🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Nov19.020640.3459@pcnntp.apple.com> (Larry Starkand) writes:
>In article <1eeivdINNefe@mizar.usc.edu>, genzuk@mizar.usc.edu (Michael Genzuk) writes:
>> Where in the world do you come up with these figures?  They are totally
>> erroneous.  It is one thing to disagree with a point of view, but 
>> certainly  another to fabricate statistics that are non-existant to

>Several newspapers have quoted the statistic that the California 
>school system employs 110 administrators for every 100 teachers,
>this would equate to less than 50% of the school staff being 
>teachers. This statistic is straight from the california state
>dept of education.

Well, you seem awful sure of your stats.  That would be good if they do, in
fact, turn out to be true.  But why not post the exact cite?  WHICH newspapers?
Date and page, please.  (And no, we're not going to call the California State
Dept. of Education to verify YOUR stats.  Do it yourself.)

>Furthermore just recently in san Jose their was a big brouhaha about the
>fact that the S.J. Union school district spent close to 7 Million (? on the
>figure it may have been 1 million) dollars on creating new administrative
>offices (refered to as the pink palace), while the kids were still being
>taught in temporary buildings (you know, the ones that look like quansit
>huts).

This is a very superficial (and perhaps one-sided) report of the incident.
Buildings cost a lot of money and I can't a large school district doing without
one for administration no matter how much you cut down the number of
administrators.  Or do you disagree?  If you don't, then the question is "how
badly did they need it?" vs. "how badly did the students need the capital
spending dollars?".  Just saying they were being taught in "termporary
buildings" proves little or nothing - the temporary facilties might have been
quite adequate and cost effective for all we know.

>Maybe what they need are better educated teachers, recently a junior
>high teacher taught her english class  that only 2000 people were
>killed in the concentration camps during WW II.

Flame bait!  Antidotal evidence is worse than worthless and I'll tell you
why: out of all the godzillions of teachers in the public school systems in
California, I would expect at least one to be incompetant.  It's impossible
to make sure every single teacher is competant in the course of hiring a large
number.  Does that mean that the hiring process (or firing process) is broken?
Not necessarily - it just means it isn't perfect.  I wonder how many private
school teachers have done as bad or worse.  But you're ready to damn the whole
system on the weight of one incident.  It's just stupid to bring something
like this up and pretend it's an argument.

Fred