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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

#321

Post by hef19898 »

mmarq wrote: post #318
hef19898 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't the most successful mRNA vaccine developed by migrants working in Germany?

The CEO of BioNTech, when he was 10, wasn't considered good enough to attend a Gymnasium.

Coming from a family of turkish Gastarbeiters, I am not surprised. You still have that problem in Germany, and I think it only got worse during the pandemic.

Edit: The Biontech founder comes from a turkish family, I don't. But I see that happening a lot, first during my school days. And now at my children's schools.

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

#322

Post by zdragnar »

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…

Teachers (or their unions) often lead the charge for the very policies that hinder performance. Some of these are done in the name of equity (local metro school districts are a prime example).

Ultimately, teachers alone can't solve the problem. As seen in both poor white rural schools and poor non-white urban schools alike, if the parents don't care about schooling or enforcing any discipline at home, there will be significant problems at school.

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

#323

Post by AJ007 »

barry-cotter wrote: post #317
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…

https://www.heritage.org/education/report/assessing-the-comp... > Workers who switch from non-teaching jobs to teaching jobs receive a wage increase of roughly 9 percent. Teachers who change to non-teaching jobs, on the other hand, see their wages decrease by roughly 3 percent. This is the opposite of what one would expect if teachers were underpaid. https://www.heritage.org/education/report/critical-issues-as... > O…

Obnoxious that your comment was downvoted. Just examining retirement benefits, public pensions pay out what would take a normal worker multiple millions of dollars of wealth to receive.

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

#324

Post by stirlo »

diob wrote: post #301
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 should increase teacher pay / benefits to attract better talent. At the same time, we should decrease how many hours parents have to work each week (40 to 30?) so that they can actually engage with their kids.

I think you’ll find those parents who don’t don’t have the time to engage with their kids are working far more than 40 hours. The lucky ones are probably working 60-70 for a tech company and making bank, the unlucky ones are working multiple minimum wage jobs to just live with the basics.

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

#325

Post by nr2x »

saiya-jin wrote: post #215
ALittleLight wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids don't need to be vaccinated. Adults who are concerned about it, including teachers, should be. Keeping schools closed because children aren't vaccinated is irrational.

What the heck are you talking about? Brazil variant for example is pretty brutal on kids, death is not so uncommon result. School is one of the worst places for spreading, since tons of kids lack will/discipline to behave consistently, and are cramped in various classes. Once 1 member of household is sick, the chance rest will get it is pretty high. Remote teaching sucks for many reasons for kids and should be used o…

My four year old has far better mask discipline than the majority of adults, kids are adaptable

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

#326

Post by mordymoop »

bryan0 wrote: post #271
saiya-jin wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the heck are you talking about? Brazil variant for example is pretty brutal on kids, death is not so uncommon result. School is one of the worst places for spreading, since tons of kids lack will/discipline to behave consistently, and are cramped in various classes. Once 1 member of household is sick, the chance rest will get it is pretty high. Remote teaching sucks for many reasons for kids and should be used o…

The CDC disagrees with you: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/science-br... > Although children can be infected with SARS-CoV-2, can get sick from COVID-19, and can spread the virus to others, less than 10% of COVID-19 cases in the United States have been among children and adolescents aged 5–17 years (COVID Data Tracker). Compared with adults, children and adolescents who have COVID-19 are more commo…

Something that is often overlooked in these conversations is the elementary schools should perhaps be considered completely differently from high schools. There were zero transmissions between students at my kids elementary school this whole year, despite the school opening as quickly as possible and despite several kids with asymptomatic COVID showing up at school and only being detected belatedly. I don’t think the same outcome would necessarily be expected at a high school.

This is relevant because younger kids need more supervision and are less likely to spread COVID, while older kids need less supervision and are more likely to spread; therefor keeping older kids home and sending younger ones in might be totally rational. But it doesn’t seem like this gets brought up.

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

#327

Post by jackson1442 »

um_ya wrote: post #312
dane-pgp wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Private companies will compete for those vouchers "Send your kid to our school, and we promise they'll always score 100% on their tests!"

The parents choose where to spend the voucher. Unless you think parents value "100% on their tests" more than receiving a quality education. I trust a parent's judgment more than administrators looking to prop up their numbers.

Yeah, some parents do value “100% on their tests” more than receiving a quality education.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/22/colleg...

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

#328

Post by chrisseaton »

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…

> Ban anyone without a minimum teaching experience of x years from participating on boards

Why do you think you need to be a teacher to direct how our schools are run?

Seems technocratic and anti-democratic.

The same way we have civilian control of the military, we should have civilian control of our schools.

Did you know in the UK there is actually a structure called governors to ensure that schools are being directed by the community, not by education insiders?

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

#329

Post by ALittleLight »

verisimilidude wrote: post #225
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.

You’re describing Finland. They outlawed private school funding for exactly the reason you’re proposing: to get the wealthiest and most engaged parents invested in fixing public schools for all. It worked. They have one of the best public education systems in the world.

This is a big oversimplification. There are many differences in education between Finland and the US. Pointing to a single one and declaiming it as the cause is unjustified.

As a counter example, the OECD PISA ranking for education puts Estonia as just barely ahead of Finland[1]. Estonia has public and private schools[2]. So, it is at least possible to have Finland quality schools while maintaining a public and private system.

Another thing to consider would be the population differences. The US has ~65 times more people than Finland. In this larger group of people there will be Finland sized subgroups that outperform and underperform Finland even though the US as a whole underperforms.

Massachusetts, for example, one of two states in the US to perform and report their own PISA numbers, is pretty comparable to Finland in 2015 (1 or 2 points above or below on scores of ~500 for science and reading and 11 points below on math)[3]. I couldn't find the official OECD results for 2018, but I believe Massachusetts is slightly ahead by then.

1 - https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/topics/education/

2 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Estonia

3 - https://www.oecd.org/pisa/PISA-2015-United-States-MA.pdf

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

#330

Post by gedy »

bombcar wrote: post #275
mobilefriendly wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a nation, US inflation adjusted, per-student K-12 spending has tripled since the 1960s.

I suspect per-teacher salaries haven’t tripled in that time however!

Their pension and retirement benefits likely cost way more now.
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