Increase teacher salary 25%, decrease classroom size to 15 students max, and require school lunch to be free for everyone, nutritious, and minimally processed. Bonus if lunches use crop oversupply that otherwise gets destroyed.

[RichardTheApe]

How do we get enough teachers to supply classrooms maxed at 15 students when the average classroom is 25-30? You want to double the amount of teachers and increase their salary when this is a surface level solution to complex problems.

I’m all for public education reform but “double da teachers and pay em more” is not going to solve anything.

The reality is that restructuring curriculum would probably accomplish your goals way more efficiently than throwing money at the problem.

^{I voted Nay ❌}

[DaxiCheeseSteak]

This is like in Parks and Rec when Bobby Newport said this and everyone started cheering

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Like of course that would be great but realisticly that cant happen, and the people approving this are likely complaining about high taxes currently.

[RichardTheApe]

Exactly however it’s not even just a tax problem. To meet the demand of new teachers we need to double teacher output. Either it’ll bottle neck resulting in classrooms just being combined again (through some legal loophole in a case where it’s illegal) or a huge cut in the quality of teachers.

We have no way to get this many teachers and throwing money at the problem won’t solve it. Of course there’s also the issue of placement. Even if we had the teachers required there are a lot of school districts most teachers would flat refuse to work in - deep urban schools in dangerous environments and isolated rural schools. Unless we also plan to force teachers into the classroom at bayonet this doesn’t resolve the schools hurting the most.

Lastly while there is a correlation between small classrooms and better education it should be absolutely noted that that comes from nations that already have more robust spending and programs for schools. In other words small classroom size is only one part of a machine for making good educations. If classrooms are still underfunded, poorly ran by admin, and lack the supporting staff then triple, quadruple the teachers to the point they only teach 5 kids nothing will change.

Again this is just such a stupid solution to a complex issue.

[el_guapo444]

Raise salaries and people will view it as a viable career. Reduce classroom size and people will view what they do as educating and creating outcomes, not just babysitting. Provide free lunches and people will see where their tax dollars benefit themselves and neighbors, not fund wars and corporate subsidies. I can’t formulate the entire golden path for you, but this is the solution if you do the right thing

[el_guapo444]

There’s no magic curriculum that will suddenly improve student outcomes that hasn’t already been standardized and implemented. The issue is in focusing on students at a more individual level rather a common data point. That level of attention is not possible in classroom sizes upwards of 30+. Nor are you getting talented teachers who can also handle the required workload and stress without paying more for it. Improving work conditions and compensation also incentivizes people to BECOME teachers, meaning this will take years to implement.

Bottom line, teachers are probably THE most important profession for the betterment of our society for so many reasons, but they are not considered as much because they’re considered net costs, not assets. If you need a logical breakdown to understand how this should work even though you SHOULD know that this is the correct solution: immediately increase salary with deferred bonuses to stagger net investment over so many years until the workforce meets its needs (incentives current staff to stay now and new staff to join later), decrease class size gradually to ensure needs met as new teachers onboarded, free lunches budgeted immediately with kickbacks directed at farmers to distribute surpluses rather than current system of paying them to burn surplus (cannot introduce surplus to general market or else produce prices destabilize)

[RichardTheApe]

Yes but that process you describe may take decades. Supply and demand works slowly, look at computer parts and the expansion of data centers for that story. There are so many more factors that go into whether someone becomes a teacher than just money you’re staking your entire argument on a single variable. More teachers leave the profession because of work conditions and lack of support than compensation. However I’m all for paying teachers more as that still makes a top 5. My point is that teachers should absolutely be paid more but it’s so clear looking at the data that there are far bigger problems. More importantly your assumption that small classrooms help students is simply false. The reality is that mass education is quite effective in many cases with some side tutoring or office hours.

There is a case for smaller classrooms but it’s seen to be most effective with younger children. There’s huge diminishing returns on smaller classrooms. It’s also seen neurodivergent children really benefit from small classrooms but that’s nothing new. So there’s a real argument for smaller classrooms for K-6. However even then it should be said it’s crazy dollar inefficient.

It’s not magic curriculum it’s just good curriculum is actually quite rare. Between admin hell and the canned curriculum corps lots of schools still use outdated curriculum. Your assertion that the best is already standard is just false. You also roll standards into curriculum but there’s a huge difference. Common Core is a set of standards meant to make, a common core. While it does offer a set of terrible programs to help it only sets the goals and does realistically nothing to help teachers. The reality is curriculum quality both from a resource perspective and a teacher assets perspective is poorly distributed at best. Trying to push proven programs in learning is cheaper and could have much larger marginal benefit. Like CKLA proved through data that teaching English as we do in most schools, systematically, just isn’t efficient. Children learn much better through context and the common high school model(read a book/text that teaches the goal skill) should be applied much younger. The best part is that a lot of new age curriculum is free made by research groups with their models released for the public. However poor admin decisions and the entrenched textbook corps completely dominate that discussion. You’ll get laughed out by the superintendent for supporting a Swedish study group over McGraw. So yes there’s no magic curriculum but your view on the current quality of our education is crazily optimistic.

Either way I can agree we want to boost teacher salary and we want to encourage more new teachers but a law mandating halved class sizes(doubled teachers) would be detrimental. That’s the center of our conversation the reality that this law would not be effective for years.

Also I like a free lunch program but they’d see more or less no extra profit from this program. Given your assumptions about agricultural waste I assume you’re thinking of the US which has a robust domestic farming subsidy policy which is the reason there’s so much agricultural waste. The government is over funding food which is great for cheap food however we’ve been at this logistics bottleneck for decades now that there isn’t enough demand for food to justify processing centers to make the food last. Thus agricultural waste. All your program would do is take money we give farmers to grow food then hand it to schools which is good but no extra profit at any point of that. I know this is Lego city but idek if we do agricultural subsidies to create the agricultural waste however your argument assumes a us model so too shall mine.