> Remember 54% of US adults read at or below the equivalent of a sixth-grade level.
The sane conclusion would be to invest in education, not to dump hundreds of billions of llms, but ok
The sane conclusion would be to invest in education, not to dump hundreds of billions of llms, but ok
Start with the easiest thing to control? Of giving more money and see what it does?
We seem to believe in every other industry that to get the best talent pay a high salary salary, but for some reason we expect teachers to do it out of compassion for the children while they struggle to pay bills. It's absurd.
Probably one of the single most important responsibilities of a society is to prepare the next generation, and it pays enormous return. But because we can't measure it with quarterly profits we just ignore it.
The rate of return on providing society with as good education is insane.
Lastly its entirely impossible to attract better candidates without more money its just not how the world works.
For reference the median household income in san ramon is about 200k so 2 teachers would be below average. A cop with her experience in the same town makes 158k
There is no reason to expect to find more qualified people for less money when you are starting at 45% of median household income for the area.
Highly qualified individuals in other career tracks are often paid more while also lacking the relevant skills and education.
Industries that are lower paid are going to be even less qualified.
You attract superior talent by either paying more full stop.
Why don't you ask actual teachers.
Maybe take a look at reading and math proficiency rates... And then add in the fact that many kids propping up those stats are basically part time home schooled by parents after school and on the weekend to makeup for the lacking teachers.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Ramon,_California#2020_cen...
As in what people generally earn on this site will crash way down and be outsourced to these models. I'm already seeing it personally from a social perspective - as a SWE most people I know (inc teachers in my circle) look at me like my days are numbered "cause of AI".
Should a city landscape truck driver make $250k because his truck drives around a rich town? No, he should make what other people in this kind of industry make.
The reason teaching became largely a women's profession when they used to be exclusively men is because we wanted to make education universal and free so we did that by paying less, and women who needed to work also had to take what they could get. The reason it has become a moron's profession is because we have made it uniquely undesirable. If you think that teachers should be amazing and imminently qualified and infinitely safe to have around children, pay them like programmers.
Instead, the middle-class meme is to pay them nothing, put them in horrible conditions, and resent them too. Typical "woman's work" model.
Do you have any source on the assertion that being a teacher used to pay more? Because to my knowledge it has never been a high paying profession.
We need different models and then to invest in the successes, over and over again…forever.
Even if the current model was working, just continuing to invest money in it while ignoring other issues like early childhood nutrition, a good and healthy home environment, environmental impacts, etc. will just continue to fail people.
Schooling alone isn't going to help the kid with a crappy home life, with poor parents who can't afford proper nutrition, and without the proper tools to develop the mindset needed to learn (because these tools were never taught by the parents, and/or they are too focused on simply surviving).
We, as a society, need to stop allowing people to be in a situation where they can't focus on education because they are too focused on working and surviving.
Incredible.
It’s not a funding problem.
But you're right after a certain point other factors matter more than simple $ per student. Unfortunately one of those factors is teacher pay <=> teacher quality.
Disruptive students in particular who negatively impact everyone around them but for whatever reason, are frequently not removed from the environment. It's also driving a lot of good teachers into retirement.
When you see clusters of poor performance, my guess is that it's associated with regional policy creating a poor environment rather than a total absence of quality teachers.
US is 5th globally in spending per student. I actually thought it was #1 and initially said that but then corrected it after double checking.
Further, the statement is about as nuanced as "the universe is just atoms". For example, I come from New Orleans where since Katrina they have effectively been 100% Charter schools (that's privatized). It has been a total disaster as not only did it not change literally any statistic for the better, it totally wrecked the local policy atmosphere. Now that shit is in 30 other states. Those "schools" get the same amount of funding (sometimes more!) and are worse in literally every meaningful measurement for society.
That's the lie.
Locals demand charter schools when the existing schools are already failing but the politics of a larger district make it impossible to meaningfully change anything.
It’s been a couple of years since I looked into Louisiana’s charters. When I last looked most of what I saw was political propaganda (from both proponents and opponents).
EDIT: I looked into it. Charters appear to experience the same performance spread (approximately) as district schools where negative performance is primarily associated with poverty.
And that makes the point…school funding is not the problem. The environment outside of school for the child is the problem. Pumping money into the schools isn’t going to get the benefit because it can’t affect outside factors. Money is better allocated elsewhere.
Relevant excerpt:
> Older studies align with this nuance: A 2013 analysis found 86% of Louisiana charters outperforming peers in reading/math, with spillover benefits. But a 2023 legislative audit linked poor results to poverty—71% of students are economically disadvantaged statewide, and concentrations above 80% predict lower scores. Notably, 85 of 138 rated charters earned D’s or F’s, and some high performers enrolled fewer low-income students than legally required.
I don't think it's a money issue at this point.
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-exp...
We spend far more than most countries per pupil, for much poorer results
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/pisa-scor...
It's pretty clear that while spending is a factor, it's probably not the biggest one. The countries that seem to do best are those that combine adequate funding with real rigor in instruction.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/teacher-s...
We're higher paying than a number of countries with higher cost of living that (whether fairly or unfairly) pay lower than us.
I stand by my assertion. I don't think our per pupil spending is the major bottleneck in our performance. I think our educational system needs fundamental reform (just like everything else in this country)
https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/te...
Or this:
> While U.S. teachers make 58% of their counterparts’ salaries, Finnish teachers make 92% of the salaries of similarly educated professions. This trend follows with other countries ranked highly in the World Happiness Report. Teachers in Denmark (ranked #2 in World Happiness) make 81% of their counterparts’ salaries and teachers in Sweden (ranked #4) make 74% of their counterparts’ salaries.
https://www.ednc.org/perspective-how-the-worlds-happiest-cou...
I'm not from the US and I think that attitude is fucked up. You'll get your wish -- the US has been steadily dropping on the lists of "World's Happiest Countries"[1]. But luckily I don't need to do anything. Nature will teach you what a simple text box cannot. Eventually you guys will ruin all your important institutions & become deeply unhappy & hit rock bottom & start meditating or something.
[1] https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart -- Fit a line and you can extrapolate by ~2030 China will be a better place to live. That's really not that far away. That attitude is not "universal".
>Whether that's truly just is an entirely different question
I save myself a lot of heartache and consternation by 'accepting the things I cannot change' to crib the serenity prayer
And there's plenty I can do. Studying the issue & preparing a move, to name two. You want to roll over cause that's your lack of ethics.
It won't work out for you. Set a reminder for 2030.
In USA K-12 education costs about $300k
350 million people, want to get 175 million of them better educated, but we've already spent $52 trillion dollars on educating them so far
Unfortunately, a lot of these people have either concluded it is too difficult to vote, can't vote, or that their votes don't matter (I don't think they're wrong). Their unions were also destroyed. Some of them vote against their interests, but it's not clear that their interests are ever represented, so they vote for change instead.
By policy changes giving unions less power, enacted by politicians that were mostly voted for by a majority, which is mostly composed of the working class. Was this people voting against their interests? (Almost literally yes, but you could argue that their ideological preference for weaker unions trumps their economic interest in stronger unions.)
Professional or artisanal work are petit bourgeois positions, so are flexible in their outlook regardless of income.
Mississipi is doing better on reading, the biggest difference being that they use phonics approach to teaching how to read, which is proven to work, whereas WA uses whole language theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_language), which is a terrible idea I don't know how it got traction.
So the gist of it, yes, spend on education, but ensure that you are using the right tools, otherwise it's a waste of money.
Hire smart motivated people, pay them well, leave them alone, they’ll figure this one out. It’s not hard, anyone can google what Finland does.
WA teachers are among the best salaries in the country for being a teacher (within top 5). You start at around 84k$ I think, 90k$+ if you have a masters degree, at least in Seattle, and it can scale up to 150k$ with enough seniority, as well as pension plan.
> Hire smart motivated people, pay them well, leave them alone, they’ll figure this one out. It’s not hard, anyone can google what Finland does.
The problem is not the teachers themselves, it's what the system tells them to teach. You can have the best teacher in the world, but if they use BS curricula students will unfortunately learn BS.
Think about it, you can have brilliant engineers, but an idiot ceo, and the company will fail despite the engineers.
Seattle rents are very high in specific hip neighborhoods.
The top 10% of households by wage income do receive ~50% of pre-tax wage income, but:
1) our tax system is progressive, so actual net income share is less
2) there's significant post-wage redistribution (social security/medicaid)
3) that high income households consume a smaller percent of their net income is a well established fact.
We can't educate someone with 80 IQ to be you; we can't educate you (or I) into being Einstein. The same way we can't just train anyone to be an amazing basketball player.
Modern society benefits a lot from specialization. It's like the dumbest kid in France is still better at French than you.
That means there are absolutely still massive benefits to be had in trying to ensure that kids grow up in safe, loving homes, with proper amounts of stimulation and enrichment, and are taught with a growth, not a fixed potential mindset.
Sad to say, but your own fixed mindset probably held you back from what you could truly achieve. You don't have to be Einstein to operate on the cutting edge of a field, I think most nobel prize winners have an iq of ~ 120