Comment by HDMI_Cable | Hacker News Reader

Comment by HDMI_Cable | Hacker News Reader

To some degree, this is a function of Baumol's cost disease [1] and high cost of living. As other fields become more productive (think fields NYC is known for, finance, research, tech.) labour for fields that don't become more productive (teaching, medicine) become more comparatively expensive. Add to this the extremely high cost of living in NYC, which pushes up labour prices, we have (part) of the root cause.

This doesn't explain everything, though. Using some back of the napkin math, a lot of money seems to be wasted in NYC (as someone who doesn't research education, though considering the state of the field I'm not sure that would help much). Imagine 10% of students need 1:1 teaching (think special needs) to be successful, while the other 90% need class sizes of 15 (gross underestimates to steelman the point). Also, imagine that 50% of costs go towards teacher labour (which may or may not be low), and that each teacher gets paid 120K a year.

Thus, the equation looks like: 2 * [0.1 * $120K + 0.9 * ($120K/15)] ~ 35K per year. This means that the NYC school system (which definitely does not have 15 kids per class, or 1:1 special needs education for 10% of students) is grossly inefficient.

--- [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect

School board member here. Although I'm in a rural district very different than NYC. I did an analysis on this. ~1/3 or less goes to front line instruction in my district (the 95%.). Around 1/3 to special ed. And around 1/3 to overhead.

So you're not quite wrong in the back of the envelope, but the assumptions are way off. For example, the 1/3 special ed in my district is consumed not by high paid specialists but by huge numbers of aids coupled with outrageous costs for a few students with services that require private drivers (with cars!) plus all the special private services they need.

Sorry about that, I know nothing about education so I'm mostly trying to start a conversation here.

Given those numbers, we should expect $12,000 per pupil to go towards special ed (let's assume 10% need it) and $12,000 per pupil to go towards teacher salaries, and $12,000 for overhead.

With that $12,000, shouldn't NYC still have class sizes of ~10-12, assuming teachers make $120K a year (which is high, but perhaps not unfeasible considering NYC being fairly pro-public sector union and high cost of living)?

This also implies that the average cost per one special-ed student is $120K per year, which is very high, but fairly understandable given the needs you mentioned. In fact, special-ed teachers (assuming few-to-one class sizes) may make comparatively less than regular teachers given the need for aides.

Also $12K per pupil on overhead also makes sense, assuming a high cost for maintenance / repair, plus administrative salaries being higher than in other parts of the country.

This (again, very uninformed, back-of-the-envelope analysis) implies that policy objectives should focus on reducing special-ed costs while increasing quality of education, figuring out why we don't have smaller class sizes, and potentially reducing overhead (which I thought would be the most wasteful sector, but actually seems small in comparison).

Unpopular opinion that special ed is draining districts dry...

The popularity of your opinion depends a lot on what you think we should do about it.

Reduce the percentage of kids that need services by putting more effort into improving pre-natal care? Cleaning up environmental contamination?

Or just cut spending?

I was tasked with photographing a teacher once for work. In her class was a child that pretty clearly didn’t know what was going on and just moaned the majority of the time. He, of course, had an aid - quite possibly an actual nurse - that presumably had to be with him the whole time.

I fee for his parents. I’m sure they want him to have as normal of a life as he possibly can. That said, when one student is taking up the resources that could fund another entire class with no perceivable benefit…. Perhaps a group home would be a better fit?

I don’t think feeling that way makes me a monster, but I bet some people feel otherwise.

All while homeless people starve down the street. We really need to get our priorities straight.

Cut spending

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