Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

No Way to Grow Up

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 714 posts

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#551

Post by aidenn0 »

bsder wrote: post #544
WalterBright wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teachers asking for donations to buy school supplies. Around here, the school district has razed the local schools and built fancy new buildings. Then they ask for donations to buy pencils, at what, 5 cents apiece? Does something seem wrong with this picture? Let's put it another way. $15,000 per student. 30 students per class. This is $450,000 per classroom per year. No, lack of funding is not the problem.

> Around here, the school district has razed the local schools and built fancy new buildings. I see this too. Might I suggest that the school board get voted out ? Part of the reason why new buildings get built is because it's easier to get the funding for a new building than to get the funding for 10 more teachers. A new building is normally a simple bond proposition on the ballot and it's off and running. Hiring 10…

I don't see how $500k gets you even 10 teachers for a single year; that covers the median salary, but in many places government employees have pensions and in most places full-time teachers get benefits. I would assume that even for the 50% of teachers below that median rate, the other costs of employing them puts them over $50k

I suppose that's another point for "expenses in US that don't apply to OECD countries" from a sibling thread assuming that teachers' health-care expenses are not included in per-student spending for OECD countries.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#552

Post by aidenn0 »

WalterBright wrote: post #549
bsder wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Around here, the school district has razed the local schools and built fancy new buildings. I see this too. Might I suggest that the school board get voted out ? Part of the reason why new buildings get built is because it's easier to get the funding for a new building than to get the funding for 10 more teachers. A new building is normally a simple bond proposition on the ballot and it's off and running. Hiring 10…

$450k/class/year needs to pay for only one teacher for one year.

2 teachers per BSDer's original comment, but it does sound like he missed the "per year" part of the $450k.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#553

Post by istjohn »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #391
orangecat wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity? Because child care has long been part of the value proposition of public schools. It's amusing how "you shouldn't have had kids if one parent wasn't willing to stay at home full time" is now something that the far left and far right agree on.

> It's amusing how "you shouldn't have had kids if one parent wasn't willing to stay at home full time" is now something that the far left and far right agree on. I consider myself somewhat left wing, and I don't agree with this statement at all. Cooperative babysitting, more flexible work arrangements, larger friend groups, joint families, and more social cohesion in general are a good way to balance childcare. I ac…

Replace "teachers" with "schools." There is no reason we can't appropiately resource schools to provide these services. We should be paying teachers enough for them to be eager to come in to work every day. Telling parents they are on their own to figure it out is not "a good way to balance childcare." It amounts to saying everyone fend for themselves, to saying that we don't really care what happens to kids whose families can't afford childcare. And sadly in our society, it mostly amounts to dumping those burdens specifically on women, who get saddled with the bulk of childcare duties in the American household. It's regressive, and it hobbles the effort to achieve equality for women in the workplace.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#554

Post by peppermint_tea »

nocsi wrote: post #548
peppermint_tea wrote: post #532

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have a good point, but I also think it will take more time to get the full picture of long covid in children (number affected, symptoms etc). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4... Because of the lack of data, it seems like I am running an experiment on my child either way : - if I send her to school where she will most likely catch covid (1st generation of kids to catch covid at a young…

They really didn’t want to push vaccines on children since there were early studies they would develop myocarditis and inflammations. Really the vaccine isn’t made to prevent you from getting covid. It’s so you won’t die. Children don’t really need that since they don’t have significant symptoms. That being the case, what’s the point of them getting vaccinated if it presents risks.

vaccination sure present a risk. so does a covid infection, they are both negligible in terms of odds but both real.

> They really didn’t want to push vaccines on children

who is "they" because when I read guidance from several countries, it does recommend the vaccine in age group 5-11

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#555

Post by istjohn »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #492
geoduck14 wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Schools increase parent productivity I'm a parent, and I work-from-home. We just had winter break. I had 2 kids not in school and 2 kids not in day care. I definitely had a productivity drop. I had a meeting where all 4 kids took turns interrupting me. I had things to do, and a daughter would "just appear" and ask me about some weird question. They would come in each afternoon and ask me when I was going to finish w…

Sounds like work from home isn't working great for you, you should probably go into the office to work. Oh wait, but there are probably safety concerns preventing that. You could also get professional childcare for your children to cover the day, but you probably don't want to pay the amount it costs. I am not sure why you don't have a friend or family member watch the kids for a day; few seem to be able to depend on…

You keep turning the discussion to teachers, but frankly, that's not germain to the initial comment in this thread, which simply stated that the costs of this pandemic to children may be much higher than we realize. No one has even argued for a specific policy like keeping schools open no matter the risks. But you seem unwilling to simply concede that this is an ongoing disaster for kids. I mean, remote learning has been a farce, particularly for young students whose parents can't work from home, are technologically or otherwise illiterate, or don't speak English. But I guess it's all our fault because we don't live near retired or underemployed friends or relatives who can take on childcare responsibilities for months on end?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#556

Post by TeeMassive »

ryanobjc wrote: post #528
refurb wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an impressive rant and makes sense if you ignore the fact that more and more money is being sucked up by the government that seems to be providing less and less in return. I mean San Francisco has a $1.1B budget for homelessness. That's a contribution of almost $1,300 for every man, woman and child resident of SF. And yet the problem is worse, not better. Maybe it's not a money problem but the approach that's…

You’re wrong about San Francisco having a $1.1B budget for homelessness. In fy2021-2022 the amount is $670M … over two years. SF spends 1/4 of the amount you accuse it of. Furthermore, it’s well known that other counties near and far send their homeless people here. So as a SF tax payer… I think you owe me many thanks for taking care of your homeless people.

https://hsh.sfgov.org/about/budget/

> The FY21-23 HSH budget leverages $1.2 billion over the next two years in federal, state, and local resources (including Prop C funds). In addition to HSH’s existing commitments

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#557

Post by TeeMassive »

> For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults.

Finally someone said it. This is where "follow the science" doesn't make any sense. Science can't and decide what is really important in life. Do we give nurses less work and grandma a few more years or we harm our children?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#558

Post by querez »

dogleash wrote: post #480

This article is a confidence trick. By making it about COVID, the affluent readers of the New York Times can pat themselves on the back as if they weren't failing the youth prior to quarantine measures. Of course they were. I've seen it. Everyone's seen it; even if they've chosen to believe they haven't. The secondary sources have to water it down like this article if they want to talk about it at all. And the primar…

Would you mind citing some of those primary sources so people who aren't in the know (like me) can educate themselves?

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#559

Post by onion2k »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #539
istjohn wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously tests are imperfect, but it's silly to dismiss them as useless. Standardized tests are the best tool we have to ensure our schools are providing all children quality educations regardless of economic or racial background or disabilities. Making education policy without measuring outcomes in a rigorous way is like doing science without running experiments. Children of priveleged families will always do fine.…

> Making education policy without measuring outcomes in a rigorous way is like doing science without running experiments. It's worse to present an experiment as objective without properly measuring its error bars. As I have pointed out, there are a million different factors that can influence performance on tests. Claiming that you are "measuring outcomes in a rigorous way" from these tests without putting in the tim…

As I have pointed out, there are a million different factors that can influence performance on tests.

For individuals, yes. But for the entire cohort not really - the results are being compared to previous years, so the error bars should be approximately the same. Children are, on average, the same as two, five or ten years ago, so the test outcomes should be about the same. The article suggests that all children are now doing worse on tests than previous years.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#560

Post by TeeMassive »

honkycat wrote: post #399

And what is going to happen? Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools? Hell, Anything? No. Nothing is ever done. Nothing ever happens except decay. The United States is spinning down its governmental duties. The pendulum will swing right again, and that will be the death blow. They will continue to gut public and infrastructure programs. All 3 branches will finally truly be a jobs program for the upper cl…

I don't know if it's good or bad but I see hear more and more parents wanting to contribute in group for handpicked tutors and teachers and they're not doing it for religious reasons. Problem is, the government doesn't want to give back the taxes or support that (even if they do support private schools).
Post reply on HN