> Some kids are educatable. Some are not.

Citation needed. Why wouldn't they be, unless there's a disability?

I have seen good teachers do wonders for 'problem' kids.

> Citation needed. Why wouldn't they be, unless there's a disability?

They come from a sub-culture (mostly based on social-economic status) that is aggressively anti-intellectualism.

Being bullied, shunned, etc. for being able to do things like read, do “basic” math, and/or speak anything outside of the local vernacular (e.g., something like a more neutral sounding “TV English”) is a thing.

This type of research is abundant in the education literature. That said, it is not always presented as straightforwardly as one might expect since it doesn’t match up with certain agendas in the education research and policy worlds.

So if a kid is being bullied for learning to read, the answer is to stop teaching them to read? Is that really your suggestion?

And by the way, the statement "Some kids are educatable. Some are not." also comes from a sub-culture that is aggressively anti-intellectual.

> So if a kid is being bullied for learning to read, the answer is to stop teaching them to read? Is that really your suggestion?

Definitely not. Quite the contrary, actually.

My point is that folks shouldn’t be surprised that some kids in these types of environments have low or negative motivation to learn.

> And by the way, the statement "Some kids are educatable. Some are not." also comes from a sub-culture that is aggressively anti-intellectual.

All kids are able to learn — in fact, they are sponges.

The issue at hand is what do they learn and in what contexts.

Formal school-based learning is a tough sell in some contexts.

People continue to be shocked that throwing money at low SES students doesn’t meaningfully improve education outcomes, despite decades of data showing that it doesn’t.

The interventions that have been shown to work over and over again are:

1. Early interventions like the (old?) Head Start.

2. Increasing engagement at the community level, specifically with parental buy in. This is very hard to do, but can be done.

Once a community has embraced anti-intellectualism, all the school can really do is create a safe space in at least part of the school for those who want to learn.

You seem to be offended by my ideas. The ideas I present here are based on actual research. I encourage you to look into the literature and (if possible) talk to researchers and practitioners in environments that you are not native to (low SES rural, urban, and non-native speaker communities are good places to start).

>I have seen good teachers do wonders for 'problem' kids

Exactly.

If you have a 1h lesson and 30kids you have 2minutes per kid. Assuming there are no "fixed costs" like registering them etc.

So EITHER that teacher somehow changed a kids whole mindset in 2minutes per lesson (and that's what, 10min a week if you're lucky?).

OR they neglected a big chunk of the kids that turned up already wanting to learn etc and gave those kids time to that 1 kid.

This is the fundamental problem I am talking about: "good" teachers neglect 80% of the class to go after 1 kid who does not want to be there. Turning that one F grade into a C grade is given more attention than turning 20 other Cs into Bs and As.

It makes a great Hallmark Moment, but it's terrible actual educational policy.

Then people wonder why education has so little affect on outcomes.

Let me be really clear here: I am not making a moral argument about leaving that one kid behind. Just purely a practical one: when you neglect the majority and focus most resources on the least productive cases you get very poor outcomes for the average person. And the outcome for the group is highly dependent on how many and how bad those worst cases are.

Because they don't want to learn.

Citation needed.

From everything I've read, it's nearly entirely the case that low income and ESL students do the worst (and there's a large overlap between those groups) and it has almost nothing to do with the kids' educability or intelligence. They are in a difficult spot due to no fault of their own and require more support than what a typical teacher in a typical school in a typical city can provide without meaningful investments in broad social services Americans don't seem to have much appetite to invest in.