| ▲ | koolba 5 days ago | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> I think this is because Asian governments want their populations to more educated and American governments want their populations to be less educated. On the American side it’s not that they want people to be less educated. It’s the adversarial system of education being run by people whose interests are not aligned with students excelling. Teacher’s unions, which predominantly exist in the public school system, are not in the business of educating children. They’re in the business of raising costs (their salaries and benefits) and lowering requirements (the work they actually have to do). They’re against measuring progress. They’re against firing for lack of progress. Compare that to a private system where you only stay employed if you’re actually doing a good job of educating kids. There’s also the advantage of private schools being able to fire their students, but that’s more of an anti-disruption thing. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | Eddy_Viscosity2 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
It's easy to blame the teachers unions, but if their goal was to only raise their own salaries and benefits, they are doing a very poor job at it. Teachers do not get paid well. They also tend to get paid more at the elite private schools. So if you want to compare, then you would be advocating for public schools to match private school salaries. While not always the case, "measuring progress" makes things worse because they tried this and what you get is standardized tests and teachers teaching to the test (Goodhart's law). Most (not all, there are crap teachers out there) are doing their best despite the rules imposed on them by local schoolboards (which are often a shitshow), and by curriculum mandates which they have no say in. And when given too large classes and next to no resources or support, they are then blamed when the kids don't prosper in that environment. There's grade inflation also, this happens at private schools too. Which teacher is more likely to get fired/disciplined; one who fails a lot of students and hardly ever gives and A, or one that hands out A's like candy and the worst non-performing students get a maybe C- (brought up to a C or C+, once the parents come in to complain to administration). | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| ▲ | teachrdan 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
> Teacher’s unions, which predominantly exist in the public school system, are not in the business of educating children I'm always surprised and disappointed to see such lazy thinking on HN. If teachers' unions were responsible for poor educational outcomes, you would see an inverse relationship between strong teachers' unions and K-12 rankings. But New Jersey and Massachusetts consistently rank in the top 2 K-12 rankings in the US. And they have ~100% union density among K-12 public school teachers! Let's test the rest of your little theory. If you believe that pesky teachers' unions are responsible for poor outcomes, then surely states with less teacher's union density and union power will be the epitome of strong K-12 outcomes. But who ranks at the bottom? New Mexico at #50, Alaska at #49, Oklahoma at #48... You might, at this point, sensibly say that's due to residents having less money and other disadvantages. But at that point you have to admit that teachers' unions have no correlation to K-12 outcomes. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||