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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

#641

Post by jl2718 »

rcpt wrote: post #440
makeitdouble wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

heritage really isn't going to be a good source on this kind of thing fwiw

Is there a rule against this?

If you have better facts, please provide them. Disparaging a source of information adds nothing to the conversation.

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

#643

Post by bargle0 »

torben-friis wrote: post #617
spoonjim wrote: post #554

I’ve noticed that in the time since I was a kid, the focus of public school has shifted from about the 40th percentile student to the 5th percentile student. In my school, the entire focus of the operation was the decent student... the one who showed up, put in a decent effort, did at least three quarters of their homework. The school had tremendous resources for these kids to go to college, and the very best college…

Honestly, I think viewing it as an exclusive choice is harmful. Schools need resources for both kinds of students, and if they have to choose who gets the attention they are simply underfunded.

Some of these failing school systems (Baltimore, MD & Prince George’s County, MD) have some of the highest budgets per pupil in the country. The problem isn’t money.

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

#644

Post by chongli »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #606
ganzuul wrote: post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are correct, but there are going to be cases where the help should come in the form of UBI or NIT. Otherwise people on the unfortunate end of the ability spectrum are going to have to get gainful employment somehow. We should definitely take care of them as a society built on solidarity, but we can be efficient about it too.

> take care of them It sounds like you want to just pay people to stay alive without helping them to gain the skills necessary to make that life worthwhile to themselves. Before we try to be efficient we need to agree on what we are being efficient about.

The wrinkle in this discussion is the inevitable march of technology. It’s simply a lot more difficult to make a valuable contribution to society today than it was a few decades ago. It takes a lot more education and specialized training to gain the skills that put oneself in demand.

The idea that we can push water uphill, and bring the most struggling students up above an ever-rising bar, is becoming a controversial one these days. There is a small but growing chorus of voices saying “enough already”, on both [1] sides [2] of the spectrum.

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36319077-the-case-agains...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51087394-the-cult-of-sma...

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

#645

Post by zozbot234 »

rmah wrote: post #639
zozbot234 wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "difficult" kids in school are the ones who need help the most. Schools do very little to help these kids. There are ways to teach low-performers efficiently (they go under the general rubric of "direct instruction") but they go unused simply because teachers do not want to feel regimented in such a rigid structure, even if that's exactly what yields the best outcomes. (So, I'd definitely disagree with GP that…

Very little? In my town's school district, something like 30% of the school's budget is allocated to these "difficult kids". Who make up less than 5% of the student body. They get a LOT of attention and extra help. As far as I can tell though, it doesn't help much.

> something like 30% of the school's budget is allocated to these "difficult kids". ...

Much of that money and effort is simply wasted if teachers aren't going to adopt effective approaches towards teaching and helping these kids.

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

#646

Post by neartheplain »

MomoXenosaga wrote: post #636
neartheplain wrote: post #623

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many good reasons to de-racialize the discussion around US public education. One is that the "white school" trope is increasingly out of date. Instead, we've begun to see "Asian schools" wherever high-performing public high school schools admit students based on standardized testing. The top-ranked high school in the entire US, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, is 65% Asian and 23% wh…

That is true its more about economic status now. We have made some considerable progress in opening up the middle class to immigrants. To paraphrase MLK "judged not on the colour of their skin but on the size of their parents' bank accounts". So many doors magically open to you when your parents have money.

That's part of what makes "Asian schools" interesting. Many Asian American students at high-performing US public schools come from solidly middle and working-class backgrounds. Their parents simply chose to invest every cent in their child's education, sometimes at great personal financial risk. Anecdotally, I know one Korean American couple of extremely modest means who took out a second mortage just to get their oldest through undergrad.

To a significant extent, Asian American parents and students have shown that merit-based admissions _do_ work as a socioeconomic equalizer (see above Atlantic article). The problem as I see it is how to replicate this success among other demographics, including white Americans of middle and working-class backgrounds. Another part of the solution in my view is just making more magnet schools.

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

#647

Post by mindvirus »

zepto wrote: post #172
mindvirus wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. It'd mean the same thing it already means for 90%+ people - compulsory publicly funded education from 5-17 years old.

> You're tearing down a straw man friend, I didn't say anything about tutoring or homeschooling. No straw man involved. I don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of ‘getting rid of private school’. The point is that to ban private schools you’d also have to ban homeschooling.

I don't see how that follows.

If you're making a slippery slope argument - the answer is that there is a difference between a private school with administration, dedicated real estate and staff teaching 100s of kids, and people keeping their kids home to teach them themselves.

If it's a semantic argument, that homeschooling is a form of non-public and therefore private education, by private schools I specifically mean the large institutions. I doubt homeschooled people would say that they went to private school.

If it's a legal argument - a blanket ban on private schools would have impact on homeschooling in California - that's likely true, but I'm not suggesting how a law would be written, just the result of the law.

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

#648

Post by throwaway210222 »

zozbot234 wrote: post #645
rmah wrote: post #639

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very little? In my town's school district, something like 30% of the school's budget is allocated to these "difficult kids". Who make up less than 5% of the student body. They get a LOT of attention and extra help. As far as I can tell though, it doesn't help much.

> something like 30% of the school's budget is allocated to these "difficult kids". ... Much of that money and effort is simply wasted if teachers aren't going to adopt effective approaches towards teaching and helping these kids.

0% should be wasted on the incorrigible. And yes, they exist.

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

#649

Post by toomanybeersies »

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…

Why do school boards need to be elected at all?

Like electing judges and sheriffs, this seems to be a peculiarly American thing. Most other countries appoint professionals to manage their education systems, and for good reason.

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

#650

Post by DSingularity »

Lammy wrote: post #337
DSingularity wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 argu…

> 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. Gotta appreciate the irony of this statement. The Idiot Tribe are victims of The System, not driving it. They are not my enemy.

They are all victims. Nonetheless, the unfortunate reality is that the state persists precisely because this idiocy broadly holds.
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