BF2S Forums DAST Chat

regression to the mean

Kimmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:

Tracking decades of allegations in the Boy Scouts   http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/boyscouts-cases/

thats a lot of sex abuse

You are both predictable mouth breathers.

The U.S. spends 5.5% of its GDP on education. Same amount as the U.K. Less than France. Less than Finland. Less than Norway.

Spending is in line with other developed nations. But of course you were trying to make a point about teachers unions and small government. I.e. being predictable.

aynrandroolz wrote:

One would imagine the spending out on education would increase as the price of textbooks, electronic resources, modern facilities, and indeed, schooling itself increases... making out you are throwing more and more money at education with 'no result' is a bit stupid. the quality of education has gone up hugely, even if the actual levels of literacy and numeracy are still averaging out with the human IQ bell-curve. i guess galt would rather he had to take all his classes in wooden shacks, using technology from the 1900's, just to keep the unions off his libertarian dime.

The chart takes inflation into account. The point was that spending more money hiring teachers to improve student-teacher ratios, and increased spending on teachers salaries, have had no impact on the quality of students produced. It is saying that throwing more money at the education system will not improve results, just make teachers and administrators wealthier.

Jay wrote:

aynrandroolz wrote:

One would imagine the spending out on education would increase as the price of textbooks, electronic resources, modern facilities, and indeed, schooling itself increases... making out you are throwing more and more money at education with 'no result' is a bit stupid. the quality of education has gone up hugely, even if the actual levels of literacy and numeracy are still averaging out with the human IQ bell-curve. i guess galt would rather he had to take all his classes in wooden shacks, using technology from the 1900's, just to keep the unions off his libertarian dime.

The chart takes inflation into account. The point was that spending more money hiring teachers to improve student-teacher ratios, and increased spending on teachers salaries, have had no impact on the quality of students produced. It is saying that throwing more money at the education system will not improve results, just make teachers and administrators wealthier.

what does inflation have to do with anything? schools nowadays as actual facilities and concrete buildings cost far more money. classrooms are far better furnished and every student has access to resources that come at a cost unheard of in comparison to the 'sheet of paper and fountain pen' education of yore. most american high-schools have large ICT resources and pc suites, offering a favourable pc-to-student-head ratio, no? of course spending has increased on education, paperwise. it has nothing to do with grossly overpaying teachers and hoping that the higher-salaries will make them better at overcoming the fundamental levels of literacy/numeracy. there is nothing on that chart that attributes the sharp rise in education spending to the 'lining the coffers' of teachers and administrators. your automatic assumption of this reveals quite a bizarre bias and assumption. what do you have against school-teachers, exactly? why does a working-class kid hate (teachers) unions so much?

also literacy/numeracy etc. are base-line statistics. they don't say anything about how much an improved teacher:student ratio can propel successful students, qualitatively as well as quantitatively (i.e. percentage of students from high-school x that go onto college education). smaller class sizes are almost always a good thing: a small tutorial-model is the ideal model, really. you are reading that graph in a very blinkered way.

okay, so break this down... you are trying to draw a relationship between the allocation of funding/budgets in schools, which unsurprisingly is mostly focussed on human resources/staffing (i.e. the top cost in almost every single services/tertiary/education based workplace)... and your previous argument, which is that teachers are cash-hungry sloths that are bankrupting the public coffers with no positive result. i don't get it? the gist of your argument is that, over a historical timeframe (which is why you included the first graph), teachers have come to soak up more and more money, becoming unionised (the bastards), overpaid, overcompensated, useless and inefficient. the first graph didn't support that statement statistically in any way. nor does the second. what you are trying to present, if i may exaggerate a little, is your personal bias version of events, whereby teachers have gone from modestly-paid, low-income professionals, to overpaid and entitled millionaires. i don't see any financial information that really shows that teachers today are paid/rewarded dramatically (and in your view, undeservedly) more than they were 50 years ago. increased spending per student and school budgets are not supporting figures in this line of argument.

Last edited by aynrandroolz (2012-10-19 11:48:02)

Your argument is essentially-
See this graph of national data? It proves increasing teacher salaries doesn't result in better education.

It didn't show allocation of spend dollars for teacher salaries adjusted for inflation.

Then you provide a pie chart of allocations of spend dollars for ohio, and say this backs up your original argument.

The pie chart doesn't encompass national data. I'm not sure what salaries are included in the 'salaries' bucket. Is it all school employee salaries, including teachers, janitors, administration, etc? Your link doesn't provide what it counts as 'salaries'. So while you think I am nonsensically arguing for increased teacher salaries (something I haven't stated at all), you're the one making a baseless claim.

You may very well be right, however nothing you've provided backs up your argument and you made yourself look like an idiot in the process (in my opinion).

Jay wrote:

KEN-JENNINGS wrote:

I don't see a line showing the progression of teachers salaries adjusted for inflation. I think its important to show the spending by catagories. Admins, teachers, materials, increased police presence, whatever. Without having more data, that graph really serves no purpose other than to provoke knee jerk-reactions and generalizations.

Graph is quite simple, I don't know why you're both having such a difficult time with it. Maybe you just don't like what it means?

Here is an example from Ohio:

http://www.lsc.state.oh.us/fiscal/ohiof … chools.pdf
So if you think the money is going for school supplies, ok.


edit - uzi corrected me via pm

Paying teachers more may make teaching a more attractive profession to smart people. That's kind of the point.

Spark wrote:

Paying teachers more may make teaching a more attractive profession to smart people. That's kind of the point.

There are already thousands of applicants for every teaching job around here, higher pay attracting yet more applicants doesn't seem very effective. The problem is that once a teacher receives tenure there is basically no way to get rid of them. They might have sixty five-star applicants but only one position to fill because of a retirement. Because they're flooded with applicants, getting those jobs becomes all about who you know rather than your qualifications, since they're all basically equally qualified after grad school.

But let's face it, teaching is pretty fucking cake. You work eight months out of the year, you have a job for life, decent to great pay, you don't get drug tested etc. I have a few friends that are teachers just so they can smoke weed every day and chill on the beach all summer If it was so hard to attract good applicants I would agree that pay needs to be raised as an incentive for new hires, but the opposite is true, yet pay keeps rising.

Teaching isn't cake. It's an honorable career.

Shocking wrote:

Smarter people teach at universities, not high schools.

different form of teaching.