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https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/08/27/640323347/the-school-shootings-that-werent
This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.
But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.
We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.
In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn't confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn't meet the government's parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn't respond to our inquiries.
More details in article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @04:55AM (3 children)
The department has ended up being mainly devoted to managing student loans. Ha, ha, only serious. That is what they do, for real. Maybe the right person comes from Citibank, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo...?
If that is some conflict of interest, then a teacher is a bigger one. Teachers are also at the bottom of college graduates for IQ. We sure don't want anybody involved in teaching.
Part of the job is being opposition to unions. Somebody has to care about the kids, and it sure isn't unions. Pissing off unions is a job requirement.
The top several levels of the federal government are just about purely management. She ran the republican party in her state; she has management skills. The same goes for General Mattis, and we could probably swap them or any other pair of cabinet members without very much harm. Management is management is management: organize people to get shit done.
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Wednesday August 29 2018, @05:56AM (2 children)
Why is it that the concept of "pay peanuts, get monkeys" does not apply to teachers? Why is it that the same people who want to suppress teacher salaries continue to decry the skills and abilities of teachers?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @06:37AM
It does. Most parents do not care. School is babysitting. Why waste $140k for someone with a phd in math to teach a 7 year old the colors of the rainbow?
Home schooled kids, even when taught by untrained parents typically score
https://www.nheri.org/research-facts-on-homeschooling/ [nheri.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 29 2018, @07:02PM
If the number of employees needs to be reduced, any same business would pick a low-performer. They'd get rid of somebody who keeps fucking up.
Unions ensure that this doesn't happen in schools. Instead, the most recently hired person must be laid off. Besides the directly bad effect, this discourages good people from entering the profession.
Suppose we doubled the pay of every teacher. Would that improve the teaching? No, it would not. Pay needs to be directed to the best people. Unions prevent this. There is little incentive to do a great job. Unions have fought out attempts to change this.
Unions generally require that a chemistry teacher get nothing more than a Spanish teacher. Unions generally require that a computer science teacher get nothing more than an English teacher.