Texas Teachers all riled up

[GloryofGreece]

Are those world histories semester long, or all year?

I teach in high school. But I have section of 8th grade Civics as well. At my school most classes are semester only, 1 and half hour blocks, everyday. Most districts have year long courses every other day, but there quite a few out the 100+ districts that do have semester 4 by 4 scheduling.

I’ve never had a chance to teach SS in a block, do you like it? That’s one of the areas I’m really interested in (scheduling) as I look at admin. The 8 period, 45-50 minute class schedule is BS. Form before function.

Honestly I think 90 minutes everyday is too long, but I like getting new students midyear. It gives them and myself a chance to improve or change scenery. I think having them everyday instead of every other day is better though. Personally, I think the most superior schedule is 7 classes a day, everyday, for about 1 hour all year long. Again, 90 minutes is too long but 45 is not quite enough. All schedules have their pros and cons.

[Zero]

Fascinating stuff in the derailment, and as interesting as it is for y’all to trot out the anti-education pablum, the initial OP about a coalition of moderate Republicans, centrists, and Democrats trying to adequately fund education in the face of radical Teapublicans trying to be the firemarshall and the arsonist at the same time will be fun to watch.

:hat tip:

You can't just trot out the adequate funding canard if what you're asking me to fund is a failed system.

In this paper, we present an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents in which human capital investment through formal schooling is the engine of growth. We use simple functional forms for preferences, technologies, and income distribution to highlight the distinction between economies with public education and those with private education. We find that income inequality declines more quickly under public education. On the other hand, private education yields greater per capita incomes unless the initial income inequality is sufficiently high. We also find that societies will choose public education if a majority of agents have incomes below average.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/a ... 086/261841

Production studies that have examined the relative performance of students in private and public schools typically find that the average student achievement in private schools exceeds that of the average student in public schools. The relatively small enrollment of students in private schools seriously limits policy predictions concerning the effects of vouchers and other policy reforms in the United States. The institutional arrangements for providing and funding schooling vary greatly across countries. This article examines these arrangements in five countries. Using a data set that measures achievement in mathematics, empirical results show that public funding and its subsequent effect of expanded enrollment in the private sector do not erase the superior performance of private schools relative to public ones. Government restrictions on private schools' decision-making powers can negate the superior performance of private schools.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/a ... 086/467345

The author summarizes the literature on the relative performance of public and private schools over the past decade and assesses what we have learned from these studies. Although many questions remain unanswered, the author concludes that private schooling — in particular, Catholic schooling — can raise graduation rates. In addition, the author finds that minority students in large cities have the most to gain from private schooling.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=1023730

First two are behind paywalls. Third one is from 1998, not exactly contemporary work, especially considering that there have reforms in public ed that have been going on since. I’ll start going through it, though I have two papers to write in the next few days, so I may be awhile getting through it.

[Okeefenokee]

This is most of the reason that my faith in public school education was shattered as an adult.

What I learned of history, after thirteen years of public school education, left me with no way to conclude that my time in school had not been wasted.

Consider this, in the one or two weeks of schooling that focused on the cold war, not once was I told that there were millions of Americans during this time who actively lobbied against the survival of their own nation, because they wanted it to fail, and for communism to win.

Not only that, but that those same people are still active in politics today.

How many of your students know that Bernie Sanders openly supported the triumph of Soviet communism over American capitalism during the cold war?

It shouldn't be hard to understand why I call foul when someone says there's no left bias in the education system.

[Okeefenokee]

Fascinating stuff in the derailment, and as interesting as it is for y’all to trot out the anti-education pablum, the initial OP about a coalition of moderate Republicans, centrists, and Democrats trying to adequately fund education in the face of radical Teapublicans trying to be the firemarshall and the arsonist at the same time will be fun to watch.

:hat tip:

You can't just trot out the adequate funding canard if what you're asking me to fund is a failed system.

In this paper, we present an overlapping generations model with heterogeneous agents in which human capital investment through formal schooling is the engine of growth. We use simple functional forms for preferences, technologies, and income distribution to highlight the distinction between economies with public education and those with private education. We find that income inequality declines more quickly under public education. On the other hand, private education yields greater per capita incomes unless the initial income inequality is sufficiently high. We also find that societies will choose public education if a majority of agents have incomes below average.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/a ... 086/261841

Production studies that have examined the relative performance of students in private and public schools typically find that the average student achievement in private schools exceeds that of the average student in public schools. The relatively small enrollment of students in private schools seriously limits policy predictions concerning the effects of vouchers and other policy reforms in the United States. The institutional arrangements for providing and funding schooling vary greatly across countries. This article examines these arrangements in five countries. Using a data set that measures achievement in mathematics, empirical results show that public funding and its subsequent effect of expanded enrollment in the private sector do not erase the superior performance of private schools relative to public ones. Government restrictions on private schools' decision-making powers can negate the superior performance of private schools.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/a ... 086/467345

The author summarizes the literature on the relative performance of public and private schools over the past decade and assesses what we have learned from these studies. Although many questions remain unanswered, the author concludes that private schooling — in particular, Catholic schooling — can raise graduation rates. In addition, the author finds that minority students in large cities have the most to gain from private schooling.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=1023730

First two are behind paywalls.

Do you not have access to a university library database?

[Zero]

Well, hot damn! Wasn’t even thinking about that as I’m on my phone. Found them.

Cool, I’ll take a look. Again, turnaround time will be a bit.

[Okeefenokee]

Well, hot damn! Wasn’t even thinking about that as I’m on my phone. Found them.

Cool, I’ll take a look. Again, turnaround time will be a bit.

Don't burn yourself out on it. I was only looking at the abstracts. I know there are probably studies that say that public schooling is the best schooling, but the US standings against the rest of the world don't support that.

I'm not anti-teacher, or anti-school, but what I have seen is that the current system, where public schools don't have to compete, doesn't produce great results.

If a slight change in policy lead to greater options for education, and that that change forced public schools to do better, I would be fine with a paradigm where pubic schools were allowed to exist in a truly free market, if they could hold their own.

Having had experience in what is passable in government work, I won't abide the notion that a government monopoly on any sector will produce the best results, or even tolerable results.