Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021 • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by hintymad » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

> 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

All such effort in the name of equity will hurt the kids whose families can't afford proper education. Eventually there will be larger degree of inequity. The best students, namely the future elites, will be okay, as they will find ways to educate themselves one way or another. The worst students, those "single student who struggled most", will be okay too, as they got all the attention they need. It is unfortunately the students in the middle, the backbone of our society, who would get hurt, like the straight-A student reported by NYT who couldn't even pass city college's math placement tests. Or the intern who just got fired because he couldn't even understand that finding the values of two variables needs a system of two independent equations.

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

#152

Post by yonran » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

adamredwoods wrote: post #141

rahimnathwani wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an effort underway to recall members of the SFBOE: https://www.recallsfschoolboard.org/ There is a father who has been out every weekend collection collecting petitions. On one occasion, someone tried to thwart the attempt by stealing some of the petitions. Even though there is clear video evidence and the public has identified the man, the police haven't arrested him, and SF politicians have not even mentio…

I am baffled why they are doing a recall? According to the site, the main reason states because their kids have not gone back to school. To me, that's not a good enough reason for a recall (recalls cost money). Public schools are under state and county health guidance.

The San Francisco Board of Education have made many displays of incompetence and malice this past year which have been covered by both local and national media.

During the pandemic, the Board of Education announced that 44 schools were named after oppressors (many were justified, but the names committee also made numerous errors) and that principals and families needed to come up with new names for their schools over Zoom. Board member Gabriela Lopez defended even the egregious mistakes, demonstrating that she only cares about “uplifting” and “holding” people of color but not facts https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-san-francisco-ren... Unfortunately, Lopez is not up for recall yet, but her enablers are.

Alison Collins led the resolution to remove academic admissions to San Francisco’s magnet high school Lowell High. But instead of debating the pros and cons of having a magnet school, she caricatured the school as bed of “toxic racism” and dismissed the Asian parents who supported an admissions criteria as “a bunch of racists”. https://twitter.com/sfchronicle/status/1316582760954331136?l... Afterwards, people discovered her previous tweets stereotyping Asians and her pattern of abusing her power (https://twitter.com/hknightsf/status/1391039211747172352). When her colleagues selected a different Vice President, she lashed out with a lawsuit calling her opponents racists (https://missionlocal.org/2021/04/alison-collins-strange-and-...)

The other board members haven't done anything offensive but haven't shown any leadership either. They just enabled the radicals. We don't know exactly why SFUSD didn't open the schools this year (negotiations were behind closed doors), but I suspect it has to do with the board members' extreme deference to the teachers' union that endorsed them.

I encourage anyone who is a San Francisco citizen to print out the recall petitions and mail them in https://recallsfschoolboard.org/

See also this explainer The Case for Recalling the School Board https://www.engardio.com/blog/school-board-recall-case

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

#153

Post by rossdavidh » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:39 PM UTC

So, this seems ludicrous and sad. What I am wondering is whether or not this is an accurate representation of the real situation in SFBay area schools? If we have any parents from the SF Bay area on HN who are sending their kids to public schools, I'd be interested in hearing their take on this.

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

#154

Post by shagie » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:46 PM UTC

rizzom5000 wrote: post #136

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, by this metric, school should stop when kids are 12.

It raises the question, what are we getting for our money (in the US)? > In 2017, the United States spent $14,100 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 37 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries... https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd

Part of this is in having schools bearing the brunt of other failures in society or by having schools be the ones trying to solve those issues.

Schools are often the safety net for youths with a wide range of problems. While schools are the catch all for such problems, they're more expensive than fixing other issues like fair wages for the parents of the students (e.g. having hischoolers needing to get a job to support the family rather than study for school).

This high price tag is the result of shifting around other issues to the place where they're inefficiently handled.

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The flip side of this is the "schools are often funded by property taxes and areas that are able to collect more taxes are able to spend significantly more per student even if it doesn't result in a better outcome." Many of these areas already have good student outcomes and the money is spent on on... whatever.

Palo Alto spends $24.5k/student ( https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?I... ).

Wyoming county schools spends $11.5k ( https://nces.ed.gov/ccd/districtsearch/district_detail.asp?S... ).

When looking at those, compare the breakdown of revenue sources.

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So, I'll say "no, we're not - but it's not the fault of the schools."

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

#155

Post by dnndev » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

Public school is broken and we all know it - in general.

We need competent administrators, more teachers and smaller classes. Parents need more time to teach their children what is not and should not be taught at school.

Kudos to parents who can afford and decide to be more hands on with children’s education. It is heartbreaking when all a child has is public school.

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

#156

Post by csa » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

yaitsyaboi wrote: post #104

refurb wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re cheating that kid. They’re going to get pushed into the next grade and fall further behind until they graduate and can’t do basic math.

I don't think theres a school district in the country that will advance a kid with a 50% average to the next grade. Idk if there's some arcane No Child Left Behind provision about kids who have been stuck for 3 years, but in general a 50% is a no go. And it's not like you can get 50s all year and get a few 80s and average it out. It takes a lot of really sustained effort to come back from that. Most kids won't. But a…

> I don't think theres a school district in the country that will advance a kid with a 50% average to the next grade.

You’re half right.

Most school districts won’t let a student with a 50% average pass.

That said, teachers will be pressed to give extra points for participation or extra credit or just to change the scores to get said kid over a passing level. Some teachers will do this unprompted just to make sure they don’t have to see the kid next year.

Not to mention that there will undoubtedly be calls of some sort of discrimination if failing grades are common in any given teacher’s class.

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

#157

Post by bob1029 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #153

So, this seems ludicrous and sad. What I am wondering is whether or not this is an accurate representation of the real situation in SFBay area schools? If we have any parents from the SF Bay area on HN who are sending their kids to public schools, I'd be interested in hearing their take on this.

I have 2 close family members working public education in Texas - one is a principal and another a teacher. Stories like this are brought up all the time. Something really shitty is going on with how we are raising a lot of our kids and managing public school systems. It's not specific to one state/county/region from what I can tell.

My brother in particular is desperately trying to get out of public education. He loves teaching, but they are making it impossible for anyone to do their jobs effectively. Pay is shit, especially since work practically doubled overnight, and you get virtually zero control over the curriculum or policies in your classroom.

Then, at the end of the day, some entitled shithead of a parent thinks their little snowflake was dealt a bad hand and parent-teacher conferences ensue which further sap whatever life force remains.

After hearing about all of this stuff over the years, I cant help but feel incredibly grateful that I have the kind of career that I do. Public education has been turned into a protracted daycare experience with the sole objective of piping the students into a college debt lifestyle.

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

#158

Post by Bostonian » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:54 PM UTC

dnndev wrote: post #155

Public school is broken and we all know it - in general. We need competent administrators, more teachers and smaller classes. Parents need more time to teach their children what is not and should not be taught at school. Kudos to parents who can afford and decide to be more hands on with children’s education. It is heartbreaking when all a child has is public school.

"We need more teachers and smaller classes."

That would cost more, and reading the blog makes me want to send less money to the public schools.

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

#159

Post by amha » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:55 PM UTC

rossdavidh wrote: post #153

So, this seems ludicrous and sad. What I am wondering is whether or not this is an accurate representation of the real situation in SFBay area schools? If we have any parents from the SF Bay area on HN who are sending their kids to public schools, I'd be interested in hearing their take on this.

I teach at an elite private school in the Bay. We're a much better place than the school described here, with kids who like learning, and administrators who are well-intentioned. But many of the author's frustrations are, directionally, exactly the same as what I experience, namely:

> .. The emails sent to me personally from counselors and administrators have overwhelmingly broken down along these lines: such-and-such a student is feeling stressed, so please excuse her from this set of assignments. This other student gets nervous about taking tests or giving presentations or working in groups, so please excuse him from work of those types. ... 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, which quite literally would have meant putting students who had signed up for Advanced Placement into a remedial course

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

#160

Post by amha » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 9:57 PM UTC

rrss wrote: post #76

mindvirus wrote: post #64

One of the most radical beliefs I have is we should get rid of private schools, because it lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed. Of course I say this as I seriously consider sending my kids to a private school because of articles like this.

FYI private schools are not immune to these problems. The administration of some private schools choose to have similar policies (accept late work indefinitely, minimum grade of 50%, etc) at their school.

Teacher at an elite SFBay private high school. Can confirm!