More Schools Go To 4-Day Week To Cut Costs

Hugh Pickens writes "As schools return to session in South Dakota, more than one-fourth of students in the state will only be in class from Monday through Thursday as budget constraints lead school districts to hack off a day from the school week. Larry Johnke, superintendant of the Irene-Wakonda school district, says the change will save his schools more than $50,000 per year. In order to make up for the missing day, schools will add 30 minutes to each of the other four days and shorten the daily lunch break. 'In this financial crisis, we wanted to maintain our core content and vocational program, so we were forced to do this,' says Johnke. Experts say research is scant on the effect of a four-day school week on student performance, but many of the 120 districts that have the shortened schedule nationwide say they've seen students who are less tired and more focused, which has helped raise test scores and attendance. Others say that not only did they fail to save a substantial amount of money by being off an extra day, they also saw students struggle because they weren't in class enough and didn't have enough contact with teachers."

Comments

Wow...

[vikisonline]

To save $50,000 a year, they make an already bad education system worse. The future implications of that are..... I mean that much money for an entire school in one year is not that much. It's like having one less teacher. I'd for one prefer larger classes over this.

Re:Wow...

[alen]

some of these high schools have a graduating class of only 100 or so. mine had about 500 or close to 1000. i guess when there is only one person for every 10 miles it's a big tax increase

Re:Wow...

[dam.capsule.org]

Big finance people are already taking all the money, now they are also (indirectly) cutting down on education. Poor and uneducated people, rich and knowledgeable lords, well come back 500 years ago.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

$50,000 per year. How big is that budget? It seems pretty small if that's how much could be saved. It's very insignificant when you consider the millions that new school buildings cost.

Re:Wow...

[dreamt]

Not only that, but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children who would otherwise be in school. We know some parents like to treat schools as babysitters, but in any case, now they will really need one. Guess they maybe shouldn't have complained about a slight tax increase to pay for their kids education.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's assuming this means it will be a worse education system. Universities typically have classes M/W/F or T/T. The HSs still have more days per class than that. We need to educate smarter, not necessarily longer. It is like the guy at work that wants credit because he "worked really hard". What about the guy who spent a fifth the time and actually got it done?

Re:Wow...

[SJHillman]

My graduating class was 64. When I graduated, the 7th grade class size was expected to be in the low 50s if there was a 100% graduation rate. I know of some schools within 50 miles of here that don't even have a graduating class every year in spite of school districts covering hundreds of square miles.

What I would like to see cut costs the most is consolidation of districts. We have two districts that average 50-75 people in a graduating class with the schools (K-12 in one building) within 10 miles of each other. Although the districts are quite large geographically, the buildings themselves are both near the same edge of where they border each other. You could easily designate one a primary school and one a secondary school, eliminate a lot of duplicate administrative positions (superintendent, elementary principal and high school principal alone would save $300-$400k)

Re:Wow...

[chrb]

There is no evidence that a 4-day school week makes education worse. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It would be an interesting task to figure out the optimal hours for children to be educated - it may be that less daily hours may be helpful or not, and it may be that cutting the long holidays may be beneficial or not. Perhaps a 7-day school week would be optimal. But this kind of research should be done as controlled experiments with the aim of figuring out the best way to educate children. Doing it in a haphazard way because of lack of funding is not useful.

The U.S. should be looking to how other countries with better educated children fare - here are the rankings from 2010 - how does the education system in South Korea and Finland work? Why are the kids there ranking better than kids in the rest of the world? How do their weekly work timetables compare? What about those long holidays?

Re:Wow...

[yog]

Don't jump to conclusions here. Home schooling is, at worst, generally equivalent to public schooling and at best, far superior (depends on the individuals involved). Whatever the children do on Friday can't be too bad for their personal emotional and intellectual development, unless they have really negligent parents. I suspect lots of 2-income families will start sending their kids to Friday camp at the local YMCA or church, to keep them occupied with games and activities. Hopefully not television for 8 hours.

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- Mark Twain (attributed)

"In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards." -- Mark Twain (Following the Equator)

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can only reduce teaching staff so much. Once you're left with one or two teachers for a given discipline you're down to cutting school days. Even still, the anti-tax crowd insists that it's not lack of funding that's the issue. It must be something the schools are doing wrong, because it can't possibly be that my opinions are wrong.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not only that, all those parents who might have worked on that day now have to arrange child care, which will cost way more than $50000

Re:Wow...

[vlm]

Big finance people are already taking all the money, now they are also (indirectly) cutting down on education. Poor and uneducated people, rich and knowledgeable lords, well come back 500 years ago.

This assumes the purpose of schools is to educate. It seems more likely their purpose is to train, and to indoctrinate classist philosophies, indoctrinate assembly line attitudes toward work schedules much like the ancient factories (which have mostly left the country).

I never let school get in the way of my education. The two are almost orthogonal.

Now untrained people, yes that is an issue, but if there are no jobs and never will be for them, no real loss. As long as there are enough doctors for the few who can afford them, enough plumbers for the few who can afford them, etc, it'll be OK. It's a pretty strong signal of what the elite think is the long term employment outlook.

Re:Wow...

[Eraesr]

I'm as amazed about that amount of money as you are. $50,000 in a single year isn't all that much. It seems like they're trying to kill a fly with a tank here.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

eliminate a lot of duplicate administrative positions (superintendent, elementary principal and high school principal alone would save $300-$400k)

You see that would be downright counterproductive to the goal of making it sound like they are saving money while actually spending the same or even more.

Re:Wow...

[trout007]

US kids get dumber the more years they spend at school. We are pretty competitive in the world when it comes to elementary school children. Basically before puberty hits and our anti-intellectual culture takes over. Maybe less hours in school will make the kids smarter.

Re:Wow...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It seems an especially false economy because it is rather hard to "close" a school(or any other largish building, particularly in a cold climate, that is actively used much of the time) for short periods.

You can lock the doors and hang a "closed" sign, sure; but you've got to heat the place to keep the pipes from freezing, if in winter, there will likely be some lights you need to keep on, custodial and other support staff may need access to run around and do their thing, IT will want computers on to do patches(and probably won't ever want switch or server racks to be off...)

It just isn't trivial to turn a building on a dime(especially if it is an older unit with slightly cranky or inflexible climate control systems).

And, of course, beyond the material consideration, team finance would probably like to have a word or two with you about the opportunity costs, depreciation costs, and assorted other quantifications of the fact that letting useful stuff just sit there has downsides...

Re:Wow...

[Joce640k]

To save $50,000 a year...

I'd like to know what that is as a percentage of total school costs.

I'm guessing it isn't an impressive number when expressed as a percentage.

Re:Wow...

[Joce640k]

What about all the parents who suddenly find they have to be home on Fridays instead of working?

Re:Wow...

[Marc Madness]

This also seems like an example of re-distribution of cost. I only skimmed TFA, and I didn't see any indication that this change is across the board or just high-school or what, but if it includes K-6, then two-income families are going to have to invest in putting their kids in some form of daycare one day a week so they can continue going to work. Which I'm sure when you account for all the kids that will be in daycare may add up to quite a bit more than $50,000/year. This seems like bad economics to me. On the other hand, some enterprising parents may open up home daycares for extra scratch and the increased demand may drive down the cost of daycare (yeah right), but I don't expect that will very much offset the $50,000+ in lost revenue for the other families.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the parents should have thought of that when they likely voted NO on a school millage increase. For those that actually did vote YES...sorry, but you've been victimized by the masses.

Re:Wow...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

If puberty is the problem, Science Has the Answer!

Re:Wow...

[lpp]

There is no evidence that a 4-day school week makes education worse. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. It would be an interesting task to figure out the optimal hours for children to be educated - it may be that less daily hours may be helpful or not, and it may be that cutting the long holidays may be beneficial or not. Perhaps a 7-day school week would be optimal. But this kind of research should be done as controlled experiments with the aim of figuring out the best way to educate children. Doing it in a haphazard way because of lack of funding is not useful.

Actually, with regard to shortened holidays, research indicates that continued academic effort (reading in the linked case) positively impacts academic performance in the subsequent semester. Granted in this case the study was performed on students who continued to read during summer vacation and checked their performance when they came back, which is different from concentrated classroom study. Furthermore, according to the wiki there is a measured "summer learning loss" attributed to summer holidays where students do not perform any notable academic tasks, suggesting that the inverse would hold true as well, that real academic tasks throughout the long summer holiday might help stave off the worst effects of this "learning loss".

When looking at a 4 day school week, I don't think the loss of one day would in itself negative impact education. Obviously cutting it much further would probably tend to have negative consequences. I think keeping the kids in class longer hours during those 4 days will actually have a more negative effect, especially among younger students who don't tend to have the mental stamina for longer sessions of concentrated focus. The problem is I think they added the hours into the remaining days in order to be able say they are still covering the entire curriculum, but the focus problem may come into play and the kids won't be able to pick up the material as readily as before. Tacking on extra weeks at the end of the year would simply bring the financial problem back into play. What kids need are a regular steady diet of learning time, not huge gobs with vast periods of time between.

Re:Wow...

[gfxguy]

Homeschooling produces more highly educated people simply because the parents are more involved with the education of their children instead of shipping them off to some government school "black box," where they usually have little idea what is actually going on and don't care.

Public schools would actually work better if people stopped letting the government assume what would otherwise be their own responsibility. If you could somehow fail and punish parents along with the students, things might actually improve.

Re:Wow...

[vlm]

It would be an interesting task to figure out the optimal hours for children to be educated - it may be that less daily hours may be helpful or not

/.ers think back upon your own past. I never let school get in the way of my education. I could trivially sit down and blast 12 hours straight of learning programming or systems administration or ham radio or building electronics stuff or reading a Really good book. But there was no freaking way I could do that 5 or 7 days in a row.

I would hazard a guess that at least /.er personality kids would excel at longer hours, fewer days.

I would extend that assumption, that even "intellectually challenged" kids had no problem turnin wrenches on their car for 12 hours, or going fishing for 12 hours, or whatever else those kids did they seemed to do it for extended durations, but not every day of the week.

Thinking back on ancient history, the ancients pretty much worked "until it was done" but on days with no work they F-ed off a lot. Not much nose to the grindstone every day of the year, at least with the ancients. Either you worked like a dog all day, or it was religious worship/celebration/festival day and you goofed off all day. If there is any genetic metabolic component to that, we should have the same preference.

Re:Wow...

[DonDuke]

Looks like things stay the same...... the Unions win and the students lose. If they kicked out the unions, they could save money and have teachers actually be rated on there abilities. Sigh..............

Re:Wow...

[vlm]

What about all the parents who suddenly find they have to be home on Fridays instead of working?

Bring your kid to work day, every Friday? Its not as insane as it sounds. I worked at a place with onsite day care, and it worked out pretty well. I also worked at a place where the owners kids just kinda "hung out" and learned the business whenever school was not in session. Pretty much as soon as they're old enough to understand "shut up, don't touch, just watch" they're ready to be kinda junior apprentices...

Going the other direction it forces a national dialog on working at home for those who can. If I recall how it all went down, the stalling point was my wife's boss wanted to know how he could be certain she was doing her work at home. She asked him how he was certain she was doing her work at 2am when he paged her, or any of the 99.9% of the time he was not vulture like hovering over her shoulder at work. Light bulb went on over bosses head. She started her new WAH schedule the next week. This may be my memory failing me, but I think that was how it happened, perhaps not. "If I use a laptop to work at home at 2am, trust me, it works just as well to work at home at 2pm"

Re:Wow...

[Shadow99_1]

I used to work as the network admin for a school with between 300-500 students. Out yearly budget was around $7 million USD. So I'd say this is nothing, though I was replaced for less than $50k to balance the budget a couple years ago as well...

Re:Wow...

[BVis]

[citation needed]

You know, because we don't have a hard enough time recruiting teachers. Let's make them all at-will employees, subject to termination because they wore the wrong color shirt that day. I'm sure people will be flocking to teaching like it's going out of style, instead of making a lot more money working somewhere else.

Teachers teach because 1) they want to educate, 2) because it's a relatively secure job. You need both. Take one or the other away, and you've suddenly got no teachers.

Re:Wow...

[royallthefourth]

lmao yes teachers get paid as much as possible (about 30k with a master's degree and certificate where i live)

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it make it worse?

I don't know much about the US school system. But when Sweden went from a 6-day school week to a 5-day school week in 1967, the students was able to learn more faster.

If you compare with ordinary work. A Swedish employer work less then half the time an US employee does (we have a 5 day, 30-40 hour, work week, but very frequent and long vacations and a much higher acceptance (both among employers and work mates) for sick and pregnancy leaves), but they are more then 5 times as efficient (20 times according to some studies). That is, even if a Swedish employee is paid more then twice of what an US employee is, doing the same tasks (he/she generally is, if (s)he is an ordinary worker, but Swedish management is paid considerably less then US management, Swedish management is also considerably smaller then US management, because Swedish workers are more autonomous), he/she still generate more money for the employer. Granted, some of the difference is because Swedish workplaces is highly automated (on the same level as West Germany, Japan, S. Korea and Switzerland), while USA is the least automated first world country (it is also the least first world country of all first world countries, the scale is rigged to include USA).

Being a hard worker and spending much time at the workplace is not always the same thing as being an efficient or profitable worker. I think that applies even more to students; learning and understanding new stuff is among the most mentally exhausting task you can do. You also have to consider the learn-fast-forget-fast effect, if you cram knowledge to fast into someones brain, (s)he will quickly forget most of it.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you dismiss the article's premise, provide no evidence for your dismisal, then project the implication that US's standard of time in class room is excessive with hand waving about other countries.

I think it comes down to national attitude towards education, not the actual mechanisms used to educate.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, but the teachers like having three days off every week...

Re:Wow...

[Sponge Bath]

At least they can look good in comparison to Texas. Not only have billions been cut from education, the State Board of Education's curriculum changes take effect this year. The founding fathers no longer include Washington or Jefferson, mention of the labor movement has been expunged, and the study of important figures like Jerry Falwell have been added.

South Dakota's new motto: We're not Texas!

Re:Wow...

[lxs]

What about the guy who spent a fifth the time and actually got it done?

Rare individuals make for great stories but you can't base your entire education system on them.

Re:Wow...

[nitehawk214]

This also seems like an example of re-distribution of cost. I only skimmed TFA, and I didn't see any indication that this change is across the board or just high-school or what, but if it includes K-6, then two-income families are going to have to invest in putting their kids in some form of daycare one day a week so they can continue going to work. Which I'm sure when you account for all the kids that will be in daycare may add up to quite a bit more than $50,000/year. This seems like bad economics to me. On the other hand, some enterprising parents may open up home daycares for extra scratch and the increased demand may drive down the cost of daycare (yeah right), but I don't expect that will very much offset the $50,000+ in lost revenue for the other families.

Sure, but the school isn't paying for their daycare, so this is still saving them money. Oh the families with 2 working parents and 3 kids will be ruined by this? Who cares.

Provide less service for the same cost (in taxes). Yep, government is more like the corporate world every day.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess they maybe shouldn't have complained about a slight tax increase to pay for their kids education.

I doubt they did. Assuming it's anything like around here, what happens is that the older residents who either no longer have school-age children or never had children at all demand lower taxes, public education be damned. After all, they're not benefiting from it (any more). Why should they have to pay for it?

So you wind up with childless voters being the majority, voting not to raise their own taxes, against a minority of couples who want to force the majority to pay for their children's education.

The outcome is not really surprising: after all, when was the last time you voted to raise your own taxes for a benefit you will never receive?

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually in South Dakota $50k is more like 2 teachers. Our teacher's pay is absolute crap. My wife grew up the daughter of two teachers and was in what some might call abject poverty. When she graduated from college and started as a full time RN, her salary was only slightly less than her parent's combined income. Ridiculous!

And as for this particular school district, it is tiny. Irene's population is like 450 and Wakonda's is 300 tops. So that $50k is probably a bigger percentage of their operating budget than you realize. And besides, if the school district really wanted to, they could try and pass an opt-out initiative and raise local real-estate taxes to cover their budget short fall (unless they already did and it failed to get enough votes).

Re:Wow...

[vlm]

lmao yes teachers get paid as much as possible (about 30k with a master's degree and certificate where i live)

Its a different wage structure than the rest of us are used to.

Yes, the first year is 30K. Any employee who survives gets a union mandated 8% annual payraise. Its all part of the game, just like they get three months vacation and "we" get about two weeks. The game is every teacher starts out of school as lower middle class wage, and retires as very much upper middle class in the low $100K area.

Re:Wow...

[Archangel Michael]

Public schools would actually work better if people stopped letting the government assume what would otherwise be their own responsibility.

If schools acted like Parents should be responsible for their kids instead of the schools, then we might actually get there. The problem is, when parents care, and try to fix the short comings of schools, they are blasted out of the water by the educational "system". There is a huge "we know better than you" mentality in the system.

Basically the system is stacked against caring parents.

Re:Wow...

[bjarvis354]

However, there are those of us who have to work on-site. We don't work in climate controlled offices and bringing our kids to work would be dangerous for them.

Many middle class people work for employers who offer no childcare options, to assume that your fringe benefits are commonplace is a mistake.

Re:Wow...

[csumpi]

I totally agree with you. They basically offset the cost to parents. The choices are:

- hire somebody to watch the kids

- daycare

- try to negotiate 4 day work week

- leave the kids home alone (sounds like the cheapest option, until they start causing trouble)

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

My family lived and farmed in Irene for a long time. Having visited Irene many times, and knowing where Wakonda is, I'd be surprised to find that there are 20 in the graduating class. $50,000 is the equivalent of 1-1/2 to 2 teachers salaries for a year. Of course, it's hard to hire 1/2 a teacher, as they bleed alot that way.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

I went to college classes 3 days a week....so by your rationale, I didn't recieve the proper education I should have? The intentional dumbing down of America has nothing to do with how many days you go to school, but has everything to do with what you are taught.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh. My mom retired as a teacher after 35 year and never came close to making that kind of money. And she taught summer school every year to make ends meet. Doesn't sound like your description.

In fact her retirement package from the state was so poor that she went back to work.

Re:Wow...

[Rogerborg]

Maybe fewer hours in school will make the kids smarter.

Fixed that for you, courtesy of a Scottish education.

Unless your intention was to redefine the hour, which I can't entirely rule out.

Re:Wow...

[morari]

Why? Four days a week is plenty. Most children are already forced to spent far too much time in public schools. How much time you spend there doesn't really matter when the entire system is geared toward the lowest common denominator. Besides, now instead of assigning an hour or two worth of homework, I'm sure the teachers will go for that missed days worth.

The public educational system is terrible. Making students waste even more time within it won't fix the problem or create brighter students.

Re:Wow...

[Just Some Guy]

Not only that, but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children who would otherwise be in school. We know some parents like to treat schools as babysitters, but in any case, now they will really need one. Guess they maybe shouldn't have complained about a slight tax increase to pay for their kids education.

Dude, you so nailed it. My school district decided that teachers needed more time during the week for training, so they changed the school schedule. Now class lets out at 3:15, except for Tuesdays when it lets out at 2:00. I can't tell you how happy I am to have to leave work early in the middle of the week.

I know teachers aren't babysitters, but in a very tangible way the school systems themselves are. The law says parents have to take their kids there at set times every weekday, and that leads to things like employers scheduling shifts around school hours. I know lots of couples who arrange their work schedules so that one parent drops their kid off on the way to work, then the other parent picks the kid up on their way home. So now that everyone's calendar is designed around this government-imposed schedule, they change it on a whim and then get pissy when parents complain about the new inconvenience?

Want to really cut costs? Fire half the administrators. The Dept. of Education says average per-pupil spending is over $10,000, and average class size is 20 pupils. If you can't run a school for $200,000 per classroom - while giving teachers the good salaries they've earned - then you're incompetent and shouldn't be running it.

Re:Wow...

[Spiflicator]

It's hard to believe they couldn't have raised taxes to cover the difference. There have to be enough tax payers that have to pay for child care on one day a week now.. w/ how expensive child care is that money alone would have easily covered any extra taxes..

Re:Wow...

[gfxguy]

Yes... no disagreement. Parents blame the teachers, teachers blame the parents... but when the parents actually get involved, the teachers often say "stay out of it."

Re:Wow...

[Fishead]

My grad class consisted of 35 students.

A couple years later, they moved to a remote teacher system, and I hear numbers slid further still.

Google "Barriere, BC" If you need a chuckle.

Re:Wow...

[G-Man]

It's simply the way school systems operate - make any cut the most visible/painful while ignoring the bloat within administration. Here in Albuquerque, if they're short on funds they always talk about class sizes or firing teachers, while ignoring the fact that less than half of the district employees are teachers (including substitutes they barely break 50%). Let me say that again: *Less than half* of the district employees are full-time teachers.

http://www.aps.edu/about-us/district-information

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think it's so easy put your money on the table and try it.

In my early twenties I achieved the same rate of pay it took my father twenty years to achieve as a teacher and yes he did have better offers. He was allways being head hunted to switch to corporate sector training.

'save money' now that really is a joke you would have had to double his salary to compensate for all the extra hours due to lesson prep, homework marking and meetings with parents. It may have changed now but in his time they were all outside of his contracted hours.

Then there is the after school sports clubs and chess club he helped run without pay. No your right they arent worth anything so correctly I suppose nothing of value would have been lost had he stopped.

I accept that because teachers are human you get a mix of excellent, good, bad and worse. So yes there should be systems in place to manage that situation but how do you asses the qualilty of the material (pupils) they have to work with initially?

You can polish a turd until it shines but it still remains a turd.

Re:Wow...

[MacGyver2210]

Why don't they try threatening the kids/parents into success? It worked for me.

If your attendance is below 90%, you fail the class immediately.

If your grade is below a C-, you fail the class.

If you fail three classes, you fail the entire grade.

If you fail the class, you(your parents) must pay a $500 fee to retake the class.

Half the challenge is making it worthwhile for the parents to actually work with their kids. I think many people would be surprised how many parents just say "Do your homework" and then don't think about it anymore. Maybe a little monetary fine if their kids fail would motivate them similarly.

Ostracizing students for not doing what they are expected is a great way to motivate them. Who wants to sit at home four-five days a week and not be able to see any of your friends? Not a whole lot of 12-year-olds would choose that, even the lazy ones.

Re:Wow...

[zildgulf]

Of course you know this will be done poorly if these are the average American public school systems.

Re:Wow...

[operagost]

They made the stupid assumption that, since school attendance is mandatory and on five days of the week, that their kids would be in school. They failed to hit 88 MPH in their DeLoreans so they could find out how much child care costs were going to be a few years down the road when the school board decided to make stupid decisions.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the short attention span - longer days and less breaks does not increase focus and therefore learning.

I'd say social values and better parenting is the reason for South Korea and Finland...

$50K a year - assuming a reasonable sized school hardly worth the hassle of changing.

I suspect it is a plot to inconvenience parents and get more funding.

Re:Wow...

[Rob the Bold]

> but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children

Don't know, don't care. Perhaps the parents should have thought about possible costs before procreating?

First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning. Secondly, potential parents who can predict every possible scenario that might impact their future offspring should just play the lottery or stock market and not worry about the cost of kids.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

>Not only that, but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children who would otherwise be in school

I don't care unless you're a single parent, then I feel bad for you.

Otherwise, one of you needs to quit your job and take care of your children. If you can't afford it, buy less, own less, live simpler. Stop letting someone else take the best years of your children away from you, stop letting someone else imprint their values on your children, start living like a family.

Re:Wow...

[zildgulf]

It will be worse if it is done poorly, just like anything else. Beyond that I, and most of us, simply don't have the knowledge to evaluate this idea.

If someone in education studies could give their professional opinions on this matter it would be helpful in this forum. Especially about the data on this method, the pros and cons, and the conditions of any experiments on the 4 day week

At least I know my personal experience is too narrow and too old to be definitive concerning the subject.

Re:Wow...

[Buelldozer]

1,000 times THIS.

I just went through it last week with my sons new Principal.

I don't want to hear any more bullshit about "Parents blame the teachers, teachers blame the parents.".

When THIS parent got involved the administration moved quickly to shut him down.

They shall pay.

Re:Wow...

[shess]

In many cases, public schools would do better if they *did* think of themselves as a daycare with an educational component. Right now it seems in vogue to imagine schools as sort of mini-universities, treating the kids as little informed consumers (at best - at worse, the kids are treated like waldos remotely operated by their parents. I never could figure out how teachers expected me to change minor quirks in my child's school-time behavior). But, well, even motivated and curious 3rd graders simply don't have the attention span to learn for more than a half hour at a time. For young kids, things like gym, art, and music are not nice-to-have once-a-week extras, they are sanity-preserving essentials that should be used to break up the day.

But, well, I don't think it's clear that the US public school system is about educating future Americans. It's about being a huge political football.

Re:Wow...

[marnues]

Your teacher's union isn't like mine. The max salary is around $65k (might have changed, my mom hasn't been in the system for 5 years). That $65 requires a PhD and 30 years of teaching. Granted, cost of living here isn't terrible, but only retirees come in making that amount. I started my first career job at $35k and had to live with my mom, coincidentally why I know the pay structure. How are we to have great teachers when we don't value them that much.

Re:Wow...

[Nadaka]

They tried that with me. I had a chronic medical condition and was officially disabled and unable to attend school regularly. So even though I did all the homework and aced every test, I got failed in a clear violation with the law regarding disabled students. When I was 16, they told me that even if I had perfect attendance from then out, I would not graduate high school until I was 21. I was also not allowed to take a GED until I turned 18. We were not able to sue to allow me to graduate because they threatened to arrest everyone for truancy and child neglect.

Your idea is fucking retarded.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

I don't know what the actual results of this decision will be, but I will say that I don't think that "good" things (speaking in general) should be held back merely because a few people have to make sacrifices.

Re:Wow...

[vlm]

Your teacher's union isn't like mine. The max salary is around $65k (might have changed, my mom hasn't been in the system for 5 years). That $65 requires a PhD and 30 years of teaching. Granted, cost of living here isn't terrible, but only retirees come in making that amount. I started my first career job at $35k and had to live with my mom, coincidentally why I know the pay structure. How are we to have great teachers when we don't value them that much.

Cost Of Living Adjustment?

One of the benefits of a union contract, is the salaries are all public. Every teacher with 12 years experience and a masters gets precisely $X base pay, its that simple. My numbers are from the early 90s in a relatively expensive suburb.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, the reason most people are upset by a 4-day work week is that it means they've lost 20% of their free babysitting service that their fellow taxpayers have had to pay for.

Re:Wow...

[tepples]

Going the other direction it forces a national dialog on working at home for those who can.

And some can't. Some suppliers will ship only to secure office facilities, not home offices. I can explain further if you want.

Re:Wow...

[dkleinsc]

Oh, you don't have to go back 500 years to get their ideal society. You only really need to go back to the 1890's or so, when Robber Barons ran everything, corruption in politics was rampant, and a few very large banking organizations (most notably J.P. Morgan's) were able to violate laws with impunity. Both Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt did a lot to put a stop to it, and there were also lots of socialists and anarchists such as Emma Goldman, Upton Sinclair, and later Eugene Debs running around arguing that if workers didn't get a government more responsive to them, they should all stop working and see how the fat cats liked that.

Re:Wow...

[Spykk]

They can just have their oldest babysit someone else's kids to pay for the babysitter they need for their younger kids. It's economic stimulus!

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

Well, I guess nothing should ever change because a few people might "suffer."

Re:Wow...

[dkleinsc]

Don't know, don't care. Perhaps the parents should have thought about possible costs before procreating?

So now you have a mass of uncared-for, uneducated, unemployable poor kids sitting around with basically nothing to do but join up with criminal gangs. Of course, you can respond to that problem with increased policing, but that means that you're now paying more than you saved in education for police, judges, and juvenile detention.

And that's ignoring the philosophical problem of how much children should be penalized for the sins and stupidity of their parents.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, you think teachers make 50k

Re:Wow...

[metlin]

Rare individuals make for great stories but you can't base your entire education system on them.

And by stating that, you are inherently biasing your system against people who may be capable but unwilling (or even unaware of being able) to spend a fifth of the time to get things done.

That is the problem with catering to the lowest common denominator - you bring everything down to the level of the least capable. On the other hand, if you set the bar high enough, at least everyone will aspire to something better. What was it about reaching for the stars again? That's right.

Let's face it. People do better when they are pushed to their limits. Even doing calculus in high-school, if we were given 2 hours to solve something, most people goofed off for an hour, and did them all in an hour. If we were all given half hour, odds are that we'd have pushed ourselves, and even if all the problems weren't solved, we'd have at least given our peak performance. Much easier to grade on a curve, too.

Re:Wow...

[marnues]

Sorry for the double post, but where in America is $100k still considered upper class? That's about mid-range middle class anymore. I'd have no problem if many teachers were near that salary either. Money well spent.

Re:Wow...

[Duradin]

"Bring your kid to work day, every Friday? Its not as insane as it sounds."

Three words, hostile work environment. Not for the kids, but for the employees without kids who don't want to deal with your noisome brats while on the job.

Re:Wow...

[RogerWilco]

I'm not so sure, I think $200,000 per classroom isn't such an unreasonable amount.

The teacher's average salary is about $50,000. Add to that health care coverage, pensions, and the employer administration and I think you're around $100,000.
Now there's heating, electricity, water, cleaning, maybe some form of internet/network & It staff, someone administering the pupils, classroom schedules, maintaining the grounds and building, teaching materials, maybe some software licences, replacing and maintaining furniture and what have you.

I can see that adding up to somewhere in the $200,000 range quite easily. Some will be below that, but as a national average I think it's at least in the right ball park.

Re:Wow...

[MrFrank]

You are over estimating the class sizes in question. Graduating classes of 5 to 20 is more likely the case in many of these SD schools. I went to college at NDSU in Fargo, ND. One of my friends had a graduating class of 8.

I live in a school district in MN that went to 4 fays school weeks last year. The district actually lost money. Enough parents transferred their kids to a different school districts that it ate through any cost saving realized. Wow, no-one saw that one coming (morons) There were some students whose parents transferred their children into the district because the four day school week was a benefit. But not enough to make up the losses. They also send additional buses out at noon to pickup/drop off kindergarteners who now have half day kindergarten instead of full day. So they are actually using the buses more now than they used to.

The teachers love the new schedule. Only one hour a day was added to school days, but they got their Fridays off. And they get this for 5 years due to the contracts signed with the teachers union. When they announced the change, my initial thought was why do they only need to add four hours. Out of a 8 hour day you are only educating my kids for four hours?

the problem with my local district is that the admin to teach ratio is way too high and the admins get paid about 15% above state average and the teachers about 5% below. Once the first local levy was voted down after building a new school (levy to build a new school passed in 2005, the next year they asked to pass a levy because they didn't have the funds to operate it. WTF) the superintendent and school board just seemed to want to stick it to the parents. Their attitude seemed to be; you stuck it to us, now we are going to stick it to you.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

Just fail everyone who has poor health and doesn't have money to go to the doctor for colds just so the school will excuse their absence, people that didn't even fail in the first place (probably for classes they won't even need), and make people who don't have money unable to get through school if they happen to fail. I don't think this would motivate many people. Rather, I think it would further increase the rate of failures and steer more people towards alternative solutions such as unschooling or homeschooling.

Re:Wow...

[PrimalChrome]

I would really like to see some unbiased numbers supporting this assumption. I will say from hiring and firing employees for the last 10 years I've found something a bit different. The handful of homeschooled applicants/employees I've dealt with have been either religious zealots or people that need a helicopter manager who will spoon feed them. Their ability to operate independently and think beyond the parameters provided has been mediocre at best.

Re:Wow...

[Mass Overkiller]

Not for nothing but I would think in your specific case there would be an exception to the previous poster's suggestion. Clearly a medical condition would be an acceptable excuse to miss school. I think in your case that the rules were not followed by the school administration and you would have a legitimate gripe.

Re:Wow...

[marnues]

Not true. Ostracizing "some" students is a great motivator. Ostracizing the other students only serves to create stress. This is called bullying, something that is in no way helpful for development. Also, making parents pay for a child's failure is motivation for parents, not children. Not all parents have the ability to put that motivation to good use. You'll have incredible drop-out rates if such policies were implemented.

Re:Wow...

[Duradin]

"parents are more involved with the education"

You could stop right there and see an improvement.

Homeschooling produces better results because the parents are involved with their child's education, not just because the kid isn't getting its daily dose of ebil gubmint mind control rays.

Re:Wow...

[timeOday]

To save $50,000 a year, they make an already bad education system worse.

With the federal stimulus program now ending, we're going to see a lot more of this type of thing. I think it's a mistake. Yes, the growth in the deficit is alarming, but the recession will end sooner or later and state/local tax revenues will come back. But these kids will never go through grade school again.

Meanwhile, many of their parents will now pay extra for child care on fridays, reducing (or even negating) any savings on taxes from this.

Re:Wow...

[lxs]

For every genius there is somebody who has difficulty tying his shoelaces unaided. You can't cater exclusively to the top, or to the bottom. The vast majority of public education has to cater to the center.

For both extremes of the spectrum there should be special education, but the majority of pupils are best served with a system catering to the IQ 100 crowd.

Running a society means doing what is best for all of society, not just what is best for niche groups.

Re:Wow...

[marnues]

Home schooling here means that you want your kids to grow up fearing you and your god properly. It has nothing to do with education.

Re:Wow...

[bberens]

Education majors have among the lowest entrance requirements of any degree. I'm sorry, but a MA in underwater basket weaving won't earn you big bucks either.

Re:Wow...

[marnues]

With good reason. Most parents who care also have no clue how to help. When they are offered suggestions its usually much too menial for that type of parent. So yes, please do stay out unless you're actually interested in helping. Just because someone cares does not mean they are helping.

Re:Wow...

[gfxguy]

It's hard to find unbiased numbers; the studies I've seen have admittedly been from home schooling advocates, but they do cite sources.

Personally, I do not believe the hype that kids get home schooled simply because of religious indoctrination (when parents could have just sent their children to religious schools, instead). Certainly some of them do, but I don't buy your anecdotal evidence. However, I said more highly educated... all the source material out there suggests they score MUCH higher on tests, but that doesn't mean they will make great employees. In the same vein, being able to rote memorize the names of the presidents of the U.S., in order, does little to help someone become a good computer programmer.

Re:Wow...

[marnues]

Not in that regard. We cut school costs because the masses are demanding government austerity. No corporation has cut costs because it's employees and customer base want austerity.

Re:Wow...

[Just Some Guy]

A classroom is much smaller than my house. I pay on the order of $3,000 per year in utilities (and my house doesn't sit empty in the summer when cooling is most expensive). A $10/hr janitor could easily clean a classroom in less than an hour per day, or less than $2,000 per year. My total Internet connection (which is better than my kid's school's) is under $1,000 per year. And as my house is stand-alone, it doesn't get to share costs with neighboring building.

I guess my final argument is that my older kids go to a private school where the total expenditure (not tuition; expenditure) per student is $5,010. That school's test scores are excellent (and even the special needs kids seem to thrive), they have great after-school activities (my kids are in sports and band), a brand-new building in mint condition, and a computer lab stuffed with Macs. I'm not sure why that private school can afford first-place amenities at less than half the national average cost, but they do and we're glad for it.

Re:Wow...

[bberens]

The $100k salaries are a myth in most of the country, but the pensions are usually pretty generous. At the same time, that $30k/yr as an hourly wage isn't bad when you consider the hours. Young teachers spend a lot of hours building lesson plans and such while more experienced teachers have a "full tool set" to deal with just about any type of student/lesson for their subject area. This is pretty similar to what other professions experience.

Re:Wow...

[marnues]

I personally found ways to use all my school time effectively. Whether it was digging into an encyclopedia or just reading a book, spending more time in school was always a bonus. Again, this could just be that I had excellent teachers. Seems to me that we need more money for better teachers then.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

I never let school get in the way of my education. The two are almost orthogonal.

I see this type of Fox news folksy truisms about US schools in general and public schools in particular so frequently that it's starting to look like a meme.

I had fun in (public) school. I had excellent teachers who knew when rote repetition was needed and when creative thinking was needed. It is, in no small part, because of them that I am a fully rounded well-adjusted and creative human being with a deep respect for the process of learning today. I grew up in a country that has some of the most productive workers in the world and we are a net creditor even after the financial meltdown. Granted this was some 15 years ago but schools can't have changed that much in a decade and a half.

Contrast that to a country where schools are routinely derided by blowhards who seem to have it in for anything that smacks of intellectual elitism. A country that is being out-competed in more and more fields and will, at some point in the near future, be bankrupt.

Have you ever stopped to wonder if, just perhaps, your attitudes towards schools and schooling is the cause of your problems rather than the result of them? I doubt very strongly that schools are that different in our two respective countries.

Re:Wow...

[metlin]

Well, it is the geniuses who are going to cure cancer.

The point is, focusing on mediocrity will get you just that. How about spending the time and effort across the board, rather than ignoring one segment in favor of another?

Re:Wow...

[gfxguy]

Wow, what baloney.... but I'll tell you what, you can let teachers take all the blame for failing students with parents who simply don't care. After all, the parents were staying out of it, right? That's what you want. But STFU when they blame the teachers, then.

Re:Wow...

[GungaDan]

"First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning."

Here I call the bullshits. "Little warning?" Have heterosexual, vaginal sex and be warned - you may be a parent in 9 months. For women there are repeated warnings after that - every month Aunt Flo fails to visit is a warning.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have been home-schooled.

The home-schooled people I've met have been profoundly undereducated to the point that several couldn't even grasp the concept that the Earth is, indeed, round and that Jesus didn't ride dinosaurs into Jerusalem.

The backwards in-bred hicks grew up to be today's Tea-party activists.

Re:Wow...

[ILongForDarkness]

Not to mention that the parents having a couple hundred kids or more per school to find sitters for for one day a week during the school year probably costs more than the $50,000 saved.

Re:Wow...

[nbauman]

The U.S. should be looking to how other countries with better educated children fare - here are the rankings from 2010 - how does the education system in South Korea and Finland work? Why are the kids there ranking better than kids in the rest of the world? How do their weekly work timetables compare? What about those long holidays?

Good questions. The first thing that visitors notice in those schools is that teachers are highly respected.

The Republicans right now are demonizing teachers, with calls for the end of unions, calls for pay cuts, high-stakes testing where they blame teachers for the results and fire the lower 10% (like Jack Welch at GE), vouchers, charter schools and privatization.

Finland has strong unions, so unions aren't the problem. There's strong evidence (NAEP scores) that charter schools are slightly worse overall than public schools. There's no country in the world with a successful universal privatized education system. Michelle Rhee, the conservative school reform darling, got caught cheating. High stakes testing leads to widespread cheating.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster is an idiot. He did say $100k was upper Middle class,,,,but in his mind he makes the rules. I've heard people say that making over a million was upper middle class, some say upper class. I think the distinction is up for debate. Compared to India or Kenya, yeah $100k/yr is probably pretty good. In the US, $100k means you are probably $500-600k in debt in a Jumbo loan + school loans + impending divorce...sounds like at best middle class to me. The poverty rate determines the "poor" class...but if you're raking in a whopping $30k/yr...well you're poor.

Re:Wow...

[Wyatt Earp]

No, some of these High Schools have graduating classes of 10.

I went to one of the larger districts in rural western South Dakota and graduated with 56.

Rapid City's schools are bigger, Sturgis is a little bigger, Lead, Deadwood, Custer were about the same size. Everyone else west of the Missouri River was smaller.

A high school of 200-250 was considered to be a middle tier school in size for South Dakota.

Re:Wow...

[kheldan]

Is it $50K/yr per school, or $50K/yr for the entire school district? Doesn't sound like enough of a savings to me to make it worthwhile to upset so many people and things.

Re:Wow...

[wintercolby]

Either that or look at any of the developing countries in the Western Hemisphere, minus Cuba, and you'll see a strong resemblance to what you're describing.

Re:Wow...

[O('_')O_Bush]

The other side of that question: How many more jobs will be created in response to increased demand for daycare/babysitting services?

Re:Wow...

[ArsonSmith]

You're starting to figure it out. The schools are using their main weapon against parents to get them to vote for higher taxes. This is pure evil as very likely any cursory look at their budget could most likely find the $50k in unneeded expenses much easier than this.

This is the evilest of politics using children as a weapon to get more money.

Re:Wow...

[Wyatt Earp]

If your numbers are from the early 90s you need to recheck them.

Budget cuts in the mid and late 90s and mid to late '00s destroyed schedules like that. In many districts COLAs of 1-3% were all the raise teachers got. Now its even worse, my sister took a 20% cut in '10 to avoid the district having to lay off 25% of staff.

I've worked in public, private school administration and state educational agencies since 1997, my wife is a 7-12 teacher with experience at contract negotiations in the PacNW, sister is a 9-12 science teacher, brother in law is a history teacher. I've been through 3 Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. Your numbers and example don't hold water.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just another example of why women can't get ahead in the professional world. When you have to spend more for childcare than you are making ( assuming an entry level position) then it is not worth it. By the time the kids get old enough to take care of themselves you have wasted many years and many opportunities to advance and develop your career.

Re:Wow...

[O('_')O_Bush]

Its not so simple though, tthere are an additional 3000 teaching assistents (college kids, usually future teachers), which only leaves around 4000 non classroom personell. Given that there are 140 schools (each with their own medical staff, treasurers, principals/APs/secretaries to handle administration, janitorial staff, food prep (lunch ladies), bus drivers, and security, its a wonder that they get by on less than 30 people overhead per school when there are also county/state staff to manage budget allocation and performance metrics.

Those are critical functions that the schools generally cannot operate without. Even with all those employees and staff, teachers are still bottom of the food chain if you want students to not be sick, dirty, hungry, or lacking basic classroom materials.

Re:Wow...

[dbkluck]

Ah, but that's the beauty of it. The ones who don't want the tax increase are property owners, who are far more likely to be affluent enough to have a stay-at-home parent who wouldn't care about having the kids home for an extra day a week. So they pass the cost off to single-parent or dual-income households who now have to pay for an extra day of daycare. And daycare is EXPENSIVE. This strikes me as having the same effect as an incredibly regressive tax increase.

Re:Wow...

[level_headed_midwest]

How about something a little less expensive?

Re:Wow...

[elrous0]

I live in a shitty state, and most teachers here make WAY more than that. The *starting* salary for teachers here is somewhere around $40,000, and they get GUARANTEED raises every year. So a teacher who has been working 20 or 30 years can easily end up making in the $90,000 range (not administrators, we're talking classroom teachers). All that and they get summers off.

If your local school district posts salaries (they have to where I'm at, since they're considered state employees), do yourself a favor and look at the salary information for your local school. If you buy into the myth of the poor, underpaid teacher, it will shock you to see the truth. I'm an experience programmer and there are teachers at my kids school making considerably more than me. And I certainly don't get summers off.

Re:Wow...

[tokul]

But there was no freaking way I could do that 5 or 7 days in a row.

My past tells me that I was not spending 5-7 days in a row on same subject in school. Every class lasted only 45 minutes to 1.5 hour. Five-six different classes every day.

Re:Wow...

[raydobbs]

It's called climbing the wealth ladder, then pulling it up behind you when you get to the top.

Re:Wow...

[anyGould]

Out of a 8 hour day you are only educating my kids for four hours?

Couple reasons I can think of:

1. The obvious - there is a limit to how many hours you can realistically expect a kid to pay attention. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that hour 9 is more-or-less a writeoff as is. Not to mention that parents probably would like their kids home before 6pm.

2. The four hours they're cutting is probably review and extra help for kids who need it. At a guess I'd say that's been offloaded to "homework" on Fridays.

Re:Wow...

[jedidiah]

For most people, the chance of an unwanted pregnancy is higher than winning the lottery. That's just the way it is in our modern high tech society if you aren't a total idiot and are paying attention.

Regardless of whom you choose to blame,the fact remains that this "bright new plan" will incur a large hidden cost that's pretty damn foreseeable.

Although we might be expecting too much of teachers and school administrators to think ahead, consider broader consequences, and understand the numbers involved.

They can't even fully understand lunch.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, last election I voted democrat because I thought there was a snowball's chance of getting single payer healthcare. Since I'm in the top 20% of incomes that would have cost me money and benefited others.. does that count?

Re:Wow...

[brit74]

> "how does the education system in South Korea and Finland work?"

South Korea:

The school year in South Korea typically runs from March to February. The year is divided into two semesters (March to July and September to February). School days are from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., but many stay later into the evening. In addition, students help clean up their classroom before leaving. Most students remain in the same room while their teachers rotate throughout the day. Each room has about thirty students with ten computers for them to share. South Korean student After 5 p.m. students have a short dinner at home, or eat at school, before study sessions or other activities begin in the evening. Students attend school Monday to Friday, with some Saturday classes scattered throughout the year.

http://www.infoplease.com/world/statistics/school-years.html

But, this article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4033261.stm) says "Finnish pupils have the least school hours of any industrialized country".

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

There are some cases (as outlined in the summary) where shorter school weeks can actually improve test scores.

However, it should be noted that there are other cases in which it would make things worse.

Re:Wow...

[jedidiah]

This boils down to parental involvement and there's already a clearly observable link between school performance and parental involvement.

This is why magnet schools do so well. They are a self-selected population of students with more motivated and involved parents.

Re:Wow...

[Solandri]

U.S. spending on public education per pupil is the 7th highest in the world (PDF warning), and above the OECD average as a percentage of GDP. We're spending more than enough money on education. As OP said, the problem is too much administrative overhead. Every time teachers complain about being underpaid, the administration points the finger at Congress and says they need more money. Every time Congress suggests cuts to Education, the administration dumps the cuts on the teachers making them rise up in furious opposition. The problem is the people who need to be cut are in charge of what to cut, so they make sure that they themselves are never cut.

Re:Wow...

[nblender]

If this schedule is so onerous on you, then I shudder to think what happens when your child becomes ill. I'm pretty sure I know what happens, based on the kids in my sons class who show up coughing/sneezing because their parents are too busy at work to take a few days off to keep little johnny at home... So then my kid gets sick and the rest of my family gets sick, and _I_ have to miss work... I'm a contractor so I don't get "sick leave", I just lose money. We see many advantages in having one of us stay home...

Re:Wow...

[unencode200x]

At least at the PTA meetings I've been at I've seen parents get up in arms over cutting morning/evening hours. It all has to do with child care (at least for younger kids). They basically use school system as a drop-off before work, pick up after work child care system with the added benefit of education.

People were getting really bothered over a proposal to not let kids into the school until 15 minutes before start time to save money. They were doing an hour before start time where the kids would sit in the cafeteria with a teacher or two until school started. AFAIK they're still doing that. I've since moved a private school/home school hybrid scenario that works great for our family.

Re:Wow...

[skine]

What state do you live in where a nontenured (aka fireable) teacher makes $50k?

Re:Wow...

[Solandri]

Keep class schedules the same, fire one administrator, give all the teachers a raise with the left-over money.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/nyregion/16rubber.html

Re:Wow...

[unencode200x]

Not only child care, but what about the societal costs of dealing with home-alone bored teenagers. I'm not sociologist, but I'd be willing to bet we see some increased crime, teen pregnancies, and other unintended costs.

Here in Wisconsin they cut $900 million for our education budget this year. It will be an interesting experiment to see the effect, if any, that this has.

Re:Wow...

[anyGould]

- leave the kids home alone (sounds like the cheapest option, until they start causing trouble)

Step 2 - wait for child services to show up and take the kids away (because you're "neglecting" them). Locally it was pointed out that there is actually no hard-fixed age where it's legal to leave a "child unattended".

Job creation program for FCCS?

Re:Wow...

[SlippyToad]

There is no evidence that a 4-day school week makes education worse

There's no evidence that it doesn't. But in order to keep our fucking tax cuts for Fucking Wall Street, we're going to experiment on a generation of young kids and hope we don't set their economic status back a whole century.

You're asking us not to rush to judgment on a decision that was rushed to completion. Thanks. I'll assume the worst, the very absolute worst. I certainly can't see how this kind of non-stop assault on education helps Americans, but I think that train left the station about 30 years ago.

Just in case you're clueless about whose bullshit ideas you are defending, the major forces behind the ongoing assault on our educational system include the ever-useless Koch brothers and their even more useless friends the DeVos family, whose sole (shriveled) contribution to our society is the gigantic scam known as Amway.

Re:Wow...

[Yamioni]

I'm not sure why that private school can afford first-place amenities at less than half the national average cost, but they do and we're glad for it.

I have two guesses.
1) They don't pay their administrators $100k+ per year.
2) They are more directly accountable to the people paying the bills, so make better use and less waste of the money they have.

Where I went to HS we had three (yes three!) principals for a body of probably 1500 students. None of them were ever observed to be particularly busy, and each made at least $75k a year. So there's $150k a year in wasted tax dollars. That goes to say nothing of all the other higher up administrators they had as well as school board members banking probably something in the range of $50k-$125k a year. I'd wager a guess they didn't need 75% of them, so that's at least another $500k a year in wasted taxes. Private schools generally have fewer administrators, and I doubt they pay them as much as my public school district paid ours. Public schools also have the advantage of collecting funds from all citizens that own land, rather than just from the people that have kids in the system. That's a large body of people paying in that aren't getting anything out (seems almost unfair if you think about it) and have no feedback from the system. So it is much easier for public schools to take money and not get complaints about what they are doing with it. Private schools only get money from enrollees, so their entire source of income is intimately familiar with how that money is being spent.

Re:Wow...

[SlippyToad]

This is part of the DeVos family's assault on public education. Don't assume it has anything to do with fiscal responsiblity or any other logical, explanable reason. It's just another way to fuck America out of everything and leave us at the mercy of con artists and frauds.

The DeVos family are the assholes who conjured up the gigantic scam and fraud that is Amway. They are nothing more than very wealthy snake oil salesmen.

Re:Wow...

[SlippyToad]

Follow the money. Follow the movement. Koch Brothers and the DeVos family. Con artists and snake oil salesmen.

We're being rooked out of our very nation by these shysters.

Re:Wow...

[anyGould]

You miss the twin problems of "the kid doesn't want to be there, so threatening to kick him out is a reward, not a punishment" and "until a certain age, I am legally required to send my kid to school and you are legally required to teach them, so I'll pay that bill Half Past Never."

Oh, also the problem of assuming that the 12-year-old has a parent available to watch them all day.

Re:Wow...

[SlippyToad]

Do you have figures on home schooling? Or just vague generalizations.

I continue to associate home schooling with Bible-thumping creationists and other social rejects who refuse to accept the reality of the modern world. And therefore I associate home schooling with NO schooling.

So, show me figures.

Re:Wow...

[anyGould]

You've probably got a bad batch, then.

I went through the public school system, my brother and sister were homeschooled from the age of 8 or so on.

They're easily more socially adjusted than I am (I'm the nerd and wallflower of the family), and I can't really point at any area where their school was "deficient" (there's some differences in what they took, but nothing you wouldn't see between any two school systems).

If I had to find a reason, it would be (1) a parent who was *very* insistent that the kids would learn properly, and (2) the parent's willingness to find experts in areas they didn't know. I got hauled in to teach maths, a neighbor (who's a vet) helped out with biology, they were enrolled in a band program (run by a former teacher who now specializes in home-schoolers). Sports was easy - they just signed up for soccer and baseball and what-not.

Re:Wow...

[HereIAmJH]

This assumes the purpose of schools is to educate.

Most schools are public funded daycare. And that will be a big problem with 4 day weeks. Who will be supervising those kids on the 5th day while parents are working?

As far as untrained people who aren't capable of getting a job, this has significant impacts on society. Those people have to eat and have a place to live. If they can't earn enough themselves, society will end up paying the cost. Whether it's through a welfare system, crime, or the costs of transporting them to another geographical region. The balancing act for an elite class is to provide a system that works just well enough to keep the population fed and docile while not investing too much wealth.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Wow, this is what happens when you go full retard, everyone.

Reform is useless, there are too many interested parties. The solution? Sauve qui peut. Most private schools can do the job, if you have the means. If not, there's homeschooling. And the rest will serve as horrible examples to those who fail to take advantage of the first two options. It's lifeboat time, and there aren't enough seats for everyone.

So either you have the money to send your child off to private school, you have the money to have a parent stay home with the kids all day, or your children don't get educated at all. Gee, I'm sure that'll completely solve the problem of people living in the ghetto.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Now untrained people, yes that is an issue, but if there are no jobs and never will be for them, no real loss.

Except when you remember that these "untrained people" are still people, and still need to fucking eat and have shelter. Should they just go out and die in the gutter now, so as not to inconvenience you?

Re:Wow...

[chrb]

On the contrary, I agree that this forced "experiment" is pointless. But in the longer term, it is worth asking these questions - how is it that the children of Finland are consistently ranked at the top of international education tables, and yet "Finnish children spend the fewest number of hours in the classroom in the developed world"? There is clearly more to optimising education than maximising hours in the classroom.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Any employee who survives gets a union mandated 8% annual payraise.

Bull fucking shit.

Its all part of the game, just like they get three months vacation

That they either have to spend at school, keeping up on new training, or working because they don't get paid for it? Sounds awesome. And those jobs typically end up being shitty, gas station jobs, as there aren't a lot of places that will just hire someone for 3 months.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

A friend of mine who is an honorably discharged veteran is married to a teacher. They're in their early 30's. She teaches first grade. Class size when from about 25 kids to 35 kids this year. She has to pay twice as much out of pocket for benefits now (which are worse than last year). She makes about $30K/year taking home less than $20K.

She's looking to get out of teaching becuase they realized that they're going to stay poor if she doesn't and won't be able to support their families. I feel for them, because she's really dedicated to it and literally loves kids.

Anyway, here in WI some of these teachers now actually qualify for welfare because of the cuts

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

My numbers are from the early 90s in a relatively expensive suburb.

So, in other words, complete bullshit.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

how does the education system in South Korea and Finland work?

I can give a few ideas why it might work better in Finland:

  * People have a better attitude towards learning
  * There isn't a mindset that everyone has to go to high school and then to college. If you don't want to learn, you just don't go to either of them but to some vocational school. So you don't get these asshole jocks terrorizing everyone in high school.
  * People who are constantly disruptive in classes get sent to "special classes" with other such people. (I guess doing this in US this would result as a lawsuit towards school.)

Also what's this complaining about parents having to pick up their kids from school early? I never got picked up. I walked to school and back, and waited several hours for my parents to come home.

Re:Wow...

[unencode200x]

Citations please.

Re:Wow...

[kevinNCSU]

Out of curiosity can you describe in what way you got involved that required the administration to move in and shut you down? I generally thought get involved means parents taking an interest in their kids school work, making sure they do their homework, helping them with concepts/ideas, giving them further reading, discussing ideas, quizzing them to help them study, ect. How would the administration even accomplish moving to shut stuff like that down?

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess they maybe shouldn't have complained about a slight tax increase to pay for their kids education.

Oh bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. At the same time we funnel more and more money into these damned schools, they purchase fewer textbooks, tissues, soap, etc. Where the fuck do you think all that money goes, anyway?

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

I'm not sure why that private school can afford first-place amenities at less than half the national average cost

I'm guessing that it's mainly because they are allowed to self-select their students. Meaning they don't have to accept the expensive ones, like the troubled kids, those without parental involvement, or the special ed students. Public schools are required to take them, and thus must spend a lot of money on them.

This is the biggest reason why a fully 'privatized' system would never work. There would be far too many people left out in the cold.

Re:Wow...

[HereIAmJH]

You only really need to go back to the 1890's or so, when Robber Barons ran everything, corruption in politics was rampant, and a few very large banking organizations (most notably J.P. Morgan's) were able to violate laws with impunity.

1890s? Look out the window, the Robber Barons have incorporated. Politicians can still be had for a price, they call it campaign financing. And rather than violate laws, big Banks just buy a politician and get the laws changed to suit them. Too big to fail.

The battles today are around entitlements to people vs entitlements to corporations. And things like Social Security and Medicare are pejoratively labeled an 'Entitlement' despite being 100% funded by payroll taxes.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Wow, asshole much?

In most places, both parents have to work in order to make ends meet. The fact that you think it can be solved by "living simpler" is completely, batshit retarded.

Re:Wow...

[Just Some Guy]

I'm lucky enough to be on flex time, so leaving the office earlier than normally planned is only an inconvenience for me. When my kids are sick, I can stay home with them (and just work on things that don't require a lot of interaction with my coworkers). But how many people on a 7-3 schedule can easily tell their boss that they can't work a full shift one day every single week?

I only find the new schedule annoying. I have neighbors who are having a much, much harder time of it.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Get over yourself. That's not what he's saying at all. This is a very serious problem, and needs to be addressed if this is going to work. Ignoring it is a sure recipe for failure.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Blah blah blah, generic anti-teacher sentiment, blah blah blah.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

There are 4 school days per week, but each day is longer. How are they cutting down on education?

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

Hmm.. school days are already shorter than workdays so either the parent works part time already or there's already a babysitting service involved. If kids stay an extra hour 4 days a week, that's an extra hour of work 4 days a week. Or an hour less of babysitting 4 days a week.

What's the big problem?

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Because it's all or nothing, right? There can't be some happy middle ground? And it can't be possible that there are some really incompetent parents out there who truly have no idea what the fuck they should be doing?

Re:Wow...

[Uberbah]

Why? Four days a week is plenty. Most children

Many children already struggle to pay attention in class. What do you think lengthening the school day while shortening the lunch period is going to do to attention spans?

Making students waste even more time within it won't fix the problem or create brighter students.

You get what you pay for. You pay good benefits to attract good teachers who have 20 students or less, you'll have good schools. Make excuses for shoving 30 students on a teacher who's paid $25,000 a year, and you wonder why you have shitty schools.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

You say "can't be possible that there are some really incompetent parents out there"

But OP said "Most parents who care also have no clue how to help."

Kind of a big difference.

And anyway you're still wrong. Saying "some" is really exaggerating. The intersection of parents who are "really incompetent" and parents who care and are very interested in helping is pretty small I'd say.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

What kind of job are you hiring for? I'm assuming these people didn't go to homeschooled college.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

but if it includes K-6, then two-income families are going to have to invest in putting their kids in some form of daycare one day a week so they can continue going to work

Hold on, what kind of K-6 school keeps the kids until 5:00pm or (more realistically with commute time) 6:00pm?

Either one parent is already part-time/stay-at-home or there's already daycare involved. Trimming an hour from 4 days a week (the school keeps them longer) may actually save money, especially for the part-time workers.

Re:Wow...

[Hognoxious]

Who's going to wipe your fat ass when you're too senile to do it yourself?

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

Get over yourself.

I don't know what you mean. My post merely meant to imply that I think that just because some people might suffer because of a decision doesn't mean that it shouldn't be done.

That's not what he's saying at all.

I don't know what he's saying. He said, "all the parents," but I do not know how many that is. I wonder how many parents truly will need to find a baby sitter or stay home. I suppose being given accurate numbers would help.

This is a very serious problem

Whether it's a serious problem or not is likely subjective.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

His argument was absolutely obliterated.

Re:Wow...

[clausiam]

Umm, because they are adding 4x30 minutes = 2 hours. They are cutting away a full day ~= 6 hours for a net loss of about 4 hours or ~13%.

Re:Wow...

[HereIAmJH]

First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning.

Is immaculate conception common? About the only case I can think of where choice doesn't enter the equation is rape. I pay a great deal of money every year to provide an education for other people's children. Is it too much to ask parents to pick up the cost when schools are not available?

(note that I do not support 4 day school weeks precisely because parents tend to work 5 day weeks)

Re:Wow...

[Marc Madness]

Over the course of four days, the family pays for 2 hours less of daycare (a half hour less each day according to the summary). In exchange, they have to pay for an additional 6.5 hours of daycare on Fridays (assuming a school day from 9-3:30). It's still a net-loss.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

You miss the twin problems of "the kid doesn't want to be there, so threatening to kick him out is a reward, not a punishment"

The punishment is the fee for the parents.

and "until a certain age, I am legally required to send my kid to school and you are legally required to teach them, so I'll pay that bill Half Past Never."

It's not just a bill that you can ignore, it's like if you don't pay your taxes. You end up with a lien on your house, your wages are garnished, or maybe you go to jail.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

I think it's pretty obvious that excused absences could be treated differently from skipping school.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, some enterprising parents may open up home daycares for extra scratch

I knew a woman who did exactly that. Had to give up full work because she couldn't find daycare. Got talking to another in the same situation. Started taking turns. Then someone else asked to join in. Now she runs her own creche.

Re:Wow...

[sjames]

It could as easily be that the "learning loss" is a continuous process but they only measure it over the summer.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Option 1: Welfare for the regular people. It's costly, and the Republicans hate it (as much as they love Welfare for Corporations and/or the super-rich).
Option 2: Massive crime, rioting, and civil unrest as the "trash" refuses to go starve quietly.

I'd prefer paying taxes for expensive welfare rather than, oh, having my house burnt down by an angry mob. I'm crazy that way.

Re:Wow...

[livid_gnome]

Umm, you don't know what truly rural areas are like do you. You talk as if a graduating class of 100 is small. My graduating class was 18, and there were maybe 100 kids total in 9th through 12th grades and maybe 200 total for K-12. Having said that $50,000 still seams like an awfuly small amount to be saving for such a drastic change. I would think the reduced fuel costs for both transportation and heating and cooling would be more than that.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

What? I specifically mentioned people who can't get their absences excused because they can't afford constantly going to the doctor because they're in poor health. When I was in school, the only way to get excused in my school was to bring a doctor's note (or something similar). A note from a parent simply wasn't enough. I don't know how many schools do that, though.

And I don't know how many of such people exist, but there are still other perceived problems that I and other comments mentioned.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

Wow, you think Republicans are in any way responsible for kids not respecting teachers?

Hmm. My mom is a high school teacher in a bad school. The kids who don't show respect are, shall we say, probably not card carrying Republicans and neither are their parents. They don't give a rat's ass about politics and certainly don't watch the news regularly or read political blogs or stay informed.

Here's the real reason kids don't respect teachers, at least in those bad environments. There are no consequences. My mom's school is the last stop before the "school of last resort" (basically a prison) for her area. It's the one where kids go after they have been expelled from 2 or 3 other schools. But guess what. The administration reeeeeally does not want to kick out bad kids. I don't know why -- funding, NCLB, something.

So the gang member in one of my mom's class who disrupted almost period by swearing at her in Spanish over and over? Yeah, it took half the semester to get him kicked out. Had to wait until he brought a knife to school. Zero tolerance for weapons, infinite tolerance for everything else. Now what possible effect did her obvious lack of authority and power have on the other kids? Hmm.

And what's the consequence to the kid of being kicked out of yet another school? *This* time he regrets breaking all the rules? *This* time he realizes he could have had a shot at a better life if he turned away from criminal violence? What a joke.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a little monetary fine if their kids fail would motivate them to beat their kids.

The more likely scenario.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

I guess I didn't understand. In my school I only needed a doctor's note if I was out for more than X days in a row (I think it was 3). Definitely never needed a doctor's note for a cold.

In any case, OP's idea of a 90% cutoff would mean... well.. the average high school year is 180 days, for lower grades it's 197 days. So we're talking 18 to 20 days of school missed.

Be honest.. what proportion of kids who miss lots of schools fall into the narrow situation of:
1. They are legitimately absent through something like illness for more than 3 weeks during the school year (illnesses on vacations, winter, summer don't count)
2. They don't get any medical attention for these long-term illnesses
3. Their parents really do care about the situation, but just can't figure out how to get a note

To me it's vanishingly small and could be handled through simple communication from the parent to the school. In reality the people caught by this rule would be
1. Not legitimately absent
2. Parents are completely uninvolved and are apparently willing to pay the fine alluded to, rather than become involved
3. Kids are completely uninvolved and have no intrinsic motivation to pass or communicate what's going on to the school

So pretty much people who would fail anyways.

Re:Wow...

[gfxguy]

Of course it's possible, it's just not "most" parents who care. The ones who don't care are already incompetent parents, but you shouldn't have a beef with them because they're not the ones trying to help. Based on your replies, that should make you happy... uncaring parents mean you get to do whatever you want without getting hassled.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

Be honest.. what proportion of kids who miss lots of schools fall into the narrow situation of:

Actually, I said that I wasn't sure right in my comment. Of course, I doubt you are, either.

And that wasn't the only "problem" I listed.

So pretty much people who would fail anyways.

I was absent quite often (according to you, it would be illegitimate absences), but I never failed. Those things might make it a bit harder, depending on the child, but it isn't guaranteed that they'll fail.

But I don't think making everything extremely strict and reforming the rules in a way that will likely increase the number of failures and the amount of disappointment in the current educational system will help the situation, to be honest.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Jail time! ... and now tax money has to go towards putting those kids in foster homes. Brilliant idea there, Sherlock.

Maybe instead of finding ways to "get tough" on people who aren't independently wealthy, we should try to figure out how to engage with them? If the parents care about their kids, and they value education, the school won't have any problems with those kids.

If the parents don't care about their kids, it doesn't matter how harsh you try to get on them. You'll still have problem kids to deal with.

If the parents don't value education, the kids won't, either ... and you're back to square one.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

You're right, in this case with a 1/2 hour difference there probably wouldn't be much opportunity to save money.

There are two things to take into account though. First, the extra 1/2 hour of work on those 4 days adds income in addition to reducing cost, so that might further balance out the deficit on the 5th day.

Second, you're looking at the total time and not paying attention to the distribution. The real cost savings are in the corner case where a babysitter is needed for 1/2 hour every day. In the new scheme the babysitter would only be needed once a week instead of five times a week. In reality, if you have someone like a nanny or home daycare, you don't get away with paying for a 1/2 hour chunk of time every single day. Coming out to your house 5 days a week and only being paid for 2.5 hours worth of actual sitting time? Not going to happen. One full day of babysitting could very well be cheaper than 5 partial days.

It would be more likely if the school day were extended by a full hour, rather than their plan of 1/2 hour plus reduced lunch. But hey, my point is just that it's more complicated than it seems at first.

Re:Wow...

[gfxguy]

Good post... I think many people out there actually don't know what home schoolers do these days; there's all sorts of programs for home schooled kids to have shared classes and field trips and such, tons of resources making sure that they are getting full state required curriculums. Yes, some of them may teach some religious doctrine, but anyone that suggests that's all they get is just parroting some idiot mouthpiece (and I've seen the idiocy parroted here on slashdot many times). And no, I'm not home schooled, and no, I don't home school my kids - I think it just shows a huge amount of parental involvement and that's the key to kids getting a good education. When the parents dont' care, very often the kids don't, either.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

You're ignoring the reduced lunch period. But yeah, the total hours is probably going to be reduced. I get that, but you're ignoring the distribution of time and the overhead in task switching and all that stuff.

It's not obvious to me that 4 days of English at 1.2 hours per class is massively worse, overall, than 5 days of English at 1 hour per class. It depends on the individual student but for some it's going to be better to have more time to focus, once you've gotten in that mode, than having more days with less time per day.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

Yes jail time.. in the rare case that the parent really doesn't give a crap.

In reality it's a deterrent. So we're not talking about throwing millions of people in jail.

You have to weigh the cost of the isolated cases against the positive effect of making all the other kids more involved and more serious about doing well in life.

Re:Wow...

[nitehawk214]

I think this is where the analogy breaks down. The taxpayers are supposed to be owners of the government (I know, ha ha), and thus would want the government to cut costs. But we aren't really customers of the government either, since we are compelled to pay taxes and many services are (rightly so) not opt-out.

As such, the stockholders or owners of a company would want it to cut costs in order to raise profits, if there was no way to increase revenues. In this case the analogy is that since the taxpayers flatly refuse to allow taxes to be raised they decide to cut costs because schooling is apparently unnecessary.

Re:Wow...

[vlm]

LOL my theory is he could do it for 12 hours, so he proves me wrong by petering out at nine words? LOL at the meta-joke.

Re:Wow...

[fishthegeek]

You seem rather short-sighted in your analysis. There is a bell curve and most of the time you are teaching a class that is dead smack in the middle. Average students from average backgrounds and average economic capacities. Average of course being relative to a region served. You're right, who doesn't want graduates capable of meaningful work? Better yet, why even bother with teaching a work ethic? We do train students because the alternative is can be as severe as trying to make a silk purse out of a cows ear. It wouldn't work. You help them try to see their potential while simultaneously trying to give them something that is practical. What is really elitist is your attitude. You're obviously bright, and probably smarter than I am but I'd also bet that you're not given a random group of kids and 180 days to try to get them a little further down the road of life skills. Now consider what you'd do if those kids couldn't even speak English. It must be nice to be so judgmental, and if you're qualified to fix the problem then why don't you? As for your other comment about education and school, I think you're correct. There are absolutely zero substitutes for experience but let's not pretend that experience (read: wisdom) can be hurried. The only way to get wisdom is to live long enough. You might have been smart as a school aged child but I guarantee you weren't wise because no child can be.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

Actually, I said that I wasn't sure right in my comment. Of course, I doubt you are, either.

I'm asking for an honest guess, not a sound statistic. As in, do you think this would be a big problem, or one that can be dealt with out-of-band, like an exception system? Like the teacher saying "Yeah cheekyjohnson is absent a lot but he's a really good student, he passes."

And that wasn't the only "problem" I listed.

Rereading your posts, it's the only problem I see listed. Well, you also mentioned the monetary fine for having to retake failed classes, I saw that as a consequence of this absence thing, but I suppose it would apply for failing for any reason. Okay.

I don't understand why you think that would prevent people from finishing school. The parent pays the fine, kid goes back to school. If the parent doesn't pay, their wages are garnished, kid goes back to school. If the parent has no job, their welfare checks are garnished, kid goes back to school. If none of the above... exception. It's a 99% solution. Perfect is the enemy of the good and all that.

But I don't think making everything extremely strict and reforming the rules in a way that will likely increase the number of failures and the amount of disappointment in the current educational system will help the situation, to be honest.

Fair enough, it doesn't have to be extremely strict and in fact I was imagining a certain amount of leeway to begin with. Like if you get straight A's but miss a month of school... and still get straight A's... well obviously that's okay. That's not the kind of student we're addressing.

Increasing the failure rate is the best thing that could happen. Right now, a high school diploma is meaningless for the bottom 10% of students I'd say. They still lack basic skills. And furthermore, a big proportion of those who don't graduate should have been kicked out far earlier, and all that money saved.

To me, the solution isn't to try to get everybody to pass and fit into society's expectations, it's to change society's expectations. That bottom 10%... well let's create jobs that they can do without a diploma.

Re:Wow...

[nblender]

I guess my point, which was admittedly not well stated, is that as a dual-income household, all these people already have this problem. They'll just have it more frequently... Unfortunately, most people instead choose to send their sick kid to school and pass their child-care problem onto the rest of us.. These are the ones complaining about having no option on the fridays off because school's not open to offload their kid.

I have friends who have high-profile careers... They send their kids to private school; have arranged for after school care, and then have arranged for the nanny to pickup their children and take them home, feed them, entertain them, and get them ready for bed; the nanny then does some laundry and prepares supper for the parents, who come home about 9PM... Parents come home, spend a few minutes with the kids, and then put the kids to bed. These are the people who are complaining about the cost of arranging an extra day of childcare.

These are people who should not have had children.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

I'm asking for an honest guess, not a sound statistic.

I don't know, then. Not many, probably.

The parent pays the fine

That isn't always possible. To some people, $500 is a lot of money.

If the parent doesn't pay, their wages are garnished

What? I wasn't aware that sending your child to a school was mandatory. Given the existence of homeschoolers and unschoolers, this does not seem to be the case.

It's a 99% solution.

Where did that number come from? Unless I see some scientifically valid study that proves that this proposed system would work, I wouldn't state any such things as facts. That sounds like quite an oppressive system to me, and I'm not sure many people would like that (especially not the part where Ds are now considered failing grades).

To me, the solution isn't to try to get everybody to pass and fit into society's expectations

That's not my solution either. But if they were to go through with this, I definitely think that they should cut out the non-essential classes (advanced math and such for starters) as not everybody needs those. Those aren't basic skills, and there's options to learn them later if someone changes their mind.

With this new system in addition to mandatory "useless" classes, I think it would only hurt people who do well in some areas but poor in others due to a lack of interest.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

> Wow, you think Republicans are in any way responsible for kids not respecting teachers?
> no consequences
> funding, NCLB
> Zero tolerance for weapons

Wow, you think those policies have nothing to do with Republicans?

Re:Wow...

[tycoex]

You can't honestly suggest that staying home for 2-3 days to take care of a sick child is the same as changing your schedule for the entire year.

2-3 days != entire school year.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

In my past experience seeing homeschooling advocates on the interwebnets, they'll "No True Scotsman"-handwave away the religious (even though that's the majority) and focus only on the success stories.

Re:Wow...

[Totenglocke]

Bullshit. Even if parts or your story are true, there's SOMETHING you're leaving out - otherwise you'd have simply sued the school and won. You yourself said it was clearly in violation of laws regarding disabled students.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

What? I wasn't aware that sending your child to a school was mandatory. Given the existence of homeschoolers and unschoolers, this does not seem to be the case.

As far as I know only the Amish have an exemption, and then only after 8th grade. Even homeschoolers are required to meet certain requirements and pass state tests. Private or religious schools also have to meet those requirements. So yeah you could homeschool your kid but they could still fail 7th grade. I'd say that should be excluded from the failure penalty though since the state didn't directly waste resources on your child, you just wasted your own time.

Where did that number come from?

"99% solution" is a figure of speech. I just meant it's not designed to fix 100% and there has to be a way to exercise judgment on special cases. We've been tending away from that in this country due to legal challenges over civil rights and discrimination and so on... but really I think a teacher needs to be able to say "In my opinion, this one kid, even though his x y and z objective measurements are the same as this other kid's, well he's a different case and needs to be treated differently."

But if they were to go through with this, I definitely think that they should cut out the non-essential classes (advanced math and such for starters) as not everybody needs those. Those aren't basic skills, and there's options to learn them later if someone changes their mind.

That's a great idea actually.

Re:Wow...

[anyGould]

You miss the twin problems of "the kid doesn't want to be there, so threatening to kick him out is a reward, not a punishment"

The punishment is the fee for the parents.

Yes, because kids who are skipping or otherwise don't care about school tend to listen to their parents. Yeah...

and "until a certain age, I am legally required to send my kid to school and you are legally required to teach them, so I'll pay that bill Half Past Never."

It's not just a bill that you can ignore, it's like if you don't pay your taxes. You end up with a lien on your house, your wages are garnished, or maybe you go to jail.

I see two practical results: one, kids will simply *not* retake the class (which will lead to kids who are required to be at school, but not permitted to be in any classes), which leads to result two: teachers will be told to ensure kids pass by simply writing "50%" on the final paperwork.

I'd suggest you might get better results by using that business model everyone keeps saying the public sector needs - if your customers (children) are not enjoying your product, what's wrong with the product?

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, we insist on sending everyone through the same high school system. Lots of other countries split their secondary education into vocational training and university bound study, so we're testing all the American kids against the smartest kids from other countries. There are still plenty of really bright kids getting good educations in our high schools.

Re:Wow...

[sesshomaru]

"So now you have a mass of uncared-for, uneducated, unemployable poor kids sitting around with basically nothing to do but join up with criminal gangs. "

Conservatives prefer to invest in Government Lethal Chambers, ala The Repairer of Reputations, to investing in Government Schools.

That way the Koch Brothers will be untroubled by restive surplus minimum wage workers while enjoying their ill gotten billions.

As Ayn Rand stated about people who aren't wealthy in her famous book, Atlas Shrugged, "To a gas chamber, go!"

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

well they just took a leaf out of the business playbook and externalised a cost back to the average working joe.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

Whether it's a serious problem or not is likely subjective.

No, it's not. The vast, vast, vast majority of parents would be affected by this. That makes it a serious problem.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

As far as I know only the Amish have an exemption, and then only after 8th grade. Even homeschoolers are required to meet certain requirements and pass state tests. Private or religious schools also have to meet those requirements

Actually, I'm pretty sure this is wrong. In quite a few states there seems to be little to no regulations on homeschooling. I personally know a few people who homeschooled their children and never had so much as a visit from the government or anything similar to that (because that kind of thing isn't required by my state).

However, there are some states that have stricter regulations on homeschooling. But, as I said, the laws vary from state to state.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

What BS. Conservatives don't have a problem with teachers, they have a problem with teacher's unions which set out to make their profession more profitable at the expense of education for the students. All the while claiming they need raises outstripping private sector salaries all for the sake of the children. Social conservatives would be more likely to require their children to be respectful towards their teachers and less likely to argue that their child is a unique snowflake that the school needs to bend the rules for.

Re:Wow...

[Just Some Guy]

I guess my point, which was admittedly not well stated, is that as a dual-income household, all these people already have this problem. They'll just have it more frequently...

But it's not "just" more frequently. It's the difference between missing a few days a year with sick kids versus missing all the same days plus an extra hour+15 about 40 times a year. A lot of companies (and coworkers who have to cover those hours) won't be thrilled.

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

But it is likely subjective. When someone says that something is a problem, that usually implies that something "bad" is happening. "Bad" is probably subjective.

The vast, vast, vast majority of parents would be affected by this.

Do you have proof that a vast majority of parents would be significantly affected by this?

Re:Wow...

[nbauman]

We would expect kids with disciplinary problems to disrespect teachers. The Republicans aren't responsible for that.

But the Republicans are responsible for the movement to destroy teachers' unions, fire teachers on the basis of invalid tests, and privatize the school system.

The reason public schools are reluctant to kick kids out is that somebody is asking the question, "What happens to them after we kick them out?"

Re:Wow...

[Rob the Bold]

"First of all, for some people there is a non-zero chance of becoming parents with little warning."

Here I call the bullshits. "Little warning?" Have heterosexual, vaginal sex and be warned - you may be a parent in 9 months. For women there are repeated warnings after that - every month Aunt Flo fails to visit is a warning.

Ugh. It would seem I did a very poor job of making my point here -- probably serves me right for feeding the Anonymous troll in my first post above.

Re:Wow...

[Belial6]

You seem to be confused about what the American school system entails. Our schools do not smack of intellectual elitism. our schools smack of ANTI-intellectual elitism. Drive around the US. Look at the signs in front of the schools. They don't pronounce the schools Math club, or literature club. The proudly declare the schools sports team. Most of the complaints about our schools is in that they are not intellectual enough.

Re:Wow...

[metlin]

Most children are already forced to spent far too much time in public schools.

Clearly, you should have spent more time in your English classes.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

I do not know what the percentage is, but please keep in mind that those 2 towns have a combined population of less than 1000 people. Not students, people. They maybe should look at closing the school and busing the kids to another town nearby.

Re:Wow...

[Totenglocke]

Except that you forget the differing work ethics from different cultures. Workers in the US are far more likely than most Europeans to sit back and do nothing if they can get away with it - and THAT is where the problem with the teachers unions in the US comes from. Teachers are not required to put out any effort or do anything at all, yet not only do they keep their jobs, they get raises too.

The only calls for pay cuts are for the crap teachers who shouldn't have a job or the ones who've exploited the union wages to earn over $100,000 a year (it's rare, but it does happen), which is a pretty high burden to put on tax payers considering that said teacher is no more productive than they would have been earning $70,000 a year (still almost double the mean and median pay in the US). Also, I've yet to see any plan saying that test scores would be the only thing used to determine who is a "good" or "bad" teacher.

Try actually spending time around teachers in the US - you'll see that the good ones ARE respected and thought highly of. The problem is that the majority of the teachers in the US aren't good, because they have no incentive to be. Hell, just take a look at what a joke it is to be an Education major in college - even the people majoring in it often mock how absurdly easy it is.

Re:Wow...

[Totenglocke]

Exactly. One studied showed that the public school system in the US has TEN TIMES as many administrators per 1,000 students as private schools. Granted, due to having more problem kids I can see having more administrators in public schools, but ten times is just obscenely excessive and screwing taxpayers while providing a lower quality education.

Re:Wow...

[Totenglocke]

But more money for better teachers doesn't work unless you can also fire the crappy teachers....

Re:Wow...

[martinX]

My wife helps out at school regularly. She takes part in reading groups, maths exercises, PMP, sports things, chapel and other activities as well as chaperoning a small gaggle of kids when their mothers are late to pick them up. The teachers welcome her assistance.

She has also had robust discussions with some teachers about our children's progress (or lack thereof) in some areas and the absence of timely and meaningful feedback that she needs to help work on particular skills at home with the kids. Some teachers are wary at first, but all come around and are grateful for the feedback.

She has also seen plenty of examples of parents who don't give a shit, don't help at school or at home and act surprised when their little geniuses ain't that bright.

Re:Wow...

[scot4875]

probably for classes they won't even need

Those classes don't exist. (Underwater basket weaving maybe.) I really get tired of this stupid idea that somehow large parts of our school curriculum is "unneeded." That may be true if your only goal in life is to be one-dimensional and generally ignorant, or if your highest aspiration is to be an insert tab A in slot B assembly line worker, but most of the time people who put forth this idea seem to think that they're "special" and should be on some fast track to a more important function.

If you can't find a way to make classes relevant to your life, that's your failing, not the class. Learning is always good. Learning a broad set of subjects is even better. Having more than a passing familiarity with an area of study will make you a more rounded, more thoughtful, more critical thinker.

The number of classes that I took through my entire schooling that I now use on a day to day basis could have probably been covered in a year or two. Vast swaths of History, Science, English/Literature, Math, Physical Education, Music, and every other subject I covered in school really has very little impact on my daily life. I'd never give them up though; if I had the option to go back and redo only what I wanted, I'd try to cover *more* subjects, not fewer. Kids are really stupid when it comes to evaluating things that they'll need in 10, 20, or 50 years.

--Jeremy

Re:Wow...

[scot4875]

It must be nice to have a canned boogeyman to blame for everything. Saves a lot of critical thinking.

--Jeremy

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

Those classes don't exist.

Really? You must have a different definition of "need" than me, then. If someone "needs" to know something to work at their currently preferred job, then that is what I mean. Can you honestly say that everyone needs every single subject in existence in order to get the job that they like? Really?

That may be true if your only goal in life is to be one-dimensional and generally ignorant

Subjective. The other option that wasn't listed is that someone knows what they are going to do, likes to do it, and doesn't want to waste hour after hour learning how to do something else (because not only would that increase their rate of failure, it would also waste the time they could be using to study or perform well in the other subject). Not everyone needs gym (whose material can be looked up and understood in minutes), advanced math classes, chemistry classes, music classes, art classes, etc. I'm not saying that there are vast quantities of such classes that need to be eliminated. I'm saying that there are quite a few.

You can't get the time you put into learning (and later likely forgetting if you didn't use) them back, but you do have options if you want to go back and learn them.

If you can't find a way to make classes relevant to your life, that's your failing

Well, yes, if you try to make it relevant to your life and fail, then I suppose that would be a failing. But it's difficult to fail at something if you didn't know or try to do it in the first place.

Learning is always good.

That's interesting. I didn't know that "good" was an objective fact of the universe that one person defined. Honestly, if you're not one of the people I described, and you want to spend lots of time learning things that you'll probably quickly forget (if you don't make the classes relevant to your life), then go ahead. No one would stop you under my proposed system (as the classes would still be there).

but most of the time people who put forth this idea seem to think that they're "special" and should be on some fast track to a more important function.

I'd never give them up though

Alright, then. Have fun with that. I'm not advocating for the complete elimination of these classes. I hope you recognize, though, that everyone isn't exactly like you.

Kids are really stupid when it comes to evaluating things that they'll need in 10, 20, or 50 years.

So just treat them like complete idiots to an even further extent and give them almost zero responsibility. Honestly, I don't think it's working.

Yes, part of their brains might not be fully developed, but that doesn't mean that they don't know what they currently like to do. They like to do what they like to do. They probably know that they have to get a job. As I said, if they change their minds later and need to learn something, they have options. But what happens if we force every subject in existence down someone's throat? I'd say they temporarily memorize the material and then quickly forget it when they can't apply it to their life. Thus, even if they wanted to use it, they'd have to learn it again, anyway. And it takes time away from things that are more important to them. It just seems like a waste to me.

Re:Wow...

[nbauman]

I've yet to see any plan saying that test scores would be the only thing used to determine who is a "good" or "bad" teacher.

No Child Left Behind does require that teachers be fired under certain circumstances. Here's an example from in New York City of an intermediate school teacher whose principal thinks she's a good teacher, and wants to keep her, whose students are getting good grades and admissions to the best competitive high schools. Yet the teacher has to be fired because she did badly on a test that nobody can figure out. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/education/07winerip.html

The test concluded that she was in the 7th percentile from the bottom of teaching ability, so the principal couldn't keepher. But the confidence interval of the test was between 0 and the 52nd percentile. So it's meaningless. If you know what a confidence interval is, you'll understand that.

Another example of firing teachers on the basis of test scores was Michelle Rhee in the DC school district. USA Today had a series of stories on that. Rhee was firing lots of teachers based on student test scores, and giving bonuses to teachers whose students were doing well on test scores. But it turned out that there was widespread cheating on the tests. Furthermore, when Rhee heard about these accusations, she hired a firm to look into the cheating who merely asked the school officials whether there was cheating and reported back to Rhee that they said there wasn't. You can find the whole story on Rhee in her Wikipedia entry.

There is no evidence that US workers, particularly US teachers, are more likely to do nothing if they can get away with it. There is no evidence that a significant number of teachers have exploited the union system to earn over $100,000 a year even though they're incompetent. You're just making that up. I challenge you to provide a link to evidence.

There's lots of good data on teaching and education in the US, what makes students and teachers effective. The best writing I've seen is by Diane Ravitch, who was secretary of education in the GHW Bush and the Clinton administration. She uses the scientific method and follows the data. She started out believing some of the things you said, but the data made her decide that she was wrong. She said that the major factor that was associated with school performance was family income. She said that unions aren't the problem, and the anti-union movement is doing lots of harm.

So that tells you how to make student performance worse -- lower their family income. And that's what the anti-union movement is doing.

Re:Wow...

[c0lo]

U.S. spending on public education per pupil is the 7th highest in the world (PDF warning), and above the OECD average as a percentage of GDP. We're spending more than enough money on education. As OP said, the problem is too much administrative overhead.

Let me rephrase: you are wasting money in the administration of the education and not enough on the education itself. And when budget-cutting is needed, you choose to cut from education (the benefit) instead of administration (cost).

Is the rewording correct?

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

As you said, like 500 years ago, BUT now we have twitter and facebook

Re:Wow...

[Meski]

People will look at this day and mark it as one of the starting points that mark the fall of the republic.

Re:Wow...

[AP31R0N]

This is class warfare. If they can make schools bad enough private schools will gain sway, public schools will lose. Parents will have to choose between rent and sending their kids to school. Soon you'll have an army of ignorant, hopeless, helpless kids. Kids you can turn into soldiers or slaves.

All this to avoid the rich paying just a little bit more and to hurt the brown and poor.

Re:Wow...

[Marc Madness]

The original argument was that the parents work until 5PM and get home at 6PM. Whether the kids finish school at 3:30PM, 4PM, or 5PM, there needs to be a babysitter involved if they add 1.6 hours to the end of the school day then yes the cost of babysitting breaks even but then are the students actually learning anything for that last 1.5 hours or so (that's a long school day).

Secondly, if the parents are working until 5PM, they'd have to work until 5:30 PM to earn more wages but as a side-effect, they also have to pay the babysitter more. Besides, most people who work at jobs with fixed hours can't set their own schedule, so they won't be able to say "I want to work a half hour more to increase my income". Otherwise they could just decide to come into work early and leave early and avoid the babysitter cost (which makes the situation worse since they otherwise don't employ a babysitter except for the one day). The only case I can see where this breaks even is if one or both parents can work a compressed work week (e.g. also work extra hours Monday-Thursday to have Friday off), but then they'll have to employ the babysitter for more hours in the evening in the general case. Still a net loss for most families and hardly a justification for a savings of $50,000 that is already a socialized cost anyway. It's effectively making the parents pay for that $50,000 twice.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. I can't believe the anti tax idiots can't see past their dogma. We want our kids to be smart but don't want to pay for it. So our taxes will go to daycare because we have to work 2 jobs to support our kids who work at some fast food joint for minimum wage...sometimes I worry about the future of our country..

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

But the Republicans are responsible for the movement to destroy teachers' unions, fire teachers on the basis of invalid tests, and privatize the school system.

Yeah but what does that have to do with kids respecting teachers? Sorry I guess I misunderstood your original post if those were meant to be unrelated points.

The reason public schools are reluctant to kick kids out is that somebody is asking the question, "What happens to them after we kick them out?"

I'm more cynical about their motivations. It's really hard for someone to maintain their feeling of caring over a long period of time for a different set of people year in year out with no real evidence that you're having any impact. So even teachers/administrators who start off truly caring end up accepting the status quo and moving on to mundane concerns like funding. But maybe you're right.

It's a shame because this is a case where "caring" about one kid is having a severely adverse affect on 20 other kids in the class.

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

Yes, because kids who are skipping or otherwise don't care about school tend to listen to their parents. Yeah...

Good point, but in the situation where a kid doesn't care about his parents, doesn't care about his own education, and isn't afraid of immediate OR long-term consequences, well... he's better off just being kicked out of school. We'll save money, we'll save time, and as long as there's a re-entry mechanism for the kid when/if he matures (if it's short term, summer school, long term GED), to me that's good enough. You can't make it work for everybody.

I see two practical results: one, kids will simply *not* retake the class (which will lead to kids who are required to be at school, but not permitted to be in any classes)

You might be right, but the upshot is that the parents are taking on the financial burden of their child. He's not sitting in school soaking up $9500 of taxpayer money (far more if he has any learning problems) while a host of adults are desperately trying to contain or manage him. He's also not disrupting dozens of other kids who actually want to be there and learn.

which leads to result two: teachers will be told to ensure kids pass by simply writing "50%" on the final paperwork.

That would suck, and highlights how there needs to be an accountability system for teachers.

Re:Wow...

[dcw3]

There is no evidence that a 4-day school week makes education worse.

Are you a subject matter expert? Let's just clarify...there's no evidence that you know of, correct?

I admit that I'm not, and my apologies if I'm incorrect, but I find it troubling when i see people making unsubstantiated claims.

Re:Wow...

[dcw3]

Bring your kid to work day, every Friday? Its not as insane as it sounds.

Not gonna happen with many major companies. One word...Liability.

Re:Wow...

[s73v3r]

But it is likely subjective. When someone says that something is a problem, that usually implies that something "bad" is happening. "Bad" is probably subjective.

No, it doesn't. It means there's a problem. That problem might be bad, but it doesn't mean that the suggestion as a whole is bad. It means it has a problem.

Do you have proof that a vast majority of parents would be significantly affected by this?

You need proof to realize that most parents don't stay home during the day?

Re:Wow...

[cheekyjohnson]

It means there's a problem.

Your problem might not be regarded as such by others. They might not care about it or not see it as harmful.

"A matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome"

Most of that wording appears to be subjective.

You need proof to realize that most parents don't stay home during the day?

Perhaps. But that isn't what I was asking. If you read it again, you'll see that I was asking for proof that a majority of parents would be significantly affected by this.

Re:Wow...

[nbauman]

But the Republicans are responsible for the movement to destroy teachers' unions, fire teachers on the basis of invalid tests, and privatize the school system.

Yeah but what does that have to do with kids respecting teachers? Sorry I guess I misunderstood your original post if those were meant to be unrelated points.

I think there's some spillover from the Republican anti-teacher movement. They encourage parents to disrespect teachers, and that sometimes affects the attitude of their kids. I just read a story in Science about how conservatives (which is to say Republicans) are attacking science teachers and specifically geology teachers over their teaching of global warming. Some state laws require "balance" in teaching the "controversy". There are lawsuits against teachers.

The reason public schools are reluctant to kick kids out is that somebody is asking the question, "What happens to them after we kick them out?"

I'm more cynical about their motivations.

Well, *somebody* has to worry about what's going to happen to those kids if they get kicked out of school. This country now has a conveyor belt into jail, where it costs at least $30,000 a year per prisoner. That's $1 million over 30 years. It's a lot cheaper to use well-known methods to improve their behavior than to jail them for the rest of their life (putting aside the damage to society they'll do).

Re:Wow...

[stdarg]

I think there's some spillover from the Republican anti-teacher movement. They encourage parents to disrespect teachers, and that sometimes affects the attitude of their kids. I just read a story in Science about how conservatives (which is to say Republicans) are attacking science teachers and specifically geology teachers over their teaching of global warming.

I don't think that disagreeing with the teacher's agenda automatically means you're disrespecting them. And in any political topic, at that level (pre-college) the teacher should just stay out of it or really give balance to both sides. A big chunk of the population disagrees with the idea of man-caused global warming, so a relatively uneducated (compared to college-level professors or actual climate scientists) high school teacher teaching uneducated children about a contentious topic isn't real science or real education, it's partisanship.

It would be like if a biology teacher used only right-to-life literature when teaching about human sexuality. Hey the pictures are all true. Those are real aborted fetuses. It's science! But somehow I think pro-choice parents would have a big problem and it would end up in court (if the teacher weren't fired).

This country now has a conveyor belt into jail, where it costs at least $30,000 a year per prisoner. That's $1 million over 30 years.

With a 30 year jail term I'm assuming the kid goes to jail for murder or rape or something. The ridiculous cost of prison care is a separate issue. Really a death sentence is (er, again, *should be*) cheaper and probably more humane than 30 years in jail.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true for Finland at least - the study was about 15 year olds - which was one of the two top countries. At that age you are studying at the second level elementary school which is the same for everyone.

Re:Wow...

[KingBenny]

with more and more people mastering i suppose the value of diplomas (is it degrees?) devaluates. Whereas say 50 years ago you were the man if you went to college and finished it, now you're supposed to take specialization, and preferably one or two sub-fields in which to almost-master in order to have a chance at making it on a certain level. Having had a certain amount of education seeds certain expectations, do we all know people who won't accept this or that job because it's just too low for what they've studied for ? Problem stays with informatisation and automatisation even if you get more 'worker-class' people (sounds so caste-system now i read it) there's simply not enough work for everyone anymore, so maybe it would be better if all companies decided to cut one day of work per person and divide the load among the jobless (i know, this is practically impossible you can't just divide every kind of job or project among two different people, it would require a level of convergence that is like almost impossible to achieve) ... my glass ain't half empty, it's practically dried out, in short, i think we're screwed as a society.

Re:Wow...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are not thinking clearly

• Rent
• Electricity
• Equipment
• Books
• Supplies
• Etc....

All those little things add up really quickly

Re:Wow...

[virg_mattes]

When they announced the change, my initial thought was why do they only need to add four hours. Out of a 8 hour day you are only educating my kids for four hours?

Cut out lunch period and recess for Friday (they already have those the other four days), class transitions (ten minutes times six classes a day is 50 minutes), homeroom and morning announcements and note that extending some classes like PE doesn't give much benefit, and it's pretty easy to eat up those extra four hours.

the problem with my local district is that the admin to teach ratio is way too high and the admins get paid about 15% above state average and the teachers about 5% below. Once the first local levy was voted down after building a new school (levy to build a new school passed in 2005, the next year they asked to pass a levy because they didn't have the funds to operate it. WTF) the superintendent and school board just seemed to want to stick it to the parents. Their attitude seemed to be; you stuck it to us, now we are going to stick it to you.

In this case, the flip side could very well be "Pay us more to work in your district because you've already proven that the voters will do dumb things like building a school without setting up a way to fund it, and we don't want to suffer for that."

Virg

Please roll this out to work

[Chris.Nelson]

This may or may not work out for schools but I would love a 3-day weekend every week at my job!

Re:Please roll this out to work

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure a lot of parents there are having to do this, although that third day is unpaid. Wonder what this will do to the juvenile crime and teen pregnancy rates?

Re:Please roll this out to work

[m50d]

And you'd probably perform better as a result. It's past time we instituted a 35-hour work week like in France, or better; it'd reduce unemployment, increase productivity and make people happier.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[Kjella]

Which is going to be the big issue here ,most people have a 5 day work week and they can't just skip one day of work each week. So in practice, they have to ship their kids somewhere or have someone come watch them - but 30 babysitters are way more expensive that one teacher - or you'll have older kids at home unsupervised, which will have plenty issues of its own. So yeah it saves the school money, but at the cost of the parents...

Re:Please roll this out to work

[Formorian]

I work 9 out of 10. I do have the option as a whole for 8 out of 10, but my Boss wanted to start with 9 out of 10 to see how it works. After 3 months, she's agreed to let me keep 9 out of 10 but not go to 8. 8 is just 9.375-10 hrs per day (depends 37.5 to 40) and for 9, i work 40 hours the 5 day week, 35hours the 4 day week. It's awesome.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[Anonymous Coward]

I know plenty of people in IT who work 4 10-hour days a week. It's a pain to schedule meetings, but the people I know who have the 4-10s schedule seem to really like it.

dom

Re:Please roll this out to work

[vlm]

This may or may not work out for schools but I would love a 3-day weekend every week at my job!

I'm living the dream... Note that if you work 4 day "weeks" the odds of getting bugged to log in at home on the 5th day of the week darn near approach 50%. So its not really a "4 day week" its more like "4 to 5 days a week, depending on problems"

Daycare costs of small children drop at least 20%, more if you're creative about which hours and days you work. My coworkers thought I was crazy to take a $2K paycut to switch employers to a 4-day employer... Then I pointed out I was saving something like $7K year on day care cost by creative arrangement of my "working days", and saving at least $1K/year on car fuel and maint, and saving around four hours per week of sitting in my car in a traffic jam... Incredibly good deal.

The longer day is not exactly oppressive... An extra hour before and after lunch, big deal, unless you're mr. clockwatcher you'll never mentally notice. This also means I miss the worst of "rush hour" traffic so bizarrely enough working two extra hours per day cuts into my free time by LESS than two hour per day, because commute drops from 45+ minutes to about 20 or less. So an "eight hour day" means about 9.5 hours outside the home, and a "ten hour day" means about 10.6 hours outside the home, an added cost of only about one hour "lost", in exchange for an extra day off per week.

It depends on your job. I program a lot, on long projects, and it takes forever to "get in the groove" and once I'm going I don't want to stop and I hate senseless interruptions. Posting to /. gets me in the mood, I'm gonna refactor a data importer right after this... Anyway longer shifts, and weekend hours, work beautifully for my job. If your job is standing heavy manual labor, then an extra 20% effort per day might kill you, so it depends.

Sleep and eating patterns take about a week to resolve, after which it feels perfectly normal.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[gfxguy]

I see tremendous benefits in four day work and school weeks, and also a tremendous saving in resources.

While it's true that four 10 hour days might seem difficult compared to 5 eight hour days, an extra two hours a day is not really that bad; people might complain they'd be tired and cranky at the end of the day, but most of them already are, and that extra day off can have a huge positive impact on one's mental health. Yes, I am saying this from someone who, for several years, worked four day work weeks and took Friday off (the worst commute day of the week... what a blessing that was).

On top of that, I don't know about everyone else but I spend 30 to 45 minutes commuting to work; round trip that an hour to an hour and a half. Over the course of 40 weeks (subtracting time off and holidays), that's a whole work week of commuting time saved, not to mention wear and tear on the car, saving gasoline, and causing less pollution. On top of that, if people staggered which day off they took, you could potentially eliminate 20% of the traffic on any given day - how would that be for easing rush hour? School would be the same way - busses only screwing up traffic four days a week instead of 5, and a 20% savings in fuel, and while my commute may be bad, some students are stuck on the bus for over 30 minutes each way... they would get that time back, too.

Of course, you get many (but not all) of the same benefits simply by working at home one day a week, but a lot of jobs can't do that. Luckily, after my stint with 4 day work week, while I'm back to 5 days a week, I work at least one day a week at home. I often (not always, I admit) get more work done at home with fewer distractions (and having been able to sleep in an extra hour or so).

Re:Please roll this out to work

[jez9999]

I'm interested in how common a practice this is; I take it you're in the US? What part? Have you found that employers everywhere allow working from home 1 day a week or is it limited to certain areas?

Here where I live - central England - there are very few companies (although more than zero) that will allow anything like that, unfortunately. It's *very* standard to have 9:00 - 17:30, and pretty hard to convince any employers to be any less rigid.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[pagedout]

Man do I hope that was sarcasm.

All we need is more laws that make it harder to make a living. Oh, and France as your example... From everything I can find France's normal unemployment rate is like ours is now, they are less productive (in total but on par per hour) and there seems to be articles taking the "happier" rating both ways. Oh, and financially our poor are often better off then their middle class so I am not really interested in trying to change our economy to be like theirs.

But that's just me,

Re:Please roll this out to work

[DriedClexler]

"Thursday, Thursday, gotta get down on Thursday..."

Re:Please roll this out to work

[gfxguy]

I live in the U.S. south-east (Atlanta, Georgia). I'm wondering which "practice" you're referring to... working at home, compressed work week, or both?

Atlanta has a "clean air" campaign, an effort to minimize the impact of commuting, and as such gets large companies like the one I work for to support things like van-pools, compressed work weeks, and working at home, as well as working alternative hours. Our company signed on to be a good "corporate citizen," but the fact is that few jobs can really be that flexible, and they buried the corporate policy about flexible work hours deep in corporate policy documents.

My story is this... I work 7:00am to 3:30pm to avoid rush hour traffic. At one point I had a manager who constantly asked me to stay later because he wanted to "meet" with me about some project, but then hours after I would have normally gone home he'd cancel and tell me we'd have to meet some other day. He hated the fact that I worked an early day... since I don't do time cards I don't think he believed I was there at 7:00. He often wouldn't get in until after 10:00. The worst was that the worst commuting day is Friday, and he'd almost always do this to me on Fridays,so I felt like he would come up with excuses to hold me there.

Finally, one day when he was not in, I wrote up an email requesting a compressed work week (Monday to Thursday), with details on when I'd work, what hours and days and that I would accept requests on Fridays if some emergency should happen. I said I'd work 7:30am to 6:30pm (that's actually 2.5 hours more per day, but ups lunch from 30 minutes to an hour and takes me to about the end of rush hour traffic, so I still avoided most traffic problems). That meant he could never ask me to stay late because I was already going to be there, and being out of the office on Friday meant he couldn't screw me up on Fridays at all, period, because he knew I'd have a valid complaint if he called me in and it wasn't an emergency.

I cc'ed the email to the VP in charge, knowing that the VP would respond first because the manager was out. The VP accepted my request.

I don't normally partake in office politics like that, but this manager really had it in for me, and I've outlasted him by many years. Subsequent managers had to accept that I already had those hours when they took over the department. I have since changed back to 7:00 to 3:30pm, but with working home on Fridays - that was the deal I made with the manager at the time because he wanted me to be available on Fridays (available via email and phone was fine). I wanted to switch back anyway, because my young kids were sleeping when I left home, and back in bed by the time I got back with the 10 hour (plus 1 for lunch, plus 1.5 for commuting) hour day. Plus now I need to be home early to take them to extracurricular activities.

Overall, the way I see it, flexible hours are win-win for both me and my employer, but I honestly don't see it working well for most non-IT positions, and it works well for me because most of my projects are not team projects.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[Anonymous Coward]

But it's the parents who will need to pay for the babysitters one day a week, not those who voted down the school budget!
As for the $50k savings, I would think the fuel bill for the schools buses not rolling would be more than that.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[Whorhay]

I'm doing a 9 in 10 schedule. I absolutely love having 26+ three day weekends every year. The extra hour at work most days isn't noticeable like you said. And I can schedule all the things that I'd otherwise need to take time off to do on my day off. So it's saving me vacation/sick leave as well.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[icebrain]

I also live in Georgia (though a different part of the state). Most of the employees in this company are on four-day weeks. Overtime is plentiful for hourly guys if they want it; for salaried types, if you have the work, you're usually welcome to it--but we also get paid (albeit at normal rate, not 1.5x/2x). If I choose to come in for that, I'll usually do a half-day and leave at lunch.

Also, my hours are 0600-1630--I come in earlier by preference, because then it still leaves me time to do things after work.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[phantomfive]

In the computer industry, especially in Silicon Valley, flexible hours are common. At my first company, people would come in at 2:00 and go home at 4:00 then work the rest of the time from home. I have another friend who works 3 or for days of the week from home.

Working four days instead of five is less common. Since most people don't want that, most companies don't have processes set in place to handle that kind of thing. However, it is not hard to get that kind of situation. A normal way to do it would be work several months at a company until everyone realizes you do good work, then mention to the employer that you'd like more time off, and then you can make special arrangements for it. Of course, you will get paid less, since you aren't doing as much work.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[Anonymous Coward]

More to the point, it's more expensive than raising everyone's property taxes to keep the school solvent.

But it's taxes, and those are bad.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Well how about the rest of europe? All 35-40 hours too. And rating poor based on income is a terrible judge. Don't forget about the fact that europe has free healthcare, free universities, great unemployment benefits and lots of other little perks. Hell im getting paid to go to college as a mature student. No one works long hours in europe and im certain we are all happier because of it. Of course you probably consider us to be socialist with high taxes, paying for the slackers or some other silly ideology. The american culture of me, money and anti-intellectualism is driving you guys into a terrible downward spiral and its such a shame to watch ye fall from greatness.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[f()rK()_Bomb]

I worked a 4 10 hour days week when i was in dell. Definitely one of the best ways of working ive ever done. Having 3 days off leaves you so refreshed on a monday and ready to tear into work.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[eth1]

Which is going to be the big issue here ,most people have a 5 day work week and they can't just skip one day of work each week. So in practice, they have to ship their kids somewhere or have someone come watch them - but 30 babysitters are way more expensive that one teacher - or you'll have older kids at home unsupervised, which will have plenty issues of its own. So yeah it saves the school money, but at the cost of the parents...

Sounds like an excellent opportunity for the out-of-school older kids to earn some extra money watching the out-of-school younger kids...

Re:Please roll this out to work

[stdarg]

Most people also work longer than school hours (e.g. out at 2:00pm or 3:00pm? not likely) unless they're already part-time or work-at-home. So it's less of a problem than you're implying and may actually save the parents money. I mean if school gets out at 3:00pm and you need a babysitter for 1 hour until you get home 5 days a week, now you won't need a babysitter for 4 of those days. Even though there are more hours on the 5th day, you'll find that babysitters charge a base cost for the visit plus an hourly cost, especially if it's a regular arrangement. You could easily end up paying less.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[pagedout]

Socialist, socialistic or just liberal... Its hard to draw a line and say past this point is bad. I would however say I would probably not enjoy living in a place with the ideology you seem to be for.

I find your "facts" to be mildly humorous, I am supposedly in the culture of "me" but what you like is free this, free that, short hours and perks! How much more of a "me" motivation can you get then basing your life on what you can take from other people (as free really only means free to you right)? If we could find a decent way to co-exist I would be for it but unfortunately it appears to me that your "free" can only come at the expensive of my blood, sweat and tears. I would rather work 50 hours a week as a free man than 30 as a slave or 0 as a parasite. I could live with paying tribute to make you and your kind leave me alone but that has always been a problem hasn't it? My resources are finite as I am only human, but your desires are endless as you are also. To enslave my mind to your stomach is a tragedy.

The part you probably can't, or don't want to, understand is that my way of life is not about "me" it's about how we interact with each other. I can not view a system as moral that requires as a basic tenant that people are to be slaves to others. The profits of my mind and my body are not public property and any time they are used as such it is an affront to the best in all of us as it makes me a slave and others parasites. What I can not understand is how a man could allow himself to become a parasite in the first place.

Hopefully you retain at least enough moral fortitude that you plan to use your college degree for some good, even if it is just supporting yourself, to pay back those who are sending you.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[f()rK()_Bomb]

The free things are just example of life being good here. It's in no way parasitic. It's using excess money to help less fortunate people better themselves. It's not like I didn't work and pay taxes for years for the programs I'm talking about. I'm 28, been working since I left school at 15. going to college now because there is few jobs so this program pays for unemployed people to go to college. that's investing in the future, not parasitic. I have no real ideology, most people I know don't. there is very little polarization of ideology here, no one calls themselves liberals or conservatives. This thinking of supporting others as parasitic is exactly the kind of culture I'm talking about.

Re:Please roll this out to work

[pagedout]

First, everyone has an ideology they are like accents you may have the prevailing one for your area but that doesn't mean its any less there. I mean seriously look at your original post "silly ideology", "culture of me" and "anti-intellectualism" are not what anyone should consider neutral terms. It's fine, probably even important, to have an ideology as it means your standing for something. You say there is little polarization of ideology where you are but is this real or just because of those you associate with? I find it interesting to look at polls for areas I am in (city/state/country) to see how many people believe what. Always interesting to find out that a large portion of the population believes something and I can find nobody in my friends and family that agrees with them.

Second, again our ideologies are so far apart it is hard to even understand where you are coming from. How are free things an example of life being good? I mean this implies that at some level your ultimate state of "good" is to basically do nothing and have everything provided to you. How is this not parasitic? Also, what would be excess money? It seems to me that if you are having to go on the dole when you are out of work you failed to plan/save good enough while you were working.

Anything outside of fair consensual trade is a form of slavery/parasitism from what I can tell. Helping others is not slavery if I person does it of his own free will but is if it is done because the government forces him.

Sorry, would write more but work calls,

Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure they will love the kids being home an extra day when they are not around. With childcare costs, this could cost them far more than $50,000 total

Re:Parents

[chrb]

From TFA: "Two different Boys and Girls Club sites and a church are offering affordable child care and tutoring, respectively, on Mondays for between $10 and $15."

The district has 300 students - 300 x $10 (or $15) x 36 weeks = $108000 to $162000.

So you are right, the cost of childcare is far more than the cost of the extra $50k to run the school for a day. However, the article also states that locals are unwilling to pay the extra cost in taxes: "We've repeatedly asked our residents to pay higher taxes, cut some of our staff, and we may even close one of our schools. What else can you really do?".

Re:Parents

[nedlohs]

But that's a cost to the parents not the schools. A simple alternative would be increasing taxes so the schools. Of course there's likely a lot of tax payers who don't have kids in school to - they might prefer that the parents eat the cost.

Re:Parents

[Goboxer]

Sounds like another case of people wanting more of something for less money. People seem to not realize that everything costs money, and their governments should spend wisely, not less.

Re:Parents

[Attila Dimedici]

The problem is that our government both spends unwisely and in ever increasing amounts. When the economy is going strong, government spending increases because there is plenty of tax revenue to support it. When the economy is doing poorly, government spending increases because "we can't afford to cut spending when the economy is weak." Of course, they never, ever actually cut spending. All they do is not spend as much more than last year as they said they would.

Re:Parents

[Anonymous Coward]

Send them to private schools. They'll get a better education.

Re:Parents

[MacGyver2210]

I think the problem is that people as a whole are cheap and ignorant, and they will rail against taxes even if they're necessary and avoiding them will cost more in the way of child care or private education. Your average joe-schmoe citizen doesn't understand that an extra $50/year in taxes or whatever could save them thousands and thousands of dollars. It just doesn't occur to them...probably because they are products of the same failing education system as the rest of the kids.

Re:Parents

[mla_anderson]

I'd wager less than 25% will be put into daycare. These two towns are out in the middle of farm country, there's not much else there. These will tend to be single earner families and many of them will have both parents around home much of the time. Add in the roughly 50% in middle and high school who can stay home by themselves and there you go. The daycare costs should be closer to $30K.

Re:Parents

[Attila Dimedici]

No, that is not problem. The problem is that government expenditures have steadily increased as a percentage of GDP and yet the outcomes for which we rely on government have gotten steadily worse. As someone pointed out in another post, in 1961 we spent $2808 in inflation adjuted dollars per student, in 2008 we spent $10,441. I have not seen it laid out, but based on other things I have seen I believe that a significant part of that increased spending is on administrative personell.
The problem is that every time people try to exert monetory discipline on political organizations, the organizations cut from the parts that deliver essential services, not from the administrative overhead.

Re:Parents

[tompaulco]

There is no need to raise taxes. The amount of money the school gets is based upon the property taxes. Property taxes are based upon property values. Property values (or at least assessed property values) outpace inflation. If they are unable to make do with what they have now, then they should have been in even worse shape last year and the year before that, etc, etc. Education continues to suffer from programs being cut, teachers not getting salary increases and all in the name of money woes, yet the districts get more money every year. What is the problem? At least where I live, the problem is the administration. When I grew up (in this same town), we had about the same population, about the same number of teachers, 1 principal per high school and no administrators. Now there are multiple principals, multiple administrative buildings and literally dozens of school board administrators. It is essentially government makework that takes money out of taxpayers hands in the name of education and gives it to paperpushers and busybodies that back in my day would have done the same job, but not got paid for it.

Re:Parents

[Uberbah]

The problem is that our government both spends unwisely and in ever increasing amounts.

As long as your limiting that to the $1.2 trillion we spend a year on the military-industrial-surveillance-contractor complex, sure. Otherwise, no.

Re:Parents

[Attila Dimedici]

Really? You think that either the government wisely spends the money that isn't spent on "defense", or you think that it is not spending it in ever increasing amounts. In either case, I think you are a fool.

Re:Parents

[Jiro]

Saying "if you pay higher taxes, we'll use them to fund ____" is a lie, and everyone knows it. The citizens have no control over where their tax money ends up, and even if the taxes are actually used for _____, money is fungible, so the government can just decide to reduce the remaining portion of the funding to free up tax funds for something else.

Re:Parents

[Uberbah]

Right, because government entities just blew up more money than exists in the world in the greatest fraud in the history of the human race.

Oh wait, that was corrupt banks and corrupt investment firms.

You think that either the government wisely spends the money that isn't spent on "defense"

I think the blatant double standards, binary thinking and willful ignorance employed by conservatives is quaint in 2011, like a teenager that still believes in Santa. Any organization of any significant size is going to have some waste. Does that mean you throw out the entire organization and all others like it? Do you honestly think that no one notices this line of reasoning is only used by conservatives on government, but business?

Re:Parents

[Attila Dimedici]

So, the answer is that you believe that the answer to all of society's problems is to ask the people who claimed that there was no problem with the banking system while those banks and investment firms were blowing up that money to spend ever more money.
You know, I don't even know what your point is. What "double standard" are you talking about? Please refer to the post you replied to (and if need be, the upstream thread).

Re:Parents

[slashqwerty]

Taxes are paid by the entire community. Child care expenses are paid by parents. So the four day school week is cheaper for some people while a five day school week is cheaper for others. That is what politics are all about.

Save school money and...

[Anonymous Coward]

Create endless headache for parents that must now have someone watch their child one day a week.... I suspect someone is not going to get reelected to the school board.

In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't matter how they tweak the system, to try and save money, or even to try and improve the educational experience for these American students. The end result will be the same. These American students still won't be at a level equivalent to their European and Asian peers of the same age.

They won't understand math and science nearly as well. Hell, many of these American students probably won't even understand English as well as Asian or European students of the same age!

Sometimes, we just need to admit that it's a lost cause. It's a situation that can't be salvaged.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Bigby]

There's a lot of truth to what you are saying. Our education woes have nothing to do with time. It has to do with the culture. When will it become "cool" to ace a math test? When will the science fair be bigger than a football game? It looks like Glee made Glee Club more popular...now come out with some similar show to help in the core subjects...

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[skyride]

Over here in the UK (and according to plenty of Europeans I know), it's certainly not "cool" either. It's just society in general really considers it to matter once you reach a certain age.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

But the problem has little to do with money or four day weeks... if they implemented four day weeks correctly, especially for middle school and above, you'd get the same amount of total classroom time and be able to have more focus because you don't need those first 5 or 10 minutes of class to get back "up to speed."

When I was in college, I always felt like my Tue-Thu 1.5 hour classes were more productive than my M-W-F 1 hour classes.

But even that has little to do with it - there's no silver bullet, no single thing that you can "fix" to suddenly make the educational system in the U.S. dramatically improve, there's just too many things that went wrong...

• * teachers unions (yes, teachers unions, and no, I don't think teachers ought to work for "slave" labor or not have benefits)
• * lack of focus... yes, art is important, music is important, but the core classes are MORE important and need more resources.
• * parents - we've had the government coddling us for so long and eliminating so much personal responsibility that most parents are no longer proactive when it comes to their child's education. Yes, your children should not only know letters and numbers, but be able to read BEFORE kindergarten, but even then parents need to be proactive all the way through at least middle school and at least be available and helpful if their child needs it while in high school. I bet the biggest complaint about the four day week comes from the parents who treat school as free daycare. Say all the bad things you want about homeschooling, home schooled students perform better, on average, than public school students, period.
• * society - when computer "nerds" are held in disdain and "gansta" rappers are lauded in popular culture, the effects are obvious; when studying hard makes you a tool of "the man," and the kids on the football team that are failing are treated like heroes while the kids on the academic team are bullied, there's a problem. When inner city kids are brought up believing they will be able to escape their surroundings by being a professional athlete (which certainly is possible, however unlikely), by being a "gansta" rapper, or through selling drugs instead of hard work in school, there's a problem. When fashion and cliques are more important than your future, there's a problem. When video games come before homework, there's a problem.

I could go on - but the bottom line is things have spiralled out of control and there's no way someone's going to step in and "solve" the problem by attacking just one issue.

I'd also like to point out that what you've stated is somewhat true, but at lower grade levels, American students score comparably to Asian and European countries. By the time we graduate high school, though, the performance falls dramatically. IOW, the potential is there, but our system - including our culture, helps destroy it by the time students become adults. Fourth graders in the U.S. outperform England, Canada, most of Europe, in fact; by grade 8 we drop below those countries... by grade 12 (U.S. public education goes through grade 12, I know it's different in other countries) we are on the bottom of the list.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[erroneus]

Culture... kind of. If you call consumerism culture, then yes, it is culture that is to blame.

To a degree, it has always been this way, but the things kids are into today are a LOT more expensive than they once were and it seems few go without them. "Members only" jackets -- anyone remember or even know about those? I didn't get one... didn't want one either. But by comparison, things are far worse today.

We also have too much social media going on. (Yes, I know Slashdot is a kind of social media)

And I wish these kids would get off my lawn... damned kids. But seriously, our cultural values are focused on things we buy rather than things we achieve. I'm ashamed to say, my brother is a harley-davidson-jack-daniels-iphone guy and damned proud of it. He has achieved so much by being able to buy these brand names and labels and is in a membership I will probably never join. (He's just so much better than I will ever be... 'cause he's got that stuff)

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[cheekyjohnson]

The "obvious" solution would be to force people who are doing poorly in math and/or science to work in a field that requires a lot of either, or both. That way, they will see where it applies to their life, and I believe they'll be more likely to remember the material. Or not. Because they still probably won't be interested in it (and, at least for me, and quite a few other people that I know, that highly decreases the chances that I'll even vaguely remember something).

Some people simply don't need certain knowledge, and asking "what if" questions simply isn't all that convincing to me (even when speaking of high school students). Increasing the rate of failures by forcibly teaching people advanced mathematics and such (rather than just basic everyday things) is rather foolish, in my opinion. They might change their minds later, but that is their problem. They have options if they need to learn it, so don't hold everyone else back and waste their time.

I believe that too much time, money, and resources are wasted on trying to teach things to people who simply won't need them, and not enough responsibility is placed on youth.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

While bemoaning the state of American education is fun, and often justified, it really makes more sense to do a more granular comparison.

The state-by-state comparisons of educational outcomes are... quite dramatic. They don't totally salvage the situation(MA, the best performing, still comes in below some but not all of the usual suspects in Asia); but there are parts of the US that do considerably better than "American students" and other parts that, well, do their bit to ensure that the first group doesn't skew the average too much...

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, it's a lost cause? I guess we'll just close every one of our schools... since you've decided and all.

For a little perspective: http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/

We spend a lot on each kid without commensurate performance across the board. But we're hardly in "lost cause" territory.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[bhcompy]

That's the thing. It's the parents, not the schools. I'm on the west coast. The schools I went to and the schools my son attends are full of Koreans, most of the families have some sort of family business and, thus, are fairly entrepreneurial. They push their kids to the top of the class in school by loading up their extracurricular activities with tutors, tutors, and more tutors. When they break out API scores by ethnicity, you'll see numbers like you see at the example I've chosen in So Cal(higher the better, obviously): Asian: 946, Filipino: 906, Non-latino White: 889, Hispanic: 835, Black: 830. The majority of schools have similar discrepancies by ethnicity. Considering the trend, it's obvious it's completely cultural. No race is "smarter" than the other, and even then test scores are about recall ability rather than intelligence. When scores by ethnicity have similar results as above across all schools you can't blame the school.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[sarhjinian]

You know, they said the same thing about the various sacred cows of prior generations of kids, that they were more expensive and more frivolous than what came before. Every generation says the one or two after it is "much worse" than the one prior. Moral decay is always right around the corner**, and the golden age was whatever was happening when you were 18-24, regardless of whether or not that was 1930, 1950, 1970 or 1990.

Do you sense a theme, here?

The point is that people are people and really don't change all that much generation to generation. You'll always have a certain amount of shallowness, consumerism, base social urges and so forth, but the proportion doesn't really change that much, and what certainly doesn't change is "Get Off My Lawn"-ism, as you note but don't really accept.

What's happening is that each generation goes through a phase of a) (mostly) growing up and realizing that actions have consequences, and b) realizing that it isn't their world anymore, and that there's all these young people around. For sound biological reasons (certain brain development doesn't finish until after puberty) you don't figure this out until you're 25, and it doesn't sink in until you're older than that.

** even though crime is down, pollution less of a problem, information easier to access and the powerful held as much, if not more, to account than ever before. Funny, how if we're at the precipice before the pit, that objectively things aren't too bad.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[wintercolby]

Don't forget that in America there is also a strong counter-culture of do-it-yourself types. A lot of people like that are here. I didn't learn much in school, but I always had my own research projects. The difference was that I didn't exactly report on what I researched, or care to. There are a lot of us that take pride in building our own homes, fixing our own motorcycles and brewing our own beer. A lot of us consider Harley riding, Jack Daniels drinking, iPhone buying jerks to be dweebs with more dollars than sense.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[godrik]

I think you got a good point with "lack of focus". I grew up in France and now live in Ohio. I got a 7th grader at home and I went to his parent conference on monday. The timetable is just ridiculous. They spend about a third of their time on music, art and PE. And all the activites kind of collide with each other such as "if you are doing band, then you miss the first 10 minutes of foreign language". WTF?

Don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with music, art and PE. They are important things. But that definitively tells you want type of society you are tending too.

When I grew up, we had about 30 actual hours of class a week. Here they are doing 33 hours everything included (lunch break, recess and "room switch" take time over a week).

I am not even talking about the content of the class. They have each day 25 minutes of silent reading. Why do you do that in class. It is wasting teacher/school time. It can be done at home.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[parlancex]

Just a word about teacher's unions. Here in Alberta the ATA (Alberta Teacher's Association) is one of the most powerful and influential unions in the province. The salary and benefits teachers receive are second to none. As of September 1st this year it is in fact possible to make over $100,000 a year in this province as a teacher teaching gym class as long as you have 10 years experience and 6 years of formal education. If that sounds like a bad thing to you then I suppose you're partially right, but we also have the best teachers in the country. You get what you pay for.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[erroneus]

That counter-culture is not as strong as we would like to think. I do like making my own stuff. It's an experience in knowledge, history and self-worship. Radio Shack selected its name because it catered to a once-strong group of young minds who liked playing with stuff like that. Now Radio Shack sells consumer crap and it's not even that good -- the stores are small and the people working there know nothing.

The slow, painful death of Radio Shack is more than symbolic. I see it as completely parallel to the slow and painful death of intellectualism in our national culture.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[operagost]

Ladies and gentlemen, the above post is what happens when you believe BOTH parties' propaganda at the same time.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[bberens]

When my grandfather was my age he didn't have an iPad. Therefore I'm a spoiled brat who expects everything to be handed to me on a silver platter.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

I am not even talking about the content of the class. They have each day 25 minutes of silent reading. Why do you do that in class. It is wasting teacher/school time. It can be done at home.

Exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about... just one example of stupid things that screw up public education. Do private schools have SSR (they call it "sustained silent reading," as if 30 minutes of reading is that difficult)? This is where parenting comes in - my kids already read 30 minutes a day, at MINIMUM, EVERY day, their bed time includes 30 minutes of reading. It's no wonder they find school so completely boring.

On the topic of bedtimes... I've coached academic teams at the school (Odyssey of the Mind) and it seems like most kids don't even have a standard bed time at all. I'm convinced that most ADD diagnosed kids simply don't get enough sleep. Fifth graders were talking about what they saw on Robot Chicken the night before. That's midnight in my timezone, not to mention terribly inappropriate for kids that age.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[wintercolby]

I knew an electronics teacher who worked part time at Radio Shack because it was fun, in 2005. Has it deteriorated since then? Could it be more localized? I still find the people I meet at local Radio Shacks to be fairly knowledgeable about the small electronic components they sell.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[dkleinsc]

A few of the other big issues with the US system:
* The US system has a summer vacation, while most other school systems do not. The effect of this policy, a legacy of the 19th century when kids had to go work the family farm in the summer, is that not only do students lose about 2-3 months in the summer, they also lose 2-3 months in the fall reviewing all the stuff they covered in the previous year that they've forgotten over the break.
* A particular style of conservative Protestantism actively discourages the proper study of many subjects. In the really extreme cases, they'll go after math departments for teaching that pi != 3, but more commonly go after history books that acknowledge that the world existed before God created it c 4000 BC (and none of that "BCE / CE" business either, it's "BC" and "AD"), biology books that teach that life as we know it was the result of natural processes, and any efforts by humanities teachers to incorporate art and culture that has viewpoints that don't match up exactly with their worldview.
* A lot of politicians want to go to a system in which only private schools exist and education is limited to those who's parents can afford to pay. A good way to make their political case is to ensure that the public schools suck. Or as the joke sometimes goes, Republicans argue that government doesn't work, and once elected to office do their best to prove their point.

You're absolutely right that with US schools, there is no silver bullet.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

I don't know about Canada, but the problem here isn't necessarily teacher pay. As I said, I don't think teachers ought to work for slave wages or get no benefits and, in fact, I think teaching is a very important and often difficult job. But many government school teachers here already exceed $100k, especially when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get. The problem is that you get what you pay for only if you can get rid of under-performing teachers and evaluate teachers based in individual performance. The unions make it nearly impossible to get rid of terrible teachers. Moreover, while not a union issue, it's hard enough to evaluate individual performance in teachers when they are given an essentially "random" variety of new students each year who may or may not perform well themselves, so I know it's difficult. The problem is the unions here make it even harder to evaluate individuals.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[godrik]

I am not saying it is not important. I am just saying spending way more time learning how to sing than learning how your country is structured does not make too much sense to me.

Ohioans voted for commissioners last year. The first 5 citizen registered on the voters list I asked "What does a commissioner do?" could not answer my question without googling it.

If that's not a failure of the school system that did not emphasize federal and state organization, I do not know what it is. And I can't help but think that if they were singing a little less and playing basket ball a little less, they could learn these things which are essential.

Once again, I am glad they learn music and arts and that they learn how to use their body appropriately; these are good things. I am saying kids are missing some essentials.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[techwrench]

I think you missed the parent's post. He didn't seem to be complaining about music and art class time, but about the time spent on sports and silent reading, which really should be spent outside of class. Just my $.02 ...

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Culture20]

When my grandfather was my age he didn't have an iPad. Therefore I'm a spoiled brat who expects everything to be handed to me on a silver platter.

If you didn't pay for that ipad with money you earned by being a soda jerk at the local druggist, maybe. 'course kids don't work for money until college these days, often after college.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[bberens]

Your first mistake is thinking that the public education system in this country is broken. Consider this your "there is no spoon" moment. The public education system does exactly what it is intended to do and will not be changed until the market demands it.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[nbauman]

Killing all republicans would be a good start to just 'fix' the school system.

Effective but somewhat brutal.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[f()rK()_Bomb]

Not cool over here, but it certainly doesn't seem to be at the level of american anti-intellectualism. Bullying of nerds seems to be a real problem in america for example. Nerds were never bullied any more than any one else when I was in school in Ireland like. I heard a guy comment the other day that a gym teacher called him a weak nerd, wtf.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Digital Vomit]

A particular style of conservative Protestantism actively discourages the proper study of many subjects. In the really extreme cases, they'll go after math departments for teaching that pi != 3

[Citation Needed]

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Duradin]

That'd depend on how they are killed.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[xaxa]

Over here in the UK (and according to plenty of Europeans I know), it's certainly not "cool" either. It's just society in general really considers it to matter once you reach a certain age.

It might not be cool to be ignorant when you're older, but it's certainly acceptable to be "bad at maths".

Demonstration: find a store with a sale, "25% off marked price". Pick something that's marked £30, walk to the checkout and hand over £22.50 (exactly) before the barcode is scanned. Many people will be impressed.

It's not acceptable to say "I can't read", or "I can't write a letter", but it is acceptable to say "oh, I'm no good at maths" or "I can't understand my gas bill".

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[MacTO]

They have SSR (DEAR, etc.) because many children and youth simply will not have the "opportunity" to read otherwise. In that respect it is an incredibly useful way to use time and it does seem to be effective.

That being said, it is only that way because of social problems that should not exist.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[wintercolby]

With 9% unemployment, kids can't find jobs until a while after college these days. Instead of saying "get off my lawn" we should be saying "here's $20, mow my lawn."

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[The Archon V2.0]

Yes, your children should not only know letters and numbers, but be able to read BEFORE kindergarten,

Good luck with that. I'm in my 30s and when I was in 1st grade I was the only literate student in the class. Years later (like, 15 years later) I had a hell of a shock when I went to a new barber and he remembered me as "that kid who could read on the first day of school". At four years older than me, he wasn't my classmate, nor had any relatives in my class. I was such an oddity for being literate at five/six that the entire elementary heard about it.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[f()rK()_Bomb]

A few of the other big issues with the US system: * The US system has a summer vacation, while most other school systems do not. The effect of this policy, a legacy of the 19th century when kids had to go work the family farm in the summer, is that not only do students lose about 2-3 months in the summer, they also lose 2-3 months in the fall reviewing all the stuff they covered in the previous year that they've forgotten over the break.

Eh? Every country in europe I can think of has the usual 2-3 month summer break too. Pretty sure everywhere has that kinda system or something similar with semesters and big breaks. A quick search online shows america does about 180 days of school a year. We do 168 days in Ireland in high school and 180 days in primary school before that.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[wintercolby]

. . . not only do students lose about 2-3 months in the summer, they also lose 2-3 months in the fall reviewing all the stuff they covered in the previous year that they've forgotten over the break.

This is actually wrong for many students. The big problem is that the school system coddles the stupid and in so doing make the whole thing redundant for everyone. If you want people to be good marksmen, make the targets smaller and farther. We're so addicted to evaluations that we forget to teach the actual material being evaluated. Most people can make up what they've forgotten without spending half the year on reviewing the latter half of the previous year. This is why intelligent people become bored of school.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[O('_')O_Bush]

I found the opposite to be true in classes. No matter what the class or who the professor, my attention span is never above 45 mins. Tuesday/Thursday classes and only Monday classes ended up requiring more learning on my own because I learned less in the classes.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[xaxa]

For comparison, in England in the 1990s-2000s I spent about 1 hour a week on art, 1 hour on music and 1 hour on PE, plus one afternoon at "games" (sport, but less structured than PE). Theatre (we called it drama) was compulsory for about an hour a week for 1 term, for one year.

Anyone interested in any of the above could do more in their own time (lunchtime or after school as a school-supported activity, or outside school).

We had 5h20m of lessons each day, roughly an hour each, two in the morning, a 20 minute break, another lesson, an hour for lunch, then two more lessons.
I don't have an old timetable, but I think we had at least 3 hours each of English, Maths and Science; plus 2 hours of Geography, History, French (or German or Spanish), plus 1 hour of technology (or 2?), 1 hour of IT, plus other stuff (Religion/theology/philosophy, health/social). That adds up to about the right number of hours.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[jdgeorge]

This explains a bit about what "unemployment" statistics mean.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[xaxa]

My primary school, like most in the 1990s in England (AFAIIA), didn't set "homework" in the usual sense, apart from learning spellings or "times tables" once a week.

But I did have to read books at home. When I was five to six/seven these were part of special series to help children to learn to read ("Roger has a red hat. Percy has a green hat. Jenny has a yellow hat. Billy has a blue hat." was the first). From when I was about six/seven we had to choose a book from the school library and read that. At the end, I think we had to explain to the teacher why we liked it (or didn't like it). From about age eight I had to write a review.

There was time for reading in class, probably about half an hour a week. During that time the teacher would have one child sit next to her and read quietly to her, sometimes from her own book. (She was assessing reading ability.)

There were some extra teachers who taught one or two children at a time, for a few hours a week (depending) outside normal classes, if they were struggling.

Presumably there were parents who didn't bother to read the book with their children, but I wasn't really aware of it. From the age of 11 we never did reading in class, but I still had to choose books from the library to read, and keep a 'diary' of what I'd read.

This was 15 years ago (or 10, I'm pretty sure my younger brother had the same thing), so I'm not sure what happens now. It's a real shame if parents won't read with their children.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[wintercolby]

Your point being?

When unemployment is high the inexperienced often suffer the most. It's the kids who are the least experienced and thus they are the ones most affected by unemployment. People who are laid off that have better qualifications often settle for less money, and in lesser positions that the inexperienced would otherwise be doing.

Offering a kid $20 to mow your lawn gets the kid occupied for an hour or so, and you can be certain that $20 is going straight into the economy elsewhere. The more you spend money directly in your community, the more you will see that community prosper. Go buy garbage from Walmart if you want to see China prosper.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

I know, that's the problem... both my kids were reading to their preschool classmates, and they were looked at as oddities when it should have been the other way around.

I don't think of them as exceptional in that respect... it's just how it should be.

When my son was in first grade, he couldn't get credit for reading Harry Potter because it was too advanced.... he was very unhappy reading "baby" books for school credit when, on his own, he was reading Harry Potter. When we met with the principle and first grade teacher to discuss advanced placement, they actually berated me for having done hooked on phonics. "We don't believe it's a good method." Oh... so not reading at all is better? It was just ridiculous.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Truth be told, I do pay someone to mow my lawn. Costs me $25 every 2 - 3 weeks. Worth every penny.
Not a kid, (I tried that, too unreliable.) but the mentally challenged guy from down the street.
Honestly I know he does a better job than I would.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[anyGould]

If you didn't pay for that ipad with money you earned by being a soda jerk at the local druggist, maybe. 'course kids don't work for money until college these days, often after college.

I have no idea what my kid will do for a job, considering that the local papers won't even hire kids for routes anymore. They've consolidated the routes into massive 250+ house runs and expect you to have the use of a car.

Also important to note that it's been many many years since "working my way through college" was a legitimate possibility. The only person I know who did it had his tuition paid by the company he worked for.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[bberens]

The joke is that when my grandfather was my age the iPad hadn't been invented.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[stephathome]

The problem I have is that schools don't always just cut music, art and PE. My neighborhood school didn't bother teaching science or social studies to my second grader most of the school year. Kids did one lesson in each of those subjects, and those only after state testing was done. The rest of the year the class only worked on math and language arts, in an effort to get the school's test scores up. I'd say they would have been smarter to broaden the education and include all the subjects they were supposed to teach. They even had the frigging textbooks in the class - they just never used them. Workbooks came home at the end of the school year untouched except that single lesson.

It didn't surprise me at all that we got a notice the following year that the school would be closed and replaced by a charter school due to poor performance. I'm really hoping the charter school does better. They've chosen a tough program, and now have to do a full curriculum to comply with the program they'd like to become a full part of. They're just a candidate school now, but have to teach a foreign language starting in kindergarten, social studies, science, and my kids tell me they do get art now.

I do know how hard it is to fit a full curriculum into a school day. I did an online charter school with my daughter for third grade which required art and either music or a foreign language in addition to the usual. It was tough to get it all done some days, but other days we could finish quite early. Not at all the same as running a class of 20-30 students, of course.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[anyGould]

Happened once, a long time ago.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

Part of that would be some of the more famous people lending their celebrity to the causes of education. There was a story recently where Wil.I.Am bought out some time on ABC so he could broadcast a national high school robotics competition. Things like that will help propel math & science to popularity again.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[anyGould]

We're so addicted to evaluations that we forget to teach the actual material being evaluated.

Not to mention that if the kid doesn't learn it, we blame the teacher for his low marks, rather than the kid.

(pause to let everyone put their "some teachers are idiots and useless" stories here - I've got a few as well)

But talk to a teacher today, and they can't do anything *but* make sure their kids know what's on the test (leaving no time to do anything actually freakin' interesting), because it's either do that or find another job.

I go for Matt Damon's take on teachers - you go into teaching because you want to do it. If you don't like teaching kids, there are easier ways to make a living. That's why you see so many education majors in human resources.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

Radio Shack is actually making an effort to get back to its roots regarding selling electronic parts. They're starting to stock a lot more robotics parts, and microcontroller boards. Still not as good as you can get online (which is why I think they steered away from it for a while to start with), but it's a start.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Culture20]

I worked my way through college, although your and my definitions of "many" might differ. It also took me a few more years than most.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

(yes, teachers unions, and no, I don't think teachers ought to work for "slave" labor or not have benefits)

Funny, because that's usually what happens. You're forgetting why the unions were started in the first place.

lack of focus... yes, art is important, music is important, but the core classes are MORE important and need more resources.

Says who? The arts can be just as important as math and science. Especially when it comes to getting kids to actually enjoy learning.

we've had the government coddling us for so long

Yes, having a social safety net and actual worker's rights (as pitiful as they are in the states) is "coddling". Same with consumer protections.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

I highly doubt that "music" and "sports" are why your commissioners didn't know what they were supposed to do. If anything, some of those programs are what kept them in school.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

Do private schools have SSR

The one I went to did. For a lot of students, if they don't have that time in school, they don't read at all.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

Funny, because that's usually what happens. You're forgetting why the unions were started in the first place.

Funny, because I know very few professionals in unions (I live in a right-to-work state), and we all get decent pay and benefits. You're forgetting unions have long outlived their usefulness. You think we're going to go back to the dark ages with sweat shops and child labor if unions disbanded? Really? You think the work week will go up to 60 hours? The problem is that unions started addressing valid problems, and then when those were solved they went on to business destroying demands; in the case of teachers, you have teachers sitting in rooms reading books all day, being paid full time wages, because it's easier than firing them... and then wonder why school districts never seem to have enough money.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[godrik]

I believe you misread my post.

And I can not resist a snarky comment: "You might have been better learning how to read than how to sing. That would have removed this embarassment." (Notice that this part is a joke. :) )

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

I don't know about Canada, but the problem here isn't necessarily teacher pay.

When new teachers start at below $35k in most places, whereas "finance" and "business" types start at more than double that, then yes, it is a problem.

especially when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get

That's actually a lie. Public sector workers are paid at market, or slightly less, even when counting in benefits.

And quite frankly, bitching over "benefits that they get that we don't!" is incredibly immature. The problem is not that teachers get the benefits. The problem is that most US workers didn't fight to keep them when they lost them. The question shouldn't be "Why do they get them?", it should be "Why don't we get them?"

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Quiet_Desperation]

Demonstration: find a store with a sale, "25% off marked price". Pick something that's marked £30, walk to the checkout and hand over £22.50 (exactly) before the barcode is scanned. Many people will be impressed.

We have that whole sales tax thing here in California. Modify that £22.50 by another 8.75%. Quick!

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

And quite frankly, bitching over "benefits that they get that we don't!" is incredibly immature.

It sure is... if you can show me where I did that, I'll apologize.

That's actually a lie. [npr.org] Public sector workers are paid at market, or slightly less, even when counting in benefits.

The article you linked to doesn't say that at all... it's got two people disagreeing and you chose a quote from the one you agree with. Nice.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Quiet_Desperation]

The slow, painful death of Radio Shack is more than symbolic. I see it as completely parallel to the slow and painful death of intellectualism in our national culture.

Or, you know, that Internet thing: http://www.digikey.com/ http://www.newark.com/ http://www.mouser.com/

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[The Archon V2.0]

Oh my god yes, that sounds like my schooling. They HATED phonics. It's how I learned (not "Hooked on..." of course as it didn't exist at the time), it worked great! But when I was growing up they were big on "Journals" where you didn't correct kids mistakes directly (passive-aggressive learning, WTF) because they "didn't stifle creativity".

Now my cousin (more like a niece due to generational quirks) is spelling apple "apl" because of some new retarded plan they have.

My elementary/middle school had remedial reading (like 3ish grades less than normal) classes up to eighth grade, and I think it stopped there only because the school stopped there.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Quiet_Desperation]

Seriously, if you are a young person, what has been done to you is criminal.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[xaxa]

Fortunately, all shops (online and brick) in the UK display all prices including VAT. It's a legal requirement (apparently only since 2004, so probably the law was made to stop people trying to compete with "lower" prices in advertisements).

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[interkin3tic]

Sometimes, we just need to admit that it's a lost cause. It's a situation that can't be salvaged.

Can't be salvaged? Well that's just idiotic. Education is not a goal that we can just give up on. It would be colossally stupid to just give up on future generations like that. It's already bad enough that we are cheating them like this, but to say we can't possibly fix it is more selfish than even we are.

It's not as if we're out of ideas either. We have plenty of our own, and if none of those appeal to you, look at countries that are doing it well, and the differences in how we do it and how they do it, and then model ourselves after that. Be prepared to spend more money on it. Throwing money at it is not a magic solution, sure, but saving money is not a goal worth sacrificing the education system for.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

I like how you spout one anecdote, with nothing to support it, and imply that's what the entire school system has become.

As for the rest of your rant, remember, most workers also aren't subject to the whims of the taxpayer, who always wants his taxes lower. Meaning that without the unions, the teachers likely would never get raises, and would likely never have limits on their class sizes, either.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

If you'd have read the article, you'd see that there's also a report backing it up.

It sure is... if you can show me where I did that, I'll apologize.

I'm gonna start with the line I quoted. And I'm gonna go back to the trouble in Wisconsin a few months ago, where people like you were constantly bitching that teachers got benefits.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[exploder]

I bet the biggest complaint about the four day week comes from the parents who treat school as free daycare. Say all the bad things you want about homeschooling, home schooled students perform better, on average, than public school students, period.

And I bet you're not a parent. Have you considered what it takes to make a two-income or single-parent household with children actually work? School is free daycare (inasmuch as anything funded by taxes is free). That's not all it is, of course, but that free daycare is absolutely critical for any family that needs both parents (or the single parent) working full-time.

So, yes, absolutely the biggest complaint will be from those parents. And they're goddam right for complaining about it.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[hairyfeet]

Actually I think it is cheaper now for everything but the throwaway iCrap. When I was a kid everybody wanted or had a muscle car. Sure we bought rustbuckets but when you figured the amount of $$$ and time we sunk into those rustbuckets they got expensive pretty damned quick.

Now when my oldest got accepted to college my dad, who got me a 72 duster with a crunched side when i was his age, gets Jackson an S10 fully loaded in mint state. We are talking deep midnight blue paint, mags, kicking stereo, man that is a sweet ride. When I was a kid something THAT nice would have broke the bank, but now? $2300 and the thing is perfect, hell the engine even looks new as well as purrs like a kitten. The mechanic that checked it out said "Its the same as the day it rolled off the showroom floor, completely perfect" and then promptly tried to buy it off us.

So if anything I'd say we have quite an abundance. Both my boys have multicore desktops AND laptops, hell we have to have 7 PCs just between me and the boys, everybody has a car and a PC and an MP3 and consoles and handhelds and just...more everything. When I was a kid having enough money to get a Coleco was considered a big fricking deal. Owning a PC? I was the only one in the entire town and that was only because i had a trucker uncle who scored a VIC20 that "fell off the back of a truck" for me.

So now all the kids are really really spoiled and don't even know what its like to trudge uphill in the snow both ways. Damned spoiled brats getting on our lawns!

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Nethemas the Great]

It'd be nice if it were in the US. However there is some benefit in not displaying the all inclusive price. As a college student on a non-existent budget I got rather good at the mental calculation of the real price so that I knew I had enough before I got to the checkout.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

If you'd have read the article, you'd see that there's also a report backing it up.

I read the article... there's no link to any confirming reports for either side. They all cite a few stats, neither really disagreeing with the other except what they emphasize to make their cases. One guy says private employees are paid more, the other counters with benefits being higher, as well as job security (which is the thing I was taking issue with), neither one denies what the other has said... then another guy counters with some nebulous negative about working in a large bureaucracy.

I'm gonna start with the line I quoted.

You mean "when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get?" The thing that NOBODY in your own article even denies?

I didn't say they got benefits we didn't, but what they get is often better - cheaper health insurance, better retirement plans. They're the same benefits most people get, they're just "better" because the employers (tax payers) pay more. I never complained they get more benefits than me - you are viewing this whole discussion with a confirmation bias that you don't even recognize, and making knee-jerk responses to anything that questions your beliefs.

Oh... and don't fucking say "people like you," because it only shows what an ignorant asshole you're acting like.... you have no idea who I am, and I have not once said teacher's benefits or pay should be cut, and never once whined about them getting a benefit "I don't get."

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[HereIAmJH]

Radio Shack's demise is more about technology than anything. Back before all their stores were in malls they carried a lot of electronics components, but they also carried consumer electronics. I have a pair of 30 year old Realistic stereo speakers. My dad owned several Tandy computers. But with electronics going to SMD and programmable chips, most of the hobbyists moved on to cheaper hobbies. And then of course, a lot of them went into programming. While I think it would be nice to have a local source for things like Arduino's and PICs, in reality I doubt they could sell enough to keep a store open since most of us would order on the internet anyway. Radio Shack was never cheap and they didn't have particularly stellar quality control either.

The only thing lost is the impulse buy.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

You're kidding, right? You think tax payers are more demanding than my private sector employer? You think my employer's not trying to maximize his profits by keeping employee pay and benefits low? What rock are you living under?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

You bet wrong, which pretty much makes the rest of your post meaningless.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

...is spelling apple "apl" because of some new retarded plan they have.

That's hilarious... sounds like they're teaching them how to text.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Nethemas the Great]

"working your way through college" any more means:

• your parents didn't have the sense to establish a meaningful college fund for you
• your parents didn't provide meaningful support while in college
• your student loans covered tuition and directly associated expenses (maybe) but not enough to cover general living expenses
• to cover the deficit you took up part-time jobs

In the GP's definition it likely means all the same but with the exception that there is no such thing as a "student loan" and therefore all expenses are covered by your part-time job. Which is very much impossible unless you happen to be a female with a body proportioned for use as a sex toy and leverage it for same.

On a related note... for those of you that are parents out there here's a bit of advice. If you care at all about your kid being academically successful and thereby having an easier time finding a good job when they get out start putting aside a college fund for them. If they have to sacrifice essential homework/study time in order to work to support their a** you are as good as sabotaging them.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

That just goes back to parents being part of the problem.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Nethemas the Great]

The last time I went into a Radio Shack and found the shelves meaningfully stocked with supplies for intellectual hobbies was the early 1990's. I've never in my lifetime (32 years) found them to be staffed by anyone other than incompetents that couldn't hack their way through a liberal arts degree much less a computer science or electrical engineering one. As far as I can tell they tend to be the types that think electronics are cool but spend all their time as consumers of video games and electronic gadgets while knowing nothing of their workings. I've found Best Buy staff to be more knowledgeable. They at least tend to memorize the talking points for the products they sell.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[LateArthurDent]

Demonstration: find a store with a sale, "25% off marked price". Pick something that's marked £30, walk to the checkout and hand over £22.50 (exactly) before the barcode is scanned. Many people will be impressed.

Part of it is that they teach the concept of associative and commutative operations in school, but they stopped teaching why it's useful. I'm not sure the teachers understand why it's useful, because I'm not sure that they've been taught it either :)

Basically, when you ask somebody, "what's 25% of 30?", they start setting up a multiplication by 0.25 in their heads. They multiply by 5, they go to the next line and offset when multiplying by 2, they add the two lines, they figure out where to put the decimal. If they understand fractions (unfortunately also pretty rare), they might start dividing by 4, which is certainly way better. Those of us who understand commutative properties handles multiples of 10 and 5 more easily by instantly thinking "10% of 30 is 3, 2*3 is 20%. The other 5% is half of 10%, so 3/2, so the answer is 6 + 1.5, 7.5". Math with multiples of 5 and 10 is easy, but that's not what most people are trying to do. :)

You can impress a lot of people with the ability to quickly multiply numbers with 2 or 3 digits in your head. The really easy way of doing that is by using associative and commutative properties with multiples of 10 and adding up the numbers. 23 * 47 = 20 * 40 + 3 * 40 + 20 * 7 + 3 * 7. Each of those terms are easy to compute by just knowing the multiplication table, and you can sum them up as you go, so you only need a running sum in memory, not each individual term. People who are good at mental math do that, people who are not start setting it up in their minds as they would in the notebook, worrying about carrying digits and whanot.

It's not acceptable to say "I can't read", or "I can't write a letter", but it is acceptable to say "oh, I'm no good at maths" or "I can't understand my gas bill".

That's because a lot of people aren't good at math, so they have a large clique with which to reinforce the perception that it's ok. If we start teaching kids to be good at math again, then people who don't know math will be in the minority and it won't be acceptable to be in that group. It's the same reason why illiteracy is not acceptable, we live in nations with close to 100% literacy rates.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

Your point? Are you saying that we shouldn't try to find alternative ways to solve that problem? That those kids unfortunate enough to not have parents that make them read should fuck off?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

You're kidding, right? You think tax payers are more demanding than my private sector employer?

When it comes to education, YES. Did you not see the bitching over "teachers salaries" and shit that happened in Wisconsin this past year?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Moryath]

It may not be a failure of the school system to "emphasize federal and state organization." It may just as likely be a function of people coming up with stupid fucking names for positions.

For example, I can tell you that even grad students in Political Science would be at a loss if you asked them what the fuck a "comptroller" is supposed to be. Or an "Ombudsman." Why? Because these titles, much like "Commissioner", are so vague as to be completely fucking meaningless without a hell of a lot of specific context.

You ask someone what a "railroad commissioner" does, they'd probably give you a best guess. But would you ever think a "railroad commissioner" would be involved in gas utilities and pipelines? No? Well that's part of the purview of the "Texas Railroad Commission."

Before you smart off about how people don't know what a "commissioner" does, start at the source. See if there's any fucking rhyme or reason or logical connection to the name and the job duties first.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[s73v3r]

You mean "when you include benefits that far exceed what people in the private sector get?" The thing that NOBODY in your own article even denies?

The ones that they get paid far less in salary to make up for? You conveniently forgot to mention that.

I never complained they get more benefits than me - you are viewing this whole discussion with a confirmation bias that you don't even recognize, and making knee-jerk responses to anything that questions your beliefs.

Says the guy who can't possibly be asked to say one good thing about the schools. The guy who has done nothing but bitch and complain about how shitty they are, and constantly bring up how their benefits are compared to the private sector, while forgetting how low their salaries are. Nope, I'm the one with the confirmation bias, not you.

Oh... and don't fucking say "people like you," because it only shows what an ignorant asshole you're acting like.... you have no idea who I am, and I have not once said teacher's benefits or pay should be cut, and never once whined about them getting a benefit "I don't get."

If you weren't, then you wouldn't constantly be bringing them up.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[sesshomaru]

Well, then Breaking Bad should make chemistry class more popular.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

It goes back to my OP, way back, where I said there's no single thing you can do to "solve" the education problem in this country.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

OMG!!! you're so blinded by your confirmation bias you can't even see it's RIGHT THERE IN WHAT I WROTE! " One guy says private employees are paid more, " but beyond that, you say "far less" even though the average is less than four percent! It says so right in your OWN ARTICLE!!!! HOLY CRAP, man, get a grip and take a deep breath.

Says the guy who can't possibly be asked to say one good thing about the schools. The guy who has done nothing but bitch and complain about how shitty they are, and constantly bring up how their benefits are compared to the private sector, while forgetting how low their salaries are. Nope, I'm the one with the confirmation bias, not you.

You're so full of crap it's unbelievable.... this is what you call reasonable dialog - creating a strawman argument? I'm not the one constantly bringing up their benefits and salaries, YOU ARE... you go way back to my OP and see where I COMPLAINED about it, the schools, or anything... go on, show me ONE BAD THING I said about schools... go ahead. You're a disingenuous moron who took a knee-jerk reaction to any negativity about unions and can't see straight anymore.

If you weren't, then you wouldn't constantly be bringing them up.

I'm only discussing it because you are. If you don't want to discuss it - since I never complained teachers made too much or got too many benefits anyway, you just assumed I did when I complained about the unions, then let's just stop talking about it - it's pointless, it's not an argument I made, and you're own article says NOTHING you said it does.... it didn't expose any "lie," it didn't counter that benefits are better, and less than 4% is only "far less" in your fantasy world.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Duradin]

Just be aware that the nifty college fund you set aside will go directly against federal aid (including grants) they'd otherwise be eligible for.

So if you really want to screw your kid over have high paying jobs and set aside a little money in a dedicated college fund and then let them pay for everything the college fund doesn't cover.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Belial6]

The arts can be just as important as math and science.

I'm going to say something unpopular here... No they can't. Art is not, has never been, and never will be as important as math and science. The very concept that it is even in the same league as math and science is absurd. Art is great, but it is what you do when you have your math and science done. Art leaves you with an empty belly and markings on your cave wall. Math and science give you safe, healthy food. Art gives you a really pretty quilt to lay under when you are dying young from some disease. Math and science give you medicines to not die young in the first place.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[HungWeiLo]

It is cultural indeed. By the 3rd or 4th generation, the descendants of those hardworking Asian immigrants are just as "dumb" as everyone else.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[HungWeiLo]

Many countries have summer vacation. The difference is that many (particular Asian) countries have assigned review assignments during the summer, due to the first day of fall quarter.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[exploder]

Not really. Are you (or have you considered the case of) a single parent or a partner in a dual-income family that requires both incomes to make ends meet? Would you care to offer your perspective on how such a family would deal with a four-day school week?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Nethemas the Great]

If you're required to put your parents on your FAFSA and they make a middle-class income you the student are as good as screwed out of any grant money regardless. If by some miracle your parents are paupers that qualify for the maximum grant allowance (never going to happen for 99.99% of the population) it tops out around $5000/year. The rest comes down to government guaranteed loans and work-study sponsorship. The amount of which doesn't vary too much thanks to some absurdly low caps regardless of financials, and is never even close to enough. You either get parental sponsorship through loans taken out against their credit or you work to cover the gap. So like I said don't sabotage your kid, save money for their college. You've got 18 years to sock away the equivalent of an entry-level luxury sedan which is a hell of a lot better than trying force your kid to work for that during their time at college.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Duradin]

All you had to say at my regular lunch table at university to get everyone laughing so hard they'd go into convulsions was EFC.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

My perspective is that nobody has the right to demand others baby sit their children, so if you can't afford to have children then you should wait until you can.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[exploder]

Yeah, about what I expected. You haven't thought about this very hard--or if you have, it hasn't amounted to much. I guess you think that everyone who e.g. lost a chunk of their retirement in the recession (or went through a divorce or death of a spouse, or had a serious illness, or, or, or...) and now has to work harder to keep the family afloat was just irresponsible for procreating in the first place. Typical Slashdot knee-jerk "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" libertarianism.

Oh, and if you had bothered to read before your knee jerked into your keyboard, you'd realize that I asked you a practical question, not an ethical or policy question: how do you think the (significant fraction of all American) families who can't easily find another few hundred dollars every month are actually going to cope with something like this? Or was "tough shit" indeed your entire answer?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[gfxguy]

I've probably thought about it a lot longer than you - and it's amounted to quite a bit. Nobody that should be worried about losing a chunk of their retirement in the recession is worrying about their school age kids; and I've thought about all the fringe cases you mention - it just doesn't add up to more than a tiny fraction.

Here's what you fail to grasp - those people somehow managed when the child was an infant, and a toddler? What did they do before kindergarten? And now that the child is easier to handle (you know, you pay more for day care for babies, right?), suddenly they're a burden?

Sorry, except for a few pathological cases, I'm not buying what you're selling.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[xaxa]

Those of us who understand commutative properties handles multiples of 10 and 5 more easily by instantly thinking "10% of 30 is 3, 2*3 is 20%. The other 5% is half of 10%, so 3/2, so the answer is 6 + 1.5, 7.5".

I did £30 - (30 / 2 / 2), which seems about as fast as any method with ¼ or ¾.

But for a general 5n × m, I'd do 10n × m/2.

The really easy way of doing that is by using associative and commutative properties with multiples of 10 and adding up the numbers. 23 * 47 = 20 * 40 + 3 * 40 + 20 * 7 + 3 * 7.

I'm with the "most people" here. I'd never thought of doing that before, and have never factorised something not containing a variable. Yet I did all the mathematics I could at school, including "Further Maths" (which only a tiny, tiny number of people do), and then ½ a year of maths at university.

I tried to do 23 * 47 = ... actually, I'm too tired to type. No wonder I went wrong. (00:30 here.)

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Culture20]

all expenses are covered by your part-time job. Which is very much impossible

Not impossible at all. If you have one or more roommates in a small apartment, a well-paying part time job that cuts off just under the hours that would make you full time (benefit eligible), and you take 9-12 credits a semester instead of 16-20. The best part is being debt free right out of the gate.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Hognoxious]

Demonstration: find a store with a sale, "25% off marked price". Pick something that's marked £30, walk to the checkout and hand over £22.50 (exactly) before the barcode is scanned. Many people will be impressed.

If Footlocker is having a 3 for 2 sale and a brick has a mass of 1 kg, how many pairs of trainers can Bozzer filch in the time it takes Joggo to steal one television?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Hognoxious]

Does being on a sports scholarship count as a part-time job?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Hognoxious]

Considering the trend, it's obvious it's completely cultural.

It's not obvious to me. Care to elaborate?

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[LateArthurDent]

I'm with the "most people" here. I'd never thought of doing that before, and have never factorised something not containing a variable.

Of course you have. You did right here:

I did £30 - (30 / 2 / 2), which seems about as fast as any method with ¼ or ¾.

Which is pretty much the same idea. Dividing by half is easier than dividing by 4, so factor that 4.

Yet I did all the mathematics I could at school, including "Further Maths" (which only a tiny, tiny number of people do), and then ½ a year of maths at university.

Which is my point. You absolutely got taught that (a + b) * (c + d) = a*c + a*d + b*c + b*d, but nobody ever bothers to tell you that's pretty useful in mental arithmetic. We're teaching the stuff, but we're not bringing it home, which causes two problems: First, people don't always know how to apply what they're taught; and second, people forget everything after they leave school, because they've never used what they've been taught.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[bhcompy]

In simple terms, since, apparently, you need it simpler than I already stated: If one culture has consistently better scores than another than it is obvious that culture is a major defining factor in scores.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Nethemas the Great]

This may be true in many cases. However, most people would call 6 years in college a master's degree or completely unacceptable. Being "part-time" status at a university can also sometimes come with a few disadvantages both on the academics but mostly and especially the financial side. Since your tuition isn't usually calculated on a "per-credit" basis and financial aid all but evaporates you could well end up paying a larger bill even if you managed to pay as you go. If you are pursuing a reasonable paying career, those missed two years may well end up costing you considerably. If I'd maintained the starvation budget I was on during college for just a single year after graduating I'd have been able to pay off all my student loans.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[Nethemas the Great]

Fits my definition. Play for pay.

Re:In the end, it doesn't matter.

[spiralx]

... "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" libertarianism.

Can I just say I love that expression :) And I'm not even American lol.

crack and condoms

[Anonymous Coward]

probably cheaper than teaching them stuff and gives them something to do as well. then just put them on welfare and let educated immigrants do our work to pay for welfare.

sounds like a plan.

Re:crack and condoms

[Anonymous Coward]

People on crack and welfare don't use condoms...to expensive.

4 days is a solid idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's give it some thought. Four days school weeks. Let's M/T, and Th/F. Now, if we extend each day by 1.5 to 2 hours, we net a savings in janitorial, heating and cooling, buses (this is huge), bus drivers, and if done nationally, a LOT of fuel from days off for parents driving kids to school. More time in each class means my kids may not complain about the limited amount actually spent LEARNING. There will be an extra day for homework (let's say Wednesday is an off day), so that there is less wear on kids. Also, on the off day, the kids could have access to email, or web/other learning tools for immersion.

daycare needed

[Anonymous Coward]

I call BS on this. They're only interested in giving themselves a long weekend.
There's no consideration given to the parents who have to scramble to find another
day-care facility (yes, I am saying that schools, now-a-days, are functionally day-care
facilities).

In some states (I don't know about N. Dakota), there's a minimum requirement for
attendance by a number of days served - which is taken to be calendar days; not
accumulated hours... Just my 2.

Re:daycare needed

[firex726]

It sounds like the residents were asked to pay higher taxes or else something drastic would have to be done.
The residents decided they didn't want the taxes so the district followed through, of course now it'll end up costing them more for childcare.

Looks like a case of shortsightedness. "Taxes are bad, even though they'll be less then what we would pay out of pocket ourselves for the alternative".

A solution for unemployment?

[arisvega]

Think about it, this can be a solution to unemployment.

Before you start asking me "But what happened to the usual near-Marxist flavor of your posts? Do you not see that this will lead to more desperate workers that will have to yield more and more to the demands of MegaCorp?", seriously, think about it. We already have robots doing labor, let's focus on building new, more efficient ones, so we can afford to have one more weekend day in the long run. And in the short-term, new people can be hired to work part-time- it's not like MegaCorp can't afford it!

Re:A solution for unemployment?

[couchslug]

I LOVED working four ten-hour shifts instead of five eights.

You can get plenty of work done with less interruption and three-day weekends rock.

Re:A solution for unemployment?

[Eivind]

It's super for those who're young and independent, agreed. One size doesn't fit all, 4 long days REALLY suck if you've got kids of your own, for example.

4 day weeks where the day off alternates between friday and monday rock even harder -- that way every second weekend is 4 days long. Enabling you to take a weekend-trip that feels almost like a vacation.

2 days, or even 3, off is -slightly- to short for many kinds of getaways.

Re:A solution for unemployment?

[vlm]

It's super for those who're young and independent, agreed. One size doesn't fit all, 4 long days REALLY suck if you've got kids of your own

LOL I had exactly the opposite experience.

Young and Single and 4 days = "the guys" are going out to the bar after work to watch "the game" and meet women, wanna come along? Oh wait you've gotta work an extra hour and then wake up for work really early tomorrow.

Kids of your own = "I just saved 20% on my day care expenses." And anyone who's paid a day care bill recently knows that is no small change... Also you get to spend an extra day per week with your kids, which, assuming you and your kids like each other, is priceless.

alternates between friday and monday rock even harder

How in gods name do you schedule anything? Daycare wants a fixed day of week schedule. I can't instantly tell a doctor I always can make an appointment on Fridays. None of the 9-5ers do anything on Friday anyway, all they do is talk about the weekend, so that means you waste a day's work every other week.

Re:A solution for unemployment?

[Totenglocke]

Yup - that's the shift I currently work (though doing grad school on top of that makes things rough). Regardless of the hours involved, I'd rather work 10 hours instead of 8 - not only do I get more free time on the weekends, but I save money on gas / wear and tear on my car.

Re:A solution for unemployment?

[Eivind]

You don't - that was my point, I listed it as awesome for the young and independent. I guess particularily for those who like to travel.

When you've got no kids, there are no daycare to schedule. Scheduling work may or may not be tricky, if you have a independent work where meetings and suchlike aren't occupying a large fraction of your time, being available for meeting every tuesday, wednesday and thursday might be sufficient (it was for me)

4 day week, 10h days

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, 4 day weeks with 10h days would rock over 5 day weeks with 8h.

I mean really, since everyone is working the SAME shifts right now, you lose 2h to traffic/travel times on a day anyways!

Socialism

[Anonymous Coward]

How can a school system not afford to stay open? In new york city they get $17,000 per year per student. Average tuition at a private school is $4,000. Enjoy your socialism

Re:Socialism

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Average? What color is the sky on your planet?

According to the probably-not-exactly-an-arm-of-teacher's-union-socialism "Council for American Private Education the lowest average private tuition was $4,944 for a Catholic elementary program(direct costs only, any cash or service subsidies from the church organization not included). All secondary and K-12 programs averaged higher.

Re:Socialism

[brit74]

So, just to get this straight:

You used the figure of "new york city they get $17,000 per year per student" (2007-2008 figure according to http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2010-06-29-school-spending_N.htm) as a comparison against "Average tuition at a private school is $4,000".

But, looking around, it seems that New York city's costs have fluctuated from year to year: "New York City, the nation’s largest school district, reported spending $13,755 per pupil" (article from 2008). You also picked the highest-cost per pupil city (New York, a city which has high costs in a variety of ways) to compare against the "average" private school tuition. But, in fact, this isn't the "average" private school tuition, either. According to another article, "Average Private School Tuition: 2007-08, All Schools (i.e. Catholic, Other Religious, Non-Sectarian), K-12 Schools" = $10,045 per pupil (Source: http://www.capenet.org/facts.html)

4 days weeks is stupid

[sxpert]

we've had that in france for a while. it has been discovered that pupils end up extremely tired at the end of each day, and the whole thing is totally inefficient. in fact, we're having talks of going to a US style week, with morning classes and afternoon outdoor activities and stuff... also, switching to a 4 days week to save money is the most ludicrous and stupid thing I've heard. ah, no, I've heard worse. closing a school in a mountain village, and forcing parents to drive their kids 1 hour away every morning and back

Re:4 days weeks is stupid

[jank1887]

"forcing parents to drive their kids 1 hour away every morning and back"

you just described the average Baltimore / D.C. commute. what's the problem?

Re:4 days weeks is stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

Has anyone tried a nine-day fortnight? Every other Friday off perhaps, provided that said Friday off won't make it less than a four-day school week.

Another poster mentioned larger class sizes. Well, that may be a good idea in lecture-type classes.

There needs to be creativity in how school is done.

Oh the humanity!

[Anonymous Coward]

Negatives:
Parents will scramble to find daycare!
Kids will run rampant in the neighbourhoods/suburbs!
Public will see this as teachers lessening their workload and/or have long weekends!
Public will see this as cost downloading!
Moderates will see this as America losing the battle to improve education (compared to China)!
Teachers will complain that they have to fit the curriculum in 4 days!

Positives:
Teeanagers will increase population growth!
Atheltic programs will have an extra day for practice!
Parents will raise more independent children as they are well equipped to leave them unsupervised for one day per week!
Daycare will BOOM!
Cartoons will run all day on Fridays!
Americans kids are too good for College; let's have the Chinese and Indians to all dem thinking jobs for us!

How is this worse?

[Shivetya]

If they are able to keep extra programs and such? Plus the dollar amounts are all relative to the schools involved. 50K would be a rounding error in NYC schools but in Podunk wherever results in a class being taught for fuel for school buses.

We have counties here whose fuel bills are in the millions, going to four day weeks would save money wasted on buses; let alone what parents and students who drive spend; and allow them to be spent more effectively.

Logic was not on the curriculum...

[clickety6]

But other schools in the state show that kids haven't suffered with a shortened school week. The Deuel school district in eastern S.D. switched to a four-day week four years ago, saving more than $100,000 and leading to no slump in academic achievement. In fact, Deuel's superintendent Dean Christensen tells the Associated Press that their failure rate has declined because they've used the spare day for extra tutoring.

We'll give them a day off school and instead use that day for tutoring.

Isn't that like teaching?

No, it's tutoring, not teaching!

Where does the money for that come from?

The money we saved closing the school for one day a week will pay for all the tutors...!

Re:Logic was not on the curriculum...

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference between tutoring and teaching is that the student focuses on the subject(s) in which they are struggling, rather than having to spend much smaller portions of the entire day learning about everything on the curriculum.

Re:Logic was not on the curriculum...

[Anonymous Coward]

Teaching involves every student, and they have to be there all day (which means things like providing them with lunch service), and the whole school has to be active. Tutoring is one on one , the student only needs to be there for an hour or two , and it's only for a limited number of students that actually need the help. This is more effective for those students that actually need the extra help, you don't have to provide them services like lunch and bus transportation, and you have to have the entire building lit up and heated/cooled. You don't see how that could be an all around improvement?

Re:Logic was not on the curriculum...

[ZombieBraintrust]

Well it could save money and make sense. Smart kids go to school 4 days a week. Dumb kids get tutured on the 5th day. You do well you get a three day weekend.

Fall of a nation

[tp1024]

Isn't it funny how the leaders of a fallen nation always claim they didn't see it coming? How they keep claiming to the very last day, that theirs is a strong nation that will never fall?

You know what? They don't even lie.

Re:Fall of a nation

[LordNacho]

Nobody walks over a cliff if they can see it approaching, duh!

We'll just keep walking backwards...

Re:Fall of a nation

[Kjella]

Politicians are not so mindless as they appear, they just know what's the right thing to say. Even when they know they have to keep running the ship against disaster to stay in office, they'll do it. That they "didn't see it coming" is a helluva lot better excuse than saying "yep I saw it coming, but I did it anyway". They're not that different from an employee keeping his head down until the project is a total failure $10 millions later instead of speaking up and getting laid off. It actually makes very little difference if a politician ends his political career on good or bad terms.

Re:Fall of a nation

[tp1024]

You should not attribute to malice, what you can adequately explain through a mechanism of self-reinforcing ignorance.

As for example the easily observable process of politicians selecting their advisors on the basis of compliance with their ideology - instead of erm ... you know ... the real world?

Re:Fall of a nation

[dcollins]

Every bluff always looks silly once it's been called down.

Re:Fall of a nation

[MacGyver2210]

Climb up on that rock.

See where the ground in front of us just stops and drops away?

That's called a cliff. We're approaching it. Now you see it, so do something about it.

Re:Fall of a nation

[Anonymous Coward]

if i weren't an anonymous coward trying to keep my head down and shake off the labels of "troublemaker", "argumentative", "arrogant", and "condescending", i would +5 this here and at work. this is the real problem with creating a 'politically correct', 'polite society' and preaching too much about 'can't we all just get along'.

Re:Fall of a nation

[Anonymous Coward]

You're confusing the leaders of a nation with 1/4 of South Dakota school districts. It's ok, the culturally insecure are usually ignorant about the world around them.

What about the (working) parents?

[Anonymous Coward]

Moving to a 4 day school week completely ignores the fact that (like it or not) school is a type of day-care that working parents rely on. While it may save the school 50k a year per school (really.. is that all?) it is going to cause problems for the working parents and their employers.

Amazing...

[damn_registrars]

... what you can't accomplish when you are unwilling to pay for anything.

Although with the rather solid conservative majority in South Dakota, many of these people are probably the same ones who complain about public schools being a machine of the commie-socialist-atheist-muslim-fascist-hippie-liberal elite.

Re:Amazing...

[berashith]

I dont know the local politics in this region, but this sentiment may be unfair. Sometimes people refuse to pay more taxes to pay for more wasteful nonsense. The politicians who are getting neutered by this attitude like to strike back by creating significant negative impacts that receive high amounts of publicity. They always remove the visible costs that create pain first. This can make the reluctant tax payers look bad, and create a win for the pols. It may be that this region has huge waste in school boards or multiple overpaid principals or even absurd wasteful spending going to a pols friend's landscaping business ( many other ideas may be relevant to this argument) . Sometimes the citizens just have to keep fighting until the correct waste is removed. Now, as I have no idea about all the potential waste in the region, you may be 100% correct, and this could be idiot voters who refuse to pay for what is needed. I just hate to jump to that conclusion.

4 Day Work Weeks for the Local Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

So are all of the local companies in those districts going to four day work weeks? A lot of parents are at work during school hours and have to take vacation days to cover school holidays that don't overlap with their work ones. I wonder how the parents are handling an extra day each week. Day care facilities must be booming!

Re:4 Day Work Weeks for the Local Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

You open the schools on Friday, but charge parents directly to watch their kids. That's where the big money would roll in. Forget that $50K/year savings.

Re:4 Day Work Weeks for the Local Companies

[Anonymous Coward]

When I grew up I had either the maid or the gardener look after me if neither of my parents were home.
Can't they just do that?

Re:4 Day Work Weeks for the Local Companies

[mla_anderson]

Probably works find for that school district. There aren't many companies there, mostly farms.

Re:4 Day Work Weeks for the Local Companies

[jank1887]

or the middle / high school students are raking in the beer money babysitting on day 5. makes for a much more enjoyable days 6 and 7 I'm sure.

Re:4 Day Work Weeks for the Local Companies

[SlippyToad]

That's called "cost-shifting." Think of all the costs that have now been shifted to those lazy working Americans since we obviously aren't doing our part.

Wait? This saved $50k/year, right? I wonder if South Dakota taxpayers have picked up on just how ridiculous the REAL COST of this bogus 'SAVINGS' is going to be. This has NOTHING TO DO WITH MONEY. This is another chapter in the ongoing effort by the Koch brothers and the DeVos family to ruin our country.

Re:4 Day Work Weeks for the Local Companies

[PeanutButterBreath]

Day care facilities must be booming!

And you can bet that the extra jobs created will be featured on some politician's resume.

This is just another way to roll a progressive system that, while not perfect, has been massively successful, into a regressive system that will further enslave working families to their employers. Parents will have to grovel in front of their employers for the flexibility to accomodate these oddball hours, likely sacrifice pay and/or advancement in exchange for this "perk" and more of their income will be spent on childcare. Being poorer, they will have to spend more time working (if they can find extra work) and be more stressed out, which while likely be detrimental to their domestic situation.

good

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish we had this when I was in school. Would have been one more day out of the week I could have spent reading something at my level instead of having to sneak it in during class.

The answer is obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Cut taxes!

Clearly it's the fault of some evil government type person somewhere, casting evil spells.

Re:The answer is obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

See- you think you are pointing out a flaw in economically conservative viewpoints in a comical fashion. What you are ACTUALLY doing is proving your incompetence at observing the obvious fact that government has gotten too big at even most local levels to operate on the taxes brought in. Reduce the ridiculous level of hand-outs for the lazy, and you have plenty of money. Note that I did NOT say to do anything to funding folks who are actually handicapped. If you could work, and haven't figured out a way to survive after welfare for a year, screw you. Hit up family or friends, or just die.

Ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Great, more time for the little brats to run around vandalizing the town. Except for the parents that take time off to watch them. In that case they'll be screaming for more "family" time off from work. They'll get it, and those of us without kids will end up carrying even MORE of their load. I'm already beyond tired of carrying extra load for people that can't figure out how to keep their pants on...

Technology...

[neokushan]

I do wonder why more effort doesn't seem to be put into using Technology to help save money.

Sure, take your 4 day week. Does that mean the kids can't be given a website to go to, with their on personal login, that has a bunch of weekly tests and exams for them to do, that they can spend friday doing? Have set times, make them sit the "exam" at the same time as everyone else, effectively making it a "school day" without the school. Even if it's something simple like watching an educational video and occasionally interrupting to ask both education questions and questions to make sure they're actually paying attention. It's not a perfect idea, it sure as hell wouldn't beat having direct access to a teacher 5 days a week, but surely it's better than just not being in school on the friday.

It seems that technology in the classroom is constantly shunned, with people stating that computers distract kids more than they help, but maybe that's just because people haven't invested enough in them. Or maybe it's just a pipe dream.

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the tech costs money... Since they don't have any to start with, the plan is unworkable.

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of "let them do it at home through a computer and an internet connection" doesn't work in public school and rural areas because some children don't have a computer and there are still entire parts of this country that don't have reliable internet access.

You can suggest "well those students have to go to the library" but that doesn't work if there are a significant number of students in this situation and the library staff doesn't have the staff to handle them. Then you just end up hiring a librarian instead of a teacher or, more likely, you have the volunteer librarians retire because they don't want to be unpaid babysitters.

Re:Technology...

[Spafticus]

What about a incorporating a program like this: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/salman_khan_let_s_use_video_to_reinvent_education.html as a supplement?

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they will spend more than the difference implementing and maintaining the technology.

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, take your 4 day week. Does that mean the kids can't be given a website to go to, with their on personal login, that has a bunch of weekly tests and exams for them to do, that they can spend friday doing?

This would work especially well in South Dakota since the school system state-wide is already setup for that sort of online learning although it is only for middle and high school students.

Re:Technology...

[berashith]

but now there is a requirement for computers and online access in the home. I know, libraries can provide this, with the caveat that libraries dont have busses or food. Now the county is required to provide computer access during a specific period of time and transportation to/from the location. My question is what is different from gathering all the students in one publicly funded building versus gathering them all in another? It seems this theory would only allow the teachers to have a day with no kids, which doesnt seem to benefit the kids very much.

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea. It also adds a level of personal responsibility that is priceless. You have to be there, at that time to do the work, even though you technically could be out doing something else.

It's something we don't learn until University and by then it's usually too late.

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

But the tech costs money... Since they don't have any to start with, the plan is unworkable.

In South Dakota where this is happening the tech already exists (at least for Middle School and above), and the programs exist. South Dakota is sparsely populated and had to find a way to get diverse classes to remote areas where there wouldn't be enough students to make it financially feasible to send a specialized teacher. Any student in public, private or home school can take classes via distance learning through the SD school system.

Moved here from California and have been astonished at the quality of the public school system here compared to California. Apparently being a mostly red state isn't actually as detrimental to our children's education as people make it out to be.

Re:Technology...

[neokushan]

True, it isn't without its issues, but you don't need to have a teacher looking after the kids and it doesn't matter if you have 200 of them in the same room as they'll all be working independently. Plus, quite a lot of them won't necessarily need to go to the library because they'll have access at home, it's only the ones that don't which will need to.

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

Great fucking idea.... just fucking great. And this is why despite being a geek myself, I fucking...hate...geeks. Short sighted, single-solution minded twits in need of management to reign delusions of grandeur in.

Let's take a rural state like south dakota, with a per capita income of $17,562, absolutely minimal broadband (if they could afford it on that), and externalize the power, internet connection, and computing resources because we can't pay for the unfunded federal mandates.

And let's take that money that could be spent on teachers and school infrastructure, and throws hundreds of millions into the e-training contract, software, training and courseware development.

Because by the time it's done, you'll have a billion dollar project or millions in training in COTS shit like WEBCT where people will bitch that their high speed videos don't work and their AJAX is too slow over the 28.8 (it connects slower on old copper) dialup! Not that they'll complain about that--the complaint will simply be "it's unusable" after the contracts have sucked the tax coffers dry.

You need to understand--this is America, not fucking Tokyo or Stockholm. Some shit you can't solve by throwing a million bucks of fiber optic cable at it, and a $300 PC in every shack. The infrastructure isn't there--it isn't as simple as adding classroom technology, and in a lot of places in the US -- it probably never will be.

And your suggestion to spend 20% of the time in testing... that's a different disgrace that someone else should take you to task over...

Re:Technology...

[jank1887]

(1) you now need to ensure all students have access to that on day 5. maybe you open computer labs. they need to be proctored. sounds like a school.

(2) people have been throwing technology at schools since forever. they're still trying to figure out when it helps and when it doesn't. most of it is blind investment with little thought for training, long term costs and proper integration into the curriculum. and forget about identifying bang for the buck. all you find are anecdotal stories of one-off neat things that some schools do, and lots of dusty tech hardware in other schools.

(3) technology and education societies are trying to identify how tech can and should help the K-12 classroom, but it's piecemeal and expensive.

Re:Technology...

[berashith]

I am not trying to say that your idea is without merit, but it does not solve the problem that is being chased in this case. The teachers are getting paid anyhow, as the extra hours cover the lost day for them. The district is saving money in lunches, staff cuts, less miles on busses ( saving on gas and hours paid to the drivers) . The computing solution just shifts these costs to a different part of the government. While I am all for larger budgets going to libraries, that is also a favorite cut from the pols. I would hate to see the result of people claiming that the district had to supply the home with compute power and internet connection and the costs that would come out of that ( hint, way more than 50k ) . This is also an area with heavy snow, which again creates an unfair playing field for people who have access at home.

I have relatives in Iowa, and the internet connectivity there SUCKS due to the sparse population creating large distances between population, and some towns over ~200 people dont really support the infrastructure. I know that my phone bill pays to bring infrastructure to these places through fees, but the big telcos dont really care much about those rules it seems.

Re:Technology...

[mla_anderson]

Let's take a rural state like south dakota, with a per capita income of $17,562, absolutely minimal broadband (if they could afford it on that), and externalize the power, internet connection, and computing resources because we can't pay for the unfunded federal mandates.

And let's take that money that could be spent on teachers and school infrastructure, and throws hundreds of millions into the e-training contract, software, training and courseware development.

Because by the time it's done, you'll have a billion dollar project or millions in training in COTS shit like WEBCT. ... The infrastructure isn't there--it isn't as simple as adding classroom technology, and in a lot of places in the US -- it probably never will be.

Let's take a rural state, in fact let's take South Dakota itself. For years now South Dakota has had a distance learning program for middle and high school students that allows them to get all sorts of classes that would not otherwise be available in the small towns and small school districts in the state. The infrastructure is there and has been for years because the culture and dynamics of such a low population density demanded it. SD has pretty good broadband coverage with fiber. SD has some of the lowest energy costs in the US. This is not a significant burden on the population as you make it out to be.

Yep, believe it or not a red state has planned ahead and put in infrastructure when it could pay for it. Now that infrastructure can help it get through the hard times.

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about children who's parents can't afford a computer?

Re:Technology...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if there's one thing our education system needs, it's more standardized testing.

Re:Technology...

[c0lo]

I do wonder why more effort doesn't seem to be put into using Technology to help save money.

Sure, take your 4 day week. Does that mean the kids can't be given a website to go to, with their on personal login, that has a bunch of weekly tests and exams for them to do, that they can spend friday doing? Have set times, make them sit the "exam" at the same time as everyone else, effectively making it a "school day" without the school.

Hell, that's not education! At the very most is "training on how to pass an exam".

Does not result in judgement/rationing/critical thinking abilities, does not result in useful skills, does not result in active knowledge... direct experience (the source of so much learning by mistakes) is missing.

Re:Technology...

[uniquegeek]

It's really fun trying to keep your teachers ahead of the technology game in schools, and be proficient enough at it to teach the kids... as opposed to the kids knowing more than the teachers, and telling them how to do it. It's especially fun if your teachers are older than 35.

Content networks like Discovery Education help. There are a few sites which are online software apps designed to let teachers choose content, extra media and questionnaires that will be available to their students. However, they are sometimes buggy, or suffer from performance issues. Add that into trying to make a class of kids with the attention span of fruit flies follow the same thing at the same time, or even follow general directions (and remember passwords, etc.)...

Mom and Dad can support it at home, but they don't know everything either.

The solution of the Internet also brings expense, even more-so for users that are kids.

Re:I can see it now...

[chrb]

From TFA it seems teachers pay stays the same since they work the same hours, but other workers who don't get their pay cut: "Teachers who still work the same number of hours over four days, instead of five, generally don't see a reduction in salary. But staff who can't make up the lost time, such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers, are often hard-hit, losing as much as 20% of their pay."

Great idea.

[couchslug]

I loved four-day weeks at college. For a trivially longer workday you get four days extra per month to have a life.

Re:Great idea.

[Anonymous Coward]

Lucky you, I had six-day weeks at college for five years.

Re:Great idea.

[MacGyver2210]

College is a different beast entirely. (Most of)The students are (sort of) adults, and are expected to be managing their own time and education.

Failing a class costs a LOT of money at the college level, so there is a financial incentive to the parents to make the students succeed, as well as the "If you fail too much you wasted your time and have no degree" aspect for the students.

Re:Great idea.

[FranktehReaver]

I think work should be a 4 day week also!!!

Increases in daycare

[Anonymous Coward]

So what are parents doing for their kids while they're at work on Friday? Now they have to pay for sitters?

Re:Increases in daycare

[Anonymous Coward]

mybe finding the kids t jerbs cleaning chimneys or sumhin G'vnor?

Best thing to happen to the education system!

[Anonymous Coward]

More free time is the best gift to give to those kids who use their free time productively. Sure, a lot of kids will waste away their awesome 3 day weekends playing video games and getting into trouble. Whatever. Their loss. There are also a lot of kids that deserve that free time - those that use that time to conduct bedroom science experiments, learn a musical instrument, play sports, etc... more time to do all of this can only make them a better person. In any case... if kids aren't learning anything from our 'defunct' education system, how can it be harmful to lessen their exposure to that system? Its a win-win scenario.

As a product of the public school system...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for this! The more time kids spend out of school the more actual learning they can do.

What about the parents?

[Anonymous Coward]

And how does this work for parents who both work, do they have to then pay out for someone to watch their kids on this day off the kids now get every week? I thought you paid taxes for your kids to be in education, so surely the state should give you some sort of rebate (about a 20%) on the amount of you tax that goes towards education funding (which from the story is a dwindling amount anyway).

Wont someone think of the parents?

School saves money, parents pay more

[Ptur]

So what are parents who have a 5 day workweek going to do? Hire a babysitter on friday? This may work out for older kids, not the younger ones....

Not one parent on here

[Anonymous Coward]

Why has no-one mentioned the issue of daycare for these kids on Fridays? Saving the school a measly $50,000 per year is one thing, but it's gonna cost the parents a lot more than that between them. What are they paying taxes for, exactly?

purpose of education

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought the purpose of education was to condition a neanderthal hunter to sit down and be still for 40 hours a week.

What is it worth to educate the poor?

[scruffy]

The affluent will be able to pay for private school. What these cuts do is to ensure that the poor get less education. Somehow, most of the affluent folks have become convinced that educating the poor is not worth it. It is hard to see how this will end well.

Re:What is it worth to educate the poor?

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn those evil rich people.

Re:What is it worth to educate the poor?

[Totenglocke]

I don't think you realize how the public school train-wreck works in the US. People sending their kids to private schools still have to pay taxes to run public schools. Thus, for every student that goes to a private school, the school has one less person to spread the same amount of income around to, meaning that spending per student goes up. Therefore, the poor benefit by the "evil rich" sending their kids to private schools.

Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[assertation]

Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s on the upper classes, but these people have been fighting tooth and nail to cut budgets even further.

While the rest of the world is increasing the school week, the US is decreasing it.

Not only are these people working to make you poor and miserable while you are old, but trying to slash medicare and "taxing" your 401K with their debt ceiling/S&P/default stunt, they are working to make your children under-educated, to make sure they are poor all their lives.

Please vote these people out in 2012.

For your self interest.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[night_flyer]

the dems and teachers unions have been in control of education for decades and you want to blame the tea party? seriously? we've had more $$$ pumped into education with gradually worsening results.

Maybe if schools would look at administrative overhead more money could make it down to teachers and students.

A great example is Oklahoma, 77 counties, 544 school districts. consolidating the Districts (not schools as the unions scream would happen) and you would save MILLIONS in administrative costs.

Another thing... get rid of "tenure" and start look at teachers performance, that would get rid of a lot of dead weight, or at least put a fire under some teachers butts that they are there to educate, not just draw a paycheck.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Attila Dimedici]

Right, because spending money we don't have is such a grand idea.
Further, taxes may be the lowest they have been since the 50s on the upper classes, yet the upper classes are paying a larger share of government revenue than ever. So, what you are suggesting is that we should go back to the days when the percentage of money we took from the upper classes was more, but we got a smaller share of government revenue from them?

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[night_flyer]

In 1961 we spent $2808 in inflation adjusted dollars per student, in 2008 we spent $10,441... has our educational quality gone up 5x since then?

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[silas_moeckel]

Having a district based school system sucks. Have one we pay 2/3 of the school budget while putting 1/3 the students into the district. The other town has a HUGE retirement community they will vote down anything that up's there taxes. I get to make up the difference. Now my son attends a private school there administrative overhead is a principle and a secretary/bookkeeper (oh and a full time school nurse) for a school twice the size of what we have in town (it's k-8 vs k-4 5-8). There loaded cost per student is 5k vs my districts 7.5k vs the city next doors 13k. Guess which one has the best test scores and graduation rates.
 

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, how the hell else are they doing to solve the budget problem? By returning the tax levels on millionaires and billionaires to 1990s levels? Heck, no. It would be a drop in the bucket -- only $700 billion over 10 years. If anything they need to increase taxes on the poor. The argument is well laid out in this program.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[night_flyer]

If you confiscate ALL the money from the millionaires and billionaires it would only reduce out debt by 17%.. wasteful spending is the problem

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, blame the Tea Party, you dope. let's see they've been around for all of 3 years...yep it's their fault.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Just Some Guy]

Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s on the upper classes, but these people have been fighting tooth and nail to cut budgets even further.

Of course, you know that schools are almost entirely paid for by state and local taxes. According to the wiki:

The federal government supplies around 8.5% of the public school system funds, according to a 2005 report by the National Center for Education Statistics.

As a homeowner, I guaran-fucking-tee that the property taxes which provide the majority of school funding are not the lowest they've been since, well, ever, either in terms of rates or revenue. Meanwhile, the Department of Education says that per-pupil expenditures have increased from $2,808 in 1961 to $10,441 in 2007, adjusted for inflation. If the Republicans' nefarious goal is to cut budgets, they've done a shitty job of it.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[geekoid]

define quality?

In many aspect sit is substantially better. What is taught is better, the opportunities are higher.

And that doesn't even get into additional cost we didn't have.

But, sure we can go back to a time when the poor didn't go to school, and it was segregated, and kids who weren't doing well where just removed from the rolls.

A far more fair comparison, would be 1980; when we where focusing more on having all student be successful.

And using the nation wide average for this discussion is an appalling abuse of numbers.

For the sake of disclosure:
My son has speech apraxia. IN 1961 he wouldn't have been able to go to school. Hell, 1980 would ahve been a hge challenge. Today he goes to school, excels at his student and plays a mean clarinet.

My daughter as aspergers. It's mild, but enough where she would have been not allowed in school in 1961. Hell, probable not in 1990. She also excells in school, loves to read, reads well above her grade, and will start playing the trumpet * next year

*My god have mercy on us all.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Buelldozer]

You should be modded up for a fact based and rational response to a political mouth breather with a rant for a post.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot a group. Democrats.

You know the ones spending like crazy and forgetting how to you know PAY for those programs.

This is just typical 'need to raise taxes' FUD. Notice every time when taxes are mentioned to go down or a budget needs to be balanced one of the first things cut is education?

Please vote people in who know how to balance a budget in 2012 and have a clue what this country really needs. It isnt more wars or spending on welfare programs.

Who is one of the largest employers in the world? It is the united states government.

If you want to blame a specific group Democrats would be a good place to start. They were the ones who came up with simplifying the banking laws (not republicans), they were the ones who took the money out of SS and put it into the general fund (not republicans). They passed laws to 'help people get home loans' (not republicans). They passed laws that they knew they had not read (again not republicans).

To ignore the long term and focus on what 'your team' is doing (GO TEAM!!!) is short sided myopic and creates the very situation you do not want. When I see something 'party line' voted it means no one really cares about it in washington other than a few dozen 'party leaders'.

I review what a politico stands for and what they said they will do and vote for that. To go in and vote party line means you do not care at all. It means you want to jam down peoples throats your world view.

When you overspend for 50+ years suddenly people act all freeking shocked when holy smokes we cant even afford programs we need.

There needs to be a culling at many levels in the gov. I mean 'cut to the bone' culling. That way we can figure out what we really need. They are already spending ~300 billion a year just on interest alone. That is not getting smaller. ALL programs need to be on the table of cuts. As *ALL* programs have increased by nearly 100% in the past 12 years.

Root cause of current fiscal fiasco? Removal of 1930's laws to make it easier to give people home loans. The very people who wrote those laws that did this are currently in charge of our tax system and sit in key positions in senate finance committees.

But yes lets blame 50+ years of mistakes on the the new guys. Notice I didnt even blame the president. His power is actually pretty limited. The real power is in those congress committees and agencies...

Where do you suggest they get 1.5 trillion in cuts per year (not the 100billion per bone they tossed us)? Oh and you have a decreasing tax base by the way. Also if you increase taxes you end up with a smaller tax base as companies can not hire as many people. You also have an increasing population of retirees for your retirement fund. This is not as easy as voting party line. There are real choices to be made. No one is making them.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[geekoid]

ah yes, the magic 1961.
Back when they just cut anyone loose from school who didn't conform, and large swaths of the poor went uneducated.

Protip: don't pull out numbers from 50 years ago without also including relevant information.
What services are now offered? what % of the population is served? Costs of educating exceed inflation; which I note you didn't look at inflation numbers either. You also might want to include how much the property values have gone up, as well as the local property tax rates. All that is the BARE MINIMUM you need to start doing an honest comparison.

S. Dakota doesn't have a state levied property tax.

I don't know where you live, but in many place the property tax has not risen much, and in a lot of places it's lower now.

In fact, many people pay less taxes now then they would have 60 years ago. In S. Dakota specifically, property taxes are cheaper because they don't assess at the full value anymore.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[CrimsonAvenger]

Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s on the upper classes, but these people have been fighting tooth and nail to cut budgets even further.

Umm, you ARE aware, aren't you, that the Tea Party is in Congress, right?

The Federal Legislature?

The one that contributes exactly NOTHING to the budgets of local elementary and high schools?

Local schools are paid for by local property taxes and State Departments of Education, NOT by the Federal Department of Education....

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[assertation]

Um, you are aware that there are also Republicans and probably tea party people in local governments as well?

Who do you think has been cutting taxes and letting the infrastructure rot for years?

Now they making your kids, not just theirs ignorant.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[metlin]

But the reverse is also to be considered. There are neighborhoods where people are willing to pay high taxes because there are good school districts (or perhaps, the vice versa). There is often genuine concern that others could reap the benefit of a good education without essentially having to pay for it.

Economically speaking, that's a free rider problem. If too many school districts allowed people from elsewhere to enroll, then what is the incentive of those who live there to pay more taxes for education? Consider Massachusetts - most school districts in the Greater Boston area are quite good, but there are a few that are outstanding because the residents and the schools have taken it upon themselves to work with the universities to get the brightest and the best teachers. When people argue that students from other parts of town be allowed to be educated in these schools, the indignation of the parents is quite understandable.

Some of the concerns are certainly demographic related - realistically speaking, an upper middle class parent is going to be uncomfortable if their kids had classmates whose parents are in the clink for selling meth. Unfortunate, yes. But the biggest problem is that at the end of the day, a certain section of the population is willing to invest in their kids education - they are willing to pay as much as needed in taxes, and spend time and effort in ensuring that the system works. Others, not so much. While it is really unfortunate for some parents of limited income, they can always make up for it in other ways (e.g. public libraries and books, camps). But at the end of the day, the children end up paying the price, and there is no good way to fix the problem.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Just Some Guy]

OK. In 1980, when I was a kid, costs were $5,700/kid. Are the services and "% of population served" dramatically different now than when I grew up? Other than that I regularly had art, music, and PE classes and no one wanted to cut them?

Costs of educating exceed inflation

That was my entire point. Why are inflation-adjusted costs four times higher than they were at the start of that report?

You also might want to include how much the property values have gone up, as well as the local property tax rates. All that is the BARE MINIMUM you need to start doing an honest comparison.

My property tax rates have gone up more than 50% in the last decade. As my valuation has increased, my tax bill has risen dramatically.

I don't know where you live, but in many place the property tax has not risen much, and in a lot of places it's lower now.

I know there was a drop due to the housing bubble, but I can't believe that the actually rates are lower than they were a decade ago.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Quit drinking the kool-aid. Not asking for all of their money, just 3%. or $30 for every $1000. That amount does make a significant difference. Figure out what billionaires really pay. More like 15% while you pay 35%. Corps pay next to nothing and use 25% of the commons. So who pays the difference?

Why are your state/local/property taxes going up? Say tax cuts. You're on /. so you can run the numbers as well as me. No talking points, run the numbers.

This country gets in an uproar about spending, but what do we look at? Planned Parenthood, NPR and NASA? How about 60% off defense. There is plenty of waste yet we don't look in the right places. Yes we have a large debt and cutting spending will only fix part of the problem. We need income to pay the debts, you can't do this by reducing income. Really take an HONEST look at the spending of your party over the last thirty years. Both parties for that matter. No yeah buts... an honest look at who spent what and who benefited. Then come back and tell me that we need to cut education, highways, etc so you can pay $10 less in property taxes.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do your property taxes go up. Because of tax cuts. If the feds get less money, then the states get less money, then the counties have less money, then the cities/towns have less money. This is basic math.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[night_flyer]

cause raising taxes has worked so well in places like Detroit and Chicago

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

You mention a number of falicies. Home loans were not the cause of the financial mess, it was the repeal of banking and investment laws that caused the crisis. The amount of money spent on the bank bailout alone is 10-25 times the amount of money owed on the loans. There is still an estimated 700 trillion dollars in credit default swaps that are still out standing. Think the banks are going to pay for that?

Raising taxes on companies does not reduce hiring. 1 employee = 1 write off. How does this reduce hiring? 1 layoff = more profit and more taxes. Either a company has demand or it doesn't. Demand = hiring.

I think you need to go back and take a look at who spent what on whom. We can spend money on the people or we can spend money on corps and billionaires. What benefits the people and this country more? What benefits the local economy more?

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[sandytaru]

I had the unusual experience of spending my freshman year in high school in one of the bottom 100 schools in the country, followed by spending the next three years at one of the top public 50 schools in the country (both in Augusta-Richmond GA.) As a student I didn't change. The teachers between the two schools weren't really THAT different, although the expectations at the "good" school were higher and I think the teachers were just grateful that we were well-behaved. Classroom sizes were about the same (20-30 students each) and the academic curriculum was the same (the "good" school had more emphasis on the arts, however, and the "bad" school included vocational classes.)

The difference was all in the students. The students at the "bad" school didn't give a crap. They didn't want to be there any way. They were only wasting time until they inevitably gave up and dropped out. The students at the "good" school wanted to be there - we had to pass tests and pass an audition, and if we ever dropped below a C average we were threatened with being returned to the "bad" schools we had come from.

You cannot fix the schools until you fix the students. You cannot fix the students until you fix their parents. You cannot fix their parents until you fix society. How do you fix a broken society?

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[night_flyer]

then explain how after taxes were cut under JFK & Reagan, receipts to the feds increased dramatically?

here are some numbers for you to run... you cant cut the federal deficit by increasing federal spending... until they cut spending, why should we entrust any more money to them?

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

See, most folks see this issue, and understand. We need better regulation, the upper class (of which I am barely a part of, for better or worse) needs to be taxed more, and we need to VERY GRADUALLY decrease our military. I can even suggest an almost painless way to do it! Decrease recruitment. That's it. As you let our poor overworked soldier re-enter the civvie life, replace them at a lower rate! 3:4 or 2:3. Retire the oldest and least effective of our fleets and airforces, and decrease the rate of expenditure on new ( IE 7 shiny new jets instead of the 10 that were retired). I'm sure some warhawk or even a legitimately educated soul can argue why it's a bad idea, but we've got to start somewhere.

We also need to slash and burn the current medical insurance system like it was a fucking poision rainforest and transfer to a single payer model like every other civilized country, but that's another rant.

Anywho, all that is leading to: Most of the "average" folks know this. A number of polls have shown that a significant number of americans agree that more taxes are needed. But those TEA party morons, those self-centered libertarian twits, they either already have what they want out of America, or think that the Gub-ment is keeping them from having it, so screw everyone else.

This is not the most coherant rant I've ever written, so I'll just end it with a pithy two-liner:

Taxes are the price of civilization.
Stiff us on the bill at your own peril.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[skine]

You cannot fix the schools until you fix the students. You cannot fix the students until you fix their parents. You cannot fix their parents until you fix society. How do you fix a broken society?

By fixing the schools.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

I laiket veri good.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[canajin56]

Well, wages and such have gone up since the 80s, outpacing interest marginally. But class sizes have gone up too, so roughly speaking the per-student salary for teachers is no different. Obviously much larger than the 60s since now you have to pay women as much as men (you can see a dramatic jump shortly after your chosen year of 1961). Lots of money (1/6th of it) goes to paying interest on debt. No idea what the historical value is for that, but that's the current one. Administration and Support has gone ever upwards, and bureaucracy tends to expand to fill the entire budget unless acted upon by outside forces. And of course, highschools at least need an IT staff for the computer network, computer labs aren't cheap to keep half-modern, and you need software licenses for all those machines, too. But back to the debt, which by and large isn't caused by willy-nilly spending, but by the requirement to build new schools in which to teach. That money has to come from bonds issued by the school district, and they need to pay interest on those or people who bought them will throw a fit (and they have when it has happened). It can't come from anywhere else because the local tax payers sure don't want to pay for a new school, and the last thing the state or the feds want to spend money on is infrastructure.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to have one extra day to do nothing, I might read, I might write a program, I am build a robot, plant a tree, build a garden ... or do nothing and just pondering on purpose of life. You are over-schooling your kids, over-working yourselves.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[SlippyToad]

Yeah, more Tea Party austerity -- austere for me and thee, but never for Wall Street.

Fuck that shit. I say we pre-emptively grab the $2T in cash that Corporate America is hoarding, and spend it on rebuilding our country.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a bagger. I'm not a partisan screech monkey (like you). When I went to school, we had shorter days and years. Summer was for real. I was far better educated that the chowder head snowflakes shit out of the system now. Of course, my peers and I actually worried about our futures, instead of assuming food would always magically appear no matter how we behaved.

Also, we immunize those running the schools from any culpability in this mess. Why is that?

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Uberbah]

Guess which one has the best test scores and graduation rates.

Sure, I'll guess: the school that can screen out poorly performing students and doesn't even bother with special ed kids. Funny how those two facts are always left out of the pro-privatization storyline.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Alastor187]

Really? I am not going to defend any particular political party, but wtf do you think more federal taxes is the solution? Why should I give a shit about educational problems in another state? Better yet, why should I have to PAY for education in another state? Why can't I just pay taxes to the state/city that I live in? How about the liberty to put my money where my mouth is, instead of someone just taking my money and then telling me to shut my mouth?

Why can't the people in South Dakota figure this out, why must it be a federal issue?

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[fropenn]

Health care costs have skyrocketed during the same time period, leading to much greater costs to school districts to fund teachers' health insurance. Add to that the large number of additional functions that schools now serve that were not included in the 1960s, and you have another large portion of the increased costs.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

The "tea party" has been around since 2009 at the earliest. The structural problems in deficit financing, taxation, and welfare have been around since the 1960s.

So who has been in power the most in Congress since then? Democrats. Who has spent more in their first in office than any president since? Obama. Who extended the Bush tax cuts? Obama and Democrats. Who hasn't submitted a budget in two years? Democrats.

Fuck you.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[silas_moeckel]

Yea so so hard to get in academically, they made him print his name and count to 20. Basic things a parent could be expected to teach there child at the pre school level. I may be mean but the special ed kids I remember from school came in 2 groups the separate classroom most complicated job they might be able to do is mcjob, these used to have a good life at the farm and the one around her was cash positive it actually made money while taking care of it's residents cradle to grave is need be. Of course that place is being phased out as mainstreaming is the rage cant let them actually have anything nice off to the group slum and a mcjob like farm work is somehow degrading (cows for those that could deal with it apples for those that needed something slower). The others needed a bit of help with one thing or the other and they do take that sort.

Riddle me this why is the local top 10 in the state performing school district 7.5k when the city is 13.5 or nearly double? They both take all students. The excess of management is public schools is atrocious. Special needs are not helped by more management. My district's high school has 90 teachers 24 for special ed and 28 support staff (I took out the lunch ladies, custodians, librarians etc) that's 1 for every 6 or so teachers seems a bit top heavy and I'm not even counting the district offices 40 or so non student facing positions. When a private school can do a better job for less with a grand total of 3 non teachers.

It's little things in private schools, hot lunch is from a pizza place down the road a little old Italian lady makes them real food at a reasonable price her children and her grand children went to the school. The public schools have 3 lunch lady's who don't cook anything ( reminds me of what you find in a truck stop vending machine). They borrow a local churches hall to put on the school play.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[unencode200x]

The federal government does contribute in certain ways to public schools ESEA, school lunch programs, etc. http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank the Democrats

There, FTFY. The majority of what gets attributed to Republicans and TEA Party members is often attributed by Democrats in an effort to dodge the responsibility of their own pet projects.

Federal taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s for everyone

Fixed that for you too. Be specific on what taxes you're talking about, since they differ on a federal, state, and local level. If the federal income tax has you at 7%, but 25% of your income evaporates before you ever see it, and only 5% of your gross income is going toward whatever company-offered benefits you pay for, then the rest is all taxes in one form or another. If you aren't allowed to opt out, then it's a tax, and if it's being used by what the vast majority of people (including you) don't qualify for, it likely came from the spend-thrift mind of a Democrat.

Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s [snip], and these people have been fighting tooth and nail to cut taxes and expenses even further.

This is a more accurate statment overall, and it's amusing to see so many people blaming the two main groups that tend to try to make the government smaller so that the people can control their own futures.

If there is a lack of funding for the government programs to pay for all and sundry, perhaps it's not really the lower taxes causing the problems as much as the programs that have failed to do what they were created to do, or that cost significantly more than was claimed when it was created.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, because schools are funded by federal income taxes. *sigh*

At least you're living up to your nym.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Uberbah]

Nice word salad. But waving your arms around with increasing amounts of vigor wont change two facts:

Private schools invariably don't bother with special ed kids. They cost more money to support and drag down test scores.

Private schools are free to set high standards for admission, whereas public schools cannot.

So of course a private school should have a better graduation rate, if it can pick out better students and deny admittance to poorly performing ones. It's like some of those foreign-to-American school comparisons that don't bother to mention that they're comparing elite foreign schools to the average American school in Jerkwater, USA.

Arguments for private/charter schools are like arguments from Intelligent Design nutjobs: they may sound reasonable on first glance, but fall apart the second they are exposed to a real challenge.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

a certain section of the population is willing to invest in their kids education - they are willing to pay as much as needed in taxes, and spend time and effort in ensuring that the system works. Others, not so much.

Just one thing to consider on the "not so much" side of things ... I'm sure there are many parents who are very willing to invest in their kids education -- but what's being asked of them is tantamount to "pay a school levy instead of your mortgage"!

I'm happy to pay my fair share of taxes to pay for schools, even though I don't have kids of my own. However, the district can fuck off when they demand so much money that I can't afford my own bills anymore.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Two years ago, my property value declined 20%.

In spite of that, my property tax bill increased by about 10%. Good thing I'm not dependent on the home value to pay the costs of the home.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[metlin]

Well, the taxes are only one part of it. Investment can happen in many ways, including time and energy.

I am part of a community outreach to help poorer kids with their education (e.g. tutoring, showing them the benefits of a good education etc). One striking indicator of economic tiers is also the amount of time the parents spend with their kids doing activities, from simply going out to play baseball to taking them to the library or a public museum. A lot of the parents are simply unwilling to spend time with their kids - they come back from work, and watch TV and drink a beer. Reading and library memberships? Activities with their kids? Nope.

Hell, we asked for parents to take their kids out to the beach to fly kites a couple of times a month, and half couldn't be bothered to do it. In stark contrast, well educated parents belonging to a better economic demographic almost always ensure that their kids read, and even get them to learn something new (usually musical instruments, especially Asian parents; ballet and karate seem to be other favorites). Board games are also fairly common.

The point is, if you are unwilling to spend time with your kids, it will show in their educational performance and attitudes. And that is the difference.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[silas_moeckel]

I'm not arguing for more private schools I'm saying that the pubic have a ton of non student facing cruft that's not adding to the education of the kids and can be cut.

As to the argument about cheery picking yes they are free to they do not get any money from the government why should they not? In my area there is a singular exception that does cherry pick kindergarten is also 20k a year and ti goes up from there.

What part of yes they do take special ed kids did you not understand. They do not take kids that are a vegetable or will never get past the level of a 6 year old etc. Like I said there are better kinder places for them. Mainstreaming failed a long time ago warehousing them for 20 ish years and then giving them a mcjob where they can be abused by a 19 year old manager and live in a group home slum at the cost of hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars to the tax payers is indefensible. Were closing down a wonderful facility that was a working farm and took nothing from the taxpayers after it was established. Private schools don't take them neither should public IMHO.

Where you got that I'm pro school privatization is beyond me. I'm pro single town school districts, it lets the local parents guide there children's education. In larger cities I could see distributing into neighborhoods rather than city wide units. I do believe that there is far far to much cruft in the public schools 1 administrator for every 6 teachers is far to many, outsource the things that make sense. I show 4 people working on payroll for a system with under 400 teachers I have run small to midsized companies payroll was outsourced at a few bucks per person per month 4 full time positions is insane.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice comeback. As usual, the answer is somewhere in the middle: The "zOMG CUT TAXES!" mantra leaves our infrastructure rotting, but raising them *too high* causes its own problems with economic vitality. Maybe if the people on the left were willing to accept some compromises in programs, and the people on the right were willing to actually pay some taxes for the govt. services (like Medicare) they demand, we'd be a bit better off.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party. Taxes are the lowest they have been since the 50s on the upper classes, but these people have been fighting tooth and nail to cut budgets even further.

While the rest of the world is increasing the school week, the US is decreasing it.

Not only are these people working to make you poor and miserable while you are old, but trying to slash medicare and "taxing" your 401K with their debt ceiling/S&P/default stunt, they are working to make your children under-educated, to make sure they are poor all their lives.

Please vote these people out in 2012.

For your self interest.

Uhh... federal taxes in the U.S. were at 90% for the top tax bracket in the 50s. I think you mean to refer to the 20s-30s.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Em Adespoton]

Please vote these people out in 2012.

For your self interest.

Please don't -- voting people out only lets other people in, with no regard for whether their policies are any better.

Instead, vote someone in who can actually make some sort of a difference. Until people start doing this instead of voting against "the other guy," you'll get the same story over and over again. It's much easier for a politiciian to "not be him" than to have a solid platform that they honor throughout their term.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Please thank your politicians for taking bri^H^H^H donations from various interest parties (lobbyists) and putting their interests ahead of the electorate they're meant to really represent and work for. In other words, make your political representatives responsible for their votes. Arab Spring, English Summer, American Fall - one way: pick which.

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't speak to JFK. But, you are forgetting that Reagan raised taxes 8 times. The money raised by those taxes more than offset the loss of income taxes. You also forget that what Reagan did to stimulate the economy was massive government spending. Granted it was mostly in defense and StarWars. It was that government spending that did more for the economy than the falicy of trickle down.

If you put money into peoples hands, then it gets spent and taxed multiple times.

One thing that you are forgetting is that republicans spend at a rate that gives drunken sailors a bad name, then uninformed idiots blame the democrats.

To use the current topic, we can spend 30k a year to educate someone or we can spend 30k a year for a prison. What's a better investment? The only difference is 10 extra in property taxes vs 10 extra in income taxes. (not quite that simple)

Re:Thank the Republicans and the TEA Party

[dcw3]

Interesting. How was it that Obama had full control of congress for two years, and has none of the responsibility in your eyes?

There's plenty of blame to go around...get your head out of your ass, and please stop being a political troll.

Re:I can see it now...

[dainbug]

Don't be a fool. It will be the Police Union that cries foul, when all the kids are let loose for long three day weekends. Imagine the trouble they are going to cause!

Priorities

[nicovl]

Great to see the US has its priorities straight. Spend money on war and other nonsense but don't spend it on your kids and society. What a joke.

One less cruise missile could keep 100 schools open all week for a whole year.

Re:Priorities

[geekoid]

That doesn't ghelp. First off, it's a state thing, not a federal thing. SO the comparison iss off, but the idea is right.

Look at it this way:
That state has a pop of 800,000+
SO they could diversify a tax* say 10 cents on fuel, 10 cents on soda, 10 cents on pre-made coffee. I suspect that would allow them to keep the day, but extend some programs and focus on a quality education.

For the record I am a middle class citizen. I pay taxes, and I ALSO realize stuff costs money. So if they imlpemented this in my state, I would be OK with it. I don't live in Dakota, but parents should be outraged, and they should be looking at getting funding; especially sine a small tax would be less for them then a day of daycare.

*OH NOES!!!1

Re:Priorities

[berashith]

but without the cruise missiles we could never maintain the freedom to attend schools. We would get walked all over and destroyed by terrorists and muslims and commies and nazis. just ask canada about how horrible it is to not extend your presence throughout the world.

Re:Priorities

[night_flyer]

or, they could quit wasting money on things not needed, but its so much easier to squeeze the population for more tax money.

Re:Priorities

[MakinBacon]

Great to see the US has its priorities straight. Spend money on war and other nonsense but don't spend it on your kids and society. What a joke.

One less cruise missile could keep 100 schools open all week for a whole year.

The state of South Dakota does not shoot cruise missiles at people, although it would be pretty badass if they did.

No problem at my school (Europe)

[Anonymous Coward]

They could have done this easily in my high school without loss of education: schooldays were from 9h30 till 16h30 with wednesdays from 9h30 till 12h

Each schoolday was divided into 8 classes of 50min with 2 breaks of 10min after 2 classes and a lunch hour from noon till 1

They could have easily squeezed those 4 classes of wednesday onto the other days by for instance shortening the lunch hour by 20min and extending the schoolday with half an hour or starting it half an hour earlier.

Re:No problem at my school (Europe)

[mla_anderson]

Wow, you had it easy. My grade school kids in South Dakota went to school from 7h50 to 16h00 with a 30 minute lunch break and two ten minute breaks. High school here starts later but goes longer.

Lol

[wisnoskij]

$50,00 for an entire district, that is ridiculous and small potatoes does not even do it justice.
That has to be like 25 cents per student (and no matter how small the district is it would still just be pocket change per student).
And just think of the cost of some kind of child care for all of these kids during this one extra day off that they parents will not have, or alternatively the extra cost to the tax payers for all the extra damaged property that these unattended children will cause.

Re:Lol

[Winter]

This particular school district has 300 students. So $50.000 divided over 300 students is $167 per student, not exactly pocket change (or if it is, I'd like to be where that is pocket change).

Re:Lol

[night_flyer]

so why not merge this district (not the schools) with a neighboring district? How much would they save getting rid of some administrator & staff's salary?

Re:Lol

[halfEvilTech]

that is actually after a district merge. Here in SD school districts have been merging like hotcakes over the past few years for that very reason. Main reasons being due to shrinking community sizes and those same communities getting older as all the younglings move to the bigger cities.

Many of these schools have less than 20 students per graduating class and are spread out over 100's of square miles. Especially as you get out west of the Missouri River. Not to mention South Dakota is ranked near the bottom in teachers salaries nationaly. The school I graduated from here had a class of 50 students. with the largest every being just shy of 100 and that was back in the 60's. Recently they merged with 2 other school districts. Yes they save money on admin costs but now spend nearly as much in gas for the buses that go out some 30 miles from the school.

Food for though $50,000 in saving for this school district would be the equivilant of several million with some larger districts that have several thousand students per graduate class. Just because you live in an area with big schools and large budgets doesn't mean we all do.

Re:Lol

[wisnoskij]

Well that is not to shabby then, I did not think that any school districts were comprised of only 300 students.
You would think that that guy would us used that $167 number instead of $50,000 as the one makes him sound like an idiot while the other makes it seem like he followed a moderately well thought out and implement plan.

Re:Lol

[night_flyer]

why would they have to drive further if you merge the district? The schools don't move

Re:Lol

[level_headed_midwest]

No, but which school YOU go to might change as the district uses fewer school buildings after the consolidation. Fewer schools in a given area than before = longer drives for most of that area's students to get to school.

Re:I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, someone bashing unions or /. What a surprise. -_-

GE pays negative billions of dollars in tax money to the US government, while you focus your hate on people who make $25K a year just because they are in a big bad union.

I thought the users of this website were smart enough not to fall for such misdirection. You have bought the class warfare propangda hook, line, and sinker.

Great news for the GOP

[sl4shd0rk]

Because you can't keeping people fat, stupid and glued to Fox news without stripping of the educational system first.

Re:Great news for the GOP

[night_flyer]

wait? which party is it that likes their voters dependent on welfare?

Re:Great news for the GOP

[geekoid]

No party like that, and you really should think more before spouting off.

There is a party that thinks it's better for society to have a way for people to get through tough times. As opposed to just throwing them in the street. But hey, you keep marching to that tune and before you know it, we'll be India.

I suppose removing a day of the week in a public school just gives you a raging boner.

MORE not less school

[p51d007]

With the kids coming out of the schools today, they should be keeping them in school LONGER, not less. The best thing they could do would be MANDATORY uniforms, and DISCIPLINE.

Re:MORE not less school

[geekoid]

Uniforms don't do jack long term.

People like you are the problem. YOU're attitude of making them uniform and punishing the different! This has never worked.
How about we use are knowledge and science? how about we give kids a sense of agency and teach them to plan? The goal isn't to get kids through school, the goal is to have a population entering the work force who is a net gain to society. Having people who feel involved, can plan, and have a broad knowledge is far better for society.

Re:MORE not less school

[bussdriver]

Uniforms do nothing but make ignorant or shallow people happy with symbolic change and symbolic discipline. The behaviors just happen -- treating the symptoms will not sure the disease. You can get discipline with psychology not clothing; not that discipline itself produces good students... or good citizens... good worker drones perhaps... One reason I think people are so easily led astray by officials is because of the level and form of discipline we get in our schools.

You don't tell the dentists how to do their job do you? Are you an expert at dentistry because you've been a client? Just because you spent your childhood in school does not mean you know anything about education. It is different from the other side... as different as the dentists perspective of your teeth is.

I'm sick of ignorant people making education policy and voting for even worse people (politicians) who just placate the ignorant for a living. There are plenty of trained professionals and scientific research to find GOOD ANSWERS and even there its a fuzzy area (soft science) with plenty of biases. We don't need more parent "experts" sticking their noses everywhere but at their own bad parenting skills; who are far more stubborn to change or examine themselves than any school system. People think just because they can pop out a brat who lives long enough to attend school they are unquestionably competent parents.

You can't punish kids today. You can criminalize them in various ways (virtual or actual) but you can't correct their behavior like could be done in the past. The parents are negligent (willfully, ignorant, or simply unavailable) and far too self-defensive when they should be focused more on their children. Kids are not adults! Why we apply similar reasoning is beyond me. Our "corrections" system for adults clearly is a POOR model upon which to build even if kids worked the same as adults! Also modeling schools after our modern MBA run businesses that are ruining our society is foolish on multiple levels. Everything is not a nail no matter how many MBAs claim otherwise! Students are also not products and a school is not a factory.

We NEED to ditch all the police in our schools and replace them with child psychologists - ones with power to invoke child protection services... and to prevent lazy parents from drugging their kids. (ok some kids need it but most do not.) Far too many people are unfit to be parents and their brats are messing things up for everybody else; parenting classes should be required... Actually any parent wanting to keep their child should be mandated by law to take courses in parenting. Nobody has time to read a Dr. Spock book let alone be around the home to practice it... (again a cultural problem not really solved by anything other than shifting the culture.)

Then we have a huge problem of disrespect of experts and an inability to tell fact from opinion... You could run schools the SAME WAY as when the USA was top of the world today and it wouldn't work out-- there are far too many other variables working against us; but we primarily focus on shallow policy solutions in a few narrow areas... again treating symptoms without even finding the disease.

Re:I can see it now...

[hattig]

What about the parents who used to be able to rely on their kids being in school so they could go out to work? Do they now need to arrange childcare for Fridays too?

This is just transferring a small cost to the system into a massive cost for society - unless you're in the childcare industry.

All in All

[retroworks]

It's just one less brick in the wall.

Re:I can see it now...

[Spiflicator]

They add 30 minutes per day (30m x 4 = 2h per week) + shortened lunch break (?? 30m x4 = 2h per week) for a total of up to 4 hours a week, and that's equivalent to how much time they would have worked on Friday?

It's worse than that

[definate]

Here's a better statistic. The internet says there are 199,616 kids in South Dakota.

So, if everyone chips in 25 cents per kid, they can go to school for that extra day.

Are you kidding me? This is a serious "cut"?

This reminds me more about Bill Maher's plate of food, they're talking about cutting the parsley (education), while ignoring the mashed potato (military spending), and macaroni (social security).

Re:It's worse than that

[canajin56]

I had no idea that South Dakota only had one school district.

Depends on their curriculum

[Sinthet]

I find I do better when we have 4 day weeks. This happens fairly frequently during the winter months, since skiing to school really isn't a viable option for many students. Our workload doesn't really get any smaller, since we just get our assignments from the internet, but it still results in more time that I can manage in a personally useful way, rather than have it managed for me by a computer program that brute forces a schedule with no conflicts. However, the amount of work we have is also huge relative to public schools.

I could definitely see myself slacking off (rather than taking breaks) if I didn't constantly have something to work on.

For a miserable $50,000?

[operagost]

Couldn't they fire one secretary instead? Or maybe-- I'm a "fascist", I know-- reduce every teacher's salary a small amount?

50,000?

[geekoid]

50 measly thousand dollars? how about you pay about 10 bucks more in taxes and get a better school?

800K in population. say 1/4 are tax payers. For 10 dollars per year that's 2 million. SO now you got your 5 days back AND you can get rid of home work and add another period design to focus kids on there specific problem area.

but ... no. Evil social programs are BAD. Fuckety fuck FUCK!

Here is one, how about a 25 cent tax on Soda for education? or gas? Spread the tax around into any area, not just property taxes.

Re:I can see it now...

[bberens]

I'm interested, if anyone knows, whether voters were given the option of raising taxes in the most recent elections there to avoid this issue. My guess is that raising taxes wasn't something that had a chance of passing. People are pretty short-sighted.

It really stinks for the childcare industry as well, it's hard to have staff to handle a huge amount of business for one day per week.

Re:I can see it now...

[LifesABeach]

It wouldn't surprise me if someone in law enforcement wasn't involved in this decision making process. Think about it, law enforcement isn't required if no one breaks the law, and law enforcement gets time and a half. Teachers, bus drivers, etc. seem to exempt from that law.

I'm waiting to read when law enforcement says that by putting a camera on South Dakota's token stop light in front of the governors mansion, that it will help reduce the number of deaths in the state.

Alternatives...

[Nesa2]

In Europe we had 5-day school week. Every two weeks we'd switch from morning classes to afternoon classes, and vice versa. Grades 1,3,5,7 ware for example morning class, and 2,4,6, 8 ware afternoon. Every two weeks they switch. Morning classes ware from 7am-12 and afternoon 12-6pm.

This allowed for smaller buildings, less maintenance, heating/cooling, smaller class sizes, less teachers!

We also had way less homework than I've had here in US. But we did more in class. Tests and quizzes ware daily occurrence - we ware continuously tested. So, even though I finished grade 7 in Europe, when I came here to US, I was put into grade 9 (youngest in my high school) due to my developed skill-set. I had easily taken maths all the way into grade 11 without any effort at all.

There are definitely more efficient ways of teaching kids. Issues I see are: curriculum, lack of inventive teaching, teacher's unions, giving kids too much slack and dumbing them down, also learning though play has to stop as well as giving everyone A+ for participation type of bullshit. But who am I to judge?

9am

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we PLEASE start school at 9am. Prior to that, it messes with teenager circadian rhythm, which is not good for retaining information. I see schools starting earlier and earlier. One school a bit away from here is starting school at 6:45.

I have a theory that they're stuffing extra hours into the morning instead of into the afternoon because of sports. Sports tend to be seen as more important and have a higher priority. You can't end school later, it would mess with sports!

I want to see schools start at 9/9:30am and end at 5/6pm.

But schools don't care about their students and if they're actually learning. They care about test scores, and they want to raise them as cheaply as possible. This means "teaching" to the test, and by teaching I mean having the students memorize instead of comprehend.

It's no wonder we're falling behind. I wince every time I hear of cuts to education budgets. It's a short term solution to a long term problem. Increase education and maybe in the future we won't be in this predicament.

Idiots.

Re:9am

[mla_anderson]

Can we PLEASE start school at 9am. Prior to that, it messes with teenager circadian rhythm, which is not good for retaining information. I see schools starting earlier and earlier. One school a bit away from here is starting school at 6:45.

I'm not sure about this school district, but others in South Dakota have done this for middle and high school. Well middle school starts at 8:30 and high school at 9:00, the classes go later in each as well.

won't someone think of the parents ?

[Anonymous Coward]

as a parent the main thing we worry about the kids are not at school is who is going to look after them, granny/granddad, pay for babysitter, or take time off work, unpaid time off work or use up vacation time.
If parents are force to take every Friday off, this is likely to cost jobs.
not to mention the teachers, unless they are getting paid for 5 days in which case that opens another debate.

Re:won't someone think of the parents ?

[mla_anderson]

Look at the region this is happening in. These are farmers, lots of single earner families. The towns are small, two towns have 300 kids, and much of the town will be extended family. This isn't the same as if it were happening in NYC.

Re:I can see it now...

[NevarMore]

It really stinks for the childcare industry as well, it's hard to have staff to handle a huge amount of business for one day per week.

I don't think this is actually a problem. There will be some number of qualified people, the teachers who are now off one day a week or friends who are also parents, that can do the work.

Could work but requires discipline and maturity

[Theovon]

If teenagers had some maturity and discipline, which they don't, they could make good use of the time by doing homework and sleeping. Instead, most will spend the time screwing around and getting into trouble. I would have just hacked on my computer all day, which would also have avoided sleep and homework. Teenagers have the same sleep requirements as pre-teens, but the rhythm is shifted. One school tried shifting their start and end time later, and the absentee rate went down and the grades went up. As it is, most highschool schedules are stupid, and students could use the extra day to make up for the lost sleep. Sadly, most won't avail themselves of that. Teenagers think they have an energy surplus, but it's mostly that they are more easily bored and distracted. Of course, they'd be less distractable if we fed them a proper diet instead of McDonalds all the time. Another school in the southeast US tried feeding their students healthy lunches, and the absentee rate went down and the grades went up. Whoda thunk it.

what happened...

[Anonymous Coward]

...to "think of the children"?

It's about time we rethink the week system

[Smigh]

Are there any good reasons to have a 7-day week anyway? I'm asking from pure ignorance because there may be, specially after everything in our lives that got adapted to that. But if we ignore everything we built on top of it, is there a good reason to choose that system over any other?

I'm asking because I always felt this is something that should be rethought. Is it really beneficial for human beings, to work 5 consecutive days and have 2 days off (in most cases). Is there any research on that?

I partially agree with this move, not because of budgets, but because I feel that working 5 consecutive days decreases your productivity as opposed to, let's say, working 3 days in a row and having 1 day off. A 4-day week system that wouldn't decrease productivity in the long run since you increase the working days and decrease the consecutive working days. Maybe a better system would be a 2/1 ratio on working vs weekend days. Who knows? All I'm saying is that this should be rethought and studies should be made.

I know I went on a tangent here, feel free to mod me down for being off-topic, this is just something I feel should be talked about but for other reasons than what these schools presented.

Re:It's about time we rethink the week system

[scarboni888]

The best schedule I ever had was working a 4x10 shift wherein I would work Mon-Tue, have Wednesday off, then work Thur-Fri, and have sat-sun off.

So then I saved travel time to and from the work for a day, was able to get household chores done on a weekday when everything's open and everyone else was at work. NEVER got burnt out because I was either a) just coming back from a day off or b) had the next day off, and then, to top it all off, had a REAL weekend on Sat & Sun because the personal errandswe normally do on weekends were already done on Wednesday.

I have never been as stress-free, peaceful, and happy as when I had that schedule. While I have a 'better' job now I cannot have that schedule so I traded one for the other and I'm nowhere near as mentally healthy as I was then.

Yay for science!

[FalseModesty]

I'm so glad that other states are doing this kind of experiment on their children. Future generations will thank them for the empirical evidence.

What I can't figure out is how they got this past the IRB.

From what I've seen

[GodfatherofSoul]

4 day weeks work well for *some* jobs, but not well for pre-college students. I shudder to think of what high school kids with a whole day off will get into.

Re:I can see it now...

[Tanktalus]

Who is making $25k a year in the teacher's union? Starting salaries here are higher than that, by a fair margin, and average salaries are over double that. Compound a PhD with leadership positions (principals), and you can be over 4 times your $25K (so, no, not generally worth it). I'm not saying teachers are overpaid. But they're not $25k, either.

Big Day Care Problem

[RandCraw]

Now parents will have to arrange day care for little kids who will be home on Fridays.

No way that's going to work. No day care provider is prepared to take kids only one day a week, much less non-toddlers, age 5 to 12.

The school board really hasn't thought this one through, unless the $50,000 figure is actually some sort of blackmail: "Parents pay up. Or come Friday, little Johnny will be hanging out on street corners".

Teaching academic subjects is a waste until age 16

[Anonymous Coward]

Around the world, illiterate adults can be taught to read, write, do arithmetic in 90 hours in a classroom. Not a high level of literacy, but enough that they can continue their education entirely on their own using books (pre-internet studies). If the students spend full-time on their studies, they can go to college in 2 to 3 years.

The current education system is the result of mis-understanding results of industrial revolution teaching. When mass education started, they had to take children that were too young to work, and didn't know how long they would have them. So, teach what they could to age 7, more the next year, etc.

This has been converted to the idea that children must go through those levels, that children's minds gradually build the ability to read at a college level. In fact, if you do nothing for the first 15 years, they will cover all of the material in the next 2 years. Easy.

Further, given the internet, it doesn't take teachers for kids to learn. Google for 'unschooling', 'hole in the wall experiment', 'Summerhill'.

The major problem with our current education system is the mono-culture of mental sets it produces. The idea that there is a particular body of knowledge which 'educated' people know is part of that general understanding.

$50k = 1 mid-management administrator

[PrimalChrome]

.....somehow I think the community would be better served ditching the employee rather than negatively impacting thousands of kid's education.

As long as Wall Street and the Banks are save

[devent]

The USA spend 1757 Billion $ on bailouts in the years 2008 and 2009 for banks, insurance groups and the auto industry. But of course they keep on saying that the well-fare state is too big and we all live beyond our means. We all need to cut costs to save the banks, because we know that without the banks and Wall Street there would be no civilization.

http://www.propublica.org/special/government-bailouts

Re:I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just transferring a small cost to the system into a massive cost for society - unless you're in the childcare industry.

You are correct. But this way of shifting cost is the opposite of socialism. You did hate socialism right?

Re:I can see it now...

[Wyatt Earp]

South Dakota is a Right to Work State, there is no mandatory union membership. The district I went to Eagle Butte 20-1, didn't have any teachers in the union when I went there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheyenne-Eagle_Butte_School
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-to-work_law#U.S._states_with_right-to-work_laws

It depends on why homeschooling

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends on why homeschooling is taken. If it's because the parents don't like the kids learning about things that the parents don't believe exists (e.g. evolution), then you get dumber adults from homeschooling.

If the parents are highly intelligent, their children will do better. If the parents are dumb, they'll do worse.

It looks more like homeschooling exacerbates the differences of the parents.

Re:I can see it now...

[Wyatt Earp]

South Dakota teacher salaries are very, very, very low.

http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state

26,000 is the average.

Re:I can see it now...

[Andrewkov]

4 hours on a Friday is considered a "long day" for the teaching profession.

Re:less hours..

[DocSavage64109]

I'm pretty sure he said less hours, not lesser hours.

from wikipedia: "The Cambridge Guide to English Usage notes that the "pressure to substitute fewer for less seems to have developed out of all proportion to the ambiguity it may provide in noun phrases like less promising results". It describes conformance with this pressure as a shibboleth and the choice "between the more formal fewer and the more spontaneous less" as a stylistic choice"

Re:Home schooling

[DocSavage64109]

I think you may be overestimating the capabilities of the "at worst" home schooling parent. For a school to match a very bad parent would require every teacher to be just as bad, and even then, at least the teachers had training and degrees in education.

Helped raise attendance...

[Johnny Mnemonic]

...cause they've reduced the chance to miss school by 20%. Hey, here's a thought! If we go down to one day a week of school, they won't be able to miss more than one day a week of school! Attendance will skyrocket!

In fact, of course, they are mandating missing school. They should factor the extra day at home into their attendance as a day being missed by every student every week.

Eliminate Income taxes

[bill_mcgonigle]

> but how much extra will it cost parents who need to pay for care for younger children

Don't know, don't care. Perhaps the parents should have thought about possible costs before procreating?

Or, I dunno, maybe we can ditch the income taxes so families have the option again of the mother staying home with the children, and we can stop incessantly building an Empire?

Nah, let's cut school days instead.

Re:I can see it now...

[Vancorps]

What teacher in grade school starts out over 25k? Where are you that this is a reality? After 30 years my mother was making decent money as a teacher, but for the first 10 she certainly wasn't breaking the low 30s.

I find it odd that the NEA is so vilified. Given what teachers have to put up with I think they are one of the least corrupt of the unions. Of course I also find it odd that Planned Parenthood is under attack when it's the ONLY source of birth control for a rather large portion of the population. I suppose some people just gotta hate for no reason.

Parental Disaster

[Anonymous Coward]

Just how can working parents control their employer? Who will be there to watch over these kids on that extra day off? How will school systems be able to keep employees from leaving. For example cafeteria workers, custodians and bus drivers won't take smaller weekly checks without a fight.
                      This may work better in small rural schools but in the cities it would be a huge problem. The better colleges surely look into the high schools sending them applicants and kids from the lesser school systems are surely already held back in applying to most colleges. If anything we need more class room hours for our kids. Human knowledge quickly doubles and the educations needed for success need to be more extensive every year.

Reality sinks in...

[Anonymous Coward]

We all knew the stupid gringos were dumb as bricks, but now they actually went and officialized it.

Great, now all the aspiring hooligans will have an additional day to go and gangbang old ladies...

Better way to cut 25%

[ananamouse]

My high school teacher wife added up the days they wasted on standardized testing, pre-testing, re-pre-testing, coaching for the testing, blah-blah-bla and it was *ONE FOURTH* of the steenking school year. Fact, not making it up.

Flushing the standardized testing would allow us to cut the school budget, and taxes presumablly, by 25%. I would buy that for a dollar.

(Or, we could spend more on the football team, this is Texas :)

a measily 50k...not worth it

[hesaigo999ca]

What about all the parents now that have to get a babysitter for them time during that extra 1 day a week, where they can not rely on school being the baby sitter, but need to be home to supervise the child...some parents (single moms) work for the time the kid is at school..doing this is really not going to solve anything, instead try and save money by forcing all paper to be cut down, and all school supplies to be cut down, ebooks instead of paperback, all tests can be done on computer terminals, where schools become really paperless..there will be a lot more savings when you consider how much paper a school goes through.

Re:I can see it now...

[CohibaVancouver]

There will be some number of qualified people, the teachers who are now off one day a week

Did you RTFA? The teachers are still working the same number of hours per week, so they're likely not a pool of workers that can be drawn upon, as they'll need that day to do the work that they would have otherwise done "after school."

Re:I can see it now...

[black soap]

Nobody learns anything on a Friday, anyway.

Re:I can see it now...

[s73v3r]

Well, for one, school shouldn't be thought of as child care anyway.

The USA: Race to the bottom

[Anonymous Coward]

The leanings of the political right (I'm pointing barbs at the GOP and TEA party here) are doing an excellent job turning the US into a 3rd world country. 1) Greed by wealthy Americans and very large corporations has led to a political establishment that has them paying about 20% of the taxes they should. The lie "don't tax the job creators" is profane! Every other G7 country has higher tax rates than the US, *AND CREATED MORE JOBS THAN IN THE US*. 2) Compared to other countries, the education system in the US is rightly described as 'dysfunctional'. The cost of keeping someone in prison for 1 year is more than the cost to send a child to school for 12 years, but in the 'rule-by-corporation' parties, fire teachers, hire guards, and go from there. Perhaps after the next US civil war (coming to a state near you), board rooms won't be more important than home rooms.

Re:I can see it now...

[s73v3r]

Who is making $25k a year in the teacher's union?

Just about anybody starting out, unless they live somewhere that has a very high cost of living (NYC, SF, etc).

Friday off - bad choice

[postmortem]

They should have went with Wednesday off. 3 days in row off means that kids won't do much for these 3 days. If they had 2 days school, one day off to do homework, then another two days of school, they wouldn't be so disconnected.

but I suppose teachers like 3 days off too - so it is win/win for everybody but students.

Unintended consequence

[ThatsNotPudding]

That is really gonna cut into bullying time!

Re:I can see it now...

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess is that raising taxes wasn't something that had a chance of passing. People are pretty short-sighted.

Or maybe we don't live in a simple world where isolated binary decisions like this are a realistic view of reality?

Maybe they don't want to pay more for the same system. Is that so hard for the tax happy ideologues to understand? We hear about the corruption and bullshit day in and day out, and they are offended people don't want to toss more money into that mess? Why is that so hard to understand?

I'm not an ideologue. I'm all for it if more money coupled with reforms would make something really amazing happen in the American educational system, but I don't see that having any chance of happening. The most minor reforms are heavily opposed by the existing power structure, and they have a seemingly bottomless war chest to favor candidates and produce propaganda to keep things that way.

At least in my personal experience, resistance to new taxes is the fact that the system is so absolutely fucked, who wants to put more hard earned cash into that? You have to be completely ignorant, insane or a rabid ideologue to want that.

Education...

[Anonymous Coward]

I teach World Geography at a NICE school and even I have HUGE classes. 38 in my largest and 33 in my smallest. We don't even have textbooks for them all and like I said... I'm at a nice school..

Re:Education...

[Just Some Guy]

You school system is seriously FUBAR. If you teach class all day to an average of 35 students, then the expenditure for your class is about $350,000 (based on the national average). If the school can't give you a good salary and buy textbooks at the same time then someone above you is criminally incompetent.

Churches

[ThatsNotPudding]

Soon, churches (mainly of the Southern, pentecostal sect) will begin offering to either underwrite public schools or help out in the class rooms as unpaid volunteers... in exchange for being allowed to proselytize in every class room as they desire and have a direct hand in the curriculum.

This fits hand in glove with the implementation of public vouchers for religious schools. Hell, just cut out the middle man and take over public schools intentionally underfunded by the GOP statehouses! Killing critical thinking and indoctrinating the next generation of the right-wing in one fell-swoop! Little Madrassa on the Plains!

Re:I can see it now...

[Silfax]

What about the parents who used to be able to rely on their kids being in school so they could go out to work? Do they now need to arrange childcare for Fridays too?

<politicianspeak> By instituting a 4 day school week, we will be creating additional jobs in childcare services, thus offsetting the loss of income by the non teaching school staffers </politicianspeak>

Following your "logic"

[publiclurker]

there should be no problem in paying more money for educating your populace. After all, it should be easy cutting some unneeded expenses. After all, you are obviously much more skilled than the people who actually run things like a school, so you can obviously eliminate a whole lot of waste in your own life and show them just how it's done.

Re:Following your "logic"

[ArsonSmith]

"there should be no problem in paying more money for educating your populace."

Where does it stop? Should it be 10% of all income? 30% 100% 200% we could just start borrowing money to educate people.. good plan.

Except...

[publiclurker]

that less hours in school leads to more hours at home where the anti-intellectual culture comes from.

No problem.

[publiclurker]

I'm sure that the current round of republican bagger candidates will be happy to create work groups where children can occupy their time learning work skills producing cheap merchandise and performing maid duties for the wealthier class of Real Americans.

erroneous assumption that schools are for teaching

[Lead Butthead]

schooling isn't design to transfer knowledge from adults to children; it's design to create conforming and obedient citizens.

Re:I can see it now...

[bluemonq]

Maybe they don't want to pay more for the same system.

Sorry bub, inflation.

Re:I can see it now...

[hrvatska]

Teachers in my school district in central NY start at about $27/yr. The median salary for high school teachers is $52k/yr. Yes, they're unionized.

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance

[idontgno]

-- Derek Bok

Re:less hours..

[obarel]

No true Scotsman would follow the Cambridge Guide to English Usage.

Finland

[SuurMyy]

I don't know about other countries, but in Finland all teachers graduate from university. In addition, there are comparatively very few immigrants in Finnish schools, so it is a lot easier to teach and to learn than in many other countries. Both children and teachers have like 10 weeks of summer vacation and a couple of weeks off during the school season.

Re:I can see it now...

[iamhassi]

I'm interested, if anyone knows, whether voters were given the option of raising taxes in the most recent elections there to avoid this issue.

More taxes? Taxes is a percentage, and as salaries go up the amount collected by taxes increases, i.e. 5% of your salary now it probably more than what 5% of your salary was in 1990. So there's no reason for *more* taxes, they already receive more money now than they did 20 years ago.

Problem is the US is facing the worse economic depression since the 1930s so fewer people are working which means less money for taxes. Schools seem to not be able to figure this out and make cuts so they think cutting a day out of the week will make the difference. All that will happen is less education for the students so US students will be at an even more disadvantage compared to students in other countries.

This goes back to the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Parents who can not afford to send their children to private schools are now faced with children that are receiving less education and decreases the chances of them getting in to good schools. They also have to find a way to provide childcare for their children now out of school one day a week which further hurts their income. Childcare for a day can range from $50-$100 so that's an extra $200-$400 a month they need to somehow pay for.

Then again this might be great for private schools, some parents that were wavering on private school might decide to just spend the money for private school rather than waste it on babysitting and risking their child's education, and if the public school lose too many children they might have to make even more cuts.

Re:I can see it now...

[bberens]

Yes, I'm familiar that taxes are a % of the income/sales/etc. going on in the area. If total economic activity goes down but the cost to running the police, fire department, schools, etc. remain constant then the % must go up.

Re:I can see it now...

[bberens]

I was assuming the cost of running the schools this year is the same as last year (with minor adjustments for inflation), but that economic circumstances meant that a lower level of economic activity meant less sales tax was collected, and lower property values meant less property taxes were collected, etc. If the cost of running the fire department and police remain a constant but the level of economic activity goes down then the % at which economic activity is taxed must go up, even if only temporarily while over-all revenues are low. I'm also assuming that the vast majority of citizens want the schools to remain open (even if they're uninterested in paying the cost). It doesn't take an ideologue to support raising taxes. I supported raising taxes when we went to a war I disagreed with. I didn't support going, but if we're going to go let's at least make some attempt to pay for it.

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

More Private Schools?

[ShooterMcGavin]

Cut the school day to save money....cut the art/music classes to save money ...how far do we go? Public school has become a disgrace. I'm all for public schools, I went clear through them. But I'm ready to see more private schools around that will offer tighter administration, teachers with authority to manage their classes, and a focus on teaching kids as much as possible.

Plus, pay the teachers well to do an important job! There is no shortage of teachers in the world! Snatch up the good ones and let the kids benefit. Give them the ability to manage their classes without fear of lawsuits and hiding behind the teacher's union.

I see too many politics, disgraceful decisions, and lack of focus on educating children. I say this after seeing my wife teaching in public school for several years. She loved her job, but quite frankly, it became too overwhelming and emotional for the pay. And I would say the kids lost great educational oppurtunities because of it.

make full time 30-32 hours a week and benefits

[Joe_Dragon]

make full time 30-32 hours a week and re work benefits around that. Also split healthcare form being tied to the job.

Re:make full time 30-32 hours a week and benefits

[Anonymous Coward]

Also split healthcare form being tied to the job.

Boy, ah say boy, you sound like one o' them thayr commernists.

Finland's success is understood but not emulated

[kuiperbelt]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Finland is well worth a read. Politicians running education systems often want to find out how the likes of Finland do so well, but they ask the questions (going on fact-finding missions etc) and then don't like the answers they get back.

Here in the UK the drive in schools for years now has been towards pitiless onslaughts of standardised national testing at all levels, and league tables and measurement everywhere you look. It is the exact opposite of letting children learn and grow in idiosyncratic ways without pressure for them to 'acquire key skills' and essentially tick the boxes the government wants ticking. This is all driven by the business imperative to turn education into training for jobs rather than anything about nurturing well-rounded, inquisitive, open-minded, moral human beings, and is combined with some ill-informed tabloid crap about how kids these days don't respect their elders, blah blah blah.

Politicians see that the country's schools are some way down the league tables, look across the water to Finland, refuse to believe what they hear about no high-pressure exams until the end of school, teachers being respected instead of turned into drones, and so they go ahead and implement the exact opposite.

South Dakota is third world society

[lsatenstein]

Poor judgement by school boards and just look at the consequences. A parent will now have to stay home from work as one cannot leave a child at home unattended. So, the state will pay a bigger price. I am sure they never thought past the budget to consider the kids. Why not close air conditioning an hour or two early, and start it an hour or two later. I am feeling very sad and sorry for the students and their difficult future.

Good!

[randyleepublic]

My children are educated in top private schools, and will treat their servants, your children, very humanely, as long as they know their place. A four-day school week is plenty of time to learn how to shine shoes, mow lawns, and heroically charge the enemy lines. A nation of religious morons and safety-serving cowards deserves no better.

Why?

[SimFlyer]

Why does anyone still have their children in a government school?

Re:Why?

[Duradin]

Their tinfoil hat isn't on tight enough.

It's not about budget, but about an extra day off.

[luv2sled]

Our local district moved to a 4 day week last year. The biggest issue I've had with it is that the reasons for going in this direction were all about budget savings, teachers preferring the 4 day work week (who wouldn't), etc. No where in the discussion was it ever discussed whether it would help more kids go to college or succeed in life. Even when it was brought up, the administrators or teachers changed the subject to how much they'd like the day off. One thing I've noticed is that the only schools doing this are rural schools. The local school district is the major employer in the district, thus making the teachers and administrators a large percentage of the voting population. Because local school boards are an elected position, this voting block carries a lot of sway with the local board members. They give the reason of budget savings, but my observation is that it's more about an extra day off than about actually improving the schools. Fortunately, it hasn't been the a disaster, but it does seem like our priorities and reasons for moving in one direction or another are messed up.

Beggar breeders

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, you don't need to go to school to become a beggar. Unless you have well connected parents and than millions of morons will hail for you - say like for Bill Gates. When will they realise the american dream is not for everybody?

Re:I can see it now...

[hattig]

Nope, why would I hate socialism? I'm not American, I don't associate socialism with communism, and there are many benefits to having a society take a wider holistic viewpoint to matters and to practice some form of utilitarianism in order to provide greatest good to society as a whole.

But hey, if the parents of these children were told they had the option of paying more taxes to keep the children in a five day week and were so scared about the tax word that they said no, then my sympathy for their situation has gone. I guess they can choose their own rip-off childcare provider now, or argue for 9/10 working or half-days on a Friday, etc.

There used to be a time in the UK when everything would shut down on Wednesday afternoons, presumably for economic reasons. That's the closest we ever got to a four day working week. A few more years of Tory power soon killed that off and again we all live to work to make money for corporate overlords...