EPTUS Politics Mega-thread - Page 3365
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Mohdoo
United States15398 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On November 10 2021 10:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: When you say "minimize costs", are you referring to the amount of money being invested into public schools? While resource allocation (making sure the money is being used as effectively as possible) is a very serious issue for many schools, budget cuts to schools probably won't address loss of learning and other potential issues within our education system, right? Maybe this is something you don't really mind, if you think that education and public schools are overestimated in terms of importance? Do you think something should be replacing our public school system, rather than working to improve it? Yes. I think most school districts are spending way more money per student than the point at which diminishing returns kicks in. It obviously varies from place to place, but most suburban school districts are, in my estimation, overfunded by 30-40% and most urban districts (which spend a lot more, which is the opposite of what many people think intuitively) are >50% overfunded. DC, for example, spends over 23k per student. I agree budget cuts wont solve learning problems. Because I don't think budgets affect that much, if at all. The system of warehousing kids, teaching them things they don't really care about, in pursuit of a credential that is required for future employment is the problem. There will be huge loss of learning so long as we have that model. Thus, it should be done as cheaply as possible. Radical reforms are something I would explore. Not sure if anything will really work though. The problems in education lie outside the control of government (aside from the problem of spending so much, which is the fault of the government). On November 10 2021 10:41 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Better and fairer than what alternatives? And I suppose it also depends on what you're using them for. Basically all of them. Interviews are horribly biased (even blinded ones!) and are not predictive of future school or job performance. Resumes (even name blinded) have mostly the same problems. People are very good at gaming them via class and virtue signaling. And, resumes are only slightly more predictive than interviews at predicting job performance. Grades (HS or college) are again, slightly better than whole resumes, but still not that great. OTOH, standardized tests are really good at predicting future performance in school or at a job. And they discriminate the least against people from poor backgrounds. And the thing is, we actually know how to make standardized tests MORE predictive and LESS discriminatory: Make them harder! The problem with the ACT and SAT is mostly that there are way too many people getting 35/36 on the ACT or 1550+ on the SAT. What that means is that at the high end its basically luck in determining who got good scores. But harder exams (for example AMC exams) can tell the top 1% from top .01% very accurately. The US Military has been using its own standardized test, the ASVAB for a long while to fairly good success in assigning people to various career tracts, for another example of a wide-scale use of standardized exams. The critiques of standardized exams are, in general, an isolated demand for rigor. None of the people who critique them have written a "better" exam that is more predictive of future success and less discriminatory of the poor. For example, the kids who attend Stuyvesant (NYC's highest rated public high school) would score the highest on basically all standardized exams (not just the SHSAT) when compared to their peers (despite a large % of their pop being low income for the city). And if you designed an exam that somehow managed to trip up a bunch of Stuyvesant kids, but not kids at the lesser schools, you'd almost certainly be designing a test that is not very good or fair. It would almost certainly lead you astray in identifying NYC's brightest youngsters, if it was as important for your operations as the ASVAB is for the military, your organization would quickly become dysfunctional. See, e.g. Project 100,000 Project 100,000 (also McNamara's 100,000), also known as McNamara's Folly, McNamara's Morons and McNamara's Misfits, was a controversial 1960s program by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) to recruit soldiers who would previously have been below military mental or medical standards. Project 100,000 was initiated by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in October 1966 to meet the escalating manpower requirements of the American government's involvement in the Vietnam War. Inductees of the project died at higher rates than other Americans serving in Vietnam and following their service had lower incomes and higher rates of divorce than their non-veteran counterparts. They could not be taught any more demanding job than trigger-pulling, so most of them went straight into combat where the learning curve is steep and deadly. The cold, hard statistics say that these almost helpless young men died in action in the jungles a rate three times higher than the average draftee. Stories about Project 100,000 abound. In one, well documented, PT incident, a draftee wore two left boots. In another less documented (but true) a 100ker liked to play a grenade based prank on his unit, for which they beat him. One time he forgot to disable the grenade, killing and maiming a half dozen fellow Americans. In yet another an extremely beloved officer was shot by a 100ker who had failed to correctly remember the proper passcode (thus thinking the beloved officer was Viet Kong and shooting him in the face). That soldier was disappeared. | ||
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Slydie
1898 Posts
Yes. I think most school districts are spending way more money per student than the point at which diminishing returns kicks in. It obviously varies from place to place, but most suburban school districts are, in my estimation, overfunded by 30-40% and most urban districts (which spend a lot more, which is the opposite of what many people think intuitively) are >50% overfunded. DC, for example, spends over 23k per student. I agree budget cuts wont solve learning problems. Because I don't think budgets affect that much, if at all. The system of warehousing kids, teaching them things they don't really care about, in pursuit of a credential that is required for future employment is the problem. There will be huge loss of learning so long as we have that model. Thus, it should be done as cheaply as possible. Budget cuts will certainly make the learning worse. Even "overfunded" schools will cut where it hurts the most, certainly not fluff like office personell passing papers to eachother, the highschool TV-channel and expensive sports activities which only benefit a few students. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43794 Posts
On November 10 2021 14:17 cLutZ wrote: Yes. I think most school districts are spending way more money per student than the point at which diminishing returns kicks in. It obviously varies from place to place, but most suburban school districts are, in my estimation, overfunded by 30-40% and most urban districts (which spend a lot more, which is the opposite of what many people think intuitively) are >50% overfunded. DC, for example, spends over 23k per student. I agree budget cuts wont solve learning problems. Because I don't think budgets affect that much, if at all. The system of warehousing kids, teaching them things they don't really care about, in pursuit of a credential that is required for future employment is the problem. There will be huge loss of learning so long as we have that model. Thus, it should be done as cheaply as possible. Radical reforms are something I would explore. Not sure if anything will really work though. The problems in education lie outside the control of government (aside from the problem of spending so much, which is the fault of the government). Would you mind sharing how you calculated 30-40% (suburban) and 50% (urban) overfunded percentages? I'm not sure what parts of which school budgets you're reducing/eliminating. If we're going to assert that we can decrease spending for public schools, we need to know exactly which areas we can spend less money on. And $23,000 per student is also at the very, very high end, compared to what most American schools spend. Here's a breakdown of costs over the years (most recent is 2017, and each year, the costs seem to increase by a few hundred dollars): https://ncses.nsf.gov/indicators/states/indicator/public-school-per-pupil-expenditures The median cost per student is likely around $12,000-$13,000 by now, while $23,000 is pretty much the maximum / 99th percentile. Here's what the cost-per-student calculation includes: "This indicator represents the amount that local, state, and federal governments spend on elementary and secondary education, adjusted for the size of the student body. It is calculated by dividing the current expenditures over the entire academic year for prekindergarten through grade 12 by the number of students in those grades in public schools. Current expenditures include instruction and instruction-related costs, student support services, administration, and operations and exclude funds for school construction and other capital outlays, debt service, and programs outside of public elementary and secondary education." https://ncses.nsf.gov/indicators/states/indicator/public-school-per-pupil-expenditures The cost-per-student calculation is just a super basic division of the total cost of expenditures divided by the number of students, but that doesn't actually mean that $13,000 is earmarked specifically for each student (i.e., we're not creating a separate budget of $13,000 for every student and then pulling from the student's account every time the student needs something that costs money). The expenditures include all the salaries of teachers and administrators and nurses and custodial staff and counselors, all maintenance for every classroom and bathroom, lunches and other food-related costs, all learning materials and technology, etc. I really have no idea what we can sacrifice, given that plenty of schools can't even afford heating and air conditioning, healthy food, basic technology, or competitive salaries. Decreasing their budgets would lead to a lower quality of life and a lower quality of education. Basically all of them. Interviews are horribly biased (even blinded ones!) and are not predictive of future school or job performance. Resumes (even name blinded) have mostly the same problems. People are very good at gaming them via class and virtue signaling. And, resumes are only slightly more predictive than interviews at predicting job performance. Grades (HS or college) are again, slightly better than whole resumes, but still not that great. OTOH, standardized tests are really good at predicting future performance in school or at a job. And they discriminate the least against people from poor backgrounds. And the thing is, we actually know how to make standardized tests MORE predictive and LESS discriminatory: Make them harder! The problem with the ACT and SAT is mostly that there are way too many people getting 35/36 on the ACT or 1550+ on the SAT. What that means is that at the high end its basically luck in determining who got good scores. But harder exams (for example AMC exams) can tell the top 1% from top .01% very accurately. The US Military has been using its own standardized test, the ASVAB for a long while to fairly good success in assigning people to various career tracts, for another example of a wide-scale use of standardized exams. The critiques of standardized exams are, in general, an isolated demand for rigor. None of the people who critique them have written a "better" exam that is more predictive of future success and less discriminatory of the poor. For example, the kids who attend Stuyvesant (NYC's highest rated public high school) would score the highest on basically all standardized exams (not just the SHSAT) when compared to their peers (despite a large % of their pop being low income for the city). And if you designed an exam that somehow managed to trip up a bunch of Stuyvesant kids, but not kids at the lesser schools, you'd almost certainly be designing a test that is not very good or fair. It would almost certainly lead you astray in identifying NYC's brightest youngsters, if it was as important for your operations as the ASVAB is for the military, your organization would quickly become dysfunctional. See, e.g. Project 100,000 Stories about Project 100,000 abound. In one, well documented, PT incident, a draftee wore two left boots. In another less documented (but true) a 100ker liked to play a grenade based prank on his unit, for which they beat him. One time he forgot to disable the grenade, killing and maiming a half dozen fellow Americans. In yet another an extremely beloved officer was shot by a 100ker who had failed to correctly remember the proper passcode (thus thinking the beloved officer was Viet Kong and shooting him in the face). That soldier was disappeared. First, I agree with you that we're putting too much emphasis on college, and not spending enough time and energy promoting other post-secondary options. From the insanely high tuition rates to the fact that plenty of great jobs don't really need university-level education, we drastically need to reform how we prepare, and what we promise, American teenagers. There are many potential benefits of going to college, but there are risks involved and it might not be the ideal path for everyone. As far as comparing standardized tests to other metrics when evaluating "future performance in school or at a job", I disagree with you in some areas. For example, you said "Grades (HS or college) are again, slightly better than whole resumes, but still not that great. OTOH, standardized tests are really good at predicting future performance", but a lot of the data seems to suggest that grades/GPA are better predictors than standardized test scores: "It’s GPAs Not Standardized Tests That Predict College Success Grade point averages are a much better predictor of success at college than standardized tests, according to new research. High school GPAs were found to be five times stronger than ACT scores at predicting graduation rates, and that the effect of GPAs was consistent across schools, unlike ACT scores. The findings overturn the conventional wisdom that, while GPAs vary widely between high schools, standardized test results are a more objective indicator of whether a student is ready for college. In contrast, the results suggest that teachers are better judges of their students’ ability than standardized tests. The results vindicate the growing number of colleges moving to test-optional admissions, in the wake of the college admissions cheating scandal. ... But while success in SATs may be effective in winning a college place, it has less relevance to how well a student does once they get there than their GPA, according to the new study. Researchers at the University of Chicago compared the relationship between GPAs and SAT scores with college graduation rates, and found the former had a much stronger correlation than the latter." https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2020/01/29/its-gpas-not-standardized-tests-that-predict-college-success/?sh=55f277432bd1 Here's the study referenced in the above article, which was published by the American Education Research Association (AERA): https://www.aera.net/Newsroom/High-School-GPAs-and-ACT-Scores-as-Predictors-of-College-Completion-Examining-Assumptions-about-Consistency-across-High-Schools Here's an excerpt from it: "High school GPAs (HSGPAs) are often perceived to represent inconsistent levels of readiness for college across high schools, whereas test scores (e.g., ACT scores) are seen as comparable. This study tests those assumptions, examining variation across high schools of both HSGPAs and ACT scores as measures of academic readiness for college. We found students with the same HSGPA or the same ACT score graduate at very different rates based on which high school they attended. Yet, the relationship of HSGPAs with college graduation is strong and consistent and larger than school effects. In contrast, the relationship of ACT scores with college graduation is weak and smaller than high school effects, and the slope of the relationship varies by high school." You also said that standardized tests discriminate the least against people from poor backgrounds. There is a positive correlation between success in standardized testing and one's socioeconomic status. The students who tend to do the best on those tests are the ones who generally can afford more resources, such as private tutors. (This is one of the areas where I make the most money as a private tutor, and not everyone can afford to pay me $100/hour every week.) There's research backing this up, as well: "Socioeconomic status (SES) and SAT scores are positively correlated: Students from higher income backgrounds generally achieve higher scores ... An admissions policy that relied heavily or exclusively on the SAT would indeed screen out low-SES students at a higher rate than high-SES students." https://journalistsresource.org/economics/ses-socioeconomic-status-sat-grade-relationships-and-in-college-admissions-decisions/#:~:text=Socioeconomic status (SES) and SAT scores are positively,of mother’s education, father’s education, and parental income.” There are plenty of other factors that affect one's ability to perform well on standardized tests and succeed in college, but we shouldn't underestimate the effect that socioeconomic status has on testing. You also said "And the thing is, we actually know how to make standardized tests MORE predictive and LESS discriminatory: Make them harder!" Harder doesn't necessarily mean better, and if we really wanted standardized test scores to be a better assessor of what students understand and don't understand, one of the things we could do is change the format of SATs and ACTs away from multiple choice questions. There is a time and a place for multiple choice questions on school assessments, but given the naturally complex and multi-step nature of standardized test problems, it's imperative that students hand in work, so that graders can actually see where mistakes are being made and offer partial credit. If you and I both pick the same wrong answer to an SAT/ACT math problem, then you and I both lose the same amount of points without any context (I may have blindly picked an answer incorrectly, without understanding the question at all, whereas you may have understood 99% of the problem but merely forgotten a negative sign somewhere), and that's problematic. Showing one's work and thought process would provide much more useful feedback, but it'll never be implemented because it would be too expensive and it would be too time-consuming. There are huge limitations to standardized tests, and I don't believe that they're the gold standard for anything, really. Edit: You also mentioned standardized testing as a strong predictor of future job performance. I imagine there are pretty good reasons why no one bothers to ask for your SAT scores on your job resume though, and why employers prefer to read about relevant job-related experience and referrals from other professionals that you've worked with. | ||
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
On November 10 2021 13:57 Mohdoo wrote: So the judge denied Trump trying to keep records sealed. Trump appealing of course. Farv, what happens now? He already appealed Judge Chutkan's ruling to the DC Circuit, and after they rule against him (which seems likely given the merits), he'll try for cert at SCOTUS. Assuming they don't grant it, which also seems likely, the Jan. 6 committee will gain access to basically all White House papers relevant to what happened that day, which includes stuff like emails, call logs, basically any kind of record used/produced by the White House during the relevant period. What those records will say remains to be seen, but it seems increasingly likely that there'll be a smoking gun of some kind showing White House involvement that will be completely ignored by all Republicans. | ||
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21364 Posts
On November 11 2021 03:46 JimmiC wrote: The release of the WH Jan 6th documents? The National Archive has said they plan to hand over the documents this Friday tho the appeals court may temporary hold that until it makes a decision, and god knows how long that would take.Any idea on the timing of it? Should I be expecting weeks or months? But then Congress has them, not the public. Some leaks may be expected tho once the 100's of pages have been processed. | ||
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
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JimmiC
Canada22817 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On November 10 2021 21:35 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Would you mind sharing how you calculated 30-40% (suburban) and 50% (urban) overfunded percentages? I'm not sure what parts of which school budgets you're reducing/eliminating. If we're going to assert that we can decrease spending for public schools, we need to know exactly which areas we can spend less money on. For sure. It was comparing local catholic school per student spending to public school spending. I even generally gave the public schools the benefit of the doubt. And $23,000 per student is also at the very, very high end, compared to what most American schools spend. Here's a breakdown of costs over the years (most recent is 2017, and each year, the costs seem to increase by a few hundred dollars): https://ncses.nsf.gov/indicators/states/indicator/public-school-per-pupil-expenditures The median cost per student is likely around $12,000-$13,000 by now, while $23,000 is pretty much the maximum / 99th percentile. Yes it is, and that number has been increasing much faster than the rate of inflation over the past 30 years. If it hadn't, we would be looking at average costs of ~6-8k instead. The expenditures include all the salaries of teachers and administrators and nurses and custodial staff and counselors, all maintenance for every classroom and bathroom, lunches and other food-related costs, all learning materials and technology, etc. I really have no idea what we can sacrifice, given that plenty of schools can't even afford heating and air conditioning, healthy food, basic technology, or competitive salaries. Decreasing their budgets would lead to a lower quality of life and a lower quality of education. This is more or less the standard line. I see little empirical evidence that the explosion of funding both K-12 and at university has resulted in improved educational outcomes. Without that evidence being provided, what we should conclude is they are spending because they can spend. As far as comparing standardized tests to other metrics when evaluating "future performance in school or at a job", I disagree with you in some areas. For example, you said "Grades (HS or college) are again, slightly better than whole resumes, but still not that great. OTOH, standardized tests are really good at predicting future performance", but a lot of the data seems to suggest that grades/GPA are better predictors than standardized test scores: You have a lot of formatting issues following this. But I will take it all because I've read the study you reference in the past. Suffice to say, its written by people, who, IMO were either motivated to see the result they saw, or were not competent. The error they made is not understanding that because the SAT causes placement effects, there is only small variation in SAT scores at individual schools. There are no kids with a 1100 at UC-Berkley or UCLA. So, yes, it loses some predictive power because you are only sampling from a tiny portion of their scale. But you can sort of fix this by looking at lifetime incomes. Wai did this in his, "Creativity and Occupational Accomplishments Among Intellectually Precocious Youth: An Age 13 to Age 33 Longitudinal Study". Which was a helpful study that showed that high IQ kids earned more even if they didn't get into the college they wanted. You also said that standardized tests discriminate the least against people from poor backgrounds. There is a positive correlation between success in standardized testing and one's socioeconomic status. The students who tend to do the best on those tests are the ones who generally can afford more resources, such as private tutors. (This is one of the areas where I make the most money as a private tutor, and not everyone can afford to pay me $100/hour every week.) There's research backing this up, as well: I'm well aware of this literature. Suffice to say, its bad. Its almost universally not IQ-adjusted. Improving your SAT/ACT score with tutors is much harder than improving your GPA or making your resume more "attractive" with trips abroad, volunteer work, etc. There are plenty of other factors that affect one's ability to perform well on standardized tests and succeed in college, but we shouldn't underestimate the effect that socioeconomic status has on testing. Of course not, but smart parents have smart children at higher rates. And smart parents are more likely to be richer. You are looking at effects and imputing cause. The real cause is IQ/G. Its driving both the wealth and the high test scores. Edit: You also mentioned standardized testing as a strong predictor of future job performance. I imagine there are pretty good reasons why no one bothers to ask for your SAT scores on your job resume though, and why employers prefer to read about relevant job-related experience and referrals from other professionals that you've worked with. Yes, the pretty good reason is that its illegal. Or, more accurately, very easy to get sued for. This is why college has such a monopoly, because it is the credential that the courts have decided doesn't get you sued for requiring. In the 50s & 60s standardized tests for employment were very common. Ever since Duke v. Griggs they are a lawsuit waiting to happen. | ||
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Simberto
Germany11334 Posts
Number vary between ~6000€ in North-Rhine-Westphalia to ~10000€ in Berlin and Hamburg. (2017 numbers) From my personal experience as a teacher in Bavaria, i think a lot could be gained by spending some more money. My personal favorite idea would be to hire some admin stuff to handle the annoying bureaucracy shit that i have to do that isn't really that related to my job, have teacher teach a few additional classes instead (talk to the teachers unions about this so a deal is reached that makes the teachers happy), and reduce class sizes. I personally would gladly teach some additional hours if it means less admin bullshit. I became a teacher to teach students, not to collect money from them in 2€ increments, alphabetize tests for storage, collect tests from students for storage, put the results of tests into a bunch of different badly programmed IT systems, check a bunch of badly programmed IT systems for new messages and all the other stuff. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43794 Posts
On November 11 2021 04:31 cLutZ wrote: For sure. It was comparing local catholic school per student spending to public school spending. I even generally gave the public schools the benefit of the doubt. I'm not talking about comparing public and private/religious schools and their funding (which you can't do anyway, for a million different reasons). I'm referring to the idea that you sat down and looked at a public school budget, and found 30%, 40%, or 50% of bloat in there that you could Thanos-snap out of existence without the school being significantly negatively affected. If a public school spends $13,000 per student (the median), with 1,000 students in the school, their budget is $13,000,000. What do you slash to drop that down to $10M or $7M? I'm extremely skeptical that you found millions of dollars in any particular public school budget that were redundant. This is more or less the standard line. I see little empirical evidence that the explosion of funding both K-12 and at university has resulted in improved educational outcomes. Without that evidence being provided, what we should conclude is they are spending because they can spend. The median expenditure per pupil has steadily increased a few hundred dollars each year, since at least 1993 (that's how far back my source shows). I don't think that's necessarily an "explosion", but regardless of that, I'm asking you, again, which of those things I listed can we cut? Salaries? Maintenance? Food? Learning resources? What is something specific that we can eliminate, since you've asserted we can cut millions of dollars from every school's budget without sacrificing educational outcomes? You have a lot of formatting issues following this. But I will take it all because I've read the study you reference in the past. Suffice to say, its written by people, who, IMO were either motivated to see the result they saw, or were not competent. The error they made is not understanding that because the SAT causes placement effects, there is only small variation in SAT scores at individual schools. There are no kids with a 1100 at UC-Berkley or UCLA. So, yes, it loses some predictive power because you are only sampling from a tiny portion of their scale. But you can sort of fix this by looking at lifetime incomes. Wai did this in his, "Creativity and Occupational Accomplishments Among Intellectually Precocious Youth: An Age 13 to Age 33 Longitudinal Study". Which was a helpful study that showed that high IQ kids earned more even if they didn't get into the college they wanted. I don't understand how this absolves standardized test scores but not GPA, unless you're suggesting that lifetime incomes or IQ or where you go to college are only related to standardized test scores and not also GPA. You say that kids with 1100 on their SAT won't be going to UC-Berkeley, but neither will kids with a 2.5 GPA. What's the difference? I'm well aware of this literature. Suffice to say, its bad. Its almost universally not IQ-adjusted. Improving your SAT/ACT score with tutors is much harder than improving your GPA or making your resume more "attractive" with trips abroad, volunteer work, etc. I didn't say that improving standardized test scores was easy; I said that private tutoring is helpful and is more easily affordable for people who have money, which means that low-SES families will necessarily be at an additional disadvantage. Of course not, but smart parents have smart children at higher rates. And smart parents are more likely to be richer. You are looking at effects and imputing cause. The real cause is IQ/G. Its driving both the wealth and the high test scores. Academic success, wealth, and intelligence are all correlated, and you don't need to have a high IQ to benefit from additional learning resources that money can buy you (a computer, a graphing calculator, private tutoring, etc.). Yes, the pretty good reason is that its illegal. Or, more accurately, very easy to get sued for. This is why college has such a monopoly, because it is the credential that the courts have decided doesn't get you sued for requiring. In the 50s & 60s standardized tests for employment were very common. Ever since Duke v. Griggs they are a lawsuit waiting to happen. Except the reason for the verdict was because it was established that high school diplomas and standardized tests weren't proper predictors of success for future employees, which is exactly my point and exactly contradicts your point: "The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required. ... As such, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment tests (when used as a decisive factor in employment decisions) that are not a "reasonable measure of job performance," regardless of the absence of actual intent to discriminate. Since the aptitude tests involved, and the high school diploma requirement, were broad-based and not directly related to the jobs performed, Duke Power's employee transfer procedure was found by the Court to be in violation of the Act. ... Griggs v. Duke Power Co. also held that the employer had the burden of producing and proving the business necessity of a test." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43794 Posts
On November 11 2021 04:45 Simberto wrote: If you want some non-US data for comparison, here is data about how much the german states spend per pupil. Number vary between ~6000€ in North-Rhine-Westphalia to ~10000€ in Berlin and Hamburg. (2017 numbers) From my personal experience as a teacher in Bavaria, i think a lot could be gained by spending some more money. My personal favorite idea would be to hire some admin stuff to handle the annoying bureaucracy shit that i have to do that isn't really that related to my job, have teacher teach a few additional classes instead (talk to the teachers unions about this so a deal is reached that makes the teachers happy), and reduce class sizes. I personally would gladly teach some additional hours if it means less admin bullshit. I became a teacher to teach students, not to collect money from them in 2€ increments, alphabetize tests for storage, collect tests from students for storage, put the results of tests into a bunch of different badly programmed IT systems, check a bunch of badly programmed IT systems for new messages and all the other stuff. I totally agree. Burnout tends to be caused by the extra workplace "bullshit" / annoying hoops that you have to jump through, that detract from what you love / prefer to do in your job. + Show Spoiler + I just watched a video on this: | ||
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On November 11 2021 05:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I'm not talking about comparing public and private/religious schools and their funding (which you can't do anyway, for a million different reasons). I'm referring to the idea that you sat down and looked at a public school budget, and found 30%, 40%, or 50% of bloat in there that you could Thanos-snap out of existence without the school being significantly negatively affected. If a public school spends $13,000 per student (the median), with 1,000 students in the school, their budget is $13,000,000. What do you slash to drop that down to $10M or $7M? I'm extremely skeptical that you found millions of dollars in any particular public school budget that were redundant. Of course not. Its across the board bloat, not individual departments. Schools and athletic facilities have been replaced at accelerated rates, teacher salaries have increased faster than inflation, and lots of extra administrative staff has been added in various places. It all could be pared back, IMO, with little to no loss. On November 11 2021 05:58 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Except the reason for the verdict was because it was established that high school diplomas and standardized tests weren't proper predictors of success for future employees, which is exactly my point and exactly contradicts your point: "The Supreme Court ruled that under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, if such tests disparately impact ethnic minority groups, businesses must demonstrate that such tests are "reasonably related" to the job for which the test is required. ... As such, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment tests (when used as a decisive factor in employment decisions) that are not a "reasonable measure of job performance," regardless of the absence of actual intent to discriminate. Since the aptitude tests involved, and the high school diploma requirement, were broad-based and not directly related to the jobs performed, Duke Power's employee transfer procedure was found by the Court to be in violation of the Act. ... Griggs v. Duke Power Co. also held that the employer had the burden of producing and proving the business necessity of a test." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Griggs_v._Duke_Power_Co. Your interpretation of Griggs is not the one the courts apply. If I gave an IQ test to every prospective employee, and it ended up resulting in significant disparate impacts, I'd lose my lawsuit even if IQ was doing a very good job at telling me who would be a good/bad employee. The problem with Griggs, is the kinds of tests the Griggs court said would be "reasonably related" are not actually good at predicting success. Broad based reqs are actually the ones that are helpful. People who are smart can be trained. So, factories give piss tests (a broad test that is thankfully still mostly allowed) not forklift operation tests to prospective forklift operators. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43794 Posts
On November 11 2021 06:16 cLutZ wrote: Of course not. Its across the board bloat, not individual departments. Schools and athletic facilities have been replaced at accelerated rates, teacher salaries have increased faster than inflation, and lots of extra administrative staff has been added in various places. It all could be pared back, IMO, with little to no loss. Across the board bloat means that you want to cut 30-50% of everything to get the 30-50% decrease. And that's certainly one way to mathematically get there, but that also means dismantling most of the school. You specifically mentioned teacher salaries increasing faster than inflation. Keep in mind that the "across the board bloat" argument would remove 30-50% of a teacher's entire salary, compared to the 1-2% salary increase you're actually proposing when you talk about setting the salary increase equal to inflation. The problem is that you're not actually using a real budget with actual numbers; you're making a lot of assertions without working out the math. Let's work out the math, specifically for your teacher's salary suggestion. Here are some numbers we could work with, since you haven't cited a specific school budget you've looked at: Let's talk about an elementary school in New Jersey (K-5 or K-6, whatever). Let's say there are 1,000 students in the school. The average class size is between 19.9 and 21.9 students, depending on the class structure, so let's just round it to 20 students per class ( https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_2009324_t1s_08.asp ). Median teacher salary in New Jersey is around $72,000 (I think elementary school teachers make a little less than high school teachers, perhaps closer to $68,000, but again we'll see why this doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things ( https://www.nj.gov/education/doedata/fact.shtml ). If there are 1,000 students in the school, split evenly across enough classes to have 20 students per class, then we have 50 classes, right? All running at the same time? Which means we need 50 teachers, right? 50 teachers * $72,000 = $3,600,000 spent on teachers. The average amount of money spent, per pupil, in New Jersey was around $22,000 ( https://www.nj.com/education/2019/08/heres-what-every-nj-district-spends-per-student.html ). $22,000 * 1,000 students = $22,000,000. Roughly 1/6 of this school's budget is being spent on teachers ($3,600,000 / $22,000,000), so not cutting a significant percentage from this 1/6 means we'll have to cut way more than 30-50% somewhere else... The average NJ teacher enjoyed a 1.46% salary increase from two years ago to last year, so we'll use that ( https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teacher-salaries-are-increasing-see-how-your-state-compares/2021/04#:~:text=The NEA also found that the average starting,increased their minimum and starting pay for teachers. ). So this is an increase from $72,000 to $73,000 per teacher, or a total increase from spending $3,600,000 in a year to 3,650,000. That's a $50,000 increase... total. So even if we froze teacher salaries (not simply lowering to match inflation, which I'm pretty sure is above 1.46% at the moment, anyway...), we would save $50,000, out of a budget of $22,000,000. How close are we to slashing 30-50% of our total budget? Well, we saved 0.22% by screwing over teachers. If you want to slash a full 1%, then you can cut an administrator or two also. Grabbing back 1% here and 1% there can be possible if you're willing to make impractical sacrifices, but until you can get to even 10% reduction from an actual budget, there's no way 30-50% can even be considered. If you think you can get to 30-50%, please show an actual line-by-line school budget and tell me what can be so heavily reduced without negatively impacting educational outcomes. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland23827 Posts
What is education for, and how does it intersect with other things? What can it accomplish, realistically? What is it meant to accomplish? I think some of these real fundamental questions are somewhat neglected in general discourse around it. It seems, to me in totality to be a complete fucking mess. It neither rewards a genuinely holistic approach, nor a real test-orientated approach as well, such a huge amount of people have the requisite test qualifications that they cease to have particular meaning. It does an extremely shit job of, equally rewarding people who may have a whole bunch of really useful soft skills, vs those who have better grades. Speaking as someone who's always had stellar grades and had huge deficiencies in my wider skillsets I'm still getting the interviews regardless. In the absolute crudest sense possible the current system, most of the world over is something that rewards smart people, whatever that means, above everything else. And those who aren't 'smart people' get naturally discouraged by the system. | ||
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Gorsameth
Netherlands21364 Posts
On November 11 2021 04:30 JimmiC wrote: I'd temper expectations. Remember the party of Trump will not hold him accountable.Thats exciting. Id be shocked if there is not awful stuff in there for Trmp. Innocent people dont desperately try to block unbiased arcieves. | ||
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LegalLord
United Kingdom13775 Posts
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cLutZ
United States19573 Posts
On November 11 2021 07:03 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: Across the board bloat means that you want to cut 30-50% of everything to get the 30-50% decrease. And that's certainly one way to mathematically get there, but that also means dismantling most of the school. You specifically mentioned teacher salaries increasing faster than inflation. Keep in mind that the "across the board bloat" argument would remove 30-50% of a teacher's entire salary, compared to the 1-2% salary increase you're actually proposing when you talk about setting the salary increase equal to inflation. The problem is that you're not actually using a real budget with actual numbers; you're making a lot of assertions without working out the math. Let's work out the math, specifically for your teacher's salary suggestion. Here are some numbers we could work with, since you haven't cited a specific school budget you've looked at: Let's talk about an elementary school in New Jersey (K-5 or K-6, whatever). Let's say there are 1,000 students in the school. The average class size is between 19.9 and 21.9 students, depending on the class structure, so let's just round it to 20 students per class ( https://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sass/tables/sass0708_2009324_t1s_08.asp ). Median teacher salary in New Jersey is around $72,000 (I think elementary school teachers make a little less than high school teachers, perhaps closer to $68,000, but again we'll see why this doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things ( https://www.nj.gov/education/doedata/fact.shtml ). If there are 1,000 students in the school, split evenly across enough classes to have 20 students per class, then we have 50 classes, right? All running at the same time? Which means we need 50 teachers, right? 50 teachers * $72,000 = $3,600,000 spent on teachers. The average amount of money spent, per pupil, in New Jersey was around $22,000 ( https://www.nj.com/education/2019/08/heres-what-every-nj-district-spends-per-student.html ). $22,000 * 1,000 students = $22,000,000. Roughly 1/6 of this school's budget is being spent on teachers ($3,600,000 / $22,000,000), so not cutting a significant percentage from this 1/6 means we'll have to cut way more than 30-50% somewhere else... The average NJ teacher enjoyed a 1.46% salary increase from two years ago to last year, so we'll use that ( https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teacher-salaries-are-increasing-see-how-your-state-compares/2021/04#:~:text=The NEA also found that the average starting,increased their minimum and starting pay for teachers. ). So this is an increase from $72,000 to $73,000 per teacher, or a total increase from spending $3,600,000 in a year to 3,650,000. That's a $50,000 increase... total. So even if we froze teacher salaries (not simply lowering to match inflation, which I'm pretty sure is above 1.46% at the moment, anyway...), we would save $50,000, out of a budget of $22,000,000. How close are we to slashing 30-50% of our total budget? Well, we saved 0.22% by screwing over teachers. If you want to slash a full 1%, then you can cut an administrator or two also. Grabbing back 1% here and 1% there can be possible if you're willing to make impractical sacrifices, but until you can get to even 10% reduction from an actual budget, there's no way 30-50% can even be considered. If you think you can get to 30-50%, please show an actual line-by-line school budget and tell me what can be so heavily reduced without negatively impacting educational outcomes. I think its true most government employees are getting hosed this year due to the high inflation. But teacher salaries (in my state) were going up about 2-3% faster than inflation pre-pandemic. Compound that over 30 years and its an effective 80% pay increase, which maths out to 40% of your total teacher salary budget. Using a classic compound interest calc, to get to the 72k number you'd have started at 40k 30 years ago. That is simply the power of compounding pay raises that exceed the rate of inflation. | ||
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