In the US there are a few obvious things, but everyone acts as if we are powerless to solve them:

1. Cell phones in classrooms.

I don’t know how or why they were ever allowed. They should have to be in a backpack or in a locker and off during class.

2. Not removing students with bad behavior from classrooms and schools.

The current thinking on how to handle a student who is seriously misbehaving and potentially violent is to remove all of the other students from the classroom versus just removing the problematic student in question. This is because there have been instances where a child has been physically removed and has gotten seriously injured. The thinking on expulsion is that it should essentially never happen because kids who get expelled have bad outcomes later in life. But the net effect is that one bad student can hold an entire classroom hostage and there is nothing the teacher can do. This is obviously detrimental to all of the kids who are compliant and behaving. It also causes burnout which leads me to the next major issue facing public schools.

3. Good teachers are quitting

It isn’t worth it to teach in America. You need a lot of expensive education. You get paid very little. You have no power to remove a student who are major disruptions and make it impossible to teach. And, in many districts, teachers are being accused of trying to indoctrinate children because we live in a politicized world.

4. Too many parents aren’t parenting

The number of kids who are not potty trained by kindergarten continues to rise. This is an issue of parents not wanting to do something that is hard and takes patience.

5. Lowering Standards

When faced with kids failing the solution should never be to lower long held standards. The kids are the same, they are just as capable, it is all of the above that is different.

Bonus. We feed kids junk in schools

This has been going on for decades. Why is it so hard to make fresh food for kids? It could probably cost about the same if done properly. The answer is it takes some effort and people have to think about it.

> In the US there are a few obvious things, but everyone acts as if we are powerless to solve them

Yes but they aren’t the things you said:

1. Schools are filled with disruptive kids who use up time and resources and are not removed. 2. Teachers have no enforcement authority so they cannot do any of what you said, including removing phones. 3. Teachers and administrators are generally not smart or capable and continue to spend resources on everything except time spent reading, writing, and doing math. 4. Teachers are trapped in a web of legal red tape, bad incentives, and horrible metrics. 5. The US is segregated by by class and education.

Re point 2: In Germany, among other countries, you have social education workers (a college-educated job) in school for these situations. Such behavior has underlying causes, e.g. problems at home (fresh divorce, drugs, poverty-related stress) recent trauma (accidents, death of a loved one, abuse), mental illness (AHDS etc.). Treat the cause and the behavior changes.

I think a major issue is the lack of a feedback loop. Cheap money in america means that no matter what country you're currently in, it's financially beneficial to migrate to the US. One of the happy paths towards this end is migrating for college or higher education.

In other countries' colleges without this unlimited input second to local students, there is a feedback loop connecting the college back to the local schools. This ensures that schools keep up. In america this is not required, since no matter what standard say UW sets, the corresponding tutoring centres in India, China and Singapore will adapt to that within weeks. And they can send as many students as UW can possibly ever want.

It also doesn't help that international students bring in more money than local students.

Point 5 has been a thing for a very long time with respect to sports. The kid is marked-up a few points on tests if they're the reason the basketball team is winning.

From your list it's hard to explain why jurisdictions such as San Diego (reading 4th grade male) test score have risen continuously since the 2000s seems like, if the students are defecating themselves at ever-increasing rates test scores would go down there too.

Or is San Diego immune to these problems? I think the reality is that these test scores aren't majorly affected by literally any of the things you listed.

On 2, the US DOEd has decided for at least the last couple decades that it is inherently racist if a school's punishment metrics are misaligned with their demographics (e.g. white kids are 50% of the school population but receive only 40% of suspensions).

That environment makes it risky to punish anyone, and a lack of order causes or compounds almost every other item on your list (which I largely agree with).

> 2. Not removing students with bad behavior from classrooms and schools

This is basically _the_ reason people send their kids to private schools

States are starting to pass bans for phones in schools which is a wonderful thing so we are making progres there.

> 4. Too many parents aren’t parenting

You attribute this to increased laziness, and that might contribute, but there are other factors at play.

For one, it takes significantly more hours of work from both parents just to provide basic food & shelter than it did a few decades ago. Calling parents who work more hours than any previous generation in history "lazy" is itself lazy and misses the point.

1. Good luck. Have you ever tried to take an iPad kid's iPad? Be ready for the fight of your fucking life.

2 and 5 are handily down to No Child Left Behind which is frankly some of the worst legislation ever devised for education.

3 and 4: And these factors are only getting worse as worse and worse kids enter the school systems. Nobody wants to deal with them, including their parents.

Bonus: It's not hard, but we won't allocate the money. School lunch lady is a job considered a punch line because for some reason our culture thinks it's easy to serve food to several hundred people in 45 minutes when the people in question aren't old enough to buy cigarettes, but good fucking luck getting money and people allocated to actually do that.

[flagged]