Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 209 posts

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#131

Post by pmorici »

tyree731 wrote: post #4
viburnum wrote: post #2

You know who’s not laying off anyone? The military. Local funding of schools is ridiculous. Education benefits the whole nation. Educational investments shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic conditions.

> 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.

Federal tax revenues are also being gutted its just that the federal government has the magical power of having control over the currency in which they issue their debt.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#132

Post by rayiner »

viburnum wrote: post #2

You know who’s not laying off anyone? The military. Local funding of schools is ridiculous. Education benefits the whole nation. Educational investments shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic conditions.

The military is funded nationally for obvious reasons. But education is necessarily local; there are few things more personal to a community than the education of its children. We don’t need bureaucrats in DC deciding how kids in South Dakota are educated.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#133

Post by npunt »

bradlys wrote: post #104
npunt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just places even more burden on teachers to do everything. This is like keeping the troops but removing the supply lines.

Maybe I'm out of touch here but what support staff do teachers need when they're teaching remotely? I'd imagine a few administrative staff, maybe some counselors, and that's about it? Maybe I'm completely out of touch since I went to such a poor school that we couldn't even afford 5 days a week (I know a little something about budget cuts). Janitors, cooks, nurses, even certain types of teachers that rely on in-perso…

True, they're also not needed as much in the summer. Question is how quickly should we dismantle our institutions, and what are the long term costs of that?

Were schools better funded, they would be able to absorb some disruptions in the world without immediately falling apart. If we build our core institutions of society on a kind of just-in-time efficiency economic model, they become weak and fragile, and getting back to prior operational capacity takes years. The long term costs of that in general outweigh the short term savings.

Education's ROI is $7+ for every $1 invested, but for a variety of cultural and legal reasons it is chronically underfunded.

https://www.impact.upenn.edu/our-analysis/opportunities-to-a...

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#134

Post by tyoma »

bradly wrote: post #48

I live in San Diego and this is sadly just more of the same. Public schools cut non-essential programs and then PTAs in upper and upper-middle class neighborhoods raise money from parents to add those programs back to their specific school. When time comes to vote on taxes to increase education budget, they are confused, as the public school system in San Diego is working great for them and their community. You shoul…

California pays for schools (at least the operational costs) at the state level since 2013 (https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcffoverview.asp).

Local districts can propose bond measures, but there is no guarantee they will be accepted, even in rich districts. The school bond for Poway Unified was rejected on this past ballot.

What is really going to hurt district finances is enrollment. The State pays districts based on student enrollment. If students do not show up due to COVID fears, that represents a lot of lost money. Many students will not be showing up this upcoming school year.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#135

Post by verst »

tyoma wrote: post #114
verst wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even shorter term I'd like us to move away from local property taxes being used for local schools. The state government should have a statewide pool of money they allocate to schools based on enrollment numbers, cost of living. This should be sufficiently funded such that teachers can make a living wage in the local school district. Those who don't like this can still send their kids to private schools.

Several states already follow effectively this model. California is one of them: the state ensures each school district is funded based on enrollment, with some correction for poverty and English learners. Oregon is another state where schools are largely state funded. Hawaii has one school district for the whole state. Illinois and a few other states have a robin-hood like system where money is redistributed to poor…

Then how is it San Francisco public schools are vastly underfunded? Teachers can't live anywhere near their school districts and get by on a single job. 20% of school budget comes from property taxes in California. I wonder how much it is in San Francisco.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#136

Post by xtracto »

culturestate wrote: post #115
jeffbee wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Unfortunately, "there are two oceans between us and any potential aggressors" is no longer a viable defensive posture. If you're gonna be drawn into a war today it's unlikely to come with years of lead time.

Anericans live so scared!

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#137

Post by lotsofpulp »

blueblisters wrote: post #106
dorchadas wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a teacher myself, and I think this is very much needed. Right now, good neighborhoods just get better schools, while bad neighborhoods get worse. It's a horribly vicious circle, and shows even in areas where there's only one school (my county, the 5th biggest in the state, only has 25k people and one high school) if there's a huge amount of poverty (something like 65% of our students are on free or reduced lunch;…

When I moved to the US, this was one of the things that surprised me the most. I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good the schools were in that neighborhood. The fact that all kids don't get equal opportunity makes it feel like a very broken society.

>I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good the schools were in that neighborhood.

It's not the schools they are looking for, it's neighborhoods where the proportion of families that have parents who are well educated and higher earning, in order to put their kids in an environment with a higher proportion of kids who have more resourceful parents. Any school with motivated kids with stable home environments will be "good schools". And since schools draw their pool of students from the neighborhood, it eventually turns into a system where parents will cluster together by income, as income determines how much of a mortgage you can afford.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#138

Post by madengr »

tengbretson wrote: post #25

It's odd to me that there is this bizarre certainty on hacker news that within 20 years the most common occupation, truck driving, will be nearly entirely obsolete, yet in an era where almost all human knowledge is available online for free, the idea that the education apparatus will either stay the same or continue to grow is somehow a given.

I doubt truck driving will obsolete, given the track record of self driving.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#139

Post by slavik81 »

drstewart wrote: post #37
achn wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

deleted

You realize this is exactly the same as how schools are funded in Canada, correct? You have provincial funding, not federal funding. >Public schools are the responsibility of individual provincial departments of education and funded mainly from local and provincial taxes, with some federal funds. https://www.justlanded.com/english/Canada/Canada-Guide/Educa... .

There's an enormous difference between provincially funded and locally funded, though. In Alberta at least, the funding is effectively entirely provincial. There aren't any significant spending disparities based on the local neighbourhood's ability to pay.

Re: US schools lay off hundreds of thousands

#140

Post by npunt »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #117
npunt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because if you know anything about education, you know it's about human relationships as much as it is about pouring knowledge into empty vessels.

I actually think the are two separate concepts, and I'm pretty sure a AI could teach kids the times tables and test spelling. My kids know a hell of a lot about the video games they play, and they didn't need a human relationship to tech them how everything works.

Tech can definitely teach some things to some people, but among other things it cannot create the context for teaching. This issue has been pretty well explored in the edtech community for a long time, and of course pedagogical research for much longer. If you're interested in learning more check out sources like EdSurge, which I started as a place to explore these issues.
Post reply on HN