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Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

adamcadre.ac

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Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#21

Post by astrange »

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #18
astrange wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California can't fund any of its public schools properly because of Prop 13. None of the wealthy homeowners care about this, because they're all too old to have kids in school.

It's not clear to me how funding plays a leading role in policies such as "let everyone pass".

Don't ask me, I was responding to "one of the wealthiest places in the world". Though I think schools with rich enough families attending do have attached foundations and just ask for charitable donations.

The easiest way to live in the area as a schoolteacher is to marry an engineer or someone else with a home, too.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#22

Post by P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul »

mediumdeviation wrote: post #13
P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #5

Not quite as good as this one: https://www.amren.com/features/2020/05/after-twenty-years-wo... I'm a bit surprised that the Bay Area, one of the wealthiest places in the world, has problems with public schools too. "Public schooling is child abuse" gains more steam every day.

> American Renaissance (AR or AmRen) is a white supremacist website and former monthly magazine publication founded and edited by Jared Taylor. > The publication promotes pseudoscientific notions "that attempt to demonstrate the intellectual and cultural superiority of whites and publishes articles on the supposed decline of American society because of integrationist social policies." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Am…

Does that subtract from the value of the article?

The question one might ask is, "did the author write this because they're racist, or are they just sharing their experience and no one else would dare publish it?"

Given there are multiple ways of verifying the details, I'd go with "just sharing their experience".

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#23

Post by underseacables »

brandmeyer wrote: post #6
underseacables wrote: post #4

This is sad. It reads more as though teachers and school employees are doing whatever they can to keep/justify their jobs, but not to improve learning. It is almost as if a teachers first job is self-preservation. If students can’t pass the test, then the test must be made easier, that way more students can pass and the teacher doesn’t look bad.

That's an incentive alignment problem. It is the responsibility of management (state and district admin) to ensure that what is best for the teacher's career is also what is best for student education.

But which comes first, the teachers career, or the students education? I would contend that in the available evidence it is the former.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#24

Post by an_opabinia »

underseacables wrote: post #4

This is sad. It reads more as though teachers and school employees are doing whatever they can to keep/justify their jobs, but not to improve learning. It is almost as if a teachers first job is self-preservation. If students can’t pass the test, then the test must be made easier, that way more students can pass and the teacher doesn’t look bad.

> Most teachers seem to take it as a given that of course half the class is going to wander in half an hour late during first period— it’s so early, you know!— and during fourth period

I don't know. What does this have to do with keeping teacher's jobs and not improving learning? Late start is, as far as "clinical outcomes" can be measured in education, like, the cheapest win there is.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#25

Post by fallingknife »

> Another initiative headed for mandate status is a school policy that no assignment can receive a grade of less than 50%

> And my direct supervisor repeatedly demanded that I pace my classes for the benefit of the single student in each section who was struggling the most

I don't understand school. Why do they do things like this? Who actually thinks this is a good idea? I've never met anyone who does. How have we gotten to the point where standards are not allowed?

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#26

Post by marcinzm »

P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #14
brandmeyer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an incentive alignment problem. It is the responsibility of management (state and district admin) to ensure that what is best for the teacher's career is also what is best for student education.

Who's responsibility is it to ensure that what is best for the management (state and district admin) is also what is best for student education? I'm not too familiar with the details of management here, but is it even possible for public schools (and other government operations) to have proper incentives given voters don't care about results? I suppose "school-choice", which happens to be vehemently opposed by Democr…

Parents who have money and care enough already pick the schools by simply buying a house in a slightly different place. Cupertino used to be the hot place for tiger parents in the bay area to go but I'm not sure if it still is. The issue is that then the rest of the schools get even worse which eventually results in bad social issues in 20 years. The kids from those schools grow up and everyone has to deal with them.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#27

Post by mistrial9 »

astrange wrote: post #12
P0l83q4p1Hw3Ul wrote: post #5

Not quite as good as this one: https://www.amren.com/features/2020/05/after-twenty-years-wo... I'm a bit surprised that the Bay Area, one of the wealthiest places in the world, has problems with public schools too. "Public schooling is child abuse" gains more steam every day.

California can't fund any of its public schools properly because of Prop 13. None of the wealthy homeowners care about this, because they're all too old to have kids in school.

you are utterly wrong here -- public school have gotten, do get, and will get, massive boatloads of money in most urban areas of California. There are many layers of money-consumers in each school system, especially in the Bay Area.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#28

Post by nerdponx »

This sounds like something out of a surrealist novel.

> consistently use umlauts in place of quotation marks and acute accent marks in place of apostrophes

US-International keyboard layout, maybe. Maybe the student doesn't know what umlauts and acute accents are, so maybe they think they're valid equivalents to " and '.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#30

Post by jdhn »

Stuff like this is why I roll my eyes every time I hear that schools are underfunded and how we need to give them just a little more funding, and surely things will get better. If they're just going to pass students anyways, what's the point of increasing the funding?
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