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Yeah came here to talk about the same thing. Teachers have a 40 hour a week in the school job paired with a 10-20 hour wfh job preparing lessons, grading papers

Yeah came here to talk about the same thing. Teachers have a 40 hour a week in the school job paired with a 10-20 hour wfh job preparing lessons, grading papers, etc. Those summer months are paid for by extra hours during the school year as far as I’m concerned. This is also not even getting into how much teachers spend of their salary money on the classroom. Which is so prevalent that there’s a tax deduction for it. How many masters professions involve spending salary money for the employer?

humanrebar 7y ago
How many master's professions insist on local monopolies for their employers? Other than predisposed ideological beliefs, it doesn't make sense for teachers' unions to be as against school competition as they are, at least with respect to employing exemplary educators.
- claudeganon 7y ago
  Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, which is largely a predatory scheme with wildly misaligned incentives. We don’t need a repeat of all the problems with the US healthcare system in education. Conflating performance with unions is bunk anyways. Japan’s teachers are heavily, heavily unionized, historically far more militant than teachers in the US, and they’re consistently among the highest performing OECD countries.
  - darawk 7y ago
    > Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, How would one have meaningful 'competition' without privatization?
    - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
      Though I doubt it would work very well in practice, students could be free to enroll in school in another school district with their home district paying a tuition fee to the host district.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization. State universities and community colleges do this across the country. And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration.
      - humanrebar 7y ago
        Teachers on the whole aren't particularly threatened by the funding model of a school. Unions, school boards, and administration certainly are.
      - darawk 7y ago
        > It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Possible, yes. Practical? No. Democratic bureaucracies are effectively incapable of learning and adapting. Schooling is basically implemented identically today as it was 100 years ago. > Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization This is a strange statement to me. In what sense is privatization a threat to public schools? If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? Wouldn't public schools invite the challenge if they believed their model was superior? The fact that they even view it as such an existential threat tells you basically all you need to know. Even they believe they'd be outcompeted almost immediately. > And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration. Firstly, the idea of differential country performance of schools is largely a myth. When you disaggregate by ethnicity, most of that disappears. Japanese kids in the US do about as well here as they do in Japan. Which is to say that differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate.
        Faark 7y ago
        > If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity. Just looking at "existential threat" -> "outcompeted" only works in a highly simplified world with no market failures and other issues. > differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US.
  - humanrebar 7y ago
    In what ways do teachers' unions campaign to give agency to students' families and career choice to in-demand faculty? Seems like the incentives are mostly oriented around getting teachers to stay in one place and grind out another year of experience, round of continuing education, and extra degrees whether they are wise or not. Otherwise, why don't teachers just quit schools with poor safety records, working conditions, pay, equipment funding, and uncompensated overtime? Because no district really has to worry about being held accountable like that.
    - claudeganon 7y ago
      >In what ways do teachers' unions campaign to give agency to students' families and career choice to in-demand faculty? I’m not sure what you mean by agency here or how many teachers you actually know. But unions have regularly campaigned for more resources for students outside of themselves, including access to things nurses, counselors, and libraries. Schools in many cities are highly racially and economically segregated in the US because of the country’s broader history of redlining and corresponding deprivation. Teachers unions are one of the only interest groups who have consistently fought against this denial of agency for their students. As to career choices, I have union member teachers in my family and they change schools as they see fit. There are some problems with state licensing incompatibilities that prevent teachers from being as mobile as they might like and we should probably move to uniform federal standards to correct this. >Seems like the incentives are mostly oriented around getting teachers to stay in one place and grind out another year of experience, round of continuing education, and extra degrees whether they are wise or not. Otherwise, why don't teachers just quit schools with poor safety records, working conditions, pay, equipment funding, and uncompensated overtime? Because no district really has to worry about being held accountable like that. Incentives around higher education are perverse in the US in almost every regard, so I’m not sure that teachers are that much of an outlier (especially for their domain, education). As to why teachers stay - I’m not sure if you’re aware but most people tend to live in the regions they’re actually from, where they have family ties and social bonds. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-stays-put-wheres-home/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-sta... Applying some sort of rational actor economic heuristic to civil servants in a service profession seems a foolhardy endeavor. I mean, I’ve worked for big companies across the country, none of which were any better run and some of which were not better resourced than a failing public school, and they all had their fair share of people toughing it out too. What binds people to a place socially and materially, especially among more working class professions, is different from white collar workers.

humanrebar 7y ago

How many master's professions insist on local monopolies for their employers? Other than predisposed ideological beliefs, it doesn't make sense for teachers' unions to be as against school competition as they are, at least with respect to employing exemplary educators.

claudeganon 7y ago
Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, which is largely a predatory scheme with wildly misaligned incentives. We don’t need a repeat of all the problems with the US healthcare system in education. Conflating performance with unions is bunk anyways. Japan’s teachers are heavily, heavily unionized, historically far more militant than teachers in the US, and they’re consistently among the highest performing OECD countries.
- darawk 7y ago
  > Teacher’s unions don’t opposes “school competition.” They oppose school privatization, How would one have meaningful 'competition' without privatization?
  - Mountain_Skies 7y ago
    Though I doubt it would work very well in practice, students could be free to enroll in school in another school district with their home district paying a tuition fee to the host district.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization. State universities and community colleges do this across the country. And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration.
    - humanrebar 7y ago
      Teachers on the whole aren't particularly threatened by the funding model of a school. Unions, school boards, and administration certainly are.
    - darawk 7y ago
      > It’s entirely possible within a publicly funded framework to have different models and observation of outcomes. Possible, yes. Practical? No. Democratic bureaucracies are effectively incapable of learning and adapting. Schooling is basically implemented identically today as it was 100 years ago. > Schools just have to be allowed the leeway to experiment without threat of privatization This is a strange statement to me. In what sense is privatization a threat to public schools? If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? Wouldn't public schools invite the challenge if they believed their model was superior? The fact that they even view it as such an existential threat tells you basically all you need to know. Even they believe they'd be outcompeted almost immediately. > And it’s not as if high-performing countries arrived at their (almost exclusively public) systems without this kind of iteration. Firstly, the idea of differential country performance of schools is largely a myth. When you disaggregate by ethnicity, most of that disappears. Japanese kids in the US do about as well here as they do in Japan. Which is to say that differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate.
      - Faark 7y ago
        > If public schools were so great and privatization were so bad, why would people want to send their kids to privately run schools? A good old prisoners dilemma. If you got more resources to spend on education, you don't want to sit in the same class as someone who can only contribute little to the course. Just like worse graduates will ruin the prestige of the school and thus value of your degree. Outcome-base exclusion can be fine, unless it ends up as proxy to select for socio-economic factors and thus make society offer less equal opportunity. Just looking at "existential threat" -> "outcompeted" only works in a highly simplified world with no market failures and other issues. > differential performance between countries is more about who is in those countries than how it is those countries educate I'd like a source on that. I do understand culture will have a significant influence, especially on what value people place on education. But your statement seems to go a lot further into "school doesn't matter" territory. This directly contradicts with earlier statements and e.g. many chines studying in the US.
- humanrebar 7y ago
  In what ways do teachers' unions campaign to give agency to students' families and career choice to in-demand faculty? Seems like the incentives are mostly oriented around getting teachers to stay in one place and grind out another year of experience, round of continuing education, and extra degrees whether they are wise or not. Otherwise, why don't teachers just quit schools with poor safety records, working conditions, pay, equipment funding, and uncompensated overtime? Because no district really has to worry about being held accountable like that.
  - claudeganon 7y ago
    >In what ways do teachers' unions campaign to give agency to students' families and career choice to in-demand faculty? I’m not sure what you mean by agency here or how many teachers you actually know. But unions have regularly campaigned for more resources for students outside of themselves, including access to things nurses, counselors, and libraries. Schools in many cities are highly racially and economically segregated in the US because of the country’s broader history of redlining and corresponding deprivation. Teachers unions are one of the only interest groups who have consistently fought against this denial of agency for their students. As to career choices, I have union member teachers in my family and they change schools as they see fit. There are some problems with state licensing incompatibilities that prevent teachers from being as mobile as they might like and we should probably move to uniform federal standards to correct this. >Seems like the incentives are mostly oriented around getting teachers to stay in one place and grind out another year of experience, round of continuing education, and extra degrees whether they are wise or not. Otherwise, why don't teachers just quit schools with poor safety records, working conditions, pay, equipment funding, and uncompensated overtime? Because no district really has to worry about being held accountable like that. Incentives around higher education are perverse in the US in almost every regard, so I’m not sure that teachers are that much of an outlier (especially for their domain, education). As to why teachers stay - I’m not sure if you’re aware but most people tend to live in the regions they’re actually from, where they have family ties and social bonds. https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-stays-put-wheres-home/ https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2008/12/17/who-moves-who-sta... Applying some sort of rational actor economic heuristic to civil servants in a service profession seems a foolhardy endeavor. I mean, I’ve worked for big companies across the country, none of which were any better run and some of which were not better resourced than a failing public school, and they all had their fair share of people toughing it out too. What binds people to a place socially and materially, especially among more working class professions, is different from white collar workers.