No, it really is about costs. Public school spending in real terms has skyrocketed in the past few decades and there are no tangible increases in student ability to justify them.
Even assuming that is true in Wisconsin (it is elsewhere I know.) but that's mostly because of bureaucracy and horrible inefficiency in administration. You don't solve that problem by taking a hatchet to the education budget though. You know why? Those exact same people responsible for the waste are the ones that allocate funds. Who do you think they'll lay off first? (Hint: Not themselves)
It'll just result in the more educational programs cut at more schools so the football teams can still get new jerseys and gear each year.
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Think of the education cuts as an exciting opportunity to consolidate costs in both the K-12 and University systems. Especially at the university level, giving the axe to a few dozen administrators at each campus and making professors profess are promising suggestions for cost containment.
A significant section of the local cuts were addressed by the pension and health benefit reforms passed earlier as well. I know how popular those were.
Would you consider getting laid off to be an exciting opportunity to re-evaluate your standard of living? Mostly snark, I just like the "exciting opportunity to do more with less!" thing.
Most people don't trust that education funds will come back easily because the GOP has always run hard with "economy in shambles? CUT TAXES TO SAVE IT!" followed by "economy doing awesome? CUT TAXES!", there is no point where they go "okay, now's the right time to restore all that funding"
edit: and yeah, cutting school funding does not result in taking a long hard look at education. It results in cutting fine arts programs in favor of a new gym.
Think of the education cuts as an exciting opportunity to consolidate costs in both the K-12 and University systems. Especially at the university level, giving the axe to a few dozen administrators at each campus and making professors profess are promising suggestions for cost containment.
A significant section of the local cuts were addressed by the pension and health benefit reforms passed earlier as well. I know how popular those were.
See, I see what you're saying with the "help cut out of control costs!" But, what I ultimately have problems with is your line of thinking isn't that, it's "Fucking teachers get way more fucking benefits than I do and their fucking unions, god what the fuck they don't deserve that, I don't even get this. Also making my fucking taxes through the fucking roof, what the fuck, this fucking $200 more a year is killing me because I spend it all on fucking lottery fucking tickets and hope to win fucking big someday. Then I'll live like a king because all of us republicans take fucking care of each other. Fuck the unions, corrupt assholes."
No, it really is about costs. Public school spending in real terms has skyrocketed in the past few decades and there are no tangible increases in student ability to justify them.
You're going to have to cite that shit. Thing is, though, that even if you prove that costs have risen out of proportion with inflation and population growth (weaker dollars and more people obviously means more costs), please explain to me what measure you're using for student ability to justify putting a hard price tag on it.
Is it because young people are voting more and more Democratic?
I thought it was common knowledge that U.S. public ed was expensive, sucky, and getting more expensive and sucky. I'll be happy to put you into the know.
I'm sorry to be flip. But for decades now we've heard the demand that government needs to be more like business. Can't it be more self-sufficient, more attuned to the bottom line?
Well, yes it can. This is what it looks like.
Florida's governor was also elected for this reason. I don't know what it's going to take for people to realize that the most efficient businesses are cold, ruthless enterprises, and not something they actually want running their society.
The dark comedy of it all is that the expansion and vertical integration of the state, and state service providers, is the exact opposite of what these people want, but a good move for a business tasked to provide these things.
No, it really is about costs. Public school spending in real terms has skyrocketed in the past few decades and there are no tangible increases in student ability to justify them.
Even assuming that is true in Wisconsin (it is elsewhere I know.) but that's mostly because of bureaucracy and horrible inefficiency in administration. You don't solve that problem by taking a hatchet to the education budget though. You know why? Those exact same people responsible for the waste are the ones that allocate funds. Who do you think they'll lay off first? (Hint: Not themselves)
It'll just result in the more educational programs cut at more schools so the football teams can still get new jerseys and gear each year.
Sounds like you need to run for school board.
Would you consider getting laid off to be an exciting opportunity to re-evaluate your standard of living? Mostly snark, I just like the "exciting opportunity to do more with less!" thing.
Most people don't trust that education funds will come back easily because the GOP has always run hard with "economy in shambles? CUT TAXES TO SAVE IT!" followed by "economy doing awesome? CUT TAXES!", there is no point where they go "okay, now's the right time to restore all that funding"
edit: and yeah, cutting school funding does not result in taking a long hard look at education. It results in cutting fine arts programs in favor of a new gym.
Sounds like you need to run for school board.
I'm really not kidding, if you think it's being handled poorly in your location you need to do something about it. Go to a meeting, run yourself, political assassination, open rebellion, strongly worded letter, whatever.
FPA20111 on
The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
FPA, your graphs indicate that there hasn't been a change in some odd 30-40 years. That could mean one of three things. Either learning has stagnated completely, the scores are accurate of performance and it's not measuring amount (statistically speaking, the averages are the same, but whereas 5 people in 1976 graduated, 1000 people graduate in 2011 ), or there is no measurable difference in the skill levels because we're still teaching the same skills.
This isn't "teachers are getting paid too much." This is "governors are mandating recycling of 60 year old text books because we don't have the funds to upgrade them." More than anything.
I had something else I wanted to say but I forgot because I am a seething fountain of hatred.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
Why is "no change" so expensive? Adjusted for inflation, it costs us double to do the exact same thing today as it did in the 1980's. Are washing machines twice as expensive? Air conditioners? Cars? There's just no reason for American public ed to cost as much as it does and be as bad as it is.
Why are our results so bad compared to other nations when we spend so much money comparatively?
This is getting pretty far off topic, we should probably reel it back in to Wisconsin oriented things.
FPA20111 on
The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
No, it really is about costs. Public school spending in real terms has skyrocketed in the past few decades and there are no tangible increases in student ability to justify them.
Even assuming that is true in Wisconsin (it is elsewhere I know.) but that's mostly because of bureaucracy and horrible inefficiency in administration. You don't solve that problem by taking a hatchet to the education budget though. You know why? Those exact same people responsible for the waste are the ones that allocate funds. Who do you think they'll lay off first? (Hint: Not themselves)
It'll just result in the more educational programs cut at more schools so the football teams can still get new jerseys and gear each year.
Sounds like you need to run for school board.
Would you consider getting laid off to be an exciting opportunity to re-evaluate your standard of living? Mostly snark, I just like the "exciting opportunity to do more with less!" thing.
Most people don't trust that education funds will come back easily because the GOP has always run hard with "economy in shambles? CUT TAXES TO SAVE IT!" followed by "economy doing awesome? CUT TAXES!", there is no point where they go "okay, now's the right time to restore all that funding"
edit: and yeah, cutting school funding does not result in taking a long hard look at education. It results in cutting fine arts programs in favor of a new gym.
Sounds like you need to run for school board.
I'm really not kidding, if you think it's being handled poorly in your location you need to do something about it. Go to a meeting, run yourself, political assassination, open rebellion, strongly worded letter, whatever.
Why would I run for a school board? My state's education seems to be in a perfectly fine place. Amusingly, so does Wisconsin's from every metric I can easily find.
edit: to point out: I didn't say "I think it's being handled poorly in my location", I grew up in west Texas however, and know first hand that "we have less money this year" means my music teacher is being let go, but we're getting bunch of new sports equipment!
If lots of funds are getting spent on education but the results don't seem to be in line with that, the solution is to revamp the educational system, not blindly hack from the budget.
He campaigned on fixing the deficit without raising taxes, 3 billion dollars had to come from somewhere. Education, medicaid, and personnel costs make up the overwhelming majority of every state's budget.
"The top-10 ranking puts Wisconsin in a dubious group with California, a state that issued IOUs to contractors earlier this year. Wisconsin is ranked ninth-worst, tied with Illinois."
"...put the state's finances in better shape than they've been in for more than a decade".
I realize nobody here is likely to care, but if anyone felt like being an objective critic of Wisconsin's government, they should at least mention how the budget is balanced (in the manner he promised) before launching into "Walker hates the children".
And all it took was lying, cheating, trying to hand supreme power over to a corporation, trying to pin everything on black people, threatening to run fake candidates to make sure you stayed in power, and basically being fucking Doctor Octopus to do it.
Way to go, Walker. Now the only thing Bankrupt is the Wisconsin Governments morals!
Why is "no change" so expensive? Adjusted for inflation, it costs us double to do the exact same thing today as it did in the 1980's. Are washing machines twice as expensive? Air conditioners? Cars? There's just no reason for American public ed to cost as much as it does and be as bad as it is.
Why are our results so bad compared to other nations when we spend so much money comparatively?
This is getting pretty far off topic, we should probably reel it back in to Wisconsin oriented things.
Because we insist on treating education differently from everyone else, and pretending we're special snowflakes. See the same reason we spend so much on healthcare compared to everyone else.
We're also increasingly mandated to teach the controversy, which wastes money and doesn't increase our children's ability to reason at all. Oh, and we can't talk about how there may be some people who like other members of the same sex. Feel free to waste your school years trying to figure yourself out instead of doing school work. Or Texas's recent attempt to rewrite American History for no actual educational value, just because they wanted people to believe something other than what actually happened. And we could get into sex ed not covering.. anything about sex or education.
Seems to pretty nicely point to "it's not because we're paying our teachers too much", our school system has just become less "how to educate our children and teach them to reason out answers to things they don't understand" and more "how can I make sure these children come out having the same world view I do"
Education reform is a serious concern in this country. But it's solved by actually looking at what is wrong with the education system, not cutting all their funding and demanding they figure out a solution. That's pretty much what NCLB tried to do. "If you don't improve, you'll get less money!" which just means a struggling school becomes a failing school. This is not a business, children are not employees. We do not have the luxury of saying "look Bobby. You're just bad at math. So we're letting you go."
The more and more I hear about school boards the more and more I'm beginning to think they ought to be done away with. I can get the idea in principle. You want school policy to be able to be tailored to fit the locale. But more often then that school boards like to create their own little fiefdoms all over the country in rural areas or anywhere nobody pays attention.
I really wonder if we need to just entirely axe local control of school boards, or at least set up a more federalized federal and state set of minimal requirements that local school boards need to abide by. Is there anything uniquely useful they still do we can't replace better elsewhere?
If the best you can come up with against someone who's patently ignorant is to yell back at him, "Yeah? Well there's BOOKS, and they say you're WRONG!"
Then honestly you're not coming out of this looking great either.
Think of the education cuts as an exciting opportunity to consolidate costs in both the K-12 and University systems. Especially at the university level, giving the axe to a few dozen administrators at each campus and making professors profess are promising suggestions for cost containment.
A significant section of the local cuts were addressed by the pension and health benefit reforms passed earlier as well. I know how popular those were.
See, I see what you're saying with the "help cut out of control costs!" But, what I ultimately have problems with is your line of thinking isn't that, it's "Fucking teachers get way more fucking benefits than I do and their fucking unions, god what the fuck they don't deserve that, I don't even get this. Also making my fucking taxes through the fucking roof, what the fuck, this fucking $200 more a year is killing me because I spend it all on fucking lottery fucking tickets and hope to win fucking big someday. Then I'll live like a king because all of us republicans take fucking care of each other. Fuck the unions, corrupt assholes."
No, it really is about costs. Public school spending in real terms has skyrocketed in the past few decades and there are no tangible increases in student ability to justify them.
You're going to have to cite that shit. Thing is, though, that even if you prove that costs have risen out of proportion with inflation and population growth (weaker dollars and more people obviously means more costs), please explain to me what measure you're using for student ability to justify putting a hard price tag on it.
Is it because young people are voting more and more Democratic?
I thought it was common knowledge that U.S. public ed was expensive, sucky, and getting more expensive and sucky. I'll be happy to put you into the know.
Probably just needs more money thrown at it. And maybe we could unionize the unions, so they can represent while they represent.
Thank you for citing your references.
First of all, I see that the charts you reference are from 2006 and appear to be at the height of No Child Left Behind stupidity, which was the ham-fisted Bush answer to education.
Secondly, you report the flatline on 17-year-olds in math, but not their 16 point increase in reading over the last three decades, or the drastic increases in 9-year-olds' proficiencies in several areas. In short, you're cherry picking this data, yo.
And... Heritage Foundation? Get the heck outta here. At least I have the decency to be embarassed when I have to quote DailyKos.
The fact of the matter is that Wisconsin has good schools and well educated students. It is part of their culture to have healthy, well adjusted students. Walker is going to increase class sizes, make them use out-of-date textbooks, and shatter their hopes of getting a post-secondary education. In short: West Virginia.
Another issue is that, while Walker ran on not raising taxes, he did not run on cutting taxes. Given that the bulk of the deficit he's claiming to be trying to fix is filled by the tax cuts he shoved through, his extreme budget cuts are not what Wisconsin voted for.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
FPA20111 on
The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
If lots of funds are getting spent on education but the results don't seem to be in line with that, the solution is to revamp the educational system, not blindly hack from the budget.
Indeed. If results have flat-lined while cost has increased, cutting costs certainly isn't going to improve results, nor should it be assumed that those rates wont plummet.
Bad analogy: If, despite pay raises, the X department has turned out a shitty product for the past 5 years, then laying people off isn't going to make the product any better. It will reduce the cost of that product, but it's still going to be a piece of shit; if not shittier than before.
Generalized spending cuts are no better a solution than blind increases, and now you're potentially fucking up the infrastructure and exacerbating whatever the actual problem is. It is a solution that has lost sight of it's intent. Schools are supposed to educate, not 'cost less,' and this only serves the latter.
The more and more I hear about school boards the more and more I'm beginning to think they ought to be done away with. I can get the idea in principle. You want school policy to be able to be tailored to fit the locale. But more often then that school boards like to create their own little fiefdoms all over the country in rural areas or anywhere nobody pays attention.
I really wonder if we need to just entirely axe local control of school boards, or at least set up a more federalized federal and state set of minimal requirements that local school boards need to abide by. Is there anything uniquely useful they still do we can't replace better elsewhere?
You mean like setting up national and state standards that school districts are supposed to teach? Because they're already doing that.
The problem of having the federal government controlling education is the states get all pissy about states rights.
And as a future teacher, the idea that taking money out of the program will somehow help it is hilariously laughable to me. There are a ton of problems with the education system, taking away money will not fix any of them.
When you're talking about how much the US spends on education, it's important to bear in mind that we send more kids to college than almost any other nation, and that the percentage of students going to college has been increasing rapidly. That makes direct comparison kind of difficult.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices.
Yes. A tough choice, however, is not the same as a constructive change. Many seniors face a tough choice between medication or food. That doesn't mean we should cut Social Security.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
The goal of a business is to make money; firing unproductive employees is one way to do that. The goal of a school is to educate children; cutting costs is unlikely to make that any easier to achieve.
Think of the education cuts as an exciting opportunity to consolidate costs in both the K-12 and University systems. Especially at the university level, giving the axe to a few dozen administrators at each campus and making professors profess are promising suggestions for cost containment.
A significant section of the local cuts were addressed by the pension and health benefit reforms passed earlier as well. I know how popular those were.
See, I see what you're saying with the "help cut out of control costs!" But, what I ultimately have problems with is your line of thinking isn't that, it's "Fucking teachers get way more fucking benefits than I do and their fucking unions, god what the fuck they don't deserve that, I don't even get this. Also making my fucking taxes through the fucking roof, what the fuck, this fucking $200 more a year is killing me because I spend it all on fucking lottery fucking tickets and hope to win fucking big someday. Then I'll live like a king because all of us republicans take fucking care of each other. Fuck the unions, corrupt assholes."
No, it really is about costs. Public school spending in real terms has skyrocketed in the past few decades and there are no tangible increases in student ability to justify them.
You're going to have to cite that shit. Thing is, though, that even if you prove that costs have risen out of proportion with inflation and population growth (weaker dollars and more people obviously means more costs), please explain to me what measure you're using for student ability to justify putting a hard price tag on it.
Is it because young people are voting more and more Democratic?
I thought it was common knowledge that U.S. public ed was expensive, sucky, and getting more expensive and sucky. I'll be happy to put you into the know.
Probably just needs more money thrown at it. And maybe we could unionize the unions, so they can represent while they represent.
Thank you for citing your references.
First of all, I see that the charts you reference are from 2006 and appear to be at the height of No Child Left Behind stupidity, which was the ham-fisted Bush answer to education.
Secondly, you report the flatline on 17-year-olds in math, but not their 16 point increase in reading over the last three decades, or the drastic increases in 9-year-olds' proficiencies in several areas. In short, you're cherry picking this data, yo.
And... Heritage Foundation? Get the heck outta here. At least I have the decency to be embarassed when I have to quote DailyKos.
The fact of the matter is that Wisconsin has good schools and well educated students. It is part of their culture to have healthy, well adjusted students. Walker is going to increase class sizes, make them use out-of-date textbooks, and shatter their hopes of getting a post-secondary education. In short: West Virginia.
I'm not really cherry picking, 17 year olds are the only metric that matter. If the 9 year old is 5 points smarter that's great, but it's only relevant if he's still 5 points smarter 8 years later. The data suggests that he is not. The entire point of K-12 education is the "end result", the 17 year old. They're flat, that's kind of all there is to it.
I don't see what NCLB has to do with anything. It's a 40 year trend of cost expansion and result stagnation. I will give you that the NCLB is bad policy but it's not relevant to this discussion.
Reading is 285-286, you might have been looking at the wrong chart. 17 year olds are flat in both reading and math.
FPA20111 on
The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
It is true that throwing money at a problem doesn't solve the problem.
However, it is equally true that withholding money from a problem doesn't solve the problem either.
Too often now, and not just in Wisconsin, governments just take the lazy route. If they want something, they try to buy it (and fail). And if they're not getting bang for their buck, they start skimping... which doesn't make things better, only worse. I mean, look, if you're buying something shitty for a lot of money, the solution isn't to resolve to spend less - it's to get out there and be smarter about your shopping. Going back to the same store with less money just gets you something even shittier.
Which is really why Republican-style conservatism sickens me. Because conservatism isn't an entirely flawed political philosophy: it's just that its American proponents are lazy and stupid, and so the brand of conservatism that emerges is also lazy and stupid.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
No, it means that running something to run a profit or keep costs low makes no sense for a government or government institution because they A) have a captive revenue base and are trying to enhance the welfare instead of make a profit. That means that priorities are totally different. Paul Krugman has written about the issue in the context of economics in a seriesofessays. Really, the closest analogy that anything to do with the government would have to be a wealthy patron of the community, trying to help the community as much as possible without spending so much that he would no longer be able to help the community.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
No, it means that running something to run a profit or keep costs low makes no sense for a government or government institution because they A) have a captive revenue base and are trying to enhance the welfare instead of make a profit. That means that priorities are totally different. Paul Krugman has written about the issue in the context of economics in a seriesofessays. Really, the closest analogy that anything to do with the government would have to be a wealthy patron of the community, trying to help the community as much as possible without spending so much that he would no longer be able to help the community.
So government agencies shouldn't try to control costs because they have taxpayers hostage? That's a pretty interesting way to look at it, might explain the cost curve too. "This X is pretty expensive" "Ain't our money ololololol".
FPA20111 on
The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
No, it means that running something to run a profit or keep costs low makes no sense for a government or government institution because they A) have a captive revenue base and are trying to enhance the welfare instead of make a profit. That means that priorities are totally different. Paul Krugman has written about the issue in the context of economics in a seriesofessays. Really, the closest analogy that anything to do with the government would have to be a wealthy patron of the community, trying to help the community as much as possible without spending so much that he would no longer be able to help the community.
So government agencies shouldn't try to control costs because they have taxpayers hostage? That's a pretty interesting way to look at it, might explain the cost curve too. "This X is pretty expensive" "Ain't our money ololololol".
So you don't understand economics at all. Got it.
Really, how hard is it to understand that state revenues don't depend on supply and demand? If you rais the price of a product, you'll lose customers and may lose revenue, with the reverse for cutting prices. That never happens for government. The fact that you think you can discuss policy without understanding something that basic just goes to show how inflated your ego is.
The more and more I hear about school boards the more and more I'm beginning to think they ought to be done away with. I can get the idea in principle. You want school policy to be able to be tailored to fit the locale. But more often then that school boards like to create their own little fiefdoms all over the country in rural areas or anywhere nobody pays attention.
I really wonder if we need to just entirely axe local control of school boards, or at least set up a more federalized federal and state set of minimal requirements that local school boards need to abide by. Is there anything uniquely useful they still do we can't replace better elsewhere?
In a year or two you'll be able to see if you're right - by looking at the Detroit public school system.
Probably just needs more money thrown at it. And maybe we could unionize the unions, so they can represent while they represent.
I'm willing to bet that cutting more then a quarter of the educational budget isn't going to improve shit.
Further, For a governor that is so concerned about the budget (which he sought to "balance" at a breakneck pace) he sure as hell didn't have a hard time finding money to give away to corporate interests like... google!
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
Your adoration of the Shock Doctrine is quite reprehensible.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
No, it means that running something to run a profit or keep costs low makes no sense for a government or government institution because they A) have a captive revenue base and are trying to enhance the welfare instead of make a profit. That means that priorities are totally different. Paul Krugman has written about the issue in the context of economics in a seriesofessays. Really, the closest analogy that anything to do with the government would have to be a wealthy patron of the community, trying to help the community as much as possible without spending so much that he would no longer be able to help the community.
So government agencies shouldn't try to control costs because they have taxpayers hostage? That's a pretty interesting way to look at it, might explain the cost curve too. "This X is pretty expensive" "Ain't our money ololololol".
So you don't understand economics at all. Got it.
Really, how hard is it to understand that state revenues don't depend on supply and demand? If you rais the price of a product, you'll lose customers and may lose revenue, with the reverse for cutting prices. That never happens for government. The fact that you think you can discuss policy without understanding something that basic just goes to show how inflated your ego is.
The fuck did I say state revenue relies on supply and demand? Tax revenue is largely stable because it's fucking mandatory. I was trying to suggest that government exercise some restraint and not treat taxpayers like fucking milk cows just because it can. Your attitude of sky's-the-fucking-limit spending is the reason why we spend double today what we did 40 years ago on education and get nothing in return.
FPA20111 on
The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
Your adoration of the Shock Doctrine is quite reprehensible.
Your adoration of a socialist conspiracy theorist and a red diaper baby is cute.
FPA20111 on
The paranoid man believes that everyone is out to get him. The intelligent man knows that everyone is out to get him.
I've been presented with a fun choice, lose my job in September, take half the hours (along with someone else) or have someone who hasn't been there as long get fired. You know, because $13 an hour with zero benefits is a dire threat to the state's budget.
This ideology hurts real people directly, not some nebulous "raising taxes destroys job creation" thing, no it's a real causal "sorry you're fired" thing. I apologize FPA for losing my temper.
All I said was that U.S. education is expensive and sucked, which it is, and which it does. I never said what was making it expensive and suck. Across the board cuts would have the effect of forcing tough choices. What's it going to be Highschool X: Basketball stadium, or math//science? Although I will admit, a law mandating math//science being the right choice wouldn't be a bad idea.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
Your adoration of the Shock Doctrine is quite reprehensible.
Your adoration of a socialist conspiracy theorist and a red diaper baby is cute.
You realize in the example you posited above, in the "School board chooses between basketball stadium or expanded math and science programs" nearly every school will pick the basketball stadium? The reason being is that basketball will bring the school money (ticket/concession sales, advertising, etc etc). Math and science scores do not do this, unless the government provides some form of reward.
So if we want our children to get smarter, leaving the schools in the hands of buisnessmen rather than educators is absolutely the wrong way to do it.
Our education system is in trouble, but a lot of it is due to how relatively "new" education is. The modern education system that we have is less than 100 years old by quite a bit and relatively untested. For instance, go ahead and tell me which is better, student centered teaching, or teacher centered teaching?
Most would go "Well, you want the education to be focused on the learner, so student centered." But in fact, quite a few pieces science and studies show that most of the time student centered is actually ineffectual. But because splitting the kids into groups feels more exciting and interactive to the kids, it is recommended, and teachers giving interesting lectures get in trouble. And most school administrators want teachers doing student centered instruction.
We need an overhaul for the education system certaintly, but taking away their money won't help it.
Not to mention all the tax cuts whatnot benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
Many years ago we frequently had an award winning blue berry ice cream manufacturer come up to local school meetings and complain about the school system and what "needed" to be done. "We need to run this school district like I run my award winning ice-cream factory!", he would frequently complain, or "this would not be an acceptable expense if I were running the show!"
So, the Associate Principal of my high chool at the time asked him, "how do you make your blueberry ice-cream so award-winningly good?"
The businessman, a grin on his face as he took the microphone, began his speech, "I personally go from farm to farm and handpick only the best blueberries" He continued, "We check for roundness and make sure no bruises are on the berries, and we personally taste every batch and only use the most sweetest in the manufacturing process." He ended with what looked to me at the time as a tear in his eye, "its all in the berries."
My associate principal, stood up, and meekly took up the microphone from the now beaming businessman, and replied, "We do not get to choose the berries that enter these doors. Some are bruised or beaten. Some berries are sour and tart and some are quite sweet. Others are ripe and others rotting. We do not get to choose the berries that enter our doors. We make our icecream with what we get, and sometimes we win awards, and sometimes people think we need to get out of the business entirely.
This is what you do not understand. We are not providing a product in education. We are providing a safety net for the community, and some communities have more problems than others. Sometimes you need a drug rehabilitation program or multiple school psychologists, and sometimes all you need are experienced teachers. Sometimes you are working with students who are at a 5th grade level when they enter high school and sometimes you are overrun with students who are fighting to prove themselves in AP/Dual Credit courses.
We take in what society gives us, and our society in the last several decades has become a much more difficult place for a great many people.
Posts
Even assuming that is true in Wisconsin (it is elsewhere I know.) but that's mostly because of bureaucracy and horrible inefficiency in administration. You don't solve that problem by taking a hatchet to the education budget though. You know why? Those exact same people responsible for the waste are the ones that allocate funds. Who do you think they'll lay off first? (Hint: Not themselves)
It'll just result in the more educational programs cut at more schools so the football teams can still get new jerseys and gear each year.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/dannywestneat/2014693677_danny06.html
Would you consider getting laid off to be an exciting opportunity to re-evaluate your standard of living? Mostly snark, I just like the "exciting opportunity to do more with less!" thing.
Most people don't trust that education funds will come back easily because the GOP has always run hard with "economy in shambles? CUT TAXES TO SAVE IT!" followed by "economy doing awesome? CUT TAXES!", there is no point where they go "okay, now's the right time to restore all that funding"
edit: and yeah, cutting school funding does not result in taking a long hard look at education. It results in cutting fine arts programs in favor of a new gym.
Sounds about right. Methinks the changes, they will not be popular.
I thought it was common knowledge that U.S. public ed was expensive, sucky, and getting more expensive and sucky. I'll be happy to put you into the know.
Increases in spending charts: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#1
Amount spent, bad results: http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/index.html
Flatline results for 17 year olds, reading and math: http://nationsreportcard.gov/ltt_2008/ltt0002.asp?subtab_id=Tab_3&tab_id=tab1#chart
http://nationsreportcard.gov/ltt_2008/ltt0003.asp?subtab_id=Tab_3&tab_id=tab1#chart
Heritage Foundation because I can: http://www.heritage.org/research/education-notebook/the-facts-on-federal-education-spending
Probably just needs more money thrown at it. And maybe we could unionize the unions, so they can represent while they represent.
Florida's governor was also elected for this reason. I don't know what it's going to take for people to realize that the most efficient businesses are cold, ruthless enterprises, and not something they actually want running their society.
The dark comedy of it all is that the expansion and vertical integration of the state, and state service providers, is the exact opposite of what these people want, but a good move for a business tasked to provide these things.
Sounds like you need to run for school board.
Sounds like you need to run for school board.
I'm really not kidding, if you think it's being handled poorly in your location you need to do something about it. Go to a meeting, run yourself, political assassination, open rebellion, strongly worded letter, whatever.
This isn't "teachers are getting paid too much." This is "governors are mandating recycling of 60 year old text books because we don't have the funds to upgrade them." More than anything.
I had something else I wanted to say but I forgot because I am a seething fountain of hatred.
Why are our results so bad compared to other nations when we spend so much money comparatively?
This is getting pretty far off topic, we should probably reel it back in to Wisconsin oriented things.
Why would I run for a school board? My state's education seems to be in a perfectly fine place. Amusingly, so does Wisconsin's from every metric I can easily find.
edit: to point out: I didn't say "I think it's being handled poorly in my location", I grew up in west Texas however, and know first hand that "we have less money this year" means my music teacher is being let go, but we're getting bunch of new sports equipment!
And all it took was lying, cheating, trying to hand supreme power over to a corporation, trying to pin everything on black people, threatening to run fake candidates to make sure you stayed in power, and basically being fucking Doctor Octopus to do it.
Way to go, Walker. Now the only thing Bankrupt is the Wisconsin Governments morals!
Because we insist on treating education differently from everyone else, and pretending we're special snowflakes. See the same reason we spend so much on healthcare compared to everyone else.
We're also increasingly mandated to teach the controversy, which wastes money and doesn't increase our children's ability to reason at all. Oh, and we can't talk about how there may be some people who like other members of the same sex. Feel free to waste your school years trying to figure yourself out instead of doing school work. Or Texas's recent attempt to rewrite American History for no actual educational value, just because they wanted people to believe something other than what actually happened. And we could get into sex ed not covering.. anything about sex or education.
http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-world/
Seems to pretty nicely point to "it's not because we're paying our teachers too much", our school system has just become less "how to educate our children and teach them to reason out answers to things they don't understand" and more "how can I make sure these children come out having the same world view I do"
Education reform is a serious concern in this country. But it's solved by actually looking at what is wrong with the education system, not cutting all their funding and demanding they figure out a solution. That's pretty much what NCLB tried to do. "If you don't improve, you'll get less money!" which just means a struggling school becomes a failing school. This is not a business, children are not employees. We do not have the luxury of saying "look Bobby. You're just bad at math. So we're letting you go."
The more and more I hear about school boards the more and more I'm beginning to think they ought to be done away with. I can get the idea in principle. You want school policy to be able to be tailored to fit the locale. But more often then that school boards like to create their own little fiefdoms all over the country in rural areas or anywhere nobody pays attention.
I really wonder if we need to just entirely axe local control of school boards, or at least set up a more federalized federal and state set of minimal requirements that local school boards need to abide by. Is there anything uniquely useful they still do we can't replace better elsewhere?
Thank you for citing your references.
First of all, I see that the charts you reference are from 2006 and appear to be at the height of No Child Left Behind stupidity, which was the ham-fisted Bush answer to education.
Secondly, you report the flatline on 17-year-olds in math, but not their 16 point increase in reading over the last three decades, or the drastic increases in 9-year-olds' proficiencies in several areas. In short, you're cherry picking this data, yo.
And... Heritage Foundation? Get the heck outta here. At least I have the decency to be embarassed when I have to quote DailyKos.
The fact of the matter is that Wisconsin has good schools and well educated students. It is part of their culture to have healthy, well adjusted students. Walker is going to increase class sizes, make them use out-of-date textbooks, and shatter their hopes of getting a post-secondary education. In short: West Virginia.
The whole "education is not a business" trope is usually a feint to avoid blame for pathetic, expensive results. "50% of these children can't read" "IT'S NOT A BUSINESS, YOU CAN'T FIRE BOBBY". I mean, what the fuck does that even mean? It's not a money-making venture so we can't criticize its shittiness even though we're all on the hook for it?
Indeed. If results have flat-lined while cost has increased, cutting costs certainly isn't going to improve results, nor should it be assumed that those rates wont plummet.
Bad analogy: If, despite pay raises, the X department has turned out a shitty product for the past 5 years, then laying people off isn't going to make the product any better. It will reduce the cost of that product, but it's still going to be a piece of shit; if not shittier than before.
Generalized spending cuts are no better a solution than blind increases, and now you're potentially fucking up the infrastructure and exacerbating whatever the actual problem is. It is a solution that has lost sight of it's intent. Schools are supposed to educate, not 'cost less,' and this only serves the latter.
You mean like setting up national and state standards that school districts are supposed to teach? Because they're already doing that.
The problem of having the federal government controlling education is the states get all pissy about states rights.
And as a future teacher, the idea that taking money out of the program will somehow help it is hilariously laughable to me. There are a ton of problems with the education system, taking away money will not fix any of them.
The goal of a business is to make money; firing unproductive employees is one way to do that. The goal of a school is to educate children; cutting costs is unlikely to make that any easier to achieve.
Clearly, everyone would live if only you stopped feeding them.
I'm not really cherry picking, 17 year olds are the only metric that matter. If the 9 year old is 5 points smarter that's great, but it's only relevant if he's still 5 points smarter 8 years later. The data suggests that he is not. The entire point of K-12 education is the "end result", the 17 year old. They're flat, that's kind of all there is to it.
I don't see what NCLB has to do with anything. It's a 40 year trend of cost expansion and result stagnation. I will give you that the NCLB is bad policy but it's not relevant to this discussion.
Reading is 285-286, you might have been looking at the wrong chart. 17 year olds are flat in both reading and math.
It is true that throwing money at a problem doesn't solve the problem.
However, it is equally true that withholding money from a problem doesn't solve the problem either.
Too often now, and not just in Wisconsin, governments just take the lazy route. If they want something, they try to buy it (and fail). And if they're not getting bang for their buck, they start skimping... which doesn't make things better, only worse. I mean, look, if you're buying something shitty for a lot of money, the solution isn't to resolve to spend less - it's to get out there and be smarter about your shopping. Going back to the same store with less money just gets you something even shittier.
Which is really why Republican-style conservatism sickens me. Because conservatism isn't an entirely flawed political philosophy: it's just that its American proponents are lazy and stupid, and so the brand of conservatism that emerges is also lazy and stupid.
No, it means that running something to run a profit or keep costs low makes no sense for a government or government institution because they A) have a captive revenue base and
So government agencies shouldn't try to control costs because they have taxpayers hostage? That's a pretty interesting way to look at it, might explain the cost curve too. "This X is pretty expensive" "Ain't our money ololololol".
So you don't understand economics at all. Got it.
Really, how hard is it to understand that state revenues don't depend on supply and demand? If you rais the price of a product, you'll lose customers and may lose revenue, with the reverse for cutting prices. That never happens for government. The fact that you think you can discuss policy without understanding something that basic just goes to show how inflated your ego is.
In a year or two you'll be able to see if you're right - by looking at the Detroit public school system.
Further, For a governor that is so concerned about the budget (which he sought to "balance" at a breakneck pace) he sure as hell didn't have a hard time finding money to give away to corporate interests like... google!
Your adoration of the Shock Doctrine is quite reprehensible.
The fuck did I say state revenue relies on supply and demand? Tax revenue is largely stable because it's fucking mandatory. I was trying to suggest that government exercise some restraint and not treat taxpayers like fucking milk cows just because it can. Your attitude of sky's-the-fucking-limit spending is the reason why we spend double today what we did 40 years ago on education and get nothing in return.
Your adoration of a socialist conspiracy theorist and a red diaper baby is cute.
It shows their fundamental dishonesty.
This ideology hurts real people directly, not some nebulous "raising taxes destroys job creation" thing, no it's a real causal "sorry you're fired" thing. I apologize FPA for losing my temper.
You realize in the example you posited above, in the "School board chooses between basketball stadium or expanded math and science programs" nearly every school will pick the basketball stadium? The reason being is that basketball will bring the school money (ticket/concession sales, advertising, etc etc). Math and science scores do not do this, unless the government provides some form of reward.
So if we want our children to get smarter, leaving the schools in the hands of buisnessmen rather than educators is absolutely the wrong way to do it.
Our education system is in trouble, but a lot of it is due to how relatively "new" education is. The modern education system that we have is less than 100 years old by quite a bit and relatively untested. For instance, go ahead and tell me which is better, student centered teaching, or teacher centered teaching?
Most would go "Well, you want the education to be focused on the learner, so student centered." But in fact, quite a few pieces science and studies show that most of the time student centered is actually ineffectual. But because splitting the kids into groups feels more exciting and interactive to the kids, it is recommended, and teachers giving interesting lectures get in trouble. And most school administrators want teachers doing student centered instruction.
We need an overhaul for the education system certaintly, but taking away their money won't help it.
Not to mention all the tax cuts whatnot benefiting the wealthy at the expense of the poor.
Many years ago we frequently had an award winning blue berry ice cream manufacturer come up to local school meetings and complain about the school system and what "needed" to be done. "We need to run this school district like I run my award winning ice-cream factory!", he would frequently complain, or "this would not be an acceptable expense if I were running the show!"
So, the Associate Principal of my high chool at the time asked him, "how do you make your blueberry ice-cream so award-winningly good?"
The businessman, a grin on his face as he took the microphone, began his speech, "I personally go from farm to farm and handpick only the best blueberries" He continued, "We check for roundness and make sure no bruises are on the berries, and we personally taste every batch and only use the most sweetest in the manufacturing process." He ended with what looked to me at the time as a tear in his eye, "its all in the berries."
My associate principal, stood up, and meekly took up the microphone from the now beaming businessman, and replied, "We do not get to choose the berries that enter these doors. Some are bruised or beaten. Some berries are sour and tart and some are quite sweet. Others are ripe and others rotting. We do not get to choose the berries that enter our doors. We make our icecream with what we get, and sometimes we win awards, and sometimes people think we need to get out of the business entirely.
This is what you do not understand. We are not providing a product in education. We are providing a safety net for the community, and some communities have more problems than others. Sometimes you need a drug rehabilitation program or multiple school psychologists, and sometimes all you need are experienced teachers. Sometimes you are working with students who are at a 5th grade level when they enter high school and sometimes you are overrun with students who are fighting to prove themselves in AP/Dual Credit courses.
We take in what society gives us, and our society in the last several decades has become a much more difficult place for a great many people.