On one hand, I've heard that a class of 30 kids gets almost half a million dollars of taxpayer money per year.
On the other hand, I've heard that teachers get a salary of about $50k, and have to beg on gofundme to equip their classrooms with basic stationary.
I really have no idea how to get these two facts to line up.
My local school district (generic midwest USA), there's a 17:1 teacher ratio, each student represents $13,011/yr in funding (so a single classroom gets $221,187 in government funding each year). Of that, the teacher in that room collects a salary of $40k to $60k W2 salary each year (plus benefits). Or, a teacher's salary is basically ~20% to 25% of the budget for that classroom, and the rest goes elsewhere.
And yeah, our teachers get literally nothing for their rooms, so they have to beg parents to donate crayons and tissue paper and pencils and basically anything else in their classroom, every year. (generally, each parent is expected to pitch in about $100 per student per year, in donate-ables to cover the stuff the district won't provide for teachers)
So while the statistics may break it down to a half million per classroom, that classroom doesn’t actually see that money. It’s chewed up with special education and the bureaucracy.
If you ask anyone, they'll tell you they're busy because that's the socially acceptable thing to say. If I'm honest, I don't do that much work (I tend to believe that's actually why we create and maintain all of these machines - so we don't have to work very much, but I'm apparently a disagreeable sort), but I still say that I'm keeping busy because if I said that I'm basically lazy and just want to meditate or watch TV most of the day away, people (particularly my employer) might take issue with that.
The proportion that goes to the management levels above the teachers keeps going up, instead of to the teachers or teaching materials.
The school didn't come up with the cartoon, others in society did. Children are going to talk about cartoons that they watch. My parents didn't always like the cartoons some of my classmates watched. Their solution was to not let me watch them, and instill their own set of values in me. They didn't ask the school to shelter me from the existence of other's ideologies.
There are ways to discuss sensitive and ideologically divisive topics in an academic and neutral way. The way religion and politics are covered in social studies courses is often a good example of this.
You don't have to pick sides to cover a topic in a neutral manner.
What do you think this means? Is having a picture of me and my wife on my desk "pushing my heterosexual orientation" on my co-workers?
I'm really confused by what you think is upsetting in a cartoon with multiple Mom/Dad characters, also including a lesbian couple. Why is it ok to "push" one sexual orientation, but "worrying" to "push" another?
This is patently and demonstrably false. Numerous cultures and societies have happily tolerated homosexuality.
Again, what is being "pushed" on kids? What are you suspicious of? I don't understand why you don't want to answer a very basic question.
Yep, that’s the way to do it, and it can be fun, especially since it’s just helping rather than full on home schooling.
Most school curricula have different and concrete objectives (basically meeting aggregated KPIs) rather than “is the student actually learning?” Also teachers have a lot to deal with, and always have, tangential to actual teaching, like disruptive students.
I think the best part of the supplement is that most school work has no context (“will this be on the test?”). Especially in math, where you spend 12 years “learning the alphabet” and only after high school do you get to the fun parts, if ever. So at home you can actually see how the stuff you’re getting in school actually relates to the realm world, and can pursue interesting paths.
I found the biggest problem of his approach is that he didn't care about figuring out my interest (TBF I didn't know either). The extra-curriculum study is mostly aimed for getting into a better school later so he first taught me Math in advance and then some extra for competitions. And even for programming he extremely hates gaming (to this day he thinks game developers are bad people, like people who do narcotics) and ONLY wants me to do competitive programming. Anyway I did not have any interest for anything he taught so it has been a painful drag for both of us until he kinda gave up when I reached grade 10.
Now that my kid is 3.25, I want to try something different. But I do find myself lacking the time or knowledge to prepare material for such activities. I want to expose him to a variety of activities after he reaches 4, say arithmetic and simple reading (so he can then spend more time reading books by himself), but I do not know how to approach teaching the topics. He is as impatient as a child can be and of course he is not interested in learning stuffs, which is definitely less interesting than, say, watching tanks crashing cars.
All in all, I know nothing about pediatrics education and need to know more before damaging our relationship as my father did back in the day. Neither do I have the mental energy reserve to burn candles to research on such topics. But I'll try.
Most math education is syntactic transforms, not understanding. There are lots of skill-appropriate puzzles in books and online you can do together so your kid can see that math can be fun. Same applies to other subjects — learning about US history? Make a trip to some local historical thing and when kiddo is bored just run around or whatever.
While not scientific, it is a sentiment described in _Diamond Age_.
Test scores are probably declining because parents are more worried about the sexual orientation of cartoon characters rather than their child's test score, among other distractions. The root of the problem is that respect for education in the US is low.