161–170 of 320 posts
The level is so low in my local elementary school that the single track math class is still doing addition within 20 for first grade.
The funny thing is that the state standard actually measure 2 and 3 digit addition for K and 1st graders, and proficiency at that level would be p75 for a 1st grader. So why is the actual class teaching level at p<50?
I'll throw in my own $1.50 , inflation and all. There's definitely loads of money in "education". But the actual teachers arent seeing it. No, its in "special interest programs", state/federal compliance, loads of tests, and ordained material from "preferred creators" (cough, pearson etm.) We can pay teachers better, sure. But there's lots of areas to "pay better". Small classes. 12-17 students. Budget for class reso…
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Buddy you've really lost the plot here. Privatization or lack thereof has nothing to do with mismanagement of employee retirement benefits. Both public and private employers can set up defined-benefit or defined-contribution retirement plans. Defined benefit pension plans create a huge risk for both private and public schools because current operating funds intended for educating students might have to be diverted to…
Ok, so why privatize?
Let's see Common Core was released in 2010 and by 2014-2015 most states had implemented it. Lets do the math, 2026 - 13 = 2013. Hmmm... You can say funding all you want but in the same 13 years of Common Core funding per student has increased by 50%.
It leads to K-shaped education where parents who recognize the deficiency of public education simply teach their kids math themselves or hire private tutors. Public education used to be a force for equality of knowledge in the country. Now it perversely does the opposite, all in the name of education!
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My non-controversial theory: It's all the attention-span-shortening stuff. - tech apps starting with infinite scroll (facebook, 9gag, Instagram, etc.) - media/tech shortened content: shorter tv shows, short video content, etc. (Tiktok is the "state of the art" of those 2 trends pushed to the max) Specifically, we're getting more & more addicted to things that increase the dopamine spikes frequency, making it increasi…
Absolutely, we are feeding kids so much attention-span killing things. Even as an adult I'm having hard time with YouTube shorts, and i cannot imagine a kids brain having the ways to deal with all that.
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We don't have any NAEP long-term test results for years between 2012 and 2020, because they were canceled due to budget cuts[1], so we can't use the linked data to determine whether the decline started before or during COVID. We do have the NAEP main series test results[2]. At a first glance at the math results[3][4], it appears they peaked in 2013, then fluctuated through 2019, then dropped significantly in 2022 and…
Could we look at average SAT scores by year as a proxy? It's not a great metric because not all students take the SAT but I think there's some correlation. https://blog.prepscholar.com/average-sat-scores-over-time
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google sez: "Inflation-adjusted public school funding per student in the United States has increased significantly over the long term, with a roughly 34% increase in inflation-adjusted revenue per student over the last two decades alone. Looking at a broader historical view, inflation-adjusted spending per student has risen by over 200% since the 1960s."
This is always a common rebuttal but I used to work in education and believe me there was not a bunch of new money coming in. Quite the opposite. Maybe the data shows funding going up but that money is not making it to the students.
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Or look at corporations + elites constantly attacking children for the last 40 years (pushing school vouchers, school choices, attacking teacher unions, politicizing school boards). Who do you think suffers when elites attack public education? It's always the children. Fun fact: Silicon Valley elites are big proponents of school vouchers because, like their hatred of American labor, they also hate public schools and…
Internet commenters try to get me to hate lots of people for lots of reasons, but "Parents trying to send their kid to a school that fits their kid's needs" seems like such a hard sell. Like, I get the desire in a hypothetical, that you hope that people in power would use their power to make public schools better if their kids were forced to go there. But in reality, the actually powerful can just pay for private sch…
If enough people use the voucher system it basically forces the per student spending to get closer to a purely egalitarian spending per student, with the result that public schools have to spend about the same amount on special ed kids as the voucher kids get (in the extreme, that's all the students they're left with). While this is objectively fairer in my opinion, it's viewed as an entitlement that the special ed kids can take more money at the expense of everyone else.
Obviously though this has to be carefully framed to sell it properly. Very few are going to knowingly sign up to lose funding for their own student to help some other student who is already getting 3x the money as them, so instead it's framed as some sort of evil capitalist agenda against public schools.
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> Funding per student is on the rise, or level on inflation-adjusted $ That's at the state level. But that doesn't account for the explosion in admin salaries and positions. The actual money a district spends on each student has been going down every year. Those funds are going more towards admin activities. > I got ahold of all the teachers I knew and asked them what impact it would have, and their response was most…
Student/teacher ratios have gone down, not up over the last few decades. This isn't a lack of funding. Teachers are put in an impossible position with students who come from homes where the parents don't do their proper jobs. It's never been easier to be a neglectful parent. Your child will be entertained non-stop by an iPad and a video game system. They won't get bored and bother you. You can send them to their room…
And I'm a former high school teacher and my wife is a current high school teacher so I've experienced all of this first-hand.