Talk:Education in the United States/Archive 2015

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Soapboxing in Secondary Education Section

I have removed the following paragraph from "Secondary Education":

The time investment and high cost of post-secondary education is of great concern for a great many people. Integrating high school, college, and vocational training is a solution worth pursuing. High achieving students are bogged down with redundant classes and rising educational costs. The same can be said of high schools trying to staff and fund more specialized programs for their students. Bachelor’s degrees are taking longer to complete and the costs have skyrocketed over the past few years and show no sign of relenting. Combining the more difficult high school programs with the lower level college programs and offering vocational programs to those not going to continue with an academic degree offer a way to solve some of these problems.

Seems like somebody is soapboxing here - it needs serious work to be brought back into line. It makes various claims about the education system without any sources - if whoever put it in there wants to put it back with the proper sources they are more than welcome. Prawn Skewers (talk) 10:15, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Percents that don't Add Up

The current second paragraph of the the article has information that the cited source does not explicitly state. The line reads

"Private schools are generally free to determine their own curriculum and staffing policies, with voluntary accreditation available through independent regional accreditation authorities. "88% of school-age children attend public schools, 9% attend private schools, and nearly 3% are homeschooled."

The source of the information (National Center for Education Statistics, Back to School Statistics) never gives any of these percents in the article. This is the relevant paragraph from the page:

"In fall 2014, about 49.8 million students will attend public elementary and secondary schools. Of these, 35.1 million will be in prekindergarten through grade 8 and 14.7 million will be in grades 9 through 12. An additional 5.0 million students are expected to attend private schools. The fall 2014 public school enrollment is expected to remain near the record enrollment level of fall 2013."

Notice that the paragraph does not mention homeschooling at all. It is likely that the "3%" statistic came from the Homeschooling page of the National Center for Education Statistics:

"Approximately 3 percent of the school-age population was homeschooled in the 2011–12 school year." This page should be cited as well in order to prevent confusion. I would chance a guess and say that the last editor came up with the percents by the following:

49.8 million students attending public elementary and secondary schools + 5.0 million attending private schools = 54.8 million students

5 million privately enrolled students ÷ 54.8 million total enrolled students ≈ 9.1% of students attend private schools

100% of students − ≈9% Private − 3% Homeschooled = ≈88% of school-age children attend public schools

To summarize, the paragraph has these issues:

It fails to cite a correct source for the "3%" statistic. I suggest citing the National Center for Education Statistics Homeschooling page.
The percents given are not actually from the source. They were probably arrived at algebraically
The percents (88, 9, and 3) all add to 100%. That would mean that 100% of school-aged children are schooled in some way. What about the children who are school-aged but don't attend school, such as high school dropouts?
It is inaccurate to say these are percents of school-aged children (except for the 3%) because the other two numbers are about children who are in school. They are not the same thing. That's the reason why the total is incorrectly 100%.

(not sure where to answer this with extra subsection below which is signed by the author.

Anyway, I agree generally. I would like to point out that some students are double enrolled, so the totals should come to more than 100%, another giveaway that the figures have been "forced." The double enrollment is generally home schoolers also enrolled in public schools, but private schools may have some double enrollees. In a minority of states there is no anti-Catholic constitutional amendment, and a parochial school student could enroll in a class not offered by his/her school of first choice. Student7 (talk) 21:38, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Sources

"Homeschooling." National Center for Education Statistics. Institute of Education Sciences. Web. 22 Feb. 2015.

"Back to School Statistics." National Center for Education Statistics. Institute of Education Sciences. Web. 22 Feb. 2015. 174.23.155.166 (talk) 22:29, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Class photo

Does the high school class like to see their picture on Wikipedia without being asked? Who is the photographer anyway, their teacher, a random stranger that passed by the classroom? And he gives it away, free to use (despite what Wikipedia claims), without caring about the privacy of the students? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.253.186.62 (talk) 19:44, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Maybe one of the students themselves? Is there any reason to assume the people in the photo didn't give permission any more than any other photo of people on Wikipedia.? 86.135.198.128 (talk) 12:09, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

External links modified

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Sexist sentence

"Parents and educators are concerned about how to motivate males to become better students", Implying that any gender is better or worse is simply unacceptable. Bumblebritches57 (talk) 23:48, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Article gives adequate, cited context. What change are you proposing to improve the article? Are you suggesting that the citation is not WP:RS? Student7 (talk) 19:28, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I read the source and did not find it relevant to the claim: "Parents and educators are concerned about how to motivate males to become better students, but this has not materialized in moving curriculum away from the prioritization of the advancement of females in society over their male counterparts." It was, in fact, a blog post about encouraging young boys to read. It did not contain information about curriculum. Prosekc (talk) 19:25, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Lisa Bloom is notable, so offsets the blog post, which I don't generally care for either. I think it is probably WP:RS in this context.

You are saying it is irrelevant to the material? non-WP:TOPIC? I've read better stuff about boys falling behind girls which is the basic problem. I think something should replace it, if it is deleted. I don't agree that any of this says "boys are better than/worse than girls." The material should report results (fairly objective) and what educators are trying to do (or not do, either of which tends to be more subjective since we don't really have nor can obtain specific facts on what is happening NOW) and let reader decide IMO. Student7 (talk) 20:29, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for weighing in. The source seems relevant to the first half of the sentence, "Parents and educators are concerned about how to motivate males to become better students"...but the second half of the sentence seems non-neutral and unsupported by the source. Nowhere did that blog post state that current school curricula prioritize "the advancement of females in society over their male counterparts." Prosekc (talk) 23:44, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree. The success of females at a higher level than males owes more to testosterone than to prejudice. Rick Norwood (talk) 21:58, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for everyone's comments! I've changed it per discussion. Student7 (talk) 23:03, 23 September 2015 (UTC)