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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

#351

Post by chrisseaton »

hef19898 wrote: post #336
chrisseaton wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 direct…

In the military, there are civilians at the top. Right below them, it's career military. Having these standards set by involving parents at a local level is ripe for disaster. As is having local sheriffs, without proper training, elected but I digress. Curriculums should be as standardized as possible. That makes everything comparable. It would be enough to have have the top brass of education elected. You can even m…

I can understand your point of view and to be honest I somewhat agree with it...

But at the same time it sounds technocratic and anti-democratic, right? The teachers' job is to teach as the people want. It's not their job to set policy. It's to get on and teach as directed.

Do you have a way you square that in your mind, as I'm struggling myself?

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

#352

Post by thundergolfer »

giantg2 wrote: post #346
ericd wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one amazing high school math teacher who graduated from MIT at 18, and was teaching all the way up to diff eq in public schools. He’d made his money and then decided to teach because he was annoyed that his sons’ math teachers sucked. There’s absolutely no way teacher salary+pension was competitive with what he was making in industry. And we should want a lot more people who are like him teaching, without the n…

Not necessarily. People who are really smart and great in industry are not necessarily great teachers. Frankly, if you are talking about making the salary competitive with one that allows FIRE will have the opposite effect that you want (ideology vs money).

Are you saying that FIRE type people are ill suited for teaching because their interest is in minimising retirement age and not being good teachers? The ideology of “earning to retire” vs. “living to teach”?

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

#353

Post by brailsafe »

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…

I don't even know what comfortable middle class in Vancouver is.

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

#354

Post by ericd »

giantg2 wrote: post #346
ericd wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had one amazing high school math teacher who graduated from MIT at 18, and was teaching all the way up to diff eq in public schools. He’d made his money and then decided to teach because he was annoyed that his sons’ math teachers sucked. There’s absolutely no way teacher salary+pension was competitive with what he was making in industry. And we should want a lot more people who are like him teaching, without the n…

Not necessarily. People who are really smart and great in industry are not necessarily great teachers. Frankly, if you are talking about making the salary competitive with one that allows FIRE will have the opposite effect that you want (ideology vs money).

Why is that the opposite? At the high school level, I’m not looking for martyrs, I’m looking for subject matter experts to teach my kids. At the lower levels, maybe empathy is more important, but by the time they get to microbiology or stats, you literally cannot be a good teacher without having a deep understanding.

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

#355

Post by barry-cotter »

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 competent administrators, more teachers and smaller classes.

NAEP scores have been more or less flat among 17 year olds since 1970. During that period inflation adjusted spending per pupil almost tripled.

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746.pdf

> The 0.075 figure reported here suggests that there is essentially no link between state education spending (which has exploded) and the performance of students at the end of high school (which has generally stagnated or declined).

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

#356

Post by diob »

stirlo wrote: post #324
diob wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Definitely agree with you, going over 30 hrs a week or whatever the new full time definition would be should always cause overtime pay. There are so many loopholes to avoid overtime these days (classify employee as X, etc etc).

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

#358

Post by giantg2 »

meowkit wrote: post #335
Judgmentality wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I fear I am feeding a political tangent here, but I think most of the problems you mentioned could be fixed in the US by recognizing (admittedly this would be a timely process) an official third electoral party. It's a lot easier for nuance to prevail when the system isn't designed to be binary.

Recognizing a third party does little with the spoiler effect. Not sure if you are referring to this in your final sentence, but the voting system has to change first to some sort of runoff model so people can express their primary choice without fear of the spoiler.

The spoiler effect is basically a non-issue with ranked choice voting. Some states are already adopting ranked choice.

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

#359

Post by saagarjha »

dehrmann wrote: post #146
bushbaba wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can ban the sat and grades and still measure for academic rigor. For example those who placed in a state math competition are likely to have higher academic abilities. Or those who had an article published in the news…etc. All this does is make grades no longer a measure used. And allow the wealthy to better position their kids at the detriment of the middle class. California’s strive to force outcome hurts the m…

> You can ban the sat and grades and still measure for academic rigor It's harder to normalize performance across schools without a standardized test. > those who placed in a state math competition are likely to have higher academic abilities That sounds like a state-run math SAT that would have the same problems. > And allow the wealthy to better position their kids at the detriment of the middle class. The upper mi…

> That sounds like a state-run math SAT that would have the same problems.

Math competitions are nothing like the SAT. Not at all. You can grind your way to an 800 on the math SAT with a basic prep and an understanding of tenth-grade math; getting a perfect score on a math competition is something only a handful of people do each year. The hardest questions tend to be of the type "ok I am not even sure how to start this one" rather than "this one has a bunch of arithmetic and I'm not sure I have time to complete it".

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

#360

Post by chrisseaton »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #349
chrisseaton wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 direct…

The problem with civilian control of schools is that it leads to asinine arguments over things like whether to teach sex ed at all or whether creationism belongs in the science classroom. Even in less extreme examples, it will lead to parents pushing for counterproductive and unnecessary reforms that make sense to the layman.

Ultimately the schools are there to serve the people, so if the people want arguments over things like whether to teach sex ed then isn't that their prerogative?

I know it's a problem and I don't agree with some sides of that argument myself... but in a democracy aren't these issues supposed to be devolved to the demos? Isn't that the whole point? Do the teachers 'know better'? Who's determining who knows better?

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