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

[bravos1]

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But you have a PhD in Astrophysics. How many parents would you think are remotely able to teach their kid science?

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I know absolutely nothing about cobbling, yet I manage to procure top quality shoes. I know absolutely nothing about cattle ranching, yet I manage to procure top quality steak. I know absolutely nothing about building a car, yet I manage to procure one I like very much. I know nothing about making clothing, cell phones, televisions, yet I can get all. I don't have to mow my own lawn, change my own oil, or fix my own roof. I trust you see the pattern.

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So you are forced to find another teacher for your child because you would be "unqualified" (not the best word choice I would guess, but you get my drift) to teach your child these topics if need be. So what do you do? You find another teacher I would guess (private school or private teacher)... and what happens when this new teacher has a similar requirement.

Parents that do not get involved with the happenings at their child(ren)s school really have a limit to which their complaints hold water.

I will agree that this story is redic and having 80% of one's grade depending on the neatness of a notebook is absurd.

[pvn]

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So you are forced to find another teacher for your child because you would be "unqualified" (not the best word choice I would guess, but you get my drift) to teach your child these topics if need be. So what do you do? You find another teacher I would guess (private school or private teacher)... and what happens when this new teacher has a similar requirement.

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You might not be able to find someone who makes the sandwich that you personally prefer in a free market, therefore any criticism of a system of government-supplied sandwhiches on the basis of you getting a sandwich you don't like is flawed.

Agree or disagree?

[Phil153]

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Car A and Car B both hold a 4 star rating from Phil's rating agency. When you read the rating you see that they measured two metrics, gas efficiency and trunk space. You then further learn that Phil's rating agency called up the manufacturer of Car A and told them that they would be basing their ratings exclusively on gas efficiency and trunk space. Would you go around telling people that these two cars were "equal"?

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I get the point of your argument, there's no need for simplistic analogies. What you've failed to do is provide evidence that excessive test gaming is causing a significant increase in the public schools scores and not in the private schools.

And you're also missing the point that both public and private schools are scoring poorly on this test, worse than public education systems in other countries. The bottom line is that private schools are doing a piss poor job as well.

Another independent metric is SAT scores. It's hard to get exact information, but the common number reported is that private schools typically score 100 points above public schools on a 2400 point scale (around 4% better, or 6% if you take the average of 1700). This is more or less in line with the 3% (based on total possible points) we see in the previously quoted data. Given that these schools attract an upper demographic, and that they contain the set of resource rich, upper level prep schools, there really is little indication that private schools in general do better on these metrics.

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The existence of public schools as they are makes it harder for private schools to access resources

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How so? Millions of children attend private schools - more than enough for a full scale economy. As I stated above, the private school market in the US is equivalent to the full or half market size in smaller coutries. Are you saying that a certain market size is needed for this to work? Seems strange to me.


Your point about public schools attracting more talented teachers due to higher wages is plausible. They certainly have more qualified teachers, on average. But private schools offer many benefits, better conditions and much higher job satisfaction, so I'm not sure how large this effect is.

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If you are going to write a textbook for fifth graders you are going to focus on the curriculum that has a potential 90% market share, not a 10% one.

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The textbook market is saturated already - people are more than happy to write for a multi million child niche. There's such a low barrier to entry in this market that I don't see it. Even my high school teacher wrote a high quality physics textbook in his spare time. And that's for Australia which is 1/15th the size of the US.

[Phil153]

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I'm not sure why tolbiny, or anyone else, necessarily must reference some "reputable" source claiming that there are problems with a study's methodology or the criteria according to which it makes its comparisons. I mean, for Pete's sake, the entire education industry is founded upon claims like those made by this study: do you expect to find many Education Doctoral dissertations or studies by institutions who have a vested interest in the public funding of education to put out many reports suggesting their own inferiority to anybody?

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I'm providing some of the only evidence there is, since private schools often do not release student grades. I also mentioned SAT scores above, which is another independent metric. People in this thread are making claims that the private system would fix problems with education (easily, according to Borodog), yet provide no evidence at all for these assertions. I'm not the one making totally unsupported claims.

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All that being said, my point earlier was that whether or not private schools have any significant edge in teaching secular academic subjects, it isn't this supposed advantage that explains the existence of most of these schools.

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It seems strange to me that people willing to pay good money - sometimes a lot of it - for a private education wouldn't be trying to improve their child's grades. Most of the arguments about the superiority of the market already (experimentation, parent involvement & choice, reputation) are already in place with the private education system. Yet they don't seem, on average, to be improving student educational outcomes - at least measurable ones.

Also, for those who say that science education will be much better under an entirely private system, remember that 50% of the US population believes that God created the world less than 10,000 years ago. It seems strange to me that people think parent choice will create a better system than the curriculums developed by experts free from the prejudices and stupidities of parents.

Anyway, to end this stupid argument...why do people in this thread think that public education system isn't fixable? It works quite well in other countries - at least a lot better than the US - even when much more centralized.

[tame_deuces]

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Anyway, to end this stupid argument...why do people in this thread think that public education system isn't fixable? It works quite well in other countries - at least a lot better than the US - even when much more centralized.

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Maybe the same thing that just made them take their kid out of school w/o trying the media, parents organizations & politicians. And some weird belief that buying education will magically make bad teachers go away.

For the advocaters of a voluntary society the lack of suggestions to take action (beyond 'shut down the state') is indeed worrying.

[BTirish]

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It seems strange to me that people willing to pay good money - sometimes a lot of it - for a private education wouldn't be trying to improve their child's grades. Most of the arguments about the superiority of the market already (experimentation, parent involvement & choice, reputation) are already in place with the private education system. Yet they don't seem, on average, to be improving student educational outcomes - at least measurable one.

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If you think it's strange that it's something other than differing degrees of success in secular academic subjects that drives most of the private school market... then you just don't understand the market. And second, you've done nothing to actually respond to the objection that the data here is incomplete and could easily present a skewed picture. I'll ask again: is there more to education than math and reading skills?

Third, you've never adequately responded to the objection that what things are like in the private school market when 90% of schools are public isn't an indication of how good education would be if it were all private. 10% of schools in America being private just isn't comparable to a privatized education system.

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Anyway, to end this stupid argument...why do people in this thread think that public education system isn't fixable? It works quite well in other countries - at least a lot better than the US - even when much more centralized.

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You mean the stupid argument you started? Like I said, personally I don't intend to have my children educated in private schools either. The real point I draw from the blog linked in the OP is that often institutional education fails to really teach well, especially with young, motivated students, and it's best in these cases if capable parents do what they can to ensure their children are educated well.

[Nielsio]

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For the advocaters of a voluntary society the lack of suggestions to take action (beyond 'shut down the state') is indeed worrying.

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The suggestion is: stop supporting violent monopolies.

What kind of action are you thinking of? The reason violent monopolies can exist is because people support it.

If your objection is: "people support it and the minds of all these peoples can't be changed", then this is what's called a self-fullfilling prophesy. It's not an argument for why *you* shouldn't be able to change your mind, and with that, the rest of society.

[tame_deuces]

Well, let's keep the discussion if shutting down to the state is a good idea out of it and conclude that on the practical side you have a kid with a bad teacher and toppling governments tends to take time.

So some suggested actions in order could be...

1. Teach kid to organize sciencebook. Teach kid some science on the side.
2. Complain to school.
3. Alert other parents.
4. Get a pressure group going and try to get some media on it.
5. Contact some politicians.

[Nielsio]

Oh, that's what you meant.

Boro and I already said what we would do: never put our children in the indoctrination camps, or getting them out of it as quickly as possible.

[ALawPoker]

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Anyway, to end this stupid argument...why do people in this thread think that public education system isn't fixable? It works quite well in other countries - at least a lot better than the US - even when much more centralized.

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I haven't been reading the entire thread, but I don't think anyone believes it "isn't fixable" (based on your apparent criteria of "slightly improved" being "fixed"). I would agree that there might be certain changes worth considering, but it wouldn't change my belief that getting the government entirely out of the way is the best possible change.

Since you seem to have so much useless information at your disposal, do other systems spend more per student? I would guess that they certainly do (but who knows). That could be one reason the other systems get better results. If I forced everyone in my town to pay $2 to build a giant statue of myself it would be a better statue than if I only took $1. But that doesn't mean things wouldn't be better still if I let people do what they wanted with their money.

Another reason, which might first strike you as silly but seems pretty intuitively relevant, is that US children are less similar to each other than kids in other countries. I'd say there's a bigger swing in, say, (not to be stereotypical, but trying to make the point clear) the black kid listening to rap music and the preppy white kid trying out for the golf team than the swing you'd find in, say, Belgium. So the bigger a disparity in the people using a service, the less a one size fits all solution can work. And so, the more devastating the results of centralization will be when you're trying to service widely varying interests.

If you compare A vs. B there will always be countless reasons why the same approach might have slightly different results. There is more going into the situations than our brains, being only human, can process effectively. So it seems silly to dwell myopically on various data points, and entirely ignore the broader trend that should tell you government intervention can only screw things up. If you can show me overwhelming evidence why such *isn't* the case, then I'm open ears. But the burden of proof is on you if you're conceding (or at least, temporarily ignoring) the theory aspects. I'm really confused what your point is, or why you think the observation that some systems happen to work better than others means something to ACers. (Or maybe you've given up on that implied point, and are just trying to argue for slight improvements to the US system because you enjoy talking about education.)