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Isn't occam's razor here that, in fact, these enormous sums of money are not going to education? Like that this is all strong evidence of bureaucratic misappro

Isn't occam's razor here that, in fact, these enormous sums of money are not going to education? Like that this is all strong evidence of bureaucratic misappropriation, corruption, text book companies, etc? Or at least, I struggle to think of what other reasonable point one could make about the insight.

Amezarak 3y ago
Sure, there are a lot of factors like that. - Bloated school administrations and the employment of all kinds of semi-professionals that were not needed or did not even exist in the past, and which are not common outside of the US. - Excessive credentialist requirements that sometimes actively harm learning outcomes: for example, not only do degreed teachers not produce better learning outcomes, much education science is bunk that actively harms learning outcomes. If you employ only more expensive Master's in Education teachers who you have teaching three-cueing, you end up with worse results. - Grift and graft where various school contracts are awarded to enrich particular people; there was a video going around of an extremely nice school with a swimming pool, large auditorium etc compared to an absolute junkyard of a school elsewhere, but the nice school was actually built for much less money than the junk school. - Endless interventions that serve to do nothing but set money on fire, like the fads around filling classrooms with iPads and Chromebooks. All of my children's math education and homework takes places exclusively on computers. There was actually another recent story where Baltimore schools are buying every student a Chromebook. Lots of educators have a sort of cargo cult belief that handing kids computers makes them tech-literate and prepares them to be a SV programmer. - Discipline. Unfortunately there are some uncomfortable truths that people don't want to address and take serious action to remediate. A few dozen really bad students in a school can absolutely destroy learning. You can find myriads of videos of classrooms where teachers have been forced to totally give up. The only day they even bother to give a lesson is if the worst actors decided to take the day off. Relatedly, in many places, policy is to do everything possible to not hold students back, which compounds issues over the years. I am very sure there are many more items we could add to the list. Some items will apply much more to some areas than others. Unfortunately there is no one silver bullet solution. The point is that adding more money does not do anything to solve the real problems with American education. You just end up handing more money out for graft and waste to enrich people are not actually making a difference educationally.
zaphar 3y ago
Yes, and it's highly applicable. But how exactly do you fix that practically speaking? Especially if you are a parent trying to ensure that: 1. Your own child get's a good education. 2. Other people's children also have the opportunity to get a good education? Your options for solving #1 are in many ways more achievable than the options for #2 requiring only a certain level of sacrifice on your part. Your options for #2 require political action against: School administrators and Education Unions, as well as having conversations like this. Allowing a parent to use the public education funding to choose where their child get's educated is a useful safety valve that opens up the same choices that a wealthier parent has while also adding a useful incentive to a school district to get their act together. If a school district's response is that they need money and you are hurting their ability to improve when more money has not in fact improved their performance in the past then maybe it's time to stop believing them.

Amezarak 3y ago

Sure, there are a lot of factors like that. - Bloated school administrations and the employment of all kinds of semi-professionals that were not needed or did not even exist in the past, and which are not common outside of the US. - Excessive credentialist requirements that sometimes actively harm learning outcomes: for example, not only do degreed teachers not produce better learning outcomes, much education science is bunk that actively harms learning outcomes. If you employ only more expensive Master's in Education teachers who you have teaching three-cueing, you end up with worse results. - Grift and graft where various school contracts are awarded to enrich particular people; there was a video going around of an extremely nice school with a swimming pool, large auditorium etc compared to an absolute junkyard of a school elsewhere, but the nice school was actually built for much less money than the junk school. - Endless interventions that serve to do nothing but set money on fire, like the fads around filling classrooms with iPads and Chromebooks. All of my children's math education and homework takes places exclusively on computers. There was actually another recent story where Baltimore schools are buying every student a Chromebook. Lots of educators have a sort of cargo cult belief that handing kids computers makes them tech-literate and prepares them to be a SV programmer. - Discipline. Unfortunately there are some uncomfortable truths that people don't want to address and take serious action to remediate. A few dozen really bad students in a school can absolutely destroy learning. You can find myriads of videos of classrooms where teachers have been forced to totally give up. The only day they even bother to give a lesson is if the worst actors decided to take the day off. Relatedly, in many places, policy is to do everything possible to not hold students back, which compounds issues over the years. I am very sure there are many more items we could add to the list. Some items will apply much more to some areas than others. Unfortunately there is no one silver bullet solution. The point is that adding more money does not do anything to solve the real problems with American education. You just end up handing more money out for graft and waste to enrich people are not actually making a difference educationally.

zaphar 3y ago

Yes, and it's highly applicable. But how exactly do you fix that practically speaking? Especially if you are a parent trying to ensure that: 1. Your own child get's a good education. 2. Other people's children also have the opportunity to get a good education? Your options for solving #1 are in many ways more achievable than the options for #2 requiring only a certain level of sacrifice on your part. Your options for #2 require political action against: School administrators and Education Unions, as well as having conversations like this. Allowing a parent to use the public education funding to choose where their child get's educated is a useful safety valve that opens up the same choices that a wealthier parent has while also adding a useful incentive to a school district to get their act together. If a school district's response is that they need money and you are hurting their ability to improve when more money has not in fact improved their performance in the past then maybe it's time to stop believing them.