Parents built a school app. Then the city called the cops(wired.com)
wired.com
Parents built a school app. Then the city called the cops
https://www.wired.com/story/sweden-stockholm-school-app-open-source/
61 comments
In the USA it’s a hot issue right now whether the schools work for the parents, or whether the schools have autonomy from parents.
I read articles like this (and others) and I feel we’ve swayed too far into the “schools are autonomous” side of things. I want it to swing back.
I read articles like this (and others) and I feel we’ve swayed too far into the “schools are autonomous” side of things. I want it to swing back.
Schools should work for kids. Period. They often don’t, but let’s keep our focus.
Schools need to collaborate with parents to work for kids. Parents need to collaborate with schools to work for kids.
Schools need to collaborate with parents to work for kids. Parents need to collaborate with schools to work for kids.
As a parent of five kids, I think the problem is in many districts, the schools do not want to collaborate with the parents. In fact, it seems like whenever possible, the schools do things to make it harder for parents to collaborate, especially on actual education:
* Objectives are rarely published so parents can understand what is being taught.
* Common core math makes it impossible for parents who did not learn common core style calculation to help their children with math.
* Textbooks are not allowed to leave the classroom.
* Objectives are rarely published so parents can understand what is being taught.
* Common core math makes it impossible for parents who did not learn common core style calculation to help their children with math.
* Textbooks are not allowed to leave the classroom.
Tragedy of the commons - enough parents don't see their kids as anything but perfect to dissuade teachers from wanting to talk to the parents about issues their little darlings have.
That said,
> Common core math makes it impossible for parents who did not learn common core style calculation
Is false. I didn't learn common core as a child, but I was able to pick it up as an adult. There's a lot of good resources online.
Tip: It's how most of 'us' do mental math, spelled out and codified. Rough estimates refined in further steps.
That said,
> Common core math makes it impossible for parents who did not learn common core style calculation
Is false. I didn't learn common core as a child, but I was able to pick it up as an adult. There's a lot of good resources online.
Tip: It's how most of 'us' do mental math, spelled out and codified. Rough estimates refined in further steps.
> Tip: It's how most of 'us' do mental math, spelled out and codified. Rough estimates refined in further steps.
I'm a nuclear engineer by education and stuggled with doing computations using common core methods. I can only imagine how most people who didn't pick a profession that involved advanced math fare when faced with doing long division common core style.
I'm a nuclear engineer by education and stuggled with doing computations using common core methods. I can only imagine how most people who didn't pick a profession that involved advanced math fare when faced with doing long division common core style.
Why should pupils be barred from learning math and science just because the parents did not enjoy sufficient education? It's one of the core tasks of the school system to ensure that pupils do not suffer disadvantages from their parent's educational background.
> Why should pupils be barred from learning math and science just because the parents did not enjoy sufficient education?
In the US we changed how math is taught about 10 years ago. 1 + 1 is still equal to two, but the children are taught an entire new methodology for calculation. I'm a nuclear engineer and had to re-learn how to do basic maths just to be able to help my children when they struggle with basic arithmetic.
To be honest, the new system (called common core) is incredibly complex and emphasizes proof of work over accuracy and understanding. It is supposed to lead to a better understanding of math. In reality, it's just really complex and difficult to learn.
In the US we changed how math is taught about 10 years ago. 1 + 1 is still equal to two, but the children are taught an entire new methodology for calculation. I'm a nuclear engineer and had to re-learn how to do basic maths just to be able to help my children when they struggle with basic arithmetic.
To be honest, the new system (called common core) is incredibly complex and emphasizes proof of work over accuracy and understanding. It is supposed to lead to a better understanding of math. In reality, it's just really complex and difficult to learn.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics_education_in_the...
Mathematics education in the United States has been in constant flux since the post-war era. The objections some parents have against “Common Core math” (which, incidentally, is not mandated by the Common Core; that is merely a set of uniform content standards) are the same objections parents had against New Math in the seventies.
My personal opinion is that the US has a bad case of Not Invented Here when it comes to pedagogy (half structural racism, half vestigial anti-communism, half class warfare, and half other things) which is then amplified by inconsistent funding and limited federal oversight.
Even if you burnt every grade school math textbook written after 1950, the problem would still persist.
Mathematics education in the United States has been in constant flux since the post-war era. The objections some parents have against “Common Core math” (which, incidentally, is not mandated by the Common Core; that is merely a set of uniform content standards) are the same objections parents had against New Math in the seventies.
My personal opinion is that the US has a bad case of Not Invented Here when it comes to pedagogy (half structural racism, half vestigial anti-communism, half class warfare, and half other things) which is then amplified by inconsistent funding and limited federal oversight.
Even if you burnt every grade school math textbook written after 1950, the problem would still persist.
This isn’t the US though. It’s Sweden.
Schools should never be autonomous, but I dont believe they should be considered to work for parents either
Schools should work to produce well rounded educated productive citizens for the community. That includes the parents, but also includes childless citizens, businesses, etc.
The politics of both parents, AND teachers have muddled the true mission of what a school should be. I would like to see schools return to actual education, and less politics.
Schools should work to produce well rounded educated productive citizens for the community. That includes the parents, but also includes childless citizens, businesses, etc.
The politics of both parents, AND teachers have muddled the true mission of what a school should be. I would like to see schools return to actual education, and less politics.
> Schools should work to produce well rounded educated productive citizens for the community.
No. Children are not a commodity, to be molded by the needs of the state by the educational industrial complex.
Children are people. Their own interests should be paramount. Not those of the community, the state, or even the parents. (The parents are generally more trusted because they have their children’s best interest at heart more often than the bureaucracy does.)
No. Children are not a commodity, to be molded by the needs of the state by the educational industrial complex.
Children are people. Their own interests should be paramount. Not those of the community, the state, or even the parents. (The parents are generally more trusted because they have their children’s best interest at heart more often than the bureaucracy does.)
I know enough people thrown out of their home for being gay that I hesitate on the idea that the parents are the most trusted (which is why I like the way you phrase it — more trusted). There are a lot of cooperating and competing interests at play, which is how it should be.
> Their own interests should be paramount
There’s a limit, though. If we followed this to it’s logical conclusion then vocational training in schools would be limited to firefighting and pilot training.
At a certain point kids can’t lead you in the right direction because they don’t know where they’re going yet. Guidance is in their interest even if it goes against their desire at that point in time.
> Not those of the community, the state
But most kids have their education free at the point of delivery, paid for by the community and state. So it’s inevitable they have a say in things. If you don’t want that then homeschooling or private schooling is a viable option.
There’s a limit, though. If we followed this to it’s logical conclusion then vocational training in schools would be limited to firefighting and pilot training.
At a certain point kids can’t lead you in the right direction because they don’t know where they’re going yet. Guidance is in their interest even if it goes against their desire at that point in time.
> Not those of the community, the state
But most kids have their education free at the point of delivery, paid for by the community and state. So it’s inevitable they have a say in things. If you don’t want that then homeschooling or private schooling is a viable option.
Their interests are best served by becoming educated productive members of society.
This feel good, utopia, idea that children have no need to be concerned with learning a skill set, or learning how to be productive members of society (which yes means often working for companies) is part of the moronic political drivel that "education reformers" and teachers unions are pushing that are causing the American schooling system to fall behind the rest of the world.
Lets start teaching hard science, math, etc. Lets start grading with red ink again, and Lets stop with the participation trophies and the like
This feel good, utopia, idea that children have no need to be concerned with learning a skill set, or learning how to be productive members of society (which yes means often working for companies) is part of the moronic political drivel that "education reformers" and teachers unions are pushing that are causing the American schooling system to fall behind the rest of the world.
Lets start teaching hard science, math, etc. Lets start grading with red ink again, and Lets stop with the participation trophies and the like
> Schools should work to produce well rounded educated productive citizens for the community.
Agreed, but who defines this? Parents deserve input, as key stakeholders and as taxpayers.
Agreed, but who defines this? Parents deserve input, as key stakeholders and as taxpayers.
Stakeholder != Owner
Yes, parents have a role. Yes, parents have a stake.
They are not exclusive in this.
Yes, parents have a role. Yes, parents have a stake.
They are not exclusive in this.
Is there a better definition of who “owns” a school other than the public tax payers?
Parents are a subset of taxpayers.
Taxpayers are a subset of stakeholders.
(Few childres are taxpayers, for starters, at least not in any significant capacity. They are a primary, but still not the sole nor determinative, stakeholder.)
Taxpayers are a subset of stakeholders.
(Few childres are taxpayers, for starters, at least not in any significant capacity. They are a primary, but still not the sole nor determinative, stakeholder.)
The public is everyone, citizen or not, taxpayer or not.
I think school choice is the ideal middle ground. Schools can offer a variety of ways to teach and parents can pick from them / start their own school and provide another offering.
One size fits all is bound to cause problems as our society becomes more diverse and accepting.
One size fits all is bound to cause problems as our society becomes more diverse and accepting.
That’s promoting school choice. (Which I support)
A very political topic. As one side is very against it
A very political topic. As one side is very against it
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It seems like the same folks who advocate for school choice are pro-vouchers, which logically follows, even if I disagree, but also anti-funding reform for public schools. It seems like some wealthy folks want to have access to good quality schools at the expense of less wealthy folks, but with many layers of abstraction and misdirection.
I wish we would fund schools directly and fairly, instead of how we do it now via local property taxes. This results in wealthy areas with wealthy schools, which is fine, but those schools have disproportionately higher spending per student than lower income schools in poorer areas.
I wish we would fund schools directly and fairly, instead of how we do it now via local property taxes. This results in wealthy areas with wealthy schools, which is fine, but those schools have disproportionately higher spending per student than lower income schools in poorer areas.
In Canada we use that model for funding schools, it’s set by the province on a per student basis with adjustments for special needs.
In BC private schools get (or used to get, govt changed recently) half of the funding of public schools.
I don’t know if the issues are to the same degree, but they certainly exist. That said I vastly preferred the poorer school where we got to wear hats to the rich area school with more rigidity.
It’s funny too as in my area the private expensive Christian schools would shuffle off their pregnant teenage moms (the rates were alarming) off to the poor school that had the teenage mom program. So to me education solves a lot more problems than income for sure.
In BC private schools get (or used to get, govt changed recently) half of the funding of public schools.
I don’t know if the issues are to the same degree, but they certainly exist. That said I vastly preferred the poorer school where we got to wear hats to the rich area school with more rigidity.
It’s funny too as in my area the private expensive Christian schools would shuffle off their pregnant teenage moms (the rates were alarming) off to the poor school that had the teenage mom program. So to me education solves a lot more problems than income for sure.
The problem is parents want to pass on their own brainwashing down to their children. Like teaching creationism or that slaveowners were good people. Creating more brainwashed citizens hurts all of us.
So you're sure that the brainwashing the state picks is the correct version?
Generally yes when they leave it to the professional educators. The problem is when politicians start meddling like all the conservative laws in response to the current CRT panic.
You should attend your local PTA meeting if this what you think parents are trying to pass down.
Youngkin just won the governors mansion in Virginia in part because the CRT boogeyman got uneducated suburban moms all riled up. Literally, that demographic swing from hard left last year to hard right this year.
Having known a couple librarians in my time, there seem to be an unlimited number of ‘concerned parents’ trying to get books that upset them banned, including for the reasons listed by the grandparent above.
alistairSH(2)
On a much smaller scale, a bad school app experience is the main reason why I built an Alexa app for anyone in our district to easily ask Alexa for the lunch menu daily https://github.com/jeffsheets/alexa-papio-lunch-menu/
Pretty common for school district apps to feel antiquated and hard to use. Definitely a disruptible space.
Pretty common for school district apps to feel antiquated and hard to use. Definitely a disruptible space.
Hello fellow Nebraskan! If you’d extend this to Elkhorn my kids (and I) would think you’re a wizard!
Ha, maybe! We got lucky that Papillion’s menu has a json feed. If Elkhorn does too then it’s doable. But seems most districts are stuck in pdf files
Still doable. AWS have a tool for parsing JSON files and turning them into a JSON feed: Textract. Given you’d already be inside the AWS ecosystem building the Alexa skill, it would make some sense leveraging that service.
Oh yeah, for sure possible, I just meant doable in the “easily extend the current pattern in an evening or two” kind of way, ha!
But hey, if a district or school menu software company wanted to sponsor it, it could absolutely get done
But hey, if a district or school menu software company wanted to sponsor it, it could absolutely get done
For those interested in some of the challenges facing schools and the attempts to improve them, I found this documentary very interesting: Waiting for Superman. https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/waiting_for_superman
And on school choice see Milton Friedman: https://youtu.be/SEZnis9-9Gc
And on school choice see Milton Friedman: https://youtu.be/SEZnis9-9Gc
Hope this isn't too off topic:
I've noticed increasingly in the past few years, news article headlines of this exact form: <something good>. Then <something bad>. Personally it often feels like clickbait to the point that the title feels like a disservice to the actual content.
But what I'm interested in is - is this a particular person's style of writing? Or is it actually a trend?
I've noticed increasingly in the past few years, news article headlines of this exact form: <something good>. Then <something bad>. Personally it often feels like clickbait to the point that the title feels like a disservice to the actual content.
But what I'm interested in is - is this a particular person's style of writing? Or is it actually a trend?
I have no actual evidence but it’s something I’ve observed anecdotally too. I strongly suspect it’s the reality of online journalism: analytics tells you exactly what headline format gets the biggest audience and everyone has discovered it’s this one.
I’m personally a little less convinced that it’s a disservice: in this instance it is an accurate summary of the article, as well as explaining the reasons why you might be interested to read it. The headline could be “The story of some parents creating an app for their school” but that’s actually less descriptive as well as less exciting. I don’t think it’s automatically better.
I’m personally a little less convinced that it’s a disservice: in this instance it is an accurate summary of the article, as well as explaining the reasons why you might be interested to read it. The headline could be “The story of some parents creating an app for their school” but that’s actually less descriptive as well as less exciting. I don’t think it’s automatically better.
It's a trend like the "X did Y, that's bad because Z"
I see it as the author trying to force a point of view on you.
"Parents reverse-engineered a school app to create their own frontend to parent data and, after being hit with a $4M SEK fine for data privacy issues on the platform already, school officials escalated concerns over it to the police to investigate who eventually cleared the parents of wrongdoing and now the school is working to license the app from the parents so everyone can use it"
Is a much less catchy headline. It's also far more verbose. What parts of you choose to whittle out to create a succinct headline drives people's perceptions of the actual article.
"Parents built a school app that was so successful that the school is now licensing it!"
It's just as true, but, you start with a much different conclusion.
I see it as the author trying to force a point of view on you.
"Parents reverse-engineered a school app to create their own frontend to parent data and, after being hit with a $4M SEK fine for data privacy issues on the platform already, school officials escalated concerns over it to the police to investigate who eventually cleared the parents of wrongdoing and now the school is working to license the app from the parents so everyone can use it"
Is a much less catchy headline. It's also far more verbose. What parts of you choose to whittle out to create a succinct headline drives people's perceptions of the actual article.
"Parents built a school app that was so successful that the school is now licensing it!"
It's just as true, but, you start with a much different conclusion.
For stories like this, 99% of the time it’s a government institution. That’s because the primary purpose of these is to leech money off people to provide an inferior service.
This happens because the worse the service the more money they get. “We need more funding” is their common cry but the marginal dollar provides zero or negative value as even more corrupt leeches flock to the system to extract all excess dollars.
This happens because the worse the service the more money they get. “We need more funding” is their common cry but the marginal dollar provides zero or negative value as even more corrupt leeches flock to the system to extract all excess dollars.
I had this explained once by a civil engineer planning highway work. He said that teams who finish on-time and on-budget charge more. Newer teams less likely to meet requirements charge less to account for the higher risk. So it’s a risk vs. cost curve.
In civil engineering, risk is taken seriously and the cheaper pitches are less-often taken. In IT, decision makers don’t yet understand the risks so they always accept the lowest bid.
In civil engineering, risk is taken seriously and the cheaper pitches are less-often taken. In IT, decision makers don’t yet understand the risks so they always accept the lowest bid.
The interesting thing is that the technology to bypass this problem exists. There are early completion bonuses and late completion penalties. Both were available for the MacArthur Maze in Oakland, California.
That project finished rapidly. The reason for that is that it was important.
Most infrastructure is unimportant. We don’t need it. There is no marginal economic gain to it that justifies the spend (in time, and money) unless accounting for the political support provided by local pressure groups.
That project finished rapidly. The reason for that is that it was important.
Most infrastructure is unimportant. We don’t need it. There is no marginal economic gain to it that justifies the spend (in time, and money) unless accounting for the political support provided by local pressure groups.
If you're going to extrapolate your experience of US governments to a story about Europe, you could at least localise "marginal dollar".
The dollar is the universal global currency. It represents ,in a synechochal sense, money.
The behaviour is actually universal. Berlin wastes money on Linux conversion through the same process. Governments are governments wherever they are.
Sweden isn’t this paradise of non-corruption you think it is.
The behaviour is actually universal. Berlin wastes money on Linux conversion through the same process. Governments are governments wherever they are.
Sweden isn’t this paradise of non-corruption you think it is.
"if you build the API, the app will come"
“We do not have open APIs, so they have made their own solution,” Hélène Mossberg, the deputy head of digitization and IT at the city’s education division,
She stated the problem very succinctly, but didn't realize that it's the problem.
She stated the problem very succinctly, but didn't realize that it's the problem.