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On August 11 2008 01:46 Caller wrote:
There is no statsistical correlation between money and improvement of kids. And funding is not as easy to get as one would think.
Merely throwing money at schools won't solve the problem, but I guarantee you a lack of money will hurt schools.
And I wish people would stop touting "PRIVATIZE IT" as the solution to everything. Sure worked out well for our Healthcare, eh?
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United States24753 Posts
On August 11 2008 06:24 Underwhelmed wrote:
And I wish people would stop touting "PRIVATIZE IT" as the solution to everything. Sure worked out well for our Healthcare, eh?
Haha I had a specific example the other day...
Hofstra University's Bookstore is now a Barnes and Noble. They sold back all the textbooks for our course before everyone even had a chance to pick it up and the professor said something like "well, when you have a Republican run campus, they want to privatize everything, and this is what happens."
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On August 11 2008 06:19 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2008 03:21 Ecael wrote:
That said, there aren't really any ways to analyze how well the teachers are doing their job outside of a standarized test, at best we can compliment the results with other factors, even if they are biased and should be corrected for location. The problem is how brutally misused standardized tests are when evaluating teachers. Hell, my class's performance is compared the performance of the physics classes at another school.... and of course if I have a lower passing percentage then I'm a worse teacher, right? It has nothing to do with the fact that half of my students are being forced to take physics against their will, and almost none of his students are.
I understand, thus the suggestion that other factors and corrections are to be included rather than having us look at only the standarized test, which is what we do now. I agree that the way that standarized tests are now used is pointless, mandatory physics is never about to turn out many students that care enough to pass the subject. I certainly can attest for how a ton of people in my HS either failed physics or purposely did bad with chemistry as to get into earth sciences. However, without standarized tests, how exactly are we to distiniguish the results put forth by teachers? The only solution I see is interpretation needs to be taking in context of far more things rather than simply taking upon the score itself, but a colossal task like that is likely to be frowned upon.
Relating this back to the policies of the candidates though, neither of them provided any real solution to it. McCain ignored the topic, Obama proposed we improve the test, how? Who knows, magical revisions will make it better I guess. So would shutting one's eyes to it.
On August 11 2008 06:24 Underwhelmed wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2008 01:46 Caller wrote:
There is no statsistical correlation between money and improvement of kids. And funding is not as easy to get as one would think. Merely throwing money at schools won't solve the problem, but I guarantee you a lack of money will hurt schools. And I wish people would stop touting "PRIVATIZE IT" as the solution to everything. Sure worked out well for our Healthcare, eh?
Are you going to claim that universal healthcare is the way to go? The American healthcare system is anything but privatized, the amount of government regulation as to how it is to be provided as well as the legalities surrounding it makes it impossible to be called upon as an example of privatization. I merely suggested that privatization is probably more effective than what we have been doing all this time, which is floundering about shifting blames from one to another.
EDIT - lol at the example, efficiency can be too much?
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United States24753 Posts
On August 11 2008 06:50 Ecael wrote:
EDIT - lol at the example, efficiency can be too much? Er, what?
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On August 11 2008 06:57 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2008 06:50 Ecael wrote:
EDIT - lol at the example, efficiency can be too much? Er, what?
Don't mind the Republican 
Was going with the idea of inventory being a horrible thing at this time and is to be reduced as soon as possible.
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privatization of the school system will not work, it doesn't make sense. people ignore several key points.
1.) the schools that cost the most will have the best teachers.
2.) what about transportation to and from schools?
3.) poor kids will have to go to worse schools.
the problem with our schools is:
1.) lack of funding. duh
2.) administrators who are REALLY bad at their jobs and make too much money.
3.) focus on irrelevant bullshit. we need to be focused on teaching our kids, not on standardized testing.
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On August 11 2008 07:53 travis wrote:
privatization of the school system will not work, it doesn't make sense. people ignore several key points.
1.) the schools that cost the most will have the best teachers.
2.) what about transportation to and from schools?
3.) poor kids will have to go to worse schools.
On August 10 2008 13:43 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2008 13:31 Underwhelmed wrote:If a school will not change, the students should be able to change schools. John McCain believes parents should be empowered with school choice to send their children to the school that can best educate them just as many members of Congress do with their own children. Translation: LET RICH PEOPLE PICK BETTER SCHOOLS AND THE POOR CAN FUCK THEMSELVES Well the current system in the USA is: Richer school = smarter students Poorer school = poorer students Sounds like it's already favoring the rich... But the first thing that came to mind when reading about the school choosing suggestion (which is not an unprecedented suggestion of course) was a thought experiment similar to this: There are 100 students, and five schools that each can house 20 students. School 1 produced A students. School 2 produces B students, etc. It's unfair to the people zoned for School 5, so give them a choice. How do we choose which of the 100 people can go to school 1? This silly example has glossed over an issue: School 1 doesn't produce A students simply because it's a better school. School 1 produces better students because the circumstances surrounding its students are superior (and because the school is probably good in addition). I wouldn't be surprised if a study showed that most of the parents in School 1 give a crap about their kids' education, and the parents of school 5 either couldn't care less, or were too poor/busy to take an active role.
While I don't think privatization solves any issues already present, I do believe that it can at least lessen the scale of them. That said, it might as well as be impossible, too many interest groups would prefer to keep schooling a government managed affair.
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I think that administrator pay, not school funding, should be based on school results.
this would solve the problem and make the terrible administrators focus on what their actual job is
also the schools just plain need more funding
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Tenure is the worst thing to happen to schools ever. Almost every shit teacher is locked into tenure, and therefore impossible to remove. That's the biggest problems with schools now.
Anyway, yeah, McCain's idea sucks. I can't see how vocuhers will work at all.
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United States24753 Posts
On August 11 2008 10:21 Hawk wrote:
Tenure is the worst thing to happen to schools ever. Almost every shit teacher is locked into tenure, and therefore impossible to remove. That's the biggest problems with schools now.
That is definitely not the worst thing to happen to schools, but I do think the power of tenure is a bit too much.
The way it works right now is, you are more or less treated like crap until you get tenure, if you can manage to get it. I'd rather there be a bit more protection for nontenured teachers, and a bit less protection for tenured teachers.
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if all the kids are leaving the bad schools and going to the good ones, what happens to the bad schools?
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On August 11 2008 10:26 micronesia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2008 10:21 Hawk wrote:
Tenure is the worst thing to happen to schools ever. Almost every shit teacher is locked into tenure, and therefore impossible to remove. That's the biggest problems with schools now.
That is definitely not the worst thing to happen to schools, but I do think the power of tenure is a bit too much. The way it works right now is, you are more or less treated like crap until you get tenure, if you can manage to get it. I'd rather there be a bit more protection for nontenured teachers, and a bit less protection for tenured teachers.
Maybe the worst thing is a bit of an overstatement (ok, it is =p) but it's still a bad system. What other job do you get security like that after 5 years or whatever? All it does is keep crappy teachers in place. The good ones aren't going to get fired, so what's the point?
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On August 11 2008 06:24 Underwhelmed wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2008 01:46 Caller wrote:
There is no statsistical correlation between money and improvement of kids. And funding is not as easy to get as one would think. Merely throwing money at schools won't solve the problem, but I guarantee you a lack of money will hurt schools. And I wish people would stop touting "PRIVATIZE IT" as the solution to everything. Sure worked out well for our Healthcare, eh?
I'm not saying a lack of money will not hurt schools, but I am saying that giving schools more money isn't going to do anything-they'll just build new swimming pools and whatnot. My school just got a recent boost in their budget and instead of hiring better teachers or improving the science department they're building a bigger auditorium and football field. Yeah, there's my money at work. Privatizing schools is probably not a great idea, however.
And for the record, the reason we got into this healthcare mess in the first place was because a certain federal government decided to a) require all employers to purchase insurance for their employees and b) decided to give aid money to HMOs in the form of grants to encourage that industry. Of course, now everybody relies on insurance, so why should doctors bother lowering a "market price." This is, again, not "free market" at work, but rather fascism, where companies basically run the government and get money from it at the taxpayer's expense.
Not to mention the US, unlike other countries, requires 8 years of college/medical school + all sorts of other crap, because we regulate everything, whereas in the UK for instance they only need 4 years as a medical major. Not to mention that drugs are cheaper in other places partly because their regulations for testing are basically a) see if US FDA approves it b) PROFIT.
I dunno about you, but if the government is paying me shit, I have no idea why I would put myself 500,000$ in debt and make zippo for 16 years when I could work at a fastfood joint for 16 years and make enough to buy a good house.
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United States24753 Posts
On August 11 2008 23:30 Hawk wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2008 10:26 micronesia wrote:On August 11 2008 10:21 Hawk wrote:
Tenure is the worst thing to happen to schools ever. Almost every shit teacher is locked into tenure, and therefore impossible to remove. That's the biggest problems with schools now.
That is definitely not the worst thing to happen to schools, but I do think the power of tenure is a bit too much. The way it works right now is, you are more or less treated like crap until you get tenure, if you can manage to get it. I'd rather there be a bit more protection for nontenured teachers, and a bit less protection for tenured teachers. Maybe the worst thing is a bit of an overstatement (ok, it is =p) but it's still a bad system. What other job do you get security like that after 5 years or whatever? All it does is keep crappy teachers in place. The good ones aren't going to get fired, so what's the point?
Well ideally only good teachers get tenure, but I know it's impossible to always make the right decision. However, "the goon ones aren't going to get fired" seems obvious but isn't necessarily true. Tenure often protects those who need to be protected for one reason or another. School involves a lot of politics.
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