alt Hacker NewsThis article is super weird because it's looking at an issue from orbit where the only things you can see are vague things like "funding" where the problem is on the ground and probably can't be solved by the levers available from orbit. The lesson of funding having arguably no effect on outcomes should either be that we genuinely don't know what improves outcomes or that we do but schools are lighting money on fire buying other things.
It means the problem is unfortunately local and you have to actually go to the schools and see what the issue is. Based on what my former HS spent money on I figure we will eventually find some commonalities:
* New computer labs, laptops, digital textbooks, learning software licenses, smart boards, and other and other expensive crap that is at best neutral from a learning perspective.
* Pointless building improvements that don't service education but instead service the prestige and egos of the administrators of the schools.
* Chronic long-term understaffing and light-speed "just get through it" lesson plans that makes teachers not give a shit, and powerless to do better even if they do.
I think "just blame the administrators" is too easy a cop-out because I've yet to meet one who isn't also underpaid and dying of stress. Although maybe I just don't have access to the real higher ups.
>> * New computer labs, laptops, digital textbooks, learning software licenses, smart boards, and other and other expensive crap that is at best neutral from a learning perspective.
I think we should be actively removing these things from schools, but it's a tough fight as parents against an entire well-funded EdTech industry pushing these things with a firehose of VC money.
>> * Pointless building improvements that don't service education but instead service the prestige and egos of the administrators of the schools.
This makes me crazy. We have a very fancy, very large new school building my city which is LEED platinum certified. I can't possibly imagine that that certification level is cost effective. I'm sure we could have built a very good school with a healthy safe learning environment and environmentally conscious decisions for heating, cooling, power, etc. for significantly less if the city were willing to forego the press release headline. This is also a really hard problem that pits taxpayers against a well-funded industry full of lobbyists.
Both of these can be traced back to the principal agent problem, which really is blaming the administrators, because they're making decisions and then don't have to deal with the consequences (actually integrating and using EdTech in a classroom, paying more taxes for the same or worse education, etc.).