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We've been treated to a post by Sarah Lacy blaming teachers' unions for the "Why Our Schools Suck" Granted, Lacy might not be the best person to listen to abou

We've been treated to a post by Sarah Lacy blaming teachers' unions for the "Why Our Schools Suck" Granted, Lacy might not be the best person to listen to about this, but I have yet to hear a better explanation for why public schools can't seem to get their act together.

jlgbecom 16y ago
I have yet to hear a better explanation for why public schools can't seem to get their act together. Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. The result is that, averaged out, we have terrible results. Mostly because there's only so much you can do with money, so the wealthiest who have access to a surplus of funding can only do so much to balance out the disadvantages of the rest. An equalized system would produce much better results for the country. This is how Finland and other social democracies operate.
- ryanwaggoner 16y ago
  Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. And yet, there are schools attended by the "lower classes" with much higher funding levels than private schools who rank as some of the worst in the nation. According to a 2007 article in The Washington Post, the Washington D.C. public school district spends $12,979 per student per year. This is the third highest level of funding per student out of the 100 biggest school districts in the U.S. Despite this high level of funding, the school district has produced outcomes that are lower than the national average. In reading and math, the district's students score the lowest among 11 major school districts – even when poor children are compared with other poor children. 33% of poor fourth graders in the U.S. lack basic skills in math, but in Washington D.C., it's 62%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#Funding_for_K-12_schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#...
  - jlgbecom 16y ago
    That's an interesting case, but it's far from representative of the system as a whole. The best you can do in that situation is use that information to criticize that specific school district, but you can't extrapolate that to a systemic critique.
    - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
      Well, you could be right, but at least I've provided a datapoint. Can you provide some evidence that the phenomenon you're describing explains the state of the public school system as a whole, and that the DC system is an aberration?
      - jlgbecom 16y ago
        There is a ton of scholarly work on the effects of unequal funding on public education. Google Scholar is a good place to start: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unequal+funding+education&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unequal+funding+educatio... A good "primer" book, although a bit old, but not outdated, is called "Savage Inequalities" http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Inequalities-Children-Americas-Schools/dp/0060974990 http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Inequalities-Children-Americas-... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Inequalities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Inequalities Another book is "The Shame Of A Nation" by the same author. These are just starting points, though, there's no shortage of studies, essays, books, and scholarly works on the subject. What I'm presenting here, in terms of social critiques of education, is by no means unique.
shareme 16y ago
Two big groups Medicine and Education.. Several stories and articles posted this week with actual science data showing that its the deep culture in both preventing change and progress... You will find the articles here at HN, reddit , and slashdot..
sachinag 16y ago
Every time I point out that educational outcomes in right to work states aren't any better than outcomes in states where teachers unions have collectively bargained contracts, I get downvoted. People just really want to believe that it's about the unions instead of poor pay, the entrance of talented women into the rest of the workforce, and other harder-to-solve-in-a-vacuum socioeconomic factors. But again: educational outcomes in right to work states aren't any better than outcomes in states where teachers unions have collectively bargained contracts. 34 states and DC have laws mandating collective bargaining with teachers. Now, it is true that in the other 16 states, there are other laws that can serve to protect teachers. But these states certainly have the ability to engage in ruthless combat with the unions, and they don't. I blame the voters and the legislators - unions exist to protect their members. The best freely available overview of this problem I've found is here: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/BetterBargain.pdf http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/BetterBargain.pdf
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  18 days ago, I pointed out that there are teachers unions in right to work states. I also pointed out that right to work laws simply allow employees to work without joining the union. They do not prohibit unionization or collective bargaining.
  - sachinag 16y ago
    Yes, that's how unionization works in the U.S. However, you've said nothing about educational outcomes, which is what I'm concerned with. In addition, you're a bit off on the facts. There actually are three states that expressly prohibit collective bargaining with teachers unions: North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. In a lot of these right-to-work states, the unions have been able to get work rules and the like codified in state law as opposed to within collective bargaining. Again, the PDF I linked to has a lot off good data and cites, and yes, it does comes down pretty harshly on the unions. Look, I've been actively engaged on this subject for the last six years of my life. It's clear that I'll never convince you that simply eliminating public sector unions won't magically solve our education woes. But I can show you the facts that the circumstances that would allow for that to happen haven't happened.

jlgbecom 16y ago

I have yet to hear a better explanation for why public schools can't seem to get their act together. Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. The result is that, averaged out, we have terrible results. Mostly because there's only so much you can do with money, so the wealthiest who have access to a surplus of funding can only do so much to balance out the disadvantages of the rest. An equalized system would produce much better results for the country. This is how Finland and other social democracies operate.

ryanwaggoner 16y ago
Unequal funding based on property taxes further penalizes the lower classes. The wealthiest go to posh private schools, the upper-middle classes have public schools with greenhouses and olympic size swimming pools, most everyone else has outdated textbooks and low salaries, and the lower classes have lead paint and crumbling infrastructure. And yet, there are schools attended by the "lower classes" with much higher funding levels than private schools who rank as some of the worst in the nation. According to a 2007 article in The Washington Post, the Washington D.C. public school district spends $12,979 per student per year. This is the third highest level of funding per student out of the 100 biggest school districts in the U.S. Despite this high level of funding, the school district has produced outcomes that are lower than the national average. In reading and math, the district's students score the lowest among 11 major school districts – even when poor children are compared with other poor children. 33% of poor fourth graders in the U.S. lack basic skills in math, but in Washington D.C., it's 62%. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#Funding_for_K-12_schools http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_the_United_States#...
- jlgbecom 16y ago
  That's an interesting case, but it's far from representative of the system as a whole. The best you can do in that situation is use that information to criticize that specific school district, but you can't extrapolate that to a systemic critique.
  - ryanwaggoner 16y ago
    Well, you could be right, but at least I've provided a datapoint. Can you provide some evidence that the phenomenon you're describing explains the state of the public school system as a whole, and that the DC system is an aberration?
    - jlgbecom 16y ago
      There is a ton of scholarly work on the effects of unequal funding on public education. Google Scholar is a good place to start: http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unequal+funding+education&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=unequal+funding+educatio... A good "primer" book, although a bit old, but not outdated, is called "Savage Inequalities" http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Inequalities-Children-Americas-Schools/dp/0060974990 http://www.amazon.com/Savage-Inequalities-Children-Americas-... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Inequalities http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savage_Inequalities Another book is "The Shame Of A Nation" by the same author. These are just starting points, though, there's no shortage of studies, essays, books, and scholarly works on the subject. What I'm presenting here, in terms of social critiques of education, is by no means unique.

shareme 16y ago

Two big groups Medicine and Education.. Several stories and articles posted this week with actual science data showing that its the deep culture in both preventing change and progress... You will find the articles here at HN, reddit , and slashdot..

sachinag 16y ago

Every time I point out that educational outcomes in right to work states aren't any better than outcomes in states where teachers unions have collectively bargained contracts, I get downvoted. People just really want to believe that it's about the unions instead of poor pay, the entrance of talented women into the rest of the workforce, and other harder-to-solve-in-a-vacuum socioeconomic factors. But again: educational outcomes in right to work states aren't any better than outcomes in states where teachers unions have collectively bargained contracts. 34 states and DC have laws mandating collective bargaining with teachers. Now, it is true that in the other 16 states, there are other laws that can serve to protect teachers. But these states certainly have the ability to engage in ruthless combat with the unions, and they don't. I blame the voters and the legislators - unions exist to protect their members. The best freely available overview of this problem I've found is here: http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/BetterBargain.pdf http://www.hks.harvard.edu/pepg/PDF/Papers/BetterBargain.pdf

yummyfajitas 16y ago
18 days ago, I pointed out that there are teachers unions in right to work states. I also pointed out that right to work laws simply allow employees to work without joining the union. They do not prohibit unionization or collective bargaining.
- sachinag 16y ago
  Yes, that's how unionization works in the U.S. However, you've said nothing about educational outcomes, which is what I'm concerned with. In addition, you're a bit off on the facts. There actually are three states that expressly prohibit collective bargaining with teachers unions: North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. In a lot of these right-to-work states, the unions have been able to get work rules and the like codified in state law as opposed to within collective bargaining. Again, the PDF I linked to has a lot off good data and cites, and yes, it does comes down pretty harshly on the unions. Look, I've been actively engaged on this subject for the last six years of my life. It's clear that I'll never convince you that simply eliminating public sector unions won't magically solve our education woes. But I can show you the facts that the circumstances that would allow for that to happen haven't happened.