Teachers Unions are taking schools hostage. This is literally not unlike asking for a ransom. ‘Work to rule’ and strike threats brewing in Bay Area too.
How can public education be revamped? We have so much technology but nothing has changed in recent times.
(At least in CA. I am not sure about other places)
1) You relax the laws that require public education using the rubric that private schools will allow for competition and force improvement. It is no accident that fewer families dependent of public schools weakens support for public schools. It also means that political and religious agendas can be entered into American education where before they were forbidden.
2) You couple that with a long term propaganda campaign about how bad public schools are including portraying teacher union activists in the worst possible light in the news.
3) You starve funding for education to the point where, for example, California goes from the foremost example of excellence in education to one of the worst.
4) When teachers start to rebel at the corruption of American education, you vilify teachers claiming they are taking American education hostage.
The idea that technology offers a solution to a political issue is not realistic.
It’s pretty gnarly. CA unfunded pension liabilities may be around $100 trillion
https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherburnham/2018/07/30/t...
It has made CA into a nanny state. Gov. Newsom now wants to provide pre school education for the first four years. Where is the money for all this?
After school tutoring classes have become a cottage industry in affluent cities. In low income districts, schools are everything from day care to free meals. Meanwhile school funding is highest in low income districts (LAUSD is 17.xxk per student ..OUSD is 14.5k/student) and on the lower scale in affluent areas(Bay Area: 8-9k/student) as property tax and general fund gets redistributed.
Which is fine as society must bear the burden of educating all. But it seems like it’s all going for the care and feeding of union backed retired teachers. Unions have become so powerful that in LA, it’s a strike. In Fremont, teachers refusing to do more their hours...in Oakland...well. That’s a huge can of worms that no one can understand or fix. I don’t even know where to start with Oakland’s problems.
So clearly throwing money at ‘public education’ isn’t working because there isn’t a whole lot of educating going on for that money.
Interestingly there is just one school district that isn’t unionized. Clovis Unified School District. It’s near Fresno. If you google it, there is some fascinating info there. And yes, they are doing very well.
I am reminded of the 2010 documentary, “Waiting for Superman”
I wasn't aware that money was being 'thrown at' public education anywhere. However you define that exactly. But it sounds, the way you describe it, like stopping 'throwing money' is part of the solution? i.e. spending even less on public schools? How much is spent anyway, compared with some other important things the US spends money on, like, say, invading/attacking other countries? Or keeping so many people locked up?
Public education isn’t free. Someone is paying for it. But public education isn’t accountable to the people paying for it.
Here is an extension of the thought experiment:
If public school education is parent directed/funded and ALL higher education/university/research/vocational studies after passing a very tough high school diploma is absolutely free, how do you think we would all fare as a society? Equal opportunity to all who have cleared their high school exams with flying colours.
(My intention is not to be offensive. I honestly don’t understand.)
1) Of course private education can be superior, but it also can be corrupted by political and religious agendas as it is commonly being done today. Mandatory public education in America tries to raise children free of such narrow-mindedness, a necessity for a free democracy.
2) Alexis de Tocqueville wrote a seminal book on the nature of America called Democracy in America. Its central theme was how common public education (as well as severe inheritance taxes) prevented the creation of a permanent privileged class which would otherwise eventually destroy freedom and democracy. Mandatory public education is or at least was a great unifier and leveler of American society. Today we are being torn apart and set against each other, and I believe we must have a common education to counter that.
Not taking offense myself, but using an expensive education so children can outshine other children rather than reach their greatest potential is at its core anti-democratic and hugely offensive to those of us who understand and strive to sustain America's traditional values of freedom from oppressive forces. We aspire to a meritocracy (however imperfectly we achieve it).
I can not think of anything more basic to the American way as the ideals of equality and meritocracy. A mandatory public education of high quality is essential to who we are and to our aspirations.
Please understand I am NOT offended by your post. This is a free discussion among people of good will seeking understanding.
Public education also can be, and often is in the US, corrupted by political and religious agendas.
There are very good ones. There are very bad ones too.
Access to good private education takes more money than the majority of Americans have.
Charter schools often pop up, look sexy, and vary extremely widely. Again some good, a lot of "meh" and some bad.
The idea behind robust public education is the majority would get a good education regardless of their economic position.
I had pretty great public education, and I was poor in a backward town too. We have declined a shocking amount!
It just so happens I can remember every year. Odd. But, useful to compare to my own kids education. We were in better shape economically, but the quality was spotty throughout.
And it was stripped down.
A move to more private, or no public is likely a downgrade for way too many people, IMHO.
I went to a fairly traditional private school (cost: $8k/yr) and absolutely hated it, but still did well. Eventually my hatred turned into a complete mental breakdown, I refused to go anymore, and after a search transferred to a super fancy independent study school (cost: $15k/yr) where I got to meet one-on-one with my teachers, or in small classes of less than 5 students. This school cured my depression in a few months and developed my intellectual and artistic passions over the next couple of years. Several of my friends followed me there in the next year or two, with similar positive effects on their sanity. If only everyone had this opportunity! Alas, Seattle spends only $15k per student in their public schools :-( Here's the data for all 50 states as a whole [1].
> Charter schools often pop up, look sexy, and vary extremely widely. Again some good, a lot of "meh" and some bad.
This is famously true of different public school districts as well. I'm not willing to discount anything that help move us away from the deranged format of traditional schools.
[1] https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/p...
However, the reason my school could get away with such a small ratio, even compared to other private schools that cost the same, is because it is an independent study school - I only went two days a week for a few hours a day.
Imagine you have one teacher working for 10 hours and 10 students. If each student goes all 10 hours, your ratio is 1:10. If each student goes only 1 hour, your ratio is 1:1.
This is like a tottering tower built on a semi solid foundation. It will topple because soon there is not enough money to educate but only to maintain those who have retired.(aka not productive in the economic system). It is highly irrational.
I wonder if public education is exactly what’s leading to inequalities and the need for equality is actually making us accept lowest common denominator.
Having classes on the basis of age is also problematic. I think children should be educated in groups with different age groups. Instead of curriculums, they can learn whatever they want and be guided to pursue what interests them most. The evaluations can be once in 3-5 years maybe? And they can streamed into groups according to their abilities. In a lot of ways, the pressure will be off kids and they can truly learn..to be the best in what interests them and where their abilities are their strengths.
How do you figure that?
And I meant intellectual inequalities. Some skills need practice(music, for example)...others need an persistence and some others need aptitude. A public school in my district right now has to choose between building a swimming pool or pay teachers more wages to build up their last drawn salary which will be their lifetime pension when they retire as a defined benefit.
All students lose because they never find out where they excel because they have to receive uniform education that is affordable to all after redistribution of resources.
However(for the purpose of this thought experiment)...if one is in a class that has students from say..grade 5 to grade 12...and can learn whatever they want..then one can entirely skip history classes and focus only on math. Everyone learns what they want...instead of learning what someone else wants.
Public schools should only be for those who can’t afford their children’s education. If one is wealthy one must pay more their kids education. I mean..if I am a multi millionaire, I am getting a fancy car and a nice house. Why can’t I pay more for my child’s education?
Public education shouldn’t be tied to property tax. We will pay less tax with the option to educate our kids the way we see fit. I still don’t understand what charter and magnet schools are in this country. I will get around to it soon. Regardless, this system is failing. So if it fails, it must be fixed..no? How is the next step..but the first step is to admit that there is a problem, no?
Is it a birth right? This is an entirely foreign concept to me.
It’s not that the ‘lower classes’ shouldn’t have children but it is expected that from their weakened position, their progeny will likely have lesser chance to thrive than others and will have to fight harder. It is also better if they have fewer children because they can devote all available resources to fewer children.
I understand that this might seem distasteful to many. But I want to dissect this and absorb it rationally.
How can the statement ‘children should have equal chances’ be supported rationally?
But I want to push this further...
The definition of opportunity: “a set of circumstances that makes it possible to do something.”
When you have offsprings of variable(1)parents coming from different variable(2)backgrounds with different variable(3) life goals, how can offering them equal chances be rational?
If there was no public funded education/support, would anyone consider having children unless they were confident that they can raise their children all on their own? Or with the help of their support system?
A child’s education doesn’t have economic value and only has the possibility of value. Society collectively invests first to benefit collectively later.
State takes over child rearing(not just education. From school lunches to vaccinations, they are happy to help everyone) so the adults can go to work to pay taxes. State takes the taxes and employs staff to educate the children in a highly conformed setting.
By providing seemingly cheap or free public school education, the children are ready to generate jobs and income for the universities. So they can go to jobs. So they can pay taxes. And when they have children, they can outsource child rearing to their public schools.
How can a public school teacher working 5.5 hours taking 5 classes with 40 children in each class be considered a good deal? Especially if they continue getting full salary as pension after they retire even though they collectively taught your child for only 12 years and you likely paid taxes for pretty much all your adult life.
Every tax payer is complicit in this communal child rearing activity where they have no collective power. The power lies with the state and it seems, the unions now. With private school education, it’s between the parent and child.
I started this thread because Los Angeles Unified School District’s teachers will go on strike. Unless they have access to a 1.8 billion dollar reserve fund..because they only got 6% raise instead of the 6.5% hike they demanded and because they had a whole list of demands. 25000 teachers will stop teaching. Is this ‘equal opportunity’ worth it?
In a free market where parents find means to educate their child according to their ability..private schools or home schooling or apprenticeship in family business or whatever fill in the blank, they still retain control over what is really their responsibility.
What one imagines is ‘equal chance for every child’ is really an equal opportunity for everyone to pay taxes and a chance to make everyone same to create a homogeneous labour class who will become future tax payers without competing too much with each other because everything from higher education to jobs is expensive, metered and decided based on how children are churned out of the public school system.
...beware of Greeks bearing gifts..
‘Free’ education and any subsidized child welfare is a way to incentivize higher birth rates. It’s not really free. Someone is paying for it. It’s like a pyramid scheme.
But my train of thought wasn’t this..
It was about exploring why it’s rational to expect every child to have equal chances handed out in life.
One might have chosen to have just one child to give him/her the best they can offer.
Another might have 5 kids because education is free and the kids can leave home when they finish school.
Another could be a trust fund baby of another trust fund baby.
Another might be the child of a beauty queen and a neurosurgeon.
Why should they all have equal opportunity and won’t it be wasted on some of them depending on what kind of chance they get..
There is one, but it is small now. Something like half the nation makes 40k per year.
That 40k has to do
Housing Food Transport Health care
Add paying private tuition?
Most will end up in what remains of public education or any number of very mixed bag charter schools.
So we will have thrown wrenches into what was pretty great public education for almost everyone, declare it isn't working (no surprise there), to achieve a market system that will deliver spotty education?
The whole thing is a net loss, if you ask me.
I would and never have opposed high end or specialized private education for those who can afford such things.
Denying what is probably the majority of Americans a solid education to expand on that just does not seem to make sense.
Worse, doing that is failure to invest in our own future. That spotty education will have a direct impact and already has.
Funding public education can be done, and should be done. And when it is propely funded, educators are not larded down with too many mamdatory requirements, stripped of the agency needed to do it right, works well.
Worked well enough to advance our nation very considerably, I should add.
Couple that mess with essentially 4 decades of flat wages taking us from one family member being able to provide reasonably to both parents working full time plus, which shifts a lot of problems onto schools increasingly unable to deal with them, and it is no wonder the future looks grim.
You say public schools should only be for those unable to afford it.
Ok, that is rapidly becoming a majority of people.
Which is it?
People earn enough to invest in the young people who are our future and who will take care of us in our old age
, or
Make it a public investment, anyone is free to augment, given they have means.
The fact is, public education only works well at scale.
We either fund it and get the benefit and security that comes along with a well educated population, or we don't.
This nation was built by people attending great public schools and colleges. The more we have stepped away from that, the less we have gained.
And there is already inexcusable student debt for college. How much do we want to bet that same thing happens in a sea of private primary education schools all looking to make money first, educate second? Charters already do that with super inconsistent, meaning generally worse overall outcomes, now.
Low odds on that one.
And they will make money first no matter what. That is what business does. No blame, no shame just facts.
Public education is about education, not making money.
I have just not seen the benefit overall, just some people getting better for their money while a lot of others get a whole lot worse.
And causing all of that so very wealthy people can get or do what they could just do anyway?
Laughable. Seriously.
Had I the means you brought up, trust me, educating my kids properly would be no problem, and it would be no problem while easily contributing my share to public education so my better educated kids grow into a competent, well educated, civic minded society they would likely be able to earn more than their share of wealth from.
Nice problems to have compared to the growing mess now.
Very nice problems.
Why do adults have children if they are not sure they can give them the very best they need to survive in a world that is increasingly hostile to their survivability?
When survival is based on money and money is based on finding work and that is dependent on quality of education, shouldn’t parents plan ahead before they bring a child that is absolutely dependent on that for every need? Where is the personal responsibility?
The fact is, we just do not need to be that shitty.
And the child is with us no matter what we think of the parents.
I have one I more or less have to care for right now. I did not fuck the mother, in fact, didn't make any of the choices.
And talk accountability all day long. But there it is, child in the street, or...
We can do better than this. We need to long before we resolve all the petty squabbles over who should have done what in a risky world no matter what we do.
Lately I have come to believe that it is evolutionarily hardwired in us to want to protect all children. It’s almost like a fierce survival instinct at species level. Still..there is a split between gut level instinct to protect what will perpetuate our species and rational thinking. It’s like we are running two different programs. Their outputs may not be similar to each other.
Having said that, back to my first sentence...the ‘high’ has become an addiction. People are coming to believe that..indeed!!..there is a ‘village’ somewhere with an army of villagers waiting to raise their child and if they drive around long enough asking for directions to said village, they will safely arrive at the destination.
It is naive to believe that all people who are capable of having children are capable of shouldering that responsibility. Where does that leave the rest of us. The government, I fear..has slipped in like a thief in the dark and insidiously inserted itself to create conformity and clones and future tax payers by taking over the public school system and redistributing the assets of the commons to those who can have more children.
Taking over child rearing by incentivizing and subsidizing parents is just wrong. And even there it’s false advertising. It’s redistribution of the assets of the commons to fulfill a larger agenda where all the players don’t have a say. This is rather worrisome. Why aren’t we worried?
- change the format of education: kids are more anxious than ever (see current HN front page). There’s no guarantee that you will be okay financially with the current education system.
But is education always about financial security?
Do we need teachers in their traditional or rather in their current roles? Should the way of knowledge transmission be altered?
What would happen when there are less jobs to fill and more human population? What is the role of education and work when automation spreads?
I guess we will have to go back to definitions:
What is knowledge?
What is education?
What is the purpose of knowledge?
What is the purpose of education?
Technology can help to cluster students appropriately so they learn and teach from each other. My 2c.
How students learn varies a lot more than many of us want to admit.
It is best to have a variety of means available, and multiple opportunities for students tonpresent how they learn.
Your sister is an increasingly rare bird.
So many lack time, resources, agency to do that.
Nearly all of the educators were able to do that for me. 70's 80's
I find the lack of agency, and standard, often teach to test, load shocking. Much reduced agency in many cases.
I have had enough I will never again contribute to HN.
I would like to see more discussion on this topic.
I tend to agree with this, the current form of public education worked well when manufacturing jobs were plentiful post WWII. Those types of jobs have migrated overseas. Trying to bring them back here will not work as many firms have begun using advancements in robotics.
Some form of art, craftsmanship, or apprenticeship will likely be part of the future mix of jobs. If you read books like The End of Jobs by Pearson or The 4 Hour Work Week by Ferris, you get a sense that being an entrepreneur is a possibility. However, I think one has to consider the real odds and survivorship bias.
What I have done with my kids is to try to instill a love of learning. I have taught my 5 year old daughter using a visual programming language. I think it is very important that you make an effort to teach your children skills that are not generally taught in school.
Each group would be about 5-6 kids in size and one of the kids would be the team leader also they would work together throughout the year. The teacher would teach the class but groups would work together to learn the assigned work. The teacher would manage the groups and be available to help. Tech would help reduce the teacher's paperwork and help reinforce the materials thru video.
Why the groups? It would make it easier to manage unruly kids thru peer pressure and identify kids that are falling behind and challenge those that learn faster.
I would also design the curriculum so that kids will have some kind of career skill by the time they graduate high school. Preparing kids for college is not enough. They should have a skill plus they can continue to college if they like. It's shameful that kids can go thru 12years of school yet not be able to earn a living- at the very least learn to give haircuts.
Also, kids should be able to tailor their assigned work towards what they like thru tech.
Example, say I like electronics then part of my day would include a project that applies what I learned in school by doing a big project in electronics.
Schools have become a place to babysit kids while their parents work. I also think that 12 years of school is probably too many years of school. The last three should be used to start learning what they want to be in life.
Also, parents need to be part of the equation. Parents want to blame the schools and the teachers if their kids fall behind but the parents need to figure out what the problem is and get the help the kids need. The parents have the ultimate responsibility for making sure their kids learn. In short, parents will be assigned responsibilities along with the kids.