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comes along bort posted:BAT are actually alright folks, even if that does sound a little doofy and some of their tactics self-negating. BAT as a group are good. I agree with much of what they're trying to do. They're making headway too, especially in New York. But I'm sure running for office as a write in without any funding is pretty futile.
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Oct 27, 2013 19:06
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Highspeeddub posted:
No, no, no, don't do this. You don't have to destroy any chance of winning out of a desire for keeping your hands clean. 
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Oct 27, 2013 19:37
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They just want to restore recess so Mrs. Williams can take it away from me again 
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Oct 27, 2013 20:12
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Is this just some union ploy for certain cities? I mean, if these are races the Ds are just going to take anyway, why not. That's the only time a left challenger isn't potentially destructive.
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Oct 27, 2013 20:57
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De Nomolos posted:Is this just some union ploy for certain cities? I mean, if these are races the Ds are just going to take anyway, why not. That's the only time a left challenger isn't potentially destructive. Surely there are reasons for ending teaching-to-the-test and charterization beyond "it's some union ploy for certain cities".
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Oct 27, 2013 22:32
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De Nomolos posted:Is this just some union ploy for certain cities? I mean, if these are races the Ds are just going to take anyway, why not. That's the only time a left challenger isn't potentially destructive. They do focus more on some states than others, but the BAT facebook group boasts 30,000 members nationwide. Whether all 30,000 are active is another issue entirely. BAT is just as fed up with Democrats as Republicans. Arne Duncan pushes CCSS on states and favors school choice. Barack Obama appointed Duncan Secretary of Education and Obama just Friday spoke at a new charter school in Chicago. 52 public schools were closed in Chicago in August, and they replaced them with charter schools. The teachers are even fed up with the NEA because the NEA endorses Common Core. Right now the group is working on getting information to parents about opting out of the state standardized tests. It is legal to opt out of standardized tests, but schools don't make that known. The movement is working well enough in some areas that state and local school board members are fighting back. When the inner circle started talking about write in campaigns for local elections, I assumed this was for school board positions. No idea they were thinking as big as governor.
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Oct 27, 2013 22:32
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De Nomolos posted:Is this just some union ploy for certain cities? I mean, if these are races the Ds are just going to take anyway, why not. That's the only time a left challenger isn't potentially destructive. Opposition to the school "reform" movement is most vocal and noticeable in major cities with pitched battles between the teachers unions and the administration, but it's also very prevalent in right wing communities with their typical handwringing about letting THE GOVERNMENT decide what should be taught via Common Core. Both sides have relatively common goals in this issue, so it wouldn't surprise me if some tea partiers are involved here.
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Oct 27, 2013 22:38
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Emanuel Collective posted:Both sides have relatively common goals in this issue, so it wouldn't surprise me if some tea partiers are involved here. One of the founders of BAT is a homeschooling mom who is active in the Tea Party. There is this common ground on the right and left and although I agree with what BAT is fighting against, it's forcing us to accept the right wing. One group of progressive teachers left BAT and formed their own group for that reason.
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Oct 27, 2013 22:48
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In some ways it falls in line with the rise of rightwing populism in Europe, many of the hard right parties have at least elements of left leaning policy, which makes sense because the Obama administration is deeply economically conservative which doesn't leave a lot of room left. It doesn't surprise me that Chicago is trying to eradicate public education either.
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Oct 27, 2013 23:14
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Highspeeddub posted:One of the founders of BAT is a homeschooling mom who is active in the Tea Party. There is this common ground on the right and left and although I agree with what BAT is fighting against, it's forcing us to accept the right wing. One group of progressive teachers left BAT and formed their own group for that reason. I'm probably about as close to a tea party conservative as you're going to get on these forums. From this list: quote:RESTORE RECESS PARTY- NEW YORK STATE- EDUCATION PROGRAM (Draft) The only ones I have any disagreement with are 5, 6, and 7. I don't disagree with the idea that testing can be used to evaluate teachers, but I can see why it is flawed as currently applied in many places. 6 is just stupid--you keep your core business (teaching and administration) in house and outsource everything else (food, maintenance, construction) to companies that can provide it at a lower cost. I disagree with 7 because at some point you have to be able to look at a school and say "this school is beyond saving and we need to start fresh." I suspect that my agreement with the others might come from different logic, but some of them just seem like common sense. Of course, any party platform needs to have a lot of "everyone can agree with this" items in it so that people have easy reasons for supporting it.
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Oct 27, 2013 23:26
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The biggest problem with No. 5 is that teachers are caught in a vicious cycle of teaching to a test so the students can do well on the test. High stakes standardized testing stifles real learning and the opportunity for teachers and students to do anything creative. High school Lit teachers are screaming at their administrators because they no longer can have their students read an entire novel, they are only allowed to read chapters from a novel, which is much like only engaging in foreplay with your wife or husband and calling that making love. This video does a very good job explaining why standardized testing is not a genuine measure of evaluating a teacher. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-18592185 Another problem with evaluations based on student tests is often not all grades take the tests every year, so teachers end up evaluated on test scores of the students when they were in a different classroom. How is that an accurate measure of how that teacher performs in the classroom? It isn't and shows how aligning teacher evaluations to test scores is fundamentally flawed. As for No 6. One local school district here outsources their busing to a private company. It costs the school district 8 times more to pay that private company to bus kids than it would if they owned their own buses and hired their own drivers and mechanics, and ran their own bus garage. Chartwells is the local cafeteria company of choice around here. I know for a fact it costs these school districts 5 times more to have Chartwells feed their kids than it would if they hired their own cooks and ran the cafeteria in-house. None of these for profit companies save school districts money. Providing the service at a lower cost is a joke, and one school district was severely ripped off by Chartwells when they were talked into building a geodesic dome greenhouse to grow produce for the cafeteria except that violates USDA guidelines for acceptable food vendors. The school district was slammed with a huge bill for the dome greenhouse and Chartwells shrugged their shoulders and said, "Who knew? Oh well." No. 7 is simple, fully fund public education and then schools wouldn't need saving.
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Oct 27, 2013 23:47
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StarMagician posted:I disagree with 7 because at some point you have to be able to look at a school and say "this school is beyond saving and we need to start fresh." I recognize this is off topic, but at what point does a school become "beyond saving?" Most people say that its when student performance sinks to an unacceptable level. Chicago's response to this has been an aggressive push for charter schools. It hasn't worked: Chicago Tribune posted:Mayor Rahm Emanuel and other city leaders have long heralded charter schools' innovative approach to education, but new research suggests many charters in Chicago are performing no better than traditional neighborhood schools and some are actually doing much worse. Now the schools the Tribune focuses on are owned by UNO, which the SEC is investigating for steering tens of millions in state/local grants to friends and family of UNO board members. Bad example, perhaps. But the UNO schools aren't alone in being just as bad or worse as the decrepit, understaffed, underfunded public schools they replaced.
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Oct 27, 2013 23:59
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Highspeeddub posted:The biggest problem with No. 5 is that teachers are caught in a vicious cycle of teaching to a test so the students can do well on the test. High stakes standardized testing stifles real learning and the opportunity for teachers and students to do anything creative. High school Lit teachers are screaming at their administrators because they no longer can have their students read an entire novel, they are only allowed to read chapters from a novel, which is much like only engaging in foreplay with your wife or husband and calling that making love. Oh, I agree that testing systems as implemented now are flawed (although not in all places). But that doesn't mean that merit-based pay is always a bad idea. The vast majority of people are going to agree with the following premises: 1. Some teachers are better than others 2. There has to be some objective method to distinguish which teachers are better than others 3. Better teachers should be paid more than worse teachers Based on the above, we've decided in most states that standardized tests are the best way to go. They aren't perfect, and they do encourage "teaching to the test" (which is still teaching -- if the tests are accurately evaluating knowledge and skills, students will still be learning), but they're better than nothing. People who advocate the complete removal of merit pay, school accountability and standardized testing are going to throw out a lot of babies with the bathwater. quote:As for No 6. One local school district here outsources their busing to a private company. It costs the school district 8 times more to pay that private company to bus kids than it would if they owned their own buses and hired their own drivers and mechanics, and ran their own bus garage. Chartwells is the local cafeteria company of choice around here. I know for a fact it costs these school districts 5 times more to have Chartwells feed their kids than it would if they hired their own cooks and ran the cafeteria in-house. None of these for profit companies save school districts money. Providing the service at a lower cost is a joke, and one school district was severely ripped off by Chartwells when they were talked into building a geodesic dome greenhouse to grow produce for the cafeteria except that violates USDA guidelines for acceptable food vendors. The school district was slammed with a huge bill for the dome greenhouse and Chartwells shrugged their shoulders and said, "Who knew? Oh well." Chartwells is an AWFUL company. That being said, the problem here is that the district agreed to a bad contract, not that the idea of contracting is itself flawed. It all depends on each district's finances and competencies. My school district growing up had many good experiences with contracting, and my university had some good and some bad (Chartwells) when it started. But opposing it outright is thoughtless and may wind up hurting some districts that could have gotten good deals. quote:No. 7 is simple, fully fund public education and then schools wouldn't need saving. Ok, I'll bite. What amount of money per student is needed in order to "fully fund" public education?
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Oct 28, 2013 00:25
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StarMagician posted:Ok, I'll bite. What amount of money per student is needed in order to "fully fund" public education? To start with have different school districts get the same amount of funding per student and have school district funding not tied to that districts property values. That more than anything else is the reason why so many inner city and poor neighborhood schools can be seen as "beyond saving".
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Oct 28, 2013 00:51
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Teaching to the test really isn't learning, it is remote memorization. There is a strong argument to be made that teaching to the test, by consuming teaching hours is making education actively worse. In addition, inner city schools have obvious costs that go along with the problems of the areas they are in, if anything inner-city probably need more money per student than suburban schools because they have to worry about safety and dealing with kids who have been dealt a harder place in life. If a kid's primary meals for the day are provided by the school, the school should be seen far more as a education and social service tool than just a place of learning. As far as evaluating teachers, do it qualitatively within the school itself, there will be school politics but ultimately it makes sense to do it that way than let state/federal politics decide which is being done at the moment. I rather a mediocre teach stick around than kick out a good teacher just because the state scores didn't line up. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 01:12
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StarMagician posted:
"Better than nothing" is a terrible way to justify an employee evaluation policy. This is a "God of the gaps" style argument.
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Oct 28, 2013 01:21
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A Winner is Jew posted:To start with have different school districts get the same amount of funding per student and have school district funding not tied to that districts property values. That more than anything else is the reason why so many inner city and poor neighborhood schools can be seen as "beyond saving".
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Oct 28, 2013 01:22
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StarMagician posted:Oh, I agree that testing systems as implemented now are flawed (although not in all places). But that doesn't mean that merit-based pay is always a bad idea. The vast majority of people are going to agree with the following premises: How about the amount of money the schools received before our soon to be ex Teachers have always received annual evaluations before the era of worthless high stakes standardized tests. This idea that bad teachers can hide in classrooms and not teach children is a fallacy pushed by people like Michelle Rhee who have a corporate reform agenda. Bear in mind teachers don't get to pick the curriculum, they don't write their own teaching objectives any longer because they have to use the state curriculum standards that they had no say in developing either and teach what the state tells them to teach. They get some leeway in being creative in how they present the curriculum, but not in the curriculum or the outcomes. Who is this "we" who decided standardized tests were the best way to evaluate teachers? Corporations who want to privatize public education for profit. Do you know how many students look at these standardized tests and bubble scantron sheets and think, "Not this bullshit again" and then proceed to just fill in any bubble they want because they aren't really interested in taking yet another standardized test, or they don't care? It happens more than you think. Teacher evaluations aren't the only thing staked to these tests, district funding is as well. Another way to strip funds from a school and make it even harder for them to maintain education standards. The standardized tests are anything but objective. How do you determine who is a better teacher? All teachers have to take professional classes and pass content area tests for their endorsements. Then they have to continue with their education and earn advanced degrees. Bad teachers just don't stay in the profession, they burn out and find another line of work. The point of teacher evaluations and merit pay is to punish all teachers by forcing them to be evaluated with a test that doesn't evaluate anything remotely related to curriculum students need to learn. Merit based pay is a terrible idea and another example of corporate deform of public education. I wish I knew which alternative universe these for-profit companies exist that save schools money by not overcharging and padding their contracts so they can fleece more money from the state and federal governments. It doesn't exist. All private contractors inflate their budgets knowing they won't get the full amount asked, but will still get more than their operating costs need. then they cut corners to maximize their profits even more. The for profit juvenile detention facility I used to work for in Idaho routinely fleeced Title 1 federal funds by charging for bogus health care premiums employees never received. Another fine example of for profit contracting that worked out perfectly - Edward Snowden. HUGE PUBES A PLUS fucked around with this message at 01:32 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 01:25
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Highspeeddub posted:Do you know how many students look at these standardized tests and bubble scantron sheets and think, "Not this bullshit again" and then proceed to just fill in any bubble they want because they aren't really interested in taking yet another standardized test, or they don't care? It happens more than you think.
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Oct 28, 2013 01:50
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DACK FAYDEN posted:I feel like a huge dork for asking this, but are there statistics for this out there? I was the freako kid who took testing very seriously and never did that and for the most part my friends didn't either, so while I certainly believe it happened I've never seen numbers and I can't really relate to stuff that I can't feel emotionally without numbers. You're not a huge dork, because this is something that could stand to have some research. I'm speaking from personal experience. I've had many students admit to me they just fill out any random bubble on the scantron sheet because they don't care about the test. I had a student challenge me one day on why he had to waste his time taking the test, because it wasn't the SAT so why did he have to take it, it didn't help him get into college. I've talked to other teachers who share the same experience. Kids don't care, and they get through the test as fast as they can just to get it over with. Bill Gates is the guy who I bet has done the research on this, because he's the one developing these student attentiveness biosensor bracelets for public schools. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/13/us-usa-education-gates-idUSBRE85C17Z20120613
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Oct 28, 2013 02:04
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Highspeeddub posted:Bill Gates is the guy who I bet has done the research on this, because he's the one developing these student attentiveness biosensor bracelets for public schools. Does he believe that students need to feel more like prisoners than a lot of them do already? 
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Oct 28, 2013 02:12
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Those stupid bracelets would be destroyed in a week.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:14
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A Winner is Jew posted:To start with have different school districts get the same amount of funding per student and have school district funding not tied to that districts property values. That more than anything else is the reason why so many inner city and poor neighborhood schools can be seen as "beyond saving". Ardennes posted:In addition, inner city schools have obvious costs that go along with the problems of the areas they are in, if anything inner-city probably need more money per student than suburban schools because they have to worry about safety and dealing with kids who have been dealt a harder place in life. If a kid's primary meals for the day are provided by the school, the school should be seen far more as a education and social service tool than just a place of learning. Highspeeddub posted:How about the amount of money the schools received before our soon to be ex I don't necessarily disagree with any of this, but none of you have answered my question. What amount per student do you think is needed in order to properly fund K-12 education? For example, an acceptable answer might be: "$10000 per student, plus perhaps an additional $1000 for special needs students and $2000 for students who are in low income or historically disadvantaged populations." Acceptable answers would not include "more," "as much as it takes," or "the amount we had before [insert budget cut here]." Ardennes posted:Teaching to the test really isn't learning, it is remote memorization. There is a strong argument to be made that teaching to the test, by consuming teaching hours is making education actively worse. This means the test is not well designed. And I just don't buy that teaching to the test doesn't actually teach the concepts: if you have a test that is 100 various math problems, for instance, you can't teach to that test without teaching the children how to do those math problems, or problems like it. For instance, take a look at this third-grade math test offered in Texas: http://www.tea.state.tx.us/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=25769805987&libID=25769805990 I don't see how you could rote-memorize for that test. You'd have to learn the underlying concepts in order to pass.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:17
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StarMagician posted:I don't necessarily disagree with any of this, but none of you have answered my question. What amount per student do you think is needed in order to properly fund K-12 education? For example, an acceptable answer might be: "$10000 per student, plus perhaps an additional $1000 for special needs students and $2000 for students who are in low income or historically disadvantaged populations." Acceptable answers would not include "more," "as much as it takes," or "the amount we had before [insert budget cut here]." There's no answer because there's no magic universal per pupil funding number. You're trying to reason something from a wholly flawed premise.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:19
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StarMagician posted:I don't see how you could rote-memorize for that test. You'd have to learn the underlying concepts in order to pass. It didn't mean I learned anything for the test, I just hammered out the answers and got to sit around bored as gently caress for two hours because not everyone knows the arcane bullshit behind standardized testing. Examples of "arcane bullshit": *Look at the next question and see if it answers the previous one *Look for "all of the above" and see if two of the answers are correct, if so it's all of the above *There are times where there's a "real" right answer and a "test" right answer *Know what answer the test wants, not what the real answer is *I learned to recognize these and put the "test" right answer, even though I would have loved to argue about the "real" right answer *Reading a crapload of books made the reading and writing portions of the easier for me, since I knew what "sounded" right and what didn't Notice how none of these are about what's actually on the test, but poo poo like this+me being in gifted classes meant I passed the standardized tested with flying colors, even though I didn't learn poo poo from them. In case it wasn't clear, I really loving hate standardized testing.  E: On a side note, since I was in gifted classes, sometimes I was taking the test over subjects two years out of date; I took geometry in middle school, and the standardized test that year was over algebra, so I had to dredge poo poo up from two years back for that test. I still passed with flying colors because I was good at standardized testing, but not everyone knows the tricks to pass. fade5 fucked around with this message at 02:39 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 02:26
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Lycus posted:I'm sometimes amazed that we still have well-funded schools in upper-class areas and badly-funded schools in poorer areas in the same state in the 21st century. Seems like a situation that we should've fixed by now. Everyone agrees that their kids education should be paid for, and their neighbors understand the value of local kids getting an education even when they have none. However no one is willing to pay for the kids of the people over there, because they aren't their kids and they aren't their neighbor's kids either. Then you've got the demands for local control of schools, both well meaning and sinister. I should have a say in how my schools are funded and what is taught. Maybe I want the local standards and funding to be higher than that shithole district next door, or maybe I want the local standards to not conflict with my fundamental religious belief that math is of the devil. Either way I sure as hell don't want some outsider jerk from [insert big city/rural area, state capital, or Washington D.C.] telling me how to raise my kids.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:31
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Hedera Helix posted:Does he believe that students need to feel more like prisoners than a lot of them do already? I could see a positive side of this, though. A large portion of the problem in education is a lack of engagement with the material - especially in subjects like history and literature, which inherently have the potential to be a lot more exciting than they are now. If these bracelets become a common tool, you might see a transition to a teaching style in these subjects that will actually engage the kids and increase their interest in these sorts of subjects.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:33
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StarMagician posted:I don't necessarily disagree with any of this, but none of you have answered my question. What amount per student do you think is needed in order to properly fund K-12 education? For example, an acceptable answer might be: "$10000 per student, plus perhaps an additional $1000 for special needs students and $2000 for students who are in low income or historically disadvantaged populations." Acceptable answers would not include "more," "as much as it takes," or "the amount we had before [insert budget cut here]." Yes, but there's more to a test than just putting some questions on paper or in a computer program and see if the kid can answer it or not. Is the test aligned with state curriculum outcomes? Are the curriculum standards skills appropriate for the grade being tested? This is big problem with Common Core. The standards are not age appropriate and do not take into consideration that students with different learning abilities, special needs students or gifted students who have different requirements are accomodated. A 7th grader with a reading learning disability and has appropriate goals listed in an IEP that require accommodations for his learning disability is still expected to take the same test every other 7th grader is supposed to take. This is a fact. Common Core requires all students regardless of learning disability or what is appropriate for their grade level must take the general education standardized test. This is why teachers are against these tests and Common Core, they wouldn't mind being evaluated on assessment scores if the tests were even remotely designed for what students need to actually learn and is appropriate for their grade level. As A Winner Is Jew stated, in Michigan per student tuition funds are based on property values. School districts in rich suburbs get more money than poorer rural districts and urban districts. About $470 per student was cut from the budget in 2011 to pay for the tax cuts Snyder gave to businesses. For some districts, that's enough of a cut to make it nearly impossible to stay open.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:39
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Highspeeddub posted:As for No 6. One local school district here outsources their busing to a private company. It costs the school district 8 times more to pay that private company to bus kids than it would if they owned their own buses and hired their own drivers and mechanics, and ran their own bus garage. Chartwells is the local cafeteria company of choice around here. I know for a fact it costs these school districts 5 times more to have Chartwells feed their kids than it would if they hired their own cooks and ran the cafeteria in-house. None of these for profit companies save school districts money. Providing the service at a lower cost is a joke, and one school district was severely ripped off by Chartwells when they were talked into building a geodesic dome greenhouse to grow produce for the cafeteria except that violates USDA guidelines for acceptable food vendors. The school district was slammed with a huge bill for the dome greenhouse and Chartwells shrugged their shoulders and said, "Who knew? Oh well." If the argument in favor of contracting is that the free market will use competition to provide the best service at the best price, the fact that such massively inept companies can stay in business seems to undermine that pretty heavily.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:41
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comes along bort posted:There's no answer because there's no magic universal per pupil funding number. You're trying to reason something from a wholly flawed premise. I just want to see the attempt. Narrow it down to whatever jurisdiction you want, but give me an actual number. I can't take arguments that schools are underfunded seriously until I see that the arguer knows a) how much funding schools actually receive and b) how much funding they should receive. Once those demands are articulated, with actual numbers, they are a lot easier for voters to evaluate and support. fade5 posted:Examples of "arcane bullshit": I bolded one of these elements because this is exactly what should happen and is the opposite of teaching to the test. The rest are common criticisms of all multiple choice testing, but in good tests they've been all but eliminated. Again, look at the example test I posted and show me where any of these exist. quote:Yes, but there's more to a test than just putting some questions on paper or in a computer program and see if the kid can answer it or not. Is the test aligned with state curriculum outcomes? Are the curriculum standards skills appropriate for the grade being tested? This is big problem with Common Core. The standards are not age appropriate and do not take into consideration that students with different learning abilities, special needs students or gifted students who have different requirements are accomodated. A 7th grader with a reading learning disability and has appropriate goals listed in an IEP that require accommodations for his learning disability is still expected to take the same test every other 7th grader is supposed to take. This is a fact. Common Core requires all students regardless of learning disability or what is appropriate for their grade level must take the general education standardized test. This is why teachers are against these tests and Common Core, they wouldn't mind being evaluated on assessment scores if the tests were even remotely designed for what students need to actually learn and is appropriate for their grade level. This is exactly why I don't like Common Core (and agree with the Bad rear end Teachers' objections to it). That being said, we do need to make efforts to "catch up" students with learning disabilities so that they're not perennially behind the other students.
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Oct 28, 2013 02:59
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StarMagician posted:I just want to see the attempt. Narrow it down to whatever jurisdiction you want, but give me an actual number. I can't take arguments that schools are underfunded seriously until I see that the arguer knows a) how much funding schools actually receive and b) how much funding they should receive. Once those demands are articulated, with actual numbers, they are a lot easier for voters to evaluate and support. Here's a story about San Antonio's Southside ISD thinking about cutting down to a four day school week to deal with budget cuts Also, here's a story about US education from this July, with some bullet points: • Spreading the costs: 87 percent of teachers have had to pay for classroom supplies using their own money; 86 percent have taken to fundraising efforts for classroom supplies — including soliciting help from parents • Prime targets: 67 percent of the teachers surveyed stated that they have seen programs cut or reduced at their schools in the last three years; as to which programs are most vulnerable to the cuts, 50 percent of the teachers stated that music programs had been cut, followed close behind by art classes (which was named as a target by 49 percent of the teachers) and theater (36 percent) • Location, location, location: Schools in the Western part of the country seem to be feeling the budget pinch more, with 80 percent of teachers in that region reporting cutbacks in programs over the last three years, versus 60 percent of their counterparts in other parts of the U.S. Education in Texas is already chronically underfunded, and our Governor Rick Perry decided to get his "balanced budget" by cutting more loving money out of education, because short term gains for long term problems down the road is the Republican way! To answer your question, whatever we're spending on education is not enough, education can always use a budget increase, since it's literally the education of the next generation of Americans. fade5 fucked around with this message at 03:29 on Oct 28, 2013 |
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Oct 28, 2013 03:24
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StarMagician posted:I just want to see the attempt. Narrow it down to whatever jurisdiction you want, but give me an actual number. I can't take arguments that schools are underfunded seriously until I see that the arguer knows a) how much funding schools actually receive and b) how much funding they should receive. Once those demands are articulated, with actual numbers, they are a lot easier for voters to evaluate and support. You're still coming at this with the wrong idea. Funding is only one aspect of a complex system and citing this number or that number as the threshold at which we consider education to be "worth it" or "adequate" doesn't work. At any rate the $10k figure you threw out earlier as a guess is a little over half of what the total per-pupil spending is in dirt poor rural districts among the lowest-spending states, to give you an idea of what merely inadequate education costs, though that's probably itself an outdated amount.
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Oct 28, 2013 03:56
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fade5 posted:To answer your question, whatever we're spending on education is not enough, education can always use a budget increase, since it's literally the education of the next generation of Americans. If you're successful, at some point we WILL be spending enough on education. How much is enough? Give me an upper bound here. For instance, my school district was able to give a quality education to anyone who wanted one. It wasn't perfect, but it was not at all inadequate. We produced world class scholars, dropouts, and everyone in between, and every student had a decent opportunity for any of those outcomes. Our gifted programs and extracurriculars were not the best in the region, but they were competitive. The district's total outlays in 2013 were $350 million, and 40,000 students were enrolled. That's an average expenditure of $8750 per student. If the school board asked for more, I would probably vote no. I'm not arguing that many schools aren't adequately funded, but if all of your arguments are reducible to "more money more money MORE money MORE MONEY MORE MONEY" don't be surprised when the public stops taking you seriously. Figure out how much money you need, campaign on that amount and declare victory when you've got it. If it turns out afterward that public schools still aren't fixed, then perhaps money wasn't the problem in the first place.
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Oct 28, 2013 05:02
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StarMagician posted:If you're successful, at some point we WILL be spending enough on education. How much is enough? Give me an upper bound here. The problem is that richer schools are both more successful and require the least amount of money, so if you ask for more than that people just say "oh no we're doing fine with $X from that school down the road". The reason richer schools require less money is that infrastructure and overhead are already paid for (by this I mean everything from the school building itself to things like computers to just enough teachers for an adequate teacher:student ratio), whereas with poor schools they have to develop that infrastructure from scratch.
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Oct 28, 2013 05:06
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computer parts posted:The problem is that richer schools are both more successful and require the least amount of money, so if you ask for more than that people just say "oh no we're doing fine with $X from that school down the road". I agree with this, but even in rich areas (my district was big enough to encompass a lot of different types of areas, but I'd say it ranged mostly between working and professional class) most of that has to be financed by debt. My numbers included debt service and other financial instruments, which took up roughly 25% of the overall spending. Another reason is that richer areas will have parents who are more invested in their childrens' education, making the overall job easier on the teachers. I don't mean to use this as a comparison to poorer districts. I understand that what works in one area will not necessarily work in another. But a very effective argument for increased school spending would go as follows: "X district only spends this much, while Y district spends THIS much and serves a comparable population. Their outcomes are a lot better, so we should be spending as much as they do." These things are not at all impossible to quantify, and I want to see advocates for increased school spending make an attempt. Any permutation of "things suck now" and "evil budget cuts" and "MORE" is not a complete answer.
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Oct 28, 2013 05:27
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StarMagician posted:These things are not at all impossible to quantify, and I want to see advocates for increased school spending make an attempt. Any permutation of "things suck now" and "evil budget cuts" and "MORE" is not a complete answer. OK, you go first. How much is sufficient in literally every case?
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Oct 28, 2013 05:38
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StarMagician posted:For instance, my school district was able to give a quality education to anyone who wanted one. It wasn't perfect, but it was not at all inadequate. We produced world class scholars, dropouts, and everyone in between, and every student had a decent opportunity for any of those outcomes. Our gifted programs and extracurriculars were not the best in the region, but they were competitive. The district's total outlays in 2013 were $350 million, and 40,000 students were enrolled. That's an average expenditure of $8750 per student. If the school board asked for more, I would probably vote no. Yes, it's pretty easy to provide an education to a motivated student who believes education has value and will help them in life. Congratulations. How about those kids who didn't want it or didn't know they wanted it until it's too late? Teenagers and children make terrible choices, and the fact that a handful of them happen to both want an education and have enough support and talent to get it doesn't mean the system works and nothing should be changed. The school district I graduated from has a budget of about $1 billion and spends around $8k per student. That doesn't mean anything though because it all depends on which school you got to in that district. Maybe you'll get into the magnet program and have access to a fantastic educational buffet. Then again maybe you'll go to one of the schools named after a Confederate General and have the wonderful opportunity to educationally tread water, if you're lucky. No one wants to raise the budget because it's already a billion and gently caress it, that's a big number. Why can't these dumb kids and teachers not suck so much when we're throwing so much money at them? Gotta be fiscally responsible and austere with the future work force and citizenry. I mean some kids turn out OK, so the rest must just not want it. Asking for the magic budgetary number is looking at the situation from the wrong angle. It's not a bunch of figures that just need to be properly arranged so that it all works out. Some schools are in a good situation, some are in a bad situation. Looking at the budget numbers for the district isn't going to tell you poo poo about that. My old school district had some of the best schools in the state and some of the worst. The great schools sure ain't helping the kids stuck at the poo poo schools, despite the budgetary numbers lining up for both.
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Oct 28, 2013 05:42
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The sufficient amount is whatever it takes to get a successful education system. Our goal should be educating kids, not having low budgets.
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Oct 28, 2013 06:44
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fade5 posted:Alright, here's your loving numbers: Yeah, education in Texas is hosed. Mayor Julian Castro may generally be an establishment Democrat on a lot of issues, but he's remained consistently popular in San Antonio because he's been trying to get schools open despite the state leadership trying to drain all the money and services away. The highschool in my home town had exposed asbestos on the ceiling; they finally got a loan from the government to build a new one but couldn't afford to build roads to the new school as well so it was serviced by gravel roads in the middle of rural Texas farmland. It was infested with field mice from the farms within a month but the district can't afford to hire anyone to get rid of them.
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Oct 28, 2013 07:35
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Star magician, how much should we spend per state department employee to bring about world peace? Just give me a number to work with and then I'll be willing to listen to your other opinions on foreign policy.
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Oct 28, 2013 09:21
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