Unless you are bugging my phone or tracking me somehow, I am not sure how you are aware of what my experience on this topic is.
I do find it ironic that on a website where a significant portion of the posters, and a larger portion of the posts, are “elite or bust”, you are blaming me, and by extension my children, for finding this dynamic destructive.
I don’t think verbal judo is a productive use of my time, but I am familiar with the “blame the victim” strategy of debating.
I work with marketing people frequently, so I understand exactly what the elite colleges are doing. They are getting precisely the response they want to get, and it does become a self-reinforcing cycle for them, where they advertise out that [Name your T20 School] is the best path to success, get the career placement stats up as soon as possible, and the drive home the marketing message that students need to go there if they want to be successful. They then scoop up many of the top students, many of whom would have been just as successful anywhere they went to college, which results in better placement numbers down the road. Wash, rinse, repeat.
I know we are supposed to keep the board civil, but your interpretation of that thread borders on gaslighting. The thread you are talking about has literally dozens of posts about the number of top earners and average salaries 5 years out and number of CEOs from the elite schools. I tried to point out that there was a clear case of comparing apples and either got ignored or contradicted by those focused on the elite schools.
There was also a consistent level of hubris throughout the thread. This is a post you made in that thread. It was not the only one along these lines, but the theme is consistent.
I won’t even bother to interpret it. The post speaks for itself.
Context matters. In the citation you highlight I was responding to your assertion that based upon grade inflation “getting in was the hardest part” at elites and responding to your asking me to explain why elite GPAs are so high. I highlighted that selectivity is a root cause. In fact you seem to validate this perspective…
I have reread my words twice and don’t see any implication that “kids must get into the top schools or their chance of career success drops dramatically” or that not sending your kid to an elite constitutes bad parenting. Actually I made numerous comments to the contrary.
Yes statistically I have highlighted the reality that certain professions are disproportionately populated by elite grads but I never suggested attendance at an elite is an imperative to success. Once again that is your extrapolation not anything others have said.
You commented that “I am familiar with blaming the victim” and “I work with marketing people frequently, so I understand exactly what the elite colleges are doing”.
Given your level of sophistication how were
you victimized or duped. We all seem to agree that there are countless paths to success so what are you so upset about?
I apologize that you view me as gas lighting but the reality is I just lack the emotional and visceral involvement you have. As previously stated I have multiple kids who have been on all sides of this discussion.
It’s easy to say we all want to improve K-12 education, but do we agree on how to finance it? Are we willing to pay more in taxes to finance K-12 schools in someone else’s district? We can’t even agree on how to measure success or failure in K-12. Do we want to set minimum national standard? I bet we’re even more divided on these issues than on college admissions.
Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place, and one in which members can post without their motives, intelligence, or other personal characteristics being questioned by others."
and
“College Confidential forums exist to discuss college admission and other topics of interest. It is not a place for contentious debate. If you find yourself repeating talking points, it might be time to step away and do something else… If a thread starts to get heated, it might be closed or heavily moderated.”
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/guidelines
As a general statement, while I (or any other mod) may “suggest” users take a break from posting, other users do not have that privilege. That said, one does not always need to have the last word. Nor does netiquette require one to answer a post simple because they are tagged.
I am. All taxes are onerous, but they are needed.
Furthermore, people who are against paying more to finance other people’s K-12 is American selfishness and self-centeredness at its worst. It is also American short-sightedness as its worst, because the same people who think that paying for other people’s education is morally wrong are the same ones who also complain about the high crime, dropping quality or services and work, and other various results of lack of support for education or services at the national level.
The same generation who voted for 30 years to cut their own taxes while living off the taxes paid by their own parents and grandparents.
Unfortunately, politicians these days pander to this type of attitude, and roll costs onto the future generations, instead of increasing taxes to pay for things now. But I digress.
So instead of schools being supported by local property taxes, schools should be supported by either state or federal taxes…
I am willing to pay more taxes too.
Unfortunately we then would lose control of where the money goes…it would be easy for the state or federal governments to shift the tax receipts to fund something that’s not K-12 education, regardless what is was initially earmarked for.
No other developed country funds public education with local taxes to anywhere close to the same extent as we do. Many in the US have this mythical belief in localism. Some things require national efforts, whether it’s national defense or fighting the pandemic, or improving the public education.
I’m not willing to pay more until the system is overhauled. Many “poor” school districts spend very large sums of money with dismal results. We already spend a lot of money on education. Money doesn’t fix everything. There are plenty of social and political issues contributing to the educational dysfunction in the country.
The amount spent per pupil for public elementary and secondary education (pre-K through 12th grade) for all 50 states and the District of Columbia increased by 3.4% to $12,612 per pupil during the 2018 fiscal year, compared to $12,201 per pupil in 2017, according to new tables released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
Of the 100 largest (based on enrollment) U.S. public school systems, the five that spent the most per pupil in FY 2018 were New York City School District in New York ($26,588); Boston City Schools in Massachusetts ($24,177); Atlanta Public School District in Georgia ($16,402); Montgomery County School District in Maryland ($16,005); and Baltimore City Schools in Maryland ($15,793).
The problems we have with public education isn’t too dissimilar to the problems in healthcare. We spend more but get less. In addition to the equity issue, we have a problem of prioritization and efficiency. Here in NJ for example, we have way too many school districts, each with its own superintendent and associated costs. Each wants to set its own course. The cost of independence far outweighs any benefit. Individualization only makes economic sense for ultra luxurious products or services. Public education isn’t and will never be such a service, because we wouldn’t be able to afford it. We need more uniformity and standardization. We have to make some trade-offs.
Didn’t they try that with common core and no child left behind?
We did.
Part of the problem is that school districts don’t exist independently of the rest of the locality or state, so unless you’re going to mandate very similar social services, housing regulations, transportation networks, healthcare, and pretty much the rest of a society’s infrastructure, you’re definitely not going to get anything approaching uniformity in results with a uniform set of ed standards. You will however get serious cheating if you try rolling out uniform national standards and then wave a big stick around for punishing districts that don’t come up to standard.
Personally, I have no problem with much higher national standards for all those things, though it’d make large parts of the country howl. As things stand, though, the inferior K12 ed in so much of the country then leaves poorer students trapped with whatever the state feels like tossing at higher ed – they can’t afford anything else – and you get massive ed inequality the whole way through, which in turn leaves industry clustering where they can actually get well-educated workers, and so the spiral goes.
The other part of the problem with Common Core (and I say this as someone who used to work for CB and worked with some of the people who wrote the CC standards) is that it was driven by someone who never taught in a K12 public school and whose own upbringing and education were a zillion miles away from anything approaching a normal American public school, much less a struggling school. The standards make beautiful sense if you’re coming from a delightful metropolitan upper-middle-class home with lots of books and conversation about matters of the day. They’re difficult to translate to…not that.
As it happens, my state collects part of school taxes as a surcharge on income tax, then redistributes it equitably across the state. That was something developed in a fit of progressivism and it had the effect (along with other rules that forbid school districts from getting fancy with extra money) of creating a really effective buffer against bidding wars for property in “good” school districts and impoverishment/flight from others. It’s administratively extremely complex and a headache in that sense, but I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone complain about it in the decades I’ve lived here.
I think Common Core’s problem is that it was too ambitious given how disparate secondary education in this country currently is. I favor more incrementalism and prioritizing a few most important aspects for reform, rather than a wholesale approach with unrealistic goals for the entire nation.
Absolutely agree that it is the parents driving the “stress train.” I work as a college counseling volunteer at our local public high school, and help my friends’ kids with their college application process. I’ve probably helped 60-plus students apply to college in the last 9 years.
In almost every case it is the overly anxious and “worried” parent(s) that fret that their students won’t get into (what the parents perceive) to be the “proper” college. They want the bragging rights and bumper sticker. I’ve observed parents consistently pushing their kids to “apply up” - telling them to apply to colleges the kids have little-to-no chance getting into. The “name brand schools” that everyone is applying to- the same 30-40 best known schools.
Here’s some advice - If your student is in the top 20% (or higher percentage) of his/her high school senior class - don’t ask them to apply to the Ivies, or other highly selectives like MIT, Duke, Northwestern, Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon, etc.
They need to be in the top 5-10% max at these schools to have any chance. They need to have above a 32/33 ACT (or above 1500 SAT) and they need lots of sports/extra-curriculars. They also need to be able to draft a really compelling College Essay - without their adult-squad writing and over editing.
That’s the reality — unless your student is the top quarterback or some type of highly sought after athletic (or musical) recruit in the state. Or unless your student is a First Gen and/or from a hugely disadvantaged economic/cultural background and has proven to rise to the top of their class with little advantage to get there.
So many parents just can’t understand that simple (current) college Adm reality. They truly believe their typical A/B plus student with a 29/30 ACT and minimal HS activities has a shot at Princeton. They really don’t!
And the kids know this more than their parents. My students tell me they are applying- usually under duress and say, “I know I prob don’t have a shot.” They are just doing it to please their family.
So please stop stressing your kids out so much by pushing them so hard their junior and senior year in HS to be people they are simply not. Find colleges that clearly show they will accept your student with their own GPA, test scores and EAs. It’s clearly spelled out on college websites and forums the average GPAs etc for acceptances. And Most colleges have above a 50%-85% acceptance rate. So that’s not that stressful.
How do these parents know their kids have “little-to-no chance”? Don’t the admission policies at these colleges make them feel that their kids do have a chance, even though it’s low for almost everyone? How often do we hear the advice (on CC or elsewhere) that a kid shouldn’t apply to one (or more) of these schools? Instead, the common advice is almost always “to apply because you won’t get in if you don’t”.
BTW, parents naturally tend to think their kids are smart. If the kid happens to have a low test score, it’s probably “because s/he wasn’t good at testing”. Besides, most colleges are test optional these days and will likely remain so. If the colleges don’t think the tests are important, why should they?
