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>Name a single government agency that is efficient with their money.

USGS!! The amount of benefit they give to the public and the data they make available for free, used by every weather station, civil engineer, surveyor, geologist, etc. etc. relative to their budget is insane! And so much of it is mission critical life-and-death stuff.

It's amazing to me. The updates to mapping alone are mind-boggling since they came from the pre-satellite and drone days.

>> Name a government agency that's good at hiring, or keeping good talent.

How about NASA?

I'm not a US citizen so apologies if I got that wrong but I figured NASA always had the goods, in terms of personel, even if they also had some bad apples in there.

I have a good friend who is a super talented software engineer. She's at Google these days, but has been at a lot of cool startups. When I met her, she was working at NASA. A super brilliant person, who can basically solve any problem you throw at her. NASA had assigned her to be in charge of a pile of shitty LabView code used to run a massive "freezer" whose purpose is to be used on rare occasions to test hardware at temperatures simulating deep space. They gave her no other assignments or duties. She was left rotting at a desk with nothing to do for 90% of the time. This was not unique to her, and was something she saw a lot of with other co-workers. So no, I don't think NASA is efficient with money. If we had left it to them, we still wouldn't have sent people into space in the last decade. That was all courtesy of SpaceX going around the horrible incumbent contractors that NASA has allowed to dupe them for decades.

Mwell, that is reminiscent of my experience in $LARGE_CORP where I was hired with a few years experience as a soft. eng. and was given a completely nontechnical role (I was supposed to make wireframes in PowerPoint), while a new graduate who was hired at the same time as myself was put in a "hands on" coding position. That other hire was a guy. My explanation was that $LARGE_CORP simply thought that, hey, she's a chick, she doesn't want to code. Or something along those lines.

That was a private company, btw. I think large companies have problems with personel like that, whether public or private. They have problems, in that their understanding of the labour market has stayed in the 1930's. Anyway I think the same thing that happened with me happened to your friend in NASA.

Large orgs are large orgs. I avoid them like the plague these days. But man do I miss the cushy benefits and not feeling guilty about taking vacations.... at a startup you just feel like you got the world on your shoulders.

Sucks that they did that to you. Utter garbage.... but yeah, waste is what big orgs do.

Yeah, for me large orgs, never again...

... though I might change my mind if I'm 60 and one needs my COBOL SKILL$$ :P

yes how dare they take vacation as already negotiated in their contract. Darn those teacher hanging at their mansions Also anyone who works at google should not be allowed to take vacation if they worked from home. Sure that would go over well.

The vaccine wasn’t really available till a few months into 2021, and I can understand the hesitation on some to be the first to take a new vaccine.

Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury.

There certainly could be improvements to public school, some of the curriculum is dumb, but again they have to serve all customers, private schools don’t.

I don’t begrudge public school teachers their vacation.

I also realize this past year+ has been extremely stressful on parents, especially those who can’t work from home

> Yes private schools might run better. Shockingly richer and generally two parent families are going to have children that been primed to respect learning and have less trauma so much easier to deal with. Public schools teachers don’t have this luxury.

Exactly. OP acts as if it's such a great surprise they're run better. Obviously they would be, because they can pick and choose who they take and usually only get those kids who's families are well off enough to afford it; those kids already all have huge advantages when it comes to learning. It's exactly why the voucher system would do no good either -- it'd just make the public school worse as the private schools take those kids who are already borderline on affording it.

They only get kids whose families are well off enough to afford it, specifically because only people with a lot of money have a choice.

You can either afford to:

1. Pay out of pocket for private school

2. Afford to have 1 parent be responsible for participation in some type of home school education (group or otherwise)

3. Relocate your house to somewhere zoned for a “good school”

If you can’t afford any of those things, you don’t have a choice. That’s why people want vouchers.

The thing is, it only expands the choice to those who are borderline on that group already. It doesn't magically make the choice be available to everyone. For instance, say you're a single parent household and you have to rely on buses. You don't really have 'choice' even within a voucher system. All it does it allow those who can transport their kids to take them elsewhere, making the school that's left behind worse again.

So basically it goes from those 'with a lot of money hav[ing] a choice' to 'those with some money having a choice'. It doesn't fix the underlying problems at all, and would actually make them worse for those who are left behind.

Let me guess:

You don't have kids in school, do you? It amazes me how many people with absolutely no skin in the game comment on this stuff.

I was literally a teacher in a poor school district. I am looking at it from a different perspective, but that doesn't mean my opinion is inherently not valuable. Yes, it might out work great for those kids who can take advantage. But all those who can't are left behind. And actually be left even more behind, especially as all the extra money that would be going to their school flows out. But, hey, they're not your kids right?

You mistake my disagreement with HOW to take care of those kids with whether or not I care about them, or want to help them. There are other solutions.

I was one of those kids. My mother was a drug addict, I spent a large portion of my childhood in a trailer park. There was nothing a teacher could do without me having a structured home life. She would frequently interrupt me when I tried to do my homework, and then yell at me 2 hours later for not having it done. She undermined my teachers at every turn, and when they called to complain about my behavior, she took my side instead of theirs. Once I was provided this structured home life (courtesy of the courts finally giving my father custody of me and my siblings and getting us away from our psycho mother) suddenly I was able to focus on school. If I disrespected a teacher, one phone call to my dad, and I was faced with a terrifying man who made my life hell. This was a powerful incentive to behave for the teachers, and do my homework as well. Bad behavior at school resulted in consequences for me at home.

The current public school system isn't capable of fixing this problem. You are just throwing good money after bad, and dragging the kids who would do well in a better school down with the kids whose homes make it impossible for school to do any good.

Geoffrey Canada's Harlem Children's Zone is an example of a model that works. He keeps the kids at school for very long hours, and minimizes the time they are at home.

Public schools were not designed or intended to replace the role of functioning families. Trying to force them into that role is a bad idea, and very ineffective and wasteful. Society has changed, an increasingly large percentage of kids across all ethnic groups (except for Asian Americans) are living in single parent homes. You were a teacher, so I think you are aware of. the fact that they are going back to homes where they are entertained by screens all night. The parents frequently throw their hands in the air, and ask "how can I keep him off video games?" seemingly unaware of the fact that they can take the controllers/phone/laptop whatever away and god forbid take the TV out of the kid's room. The point is that teachers can't fix this.

Teacher's unions and public school districts are incentivized to pretend they are capable of addressing the problem, provided they get more money. That's what institutions and organizations do, after all. They always want to expand their scope, get more personnel, do more, and get paid for it. It's dumb in this case.

I do want to say I completely agree with most of what you have said. Current schools are not capable of handling it. But I don't think there's any possible model of schools that can handle it, except, as you said, keeping kids out of their homes when they're in these situations. That's why I don't think any model of vouchers will work, and will just make things worse for the kids whose parents can't afford or don't want to make things better for them.

Basically, to fix this problem, we need to fix the societal issues in the country, not the schools. That's something I entirely agree with. My disagreement is that I think switching to a voucher system and things like that only makes matters worse for those who can't take advantage of just moving for whatever reason.

The system would be different, but it can be done.

Most people hear vouchers and they think "the other large public school across town or the existing private school". The real goal is many more small schools.

Enabling "educational entrepreneurship" so somebody who has an idea that thinks will work really well for certain types of kids can start a school teaching exactly that way...and parents can sign up if they think it's best for their child. I want creative teachers to create schools to solve the problems that they see without all of the red tape that makes everyone feel like change is hopeless.

Even with larger schools and bus routes, the solution is to create hubs where you can get off one one bus and hop on the one that goes to your school.

It's certainly different, but it can absolutely be done.

> The real goal is many more small schools.

That's not what will happen, though. What'll happen is you'll get big players owning most the schools, all teaching the same way and same stuff (and if there's no oversight, they can also teach anything, even creationism). Capitalism won't allow this to happen.

> Even with larger schools and bus routes, the solution is to create hubs where you can get off one one bus and hop on the one that goes to your school.

This sounds awful, and absolutely won't work for rural areas. I worked at a school where we already had kids on the bus for two hours each way. They had to wake up before 5 sometimes to prep for school. Imagine expanding this so kids can get to their hub and then to another school. That sounds awful.

Really, the only ones who benefit from this system, still, are those who's parents are already borderline being able to send them to private schools or move. It doesn't help the lower socioeconomic groups at all, and, again, will make things worse for them.

Smaller schools will happen. This will make it possible for all of the huge home school groups that already exist to form real, funded schools.

Big players owning the schools also becomes a huge risk since parents can easily just go elsewhere. Those big players would have to be doing a very good job to keep everybody, compared with the current situation where most people seem to do it because they have no choice.

Where in the world are you seeing a school bus route that goes 2 hours each way? Ideally, the creation of schools a lot closer to those kids would become possible.

And a transport hub is perfectly normal and even reasonable. It simplifies the entire pickup and drop off process. Who knows, maybe UPS can show us how it’s done?

> Big players owning the schools also becomes a huge risk since parents can easily just go elsewhere.

You seem to keep assuming this, but it's just not true. Parents with means can go elsewhere, and even then to a limit. But all that does is leave the schools and kids that are left behind even worse off. And the big schools can keep buying up the other schools. There's only so many places within a range where parents can take their kids, not to mention there'd need to be a minimum amount of kids to even justify keeping one open.

> Those big players would have to be doing a very good job to keep everybody, compared with the current situation where most people seem to do it because they have no choice.

No they really don't. We see this all the time with other big companies. I fail to see how privatizing education makes it any different than every other private enterprise out there.

> Where in the world are you seeing a school bus route that goes 2 hours each way?

Rural United States. I had students literally have to be on the bus at 5:30 in order to get to school at 7.30. They also didn't get home until 5:30 or later at night, depending on weather.

> Ideally, the creation of schools a lot closer to those kids would become possible.

Population dynamics prevent it.

> And a transport hub is perfectly normal and even reasonable. It simplifies the entire pickup and drop off process. Who knows, maybe UPS can show us how it’s done?

Sure, if you're willing to have kids commute multiple hours a day, and have to switch buses (maybe several times?) and somehow expect that to not impact their success.

Where in rural United States? US is a big place but I can’t imagine a 2 hour bus route getting approved anywhere.

You are assuming that I am comparing the private school to a poor public school district. I'm not. I live in a wealthy public school district. There are zero impoverished kids in the public schools here, which I actually think really sucks.

The point being, there is no excuse. The stats on this school district are public, and it's very wealthy.

Where in CO? I have always heard the schools were pretty good, especially BVSD, Poudre Valley etc. and some in Denver, Cherry Creek etc.

Compared to other public school districts, they aren't bad. It's just that "other public school districts" isn't exactly a great baseline. The truth is that the school district personnel have very little to do with this, and the average income level of the student body has a ton to do with it. I'm in a wealth school district as well.

I live just over the county line from Boulder (I can get to Pearl Street in 13 minutes), and the BVSD is very overrated. They were closed for far longer than other districts were last year. They have a lot of money, but also a ton of wealthy students with overly permissive parents who bring drugs into the schools. (I know the vice principal of Fairview High in Boulder, and the incidence of drug use in the school is mind-blowing, all courtesy of rich kids with rich hippie parents who give them allowances of hundreds a week that they buy drugs with.)

One issue prevalent in all public school systems, but particularly bad in BVSD, is the number of students being falsely classified as learning disabled. Many kids with highly inattentive parents, who are essentially babysat by iPads and video games when at home, are labelled as LD/ADHD/etc when the reality is nobody makes them do their homework or study at home. They are then, due to the disability diagnosis, allocated disproportionate resources and staff to try to bring them up to average level. These resources come at the expense of gifted programs which have fewer seats available than they otherwise would for advanced students with good parents. At the end of the day, most public school systems in the US are investing vastly more resources into bringing poor performers to average than helping gifted students reach their actual potential by actually challenging them.

I view them as institutions which are, at a functional level, primarily incentivized to serve the needs of their employees over those of their students. They are a massive source of union jobs, and these unions are the largest funders of politicians who then increase the budgets that then fund the unions via wages to members. I'm a huge fan of unions in non-monopolized industries, but like FDR, I vehemently oppose unions for public sector employees for this very reason. I pay these idiots whether I want to or not. And my wife and I were emotionally crushed when we saw the horrific, and frankly sloppy, remote learning that was taking place. The curriculum was terrible, the teachers were not engaged, and it just felt like too many were taking advantage of the WFH to fuck off and indulge their hobbies and personal lives. This was a universal sentiment amongst the parents (and hilariously, the middle school students) in my daughter's school. There was not a single remote learning lesson I witnessed that was remotely as effective as a Khan Academy course. We know this because we ended up supplementing her lessons with Khan, and she was very emphatic that she liked them a million times better.

I know many on HN will disagree with my sentiment, but I've noticed that the people in my friend group who don't share my view are disproportionately childless. People with kids in school tend to be pretty frustrated with the structural deficiencies of the fossilized, mid-20th century institutions that are US public schools.