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NWS Announces Big Computer Upgrade
riverat1 writes "After being embarrassed when the Europeans did a better job forecasting Sandy than the National Weather Service Congress allocated $25 million ($23.7 after sequestration) in the Sandy relief bill for upgrades to forecasting and supercomputer resources. The NWS announced that their main forecasting computer will be upgraded from the current 213 TeraFlops to 2,600 TFlops by fiscal year 2015, over a twelve-fold increase. The upgrade is expected to increase the horizontal grid scale by a factor of 3 allowing more precise forecasting of local features of weather. The some of the allocated funds will also be used to hire some contract scientists to improve the forecast model physics and enhance the collection and assimilation of data."
It appears that the computers that Europe was using for the "better forecast" were not as powerful as the old system being replaced. Upgrading because Europe's forecast better would be like taking a slow route to a holiday destination then buying a Porsche because your neighbours got there sooner when all you need is a new roadmap.
So much ignorance, I'm not sure where to start. First, I work in a public school. I've worked in private schools, my mother runs a (non-religious) private school. My wife has taught in other private and public schools. My daughter has an IEP.
Teacher's unions generally do not want more money thrown at the schools, depending on the state. There will be significant differences in the political games in public education depending on the state. In most "at-will employment" states, the teacher's union is mostly there for show. The district mostly controls the teacher's union. In states like this, the district administration pushes for more money to be thrown at "schools." This is because they control how the money is actually spent, and as a result, most of the money doesn't get to the school level.
There is a huge misdirection that most of the general public has fallen for in public education. The perception among the general public is that the "schools" are at fault. In reality, the district administration controls and dictates everything. A school principal has much less authority and autonomy than most people realize. This works out great for the district administration, because the school staff regularly become the scapegoat for failed district policies. In many states, counties, districts, cities, a school can do very little other than what district administration tells them to do. In effect, a school has all the accountability with none of the authority. Meanwhile, the district administration continues to make decisions in a vacuum while collecting paychecks that would make a seasoned IT Director blush.
I've been in countless IEP meetings, both as a parent and as a school administrator. Most IEP meetings are educators and parents. 4-5 school staff, 1-2 parents. The school staff are usually the various specialists (speech, OT, learning specialist, etc) and general ed teacher. I will usually be involved if there's some behavior concerns related to the IEP. I have never had a lawyer in an IEP meeting, other than a child advocate when there's social services involvement with a student. If a district needs lawyers at every IEP meeting, they're doing something very wrong. That would suggest the district is the problem, not the system itself.
One last note, socio-economic status has a larger impact on student success than most people want to admit. Districts don't want to talk about that because then they might lose the federal programs thanks to No Child Left Behind.
tl;dr It's not the individual public schools that are a problem, it's district administrations and school boards that have created huge bureaucratic structures and keep huge portions of money at the district level. This is really why private and charter schools generally do better with less money. They don't have the huge bureaucracy sucking up the money.