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Your chart shows that the student population increased 96%, teachers increased 252%, and non-teacher staff has increased by 700%. But what does that mean in ter

by rp1 5y ago

Your chart shows that the student population increased 96%, teachers increased 252%, and non-teacher staff has increased by 700%. But what does that mean in terms of the typical school budget? Going from 1 to 7 non-teacher staff doesn't seem like that big of a deal. A baseline related to the school budget would make these stats more useful. Also, the article clearly has a political axe to grind. For instance, they compare the Chicago BOE to the Japanese Ministry of Education. The Japanese Ministry of Education is actually called "The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology." You can read their Wikipedia page, but they're not directly involved in providing education to the population, so it makes sense that they would have a small staff: > The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (文部科学省, Monbu-kagaku-shō), also known as MEXT or Monka-shō, is one of the eleven Ministries of Japan that composes part of the executive branch of the Government of Japan. Their goal is to improve the development of Japan in relation with the international community. They are responsible for funding research under their jurisdiction, some of which includes: children's health in relation to home environment, delta-sigma modulations utilizing graphs, gender equality in sciences, and other general research for the future https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Education,_Culture,_Sports,_Science_and_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Education,_Culture...

WillPostForFood 5y ago
Going from 1 to 7 non-teacher staff doesn't seem like that big of a deal. A baseline related to the school budget would make these stats more useful. It's a good point. I don't know the budget, but NY has a lot of admin overhead with a 13:1 teacher to admin ratio. edit: for the country overall, 54% of the spending is going to teachers, 27% to staff. It is a high number compared to OECD average which is 15% to staff. https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10527 https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10527 The school problem looks like healthcare - failing not for lack of money in the system, but for dozens of other reasons.
- rp1 5y ago
  Again, this stat is totally devoid of information. From your link, non-teacher staff is defined as: > Nonteaching staff includes administrative and support personnel, such as administrators, supervisors, counselors, school psychologists, health personnel, librarians, building operations staff, and maintenance personnel. If you had a specific education system to point to, where you could clearly highlight the waste, then that would be one thing. But on a high level, I can see the U.S. having way more services than Europe. For instance, Football is very popular in the U.S. with many high schools having full blown stadiums for their teams. That type of infrastructure is going to come with overhead. The U.S. also has terrible mass transit, meaning that schools need to maintain their own bussing systems. That also takes people to maintain. Population density is also lower, so the cost of transporting a single student will be higher. You can’t point to a few top-level numbers in isolation and say “See! Look at all the waste!” All of the school spending is public information. If there was a lot of waste, it shouldn’t be hard to find specific instances of waste.

by rp1 5y ago

WillPostForFood 5y ago

Going from 1 to 7 non-teacher staff doesn't seem like that big of a deal. A baseline related to the school budget would make these stats more useful. It's a good point. I don't know the budget, but NY has a lot of admin overhead with a 13:1 teacher to admin ratio. edit: for the country overall, 54% of the spending is going to teachers, 27% to staff. It is a high number compared to OECD average which is 15% to staff. https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10527 https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=10527 The school problem looks like healthcare - failing not for lack of money in the system, but for dozens of other reasons.

rp1 5y ago
Again, this stat is totally devoid of information. From your link, non-teacher staff is defined as: > Nonteaching staff includes administrative and support personnel, such as administrators, supervisors, counselors, school psychologists, health personnel, librarians, building operations staff, and maintenance personnel. If you had a specific education system to point to, where you could clearly highlight the waste, then that would be one thing. But on a high level, I can see the U.S. having way more services than Europe. For instance, Football is very popular in the U.S. with many high schools having full blown stadiums for their teams. That type of infrastructure is going to come with overhead. The U.S. also has terrible mass transit, meaning that schools need to maintain their own bussing systems. That also takes people to maintain. Population density is also lower, so the cost of transporting a single student will be higher. You can’t point to a few top-level numbers in isolation and say “See! Look at all the waste!” All of the school spending is public information. If there was a lot of waste, it shouldn’t be hard to find specific instances of waste.