4 ms·

The USA spends more per capita than anyone else and we get worse results. More money isn't going to fix it. We need to break up the teacher's unions and put c

The USA spends more per capita than anyone else and we get worse results. More money isn't going to fix it. We need to break up the teacher's unions and put competition into the education marketplace by supporting students not schools. If we gave every student a stipend that their parent's could use to pick the school they wanted, then our education system would have competition and actually get better.

CivBase 6y ago
> More money isn't going to fix it. Bingo. My wife teaches for an urban school district. They get plenty of money. We see where it all goes, and it isn't into supporting education.
- brandmeyer 6y ago
  Rather than rely on innuendo, can you provide specifics and cite the district's budget to support them?
  - CivBase 6y ago
    I'm not prepared to write an entire article on the subject and I'm not sure it would be wise for me to publicly criticize my wife's employer. But I can at least elaborate on how I feel the funding is being mismanaged. The biggest problem I see is a bloated administration. As is the case with most large organizations, power gravitates towards the top. The admin at the top get overwhelmed with responsibility and end up hiring more admin beneath them to handle things, but the power just gravitates back towards the top and the cycle continues until you have a highly-bureaucratic, admin-heavy organization. The salaries for all those admin has to come from somewhere. Meanwhile, teachers are treated as warm bodies to fill positions. Their performance is evaluated by admin who have little-to-no actual education experience, so grade inflation and brown-nosing are the most effective ways to keep a teaching position. This ensures the school keeps wasting money on bad teachers while the bloated admin retains support from the rest of the organization. Many teachers get shuffled around from school-to-school, and in some cases subject-to-subject, so they are constantly adjusting instead of refining their craft. Admin's solution to this is to take the burden of course development away from teachers by purchasing bundles of course materials/frameworks from third parties and pushing (sometimes requiring) teachers to teach according to them. So much of the material ends up being useless that teachers end up having to spend just as much time/effort anyways adjusting the material and sorting the wheat from the chaff. Going into a little more specifics, my wife works with special needs children at a high school level. This is getting especially frustrating because admin and other non-education staff lazily put any kids who misbehave or just don't do their work on special development plans. These plans involve a lot of costly bureaucracy and are very difficult to get rid of once created. Meanwhile, my wife has to put less and less of her attention on kids who legitimately need the extra help as an increasing portion of the student body gets put on these plans. Naturally, many of the kids don't like getting put on special development plans and separated from their peers. Admin's solution is to abandon self-contained classes for kids with special needs in favor of co-taught classes where two or more teachers manage an oversized class of mixed-needs students. This results in classes which are less effective for both groups of students while costing more as teachers now have to spend extra time and effort on coordination. These are just examples that are fresh in my mind based on recently discussions with my wife. Unfortunately, a lot of this isn't made evident by budgets.
    - hemloc_io 6y ago
      This happens doubly so for some Universities. If you take a look at some of the more expensive ones w/ small endowments most of them are broke because of huge bureaucracies. I wonder if there's a principal in here somewhere, something like an optimal amount of middle management.
    - brandmeyer 6y ago
      > These are just examples that are fresh in my mind based on recently discussions with my wife. Unfortunately, a lot of this isn't made evident by budgets. I urge you to look at your district's budget in detail. Many of them do in fact break out administrative staff costs separately from teaching staff costs. Decades of frustration on the part of the electorate has forced them to in some cases. You might have to dig for it, but its in there. I don't doubt your wife's experience with an overbearing administration, but one person's lived experience does not count for your whole district, let alone the entire nation. You have to examine the data. My kid's district's breakdown is on page 92 of https://www.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/FY2020-21%20Budget%20Book.pdf https://www.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/document... Administrative staff is only 9% of the the labor budget.
      - CivBase 6y ago
        My wife's district's budget includes "Instruction" as one opaque budget item which accounts for 47.9% of the 2020 budget (up from 46.3% in 2017). Admin accounts for 9.6% (up from 8.3%). There is also a vague "Non-Instructional Expenditures" category which accounts for 5.1% (up from 4.6%). Almost everything else is operation/maintenance, transportation, construction, and debt service. Less than half of the district's budget goes to "instruction" and who knows how much of that budget item really ends up being spent usefully. The "instruction" budget item did increase as a portion of the budget, but budget items specifically labeled as "admin" increased disproportionately by nearly 5x as much. "Non-Instructional Expenditures" also increased disproportionately by nearly 3x as much. Comparing to your district, yours spends much more on instruction and much less proportionally on construction and debt services. Your district's budget is also much more granular, splitting out categories like utilities, printing, safety, and IT, plus a breakdown of your instruction budget. I'd link to my wife's district's budget but like I said, I don't think it's wise to name my wife's employer as I'm complaining about them publicly.
bena 6y ago
I think the "per capita" bit is misleading. Because it lumps in certain area with other areas. Certain school districts are way underfunded compared to others. Part of that problem is that a lot of school districts are funded through property taxes. Which has a way of reinforcing the cycle of poverty. Your voucher system would simply exacerbate the problem. You know what happens when you allow people to be selective about their schools? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight In your case, it would just be a move to private schools and if you don't think those people wouldn't be able to vote out all taxes that go to schools now, then you are naive. And breaking up the teachers' unions? Yeah. That's a race to the bottom. Already schools in those underfunded districts do their best to discourage long-tenured teachers as their pay is directly related to years of service. Make it easier for schools to churn teachers and that's exactly what you'd see. Not a selection for the "best", but for the cheapest. Education is a service with no direct material benefit. Investing in it does not pay off any particular person or group in any noticeably tangible way. However, having a well-educated population benefits everyone and everything. Education is one area where we probably need less privatization rather than more.
- douglaswlance 6y ago
  >Your voucher system would simply exacerbate the problem. That cannot be proven without testing. >You know what happens when you allow people to be selective about their schools? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight And...? Race of citizens doesn't matter. The city schools, since they face the most competition (due to proximity) would improve the most quickly. >In your case, it would just be a move to private schools Exactly. New models would crop up. Overnight, a new multi-billion dollar industry would be created. Startups would spring up everywhere to get certified and capture that new value. >And breaking up the teachers' unions? ... That's a race to the bottom. ... That's because there is no competition. In a non-competitive marketplace, there is no forcing function for quality. >Education is a service with no direct material benefit. Education is a service with the greatest material benefit. It is the foundational service. It allows all other goods and services to be generated. >Education is one area where we probably need less privatization rather than more. This does not follow from your previous assertions. Homogenizing education has clearly failed. It is a race to the bottom. The education system has been captured by the political class via teachers unions. That is why they want to churn out homogenized thinkers who are only smart enough to vote for their aligned political faction.
honkdaddy 6y ago
As a Canadian who's spent some time in various parts of the States, I would say the biggest change that needs to be made is a greater cultural value being placed on good education. In simpler terms, I believe disadvantaged youth will do better at school when those youth start _wanting_ to go to school. The most successful ethnic group in the United States are Nigerian-Americans because in Nigerian society, education is valued above all else. 61% of Nigerian-Americans over 25 hold a Masters degree - a remarkable number!
scruple 6y ago
Therefore we shouldn't address the fact that corporations aren't paying their taxes? We could also put more money into the pockets of parents by easing their tax burden...
rory 6y ago
To give a personal example-- the public school I graduated from has a racial busing program from a school district that spends $24k per student to a school district that spends $15k per student. Many US cities have tried to throw money at this problem with little to no success. I don't claim to know the answer, but we should at least stop pretending we have it already.

CivBase 6y ago

> More money isn't going to fix it. Bingo. My wife teaches for an urban school district. They get plenty of money. We see where it all goes, and it isn't into supporting education.

brandmeyer 6y ago
Rather than rely on innuendo, can you provide specifics and cite the district's budget to support them?
- CivBase 6y ago
  I'm not prepared to write an entire article on the subject and I'm not sure it would be wise for me to publicly criticize my wife's employer. But I can at least elaborate on how I feel the funding is being mismanaged. The biggest problem I see is a bloated administration. As is the case with most large organizations, power gravitates towards the top. The admin at the top get overwhelmed with responsibility and end up hiring more admin beneath them to handle things, but the power just gravitates back towards the top and the cycle continues until you have a highly-bureaucratic, admin-heavy organization. The salaries for all those admin has to come from somewhere. Meanwhile, teachers are treated as warm bodies to fill positions. Their performance is evaluated by admin who have little-to-no actual education experience, so grade inflation and brown-nosing are the most effective ways to keep a teaching position. This ensures the school keeps wasting money on bad teachers while the bloated admin retains support from the rest of the organization. Many teachers get shuffled around from school-to-school, and in some cases subject-to-subject, so they are constantly adjusting instead of refining their craft. Admin's solution to this is to take the burden of course development away from teachers by purchasing bundles of course materials/frameworks from third parties and pushing (sometimes requiring) teachers to teach according to them. So much of the material ends up being useless that teachers end up having to spend just as much time/effort anyways adjusting the material and sorting the wheat from the chaff. Going into a little more specifics, my wife works with special needs children at a high school level. This is getting especially frustrating because admin and other non-education staff lazily put any kids who misbehave or just don't do their work on special development plans. These plans involve a lot of costly bureaucracy and are very difficult to get rid of once created. Meanwhile, my wife has to put less and less of her attention on kids who legitimately need the extra help as an increasing portion of the student body gets put on these plans. Naturally, many of the kids don't like getting put on special development plans and separated from their peers. Admin's solution is to abandon self-contained classes for kids with special needs in favor of co-taught classes where two or more teachers manage an oversized class of mixed-needs students. This results in classes which are less effective for both groups of students while costing more as teachers now have to spend extra time and effort on coordination. These are just examples that are fresh in my mind based on recently discussions with my wife. Unfortunately, a lot of this isn't made evident by budgets.
  - hemloc_io 6y ago
    This happens doubly so for some Universities. If you take a look at some of the more expensive ones w/ small endowments most of them are broke because of huge bureaucracies. I wonder if there's a principal in here somewhere, something like an optimal amount of middle management.
  - brandmeyer 6y ago
    > These are just examples that are fresh in my mind based on recently discussions with my wife. Unfortunately, a lot of this isn't made evident by budgets. I urge you to look at your district's budget in detail. Many of them do in fact break out administrative staff costs separately from teaching staff costs. Decades of frustration on the part of the electorate has forced them to in some cases. You might have to dig for it, but its in there. I don't doubt your wife's experience with an overbearing administration, but one person's lived experience does not count for your whole district, let alone the entire nation. You have to examine the data. My kid's district's breakdown is on page 92 of https://www.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/documents/FY2020-21%20Budget%20Book.pdf https://www.adams12.org/sites/default/files/uploads/document... Administrative staff is only 9% of the the labor budget.
    - CivBase 6y ago
      My wife's district's budget includes "Instruction" as one opaque budget item which accounts for 47.9% of the 2020 budget (up from 46.3% in 2017). Admin accounts for 9.6% (up from 8.3%). There is also a vague "Non-Instructional Expenditures" category which accounts for 5.1% (up from 4.6%). Almost everything else is operation/maintenance, transportation, construction, and debt service. Less than half of the district's budget goes to "instruction" and who knows how much of that budget item really ends up being spent usefully. The "instruction" budget item did increase as a portion of the budget, but budget items specifically labeled as "admin" increased disproportionately by nearly 5x as much. "Non-Instructional Expenditures" also increased disproportionately by nearly 3x as much. Comparing to your district, yours spends much more on instruction and much less proportionally on construction and debt services. Your district's budget is also much more granular, splitting out categories like utilities, printing, safety, and IT, plus a breakdown of your instruction budget. I'd link to my wife's district's budget but like I said, I don't think it's wise to name my wife's employer as I'm complaining about them publicly.

bena 6y ago

I think the "per capita" bit is misleading. Because it lumps in certain area with other areas. Certain school districts are way underfunded compared to others. Part of that problem is that a lot of school districts are funded through property taxes. Which has a way of reinforcing the cycle of poverty. Your voucher system would simply exacerbate the problem. You know what happens when you allow people to be selective about their schools? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight In your case, it would just be a move to private schools and if you don't think those people wouldn't be able to vote out all taxes that go to schools now, then you are naive. And breaking up the teachers' unions? Yeah. That's a race to the bottom. Already schools in those underfunded districts do their best to discourage long-tenured teachers as their pay is directly related to years of service. Make it easier for schools to churn teachers and that's exactly what you'd see. Not a selection for the "best", but for the cheapest. Education is a service with no direct material benefit. Investing in it does not pay off any particular person or group in any noticeably tangible way. However, having a well-educated population benefits everyone and everything. Education is one area where we probably need less privatization rather than more.

douglaswlance 6y ago
>Your voucher system would simply exacerbate the problem. That cannot be proven without testing. >You know what happens when you allow people to be selective about their schools? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight And...? Race of citizens doesn't matter. The city schools, since they face the most competition (due to proximity) would improve the most quickly. >In your case, it would just be a move to private schools Exactly. New models would crop up. Overnight, a new multi-billion dollar industry would be created. Startups would spring up everywhere to get certified and capture that new value. >And breaking up the teachers' unions? ... That's a race to the bottom. ... That's because there is no competition. In a non-competitive marketplace, there is no forcing function for quality. >Education is a service with no direct material benefit. Education is a service with the greatest material benefit. It is the foundational service. It allows all other goods and services to be generated. >Education is one area where we probably need less privatization rather than more. This does not follow from your previous assertions. Homogenizing education has clearly failed. It is a race to the bottom. The education system has been captured by the political class via teachers unions. That is why they want to churn out homogenized thinkers who are only smart enough to vote for their aligned political faction.

honkdaddy 6y ago

As a Canadian who's spent some time in various parts of the States, I would say the biggest change that needs to be made is a greater cultural value being placed on good education. In simpler terms, I believe disadvantaged youth will do better at school when those youth start _wanting_ to go to school. The most successful ethnic group in the United States are Nigerian-Americans because in Nigerian society, education is valued above all else. 61% of Nigerian-Americans over 25 hold a Masters degree - a remarkable number!

scruple 6y ago

Therefore we shouldn't address the fact that corporations aren't paying their taxes? We could also put more money into the pockets of parents by easing their tax burden...

rory 6y ago

To give a personal example-- the public school I graduated from has a racial busing program from a school district that spends $24k per student to a school district that spends $15k per student. Many US cities have tried to throw money at this problem with little to no success. I don't claim to know the answer, but we should at least stop pretending we have it already.