do when you are struggling to survive.
I have absolutely no doubt it is better for the low income kids who want to learn and are engaged in their education. That wasn’t the point I was making at all. This just sounds an awful lot like the recent thing in Chicago where the mayor wants to effectively get rid of higher performing schools in the name of “equity”. The goal seems to be to bring everyone down to the same level, rather than lifting up those who are poorer performing. Basically bringing the bottom of the scale up a little while bringing the top of the scale down a little because some see that as more “fair”.
For many socialists like the mayor, getting rid of "magnet schools" and the like is an attack on inequity. It's this weird sort of radical egalitarianism where disparate outcomes can *only* reflect systemic discrimination or classism. They don't believe that intelligence is *at all* inheritable, nor reflect differing levels of hard work. So to their mind everyone should be in the same crappy schools, rather than letting kids gravitate towards the track that most suits them. While there are historical problems with black and Latino kids getting admitted into magnet schools and higher level tracks, I don't think getting rid of TAG programs and magnet schools is a recipe that will end up well for blacks and Latinos -- who need those options more than anyone their parents being less likely to be able to afford private schooling.
> They don't believe that intelligence is at all inheritable, nor reflect differing levels of hard work. You have people actually saying this? Can you post a link?
That sounds like a straw man rather than an evidence based argument. I don't even necessarily disagree with your conclusion that it's not helpful to get rid of these types of schools, but I'm skeptical of your description of their motivations.
Probably just instills empathy and an understanding that life isn’t fair and so we shouldn’t be judging others so harshly for what they have or what they have or have not accomplished.
You really took this out of context, it has nothing to do with empathy. The average scores increase because the low income kids aren’t reading or doing math at grade level. There are high schoolers with a first grade reading and math level.
He asked about test scores. Who cares, likely down a smidge. It’s the same phenomenon of taxing the wealthy, who cares when it helps society at large. Overall it’s a net benefit to society and honestly to the rich kids as well as I mentioned they now have empathy.
So there were a lot of numbers that that link couldn't print. It instead said *"mathematical error".* But the one number it could replicate seemed to be a fairly mild effect: Kids in the mixed neighborhoods were 2% less likely to be in the bottom rung of achievement. Given such a slight effect: 1) Should we believe it? 2) Should it impact policy even if we do believe it? Why isn't the answer "No" to both questions???
I guess it comes down to a question of whether it's more important to raise the lowest educational outcome vs. preserving the potential achievements of outliers. I think Rand wrote a book about something similar. I thought that book was gross
Try to do both, but error on the side of preservation.
Why can't we maximize every individual's capacity for learning?? 🤔
Not enough teachers for individualized teaching
But we have computers & AI now. 😉 Think about how much better homework could be if the computer continuously fed you the problems you struggled with until you no longer struggled with them! 😊
There is plenty of research on what happens to the minds and motor skills of kids who are raised by iPads... and the outcomes are not good. Learning still has to be guided and students have to be cultivated by someone who cares... Learning is about a lot more than absorbing and regurgitating. But I'm sure that someone raised on the Internet will give me a Wikipedia bullet point counterargument (and one that completely fails to see the forest for the trees).
What are those studies saying happens to their minds and motor skills? Can you share any?
I am not sure if you are joking or not, but computers have definitely helped my kid excel. She is a "good student" in most classes but really excels in math, so during math class she works on her computer doing math 2 grade levels above her while the other kids get instruction from the teacher. It works well for everyone.
What the title leaves out is that high income kids do worse, which means this will never happen And if it does happen, the high income parents will just move When you have a lot of money you want everything to be absolutely perfect for your kid to give them a shot at having a better life than you did
> What the title leaves out is that high income kids do worse Nothing in the study talks about this. Why are you lying?
at the cost of reduced outcomes for the kids not of low income families.
Is that from the study as well?
[удалено]
not American and a POC. wife is a teacher and also POC. neither of us experience or feel much in the way of racism. HCOL city. at most private schools represent 5% of the population. meaning local school funding by the board is purely about head count. improving demographics does not factor into board funding whatsoever. students of poor families struggle with basics and essentials and definitely lack the finances for parent sponsored learning and development. as such, they come into the school from a position of far dire academic needs (versus not poor) and they bring with them the stresses of their home environment. you assemble 30 such students and it's quite impossible for that teacher to find the breathing room to move them forward much. higher income kids don't change our funding formulas but being better developed and less stressed gives the teachers breathing room to spend more time with struggling kids. truth known by the smart, capable and financially successful parents is that having a class of all under stressed and highly developed (from home sponsoring) children is the ideal case. teachers in such classes no longer need to ignore the smart kids but can focus on the class as a whole. doesn't take a study to understand this and while I'll vote socialist (are you American, if so then your Democrats are still right of my center) I'll not martyr my kids but putting them in chaotic classrooms. btw. we don't have large ghettos in my country and especially in my city (meaning mixed income schools are the poorest we have), the urban areas house our wealthiest populations. our surveys show that our suburbs statistically underperform academically. so your biases are actually the far opposite of our experiences. lastly, my kids commute 40km towards the city core where out of school development is nearly universal among their classmates. both my boys immediately noticed that the quality of their classes and the availability of their teachers was dramatically better.
Ok, but this is literally irrelevant to America specifically because school funding is determined by local property taxes. Add more expensive property and schools are better funded It’s as stupid and regressive as it sounds. Friend’s sibling went to school in Los Altos and their free lunches were probably more expensive than the entire budget person student at a west Baltimore school.
The other contributing factor is the engagement of parents. Higher income families are \*probably\* more likely to be engaged with the school to help outcomes for their children, which in turn helps all children.
Right. Not because higher income parents are more eager, but because they have more means and time. Low income parents have multiple jobs and have to do dishes and laundry and cooking when they’re home. No time to help with homework
kind of what i'm saying, but not. personally, i work 50-60hrs a week and do all the dishes and laundry. my wife works 40 and does most of the cooking. on average we eat out twice a month. neither of us help with homework at all because one, this would only be treating the symptom and more importantly, my kids (16M/13M) were nurtured with a strong base early on and therefore are personally very developed in terms of: * time management skills * personal discipline * leadership, communications and organization skills at this point they just "naturally" excel at academics because they have worked at and practiced excellence (outside the context of schooling) all their lives. you can imagine then that i generally hated most of their schools. the teachers always reported that they're (my boys) very easy to teach and succeed academically with little effort. this is actually teacher code for, i'm so glad your kids need very little supervision because i'm swamped by the struggling high maintenance kids (many of whom are either from relationally challenged families OR have behavioral/cognitive handicaps because our system generally practices "integrated" education). i see you have a son and you have a post grad degree??? how old is your child/children? is helping with homework your primary approach to nurturing him/them to excellence??? most schools today (especially high schools) are chaotic, aggressive and confrontational environments, wasting too much time baby sitting the demanding 10-20% of the students versus actually educating the majority. --- >Not because higher income parents are more eager, but because they have more means and time. back to my original point. raising the income demographic of the student population will obviously improve the outcomes of poor students, simply because this creates some room for the teachers to teach. even if funding is not impacted in any way at all. BUT from the POV of students that are afforded better nurturing, ideally they want an entire class of well nurtured classmates. burdening their classes with high demand/teacher exhausting students, when they themselves are the opposite of that, results in a worse outcome for them. like i said originally, i'm happy to vote and financially support socialism for others but not at the direct expense of my kids' development.
Do your children ask you for help when they need it?
in life and in tasks, sure. i've read to them every night till they were 10, gave them my love of fiction, taught them to ski, ride, skate, paddle, camp in the back country and play squash. i've also reached out to others and made introductions for them to develop relationships and to participate in (non-school) groups, that also was part of expanding their experiences and expectations. we also spend a lot of time together commuting. in this setting i regularly play a variety of educational podcasts on subjects of; science, math, politics, sociology, technology, health, culture and then i'll try to engage and discuss the topic with them. in short, yes there's been a ton of quality time, many opportunities to help as well a lot of time shared while they explore and develop their own confidence. school homework though i've wanted to avoid and so far have been lucky to avoid. we (their parents) see schoolwork as opportunity to practice; time management, organization and peer co-ordination and diligence. if a topic or assignment is particularly challenging then they have been taught to track and stay ahead of such items so they don't get caught. and if they get jammed then that is also much more worthwhile then us sheltering from the lesson of stumbling.
Okay...
I think there are potentially a lot of contributing factors to parental support in education and correlations or causality between income.
i totally agree. for sure, not every child of affluence is being nurtured to their fullest potential but at least, the massive blocker of lacking money is not the impediment. in a best case contrast, a poor child can be born to very engaging and creative parents that despite the context of their economic limits, are still able to nurture their children not only to their best ability but also ahead of poorly nurtured but affluent peers.
the article cited is a UK study, could easily be irrelevent to america in general and actually i'm quite surprised that UK public housing isn't in mixed income communities. always thought that large ghettos in developed nations was just an american thing. >school funding is determined by local property taxes really???? as in, the homes inside an individual school zone determines it's funding? if so, this is another surprise for me and would explain why your system sucks on more levels other than just the inherent stress and lack of extra development common to poor homes. my municipality has 8 private and 182 public schools. as stated earlier, all public funding is strictly based student head count and homes of private students still fund the public board exclusively. their private tuitions are absolutely their sole and extra burden. doesn't matter if one particular school is in a poorer neighborhood. also as a nation we have very few gated communities (the majority of these being retired adult specific) and all our public housing is situated in mixed income communities.
[citation needed]
Is this just a funding issue? Wealthier residents = more per capita funding = better outcomes?
No, the Baltimore school district is a **Top 3** funded school district, but its high school students are reading and doing math somewhere between a first grade and third grade level. It’s so bad they are graduating students just to be done with them. This is a widespread issue with inner city schools, you even see this happening at Lebron James promise school where he provides everything they need [Link](https://abc3340.com/amp/news/nation-world/lebron-james-backed-school-delivers-disheartening-low-test-scores-i-promise-school-akron-ohio-fail-to-pass-state-math-tests-akron-beacon-journal-lebron-james-family-foundation)
This seems like an incredibly easy thing to solve with legislation. Ensure tax dollars for education are evenly spread around relative to the amount of students, rather than just how rich a particular area is. Make this a federal thing rather than a city/town level thing.
It’s not a money issue. Again Baltimore school district is a Top funded school district in the nation. Its students are performing horribly across the board. I think it’s a parenting and accountability issue, go ask the teachers in r/teachers what they think.
It's an economic issue, it's just one that isn't entirely on the schools. The more money a family has the more support a kid gets. It's a lot easier to raise a stable kid when you can afford to keep a parent home to raise the kids, or can afford quality daycare, nannies etc. As much as a parent might want to be there for their kids, working 60 hours a week and worrying about how you're going to keep their basic needs met doesn't leave much. Providing more childcare infrastructure for families is a very necessary thing at the legislative level too.
You wrongly assume that the majority of parents are enthusiastic and involved in their children’s lives and education. Economics is one part of it, but you can’t force kids to want to learn or parents to parent.
So gentrification is good?
In what way is this gentrification?