Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dahart | Hacker News Reader

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> Kids who molest other kids and bring guns to school are criminals. We should lock them up early, and we can reduce the cost of prison by getting more labor out of prisoners and busting the guard unions.

This seems like short-term economic thinking to me. We can also reduce the cost of prison by keeping more kids in school, rather than kicking kids to the curb the minute something bad happens. Inclusion, not exclusion, is how to feed the virtuous cycle.

Also, if it's so easy to reduce the cost of prisons even though people have been debating it for centuries, why hasn't it happened already? How do you just extract more labor out of prisoners?

And what happened to your plan to produce more scientists and fewer criminals? For three comments in a row you've ignored the question of how to convert more would-be criminals into scientists, and talked about reducing dollar costs instead. Pretend I don't care about dollar costs and help me understand how increasing expulsion and incarceration rates leads to more scientists.

> Teachers spend a non-zero amount of time dealing with parents. I know a few teachers personally and all of them have stories about parents who take up too much of their time.

So what? Part of being a teacher is interacting with parents, it's a good thing, not a bad thing. Some parents will take up more time. What is the actual problem here? What is the economic cost to teachers talking to parents? Since teachers mostly talk to parents outside of school hours, how much extra money for the education budget or the economy will solving this "problem" yield?

> In the school districts near me, special ed and admin costs can take ~40% of the budget. I wouldn't displace the students onto social services because there'd be no social services.

It sounds like regular students take ~60% of the budget. By your math, we could get more bang for our buck by eliminating the non-special-ed services.

Do you have any policy study or experience at all? The more suggestions you add, the more it sounds like you aren't aware of any policy or government or education funding history. People have tried some of the kinds of things you're suggesting in the past, and gotten wildly different results than they expected.

1. Expelling a student for bringing a gun to school is hardly tantamount to 'kicking kids to the curb the minute something bad happens'. It's preserving the safety and the integrity of the school.

2. We can also reduce the cost of prison by keeping more kids in school

To the extent that school can persuade people to trade a life of crime for a more virtuous path. There are some people who are going to be criminals regardless of how much schooling is available to them, those people are lost causes and we should stop investing in them the moment they reveal themselves.

3. The cost of incarceration is high because people are concerned with human rights and getting their cut of the expenditures. Prison would be much cheaper if we just put all the convicts on an island and catapulted basic supplies to them, and just made sure no one swam off the island.

4. I never claimed that my plan would produce more scientists and fewer criminals - just that we'd spend less money on criminals and free up resources that could be spent on educating scientists or funding their experiments.

5. Part of being a teacher is interacting with parents, but some parents demand extensive communication that's above and beyond what we should expect. And you're right that parents talk to teachers outside of school hours, however, there's no free lunch - we have to pay for it in some way whether that's teacher job dissatisfaction, teacher salary expectations, etc. We should respect parents' interest but empower teachers to tell them to hit the sand if they're overbearing.

6. the 60% of the budget that goes to normal and high achieving students is the only part of the budget that has a positive ROI. Ideally we'd have more of it, but at the least we'd do better if we didn't spend 40% on the failures.

> I never claimed that my plan would produce more scientists and fewer criminals

You literally said this morning: "Hilariously, the solution to education funding is more of the 'short term economics'. We should spend less money on educating would-be gangsters and more money education would-be scientists."

> Expelling a student for bringing a gun to school is hardly tantamount to 'kicking kids to the curb the minute something bad happens'

Expelling a student for hitting a teacher is, and you mentioned that too. The gun issue depends entirely on why it happened. Some kids are already expelled for bringing guns to school. Some kids don't have a clear concept of why bringing the gun to show off to their friends is so bad. Education, not expulsion, is the only way to prevent it, and the only way to (literally) teach them the lesson. Expulsion only does one thing: disenfranchises the child and leaves them more likely to escalate their bad behavior outside of school. It leaves them at a disadvantage socially and economically and more likely to have to resort to crime in order to live.

How about instead of having a contrived debate about a very tiny minority of kids with guns, we enact some actual gun control in this country, and prevent any kids from having any guns in the first place like other countries do? Then we don't have to criminalize children, and we don't have to expel them in a fit of incredulity. Best of both worlds, and far cheaper than expulsion and incarceration.

What does any of your tirade about child criminals have to do with solving education funding? How many kids in the US are bringing guns to schools, and how much money does it cost in the aggregate?

> We should respect parents' interest but empower teachers to tell them to hit the sand if they're overbearing.

What does that have to do with education funding? What is your point here? You suggested that keeping time-hogging parents from teachers was a solution to the education funding problem. How, exactly?

> the 60% of the budget that goes to normal and high achieving students is the only part of the budget that has a positive ROI.

Lower than average achieving healthy students make up 50% of that group you say has a positive ROI. There are also plenty of special needs kids that are physically handicapped and not mentally handicapped.

What is the ROI of education, exactly? How is it measured? Care to share any sources to back that claim up? You just ruled out both all school administration and all special education. How do schools function without administration? Do you believe that school principals and school districts are useless?

If you stopped special education programs and the social services that go along with them, as you suggested, suddenly the parents of those children will need to find alternative care. In many cases that will mean the parent has to care for them during the day themselves, which will pull them out of the workforce. Regardless of the cost of special education, your suggestions could be a net drain on the economy.

> but at the least we'd do better if we didn't spend 40% on the failures.

What data do you have that it's failing? Under what metric are you declaring all school admin and special education to have zero return? I'm pretty stunned how deeply discriminatory your statements have been repeatedly. I hope you never have to be on the receiving end of your own ideas.

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