Are many of those who complain about teachers's unions defending school boards? Excepting teachers, everybody I know who complains about one, complains about the other.
Is any one else appalled that there are recruiting scandals for high school baseball?
This guy is alleged to have induced someone to transfer from another high school. Are there also people out there trolling middle schools?
There is a gulf between the communitarian ideal of American public schools (a less-white Scandinavia, a more humane Japan, a less-French France, a chicken in every pot WPA in every recession, a chance to instill the very values on which public school depends, an interest of every constituency in society) and the brute reality of American society, where we can't agree even that decent public schools are worth paying for.
Something tragedy something feel something comedy something think something.
2: Yes and yes. Public school coaches can get forced out of their jobs for losing.
"Gamed" is the wrong word here. Allowing management to arbitrarily punish employees and do an end run around the protections negotiated by past generations of the union was the purpose of the "rubber room" system. The fact that the New Yorker article managed to convince so many people that this massive and obvious abuse was in some way the union's fault and that the solution was to allow management more unaccountable power is quite troublesome.
6
"Gamed" is the wrong word here. Allowing management to arbitrarily punish employees and do an end run around the protections negotiated by past generations of the union was the purpose of the "rubber room" system. The fact that the New Yorker article managed to convince so many people that this massive and obvious abuse was in some way the union's fault and that the solution was to allow management more unaccountable power is quite troublesome.
Give me a break. The purpose of the system was to make it difficult and expensive to fire people and that was in the union's interest not management's.
3
... where we can't agree even that decent public schools are worth paying for.
Not exactly. People don't agree on what constitutes decent public schools and on the best way of achieving them.
Blindly advocating throwing money at them is just a symbolic way of showing you are a good person and has nothing to do with actually improving the schools.
I've been stewing about a post where I propose making private schools illegal. Not that this would ever have any sort of shot of getting passed, but I think it's one of the best things that could happen to the schools.
People don't agree on what constitutes decent public schools and on the best way of achieving them.
Point.
Blindly advocating throwing money at them is just a symbolic way of showing you are a good person and has nothing to do with actually improving the schools.
I grant that there is some of this among America's guilty white liberals (see the ref. to the WPA in my comment above), but I think much less than conservatives tend to think or imply.
9: Are there other areas of life where prohibiting private, personal choices would find favor with the procedural liberals that, if memory serves, we all feel guilty for being?
The WPA was designed to combat a problem that was particularly amenable to being solved by having money thrown at it.
9: It would create a huge new set of exurbs unless it was also paired with the creation of school districts too large to commute out of.
I also think that schools should not be funded unequally.
re: 9
I'd certainly do that in the UK. Or, rather, as a milquetoast type, I'd tax fuck out of them and forbid them from registering themselves as charities/non-profits.
11: It can be a bit tricky to define what areas constitute a "commons" that requires cooperation and coordination, but surely it's not hard to make an argument that schooling is one such place. Liberals are more than happy to regulate private decisions in matters like, say, real estate zoning or sewage control.
On the other hand, liberals somehow fail to grasp that allowing gay marriage pollutes all marriages. Lefties. Go figure.
It will really never happen, as noted above. Looking roughly at the census figures and school enrollment, over half the kids in Pittsburgh are in private schools or have dropped out.
9: That would just drive up house prices in the good school districts.
Nowhere does our idiotic devotion to federalism/"local control" serve us more poorly than in our schools.
14: Oh, so now you hate special-needs kids too?
20: Local control wouldn't be so bad if the localities were a bit bigger.
22: Whoa. As good liberals, we hate all the children equally.
Local control wouldn't be so bad if the localities were a bit bigger.
Or the locals weren't such slack-jawed imbeciles.
Any system that doesn't half-ass function with slack-jawed imbeciles is too perfect for this world.
24: You are guaranteed to have worse results in the schools with exogenously disadvantaged students. Funding the schools equally only provides equality of "opportunity", not equality of outcome.
(Which is not to say it wouldn't probably be an improvement over the current allocation.)
It came from reading that article about the Finnish schools, and how private schools don't exist and fairness/equality is prized above all else, including actual high performance. And how disgusted they were by the idea of valuing competition in schools.
Funding the schools unequally provides neither type of equality.
Addendum to 24:
... which is why our school proposals contemplate every other constituency: teachers, taxpayers, politicians, local residents, notional future business owners and employers. Children don't vote and they don't have any money.
16: Banning/prohibitively taxing private schools and/or health insurance is a relatively common liberal (US sense) position in the UK. And the latter is IIRC the legal position in Canada.
23: obviously, the larger the localities are, the less bad it is, but even with larger localities it still wouldn't exactly be a positive good.
3
... brute reality ...
Speaking of brute reality, research has shown that the quality of a school is much more dependent on the quality of the other students than of the quality of the teachers or of the physical facilities (within the range commonly found in the US). Which means it is impossible for everyone to attend an excellent public school regardless of how much money you spend. People are quite willing to pay for an excellent public school for their kid.
16. Just removing charitable status would be a start. Eton is a charity how, exactly?
It came from reading that article about the Finnish schools, and how private schools don't exist and fairness/equality is prized above all else, including actual high performance. And how disgusted they were by the idea of valuing competition in schools.
I don't know what article you're referring to, but Finnish schools are better than ours for a huge number of overlapping reasons. Banning private schools is probably a good idea there, but taking that step alone wouldn't exactly make us Finland, and doing it alone seems likely to have more negative than positive results.
32: My county has 43 school districts, and this is after some court-ordered combinations. If you leave aside Pittsburgh, you get something like 20K people (not students) per district.
28: Are you talking about that Atlantic online piece?
I think the superiority of the Finnish schools can be adequately explained by:
1) Offering enough money to consistently attract and retain top talent as schoolteachers.
2) A robust welfare state so fewer poor kids are malnourished, hungry, sick, or in pain.
3) Adequate funding of schools in poor areas
Only (3) has to do with equality per se.
We don't have failing schools because we test. We test because we have failing schools, and we want to try to fix them without spending money.
The purpose of the system was to make it difficult and expensive to fire people and that was in the union's interest not management's
Not true. The system simply provided for a set disciplinary process with appeals. Management's inability to manage that process properly is their fault, and their decision to try to do an end run around it by using suspensions to increase stress on people so that they resign was also their fault.
One man's disciplinary process with appeals is another man's difficult and expensive to fire people.
37.2 is the biggie. Finland's child poverty rate is around 5 percent. In the U.S. it's over 20.
8: Are there other areas of the economy where the quality of service/facilities is unrelated to the amount of money available?
Only (3) has to do with equality per se.
How is (2) not directly related to equality?
20: Local control wouldn't be so bad if the localities were a bit bigger.
Depends on how much bigger you're talking about. A federal judge just ordered the state to advance money to this bankrupt school district.
Meantime, legislators have leaked a draft proposal from the governor for state takeover of distressed districts that would allow an oversight board to cancel teacher contracts and turn all district schools into charters.
While this particular district has been in fiscal disaster for a decade-plus, it's located in a larger county that is seeing massive job losses (1500 direct jobs plus probably 7000 more indirect) from two refinery closings. Bumping school-funding up from the district to the county level wouldn't do much.
In the midst of all this, the neighboring city's controller has suddenly (after 3 or 4 years in which the handwriting has been on the wall) announced that he may insert language stating that the $2+ billion district is not a "going concern".
You guys have a combined city/county and thus have different types of absurdities.
When I read the OP, I was wondering how much this sort of thing is uniquely a problem in large school districts. I don't know, but doubt that there's the same kind of rubber room situation in many places. Somehow I doubt that Montgomery County has the same situation. I could be wrong.
On the question of local control, I wonder if you people are on drugs. The places I've lived most of the last 30 years have had decent school boards, and the idea that any significant decisions ought to have been shifted to Annapolis or Helena, or to the likes of Boehner or Gingrich, is simply beyond understanding. In no way would schooling where I live be improved by such a thing. No way at all.
44: It's true that Philadelphia county and city have coterminous boundaries, but the bulk of my comment discusses the suburbs -- where there are many school districts located within one county.*
*I really just wanted an excuse to say "coterminous."
37
1) Offering enough money to consistently attract and retain top talent as schoolteachers
If I recall correctly Finnish teachers are paid less than US teachers. In any case teachers aren't very important to student outcomes.
We test because we have failing schools, and we want to try to fix them without spending money
For the most part our schools aren't failing and there is nothing to fix. The range in outcomes is primarily because there is a range of student ability. There is no way to fix this (other than handicapping the good students as in the Vonnegut short story).
Oh James, 47.last is darling. There should be a word for dropping Harrison Bergeron on a conversation not among middle schoolers.
45
On the question of local control, I wonder if you people are on drugs. ... In no way would schooling where I live be improved by such a thing. No way at all.
You don't understand. The problem in some minds is that your schools are too good and that this is unfair. The solution is to destroy all the good schools. Hence abolishing private schools.
45: Things like the OP are probably limited mostly to large school districts. However, the smallest districts around here often serve mostly poorer, African-American populations and appear to exist for little reason but to keep all the poor people in one school.
Anyway, we use a private school to get a well run school.
There is no way to fix this (other than handicapping the good students as in the Vonnegut short story).
Or reducing child poverty.
Children are poor because they're stupid, Ginger Yellow. If they weren't stupid, why would they be poor?
42: I'm not sure why I said that. I guess I was thinking of it as a background condition, not related to equality of education.
Yes, let's all engage Shearer. That's going to be rewarding.
Bob, could you please derail this thread with talk of feminist genocide or something? Thanks.
47: The nytimes seems to think Finnish teachers are paid more, at least on a relative basis:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/education/16teachers.html
Raising teachers' status is not mainly about raising salaries, the report says, but pay is a factor.According to O.E.C.D. data, the average salary of a veteran elementary teacher here was $44,172 in 2008, higher than the average of $39,426 across all O.E.C.D countries (the figures were converted to compare the purchasing power of each currency).
But that salary level was 40 percent below the average salary of other American college graduates. In Finland, by comparison, the veteran teacher's salary was 13 percent less than that of the average college graduate's.
47.last: Just because some schools have an objectively more difficult task due to exogenous factors doesn't mean they're not failing.
research has shown that the quality of a school is much more dependent on the quality of the other students
This is a tautology. The quality of a school is typically defined as its average grades. A school with high average grades arithmetically must have a lot of pupils doing well. A school with lots of pupils doing well must have a high average grade.
As heebie has already pointed out, whenever the Finnish thing comes up, US commentators often choose to ignore all the egalitarian class-leveling aspects of their system.
I'm having trouble figuring out any way that the same person could make the following two statements in short succession in good faith:
research has shown that the quality of a school is much more dependent on the quality of the other students than of the quality of the teachers or of the physical facilities...
For the most part our schools aren't failing and there is nothing to fix. The range in outcomes is primarily because there is a range of student ability.
James, if the quality of a school is significantly dependent on the quality of the other students, doesn't that mean schools with concentrated numbers of disadvantaged children ("low quality students," you might say), are something to fix?
58: I suspect it's not a tautology, because when James refers to "the quality of the other students", he means how white and how wealthy they are, not their GPAs.
60.1: DOES JAMES B. SHEARER CONTRADICT HIMSELF? VERY WELL THEN JAMES B. SHEARER CONTRADICTS HIMSELF, (HE IS LARGE, HE CONTAINS MULTITUDES.)
60.last: donut put the clown nose on Howard Roark! Howard deserves only to associate with the other brilliantly rich and white children!
63: NO ONE DESERVES TO ASSOCIATE WITH HOWARD ROARK
58: it does rather seem that way. I can sort of see how it might not be, if you define quality as "improvement it makes in the average student's performance"; I can imagine that if you have a school full of A-grade kids, then a student who starts there as a C may rise to a B+ by graduation; but another identical C student at a school full of D-grade kids may be not much more than a C+ by the end of her time there. That would be a) intuitively sensible and b) non-tautologous.
I'm not sure this is the definition being used though.
65: unless James is referring to research I'm unaware of, I really think the correct way to unpack the statement "the quality of a school is much more dependent on the quality of the other students than on the quality of the teachers or of the physical facilities" is: "the [average GPA of a school] is much more dependent on the [socioeconomic attributes] of the other students than on the quality of the teachers or of the physical facilities".
Which is also intuitively sensible and non-tautologous.
Use of sarcasm as a means to avoid engaging with Shearer is weakness, not strength.
We are still really torn about what to do for Mara when she reaches school age, so not for another year. I'm strongly pushing for her to go to the local public, where Val goes now. Lee is much more skeptical because almost all our friends (although none of the ones who aren't white) in our more gentrified neighborhood pay to send their kids to other places and she can't help feeling that this means they know something we don't about how truly awful our school is. (She also doesn't like to think that her friends are sometimes racist even after the big throw-down we had about blackface at their Halloween party a few years back.)
Our city has slightly more than 30% of kids under 18 living below the poverty line, but the rich/white flight aspect has to up that at the schools. Alex gets sent home from preschool every week with a big bag of food kids can open themselves and eat cold because there's enough food instability that this is just a given.
Val started doing so much better once she came to live with us that her teacher no longer thinks she has some kind of dyslexia/processing disorder, though I still do. She also apparently started smiling and being friendly, which makes us suspect that her previous "shyness" was actually exhaustion. Now that she eats healthier meals than her relative with no car and limited mobility was able to provide and she sleeps at least 10 and often 12 or 13 hours a night, she's suddenly doing better in school. Still can't/won't learn her fucking "popcorn" sight words, but that won't be my problem after another week.
(She also doesn't like to think that her friends are sometimes racist even after the big throw-down we had about blackface at their Halloween party a few years back.)
A fascinating parenthetical indeed.
Lee is much more skeptical because almost all our friends (although none of the ones who aren't white) in our more gentrified neighborhood pay to send their kids to other places and she can't help feeling that this means they know something we don't about how truly awful our school is.
Most of Sally's preschool friends left the neighborhood or went to private school to avoid the grade school she and Newt went to. I don't want to call the parents racist for avoiding it, but the school was great; my kids are certainly writing more, and more advanced, stuff than I was in a 90% white middle class public school in the 70s (I have issues with the math teaching, but it didn't actually do my kids any harm). I think people often avoid schools out of inchoate worry, rather than genuine knowledge that they're bad.
69: You don't get to be a black professional in heavily white environments without getting used to microaggressions being everywhere, I guess? It would probably be more fair to say that she's very willing to say they're racist or at least willfully unaware on the question of blackface and the two people who were unable to dress up as Jimi Hendrix without it but not that they're racist enough that the percent of the kids who aren't white (maybe a third of the class, if Val's is representative) would be something that drives them to seek other options. I don't think they're actively avoiding black people like the ones in our family, but they're definitely classist in other ways too.
I was always totally baffled by parents who sent their kids to private school in the streetcar suburb of my upbringing. The town was nationally known for having good public schools, and they were already paying the premium to live there. Either it was some deep cultural thing that I don't understand or the 2% of students bussed in from other districts were far more terrifying than I realized.
70: Yes, that's exactly what I think is going on. They're scared about potential badness enough that they don't want to risk their kids, which I understand. But every time I've said, "Well, we also don't want Mara to be the only black child in her class," it's lead to responses that, oh, well, there already is one in their son's/daughter's classroom and so on and we're just not wanting to go there.
I do think that the schools in our town were historically not very good, but that improved funding and new blood among the teachers and administrators have improved that a lot. I have my complaints, but I'm sure I would anywhere and they're not huge.
Right, it's not racism so much inchoate worry, because you don't want to send your kids to a bad school. And the public school has a reputation for being bad. And it's got a low average GPA, to justify that reputation. And it's got a low average GPA because so many well-off parents have left, because it's got a bad reputation. Lather, rinse and repeat. The fact that the motivation behind the initial round of well-off parent departures was almost always explicitly racist is almost beside the point, at this point. (Almost.)
I think it's an outrage that fancy colleges and, god help us, prep schools have charitable status.
But as everyone knows, from the point of view of the aspirational UMC parent, there's a real vicious cycle -- once people start pulling their kids out of the public schools, the schools get worse, which leads more kids to get out of the schools. Maybe banning private schools would work to end that; as it is, at least locally, the only public schools that are even "thinkable" for people in my acquaintance circle are either charter schools or very special magnet schools that are "free" (if you jump through a zillion bureaucratic hoops, and often only if you volunteer to raise a lot of money). I just did the private school interview for my kid's elementary school, where she'll almost certainly go. At least it's got a relatively wide income and racial mix.
once people start pulling their kids out of the public schools, the schools get worse schools' average GPA declines.
Fixed. It's a big difference.
75 written without reading the preceding like 10 comments.
A person I happen to pass judgement on lives in San Raf/ael, CA, and insists that the schools are actually so terrible that private school is the only option. To me, the area is so fucking wealthy that I can't understand how this can possibly be the case.
Any Californians know what the schools there are like?
76 -- I'm not sure that's all of it -- that is, I think there's probably also an absolute decline in instruction -- but even if thats so, so what. From a parent's point of view you also want your kid to be around other hard working/smart/academically oriented kids. Maybe not exclusively those kids, but once the percentage drops too sharply things get scary if you're focused on peer groups. Maybe that's the wrong thing to be focused on, but that's an understandable fear.
Let's not forget race of course, I've told here the story of how there is 0% white enrollment at my local public elementary school and the teachers warned my (white) friend away from sending his kid to that place. But even the aspirational black and Latino parents will go to enormous lengths to avoid that school.
Oh, hey, educational class-warfare piss-off of the week:
Sally's out of the school I was talking about, and in a math/science public middle/high school with test-based admissions. Its catchment area is Manhattan north of 96th St., which helps it to be moderately selective but still diverse -- while there are certainly upper middle class white families in the area, and in the school (hi!) they're not a big enough part of the population to swamp it. We like it, and we're hoping to send Newt there.
Eligibility to take the test to get in is based on last year's standardized test scores; you fill out an online form, and the school says they'll inform you if your kid is invited to the test at some point in the future. I fill out Newt's form. Last week, other families in Newt's current school get the notification that their kid should take the test on this Saturday, we get nothing.
So I call the school, and ask what gives? The admissions coordinator rummages through a drawer, says, "Newt? Sure, he's taking the test. You didn't get the letter? I'll send it home with Sally. Funny, that happened to a bunch of the letters; a lot of people have been calling."
No big thing, and it's all fixed. But geez. Anyone who's not on top of when everyone else got their notification, isn't pushy about calling schools, and isn't superconfident that of course their precious snowflake of a child couldn't possibly have failed to meet eligibility requirements to even take a test? Just got their kid shut out of a very good, intense, free school.
I'm sure this wasn't intentional or malicious: I like the administration, and there's no feeling that the school is run in a classist or racist way internally that I'm aware of. But whenever I run into this kind of snag on something important, I feel like I'm cheating somehow, because it's so easy for someone in my position to catch it and straighten it out, but so much more difficult for lots of other people.
I like the administration, and there's no feeling that the school is run in a classist or racist way internally that I'm aware of.
I think I'd like them a lot less after that. As you point out, that bit of bureaucratic carelessness could seriously fuck up somebody's life. Don't they have check lists and stuff?
I'm not sure that's all of it -- that is, I think there's probably also an absolute decline in instruction
Well, I'm not sure that's all of it, either, but that's what's actually measured. It's certainly plausible that, over time, better teachers would try to transfer out, general apathy would take over, the adminstrators would start focusing more on how to prevent crime and violence and less on how to improve educational outcomes, etc.
81: Well, the downside of the school is that it is administratively rickety. It's still quite new, there was a huge fuss last year when the principal was fired, and everything is sort of held together with duct-tape and improvisation, so I'm not surprised by this class of fuckup. But the teachers and students, and the atmosphere of the school generally, are very good.
I don't know that anybody is really very good a knowing what is measured. That's part of the reason parents get so jumpy.
80: And then add to that the fact that families with lower income are more likely to move, and therefore to miss letters mailed to a prior address.
81: Ha. Around here, the school district requires that 8th graders apply for high school by an *October* deadline. (That's 11 months in advance of the start of the school year, if you're counting.) It's poorly publicized, poorly explained, and poorly understood even by school administrators, never mind parents. (And how many 13-year-olds do you know who are in the habit of making detailed logistical plans a year in advance?)
There was a terrific expose a year or so ago by a nonprofit news organization on the high-school application process and how many kids end up in comprehensive high schools schools (basically, the schools of last resort) rather than magnet, special-admit or other public schools because they or their parents don't know or can't follow the extensive rules in the high school application process.
That doesn't even cover the kids who move into the district after October. Sorry guys, you should have known in advance your parents were going to move!
85: Yeah, I really don't think people appreciate how much 'school choice' turns into a class filter without trying terribly hard.
I find it really hard to get a handle on how I can know what a school is like before my kid goes there. If I were in Pittsburgh, that would be fine, because I have good friends who have kids a little older than mine and who are also teachers in the public school system. But in my actual situation, all I have is the kind of chatter that might be racist-alarmist-whateverist. And all the school districts are so carved up where we're moving that I don't think there's really any such thing as options other than That One School Where You Live or private school. There's no way to get a situation like Sally's.
OT: Last call for handy witticisms, people, while I shave and look for a shirt that will accent but not overemphasize my louche lack of affect bring out the color of my eyes.
Music to get ready by, endorsed by Michael Mann and Arnold Schwarzenegger alike.
It's too late for you to use this today, but if there's a second date, you should certainly get yourself one of these.
89: Yeah, we felt confident (sorta) about the grade school because we had friends who had an older kid in the school already, and a younger kid Sally's age (which is how we knew them). Jane's probably still on the young side for you to know a lot of people because she plays with their kids, but once that kicks in it'll provide some insight into the schools. (Have I mentioned lately what an astonishingly appealing child she is? Or maybe you just take good pictures, but in either case, your blog is up there with Zooborns for adorableness.)
Knock 'em dead, Flip.
(Not literally, of course. But you knew that.)
Any Californians know what the schools there are like?
As, of a few years ago, quite decent. Very good, even, for CA. But, a)that's a big qualifier, and b)they'd be relying on the state not imploding.
Imploding or falling into the ocean.
93: Not literally.... [Scribbles note.]
pay to send their kids to other places and she can't help feeling that this means they know something we don't about how truly awful our school is. and 70.
My sister lives in a gentrifying neighborhood and the gentrifiers have zero intention of sending their kids to the local elementary. But my sister was real tempted, because it is a block from their house and that kind of convenience can't be ignored. So she... sat in the classroom for a day! I know! She directly observed the classes her kids would be in. Came away thinking that they looked just like a kindergarden and she couldn't discern any notable problems.
She was game to send them there, but her babydaddy was real opposed (although he didn't go sit in classrooms himself). They ended up in the complicated lottery for the charters. She was hoping to lose and default to the local elementary, but she got the second to last slot in a coveted charter. They like the charter, and bike to school, but that wasn't her intention.
I heard that it was San Rafael high school students who developed the "4:20" thing, but there seem to be multiple claimants for the title.
97: Yeah, "gentrifying" isn't quite the right word. It's the historical zone where the houses always were kept in decent repair, but there's certainly an east/west divide and we're in the wealthier end of town. I did make Lee go to the open house a week ago, but she was mostly busy paying attention to Alex's misbehavior and not that it looks like any normal suburban primary school, nothing at all like what we were seeing in The Lottery or Waiting for Superman, which was the basic message I wanted to send to her.
Of the people we know from our neighborhood who send their kids to the public school, one is a mixed-race couple, one is a teacher at the school with one bio child and one adopted from foster care, and the last is white parents, white child, and one internationally adopted child who's currently in Alex's preschool class. All the people going elsewhere are white parents with white bio kids. I guess I know which demographic we fit best.
Thing is, my sister and I had an unusual public school experience. We were on an entirely Black/Hispanic campus, in the small pocket of Asian/Eastern European math/science magnet. The small pocket was the best school in LA. So we're all: entirely Black/Hispanic or first generation kids? Great! Must be a great school! That's what we experienced! But perhaps that doesn't hold for all public schools.
And, I had a far worse time in the white suburban schools that weren't sorted by IQ tests. So I don't have an intuitive sense that those must be better places to be.
||
I must say, I enjoyed reading that fewer than one in three Californians registered Republican. Great! I hope that soon we'll have fewer than one in three Republican senators.
|>
101: Similar to the current national registration figure, actually. I wish that was a leading indicator of presidential elections (technically I don't know if it is or not, but I'm pessimistic).
How plausible would it be to really fix the California we-can't-raise-taxes problem? What specific actions (ballot measures, I'm guessing) would have to be successful?
The biggest thing is to repeal the requirement to have a 2/3 vote to increase taxes. And that consistently fails by huge margins when tried or polled. So not very plausible - unless this court case works out. (A similar case was made in 1978 and failed, but I believe they're gambling that the decision on Prop 8 made it more conceivable.)
Also something would need to be done about three-strikes. Similarly implausible.
And that consistently fails by huge margins when tried or polled.
I wonder if it would fail as badly if the requirement was reduced from 2/3 to 3/5, instead of all the way to 1/2.
So she... sat in the classroom for a day!
Yeah, this is obviously what you do when you already live somewhere and are deciding what to do with the options you have. I'm currently fretting over how much to take chatter about schools into account in choosing where to live.
(Thanks, LB! I should post more often; I certainly have plenty of photos and highly nonmomentous anecdotes waiting in the wings. The fear of being unbearable sometimes gets in the way.)
Use your words, Halford.
No, I don't think 3/5 would fare any more than marginally better. It's a visceral aversion to taxation that even many Democrats share.
Constitutional convention. This is actually probably as good a time for one as any time in the last 30 years.
Just yesterday I saw something about legislators putting Three Strikes on the ballot for Fall.
Freakishly, it now looks more likely that we'll get a 2/3 majority in the Senate than it does that we'll repeal the 2/3 requirement to raise taxes. It could be a new era come November.
So, on the basis of 90 seconds of internet research, it appears that the California state budget accounts for about 4.78 percent of its GDP, while the Montana state budget accounts for 7.3 percent of its GDP. The Minnesota number is around 6.3 percent. None of these seem like fantastically high numbers. I don't know. Maybe I should take an Econ 101 course.
58
This is a tautology. The quality of a school is typically defined as its average grades. A school with high average grades arithmetically must have a lot of pupils doing well. A school with lots of pupils doing well must have a high average grade.
It is true that that is how quality is typically defined but here I am defining quality as the effect on predicted academic performance. The most important factors in predicting performance are characteristics of the student, IQ, family income etc. But the quality of the other students is also a factor although less important. In other words your kid can be expected to do a bit better if the other kids in the school are smart and hard working as opposed to dumb and lazy. This is sometimes referred to as peer effects. Still less important is the quality of things like the teachers or physical facilities (within the range commonly found in the US) which are in fact hard to reliably measure because the effects are down at the noise level.
57
47.last: Just because some schools have an objectively more difficult task due to exogenous factors doesn't mean they're not failing.
Failing to meet impossible goals.
60
James, if the quality of a school is significantly dependent on the quality of the other students, doesn't that mean schools with concentrated numbers of disadvantaged children ("low quality students," you might say), are something to fix?
But they can only be fixed by making other schools worse. They is no way everyone can attend a school with above average classmates.
66
unless James is referring to research I'm unaware of ...
There is a ton of research on this starting with the 1966 Coleman report. A little googling found this paper which I have not read but which references cites the Coleman report as follows:
Most of the research literature on peer effects in education has focused on elementary and secondary schools.1 Certainly the most influential piece of social science research incorporating peer effects is the famous study Equality of Educational Opportunity, completed over thirty years ago (Coleman et al., 1966). Employing over half a million students from approximately three thousand elementary and secondary schools, Coleman and his associates sought to measure the features of school environment that led to differences in student attainment. A key finding of this study was that ". . . a pupil's achievement is strongly related to the educational backgrounds and aspirations of the other students in the school." Indeed, peer characteristics were found to be notably more important than teacher characteristics or nonsocial aspects of the school.
38
Not true. The system simply provided for a set disciplinary process with appeals. Management's inability to manage that process properly is their fault, and their decision to try to do an end run around it by using suspensions to increase stress on people so that they resign was also their fault.
Banker thinking here. We provide a simple 37 step process to renegotiate your mortgage and if you can't follow it properly it's your fault.
Even if management did everything as efficiently as possible firing a teacher still took years. And suspensions were always part of the system. You were suspended with pay while the charges were evaluated. You want some teacher accused of groping students to stay in the classroom until they exhaust all of their appeals.
115: There's a real question here, and while I have a strong belief as to the answer, I don't have data to appeal to. A school where all or most of the the students are disadvantaged is pretty much inevitably going to be a bad school (something which should be addressed at least in part outside the school system by policies rendering the kids in question less disadvantaged). If you spread those same kids out among other schools, on the other hand, while they may not be the star students, it seems inevitable to me that they will learn more than they would in a school that concentrates the poverty, and that they won't do the other students any harm.
You're right that socioeconomic status is a very strong predictor of academic success. You're wrong to deduce from that that there's a fixed amount of possible learning, and nothing you can do to the schools is going to change that.
Even if management did everything as efficiently as possible firing a teacher still took years.
Bullshit.
118
There's a real question here, and while I have a strong belief as to the answer, I don't have data to appeal to. A school where all or most of the the students are disadvantaged is pretty much inevitably going to be a bad school (something which should be addressed at least in part outside the school system by policies rendering the kids in question less disadvantaged). If you spread those same kids out among other schools, on the other hand, while they may not be the star students, it seems inevitable to me that they will learn more than they would in a school that concentrates the poverty, and that they won't do the other students any harm.
Of course they are harming the other students. The effect is not that noticeable if you put just one bad student in a good class because the loss is spread over say 20 good students while the gain is concentrated in the bad student. But I don't see any reason to believe there is a net gain. And in many urban districts if you spread the bad students out then they will be the majority everywhere and all the schools will be bad.
119
Bullshit.
You have some reference for this? Everything I have read on the subject indicated that even if management made no mistakes the process could take years. As I recall there were usually long delays in scheduling arbitration hearings and then waiting for decisions and there was nothing management could about this.
I am assuming of course that the teacher chose to use every delaying tactic the process allowed. Perhaps there were some exceptionally favorable cases (such as the teacher pleading guilty to a major felony) where the process went quickly but it is my understanding that a typical case would unavoidably take years.
119 121
A link to the Brill article on the rubber rooms.
The teachers have been in the Rubber Room for an average of about three years, ... The city's contract with their union, the United Federation of Teachers, requires that charges against them be heard by an arbitrator, and until the charges are resolved--the process is often endless--they will continue to draw their salaries and accrue pensions and other benefits.
It takes between two and five years for cases to be heard by an arbitrator ...
This was the thirtieth day of a hearing that started last December. Under the union contract, hearings on each case are held five days a month during the school year and two days a month during the summer. Mohammed's case is likely to take between forty and forty-five hearing days ... Jay Siegel, the arbitrator in Mohammed's case, who has thirty days to write a decision, estimates that he will exceed his deadline ...
Dan Weisberg says that because of the way cases are litigated by the union it's impossible to move them along. He notes that, unlike in a criminal court, where the judge has to clear his docket, there is no such pressure on an arbitrator ...
You have some evidence that this article is wrong and it didn't necessarily take years to dismiss a teacher?
119 121 122
A flowchart (pdf file) of the process to fire a teacher.
Long delays in scheduling arbitration are a product of how management has set up the system. The union doesn't control the arbitrators, they're outsiders paid by the school system, and the process can be set up to run more speedily. Part of what I do for a living is work on cases (not for schools, but other government employees) where an employee has sued after being fired though this sort of process: the wildly extended timelines are a function of management priorities.
123: That's not loading for me, but assuming it's the same idiotic chart you linked a while back, as I said last time, you're not that dumb. That's not a flowchart. It's an unnecessarily chatty description of the process, with a box drawn around every sentence whether or not it describes a procedural step.
you're not that dumb
You can tell, he went to school in the suburbs.
124.2 It is the same. From reason.com, who clearly don't have an axe to grind here.
124
Long delays in scheduling arbitration are a product of how management has set up the system. The union doesn't control the arbitrators, they're outsiders paid by the school system, and the process can be set up to run more speedily. ...
According to the Brill article the arbitrators are paid by the state and approved by the union.
When the bill for the arbitrator is added to the cost of the city's lawyers and court reporters and the time spent in court by the principal and the assistant principal, Mohammed's case will probably have cost the city and the state (which pays the arbitrator) about four hundred thousand dollars.
Klein's explanation is that "most arbitrators are not inclined to dismiss a teacher, because they have to get approved again every year by the union, and the union keeps a scorecard." (Weingarten denies that the union keeps a scorecard.)
Given that the long delays are in the interest of the union and not in the interest of management I find it hard to believe that they are primarily due to management. In any case in the actually existing system dismissing a teacher took years.
126
124.2 It is the same. From reason.com, who clearly don't have an axe to grind here.
You guys are free to find and link defenses of the system. I haven't encountered any convincing ones.
Arbitrators are approved by both the union and the school system, not by one side alone.
Given that the long delays are in the interest of the union and not in the interest of management
Begging the question, aren't you? That was the whole point of this post. Doesn't mean that you have to agree that I'm right, but an argument that starts with "Given that what you're asserting is wrong, what you're asserting is wrong," isn't going to be productive.
Actually, the chart linked in 123 is kind of fun considered for its artistic value as obfuscation. Page 2 is particularly good. Look! Five boxes out of the list of reasons you can suspend a teacher without pay pending an arbitration! (None of which are relevant to the stated reason for firing this hypothetical teacher, which is lack of competence.) Nine boxes for a list of procedural rights at an administrative hearing! Three boxes for the separate "steps" of (1) issuing a written decision, (2) making copies of the decision, and (3) forwarding copies of the decision. Look at these terrible burdens!
124
... Part of what I do for a living is work on cases (not for schools, but other government employees) where an employee has sued after being fired though this sort of process: the wildly extended timelines are a function of management priorities.
Are you talking about delays before or after they are fired? Are they still acruing pay and benefits?
I am amused to find that the antonym of reason.com is actually a campaign against corporate tax evasion.
129
Begging the question, aren't you? That was the whole point of this post. Doesn't mean that you have to agree that I'm right, but an argument that starts with "Given that what you're asserting is wrong, what you're asserting is wrong," isn't going to be productive.
The case in the story you linked is different as the school district has already imposed the result it wanted and the coach is trying to reverse the decision. So the coach does not have an incentive to delay. In the rubber room cases the teachers were accruing pay and benefits while the cases were decided so had an incentive to delay as long as possible (especially if they feared an adverse decision).
But I guess I should have said that the long delays were primarily in the interest of the union and not in the interest of management as few systems are entirely one sided. And management is not an unified actor, a principal may just want a teacher out of their school and not care too much what finally happens to them or how much it costs.
But inasmuch as you saw management attacking the the rubber room system and the union defending it, it seems reasonable to believe it was on balance in the interests of the union and not in the interests of management. Which doesn't mean there aren't other cases (than the rubber rooms) where the interests are reversed.
No. Management wasn't attacking the rubber room system. Management was attacking the system under which they are not allowed to fire most teachers without cause. What it looks like from here is that the rubber room system is management throwing a tantrum: they are so opposed to having to demonstrate causes for teacher discipline that they are willing to make the disciplinary system completely non-functional, even at great expense to the schools (which, as in any large organization whether public or private, doesn't come out of the pockets of the decisionmakers.)
You all (not Shearer) are completely right about so much in this thread, and yet I still have a deeply ingrained New Englander's belief about the cultural superiority of private schools with nice buildings. I am sure that it is wrong, but I also have trauma over the time I spent in public school where we had to recite the pledge of allegiance and you had to get passes to go to the bathroom.
134
No. Management wasn't attacking the rubber room system. Management was attacking the system under which they are not allowed to fire most teachers without cause. What it looks like from here is that the rubber room system is management throwing a tantrum: they are so opposed to having to demonstrate causes for teacher discipline that they are willing to make the disciplinary system completely non-functional, even at great expense to the schools (which, as in any large organization whether public or private, doesn't come out of the pockets of the decisionmakers.)
It appears our versions of reality are too different to reasonably discuss this. It is the union not management that wanted and benefited from a nonfunctional disciplinary system. I am baffled by what you think management should have been doing differently or why you think it was their fault that that it was expensive to fire teachers.
Well, I would like to hear more of LB's argument here, since I think I understand JBS's well enough to evaluate it, I don't feel I've heard the strongest case that could be made for LB's opinion.
My takeaway from JBS is that management is not a single actor, and separately (a) some actors such as the state, in cooperation with the unions, have designed the arbitration process to be slow to approve any action, and (b) some administrators in actual schools are frustrated with the process because it seems like they can't get anything done about incompetent or otherwise bad teachers.
Looking at the flowchart, JBS linked, I notice two things:
1) A lot of the boxes at the bottom of the chart really ought to be at the top. For example, if the arbitration board is likely to reject a dismissal because the administrator has not attempted (and documented) some remediation strategies (peer intervention etc.) then those should really go at the beginning of the process as steps before you try to get the teacher fired. Similarly, documenting poor performance is not something you're supposed to be doing only once you've decided the teacher should be fired.
To the extent that the flowchart actually reflects how administrators think about the process, it represents a failure to educate school adminstrators as to the required performance management procedure, not necessarily a problem with the process itself.
2) The chancellor seems to have a fair amount of power. To the extent that the chancellor is part of "management", the steps that require approval by the chancellor are not really checks on the power of management. However, they may be checks on the power of individual administrators.
Start with a couple of underlying factual assumptions:
(1) in most unionized school systems, teachers who have worked for any significant period of time have 'tenure', which means that they may only be fired for cause, which has to be properly documented;
(2) in almost any employment situation, management resents and opposes procedural protections for employees;
(3) this is particularly true over the last couple of decades for teachers, who have become a political target: why are our schools so terrible? Lazy, incompetent teachers who can't be fired and replaced with the clever, cheerful young things who are dying to replace them, because of the damn teacher's unions standing in the way;
(4) People in decision-making positions in school systems, like people in almost any large organization, public or private, often value the exercise of power over avoiding the waste of the organization's money.
(5) Management (the state) in general has much more control over how administrative processes are carried out than the union does. A contract spells out the general nature of the process that must be followed before a teacher can be fired, but the state is the one that's hiring the arbitrators and scheduling the hearings. (In any individual case, the teacher being punished might be attempting to delay. Overall, though, the scheduling is mostly in the state's control.)
(6) Being suspended from one's duties (while still expected to show up so you can't do anything else) is a significant punishment for most normal people even if you're still being paid. The 'rubber rooms' were humiliating and unpleasant for the teachers involved.
(7) In a system where it takes forever to get through the process of demonstrating 'cause' for disciplining a teacher, but the teacher is being punished during the pendency of the process, management has essentially set up an arbitrary and unaccountable process for punishing teachers, evading the terms of the contracts they've entered into. It's expensive for the state, but if unaccountable power over your employees is more important to you than delivering services to schoolchildren, it's a fair tradeoff.
That's an outline, without backup, but it should give you a sense of how the 'rubber room' thing looked to me.
139: OK, it sounds like you really are thinkng of the state as a single agent, rather than factions within the state (legislature, chancellor, school administrators) as agents.
Not exactly, but there's a limit to how detailed I can get in one blog comment not responding to a specific question. In real life, there are agency problems all over the place within any large organization: some parts of the state are interested in avoiding waste and providing educational services, others less so.