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Zuckerberg's $100 Million Education Gift Solved Little
An anonymous reader writes "In 2010 the state of public education in Newark, New Jersey was dire. The city's school system was a disaster, replete with violence, run-down buildings, and a high-school graduation rate of only 54%. Newark's mayor at the time, Cory Booker, teamed up with governor Chris Christie to turn the schools around. At the same time, Mark Zuckerberg was looking to get his feet wet in big-time philanthropy. The three hatched a plan, and Zuckerberg committed $100 million to reforming the schools. Four years later, most of the money is gone, and Newark's children are still struggling. Tens of millions were spent on consulting groups, and yet more went to union negotiations. Plans to change how teacher seniority affected staffing decisions — in order to reward results rather than persistence — were dashed by political maneuvering. The New Yorker provides a detailed account in a lengthy piece of investigative journalism, and MSN provides a summary."
Rich man donating large sums of cash to education system shocked to find systems flaws are of great complexity and cannot be solved by simply shitting large sums of money into education. When reached for comment, Rich man was found paralyzed by indecisiveness during elusive hunt for tasty caviar on weekend aboard mega yacht.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Throwing money at every problem doesn't make it go away. Who woulda thunk it?
While I appreciate the research potential of this experiment I just don't think people are looking at the human element when it comes to social problems like education and welfare. Our politicians don't seek a better answer because they don't care that people are wasting their lives on reality TV and booze as long as they get their pockets lined from it.
there was a time when they paid more taxes, and they were still rich (and also employed many others in this same country).
mfwright@batnet.com
Who the fuck links to MSN? Sponsored much?
If my inferior public school education is any guide, I believe that is technically known as "begging the question". There was no evidence beforehand that there are significant problems with US K-12 education on average, but there was and is absolutely zero evidence that the vast majority of teachers weren't already working hard 'to achieve results' before Grover Norquist and Michelle Rhee got involved to "improve" the situation. On the other hand, there is over 100 years of evidence as to why schools tend to evolve toward seniority systems (hint: not to protect "incompetent" teachers), all of which was ignored.
sPh
I'm not surprised a bit. Show me a teacher who gives a damn about his/her students and I'll show you a hundred who don't. Combined with an administration that just sees each head as a number, and even the most hippie head-in-the-clouds-I'm-going-to-change-the-world teacher will be worn down eventually.
And I'm not even going to get started on the parents--Jersey Shore, anyone?
a multi-billionaire like Zuckerberg just didn't give enough.
a measly $100mil?? it should of course had been $500mil
THEN...the problems could really be solved!
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
In other words, the way dedicated and capable public school teachers have been handling it in the United States for 275 years. Good plan.
sPh
> Next time hire me to handle it
Sounds like an example of the Dunning - Kruger effect.
"A fool and his money are soon parted."
(Zuck should have Googled it).
Based on what I read, he set thew wrong goals and had little oversight once the match was made.
If there is something I missed, please let me know.
That said, I can come up with a plan that would help every child in that school today, and every day.
Well, I already have one, so 'come up with' isn't quite correct.
Thanks for calling me out if I missed something!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
bottom line: it ain't a MONEY thang.
We spend more on public education in America than any other country. Money is clearly not the problem unless you are talking about controlling waste spending and corruption. Liberal idealists cannot come to terms with the ideas of hard discipline and failing students who disrupt other students' education. Social liberals are too afraid of the politically correct reality that some students need to be held back. Instead they will bankrupt society to try to find any solution that doesn't cause people to "track" students. Tracking being the process of putting some kids into an honors level classroom and then failing others and holding them back. It's more politically correct to throw money at schools with horrid student bodies than admit that the problems have little to do with money.
Conservatives are generally no better. They preach fiscal responsibility but then privately take taxpayers and citizens to the cleaners to advance their own personal agendas and businesses. Chris Christie had no problem duping some morons out of $100 million just to get himself a nice photo opportunity and some good press. Christie and Booker knew that any donated money was free from public oversight. A con in broad daylight.
In America we pay the highest cost per capita for public schools. Our rewards as taxpayers? Graduation rates in the 50-60% range for large cities. Illegal immigrants using public schools as nothing more than free daycare centers. Kids who graduate with no skill sets and are churned out just so a school can keep its funding. Abandoning of once good public schools by wealthy citizenry who can afford to take their kids into a neighboring school system in the suburbs that actually is an environment of learning. Detroit is the future of lots of cities. Newark is another corrupt murder capital with crumbling schools yet billions to spend on solutions that never materialize.
If Christie, Booker, Zuck, and ever other smug douchebag wanted to really find a solution....they'd send their kids to these schools. If rich asshole politicians had kids in these schools you'd see no problems. If these liberal do-gooders had kids in these schools there would be far less problems.
teachers aren't the problem, and the goals and achievement I am talking about are about improving the school and teaching process. Objective measurement about the tools, use and progress. Not replace the manager and everything will be fine.
Something the cheaply measure progress, and allow the teacher to set progression goals with the plan as aggressive at any specific student can handle.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Department of Education should do studies on how to teach kids & how to motivate them to do better ... how public vs. private vs. charter schools affect them, etc.
And study what the long-term effects are of just paying the kids when they get good grades:
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com...
Because the short term seems to be that they do better ... and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than most other things that people come up with. (but then again, the money doesn't go to some corportation with a great 'solution' to the problem)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
The problem with the education system in this country are pretty strait forward. They stem directly from the completely inflexible teachers union (who should be ashamed of themselves) and management that does nothing more than attend endless meetings over and over that churn out bullet point after bullet point. My kids school actually has some pretty good teachers by some miracle, but the management issue is ridiculous. I try to be an involved parent but all the events they have are so ridiculous it borders on insanity. They always serve Pizza Pit, the champaign of pizza. Follow that up with great games or skits to entertain the crowd... then the principle gives a 30 to 45min speech about all the great plans she has (but will never implement) then they let the parents talk for about 10min and avoid answering all our questions like "When will you fill in the 6 foot sink hole in the middle of the playground?" and no, I'm not kidding, there really is a 6' sinkhole.
The last one I went to they sent out a questionnaire that asked:
What is most important to you in the education of your child?
a. Hands on learning
b. A diverse and equitable learning environment
c. An involved teaching staff
What the hell does that mean? I just circled them all and wrote "YES" underneath. And these people have 4 to 8 year degrees.
In other words, the way dedicated and capable public school teachers have been handling it in the United States for 275 years. Good plan.
sPh
We haven't HAD dedicated OR capable public school teachers in about 275 years.
San Diego schools got lots of money years ago for teachers and supplies, most of it was spent in consulting what to do with it, the result was one new fence, and there was nothing wrong with the old one. It was all over the news
If the money was wasted by upper management, then that should be a big red flag that the problem is most likely with upper management.
Two points: the hideously counterproductive NCLB went into effect in 2002, and there has been enormous amounts of work done on testing and reporting numerically consistent results since that date. In some lower-performing school districts children now spend very large amounts of time per year taking tests (I've heard up to 20% of total school time, although that's probably an exaggeration). So whether those systems are good or bad, well-designed and managed or not, the one good result is that it is not possible in 2014 to argue that there are no standardized standards or reported numerical "metrics" for public education (many categories of private schools and of course homeschoolers being exempt from this testing, natch). If you have a better standardized evaluation system by all means form a company or nonprofit and start selling it, but let's not pretend that evaluation isn't occurring.
Second point: the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student. That's what they do all day, every day. I'm sorry if you personally had some K-12 teachers who missed that mark (I'm not saying there aren't some at the lower end of the capability distribution - stats says there will be), but the vast majority of teachers I've met work very hard to do just that and are quite good at it.
sPh
Zuckerberg spends $100 million to prove that throwing money at broken public schools does not fix them.
Are we surprised? No.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
I think he would have been better to use the money to set up training programs for skill sets that are useful to society, particularly infrastructure aspects like plumbing, electricians etc. May be use the money to set up in school programs for really specific things like programming, or target specific types of students to figure out what they might excel in.
You can do anything you want in school. It won't work if the society outside the school is completely dysfunctional.
Bill Cosby had it right.
http://www.snopes.com/politics...
I wouldn't be too worried about Zuck....I'm sure his "gift" was also a nice tax write off. Again, this just goes to show you that if you want to IMPROVE education, throwing more MONEY at it, will not work!
- - - - - We haven't HAD dedicated OR capable public school teachers in about 275 years. - - - - -
An brief examination of the list of Americans who have graduated from New York City public schools alone belies that sweeping statement. The United States has an overall very good public schools with - unfortunately - a few very bad spots. And there are hundreds of thousands of dedicated and very good public school teachers in the US to match. Your statement is the sort of baloney that makes glibertarians look utterly foolish.
sPH
We could hook the printers to all the "One laptop per child" laptops.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Sounds like the problem with Newark schools are the folks that -HAD- a great opportunity to make things better, but diverted it into each others pockets rather than into programs that actually increased the chances that the students would prosper? Is this a small scale version of municipal budgets and quest for opinion and appearance rather than results? I mean .. publicity and appearance over real change?
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
Which if any of the graphs on that ed.gov page are adjusted for inflation?
Well..if you give free money to managers, they will solve their issues....new yatch, new sports car, new house, 5* vacations.... of course, it will look as "work" from the accountability perspective....big invoices from consulting companies, fake construction, availability studies, etc.....just a bunch of paper. There is nothing more tempting to "administer" other's monies.... look at the Govt!...
Throwing money at a problem does not result in a solution, it results in a well-funded problem.
I agree with you - the vast majority of teachers are very good and almost all work very hard. But just like any occupation, you have a few outliers. My beef with the public school system is that these outliers are protected as if they are just as valuable as the others. The teachers unions would earn a lot more respect from me if they thinned the herd a bit.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You can't blame this on overall funding levels - the US spends more than just about any other nation on public education. Funding is uneven, however.
We have very serious structural problems with our education system that more money will not solve.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
John Taylor Gatto covers it pretty well in "The Underground History of American Education". It' available for online reading here:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
The ones which say "Constant Dollars".
The Newark School District gets more money per pupil than the suburban school districts surrounding it. And its outcomes are far worse. It's not the money.
The one that says "constant dollars".
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Dear Geekoid, Do you really think Mark didn't have that sort of thing in mind? That he didn't pay the consultants to come up with such things? I'm afraid teachers are a large part of the problem. Their unions consistently thwart attempts to address teacher performance or rather the lack thereof. Do a search on the various attempts to deal with bad teachers and you will find attempts that have nearly all failed by the hands of the teacher's unions.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
... the consultants got rich and the kids got nothing. Good work, guys. There's a special spot in hell for you.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sorry my friend, society no longer works that way.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
According to the parent page, the chart for per-pupil spending is already adjusted for inflation. As such, the $4,221 per student figure in 1969 looks to be close to the truth, except that it's *already* adjusted for inflation at that value.
As much as I would like to have a simple explanation like "spending is less than half what it used to be", the numbers don't lie.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
You can't just throw a bunch of money at a problem and expect a solution to come out. You have to decide on a solution and then throw a bunch of money at it.
It sounds like there were a ton of problems in New Jersey. Crumbling schools? Spend the $100 million fixing infrastructure. Kids have trouble at home? Spend the money on councillors and after-school programs. Poor teachers? Spend it on recruiting.
It seems like they went in with a lot of money and a grand poorly defined plan, a huge institution isn't just going to jump in and implement someone's poorly defined scheme, so instead of spend everybody was busy fighting over details and figuring out where the money should go. The result is the money is wasted in paperwork and of the stuff that got spent no one knows what actually worked.
I stole this Sig
Zuckerberg spends $100 million to prove that throwing money at broken public schools does not fix them.
Zuckerberg spent $100 million in a botched attempt to funnel selected students into for-profit charter schools. Helping to break the public school system for those left behind.
Post office is model of efficiency, and studies show private and charter schools spend more on administrative costs (read:profit for the owners) that public schools. But hey, keep repeating a lie often enough and it's bound to become true sooner or later, right?
Or could it be that good education is really, really expensive, and that $100 million dollars isn't really a lot of money on the scale of a State of American. Could it also be that a lot of that $100 million was spent on trying to make the school district turn out cheap employees for facebook?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
They don't neccesarily need to thin the herd. Training and motivating them so the present a usable product is another option.
If these problem teacher don't get with it, the should be expelled from the union.
Schools are largely funded at local levels. The parent is just wrong. What happened was the departmd.t of education was created.
I guess it is possible to reform an individual. But I don't see them doing that, either.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
the worst huh?
Its certainly not the worst.
again, I could argue the problem is not funding but methods and entreched beurocracy. Sure a district like Newark might have had funding problems, but it also had other problems.
the major problem is when we talk about education, we talk about budget.
No, I'm not wrong. Total funding has gone up, up, up for US schools. Measure it in constant dollars, % of GDP, any way you like. Compare us to other countries, and there are perhaps two who beat us per-pupil. We spend enough money - the solution lies elsewhere.
And while schools still are highly dependent on local funding, that too has been changing steadily to the point where it is no longer the largest source.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You do realize that while this is common rhetoric from both the hard radical right and the neoliberals (President Obama being an example of the latter) it really (a) isn't backed up by factual and statistically-valid evidence (b) often is based on conservative objections to any amount of worker protection and due process in the work environment (b) even where true (NYC for example) is often the result of years of abuse of the labor force to the point where anyone with a shred of self-respect and a shred of belief in the mission would adopt a similar position?
sPh
I agree actually. If you read what I wrote carefully you'll discern that I'm not a big fan of excessive testing and I despise "metrics". I look to outcomes: the incredible job that public schools in the United States have done over that past 275 years and continue to do today, educating and preparing young people for life at a level and on a scale inconceivable by historical standards. And pretty darn good [1] by any worldwide standard today.
sPh
[1] Yes, there are pockets of severe failure such as the City of Detroit. Please review the concepts of mean, median, mode, and statistical distributions. Also note that I haven't been impressed by the output of cram-type school systems no matter how well their students test on the exit exam.
The first half of that (very common) statement is unproven and in most cases demonstrably false. The second half, also very common hard right wing propaganda, is an issue on which there can be reasonable disagreement but is not in any form a "given truth" and even at best ignores the history of teacher unionization from 1920. So, not very good marks to your (presumably private school?) history and political science teachers.
sPh
Vint Cerf - Vinton F'ing Cerf - was not allowed to fill in for his kids schools CS teacher for a couple of months while the teacher was unable to teach.
The reason for this was that Vinton F'ing Cerf did not have a California teacher certification to prove he knew how to teach computer science. Clearly unqualified, after having invented the F'ing Internet.
That's kind of not allowing Edison to teach a introductory science class about electricity.
(a) isn't backed up by factual and statistically-valid evidence
One only has to read their school district's negotiated teacher contract. It's there in black and white. Ours even had a ridiculous provision where they would go on probation for 6 months and then the probation would be removed from their record. They could pretty much go on probation as many times as they wanted. I think this was remedied, but the thing is a bit tough to read. In any event, there are absolutely no mechanisms whereby the union does any kind of quality control - they are dedicated to defense and collective bargaining.
(b) often is based on conservative objections to any amount of worker protection and due process in the work environment
I don't object to those things. I think public workers probably need a union to counterbalance the ridiculousness of government bureaucracy. Like corporations, they probably shouldn't be able to lobby... but that's a whole separate discussion.
I simply don't see things in black and white, that's all. I recognize that teachers and teachers unions have incentives and concerns that sometimes conflict with my concerns as a parent and taxpayer. I also recognize that we are on the same side more often than not. The same can be said about the school administration. Most local schools are given an impossible set of problems to solve, and they respond by kind of circling the wagons and going the path of least resistance. These days that is "common core"... it's mostly retarded and has not been shown to help or hurt students, but everyone in the command chain can point somewhere else when asked why they do it. This is not new - in the 80s it was "new math" and "phonics". Computers for every student. None of it was helpful, nor particularly harmful - but it was energy spent doing something that wasn't helping. I was hoping that charter schools would give us a place where educators could experiment a little more freely, but sadly that does not seem to have happened much and instead it has become just another wedge issue: it doesn't really make all that much difference but Republicans and Democrats rally around it anyway because it gets people fired up.
Sorry, I went off on a tangent. I just get frustrated. :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
There is a hell of a lot more to working as a K-12 teacher and successfully and safely managing multiple classrooms of students than just technical/domain knowledge. Try volunteering at your local middle school for a few weeks and tell me how "inventing the f'ing Internet" [not technically accurate, but we'll let that go] is of any value at all in handling a classroom full of kids who act like young adults one minute, wild toddlers the next minute, and insane hormone-crazed preteens the third. Also tell me about how "inventing the f'ing Internet" gives one an understanding of the legal requirements of being a school employee in your state and county (e.g. sexual harassment regulations and reporting requirements, counseling students who approach you to report abuse at home, the 8347 reporting requirements of NCLB, etc).
I've known some very good college professors who fled the high school classroom in terror when invited on site to teach AP classes, and who weren't afraid to admit they couldn't do what their HS counterparts do. Yes, there is a reason for teacher certification requirements.
sPh
Which will be fine until the bad teachers complain to their union and the rest of the money is sucked up in legal bollocks.
Perhaps the issue isnt funding at all. Take a look at the US from the outside and you have a number of wealthy people that can buy and earn a good education. Youve also got a huge prison population with children that look up to that lifestyle. For those children graduating school isnt on the radar. Throwing money at schools wont help them.
money isn't a solution, its a tool like any other.
Zuck, keep your money to yourself, keep honing your skills, mature _then_ follow Gates' example and contribute.
The second half, also very common hard right wing propaganda, is an issue on which there can be reasonable disagreement but is not in any form a "given truth" and even at best ignores the history of teacher unionization from 1920. So, not very good marks to your (presumably private school?) history and political science teachers.
I don't really care if teacher unionization has great historical roots and we have a parade for it every year. None of those folks are still around either in the union or outside of it. The teacher's union is now like other government unions that contribute to their bosses campaigns while negotiating for raises and better working rules with those some bosses.
There are plenty of examples of school problems that can be traced back to teachers and administrators. Look at the Camden article where there staff to teacher ratio is twice that of the rest of the state. That just bleeds funds out of the classrooms.
Some years ago, when fantasizing about being a billionaire, I gave thought to how I would improve upon education.
The solution I came up with was to found my own network of private schools and colleges, which I could hold to a high standard due to them being under my control.
The private schools and colleges wouldn't be free to attend, per se, but I'd make it sort-of-trivially-easy for an ambitious student to gain admittance to the private high school without paying tuition (say, the student must participate in on-campus work, organized charity volunteer work, or extracurricular research work, or simply be gifted, etc).
Exceptional students at the private schools would be given scholarships to the colleges, and billionaire-money would attract top-tier professors and researchers. I fantasized about eventually running the top private research institution in the world.
In essence, you create a brand. Use the money to create top-tier colleges under a brand name, then 'franchise' private high schools under the brand, and funnel kids from those schools to the colleges.
Punctuate the concept with aggressive job placement assistance, complimentary career counseling and even therapy for all graduates that extends for for a lifetime beyond graduation. (I think this point is a huge idea in itself, to be honest, and is something that universities should do anyway).
Being a graduate doesn't just mean you got a degree there - it means you're part of a lifetime club, a member of a 'living network' (as opposed to 'social network') with high ideals in mind. Graduates would be encouraged to serve as mentors to students in their spare time in exchange for their lifelong benefits.
Above all, this all could exist without being exclusionary toward non-'members'. For instance, tuition credits could be earned for students who agree to tutor public school students in the community and 'take them under their wing'.
Basically, in the end, you have what a real society should be - a nurturing network of educators, counselors, mentors, and just plain *people* helping each other out for their entire lives. A community, you know? Rising tide, lifting boats.
I actually think this sort of thing could be profitable, and not an expense, in the long run. Once you are established as a top-tier educator, your 'product' will become desirable and those with money will gladly pay for their child's enrollment. Build a solid reputation for producing high-quality, well-rounded, well-adjusted, successful graduates, and marry that to the benefits of being part of this fantastic 'life support group', and you've got one hell of a desirable thing, here.
In short, if you want to do something right, do it yourself. Throwing money at a flawed system isn't going to fix anything. It's like trying to fix a leaky bucket by pouring more water in it.
Slashdot-reading billionaires, feel free to run away with my ideas and do something great with them. Also feel free to contact me if you need help in the implementation. :)
Parent was correct. Overall spending is up. Some of the worst systems spend the most money per pupil. The nation's capital was the poster child for this in years past.
TFA says at least $20 million went into studies. How much money ended up actually making it into the schools, facilities, teachers, transportation, etc?
And what evidence do you have that either Vint Cerf or Thomas Edison would have been good teachers? Being a teacher is more than just knowing the technology, there's a crapload of evaluation and administrative aspects to the job that you wouldn't know if you weren't trained. Not to mention that in order to teach, you don't just need to know the subject, you also have to be able to figure out how to break it down and sequence the topics so you cover all the required material in a way that the students understand. What's more, without a certification, there's no way of knowing if the teachers are going to be any good at all.
I know that it's popular to bad mouth regulations and teachers, but if you think that the teaching profession is bad now, just wait till you see what happens if you remove the requirements for certification and training.
Almost all of the highest spending per pupil is done in the districts with the worst results. It is provably certain that increasing spending without changing culture does zero to actually help students.
From the kids. You see how trickle down works?
Mod parent up - it is *culture* that drives academic achievement. If you have a thug culture, which denigrates those who "talk white", or get straight As, or embrace "white values" instead of ghetto values, you get generation after generation of failure. If you have a culture of personal responsibility, which insists on proper english, attention to grades, and integration into the upper class culture rather than the denigration of upper class culture, you get generations of success.
The real question is this - barring taking children away from their parents for proper enculturation, what can government possibly do to turn the toxic tide of such cultural values?
Thank you so much for that link - Cosby is a shining ray of cultural hope in a morass of thugs and punks.
While $100 million sounds like a lot of money it isn't and while a lot of these posts are doing a Nelson on Zuck "Ha! Ha!" I'd say that at least he put up some money to try and make a difference. Are we that jaded nowadays that when somebody makes an honest effort that we mock the effort? I mean sure it was naive given the circumstances but at least he tried. How many other billionaires out there are willing to pony up their checkbooks and contribute? We should at least applaud the effort and work towards fixing the system so that the next time somebody ponies up some much needed funds, it goes to the kids and not to a bunch of consultants and union reps looking to milk the situation.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
The real question is this - barring taking children away from their parents for proper enculturation, what can government possibly do to turn the toxic tide of such cultural values?
Gas the crime-ridden neighborhoods, then start over with a fresh batch of people who want to learn.
But I don't think that will go ever well at the ballot box.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
And it's interesting to note that Democrats love to raise taxes and give money to the people who cannot support themselves.
It would seem that a party that panders to poor, uneducated, jobless people would get the most support from those very same people... so build an education system that spits out people who support your agenda, and what do you get?
wow dude... this is why you don't get invited to parties. Racist. Wow. And so blantant about it.
I just.... wow. I didn't think your kind still existed. Eye opener. Wow..... And you didn't even post as an AC. You just said it. To everyone. Wow....
You need to hole up and examine yourself deeply. Something is wrong with you.
Three of my son's principals stopped being principals and went to "assistant superintendent" jobs at the school board. Higher pay, lower responsibilities. My sister and two of her kids are teachers. There's plenty of money in the school district but there isn't enough flexibility with state mandated laws/budgets to funnel the money where it is actually needed. Too much of "we can't use the money for that purpose because it has to be used for (fill in the blank). They can't even provide basic supplies like copy paper, pencils and classroom supplies because of inflexibility of the budgets for various reasons. My son's school is the same. They want the parents to come in on weekends and maintain the school grounds. Shit! They have union groundskeepers and they can't maintain the school. Then I went to my old elementary school to see weeds growing up in cracks of the pavement. It was NEVER that way when I attended. It was impeccably maintained. Yet, the school has obtained a magnitude of funding increases. Every time I see the school trying to shake me down for basic supplies and programs, I look at their requests with disdain. Now, we even get "suggested donation" sheets (Mount Diablo Unified School District) and If I were do donate what they suggest, it'd be nearly $800! What is this crap? The school district has some of the most-expensive homes in the county yet they can't manage their money! No thanks. The problem is a management and a government regulatory problem. Not a funding problem.
I'm ashamed to share a country with people like you... Racism is horrible.
I find your ideas intriguing, and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
I'm sure these are the exact reasons (among many others) that unions use when fighting against progress in teaching. Thanks for the example.
I'm from the UK, and here you simply cannot get rid of a bad teacher - to even try to do so takes years and is very expensive so no-one bothers. And how do I know this? Because two of my best friends are teachers - I'm am espousing *THEIR* point of view...
Realistically, at the high school level you want a teacher who can manage a classroom, and knows how to work with kids; being a genius is not required or even really a huge benefit. He's not going to be teaching them about his latest research in ad-hoc networks with hour packet delays, he's going to be teaching them about printf().
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The question is, are you actually spending it evenly on all schools? Or are some schools eating up the lion's share of that funding, while others have virtually none?
Second point: the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student. That's what they do all day, every day. I'm sorry if you personally had some K-12 teachers who missed that mark (I'm not saying there aren't some at the lower end of the capability distribution - stats says there will be), but the vast majority of teachers I've met work very hard to do just that and are quite good at it.
sPh
While I agree many teachers try to do that, the reality is standardized test force them to teach to passing a test; because if students fail to score high enough the school gets penalized. As a result, test performance, rather than real learning, becomes paramount. Teachers hate it but have to play along in order to succeed.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
> Second point: the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student.
Silly me, I thought that actually teaching people was some part of the job. I guess mom had no idea what she was doing when she was a public school teacher.
If 100M yields no results, call the FBI.
All those advisors and union officials need to go to jail now.
And kids, lesson of the day, all school work was a waste of time to graduate, just become a union official or politician, no qualififications, easy money, and your above the law.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Stop making so much sense.
In reality, this idea would never fly because it empowers students with their own destiny and heaps piles of accountability upon the education system. Accountability is something teachers and administrators (and people in general these days) do not like.
you should check the studies on this:
http://credo.stanford.edu/docu...
on average, charters are no better. But for some reason, they prove exceedingly successful in educated people in poverty, people where english is not their first language, and special education needs students.
Charters are supposed to be a place where different approaches are tried. And if public schools were doing their duty, they would look at this extraordinary set of results dealing with poor, handicap, or ESL students and find out how they can incorporate this success. There are real successes with at risk populations that are not being effectively serviced by the current public school system. As education is the best way to address the long term issues of generational poverty, I'd say charter schools are proving their worth quite ably.
The other data we have is that charter schools, their first or second year out, are very ineffective. It probably has to do with both the lower experience of the teacher core and trying to figure out what works, or at least that is my random guess based on nothing more than the back of an envelope.
So the best of both worlds would be leveraging the success in dealing with the needs of poor, ESL, and handicap students either as an offshoot or within the framework of the public school system. But no one in TPS wants to hear that they may be failing quite miserably relative to the competition and no one within the charter movement is willing to admit that the data doesn't support the wholesale abandonment of the public school system.
if we are measuring the success of a system by the few who stand out (by definition, people will stand out without a system, even if that system is absolute and utter crap), then the nonexistent PE classes (at least in my area they were phased out) are doing an amazing job creating professional athletes (just look at all the professional athletes that went to public school!).
That there are people who are exceptional is besides the point. The goal of public education isn't the exceptional, and it's success isn't measured by that metric. The success should be measured by the success of the middle class (not defined by percentile ranks, but rather percent of median income) in both the increase in it's size and the increase in that median income.
On the last two measures, without considering other factors, American public schools have been a failure in the last 30 years. But you may say this metric is unfair because there are so many influences on this measure. I'd agree. The closest we can come is probably college attendance and completion, and the experience of college professors when dealing with foreign educated, privately educated, and public educated students. My discussions with professors and many studies show that they feel as the years go by, students are LESS prepared for college level work. And it is bad enough that remedial classes are now being taught at the college level.
So at least by the local outcome and the global outcome, we are getting worse. On international comparisons, we are really quite miserable and don't only lose out to the intense testing and cram systems of East Asia and India. We are also losing to most of our European counterparts, even those crazy "don't believe in testing and everyone gets a medal for participation" Finns.
Yes I spent 11 years in the public system (only Kindergarten and 1st grade in a private school), and I appreciate it. In fact, some of the most inspiring teachers I ever met were in high school. But I'm not blind to the facts on the ground. I went to an extremely good school, within a system that was very responsive to parental pressure. It took 2 years for the school to go from never considering AP classes to rolling them out across all the high schools because a small cadre of parents asked. The school system is definitely doing worse than it used to on a whole though. And it's unlikely we will have a WW3 to wipe out competition for jobs that bolstered the middle class in the 50s and 60s, so we have to address this.
Well, the Washington, DC school district spends about the most per pupil of any school district in the country, yet the politicians who go to Washington are rarely willing to send their children to those schools. So, no, the money is not spread evenly. Unfortunately, some of the schools which are eating up a larger slice of the pie are among the worst in the country.
Ultimately, the problem is that you cannot fix the problems with schools on the large scale. You cannot mass produce education. Education is a craft. A good teacher customizes their technique for each student. In a really good school, the administration will do what it can to place students in a class with a teacher whose skills best suit what that student needs in teacher, thus allowing teachers to teach a larger number of students.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm quite certain that uneven school funding is an issue. I'm also quite certain that fixing that disparity alone will not improve outcomes, having witnessed the money disappear into the ether in Philadelphia. I wish money were the issue, because fixing education would then be very easy.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
While I certainly agree that they do get paid pretty well considering days worked (at least around here), that does not make them lazy people. My brother was a teacher for a while and still worked all summer at another job. It wasn't his fault that his occupation doesn't have summer work.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
One problem is the unions, is should be banned when it involves public money.
I would expand that to corporations who accept public money as well - but yes, I agree that lobbying by such groups undermines democracy. I don't think unions need to be eliminated - they might serve as an important counterbalance to the unmoving government bureaucracy... but they definitely should not be allowed to lobby.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When will the Americans realize that they no longer have any time to waste ?
When it becomes politically acceptable to criticize and act against underperforming administrators, teachers, parents, students, and cultures. Right now, the only allowable form of criticism is against people who say there is enough funding, even though tripling funding in the past 30ish years has not improved results.
In our county, the library system used to do outreach to the schools, where they'd go and try to get kids interested in reading ... but then the county went and fired all of the branch managers, and they didn't have staffing to keep it up.
Librarians require Master degrees in most areas (and may require a specialization if they work in a school library), but regularly make the 'lowest paid graduate degree' lists. .... but the schools and governments would rather appear 'cutting edge' or 'high tech' and give an iPad or Kindle to every student.
(disclaimer : I'm a member of our local Friends of the Library, and some of the best customers at our book sales are school teachers stocking their classrooms)
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
I tend to think the problems that cause low graduation rates are most likely social or at home...Throwing money at schools won't fix those problems.
Of course you can mass-produce education, to the extent it is expected from a school (i.e. fundamental stuff, not trade skills or academic knowledge) - most other First World countries manage to do so just fine, you know.
Please list the country which is doing so over a population anywhere close to as large, while that population is equally heterogeneous to that of the U.S.?
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I don't see what size has to do with this. It's not like you have a fixed number of schools per country - this is a problem that scales horizontally nearly perfectly, if you can solve it in one region then it stays solved even when you add more regions to the mix (even though those other regions may require other solutions).
To that extent, I would rather compare US to EU as a whole here - it would be closer to an apples-to-apples comparison. In fact, it would favor US, because EU doesn't have any sort of centralized education planning, so every country has to deal with its own problems; in US, OTOH, while states do have extreme leeway, the feds can also step in to help in problematic locations.
So, you are saying that the EU uses the same education system from country to country, much the way the U.S. Department of Education is attempting to solve the problem by implementing a system that is the same from state to state? I was under the impression that each country in the EU had their own independent standards for education.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Not very high, you just have to know the right people. Easy, right?
No, I'm not saying anything of a sort. All I'm saying is that, clearly, providing good primary/secondary education for over 400 million people on a territory spanning a large part of a continent is feasible, since we have real-world example of that. How that is achieved is another matter. I'm not necessarily arguing for more centralized approach in education. On the other hand, I seriously doubt that EU does that much better because they are decentralized.
Don't make sense, lest you feel the wrath of the union.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
No, we do not have an example of that. We have examples of smaller groups providing good primary/secondary education for subsets of that. We do not have an example of any group providing education for over 400 million people on a territory spanning a large part of a continent. Which actually illustrates my point, the solution to the U.S. "problem" is to stop making it a U.S. wide problem and leave it to those in specific areas to solve. Solve it local to yourself, then, and only then, convince others to adopt the parts of your model for the areas local to them. We need to stop trying to impose a solution from Washington (or even from state capitols). The places where education works (the E.U in your example) do not impose solutions from far away from where they are applied.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Under-paid?
Average teacher salaries. California had the nation's highest average salary in 2002-03, at $55,693. States joining California in the top tier were Michigan, at $54,020; Connecticut, at $53,962; New Jersey, at $53,872; and the District of Columbia, at $53,194.
Source: http://www.educationworld.net/salaries_us.html
Being one of the highest paid, it's kind of strange that Mark identified New Jersey as the school system in need of help. From all appearances the US is saddled on the high-end of average yet performance is far from. It's a real pain when there's actual metrics to by which to measure these crap arguments. Funny how the teacher unions are so against them. I'd accept your "the system" argument if and only if you included the union to which these teacher belong.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
We do not have an example of any group providing education for over 400 million people on a territory spanning a large part of a continent. Which actually illustrates my point, the solution to the U.S. "problem" is to stop making it a U.S. wide problem and leave it to those in specific areas to solve.
Are you familiar with the notion of "divide and conquer" as it applies to solving complex problems by breaking them down into simpler ones?
The end result is that 400 million people on a given territory got their education. Again, I don't care how it's done, so long as it's done. "Delegate everything one level down" is a plan just like any other.
And I still find it dubious that decentralization is really the magic pill here. You're arguing that EU works because it "does not impose solutions from far away", yet countries like Germany (80 million) or France (65 million) are still plenty big and not monolithic - heck, how many local languages are there in France? - yet handle education on national level just fine.
I am arguing that the EU does NOT do education at all. So, arguing that they have solved the problem is BS. Members of the EU have done education, but none of them have done it on the scale and diversity that is the U.S.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
While there's a whole lot of performance data available, the questions are how good it is, and how well it's used. From what I've seen, teachers and schools are being judged on what proportion of their students pass the tests, which in isolation is a really bad measure of quality.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
A few things.
You say that education should be measured by the success of the middle class, but that's subject to so many other factors it isn't funny. There are many other things that have been contributing to stress on the middle class.
Assuming that your contacts are correct about the level of preparedness, does that mean that the schools are doing worse or that more bad students are applying to colleges (or, better, how true is each)? When I was a kid, most people got a high school diploma and went from there, not going to college. Currently, there's a lot more pressure to get that college diploma, and so more people will try to get into and through college.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Absent those clear metrics the unions are so fond of, one must rely upon anecdotes both from within and without as well as secondary, or symptomatic evidence. Given the sizable quantity of which, they become far more trustworthy of a source than would normally be afforded them. The history of unions has little to do with unions in the present. It would be interesting to see how you come to the conclusion that there's even grounds for debate on the union stance with regards to metrics, especially ones that enable national, let alone global apples for apples comparisons. I would also love hear how you think your beloved unions have maintained the bargain of quality work for quality jobs throughout the years, especially as it relates to education.
It is rather interesting that you bring up "private schools." They are generally known to out perform their public school counter parts. What's rather funny about that is that in most cases the per-student funding is actually less and their teachers are seldom unionized.
For the record, I would fall left of center on the political bar, or Chaotic-Good on the D&D alignment spectrum. I'm actually rather offended you'd lump me with tea-baggers and neo-cons.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I blame the decline of education on a few things
Parents, parents these days just are not involved in their kids lives as much as they were 30-50 years ago. The rise of divorce rates I believe have harmed the children in this level. Of course people should be happy with their SO, but if you have a child, you do whats best for the child
teacher unions, the make it damn near impossible to fire bad teachers and hire good ones. There is no reason that people should be guaranteed a job for life (almost) after a handful of years. If your students are not learning its not always your fault, but teachers unions are just as bad as the UAW, arguably one of the worst unions for america today
and lastly, but most importantly, the department of education. This bureaucracy does NOTHING to help students, and only helps control people by making people jump through hoops to fit some made up criteria. The money for the schools in NY, should stay in NY, not come from cali and alaska tunneled in through the federal government, because anytime the federal government "gives" states money, there are ALWAYS strings attached. (look at highway funding for the reason why all states have a 21 year old drinking age for example) On top of that we have no competition when all the mandates are pushed nationwide. The beauty of this country is that we have 50 states, or 50 different tests ongoing all the time. Sometimes things work, sometimes they dont. When 1 state fails, it can learn from others who dont fail what works best. However if all 50 fail, where do we learn from??
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
how about we get rid of the unions, AND the bureaucracy?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You would be the most awesome human that ever lived. People would worship you as a God.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I'm not one of those folks who doesn't champion a penchant for the obvious as a marketable skill.
The Newark School District gets more money per pupil than the suburban school districts surrounding it. And its outcomes are far worse. It's not the money.
I too, am adept at processing Bayesian inference, and that leads me to believe you're not blaming an equipment malfunction for this plane crash. Is it a personnel problem?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
actually, my contacts are across standing, reasonable universities (those universities that have been around for a long while). And every single one of these schools is HARDER to get into now than they used to be.
To be specific to a given school, we have kids at UF where the entering SAT score has moved higher by a large margin, the average raw 4 point scale GPA is higher (raw, as in no bonus points for honors or AP classes) but the entering level is bad enough to require remedial classes. Note the math required for the SAT is so remedial (I covered all relevant topics before high school, took exam circa 2000) that it isn't unreasonable to see higher SAT scores and lower preparedness. The problem though, is really acute at the community college level. My home state (Florida) has a unpreparedness rate of >50% at that level, where enrollment does surge as more people attempt college. So even as we need more people to go to college to get the skills to be able to provide a decent life for themselves, the average American high school isn't pulling it's weight. Sure, back in the 50s when you would go work on a factory line or do other work that required no education beyond middle school, they were doing great. But then, they didn't actually have to do anything.
... if I looked up my old slashdot postings from then talking about Gatto and Holt and homeschooling and unschooling.
You wrote: "the entire job of a teacher, particularly a K-8 teacher, is to evaluate students and set good progression goals for that student. ..."
Fairly accurate, but interesting you did not mention activities like communicating information or values in that... Or who sets the "goals" or what they actually are. As John Taylor Gatto says, the problem with most US schools is they are working as designed (originally in Prussia to deliver obedient cannon-fodder soldiers, obedient factory workers, and obedient citizens). So, if you give schools more money, they will only do that job better!
See: ... Before you can reach a point of effectiveness in defending your own children or your principles against the assault of blind social machinery, you have to stop conspiring against yourself by attempting to negotiate with a set of abstract principles and rules which, by its nature, cannot respond. Under all its disguises, that is what institutional schooling is, an abstraction which has escaped its handlers. Nobody can reform it. First you have to realize that human values are the stuff of madness to a system; in systems-logic the schools we have are already the schools the system needs; the only way they could be much improved is to have kids eat, sleep, live, and die there. ..."
http://www.newciv.org/whole/sc...
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com...
http://www.the-open-boat.com/G...
https://www.johntaylorgatto.co...
"I'll bring this down to earth. Try to see that an intricately subordinated industrial/commercial system has only limited use for hundreds of millions of self-reliant, resourceful readers and critical thinkers. In an egalitarian, entrepreneurially based economy of confederated families like the one the Amish have or the Mondragon folk in the Basque region of Spain, any number of self-reliant people can be accommodated usefully, but not in a concentrated command-type economy like our own. Where on earth would they fit?
That said, investments in groups like Khan Academy seem worthwhile... One of the few really good Gates Foundation investments perhaps...
https://www.khanacademy.org/
http://www.gatesfoundation.org...
The Broad Foundation is making the exact same mistake as Zuckerberg...
http://www.broadcenter.org/
An alternative by me: :-) because ultimately local schools will grow into larger vibrant community learning centers open to anyone in the community and looking more like college campuses. New York State could try this plan incrementally in a few different school districts across the state as pilot programs to see how it works out. This may seem like an unlikely idea to be adopted at first, but at least it is a starting point f
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towa...
"New York State current spends roughly 20,000 US dollars per schooled child per year to support the public school system. This essay suggests that the same amount of money be given directly to the family of each homeschooled child. Further, it suggests that eventually all parents would get this amount, as more and more families decide to homeschool because it is suddenly easier financially. It suggests why ultimately this will be a win/win situation for everyone involved (including parents, children, teachers, school staff, other people in the community, and even school administrators
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Further proof that just throwing money at the problem doesn't necessarily solve the problem.
...that the more you spend on schools, the worse your results.
Find the sweet spot.