School superintendent requests school be turned into prison • Hacker News Board

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#41

Post by SoftwareMaven » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 4:36 PM UTC

latch wrote: post #6

Kudos to the superintendent for doing his job. Whatever validity you think his point has, there's no doubt he'll get a lot of attention thanks to the clever way he's approached the problem. I'm one of those people that, whenever they hear about economic problems, always thinks individuals are responsible. I want to know, am I wrong? Nowhere does it say you need a house with a spare bedroom and a bathroom for each per…

In a knowledge-based economy, education is critical to keep that economy moving, which is good for every tax payer. Make parents pay the full cost of educating their children, you'll see half the kids out of school, poverty will increase, and crime will skyrocket.

Unemployment would go way up, but companies wouldn't be able to find skilled employees. This is already a problem now, imagine how bad it would be in a society with 1/4 of the current high school graduates not graduating.

Then, coming full circle, we would find ourselves paying $30-40k/year to incarcerate more people we could have paid $10k/year to educate.

Education isn't an investment in an individual, it's an investment in a society.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#42

Post by Dove » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 4:38 PM UTC

If children were fully the state's responsibility the way prisoners are, I'm sure they would have those things and more.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#43

Post by ori_b » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 4:41 PM UTC

scythe wrote: post #25

anamax wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, teachers are often treated as if they aren't part of the professional class. They're not. Professionals are liable for malpractice. > fire the youngest members of the profession first That's what the teacher's unions demanded in negotation, so if you think that it's wrong....

>They're not. Professionals are liable for malpractice. Even programmers?

Programmers aren't professionals in the sense that he's using. There is no accreditation procedure, there is no regulating body, there is no licensing, there is no code of ethics that must be followed by all programmers, and there is no liability attached to malpractice.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#44

Post by run4yourlives » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 4:47 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #34

"Education funding is being slashed left and right" - uhm no - most states aren't getting the increases they want. The University of Minnesota loves to use this tactic in press releases that their funding was cut, when actually, their increase in funding was cut. I hate politics for the acceptance of lies as standard practice.

To be fair, if enrollment is increasing and funding is flat, the effect is a decrease in funding. From what I can gather, most areas have a per-student funding model so this doesn't mean your statement is incorrect, but it's a little more complicated than being the black to the university's white.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#45

Post by jbooth » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 4:57 PM UTC

latch wrote: post #6

Kudos to the superintendent for doing his job. Whatever validity you think his point has, there's no doubt he'll get a lot of attention thanks to the clever way he's approached the problem. I'm one of those people that, whenever they hear about economic problems, always thinks individuals are responsible. I want to know, am I wrong? Nowhere does it say you need a house with a spare bedroom and a bathroom for each per…

Public education isn't even that expensive. Did you read the guy's letter? 7k/head/year, that's including everything. Society definitely gets a huge return on that investment. It should be a no-brainer.

Michigan is A) hard hit and B) elected a fundamentalist lunatic for a governor. The guy's been in office less than 6 months and everyone hates him already, he has an ideological beef with the idea of public education in general and teacher's unions in particular, so he's slashing those budgets even more than necessary to prove his point.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#46

Post by jbooth » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 5:02 PM UTC

hugh3 wrote: post #28

scott_s wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The HN community generally accepts that companies should expect to pay good developers well. And, the corollary to that is if you're not willing to pay well, don't expect to get good developers.

You also need to pay good developers better than bad developers, and fire the worst developers, and have competition among companies for the best, and have some way of knowing who the best and worst developers are. Imagine what the state of the software industry would be like if developers were hired like teachers! Anyone with an appropriate qualification would be given an office and told to write code. Every year th…

Uh, how about we just abolish last-in-first-out? That solves all of your problems without privatizing the whole school system.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#47

Post by leot » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 5:04 PM UTC

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #41

latch wrote: post #6

Kudos to the superintendent for doing his job. Whatever validity you think his point has, there's no doubt he'll get a lot of attention thanks to the clever way he's approached the problem. I'm one of those people that, whenever they hear about economic problems, always thinks individuals are responsible. I want to know, am I wrong? Nowhere does it say you need a house with a spare bedroom and a bathroom for each per…

In a knowledge-based economy, education is critical to keep that economy moving, which is good for every tax payer. Make parents pay the full cost of educating their children, you'll see half the kids out of school, poverty will increase, and crime will skyrocket. Unemployment would go way up, but companies wouldn't be able to find skilled employees. This is already a problem now, imagine how bad it would be in a soc…

You're under the impression that the wealthy are looking to increase their absolute, rather than their relative, wealth. But much of what I've seen in the U.S. are policies focused on preserving or increasing relative wealth at the expense of the absolute kind.

The millions who, for their whole lives, have been poorly educated and are now unemployed (or imprisoned) could be making stuff of value that would ultimately make us all (absolutely) richer. This would increase the absolute wealth of the people-paying-the-bills (the already rich), but would decrease their wealth relative to those around them.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#48

Post by jbooth » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

krakensden wrote: post #40

anamax wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits? Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security. We blame them because they have a huge effec…

> Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security. Good benefits yes, good salary, not so much: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/degrees/education for instance. I really have no idea how people complain that teachers are overpaid. It beats picking lettuce, but consider the opportunity cost of a bach…

Yeah, that's one of those "believe it because I want to believe it" things.

I mean, do these people actually know any teachers? Why aren't they teachers themselves if it's so great?

I know for a fact that I'm not a teacher because the pay is shit and I'm not a good enough person to sacrifice my lifestyle for it. At least I can admit that.

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#49

Post by jbooth » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

Duff wrote: post #30

nkassis wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most parent that can already do send their kids to private school. But we have to admit that public schools often get the short end of the stick in most state budget discussions. Even if parents contribute more (taxes) it ends up not being used properly. Also, the bigger the house usually means the more taxes you pay to the school board ;p

Huh? Public school STUDENTS get the short end of the stick. Public schools as institutions get rich funding streams, second only to Medicaid at the state level. I'd suggest looking into the $7,500 per student figure as well. Usually when school people look for more money, they lowball that figure by excluding things like capital expenses, administrative expenses and busing.

Public schools as institutions? What's that even mean, that when you add up 1,000 salaries it's a lot of money? Ok, so what?

Teachers and school administrators aren't taking home megabucks -- if they were, that per student figure would be a lot higher. Typically, administrative expenses and busing will be included in that figure but capital expenses are probably not (but the building may be already paid off anyways).

Re: School superintendent requests school be turned into prison

#50

Post by lukejduncan » Thu, Jun 02, 2011, 5:07 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #33

lukejduncan wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, I'm sorry, are you saying teaching isn't a profession?

They can't be considered "professionals" because they're not held to any professional standards.

Seriously? I can see the arguments for accreditation, but to say they aren't held to professional standards is a joke.

Again, solving hard problems means finding top talent. People love to slander teachers as lazy, but what can you really expect from an industry that repels talent - especially young talent. Teachers are vilified are underpaid ($60k is nothing for the type of problem being solved, and many teachers make closer to $30k).

I promise you, if we treated teachers as well as we treated Software Engineers we'd have a much healthier education system.