#21541: Michael Feldgarden — 04/11  at  09:08 AM
PZ,

could you say more about why some want to starve the local school district?

#21542: PZ Myers — 04/11  at  09:20 AM
It costs money to run a school. People don't want to pay taxes. Short-sighted, stupid people, that is.

And a few board members seem to consider short-sighted, stupid people their constituency.

#21543: Enigma — 04/11  at  09:24 AM
Aww, come on, how can you not like Ah-nold?

Oh, and on a side note, why the hell haven't we heard anything from Jesse Ventura in a long time?

#21548: DarkSyde — 04/11  at  10:24 AM
PZ ever think about running for a schoolboard seat?

#21589: — 04/11  at  03:03 PM
"And we want the widows and survivors of our cops and firefighters to be taken care of, the way those cops and firefighters take care of us."

so he wants the widows and survivors of minority cops to be pulled over for having their tail light out or going 5 mph over the speed limit and then humiliated, treated like a child, and searched? or maybe he wants them beaten and maced until they capitulate and confess to drug charges.

http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/2005/02/07.html#a760

cops are not heroes, and they're not helping. i know its not relevant but it pisses me off.

#21598: — 04/11  at  04:14 PM
We found it useful in our penny-pinching school district to have someone show up at all the relevant meetings and say things like these lines:

"Our kids are precious, and they deserve the best schools in the nation."

"None of us wishes our kids to sit in a 'portable' classroom to get the education they need to get through life."

"In a rational world, we want every teacher to know that our school district has the best teachers, and that the way we get them is by paying for them. There is no shame in being the New York Yankees of education."

"Good kids deserve good schools, good teachers, good books, good tools, and enough of all of those."

"Our parents sacrificed big things to get us through school. We owe it to our heritage as flag-waving Americans to make the necessary sacrifices so that our children get as much from us."

"I think we have the best kids in this (pick one: state, county, country, region, area). They deserve the best schools. Small classes are proven to give better education -- our kids deserve small classes and well-prepared, well-equipped, well-paid teachers."

Yeah, there is some begging of the question there -- but the anti-school people don't know enough about argumentation to realize that. If you're not fond of the New York Yankees, pick another championship team in another area. I guarantee you that the state champions in your state do not come from impoverished programs, in whatever area of endeavor you choose. More, everyone knows that. Make them face it.

It helps, of course, if local realtors do what ours do: They put up big billboards advertising that their developments are in our school district. It's a selling point, and it adds value to homes. That means higher property values for sellers and investors, and more property tax collections, for the taxing authorities.

Why do you suppose rich districts stay rich?

#21601: — 04/11  at  04:23 PM
I don't want to speak for anyone whose goal is to starve the school district, but even for those of us who value education and consider it a paramount responsibility to a younger generation, I think there's honest reason to question the efficacy of our current patterns of educational spending. (Note: I don't have kids and I haven't attended a public school in 20-some years, so I'm commenting from more than arm's length here and readily acknowledge that I may be mistaken; in fact, I'd welcome elaboration or correction from others more informed than I.)

My concern is this. Here in Seattle, for example, we spend about $10,000 annually per child attending public school. Yet the results are, frankly, abysmal. I heard on NPR this morning and verified this afternoon that less than 40 percent of tenth graders pass the tenth-grade WASL test, which is supposed to measure basic competence in reading, writing, and math. And that's *after* the passing thresholds were reduced in recent years.

Doing a back-of-the-envelope calculation, I figure we're spending $8-$10 per student per hour of instruction. Yet in the majority of cases, that instruction doesn't seem to be particularly effective. I'm virtually certain that, were I a parent, I could get better results from spending $10,000 a year out of my own pocket. (Think how many hours of one-on-one tutoring that would buy from, say, a small cadre of UW grad students.)

Note that I'm not advocating any particular solutions such as vouchers, home-schooling, etc. -- merely pointing out that the return on the investment we're making in childrens' education appears to be shockingly low on the whole (I'm sure there are exceptions in top-flight school districts, for example). Nor am I going to claim that teachers are overpaid or anything like that. My point is that something seems to be systemically wrong here -- educational expenditures are sizable, outcomes are poor, conditions in many schools are reputedly anywhere from mediocre to appalling (overcrowded classrooms, outdated textbooks, etc.), and yet many of the stakeholders like teachers are not adequately compensated.

Isn't there an alternative to this industrial-age/assembly-line school system that the U.S. has that would actually *educate* kids better for the money we spend? I would be much happier about the taxes I contribute if I believed they were achieving more valuable outcomes.

#21603: — 04/11  at  04:37 PM
"My point is that something seems to be systemically wrong here"

John, I work inside the system, study education, and was recently a teacher in a small rural school district, and a large suburban (low income) district before that. Your observations have a lot of truth. While various tactics have been considered and some tried, a new, accepted, educational model has yet to gel.

It is a complex situation, but without a viable, and better alternative, funding the local school district is the best choice available for the foreseeable future. Morris MN very likely has much better educational success than Seattle WA does.

#21610: Philip Brooks — 04/11  at  05:02 PM
I'm all for well-funded schools, but I don't know if raising minimum wage helps any more than it hurts. An economist friend with an otherwise liberal bent tells me that raising the minimum wage just causes the cost of living to go up by about enough to cancel it out, with a period of readjustment and layoffs between.

#21614: — 04/11  at  05:38 PM
The right-most of the right wing want to do away with public schools altogether, and starving them into submission is one tactic. Two years ago (in Minneapolis!) the leader of the Ohio wing of the Intelligent Design Network gave a talk to the gathered faithful, and in the Q&A afterward (I listened to the whole bloody tape!) one speaker said as much, to approving noises from the audience.

#21615: — 04/11  at  05:40 PM
Philip, I was tempted to comment on the minimum-wage bit as well but I figured my education screed was long enough. Still...

My concern about raising minimum wage is an honest one about whether it really helps the people it's intended to help. I'm no economist, but I have to believe that at any given wage level, there's going to be a segment of the population that lacks the skills/ability/whatever to perform duties that are worth more than his cost in wages plus the commensurate taxes and other overhead. If you raise the minimum wage, do you simply price those people out of the labor market altogether?

Of course, the lack of skills/ability/whatever often traces back to, well, education... people who are actually literate and numerate are going to have much better economic prospects than those we leave behind, regardless of what the specific level of the minimum wage may be.

#21859: — 04/14  at  12:25 AM
If someone is working for minimum wage now, then they will still be working at a higher minimum wage. It is impossible to make an adequate living working for minimum wage, especially when you consider that almost no minimum wage job provides other benefits, such as health insurance. Raising the minimum wage helps everybody, because it helps the persons working for it, and because there are so many of them, their increased wages go directly into the economy. People working for minimum wage don't put their paychecks into a savings account - they spend all of it, every week. They have to. Teenagers are by far the minority of people working for minimum wage. Waitstaff at restaurants don't even make minimum wage, they have to rely on tips to get paid that, and have to share the tips with the busboys, bartenders, cooks, hostesses, etc. Most minimum wage earners are adults supporting a family, or trying to.

All this crap about raising the minimum wage hurting the economy is being thrown around by people who have never, in their entire lives, worked for minimum wage, and probably never for less than double that.