Slashdot Mirror

A professionally trained, well-paid human teacher eh?

If this is true, then how come our schools are so awful?

We the people have been throwing more and more money at schoolteachers, and requiring ever-increasing levels of training and education to maintain their license to teach, yet the educational achievments of our students have been flatlined for 40 years, and have even fallen dramatically in some districts.

this is a MYTH.

this is nothing but a red herring argument foisted by fiscal conservatives to continue to destroy the public school system and to concentrate resources in elite public schools. for a nation whose economic engine relies on advanced knowledge and high literacy, we should be treasuring our teachers. teaching should be one of the highest-paid professions, and people should be beating down the doors to try to become a teacher.

instead, people have bought the line that teachers are "overpaid" and don't bother to realize that teachers earn incredibly low salaries for the education and professional level of their work. that is insane.

at the very least, please stop repeating the blatant lie that teachers are overpaid. there could be nothing farther from the truth.

" Perhaps it was not broken in the first place."

Yes, it has been broken for quite some time. It is a hard problem to solve, since the population is roughly "everyone from 6 to 18 years old" regardless of their home environment, socioeconomic status, genetics, and community. There is not one general solution that works for everyone, and what works one place may be a failure elsewhere for a number of reasons. Fixing it will take lots of trial and error.

I'm not sure what your problem is with smaller class sizes. About 3.8 million teachers at $50k average (according to census.gov and the BLS for 2011), with about 6 percent coming back as federal taxes (the lower than average probably don't pay much back at all, or it would be closer to 10). 55.5 million grade school students. That averages 14 kids per teacher (quoted as pupil/teacher ratio, 15.1 for 2013 on http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=372) , but only if teachers get no planning periods. A rough estimate of reality would be closer to 19 in each class.

That comes from state money mostly, with a combined state and local budget of $3,233.6 billion, the $211 billion in teacher salary was 6.5% of the spending total. Getting enough teachers for 15 student classrooms would probably need 825 million teachers, adding another 1.625% of spending. This is a problem for you because... teacher's unions? Is 1.6 percent really going to break the bank?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/state_spend_gdp_population

I see people have eviscerated the remainder of your lunacy. New math was tried and then backed off, "smart" classrooms are not mainstream (unless you mean just having computers), and the rest of what you say just makes you sound like an ignorant crazy person.

I said it was possible that Blacks attending segregated schools before WW2 were getting a better education than Blacks attending dysfunctinoal inner-city schools today.

...increase in test scores in math and...

Since you're actually taking it seriously I'll look it up. I can't find the chart that would have expressed it clearly but the data here shows that blacks improved significantly from 1970 until today. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/pubs/main2008/2009479.asp

When you talk about "dysfunctional" inner-city schools you're begging the question. If they're dysfunctional then by definition the functional segregated schools, to the extent that there were any, were better. There may have been some segregated schools that were better than inner-city schools, but I think this data shows that overall the segregated schools were worse than the center-city schools.

So you're on the record that test scores are the measure to use? I'm sure some people would argue against that, but that's beside the point.

For the record I'll say that well-designed, statistically valid test scores measure what they're intended to measure. The NAEP was designed to measure educational achievement to evaluate the educational system as a whole, and break it down by certain categories, including race. I think the NAEP data demonstrates that blacks had lower educational achievement in math and reading in 1970, and that their educational achievement increased dramatically from 1970 to 2008. This was contemporaneous with the desegregation of a lot of schools (and workplaces), and I think desegregation was a major cause of the increase.

The best data says that, overall, black educational achievement increased from 1970 to 2008. The schools that black kids went to in 1970, including a lot of segregated schools, were not doing better, overall, than the schools that black kids were going to in 2008.

To reiterate--there's no getting around the fact that Black schools in the South were underfunded, in run-down buildings, with old texts and worse teachers. The question is, is that any better than today's schools in the cities that are also underfunded, run-down, with iPads, tenured mediocrity, students whose parents are drug users vs. oppressed field workers, etc.?

A real answer to that question seems hard to come by. You're going to get anecdotes at best. I think the opportunities for Blacks are definitely better today than they were then; but if it were possible to chose a Georgia segregated school in 1935, or a Detroit inner-city public school in 2013, which would you pick? That's the question.

I don't know Detroit but I do know New York, and there is a wide range of quality among the public schools. There are millionaires who send their kids to the public schools. There may well have been a segregated school in Georgia whose teachers and parents were so dedicated that they gave a good education. All those black lawyers must have come from someplace. My Gunnar Myrdal books are packed away, so I can't look it up. There probably are teachers and parents in Detroit who are so dedicated that they're giving their kids a good education.

If you read Diane Ravitch, a former conservative Republican who nonetheless followed the data, you'll see that the main factor associated with educational achievement was family income. Lifting people out of poverty would do a lot of good. Just giving handouts to the poor does a lot of good. But giving handouts to computer consultants or following the latest education fads doesn't seem to do much good.

It remains fact that students pre WWII were better educated in every discipline.

It remains a *fact* that in the 1930s 1 in 20 adults were completely illiterate. By 2000, that number was closer to 1 in 1000, and concentrated among people who are over 65 years old. In the 1930s, well over half of all teenagers dropped out of school, in 2013 that number was down to 22%.

The US has sunk billions of dollars over the decades to fix education, and as a result the population is much better educated today than it was 75 years ago. That's part of why the US has the most productive workforce on the planet. It was arguably one of the best investments the US has ever made. And it's cost us peanuts compared to the 3 big-ticket items in the US budget, which are (and have been for decades) Social Security, Medicare, and the military.

How was education in black and minority communities pre-WWII?

The first thought that occurred to me was that education in pre-WW2 segregated schools might actually have been better than education in today's "integrated" inner-city schools.

No, there's data on that, and it was submitted in the Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education. The southerners claimed that their schools were "separate but equal," so the lawyers proved they weren't. The schools got far less money, the teachers were less qualified, and the textbooks were hand-me-downs from white schools (30-year-old science and history textbooks).

If you look up the NAEP data, you'll see that there's been a steady increase in test scores in math and English for black students from 1970 to today, when they're almost equal. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012026/tables/table_12b.asp

It's also part of a system that cares more about the Democratic Party machine and re-electing politicians than it does educating.

I've got news for you. The Republican Party machine cares more about re-electing politicians than it does educating, or anything else. Grover Norquist said that he wanted to destroy the government, as long as he can cut his taxes.

We need an education major who knows all those statistics -- oops! We sent them all off to study hotel management instead.

Anecdotally, there was an article in I think Slate that looked up old prewar high school exams, and I couldn't pass them today. Some people got a very impressive education before WWII, other people didn't. I found my father's old prewar college math textbooks down the cellar, and his freshman math course was covering stuff I had done in high school, like basic algebra.

The best data I know of offhand is from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tested a good national sample of students every year since 1970 for math and reading. http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012026/tables/table_12b.asp

According to those data, the test results were about level since 1970, with no more than 1-2% variation, not consistently up or down.

The impressive exception was among black students, who had very low scores in the 1970s (when many of them were attending segregated schools in the South, and even in the north). The scores steadily increased, and the gap steadily diminished, from 1970 to the latest data.

If you want more data, you can look up the Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education, which finally outlawed segregated schools, at least on paper. As I recall, they submitted lots of evidence that black students attending segregated schools did much worse than white students or black students attending integrated schools. They also showed that the "separate but equal" schools weren't equal.

I don't think people realize the extent of segregation and discrimination up to as late as the 1960s, when black people couldn't vote in much of the South, much less go to equal schools. The effects are still with us today.

Back to your original question, I think the good schools 100 years ago were very good. The bad schools were very bad. A a lot of people think that Catholic schools were very good, but Catholic schools too actually varied greatly in quality, some teaching by rote and some teaching critical thinking. I don't know if you can get valid test data from 100 years ago.

National Education Association: http://www.nea.org/home/54597.htm

National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_083.asp/

Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm

The last one is particularly good in that you can pick any state off of the map, and it will give you a chart that includes both the average wage for all jobs, as well as those for public school teachers.

Someone is lying about how much they make. I'm not saying it is your wife, but if she is making less than an average wage in your state, then some of her peers are making a lot more than she is.

The fact is that progress must be monitored, there simply is not a better way to measure progress. History has shown that you can't leave it up to teachers to evaluate their students. 21% of High School Graduates are functionally illiterate. National Adult Literacy Survey pdf page 43

I thought it was optional everywhere. But apparently this varies from state to state and 16 states require kindergarten attendance. This website gives a break down as of 2012 (see far right column, and mandatory school attendance ages):
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/statereform/tab5_3.asp

I should note a caveat--I am in Virginia, which, according to that chart requires school attendance beginning at age 5 and is listed as having mandatory kindergarten. It so happens that I have a 6 year old in 1st grade. We put our kid in Kindergarten last year like pretty much everyone else. But among the piles of paperwork we received were documents involving not doing kindergarten, waiting a year, and starting school with first grade or starting Kindergarten at age 6, as appropriate. But, I don't still have that paperwork to review what it said. It might have required some sort of home kindergarten or something, perhaps.

Yes, scarce

The per-pupil cost of public school education quadrupled since 1961 (inflation-adjusted). That's points at anything but "scarcity" — yet, the education quality is slowly declining.

I submit, that neither you, nor anyone else in their right mind would continue to purchase a worsened service, that costs four times more than it used to — if they were well-informed and had a choice.

Such lack of awareness is inexcusable, but clearly, it is pervasive

Well-spoken, yet completely misdirected words...

funded with scarce dollars.

The per-pupil expenditures in public-schools nation-wide has quadrupled since 1961. That's adjusted to inflation — the nominal increase is nearly 30-fold. And yet, even the most Illiberal segment commentators — whom you'd expect to try hardest to defend the public schools — acknowledge, that mere 30% of the nation's 8th-graders qualify as "proficient" in something as basic and fundamental as reading.

In the high-population states and locales, where one would expect the high number of customers to get a better deal through the economy of scale, the per-pupil costs are, actually, even higher. District of Columbia, for example, has spent over $17k per kid in 2010, compared to Kentucky's $10k. NYC spends even more.

Whatever is wrong with the schools, "scarcity of dollars" is not it...

I took a quick look at the materials they're publishing, and if you can read a vulnerability report, you can read these. (e.g., http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practice_guides/mps_pg_052212.pdf#page=16)

Well, I am not sure where there study group came from, but there is a tremendous amount of real-world examples to show that just giving money to people does NOT fix poverty. Don't believe me, take a good hard look at every big city in America for the last 40 years. The amount of money given to people in poor environments is staggering, and there is no real numbers to show that we have made a dent on poverty (by dent, I mean helped an appreciable percentage of people out of poverty).

The study comes from Science magazine. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/341/6149/976.abstract and if you click on the author affiliations you'll see that they came from Harvard, Princeton, U British Columbia, and U Warwick. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs is not a left-wing think tank.

They provided good evidence to support their conclusion that when people are poor, they're under stress, and they're less able to make good decisions.

Other things being equal, giving money to people does fix poverty. The most successful poverty program in the country, in terms of bipartisan approval, was the Earned Income Tax Credit, and it did move a lot of people into significantly less poverty. So did the food stamp program.

Over a time scale of about 50 or 60 years, black people started out in the south in terrible poverty. The federal poverty program by Kennedy and Johnson gave them more income. We don't have the same poverty in the south now that we did in 1950. One dramatic chart is of the reading and math level of black students, which climbed dramatically from 1970 to the latest data, according to the NAEP. http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/

I know people who worked in Africa with families who were living on the subsistence level. One of the successful things they did was give them cash. They'd give the families $10 or $20 and the first thing they'd do was pay their debts. Next month, they'd buy necessities, like furniture. Next month, they'd start a little business, like selling things on the side of the road.

The Department of Educations budgets are public record and the data includes both the actual appropriations as well as the amounts requested in the president budget (the president submits a budget request every year.)

We can end this on Bush's final year, his 2008 State of the Union address, where he asked congress to double science spending. Thats after he already increased science spending over his terms.

If this Libertarian poppycock were true, how would you explain the fact that tuition at private colleges has increased just as dramatically? They do have competitive pressures and are rarely union shops. When you have an ideological hammer every problem looks like a political nail. Despite your desire to convert the problem of tuition costs into evidence to support your philosophical opposition to the right of working people to manipulate the output of their product to achieve maximum profit as businesses do, this has nothing to do with unions or public universities and everything to do with politicians' unwillingness to tie a university's eligibility to lower tuition.

This (PDF) doesn't seem like a memorization based exam to me...

Nor does this one...

Standardized, multiple choice exams have problems. They usually don't accurately reflect ability, discriminate against ELLs as well as students with anxiety or dyslexia and are generally vulnerable to gaming / test strategies. But most I've seen aren't what I'd call tests of memorization, except maybe the History component of the STAR exams.

This (PDF) doesn't seem like a memorization based exam to me...

Nor does this one...

Standardized, multiple choice exams have problems. They usually don't accurately reflect ability, discriminate against ELLs as well as students with anxiety or dyslexia and are generally vulnerable to gaming / test strategies. But most I've seen aren't what I'd call tests of memorization, except maybe the History component of the STAR exams.

Your description fits the bankers perfectly.

Most charity started from a very little budget, have no expectation of profit, and created for the sole purpose of benefiting the society. Those who started up for some maligned purpose are easily AND quickly caught up by IRS or their state's attorney general.

Besides starting a non-profit have several purposes:

1. Re-define your character, especially if you have a shady past

2. If you have monstrous (federal) student loans, you can qualify for PSLF for TAX-FREE forgiveness after working 10 years full time in any 501(c)(3) organization, including those you started. (Orgs that are tax-exempted on other sections of the tax code, such as 501(c)(4), does NOT count.) You must be making payments (Hint: use income-based repayment) and in good standing in order to count. If you have private student loans, too bad.

3. If your org involve in running a business, and as long as you are not breaching any contracts or engage in obviously fraudulent behavior, anyone who try to pull a McDonald-coffee-style lawsuit against your org can be getting very bad publicity given the fact that you are a non-profit. It acts as a very good natural shield against nuisance, NIMBYs and other pests that comes in your way when advancing your noble purpose.

#1 in murders per capita

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-peanalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates

#1 in illiteracy

Illiteracy is higher in California and New York State than in Texas.

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/estimates/StateEstimates.aspx

I'll leave it at that. Obviously, your statements are politically motivated fabrications.

In fact this article is referring to the combined english and math scores (their source: http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012160.pdf page 7). Nobody cares about the essay score, as any selective college will be reading essays you wrote themselves.

I thought that was the case as well, but unfortunately it isn't. That is the combined reading and math score according to the article's source http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2012/2012160.pdf page 7.

He is gonna end up buried in 37k of debt without even a piece of paper, damned shame is what it is, poor kid worked his ass off and got screwed..

How did that happen? The average for 4 year public schools is $13,600 a year. A part time job and a summer job could put a pretty huge dent in $13,600 a year. Note this figure includes room and board.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=76

The study notes that, according to the Department of Education's most recent study, 19 percent of undergrads at four-year colleges received merit aid despite scoring under 700 on the SAT. Their only merit, in some cases, might well have been mom and dad's bank account.

The study doesn't actually say that, at least not according to the chart on page 4. It says that 18.8% of the students in college who had scores of 0-699 got merit aid. Not that 18.8% of all the students in college received aid with such low scores.

(but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.)

Note: Im trying to cite sources on both sides-- not just heritage, but also huffington-- and to include "primary" sources (US Dept of Education).

Interesting thing about education is that there seems to be little direct relationship between spending and results with education. Look at [PDF WARNING] per-pupil spending by state (Table 8, on page 26), and compare to NAEP performance by state. You have some top spenders in the first few top spots, but you also have the very top spenders-- New York and DC-- all the way at the bottom of the list; and you have a number of others scattered throughout the rankings. It would be nice if there were a combined graph somewhere, but I wasnt able to find one.

Also (and I didnt know this till looking it up just now), apparently per-student expenditures have doubled since 1970, and yet scores have remained flat:
http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/796DF8C7C231CFFE366308277E88CF57.gif
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-performance_b_829771.html
(verify the numbers @ http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 and http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html)

Its almost as if, after a certain point, spending on education has very little effect. Almost as if "getting iPads for your students" doesnt ACTUALLY magically implant knowledge in their brain, or motivate them to learn. Almost as if there are much more important factors like family and community involvement.

(but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.)

Note: Im trying to cite sources on both sides-- not just heritage, but also huffington-- and to include "primary" sources (US Dept of Education).

Interesting thing about education is that there seems to be little direct relationship between spending and results with education. Look at [PDF WARNING] per-pupil spending by state (Table 8, on page 26), and compare to NAEP performance by state. You have some top spenders in the first few top spots, but you also have the very top spenders-- New York and DC-- all the way at the bottom of the list; and you have a number of others scattered throughout the rankings. It would be nice if there were a combined graph somewhere, but I wasnt able to find one.

Also (and I didnt know this till looking it up just now), apparently per-student expenditures have doubled since 1970, and yet scores have remained flat:
http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/796DF8C7C231CFFE366308277E88CF57.gif
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-performance_b_829771.html
(verify the numbers @ http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 and http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html)

Its almost as if, after a certain point, spending on education has very little effect. Almost as if "getting iPads for your students" doesnt ACTUALLY magically implant knowledge in their brain, or motivate them to learn. Almost as if there are much more important factors like family and community involvement.

(but we can't afford to educate our children... bright.)

Note: Im trying to cite sources on both sides-- not just heritage, but also huffington-- and to include "primary" sources (US Dept of Education).

Interesting thing about education is that there seems to be little direct relationship between spending and results with education. Look at [PDF WARNING] per-pupil spending by state (Table 8, on page 26), and compare to NAEP performance by state. You have some top spenders in the first few top spots, but you also have the very top spenders-- New York and DC-- all the way at the bottom of the list; and you have a number of others scattered throughout the rankings. It would be nice if there were a combined graph somewhere, but I wasnt able to find one.

Also (and I didnt know this till looking it up just now), apparently per-student expenditures have doubled since 1970, and yet scores have remained flat:
http://www.heritage.org/static/reportimages/796DF8C7C231CFFE366308277E88CF57.gif
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-gates/bill-gates-school-performance_b_829771.html
(verify the numbers @ http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66 and http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html)

Its almost as if, after a certain point, spending on education has very little effect. Almost as if "getting iPads for your students" doesnt ACTUALLY magically implant knowledge in their brain, or motivate them to learn. Almost as if there are much more important factors like family and community involvement.

A) The alternative is worse.

Not proven. In fact, why don't you look at what the Feds say? We've roughly doubled our education spending per pupil in the last forty years in public elementary and secondary schools. Is it your contention that we've doubled the quality of results?

oops forgot about the homeschool part. You are correct.

http://studentaid.ed.gov/eligibility/basic-criteria

For adults who don't have a high school diploma, however, there are basically no choice but a GED in order to get aid.

I was just referencing recent data
From the publication you linked to:

2000-2010, the increase in engineering degrees earned was 24% compared to 33% for all university majors. Which demonstrates the lag engineering is experiencing in graduating students.
Data for 2005-2010 shows the number of enrolled engineering seniors rose 19% but during that time frame there was only an increase of 8.7% for degrees awarded.
The US has increased the number of students in the pipeline, but there are issues getting them to graduate.

AY1992-1993 (earliest enrollment figures I could find)
CS 927K
engineering 1.229M
physical sciences 254K

AY2007-2008 (latest I could find by field)
CS 702K
engineering 690K
physical sciences 180K

So, yes, it appears enrollments are down, quite reasonably enough considering the dysfunctional US job markets for STEM fields.

I'm not seeing that, looking at
http://nces.ed.gov/
the Digest of Education Statistics.

In academic year 1959-1960, US citizens earned about 45,624 engineering degrees, and some 80,566 STEM degrees altogether.

That rose to 71,795 engineering degrees, and 162,190 STEM degrees in AY1971-1972; 95,044 engineering degrees and 230,129 STEM degrees in AY1989-1990, when the H-1B visa program started and the Cold War supposedly ended, after which US citizen STEM degrees dipped.

In AY2001-2002, US citizens earned 71,492 engineering degrees and 240,592 STEM degrees. In AY2009-2010, US citizens earned 91,430 engineering degrees and 310,586 STEM degrees.

From AY1969-1970 to AY2009-2010, US citizens earned over 1.3 million CS degrees, 3.1M engineering degrees, and 91M STEM degrees.

Studies by Michael Teitelbaum, Hal Salzman, and B. Lindsay Lowell suggest that only about a third to a half of new STEM grads have been landing STEM jobs.

But degrees with particular majors don't equal the ceiling on the talent pool for competent software developers, engineers or other kinds of STEM professionals. NSF reports suggest that, from AY1969-1970 to AY2009-2010, over 2.3M US citizens developed skills and knowledge in software development, 4M in engineering, and 11.9M in all STEM fields -- many by minoring or otherwise taking significant university course-work in those fields. Additional US citizens developed the necessary knowledge and skills by taking only 1 or 2 classes or employer-provided training combined with additional self-directed study and work experience.

According to Samuel C. Florman, past president of ASCE, in his book, in 1916, half of America's practicing engineers had never been to college. I would add that Nicolaus Otto, developer of the internal combustion engine, was a grade-school drop-out due to the death of his father and never attended a university.

I see your point, and the summary makes for good hyperbole, but the average student at Purdue (Main campus, 2011) who qualifies for grant aid received $5,496 in Federal grant aid, $5,158 in State / Local grant aid, and $5,405 in institutional grant aid. That's $16,059 a year, x 4 years = $64,236. Only 44% of students took out loans in 2011, at an average of $6,480 each, extrapolating to $25,920 borrowed over 4 years--which is less than many car loans, I'd imagine.
Data is from NCES IPEDS. http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/
Most students DO NOT pay the sticker price for higher education.

They've been operating on a shoestring budget since as long as I can remember.

This appears to not be the case: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html

Shit wages make for shit teachers.

I do tend to think that wages make a difference. I also think one problem lies in keeping them in the profession as opposed to going into a more lucrative field. I haven't seen much data to back that up though.

On its face, the proposal to share student data with private companies seems to clearly violate FERPA, the federal law covering privacy of educational data. According to the article linked, the schools are claiming that it's OK, because when FERPA says it's OK for student data to be accessed by "School officials with legitimate educational interest", that really also means third-party contractors working for the schools. Apparently, the Department of Education has signed off on this. WTF? How can this possibly fit the legislative intent? It says "school officials", not "school vendors" or "school contractors". And there's a reason for that: actual school officials are subject to some level of public control and accountability, while private contractors are not.

This plan should be challenged in court as a violation of federal law.

Nonsense.

Women earn degrees at just about every educational lever at a higher rate than men. Women account for the majority of post secondary degrees in the US.

The old idea that women have to work harder to achieve degrees simply has very little data to support it.

As far as facing more scrutiny, why would that be the case since they are caught far fewer times than men? If some one is going to be scrutinized its most likely the person with a higher than average statistical propensity to bend the rules. In almost every aspect of society, that would be men.

I wish people would just mourn the dead and stop trying to "solve the problem." The shooting at the Sandy Hook Elementary School was unendingly tragic. I was literally weeping when I heard the details. I can't even imagine the grief the parents and teachers and students and everyone else there felt and will never stop feeling. I have a son and I can't even comprehend of the depths of despair I would feel if...I'm not going to finish this sentence.

But, as much as we wish this had never happened, and wish it will never happen again, it probably will, and there's just about nothing that can be done to stop it. And it's such an incredibly, incredibly rare event. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, there are about 100,000 public schools in the US. There are about 180 days in a given school year. There are have been an average of two school shootings per year in the US since 2000. So in a given year, there are on average 17,999,998 times a school bell rings in the morning, students show up to class, no guns are fired all day, and everybody goes home in the afternoon. And there are 2 tragic, awful, awful days where gunshots are fired. If you're a parent with a kid in school, your chance of sending your kid off to school that day and then a shooting occurring at your child's school is one in 9 million.

You can't defend against 1 in 9 million chances.

Control the guns: Won't work. There are so many millions of guns already in the US, you can't round them all up. Even if you do, if somebody wants to do something like this, you can't control every household chemical or bag of fertilizer that could be used to construct explosive devices. If somebody wants to hurt people, they can find a way. People are fragile that way.

More guns! Arm the teachers!: Won't work, and is dumb. Really? So we're gonna have teachers walking around packing for 17,999,998 school days where nothing happens, but they're going to be primed and ready to instantly switch into Tactical Defense Mode on one of those 2 in 18 million days something tragic occurs? School teachers are not soldiers. Schools are not fortresses. And when all those days go by where nothing happens, people get complacent. Those teachers are going to wind up leaving a gun in a desk or something, and then it will be available when some kid gets angry another kid stole his girlfriend. "And oh look, the teacher keeps a gun in her desk, and maybe she didn't lock it today." The law of unintended consequences always bites you in the ass in the end.

Mental health treatment: Won't work for this. I'm not opposed to a greater availability of mental health counseling for people, but mental health treatment has to be voluntary. You have to want to get better. The "solutions" I see proposed on the news and online seem to involve "identifying people who might snap like this and get them off the streets." How exactly do you want to do that? Talk about a needle in a haystack. So the school shooter had Asberger's or something? Okay, how many people are there with Asberger's who don't snap and kill people every day? I bet a lot more than those who do. And the "signs" we're supposed to be looking for? Depressed and withdrawing from friends and family? Well, if your dog dies and your girlfriend dumps you and you lose your job, you've got a right to be depressed and maybe spend a couple weeks sobbing in the dark. But gosh, you know what'll help you get right back on your feet? Getting branded as "mentally unstable" and put on some watch list. Yeah the HR person at the new job you're applying for is going to look right past that! Ostracizing people going through rough times is just going to make it harder to reintegrate those who need help back into society before they actually DO suffer a psychotic break.

These events are terrible and tragic a

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=77

The average teacher salary in 1990 for NY was $42k source, much less an in-demand technology job in 2012. You're goddamned right a programmer is "entitled" to "look down" on that salary (read: expect a fair wage).

Citation for what? The number on Arabs reading come from RIA Novosti, quoting an Arab newspaper I can't read for a rather obvious reason. For functional illiteracy in the First World, look around yourself. :-) Or read the result of a US study. (There seems to be much more info on that page relating to methodology, plus some raw data to download.)

There seems to be a corrolation between Slashdot posters and incompetent teachers. According to NCES the national average for teachers salaries is $56,069. Given all of the Slashdot posters who claim they are, they are related to, and know teachers making less than $25k a year, you might have to consider that your dad just might have been lying to you.

I agree. it's a stupid comparison ... 3 year olds form new neural connections at a far higher rate than adults ... see http://www2.ed.gov/pubs/ReadWithMe/makconn.html

False. Total Expenditures for 2008 = 596 billion for both primary and secondary education. Of that, 506 billion was directly being spent by the districts (vs adult education, debt obligations, etc for the remainder).

Excellent debunking! I'll just leave this here:
Pyrrhic victory

False. Total Expenditures for 2008 = 596 billion for both primary and secondary education. Of that, 506 billion was directly being spent by the districts (vs adult education, debt obligations, etc for the remainder).

Plus, I wonder how much you know about schools that you would suggest firing administrators entirely.

And then when your students emerge, they will want to have been through a balanced syllabus, which will have to be assessed somehow in a way that is recognised nationwide, so that will have to be standardised somehow, all of which sounds very much like something that a government should be doing.

No. Private non-profits do a good enough job here. For example, college accreditation is mostly a private affair, even for public universities. The US Department of Education does have the authority to recognize accrediting agencies, but it doesn't have the authority to be one. And that has worked out just fine for the US.

I find it remarkable how little people understand of such things to think that so many things can only be fixed by government action.

Canada is huge, but our politics are a lot more nationalistic than the US. The concept of 'state' rights is not so important here, which I suppose is why Quebec wants to secede.

I'm not advocating disarming anyone but the criminal population that uses weapons as a method to silence critics and bend others to their will. I also agree that people should be more willing to fight back, and better prepared, to protect themselves against assault. I've never been one to back down from bullies, and won't be teaching my kids that they're better off not punching someone in the mouth when they're being bullied. That said, teaching everyone how to fight may not be the best answer either, as most of the people I know that know how to fight, myself included, are less willing to walk away when we probably should; I know that's anecdotal, but it's all I've got for this point.

Regarding guns as deterrents for robberies and assaults, statistics don't show that to be the case. Excluding DC because it's a crime infested shithole, with more economic disparity and poverty than the majority of the states, the amount of legally owned guns doesn't seem to have any significant bearing on crime statistics. Montana, West Virginia and Alaska all have rates of aggravated assault higher than most of the country. Alaska is the rape capital of the US, fourth in assaults, and consistently one of the best armed states in the union.

If we compare states, Texas and California for example, with similar median incomes (50/53K), populations (25M/37M), and education (average for both), but significantly different gun laws (TX, CA) and you'll see that the gun laws don't make a huge difference in crime. In fact, as of 2008, Texas was significantly more criminal than California is, Texas #10 on most criminal overall, and California #27. Other years put them within one or two of each other, in varying orders, but comparable.

What I also found shocking, was that Texas is one of the lesser armed states in the union.

What it comes down to, is for self defence, there doesn't seem to be that much of an impact.

Do law abiding people need to have the right to keep and bear arms? Unquestionably, and well they should. But it shouldn't be thought of as a deterrent for common crime. Guns should be kept to keep the government in line.

I don't know where you come up with the idea that charter schools are mostly in poor and minority areas.

The reference in the GP post specifically says so. There are plenty of references that say this listed on the Wikipedia Page.

I know that many of the ones I know of are in middle-class predominately white areas.

Could this, perhaps, be because you live in a middle class predominately white area? The city with the most charter schools, by far, is New Orleans, Louisiana. That is hardly a "middle class predominately white area".

1) They can be selective with their students.

No they can't. They are required to have the same admission standards as the public schools.

2) In most areas charter schools are exempt from many regulations and almost all mandated testing.

This is complete nonsense. Charter students take the exact same standardized tests as the normal public schools.

How about we roll back that premise first, because they don't.

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/charter/2005456.asp

Believe it or not, this has been studied.

I can't seem to find the paper I wanted to reference, but here are a few others that might interest you:

The Effects of a LOGO Computer Programming Experience on Readiness for First Grade, Creativity, and Self Concept.
http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/search/detailmini.jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=EJ320159&ERICExtSearch_SearchType_0=no&accno=EJ320159

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/edu/76/6/1051/
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J025v04n02_07#preview
http://surface.syr.edu/eecs_etd/256/

Why is this modderated +4? Its sources are crap.

"Poorest Paid Professional? Google: http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state/ [teacherportal.com]"

  Yeah, here is a group I am going to trust. Who owns the site? Oh an ad company. What three colleges are on their site, oh, on-line for profits. Yeah, no bias there to drag the numbers up.

Heres one to try: MYTH: Teachers make just as much as other, comparable professions. It says:

"FACT: According to a recent study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the teaching profession has an average national starting salary of $30,377. Meanwhile, NACE finds that other college graduates who enter fields requiring similar training and responsibilities start at higher salaries:

        Computer programmers start at an average of $43,635,
        Public accounting professionals at $44,668, and
        Registered nurses at $45,570."

Don't like that? Try this:

"The average salary for full-time public school teachers in 2010–11 was $56,069 in current dollars (i.e. dollars that are not adjusted for inflation). In constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, the average salary was about 3 percent higher in 2010–11 than in 1990–91. " nces.ed.gov

"Average HOUSEHOLD income? Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]"

Now for Google, yeah lets look at that average Household. in 2003 (horribly old as shit data) Households with a person with a professional degree was $100,000 so our average teacher has a spouse making ~$44,000 which means in general the spouse has either a Bachelors or a Masters. What a shock, two college educated people make good money - the horror

"And 6-8 weeks of PTO?"

This old saw? Try 6-8 weeks of unemployment where you are STILL doing your job to get ready for the next year.

"As an IT PM, 50-70 hours. 15-20 days PTO + 10 holidays."

No wonder you are so confused, you are sleep deprived.

"BUT COME ON, "consistently one of the least respected, poorest paid professionals... longest hours of anyone"? BULL! Go see a few episodes of Dirty Jobs."

I don't know the show but do they have lots of PROFESSIONALS on dirty jobs? I had no idea.

So out of 20 million people out of work we have ~150K (which from the article notes is ~2% total) ?

When we're talking about a nation of 310 million people, though 150K is a lot but not "all over the place" as was asserted earlier.

There are 3.3 million public school teachers, and 150,000 have been cut since the recession (5% of the workforce). The population growth rate is about 1% per year. This means the public schools effectively have 8% less teachers per student than they did 5 years ago. This is a pretty big deal, even if you don't see it.

Also, in general higher income earners tend to send their kids to private school to avoid the generally overall poor performance of public schools

No shit, because assholes like you don't give a shit that class sizes are rising and the quality of education is dropping.