
The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom - washt
http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom/
======
rossta
I taught middle school science in Houston for five years. I decided to leave
the traditional public school system for many of the same reasons the author
makes about his experience. This was over a decade ago so it's sad to hear the
same problems persist.

Alternatives like charter schools have not always fared well, but some, like
YES College Prep ([http://www.yesprep.org/](http://www.yesprep.org/)), are
serving low income areas and achieving profound success. They've been able to
replicate a model where teachers, students and parents all buy into the same
mission: that all students must gain acceptance into a four year college or
university to graduate. YES began with the hard work a few enterprising
teachers who became tired of a broken system - not much different from a tech
startup in a way.

I've often felt if the teaching profession was prestigious as, say, law or
medicine, we could eventually solve the problems in education. That's not to
say we don't have problems with our legal system or healthcare - but it'd be
hard to argue there is a shortage of good lawyers or doctors. Imagine if we
had no shortage of good teachers... But we don't pay teachers well, there are
stigmas ("Those who can't...) and a lack of long term benefits outside of the
daily joy of interacting with young people and helping them grow - we'd all be
crazy to leave tech to go teach, right?

~~~
akshatpradhan
Actually, we do have a shortage of Doctors, especially Primary Care. Caps are
set in place by Medicare to limit the number of residents in an academic
program. Academic hospitals would love to increase their slots but Medicare
won't allow that. I think last year something like 23k students applied to
residency programs and only 6k got accepted. What happens to the rejected 17k
students as they wander aimlessly to figure out what next? Re-apply next year?

I think the cap is set by Medicare because they pay the Residents salary
across the nation.

6000 students * $60k resident salary = $360,000,000

~~~
debacle
Medicare has nothing to do with it. The AMA doesn't want doctors flooding the
market. They are a very powerful union.

~~~
akshatpradhan
Here's an interesting piece of info from the AAMC:
[https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html](https://www.aamc.org/advocacy/gme/71178/gme_gme0012.html)

------
rdtsc
Great points.

This, I think is one of the fundamental problems:

\---

If parents and local decision-makers really value education (and there is a
small portion of the community that does), student and teacher morale would be
much different.

\---

The overall environment matters more than the teacher. We've mentioned it here
not too long ago as well.

Doesn't matter how fancy the workbooks and new materials or how hard we flog
the teachers. The environment is anti-learning. Sure there is tons of lip
service of "children are our future". All the best for the children, etc, etc.
Except that actions and reality doesn't reflect that.

Many students come poor and/or bad families. No new "Common Core" tests are
going to help that child learn if they are afraid they might not eat dinner
that evening or they will be beaten up by their drunken family members. Just
flogging the teacher to teach harder won't work.

It would be nice if "teaching" was considered just as a prestigious profession
as laywer, doctor, astronaut, CTO of startup. Besides attracting more talent,
it would send a cultural message -- education is very imporant and only
special people get to do teach.

Heck look at the stupid Breaking Bad show. If Walter would be just teaching
chemistry vis-a-vis his rich startup-owing friend he would be totally pathetic
and uninteresting. Media like that tends to condense, distil and reflect back
cultural attidides. Well thank god Walter started cooking meth, and killing
otherwise he would have been the most boring person ever.

~~~
w1ntermute
If the problem is community, why not take the students/families who really do
care (from all the schools in a metropolitan area) and put them all in the
same school? That would at least be a start.

~~~
willvarfar
All the uninterested parents would become really interested around selection
time trying to get their kids into the 'best' schools. As soon as the choice
is made, however, they'd be back to indifference. School is viewed as
delegating responsibility from parent to teacher.

In England there have been so-silly-its-staggering stories of anti-terror
legislation being used to spy on parents suspected of lying about their
addresses in order to get their kids into particular school catchment areas.
You'd imagine that these are parents who super-care. I'm skeptical; I think
they are parents who have an intense interest only at the beginning and no
lingering part in educating their children.

~~~
wtallis
And the worst thing is that to a limited extent, the caring-only-at-
registration strategy _does_ help that family some, because their kids will at
least be in a functional learning environment for _part_ of the day. It only
falls apart when the families that care get diluted enough that the teachers
have to spend too much time dragging along the unengaged students.

------
iguanayou
I taught high school for 5 years and made the same decision. The biggest
factor for me was how the schools were being administered; just a few
examples:

\- Competition among students, instead of being used as a motivator as piles
of research suggests, was specifically DISALLOWED because it might make
certain students feel bad.

\- When a student fell behind because they were slacking off in class, it was
the teacher's responsibility to put in extra time and make sure they caught
up, stopping just short of doing the work FOR the student.

\- Double standards, administrators demanding that classes be "rigorous", but
then when students complain that the class is too hard, or students get bad
grades because they can't hack it, that of course is the teacher's fault, and
it is reflected in our official evaluations.

\- Turf wars among teachers who only care about protecting their own jobs.

\- I never had a full time job. Schools will hire for, say .6 FTE, or even .2
FTE, which no one can make a living on. I tried holding 3 teaching jobs at
once to put together a full time salary and that worked for about 4 months
before things fell apart.

\- Working hours of 60-70 hours per week during the school year leads to
burnout.

\- I make 3x as much as a software engineer.

If it was truly about the students, I'd still be teaching, But it's not.

~~~
beams_of_light
I don't feel that competition would be healthy between students. Some kids are
simply not going to be as smart as others, due wholly or in part to genetic,
socio-economic, or emotional parameters. Making them feel like garbage on a
daily basis at school will not help them at all.

~~~
cheepin
If you structure competition as Winner(s) + everyone else (as opposed to a
full ranking system), you gain a powerful motivator for competitive students,
while not necessarily convincing the others that they are garbage.

~~~
beams_of_light
Can you provide an example of how this might work in practice?

------
jurassic
No raises in six years as inflation marches steadily on is a 10% paycut.
Criminal. It's a disgrace that our college-educated professional teachers are
so under-valued they have to take on multiple side-jobs just to maintain their
economic status quo.

~~~
jpadkins
education degrees are lower on the IQ scale [http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-
estimates-by-intended-colle...](http://www.statisticbrain.com/iq-estimates-by-
intended-college-major/)

I think they are paid about right, given the business model. If we had a
private run education system, we would see much higher salaries (and attract
much smarter people to the career).

~~~
pdabbadabba
> education degrees are lower on the IQ scale

What makes you think this is a cause, rather than an effect of low pay?
(Assuming, dubiously, these statistics aren't total nonsense, and we should
actually care about average IQ.)

------
aerique
Honest question:

 _We lived with one car (a car that was given to us) for 4 ½ years. During
that time, I walked or rode my bike to school to save on gas. We recently
bought a second car with money I saved from my web design business._

Is the US really structured so that owning one car is (seen as) a problem?

~~~
amorphid
I just moved from San Francisco, CA to the Washington, DC area. I'm currently
staying at my dad's place in Alexandria, VA.

San Francisco has a very good public transit system, at least compared to any
other suburb in which I've lived. In San Francisco, I could be most places I
cared to be within 30 minutes. There was literally a bus station outside of my
apartment window, and I could catch probably a dozen different bus lines
within a six block radius, maybe more. I lived without a car for over 5 years
in SF, and it was fine.

Alexandria, VA is different. The closest Metro Station a light rail system, is
a 20 minute walk by foot, and it has little to no parking. Pretty much
anything I want to do is at least a 20 minute walk away. At the moment I can
borrow my dad's car, but if I had to walk, my life would be dominated just by
trying to get around. Sure, I can survive without a car in Alexandria, VA, but
it'd kind of a pain in the ass.

I can't imagine trying to live in a rural area without a car.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
DC is at least as good as San Francisco for living without a car. You're
having problems because you're out in the suburbs. Move into DC proper or even
to a more accessible suburb like Ballston, Clarendon, Crystal City, etc or
even just move a bit closer to old town Alexandria and it's very easy to live
without a car.

~~~
scott_s
_DC_ is fine. But "DC" is a tiny part of the "DC area". I grew up in
Annandale. A car was necessary. An old friend of mine lives in Alexandria, in
Del Ray. He takes the train into DC (which takes him about an hour total, when
you add up the walking, waiting and riding). But his family needs a car
because his wife works in a school that is not in walking distance, their
parents live in Arlington and northwest DC, and most of their kids' activities
require driving.

In DC, as in San Francisco, the trains are more for commuters to get into and
out of the city. They're not really for connecting within or outside of the
city. The NY area is better about that. (But not great.)

If I ever moved back to the area, I would seriously consider Bethesda. Easy
access to DC, and a neat town in its own right.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
> But "DC" is a tiny part of the "DC area".

Every city has outlying suburbs and not a single one has excellent transit
throughout the entire metropolitan area. The DC metropolitan area has the
lowest mode share for private automobiles and the highest mode share for
public transportation of any except for NYC. It is objectively the second best
city in the US for getting around without a car. It is clearly not as good as
NYC but it is certainly not worse than San Francisco.

~~~
olifante
Berlin has excellent transit throughout most of its metropolitan area, and
it's a large, low-density city.

------
loteck
_Do we care more about student progress or our appearance?_

We care about both, and we have to. Proposed solutions will have to cater to
this reality to have any hope of success.

 _Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests?_

Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of
education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still
past the test, it's a quantifiable bare minimum.

 _Why can’t we shift our focus to critical thinking and relevant educational
experiences?_

Because while great teachers exist, they are sitting on top of a pile of good,
decent and bad teachers that largely can't be fired or forced to improve. Kids
in those teachers' classrooms need to come out with some bare minimum of
quantifiable education.

~~~
logicallee
>> _Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests?_

>Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of
education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still
past the test, it's a quantifiable bare minimum.

Why does test-driven development enable the efficient creation of software
that works, but the same isn't true of education? For example, asking a
student to read some text and answer questions about whether they've
understood it is a simple way to see if they're actually literate. An assert()
if you will.

Test-driven education has resulted in an American literacy rate of 99%
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_r...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_literacy_rate)

The SAT is a test that heavily influences University admissions in the United
States. (Not all countries have college admissions exams.) The most selective
universities in America are some of the ones who give it the greatest weight.
It is hard to argue against a causal link given the level of scholarship and
research that is produced in American higher education.

[http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-
ranki...](http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/world-university-
rankings/2014-15/world-ranking)

I am not going to weigh in on what kind of tests should exist. But the idea
that testing is a last resort, and you can 'get a bad education' and still
pass the test, is like the idea of a function that doesn't work, but passes
all the tests. Not to put words in your mouth, but in essence then you are
essentially arguing that it is impossible to test an education.

If so, what makes you think a bad education exists? Perhaps all educations are
perfect?

Granted this last example is a bit glib of me, since perhaps there are things
that are infeasible to test in a normal test setting. But overall, I would say
the type of things that make you say someone got a poor education, are also
the kinds of things that can be tested for and are, in fact, tested for. You
don't mean they can't make an omelette without getting it all over the floor.

~~~
antimagic
Actually, test-driven development is a pretty decent analogy. Including the
shortcomings of TDD, such as the fact that you pass the unit tests doesn't
mean you have a working product, which in education translates as students
passing tests but not being able to use the subject in real life.

You can reduce the delta between passing tests by writing more, better tests,
but again you quickly run into a problem - you spend so much time on testing
that you start to lose the time to actually learn / write the actual project
code.

So that's some ways in which the analogy is good. But there are some glaring
errors in the analogy. In education, a student can have perfectly mastered the
material, but is just really bad at passing tests, getting stressed out by it.
In TDD, you can make your test environment match the target environment very
closely. For most student exams this isn't true - most applications of higher
learning are not done in a race against the clock, and you always have access
to the Internet to help you out when you're stuck. By their nature, tests
can't validate your capacity to work in a team with any fidelity. So, some of
the very important skills that are needed in the application of knowledge are
very difficult to test, making tests less valuable as a means of judging a
student's acquisition of skills. There's a reason why PhDs require a thesis
and a thesis defence, rather than sitting an exam before they are awarded.

~~~
arghbleargh
In the same vein, an easy way to get the tests to pass is to add a bunch of
"if" statements to handle each test case. Of course, that is counterproductive
in terms of the usefulness of the software.

However, because so much weight is put on testing, that is essentially what
happens in school a lot of the time. For some reason, it seems more obviously
absurd in the software context.

------
waynemr
The sad and infuriating thing is that good teachers leaving public service is
precisely what conservative groups strive for, in their "starve the beast"
agendas. As more quality staff leave, they [conservative groups] can claim
greater and greater failures in the public system and siphon more tax dollars
into private voucher schools.

~~~
tokenadult
_The sad and infuriating thing is that good teachers leaving public service is
precisely what conservative groups strive for_

I challenge you directly to find _any_ example of a conservative person saying
that they want good teachers to leave public service. Most voters and
taxpayers who have considered the issue want bad teachers to leave the public
payroll, to make more room for good teachers. Young people from poor families
need to be taught well to help children from poor families advance in
developed countries,[1] and several researchers on education suggest that
simply encouraging the very worst teachers to change careers might have a huge
benefit for school effectiveness for whole countries.[2]

[1] [http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-
kenschaft.pdf](http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf)

[2] [http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/economic-value-
hig...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/economic-value-higher-
teacher-quality)

~~~
debacle
There are many wide-right libertarians who want to completely dismantle the
public education system. Reducing the overall quality of public school
teachers advances their cause.

~~~
tokenadult
That's not the same thing that I asked. Nor have you given any examples of
anyone saying what I was asking about.

AFTER EDIT: I just received in today's postal mail a mailpiece from a public
advocacy organization (I'm not familiar with the organization) pointing out
that current union contracts in Minnesota's public schools still require that
school districts that have to downsize staff (as some must do as the number of
school-age children in Minnesota declines) have to lay off teachers by
seniority, not by effectiveness. This organization's policy argument is that
any time a school district hires, lays off, or promotes teachers, it should do
so on the basis of demonstrated helpfulness to learners learning, not by the
order in which the teachers were first hired. That makes sense as a way to
staff schools better to help learners, which is what teachers are all about.

------
WalterBright
> SOL tests are inherently unfair,

I regularly see claims that tests are at odds with learning. What I don't
understand is how anyone can tell what kids have learned without some sort of
test.

~~~
pizza
But really, with the way standardized tests are done now, can you even tell
what kids _have_ learned with a test?

By which I mean, when kids can't memorize all the stuff that they have learned
by heart, and then when they can't produce an exact replica of a procedure or
something without some kind of reference, we equate it to their not having
learned it in the first place.

Programmers create docs for the purpose of referring to them, doctors _must_
look things up as opposed to simply relying upon a faulty memory, etc.

Kids get the impression that to learn is to fill their memories as opposed to
be able to analyze in new scenarios, and that if they can't memorize facts
then they are a 'bad learner'. These standards just aren't fair.

~~~
anigbrowl
Well, _some_ things people should remember - how to calculate the hypotenuse
of a right-angled triangle, or who the parties were in WW2, or what makes a
metaphor different from a simile.

But you can also give problems, like 'here are the dimensions of some real-
world problem, and here's a formula used to solve such problems, apply one to
the other'; or 'here's the text of a poem by so-and-so, explain what you think
the poet means and support your arguments with reference to the text.'

I know essay answers take longer to evaluate and are harder to score, but I
get the impression that way too much of k-12 educational testing involves
multiple-choice questionnaires.

~~~
ahomescu1
> Well, some things people should remember - how to calculate the hypotenuse
> of a right-angled triangle, or who the parties were in WW2, or what makes a
> metaphor different from a simile.

This line of thinking is IMHO a lot of what's wrong with modern education:
none of that stuff matters if you don't understand what's behind it (how you
get to the formula of calculating the hypothenuse and why people fought WW2).
To use the WW2 example, the answer to "who" is "Germany&allies vs
Russia&allies" (an oversimplification), but it's far more important to know
why they were fighting (a fight between different political ideologies,
including Nazism and Communism). Education focuses too much on (possibly
useless) facts, and far too little on the logic behind them, or why they
matter.

~~~
wues
Oversimplification indeed - to the extent that for the first one year and a
half of WW2 Germany and Russia _were_ allies.

------
nkangoh
I REALLY wish teaching was as prestigious as say, being a doctor, or
investment banker. I read a very interesting [1] book on this and it really
just opened my eyes regarding the mediocrity of teaching (not quality per say,
but as a profession, which eventually leads to poor education).

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-
That/dp/14516...](http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Kids-World-They-
That/dp/145165443X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1420782654&sr=8-3&keywords=education)

~~~
brador
It is (in a free market). China/HK has millionaire private teachers.

~~~
warfangle
It is (in a socialist market). Finnish teachers have some of the utmost
prestige.

~~~
wyclif
The problem with those who make 1:1 comparisons of the US and Finnish public
education systems is that Finland is largely (yes, I know there are some
Swedes there) a homogeneous culture, whereas the US is a "melting pot"
containing a huge variety of cultures.

~~~
peterfirefly
The Swedes there are not the problem. The recent Muslim immigration is. The
PISA scores are falling in Finland, too, in accordance with the rising number
of school children of (recent _) Muslim origin.

_ : The Tartars do not seem to be stupid and do fine.

~~~
wyclif
Well, I wasn't saying Swedes in Finland are a problem; I was simply trying to
head off the potential criticism that Finland is not technically homogeneous
;-)

------
ComSubVie
> I stepped into the classroom around the time of a major worldwide recession.
> As the individuals and institutions responsible for this recession escaped
> accountability for their actions, school districts like ours went into
> survival mode. > Six years later, we’re still there. We have no plan for the
> future. > Earlier this year, the school board held its annual budget
> meeting. I left my second job early to attend and asked board members one
> simple question: “Is there any cause for optimism?” Each school board
> member, searching for a silver lining, effectively answered “no” by the time
> their reasoning caught up with them.

I think that's quite the same everywhere. Here in Austria school budget gets
cut every year, local media are always bashing the teachers so the social
standing of teachers isn't very good, therefore it is hard to get
good/motivated teachers and you're struck with unmotivated teachers (and even
motivated teachers don't hold their motivation for a lot of years).

Most important would be for the community to recognize that education is the
most important thing we have for future generations and start investing
(financially, socially, ...) into it. However I have no idea how that could be
reached.

------
scornwell
I don't think there is another profession who's need is so widely advocated
for, yet so pathetically enticed. Put some money on education, make it a
desirable job, and then watch the world change as talented people try for
those positions. Now, just figure out how to get the money committed to
education instead of people giving RollsRoyce, Bentley, Ferrari, etc their
best years ever.

~~~
jpadkins
its the business model. As long as its taxpayer funded, incentives won't be
aligned, and you won't see a lot of money in education. A market system would
have a lot higher salaries, and attract a lot more investment.

------
jqm
Good read. I remember a few dedicated influential teachers. Unfortunately,
they are but a few and surrounded in my memory by a large number that were
simply going through the motions.

That was 20 years ago, and it sounds like maybe things have not improved.
Quality teachers are just about one of the most important things a society can
have. Not sure why we haven't institutionally figured that out.

~~~
OedipusRex
I've had great teachers and I've had terrible teachers. I don't think any
teacher sets out to be one of the bad teachers, I think the amount of things
teachers go through (low pay, unnecessary hoops to jump through, etc) just
grinds a person down.

~~~
jqm
Maybe they don't set out to be bad teachers.

But the way it is set up now, education does seem to get a fair share of
people looking for an easy path. Not sure this is the best group to be
educating our youth.

~~~
dbrannan
You get what you pay for.

~~~
jqm
You get no more than you pay for. You don't always get what you pay for.

------
SeanLuke
In what way is this person the "Virginia Teacher of the Year"? The word
"Virginia" never appears in the body. He was the Waynesboro (pop. 20K) Rotary
Club Teacher of the Year.

~~~
delinka
He's a "Teacher of the Year" from Virginia. Similar to how "Florida man" is
from Florida.

~~~
rdtsc
It is a good point, it made it seems like he was awarded a tittle by the state
itself.

------
retrogradeorbit
The Reason Education Sucks:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98)

Edit: for those wanting something less cynical and more serious, I recommend
some John Taylor Gatto:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_CeWip5BpU#t=1m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_CeWip5BpU#t=1m)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCuc-2tfgk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxCuc-2tfgk)

~~~
MichaelRender
When I read this article, the first thing I thought of was John Taylor Gattto,
a man voted Teacher of the Year who had to resign out of conscience. I was
lucky enough to spend a weekend with Mr. Gatto at a conference. Very
enlightening.

------
noir-york
The American political system is broken. Here is a middle-class family that
can barely make it. The GOP harp on about lower taxes and immigration, and the
Dems talk about economic equality and healthcare. The ACA helps the middle-
class but the political gridlock ensures that the president, or anyone else,
can't force through effective change.

Commonly cited are campaign finance and lobbying and polarisation but those
are merely the symptoms of the deeper problem which is the US constitution. A
messy compromise, the US constitution effectively gives veto to tiny states
(Senate seating). Gerrymandering at the state level ensures that safe seats,
and worse, incumbents who have to defend themselves from the ideological
'purists' of their own party. Not a recipe for pragmatic government, vide
Brownback, Kansas.

I still look forward to the spectacle of the 2016 general but even if Warren
were to be the president (a far off prospect, even though she is what the US
needs), little real and effective change would come about because she'd be
stymied at ever corner. In view of the fundamental alignment of forces
political and economic (increasing inequality in both), we can expect a return
to a Victorian economy.

~~~
qj4714
The political system and Senate reflect the division in the country. There is
no easy fix. The problem is people do not trust their government, which is
reflective of the current political environment and is the primary reason
these problems are not addressed.

~~~
noir-york
Mixing cause and effect. The fundamental cause is how the constitution
allocates power to the three branches. Power has a logic all of its own; each
actor in the system acts in line with their power and this leads to the
division and gridlock that you see.

It is impossible to fix the US constitution under the current political
system. There has to be a fundamental realignment of power and that will most
likely only happen via a major external shock, like a world war.

~~~
mtbcoder
I would think the cause of the ridiculous and nasty political divide stems
more from campaign finance laws and media punditry masquerading as journalism
rather than how the constitution allocates power to three branches of
government. It seems to me that many Americans are taught daily to vilify
anything that is put forth by an opposing party simply on the grounds of
whether or not they have the correct letter prefixed to their title. I think
the start of any fix would have to be campaign finance reform and a push for
publicly funded elections.

------
AndrewKemendo
My wife is a school teacher and so I see this from her constantly. She argues
that people don't value her work but that it is vitally important.

So my question to her is, if it is so valuable then why aren't people willing
to pay for it? The answer seems to be, because they can't afford it. People
with money spend egregious amounts of money on schooling and private school
teachers are reasonably well paid.

Publicly funded schools however are like every other major bureaucratic
organization, they have to prove their worth and are all competing for a
shrinking pot of money. That is where all these bullshit requirements come
from.

Schools are trying to prove that their teaching is effective. The problem with
this however is that the community around the school, the engagement of
parents in education and the economic opportunity in the community has as much
if not a larger influence on educational outcomes than the actual school day
activities do.

In my opinion schools should be kind of a seat of knowledge for their
communities, not just a place that kids go to during the day and then go back
home - like a glorified day care (or prison).

~~~
ashark
Private school teachers are reasonably well-paid? In general?

My wife and most of my friends are teachers. Private schools are where you go
when you're so sick of public schools' bureaucratic BS that you're willing to
take a 1/3 to 1/2 (!) cut in total compensation to get away from it and start
feeling like you're a Teacher instead of a secretary who also teaches a bit on
the side.

None of my friends have done it, but every year I hear another story about one
of their co-workers who did, and they always sound a bit envious when they
tell it. There are tons of private schools around here, and if any of them
paid even close to what public schools do 100% of the teachers I know would
apply for a job at one of them ASAP.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Interesting. Maybe it is just the market we have been in, but the prep type
schools (Maret, Dalton etc...) and "academies" have very competitive pay.

------
jonpress
I was surprised that he mentioned the global financial crisis. I think 'too
big to fail' was one of the biggest frauds ever committed against society.
There is no such thing as too big to fail.

I think the 2008 financial crisis was an evolutionary mechanism for society to
rid itself of excessive greed among its leaders (natural selection). The
bailout was an unnatural intervention and will only serve to propagate the
genes for greed in our society.

I think it's only a matter of time though before the next crisis - And I think
it will be the same people who will take us there - This time the cause will
be more clever and more complicated than the last time.

~~~
deadgrey19
This seems a little short-sighted to me. Bailing out the banks was not a
question of protecting the banks (who are by no means blameless), it was a
question of limiting collateral damage. A large bank failing has the potential
to render (literally) millions of innocent people ("mom's and pop's")
instantly bankrupt. If a bank fails, there's no way to get your money out. The
money simply goes away. Typically banking preferences run in families, so the
effects would probably be even greater, with entire families going bankrupt.
The ramifications of such a failure would be felt for generations onwards.
This is what "too big to fail" means.

~~~
FeeTinesAMady
That doesn't make any sense. You seem to be assuming that it's impossible to
bail out the bank's clients and let the bank itself fail, but that is not, in
fact, impossible. That would insulate all those families from that collateral
damage while still allowing the scumbags at the top to feel the effects.

~~~
deong
> You seem to be assuming that it's impossible to bail out the bank's clients
> and let the bank itself fail, but that is not, in fact, impossible.

It probably _was_ impossible. Banks don't just function as holding pens for
your money. They're (by design) overly leveraged based on the idea that not
everyone will want their money at the same time. If the bank fails, you need
to come up with all the money at once, and there was never that much money in
the bank to begin with.

Maybe you could have handled this by some system in which you backed people's
deposits with things like bonds, but at a minimum, it's pretty complicated.
It's easier, and probably better in the long run, to just reassure everyone
that their money is safe in the bank, and give the bank whatever is needed to
ensure that promise is kept.

Where we went wrong was in failing to meaningfully change the system that
incentivized and allowed the failure to occur in the first place. We probably
couldn't have done anything to avoid bailing them out the first time, but we
could be doing much more to avoid the need to do it again and again in the
future, but we're not, because the banks own the government and don't want us
to.

~~~
FeeTinesAMady
But all that would have been needed would be for the money that the government
used to bail out the banks instead go directly to the depositors, and for the
government to seize all the bank's assets to help pay for that. All they would
need would be the relevant records. That would only be impossible if the
depositors had so much money invested in the banks that there wasn't enough to
cover them. Was that the case?

~~~
deong
> That would only be impossible if the depositors had so much money invested
> in the banks that there wasn't enough to cover them. Was that the case?

Well, you're probably right in that I think there would have been enough money
between the banks' assets and the amount the government contributed to cover
the amount immediately owed. Probably. I'm just guessing really, but let's say
that's true.

What would the next day have looked like? My guess is that the banks who
weren't already failing probably would start to fail very quickly. My guess is
that if you let the "bad" banks actually fail and cease operations, with the
federal government giving out hundreds of billions of dollars in deposit
guarantees directly to the people, you'd have had lines at the banks the next
day as everyone else rushed to get their money out of the banks that hadn't
failed yet.

~~~
FeeTinesAMady
I don't think they would, though. I think people would see that their money is
in fact safe, as the government guaranteed it, because now the possibilities
are 1) the bank will fail and the government covers the deposits and
liquidates the bank, and 2) the bank doesn't fail and the deposits are safe
anyway.

------
Goronmon
I honestly don't know how people stay teachers for more than a couple years in
most places. The people who I know who are teachers not only get paid fairly
poorly, they work 60-70 hour weeks, have less and less control over how they
are allowed to teach and also have to deal with crazy parents (ie. parent
stalking outside school, sending books/emails, because they apparently aren't
teaching in a way that is pro-conservative/pro-christian).

It just seems like it takes a lot of effort to get into a field that treats
you like crap almost as a general rule.

~~~
talmand
I think the pro-conservative/pro-christian snipe isn't necessary. In my
experience parents all across the political/social/class spectrum are capable
of crazy things when it comes to their kids.

~~~
relaytheurgency
It doesn't even have to be political. I had a parent supposedly "so angry that
he could not meet me in person for fear of hurting me" because his daughter
supposedly came home crying from school every day due to my class. He was just
a pushover parent who was being utilized by a girl that did not want to be in
physics class. She was even bragging to her friends about how she was going to
get her dad to have her pulled from the class.

------
blazespin
I thought all of the points were naive, except for fair compensation. What we
need is extremely high compensation (the level of doctors) for teachers who
can inspire their students to teach themselves.

~~~
pizza
What's so naive about 4.? I think an environment that encourages learning
would have way, way, way more influence over educational outcome than the
instructors involved.

------
tempodox
Oh, my. Education in the U.S. is as broken as it gets. If you have to pay for
being able to afford a job as a teacher, that spells doom for a whole
profession. Not to mention a nation's future.

------
kaptain
> When we have a desperate need like football bleachers that have to be
> replaced, or turfgrass that isn’t up to par, we somehow find the money. We —
> through public or private avenues — meet those needs. Why can’t we find
> funds to address the areas that seem more pertinent to our primary mission?

> Stop by the high school for a sporting event (and I love sports) and you’ll
> be impressed with the attendance and enthusiasm. Stop by the high school on
> a parent-teacher night and you’ll see tumbleweed blowing through the halls.

Living in China, the expat community often criticizes how parents are fixated
on trying to make sure their child does well; for most Chinese children, every
waking moment of their life from elementary school on is focused on trying to
get into a university. Childhood often consists of going to class, coming home
to eat, going to class, coming home to do homework, and then sleeping.

The irony in the critique is that most Americans (I float around with a mostly
American expat community) are unaware how weird their own sports fetish is.
I'm American and I love sports too! But it wasn't until recently (like in the
last 10 years) it dawned on me how weird it is that Americans love sports so
much.

Look at our university system. The university system is just a proxy for a
professional sports league, except the participating athletes are not paid and
are not allowed to hold jobs. Instead many of them are required to study
things they have no interest in, in the hope that they can get by long enough
to be able to graduate to a real professional league to begin making a living
wage. Meanwhile many schools go bankrupt trying to field a winning team, while
the teams that do win make millions that go to university officials.

When a university is mentioned in the news, it is most likely in the context
of some sporting event. Imagine what would happen if, instead of focusing on
sports, people focused on the actual mission of the university. I think this
is a microcosm of American culture and the way we treat education needs to
change dramatically. All of these tests and metrics smack weirdly of
"sportsification" or "athelitis", where we try to turn education into some
sort of game because it makes it easier to understand even when there is
little correlation with the original mission.

I don't know if the situation is as dire as I write it to be. This rant is the
result of years of incubation in my mind. Hopefully things will change so I
don't seem so grumpy or anti-social (like seriously, it's hard to make friends
with other guys unless I can say something intelligent about the Big 10).

------
markvdb
Make all schools compete for students. And if you can't pay teachers lots of
money, at least give them some trust. They're in it for teaching.

It works relatively well over here.

------
pfortuny
I know this is easy to say from abroad but something that keeps coming to my
mind when reading these statements is: what is needed are (also) teachers with
the guts to act freely and teach what they deem necessary DESPITE whatever the
government says and scraping the bureaucracy. Be not afraid of being fired.

Yes, very easy to say but, as I see it, the only weapon against the Leviathan
is your conscience.

------
mcguire
It's really hard to care about _X_ when everyone you work with, judging by
their actions, seems to not care about _X_.

------
ck2
A calm rational deep and insightful explanation that will be completely
ignored and forgotten.

Oh I know, let's spend more money on weapons for police and the military while
draining all resources from schools, that will solve everything.

------
ck425
Good post and a lot of interesting points, some of which I've seen raised in
the uk too. But one thing that confused me, in the US is _only_ having one car
and walking or cycling to work considered a big sacrifice?

~~~
zacharycohn
(full disclosure, I do not know anything about the town OP is from)

It is a big sacrifice when you live in a suburban area, which typically don't
have great (if any) public transit options. You could easily be 3 or 4 miles
out from the nearest grocery store or shop - let alone your job.

In many cities in America, you NEED a car to get around. It's just not
feasible to live without one.

~~~
ck425
Is it a big deal to have only one?

~~~
douche
Imagine that you and your spouse both work 15-20 miles away from your home, in
different directions (This is common outside of the biggest urban areas).
Unless you REALLY like to bike, you need two vehicles.

------
tokenadult
I read the fine article kindly submitted here and a great many of the comments
here before commenting. First of all, the headline of this submission (which
is the original article headline, and thus expected by Hacker News rules) is a
misstatement of fact. The author of the submitted article is a Virginian who
has been teacher of the year at his little-known high school, but NOT the
"Virginia Teacher of the Year."[1] The exaggerations go on from there.

The author writes, "But public education is painted as a career where you make
a difference in the lives of students. When a system becomes so deeply flawed
that students suffer and good teachers leave (or become jaded), we must
examine how and why we do things." Well, yes, but he could have asked
different questions, and come up with the different answers earlier reached by
John Taylor Gatto, a New York State Teacher of the Year decades ago.[2]
Teachers should never kid themselves about how much the school-system-as-such
is designed to enable learners to learn well. That has hardly ever been its
main purpose.

Meanwhile, I have seen some examples of helpful reforms where I live. Virginia
needs to catch up with all those reforms. Minnesota, where I now live and
where I grew up, has had largely equal per-capita funding for public school
pupils statewide since the 1970s. The state law change that made most school
funding come from general state appropriations rather than from local property
taxes was called the "Minnesota miracle."[3] Today most funding for schools is
distributed by the state government on a per-pupil enrollment basis.[4] You
don't have to live in a wealthy neighborhood in Minnesota to have adequately
funded schools in your neighborhood.

The funding reform in the 1970s was followed up by two further reforms in the
1980s. First, the former compulsory instruction statute in Minnesota was ruled
unconstitutional in a court case involving a homeschooling family, and a new
compulsory instruction statute explicitly allows more nonpublic school
alternatives for families who seek those. Second, the Legislature, pushed by
the then Governor, set up statewide open enrollment[5] and the opportunity for
advanced learners to attend up to two years of college while still high school
students on the state's dime.[6] And Minnesota also has the oldest charter
school statute in the United States.[7]

Parents in Minnesota now have more power to shop than parents in most states.
That gets closer to the ideal of detecting the optimum education environment
for each student (by parents observing what works for each of their differing
children) and giving it to them by open-enrolling in another school district
(my school district has inbound open-enrollment students from forty-one other
school districts of residence) or by homeschooling, or by postsecondary study
at high school age, or by exercising other choices.

The educational results of Minnesota schools are well above the meager results
of most United States schools, and almost competitive (but not fully
competitive) with the better schools in the newly industrialized countries of
east Asia and southeast Asia. It's a start. More choices would be even better.
(P.S. Many of these school system reforms in Minnesota were sponsored and
championed by supporters of the state's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, but
most are also supported by Republicans here too. Choice is good for everybody
and helps schools have incentive to improve.)

[1]
[http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/recognition/](http://www.doe.virginia.gov/teaching/recognition/)

[2] [http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html](http://www.cantrip.org/gatto.html)

[3]
[http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.php](http://www.mnhs.org/library/tips/history_topics/18public.php)

[4]
[http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf](http://www.house.leg.state.mn.us/hrd/pubs/mnschfin.pdf)

[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/SchSup/SchFin/index.html)

[5]
[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.h...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/EnrollChoice/index.html)

[6]
[http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index...](http://education.state.mn.us/MDE/StuSuc/CollReadi/PSEO/index.html)

[7] [http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter...](http://www.amazon.com/Zero-Chance-Passage-Pioneering-
Charter/dp/1592984762/)

------
personlurking
The other day there was a "best-of" on Reddit where a teacher said that "only
martyrs teach now in America."

[http://np.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/2rj1r1/i_really_wan...](http://np.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/2rj1r1/i_really_want_to_be_a_teacher_but_im_afraid_of/cngetgc)

------
thirdreplicator
That's sad. I would be a teacher if I could get paid $75/hr...

------
keithpeter
_" Bad teachers can game any system; good teachers can lose their focus trying
to take new requirements seriously."_

This is a major point and it applies to educational 'systems' across the
world.

~~~
keithpeter
Downvoters: I'm interested in your reasons. My observation above is based on
several decades of classroom experience.

------
tlrobinson
More like "Waynesboro Rotary Club Teacher of the Year"?

Looks like this is blogspam with a linkbaity title. Original was "The Tough
Decision to Leave the Classroom": [http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-
leave-the-classroom...](http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-
classroom/)

~~~
blakeja
BS, link bait / blogspam are any one of the numerous nautil.us or medium.com
articles that seem to consistently make it onto the front page of hackernews.

Whereas, this article reflects the same sentiments I have been hearing from
close friends over the past years who are public school teachers. And it boils
down to two facts that I have taken particular note of after listening to
their grievances:

1\. Government interference with education has been a huge mistake. 2\. We do
not pay our teachers nearly enough.

You cannot legislate education, especially when trying to create a universal
adapter for all education across the country.

You cannot get quality teachers in the education system without adequate
compensation, period.

~~~
frozenport
>>You cannot get quality teachers in the education system without adequate
compensation, period.

In Chicago we tried paying them more and didn't see much improvement.

~~~
eropple
Tried paying the current teachers more, or undergoing a concentrated effort to
evaluate current teachers against a baseline and aggressively court and hire
at competitive wages teachers who have a track record of being better than the
teachers that you have at that baseline?

I ask 'cause while I know nothing about Chicago, I've found that what you said
always comes up with regard to the former.

~~~
sitkack
You can't just fix something with more money. Analogously, it would be like
fixing a soup with too much salt by pouring in more water and sour cream,
might work, might not.

~~~
eropple
Yes, that was my point, thank you for repeating it.

~~~
sitkack
total agreement, how do we fix it?

------
jonas21
The original post is over here: [http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-
leave-the-classroom...](http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-
classroom/)

------
joshstrange
Here is the non-mobile (and from what I can tell, original) article:
[http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-
classroom...](http://iamjwal.com/the-tough-decision-to-leave-the-classroom/)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we updated the URL from
[http://www.schoolleadership20.com/m/blogpost?id=1990010%3ABl...](http://www.schoolleadership20.com/m/blogpost?id=1990010%3ABlogPost%3A205389).

------
animex
Maybe do some job research before getting an education degree in the US. I
think most teachers would have told you it's pretty shitty in general. In
Canada, teachers make more than most software developers, ~90k/yr. Still, much
of the same bureaucracy exists here as well.

~~~
kodreaming
I don't know where you get the number, teachers in Canada make ~90k / yr.

Let's say that number is correct, and this is why Canada doesn't have a
thriving technology industry, companies like RIM fails. They can't pay enough
to retain good engineers in the country.

~~~
animex
Tons of my friends are teachers. Software dev salaries are on the rise but I'm
sure the medium is around this range. We constantly lose talent to the bubble
markets in the US though.

