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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

#291

Post by glitchc »

In North America, teachers are grossly underpaid and their ability to discipline poor performance has been entirely eviscerated. It’s not just SF, look at what’s happening in Vancouver: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-cutting-honours-...

The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards.

The solution is this: Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards, bring all teacher salaries up to comfortable middle-class in every district and give them back their authority in the classroom. Otherwise this downward slide into illiteracy will continue until North America is dominated by an idiot majority.

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

#292

Post by yonran »

hellbannedguy wrote: post #163
rahimnathwani wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The teachers were worried about Covid. Kids weren't vaccinated.

I think bunnypapr would have been perfect to protect teachers if safety were the primary concern https://bunnypapr.com

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

#293

Post by lr4444lr »

dnndev wrote: post #188
Bostonian wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Another approach could be: High school should be completely optional. Those who want to go will benefit from it and those who don’t won’t be there to make trouble. Move the high school teachers to middle school and elementary for smaller classes.

You need some kind of VoTech and continuing Ed for people without degrees and white collar portable skills. Otherwise you get legions of disaffected populist voters when the economic tides shift against the only industry they know how to work in.

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

#294

Post by ZephyrBlu »

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...

Wait, what? Does that mean they don't use any exam results for admissions?

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

#295

Post by hoka-one-one »

glitchc wrote: post #291

In North America, teachers are grossly underpaid and their ability to discipline poor performance has been entirely eviscerated. It’s not just SF, look at what’s happening in Vancouver: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-cutting-honours-... The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards. The solution is this: Ban anyone without a m…

It doesn't have to be continuous. You can introduce a virus to kill off some of the illiterate and maintain some balance.

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

#297

Post by dane-pgp »

um_ya wrote: post #170
staticassertion wrote: post #165

School's so stupid. If you give people a grade and tell them to maximize it, with no meaningful rewards that they can understand, they're going to cheat. Duh. I regret not cheating in school, what a waste of time all of that shit was. The teacher is basically like "haha dumb kids, we know you're cheating" and "if only we could punish students more!". There's a lot of "the smart kids are suffering because of the dumb…

I like the school voucher idea a lot. Give parents a voucher, as good as cash, for their child and let them choose the school. Private companies will compete for those vouchers, aligning focus on satisfying the parents and the children, rather than the government.

> Private companies will compete for those vouchers

"Send your kid to our school, and we promise they'll always score 100% on their tests!"

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

#298

Post by DSingularity »

glitchc wrote: post #291

In North America, teachers are grossly underpaid and their ability to discipline poor performance has been entirely eviscerated. It’s not just SF, look at what’s happening in Vancouver: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-cutting-honours-... The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards. The solution is this: Ban anyone without a m…

You say “until we are dominated by idiot majority” as if it hasn’t happened. Just look at the platforms of the peoples vote to represent Americans. Rarely are they platform that would actually matter to the people and most of the time it is identity politics, nationalism, gun rights, and religion. We can’t even have a nuanced conversation about anything in politics that doesn’t devolve into an ideological/tribal argument. I think the US is already dominated by idiots in every state.

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

#299

Post by mirashii »

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…

> The board spent time (whilst schools were closed) deciding how to rename schools, something which has zero impact on educational outcomes.

I'd like to expand on this one, as it's been a particular frustrating one. It launched San Francisco's school system into the national spotlight as our Board of Education debated this publicly and initially planned to spend millions of dollars before the outrage and backlash canceled these plans.

Amongst other issues, they did short, haphazard research on the origins of the names of the schools, instead typing common Hispanic surnames into Google/Wikipedia, finding the first result, and deciding that the word colonizer being mentioned in the Wikipedia article was sufficient to rename the school. They problem? Wrong person, they didn't bother to look so far as the school's website to determine who it was named after. Here's a video of the full deliberation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1jj33NBAH8

Some articles summarizing other issues with this process: https://abc7news.com/sfusd-san-francisco-unified-schools-dis...

While here, I'd also like to throw in this article about Alison Collins, the school board member who is suing her colleagues and the city for $87 million dollars: https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/heatherknight/article/Alis...

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

#300

Post by dnndev »

lr4444lr wrote: post #293
dnndev wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another approach could be: High school should be completely optional. Those who want to go will benefit from it and those who don’t won’t be there to make trouble. Move the high school teachers to middle school and elementary for smaller classes.

You need some kind of VoTech and continuing Ed for people without degrees and white collar portable skills. Otherwise you get legions of disaffected populist voters when the economic tides shift against the only industry they know how to work in.

I think this is already happening. High school is not helping…
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