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MIT's Elegant Schoolbus Algorithm Was No Match For Angry Parents (bostonglobe.com)
"Computers can solve your problem. You may not like the answer," writes the Boston Globe. Slashdot reader sandbagger explains:
"Boston Public Schools asked MIT graduate students Sebastien Martin and Arthur Delarue to build an algorithm that could do the enormously complicated work of changing start times at dozens of schools -- and re-routing the hundreds of buses that serve them. In theory this would also help with student alertness...." MIT also reported that "Approximately 50 superfluous routes could be eliminated using the new method, saving the school district between $3 million and $5 million annually."
The Globe reports: They took to the new project with gusto, working 14- and 15-hour days to meet a tight deadline -- and occasionally waking up in the middle of the night to feed new information to a sprawling MIT data center. The machine they constructed was a marvel. Sorting through 1 novemtrigintillion options -- that's 1 followed by 120 zeroes -- the algorithm landed on a plan that would trim the district's $100 million-plus transportation budget while shifting the overwhelming majority of high school students into later start times.... But no one anticipated the crush of opposition that followed. Angry parents signed an online petition and filled the school committee chamber, turning the plan into one of the biggest crises of Mayor Marty Walsh's tenure. The city summarily dropped it. The failure would eventually play a role in the superintendent's resignation...
Big districts stagger their start times so a single fleet of buses can serve every school: dropping off high school students early in the morning, then circling back to get the elementary and middle school kids. If you're going to push high school start times back, then you've probably got to move a lot of elementary and middle schools into earlier time slots. The district knew that going in, and officials dutifully quizzed thousands of parents and teachers at every grade level about their preferred start times. But they never directly confronted constituents with the sort of dramatic change the algorithm would eventually propose -- shifting school start times at some elementary schools by as much as two hours. Even more... Hundreds of families were facing a 9:30 to 7:15 a.m. shift. And for many, that was intolerable. They'd have to make major changes to work schedules or even quit their jobs...
Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
But will the whole drama play out again? "Last year, even after everything went sideways in Boston, some 80 school districts from around the country reached out to the whiz kids from MIT, eager for the algorithm to solve their problems."
The Globe reports: They took to the new project with gusto, working 14- and 15-hour days to meet a tight deadline -- and occasionally waking up in the middle of the night to feed new information to a sprawling MIT data center. The machine they constructed was a marvel. Sorting through 1 novemtrigintillion options -- that's 1 followed by 120 zeroes -- the algorithm landed on a plan that would trim the district's $100 million-plus transportation budget while shifting the overwhelming majority of high school students into later start times.... But no one anticipated the crush of opposition that followed. Angry parents signed an online petition and filled the school committee chamber, turning the plan into one of the biggest crises of Mayor Marty Walsh's tenure. The city summarily dropped it. The failure would eventually play a role in the superintendent's resignation...
Big districts stagger their start times so a single fleet of buses can serve every school: dropping off high school students early in the morning, then circling back to get the elementary and middle school kids. If you're going to push high school start times back, then you've probably got to move a lot of elementary and middle schools into earlier time slots. The district knew that going in, and officials dutifully quizzed thousands of parents and teachers at every grade level about their preferred start times. But they never directly confronted constituents with the sort of dramatic change the algorithm would eventually propose -- shifting school start times at some elementary schools by as much as two hours. Even more... Hundreds of families were facing a 9:30 to 7:15 a.m. shift. And for many, that was intolerable. They'd have to make major changes to work schedules or even quit their jobs...
Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
But will the whole drama play out again? "Last year, even after everything went sideways in Boston, some 80 school districts from around the country reached out to the whiz kids from MIT, eager for the algorithm to solve their problems."
What about providing optimal bus routes without changing start times? Or what about factoring in a cost for changing start times to only do so when the new start time makes a huge difference in the bussing cost? They just need to take into account the political cost of moving start times as another set of parameters.
Hundreds of families were facing a 9:30 to 7:15 a.m. shift. And for many, that was intolerable. They'd have to make major changes to work schedules or even quit their jobs...
This sounds like a perfectly legitimate argument against the plan. The plan wasn't nixed because people were angry to it, the people were angry because it's a bad plan.
Given there have only been around 4.3 x 10^17 seconds since the big bang, it seems unlikely that they actually sorted through 10^120 options.
You may have forgotten that this would also have the elementary school kids getting home 2 hours earlier when both parents are still at work. Many bosses wouldn't be that understanding about needing to leave 2 hours early every day.
Another case where the installed base wins over new things because it is too disruptive to change it.
The school scheduling equivalent of COBOL.
Civilized people are dead at 7:15 AM. What kind of an asshole would demand that you get a kid to school so early?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Programming would be so much easier without the damn user!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The big question being: Are you really willing to stomach the results? So optimsing school bus usage for highest effciency brings morning schedule out of wack by 2 hours and more for on the far ends of the queue? Gee wizz, what a surprise. Who would've thunk?
In other words: Be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Too-early start times, especially for high schools, are a well known reason for poor academic performance:
http://time.com/4741147/school...
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/s...
Wonder what the public key field is for?
Nearly 85% of the district had ended up with a new start time, and "In the end, the school start time quandary was more political than technical... This was a fundamentally human conflict, and all the computing power in the world couldn't solve it."
No, it wasn't 'political'. The algorithm successfully computed an optimal schedule for the students with regards to bus transport, but did not include any data at all about the optimal schedule for the parents.
If they wanted to find the optimums, they should have included the whole system and not just the least impactful part. The parents schedules are the most important ones since they are responsible for making it all happen; from breakfast to dinner to bedtime.
I see this all the time. Brilliant programmers and mathematicians that think they can just throw the data into an algorithm and get an answer without understanding the data itself or how to interpret it medically/biologically.
You might not be a parent.
If elementary school starts 2 hours earlier, that means it also *ends* 2 hours earlier. Now, where does that elementary school child go for the 2 extra hours (while parents are, presumably, at work)? That's right - now you need pay a nanny.
There is nothing "elegant" about an algorithm that optimizes one variable. You can optimize any one variable to the detriment of others (what if *all* kids go to one giant school, for example :) ) It is not a fault of the algorithm though - it's just relying on poorly specified conditions. To be actually useful to real humans, it should have included as many relevant variables as possible.
No need to blame "angry parents" and no reason to laud poorly specified task.
...if I had a mere dollar for every project that failed because they failed to identify the primary customer and understand their needs.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
That's because while they might be hot shot programmers, they are crappy analysts.
I suspect that any grad student from a, "lessor" school, but had been trained in analyzing requirements correctly, this would not have happened. That's because they would have asked the most obvious question, who are the customers and what are their needs.
Failing to account for the work schedules of parents (the real customer ) is a 100,000 watt light sign proclaiming Inadequate Analysis.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Start time changed from 9:30 to 7:15 rather than an overnight work shift. If changed had been used instead of shifted, it would've been clearer.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
What exactly is bad about starting school at 7:15AM?
For most people, that means drop the kids off at school, then head to work.
It's only a problem if you've organized your life around the 9:30 start time. The change would be difficult for some. (I suspect that for many it would be less difficult than they make it out to be. People often complain loudly about change, then when that doesn't work they make some simple adjustments to adapt to the change.)
In Europe, many countries are considering moving the start of the school day from 8-9 am to 10, because it is simply neither healthy nor productive to wake people up so early, child or not.
MIT's algorithm wasn't elegant. It was a complete failure. Still, it is being spun as some sort of success. They're blaming the field of algorithms. The brilliant and elegant men of MIT could not fail.
All this university branding ...
School starting at 7:15 is ludicrous. Especially for older children for whom getting up early is counter-indicated by biology. (There are studies but I can't be bothered looking up references for a /. comment.) And wouldn't that mean school is then getting out for the day at 1:30 or so? Or do school days run longer in the US than I'm familiar with from when I went to school. Where and when I went to school, it ran from roughly 8:45 or 9:00 to about 3:15 or so, which meant I could get up at 7:00, do the necessary morning stuff, and *walk* to school and be there with a substantial margin before school started. Said schools provided zero bus service within towns. Maybe it's time we start allowing children to walk to school and stop bubble wrapping them? Especially the older ones, but even at age 6, I was walking to school and crossing a *highway* to do so.
If it works in theory, try something else in practice.
The real root of the parents complaint is the lack of individual situational data into the algorithm. Plug that data into the system, and the results would not be as dramatic, but I guarantee they'd still pay for the project itself multiple times over.
I wonder why they overlooked the individuals as components of the algorithm versus just scheduling the bus. It's like they were programming a motherboard bus where people are 1s and 0s instead of dealing with complex human individuals.
Here's a good exercise for them to remember to think of people:
Create a program to determine where an office full of 15 people can eat lunch on Fridays. Take into consideration, work schedules, personal restaraunt preferences, food preferences, allergies, location of eatery, menu options, service level, eatery reviews, avoid repetition, transportation, weather, traffic, eatery wait times, busyness by hour, price.
Humans negotiate a lot of that in a conversation and usually with a larger group, there's some sacrifices that need to be made. A program should be able to do this, and MIT should have done something like this before attempting the schoolbus problem.
Is that problems like this didn't happen when only one parent had to work to support a family. The 'homemaker' stayed home and handled things like weird school times, plus you know, actually teaching their own kids about life. Now both parents have to work, isn't it nice that now it takes two people working full time jobs to earn enough that used to be done by ONE full time parent? This tells me that your job is only worth half the value it used to be! Progress for corporations, at the expense of your family, indeed.
shifting school start times at some elementary schools by as much as two hours. Even more... Hundreds of families were facing a 9:30 to 7:15 a.m. shift.
Elementary school kids should start at 7:15???
When are they supposed to leave the house? 6:45?
When are they supposed to get out of bed? 5:45?
When are the parents supposed to get out of bed?
Hello!!! That is torture!!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Waking the kid at 7:00 and dropping it half dead in school at 7:15 is probably no problem, if the parents manage to get out of bed early enough and the school is close buy. Probably best is, to put it completely dressed into bed, that saves time.
But: what is a half dead kid supposed to do in school so early? Sleep another 2 hours before the classes start? I don't know a school that has enough sleeping room for early coming kids.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
"Computers can solve your problem.
Computers do not solve problems. Computers run programs written by humans. Those humans try to solve the problem via computers. When (if?) humans take responsibility for the problems they tell the computers to create, then and only then will we be able to better resolve the problems that face us.
The two hour change in the morning comes with a two hour change in the evening. Meaning that young school children would start getting home well before their parents.
The two hours earlier was for high school students, TFA doesn't mention what times elementary students would've started/ended at (and I can't be bothered to find out).
Not every parent has the time or skills to give their kids a good education at home. Not to mention that most homeschool curricula in the US are written by religion/conservative nutbags.
Because MIT's "plan" shifts a cost of $3-5 million from the school buses to an order of magnitude more money from the parents as they try to adjust their lives and work schedules to fit the changes. That was a really shitty algorithm they came up with.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
College students WERE kids more recently than the "grownups" who are under a misguided delusion that suffering (getting up at 6 am for a high school student) somehow builds character.
....it was the choice of cost function. They could have chosen the cost function so that no school had their time moved up more than, for example, 30 minutes. The end result might not have saved as much in bus costs, but by removing the objectionable results, they might have successfully implemented the optimized schedule. If they had asked parents about acceptable start times in the surveys, surely they should have exposed the problem up front.
Stupid as. Private for profit, their only purpose to serve the wallets of the investors, if they could rent the children out as slaves they would, their last priority is teaching children, their first priority profits, honestly how well do you think that will really work, it routinely fails to provide good services every where else, if fact ' cheap shit service, lawyers and lobbyists and maximum profit' are their motto (that's cheap to provide, charge maximum amount of course, else where the profits).
Basically education should be taken out of local purview and be shifted up to state level. Each school should serve a catchment zone the obviates the need for school buses, except for larger regional zones catchments.
So in the majority of instances no school buses what so ever, done and finished. If necessary more smaller school if catchments are too large to be done on foot, by bicycle or parents dropping off kids to school. Worried about the kids travelling, no problem, the highest possible number of police officers should be on the road patrolling at school start and finish times. Same should be done for the police, turn them from junk yard dog enforcers, to proper police officers caring about their community, drop the insane local show and go for properly managed state based policing.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
They experimented here one year with starting the high school students early, like 6:30 instead 7:50 to catch the bus (I'm at the end of the route and there's a few dozen houses further down the roads). It was sure hard on the teenage kids and their school work. They canceled it the next year.
As it is, the bus serves 3 or 4 schools, which are staggered by about half an hour and it seems to work well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Maybe if we didn't condition kids to accept unnecessary suffering from an early age, they'd push back against asshole bosses who made ridiculous demands of them. Give a generation or two, and we might even end up with a 40-hour average work week in the US again. Would that be so bad?
If you've ever worked with a fresh college grad, you know that they are very, very junior. College does not teach students how to be software engineers, it only teaches them how to write code, and maybe a bit of logic theory. To be worth much in business, it takes a few years of experience.
Missing the actual reaction of humans who use a system (in this case, parents dealing with bus schedules) is very typical for a young person just out of school, or in this case, still in school.
College students WERE kids more recently than the "grownups" who are under a misguided delusion that suffering (getting up at 6 am for a high school student) somehow builds character.
Bravado and posturing is all very nice, but in other countries all schools manage to start all at the same time at 9.00pm and things work out fine.
In the USA, whinging about busses costing money and requiring absurd pre-sunrise wake up times to compensate is a product of inadequate taxing and incompetent government.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I mean, what nation decides to place a higher value on an arbitrary start time for work than it does at making certain its children are able to attend school?
Oh. Wait. That would be our nation.
It's downright silly to put such demands on people. To tell them simultaneously that they must ensure proper care and education of their children and that they have to be employed while being without recourse or protection of the law should the first priority come in conflict with the second. Only psychopaths demand that sort of thing. And I don't know about the rest of you, I'm not one of those.
9 am ... but yes, you've described Americah in a nutshell..
Home schooling works superbly in the best case.
In the worst case, it's a disaster. Parents don't care, kid watches TV for a year, learns nothing and loses much of what was previously learned. You'd be surprised to find out just what portion of parents are that bad, probably close to one quarter.
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This is why spelling matters. "Lessor" still makes sense, but is probably nothing close to your intended sarcasm. The word you are hunting for is "lesser."
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That sounds like a social problem. In studies where societal interaction was not a factor, having people active for the fewest hours while it's dark out is the healthiest. If an area's schedule could be rebooted, business and work times should center around mid-day if health is the primary concern.
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If the kid is put to bed at 8 PM, he'll have no problem being wide awake at 6 AM.
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Clearly you are not a parent or haven't looked at any city maps and traced the homes of origin to the schools. It's a spider web approach, with hundreds of students coming from literally 360o around. Your plan would require 'security' for hundreds of children each way, every day. Also, 7:30AM is in the fucking *dark* in the winter.
So does context. It was obvious the poster meant lesser. But, like those grad students, you focused on the pedantic details instead of the actual picture.
PS: That lack of proper analysis on the part of MIT can easily be explained - they weren't parents and probably never gave a thought or helped out with the details of getting siblings off to school, perhaps even being influenced by their memories of hating being bussed.
Redicilous? Where do you live? In the US, Germany, and Nordic countries tardiness is never ever acceptable PERIOD. Sure you can be a few minutes late every now and then but if it is a common occurence then prepared to be disciplined.
I have to get up at 4:45am to get to work at 8am due to traffic and other variables where I live. I was late 3 times when they demanded I come in earlier last month and I was angry too. Then I thought about it and realized if I didn't be there on time they would fire me and replace me with someone else who will. I am a contractor and the customer is always right too in the US.
How do we prepare our kids if they expect to show up late and be fired all the time when they enter the workforce? Also in my neighborhood I see cars heading out starting at 4am! Obviously they have no problems and are thrilled to be up early and have a job.
But I studies international marketing in college. Germany, Nordic countries, and the US/Canada do not tolerate tardiness and have more clocks per capita than everywhere else. You can't change the culture of Americans when someone else is happy to do your job for less and be there on time.
Just go with the flow or be unemployed with no benefits as being late counts as misconduct.
http://saveie6.com/
Just wondering, do elementary schools not offer after school programs anymore? I went to after school every day when I was in elementary for 2hours until my parents could get me
Arriving to work on time sure, thats a fine value
Why is going to bed early and getting up early a value? Its all arbitrary. At least all of the shops I know of and have worked at dont really give a crap what time you show up (at least before noon so you can be there to discuss things with others or to make it to a meeting when scheduled). As long as you aren't inconveniencing someone else by not being there what does it matter, do your 8hrs of work and as long as you get it done adequately who cares
Of course this doesnt apply to shift work, when you have to be there at a certain time, but for anything non shift going to bed early and getting up early is a preference, not a value
"It's just want I asked for, but not what I want!"
Get a city map. Study the layout as concerns where people live and where they work. Get back to me when you realize five miles isn't that far from work for most people. Hell, I now live in a tiny town and know people who live on one side and work on the other. Over five miles.
What has getting up early for work as a guy over 30 to do with getting up early for school for a 6 or 7 year old?
Easy answer: nothing.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Never met a kid for which this worked. ...
And for the scenario in question, being at school at 7:15, getting up at 6AM will only rarely work. Washing, getting dressed, breakfast, traveling to school etc
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
What a fucking waste of time. Let's do it again!
come in earlier so the older kids could come in later. That would make the day care situation worse, not better. That's more than likely why people complained about the change. That plus most folks build their work hours around their kids.
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for factory work. Until you get to the fancy private schools that is...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
The MIT leftie loonies are kept in line by actually having to prove their scientific claims. Harvard, however.....
The problem for the MIT researchers was that they tried to solve a math and a scheduling problem. They'd never attended a town hall meeting in Southie, or in Charlestown, or the political loonie of anything involving the Cambridge Housing Authority. Now *that* is a bunch of overprivileged wealthy white single moms who don't actually have to worry about rent, they just worry about where to find cheaper gas for their SUV that their daddy or ex husband is paying for. Been there, done that, dealt with their spoiled rotten over-medicated kids.
Back in mu day, we walked to school.
If this is such a hassle, what is the advantage of the US school bus system?
Netherland has no school buses; all schools start between 8:15 and 8:45, and kids go to school on their own bike. Young kids are brought by their parents. Especially in a city like Boston, I would expect the distance to school to be too short to justify buses.
So, create an algorithm which migrates from the current times to the new times over a longer period of time. and does so in short segments? Hmm
What kind of security would you need? And why 7:30? Dutch schools start at 8:30 and kids walk or bike there. Young ones accompanied by their parents.
Lack of walking and biking infrastructure in the US is definitely a problem of course, but it seems to me that that's the thing that needs to get fixed here.
No it was not. They didn't try to optimize costs, wasting money to achieve social goals wasn't even frowned upon. I attended three schools in SU, all were in 8 minutes walking distance. Never had any reason to use a bus. It wasn't a weird coincidence, it was built this way.
We don't really have those problems here.
In first world countries, it is assumed that people work for a living and that the average work day spans from around 7am to 5pm with a little time for drifting. As such, in first world countries we have government subsidized day care that operates from 7am to 5pm. This means that everyone should be able to make their work window happen during those hours.
For children who are too young to be home alone before and after school, the schools are open early and there are people watching the playgrounds. Then there are programs sponsored by the government to provide after school activities (similar to day care) for kids up to around 6th grade until 5pm.
In these environments, we don't have school buses... we simply have public transportation. The parents drop off and pick up using public buses... even if you live on a farm 500km from civilization... there should be a regularly serviced bus stop nearby.
Parents often make groups to walk kids to and from school each day... and the single parent with a long way to go to get to and from work generally don't have problems because no one would consider making one of their child's friends mother have to quit their job.
Then there's the issue of making sure that mom or dad don't have that problem. Whether you're a 1%er or you're the bottom 1%, the government pays your child welfare to make sure their have what they need. This pops an extra $300-$500 a month into your bank account. So you can afford to have a slightly more flexible job or even to be a student long enough to make things easier later on.
We pay for this as tax payers in the first world and don't think anything of it. It doesn't matter whether we choose to have children of our own or not. What matters is that the people we work with need to be healthy. The people who work for us need to be healthy. The people who pick up the trash on the road need to be healthy. The people who we pass on the street need to be healthy. Otherwise, you get second world problems like school shootings because people aren't healthy. Or equally disgusting... people live in neighborhoods with security gates and guards because they're terrified of their own lives.
The first world is willing to live with a little less to get a lot more. We have governments with parties who we don't trust, but are smart enough to make sure there are enough parties that they can't make any choices without actually debating those laws openly. So while we don't trust the people in the government... we trust their enmity towards one another to keep them from hurting us. We also trust the government to make sure our tax payer money is spent in a way that will get them reelected because we can see, touch and feel how much better our lives are than the second world Americans on TV.
There are two key differences between typical US towns and those in European countries: 1) The US tend to have far fewer but larger schools. 2) Housing is far more spread out in the US and the areas were built from scratch long after travel by car became the norm. They're just not designed for walking. In the UK at least, most housing areas are designed to support walking with smaller schools spread out to improve locality. I've got 4 primary schools within 15 mins walk from my house - the nearest is less than 2 mins walk away. The nearest high school is less than 20 mins walk and the route only involves 30mph limit residential roads. This just doesn't happen in US towns.
Not to mention that the first sentence in the second paragraph is a total fucking trainwreck.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
In the USA, whinging about busses costing money and requiring absurd pre-sunrise wake up times to compensate is a product of inadequate taxing and incompetent government.
Not only that but one can also complain that it's primarily the "fault" of the low income parents because they have no flexibility in their jobs.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Hmm, I get up in the 4AM to 5AM range most mornings. No, it's not torture, since I don't bother with an alarm (actually, I have a 6AM alarm, because there are a couple things that absolutely must be done before 7, but I've only been awakened by that alarm twice this month)....
No, humans aren't hardwired to any particular wake-up time (other than dawn), nor to any particular sleep time (other than sunset).
Now, are modern parents/children wired to particular times for waking and sleeping? Well, I guess that depends on what TV shows are on at any particular hour....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Walk? Bike? When I was in high school, the high school was about five miles away from where we lived. The same was true with junior high, as a matter of fact. This is far from uncommon in the US. People from Europe often don't grasp how *big* the US is until they come here, and then they wonder why we don't walk anywhere. The answer is that it's almost always too damn far.
Who says anything about tardiness? What's wrong with shifting ACTUAL start times (work or school) to better accomodate human circadian rhythms?
Ding ding ding. My kids go to a private school that costs far less to run than an equivilent public school. The education is better, no stinky busses, starts at 9am, ends at 4:30, kids love it, and it is located a few minutes from the house.
Funny how all the neckbeards on here fixate on the complex algorithm when the solution is a simple distributed system.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
The US mil would have some idea of the education standards of who was accepted. The educational needs and later quality of its officers.
The quality of US math, medicine, legal services, industrial skill, universities could be measured.
Later IQ testing gives a way to rank most normal advanced nations AC.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Work as in an average day shift and school start times got set to some system everyone could work with in the USA.
Working people do not have the ability to push the time they would like to get to work out by a few hours.
That job would go to someone new who could get to work on time.
Re "school is close buy" not every school is close.
Thats why the time needed is such a consideration to get correct.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Work for the parents starts at set time. They have to be at 'work' at a set time. That work shift time cannot be changed for many working people.
Distances and time needed has to count back from that very important start of work time.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
According to research cited in Matthew Walker's excellent book, teenagers shift their sleep schedule later by a couple of hours compared to their younger years. This may be because of evolutionary benefits to a tribe of having some people in a village awake to watch for danger when others sleep. A couple of unsupervised hours at night also provides a chance for teenagers to learn to operate independently from their parents while still being part of the family, village, and tribe. So, if you take a teenager who naturally may go to sleep close to midnight and wake up at 10am, and you force them to wake up a 6am to get to a 7am class, you are disrupting their natural sleep cycle which has all kinds of health an cognitive consequences (since naturally they will still stay up late and will thus get less sleep). Examples in the book include a huge reduction in car accidents in an area among teenagers who are better rested. Studies also show vastly better test scores for well-rested teens. Lack of sleep may also be contributing to the teen obesity crisis, the teen heart disease crisis, teen mental illness -- among other negative health impacts from lack of sleep.
More on this: https://www.sleepfoundation.or...
As an additional complexity, some people are naturally "larks" (early morning risers, about 10%, according to link below) and some are naturally "night owls" (later risers, about 20%) while most others are "hummingbirds" in the middle. There is very little that can be done about this since this sleep preference is genetically determined to a significant degree -- although sleep schedule may change as we age as above. Caffeine may help some night owls get going anyway in the morning -- but there remains a significant health impact of getting too sleep -- since most night owls simply are not going to go to bed earlier even if they are forced to wake up earlier.
https://www.nasw.org/users/lla...
People suffer if their sleep schedule does not reflect their natural cycle. So, forcing a night owl to perform early in the morning is just a bad idea -- whatever the person's age. Similarly, the cognitive performance of someone who stays up a few hours late or who gets a few hours too little sleep is typically similar to that of someone who is drunk -- which is why drowsy driving kills more people than drunk driving. If an early morning school schedule is terrible for a regular teenager, it is going to be even worse for a night owl.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
A long long time ago, known as the '80s, we still had people called "general business consultants". These people were hired by businesses, for lots of money, purely to look around and make decisions. They didn't justify those decisions (with any sort of data) at all. They simply said thing like "I believe this is the best course of action.". You believed them because they had a good track record and experience in the field, or you didn't.
Nowadays, general business consultants have been replaced by data engineers -- people who like to collect huge amounts of data points, and have dumb-ass machines make decisions based on those data points. Alas, like every study that's ever been done with data points, it all comes down to whether or not you have enough of the right data points, and not too many of the wrong data points. And that's a skill that absolutely none of these data engineers has ever had.
I can make the cost of transportation absolutely $0. It's really easy. I'll just cancel all of the buses. Oh, wait, you actually want buses? I hadn't thought about that. Okay, I'll take your children at midnight. Oh? You don't like that either? Here's a thought, I'll get more buses, not stagger anything, and you'll be happy. Oh wait, we don't have that much money?
Look at that. Balancing costs and services can't make everyone happy. Maybe happiness costs money, or customers. Shock of a lifetime.
Maybe one day, data engineers will be able to put in the very important data point that says we're never trying to solve a problem. Solving any problem is ridiculously easy. We're always trying to solve a problem within another problem -- within a context. Like, in this case, within a parent's business day. That's hard, if not impossible, every time.
Engineers fail to take into account human factors and respect the way things have evolved over time. It will be the same with self-driving cars and vehicles. There are the laws of the road, and then there are the human laws of the road - and they are not the same. You can program in fixed laws, but you cannot account for the understandings and accepted abnormal behaviors of people in software.
E Proelio Veritas.
That's why we need more SOCIALISM. That's right. Socialism. If a 35-40 hour work week were the norm and respected, and parents were allowed enough free time to care for their kids, maybe such problems wouldn't arise. Two working parent families are fine, but hours should be cut and made flexible enough to deal with the situation.
As far as making up your wife's share of income, there's an option. Downsize. Do you live in a single-family home on a bigger lot? Sell it, buy a duplex in a less posh part of town (often available for the same price as single-family 'burb homes). Rent one apartment, have some other poor sod paying a large % of your mortgage and taxes.
Keep cutting. No need for a new iPad every year, one phone and e-device per person, go on the cheapest cell plan possible, drive used cars that are paid off.
Who knows, you might make up enough money to take a nice backpacking trip every year :D
Problem is that the helicopter parents will start yowling that their Biffy and Buffy might get hit by a car or abducted by aliens if they don't have a nice safe bus or can't drive their kids to school.
Wait, five miles is supposed to be a long way? For a child presumably in peak physical condition?
Drug your kids? Seriously?
Also, early school start times still sucked sweaty donkey yarbles before mobile devices and the Intarwebz.
A few themes here made me want to comment: 1. Who pays for the schooling system 2. Choice within the schooling system 3. Purpose of the schooling system To point #1: everyone who pays taxes. That includes myself and my wife, who both work hard for our money and who donâ(TM)t - and never will - have kids. As such, I have a stake in this but donâ(TM)t receive any direct benefit. To point #2: as someone who grew up and was educated in the UK the choice available was simple: any of the local schools within a certain catchment area/radius, or pay to go to a private (fee paying) school. The local schools all had generally the same start times (8:30 - 9:00) and you were expected to be there. It wasnâ(TM)t the schoolâ(TM)s responsibility how you got there, and there would be penalties for being late. If you lived out in a remote village then the city would ensure a bus was available (either existing public transport or a school bus). It was your responsibility to catch the bus at whatever time it was due in order to be at school on time. This was an early lesson in the requirements of adulthood. Since we were at school with kids from the same streets, sometimes literally next-door neighbors, we knew many kids at school and could all walk/travel to and from the school together, making it safer and ensuring we all got there on time. Also, it was common that at least one parent would have some schedule flexibility on a particular day so after school a whole bunch of us would go play at that house until our parents were home. To point #3: the basic and undeniable purpose of schooling is to learn. Racial/gender/religious/ considerations are nice but shouldnâ(TM)t drive any of the decisions around which school you can attend. If you leave school without the ability to write, listen, process information, and contribute new ideas then itâ(TM)s a fail. Not being able to do this but having a firm grasp of random sensitivities is still a fail. The number of folks that decide to have kids but only factor in the cost of things like a pushchair, diapers, clothing, etc. rather than the entire cost of their upbringing continues to disappoint me. If you want your kid to go to school A at times B and with diversity C, then donâ(TM)t expect the _public_ system that I help pay for to meet these goals. Canâ(TM)t afford the choices youâ(TM)d want your kid(s) to have? Then you should either not have kids, adjust your expectations, or find some way to make more money. This entitlement crap drives me crazy. Growing up, we were always taught that schooling was a privilege - not a right - and that we should treat it as such. The number of parents who believe that society should pander to accommodate their kids is jarring. You made them, theyâ(TM)re your responsibility, they get no special rights over adults, and I will admonish them if they are doing something that bothers me...exactly as I would do to an adult. Iâ(TM)m content to pay taxes for systems that benefit the wider society but donâ(TM)t directly benefit me, as I recognize that they improve the society I live in and hence improve my quality of life. On a couple of additional points... Homeschooling is a terrible idea for all the reasons already provided (parents are terrible educators, parents canâ(TM)t be expert enough in all subjects, kids grow up with relationship problems, religious nutbaggery, etc,). Safety of kids on the commute: statistics show that kids are safer now than in the past and itâ(TM)s the (social) media who are responsible for whipping people up into a froth about such concerns.
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The real question is, what's wrong with the kidlets walking to school in the dark (or more likely twilight) in an era of streetlights and cell phones? Make everyone walk -- maybe this will be the push required for Americans to support livable neighborhoods with sidewalks and bike paths instead of suburban-hell cul-de-sacs off a 4-lane road.
That's because while they might be hot shot programmers, they are crappy analysts.
I suspect that any grad student from a, "lessor" school, but had been trained in analyzing requirements correctly, this would not have happened. That's because they would have asked the most obvious question, who are the customers and what are their needs.
Failing to account for the work schedules of parents (the real customer ) is a 100,000 watt light sign proclaiming Inadequate Analysis.
I don't personally know either of the grad students, but I've corresponded via email with Sebastien, and I can say he seems like a decent, thoughtful guy who does in fact understand all the issues. If you had bothered to RTFA, you'd see that they ran their program multiple times with multiple criteria (thousands of times to be exact). The reality is, people just don't like change, even if you can demonstrate that a) the systems (jobs, businesses, etc.) will adjust to accommodate and b) things will be measurably improved after. It really was a political failure -- the program did exactly what it was required to do. The people who ordered the results failed to get the required buy-in from the public to implement those results.
There is a fallacy of averages in play here.
We try to provide an education for all students, and there are federal laws protecting that right to an education. But some students cost more to educate than others. Special needs students are very expensive to educate. Most charter and voucher schools find ways to get out of taking their fair share of special needs students, and few parents will have the resources to home school them.
But voucher systems typically pay the district-wide average of student cost, rather than the average cost of educating a non-special-needs student. As a result, they overpay for what the schools are delivering. Students who are less costly to educate leave the public school system, leaving that system with a higher percentage of those expensive students while simultaneously damaging its economies of scale. The result is a downward spiral of public education.
What about going back to neighborhood schools?
More grades in one building isn't so bad - when you aren't scooping them up from all over the city. Bonus, they could take the same bus and wouldn't need staggered start times.
WTF?
You really think a 'hookers and blow' will have more impact than education?
Sure, give them a voucher, let them pick a school. But cash? You must be joking.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
In CA 'homeschooling' is what they call it when the student is truant to the point the schools are losing federal money on the deal.
The kid gets designated 'homeschooled' and stops going to school. The 'teachers' call once per week to bitch about 'no homework', give him/her a joke of a test once in a while. The sweet federal money flows.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This can call be solved with a single ALTER TABLE to add a column "user_preferred_start_time" and reruning their gigawattBS algo.
But no, let's make a political post on /. or some other crappy news site.
Noting that not all fee paying schools are public schools (most are not). So we have state schools which are free to attend, private schools that cost money, and public schools which are all very old and very elitist, think Eton, Harrow, Rugby etc. Note the oldest school in the UK (and world as I understand it) with continuous teaching since 692 AD is technically not a Public school, and the state school in the next town to mine growing up known locally as Qegs or the Queen Elizabeth Grammer School, where thats Elizabeth the First, and the school is getting on for 500 years old. So its not just about age.
That is a very concise summary of the problem with charters that can skip out on the requirements that public schools must operate under.
5 miles isn't a problem. I biked 10 km to school from age 12. My wife 20 km (she lived in a very rural area). A big part of the problem is of course the complete lack of bicycling in the US. That takes away kids' mobility.
How about somewhere in the middle? Schools that aren't enormous, small enough to have them within a reasonable distance, but large enough to have at least one teacher per year group?
Blah blah blah, a kid's more likely to be hit by lightning than be abducted by a psychopath. Most abductions are one parent in a divorce or a family member. Stop drinking hyped-up media Koolaid.
What would happen if you were not in your seat at 8? Would the world stop? If it would you must be very important.
My world would stop frankly.
I agree on principal that everyone would benefit if we worked less and hired more people and stopped obsessing over time.
But in reality my posts are about hurting parents who need to work and an intollerent society of not showing up early or before 9am outside of programmer jobs.
I had to not work for 2 years because of this problem as kids had early release at 1:30 Friday's to appease the teachers union. No one would hire me as a result.
http://saveie6.com/
Which part of:
The kid is tortured to get up at 5:45 (to get to the school so early it will spent the first hours sleeping), don't you get?
No, humans aren't hardwired to any particular wake-up time (other than dawn), nor to any particular sleep time (other than sunset).
Seems you never worked in an environment where it was obvious: yes, 50% of humans are hardwired. E.g. me. And the others aren't, like you.
E.g. the typical, hard wired, "I get up somewhat early and like to work from 8:30 to 15:30", that is the classical school teacher. You will hardly find one who likes to sleep into the day, or gets up for fun at 4:00 in the morning.
If you can shift your sleep and wake times around, you belong to the happy 50% people who can. I guess it is probably only 25% even. As I don't know anyone in person who can do that.
Well, I guess that depends on what TV shows are on at any particular hour.... Kids usually have no TV in their rooms (where I come from).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Note that a public school in the UK means the opposite - a private school.
I'm from the Uk and I've never heard a private school called a public school. Private schools cost fees, public schools are free and do all the catchment stuff.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
My impression is that the US has thoroughly neglected all forms of non-car infrastructure. Some straight bike and foot paths running straight through a suburban cul-de-sac maze would do a lot of good.
Every kid in elementary school that goes to "before care" or any other early program lives this life just fine.
If necessary more smaller school
A lot more in some places. In rural areas people can live many miles from the nearest school. You would need little bitty schools that serve the handful of families in walking or biking distance. I think the one-room rural schoolhouse is probably not going to make a comeback though.
I think there are too many untrustworthy parents for varying reasons, to trust giving them a lump-sum cash payment and expect them to responsibly spend that on their childrens' education...
What a terrible idea. My high schooler starts at 7:15 and it's just too early for teenagers. My middle schooler has trouble waking up for 8:30 school and I'm worried how he's going to cope when he starts high school.
Conversely buy enough buses to serve both elementary/middle schools and high schools and the problem goes away too.
It's not about the buses, it's about the bus drivers. My current town has 3 different start times staggered so that they can have full time 8-5 bus drivers. They basically work 4 hours in the morning and 4 hours in the afternoon with a lunch break like a normal job. Where I grew up, the bus drivers were mostly farmers or people who had other jobs. They would drive for 1 hour in the morning, go to work and then drive 1 hour in the afternoon. My current school also has a large number of before and after hour care which is even more needed now that schedules are staggered and the teenager can't be home to take care of the grade schooler. It seems like another easy solution to the busing problem is counter intuitively to extend the school day. If kids went to school the standard 8-5 then there would be less need for bus drivers and more bus drivers available. People could work a normal day job and then still run the buses in the afternoon. Another option would be to have the school teachers drive the buses. If the school teachers did the busing during a normal 8a-3p/9a-4p school day they would have a normal 8 hour 7a-4p/8a-5p 40 hour week.
I doubt it.
As there are no such elementary schools in Europe. That would be insane.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If an area's schedule could be rebooted, business and work times should center around mid-day if health is the primary concern.
Actually, business/work and leisure times would center around mid-day if health is the primary concern.
The reason many people (especially nearer the equator) prefer summertime / daylight saving is because it also provides them with daylight in their leisure time. This preference is obviously more prevalent in rich countries, because people don't have to work around the clock to sustain themselves and sitting in your garden in daylight is a lot better than at night.
I think it's because these critics are smug elitist better-than-everyone programmers that reinforce their elitism by talking shit about, and loving finding faults in, other programmers.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
You don't have like a before care school system for single or working parents?
Sadly not really. And if we had more of those, it would not start 7:15 but 8:45 so parents can be at work around 9:00.
While there are jobs that start more early, it makes no sense to bring kids even more early to child care.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.