4 ms·

School funding often breaks down at the state level not the local level though it varies by state of course. Simply being in a wealthy suburb does not mean that

by ktsmith 14y ago

School funding often breaks down at the state level not the local level though it varies by state of course. Simply being in a wealthy suburb does not mean that your school has any more funding than a school in a poor area. In fact it's quite likely that your schools received significantly less money than schools in poorer areas due to federal funding via grants and things like Title I.

w1ntermute 14y ago
In that case, why are there not better teachers in poor school districts? After all, if my school was receiving less funding and still had good teachers, then those poor districts must have stellar teachers. And yet we continue to hear about how teachers suck.
- japhyr 14y ago
  The higher level of funding does not translate to higher-paid teachers. That money goes to supporting students. It can be used to implement school breakfast programs, hire additional support staff, develop afterschool programs, etc. But a school can't just decide to pay its teachers more. The other important answer to this question is that low pay is not the major disincentive for working in an urban school. It's the challenges of working in a high-poverty environment. Those challenges are numerous, and pretty well documented. There are many similar issues in low-income rural areas.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    > But a school can't just decide to pay its teachers more. Why not? If there are so many environmental reasons why teaching at such a school is disincentivized, providing a monetary incentive could bring in teachers.
    - ktsmith 14y ago
      > Why not? State law prevents it in many cases. Collective bargaining agreements with unions, standard pay scales etc.
      - w1ntermute 14y ago
        That sounds like a place to start then. Change the laws.
        ktsmith 14y ago
        One of the provisions of being eligible for federal funding as part of the Race to the Top program is that states implement merit pay. I don't personally believe that will change anything and may place even more emphasis on standardized testing, but it could also lead to diversified pay scales.
        japhyr 14y ago
        I am really suspicious of any teacher evaluation system that ties to merit pay. I don't trust administrators and politicians to understand statistics well enough to measure my impact on student learning, as distinct from impacts such as home life, previous teachers, environmental factors, etc. I would love to be able to earn higher pay for better performance. I have been so frustrated with terrible teachers getting paid much more than me throughout my career, simply because they'd been there longer. But I haven't seen any merit pay system yet that is anything more than a token bonus for some nebulous student performance measures. Nate Silver did an AMA on reddit the other day, and the top question related to teacher evaluation and merit pay: "What are your thoughts on data-driven metrics for teacher evaluation? Do you think a system that accurately reflects teacher value could ever be created, or will it always be plagued by perverse incentives (teaching to the test, neglecting certain types of students, etc)?" He basically said that's too big of a question to answer in an AMA[0], it would take a book. But his first line captures my stance on merit pay: "There are certainly cases where applying objective measures badly is worse than not applying them at all, and education may well be one of those." [0] - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/166yeo/iama_blogger_for_fivethirtyeight_at_the_new_york/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/166yeo/iama_blogger_fo...
- ktsmith 14y ago
  The teachers are making the same amount of money regardless of what school they work at. Most school districts have had pay scales based on amount of college education (degrees and credit hours) and longevity in the district. That is starting to change but there doesn't seem to be a good way to judge "merit" when determining teacher pay at the moment. Teaching jobs in wealthy areas can often be vastly easier than in poor areas and as such they are highly desirable and hard to get due to a lack of teachers leaving those positions. When you teach at a school in a wealthy neighborhood you can expect great parental involvement, an active PTA that picks up the slack during budget shortfalls etc. When you work at a poor school you can expect to be a counselor, get little to no parental involvement and have to deal with tons of issues tangential to education. Teachers don't last long, the average teacher is only expected to last 3-5 years in the field. A few anecdotes. The school district my wife teaches in pays for no PE teachers due to budget shortfalls. Three of the elementary schools in town have PE teachers that show up between three and four days per week entirely funded by the schools PTAs. The elementary schools in wealthy neighborhoods send home supply lists with items like paper, pencils, crayons, paper towels and kleenex. The parents send all that stuff in. The poor schools have that provided but once it's gone there isn't any more because the parents can't afford to pick up the slack. The school my wife teaches at is Title I provision G. That means the kids get all three of their meals at school during the week. 40% of the students at her school are classified as being "in transition" which is a bureaucratic way of saying homeless. There's a lot more money being spent at my wife's school than the "good" schools but most of it isn't spent on education, it's spent on the basic needs of the kids.
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    I am of the opinion that if these people cannot afford to properly raise their children, they should not be having them. It shouldn't be the school's responsibility to take care of all these basic parenting duties. Perhaps that is where we should start. What if the government were to offer $X to women in return for having their tubes tied (same for the male equivalent)? Only the poor people would need the money badly enough to actually do so. You could offer a small sum for a reversible process (which you'd have to pay back in order to get it undone), or a large sum for a permanent procedure. This could very likely solve a lot of these issues in a generation.
nitrogen 14y ago
Where I went to highschool, there was an obvious difference between schools in upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class areas. The upper middle class public schools had access to the best/most resources, to the point where their football teams would recruit students from other areas in the state and some of their games would be televised. The buildings were newer and better maintained. The schools in poorer areas were ugly, aging, had problems with mold and flooding, etc. Being in that kind of environment is demotivating to both students and teachers.
- ktsmith 14y ago
  Where I went to school the nicer schools were in the nicer areas because both the homes and the schools were newer. While the district spent the same amount of money to maintain them all two of the schools I went to were much nicer than surrounding schools due entirely to private donations. During the summer following my freshman year of highschool we got a brand new basketball court, all the materials and labor were donated. After I graduated the school got a new football field and track, also all through donations. Simply having extremely wealthy individuals living nearby and having their kids go to those schools provided incentive for them to help make the schools better. The other schools couldn't keep up because the families they service didn't have the same type of resources.

by ktsmith 14y ago

w1ntermute 14y ago

In that case, why are there not better teachers in poor school districts? After all, if my school was receiving less funding and still had good teachers, then those poor districts must have stellar teachers. And yet we continue to hear about how teachers suck.

japhyr 14y ago
The higher level of funding does not translate to higher-paid teachers. That money goes to supporting students. It can be used to implement school breakfast programs, hire additional support staff, develop afterschool programs, etc. But a school can't just decide to pay its teachers more. The other important answer to this question is that low pay is not the major disincentive for working in an urban school. It's the challenges of working in a high-poverty environment. Those challenges are numerous, and pretty well documented. There are many similar issues in low-income rural areas.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  > But a school can't just decide to pay its teachers more. Why not? If there are so many environmental reasons why teaching at such a school is disincentivized, providing a monetary incentive could bring in teachers.
  - ktsmith 14y ago
    > Why not? State law prevents it in many cases. Collective bargaining agreements with unions, standard pay scales etc.
    - w1ntermute 14y ago
      That sounds like a place to start then. Change the laws.
      - ktsmith 14y ago
        One of the provisions of being eligible for federal funding as part of the Race to the Top program is that states implement merit pay. I don't personally believe that will change anything and may place even more emphasis on standardized testing, but it could also lead to diversified pay scales.
        japhyr 14y ago
        I am really suspicious of any teacher evaluation system that ties to merit pay. I don't trust administrators and politicians to understand statistics well enough to measure my impact on student learning, as distinct from impacts such as home life, previous teachers, environmental factors, etc. I would love to be able to earn higher pay for better performance. I have been so frustrated with terrible teachers getting paid much more than me throughout my career, simply because they'd been there longer. But I haven't seen any merit pay system yet that is anything more than a token bonus for some nebulous student performance measures. Nate Silver did an AMA on reddit the other day, and the top question related to teacher evaluation and merit pay: "What are your thoughts on data-driven metrics for teacher evaluation? Do you think a system that accurately reflects teacher value could ever be created, or will it always be plagued by perverse incentives (teaching to the test, neglecting certain types of students, etc)?" He basically said that's too big of a question to answer in an AMA[0], it would take a book. But his first line captures my stance on merit pay: "There are certainly cases where applying objective measures badly is worse than not applying them at all, and education may well be one of those." [0] - http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/166yeo/iama_blogger_for_fivethirtyeight_at_the_new_york/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/166yeo/iama_blogger_fo...
ktsmith 14y ago
The teachers are making the same amount of money regardless of what school they work at. Most school districts have had pay scales based on amount of college education (degrees and credit hours) and longevity in the district. That is starting to change but there doesn't seem to be a good way to judge "merit" when determining teacher pay at the moment. Teaching jobs in wealthy areas can often be vastly easier than in poor areas and as such they are highly desirable and hard to get due to a lack of teachers leaving those positions. When you teach at a school in a wealthy neighborhood you can expect great parental involvement, an active PTA that picks up the slack during budget shortfalls etc. When you work at a poor school you can expect to be a counselor, get little to no parental involvement and have to deal with tons of issues tangential to education. Teachers don't last long, the average teacher is only expected to last 3-5 years in the field. A few anecdotes. The school district my wife teaches in pays for no PE teachers due to budget shortfalls. Three of the elementary schools in town have PE teachers that show up between three and four days per week entirely funded by the schools PTAs. The elementary schools in wealthy neighborhoods send home supply lists with items like paper, pencils, crayons, paper towels and kleenex. The parents send all that stuff in. The poor schools have that provided but once it's gone there isn't any more because the parents can't afford to pick up the slack. The school my wife teaches at is Title I provision G. That means the kids get all three of their meals at school during the week. 40% of the students at her school are classified as being "in transition" which is a bureaucratic way of saying homeless. There's a lot more money being spent at my wife's school than the "good" schools but most of it isn't spent on education, it's spent on the basic needs of the kids.
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  I am of the opinion that if these people cannot afford to properly raise their children, they should not be having them. It shouldn't be the school's responsibility to take care of all these basic parenting duties. Perhaps that is where we should start. What if the government were to offer $X to women in return for having their tubes tied (same for the male equivalent)? Only the poor people would need the money badly enough to actually do so. You could offer a small sum for a reversible process (which you'd have to pay back in order to get it undone), or a large sum for a permanent procedure. This could very likely solve a lot of these issues in a generation.

nitrogen 14y ago

Where I went to highschool, there was an obvious difference between schools in upper middle class, middle class, and lower middle class areas. The upper middle class public schools had access to the best/most resources, to the point where their football teams would recruit students from other areas in the state and some of their games would be televised. The buildings were newer and better maintained. The schools in poorer areas were ugly, aging, had problems with mold and flooding, etc. Being in that kind of environment is demotivating to both students and teachers.

ktsmith 14y ago
Where I went to school the nicer schools were in the nicer areas because both the homes and the schools were newer. While the district spent the same amount of money to maintain them all two of the schools I went to were much nicer than surrounding schools due entirely to private donations. During the summer following my freshman year of highschool we got a brand new basketball court, all the materials and labor were donated. After I graduated the school got a new football field and track, also all through donations. Simply having extremely wealthy individuals living nearby and having their kids go to those schools provided incentive for them to help make the schools better. The other schools couldn't keep up because the families they service didn't have the same type of resources.