
The $1-a-week school - jimsojim
http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21660113-private-schools-are-booming-poor-countries-governments-should-either-help-them-or-get-out
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ejk314
I can't really picture a system where 20% of teacher are absent on any given
day... and since I can't picture it I feel like I'm not really getting the
whole picture. The article just gives a single paragraph to blame the unions
and doesn't really dive into the issue. So I looked into it:

[http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/pdf/outputs/systematicreviews/Q39Teac...](http://r4d.dfid.gov.uk/pdf/outputs/systematicreviews/Q39Teacher_attendance_2012Guerrero.pdf)

The primary reasons for absenteeism seem to be personal/family health (which,
granted, that _could_ be bullshit if it was self-reported) and work related
requirements (training, etc.)

Several studies showed correlation between poverty and absenteeism, which
suggests to me that teachers who have less financial resources to deal with
personal issues are going to miss work more often to go deal with those
issues.

It was also noted that administrators were absent more often than teachers and
the author suggested this as being a factor in teacher absenteeism.

~~~
barry-cotter
I regret I accidentally upvoted you when I meant to downvote, please excuse
the Sony fat fingers. (Don't buy unless it's Nexus or iPhone, kids.)

Your background assumption outside the first world should be that most people
are trying to cheat you, most of the time. If this wasn't true the country
would already be at least middle income, absent massive fuck ups, (communism
included) or recent wars. If you doubt me I invite you to move to the richest
city in any poor country.

All that said education isn't as wonderful as one might naively think. Kerala
in South India is anomalously well educated compared to its neighbours but
about as poor. The main thing motivating their teachers to show up compared to
their neighbours is that Keralan parents beat up teachers who don't at least
show up for work.

~~~
jimrandomh
Presumably you mean the reverse (meant to upvote); the GP post seems pretty
good.

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seibelj
If you have a monopoly, you charge excess rents and stop innovating. People
accept this easily as a fact of private enterprise, which is why we have the
state intervene to break monopolies.

Why people can't take this obvious fact and apply it to state-mandated
monopolies, like education, is perplexing. There should not be 1 provider of
education. We need competition and innovation in education.

~~~
tim333
State education doesn't have to be bad. It's not like they are granting a
monopoly to a private company. Finland for example "ranked sixth in math,
second in science and third in reading. By comparison, U.S. students ranked
30th, 23rd and 17th, respectively, of the 65 tested countries/economies."

[http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/january/finnish-
schools-r...](http://news.stanford.edu/news/2012/january/finnish-schools-
reform-012012.html)

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brudgers
Teachers unions are an artifact of a system modeled on the way things work in
wealthy nations where there are a surplus of qualified teachers...e.g. the US
where states have factory scale colleges of education in order to churn out
new teachers and thereby suppress wages (and historically to provide
respectable jobs for women from "respectable" social backgrounds).

It's a model where schoolmasters have Doctorates of Education; local
government administrations tend to be relatively less corrupt; the overall
cultural identity relatively free from hereditary entitlement; and with a
historical ideal of universal franchise.

The idea that education can be provided for $100 per pupil per year doesn't
fit the model, and the skew is in economic assumptions in general.

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joshdance
If you want a good book on the subject, check out the Beautiful Tree -
[http://www.amazon.com/The-Beautiful-Tree-Educating-
Themsleve...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Beautiful-Tree-Educating-
Themsleves/dp/1939709121?tag=joshdanc-20)

