[PJDK]

>I think you're mistakenly assuming the point of public school is to educate. I think it exists more so the proles have somewhere to dump their kids when they're working. The "education" happens to be incidental.

No one you know is a teacher? I can't speak for the US, but many of my friends went into teaching here in the UK. There is plenty wrong with education but the people I know who went into it definitely want to teach and want to teach well. This kind of blanket statement is quite disrespectful to them.

[noobiemcfoob]

I don't see it as an indictment of the teachers, but the institution itself. I know many inspired teachers whose work ethic and selflessness can put us all to shame. There are also some pretty bad teachers. But neither point illustrates that the public education system (in the US at least) is engineered for many other concerns before considering how best to educate its students.

You can see it in this paraphrased anecdote from a middle school science teacher: The principal asks me to do a lot of things. Sometimes, he asks very sternly. However, as a teacher, there is only one thing I am legally required to do for these children every day: take attendance.

[deong]

I don't think that quote means much of anything other than it's very difficult to legislate efficacy.

Suppose you had the absolute dream of a public education system -- one that existed solely to provide a real education for the children. What would the actual laws around that system look like? Is it a misdemeanor to make a D on a math test?

It also ignores that there are a wide range of well-meaning (but probably counterproductive) things we require of teachers that are for all intents and purposes legal requirements. If your kids perform too poorly on a test, your school may lose funding, for example. Again, I think that crosses the line beyond which such mandates make sense, but it's pretty clearly intended to improve the legitimate education your kids get. If it were about babysitting, they wouldn't bother.

[noobiemcfoob]

In a vacuum, you're right, and it would be difficult to convey all the context that might sway you such that this anecdote is indicative of the structural problems in the education system. But this is just one of millions of anecdotes on how the system as a whole is largely concerned with anything but education.

The accounting machinery is needed to get money to all the schools sure, but when that accounting machinery becomes the focus of 40% of admins... You're not running an education system. You're moving money around that happens to educate...sometimes.

[emerod]

Whether teachers have noble motivations is completely irrelevant to whether the institutions perform their function well. All it means is that the teachers are working for institutions that take advantage of them.

[michaelmrose]

You can have inspired worthy people working in the midst of a crappy institution infested with bureaucrats and sports programs that suck up most of the money that could have been used to pay teachers.

[TheAdamAndChe]

I think the education system in the US is vastly different from the UK. In the US, the teachers are massively limited in their freedom to choose how and what to teach their kids. Mostly because the No Child Left Behind Act(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Child_Left_Behind_Act), which requires teachers to teach for tests and nothing else. And this IS coming from someone who knows a teacher in the US. My uncle was an art teacher for several years, and ended up leaving because of the politics and lack of care given to students.

[PJDK]

I'm not saying that any particular system is good or bad (and for what it's worth there are similar complaints about teaching in the UK with regards to teaching to tests).

But looking at that summary it's pretty clearly intended to improve schools. It might (or might not) be the wrong way to do it - but it's certainly about trying to give children a good education.

[TheAdamAndChe]

I understand that's the intent, but what happens is that schools lose money if too many of its students do poorly, which leads to a lowering of standards and a teaching towards tests alone to shovel as many students through the system as possible. The students can make an educated guess at a multichoice question, but lack any real understanding of the topic being taught.

[sp332]

The act did not assert a national achievement standard – each state developed its own standards. I think I found the problem.

[tcfunk]

Not to mention the proles.