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So this is an offshoot of the K-12 Teaching Megathread posted here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3563040&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 After some discussion it was probably a good idea to split off some of the more political views and arguing of policy from the megathread that is more about the experiences and questions of being in education. Purpose: The idea behind this D&D thread is to debate the state of the US educational system. Since many of us participating in this thread are teachers or working in other positions in education, the main rule is Show Your Work! (real sources, not bullshit...APA citation not required) Topics: Some of the more popular topics to debate in education... 1. Systemic problems plaguing education (poverty, anti-intellectualism, religious morals, etc) 2. Charter schools, vouchers, and private education 3. Role of federal, state, and local governments on educational policy/funding 4. Goals and nature of education itself (standardization, Common Core, testing, college and career readiness, NCLB/RTTT/ESSA) 5. Role of schools (sports, health services, sex ed, childcare, etc) 6. Politicization of education (unions, school boards, administration, government officials, etc) 7. Curriculum 8. Myths of education and the educational workplace 9. Teachers (training, evaluation, autonomy, discipline of students, retention, etc) 10. Parents/students/communities 11. International comparisons to US education 12. Special education Reputable Resources: National Center for Educational Statistics - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/ Educational Resources Information Center - https://eric.ed.gov/ Gallup Educational Polling Data - http://www.gallup.com/poll/1612/education.aspx Starting Topic: I come from a social studies background, so I'm going to start off with current events and the horrible waste of air that just got confirmed as the new secretary of education, Betsy DeVos. I'm not going to post a picture of her because honestly I don't need to as it haunts my dreams nightly as of late, just one step below Kellyanne Conway and a blender having a love child. So in the republican's wet dream of deconstructing the federal government as much as possible, Trump has nominated almost every single position with someone who despises the very departments they will be running. For the department of education, Trump chose a wealthy dilettante with zero experience in public education (never been in a public school, never graduated from a public school, never taught ever, never had her kids in public school, and only advocates for vouchers) to run the department. This is like asking a dog walker to run the military or a garbage can to run the department of energy. It's almost comical in a 'watch the world burn' kind of way, until we realize that they are loving with the entire country's children for their own laughs. Not a single one of these fuckers have taught in a low income school before and if I seem pretty pissed about it, it's because I am. I've spent the last ten years in education and I'm to the point where honestly I think it's going to take an entire states' worth of teachers striking to get the public to realize how bad it's getting in education at this point. Until teachers walk out and basically say 'gently caress you, fix it' I don't see anything changing for the better soon. .....and with that, let the chorus of teachers are just whiney bitches who need to shut up with their cushy rear end jobs begin... Oxphocker fucked around with this message at 05:02 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 04:53
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The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed showcasing the narrative DeVos will soon be pushing: any resistance to school privatization and Christianization is the corrupt lazy teachers' unions trying to extract rent from a failing system. It's gonna be bad.
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Feb 9, 2017 05:03
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Cease to Hope posted:The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed showcasing the narrative DeVos will soon be pushing: any resistance to school privatization and Christianization is the corrupt lazy teachers' unions trying to extract rent from a failing system. Yup... Just a side note on the public perception of teachers....how many out there would like to spend $80k on a college education, pay for all your own licensure/testing, to go into a job that starts off at around $35k with no bathroom breaks, buying your own work supplies, a guarantee that you have to keep going back to school to keep your job, work +60 hours/6 days a week, be poo poo on constantly (figuratively and sometimes literally), just to be told you're lazy? Sometimes I really want to stab some of these people because I know they wouldn't last a week in my job... Also, since we're talking about extracting rent out of the system, how about dispelling some myths of educational spending as well: http://www.vox.com/2015/3/25/8284637/school-spending-US And the testing bullshit: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/11/29/13testcosts.h32.html quote:Standardized-testing regimens cost states some $1.7 billion a year overall, or a quarter of 1 percent of total K-12 spending in the United States, according to a new report on assessment finances. Oxphocker fucked around with this message at 05:13 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 05:07
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Last December, Vice ran a good if heartbreaking piece about what DeVos and her ilk had done to Detroit public schools. And HUGE PUBES A PLUS wrote an excellent OP for CSPAM's DeVos thread and I'm just gonna steal part of it! HUGE PUBES A PLUS posted:The DeVos family uses all that sweet bank to fund their many projects and causes. Members of the Dutch Reformed Church (now Christian Reformed) they practice Dominion Theology, which means they want the United States to be a Christian-dominated theocracy. Dick and Betsy DeVos support all the usual fundamentalist causes: Anti LGBT, anti choice, anti public schools, anti union, anti anything and anyone who doesn't think and believe exactly the way they do. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 05:13
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loving amen on that DeVos poo poo. People don't know just how important public education funding is because in middle-class neighborhoods, the middle-class families subsidize the schools' needs. Like how loving ridiculous is it that my school's PTA fundraises for poo poo like our science fair? But they do. Because our district and school funds only go so far, and so the school science fair happens because the parents fundraise for it. That's bullshit. I've been all cute and silly with my students and their families, saying that all of my eighth graders just suddenly magically became teenagers in the last month, but I'll be honest with SA. My kids are loving terrified of their future and they aren't coping well. Betsy loving DeVos and what she represents is going to gently caress up their lives. Teaching was already hard before this poo poo, now it is loving exhausting.
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Feb 9, 2017 05:29
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Here's an article on what an education secretary's powers are: https://m.lasvegassun.com/news/2017/feb/08/a-look-at-the-job-of-education-secretary/ Phone posting but overall could be worse, seems the damage she can cause is limited.
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Feb 9, 2017 06:14
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so what actually is the solition to fixing bad public schools full of poor black people? i'm guessing the answer is there is none, without somehow fixing the poverty first right? may as well ask again in a new thread
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Feb 9, 2017 11:34
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icantfindaname posted:so what actually is the solition to fixing bad public schools full of poor black people? i'm guessing the answer is there is none, without somehow fixing the poverty first right? may as well ask again in a new thread You pretty much have to improve the SES of these areas to get much improvement out of these schools. A few charters that cherry-pick and cheat will outperform urban schools but the public education system has a different goal. There'll be a lot of guff about teacher quality but paying fast-food manager level wages to master's educated people is not going to attract the best and brightest to the positions and this is with unions in play. Imagine how poo poo it's going to be when the NEA gets broken.
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Feb 9, 2017 11:42
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what does 'SES' mean?
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Feb 9, 2017 11:59
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icantfindaname posted:what does 'SES' mean? socio-economic status.
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Feb 9, 2017 12:06
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icantfindaname posted:so what actually is the solition to fixing bad public schools full of poor black people? i'm guessing the answer is there is none, without somehow fixing the poverty first right? may as well ask again in a new thread One really good way is actually forced integration: There's several cases people have studied, and it even benefits all students. Some more reading: https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/transcript http://www.syracuse.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/10/syracuse_professor_desegregation_is_the_best_way_to_improve_our_schools_commenta.html You'll hear unholy hell from pearl-clutching closet racists (liberal, so ten degrees to the right when it affects them personally), but it would benefit all students in a lot of ways, and would be a great for combating racism in the long run. Poverty is devastating to children's learning too, so any anti-poverty programs are going to do a lot of help as well. Integration and anti-poverty programs would do amazing things.
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Feb 9, 2017 12:47
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Part of the problem is the way we fund schools with local taxes. While it only accounts for approximately 20% of most districts budgets...the local tax portion is why schools in nicer areas can afford better things vs poor areas that have to run everything on a shoestring. It causes problems because those better off, already have better schools so they aren't going to vote for change and those who need it are often already disenfranchised to begin with. That is partially why the forced integration in the south was a federal directive because the local populations will never support it.
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Feb 9, 2017 13:51
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Oxphocker posted:Part of the problem is the way we fund schools with local taxes. While it only accounts for approximately 20% of most districts budgets...the local tax portion is why schools in nicer areas can afford better things vs poor areas that have to run everything on a shoestring. It causes problems because those better off, already have better schools so they aren't going to vote for change and those who need it are often already disenfranchised to begin with. That is partially why the forced integration in the south was a federal directive because the local populations will never support it. There was a book that came out in 1991 that detailed this whole thing (Savage Inequalities) and literally nothing in it has changed one iota. The descriptions of schools in East St. Louis are basically those of Detriot area schools.
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Feb 9, 2017 14:09
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Oxphocker posted:Part of the problem is the way we fund schools with local taxes. While it only accounts for approximately 20% of most districts budgets...the local tax portion is why schools in nicer areas can afford better things vs poor areas that have to run everything on a shoestring. It causes problems because those better off, already have better schools so they aren't going to vote for change and those who need it are often already disenfranchised to begin with. That is partially why the forced integration in the south was a federal directive because the local populations will never support it. This is something I'm curious about. I teach in a wealthy district in California, and I've been hearing a lot of talk lately about how we receive some of the lowest per-student funding in the state due to the assumption that we can make it up with our own fundraising. Are there any other states that use this model? What have the results been? I can and will do my own research here, but it's a point I would like to see discussed.
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Feb 9, 2017 15:33
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Oxphocker posted:work +60 hours/6 days a week According to the following BLS survey, this is unusual. The average full-time teacher works about 40 hours a week, which is a pretty reasonable workweek, IMO. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf I remember at about the time I graduated from high school, public school teachers in my hometown successfully negotiated for a shorter workday of seven hours. There may be many bad aspects about being employed as a public school teacher, but it is hard for me to believe that having to work an excessive number of hours is one of them.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:09
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Has there ever been a time when public schools weren't everyone's favorite whipping boy?
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Feb 9, 2017 16:36
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Oxphocker posted:Yup... What level of education are we talking about though? If it is Lower or High school then the general stress and pressure will eventually break them but I am pretty sure putting people with no experience teaching in a Middle School environment is tantamount to a war crime. In all seriousness though the idea of treating Schools as a business sickens me. Education is too important to just treat it as just another business venture.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:51
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silence_kit posted:According to the following BLS survey, this is unusual. The average full-time teacher works about 40 hours a week, which is a pretty reasonable workweek, IMO. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf I remember at about the time I graduated from high school, public school teachers in my hometown successfully negotiated for a shorter workday of seven hours. They also mark work and prepare lessons outside their classroom hours.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:53
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BarbarianElephant posted:They also mark work and prepare lessons outside their classroom hours. Those hours are included in the survey results.
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Feb 9, 2017 16:59
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looking forward to this renaissance of experimentation w/ dewey-esque progressive education, OP
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Feb 9, 2017 17:01
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Uranium Phoenix posted:One really good way is actually forced integration: Funny thing about integration is that when you put white kids in a poor black school, all of a sudden their is money to fix poo poo.
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Feb 9, 2017 17:21
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Is there a good resource on charter school performance by state, and includes data on students that were kicked out for under performing or being special ed, along with relevant state regulations and if that makes an impact? Or is that data more dispersed and obfuscated? I am particularly interested in Arizona, because I have family who swear by charter schools here being better than regular schools, but their "data" is entirely personal experience drawn from their own non-disabled children and a belief that they received a better education, particularly because teachers could be fired (one was fired for teaching ancient aliens in a science course, or so goes the anecdote I've heard) and whether this is due to higher standards for teachers or just a greater revolving door to kick teachers out and push a certain curriculum. I've found some studies on ERIC suggesting that they're typically poor for students with disabilities and that overall their performance varies to a greater degree than public schools, and I am wondering how this compares to other states like Michigan. Also, teacher tenure and unions protecting lovely teachers above all else are not a thing that exists at any real level is it? Because the same family also swears that this is the case.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:42
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silence_kit posted:According to the following BLS survey, this is unusual. The average full-time teacher works about 40 hours a week, which is a pretty reasonable workweek, IMO. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf I remember at about the time I graduated from high school, public school teachers in my hometown successfully negotiated for a shorter workday of seven hours. A shorter physical workday does not mean less hours, because work for a teacher does not stop when their contract ends. Just from your data alone, I am seeing: -"Teachers employed full time worked 24 fewer minutes per weekday and 42 fewer minutes per Saturday than other full-time professionals. On Sundays, teachers and other professionals worked, on average, about the same amount of time." So, starting here as a baseline (assuming everyone is working outside of contract hours), Teachers are only working about 3 hours less than the average professional - which, considering I am contract for about 7 hours a day does make sense, since my work day is shorter. But then we start getting into the extra work: -"Thirty percent of teachers worked at home on an average day, compared with 20 percent of other full-time professionals." Nearly 1/3rd of the teacher workforce works at home EVERY day, vs. 1/5th of the professional workforce. No numbers attached. Here's the important one: -"Teachers were more likely to work on a Sunday than were other full-time professionals. Fifty-one percent of teachers worked on an average Sunday, compared with 30 percent of other full-time professionals." 50% of the teacher workforce is working on sunday. Half vs. 1/3rd. And again, there are no numbers attached to this, so we don't know how long they are working (although the worktime spike chart probably gives us an idea). And there's even a statement that does back up outside of contract work as well: -"At any hour during the 8-hour stretch between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m., 25 percent to 30 percent of teachers who did at least some work that day were working." Most contract days end a little after 3PM, so we'll write off the first hour, but that's still an extra 7 hours in which teachers are putting in extra work, every day. Even if we take this at a generous baseline of "a teacher works an extra hour a day", that's now 2 hours over the average professional work day we discussed initially, and not including Saturday or Sunday. And there's a good chance that what this ACTUALLY means is "most teachers are working for this 7 hour stretch because you can pick an hour and 30% of them will be working." Someone who is more familiar with study language can refute me on that if I'm wrong. So, your data is pretty telling in supporting that most teachers work AT LEAST 2-4 hours beyond the typical 40 hour work week a week, and again, that's assuming a very general baseline and putting in some guesswork on my part because there really aren't many numbers attached to the study you've linked. In my experience? Most teachers get 1 45-55min prep a day in a typical school system / 1 100 minute prep every other day in a full block, which is the only time that we have during our 7 hour work day for anything that's not teaching, because we're not doing a lot of grading while we have students in our room. That's also ignoring things teachers do during their preps like responding to e-mails and phonecalls, going to special ed meetings, parent conferences, etc. The average teacher has between 5-6 classes a day, with let's say (again a generous) 30 students a day. On any given day that is between 110-180 HW assignments coming in a day, which need to be graded. I guarantee that is not going to take that single hour at home that would put them at 44 hours. I'd love to see another study with actual numbers attached, and I'd love to see more specifically what you are citing from this one that is showing a "reasonable" 40 hour work week? Oh, and final "fun fact" regarding "well teachers work so little during the summer, look at the data!" - I am only paid for 11 out of the 12 months of the year. This is not uncommon.
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Feb 9, 2017 18:42
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KiteAuraan posted:Is there a good resource on charter school performance by state, and includes data on students that were kicked out for under performing or being special ed, along with relevant state regulations and if that makes an impact? Or is that data more dispersed and obfuscated? Yeah, this is actually something I have always wondered about as well. I worked briefly for a charter school that advertised "100% college placement!," but I'm fairly certain that was fabricated because I rotated between 4 school sites on a 2 week basis, so when I would return to school sites after 6 weeks my roster would be dramatically different because kids were no longer attending. It's easy to achieve 100% placement when you only keep the kids who want to go to college and are doing well?
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Feb 9, 2017 18:44
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Quidthulhu posted:
That's saying that at any given hour between 2 and 10, 25-30% of teachers are working, not that that 30% is working 7 extra hours per day. Between 2 and 6 nearly 100% of other professions are working. Your average teacher puts in an hour or two of work at some point between 2 and 10 every day, but still works fewer hours per week than many other professions.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:13
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Quidthulhu posted:Yeah, this is actually something I have always wondered about as well. I worked briefly for a charter school that advertised "100% college placement!," but I'm fairly certain that was fabricated because I rotated between 4 school sites on a 2 week basis, so when I would return to school sites after 6 weeks my roster would be dramatically different because kids were no longer attending. It's easy to achieve 100% placement when you only keep the kids who want to go to college and are doing well? it's also easy to achieve 100% college placement if you take the bottom slice of kids and pressure them heavily to attend community college even if it's not in their best interest
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Feb 9, 2017 19:15
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As soon as a metric becomes a goal in and of itself, all hope is lost. There's no way these people, who clearly don't understand that, should be put in charge of anything more complex than a peanut cart down in the park.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:21
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BigFactory posted:That's saying that at any given hour between 2 and 10, 25-30% of teachers are working, not that that 30% is working 7 extra hours per day. Between 2 and 6 nearly 100% of other professions are working. Your average teacher puts in an hour or two of work at some point between 2 and 10 every day, but still works fewer hours per week than many other professions. We all start at 8, though, and most of the working world starts at 9. Average teacher work day: 8-3, plus 1-2 hours a day = 8-9 hours a day Average professional work day: 9-5, plus 1-2 hours a day = 9-10 hours a day So again, this is in line with us having an hour shorter work day every day, but does not account for the 50% Sunday time, which AT A BASELINE would even it out to totally even. Pushing a narrative that "teachers work far less than working professionals" is untrue, and I would still wager that if we had some data with actual numbers attached rather than blanket "well they are working" you would find that teachers ARE working far more than the average working professional. Or the other option is that every single teacher in the nation has weekly meetings where we come up with ways to fabricate how hard our lives are so we can...complain? I don't even know. Why would every teacher in the world say "it sucks that I work so many unpaid hours just to make my job be BASELINE FUNCTIONAL" if it weren't the case?
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Feb 9, 2017 19:40
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There's currently a Supreme Court case pending about special education and the definition of "equal treatment" and I pose the question, which form of equal protection should we use in cases of failing schools, special education, and similar expensive problems, equality of opportunity (funding) or equality of outcome? To me, it seems moronic that we spend 70k/per student per year on special ed kids to make everyone feel better. Any rational school funding scheme should ideally fund every student equally well (accounting for cost of living diffs) and let the chips fall where they may.
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Feb 9, 2017 19:56
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ah good, i wondered when someone would start calling for eugenic action against the speds
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Feb 9, 2017 19:59
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So is it also time to get rid of all handicapped entrances?
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Feb 9, 2017 20:07
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boner confessor posted:ah good, i wondered when someone would start calling for eugenic action against the speds Not wanting to throw away inordinate amounts of money on special education is not eugenics at all. Society should absolutely consider the costs and benefits of special education policy
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Feb 9, 2017 20:07
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on the left posted:Not wanting to throw away inordinate amounts of money on special education is not eugenics at all. Society should absolutely consider the costs and benefits of special education policy So should we also bar kids from disadvantaged homes as they require more resources to teach then a peer from a more stable family?
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Feb 9, 2017 20:10
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We are really going full Hitler today.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:11
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Hunt11 posted:So should we also bar kids from disadvantaged homes as they require more resources to teach then a peer from a more stable family? maybe let's not argue with the guy calling for locking the autistic away in closets as if he's completely sincere and not just dumping low effort trolls into the thread
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Feb 9, 2017 20:12
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Oxphocker posted:Part of the problem is the way we fund schools with local taxes. This is true but incomplete. While property tax bases are a problem, poor kids in poor schools do worse even when you spend more on them. Poverty means malnutrition, trauma, and exhausted parents, and there's only so much a school can do to compensate for that. (Free meal programs really help.) "Failing schools" and "school choice" often end up reinforcing the already-extant patterns of trying to avoid having to go to school around poor kids, by defining any school those kids go to as failing.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:13
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Hunt11 posted:So should we also bar kids from disadvantaged homes as they require more resources to teach then a peer from a more stable family? This is an argument to fix those problems through the social welfare system, not to inefficiently spend education dollars hoping to set up some sort of backdoor welfare system. If education is designed as a wealth redistribution scheme, don't be surprised when conservatives have no problem eviscerating the education system. boner confessor posted:maybe let's not argue with the guy calling for locking the autistic away in closets as if he's completely sincere and not just dumping low effort trolls into the thread lol at the false consensus of "How could anyone seriously be against infinite money being spent on special ed?"
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Feb 9, 2017 20:23
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Deadspin profiled DeVos, although it's nothing that hasn't already been posted in this thread. Cease to Hope fucked around with this message at 20:25 on Feb 9, 2017 |
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Feb 9, 2017 20:23
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on the left posted:There's currently a Supreme Court case pending about special education and the definition of "equal treatment" and I pose the question, which form of equal protection should we use in cases of failing schools, special education, and similar expensive problems, equality of opportunity (funding) or equality of outcome? Did you have that red title before you posted this? If not, you earned it here.
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Feb 9, 2017 20:27
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Cease to Hope posted:This is true but incomplete. While property tax bases are a problem, poor kids in poor schools do worse even when you spend more on them. Poverty means malnutrition, trauma, and exhausted parents, and there's only so much a school can do to compensate for that. (Free meal programs really help.) Do you have a citation on this? I'd be interested to read the scholarship on spending more on poor schools and having the students performance directly negatively correlate. Thanks!
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Feb 9, 2017 20:29
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