8 ms·

I live in Seattle, not San Francisco, but we have some similar issues with our schools. I'd really prefer to send my son to our local public schools, but if the

• nordsieck 3y ago
  > I live in Seattle Luckily, everyone in the area gets access to Running Start[1]. Doesn't address the earlier years of schooling, though. If your children are in HS, I'd really recommend sitting downing with a HS councilor to make sure that your kids take the classes that are required by the district for HS, but aren't required for a college degree (I'm thinking of speech here, but there may be others) in the first 2 years of HS. That way they get the most benefit out of their Junior and Senior years, if they decide to go that route. I'm honestly not sure how the GPA thing works - I know AP classes can sometimes let kids increase their GPA above 4.0 for admissions purposes. But as someone who did both Running Start and AP classes, IMO, the actual college credit was way more valuable. But I also went to school in state, so those credits transferred nicely. May be a totally different story if you're shooting for Ivys. --- 1. https://www.k12.wa.us/student-success/support-programs/dual-credit-programs/course-based-dual-credit https://www.k12.wa.us/student-success/support-programs/dual-...
  • buildbot 3y ago
    Running start is an incredible program - beyond offering far more advanced and faster paced classes, it also really helped me personally mature and see vastly different people and perspectives than where in my age group at high school.
  • icelancer 3y ago
    I did this in HS decades ago and had to fight guidance counselors to get it done. Fortunately, it's much easier now. I cannot recommend this program highly enough.
  • pfannkuchen 3y ago
    I found the actual impact of AP credits disappointing. I ended up with no gen ed classes and started off in sophomore classes for math and physics. AP doesn’t count towards college GPA, and it turns out that others ended up with GPA padding that I missed out on. Still turned out fine overall, the GPA padding thing just didn’t occur to me in high school and no one pointed it out.
    • brianwawok 3y ago
      Who do you tell your GPA to? I stopped listing GPA after my first job. When I get a resume from someone that went to college 10 years ago and lists a 3.245 GPA, I laugh.
      • deleted 3y ago
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      • nordsieck 3y ago
        1. My understanding is that education is much more important in Europe than the US. From what I gather, people with long careers often still lead with their education credentials. Not sure why. 2. I think it really depends on the person's career. If they've had 7 jobs in 10 years, yeah - GPA probably isn't super relevant. But if someone's been at the same place for 10 years, maybe it's not the worst thing. IMO, the 1 page (with large text) rule is more important. GPA should probably fall off before relevant job related stuff, but there's no harm in keeping it there if the resume has the space.
      • firstlink 3y ago
        Yeah but what about when their GPA is 3.254? Bet you're not laughing then! /s
        • brianwawok 3y ago
          Lol. I even had someone with like 8 years of work experience put a 2.5 GPA on their resume. I would have done a phone screen.. but with that low of a GPA, and the judgement to put it on your resume? Pass.
  • bradlys 3y ago
    They don’t generally transfer for Ivys. Running start is something you do if you have no intention of going to prestigious private universities as it’s completely pointless (credits don’t usually transfer) and they don’t have a great process for evaluating such students into their programs. You’d only do it if you plan to go to a school in your state since transferring credits out of state isn’t always easy going.
    • oasisbob 3y ago
      Running start credits, being based on community college credits, don't even transfer cleanly to state schools. When I did running start, this was the cautious advice. There are plenty of other reasons to do running start, aside from transfer credits. Access to higher level subjects you wouldn't have access to otherwise. Personally, I traded high school PE for scuba and yoga, a full year of A&P, college calculus, and an intro year of psych. Transfer credits had very little to do with it - it was just a more fulfilling curriculum.
      • nordsieck 3y ago
        > Running start credits, being based on community college credits, don't even transfer cleanly to state schools. When I did running start, this was the cautious advice. My understanding is that there are been a number of reforms to WA community colleges that mean that a larger portion of community college credits transfer to public universities now. Of course, going out of state is a roll of the dice as always. > Transfer credits had very little to do with it - it was just a more fulfilling curriculum. Very true. I loved taking Microbiology as a HS student. Def something I wouldn't have gotten the chance to do normally. And CC offers far more advanced math than HS.
  • seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Running start applies to the entire state of Washington, and since 2013, all Washington state schools are pretty well funded (even if that means taking money away from richer Seattle area property tax districts).
• b59831 3y ago
  And the kids who's families can't afford to move/go to private school pay for the rich family's idealism.
  • celeritascelery 3y ago
    No, it’s the school board of San Francisco who is making the poor kids pay. They can’t afford to get private schooling, and their school is actively preventing them from succeeding.
  • icelancer 3y ago
    The rich families are not the problem here. The public schools with the tyranny of low expectations are the issue.
    • pseudostem 3y ago
      I will have to disagree with both you and GP to a certain degree. A developed country is not where even the poor have cars, it's where even the rich use public transport - a quote attributed to many including LKY. Extrapolating this to the current argument (disclaimer: not read the article), if the same system is thrust onto the rich and poor alike, it should get better over a period of time, no? This is a complicated question, thoughts welcome.
      • no1groyp 3y ago
        [flagged]
      • jonhohle 3y ago
        That’s a very specific view of a mostly urban environment. Forcing an encumbered, Orwellian institution on a populace against their will does not seem very developed. (I say that as a husband to a public school teacher, son of a public school teacher, and father of children attending public school.)
      • supportlocal4h 3y ago
        My child attends a small, arguably underfunded, rural public school. It does not have enough faculty to teach Chemistry or Physics every year. Spanish is the only foreign language taught. The student body generally excels. A graduating class of 120 students might have a dozen who score 30+ on the ACT. And, of course, there is perhaps an equal number who fail to graduate. They all go to the same school, but I wouldn't say "the same system is thrust onto the rich and poor alike." The most important system in the education of a child is not within the walls of a school. It is within the walls of their home. It is simply true that a certain level of affluence is necessary to provide a stable learning environment * in the home *. Affluence does not guarantee that stability, but it increases the odds so dramatically that its affect should not be ignored.
• testfoobar 3y ago
  Wealthy suburbs are cutting advanced classes too. Palo Alto Unified School District is dropping dual-enrolled Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra (classes taken after AP Calculus BC). https://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2023/03/29/cancellation-of-multivariable-math-at-paly-and-gunn https://www.paloaltoonline.com/square/2023/03/29/cancellatio...
  • prpl 3y ago
    I have a hard time believing above average students (with parents with parents without engineering/science degrees) could take linear algebra and multi variable calculus at university rigor along any other courses they are required to take. Sure, maybe at Paly and Gunn there’s enough to fill a 20 person class, but those are still pretty steep courses which require math majors and not math education majors. If the students are prepared enough for those classes, what’s the point in keeping them in High School anyway? I had a strange experience where I had a bunch of AP courses lined up my senior year and then moved to a place which did not have nearly any of them. In hindsight, I should have really pressed for direct enrollment to college instead of faffing around my senior year in “communication skills”, AP english, and “Economics” - all three required by the school district but mostly useless.
    • lokar 3y ago
      At some point the answer should be to support students just taking a class or two at a local university. This is totally reasonable.
      • testfoobar 3y ago
        This is in fact how the programs are structured at many high schools with dual-enrollment. Most top high schools in the Bay Area offer such options for Multivariable Calculus and Linear Algebra. What Palo Alto is doing is dropping formal support of the program - in practice that has meant bringing college professors to school sites and providing these classes without fees for students. Without formal support, students have to pay and have to commute.
      • 3y ago
• HopenHeyHi 3y ago
  [flagged]
• option 3y ago
  in what universe sacrificing child’s education (even if the child is from wealthy family) leads to some greater good. It is a lose-lose proposition for everyone.
• adamredwoods 3y ago
  We have two friends whose kids are in two different Seattle middle schools, and the anecdotes we hear are not going well. One middle school was considering getting rid of advanced courses entirely. We're in East Renton, which usually follows Seattle, but they have kept honor courses. In fact, honor courses are encouraged to take, open to everyone, and from what I understand, no one is rejected (possibly only for the first year). I like this approach better than 'algebra for no one'. Yes, the better school districts are east of Seattle, and this is why all those homes are retaining their skyrocketing value. >> Asking higher income parents to risk their children's future is a lot. We're not wealthy at all, so if the Renton school system follows Seattle, we're not going to waste our child's future on crap education.
  • echelon 3y ago
    You're not going to improve the lives of impoverished children by lowering the bar. It's absurd. The best solution I can think of is to pay children to succeed in academics or extracurriculars (STEM, clubs, sports, arts, etc.) A student wouldn't have to be gifted in math, just apply themselves to some interest that drives them. Give them a score-based percentage of $200/mo for hitting certain criteria each month. Playing for the school sports team, being in the band, getting involved in photography. Something positive in academics, arts, leadership, cooperation. Paying kids would teach valuable lessons about finance and build up a reward system that would serve them later in life as they begin to associate action and achievement with positive outcomes. It should still work even if they don't have a suitable environment at home to discover this on their own. Right now school is basically daycare. It can teach those that are properly prepared at home to pay attention, but it fails so many others.
    • voidfunc 3y ago
      This sounds nice but would quickly be abused by households with shitty parents (gamblers, drug addicts, alcoholics etc) that would take the kids money. Better to somehow subsidize higher education through some kind of credit system they can earn and then use to pay for college later on... of course the problem then is it would have to scale with the rising cost of tuition.
• 40yearoldman 3y ago
  > That's a much worse outcome from an equity lens Bingo, that is the issue, everybody is worried about equity. You can't have it, we need meritocracy, equity is just cruel and unusual punishment to future. It is a recipe for driving society to the lowest common denominator. You should demand proper education or your money back. (Side note, this is what we will get 10x with free college, and the guaranteed loans have already driven it this way a bit more)
  • staunton 3y ago
    > this is what we will get 10x with free college That seems quite different. First, lots of countries have free higher education and seem to do just fine. Second, lowering price of entry is orthogonal to lowering expected performance. Your argument does not apply.
    • SideQuark 3y ago
      Every free college country sends less of their people through college than the US. Is that the outcome we want? Fewer educated?
      • throwaway71271 3y ago
        looking at how things are going, why would you want more educated people?
        • timcavel 3y ago
          [dead]
      • leoedin 3y ago
        Maybe? The idea that "more formal education is better" is kind of silly when you dig into it. What value does it give society to have a huge percentage of people spend some of their most important years learning things which are completely perpendicular to whatever career they might do? Education at this point feels like exploitation. We tell people that they can achieve greatness, they just have to pay huge amounts to a college to be educated, when the truth is that most of the value of college is networking and status signalling, and the value of those is pretty much directly related to how prestigious the institution is. Yes, we should set up a system that allows all people, whatever their background, to pursue a liberal arts education if they're passionate about it. But a system that makes a pretty useless and very expensive degree a barrier for entry for completely unrelated jobs is just exploitative.
• bigbacaloa 3y ago
  This is the essence of NIMBY reasoning.
• golergka 3y ago
  I grew up in Russia, and education system at the time was mostly the same as it was in Soviet times. Still, there was a whole system of special schools, both for high and low achievers. I have went to a “math/physics” grade school from the start, and subsequently changed schools two times, each time through hard entrance exams, to finally end up in the most challenging/prestigious school in the country. It's completely mind boggling to me that a communist country has such a system, but a capitalist country is trying to bring everyone to common denominator.
• say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
  The greater good isn't dumbing down but wising up. The former is the current strategy. Don't play their game.
• gramie 3y ago
  The real problem is the insane policy of the U.S. to fund schools locally. That way, you will always have better schools in the richer areas and worse schools in the poorer areas. In Ontario (Canada), schools are funded by the province. Schools doing worse can access addition funding and other resources. In 2020 teachers earned an average of $103,000/year including benefits. In Toronto, which has a high cost of living, the average was $108,000. That's not to say that school quality doesn't vary, often by household income. Poorer people often have language issues (immigrants) and can't afford to pay for extra help for their kids, or don't have free time to work with them. The system is still stacked against them, but not nearly as badly. The American "I got mine" method of school funding seems like the worst possible choice.
  • laverya 3y ago
    This isn't a funding problem - SF's schools spend ~$17,500/student/year, while the California average is ~$14,000/student/year. LA Unified is currently ~16,000/student/year. It looks to me like SF actually gets significantly more money per student than people in the suburbs.
  • hintymad 3y ago
    > In Ontario (Canada), schools are funded by the province. California too, yet California has one of the most corrupted education systems. Case in point, the Bay Area schools couldn’t even afford school buses
• seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  Same boat. He is in SPS now, but as a kindergartener. We will kick the can down the road and do something if he gets bogged down in a watered down curriculum. I get the equalization goal, but when kids in China are starting calculus, not algebra, in 9th grade, we can't just ignore that.
• timcavel 3y ago
  [dead]