California’s new law bans schools from starting before 8am • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by ultrarunner » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:16 AM UTC

crooked-v wrote: post #237

gundmc wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 3 months vacation per year This perception is usually pretty inaccurate. There's no time given during the school year for essentials like curriculum development, continuing education requirements, training new teachers, etc, so that eats up time during the summer 'break'. https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/07/myth-o... > Klem says she’s spending the rest of her summer this year attending meetings, d…

I appreciate the perspective that you’re coming from, but I come from a family of educators. They do have occasional in service days over the summer and obviously are expected back at work a week or so before classes start. Other than that, it very much is a three-month vacation, one that shaped a large part of my childhood.

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

#242

Post by beefalo » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:16 AM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #70

The implied assumption in all this discussion is that everyone stays up late so 7am doesn't work. Perhaps the question should be why society is so geared for waking hours shifted partly into the night. Perhaps people should wake with the sun and sleep soon after dark. But so much entertainment is scheduled during the evening, and everyone is so deeply entrenched in their habits.

If students are to wake with the sun in winter months, that would mean waking up at 8AM where I went to school. You would need to start school around 9:30AM since some students spent over 1 hour on the bus.

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

#243

Post by protomyth » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

saagarjha wrote: post #119

lonelappde wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are claiming that poor parents will changed their school choice based on the availability of parent-teacher conferences? And that the problem of poverty is overemployment, not underemployment?

Poor parents often don't have a choice: they can't afford to take time off from their job(s).

Yeah, it's the easiest way to discriminate against poor people without getting into trouble. Hell, you can even point to papers that say parental participation in schools helps the children. All the while you know poor folks won't apply.

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

#244

Post by semoule » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:19 AM UTC

braythwayt wrote: post #225

mc32 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 carr…

I don't know if we read "carry their load" the same.

I think of it that parents need to teach their kids how to behave, not math. Kids who come to class and don't listen, talk when the teacher is talking and disturb the other kids is going to be a problem. Children who act out violently or with screaming when confronted create big problems. Children who are not adjusted to being respectful towards other children and grownups will ruin any school.

That job is in my mind the job of the parent, the teacher should not have to use math class to try and get a child to be respectful. This is what it in my mind means when you tell someone that parents need to "carry their load".

If the teacher needs to do all these additional jobs, then I think we need to change the whole institution of school.

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

#245

Post by shakna » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:25 AM UTC

sologoub wrote: post #236

shakna wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are grade schoolers doing assignments that can't reasonably be completed on a raspberry pi grade computer or lower? Any assignment that makes use of a proprietary software that the school has purchased. That is to say that there are plenty of times when a student _must_ use X software that only runs on platform Y, and the school very rarely takes into account what platforms the student may have available to them. I…

That’s why Chromebooks are a lot better choice - $150 buys you a reasonable example and you also don’t have to worry about kid breaking it and loosing weeks of work. Example: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-11-6-chromebook-intel-cele... And for older kids, there’s Linux support, etc.

Teachers who cannot understand why you can't use the Apple Store on an Android fare no better at understanding that they can't run X proprietary Windows program on a Chromebook.

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

#246

Post by flukus » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:26 AM UTC

Aperocky wrote: post #152

plughs wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every year I see what a insurmountable advantage my kid has by having educated, comfortably well off parents. He's in 3rd grade and last week he had a homework assignment that had to be completed on a computer. What, your kid doesn't have their own computer at home? Tough luck! We're also already into 'projects' - more hours of work, more resources to buy. "oh you can do it with stuff around the house" (no you can't)…

Raspberry Pi are created for this exact purpose, and to think the school isn't giving everyone one to educate on basic computer science is beyond me. If you eventually learn trigonometry in math within the public education framework, I see no reason why people shouldn't be educated in more basic and practical things like computers.

> I see no reason why people shouldn't be educated in more basic and practical things like computers

Because the teachers and education department are useless. My nephews had to get an iPad for their programming class, an expensive device (and all the problems with that) that is less capable and far less practical to learn programming on.

Imagine how much better school could be if kids had raspberry pis and and use free tools like gnuplot in their maths and physics classes.

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

#247

Post by Alupis » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

slykat wrote: post #235

Alupis wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While what you say is true, does pushing the start time of class back 30 minutes or 1 hour make any difference? I'm skeptical. When I was a teen, on weekends with no where to be, I'd regularly sleep until noon, 1pm, sometimes 2pm or later. Should we push school back until, say, 4pm through 10pm-12am? Doubtful that's good either. On some level, it teaches kids that they have to be someplace at a certain time, regardle…

> While what you say is true, does pushing the start time of class back 30 minutes or 1 hour make any difference? I'm skeptical. Did you read the article? They have done several studies to show a significance difference in academic performance with a slight shift. That's the whole reason for this change. "One three-year study (pdf, p.1) of 9,000 high-school students across three states, for example, found that academ…

Like I said - why not push it to a start time of noon or later then? Was that studied too? Or are we just basing policy off a half-baked idea, here in Calunicornia?

I can be skeptical this will have any real impact, despite the findings of one survey-study.

The cited study was a survey students voluntarily completed... which opens the door for response bias. The study was only conducted over a single school year, and no two schools had the same modified schedule. Nor did they repeat the study for a second school year to ensure they didn't observe anomalies, nor go back to the old schedule to see if a simple schedule change - not the late start time - is what prompted the changes. Nor did they follow students through their student career, maintaining the altered schedule to see if performance results were consistent.

The 9,000 students might sound impressive - but this is not actually a good long term study... far from it.

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

#248

Post by ApolloFortyNine » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:31 AM UTC

skissane wrote: post #67

topkai22 wrote: post #61

This is a great move by California. My family engaged with school district officials a few times on why we started school so early, when there is so much research showing it is harmful for teenager. The answer we got was... buses and sports. And little kids. Basically, the district needed to make sure that elementary school kids weren't walking to school or waiting for buses in the dark, so they had to start around 9…

As a non-American I find this interesting, that school start times would be decided based on availability of buses. Here in Australia, most schools don't own their own buses (I see a few expensive private schools do). Buses are provided by private bus companies and/or by a government-owned bus company (depending on who provides regular non-school bus services in the area). The bus fare is either paid by the student's…

>Bus availability is something for bus companies to worry about, not schools.

If you have all 3 classes of students going to school at the same time, your bus costs are going to be 3 times as high. It doesn't matter if it's public or private, that's just how it works.

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

#249

Post by conanbatt » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:35 AM UTC

WillPostForFood wrote: post #52

Weird thing is the assumption there is a single one-time-fits-all solution. Give some flexibility to kids and families on start time. Optional period 1 paired with optional period 8(or 7 or 9).

Thats not how public schooling works: its mechanics are rules on rules.

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

#250

Post by pandapower2 » Wed, Oct 16, 2019, 5:36 AM UTC

jclulow wrote: post #215

yellowapple wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and pay for uniforms It's bad enough that the school enforces a school uniform in the first place, let alone has the nerve to make parents pay for it.

There are lots of benefits to uniforms. In NSW (Australia) public schools have uniforms, and parents pay for them. Low income families are generally able to obtain financial assistance through some grant, or fundraising programme; sometimes through donated uniforms. Uniforms actually help with socio-economic gaps: everybody dresses the same, regardless of whether you can afford more expensive status symbol clothing o…

School uniforms is somewhere where Facebook has facilitated some social good.

Various community facebook groups and "buy nothing" facebook groups facilitate giving away items you no longer require. That the items be given for free, no strings attached is often a firm requirement.

School uniforms are a common item to be given away because children frequently outgrow uniforms long before they wear out.

Its very helpful for families with young children as they outgrow clothes incredibly fast and also don't yet have any resistance to the idea of second hand clothing.