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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

#481

Post by throwaway894345 »

bnj wrote: post #453
hypnoscripto wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your salary is high enough that you can save some money then you aren’t required to put up with bullshit in order to keep eating food.

Do you mean that by saving money people can leave the profession sooner or at least move to a school with more favorable working conditions? If so, maybe you’ve hit on a kernel of truth: we can’t risk paying teachers enough that they’d have the financial security to leave a bad work situation.

Am I the only one who thinks “we should pay teachers more so they can afford a new profession because public education is horrible” is the wrong takeaway? Like, why not fix public education (e.g., more teacher autonomy) or at least support some voucher program so more teachers can be private school teachers?

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

#482

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #472
brightball wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this drives the push for things like vouchers. I’m lucky to be able to send my kids to a good private school. We chose it after a tour and discussion with the headmaster about exactly how it operates. The teachers as a group research and plan curriculum. They coordinate across grade levels and determine how to roll out changes in the most effective way possible for students and parents as well. They rolled…

> Yet for some reason in the US this is a political hot button, which doesn’t make any sense to me. I share in your bafflement. Charitably, perhaps they reason that parents will pick schools that are worse on average than public schools, but I suspect it is more of a “equality demands poor schooling regardless of class” with a side of “the state gets to determine the values your child is taught”.

My understanding is that vouchers still put the most power in the parents about what school their children go to, when the parents themselves aren’t necessarily good judgements of what would make a good school. Additionally, tools that parents would use (how students are graded in standard tests) are opaque. There are even cases where private schools don’t have to disclose how well or poorly their students score, which means they can effectively present as being a great school without any proof, while public schools have to provide proof and therefore look worse as they can’t lie.

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

#483

Post by adolph »

jimbokun wrote: post #97
6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is going to work while everything is paced by year. In 7th grade, in the fall you are taught X, so if you miss it the only solution is to take it next time: next fall with the next year’s 7th graders. In an ideal infinitely funded world, if you took 20% longer to learn X, you’d just go slower, not be left behind.

How does a teacher instruct a class where every single student is learning something different at a given time, based on their progress up to that point?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

I guess in Montessori every single student isn't learning something different, but each one is often in a unique state of learning and development. The guide gives lessons in small groups, less than 6. Each kid gets a new lesson every few days and spends the remainder of their time "doing their work" (practicing their lessons and turning the results into the guide, doing small group research projects, etc.). The kid is encouraged to ask others for help understanding the lesson and to mentor others who are working on a lesson the kid knows. Once the guide observes the kid succeeding at the lesson, the kid is invited to the next lesson.

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

#484

Post by exporectomy »

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 a problem for tribal voters and for politicians but I don't think it matters for the actual outcomes of laws passed. If a minor party steals votes from a major one, that major party has an incentive to win them back by offering those voters what they want.

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

#485

Post by throwaway894345 »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #482
throwaway894345 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yet for some reason in the US this is a political hot button, which doesn’t make any sense to me. I share in your bafflement. Charitably, perhaps they reason that parents will pick schools that are worse on average than public schools, but I suspect it is more of a “equality demands poor schooling regardless of class” with a side of “the state gets to determine the values your child is taught”.

My understanding is that vouchers still put the most power in the parents about what school their children go to, when the parents themselves aren’t necessarily good judgements of what would make a good school. Additionally, tools that parents would use (how students are graded in standard tests) are opaque. There are even cases where private schools don’t have to disclose how well or poorly their students score, whi…

Fair enough, but my impression of lots of public schools is that they are abysmal and the few that aren’t are typically only available to rich people anyway (in practice, not principle) so the current system addresses neither overall quality of education nor inequality.

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

#486

Post by typon »

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…

Linking a heritage foundation study unironically. Is this the standard of this forum now?

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

#487

Post by mlyle »

tw04 wrote: post #468
brightball wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this drives the push for things like vouchers. I’m lucky to be able to send my kids to a good private school. We chose it after a tour and discussion with the headmaster about exactly how it operates. The teachers as a group research and plan curriculum. They coordinate across grade levels and determine how to roll out changes in the most effective way possible for students and parents as well. They rolled…

Well right, because they can kick out students who are disruptive and make them the public school systems problem. When the public school system becomes insolvent, what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education? We hope someone else has a solution? Vouchers are a great way to permanently cement the cradle to prison cycle.

Perhaps any voucher system could be calibrated to: A) allow some more students to go to private schools by providing a fraction of what would be spent on them, and B) increase remaining resources per-pupil in the public school system.

Of course, it still takes thought to make sure that the public schools improve in this scenario, because they will also be fighting an adverse-selection headwind of being stuck with students from lower classes and those that the private schools don't want. But if you can shrink classes and cater classes to similar ability levels, I'd think this would win out.

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

#488

Post by rbetts »

makeitdouble wrote: post #362
barry-cotter wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From the same report, the bullet point above your first quote: > The wage gap between teachers and non-teachers disappears when both groups are matched on an objective measure of cognitive ability rather than on years of education. That “objective measure” is based on human capital model of wages, and it seems to me pretty biased to apply to such a specialized profession. Being wonderful at making a group of 6 years…

In my experience, teachers are strong communicators, highly self-organized, aware of organizations, able to work with others, and able to create and follow a plan. They have a demonstrated history of continued learning - and know a lot about how to learn. Teachers, when I've been lucky enough to hire them, have been excellent additions.

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

#489

Post by mlyle »

barry-cotter wrote: post #409
mattkrause wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analysis is harder than that. I would imagine education degrees are not particularly versatile: they’re meant to train you to become a teacher, more or less. Given that, it is not particularly surprising that teaching is one of the better-paying options once you commit to that pathway. However, there are plenty of other, career tracks: potential teachers might become accountants or engineers instead. Zooming in a…

> I would imagine education degrees are not particularly versatile: they’re meant to train you to become a teacher, more or less. This would imply that education degrees make their recipients better educators. There is no strong evidence of that. https://www.brookings.edu/research/who-profits-from-the-mast... > The fact that teachers with master’s degrees are no more effective in the classroom, on average, than their…

> This would imply that education degrees make their recipients better educators. There is no strong evidence of that.

This is orthogonal to what he is discussing; he's just discussing the relative pay picture (in-profession vs. out of profession) for one who holds such a degree.

> > The fact that teachers with master’s degrees are no more effective in the classroom, on average, than their colleagues without advanced degrees

This is -further- orthogonal and off-topic, because we're not talking about the relative merits of graduate education for teachers compared to bachelors degrees.

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

#490

Post by yboris »

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 love the solution you propose. There are certainly other ways in which the whole school system can improve in this and other directions. The most-direct (and sensible!) reform I've come across is: distribute education funding equally, without tying school income to local taxes paid. You end up with richer schools receiving a lot of funding, while the poorer neighborhoods (already disadvantaged as it is) receiving unacceptably low funding - exacerbating the inequities currently engrained in the current system.
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