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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 Teachers are having to teach students with materials that are defective, outdated and inefficient because of a lack of funding going to state education budgets -- particularly in Republican states.
after many years living in a borderilne slum (cheap rent from relatives who owned the place). The first thing he noticed is he didn't have to buy nearly as many school supplies as he did when his kids went to a poor district.
In America we use property taxes to fund individual school districts. This means we've got nice, rich districts and lousy poor ones. This is by design. I've read one of the Scandinavian countries has laws about schools being funded equally to prevent just these kind of shenanigans. I'd love to see those kind of laws here in the States. As an added bonus it'd make forced busing pointless outside of specialty magnet schools.
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In part, because our tax money ( and a percentage of lottery winnings ) are supposed to go to the schools.
But of course politicians get their grimy little hands on a budget, and it all goes to shit. This is in part why I
A) Almost always vote against the incumbent
B) *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* vote against tax increases.
They have enough of my cash. If they can't pay for basic services with the stacks of green they pull out of my ass, that's they're fuck up not mine, and I won't fund any further idiocy.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
has a projected budget that averages out to about $37,400 per student.
I know there are considerations like property upkeep, and administration, but holy moly, why not just bus them to a nearby community college at that rate?
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.
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.
Are the comparatively flush budgets in Democratic states producing better outcomes for their students?
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.
Theocrats hate any education beyond rote reading
Actually, the Church hated Martin Luther because he advocated plebeians reading the Bible for themselves, rather than only the priests who knew Latin being able to read it for them, and telling them what it 'REALLY' means. So they don't always like literacy either. That said, Muslims are expected to be able to read the Koran for themselves (and even memorize it).
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
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.
It is likely that your quality of life would improve if you paid significantly MORE taxes. In addition to you paying more taxes the rich would pay more taxes. That additional tax would outweigh your contribution. And then you could get roads, bridges, working schools, police, etc.
When everyone is supported by proper public funding, everything works properly. You would prosper despite your selfish inclination.
This idea that everyone should pay nothing in taxes is why we can't have good things. If we pay too little tax, the system decays and we get nothing. If the roads work and the trash system works and the air is clean and the schools are well supplied and safe then the world is great and everything improves. And paying tax does that.
The problem isn't the amount of money allocated for schools. The problem is where that money goes - namely, to bloated administrative costs. Fire half of the non-teaching staff, set the salaries of the rest so that no one earns more than the teachers, and - magic - suddenly schools will have plenty of money.
Of course, that's only the first problem with public education in the US. There are a whole lot of other problems: the culture of passing students who ought to fail, the inability to fire incompetent teachers, discipline problems, etc...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
> Universities and colleges in the US don't provide textbooks out of tuition costs. Pushing it down a level or two makes just as much sense as not doing so.
I worked at a rural school district for a while and part of my job was doing analysis of student performance compared to various out-of-school factors. I was stunned and humbled to find out how many of the kids literally had no permanent home. They'd move throughout the school district several times a year because their families were couch-surfing from house to house. And these weren't high-school kids (almost adults)... these were kids younger than 10. Their only regular meals came from the school.
With kids in this kind of situation, there's no way their parents are buying books when they can't even feed them and put a roof over their heads.
I buy office supplies and even software for my work because the administrative headaches of ordering such are often not worth the hassle. I'd rather work on IT than procurement paperwork. I've done this at multiple companies. Bad apples often cheat the procurement such that many orgs end up putting in lots of roadblocks.
True, I'm probably paid better than most teachers, though. Still, for smaller things, it often just makes life easier to go get them yourself.
Table-ized A.I.
So the solution is let the kids remain ignorant? Do you suppose not teaching them a lesson will teach the politicians a lesson?
The US university textbook system should not be used as a model for anything.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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.
Sheesh... Talk about completely un-productive voting habits...
If you vote out your politicians regardless if they do a good job that doesn't exactly promote responsible government as you don't have the chance of being voted out if you do a bad job driving you to actually do a good job. Instead you have the certainty of being voted out ensuring that you really don't need to give as damn as any issues you end up causing, like say a serious budget shortfall due to excessive tax cuts, is going to be the your replacement's problems.
As for the "no tax increases, never!"-attitude, that really doesn't work at all for tax revenue drops or increased costs, particularly unexpected ones (like natural disasters). The only options that leaves you with are cutting down on essential services, taking on debt or moving around money in the budget like how they move away money that's supposed to go to education into other essential services when lottery money starts coming in.
"Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it."
that the pay is for only about 9 months per year of work
If you think all teachers are just idle during the school holidays you're either surrounded by shit teachers or know nothing about teaching, I wonder which it is.
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Well no, as a parent it's pretty much your responsibility to make sure your kids get an appropriate education - the state offers it for free, but if you think that's ever been a high bar you should look at what past generations weren't taught (and what not being able to read or do math cost them).
I have never put faith in our education system to teach my kids what they need to know - sure, they'll pick up *some* of the fundamentals, but if you're not willing to spend some time filling in the gaps you're a YUGE part of the problem.
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.
Ideally, yes. But not all parents actually know the material themselves. Even where they do, schools have a bad habit of expecting the knowledge in a specific form and marking off on correct answers if the reasoning doesn't parrot the book.
Math (arithmetic) is a classic example. It's not enough to be good at arithmetic, you have to understand "new math" or they'll get marked wrong even with correct answers. So even a parent who excels in the subject may not be much help.
Then there are single parents with more than one job. They may simply not have enough left at the end of their day to be much help to the kids.
Or, perhaps they got the same crappy "education" when they were in school.
Muslim here. I don't know why Joannesg got voted Troll because what he said is 100% accurate. If you go to any non-Arabic speaking country and talk to the Muslims there, very few of them will be able to speak Arabic or translate it for you.
I have nephews and nieces in the UK who have all read the Quran. A couple of them have memorized it, but if you ask them to translate a random verse into English, they won't be able to because they don't really understand what they're reading. It's a big thing in my family when someone has memorized the Quran - parties are thrown, gifts are shared etc. but no-one really cares about if the person actually understood any of it. It's just memorization.
I read the Quran when I was younger and even memorized half of it but I couldn't tell you what any of it meant until I got my hands on a version that hand Arabic and English translations side by side. That was considered 'cheating' back in the day so my parents and the local Imam were really disappointed I had to resort to finding an English translation version.
This is one of the great dangers of preachers/Imams etc. They ask a child to read some text and then tell the child what the text is saying rather than let the child figure it out themselves. What doesn't help is that most religious texts are kinda ambiguous - if you're a pacifist you can read one sentence a certain way and think, "OK, that sounds entirely reasonable. I should look to help others" whereas a maniac would read the exact same words and come to the conclusion, "God is telling me to kill infidels".
Incidentally, it was after reading the English translations that I moved away from religion.
We should also remove the special perks for teachers: they should work a full working year, with a few weeks off, get the same kind of health insurance as other people in their income bracket, and get 401(k) or 403(b) plans instead of pensions.
This whole "teachers get the summer off as a paid vacation" is a fallacy. Most teachers are paid for woking X days; where I live they can get the check only during the school year or spread over 12 months; even so teh summers are spent prepping for the next year. Anyone could have the same deal if their company offers an unpaid sabbatical leave of 3 months. They don't get overtime if the have to stay late for an event or a parent insists on their conference be held after normal working hours. As for benefits, they are average at best in my district. Yes, they are one of the few jobs that still offers defined benefit pensions, but even then the county messes with them by giving bonuses in lieu of pay raises so they don't get included in pension calculations.
Yes, there are bad teachers; and benefits vary greatly by state; but at the rate we are going the only people who will teach are those who can't do anything else or coaches.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Are they still talking about arming teachers?
Yes, but they won't be allowed to carry around politicians or administrators. Parent / teacher conferences, however, will be a lot more cordial when the teacher is openly packing a loaded .45 in a shoulder holster.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
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.
In part, because our tax money ( and a percentage of lottery winnings ) are supposed to go to the schools.
But of course politicians get their grimy little hands on a budget, and it all goes to shit. This is in part why I
A) Almost always vote against the incumbent
B) *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* *ALWAYS* vote against tax increases.
They have enough of my cash. If they can't pay for basic services with the stacks of green they pull out of my ass, that's they're fuck up not mine, and I won't fund any further idiocy.
The USA is one of the less taxed developed country. Don't be surprised if your public services suck. You get what you pay for.
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