Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021 • Hacker News Board

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

#541

Post by Thorentis » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

professoretc wrote: post #114

analog31 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing devils advocate for a moment, as grading works right now, a kid can quickly dig themselves into a hole that they have no realistic way to get out of, e.g., by utterly bombing on an exam or missing a few assignments early in the semester. The motivation for that kid to progress any further is zero, yet they are imprisoned in the classroom for the duration of the semester. This hits very close to home for me, a…

> a kid can quickly dig themselves into a hole that they have no > realistic way to get out of, e.g., by utterly bombing on an exam > or missing a few assignments early in the semester. You've pretty much hit the nail on the head. The authors of _Grading For Equity_ spoke at my school and the reasoning they gave for eliminating 0-grading (i.e., not using 0 as the lowest possible grade) was because it's basically impo…

If 50% is a passing grade, and a student neither mastered the topic at the beginning or the end, they would still pass. A better solution is to weight the assignments and exams at the end much higher, to give a students a chance to prove their knowledge, while still failing those who learned nothing.

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

#542

Post by pianoben » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 6:52 AM UTC

lettergram wrote: post #403

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…

School choice would go a long way and breakup the teachers unions (through school choice). School choice effectively allows increased wages for good teachers and yes there's competition so you'll have lower end schools as well. However, it'll be a rising ship, which raises all boats IMO. You can also audit the schools and shutdown poorly run ones, etc.

You know what would go a long way towards increasing the effectiveness of schools?

...funding them, equitably. Simple as that. Public school funding is derived from local property taxes, so rich areas have good schools and poor areas are just boned.

Invest in schools and good education results. Look at the States in the 60s and 70s! California was #1 in the nation. Prop 13 passes, capping property taxes (and thus school funding), and now it's at the bottom of the heap. It's not hard to draw the line between inputs and outputs here.

Vouchers will only further weaken our already-starved public education system.

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

#543

Post by thebigman433 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:04 AM UTC

Bostonian wrote: post #173

Bostonian wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We need more teachers and smaller classes." That would cost more, and reading the blog makes me want to send less money to the public schools.

For some reason my comment was downvoted. Does the system portrayed sound like one that is using resources efficiently to do important things? In some respects the school may doing harm, teaching students that they can be late and miss assignments without consequences. In the private sector they would be fired.

Its probably because obviously not all districts are like this, and its likely that the author's entire school isnt even like this. The blog points out small parts of a single school district in the entire country.

Giving struggling schools less money when they require larger and more diverse funding almost definitely isnt the answer. The average public school teacher still spends a huge amount of money every year to buy stuff for their class to use, and we expect them to continually do that throughout their career.

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

#544

Post by thebigman433 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:09 AM UTC

vl wrote: post #540

mindvirus wrote: post #64

One of the most radical beliefs I have is we should get rid of private schools, because it lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed. Of course I say this as I seriously consider sending my kids to a private school because of articles like this.

And my belief is that we should have educational vouchers that cover the cost of public schools. So parents can choose to send children to public school and apply voucher there, or to spend it as private school. Public schools with low sign-up rate are closed. Trust me, all schools will be reasonably good in the few years.

And where do you send kids after schools are forced to close? Private schools will raise their rates past what vouchers cover, and the poor will be continually left behind while the rich talk about how great choice is.

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

#545

Post by thebigman433 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:12 AM UTC

kart23 wrote: post #446

kyboren wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That trope needs to die. California's schools are not underfunded. California spends a record amount on education[0], over $18k per child. "Reflecting the changes to Proposition 98 funding levels noted above, total K-12 per-pupil expenditures from all sources are projected to be $18,837 in 2020-21 and $18,000 in 2021-22—the highest levels ever (K-12 Education Spending Per Pupil). The decrease between 2020-21 and 2021…

Makes private school look like a good deal. I seriously didn't know it was that high.

The money isnt evenly distributed at all. Plus, private schools in areas that actually spend 18k/student will cost you more than 18k on their own. Most in the Bay are over 20k now

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

#546

Post by pjerem » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:13 AM UTC

pdonis wrote: post #529

tw04 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well right, because they can kick out students who are disruptive and make them the public school systems problem. When the public school system becomes insolvent, what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education? We hope someone else has a solution? Vouchers are a great way to permanently cement the cradle to prison cycle.

> what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education? You want the brutal truth? Yes, that's exactly the solution. Want an education? Learn to behave in class. And note that this is the only workable answer even in public school systems that aren't insolvent. No amount of money can educate a kid who refuses to be educated.

> Learn to behave in class.

Who’s the job to teach those kids how to behave in class ? Their parents ? And what do you do if their parents don’t care (which is the common case with those kids) ? What do you do if the student has undiagnosed mental illness ? Entire generations of misbehaved children were in fact suffering ADHD. How do you manage a misbehaving children that is bullied every single morning when he comes to school ?

Not educating a kid is ruining its life and, since you speak with « brutal truth », yeah, just sentence those students to jail for life already, at least they’ll not have to struggle with hunger and homelessness during years.

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

#547

Post by quadrifoliate » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:14 AM UTC

paulddraper wrote: post #498

quadrifoliate wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would someone just starting their career in 2021 in the Chicago area get defined-benefit pension plans? Also, does a new teacher get as much as a new software developer? The $80k/year numbers that I keep seeing thrown around often apply to teachers with 20 or more years of experience, but software developers that level of experience make a lot more. In my state, older teachers get these, but newer teachers including…

> teacher > software developers Those are very different jobs, with very different skill sets. I'm not sure how much you can infer about one from the other.

> I'm not sure how much you can infer about one from the other.

You can certainly infer how much a largely capitalist society values each skill set at this point in time. The GP is claiming that "suburban Chicago teachers make as much as Chicago-area software developers do", presumably implying that capitalist society in the suburban Chicago area values the labor of teachers and software developers equally.

This is a claim that I want to understand better, since I don't think it reflects the statistical reality. Typically, such claims cherry-pick tenured teachers with 15+ years of experience, and compare their wage with the average software developer wage, which is itself a very unclear number – for example, a lot of developers go on to be managers in 15+ years whereas teachers largely remain teachers.

Glad to be wrong on this though, and might consider moving to an egalitarian society like suburban Chicago.

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

#548

Post by bruce511 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:20 AM UTC

mlyle wrote: post #487

tw04 wrote: post #468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well right, because they can kick out students who are disruptive and make them the public school systems problem. When the public school system becomes insolvent, what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education? We hope someone else has a solution? Vouchers are a great way to permanently cement the cradle to prison cycle.

Perhaps any voucher system could be calibrated to: A) allow some more students to go to private schools by providing a fraction of what would be spent on them, and B) increase remaining resources per-pupil in the public school system. Of course, it still takes thought to make sure that the public schools improve in this scenario, because they will also be fighting an adverse-selection headwind of being stuck with stu…

I'm not sure your math works. If the goal of vouchers is to take the total education budget, divide it by the number of students, then disperse the pot equally.

In other words is it simply a case of $10 000 per child per year, so here's a voucher for 10k, go wherever you like?

There are no extra resources here for underperforming schools - in fact there are likely fewer resources. Public shools won't get smaller though, they'll just merge together to create fewer schools, and the bad teachers will go away.

And perhaps therein lies the root of the resistance to vouchers. It starts to measure school, and by extension, teacher quality. And that's not a rabbit hole teacher unions want to go down.

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

#549

Post by dbt00 » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:21 AM UTC

throwaway894345 wrote: post #472

brightball wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this drives the push for things like vouchers. I’m lucky to be able to send my kids to a good private school. We chose it after a tour and discussion with the headmaster about exactly how it operates. The teachers as a group research and plan curriculum. They coordinate across grade levels and determine how to roll out changes in the most effective way possible for students and parents as well. They rolled…

> Yet for some reason in the US this is a political hot button, which doesn’t make any sense to me. I share in your bafflement. Charitably, perhaps they reason that parents will pick schools that are worse on average than public schools, but I suspect it is more of a “equality demands poor schooling regardless of class” with a side of “the state gets to determine the values your child is taught”.

The problem isn't what school the parents pick, it's that the voucher schools cherry pick high scoring kids to hold up stats and aren't accountable to the state for the education the state is paying for.

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

#550

Post by Jare » Sun, Jun 20, 2021, 7:25 AM UTC

hypnoscripto wrote: post #533

bnj wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that by saving money people can leave the profession sooner or at least move to a school with more favorable working conditions? If so, maybe you’ve hit on a kernel of truth: we can’t risk paying teachers enough that they’d have the financial security to leave a bad work situation.

I mean that teachers would have a credible threat of leaving and hopefully administrations and school boards would respond to the threat by improving conditions.

High salaries means more people looking to get in, so it's not like administrators would risk running out of teachers.

(I'm all for financially rewarding good teachers, but because their work is incredibly valuable. It's just ab incredibly hard context in which to separate the good and the bad without creating perverse incentives)