Jim Lux wrote:
At 01:32 AM 1/30/2006, Robert G. Brown wrote:
<snip>
Super-inflated property values add a certain baseline minimum to the
cost of living there, even with rent control and the like (as in my
brother cannot charge anything like the $7K/month or so that would be
"fair market" rent for a ramshackle trailer). The CA economy in the
highly desirable living/affluent zones (like e.g. the New York City
economy) "works", but it is somewhat distorted compared to 90% of the
rest of the country.
I suspect, though, that the ratio between software weenie wages and
teacher wages is fairly consistent.
So OK, you got me, 4-5x was a bit hyperbolic. The main point, though,
is not -- there is and will likely continue to be a large and immediate
marginal benefit to anyone who leaves a job teaching computer skills in
high school and enters almost ANY sort of real IT position in industry
or (even) higher academe (which pays less than industry but employs a
lot of IT people, making the average a bit deceptive). For young people
just starting out in teaching the marginal difference of $10-20K can be
a significant fraction of their original salary, and its MARGINAL
benefit (factoring in insurance and retirement, taxes, social security,
and the fixed costs to the family of mortgage and food) can be the
difference between not so genteel poverty and some degree of comfort or
the money required to start a family. I know several people who used to
be teachers but who literally couldn't afford to stay in the profession,
at least if they wanted to remain married.
This has awful consequences sometimes.
The math dept. in our high school spent two years courting a PhD candidate
from MIT to join the school after he completed his studies. He completed
his PhD, then took the job at the school, and at a salary significantly
higher
than the average starting salary for high school teachers. Now this fellow,
and his wife, were from Texas, where apparently you don't need about a
million dollars to buy a reasonable house (this is very nearly the case here
in NE NJ, near the GWB). So he stayed for about 6 months, then quit, and
returned to Texas.
The bottom line is that although you want excellent teachers in an
academically aggressive area (i.e. parents are well educated, and strong
earners, and want both of same for their kids), very often the teachers
drafted to lead this charge cannot afford to be in the area.
But personally, I think one of the real downward pressures on teachers
is their lack of excellence. This, coupled with the very low value ascribed
to education in this country, and you get a result where the benefit
of an excellent educational system is simply not all that relevant.
Or, that is, it's perceived to not be relevant.
Oh, sure, you get lots of parents that *talk* about how important school is.
You get lots of politicians that talk about how important education is.
But the bottom line is that the culture is largely at fault. Let's face it,
smart folks are largely marginalized until they learn to be aggressive
enough
to gain power (typically, by way of economic gain).
You're right.. you'll climb the scales faster in IT than in teaching.
However, folks who teach do it for the love of it, not for the money, so
probably, it's not so much that you can earn a better living being an SA
than a teacher, but that the career path for the average IT person
doesn't encourage teaching as a profession. I'll bet the average CS
curriculum doesn't have much content in the "how to teach others to do
computer" area, especially when the teaching target is rookies or 4th
graders (CS grad students do discussion sections for undergrads, but
that's, I'm sure, viewed as penance, dues paying, or something
similar). Likewise engineering, etc.
Hah.. maybe this is the solution to the world's problems, here on the
Beowulf list: it's not that we need writing classes, or teamwork
classes, or more calculus, etc., it's that we need to encourage more
engineering majors to take up teaching as a job, as opposed to being
money grubbers chasing VCs.
The money grubbing VCs are a way out of 'poverty.' The big bell at the top
of the financial heap, once you get to ring it, you're safe. This is what we
perceive, and this is the reality (in this area, making $100K is really no
assurance that you will survive, which makes for some very odd outcomes
in your psychology compared to the folks just 60 miles away that think this
is a fortune).
The interesting thing is that I think that everybody -- governments,
school boards, parents, students, teachers -- understands that computing
is one of the most important single things for an individual to master
in school these days. Computers are also expensive little suckers, they
become obsolete in 3 years and decrepitly obsolete in 5 years, and the
BEST INTENTIONED TEACHERS IN THE WORLD lag the mastery of the technology
by more like 10. The kids being taught, who have grown UP with
computers, often understand them better than most of the teachers in
their school, sometimes including the ones nominally responsible for
teaching them about computing. This creates a huge resource problem.
You can't solve a school's computer problem by a single huge bolus of
money.
The endowment idea... As I mentioned earlier (and you go through again
below), you need a continuing source of money. Doesn't have to be huge,
but it does have to endure.
I disagree with this concept because it's the application that is important,
not just the simple reality of having lumps of cash, even regularly.
Take two examples: the dot-bust, where people threw money at us because,
to a large degree, it had become fashionable (where else would computer
geeks
receive a million dollars from a VC, then blow half of it on a great
party (not
fictional, happened just up the street from us..)).
Computing in schools. Yes, computing! Many of our affluent districts measure
their success by the number of machines they update/receive on an annual
basis, even though teachers and students alike are hard pressed to make
major
usage of this iron. Do we really need tons of 3+ Ghz machines for word
processing
and net browsing?
So when you say endure, I think 'a plan first, a brilliant plan, then a
carry-through
over a long time.'
To do this properly, one needs to FUND computing with ROLLOVER
REPLACEMENT of every computer the school owns, including those provided
for all the teachers, every five years at the latest.
This actually is starting to be standard practice. If only because
supporting all the other things becomes difficult with highly
heterogenous configurations. It's actually the case that some
(enlightened) schools won't accept donations of 3 year old computers
(costs more to keep them running than the "free computers" are worth).
One has to FUND
systems management for an entire LAN. One has to FUND software. One
has to FUND teachers to teach computing, in the teeth of a 30% salary
differential available for the asking to anyone competent and willing to
work for IBM, or SAS, or Pfizer, or GE, or countless smaller companies.
The 30%, realistically, is going to be paid by love. Sort of like folks
working for NASA being paid in "space dollars". However, there does need
to be some sort of payment.
So, get that endowment fund going.
Interesting solution! Of course this produces a sort of awkward
plutocracy as far as setting curricula is concerned, where someone or
some corporation (ahem, ahem) with lots of money (ahem) and an agenda
(ahem) can endow a fund with strings attached and arrange to shape those
young minds along the paths they select.
Ah, yes, the Oracles and Microsofts and Suns of the world. How we know
them well......
But this happens anyway, just in other areas (athletics springs to mind).
Or they can achieve the same
goal by donating equipment or software instead of money and avoid having
to pay the taxes that might have ultimately funded the schools directly
(but without the influence). Beyond the corporate, often as not
individual initiatives along these lines tend to push still more
resources into schools in affluent communities while neglecting poor
ones just because the poor ones don't have the wealthy donors, because
parents have a hard enough getting involved where their own kids' future
and opportunities are at stake, let alone kids in poor rural communities
Down East (in NC, that would be the eastern part of the state, where
there are whole counties that are very poor indeed).
This is a fundamental problem (and one which has resulted in interesting
lawsuits, where some districts have a "share the donation wealth" policy)
Is it more inequitable than any other aspect of something as highly
politicized as public school funding? Probably not. In California,
decades ago, schools were funded almost entirely by property taxes
within the district, leading to huge inequities. They created what was
called the "Collier factor" method (I think) which did some wealth
transfer to equalize it. Prop 13 resulted in a huge defacto change to
state funding, but then, it's the legislature sticking their fingers
into the money distribution: influenced by the feds, etc. No matter how
you slice it, public schools are viewed as a convenient mechanism for
achieving social goals (it's pervasive, everyone's kids go, it's
compulsory, etc.)
optimization problem. One might THINK that communities have the right
to determine what school size is best for their own community's needs.
Not according to the Gates foundation.
Communities have decided to do things in the past that are demonstrably
inappropriate: segregated schools spring to mind.
I'm sorry, and how is that?
Go ahead, ask me why I say that.
Local school boards
are typically not educationally sophisticated, and tend to respond to
loud voices, reasonable or not. One hopes for a reasonably
sophisticated professional infrastructure at the county and state that
provides a decent framework within which a local school board can work.
State textbook adoptions are a good example. If you use the state
textbooks, you get money to buy them. (Mind you, textbook adoption is
itself an interesting can of worms. Read Feynman's comments on the
process in one of his books). California, for instance, publishes
"framework" documents that describe an integrated K-12 plan for each
subject (i.e. in Grade 4, we all talk about California history, and
cover the following areas)
<snip>
Anyway, an excellent discussion.
jim
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