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> Teaching doesn’t attract highly paid workers because in addition to a big pay cut those workers would be considering likely worse working conditions as well.

You could double teacher pay and it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

As a teacher, you have no control over your classroom.

Disruptive students that destroy everybody else's learning environment? Too bad. No Child Left Behind! Wait, that's the old slogan, what's the new one? Equity Uber Alles? Equity Macht Frei?

It changes so often, I keep forgetting.

Assaulted by the kids? Suck it up, we don't want to be sued! Better to have a battered teacher -- the Unions will keep them in check -- than a lawyered-up parent.

I have seen this first-hand.

Want to actually teach kids things they need to learn to succeed? This is the wrong job for you.

I know a lot of motivated folks that went into teaching, with big salary bonuses, full scholarships for their degrees, everything. None of them lasted more than four years.

Public education in the US selects for Dolores Umbridge, and against Remis Lupin.

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Stuff like this drives the push for things like vouchers. I’m lucky to be able to send my kids to a good private school. We chose it after a tour and discussion with the headmaster about exactly how it operates.

The teachers as a group research and plan curriculum. They coordinate across grade levels and determine how to roll out changes in the most effective way possible for students and parents as well. They rolled out common core math over 5 years with great success well before it was forced on public schools.

In other words, they let the people who have studied to be professional educators make decisions about the best way to…educate. There’s no school board, no state level involvement, no federal disruption every time there’s an election.

And it’s fantastic. I see this work and my first instinct is that EVERYONE should have an option like this, not just the people who can afford it.

For that reason, I support some type of voucher program that could achieve these goals. Yet for some reason in the US this is a political hot button, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Currently, the only people who have all the options are people who can afford them out of pocket. Everybody else is stuck with either public school or home school and home school is on the rise.

> Yet for some reason in the US this is a political hot button, which doesn’t make any sense to me.

I share in your bafflement. Charitably, perhaps they reason that parents will pick schools that are worse on average than public schools, but I suspect it is more of a “equality demands poor schooling regardless of class” with a side of “the state gets to determine the values your child is taught”.

The problem isn't what school the parents pick, it's that the voucher schools cherry pick high scoring kids to hold up stats and aren't accountable to the state for the education the state is paying for.

But isn't it a good thing where birds of feather flock together? Just not being dragged down from low scoring kids is worth it. Why can't they select for criteria they are looking for?

In practice this means discriminating against students who are non-native English speakers, students with learning disabilities, etc.

> Just not being dragged down from low scoring kids is worth it.

It depends on the kind of society you want to live in. I would rather live in a society that prioritizes decreasing inequality rather than exacerbating it.

https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/success-academy-charter-sc...

I could equally (and accurately) argue that in practice public school means discriminating against people by wealth, using zip code as a proxy.

And anyway, why would "discriminating based on competence" exacerbate inequality? Shouldn't competence-based discrimination lessen inequality e.g. by giving bright, poorer schools a shot at more prestigious institutions while financially-but-not-intellectually privileged kids move to more middling institutions?

Given the choice between wealth discrimination and merit discrimination, I would prefer the latter.

My understanding is that vouchers still put the most power in the parents about what school their children go to, when the parents themselves aren’t necessarily good judgements of what would make a good school. Additionally, tools that parents would use (how students are graded in standard tests) are opaque. There are even cases where private schools don’t have to disclose how well or poorly their students score, which means they can effectively present as being a great school without any proof, while public schools have to provide proof and therefore look worse as they can’t lie.

I taught for a few years, and I met many parents and students. The old adage is right: judge the tree by its fruit. Voucher-funded charter schools don't even have to cherry-pick students to surpass public schools: the biggest factor is that parents have to make a conscious decision to send a child to a charter school over the default public school. The worst-performing students belong to parents who will not put in the effort to choose a school instead of sending their kids to the default public school. There is a direct correlation between the parents' (or more likely parent's or grandmother's) lack of involvement in the child's education on the child's performance in school. The easiest filter to separate the bottom of the population from the average and top is to provide a choice of schools, because the lowest segments simply will not make any choice.

Fair enough, but my impression of lots of public schools is that they are abysmal and the few that aren’t are typically only available to rich people anyway (in practice, not principle) so the current system addresses neither overall quality of education nor inequality.

Yes, currently. But we should be looking to improve that system for everyone, not allowing a privileges few to opt out.

Wouldn’t a better system have more options with different approaches rather than a single lowest common denominator?

Just from a scientific perspective, more experiments that are able to learn from each other and adapt things they see working elsewhere into their approach should naturally lead to constantly improving schools.

A single lowest common denominator that nobody is allowed to escape from is doomed to failure by comparison.

Vouchers aren’t about letting the privileged few opt out, not more so than the current system anyway. And shooting down vouchers without a better plan for improving the current system is just prolonging a system that is bad for everyone (mostly the poor).

That’s the ultimate issue though. If parents don’t have the choice then we never really know that.

Right now, the only parents with a choice are the ones who can afford all the options, including moving to a better public school district.

Vouchers add power to parents, and we've (I think) already agreed that parents are a large part of the problem. Even worse: unlike policies, standards, regulations, boards, administrations, and rules, you can't change parents. Even worst: you can manipulate parents, and perverse incentives all but guarantee that evil people will be attracted to this opportunity.

>we've (I think) already agreed that parents are a large part of the problem

I'd be interested in seeing data showing this.

> we've (I think) already agreed that parents are a large part of the problem.

No.

> Even worst: you can manipulate parents, and perverse incentives all but guarantee that evil people will be attracted to this opportunity.

Of course, those evil people would never think of becoming teachers or professors in order to brainwash thousands of students over their careers.

Because that would be, what, wrong and stuff?

Forgive my ignorance, I’m from another land. What are vouchers in this context?

It’s about giving parents a voucher (like a gift card) to spend on a school. The idea is that instead of subjecting everyone to a one size fits all public school system, which can have various problems and inefficiencies, you give parents money that can only be spent on schools but let them choose which provider to spend it on (whether public or private or homeschooling or whatever). It introduces an element of competition between schools but also choice, and the ability for parents to seek out what is best for their child. For example: teacher union avoiding accountability via test scores? Switch schools. School policies not properly managing disruptive students? Switch schools. Curriculum not appropriate for your child? Switch schools.

Usually a government program to give parents fixed annual tuition voucher which they can use to enroll their child at a private school. The voucher may cover part or all of the tuition at the private school and the parent would pay the remainder if there is one. It often goes under other monikers such as School Choice. Parents usually don't have much say as to which public school their child goes to, as it is assigned by address. These programs aim to let parents who are in the district of a poorly performing school to transfer their kids to a school they think will benefit them. Wealthier parents already have this option, but private schools are too expensive for even most middle class parents.

It is often related to efforts to create charter schools which are essentially private schools funded by taxes but run by a commercial or non-profit management company. These schools are usually regulated similarly to other private schools, having fewer regulations than the public schools and not under any direct authority of elected officials.

"Vouchers" are effectively tuition money for a school of a parent's choice, funded by the government. They would in theory allow parents to choose the "right" kind of schooling for their child, rather than having their child attend a school based on where they live.

This system does not exist today, but there are many who would like to see it. Lots of people are fed up with what they perceive as the failings of public schools. Very few who advocate for vouchers seem to advocate for education funding in general - most seem to simply want their kids somewhere else.

Historically, the push for vouchers is a right-wing, small-government kind of effort intended to further undermine the public school systems, and also to allow government funds to support religious education which, under the current system, is not permitted.

Well right, because they can kick out students who are disruptive and make them the public school systems problem. When the public school system becomes insolvent, what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education? We hope someone else has a solution? Vouchers are a great way to permanently cement the cradle to prison cycle.

Why should disruptive students be tolerated in public school classrooms? Does the disruptive student actually get an education simply by virtue of being in the classroom? He certainly drags his peers down, but how much is he actually educated in the process, and is that worth the harm he does his peers?

> Vouchers are a great way to permanently cement the cradle to prison cycle.

I could as easily say they are a way out of the cradle to prison cycle for many at risk youths.

> what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education?

You want the brutal truth? Yes, that's exactly the solution. Want an education? Learn to behave in class.

And note that this is the only workable answer even in public school systems that aren't insolvent. No amount of money can educate a kid who refuses to be educated.

> Learn to behave in class.

Who’s the job to teach those kids how to behave in class ? Their parents ? And what do you do if their parents don’t care (which is the common case with those kids) ? What do you do if the student has undiagnosed mental illness ? Entire generations of misbehaved children were in fact suffering ADHD. How do you manage a misbehaving children that is bullied every single morning when he comes to school ?

Not educating a kid is ruining its life and, since you speak with « brutal truth », yeah, just sentence those students to jail for life already, at least they’ll not have to struggle with hunger and homelessness during years.

> Who’s the job to teach those kids how to behave in class ? Their parents ?

Yes.

> what do you do if their parents don’t care

Then other family members should pitch in. Or other adults in the kid's life should pitch in. Or, if you believe the government can exercise such power with good judgment (I personally don't), you could have the parents' rights terminated and put the kids up for adoption.

What you can't do is ask schools to do the job, because that isn't what schools are for. Schools are not supposed to be rehabilitation centers for kids who can't be educated because they have bad parents. They're supposed to be places where kids who can be educated, are educated. Trying to make them into rehabilitation centers just ruins the education of all the other kids who can be educated.

> Not educating a kid is ruining its life

I entirely agree. But that doesn't change the fact that a kid who refuses to behave in class cannot be educated. Even if it's not the kid's fault, that's still the fact.

Also, if kids who can't be educated are put in schools, now you don't just have them not being educated, you have all the kids not being educated because of the constant disruptions. How is that an improvement?

[Edit: I see you mentioned specialized schools elsewhere in the thread. I'll respond to that point there.]

> just sentence those students to jail for life already

I didn't do that; the kids' parents did, by making them unable to be educated. So why aren't you all on fire to hold the parents accountable? Why are you going after me, who had nothing to do with it?

The problem is keeping those kids in school ruins the education of all of the kids in that class. How is it fair to damage the potential of so many kids, because one kid is disruptive, and their parents don’t care.

The options here are not binary. There are other possibilities than keeping them ruining the class or abandoning them.

A lot of countries have dedicated schools for those children, so they damage nothing around them and can be treated individually. And in lot of cases, since it requires removing them from families where their problems comes, it’s a breadth of fresh air for them.

As an outsider, it looks to me like the options in America are binary. Either the student can be removed from the class, or they can’t. The problem as I understand it, is that in regular schools teachers are disempowered from removing trouble-making students for a number of reasons, including “equity”.

I agree, that special programs and schools are required for challenging students. But that is a different question.

Someone has to be there for that kid to say 'shut up and study'. Failing that, disruptive student is a drag on the rest.

I am sympathetic to the thought process behind it but the end results are hard to argue with.

I agree. But if their parents are not able to say « shut up and study », it should be the role of the public power to say it, even if it means transferring them into specialized schools, but letting them aside of the road should never be an acceptable option, because it will hurt them and it hurts the society (by making up future criminals and spreading wrong values)

> if their parents are not able to say « shut up and study », it should be the role of the public power to say it, even if it means transferring them into specialized schools

Who pays for the specialized schools? If it's we, the taxpayers, then we have a right to expect that those schools do their jobs. Do they? Do you have any specific references you can give?

> When the public school system becomes insolvent, what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education?

Are they getting an education now?

According to most metrics - including this article - more and more students are passed without meeting the requirements for their grade level.

Vouchers are a great way to permanently cement the cradle to prison cycle.

You don't solve a problem by making it worse. Making smart and/or motivated kids stay in the same classrooms as disruptive and demotivated kids just turns the motivated kids into more disruptive and demotivated kids. Right now it looks like we can choose between some people getting educated, and almost nobody getting educated because of the disruptive environment.

Perhaps any voucher system could be calibrated to: A) allow some more students to go to private schools by providing a fraction of what would be spent on them, and B) increase remaining resources per-pupil in the public school system.

Of course, it still takes thought to make sure that the public schools improve in this scenario, because they will also be fighting an adverse-selection headwind of being stuck with students from lower classes and those that the private schools don't want. But if you can shrink classes and cater classes to similar ability levels, I'd think this would win out.

I'm not sure your math works. If the goal of vouchers is to take the total education budget, divide it by the number of students, then disperse the pot equally.

In other words is it simply a case of $10 000 per child per year, so here's a voucher for 10k, go wherever you like?

There are no extra resources here for underperforming schools - in fact there are likely fewer resources. Public shools won't get smaller though, they'll just merge together to create fewer schools, and the bad teachers will go away.

And perhaps therein lies the root of the resistance to vouchers. It starts to measure school, and by extension, teacher quality. And that's not a rabbit hole teacher unions want to go down.

> In other words is it simply a case of $10 000 per child per year, so here's a voucher for 10k, go wherever you like?

When vouchers were proposed in California in 1993, it was to be half the amount spent by the state on each child for public education. In 2000, it was to be $4000/year, when the state spent about $7000/year per student.

Of course, there's the big existing population in private schools that would also have been eligible for vouchers-- about 7%-- so these amounts probably still would drive down per-pupil spending in public schools. You'd need to roughly double private school enrollment to "break even" in per-pupil spending.

I favor something like 20-33%-- that might reasonably be expected to both make it significantly easier for parents to send their children to private schools and increase resources per student in public schools.

Although an insanely complex topic, this basically sums up my views (spouse is a 6-8 teacher). Teachers have no autonomy to teach (which discipline is apart of).

Want to actually teach kids things they need to learn to succeed? This is the wrong job for you.

I teach at a community college and for years I've told newcomers to profession that one thing this job is not about is teaching.

>and for years I've told newcomers to profession that one thing this job is not about is teaching.

So, what is about then?

High passing rate and minimal number of student complaints. No one in administration cares if the high passing rate is because standards were lowered. All they care about is that more than x% pass.

Another sad instance of Strahern's adaptation of Goodhart's law[1]:

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure"

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

I am curious whether there are any systems that let parents choose teachers within a school — and let teachers admit students they will take. So they can make more if they are in demand — and that students that are "problems" will result in greater income for the teachers that take them.

A kind of "choice-based" market system within a school.

> You could double teacher pay and it wouldn't make a lick of difference.

I sincerely doubt that. Having a teacher who isn't struggling financially would be a huge improvement.

OP is correct. double your salary at your job, but have to take verbal abuse and berated from your 'boss' and see how that paycheck affects your life

Investment bankers barely enjoy their jobs and take a lot of abuse from their bosses, yet there is no shortage of banker aspirants. Some even stay for the long haul, or go to even worse working conditions such as private equity, for more money.

Investment bankers also have autonomy and generally work in small teams. Not responsible for human beings, just capital. Also if a IB gets fired (but is good) they are probably employed within a week. A good teacher that gets fired (for fighting the bad administration? Good luck...

To draw parallels, an investment banker who goes against the system would likewise not be hired, but rather virtually blackballed. And good luck for whistle blowers in any financial institution.

Also investment bankers have as much autonomy as a client allows them to. And MDs and VPs are as much responsible for their subordinates and client relationships (although not in the same way as teachers are for students).

Yet public school teachers do this all the time. They take low pay and a bad work environment, and keep teaching anyway. Why? Because they are passionate about teaching.

I had several high-school teachers who weren't financially comfortable, yet still chose to spend hundreds or even thousands on their students during a school year.

Of course, those teachers would have been much more effective if they were in a financially stable position. I also would have had fewer quality teachers leave.

If your salary is high enough that you can save some money then you aren’t required to put up with bullshit in order to keep eating food.

Do you mean that by saving money people can leave the profession sooner or at least move to a school with more favorable working conditions?

If so, maybe you’ve hit on a kernel of truth: we can’t risk paying teachers enough that they’d have the financial security to leave a bad work situation.

Am I the only one who thinks “we should pay teachers more so they can afford a new profession because public education is horrible” is the wrong takeaway? Like, why not fix public education (e.g., more teacher autonomy) or at least support some voucher program so more teachers can be private school teachers?

See my reply above. I didn’t think this idea would be controversial. Working conditions should improve when the workers have other options.

"Working conditions should improve when the workers have other options."

So when the workers have not other options, working conditions can stay low?

It’s not a “should” it’s just what happens.

I mean that teachers would have a credible threat of leaving and hopefully administrations and school boards would respond to the threat by improving conditions.

High salaries means more people looking to get in, so it's not like administrators would risk running out of teachers.

(I'm all for financially rewarding good teachers, but because their work is incredibly valuable. It's just ab incredibly hard context in which to separate the good and the bad without creating perverse incentives)

And ultimately, the teacher doesn't get to choose what they teach either. Somebody else decides that and gives teachers a long list of things that the students have to know.

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