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

Post by geoduck14 » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

throwaway6734 wrote: post #213

briandear wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public schools where I live in Texas are great. Much better than the $33k per year school we had in Silicon Valley. The places were they seem broken are in big city districts where certain political factions, specifically teacher unions, get outsized influence on policy. I saw this up close when I lived in Jersey City and was considering a run for school board on Mayor Fulup’s slate of candidates. After being warned…

>And it isn’t about funding: look at the per pupil expenditures in DC or New York, and compare them to Austin suburbs like Leander, or Houston suburbs like the Woodlands Spending per pupil can be a deceiving statistic due to the vastly different needs between poor/middle-class/wealthy students

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 11:03 PM UTC

rahimnathwani wrote: post #149

adamredwoods wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 board could have opened schools months ago, but chose not to. The board opened some schools for a single day at the end of the school year, just to qualify for state funding to pay teachers. The board spent time (whilst schools were closed) deciding how to rename schools, something which has zero impact on educational outcomes. The board has a member who made racist remarks on Twitter and, despite not losing her…

Post by dnndev » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 11:04 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #227

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.

> It is heartbreaking when all a child has is public school. All I had was public school in a small town and I was a National Merit Scholar. I don’t understand this line of reasoning that you need more teaching from parents or for profit tutoring etc. I got a great education at my public school. Now are some schools not great? Yes. But a blanket statement that all public schools aren’t enough seems incorrect, in my e…

Post by yhoneycomb » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 11:05 PM UTC

almost_usual wrote: post #201

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #162

I thought AP classes and a level of general competitiveness stopped stuff like this? Even if the in person classes are easy to pass, the AP scores should be consistent with the rest of the country and should make identifying the relative difficulty between schools pretty easy? ACT and SAT should also make grade inflated school very easily to spot. I think California has a rule requiring that at least X% of their stud…

UC schools no longer consider SAT or ACT for admissions or scholarships. https://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/admission-requi...

Post by akomtu » Sat, Jun 19, 2021, 11:06 PM UTC

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.