231–240 of 320 posts
… in mice. Sorry - that was reflexive: “… in the US”. I don’t think there’s any great mystery here. Every few years, you guys elect a bunch of people for whom active sabotage of public education is a sine qua non to political gerrymandering strategies driven by the self-preservation instincts of lobbyists.
People are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go…
My wife is on a school board in a large district that is trying to cut spending. The problem is not really how much money they have and giving them more money doesn't help. The problem at least in our state is: Public schools are subsidizing charter schools Public schools have many legal requirements to provide services that charter schools don't have to deal with. Charter schools also have a lot of freedom to refuse…
I don't know what state you are in, and there are a number of them where the charter systems are absolute messes and have become fraud paradises (looking at you Florida), but other states things are much better.
Fo instance my kids are in charter schools in California. All charter schools here are required to have tiered lotteries to get in, and after siblings and teachers' kids, the first tier is always kids with an IEP (the problematic/expensive ones). And at my kids school we know one of the kids with a severe problems that the school has bent over backwards to provide the best environment for that little girl.
And every 4 years they have to re-apply for their charter, and one of the front-and-center numbers required for that is how many kids they kick out. And they got grilled on that (which our school passed with flying colors). The charters absolutely had to prove that they are doing things better than the local schools, and our school worked very hard to prove that (and had the numbers to do so). If they didn't, then their charter would have been cut (we heard about other schools that failed this grade).
So I am experiencing a well run charter school, inside a well policed system (California). If you are not, then make that one of the things you cast your vote on: regulations on where your school dollars flow to.
I will note that there is one important advantage that charter schools have: you have to make a choice to get into them. That means that the parents tend to be more involved in their kids' education (if only minority so), and so you get kids that are a bit more motivated to do well. This one area is unfair to the public schools.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much of the school closures are because of declining enrollment? https://www.bostonindicators.org/article-pages/2024/june/emp... https://www.bu.edu/articles/2025/public-school-enrollment-do...
Nearly nation wide enrollment at schools is down, and the funding methods for schools mostly are done on a per-student basis. So school budgets are getting smaller in absolute terms, so they have to get rid of a lot of the fixed spending (mainly schools). Unfortunately, people hate it when you close their local school, and fight tooth-and-nail against it, but almost never fight for the funding needed to keep those sc…
Much ink has been spilled in the comments already, but as a child of the 80s, computers were a class, and not a lifestyle. If I had gone through school with what's available today, I doubt I would have done as well as I did. Most things were handwritten, I learned cursive, and computer class was Oregon Trail and basic programming essentially. Looking back, I don't think Chromebooks, iPads and the like would have been…
As a 30-something, basic AI uses completely blow my mind. It has never been this easy to be curious, because there is a machine in my pocket that reduces the cost of finding answers to nearly zero. I can point my phone at a painting and dig as deep as I want into its subject, artist, movement and so on. It's a real world Pokédex.
Then there are countless well-made tutorials for every imaginable topic on YouTube, and more high-quality old-fashioned websites that Google cares to index.
Claude is really cool too. If you care to look at its output, you can see a fairly good translation of your thoughts into code. You can translate your projects from one language or framework to another. We used to read textbooks cover to cover. Now we get custom examples for any imaginable idea.
So why are these technologies failing our kids? Why are they so powerful in the hands of a curious person, yet making everyone dumber?
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Labor compensation in the U.S. is also extremely unequal, which pulls the average up in a way that isn't very informative as to this particular issue. The average starving PhD would be a much better and more knowledgeable teacher to high school students in the subject she took her PhD in, than the typical high school teacher with nothing more than an Education credential. Are you sure that you need to pay such high w…
Here in my state teachers in good districts start at $60,000 per year and see minimal increases due to length of service; after 20 years they might be making $75,000 per year. You ever done the math on living on $60k per year? Hard to do a lot besides support youself on that income. I note that surrounding states (even higher cost states) have lower salaries. Teachers get paid peanuts.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here in my state teachers in good districts start at $60,000 per year and see minimal increases due to length of service; after 20 years they might be making $75,000 per year. You ever done the math on living on $60k per year? Hard to do a lot besides support youself on that income. I note that surrounding states (even higher cost states) have lower salaries. Teachers get paid peanuts.
US teacher pay is near the top for OECD countries: https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/teachers-salaries.ht...
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The single variable that actually matters when it comes to school - and nothing else matters until this one is fulfilled: The quality of the peers who make up the student body. Or put another way: The quality and involvement of the average parent. A school can absorb an extremely small minority of "problematic" students if the rest of the student body is stellar, but that's about it. There is not a single thing any p…
If you ask boomers they'll be far more likely to tell you dad was out working 16 hours in the oil field / carpenter for the housing boom or something like that. Mom has no time for you either, she is busy with the 4th baby. Kid gets a nice belting for bad behavior and other than that, be back before the street lights come on for a dinner conversation and then left to your own devices before bed. I think if anything p…
People are talking about Covid, smartphones/screens, social media, and AI. No one has mentioned defunding public education yet. In Alaska, where I lived most of the last 20 years, education has been largely flat funded for about a decade now. Imagine running an organization in 2026 on that organization's 2016 budget. Schools have a bunch of obligations they have to spend on. Every time health care costs for staff go…
Funding per student is on the rise, or level on inflation-adjusted $ https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... The funding for dept of ed has _exploded_ after 2000 https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... At the same time, school scores started to sag after 2014 https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ushistory/results/scores/ There are highly politicized blogs which can discuss…
I'm not criticizing your take, although I suspect teachers might lose more than their lunch, just pointing out how terrible the plot is.
It's really really difficult to worry about school when your in a homeless shelter or living in a motel.
https://www.wtxl.com/thomasville/school-bus-dropoff-reveals-...
I do well now , but as a teenager I didn't give a shit about high school. If anything I wanted to graduate early, and get a job to ward off the next eviction.
We really need to go back to occupational training in high school. I should be able to graduate and earn enough to get an apartment. It's not like you can't get a degree in Midwestern Poetry later in life.