Any products of the California educational system here?

Actually, it's not how much you spend on education, it's how effectively you use the money you have. California is no worse than any other state in that regard.

This site sucks donkeys.

Rude, huh?

I think one of the things that really annoyed me about the California school system when I lived there (or the CA government, or both), was the lottery. Originally intended to provide *extra* funding for the schools, it was used as an excuse to cut back school funding by the government.

I never went to California schools, but my kids did. It was a bit of a struggle with my youngest one to get him the help he needed.

Funny. I love Zimmerman.

But I have to admit that wasn't my experience. I grew up in Southern Califorinia and received most of my education during the '60s. The schools were new, most of the the teachers were young, progressive and energetic and I had an amazing time. I learned to play my first instrument and read music in elementary school. I'm sure that the fact we lived in the wealthier coastal towns and the school districts were small (until high school) was a factor. Plus the fact that I was a top student didn't hurt the opportunities I received. I still remember some of my great teachers from elementary, junior high and high school.

At the time the Cal University was still very affordable. My father had graduated from Berkeley as an engineer and went into aerospace. I went to UC Irvine, twice, having the opportunities to study pre-med in psychiatry, sociology and studio arts. I left to pursue a music career and returned for graduate studies in contemporary art and teacher education. I say all this because to this the opportunities and doors opened to me by education in California still resonate in my life.

I feel extremely fortunate for the quality of education I received in California and my three younger brothers would all testify to the same.

"Rude, huh?"

Nope. Just lame and stupid.

I went through the California public school system (way) back during the Prop. 13 era. We had no cafeteria staff for 4 years at my elementary school, the class sizes were in the 40+ range all the way through high school, and the condition of the buildings was pretty poor. One building on my elementary campus (the district office) was deemed unsafe and no students could enter it.

Sadly, I find that I received a much better education from that system than many younger people have from well funded programs. I say sadly because something is definitely wrong with school programs now, but it isn't necessarily being caused by lack of funding.

Mr or Ms mythusmage is correct, to an extent, anyway. At this point I think we could spend $200K per student and not see any improvement. Some local radio shows and papers do stories on the high paid administrators who sit around all day and do... something, but nothing ever changes. I know all you progressive types loves you some unions, and I personally have nothing in general against them, but the government employee unions here in California are really just a bunch of cancers.

Just to clarify, this was the mid-70s - mid-80s.

I am one of those products, having graduated in '87 from one of the worst districts in California -- the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD).

mythusmage hit the nail on the head: it's how the money was utilized that made the school system what it was. The district hierarchy was incredibly "top-heavy". As I understood it, the LAUSD, as an organization, had three paid non-teaching positions (bureaucrats, administrators, supervisors, etc.) for every teacher. Any business run that way would collapse under its own weight in no time!

I consider myself lucky that I managed to achieve escape velocity upon graduation, and go to a fine east coast college.

I' reminded of the old bromide "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance"

Well, I liked it about as much as I liked all the other Zimmerman stuff.

Is this a hobby for him, or is Roy actually making a living out of writing mediocre songs?

Zimmerman is great.

I went through CA public high school, and definitely wasn't prepared for UC Berkeley (does Cal count as part of the "California educational system"?). I had a lot of catching up to do, but Berkely itself had a lot going for it.

I am thoroughly a product of California public schools. The education I received at my local junior college sufficed to get me into Caltech (the one private college I attended). I also benefited from the (then) low tuition at California's public universities, but every Republican governor keeps raising the fees (why do we elect those bozos?).

While some school districts are bogged down in administrators, we have a bigger organic problem that plagues the entire state. The two-thirds vote requirement to pass a state budget or raise a tax means that California has for a couple of decades now been living on its credit cards. Democrats don't want to cut programs and Republicans don't want to raise taxes, so one state budget after another is cobbled together with gimmicks that soon unravel (witness the present budget stalemate in Sacramento). Now that the Democrats have proposed a budget that (reluctantly) cuts several programs and (less reluctantly) raises some fees, the GOP caucus is insisting on balancing the budget entirely with cuts. The fun part? They won't identify the cuts and haven't proposed a balanced budget of their own. It's entirely a political ploy. And Governor Schwarzenegger has too little clout within his own political party to twist their arms. (Yes, he's a 90-pound weakling.)

If California took a simple-majority approach to budgeting, the problem would finally be resolved. The Democratic majority would raise taxes and pay for their programs. No problem. And if voters didn't like the combination of programs and taxes, they could vote for Republicans, who could then try their cut-to-fit approach. The way it is now, no one has full responsibility for the mess. They just point at each other and the standoff continues. It's absurd.

mythusmage (@1):

I can't se the video from this computer, so I don't know exactly what you're responding to, but I want to take some issue with this:

Actually, it's not how much you spend on education, it's how effectively you use the money you have.

Obviously, ineffectiveness, if it exists, is a problem... but above a certain baseline level of effectiveness, it's my observation that most of the problems that plague public schools are resource driven:

Do we have enough teachers (i.e., enough to maintain an effective student/teacher ratio)? Can we pay salaries adequate to attract and retain high-quality teachers (and to support their continuing education and inservice training)? Is there sufficient administrative and support staff to effectively manage each campus? Are the physical facilities adequate to provide an effective learning environment for all students (i.e., without putting classes in leaky trailers or converted storage rooms)? Are operating budgets sufficient to keep facilities safe and well maintained? Is the school's equipment (textbooks, classroom furniture, computers, microscopes, drafting boards, language labs, etc., etc., etc.) adequate to meet its educational goals? Are there adequate provisions for cocurricular, extracurricular, and afterschool programs (and don't write these things off as fluff, as they have huge implications for overall educational success)?

I'm not presuming anything about you, mind you, but I've had too many online conversations with conservatives whose premise is "you can't fix anything by throwing money at the problem"... and who invariably have some (usually solitary) example of a well funded school that's failing or a poorly funded one that's producing exceptional results.

Of course it's true that spending money recklessly on the wrong solutions won't fix things; it does not follow that the right solutions are unconnected to resources. In my experience, it's vanishingly rare that a school (or school system) that can answer "yes" to all (or even most) of the questions I posed above will fail to provide good education. Unfortunately, it's also vanishingly rare that a school (or school system) can answer "yes" to all (or even most) of those questions. And that's often true because small but very loud groups of hardcore conservatives (who often drive the local budget process, at least in my state) have decided that public education is the one thing they don't think people should pay "fair market value" for.

Sorry to piggyback this rant on your brief comment; as both a former (and possibly future) teacher and a parent whose daughter just barely made it out of a public high school that's being slowly starved to death by a militant (even though small in numbers) anti-tax group in my town, this is an issue I feel some passion about.

Ditto Bill #14.

Mythusmage and $0.49 are crazy if they think that student-teacher ratios are due merely to bad management, or to unions. We all know there are bad administrators, and bad teachers, and yes, we should have some way of fixing this. But that doesn't mean that's the problem.

You've got a bunch of old, useless teachers? Hire some better ones. How? Well, you can make teaching a well-paying job, or a fun job. This means giving teachers more money, and more respect. I'm not sure how the 'respect' part is accomplished, but I think it's just as important as money. Teaching should be a glamor job - competative, hard to get, valued - like university professorships.

Here we go again, to paraphrase that great intellectual president from California, Ronald Reagan: another public school-basher bitching but offering no solutions. This has been the mode du jour since Proposition 13 passed with overwhelming support from voters. California's public schools ranking went from among the top 10 to around 49th. nationally in a few short years.

Because of this "Government is the problem," Smaller government is better government," "No new taxes," "less regulation is good for business," and all the other Republican mantras chanted since the "Teflon President's" terms in office, first in California and then in the White House, my state - California - and my nation have been visited by one financial disaster after another.

Reagan began his first term in CA with a budget surplus; he left us at the end of his second term with the largest deficit in the state's history to date. He did the same for the federal budget. He also left the legacy of greed: those with a wealth of riches were sure they were entitled to more; the rest of us were sure we could have all the governmental services we needed or wanted - for nothing.

Now it may be too late for California's schools - and the state as a whole - to recover from these last thirty years of shoestring spending, budget cutting, postponing the least broken, style of spending. There is just so much that has been left undone for so long, and the state with the world's fourth-largest economy is broke.

So, perhaps those of you now living in the once-Golden State should think about moving to more favorable climes if you're able, because we have a Republican governor who still thinks that no new taxes will provide enough funding to solve this massively indebted budget, and a public which seems to agree with him.

Personally I feel that the California school system can be pretty good- but that depends on what district you are in. I grew up in Southern California, within a very well off area (south orange county) and received a great education through the public school system. The HS I attended was highly accredited and had some great teachers, especially science teachers (go figure), which led me to the UC system (w00t UCSC). Now my sister, worked in Oakland while at Cal, for the local school district, only to be amazed at the difference in quality of education (and she was intentionally working in one of the worst districts in the state).

One BIG issue with the current status of the California school system (and the whole California government in general) come directly from 1978's Proposition 13 initiative. This put a cap on property tax to 1%, decreasing the amount of money collected by the state through property tax by almost 60%. This came right after California had declared it unconstitutional to fund schools directly through property taxes, requiring schools to be funded directly from the state or local sales taxes. These have helped bankrupt the government and in turn the public school system.

Some local radio shows and papers do stories on the high paid administrators who sit around all day and do... something, but nothing ever changes.

Hrmmph. Administrators, especially vice principals, are always the first target. Show me an administrator who's genuinely slacking off and I'll agree wholeheartedly that s/he must go... but s/he must be replaced by someone who'll do the work. Anyone who thinks being a vice principal is some sort of featherbed job for slackers just hasn't spent much time in a school: Vice principals (or deans or house masters... whatever your school system calls them) have invariably been the hardest working and least appreciated people in every school I've been associated with. When you cut these positions, the administrative and disciplinary work they do lands back in the classroom, where it diverts time, energy, and attention from the teaching and learning that's supposed to be going on there.

I don't discount the possibility that some districts really are top-heavy with administrators... but I haven't seen one. In virtually every case, cutting these positions is the polar opposite of a good way to improve school effectiveness.

I know all you progressive types loves you some unions, and I personally have nothing in general against them,

Got it. "Honest, some of my best friends are union members!" But would you want your sister to marry one?

...but the government employee unions here in California are really just a bunch of cancers.

Right. Because people willing to work for the public, typically for less compensation than their private-sector counterparts... those people are obviously greedy bastards who deserve no protection against getting even further screwed. Riiiiight....

#15

"You've got a bunch of old, useless teachers? Hire some better ones."

You can't just get rid of the old ones once they're tenured. That's part of the problem. Imagine if they tenured software developers. Most modern software would be written in COBOL.

Actually, it's not how much you spend on education, it's how effectively you use the money you have.,/I> - mythusmage

Right. So you could spend $1 p.a. per student, and still get better results than you do now. Hey - why aren't you President? What with your Nobel Prize in Economics and all?

Quick correction to avoid an unintentional slander of my Brilliant Daughter™:

When I said (#14)...

...daughter just barely made it out of a public high school that's being slowly starved to death...

...I meant that she got out in the nick of time, not that she just barely graduated. Actually, she graduated 3rd in her class, as a National Merit scholar and an accepted Yale student. </brag>

Bill Dauphin: Funny how that always happens, huh? People working for the gov, for less pay, occasionally, in the past, with slightly better benefits (or at least more secure ones), are the bloodsuckers, while no one mentions the millions filtched or lobbied away from the gov by private industry. Heck, how many millions did Enron alone steal from the state with its brown-out extortion plan, I wonder?

#20

"Right. So you could spend $1 p.a. per student, and still get better results than you do now. Hey - why aren't you President? What with your Nobel Prize in Economics and all?"

Did he say that you could spend a $1 per year and that it'd all be fine?

What you could do is be more honest and argue the point you know he was making rather than parse his words. This is a problem on most of these boards. Someone says something you disagree with and you argue to the ridiculous end.

I think this is a logical fallacy.

""Because of this "Government is the problem," Smaller government is better government," "No new taxes," "less regulation is good for business," and all the other Republican mantras chanted since the "Teflon President's" terms in office, first in California and then in the White House, my state - California - and my nation have been visited by one financial disaster after another.""

Ummm, if you want to find a problem with California's schools, you can start by noting this quoted comment came from a retired California teacher...

First off, what financial disaster after another? In worldly terms, California kicked financial butt for a long time, due to its industry and agriculture. Eventually, high taxes pushed a lot of big employers out, and the state began to rely on rising housing prices for its in-state income. Now that that's gone, the state is truly fucked, and the state government will be forced to cut itself in half over the next three years.

California's mortgage default numbers are going to go through the roof come February through April, and, as long as the federal government keeps sucking out its wealth and shipping it to military bases overseas, there will be massive shortfalls for school funding and the school system will be rocked like its never been rocked before...

Weeee....

Part of the Prop 13 insanity in California is that school funds are tied to property taxes. Because corporate business was able to get the same tax ceiling as homeowners, they are now sitting on properties worth 10-20 times more than their original value and paying criminally low rates. Homeowners tend to move more often and the tax rates readjust with each sale. Biz properties often don't change hands for 10-20-30 years, even more, so they are literally living off the backs of single homeowners when it comes to state services and education.

I proposed long ago that Big Business should pay the education tax instead of landowners. Business directly prospers and profits from the educated and should have to invest accordingly.

#25

"I proposed long ago that Big Business should pay the education tax instead of landowners. Business directly prospers and profits from the educated and should have to invest accordingly."

My plan would be to directly tax for schools on your income. Have it be a line item. That way, you know what your paying,and if you think it's too much, you'll demand things be done.

I hate the hiding of taxes by taxing business entities. Don't for a second think that you as a peon is not paying those taxes. It's only now you don't know how much it is.

"Eventually, high taxes pushed a lot of big employers out..."

Oh bullshit. That myth has been repeatedly debunked. Yes some moved but even more came in. Businesses move all the time for various reasons. One of the biggest hits was in the aerospace industry and that had nothing to do with taxes. But over the next decade the entertainment industry more than made up for the job and economic losses.

I'm second generation Los Angeles school system. My father went to school (Hoover High in Glendale) in tents because of the 1933 earthquake damage to his school. He wound up working in aerospace, and the Apollo project.

I entered LA system in Manhattan Beach with the first year of the baby boom, and was in a second grade class of 53 kids. I basically got lost, but the building was good - WPA built in the 30's so it was still working well, and picked up enough to make my way. (That school is still open and running).

Today LA system deals with a lot. Non-native English speakers, about a dozen different languages, and has to cope with that. My son, a special needs student, got great service from the district (he's now 17).

So, all in all, I'd have to say it's not a bad system, and if you can learn in a tent, something other than money is at work.

Teachers definitely deserve much more money. I've been amazed by the wonderful teachers and special ed teachers who toil there. Very professional and truly caring, so this song doesn't resonate with me.

PGPWNIT (@23):

I think [KnockGoats' argument @20] is a logical fallacy.

Actually, I think he was going for reductio ad absurdum, which can be a perfectly valid sort of argument. Mythusmage denied the connection between school spending and quality — "it's not how much you spend on education" — and KnockGoats pointed out the fallacy of that contention by suggesting a deliberately absurdly small value for "how much you spend."

IMHO, what's really "a problem on most of these boards" is people who can't follow an argument that doesn't involve lots of capital letters and exclamation points.

#29

Mythusmage did not say that $1 is sufficient. He said it didn't matter, and we all know that he really doesn't mean that. He meant that it didn't matter as much as... (this is my assumption, and I could be wrong, but I doubt it).

The problem with the reduction logic is that it's not honest. It works best in the engineering field.

It would be nice if we stopped treating education like a business. MBA's don't need to decide our childrens future, educators should.

The more people complain about the bureaucracy, the more MBA style admins are put in to run it more business like, and make it less about education.

@PIGSNIT
"I hate the hiding of taxes by taxing business entities. Don't for a second think that you as a peon is not paying those taxes. It's only now you don't know how much it is."

Come on now and let's be honest: you hate any taxes. The right has forever been trying to figure out a way so that the public will reject all taxation and trying to dump everything on the payroll tax is one of them.

Taxing biz profit is not the same as taxing payroll. Corporate profits and executive pay skyrocketed obscenely while average wages stayed static or decreased relative to inflation. The wingnut mantra that all tax on biz would be sent to the consumer is another myth with no basis in fact.

#32

PIGSNIT....nice.

I know the type of person I'm dealing with now.

Don't presume to know my position on taxes. I feel that I pay too little due to all the deductions I get.

...paraphrase that great intellectual president from California, Ronald Reagan:...

I am thankful that I continued to read on after the above statement to see that "Retired CA teacher" @ #16 was being sarcastic and he/she has it exactly correct. Reagan started that downhill slide followed by George H.W. Bush and culminated by Dumbya.

Mayhempix (@25):

Part of the Prop 13 insanity in California is that school funds are tied to property taxes.

Amen, brother!

But it's worse than the. As I'm sure you know, public schools in many (if not most) states are funded through property taxes, and this is a fundamentally flawed (and arguably racist) way of doing things, even in places that don't face the arbitrary constraints of something like Prop 13.

Public education is a vital part of our civic infrastructure, of long-term value to the entire society. As such, it should not be held hostage to the fluctuations of wealth in any given neighborhood (nor to the economic deprivation endemic to certain minority neighborhoods that results from the legacy of racism), nor to the annual whims and passions of disparate small groups of voters.

What we really need, IMHO, is 100% federal funding, at an equivalent per-student level (adjusted for local cost of living), covering a minimum adequate budget (and be assured, my notion of the minimum adequate budget is pretty comprehensive, as you might guess from #14) for all public schools in the U.S.

Of course, this would face all the same anti-government political opposition that federal single-payer health coverage does, plus a chorus of old-school "states' rights" objections from the Bible Belt, so realistically it ain't gonna happen.

But I can dream, can't I?

#35

I agree with federal funding of schools. It goes against my libertarian ideals, but I think it's important enough to do.

Posted by: PGPWNIT | January 14, 2009 12:34 PM
"I know the type of person I'm dealing with now."

My sincere apologies if I misjudged you. I am so used to wingnuts and Libertarians coming here and dumping their no tax Free Market God BS all over the threads that I apparently judged too quickly.

#37

Accepted....though I am a libertarian. But I'm not a rabid one.

"But I can dream, can't I"

Please do!

Bill Dauphin, #29

Let me put it this way... Using ping pong balls to sink a boat is a waste of time.

Knockgoats (a fine example of grouchy and rude) has a talent for missing the point. For his benefit I shall reiterate.

How you spend the money you have available is more important than how much money you have to spend. To paraphrase Scrooge McDuck's father, "Don't spend harder, spend smarter." Encourage learning, engage the family, acknowledge individual capabilities and adjust for them.

When I was nine years old they started us on something called New Math. Small problem, the teachers who were supposed to teach this New Math not only knew nothing about teaching it, they had no education in New Math themselves. Math scores tanked, teachers bitched, and New Math was dropped faster than discussing the Gospel According to Thomas at a fundy symposium.

We rely on many assumptions concerning how people learn, how to get people to learn, how to determine when and how well people know a subject, and other things. Assumptions we don't want to question because it means making an effort and may lead to changing things.

And God forbid we ever show enthusiasm for anything. Can't have that, why the little baboons may show a real interest in a subject and expose our fundamental ignorance of it beyond what we've got printed in our teaching manuals.

In short, I pointed out the vital connection between how resources are used and the quality of the product. Just throwing money at a problem won't do a thing, it's how you spend that money.

"Of course, this would face all the same anti-government political opposition that federal single-payer health coverage does, plus a chorus of old-school "states' rights" objections from the Bible Belt, so realistically it ain't gonna happen."

That's why I proposed an education biz tax. The argument can be made that Big Biz should have to pay directly for the talent they exploit to make money. Those students who don't make the grade are just a cost of doing biz like any other investment. Why should the average taxpayer have to subsidize the workforce for Big Biz? That concept would surely make wingnut heads explode because of a closed logic loop while attracting vast public support.

#41

"That concept would surely make wingnut heads explode because of a closed logic loop while attracting vast public support."

Well, yeah, it would be very popular because of the feeling that it was free. I see nothing wrong with paying for something you find to be important.

@ PGPWNIT

For a libertarian, your not so bad...

;^ )

Spelling Police @43

It's spelled "you're" dammit.
I finally got the spellchecker working with NetNewsWire and I still get screwed.

I both taught UC Irvine freshman who'd been through the CA system in the early 80s and had a kid go through the public school system in LA in the 90s. I've never been so appalled.

My students were abysmally unprepared for college, from their inability to write a coherent sentence to their lack of grounding in basic subject matter. [An English lit major whose only reference for the word "Vulcan" is Mr Spock??? Pre-med students who couldn't grasp the concept of the scientific method?]

I took the California Basic Education Skills Test back in the 80s [I like teaching; it was, at one time, an option]. I thought it was the easiest test I'd ever taken, far simpler that the SAT. There were people there who complained mightily about how hard it was and a fair proportion of test-takers failed it the first time around. It was subsequently dummied down some more, in order that more "minorities" could pass it. This is the test that determines whether people are qualified to teach.

As for my kid:

His elementary school principal was a falling-down drunk who wouldn't even respond to requests from parents - we only saw her staggering around public functions. The vice principal had no power;

The school nurse didn't believe that asthma was a "real" illness ['It's all in their minds.'], despite the fact that it is the most severe health problem in the LAUSD. She wanted the kid to walk up two flights of stairs in mid-attack. [Her, I got fired.]

He had a middle school maths teacher who suffered from OCD [and tenure] - during a 20 minute parent-teacher conference, she left the room three times to wash her hands, taking with her more cleaning supplies than I used in my entire house. My son reported that class was similarly conducted;

A middle school science teacher he had taught woo; I had to get him transferred to a real science class. She, too, had tenure. [I discovered that my two bio classes in college qualified me to be a science teacher. Gaack.]

Two of his middle school English teachers were non-native speakers who had only a glancing knowledge of grammar; they, in fact, "corrected" errors into his written assignments. They were officially "substitutes", despite being there all year - and when I complained, I was told that LAUSD had an "official" policy that there was no "correct" English grammar, as that would be culturally insensitive;

There was a proselytising Scientologist at his high school; when I complained about that, the response was 'We've told him not to do that';

The guidance counsellor in charge of Section 504 plans [accommodations for kids with learning issues - mine has a reading disability] knew nothing about the program, which she insisted was "new" [no, it had been around for a couple of decades by then], claimed that teachers couldn't be made to cooperate [no, it's the law; they have no choice] and thought that kids had to be retested annually because their disabilities "ran out". ['You'll have to get little Helen tested again to see if she is still deaf and blind, Mrs Keller.'].

Did he have some good teachers? Yes, definitely, tho' at least one left teaching because of the bureaucracy and the sheer frustration. But too many of his teachers were nowhere near the calibre of those I had at the same age. My kid had the advantage of having a white, upper-middle-class, educated, JD-bearing, daughter of a college professor and a high school maths teacher for a mother, who wasn't about to put up with bullshit and who could tutor him at home. What chance did a kid have whose parent[s] had none of those advantages? Zip, zero, nada.

Solutions? Raise the standards for teachers - and the pay; tax businesses sensibly [after all, businesses keep bitching about how they have to import educated workers...]; make sure the new teachers are better than the old, which will eventually age out the lousy tenured ones; retest and get rid of those who cannot meet the raised standards before they get tenure; and stop tying school money to local property taxes - that's ultimately disadvantageous to everyone, as it perpetuates an underclass and foments social unrest.

/rant

Mythusmage (@40:

Knockgoats (a fine example of grouchy and rude) has a talent for missing the point.

KnockGoats has a pretty good track record around here for being intelligent and perceptive; if it looks to you like he's missing your point, you might want to consider the possibility that you haven't made your point clearly. Jus' sayin'....

Actually, his reductio turned out to be effective in getting you to restate your point in a somewhat better form. While your original formulation ("It's not how much you spend...") appeared to deny any relationship between spending and quality, your new version at least acknowledges some proportionality ("...is more important than..."). I still disagree, mind you, but it's a start.

It would be truer (albeit trivially obvious) to say that for any given level of funding, spending money more wisely is the way to improve effectiveness. It would be truer yet, and perhaps even somewhat useful, to say that above a certain, fully adequate, level of funding, how you spend the funds becomes significantly more important to outcomes than adding additional funding. But it's hard to spend funds wisely when you don't have sufficient funds to begin with, and I'm fairly sure that most of the problems faced by most public schools stem from inadequate resources.

Show me well funded, fully staffed schools (and I mean according to the criteria I laid out in #14... not some minimalist notion of full funding and staffing) that are nevertheless failing to produce good educational outcomes, and we can talk. But I predict you'll have a hard time coming up with anything more than a handful of scattered anecdotes.

BTW, WRT your rant about "New Math" (if I were at my home computer, I'd link you to a YouTube of Tom Lehrer singing his hilarious song by that name; you should Google it), what's your point? Teachers and other education professionals are constantly searching for innovative new methodologies. Some of them prove out in the field and become part of standard practice (e.g., phonics), while others prove less effective and are abandoned. How is this different from medicine or engineering or science or...? Are you suggesting that innovation is a bad thing?

IIRC, one of the aspects of New Math was doing math in bases other than Base 10. While the whole edifice of New Math may have been discarded, vestiges of it remain in computer classes, where Base 2 (aka binary) notation and arithmetic is taught. Similarly, my junior high English class (ca. 1972-73) taught grammar using an experimental method called morpheme strings, in which sentences were represented as quasi-mathematical expressions of the smallest units of meaning (aka morphemes, analogous to phonemes in phonics): Noun, verb, and adjective root words; base pronouns and prepositions; and various grammatical markers for number, tense, case, mood, etc. It was weird as snakes' shoes, and didn't last long enough for the textbooks to wear out, but it did me no harm (I'm now a professional technical writer/editor), and even (IMHO) taught me certain concepts (e.g., subject-verb agreement) with greater clarity than traditional grammar could have. Broadly speaking, innovation is good... even when individual innovations don't work out.

Finally...

And God forbid we ever show enthusiasm for anything.

?????

I suspect you have something specific, at a specific school or school system, in mind... but in my experience it is the opposite of typical for public schools to discourage enthusiasm.

I think I've heard the tune for this song somewhere. But I can't remember where.

Please?

"I took the California Basic Education Skills Test back in the 80s [I like teaching; it was, at one time, an option]. I thought it was the easiest test I'd ever taken, far simpler that the SAT....Solutions? Raise the standards for teachers - and the pay; tax businesses sensibly [after all, businesses keep bitching about how they have to import educated workers...]"

I too took that test and was amazed at how easy it was.

It wasn't until the head of the UCI teaching program took me aside to discuss why my scores, especially in writing, were so high that I realized the questionable caliber of students that were going into teaching as a profession. I'm not saying this to boast about my scores... I was truly surprised and shocked that the others were so low on such an easy test.

One of the other test takers told me she was becoming a teacher because she didn't think she could get a job doing anything else. I had taken the program both to fulfill my minor and as a back-up plan and ultimately pursued other careers. But it really left an impression on me that we weren't channeling the best and brightest towards teaching careers...

I guess they all became investment bankers on Wall Street.

#43

High Praise, indeed.

;)

All rise for our new state anthem.

I graduated from Pali Hi (LAUSD) in '80, at the beginning of the end of the golden age of public education in CA. Most people don't remember that up until that time CA was the crown jewel of public education.

Now that I have 3 kids of my own, the situation is so bad that I pulled up stakes and moved to Chapel Hill, NC where the public schools are great.

However, a large part of the problem is society at large. In ye olden days teachers did not have to spend so much time disciplining the children - good behaviour was the norm and expected. It was also expected that one's parents would make them do their home work. Etc.

Bottom line - education begins at home, and the school system cannot make up the deficit of parental involvement.

In my area the population is rapidly expanding. We have an interesting problem with the schools. People seem to recognize that new bricks and mortar are needed, and approve building bonds readily enough. Then comes the time to hire staff for the new school, and trying to get a millage increase to do so is next to impossible. And the leader of the "vote no" compaigns lives about 40 miles and several school districts away.

Well, my 5 siblings and I all went to public CA schools, and 4 of us went to Stanford, my next oldest brother went to WPI, then finished up at LongBeach State after nearly dying in a car accident one Christmas break. I went to UCI. This time period would have spanned from ~1960 to 1985. It was certainly possible to get a good education in at least some public schools in CA at that time, but I think the family I grew up in had more to do with my education than the schools I went to.

Mayhempix (@41):

That's why I proposed an education biz tax. The argument can be made that Big Biz should have to pay directly for the talent they exploit to make money.

I have a mild philosophical objection to this. In my view, the "customer" of public education is not business, nor is its "product" well trained workers. Rather, I think society is the customer and well prepared citizens the product; career training, vital as it is to individuals, is IMHO an ancillary benefit.

That said, any model that gives us well funded public schools fully staffed with high-quality teachers is OK with me... as long as the goals and accountability of the schools stays in the hands of the people. If business started asserting that, owing to its role in funding the schools, it should have any large measure of control over curricula, that would be backdoor privitization... and the nightmare scenario would be for the schools' corporate masters to start deleting programs and subjects — literature, art, music, drama, etc. — not deemed sufficiently relevant to business objectives.

I think with your funding model, a high level of public vigilance would be required to keep us off the slippery slope from true public schools to corporate training academies.

a friend of mine is a fourth grade school teacher in southern california. while waiting for her to get ready for a day out and about i picked up one of her math books.

i truly understand the reasoning for logic problems. one had a lead up discussing the sport of basketball, the number of times a ball can bounce on dribble in X number of feet before being thrown to the basket which is Y feet overhead. the question asked was what size and colour are the shoes the basketball player is wearing. huh? what does that have to do with math?

she has a masters degree. one of her first assignments was as a long term substitute for a teacher who was out on disability in rehab as an alcoholic. that teacher returned after four months, still alcoholic and abusive to the students. however due to her tenure and status in the union she could not be removed from the classroom. fate took care of it over a holiday when she kissed a telephone pole with her car. my friend became the permanent teacher in the room.

i have a number of friends educated in california in the age range of 20-30 who cannot spell properly. they were not taught how to use grammar or phonetic rules. the professional correspondence i have had to correct in my position as an executive assistant is appalling. (e.g. repoire/rapport)

yes, i know i type without capitalisation in my personal correspondence. what can i say? i am a fan of e.e. cummings. in professional correspondence i do ensure all is proper.

i have to agree with regard to prop 13 and business properties not being affected by the increase of value of the land and structures. those are rarely sold thereby are not reassessed and taxed accordingly. the property taxes to date have essentially been borne by the resale of private properties.

Another echo here from someone who went through California's system ('60s and '70s, in at least three different districts (due to family relocations)), whose experience was generally fine. One school was badly overcrowded (numerous "temporary" classrooms) but the class sizes weren't excessive (as I now recall). Both Junior and Senior High School campuses were brand new and on the whole well-equipped, as was the local Community College I attended whilst in Senior High School. But that was a long time ago…

Zimmerman usually has a point, but his whole act is based on a bad theory:

If it rhymes, it must be funny, and true.

He can sing OK, but the music is mostly bland, and the lyrics, uninspired (even if they rhyme).

And who edits the videos? I didn't have the patience to wait through the false starts.

David (@51):

JOOC, are the public schools good in NC generally, or is it just that Chapel Hill is a college town? (Irrelevant personal aside: When I was a kid [ca. early 60s], my Uncle Charlie was a professor of Spanish at UNC.)

Nerd (@52):

We have an interesting problem with the schools. People seem to recognize that new bricks and mortar are needed, and approve building bonds readily enough. Then comes the time to hire staff for the new school, and trying to get a millage increase to do so is next to impossible.

I'm living through almost the same problem, with a bit of a wrinkle: I serve on the School Building Advisory Commission that's overseeing my town's bond-funded district-wide school renovation project (we're not building any new schools, but we are renovating every campus in the district). It turns out that a nontrivial percentage of the work we're having to do involves fixing items that haven't been properly kept up over time, owing to the meager budgets we've been able to pass in recent years. Not only does this divert funds from actual upgrades, but work the state classifies as "deferred maintenance" is ineligible for the state reimbursement we get for proper renovation work... meaning we're paying full price for this work, which, under the project contract, probably means higher costs than if the work had been done by town employees on an as-needed basis.

And don't even get me started on all the teaching positions and programs we've cut in recent years, or the fact that our per-student spending gets farther and farther below the (already inadequate) state average with each passing year.

And this is in a state with good public education support, relative to Florida (where I last lived) or Texas (where I grew up). Grrrrr....

And the leader of the "vote no" compaigns lives about 40 miles and several school districts away.

In our case, the leader of the "Taxpayers' Association" (which ought to be called the "We Wouldn't Pay a Fucking Cent in Taxes if We Could Get Away With It Association") lives in town (he's a former mayor), railing against teachers' pay and teachers' unions... as a retired teacher living on a pension secured for him by his union! GRRRRRR!!!!

When I stand by the roadside at budget referendum time, holding my "Vote Yes" signs, these bozos give me the finger as they blast past in their $40,000 SUVs... all the while claiming they couldn't possibly afford to pay one more penny in taxes.

Mi intyre edumakashn wuz in Callifornyuh an i thort it wuz okay -- hyuck!

Actually, I don't recall the primary years in the CA school system (mid-60s) as being particularly lacking. We students all had desks and chairs and reasonably-recent textbooks. OK, all right, the textbooks were old. More importantly, we had interested, hard-working teachers. But when my family moved to the central-CA, Santa Cruz area in the early '70s and it was time for high school... wow.

The classrooms leaked during the winter, there were 40 or more in every room, we shared a cafeteria/track/gym/lockers with the junior high next door, in more than one class I recall sitting on the floor or on the benchtop, just because there were no desks or chairs. There was no heating or air conditioning. Our social studies teacher bought one of the first VCRs out of his own pocket, because the school couldn't afford it. Cost him $1200, in 1977. The campus, built to accommodate 500, had twice that number. Just before I exited, my high school lost its accreditation, due to "a lack of facilities", as I recall. (I'm pleased to say that this didn't affect my acceptance into Berkeley the following year.)

In the 1990s I went back to visit a friend who was still teaching there, and had been since the late 50s. He said that conditions had never been worse than when I was a student and a bond issue in the 80s had finally allowed replacement of infrastructure that was dangerously out of date ten years earlier. Honestly, I can't believe that people who suffered through what we did in the 70s and have high-school aged kids now, would allow these conditions to continue to such a point that Zimmerman can make a well-understood joke about it.

If it rhymes, it must be funny, and true.

If it's good enough for Odgen Nash and Dorothy Parker, surely it's good enough for Roy, no?

When I was at UCI [grad school], the joke in the English department was that one could tell who the education majors were - they were the ones who, when faced with a form asking for "name", asked 'Whose name?'

In retrospect, that was frightening in its closeness to the truth. As mayhempix & I experienced, the CBEST is pathetically easy, if one has half a brain and a little knowledge. I mean, for pete's sake, they give the equations in the maths section. And still people complain that it's too hard to calculate the circumference of a circle.

IMX, another thing keeping bright folk out of teaching [beyond the lousy pay, the crappy conditions and the lack of supplies] is the sheer frustration with arbitrary rules. In Irvine, a friend of mine reported, her principal told the teachers not to purchase alcohol within the city, lest the parent of a student observe this and complain to the principal. WTF?

BD@54: Obviously, it isn't that the function of schools is to provide cannon fodder for business - but in CA, business property owners get off pathetically easily. Using corporate contrivances and asset buy-outs, they transfer business property to new owners without triggering a property tax re-assessment. It's a clever loophole, and it means that business property owners are paying a disproportionately lower amount of taxes. Blame Prop 13, which was supposed to protect homeowners, but has irreparably damaged the educational system of the state.

Rowan,
I for one am not going to read anything you write, because you don't have the courtesy to make it easier by capitalising the first letter of each sentence.

@Bill Dauphin

I completely agree with your concerns, both philosophical and pragmatic. Any tax program like that would have to be free of any meddling influence and it could be difficult to maintain academic freedom.

On the other hand, the current property tax system is failing us and the money has to come from somewhere. You mentioned federal funds which would probably be the best solution, however as you pointed out the chances of that occurring are slim.

I think it is important to note that business includes music, arts and entertainment, sports, gaming, etc. so that means it wouldn't just be the usual corporate suspects that could claim some sort of ownership over the process. Perhaps a percentage breakdown of funds raised could be given across the board to all disciplines guaranteeing adequate funding.

At any rate there are no perfect answers. But we must get more money for teachers, schools and supplies for all the reasons we know to be true and necessary.

Bill Dauphin, you would like the Redhead and I living in your district. We always vote yes on school bonds/millages.

DominEditrix (@61... love the nick, BTW):

...in CA, business property owners get off pathetically easily. Using corporate contrivances and asset buy-outs, they transfer business property to new owners without triggering a property tax re-assessment. It's a clever loophole, and it means that business property owners are paying a disproportionately lower amount of taxes.

In my (CT) town, we have a different problem, but with something like the same result. Residential and business properties are taxed on the same basis, and we have mandatory periodic reassessments, so businesses can't really hide assets. However, because of the housing bubble (which hadn't quite popped yet at the time of our most recent reassessment) and the area's flat business economy, the total value of residential property in town has grown vastly faster than business property... which has had the effect if significantly shifting tax burden to individual homeowners.

That, in turn, has translated into a horrifying string of "no" votes on budgets, because the voters don't understand1 that their big tax increases are attributable almost entirely to reval rather than to the budget per se. If we flatlined the budget, most homeowners would still see ~90% of the same tax increase, and if we cut the budget enough to complete offset reval, it would literally bankrupt the town.

So I agree we must move school funding off of property taxes, because local-option taxation cuts too close to voters' bone to expect them to make rational, dispassionate decisions. If y'all can figure out how to get business to pay while still keeping their hands off the controls, I'm right there with you. But my preferred solution is still to fund schools out of the federal general revenue... or failing that, each state's general funds. I don't mean to sound anti-democratic w/my comments about budget referenda... but this is a perfect demonstration of the advantages of representative government.
_______
1 I'm not just being an arrogant elitist when I say this: I've been involved in the budget referendum campaigns and talked to a lot of voters. They genuinely don't understand how the reval process works.

"yes, i know i type without capitalisation in my personal correspondence. what can i say? i am a fan of e.e. cummings."

Then you should honor his request to represent his name as E. E. Cummings. "...may it not be tricksy, svp" (see www.gvsu.edu/english/cummings/caps.htm, and ...caps2.html linked therein)

Cummings used capitalization unconventionally and sparingly in his poetry, but was more conventional in other writing, including personal correspondence, as in this line from a letter to his mother:

"I am a small eye poet." Note the letter-writer "I" is capitalized.

@Bill Dauphin
"When I was a kid [ca. early 60s]..."

Where were you in CA at that time? I was in Seal Beach.

Mayhempix:

ca. as in circa, not CA. I grew up in Friendswood, Texas, in the Houston suburbs (my dad was a NASA engineer @what is now called Johnson Space Center), and lived there from age 2 (1962) through my graduation from University of Houston (1981). At various times I've lived in NY, FL, CT, and the Republic of Korea, in addition to TX... but I've never lived in CA.

Sorry for any confusion.

the GOP caucus is insisting on balancing the budget entirely with cuts. The fun part? They won't identify the cuts and haven't proposed a balanced budget of their own.

Yes, they have, at least twice, but the Democrats in the legislature (and amongst the citizenry, it seems) ignored them.

Meanwhile the Democrats tried to pass illegal tax increases with their little "but they are fees" fiasco.

Enough of the taxation. Stop making the taxpayers pay for the idiocy of the politicians.

these bozos give me the finger as they blast past in their $40,000 SUVs... all the while claiming they couldn't possibly afford to pay one more penny in taxes.

Fuck you and your stereotypes. It's not a matter of being able to pay more, it's the fact that we shouldn't have to continually get financially raped for the fuckheads in Sacramento. The money they get now has been squandered by the billions. Is it really unreasonable that people don't want to pour more of their hard earned money into a festering rathole of proven waste and corruption? IS THAT REALLY SO FUCKALL HARD TO UNDERSTAND FOR YOU IDEOLOGUES? I guess it is, because folks like you just blindly demand higher taxes and we NEVER hear a peep out of you for more accountability in the spending.

Now don't you go ragging on New Math. I had it in 5-6th grade circa ~1972 and think it served me quite well. The class was a self-paced one based on SRA unit cards -- anyone remember those -- with the teacher there to facilitate learning, but she knew the material (at least I think so... it's been a few years). Once you got past the boring stuff like long division you got to learn all about Venn diagrams, alternative bases, permutations, etc. Quite cool, and much more useful in the long run (to a physicist/computer professional) then long division.

I spent grades 7.75 - 12 in CA public schools + 4 years at Berkeley, but Prop 13 only hit very late in the game (1978, my junior year of high school) so the impact hadn't yet taken hold so much. It probably also helped that I was in a very good district (in the upscale part of silicon valley) so large class sizes and bad facilities weren't yet a reality. Heck, I took calculus based physics class and got community college credit for calculus my senior year.

This discussion also seems to overlooked a major point of Zimmerman's, namely that it isn't all about money, it's how it's spent. But I (and he) don't mean that in the "oh, those evil unions and bad teachers and overpaid administrators" way that the twits above rail against. The state does spend a lot of money on prisons that are a horse-has-left-the-barn approach to some social issues. Money that if it had been wisely spent on schools in the first place would have dampened the need for prisons.

Who was it who said, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." ?

"Sorry for any confusion."

Sorry for my abbreviation illiteracy.
;^ )

"IS THAT REALLY SO FUCKALL HARD TO UNDERSTAND FOR YOU IDEOLOGUES?"

Gee... I hope Winter took his blood pressure medication today.

Hmmm. I had just been thinking we should all congratulate ourselves for this civil, informative, information-dense thread... but it looks like we've had a bit of an ideological invasion. Sad: I used to be a fan of Rush (the Canadian power trio, not the American rightwing blowhard), but now when I see someone posting under 2112, I just brace myself for the Randite rant. Anyway...

Winter (@70):

these bozos give me the finger as they blast past in their $40,000 SUVs... all the while claiming they couldn't possibly afford to pay one more penny in taxes.

Fuck you...

Well, thanks for the offer, but mindful of the uncertainty inherent in your gender-neutral nickname, I think I'll pass.

...and your stereotypes.

The thing is, it's not a stereotype, nor even a hypothetical: I'm reporting an actual, personal, front-line experience I had during my town's budget referendum campaign. And, I might add, an experience emblematic of many other similar encounters that I have actually experienced.

It's not a matter of being able to pay more,

It's certainly not a matter of ability to pay: The cars and clothes and homes of the people I have in mind (again, I'm talking about specific real people, not some collection of stereotypes or strawmen) demonstrate fairly conclusively that they can afford to pay. They just don't want to... presumably because they care far more about their own bottom lines than they do the sinking fortunes of the town they inhabit.

...it's the fact that we shouldn't have to continually get financially raped for the fuckheads in Sacramento.

Read much? My story had nothing to do with Sacramento. In fact, the town I'm talking about — in Connecticut — is a whole continent away from Sacramento.

THAT REALLY SO FUCKALL HARD TO UNDERSTAND FOR YOU IDEOLOGUES? I guess it is, because folks like you... [emphasis added]

Wow. And you want to lecture me about stereotyping? It's a funny old world, innit?

I guess the education you get really depends on the area you're in. I went to CA schools my whole life, from 1990-1995 in San Diego and 1995-2002 just north of Sacramento. I had a great education, especially in high school. My school was ranked very highly, had an excellent range of AP classes, tons of technology, and teachers that for the most part actually knew what the hell they were talking about (even if the conservative parents in the area didn't like it). My brother went through the same schools I did and we both got into UC schools with no problem. I'm now a happy graduate of UC Davis (with a chemistry degree) and working in a fantastic lab in Wisconsin.

Hrmmph. Administrators, especially vice principals, are always the first target. Show me an administrator who's genuinely slacking off and I'll agree wholeheartedly that s/he must go... but s/he must be replaced by someone who'll do the work. Anyone who thinks being a vice principal is some sort of featherbed job for slackers just hasn't spent much time in a school: Vice principals (or deans or house masters... whatever your school system calls them) have invariably been the hardest working and least appreciated people in every school I've been associated with. When you cut these positions, the administrative and disciplinary work they do lands back in the classroom, where it diverts time, energy, and attention from the teaching and learning that's supposed to be going on there.

Um, where were did you go to school where Vice Principals dealt with discipline problems (other than their "zero tolerance on fighting back" policy).

In short, I pointed out the vital connection between how resources are used and the quality of the product. Just throwing money at a problem won't do a thing, it's how you spend that money.

Adequate funding is not a sufficient condition for a school to be successful. It is, however, a necessary one.

@Winter
"The money they get now has been squandered by the billions."

Please show us on what the money was wasted. I'm not saying there is not any waste but I'm curious as to how you arrived at such an enormous figure and where you think it all went. It certainly hasn't gone into the education system.

"Because folks like you just blindly demand higher taxes and we NEVER hear a peep out of you for more accountability in the spending."

If you had read my posts you would see that I suggested that we shift education costs away from property taxes. Also please show proof that we don't want accountability in spending. I for one certainly do and would expect the others here probably agree. But I would be surprised to see any facts showing systematic waste and corruption in the payment of teachers, purchase of school supplies and the building and maintenance of decent schools. Yes I'm sure there some anecdotal examples like the LA school built on a toxic site (of course those responsible for the contamination didn't have to pay to clean it up) but it would be peanuts compared to the bigger picture.

I attended schools in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and Alaska and except for a small district in OK ('68-'69), the VP handled all disciplinary matters.
In OK got swats from a music teacher when I was in 4th grade.... lol

It turns out that just today the San Francisco Chronicle published data comparing California per-pupil spending with other states:

national average: $9963
1. Vermont: $15139
47. California: $7571

Consider that California has unique problems that are not present in Vermont, such as funding translators/bilingual education for the 91 different languages used by students in the Los Angeles School District.

California public schools are starved for money.

Winter is right. I mean, why should people have to pay to support the upkeep and progress of the society they depend on?

The Google put an advert along the bottom of the video which said "Is evolution just a theory? You can prove creation. Send for a free booklet www...."

Who do I send the Irony meter repair bill too?

You don't need federal funding for schools; state funding would work just fine. The important thing is to have an idea of how much is needed per student and make sure that the schools get it. Right now you have funding by municipality and that lets developers and local governments cut out the poor by making new and rich enclaves into separate districts; then you have things like 4:1 funding discrepancies.

#47: The tune was borrowed from an old Tom Lehrer song about the Army, if my memory serves.
As the product of West Virginia's public schools (my elementary school had four rooms), California doesn't sound too bad to me.
Why do I feel a powerful desire to purchase a George Foreman Grill?

Bill@58

Much of North Carolina is a disaster, not far removed in character from the hinterlands of Alabama. However, Chapel Hill, surrounded by Duke (my employer), UNC, and one of the largest concentrations of research facilities in the world, happens to be a happy blue island in a sea of red.

When they were planning on building a state zoo, Jesse Helms (RIH) said that they should just put a wall up around Chapel Hill.

We are also known as the Berkley of the South.

Oh, and the concentration of PhDs is off the charts.

For all you folks fighting about money: The issues are simple:

1. Smaller class size = better education. Always.
2. Get better teachers (lets you get even more effect from #1)
3. Parents - get involved

You know, those of living in the first world have got to realize that the only competitive edge we have in the world is our educational system and the technology based economy it engenders. Loose that and we're just fucked.

#79:

"Please show us on what the money was wasted."

We can start with LAUSD Belmont Learning Center. The school will have cost taxpayers an estimated HALF BILLION when it is completed.

http://www.fulldisclosure.net/belmont_learning_center_and_LAUSD.htm

sparkomatic #72

Who was it who said, "Taxes are the price we pay for civilization." ?

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. Google is your friend.

@AaronF
"We can start with LAUSD Belmont Learning Center. The school will have cost taxpayers an estimated HALF BILLION when it is completed."

Apparently you didn't read my post completely before you reacted because I had already referenced that school:

"Yes I'm sure there some anecdotal examples like the LA school built on a toxic site (of course those responsible for the contamination didn't have to pay to clean it up) "

So do we now punish students and teachers for the mistakes made by others? Is your solution to let CA schools continue to decline?

I am always amused that companies and corporations waste incredible amounts of money every year in bad investments, failed products, etc and the consumer ultimately ends up paying for all of it but you never hear the right complain about it. But dare something done by the government be wrong and they scream the sky is falling and civilization is near the end.

Ulysses S. Grant H.S., Van Nuys, late 1970's, was a great school. Cal. St. Northridge, early '80's, great education. The reason it went so well for me: my parents.

@mayhempix:

I didn't suggest at all that we punish students or teachers. And considering that my son will be entering LAUSD in a few years, I certainly have an interest in the system improving. However, it's NOT a financial problem. Education is over half of the CA state budget. We have some of the highest paid teachers in the country. There's plenty of money, it's just not being spent wisely.

We need a change in philosophy if we are going to improve our schools. We need to encourage more parent involvement. We need to get kids out of permanent ESL classes and immerse them in English so they can learn. We need to stop lowering the passing scores for high school exit exams (currently 8th grade math and 10th grade english). We need to motivate kids to learn instead of pushing them through the system so they can be "someone else's problem". If we don't solve a lot of these issues, no amount of money in the world is going to improve education.

Azkyroth (@77):

Um, where were did you go to school where Vice Principals dealt with discipline problems

In every school I've ever attended (TX), taught at (TX + 2*NY), or had a student enrolled (FL + CT), vice principals (or the equivalent officer by some other title) have been the first-line disciplinarians, with principals getting involved only with the most serious cases, or repeat offenders. I thought that was the pattern pretty much everywhere (I've had this conversation with lots of parents and teachers from other states, and you're the first one to question it); have you had some other experience?

It amuses me that I have seen so few mentions of the Silicon Valley in this thread. I am pretty sure that the school systems of many Silicon Valley cities are among the best in the nation--I would say they are just plain *the best* in the nation, but I do not know how well-supported by evidence such an assertion would be. In any case, I resent us being lumped in with "the California educational system".

"We need to encourage more parent involvement. We need to get kids out of permanent ESL classes and immerse them in English so they can learn. We need to stop lowering the passing scores for high school exit exams (currently 8th grade math and 10th grade english). We need to motivate kids to learn instead of pushing them through the system so they can be "someone else's problem". If we don't solve a lot of these issues, no amount of money in the world is going to improve education."

Agreed.

But we also need schools with bathrooms that work, air conditioning, etc, especially in the inner city and East LA. That does cost money and it has to come from somewhere. Otherwise we will be paying much more on the back end with crime, teenage mothers and enriching the private prison developers.

AaronF,

Education does take up a sizable chunk of the CA budget, but it's still well short of 50%. What I am curious about is where the spending increases over the last 5 years were going. Was it across the board or targeted in specific areas? California's budget in 2003-2004 was 40 billion dollars less than 2008-2009 (an increase of about 40%).

Bay Area student,

I was also lucky enough to attend well-funded, academically excellent public schools in CA (not Silicon Valley, but one of the other good districts in the state). I'm not worried about the stained reputation of my education because I'm busy getting pissed off that my friends 17 y.o. brother is not getting the same quality out of LAUSD. It's hardly productive to say "Oh, but *my* education isn't like that."

If you really have a vested interest in the reputation of your education, you can use your own example to raise the bar. What our districts can show people is how much funding is necessary, as well as what level of parental involvement and administrative competency it takes to run a public school well. And, with so many people trying to undermine the public school system in favor of privatization, we are living proof that public school can work.

I wish people knew about the system in CA before they talk about it. Kids aren't in permanent ESL classes. They are in regular ed. classes after a year or two. This is law as of about 10 years ago. Most of the research says that is the wrong approach but it defies common sense so we stick them in academic classes that they will fail in and then blame them. Tenured teachers can get fired but the administrators have to do their job. If you don't teach the district standards, you can get fire. Almost every school offers quality education. Students have to take it. I know of plenty low scoring schools which provide AP classes, etc. If the culture of the students is such that they value non-education life-style, it will show up in their school. And no, you can't take two science classes and be qualified to teach science in CA.

Posted by: Dan | January 14, 2009 10:01 PM
"I wish people knew about the system in CA before they talk about it. Kids aren't in permanent ESL classes. They are in regular ed. classes after a year or two. This is law as of about 10 years ago. Most of the research says that is the wrong approach but it defies common sense so we stick them in academic classes that they will fail in and then blame them."

You are partly right but there are schools, although only a few, that take a different approach. Edison Elementary in Santa Monica is a bilingual school that starts 10-90% English to Spanish with English increasing 10% each year. My son who was a native English speaker went there from K-3. A great many of the students were Spanish native speakers along with the English native speakers. Both groups became bilingual with Spanish speakers easing into all English classes.

Having been a participant at each corner of the educational triangle (Student, Parent, Teacher (private school)) I can only say that each one has to do his part. My three sons (cue music) were essentially educated in the Los Angeles USD. However, I'd like to point out that all three people in that triangle participated in the child's education. Or were coerced, on the case of a couple of the children. Take any vertex away, you got nothin' but a flatliner. Anyone can make up a ditty, but only a pile of work by those involved can make a decent education. I can try as I might in front of my physics class, but if they don't want to be there, they're not going to learn. I think the guy has a cute little satyrical ditty, but I wholeheartedly disagree with him. Failures abound, for certain. But successes abound for much more sure, or California wouldn't be the 5th largest economy in the world (last time I checked), ahead of many nations. I grew up in a small town in sunny Cal that had, and still has, a blue ribbon rating 40 years later. LAUSD still has plenty to offer, believe it or not.

Bill Dauphin, #46

What rant? I liked New Math. New Math was neat. New Math was keen. New Math asked that you understood what you were doing. My beef is with the way it was implemented. In too many cases there was no education in the subject for the teachers, or even education in how to teach it. It's the lack of preparation that killed New Math, preparation that would've made it much easier for it to be taught.

Where Knockgoat is concerned, he is informative and helpful when he doesn't get all bent out of shape. I suspect he has conservative tendencies, since liberals just do not behave in a disagreeable and disparaging manner. He is not, I must point out, a closet conservative. That is something else entirely. I do think he's more apt to go conservative for people you would not.

Going on to enthusiasm my reference was to a class, boring teachers. A lucky child it is who never encounters a boring teacher in all his school days. If you can't rouse a little interest in what you teach, find another job.

A lot of the higher ed money in California is wasted on bloated salaries for administrators.

If they want to save they system, they should start chopping at the top.

Charles B Reed
Chancellor Of The California State University
$421,500

Mark G. Yudof (UC President) will receive a compensation package valued at $828,000 in the 2008-09 year.

It's disgusting.

I also attended the nice shiny new California public schools in the 60's, and had a fantastic experience and great teachers. I loved school so much I had perfect attendance almost the whole way through.

My kids also got a great public education here-- but only because we live in a well-to-do community that funds almost all the extra good stuff (free music lessons starting in second grade; a GATE program; museum and other field trips), and even some of the necessities (enough teachers so that we can have small class sizes), through a very wealthy Ed Foundation. That's how it's done in California now, and it's completely unfair.

Cal George, maybe you should start the ball rolling by taking a pay cut of your own. One dollar a year sounds right.

In case you are interested, which you aren't, those position probably pay less than the going rate for the #1 and #2 people in a major university, much less for the whole state system.

This is the first time I've ever felt qualified to post an opinion here. You folks are fantastic! A shame facilis won that last one.

So Like Anyway, I went to California schools with good teachers in a rich area, and now I teach with a lot of good teachers in a underperforming high school in LAUSD. You can't lay all the blame on the teachers lack of credentials, training or motivation. Where I work a sixth grade reading level gets you into AP classes, and those kids do wind up in college. You could do a lot worse for students, believe me.

There simply are too many kids who think they're stupid and would rather play video games or listen to music than do anything related to getting an education. They're not interested in what you've got to teach them and they've decided not to learn anything. They really have made the choice to blow school off. Many won't bring anything but a pen to class and won't read anything you assign. Some are lazy, and others just have too many hassles to be able to sit down anywhere quiet and try to do homework. A lot of them don't have a quiet spot to study at home or on campus, and they to walk to school with the rest of the 2500 kids who file in every day.

I'd love to meat the policy maker who could do better than we are with kids who come into our schools. The days of the provisional long-term sub assignments are long past, so I don't know where a minor in science gets you a job. A lot of folks I know get a masters to fulfill their BTSA when they start. We're not all stupid lazy incompetent drunks. In fact there are very few of us left.

Me: CA public school system born and raised. LA and Silicon Valley primary/secondary. UC San Diego.

Now: 8th grade science teacher, East San Jose. 90% Hispanic. 95% free/reduced lunch. 70% ELL.

My thoughts: I also hate the tenure system but that's not really the problem. The problem is not our inability to fire bad teachers, it's our inability to find good ones. Since the new millennium, we've never had a fully employed special ed department and we've had constant problems with math/science. The only math teachers we can ever find are the retired engineers. I really appreciate that they're trying to give back, but white males, in their 50's and 60's, haven't adjusted well to my school and my students.

Where tenure really sucks: Because of budget cuts, we're cutting about 20% of our teaching staff in the district. I think that's about 50 teachers. You get this list of seniority with additional "points" (like Master's degree, spec ed credential, bilingual credential). They pretty much tell you a number and if your seniority number is lower, you're pink slipped. This is without regard to quality and with only the barest nod to need.

Bonus New Math comment: New Math is better than what was inflicted on me. Because of my sister's math struggles, my mom enrolled us in Kumon. I was always good at math but I really, really, really hated it after a year of Kumon. For those of you who don't know, it comes from Japan and is essentially time tests. You get a time test. You get it scored. If you do well, you get another one! If you're lucky, you get an even harder one! Math was my favorite subject but my interest and grades went straight down when I started Kumon.

@61

I agree. The CBEST was about the easiest thing I've ever taken. That and a BA qualifies you to be a sub, not a teacher though. Sure it's easy, but just like with perm teachers I think our problem is with finding them at all rather than getting rid of the bad ones and replacing them with good ones. One of the upsides of a recession is there are a lot more subs around. The last three years have been impossible to find subs and mostly we'd just sub for each other during our prep periods.

To actually be a teacher you usually need to go to a credential program which is generally 2 years post bachelor's. You can either have a major in your subject area (or a minor with a few additional classes) or you can test through with the CSET. Reforming our teacher prep system would probably go a long way to school improvement.

Side note: Part of the problem with our educational system can be seen in the CSET itself. It assesses trivia, especially for primary. You get questions like, "What type of space is used when jumping rope?" which nobody would care to know. I think the correct answers are "high space and personal space" but I can't quite remember.

Since we've come back 'round to New Math, and I'm now sitting at a non-firewalled computer...

Enjoy!

In every school I've ever attended (TX), taught at (TX + 2*NY), or had a student enrolled (FL + CT), vice principals (or the equivalent officer by some other title) have been the first-line disciplinarians, with principals getting involved only with the most serious cases, or repeat offenders. I thought that was the pattern pretty much everywhere (I've had this conversation with lots of parents and teachers from other states, and you're the first one to question it); have you had some other experience?

Don't confuse "having nominal responsibility for discipline" with "dealing with discipline problems."

And no, you can't take two science classes and be qualified to teach science in CA.

My seventh grade science class, at W. E. Mitchell Middle School in the Folsom-Cordova Unified School District, was taught by a credentialed PE teacher who was under the impression that humans were the only organisms with fully four-chambered hearts. Explain.

Lodi Unified School District, Tokay High. Three of my teachers won statewide awards for excellence (two from English classes, and my Chemistry teacher). My band director went on to a college professorship the year after I graduated. National Merit Scholarship Finalist. My brother, same school system, actually got a scholarship from them-- and we both won Omaha Woodsmen's History Awards. I joined the International Thespian Society due to my school's extracurricular program. There was little room for bullying at Tokay High, and the cliques, such as they were, were never exclusive, but fluid groups of people with shared interests.

When the administrators take care of their actual jobs and create a positive environment with room for creativity, the teachers and the students tend to thrive.

#110 when were you in seventh grade?

Today teachers teaching outside their credential, such as PE teachers teaching science or history are usually targets when accreditation review teams come through. Schools face sanction for such placements. It is a different environment now than when I started teaching ten years ago. Even then teachers teaching out of their major/ credential were rare. Now you can't even get a job without a preliminary credential in the subject you plan to teach

Posted by: CalGeorge | January 14, 2009 11:31 PM
"A lot of the higher ed money in California is wasted on bloated salaries for administrators.
If they want to save they system, they should start chopping at the top."

Do you feel the same about corporate CEOs and sports figures? The reason the UC execs are paid those salaries is because that's what it takes to lure that caliber of talent away from the private sector.

What's good for the goose is good for the gander. The free market that sets the bar. One of the rightwing hypocrisies I never understand is why the church of the free market should be unregulated but somehow educators must be exempt.

Grammar Police #113

"The free market sets the bar."

@113: One of the rightwing hypocrisies I never understand is why the church of the free market should be unregulated but somehow educators must be exempt.

Well, that's 'cuz education is forced on future slavesworkers by TEH GUMMINT, and anything TEH GUMMINT does is wrong. Of course, if we just privatized the schools, we wouldn't need to do that anymore, and then everything would be okay. We'd just teach kids how to be good consumers and good wage slaves, and the world would inch closer to perfection.

@Nerd of Redhead
"...those position probably pay less than the going rate for the #1 and #2 people in a major university..."

I was always of the understanding that the University of CA system was a major system consisting of world class campuses including UC Berkeley, UCLA and UC Irvine.

"LAUSD board vote 4-2 to send out teacher layoff notices"

"This country always screws teachers. Always..."

http://crooksandliars.com/john-amato/lausd-board-vote-4-2-send-out-teac…

Azkyroth (@109):

Don't confuse "having nominal responsibility for discipline" with "dealing with discipline problems."

Perhaps I've just been lucky (admittedly, most of the schools I've been associated with have been have been relatively comfortable middle-class schools, comparatively free of endemic, structural discipline problems), but all of the vice principals/deans/house masters I've been associated with over the years have worked very diligently at discharging their responsibilities... and most of them (though not all) have been good at it.

I don't want to make unwarranted assumptions about you, but in my experience people who dump on vice principals often do so without much actual personal knowledge, often based on ideological punditry or perhaps a sensational anecdote or two.

To be sure, there's no job or profession in which you can't find some fools and slackers... but my experience has been that the vast majority — apparently a higher percentage than many other professions — of educators (including administrators) are diligent and selfless in their dedication to their duties.

As a society, we haven't always prioritized attracting the very brightest and most talented into education, and that's reflected in the meager pay and benefits we typically offer public-school professionals... but conversely, the people willing to nevertheless accept that meager pay are perhaps more likely than folks in better paying professions to be in their field for idealistic or altruistic reasons.

Mayhempix:

I was always of the understanding that the University of CA system was a major system consisting of world class campuses...

Maybe I misunderstood, but I thought Nerd was saying precisely that the UC system was world class, and thus those folks CalGeorge named were underpaid relative to their peers, rather than overpaid as CalGeorge had implied.

One of the rightwing hypocrisies I never understand is why the church of the free market should be unregulated but somehow educators must be exempt.

Once again, amen, brother!

@Bill Dauphin
"... thought Nerd was saying precisely that the UC system was world class..."

Are you trying to claim that I misinterpreted another poster?
That would be a first!

;^ )

Last I knew, Presidents of world class universities, which includes UCB and UCLA, were getting seven figure salaries. If they were in charge of the total state system (which also appears to be the case in Minnesota with PZ), I would expect even more recompense. Which is why I made my remark to CalGeorge. He doesn't believe in paying the going rate for executives/funraisers. So, so he doesn't deserve the going rate for whatever he does.

Time for me to pony up a little money for UCB. They are in charge of Seti at Home. ET, where are you?

"Right. Because people willing to work for the public, typically for less compensation than their private-sector counterparts..."

Hardly, but maybe my situation is different. the Central Labor council (of 3 people max) for the AFL-CIO has EXcellent medical coverage. The benifits are really the gold lining in union work. And i don't know about the "for less mantra" either, becasue all the minumum wage fights were union based, and most union jobs that i can think of pay rather well. The ones you are thinking of are the top 2-3% earners (read, "the bosses")of private companies.

but speaking of "for less", why don't government officials get payed less? A large portion of what they do is covered by taxes, and the benifits (once again) are amazing. But this will be an interesting discussion, if i can find me someone who takes personal offence at that. I honestly have never heard the other side of the equation before...

RickrOll (@121):

I think you misunderstood me: I wasn't saying union members make less than non-union members; I was saying teachers make less than private-sector workers with similar levels of education1, experience, and ability. This has been true everywhere I've lived, even when the teachers have been well represented by unions and even here in CT, which (IIRC) is statistically one of the most favorable states for teacher pay.

I've been both a teacher and a white collar worker in the private sector. I know I worked harder (despite the superficial appearances of short days and lots of time off), earned less, and got less in benefits as a teacher than in the office environment. Depending on where you teach, tenure rules, and the state of the private-sector economy, you might have slightly better job security as a teacher... but even that's no guarantee, and it doesn't really offset the other deficits.

but speaking of "for less", why don't government officials get payed less?

Why should they? Why is it that folks assume a person's labor is worth less because s/he works for the people instead of doing the same work for some corporate master?

A large portion of what they do is covered by taxes

So? Since when is the source of the funds a good way of determining the value of someone's labor? What you're really saying is that you expect the people who work for you (as a member of the public) to give you a discount because... well, for no reason, really, other than you just don't feel like paying them what they're worth.

But I'm not sure your premise is even correct. If by "government officials" you mean civil servants, I don't know what the numbers say about comparing their compensation to private-sector equivalents. My guess is it's no better, and likely less, but that's only a guess.

But if you mean elected officials, I know you're wrong: IIRC, the POTUS makes roughly $400,000 (plus, of course, some very fancy housing and expenses); members of Congress make lower, but still 6-figure, salaries. Sounds pretty nice, eh? Except that look who these people are, the level of responsibility they have, and the "opportunity cost" of the careers they might have if they weren't in public service. Barack Obama, for example, would make more money at almost any of the many positions he's qualified for, given his education and experience. He will be effectively the most powerful CEO in the world, yet the actual CEO of any decent-sized corporation will make more money in a single year than Obama will make total, even if he stays in office the maximum 8 years the law allows. Similarly, dozens if not hundreds of U.S. CEOs, lawyers, entertainers, athletes, authors, artists, etc., will make more in the coming year alone than most current members of Congress will make in their whole careers. Think of the pay cut Al Franken will be taking when he's finally confirmed as Minnesota's new senator.

At the state, county, and city levels, too, most elected officials make far less than they could be in the private sector (and, BTW, it's often very difficult for them to supplement their incomes with other work, due to the demands of their public employment and limitations arising from ethics rules). In small towns and other municipalities, elected officials often serve for no compensation at all, or perhaps for a token honorarium: In my town, the Town Council and Board of Education get no pay, and the mayor gets the equivalent of a small half-time salary (and, I'm pretty sure, no benefits whatsoever). As our current mayor is kind of a tool, it doesn't break my heart too much... but still, it's hardly some lucrative sinecure.

I think far too many fail to realize how often public service really is just that: service.
_____
1 Keep in mind that in most states a teacher with anything more than a couple years' experience is essentially required to have an advanced degree. Many have more than one, and significant additional coursework and inservice training, by mid-career.

My three kids are being raised in the California public school system.

Well, actually, no. They're going to schools in the California public system, but the schools here in my neck of the woods are largely paid for by the Eureka Schools Foundation.

Y'see, we're a fairly affluent area of exurban northern California. Lawyers, engineers, doctors, and so forth - a bunch of highly-educated folk, who know the value of education, who see that the local schools are starved for cash, and many of whom earn enough money that they can afford their house and lifestyle on a single income.

So a lot of our spouses do a ton of volunteer work and raise a ton of cash for the local schools.

And as a result our schools rock on toast. There are Promethean Boards in every classroom in the junior high school and several in the upper-elementary classes. My kids (in second, fifth, and seventh grades) are in choir, band, orchestra, and Spanish, all paid for by the ESF. My oldest is going to Europe this year, and DC next, on school trips.

And as I type this he just finished a fun homework project - a time-travel brochure selling the reader on visiting the Cambrian, decorated with some art we found on this very site. My second-grader can do long division and work with negative numbers; my fifth-grader is doing early prealgebra.

And one of my kids has mild OCD+Aspergers symptoms, and the schools have bent over backwards for him -- because they have the resources to do so -- and as a result he's pulling straight A's, instead of being a chronic problem kid/underachiever.

The people who say the deficiencies in our schools can't be solved with money are fucking morons. We have awesome schools here -- because we pay for them.

The people who say the deficiencies in our schools can't be solved with money are fucking morons. We have awesome schools here -- because we pay for them.

Amen, brother!... but kids' access to awesome schools shouldn't depend on the luck of having been born into "a fairly affluent area of exurban northern California[: l]awyers, engineers, doctors, and so forth," which is why I still say we need a comprehensive way of ensuring that we (i.e., all of us) pay for all our schools... and do so adequately.

Dauphin,

"Barack Obama, for example, would make more money at almost any of the many positions he's qualified for, given his education and experience."

So what does he do the job for, power? It wasn't that long ago, that O'Bama was a lowly state legislator in a machine politics state, ruled by nepotism. How good an attorney was he? He never made more at any of the positions he held. Edwards made far more as an attorney. Obama wasn't particularly notable as a US Senator. What he excelled at was being a candidate for election, even there he made terrible mistakes and benefitted from kid gloves treatment by the press. Perhaps though, he has just never had a chance to show what he could do. He definitely has put together a high profile cabinent, but is perhaps overly impressed with those who were politicians. What will be the consequences of a high profile cabinent? Perhaps high profile cabinent heads will be lightning rods for blame for any failures, protecting him. After all, how can Obama be at fault, he selected someone of such stature and respect. The Senate agreed and approved them with little delay. Was he wrong to defer to such high profile people, when they were closer to the problem? Perhaps all these high profile people are sacrificial lambs in waiting.

eyelessgame@123,

You paint a luxurious education system, supplemented by funding going to substance rather than salaries, enhanced by spouses probably a notch above the teachers in educational attainment and paid far less. But can you point to attainment beyond the usual expected of the children of such parents?

Dauphin@124,

One way to assure that all of us pay for all of our schools, is vouchers, because currently we aren't paying for the private and parochial schools. Are you sure such a system would be better?

africangenesis (@125 & 127):

Before I start, just a quick comment: Your writing makes you sound like you're an American (though of course it's hard to tell on teh intertooobz), so I assume you're aware that using someone's last name only in casual personal conversation (which is the closest model for this sort of communication) is generally considered rude... and thus, since I'm one of those rare folks who comment under an actual name and you choose to use only my last name, I assume you've been being deliberately obnoxious to me each and every time you've addressed me. If that's not what you had in mind, do please let me know, won't you?

Now to the point...

So what does [Obama] do the job for, power?

You'll no doubt laugh at my answer, but what do I care for that?

I haven't met Obama, so I can't swear this is true for him, but for all the elected political figures I have meant, the answer would be that they do the job because they believe the job needs doing. It's obvious (because we sometimes catch them at it) that some are involved in politics out of a lust for power or fame or some other form of self-aggrandizement... but in my experience and observation, the vast majority of public servants do what they do because they want to serve the public. Their altruism is arguably heroic; it doesn't strike me as a good excuse for screwing them on payday.

As for teachers, I never met one who went into teaching to make money. Almost without exception, the teachers I've known could have made as much or more at far less stressful and demanding jobs... but they typically love kids and are dedicated to the vital importance of education, so they make a financial sacrifice in order to do important work. I'm just saying they shouldn't have to make a financial sacrifice in order to do important work.

Two points: First, the people who say what's wrong with the public schools is that teachers and their unions are lazy and greedy are just flat wrong. And second, it's easy to imagine that there's a large pool of people who are bright and talented and hardworking but just a little bit less altruistic, or who are not in a financial position to indulge their altruism, and those people might represent a massive upgrade to the teacher workforce if we were just willing to pay them well.

One way to assure that all of us pay for all of our schools, is vouchers, because currently we aren't paying for the private and parochial schools.

[sigh] The voucher thing, huh?

First, there aren't nearly enough private schools to take over any significant load from public schools, so what's a voucher program going to accomplish other than give public-dollar scholarships to families that would go to private school in any case? Second, a big part of what makes private schools look good compared to public schools is that they get to pick their students, and thereby simply ignore many of the socioeconomic and community issues the public schools must confront. If you force private schools to take voucher students on an unbiased basis, you'll be destroying their so-called advantages.

And finally, two philosophical difficulties:

1. According to a tiny little thing called the Establishment Clause, we (aka the people, aka the government) should never be paying for parochial schools... and it's impossible to imagine a politically viable voucher plan that excluded them.

2. The essential feature of public education in a democratic society is that it's accountable to the public. Private schools, OTOH, are accountable only to the families and donors who pay for them (and, BTW, the fact that some of the families got a government handout that helped them pay wouldn't change that). If you tried to fix this through regulations mandating public accountability, you'd be effectively nationalizing the (formerly) private schools... which is not, I suspect, what you have in mind.

Personally, I think we'd be better off if there were no private schools at all, and we instead had universally well resourced public schools. I'm not quite radical enough to advocate banning private schools, but I will oppose any effort to expand their overall role by state action, or to divert public funds from the public schools for the benefit of private education.

California kid 6th grade through high school, starting in 1962. Back in them olden days, LAUSD had enough money for art and music classes. I made terrible pottery. My junior high music teacher let me know me it was okay to laugh during "Pictures at an Exhibition". I learned to drive at high school. One of my HS English classes was all Shakespeare and I still have the books we used.

However, I came from a family that was all reading, all the time, museum goers, college educated parents, etc. so my siblings and I had an "enriched" environment. It helps.

Bill@128

I didn't know using the last name, per se, was rude in the United States, I thought it depended upon the intonation. I chose Dauphin because it was more unique and I though it would make your searches for your reponses more efficient. If whether I intended offense contributes to whether you take offense, then rest assured, I rarely ever intend to give offense, and did not in this case.

The public school teachers unions almost univerally are jealous of their monopoly on the public treasury and oppose measures for school choice and competition. I don't think they are percieved as lazy but it can seem hard to fire the incompetent, and the perception of greediness probably comes from a perception that they have long vacations, private school teachers work for less, and they strike for higher pay collectively not based on individual merit and with an anti-trust exemption that allows them to extract more than their market value. Since we are relating anecdotes, most teachers I've met who are disillusioned with the system blame the paperwork, regulations and administration. They like being in the class teaching the students, but feel that is no longer enough to justify the strait jackets and hassle. Some opt to work for less at private schools, or just to go into the private sector. The beaurocratic control also drives students to other majors.

The private schools don't have to take on a significant part of the load to have a salutory effect, the competition will enable reform, efficiency and competition for the parents and students. The private schools are at least accountable to someone, but public schools are allowed to persist without having to justify their existence.

The establishment clause hasn't proven a barrier to student loans, and tax credits for religious reasons, and other funding at the university level. Vouchers may be able to pass legal muster also.

There is an essential conflict of interest in having public schools in a democracy, since the state is molding the citizens rather than the citizens controlling the state. The abuse of power represented by state employees in positioons of authority, pressuring students to pledge allegiance to the state, is compounded by the sheer monotony of its mindless repetition like a mantra. It shows a lack of respect for the childs time and the childs honor. After all, it the child really meant the pledge, once should have been enough. Such commitments should await the age of majority.

but kids' access to awesome schools shouldn't depend on the luck of having been born into "a fairly affluent area of exurban northern California

Yes, absolutely.

We are talking about possibly having to use fundraised money to save some teachers' jobs next year instead of being able to use it on enrichment. I hope I didn't obscure my point: if you want better schools, pay for them. In most places where people don't have the luxury of our fundraising volunteerism, that means you have to pay taxes if you want an educated populace.

The argument that this doesn't improve schools is, as I said, nonsense. Our schools are better than the schools around them for the simple reason that they have more money. I don't know a single school that can't be made better by spending more money on it.

And it stuns me that supposed capitalist/free-marketeers don't see that. Don't they think you can get a better product if you're willing to spend more money?

And it stuns me that supposed capitalist/free-marketeers don't see that. Don't they think you can get a better product if you're willing to spend more money?

Well, you're very close to uncovering their dirty little secret: It's not that they don't see that they'll get a better product if they spend more money; it's that they don't want the product to be better. They want public schools to fail, because they're ideologically opposed to the concept of public schooling. (Not for nothin', but I'm personally convinced that's why No Child Left Behind was designed to be punitive rather than supportive: They didn't want to fix troubled schools, they wanted to catch them failing.)

Before you write me off as paranoid for saying that, I've actually had one or two unusually honest right-wing libertarian types admit that's what they want. Most will not admit it, and many rank-and-file conservatives, I suspect, don't realize (or can't admit to themselves) that's what their movement's leaders are after... but that is the right-wing program for public education.

I've mentioned it here before, but let me renew my recommendation for Thomas Frank's The Wrecking Crew. It doesn't address education specifically, but it does detail the right's propensity for attacking "ideologically unsound" government functions through defunding and incompetence.

Bill,

Make that three. It is just wrong to institutionalize children in the factory model schools.

"No Child Left Behind" is just a reminder of how undemocratic the Democrats are. They lobbied long and hard for primary and secondary education to become part of the federal agenda. "Republicans didn't care" they cried. Whereas Republicans had always cared for public education, but just believed in local and parental control. So, Bush, "the education president", gave the Democrats the federal involvement they had been whining for. Except now it has become quite obvious that these central planners had the mistaken belief that they would never lose an election. That is a rather undemocratic assumption don't you think? The other big government central planners, the communists and fascists, had the intelligence to recoganize that if the create this central control apparatus, they had better not have two or multi-party elections ever again. The government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take everything you've got. (to paraphrase Barry Goldwater, who was paraphrasing someone else).

africangenesis:

I'm short of time, so forgive my brief skipping through your comment.

I don't think [teachers] are percieved as lazy

Then you haven't been listening to the arguments I have: Whenever budgets are tight (and when are they not these days?), the "Vote No" forces invariably attack public workers in general and public school educators in particular as overworked and underpaid... which invariably gets blamed on their "greedy" unions.

The private schools don't have to take on a significant part of the load to have a salutory effect, the competition will enable reform...

The "competition will make them better" argument only holds if the problem is they're not trying hard enough, and you assume competition will force them to try harder. That's not the problem in most public schools.

private school teachers work for less

Keep in mind that some nontrivial fraction of private school teachers are nuns, brothers, and priests who've taken a vow of poverty. Also, some private schools pay poorly because they're struggling financially (remember, one aspect of a private school is that it's free to go bankrupt, leaving its students high and dry... I taught at just such a school very early in my career). But at the well funded, elite private academies that (I suspect) everyone has in mind when they extoll the virtues of private schooling, I'm pretty sure total compensation does not lag behind public schools.

There is an essential conflict of interest in having public schools in a democracy, since the state is molding the citizens rather than the citizens controlling the state.

This upside-down-and-backwards argument is based on the (IMHO rather paranoid) notion that "the state" is some sort of malevolent external force, distinct from "the citizens" and bent on fell brainwashing. In fact, in our system the state is the citizens... or at least it is if we're doing it right, and "doing it right" involve educating future voters. And BTW, the part of "the state" that controls public schools is almost always a locally elected school board... which is one of the most accessible of all our democratic institutions (in terms of both getting elected to it and being heard by it). We're not talking about some politburo in a secret bunker, here; we're talking about your neighbors.

BTW, don't let those "long vacations" fool you: By any honest accounting for time (including massive work outside the classroom and far beyond the school day), I'm absolutely convinced that the average public school teacher puts in far more total hours each calendar year than his/her counterpart in the private-sector white-collar workforce. (Remember, I've done both. I don't have tons of data at hand, but I'm not just makin' shit up, either.)

[Democrats] lobbied long and hard for primary and secondary education to become part of the federal agenda.

We wanted the public schools improved (and we still do); the Republicans wanted them lined up and shot... and that's what NCLB was all about.

Every time I hear somebody call Bush "the Education President," I throw up a little in my mouth. Feh.

Only about 85 hours left, as I type this.

The competition argument doesn't depend on "they're not working hard enough", the requirements of living in a competitive world can also free up the beaurocratic constraints and allow more of that hard work to be productive, or innovative or to cater to special interests.

Many thinking of private schools do think of the parochial schools which did so much with less. Many teachers today who have NOT taken a vow of poverty, much prefer teaching in a more free environment over the higher pay of public schools.

The paranoid notion that the state can be a malevolent force is what our constitutional system of checks and balances is based upon. Of course, this was not enough, it depended upon a certain amount of statemanship and integrity in those taking the oath to uphold it. The supermajority provisions have proven inadequate. I'm not sure there can be any lasting protection of minorities without political power. In this internet age, I don't think we need the geographical representation of the House of Representatives any more. I propose a proportional representative system by "subscription", anyone that can sign up the prescribed number of voters can serve regardless of geography. That way minorities such as libertarians might get the 10 to 20% representation to be a power that both sides have to compromise with. It is a more parliamentary style system. The senate should probably be retained as is, to preserve the power sharing compromise between the rural and populous states.

africangenesis:

I posted my last reply in haste, before it had fully sunk in that the opening words of your comment...

Make that three.

...were intended as a self-identification with the "one or two unusually honest right-wing libertarian types [emphasis added]" I had previously mentioned. Now that I grok the ideology I'm talking to (and admittedly it was somewhat dense of me not to twig sooner), I judge there's not much point in talking to it further.

More broadly to the Pharyngula community: I'll be offline for several days starting right after I hit "post" on this... because I'm going to be in DC partying like it's 2009. See y'all on the other side.

AG, vouchers are only fair if the public schools can offload some of their disciplinary problems unto the private schools. If private schools want to except vouchers, 15% or so of the student body should be assigned to them. Then the public schools can assign the gangbangers the private schools wouldn't normally accept, and that level the playing field, since then the private schools would either have to educate the gangbangers or lose the money. Once that happens, the only advantage the private schools have, which is parental involvement, will go away. Their supposed advantage will go away.

As an actual LAUSD teacher from a PI5+ school that has after-school enrichment programs, and art and music and theater during the regular day, and gangs and LEP students and poverty all the extreme discipline problems and social problems along with our AP classes and free lunches, I've got to say it's very entertaining to watch non-teachers discuss my profession.

NCLB may be a big smelly turd designed to get every kid a voucher so they can learn that the reason there aren't any more dinosaurs is because Noah didn't take them on the ark. Even if it is, where I work it has forced us to align our classroom assessments and pacing with the tests of the state standards. It has forced us to chase grants restructure our departments and scheduling. It has forced us to disaggregate testing data to determine what math and language skills we need to focus on, and stop living in a dream world where if we outperform the other overcrowded school down the road we pat ourselves on the back.

Now I'm no cheerleader for the district, or their priorities, or how they spend money. I could go on for days with all the fuckups I've seen or been affected by, but free and appropriate public education is essential for a free society.

nerd@138,

Can't you think of voluntary solutions to problems? Progressives apparently don't believe in gun control when it comes to government guns.

Voluntary means optional, which means it won't work. Or at least it means people in poorer areas can be made to choose what they can afford. Have people had guns on them in my class? Probably, though I'm not afraid I'll be shot. Regulations are doing fine, really.

Anyway, government guns aren't for use on our citizens, and private gun hoarders are likely as not denialists about something. People who think they need the law to protect them from the government which wants to take their guns as the first stage of the establishment of the NWO, which is really just the apocalypse in modern terms so don't get vaccinated because it's just mind control don't need access to assault weapons. But then with Iraq winding down maybe we'll have our own versions of Quantril's Raiders coming to my neighborhood, so maybe I'd better start sandbagging and stocking up on .223

Must needs coffee.

I'm shocked! Shocked! I say.

Do you mean to tell me that Aaron Spelling has been lying to me in his documentary "90210"?!

Theo@141,

Madison appeared to view guns and the second amendment as about more than just hunting, but as one of the checks and balances against tyranny. Something similar to the right to another revolution. He seems to assume that local governments would participate in the solution, he must have envisioned the states and localities remaining more independent than they have since the FDR administration.

http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2008/06/madison-fede…

90210 was in fact accurate about the high school I went to except without the radio station. I can't imagine my current job would make good TV.

The most interesting thing I have noticed is the language shift. When I started working maybe ten kids in a class of 40 would speak English only. Another ten wouldn't understand a word of it and speak only Spanish. Both of these subsets would do okay with the Spanish speakers able to get help translating their written work. The remaining 20 were unable to speak either English or Spanish fluently and would putter along in one language before shifting to the other. They'd be failing all their classes and write things like, " I hope you liks this ting cuz it's my berry good won." Now days all my students converse among themselves in English and write poorly, but in complete sentences. To all those worried about the effect on their local schools of Spanish speaking immigrants I'd say wait it out. Language goes out the window first

As far as gun rights go I just don't see the cause for alarm. It's not like a closet full of guns will protect you from the tyrants, who probably have a closet of their own, and a church full of supporters with their own weapons cache, cops, lawyers etc. You might be able to hold out for a day or two, but this aint 1776 and a brown bess, or its modern equivalent, and a hideout in the woods won't do much good against the forces that can be brought to bear.

Theo@144,

It depends on how good the citizens are at assymetrical warfare. Look at how the two DC sniper loaners were able to bring the economy of a whole region to its knees. It was so successful, and they were only caught because of extreme hubris, that I am surprised it hasn't be repeated, and must wonder what it says about the socialization in the US. Is that really all the extremist loaners the third most populist nation in the world can produce?

I hardly think the DC snipers are guardians of liberty. I don't think Madison would have seen it that way either. Romantic notions of bygone days don't just afflict the religious it would seem.

So what's next? 9/11 truth? Bilderbergers? Masons? I've got a feeling I've heard this before I just need a little help remembering where.

theo@146,

You are right, the DC snipers had the opposite in mind, but they demonstrated the vulnerability of modern societies and how mass media amplifies the terror. You know this site better than I do, what next, "The science of climate change is settled."?

The biological speciality here is the octopus, not the ostrich.