HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

Quite sad that nothing came out of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U.

Sir Ken Robinson has a lot to say about the education paradigm and why it should be changed, and in what ways. He appeared on TED[1][2], too, since then, and probably elsewhere as well.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wX78iKhInsc [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

⬐ jahewson

Sadly he passed away in 2020.

⬐ johnisgood

Oh wow, I just remembered now. :( That's really upsetting! He was the only person giving me hope. :/ Thank you for the reminder.

It’s called divergent thinking. Creativity is a form of intelligence. RSA Animate on education and changing the paradigm: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

I wholeheartedly agree, and came out so disillusioned with the public education system that I'm struggling to decide what the right answer will be for my children.

I understand that many kids are not this way, but I was the type that read physics textbooks while in elementary school. We had a mentorship program that paired kids with someone from two grades above (e.g. 1st graders with 3rd graders). My reading level was always higher than my mentors' and it made me furious (and probably insufferable).

I feel like my entire time in school was spent getting it out of the way so I could study things that genuinely interested me. I would love for my children to not feel that same constraint, but instead feel free to go deeper at their own pace.

I'd recommend this talk by Sir Ken Robinson on this topic generally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ koenneker

Have you looked into Montessori schools[1]?

I had the great pleasure of visiting a school based on that model and it allowed a lot of flexibility for students. In my instance there were 4+ hours of "Free-work" blocks everyday, where we could work on whatever we wanted, we just had to make sure we finished certain (personalised) workloads by the end of the week. Pacing and what we wanted to do with our time if we finished early was up to us as a student and we could work on more advanced topics. Students were also encouraged to ask older members of the mixed age class if we got stuck, which made most students quite good at explaining topics to each other while giving older or more advanced students something to do if they didn't want to advance further in their own studies.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education

⬐ jkhdigital

Sudbury schools are even better. Unfortunately there are very few such schools in the world so you just have to get lucky and live near one, or start your own.

⬐ bamboozled

Have you considered this is a problem that's pretty specific to you and what while your experience might suck. It also sucks for kids who can't read well, period.

I think while schooling is far from ideal, most kids aren't reading physics books in elementary school. Many kids are struggling to cope on several different fronts.

⬐ TomMarius

Have you considered that the psychological effects on said children are not ignorable even if there is only a small minority of them?

⬐ bamboozled

Sure, I'm saying that it goes both ways.

⬐ TomMarius

I think everyone in this discussion recognizes that and in no way has tried to suggest anything different. Here we are talking about the unusual children and their (different from most others AND each other) needs.

⬐ jkhdigital

Do you have children yet? My son is 6 so I am right in the middle of this process. My wife does not share my point of view (different culture, different educational attainment) which makes it even more difficult. If I could clone myself I would just homeschool, but that’s not possible so it increasingly feels like I have no choice but to be an accomplice in the crime of sucking the creativity and curiosity out of my son by sending him to public schools.

⬐ achenatx

home schooling comes in many forms. Some are groups of people that get together and rotate duties. Some are groups that hire specialist teachers.

There are charter schools, magnet schools, and academically focused private schools. Ultimately though if your child is too gifted you will need private tutors. You dont need the tutors all day and you can supplement with other more cost effective methods as above.

My city even has a school for girls that are preparing to compete in non academic subjects and that want to practice for half the day. Academics are only half day and then they do whatever their passion is for the rest of the day.

The author might like an illustrated summary of a talk given by Sir Ken Robinson about "Changing education paradigms"[0], which includes some of the essence of this article (particularly referring to studies about how many uses one person can think of for a paperclip)

[0] RSA Animate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

[1] Full talk (55 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCbdS4hSa0s

⬐ claes-magnus

I actually link to [0] in my text in the end when I say we should 'rethink education'. :) I did not know of the full talk, and I am very grateful for your link [1]!

⬐ cmehdy

I'm sorry I missed that! I did read the rest but must have been so eager to share that fascinating talk that I overlooked this mistake. Thanks for the article!

⬐ claes-magnus

No worries. Also, I don't count on people clicking on all links. Further also, I totally understand what you mean: you want everyone to see it!

Isn't cheating a symptom of the failure in how the education system works? This^ very interesting video of Ken Robinson produced by RSA was recently posted by someone on this forum. It diagnose this problem very well.

Trying to put kids in a system that is boxed due to constraints of age, time, subjects and grades is very harmful for the real development of individual kids. Kids understand this and get disengaged from the system but still have to force themselves to follow along because they are not provided with an alternative.

^ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ abdullahkhalids

Look, we live in the real world with scare resources distributed to different needs, one of them education. It is sad that a lot of times students will have suboptimal teachers and teaching. Even at the best schools and universities in the world, there will be certain parts which will be taught badly.

Secondly, in the real world, some high value creating jobs can be extremely tedious and boring. And in the real world, some things you need to learn to do either these boring jobs or even interesting jobs, can be very boring.

As an educator, I am all for making education better (like a lot), but for the above reasons, parts of education will always be boring. And I understand that some students will cheat because of this boredom.

But what I observe is that the rate at which students cheat is much higher than the fraction of their education that is boring or badly done. Students cheat because it is easier than working hard, students cheat because it is cool to cheat and brag about it, students teach because they don't care about learning at all.

Here is a very good RSA animation[0] on Sir Ken Robinson's talk on the same subject.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ alexmingoia

Wow that’s a great talk. Thanks for sharing!

Ken Robinson on collaboration in education:

"In the work world, collaboration and team work are essential to success; in school, it's called cheating."

More here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ wfo

"In school, taking credit for someone else's work that you had nothing to do with creating is unethical, not accepted, and punished severely. In the work world, it's called Tuesday."

--Anyone who's experienced it

Cheating and collaboration are not the same. If you've ever taken an advanced math/cs/STEM class you've collaborated often on problem sets, they are often too hard to do alone. But you shouldn't have cheated.

⬐ shuntress

Collaboration is great for learning something new as a group.

But how do you then assess whether each individual in the group learned that important concept, or if they just all agreed with the one (and only) student who actually learned/knew it?

⬐ conanbatt

What would be the point of assessing an isolated individual in a world of collaboration?

Its akin to evaluating how someone would do something in the middle of the jungle without tools or support. Sure, you will be able to know who does better in that setting, but what conclusion can you bring of that?

⬐ cellularmitosis

> but what conclusion can you bring of that

Welllll you could conclude that they are in a prime position to create a YouTube channel with 178 million views /s

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA/abo...

⬐ enraged_camel

>>What would be the point of assessing an isolated individual in a world of collaboration?

Collaboration can only occur when each party has something meaningful to contribute.

⬐ SilasX

Yes, you're absolutely right, that someone's effectiveness -- in academia or otherwise -- depends on those around them.

But you still have to distinguish those who are not effective at all, contributing nothing, but who are still putting their name on the project.

To use the sibling example, there's a difference between a surgeon who draws on other specialists in the operation, vs someone that knows nothing about surgery.

⬐ conanbatt

> But you still have to distinguish those who are not effective at all, contributing nothing, but who are still putting their name on the project.

You dont need an individual assessment to do that. The real work world is exemplary on that. People without degrees very often outrank and outperform people with degrees, either through curiosity or through other skills that make him a more important key member.

In real life if someone is regarded as unproductive by his co-workers is not re-tested individually for validation.

⬐ mcguire

It's gonna kinda suck to be the engineering team where nobody actually learned calculus.

Or the surgical team where everyone "collaborated" on basic anatomy.

⬐ conanbatt

How would you know nobody learned calculus?

You are comparing people that dont know to people that know with that allegory. In a collaborative setting you would be able to see what people build, teach each other, and learn.

A team with 5 people that know 20% calculus can produce much better results than a team where 1 person knows 100%. And sometimes they wouldnt be able to produce a result at all.

⬐ Wonderdonkey

Both collaborative assignments and assessments of those assignments are often poorly conceptualized in school.

Why, for example, do curriculum developers create (or choose to adopt from textbook publishers) scenarios where if one person fails, everybody in the group suffers? That's not why we collaborate. In fact, that's the opposite of why we collaborate. We don't do it to create multiple points of failure.

It's also a problem with the way we assess and the fact that we almost exclusively conduct summative assessments on these types of projects with high-stakes consequences rather than formative assessments that allow the experience to be used to foster understanding.

I'm a parent (and an education journalist). I see a lot of this. My daughter has had to do the entire work for several "collaborative" projects to maintain her GPA just because the other students wouldn't do the work or wouldn't do it well. That's a common complaint.

Two ideas for getting around that:

1. For the types of assignments where a small group produces a single outcome and shares responsibility for it, assess formatively. If the group does poorly, the teacher sits down with them and gives them supplemental instruction. And, in talking to the students, that teacher can also discover where the weaker students are and focus on them. That way you get assessment with zero high-stakes consequences, and you help advance learning rather than ending it with a letter grade.

2. Assign projects where each student has a job and is evaluated singularly for that job but is allowed to work collaboratively with other students (and the teacher) to complete it. There are all kinds of ways to encourage collaboration in those cases without resorting to punishing others for one person's failure in the end product of a collaborative assignment.

As others have said, there's also the question of assessment itself. Why assess for a grade or points or what have you? There's a movement to do away with grades and test scores. It's working fairly well, but it requires serious dedication from the teacher to ensure that students are learning. Large-scale, that's difficult. We don't have 4 million+ teachers who would be willing to do that extra work.

⬐ admax88q

In University for me at least, a lot of those collaborative projects allowed the students to distribute their grade amongst participants.

In my experience at least the weaker contributors to the groups success, even those that just coasted, were still very honest when asked to assess their contribution and the contribution of others.

⬐ curried_haskell

In my university we often had group projects and at the end of the project you scored your team members. If the entire team scored one member highly or poorly, their grade could be weighted higher or lower.

⬐ npiazza83

Furthermore, how do we ascertain whether or not group work is just "outsourcing" for teachers and the students that learned the concept aren't simply k-12 unpaid TAs who find their role as "assistant professor" pretty tedious thus turning off the best and brightest from a lifetime of enriching educational experiences?

⬐ thegayngler

Actually you can learn a lot from teaching others or helping others learn the material. When you have to teach someone else something you learn what you don't actually know that well.

⬐ zdean

It probably requires a shift in what we think of as assessment. Montessori has some ideas:

http://montessoriguide.org/assessment/

Seems to produce good results:

http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-...

⬐ 4h53n

I remember having a cheating rig at high school. We were 4-5 classmates, who would always sit close and hangout. Each of us would study the classes we best at. For example I really sucked at English and math, but was really good at physics and biology, one guy was good at English and another one at Turkish literature, another at history, another at Math. Overall high school was really easy for us. It's not like we didn't cheat at exams, we also helped each other before the exams. Teachers tried to separate the group several times but we were smart and doing well, so they chose to ignore at some point. All members went to uni, studied STEM.

Now, I'm well aware that studying things you can already do is not the best way but this was what happened.

⬐ digi_owl

Until you get slapped with a parent or copyright lawsuit...

⬐ atdaemon

Sir Kenneth Robinson! :-)

⬐ threatofrain

Well what a lot of children do in school is indeed cheating outside of collaboration. It's often one person who's already done doing the work of another without much bidirectional creative synthesis.

I would think that students who collaborate on schoolwork or studying are very institutionally fluent and aren't really at risk of the institution stepping over them and calling them cheaters.

I see the college cheating industry as a trade between wealthier cooler kids and the smarter disadvantaged kids, which I suppose is also life in most places, China or US.

⬐ nol13

What a lot of adults do at work is also indeed cheating outside of collaboration.

⬐ jmcdiesel

Well, cheating is only to be expected in a system that puts a score/grade on the pedestal.

The point of school (American school, at least) isnt to learn, its to get a good grade. When the goal is a number, than 'cheating' is simply trying to achieve the goal.

If the goal was to actually learn, the "cheating" that you see in schools would become "collaboration" - much like in a workplace with quotas and ridiculous metrics, people will cheat the system - in a workplace who values output quality first, you end up with collaboration between employees to reach that goal...

The problem is - 90% of us went through the school indoctrination of "the grade is the goal" ... and carry a lot of that mentality out into the work force.. and at worse, many of them start companies and align their business goals for their employees with that same standard..

⬐ Y_Y

The point of school (American school, at least) isnt to learn, its to get a good grade. When the goal is a number, than 'cheating' is simply trying to achieve the goal.

Aka Goodhart's Law[0].

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

⬐ threatofrain

The education system ought be multi-purposed. Some people want school to get them a job. Some people want school to give them a 'well rounded education' on matters like history, American civics, math, sports, sexual education, etc. Some businesses want schools to correctly identify and promote talent, for better hiring signals. Some people view school as a way for preparing for college, where a student might choose specialities.

These are all goals which are harmonious to societal health.

⬐ greedo

Burning my karma, but I can't resist; lots of students in my high school agreed that collaborating in sex ed was far more beneficial than studying solo.

⬐ na85

I don't get it

⬐ cholantesh

Having sex is better than masturbating.

⬐ CRConrad

Really? He means intercourse is more fun than masturbation. HTH!

⬐ cellularmitosis

When he refers to "collaborating in sex ed", he isn't actually referring to studying, but rather to teenagers having sex. Similarly, "studying solo" refers to masturbation rather than actual studying.

⬐ digi_owl

The education system boils down to attempting to certify that someone knows what they claim to know.

This so that said someone can be slotted into place in the company production line.

⬐ jmcdiesel

Yep. Education isnt the goal, menial job placement is. Its cynical, but also true, that an educated populous would grind America to a halt, because we're reliant on people doing a lot of menial jobs... and educated people dont do those jobs...

⬐ admax88q

> Education isnt the goal, menial job placement is.

I disagree. Plenty of times through school I heard complaints of "When will I need this in the real world!" and numerous comments online complaining about education (particularly arts and social science curricula in university) not preparing people for jobs.

Plenty of things I learned in primary school, high school and in my Engineering degree are not applicable to my day job but did make me a more educated person.

It's funny to witness the education system get simultaneously criticised for not preparing people for the workforce and also only preparing people for the workforce.

⬐ jmcdiesel

"Plenty of times through school I heard complaints of "When will I need this in the real world!" and numerous comments online complaining about education (particularly arts and social science curricula in university) not preparing people for jobs."

Both of these are correct - and they corroborate my point. The skills taught, they don't prepare you for a real world job - they teach you to stay in line, as few questions, and do what you're told. Thats what you need to be tought to work in a factory or plow a field... or stand behind a cash register.

They don't prepare you for "good" jobs... they prepare you for menial jobs. If everyone came out of high school with real knowledge and real skills, nobody would run the cash register at the gas station for minimum wage...

⬐ na85

Not sure why you are being down voted. Perhaps people are just bitter at school.

⬐ TeMPOraL

> Plenty of things I learned in primary school, high school and in my Engineering degree are not applicable to my day job but did make me a more educated person.

It doesn't matter. There must be something that can be taught to you and later used to grade you. Whether it's maths or arts or history of the good deeds of Comrade Stalin, it doesn't matter. What matters is the series of filters, at the end of which is entering the job market. Even the parents don't care what you're being taught - only that you are good at it, so that you can go to better higher-level schools, and get a better diploma at the end. Only few parents and teachers with ideals give a shit about the actual content of the education material...

As for job usefulness, 90% of stuff you'll have to learn on the job anyway.

⬐ dhimes

As for job usefulness, 90% of stuff you'll have to learn on the job anyway.

Of course. Education is about laying the foundation, giving you a bounty of contexts with which you can make faster associations and more quickly learn what you need for the job.

⬐ stinkytaco

Though I don't disagree with your argument that grades weigh to heavily in American education, I disagree that "collaboration" and "cheating" are the same. There are certain, rote skills you need to take away from school and on which you need to be evaluated individually. You must know how to read, do arithmetic and algebra, understand civics, geography, etc. The problem with encouraging collaboration over evaluation is that evaluation is still necessary to determine whether kids are learning what they need to learn.

I think we all remember that kid in school (or college) that joined a group and coasted to grade. I know those people where I work, too. They know little and contribute nothing. We do not serve them by letting them get out of school without the knowledge they need.

So I agree that grade-centric education is poor, but can also not reject either rote learning or evaluation as being an important goal.

This whole premise of this story has me wearing a tin foil hat. [tldr]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILQepXUhJ98[/tldr]

Soooo many questions. so few answers.

I'll start with my immediate thoughts. High dropouts are not absolutely a bad thing. In fact its pretty normal in all western schools that have zero focus on "how to learn". The "problem" is clearly earlier on in the education system, wherby students are reaching college age not knowing "how to learn", and suddenly finding its important.

Next up - the cost of learning/knowledge material. I know of textbooks from the US being priced in the multi thousand dollar range (or simply not available for student purchase). "Teachers/Lecturers" aren't that important (I say that having graduated with a joint 1st from a top UK university having acquired a lot of warnings criticizing me for hardly ever attending lectures, but I wasn't skipping the material, I was skipping lecturers reading from textbooks).

All that said, I am left feeling these stories are more about attacking education that provides chances for the lower classes in the US to become middle and upper classes. Nothing about this ITT tech story addresses this one way or the other. Where are the employment stats for those who successfully graduate? Where are the interviews with graduates? I just see a ton of hyperbole he said she said. And whenever I come across that I automatically assume its a political power based decision, rather than a rational "good for everyone" one.

I know that all sounds a bit confused - that happens with "immediate thoughts". Its a first attempt at thinking about something we haven't really been allowed to think about.

Why am I thinking along these lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Education was set up as a "production line" into large public institutions. But the politicians destroyed the "large public institutions", and education doesn't teach people to be their own institution.

"If you are interested in the model of learning you don't start from this production line mentality"

⬐ ryuker16

Everyone prefers they look at community college which is super flexible, dirt cheap, and will accept anyone.

There are also legit apprenticeship programs for trades.

The for-profit schools have a decades long record of charging 10x community college rates, paying teaching staff poorly, and almost always having poor standards of education. If government loans were ineligible, most of these institutions would close over night instead of trying to continue with poor friendly community college rates.

⬐ mSparks

->If government loans were ineligible, most of these institutions would close over night instead of trying to continue with poor friendly community college rates.

Isn't that true of any education system based on tuition fees?

So I found http://www.bankrate.com/finance/college-finance/myths-for-pr...

says: Relatively few recent high school grads attending school full time flock to the halls of for-profit schools. These schools typically cater to nontraditional students, including older students with full-time jobs, parents, military veterans, at-risk students and those who need flexible class scheduling.

So is this really about "fixing" schooling, or just "fixing spending on people who don't deserve an education".

Feels much more like the later than the former.

While I do think that ADHD is a real condition, I don't think that the solution is to medicate children with a very serious life changing drug that alters the core aspects of a child's personality and behavior.

The true solution is to revamp our country's education system and provide a framework that can accommodate the wide variety of personalities that come into the classroom. Instead of forcing children to think one way, we should let them think the way they NATURALLY think, and flourish with their native mindset.

I strongly recommend this eye-opening video for those of you who haven't already seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ AStellersSeaCow

"I don't think that the solution is to medicate children with a very serious life changing drug that alters the core aspects of a child's personality and behavior. ... Instead of forcing children to think one way, we should let them think the way they NATURALLY think, and flourish with their native mindset."

This is wildly inaccurate and ignorant, and basically perfectly sums up why the problem isn't being treated effectively.

1) The drugs aren't serious and life changing and they don't alter core aspects of your personality. People seem to confuse the effects of mild stimulants like ritalin and adderall with the effects of powerful antidepressants like prozac (I blame South Park, et al). Stimulants can have negative side effects, but they're more along the lines of what you'd expect from too much coffee: loss of appetite, hyperalertness and sleep problems, in extreme cases twitchiness and cardiovascular problems. These are well-understood, and any doctor would adjust/halt the drug if they got worrying. In terms of personality, the person is just getting a boost to their deficient executive function. The net result could be that they're less likely to do things impulsively, but not that they're less likely to do things, period.

2) I'm all for letting children think how they're going to think, and agree that our education system is far too constraining and cookie-cutter. But there's a huge and meaningful difference between "let kids think how they want" and "don't treat problems that are preventing kids from thinking lucidly". Some excellent research has shown that even if parents and teachers bend over backwards to facilitate kids with ADHD, unless they get some kind of treatment (and medication is both much more effective and far less expensive than behavioral therapy) they're still going to struggle.

So what people who advocate "let (kids) think the way they NATURALLY think" are effectively saying is "let some non-negligible fraction of kids have a dramatically lower chance of success and happiness in life rather than acknowledge that they have a disorder and treat it".

⬐ crack-the-code

To your first point, I would strongly disagree, and actually argue that you are the one being wildly inaccurate and ignorant. I know many people first-hand who were affected negatively from the drugs. As an example, I once had a very charismatic friend who was extremely bright, happy, and just fun to be around. In middle school, he started taking medication. He became detached, depressed, quiet, and generally dull. He would at times be himself, but overall, other friends and I noticed a drastic [negative] change in his behavior. To me, that is extremely serious, especially as a child where you are forming your character and social abilities and exploring your imagination. Another example, I have a cousin who takes the medication. Throughout her childhood, she experienced unusual and unpleasant side effects like headaches, stomach pain, anxiety, sleep issues, etc. Her doctors have rotated her through different medications, but it seems there was never a golden ticket with 0 side effects. You argue that these are negligible side effects, like coffee. I would say that these are much worse than coffee, at least in the extent of how they effect people, and at the same time would argue that it doesn't even matter if the effects WERE the same as coffee. Do you want your child to be on coffee and redbull? Not me. I know plenty of other people who experienced the same symptoms and personality changes I described here, and although that is not conclusive evidence, there seems to be a large consensus on this issue (as far as the side-effects and changes in personality). And if you think there is no chance of any long-term health consequences derived from prolonged use of these "mild stimulants" like ritalin and adderall, then I am going to reluctantly step back and say we should just agree to disagree.

To the second point, you seem to be confusing my observation as a call to blindly end the use of medication. My argument isn't that we must end the use of medication and ignore the issue, it was that we need an overhaul of the education system so that we can get rid of the pills and preserve the well-being of the children. Not a practical or easy solution, I agree, but it is an important one at the least. And of course there will be children who fall at the far end of the spectrum, where no matter how accommodating the system is, they will still need the assistance of medication to truly thrive. But at least we can safely say we tried at that point, instead of assuming that these children are all "troubled" and need big pharmamama to feed them the milk of corporate greed.

An indirect response:

Try this for another explanation/point of view (it's kept short and to the point):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

(About the speaker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_Robinson_%28educationalist...

maybe what you are referring to:

https://youtu.be/zDZFcDGpL4U?t=536

which is a delightfully digestible, abridged, version of this talk:

https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/event-videos/2008/06/...

whose transcript you can find here:

https://www.thersa.org/globalassets/pdfs/videos/2010/10/rsa-...

whose figures are drawn from this book:

    Break Point and Beyond, by George Land

relevant bit:

    So my question to you is what
    percentage of the people tested of the 1,500
    scored at genius level for divergent thinking.
    Now you need to know one more thing about
    them - these were kindergarten children. So
    what do you think? What percentage at genius
    level? 80? 98%. Now the thing about this was
    it was a longitudinal study, so they retested the
    same children five years later aged 8 to 10.
    What do you think? 50? They retested them
    again five years later, ages 13 to 15. You can
    see a trend here can't you?

⬐ Aeolos

Thanks, this was what I was referring to!

Most education research is about how to evaluate TEACHERS not children.

If you want to help children then you're better off starting here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

If anyone is actually surprised by the administrations intelligence - I should remind you of 3 events:

- A teacher confiscates Linux CDs claiming that the student was essentially distributing illegal copyrighted software - because no software is free [1]

- A system administrator was fired for installing/running seti@home on school computers. There is a lot of controversy about this case - but I read one news article (that I can't find right now) where the administration said they would have been ok with cancer research folding@home rather than searching for aliens with seti@home. This combined with the backpedaling of "oh actually he was a bad employee, stole things, and cost the school millions in extra in electricity costs!" makes me believe that they just wanted to use it as an excuse to fire him and make the position open for a friend/relative. [2].

- Or an honor roll student suspended for buying candy from another student [3]. His statuses were only restored after it caught media attention.

I would go into my rant about the education system but you should just watch this video [4]

[1] http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/12/linux-stop-holding-our...

[2] https://boinc.bakerlab.org/rosetta/forum_thread.php?id=5169

[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20080313141623/http://edition.cn...

[4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ pdabbadabba

President Obama has invited Ahmed to bring his "cool clock" to the White House: https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/644193755814342656

⬐ raarts

This is all over the news here in The Netherlands, so probably in other countries as well.

⬐ lucio

LATEST NEWS: Terrorist-sounding-named boy Ahmed Mohamed gets into White House with ticking device! The boy was given safe-passage from a guy named Hussein. Both are being investigated.

⬐ lucio

I've got it. No jokes on HN.

⬐ ceejayoz

Jokes can be fine, if they're good.

⬐ xasos

As well as Zuck inviting him to Facebook's HQ: http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/16/9338747/mark-zuckerberg-fa...

⬐ t2015_08_25

Great list. How about teacher Julie Amero, whose browser was apparently hijacked, possibly while students used it while she was out of the room resulting in students seeing nudity briefly and uninentionally [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_v._Amero

⬐ HarryHirsch

Wikipedia says she pled guilty to disorderly conduct and handed in her teaching license because the school board wouldn't pay for IT support that would have kept the naked ladies off her computer. Incredible.

⬐ toomuchtodo

And people wonder why its so hard to find teachers. Because the job conditions are terrible!

⬐ tomswartz07

Working in a school district, doing IT, I can agree.

My buddies do the same sort of stuff I do and make 1.5x my salary.

⬐ baldfat

Trust me the "Technical Experts" for prosecution are a joke. long story but my friend was jailed for 6 years based upon stuff like this concerning his IP address and it 100% identifies him though it wasn't the same IP address. What jury knows anything about IP addresses and how they don't identify a person?

⬐ nadams

> Amongst the most noteworthy, Detective Lounsbury stated in the trial that a red link proved that Amero had deliberately clicked on the link to visit a particular pornographic page. Huge blown up pictures were shown to the jury. In fact, forensic investigation showed that the link visited color for the browser was olive green. The link was colored red because there was a font tag on the page turning the link red.

I have no comment for that.

⬐ ArkyBeagle

I would think some enterprising employment lawyer would smell blood and there would then be a wrongful termination suit.

⬐ vermontdevil

There's the case of WebCamGate:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbins_v._Lower_Merion_School...

⬐ bedhead

Holy shit, that is one of the most insane stories I've ever heard of. How was this not made into a prominent national news story? How have tons of school administrators not wound up in prison??

⬐ fluidcruft

It was a prominent national news story

⬐ Raphmedia

I remember it being all over the news up in Canada. It must have made national news in America too?

⬐ walshemj

I know I remember at the time talking to a couple of friends who are school governors in the uk.

Overhear both the Head and It guy responsible would have been fired and be on the "not allowed to work with kids and vulnerable people" list for the rest of their lives. They would have been lucky not to get prosecuted for child porn as well

⬐ lemevi

It was national news when it happened if I recall. It wasn't like 20pt font on the nytimes home page, but it was reported.

⬐ drzaiusapelord

>A system administrator was fired for installing/running seti@home on school computers.

Actually, I agree with this. I remember when this got big and suddenly every IT department, school, etc had these things installed, clearly without permission. If you tried talking about wasted electricity, added pollution, and the social cost of running power hungry processors 24/7 for "alien points" on their forums (or any forums) you'd be shouted down.

The reality is that sysadmin and helpdesk staff shouldn't have this kind of power. If they want to run these types of things on their employers hardware they need to get permission.

You occasionally hear about this nowadays with Litecoin and Bitcoin mining, but it seems we've learned our lesson here. Power doesn't grow on trees. There are real costs and environmental effects here to seriously consider. This attitude of "fuck you, I understand computers and you don't" really needs to go the way the way of the dodo. Real professionals don't act this way. Also, comparing this guy to a 14 year old who was pulled out of his class and handcuffed for making a clock is fairly weak sauce.

⬐ Karunamon

In an environment where kids are literally arrested for sending popup messages over the network, I think that attitude has some value. People are overreacting based on things they have no understanding of.

⬐ Gorgor

Do you have a link to this story about being arrested for sending messages?

⬐ chejazi

If public schools are going to succeed, then many states need to "catch up" when it comes to funding. More funding will attract more teachers, creating a stronger candidate pool.

If you look at the average funding per student by state, Texas isn't doing so hot [1], especially for being the second largest state [2]. There's definitely more to it than just funding, but I think that would be a good starting point.

[1] http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may0...

[2] http://www.ipl.org/div/stateknow/popchart.html

(edit) More recent funding figures, from 2013: http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-educa...

⬐ dopamean

I'm always find the "more funding" idea to be somewhat dubious. Don't we already spend a ton of money on education? Perhaps even more per pupil than other developed countries?

⬐ ArkyBeagle

One takeaway from the film "The Street Stops Here" ( which is a documentary of an extreme outlier teacher/coach, so caveat caveat ) is that it takes a strong sense of dedication to make a difference in education.

The person in question - coach Bob Hurley, in a decaying New Jersey town - is a retired parole officer, and he's there to keep kids out of prison. So this is is his white whale.

I don't think you can buy that, but you might be able to buy furniture - support systems, assistance, the like - to keep it from being killed off. Instead, we get six-sigma metrification which may well make it worse. At least it Heisenbugs the curriculum and distracts from actual teaching.

Something must be done, this is something, this must be done...

Then again, the canonical teacher is Socrates, and he was forced to drink hemlock...

I think people get embarrassed by being discarded by the sorting-machine and resent the system, even when it's their kids in it. We don't really value education for its own sake - it must be shown to be in service of other societal goals - mainly economic goals. That can get out of control quickly.

⬐ ams6110

Yes, and on an inflation-adjusted basis we spend more on K-12 education than ever before.

It isn't a funding problem. It's a problem with how we spend that money.

⬐ ScottBev

So true. We allocate lots of money to education. Just it goes to administrative, consulting and testing expenses, rather than to improving the education provided.

⬐ cschneid

At the teacher level, they are underpaid. My girlfriend is a high school teacher w/ 4 years experience, a masters degree in her topic, and works 12+ hours a day (not kidding, seriously all day).

She makes $35k / year.

If she wasn't lucky enough to have an engineer paycheck behind her life, she simply wouldn't be able to do the job.

It's likely that funding gets allocated in stupid ways, but the whole process is inherently expensive. Managing thousands of employees, dozens of buildings, updating equipment, training, etc, etc. It's a hard problem, and we've basically just decided that only "dedicated" workers should do it, which is code for "willing to be underpaid compared to qualifications".

⬐ aianus

> It's likely that funding gets allocated in stupid ways

That's exactly what it is.

When I was in high school we got a shipping pallet of new $100+ calculus textbooks that sat unused because they were the same as the old calculus textbooks but with material cut out because the curriculum had been dumbed down.

Thank god our teacher saw them as the worthless turds that they were and continued teaching us prohibited advanced material like gasp integration from the old books.

Meanwhile our CS teacher was actually a history teacher who stayed a chapter or two ahead of us in the book because who in their right minds would become a teacher making $50k if they actually knew how to write software?

⬐ greedo

Well, here's anectdata to contradict yours. A new teacher in my fine town starts out at $43K/year plus benefits. 9 month work schedule. Here in the Midwest of the USA, $43K to start with nothing but a degree and teaching credential is a perfectly good salary, above the median for the city and state.

⬐ rebootthesystem

If your girlfriend feels she is a better teacher and deserves more she needs to help start a movement to de-unionize schools. We should not have incompetent dinosaurs teaching our kids. We want brilliant, dedicated, hard working, up-to-date teachers who are worth every penny they earn in front of our classrooms. And, yes, they should make $150K per year or more. And, no, it's not free money. They have to be that good. Everyone else needs to be fired.

Imagine building a company where you cannot get rid of incompetent, mediocre and down-right caustic employees because some third party (a union) gets in the way. This company will never amount to anything and will never be able to compete with one where excellence is the goal and people are well paid because they are worth it.

For some reason we seem to be OK with the idea of supporting the unions and lose sight that our goal should be to ensure the kids come out of school with absolute genius level knowledge, experiences and enthusiasm across a range of topics from arts to engineering. Kids ought to leave school with a hunger to succeed and contribute to society resembling a massive buffalo stampede with a purpose. Today a huge swath of them leave school with a "thump" and no passion, direction or real knowledge to guide them forward.

The system is broken.

⬐ cschneid

:-/ Yeah, deunionizing would be great.... Private school teachers get paid much less than public [1], with the bonus of being fired any time. Instead, when school districts attempt to bust the teachers union, they do it in order to funnel money to charter schools, often religious [2]. These charter schools have selective admissions, and often won't keep children with any sort of difficulty [3], which artificially raises their test rates, and hoses kids who need the help.

[1]: http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2013/10/why-are...

[2]: http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_28401042/colorado-supreme-...

[3]: http://dianeravitch.net/2014/02/26/breaking-news-new-data-sh...

⬐ rebootthesystem

Please see my other comment [1]. I don't disagree with your points. I think the problem is much bigger than what we can discuss here.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229785

⬐ hdctambien

There are no teacher unions in Texas. Texas can not only get rid of incompetent teachers, it can also get rid of any teachers that rock the boat or question the administrators or make someone look bad by going an extra mile for a student.

Public schools will never pay $100k+ to someone to teach Computer Science, so how will they ever get someone that actually knows Computer Science to be a teacher[0][1]? Instead they are offering a $1000 stipend to current Science and Math teachers to take a 1 semester course in Java so they can pass the Computer Science Certification Test and teach Computer Science.

So the future computer science high school students will be getting taught computer science by 10+ year Physics teachers that took a 15 week Java course.

[0] I left a $100k Software Engineering job to become a Computer Science teacher... hoping to make a difference with the diversity issues in our field. Luckily I am married to someone that has a job that can pay the bills.

[1] There are at least 3 open Computer Science teaching positions in my district right now if anyone is interested! And in the next 2 years we will have enough students that we will need another CS teacher at my school.

⬐ saryant

I took computer science at a high school in Texas (graduated in '08). We were taught everything from basic imperative programming to analysis of algorithms (and this was just a public school, not a magnet school).

I keep in touch with my high school CS teacher and that school now offers four years of CS education with multiple CS teachers. Your profile says you're in Round Rock, I graduated from Seven Lakes near Houston. My experience does not match yours.

⬐ rebootthesystem

Well, the other thing we need to do is look and treat schools differently.

To me every dollar legitimately (with a HUGE emphasis on the legitimate part) spent in schools is a valuable investment in the future. I hope that is a statement that cannot be disputed.

However, we've performed badly enough and have wasted so much money that we are in a situation where someone who thinks teachers ought to be able to make $150K per year would be laughed out of the room.

We are slowly destroying our country from the inside. And a big part of that is in how we are not educating our kids. And perhaps even our population in general. I mean, the fact that the Theory of Evolution is cause for debate in the US is down-right shameful and a sad indication of just how backwards some of our population is in their thinking.

The problem of schools and education is simple. It get's complicated when we are not united in an understanding of what our objectives should be.

What are they? In my view: science, technology, engineering, mathematics (STEM) and entrepreneurship. Arts belong in school as well but we are not going to float the boat on arts alone. STEM+E need to be our strong suit and our kids need to be exposed to the arts in order to see, feel and experience the beauty in the human condition.

⬐ hdctambien

I totally agree with you. I don't necessarily think that people who are currently teachers should make >$100k. But if teacher pay was competitive with industry pay then we would have more smart people competing for teaching jobs.

The problem with education is that old saying "people that can, do; people who can't, teach" but it's more like "people that can, do even if they would be really good at teaching because teaching doesn't pay nearly as much as anything else you can do with the same skills"

The way things are right now, who cares about tenure! If you fire all the bad teachers who are you going to replace them with? The only people that want those jobs are the applicants that weren't as good as the people that just got fired!

And like you said, an additional problem is that every state gets to decide what the goals for education are and those goals can get very political (see: evolution vs creationism, civil war vs war of states rights).

And the biggest blind spot for HN readers concerning education is that most of the students in school are not like you! Public (and some Private) Schools are full of students that would stare blankly into space all day rather than watch one Khan Academy video. It takes a lot of work and effort to provide an education to both the low achieving and the high achieving students, especially with 25:1, 30:1, sometimes 35:1 student to teacher ratios.

⬐ rebootthesystem

I would love to teach. I am very good at it. But I am also an entrepreneur to the core and hate, hate, hate bullshit.

I am one of two engineering mentors for our local FIRST FRC robotics team. Brilliant kids fully motivated to learn. I love it. We've built a bunch of neat stuff. I happen to own a lot of nice manufacturing equipment so we've taken advantage of that with the kids learning such things are running CNC and manual milling machines as well as soldering SMT, using DSO's etc.

Anyhow, one day I get hit with this business of having to register as an official school system volunteer in order to be able to be a mentor for the team. Mind you, FIRST has no such requirements, this is the school system bureaucracy meddling with things.

What did it entail? Filling out a bunch of forms that nobody could email me. I had to go to the main office and get them. And then they need to do a full-up background check, blood test and other crap. The process takes months. Oh, yes, and I have to pay for it.

Being that part of my work is in aerospace there are certain things I just can't do, at least not without involving certain checks and balances.

I flat out told the school system folks to go stuff it. I further threatened to fully fund the robotics team myself and pull it completely out of the the school. FIRST does not require teams to be attached to schools, so, technically, we could run it out of my warehouse and we'd be fine. The school folks took a few steps back and figured out a way to allow me to continue to be a mentor (after two years of doing it) without red tape. I suspect someone is making money somewhere by having this team be at the school. We are required to have a teacher associated with the team (one who knows nothing about nothing). My guess is he is getting extra bucks for having his name on a list somewhere.

This is just one example of why they don't attract better talent. We could have a lot more engineering mentors in this team but everyone recoils at some of the red tape they toss in front of you.

I know I and other practitioners could be amazing teachers and sources of inspiration for students. Yet, none of us has any interest in dealing with bullshit. And the school systems are permeated by it.

I mean, imagine the idea of having someone like Elon Musk do a physics lecture at a High School even once per semester. Think of the inspiration and effect that would have on kids. The effect would be very similar if you had passionate practitioners, perhaps less well known than Elon, yet passionate about their work, contribute to the education of our kids.

Money, to some degree, isn't the problem or the solution. We just don't have a good system. Teachers could be professional "inspiration organizers" who pull-in from the local and distant communities with the goal of blowing away kids with the passion, wonder and possibilities of the subject at hand, whether it is music, mathematics or physics. That. Something even a little bit like that. Would be amazing.

⬐ selimthegrim

Elon Musk is an engineer and entrepreneur/inventor, not a physicist. He stopped being a physicist the day he dropped out of grad school at Stanford. Why would you call a lecture he gives a physics lecture?

⬐ rebootthesystem

You don't think someone like him could give a lecture to a high school class and inspire the heck out of them? I think you are missing my point.

⬐ greggman

Maybe you have more info but... Somehow, if I understand correctly. The USA spends more per student than any other country. Yet, somehow, other countries have better outcomes.

Is my info bad or does that suggest that more money isn't the problem. Is the problem how the current money is being spent or is it that we need more money. Are those articles making stuff up?

https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

http://www.oecd.org/edu/skills-beyond-school/48631286.pdf

As for salary I also think it's a crime that teachers get paid so low. At the same time low is probably relative. A teacher in Berlin making $40k a year is doing a lot better than a teach in NYC/LA/SF making $40k a year. I've tried to talk myself into becoming a teacher but salary is a big reason I can't quite get myself to take the leap.

⬐ Glyptodon

I've actually thought about becoming a teacher because developer salaries are so uncompetitive in my area.

⬐ twoodfin

At the teacher level, they are underpaid. My girlfriend is a high school teacher w/ 4 years experience, a masters degree in her topic, and works 12+ hours a day (not kidding, seriously all day).

She makes $35k / year.

How much do teachers in her school system who have 25 years experience make?

The union-mandated tenure system, which prevents young, talented teachers from making even vaguely competitive salaries, but rewards older, mediocre teachers with "time served" is part of what's stopping "more money" from being the answer. Higher teacher salaries under the current system would largely reward the oldest, not the best.

⬐ zb

How much do teachers in her school system who have 25 years experience make?

In my state, which has comparable starting salaries, $56k assuming they obtained some professional certification along the way. Otherwise, $50k. (For comparison, an engineer straight out of college could expect to make maybe $75k.)

I find the idea that we should destroy the entire school system to ensure that a small handful of undeserving people are not able to serve out their career on a still-very-modest salary quite mad.

⬐ panzagl

Yeah, wait until these Javascript beasting brogrammers reach 35- all of a sudden experience will become much more valuable to them.

⬐ cschneid

Given 20 years, and a doctorate degree $65k. Beyond 20, it goes to letters on the pay scale, and I'm not sure what the requirements are to move up that.

No teachers in this district are making money suitable to their training and experience.

⬐ kdamken

This - I know teachers with 25 years experience making close to six figures, which seems fairly insane.

⬐ hdctambien

What school district? Teacher salary is public knowledge. There are very few states that pay teachers 6 digits.

⬐ genghisjahn

Why shouldn't a teacher with 25 years experience not make six figures, or close to it?

⬐ Silfen

Because it's a function of tenure, and not job performance?

⬐ panzagl

So they never performed well? Very few jobs have pay that directly correlates to current performance.

⬐ PretzelFisch

If you put more money into the system, you could be pretty sure that the teachers would not see more than a dime of it. Tenure is what prevents schools from removing a higher cost experienced teacher and replacing them with a cheaper no experienced teachers.

⬐ twoodfin

Microsoft and Google don't fire all their higher cost experienced engineers in favor of cheaper fresh graduates every year. They also don't forbid new engineers from making more than any longer-tenured ones.

Why is tenure-based compensation an efficient use of dollars in primary education but not elsewhere?

⬐ panzagl

If unions aren't strong in your state generally, then teacher's unions are no different. Too many people jump on teachers in New Jersey making $100K at the end of their career as an excuse to not even try to aim above the bottom of the barrel.

⬐ hdctambien

In my school district[0] teachers start at $43,500 and max out at $63,688 (after 30 years and a PhD)

You can pick up some extra stipends if you coach or work in certian departments (STEM) but good luck getting into 6 digits as a Teacher.

When I taught in Massachusetts (where we have a teacher union)[1] pay starts at $36,400 and maxes out at $74,000 (with a PhD) after 19 years.

Turns out that public school salary information is public information. So if you "know" a teacher that is making 6 digits, I challenge you to look up their pay scale and see if you really know what you think you know.

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B27mc-sxcu8ldW9OTHlLMjZ0SlU... [1] http://www.pittsfield.net/UserFiles/Servers/Server_1051846/F...

⬐ twoodfin

For the record, I didn't make the "6 digit salaries" claim. I'd be thrilled if world-class (or even top 5-10%) teachers could command those kinds of rates without having to teach in the richest school districts for decades.

I'd also note that those are salaries (and similar for others in this discussion) are for 187-day school calendars, or 37.4 weeks/year. Generously applying the same rate to a 46 week/year "full time" calendar puts the top end in Round Rock at over $78,000. The median household income in Round Rock is around $70,000[1], suggesting that it isn't outrageous for a couple of married teachers there to earn well above average, even without summer income.

Also, at least in MA, many teachers are not required to pay Social Security tax, but instead pay into a much more generous pension system. Other benefits are also competitive relative to the private sector.

Again, though, I'm all for teachers making more money so more talented people are encouraged to teach. But the tenure system is not the way to get that result.

[1] http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/48/4863500.html

⬐ selimthegrim

http://www.governing.com/columns/public-money/FICA-free-lunc...

⬐ cschneid

ugh, summer argument.

First: teachers typically work days not on the student's school calendar, so it's more like 39 or so weeks by your calculation.

Second: they work WAY more than an 8 hour day. Last night she did 7am - 4pm in the building, then 2 or so hours at night grading. (and that was a light day since she had gotten her planning done previously this weekend).

Third: summer is where you can finally catch up and plan classes. Girlfriend did a major revamp of her AP US History class so she was in-line with the new standards. Last year was Western Civ revamp. Next year will be the standard US History class.

You're right, benefits are in-line (not better, just in-line) with corporate america. Mediocre, but existing health care. A pension style retirement plan that's reasonable, but at the mercy of underfunding by politicians (which seems to be expected at this point).

⬐ phonon

Well, you can easily look up NYC teacher salaries. They start at $50k and go up to $105k. http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/2712AB02-A1EF-4CE2-B879-...

When you take into account the shorter work day/work year http://www.uft.org/new-teachers/your-work-day-and-year

really good benefits, including a $50-$60k a year pension (http://www.empirecenter.org/publications/pension-calculator/) and essentially tenure...well, it's not too bad...

⬐ panzagl

Why shouldn't it be 'not too bad'? For NYC that's the lower end of middle class- comparable to being in a (unionized) trade. And I can guarantee the teachers put up with more shit than a plumber.

⬐ phonon

I'm pretty sure plumbers deal with more shit. Literally.

⬐ biftek

lol if you think teachers have a "shorter work day/work year"

My girlfriend is a High School teacher in NY, and easily works more than I do. You have to factor in planning and grading which is all done after "work".

⬐ phonon

Well, average actual hours worked in the US is around 1800 (that's net after sick days, vacation, personal days, etc.) https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS Given (in NYC) a school day of 6.33 hours (including lunch) and a school year of 18x days, then subtract personal days and the like...well.

Also, most teachers don't need to do as much planning after a few years. Is if fair that longer serving teachers get paid twice as much as new ones, when new ones put in more hours usually? Well...

⬐ hdctambien

Most teachers aren't teachers after a few years[0] so most teachers do not benefit from having old lesson plans, most teachers are not making the upper levels of salary, and most teachers will never collect on their not-social-security-pensions.

The school day may be 6.33 hours (including lunch) but do you only count football players as working 3 hours a week when you watch them on TV? Teachers have to do a lot of "under the table" work to make those 6.33 hours (including lunch) happen.

When are those tests getting graded? When are those struggling students getting extra help? When are those lesson plans getting written? When are those parent-teacher conferences happening? When are those teachers going to football games/plays/other events to make connections with the students? When are those teachers writing letters of recommendation for those students? When are those lesson plans being modified to meet the needs of students with IEPs? When are those lesson plans being modified to meet the needs of ESL students? When are the formative and summative assessments being analyzed to modify lesson plans to better meet the needs of the students?

Those 6.33 hours (including lunch) are just the hours that teachers spend in front of the camera. There is so much more work involved to support those 6.33 hours (including lunch). Even for the long tenured teachers. If a teacher is resting on their laurels and just rehashing old lesson plans, then that's one of the "bad ones".

[0] http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/03/30/395322012/the-hidd...

⬐ phonon

It is a crying shame that there is so much teacher churn...why is that? In the article you reference, it's actually not primarily related to compensation, but to autonomy, support, and student behavioral issues.

Yes, of course, like I said, there are many outside the class hours. And in fact, 6.33 hours/d are not the "hours in front of the camera" (I assume you mean instructional hours.) The exact number is a bit hazy, due to self-reporting issues, but it seems to be about 700 h/y. http://cbcse.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/The-Mi...

⬐ hdctambien

It's hard to say why there is so much churn. The churn related to changing schools pretty much can't be about pay because you get paid the same amount no matter where you teach unless to change districts, and even then you might only get a couple hundred dollars a year more. But changing schools can get you a better administration or a better pool of students to work with.

However, if you get offered a 9-5 job for $100,000 and you are looking at making $48,000 after several years experience ... you start imagining what you could do with an extra $50,000 a year. Just think of the compound interest!!!

If you can make lots of money, you almost owe it to yourself to get it. But who does that leave us to educate the kids that are going to run the country when we are old? Do we really want to leave that job up to people who can't do anything but teach (so they live and die by the dreaded tenure system) and people who don't have experience teaching (and will soon leave to make money in industry)?

Also, not all states have unions or tenure (my state included) and those states to not have industry-competitive salaries and they do not provide better educations. If unions were the problem, wouldn't we see better results from non-union states? Wouldn't it behove non-union school districts to out perform/compete union school districts to keep teachers from unionizing? (or is the fact that they can get laws passed saying that teachers cannot unionize better than trying to be competitive in the job seeker market?)

⬐ hdctambien

Let's talk about the teacher's work day.

Your link says it's 6 hours and 55 minutes, including lunch. So 6 hours and 25 minutes is a work day.

Plus there's 150 minutes a week (2 and a half hours, or 30 minutes per day) for training, professional development, teacher collaboration, parent engagement and other professional activities.

150 minutes for all of that is a joke, and if any teacher was actually following that rule (union or not) then you'd be hearing about it.

What are "other professional activities?

Students that need extra help? Students that need to make up work/tests? Grading homework/tests/quizzes

I have about 150 students. If I give a test, that's 150 tests to grade. If it takes me 1 minute to grade each test, then I've just blown that entire quota of "other professional activities"

But I still do my job.

I grade all those 150 tests. Then I grade the homework that I gave all those students. Then I write my lesson plans for the next classes and I write the next test. And I email/call parents. And I meet with parents. And I see students before/after school to answer their questions and have them make up their work and tests. And I answer emails from students that have questions about their homework.

I spend 6 hours and 25 minutes a day teaching. I spend plenty more time making sure students learn.

But at least I get summer vacation, right? Sure, it's just full of mandatory Professional Development (so I can keep my teacher license up to date) and lesson planning for the next year.

But hey, in New York you can make up to $105k! After 22 years AND earning a PhD (which you paid for with your own money ... and where did you find the time to get that degree?) Rent in NY is 3x rent where I live, but the max $105k isn't even 3x the starting salary of my school district.

⬐ phonon

That's for nurses, etc. It's 6 hours and 20 minutes for regular teachers (including lunch). Actual instruction hours per day are quite a bit less of course.

Even for someone without more advanced degrees (fyi you do not need a PhD to cap out.) you cap out at $93k. Agreed that teachers (particularly beginner teachers) put in a lot of hours outside school. 10 hours a week? More? So a 40-50 hour workweek during the school year? (But with predictable scheduling, which not all professionals have.)

A roughly $1 MM dollar annuity when you retire isn't so horrible either.

Lesson planning takes less time as you get more experienced, plus you reuse your old lesson plans.

175 hours every five years for required professional development? http://www.uft.org/q-issues/maintaining-your-professional-ce...

Did I miss anything? COL in NYC is definitely higher...but you do not have to live in Manhattan. There are many affordable areas in NYC.

⬐ hdctambien

I've worked for a big insurance company, a medium sized company that went public, and a couple startups, and two school districts.

I made waaaaay more money working in industry and never worked anywhere near as hard or long as I do being a teacher.

Sure, lesson planning gets easier. And you can reuse old lesson plans (although, the standards get changed fairly regularly and in my district you need to use "data-driven metrics" to improve your lesson plans year after year, so if you're just reusing lesson plans you get put on the "bad teacher list" in a state with no unions which means no tenure).

Without the PdD, you don't cap out at that 6 digit number. But $93k isn't bad. That's about the entry level salary of a Software Enigneer, right? And you only need to be a teacher for 20 years to earn that. What a deal!

That's probably all a teacher deserves though. As a society we really need incentivise our best and brightest to use their skills to build new ways to share photos.

All I'm saying is that you get what you pay for. If you pay teachers $40k, then you're going to get $40k value.

⬐ phonon

No, you do not need a PhD to cap out. It's a Masters + 30 credits. http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/DHR/TeacherPrincipalSchoolPro...

One of my bêtes noires about the system is that it does not differentiate between a high school teacher getting an advanced degree in STEM versus a kindergarten teacher getting a secondary development blah blah from University of Phoenix.

My personal opinion is that some teachers are underpaid, and some are overpaid. Senior teachers should not be making twice as much as junior teachers, and high school physics teachers should not make the same as kindergarten teachers. Additionally, schools should have some leeway in rewarding better/harder working teachers, instead of the unionized lockstep pay scales.

Yes, programmers make more than teachers, on average. (Though the mean hourly wages are not that different, actually-- http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbl1614.pdf for NY/NJ/CT). So?

⬐ hdctambien

Programmers make more than teachers, so someone that is any good at programming is better off being a programmer than a teacher. Which leaves people who don't know how to program to teach high school kids to program.

Which is why everyone is a "self taught" programmer.

Imaging if you took everyone that posts to Hacker News about how they were the only person in their school that knew how a computer worked and they did all sorts of hacks and had all sorts of fun subverting authority and you went back in time and you gave them a knowledgeable mentor (read: teacher) how much better would they be at programming now?

It's 2015 and we don't have those teachers in our schools. What we have are Math teachers that are being told "We have to have a Computer Science class and we heard that programming is like math, so you're going to be teaching Computer Science next year. Go take a Java course."[0]

Also, unions are not keeping the pay scales the way they are. Texas does not have unions. Texas does not have tenure. Texas still has "lock step pay scales". Unions are not the problem.

Private schools pay teachers less than Public Schools. Private Schools don't have unions. Unions are not the problem.

I don't know what the problem is. I think it has something to do with there being very little respect or prestige for the teaching profession among tax payers (or anybody, really). But the problem isn't unions. If unions were the problem, then the problem wouldn't exist in places where there are no unions.

[0] 100% serious. I had a training this summer where 6 of the other 7 teachers were Math teachers that were told at the end of the year that they would be teaching AP Computer Science and were sent off to take their first ever Java course over the summer.

⬐ marincounty

"If public schools are going to succeed, then many states need to "catch up" when it comes to funding. More funding will attract more teachers, creating a stronger candidate pool.

If you look at the average funding per student by state, Texas isn't doing so hot [1], especially for being the second largest state [2]. There's definitely more to it than just funding, but I think that would be a good starting point."

I used to think on these lines too. After talking to two teachers in different districts, they both said the same things. More money is fine, but it usually goes to Administration.

The two teachers I knew, and talked to, lived and taught in California. They were both tenured. I talked to them a decade ago. They were both making, I belive 150k a year. At the time, they weren't complaining about wages. In fact, they had no complaints. Maybe, they just got lucky? I don't think money is the answer?

(Actually, I just remembered--my ex'es mother-inlaw was a school teacher, and she told me countless times the money always goes to bloated Administration. I don't know why I just remembered her? She taught high school back east.)

⬐ Kinnard

Public schools are not going to succeed. I spent 12 years in some of the best public schools and two at an elite boarding school. People are too attached to the good intentions behind the model to accept that a new one has to be found.

A lot schools/districts that are better spend less money per student than schools that are worse. You should ask David Tarver about it.

⬐ rebootthesystem

> More funding will attract more teachers, creating a stronger candidate pool

Without the ability to get rid of bad teachers as quickly and easily as one can fire bad engineers in the private sector money isn't going to fix a damn thing. It might even make it worst.

Fix that part first.

⬐ panzagl

In Colorado teachers can be fired at the drop of a hat (or, more likely, not be asked to come back next year). I can assure you this hasn't kept the state off of the bottom of the academic performance lists.

⬐ rebootthesystem

You are right. The problem is far more complex.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10229785

⬐ jpereira

Wouldn't more funding in public schools just eventually lead to more expensive private schools which leads to there being new standards set for education? We've seen this recently with a college degree becoming the new high school diploma in regards to the job market.

⬐ ticviking

That has nearly as much to do with changing standards. While I was completing my teaching credential I watched the standards process dumb things down so schools could achieve an "acceptable pass rate"

⬐ 13thLetter

So it's kind of unfortunate that when people see a system full of ignorant jerks, they have been trained to always think "let's give the ignorant jerks more money," and never think "let's fire the ignorant jerks."

The incentives are completely upside down when one's entirely avoidable screwups are used as an excuse to ask for more money. That's how we get the current state of public education and, frankly, most levels of government in the United States: hideously expensive bureaucracies run by ignorant jerks for their own benefit.

⬐ clarkmoody

> If public schools are going to succeed

Under what circumstances would you consider that public schools are a failure and that we should try another approach?

⬐ zardo

In the case that they don't provide a world class education for all students. Why should we settle for less than that?

⬐ geggam

The current circumstances indicate a really high failure rate. Another approach would be prudent.

⬐ jcromartie

Aren't some of the worst performing school districts also the most expensive?

⬐ baldfat

People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school.

We under value in society

1) Education (We make fun of smart people who lack social graces)

2) Science (Scoff at all science and under fund Space Programs)

I ran for local School Board in my city. We are a school district with over 90% qualify for free lunch and extreme poverty. Parents pick Charter School over Public Schools (But Charter Schools under perform on test scores and under pay teachers compared to Public Schools (Money goes to the top in Charter which gets 100% of the child's local funding)) My city per student was the state's lowest at $5,700. The next county over some districts were paying over $28,000 per student. My state has the greatest disparity between haves and have nots.

Our school board loves to point to Teacher Union and Teacher Pensions as the problem. How about just give us the money. We need a change in priorities and not freak out about taxes for education. Sadly I don't see this changing and I don't think funding is the number one factor for educational success but it is an easy thing to measure.

⬐ Lawtonfogle

>People HATE TAXES. People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school.

Or maybe I hate paying school taxes because the schools promote sports as far more important than academics. End of last year I went to the awards ceremony for top performing students in academics and sports... the difference in treatment left me feeling ill in my gut.

Exercise serves a purpose. I've even remember seeing evidence exercise helps improve learning. And in no way am I against a group of kids playing ball together. But I do not like funding an educational institute which does more to foster sports are being more important than the very stated purpose.

Think about some other good goal. Say feeding starving people. Now imagine if you were forced to pay some charity that was grossly incompetent in how it actually worked. Yes, people got fed, but often after they were negatively impacted in other ways. And that is money that could'be been going to better charities, but you aren't allowed to make such a choice.

⬐ intopieces

>Or maybe I hate paying school taxes because the schools promote sports as far more important than academics.

Unfortunately, this is unlikely to change given that sports bring in revenue and academics do not.

⬐ nmrm2

> sports bring in revenue and academics do not.

?!?!

In high schools in the US, academics are intimately linked to funding. Sports are not. I guarantee you no teacher or administrator gives a shit about how much money the Friday night concession stand is bringing in. It probably doesn't even cover the electricity bill for the flood lights.

But they do all care a lot about test scores and other (mostly academically-related) metrics that determine how many millions in state/federal funding they receive.

Sports are one of many ways that students can use their free time to learn to socialize, lead, and work in a group. Those are all important skills that are hard to teach in a classroom, and running a sports team (or robotics team or programming competition team or chess club) is a hell of a lot cheaper than running a classroom. And often far more enjoyable for everyone involved.

⬐ Lawtonfogle

>or robotics team or programming competition team or chess club

And yet these are rare and never given the same prestige that sports does. Being a member of many of those clubs will likely negatively impact your ability to socialize and learn social skills as you will be ostracized by the larger groups.

⬐ nmrm2

> And yet these are rare

They are too rare, which is why it's important for (even/especially childless) engineers to be actively involved in the after-school activities offered by surrounding schools.

> and never given the same prestige that sports does.

This might be true in some schools, but in every school I've worked with (which have included everything from blue collar suburb to pretty depressingly poor urban), academics are values much more than sports.

Kids who do well at sports get validation. And they should. Performing well in a competition -- any competition -- requires equal parts skill and dedication.

So why don't academics get the same sort of social validation from adults as sports?

It's worth remembering that the social validation is probably the only validation high school athletes will receive.

In contrast, most people assume that academics will be validated by scholarships, and that the intermediate social validation is therefore unnecessary. That painfully over-estimates the maturity of the typical high schooler (even a bright one), but it's a common mindset.

So it's not that academics isn't valued over sports; rather, it's more like the value of academic achievement is perceived to be self-evident and therefore doesn't require social validation, whereas for sports that's not so much the case.

> Being a member of many of those clubs will likely negatively impact your ability to socialize

That's not true at all! It will absolutely improve your ability to work on problems with a group. No one on a robotics team is going to ostracize someone because they are on a robotics team...

> as you will be ostracized by the larger groups.

Bullies are everywhere in life. Knowing how to live life and get work done in spite of bullying is an important skill.

⬐ warfangle

> People HATE paying school tax when they don't have children in school or never had children in school.

Recently (well, a few years ago), there was a controversy in my home state about the removal of funding for bus transport to and from magnet schools. I went to one of those magnet schools - as did my two older siblings.

I brought it up talking to my dad (who still lives there), and he said, "well, I don't have a horse in that race anymore."

Meanwhile, those schools' academic ratings are plummeting...

⬐ X-Istence

I know, I know, sample of 1 does not a study make, but I am single, don't have kids and live alone. I wish more of my tax money went to education, if this meant I was taxed a little bit more, then so be it.

Education is so incredibly important, and honestly the education system here in the United States is abhorrent. Not due to the teachers mind you, but due to the requirements that are being made by legislators.

Testing requirements don't allow for a wide variety of curriculum anymore, students are all taught at the same baseline (lowest common denominator because otherwise it's discrimination) and students are no longer allowed to excel for fear of making their peers uncomfortable.

As a country the United States is not teaching students to think for themselves and challenge viewpoints, instead they are becoming complacent followers. Which is perfect if you want people that can easily be controlled.

⬐ LesZedCB

I would happily pay 40-50% income taxes if our system was much more socialized like some of our European counterparts.

⬐ vkjv

I would happily pay 10-15% income taxes if our system was much less socialized like some of our European counterparts.

⬐ reddog

Did you know that the US spends more on education than almost any other country? Only Switzerland spends more per capita and only Switzerland, Norway and Austria spend more per student.

http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

Do you think more money is the answer or should we spend smarter?

⬐ maratd

> We need a change in priorities and not freak out about taxes for education.

People don't freak out over paying taxes for education. Even if they don't have kids in the system.

They freak out over throwing money at a broken system and the solution isn't to throw more money at it.

Attach a specific dollar amount to a student. Allow that student to go to whichever school they want. End of story.

Stop forcing children to go to broken schools.

⬐ logfromblammo

No one I know has ever freaked out about paying taxes for education. They are, however, skeptical that the local school system which receives those taxes is wisely using those funds to provide education.

They have good reason. Much of the money poured into public schooling in the U.S. goes to administration and overhead rather than the direct costs of teaching and student evaluation.

Many parents in this country are desperate to get their children the best education they can, within a certainly dysfunctional, and possibly also corrupt, system.

Part of the problem is that the funding is largely dissociated from effectiveness. The people spending the money have no vested interest in seeing that it is spent appropriately, for the benefit of the children--and the community they will be a part of when they eventually cease to be students.

I am not proposing any fixes. I am simply agreeing with my parent post. Every parent knows that raising local taxes to throw more money at their local schools will not solve anything. Richer neighborhoods will have to subsidize the schools in poorer neighborhoods in order to provide equal access to educational resources to all children.

If you want your kids to have extra opportunities, you can voluntarily give your own money to the PTA for the school they attend. Clearly, having to pay to remove the dents in the school-owned band instruments is a problem of a completely different order of magnitude from students in the classroom not having textbooks, or paper and pencils. Equally clearly, it is a disservice for Louisiana students to get pseudoreligious instruction in science class, as Massachusetts students learn without political interference.

I'm not a socialist, but it is blindingly obvious to me that if the state is to provide public education in any form, it needs to provide equal resources to everyone. It cannot select winners and losers by giving more money to schools where the children of richer people attend, and less money to schools where the children of poorer people attend.

As PP stated, attaching an equal dollar amount to each student, for the sole purpose of paying educational expenses, is one way to improve upon the existing system. It is not necessarily the best way, but better is a good first step on the voyage to good.

⬐ vellum

>Every parent knows that raising local taxes to throw more money at their local schools will not solve anything. Richer neighborhoods will have to subsidize the schools in poorer neighborhoods in order to provide equal access to educational resources to all children.

It depends on where you live. In Silicon Valley, they have local measures to raise parcel taxes to fund the schools. All money stays in the district and none of it goes to administration.

⬐ intopieces

>Allow that student to go to whichever school they want. End of story.

I was given this option in the third grade. I got a letter from the State Board of Education saying that I had performed exceedingly well on their standardized test and that I was invited to change schools and go to a special program in another town for smart kids.

My parents told me I should do it.

I regret it to this day. I was not equipped to understand the consequences of this choice, was not aware what I was getting into and it basically ruined my education.

Our class was separate from other students at this school. We started at a different time and ended earlier. In general, the rest of the school knew us as "those smart kids" and it took a major toll on my work ethic throughout high school.

No. Please do not give students the choice of which school they go to. They need to learn to get along with students different from them, not self-segregate into classes based on wealth, intelligence, etc.

⬐ maratd

We all make decisions we regret. That doesn't mean all decisions lead to regret. Nor does it mean that we should take away the ability to make decisions.

Fundamentally, we already have school choice. If you have enough money, you can choose your school district by purchasing a house wherever it is that you want to send your children.

That's absolutely revolting.

We are giving choice to those who can afford it and taking it away from those can't. Is that what a public school system should do?

⬐ ChicagoBoy11

>We are giving choice to those who can afford it and taking it away from those can't.

Amen. I'm astounded by the number of people who completely fail to see this very basic point.

⬐ jkestner

I agree that lots of money is wasted in the public school system, but we don't need University of Phoenix brought to elementary schools.

⬐ maratd

> we don't need University of Phoenix brought to elementary schools.

I realize that from your perspective, the world if full of imbeciles ... but just for a second, consider that {insert for-profit college name} is providing a service that people want and that's why people are choosing it.

Those people don't care how the money they are paying is divvied up afterward. Whether it goes into the pocket of some administrator or a sports program at a non-profit institution, or into the pocket of some CEO or shareholder at a for-profit one.

They are getting something they want and that's all they care about.

If we had an education system that as a whole, gave people what they wanted, we would all be better off.

⬐ justizin

> If we had an education system that as a whole, gave people what they wanted, we would all be better off.

Because a teacher's job is customer service and the customer is always right? ;)

⬐ maratd

> Because a teacher's job is customer service and the customer is always right? ;)

Yes?

Good customer service is making sure the customer walks away happy in the long-term. Sometimes you do that by giving homework and tests. They might be miserable in the moment, but they'll be happy in the long-term.

Viewing students as customers may not be ideal, but it's certainly better than seeing them as a burden.

⬐ shkkmo

> but just for a second, consider that {insert for-profit college name} is providing a service that people want and that's why people are choosing it.

Are you aware of how extremely predatory many of these for-profit colleges have been? Their students aren't getting something they want.

I don't disagree with vouchers in general, but you can't just ignore the risks when using public funds to have private institution provide education.

⬐ maratd

> Are you aware of how extremely predatory many of these for-profit colleges have been? Their students aren't getting something they want.

I don't know what this statement means.

If you're suggesting that people attend these institutions and then aren't able to find work in that field, I would say that's true of many other institutions as well.

Those majoring in English in a standard non-profit college aren't likely to become authors or English teachers. Those going to law school aren't likely to become lawyers. So what?

⬐ tbrownaw

I'm taking it as an accusation of false/misleading advertising.

⬐ shkkmo

Try using google. This isn't a controversial statement or hard to find reporting on:

http://www.consumerfinance.gov/newsroom/cfpb-sues-for-profit...

>The Bureau alleges that Corinthian lured tens of thousands of students to take out private loans to cover expensive tuition costs by advertising bogus job prospects and career services. Corinthian then used illegal debt collection tactics to strong-arm students into paying back those loans while still in school.

> Corinthian Colleges, Inc. is one of the largest for-profit, post-secondary education companies in the United States. The publicly traded company has more than 100 school campuses across the country. The company operates schools under the names Everest, Heald, and WyoTech. As of last March, the company had approximately 74,000 students.

⬐ baldfat

> Attach a specific dollar amount to a student. Allow that student to go to whichever school they want. End of story.

Allow it to go where there is little to no public over sight, no public school board or checks and balances, under performing scores, teachers paid $20,000 less with no pension, and CEOs making millions. Charter Schools are a part of the problem with American education. Sure some Charter Schools are good so are some Public School but as a whole Charter Schools are not for America's children but for the non-profit and for profit companies that run them.

PUBLIC SCHOOLS are the back bone of our educational system and democracy. Sending to school that take monetary advantage of our tax money with no over sight is wrong for everyone but the people who get the money.

Who is running America's Charter School: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2015/07/22/whos-actua...

⬐ briandear

Then why don't the Obama kids go to public school? Citing security would be silly. A school is a school. Even the President doesn't believe in public schools. If he does, he sure isn't eating his dog food.

⬐ dragonwriter

> Then why don't the Obama kids go to public school? Citing security would be silly. A school is a school.

In the matter of experience in dealing with the issues (and dealing with the Secret Service on security is far from the only one) that attend children of major public figures, no, a school is not a school. And Sidwell Friends, the school that has been attended by every school-age child of a US President since the Nixon Administration is, arguably, sui generis in that regard.

The President not sending his kids to public schools is probably, as much as anything, a service to the public school that they would go to if they weren't going to Sidwell Friends.

⬐ logfromblammo

While this has great rhetorical impact, it is still an appeal to authority. To me, the Obamas are just like any other rich(er) family. The PotUS has no special expertise in this domain.

They can afford to send their kids to private school, they believe that school to be superior to the public schools their kids would otherwise attend, so they pay the private tuition. As a parent, I agree with this. I, however, do not have a $400k income with a $169k expense account and a sweet pension plan, like he does.

In short, his kids don't attend public school because he can afford for them to go somewhere better. I am not willing to penalize any child for the sake of their parents' political views (or offices), nor am I willing to restrict people from spending their own money just because they might buy something I don't like.

⬐ lliamander

it is true that the president may have no special expertise in assessing whether private schools are better than government schools, but it strikes me that any support he expresses for public schools is going to ring hollow if he isn't personally invested in the success of government schools.

I could be mistaken, but as far as I am aware no politician (from either side of the aisle) sends their kids to a government school. At least, no politician at the national level (president, congress, etc.).

I am not a fan of having a centralized governmental school system (I think the indoctrination risk is greater, because then there aren't competing institutions around to teach anything different) but it strikes me that any voter who does believe in government schools should demand that their representatives send their own kids to governmental schools as a sign of good faith.

⬐ vellum

> no politician (from either side of the aisle) sends their kids to a government school. At least, no politician at the national level (president, congress, etc.).

About half of Congress sends their kids to public school.

http://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/how-many-politicians-...

⬐ lliamander

Ah, well I stand corrected. Thanks for the pointer!

⬐ msandford

Public schools also do plenty of dumb things. It's not as though charter schools have a lock on this.

A lot of people want "vouchers" so that private schools are more affordable. And plenty of private schools have a good track record, while having similar per-pupil costs as public schools.

If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public school or a private school, why does the state really care which one the child attends? Why not let parents choose the school?

⬐ dragonwriter

> If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public school or a private school, why does the state really care which one the child attends?

Because it doesn't cost a flat amount per student. The fact that funding is fixed per student doesn't mean that all students are equally costly to educate, and private schools that don't have a universal acceptance mandate impose selection criteria which tend to select for students which are less expensive to serve, increasing the per-student costs (but not funding!) in the public schools if public funds are used on an equal per-student basis to support students going to those private schools.

⬐ msandford

That's quite an interesting point. It's similar to the reason why insurance companies won't cover pre-existing conditions, isn't it?

⬐ pfooti

In addition to the per-student cost-to-educate not being constant, but charters only admitting the cheap students (as mentioned in sibling posts), charters also tend to have much lower salary costs, because in most states charter school teachers aren't part of the teachers' union. They have lower pay, worse benefits, and trend quite young. The charters, for the most part, are only making use of the cheapest, least experienced teachers in order to educate the students who are most likely to do well no matter what school they attend. After those teachers are chewed up and spat out, they're replaced by other fungible TFA folks who are just as inexperienced and just as willing to work unpaid overtime until they burn out.

As a predatory move to extract value from a very large market, it's commendable capitalism. As a general trend that undercuts the quality of public education nationwide, well, it's very distressing.

⬐ maratd

I find it funny how you completely ignored the most important aspect of the equation.

The student.

The students are choosing to attend those charter schools. People choose things that are better for themselves. Not always, but often enough that you can safely assume it's true for the majority.

Why are they doing that?

Could it be, that in spite of everything you mentioned ... charters are a better option for the student? Isn't that's what's important?

What's broken with the public education system isn't the funding, not the teachers, not the unions, not the administrators, or the facilities. It's none of those things.

It's demented notion that the system exists for the sake of the teachers/unions/administrators/etc. It doesn't. It exists for the students. Do what's best for them. Let them choose where they spend 12+ years of their life.

⬐ pfooti

For what it's worth, I'm not usually one to do credential comparisons and stuff, but I'm going to prefix this with: I got a Ph.D in science education over ten years ago from UC Berkeley, and have been working in and around the world of education, schools and schooling for that entire time. I happen to also do technology stuff, so in addition to being deeply engaged with this content, I develop software and hang around on hacker news. Anyway.

The point is: (as dragonwriter mentioned), the student rarely makes this decision. Furthermore, even when the student does, or when the parents of the students do, the decisions that are being made are pretty heftily influenced by advertising, gut instinct, and in-general wrong thinking about education. Take, for example, the weird and broad anti-common-core movement. Parents don't want their kids thinking about mathematics, they want their kids memorizing math facts just like they did when they were in school. Parents are swayed by images of tons of technology being used in these charters, when it turns out that most schools don't use tech all that effectively (they just reproduce old behaviorist models of instruction in an attempt to automatize teaching - recreate the teaching machine as Audrey Watters puts it).

In fact, the recent OECD report about use of technology in classrooms around the world was just making news earlier this week: in schools where there's a lot of 1:1 use of computers, students actually fare more poorly. This isn't surprising to me, or anyone else who studies education and the school systems, because of the point above: those computers aren't being used to improve or extend interactive learning, they're being used to deliver memorization-based, fact-and-repeat instruction. That's the same kind of boring teaching that turned off generations of kids in the past, and we're reproducing it again in classrooms with computers. However, those classrooms are shiny, filled with young, idealistic, often very poorly-prepared teachers and are very photogenic to parents.

Even worse- the charter movement (broadly speaking) has subverted most of the assessment process by ensuring that what is tested is the most flat, boring, and fact-based material around. (This is, incidentally, my own objection to common core- not the standards, but the terribad implementation of those standards in untested and regressive assessments). The assessments are bad, tend to not measure good learning, and instead measure a student's ability to memorize and repeat factual information. When charter schools do well on that front, and when the pro-charter movement gets the entire narrative framed in terms of "bloated, failing public schools", it is not surprising that parents (and grandparents, and students, and so on) are generally mislead by this narrative. It's not surprising that people choose charter schools.

People choose to give their money to University of Phoenix, which is objectively a terrible idea. Marketing works. Shiny pictures of happy kids with laptops learning the basics works to motivate people. The truth is, good education is complex - not even complicated, but complex - and asking the general public to really grok the nuances of it is difficult, especially since everyone has their own experience of what worked for them and things were good enough for me when I was in school, darn it.

A brief aside: there are plenty of good charter schools and charter networks, which are striving to bring high-quality reform-oriented education to everyone, especially underserved minorities. However, these charters aren't the ones I'm talking about. There are plenty more that take district dollars and provide sub-par education, and somehow manage to keep either getting renewed or just change names every three years when they come up for re-accreditation. There's also plenty of poorly-performing public schools and districts. Teachers' Unions aren't a panacea.

Ultimately, the problem from top to bottom is that our school system is in the hands of people who don't actually know much about education. Many board of education positions (especially state levels, which exert a lot of control) are political appointments or elected positions. How many times do you read about stupid stuff some board of ed is doing - rewriting history or requiring creationism or other crapola? Education is complex and nuanced, and people seem to engage in the discussion thinking that there's a Simple Fix for everything.

Charters are just vouchers in disguise, and vouchers are just saying "let the Free Market fix it", because the Free Market is super-great at fixing things like the banking, energy, health care, and housing systems in the US. Other charters have "let's let Technology fix it" ideas or "we're super-rigorous, require dress codes, and provide Discipline by calling all our students Mr. and Miss Lastname instead of having real relationships with our students". There's dozens of silly simple fixes floating around.

And you want parents to navigate all of this? It may be arrogant of me to say it, but I honestly don't think most parents can parse through all the crap. Again, people are still paying money to University of Phoenix, people buy guns thinking it will make them safer, and do dozens of other things that are just plain foolish because people aren't experts in everything. If you could assume that someone had enough understanding of how people learn (at least having read the book... How People Learn, which is still a great primer), you could maybe assume they're going to make good decisions. But this is a decision that (as you point out) will stick with the kid for 13 years proximally, and influence their opportunities for the rest of their life.

We should regulate this market.

⬐ dragonwriter

> Charters are just vouchers in disguise

That depends; there are lots of different kinds of charters. Charters are public schools that have some exceptions -- enshrined in a particular charter, hence the name -- to the generally-applicable rules for public schools in the jurisdiction. These can be exception in terms of administrative process, specialty curriculum, alternate non-geographic admission criteria, etc.

They can also be exceptions in that the whole operation of the school is contracted out to a private entity, making it essentially a private school where tuition is entirely publicly paid for a cherry-picked student population with less accountability to the public than is usually the case with public schools. But that's not always the case.

⬐ pfooti

True, I was being a little reductionist there. But I think that the charter school movement took off shortly after and directly because the voucher movement sunk. There's a lot of isomorphic economic policy between the two, although if I had to pick I'd say charters are better than vouchers.

⬐ dragonwriter

> But I think that the charter school movement took off shortly after and directly because the voucher movement sunk.

I remember both taking off in parallel with very different support basis; the movement for privately operated charter schools has taken off when and where vouchers-for-private-schools haven't succeeded, but the publicly-operated charters that function as alternative-model public schools still exist and are still something that reformers that aren't supporters of the education privatization movement push (and sometimes nearby areas -- possibly even the same districts -- will have both kinds of charters.)

> There's a lot of isomorphic economic policy between the two, although if I had to pick I'd say charters are better than vouchers.

Between vouchers and privately-operated charters, I don't think you can make a useful of which is better; it mostly comes down to conditions, management, and accountability measures; charters probably make it administratively simpler to avoid the worst problems, but also tend to be greater single-point-of-failure systems.

⬐ dragonwriter

> The students are choosing to attend those charter schools.

Generally not the case. The parents are, usually, choosing.

> People choose things that are better for themselves. Not always, but often enough that you can safely assume it's true for the majority.

You might reasonably make that assumption for cases where the people making the decision are making it for themselves, and with sufficient information and skill to make a reasonable prediction of the utility that will result from each available choice. (A stronger form of this is a central element of rational choice theory, so its common to Econ 101 models of behavior -- and lots of people have internalized these models without understanding the assumptions underpinning them, and how limited they are in the real world.)

I think its far from evident that school choices under the conditions they are actually made meet that description.

⬐ baldfat

Charter Schools = They take 100% of the money from the public school and the money follows the student.

> why does the state really care which one the child attends?

Well I as a tax payer cares. If those school fare even worst and the administration and CEO/President of the foundations makes millions at the expense of children there is a concern.

Public Schools work and have worked for decades. We have a problem with inner city schools and a big part is unfair funding, but killing public schools and give it over to various schools with no public oversight just government over sight is scary. We vote on our School Boards and Directors. We can protest and get Administrators removed. Can't do that to these Charters School. Also privatizing schools will make being a teacher an even worst job.

⬐ eric_the_read

In many cases, that's not true. Until recently, charter schools in my district received 17% of the per-pupil funding compared to district-run schools. That's changed recently, but who knows how long that will last.

⬐ msandford

You're not making very coherent arguments. What's wrong with a voucher system whereby the PARENTS of the children being educated are the ones who determine which child the school goes to? Doesn't that make it very easy for the parents to shut bad schools down very quickly? It seems like that solves all the problems you're worried about, while also providing more choices to parents and students. What's the downside?

⬐ baldfat

Voucher and Charter School are two different things. Charter Schools are taking over Public School System. Vochers are evil for many social reasons. I'll just focus on one.

So Vouchers really will be the new segregation tool for the 21st Century. Your money will be used to send kids to religious schools you don't like teaching Islam, Christianity in all its forms, or who knows what and if they want to teach the children ignorance and hate and you as a tax payer just flipped the bill for this and can't stop it. I can't see a good voucher system that would answer my fears of miss used funds spent on poor education back by people groups that will not teach based on various world views that are not politically correct and just wrong. Our Brain Drain in America will go into Nuclear Meltdown.

To quote the 2002 Supreme Court Voucher Dissent: Justice Breyer on Descent “... all religious institutions cannot be given equal opportunities to the government funding and trying to do so not only turns back the clock on the Constitution, but creates a powder keg in our society.” http://www.pewforum.org/2002/06/28/judgment-day-for-school-v...

Back ground: I went to private school and graduated with a Theology Degree and worked as a Pastor for years. I absolutely know that many in the voucher movement see the Government footing the bill for their Christian Education. You have no idea how deep Crazy Christianity can get (Westborogh is just the tip of the ice berge). They will spew their version of crazy that they got with no academic or logically training to children with your tax dollars paying for it.

⬐ msandford

So the money for education can only be spent on the kind of education YOU like, and not the kind of education that the parents like? You do realize that's incredibly arrogant, right? You and other enlightened people know what's best, but everyone else who disagrees with you about what's best is unenlightened swine? That's tautological.

⬐ baldfat

Your missing the point. They can spend their money where you would be mad. So if they go to a school where history is through the lens of white supremacy and teach that science is evil because it contradicts their narrow version of the Bible and that God created black people because of the curse on Noah's son for having homosexual sin with Noah your fine? By the way a LOT of people believe this especially in the south. (Also BTW Noah's son Cush who did this "looking on his father naked" the scriptures say they went to Persia and NOT to Africa but that is another matter of facts getting way to their fictionalized bibles)

Also show one example where vouchers BETTERED students education? It didn't in Switzerland it actually made their scores worse since 1992.

⬐ msandford

I am saying that if you apply that argument inductively, then nobody should be able to do anything because there will always be someone to object to it. Public money can't be used by anyone for anything because someone will have a problem with it. You do see how that could be, don't you?

I am in group X and I object to things that you value in group Y. You in group Y object to things that I, in group X, value. What do we do?

Once you have a particular group that claims to have the moral high ground for some nebulous definition of "the high ground" the whole argument is lost because so few people agree on so few things.

I get that creationists are annoying, but I'll give them credit for not demanding that science not be taught, just that they wanted their pet theory taught too. That looks a lot more reasonable (from a certain perspective) than the evolutionists who insist that evolution is the only possible explanation ever, with quite religious zeal, despite having only circumstantial evidence. Evolutionary science is nowhere near as rigorous as physics and won't be for thousands and thousands of years of highly accurate recordkeeping. At that point the creationists will have suffered a thorough defeat, but until then, well, truthfully the science isn't settled. At least to the degree of rigor that I would personally care for.

⬐ taco_emoji

> I'll give them credit for not demanding that science not be taught, just that they wanted their pet theory taught too

This was largely demonstrated to be a ruse by so-called "Intelligent Design" proponents in the Kitzmiller v Dover trial[0].

I would respectfully suggest that you haven't really looked into the evidence that carefully if you question the degree of rigor that underpins evolutionary science.

Large parts of evolutionary theory are indeed based on circumstantial evidence. But the quantity of such evidence is so overwhelming[1] that questioning its explanatory power is rather foolish. It's the sort of evidence where coming up with any alternative hypothesis besides evolution quickly becomes an exercise in futility. Unless, that is, you don't care if the hypothesis is testable or not, in which case creationists have many.

Moreover, evolution does not only have circumstantial evidence. You and I are living through the rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria - an evolutionary change that is being observed and documented as it occurs. Fruit flies from the same species have been split into physically isolated groups, allowed to breed over many generations, and subsequently reintroduced, only to discover that they had become reproductively isolated.

There's more evidence discussed here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

Or here:

http://amazon.com/dp/1416594795/

Or here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_Schoo...

[1] For example, here's Wikipedia's list of transitional fossils (so-called "missing links" between divergent extant species) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

⬐ msandford

Look I'm not suggesting that evolution is completely unfounded or anything like that. And I agree that we're witnessing it unfold with antibiotic resistance and the like.

But what I am saying is that physics has a lot more rigor for the claims by virtue of how it works, and what people are looking for there. Evolution is punctuated equilibrium and human beings haven't directly witnessed this to the same degree that people have in physics.

I think the direct witnessing aspect is important, even if others may disagree. The reason I think it's important is that there are other possible though highly improbable explanations for various physical phenomena we see on earth.

If there really was a "guy in the sky" he could have absolutely made a bunch of stuff and "planted the evidence" all over the place to fool people. But if also for some reason, he always handled the laws of physics just the way things are now, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

To me it's kind of like the people who suggest that we should try and see if reality is just a simulation being run in a computer. The odds -- at least in my mind -- are absolutely astronomical against. But just because it's a "crazy idea" and there's "no way" it could be true doesn't mean I get to dismiss it offhand and maintain my intellectual integrity.

⬐ baldfat

Just for the record Charter Schools have a purpose BUT not to replace Public schools.

1) I think in experimentation charter schools do serve a good purpose, but right now it is the battle of not having another New Orleans (New Orleans has ZERO public schools and its school board has dissolved).

⬐ dragonwriter

> Evolution is punctuated equilibrium and human beings haven't directly witnessed this to the same degree that people have in physics.

I don't think this is really true. For most important effects in large domains of physics, directly witnessing the underlying processes is as impossible as directly witnessing the history of evolution (to the extent that "directly witnessing" is even meaningful -- on a detailed level, all witnessing other than of ones own internal subjective mental states is through several layers of indirection.) We witness them indirectly, through various media whose mechanism are explained by other well-tested scientific theories.4

> If there really was a "guy in the sky" he could have absolutely made a bunch of stuff and "planted the evidence" all over the place to fool people. But if also for some reason, he always handled the laws of physics just the way things are now, we wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

IF there's really a "guy in the sky" exercising arbitrary power over the physical universe, even if he had not always handled the laws of physics in the same way, we couldn't necessarily tell the difference, since he would also have the power to make it so that our perception of evidence we examine at any given time (including our present recollection of what we might have done in the past) is always consistent with physical law always having been the same, even if it wasn't, and even if our actual observations in the past would have differed.

⬐ msandford

How is the idea that our whole universe is merely a simulation inside someone else's computer practically much different than the idea of there being a "god"? From a certain perspective, they're one and the same. They can both change the universe arbitrarily either by changing the rules of the simulation or the state of the simulation.

I agree that both are incredibly unlikely, but you can't say for certain that it is not so.

⬐ zo1

Are Texas public schools not proof that public schools are not immune from this "teach the children ignorance and hate" thing you speak of? You have to think past stage-one if you want to meddle with peoples' lives on such a grand scale.

⬐ saryant

I graduated from a Texas high school in 2008. Never heard a peep about intelligent design and the school was 1000% better than the school I moved away from in California. The two weren't comparable—the CA school was a prison, the Texas school was a palace of education.

⬐ Natsu

I've never been able to make sense of these arguments. Can't parents already teach their kids that without sending them to a special school?

And what about the people who don't have some religious agenda, but simply want to get away from crazy school administrations like, well, this one? "We're worried that you might be religious, so we're adamantly against leaving you any option whatsoever to avoid a known bad local school" doesn't exactly make a compelling argument if it's your kid suffering.

FWIW, I did go to a normal, public school. Mine wasn't so bad, but some of the usual idiocy was still present, like getting punished for "fighting" when I was attacked, unprovoked and had not even touched the other party.

⬐ nmrm2

> Why not let parents choose the school?

As long as private schools are required to take any comer can cannot charge tuition beyond the per pupil amount.

Somehow I doubt any private school advocate wants actual school choice.

⬐ warfangle

> If it costs $1000/student/month irrespective of if a child goes to a public school or a private school, why does the state really care which one the child attends? Why not let parents choose the school?

Except it doesn't. In fact, at-risk children going to poorly performing schools cost more per dollar: they need more extra curricular activities, possibly counseling, lower cost lunches, a lower teacher:student ratio, and so on and so forth. More children at poorly performing schools have more problems with their home life, and school is about the only thing other than organized crime that can give them structure.

There was a whole season of The Wire about this.. :)

⬐ codyb

It's really not that easy. Location and transportation logistics factor in greatly and are hard problems to solve for the disparate network of connections a system like that might create.

⬐ 6stringmerc

First, no, they do freak out for paying taxes for education, and it's pretty obvious that the hostility increases with age and as the elderly rely on social welfare programs. They get out and vote. Traditionally they vote down any education funding, as a cohort.

In my experience the people who claim the public schools are "broken" the loudest are the least qualified to make such an assessment. Also, public schools reflect the public, as in, you know, society at large. Saying that public schools are broken is essentially saying our basic local systems are broken, and that opens a whole new can of worms regarding inequality, poverty, and social priorities.

The significant problem with your "End of story" type solution is that there are schools which are tantamount to educational fraud based on their religious priorities, and there's no way public monies should enable that type of selectivity. Pay into the public system. If you can afford to keep your child ignorant through religious pursuits, or can afford the opportunity for a selective population experience by way of a private school, that's totally fine, always has been and always will be.

Stop forcing schools to listen to broken people.

⬐ Hydraulix989

"Saying that public schools are broken is essentially saying our basic local systems are broken, and that opens a whole new can of worms regarding inequality, poverty, and social priorities."

Not necessarily.

⬐ 6stringmerc

Initiatives like No Child Left Behind would indicate that my statement is closer to reality than you might choose to believe.

⬐ xacaxulu

More evidence that school serves to simply stultify the youth. Unschooling is looking more attractive all the time.

⬐ zaphar

In my day we called unschooling homeschooling. And it's a lot of work. It's a fix for those families that can afford to do it.

However the families most harmed by public school policies are precisely the people who can't afford to unschool or homeschool which is perhaps the saddest part of all of this.

[edit]: spelling

⬐ tmsam

I would like to point out that homeschooling and unschooling are not the same thing. From:

http://www.pbs.org/parents/education/homeschooling/unschooli...

"Unschooling is a branch of homeschooling that promotes nonstructured, child-led learning. There’s no set curriculum or schedule."

⬐ zaphar

Homeschooling may encompass a lot of different methodologies but as I said Homeschooling back when I did it which was a long time ago it had a lot of similarities to unschooling as it's defined now.

The point here though is that whether you call it Homeschooling or Unschooling it is still a labor intensive process that will likely require sacrifice on the part of the parents. Sacrifices that many times a lower income family can not afford to make.

⬐ logfromblammo

Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling. In ordinary homeschooling, the parents set a curriculum, and direct the learning. In unschooling, the student decides what to learn, and the parent provides resources to support that.

If the kid gets into dinosaurs, a regular homeschooling parent might add a dinosaur module to the science/biology part of the curriculum. The unschooling parent might ask, "How would you like it if we took a trip to Utah, to visit an actual dig site?"

If the kid gets into robots, a regular homeschooling parent might add mechanical engineering and electronics to the curriculum. An unschooling parent might bring home a LEGO Mindstorms set and sign the kid up for the robot soccer league run by an adjunct from the local community college.

As I understand it, successful unschoolers rely rather heavily on a whole-family lifestyle commitment, to subtly discourage the kid from choosing to become the world's foremost expert on Minecraft, and learn nothing else. I would, at the least, be compelled to suggest that perhaps my kid should play all the computer games in my personal collection, in chronological order, starting with the Infocom library, progressing through the Sierra/Dynamix era, running through Black Isle and LucasArts titles, and ending with access to my Steam and GOG accounts. I could also hook up my old console systems.

Then I might, ever so subtly, suggest that an encyclopedic knowledge of video gaming, past and present, might be useful to a heavily-followed and well-monetized text or video blogger. Because I am certainly not going to unschool if it won't eventually get the kid out of my basement (and pantry).

⬐ fao_

  Unschooling is a subset of homeschooling.

No, Unschooling is a subset of Home Education. So is Home Schooling. The distinction is important, since while both count as education, only one is school-at-home.

The rest of the post is rather accurate though, although I would say that with the robotics, the unschooling parent would probably take the kids to a local Radioshack (Or Maplin's, if you're in the UK!) and buy a book on electronics, along with a few bits and bobs (motors, etc), encourage the kid to experiment, and encourage them to join a local engineering group :D

⬐ logfromblammo

If you go to Radio Shack tomorrow, looking for robot parts, you're going to come back disappointed.

⬐ fao_

  buy a book on electronics, along with a few bits and bobs (motors, etc)

I assume that Radio Shack has in stock a small collection of resistors and motors, at the least. If not then I feel very sorry for you USA-ians.

⬐ kirsebaer

From a survey of adults who had been "unschooled" (homeschooling without a curriculm):

> Almost all of the respondents, in various ways, wrote about the freedom and independence that unschooling gave them and the time it gave them to discover and pursue their own interests. Seventy percent of them also said, in one way or another, that the experience enabled them to develop as highly self-motivated, self-directed individuals. Many also wrote about the learning opportunities that would not have been available if they had been in school, about their relatively seamless transition to adult life, and about the healthier (age-mixed) social life they experienced out of school contrasted with what they would have experienced in school.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201406/su...

⬐ lallysingh

The nice thing about private school is that the student and parents are customers.

⬐ LesZedCB

the unfair thing about private school is only people who have money can go, thus increasing the social gaps.

⬐ vonmoltke

My wife went to a private boarding school in New York that was paid entirely by scholarship money.

⬐ tomjen3

Vouchers. Socialistic Denmark use them. It would only cost me slightly more than 200 usd/month to send my (non-existing) kid to a private school. Scaled to US cost it would be something like 50 usd/month more.

Sure those are not the super fancy private schools, but they will always be out of reach of anything but the very rich.

⬐ smcl

Let's not turn this into a private/public school thing

⬐ lallysingh

Good point, sorry.

⬐ codyb

I think thats a very cynical view point which reduces to a platitude an extremely complex issue especially when your evidence primarily appears to concern a smattering of cases among a system which serves millions of children a year.

Technology is very esoteric and almost brand new in a sense. It's been as little as two decades since the advent of schools even having computers.

The fact there are misunderstandings, growing pains, and abuse associated with the system that results should be a foregone conclusion.

The answer isn't to give up on the school system or assume bad intentions by administrators, curriculum developers, or legislators. The only thing that can come of that is an even more broken school system.

⬐ nitrogen

It seems we're talking about schools' failure to support exceptional students -- those most likely to make outsized contributions to society when older. So of course we are only looking at exceptional cases.

⬐ None

None

⬐ 0xdeadbeefbabe

It's also a dopey to think the student in this particular case is not getting an education.

⬐ Domenic_S

Perhaps, but each family with a child will need to make a decision about how to school that child, and one family doesn't have the power to fix the system.

Tragedy of the Commons and all that. Maybe it's best for society if we don't give up on the public school system, but for my kid, today, given the options I have, is sending them there the best option? Rarely is the answer yes.

⬐ lloyd-christmas

I wasn't allowed to do my high school science scholars project on electromagnetic propulsion because it was around the time of Columbine: "You could potentially make a gun out of it".

⬐ elektromekatron

I used to use the bench power supplies to fire nails across the classroom with a coil. This wasn't for a project, I was just bored.

⬐ nailer

Another boy makes gun gesture with hand, gets suspended:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/04/us/ohio-boy-suspended-fing...

⬐ c3534l

I got in trouble at school for having smarties candias because "it could be pills."

⬐ eldude

Exactly. Exploiting his race to further a political narrative as the author has done, is both intellectually feeble and misdirects away from the real issue: authoritarian government behavior targeted at school children.

⬐ boomlinde

You mean furthering a different political narrative than you are.

⬐ eldude

So, you focus on attacking my point with insinuation and equivocation, yet ignore the exploitative anti-intellectual (fact-less) position of the TechCrunch author, whose sole contribution to the story was to inject race?

Conveniently, you ignored the facts and in doing so implicitly mischaractered me as equally lacking in factual basis for my "narrative", which, of course, is absurdly wrong, since my first word, "Exactly" presupposes the parents' citations.

⬐ boomlinde

Perhaps surprisingly, to a small amount of people, "Exactly" isn't the source of the irony that I pointed out, but the fact that you are referring to the real issue, by which you dismiss that there are any other real issues involved. You did so without making a factual argument and without sharing any of the reasoning that had you arrive at that conclusion.

The mystical real issue for which no other explanation is offered is like a textbook example of a political narrative.

⬐ cholantesh

The spirit of Murray Rothbard personally touched the poster and imbued him with sacred realisation, obviously.

⬐ eldude

The only irony here is your complete failure to understand my original comment and your own failure to provide reasoning for your own false conclusion.

Based on the facts in the OP and parent comment, I was disassembling the race-baiting rhetoric as anti-intellectual and fact-less (which, since you missed it, is itself a fact), to refocus on the original issue.

Meanwhile, double-ironically, you again ignore context and facts, equivocate ("real issue"), and wildly mischaracterize me to make an increasingly invalid point based on a fundamental misunderstanding of my comment.

⬐ DanBC

The police made repeated mention of his surname. You might want to ignore race but thischild's religion was clearly a factor for the investigating police.

⬐ eldude

You're mistaken.

    You might want to ignore race [...]

I neither appreciate the defaming mischaracterization resulting from your mistake, nor do I appreciate the casual and irresponsible manner in which you do so:

    police made repeated mention of his surname.

Neither the original DallasNews article nor the TechCrunch article makes any such assertion about . The only person who draws that assertion is his dad, for which he provided no supporting evidence, and has a history of political provocation on this specific issue. (Not saying it's not true, but he's definitely not citing anything or anyone, so as presented, its only an opinion.)

⬐ elektromekatron

Actually, it is the kid himself is who is saying it. http://mic.com/articles/125400/texas-police-officer-to-ahmed...

Now given you are getting all high and mighty bandying around terms like defamation, you going to go calling him a liar?

⬐ eldude

EDIT: I believe you are misunderstanding the meaning of my previous comment based on its use of indefinite pronouns and how it was physically structured relative to the quote block. Rather than rehash it here, please re-read it.[1]

EDIT 2: Looks like my Edit window timed out. I meant to also update this line as follows:

    Neither the original DallasNews article nor the TechCrunch article
    makes any such assertion about the officer's use of his surname.

I'm not going to call him a liar, because that presumes malice. He was wrong and irresponsible in his defaming statement.

EDIT 3: One last time for clarity, the kid felt his name to be relevant (which still does not mean his name was in fact relevant), but did not assert that the "police made repeated mention of his surname", which, apart from the mischaracterizations, was specifically what I was refuting.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10228819

⬐ elektromekatron

My, how gracious of you.

⬐ Crito

I guess when you can't tell somebody that they are wrong, you can still complain about how they are saying it.....

⬐ elektromekatron

It was a response to the original comment of - I'm not going to call him a liar, because that presumes malice. He was wrong and irresponsible in his defaming statement. - which I still think merits sarcasm.

I could have done better however, so in that spirit, here's First Dog on the Moon's take on the event - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2015/sep/18...

⬐ eldude

I believe the parent was calling you out on your BS. You claimed to care about the truth, but actually misunderstood and mischaracterized me. Then when the ignorance of your original statement became obvious, rather than acknowledge your gaffe, you immaturely deflected with glib sarcasm.

Not surprisingly, consistent with your weak intellectual arguments and preceding dishonesty, your comic forwards bigotry and ignorance while ignoring every meaningfully accurate portrayal of the truth.

You're a mouthpiece for hatred and ignorance.

⬐ boomlinde

The only irony here is your complete failure to understand my original comment and your own failure to provide reasoning for your own false conclusion.

Which exactly is my false conclusion? Weren't you referring to the real issue? Doesn't the determiner in that mean that there is a only a single such thing? Did you offer any basis for the assumption that it was indeed the single real issue? Those are the assumptions of my conclusion.

It's fair if you wrote "the real issue" and actually meant something else, in which case my conclusion would indeed be invalid, but not writing in clear terms hardly puts you in a position to accuse me of equivocation.

⬐ eldude

You falsely conclude that I have a singular (implicitly subjective) "real issue", to which I "offer" "no other explanation." In fact, despite your projecting, by "real" / "original" issue, I meant the mistreatment of children by authority in schools, which is both the context of the parent comment and the original article from which the TechCrunch article derives.

Again, for clarity, I am asserting that the original article focuses on student mistreatment and not race, TechCrunch subverts it, and the parent comment refocuses on it. In other words, the "real issue" was pre-established as the context for and precedes my comment. All my comment served to do, was concisely articulate the issue of the preceding contexts, which is self-evident when reworded to be less generic, "Use of institutional force by the police and school officials to suppress or punish divergent student behavior."

⬐ elektromekatron

"All my comment served to do, was concisely articulate the issue of the preceding contexts, which is self-evident when reworded to be less generic"

I doubt you could concisely articulate anything if your preceding contexts depended upon it.

⬐ eldude

> I doubt you could concisely articulate anything if your preceding contexts depended upon it.

Umm.... My "preceding contexts depended upon it"? First, as stated, the preceding contexts were not mine. Second, concisely articulating someone else's stance or summary, or a current context, while not easy, is trivially simple.

Here's an example: Contents of Moby Dick => "A whale fishing allegory about the idolization of man's desires and its limitations."

⬐ elektromekatron

Contents of Moby Dick => Ahab's leg.

⬐ cholantesh

Well, given that the police implied heavily that his religious background makes him a candidate for making a bomb...

⬐ eldude

You mean the non-specific 2nd-hand quote from the officer that makes up the entirety of the justification for the race baiting and exploitative behavior?

    "Yup. That’s who I thought it was."

Like I said, it's an intellectually feeble argument.

⬐ nsxwolf

That either meant "Yup. The kid that's always building electronics", or "Yup, the Muslim." When in doubt, always assume the worst.

⬐ None

None

⬐ cholantesh

What part of his appearance gives the former away?

⬐ nsxwolf

The cop may already know the kid or have heard about his hobbies? We have no idea, we just have a short bit of hearsay.

⬐ 7Z7

"He said an officer he’d never seen before leaned back in his chair and remarked: 'Yup. That’s who I thought it was.'"

Almost certainly not known to him before this incident.

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/northwest-dall...

⬐ ebbv

I'm all in favor of seti@home but it's not like running that on the school computers is free. If he didn't have permission to do it, then setting it up on those computers without getting that authorization was inappropriate. Obviously firing him is an overreaction, but I tend to believe their excuse that if he was fired for that, it wasn't just for that. He was already on thin ice before that incident and it was just the final straw.

My point being, comparing what this kid is going through -- pure racist overreaction -- to a teacher installing seti@home on school computers without permission, isn't a great comparison.

⬐ nadams

> If he didn't have permission to do it

From a previous news article I've read (not linked) - he claimed the previous system administrator told him to do it and he continued following their instructions. Again this has to have some other side to it - because if someone told me to do that and I googled what it was I would definitely question it and bring it to the administration and let them decide what to do (which some reports claim he had permission from previous administration). Originally they reported firing him because of running seti@home - but then they changed their story quickly afterwards.

> My point being, comparing what this kid is going through -- pure racist overreaction -- to a teacher installing seti@home on school computers without permission, isn't a great comparison.

It's a great compare because it shows how out of touch with reality school administration is. Yeah it's two completely different cases - but if common sense was introduced to both then we wouldn't be here discussing it. And this wasn't a teacher - it was a system administrator that was running it for several years. I find it hard to believe that if it truly was using that much more electricity that someone who does the budget for the school didn't catch it right away.

⬐ DanBC

> I find it hard to believe that if it truly was using that much more electricity that someone who does the budget for the school didn't catch it right away.

How the fuck are the accoutants supposed to connect "big increases in electricity use" with "unauthorised installation of software on 5,000 school computers"?

⬐ nadams

> How the fuck are the accoutants supposed to connect "big increases in electricity use" with "unauthorised installation of software on 5,000 school computers"?

Use common sense and ask people? Unless the school is doing something that requires that much electricity - it's probably reasonable to assume that it's the 5000+ devices that consume 300-1kw/hr of electricity.

⬐ jeeva

Well, based on the 9 year / millions of dollars thing (and I agree this is a bit of a stretch), someone might say "Oh, hey, Jerry - are we paying $200,000 more this year for electricity than we did last year? Have prices changed? Not that much? Hm. Did we expand? We should look into this, I mean, that's a fair wedge of cash."

⬐ jussij

> If anyone is actually surprised by the administrations intelligence

Unfortunately this is not a lack of intelligence, which in fact it was, but instead it is a Christian right society that fears everything and anything.

The USA has become a country that is now scared of it's own shadow.

The problem started when someone with a Muslim sounding name brought something clicking to the school and naturally everyone though it was Muslim terrorist with a bomb.

Luckily it was not a bunch disenfranchised white youths, carrying hand guns, machine guns and grenades as they would have walked straight through the security check, because they had the correct skin color.

Here is a simple lesson for the people of the USA. Clocks don't kill guns kill.

⬐ andrepd

You cited three cases, it's anecdotal evidence that says nothing about the efficiency or intelligence of administration.

⬐ DanBC

Running seti / etc on the school computers does result in thousands of dollars spend on extra electricity. He was number one on SETI for years, running the client without approval on 5,000 machines. It's not surprising that people get fired for increasing costs by that much without getting approval first.

See also http://www.securityfocus.com/news/300

⬐ JoeAltmaier

Thousands can be wasted on dumb stuff like bad office-supply purchasing decisions. Those folks don't get fired. Sounds overblown - folks afraid of anything they don't understand.

⬐ nowarninglabel

I don't get how this point is debatable.

I did this when I worked as a network administrator for a new school campus. It was folding@home vs. SETI but same concept. Once the administration realized all the computers were running folding@home they compared the bills after turning it off and it was tens of thousands of dollars difference (granted this was 2001 and full-size desktops).

Now, one could say they overreacted, sure, in my case I just got reprimanded and told to uninstall it off all the computers. But firing for costing the district significant amounts of money isn't some testament to the ignorance of the South, unlike the "bomb" clock.

⬐ nadams

> tens of thousands of dollars difference

I still don't believe that - unless this was 10k computers+. I'll bet that if you used watts up on an idle computer, then used it on a computer running seti@home I'll bet the difference would only be 100 watt difference at the max (probably more like 50 depending on what is running on the computer).

⬐ vacri

"compared bills after turning it off" is a direct measure of costs.

⬐ TallGuyShort

5k is easily within an order of magnitude of what you would find believable, and he's only expressing an order of magnitude. I think your dispute is rather academic.

⬐ acqq

See my other post here for details, 5000 desktop computers using 100% CPU all the time can cost some 18000 USD per month (1) more versus keeping them idle.

1) if 1 KWh costs 10 cents, which is reasonable to expect, and the load increases just 50 W.

And for this guy here it's even much more:

http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_thread.php?id=54609&pos...

His single computer uses 490 Watts when turned on and calculating Seti, and he's keeping it on for 18 hour more per day just for Seti. Only 500 of such computers and such usage patterns make 14000 dollars more per month.

⬐ Alupis

Would you still consider it "overblown" if he had run, say... a bitcoin miner on all those machines?

Sure, he didn't make profit from the seti@home instances, but he did it without approval, did ultimately cost the district money, and likely caused other issues along the way (like additional wear-n-tear on the machines)

⬐ ohitsdom

I'd think administrators would have a very different approach to disciplining a "bad office-supply purchasing" decision versus a well-thought out choice to use school equipment & electricity for non-work related causes.

⬐ tomswartz07

> electricity for non-work related causes

I wish we could fire teachers for using their computers for Facebook and Amazon shopping during the day.

⬐ pbhjpbhj

Do you want to be fired for using your computer for non-work activities?

⬐ lotharbot

in the school where I most recently taught, there was an explicit expectation that teachers could use district computers for personal business when on break. Being on facebook when they had kids in the room would be an entirely different matter.

The internet was also heavily monitored, with a proxy server that required a login to get to forbidden sites. Our IT guy had a pretty good idea of when teachers were getting on facebook etc.

⬐ ArkyBeagle

This question is not intended at all to be snarky. Seriously.

And then you'll hire them?

Gets complicated fast, dunnit?

⬐ blacksmith_tb

If they have shown they can get the job done, why wouldn't I? (Other than not being in HR and all).

Also, hard not to feel a little snark in the emphasis and "dunnit", really...

⬐ ArkyBeagle

I would not have thought of that :) I just thought it was a contraction of "doesn't it".

Perhaps they are like farmers we paid to not grow corn in the past.

But that's just for the time-servers, not the dedicated professionals, who are probably the majority.

⬐ blacksmith_tb

And should private sector employers fire their employees for using their computers to do the same? Obviously I don't want to see teachers goofing off on social media instead of teaching kids, but if they aren't actively teaching, why not? The idea that every second of your time on the job needs to be spent furiously working is an attitude from the industrial revolution - I would have thought these days we were more interested in results.

⬐ ja27

dumb stuff

My wife was on the advisory committee for a local middle school that's struggling. One winner is that they bought SmartBoards for a bunch of classrooms but didn't get stands for them, so they just mothballed them for a year until they could buy stands with the next year's budget.

⬐ HeyLaughingBoy

What would you have them do? If they're over budget, they're over budget and non-emergencies will have to wait.

⬐ phaus

The obvious solution would be to buy fewer smart boards this year, along with the stands, and then buy the rest of the smart boards and stands the next year.

⬐ nmrm2

Sure, obvious. Until you're negotiating price points and you can save X% aggregate by purchasing Y boards at a time, and then figure you're only losing <<< X%*total_cost in depreciation... then it's just as obvious, but you're making a different decision.

⬐ None

None

⬐ conanbatt

They pretty surely do if their costs were measured by someone.

I wouldnt call someone externalizing costs for whatever noble endeavor responsible or forward thinking.

⬐ None

None

⬐ benihana

It's much easier to justify wasting money on normal business things every day people understand, like buying office paper. Most people can relate to that, even when things go wrong and money is wasted.

Most people, be they in the deep south or the northeast have no fucking clue what SETI is and may even have very specific metaphysical opinions on how we should deal with the possibility of alien life that doing this violates. Most people don't care enough about paper to do more than write it off as a normal expense.

I personally think that alien life is everywhere and I can't wait until we discover more evidence of it. But I think SETI is a huge waste of resources that could be spent better elsewhere. Even though I'm pro science, discovery, and utilizing wasted cpu cycles, I still think searching for life this way is a huge waste of time and resources and I'd be pissed if some teacher decided he was going to use the resources I take a part in paying for to do this.

The benefits of this are external while the cost is internal. If you're going to use resources, at least use them to benefits the kids who are in your budge.

⬐ None

None

⬐ sixothree

Having lived in the deep south most of my life I think I understand what's going on here.

It's not that they're afraid of things they don't understand. It's that there is a certain type of person they generally don't like. In this case it might have been a man that had some sort of intellectual curiosity, maybe a bit eccentric. And they will use their ignorance as a weapon against those people.

The police department knows full well they can determine whether this was a bomb or not. It's within their ability to interview every person he interacted with to find if he claimed it was a bomb at any point. Instead of doing that they will use their lack of knowledge to allow falsehoods to move the investigation.

It was within the ability of the staff to determine the monetary cost of this man's actions. In the very least they could compare the electricity bill during a month he was running SETI versus the next month when he was not. They could calculate the power consumption of the machines.

It's not that they are afraid of knowing. But that knowing or admitting the truthfulness of the facts makes them less powerful as people.

⬐ lisper

I think it's both: ignorance is the source of their power, and they are afraid of losing it. (I also grew up in the South.)

⬐ Florin_Andrei

> ignorance is the source of their power

Ignorance is a source of power only within a like-minded group, and only as long as that group is powerful.

Now get out of there and see where ignorance gets you.

Or wait until that group washes out into the irrelevance of history.

⬐ PhasmaFelis

Saying "don't worry, this group that currently holds power over large parts of the country only holds power currently, and only over large parts of the country" is not as reassuring as you probably meant it to be.

⬐ anigbrowl

If you're stuck within such a group, you can wait your whole life for history to prove you right and still be disappointed - better to start planning your exit strategy.

⬐ braythwayt

"The market can remain irrational far longer than you can remain solvent."

⬐ anigbrowl

Precisely - I actually started out with the same quote but trying to articulate a notion of epistemological solvency became unwieldy :-)

⬐ jessedhillon

> Or wait until that group washes out into the irrelevance of history.

That's all fine and good on a geological scale, but we've been waiting 200+ years for the irrelevance of this particular group, and there's not a hope in sight of it happening any time soon.

⬐ lisper

It's actually not the ignorance per se, it's the self-confidence that comes from a mindset that allows you to believe things without evidence, or even in the face of contrary evidence. That sort of self-confidence can be very powerful (c.f. Donald Trump) but, of course, it can also be very dangerous.

⬐ None

None

⬐ andrepd

That, or they just didn't like that someone illegally installed money-wasting software on school property without so much as an approval request.

PS: Money wasting from their point of view, not making any judgement about SETI here

⬐ sixothree

Right. I really should have separated the two incidents from my single point.

⬐ xbryanx

Irving, Texas is not typical of what most consider the deep south. It's part of the DFW metroplex which is in the nation's fourth largest population center[1], and it's in a county that went 57% for Obama in the 2012 election[2]. So let's just be careful about painting wide swaths of the country with an singular view.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Metropolitan_Statistic...

[2] - http://elections.nytimes.com/2012/results/president

⬐ 01Michael10

I guess you are not familiar with Irving's Mayor, Beth Van Duyne... Sorry to blow your theory right out of the water.

⬐ None

None

⬐ TallGuyShort

Are you saying the Mayor defines this area more than the numerous other demographics that show it is not simply a backwoods hillbilly town?

⬐ 01Michael10

Yes... I believe the Mayor of Irving is an elected position by the people. It's a better indicator then being the 4th biggest metropolitan in the country like that matters.

⬐ TallGuyShort

And going 57% for Obama also says something about the people. We're not saying they're bleeding-heart-liberals. We're saying it's a little more complicated than, "Oh well it's the deep South..." Too many people are dismissing this like it's just the norm. It shouldn't be. More people should be asking if Islamophobia is a bigger part of mainstream America than we're willing to admit.

⬐ fnordfnordfnord

It doesn't say as much as you think. Texas has done gerrymandered itself up pretty good.

⬐ tinalumfoil

That's ridiculous. Now you're going to say I'm "breaking the law" for installing a bitcoin miner on all the computers I support and donating the money to charity (well, some of it;rent doesn't pay itself)!

⬐ peter303

Yep, government works have been fired for mining on government computers. Unauthorized computer use.

http://www.businessinsider.com/researcher-bitcoin-supercompu...

⬐ TallGuyShort

Maybe not breaking the law, but if you're not the person ultimately responsible for the costs and they're not actually your computers, that's still a dick move. I'd fire you if you worked for me and caused a massive increase in my power bill for something that had no relation to what I asked you to do.

⬐ nadams

> does result in thousands of dollars spend on extra electricity

Thousands maybe - definitely not millions as they are claiming. From what I read it was setup to calculate through the screensaver. For most of the day - the computer will be in use and I would imagine/hope that they turn them off when they leave.

⬐ tomswartz07

All of that extra power really only amounts to tens of dollars per year.

Running a processor at an extra (grossly exaggerating here) few watts + an extra 5-10 watts for fans, LEDs, etc don't amount to much. Especially when you consider that all electricity is paid for by the Thousand-Watts/Hour.

⬐ DanBC

Advice used to be to not turn machines off but let themgo into sleep. This avoided power cycling which some people though caused problems. A sleeping machine still costs money, but much less than a machine churning SETI.

5,000 machines churning SETI for nine years? I'd be interested in estimates of cost.

⬐ mikeash

Quick and inaccurate estimate:

Let's say 100W per computer running at full blast, and assume 12 cents per kWh for electricity. Running for 9 years straight, that's about 5 million dollars. If they're running for 16 hours/day then it's more like 3 million dollars. Adjust other factors to taste, but "millions" sounds pretty reasonable.

⬐ sean13013

If the machines were awake for 12 extra hours a day, and drew 100 watts, that's 0.1kW * 5000machines * 12hours = 6000kWh per day.

Where I live, electricity costs about 20 cents per kWh. 0.2dollars * 6000kWh * 365days * 9years = $3.94 million.

⬐ Alupis

Well, far from being definitive, but it looks like a regular pc will cost around $227.52 (350 watt psu, $18.96 per month) in electricity per year to run 24/7.[1]

(calculated using $0.06 per kWh, which is rather low for most people in the US)

So, 5,000 machines running 24/7/365 would cost around $1,137,600 annually (5,000 machines * $227.52 per year) in electricity usage alone.

Of that 24 hours per day, we can assume 8 hours of each day the district expected to pay for them to run, so that leaves ~16 hours the district expected the machines to be asleep or off.

24 - 8 = 16 (about 66% of the 24 hour period)

So, the admin was consuming about $12.51 per machine per month the district did not expect.

This comes out to around $750,600 the sys admin potentially cost the district, for a single year. He ran this scheme for 9 years -- so...

$750,600 per year * 9 years = $6,755,400 in additional electricity costs

Keep in mind this is likely rather low, since most places in the US have a significantly higher per kWh fee than the $0.06 per kWh used in these calculations.

I'm certain that this sum alone was enough cause to terminate the sys admin.

Think about all the things the school district could have spent an extra ~$7MM+ on...

[1] http://www.dslreports.com/faq/2404

⬐ ScottBurson

Just one data point, but I have a machine I run Folding@Home on most of the time, and that is plugged into a Kill-A-Watt. The difference between idle and full folding power is about 70W, as I recall. Not trivial, but 1/5 of what you've estimated here.

15 years ago, the power difference was probably smaller, maybe quite a bit smaller -- modern CPUs are better optimized for low idle power.

⬐ Alupis

Most schools don't have "modern" computers (by most definitions of the word "modern" at least).

⬐ rtkwe

You're probably running a much more powerful processor than the school's computers were. The report is from 2009 at the earliest based on the cited forum post. There were some very low TDP processors during the 2000-2009 time frame that were very common in education systems.

Core 2 Duo was <35W TDP and was pretty popular from what I remember. P3 was in the same neighborhood too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_...

⬐ vectorjohn

You were looking at laptop Core 2 Duo. Desktop was 65 to 105.

⬐ rtkwe

Ah my mistake.

⬐ redblacktree

Something is wrong with your math. $227.52/year is $0.62/day

Also, bear in mind that PSUs do not use their full rating unless the hardware they are powering requires it. [0] Your number could easily be double what the machines actually used, if the PSU was somewhat oversized, as they typically are.

[0]: https://superuser.com/questions/106792/does-a-power-supply-d...

⬐ Alupis

Sorry, type-o, math is still correct though. Meant it to say "per month" not "per day".

⬐ nadams

> Think about all the things the school district could have spent an extra ~$7MM+ on...

That's assuming they didn't use computers. Your calculation assumes that the computer uses a full 350+ watts of electricity. If it had a 350 watt PSU and was drawing that full load - it would shutdown (I've had this happen). Even then the CPU doesn't require 350 watts of power [1]. The only device that I know of that will use and designed to use a full load is a bitcoin miner.

Taking in consideration that these computers might have been left on already. I would argue that he used MAYBE an extra 50 watts of electricity [2]. So assuming $0.10/kw/hr (which is the cost of where I live) - he wasted a whopping $0.12/day or ~$50/year.

You have to take into account if the computers were already on. He didn't waste electricity because someone left their computer on - his "waste" would be electricity use that is above that of an "idle computer". It should also be pointed out that if the computer has Mcafee or some other crappy AV the CPU usage would be 100% anyways due to poor programming of the AV software (I have personally seen this many times and you don't know how many times people complain about their slow computer because the AV is using 100% of the CPU).

There is no way he wasted $7m - and even if he did and no one noticed that is part of a larger problem. Besides they only claim he wasted $1.2m - $1.6m [3] - with no evidence of how they came up with that number. That is saying he managed to waste over $100k/year (over 9 years) in equipment purchases, electricity etc - and NO ONE noticed this? I find it hard to believe that the people managing the budget were like "$100k unaccounted for this year? no big deal...". And even if it was accounted for and signed off - there should be 2 people fired - his and the guy who approved the purchase.

Even from the article:

> would find that in a middle of a lesson, the SMART Board had turned off.

This has happened to me personally on my own laptop. Not because I was mining bitcoins or running seti@home. In fact I've seen them installed and they are such POS that no instructor I know actually uses it as a SMART board.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_...

[2] http://i.stack.imgur.com/4HQPY.png

[3] http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2009/11/30/20091130se...

⬐ Alupis

Even using your math:

~$50 per year per computer * 5,000 computers = $250,000 in additional power consumption per year

He ran this scheme for 9 years:

$250,000 per year * 9 years = $2,250,000 total additional electricity costs

No matter what way you run the math, he blew millions of the school district's budget.

⬐ nadams

> No matter what way you run the math, he blew millions of the school district's budget.

And the school blew millions by not turning off the computers when not in use. Power management is built into Windows - this can easily be done/managed with group policy.

> $250,000 per year * 9 years = $2,250,000 total additional electricity costs

This is all assuming he went around in a ski mask before he left every day and turned on all the computers across the school. Sure he might have used WOL but from the article I don't think he was that devious. From reports of what I read this was something the previous system admin guy did and just passed it along what to do.

I'm not saying he could have wasted money - I'm just giving him the benefit of the doubt and trying to make sure we don't frame him as some sort of criminal mastermind out to rip off this school district. There are a lot of reports out there about this and it's obvious the school wanted to spin it to look like he was the bad guy.

⬐ Alupis

He was the IT guy, so for all we know (and can likely safely assume) he had a GPO to not turn off the systems, but instead schedule this app to run after students left for the day.

I do believe somewhere someone stated the district had wanted the systems put to sleep (not turned off) and believed it was happening.

⬐ digler999

> 350 watt psu,

PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts. That's the theoretical maximum you can draw from it. Sure, SETI was probably drawing a higher load than idle, vs off, but I highly doubt it was drawing 100%.

Even more complicated is the heat. If they lived in a cool climate, at least some of the waste heat that was emitted would have been absorbed by the building, which they are (presumably) paying to heat at least a few months of the year.

Edit: also if it was a public school, wouldn't they be off for about 3 months over summer ?

⬐ CydeWeys

> PSU's arent light bulbs. A "350 watt" psu doens't draw 350 watts.

Yes, it will draw even more than 350 Watts at full load. 350 is the output power, whereas incandescent lightbulbs are measured in input power. So a 350 watt power supply, depending on efficiency of the PSU anyway, is probably using around 400-500 Watts at the wall at full load.

⬐ vectorjohn

But this completely misses the point. You can put a 1000 watt PSU in a computer and it won't draw 1000 watts at full load. That's just the max the PSU can supply. SETI is mainly CPU intensive so even if they had the absolute smallest possible PSU, SETI isn't going to cause it to produce the full 350 watts.

And that's a pretty awful efficiency you suggest. It may be that bad, but I'd sure hope not.

⬐ CydeWeys

SETI also runs (or did, from what I remember) a 3D screensaver. It's not doing nothing on the videocard, anyway, but I don't know how close to fully maxing out anything it gets.

Talking about power load, though, I have a Kill-A-Watt pass-through power meter, and I have measured power at the wall exceeding the rated output power capacity of an 80% efficient power supply on a computer running at full load (running a graphically and computationally expensive computer game).

A lot of PSUs are pretty inefficient. You can look up the stats. It wasn't until recently that you even had a lot of them earning the 80 Plus "bronze" rating, which is 80% efficiency. There's still plenty with worse efficiency than that. A decade ago, you're probably looking at 60% efficiency on average.

⬐ nerd_stuff

He lived in Arizona which is hot and a school full of space-heaters (humans) will probably run AC more often than heat.

What grandparent commenter showed was the school district's numbers are plausible. I doubt the district entered into a legal battle without first consulting an engineer or two about the electric costs.

⬐ ArkyBeagle

I wonder if anybody even so much as plugged a typical computer used into a Kill A Watt and compared with/without SETI running.

⬐ holyoly

I have. I tested 3 models of HP that we had on campus which are kind of aging. Here's my results in Watts:

HP 6000 Pro SFF - Core2Duo E8400 @ 3GHz - 100% CPU: 70, Idle: 26, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1,

HP 6200 Pro SFF - Core i5 3470 @ 3.2GHz - 100% CPU: 83, Idle: 31, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1,

HP 6300 Pro SFF - Core i5 2400 @ 3.1GHz - 100% CPU: 100, Idle: 30, Sleep: 2-3, Off: 0-1,

It's been a few months now, and I can't remember what I used to max out the CPU. It wasn't SETI @ Home, but it should give you a pretty good approximation. When it was off, it had Wake on LAN enabled, so it still drew some power. But it would fluctuate between 0 and 1.

⬐ ArkyBeagle

Neat! Thanks for that. That definitely supports the estimate of cost from running SETI. You wouldn't think it'd be that much, would you?

⬐ Natsu

Speaking only for myself, in Phoenix we barely ever turn on heat, even in winter, whereas the AC is currently running and will be for another month or two yet.

⬐ cbhl

Even if the machines only drew 50% of that at load, it would still be over $3 000 000. That's a lot of money.

⬐ rconti

It's definitely worth pointing out, but his electricity estimate is so low that the numbers effectively work out for Tier 1 in the SF bay area. I'm sure a school is not in tier 1. But maybe they get beneficial commercial/educational/government pricing, I don't know.

They may be off for 3 months over the summer. Which might mean they were actually off, or it might mean that they ran 24/7 and NONE of that time was for 'educational' purposes.

⬐ Alupis

> PSU's arent light bulbs

You are right. I was just going off the source I found, which accounted for some of the aspects you point out, but not all. These numbers simply provide a rough estimate, and detail how the sys admin certainly did cost the school district real (and potentially very substantial) sums of money.

> Even more complicated is the heat.

You make a good case for the winter months, but the opposite would hold true for the summer months when the heat becomes a real issue and additional air conditioning may be necessary, etc...

> Edit: also if it was a public school, wouldn't they be off for about 3 months over summer ?

Not necessarily. Usually over the summer months (for a traditional schedule school as opposed to a year-round schedule like many public schools are these days) some of the staff is typically on campus monday-friday doing various administrative tasks, workshops, prepping for the next school session, moving classroom furniture, cleaning, etc... IT staff would be included in this, and therefore we can reasonably assume the sys admin was still running his systems.

⬐ samstave

Were the machines always on regardless? Wouldnt they have consumed some portion of the said electricity no matter what? Or was he preventing the machines from being shutdown or sleeping?

⬐ DanBC

The software runs on lowest priority. So when people are using the computer the software just sits there, not doing much. After a few minutes of inactivity the seti software (which sometimes was a screensaver) would kick in. Rather than sleeping or idling the computer would be doing computationally intensive work. Some distributed stuff (especially Prime95) is used specifically because it makes the computer work hard - it's a reliable stress test. This causes extra power to be used for the processor and the fans.

http://www.mersenne.org/download/

⬐ garrettgrimsley

Running Folding@Home, SETI@Home, Prime95, and other CPU intensive applications requires much more power than simply running idle. For example, I have a processor that when running Prime95 will use more than double the idle load wattage. [0]

[0] http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cpus/2010/04/27/amd-phenom-...

⬐ None

None

⬐ rtkwe

Even if they were always on running *@home increases their power load a lot during non school hours when they'd normally be at dead idle. The way @home software usually works is once the CPU has been at low utilization for a certain period it cranks up it's computation. If he was top of SETI@home then the computers were definitely up 24/7.

⬐ masklinn

> Wouldnt they have consumed some portion of the said electricity no matter what?

Some yes, but there's a lot of difference between a machine idling at 0% CPU and one fully loaded with SETI or Folding and running 100% all the time.

Would be even more worse now with deep sleep states and GPGPU, but even back then the difference between an idle and a fully loaded machine was absolutely significant.

⬐ logfromblammo

During the winter months, the electric heaters that were also performing computation would supplement the normal dumb heaters. The cost of electricity or fuel saved on heating should therefore be subtracted from the cost of running @Home. Likewise, additional cooling costs would have to be added for the summer months.

Once those kWh are used in the CPU, they don't just disappear. They become heat.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/414050/computer-cluster...

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32816775

⬐ None

None

⬐ Peaker

Is heat turned on around the clock?

⬐ kazinator

Running MS Windows on computers results in wasted electricity.

⬐ acqq

Yes, running 5000 computers on 100% CPU instead of idle is a lot of money and a lot of electricity spent:

If these were typical desktop computers, the CPU working at 100% can use some 50 W more than the one staying idle. 5000 computers at 100 % CPU produce then the load of 250 KW, resulting in 6 MWh per day which at 10 cents per KWh costs 600 USD per day, or 220000 USD per year. Finally, 9 years that he did it make almost 2 million dollars (!) for electricity that he managed to spend.

⬐ reddog

You can roughly double that. Thats the cost of the extra electricity needed by the ACs to offset the heat generated by the pegged PCs.

Some of these talks (not just TED) are incredibly inspiring. I particularly love the ones that were turned into RSA Animate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

Here's Ken Robinson making speeder's point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

I was gobsmacked when I saw a teacher "diagnose" ADHD in one of her students. The fact that this is done regularly is flabbergasting.

I'm not sure if this a good recommendation. According to this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U ADHD are normal symptoms that occur when a creative mind has to perform dull tasks. ADHD becomes bigger and bigger problem, because today, there are much more stimulants that cause things like traditional school or work to be boring.

According to the speaker, curing ADHD with pills solves the problem by reducing creative potential of a mind. A better approach would be to create an environment where people with ADHD can thrive.

(Note, that I don't have any real experience with ADHD, this comment is based only on the talk).

⬐ mistercow

>According to this talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U ADHD are normal symptoms that occur when a creative mind has to perform dull tasks.

Yes, ADHD denial is a very popular position. It has about as much backing in science as climate denial. The idea that ADHD meds reduce the "creative potential" of the mind is pure nonsense.

⬐ derefr

I have a friend. He has to be listening to music, watching television, reading some article online, chatting with people, and playing some video-game--all simultaneously, all the time--or he feels like his mind is collapsing in on him from the weight of all his thoughts and ideas and ambitions. He often gets drunk just so he can concentrate on only doing one thing--composing a song, say. Even when intensely interested in something--watching a movie with friends, say--he can't actually focus long enough to follow the plot. He ends up having to ask for a summary because he has no idea what happened.

And this is in his optimal environment, completely under his control.

He is not "thriving." He is cache-thrashing.

⬐ ColinWright

An RSA animation of a talk by Ken Robinson.

AKA: Changing Education Paradigms.

In case this doesn't get much discussion and you're wondering why, many people here on HN will have seen it before. That last substantial discussion was here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1805419

Some previous submissions, most without comment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1791749

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800876

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1802072

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1805419 <- This has the most comments.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1858254

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1882297

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886532

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025766

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2033198

There are more:

http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=title%3A%28...

I have a question for HN. At what point do you become responsible for your own education?

Before, you may have not had a public library near you. Nowadays, there is too much information. Curation? Multiple MOOC's have taken the problem and squashed it. Internet Access? I'm not sure, but I remember reading that Comcast gives subsidized rates in poor income areas. Computers / Notebooks? This I'm not sure about at all. What access do people have?

Assuming people have access to education, at what point are "educators" defunct? I feel as though I would not have gone to high school had these MOOC's been available. However, I did have enough personal curiosity to pursue these things. In college now, I'm not "spoon fed" anymore, it is my responsibility to do well, and seek out help if I am struggling. I am just curious where people think that line is drawn, and if it's different for everyone or not. I am for the Bar exam - for goodness's sake, we still have teachers trying to teach Creationism!

One of my favorite videos on reforming education, from a very logical perspective from Sir Ken Robinson. Bonus: it's pictorially animated! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ japhyr

"Multiple MOOC's have taken the problem and squashed it."

I have been watching some of my high school students enroll in some MOOCs recently. Most of them only do well if they have the support of at least one skilled adult around them - skilled meaning that person can help the student find the right course, get the computer working properly, help understand assignments that may require background knowledge that the student is lacking.

I am in support of MOOCs, but we can't just dump these courses online and then claim that everyone now has equal access to a high-quality education on their own time.

⬐ manglav

japhyr are you a teacher? What subject? I'm definitely not saying that. The I was describing was curation - to know the good courses from the bad. Shoot, if you don't like the Harvard course, take the MIT course.

I agree that getting the computer to work properly can be an issue sometimes, but I don't think it's that complicated? I feel as though if people know how to post to facebook/twitter and stream video, they can get by in the course...please correct me if it is more involved than that. My only experience entailed exactly that - posting in a discussion forum and streaming lessons.

For background knowledge, I used to use physicsforums.com to answer all my questions. 99% of the time the question had already been asked.

japhyr I agree that a guiding hand is always helpful. But I would count finding you and getting your help as "taking responsibility for my own education". Kudos to you and your students!

⬐ japhyr

I teach high school math and science, and I teach some intro programming courses when I can fit them in. I'm also starting to mentor more students who are interested in programming throughout my district. I currently teach in southeast Alaska, but I spent 7 years teaching in NYC before that.

I agree that a good MOOC does fill the role of curating material. But it is still difficult for most of the students I see to find the right course, and get enough momentum in the course to finish it, without a knowledgeable person to mentor them in the initial phase. It's similar to getting a programming environment set up. To really start programming effectively, you've got to know your way around an editor, a filesystem, a package management system, a terminal... You can do some hello world stuff without all that, but it's hard to make meaningful progress in programming without knowing all that. It is certainly difficult to complete these courses without figuring this environment stuff out.

So why do I like MOOCs? Because they help free me up to play the role of facilitator and mentor. I have one student now who is happily working his way through a python-related MOOC, and a couple other students who are trying them out. I just watch their progress, and help them when they hit a block. But none of them would be likely to complete these courses without that guidance.

'But I would count finding you and getting your help as "taking responsibility for my own education".'

It's not that simple; I am spotting these students, they are not finding me. If you're not living in a tech hotspot, it's pretty hit or miss whether there is anyone around who can act as a mentor. It's been said in other comments, that many of us are programmers because we watched people around us work as programmers when we were younger. That is a huge influence on who becomes a programmer.

⬐ bphogan

Say you have parents who split up when you were two. Then say your mom works two jobs and doesn't help you with your homework, ever. Say you go to school on Monday and your first decent meal is the snack the teacher gives you on Monday morning.

Say this is Kindergarten.

At what point do you then even learn to become responsible for your own education?

Unfortunately I've recently been introduced to a lot of those kinds of things, and it's really hard to make that change from judging.

It was easy to see the unmotivated kid in the class as a slacker. Then we find out he wasn't eating cos it was a choice between getting food or paying for heat.

Our backgrounds shape us much more than teachers do. What goes on outside of the class does too.

You're a motivated self-learner. How much of that, truly, is because of the environment you grew up in?

I know I sling code because my dad bought a computer and let me play on it when I was 7. I was encouraged by my dad to learn on my own.

⬐ manglav

bphogan I was not saying these kids are unmotivated and should focus on school - I am very sorry for even letting my comment be unclear. Of course our children should be nurtured, and the fact that this situation exists is awful.

Everyone is different when it comes to what shapes them, for me it was a few select science teachers (not so much my environment in this case). That's why I am such a fan for Teach for America. I know four of my classmates who have elected to participate, and it has been the most rewarding experience of their lives. The thing that kids appreciate most? That they care. Really care.

One idea thing I've always wondered about was making a safe place in this cities to code. I wrote a paper on how 1. School districts can cut IT budgets instead of teaching staff by using servers and thin clients instead of full desktop computers. Then 2. after school, adding some coding classes after school (including meals, stews are healthy,cheap, and hot), with the eventual goal of becoming a self-sufficient outsourcing team. Or making mockups, or even slicing PSD's. I feel as though if Hacker Dojo's and such exist, eventually a charity version will be created as well. There could be sponsors from FB / Google / IBM, etc...

It's just a dream.

I've always been a supporter of education for all. It's just a really, really, hard problem. I can't think of doing anything that these other startups aren't doing, so I'm waiting until I can contribute a bit more. Thanks for the anecdote bphogan, it really hit home.

There are many academic pieces and work on the topic such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Work

Obviously some of the difference will be soaked up by new professions that didn't exist before. For example here is a list of jobs that didn't exist 10 years ago http://finance.yahoo.com/news/10-jobs-didn-t-exist-175608243...

I am convinced that prosperity is being driven by trade and specialisation as put forward by Matt Ridley http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.htm...

Specialisation is a form of skill and so the issue is really what happens to unskilled labour. Everyone "knows" that education is a fix, but current education systems are extremely broken and closely modelled on the dawn of the industrial age https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

It will be interesting to see if the cost of living goes down since that will also greatly alleviate things. Increased automation should result in that.

⬐ pekk

Unless you start out with piles of capital, you have to get paid for doing something in order to pay for things like food. If your labor is worth almost nothing, you will be doing a lot of it in order to cover basic needs. That is only prosperity for people who have the capital to take advantage of low labor costs, for others it is hand to mouth.

There isn't any reason to suppose that demand for engineers and managers will ever come anywhere close to 100% of the working population.

Meanwhile, the advantage of theft, violent crime and the black market improves dramatically as wages decline to nothing.

⬐ rogerbinns

You are assuming capitalism for everyone which is not a given. Heck it isn't even how things are at the moment. It is increasingly possible to shift the proportion of people paid for labour/capitalism to being supported by the state. If the costs of living go down (a likely consequence of increased automation) then the financial burden would decrease too.

Most education systems around the world are broken. They are still modelled on production systems from the industrial revolution.

Here is a wonderful 11 minute talk by Ken Robinson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ ColinWright

In case you don't get many upvotes or comments, it's probably because many people here on HN have seen this before.

========

The original talk by Robinson is here:

http://www.thersa.org/events/vision/archive/sir-ken-robinson

========

Here are some of the previous submissions:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1791749

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800876

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1802072 <- 2 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1805419 <- 13 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1858254

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1882297

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886532

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025766

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2033198

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2214554

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2400496

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2432313

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2527714

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2552518

⬐ mrbgty

Thanks Colin

Universities are not going to 'make' entrepreneurs. That trigger usually happens a lot earlier in life. Take for example, the "Montessori Mafia" that includes people like Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Jeff Bezos, Will Wright, Jimmy Wales, Julia Child, and Sean “P.Diddy” Combs. The common thread among them is that they all were educated in a Montessori environment (http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-...). At a very early age, they were empowered with and nurtured to exercise their minds in ways that coincidentally make for successful entrepreneurs. I'm not saying Montessori is necessarily the only way to do this, but I think if you spoke to 10 entrepreneurs, a majority would point to experiences in their youth as having had an impact on their path.

Someone else that speaks to this is Sir Ken Robinson (Changing the Education Paradigms): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

Indeed I also quite liked his RSAnimate talk on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

This ACME education and its origins is very well discussed on this famous RSA video "Changing Education Paradigms ": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ Fuzzwah

I hope I know everything and am rich by the time I have kids, so I can quit my job and home school them.

This RSA video shows some reasons why the current education systems (not only US') has the problems it has: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

⬐ sebkomianos

Some great thinking on that video!

⬐ tsbybts

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1791749

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1800876

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1802072 <- 2 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1805419 <- 13 comments

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1858254

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1882297

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1886532

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2025766

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2033198

⬐ wilzy

Thanks for noting which ones include comments! :)