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> How many person-hours of lost productivity is there for each day a classroom is closed? At least a hundred per classroom, more than a thousand for each day a

> How many person-hours of lost productivity is there for each day a classroom is closed? At least a hundred per classroom, more than a thousand for each day a school is closed. I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity? If so, does parental productivity also fall drastically during summer when schools have holidays? Stresses by the pandemic itself have likely caused parental productivity to plummet. Remember that "classrooms" are not the sterile abstractions you seem to bucket them into, they are staffed by teachers who are both employees and often parents themselves; with the accompanying stresses. They are required to face Covid, often from students who are imperfectly masked or unmasked. I don't understand the American blind spot that allows people to think of schools being as essential as hospitals; and requires them to both face Covid infections while paying teachers $40k and doctors $400k. Clearly the rates at which teachers are paid indicate that US society doesn't consider them as essential.

orangecat 5y ago
I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity? Because child care has long been part of the value proposition of public schools. It's amusing how "you shouldn't have had kids if one parent wasn't willing to stay at home full time" is now something that the far left and far right agree on.
- quadrifoliate 5y ago
  > It's amusing how "you shouldn't have had kids if one parent wasn't willing to stay at home full time" is now something that the far left and far right agree on. I consider myself somewhat left wing, and I don't agree with this statement at all. Cooperative babysitting, more flexible work arrangements, larger friend groups, joint families, and more social cohesion in general are a good way to balance childcare. I actually agree that teaching can provide some part of this, but don't understand the fact where everything else runs according to a hyper-capitalist algorithm, but teachers are expected to take on outsize responsibility and risk adverse healthcare outcomes because "Think of the children". It does take a village to raise a child. Let's do that, and not just leave it to two parents and a teacher.
  - istjohn 5y ago
    Replace "teachers" with "schools." There is no reason we can't appropiately resource schools to provide these services. We should be paying teachers enough for them to be eager to come in to work every day. Telling parents they are on their own to figure it out is not "a good way to balance childcare." It amounts to saying everyone fend for themselves, to saying that we don't really care what happens to kids whose families can't afford childcare. And sadly in our society, it mostly amounts to dumping those burdens specifically on women, who get saddled with the bulk of childcare duties in the American household. It's regressive, and it hobbles the effort to achieve equality for women in the workplace.
zookatron 5y ago
For better or worse American public schools have basically become an essential service as a free day care system for busy parents. I'm not saying this is good, I think it's a huge problem, but pretending that is not the way it is doesn't help fix it. The question is how to make improvements to our education system to prevent it from being misused this way, and on top of that how to actually politically make those changes happen when there's a huge number of parents that just want to pawn their children off to the state and would oppose such improvements.
- istjohn 5y ago
  That's not a bug, it's a feature. Why shouldn't we have socialized childcare? Our economy needs parents to be able to work 40 hours per week while raising children. If anything, we need to provide better support to families who can't afford childcare every summer.
  - herbst 5y ago
    Why do you need parents to work 40 hour weeks? Wouldn't it be more beneficial for anyone if they 'somwhow' have time raising their own children without running poor? Many parents in Europe heavily depend on our social net, and I know that's a different debate, however single parents or families where both HAVE TO work full-time sounds like the wrong approach to me.
  - pnutjam 5y ago
    <i>Our economy needs parents to be able to work 40 hours per week while raising children. </i> Let's be honest. Our economy only needs people to work 20-25 hours a week max.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- watwut 5y ago
  Isn't that a good thing? The externalities are universally good - single parents have it significantly easier. Even married moms have easier time to find work or occupation outside of the house - whether for money or to not be restless and isolated.
ianbicking 5y ago
"I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity?" Why the resentful reaction? Schools DO increase parent productivity, and that's one among many positive features of a school. It's not a bad thing! I'm proposing that the cost benefit analysis would show that we should invest more in keeping schools safely open, and doing so will probably pay off immediately without even factoring in future harm or benefit to children. It's not wrong to factor in that future, but if there's an immediate justification using even very reductive capitalist thinking then it should be easy to build a consensus. (It's still not easy to build a consensus, but that's because our civil society is running on automatic and we struggle at making even win-win decisions)
- quadrifoliate 5y ago
  > Schools DO increase parent productivity, and that's one among many positive features of a school. It's not a bad thing! It certainly isn't. What I'm saying is that: - Your repeated statement that "Schools increase parent productivity" is far from proven in the first place (see the point about summer, which is not consider a major 'productivity hit' event at most companies, unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving). - And even if it were true, it's an incidental factor, and not one that is planned for. > ...if there's an immediate justification using even very reductive capitalist thinking then it should be easy to build a consensus. Sure. All I'm saying is that the consensus which you're talking about should emerge from first principles, and should not just happen to fall close to "schools should stay open as usual, disregarding the pandemic sweeping the nation". If schools do indeed have a measurable effect on parental productivity, then the consensus could look like companies being required to enter into a profit sharing arrangement with all the schools of their employees' children.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    >Schools increase parent productivity I'm a parent, and I work-from-home. We just had winter break. I had 2 kids not in school and 2 kids not in day care. I definitely had a productivity drop. I had a meeting where all 4 kids took turns interrupting me. I had things to do, and a daughter would "just appear" and ask me about some weird question. They would come in each afternoon and ask me when I was going to finish work amd play with them - and yes, I played with them (no regrets!). Also, my oldest daughter tested positive for covid yesterday, so we kept all 4 home today. Even with my wife handling the "learning form home", I still got interrupted: how do I log in, what do I need to learn, where is the website, can I eat "this". I'm not sure I follow your point of separating productivity hits from summer/Thanksgiving/Christmas. My points about these past 2 weeks hold for thr upcoming summer.
dcolkitt 5y ago
Salaries aren’t determined by essential-ness, they’re determined by supply and demand. Obviously a nursing home aid is a lot more “essential” than a FAANG engineer, but the latter is paid substantially more. It sounds flowery and noble to pay people based on how “important” their jobs are to society. But it’s simply no way to run an economy.
- em-bee 5y ago
  how about "salaries are determined by the amount of profit they can generate"?
- weakfish 5y ago
adam_arthur 5y ago
In a market based economy, wage is determined by supply and demand. Then, high wages incentivize new people to enter the high wage field, and low wages disincentivize new entrants. This is a societally productive outcome, because labor gets allocated to the most economically beneficial sectors naturally through fluctuations in wages. If we had 10x the number of engineers, wages would drop significantly. Imagine, for example, that the US allowed unlimited migration from China, India etc for engineer positions... wage situation would be much different. But also likely more societally beneficial due to lowering cost to provide software (which in a competitive market, will get passed down to consumers). A big problem we have though is lack of education/direction given to college students so many of them aren't even really aware of wages of various fields and choose based on likability of the role rather than considering both likability and economics. Unfortunately many people choose to be teachers regardless of low pay. Given that teachers are primarily government paid, we could elect to simply pay them more to attract higher caliber talent. But most fields aren't government employed, so not feasible for other roles. Doctors in particular are problematic, because as I understand it the AMA limits number of new doctors creating an artificial shortage. That should be fixed/regulated against... it's pretty much monopoly power of labor to be able to decide number of doctors. Monopoly power on either the corporate or labor sides pretty much always leads to worse societal outcomes. But yeah, generally in a free market wages will be set "fairly". You're free as a student to choose a career path that pays better. I'm hugely in favor of reducing barriers to role switching and doing away with the traditional 4 year college program. Could open up lots of doors for people. Whole conversation around free college is starting from the wrong premise (that 4 year college should even be the baseline). College is largely just a signaling tool, and the long duration and requirement makes switching career paths very costly, and pretty much impossible for people who aren't in their 20s. Even if it were made free
- tylerhou 5y ago
  > because labor gets allocated to the most economically beneficial sectors naturally through fluctuations in wages. In a perfect market economy, yes. In an imperfect economy, where the value of each teacher is hard to measure, and where teachers cannot capture the full value of their work (e.g. a lifechanging middle school teacher can't charge much more than a normal teacher) this isn't true. > Imagine, for example, that the US allowed unlimited migration from China, India etc for engineer positions... wage situation would be much different. This is really not clear. First of all, as software engineering can be done remotely, there is already a fair level of global competition. Second, migration doesn't always decrease wages (see Mariel boatlift for a counterexample). And even with open borders I don't think the current top 10pct of SWEs would be paid more than 20% less. > But yeah, generally in a free market wages will be set "fairly". Again, assuming that the market is efficient, which it probably isn't.
IggleSniggle 5y ago
Hello, American parent here. In non-COVID times, there are endless summer programs of all variety to provide childcare for kids during summer months. This is not the case during Thanksgiving / Winter Holiday and depending on where you are, Spring Break. As an American parent, COVID has been rough. I love spending my time with my kids, but there’s also an endless debate of “am I going to take time off work today to properly raise my children, plop them in front a screen when that’s the last thing their young brains need, or try and parent and work simultaneously while simultaneously failing at both?” If you want to work full time, and your partner wants to work full time too, there’s lots of childcare solutions to supplement school during non-COVID times. Without those options, it’s just a continuous unstable compromise with work, partner, sending your kid to school vs online learning, etc. —- I can’t explain the pay thing with teachers vs doctors. I don’t understand how my wife, a healthcare provider, was able to deliver a baby at a private, well-equipped clinic in Kenya for a total cost of $300 USD while having to pay >$6000 USD out-of-pocket after insurance for an uncomplicated birth of her own a few years later in a US hospital. Just the way capital, normal supply and demand, mixed with lobbying has distorted things over time I guess. I also don’t really understand why people send their kids to private school instead of just putting that same monetary support directly into the public school system. Anyway, these are totally separate issues from the cultural reliance on schools as childcare providers.
- BadCookie 5y ago
  I send my kid to private school to get an average class size of about 8 kids. If instead I sent him to public school and donated my tuition checks to the school, my son would have a class size of >20, and I have no idea where my money would be spent. On some level, I’m a little ashamed of sending my kid to a better school than most kids get, but I’m giving you an honest answer.
  - bradlys 5y ago
    The other aspect is that private schools are self-selecting first and selective second. Your kid either needs to be well behaved or fiendishly rich (enough to offset their problems with benefits for everyone). This isn’t the case in public - as it takes everyone as they are. The reasons I’ve considered private school for my future children after talking to friends/parents who have put theirs in private has less to do with the quality of education but more to do with the peers they’ll have. They’ll likely be around decently behaved peers and I’ll be able to shape the discussion of how the school is run - whereas that’s not the case at public schools at all. Having come from such poor schools where we couldn’t even afford five days a week education and only went 3-4 days/week, I know my kids will get an exceptional education compared to what I got - but I want them to have a good social life too and maybe that’ll work at a public school but maybe it’ll work at a private instead.
maxerickson 5y ago
The cost-benefit is there regardless of whether the responsibility is there. Path A will have Path A costs and benefits, Path B will have Path B costs and benefits.
uvdn7 5y ago
- Most parents I know (ourselves included) depend on summer camps. - yes, teachers are severely underpaid and it makes little sense to me. Education is so important if not the most important matter for democracy but US messed it up so bad. I wish all teachers’ wages to double if not more.
yes_really 5y ago
> I don't understand the American blind spot that allows people to think of schools being as essential as hospitals; and requires them to both face Covid infections while paying teachers $40k and doctors $400k. Clearly the rates at which teachers are paid indicate that US society doesn't consider them as essential. That's not how salaries work at all. Waste collection is extremely essential to society (without it, tens of millions would die of easily preventable diseases, and big cities would be unviable). Yet garbage collectors also earn around $40k.
- istjohn 5y ago
  And water is pennies a gallon while gold is $1,800/oz
in3d 5y ago
Your numbers are completely off. The median salary for 10 months of work per year for high school teachers in 2020 was $62,870 and $60,970 for kindergarten and elementary teachers (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/home....). But this is a large underestimate of the total compensation because it doesn't take into account generous benefits and pensions. In Illinois, for example, 39% of all education spending goes to pensions: https://madisonrecord.com/stories/608526182-nearly-40-cents-of-every-education-dollar-in-illinois-goes-to-pensions https://madisonrecord.com/stories/608526182-nearly-40-cents-.... There is also a very high job stability. I don't mind the best teachers being paid more but we have to be honest with our numbers first.

orangecat 5y ago

I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity? Because child care has long been part of the value proposition of public schools. It's amusing how "you shouldn't have had kids if one parent wasn't willing to stay at home full time" is now something that the far left and far right agree on.

quadrifoliate 5y ago
> It's amusing how "you shouldn't have had kids if one parent wasn't willing to stay at home full time" is now something that the far left and far right agree on. I consider myself somewhat left wing, and I don't agree with this statement at all. Cooperative babysitting, more flexible work arrangements, larger friend groups, joint families, and more social cohesion in general are a good way to balance childcare. I actually agree that teaching can provide some part of this, but don't understand the fact where everything else runs according to a hyper-capitalist algorithm, but teachers are expected to take on outsize responsibility and risk adverse healthcare outcomes because "Think of the children". It does take a village to raise a child. Let's do that, and not just leave it to two parents and a teacher.
- istjohn 5y ago
  Replace "teachers" with "schools." There is no reason we can't appropiately resource schools to provide these services. We should be paying teachers enough for them to be eager to come in to work every day. Telling parents they are on their own to figure it out is not "a good way to balance childcare." It amounts to saying everyone fend for themselves, to saying that we don't really care what happens to kids whose families can't afford childcare. And sadly in our society, it mostly amounts to dumping those burdens specifically on women, who get saddled with the bulk of childcare duties in the American household. It's regressive, and it hobbles the effort to achieve equality for women in the workplace.

zookatron 5y ago

For better or worse American public schools have basically become an essential service as a free day care system for busy parents. I'm not saying this is good, I think it's a huge problem, but pretending that is not the way it is doesn't help fix it. The question is how to make improvements to our education system to prevent it from being misused this way, and on top of that how to actually politically make those changes happen when there's a huge number of parents that just want to pawn their children off to the state and would oppose such improvements.

istjohn 5y ago
That's not a bug, it's a feature. Why shouldn't we have socialized childcare? Our economy needs parents to be able to work 40 hours per week while raising children. If anything, we need to provide better support to families who can't afford childcare every summer.
- herbst 5y ago
  Why do you need parents to work 40 hour weeks? Wouldn't it be more beneficial for anyone if they 'somwhow' have time raising their own children without running poor? Many parents in Europe heavily depend on our social net, and I know that's a different debate, however single parents or families where both HAVE TO work full-time sounds like the wrong approach to me.
- pnutjam 5y ago
  <i>Our economy needs parents to be able to work 40 hours per week while raising children. </i> Let's be honest. Our economy only needs people to work 20-25 hours a week max.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
watwut 5y ago
Isn't that a good thing? The externalities are universally good - single parents have it significantly easier. Even married moms have easier time to find work or occupation outside of the house - whether for money or to not be restless and isolated.

ianbicking 5y ago

"I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity?" Why the resentful reaction? Schools DO increase parent productivity, and that's one among many positive features of a school. It's not a bad thing! I'm proposing that the cost benefit analysis would show that we should invest more in keeping schools safely open, and doing so will probably pay off immediately without even factoring in future harm or benefit to children. It's not wrong to factor in that future, but if there's an immediate justification using even very reductive capitalist thinking then it should be easy to build a consensus. (It's still not easy to build a consensus, but that's because our civil society is running on automatic and we struggle at making even win-win decisions)

quadrifoliate 5y ago
> Schools DO increase parent productivity, and that's one among many positive features of a school. It's not a bad thing! It certainly isn't. What I'm saying is that: - Your repeated statement that "Schools increase parent productivity" is far from proven in the first place (see the point about summer, which is not consider a major 'productivity hit' event at most companies, unlike Christmas or Thanksgiving). - And even if it were true, it's an incidental factor, and not one that is planned for. > ...if there's an immediate justification using even very reductive capitalist thinking then it should be easy to build a consensus. Sure. All I'm saying is that the consensus which you're talking about should emerge from first principles, and should not just happen to fall close to "schools should stay open as usual, disregarding the pandemic sweeping the nation". If schools do indeed have a measurable effect on parental productivity, then the consensus could look like companies being required to enter into a profit sharing arrangement with all the schools of their employees' children.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  >Schools increase parent productivity I'm a parent, and I work-from-home. We just had winter break. I had 2 kids not in school and 2 kids not in day care. I definitely had a productivity drop. I had a meeting where all 4 kids took turns interrupting me. I had things to do, and a daughter would "just appear" and ask me about some weird question. They would come in each afternoon and ask me when I was going to finish work amd play with them - and yes, I played with them (no regrets!). Also, my oldest daughter tested positive for covid yesterday, so we kept all 4 home today. Even with my wife handling the "learning form home", I still got interrupted: how do I log in, what do I need to learn, where is the website, can I eat "this". I'm not sure I follow your point of separating productivity hits from summer/Thanksgiving/Christmas. My points about these past 2 weeks hold for thr upcoming summer.

dcolkitt 5y ago

Salaries aren’t determined by essential-ness, they’re determined by supply and demand. Obviously a nursing home aid is a lot more “essential” than a FAANG engineer, but the latter is paid substantially more. It sounds flowery and noble to pay people based on how “important” their jobs are to society. But it’s simply no way to run an economy.

em-bee 5y ago
how about "salaries are determined by the amount of profit they can generate"?
weakfish 5y ago

adam_arthur 5y ago

In a market based economy, wage is determined by supply and demand. Then, high wages incentivize new people to enter the high wage field, and low wages disincentivize new entrants. This is a societally productive outcome, because labor gets allocated to the most economically beneficial sectors naturally through fluctuations in wages. If we had 10x the number of engineers, wages would drop significantly. Imagine, for example, that the US allowed unlimited migration from China, India etc for engineer positions... wage situation would be much different. But also likely more societally beneficial due to lowering cost to provide software (which in a competitive market, will get passed down to consumers). A big problem we have though is lack of education/direction given to college students so many of them aren't even really aware of wages of various fields and choose based on likability of the role rather than considering both likability and economics. Unfortunately many people choose to be teachers regardless of low pay. Given that teachers are primarily government paid, we could elect to simply pay them more to attract higher caliber talent. But most fields aren't government employed, so not feasible for other roles. Doctors in particular are problematic, because as I understand it the AMA limits number of new doctors creating an artificial shortage. That should be fixed/regulated against... it's pretty much monopoly power of labor to be able to decide number of doctors. Monopoly power on either the corporate or labor sides pretty much always leads to worse societal outcomes. But yeah, generally in a free market wages will be set "fairly". You're free as a student to choose a career path that pays better. I'm hugely in favor of reducing barriers to role switching and doing away with the traditional 4 year college program. Could open up lots of doors for people. Whole conversation around free college is starting from the wrong premise (that 4 year college should even be the baseline). College is largely just a signaling tool, and the long duration and requirement makes switching career paths very costly, and pretty much impossible for people who aren't in their 20s. Even if it were made free

tylerhou 5y ago
> because labor gets allocated to the most economically beneficial sectors naturally through fluctuations in wages. In a perfect market economy, yes. In an imperfect economy, where the value of each teacher is hard to measure, and where teachers cannot capture the full value of their work (e.g. a lifechanging middle school teacher can't charge much more than a normal teacher) this isn't true. > Imagine, for example, that the US allowed unlimited migration from China, India etc for engineer positions... wage situation would be much different. This is really not clear. First of all, as software engineering can be done remotely, there is already a fair level of global competition. Second, migration doesn't always decrease wages (see Mariel boatlift for a counterexample). And even with open borders I don't think the current top 10pct of SWEs would be paid more than 20% less. > But yeah, generally in a free market wages will be set "fairly". Again, assuming that the market is efficient, which it probably isn't.

IggleSniggle 5y ago

Hello, American parent here. In non-COVID times, there are endless summer programs of all variety to provide childcare for kids during summer months. This is not the case during Thanksgiving / Winter Holiday and depending on where you are, Spring Break. As an American parent, COVID has been rough. I love spending my time with my kids, but there’s also an endless debate of “am I going to take time off work today to properly raise my children, plop them in front a screen when that’s the last thing their young brains need, or try and parent and work simultaneously while simultaneously failing at both?” If you want to work full time, and your partner wants to work full time too, there’s lots of childcare solutions to supplement school during non-COVID times. Without those options, it’s just a continuous unstable compromise with work, partner, sending your kid to school vs online learning, etc. —- I can’t explain the pay thing with teachers vs doctors. I don’t understand how my wife, a healthcare provider, was able to deliver a baby at a private, well-equipped clinic in Kenya for a total cost of $300 USD while having to pay >$6000 USD out-of-pocket after insurance for an uncomplicated birth of her own a few years later in a US hospital. Just the way capital, normal supply and demand, mixed with lobbying has distorted things over time I guess. I also don’t really understand why people send their kids to private school instead of just putting that same monetary support directly into the public school system. Anyway, these are totally separate issues from the cultural reliance on schools as childcare providers.

BadCookie 5y ago
I send my kid to private school to get an average class size of about 8 kids. If instead I sent him to public school and donated my tuition checks to the school, my son would have a class size of >20, and I have no idea where my money would be spent. On some level, I’m a little ashamed of sending my kid to a better school than most kids get, but I’m giving you an honest answer.
- bradlys 5y ago
  The other aspect is that private schools are self-selecting first and selective second. Your kid either needs to be well behaved or fiendishly rich (enough to offset their problems with benefits for everyone). This isn’t the case in public - as it takes everyone as they are. The reasons I’ve considered private school for my future children after talking to friends/parents who have put theirs in private has less to do with the quality of education but more to do with the peers they’ll have. They’ll likely be around decently behaved peers and I’ll be able to shape the discussion of how the school is run - whereas that’s not the case at public schools at all. Having come from such poor schools where we couldn’t even afford five days a week education and only went 3-4 days/week, I know my kids will get an exceptional education compared to what I got - but I want them to have a good social life too and maybe that’ll work at a public school but maybe it’ll work at a private instead.

maxerickson 5y ago

The cost-benefit is there regardless of whether the responsibility is there. Path A will have Path A costs and benefits, Path B will have Path B costs and benefits.

uvdn7 5y ago

- Most parents I know (ourselves included) depend on summer camps. - yes, teachers are severely underpaid and it makes little sense to me. Education is so important if not the most important matter for democracy but US messed it up so bad. I wish all teachers’ wages to double if not more.

yes_really 5y ago

> I don't understand the American blind spot that allows people to think of schools being as essential as hospitals; and requires them to both face Covid infections while paying teachers $40k and doctors $400k. Clearly the rates at which teachers are paid indicate that US society doesn't consider them as essential. That's not how salaries work at all. Waste collection is extremely essential to society (without it, tens of millions would die of easily preventable diseases, and big cities would be unviable). Yet garbage collectors also earn around $40k.

istjohn 5y ago
And water is pennies a gallon while gold is $1,800/oz

in3d 5y ago

Your numbers are completely off. The median salary for 10 months of work per year for high school teachers in 2020 was $62,870 and $60,970 for kindergarten and elementary teachers (https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/home.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/education-training-and-library/home....). But this is a large underestimate of the total compensation because it doesn't take into account generous benefits and pensions. In Illinois, for example, 39% of all education spending goes to pensions: https://madisonrecord.com/stories/608526182-nearly-40-cents-of-every-education-dollar-in-illinois-goes-to-pensions https://madisonrecord.com/stories/608526182-nearly-40-cents-.... There is also a very high job stability. I don't mind the best teachers being paid more but we have to be honest with our numbers first.