Wages Aren't the Only Reason Teachers Are Striking (axios.com) 514
An anonymous reader shares a report: Schools in 39 of 50 states have seen decreases in funding for instructional materials for their students, according to data from the Urban Institute. These conditions have sparked a wave of teacher activism across the country. Educators have had to pay for supplies themselves to provide new materials for students at times. Teachers' salaries aren't enough to pay for materials, either. In some cases they have to pay for materials for dozens of children. Teachers are having to teach students with materials that are defective, outdated and inefficient because of a lack of funding going to state education budgets -- particularly in Republican states.
Parents? (Score:2, Informative)
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In part, because our tax money ( and a percentage of lottery winnings ) are supposed to go to the schools.
But of course politicians get their grimy little hands on a budget, and it all goes to shit. This is in part why I
A) Almost always vote against the incumbent
B) *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* vote against tax increases.
They have enough of my cash. If they can't pay for basic services with the stacks of green they pull out of my ass, that's they're fuck up not mine, and I won't fund any further idiocy.
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How do you know they have enough of cash? What are they spending the money on that you want to not spend money on.
Per-pupil spending 4x times that of the 60ies (Score:5, Interesting)
Because this nice table [ed.gov] convincingly shows, that the per-pupil spending in America's public schools has quadrupled since 1960ies (inflation-adjusted).
There is amply enough money being spent. We are just doing it wrong [TM].
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Unfortunately, the costs of the private school are not instead of, but in addition to the costs of public ones, for an American taxpayer.
Hence the vouchers, which the teachers' unions fight tooth-and-claw in any way they can.
Re:Per-pupil spending 4x times that of the 60ies (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope, I can not. 70% of the 8th graders nationwide fail reading proficiency. Most also lack in other knowledge — like distinguishing between mass and weight, Ukraine and Russia, Conservatism and Fascism.
That's a massive failure (or, worse, deliberate wrong-doing) of those same teachers, whose Unions are spending millions of dollars on the positive spin in mass-media and Slashdot.
You would not continue ordering pizza from the same place, after they quadruple their prices without any improvements in quality. How can you expect me to continue buying education (for myself or my neighbors) in the same circumstances?
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The vast majority of K-12 education is funded through state and local taxes. Exactly 0 of this is sent to the DoD.
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Public school education is and should be a local responsibility. Tying it somehow to national defense is wrong and misleading.
However, it's also instructive that local government most often cuts or neglects the core responsibilities when money gets tight; fire protection, police, schools. Do they cut PR flaks and managers? If local government is in fact operating close to the bone, any cuts have to be across the board. No department should be fatter than another.
Short sighted attitude (Score:5, Insightful)
It is likely that your quality of life would improve if you paid significantly MORE taxes. In addition to you paying more taxes the rich would pay more taxes. That additional tax would outweigh your contribution. And then you could get roads, bridges, working schools, police, etc.
When everyone is supported by proper public funding, everything works properly. You would prosper despite your selfish inclination.
This idea that everyone should pay nothing in taxes is why we can't have good things. If we pay too little tax, the system decays and we get nothing. If the roads work and the trash system works and the air is clean and the schools are well supplied and safe then the world is great and everything improves. And paying tax does that.
Re:Short sighted attitude (Score:5, Interesting)
This idea that everyone should pay nothing in taxes is why we can't have good things
Except I pay more in taxes than even last year and I still don't have nice things. Roads are shit, PD/FD response times are worse than ever, teachers don't have the materials they need.
So where's that money going? It's not going to infrastructure or support. This has been the trend for the past decade, probably longer. So enough's enough; they can make do with what they have and go fuck themselves if they want to whine about not having enough.
( I liked your joke about how the rich will pay their fair share. I'll giggle about that one for a while, especially since the rich are usually the ones making the laws. )
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So where's that money going?
Establishing and maintaining a global military hegemony, and tax breaks for the wealthiest... you know, good old conservative values: murder and looting.
Re: Short sighted attitude (Score:4, Informative)
IE public system pensions, social security, and welfare.
*sings* One of these things is not like the others......
You should probably look up the difference between mandatory and discretionary spending when it comes to the federal budget, and their funding mechanisms. It's an extremely important subject, and your lack of understanding is why you mistakenly believe cutting Social Security or pensions will do anything to the discretionary budget.
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Maybe stop voting for idiots who can't handle your money properly?
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It is easy to have that attitude, much harder to actually fix the problems.
The issues, at least as I see them are: historical trend of pushing costs forward to balance books today; focus on funding new things rather than maintaining existing infrastructure; and ignorance of the population of the cost/benefit of services provided.
The biggest point on pushing costs forward are retirement plans and bonds that run the duration of something's life, rather than a more logical "major maintenance interval."
The next
Re:Parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you vote out your politicians regardless if they do a good job that doesn't exactly promote responsible government as you don't have the chance of being voted out if you do a bad job driving you to actually do a good job. Instead you have the certainty of being voted out ensuring that you really don't need to give as damn as any issues you end up causing, like say a serious budget shortfall due to excessive tax cuts, is going to be the your replacement's problems.
As for the "no tax increases, never!"-attitude, that really doesn't work at all for tax revenue drops or increased costs, particularly unexpected ones (like natural disasters). The only options that leaves you with are cutting down on essential services, taking on debt or moving around money in the budget like how they move away money that's supposed to go to education into other essential services when lottery money starts coming in.
Voting problems (Score:3)
If you vote out your politicians regardless if they do a good job
That's not really the problem. The problem is that once they get in it's damn near impossible [politico.com] to get them out of office no matter how badly they do. Incumbents get re-elected at rates over 90% thanks to a combination of voter apathy, gerrymandering, confirmation bias, and other factors.
As for the "no tax increases, never!"-attitude, that really doesn't work at all for tax revenue drops or increased costs, particularly unexpected ones (like natural disasters).
Of course you are correct but good luck getting that fact to penetrate the skull of your typical "taxes = evil" republican or worse, one of the tea party variety. So now we have a national debt of around $21 Trillion which
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Yep, only the Republicans were responsible for all that debt. I'll give you a clue - both parties are bad.
Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus. The last W budget was more than $1T in the red. The last Obama budget was $600M in the red, when $200M of tax cuts were added in an attempt to appease Republicans. The one before that was $400M in the red. Meanwhile, the Trump tax cuts are ballooning the deficit nicely.
Tell me again how both parties are equally bad when it comes to budget deficits.
Illinois is run lock stock and barrel by Democrats
You better tell current Illinois governor Bruce Rauner that he's a Democrat. He'll be rather surprised, since
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As for the "no tax increases, never!"-attitude, that really doesn't work at all for tax revenue drops or increased costs, particularly unexpected ones (like natural disasters). The only options that leaves you with are cutting down on essential services, taking on debt or moving around money in the budget like how they move away money that's supposed to go to education into other essential services when lottery money starts coming in.
You left out the obvious option: cutting non-essential services. This is what every business and household does when revenue drops. Maybe we don't eat out as often or see movies in the theater. Maybe 500 cable channels aren't so important. We don't quit eating, but we do cut stuff that we don't need.
Education has a lot of bloat in it, but mainly at the administrative level. What we see time and again is that giving more money to "education" doesn't end up as raises for teachers. It ends up with non-es
Re:Parents? (Score:4, Insightful)
In part, because our tax money ( and a percentage of lottery winnings ) are supposed to go to the schools.
But of course politicians get their grimy little hands on a budget, and it all goes to shit. This is in part why I
A) Almost always vote against the incumbent
B) *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* vote against tax increases.
They have enough of my cash. If they can't pay for basic services with the stacks of green they pull out of my ass, that's they're fuck up not mine, and I won't fund any further idiocy.
The USA is one of the less taxed developed country. Don't be surprised if your public services suck. You get what you pay for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
A-ha!
Re:Parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
So the solution is let the kids remain ignorant? Do you suppose not teaching them a lesson will teach the politicians a lesson?
Re:Parents? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well no, as a parent it's pretty much your responsibility to make sure your kids get an appropriate education - the state offers it for free, but if you think that's ever been a high bar you should look at what past generations weren't taught (and what not being able to read or do math cost them).
I have never put faith in our education system to teach my kids what they need to know - sure, they'll pick up *some* of the fundamentals, but if you're not willing to spend some time filling in the gaps you're a YUGE part of the problem.
Re:Parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
Ideally, yes. But not all parents actually know the material themselves. Even where they do, schools have a bad habit of expecting the knowledge in a specific form and marking off on correct answers if the reasoning doesn't parrot the book.
Math (arithmetic) is a classic example. It's not enough to be good at arithmetic, you have to understand "new math" or they'll get marked wrong even with correct answers. So even a parent who excels in the subject may not be much help.
Then there are single parents with more than one job. They may simply not have enough left at the end of their day to be much help to the kids.
Or, perhaps they got the same crappy "education" when they were in school.
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Well no, as a parent it's pretty much your responsibility to make sure your kids get an appropriate education
That is ridiculous. We do not (can not) regulate who can become a parent and it is in all of our interest to make sure that people around us are as educated as possible. It is wrong headed and short sighted to assume that you do not have a responsibility to help with the education of the community you live in.
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Well no, as a parent it's pretty much your responsibility to make sure your kids get an appropriate education
This is absolutely true, however...
the state offers it for free It's not for free. We pay significant amount of moolah as taxes that are supposed to go to our schools. The system is broken, though.
but if you think that's ever been a high bar you should look at what past generations weren't taught (and what not being able to read or do math cost them).
I have never put faith in our education system to teach my kids what they need to know - sure, they'll pick up *some* of the fundamentals, but if you're not willing to spend some time filling in the gaps you're a YUGE part of the problem.
The problem here is one of selective thinking. Consider this:
My wife and I are college educated, suffiently well off so that my wife only works part time and can stay with my daughters to make sure all homework is done. Additionally, they are exposed to extra curricular activities, private tutoring and a multi-lingual education. When summer break comes, they go to summer boot camp... and more tutoring.
Learning never stops... because I have the money to afford it.
Wha
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Well no...
The US Taxes for education highly, but their functional spend (as in teacher pay + actual school supplies) is nowhere near the same $. Instead each town has it's own school board, staff, etc. which all need to get paid to justify their (frankly massively redundant and useless) jobs. Plus lots of other useless and overpaid work being done. Lots and LOTS of useless babysitting. Plenty of corruption and graft.
If the amount paid went directly to educating students we wouldn't have problems and tea
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If you want to solve that problem, don't just look at the teachers and school supplies. The problem is at the administrative level.
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Why doesn't the state just self publish the damn books for $1 a piece?
Because a large percent of the population wants small governments. Adding a publishing house to state government is the opposite of that.
Has k-12 reading, writing and math really changed that much in that last 100 years?
Yes, yes it has. It has changed dramatically over that time. We also need to teach other subjects now. You might have heard of these newfangled computers, and this thing called the internet. 100 year old books are not sufficient to teach them.
Why are we paying text book publishers?
See previous answer.
I got awesome stuff from the early 1900s. Latin readers, geometry etc.Those books were heads and shoulders above the text books I had in school.
And I got awesome scifi and fantasy books, which were also head and shoulders above the text books I had in s
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In my country its up to the parents to buy textbooks and materials for their children. Why isn't it like that in the USA? Or do only rich White or Asian parents do that, not the poor or Black or Hispanic parents?
Buy their own binders, papers, and pencils sure. But textbooks?
I'm not sure what country you live in but that seems like a bizarrely inefficient system. Every student needs the same textbooks and they don't serve the student after the end of the school year. Forcing the parents to buy them just creates a big inefficient resale market where there's no need for one.
Making the parents buy the textbooks is effectively just a poorly administered tax on parents.
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Universities and colleges in the US don't provide textbooks out of tuition costs. Pushing it down a level or two makes just as much sense as not doing so.
Re:Parents? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, At university you buy the textbook at a ridiculously high price. There used to be all kinds of excuses such as the high cost of making an archival quality book, etc. but those have mostly fallen by the wayside. At the moment, it just seems to be accepted that they have you over a barrel and that's that. A lot of universities also simply require that you buy the textbook at the university bookstore, rather than online, or from another student who has taken the class, etc. At the end of the semester, you may be able to sell the book back to the university bookstore for a small fraction of what you paid, then they'll sell it used for a tiny discount off the new price.
It's basically an exploitive, captive market. Seeing the same thing happen to pre-university education would be a tragedy.
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Yeah, At university you buy the textbook at a ridiculously high price. There used to be all kinds of excuses such as the high cost of making an archival quality book, etc. but those have mostly fallen by the wayside. At the moment, it just seems to be accepted that they have you over a barrel and that's that. A lot of universities also simply require that you buy the textbook at the university bookstore, rather than online, or from another student who has taken the class, etc. At the end of the semester, you may be able to sell the book back to the university bookstore for a small fraction of what you paid, then they'll sell it used for a tiny discount off the new price.
It's basically an exploitive, captive market. Seeing the same thing happen to pre-university education would be a tragedy.
That's what the internet is for. As long as you know the citation you don't need to actually own shit.
Re:Parents? (Score:4, Interesting)
So far the theory, now the practice. In other words, prove the prof failed you because you refused to buy his book.
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Re:Parents? (Score:5, Insightful)
> Universities and colleges in the US don't provide textbooks out of tuition costs. Pushing it down a level or two makes just as much sense as not doing so.
I worked at a rural school district for a while and part of my job was doing analysis of student performance compared to various out-of-school factors. I was stunned and humbled to find out how many of the kids literally had no permanent home. They'd move throughout the school district several times a year because their families were couch-surfing from house to house. And these weren't high-school kids (almost adults)... these were kids younger than 10. Their only regular meals came from the school.
With kids in this kind of situation, there's no way their parents are buying books when they can't even feed them and put a roof over their heads.
Re:Parents? (Score:4, Informative)
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Well, it could work as the "what to avoid" role model...
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In my country its up to the parents to buy textbooks and materials for their children. Why isn't it like that in the USA? Or do only rich White or Asian parents do that, not the poor or Black or Hispanic parents?
Buy their own binders, papers, and pencils sure. But textbooks?
I'm not sure what country you live in but that seems like a bizarrely inefficient system. Every student needs the same textbooks and they don't serve the student after the end of the school year. Forcing the parents to buy them just creates a big inefficient resale market where there's no need for one.
Making the parents buy the textbooks is effectively just a poorly administered tax on parents.
Yeah we had a name for this at my school. In addition to the classroom books that every student used there was the big room full of lots of books on lots of subject you could go and borrow if you needed, the name totally escapes me now.
regulations? chapter 11 and 7 for student loans (Score:3)
regulations? chapter 11 and 7 for student loans will push the banks to make the schools fix it!
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In my country its up to the parents to buy textbooks and materials for their children. Why isn't it like that in the USA? Or do only rich White or Asian parents do that, not the poor or Black or Hispanic parents?
I like how you worked a racist comment into that last (incomplete) clause.
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In my country its up to the parents to buy textbooks and materials for their children. Why isn't it like that in the USA? Or do only rich White or Asian parents do that, not the poor or Black or Hispanic parents?
That's what college students do, and book publishers realized that they have a captive audience of consumers that *have* to buy books every year (thanks to (often) unnecessary to book editions that ensure used book are nearly useless), and books end up costing over $1000USD/year.
It turns out that when a business is faced with a consumer that *has* to buy their product, they don't have any incentive to keep prices low.
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book publishers realized that they have a captive audience of consumers that *have* to buy books every year (thanks to (often) unnecessary to book editions
It would be simple enough for the school to keep using the old edition.
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since their bookstore sells you the books, and some of those were written by the professors.
When I went to university, about half my books were from the university publisher/bookstore and they were sold at cost (maybe $5-$10 depending on how big the book was). The rest were just generic textbooks we got at a regular book store. Both were reused year after year.
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If he couldn't make minor edits and teach from the last edition he would have to settle for the money he got directly from the school
I don't see why that would be undesired. The teacher is hired to teach, not to run his private business.
Also, the system should allow a student following an older book with minor differences can still pass all the tests. The tests should reflect the general knowledge you need to acquire the diploma/degree. When a hospital hires a surgeon, nobody cares about which version of the anatomy textbook he/she used.
Buddy of mine finally moved to a nice place (Score:5, Informative)
In America we use property taxes to fund individual school districts. This means we've got nice, rich districts and lousy poor ones. This is by design. I've read one of the Scandinavian countries has laws about schools being funded equally to prevent just these kind of shenanigans. I'd love to see those kind of laws here in the States. As an added bonus it'd make forced busing pointless outside of specialty magnet schools.
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California has some historical inequalities. Districts that, decades ago, were rural low cost of living places, but are now high cost of living, don't get the same level of funding as parts of LA.
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But wait, that's like Communism! Spreading it all out means everyone starves to death! /s
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Re:Buddy of mine finally moved to a nice place (Score:5, Insightful)
Equal outcome is communism. Equal opportunity is basically what the US was originally founded for.
And it doesn't come closer to equal opportunity than teaching everyone on equal footing, then let them go out into the world and become what they can become based on the education they got.
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Not just Scandinavia, that's pretty much the norm in Europe. To be honest, I never thought something like you describe was possible in the first place.
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Tne worst school district in the area (Score:4, Insightful)
has a projected budget that averages out to about $37,400 per student.
I know there are considerations like property upkeep, and administration, but holy moly, why not just bus them to a nearby community college at that rate?
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has a projected budget that averages out to about $37,400 per student.
I know there are considerations like property upkeep, and administration, but holy moly, why not just bus them to a nearby community college at that rate?
I'm not sure where you live, but your numbers seem to be wildly off.
The average is close to $11k [washingtonpost.com], with the highest state at $21k [governing.com].
Re:Tne worst school district in the area (Score:4, Insightful)
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My local district, with an enrollment of 6000 students, just published their $175M budget ($29K/student). The top spending categories are:
$52.1 million for employee benefits
$43.1 million for regular school teaching costs
$30.4 million for programs for students with disabilities
$11.9 million for general support.
$9.2 million for debt service
$8 million for transportation, up 4.5 percent.
The two main things that throw off your 20% calculation is the ridiculously high 'employee benefit' spending, and the disabi
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Employee benefits is NOT teacher salary (or anyone else's) salary. It is PURELY health insurance and pension. Salaries are 'regular school teaching' and 'disability programs' and 'general support'.
Administrative costs are one of those things that always sound plausible, but on closer inspection don't really amount to much. Total administrator costs in this district are around $2M, or just over 1% of the budget.
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>I didn't finish my minor in math, but 957 Million and 27K students
Where did you get those numbers?
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Over the decades of calculators. New books with math for new calculators.
Desktop computers. The internet. Laptops. Newer mobile computing. GUI robot kits. GUI robot kits with software and new computer code.
Grades stay the same.
Students all over of the USA cant pass tests even after 30 years of new math and later computer spending.
Great for the selling of calculators, new math books just for the new calculators, computers, networks, GUI robot code
Budgeting Hell (Score:5, Interesting)
My take on it is that the budgeting at public schools is as big of a mess as budgeting at NASA. Way too much is wasted on legacy make-work boondoggle cronyist handouts. In the last slashdot discussion of this, someone linked to this image [heritage.org] which pretty succinctly summarizes the problem. This is magnified by the problem of school administrators getting a large salary increase in the last year or two of work before retirement, because their pension is based on their salary at the point of retirement; and thus they get an inflated pension.
I was thinking that regulations could mandate a maximum portion of a school's staff that is non-teaching administrative staff, but then those staff members would teach 1 hour a year to be classified as 'teaching staff' thus gaming the system, so there'd need to be a stricter definition of 'teaching staff' as well. Aside from a nurse, janitors, principal, career counselor, and social worker, how many other administrators do you need?
A book I read years ago on how to fix America's schools advocated using zero-based budgeting [wikipedia.org] and cutting non-academic 'side-shows' like sports teams, then starting school a couple hours later, once children are actually awake enough to learn. A related book ('The End of Homework') also advocated eliminating homework as a way to save time that'd be better spent on one-to-one assistance.
Re:Budgeting Hell (Score:4, Interesting)
That graph starts in 1970... just before all the special needs rules went into effect. I think a huge percentage of school funding is spent on that... mostly on staff.
I don't see any point to zero-based budgeting schools. You think math is going to go out of vogue?
Re: Budgeting Hell (Score:2)
That graph starts in 1970... just before all the special needs rules went into effect. I think a huge percentage of school funding is spent on that... mostly on staff.
That's an interesting point ... except that the trend in university budgets looks very similar as well. How many special needs universities are there?
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At universities, it's probably due to Title IX's expansion of athletics for women. After all, since the dollars spent have to be the same, and football/men's basketball are expensive, that's a lot of cash. Plus, football/basketball coaches now make millions a year in universities. College sports are a big business.
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As a non-American, I find the whole concept of universities organizing sports teams bizarre. I went to university to get an education in my field, not to get involved in basketball or some other sport I don't care about. Other students, who were interested in those activities, could simply use their own money and get membership of an appropriate club and play in their free time.
Re: Budgeting Hell (Score:4, Insightful)
Luckily, you aren't actually required to pay any attention whatsoever to the university sports, even if you go there
Unluckily, you are actually required to pay.
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The basic argument for zero-based budgeting is that if you start with a blank sheet of paper and add the things you really need in a school, you'll end up with a short list with a relatively small bottom line. However, if you use incremental budgeting, starting with a multi-page sheet of every current itemized cost, you end up with a much larger bottom line, even if you tweak each item's budget a little. The implication is that many items on the budget aren't crucial to education but are part of the budget
Funding vs outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
Teachers are having to teach students with materials that are defective, outdated and inefficient because of a lack of funding going to state education budgets -- particularly in Republican states.
Are the comparatively flush budgets in Democratic states producing better outcomes for their students?
Re:Funding vs outcomes (Score:5, Insightful)
The overwhelming factor in overall educational results does not seem to be the school budget. It is the presence of two parents in the home. And that is more common in the Democratic states. A New York Times article, with citations, describes some of this. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/1... [nytimes.com]
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> That's absolutely false. Single mothers overwhelmingly vote Democratic, while married women and men favor Republicans
From the article, the conservative, Republican states generate far more single mothers, due to teen pregnancy and divorce. Apparently the overwhelming majority to which you refer isn't enough to override the statistics and behavior that create so many single parents in the first place. Also, these notably poorer single parents apparently vote less than married women. It seems true that t
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Even to the degree that that is true, what does it matter? Even in counties where half the kids are raised by single mothers, single mothers are still only a small fraction of voters and they can't turn an otherwise Republican district Democratic.
No, you simply need subsidized housing and lots of government benefits.
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Christian, checking in...
Well, just because Jesus taught that divorce/adultery was a sin (while saying nothing about abortion or gay marriage), that doesn't mean the bible belt fake christians in the US have to live by his teachings when they're so busy lying about his teachings.
Let's start with the divorce/adultery issue. You're absolutely right, that there isn't nearly as much disparity in divorce rates among Christians as their should be. Adultery would be a bit more complicated to pin down in this context, because Jesus' teachings indicate that lustful thoughts are akin to adultery. If Christians take that teaching into account when discussing their experiences with adultery, then that's going to skew the numbers a bit if the polls don't account for it.
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California has about average graduate rates, yet its school system ranks near the bottom in the country. Graduation rates are a poor measure of performance.
Education is dangerous (Score:5, Interesting)
A well-run democracy requires educated citizens. The state of school systems in poor neighborhoods is by design. Those in charge want only the "right" kind of voters to be educated.
Teachers are themselves to blame (Score:2, Insightful)
First: Their big unions are so powerful that they are some of the biggest campaign contributors in many states, which results in the people the union bosses want running the state education bureaucracies. The individual teachers may object to this idea and claim they do not like the people in charge, but those denials are false. By supporting their union bosses who in turn pick and support the education burueacrats they are in fact selecting the policies.
Second: In places like California, the teachers suppo
Re:Teachers are themselves to blame (Score:5, Insightful)
that the pay is for only about 9 months per year of work
If you think all teachers are just idle during the school holidays you're either surrounded by shit teachers or know nothing about teaching, I wonder which it is.
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First: Their big unions are so powerful that they are some of the biggest campaign contributors in many states
You mistakenly believe this because "rich people" are not lumped together as a single contributor. They vastly overwhelm spending by all unions combined.
which results in the people the union bosses want running the state education bureaucracies
Um....no. The unions are not interested in "school choice reformers" running the state education bureaucracy, since the for-profit schools they set up siphon even more money out of the system. Yet such people are put in charge in many states, and have been for a long time.
Second: In places like California, the teachers support all the other state workers (who respond by supporting the teachers) and ALL these state workers collectively use their political might to get incredibly generous pensions
That's because they collectively decided to forego more salary in favor of pensions
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but they also love to have the public not notice that the pay is for only about 9 months per year of work
Hi, husband of a teacher here. Not only does my wife *work* for 12 months of the year she also *works* in the evenings, after hours, answering student questions, marking assignments, exams, and preparing the next class. She only attends a classroom for 9 months of the year.
But thanks for mentioning this. With this one line you have instantly shown the Slashdot readership that you simply don't have the slightest clue about teachers or teaching. That's assuming people bothered to read through the rest of the
Funding is not the problem (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem isn't the amount of money allocated for schools. The problem is where that money goes - namely, to bloated administrative costs. Fire half of the non-teaching staff, set the salaries of the rest so that no one earns more than the teachers, and - magic - suddenly schools will have plenty of money.
Of course, that's only the first problem with public education in the US. There are a whole lot of other problems: the culture of passing students who ought to fail, the inability to fire incompetent teachers, discipline problems, etc...
Re:Funding is not the problem (Score:4, Informative)
The problem isn't the amount of money allocated for schools. The problem is where that money goes - namely, to bloated administrative costs. Fire half of the non-teaching staff, set the salaries of the rest so that no one earns more than the teachers, and - magic - suddenly schools will have plenty of money.
Of course, that's only the first problem with public education in the US. There are a whole lot of other problems: the culture of passing students who ought to fail, the inability to fire incompetent teachers, discipline problems, etc...
While that is some of the problems, there are others than need to be addressed. I know a number of teachers and the complaints are the same. Parents who blame them for their child's problems in school; the homework's too hard, too much, the teacher doesn't know how to teach, it's never that their snowflake is lazy and or undisciplined. Overcrowded classes without enough desks or books, the administrations reply is to think outside the box. Having a contract for X days and then being told, "oh, we need to save money so you are getting a bunch of unpaid furlough days." One teacher had a parent expect her to monitor what the child was eating because she was getting fat; of course the parent sent the kid to school with extra lunch money so the kid bought cookies and Cokes. They are going to a merit bonus system and teachers have been told no one can get higher than a 3 out of 4 because the county doesn't want to pay out bonuses. It's no wonder teachers in my district retire on the first day they can, even in the middle of the school year, as a final FU to the system. A recent survey showed over 70% would retire tomorrow if the could, and actively discourage anyone, especially student teachers, from entering the profession. They can't keep match and science teachers, and most new teachers leave after a couple of years; the veterans are marking time until they can retire.
We simply do not value education and are getting what we pay for.
The Underground History of American Education (Score:3)
by John Taylor Gatto: https://archive.org/details/Th... [archive.org]
From the summary:
John Taylor Gatto is a former New York public schoolteacher who taught for thirty years and won multiple awards for his teaching. However, constant harassment by unhelpful administrations plus his own frustrations with what he came to realize were the inherent systemic deficiencies of our `public' schools led him to resign; he now is a school-choice activist who writes and speaks against our compulsory, government-run school system.
THE
Re:Funding is not the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
"teachers would have to gather and report ever-changing KPIs and sift through the new raft of curriculum and regulation changes, organise health and safety reviews and personal and school recertifications"
Um...no? Those requirements are mandated by the very same bloated administrative staff, just at different levels. Those are the first people to fire. Start at the top (federal level), fire them all, because they have no mandate to be involved in local education in the first place. Then work your way down through the layers: State, county and city. Cut out the administrative crap all the way down.
I do that (Score:5, Insightful)
I buy office supplies and even software for my work because the administrative headaches of ordering such are often not worth the hassle. I'd rather work on IT than procurement paperwork. I've done this at multiple companies. Bad apples often cheat the procurement such that many orgs end up putting in lots of roadblocks.
True, I'm probably paid better than most teachers, though. Still, for smaller things, it often just makes life easier to go get them yourself.
Continuation (Score:2)
Re:Continuation (Score:4, Funny)
Are they still talking about arming teachers?
Yes, but they won't be allowed to carry around politicians or administrators. Parent / teacher conferences, however, will be a lot more cordial when the teacher is openly packing a loaded .45 in a shoulder holster.
Get Off My Lawn! (Score:3)
OK, showing my age here, but I remember when paper and pencils and such were provided by the school. You could, at your option, bring in your own (and notebooks, ring binders, and such, and we did. . . ), but basic materials were provided by the school.
I also remember being a little shocked when I enrolled my daughters in public school (this was early-to-mid 1990s) they were given a list of supplies to bring in. A list that grew longer every year.
At the same time, I noted that the libraries lacked recent books, and there were nearly as many "resources" as there were teachers. A K-5 elementary school had **3** secretaries and a vice-principal.
In retrospect, I suspect the two are related, and also to the growth of administrators in post-secondary education.
Lots of school funding myths out there (Score:3)
It's a myth that you can solve problems in education by just giving schools more money. It's not the amount of money that schools have, it's how they spend the money they have.
Spending more money doesn't improve quality.
https://www.americanexperiment... [americanexperiment.org]
Schools actually spend more on minority students than white students
https://www.brookings.edu/blog... [brookings.edu]
The GAO has something to say:
https://www.gao.gov/products/G... [gao.gov]
Even NPR came to the conclusion that simply adding more money doesn't neccasarily help:
https://www.npr.org/sections/e... [npr.org]
"Money alone does not guarantee success any more than a lack of it guarantees failure. Paul Reville, the former Massachusetts education secretary, says not all districts there were able to translate funding increases into academic gains. Often, the difference was how they spent the extra money."
Re: (Score:3)
The GP obviously attended one of the poorer schools in the US.
Re:it's the party platform (Score:4, Informative)
Theocrats hate any education beyond rote reading
Actually, the Church hated Martin Luther because he advocated plebeians reading the Bible for themselves, rather than only the priests who knew Latin being able to read it for them, and telling them what it 'REALLY' means. So they don't always like literacy either. That said, Muslims are expected to be able to read the Koran for themselves (and even memorize it).
Re:it's the party platform (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, Muslims are expected to be able to read the Koran for themselves (and even memorize it).
In the islamic world, it's not considered necessary to actually speak arabic in order to memorize the koran - you can memorize it just fine without understanding a word of what it says. And the goal is really memorisation, and not reading, in order to make a difference between in-group and out-group people, not to actually gain any kind of knowledge or wisdom.
Re:it's the party platform (Score:5, Informative)
I have nephews and nieces in the UK who have all read the Quran. A couple of them have memorized it, but if you ask them to translate a random verse into English, they won't be able to because they don't really understand what they're reading. It's a big thing in my family when someone has memorized the Quran - parties are thrown, gifts are shared etc. but no-one really cares about if the person actually understood any of it. It's just memorization.
I read the Quran when I was younger and even memorized half of it but I couldn't tell you what any of it meant until I got my hands on a version that hand Arabic and English translations side by side. That was considered 'cheating' back in the day so my parents and the local Imam were really disappointed I had to resort to finding an English translation version.
This is one of the great dangers of preachers/Imams etc. They ask a child to read some text and then tell the child what the text is saying rather than let the child figure it out themselves. What doesn't help is that most religious texts are kinda ambiguous - if you're a pacifist you can read one sentence a certain way and think, "OK, that sounds entirely reasonable. I should look to help others" whereas a maniac would read the exact same words and come to the conclusion, "God is telling me to kill infidels".
Incidentally, it was after reading the English translations that I moved away from religion.
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Re:overpaid, underperforming (Score:5, Informative)
We should also remove the special perks for teachers: they should work a full working year, with a few weeks off, get the same kind of health insurance as other people in their income bracket, and get 401(k) or 403(b) plans instead of pensions.
This whole "teachers get the summer off as a paid vacation" is a fallacy. Most teachers are paid for woking X days; where I live they can get the check only during the school year or spread over 12 months; even so teh summers are spent prepping for the next year. Anyone could have the same deal if their company offers an unpaid sabbatical leave of 3 months. They don't get overtime if the have to stay late for an event or a parent insists on their conference be held after normal working hours. As for benefits, they are average at best in my district. Yes, they are one of the few jobs that still offers defined benefit pensions, but even then the county messes with them by giving bonuses in lieu of pay raises so they don't get included in pension calculations.
Yes, there are bad teachers; and benefits vary greatly by state; but at the rate we are going the only people who will teach are those who can't do anything else or coaches.
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Quite the opposite: I want education to become an enterprise where good teachers are highly rewarded and bad teachers are fired; where good schools are rewarded and bad schools are closed.
The public education system as it is rewards good and batch teachers largely alike, beca
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The reason we have a teacher shortage and a glut of awful teachers is precisely because teaching currently isn't rewarded based on performance: a profession that rewards people based on tenure is utterly unattractive to abov