Slashdot Mirror
Wages Aren't the Only Reason Teachers Are Striking (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Schools in 39 of 50 states have seen decreases in funding for instructional materials for their students, according to data from the Urban Institute. These conditions have sparked a wave of teacher activism across the country. Educators have had to pay for supplies themselves to provide new materials for students at times. Teachers' salaries aren't enough to pay for materials, either. In some cases they have to pay for materials for dozens of children. Teachers are having to teach students with materials that are defective, outdated and inefficient because of a lack of funding going to state education budgets -- particularly in Republican states.
My take on it is that the budgeting at public schools is as big of a mess as budgeting at NASA. Way too much is wasted on legacy make-work boondoggle cronyist handouts. In the last slashdot discussion of this, someone linked to this image which pretty succinctly summarizes the problem. This is magnified by the problem of school administrators getting a large salary increase in the last year or two of work before retirement, because their pension is based on their salary at the point of retirement; and thus they get an inflated pension.
I was thinking that regulations could mandate a maximum portion of a school's staff that is non-teaching administrative staff, but then those staff members would teach 1 hour a year to be classified as 'teaching staff' thus gaming the system, so there'd need to be a stricter definition of 'teaching staff' as well. Aside from a nurse, janitors, principal, career counselor, and social worker, how many other administrators do you need?
A book I read years ago on how to fix America's schools advocated using zero-based budgeting and cutting non-academic 'side-shows' like sports teams, then starting school a couple hours later, once children are actually awake enough to learn. A related book ('The End of Homework') also advocated eliminating homework as a way to save time that'd be better spent on one-to-one assistance.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
A well-run democracy requires educated citizens. The state of school systems in poor neighborhoods is by design. Those in charge want only the "right" kind of voters to be educated.
Yeah, At university you buy the textbook at a ridiculously high price. There used to be all kinds of excuses such as the high cost of making an archival quality book, etc. but those have mostly fallen by the wayside. At the moment, it just seems to be accepted that they have you over a barrel and that's that. A lot of universities also simply require that you buy the textbook at the university bookstore, rather than online, or from another student who has taken the class, etc. At the end of the semester, you may be able to sell the book back to the university bookstore for a small fraction of what you paid, then they'll sell it used for a tiny discount off the new price.
It's basically an exploitive, captive market. Seeing the same thing happen to pre-university education would be a tragedy.
This idea that everyone should pay nothing in taxes is why we can't have good things
Except I pay more in taxes than even last year and I still don't have nice things. Roads are shit, PD/FD response times are worse than ever, teachers don't have the materials they need.
So where's that money going? It's not going to infrastructure or support. This has been the trend for the past decade, probably longer. So enough's enough; they can make do with what they have and go fuck themselves if they want to whine about not having enough.
( I liked your joke about how the rich will pay their fair share. I'll giggle about that one for a while, especially since the rich are usually the ones making the laws. )
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
That said, Muslims are expected to be able to read the Koran for themselves (and even memorize it).
In the islamic world, it's not considered necessary to actually speak arabic in order to memorize the koran - you can memorize it just fine without understanding a word of what it says. And the goal is really memorisation, and not reading, in order to make a difference between in-group and out-group people, not to actually gain any kind of knowledge or wisdom.
So far the theory, now the practice. In other words, prove the prof failed you because you refused to buy his book.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The US spends more on education than most developed countries, much more in many cases, and gets worse results. Over the last 20 years, we've thrown more money at schools and got worse results. More money isn't improving outcomes.
Perhaps we should look at the countries that get better results and see what they are doing differently. They're spending less money than the US, not more.
I haven't done a rigorous study, but I have noticed that our schools seem to spend a LOT of time (aka money) on non-academic things, things that are somewhat political like "Mexican heritage month". Kids in the US spend 180 days in school. When three or four months of that are spent on teaching diversity, tolerance, environmental awareness, etc, that's all time not spent on math, reading, science etc. That must have an impact.
Because this nice table convincingly shows, that the per-pupil spending in America's public schools has quadrupled since 1960ies (inflation-adjusted).
There is amply enough money being spent. We are just doing it wrong [TM].
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.