[Dan]

There are a lot of issues with public education. Lack of money is a huge one. Telling teachers what they can teach kids based on a religious belief in a public school is another. Making it so schools lose funding if they don't meet a certain graduation rate is another. NCLB is a huge mistake.

Another thing is, there are a lot of people who would make great teachers who can't get into the programs..and there are a lot of teachers who shouldn't be teachers who are.

Teachers should get paid more, and despite what people say, they don't get overpaid. Yes, some teachers get paid well, but you have to remember that they don't get paid overtime. Let's say they work from 7:30-3:30, but stay at the school till 6 or 7. They don't get paid for that. Doing grading over the weekend? Free time.

They have a much harder job than people who aren't teachers realize. Raising your own kids is hard, but imagine trying to teach 20-35 different kids, 2-6 times a day, 5 days a week? And then imagine that you have to teach kids whose parents don't understand that they are actually the ones who need to make rules, and be strict? And then imagine that a lot of kids come from single parent homes, or dysfunctional homes, or have emotional issues that you're not really prepared to handle?

There isn't a lot of upwardly increases in teacher salaries either.

It is a political issue, but it's not a "Republican" or "Democratic" issue.

I'm not saying this because my mom is a teacher (as is one of my uncles, two of my aunts and my sister in law..and I hope to be one)..but because it seems that a lot of people who aren't in the profession seem to know whats best for it. It's whats gotten the schools into the mess they're in now.

[blazerboy30]

Some of you crack me up...

Maxiep comes on the thread and provides concrete examples, and the rest of you try to argue against him with absolutely no quantitative data. No, your opinions do not count as quantitative data. It is the standard baseless garbage that many people love throwing out there: complaining about issues with no real solutions.

But you're right. It can all be solved by throwing more money at the situation. For example, public schools are given more money-per-child for students with disabilities or learning disorders. So, now schools claiming false numbers of these students in order for the state to throw more money to the school. I've seen it happen while being on the school-board for multiple schools. Yeah, that sounds like an efficient system that will only get better with more money.

The unions ARE one of the biggest problems. It is very difficult to incentivise high performance from union members, and that is largely what our school system needs.

[maxiep]

Originally Posted by hoojacks

Are you serious? The average inner city student is crammed with 60+ of his classmates in one classroom where underpaid teachers attempt to get them under control to teach them out of outdated textbooks. Private schools are for the wealthy. If everyone was wealthy, we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Yep, don't let the facts get in the way of a good argument. The data is a bit old, but it's current enough to give you an idea of the problem we face:

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/rev_exp_02/

In 2001-02, the 50 states and the District of Columbia spent an average of $7,734 in current expenditures for every pupil in membership (table 5). This represents a 4.9 percent increase in current expenditures per student from the previous school year ($7,376 in unadjusted dollars).

The median of the state per pupil expenditures was $7,380, indicating that one-half of all states educated students at a cost of less than $7,380 per student. Four states—New Jersey ($11,793), New York ($11,218), Connecticut ($10,577), and Massachusetts ($10,232)—expended more than $10,000 per pupil. The District of Columbia , which comprises a single urban district, spent $12,102 per pupil. Only one state, Utah, had expenditures of less than $5,000 for each pupil in membership ($4,900).

On average, for every student in 2001-02, about $4,755 was spent for instructional services. Expenditures per pupil for instruction ranged from $3,197 in Utah to $7,660 in New York. Support Services expenditures per pupil were highest in the District of Columbia ($5,726) and New Jersey ($4,454) and lowest in Tennessee ($1,789), Mississippi ($1,781) and Utah ($1,435). Expenditures per pupil for noninstructional services such as food services were $322 for the nation.

Again, lets focus on "support services expenditures"; that's the killer. I'm all for textbooks and smaller class sizes, but when only 61.5% is going to the teachers and textbooks, then I think there's room for improvement. BTW, you'll note the highest "support services expenditures" are in the areas where unions have taken the deepest hold.

Originally Posted by hoojacks

Things like union and tenure are kept around because schools are so drastically underfunded and teachers would prefer to make more than someone at McDonalds. The teachers are burnt out because they have to teach 50 students because schools are being shut down and the rest are severely overcrowded.

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2004/rev_exp_02/table_05.asp

Again, if you want to aleviate that problem, deal with the bureaucracy. More money doesn't solve it. Spending the money smarter does. Any company that didn't have to pay rent (real estate is typically the second largest expenditure on an income statement) yet spent over 1/3 of its revenue on overhead wouldn't be in business very long. And I think we can all agree that we'd like the product this business puts out to be better. Move it up to 80-85% and then I'll say the money is being used efficiently.

Originally Posted by hoojacks

I never implied to just throw money at it. Of course there's a plan, it involves a different president's policies that aren't No Child Left Behind.

You once again offer no specifics but feel free to offer a negative. "Change we can believe in", perhaps?

Originally Posted by hoojacks

Oh, it's the unions. Of course. Why didn't I think of that before?

Tell me, if we abolished teacher's unions and faculty tenure, would that open new schools, hire better teachers and reduce class size? I can't see how someone can look at a floundering system and then look at its list of problems and completely blank over "severely underfunded" while pointing the finger at the people who are the second most affected by the underfunding, the teachers.

It is the unions. It's the barriers to entry that is put up by teacher unions that keep people that want to teach out. It's the administrative offices that don't directly contribute to teaching students that eat over one out of three educational dollars that contribute to it. It's those teachers who only work hard until they get the guarantee of lifetime employment.

Teaching is mostly about passion. Sure, you have to be qualified, but pretty much any reasonably trained person can teach through the secondary level. After all, how did we manage to learn anything when our teachers weren't certified? Teaching was never meant to be a lifetime career for most--it's too hard. But we treat it the same way we treat a clerk at the IRS. The kind of passion it takes to be an exceptional teacher means the vast majority can't keep it up for more than 5-10 years.

If you want a solution, look at Teach For America. It's about getting smart kids who care into communities to teach. It's one of the most successful non-profits in the country for two reasons. First, it's an idea that makes so much sense of course it's going to be successful. Second, compared to the lifetime burnouts, of course the young smart kids with passion are going to look good.

Originally Posted by hoojacks

Public schools simply can't afford to hire decent teachers anymore. Once in a while a gem will come around, but on the whole, being a public school teacher has got to be one of the most underpaid positions in American society.

See, the numbers put the lie to your supposition. There's enough money; it's just not efficiently used. Whether or not teachers are underpaid is subject to debate--some are underpaid and some are overpaid.

Originally Posted by hoojacks

On a personal note, when I was a freshman in high school, my math teacher was a nice Chinese man named Mr. Liu. Mr. Liu spoke maybe 10 words of English. He wanted us to do 6 hours (!) of math homework a night because that's what they did where he was from (communist China.)

That sounds like a great teacher to me. A teacher with high expectations? Fantastic. Remember, that teacher had to go through that six hours of homework. We need more people like him.

Originally Posted by hoojacks

I have endless stories of terrible teachers. My classes were 50+ students in tiny classrooms. I can safely say I learned one thing in public school. Yes. One. True story, when I got to college, the very first class I took (US History 101 with Dr. Mullen) I almost cried I was so happy. I couldn't believe that there were teachers that weren't incompetent boobs.

May I ask which school district you attended? I bet you had plenty of administration who were in a really nice building.

We all have stories of terrible teachers. And the worst part is that most of them can't be fired. I just find it funny how you categorically state that teachers are underpaid and underappreciated, yet you believe them all to be "incompetent boobs".

[maxiep]

Originally Posted by Dornado

I'm sure you enjoy weekends... doesn't make much sense to be anti-union.

Unless you think the best way to attract quality teachers to a position is to make it low paying (even lower, as it were) and totally lacking in benefits or job security....

But right, exactly, teachers unions are the problem... employers should have rights, employees shouldn't, brilliant.

Unions once served a valuable role in society. I'm convinced without them, this country would have had a workers' revolution of some sort in the late 19th/early 20th century. But like the buggy whip, their time has passed and their utility has been diminished.

As for when they should be used, unions are fine when they're putting out products like cars, steel or food products. They're not so good when their product is children, because a union puts the welfare of its members above that of the product.

As for me, I believe that students should take first priority, but you keep putting them behind the faculty and the administration. That's what's happening now, and it seems to be working like a charm.

If you want to attract teachers, drop some of the ridiculous requirements that serve as nothing more than a barrier to entry for those that just want to teach. Have the ability to fire those really bad teachers we've all encountered. Take some of those cushy district jobs, and put that money back in the classroom or just move those people back to teaching.

As for me, I work in investment banking--what's a weekend?

[maxiep]

Originally Posted by crandc

If money has nothing to do with it, why don't rich families put their kids in poor neighborhood schools?

Because they don't live in poor neighborhoods. We tried bussing once before, and it didn't work.

Also, please don't pretend that inner-city neighborhoods receive less money than the suburbs. They don't.

Originally Posted by crandc

There are schools with textbooks that are years out of date, leaking roofs, no computers. Science, art, music are all but gone, sometimes totally gone. Not the only issue of course; kids come to school without proper food and with rotting teeth, unable to sleep properly in crowded noisy neighborhoods. New studies have shown stress levels of poor neighborhoods impair brain development.

And there are schools with none of those problems, but it sure sounds like a great bumper sticker. BTW, my wife works for a company that takes over defunct Head Start programs and turns them around and puts them back on their feet. The overwhelming reason those Head Start programs fail? Financial malfeasance.

Use the money they have more efficiently, then come back and ask for more funds.

Originally Posted by crandc

So no, just throwing money is not the solution; public schools reflect problems of society. But get rid of unions so teachers get paid even less? Force memorization and regurgitation instead of learning to critically think and write coherent English?

You have to learn to walk before you can run. Forced memorization and regurgitation are part and parcel of learning to critically think and learning how to write coherent English. What's wrong with learning grammar and multiplication tables?

And I want to get rid of the unions so the students are put first. But if you want to put them behind the teachers and the administration, that's your right. On that issue we just disagree.

[mook]

if you're as bored as I am about the old re-hash of funding education, here's a really interesting article about a charter school in New York that plans on paying teachers $125,000. makes a ton of sense to me:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/ny...+school&st=nyt

think about it. what made the most lasting impact on your own education? was it the principal or counselors? the standardized tests? the access to computers? the ability to take German? was it the class with only 15 students and one incompetent teacher?

or was it the half dozen or so incredibly good teachers over the years who busted their asses to really make you think? the few teachers who could get a class of 10 or 50 excited about what he had to say.

teaching right now is a joke. partially because unions make it sluggish, but also because we aren't paying for quality.

you make teaching high school a financially attractive alternative to law, medicine, management or engineering, and people will fight for those jobs. it's more fun than a lot of those professions, and if the money is anything close to equal you'll get our nation's best and brightest clobbering each other for those plumb jobs.

or we could just go back to debating a 5% salary increase to some tired, middle aged hack who can't be fired and has no incentive to improve.

[blazerboy30]

Originally Posted by mook

if you're as bored as I am about the old re-hash of funding education, here's a really interesting article about a charter school in New York that plans on paying teachers $125,000. makes a ton of sense to me:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/ny...+school&st=nyt

think about it. what made the most lasting impact on your own education? was it the principal or counselors? the standardized tests? the access to computers? the ability to take German? was it the class with only 15 students and one incompetent teacher?

or was it the half dozen or so incredibly good teachers over the years who busted their asses to really make you think? the few teachers who could get a class of 10 or 50 excited about what he had to say.

teaching right now is a joke. partially because unions make it sluggish, but also because we aren't paying for quality.

you make teaching high school a financially attractive alternative to law, medicine, management or engineering, and people will fight for those jobs. it's more fun than a lot of those professions, and if the money is anything close to equal you'll get our nation's best and brightest clobbering each other for those plumb jobs.

or we could just go back to debating a 5% salary increase to some tired, middle aged hack who can't be fired and has no incentive to improve.

One of the high schools near my home has an AVERAGE STARTING teacher salary of $78k. The competition for those positions is obviously very high, and the school is thought of as the best in the area. But, for this to really take off, the unions still need to be dissolved or completely revamped.

[mook]

the depressing thing to me is how remarkable that one charter school is. our founders intended the United States to be 50 different local governments experimenting with 50 different solutions. the cream would rise to the top and the bad ideas would fall by the wayside.

No Child Left Behind is the exact opposite of that principle. standardize how we treat all the kids and enforce it through federal government action. ugh. how on earth that's a "conservative" idea is beyond me.

every state should be trying 5 different versions of that charter school experiment. some will be disasters, but some will be outstanding. anything is better than the monolithic sludgy goo we're paying for now.

[mook]

Originally Posted by blazerboy30

One of the high schools near my home has an AVERAGE STARTING teacher salary of $78k. The competition for those positions is obviously very high, and the school is thought of as the best in the area. But, for this to really take off, the unions still need to be dissolved or completely revamped.

as a liberal, I'm generally pro-union. it makes sense to me to have a counterbalance to the power of management. if you want to pay somebody $35k a year, you probably shouldn't gripe too much if they want to be in a union.

but unions are supposed to protect wages and work conditions. if you are making $125k, do you really need much protecting? how many engineer unions are there? doctors unions? lawyers unions? they don't exist because they'd be utterly pointless.

if you had a country of $125k/year teachers, the first thing those teachers would do is abolish their unions. because such teachers would never get access to tenure (that's the whole point), but they'd be well-compensated for that risk with enormous salaries. so why would such a teacher want to pay union dues?

[blazerboy30]

Originally Posted by mook

but unions are supposed to protect wages and work conditions. if you are making $125k, do you really need much protecting? how many engineer unions are there? doctors unions? lawyers unions? they don't exist because they'd be utterly pointless.

This isn't entirely true. There are engineer unions at some companies. I had the unfortunate experience of being in one at a previous job. Needless to say, I didn't stay there very long. I have never seen so much inefficiency in a workplace.

[dudleysghost]

If you are going to look at salary and expenditure data, you have to remember the difference between correlation and causality. Here's an analogy:

States with more forests spend more $ each year on average for fire suppression and have more acres burn to fire. Does that mean:
A) Spending more money on fire suppression actually causes more fires?
B) Spending more money on fire suppression is ineffective at reducing acres burned?

or

C) We don't know from this information, because we don't want to make a false inference of causality.

If you compare private schools and public schools, in basically any way, it's apples and oranges. The students are not randomly sampled, so it is an uncontrolled experiment. Private schools get a select group of students whose parents care enough about education to arrange transportation to the school, to pay the tuition and to put in the volunteer time that is often required. They get the students whose parents are relatively wealthier, better educated and more involved in their child's education, which are all predictors of success. Public schools get everyone else.

You could take the student populations of a neighboring public and private school, put them into identical cloned school systems, and the private school students would still do better. Some kids are just learn better and are easier to teach. With that in mind, it doesn't make sense to compare across districts or between public and private schools and just look at expenditure and education outcomes, without also considering demographics and non-random selection.

There are a lot of different aspects to the puzzle of school management, but there certainly is one proven way where greater expenditure can cause improved education outcomes, and that's with hiring more teachers and reducing class sizes. That's not to say the non-classroom expenditures are unimportant though. There are a whole lot of other aspects to building and maintaining a functioning school than just hiring teachers, and these will differ from school to school and tend to be higher in tougher urban areas, so I don't see any reason why we should expect the percentage of non-classroom expenditure to be comparable in different districts with different demographics and facilities.