outbreak! (ebola, sars, coronavirus, etc)

people keep saying this is a rich country but it's not really anymore? it's a poor country that has become good at one thing, legitimizing massive public theft.

well, three people are unconscionably rich and some other comfortable elites avoid using public services which helps contribute to their atrophy. obvs all these people are living off others' labor.

My boyfriend's kids both go to Catholic schools and they've been in-person all year, apparently no one remembers that one of the APs at his daughter's school was a healthy 40-something father and one of the first educators to die of COVID last winter/spring (admittedly before schools were doing much of anything to protect ppl).

I think the other thing that would be great would be to force all school PTA money into a district-wide pot shared by all the schools.

― DJI, Friday, February 26, 2021 12:06 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This is often proposed in NYC, but never with any seriousness that I can detect. The world would end first.

I definitely think forcing everyone to attend public schools would force public schools to be a lot better. You’d also probably need radical changes at the state level for this to be meaningful because it’s too easy for tiny municipalities to each have their own separate schools. I mean, I live in one now. But I recognize that what’s best at the policy level might be counter to the individual interest I’d pursue given the choice.

there's a podcast about that iirc

Also I don’t want to thread jack this into an Ed policy thread but I looked at the PTA idea in detail and the total amount of money raised by the handful of schools with rich PTAs is pretty small and would become not that meaningful spread across the entire city, at least in NYC. Better to just increase funding.

yes. like, divert the defense budget.

what is more in the public interest than educating children? (i am biased.)

However small it might be there is no way on god's green earth that rich white parents would tolerate the funds they raise going to underserved communities, ie Black children. Absolutely no way.

xp Yes I can recommend at least two excellent podcasts on this matter. :)

PTA money isn't that meaningful spread out, but it makes a big difference to the schools that have a lot of it. I agree though - shut down private schools.

the whole issue is you can never rely on individual elites to do the right thing. just divert federal funds. but there is no political will to help poor kids, mostly black and brown, who American political elites ignore and whom much of the white electorate looks on as undeserving.

i know you all know this but that david brooks op-ed broke my brain and now it's all i rant about.

like public schools have been in crisis for decades! afaict noone with any power has cared?

I went to a community board meeting in Bay Ridge as a representative of my (majority minority) school and put flyers on the table for our community-based program that secured extra funding for the most left-behind kids in the district, and a local (Republican) elected leader spoke AGAINST US because "why should we reward underperforming schools while our children's GOOD schools are going unrewarded for their success?"

i have become so boring. i can hear how boring i have become, but i can't shut up.

oh, i steamed about that one for days. he either mentioned baltimore in it or linked? it made me so angry. xp re: brooks

xxp Rolling explaining conservatism...

I mean if you want to blunt the impact of wealth you have to redistribute wealth. Targeting the PTA funds strikes me as low bang for your buck.

oh, i steamed about that one for days. he either mentioned baltimore in it or linked? it made me so angry. xp re: brooks

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Thursday, February 25, 2021 7:19 PM (twenty-two seconds ago) bookmarkflaglink

David Brooks, defending Black lives against evil teacher's unions!

i am still working through my PTSD from reading it obvs

anecdotal but around the same time i saw someone tweet that their kid hadn't had asthma attacks while out of school. kids and teachers were exposed to so much even pre-covid and that sentient bag of shit never cared.

people keep saying this is a rich country but it's not really anymore? it's a poor country that has become good at one thing, legitimizing massive public theft.

― map ca. 1890 (map), Thursday, February 25, 2021 7:10 PM (eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is kind of my point when i say the ivys are under-resourced. the resources that (presumably?) used to fund world class physical infrastructure and teaching resources at the best universities in the world are no longer there. or at least not at the level of the other countries i've taught in (uk, aus, germany).

and if they're not at the ivys then we're screwed. i don't mean to say we should fund the ivys better or that we particularly need this insight to tell us that public schools are in trouble.

yep. neither did Larry Hogan. everyone in Baltimore city could die and he'd be thrilled because he knows we didn't vote for him.

yes, that's a fair point, caek. the problem pretty pernicious at this point.

larry hogan today said we are getting more than our share of vaccines while 2/3 of our allotment is going to people who don't live here

he can keep going on meet the press and being asked why he's so cool though

WHY WON'T JOURNALISTS CALL HIM ON HIS BULLSHIT PR???

sorry that is wildly off topic but he is so full of shit!

isn't this the Baltimore/Maryland/fuck Larry Hogan politics thread?

i am mad at larry hogan every day of my life

not getting vaccines to mostly Black Baltimoreans for a disease that's killing them at higher rates than everyone else is...tantamount to genocide. maybe not in intention, but in effect.

xp sing it!

FUCK YOU YOU STUPID RICH HAM

OBVS YOU'RE NEVER GETTING ELECTED WITH THAT FACE; MIGHT AS WELL TRY TO DO THE JOB YOU ACTUALLY HAVE

(elected president, i mean)

and if they're not at the ivys then we're screwed. i don't mean to say we should fund the ivys better or that we particularly need this insight to tell us that public schools are in trouble.

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Thursday, February 25, 2021 7:21 PM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

they are at Yale and Harvard, where the uber-wealthy kleptocrats graduated from. other ivies do have considerably inferior endowments.

my modest proposal for American universities: dissolve all the private ones, redistribute Yale and Harvard's endowments to four public universities.

university of the north, the east, the south, and the west

i guess there might have to be more than four for logistical reasons whatever whatever

great plains oblast university

many xps
ime the biggest impact on school budgets from rich parents isnt the pta but booster orgs (athletics, band, etc). plus just regular degular private spending on camps, tutors, private lessons, etc. skews things even more.

great plains oblast university

― superdeep borehole (harbl), Thursday, February 25, 2021 7:37 PM (one minute ago) bookmarkflaglink

lol yes

when i was in grad school (in America) my smartest peers all went to McGill, which was a legit school you could actually flunk out of and didn't have to pay through the nose for. unlike my "prestigious" college which felt like our parents were all paying for our ability to say we went there.

my dad wanted me to go to mcgill but i didn't apply because i wouldn't follow my dad's advice when i was 16, maybe i could have been canadian oh well

they are at Yale and Harvard, where the uber-wealthy kleptocrats graduated from. other ivies do have considerably inferior endowments.

― horseshoe, Thursday, February 25, 2021 7:32 PM (nineteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the ivy i had in mind, the worst-resourced university i have ever taught at, was columbia, which admittedly doesn't dominate the elite to the same extent as harvard/yale. so maybe things could be bad at columbia and word wouldn't reach people who could change things if they want to. but ... well, obama went there?! (being rhetorical. i know why this doesn't happen. but honestly!)

Obama isn’t endowment rich (well, maybe he is now)...that’s like, Rockefeller shit. Harvard has an endowment the size of like 500 other schools’ endowments. It’s absurd.

Harvard has 41.9 bill

Yale has 31.1 bill

Columbia is chronically ill run; I think they probably suck at fundraising. But Harvard turns out more wealthy people that want to make sure their kids are set up for life than anywhere else

many xps
ime the biggest impact on school budgets from rich parents isnt the pta but booster orgs (athletics, band, etc). plus just regular degular private spending on camps, tutors, private lessons, etc. skews things even more.

― class project pat (m bison), Thursday, February 25, 2021 7:37 PM (fifty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ie wealth

cool thanks

Obama isn’t endowment rich (well, maybe he is now)...that’s like, Rockefeller shit. Harvard has an endowment the size of like 500 other schools’ endowments. It’s absurd.

I think Columbia’s chronic ill run-ness just becomes part of the larger backdrop of things Americans don’t notice. And is less emblematic of American decline than American public schools, to be fair.

Fair. I have very limited experience. Psyched to learn about public schools next year.