American public school system

if you read the article you would have learned that the europeans spend LESS money on public education then the americans do. so this is not all about being underfunded. or what am I missing?

which do you think is which?

unfortunately you can't apply for state and federal grants to pay for postage stamps.

It's like the do the "No Child Left Behind"/FEMA thing by cutting money to the program, then point to its failure as how government sucks so we should just fork over money to churches and for-profit groups.

Competition is a proven answer. Vouchers are an attempt at this but are severly flawed within the confines of our current system. Public school's are handcuffed by administative costs and/from the teacher's union so they cant compete on an even playing feild. Vouchers in that context will drive public schools further under. Loosen the grip of the union, then you can hold the administrations responsible. Then you'll get results.

Destroy Taks. With taks, you end up not learning anything other than how to pass the damn thing. You learn "testing tricks" and "things that will come up on the test but are in fact useless and stupid and you divert weeks at a time practicing with practice tests. So ridiculous. Too bad people make so much money of such things.

That's a much bigger issue than the kind of bureaucratic ossification Stossel loves being a bitch about; there's no doubt that in cities especially you get a combination of strong unions and middling functionaries that make schools stunted and inflexible, but is that really the issue? They tested their American kids in ... New Jersey. Where exactly in New Jersey are we talking, guys? And who but Stossel would present an argument about American education that assumes from the get-go that American public schools are all offering the same service? Not even McDonald's pulls that one off.

BEGINNING: Some US districts spend more than European ones, but the kids still do worse on standardized tests.

END: Get rid of standardized tests.

That's a good one.

Also I'm curious how people think unions strangle schools. I was (and well actually still am) a member of the nation's largest teacher's union and I've never seen any action that I thinks ties the hands of schools to do what's right. NCLB did more visible, no doubt about it, strangling than any unions, I believe.

But like I said, I'm not even close to convinced that's the main problem facing American public schools. And let me hazard a wild, wild guess: at no point in this special or any of its accompanying material does John Stossel stoop to investigate the organizational heirarchies of foreign public schools, to compare their relative levels of bureaucracy and ossification.

I bought several books on our crappy system after I left teaching. My thought - read what's out there and then try to write my own book based on my experiences/opinions. It all hurt my brain way too much (I've already expended enough personal stress points on public education to last a lifetime) so I kind of chucked it.

But now that I'm thinking of having my own child it makes me realize I'm going to have to pick it all up again. I subbed in the schools around here and the thought of sending my child into them makes my skin crawl. Thankfully I'll have around five years to figure that out once s/he arrives.

i do think competition could do some good, but not the voucher kind. i like the idea of charter schools, as long as they're nonprofit. i also think the disparities between wealthy and poor districts have to be addressed if anyone wants to talk seriously about reforming public education. we basically have schools segregated by class in this country (which in some cases also means segregated by race, obv.), and that segregation seems almost as objectionable to me as Jim Crow segregation.

but i also wish people like stossel would acknowledge that american culture simply does not put the kind of premium on education that some other societies do. we have a strong streak of proud anti-intellectualism and suspicion of worldly knowledge that has its roots in a bunch of things, from puritanism to the rugged individual pioneer ethic. we have a president who brags about being a "gentleman's C" student, and who endorses teaching religious superstition alongside science. a lot of our notions of and resentment toward "elitism" are really the resentment of the less educated toward the more educated. so i think some of this stuff goes deeper than how the school board is structured.

I'm not entirely sure many religious conservatives will argue against this point anymore

what i'm referring to is that particular history textbook a coupla years ago which got into a lot of shit since its antebellum section went on about how things for black folks really weren't all that bad.

gimme a bit, i'm trying to find the name of that book.

in general, tho, it's also the Lynne Cheney impulse; that only the good things of history should be emphasized, that we somehow shouldn't talk about the bad shit that our own country has done.

-- petlover (strawberrywin...), January 17th, 2006.

Not sure that's true across the board. I believe it varies widely from state to state, as education is primarily adminstered by states. I've heard New Hampshire does almost nothing to redistribute school funding, for example. I also heard something about New York State being found by a court ruling to not be doing adequate job of providing equal education to poorer areas.

we have a strong streak of proud anti-intellectualism and suspicion of worldly knowledge that has its roots in a bunch of things, from puritanism to the rugged individual pioneer ethic

is especially true, and gets to some of the root of the nationalized teacher-demonization.

-- Miss Misery xox (missmisery7...) (webmail), Today 2:40 PM.

Man-oh-man, I'll see you and raise you one. If my horrible teaching experience is any indication, it's a wonder there's anybody left to staff schools at all. It's amazing how said policymakers wilfully refuse to see any connection between the lack of support they offer and the bitter nastiness they associate with the teachers who may have terrorized them as wee politicos.

Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.

I'm not a big fan of tests but we need to figure out some way to evaluate teacher effectiveness. My goofy idea is that we ask the kids. The kids in the school know which teachers are magic and which are just punching the clock. Sure some of them are going to have an ax to grind with a certain teacher but I think a qualified evaluator could tell the difference between 'Ms X is too hard on me' and 'Ms X doesn't care.' And anomalies would be evened out over a large population and time.

the problem with public-sector job security is that teachers hardly ever get fired unless they've made some serious, conspicuous blunder (did mary kay letourneau get fired?). if a teacher's not cutting muster, what else can you do with him (or her)?

haha this explains so much.

in nyc, students are allowed to enroll in any public school they wish, regardless of what they're zoned for (unless it's a specialized magnet school where you have to pass a test or audition to get in). still, withdrawing from one nyc public school just to go to another is kinda like moving next door in the same building. it's not exactly statement-making.

teachers hardly ever get fired unless they've made some serious, conspicuous blunder

One reason they don't is there aren't any to replace them. The worst, most desparate schools are begging for teachers. And most new teachers leave the profession within five years. (In my school it was more like one.)

I think teaching needs to be treated on par with professions like law and medicine. Require more education of teachers, take only the top students. Make the job a respectable one that more people aspire to rather than fall into. But of course this raise of esteem would also have to trickle down to students and far too large a portion of society cares far too little about most of our public school students.

Imagine if the only lawyers you could get were from legal aid and the only doctors you could see worked at free clinics. Noble people indeed but also overworked, underpaid and few and far between. That's the kind of service our kids get today.

I don't know about everywhere else but here in the south (Texas) I think most of it is about class (which means race). Most big cities have only a minority of white students. Hmm, wonder why their test scores are so low. . .

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/4198/footballgroup4kf.jpg

How often, for school districts in financial trouble, does this get cut, rather than, say, bussing? Or arts education? Or some other academic area? Very rarely, in my experience.

but you're also right that arts education is one of the first things to go, which is really sad. i know a woman who got hired as a part-time elementary arts teacher by a pta group because the school system provided no art teacher at their school.

i've noticed that many of the people i've known who were studying education wanted to go into elementary ed or pre-kindergarten -- anything above that was too stressful (or possibly dangerous).

gypsy is very much OTM all over this thread.

Per pupil spending is a red herring that has been disproven as an achievement indicator many times over. Same with facilities. It's a sideshow to the real problem, which is, as gypsy notes, is cultural.

I live in an area where, often, friendships are decided over whether or not your kids go to private or public schools. It's fucking sickening. Kids just bring out the worst (and occasionally, the best) in people. Try to remain optimistic, Teeny, while you still can.

I live in an area where the public schools have four private schools within probably 6-8 miles. The public schools get to suck up all the ESL kids and a host of other "integration" issues. Guess whose test scores are higher? Guess who has less behavioral issues?

The one thing I think would help is to make schools smaller. I don't think it's classroom size nearly as much as it is the size of the building. Most of the time, in big schools, the principal doesn't even know half of the teachers. It's a massive bureaucracy with predictable intra-political problems and then, of course, political battles with parents, PTA, the city, the county, and the Republicans. But these massive warehouses for kids inspires a lack of accountability and control. They are top heavy because they need to be, but the more management that appears, the harder it is to get anything done. Or worse, the harder it is to change.

I am positively mental about education for my kids. It eats away at me almost daily.

in a way it's like being a nurse... since any joe schmo can train for it fairly easily and there's a lot of work around, there's just no flash 'n' dazzle to the profession.

There's no evidence that paying teachers more will change anything.

still doesn't necessarily mean the people they hire will be better teachers. they may have more experience on their resume but more experience doing what -- glorified babysitting? grade inflation?

so why aren't there more people who want to teach even with a guaranteed $45K-a-year salary and full benefits (admittedly figures i'm pulling out of my butt)?

that wasn't my point.

Last week I filed charges against a student who threw a lock -- a combination lock that you put on your locker -- at me. Don't worry, he missed my head by about 6 inches.

Since the school didn't do any pressing of charges, I had to go down to the precinct and file them myself. Unfortunately, since the lock did not actually hit me, it was not assault. And there is no such thing as "attempted assault."

But that little fucker is getting charged with reckless endangerment.

But he hasn't been arrested yet.
What the fuck?

I cannot believe this is my life.

and from a while back:

? One of my fellow Fellows was recently given a "written warning" because she had the wrong kind of staples on her bulletin board. I was punched in the jaw by a student who was then put back into my classroom; if someone, even accidentally, punched an MTA worker, he/she would be in jail. My pregnant roommate had a chair thrown at her by a student; her school refused to give her the line of duty absence that she should have recieved. Yeah, let's talk about respect. Menial tasks? Starting in February, due to the new teacher contract, we all have to start acting as lunchroom/bathroom/hallway monitors. And by "we" I mean the people who aren't allowed to work (for 15,000 less, annually, might I remind you) unless we already have or are pursuing a Masters Degree.

I'm wondering, as someone who plans to teach as soon as a couple of years from now, if the prospect of being responsible for some strangers' kids might be a deterrant for a lot of people. And not responsible for their physical well-being, but their FUTURE. IS. IN. YOUR. HANDS!

i've noticed that many of the people i've known who were studying education wanted to go into elementary ed or pre-kindergarten -- anything above that was too stressful (or possibly dangerous).

Add to this that middle schoolers and high schoolers are just so damn awkward. In addition to keeping up to par with national testing standards, you have to deal with the students' emotional maturations and all the social feedback that grinds on in the background. I have to think that, money aside, having to deal with so many weird people is keeping a lot of people away from teaching.

That and the prospect of getting whanged in the head with something.

No female-teachers-seducing-teenage-students whang-in-the-head jokes plz.

but how do you gauge what a "highly qualified" teacher is? a bigger applicant pool is no guarantee of better teachers, it just means more teachers. i think the way the system works now, the "better" teachers would be criminally underutilized anyway. a teacher is only as good as his current school system.

lawyers win cases, doctors cure ailments. those are pretty quantifiable.

or i should say "treat" ailments. semi-unrelated: there was a law and order episode on tonight about an evil HMO that wouldn't let one of their doctors make a referral for a violent schizo patient. in that case, he could have been a "better doctor" but the man was keeping him down, etc.

xpost: depends on the applicant. it's not always that easy to tell, even with glowing recommendations. i guess you can weed out the really super-duper-unqualified applicants that way.

how about your own future? I cared more about most of my students' well-beings (present and future) than their parents. Very scary. Doubly scary when I thought about how these kids will be running the world when I'm older. We should all fear.

I was never hit directly by a student but I think this was largely b/c I made it clear that when I was hit, I hit back. I saw plenty of my colleagues get struck. I was hit a few times while breaking up fights (our school resembled a prison complete with gangs and daily riots), had shit thrown at my head, filed a sexual harrassment complaint against a student, was told things such as "I'm gonna spray you" (with bullets), had the windows of my car shot out, etc etc. I don't think ANY salary could justify those kind of working conditions.

speak for yourself, jody

i'm not anti-labor! but i like to look at things case-by-case, and i don't like choosing a side simply because i feel like i'm supposed to. i grew up in a very labor-conscious family... my dad has worked for a union-owned bank since 1980 (the one in union square, haha), and my mom was in one of the board of ed unions for many years. and my mom's a red diaper baby with a strong interest in community organizing. so i was looking at the strike as someone with a decent awareness of how unions think.

i dunno. i've gotten back into activism in a big way over the past year, and i've gotten to watch local politicians interact with their constituencies in a way that reads "ugh, do i really have to help you ugly unwashed uneducated poor people? i don't have time for this, i have a dinner party to attend." and this includes democrats! not all, obv, but the ones with careerist interests. face it, new york is a very careerist city, and by and large the most careerist residents are stuck-up whiteys who work on wall street or at corporate law firms -- i once temped at a place like this where my supervisor bleated in HORROR when i told him i had friends who were moving to bed-stuy and bushwick. he'd never left manhattan except to go to the hamptons. so when i think of the eyes-on-the-prize "careerist" in new york, i think of guys like that.

-- Miss Misery xox (missmisery7...), January 18th, 2006.

I agree, and that's part of the problem with this whole "debate" -- drowning inner city schools and cushy middle class suburban schools that maybe, like "don't prepare the kids to compete with the Chinese" are two mostly very different issues. But we talk about it as "our failing schools" as though it's all one problem -- and the people dictating those terms of debate are often the anti-public-school people.

In my brief stint as a newspaper reporter I covered a very good New Jersey school district. Honestly if I could find any fault at all it'd probably be TOO much individualized attention for kids, and TOO much creativity, new methodology, etc. These are kids, not delicate rare plant species. But again, that's hardly a major complaint.

that's a problem too, but not quite as pressing. the only bad thing that's come out of education like that is a proliferation of cloyingly clever indie filmmakers and mp3 bloggers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/17/us/public-schools-falling-enrollment.html