"the influence of genes on intelligence varies according to people's social class in the US, but not in Western Europe or Australia. "
"That is, the relatively robust healthcare and social-welfare programs in Western Europe and Australia may buffer some of the negative environmental effects typically associated with poverty."
What you write is not applicable, for many reasons.
What basis do you have for saying that?
1. Rich neighborhoods result in well-funded schools with the resources to provide a superior education, better than the not-well-funded schools that are in poor neighborhoods.
Or
2. A superior education comes from "children's efforts" and kids that put in a lot of effort coincidentally all live in the same school districts, which also coincidentally are located in the richest neighborhoods?
Abject poverty is likely to have way more impact on kids performance in school than any level of school funding. Whether you want to lump that in with "children's efforts" or not, it's certainly exogenous to the school.
Coping skills and resources. Reminds me of
Privilege and inequality in Silicon Valley https://medium.com/tech-diversity-files/privilege-and-inequa...
With growing class sizes, and less teachers, US schools don't have the resources to focus on individual students' needs. The best they can do is trying to get some students through.
They could adopt the more modern concepts, where small groups of pupils get a task they can't do yet "derive a function", each group gets given some hints in which way to try it (each group in a different one — one going via limits, the next doing it numerically, the next graphically), and then each group presenting their concept to the others, and comparing.
Those, more modern teaching concepts, also allow for good teaching for every student with a low amount of teachers (and teach independent understanding, research, etc), but they're rare in most countries.
The US has a very high wealth per capita - if other countries with similar resources can do it, so can the US.
The American dream used to be about letting those who work hard succeed, and letting those who didn't fail. And anyone could choose to more from the fail to the succeed pool.
If you really want to fix education, don't repeal NCLB; amend it to state that special-needs kids get education vouchers with for going to a school specifically enabled to help them, with at least one state-funded school so enabled in each state; and then drop the requirement that any other school handle them in normal classes.
This would be better for the student, for the teacher, and for all the other students. The only people it would negatively affect are the parents, who would be forced to either homeschool, or move the family to a place where schooling for their child is available.
To clarify - I think corporations should profit as much as possible. I do have an issue with companies profiting from making shit products that comply with regulations and acting like they are making a positive contribution to society.
I've never heard the latter. When was this true? According to one history I read, one of the appeals of the New Deal programs in the 1930s is that we would be better than the Old World (i.e., Europe) and not leave our own citizens in the gutter.
But it doesn't leave them without perspective.
The tiered school model of Germany sorts you into one of three tiers based on your abilities with the age of 10, which gets even more specific over the years after that.
Only people finishing from the highest tier can go to a theoretical university, people from the tier below can at maximum go to a university of applied sciences, and people from the lowest tier can only go to a trade school.
Obviously, these tiers have different lengths of education (5 years, 6 years, 8 years), and you can always switch up a tier if you believe you can do it, but most people take what's recommended for them.
And this is necessary.
We, as a society, have to accept that some people won't be able to study maths. Or computer science.
For some people, applied sciences, or even a more technical job might be more ideal.
The solution isn't to get everyone into college, but to accept the fact that not everyone can do so, and to also value the job the manual workers are doing.
There is this nice advertisement campaign from 2014 from the German association of craftsmen, "What would the world be without craftsmen?": https://youtu.be/YfgqIWwxk2g
It's necessary not because of what some people can't do, but because:
1. It doesn't make sense to send people, who want to work in hospitality for example, to a school that has to pay for physics, chemical engineering, medical labs, etc.
2. Reducing the shopping mall quality of the American-style university -- and equally respecting technical and trade schools for the education they provide -- results in a more even distribution of attendance and probably healthier personal debt.
A lot of the German school routing is directed by desire as well; the solution is to help youngsters explore and express the skills they have most strongly.
The architecture is a bit complicated, though the picture on Wikipedia does an alright job explaining it, I think:
I've just moved to Germany from the US about one year ago. So far it's made me realize how under-developed the US society is. As I learn more about how Germany operates, I constantly have those, "that makes so much more sense", moments. Of course this isn't always true, but in general I feel that they are just doing things a little better here.
I agree that society has to change how we view jobs that don't require education from a university. It makes no sense that we should value an engineer from a tech company more than a farmer that provides our food.
Also, I find that people in Germany are more aware of what role they play in society and how it operates.
I’m not sure yet if Germany is just the least worst country, or if it’s just all PR.
the sorting after the age of 10 is simply a recommendation. It is simply an estimation of the Teacher if the Student will get accepted by a school of certain tier. For example, I recieved a mid-tier (Realschule) recommendation, but was accepted by a highesthtier (Gymnasium) school due to musical skill and passing some kind of intelligence test.
Skills taught by the scools vary by tier. A friend wo went to a lower tier school tended to have more practical subjects such as "mechanics" or "crafting". They learned how to assemble a solar array, how a transmission or factory line works etc.
You can get to any tier of education if you want. If you want to become a baker and are on a highest tier school you can drop out after getting your low-tier certificate in 9th grade and go to a trade school, and that's totally fine. If you are in a low-tier school you can either have grades good enough to get accepted by a mid-tier school and then by a high-tier school. You can also go to school in the evening if you want a better certificate, but have a job.
That the US and UK fail in this matter doesn't say anything about the rest of the world's ability to provide equal opportunity for all children.
And from what a German HN contibutor said here its funny how all the "dark skinned" Germans get put into the vocational track.
Germany is unfortuntly an outlier.
Many countries also offer vocational alternatives over academic classes at the secondary education level. While some districts in the US offer vocational "tracks", they still have to abide by the federal and state academic mandates, so they're not usually purely vocational.
Not that the structure of the US system isn't a problem in itself, but the fact that we have compulsory, academic-based secondary education that requires public schools to accept all students zoned for it leaves the US in a tight spot. We'll already have a lower graduation rate simply from people dropping out that would otherwise never have started if it wasn't compulsory here. But it's even worse since we don't optimize it to the students (such as the purely vocational options and competitive high school entrance acceptance that allows for a more homogenous student body and more tailored teaching that I mentioned previously)
did you want actual suggestions?