Public Education: Vital for modern society or a scam?

[Al B. Sure!]

You have yet to show any evidence that anything done in the public school system (with or without textbooks) actually improves outcomes.

At what point would additional funding cease to provide a benefit? I assume that point is a lot lower than Lower Merion's $18,800/student or Fairfax county's $13,000/student, right? Those districts must surely be grossly over-spending on education. Especially if their home environments are conducive to education so less spending would be required to meet the same performance levels.

So what do you propose are the primary reasons for achievement disparities and how would you go about correcting them? Enough about what I think will help. Let's hear your ideas.

[Kuciwalker]

At what point would additional funding cease to provide a benefit?

We don't know if it's $0. Now, I think we can probably assert that basic literacy, arithmetic, etc. genuinely are improved in a valuable way by public schooling without too much new data - probably. But those are an absolutely tiny fraction of what is actually done in school. It might be that eliminating all public schooling after the age of 10 would be optimal. We don't know. (More precisely, you don't know and I don't know; someone might have better data.)

So what do you propose are the primary reasons for achievement disparities and how would you go about correcting them? Enough about what I think will help. Let's hear your ideas.

I don't know; I refuse to speculate in the near-total absence of data.

[KrazyHorse]

*****.

[Al B. Sure!]

At what point would additional funding cease to provide a benefit?

We don't know if it's $0. Now, I think we can probably assert that basic literacy, arithmetic, etc. genuinely are improved in a valuable way by public schooling without too much new data - probably. But those are an absolutely tiny fraction of what is actually done in school. It might be that eliminating all public schooling after the age of 10 would be optimal. We don't know. (More precisely, you don't know and I don't know; someone might have better data.)

So what do you propose are the primary reasons for achievement disparities and how would you go about correcting them? Enough about what I think will help. Let's hear your ideas.

I don't know; I refuse to speculate in the near-total absence of data.

Never prevented you from having an opinion before...

It does appear that you have some other 'end' than what I thought this was about... scholarly success measured by things like graduation rates (which wouldn't apply in your case), college enrollment, or standardized test scores.

Obviously, eliminating schooling after age 10 would not improve the performance in standardized tests or college enrollment rates.


So this thread is just blah now? Unresolved in the absence of data either way? Really? On Apolyton?

[Kuciwalker]

Obviously, eliminating schooling after age 10 would not improve the performance in standardized tests or college enrollment rates.

For the latter in particular that's not at all obvious.

[Kuciwalker]

So this thread is just blah now? Unresolved in the absence of data either way? Really? On Apolyton?

This thread is a demonstration that you can't say "reducing funding inequality is the solution" when you don't know whether funding influences outcomes at all.

[Al B. Sure!]

So this thread is just blah now? Unresolved in the absence of data either way? Really? On Apolyton?

This thread is a demonstration that you can't say "reducing funding inequality is the solution" when you don't know whether funding influences outcomes at all.

No but reducing funding inequality and seeing what happens would conveniently provide insight into the role of funding with regards to outcomes...

and, also, not a legitimate answer to you, but doing so just feels right.

Robin Hood

[DaShi]

DaShi: I am currently in Palm Beach and writing this on my phone while drinking frozen rum drinks poolside. Doing digging to get you references will not happen before tomorrow night at the earliest.

Oh hell no! You'd better work out your priorities and do it fast!

Other than that, there's no hurry.

[Heraclitus]

and, also, not a legitimate answer to you, but doing so just feels right.

This is why I think democracy is a terrible idea.

[Kuciwalker]

No but reducing funding inequality and seeing what happens would conveniently provide insight into the role of funding with regards to outcomes...

Yes, I'm sure states are just lining up to give you a proper natural experiment.

[Al B. Sure!]

Yes, I'm sure states are just lining up to give you a proper natural experiment.

It can't be worse than everything they already do, right? There's social engineering; why not social experimentation?

[Agent Sox]

Sometimes the government really does run social experiments. That's why states are allowed to have their own laws unless it interferes with what the federal government is doing.

[Jon Miller]

We don't know if it's $0. Now, I think we can probably assert that basic literacy, arithmetic, etc. genuinely are improved in a valuable way by public schooling without too much new data - probably. But those are an absolutely tiny fraction of what is actually done in school. It might be that eliminating all public schooling after the age of 10 would be optimal. We don't know. (More precisely, you don't know and I don't know; someone might have better data.)

Actually, I have lived in a community where at 8th grade graduation parents would cry due to their children making it farther than them.

Their children did have serious issues. But there is a distinct differences between people who complete and don't complete highschool and for groups that have only a few years of education and those that have 12+. The latter I have sort of seen in South Africa recently, and that is even with most of the youth (who can now get a 12th education whatever their race) value education a lot less than their elders (who often were unable to get more than a few years education) but still have better literacy/arithmetic/etc. This is with valuing education less, which is usually heavily correlated with lower achievements in literacy/arithmetic/etc.

I think that maintaining that public education doesn't do much is silly. Saying that many people now don't take full advantage of it is definitely true.

JM

[Jon Miller]

I would encourage many of you to go to different countries (or even different areas of the US) and seeing how people live. Staying in the same city or observing just a single type of situation is very limiting.

A culture (the family or community or nation) that values education plays a huge role.

Availability of education plays a huge role (we can see in other countries, both among groups that value education and those that don't).

Opportunity also plays a large role. The smartest person my former roommate knew (my former roommate went to the best school in India for his Masters due to achievement, but a low tier school in the US. He didn't regularly use a computer until graduate school) could not continue his education because he had to leave to work a low skill job to provide food for his family. While this isn't so common in the US, it still happens (especially among the rural poor, but still sometimes among the urban poor).

Realizing that a culture that values education plays a significant role and then claiming that availability and opportunity might play no role at all is just foolishness.

JM

[Al B. Sure!]

Nah in the urban areas, it's not usually a kid not going to school to support his family... it's a kid not going to school because he wants to sell drugs and rob people. I talked about the psychological issues in the other thread.