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California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

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Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#221

Post by barry-cotter »

whymsicalburito wrote: post #96
35787 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true for me. Public schools are so horrible that it drives me insane just to think about it. And people brush it off because of some vague notion that there’s no other choice. Look at billy eilish. She’s fantastic and very successful and she was homeschooled. Palmer luckey who founded oculus and is now worth something like 500 million dollars, homeschooled. “I can’t afford homeschooling. I have never even tri…

Of course there are exceptions, but most homeschooled people I've met have displayed some sort of social deficiency. I wouldn't support a blanket statement that the solution is more home schooling.

Homeschooling and the Question of Socialization Revisited

https://www.stetson.edu/artsci/psychology/media/medlin-socia...

This article reviews recent research on homeschooled children’s socialization. The research indicates that homeschooling parents expect their children to respect and get along with people of diverse backgrounds, provide their children with a variety of social opportunities outside the family, and believe their children’s social skills are at least as good as those of other children. What homeschooled children think about their own social skills is less clear. Compared to children attending conventional schools, however, research suggest that they have higher quality friendships and better relationships with their parents and other adults. They are happy, optimistic, and satisfied with their lives. Their moral reasoning is at least as advanced as that of other children, and they may be more likely to act unselfishly. As adolescents, they have a strong sense of social responsibility and exhibit less emotional turmoil and problem behaviors than their peers. Those who go on to college are socially involved and open to new experiences. Adults who were homeschooled as children are civically engaged and functioning competently in every way measured so far. An alarmist view of homeschooling, therefore, is not supported by empirical research. It is suggested that future studies focus not on outcomes of socialization but on the process itself.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#222

Post by rockinghigh »

gundmc wrote: post #212
_coveredInBees wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the frustration, but I think it is absurd to expect teachers and school administrators (who are woefully underpaid, especially in the Bay area) to accommodate working parents by working extra hours just for the parent's benefit. It's a hard enough job as it is, what with the poor pay, large workload, dealing with entitled, helicopter parents and the diminishing societal appreciation for their contributio…

I'm not saying teachers don't deserve to be paid more, but I was surprised to see how much Bay Area teachers make. It's public info for public schools.[1] In Santa Clara County, with no experience, starting salary is $71000. It increases on a schedule each year up to over $131000. Honestly, the job security, structured pay, and 3 months vacation per year is a pretty darn good deal. [1] - https://www.santaclarausd.org…

You picked an outlier. Most schools districts in the Bay Area (including San Francisco) have starting salaries for teachers in the $50k-$60k range. And in my experience, teachers work a lot more than 40 hours a week. I picked 3 randomly below:

Redwood City: https://www.rcsdk8.net/site/handlers/filedownload.ashx?modul...

San Mateo: http://www.smfcsd.net/en/assets/files/Employment%20and%20HR/...

San Francisco: https://archive.sfusd.edu/en/assets/sfusd-staff/contract%20a...

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#223

Post by rockinghigh »

thrower123 wrote: post #187
_coveredInBees wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but all the activities the OP complains about - parent teacher conferences, kindergarten/classroom tours, etc. all require the actual teachers involvement so it seems perfectly reasonable that those activities would occur during regular working hours. Plenty of schools offer before/after care for families with working parents so that they can drop-off/pick up their kids before/after work. I don't think that is…

Are parent/teacher conferences not built into the schedule as working hours? If I recall correctly from my mother, who was a school teacher, they did these twice a year and those eight hours were counted as one of the days that they worked in their contract. Maybe that is not universally negotiated. As she was a special ed teacher, she also had a whole slate of other meetings with parents to go over IEPs and testing,…

Overtime pay for IEP meetings is definitely not the norm everywhere.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#224

Post by jacobolus »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #193
btilly wrote: post #55

Wonderful. Now can we pay attention to all of the research saying that homework creates stress but doesn't work, and have schools stop assigning so much? More precisely, the research shows that homework done right helps, done wrong hurts, and the result is that more homework increases the correlation between parent's socioeconomic status and student performance. But on average is approximately net neutral for learnin…

You are misinformed about research on homework. Even when you control for socioeconomic status homework has a large positive impact. [This is a nice review of many papers]( http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar0... ). The only place where homework is questionable is for very young children, like in kindergarten.

The paper by Cooper cited positively in your link claims:

> For elementary school students, the effect of homework on achievement is trivial, if it exists at all https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=86753143098932071...

Which is diametrically different from the “large positive impact” you described in your comment. Maybe by “very young children” you mean to include 5–10 year olds?

(For what it’s worth, I don’t find Cooper’s arguments that arbitrary amounts of homework are beneficial for secondary students very convincing. But we should at least not mischaracterize the claims about primary students.)

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#225

Post by braythwayt »

mc32 wrote: post #183
kaitai wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some countries, schools exist to teach students, rather than simply warehousing them and saying it's parents' fault for not teaching everything in the hours from 3 pm - 10 pm and weekends. Truly, your comment does reflect the attitude of much of the teaching establishment: if children can't learn to read from their parents, they're hopeless [1]; if children can't learn math from their parents, they're hopeless. It…

Teachers can't bear to carry that load themselves. That's ridiculous. Parents have a load to carry. Parenting isn't easy. I know people whose idea or rearing is limited to feeding, dressing and sending their kids to school. "Kids are not expensive" is what they tell me.

> Teachers can't bear to carry that load themselves.

Why can't they bear the load?

- Because they are underfunded and understaffed

- Because society doesn't think it's the school's responsibility to teach

If society decided that reading and writing should be taught in school, then it would be taught in school and the system would be designed such that teachers would easily handle it.

Your "parents have a load to carry" in this case is throwing people under the bus like single mothers who are working two or more jobs just to put food on the table.

Your attitude is that their children should be left behind because those children belong to the unlucky sperm club.

And those children grow up to be disadvantaged and poor and the cycle continues indefinitely. I find it vile and revolting that HN can talk about the wonders of Elon Musk disrupting the automobile industry, can debate whether scooters will disrupt the ride sahring industry, which in turn disrupted the taxi industry, and so on...

And then when it comes to poverty, the attitude is, "C'mon, carry your load or fall behind."

This community talks a good line about disruption, but if the only kind of disruption that interests us is the disruption that happens to make people into billionaires, it's time to stop pretending that we're "hackers" and start calling ourselves capitalists.

The education system needs to be disrupted from the bottom up, but it needs people who actually care about educating children more than negotiating term sheets.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#226

Post by jumpingmice »

driverdan wrote: post #72
colordrops wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't you get 8+ hours of sleep if you have practice at 6:15?

How many people did you know in school that went to bed at 10pm? I don't think I knew any.

I just slept through third period every day.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#227

Post by dagenix »

Alupis wrote: post #57
briandear wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This has been driven by earlier and earlier school start times What about later and later bed times?

> What about later and later bed times? This is the real factor. When I was a kid - it was in bed, lights out and go to sleep at 9pm the latest during school nights - strictly enforced by my parents. Now I regularly see small children (< 10 years old) out at the store past 10pm or 11pm on school nights.

In my day I had to walk uphill to school - both ways!!

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#228

Post by rhacker »

kbrackbill wrote: post #140
corey_moncure wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are grade schoolers doing assignments that can't reasonably be completed on a raspberry pi grade computer or lower? It's difficult for me to imagine it, or the family that has two working parents yet legitimately can't fit $40 into the budget over the entirety of their child's career in school.

That's a little disingenuous, you can't just use a raspberry pi by itself. You need an SD card, keyboard, mouse (probably), display (maybe could use a TV for this if you have one). It seems like it'd be at least $100. That's still not a ton, but for a family working a bunch of minimum wage or gig jobs it's not nothing. edit: not to mention internet, router, wifi dongle or ethernet cord, etc.

And the know how to do all of that and what to buy and where to buy it.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#229

Post by AnthonyMouse »

rhacker wrote: post #228
kbrackbill wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a little disingenuous, you can't just use a raspberry pi by itself. You need an SD card, keyboard, mouse (probably), display (maybe could use a TV for this if you have one). It seems like it'd be at least $100. That's still not a ton, but for a family working a bunch of minimum wage or gig jobs it's not nothing. edit: not to mention internet, router, wifi dongle or ethernet cord, etc.

And the know how to do all of that and what to buy and where to buy it.

An alternative would be to buy a complete used PC, which can also be had for a total of around $100.

Re: California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am

#230

Post by arpa »

brodie wrote: post #175
selectodude wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting out of bed before ten no matter when I went to sleep was a mortal struggle until I was probably 25. Now I’m gassed by 11 and up by 6. The research has shown that circadian rhythms change with age.

I've noticed the same thing. In my twenties waking up before ten was extremely difficult and made getting into work stressful every morning. But now in my thirties I find myself awake when the sun rises without issue.

My lights are out at 11, but getting up at 7 is difficult still. On the other hand, it was straight impossible to do at 25.
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