It’s very much true that wealthy parents supplement their kids to keep them challenged and leveling up, so to say. What you’re describing re: AP classes is for high school students. While the parent comment may have been referring to high school, I imagine they meant elementary and middle school level. Students with support (read: challenged to learn at their level and not slowed down to the pace of the average student) are able to take more AP courses because they are ready at a younger age. They take AP Calculus in grade 9 or 10. My son, for instance, is taking algebra 1 as a 6th grader because we started doing math lessons at home for fun the last couple years. In terms of AP science classes, it’s typically hard to take all of them if you’re not doing outside lessons due to the nature of prerequisites. And, back to the point of extra lessons (which only wealthy parents can afford) I’ve had a few 8th graders (learning programming with me starting in grade 7) who scored 5s on the AP computer science A exam. Often students can’t get to that AP level without additional support prior to high school.
The reason parents look for extra lessons is because most schools can’t challenge students because they group too many students of varying intelligence and interest level into the same class. My public school district does 1 on 1 mentors for students, but only if they score higher than ~144 on an IQ test in grade 2 or 3, which is ridiculous, but these students do get that extra challenge and support with no extra cost. Schools need smaller cohorts to best support kids of all levels, and we’ll continue to fail the majority of kids until we reorganize our schools.
I understand that wealthy parents are going to show up in these stats far more often than non-wealthy. I take umbrage at the statement it's only the wealthy. It has turned into effectively only for the wealthy due to the focus on equity over the past 20+ years as we've torn down any sort of public programs for these students.
My advanced class placement started far earlier than high school. 5th grade is when I recall being put into the advanced track along with others of demonstrated ability. I'd say from my memory maybe 1/3rd of those students could be described as wealthy by any sort of the word. But they'd be more middle class vs. working class in retrospect. They just seemed wealthy in comparison at the time.
The one thing that had near 100% correlation was highly involved parents - even if they were single moms who never had time to be directly involved. All the kids were held accountable at home. I never had outside tutoring, and few of my peers did either. It was all in-school education, where we were removed from normal classes for a few subjects but otherwise part of our grade level for everything else like social studies or gym. Plenty of time spent with said friends at various houses doing homework together though.
I totally agree this needs to happen at a very young age. I was able to test out of the public high school in 10th grade due to being tracked the way I was in grade school and junior high. High school due to no advanced courses being available was an utter waste of time. Those programs that got me there have now been long-removed in the name of equity. This is the one political topic I will speak out on, since it's outright evil what we are doing kids in the name of fairness.
You really couldn't come up with a better plan to cripple a society than what we are doing to public education.
I really don't think that you and I disagree—I'm talking about the way that things are for my kid who's about to go into elementary school, not the way that things were when we were growing up.
We're well off enough to provide what he needs, but we're also painfully aware that the public school system is not going to and that most people don't have the means to do what we can do for him. I agree that that's a new trend and not something that has always been true of public education in the US.
Your implication that conservative politicians are more likely to be sabotaging schools than democratic politicians is hilarious. I'm quite certain both sides are equally adept at throwing good money after bad so long as the present policy they pursue is fashionable and focus group tested. They're incompetent, as you say, or, perhaps, they just aren't willing to risk their own political future because the changes that might make a difference will be unpopular with voters.
My reading of "purposefully sabotaged" is that whoever was in charge of the schools decided to make them worse for political reasons, like not believing in public education. I'm not aware of any dems doing this. I certainly agree that they have accidentally sabotaged schools through incompetence or corruption, but that's a much harder problem to fix than "just don't vote for people that don't believe in public education".
My point was that elections here are almost always about improving public schools, but the government has not been able to over the course of decades. Call their stewardship what you will. Purposeful sabotage, accidental sabotage, whatever, doesn't really matter to me. What matter is that the government is not capable of enacting the voters will of having good public schools, which is why charters are so popular.
It's similar problem to drugs. We have populist solutions that don't work and solutions that work but will make you unelectable. Guess what solutions will get implemented? Also it doesn't matter how much money is spent per child if almost all of it is spent on turning school into day prisons for children. Students from poor families need more resources to be able to achieve same as children who have richer families. Family support goes a long way. This includes material support and cultural one. Parents often don't know how or have resources to help their children. Easiest solution would be for schools/government to help their parents so their children could rely on their family for support. Helping whole family is not only good for children but also to whole community. It was shown that hungry students have lower achievements than feed ones but we still pretend like only thing that matters is personal learning ethics, so we don't have to feed them.
Keep in mind that the North also had it's share of segregation and discrimination against poor(and by proxy Irish, Poles etc) and people of colour. It includes schools.
Also property tax as way of funding schools is awful.
It's also wrong. His numbers are exaggerated and provided without any source. In 1970, it was closer to 250 hours of minimum wage for tuition alone (no living expenses) as minimum wage was $1.60 and the cost of tuition for a public university (near me) was $420 for 30 credit hours. Today, that same university is $6,270 for 30 credit hours of tuition, which is around 520 hours of work at $12/hour (which is $1.60 expressed in nominal 2023 dollars and is also the minimum wage in the state).
While I realize that's still a little more than 2x the amount of working hours, it's definitely not as depressing as 20x the amount of working hours as the poster stated.
In Vietnamese, "sô cô la" is chocolate, and I think it's bit of a stretch to say those are the same. Coffee is cà phê, which is good. Tea is another that doesn't work in Vietnamese (trà), but taxi is great (xe tắc xi).
Similar idea is for an interior design company to own the device and bring it out to your home after they've planned out your rooms. Same idea works for landscaping companies, custom home builders, etc. Clients can 'experience' the new design before committing to the designer's vision.
I think the error is coming from pressing space before pressing C. I made the that mistake multiple times after lining up my shot and had to refresh the page so I could try again.
When will the government start paying off my mortgage? The terms of my loan say I need to pay back the loan in full. I signed that contract, but I was young and didn't know any better. Everyone said, take out a loan to buy a house. It's worth it! My parents aren't wealthy so I took out a loan. But, the house isn't what I was promised. I don't think it's worth what I had to pay. I want to keep the house, but I don't want to pay back the loan. When will that debt be forgiven?
The Four Seasons fiasco is so strange. I remember hearing in an interview with that business owner that they (the business) explicitly told the Rudy team (during the phone call) that they were a landscaping company, not the hotel, and Rudy's team confirmed that they knew that and still wanted to use their building for their press conference.
I think the rather dumb justification was that they had already announced they would be holding a press conference at the Four Seasons, were denied by the hotel, and thought this would somehow be a less embarrassing out than simply finding a more reasonable location without the same name.
It's really surreal to remember how unstrange it was at that point. Hair dye dripping down Guiliani's face as spearheaded a blatant lie everyone knew was a lie whilst trying to overturn an election. Just completely insanity all around, and yet, it didn't feel that far off from everything that had preceded it. Just the frog getting a little hotter.
I bet the landscaping company was called after the location was already internally shortlisted by mistake, and some people would've lost face if they suddenly had to change it, so they rolled with it and doubled-down.
The reason parents look for extra lessons is because most schools can’t challenge students because they group too many students of varying intelligence and interest level into the same class. My public school district does 1 on 1 mentors for students, but only if they score higher than ~144 on an IQ test in grade 2 or 3, which is ridiculous, but these students do get that extra challenge and support with no extra cost. Schools need smaller cohorts to best support kids of all levels, and we’ll continue to fail the majority of kids until we reorganize our schools.