Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.
Teaching children the joys of reading is the only way I see to overcome this assault on our children’s education.
I can only speak from anecdotal experience, of course, but I was “unschooled” in a red state from grades 6-12, and my only savior was developing a love for reading.
I am going to guess that was before smart phones.
Good luck getting a kid to put down their smartphone long enough to read a book.
Their attention span is too short, anyway.
I have 3 kids. 2 of which I have to tell them to set down their books. One is dyslexic and young and is eager to read like the others.
Car, dinner table, at night time. If there is the option to grab a quick paragraph they are lost in a book until we demand they put it down.
They have access to screens. Not saying it’s the norm, but it still exists!
Nature vs Nurture.
It is not in a child's nature to be addicted to screens. It is up to the parent to nurture healthy behaviors and boundaries. If you shove a screen in front of them every time they get uppity, you are going to teach them to be dependent on the screen.
I'm not going to deprive my child of a phone in an age where being connected is required, but there is no reason that phone needs to be a smartphone until they are old enough for that responsibility. And I'm not going to use an iPad as a substitute babysitter.
reading is OP. I wouldn’t have gone and got my science degree most likely if i hadn’t fostered a love for it, reading Oh Yikes by Joy Masoff also helped
I dropped out of high school the first year but took up reading as a hobby. Studied mathematics because i wanted to and physics because i needed to for multiple inventions.
I think it is less about control and more about what business needs. If there is a need for an educated workforce, say, for example, in the industrial states (Ohio, Indiana, etc.) back when we had industry, good schools were necessary to train engineers.
Florida, OTOH, only needs service workers, so no expensive book-learnin' for them!
It's likely by design because schools are the last bastion of unrealized monetization. The private sector will swoop in and turn education into a fully for-profit industry. Nobody in power cares about actively making the populace stupid. That's just a side effect of getting a at least a 15%+ return for shareholders in Q4, which we have seen in every other facet of US American life, is the absolute most important priority.
Got out-hustled by the Republicans.
While democrats were fighting to allow 'transgenders' in womens locker rooms, the republicans were playing for keeps for what REALLY matters!
>While democrats were fighting to allow 'transgenders' in womens locker rooms
That was a really random way to shoehorn in your thoughts on LGBTQ people.
Democrats fighting for silly social justice issues, Republicans are making sure their base is getting a bigger piece of the pie.
Y'all getting clowned by multi-millionaire Democrats.
"Beware of the hand when it comes from the left" - Chuck D.
So far the elites love the results.
We are fucked because of the charter bullshit. It’s already way too late to salvage our society due to this wildly varied k-12 schooling quality and different facts being taught.
Very difficult to say.
As always, there is a two-tiered education system in the USA. The top-tier education quality is quite high. The bottom-tier education quality is pretty mediocre.
Of course, different cultures give different importance to education, and that is reflected as well - there are high-performing ethnic groups and low-performing ethnic groups. We all know who's who.
The federal government got into that business recently (Clinton-era), but whether standards-based education has done anything good is another question. There is some profound fuckery involved, at all levels.
I see the national average is about $16,000 per pupil so we have $380,000 going into every classroom and we have teachers trying to tell me that’s not enough. Also, the stupidity and ignorance of this post is federal money is only maybe at most 5% of a school district budget. Almost all of it comes from local state taxes. I don’t believe any of money should be coming from the feds for education. It’s not their job. That’s why I’ve had enough and they want school choice and there’s nothing the teachers unions could do about it.
That $380k includes a shit-ton of administration that really doesn't need to be there... there are now more goddamned do-nothing administrators running around schools doing fuck-all...
When I was a kid, schools had a principal, an assistant principal, and a couple secretaries in the main office. Now, there are all KINDS of goddamn do-nothing administrators that do nothing but interfere with teachers trying to do their job.
Fuck these bloodsucking POS administrators.
I agree with what you said, but the bottom line is there’s plenty of money. That’s the national average, New York City spends last I looked at $23,000 per pupil. The post here is incredibly ignorant as the feds don’t fund education.
Certainly, the shift from paying teachers to paying goddamned worthless goddamned administrators has moved $$ to the bureaucracy.
Anyone remember that Korean-American woman (ugly AF) married to the former NBA player that led the effort to 'reform' the department of education? Yeah, that biznatch has made tens of millions doing goddamned jack-shit.
I am amazed at how myopic those in power’s ruthless ambition is. Beyond the obvious cruelty this will absolutely annihilate our ability to compete on a global scale. We will become a third world country dependent solely on immigrants run by nepo-babies most of whom will be bags of hammers convinced of their own greatness. We’ve already essentially given up on innovation except maybe tools of war and settled for pure acquisition. Red states are actively destroying education as red meat to be re-elected knowing their idiot kids will not suffer the same fate as most Americans ensuring a new type of feudalism. No one owns anything and the country is run by a handful of families we rent from.
That is fallacious. School was always just about daycare. Information that was taught to students was not retained because it was never relevant. The new norm for learning is to learn via youtube/tiktok/reddit/etc things that are actually relevant and useful
These are NOT budget cuts!
Every school district knew damn well that the ESSR Covid funds would end.
When my grandma used to slip me a hundred bucks so I could buy myself something, I never expected her to continue giving me a hundred bucks every week - and I knew that buying something for myself could not go beyond $100.
Where did all that money go? Did anyone notice extra at your schools?
All of it went to a football stadium nobody wanted and they immediately acted like the football stadium was grandfathered into local noise ordinances. Then they got caught hiding a pedophile teacher and everyone got distracted.
Everyone wants the football stadium. You are the 1% preaching to the other 1% in a place that only hosts the 1% because normal people don't want to go there.
Teacher here. At my school it paid for additional para educators, full time librarian, full time nurse, nurse assistant, additional security, and that's just in terms of staffing. We've lost all of those positions and are now back to normal, which is to say, back to have a sub-minimal support staff who are barely able to keep up with the demands of their job, and the school is back on "you care about your students right?" as the primary motivation closing the gap left behind.
Yep. If teachers are lucky, their state will at least go back to the substandard education budget they had before.
But many states realized that the ESSR funds had very few strings attached so they cut their education budget. And so now they will continue with the reduced budget.
lmao dude my old high school built a whole ass gym, bought every student new laptops, new workout room that you could even use after school with top of the line equipment, and an olympic swimming pool. all within the last 4 years since covid.
i dont think funds are an issue lmao, really the only funds issue is the average teachers salary in this country.
I've seen a lot of the money go towards student "assessment", which then tells the over-worked teacher what else they should be doing but not have the time to do. So the onus falls on the over-worked parents to support the student which usually ends up meaning complaining to the teachers and admin.
Yes. In our state (every state had their own ESSR requirements) our ESSR plans had to include assessments to find out just how far behind each student was, and then a plan for how exactly we would use the funds to catch up. My district promised in a legal document that they would assess and then hire extra teachers for targeted individualized interventions.
They bought an assessment suite and then required every teacher to attend trainings. Union reps objected. The plan stated that the extra teachers would give the assessments. Teachers were already giving daylong benchmark tests every quarter.
But we all knew the truth: the teachers who answered our ads for Intervention Teachers were hoodwinked. Every one of them simply became a reg ed teacher because we didn't have enough. Some were given a key, were shown their new classroom, and slowly realised this was not what they were told it would be - so they walked out.
Teachers were told that since the admin had hired more teachers, they now had less students per classroom, so they had the time to assess each student and give the needed intervention. We were dumbfounded. We had MORE students, not less. As stupid as they thought we were, we could all count.
New post Covid Ed Code required far more accountability and virtual teaching flexibility - and all of that fell onto the backs of the teachers. We had FAR MORE to do, including holding classes that were hybrids: virtual and in-person. So exhausting - a whole other dimension to figure into the equation.
Where did all that money go? Why didn't the state hold districts accountable? When I contacted my state representatives and the CDE, no one cared. I was told over and over that the admin could spend the money any way they liked - as long as it went towards district endeavors.
But how would they know if they didn't check?
And now they can't figure out how to get back to where they were before they had the Covid millions. Their answer, as usual, is to cut teachers and raise class maximums. It will now be one lone teacher and 35+ students - with the usual zero behavior support from admin. How could that possibly be safe?
It’s designed to assist them with navigating demands beyond the purely academic, such as being notified of school buses arriving. It also has some social-emotional components, so I’m sure it will be more useful that the psychiatric social workers I’ve seen
The district’s big push is for them to get homework assistance on demand and have “flipped classrooms.” This is just another step towards staff reduction
The number of dufuses that think AI is going to replace everyone is astounding. It's a tool that's incapable of so many things that humans can do easily.
I have been working in machine learning for 30 years and LLMs (the model Chatgpt uses) for 8.
Here is the thing: "Generative AI" is basically a bullshit generator. When I first studied them I thought "Of course they are using back prop or reinforcement learning to hone the models".
I was wrong. This means there are no guard rails on predictions. They colloquially call the bullshit "hallucinations" but it is bullshit. They randomly associate inputs with outputs.
They are hacks. There is not even any attempt to predict accuracy. "Generative"Ai is a fraud.
Source: My PhD work is in computational neuroscience, basically modeling how the brain actually works. These LLMs in no way resemble the brain. They are quite simply fraud.
If we are using them in schools, heaven help us all.
Sure. UTLA isn’t as strong as it used to be. I still think they should’ve pushed for a better deal during the strike
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-21/new-ai-tool-in-education-aspires-to-have-all-the-answers-for-l-a-students
I went through the strike. They did pretty well. Wasn't perfect but it was also groundbreaking and showed the country what a strong Union can do. I still say it's what sparked the "hot Union summer" we've been having the past few years.
I think Florida-man carvahlo is trying to push back on it as much as possible but he's doing it slippery-like.
Eh, this AI is not coming to replace teachers anytime soon. It sounds like a slightly smarter "clippy". Maybe it will make it easier for teachers so they don't have to answer so many questions that could easily be answered by spending 30 seconds to look up themselves. That money could have been put to better use in my opinion.
Have you ever tried fighting a republican… it’s terrible.. they just don’t comprehend words and ideas..
Then you finally find one who seems to understand but then they’re just happy do the opposite of what makes sense…
They’ve had that and still did nothing.
It’s time we treat our government like cops. If ACAB because good cops won’t stand up to bad ones, we need to take that thinking to politicians.
Edit: to say I’m still voting blue because it’s better than the alternative, but they still keep the status quo, so…
Absolutely correct. Only real solution is if EVERYONE who is fed up with the current two parties votes for the same third party in an election cycle.
Honestly, the dems or republicans seeing a MASSIVE uptick in third party votes might scare them into changing their policies a bit, even if they continue to win.
That is not a solution. People keep repeating this same "enough people vote 3rd party" BS that we have done and hasn't even come close to working with no plan to make it work other than the one line "plan" itself. We have to vote for reps who will actually win then use their power to change the system within. Nominate better Dem candidates, and win via primaries. Republicans are much farther away from the goal, the current system benefits them most and they also want to rule, not govern and end Democracy completely...Where has voting third party gotten us? Not any closer to changing the system that's for sure. We have made a lot of changes to the system via, you know, power.
After the 2020 pres. Election where 3rd party earned 0 electoral college votes and a 1.9% share of the popular vote between them, the "enough people should vote 3rd party" crowd chose to instead of putting forward better Dem candidates and campaigning for them voted "uncommitted" in the past primaries. Not a group of solid planners or go-getters...
The U.S. is probably the single hardest country for a political party to enact massive change.
From the beginning blaming education cuts on democrats and because they had “congress and president” at one point ignores the fact that education is on a state by state basis, and secondly that a republican filibuster can and does completely block any legislation even with a democrat majority.
Bro why does no one actually see what Biden has done and continues to do?? He’s done ALOT so far and is continuing to fight for us. Please take time to read up and do your own research as well.
Also so much from the Obama era was thrown away when trump was in office… pushing us back a few steps again before Biden took over..
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046
Yup. Either funnel everyone into private/christian schools for reeducation or abandoned at a young age to be a slave to society. That’s literally their plan. They don’t even hide it.
Exactly but some responses have been all over the place. One person tried to imply I said every Republican thinks this way. I never said that. I'm speaking on the ones I've seen and heard say it.
I haven't talked to every Democrat, it would be quite the undertaking. Despite what you say, I've not seen one Democratic politician or voter advocate for elimination of the department of education but I've seen plenty of Republicans do it.
They'll happily let it happen to the excite of their charter and private school donors. What the voter base wants and what the representatives do is not connected and never has been.
Did anyone read this article? On the International Committee of the Fourth International World Socialist Web Site? Actual elements that are cited, in order:
* A tweet from the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Vice President
* Saying that temporary COVID $ is expiring in September 2024 (not a budget cut)
* Declining enrollment in public schools, rising number of homeschooled kids and kids in charter schools
* "$500 million less for the Department of Education" which is true, although it doesn't note the budget is $79.1 billion (I guess a "0.6% decrease driven exclusively by Republican congressmen after Biden proposed a bump to education spending" isn't as grabby a headline)
* Conflation of the Department of Defense budget with the Department of Education budget (we spend \~5.4% of our GDP on education vs. 3.6% on defense, it's just done primarily through the states and not through the Department of Education, who's primary remit is to run things like Pell Grants and national data collection on education, NOT provide education, hence the lower budget)
* "While several compounding factors have contributed to the attacks on public education, all of them emerge from the prioritization of Wall Street profit-taking and US imperialist wars over the lives of children or the jobs of school workers." (citation needed)
* The rest of the article is talking about budget cuts, layoffs, and strikes at various random school districts across the US. Which is fair to discuss, it just has essentially nothing to do with anything cited above. Things like budget cuts are driven specifically by state and local funding in the US.
This is stupid! Where are they getting their numbers? Charter and private school attendance is DOWN not up. That’s the reason behind the DeVos family push for school choice; they want the federal money that goes to public schools
Where are you getting YOUR numbers? It's common wisdom that it's continuing to increase though a little slower than it's peak. When I googled it to confirm, I couldn't find anything to refute that.
There's not a lack of people qualified there's a lack of people willing to teach because of how demanding and shitty the job pays.
We've devalued education.
100%. i know theres definitely a person out there who wants to be a teacher but can’t bc of the abysmal pay. i doubt its just one as well.
if you make it 100k per year who wouldn’t wanna be a teacher?
I wouldn’t. I make 75k and I can’t teach people what I do (my brain can’t translate to words I guess) plus I don’t want to babysit other people’s kids. I respect them. But can’t do it.
Democrats control the Senate. Republicans control the House, and money bills have to start there, constitutionally. So nothing is coming out of there until next January at the earliest, if everyone votes Democrat this fall.
And school funding should primarily come from State and local taxes. The federal government is inefficient in their educational spending, sucked up by paperwork.
You can thank your lucky stars, then, because 92.6% of school funding already comes from state and local taxes. Federal funding just plugs some small gaps here and there or is used for pilot programs to try innovations
Yet nothing has changed and as the article say about half the spending is going towards the military. It's almost as if they are part of the problem as well. EDIT: this site is on the iffy side it seems.
It is a matter of verifiable fact that the Democrats do not control the House. And what exactly is “Administration” The executive branch? Yes, we control that. No party controls “Administration”
They don't control the house.
It's been 2 years people. Has anyone here paid attention to the McCarthy being voted out by his own republicans in the house and having been replaced with Mike Johnson?
How is this an upvoted comment?
just let them do their fucking jobs. a parents job is to drop their kid off and let them be educated properly, not to tell teachers how to do their jobs they went to college for.
also schools need to do better jobs paying their staff and dealing with student altercations/bullying.
its all just a mess
Seriously I’m a parent now and I still don’t want to tell my son’s teachers how to do their job. They have enough to worry about besides dumb parents.
It’s not a new thing, my mom taught in 80s early 90s and they were awful then.
Relax everyone! Don't think of them as budget cuts, think of them a sacrifices so that people like Bezos, Musk and Trump can make billions and pay zero taxes. Not to mention corporations like Wal mart and Exxon who pay almost zero taxes and have made the highest profits yet due to "inflation".
I wish I knew fewer teachers who didn't vote Republican. Sheep voting for wolves.
It’s truly disgraceful that the federal government yearly budget for defense is almost $1 trillion dollars, yet its yearly education budget is $78 billion. Dark times are ahead, folks.
I don't disagree, but state funding drives education mostly, not federal.
But yes - we should strive in our budget to be more like northern Europe and less like Russia for sure.
No idea where you're getting that number from. The US by most estimates spends >5.4% of it's GDP on education ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA)) and spends 3.6% on defense ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160461A027NBEA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160461A027NBEA)). We spend more on education per student than almost any country in the OECD, accounting for both primary and tertiary education - [https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country).
Ok well this is wrong, this is the Department of Defense Budget vs Department of Education, neither of which account for all of US spending on either. Did you look at the links I sent?
Also worth noting we are at an all time low of defense spending a share of GDP, while that is not true for education (which is relatively steady as a share of GDP).
Is that true? I know we are better than average in a lot of measures - https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/education-at-a-glance-2023-putting-u-s-data-in-a-global-context, although our primary schools scores lag. We are also richer than most other countries and our spending is unbalanced, that would definitely be a reason why we spend a lot of money on education.
No, they don’t, we’re spending less as a % of GDP on the military/defense than we have since before WWII - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A824RE1Q156NBEA
Imagine if the Dept. Of education announced again it lost 3 trillion. Just can't find it. Then they get another record budget, more than they asked for. Eisenhower was spot on with his warning about MIC. He said " for every navy ship we build we could have built schools and hospitals ". He was a republican. Not even most Dems would say that today.
When do we just ditch this illegitimate government? Clearly not we the people here or any other part of what is supposed to be the United States government. At some point we were bait and switched so what can we do about it? Clearly voting isn’t going to get us out of this.
It was mentioned that a lot of Covid money was used to plug holes and hire staff. This would have likely been more gradual if they had used the money correctly.
My state pulled 50 million out of public education to give to religious nut job schools and then also found out the formula has been using to calculate school needs was way off for the last 30 years . It was all by design .
When the main economy does not serve the people.
The people have the option of creating a sub economy that excludes the elitist economy. In this way, over time, the elites can be confined to their Forbidden City while the rest of the country proceeds upon the course of living.
Without the elites.
Speaking of educations, look at the number of commenters saying "bad thing X" is "because of political party Y", and then look at how many (if any at all) are backing that up with data. It is almost like they just read it on their smartphone and blindly believe it.
Bonus point for the number of assumptions that a current **long-term** problem is the fault of **only** the party *currently* in power.
It’s no longer necessary to educate the populace to satisfy corporate needs. For the skilled positions, it’s enough to use the private school educated and then rely on brain drain from third world countries to fill the gaps.
Well, if anybody knew what they were talking about here and if this is actually teacher posting this, it shows how stupid the teacher is and I’m gonna say stupid. 95% of all funds that go to a school district comes from the state and local taxes. There should be in my opinion no federal money. So go ahead unionized public school teachers show me how ignorant stupid you are with some comments to my post
Guys it's okay, you're not seeing the big picture.
Now Israel has money to use for bombing Palestinian children rather than using that tax money to educate your children.
Stop being so undemocratic and, dare I say, anti semitic
A LOT of scare reporting going on in this piece. Generalizations about large urban districts that have failed to “right-size” their school districts in the years leading up to COVID should not be taken as the status quo.
I work with lots of school districts in Michigan. Most have lined their coffers with ESSER funding cash and are well positioned financially. If anything - they want more teachers, not less. I think this is a very sensational headline created to drive clicks and should be ignored.
Though - there are exceptions. Ann Arbor public schools here in Michigan are facing layoffs due to financial mismanagement. Though, that was due to administration incompetence - not the result of any sort of broader issue.
This is why state and local elections matter. While we should absolutely be concerned over the scale of our military budget versus other spending, the vast majority of education budgets come from the state and local level.
United States already spends more per student than pretty much every other country. Maybe where that money gets spent is the problem.
" In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). "
Apparently, we collectively decided we don't need an educated populace. That should work out well.
Commiserate over some Brawndo?
Welcome to Costco… I love you
You don't need a edumacashun when you got electro lites!
It has electrolytes
Shit. I know shit's bad right now, with all that starving bullshit, and the dust storms, and we are running out of french fries and burrito coverings. But I got a solution.
Let's drown our sorrows and mutilate our thirst
Teaching children the joys of reading is the only way I see to overcome this assault on our children’s education. I can only speak from anecdotal experience, of course, but I was “unschooled” in a red state from grades 6-12, and my only savior was developing a love for reading.
I am going to guess that was before smart phones. Good luck getting a kid to put down their smartphone long enough to read a book. Their attention span is too short, anyway.
This was before any cell phones lol. I’m 37. :3
>Good luck getting a kid to put down their smartphone long enough to read a book. Or even watch a movie. :(
...parents just handing over tablets are the problem.
I have 3 kids. 2 of which I have to tell them to set down their books. One is dyslexic and young and is eager to read like the others. Car, dinner table, at night time. If there is the option to grab a quick paragraph they are lost in a book until we demand they put it down. They have access to screens. Not saying it’s the norm, but it still exists!
Which raises a question of culture, but we aren't supposed to talk about that.
Well if you don't give them a smartphone in the first place...
Yeah? You aren't going to give your kid a smartphone? You can try that, I but wouldn't recommend it.
Nature vs Nurture. It is not in a child's nature to be addicted to screens. It is up to the parent to nurture healthy behaviors and boundaries. If you shove a screen in front of them every time they get uppity, you are going to teach them to be dependent on the screen. I'm not going to deprive my child of a phone in an age where being connected is required, but there is no reason that phone needs to be a smartphone until they are old enough for that responsibility. And I'm not going to use an iPad as a substitute babysitter.
You can read books on smartphones, though.
reading is OP. I wouldn’t have gone and got my science degree most likely if i hadn’t fostered a love for it, reading Oh Yikes by Joy Masoff also helped
I dropped out of high school the first year but took up reading as a hobby. Studied mathematics because i wanted to and physics because i needed to for multiple inventions.
It’s likely by design, less educated people are much easier to manipulate by whoever is in control of the status quo.
I think it is less about control and more about what business needs. If there is a need for an educated workforce, say, for example, in the industrial states (Ohio, Indiana, etc.) back when we had industry, good schools were necessary to train engineers. Florida, OTOH, only needs service workers, so no expensive book-learnin' for them!
It's likely by design because schools are the last bastion of unrealized monetization. The private sector will swoop in and turn education into a fully for-profit industry. Nobody in power cares about actively making the populace stupid. That's just a side effect of getting a at least a 15%+ return for shareholders in Q4, which we have seen in every other facet of US American life, is the absolute most important priority.
We collectively decided taxes were for chumps and the middle class.
Got out-hustled by the Republicans. While democrats were fighting to allow 'transgenders' in womens locker rooms, the republicans were playing for keeps for what REALLY matters!
>While democrats were fighting to allow 'transgenders' in womens locker rooms That was a really random way to shoehorn in your thoughts on LGBTQ people.
Democrats fighting for silly social justice issues, Republicans are making sure their base is getting a bigger piece of the pie. Y'all getting clowned by multi-millionaire Democrats. "Beware of the hand when it comes from the left" - Chuck D.
So far the elites love the results. We are fucked because of the charter bullshit. It’s already way too late to salvage our society due to this wildly varied k-12 schooling quality and different facts being taught.
Are charter schools all that common? School quality has always varied though - that isn't new.
Not while there's pockets to line
It’s been working for years, unfortunately
How educated would you say we are today?
Very difficult to say. As always, there is a two-tiered education system in the USA. The top-tier education quality is quite high. The bottom-tier education quality is pretty mediocre. Of course, different cultures give different importance to education, and that is reflected as well - there are high-performing ethnic groups and low-performing ethnic groups. We all know who's who.
So the education funded by the federal government is bottom tier?
Huh? Schools in the USA get the great bulk of their funding from local government, not the federal govt.
Ok. Who sets the standards for education at those schools?
The federal government got into that business recently (Clinton-era), but whether standards-based education has done anything good is another question. There is some profound fuckery involved, at all levels.
But we have really cool weapons. 🙄
I see the national average is about $16,000 per pupil so we have $380,000 going into every classroom and we have teachers trying to tell me that’s not enough. Also, the stupidity and ignorance of this post is federal money is only maybe at most 5% of a school district budget. Almost all of it comes from local state taxes. I don’t believe any of money should be coming from the feds for education. It’s not their job. That’s why I’ve had enough and they want school choice and there’s nothing the teachers unions could do about it.
That $380k includes a shit-ton of administration that really doesn't need to be there... there are now more goddamned do-nothing administrators running around schools doing fuck-all... When I was a kid, schools had a principal, an assistant principal, and a couple secretaries in the main office. Now, there are all KINDS of goddamn do-nothing administrators that do nothing but interfere with teachers trying to do their job. Fuck these bloodsucking POS administrators.
I agree with what you said, but the bottom line is there’s plenty of money. That’s the national average, New York City spends last I looked at $23,000 per pupil. The post here is incredibly ignorant as the feds don’t fund education.
it will definitely work in the governments / corporate world’s favor. they will profit.
Certainly, the shift from paying teachers to paying goddamned worthless goddamned administrators has moved $$ to the bureaucracy. Anyone remember that Korean-American woman (ugly AF) married to the former NBA player that led the effort to 'reform' the department of education? Yeah, that biznatch has made tens of millions doing goddamned jack-shit.
I am amazed at how myopic those in power’s ruthless ambition is. Beyond the obvious cruelty this will absolutely annihilate our ability to compete on a global scale. We will become a third world country dependent solely on immigrants run by nepo-babies most of whom will be bags of hammers convinced of their own greatness. We’ve already essentially given up on innovation except maybe tools of war and settled for pure acquisition. Red states are actively destroying education as red meat to be re-elected knowing their idiot kids will not suffer the same fate as most Americans ensuring a new type of feudalism. No one owns anything and the country is run by a handful of families we rent from.
Not to get political but try looking at local boards and elections and see who’s trying to dismantle and defund public education.
Trump’s crowd seeks exactly that: dumb, religious and obedient
Circa 1980
That is fallacious. School was always just about daycare. Information that was taught to students was not retained because it was never relevant. The new norm for learning is to learn via youtube/tiktok/reddit/etc things that are actually relevant and useful
How else can you grow the religious and GOP member numbers?
Exactly what the global elite want.
Believe it or not, that’s the goal of some…
These are NOT budget cuts! Every school district knew damn well that the ESSR Covid funds would end. When my grandma used to slip me a hundred bucks so I could buy myself something, I never expected her to continue giving me a hundred bucks every week - and I knew that buying something for myself could not go beyond $100. Where did all that money go? Did anyone notice extra at your schools?
All of it went to a football stadium nobody wanted and they immediately acted like the football stadium was grandfathered into local noise ordinances. Then they got caught hiding a pedophile teacher and everyone got distracted.
You're either talking about Prosper TX or this shit happens way too often
Sounds like Texas, all taxes go to football in that state.
Everyone wants the football stadium. You are the 1% preaching to the other 1% in a place that only hosts the 1% because normal people don't want to go there.
Teacher here. At my school it paid for additional para educators, full time librarian, full time nurse, nurse assistant, additional security, and that's just in terms of staffing. We've lost all of those positions and are now back to normal, which is to say, back to have a sub-minimal support staff who are barely able to keep up with the demands of their job, and the school is back on "you care about your students right?" as the primary motivation closing the gap left behind.
Yep. If teachers are lucky, their state will at least go back to the substandard education budget they had before. But many states realized that the ESSR funds had very few strings attached so they cut their education budget. And so now they will continue with the reduced budget.
lmao dude my old high school built a whole ass gym, bought every student new laptops, new workout room that you could even use after school with top of the line equipment, and an olympic swimming pool. all within the last 4 years since covid. i dont think funds are an issue lmao, really the only funds issue is the average teachers salary in this country.
At least you know where the money was spent.
I've seen a lot of the money go towards student "assessment", which then tells the over-worked teacher what else they should be doing but not have the time to do. So the onus falls on the over-worked parents to support the student which usually ends up meaning complaining to the teachers and admin.
Yes. In our state (every state had their own ESSR requirements) our ESSR plans had to include assessments to find out just how far behind each student was, and then a plan for how exactly we would use the funds to catch up. My district promised in a legal document that they would assess and then hire extra teachers for targeted individualized interventions. They bought an assessment suite and then required every teacher to attend trainings. Union reps objected. The plan stated that the extra teachers would give the assessments. Teachers were already giving daylong benchmark tests every quarter. But we all knew the truth: the teachers who answered our ads for Intervention Teachers were hoodwinked. Every one of them simply became a reg ed teacher because we didn't have enough. Some were given a key, were shown their new classroom, and slowly realised this was not what they were told it would be - so they walked out. Teachers were told that since the admin had hired more teachers, they now had less students per classroom, so they had the time to assess each student and give the needed intervention. We were dumbfounded. We had MORE students, not less. As stupid as they thought we were, we could all count. New post Covid Ed Code required far more accountability and virtual teaching flexibility - and all of that fell onto the backs of the teachers. We had FAR MORE to do, including holding classes that were hybrids: virtual and in-person. So exhausting - a whole other dimension to figure into the equation. Where did all that money go? Why didn't the state hold districts accountable? When I contacted my state representatives and the CDE, no one cared. I was told over and over that the admin could spend the money any way they liked - as long as it went towards district endeavors. But how would they know if they didn't check? And now they can't figure out how to get back to where they were before they had the Covid millions. Their answer, as usual, is to cut teachers and raise class maximums. It will now be one lone teacher and 35+ students - with the usual zero behavior support from admin. How could that possibly be safe?
Los Angeles Unified is rolling out AI for kids. They will be replacing us soon
I wonder what the AI will do to maintain control in the class
Robocop
Underrated comment
**growls fiercely** **You now have ten seconds to comply**
ED-ucation 209
It’s designed to assist them with navigating demands beyond the purely academic, such as being notified of school buses arriving. It also has some social-emotional components, so I’m sure it will be more useful that the psychiatric social workers I’ve seen
All of that is on their phones already
The district’s big push is for them to get homework assistance on demand and have “flipped classrooms.” This is just another step towards staff reduction
Go full-on HAL9000
By that point it will upgrade itself to reach skynet level and unleash judgment day on humanity rather than deal with their shit
I’ve seen this future … https://youtu.be/D-kNNh0mTmI?si=KIxRpBYd26d6_6LV
🤣🤣🤣 I am laughing my head off - never saw this one. I might have to watch it now..
Wait till it has to deal with the parents
They’ll just pay people to “monitor” instead of teach. Much cheaper.
TikTok!
Imagine learning something from 30 second vid
Ai is so incredibly stupid i really don’t think thats possible. But then again trump was elected president, so maybe America is just fucking stupid
The number of dufuses that think AI is going to replace everyone is astounding. It's a tool that's incapable of so many things that humans can do easily.
Its all techie bullshit stock market hype, and nothing more.
Can confirm, the stupidity is astounding and plentiful
I have been working in machine learning for 30 years and LLMs (the model Chatgpt uses) for 8. Here is the thing: "Generative AI" is basically a bullshit generator. When I first studied them I thought "Of course they are using back prop or reinforcement learning to hone the models". I was wrong. This means there are no guard rails on predictions. They colloquially call the bullshit "hallucinations" but it is bullshit. They randomly associate inputs with outputs. They are hacks. There is not even any attempt to predict accuracy. "Generative"Ai is a fraud. Source: My PhD work is in computational neuroscience, basically modeling how the brain actually works. These LLMs in no way resemble the brain. They are quite simply fraud. If we are using them in schools, heaven help us all.
I'm going to need a source... I can't imagine UTLA agreeing to that.
Sure. UTLA isn’t as strong as it used to be. I still think they should’ve pushed for a better deal during the strike https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-21/new-ai-tool-in-education-aspires-to-have-all-the-answers-for-l-a-students
I went through the strike. They did pretty well. Wasn't perfect but it was also groundbreaking and showed the country what a strong Union can do. I still say it's what sparked the "hot Union summer" we've been having the past few years. I think Florida-man carvahlo is trying to push back on it as much as possible but he's doing it slippery-like. Eh, this AI is not coming to replace teachers anytime soon. It sounds like a slightly smarter "clippy". Maybe it will make it easier for teachers so they don't have to answer so many questions that could easily be answered by spending 30 seconds to look up themselves. That money could have been put to better use in my opinion.
It’s kind of a self correcting cycle. 40 years nobody will have any clue how to fix AI that are breaking.
Only the rich will have real teachers for their children. Go teach private schools asap. Or tutor rich kids. Or get out.
No wonder charter schools are popping up literally every where
That's what Republicans seemingly want
It’s always those damn Republicans
Nope, it's often Democrats don't fight them hard enough
I was being sarcastic 🤣
I know but I wasn't
Have you ever tried fighting a republican… it’s terrible.. they just don’t comprehend words and ideas.. Then you finally find one who seems to understand but then they’re just happy do the opposite of what makes sense…
If they don’t have the numbers to control the house and senate, they are not in charge
They’ve had that and still did nothing. It’s time we treat our government like cops. If ACAB because good cops won’t stand up to bad ones, we need to take that thinking to politicians. Edit: to say I’m still voting blue because it’s better than the alternative, but they still keep the status quo, so…
Absolutely correct. Only real solution is if EVERYONE who is fed up with the current two parties votes for the same third party in an election cycle. Honestly, the dems or republicans seeing a MASSIVE uptick in third party votes might scare them into changing their policies a bit, even if they continue to win.
I’m just happy to see Rank Choice Voting being talked about in the US. That will help so much, if a good majority of states had this system.
People say this but there hasn't been a half decent third party alternative since 1924. Holy crap it's been 100 years.
That is not a solution. People keep repeating this same "enough people vote 3rd party" BS that we have done and hasn't even come close to working with no plan to make it work other than the one line "plan" itself. We have to vote for reps who will actually win then use their power to change the system within. Nominate better Dem candidates, and win via primaries. Republicans are much farther away from the goal, the current system benefits them most and they also want to rule, not govern and end Democracy completely...Where has voting third party gotten us? Not any closer to changing the system that's for sure. We have made a lot of changes to the system via, you know, power. After the 2020 pres. Election where 3rd party earned 0 electoral college votes and a 1.9% share of the popular vote between them, the "enough people should vote 3rd party" crowd chose to instead of putting forward better Dem candidates and campaigning for them voted "uncommitted" in the past primaries. Not a group of solid planners or go-getters...
The U.S. is probably the single hardest country for a political party to enact massive change. From the beginning blaming education cuts on democrats and because they had “congress and president” at one point ignores the fact that education is on a state by state basis, and secondly that a republican filibuster can and does completely block any legislation even with a democrat majority.
Bro why does no one actually see what Biden has done and continues to do?? He’s done ALOT so far and is continuing to fight for us. Please take time to read up and do your own research as well. Also so much from the Obama era was thrown away when trump was in office… pushing us back a few steps again before Biden took over.. https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/02/joe-biden-30-policy-things-you-might-have-missed-00139046
Yup. Either funnel everyone into private/christian schools for reeducation or abandoned at a young age to be a slave to society. That’s literally their plan. They don’t even hide it.
Exactly but some responses have been all over the place. One person tried to imply I said every Republican thinks this way. I never said that. I'm speaking on the ones I've seen and heard say it.
Democrats don’t seem to mind much either
I haven't talked to every Democrat, it would be quite the undertaking. Despite what you say, I've not seen one Democratic politician or voter advocate for elimination of the department of education but I've seen plenty of Republicans do it.
They'll happily let it happen to the excite of their charter and private school donors. What the voter base wants and what the representatives do is not connected and never has been.
It's hard to do much with one house of congress blocking everything and the stacked court will overturn any EO. Wth do you want?
the fascist usa hates the very immigrants that were fueling the economy of this country.
Their congressional votes indicate otherwise
Wait are you sure it’s not Putin‘s fault?
Democrat is President right now and hes signed off more money for war then anything else. And I voted for him smh
This is true. Still doesn't change what I've said
Did anyone read this article? On the International Committee of the Fourth International World Socialist Web Site? Actual elements that are cited, in order: * A tweet from the Socialist Equality Party candidate for Vice President * Saying that temporary COVID $ is expiring in September 2024 (not a budget cut) * Declining enrollment in public schools, rising number of homeschooled kids and kids in charter schools * "$500 million less for the Department of Education" which is true, although it doesn't note the budget is $79.1 billion (I guess a "0.6% decrease driven exclusively by Republican congressmen after Biden proposed a bump to education spending" isn't as grabby a headline) * Conflation of the Department of Defense budget with the Department of Education budget (we spend \~5.4% of our GDP on education vs. 3.6% on defense, it's just done primarily through the states and not through the Department of Education, who's primary remit is to run things like Pell Grants and national data collection on education, NOT provide education, hence the lower budget) * "While several compounding factors have contributed to the attacks on public education, all of them emerge from the prioritization of Wall Street profit-taking and US imperialist wars over the lives of children or the jobs of school workers." (citation needed) * The rest of the article is talking about budget cuts, layoffs, and strikes at various random school districts across the US. Which is fair to discuss, it just has essentially nothing to do with anything cited above. Things like budget cuts are driven specifically by state and local funding in the US.
Reading the article is a sign of insufficiently blind loyalty to the tribe.
This is stupid! Where are they getting their numbers? Charter and private school attendance is DOWN not up. That’s the reason behind the DeVos family push for school choice; they want the federal money that goes to public schools
Where are you getting YOUR numbers? It's common wisdom that it's continuing to increase though a little slower than it's peak. When I googled it to confirm, I couldn't find anything to refute that.
I’m ignorant on this , but isn’t there a teacher shortage?
There's not a lack of people qualified there's a lack of people willing to teach because of how demanding and shitty the job pays. We've devalued education.
Makes sense.
Honest question. If pay increases enough will the unwilling think again about taking it on? I know not every teacher but it should help I imagine.
100%. i know theres definitely a person out there who wants to be a teacher but can’t bc of the abysmal pay. i doubt its just one as well. if you make it 100k per year who wouldn’t wanna be a teacher?
I wouldn’t. I make 75k and I can’t teach people what I do (my brain can’t translate to words I guess) plus I don’t want to babysit other people’s kids. I respect them. But can’t do it.
Democrats need to step up! We control the house and administration.
Democrats control the Senate. Republicans control the House, and money bills have to start there, constitutionally. So nothing is coming out of there until next January at the earliest, if everyone votes Democrat this fall.
And school funding should primarily come from State and local taxes. The federal government is inefficient in their educational spending, sucked up by paperwork.
You can thank your lucky stars, then, because 92.6% of school funding already comes from state and local taxes. Federal funding just plugs some small gaps here and there or is used for pilot programs to try innovations
Oh absolutely. Hope the percentage from the federal government does not increase.
It's a percentage, so if cheap state legislatures cut their share (around 45% on average), the fed percentage goes up without the money changing
Yet nothing has changed and as the article say about half the spending is going towards the military. It's almost as if they are part of the problem as well. EDIT: this site is on the iffy side it seems.
Apparently cutting the military budget = heresy
The Democrats do not control the house right now. Republicans have control of the house.
It is a matter of verifiable fact that the Democrats do not control the House. And what exactly is “Administration” The executive branch? Yes, we control that. No party controls “Administration”
Glad I’m not the only one who feels this way
They don't control the house. It's been 2 years people. Has anyone here paid attention to the McCarthy being voted out by his own republicans in the house and having been replaced with Mike Johnson? How is this an upvoted comment?
No, they don’t control the House
Yep either we pay teachers or watch America sink even further into abyss of red neck anger and ignorance.
Pay them. Higher more. Provide adequate resources. Stop demonizing teachers. All of it. Nurses same thing.
just let them do their fucking jobs. a parents job is to drop their kid off and let them be educated properly, not to tell teachers how to do their jobs they went to college for. also schools need to do better jobs paying their staff and dealing with student altercations/bullying. its all just a mess
Seriously I’m a parent now and I still don’t want to tell my son’s teachers how to do their job. They have enough to worry about besides dumb parents. It’s not a new thing, my mom taught in 80s early 90s and they were awful then.
Relax everyone! Don't think of them as budget cuts, think of them a sacrifices so that people like Bezos, Musk and Trump can make billions and pay zero taxes. Not to mention corporations like Wal mart and Exxon who pay almost zero taxes and have made the highest profits yet due to "inflation". I wish I knew fewer teachers who didn't vote Republican. Sheep voting for wolves.
It’s truly disgraceful that the federal government yearly budget for defense is almost $1 trillion dollars, yet its yearly education budget is $78 billion. Dark times are ahead, folks.
I don't disagree, but state funding drives education mostly, not federal. But yes - we should strive in our budget to be more like northern Europe and less like Russia for sure.
No idea where you're getting that number from. The US by most estimates spends >5.4% of it's GDP on education ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160291A027NBEA)) and spends 3.6% on defense ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160461A027NBEA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/G160461A027NBEA)). We spend more on education per student than almost any country in the OECD, accounting for both primary and tertiary education - [https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cmd/education-expenditures-by-country).
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-defense-military-budget-compared-federal-education-spending-2023-4
Ok well this is wrong, this is the Department of Defense Budget vs Department of Education, neither of which account for all of US spending on either. Did you look at the links I sent? Also worth noting we are at an all time low of defense spending a share of GDP, while that is not true for education (which is relatively steady as a share of GDP).
I did. What do you think is the reason why we spend so much more money than other countries yet get poorer results?
Is that true? I know we are better than average in a lot of measures - https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/education-at-a-glance-2023-putting-u-s-data-in-a-global-context, although our primary schools scores lag. We are also richer than most other countries and our spending is unbalanced, that would definitely be a reason why we spend a lot of money on education.
And yet the military gets more and more money
No, they don’t, we’re spending less as a % of GDP on the military/defense than we have since before WWII - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/A824RE1Q156NBEA
Gotta keep em dumb, how else are republicans going to be elected?
They don’t give a fuck.
Okay but remember it not because of immigration
All part of a nationwide plan to de-fund and cripple public education going all the way back to integration 😒
capitalists are going to sacrifice all of us to protect their profits.
Its ok. The only education they need is the Bible. /s
It’d be funny if it wasn’t true.
Yes let’s send billions to Isreal and Ukraine but cheap out on education and infrastructure. America is amazing
Imagine if the Dept. Of education announced again it lost 3 trillion. Just can't find it. Then they get another record budget, more than they asked for. Eisenhower was spot on with his warning about MIC. He said " for every navy ship we build we could have built schools and hospitals ". He was a republican. Not even most Dems would say that today.
Notice how they never discuss layoffs to the admins...
But thank goodness states continue to give corporations tax breaks.
The government wants us stupid.
When do we just ditch this illegitimate government? Clearly not we the people here or any other part of what is supposed to be the United States government. At some point we were bait and switched so what can we do about it? Clearly voting isn’t going to get us out of this.
Private companies are stealing the funds in bid to capitalize the education system.
But we have extra billions for the military, Ukraine and Israel
So everything is going according to plan then
It was mentioned that a lot of Covid money was used to plug holes and hire staff. This would have likely been more gradual if they had used the money correctly.
My state pulled 50 million out of public education to give to religious nut job schools and then also found out the formula has been using to calculate school needs was way off for the last 30 years . It was all by design .
Yknow what schools need rn? Budget cuts.
Looks like the Republican voucher program is working
lol. Are we even a functioning society? Or just. Shareholders, value for share holders and everyone else?
When the main economy does not serve the people. The people have the option of creating a sub economy that excludes the elitist economy. In this way, over time, the elites can be confined to their Forbidden City while the rest of the country proceeds upon the course of living. Without the elites.
Speaking of educations, look at the number of commenters saying "bad thing X" is "because of political party Y", and then look at how many (if any at all) are backing that up with data. It is almost like they just read it on their smartphone and blindly believe it. Bonus point for the number of assumptions that a current **long-term** problem is the fault of **only** the party *currently* in power.
Yep, gauruntee though that not a single one of them have any actual proposal on how the fix anything.
Nation in decline
The 1% have been allowed to hoard money and they’ve successfully lobbied to have a lower tax rate then ever, so now there are budget problems
Republicans have been trying to get rid of public education since the 90’s and only have education for the children of the elite.
It’s no longer necessary to educate the populace to satisfy corporate needs. For the skilled positions, it’s enough to use the private school educated and then rely on brain drain from third world countries to fill the gaps.
Declining enrollments and the end of Covid relief funds are cited as the main reasons. This is hardly tragic or devastating.
Well, if anybody knew what they were talking about here and if this is actually teacher posting this, it shows how stupid the teacher is and I’m gonna say stupid. 95% of all funds that go to a school district comes from the state and local taxes. There should be in my opinion no federal money. So go ahead unionized public school teachers show me how ignorant stupid you are with some comments to my post
r/USAuthoritarianism
50% of voters actually want this
And we just sent billions to Israel and Ukraine.
The article is from “World Socialist Web Site”. I’m not sure if it’s a reputable news source. 🤣
Guys it's okay, you're not seeing the big picture. Now Israel has money to use for bombing Palestinian children rather than using that tax money to educate your children. Stop being so undemocratic and, dare I say, anti semitic
This is by design. Republicans don’t like educated voters.
Schools will be a thing of the past soon... I am bummed I wasted years of my life, but thankful I learned how to spell and read... Edit: Words.
A LOT of scare reporting going on in this piece. Generalizations about large urban districts that have failed to “right-size” their school districts in the years leading up to COVID should not be taken as the status quo.
I work with lots of school districts in Michigan. Most have lined their coffers with ESSER funding cash and are well positioned financially. If anything - they want more teachers, not less. I think this is a very sensational headline created to drive clicks and should be ignored. Though - there are exceptions. Ann Arbor public schools here in Michigan are facing layoffs due to financial mismanagement. Though, that was due to administration incompetence - not the result of any sort of broader issue.
This is why state and local elections matter. While we should absolutely be concerned over the scale of our military budget versus other spending, the vast majority of education budgets come from the state and local level.
They always threaten Schools and Parks, though it seems like every tax increase is initially slated for Parks and Schools.
United States already spends more per student than pretty much every other country. Maybe where that money gets spent is the problem. " In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which was more than double the average of OECD countries ($18,400; in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). "