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I'm a parent of two kids and I couldn't agree more. I went to mostly black and poor public schools my entire childhood. Back then there were a few teachers wh

by JPKab 5y ago

I'm a parent of two kids and I couldn't agree more. I went to mostly black and poor public schools my entire childhood. Back then there were a few teachers who clearly didn't care and were never held accountable. Most of the teachers were pretty good though. It's increasingly shifted towards the opposite. I was blown away by how pathetically run my children's public schools are here in Colorado so I put them both in private school. They get less than half the money per student that the public school system I live in gets, and are vastly more efficient. The operations, the instructors, it's all just run correctly. When my daughter was still in a public elementary school I walked in one day to try to get her iPad fixed when they were doing full remote learning due to the pandemic. There was a large meeting taking place amongst all the staff. None of them had bothered to return my calls which is why I had to go in person. They looked like they were having a party because I didn't see any work getting done. At the end of the day it's a government school. Name a single government agency that is efficient with their money. Name a government agency that's good at hiring, or keeping good talent. We should just do a voucher system and let the private sector deal with this. As a taxpayer I'm deeply resentful of having my money get taken from me and given to unionized teachers who refused to work for a full year and then had the nerve to take summer vacation as if it had been a normal year. These were the same folks who were put at the front of the line for vaccinations independent of their age groups. And then they proceeded to act like they were still in danger and couldn't open schools.

pcmoney 5y ago
Where in CO? I have always heard the schools were pretty good, especially BVSD, Poudre Valley etc. and some in Denver, Cherry Creek etc.
- JPKab 5y ago
  Compared to other public school districts, they aren't bad. It's just that "other public school districts" isn't exactly a great baseline. The truth is that the school district personnel have very little to do with this, and the average income level of the student body has a ton to do with it. I'm in a wealth school district as well. I live just over the county line from Boulder (I can get to Pearl Street in 13 minutes), and the BVSD is very overrated. They were closed for far longer than other districts were last year. They have a lot of money, but also a ton of wealthy students with overly permissive parents who bring drugs into the schools. (I know the vice principal of Fairview High in Boulder, and the incidence of drug use in the school is mind-blowing, all courtesy of rich kids with rich hippie parents who give them allowances of hundreds a week that they buy drugs with.) One issue prevalent in all public school systems, but particularly bad in BVSD, is the number of students being falsely classified as learning disabled. Many kids with highly inattentive parents, who are essentially babysat by iPads and video games when at home, are labelled as LD/ADHD/etc when the reality is nobody makes them do their homework or study at home. They are then, due to the disability diagnosis, allocated disproportionate resources and staff to try to bring them up to average level. These resources come at the expense of gifted programs which have fewer seats available than they otherwise would for advanced students with good parents. At the end of the day, most public school systems in the US are investing vastly more resources into bringing poor performers to average than helping gifted students reach their actual potential by actually challenging them. I view them as institutions which are, at a functional level, primarily incentivized to serve the needs of their employees over those of their students. They are a massive source of union jobs, and these unions are the largest funders of politicians who then increase the budgets that then fund the unions via wages to members. I'm a huge fan of unions in non-monopolized industries, but like FDR, I vehemently oppose unions for public sector employees for this very reason. I pay these idiots whether I want to or not. And my wife and I were emotionally crushed when we saw the horrific, and frankly sloppy, remote learning that was taking place. The curriculum was terrible, the teachers were not engaged, and it just felt like too many were taking advantage of the WFH to fuck off and indulge their hobbies and personal lives. This was a universal sentiment amongst the parents (and hilariously, the middle school students) in my daughter's school. There was not a single remote learning lesson I witnessed that was remotely as effective as a Khan Academy course. We know this because we ended up supplementing her lessons with Khan, and she was very emphatic that she liked them a million times better. I know many on HN will disagree with my sentiment, but I've noticed that the people in my friend group who don't share my view are disproportionately childless. People with kids in school tend to be pretty frustrated with the structural deficiencies of the fossilized, mid-20th century institutions that are US public schools.
bruceb 5y ago
yes how dare they take vacation as already negotiated in their contract. Darn those teacher hanging at their mansions Also anyone who works at google should not be allowed to take vacation if they worked from home. Sure that would go over well. The vaccine wasn’t really available till a few months into 2021, and I can understand the hesitation on some to be the first to take a new vaccine. Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury. There certainly could be improvements to public school, some of the curriculum is dumb, but again they have to serve all customers, private schools don’t. I don’t begrudge public school teachers their vacation. I also realize this past year+ has been extremely stressful on parents, especially those who can’t work from home
- dorchadas 5y ago
  > Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury. Exactly. OP acts as if it's such a great surprise they're run better. Obviously they would be, because they can pick and choose who they take and usually only get those kids who's families are well off enough to afford it; those kids already all have huge advantages when it comes to learning. It's exactly why the voucher system would do no good either -- it'd just make the public school worse as the private schools take those kids who are already borderline on affording it.
  - brightball 5y ago
    They only get kids whose families are well off enough to afford it, specifically because only people with a lot of money have a choice. You can either afford to: 1. Pay out of pocket for private school 2. Afford to have 1 parent be responsible for participation in some type of home school education (group or otherwise) 3. Relocate your house to somewhere zoned for a “good school” If you can’t afford any of those things, you don’t have a choice. That’s why people want vouchers.
YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
>> Name a government agency that's good at hiring, or keeping good talent. How about NASA? I'm not a US citizen so apologies if I got that wrong but I figured NASA always had the goods, in terms of personel, even if they also had some bad apples in there.
- JPKab 5y ago
  I have a good friend who is a super talented software engineer. She's at Google these days, but has been at a lot of cool startups. When I met her, she was working at NASA. A super brilliant person, who can basically solve any problem you throw at her. NASA had assigned her to be in charge of a pile of shitty LabView code used to run a massive "freezer" whose purpose is to be used on rare occasions to test hardware at temperatures simulating deep space. They gave her no other assignments or duties. She was left rotting at a desk with nothing to do for 90% of the time. This was not unique to her, and was something she saw a lot of with other co-workers. So no, I don't think NASA is efficient with money. If we had left it to them, we still wouldn't have sent people into space in the last decade. That was all courtesy of SpaceX going around the horrible incumbent contractors that NASA has allowed to dupe them for decades.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
    Mwell, that is reminiscent of my experience in $LARGE_CORP where I was hired with a few years experience as a soft. eng. and was given a completely nontechnical role (I was supposed to make wireframes in PowerPoint), while a new graduate who was hired at the same time as myself was put in a "hands on" coding position. That other hire was a guy. My explanation was that $LARGE_CORP simply thought that, hey, she's a chick, she doesn't want to code. Or something along those lines. That was a private company, btw. I think large companies have problems with personel like that, whether public or private. They have problems, in that their understanding of the labour market has stayed in the 1930's. Anyway I think the same thing that happened with me happened to your friend in NASA.
    - JPKab 5y ago
Enginerrrd 5y ago
>Name a single government agency that is efficient with their money. USGS!! The amount of benefit they give to the public and the data they make available for free, used by every weather station, civil engineer, surveyor, geologist, etc. etc. relative to their budget is insane! And so much of it is mission critical life-and-death stuff. It's amazing to me. The updates to mapping alone are mind-boggling since they came from the pre-satellite and drone days.

by JPKab 5y ago

pcmoney 5y ago

Where in CO? I have always heard the schools were pretty good, especially BVSD, Poudre Valley etc. and some in Denver, Cherry Creek etc.

JPKab 5y ago
Compared to other public school districts, they aren't bad. It's just that "other public school districts" isn't exactly a great baseline. The truth is that the school district personnel have very little to do with this, and the average income level of the student body has a ton to do with it. I'm in a wealth school district as well. I live just over the county line from Boulder (I can get to Pearl Street in 13 minutes), and the BVSD is very overrated. They were closed for far longer than other districts were last year. They have a lot of money, but also a ton of wealthy students with overly permissive parents who bring drugs into the schools. (I know the vice principal of Fairview High in Boulder, and the incidence of drug use in the school is mind-blowing, all courtesy of rich kids with rich hippie parents who give them allowances of hundreds a week that they buy drugs with.) One issue prevalent in all public school systems, but particularly bad in BVSD, is the number of students being falsely classified as learning disabled. Many kids with highly inattentive parents, who are essentially babysat by iPads and video games when at home, are labelled as LD/ADHD/etc when the reality is nobody makes them do their homework or study at home. They are then, due to the disability diagnosis, allocated disproportionate resources and staff to try to bring them up to average level. These resources come at the expense of gifted programs which have fewer seats available than they otherwise would for advanced students with good parents. At the end of the day, most public school systems in the US are investing vastly more resources into bringing poor performers to average than helping gifted students reach their actual potential by actually challenging them. I view them as institutions which are, at a functional level, primarily incentivized to serve the needs of their employees over those of their students. They are a massive source of union jobs, and these unions are the largest funders of politicians who then increase the budgets that then fund the unions via wages to members. I'm a huge fan of unions in non-monopolized industries, but like FDR, I vehemently oppose unions for public sector employees for this very reason. I pay these idiots whether I want to or not. And my wife and I were emotionally crushed when we saw the horrific, and frankly sloppy, remote learning that was taking place. The curriculum was terrible, the teachers were not engaged, and it just felt like too many were taking advantage of the WFH to fuck off and indulge their hobbies and personal lives. This was a universal sentiment amongst the parents (and hilariously, the middle school students) in my daughter's school. There was not a single remote learning lesson I witnessed that was remotely as effective as a Khan Academy course. We know this because we ended up supplementing her lessons with Khan, and she was very emphatic that she liked them a million times better. I know many on HN will disagree with my sentiment, but I've noticed that the people in my friend group who don't share my view are disproportionately childless. People with kids in school tend to be pretty frustrated with the structural deficiencies of the fossilized, mid-20th century institutions that are US public schools.

bruceb 5y ago

yes how dare they take vacation as already negotiated in their contract. Darn those teacher hanging at their mansions Also anyone who works at google should not be allowed to take vacation if they worked from home. Sure that would go over well. The vaccine wasn’t really available till a few months into 2021, and I can understand the hesitation on some to be the first to take a new vaccine. Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury. There certainly could be improvements to public school, some of the curriculum is dumb, but again they have to serve all customers, private schools don’t. I don’t begrudge public school teachers their vacation. I also realize this past year+ has been extremely stressful on parents, especially those who can’t work from home

dorchadas 5y ago
> Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury. Exactly. OP acts as if it's such a great surprise they're run better. Obviously they would be, because they can pick and choose who they take and usually only get those kids who's families are well off enough to afford it; those kids already all have huge advantages when it comes to learning. It's exactly why the voucher system would do no good either -- it'd just make the public school worse as the private schools take those kids who are already borderline on affording it.
- brightball 5y ago
  They only get kids whose families are well off enough to afford it, specifically because only people with a lot of money have a choice. You can either afford to: 1. Pay out of pocket for private school 2. Afford to have 1 parent be responsible for participation in some type of home school education (group or otherwise) 3. Relocate your house to somewhere zoned for a “good school” If you can’t afford any of those things, you don’t have a choice. That’s why people want vouchers.

YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago

>> Name a government agency that's good at hiring, or keeping good talent. How about NASA? I'm not a US citizen so apologies if I got that wrong but I figured NASA always had the goods, in terms of personel, even if they also had some bad apples in there.

JPKab 5y ago
I have a good friend who is a super talented software engineer. She's at Google these days, but has been at a lot of cool startups. When I met her, she was working at NASA. A super brilliant person, who can basically solve any problem you throw at her. NASA had assigned her to be in charge of a pile of shitty LabView code used to run a massive "freezer" whose purpose is to be used on rare occasions to test hardware at temperatures simulating deep space. They gave her no other assignments or duties. She was left rotting at a desk with nothing to do for 90% of the time. This was not unique to her, and was something she saw a lot of with other co-workers. So no, I don't think NASA is efficient with money. If we had left it to them, we still wouldn't have sent people into space in the last decade. That was all courtesy of SpaceX going around the horrible incumbent contractors that NASA has allowed to dupe them for decades.
- YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
  Mwell, that is reminiscent of my experience in $LARGE_CORP where I was hired with a few years experience as a soft. eng. and was given a completely nontechnical role (I was supposed to make wireframes in PowerPoint), while a new graduate who was hired at the same time as myself was put in a "hands on" coding position. That other hire was a guy. My explanation was that $LARGE_CORP simply thought that, hey, she's a chick, she doesn't want to code. Or something along those lines. That was a private company, btw. I think large companies have problems with personel like that, whether public or private. They have problems, in that their understanding of the labour market has stayed in the 1930's. Anyway I think the same thing that happened with me happened to your friend in NASA.
  - JPKab 5y ago

Enginerrrd 5y ago

>Name a single government agency that is efficient with their money. USGS!! The amount of benefit they give to the public and the data they make available for free, used by every weather station, civil engineer, surveyor, geologist, etc. etc. relative to their budget is insane! And so much of it is mission critical life-and-death stuff. It's amazing to me. The updates to mapping alone are mind-boggling since they came from the pre-satellite and drone days.