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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   31449 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Perhaps not Harvard material, but are you really feeling that there are 'lots' ( 5? 50? a double-digit percentage?) of highschools where the year's most academically successful graduate is not among the approximately 50% of Americans able to eventually navigate some form of post-secondary education? I know some districts are pretty rough but 'their top 1% is worse than our median' is a heck of a claim.

I’m quite confident that the typical public high school in Baltimore Maryland, Jackson Mississippi, Washington DC, and certain parts of Central Valley fits the bill. I would be shocked if chicago and LA and New York didn’t have at least a few apiece.

I in general expect low performing high schools to be much, much worse than it says on the tin because of fraud on the part of teachers and administrators.

There are 60 schools in Chicago where no student is proficient in math or reading.

These are not underfunded schools. The Douglass Academy High School gets $56k a student and has none that are proficient in reading.

And to note- the usual response to a high failure rate in schools is to lower standards, and admins and teachers are strongly incentivized to make rounding errors in a students favor. These are not unrealistically high standards; these are extremely doable standards even for a student body with an average IQ in the 80’s.

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