Hacker News Reader

Comment by opendais | Hacker News Reader

It is because of bullshit like this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-207079/Evolution-ban...

"The word "evolution" will be removed from school books in the deep south of the United States under a new proposal."

How much do you want to bet violating such a ban would lead to immediate dismissal without tenure protections?

This is a school administrator that tried to get such a ban passed.

EDIT: Since there seems to be some confusion, I've italicized the word immediate since people seem to think it was irrelevant.

View on HN

I think the courts are a better solution for that problem.

Having a couple "crazy science teachers" with tenure shouldn't even count as a solution IMO - especially if that causes people to be more careful about who they give tenure to...

EDIT: I said "better solution" not "perfect solution". I would love if you speculate about what a perfect solution is though!

School administrators, not teachers, are the elected crazies.

The courts? Have a judge pick the textbook? I can't think of anything that could possibly go wrong.

School choice is the solution. Let parents hold the schools accountable, because they're the only ones (apparently) who put the kids' education ahead of political pet causes.

School choice may not be a viable option for lower income families, especially in non-urban settings.

It would be under a voucher system, but the teacher's union doesn't like that idea.

It's been awhile (high school) since I've read about voucher system; how do they work nowadays? Is there a way to cover transportation cost and time?

A voucher system that properly enabled children in poor neighborhoods (by covering the related costs) would be a good idea.

It's not just the union as charter schools are (in general) just as mixed of a bag as public schools. There was a Stanford study back in 2009 that spanned 16 states and showed around 20 percent of charters outperformed and 35 percent of charters underperformed their peer public schools. Actually this reminds me they were supposed to have another round of outcomes last year or so. I'll have to go and see again how things have changed. (Offhand, it wouldn't surprise me if it's relatively close overall).

That's why lawmakers often want a voucher system, to give the lower income students the power of school choice.

You don't have to sell me on the idea, brother, I've been supporting vouchers since I heard of them. I think you're overly optimistic that there are "lawmakers" on our side, though. Even those from the ostensibly free-market party, when they get into power, rarely support programs that would reduce their own sphere of influence. It's hard to get re-elected by saying "Look what I didn't do for you."

School choice only works if it is enough to cover all the external costs as well as all the tuition at a private school.

No lawmaker and few citizens are willing to pay for that. ;)

The average private school costs quite a lot less than the average public school. You could spend about half as much per student and still get safer kids and happier parents.

So what "external costs" are you thinking of? Going to a private school does involve travel, but so does going to your assigned public school. Depending on how the district lines are drawn and how centralized the district is, the trip might even be shorter.

Source?

When my ex girlfriend was shopping around for a private school the private schools in the area were both:

A) More expensive (by about $3-5k/year) than what the local district spends.

B) Were generally further and didn't provide a bus to pick the kids/drop them off at that distance.

Did you consider religious schools? Catholic schools are ubiquitous and tend to dramatically pull down the average.

According to stats collected at http://www.edreform.com/2012/04/k-12-facts/ :

AVERAGE DISTRICT PUBLIC SCHOOL PER PUPIL EXPENDITURE: $13,041

AVERAGE PRIVATE SCHOOL TUITION: $8,549

AVERAGE CATHOLIC SCHOOL TUITION: $6,018

I'm uncertain why you expect anyone to send people to Catholic schools "because cheaper"?

Not everyone is Catholic.

>I'm uncertain why you expect anyone to send people to Catholic schools "because cheaper"?

Cheaper, better, and/or safer, yes. Sometimes it's the best available option.

> Not everyone is Catholic.

Sure, but not everyone who attends Catholic schools is Catholic. Lots of Jews, atheists, and agnostics attend Catholic schools. How difficult that is to do depends on the school. In general, yes, the schools will be teaching some stuff your family doesn't believe...but that'd be true for public schools too, no matter what your beliefs are. Heck, having the irrationality in the curriculum be so blatant might produce more healthy skepticism in the kids than when the irrationality takes the more subtle forms it does in public schools!

It seems your motivations are primarily religious so I'm bowing out of this conversation.

I'm an atheist, FWIW. Perhaps I did a bad job of correcting you when you kept jumping to conclusions above, but whatever my motivations are doesn't change the fact that the average private school costs less than the average public one. :-)

You ignore a bunch of things in your process and generally use misleading numbers that fit your worldview.

Why not, "because better"?

Your average Democrat who wants to sabotage school vouchers will vote for vouchers of 2 or 3 thousand dollars. Meanwhile spending fifteen grand per student on the public school system. Great way to "prove" that vouchers "don't work".

The true idea of a voucher system is that the parent gets to decide where ALL of their child's share of that spending will go.

I was more or less agreeing with you.

However, you seem to gloss over the fact that not all people in this country have a car and their children may be too young for the bus system. Etc.

It isn't "better" if people are too poor to take advantage of the option. So there are additional costs that get frequently overlooked beyond just the cost of school/tuition.

The amount of money has to be enough that even the poorest student has 2-3 options or it becomes pointless.

I don't see why, from an economics perspective. Sure, the person who lives real close to one school and very distant from the other schools may not have other options so good that they overcome the cost difference of travel, however, the people who live halfway between the two schools will still have that choice. This still ensures that there is competitive pressure on the schools. The thing about competition is that it tends to improves the quality/cost ratio of all offerings, even those that don't "win" the competition.

In capitalism, those that don't "win" the competition go bankrupt and die.

I can easily see scenarios [say inner city LA county] where the only options are "bad schools" and siphoning funds away from them while leaving the poorest that are stuck in Compton or the like, isn't going to work.

It has to provide for the poorest to get an education as good as those in richer areas.

So... when will they be taking Pepsi off the shelf? Closing down all the Burger Kings?

LA has dozens if not hundreds of schools. If there are two lousy schools near Compton and parents can choose which ones get the funds earmarked for their child, even those lousy schools will get better fast. They don't have to become the best schools in the country for the parents and children to experience a benefit.

> "I think the courts are a better solution for that problem."

So who sues? The students who are under-served by a public education system that doesn't teach evolution? Let's suppose they find a jury of their peers that agrees, what does the court decision look like?

A mandate for the hiring or retention of at least one teacher who will teach evolution? (Likely with redundancies. People retire, change jobs, get sick, etc.)

And to ensure the ruling is respected one would imagine the district would have to go to further lengths to prove cause, if they ever want to remove that teacher, right?

So all we'll have done is move the tenure track to the court docket, but only for those students/concerns that can shoulder the legal costs to pursue their rights, inevitably providing poorer service to poorer students and those seeking protections for minority concerns (which are disproportionately less likely to win a court case).

Isn't it just as, if not more, likely that a teacher would i.e. refuse to teach evolution (or even just be generally incompetent) and irremovable because of tenure? How does that improve anything?

Ah, but that is a violation of the curriculum and clear cause for removal.

Tenure isn't some magical invulnerability to being fired. It simply slows the process to a crawl and forces the collection of a mountain of evidence to fire someone for cause.

If someone intentionally, and repeatedly, violates the curriculum you can fire a tenured teacher.

You can't acquire that mountain of evidence in the 12 months between getting a ban on evolution passed and having it repealed in federal court.

You just contradicted yourself. You're saying here that tenure cannot enable teachers to defy the school board.

I didn't actually.

Tenure doesn't give them immunity to the school board and/or other administrators.

It does last long enough that abuses of the system and/or unofficial pressure to be resolved before the teacher actually loses their job.

Firing a teacher with tenure can take 12+ months.

Clearer?

Joe is right, you did contradict yourself. You originally said that tenure allows teachers to violate stupid school board decisions and to teach evolution anyway. Here, you said that tenure does not allow teachers to not teach evolution if the school board mandates it.

Which is it? Can the school board fire teachers for not following the curriculum? If so, then school boards can stop teachers from teaching evolution. If not, then teachers can choose to teach Creationism. Either way, tenure doesn't matter.

> How much do you want to bet violating such a ban would lead to immediate dismissal without tenure protections?

Another way to phrase that would be: Teachers can violate such a ban temporarily.

It isn't blanket immunity and that isn't what I said.

So teachers can only teach evolution temporarily until the school board fires them and implements Creationism?

Assuming the Church/State separation vanishes, yes.

Sounds like the solution to that is to make it illegal to ban these topics (and then firmly enforce that law), rather than giving the teachers tenure.

I think you've never experienced unofficial pressure in the workplace before when you need to put food on the table. ;)

Tenure is much, much more effective than trying to make a law like that work reliably. Every time some new topic came up that was politically charged, you'd need to amend it. What happens when the people you consider to be the "wrong people" are in charge? They get their way.

If it's unofficial, then there's not much to be worried about. Do your job and you'll be fine.

I honestly don't think tenure is more effective than actual legal enforcement, namely because tenure isn't really effective for that purpose at all, especially when we're considering that the older teachers - the ones who benefit from tenure - are the ones who are probably in support of such pressure, which is more likely directed at the younger teachers, relatively fresh from college, who want their students to learn about the proper science they learned about in school but are afraid to do so when their paychecks are on the line.

That's not even in the possible range of solutions. Remember that lawmakers and law enforcers in red states are actively hostile towards teaching science, never mind teaching anything at all about the body, such as sex education.

It's not going to be made illegal, and such laws will not and would not be enforced in the areas in which this is a problem to begin with, i.e., Republican areas.

> Remember that lawmakers and law enforcers in red states are actively hostile towards teaching science, never mind teaching anything at all about the body, such as sex education.

Then do it at the federal level. Fuck the troglodytes in the red states.

The freedom to teach unpopular ideas also includes the freedom to teach that water has feelings and you can change its molecular structure by yelling at it, or that vaccines cause autism, or that global warming is all a bunch of bullshit made up by the liberal media. Pick your poison.

Please cite examples of this actually occurring and the teacher not being fired for 12+ months?

I used the word immediate for a reason that seems to be lost on some people :/

No, I'm agreeing that a science teacher who taught kids that water has feelings would be fired immediately without tenure protections -- and deserves to be fired immediately! But tenure protections would not just protect an evolution teacher in Mississippi, it would also protect Gwyneth Paltrow's right to teach kids batshit crazy things about molecular chemistry based on new age pseudoscience. It cuts both ways.

You make a point in a later comment "Except a Creationist school district would be a violation of Church/State separation and the trial relating to that would stop the teacher from being fired."

So tenure protects teachers long enough for such a trial to occur. I understand that. But wouldn't a wrongful termination suit do the same? After a couple of these, the State would pass guidelines on hiring and firing so that they don't get sued.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com