Said Nate G. Hilger, author of "The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis," quoted in "New SAT Data Highlights the Deep Inequality at the Heart of American Education" (NYT).
October 25, 2023
"K-12 schools only manage 10 percent of children’s time, and they do it pretty equitably."
"The other 90 percent of nonschool time — early childhood, after school, summer, private extracurriculars, counseling, tutoring, coaching, therapy, health management — masks all the most important inequality of opportunity."
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51 comments:
Ten percent? Please. If you count toddlerhood and sleeping hours in order to reach that number, you're not serious. How can something that takes -- 8 hours? -- of someone's waking, active day count as ten percent?
I don't even know the point of this article. The bogus statistic stopped me from advancing.
I am appalled to learn that the State has only managed to control 10% of the Equity Problem. Parents need to surrender their kids (and, the real objective, their resources) to the Handicapper General.
Class inequalities in achievement? High IQ parents producing high IQ children? That was covered 30 years ago in The Bell Curve as anyone who actually read that damn book understands.
Michael @ 5:11: “The B— C——“?!!? That’s now on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum! Away with you!
Yep.
Is this a condition, or a problem? If it is a problem, our lives will be forced to endure tradeoffs to create a "solution." If it is a condition, we will be allowed to live with it while finding our own ways to cope with inequality according to our skills and desires.
Is inequality in anything and everything a problem? Some say it is our only problem, while everything else is a condition. It usually takes years of professional training to come to this conclusion.
For those who read the NYT piece, did you see anything there you didn't already know? My childhood was materially reflective of growing up with a working class set of parents (milkman, hairdresser.) Despite this, I managed to score 1300+ on my own SAT test well over fifty years ago. My Dad loved to listen to Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw, so I took up the clarinet. My Mom loved to read, filled the house with books, and I was a compulsive reader from an early age. They threw in for a set of Brittanica (Junior and the real one) from an effective book salesman. I saw Bernstein and his Young People's Concerts early on, and as soon as I started to figure our what he meant when he started to explain "what is a mode?" I asked Mom to get us a piano and I was hooked.
It's been a good life. Do not feel guilty if you grew up with more money and opportunity than I had. Please do not feel oppressed if you had less. These are destructive emotions, and will not serve you well in life.
Strive for two parent households, attentive fathers, appropriate discipline, developing skills and passions, etc. Until we improve the stats on that, we won’t improve SAT or any other so-called achievement results.
I'm deleting comments that redirect the topic to murder. Yes. I have to deal with that. Do me a favor and don't be part of the problem.
It's obvious that this country subjects innocent children to a survival of the fittest contest in which a significant portion have the unfortunate luck of being born into all levels of poverty including economic intellectual social physical etc etc.
This produces human beings more likely to depend on welfare more likely to commit crime and more likely to have chronic health problems and more likely to die younger.
This is a vicious cycle that keeps repeating generation after generation. I think we've tried the bootstrap theory of survival for children long enough. Especially now with the lower birth rates among the privileged middle class, we can no longer afford to throw away human resources.
...I'm gonna guess the solution is to throw more money at teacher's unions? How'd I do?...
...masks all the most important inequality of opportunity.
...so can we stop spending whatever the multiple is per student vs the rest of the developed world? I lost track when it was 3x...
Blogger Breezy said...
Strive for two parent households, attentive fathers, appropriate discipline, developing skills and passions, etc. Until we improve the stats on that, we won’t improve SAT or any other so-called achievement results.
10/25/23, 6:06 AM
———————-
The problem is that all of the things you mentioned are hallmark of white supremacy.
There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas
The trouble with the maples
And they're quite convinced they're right
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can't help their feelings
If they like the way they're made
And they wonder why the maples
Can't be happy in their shade
There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream "Oppression"
And the oaks just shake their heads
So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
"The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light"
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe, and saw
"The Trees," Rush (Hemispheres, 1978)
Even the Times commenters are not on board with this nonsensical article. A sample:
School funding plays a part but you can throw all the money you want at the poorer schools and unless education is emphasized at home it won’t matter. Having two parents who emphasize the importance of school and work with their kids after school , make sure they go to school and make sure homework and studying are done is more important than more money in schools. the fact that some of the high scores are in the low income group show it can be done.
I am right now seeing differences in outcomes among my 4th and 5th grade grandchildren and their friends here in working class central PA.
All these kids are bright going by their progress in earlier grades, which was smack in the middle of pandemic remote learning, and from middle class homes. But as they go through standardized testing the ones with houses full of books continue the trajectory, while the others are starting to lose interest. For me the books are just an indicator a culture of curiousity.
I just see a small slice of what's going right here: I'd say 50% of local kids come from seriously messed up families (and these are the kids who fell behind a lot with no supervision during remote learning).
These kids all go to the same school, which is not posh but does have enough resources to do its job (though of course we have a know-nothing element around here who can't get over the idea of teachers making $60K or more).
My grandkids are not growing up in a higher income family. I agree with the premise the family heavily influences the child's academic achievement and potential. But some level of school resources are also needed. I think Mississipi and Louisiana prove this when they happily provide ridiculously inadequate public schools for decades, while decent schools are available to those who can pay, and then a find that actually fixing some of the public school does get results.
There are lots of rich people who love their kids, but what with domestic arguments, addiction problems, divorce, etc. irreparably screw up the lives of their kids. The kids have access to therapists, good schools, good diet and exercise, and they never manage to get their heads on straight. There are a great many things that can go wrong in a childhood and very little that the state can do to rectify it.....In adolescence I was afflicted with poverty and acne. I worried more about the acne.
I have three points to make...
I was raised in a communist country, where everyone was making more or less the same amount of money (pittance). THe disparities in outcome were just as large, though... My parents made less than $100 a month (engineers). It is amazing how much they did with so few resources. Long story short... I scored 1,300+ on the SAT not having lived in an English-speaking country, not having a single test prep book, and not having spent a minute doing test prep. (Please don't ask me about my verbal score - my kids are having too much fun with that as it is :)) I made it across the Atlantic, got a fantastic education, ... only to now have to learn that I have been doing it wrong all along and I ought to turn my kids over to the state...
It is a sad fact that only 30% of the children of the parents at the top, those having effectively unlimited resources, score above 1,300... Again, it goes to priorities...
Finally, as much as I appreciate the job the hostess does, may I suggest that she considers changing the starting point of all her blog posts every once in a while. At the end of the day, the one who sets the topic (ask the questions) gets to determine the outcome (the answer). Thus, starting out the day, and every day, with the daily marching orders of the New York Times - a modern day Pravda - is bound to put us on the Road to Serfdom.
So much BS in that short sentence used as the headline it could almost be fisked word by word.
Howard, I note your comment is devoid of any suggestions, general or specific, on how we should do things differently.
I'd like to hear them.
Tell (the public) what you are going to teach kids; teach the kids; tell the public what you taught them.
There's nothing wrong with standardized and timed tests. Just because todays 'students' are failing at higher rates doesn't mean the testing is a problem, but that the teaching is a problem.
It's simple and a sad and ironic state that the education system refuses to do anything about, indeed, the exact opposite.
mezzrow @ 5:53: "...These are destructive emotions, and will not serve you well in life." Great comment and, yes, excellent advice.
High educational achievement starts in the home, with parenting. Parents- TWO of them- working with their kids early on. Reading to them. Reading with them. That's a start. Then directing them into other areas. The young minds are so curious, so wanting to learn more about more things. Think of a starving adult, in need of food. That is how the young mind is. And it'll absorb almost whatever you can put in front of it (them).
We've lost the standard of a two-parent family. That's the first place to start. Charles Murray discussed this often and he's correct. In 1964 the percentage of single parent families in the Black community was around 24%. Today it is over 70%. Those kids are starting out behind the 8-ball immediately, before they do anything. And those further, growing up in hard core, tough urban centers, say Baltimore or Detroit or Chicago, are lucky to just get through a day, let alone attend a decent school, hold onto their books, read them, have someone work with them. SATs? Seriously? These kids are lucky to make it home in some cases.
What is called privilege is actually just what used to be a societal norm: Growing up in a civilized part of a civilized town, with two parents who are engaged in your education and upbringing. All the test scores and data can be compiled for as many years as they'd like. But without the basic foundation of a family and safe environment, good luck to all.
Poor Black Americans are kept in poverty by design of the Black leadership progressives. The BLPs would promote marriage, study and work if they wanted to end poverty. Instead, they promote lawlessness, out-of-wedlock births, and "acting white" school behavior.
Baltimore is a particular example. The schools don't educate, they're nothing but unstructured day care centers where the kids go to play and roughhouse. Crime is out of control.
Planned Parenthood exists to perform abortions for young girls. The culture promotes free sex to prove PP with a clientele. When a baby is born, the fathers don't provide support, neither financial nor emotional to their kids. It's no wonder that the boys grow up to join gangs.
Middle and upper class Blacks know the code. They should be calling their Black leaders on the carpet or even dethroning them for their malfeasance. Yet, they continue to support charlatans like Chicago's recent mayors.
Clyde @ 7:02: Awesome song/poem. Which is to say: possessing both respectable prosody and a powerful message which is both true and punchy. Thanks.
My Kids' Dad @ 7:48: Very insightful, thanks. Both on your personal experience and on the way our shared discourse is shaped by the choice of topic. OTOH I am fine with beating the crap out of the NYT every day. I am grateful that our hostess does the dirty work of actually reading that rag and bringing us fresh material to feed my snarkomania...
I would like to compare and contrast this article with the recent study showing that DoD run schools produce the best outcomes while educating diverse student populations.
I would like the DoE as well as local, state, and national teacher and educator associations and unions to wrestle with the fact that government run schools of diverse populations dealing with students with little home stability and often absent parent(s) are yielding the best results.
Here's a hint: While the 10% stat may be specious, even 10% of a childs time well invested in a serious learning environment will produce real results.
Temujin @ 8:16: "...Charles Murray discussed this often and he's correct. In 1964 the percentage of single parent families in the Black community was around 24%. Today it is over 70%...." In his fairly-recent book "Coming Apart" Murray reported on a similar rise in the percentage of single parent families in the "White" community. The disorder is contagious. And when something hits 70-plus percent, IMHO it represents an inflection point: the basic conditions (and expectations: which set the conditions) have changed. Tipping point, etc.
As for the possibility that poor kids can actually flourish academically in a tough neighborhood? See Thomas Sowell's "The Charter Schools And Their Enemies." Sowell is a real thorn in the side of the racist apologists and the teachers' unions, because he shows his work.
"The other 90 percent of nonschool time . . . masks all the most important inequality of opportunity."
This assumes the spending of "time" causes inequality. Now control for inherited qualities.
Biology and family cause "inequality of opportunity." Therefore, for the common good, the state must control all breeding and child development.
"K-12 schools only manage 10% of children's time"
“My teachers could have easily ridden with Jesse James for all the time they stole from me.”
— Richard Brautigan
My husband works for a large, local foundation. This foundation has three areas of focus, one of which is education - and this is the area where its grantees show the worst results. The major school district serving this city has told the foundation not to keep giving them money directly, because they don't know what to do with it - they're swimming in money, but nothing is changing.
Education is a tough nut, because while it's the thing with measurable outcomes, those outcomes depend heavily, very heavily, on family and community structure. And these things are pretty much off limits to public schooling.
This foundation, for all that it's de-facto progressive in what it actually supports (officially it's non-partisan), does at least strongly support charter schools.
Our church back in PA supported a private, religious school in inner-city Philadelphia that explicitly required an adult in every student's life to be actively involved in that student's education - as in, the adult got regular phone calls, had to attend regular meetings, etc. That school went through 8th grade and then found private, often religious high school placements for all its students, and continued to follow them through graduation and assist with college placement. It was remarkably successful - but could it scale?
Owen- Sowell came from a tough neighborhood and flourished. But again, he had two parents. He's among first ones that'll talk about the importance of it. Yes- school choice, even in a tough neighborhood can absolutely be a change maker. But that, again, requires parental involvement. An involved parent has to first notice that their kid is being shortchanged in a bad school. Then want a change bad enough to fight for it. And in every case, in every city, that means NOT voting reflexively for Democrats who have not hidden their delight in backing teachers unions over kids, and stifling the growth of school choice wherever they are, to keep kids in bad schools.
A lot more to overcome today for most of these kids than Thomas Sowell had to deal with. Unfortunately. At this point it's not race, it's class. Hence, as Murray's last book pointed out- it's now happened to the White families as well. Far more single parent homes. Far more kids failing at school. And...far more bad public schools with bad teachers.
The result is you get kids growing up on TikTok and IG. They know nothing, but they are vehement about what they don't know. And so you get them a few years on marching in the streets in favor of the terrorists cutting the babies out of pregnant women, and beheading other babies, while on another day protesting at their university because of Halloween costumes misappropriating...something.
Grrrrrrr.
Here in my wealthy suburban school district, 48% of students graduating high school can read at or above a 6th grade level. Don't ask about math, just forget it. Tell me again about how well schools work, I need a good laugh.
Thanks for asking me what I think needs to be done, Wilbur. I think the education system needs to be overhauled back into a more common sense holistic design that emphasizes Play Time Athletics art shop class home economics in addition to basic Reading writing arithmetic and basic history. The other thing is I think would be very helpful if more attention was paid to common learning and social differences such as dyslexia ADHD and autism spectrum.
I think it would also help to get men back in the classroom. Of course this means that teachers need to be able to correct inappropriate behavior and the administration needs to support their teachers when they are dealing with disruptive kids.
Also with both parents working I think we need to emphasize free after school programs that offer tutoring and activities. Type of program could be manned by college students getting their education degrees as a required component to gaining their certificate.
When I was a kid in the Jurassic period, we got notice that there would be a test on Friday...bring extra pencils, etc.
We took the test which turned out to be the SAT test. No prep, no fancy classes (we were poor so that wasn't going to happen).
I did reasonably well in math and crushed the language part.
Still ended up at a state school (the poor part), but worked for decades with the smartest people on the planet, and I could keep up.
IQ isn't destiny, but it can't hurt to be on the right side of the curve...
Temujin @ 9:42: I wish I could disagree with anything you say. As it is, I am going to sign off and just slit my wrists. Just kidding: going to find ways to read more books with my toddler grandchild.
Howard @ 10:30: "...I think it would also help to get men back in the classroom. Of course this means that teachers need to be able to correct inappropriate behavior and the administration needs to support their teachers when they are dealing with disruptive kids." ...Trouble is, kids (especially "difficult" kids and kids in middle school) tend to be physical. They don't joust with words, they break things and throw stuff. Unless the system backs up teachers who can "get tactical" with these kids and establish classroom control, I don't think there will be much progress. With litigation-shy or otherwise spineless administration, teacher morale will crash hard and soon.
Another study that confuses correlation with causation.
6 and a half hours a day, 180 days a year.
Plus homework. Usual school promoted formula, ten minutes per grade. Reality,often twice as much.
Extra curriculars, sports, clubs, band, drama. Could be another 2 to 4 hours a day.
Aftercare for the little ones. Free breakfast for some.
Nothing will work without getting the parents to marry each other. Nothing.
Education is a tough nut, because while it's the thing with measurable outcomes, those outcomes depend heavily, very heavily, on family and community structure. And these things are pretty much off limits to public schooling.
And this is the answer to why DoD schools do better, even with children of single parent households. There is structure and discipline, unlike the majority of public schools. Our idiot governor just extended the “no discipline for defiance” rule to include middle school and high school students, removing the last effective tool teachers had for maintaining order in the classroom. Without consequences there is no discipline and without discipline there is no order. We are now mandating chaos in public education in CA.
I'm recalling a 'Guardian' (UK) article from a couple of years ago opining that middle-class parents who read to their children should be discouraged from doing so, as they were promoting disparate outcomes that contributed to racism.
'It's obvious that this country subjects innocent children to a survival of the fittest contest in which a significant portion have the unfortunate luck of being born into all levels of poverty including economic intellectual social physical etc etc.'
This country throws trillions of dollars at poor Americans.
Where have you been the last 60 years?
And some of us who grew up poor with parents never took welfare, and are doing quite well, thank you.
Because my parents worked hard, paid taxes, didn't acquire debt, and stressed education, even if they couldn't pay for fancy schools.
My grandfather started in this country digging ditches. My father as skilled manual labor. And I sat in an office and used my brain.
So I write this while sitting on a comfy couch in a multi-million dollar home having been retired since the age of 55.
Life is survival of the fittest. I played the game and won. Why can't others?
One cause of so much poverty, as well as of one-parent (sometimes, hardly any parent) families is our welfare system. If you have a child, the money is provided--so why wait, why demand that your man make some commitments to your and your child's future? Then as the child goes off to school, you sit alone, with nothing to do, hardly any social interaction with people who work at even the simplest jobs. So you don't know how to find yourself a way to become a little better off financially, more to a safer neighborhood, and introduce your child to the world of work.
The black family was making great financial progress even before the Civil Rights laws were passed. That slowed drastically with the "Great Society." When we see things not progressing, even going backward, why don't we look at what we are doing and CHANGE???
Might I suggest reading, or rereading, Kurt Vonnegut's 1961 short story, "Harrison Bergeron." Vonnegut was a man of the left but even he could see how an obsession with equity (equal outcomes) rather than equality (equal opportunity) could easily lead to perverse outcomes.
Incidentally the story is now in the public domain so you can read it for free online. Just google "harrison bergeron."
By the way, schools do not use their time "equitably" for all children. There is a very distinct range of effectiveness even in schools across a single city, that is, schools that are all receiving the same funding and ruled by the same administration. The cultures of the parents, the general neighborhood, the teachers, and the children themselves all make a great difference in the effectiveness of teaching and even the goals of the teachers.
Howard:
It's obvious that this country subjects innocent children to a survival of the fittest contest in which a significant portion have the unfortunate luck of being born into all levels of poverty including economic intellectual social physical etc etc.
So... life?
We have a life of gravy in these times. Know what happens to the young of animal parents who are inattentive of their offspring? They die. Ours don't.
Joe Smith:
Still ended up at a state school
If one insists a diploma is necessary, that's really the best option after community school, so you lucked out.
Don't manage, teach. That said equitable education begins at home with parental choice and children's discipline.
Father assists mother (or vice versa) and child scores! With a helping hand from the most expensive public education system on earth to manage their time... affordable edumacation act.
The most expensive welfare system on earth. The disparate outcomes between poor communities, neighborhoods, indicates that the issue is not funding, but personal choice.
Went to a Christian Brothers high school. Required to write an essay every day of HS including the last day of school. Sailed through college. Most struggled to write. Eternally grateful to the sadist brothers.
The premise is wrong. 6.5 hours a day (8-2:30), 5 days a week 36 weeks a year is 1,170 hours. 24 hours a day times 365 days a year is 8,760 hours. 1170/8760 is 13.3%.
If you take out sleeping, you have 16 hours a day times 365 days year or 5840 hours. 1170/5840 is 20%. That is double the time stated.
There is no mention of genetics, because they only have a vague, hand-wavin g idea that those have any effect - though there are those who know it quite clearly and actively suppress the knowledge. They like other solutions because those mean jobs and status for them. Art therapists believe we need more art therapy, harmonica players think your band needs a harmonica, liberals think that government interventions will fix education.
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