4 ms·

I see your point that adding money to a badly managed system won't fix it. But I also think that a cost of 15K per student, for example, is totally reasonable.

I see your point that adding money to a badly managed system won't fix it. But I also think that a cost of 15K per student, for example, is totally reasonable. I don't know where you live, but if you imagine that you need about 2 teachers to teach a class of 20 pupils at a salary of 100K, this alone is 10K per student, per year. Plus there is maintenance staff, the buildings, materials, canteen staff...

rahimnathwani 3y ago
$15k per student per year would be reasonable here in San Francisco. Imagine I were to offer you $100k to teach for 36 weeks, but you also had to organize everything for the year, including deciding how to use another $200k to procure everything you will need. How would you spend that $200k over the 36 weeks? For me, it might be something like: $1.5k/week for a teaching assistant $1.5k/week to rent a space $1.0k/week for catering $0.5k/week to rent furniture $0.5k/week for materials That would still leave $1000 per student to buy a Chromebook at the start of each year.
- konschubert 3y ago
  I you want to have good teachers, you need to pay them good yearly salaries. Probably 200K in the tech hubs, 100K in the rest of the world. If your teaching assistant gets 54K from you (in SF!!) and then has to work odds jobs during the summer, you're going to get the rare idealist and a bunch of ppl who are bad at making decisions.
  - rahimnathwani 3y ago
    San Francisco is a tech hub. There are good teachers in San Francisco (in both public schools and private schools) who are paid way less than 200K.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      My impression from HN was that people were not very happy with the quality of the teachers in SF. But maybe I am wrong.
      - rahimnathwani 3y ago
        The performance of public schools in SF isn't solely (maybe not even mainly) related to the quality of the teachers. Even if it were solely to do with the teachers, this doesn't mean that all (or even the majority) of teachers are bad. Even if we're the case that all teachers in SF are bad, this would be more likely to do with the hiring standards (e.g. you have to have gone to teaching college) and firing standards (LIFO), than to do with salaries offered to newly-hired teachers.

rahimnathwani 3y ago

$15k per student per year would be reasonable here in San Francisco. Imagine I were to offer you $100k to teach for 36 weeks, but you also had to organize everything for the year, including deciding how to use another $200k to procure everything you will need. How would you spend that $200k over the 36 weeks? For me, it might be something like: $1.5k/week for a teaching assistant $1.5k/week to rent a space $1.0k/week for catering $0.5k/week to rent furniture $0.5k/week for materials That would still leave $1000 per student to buy a Chromebook at the start of each year.

konschubert 3y ago
I you want to have good teachers, you need to pay them good yearly salaries. Probably 200K in the tech hubs, 100K in the rest of the world. If your teaching assistant gets 54K from you (in SF!!) and then has to work odds jobs during the summer, you're going to get the rare idealist and a bunch of ppl who are bad at making decisions.
- rahimnathwani 3y ago
  San Francisco is a tech hub. There are good teachers in San Francisco (in both public schools and private schools) who are paid way less than 200K.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    My impression from HN was that people were not very happy with the quality of the teachers in SF. But maybe I am wrong.
    - rahimnathwani 3y ago
      The performance of public schools in SF isn't solely (maybe not even mainly) related to the quality of the teachers. Even if it were solely to do with the teachers, this doesn't mean that all (or even the majority) of teachers are bad. Even if we're the case that all teachers in SF are bad, this would be more likely to do with the hiring standards (e.g. you have to have gone to teaching college) and firing standards (LIFO), than to do with salaries offered to newly-hired teachers.