3 ms·

Before the pandemic I had this uncomfortable sense that the people running the place were asleep at the wheel, and everyone was tacitly expecting someone else t

Before the pandemic I had this uncomfortable sense that the people running the place were asleep at the wheel, and everyone was tacitly expecting someone else to do the actual hard work/thinking so they could go back to their phones/Netflix in peace. Now I’ve had to acknowledge that for a lot of institutions this more or less is the case.

ethanbond 5y ago
I wonder if decades of malinvestment in those institutions and routing our most educated people to editing spreadsheets with dollar signs on them or selling ads (Now With Code!) has had negative consequences for our society.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  When school budgets are cut and underpaid teachers leave the industry "Oh, that's just the free hand of the market." When a multilateral, societal disaster strikes and schools struggle with contradicting demands: "What an inept bunch we have running these schools" Very few are being honest on why the kids have to be in school (so it doesn't disrupt parents' labor), so it's framed as "think of the children" when TFA shows that little education happens at school when teachers are sick. Zoom class is terrible, but its better than the shitshow described in the fine article. Worse, if students get into dangerous situations while at school/playing hooky because there isn't adequate adult supervision, the same people will have the gall to blame the schools.
  - pjscott 5y ago
    > When school budgets are cut and underpaid teachers leave the industry "Oh, that's just the free hand of the market." Are school budgets being cut? I keep hearing people saying they are, but the US Department of Education says the opposite [1]: that per-pupil spending (adjusted for inflation) has increased greatly over the past century or so, and its trajectory has almost always been upward. What's the deal? (My best shot at a steelman is that either (a) the money has been disappearing down a mysterious rabbit hole and so teacher pay hasn't risen as much as the raw budget numbers would lead you to think, or that (b) teachers are underpaid relative to what they could get in other occupations that have seen more per-worker productivity growth, i.e. the Baumol effect.) [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_236.55.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_236.55.a...
    - sangnoir 5y ago
      > Are school budgets being cut? Absolutely! Sometimes it's explicitly sold as an education budget cut (like Texas in 2011, narrowly averted in 2021 but there was a whole campaign for it), and occasionally it's cloaked in carrot/stick incentives where district that "excel" get more money, and the underperfoming ones get less. The lately, there's an attempt in red states to go around Brown v. (IMO) by promoting tax-funded charter schools, which take money away from public schools - so, technically the budget hasn't been cut, but public school districts (and schools) are getting less money.

ethanbond 5y ago

I wonder if decades of malinvestment in those institutions and routing our most educated people to editing spreadsheets with dollar signs on them or selling ads (Now With Code!) has had negative consequences for our society.

sangnoir 5y ago
When school budgets are cut and underpaid teachers leave the industry "Oh, that's just the free hand of the market." When a multilateral, societal disaster strikes and schools struggle with contradicting demands: "What an inept bunch we have running these schools" Very few are being honest on why the kids have to be in school (so it doesn't disrupt parents' labor), so it's framed as "think of the children" when TFA shows that little education happens at school when teachers are sick. Zoom class is terrible, but its better than the shitshow described in the fine article. Worse, if students get into dangerous situations while at school/playing hooky because there isn't adequate adult supervision, the same people will have the gall to blame the schools.
- pjscott 5y ago
  > When school budgets are cut and underpaid teachers leave the industry "Oh, that's just the free hand of the market." Are school budgets being cut? I keep hearing people saying they are, but the US Department of Education says the opposite [1]: that per-pupil spending (adjusted for inflation) has increased greatly over the past century or so, and its trajectory has almost always been upward. What's the deal? (My best shot at a steelman is that either (a) the money has been disappearing down a mysterious rabbit hole and so teacher pay hasn't risen as much as the raw budget numbers would lead you to think, or that (b) teachers are underpaid relative to what they could get in other occupations that have seen more per-worker productivity growth, i.e. the Baumol effect.) [1] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_236.55.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_236.55.a...
  - sangnoir 5y ago
    > Are school budgets being cut? Absolutely! Sometimes it's explicitly sold as an education budget cut (like Texas in 2011, narrowly averted in 2021 but there was a whole campaign for it), and occasionally it's cloaked in carrot/stick incentives where district that "excel" get more money, and the underperfoming ones get less. The lately, there's an attempt in red states to go around Brown v. (IMO) by promoting tax-funded charter schools, which take money away from public schools - so, technically the budget hasn't been cut, but public school districts (and schools) are getting less money.