US schools lay off hundreds of thousands • Hacker News Board

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#81

Post by Breefield » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

makeitrein wrote: post #58

Just watched Bryan Caplan give a talk about how the majority of our education system's resources are spent towards a "signaling arms race". What once required a high school diploma requires an undergraduate degree. What once required an undergraduate degree requires graduate school. Most of your time spend in school is learning skills that the labor market cares little for. Not wholly convinced by his conclusion that…

The Elephant In The Brain has a chapter on education which clearly draws a lot from Bryan's book The Case Against Education. Interestingly Bryan Caplan was one of book's pre-publishing reviewers.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#82

Post by darksaints » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

RhysU wrote: post #54

malwarebytess wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense? The US's definition of National Defense is actually playing world police for corporate profit. With that in mind it shows that they are superficially similar only.

National Defense is a luxury good until it isn't. Moreover, it is not something that can be purchased on short notice.

Protecting our nation from harm is easy to do. Nearly every nation in the world does it pretty well, and they do it with tiny fractions of our budget. The key is to not run around the world occupying nations and starting new wars every other day.

War is and always will be asymmetric. Our military isn't expensive because we need it to be, it is expensive because it is an invasion and occupying force.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#83

Post by dorchadas » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

buzzkillington wrote: post #24

tyree731 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educational investments shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic conditions. Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense? Education is funded largely by local taxes, and local tax revenues are being gutted, so there isn't much that can be done here without nationalizing public education.

>Education is funded largely by local taxes, and local tax revenues are being gutted, so there isn't much that can be done here without nationalizing public education. This should be the case. Having each state decide it's education is in the long term more dangerous than having each state have it's own army. Imagine if half the country had textbooks that made the Confederates out to be misguided but well meaning...…

Yep. I teach in a rural school in the South. We still have Social Studies teachers claiming the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. It's really damn frustrating.

Though textbooks? We haven't had textbook updates in years at this point. Since I was in the school, and I graduated 10 years ago.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#84

Post by MattGaiser » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

indemnity wrote: post #70

MattGaiser wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not funded by the national government. They are mostly funded by city and county governments, with some money from state governments. Basically each city or county is mostly responsible for paying for the education of the children within its boundaries. EDIT: I am slightly off on the percentages. See the comment below.

Explains a lot about the state of primary and secondary education in the USA. How can such a system not lead to massive disparities in quality and access to education, if there isn't a federal backstop to make up for differences in funding available from the state/county. Is there such a thing? Glad I live in a country where schools get funding based on factors like socio-economic status of surrounding community (the…

> Is there such a thing?

No. Plenty of poorer states would oppose it if there were anyway.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#85

Post by blisterpeanuts » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:13 AM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #55

tyree731 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educational investments shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic conditions. Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense? Education is funded largely by local taxes, and local tax revenues are being gutted, so there isn't much that can be done here without nationalizing public education.

> Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense? > national defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_... I'm not as against military spending as some people, but almost 800 billion dollars is too much

How much would be appropriate? What weapons systems should be canceled? Serious question. I would agree that $800B seems ridiculously high, and yet it's not easy to tease apart what should be cut.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#86

Post by blisterpeanuts » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

yalogin wrote: post #69

tyree731 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educational investments shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic conditions. Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense? Education is funded largely by local taxes, and local tax revenues are being gutted, so there isn't much that can be done here without nationalizing public education.

Yeah but the US pays for national defense only to fund corporations continuously with unneeded weapon manufacturing so that the respective politicians in those districts can keep winning. There is really no national defense reasons there.

What's an example of an unneeded weapons system?

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#87

Post by jeffbee » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:14 AM UTC

RhysU wrote: post #54

malwarebytess wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense? The US's definition of National Defense is actually playing world police for corporate profit. With that in mind it shows that they are superficially similar only.

National Defense is a luxury good until it isn't. Moreover, it is not something that can be purchased on short notice.

The ONE TIME that US national defense actually worked it was very much purchased on short notice.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#88

Post by MattGaiser » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

woofie11 wrote: post #59

MattGaiser wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where almost all human knowledge is available online for free And it has been so for nearly 20 years and changed very little. MOOCs are a failure as people will not finish them. Online certificates carry no weight with employers even if people do. We have promising prototypes of self driving trucks. We don't have such models for education.

We have plenty of promising prototypes. The original MITx / 6.002x had in the nineties rate it as being as-good-as or better than in-person. OLI before that had good prototypes too. The low-quality junk came in scaling. Part of that had to do with culture and people (business people took over from academics). Part of that with economics (people didn't shop on quality). Part on difficulty training. Etc.

The problem is not in information quality. I agree that is a solved problem. But that was never the big challenge in education (besides the politics of it).

The problem is in getting students to complete the work, be honestly assessed about the work, get feedback on their work as well as for employers to believe that the assessment means anything.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#89

Post by Wowfunhappy » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:15 AM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #30

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we should be opposed to nationalizing education. A common curriculum would help mobility when it comes to families moving across state lines. It would also ensure uniform funding and plentiful opportunities to poorer and rural schools.

Maybe, but it would require a constitutional amendment to enact. The Constitution is explicit about which powers the Federal government has and everything else is delegated to the states. Education is not one of them.

"You don't get any federal funding unless you do X Y and Z."

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#90

Post by JackFr » Fri, Jun 05, 2020, 3:16 AM UTC

Spartan-S63 wrote: post #27

tyree731 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Educational investments shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic conditions. Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense? Education is funded largely by local taxes, and local tax revenues are being gutted, so there isn't much that can be done here without nationalizing public education.

I don't think we should be opposed to nationalizing education. A common curriculum would help mobility when it comes to families moving across state lines. It would also ensure uniform funding and plentiful opportunities to poorer and rural schools.

That’s an idea that’s popular with no one. People want local control. And if you want local control, you have to pay for it. Utah spends $7k per student and New York spends $22K and that’s the way they want it.