There isn't "the" solution. I qualified this in my first post when I stated 'any discussion about funding". It's merely one example of inefficient spending. We should stop comparing the two countries because by and large, in the US, it's a local issue, and it's not really productive to compare national aveages.

Generally the issues with US schools (pre - k thru 12):

1. Not enough funding - this affects everything from facilities, cleanliness, extracurricular activities, equipment, teachers pay, etc. etc.
2. Low teachers pay - forces talented teachers who have better paying alternatives to disappear.
3. Too many students per teacher - a huge factor to a student being engaged with their studies
4. Religious crap in schools - sled explanatory
5. Stupid school schedules that are different from 9 to 5 job schedules - this impact parents more than students particularly Pre-K.

Ideally if I was emperor of the US, this is what I will do:

1. All pre-k to 12 schools are now funded directly by federal government. Funding is not based on income of parents or businesses in town. Funding will be based purely on student age population. Funding per student will be the same as that of the best school district in the country.

2. Teachers pay will be competitive similar to a registered nurses pay.

3. There will be a universal limit to # of students per class, can base this # on some simple studies.

4. Obviously, no religious crap whatsoever. Any organization pushing for religious crap in school, I, as emperor, will go to their place of gathering and personally torch it to the ****ing ground.

5. Preschool will be available for kids starting at age 2 or if they are already potty trained.

6. All schools will be open from 8am to 6pm. Core classes will only take a portion of the time. There will be more extracurricular activities kids can join if they choose. They can choose supervised play time, quiet time etc if they want. This helps kids, but parents as well.

Could you please give an example of "religious crap" currently being taught in public schools?

How would you explain the excellent quality of education that children receive in Catholic schools? Many non-Christians send their kids to Catholic schools because the parents know that their kids will receive a top-notch education.

Almost all of your ideas make a lot of sense, in my opinion.

Yeah that was a cute little anti-religion tangent that completely ignores the blanket superiority of parochial schools, even those in otherwise incredibly shitty districts.

St. Marcus in Milwaukee is a fantastic example of this. Worth noting that their attempts to expand to a second location via a long-vacant MPS school were thwarted by the district for reasons that nobody understands even years later. It's still empty, but now the district is paying a premium to lease it back from the insider they sold it to to keep it out of the hands of St. Marcus. It's all about the kids, until some uppity parochial school starts getting too big for their britches and risks snatching up another few hundred kids off the scrap heap that is public education in Milwaukee. MPS doesn't want to lose the funding vouchers that are attached to those kids.

Teaching children inaccurate information, such as young earth science, as part of their physical cosmology curriculum.

Nothing against parochial school except for the religious part.

Praying and learning any religious dogma needs to be thrown out for obvious reasons.

Learning the various religions as cultural practices around the world in a religious studies class is fine, and encouraged just like other extracurricular activities.

Learning religious crap as truth will not be tolerated.

That happens mostly in your head. Schools still have to follow DPI rules, and I can promise you that there are very very few schools teaching about Noah in the Earth Science books. The ones that are, are probably off-grid in the back mountains of Utah on some compound.

It may surprise you to know that plenty of non-religious people send their kids to religious schools specifically because of expected educational outcomes. Their kids do have to sit through chapel on Wednesdays, though.

I have concrete proof of two specific schools in Utah. I don't know how many others schools, obviously and only know of these schools for very specific reasons. Some areas fly under the radar more than I had realized in that regard. I popped in here to make that controversial statement because i knew it was true.

But yes, it's an outlier and definitely isn't a part of students curriculum for the overwhelming majority of public schools because it isn't legal to do so.

A part of the muslim community thinks it's a good idea to fly airplanes into buildings as part of some holy war. Let's not make blanket statements using the tiniest of minorities as our evidence.

Lol, no.

My high school in 2013 still taught young earth creationism and Noah's ark as fact. Noah's ark is taught in biology to explain biodiversity and to explain why ocean fossils can be found on mountainsides. I also remember one assignment from biology class was to write an essay about why the theory of evolution has been disproven (I got an F for disagreeing with the prompt and disciplined).

This was in the california bay area, not in the back mountains of Utah or on a cult compound. I could tell you what we were taught in Wednesday chapel but you wouldn't believe me.

I think you're probably exaggerating, but if not, at least we know this school does not get any public funding.

Same experience for my son that graduated in 2011, metropolitan Idaho, tg.

McGraw Hill publishes science textbooks in use today teaching creationism. They don’t explicitly say creationism is true. They just use language that suggests “evolutionist” beliefs are not in line with a belief in God and/or language putting evolutionists/creationists on equal footing suggesting they are equally credible.

Some districts forced publishers to add disclaimers that evolution is a theory, not fact.

Creationism has no place in modern science textbooks other than as footnotes clearly labeling creationism as unsupported by any evidence.

I only mentioned the tamest things they taught (young earth creationism/noah's ark) because I didn't think you'd believe the wilder stuff.

You're right though, they don't receive public funding. Though it's for their admission policies, not because they teach young earth creationism.

It's already impeding on the child's learning if one classroom teaches that 1+1=2 and your next classroom teaches 1+1=9.

Teaching young earth cosmology in public schools definitely is a problem, but as you acknowledge, this isn't a common practice in public schools. Thus, it isn't persuasive evidence that religion is a root cause of widespread problems in public schools.

There is overwhelming evidence that the earth is billions of years old. What is the overwhelming evidence that Darwin was wrong?

If this school's admissions policies had not precluded public funding, the school's curriculum would have.

I agree that there isn't any one solution, but what you're concerned about is way down the list IMO.

There are a number of reasons not to directly compare countries and draw definite conclusions about what that means without considering the whole context. I'm simply providing the comparison to show that what you assume to be a big issue may not actually be one.

Saying it's a "local issue" highlights one of the problems the US faces. National averages work quite well here, because we have a fairly equitable system that doesn't lead to wildly different results. Large inequities lead to "local" problems, which can be a nice way of saying inner city problems, or low income problems, or minority neighborhood problems.

But this response has neatly dodged my question and supposition (changed "the" to "a" to reflect the point you raised):

"Why is it you're so sure that a solution lies in merit-based pay? It seems to me that will do nothing more than make an existing problem worse - too much emphasis on standardized testing, and rewarding districts, schools, and teachers whose students achieve the best results on said tests."

I think most of your ideas have at least some (and often a lot of) merit. This one, not so much IMO.

I don't think there's much denying that with an unlimited budget, smaller class sizes are better. There's a lower limit, because there are benefits to students learning together and from each other, learning to interact and work together, etc. But because we don't have unlimited budgets, I think a lot of the time, too much is made of class size when there might be other places to spend money that would provide more of a benefit. And deciding on one ideal class size for everyone, everywhere, isn't a good or efficient way of doing things. Unless you mean a fairly high limit of 30 or more that no one would exceed, and then some classes would be smaller. But I would hope this wouldn't have much of an impact anyway, as it wouldn't change many actual class sizes.

Let's assume for a second that you are correct about there being a "blanket superiority of parochial schools". Have you considered why that might be? Do these parochial schools have a mix of students from different cultures, socio-economic background, family stability, parent involvement, learning abilities, English language proficiency, as other schools? In my observation, schools with unique programming and high achievement rates never have the same composition of students, and that's the biggest reason for their differing results.

I don't know what itshot means by "blanket superiority", but there is no way that all parochial schools are better than all public schools. That isn't close to true. There are plenty of public schools that are better than parochial schools and vice-versa.

FWIW, I don't have the impression that parochial schools are full of super rich kids. In cities like New York, religious schools tend to be much cheaper than other types of private schools.

Agreed.

Right, which is why I brought up a number of differences that could exist.

And that's not to say that there are not some schools out there, parochial or otherwise, that will achieve better results with pretty much any student composition. But I think that oftentimes, school achievement rates are looked at and compared without considering the full context.

This is 95% of educational success. It matters early on, and it snowballs.

That's why throwing money at failing districts that typically already spend as much as double that of the suburban ones do per student is just a waste of resources and more importantly, a waste of time and hot air as people argue about it. Gotta address the underlying problems and the education outcomes will follow.

Nope. No matter how many ways you reframe this, it doesn't stop being cold, callous, and completely incorrect.

My wife works with kids that fit those very categories, and is able to help many of them. It's not perfect, and obviously the outcomes aren't the same, but it's well worth the effort. And if you want to look at this from a purely fiscal standpoint - what do you think the cost to society will be if we just give up on 15% of kids like you seem to think we should?

Also, if you truly have districts in your area that are spending double what other districts are and getting worse results, there are clearly some pretty serious issues that need addressing. It could be that the money is being spent very poorly, but I'd be more concerned that there are some big social/financial inequity issues underlying all of this. Pretty tough to fix the education issues without addressing those.

You mean inso?

@BoBo Fett


I don't know where you are getting merit based pay, especially after I clarified. I'm talking about getting rid of bad teachers. The return/results of the money the US spends on education is abysmal. Are you are telling me there is no reasonable way assess good/bad teachers? If so, I call bullshit on that. Finally, the process to fire a teacher in many places is wrinkled with red tape.


On another note, in the US, contracts with unions are not national, they are local, and there are hundreds of them.

There is no way anyone can say with any degree of seriousness that better teachers should not be a focus (which means getting rid of bad teachers).