Re: Tim Wise
 

I'm tired of Salon lately, but that's very good.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

if Sav Sav is a toss up how the fuck can the state be in play?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

And assuming Thurgreed is not engaging in a bit of hyperbole, these are kids in TCOTU. Extrapolate to kids growing up in Detroit, or South LA, or rural WV.

My experience is parents who worked lots of jobs took time to keep on their kids. But those are 'rents that worked to get an address in a suburb outside Detroit. T is speaking of people with a Manhattan address already?

But move away from there. Rural WV parents being asked to drive 30 miles to get their kids to the community center to get the classes that lead to their kids doing well in the schools the parents didn't get?

After generations there are parents who are so disconnected from what schools can do, that to do the work to get, and keep, kids there is just not something easy to achieve. It might be those parents fault, or their parents fault, or society's. But paying teacher's more is not an answer to that problem.

The Hip
 

What say we start a movement to amend the constitution to allow Justin Trudeau to run for President?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Thanks.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

I disagree. On the other hand, I think HOW you pay teachers can be more important than what you pay them. We ought to be paying SOME teachers more.

We pay them in lock-step based on seniority because they are public employees and we learned a long time ago that public employment can easily be corrupted if you don't implement those kinds of protections. And the base for teachers salaries was set back in a time when most teachers were women and there was an assumption it was not just a second but a secondary income.

We ought to be negotiating very different deals for teachers than we have today.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

makes sense. how does that help get marginalized kids through school?

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Well, you know, that's kind of what good teachers do.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

On the other hand, this http://www.detroitnews.com/story/new...ains/81820844/ says Detroit schools have really increased graduation rates. The article doesn't speculate as to why/how, although the highest rates are at specialized schools, with focused curriculum. I would think tapping off all of those students would have a "pulling down" effect on the neighborhood schools they left, but maybe not.

On the other other hand, I look at all Detroit stats with a jaundiced eye.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

A couple of things:

1. It is always amazing to me what we choose to look at from an anecdotal perspective vs. an empirical one. Otherwise well-educated people look at what happens in ghettos from a "If I--given my current personal experiences--were in their shoes" perspective. In almost any other case, intelligent people look at things from an empirical perspective. The difference is significant.

"Why don't they just make their children's education a priority and be more engaged" vs. "If you step on the necks of 100,000 people in this neighborhood (for example) for 3 generations, what percentage will succeed? If you give 100,000 people in this other neighborhood every advantage, what percentage will succeed?"

2. Translating the idea that putting more money into schools always means paying teachers more is ridiculous. Like Adder said, lowering class size is a real thing. And that means paying more teachers.

Also, my ex-wife has worked in the absolute worst schools and the absolute best. She had many headaches for wildly different reasons. But the best teachers usually don't want to tackle starting from scratch in terrible schools for very little money. Salaries being equal, teachers go where things are cushy. Raise salaries for teachers significantly in depressed communities and draw more talent. Raise salaries to levels competitive with professional jobs along the lines of attorneys and accountants and watch things vastly improve.

But I think we are generally in agreement.

TM

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Think that was TS, or maybe Wonk. Anyway, I'm happy to get on the smaller class size bandwagon too.

Although my primary ride for improving education is early childhood intervention, with a side of end the drug war.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Paying teachers more is not a panacea to that or any other problem. But paying teachers more will tend to get you more and better teachers, which tends to improve outcomes. eta: Or, what TM said.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Don't know about Detroit schools, but when Michelle Rhee took over in Washington, one of the things she did was to work to improve the schools in better neighborhoods to persuade more kids there to stay in the public schools instead of opting out to private schools. Cynically, you could say that was just about improving metrics by pulling students into the schools who are likelier to perform. Less cynically, you could say that you need the community to support the schools if they are to perform better, and she was playing a long game. Either way, parents from other neighborhoods interpreted her moves as an effort to shift resources away from the kids who need them the most.

All of this goes to show that it's very difficult to assess the job that schools are doing in educating kids -- the true outputs. IMHO, this is the prime reason that teachers are paid lockstep -- it's very difficult to figure out how to pay them for doing a better job, because even if you trusted the administrators to try to do that right, they wouldn't really know how.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Look, dammit, I want a panacea. You go find me a panacea or to hell with it all.

Screw these half solutions.