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Two ways poor school districts could work on serving the kids are take some money from administration salaries to pay teachers and take some money from administ

by cestith 8mo ago

Two ways poor school districts could work on serving the kids are take some money from administration salaries to pay teachers and take some money from administration salaries to pay for breakfast and lunch for students.

mikkupikku 8mo ago
The latter will probably work much better. Good teachers get embittered and burned out through exposure to bad students (who are mostly bad because their parents are trash, and feeding the kids breakfast partially mitigates this.) Of course the teachers will tell you that paying the teachers more is the solution, but that doesn't seem to track with the evidence. Good schools, which are good because the students are good, tend to compensate their teachers less than bad schools. The teachers really aren't what make a school bad or good in the first place, and virtually no teachers start out being bitter assholes but are made to be that way after years of bad students. It's all downstream of social problems in the community causing kids to be raised poorly, and fixing that requires more nuance than just throwing money at teachers.
- cestith 8mo ago
  But you get the best teachers by requiring a Masters and paying $40k a year while your school has three assistant principals and your district pays six figures apiece to multiple assistant superintendents, right?
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    The administrative busybodies soaking up so much of society's money is a problem, but not the reason bad schools are bad.
- tstrimple 8mo ago
  I tend to think "good teachers" is a thing that doesn't really matter outside of niche 1-1 breakthrough moments. I know there are exceptions. Teachers who go way above and beyond, but that's not a scalable solution. A great teacher can make a difference in a handful of children. But they can't fix a fundamentally broken system. I tend to agree with you that it's not teachers that make a school good. It's the reputation and the parents who will move to areas based on said reputation. It's already selecting for parents who have the means and willingness to decide where they live to achieve better results for their child's education. They are invested in other ways as well. Thus bad schools don't necessarily have bad teachers. They have a concentration of complacent or actively bad parents who drag the entire experience down for everyone. Throw in the bulk of special needs kids who fall on the public school system that is not in any way equipped to actually handle them and it's no wonder very few kids are learning effectively.
  - mikkupikku 8mo ago
    I do think the impact good teachers have is relatively minor, except for the part where a good teacher isn't a bad teacher, and the damage a bad teacher can do is enormous. A young inexperienced teacher is almost certainly getting into the career because they want to help kids. They may become a bad teacher, the bitter sort of teacher, after many years of seeing little but negative outcomes. At that point, they become part of the problem and realistically the only way to correct this is to wait until they quit. Incidentally, high wages are more likely to keep bad bitter teachers in jobs they hate longer, while young optimistic teachers require less fiscal motivation.
    - cestith 8mo ago
      Perpetually low pay sees fewer truly competent people going into education. It also means that mid-career people who are trying to raise families often leave for better pay and hours.

by cestith 8mo ago

mikkupikku 8mo ago

The latter will probably work much better. Good teachers get embittered and burned out through exposure to bad students (who are mostly bad because their parents are trash, and feeding the kids breakfast partially mitigates this.) Of course the teachers will tell you that paying the teachers more is the solution, but that doesn't seem to track with the evidence. Good schools, which are good because the students are good, tend to compensate their teachers less than bad schools. The teachers really aren't what make a school bad or good in the first place, and virtually no teachers start out being bitter assholes but are made to be that way after years of bad students. It's all downstream of social problems in the community causing kids to be raised poorly, and fixing that requires more nuance than just throwing money at teachers.

cestith 8mo ago
But you get the best teachers by requiring a Masters and paying $40k a year while your school has three assistant principals and your district pays six figures apiece to multiple assistant superintendents, right?
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  The administrative busybodies soaking up so much of society's money is a problem, but not the reason bad schools are bad.
tstrimple 8mo ago
I tend to think "good teachers" is a thing that doesn't really matter outside of niche 1-1 breakthrough moments. I know there are exceptions. Teachers who go way above and beyond, but that's not a scalable solution. A great teacher can make a difference in a handful of children. But they can't fix a fundamentally broken system. I tend to agree with you that it's not teachers that make a school good. It's the reputation and the parents who will move to areas based on said reputation. It's already selecting for parents who have the means and willingness to decide where they live to achieve better results for their child's education. They are invested in other ways as well. Thus bad schools don't necessarily have bad teachers. They have a concentration of complacent or actively bad parents who drag the entire experience down for everyone. Throw in the bulk of special needs kids who fall on the public school system that is not in any way equipped to actually handle them and it's no wonder very few kids are learning effectively.
- mikkupikku 8mo ago
  I do think the impact good teachers have is relatively minor, except for the part where a good teacher isn't a bad teacher, and the damage a bad teacher can do is enormous. A young inexperienced teacher is almost certainly getting into the career because they want to help kids. They may become a bad teacher, the bitter sort of teacher, after many years of seeing little but negative outcomes. At that point, they become part of the problem and realistically the only way to correct this is to wait until they quit. Incidentally, high wages are more likely to keep bad bitter teachers in jobs they hate longer, while young optimistic teachers require less fiscal motivation.
  - cestith 8mo ago
    Perpetually low pay sees fewer truly competent people going into education. It also means that mid-career people who are trying to raise families often leave for better pay and hours.