
US schools lay off hundreds of thousands - hedora
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-teachers-insig/u-s-schools-lay-off-hundreds-of-thousands-setting-up-lasting-harm-to-kids-idUSKBN23B39R
======
viburnum
You know who’s not laying off anyone? The military. Local funding of schools
is ridiculous. Education benefits the whole nation. Educational investments
shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic conditions.

~~~
tyree731
> Educational investments shouldn’t be dictated by transient economic
> conditions.

Could someone not make the same argument about the national defense?

Education is funded largely by local taxes, and local tax revenues are being
gutted, so there isn't much that can be done here without nationalizing public
education.

~~~
Spartan-S63
I don't think we should be opposed to nationalizing education. A common
curriculum would help mobility when it comes to families moving across state
lines. It would also ensure uniform funding and plentiful opportunities to
poorer and rural schools.

~~~
verst
Even shorter term I'd like us to move away from local property taxes being
used for local schools. The state government should have a statewide pool of
money they allocate to schools based on enrollment numbers, cost of living.
This should be sufficiently funded such that teachers can make a living wage
in the local school district.

Those who don't like this can still send their kids to private schools.

~~~
dorchadas
I'm a teacher myself, and I think this is very much needed. Right now, good
neighborhoods just get better schools, while bad neighborhoods get worse. It's
a horribly vicious circle, and shows even in areas where there's only one
school (my county, the 5th biggest in the state, only has 25k people and one
high school) if there's a huge amount of poverty (something like 65% of our
students are on free or reduced lunch; over 80% live with either a single
parent, grandparent(s), or other guardian), so it doesn't get the funding
that, say, the school in the rich neighboorhood of the nearest big city gets,
and it shows (it also doesn't help that our guidance councilor is ignorant and
actively trying to make everything easier and less rigorous, but that's a
different story). A state wide collection and distribution would help a lot;
sadly, you're right and a lot of the parents in those better-off neighborhoods
won't like it.

~~~
blueblisters
When I moved to the US, this was one of the things that surprised me the most.
I found it really odd that my coworkers would look for homes based on how good
the schools were in that neighborhood. The fact that all kids don't get equal
opportunity makes it feel like a very broken society.

~~~
rayiner
That has nothing to do with school funding. Your coworkers were looking for
neighborhoods where they don’t have to send their kids to school alongside
black or Hispanic kids. Here in Maryland, my exurban county spends $14,400 per
student per year. Baltimore spends $17,500, despite having substantially lower
cost of living. (Even excluding federal funding, Baltimore spends $2,000
more.) The rich suburbs around DC spend $16,900. The rich Virginia county
where I grew up, on the other side of DC, spends $15,300. DC itself spends
$21,000 per student. DC also has some of the highest teacher salaries in the
country. It has brand new, beautiful LEED Gold high schools your coworkers
would never send their kids to because those schools are 99% black. Inside DC
itself, schools are funded equally, but houses in neighborhoods districts to
majority white schools cost hundreds of thousands of dollars more.

(When we talk about “systemic racism” in this country, that’s what it means.
It means that, even in blue states that are willing to provide ample funding
to majority-minority schools, white and Asian parents would rather spend
hundreds of thousands more on housing to avoid sending their kids to those
well funded schools.)

------
avsteele
Title: about teachers. Anecdotes: about teachers.

Buried in the article: _Susanna Loeb, a professor of education at Brown
University, said she believes most of the 469,000 laid off in April were non-
teacher personnel, as districts tend to fire teachers last_

If schools aren't open, a lot of janitorial, cafeteria worker, etc... are
probably being laid off.

~~~
npunt
This just places even more burden on teachers to do everything. This is like
keeping the troops but removing the supply lines.

~~~
lettergram
Except, the janitors and / or lunch servers can be hired within a couple weeks
and don't require training. Teachers are harder to hire because they have
expertise, unions, and have years of experience.

~~~
npunt
And what about the instructional aides and other staff that do have
significant training? And what about the web of relationships formed between
the staff and students, including those between the janitors, lunch servers,
etc and students? And what about the capacities and institutional knowledge
that staff have about school operations?

Schools are complex operations, made simple only by those who don't understand
them.

~~~
M5x7wI3CmbEem10
janitor-student relationships?

server-student relationships?

~~~
ticviking
The lunch lady is a time honored and well known source of wisdom for those who
get to know her.

~~~
Godel_unicode
Even if that's true, why would it not be true about the new school cook? Kids
get new teachers every year and seem perfectly able to bond with them.

~~~
npunt
Consider perhaps part of the reason kids can adapt to new teachers each year
is because there's consistency among the other members of the community, and
that swapping the entire community out each year might be detrimental to their
experience. Also, not all kids adapt that well to new teachers.

------
tengbretson
It's odd to me that there is this bizarre certainty on hacker news that within
20 years the most common occupation, truck driving, will be nearly entirely
obsolete, yet in an era where almost all human knowledge is available online
for free, the idea that the education apparatus will either stay the same or
continue to grow is somehow a given.

~~~
MattGaiser
> where almost all human knowledge is available online for free

And it has been so for nearly 20 years and changed very little. MOOCs are a
failure as people will not finish them. Online certificates carry no weight
with employers even if people do.

We have promising prototypes of self driving trucks. We don't have such models
for education.

~~~
woofie11
We have plenty of promising prototypes. The original MITx / 6.002x had in the
nineties rate it as being as-good-as or better than in-person.

OLI before that had good prototypes too.

The low-quality junk came in scaling. Part of that had to do with culture and
people (business people took over from academics). Part of that with economics
(people didn't shop on quality). Part on difficulty training. Etc.

~~~
MattGaiser
The problem is not in information quality. I agree that is a solved problem.
But that was never the big challenge in education (besides the politics of
it).

The problem is in getting students to complete the work, be honestly assessed
about the work, get feedback on their work as well as for employers to believe
that the assessment means anything.

~~~
bradlys
> The problem is not in information quality.

Information quality can be interpreted many ways. I wouldn't say most teachers
are good at their job or at presenting information. Most I had were not good
at the job - a lot of them were babysitters and acted as such. At the college
level, it's possibly worse where the people are so consumed with their
research that they have absolutely no interest in teaching or getting good at
it.

Textbooks are also very poor quality. History textbooks are probably the worst
offenders.

~~~
MattGaiser
I was mostly referring to why MITx isn't a solution to education.

I agree with respect to the current education system.

History is hard to correct as it is politically thorny and frequently
disputed. If I built a e-learning system, I wouldn't include that.

------
makeitrein
Just watched Bryan Caplan give a talk about how the majority of our education
system's resources are spent towards a "signaling arms race".

What once required a high school diploma requires an undergraduate degree.
What once required an undergraduate degree requires graduate school. Most of
your time spend in school is learning skills that the labor market cares
little for.

Not wholly convinced by his conclusion that entirely defunding education is
the path forward, but it's a perspective I found very interesting!

Here's the interview: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZylJp-
pHo&t=495s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hZylJp-pHo&t=495s)

~~~
MattGaiser
I see it as less about signaling and more about proof.

A long time ago, a high school diploma was rigorous enough that people
actually failed. A significant number of people did not earn one. Now, I don't
even know of a friend of a friend who has failed to earn one, even if they
just kept on retaking the courses at relatively easy schools until they
passed.

It isn't clear to me what holding a high school diploma indicates about a
person anymore simply because nearly everyone gets one.

What does holding a high school diploma prove?

~~~
satyrnein
This is what the "signaling arms race" refers to.

The other model, human capital theory, says that a high school diploma proves
that the student has acquired specific skills (algebra, European history, etc)
and therefore built up human capital. Signaling theory says the specific
skills are not the point.

------
bradly
I live in San Diego and this is sadly just more of the same. Public schools
cut non-essential programs and then PTAs in upper and upper-middle class
neighborhoods raise money from parents to add those programs back to their
specific school. When time comes to vote on taxes to increase education
budget, they are confused, as the public school system in San Diego is working
great for them and their community.

You shouldn’t be able to tell the income level of a neighborhood simply by
looking at a picture of a public school, but in San Diego county, that is
absolutely the case.

~~~
tyoma
California pays for schools (at least the operational costs) at the state
level since 2013
([https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcffoverview.asp](https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcffoverview.asp)).

Local districts can propose bond measures, but there is no guarantee they will
be accepted, even in rich districts. The school bond for Poway Unified was
rejected on this past ballot.

What is really going to hurt district finances is enrollment. The State pays
districts based on student enrollment. If students do not show up due to COVID
fears, that represents a lot of lost money. Many students will not be showing
up this upcoming school year.

------
jwilber
Could also do with cutting police funding. A local city in WA spends 53% of
their budget on police[0].

Imagine if just a fraction of that went to education?

I’d love to see solid studies on the efficacy/use of police budgeting. At a
cursory glance, it’s an easy dataset with which to mislead: is crime going
down because budgets are going up? Probably not. But without a solid study, we
can’t say for sure.

Still, I think we can agree: 53% is way too high (NYC in 2017 was 8% [1]).

[0]
[https://mobile.twitter.com/jesusonah/status/1268650880800223...](https://mobile.twitter.com/jesusonah/status/1268650880800223235)

[1]
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccar...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/08/07/how-
much-do-u-s-cities-spend-every-year-on-policing-infographic/amp/)

~~~
blisterpeanuts
But a lot of money is wasted in education, as well. There are incompetent
teachers with too much seniority to fire, for example, who are at the top of
the pay scale, and with nice pensions waiting for them when they do retire.
Many competent ones as well, but it's a big enough problem that basically
every teacher I've ever met can tell you stories.

~~~
ikeyany
I'm curious about the true total cost of pensions for jobs like teachers and
cops.

~~~
lotsofpulp
Add at least 30% to the numbers provided by the government hired actuaries.
Each percent the assumed discount rate is too high results in ~15% change in
liabilities. Not even mentioning additional liabilities due to underfunding,
bad investments/corruption, and erroneous assumptions about mortality.

------
zaroth
> _Robert Hull, chief executive of the National Association of State Boards of
> Education, which represents states’ interests, told Reuters most class sizes
> actually will shrink when schools reopen. That is because of COVID-19 and
> the need for social distancing. One adaptation will be to have students come
> to school, on a staggered basis, only on certain days of the week, and
> possibly receive video instruction other days. He predicted that some of
> these changes would be permanent._

I have a 2nd and 5th grader, going into 3rd and 6th grade. I can say from
first and second-hand experience that the social, emotional, and intellectual
damage being caused to young children by closing schools is absolutely
frightening. This is to say nothing of the tremendous cost to households who
aren’t able to adjust work schedules around their children not being in
school. Or even of the children where school is their respite and dependable
source of a decent meal.

If there are days where my children are not allowed to go to school in the
fall, those are days my kids and I will be spending protesting either in front
of the school, or in front of the State House.

If from my ultra privileged position I can see significant emotional and
intellectual damage being done to my kids from this policy, I have a hard time
imagining the widespread costs and impact that closing schools is having
across society.

------
eanzenberg
Open up already. The lockdown has been a sham, with scientists and researchers
already acknowledging no difference between areas that locked down and areas
that didn’t.

Enough is enough. How much more suffering does the world need to endure over
bad models and bad policy.

------
egberts1
They should start with cutting the upper staff, (and their cushy expensive
retirement package) of their school district. This would pave way for hiring
more teachers and restoring the arts, music, shop classes back into vogue.

------
Fiveplus
On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.*

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. _If they 'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic._

*[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
MattGaiser
> anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

These layoffs could compromise the ability of millions of children to be
curious. Is protecting future intellectual curiosity sufficiently interesting?

------
rantwasp
it’s puzzling to me since I don’t understand who is going to replace the
teachers. how is this going to work?

also I feel like the priorities are totally wrong. on one side we invest in
things that don’t matter or are harmful. on another we screw people that have
a meaningful contribution to society

~~~
wmf
The article says class sizes will double. But since classes will be through
Zoom, teachers can just mute students who misbehave!

~~~
rantwasp
so we’re gonna have 2 failures. doubling the class size and remote “learning”.
what a mess

------
jake_morrison
I think we need a common online learning platform for K-12.

That at least gives everyone the same access to the best lecturers,
independent of the low education budgets from poorer areas, as well as e.g. AP
classes that they can't get locally.

It reduces the need for "redundant" teachers there just to deliver a mediocre
lecture. Teachers are still needed to provide individual help, something that
doesn't scale as easily as online lectures. That could be done locally or
remotely.

Students need a computer and internet access. Providing them with that is
cheaper than trying to fund local teachers and buildings, though.

Then we need some way to provide the social aspects provided by schools,
sports, chemistry labs, as well as all the other services like food and
counseling which are not part of education but are provided by the school
system.

The same thing applies to the university system. I think this is the way out
of the current cost explosion/bubble.

------
achn
Wait, public schools for children are not funded by the government in the US?

~~~
MattGaiser
They are not funded by the national government. They are mostly funded by city
and county governments, with some money from state governments.

Basically each city or county is mostly responsible for paying for the
education of the children within its boundaries.

EDIT: I am slightly off on the percentages. See the comment below.

~~~
indemnity
Explains a lot about the state of primary and secondary education in the USA.

How can such a system not lead to massive disparities in quality and access to
education, if there isn't a federal backstop to make up for differences in
funding available from the state/county. Is there such a thing?

Glad I live in a country where schools get funding based on factors like
socio-economic status of surrounding community (the poorer the community, the
more funding from central government).

~~~
ikeyany
There _are_ massive disparities. If you're an upper-middle class parent, you
are primarily concerned with getting your kids in nice schools, as one's life
trajectory in the US correlates very strongly with the kind of schools one
went to.

------
RickJWagner
It's an interesting time, for sure. My son just finished his academics to be a
teacher, his next step is a semester of student teaching. But it's not certain
if classes will convene in the fall.

------
doggydogs94
It is ironic that smaller class sizes will require many more teaching
professionals. And here we are laying off people.

------
techslave
and the stock market is still on a tear...

~~~
missedthecue
Better sell all my holdings in public schools

------
throwawaysea
In some ways I view this as an opportunity for society. I would be happy to
have a return to decentralized schooling or alternate models with more choice,
rather than a one size fits all model that is increasingly being co-opted by
political actors to propagandize children with certain views or values.

~~~
tropdrop
And children who don't have parents with resources to "alternative models,"
deserve poor education? (I'm assuming you mean a stay-at-home parent who
chooses to teach home-schooling because all that's necessary for the survival
of this theoretical family is only 1 income earner, not 2).

For reference, this is NOT an insignificant percentage of the US population
[1].

1 - [https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-median-net-worth-of-
us-...](https://www.financialsamurai.com/the-median-net-worth-of-us-
households-over-time-has-gone-nowhere/)

