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On September 16 2013 10:45 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:41 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 09:55 Sermokala wrote: The problem with making schools better is that teachers don't want schools to get better in any measurable way.
We also decided that everyone deserves a high school education for some reason and can't just jettison half our population out after middle school like other countries. Which other countries? I'm color blind so I don't know what that graph means but I am going to assume that it proves my point. I'm allergic to peanuts so I don't know what you just said but I am going to assume you conceded the point.
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On September 16 2013 10:44 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:40 DoubleReed wrote: That's a bad graph. I would attribute most of that to simply rising population. Really? REALLY? I MEAN. REALLY? really... really? Really? Seriously? Really? Did you start dosing the water with rohypnol and Viagra in 1980?
Hahahaha
Population Growth is exponential. Though I think you're right that it isn't that dramatic (certainly not specifically at 1980), as America has a relatively low growth rate. I'm just saying I would prefer percentage of population rather than absolute numbers...
But no. Not really
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On September 16 2013 10:48 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:45 Sermokala wrote:On September 16 2013 10:41 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 09:55 Sermokala wrote: The problem with making schools better is that teachers don't want schools to get better in any measurable way.
We also decided that everyone deserves a high school education for some reason and can't just jettison half our population out after middle school like other countries. Which other countries? I'm color blind so I don't know what that graph means but I am going to assume that it proves my point. I'm allergic to peanuts so I don't know what you just said but I am going to assume you conceded the point. + Show Spoiler +
I actualy love peanuts in their various forms. I'm sorry for your loss but I'm going to assume your loss in the point as well.
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On September 16 2013 10:51 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:48 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 10:45 Sermokala wrote:On September 16 2013 10:41 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 09:55 Sermokala wrote: The problem with making schools better is that teachers don't want schools to get better in any measurable way.
We also decided that everyone deserves a high school education for some reason and can't just jettison half our population out after middle school like other countries. Which other countries? I'm color blind so I don't know what that graph means but I am going to assume that it proves my point. I'm allergic to peanuts so I don't know what you just said but I am going to assume you conceded the point. + Show Spoiler +I actualy love peanuts in their various forms. I'm sorry for your loss but I'm going to assume your loss in the point as well.
The image is just different hues of green.
To put what I'm saying in more succinct terms: you are silly.
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On September 16 2013 10:49 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:44 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 10:40 DoubleReed wrote: That's a bad graph. I would attribute most of that to simply rising population. Really? REALLY? I MEAN. REALLY? really... really? Really? Seriously? Really? Did you start dosing the water with rohypnol and Viagra in 1980? Hahahaha Population Growth is exponential. Though I think you're right that it isn't that dramatic (certainly not specifically at 1980), as America has a relatively low growth rate. I'm just saying I would prefer percentage of population rather than absolute numbers... But no. Not really 
Per 100,000 does not look qualitatively different:
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On September 16 2013 10:40 DoubleReed wrote: That's a bad graph. I would attribute most of that to simply rising population. Not really. During the obviously alarming period, our overall population only increased by a factor of about 1.33. Our prison population increased by a factor of about 5. Our prison population grew 3 times faster than our population.
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On September 16 2013 10:54 frogrubdown wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:49 DoubleReed wrote:On September 16 2013 10:44 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 10:40 DoubleReed wrote: That's a bad graph. I would attribute most of that to simply rising population. Really? REALLY? I MEAN. REALLY? really... really? Really? Seriously? Really? Did you start dosing the water with rohypnol and Viagra in 1980? Hahahaha Population Growth is exponential. Though I think you're right that it isn't that dramatic (certainly not specifically at 1980), as America has a relatively low growth rate. I'm just saying I would prefer percentage of population rather than absolute numbers... But no. Not really  Per 100,000 does not look qualitatively different: ![[image loading]](http://filipspagnoli.files.wordpress.com/2008/08/us-incarceration-rate.jpg)
Yea, that's a WAY scarier graph :O
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On September 16 2013 10:44 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:04 Roe wrote:On September 16 2013 09:55 Sermokala wrote: The problem with making schools better is that teachers don't want schools to get better in any measurable way. Prove it? The strike that chicago teachers went on turning down a 10% raise because having some way to hold them accountable for whats going inside of a classroom is unacceptable. Sounds like one of your fairy tales. Details? Proof?
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On September 16 2013 10:53 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:51 Sermokala wrote:On September 16 2013 10:48 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 10:45 Sermokala wrote:On September 16 2013 10:41 Dapper_Cad wrote:On September 16 2013 09:55 Sermokala wrote: The problem with making schools better is that teachers don't want schools to get better in any measurable way.
We also decided that everyone deserves a high school education for some reason and can't just jettison half our population out after middle school like other countries. Which other countries? I'm color blind so I don't know what that graph means but I am going to assume that it proves my point. I'm allergic to peanuts so I don't know what you just said but I am going to assume you conceded the point. + Show Spoiler +I actualy love peanuts in their various forms. I'm sorry for your loss but I'm going to assume your loss in the point as well. The image is just different hues of green. To put what I'm saying in more succinct terms: you are silly.
Ah, to be honest I didn't even see the map in the top right. I was looking down the list to find countries where the school leaving age was under 15, which is what I think you're proposing.
In Europe I found Turkey. In other continents it's pretty much a litmus test along the lines of "Is your country a third world shit hole?" though it's possible some Indian readers might fight such generalisation offensive.
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On September 16 2013 10:35 Dapper_Cad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 09:42 Leporello wrote:On September 16 2013 09:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On September 16 2013 09:10 Leporello wrote:On September 16 2013 09:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On September 16 2013 09:03 Leporello wrote:On September 16 2013 09:01 sam!zdat wrote: yes but the point is that getting more healthcare means you are getting sicker. Getting more healthcare is a bad thing not a good thing, it would be better not to get sick at all. But getting sick and getting healthcare increases gdp so therefore it is a good thing, so therefore giving people diabetes and then treating them for it is good for the economy. Go capitalism Same thing with prisons. "Privatizing is good because it creates incentive", so we create incentive for "crime" to exist. Everything in our prisons is privatized and outsourced. We have the largest incarceration percantage in the world, but if we actually decreased crime, that would mean someone loses a government contract. Few prisons are privatized... Most prisons are de-facto privatized. The food service, the utility management, even the phone-systems which operate on a collect-call-only basis. Does that differ from other countries? My understanding is that private prisons started becoming more prevalent as prison populations grew. Not that private prisons started cropping up before prison populations. Edit: Most things governments around the world do rely on private enterprises. Public schools buy supplies from private businesses. It doesn't mean that public schools are really private schools. Oh I agree. We need the military industry too. These are necessities, but not all the time. Using the phone-prison example, there is no need for these families to be paying over $1 a minute to make a phone-call. There is no choice for them, as "consumers", in how to talk to their imprisoned family member, they have to pay this private company whatever they charge. It's a government-run private-monopoly. Our military is full of these as well. No-bid contracts, or contracts that when fulfilled, incentivize waste and price-gouging. It's just that with schools, on the other hand, they get a lot of attention and a lot of oversight. Despite all the hand-wringing conservatives make over waste in public education, it doesn't really exist in comparison. Most schools operate on reasonable budgets. And any incentive we can create from private industry towards education is a good thing, everyone would agree. Meanwhile, we're creating incentive for prisons and war-machines, but not giving that same level of oversight, sometimes much less. I don't think you even needed to concede the first point. From what I can see, and I might have misread the data I've been able to scrounge up, about 1 in 2 prisoners in the U.S. is being held in a private prison. In 2006 there were a little under 250,000 incarcerated americans. SourceIn 2011 130,000 American's were incarcerated by for-profit companies. Source You have some numbers wrong. There's over 2mm incarcerated Americans (only 250,000 would be awesome).
![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b6/Adult_incarceration_statistics_for_the_USA._Timeline.gif/350px-Adult_incarceration_statistics_for_the_USA._Timeline.gif) Link
~ 5% are in private prisons.
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only 250k would be terrible because then you'd have to find jobs for them
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On September 16 2013 11:01 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 10:44 Sermokala wrote:On September 16 2013 10:04 Roe wrote:On September 16 2013 09:55 Sermokala wrote: The problem with making schools better is that teachers don't want schools to get better in any measurable way. Prove it? The strike that chicago teachers went on turning down a 10% raise because having some way to hold them accountable for whats going inside of a classroom is unacceptable. Sounds like one of your fairy tales. Details? Proof? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/education/chicago-teachers-strike-enters-third-day.html?_r=0
Like do you doubt that it happened? beacuse thats just what a quick google search gave me.
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Teacher's unions have generally been opposed to merit pay and the sacking of poorly performing teachers.
Administrators want to impose merit pay as an incentive to keep good teachers around.
Currently bad teachers are shuffled around from one school to the next because it's too hard to fire them. It's called "the dance of the lemons."
Every public school principal is painfully familiar with being forced to send children to a classroom where she knows the teacher there is not the best fit, but the teacher's placement has been forced on the school by higher-ups at the central district. In an effort to improve classroom instruction, bad teachers are often shuffled from one school to another, an administrative tactic known among principals as "The Dance of the Lemons." link
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On September 16 2013 11:11 sam!zdat wrote: only 250k would be terrible because then you'd have to find jobs for them What's wrong with that? Afraid of a little work?
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On September 16 2013 11:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Teacher's unions have generally been opposed to merit pay and the sacking of poorly performing teachers. Administrators want to impose merit pay as an incentive to keep good teachers around. Currently bad teachers are shuffled around from one school to the next because it's too hard to fire them. It's called "the dance of the lemons." Show nested quote +Every public school principal is painfully familiar with being forced to send children to a classroom where she knows the teacher there is not the best fit, but the teacher's placement has been forced on the school by higher-ups at the central district. In an effort to improve classroom instruction, bad teachers are often shuffled from one school to another, an administrative tactic known among principals as "The Dance of the Lemons." link
Merit pay isn't really a good policy. Teachers didn't go into teaching for the moneys. The went into it for the teaching. Sorry, but it's one of these easy-but-dumb solutions.
From what I've seen about Merit Pay, the main effect it has is causing good teachers to move to other districts where they don't have to put up with that crap.
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On September 16 2013 11:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Teacher's unions have generally been opposed to merit pay and the sacking of poorly performing teachers. Administrators want to impose merit pay as an incentive to keep good teachers around. Currently bad teachers are shuffled around from one school to the next because it's too hard to fire them. It's called "the dance of the lemons." Show nested quote +Every public school principal is painfully familiar with being forced to send children to a classroom where she knows the teacher there is not the best fit, but the teacher's placement has been forced on the school by higher-ups at the central district. In an effort to improve classroom instruction, bad teachers are often shuffled from one school to another, an administrative tactic known among principals as "The Dance of the Lemons." link You know, I think a better system would create a place for teachers that can't get results from their students. In the professional world with many other careers, "lemons" are made into lemonade or at least set aside where they can't do harm (given menial tasks or a lot of supervision). For some reason, our solution to bad teachers is to just fire them or pay them so little that they're only available to poorer school districts.
As for you rubes arguing that the graphs show the "same thing," no, they don't. The first is very potentially misleading. That it happens to not be nearly as misleading as it could be is no saving grace for it. Showing it as per-capita (or something similar) is the correct approach to gauge increase incarceration RATES.
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On September 16 2013 11:28 DoubleReed wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Teacher's unions have generally been opposed to merit pay and the sacking of poorly performing teachers. Administrators want to impose merit pay as an incentive to keep good teachers around. Currently bad teachers are shuffled around from one school to the next because it's too hard to fire them. It's called "the dance of the lemons." Every public school principal is painfully familiar with being forced to send children to a classroom where she knows the teacher there is not the best fit, but the teacher's placement has been forced on the school by higher-ups at the central district. In an effort to improve classroom instruction, bad teachers are often shuffled from one school to another, an administrative tactic known among principals as "The Dance of the Lemons." link Merit pay isn't really a good policy. Teachers didn't go into teaching for the moneys. The went into it for the teaching. Sorry, but it's one of these easy-but-dumb solutions. From what I've seen about Merit Pay, the main effect it has is causing good teachers to move to other districts where they don't have to put up with that crap. Merit pay isn't magic, but it's often effective. Lots of people in other industries take jobs for more reasons than the money, but they still respond to it. What's different about teaching that would make them leave (assuming they are, in fact)? Are they fleeing the merit pay or are they running to safe salary?
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On September 16 2013 11:32 aksfjh wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Teacher's unions have generally been opposed to merit pay and the sacking of poorly performing teachers. Administrators want to impose merit pay as an incentive to keep good teachers around. Currently bad teachers are shuffled around from one school to the next because it's too hard to fire them. It's called "the dance of the lemons." Every public school principal is painfully familiar with being forced to send children to a classroom where she knows the teacher there is not the best fit, but the teacher's placement has been forced on the school by higher-ups at the central district. In an effort to improve classroom instruction, bad teachers are often shuffled from one school to another, an administrative tactic known among principals as "The Dance of the Lemons." link You know, I think a better system would create a place for teachers that can't get results from their students. In the professional world with many other careers, "lemons" are made into lemonade or at least set aside where they can't do harm (given menial tasks or a lot of supervision). For some reason, our solution to bad teachers is to just fire them or pay them so little that they're only available to poorer school districts. True, just firing the bad ones is too simple. It should be an option though.
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On September 16 2013 11:16 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:01 Jormundr wrote:On September 16 2013 10:44 Sermokala wrote:On September 16 2013 10:04 Roe wrote:On September 16 2013 09:55 Sermokala wrote: The problem with making schools better is that teachers don't want schools to get better in any measurable way. Prove it? The strike that chicago teachers went on turning down a 10% raise because having some way to hold them accountable for whats going inside of a classroom is unacceptable. Sounds like one of your fairy tales. Details? Proof? http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/13/education/chicago-teachers-strike-enters-third-day.html?_r=0Like do you doubt that it happened? beacuse thats just what a quick google search gave me. Yes I do. Show the 10% raise in salary. I doubt that it happened because a substantial raise for any government organization would be 3%.
On September 16 2013 11:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Teacher's unions have generally been opposed to merit pay and the sacking of poorly performing teachers. Administrators want to impose merit pay as an incentive to keep good teachers around. Currently bad teachers are shuffled around from one school to the next because it's too hard to fire them. It's called "the dance of the lemons." Show nested quote +Every public school principal is painfully familiar with being forced to send children to a classroom where she knows the teacher there is not the best fit, but the teacher's placement has been forced on the school by higher-ups at the central district. In an effort to improve classroom instruction, bad teachers are often shuffled from one school to another, an administrative tactic known among principals as "The Dance of the Lemons." link We get it, unions are the great evil of the world. Teachers are no better than terrorists, and more likely to break into your house to steal your hard earned tax dollars.
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On September 16 2013 11:34 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 16 2013 11:28 DoubleReed wrote:On September 16 2013 11:23 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Teacher's unions have generally been opposed to merit pay and the sacking of poorly performing teachers. Administrators want to impose merit pay as an incentive to keep good teachers around. Currently bad teachers are shuffled around from one school to the next because it's too hard to fire them. It's called "the dance of the lemons." Every public school principal is painfully familiar with being forced to send children to a classroom where she knows the teacher there is not the best fit, but the teacher's placement has been forced on the school by higher-ups at the central district. In an effort to improve classroom instruction, bad teachers are often shuffled from one school to another, an administrative tactic known among principals as "The Dance of the Lemons." link Merit pay isn't really a good policy. Teachers didn't go into teaching for the moneys. The went into it for the teaching. Sorry, but it's one of these easy-but-dumb solutions. From what I've seen about Merit Pay, the main effect it has is causing good teachers to move to other districts where they don't have to put up with that crap. Merit pay isn't magic, but it's often effective. Lots of people in other industries take jobs for more reasons than the money, but they still respond to it. What's different about teaching that would make them leave (assuming they are, in fact)? Are they fleeing the merit pay or are they running to safe salary?
Well, I googled it, and I found things pointing both in favor and against merit pay, so I can't say whether it is effective or not. The general consensus I found is that it hasn't been effective at all so far, and proponents say it needs to be tweaked.
I don't quite know why it doesn't work. One thing is that teachers are more motivated by social pressures, not financial pressures. By shifting it to financial pressures it actually diminishes their care of the social pressure.
In general I think teachers should be treated with a lot more respect in our society than we give them. Parents and administrators are very quick to blame teachers for everything, including their own issues. That's the main problem, and merit pay really doesn't address that. It's a band-aid at best.
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