Science Education in America: Why I'm Homeschooling My Kid in Science

[PLOlover]

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"there are a huge number of people . . . unable to recognize that it is the structure of the system itself that is ultimately destructive to genuine understanding and creativity."

Include me among those people. Please, then, explain why. I'm not being snide here, I truly want to hear the argument. The article cited by Borodog was about a particular teacher who is a stickler for organization. I've known many teachers--both my own and those who taught my kids, and noth in public and private schools--who were the same way and were wonderful teachers.

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I think he was talking about evolution vs. intelligent design. in evolution there is a system of thought that can be expanded upon, the whole scientific process/method, whereas ID just boils down to "this is how it is, because <somebody> says so".

[PLOlover]

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So basic you might even say "fictitious." How would the intangible drive to "compete with a free product" (in the absence of magic wands or fairy god mothers) result in a market doing things that seem impossible?

They're not already doing their best to provide the best service?

Say I'm a professional baseball player. I'm working hard. Been perfecting my craft all my life, and working particularly hard the last few years. Lift weights an hour a day, 10 hours of cardio a week, 3 hours of batting practice every day. Spend lots of time with my coaches fine tuning my mechanics. Eat healthy, live healthy. Such a small edge between me and the next guy, and I want to maximize it. Everything is a well oiled machine. I've finally gotten to the point where I have enough of an edge to expect a starting job next season.

Then, baseball playing robots show up. They're a big step quicker, stronger, and just plain better than me. They do things I could only dream of. Do I (and my comrades) just magically "get better" because now there is a really high bar to compete with, or do you think maybe we're faced with something we just can't overcome, no matter how hard we might try?

The reason the subs are free at one place is not because the market found that price as an efficient solution. If such were the case, I would agree that this is great for the industry. But it's not the case. It's artificial. And no sub shop can compete with it (in the absence of holding a gun to someone's head and making them support my business). The result is you will eat stale bread.

Your post is actually pretty enlightening. I can actually see why people would support government interference in markets when they hold such flagrant misconceptions of how economics actually works.

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you're forgetting that say "free" subs cost a nominal 1 dollar. well the private subs may cost 10 dollars or more to compete, because they compete on quality. a lot of people will pay 10 dollars rather than 1 or even 0, in order not to eat stale bread.

[PLOlover]

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I just have to point out that this is untrue. Look at his last 100 posts and several OPs (or any time before that) and see how many times I've responded to him...none apart from this thread. I respond to maybe 1 in 10 of his OPs (mostly when he posts thinly disguised AC rants in SMP that are contradicted by evidence) and virtually none of his posts. There is no pattern of trolling at all like you suggest.

As for the person who said the article is light on data - it references this report, which is one of the most comprehensive reports ever done on public vs private schooling:

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard...es/2006461.asp

Some highlights:

Quote:
In the first set of analyses, all private schools were compared to all public schools. The average private school mean reading score was 14.7 points higher than the average public school mean reading score, corresponding to an effect size of .41 (the ratio of the absolute value of the estimated difference to the standard deviation of the NAEP fourth-grade reading score distribution). After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was near zero and not significant.



14.7 points difference on a 500 point scale...and this includes the subset of the wealthy, who do better in in school

Quote:
In the first set of analyses, all private schools were again compared to all public schools. The average private school mean mathematics score was 7.8 points higher than the average public school mean mathematics score, corresponding to an effect size of .29. After adjusting for selected student characteristics, the difference in means was -4.5 and significantly different from zero. (Note that a negative difference implies that the average school mean was higher for public schools.)


7.8 points on a 300 to 500 point scale (depends on the grade - not sure of the details).

This is including the fact that the elite private schools attract the best teachers available, and many are academically selective - which means they're already skewed toward picking up the most capable students already. Even if there was no effect from private school education, private schools should significantly outperform public schools...yet they don't.

Why are private schools failing as badly as public schools? Surely competition from the significant middle-upper class in the US is sufficient to provide market driven improvements in school quality and outcomes? BTW, private schools make up roughly 10% of the nation's schools. In other countries, this volume of kids would provide half or more the nation's education needs. Are you saying that this is insufficient to work? That the wealthy and those who care about their kids enough to pay for private school, are unable to choose the best one in their area and petition for improvements? It's a bizarre position that you guys have on this point.

One other point - the US trails significantly behind the Western world in terms of student proficiency - near the bottom, in fact. Yet they have one of the most decentralized educational systems in the Western world, and similar private school percentages to other countries who outperform them. So why are they failing?

RDuke asks above: Do you think this is fixable? Well, clearly it is, as other public school systems outperform both the public and private schooling system of the US.

So, you can keep posting "statist clown" pictures if you want, and blindly asserting your AC mantras, but the silence of you guys regarding the actual evidence is deafening....

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not sure from the quote if these are SAT scores or what. if they're grades then maybe private schools just grade harder?

[chezlaw]

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One other point - the US trails significantly behind the Western world in terms of student proficiency - near the bottom, in fact. Yet they have one of the most decentralized educational systems in the Western world, and similar private school percentages to other countries who outperform them. So why are they failing?

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I strongly suspect that current education standards are inversely correlated with the current standard of living (within countries that have well developed eucational systems)

So I'd expect the USA to do relatively badly and the question is would it do bettor or worse with fee-paying or state systems not how does it do compared to western europe.

perhaps its a sign of success that the UK is catching down with the US.

chez

[Phil153]

ALaw - you're missing the point here.

ACists in this thread are aggressively and absolutely claiming that a privatized school system will be vastly superior, AND that it's the only solution to the problem, AND that centralization is the cause of the state of education in the US.

The burden of proof is on THEM to prove their God. I am not making these kinds of huge claims. I am saying:

- There is a lack of evidence that private education is greatly superior, in addition to some contradictory evidence.
- That centralization is not the main reason for the terrible state of US schools relative to other countries with far better education systems and outcomes;
- That the currently centralized system can indeed be improved.

These are my only claims. They are backed up by plenty of evidence. The claims of ACers in this thread are not and they appear unwilling to provide evidence for their position - just a lot of bluster and hyperbole.

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LOL. Do your friends help you out by bending over so you have new and exciting [censored] to pull [censored] out of when it's convenient to a particular argument? After the Ivy leagues, the US universities are mediocre compared to the rest of the world. What a claim.

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The US is the most powerful and wealthy country on Earth, with many nobel prize winning immigrants, a huge science and technology based industry, nearly a quarter of world GDP, and the largest middle class anywhere. Yet, according to the only rankings I can find, the US has only one quarter of the world's top 200 universities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educati..._status_ladder
I maintain my position that the US has a small clustering of elite universities at the top, and the others are fairly mediocre by Western standards.

Do I think that the elite universities have benefited from being private? Absolutely. The greatness of all of the ivy leagues is partly due to the freedoms of private ownership. But only partly...two of the top three universities in the world are public. It's obvious that the wealth and selection that goes into the pinnacle of any private system will produce elite outcomes that are superior to a public system.

The larger question, and the only one relevant to this discussion, is whether the average case under private ownership is significantly better than public. I do not see it in the case of universities and I don't see it in the case of schools. It may well be the case, but you guys haven't shown a shred of evidence that it is.

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BTW - the best of the US private high school system (mainly for the elite) blows everyone else away as well, which invalidates your point I think.

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It does!?

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It's about the elite vs the average case.

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I'd suggest that wealth is the key factor in both.

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I agree! It's almost like there's a rational order to it all. People with more money will always have more and better goods than everyone else. Oh well. Rather than bring everyone down to one level so that some people won't feel bad, I'd rather people be free to do as they please, so that we'll all be richer than we would be otherwise. I just want people do be happy, Phil. It might be nice to think we can close our eyes, say a wish, and manually solve everyone's problems at once. But when you're in touch with the reality that this mindset makes problems worse, you feel like sort of a dick when you support the idea of trying, even if you can myopically represent some piece of data to give a glimmer of encouragement to your position.

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It has nothing to do with bringing everyone down to the same level. Both you and Nielsio with his comments above about outlawing competition (wtf?) and choice are missing that people can already choose to send their children to private schools. And voucher systems have been tried, but they don't seem to have improved things much.

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It's clear that you don't like AC. I guess you'd be happier if your misconceptions remained unchecked....You assume I'm as interested in misrepresenting various pieces of data to defend deep rooted misconceptions as you are.

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What is the point of this? You assume that my objections to AC comments are due to "misconceptions". Pretty arrogant, no?

In reality, my objections to AC posts are the pathetic lack of evidence that accompanies bold assertions, the over-extrapolation of freshman economic assumptions that underly those assertions, and the unwillingness to examine the downsides. I'm entirely open to the idea that private education, and the competition/efficiency/experimentation it creates, may produce a vastly better outcome. But I can't find evidence for this position, and even the theoretical underpinnings are lacking in depth. So I'm disappointed that the subject isn't treated seriously, but instead blindly asserted from the most sophomoric of assumptions.

[vhawk01]

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ALaw - you're missing the point here.

ACists in this thread are aggressively and absolutely claiming that a privatized school system will be vastly superior, AND that it's the only solution to the problem, AND that centralization is the cause of the state of education in the US.

The burden of proof is on THEM to prove their God. I am not making these kinds of huge claims. I am saying:

- There is a lack of evidence that private education is greatly superior, in addition to some contradictory evidence.
- That centralization is not the main reason for the terrible state of US schools relative to other countries with far better education systems and outcomes;
- That the currently centralized system can indeed be improved.

These are my only claims. They are backed up by plenty of evidence. The claims of ACers in this thread are not and they appear unwilling to provide evidence for their position - just a lot of bluster and hyperbole.

[ QUOTE ]
LOL. Do your friends help you out by bending over so you have new and exciting [censored] to pull [censored] out of when it's convenient to a particular argument? After the Ivy leagues, the US universities are mediocre compared to the rest of the world. What a claim.

[/ QUOTE ]
The US is the most powerful and wealthy country on Earth, with many nobel prize winning immigrants, a huge science and technology based industry, nearly a quarter of world GDP, and the largest middle class anywhere. Yet, according to the only rankings I can find, the US has only one quarter of the world's top 200 universities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educati..._status_ladder
I maintain my position that the US has a small clustering of elite universities at the top, and the others are fairly mediocre by Western standards.

Do I think that the elite universities have benefited from being private? Absolutely. The greatness of all of the ivy leagues is partly due to the freedoms of private ownership. But only partly...two of the top three universities in the world are public. It's obvious that the wealth and selection that goes into the pinnacle of any private system will produce elite outcomes that are superior to a public system.

The larger question, and the only one relevant to this discussion, is whether the average case under private ownership is significantly better than public. I do not see it in the case of universities and I don't see it in the case of schools. It may well be the case, but you guys haven't shown a shred of evidence that it is.

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BTW - the best of the US private high school system (mainly for the elite) blows everyone else away as well, which invalidates your point I think.

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It does!?

[/ QUOTE ]
It's about the elite vs the average case.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'd suggest that wealth is the key factor in both.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree! It's almost like there's a rational order to it all. People with more money will always have more and better goods than everyone else. Oh well. Rather than bring everyone down to one level so that some people won't feel bad, I'd rather people be free to do as they please, so that we'll all be richer than we would be otherwise. I just want people do be happy, Phil. It might be nice to think we can close our eyes, say a wish, and manually solve everyone's problems at once. But when you're in touch with the reality that this mindset makes problems worse, you feel like sort of a dick when you support the idea of trying, even if you can myopically represent some piece of data to give a glimmer of encouragement to your position.

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Both you and Nielsio with his comments above about outlawing competition (wtf?) and choice are missing that people can already choose to send their children to private schools.

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It's clear that you don't like AC. I guess you'd be happier if your misconceptions remained unchecked....You assume I'm as interested in misrepresenting various pieces of data to defend deep rooted misconceptions as you are.

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What is the point of this? You assume that my objections to AC comments are due to "misconceptions". Pretty arrogant, no?

In reality, my objections to AC posts are the pathetic lack of evidence that accompanies bold assertions, the over-extrapolation of freshman economic assumptions that underly those assertions, and the unwillingness to examine the downsides. I'm entirely open to the idea that private education, and the competition/efficiency/experimentation it creates, may produce a vastly better outcome. But I can't find evidence for this position, and even the theoretical underpinnings are lacking in depth. So I'm disappointed that the subject isn't treated seriously, but instead blindly asserted from the most sophomoric of assumptions.

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But just because your position happens to be the status quo doesn't mean you aren't making a positive claim. By supporting the state system, you are supporting limiting my choices. In order to justify this, you need to show that it is the only possible way to provide quality information. All the ACists are saying is that it is wrong to tax for education, so if you plan on doing it you had better, at the very least, demonstrate how it is far superior to any product that the market could provide.

You have the huge status quo advantage, but that isn't a trump card.

[andyfox]

I've had experience, both personal and with my kids, with many different school systems, public and private, in different states, and I didn't see this one-size-fits-all nationwide system which you're alluding to. That there might be national standards to adhere to doesn't necessarily mean that all teachers take the easy way out or do things the same way. Likewise, that some administrators are worried about falling graduation rates doesn't mean that education will necessarily suffer.

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
But just because your position happens to be the status quo doesn't mean you aren't making a positive claim. By supporting the state system, you are supporting limiting my choices. In order to justify this, you need to show that it is the only possible way to provide quality information. All the ACists are saying is that it is wrong to tax for education, so if you plan on doing it you had better, at the very least, demonstrate how it is far superior to any product that the market could provide.

You have the huge status quo advantage, but that isn't a trump card.

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I was waiting for the standard AC calling card. It goes like this:

1. Assert that a private system can do vastly better than a public system
2. Don't provide any evidence when challenged
3. When that's lost, say "taxes are evil...unless the public system is WAY better, we should go private"
4. Say "even if it's WAY better, what right to you have to steal and extort from me?? AC FTW"

This happens in every freaking thread, and it's why you guys deserve zero respect.

The question here is OP's claim that a private system will solve the education crisis in America and produce very favorable educational outcomes, as well as the question of whether the public system is irreparably broken, or if it can be fixed. Not about whether taxes are evil.

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All the ACists are saying is that it is wrong to tax for education

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No, that isn't all that they're saying. Read their claims in this thread...I even listed their claims in the OP you quote.

[foal]

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By supporting the state system, you are supporting limiting my choices. In order to justify this, you need to show that it is the only possible way to provide quality information.

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I think we can accept that we will never satisfy your subjective sense of justice. Why do we "need" to do this?

[tame_deuces]

But if we assume complete market control over the education system - with no 'state' to hold up a big contract saying 'education for everyone' hanging over their heads - shouldn't we assume that in areas where having a school would be a net profit loss that atleast in some cases a school would not exist?

I guess what I'm saying is that there would be not right for education? No attempt at equalizing the possibilities (which I'll admit is not always carried out in a perfect manner by the state, but atleast it is an attempt)?

Oh I'm certain grants, scholarships, community effort and similar could take some weight off - but all?