“Not College Material”, or 50 years in Higher Education

[ucbalumnus]

Alabama has other issues in its K-12 schools.

https://www.propublica.org/article/segregation-now-the-resegregation-of-americas-schools

[MWolf]

@@roethlisburger

MA likely has lots of high IQ parents, who pass their high IQ genes down to their children, which accounts for the high test scores.

Uh huh. Typical circular argument: “They do well because they are smart. How do we know that they are smart? Because they do well”. IQ is a meaningless term which was invented to support a system which ensures that poor families stay poor by blaming them for their poverty. IQ is a smoke screen for hiding privilege, racism, and classism.

@@roethlisburger

Alabama has a teacher’s union. It does not have laws against unionization as you say. More importantly, there’s a tenure process that makes it extremely difficult to fire bad teachers. Alabama has nothing like a private sector “at-will” status for public teachers.

Alabama law says that “public employees are not authorized to picket to compel a labor contract”. They may not as well have unions, if state law takes away the only weapon by which public employees can protect themselves.

@@roethlisburger

You say teachers will stop trying to teach, but are they trying to teach now? If so, we wouldn’t have the situation described by JHS where most high school grads lack “Basic reading, arithmetic, and communication skills”.

Because of funding. If you fund public schools generously, and pay teachers very well, and support them, your school system will do well. Well equipped and supplied schools with teachers who are well educated and trained will perform well. But if your school lack basic facilities, and teachers are paid so poorly that few teachers who have alternative possibilities will apply, and those who apply are afraid of angering parents and politicians, the school is going to suck.

If a school offers great pay, benefits, and facilities, they will be able to pick and choose the very best teachers from the many ma y teachers who will be lined up to apply. A school which has poor pay and in which teachers have to buy the basic class materials with their own money, will have difficulty even hiring enough teachers to provide basic classes, and will take anybody with the minimal credentials. Add “at will” hiring, and you are left with a few idealists who burn out after a couple of years, and a bunch of teachers who could not get hired elsewhere.

Of course, you can always add basing a teacher’s pay on performance at standardized testing as an extra bonus to chase off a few more good teachers.

But I’m sure that your idea of making a teacher’s job even less appealing than it already is will help K-12 education more than funding and support will.

[roethlisburger]

@ucbalumnus
However, often it is not known until after they attend college whether they will succeed. High school academic record and test scores can only predict percentage chance of success, not guarantee success or failure.

There are no guarantees of success or failure in most areas of life, anymore than you can guarantee someone will lose money at a casino. You can know whether the odds are in your favor, and a combination of SAT/ACT scores and GPA explains most of the variance in college graduation rates at 4-year institutions. More complex models, which explain more of the variance, are obviously possible.

[ucbalumnus]

@roesthlisburger

There are no guarantees of success or failure in most areas of life, anymore than you can guarantee someone will lose money at a casino. You can know whether the odds are in your favor, and a combination of SAT/ACT scores and GPA explains most of the variance in college graduation rates at 4-year institutions. More complex models, which explain more of the variance, are obviously possible.

At what odds (or high school GPA and SAT/ACT scores) do you think that states should declare potential students to be “not college material” and close the doors of currently-open-admission community colleges to them, rather than allowing them a chance to see if they can succeed in college?

[lookingforward]

LOFL. Why can’t OP’s friend just get credit for running the long race and winning it? Why all this hoohaw about other factors?

How many times do we need to say hs stats are NOT the primary factor in college success? That argument is full of loopholes. No the struggling kid won’t manage an admit to Harvard. But there are avenues.

[sorghum]

“You are not college material” is a short form of “Based on your attitude, character, performance and wilful ignorance so far, you are not college material”. Sometimes it can give a kid the impetus needed to up their game.

[skieurope]

MODERATOR’S NOTE:
What a lovely story.

How unfortunate that users have again derailed thread with analysis paralysis. Several posts deleted. Further posts that require me to break out a calculator to follow along will be considered as OT and handles in accordance with ToS.

[PurpleTitan]

I hold two observations to be true:

1. The US does effectively have a caste system with big inequality (even though the vast majority of Americans still believe we are a classless society) and less dynamism than before or elsewhere (go to China, where the hustling is unbelievable).
2. In the US, life is still what you make of it to a large extent and second/third/fourth chances abound. Though with a big caveat: if your parents have means (middle-class or above), you get more opportunities to fail before you find your footing.