Comment by lm28469
5 days ago
> Remember 54% of US adults read at or below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
The sane conclusion would be to invest in education, not to dump hundreds of billions of llms, but ok
5 days ago
> Remember 54% of US adults read at or below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
The sane conclusion would be to invest in education, not to dump hundreds of billions of llms, but ok
Education is not just a funding issues. Policy choices, like making it impossible for students to fail which means they have no incentive to learn anything, can be more impactful.
But holy shit is it also a funding issue when teachers make nothing.
As far as I understand it, the problem isn’t that teachers are shit. Giving more money would bring in better teachers, but I don’t know that they’d be able to overcome the other obstacles
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I think you need to research the issue more. Teachers are well remunerated in most states. Educational outcomes are largely a function of policy settings. Have a look at the amazing turnaround in literacy rates in Mississippi after they started teaching phonics again.
I date a lot of teachers. My last one was in the San Ramon (CA) Valley School district, she makes about $90k a year at 34 years old. Talking to her basically makes me want to homeschool my kids to make sure someone like her isn't their teacher. Paying teachers more won't do ANYTHING until we become a lot more selective about who gets to become and stay a teacher. It can't be like most government jobs where getting it is like winning the lottery and knowing you can make above market money for below market performance.
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It's not just investing in education, it's using tools proven to work. WA spends a ton of money on education, and on reading Mississipi, the worst state for almost every metric, has beaten them. The difference? Mississipi went hard on supporting students and using phonics which are proven to work. WA still uses the hippie theory of guessing words from pictures (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language) for learning how to read.
Investing in education is a trap because no matter how much money is pumped into the current model, it’s not making a difference.
We need different models and then to invest in the successes, over and over again…forever.
Because education alone in a vacuum won't fix the issues.
Even if the current model was working, just continuing to invest money in it while ignoring other issues like early childhood nutrition, a good and healthy home environment, environmental impacts, etc. will just continue to fail people.
Schooling alone isn't going to help the kid with a crappy home life, with poor parents who can't afford proper nutrition, and without the proper tools to develop the mindset needed to learn (because these tools were never taught by the parents, and/or they are too focused on simply surviving).
We, as a society, need to stop allowing people to be in a situation where they can't focus on education because they are too focused on working and surviving.
Exactly correct.
It's so hilarious to look at 10k years of education history and be like "Nah, funding doesn't make a difference."
Incredible.
The US already spends more per student than almost any other country (5th globally) and the outcomes are getting constantly worse.
It’s not a funding problem.
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Education funding is highest in places that have the worst results. Try again.
Yes for example is its very well known that Angola has a top tier education system while Swedish people can barely read or count
Well, if you actually look at the data:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
We spend far more than most countries per pupil, for much poorer results
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...
It's pretty clear that while spending is a factor, it's probably not the biggest one. The countries that seem to do best are those that combine adequate funding with real rigor in instruction.
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New Mexico (where I live) is dead last in education out of all 50 states. They are currently advertising for elementary school teachers between 65-85K per year. Summers off. Nice pension. In this low cost of living state that is a very good salary, particularly the upper bands.
I don't think it's a money issue at this point.
Because they use whole language theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language) instead of phonics for teaching how to read.
Just flatly not true.
In theory yeah, but in practice 54% will also vote against funding education. Catch-22.
In WA they always pass levies for education funding at local and state level however results are not there.
Mississipi is doing better on reading, the biggest difference being that they use phonics approach to teaching how to read, which is proven to work, whereas WA uses whole language theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language), which is a terrible idea I don't know how it got traction.
So the gist of it, yes, spend on education, but ensure that you are using the right tools, otherwise it's a waste of money.
First time hearing of whole language theory, and man, it sounds ridiculous. Sounds similar to the old theory that kids who aren't taught a language at all will simply speak perfect Hebrew.
I almost agree, but too many people will take that to mean “we need to do more with less”. It’s a feature of capitalism. Teachers are stretched thin in most places, that’s always the main problem. Are WA teachers compensated about the same as other similarly educated professionals? As cops?
Hire smart motivated people, pay them well, leave them alone, they’ll figure this one out. It’s not hard, anyone can google what Finland does.
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Not true, most people are not upper-middle class anti-tax wackos. They benefit from those people being taxed.
In my own social/family circle, there’s no correlation between net worth and how someone leans politically. I’ve never understood why given the pretty obvious pros/cons (amount paid in taxes vs. benefits received)
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The electorate in the U.S. commonly votes against its own interests.
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That's why you phrase it as "woke liberals turning your children gay!"
In USA K-12 education costs about $300k
350 million people, want to get 175 million of them better educated, but we've already spent $52 trillion dollars on educating them so far
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You don't need an educated workforce if you have machines that can do it reliably. The more important question is: who will buy your crap if your population is too poor due to lack of well paying jobs? A look towards England or Germany has the answer.
The top 10% of households already account for more than half of consumer spending in the US
Hmmm, that doesn't seem right. I'm having a hard time finding an actual consumption number, but I am confident it's well below 50%.
The top 10% of households by wage income do receive ~50% of pre-tax wage income, but:
1) our tax system is progressive, so actual net income share is less
2) there's significant post-wage redistribution (social security/medicaid)
3) that high income households consume a smaller percent of their net income is a well established fact.
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Unfortunately, people are born with a certain intellectual capacity and can't be improved beyond that with any amount of training or education. We're largely hitting peoples' capacities already.
We can't educate someone with 80 IQ to be you; we can't educate you (or I) into being Einstein. The same way we can't just train anyone to be an amazing basketball player.
From what I've read, IQ is one of the more heritable traits, but only about 50% of one's intelligence is attributable to one's genes.
That means there are absolutely still massive benefits to be had in trying to ensure that kids grow up in safe, loving homes, with proper amounts of stimulation and enrichment, and are taught with a growth, not a fixed potential mindset.
Sad to say, but your own fixed mindset probably held you back from what you could truly achieve. You don't have to be Einstein to operate on the cutting edge of a field, I think most nobel prize winners have an iq of ~ 120
This is extremely not settled science. Education in fact does improve IQ and we don't know how fixed intelligence is and how it responds to different environmental cues.
Other countries have better outcomes. I doubt it's just because of the genetics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage
Modern society benefits a lot from specialization. It's like the dumbest kid in France is still better at French than you.