Your local teacher's union is likely supporting policies that would improve these problems. If they have a contract dispute or a strike, please show your support for them.
Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
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Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#12The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame…
That's why we need school choice, give the working poor the same opportunity to abandon the public schools like the wealthy have.
Did you miss the /s tag here?
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#13The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame…
So the solution is…not go to school, missing out on basically the main resource to defend yourself from oppression (education)?
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#14The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame…
I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too.
Wealthy people don't like to pay taxes which funds the public education
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#15The pandemic showed students that adults treat them and other adults as chattel. The response has been further dehumanization. The older generations who don't have school-age children have been continuously draining education in order to have lower property taxes. The wealthy parents sent their kids to private schools and try to defund public education, actively harming the children in their community. I don't blame…
That's why we need school choice, give the working poor the same opportunity to abandon the public schools like the wealthy have.
In other words, replace it with nothing. That doesn't help the working poor. If you mean another private option, they aren't going to shell out for a "discount" school over public schools, and nothing prevents them from trying.
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why we need school choice, give the working poor the same opportunity to abandon the public schools like the wealthy have.
False. Taking tax dollar funding away from public schools only exacerbates the issue. School choice is a scam to fund private Christian schools to brainwash the youth and maintain a conservative voter base
The cost per student in the US is higher than every country in the world (save Luxemburg if I recall correctly). The problem isn't a lack of money, the problem is the money is misused. Private schools are just better stewards of the students dollars.
I mean the teacher's unions have been screaming about smaller class sizes for decades, let's give it to them.
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#17- We're 20+ years into a gun crisis in schools, such that "school shootings" are so common as to no longer be major news and are now just a punchline to a joke. No politician in the nation has put forward any serious plan to address this issue, and the kids are hyper aware of this.
- There are no real mental health services for students, especially those with extreme mental health concerns. (and even if you as a child, or your own children, don't need those services, you'll be lumped in with other kids who desperately do need it)
- Schools themselves are chronically mismanaged, generally due to funding issues. (some still don't have Air Conditioning, despite rampant global warming. Some still don't have any ventilation, despite being on year-three of a global pandemic, etc)
- Teachers have some of the lowest wages of any white-collar profession. (average pay here is $55k/yr). Teachers are so underpaid, they often can't even afford basic housing in the school districts within which they teach.
- Because of the last point, some of the teachers still willing to tolerate all-of-the-above are not necessarily folks who should be teaching. Some districts are heavily using/abusing substitute teachers as in-fill, which reduces the quality (and staff wages) even further. (google: Florida Teacher Shortage, and their plans to use unqualified military staff, as some kind of insane stop-gap plan)
- School boards have become weaponized, such that right-wing-extremists are taking control of them via poorly-noticed elections, in an attempt to destroy public schooling and make life miserable for all teachers and students. (google: Ottawa Impact or Moms for Liberty, as some examples)
- Right-wing extremists have demonized teaching as a profession, actively operate and fund hate campaigns against all public schooling, (and libraries, apparently), and they openly issue death threats or terrorism threats to any teacher who is kind to students. (see "Libs Of TikTok" and related)
It is absolutely no shocker that kids who aren't forced to go, wouldn't want to go. Why would any reasonable person want to deal with all of this?
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too.
Wealthy people don't like to pay taxes which funds the public education
Not exactly a choice.
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#19What kind of child wouldn't want to get up at an unreasonable early hour, to go to a building designed with factory work in mind, to memorize debatably worthwhile information, in a suffocating environment, around other children that they may or may not get along with? It's so strange to think that they would want to instead learn online, when that's not only possible, but feasible.
Let's find someone/something to blame, and insist on shoveling massive sums of cash into a new football field. That will fix this horrible, horrible improvement to their personal lives.
Re: Why aren’t America’s students showing up?
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's unfair to say that wealthy parents send their kids to private schools as a way to actively defund public education. Parents are making this choice to give their kids a better education, and anyone with the same opportunity would do it too.
Wealthy people don't like to pay taxes which funds the public education
According to the 2020 IRS tax report, the top 1% of American earners pay 42% of all income taxes, the top 10% of earners pay 74%.
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p1304.pdf
In California, property tax revenue has been increasing steadily YoY... a $3.2Bn increase in 2020 alone.