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

[Rduke55]

Also, wasn't the author of the linked article angry about his kid's grade, not the amount of science he learned? As other people said, why would you expect this to be different in a private school?

And I think Phil is bringing up good points worthy of discussion and I don't know why you are doing what you are doing. You are just brushing his points aside without any debate - some sort of reverse-trolling.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
Also, wasn't the author of the linked article angry about his kid's grade, not the amount of science he learned? As other people said, why would you expect this to be different in a private school?

And I think Phil is bringing up good points worthy of discussion and I don't know why you are doing what you are doing. You are just brushing his points aside without any debate - some sort of reverse-trolling.

[/ QUOTE ]
Its a shame because its important stuff.

I assume the argument for non-state education is that if you're paying fees and unhappy with the school you can take your business elsewhere whereas if you're paying from taxation you have to pay again or take what's offered.

In any case a system that allows people willing and able to arrange notepads to do better then people understand the subject far better is aweful for science education and a disaster because it fills the world with people who value presentation over content.

chez

[Rduke55]

[ QUOTE ]
In any case a system that allows people willing and able to arrange notepads to do better then people understand the subject far better is aweful for science education and a disaster because it fills the world with people who value presentation over content.

[/ QUOTE ]

But as Andy has said, this is also the case in some private schools. This is an individual teacher and student here.

[chezlaw]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
In any case a system that allows people willing and able to arrange notepads to do better then people understand the subject far better is aweful for science education and a disaster because it fills the world with people who value presentation over content.

[/ QUOTE ]

But as Andy has said, this is also the case in some private schools. This is an individual teacher and student here.

[/ QUOTE ]
Sure, I'm not arguing state vs fee-paying except that if you pay you can chose.

The UK used to have a much deserved very high reputation for meaningful qualifications has had this ruined by grade inflation. Like the easy printing of money the government found short term votes in 'improving' education by ensuring more and more passed exams with higher grades. The method is to increasingly measure things that require very little ability or knowledge (as before this is popular so people going private will pay for it as well).

Maybe some don't think this is a disaster, I do. it would make me very angry if I wasn't still thinking about the rugby.

chez

[ALawPoker]

[ QUOTE ]
And I think Phil is bringing up good points worthy of discussion and I don't know why you are doing what you are doing. You are just brushing his points aside without any debate - some sort of reverse-trolling.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe because Phil made it pretty clear he was more interested in petty trolling than actual debate?

I really don't understand why he gets all bent out of shape even if this WAS meant to be an AC thread (which, I don't think it necessarily was, especially when you consider that Boro is a man of science and could easily have been motivated by only that). Is being an ACist not allowed? Since the state in some way will affect basically everything we could talk about, I guess Phil would rather Boro just not start threads, since they *could* all be construed as an "AC thread in disguise" whenever someone asked him a question that begged that answer.

If in one of Phil's threads someone asked him a question that he answered with something to the effect of "public school is good," would Boro or any free market fans bash him for making the thread? "ZOMG this is a state thread in disguise!!1!!!1!" No way. And it's not because we're necessarily any more polite than Phil. It's just that when you're confident in your message you don't really feel the need to resort to nonsense to attack other messengers.

If you had to deal with this guy doing this to all of your threads, you'd probably ignore him too, even if he found a nut every once in a while. I don't get why you, especially as a moderator, would defend Phil here. You accuse Boro of "reverse-trolling".... shouldn't you be more worried about the person doing the "-trolling"?

If you want to layout what exactly you'd like an answer to though, I'm sure someone will address it.

[Rduke55]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe because Phil made it pretty clear he was more interested in petty trolling than actual debate?

[/ QUOTE ]

In this thread?

[ QUOTE ]
I really don't understand why he gets all bent out of shape even if this WAS meant to be an AC thread (which, I don't think it necessarily was, especially when you consider that Boro is a man of science and could easily have been motivated by only that). Is being an ACist not allowed? Since the state in some way will affect basically everything we could talk about, I guess Phil would rather Boro just not start threads, since they *could* all be construed as an "AC thread in disguise" whenever someone asked him a question that begged that answer.

If in one of Phil's threads someone asked him a question that he answered with something to the effect of "public school is good," would Boro or any free market fans bash him for making the thread? "ZOMG this is a state thread in disguise!!1!!!1!" No way. And it's not because we're necessarily any more polite than Phil. It's just that when you're confident in your message you don't really feel the need to resort to nonsense to attack other messengers.

[/ QUOTE ]

My problem is that I'm seeing more of threads that go something like what we see here.

OP: -Link- "Blah blah blah"

Responder: What about -link- "Blah blah blah?"

OP: Stop trolling me.

Responder: I'm not trolling you. I'll say again what about this point?

OP: You're a troll.

etc. etc. etc.

And nothing gets discussed - which is the point of this forum.

[ QUOTE ]
If you had to deal with this guy doing this to all of your threads, you'd probably ignore him too, even if he found a nut every once in a while. I don't get why you, especially as a moderator, would defend Phil here.

[/ QUOTE ]

Phil and I have had some battles before. I briefly considered ignoring him but got past it, quit with the insults, and started debating his points and I think it worked itself out.

[ QUOTE ]
You accuse Boro of "reverse-trolling".... shouldn't you be more worried about the person doing the "-trolling"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, I didn't see much in the way of trolling here by Phil. It seems like Borodog has been doing this lately: makes a declaration, people try to debate with him, he responds with the "Market is better than anything.", "You haven't read what I've read", or "you're a troll" instead of discussing the issue at hand.

There is a ton of stuff on public vs. private schooling. Instead of talking about the studies, flaws, etc. we get nothing done.

I asked whether or not these problems could be fixable because he did just give an anecdote about one individual teacher and student. He gave a stock answer, Phil brought up a study disagreeing with Borodog's point and then the T-word started getting tossed out.

Borodog also said that I "really didn't want to hear the answer" which seems kind of odd. Maybe I'm a troll too I guess.

[ QUOTE ]
If you want to layout what exactly you'd like an answer to though, I'm sure someone will address it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't necessarily care about an answer, I just want to see some actual discussion.

Also, straight AC threads go in politics. Debating public vs. private education stays here.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
My problem is that I'm seeing more of threads that go something like what we see here.

OP: -Link- "Blah blah blah"

Responder: What about -link- "Blah blah blah?"

OP: Stop trolling me.

Responder: I'm not trolling you. I'll say again what about this point?

OP: You're a troll.

etc. etc. etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

But that isn't what happened in this thread.

It was more like this:

OP: (link) blah blah blah
Responder 1: what about XYZ?
OP: ABC.
Responder 2: OH NOES NOT THE ABC AGAIN!?!
OP: STFU troll

[Phil153]

[ QUOTE ]
If you had to deal with this guy doing this to all of your threads, you'd probably ignore him too, even if he found a nut every once in a while.

[/ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

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.)

[/ QUOTE ]
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....

[Rduke55]

Hopefully the thread is getting back on track.

What I was starting to get at with the "fix" question (I wasn't being a socratic ass or anything - I just wasn't sure of what I was trying to say) was that I think the problem is that with educating a crapload of students it's difficult to measure the quality of the education. Many people talk about the No Child Left Behind Act as the main villain here and I think that idea definitely has merit but the problem goes past that.

In this case public schools need to meet some benchmark for continued funding. Meeting that benchmark results in a kind of "training for the test" education that is certainly not optimal. But I think that this is also inherent to any large educational system, for public it's competing for tax dollars, for private it's competing for students.

How do we assess the quality of education? The fixable solutions I'm wondering about is whether or not there are problems with the tests themselves (can the tests be fixed) or with the idea of testing itself - should we use some other metric to grade education? If so, what should it be?

[ALawPoker]

[ QUOTE ]
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.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't really care to sift through old threads to determine the extent of your trolling, so I'll take your word for it that it's not as bad as I suggested.

Would you agree though that you and Boro aren't exactly chums and the discourse between you is usually unproductive? I don't really care who says what and am fine with retracting my claim that you are entirely to blame, but I think you'd agree that it should be no real stunner if Boro just doesn't want to deal with you (even if you raise a legitimate point once in a while).


[ QUOTE ]
In the first set of analyses, all private schools were compared to all public schools.

[/ QUOTE ]

Stop right there. If we're determined to talk about this from an AC/state angle, then there are no "private" schools compare to.

I personally have no interest in defending the "private" schools that exist in a saturated market, and would be entirely open to the idea that public schools maybe even outperform them. This should not be seen as the same argument as "in the absence of all government interference, private schools would be better still." It's possible that given a certain arrangement of laws (such as my sub sandwich example) the market just could not provide a product that was a better quality than the one government forced people to pay for.

[ QUOTE ]
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?

[/ QUOTE ]

Is it enough to overcome the enormous barrier that is artificially free schooling existing in the "market"? Apparently not, if it's true that private schools perform as bad. You shouldn't look at these schools as a result of what the free market would provide.

If what you want is to compare public schools vs private schools in an unfair market, then all your arguments apply. But the latter is not something I care to defend, because I admit it might be equally flawed (or in some cases even worse).

[ QUOTE ]
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?

[/ QUOTE ]

One of the most decentralized systems? How so? The difference between US public education and European public education is awfully small compared to the difference between either and a free market (which is, I think, what you claim to be arguing against).

A better example would be to look at the US university system, where public interference is small enough to be at least a passable insight into what a market provides. I don't think it's coincidence that the US system blows everyone else away.

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

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe ACers are silent because your evidence and questions don't have anything to do with AC, so we have nothing to defend. I have to say, you're awfully good at deflecting the actual issue into something slightly different that makes you appear to have raised a good point. Since my hunch is you actually believe what you're saying, I think you must do this on a subconscious level. Either way, you have quite a knack for it. You should be a politician, or maybe a cable news personality.

If what you want to do is empirically compare public school systems with varying degrees of interference and slightly different sets of laws to determine which one is worse, then carry on. But it really has nothing to do with AC or our positions on education, so don't be surprised when we show no interest.