Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mlyle | Hacker News Reader

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> but once you start to get into actually-good private school territory

This just isn't true of the SF Bay Area. When you look at the very top, like Harker, Nueva, etc-- salary may slightly edge above public school pay for some portions of the scale, but is still behind when you consider total comp.

> appreciation (and to a some extent social status, at least within a certain circle)

I feel appreciated and valued by our parent community, and I do not feel like there are many that look down their nose at me. (And, given my background, I'm just kinda amused by the group that do).

I also have total "easy mode" when it comes to behavior management. Students that don't even know me come into the room predisposed to think I have important things to say and to work hard.

> A very high percentage of private schools are not good, though

Oh, believe me, I know about the crummy sectarian schools, and the crummy for-profit "highly academic" academies. I am not talking about that. (I don't think many of these are very good teaching environments, either...)

> private schools are less beholden to any one parent than public schools are

This is very complicated and probably out of scope for this discussion.

> and are much better positioned to firmly tell them "no"

Once you have a wait list, this is true.

Sorry, by the way, if I've misunderstood or misread some of your posts. I'm truly not trying to be argumentative for the sake of it, and expect we agree much more than we disagree, overall. Also: yes, I'm sure you're right about your local market, and part of the problem discussing these things is that the situation in schools varies greatly state-by-state and region-by-region, so it's easy to get wrong ideas about things—teachers unions might be so powerful they're part of the problem, in some places, but in others they barely have any power at all so those very-common "teacher's unions are out of control and that's the main problem with education!" takes come off as something from another universe, or teacher comp might be borderline-OK in some places, but really, really isn't in others. Some places, there are five private schools in a 30-minute drive that charge $40+k/yr and are all pretty good or even excellent—others, there are five private schools in a 30-minute drive and they all charge $12k/yr or less and are all terrible (but do cater to religious and/or political preferences). It's a highly heterogenous field.

Likewise --- I understand you're passionate about the issue and feel your spouse has been ripped off. I think we should pay teachers much more. I just don't think it is likely to improve education much, and most of the benefit will be in the far future. [I do think improving working conditions will have an immediate benefit, though].

> Some places, there are five private schools in a 30-minute drive that charge $40+k/yr and are all pretty good or even excellent

Far, far in excess of that here.

> there are five private schools in a 30-minute drive and they all charge $12k/yr or less and are all terrible (but do cater to religious and/or political preferences)

And we have a bunch of those, too.

There's a huge selection effect: when you choose the students A) who can earn a scholarship, or B) whose parents will sacrifice to pay tuition at a non-sectarian school, you're basically selecting for the families who value education.

I'm reminded of research that shows that students at lottery charter schools outperform students at neighboring public schools... but then the students who enter but lose the lottery also outperform the general student population at those schools.

I believe we have very good educators and we have a whole lot of things we're doing right. But we also have a whole lot of things that are just fundamentally easier or better in our environment. Almost entirely, the behavior problems I confront are students getting a little excessively exuberant or otherwise out of hand, not wanting to misbehave.

> I understand you're passionate about the issue and feel your spouse has been ripped off.

It's not just that we're personally harmed by the current system—we're in the "has a high-earning spouse" group so we don't need to both be adequately paid, though of course it'd be nice—but I've watched one good, experienced teacher after another bail on the profession over the years, because they do not get paid enough to put up with the shit they're subjected to, and at some point they see an opportunity outside education, realize just how badly they're under paid, and decide they're done with it. It seems to be getting worse, too, even before recent inflation started screwing with everything (I suspect the rest of this decade is going to be a slow-motion disaster for education hiring and retention, in excess of how bad it already was). I have kids, too, and they're in school, and I hate knowing that a bunch of the best teachers they might have will leave before they get them, because the work-conditions/comp ratio is so badly messed up that it's not only asking some sacrifice of teachers, but is practically abusive.

> There's a huge selection effect: when you choose the students A) who can earn a scholarship, or B) whose parents will sacrifice to pay tuition at a non-sectarian school, you're basically selecting for the families who value education.

Yeah, agree that the factors that make a "good school" versus a "bad school" are complex and that you can't just look at student outcomes to decide whether the quality of a school's instruction is actually above-average—especially with private schools, but also with public schools. Solutions to those problems that aren't actually related to school quality per se are hard to come by, without deliberately leaving some kids behind and/or increasing staffing levels dramatically (so, also significantly increasing district spending/budget). Lots of the problems, effective solutions start to look like "solve poverty", so... good luck. :-(

Didn't mean to be flippant with the good vs. bad school distinction—looking at various measures of student outcomes definitely doesn't give a full picture of how good a job a school, or a teacher, is doing, and selection bias is a major confounder in attempts to do that.

> because they do not get paid enough to put up with the shit they're subjected to

Yah. And the crap is a primary concern, too. We need to figure out how to make things better. Especially on the things that teachers complain about that are demoralizing because they can be expected to negatively affect student outcomes.

I think improving comp has a distant and uncertain effect, but fixing a lot of the crap could be more impactful. Right now we incent administrators not to hold students accountable; how can we do the opposite?

Also, how can we systemically study interventions in a way that we can draw meaningful conclusions-- instead of leaping from educational trend to educational trend because they seem like they sound like they'll do something.

> and selection bias is a major confounder in attempts to do that.

It's got a huge indirect impact that is difficult to control for, too. If I have a student who wants to be disruptive, other students will call him or her out, and they won't find much social validation from it. So, it's not just the attitudes of individual students affecting their own outcomes, but everyone else around them.

And even second order things. I would probably be a below average educator in a difficult public school classroom. And instead, I'm an extraordinary one in the environment I'm in. Horses for courses.

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