Onslaught. posted:

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In state universities, colleges as well as public k-12 schools, the amount of funding continues to go up, but administrators continually give themselves raises and hire more administrators rather than the hiring more teachers or funding educational expenses.

Blame America's love for the parasites known as business and law majors...

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paulg_68 posted:

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90% of voters think public school funding is down in this country...

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Ptilk posted:

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Could have something to do with the fact that 1977 was the year with the lowest enrollment in the past 75 years in public schools and the fact that there are more than 10 million more students in those schools now than there were then.

Just maybe.

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Modeeb posted:

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Our education is a disgrace. Our teachers come from the lower third of their classes.

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Onslaught. posted:

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In state universities, colleges as well as public k-12 schools, the amount of funding continues to go up, but administrators continually give themselves raises and hire more administrators rather than the hiring more teachers or funding educational expenses.

Blame America's love for the parasites known as business and law majors...

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Crooq_Lionfang posted:

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I'd guess most straight guys would prefer that over

any given day

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Eithne_Boadicea posted:

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That's funny... my dad works in the public school system and not only did he not get the tiny annual raise this year, but he got a 3% pay cut and now pays an increased portion of his insurance premium. I wonder where all that $$ is?

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ZigmundZag posted:

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The timeframe you're including is kind of important here.

Since the 1970s, the cost of education has gone up. Paul knows why that's happened; he's been reminded of it in several threads he's made on this topic but he pretty much chooses to avoid talking about it.

Since the current recession, you'd be hard pressed to find a public school that is taking in more money per student than they were before the recession. To some extent, it's a good thing. It's forcing schools to focus on what's important rather than throwing money at the wall to see what sticks. But there is a tipping point where it begins to affect learning and safety as well.

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Libtards posted:

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We should have tripled the cost per pupil instead of only doubling it. Maybe then we could have nudged test scores up 1 point.

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Tych2 posted:

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They need to get rid of ALL these administrators. When I was growing up we had a principle and a vice principle. That's it.

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_Enkidu_ posted:

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There's some really good studies out now on why the public K-12 education system in the US is so fubar. It has nothing to do with there not being enough money. It has everything to do with teachers sucking and administrators being forced to accept the suck. I still don't understand how k-12 can be so messed up when they can just look at public universities for guidence.

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theredkay1 posted:

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We do spend alot more than we used to. Kids are also much smarter than they used to be.

Both extremes in this debate have trouble admitting these basic facts.

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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Critical failures like failing to teach a child to read is the fault of the school and the teacher.

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Cawlin posted:

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2) Parental crap. Yes, parents are less engaged nowadays than they used to be, but I have a hard time putting a huge amount of emphasis on that problem. From probably grade 7 to 12, I don't think my parents spent more than 40 hours total helping me with my work - that's over the course of 6 years of schooling. Prior to that in grade school my parents helped me with various projects and whatnot that were more like art projects than actual academic pursuits and their time spent was greater of course, but certainly not as great as what I see schools requesting in the way of direct parental involvement and assistance with out of class work for students. Surely parental disengagement has some part to play, but it's a small one relative to the others.

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ZigmundZag posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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2) Parental crap. Yes, parents are less engaged nowadays than they used to be, but I have a hard time putting a huge amount of emphasis on that problem. From probably grade 7 to 12, I don't think my parents spent more than 40 hours total helping me with my work - that's over the course of 6 years of schooling. Prior to that in grade school my parents helped me with various projects and whatnot that were more like art projects than actual academic pursuits and their time spent was greater of course, but certainly not as great as what I see schools requesting in the way of direct parental involvement and assistance with out of class work for students. Surely parental disengagement has some part to play, but it's a small one relative to the others.

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Parental involvement goes beyond helping with homework. In some cases, I think classes are expecting a little too much in that regard.

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ZigmundZag posted:

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Did your parents take the responsibility to make sure you understood how to read, write, perform basic math skills and tie your shoes during your early school years? If so, your parents were involved more than quite a few parents are today.

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ZigmundZag posted:

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Later on, were there consequences if you came home with Ds and Fs on your report card? If so, same as above.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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My parents never spent a single minute in my whole K-12 career helping me with academics. That doesn't mean I lived in a family environment that didn't value success in school. It just means my parents were so successful at fostering that environment that they never needed to help me in the first place.

There are some disturbing truths about how kids learn. One of them is that there is a greater correlation between having books in your house and your kid's academic success than there is between actually reading to your kid and your kid's academic success. The truth being that the sort of people who have books in the house are the sort of people who have kids interested in succeeding, whereas people who just read to their kids out of duty - but don't read themselves or have books in the house - don't create that environment.

It is less about actually helping the kid as it is about the environment you create.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Which is why your parents never had to actually help you.

Schools can and should do their best to educate everyone. But it's also stupid to discredit how much the environment the kid is in influences his or her learning habits.

Kids who come from families that value learning almost always will do well no matter who their teachers are.

On the other hand, kids who come from families that despise learning will almost always do badly regardless of the teacher.

In the squishy middle is where teachers can make a difference. One of the defining features of American education in the last 30 years is that the squishy middle has been getting smaller while the two ends of the spectrum have been accounting for a larger and larger % of students. The result is that teachers matter less than they used to.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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Critical failures like failing to teach a child to read is the fault of the school and the teacher.

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One would certainly think so. Although there is not much you can really do to force a kid to learn to read who doesn't want to learn.

I mean I agree if you are graduating kids who literally can't read at all that's the fault of the school. But that almost never happens. When people say kids can't read they don't mean it literally. They mean they still read at a 3rd grade level in middle or high school. In almost all cases that is because they have no interest in learning to read better and never read on their own. Schools should do a better job at pushing these kids to learn even though they don't want to, but there are pretty big limits to what you can do.

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Cawlin posted:

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It will not be solved by making parents sign a paper that says they sat with their kid while the kid did 3 times as much homework as I ever had each night...

Why is so much work coming home? Why is that not being accomplished in the classroom?

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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If the parents are X then the teachers have to know how to deal with students who have parents that are X. Whatever X may be.

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_Enkidu_ posted:

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There are plenty of studies out now on this that show parental involvement is not the problem. It's not money either. It's the teachers and the administrators, which is why it's so stupid nobody wants to fix the problem. In universities we have a way of dealing with underperforming teachers and administrators. K-12 should adopt these same criteria, it's that simple.

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paulg_68 posted:

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90% of voters think public school funding is down in this country...

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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If the parents are X then the teachers have to know how to deal with students who have parents that are X. Whatever X may be.

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That's sorta the point. Schools where the parents are X are not going to have the same results as schools where the parents are Y. Whether you want to call that blaming the parents or not doesn't really matter.

It isn't realistic to try to teach kids with X parents like we teach kids with Y parents and it also isn't realistic to expect the X group to ever do nearly as well as the Y group.

I would like to see Enkidu's studies because I question if the findings are really as robust as he claims. And the conclusion (adopt university hiring and firing policies) is so patently self-congratulatory and absurd it sorta makes me question the data itself. The worst teacher I have ever had was a university professor and the idea that university teachers are hired and fired based on their ability to teach is laughable.

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_Enkidu_ posted:

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All you have to do is look at the product they are producing and the vast amount of deadwood in the system that cannot be removed.

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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I am not comparing different types of students, I am comparing different types of schools. There are different results for parents that are X based on the school.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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I am not comparing different types of students, I am comparing different types of schools. There are different results for parents that are X based on the school.

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I don't disagree. What we should be doing is making sure more schools with X parents are doing the best they can. Not trying to make schools with X parents get results like schools with Y parents.

It should be possible to look at the good performing schools with X parents and figures out what makes them good compared to the bad ones. It presumably is not just union contracts because those are the same at pretty much every public school and yet there are substantial differences between schools in the results they get.

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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I am not comparing different types of students, I am comparing different types of schools. There are different results for parents that are X based on the school.

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I don't disagree. What we should be doing is making sure more schools with X parents are doing the best they can. Not trying to make schools with X parents get results like schools with Y parents.

It should be possible to look at the good performing schools with X parents and figures out what makes them good compared to the bad ones. It presumably is not just union contracts because those are the same at pretty much every public school and yet there are substantial differences between schools in the results they get.

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As I said from the start, one of the most important things is to stop blaming the parent or the kid.

Seriously it is absolutely critical that the child and the parent doesn't become a scapegoat. This results in people ignoring the problems with the school or the curriculum or the teacher or whatever.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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It isn't about blame. It's about being realistic.

Kids with X parents are different than kids with Y parents. If you ignore that difference you will get bad results. Our basic educational policy for the last 30 years or so has been to ignore those differences and demand everyone perform equally well. That's stupid and counterproductive.

I agree blaming the kids and parents is counterproductive. What needs to happen is policy makerse need to appreciate the impact parents have on the education of their kids and not ignore it and then do what you can with the cards you are dealt. Public schools can certainly do a better job with the marginal kids they get. But they arn't going to do it by trying to treat everyone like they have engaged parents and a home environment conducive to education.

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Cawlin posted:

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There is a huge tendency to draw the lines between the haves and the have-nots and to draw the lines along racial lines, with the intention of course of taking the argument into the realm of how white people keep brown people down, going all the way back to education, but at a point, one has to take into account certain social paradigms that are internally created by the cultures involved. One cultural issue is disdain for education.

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reesescups posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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There is a huge tendency to draw the lines between the haves and the have-nots and to draw the lines along racial lines, with the intention of course of taking the argument into the realm of how white people keep brown people down, going all the way back to education, but at a point, one has to take into account certain social paradigms that are internally created by the cultures involved. One cultural issue is disdain for education.

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I think that cultural issue (disdain for education) is in fact cultural and not just divided along racial lines.

Unless you are about to tell me all the stupid dumb effers here on the outpost are all black...

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Cawlin posted:

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Crooq_Lionfang posted:

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I'd guess most straight guys would prefer that over

any given day

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LOL perhaps... but... your COLA raise will pay for



While your food stamps will only pay for

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Cawlin posted:

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There is a huge tendency to draw the lines between the haves and the have-nots and to draw the lines along racial lines, with the intention of course of taking the argument into the realm of how white people keep brown people down, going all the way back to education, but at a point, one has to take into account certain social paradigms that are internally created by the cultures involved. One cultural issue is disdain for education.

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Cawlin posted:

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Honestly, I wonder about the metrics we're even using to try to define the problem.

In truth we have only one metric: cost. We can track that one pretty well, whether or not we interpret it appropriately is another matter, but in the end we actually have a fair record of the direct costs of the American public education system.

As for the rest - I wonder about the metrics that speak to the performance of American students - I wonder about their applicability and correctness.

Any metric derived from NCLB is a sham and should be written off entirely. NCLB is a disaster on a scale so large that it has set education back more than 2 years for every year it's been in place.

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ZigmundZag posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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Honestly, I wonder about the metrics we're even using to try to define the problem.

In truth we have only one metric: cost. We can track that one pretty well, whether or not we interpret it appropriately is another matter, but in the end we actually have a fair record of the direct costs of the American public education system.

As for the rest - I wonder about the metrics that speak to the performance of American students - I wonder about their applicability and correctness.

Any metric derived from NCLB is a sham and should be written off entirely. NCLB is a disaster on a scale so large that it has set education back more than 2 years for every year it's been in place.

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NCLB is useful if only that it got educators to start thinking in terms of metrics and data collection. Prior to that, it was mostly about how good the teachers and the principals thought they were doing. We're actually seeing scenarios now where teachers and administrators review standardized report results as a group and adjust their instruction appropriately. Teachers who underperform can be paired up with other teachers who did well to get some pointers on how to improve their curriculum. Granted, it takes a good principal to pull this off so that the teachers don't feel threatened, but it is happening in some schools.

I do agree about needing to rebuild from the ground up, though. These schools are the exception rather than the rule.

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ZigmundZag posted:

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NCLB is useful if only that it got educators to start thinking in terms of metrics and data collection. Prior to that, it was mostly about how good the teachers and the principals thought they were doing. We're actually seeing scenarios now where teachers and administrators review standardized report results as a group and adjust their instruction appropriately. Teachers who underperform can be paired up with other teachers who did well to get some pointers on how to improve their curriculum. Granted, it takes a good principal to pull this off so that the teachers don't feel threatened, but it is happening in some schools.

I do agree about needing to rebuild from the ground up, though. These schools are the exception rather than the rule.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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edit: Also, back on the subject of funding. Overall funding levels are not a problem. But the distribution often is. The American public school funding system tends to give more money to districts with rich parents and less money to districts with poor parents. This is assinine. We are funneling more of our educational dollars to districts that don't need it and less to districts that really do need extra funding. Things have improved over the last 20 years but it is spotty and there are still plenty of states where the distribution is vastly unequal.

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Cawlin posted:

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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edit: Also, back on the subject of funding. Overall funding levels are not a problem. But the distribution often is. The American public school funding system tends to give more money to districts with rich parents and less money to districts with poor parents. This is assinine. We are funneling more of our educational dollars to districts that don't need it and less to districts that really do need extra funding. Things have improved over the last 20 years but it is spotty and there are still plenty of states where the distribution is vastly unequal.

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By what mechanisms are these funding discrepancies occurring? I thought it was based on population? Are the districts gerrymandered since school taxes are based on property value or something?

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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edit: Also, back on the subject of funding. Overall funding levels are not a problem. But the distribution often is. The American public school funding system tends to give more money to districts with rich parents and less money to districts with poor parents. This is assinine. We are funneling more of our educational dollars to districts that don't need it and less to districts that really do need extra funding. Things have improved over the last 20 years but it is spotty and there are still plenty of states where the distribution is vastly unequal.

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By what mechanisms are these funding discrepancies occurring? I thought it was based on population? Are the districts gerrymandered since school taxes are based on property value or something?

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Traditional American public school funding has come mostly from local school district property taxes. The results are obvious and entirely inequitable but the incentives are also obvious to perpetuate the system.

In some states - like California - there have been serious efforts to remedy the issue, and funding has become more equal, although still not fully equal.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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You're talking about individuals. Under local property tax funding as long as the poor areas stay poor the poor schools will stay underfunded relative to the rich schools, regardless of how their students end up doing in the future.

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reesescups posted:

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Instead of measuring standardized tests, why not look at the success of students after school? You know, how they do in the real world with the stuff that was taught to them to prepare them for the real world?

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Sin_of_Onin posted:

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In CT the rich people get property tax exemptions in the cities because there is no way they would stay if they had to pay the same rate as the poor people.

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Cawlin posted:

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Property taxes are a terrible model to use to pay for school anyway.

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Tych2 posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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Property taxes are a terrible model to use to pay for school anyway.

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I agree. It's unreal the amount I have to pay.

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Tych2 posted:

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That's fine, but at a much lower rate. I don't even have kids in school anymore. I get no benefit from it.

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Tych2 posted:

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I still reserve the right to bitch about it every chance I can get. I'll vote for any politician that wants to change it.

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Tych2 posted:

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Or you bitching about how people like their steaks.

We all have things we bitch about. This is mine.

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Cawlin posted:

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The bottom line though is that you will still have teachers who stop wanting to work in the sihtty neighborhood schools and who will move out to the suburbs, just like you have now.

Putting more iPads in ghetto city schools isn't going to change siht.

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Yukishiro1 posted:

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Cawlin posted:

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The bottom line though is that you will still have teachers who stop wanting to work in the sihtty neighborhood schools and who will move out to the suburbs, just like you have now.

Putting more iPads in ghetto city schools isn't going to change siht.

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Yeah, but people might if they got paid 20% more to teach in the bad school in the bad neighborhood. Right now it is a bit of a no brainer. Because of cost of living adjustments you actually get paid MORE to teach in the good school in the good neighorhood with good facilities and good students.

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