9 ms·

The feds could also do some easy, central infrastructure things that would reduce school and local govt funding needs in the first place. If the schools or loc

by imglorp 11y ago

The feds could also do some easy, central infrastructure things that would reduce school and local govt funding needs in the first place. If the schools or localities want to buy their own, great. Three examples: 1. It seems every school uses a mishmash of Moodle, Schoology, and some Sharepoint abortion. If the feds would spend around the cost of 3 or 4 F-35 helmets ($1.6M) they could build and offer a decent school site. You know, homeworks, attendance. It could be the same software everywhere, even if you changed schools. Teachers wouldn't need retraining and kids would have their stuff follow them. 2. Fund a decent central, unbiased curriculum with open source text books. Kansas can suck an egg. Localities really _don't_ need their own curricula. The 3 R's don't need to vary with district. 3. Same as 1 but for local government operations software. Do they really all need their own?

zrail 11y ago
Number 2 is never ever going to happen. Do you remember all of the bugaboo about Common Core? That wasn't even the Feds getting involved in setting curriculum directly.
- fooey 11y ago
  The right of a parent to indoctrinate their children trumps the right of the child to have an actual education. I don't know the answer, but it's a gross feedback loop.
  - fapjacks 11y ago
    >an actual eduction I'm not one of those people, but here it should be "indoctrinated by the state", because I think that's what our schools do. I think we play fast and loose with the term "school". For being an institution supposedly concerned with imparting knowledge on kids, the current system does a pretty shitty job of it. Most kids don't even know the algebra they "learn" in school, let alone stuff like how to pay rent, taxes, how to drive, how to budget, how to vote, how to work effectively in team situations on common tasks, how to survive in the wilderness (yes, that skill is taught in some countries). Our "schools" are awful. Maybe it's as simple as a big money injection. I dunno. But as is, it's awful.
    - nikdaheratik 11y ago
      I think you're being a little hyperbolic. And the question is whether the parents' exercising their "right" to promote their religion of choice and cut out the teaching of evolution and sex ed might not leave the child with some deficiencies in their education. It generally depends on how qualified the alternatives are, but the answer is probably "yes it does".
      - fapjacks 10y ago
        I'm not saying anything about those awful people. I'm saying that our education system is a giant mess. I am the polar opposite of those parents, but I know a few of them on Facebook and find that I agree with their sentiment about schools more often than not. And that is a problem, when the system is in a condition such that I find myself agreeing with those people about schools.
    - douche 11y ago
      I wouldn't bet on a money injection fixing anything - I've read a number of reports that show almost no correlation between performance and per-student-dollars.
      - fapjacks 10y ago
        Yeah, you're right, douche.
humanrebar 11y ago
On paper that's interesting. I'm skeptical that the national government can do that well, however. The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good at producing that sort of product. Furthermore, the premise of the article is that the government is very inefficient. I'm not sure $1.6M is a fair estimate for the cost of this sort of product. There are millions of teachers in the U.S. not to speak of parents, administrators, and kids. I'm open to providing incentives to make this sort of progress more feasible. I'm partial to better support of open source software that meets these ends (like tax deductions for time or cash contributions to OSS projects the government uses).
- thoth 11y ago
  >The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good at producing that sort of product. You mean that the private contractor hired to do the HealthCare.gov website, CGI Federal, did a lousy job?
  - caseysoftware 11y ago
    Most of the things the government "produces" are not produced by the government. They're sent out for bidding by private companies - roads, guns, websites, whatever - and the government is in charge of oversight. And the fact that they've been proven incapable at oversight and management should figure into the planning.
    - emodendroket 11y ago
      But what makes you so sure the government wouldn't do better taking it in-house? And even if we throw out that possibility, we're talking about implementing off-the-shelf software here, no producing custom software.
      - caseysoftware 11y ago
        Great point! And since - as described - it's all open source, there doesn't even need to be Federal oversight or management. If the only thing standing between now and doing it is the will and tech support, that's an easy problem to solve.
joe_the_user 11y ago
But the reason the Fed don't build cheap schools is the same reason the Feds do buy million dollar helmets. Regulatory capture extends to every level of government so switching the level of government you deal with won't change the problem.
AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> Fund a decent central, unbiased curriculum with open source text books. The key with this would be to fund the effort but not mandate it. The carrot for using the federal standard books is that they would be without license fees, which means localities would have to justify spending their own money to use something else. But if the feds do such a crap job that localities find it worth it to do that, they should still be able to. Or do that with some books but not all of them etc. The free software model (something like the GPL) would be very interesting here, because you could have local schools making contributions to the national curriculum that other schools could adopt or not based on merit rather than local budgets. But not have some textbook publisher doing what Apple does to BSD, i.e. making sufficient improvements that theirs is the dominant version and then prohibiting further improvements by anyone else.

by imglorp 11y ago

zrail 11y ago

Number 2 is never ever going to happen. Do you remember all of the bugaboo about Common Core? That wasn't even the Feds getting involved in setting curriculum directly.

fooey 11y ago
The right of a parent to indoctrinate their children trumps the right of the child to have an actual education. I don't know the answer, but it's a gross feedback loop.
- fapjacks 11y ago
  >an actual eduction I'm not one of those people, but here it should be "indoctrinated by the state", because I think that's what our schools do. I think we play fast and loose with the term "school". For being an institution supposedly concerned with imparting knowledge on kids, the current system does a pretty shitty job of it. Most kids don't even know the algebra they "learn" in school, let alone stuff like how to pay rent, taxes, how to drive, how to budget, how to vote, how to work effectively in team situations on common tasks, how to survive in the wilderness (yes, that skill is taught in some countries). Our "schools" are awful. Maybe it's as simple as a big money injection. I dunno. But as is, it's awful.
  - nikdaheratik 11y ago
    I think you're being a little hyperbolic. And the question is whether the parents' exercising their "right" to promote their religion of choice and cut out the teaching of evolution and sex ed might not leave the child with some deficiencies in their education. It generally depends on how qualified the alternatives are, but the answer is probably "yes it does".
    - fapjacks 10y ago
      I'm not saying anything about those awful people. I'm saying that our education system is a giant mess. I am the polar opposite of those parents, but I know a few of them on Facebook and find that I agree with their sentiment about schools more often than not. And that is a problem, when the system is in a condition such that I find myself agreeing with those people about schools.
  - douche 11y ago
    I wouldn't bet on a money injection fixing anything - I've read a number of reports that show almost no correlation between performance and per-student-dollars.
    - fapjacks 10y ago
      Yeah, you're right, douche.

humanrebar 11y ago

On paper that's interesting. I'm skeptical that the national government can do that well, however. The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good at producing that sort of product. Furthermore, the premise of the article is that the government is very inefficient. I'm not sure $1.6M is a fair estimate for the cost of this sort of product. There are millions of teachers in the U.S. not to speak of parents, administrators, and kids. I'm open to providing incentives to make this sort of progress more feasible. I'm partial to better support of open source software that meets these ends (like tax deductions for time or cash contributions to OSS projects the government uses).

thoth 11y ago
>The rollout of the ACA websites makes it clear that the government isn't good at producing that sort of product. You mean that the private contractor hired to do the HealthCare.gov website, CGI Federal, did a lousy job?
- caseysoftware 11y ago
  Most of the things the government "produces" are not produced by the government. They're sent out for bidding by private companies - roads, guns, websites, whatever - and the government is in charge of oversight. And the fact that they've been proven incapable at oversight and management should figure into the planning.
  - emodendroket 11y ago
    But what makes you so sure the government wouldn't do better taking it in-house? And even if we throw out that possibility, we're talking about implementing off-the-shelf software here, no producing custom software.
    - caseysoftware 11y ago
      Great point! And since - as described - it's all open source, there doesn't even need to be Federal oversight or management. If the only thing standing between now and doing it is the will and tech support, that's an easy problem to solve.

joe_the_user 11y ago

But the reason the Fed don't build cheap schools is the same reason the Feds do buy million dollar helmets. Regulatory capture extends to every level of government so switching the level of government you deal with won't change the problem.

AnthonyMouse 10y ago

> Fund a decent central, unbiased curriculum with open source text books. The key with this would be to fund the effort but not mandate it. The carrot for using the federal standard books is that they would be without license fees, which means localities would have to justify spending their own money to use something else. But if the feds do such a crap job that localities find it worth it to do that, they should still be able to. Or do that with some books but not all of them etc. The free software model (something like the GPL) would be very interesting here, because you could have local schools making contributions to the national curriculum that other schools could adopt or not based on merit rather than local budgets. But not have some textbook publisher doing what Apple does to BSD, i.e. making sufficient improvements that theirs is the dominant version and then prohibiting further improvements by anyone else.