US Gov't budget problem

Union busting? How does that make any sense? it violates freedom of association.

Like most amendments, it only protects you from the actions of government, not private parties.

point. forgot about that.

And don't imagine M$ is special, from Apple to Google, the computer industry is mysteriously spotless of organized labor, I doubt magical pixie dust is what keeps it that way.

It's no accident at all.

Then it's doomed to failure now and forever.

Yes it is Deboss.

^^ And standardized tests are not the answer. I could guarantee you, if you would have told me I had to take standardized tests as part of college I along with many many people would have gone "fuck that noise" in regards to getting a degree because college just because of standardized testing just turned into a repeat of high school.

I hated high school and standardized testing then did nothing to help that. In all honesty in many ways standardized testing ruined schooling for me as a kid.

Hey, I always liked standardized tests-I always did well on them!

Then again, I also did well on the LSAT which really isn't the same kind of test... Even then, only 83 Percentile, but still, certainly not bad.

edited 17th Mar '11 8:30:38 AM by TheyCallMeTomu

SA Ts are a necessary evil because otherwise there's no way to gauge the learning curve at all.

The issue at hand is whether one should extend the SAT model to every single aspect of schooling — i.e. a business model.

People are gullible if they think attaching a letter grade to the front door like a positive Health Inspector rating is going to save public schools. Besides which, here in New York the ratings are no guarantee your school will stay open..

If the city determines your budget is too high, they merge your school into 1-2 other schools, all crammed inside one building with 30-40 students per class. (Sometimes they cordon off single rooms with divider walls, so as to fit two classes in there at once).

Haven't we gotten onto a completely different topic? We started going off a couple of pages ago and now we're on something completely different.

Morven, naughty mod, go make a "Testing and educational standards" thread.

@ Budget specifically

I think we've moved onto topics discussing how to improve the economy as a way to fix the budget. Somewhat indirect, but still vitally important.

@ Unions at Tech companies

The reason there are no unions from "Apple to Google" is because the pay is very high. You only see serious labour malpractice at crappier firms (such as EA) who pay lowly amounts of 30k-40k. I'm not going to rely on anecdotal stories about how terrible it is in those places because I have personal anecdotal evidence to the total opposite. Your average salary at those places is 100k+ and you still want a union? For what? The magical pixie dust keeping away unions is fat wads of cash and stock bonuses.

@ Protectionism

Unfortunately for you, the comment that it "isn't so bad for Canadians" is actually completely wrong. You don't treat Canadians any different than a terrorist in the middle of Afghanistan (okay I exaggerate). That's how broken the immigration system is because it weakly bases acceptance on economic prowess. Family immigration into the United States rivals that of economic immigration. Backlog on master's degree is at 3 years, bachelors is at 8.5 and rising. The only thing that can get you in "fairly" fast is a Ph D, which is a backlog of a year.

Protectionism encourages depredation on foreign labour. You say that America "shares a border with a third world country", notice that I conspicuously left out Mexican illegal immigration from the discussion. I talked about Carribeans in Canada, Indians/Chinese in the United States. This was important to showcase how protectionism allows exploitation of people from halfway across the world, a phenomena that occurs much more rarely in Canada. The more convoluted the visa system, the easier it is to prey upon those people.

@ Standardised Testing

Standardised testing is a poor method to encourage better education. Tests are difficult to come up with and much too difficult to maintain. None of the countries at the top of the OECD lists do standardised testing. They only do sample testing to measure the proficiency of students, with anonymous results, in order to judge funding and curriculum changes.

Sweden, Finland, Canada which rank in the top slots don't use standardised testing. They all have super powerful (ridiculously so) teacher unions. The problem is not unions. The problem is not lack of tests. The problem (probably) is not funding. The problem is restricting teachers to doing a set of things, without the freedom to tailor their lectures to the local environment. The problem is lack of empowering teachers. The problem is the government constantly making witch hunts against "bad" teachers. You let teachers do their job and allow their own organisation to push for professional excellence and just watch as they weed out their own bad teachers and improve the cirriculum. It won't be perfect, but it'll be hell of a lot better than what America has right now.

I get the impression that the real difference (especially in Finland) is a cultural climate that encourages the smartest people to become teachers.

When my dad worked at Florical, he was earning 50k. When he was working at Compuware, he was earning about 100k, but that was a very highly paid position. So I don't know that the average is 100k...

Yes, the cultural climate is very large. I don't like to generalise but the feeling I get in the USA is that people value teachers very lowly, expect teachers to be failures in whatever subject they're teaching, have basically no standards for teachers (it's a well known problem in Canada that people who fail to become teachers here, go to the USA to get their degree instead because it's just a matter of paying your way through). All teachers in Ontario require an undergraduate degree before going onto teacher's college. There's an expectation of teachers to be of good quality but Canada still has that slight anti-intellectual tinge here.

East Asian countries put teachers near the top of the profession list, the very opposite of America. Becoming a teacher there is actually quite prestigious, moreso if you're at a good school.

EDIT: Yes the average is 100k. I wasn't mentioning random tech companies. It was specifically mentioned as "Apple to Google", meaning Microsoft/Google/Amazon/Apple.

edited 17th Mar '11 9:43:58 AM by breadloaf

Oh! Okay.

This is so far off the original topic there's no going back.

If you want to make a thread about standardized testing, or unions' place in education or any of the other topics it's turned into, make them. This one is being locked up.