3 ms·

> I infer your complaint is misdirected at the taxpayers, and should be with mis-spending by the school administrators. I never directed a complaint at the tax

by mlyle 4y ago

> I infer your complaint is misdirected at the taxpayers, and should be with mis-spending by the school administrators. I never directed a complaint at the taxpayers-- though it should be directed at the voters. Society expecting/normalizing teachers to pay for supplies out of their own pocket is the problem. Education keeps getting more and more expensive and lower and lower quality across the board. Especially in universities, but also in K12. Administration and waste gobble up more and more. It seems like your responses expect teachers to paper over all the systemic problems. Their employer demands they teach excessive amounts of curriculum? Well, they'd better listen to parents, too, even if this is impossible, or else get no respect! School districts don't actually buy supplies or resource classrooms sufficiently? Well, teachers had better fix that!

WalterBright 4y ago
The teachers cannot fix the public schools, I agree with that. But they shouldn't keep repeating the obvious propaganda like the Great Pencil Shortage :-) The solution is, and you know this is coming (!), free market schools. A half-step in that direction are charter schools, which the teachers unions fight tooth and nail. I've never talked with a public school teacher who had anything positive to say about charter schools.
- mlyle 4y ago
  > The teachers cannot fix the public schools, I agree with that. But they shouldn't keep repeating the obvious propaganda like the Great Pencil Shortage :-) If teachers are shamed into buying supplies for their room, it's not propaganda. > A half-step in that direction are charter schools, which the teachers unions fight tooth and nail. Charter schools are pretty complicated from a policy perspective. We're not talking about the same thing in different states. Some of the for-profit charter schools are much worse than public schools. Other areas have sane regulatory regimes that result in an OK product. Even there, though, students in charter schools do not do better than students who applied for the school but didn't win "lotteries" to get in. That is, the performance benefit seems to mostly be tied to selection effects relating to parental involvement. > I've never talked with a public school teacher who had anything positive to say about charter schools. Welp, I'm not a public school teacher, but there is a decent charter school in town.
- mlyle 4y ago
  The big problem with "free market schools," BTW, is that the state is the educator of last resort. There's a real adverse selection problem if education suppliers can take $X to educate the most desirable students, leaving $X per student for the most difficult to educate students. A huge proportion of public educational expense is special education. If you don't want to give up on special education, this is difficult to do. I favor policies like vouchers for ~33% of public educational cost to be used at private institutions. This is enough to make private education more affordable to many more families (especially with institution financial aid), but could possibly increase resources-per-student for the remaining students in public schools.

by mlyle 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

The teachers cannot fix the public schools, I agree with that. But they shouldn't keep repeating the obvious propaganda like the Great Pencil Shortage :-) The solution is, and you know this is coming (!), free market schools. A half-step in that direction are charter schools, which the teachers unions fight tooth and nail. I've never talked with a public school teacher who had anything positive to say about charter schools.

mlyle 4y ago
> The teachers cannot fix the public schools, I agree with that. But they shouldn't keep repeating the obvious propaganda like the Great Pencil Shortage :-) If teachers are shamed into buying supplies for their room, it's not propaganda. > A half-step in that direction are charter schools, which the teachers unions fight tooth and nail. Charter schools are pretty complicated from a policy perspective. We're not talking about the same thing in different states. Some of the for-profit charter schools are much worse than public schools. Other areas have sane regulatory regimes that result in an OK product. Even there, though, students in charter schools do not do better than students who applied for the school but didn't win "lotteries" to get in. That is, the performance benefit seems to mostly be tied to selection effects relating to parental involvement. > I've never talked with a public school teacher who had anything positive to say about charter schools. Welp, I'm not a public school teacher, but there is a decent charter school in town.
mlyle 4y ago
The big problem with "free market schools," BTW, is that the state is the educator of last resort. There's a real adverse selection problem if education suppliers can take $X to educate the most desirable students, leaving $X per student for the most difficult to educate students. A huge proportion of public educational expense is special education. If you don't want to give up on special education, this is difficult to do. I favor policies like vouchers for ~33% of public educational cost to be used at private institutions. This is enough to make private education more affordable to many more families (especially with institution financial aid), but could possibly increase resources-per-student for the remaining students in public schools.