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A letter to my students

blogs.berkeley.edu

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Re: A letter to my students

#91

Post by aaronbrethorst »

pg wrote: post #4

There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower. Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflati…

Apparently this professor is better acquainted with the definition of the word posterity than Paul Carr. Thanks again for pointing that out the other day.

Re: A letter to my students

#92

Post by korch »

Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.

  —Socrates
These kind of education articles are fucking stupid and only help fan the flames on all sides of deeply flawed ideologies. Beating this dead horse is so common that I've learned to tune these from out when NYT, NPR, etc run these formulaic education scare pieces.

The flaw is that you just can't compare apples to oranges and expect any kind of meaningful conclusion. In this case, it's cross correlating some super high dimensional manifold from 1964(or whenever) comprised of easily hundreds of thousands of variables, against a similar large manifold(2010). There are just too many totally different variables between then and now for it to be a fair comparison at all.

Sure, each side sees what it wants in whatever tiny slice of the data they choose to use. Blame the Mexicans, no blame the Rich, no blame the Liberals, no blame Reagan, ad infinitum.

And this guy, a professional in higher education, wants to step out on a far limb to make some grandiose claim about the status of California education. I am more fearful of him ruining his own students by teaching them to mimic his own flawed reasoning than I am of any of his exaggerated, inaccurate conclusions.

You know what? More likely than not, the world will keep going the way it has been, people, kids, and education will keep improving, albeit incrementally, and there is not going to be some apocalyptic doomsday in the future of public education in California, or anywhere.

In summary, he's basically following the same pattern so many old people follow: somewhere along the way they lose touch with reality, with the youth, get stuck in their ways, and believe the whole world has gone to hell in a handbasket, and all because of some imagined flaw in the entire youth population. Old people forget what it was like to be young, and lose their ability to rapidly adapt and learn as children do. And without fail, each generation grows up to believe they were somehow better than later generations. Bollocks!

I used to be with it, but then they changed what "it" was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's "it" seems weird and scary to me.

—Abe Simpson

Re: A letter to my students

#93

Post by elai »

eli wrote: post #63
patio11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using state figures and the CPI calculator: 1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars) 1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B) 2008-2009: $144B ($145) 2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B) Even if you adjust for California's prodigious immigration-fueled population growth, spending per person in constant dollars has more than doubled. You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less. I feel the urge to get ou…

So is the implication that the state has grown much more wasteful in its spending over the last few decades? If you've got a plan for providing the level of services from the 60s without raising taxes, I'd love to see the details. (Consider pension and healthcare costs now versus then, even accounting for inflation)

Repair the bugs in the american health care system? Americans spend more per capita yet get worse services.

Re: A letter to my students

#94

Post by callmeed »

joe_the_user wrote: post #65
pg wrote: post #4

There are two ways CA could be doing less for its citizens. They could be raising less money, or spending it more wastefully. The writer seems to assume all the problems he observes are due to the former and none to the latter. The first step in verifying his claims would be to check whether the state's revenues are in fact lower. Are current state revenues lower than revenues in, say, 1960, when adjusted for inflati…

I believe California currently spends a similar amount on prisons as on education. I don't believe that was the case in 1962. That would effect total spending. Whether that means California is doing more for its citizens in this way is a question one can ask.

Err, not even close:

9.6% of the general fund on corrections/rehab programs

43.4% on K-12 education

14.3% on higher education

http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/SummaryCharts.pd...

Re: A letter to my students

#95

Post by jseliger »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #85
btilly wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that teachers have easy hours? Have you ever known any teachers? When you just look at hours in the classroom it doesn't look that hard. But add in the time for grading and preparing classes, and you find that teachers work long hours. I don't have any statistics on it, but http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_hours_per_week_do_teacher... is in line with the anecdotes that my mother and sister have given me a…

I've known a few teachers and I used to be a professor myself [1]. Prep takes up very little time after you've already taught a class. But I'll certainly take your 2 secondhand anecdotes and some random internet guy over a scientific survey done by the BLS. Incidentally, your random internet guy is pretty obviously exaggerating. He claims 30 min putting grades into the computer. If he has 40 students in his class, th…

I've known a few teachers and I used to be a professor myself [1]. Prep takes up very little time after you've already taught a class.

I'll echo this: I'm a grad student in English lit and entering my third year. I've taught Engl 101, 102, and 109 (the honor version); the first year I taught, I spent a lot of time in preparation, thinking about activities, and so on. My second year, somewhat less. Ditto for this year.

That isn't to say I'm not changing things from year to year, because I am, but the big hurdle is at the beginning.

Re: A letter to my students

#96

Post by Experimentalist »

(edit: reply to _delirium, not sure this might be out of order, oops)

As you mention, those stats are only for the UC system (no source), but leave out a whole chunk of other relevant data. The author is addressing what he believes is the decline of public educaiton in general in California, not just UC.

Some people outside CA may not understand that the UC system (University of California) is only one part of the public college and public education system in California.

As far as colleges, California also has substantial state funding for a lot of other non-UC California state colleges (CSU, California State University -- 23 campuses compared to 10 UC) and community colleges.

Of course, additional funding goes to non-college education as well, and grants that people receive who attend private colleges and schools.

Also future liabilities and pensions which are not included on budget.

So my point being--just focusing on your UC stats is misleading.

1. How about the whole California state college system? 2. How about community colleges, vocational education? 3. How about other forms of public education? 4. How about all education grant totals made with public dollars? 5. Also while you are at that, how about adding in future liabilities/pensions which are not included in the yearly budget?

Re: A letter to my students

#98

Post by DanielN »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #89
DanielN wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well for what its worth, a lot of studies suggest that you actually get better teachers if you exchange these "fringe benefits" for higher salaries.

[citation wanted] Not to be wikipedia-style passive aggressive, I'm just genuinely curious and unfamiliar with these studies.

no direct sources off the top of my head but http://fora.tv/2009/07/05/Transforming_the_System_An_Intervi... is a good start

Re: A letter to my students

#99

Post by Locke1689 »

Locke1689 wrote: post #40
patio11 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Using state figures and the CPI calculator: 1965-1966: $4B nominal ($28B, constant 2010 dollars) 1982-1983: $25.3B nominal ($57.2B) 2008-2009: $144B ($145) 2009-2010: $119.2B ($119.2B) Even if you adjust for California's prodigious immigration-fueled population growth, spending per person in constant dollars has more than doubled. You spent your school years with teachers paid less and less. I feel the urge to get ou…

So I went ahead and did a calculation of my own: revenue by all taxes per capita in the state of California between 2005 and 1964. All following figures are from US census data: Total revenue from all taxes per capita 1964: $2182.85 (helpfully provided by the 1964 census). Total revenue from all taxes 2005: $146,692,000,000 Total resident population of California, 2005: 36,250,000 Total revenue from all taxes per cap…

I'd just like to point out to people reading this (since one commenter already said something then deleted his comment), that I am actually very liberal. I strongly believe in the fundamental role of the government in the welfare of the nation and I also strongly believe that we should be taxed for the money that's needed to make that happen.

HOWEVER, what I will never do is frame statistics or data just to fit my argument better. I was curious about this statistic (I don't really believe this tiny bit of data is really evidence for any drastic response) and decided to do the grunt work with the past US census data to satisfy my curiosity, whatever the results.

Also, the US census papers look way better in 1964 than they do in 2005. I think the 2005 documents may have a more legible typeface but it certainly makes me go "ugh." The margins are very bad in the '05 docs, too.

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