
Could You Modify It ‘To Stop Students From Becoming This Advanced?’ - docgnome
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/could-you-modify-it-to-stop-students-from-becoming-this-advanced/
======
_delirium
I suppose it's a Cato blog post, but I was hoping for a more interesting
discussion than just a random call for private education, with a market-will-
solve it assertion. People learning at different paces and on their own is a
fairly interesting problem highlighted here, but I think it's wishful thinking
to claim that the perfect answer is already known.

It's not entirely clear to me that private schools _would_ cater to
individuals, or group by ability in the way that tutors do. There are other
market forces at work, such as the preference of many students and their
parents for students to be grouped with those of a similar age--- and the
dislike of many parents for their students to be seen as "behind". There are
also administrative/cost problems with individual attention that weigh in
favor of uniformity. For example, if there are a few students who learn "too
fast", the optimal business solution for an education provider might be to
say, "fuck 'em, 5% of the students isn't where my money is coming from". Or,
it might be to generally go by age but have a smallish exception pool; the
age-groups-plus-'gifted'-class model that many public schools already use
might cover enough of the skills variance, while being much cheaper to
administer than a fully individualized model.

At the very least, I don't think it's entirely obvious what the results would
be. The bits of evidence we do have don't seem super-encouraging. For-profit
universities, for example, appear to have decided that a mass-production model
is the best business strategy. And existing private K-12 schools don't seem to
have adopted an ability-based model, instead using traditional age-based
classes. Is there a reason that, if market incentives would indeed cause such
an outcome, they wouldn't have _already_ caused it? It's true that the
private-education market is currently effectively restricted to wealthier
families, but it's still quite large.

~~~
yummyfajitas
At the college level, private schools certainly do cater to the individual. I
was fast in math, regular speed in everything else. They put me into grad
level math and physics classes, while my writing/history/etc classes were
still at the normal pace.

I don't see much reason why the incentives would be different below the
college level.

Whenever you want to ask "what would a privatized primary education system
do", you can often ask instead "what does the privatized secondary education
system currently do?"

~~~
mdwrigh2
Except that this is _exactly_ what happens at public colleges as well. In
fact, my public high school saw that I was fast at math and got me into
college classes early, so it even occurs there to some degree.

~~~
dantheman
Most colleges are competing for students; there are market forces. Public
schools have a much stronger monopoly due to the difficulty changing location.
Additionally public schools still cost money, if it was useless people would
not use it.

------
sequoia
I'm a parent of two who does NOT plan on putting his kids in public school
because I think they won't be served well there (plan on "home schooling"). My
5yo uses Khan Academy and it seems to be great. Finally, I basically hate most
aspects of public school.

That said, I get sick of everyone piling on public school whenever something
like this comes up. Public school is set to the following task: "take
__everyone __, __everywhere __, all across the country, and bring them to the
same level of proficiency across the board, with tightly limited funding and
regardless of outside factors." Someone comes along and finds a tool that
works on a teeny tiny cohort then climbs on their pedestal and declares their
system better than public schools.

Personally, I think public schools are being set to an (almost?) impossible
task. What the reviewer said in that article about "slow them down please" is
obviously abhorrent, but the "They have a monopoly! They're monopolists!"
chatter is silly, in my opinion. First of all they don't have a monopoly (for
those who can afford it: private charter homeschooling etc.). Secondly, they
are just trying to do their best to meet their goals _with what they have_.
It's selfish, yes, but having students at more or less the same level of
competency makes it easier for them to do the task to which they've been set.

When I was in school, the teacher would often say "Sequoia, that's a great
question, but it's a bit advanced and I've got 30 other students here. I can't
spend a lot of time answering advanced questions when half the class is
struggling with basic concepts." That was annoying and I'm not going to send
my kids to public school in part because of it, but I didn't rail against the
teacher for being a selfish monopolist. S/he was just doing his/her best given
the circumstances and requirements: often times public schools are doing the
same.

EDIT: an article that informs my thinking here:
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-
ch...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/11/myth-charter-
schools/?pagination=false) Great article, whether you've seen _Waiting for
Superman_ (hit piece "documentary" about why public schools suck and charter
schools are the answer) or not.

~~~
klenwell
Well put.

 _Finally, I basically hate most aspects of public school._

I was ready to agree with this. But then I reflected. What I really hated were
my rotten peers (and, to an extent, my rotten self) from around the start of
junior high to the end of high school. They weren't horrible, mind you. Just
middle-of-the-distribution-curve kids, with the inevitable psychopath or two.
I don't think privatization is going to filter that out.

And I rather liked my public community colleges and universities.

~~~
sequoia
By no means universal, merely a reflection of my experiences.

For example, I was an exchange student for a year and when I came back I was
told I'd get no credits for it because I couldn't produce a report card , so I
was held back (i.e. punished for studying in a diff. country for a year).

Same year: moved from another state, forced to take freshman "earth &
environmental sciences" because it's a state requirement. I requested being
able to take AP Environmental Science instead: "no, it's a requirement." So
I'm turning 18, held back to 11th grade because I got an exchange scholarship,
forced to take a freshman (remedial) course surrounded by kids straight out of
middle school (embarrassing and discouraging as a teenager) when I'm willing
to take a comparable AP course.

This stuff happened with me all throughout school. To be fair I was somewhat
lazy, but much of this was due to the feeling of powerlessness and
inevitability public school is designed to instill.

inb4 someone who had a different, great public school experience. As I said,
this is _my_ experience.

~~~
fleitz
The key with the public school system is to leverage your statistical power.
When I was in school I told them I wasn't going to take all the optional
blocks and instead would have spares. They said that it was a school policy
blah blah blah.

I told them that the School Act defined no such requirement and being older
than 16 I was no longer required to be in school at all so they could either
let me have empty blocks or kick me out for violating the school policy on
spare blocks. Being a rather articulate student I would be willing to write a
letter to the editor explaining how a student who could sleep through math
class and still get an A in the course was being forced out of school despite
fulfilling the requirements of the School Act.

They could have another graduate on their rolls or another drop out, it was
their choice.

~~~
Jach
...So I guess they let you stay? That seems like a risky game to me, I didn't
think schools really cared about their students individually, just on an
aggregate "x% graduated so we get funding" level. When I finished 8th grade,
with 7th and 8th being full years of 4.0 GPAs every quarter, my junior high
decided to kick me out instead of letting me go into 9th grade because I lived
in the neighboring city and they didn't like that. The city JH and HS I went
to after though were better anyway.

I kind of wish I took the GED as soon as I could have, would have saved many
years. I had the unfortunately lucky 'problem' of liking a lot of my teachers
and classes though. Basically what I hated were the prerequisites and the
required things like art/p.e./poorly taught history which I had already
learned in junior high that I had no interest in those things. (I actually
liked weight lifting in p.e., but the running and 'games' I didn't like.)
(It's especially bad that many of the required subjects in high school are
near-replicas of what was required in junior high since most students had
forgotten what they learned by then and when a Ceramics course is available to
fill an art requirement the teacher has to construct it for those who suck at
art, while the good ceramics people still have to take it to get to Ceramics
2.)

------
icegreentea
Could also mean that some teachers don't want the headache of dealing with a
class with even greater disparities in skill and knowledge. It's hard enough
dealing with a couple students bored in class cause they already know it. It's
even harder to deal with half the class bored cause they already know it.

Or it could really mean anything. Removed from context and the teacher's
deeper reasoning, these quotes are largely useless. Maybe it was just the
really lazy teachers who didn't want to deal with kids asking more advance
questions who talked to them. Could be -anything-.

Trying to squeeze more analysis out of this will just result in all sorts of
confirmation biases regarding teachers and the education system.

~~~
roc
Indeed. All I see here, is an aptitude-driven advancement system (Kahn) coming
into conflict with an age-based advancement system (public schools).

Clearly, if we're to reap the benefits of an aptitude-driven advancement
system, we need to erase the core assumptions of the public school curriculum.
(age-based peer groups, pass/fail an entire grade at a time, etc)

When students are permitted to progress in different subjects at different
speeds, the desire to see "brakes" put on tools like Kahn's will evaporate.

~~~
maxharris
_we need to erase the core assumptions of the public school curriculum_

Great, I agree. Why do you think these assumptions are so hard to change?
_Who_ are the people holding the assumptions? _Why_ haven't they changed their
minds already?

~~~
ZachPruckowski
We run into problems not only with the established educators, but I think also
from parents. A lot of people tend to get really edgy when you're discussing
changing things like curriculum or pedagogy, because they're very risk averse
when it comes to their children. Not all parents are like this, but a lot of
them are. They're also generally bad at properly evaluating their kids'
strengths and weaknesses since they tend to have a positive bias.

~~~
derleth
That, and there's the 'education as hazing' notion: "If I had to suffer
through four years of high school bored out of my mind, so should the next
crop of kids! It's good for the little buggers! Builds character!"

Frankly, the best way to deal with that mindset is to invent some crap for the
people who have it to go through so they leave the rest of us alone. Maybe
call it a team-building exercise.

------
jmtame
_That is why the for-profit Asian tutoring industry groups students by
performance, not by age. There are “grades,” but they do not depend on when a
student was born, only on what she knows and is able to do._

I just interviewed Andrew Hsu for Startups Open Sourced and he mentioned this
was very important in education. He had scored so high on his IQ test at 6
years old he was classified as "genius" and received 3 B.S. degrees at 16, and
then dropped out of his Stanford Ph.D. at 19 to do a startup. One thing he
says really makes a difference is splitting students based on skill level, not
by age. Hoping to release the interview soon.

~~~
hugh3
I'm sorry, but how the hell do you recieve three BS degrees at the age of
sixteen (unless you mean _BS_ degrees, which I'd imagine they'd really have to
be...)

~~~
samlevine
If you can learn the material you can pass classes by examination.

~~~
hugh3
Maybe, but the material needed for multiple bachelors' degrees is _vast_.

I suppose if you took (essentially) the same courses at four different
universities simultaneously, you could get four for the "price" of one. And I
mean only the intellectual price, not the _actual_ price, which would be huge
and pointless.

~~~
ZachPruckowski
It depends. If there's a large relationship between the degrees, then a lot of
the classes you're taking are going to be similar (or the same class), and you
only have to do the liberal arts and entry level stuff once.

------
jdvolz
As the father of a near 3 year old the educational questions weigh heavily on
my mind. While this is a great thought experiment ("How could we make it
better?") it's scary when given a concrete example that is near and dear to
your heart.

I believe:

[1] Each general subject has a core competency that you have to achieve at a
minimum.

It's broken into skills and subjects.

Skills includes: programming, reading, writing, functional mathematics (+-*/
and solving word problems), learning (figuring out how the pupil best learns
for themselves, or if you want "meta-learning"). I may be missing some skills
here.

Subjects include: english, history, biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics
(both higher level functional math and theory / proofs). I may be missing some
subjects here.

[2] on top of #1 you have focused subjects of interest which you should
support the pupil learning to whatever depth they are interested in learning.
Most people I know upon finding something they are truly interested in become
a borderline expert. Are they world class? Maybe or maybe not, but they are
certainly journeymen. These range everywhere from finance to car repair to
engineering to language learning to musical instruments to basically anything
people take an interest in.

If your student can reach functional usage in all parts of #1 earlier that
gives them more time to learn different things from #2. Note that the skills
and background knowledge learned in #1 are reusable to various subjects in #2.

Circling back to the article: It's a stupid idea to even attempt to prevent a
student from mastering anything in #1 above faster. It might help if the peer
group instead of being defined by age could be defined by what your interests
in #2 are. Then you get cross pollination of students by more advanced
students in those same interesting subjects.

~~~
dkokelley
Why is programming a basic skill? To me, programming is more of a trade than a
basic skill. People get by just fine without knowing a thing about
programming. When students can't read, write, and do simple mathematics, then
they have trouble later in life.

I believe logic and basic computing (this is a folder, that is a keyboard,
etc.) are necessary. In fact, these form the foundation for programming later,
but how could programming be considered a skill comparable to reading or
writing?

~~~
derleth
> Why is programming a basic skill?

For the same reason being able to write English[1] well is: If you can use
English effectively, you can better influence the people you have to deal
with. If you can write code effectively, you can often find ways to better
influence the computers you have to deal with.

[1] (Replace 'English' with any natural language of your choice, if you want.)

~~~
dkokelley
Programming is not as ubiquitous as you or I would like to think. In fact, I
would say that most people use less than 10% of a computer's capacity at work
or home (not to say they don't max out memory or tax the CPU, but that they
don't 'unlock' the computer to its potential).

Also, if you can tune engines effectively, you can better influence the cars
you drive, and most people use one every day. Shouldn't auto shop be up there
with programming?

I don't say that to knock auto shop. I want to reinforce the idea that
'programming' is not as important a skill as reading, writing, and math.
Programming is a trade skill that builds on the concepts of reading, writing,
and math. It's an advanced skill, not a basic one.

~~~
derleth
Education isn't about making people average. It's about trying to elevate them
a bit above. I wouldn't be averse to adding auto shop in (except for the
practical matter that modern cars aren't as friendly to shade-tree mechanics
as cars of decades ago) but I still think computer programming is more
important.

It's more important because, frankly, being able to use a computer really well
means you can do things the companies in charge don't want you doing.
Disabling DRM, making backups of the software you own, blocking virus-laden
ads, and so on, all the things I won't put up with being unable to do but the
average person just kind of suffers with, like a cow in a thunderstorm unable
to find shelter.

~~~
pjscott
_Education isn't about making people average. It's about trying to elevate
them a bit above._

I wish this were so, but if you look at most education systems, they seem to
be designed with a goal of ubiquitous mediocrity. There's a lot of focus on
bringing everybody up to minimal standards of not totally sucking, but anybody
who isn't in the bottom 1/3 of the class is usually neglected.

At least, that's the way I remember it, and the way politicians usually talk
about it. Remember "No Child Left Behind," where the goals were all based on
improving education for the worst-performing students?

(It wasn't all bad. I got so bored that I learned a lot of computer stuff,
which turned out to be a spectacularly good use of my time.)

------
tokenadult
Segregating pupils by age in school has always been a bad idea, and it has
always been known to be a bad idea by careful observers of children and their
learning.

<http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html>

Segregating pupils by age in school began in the English-speaking world (in
Massachusetts) as an imitation of the Prussian schools of that time. It was
strictly for administrative convenience. It is not at all a cultural or
historical universal to group school learners into lock-step groups by age.

After edit: One comment about the author of the submitted article. He is
actually a programmer by occupation. When his employee shares of Microsoft
stock vested, he turned his good fortune to improving education in the United
States. I have known him online for years as a thoughtful contributor to
discussions of education policy.

I came to Hacker News by links from Paul Graham's essays

<http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html>

and came to those because pg frequently writes about education policy and has
some of his own thoughts about how schools could be better. So I've always
expected threads about education policy to be within the Hacker News topic
scope of "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That
includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a
sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual
curiosity."

------
Alex3917
This isn't surprising. There was actually an experimental elementary school in
my town that was eventually shut down because the students were too advanced
in math, so once they got to middle school it started causing political
issues. Rather than having the other three elementary schools adopt the same
system, they literally demolished the school and replaced it with a parking
lot. There is actually a pretty good book about the whole incident called
Public Schools Should Learn To Ski.

~~~
chopsueyar
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873892763/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0873892763/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=littdidd-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0873892763)

------
wizard_2
I've read though most of our comments here and I have a question. Are people
concerned with the education of their neighbors kids?

I'll be able to afford private schooling for my children. The average
demographic here probably can. I relish at the idea of seeing how a Khan
Academy Classroom could teach my child (maybe in some sort of "Free school"
environment?) and I realize that public education probably wont be able to
cover that.

What I worry about more is that my children's friends wont be able to go to a
private school, and while I realize Khan Academy is free online. Most kids
will probably be sent to public schools.

I was educated in public school and I don't think it was horrible but I do
think we can do better.

I think the question is; How do we bring this type of learning to public
education?

~~~
sukuriant
Get the parents involved, get them to help teach their children, or even just
point their children to Khan Academy.

------
bendotc
Really interesting, shocking quote from the original article, but the Cato
free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker News,
IMO. The original Wired piece is great, though.

~~~
gdfsnob
"Cato free-market spin is questionable and not terribly well suited to Hacker
News"

As if Hacker News is somehow more qualified on economic issues than Cato,
which has 10 Nobel Laureates?

F. A. Hayek

Milton Friedman

James M. Buchanan

Robert Mundell

Edward C. Prescott

Douglass C. North

Vernon L. Smith

Gary S. Becker

Ronald Coase

Thomas C. Schelling

<http://www.cato.org/people/nobel-index.html>

~~~
bendotc
You seem to be arguing against a point I didn't make. I didn't say that
"Hacker News is more qualified on economic issues than Cato" as you put it. I
said that I found the case made in this blog post to be questionable and that
this political content is not well-suited to Hacker News.

I was not impeaching the intellectual output of the Nobel laureates associated
with the Cato institute, but I do have to note here that none of them wrote
this blog post, nor is there any indication that any of them reviewed it. I
could further debate your name-dropping, but I've wasted enough key-strokes on
this as is.

~~~
fleitz
If politics is not suitable for HN then why do we have lots of articles about
'open source', patent reform, privacy issues regarding Facebook,Twitter,
articles about wikileaks, lulzsec, the FBI, etc.

These are all primarily political and non-technical issues that affect our
industry just as the Khan Academy affects our ability to learn in the
politicized education industry.

------
seanalltogether
My brother is currently working with the Adams County school system which is
switching to an entirely new system of public education.
<http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/22189278/detail.html>

They will no longer have traditional grades like Grade 7, Grade 8, etc,
instead they will only have levels, and all students of a certain level will
share the same classroom. When you level up in Math 10, you move to Math 11,
even if you're still only in English 6. Your age no longer has any bearing on
the level you belong in, only your ability.

The educational track will now be entirely in the hands of the students and
they have until the age of 20 I believe to "graduate" from high school under
the new system with a certain number of levels achieved.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Are they ignoring social aspects of Grade based teaching?

------
code_duck
I spent some time with a 6 year old, who was my girlfriend's nephew. I noticed
that he spoke well and was very sharp, but wasn't able to read. I suggested
that we should read some things and he should learn to read, but no - his
mother said that he was going to learn to read in 1st grade, with the other
kids. Starting him earlier than that, she said, would stunt his social
performance because he would be so far ahead of his peers.

~~~
carpdiem
As someone who learned to read at a very early age, this is horrifying to me.

~~~
code_duck
I didn't know what to say. I can't believe the logic. I wanted to help this
kid, but it seems his parents are set on him not turning out any smarter or
better educated than they are.

------
zafka
This is a fine example of supplying a quote from an imaginary adversary to
show how much better your own position is.

The proponent is just using the popularity of the khan schools to frame the
bashing of public schools.

------
lwhi
I don't think the issue involves monopolies as much as a historically based
needs.

Our education systems were formed as part of the drive that became known as
the industrial revolution. Standardisation was a key focus, because people
needed to be able to become part of the industrial processes that surrounded
their day-to-day lives working in factories and offices.

Workers needed to possess skill sets that are known, and they ultimately
needed to become replaceable.

It stands to reason that our education system will change as we move away from
the industrial revolution and into the next.

The question should be: what do (and will) society need from an education
system in the coming 50 years?

------
wccrawford
It doesn't surprise me at all. The incentives are all wrong. Teachers are
incentivized to push students to the next grade with as little fuss as
possible. They aren't ever asked to help kids improve themselves... Only to
make sure they learned the minimum required knowledge.

That teachers would ask that students be kept ignorant just to make their job
easier does not surprise me a bit.

To be clear, not all teachers are asking this. Some teachers really care about
the students. I had quite a few good teachers in school, and only a few bad
ones. But my perception is that that balance has been changing. Lower pay,
more work, and general bad conditions have been driving the good teachers to
go elsewhere while the bad ones stay to collect a paycheck.

~~~
jbooth
So, if you had quite a few good teachers, and only a few bad ones, doesn't
that entirely invalidate your first 2 paragraphs?

I know that anecdote < data but surely anecdote > ramblings, right?

~~~
talmand
"So, if you had quite a few good teachers, and only a few bad ones, doesn't
that entirely invalidate your first 2 paragraphs?"

Not at all. I would have to assume he is describing the current state of
education as he sees it and not his direct experience with education from
whenever he was previously in school. It is perfectly fine for him to say
that, in his opinion, there are fewer good teachers today than there were
yesterday.

~~~
jbooth
It's not perfectly fine without evidence, it's just unsupported rambling about
how things are going to hell, in direct contradiction of what little anecdotal
evidence he has, in order to prop up an ideologically favored argument.

~~~
talmand
That's why I said "in his opinion". You may disagree with him but there is
nothing wrong with him saying he thinks that education was better in his day
than what he sees now. He states his opinion, you say he is wrong and then
demand he prove himself correct by presenting evidence that supports his
ideologically favored argument even though you present nothing to support your
ideologically favored argument.

And based on data I've seen for the past few years on the performance of our
education system I would have to say he's more likely correct than you.

~~~
jbooth
I didn't actually make a point about policy. I was just defending teachers.

He's saying that because of the incentives, most teachers will drift into
becoming lazy SOBs who don't fundamentally care about education and will only
work to the extent that they're whipped into doing it.

I'm saying that there's something else going on, in most cases. Professional
pride, believing in education.

------
Duff
The education system is broken and has been for decades. The supporters of the
system re-characterize criticism of the system into "attacks" on teachers (ie.
union membership) and demand more money.

The establishment "won" their side of the argument in many states -- states
that richly compensated employees (the payscale in most NY school districts
ends at $110k, plus 65% pension for life) and administrators (typical school
superintendents make $175k in NY) and built lots of new schools. Yet those
investments yielded marginal "value" at best.

Until recently, the critics were mostly focused on religion (ie. Catholic
schooling dominated education in many areas until fairly recently), monetary
issues (taxes) and ideological stuff (unions suck).

That seems to be changing now. Movements like the Khan Academy are bringing
scientific methods focused on outcomes to education. There was a recent
"Freakonomics" podcast talking about how the New York City school system is
experimenting with multi-modal learning, which seems to be successful in its
early stages.

~~~
timsally
$100K+ and $150K+ /w pension are the salaries it takes to attract and retain
excellent teachers and school administrators respectively (adjust for
locality). These are the going rates at all the top public schools in the
nation. With a fully staffed school, it works out to be about $15K per student
per year if you include overhead. The results you get are a 99% graduation
rate, average standardized testings scores in the 90th percentile or above,
special education, tons of AP classes, and top flight athletics and fine arts
programs. Success in college admissions follows from the aforementioned facts,
i.e. extraordinarily successful.

So I would propose to reframe the discussion. Because talking about money is
silly. We know how much it costs to run a top tier school. The central
question in my mind is whether we can develop new methods of education that
are cheaper but achieve the same result.

~~~
Duff
Read my comment. I specifically didn't focus on money. The point is throwing
money and bodies at the problems of education has a proven track record of NOT
working.

Those results that you refer to apply to a suburban school in high-income area
with few challenges. Those students have an edge because they have parents
(note the plural) who can fill in the blanks left at school or have the
resources to hire someone to do that. That's why the stoner white kids from
the suburbs graduate from high school and the middle of the pack urban
students get swept out the door.

I live in a small city with low costs (standard of living index is 1.1) where
the per-pupil costs are in excess of $23,000/child, the average teacher salary
is $85k, median income in the city is $50k, the graduation rate is 42%, and in
many elementary schools less than 15% of the 4th graders are in the upper half
of state testing results for math.

That NYC multi-modal experiment offers the promise of bridging the gap between
urban students without access to supplemental instruction and the suburban
kids who have lots of resources available. Kids spend time in large/small
classroom settings, Khan-academy type computer applications and "virtual"
tutoring. Results are measured and kids get rotated through various modes of
learning based on their results.

What does that mean? It means that we can improve education and reduce the
inequity in our society without throwing $100k+ teachers into the breach like
infantrymen. Being born in a city shouldn't condemn you to a marginal
education and future prospects.

It's not a matter of being "against" teachers or whatever -- it's applying
their talents strategically in a way that benefits the students. Would you
solve an IT or difficult programming problem by throwing more IT guys at it?
Or would you break the problem down and figure out the best way to address it?

~~~
timsally
What you describe is a school in a low cost area with a 42% graduation rate
that compensates its teachers just as well as the best high schools in
America. Even with an average teacher salary of 85K, a cost of $23,000 per
student seems high by a significant amount (an average of 85K for teachers
usually comes in at under $20K student/year by a fair margin). Also towns with
a median income in that range usually have far better graduation rates. I'd
definitely be interested in learning more about that school, because those
numbers seem far different than those I have experience with.

------
dodo53
It's a very bad way of putting it - but I think there's a valid discussion
needed around whether schools should enforce 'rounded' education - I think the
question is essentially what should we do students who are at 10th grade maths
and 5th grade social science?

Should we allow earlier education specialization? (ie move them up grades but
accept they'll be lacking in some areas) Or keep them in 5th grade until they
are sufficiently good in all areas - maybe allowing them skip classes they're
already excelling in so they have more free time for self-study?

I imagine allowing 5th graders to attend 10th grade maths only say (or more
general any student being in a mix of any level in any subject) becomes
impractical to schedule.

UPDATE: and as other people pointed out that's ignoring all the potential
social advantages of being roughly grouped by age

~~~
SwellJoe
_Should we allow earlier education specialization? (ie move them up grades but
accept they'll be lacking in some areas) Or keep them in 5th grade until they
are sufficiently good in all areas - maybe allowing them skip classes they're
already excelling in so they have more free time for self-study?_

You're simply accepting that "grades" are an ideal concept, and that in order
for a kid to learn higher math, they also have to accelerate English, history,
etc. If you remove the concept of grades from the picture, you no longer have
to call a kid who's really good at math a math specialist...you can just say
he's very advanced at math, and on par with his age group at English and
history and science.

Remove the preconceived notion that everyone needs to be studying the same
thing in order to be in the same "grade", and you don't have this problem.
Obviously some kids can self-direct their education to some degree. So, why
not let them? If they can advance this way via online instruction, why on
earth would you want to stand in their way?

I had a lot of bitterness about my school experience, because I was so often
bored and slowed by the pace of my classmates. If I'd had the ability to set
my own pace, I would have been much happier and much more successful. We're
beginning to have the technology to allow kids to go at their own pace...it's
obvious to me (and should be to any other adult who was a "gifted" kid growing
up but shackled by the limitations of public school) that the only ethical
thing to do is let kids learn as fast as they want to learn. It's the teachers
and schools job to figure out how to accommodate that learning, not try to
shackle it to a pace that matches the least common denominator.

------
ohyes
How did this article hit the front page? What is insightful or interesting
about it?

"This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our decision to operate education as
a monopoly."

This is blatantly not true, in the US we do not operate education as a
monopoly. There are plenty of private schools.

~~~
Symmetry
Its not a perfect monopoly, but the market dominance of state education is
greater than that of Microsoft, or Standard Oil, or any of the other companies
we tend to think of as monopolies.

~~~
ohyes
But it isn't a monopoly. There is no single entity controlling all of the
public schools. There is no Gates or Rockefeller of education.

Each school is controlled by the state and local government, which is in turn
controlled by elected officials. There are federal and government regulations,
but aside from that, it is run by the people.

If you don't like what your town or district is doing, get on the school board
and change it, or vote for someone who agrees with you. And if you really
don't like what the state is doing, offer your own option through private
education.

------
shawndrost
Could you modify it "to not take a random quote from out of context and
extrapolate a false portrayal of a system"?

------
DanielBMarkham
Seeing that it's a Cato Institute article, I anticipate a lot of noise here.
I'd like to note, though, that in a standardized, rule-from-the-top system,
outliers create immense problems, whether the outliers are really smart kids
or kids who need additional attention.

In a distributed, self-optimizing system, this is not the case. Outliers can
be handled in various ways.

This observation isn't political. You can observe the same thing in stuff all
over the place, like network traffic. If you had universal rules for
everything, the internet would tank. Instead we have a (somewhat) distributed
and adaptive system using common protocols. Best of both worlds.

Perhaps the argument begins at how to create such adaptive distributed
systems. If so, that's cool, but that should be the starting place, not a
discussion of free markets or social concern, at least in my opinion. (I was
very discouraged to hear Bill Gates blow right through this concept when
talking about helping education systems. He's trying to quantify and create
the universally-optimized teacher. Good luck with that pipe-dream, Bill.)

------
bugsy
Too short an article. That particular quote was called out and discussed here
when the Khan Academy article was discussed previously.

It's a certain mindset that thinks this way. It reminds me of another
discussion here where some people and a supporting article
([http://geekfeminism.org/2010/08/10/restore-meritocracy-in-
cs...](http://geekfeminism.org/2010/08/10/restore-meritocracy-in-cs-with-an-
obscure-functional-programming-language/)) argued that it is unfair that some
students have previous experience programming when they enter a CS program,
therefore classes should be done in obscure (and thus pretty useless)
languages that no one has heard of, in order to equally handicap everyone.

------
user24
Reminds me very much of Lockhart's Lament[1] - an excellent essay on the state
of mathematics education, and which has featured on HN several times[2]. So
yeah, if this topic interests you and you haven't yet read the lament, go and
read it!

[1] <http://www.maa.org/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf>

[2]a <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=130499>

[2]b <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=666563>

[2]c <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=256176>

------
skrebbel
The article identifies a strong problem, but:

> "This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our decision to operate education
> as a monopoly."

Without any arguments to support it, the libertarian approach is served as the
only solution.

~~~
jswinghammer
I'm not always a big fan of Cato but a short blog post isn't really the place
for a full dissertation on libertarian education perspectives.

------
rglover
It made me sick to my stomach to read this. Why are people so frightened by
intelligence and more importantly, intelligent children? It's sad to see that
we've become so competitive and complacent with our shit education system,
that we're willing to _limit intelligent students on purpose_. True educators
will find the value in the Khan Academy and similar services. Heartbreaking to
learn that people are actually trying to limit the success of a company that
promotes free knowledge.

------
canistr
But this is already occurring for students enrolled in extracurricular math
programs like Kumon that accelerate their math skills. Khan Academy isn't
doing anything that Kumon isn't already doing other than adding a few more
science subjects.

------
i5ao
the "problem" isn't student tracks or free markets. it's teacher tracks.
teacher unions (or monopolies) retard innovation-- and accommodate failures--
as evidenced by the quote.

------
clarkevans
In 90% of the geography (50% of the population?) of the united states, there
is effectively only enough population to support a limited set of teachers &
facility. It is nice that we can have magnet schools in urban areas. What
about deeply surban or rural areas?

Perhaps the whole idea of competition between schools is incorrect -- should
we instead focus on creating a competitive learning platform (under neutral
brick & mortar facility) where competition is between classrooms?

~~~
hugh3
_It is nice that we can have magnet schools in urban areas. What about deeply
surban or rural areas?_

Well, in a small-to-medium-sized town that can only support one school, you
can nonetheless segregate students by ability. A town of eight thousand should
have about one hundred students in each year, so you segregate 'em into five
classes (alpha through epsilon?) and teach 'em separately, at a pace suitable
for each.

The US is actually pretty densely populated, so the number of folks living
outside commuting distance of eight thousand other people is pretty low.

The _real_ problem with this is that nobody wants their precious snowflake to
be classified as an epsilon, or even a delta or gamma. Bad luck, drones!

------
vnchr
I think the innocence behind that statement comes from the difficulty a
teacher will face if s/he must teach students with diverse learning needs
(child A is learning timestables while child B has moved on to trigonometry).

That said, I think a teacher should suck it up for the sake of students in
this sort of situation. At worst, we find ways to reorganize teachers and
students based on students' self-progress.

~~~
hugh3
Clearly students need to be placed into classes based on their ability. There
is no goddamn reason why student A and student B should be in the same class,
or even at the same school.

~~~
vnchr
Agreed. Maybe techies gotta band together and create a better online
infrastructure for the whole homeschooling process. Just combine Meetup with
Khan Academy and you can have decentralized collaborative homeschooling@!

------
mahyarm
I think this more a function of all subjects in one classroom and one teacher
model of grade 1-7. If this was a grade 8 13 year old, he would be just taking
Math 11 classes and English 8 classes in his schedule. If they put their
primary school schedule in bands (all classes teach math from 1-2, teach
english from 2-3, etc) advanced kids can move to another classroom during that
band.

------
raldi
If you ran a school with complete authority, how would you handle these cases?

(I don't mean that rhetorically; I'm curious to see some hacker
brainstorming.)

~~~
politician
Well, I'd allow students the option to take the final exam once per semester
at any time. Those that pass at 90% would be transferred to a mixed-grade
same-subject classroom for that period where they could study at their own
pace.

I'd start with Khan Academy math, since they've got pretty good tools for
supervising students learning at different rates, and the math track is pretty
thorough for someone in K-12.

Since the students are self-selected, I wouldn't expect significant discipline
problems, and since each mixed-grade classroom focuses on a specific subject
there exists the possibility for easier collaboration.

I think this model would stand a greater chance of success in middle- or high
schools where students have a class schedule. I don't think it would be
practical in very small schools; however, I would expect that very small
schools already have their own ways of handling students learning at different
rates for budgeting reasons.

------
46Bit
An anonymous quote does not a compelling argument make.

------
pnathan
I like the US college system. In each track, you move along at the appropriate
speed and levels.

~~~
Pointsly
College is not working - by the time kids graduate most of what they 'learned'
in the classroom is outdated. College if anything is just a good place to gain
'social experiences'.

~~~
hnal943
That's ridiculous when applied to college education in general. Do you really
think that history, mechanical engineering or business majors graduate only to
find that their education is rendered uselessly out of date?

~~~
burgerbrain
Exactly. Out of date information may perhaps plague trade schools (I kind of
doubt it there too..) but in a proper curriculum in a university it's total
popular myth rubbish.

------
chopsueyar
Disgusting.

------
shareme
It skips the whole effing core of the debate...

Its not, "How do we get better test performing students?"

Its, "How do we produce people who are at the top of their self-learning
game?"

The general idea is that someone progresses from elementary school of directed
learning to self-directed learning when finishing a University degree..

Some of us reach that stage when in fact we are in High School..

------
kenjackson
Without attribution of who made the original statement and the context, this
is completely meaningless. The Wired article is good, but the Cato article is
not HN worthy at all. Purely political propaganda.

~~~
gdfsnob
Why would you automatically declare an organization like Cato, which comprises
a lot of living and dying Nobel Laureates (10 in fact) and read by a large
number of PhDs in economics from our top universities, not HN worthy and
"political propaganda"? It's a little absurd to make such a claim without
substantiating your argument.

~~~
kenjackson
To be clear, my pronouncement of it not being HN worthy has nothing to with it
being from Cato. But purely with the content of the article. Let me explain.

It opens with an unattributed quote. One that is somewhat surprising given
what I've seen from the teachers and educators I know who have seen Khan
Academy. While some complain about things like the rigor of the exercises,
I've never heard the complaint about needing to slow down the education of
students. Ben's statement, which Cato parrots needs to be attributed to
someone. Cato should known better than to base a story on it.

Furthermore, the Cato story say, "This attitude is a natural outgrowth of our
decision to operate education as a monopoly." Is it really? Where is the
argument that substantiates such a claim?

Then they say, "In a competitive marketplace, educators have incentives to
serve each individual child to the best of their ability, because each child
can easily be enrolled elsewhere if they fail to do so." Again, can they
substantiate that claim? Supermarkets exist in a competitive marketplace, but
things like geography make it far from a frictionless market. Again, I'd love
to see the data that supports this claim.

Lastly, "But why should a monopolist bother doing that? It’s easier just to
feed children through the system on a uniform conveyor belt based on when they
were born." Again, this is a claim with no finding in fact. And ignores a LOT
of things like the fact that schools typically have single classes by grade,
but subclasses broken out by skill. In my experience a child who is three
grade levels ahead in math often should't be placed for social interaction
with children three years older.

So again, my point is that this Cato article is full of speculation and
absolutely no data. Now your appeals to Cato's authority (Nobel prizes and
such) is fine. They should put their skills that won them the Noble prize to
work and actually write credible stories. This was a junk story simply meant
to attack public schools. Plain and simple. It's political propaganda. No
data. No logical arguments. Not worthy of HN.

But that's just my opinion.

~~~
gdfsnob
The "appeals to authority" fallacy applies when I'm citing non-experts (like
if I'm citing Chomsky for an economics issue). CATO is overwhelmingly filled
with PhDs in Economics, and with my economics background, I think it's safe to
assume the above article is not controversial at all among economists across
the aisle and none of them would term it "purely political propaganda".

You state that CATO is "purely political propaganda" without substantiating
that claim with any specifics whatsoever. Where is your data?

American public schools, with few exceptions, don't compete with each other
for resources and students. Therefore, it's a form of monopoly. For instance,
an American student within a designated area can only attend a certain public
school. Geographically-disadvantaged residents can still choose supermarkets
outside their areas if they find more utility doing so (or a competitor can
start up their own supermarket and take market share from the lazy incumbent),
so supermarkets do exist in a competitive market. Public school students
rarely have the option to choose new suppliers.

~~~
kenjackson
_The "appeals to authority" fallacy applies when I'm citing non-experts (like
if I'm citing Chomsky for an economics issue)._

Or when there's not consensus in the field.

 _You state that CATO is "purely political propaganda" without substantiating
that claim with any specifics whatsoever._

Why do you keep saying that? The first sentence of my last post makes it clear
that this isn't about Cato. I don't care who wrote it.

I'm from Seattle and this school district, up until this year, has been open
enrollment which means students could attend any school in the school district
they wanted. And the school district would even pay for busing, but traveling
halfway across the city, spending 2 hours a day on the bus typically meant
people went to neighborhood schools.

And that's my point with supermarkets too. Go to Watts and check out the
selection and quality of food in supermarkets. Then go to La Jolla. Sure its a
free market, but people don't really have much in the way of choice in poor
areas. Unless they want to hop on a bus for an hour each way.

A PhD in econ may mean you've figured out the optimal way to rapidly approach
equilibria, but it won't tell you that you can't ride the L through the
westside to get to the good supermarkets if you're known to be from the
eastside.

~~~
gdfsnob
Please cite specifically what you're referring to as "political propaganda".
Is it the claim that students don't have much of a choice when it comes to
public schools? If so, to call that "political propaganda" is absurd.

Regarding Seattle, you're citing one data point. The majority of American
public schools don't operate with open enrollment. If you're in a public
school, you're assigned to one school in a designated area, and can't choose a
different school.

"Go to Watts and check out the selection and quality of food in supermarkets."

This is just completely false and dishonest. There are a handful of Walmarts
and Targets around Watts and the majority of other low-income neighborhoods --
all within a 5-minute drive.

[http://maps.google.com/maps?q=watts,+california,+walmart&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?q=watts,+california,+walmart&hl=en&sll=33.940571,-118.24285&sspn=0.067077,0.048323&z=11)

~~~
kenjackson
First, I don't know where you're from, but from Watts to the Walmart in
Torrance is a 15 minute drive with no traffic (good luck). And its at LEAST 45
minutes by bus (if the buses are running on time -- good luck). You really
need to step out of your house and go to Watts. Then come back and let me
know.

 _Please cite specifically what you're referring to as "political
propaganda"._

Political propaganda is trying to make political claims with no data or
evidence. It's not the specific claim that's relevant so much as the fact that
its just a post that says it and nothing else.

It would be like someone posting to HN something that said:

Emacs sucks. Really. It's for dumb programmers who program in languages that
no one uses it. If the world didn't have Emacs we'd be better off.

The specific claim here doesn't matter. But I'd be trying to push a specific
agenda by using no or deceptive arguments. This Cato post doesn't give any new
information. It leads to no new insight. It doesn't present a new perspective.
It simply asserts its position.

------
siromega
As a software developer who works with teachers on a regular basis (and one of
my parents is one), the issue of becoming "too advanced" is a legitimate
problem. Its the same reason why Einstein supposedly got Fs throughout school
- he was bored with the curriculum, he was too smart for class.

Teachers have to work within the framework and structure of the current
education system. Let me assure you that in education the tallest blades of
grass are the first to get cut. I don't really blame them, its just self-
preservation.

If you look at the current structure of grouping kids by age, then the
teacher's issues are perfectly reasonable. How are they going to keep the 15%
of really smart kids from being bored, goofing off, and raising a ruckus while
the teacher tries to run around and help the average or behind kids with the
exercises. A child could legitimately be 3-4 months ahead in school work if
they're brilliant learners. So what do we do, let me out in March if he has
mastered all the material for the school year? Let him start on next year's
material?

If we start grouping by ability to learn and knowledge level, that has
problems too. I was great at math but only a good reader and poor at
spelling/grammar. Do I get put in an advanced class and lag the other students
in areas where I wasn't as strong? Does elementary school look like high
school with different classes throughout the day, and how does that impact
students in non-knowledge areas?

The rates at which children learn is not steady across all subjects. The rates
at which children learn aren't even steady throughout childhood - they could
start slow and speed up at a certain age. Self-paced education would be ideal
for every student if we were all self-starters and bright, KA will be great
for home-schoolers and tutors. Even kids who need remedial help over the
summer, give them an iPad and the Khan Academy app and let them catch up over
the summer. But letting a bright, ultra-focused kid master an entire grade
level over the summer and then the kid will be a hellraiser in school for the
next 9.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _But letting a bright, ultra-focused kid master an entire grade level over
> the summer and then the kid will be a hellraiser in school for the next 9._

If kids fall behind or are poorly motivated then they get extra attention. But
if they shoot ahead or are strongly motivated they get ignored? Chastised?

I'm interested in presenting the best opportunities for education to my
children and instead of being concerned with making the current educational
frameworks run more smoothly (they're not mutually exclusive interests
though).

~~~
siromega
Then take your kid out of school and home-school him. You're shitting in the
commons if you don't care about the "current educational framework".

