Microsoft, Amazon Execs Call Out Washington's Low-Performing 9-Year-Olds In Tax Pushback (geekwire.com) 155
Longtime Slashdot reader theodp writes: A coalition of Washington state business leaders -- which includes Microsoft President Brad Smith and Amazon Chief Legal Officer David Zapolsky -- released a letter Wednesday urging state lawmakers to reconsider recently proposed tax and budget measures. "I actually think it's an almost unprecedented outpouring of support from across the business community," said Microsoft's Smith in an interview. In their letter, which reads in part like it could have been penned by a GenAI Marie Antoinette, the WA business leaders question whether any more spending is warranted given how poorly Washington's 4th and 8th graders compare to children in the rest of the nation on test scores. The letter also laments the increase in WA's homeless population as it celebrates WA Governor Bob Ferguson's announcement that he would not sign a proposed wealth tax.
From the letter: "We have long partnered with you in many areas, including education funding. Despite more than doubling K-12 spending and increasing teacher salaries to some of the highest rates in the nation, 4th and 8th grade assessment scores in reading and math are among the worst in the country. Similarly, we have collaborated with you to address housing and homelessness. Despite historic investments in affordable housing and homelessness prevention since 2013, Washington's homeless population has grown by 71 percent, making it the third largest in the nation after California and New York, according to HUD. These outcomes beg the question of whether more investment is needed or whether we need different policies instead."
Back in 2010, Smith teamed with then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to fund an effort to defeat an initiative for a WA state income that was pushed for by Bill Gates Sr. In 2023, Bezos moved out of WA state before being subjected to a 7% tax on gains of more than $250,000 from the sale of stocks and bonds, a move that reportedly saved him $1.2 billion in WA taxes on his 2024 Amazon stock sales.
From the letter: "We have long partnered with you in many areas, including education funding. Despite more than doubling K-12 spending and increasing teacher salaries to some of the highest rates in the nation, 4th and 8th grade assessment scores in reading and math are among the worst in the country. Similarly, we have collaborated with you to address housing and homelessness. Despite historic investments in affordable housing and homelessness prevention since 2013, Washington's homeless population has grown by 71 percent, making it the third largest in the nation after California and New York, according to HUD. These outcomes beg the question of whether more investment is needed or whether we need different policies instead."
Back in 2010, Smith teamed with then-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos to fund an effort to defeat an initiative for a WA state income that was pushed for by Bill Gates Sr. In 2023, Bezos moved out of WA state before being subjected to a 7% tax on gains of more than $250,000 from the sale of stocks and bonds, a move that reportedly saved him $1.2 billion in WA taxes on his 2024 Amazon stock sales.
Washington's low performing 9 year olds (Score:5, Insightful)
Washington's low performing 79 year olds (Score:5, Funny)
FTFY
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Hint: in this case it's the latter: An outcome doesn't beg the question.
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Ok, I actually don't. I just wanted to use beg again.
red herring (Score:2)
By now, we should easily identify agenda based articles such as this as deflections and red herring attention diversion from the companies, politicians, nonprofits and NGOs.
So what programs for boys only has Microsoft started so that boy graduation rates from high school rise to that of girls, considering how for 40 years boys are institutionally disadvantaged by school policies and teaching methods? That's for boys only and not a "for everyone" program, while there are many "for girls only" school progra
Re:Washington's low performing 9 year olds (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought after reading the title that they were referring to our federal government.
This. And this entire genre of clickbait headline marketing needs to die a violent and horrific death. FUCK am I tired of that pointless shit. Going to make sane readers here not even want to click on TFS eventually.
Live and Learn, Slashdot. Or don’t live at all.
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Sounds like somebody needs to revisit 4th grade English? Title case upper cases the first letter of every word except for prepositions and articles after the second word.
You might have had a valid point, if the parents point hadn’t been validated by the Narcissist Generation naming kids shit like “North” and “West”.
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Do you get confused when you see a headline about "Georgia" and the article doesn't specify the US state or the former Soviet republic?
If you’re intelligent enough to grasp why Friedman claims our modern world is flat, then you will understand why specifics fucking matter when speaking to a global audience. Also known as the only audience you should assume remains in the internet era.
Yes, people should be specific. Even when talking about a single country. Hell, the majority of places in America named “Kansas City” aren’t even IN fucking Kansas.
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I figured they were unhappy with the performance of their child laborers. If they're using them as programmers it explains a lot about both organizations' software offerings.
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The guys re-writing the social security computer system in a month weren't kids all that long ago. I hear that even back then, some of them were pretty good hackers.
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I hear that even back then, some of them were pretty good hackers.
I wish they were better people instead.
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That would be: low performing 79 year olds
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Why do they think Washington's 9-year-olds are underperforming? They are learning, and they are performing just as expected, according to their learning. Indeed, children in American have been taught well the past 30-40 years, and they are performing as should be expected by their educations.
For too many, TOO MANY, they were taught not what is useful and productive, but what is destructive and counterproductive. Disagree, I offer society as evidence. Too many were taught wrongly. Taught well, but wrongly.
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Only the minority that were not taught that can sustain us.
I have no doubt that those who were not taught believe that.
Re: Washington's low performing 9 year olds (Score:2)
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For too many, TOO MANY, they were taught not what is useful and productive,
One huge problem there is that the same material is not "useful and productive" for everyone. I took three years of Spanish through high school and I can't handle the answers to simple questions in that language - yet I have very nearly no use for it whatsoever in my field of work. By comparison I have a sibling who went to Spanish immersion and does occasionally use the language - though we work in vastly different fields.
Similarly I use calculus on a regular basis, and chemistry and physics every w
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Who here didn't immediately think; "Well, that sounds a bit young for someone working with DOGE, but, not so very shocking these days."
Gee, I don't see the connection, do you? (Score:3, Insightful)
The letter also laments the increase in WA's homeless population as it celebrates WA Governor Bob Ferguson's announcement that he would not sign a proposed wealth tax.
"We hate this problem that we refuse to do our part to help solve in any way other than the manufacturing of soylent green."
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According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development it would cost 20B to end homelessness in the US. Good thing California spend 24B on the homeless issue! That means Washington doesn't have to spend a dime on it.
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Good thing California spend 24B on the homeless issue! That means Washington doesn't have to spend a dime on it.
A recent audit [cbsnews.com] found that no one knows where a lot of that money went or whether it did any good.
The audit analyzed five programs that received a combined $13.7 billion in funding. It determined that only two of them are "likely cost-effective. The remaining three programs, which have received a total of $9.4 billion since 2020, couldn't be evaluated due to a lack of data."
Re:Gee, I don't see the connection, do you? (Score:5, Insightful)
My experience has frequently, but not always, been that with all of the services available, most homeless people are homeless because they want to be homeless.
My experience, which involves working directly with the homeless, tells me that the vast majority of them want to be housed.
There are many shelters, but most don't allow drug users.
You consider shelters banning drug users to be evidence that those drug users don't want to be housed? You're going to have to draw me a flowchart to explain that one.
And on that, many are drug users who don't want to quit and would rather be homeless than quit.
This is fucking stupid ignorant horse shit. I don't believe you've ever actually talked to a homeless person long enough to actually know what they think.
You can throw somebody in a treatment program all you want, but if the don't want to quit, they won't.
You can not just "throw somebody in a treatment program" and expect their life to change. That is not how anything works. In addition, most of the available free treatment programs are religious, which means they are victim-blaming since that's religion's whole fucking schtick. Just because someone's a homeless drug user, that doesn't mean they're too fucking stupid to understand the brainwashing they're subjected to in a religion-based program. Did you know that AAA (which is heavily religious and insists that you state that you have no control over your life or addiction and you must transfer your addiction to religion) is literally no more effective than nothing whatsoever?
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Question: if not the drug user, whose fault is it? Did someone hold this person down and inject them drugs which got this person started? Were they given drugs in what they ate without knowing it?
I'm all for sticking it to the cults of religion, but explain how using drugs is not the person's fault? Unless the drugs were forced into them against their wil
Re: Gee, I don't see the connection, do you? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are missing the point here. The point is: it doesn't matter whose fault it is. There is no value to assigning blame in this situation. What matters is to help the people stop being addicted.
Your question, while it invites an interesting debate on personal responsibility in a hostile environment, is not on topic.
Re: Gee, I don't see the connection, do you? (Score:2)
I'm not sure where this is coming from, nobody said anything about blaming others either. The question here is do we give help to people who ask for it.
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Unless the drugs were forced into them against their will, they were the ones who chose to use drugs.
This argument is equally erroneous in every situation. We have a system of education which fails to educate. We have an economic system which leaves more and more people behind every year, and an unemployment rate measurement which by design is more inaccurate the worse things get. We have a medical insurance (not care) system which is intentionally abusive so as to produce profits for people not in any way involved in providing care, in fact their job is to impede it and even prevent it if possible in orde
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Question: if not the drug user, whose fault is it?
Obviously its the addicts fault for taking heroin when they were 13 to cope with getting raped by a family member, and then threatened with worse if they talked about it. It would also be the addicts fault If they started drugs to cope with getting bullied at school.... or even if they got addicted because they were a stupid 13 year old who made the wrong friends and thought they were being cool.
Are they all equal, because in each case nobody else injected the drugs into their veins?
What difference does it
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most of the available free treatment programs are religious, which means they are victim-blaming since that's religion's whole fucking schtick.
Question: if not the drug user, whose fault is it?
Blame is one of those things that can be spread around:
Notice that none of those are inherently a moral failing. And that's the problem with blaming the addict; it t
Re:Gee, I don't see the connection, do you? (Score:5, Interesting)
My experience, which involves working directly with the homeless, tells me that the vast majority of them want to be housed.
Of course. They want to be housed while they do drugs . Working with them, you should know that benefactors of the shelters don't want to pay to house drug users and support their drug habits. Regardless, when you (and I mean you, personally) start realizing that you're just getting taken advantage of, you'll get it. You'll see the difference between the drug users and people who genuinely want to get back on their feet. I've helped 2 of the former and regretted it. I've helped quite a number of the latter, that is people who didn't want to do drugs, and had success because they didn't want to be in their situation. I've housed a number of roommates who paid their rent by way of helping me to remodel my house, and they'd otherwise be homeless. I helped one man get back on his feet after surviving prostate cancer. So, yeah, I have personal experience with this stuff. And that's why I know for certain what I said is true.
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Of course. They want to be housed while they do drugs
They need help with their drug problem, which was created by the same system that's benefiting the rest of us. Some people like to enjoy the benefits of that system for themselves and DGAF what it does to the people it isn't working for.
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They need help with their drug problem
I'm cool with that, but what do you suggest?
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Re:Gee, I don't see the connection, do you? (Score:4, Interesting)
Remember that study done with rats and cocaine? You have two waterbottles, one with cocaine in it. AND THAT IS IT.
So the rats take the cocaine laced water. And SEE; addiction!
Then someone else did the experiment with a rat playground. Good food. Things to play with. Tunnels to explore. Some nature. Maybe an Xbox. And guess what? Rats didn't get addicted to the cocaine water. I suppose they tasted it now and again for the rat party, but there was no self destructive addiction going on.
So, if I'm a rat stuck in an empty cage, or a homeless person in this God forsaken place we call a country, I think drug abuse would be the only thing keeping me from stepping off a bridge.
We don't have a drug problem, we have an empathy and common sense problem in this country. Give people no reason to live and complain about their bad choices -- how is that working out?
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We don't have a drug problem, we have an empathy and common sense problem in this country. Give people no reason to live and complain about their bad choices -- how is that working out?
First +7 Insightful post on Slashdot ever.
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P.S. Thanks slashdot for not ripping me one for "AAA", though they are also a "christian" organization so I guess that helps and also works
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Did you know that AAA (which is heavily religious and insists that you state that you have no control over your life or addiction and you must transfer your addiction to religion) is literally no more effective than nothing whatsoever?
Well then, I'm definitely not going to renew my membership!
It's certainly more effective than asking AA to change your tire, I suspect. (I'm assuming that was a typo.)
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No, wasting money on a specific project or projects is not better or worse than wasting money on however many projects are available for such pursuits.
Waste is waste. Failure is failure. If it's not 'working', no time like the present to change the approach. In this and much other government, just spending money is not the solution after all.
Low Performing National Policies (Score:5, Insightful)
Our public education system is a monumental failure, but not because of the performance of young children. It's because we are expecting young children to perform. They should be outside playing with other children rather than sitting in classrooms day in and day out. Educational performance can wait until they're older.
I use myself as an example. I grew up a Navy child, and moved every few years until I was 18. Every school district I moved into had higher standards than the one I left, so I never progressed (according to the school district). I graduated from high school with a 1.0 GPA (one of my teachers rounded up from .59 to .60 so I passed that crucial class with a D instead of an F). My low grades were due to both the higher standards and that I really hated public school. It was beneath me, and taught me nothing of value (in my opinion). Homeschooling would have produced far better results.
Due to a variety of factors, I got accepted into the local university a few years later as an adult under the "alternative student" program. I got placed into the introductory math class that was just one step above remedial. During my tenure in that university, my grades were routinely As and Bs in most of my classes, with one or two Cs along for the ride). That was mostly due to me actually wanting to be in school at that point in my life. My childhood was wasted in school, but I was mature enough later in life to want to learn so I could get out of my minimum-wage shit hole jobs.
I graduated with a 3.8 in my major, and a 3.6 overall. I got a good paying job doing what I (mostly) enjoy, and can see the light of retirement showing down the career tunnel. No employer gave a shit about my childhood education, and rightfully so. It has absolutely zero bearing on lifetime success.
Re:Low Performing National Policies (Score:4, Funny)
I got a good paying job doing what I (mostly) enjoy, and can see the light of retirement showing down the career tunnel.
That light is an oncoming train, consisting of the bottom falling out of the market. Kiss your retirement goodbye! I guess I should just be glad I've only been paying into a mandatory pension fund for a year and a half...
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We are trying to compete with Asia, the land of suicidal prodigies. But outside of very specific specialties, people skills matter at least as much as technical skill, as products have to be usable by non-experts, as one has to communicate with non-experts to understand their needs and perspectiv
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If they hadn't spent the time educating you during your childhood, your dumbass would have failed out of college in the first quarter.
Yeah, kids hate school and think they know better. They don't.
They rewired their brain (Score:3)
"Low performing" is how these people think of Americans. Everything is justification for using robots instead of people.
Washington Needs Solutions, We Don't Have Them (Score:4, Insightful)
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> Don't think about increasing taxes or we will leave.
And go where? The best and brightest don't want to live in Texas or Sticksville. They beat up nerds and other "oddballs".
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I-2066 wasn't overturned because a Judge knows better and will rule in the name of the people, it was overturned because those who brought suit against it argued it was unconstitutional, on its face. The Judge agreed, and frankly, even though I supported the initiative, I can't really argue with the logic here.
This is what hap
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You are the ones who keep repeating things that have already failed over and over again.
I want you to leave me alone, but neither liberal nor theocrat can do that. Frankly the theocrats infringe much less on my rights.
It's odd how the only bills not found unconstitutional are those that limit my freedom? No it's not when you realize the professional managerial class wants to increase its power.
If the initiative is unconstitutional so is the original law.
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You are the ones who keep repeating things that have already failed over and over again.
lol. Ya, all humans don't do that at all. /s
I want you to leave me alone, but neither liberal nor theocrat can do that. Frankly the theocrats infringe much less on my rights.
Your rights weren't infringed here. You sound like a sovereign citizen.
It's odd how the only bills not found unconstitutional are those that limit my freedom? No it's not when you realize the professional managerial class wants to increase its power.
Ah, so you're a crazy person.
Got it.
If the initiative is unconstitutional so is the original law.
Incorrect.
The initiative makes changes to several laws.
How the fuck you gonna have an opinion on this matter when you don't even know the basic details?
Like I said, I supported the initiative.
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"Your rights weren't infringed here."
My right to have a propane stove (the other gas) is indeed infringed. That was the whole point of the law. You WILL have an electric stove in the house.
And what in the State Constitution gives the Legislature the right to dictate how I cook my food? So yes, massive governmental overreach.
So yes we have a major disagreement on the allowable scope of government power.
And you descending to ad hominem attacks isn't improving your case.
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My right to have a propane stove (the other gas) is indeed infringed. That was the whole point of the law. You WILL have an electric stove in the house.
1) You have no such right.
2) Second, even that proposed right was not infringed.
You don't even know what the bills in question do, do you?
And what in the State Constitution gives the Legislature the right to dictate how I cook my food? So yes, massive governmental overreach.
Nothing, which is why they didn't.
However, just playing devil's advocate- were they to have actually "banned gas stoves" (which they didn't, and which I have- most homes I know of in Seattle are hooked up to gas) I'm pretty sure they'd be able to do so in the same way that they can ban the burning of wood. Because the use of gas affects more than just you.
This is moot
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PS, I forgot to ask, at the of seeming Shadow-like, what do you want?
To my ears Liberals keep seeming to advocate to try Marxism again. This time it will work for sure.
Having to choose between death by starvation (Holodomor, The Great Leap Forward) or simply being shot (the Great Purge, Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot) is not appealing to me.
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Are you trying to conflate democratic socialism (Scandinavia, Europe, Canada) with big "S" Socialism with vanguard parties and shit?
I live in Seattle and make a fucking shit-ton of money. Does it seem like people like me would want big "S" Socialism? lol
You're ridiculous.
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You didn't answer the question, did you.
You (and Seattle in general) keep voting for Socialism. I drew the logical conclusion. You want an all-powerful state regulating every aspect of your existence so you don't have to think about it.
That's the charitable version, and entirely within your right to vote for.
I don't agree with it.
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You didn't answer the question, did you.
I rejected your question, because it was based on a false premise.
You (and Seattle in general) keep voting for Socialism.
This is a falsehood.
I drew the logical conclusion.
I think we've established that you can't be trusted to know logic if it were to bite you in the ass, since you're fully willing to formulate fantasies about a bill based on nothing but your dislike of its constitutionality.
You want an all-powerful state regulating every aspect of your existence so you don't have to think about it.
Nobody wants that. Like I said, you're being absurd.
You are conflating big "S" Socialism with democratic socialism. They are not the same thing.
Money is everything? (Score:1)
Aside from the impenetrably poor language skills of the poster/editor here, the narrative here seems to be "we paid more money, nothing much happened, so we're going to pay less". That's backed up with 'our teachers earn loads of money, yet our kids aren't learning any more".
The problem with those attitudes is that money isn't everything. I'll bet if we go talk to those teachers, they'll say the money is nice and all, but what they really want is XYZ (likely, more resources, more freedom around the curricul
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This is a major contributor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Money is everything? (Score:2)
They cover slavery in history class without suggesting some slaves were happy.
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the education department management need to be held accountable
What methods of account besides money and test scores do you suppose we should use? The balance sheet is the bottom line. The left keeps saying we need to spend more on education, we keeping doing exactly that (for the most part at a national policy level) and the education outcomes keep deteriorating. What choice does the voter have other than take the money away at this point?
If it is to much paper work and to much control of curriculum you know who has/had the influence to change that? Teacher's Unions,
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And to take "parochial" literally, have things gotten better or worse in our schools since the Bible was removed from them?
I'm not even going to bother with the "correlation isn't causation" lecture. How about, "have things gotten better or worse in our schools since we started air conditioning the classrooms?" Or, "Have things gotten better or worse in Southern California schools since air quality has improved since the '50s and '60s?" Obviously we need to make those ignorant kids sweat more during the hot months and pipe some CO2, CO, and NOx into the ventilation systems.
Oh, and it's not the teachers who set the curriculum; i
Re: Money is everything? (Score:2)
Sorry, but without controls for other independent factors, it's not scientific at all.
WA isn't CA (Score:1)
CA has a some excuse on the homeless front because it has a large geographic area where you can live outside pretty much year round, just for the that reason alone it is likely a lot easier to get by homeless their than in other places so people don't migrate away as readily.
WA is a good natural experiment in progressive policy on the other hand. It has both a powerful economic engine in therms of being the Second Si Valley, and lack some of the pressures CA faces from immigration both foreign and domestic.
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Ask yourself what jesus would do in this situation.
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You can give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime. Jesus would teach the man to fish.
You can build a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. Jesus would rattle off a few beatitudes and be on His way.
Why is US public education so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
This, to me, is a mystery. The US spends more per kid on public education than Canada does, yet our students perform better [wikipedia.org].
I have a few theories, but no way to prove them. First, in Canada, your taxes go to fund the education system all across the city... not to a specific small school district. So the quality of schools in Canada tends to be much more uniform across the country. Schools in poor neighbourhoods generally are as good as in wealthy ones. My three adult kids went to three different high schools in very wealthy, average, and poorer neighbourhoods respectively, yet the quality of education they received was about the same.
Second, there seems to be an irrational resentment of public school teachers in the USA. American teachers express much lower job satisfaction and much more pessimism than Canadian teachers.
Third, I think there is (and always has been) a strong strand of anti-intellectualism in the USA which devalues education. This is starting to show results.
Re:Why is US public education so bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
It got to the point where most of the teachers I talked to there would vote "no" on every ballot proposition for more funding for schools.... because they knew it wasn't going to trickle down to the classroom
Re:Why is US public education so bad? (Score:4, Informative)
...a lot of money was getting eaten up by administrators....
I have a relative who is a middle school teacher in a small town. One day in the 90s, she asked me if I could write a program that would let teachers submit requests from the classroom to the lunch room for small milk cartons for the students. I said I could, and that it wouldn't be hard. The conversation over the next few days went like this:
Me: I'll make an internal website for the school that will let the teachers submit their requests.
Her: The school doesn't want to pay an outside provider for a website.
Me: The school won't have to pay anyone. The school will host the website internally, on its own computer.
Her: The administration told me that's not possible. You have to pay an outside provider to host a website.
Me: That is not true. All they need is a working computer connected to their network. I'll take care of everything else.
Her: The school's IT guy said that's not how websites work, so the school won't allow it.
At this point, I should have just let it go. But I didn't. I eventually got the lightbulb in her head to turn on.
Her: The school said no, since they will only allow copyrighted software to be used.
Me: My software is copyrighted by me.
Her: The school said individuals like you can't have copyrights.
Me: Your school is run by idiots.
[I explained the basics of copyright to her]
Her: The school said they will only use commercial software.
Me: I'll charge them for it.
Her: They mean software that is purchased by a company.
[I forwarded her to my state business registration]
Her: They mean large companies, so the school won't be sued for copyright infringement.
[I reiterated that her school administrators were morons, and told her that I was done.]
I have no idea if the school ever got that very simple capability.
Re:Why is US public education so bad? (Score:5, Insightful)
That said: what you've observing is the result of half a century of Republican policies designed to dumb down the American population. Republicans realized, in the 1970's, that educated, literate Americans were increasingly rejecting their policies. Rather than change those policies, they decided to change Americans. Since then, they've systematically demonized higher education, public school teachers, libraries, science, literature, history -- all the components essential to an intellectually-rich country. They've stripped funding wherever they can. They've ensured that many inner city public schools still have lead in the drinking water. (Note the studies showing the lifelong deleterious impacts of same.) They've made public school teachers' working conditions miserable in order to drive them out of the profession. They've promoted junk/pseudo-science. They've glorified ignorance. They've done everything they could possibly do to create an uneducated, illiterate, tractable, manipulable population.
And no surprise: it's worked. The United States now has a substantial population of knuckle-dragging drooling morons who think vaccines cause autism, that the moon landings were faked, that the earth is flat, that creationism is real, that global warming is fake, that DEI is discrimination, etc. This is the population that Republicans wanted, they worked hard for it, they got it, and now they're leading them off a cliff. Why? Because while the Republican party of 1975 had at least some semblance of sanity (recall how many Republicans helped take down Nixon), the Republican party of 2025 is a nihilist death cult. They revel in suffering and death, and every policy, every action, is designed to maximize both. (Think I'm wrong? Consider: what would be they be doing differently if this were not the case?) And the population they've created is cheering them on, apparently oblivious to what this means for their own fate.
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Thank you for providing a textbook example of how to reinforce the argument you're trying to defeat.
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We have also spent decades denigrating teachers to justify spending less on poor children and making becoming a teacher the path to financial ruin and a lousy retirement. Complaining that a relatively recent tax increase did not fix the problems caus
Re: Why is US public education so bad? (Score:2)
The reason US teachers are poorly regarded, is because so many of them are unqualified. The pay isn't great, the working conditions are poor (for example, you cannot get rid of disruptive students), and an ed-degree is valued over a degree in what you teach. The SAT scores of people getting ed-degrees are among the worst in any field. You want the best teaching your kids, not the worst.
Apologies to the (few) good teachers out there, but my time in US public schools sucked. I was lucky that my parents manag
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If you want the best to teach your kids, you have to pay them well and give them good working conditions.
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This, to me, is a mystery.
There's no mystery to it. Public education in the US was not founded on the principle of educating children, it was founded on the principle of indoctrinating them into being good citizens. The only change has been who gets to define "good citizen."
Re: Why is US public education so bad? (Score:2)
It's just not a priority. Remember that all of our rich people send their kids to elite private schools. In addition, the petite bourgeoisie often send their kids to religious schools. Public schools just aren't a priority for the ruling class.
Ironically, your rich people probably send their kids to elite private American schools, too, but we have lots more and much richer people.
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No, our extremely rich people send their kids to private schools in Canada. They might send them to US universities (at least in the past... not sure about going forward.)
Our pretty well off people tend to send their kids to public schools.
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It's not a mystery to me; education gets in the way of education.
They are too much into being "educators" and not enough into helping kids have a good life.
As others have said; kids are in school all day long. Not playing. Not having sports. Less liberal arts. Suicide rates go up.
If people don't have a REASON TO LIVE, then performing in academics takes a back seat. The kids are on social media, seeing other people doing interesting things having wonderful lives and relationships. They go to school, and it's
Re: Why is US public education so bad? (Score:2)
Re:Why is US public education so bad? (Score:4, Interesting)
I've never lived in Canada (Victoria was a lovely city to visit though), but I am inclined to believe that your overall cultural diversity is not what it is in the USA. I mention this as we have children from all over the world. Many don't speak English. We end up spending a lot more resources trying to get children up to speed.
That is simply not true. Victoria is not representative of Canada; Toronto is more culturally diverse than almost any American city. And even my city is pretty diverse; the school my youngest went to was extremely diverse, with many Syrian refugees, other Middle-Eastern kids, plenty of Asians, etc. And the school still delivered an excellent education.
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"Spending for California is 21th most and Texas is at 35th. Seems California is the state that really needs attention. "
Now sort your second link by "K-12 Spending as % of Taxpayer Income". Texas is 3.89% while California is 3.38%. What's really called for is a cost-of-living adjustment, but the jist is that California is more expensive than Texas. New York is way out of line of costs., and Montana remains a highlight.
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I agree that education fads are dangerous, but this is the zeitgeist in America. Nobody has any attention span anymore, and social media has turned everything (including politics) into entertainment and sound bites.
Also agree with the difficulty inversion. My sister lives in the USA and her school-aged daughter was given ridiculously-difficult work that no school-aged kid could possibly handle. So the kids from well-off homes basically had their homework done for them by their parents, and the kids fro
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Yeah... I don't really know the answer to this. What should happen is that the US should look at countries with good public education systems and learn from them.
However, in my experience, the notion that the USA could possibly learn anything from another country raises the hackles of a large part of the American population. :(
If money doesn't matter... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you look at the school data carefully, you will see this: the United States has some of the best K-12 schools in the world (some public, some private). Schools that generate tons of highly qualified students who attend and excel at the greatest universities in the world, and go on to be leaders, scholars, CEOs, etc. AND, the U.S. has some of the WORST K-12 schools in the world (some public, some private). Schools where more than half drop-out before completion, where just a handful of those who do manage to graduate dare to attend college at all, and most of them never graduate college.
And this is what the rich conservatives want: fantastic schools for them (who can afford to pay, either tuition or by living in the right neighborhood), and cheap, ineffective schools for everyone else (so there's a pool of cheap labor who have no choice but to work at low cost for your business).
This is the American Dream in 2025...?
Re:If money doesn't matter... (Score:4, Informative)
This is from another post but does illustrate why it is not all about money.
First link here is graduation rates by state https://www.datapandas.org/ran [datapandas.org]... [datapandas.org]
This link is spending per child https://worldpopulationreview.... [worldpopul...review....] [worldpopul...review.com]
As you will see, Washington State spends the 11th most per student but 15th in graduation rates. This is actually not that bad of a ratio. Look at California and Texas. California 50th, Texas 49th. Spending for California is 21th most and Texas is at 35th. Seems California is the state that really needs attention. Montana is 22nd in spending but #1 in graduation rates. We should ask them their secret. New York is #1 in spending but 43th in graduation rates. Yikes.
If spending was the be all, then NY would be killing it but from these numbers, they are doing no such thing.
Regarding private schools. My coworker and her husband both work in a grocery store, same as me. They choose to send their two daughters to private school. It cost them $750 a month for both or $500 for one. They are way ahead of public school students in all metrics and yearly spending for TWO children is only $9,000.
California spends around $18,000 per student for terrible results. So clearly, the problem is not student children. It really seems to me that much of this spending is not doing anything for the children in the public system which means it must be spent else where. Maybe to many sports? To much administrative overhead? I don't know the answer but I suspect politics is ruining public schools given how effective my coworkers' private school setup is doing.
P.S. I live in California. No one in the grocery store is above working class, so don't think we're all rich. It's far from the truth. Okay, the pharmacist is middle class and is the best paid in the store. Of course, he has the education of a doctor, so there is that.
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For example, looking at the report, Berkeley Unified (CA) spends an average of $25,728 per student, while Livemore Valley
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That's fair. I didn't think to search for school funding and graduation rates at a county level. It's also another layer to just get K-12 and not university.
My original point regarding money still stands. Yes, there is plenty of grey area to discuss but there is more going on then just money. Want to redesign K-12 funding? I'm on board. I've always liked the idea of pooling all money a state will use for education then redistributing on a per child basis. A school would need a certain head count but you cou
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Really, the notion that someone wants the schools to be bad is stupid. Nobody wants that. Nobody needs that for cheap labor. The simple fact that half the population is below average basically guarantees it without having to hamstring schools. What we do have are people with stupid ideas about education and inco
Why worry? (Score:3, Interesting)
The test questions themselves are problematic, so the Oregon curriculum eliminated the inequitable Jim Crow practice of expecting correct answers (https://equitablemath.org/).
Accordingly, Oregon suspended “state requirements that kids demonstrate proficiency in reading, writing, and math to graduate from high school” (https://www.wsj.com/articles/dumbing-oregon-down-kate-brown-proficiency-requirement-high-school-graduation-11628796270).
It’s all very logical. Ignore test results, expect less of students, and the level of inequity naturally drops.
Problem solved!
hypocrites (Score:4, Insightful)
A lot of the low performance is driven by the insane proliferation of tech and screen time, which MS and Amazon both have plenty of blame for.
Government spending != panacea (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite more than doubling K-12 spending and increasing teacher salaries to some of the highest rates in the nation, 4th and 8th grade assessment scores in reading and math are among the worst in the country. Similarly, we have collaborated with you to address housing and homelessness. Despite historic investments in affordable housing and homelessness prevention since 2013, Washington's homeless population has grown by 71 percent.
Progressives fail to understand that government spending is not a panacea. In fact, it is often counterproductive.
In the two cases cited: (1) Adding bureaucrats, rules and regulations does not improve education. (2) Funding programs to help the homeless, where the funding is proportional to the numbers of homeless provides a perverse incentive - both for the programs and for the homeless.
Granted, I am not familiar with these specific government programs, but the results speak for themselves.
In a land, where corporations are above people (Score:2)
Teachers valued less than plumbers (Score:2)
Bernie Sanders (Score:2)
It's Not About The Money! (Score:2)
If all it took to solve the problem was money, it would have been solved long ago. The problem with the schools are the people we've hired to run them. Low performance is always, always a staffing issue.
Start by outlawing teacher's unions, then introduce merit-based pay, with "merit" defined as a baseline student academic performance metric, and then fire any teacher who cannot deliver the baseline results after a year.
Parenting Fail (Score:2)
Children's success begins at home, in an environment that nurtures growth, curiosity, and resilience. A stable family, consistent meals, and a safe roof over their heads are essential foundations. When parents fail to provide these basics, children may struggle to thrive not just academically but emotionally and socially. Yet, the absence of support isn’t the only challenge. The rise of helicopter parenting has stifled kids' ability to independently explore and discover. Children need the freedom to c
Easy solution (Score:2)
I hear a certain prison has still a lot of space. I say deport the fuckers! May want to add the teachers as well...
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Washington's extended COVID lockdowns have also been a contributing factor
My daughter's tutor told me this entire generation of kids is two years behind where they should be. Closing schools for two years is going to affect them far into adulthood.
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Our children are, too often, being taught unimportant and meaningless knowledge, and inappropriate subjects. They are taught these well, their teachers are competent. It is not how they are being taught, it is what they are being taught.
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"It was the disrespect and lack of support." - That's why I left after 18 years.
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