4 ms·
Why just public schools? At least in California (and I suspect elsewhere), teachers at private schools are paid quite a bit less than public school teachers. I
by maxharris 7y ago
Why just public schools? At least in California (and I suspect elsewhere), teachers at private schools are paid quite a bit less than public school teachers.
I know this because I used to work at a private school! I did that for two years, then left all of it for a tech job so that I could climb out of student loan debt and actually have a decent life. (The basic issue is that parents can't afford to pay more because they pay twice for education: first they pay taxes to send other kids to school, and then they pay private school tuition on top of that for their own kids. The result is tens of thousands of dollars in lower pay for private school teachers.)
Anyway, the point of this isn't to dump on anyone's school. I just want to help correct the idea that private schools are somehow less worthy of care and attention than public schools are. The truth is that private schools are often in financially precarious circumstances!
- brians 7y agoAnd school-like nonprofits. Harvard can have them. Phoenix can’t.
- elil17 7y agoPrivate schools can use the games, they just have to be not-for-profit (as opposed to a for-profit school, like DeVry). The vast majority of private schools are not-for-profit.
- maxharris 7y agoWhat about the school I worked at? Students were aged ~4-13. We were definitely for-profit, but we never managed to make a profit.
- Gene_Parmesan 7y agoA for-profit grade school? Interesting. I'm not sure I've ever encountered one of those. But yeah, an entity's ability to draw a net positive profit doesn't change their for-profit status, obviously. As for why Zachtronics is limiting this to non-profit schools, my guess would be for tax purposes. There's a good chance there's a benefit from providing something like this for non-profit institutions, but not for for-profit ones, although it's been 7 years since law school for me and my tax law is rusty. Although there's always the chance that he just didn't know for-profit grade schools exist, because I sure as heck didn't.
- jcl 7y agoThe page makes provisions for for-profit schools: "Private and/or for-profit schools are not included. However, if you email us with the information listed above we can put together a quote that includes an educational discount (usually 25% - 75% off depending on the number of licenses)."
- elil17 7y agoThose are just really rare - only a few states (Wisconsin, California, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Arizona) even allow private companies to accept charter money, and for-profit charters make up the vast majority of for-profit schools in America (see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_education https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/For-profit_education and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_management_organization https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_management_organiz...). Whether these corporations should even be allowed to exist is controversial and it’s entirely possible Zach doesn’t support them. Sounds like the place you worked was an edge case.
- maxharris 7y ago> Charter schools We didn't take any charter money because it comes with strings. We were doing our own curriculum development. (Everyone there had a healthy distaste for the standard curriculum that gets taught in most places.) And before you start, we were secular. Most of us, including myself, were/are atheists! Maybe I did work at an edge case, but I still think that this is an edge case the world needs more of.
- elil17 7y agoNothing at all against your school! Sounds like you were doing great work