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Where are you going to get a few million surrogates? A lot of solutions shared here fail to realize that the majority of US public school teachers are routinely

Where are you going to get a few million surrogates? A lot of solutions shared here fail to realize that the majority of US public school teachers are routinely spending their own money on basic classroom supplies.

jakeinspace 5y ago
I assumed they meant having other kids be surrogates, so representing both themselves as well as another student. Could work in the right environment I suppose, but US public school culture is a million miles from that of Japan.
- redisman 5y ago
  This just seems like a very naive idea in a very confident HN manner. Have you met teenagers?
  - jakeinspace 5y ago
    That's what I meant by the right environment. I don't think it'd work well for the typical American public school.
alach11 5y ago
Double up classes. You could have a 60 person class taught by one teacher, with the other acting as support.
- germinalphrase 5y ago
  I am a high school English teacher. I currently teach six sections of 30-35 students. I already spend my nights and weekends lesson planning/assessing writing, and you want to double my student load? Fuck off. I’d quit tomorrow.
  - LodeOfCode 5y ago
    The grading (and lesson planning/assignment & test writing, though those scale anyway) would be split between the teacher giving the lesson and the one acting as a surrogate, so they'd basically still have the same load each. Edit: probably on an alternating assignments basis rather than a "half the students' papers for you, half for me" basis, for grading consistency/fairness reasons Edit2: Actually, for feedback-latency reasons it's probably better to split grading the other way. I wonder whether it's better to split each assignment randomly, or grade as two separate classes with shared lectures.
    - jagger27 5y ago
      For tests and exams it’s common for teaching assistants to mark the same few questions on every test, usually on the same page. It helps catch cheating and plagiarism and keeps grading consistent. When I was a TA we’d split the stack of paper tests evenly and rotate them every few days to grade them in parallel. It’s even easier to do the splitting if tests are submitted online.
      - LodeOfCode 5y ago
        Oh, yeah! My profs'd also post the list of which TA did each (sub-)question, so that if we had questions about why we lost marks we knew who direct them to (although all grading disputes had to go to the prof, to disincentivise people from arguing with the TAs) And with two teachers, you'd also be able to have each write half the questions, and split the grading that way.
- xrd 5y ago
  My brother is a teacher, his class sizes have increased by 30% this year. He's exhausted and was long before COVID surged. It is not an easy job.
eadmund 5y ago
'Since March 2020, the federal government has provided $190 billion in pandemic aid to schools …'[0] 'There are 130,930 public and private K-12 schools in the U.S.'[1] $190 billion divided by 130,930 is $1.45 million dollars per school. Now, I will readily grant that a million dollars just ain't what it used to be, but it is, even in 2021, still a heck of a lot of money, and it sure sounds from the raw numbers that public school teachers shouldn't need to spend their own money on basic COVID-19 supplies. 0: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/look-up-how-much-covid-relief-aid-your-district-is-getting/2021/09 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/look-up-how-much-covi... 1: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/2019/01 https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts...
- LodeOfCode 5y ago
  >shouldn't need to spend their own money on basic COVID-19 supplies Not covid supplies, school supplies pre-covid (which they also shouldn't have needed to, but did need to nevertheless). And hiring enough surrogates would eat up a huge chunk of that $1.45 million, given that you'd need, what, ~10 per school for nearly 2 years now? Actually, that's more doable than I expected.
- cipheredStones 5y ago
  There's around 50M K-12 students in public schools. That's roughly $4k per student over the course of about 18 months, at the time the article was written. Subtract six months for summers, if you like; that's still ~360 days, for about $11/student/day. It's not nothing, but a single rapid test costs more than that.
  - bushbaba 5y ago
    Rapid testing every student wouldn’t be necessary to open the schools.
    - dude187 5y ago
      The continual testing and quarantining of healthy students and staff is what keeps schools from being able to reliably stay open.
hidudeurcool 5y ago
home/community school. public schools are a death trap
rayiner 5y ago
Just. Stop. You’re hurting kids by spreading the myth that school funding is the problem, because it allows the real problems to continue festering. US public schools are among some of the best funded in the world: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15434/the-countries-spending-the-most-on-education/ https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15434/the-countries-spend... Plus, schools have tons of unused covid relief money: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/05/politics/school-federal-covid-relief-money/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/05/politics/school-federal-covid...
- xyzzyz 5y ago
  New York City spends close to $30k per public school student. They should be able to afford anything with this kind of spending.
- tptacek 5y ago
  I'm inclined to believe this. I was in a discussion about this yesterday with friends and a clear statistic would have helped. But the chart you've got there --- I know it's not the fulcrum of your whole argument, I'm not sniping --- doesn't really make the case you make in your comment. It says that we spend 0.1% more than the OECD average on primary/secondary schools, but are boosted in the overall rankings by spending way more than any other country on tertiary schools (unsurprising).
  - rayiner 5y ago
    I usually take the G7 as the benchmark—what oil emirates like Norway or banking havens like Switzerland spend aren’t a relevant comparison to a big diversified economy like the US. We spend a bigger percentage of our economy on K-12 than all but one other G7 country. And since our GDP per capita is so high, that share of GDP represents 20%+ more purchasing power than other G7 countries. That should be more than enough. We need to stop acting like money is the problem in education.
    - wolf550e 5y ago
      Isn't money spent on education mostly teachers' salaries? So high GDP per capita just makes education more expensive, not less expensive. If education spending was mostly electronics, then higher GDP per capita would have been good for education.
Lofty1971 5y ago
I assume this could be done with one surrogate per teacher rather than per student and would be almost as effective.
- another_story 5y ago
  That was my assumption, one per teacher.

jakeinspace 5y ago

I assumed they meant having other kids be surrogates, so representing both themselves as well as another student. Could work in the right environment I suppose, but US public school culture is a million miles from that of Japan.

redisman 5y ago
This just seems like a very naive idea in a very confident HN manner. Have you met teenagers?
- jakeinspace 5y ago
  That's what I meant by the right environment. I don't think it'd work well for the typical American public school.

alach11 5y ago

Double up classes. You could have a 60 person class taught by one teacher, with the other acting as support.

germinalphrase 5y ago
I am a high school English teacher. I currently teach six sections of 30-35 students. I already spend my nights and weekends lesson planning/assessing writing, and you want to double my student load? Fuck off. I’d quit tomorrow.
- LodeOfCode 5y ago
  The grading (and lesson planning/assignment & test writing, though those scale anyway) would be split between the teacher giving the lesson and the one acting as a surrogate, so they'd basically still have the same load each. Edit: probably on an alternating assignments basis rather than a "half the students' papers for you, half for me" basis, for grading consistency/fairness reasons Edit2: Actually, for feedback-latency reasons it's probably better to split grading the other way. I wonder whether it's better to split each assignment randomly, or grade as two separate classes with shared lectures.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    For tests and exams it’s common for teaching assistants to mark the same few questions on every test, usually on the same page. It helps catch cheating and plagiarism and keeps grading consistent. When I was a TA we’d split the stack of paper tests evenly and rotate them every few days to grade them in parallel. It’s even easier to do the splitting if tests are submitted online.
    - LodeOfCode 5y ago
      Oh, yeah! My profs'd also post the list of which TA did each (sub-)question, so that if we had questions about why we lost marks we knew who direct them to (although all grading disputes had to go to the prof, to disincentivise people from arguing with the TAs) And with two teachers, you'd also be able to have each write half the questions, and split the grading that way.
xrd 5y ago
My brother is a teacher, his class sizes have increased by 30% this year. He's exhausted and was long before COVID surged. It is not an easy job.

eadmund 5y ago

'Since March 2020, the federal government has provided $190 billion in pandemic aid to schools …'[0] 'There are 130,930 public and private K-12 schools in the U.S.'[1] $190 billion divided by 130,930 is $1.45 million dollars per school. Now, I will readily grant that a million dollars just ain't what it used to be, but it is, even in 2021, still a heck of a lot of money, and it sure sounds from the raw numbers that public school teachers shouldn't need to spend their own money on basic COVID-19 supplies. 0: https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/look-up-how-much-covid-relief-aid-your-district-is-getting/2021/09 https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/look-up-how-much-covi... 1: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/2019/01 https://www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts...

LodeOfCode 5y ago
>shouldn't need to spend their own money on basic COVID-19 supplies Not covid supplies, school supplies pre-covid (which they also shouldn't have needed to, but did need to nevertheless). And hiring enough surrogates would eat up a huge chunk of that $1.45 million, given that you'd need, what, ~10 per school for nearly 2 years now? Actually, that's more doable than I expected.
cipheredStones 5y ago
There's around 50M K-12 students in public schools. That's roughly $4k per student over the course of about 18 months, at the time the article was written. Subtract six months for summers, if you like; that's still ~360 days, for about $11/student/day. It's not nothing, but a single rapid test costs more than that.
- bushbaba 5y ago
  Rapid testing every student wouldn’t be necessary to open the schools.
  - dude187 5y ago
    The continual testing and quarantining of healthy students and staff is what keeps schools from being able to reliably stay open.

hidudeurcool 5y ago

home/community school. public schools are a death trap

rayiner 5y ago

Just. Stop. You’re hurting kids by spreading the myth that school funding is the problem, because it allows the real problems to continue festering. US public schools are among some of the best funded in the world: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15434/the-countries-spending-the-most-on-education/ https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/15434/the-countries-spend... Plus, schools have tons of unused covid relief money: https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/05/politics/school-federal-covid-relief-money/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/05/politics/school-federal-covid...

xyzzyz 5y ago
New York City spends close to $30k per public school student. They should be able to afford anything with this kind of spending.
tptacek 5y ago
I'm inclined to believe this. I was in a discussion about this yesterday with friends and a clear statistic would have helped. But the chart you've got there --- I know it's not the fulcrum of your whole argument, I'm not sniping --- doesn't really make the case you make in your comment. It says that we spend 0.1% more than the OECD average on primary/secondary schools, but are boosted in the overall rankings by spending way more than any other country on tertiary schools (unsurprising).
- rayiner 5y ago
  I usually take the G7 as the benchmark—what oil emirates like Norway or banking havens like Switzerland spend aren’t a relevant comparison to a big diversified economy like the US. We spend a bigger percentage of our economy on K-12 than all but one other G7 country. And since our GDP per capita is so high, that share of GDP represents 20%+ more purchasing power than other G7 countries. That should be more than enough. We need to stop acting like money is the problem in education.
  - wolf550e 5y ago
    Isn't money spent on education mostly teachers' salaries? So high GDP per capita just makes education more expensive, not less expensive. If education spending was mostly electronics, then higher GDP per capita would have been good for education.

Lofty1971 5y ago

I assume this could be done with one surrogate per teacher rather than per student and would be almost as effective.

another_story 5y ago
That was my assumption, one per teacher.