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Incredibly low-priced private schools

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Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#41

Post by shaddi »

barry-cotter wrote: post #22
shaddi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think I'm making any assumptions -- these outcomes have been seen, as I've said, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I am not going to respond to your second point... I think that is a point of debate that you're making out to be far more black-and-white than it really is. There is further complexity than you are admitting in your last two examples. There is a broad-reaching social impact that schooling, or lack the…

You're working off of your terminal values, your moral judgement, that the outcomes in Afghanistan and Pakistan are bad. That's a value judgement, not a fact one. So you can't but assume your conclusion, you desire outcome x because you do. As to the state sponsored indoctrination bit, whether it's explicitly planned or comes about organically through political bargaining between those with the power and those with t…

> You're working off of your terminal values, your moral judgement, that the outcomes in Afghanistan and Pakistan are bad.

Yes, the particular systems I'm referring to are bad, in my opinion. My base principles for making that assumption is that educational systems should not deny education to women, promote violence, or provide educations based on faith and mythology. If that is a purely moral viewpoint, so be it: we do not live in an objective world, and you're free to disagree with me.

But that is /not/ the point I'm trying to make here. Moreover, these are just an example of a potential failing of private schools. I could imagine several ways to defraud parents of the education they think they're paying for. My conclusion it's unclear what the incentive system for private schools to provide "quality" education (from the point of view of parents, students, and society as a whole) in an area where little or no educational institutions have existed before, and where institutions (public or private) do not exist to allow families to make informed decisions about the schools they're sending their kids to. It's a basic problem of incomplete information available to clients of these schools, that's all: can we (or someone else) come up with a way to allow families in these areas to make sure that the school they're paying is actually providing the education they're expecting to receive?

> what's wrong with a solely instructional institution that certifies competence in a given area? I am referring to fraudulent organizations that award degrees based solely on payment, and provide no actual education, classes, instruction, etc. The system we have may be flawed but these do not do anything constructive to change it.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#42

Post by amalcon »

patio11 wrote: post #38
yummyfajitas wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers do not work 50 hour weeks. On average, teachers work 38 hour weeks. That's 24 minutes less per weekday and 42 minutes less per saturday than the average professional. They do this 9-10 months/year, the other 2-3 months a year they work dramatically less. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf Additionally, while their wages are low, their fringe benefits are excellent. They often get defined benefi…

I agree with everything in the above post except the one unevidenced claim: that teachers' wages are low. Teachers' wages are not low in the United States on average. Quoth the BLS: Median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008; the lowest 10 percent earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10 percent earned $75,190 to $80,970. You can scro…

For the most part, wage is tied directly to the amount of education required for a position. Teachers have similar education requirements to high-tech fields (bachelors is not required, but not having it is considered a special case; bachelor's is the low end; master's is typical). Which high-tech fields are on that list?

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#43

Post by tokenadult »

DrSprout wrote: post #31
grellas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficien…

>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 year…

Use Minnesota, which has a very different system of school funding, as a reality check on whatever you say about public policy and how it influences schools.

http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.htm...

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#44

Post by Avshalom »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #36
Avshalom wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because No Child Left Behind is just every teacher's favorite legislature, and nothing makes teachers happier than 50 hour work weeks for low wages. The two biggest problems any teacher I know can find with the current public school system are: 1. Over reliance on standardized test as the only metric of education. Making it difficult to teach kids engaging material in various subjects (Nope, can't cover history's 10…

Teachers do not work 50 hour weeks. On average, teachers work 38 hour weeks. That's 24 minutes less per weekday and 42 minutes less per saturday than the average professional. They do this 9-10 months/year, the other 2-3 months a year they work dramatically less. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf Additionally, while their wages are low, their fringe benefits are excellent. They often get defined benefi…

38 hours a week implies that a total of maybe thirty minutes a day of after hours work, I'll go poke my head around but I'm pretty sure I've seen studies putting average work load at 16 hours a week after hours (+ 38h at school giving my 50). I like how the second link acknowledges that teachers spend time after hours grading and writing tests and lesson plans (including specialized 30 page reports for how they will personally ensure that billy will pass the state test this year) etc, but hand waves it with "a job that permits relatively more work at home is typically attractive."

That said while I feel that the people in charge of making sure the next generation is capable of progressing society should probably get paid more than they do, I'm not going to claim that doubling teacher salaries would really help anything. I only made that comment in response to the idea that the "Gov's Education Department metric seems to be "pleasing the teacher's unions"... And at that, they are very good."

>>Incidentally, while it may be the case that private schools don't educate everyone, so what? If they can educate students in category X better than public schools, but schools can educate category Y better than private, isn't it best for everyone if private schools take the X students and public takes the Y students?

I'm not arguing against private schools categorically, more so I'm sticking up for the public education system. That said 1. I'm generally a big proponent of heterogeneity in peer groups 2. It's not that public schools are better at educating Y, it's that private schools are often unwilling to.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#45

Post by Avshalom »

amalcon wrote: post #42
patio11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything in the above post except the one unevidenced claim: that teachers' wages are low. Teachers' wages are not low in the United States on average. Quoth the BLS: Median annual wages of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers ranged from $47,100 to $51,180 in May 2008; the lowest 10 percent earned $30,970 to $34,280; the top 10 percent earned $75,190 to $80,970. You can scro…

For the most part, wage is tied directly to the amount of education required for a position. Teachers have similar education requirements to high-tech fields (bachelors is not required, but not having it is considered a special case; bachelor's is the low end; master's is typical). Which high-tech fields are on that list?

In New York for instance as far as I know a Masters Degree is required. That means that that top 10% $80,000 salary is being paid to a someone in the middle of NYC with 30 years of experience and a Masters degree (at least, probably a PHD).

Also yes firefighters earn terrifyingly low salaries, so do cops and a lot of other government funded position necessary for the continued survival of civilization

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#46

Post by Alex63 »

sethg wrote: post #21

If this were an article about poor people in India hiring their own militia because they couldn’t get adequate protection from the local government-sponsored police force, would anyone be considering this a model for the US to emulate?

Not sure why people are down-voting this. This seems like a reasonable effort at argument by analogy. In point of fact, it is not uncommon in many parts of the world to pay for protection. Unfortunately, this creates an incentive for those providing the protection to also encourage the perception that protection is needed (possibly by committing crimes themselves). This is where the analogy seems to break down, as it is hard to see how private educators can foster the perception that public schools are failing (unless they are the people promoting standardized testing!).

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#47

Post by yummyfajitas »

Avshalom wrote: post #45
amalcon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the most part, wage is tied directly to the amount of education required for a position. Teachers have similar education requirements to high-tech fields (bachelors is not required, but not having it is considered a special case; bachelor's is the low end; master's is typical). Which high-tech fields are on that list?

In New York for instance as far as I know a Masters Degree is required. That means that that top 10% $80,000 salary is being paid to a someone in the middle of NYC with 30 years of experience and a Masters degree (at least, probably a PHD). Also yes firefighters earn terrifyingly low salaries, so do cops and a lot of other government funded position necessary for the continued survival of civilization

First, a masters in teaching is not hard to get. You basically just need to show up.

Also, the base pay of a teacher in NYC with 20 years experience is $83,000 (with pay going up if they have degrees). $83k/year for 39 hours/week, 9 months a year is not bad, even by NYC standards. (It's equivalent to $99k/year working all year.).

http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolPro...

They also get to retire at 55 with a full pension, assuming they started work at 25. So you need to factor in the value of those extra years of pension, and fewer years of work to get it.

http://www.psc-cuny.org/PensionApermanentDecision.htm

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#48

Post by jbooth »

grellas wrote: post #20
mml wrote: post #3

I've lamented the fact that we are such small thinkers today. Our neighborhood public school is among the worst in the state. Local private schools cost about 1500/mo for gradeschool. I was looked at as a wild man for suggesting we should start our own school. 20 kids' worth of parents can afford to employ a teacher at a very attractive rate for both parties I suspect.

Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficien…

RE: unions, there are 2 issues I think.

A) (perception), unions are more concerned with benefits for their members than educating their kids. Uh... so? Who else is going to advocate for them? They have to eat too, and every small town in America trots out a bunch of reaganish bullcrap about how the school system should be able to do more with less but they all expect a raise in their private sector job if they're doing well. We drop our kids off at school for the day, drive to work on clean, safe streets, and then bitch about how the public sector employees should get by with no yearly raise, without even bothering to inform ourselves about our local budget.

B) (reality) Unions are oftentimes more concerned with the preservation of power, access and position for the top union officials than they are with either the benefits for their members or the quality of education, except for cases where the latter two feed into the first (fortunately, fairly often). This is how it actually works. Unions have their problems but it's not because the teachers are greedy -- teachers are already doing a difficult job for low pay, presumably because they care about education. Anyone who whines about unions or about teachers expecting a fair pay check is free to try it for a few years - last I checked there's a huge shortage of qualified math and science teachers.

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#49

Post by jbooth »

DrSprout wrote: post #31
grellas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficien…

>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 year…

++

In Massachusetts, there's a cap of 2.5% for property tax increases without a ballot measure. This means that almost every year, local budgets are shrinking relative to inflation.

You know what the most common complaint I heard was when these issues went to ballot? "Screw those councilmen, they want to raise our taxes so they're holding these services hostage." What's the phrase about it being impossible to make people understand something that they don't want to?

Re: Incredibly low-priced private schools

#50

Post by stonemetal »

DrSprout wrote: post #31
grellas wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Local caring and local responsibility are key to any system of quality education. The public schools I grew up with in the American midwest (all lower middle class) were uniformly good but this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources (e.g., property taxes from the community), did not have to account to the distant bureaucracies or have to focus on prepping kids to meet minimum proficien…

>this was 50 years ago when such schools were widely funded by local sources This is really the only significant part of the equation. The system is basically designed to fail. You pass a tax levy for X mills, which brings in X amount of money for the school system, and never a dollar more. Property values go up, but property taxes do not. The budget therefore shrinks every year due to inflation, and every 10-15 year…

Property tax is a percent of property value or at least it is every where I have ever lived. Last I checked housing was ahead of inflation pretty uniformly until recently.
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