Education Reform........

[cougarfreak]

I have been an educator of high school students for 11 years, and have coached varsity level in two different sports since 1991 (not both at the same time, only crossed over for 2 years). My question to you is, what would you do to improve the American Public Education system.

[JPhillips]

Smaller schools.

[Greyroofoo]

Hot girls walk around topless.

I promise this will improve attendance (at least among the male students)

[Noop]

Put the best teachers in elementry school. So that these kids have a good foundation.

[Bubba Wheels]

Privatize it. Use government subsidies and private schools. Diversify and inject competition. The good will get better and the worst will dissappear.

[rowech]

Eliminate the use of calculators

[Noop]

Privatize it. Use government subsidies and private schools. Diversify and inject competition. The good will get better and the worst will dissappear.

You mean you want a church run school or something? Because if everyone went to private school then it would be like a public school socially speaking. I must admit I am a but uninformed about private schools.

[mauchow]

go to the metric system

[Galaxy]

Privatize it. Use government subsidies and private schools. Diversify and inject competition. The good will get better and the worst will dissappear.

Holy crap, I agree with BW for the second time in as many weeks. :eek:

[Raiders Army]

1. Make parents responsible for bringing up their children.
2. Make teachers responsible for teaching children.

This isn't a slam on teachers; it's on the parents who are too "busy" to bring up their children. I'm not talking about the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing. I'm talking about parents who want the schools to be responsible for the conduct and study habits of their children. Although schools are responsible for the conduct of the students while they're at school, parents need to take some responsibilty in the actions those children take.

For instance, why are there metal detectors in schools? I blame the parents of a student who kills someone rather than the school itself. The parents failed parenting, yet it is inevitable that the school will be blamed. My two cents.

[Galaxy]

1. Make parents responsible for bringing up their children.
2. Make teachers responsible for teaching children.

This isn't a slam on teachers; it's on the parents who are too "busy" to bring up their children. I'm not talking about the whole Pledge of Allegiance thing. I'm talking about parents who want the schools to be responsible for the conduct and study habits of their children. Although schools are responsible for the conduct of the students while they're at school, parents need to take some responsibilty in the actions those children take.

For instance, why are there metal detectors in schools? I blame the parents of a student who kills someone rather than the school itself. The parents failed parenting, yet it is inevitable that the school will be blamed. My two cents.

Agree with this as well.

[molson]

You mean you want a church run school or something? Because if everyone went to private school then it would be like a public school socially speaking. I must admit I am a but uninformed about private schools.

The idea is that schools and private education entities would compete for government contracts, with the goal being more efficient spending of education funding. The idea has always intrigued me.

[JPhillips]

Its sounds good, but in reality it will just be a giveaway to private schools. There aren't enough companies/non-profits for there to be any real competition in most of the country. Some will be good, but there will be a large number of mediocre to poor schools that are just in it for the money. Its like a lot of government privatization schemes, it sounds good, but in the end we don't save money and the results are the same.

That being said, I'm more than willing to try it on a small scale and see what happens. One of the biggest problems in education is the unwillingness to try solutions. Let's experiment and see if we can find better methods.

[Greyroofoo]

If we rely on parents, then I pity the kids who have poor parents.

[Noop]

If we rely on parents, then I pity the kids who have poor parents.

We need to make the parents suffer for their childrens poor behavior. Instead of a running to a doctor to give their kid some diagnois(sp?) saying they have some problem. They need to 'cowboy up' and disicpline(sp?) their child.

[Steveski]

The problem is as much a result of poor parenting as it is the school systems. I will however note that I was a very poor high school student for the most part. I did attend a Catholic high school and despite how poorly I did, when I got to college I never openned a book the first year and I busted the curve on every test for all the poor public school kids in class with me. I graduated with honors and went on to graduate school. I will not tell you how many D's I made in high school though. I really appreciate the education I got there once I was in college and I sent all my kids to private school.

[Greyroofoo]

We need to make the parents suffer for their childrens poor behavior. Instead of a running to a doctor to give their kid some diagnois(sp?) saying they have some problem. They need to 'cowboy up' and disicpline(sp?) their child.


To me that sounds like we should make the children suffer so we can spite the parents.

Some parents won't take their responsiblities seriously and to that there are no easy answers.

[clintl]

The main predictors of student success are the socioeconomic status of the student's family, the education level of the parents, and parental involvement. There was a report out about a month ago or so that finally controlled for socioeconomic status when comparing public and private school students' test scores, and the public school students were actually doing a little better. So, if you want to improve public education, you need to focus on giving the poorer school districts the resources to overcome the disadvantages that come with being a child in a low socioeconomic status family, which are considerable. Almost all of the difference is related to socioeconomic factors.

I've gone back to school to get a teaching credential, and I'm doing my student teaching in a low socioeconomic status district, and it's appalling the lack of resources they have compared to other (still not "advantaged) districts I'm familiar with. For instance, the library has only seven pretty old computers for student use for a student body of 1200. They do have a separate computer lab, but those computers are generally only used by whole classes, and not available for individual student use. The library is pretty small. It has more science teachers than science classrooms, so teachers are sharing rooms, and at least doesn't have a room he can call his own.

And that's not even getting into the language issues - and I'm not talking about just Spanish. There are 18 different native languages spoken by students at this school, including a large Russian contingent (the community is something of a magnet for Russian religious refugees). Out of 27 students in the chemistry class I've taken over as a student teacher, 5 are Russians, and that's pretty consistent with the percentage of the student body as a whole. There are a fair number of Asians as well, from a diverse set of Asian countries. I guarantee you that few if any private schools have to deal with a student population as linguistically diverse.

Too many people are thinking about a mostly white middle class U.S. born student population when they talk about school reform and make assumptions about how schools are performing. But that is not the reality, and it's especially not reality for schools in socioeconomically-disadvantaged communities. And unless you address the issues that put students growing up in these kinds of environments at a disadvantage from the moment they are born, you will not come up with an effective reform package.

So the essential elements are: better teacher training, higher expectations for student performance, facilities and resources for disadvantaged districts that bring them up to the level of affluent districts, and after school programs to mitigate the effects of limited home resources for low socioeconomic students.

[molson]

3. Begin to look at the real purpose of high schools. Should there be separate high schools depending on level of student achievement? Based upon future plans? Based upon testing? Should all students be required to learn certain material at the high school level or only those that are college bound? What should be our real purpose for secondary education?


Great point. Unfortunately, I think we're heading in the opposite direction now, with the idea that every kid can be college bound if we just give them the right combination of pills.

The traditional secondary education isn't for everyone. Some parents resist vocational schools, but 16-year old kid who gets a head-start as an electrician can make a VERY good living. Too many of them are wasting these years buying the cliff notes for English Class, doing just enough to graduate.

[clintl]

2. Single gendered schools. This eliminates many of the distractions that create many problems in schools. In addition, research shows males and females learn in very different ways and studies show continually how much improvement there is when this idea is done.


The research is not that clear-cut. In addition, I firmly believe that girls and boys need to interact with each other throughout their developing years. School is as much about developing social skills as it is about academics, and so is adult life. They need to learn how to work together. It's the teachers' responsibity to make sure both genders have a suitable learning environment.

[WVUFAN]

Put the kind of money spent on the military to schools. Eliminate a bunch of ridiculous programs the government funds (like the NEA).

Eliminate teaching in languages other than English. The language barrier causes segregation in schools. Force all student to learn English and teach all classes in English.

[Raiders Army]

Put the kind of money spent on the military to schools. Eliminate a bunch of ridiculous programs the government funds (like the NEA).

Eliminate teaching in languages other than English. The language barrier causes segregation in schools. Force all student to learn English and teach all classes in English.

Your first point I don't agree with. Your second I do agree with. They have all-Spanish classes down here. It's somewhat ridiculous since they have to learn English at some point. I may be mistaken, but I believe the SAT and ACT are all in English, no?

[rowech]

The research is not that clear-cut. In addition, I firmly believe that girls and boys need to interact with each other throughout their developing years. School is as much about developing social skills as it is about academics, and so is adult life. They need to learn how to work together. It's the teachers' responsibity to make sure both genders have a suitable learning environment.

You have them interact but not within the school setting. Whether it's still having boys and girls in the same school but single gendered classrooms or having a male and female school be tied together for sports, etc. It's not as big of a difference in elementary schools as it is in the middle and secondary grades but it's a nice gap based upon what I've read.

[Raiders Army]

FWIW, I think there are a lot of colleges out there with pretty low standards so every kid can be college bound easily. College is no longer a higher institution of learning; it's a cash cow.

[rowech]

FWIW, I think there are a lot of colleges out there with pretty low standards so every kid can be college bound easily. College is no longer a higher institution of learning; it's a cash cow.

It is for year one anyway. College's will take anyone's money but how much money does one have to flush before they figure out they can't hack it at that level?

[14ers]

Put the kind of money spent on the military to schools. Eliminate a bunch of ridiculous programs the government funds (like the NEA).


What is wrong with the National Education Association?
http://www.nea.org/nav/images/NEA-logo-horiz-CMYK-2.gif


http://www.nea.org/index.html
Could 3.2 million teachers be wrong?

[Raiders Army]

It is for year one anyway. College's will take anyone's money but how much money does one have to flush before they figure out they can't hack it at that level?

Not to sidestep the question, but I'd have to look for numbers on college dropouts after the first year. I would also guess that a college gets more money from a freshman than a senior since the freshman stays in the dorm, eats the food, etc. more than a senior. In that aspect, if I were a college I would have low entrance standards to get the freshmen money and then have a harder program so that "unworthy" students drop out and you maintain your level of prestige among your undergraduates. That's what I would do to run my own business...er...college.

/threadjack

[WVUFAN]

What is wrong with the National Education Association?
http://www.nea.org/nav/images/NEA-logo-horiz-CMYK-2.gif


http://www.nea.org/index.html
Could 3.2 million teachers be wrong?

Well, I was talking about the National Endowment of the Arts, but I'm not a fan of the teacher's union either. My mom was a teacher for over 30 years, and it didn't help her at all.

Then again, I'm generally against unions period. For their time they were invaluable, but now there's no use for them at all.

[clintl]

Eliminate teaching in languages other than English. The language barrier causes segregation in schools. Force all student to learn English and teach all classes in English.

Actually, I think it's harmful to deny them the opportunity for language arts instruction in their native language. Bilingualism is better. Yes, we want them to learn English, but we shouldn't want them to speak only English.

I think we should actually start teaching foreign language to English-speaking students in kindergarten, rather than waiting until they're in the 6th or 7th grade. That's when the human mind is most receptive to learning new languages.

[thealmighty]

Quick hits:

start out right. every kid should be able to read by the end of first grade, to some extent, or they don't move on.
make first period be breakfast. Too many kids get a shitty start every day because they are raising themselves. Get their day started off right and the rest of the day will be easier to handle.
make elementary math and science teachers teach math and science. Most elementary ed. teachers know nothing about math or science from what I have seen and heard. Teach them how or get some that can.
if you cannot read at the correct level at the end of a year...summer reading school is mandatory.
get rid of lawyers. Too many things are done in a big district because of lawsuits or the possibility of same (unfortunately, this presupposes that administrators would actually be there for the betterment of all students, which isn't reality in many, many places)
get rid of teacher unions. They are not there to better a students life but to prolong a shitty teachers' career, imho.
fire idiots
fire lazy teachers
fire the rest of the stupid teachers
get rid of idiot administrators, too
***bring back auto shop class, furniture repair, computer repair, AC repair, plumbing and other voc. ed. classes that were cut in budget reductions (at least where I am). If you have all these classes count towards a diploma, many, many more students would have a reason to be in school besides hanging in the halls, selling drugs or being a nuisance***
deemphasize athletics (not going to happen in most places) and reemphasize academics as the raison d'etre of a school
deal with the salary structure. Here, a starting teacher makes plenty, again imho, but they do nothing later. Why stay in teaching when you only make $5000 more after 10 years than when you started. If you do, in fact, get rid of the idiots, what you have left is worth what it costs to keep them
More money for special ed programs. The money spent seems to be huge compared to yesterday, but it is now being used for special ed programs and salaries. We have aides all over the building being paid to follow ONE student around ALL DAY. That's right, one person/student, ALL DAY. Special needs children deserve an education, and inclusion is great, but a TON of the money now goes to special stuff because if it isn't done, parents will sue the district. Special ed students in the classroom. No problem. However, the feds or state need to pick up more of THAT tab so the taxes we pay goes to the classroom and not the lawyers.
I could go on, but quick hits went on to be too long already. Any questions? BTW, I am a high school teacher, 20 years. Also, I am in a union but only because the union has lawyers on staff that will represent a member if ever needed...for free. These days, you just never know. One pissed off parent and you are done from legal bills if the union isn't behind you. There is just too much crap in public schools now. It pisses me off just thinking about the incompetence I see and hear about every week.
(and I did not proofread this so if there are errors, fuck off. I teach math and psych, not english. :p )

[14ers]

Quick hits:
fire idiots
fire lazy teachers
fire the rest of the stupid teachers
Talk about a teacher shortage. Where do you stand on only hiring certified teachers?


I think your Salary for older teachers is wrong. Most School Districts not only pay their teachers by the numbers of years they have been there, but also have pay raises for their education level.(Bachelor, Masters, Specialist, and Doctorate)

[14ers]

Now for something completly different. Are teachers being overpaid?

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/05/the_teacher_sal.htmlThe Teacher Salary Myth

For example, per the NEA web site, teachers made a bit over $56,000 on average in California in 2004. Lisa Snell, in this month's Reason (http://www.reason.com/), estimates that benefits add nearly $16,000 to this compensation package, for a total of about $72,000 per year for California teachers. Normalize this for the fact they work 9 months (or less) a year, and you get them making an equivalent of $100,000 a year. Woe is me.
Wow, the average teacher in California is pulling down 6 figures a year.

[WVUFAN]

Now for something completly different. Are teachers being overpaid?

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/05/the_teacher_sal.html
Wow, the average teacher in California is pulling down 6 figures a year.

And they deserve EVERY SINGLE penny. I'd pay them more.

[WVUFAN]

Actually, I think it's harmful to deny them the opportunity for language arts instruction in their native language. Bilingualism is better. Yes, we want them to learn English, but we shouldn't want them to speak only English.

The language classes are taught in should be English. It's a waste of resources to teach Mathematics in both Spanish and English. It establishes the idea that it's perfect ok to live in this country without knowing English.

Then again, I believe English should be declared the national language.


I think we should actually start teaching foreign language to English-speaking students in kindergarten, rather than waiting until they're in the 6th or 7th grade. That's when the human mind is most receptive to learning new languages.


I'm all for people being bi-lingual, but when you're talking about primary classes .. math, science, ect ... those should be in English and no other language.

[mgadfly]

Get rid of NCLB.

Strengthen Teachers' Unions. (I apparently am in the minority and believe that teachers actually care about their students and might have insights about how to help address whatever problems public schools are facing.)

Do not privatize at all. (Education is an investment in our future, not a for-profit business aimed at good quarterly returns. And I'm not sure why we'd want to pay a CEO ten times as much as we are currently paying an "administrator" to do the same work.)

Make college free to everyone who qualifies academically. (There are a great number of kids who will not have the financial capabilities of attending 4 years of college. With 40% of American jobs in the service sector, many kids are finding it difficult to see why they need to learn much of anything if the overwhelming odds have them flipping burgers, answering phones, etc... What possible application will most of the subjects they are refusing to take seriously have in their lives?)

[cougarfreak]

Now for something completly different. Are teachers being overpaid?

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/05/the_teacher_sal.html
Wow, the average teacher in California is pulling down 6 figures a year.


Yeah, pay them less. Their job isn't important at all. :rolleyes:

[cougarfreak]

Quick hits:
[LIST]
***bring back auto shop class, furniture repair, computer repair, AC repair, plumbing and other voc. ed. classes that were cut in budget reductions (at least where I am). If you have all these classes count towards a diploma, many, many more students would have a reason to be in school besides hanging in the halls, selling drugs or being a nuisance***
deemphasize athletics (not going to happen in most places) and reemphasize academics as the raison d'etre of a school


Two of the biggest IMO. I just quit coaching. I have never felt like in the classroom that my career was on the line everyday, as I do my job, and I feel I do it well. But when I was coaching it seemed like every single day my career could end. If a kid fielded a ball wrong and took it in the face, I could be sued for not teaching him to field the ball right, or if I didn't play this kid or that kid, someone was nicpicking or complaining trying to get me kicked out of coaching and/or teaching. Athletics need to go IMO, too much money is spent there, and not enough good coaches want to stay in it for reasons I stated IMO. Vocational schools would be a godsend for kids who just can't get it academically.

[Raiders Army]

make first period be breakfast. Too many kids get a shitty start every day because they are raising themselves. Get their day started off right and the rest of the day will be easier to handle.
This is what I'm talking about when schools raise kids instead of parents.

[Raiders Army]

Now for something completly different. Are teachers being overpaid?

http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2005/05/the_teacher_sal.html
Wow, the average teacher in California is pulling down 6 figures a year.

Your point is what? Put the blog into perspective.

The bottom line is that they work 9 months a year. They earn $72,000 per year teaching. That's it. Here's a newsflash: they don't get paid for those other three months they don't work. Did you realize that?

The other two huge holes in the argument are that:

1. It's California. Look at the cost of living there and compare it to say...El Paso, Texas. $100k in CA is like $40k per year here.

2. $72,000 for 9 months equates to $8k per month. For 12 months, it's $96k. From what I understand, $100,000 is six figures (albeit on the extremely low end of the scale, since the guy who makes $999,999 per year also makes six figures :rolleyes:). $96,000 per year...let me count the numbers...one...two...three...four...five...five..........five.....WTF???? That's only five figures per year! Couple that with hole #1 and teachers are underpaid in California!!! Maybe if that moron had gone to school he would realize what an utter dumbass he is.

Edit--you were the one who said six figures, not the blogger.

[14ers]

Edit--you were the one who said six figures, not the blogger.
And I stand by it. $100,000 is six figures.

Lets count it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6:D

Come on moron and tell me why you claim 100,000 is not 6 figures. Maybe you need to go back to school.:p

Idiot!!!

[Raiders Army]

And I stand by it. $100,000 is six figures.

Lets count it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6:D

Come on moron and tell me why you claim 100,000 is not 6 figures. Maybe you need to go back to school.:p

Idiot!!!

From what I understand $96,000 per year is only five figures. Don't count the comma as a figure and you'll come to the same conclusion.

[14ers]

$100,000 is a 6 figure salary. I don't understand what you don't get.


The $100,000 is based on the teachers only having to work under 9 months a year. According to the California School year I saw it is actually more like 8.5 months a year.

[Tekneek]

Privatize it. Use government subsidies and private schools. Diversify and inject competition. The good will get better and the worst will dissappear.

I agree with this. I'd also remove any legal barriers that have been put in place that make it more difficult for parents to serve as teachers of their own children (not talking about testing criteria at regular intervals to make sure they are progressing, but rather attempts to prevent parents from reasonably exercising this option).

[Raiders Army]

$100,000 is a 6 figure salary. I don't understand what you don't get.


The $100,000 is based on the teachers only having to work under 9 months a year. According to the California School year I saw it is actually more like 8.5 months a year.

Where do you see 8.5? The blog that you pointed out said 9.

[Raiders Army]

From what I can tell it's more like 9.6 or 9.7 months.

For example: in the Carlsbad Unified School District in San Diego teachers started work on August 25, 2006. They will finish up on June 15th, 2007.

That's 294 days out of the year, which is over 80% of the year.

[JPhillips]

14ers: You make a very misleading argument by including benefits. Only if teachers are working less than six months are they "making six figures." You can argue that teachers make too much, but at least be honest about it.

[duckman]

For the dick who thinks that teachers get paid too much:




TEACHERS GET PAID TOO MUCH !!!!!!! I'm fed up with teachers and their hefty salary guides. What weneed here is a little perspective. If I had it my way, I'd pay theseteachers myself......I'd pay them baby-sitting wages. That's right........instead of paying these outrageous taxes,I'd give them $3.00 an hour out of my own pocket. And, I'm only going to pay them for five hours, not coffeebreaks. That would be $15.00 a day. Each parent should pay $15.00 a day for these teachers tobaby-sit their children. Even if they have more than one child, it'scheaper than private daycare. Now how many children do they teach a day.....maybe twenty-fiveor thirty? That's $15.00 X 25 = #375.00 a day. But remember, they only work 180 days a year! I'm not going topay them for all of those vacations. $375 X 180 = $67,500. (Just a minute, I think I added wrong!) I know you teachers will say, "What about those who have 10years of experience and a masters degree?" Well, maybe (just to befair) they could get the minimum wage, and instead of justbaby-sitting, they could read the kids a story. We can round that off to about $5.00 an hour, times five hours,times twenty-five children. $5.00 X 5 X 25 = $625.00 $625 a day times 180 days............That's $112,500 per year. HUH??????? Wait a minute......Let's get a little perspectivehere. Baby-sitting wages are too good for these teachers. Did anyone see a salary guide around here?
</PRE>

[Klinglerware]

For the dick who think that teachers get paid too much:

That was pretty good...

[wade moore]

14ers: You make a very misleading argument by including benefits. Only if teachers are working less than six months are they "making six figures." You can argue that teachers make too much, but at least be honest about it.

I'm wondering why it took so long for someone to say this...

Everyone gets Benefits in their full time job. Do you count that towards your salary?

You would need to bump everyone's salary up according to benefits.. my fiancee is a teacher and she gets about the same benefits as me, if not less - so it is very disingenuous to include that figure in there.

[thealmighty]

Talk about a teacher shortage. Where do you stand on only hiring certified teacher?

I don't care where/how they get there. I care if they are any good/care about what they are doing.


I think your Salary for older teachers is wrong. Most School Districts not only pay their teachers by the numbers of years they have been there, but also have pay raises for their education level.(Bachelor, Masters, Specialist, and Doctorate)

Umm, I am a teacher. I think I know how much I am getting paid/salary schedule, for my area at least. The "bonus" for having a masters degree is so pitiful it isn't even any incentive to get one if you don't already. I believe a starting teacher gets $1000 more for a masters.

[wade moore]

I don't care where/how they get there. I care if they are any good/care about what they are doing.




Umm, I am a teacher. I think I know how much I am getting paid/salary schedule, for my area at least. The "bonus" for having a masters degree is so pitiful it isn't even any incentive to get one if you don't already. I believe a starting teacher gets $1000 more for a masters.

It's the same here give or take for the masters.

It's clear to me that 14ers really doesn't know what he's talking about. Go to any county and pull up their salary schedule. Try not picking a district in California that has probably some of the highest paid teachers in the country.

My fiancee has several co-workers who are single that have to keep 2nd jobs just to get by - and this is a relatively low cost of living area with competive wages for teachers compared to the surrounding counties.

Anyone that argues that teachers are OVERPAID really needs to get their facts straight.

[thealmighty]

This is what I'm talking about when schools raise kids instead of parents.

You are right, but the reality is, in this day, what it is. We deal with the reality of the student and their lives, not what it should be.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Anyone that argues that teachers are OVERPAID really needs to get their facts straight.

Based on the productivity of teachers in Georgia, many of them are overpaid.

Having weight & taking up space <> being worth their salary.

[wade moore]

Based on the productivity of teachers in Georgia, many of them are overpaid.

Having weight & taking up space <> being worth their salary.

Ok, fair point there.

Anyone that argues that good teachers are OVERPAID really needs to get their facts straight.



I don't think the fact that there are wastes of space as teachers means we need to decrease pay though, it means there needs to be some mechanism to bring in better teachers (higher pay?) and to get rid of crap teachers.

[wade moore]

You are right, but the reality is, in this day, what it is. We deal with the reality of the student and their lives, not what it should be.

Totally agreed. My fiancee and I were discussing this the other day. I am pretty anti-government spending on "entitlements" or whatever you want to call it. But when it comes to kids in school... The kids should not suffer because the parents suck. We should be doing everything we can to get them where they need to be. In an ideal world much of that happens at home, but we're not in an ideal world - so we need to do what we can for the kids.

[JonInMiddleGA]

We should be doing everything we can to get them where they need to be.

Problem is you're talking about doing it out of MY wallet, at gunpoint no less.

Put measures in place to prevent reckless breeding & then I'll consider it. But damned if I'm going to willingly sink further into the failed business of financing other people's kids.

[thealmighty]

For the dick who thinks that teachers get paid too much:

That is good.

Let's see... I actually have over 160 kids each day but we'll say 160 for so those in bad schools can follow the math better.

160*5= 800
800*180=144000

Add in a bit, also for the training days during the school year plus the time I have to go to training in the summer... I'll take it. That's not too far from 3x what I actually make...after 20 years.

[Tekneek]

But damned if I'm going to willingly sink further into the failed business of financing other people's kids.

What? You don't agree with the conventional wisdom that it is a good idea for us to pay more taxes/fees to cover for those who won't take proper responsibility for themselves and their children? I do enjoy the few times when we might agree on these matters. ;)

[mgadfly]

Problem is you're talking about doing it out of MY wallet, at gunpoint no less.

Put measures in place to prevent reckless breeding & then I'll consider it. But damned if I'm going to willingly sink further into the failed business of financing other people's kids.

Your wallet? Taxes isn't your money, it is OUR money. As in We The People's from our, ummm, constitution that provides for the investment in/and protection of our Commons. You can be a conservative asshole that doesn't believe in the social contract that two hundred years of American's have been a part of, but screw you when you call it "MY wallet." As long as you chose to stay here and reap the many benefits of being an American, your taxes isn't your money, any more than the money I owe the cable company for their services is MY money.

Nobody likes to pay taxes, but it has been proven over and over again that one of the most fiscally responsible ways to spend our money is by investing it in our children. Parents need to take responsibility, sure, but you can either "sink furhter into the failed business of financing other people's kids" or sink further into the failed business of housing those kids in prisons when they become adults. $500 a year now saves $27,000 per year later.

[JonInMiddleGA]

[quote]$500 a year now saves $27,000 per year later.

And vasectomies, tubal ligation, et al ends the expense of either, capping it at a one-time fee.

[Raiders Army]

The main predictors of student success are the socioeconomic status of the student's family, the education level of the parents, and parental involvement.
Agree with this completely.
You are right, but the reality is, in this day, what it is. We deal with the reality of the student and their lives, not what it should be.
The problem with dealing with the reality and in this case specifically of providing breakfast as the first period to all kids is that you are solving only one issue: socioeconomic status of the student's family. There's nothing you can do about the education level of the parents nor the parental involvement so why waste time/money on a sinking ship?

The only counter to this argument (that I see) would be the old "if it saves even one student, then isn't it worth it." Rationally I would disagree, but emotionally I would say that if it helps one student get ahead and provide a means that they can go on to a higher education then it's worth it...no matter the cost.

Then the rational side of me slaps the emotional side upside the head. ;)

[Jonathan Ezarik]

And vasectomies, tubal ligation, et al ends the expense of either, capping it at a one-time fee.

Can we start using federal tax money to fund abortions too?

[thealmighty]

I'd rather slap the wastoid parent upside the head, but my union lawyer wouldn't represent me in that case. :)

[rowech]

That is good.

Let's see... I actually have over 160 kids each day but we'll say 160 for so those in bad schools can follow the math better.

160*5= 800
800*180=144000

Add in a bit, also for the training days during the school year plus the time I have to go to training in the summer... I'll take it. That's not too far from 3x what I actually make...after 20 years.

Hate to point this out but you have made the faulty assumption that you have these kids all at the same time for five hours a day. You would probably have them all for one hour a day giving you $480/day. Comes out to be $86,400.

[thealmighty]

Hate to point this out but you have made the faulty assumption that you have these kids all at the same time for five hours a day. You would probably have them all for one hour a day giving you $480/day. Comes out to be $86,400.

Hate to point this out, but no.

If you read the post, you see I was using the $5 per and not the $3 per, so refigure.

I don't make mistakes.

I am a teacher.

I am perfection personified.

(the last part is for haters.)

[JonInMiddleGA]

Can we start using federal tax money to fund abortions too?

Works for me ... but only one per customer.

[Jonathan Ezarik]

Put the kind of money spent on the military to schools. Eliminate a bunch of ridiculous programs the government funds (like the NEA).

Eliminate teaching in languages other than English. The language barrier causes segregation in schools. Force all student to learn English and teach all classes in English.

I've never understood the hatred for the NEA. Its budget of around $125 million is an insignificant drop in the bucket when the overall federal budget is inching closer to $3 trillion.

And, please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all schools require you to take English? When I was in high school English was the only class we were required to take all four years. Has something changed in the last twelve years?

[Tekneek]

Nobody likes to pay taxes, but it has been proven over and over again that one of the most fiscally responsible ways to spend our money is by investing it in our children.

It has been proven? Beyond any reasonable doubt? Please point me to that irrefutable proof.

By the way, there may not be a lot of people who like to pay taxes, but there are certainly a lot of people who like to talk about how to spend tax money. There also seem to be more people talking about how to spend tax money than talking about letting people keep their own money. Of course, it may because almost half of the people in the nation probably don't pay any measurable amount of taxes when compared to the other half.

[Barkeep49]

I understand best how elementary and middle schools work so let me say that I am going to focus on those schools.

Ok I think teachers are not the first problem we need to fix. I agree teachers need fixing, but let's not start there. A bigger problem? The management structure of schools. High Schools have it close to the corporate world, but most people in the corporate world don't have a dozen, or more, direct reports, as even department chairs would have. Most elementary schools, even small ones, can have principals that have 30 direct reports. Sure there are plenty of crappy managers in the corporate world, but how do we expect new teachers to grow when mechanisms for getting help is so difficult? So first we need to completely rethink how structure schools.

Then we need to think about who we are putting in positions of responsibility. In many cases administrators were not the best teachers. They were so-so teachers. The best teachers don't want to leave the classroom for all the headaches of administration. The skills a typical administrator are called on to have include finance, human resources, operations (building issues), and on TOP of that they need to be experts in educational theory and practices. Oh and let's not forget the "joy" of having to deal with upset parents. It's no wonder that many of the brightest people in education stay in the classroom while those who are more mediocre move up, lured by the better pay. Authority, quite simply, needs to be far more diffused than it is now. One practical suggestion would be that master teachers, our best teachers, be regularly put in the classroom of other teachers. That through example these teachers would continue to teach and at the same time be modeling not only for students but also for other teachers. These teachers could also have a sense of the "feel" of the classroom and the problems that the teachers under them would be facing.

We also need to recognize that education really has no private sector parallel. The fact that students are the "customers" does not take into account the fact that people who are really being catered to are the parents. My education reform would start there and then move into areas like getting rid of salary based on experience, and even unions. But really the whole structure of a school is messed up and this is beyond the fact that good parenting could do far more to fix schools than anything else, as others have already mentioned.

[wade moore]

Problem is you're talking about doing it out of MY wallet, at gunpoint no less.

Put measures in place to prevent reckless breeding & then I'll consider it. But damned if I'm going to willingly sink further into the failed business of financing other people's kids.

I'm just going to skip past the measures in place to prevent reckless breeding, because, if nothing else, much of what we're talking about is relatively "stable" homes with a single child. You're going to paint the picture that it's borken homes with 400 children for welfare. There are plenty of bad parents that have stable jobs and one child.

So. That being said. In general, I agree with you that we should not have to pay because other people are screwups. I'm very much against welfare and many of the things you are against.

However, when it comes to school and children - I do not think that we should make the children suffer because they have bad parents. If we take the "screw 'em, let society deal with 'em" aspect. Well, guess what? We're society. I'd rather put money in early.

How far does that go? I don't know, but I definately think there are things we can/are doing that go above and beyond just teaching academics that are good things.

[Glengoyne]

...

Everyone gets Benefits in their full time job. Do you count that towards your salary?
...

Yes. Well, if you want to compare jobs apples to apples.

When my company's benefits lacked a little, I had guys turn down 12k to 15k raises because I couldn't compete with benefits.

Currently I'm being courted by a company whose base salary is quite a bit less than my own, but their benefits, bonus structure, and a crap load of perqs make it almost appealing.

[famatu]

I have been an educator of high school students for 11 years, and have coached varsity level in two different sports since 1991 (not both at the same time, only crossed over for 2 years). My question to you is, what would you do to improve the American Public Education system.

Abolish the DOE

[WVUFAN]

I've never understood the hatred for the NEA. Its budget of around $125 million is an insignificant drop in the bucket when the overall federal budget is inching closer to $3 trillion.

Very true, but it's 125 million that can be used elsewhere.


And, please correct me if I'm wrong, but don't all schools require you to take English? When I was in high school English was the only class we were required to take all four years. Has something changed in the last twelve years?

But the rest of the primary courses in many places have separate classes with separate teachers, one in English, one in Spanish. That is what needs to stop.

[famatu]

Example of what is wrong with government schools and why they should all be abolished....

The Seattle school district, the largest school system in Washington State, has a nasty, insane message for budding entrepreneurs, civil libertarians, and free market conservatives: your belief in individual rights or individual initiative brands you as a racist.

The Seattle Public Schools formally define individualism as a form of “cultural racism,” declaring that “cultural racism” includes “emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology.”

On their web site, they also define racism to include stereotypically white traits such as “future time orientation,” which is a pejorative word used among African-American studies professors for studying and “acting white” to reap future advancement, rather than devoting one’s energy to being hip or cool and enjoying the moment.

It is racist for the Seattle schools to stereotype achievement as a “white” characteristic. Plenty of non-whites study and exercise self-discipline. No school system should disparage student studying and achievement. That is at odds with a school system’s basic educational mission.

The Seattle schools also declare “equality” of treatment to be a form of racially-biased assimilation, favoring instead affirmative action in the form of “unequal treatment for those who have been disadvantaged over time,” to give historically oppressed groups “special programs and benefits.”

The “equality” they deride – the notion that “people who are the same in those respects relevant to how they are treated in those circumstances should receive the same treatment” – is the same notion of equal treatment whose infringement is the basis for a disparate-treatment discrimination lawsuit under the federal civil rights laws, under U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

In an apparent conflict with federal law, the Seattle schools deny that whites can be the victims of racism. They define racism as limited to acts against groups that have “little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites).”

By contrast, federal appeals courts routinely rule against institutions that fire or harass white employees, recognizing that whites can indeed be victims of racism. See, e.g., Bowen v. Missouri Department of Social Services (2002) (racial harassment of white employee by black co-worker); Taxman v. Board of Education (1996) (termination of white teacher instead of black teacher). And the Supreme Court held that racial discrimination against whites by local governments is generally illegal in City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. (1989). Affirmative action can’t be used to justify terminating or harassing an employee.

The Seattle schools’ policy, which appears to condone unlawful racial discrimination and retaliation against whites, is the product of its Equity and Race Relations department, whose director, Caprice Hollins, a multicultural “educator,” was selected with the approval of representatives of the Seattle Education Association (the local teacher’s union), the NAACP, and the Urban League.

Thanks to people like Hollins, the Seattle schools will be able to spend their time teaching (and practicing) racism, rather than reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The Supreme Court is currently considering a challenge to the Seattle schools’ policy of assigning pupils to schools based on their race, in the case of Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1. The Seattle schools’ racist web site should be brought to the Supreme Court’s attention, since it speaks volumes about the school system’s discriminatory purpose, and a discriminatory purpose invalidates even an otherwise permissible affirmative action policy under the Supreme Court’s 1996 decision in Shaw v. Hunt.

[JPhillips]

Famatu: Can you post a link?

[famatu]

Famatu: Can you post a link?

Actually, the Seattle Public School system has been FLOODED with inquiries about their "policy" so they decided to "revise" their site. You will notice at the bottom, there is a way to contact:

Caprice D. Hollins, Psy.D.
Director of Equity & Race Relations

Is there a need for a "director of equity and race relations"? WTF?

Seattle Public SchoolsYou can see their lame excuse at this link:

http://www.seattleschools.org/area/equityandrace/definitionofrace.xml

These links are articles that talk about what the policy is/was:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/272248_future01.html

http://volokh.com/posts/1147906777.shtml

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=4677

[rowech]

Absolutely frightening. Where the hell does a school district get off with that?

[Barkeep49]

Here's what I don't get with the "abolish public schools" crowd. Either they are suggesting that universal education is bad OR they are suggesting that because publicly transparent systems are bad it is bad to give power to a system where we have LESS ovesight. If some smucks in Seattle mess up on commonsense there are people we can vote out of office. Ways to pressure change. They are forced to publicly acknowledge policies such as this. Outsourcing this guarentees none of these things.

[WVUFAN]

I actually disagree with the republican view of vouchers. I think the key is more fund to schools overall. I believe one of the reasons education is sliding is because teachers and schools do not have the money to get the things they need to properly educate.

[Barkeep49]

Here's the thing with vouchers: they work against the idea of universal education. A big drain, right now, on public education is special ed students. A system of vouchers does not work because the voucher for the student does not cover that student's actual costs. Schools, therefore, have an economic incentive to not take that student. As long as universal education remains a goal, I do not think vouchers are the right idea.

[WVUFAN]

Here's the thing with vouchers: they work against the idea of universal education. A big drain, right now, on public education is special ed students. A system of vouchers does not work because the voucher for the student does not cover that student's actual costs. Schools, therefore, have an economic incentive to not take that student. As long as universal education remains a goal, I do not think vouchers are the right idea.

Good point.

[famatu]

Here's what I don't get with the "abolish public schools" crowd. Either they are suggesting that universal education is bad OR they are suggesting that because publicly transparent systems are bad it is bad to give power to a system where we have LESS ovesight. If some smucks in Seattle mess up on commonsense there are people we can vote out of office. Ways to pressure change. They are forced to publicly acknowledge policies such as this. Outsourcing this guarentees none of these things.

I home school my kids. That is my way to "practice what I preach." I mean no disrespect to those of you who send your kids to government schools but I think even letting your kids enter those places is borderline child abuse (by the government school, not the parent since they really don't know any better.)

I understand not everyone has the time or resources to home school and that is why I am for vouchers. Why not give that single mom who works 3 jobs with no chance in hell to give her kid an advantage a chance to send her kid to a good school? Why force her to keep sending her kid to the local failing government school? Vouchers are FOR THE POOR KIDS. The rich kids don't need them. Their parents have the money to send them to any school they wish or home school them.

I care very deeply about the children of this world and would like nothing more than to see them all get a chance at a quality education in a positive environment. I think giving them vouchers that allow them to attend good, private schools is the best way to do this.

[Barkeep49]

I home school my kids. That is my way to "practice what I preach." I mean no disrespect to those of you who send your kids to government schools but I think even letting your kids enter those places is borderline child abuse (by the government school, not the parent since they really don't know any better.)

I understand not everyone has the time or resources to home school and that is why I am for vouchers. Why not give that single mom who works 3 jobs with no chance in hell to give her kid an advantage a chance to send her kid to a good school? Why force her to keep sending her kid to the local failing government school? Vouchers are FOR THE POOR KIDS. The rich kids don't need them. Their parents have the money to send them to any school they wish or home school them.

I care very deeply about the children of this world and would like nothing more than to see them all get a chance at a quality education in a positive environment. I think giving them vouchers that allow them to attend good, private schools is the best way to do this.
Except, as has been noted earlier in the thread,
A. Private schools haven't been shown to have overall superiority to public schools
B. This does not address my contention that poor kids, rich kids, black kids, white kids, or any kids, who are expensive to educate would be rejected by private institutions due to the fact that the voucher would not cover the true cost of their education.

[14ers]

I understand not everyone has the time or resources to home school and that is why I am for vouchers. Why not give that single mom who works 3 jobs with no chance in hell to give her kid an advantage a chance to send her kid to a good school? Why force her to keep sending her kid to the local failing government school? Vouchers are FOR THE POOR KIDS. The rich kids don't need them. Their parents have the money to send them to any school they wish or home school them.
this would turn out to be just another Food Stamp scam with people trying to figure out how much drugs, booze and tobacco they can buy with their vouchers.

Would your single Mom be a licensed qualified teacher?

At least the public education system right now gives some of these kids a fighting chance to get out of their situation. I would hate to see parents allowed the opportunity to cash in on their kids by keeping them at home.

[wade moore]

Yes. Well, if you want to compare jobs apples to apples.

When my company's benefits lacked a little, I had guys turn down 12k to 15k raises because I couldn't compete with benefits.

Currently I'm being courted by a company whose base salary is quite a bit less than my own, but their benefits, bonus structure, and a crap load of perqs make it almost appealing.

I understand that when comparing jobs.

But when making some bold claim that teachers "Make 6 figures" it is misleading to include benefits, because when people talk about someone's salary they are not including benefits.

[thealmighty]

Maybe it's just where I am, but I don't know what all this benefit talk is about for teachers. I don't have any benefits. We pay out the ass monthly for health insurance, almost $600 a month.

Benefits? Right.

[WVUFAN]

Maybe it's just where I am, but I don't know what all this benefit talk is about for teachers. I don't have any benefits. We pay out the ass monthly for health insurance, almost $600 a month.

Benefits? Right.

Jesus. Sorry, man.

My mom retired 3 years ago as a teacher. Her health insurance has increased 30% since that date. The WV school system really screws with retirees (plus the insurance, PEIA, is really poor).

[Tekneek]

At least the public education system right now gives some of these kids a fighting chance to get out of their situation. I would hate to see parents allowed the opportunity to cash in on their kids by keeping them at home.

I do believe, in most areas, home schooled students are still required to take standardized tests at regular intervals, just like public school students. They wouldn't be able to milk the system of money forever while teaching them nothing, just like the public school can no longer get by the same way.

I find it to be a major contradiction how some people say a problem is the lack of parental involvement, yet parents who decide to have the ultimate amount of parental involvement (homeschooling) are criticized. Parents need to be involved...oh wait, not that involved...just involved up to the point that the public school advocates are happy with...?

[CraigSca]

I'm not really sure that education reform is actually do-able. There are so many opposing opinions and it's hard to get people to understand that additional monies taken from your wallet = hopefully better schools.

We're having a referendum in our area for additional schools. I think it'll cost ~$200 more a year. It makes sense to me as our school district is growing astronomically. That being said, we also see the school district not living up to their end of the bargain (particularly surrounding the unique circumstances of our son). I give them the benefit of the doubt and hope they're just doing the best they can.

And frankly, the area I used to live in, the teachers made an average salary of $87K (this was years ago as well - they are the highest paying school district in PA). No, that didn't include benefits, nor was it pro-rated to 12 months. To have tenure on top of that, it looked like a pretty sweet deal to me. However, I have also seen the opposite - my girlfriend in college became and elementary school teacher and the Catholic schools were offering about $20k. I'm not sure how you can even live on that.

[famatu]

I do believe, in most areas, home schooled students are still required to take standardized tests at regular intervals, just like public school students. They wouldn't be able to milk the system of money forever while teaching them nothing, just like the public school can no longer get by the same way.

I find it to be a major contradiction how some people say a problem is the lack of parental involvement, yet parents who decide to have the ultimate amount of parental involvement (homeschooling) are criticized. Parents need to be involved...oh wait, not that involved...just involved up to the point that the public school advocates are happy with...?

We give our son two different standardized tests every year. We give him days off when we take a family vacation and that's about it. Because of this, he is a full grade ahead of his government school peers and scores much higher than all of them in evey important category - reading, comprhension, writing, and math.

The local governent school tried to buy us off buy offering to pay for his yearly school supplies and calling us a "charter school" if we would allow his test scores to be lumped in with their. Our response was LOL - we took him out of your school because you do things like dumb down your school population! Now you want us to help you do it? Are you crazy?

[Edward64]

(This is a good discussion topic. I purposely withheld from reading/participating on this thread until I came up with my list of solutions).

I know there are exceptions and extremes and you can't have an answer to everything and make everyone happy but here are my thoughts. They apply to what I believe is the general, overall situation. My numbers, unless otherwise specified, are generalized based on the 80/20 rule.

I have been an educator of high school students for 11 years, and have coached varsity level in two different sports since 1991 (not both at the same time, only crossed over for 2 years). My question to you is, what would you do to improve the American Public Education system.

I tend to believe the American Public Education system is fine. Of course there is room for improvement but overall its good. With that said, I would ...

1) Continue the certification of teachers and require continuing education of teachers.
2) Implement an incentive program for top performing teachers. Not just raw test scores but improvement delta of test scores, additionally feedback from students/parents etc.
3) Implement some sort of breakfast/lunch/dinner school food program for especially the underprivilege.
4) Implement some sort of 'stay at school while parents are at work program' for especially the underprivilege.
5) Allow the termination/reassignment of poor performing teachers.
6) Allow the termination of habitual 'bad' (I'm sure this can be defined somehow) students. Some kids are just cancer to the rest of the classroom. Get rid of them to (someplace else).
7) Accept that some students will never graduate HS as they don't have the support structure/intelligence/aptitude/attitude/maturity and create an apprenticeship program (or like) for them. Of course, allow them to resume HS at a later date if appropriate.
8) Accept that the government's role is to provide opportunities and avenues for education and can only do so much. There will always be 20% that is left behind.

Privatize it. Use government subsidies and private schools. Diversify and inject competition. The good will get better and the worst will dissappear.

Its sounds good, but in reality it will just be a giveaway to private schools. There aren't enough companies/non-profits for there to be any real competition in most of the country. Some will be good, but there will be a large number of mediocre to poor schools that are just in it for the money. Its like a lot of government privatization schemes, it sounds good, but in the end we don't save money and the results are the same.

That being said, I'm more than willing to try it on a small scale and see what happens. One of the biggest problems in education is the unwillingness to try solutions. Let's experiment and see if we can find better methods.

Agree with JPhillips. There is a role for private schools, however this is just unrealistic for the majority of parents/students. Allow vouchers but Public education must be supported for the other 80% of students.

Make parents responsible for bringing up their children.

The problem is as much a result of poor parenting as it is the school systems.

If we rely on parents, then I pity the kids who have poor parents.

Conceptually, I agree with making parents more responsible but do not see how this is enforceable. I think our solutions have to assume this is not doable.

The main predictors of student success are the socioeconomic status of the student's family, the education level of the parents, and parental involvement.
Agreed with your main predictor statement. The book, Freakonomics, support this also.

Eliminate teaching in languages other than English. The language barrier causes segregation in schools. Force all student to learn English and teach all classes in English.
Didn't think about this one but I like it. Of course teach foreign languages but teach classes in English. From my point of view, an immigrant kid may be 2 years behind because of this (ex. to learn English adequately) but it will benefit them in the long run.

FWIW, I think there are a lot of colleges out there with pretty low standards so every kid can be college bound easily. College is no longer a higher institution of learning; it's a cash cow.
I agree. Most kids can get into some college. The BA/Associates degree opens up opportunities.

deal with the salary structure. Here, a starting teacher makes plenty, again imho, but they do nothing later. Why stay in teaching when you only make $5000 more after 10 years than when you started. If you do, in fact, get rid of the idiots, what you have left is worth what it costs to keep them

I personally believe teachers are well paid. GA 2001 average $42K, ranked 20th. MS averaged $32K, ranked 49th. http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/doe/finances/salaries.asp

I don't think pay needs to be increased but do think there should be incentives for performance (ex. merit bonus, recognition etc.). This is a middle income salary for 9 months work, I assume more if summer school is taught.

Everyone gets Benefits in their full time job. Do you count that towards your salary?

You would need to bump everyone's salary up according to benefits.. my fiancee is a teacher and she gets about the same benefits as me, if not less - so it is very disingenuous to include that figure in there.

I don't know what a teachers benefits are but do believe the are within norm. Also, I believe as a state employee, their retirement benefits far exceeds a normal retirement benefit. I do think their benefits should be factored into the equation but no, they should not claim to make 6 figures.

Maybe it's just where I am, but I don't know what all this benefit talk is about for teachers. I don't have any benefits. We pay out the ass monthly for health insurance, almost $600 a month.

Benefits? Right.
To compare, family coverage for BCBS-GA with regular deductibles are probably $800/month for self insured. I would expect state to subsidize at least 50% of health (ex. $400/month).

I find your situation strange. Can you detail where and if you have any special circumstances?

[Barkeep49]

Taking a look at what Edward so thoughtfully put out there:

1) Continue the certification of teachers and require continuing education of teachers.
Fine. I think there are better ways to promote new ideas than mandating continuing education (which I will talk about below)

2) Implement an incentive program for top performing teachers. Not just raw test scores but improvement delta of test scores, additionally feedback from students/parents etc.
I think incentive programs don't go far enough. I think the whole compensation system is out of whack. I would get rid of pay for seniority and also tenure. Open up the labor market. In this particular design I would actually keep unions as otherwise I think it's far more likely that you'd see a net decrease in teacher pay, rather than a reallocation. Teachers in demand should get paid more. Whether they are in demand because they are good teachers, or teaching a subject with less teachers, or because they are good negiotiators shouldn't matter. The idea would be to create some market forces in the labor market. As previously posted I believe there needs to be more teacher collobartion and by having teachers switch schools more best practices are more likely to be dissiminated.


3) Implement some sort of breakfast/lunch/dinner school food program for especially the underprivilege.
Not sure how this is a change, but I agree with conceptually.

4) Implement some sort of 'stay at school while parents are at work program' for especially the underprivilege.
Strongly agree. As Edward stated later on it's less likely that parents are suddenly going to know how to parent. So giving parents some structure is good. One of the best schools I know of, KIPP Charter Schoools, have a very long school day. I'm wholely in favor of this idea.

5) Allow the termination/reassignment of poor performing teachers.
Again I agree that the labor situation needs to be redefined and this would go along with what I was saying with getting rid of tenure.

6) Allow the termination of habitual 'bad' (I'm sure this can be defined somehow) students. Some kids are just cancer to the rest of the classroom. Get rid of them to (someplace else).
Amen.

7) Accept that some students will never graduate HS as they don't have the support structure/intelligence/aptitude/attitude/maturity and create an apprenticeship program (or like) for them. Of course, allow them to resume HS at a later date if appropriate.
I think every student should graduate HS. However, what is done with the last two years of high school should be rethought more. I see nothing wrong with demanding a student have, for instnace, four years of English. But also allowing for mroe apprenticeships is a good idea.

[JPhillips]

I'll add increased funding for lead abatement in homes and apartments. Its the easiest way to raise the average IQ in poor children.

[thealmighty]

I find your situation strange. Can you detail where and if you have any special circumstances?

The only special circumstances are that:

I am in Texas. Special being that in this state we have no right to strike as teachers. That's not to say that I have a sign in my closet waiting, but that in some states/cities that have that right, they are able to strike to get better deals for benefits and salary. Texas was, last I looked, in the bottom half of states for average teacher pay.
I am in Dallas, where stupidity and corruption are monthly topics in the news.Now, I would love to get $$, $$, $$ out the ass. More, more, more? I would take it. That isn't my main concern in the salary area, however. It just pisses me off, as with many of the rest of you, that I can have 90+% of my students pass the state exam and get the same renumeration as someone that sits around constantly and has a 30% passing rate.

I personally believe teachers are well paid. GA 2001 average $42K, ranked 20th. MS averaged $32K, ranked 49th. http://www.doe.k12.ga.us/doe/finances/salaries.asp

I don't think pay needs to be increased but do think there should be incentives for performance (ex. merit bonus, recognition etc.). This is a middle income salary for 9 months work, I assume more if summer school is taught.

You really think that an average of $32K, say for a 10th year professional , possibly with a masters degree, is what people teaching the future of this country are worth? Or $37K to put the number in the middle of the two examples you give? You think postmen with no degree are more worthy, because a friend of mine is a postman and he makes more than I do (good for him. That's not my point.)? Or garbage collectors, or plumbers? How do you judge what a teacher should get? Do you get enough? Are you actually overpaid like teachers, since we "only work" 9 months a year (fallacy, in lots of places/cases)?

[Galaxy]

20/20 did an interesting two-piece story on education reform, competition, and the teacher unions (which he pissed off the NYC union).

Personally, re-develop K-8 to teach and instill the basics. Then, privatize high school. One thing you could do is develop magnet schools. If students like science, develop a school with labs, research centers, and that. If a student wants to learn about construction or business, develop programs and facilities around those subjects.

Also, I think that the way things are taught needs to be updated. Create more projects and interaction.

[duckman]

Here is the entire episode:

hxxp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfRUMmTs0ZA

Here is an article that John Stossel wrote in response to the New York Teachers' Union remarks about the special:

hxxp://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1701265&page=1

[Edward64]

It just pisses me off, as with many of the rest of you, that I can have 90+% of my students pass the state exam and get the same renumeration as someone that sits around constantly and has a 30% passing rate.
I do believe there should be incentive bonus based on other criterias in addition to straight passing rates. Otherwise, teachers in depressed areas will be at an disadvantage.

You really think that an average of $32K, say for a 10th year professional , possibly with a masters degree, is what people teaching the future of this country are worth? Or $37K to put the number in the middle of the two examples you give? You think postmen with no degree are more worthy, because a friend of mine is a postman and he makes more than I do (good for him. That's not my point.)? Or garbage collectors, or plumbers? How do you judge what a teacher should get? Do you get enough? Are you actually overpaid like teachers, since we "only work" 9 months a year (fallacy, in lots of places/cases)?

The simple answer is yes. Here's my reasoning.

(Please do not consider my response as anti-teacher. I see the difference teachers make in my 2 children's life and certainly respect them).

To try discuss this based on 'teaching the future of this country are worth?' will not be productive. The world is not fair, no one thinks they are being paid enough but bottom line, the supply-demand does not support paying teachers more.

This is the key point. You may think teachers should be paid more because they are teaching the future of the country ... however market forces is saying there are plenty of others who believe 'total compensation' of teaching is satisfactory enough to warrant them being teachers.

I view the total Teacher 'total compensation' package as

1. Current Salary
2. Current Benefits
3. Retirement Benefits
4. Quality of Life
5. Self actualization

I would appreciate real world feedback on 2-3.

(1) Current Salary.

Lets first establish that average Teacher salary is basically the US average also. US average was range of $36K in 2001-02.

http://www.bls.gov/cew/state2002.pdf

(2) Current Benefits. (please share your situation)

No hard data but I will assume it is norm.

(3) Retirement Benefits. (please share your situation)

No hard data but conventional wisdom tells me retirement benefits from State government is good, certainly better than many public corporations.

(4) Quality of Life.

Two items here (a) 3 months off and (b) not high stress.

I'm just going to assume teachers gets 3 months more off-time than the typical corporate employee. This factors in summer and spring break etc.

Sure we can say add x% more to average teacher wages and consider this true compensation. But I believe the value of the 3 months break is far greater than a simple x%. The ability to have 3 months break and ability to continue back on your job is an extraordinary perk.

Also, I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but I believe teaching is generally, as a whole, on average a relatively, non-high stress job. This is not to say its a low stress job, just that its not high stress ... not out of the norm.

(5) Self Actualization. Talk about getting instant gratification, being able to make a difference in a child's life etc. The vast majority of workers do not have this privilege. I have to believe this aspect of the job goes a long way to the reason why teachers teach.


Therefore ...

With this all said, when you factor in total compensation, I believe a teacher has many non-monetary compensation that makes their job more than worthwhile, even after accounting for market forces in $ inequity.

I would add as an afterthought (because I do not know the subject well) that teacher unions may contribute to the pay inequity. The tradeoff on 'lower' pay maybe job security and retirement benefits? Can someone speak to this?

[Barkeep49]

Edward: But are teachers an "average" profession? I would argue no. And that doesn't even go into the fact that teachers are more highly educated, with many having masters degrees and more, than the average person.

2-3. Benefits are fairly good, I won't lie, in Illinois. The fact that public school teachers can get a pension is a good thing. Of course I don't expect to see a pension by the time I retire. But then again most of the people my age won't. Health care is fairly standard with most industries.

4. I've had low stress jobs and teaching is not one of them. Good teachers have to be mentally on every moment you are teaching. When I'm working at the library, if I'm off my peak for a minute, or even five, perhaps I don't find the books a patron was looking for as quickly. If I do that while teaching? Utter chaos. Further, good teachers are invested in kids. So there is stress in that. I'm not going to claim that it's the same level of stress as say a divorce lawyer or hedge fund manager, but teaching is it's own unique challenge.

The three months off are great, I won't lie. But I think you make the picture a little easier than it is.

5. This is why most teachers teach. However, I get a lot of enjoyment out of other things I do with kids, such as being a librarian, without a lot of the other things.


But this whole discussion gets away from the reform idea.

[wade moore]

(b) not high stress.

You just showed your lack of knowledge of the teaching profession.

[thealmighty]

I do believe there should be incentive bonus based on other criterias in addition to straight passing rates. Otherwise, teachers in depressed areas will be at an disadvantage.



The simple answer is yes. Here's my reasoning.

(Please do not consider my response as anti-teacher. I see the difference teachers make in my 2 children's life and certainly respect them).

To try discuss this based on 'teaching the future of this country are worth?' will not be productive. The world is not fair, no one thinks they are being paid enough but bottom line, the supply-demand does not support paying teachers more.

This is the key point. You may think teachers should be paid more because they are teaching the future of the country ... however market forces is saying there are plenty of others who believe 'total compensation' of teaching is satisfactory enough to warrant them being teachers.

I view the total Teacher 'total compensation' package as

1. Current Salary
2. Current Benefits
3. Retirement Benefits
4. Quality of Life
5. Self actualization

I would appreciate real world feedback on 2-3.

(1) Current Salary.

Lets first establish that average Teacher salary is basically the US average also. US average was range of $36K in 2001-02.

http://www.bls.gov/cew/state2002.pdf

(2) Current Benefits. (please share your situation)

No hard data but I will assume it is norm.

(3) Retirement Benefits. (please share your situation)

No hard data but conventional wisdom tells me retirement benefits from State government is good, certainly better than many public corporations.

(4) Quality of Life.

Two items here (a) 3 months off and (b) not high stress.

I'm just going to assume teachers gets 3 months more off-time than the typical corporate employee. This factors in summer and spring break etc.

Sure we can say add x% more to average teacher wages and consider this true compensation. But I believe the value of the 3 months break is far greater than a simple x%. The ability to have 3 months break and ability to continue back on your job is an extraordinary perk.

Also, I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but I believe teaching is generally, as a whole, on average a relatively, non-high stress job. This is not to say its a low stress job, just that its not high stress ... not out of the norm.

(5) Self Actualization. Talk about getting instant gratification, being able to make a difference in a child's life etc. The vast majority of workers do not have this privilege. I have to believe this aspect of the job goes a long way to the reason why teachers teach.


Therefore ...

With this all said, when you factor in total compensation, I believe a teacher has many non-monetary compensation that makes their job more than worthwhile, even after accounting for market forces in $ inequity.

I would add as an afterthought (because I do not know the subject well) that teacher unions may contribute to the pay inequity. The tradeoff on 'lower' pay maybe job security and retirement benefits? Can someone speak to this?

I can see from some remarks that you have no idea what teaching is like or the equity gap from compensation/benefits from one place to another. Market price is what you are paying and it is why you have so many unqualified or piss-poor teachers in so many, many classrooms, which is one reason education is in the state it is in.

Everthing is relative to where you are.

[wade moore]

I can see from some remarks that you have no idea what teaching is like or the equity gap from compensation/benefits from one place to another. Market price is what you are paying and it is why you have so many unqualified or piss-poor teachers in so many, many classrooms, which is one reason education is in the state it is in.

Everthing is relative to where you are.

Not to mention that I would like to fully understand where this average comes from.

He's saying it's all ok because a teacher makes the "average" salary ...

This compares someone with at LEAST a bachelor's (and many more teachers are getting a master's these days) to unemployed, potentially part-time (don't know what's included in there), unskilled labor... need i go on? I don't think it's a fair comparison at all...

And the whole argument that they're getting paid "market value"... like thealmighty mentions here, they're getting paid the market value for the quality that is there now... if you want higher quality teachers, you pay more, simple... many good teachers either don't teach ever or leave teaching because of the pay - or lack there of.

[Edward64]

You just showed your lack of knowledge of the teaching profession.

It is true that I am not a teacher, however I have obviously gone through 12 years of schooling and additional college years. From what I've seen, I stand by my comment.

I do not mind debating if you wish. Can you please site examples that apply generally, as a whole, on average to the teaching profession that causes high stress?

Not to mention that I would like to fully understand where this average comes from.

He's saying it's all ok because a teacher makes the "average" salary ...

This compares someone with at LEAST a bachelor's (and many more teachers are getting a master's these days) to unemployed, potentially part-time (don't know what's included in there), unskilled labor... need i go on? I don't think it's a fair comparison at all...

And the whole argument that they're getting paid "market value"... like thealmighty mentions here, they're getting paid the market value for the quality that is there now... if you want higher quality teachers, you pay more, simple... many good teachers either don't teach ever or leave teaching because of the pay - or lack there of.
You are right. I don't know how the numbers are generated, but you have the link.

I tried doing a search on average wages for college graduates and did not have much success. I welcome any additional data that you can find.

As to market value, I can only speak from my experience in a suburb in GA. The GA 2001 average is $42K (see my other link) and I feel the quality of teachers is good+.

wade moore & thealmighty. Your counter points are primarily to my my (1) and part of (4.b). I would appreciate your views on the other points?

[Izulde]

All the people who bitch about teacher's salaries need to realize how much work teachers put in during the school year. Every day, my mom would get up at 5 am to be to school by 6:30 (school started around 7:00ish if I remember right) and most nights she wouldn't be home until 6 pm or later because of helping kids after school, etc.

And that's just the school day. That's not counting the hours grading papers and tests at home, or in some cases, spending summers writing curriculum as some teachers do.

[wade moore]

It is true that I am not a teacher, however I have obviously gone through 12 years of schooling and additional college years. From what I've seen, I stand by my comment.

I do not mind debating if you wish. Can you please site examples that apply generally, as a whole, on average to the teaching profession that causes high stress?

I can site many examples, so I'll just try to grab a few that are direct examples from my fiancee's short year and a half teaching...

A) Special Needs children that are EXTREME disruptions in the classroom, but do not get the services they need.
B) Standardized testing that is thrown at them 2 hours before it has to be implemented.
C) Short deadlines for Report Cards.
D) Crap parents that will not even return the most basic emergency forms, let alone assist the kid at skill.
E) Even crappier parents where kids come into school with bruises, etc. and they report as required but nothing is doneand the parent comes back and takes it out on the teacher.
F) Dealing with 19 different children (many classes elsewhere in the country are larger than hers) all with very different needs relying on her to teach the very basics of education.

There are many more, but I'm hoping the general point is getting across...





You are right. I don't know how the numbers are generated, but you have the link.

I tried doing a search on average wages for college graduates and did not have much success. I welcome any additional data that you can find.

As to market value, I can only speak from my experience in a suburb in GA. The GA 2001 average is $42K (see my other link) and I feel the quality of teachers is good+.

wade moore & thealmighty. Your counter points are primarily to my my (1) and part of (4.b). I would appreciate your views on the other points?

While you may not be able to obtain the market value for college graduates (i'll see what i can find) I think it is very easy to surmise that it would be substantially higher than the numbers for all workers.

As for your comment about GA, I think JiMG, SkyDog, and others would be shocked because my impression has always been that GA is commonly known to have one of the worst public school systems in the nation.

As for your other points, i'll work on responding to them, it's just very time consuming to do it thoroughly like I like to. Let me look for this data first.

[wade moore]

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06304/

Here's the best I could find for now...

You'll see on the salary table that Educators (particularly for PreCollege) are amongst the lowest paid of college graduates. The only things similarly low are the Self Employed and state government employees.

You'll notice that the median pay for all of those with bachelor's degrees is 47,000 and for PreCollege educators it is 41,000. For all graduates period it is 50,000 - which is more fair since there are many teachers with master's degrees (which btw averages 54,000 in salary).

[Edward64]

Cougarfreak. My apologies if we have gone off topic. I do feel this discussion on total compensation is important but will start another thread if you believe we've hijacked your thread.

While you may not be able to obtain the market value for college graduates (i'll see what i can find) I think it is very easy to surmise that it would be substantially higher than the numbers for all workers.

As for your comment about GA, I think JiMG, SkyDog, and others would be shocked because my impression has always been that GA is commonly known to have one of the worst public school systems in the nation.

As for your other points, i'll work on responding to them, it's just very time consuming to do it thoroughly like I like to. Let me look for this data first.

Fair enough, I appreciate your efforts and am very interested in debating this. I will wait for your full response on my 5 points of 'total compensation' plus anything else you wish to add.

Update to average teacher wages. According to the NEA, the average wage is $47,808.

http://www.nea.org/edstats/index.html

In response to quality of GA public school, I found the below links (see report cards bottom half).

http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/states/profile.asp

and ...

http://www.collegeboard.com/prod_downloads/about/news_info/cbsenior/yr2006/table3-mean-SAT-reasoning-test.pdf

Yes, this does seem to indicate that GA is below average but will not concede that it is 'one of the worst'.

FWIW, I searched for elementary school rankings and did not find any, the closest I could find was HS rankings. The HS that my children will be going to was ranked 375 out of top 1200 schools as ranked by Newsweek.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12532678?s=400&np=13&sort=sta

Regardless of my satisfaction, I will concede that GA public education, as a whole, on average is below national average.

[Edward64]

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/infbrief/nsf06304/

Here's the best I could find for now...

You'll see on the salary table that Educators (particularly for PreCollege) are amongst the lowest paid of college graduates. The only things similarly low are the Self Employed and state government employees.

You'll notice that the median pay for all of those with bachelor's degrees is 47,000 and for PreCollege educators it is 41,000. For all graduates period it is 50,000 - which is more fair since there are many teachers with master's degrees (which btw averages 54,000 in salary).

Just saw your new post. My latest reply took alot of time and research and was not a reply to the post above but the one prior.

I will reply after reading through your latest info.

[wade moore]

FWIW, I take the NEA stats with a grain of salt as they're trying to get people to be teachers.

[panerd]

It is true that I am not a teacher, however I have obviously gone through 12 years of schooling and additional college years. From what I've seen, I stand by my comment.


I have seen happy doctors on the golf course and lawyers at the bars, so due to my 20 years of schooling I have come to the conclusion that they are not stressed. Of course I could also just be talking out of my ass.

[wade moore]

1. Current Salary
We are addressing this, but I still stand by the fact that they are one of the lower paid professions that requires a degree.

2. Current Benefits
I concur that on the whole, their benefits are on par with everyone else's.. sometimes worse, sometimes better... pretty much like any other job..

3. Retirement Benefits

I'll quibble with you a bit here. First off, you seem to write them off as being above average because state government is "above average". Well, state/federal/local/military all are pretty similar (although military is actually better). That is a LOT of the employees in the nation. So, I don't like teachers being categorized by themselves here.

In addition, some larger corporations (like the one I work for) have pension plans that from what I've seen of the data from my corporation and my fiancee's retirement plans - are relatively on par. I will concede that I am in one of the largest professional corporations (by employees) in the nation, so I'm not a GREAT sample.. but there are many companies that have pensions...

So, yes, they have better retirement benefits than many, but they are by no means in a class of their own.


4. Quality of Life

4a. Three Months Off

Quick point of clarification - it's really 2 months off, at least in VA. In VA the last day of school is around the 3rd week of June (in the early 20's) and then they return to school 1 or 2 weeks before school starts (so again, 3rdish week of August). In addition, many teachers go in early in the summer on "their own time" to get things ready.

I'm going to be selfish in answering PART of this. My fiancee works summer school. So, she really only has about a month off. And, the compensation for summer school is not all that great. So, for some teachers, they don't truely have 3 months off.

That being said, this is obviously a huge draw. I can't argue too much when people make the statement that you should figure teacher pay by the hour when comparing to other professions. Fair enough to an extent, but they are still pretty low imo when you do this.

However, I will argue some. The reason I say that is - yes, they get two months off. But that is the way the school system is setup. So, if you want to get full-time professionals, I don't think you can factor this in too much. It's not reasonable, imo, to say you want someone to dedicate themselves to this important profession, and pay them at a rate in which they need to work a labor intensive job in these two months in order to live like their peers with similar educations.

4b Low Stress - I'm not sure you responded to this, but I attempted to address this. I think your stance on this just comes from not seeing the behind the scenes of a teacher's job. In fact, I would add the stress of having to always look like you're enjoying your job ;).

5. Self actualization

I would quibble with this a LOT. First off, to be honest, there are many teachers that I have seen that do not get this self-actualization.

That being said, I do agree that this is a reason a majority do it.

Where I quibble is that others don't do this. I would argue that if you're not getting this from your job, perhaps you should reconsider your profession. I do not think the rate at which teachers get this from their job is THAT much higher than other professions. I have met many people in the IT sector that get this from engineering a solution, developing a website, satisfying a customer, etc.. hell, when I worked Help Desk - I got a ton of satisfaction in fixing people's issues.

I think you're short changing other professions in this element and would argue that while it may be a larger factor for teachers in doing their job, that they do not actually get that much more satisfaction than many other people do from their professions.



Note: I'm really enjoying this conversation fwiw.

[wade moore]

I've been hunting and hunting for a good ranking of stressful jobs.. Not having much luck, but I did find this one:

http://www.uq.edu.au/news/?article=7633

That mentions teaching as a top 10... admittedly this is in Australia, but I doubt it is that much different.

[thealmighty]

FWIW, I searched for elementary school rankings and did not find any, the closest I could find was HS rankings. The HS that my children will be going to was ranked 375 out of top 1200 schools as ranked by Newsweek.

On that note, over half the high schools in my district are considered low performing, I believe. However, the #1 high school in the USA, according to the report you show (and the #8 as well) is also in my district. So if you are at the #1 school and you drive, literally, a mile away, you see a low performing school. How? Magnets. They recruit. They expel. They interview...point is any place can have a killer school given circumstances. The lowest rated state in the country has some awesome schools if you can afford to live there (or pay to go there).


1. Current Salary
Discussion ongoing.

2. Current Benefits
As stated in a previous post...what benefits?

3. Retirement Benefits
Again, I have no idea what benefits you are referring to. Enlighten me.

4. Quality of Life

4a. Three Months Off- As stated, maybe depending on where you are from, the three months off is not three months as it was back in the day. Then you have the week long conferences, the days of training, etc..., to keep up with all the really neat advences and research (which seem to oftem be actually a rehash from 25 years ago. Nevertheless, the summers do, indeed rock. Of course, the summer off isn't a summer off because I demand that time off or I retire. It wasn't my idea.

4b Low Stress - You have no idea. Quit making assumptions you have no basis to make.

5. Self actualization
What? Doctors save lives. Since this is very gratifying, I think we should take that into account and pay them $45K per year average across the board. Some doctors suck and kill people way more than others do, but they should all be paid the same regardless.


p.s.- none of what you (or anyone in this thread) say is being taken personally by me and I hope the same goes for you.

[wade moore]

thealmighty - do you really not have any retirement benefits? I did honestly think that it was pretty standard to have state retirment benefits for teachers.

[Edward64]

Note: I'm really enjoying this conversation fwiw.[/I]
p.s.- none of what you (or anyone in this thread) say is being taken personally by me and I hope the same goes for you.
I am enjoying this also. I do enjoy civil debates and this has been a subject matter I would like to understand more. I'll respond properly later today to your latest postings.

4b Low Stress
4b Low Stress - You have no idea. Quit making assumptions you have no basis to make.
I would appreciate you both to quote accurately my statement as your rebuttals are not rebutting my specific claim ...

(4) Quality of Life.

Two items here (a) 3 months off and (b) not high stress.
:
Also, I am sure there are exceptions to the rule, but I believe teaching is generally, as a whole, on average a relatively, non-high stress job. This is not to say its a low stress job, just that its not high stress ... not out of the norm.
In regards to this issue 4.b, I suspect we will not get anywhere with subjective posts. I will make a effort to find 'legit' rankings of stressful jobs later.

I have seen happy doctors on the golf course and lawyers at the bars, so due to my 20 years of schooling I have come to the conclusion that they are not stressed. Of course I could also just be talking out of my ass.
I believe if you are around doctors/lawyers 5-6 hrs a day, for 5 days a week for 9 months of the year, for 12-16 years, you would not be talking out of your ass.

[wade moore]

n regards to this issue 4.b, I suspect we will not get anywhere with subjective posts. I will make a effort to find 'legit' rankings of stressful jobs later.

I agree that it is the best way to definitively address the issue. Unfortunately all I can find are "top ten lists" which are all over the map - but that Australia one and a UK one list Teaching in the top 10. That leads me to believe that it would be difficult to argue that it is not a stressful job, even if it is not really a top 10 stressful job.

[waltwal]

i taught in school for about 27 years- 10 in private. one day i was sitting in the teachers room at a school that was below average in terms of student academic quality. i was complaining about the fact that the same kids were causing most of the problems. i said something like "why don't they send these kids to Continuation school and keep them there". another teacher looked at me and said "you don't understand! Continuation school is harder to get into than Stanford!"

i have always disagreed with the premise of the voucher system. my point has been that it doesn't make sense to allow 70-90% of the students to move to a private school when all you have to do is move 10% or so of the losers to Continuation school. in a normal school or classroom about 10% of the students cause most of the problems and they pull other kids along with them. getting rid of a few students would really improve the level of instruction.

of course the question arises - Is this possible? a constitutional amendment would have to be passed that would state something to the effect that student rights do not exist. the school has the ability to make decisions that can only be appealed to the school board and attorneys cannot enter the process.

my 10 years in a private catholic school showed me 2 things.

1. when you have a student problem deal with it by sending the problem to a public school.

2. you can have much better football teams in private schools.

[Edward64]

The following are quotes and responses to wade moore and thealmighty.
1. Current Salary
We are addressing this, but I still stand by the fact that they are one of the lower paid professions that requires a degree.
1. Current Salary
Discussion ongoing.
You'll notice that the median pay for all of those with bachelor's degrees is 47,000 and for PreCollege educators it is 41,000. For all graduates period it is 50,000 - which is more fair since there are many teachers with master's degrees (which btw averages 54,000 in salary).
Regardless of personal situations, I think there is enough legit, verifiable evidence to indicate that the average teacher salary is around mid to high $40K. Unless you can point out studies otherwise and to move on in this particular point, I propose we agree that the average teacher salary is approx $47K.

Also see below for another link to backup my claim of average teacher salary

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bestjobs/snapshots/84.html

Assuming there is approx. 2.5 months of non-work, I am going to state the average annualized teacher salary = $59,368.

9.5 / 12 months = $47000 --> $47000 x 12 / 9.5 = $59,368.

I actually believe the value of 2.5 months non-work with the ability to return to work after the 2.5 months non-work is higher than this monetary value but we need to quantify it somehow.

Again, this is to make apples-to-apples comparison on salary wages. If you do not believe this $59K is valid, please (1) explain your reasoning and (2) propose your average annual teacher salary and how you came to the figure ex. how did you quantify the 2.5 months of non-work.

2. Current Benefits
I concur that on the whole, their benefits are on par with everyone else's.. sometimes worse, sometimes better... pretty much like any other job..
2. Current Benefits
As stated in a previous post...what benefits?
thealmighty. I do not know why your benefits are so poor. I would propose that on average, as a whole ... teacher at-work benefits can be classified as normal. Can you concede you are in an abnormal situation and move to agree on this point?

3. Retirement Benefits

I'll quibble with you a bit here. First off, you seem to write them off as being above average because state government is "above average". Well, state/federal/local/military all are pretty similar (although military is actually better). That is a LOT of the employees in the nation. So, I don't like teachers being categorized by themselves here.

In addition, some larger corporations (like the one I work for) have pension plans that from what I've seen of the data from my corporation and my fiancee's retirement plans - are relatively on par. I will concede that I am in one of the largest professional corporations (by employees) in the nation, so I'm not a GREAT sample.. but there are many companies that have pensions...

So, yes, they have better retirement benefits than many, but they are by no means in a class of their own.
3. Retirement Benefits
Again, I have no idea what benefits you are referring to. Enlighten me.
The 2 above normal benefits I have seen for state government employees are (1) pension plan ex. above and beyond typical 401K and (2) health care insurance. Can both of you please verify that you do get both of these benefits after retirement? If you do verify this, I can tell you the vast majority of corporate American do not get these 2 benefits.

I understand your argument may be that you are paid less during your working years etc. However, it is my contention that you both get better retirement benefits than the typical corporate employee during retirement.

Also, if you do get pension after retirement, can you share the approx $ value per month? There is a place somewhere on the web that can put a current value price on this retirement annuity (ex. swag - $600/month retirement is really equal to approx $100K in todays dollars).

4. Quality of Life

4a. Three Months Off

Quick point of clarification - it's really 2 months off, at least in VA. In VA the last day of school is around the 3rd week of June (in the early 20's) and then they return to school 1 or 2 weeks before school starts (so again, 3rdish week of August). In addition, many teachers go in early in the summer on "their own time" to get things ready.

I'm going to be selfish in answering PART of this. My fiancee works summer school. So, she really only has about a month off. And, the compensation for summer school is not all that great. So, for some teachers, they don't truely have 3 months off.

That being said, this is obviously a huge draw. I can't argue too much when people make the statement that you should figure teacher pay by the hour when comparing to other professions. Fair enough to an extent, but they are still pretty low imo when you do this.

However, I will argue some. The reason I say that is - yes, they get two months off. But that is the way the school system is setup. So, if you want to get full-time professionals, I don't think you can factor this in too much. It's not reasonable, imo, to say you want someone to dedicate themselves to this important profession, and pay them at a rate in which they need to work a labor intensive job in these two months in order to live like their peers with similar educations.
4. Quality of Life

4a. Three Months Off- As stated, maybe depending on where you are from, the three months off is not three months as it was back in the day. Then you have the week long conferences, the days of training, etc..., to keep up with all the really neat advences and research (which seem to oftem be actually a rehash from 25 years ago. Nevertheless, the summers do, indeed rock. Of course, the summer off isn't a summer off because I demand that time off or I retire. It wasn't my idea.
Wade moore. I am assuming 2.5 months of non-work. You listed 2 months during the summer. I also believe it is fair to factor in Spring break, Christmas break etc.

Can you tell me if teacher also get normal vacations (ex. 2 weeks/yr in first 5 years) above and beyond the school breaks? If they do NOT, I will subtract the .5 months and make it a 2 month non-work period in my above calculations.

thealmighty. If you do not believe 2.5 months of non-work is accurate, please state your (1) number and (2) reasoning.

4b Low Stress - I'm not sure you responded to this, but I attempted to address this. I think your stance on this just comes from not seeing the behind the scenes of a teacher's job. In fact, I would add the stress of having to always look like you're enjoying your job ;).
4b Low Stress - You have no idea. Quit making assumptions you have no basis to make.
Again, to have a fair debate, please acknowledge that I did not state 'low stress'. I believe this is a mischaracterization of my argument.

With that said, I have tried for the past 2 hrs to find what I consider legit studies on 'ranking job stress', 'stressful jobs', 'stressful occupations' etc. and have not been successful. I have seen the UK studies listing the teaching profession, but have also seen other lists not include teaching.

If you have a link to a respectable study, please provide it. Otherwise, we will agree to disagree on whether teaching is a 'not high stress occupation' and 'This is not to say its a low stress job, just that its not high stress ... not out of the norm'.

5. Self actualization

I would quibble with this a LOT. First off, to be honest, there are many teachers that I have seen that do not get this self-actualization.

That being said, I do agree that this is a reason a majority do it.

Where I quibble is that others don't do this. I would argue that if you're not getting this from your job, perhaps you should reconsider your profession. I do not think the rate at which teachers get this from their job is THAT much higher than other professions. I have met many people in the IT sector that get this from engineering a solution, developing a website, satisfying a customer, etc.. hell, when I worked Help Desk - I got a ton of satisfaction in fixing people's issues.

I think you're short changing other professions in this element and would argue that while it may be a larger factor for teachers in doing their job, that they do not actually get that much more satisfaction than many other people do from their professions.

Wade moore. I work in the IT HR sector in a technical and functional capacity as a consultant. In my experience, most IT people do not love their jobs and do not get self actualization from it.

I do not believe the following links prove my point, however they are 'evidence' and FWIW here they are. Please provide your links showing otherwise.

(a) Teachers have highest satisfaction in 20 yrs and/or great increase ...

http://www.edweek.org/chat/transcript_11_01_2006.html
http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?PID=448

(b) Teacher job satisfaction is higher than IT and far above average.

http://www.studentsreview.com/satisfaction_by_major.php3

5. Self actualization
What? Doctors save lives. Since this is very gratifying, I think we should take that into account and pay them $45K per year average across the board. Some doctors suck and kill people way more than others do, but they should all be paid the same regardless.
I really do not know how to respond to this. Can you rephrase your argument?

****

To summarize and to try to establish some points of agreement ...

1. Current Salary. Can we agree on average salary = $47K and average annualize salary = $59K. If not please state your $ and links to show otherwise.

2. Current Benefits. Can we agree current benefits (as a whole, on average) norm with rest of corporate America?

3. Retirement Benefits. Can we agree that Teacher retirement benefits is on par with other government/state entities but above regular corporate America?

4.a Quality of Life - Three Months Off. Can we agree that Teachers get 2.5 months of additional non-work that others in corporate American do not? If not, state your months and reasoning.

4.b Quality of Life - Not High Stress. Can we agree to disagree unless someone comes up with a legit study/ranking on this?

5. Self actualization. Can we agree that there is 'evidence' that Teaching has a higher job satisfaction index than average? It seems much higher than IT etc. (see above link). If not, please state your reasoning and any links to support your position.

****

Additional other quotes and comments ...

On that note, over half the high schools in my district are considered low performing, I believe. However, the #1 high school in the USA, according to the report you show (and the #8 as well) is also in my district. So if you are at the #1 school and you drive, literally, a mile away, you see a low performing school. How? Magnets. They recruit. They expel. They interview...point is any place can have a killer school given circumstances. The lowest rated state in the country has some awesome schools if you can afford to live there (or pay to go there).
thealmighty. The school I listed is not a magnet school but a regular HS. I only referenced it to show some 'evidence' that I have reason to be happy with my children's P.S. education while conceding that GA has a lower than average P.S. system.

[Barkeep49]

Assuming there is approx. 2.5 months of non-work, I am going to state the average annualized teacher salary = $59,368.

Let's say I'm an autoworker. If I'm furloughed for 2.5 months of the year you wouldn't claim that my salary is higher than what I earn for 9.5 months. Or if I worked construction here in a cold climate and couldn't work for a few months thanks to the Chicago winter. Again you'd not claim that my salary was really greater because of all this time off.

Sure I get the time off, but I'm not earning anything. Well it's the same in the education industry. Listen I'm not denying that the time off is fabulous. I understand completely why the Europeans take all the time that they do. But I think it should be classified under benefits and not salary. There is simply no way, that in 5 years I'd be able to earn something even close to what I earn now over the summer. The fact that I do so now only speaks to my low teaching income and fact that I have year round part time job that pays me well.

Teachers did not chose to work 9 months, it's the way the industry is structured.

Also I'm kind of sad that this topic has gotten so far abreast from reform and I've gotten so little feedback on the ideas I've thrown out there.

[waltwal]

private army- in case you don't get my pm. let me explain. i am too lazy too capitalize. sorry if that's a problem. where you see the letters that start a sentence with i just assume it's an I. the meaning is exactly the same. i am amazed you weren't taught that in public school - we always made a point of explaining that in private schools.

But just to put you at ease when i wrote anything to the students or parents i always was sure to capitalize and check my spelling- feel better now.

[Front Office Midget]

So... I'm a little late here. I just graduated from high school. Everyone here seems to be bent on "fixing" education. My question is...

A. What is wrong with the education system; why does it need fixing?
B. What is the goal of an education system? You want to fix it... to make it do what?

Just curious. My problems with the education system are probably far removed from any of the problems anyone on this board has with it.

[Raiders Army]

private army- in case you don't get my pm. let me explain. i am too lazy too capitalize. sorry if that's a problem. where you see the letters that start a sentence with i just assume it's an I. the meaning is exactly the same. i am amazed you weren't taught that in public school - we always made a point of explaining that in private schools.

But just to put you at ease when i wrote anything to the students or parents i always was sure to capitalize and check my spelling- feel better now.

I received your PM. Like I said, I wasn't criticizing you; I was just curious why a teacher for about 27 years wouldn't capitalize the beginning of sentences and the word "I". I always thought teachers would be meticulous about that stuff. If I were attempting to make fun of you, I would've done it publicly instead of a PM.

I also have no earthly idea what your PM means. I assume that you were either drunk or English is not your first language.

[Edward64]

Let's say I'm an autoworker. If I'm furloughed for 2.5 months of the year you wouldn't claim that my salary is higher than what I earn for 9.5 months. Or if I worked construction here in a cold climate and couldn't work for a few months thanks to the Chicago winter. Again you'd not claim that my salary was really greater because of all this time off.

Sure I get the time off, but I'm not earning anything. Well it's the same in the education industry. Listen I'm not denying that the time off is fabulous. I understand completely why the Europeans take all the time that they do. But I think it should be classified under benefits and not salary. There is simply no way, that in 5 years I'd be able to earn something even close to what I earn now over the summer. The fact that I do so now only speaks to my low teaching income and fact that I have year round part time job that pays me well.

Teachers did not chose to work 9 months, it's the way the industry is structured..
I think how we got off on a tangent was, in response to a post about unsatisfactory wages, I proposed the argument should be based on the 'total compensation' (ex. my 5 factors), not just straight salary. I believe the argument of unsatisfactory $ compensation of teachers not valid if we do not factor in all the other benefits ex. 'total compensation' when compared to the rest of corporate America.

I do not know how much teachers are paid for summer school teaching and maybe my extrapolation in the attempt to quantify the 2.5 months of non-work is invalid. However, there needs to be some sort of 'value' factored for the 2.5 months of non-work in the discussion of 'total compensation', not just ignored.

In your furlough example, the autoworkers were unexpectedly furloughed. The teacher 'furlough' was clearly defined up front (an extraordinary perk the rest of corporate America would love to have).

Also I'm kind of sad that this topic has gotten so far abreast from reform and I've gotten so little feedback on the ideas I've thrown out there.
You're right. I accept my responsibility in taking the thread elsewhere and will try to redirect.

So... I'm a little late here. I just graduated from high school. Everyone here seems to be bent on "fixing" education. My question is...

A. What is wrong with the education system; why does it need fixing?
B. What is the goal of an education system? You want to fix it... to make it do what?

Just curious. My problems with the education system are probably far removed from any of the problems anyone on this board has with it.
Great questions.

I think the common answer to (A) is that (A.1) our PS education system is not preparing students for the future, as evidenced by low test scores and the lowering of the US competitive/economic advantage compared to the rest of the world and (A.2) overall teacher dissatisfaction with their profession due to compensation/work demands et al.

For (B), ideally, for my children, I would want the answer to be (B.1) to prepare our students for collegiate level work and/or (B.2) encourage students to enjoy learning and/or (B.3) instill/inspire confidence in students which will allow them to succeed/adapt in adulthood and/or (B.4) somewhat expose students to more than traditional school work/sports.

What to fix? I actually think, on average, as a whole our P.S. education system (as opposed to College which I think has a different set of issues) is doing okay (ex. I am personally satisfied with the education my 2 children are getting so far).

This is not to say there is no room for improvement. I acknowledge the following suggestions are (a) easy to say but hard/not practical to implement and (b) some are in progress/being implemented to a certain degree. Regardless, my blue-sky suggestions are:

(C.1) Additional vocational/apprenticeship options for non college/graduating students.
(C.2) Somehow allow/encourage/entice/subsidize the underprivileged to continue P.S. eduction (ex. I always think how hard it would be for a single parent family to have his/her 4 kids go to school and keep a full time job).
(C.3) Somehow eliminate any negative influences (ex. bullies, drugs, habitual problem students) from the P.S.
(C.4) Ensure a maximum reading competency (ex. note I said maximum, not minimum ... no exceptions for Football players, hold back failing students if necessary etc.). I truly believe the ability to Read well coupled with the excitement of Learning is the key to a child's future.

Miscellaneous additional ramblings, not quite as important ...

(C.5) Let elementary school students (ex. maybe <4th grade?) do a 4 day school week, maybe extend school days Mon-Thu (ex. I know this will cause issues if both parents working). I feel younger students need more free time.
(C.6) Require foreign language classes each year (ex. Mandarin or Spanish, future languages of the world).
(C.7) Require music classes each year (ex. I think its been shown that music improves concentration/focus).
(C.8) Encourage physical fitness but downgrade the importance of some competitive team sports (ex. I don't mind Football, Basketball but big-time competition with other schools I dislike).
(C.9) More non-traditional school work (ex. balance check books, basic cooking skills, basic car maintenance etc.). I don't expect a full semester class in each but some exposure, maybe 1-2 weeks?

[duckman]

What is this 2.5 months of "non-work" you're talking about? I don't know a single teacher who doesn't do something during those months "off." It's not like they are sitting on their collective asses watching reruns of the Price Is Right and Brady Bunch. They have to take classes and attend workshops and seminars. A lot of them have to pay for this out of their own pocket. Again, you have shown that you have no clue whatsoever about the teaching profession.

[Edward64]

What is this 2.5 months of "non-work" you're talking about? I don't know a single teacher who doesn't do something during those months "off." It's not like they are sitting on their collective asses watching reruns of the Price Is Right and Brady Bunch. They have to take classes and attend workshops and seminars. A lot of them have to pay for this out of their own pocket. Again, you have shown that you have no clue whatsoever about the teaching profession.
When you get a chance, can you please itemize weekly what you did last summer? I really want to understand and validate your statements.

[JPhillips]

Edward: I can't itemize for my brother but I know he took his HS steel drum band to several performances and had practices as well. He arranged music for the group. He took two weeks of seminars that he paid for. He spent some time writing a madrigal show that will be performed in the spring.

He didn't work 40hrs a week, but he didn't take the whole summer off either. During the school year he teaches a guitar class during his lunch hour, works with the HS band percussion section after school and at each football game, has regular evening rehearsals for his choirs, has regular madrigal rehearsals, has night and weekend concerts and competitions, and teaches private voice lessons for auditioning seniors.

By no means does he have a light workload because he's a teacher.

[Front Office Midget]

Edward, I'd like to reply more... but I won't be able to be on a computer much until Monday. So hopefully I can continue the dialogue on Monday. :)

[AZSpeechCoach]

Itemize? Okay...

We got out Memorial Day Weekend. I spent that weekend with my family.

Over the next three weeks, I spent 3 days in a workshop for required development so that I wouldn't lose my state certification. I worked 9 days over the three weeks with students from around the city preparing them for the National Speech Tournament. I spent 8 days in Dallas at Nationals. That was not a vacation; that was work.

In July, I had numerous meetings for Association Organization, in addition to a three day retreat for the Association Representatives. Along with this, I am working on a Master's degree. I also had to revamp my curriculum and compile my new materials. I had meetings with my fellow coaches to plan our coaches convention. I had to meet with the Arizona Interscholastic Association officers to discuss the committees that I head. And on August 1, I was back at my school getting ready for the year.

I did find a weekend to take my wife to Sedona, so I suppose I was very lazy last summer. Sorry that I didn't give you a day by day breakdown, but it is a bit fuzzy at this point.

[duckman]

When you get a chance, can you please itemize weekly what you did last summer? I really want to understand and validate your statements.

I'm not a teacher...yet. I still have 1.5 years to go. I do, however, have several friends who are teachers. Two that teach summer course for junior colleges. Another two that are going through grad school during that time. My mentor teacher said that you are either working a second job (tutoring, teaching, etc.), or futhering your education along with workshops and seminars.

[Edward64]

JPhillips, AZSpeechCoach and Duckman. I find it hard to respond with what I consider a good analysis without a more definite information. I do really want a good, fair analysis on this subject matter.

Reading through AZSpeechCoach notes, it seems that he worked 20 days over a 3 week period (ex. over the next 3 weeks) but I believe I misterpreted his reply.

I concede that teachers do complusory work over the summer holidays but there is no doubt they have extra days that corporate America do not have. Can we just try to come up with an average consensus number and move on?

Just approximate honestly all the non-work time you (or friends) have off excluding holidays that rest of corporate America have also. Lets come up with an average of non-work days 'benefit'.

Here's the format I think will work ...


Spring Break = approx non-work days (probably 5?)
Summer = Start/End/approx non-work days
Fall Break = approx non-work days (probably 5?)
Christmas Break = approx non-work days (probably 10-15?)
(anything else you can think of)


To be fair, I don't believe you should factor any volunteer/hobby type work that occurred during the non-work periods. These were optional work that you choose freely to use up.

Again, all I want is quantify this benefit. If you disagree with my earlier analysis, lets try to come up with an average non-work days that we can all agree on.

[duckman]

Reading through AZSpeechCoach notes, it seems that he worked 20 days over a 3 week period (ex. over the next 3 weeks) but I believe I misterpreted his reply.

My understanding of it was that he was working closer to 30+ days. You are leaving out July. Plus, he has to return to work 3 weeks before the children even arrive, so that makes summer vacation shorter.

I concede that teachers do complusory work over the summer holidays but there is no doubt they have extra days that corporate America do not have. Can we just try to come up with an average consensus number and move on?

From the looks of it, I would say that have less than 10 total days for the summer if they are lucky.

Just approximate honestly all the non-work time you (or friends) have off excluding holidays that rest of corporate America have also. Lets come up with an average of non-work days 'benefit'.

Here's the format I think will work ...

Spring Break = approx non-work days (probably 5?)
Summer = Start/End/approx non-work days
Fall Break = approx non-work days (probably 5?)
Christmas Break = approx non-work days (probably 10-15?)
(anything else you can think of)Again, you are underestimating a teacher's workload. Teachers will spend Spring, Fall, and Christmas breaks getting caught up with grading, preparing lesson plans, etc. An average teacher will spend between 5-15 hours a week just grading papers. That's not counting on the numerous hours they have to keep their lesson plans updated with ever changing cirriculum. In other words, the time off is not as much as you think it is.

To be fair, I don't believe you should factor any volunteer/hobby type work that occurred during the non-work periods. These were optional work that you choose freely to use up.

What qualifies as volunteer/hobby type work? Because I don't see where teaching summer school as a volunteer/hobby type of situation, nor do I see earning extra income to support your family as volunteer/hobby type work.

Again, all I want is quantify this benefit. If you disagree with my earlier analysis, lets try to come up with an average non-work days that we can all agree on.

From my estimation, I would say it is 14-30 days depending on subject area, activities that they are involved, state requirements for teachers in regards to mandatory workshops, organizational obligations, etc.

[Barkeep49]

For the summer break debate:

I know during the summer I work between 10 and 30 hours a week. Once meetings begin that number approaches 40. But while I am working, it's the best kind of working:

1. I get to set my own hours
2. I get to set my own focus

Sure I might attend a workshop. But it's a workshop I've chosen to attend. If I decide I want to take a weekend off, I can do it with no hassle. I might sit down and read a new book for eight hours one day and do nothing the next.

Summer breaks aren't outright breaks, but they are a huge perk to being a teacher and I'm not sure why some people seem so intent on downplaying them.

[Edward64]

My understanding of it was that he was working closer to 30+ days. You are leaving out July. Plus, he has to return to work 3 weeks before the children even arrive, so that makes summer vacation shorter.
Again my confusion and I'm sure a misterpretation, therefore my preference to try itemize the non-work days in the proposed standard format below.

Again, you are underestimating a teacher's workload. Teachers will spend Spring, Fall, and Christmas breaks getting caught up with grading, preparing lesson plans, etc. An average teacher will spend between 5-15 hours a week just grading papers. That's not counting on the numerous hours they have to keep their lesson plans updated with ever changing cirriculum. In other words, the time off is not as much as you think it is.
I have not been considering hours spent 'grading papers' during a normal work week. I was factoring only non-work weeks. I do believe this leads to 'overtime' hours or to the discussion of whether a teacher works over 40 hrs in a typical week. I understand you wanting to add this but to change this discussion to factor in teacher overtime vs corporate America overtime will really muddy up this discussion and require calculations by hours instead of days/weeks. Can we hold off on calculating/comparing teacher overtime for later or propose your own valuation methodology and let me analyze/rebut.

What qualifies as volunteer/hobby type work? Because I don't see where teaching summer school as a volunteer/hobby type of situation, nor do I see earning extra income to support your family as volunteer/hobby type work.
As per AZSpeechCoach post above, IMHO (a) working on Master's degree does not count (b) meeting with fellow coaches to plan a convention does not count. These seem to be non-complusory activities (ex. I went to night school while working, I would have loved the luxury of going for my graduate degree during the summer).

I agree with considering 'earning extra income' out of counting non-work weeks. However, to remove this from the equation, we need to add the extra income generated in lieu of the non-work week. I am just going to say $1,500 unless you have a better swag.

Working over the non-work weeks that you quoted. Out of 5 days possible per week, can you confirm you believe your friends are working 5 days (or more) a week working during Spring, Fall, Christmas breaks? I believe I can hypothesize probably not. In my swag of the 4-5 non-work weeks during Spring, Fall, Christmas breaks ... maybe they worked a total of 2 / 4 weeks?

From my estimation, I would say it is 14-30 days depending on subject area, activities that they are involved, state requirements for teachers in regards to mandatory workshops, organizational obligations, etc.
I will accept this but prefer the stated format as I think it will help us do the analysis (ex. all of us likes to analyze our FOF stats, eh?) ...


Spring Break = approx non-work days (probably 5?)
Summer = Start/End/approx non-work days
Fall Break = approx non-work days (probably 5?)
Christmas Break = approx non-work days (probably 10-15?)
(anything else you can think of)


Lets just say approx midpoint of 25 days in your experience, which is equal to approx 5 weeks (5+5+5+5+5). Therefore, I would value your examples' of additional non-work week + average salary = $53,500.

47 / 52 weeks = $47000 --> $47000 x 52 / 47 = $52,000.

$52,000 + $1,500 = $53,500.

I will wait to hear back from the others before trying to come to a consensus. So far, this means in my 'total compensation' model approximates $53,500 annual $ (with other benefits like pension yet to be factored).

Summer breaks aren't outright breaks, but they are a huge perk to being a teacher and I'm not sure why some people seem so intent on downplaying them.
Barkeep. Thanks for your thoughts and I agree. I apologize for your frustration on how this thread has gone off on a tangent and will be glad to engage you on the other related matters. Any comments in my long-winded C.1-C.9 thoughts?

[wade moore]

Edward...

The reason I have stepped out of this argument...

I think you really have a block and are trying to analyze this down to way minute of a detail.

let's face it.. .Teaching is just as stressful if not more than others, it has as many bad things as good as any other job, and they make in the 40's per year... they cannot choose to work all year, this is just like furloughing Auto Works (You must not know about auto plants, many of them take several months off EVERY year.. I thought this was a very good comparison)...

I just think you're doing way too much to try and drill this down. Fow what it's worth, even if you prove that they make on average what many other professions do, I will still say that the benefit to the community of what they do is worth FAR more than the average profession, and therefore they should be paid more.

[Barkeep49]

I think the common answer to (A) is that (A.1) our PS education system is not preparing students for the future, as evidenced by low test scores and the lowering of the US competitive/economic advantage compared to the rest of the world and (A.2) overall teacher dissatisfaction with their profession due to compensation/work demands et al.

I would argue, to answer this question, on a slightly different track, that good might not be good enough. Education is so important that merely having a good education system is vastly inferior to having an excellent one. I would also suggest that the US, much as it does in health care, spends a lot of money on education relative to comprable countries. This suggests, to me, we're not doing something right. I would argue that the US does place value on things that are not easily measured by tests, such as independent and creative thinking, but I would agree that the system simply isn't performing as well as it could be.


What to fix? I actually think, on average, as a whole our P.S. education system (as opposed to College which I think has a different set of issues) is doing okay (ex. I am personally satisfied with the education my 2 children are getting so far).
This is actually the biggest overall problem. Most people are happy with thier indvidual schools. It's every other school that's bad. Even in poorer neighborhoods with schools that most people would say are awful, parents are fairly satisified. It's much like how in Congress people, normally, say their Congressperson is great, it's all the other bums we should get rid of.

(C.1) Additional vocational/apprenticeship options for non college/graduating students.
I don't disagree. However, we need to be careful about how students are "steered." I would suggest that students should only really be placed on such a track during their last 3 semesters. Having people who are well educated, on the whole, in a variety of areas has some benefit to society as well.

(C.2) Somehow allow/encourage/entice/subsidize the underprivileged to continue P.S. eduction (ex. I always think how hard it would be for a single parent family to have his/her 4 kids go to school and keep a full time job).
I have no idea what the specific suggestion is here.

(C.3) Somehow eliminate any negative influences (ex. bullies, drugs, habitual problem students) from the P.S.
I think our education system has a certain obligation to all students. This obligation is why I agree with C.1. However, this flies in the face of it. I have this year 1 student who has ruined an entire class. He's not even a "bad" kid but he's got some real emotional issues which translates into weird behavior that has had a hugely detrimental effect. However, that kid has a right to an education as well. In fact without it he's going to be a bigger drain on society than most. So sure I'd love to get rid of bullying, but not bullies. Sure it would be great to get rid of drugs and habbitual problem students. But this is easier said than done.

(C.4) Ensure a maximum reading competency (ex. note I said maximum, not minimum ... no exceptions for Football players, hold back failing students if necessary etc.). I truly believe the ability to Read well coupled with the excitement of Learning is the key to a child's future.
I don't disagree. Reading is the focal point of what I do. But then it is for most teachers. So I'm not really sure this would be as big of a change as you might think. Especially with NCLB.


(C.5) Let elementary school students (ex. maybe <4th grade?) do a 4 day school week, maybe extend school days Mon-Thu (ex. I know this will cause issues if both parents working). I feel younger students need more free time.
I agree we don't allow children nearly enough time to be children. However, many of the schools that do well with children in urban areas have programs that engage the children until late in the day so that they are not at home unsupervised. I think having recess every day twice a day, if not three times, should be a must for children through at least 5th grade. Social learning is an important component of schools. Making sure kids have art, music, and gym is important too. But shortening the school week is not the answer.
(C.6) Require foreign language classes each year (ex. Mandarin or Spanish, future languages of the world).
I am a big proponent of dual language programs. Teaching kids, from kindergarten on, two languages is a huge advantage in this ever increasingly global world.
(C.7) Require music classes each year (ex. I think its been shown that music improves concentration/focus).
Agreed, see above.
(C.8) Encourage physical fitness but downgrade the importance of some competitive team sports (ex. I don't mind Football, Basketball but big-time competition with other schools I dislike).
I disagree here. Athletics provide a crucial motivation to many students who otherwise have become completely disconnected from schools. I should actually say that extracurriculars, including athletics, do this. Especially for girls the benefits of competitive team sports have been shown in numerous studies. The world is a competitive place. I don't see why we should be terrified of it in our schools.
(C.9) More non-traditional school work (ex. balance check books, basic cooking skills, basic car maintenance etc.). I don't expect a full semester class in each but some exposure, maybe 1-2 weeks?
I think consumer education is sorely lacking, but think that this, on the whole, would be a waste of time.

I am also going to reprint my suggestions for change from earlier in the thread

I understand best how elementary and middle schools work so let me say that I am going to focus on those schools.

Ok I think teachers are not the first problem we need to fix. I agree teachers need fixing, but let's not start there. A bigger problem? The management structure of schools. High Schools have it close to the corporate world, but most people in the corporate world don't have a dozen, or more, direct reports, as even department chairs would have. Most elementary schools, even small ones, can have principals that have 30 direct reports. Sure there are plenty of crappy managers in the corporate world, but how do we expect new teachers to grow when mechanisms for getting help is so difficult? So first we need to completely rethink how structure schools.

Then we need to think about who we are putting in positions of responsibility. In many cases administrators were not the best teachers. They were so-so teachers. The best teachers don't want to leave the classroom for all the headaches of administration. The skills a typical administrator are called on to have include finance, human resources, operations (building issues), and on TOP of that they need to be experts in educational theory and practices. Oh and let's not forget the "joy" of having to deal with upset parents. It's no wonder that many of the brightest people in education stay in the classroom while those who are more mediocre move up, lured by the better pay. Authority, quite simply, needs to be far more diffused than it is now. One practical suggestion would be that master teachers, our best teachers, be regularly put in the classroom of other teachers. That through example these teachers would continue to teach and at the same time be modeling not only for students but also for other teachers. These teachers could also have a sense of the "feel" of the classroom and the problems that the teachers under them would be facing.

We also need to recognize that education really has no private sector parallel. The fact that students are the "customers" does not take into account the fact that people who are really being catered to are the parents. My education reform would start there and then move into areas like getting rid of salary based on experience, and even unions. But really the whole structure of a school is messed up and this is beyond the fact that good parenting could do far more to fix schools than anything else, as others have already mentioned.

[thealmighty]

Edward...

The reason I have stepped out of this argument...

I think you really have a block and are trying to analyze this down to way minute of a detail.

There you go. It sounds like a divorce lawyer. "Can we accept this. Will you agree to that."

No, I am in my situation and I can't agree to all that stuff at all.

Your average salary was $57K or something (gives me a headache to read through this thread with all the quoting. :) ). I am in my 20th year and my salary is not even $57K. I do make $57K a year but it's because of coaching. Oh, and a $2500 stipend that math teachers get because they can't get any to stay in teaching. In fact, after 2/3 of a semester, my school still has an opening for a math teacher- currently filled with a non-math permanent substitute.

Carry on.

[Edward64]

Edward...

The reason I have stepped out of this argument...

I think you really have a block and are trying to analyze this down to way minute of a detail.

let's face it.. .Teaching is just as stressful if not more than others, it has as many bad things as good as any other job, and they make in the 40's per year... they cannot choose to work all year, this is just like furloughing Auto Works (You must not know about auto plants, many of them take several months off EVERY year.. I thought this was a very good comparison)...

I just think you're doing way too much to try and drill this down. Fow what it's worth, even if you prove that they make on average what many other professions do, I will still say that the benefit to the community of what they do is worth FAR more than the average profession, and therefore they should be paid more.
There you go. It sounds like a divorce lawyer. "Can we accept this. Will you agree to that."

No, I am in my situation and I can't agree to all that stuff at all.

Your average salary was $57K or something (gives me a headache to read through this thread with all the quoting. ). I am in my 20th year and my salary is not even $57K. I do make $57K a year but it's because of coaching. Oh, and a $2500 stipend that math teachers get because they can't get any to stay in teaching. In fact, after 2/3 of a semester, my school still has an opening for a math teacher- currently filled with a non-math permanent substitute.

Carry on.
Okay, I accept your constructive criticisms on my over-analysis and will speak in non-monetary, general terms.

[wade moore]

Okay, I accept your constructive criticisms on my over-analysis and will speak in non-monetary, general terms.

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that you want to dial in to exactly what someone is doing week by week in the summer, etc..

Here's the facts:

Teachers average in the mid-high 40k's per year
Teachers have quite a bit of stress, as much or more than other jobs


Opinion:

Teaching is one of THE most important jobs in this country.

Therefore, I think they don't get paid enough.

[waltwal]

if u are offended by my non-capitalization - stop reading

i taught as mentioned before for 27 years. as a teacher you teach about 185 days a year which is approximately half the year. during the school year or summer vacations you take courses in order to further your education and become a better teacher but the additional units also lead to extra salary compensation. most of the teachers i knew took extra units early in their career in order to maximize their earnings.

teachers are paid fairly for their work but since it is a job that depends on taxation revenue it will always be limited in comparison to most other college degree professions.for 2 married people who both work and want to travel on their vacation time it is a great job but if you are raising a family particularly in an expensive area it can be tough to make ends meet.

but believe me if you are in the right environment and know a liitle more than the students you can be a successful teacher. as i stated earlier i taught in both public and private schools. in the public school depending in part on the course and the economic level of the community i could teach successfully if i could demand the attention of the students. in the private school attendance was generally at about 95-100% and i would spend no time at all on maintaining discipline. there simply was absolutely no discipline poroblems whatsoever in the classroom and that is the key to the ability to teach.

take a student who has the ability to learn but has always failed and get that student in a 1-on-1 situation everyday for the entire school day. i firmly believe that every student would walk out with a good education. that is not reasonable but the closer you can get to that type of environment with 30 kids the more success you would see in actual learning.

in addition one other belief i developed was this. students do not enter the learning process on an even playing field. there are students who enter school and since they are so poorly prepared there is no alternative but to fail. imagine how you would feel if from the very first day of school you found yourself way behind the rest of the students. after a few years you tire of failure and simply give up. i believe there is a way to minimize this problem. when students enter school (1st grade) there should be an immediate identification process to see who is below grade level. if the school day is 8-3 for students it should be extended to 8-4:30 for those students below grade level. i believe that what this would do is put the teacher in a situation to work with a smaller class and concentrate on turning failures at 6 years old into students with a chance of success at 7-10 years old. it would take more money, would increase teacher salaries and dramatically decrease the number of students who look upon themselves as failures.

[Edward64]

I would argue, to answer this question, on a slightly different track, that good might not be good enough. Education is so important that merely having a good education system is vastly inferior to having an excellent one. I would also suggest that the US, much as it does in health care, spends a lot of money on education relative to comprable countries. This suggests, to me, we're not doing something right. I would argue that the US does place value on things that are not easily measured by tests, such as independent and creative thinking, but I would agree that the system simply isn't performing as well as it could be.
I think good enough is sufficient but maybe I need to understand your definition of 'excellent education system'. Can you list top 2-3 items that characterizes this?


I have no idea what the specific suggestion is here.
There are alot of additional factors that underprivileged kids have to deal with that middle class ones do not (ex. hunger, therefore my suggestion for a breakfast/lunch AND dinner program). These additional factors put the underprivilege kids at a disadvantage. My statement was to (somehow) alleviate these negative factors.

I don't disagree. Reading is the focal point of what I do. But then it is for most teachers. So I'm not really sure this would be as big of a change as you might think. Especially with NCLB.
I am sure there are good and bad but what is your overall feeling towards NCLB?

I disagree here. Athletics provide a crucial motivation to many students who otherwise have become completely disconnected from schools. I should actually say that extracurriculars, including athletics, do this. Especially for girls the benefits of competitive team sports have been shown in numerous studies. The world is a competitive place. I don't see why we should be terrified of it in our schools.
I do believe in competitive sports but not big time competitive sports (struggling to define properly but H.S. Football etc). Some students make these competitive sports their focus of H.S. and make education secondary.

I think consumer education is sorely lacking, but think that this, on the whole, would be a waste of time.
There were many times when I wished I knew how to cook well and fix a car. It can be argued these are taught in college but many do not make it there. Still think benefit of allocating 1-2 weeks per school year is good.

Ok I think teachers are not the first problem we need to fix. I agree teachers need fixing, but let's not start there. A bigger problem? The management structure of schools. High Schools have it close to the corporate world, but most people in the corporate world don't have a dozen, or more, direct reports, as even department chairs would have. Most elementary schools, even small ones, can have principals that have 30 direct reports. Sure there are plenty of crappy managers in the corporate world, but how do we expect new teachers to grow when mechanisms for getting help is so difficult? So first we need to completely rethink how structure schools.
In my experience in corporate America there may be upwards of 8-10 direct reports, 12 is probably doable but 30 direct reports is certainly too high.

Then we need to think about who we are putting in positions of responsibility. In many cases administrators were not the best teachers. They were so-so teachers. The best teachers don't want to leave the classroom for all the headaches of administration. The skills a typical administrator are called on to have include finance, human resources, operations (building issues), and on TOP of that they need to be experts in educational theory and practices. Oh and let's not forget the "joy" of having to deal with upset parents. It's no wonder that many of the brightest people in education stay in the classroom while those who are more mediocre move up, lured by the better pay.
I think you are stating if good teachers could/would become adminstrators, there would be more good administrators. There are many parallels I can draw where good worker bees would make bad managers. I would not be surprised if this was the same for teachers-administrators.

Granted, maybe the wrong people are becoming Administrators. Maybe the solution to hire externally and not focus on promoting teachers to administrators unless true competency is shown. I know this might opened me up to more (!) criticism, but I tend to believe a good corporate manager can probably do well as a P.S. school administrator.

We also need to recognize that education really has no private sector parallel. The fact that students are the "customers" does not take into account the fact that people who are really being catered to are the parents.
Disagree. There are many parallels where my users are not the true people I am catering to. It is very normal to have multiple powers-that-be with different agendas. Yes, we get verbal/mental abuse also.

My education reform would start there and then move into areas like getting rid of salary based on experience, and even unions. But really the whole structure of a school is messed up and this is beyond the fact that good parenting could do far more to fix schools than anything else, as others have already mentioned.
Your main complaint is the management/ administration of the schools. Can you list specific examples of bad management/ administration that you have observed?

This is not an unusual complaint that I observe in corporate America. Unfortunately, most of the times there are minimal options other than to wait it out, change jobs/schools. The bad administrator/manager will probably never change his stripes.

[Edward64]

in addition one other belief i developed was this. students do not enter the learning process on an even playing field. there are students who enter school and since they are so poorly prepared there is no alternative but to fail. imagine how you would feel if from the very first day of school you found yourself way behind the rest of the students. after a few years you tire of failure and simply give up. i believe there is a way to minimize this problem. when students enter school (1st grade) there should be an immediate identification process to see who is below grade level. if the school day is 8-3 for students it should be extended to 8-4:30 for those students below grade level. i believe that what this would do is put the teacher in a situation to work with a smaller class and concentrate on turning failures at 6 years old into students with a chance of success at 7-10 years old. it would take more money, would increase teacher salaries and dramatically decrease the number of students who look upon themselves as failures.
I like this early identification process. My son had a 'general assessment' done (my wording, not sure what it was called) for about 10 minutes when he registered for Kindergarten. It was for speech, simple counting etc. I don't know if this is what you are referring to but any early assessment is better than none.

[Edward64]

That's not what I'm saying.

What I'm saying is that you want to dial in to exactly what someone is doing week by week in the summer, etc..

Here's the facts:

Teachers average in the mid-high 40k's per year
Teachers have quite a bit of stress, as much or more than other jobs


Opinion:

Teaching is one of THE most important jobs in this country.

Therefore, I think they don't get paid enough.
I believe I understand your opinion (and thealmighty's) and I believe you understand mine. I don't think talking about compensation/stress will be productive anymore, lets agree to disagree.

If you would, can you share your view on what a teacher should be paid? Not to further this discussion but to put closure to it.

[wade moore]

I believe I understand your opinion (and thealmighty's) and I believe you understand mine. I don't think talking about compensation/stress will be productive anymore, lets agree to disagree.

If you would, can you share your view on what a teacher should be paid? Not to further this discussion but to put closure to it.

I don't have an exact number without doing extensive research.

Here's the general position I would put out there:

Teacher's should be paid enough that many of our better minds want to teach. It should be a position where they are desperate to find teachers therefore they often higher underqualified teachers and hold onto poor performing teachers.

Teaching should be a profession that people say, "I'd love to do it, but you just can't live off of that." Right now you could go on any college campus and ask people if they would like the job of teaching and many would say yes. Ask them if they'll do it, and they'll say no. Ask why? "It doesn't pay enough."

I don't know what the magic number is. Maybe it's 60k, maybe it's 55k, maybe it's 90k -- I don't know. But, if we want to increase the quality of teaching, we need to increase pay.

Now. How do we afford that? I also don't know. To afford it, it would require an overhaul of many other things in the education system.

[waltwal]

you can spend the rest of your life shouting to the rooftops that teaching is the most important profession in this country or any country and it will not change the way teachers are compensated. they will always be at the bottom of the professional ladder because of where the funds come from. that does not mean that the educational system cannot be successful. private school teachers make less money and have less benefits than public school teachers and yet have better results. it comes down to discipline and parent involvement. every time you see an attorney win a battle for student rights in any way it is a defeat for the educational process. attorneys are the major reason why the greatest right a student has is the right to "FAIL".

[Barkeep49]

waltwal: I hate to tell you this but private school teachers have NOT, in the most recent and most comprhensive study to date, been shown to do all that better than public school teachers. Especially by 8th grade. This could be different for HS. Private school teachers just have better stock to work from.

[MrBigglesworth]

Sorry, I just stumbled on this older thread from another thread and had a couple comments. This is absolutely ridiculous:

For the dick who thinks that teachers get paid too much:

TEACHERS GET PAID TOO MUCH !!!!!!! I'm fed up with teachers and their hefty salary guides. What weneed here is a little perspective. If I had it my way, I'd pay theseteachers myself......I'd pay them baby-sitting wages. That's right........instead of paying these outrageous taxes,I'd give them $3.00 an hour out of my own pocket. And, I'm only going to pay them for five hours, not coffeebreaks. That would be $15.00 a day. Each parent should pay $15.00 a day for these teachers tobaby-sit their children. Even if they have more than one child, it'scheaper than private daycare. Now how many children do they teach a day.....maybe twenty-fiveor thirty? That's $15.00 X 25 = #375.00 a day. But remember, they only work 180 days a year! I'm not going topay them for all of those vacations. $375 X 180 = $67,500. (Just a minute, I think I added wrong!) I know you teachers will say, "What about those who have 10years of experience and a masters degree?" Well, maybe (just to befair) they could get the minimum wage, and instead of justbaby-sitting, they could read the kids a story. We can round that off to about $5.00 an hour, times five hours,times twenty-five children. $5.00 X 5 X 25 = $625.00 $625 a day times 180 days............That's $112,500 per year. HUH??????? Wait a minute......Let's get a little perspectivehere. Baby-sitting wages are too good for these teachers. Did anyone see a salary guide around here?
Reducing it in the manner that this writer did completely ignores economies of scale. You could reduce every occupation down in this manner. I don't know that teachers are over or underpaid, but this thing cited by duckman neither adds nor detracts from any argument, and the pompous way it was presented makes it extra offensive. The median teacher salary is $38k per year, and assuming 8 hours of actual work per day over 180 days, that's $26/hour. Not great, but not chump change.

The problem is that labor in this country is expensive, and education is extremely labor intensive. The recent explosion in technology that has increased the productivity of the average worker has done little to increase the productivity of teachers. You still need one teacher per 20 students or so that you needed 30 years ago. So what you see is that second tier countries like Poland and Ecuador and what not get high marks for educating kids, because their lower labor costs make it more cost-effective to use a lot of labor on education. To compete with those countries in education is like a clothing manufacturer here that has to compete with one in China.

Would increasing salary cause better candidates to become teachers? Yeah, but not as much as you might think. There are many non-monetary benefits to being a teacher that already increase the talent pool (summers off, working with children, 'making a difference', etc).

[Barkeep49]

Mr. B I think those are some insightful comments about the cost of labor and education. I will suggest that actually teaching has become MORE labor intensive in the last 20 years in the US. Class sizes are down. This makes sense as teachers are expected to do far more customization than they were 20 years ago.

Our society equates a lot of prestige with money. So while there are some tangible benefits that you mention I think the lack of prestige is as big of hindrance to attracting the kind of teacher we want as anything. It amazed me when I was in college the negative reactions I would get from people when I told them I was studying education. I was told time and time again "You're too smart to be a teacher". That sort of attitude needs to change and if it's not through raising teacher salaries we need to figure out some other way to make it as prestigious to be a teacher as a doctor or lawyer.

[JW]

Oh, let me jump into this since I missed it the first time.

I've had two major careers, one as an Army officer, the other as a teacher, with a couple of far shorter stints where the government was not paying my salary.

I think teachers should be paid more. I think it would in general attract and retain better teachers. Let's not forget that teaching has a very high turnover rate, especially in the first couple of years, so retention is as important as initially attracting teachers to the profession, if not more important. The fact that there is a continuing large shortage of qualified teachers in America indicates things need to be done to attract more good teachers. But I would couple higher pay with some changes.

First, you have to improve conditions in some schools. That starts with basic discipline, order, and safety. I won't get into that in detail, but that is a self-inflicted wound in many schools and districts, and many administrators and elected school officials are afraid to face down the community and create safe, orderly schools. That alone drives out many teachers, and most people don't have a clue of what goes on in some schools.

Second, make the teacher education, selection, and retention process tougher. Assuming a bigger, better pool, you can be more selective. And that already happens in higher paying districts. For my own district, the supply of good teachers exceeds the demand due to higher pay and better conditions. For most neighboring districts, the demand exceeds supply, primarily due to salary and conditions.

Finally, I think teachers should work 12 months -- an educational 12 months, that is. I believe as long as teachers only work 9 months, that fact will always mitigate against higher pay, and nothing teachers can say about all the extra work they do off the clock will change that. In the Army I never worked a 40-hour week and as an officer never took my full 30-day leave allotment. I have no sympathy for teachers who moan about their long hours.

I suggest that teachers work 12 months, which would include all existing holidays plus a two-week vacation in the summer, which would still give teachers about 30 or so days off per year, still more than most Americans get. Teachers who need to attend classes for certification or advanced degrees etc. -- and there is a lot of that in the summer -- that are job-related would be permitted to do that in the summer "on the clock." Otherwise during the summer teachers would be at the school collaborating on plans for the coming year, working individually on their own plans, analyzing test data from the previous year (We are swamped in standardized test data these days.), attending professional workshops and conferences, and doing other constructive things to make the school a better place.

That's my view. I know, however, that most teachers think I'm crazy when I bring this up.

[KevinNU7]

Finally, I think teachers should work 12 months -- an educational 12 months, that is. I believe as long as teachers only work 9 months, that fact will always mitigate against higher pay, and nothing teachers can say about all the extra work they do off the clock will change that. In the Army I never worked a 40-hour week and as an officer never took my full 30-day leave allotment. I have no sympathy for teachers who moan about their long hours.

Word

[wade moore]

FWIW, I'm sure my fiance would not mind working 12 months.. she does summer school and goes stir-crazy during the period between that and the regular school year as it is.

[wade moore]

Dola:

I would imagine that many of the teachers that would have a problem with this are the ones that take the job not cause they're good at it or that it is rewarding, but because they get 3 months off.

[Barkeep49]

If teachers are going to go to 12 months of teaching I think schools should go year round. I don't think there's enough legitimate work to be done in the summer absent of students. However, if you switch to a year round schedule, which would give students the same number of days off, I think it could be entirely appropriate to do much of what you're talking about then. Simply because the planning you do would be implemented sooner.

I have no problem with the idea of teachers teaching 12 months a year, though I'm sure most would, but I think you need to re-examine the school calendar if you're going to do it.

[Barkeep49]

Dola:

I would imagine that many of the teachers that would have a problem with this are the ones that take the job not cause they're good at it or that it is rewarding, but because they get 3 months off.
I don't think that's true. I know of several teachers I consider excellent who would have no problem going to 12 month years assuming compensation rose accordingly. I do agree, however, that the majority of teachers who would out right refuse this idea, even if compensation were to rise, are mediocre or worse.

[wade moore]

I don't think that's true. I know of several teachers I consider excellent who would have no problem going to 12 month years assuming compensation rose accordingly. I do agree, however, that the majority of teachers who would out right refuse this idea, even if compensation were to rise, are mediocre or worse.

That's what I'm trying to say. It was my assumption that compensation would increase if hours increased.

[Barkeep49]

That's what I'm trying to say. It was my assumption that compensation would increase if hours increased.
Ok. I'm not sure that's what JW was saying, however.

[AZSpeechCoach]

I strongly agree with points 1 and 2 of JW's post. If students and the surrounding communities were more supportive of education and held accountable for their work and behavior (or lack thereof), then much of the stress of being a teacher would be lessened.

[JW]

A couple of points.

Yes, pay teachers more, a lot more, to work 12 months.

Second, I wasn't assuming year-round school, and I do think there is a enough work to keep teachers occupied. Most teachers by necessity really spend very little time doing detailed planning. In many Asian and European systems, otoh, one hour planning for each hour in the classroom is considered necessary to good planning. So departmental planning and individual lesson planning would be very beneficial and could take a lot of time if done right.

There is also a great deal more bureaucracy in schools due to such things as No Child Left Behind. Writing annual school improvement plans for NCLB would be a good task for a group of teachers to undertake. Those plans would be much more meaningful if done with the full attention and input of teachers. In many cases they are done now by one or two people, often with little input from the faculty.

Back to year-round school, most plans I've seen don't really add many more days in school for a student. Instead they spread the days out during the year. And summer is now used by many teachers to get additional degrees or to complete certifications, because in many areas night classes are not easily available. But I would have no real problem with year-round school.

[wade moore]

From what I know with JW, I agree.

At the same time I agree with Barkeep.

(in reference to amount of work)

I think that based on what teachers do right now, there may not be enough work to fill a summer.

However, I think that (out of necessity) teachers skip on a lot of things they should be doing. I know that my fiance spent the month between summer school and the regular school year doing GOOD lesson plans for the first couple of months of school and it paid MAJOR dividends. Now because of the many other things on her plate, the rest of the months are back to the rushed lesson plans and she says she can feel the difference.

That's not to mention many other things that they either just don't do or have to do half-assed because there just isn't enough time.

[Barkeep49]

JW my argument is that only so much planning is realistic during summer. If you plan too much you become like the teachers who have done the same thing for 30 years. I would argue that effective planning involves knowing your students and so I find myself veering into completely different directions based on the class I have this year verses last year. However turning teaching into an office job for 3 straight months a year is NOT something which I think will lead to attracting better teachers, whatever the pay. That's why I suggested spreading out those months through-out the year. The idea was not to get more instruction time for students, but instead to spread out the bureaucratic work. I don't disagree with your idea, I just think doing it for 3 months straight (or really 2 and a half as you've laid it out) during the summer is a bad idea.

I hear what you're saying about night classes, and I would argue that online classes can take the place to a certain extent. Also, a great deal of continuing education currently, at least in Illinois, is done through week long workshops, or even shorter, so having 3 weeks spread out throughout the year for this sort of teacher improvement would not hinder teachers taking focused classes for recertification purposes. If the change became widespread enough colleges would even learn to offer 3 week intensive courses for more academic work.

However, I frankly think the 12 month teacher is less likely than the idea of changing how teachers are educated and that is but a dream.

[JW]

I understand your point, but it isn't really three months. With increased school years, school starts in the middle of August in Louisiana. My first official day of work this year was Aug. 10. I know that isn't true for all areas, but I think most districts are really already having 9.5-month school years already. So you're really only talking adding a couple of months work if you give teachers a two-week holiday. There is also summer school. You need teachers for that. And tutoring for high-stakes test retakes in the summer, and administering those tests. And a lot of other things. Teachers could also do some administrative tasks in the summer that are currently done by central officer personnel. So there are things to keep teachers occupied. As for the 12-month school year you're talking about, I like the idea. A lot of people don't, including a lot of parents.

[Edward64]

However, I frankly think the 12 month teacher is less likely than the idea of changing how teachers are educated and that is but a dream.
I agree 12 month teacher is less likely. I would think most teachers do NOT want to teach 12 months and most parents like the summer off for their kids (I know I do). I reiterate, the 1-3 months off (however you want to calculate it) is a vastly undervalued perk of the teaching profession.

Our society equates a lot of prestige with money. So while there are some tangible benefits that you mention I think the lack of prestige is as big of hindrance to attracting the kind of teacher we want as anything. It amazed me when I was in college the negative reactions I would get from people when I told them I was studying education. I was told time and time again "You're too smart to be a teacher". That sort of attitude needs to change and if it's not through raising teacher salaries we need to figure out some other way to make it as prestigious to be a teacher as a doctor or lawyer.
I think teaching will never be equivalent to the medical profession, just won't happen (nor should it).

However, I believe teaching has far more prestige than you would think. As a computer consultant, I do make more than the average teacher (see above calculations), however I am *positive* that in 10 years time, there will be more kids remembering their teachers (some for the rest of their lives) than my business clients remembering me.

Although not prestige = $, this is, nevertheless, prestige most common professions would love to have (ex. accountants, secretaries, computer programmers etc.).

[Barkeep49]

This is not prestige you describe Edward. It's impact. I think that the average teacher does have more impact than most people in other professions. That still does not make teaching prestigious.

[wade moore]

I think teaching will never be equivalent to the medical profession, just won't happen (nor should it).

Please elaborate.

This is not prestige you describe Edward. It's impact. I think that the average teacher does have more impact than most people in other professions. That still does not make teaching prestigious.

Agreed. Edward seems to simultaneously do two things. He overstates how much "prestige" there is with teaching - let's face it, there is very little prestige in the communities.. you hear a ton more "teachers suck, what the hell are teachers doing these days, etc" than anything else.

I also think he overestimates the 3 months off and how much of a decision factor it is. Is it nice? Yes. Do tons of people choose the profession because of that? No.

[Edward64]

Please elaborate.
I think my statement is self explanatory and obvious. Can you detail your thoughts on why teaching should be as pretigious as a medical doctor profession? Maybe I am missing a nuance here?

Agreed. Edward seems to simultaneously do two things. He overstates how much "prestige" there is with teaching - let's face it, there is very little prestige in the communities.. you hear a ton more "teachers suck, what the hell are teachers doing these days, etc" than anything else.

I also think he overestimates the 3 months off and how much of a decision factor it is. Is it nice? Yes. Do tons of people choose the profession because of that? No.
Lets not talk about the 3 months off (unless we really want to go over that again). That's been covered in numerous threads above, we agree to disagree ... and as a concession to the earlier threads, my quote was "1-3 months off (however you want to calculate it)".

I don't think I've overstating the "prestige". There is far more impact/prestige/self-gratification in teaching AND outward appreciation (to teachers) than there are in most typical jobs.

My hypothesis is that teaching actually has MORE "prestige" than a typical job ... just not when compared to the elite jobs.

[Barkeep49]

Edward, even if we agree, for the sake of argument, that it has more prestige than a typical job, is that good enough? I would argue no. If we want elite people than it needs to be as prestigous as an elite job.

[wade moore]

I think my statement is self explanatory and obvious. Can you detail your thoughts on why teaching should be as pretigious as a medical doctor profession? Maybe I am missing a nuance here?

Yes, you are missing a nuance. Teaching should be as prestigious, or at least VERY close to teaching. And should pay close to as well to. Teachers impact more of our society on a daily basis than doctors do and the better they are the more of a positive impact they can have.


Lets not talk about the 3 months off (unless we really want to go over that again). That's been covered in numerous threads above, we agree to disagree ... and as a concession to the earlier threads, my quote was "1-3 months off (however you want to calculate it)".

I don't think I've overstating the "prestige". There is far more impact/prestige/self-gratification in teaching AND outward appreciation (to teachers) than there are in most typical jobs.

My hypothesis is that teaching actually has MORE "prestige" than a typical job ... just not when compared to the elite jobs.

Your continued conversation in this thread continues to tell me that you are, to be blunt, totally clueless on the teaching profession, how it works, what it is like, and how it is perceived in society.

I would argue that teaching is LESS presitigious than your typical job fwiw. I think it's viewed as a job for women and those that can't do "real jobs". There is the say, "those who can't do, teach" for a reason - because people look down on the teaching profession.

Disclaimer: I clearly do not feel this way, but much of society does.

[Edward64]

Yes, you are missing a nuance. Teaching should be as prestigious, or at least VERY close to teaching. And should pay close to as well to. Teachers impact more of our society on a daily basis than doctors do and the better they are the more of a positive impact they can have.

Your continued conversation in this thread continues to tell me that you are, to be blunt, totally clueless on the teaching profession, how it works, what it is like, and how it is perceived in society.

I would argue that teaching is LESS presitigious than your typical job fwiw. I think it's viewed as a job for women and those that can't do "real jobs". There is the say, "those who can't do, teach" for a reason - because people look down on the teaching profession.

Disclaimer: I clearly do not feel this way, but much of society does.

Clueless is a little harsh. Like I said, teaching is already considered prestigious. Just not as prestigious.

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/newsletters/k12news/HI_Trends&TudesNews2004_v3_iss01.pdf

Maybe its your specific situation? Or do you have studies to offer that show otherwise?

[wade moore]

Clueless is a little harsh. Like I said, teaching is already considered prestigious. Just not as prestigious.

http://www.harrisinteractive.com/news/newsletters/k12news/HI_Trends&TudesNews2004_v3_iss01.pdf

Maybe its your specific situation? Or do you have studies to offer that show otherwise?

I'd love to see more details on this study, like the wordings of the question and otherwise..

I'm not going on any studies, i'm going on my real life experience... In my real-life experience, Teachers are generally underappreciated and looked down upon as taking "the easy job" as you have done in this thread continuously.

[Edward64]

I'd love to see more details on this study, like the wordings of the question and otherwise..

I'm not going on any studies, i'm going on my real life experience... In my real-life experience, Teachers are generally underappreciated and looked down upon as taking "the easy job" as you have done in this thread continuously.

Sorry, I don't know any additional details of the study. Unless someone can point out other studies showing otherwise, lets just accept it for what it is ... a specific, semi-valid, data point in our discussion that the teaching profession is viewed 'externally' as prestigious, more so than many common jobs but not as much as a medical doctor.

I do object to your mis-characterization of me. Throughout this thread, there are 2 things I wanted to point out

(1) Teachers are paid average wages, and when factoring in other benefits (ex. 1-3 months off), their 'total compensation and benefits' are 'extra' ordinary.

(2) The teaching profession is viewed by many with respect already.

EDIT. I will take your response as a begruding acceptance that I do have something new/worthwhile to contribute to this thread.

[Edward64]

http://www.cumminghome.com/news30041/newsflash/forsyth-crct-scores-top-the-state.shtml

FWIW, regardless of what people think of no child left behind, standardized testing etc. just thought I would give kudos to my children's teachers.

[Marc Vaughan]

I have been an educator of high school students for 11 years, and have coached varsity level in two different sports since 1991 (not both at the same time, only crossed over for 2 years). My question to you is, what would you do to improve the American Public Education system.

(Most of these come from disparate differences between the UK and US education system - I'm biased towards liking what I grew up with and I apologise in advance for that, but in my defense its fairly natural imho)

No Child Left Behind?
For the Florida state (no idea if this is a country wide thing) I'd remove the "No Child Left Behind" system.

In my area the amount of kids who have been 'left behind' by this system is downright scarey - but more so than the fact that education is failing these kids and allowing them to drift behind their age range in some cases by 3 years is the pyschological harm you're giving them.

Kids who are 15 should NOT be expected to socialise with 12 years olds, their attention span and interests differ wildly and so you're basically asking for trouble by putting them in a situation where they won't have many friends and are more likely to cause trouble.

On top of this once they reach puberty they're going to be having 'other interests' which their classmates shouldn't be having until much much later, they won't be able to share these feelings and confusions with their friends because of the age gap and so again this seems to me to be asking for problems (either by leaving the child isolated or introducing his younger peer group to such issues at an age where they aren't ready for such things).

Compulsory PE
I was shocked to discover that my daughter won't be given compulsory Physical Education at High School - kids worldwide are struggling against a growing problem with obesity and not encouraging exercise seems very foolish to me (I was even more amazed that my kids current school doesn't have an indoor gym for them to use during the heat of the day, but thats a seperate issue).

[Barkeep49]

Marc, I'd be interested in hearing more about aspects of the British school system that you think America would benefit from.

[Marc Vaughan]

If you would, can you share your view on what a teacher should be paid? Not to further this discussion but to put closure to it.

As someone who wanted to be a teacher when he was younger but failed to obtain the grades to do so, I think that teachers salaries are far too low on pretty much a 'global' level (ie. in all the countries I've experience of - parts of europe, US, UK).

The impact of teaching upon society is huge - not just in the skills of workers, but also their attitudes to each other and their approach to life. As such I sincerely believe they should be recompensed decently for their work.

(on the 'holiday' front in the UK at least teachers spend a fair part of their holiday period preparing plans for the next year coming so while it looks great on paper and is better than most other professions its not like they sit on their todd all the time)

[Marc Vaughan]

Marc, I'd be interested in hearing more about aspects of the British school system that you think America would benefit from.

Ok here goes for a few more ...

Introduction of half-term holidays
In England its accepted that kids need a break after a couple of months of schooling, for this reason we have what are called 'half-term holidays'.

These are generally a week long and give the kids a chance to blow off steam and relax before coming back to complete their term. This also shortens the summer holiday slightly meaning kids don't get quite so restless during that period.

This would be largely impractical in America however because of the very restricted holidays which are given to your workers (in England 20-25 days holiday (+ around 14 days public holidays) is standard for all workers, plus if your kids are ill you're protected by law and allowed to have time off to look after them without taking holiday etc.). I can't speak accurately about how things work in America on this front (as I still work for SI/SEGA and retained my old allowances) but I know holiday time is lesser over here.

Smaller Schools
The average school size in England is tiny compared to the ones in America. For purposes of comparison the largest school my kids went to in England had probably around 600 students in total and the largest I ever attended was my high school which had 1000 students.

These smaller size schools allow both students and teachers to build closer relationships and ensure that there is less annonymity.

This helps keep kids on their toes because they know the teachers know who they are and if they're good/bad kids etc., but it also helps teachers because they know the kids and how to motivate them better imho.

Allow a bit of 'risk' for Gods sake
In English schools from a fairly early age (around 10+ when I did it) you handle acids, use bunsen burners, disect animals and do all manner of dubious stuff in the name of science (when I was 15 I fired an air-rifle in class to measure velocity for instance - great fun :D).

American schools appear a little molly coddling from this sort of thing which restricts both what can be taught and also how interesting it is to students (particularly boys who love that sort of thing imho).

..
finally
..

Actual Teaching
To be quite frank I've been very impressed with the teachers I've come across so far in America and think they're just as competant and plan their lessons as well as those I've seen anywhere else (within the other constraints I've indicated about class/school size etc.).

[Edward64]

Just thought I would bump this thread. Today's AJC had a pretty disturbing article. EOCT stands for 'end of course test'. The article was on students that got 'A for class, failed EOCT'.

COVER STORY: ARE SCHOOLS INFLATING GRADES? Marks from teachers, test scores vary widely | ajc.com (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/printedition/2009/02/08/eoct02081.html?cxntlid=inform_artr)
NOT MATCHING UP

Student grades in core high school classes didn’t track their results on a state standardized test given at the end of that course. Here’s how the area’s largest public school systems did overall on three of the eight subjects the state examined.


…………..Failed………Failed….A for class,

…………..EOCT………..class…..failed EOCT

BIOLOGY

Atlanta ……64.2%……….17.5% ……….24.6%

Clayton ……73.3%……….20.8% ……….32.9%

Cobb……….32.3%……….14.1%…………4.4%

DeKalb……..56.3%……….21.4%…………9.4%

Fulton……..39.8%……….15.9%…………4.1%

Gwinnett……29.4%……….13.9% ………..2.2%


GEOMETRY..

Atlanta ……67.9%……….17.1% ……….20.7%

Clayton ……76.6%……….19.7% ……….30.4%

Cobb ……….9.9%……….10.8%…………1.6%

DeKalb: ……65.6%……….16.9% ……….38.2%

Fulton……..35.6%……….12.1%…………4.4%

Gwinnett……22.7%……….10.3%…………1.9%

ENGLISH

Atlanta ……51.2%……….20.3%……….19.6%

Clayton ……51.8%……….14.6%……….18.6%

Cobb……….23.1%……….14.3% ……….1.5%

DeKalb……..44.6%……….19.3% ……….9.1%

Fulton……..27.7%……….13.8% ……….2.5%

Gwinnett: ….20%…………11.1% ……….1.3%

Source: Governor’s Office of Student Achievement
My county is not listed although I did live in Gwinnett for a while (which did the best). The article suggested grade inflation but didn't give any definitive analysis as to why ... hopefully more analysis will be forthcoming.

Also, currently travelling to NY which is undergoing budget cuts.
Approximately 23,000 jobs could be cut on top of 3,000 cuts Bloomberg announced in November, officials said. In addition, the $400 property tax rebate will be axed but homeowners will not be hit with new property taxes.

The city faces a $4 billion deficit in 2010, falling tax revenues and deep cuts in city and state funding.

About 15,000 of the possible job cuts belong to school employees; mostly teachers, according to city officials.

[gstelmack]

My county is not listed although I did live in Gwinnett for a while (which did the best). The article suggested grade inflation but didn't give any definitive analysis as to why ... hopefully more analysis will be forthcoming.

Well, if your paper is anything like the News & Observer, they are basically a mouthpiece for the local BoE, and will take anything they say as gospel without investigating the facts or questioning them. It's up to the parents to do the research and digging and point out how insane they are being.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Well, if your paper is anything like the News & Observer, they are basically a mouthpiece for the local BoE, and will take anything they say as gospel without investigating the facts or questioning them.

Not quite the opposite here but this wasn't a p.r. piece by any means. It's one of several recent articles in the past couple of weeks really highlighting how screwed up things are here, taking shots at systems that appear to be too lax in grading (too many sets of A's and failing EoCT's) and even a few that appear to be possibly too stringent (too many F's and hardly any failing EoCT's).

[AZSpeechCoach]

At my school, we are under intense pressure to eliminate D and F grades. It doesn't matter how low the student's achievement is; we are pushed to find ways to give them at least a C, we are warned that we will be "held accountable" for grades, and told that we shouldn't consider attendence when calculating a grade. "Good teachers only count the work they turn in, not what they don't turn in."

[Edward64]

From another thread
Health Care Reform - Universal Healthcare - Front Office Football Central (http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showthread.php?t=73469)

there is a discussion on whether our socialized PS education system works. My take is it works okay and for me, factoring where I live etc., its works pretty good as evidenced with test scores and such.

Revrew, on the other hand, believes "it is clearly flawed to the point of being a failed system". I invited him to this thread (so we don't sidetrack the healthcare debate) to start a healthy debate and give him an opportunity to present his POV.

However, I am interested in hearing from the educators on this board on the topic. Your thoughts?


Quote:
Originally Posted by revrew
Yep. You're right (about the offensive part), and I hereby extend to Edwards64 a public apology for the pointed and mocking tone of that post. Over the top to be sure.

I do maintain that the public education system is a clearly flawed to the point of being a failed system. I do maintain that it remains more about "schooling" children to fit a mainstream worldview, as opposed to actually educating their minds. And I believe the failures of socialism - whether in medicine, economics, or education - are a matter of fact, not opinion.

I do find it ironic that one would defend a historically ignorant viewpoint on socialism by saying that socialist schooling "has worked out so far," but ironic and humorous or not, there's a difference between quietly chuckling at the irony of a comment and publicly mocking and deriding the person who said it. I strayed into the latter, and I apologize.

Hey, I accept your "blended" and "nuanced" apology. Thanks.

Once again, to be absolutely clear, I am not saying socialism as a government works well. I am saying that the US PS eduction is doing okay (and we are certainly better for it). Lets move this over to the other thread if you care to prove your point or offer any other plausible alternatives.

[gstelmack]

Yup. Too many discipline problems allowed in the classroom that take time away from the kids who want to learn, too much of a focus on "life skills" instead of actual important subject matter, too much of a focus on standardized testing that leads to "teaching to the test", too much of a focus on diversity (actually they're hiding test scores but that's not the publically voiced reason) that has the local school system busing kids all over the county and going through huge reassignments every year, not nearly enough support for gifted kids as they focus on the middle-of-the-road, too much of a focus on administration that leads to teachers being let go in budget crunches instead of administrators and overhead, money spent on administration instead of basic teaching supplies, too many parents that blame the teachers instead of the kids when issues arise and won't help control the discipline problems.

It is possible to come through having learned a lot, but the school system sure isn't helping. I am lucky to be able to afford private school for my two (barely), but we're still paying attention to the next local school board elections to get some people in place who want to actually educate the kids instead of shuffling kids around to hide failing test scores from the feds.

[gstelmack]

I'll give a specific concrete example: Blazing Saddles is an excellent movie to show in an American History class to discuss stereotypes, diversity, and how far our country has come in all these areas. I got to watch it as part of a History class in high school back in '85 along with some great open discussion on the topic. What do you think would happen today if a teacher tried to use that in the classroom?

[gstelmack]

3. Traditional mandatory schooling ends in 10th grade. After that, if you stay in high school it is a true college prep curriculum...no watering down...if you stay you will bust your butt to keep up because the level of work skyrockets.

My father was a vocational education teacher (he actually just retired this year). He started out teaching drafting / woodworking, has most recently taught auto shop, and has also taught CAD, computer classes, some basic math, and the like. He is a big fan of having a vocational track to replace the typical college-prep high school. By the time you reach high school you should already know enough math/reading and other skills for basic economic survival (how to make change, those sorts of things), and now you're working on your trade. That may be vocational, it may be college prep, but keeping kids learning advanced math when they could be learning a useful trade is not the best idea. But we have a one-size-fits-all mentality in education that prevents us from properly educating those that don't go right down the middle, and that's the same mentality that blocks proper gifted programs as well as vocational education.

[Edward64]

Hey, I don't disagree with alot of points you are making and I've made similar points (see my post #94 and below).

I tend to believe the American Public Education system is fine. Of course there is room for improvement but overall its good. With that said, I would ...

1) Continue the certification of teachers and require continuing education of teachers.
2) Implement an incentive program for top performing teachers. Not just raw test scores but improvement delta of test scores, additionally feedback from students/parents etc.
3) Implement some sort of breakfast/lunch/dinner school food program for especially the underprivilege.
4) Implement some sort of 'stay at school while parents are at work program' for especially the underprivilege.
5) Allow the termination/reassignment of poor performing teachers.
6) Allow the termination of habitual 'bad' (I'm sure this can be defined somehow) students. Some kids are just cancer to the rest of the classroom. Get rid of them to (someplace else).
7) Accept that some students will never graduate HS as they don't have the support structure/intelligence/aptitude/attitude/maturity and create an apprenticeship program (or like) for them. Of course, allow them to resume HS at a later date if appropriate.
8) Accept that the government's role is to provide opportunities and avenues for education and can only do so much. There will always be 20% that is left behind.

I just disagree that our socialized PS education is "it is clearly flawed to the point of being a failed system".


Our PS school system produced HS graduates that went to college, who then eventually fueled the booms (and the damn collapses) of the past 2 decades.
It is unfair to blame our PS education when alot of the current failures can be placed on the parents.
Some states compare very well with the rest of the world. Some others not well at all. Brainstorm: USA vs. the World - Chronicle.com (http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/carey/usa-vs-the-world).

[Edward64]

I'll give a specific concrete example: Blazing Saddles is an excellent movie to show in an American History class to discuss stereotypes, diversity, and how far our country has come in all these areas. I got to watch it as part of a History class in high school back in '85 along with some great open discussion on the topic. What do you think would happen today if a teacher tried to use that in the classroom?
I do think you have to go with the times. IMO, Blazing Saddles is not the best movie to show in American History now. I would want something a little more neutral.

[Edward64]

My father was a vocational education teacher (he actually just retired this year). He started out teaching drafting / woodworking, has most recently taught auto shop, and has also taught CAD, computer classes, some basic math, and the like. He is a big fan of having a vocational track to replace the typical college-prep high school. By the time you reach high school you should already know enough math/reading and other skills for basic economic survival (how to make change, those sorts of things), and now you're working on your trade. That may be vocational, it may be college prep, but keeping kids learning advanced math when they could be learning a useful trade is not the best idea. But we have a one-size-fits-all mentality in education that prevents us from properly educating those that don't go right down the middle, and that's the same mentality that blocks proper gifted programs as well as vocational education.
I am all in favor for the vocational trade school route (see my #7). Some kids are not meant to go to college (or at least not yet) and they should learn a trade vs getting frustrated and dropping out of HS or College.

[Edward64]

Just wondering. Where and if your HS rank in the Newsweek survey?

My kids aren't in HS yet, but if they were, they would be at #337.
America's Top Public High Schools | Newsweek Best High Schools | Newsweek.com (http://www.newsweek.com/id/201160/?q=2009/state/501)

[RainMaker]

Just wondering. Where and if your HS rank in the Newsweek survey?

My kids aren't in HS yet, but if they were, they would be at #337.
America's Top Public High Schools | Newsweek Best High Schools | Newsweek.com (http://www.newsweek.com/id/201160/?q=2009/state/501)

My old school is at 151. They used to be ranked much higher when I was there I believe. Was real big and sent somewhere around 95%+ of the graduating class to college.

[Barkeep49]

There's such an interesting dichotomy that I see in this thread at the moment:

1. Kids are entitled to an education, so let's kick the kids who disrupt this out.

2. Kids shouldn't be entitled to an education past 10th grade.

I understand that this isn't exactly what is being said and that the two things aren't mutually exclusive, but still...

I don't think the vocational trades are able to employ as many as they once did. I think we need to be getting more kids through college not less so that we can maintain our edge in the global economy. I think #1 could help to make kids more college ready, but I think #2 hinders that.

[Ajaxab]

At my school, we are under intense pressure to eliminate D and F grades. It doesn't matter how low the student's achievement is; we are pushed to find ways to give them at least a C, we are warned that we will be "held accountable" for grades, and told that we shouldn't consider attendence when calculating a grade. "Good teachers only count the work they turn in, not what they don't turn in."

I have experienced this to a degree in higher ed as well. The university has become a place where money needs to be made rather than a place where students are to be educated. That invariably means that professors must focus on making sure students finish the courses they start so that the university can collect maximum tuition. As a result, only those who don't do the work fail, especially in the humanities and social sciences.

Universities have also put increasingly more weight onto student evaluations of professors as well when it comes to evaluating a professor's value as a teacher. Some institutions use student evaluations as the sole measure of a professor's teaching ability. This causes the smart professor to inflate grades. Duke statistician, Valen Johnson has concluded that professors can double their chances of getting a favorable student evaluation by giving more A's instead of B's and C's. If a professor is on the way to getting tenure and student evaluations are important in the university's evaluation of that professor, it only makes sense that courses will be dumbed down and grades will be inflated. This is what has happened over the last two and a half decades or so. Apparently, the average GPA in US universities in 1985 was 2.6. In 2008, it was almost a 3.0. Maybe students are getting smarter, but somehow I don't think this is the case.

There's no room for what amounts to a Simon Cowell approach to grading anymore. Professors are forced to be Paula Abduls to make sure students make it through courses, to make sure the university gets its money and to make sure they keep their jobs.

[Klinglerware]

Apparently, the average GPA in US universities in 1985 was 2.6. In 2008, it was almost a 3.0. Maybe students are getting smarter, but somehow I don't think this is the case.

There's no room for what amounts to a Simon Cowell approach to grading anymore. Professors are forced to be Paula Abduls to make sure students make it through courses, to make sure the university gets its money and to make sure they keep their jobs.

I think it all depends. At some schools, the students probably have gotten smarter and more motivated. At the top universities in the US, it is much more difficult to gain admission than even 15 years ago, and students who do get in are much more competitive (since they are used to the grind that got many of them accepted in the first place). I don't necessarily like the fact that so many kids are trained to work like machines now, but I guess it is what it is.

As for the grading issue, it can be a tough one. So, you have a class of Ivy-caliber students. The grading is based on something on the qualitative side, such as a final paper. Everybody hands in work that would be considered an A in the 50s or 60s, a time when these schools were full of students who viewed this as finishing school and were content to receive their "Gentleman's C's". Do you give them all A's, since everybody hands in excellent work? Or do you still try to impose a distribution curve?

I think the issue at a lot of these schools isn't necessarily grade inflation, but grade compression. Since tighter admissions have already weeded out many of the former C or D students even before they set foot on campus, almost everybody left is an A or B. The question is whether you need to redefine grading standards accordingly.

[rowech]

Grades are clearly watered down. In teaching math, I am all but required to give credit every day for homework. It is simply not possible for me to grade homework every day for all of my classes but I have to give credit for things the kids do...so it's the dreaded completion grade.

The dilemma? Flat out don't give homework expecting the kids to do some work ont heir own or do homework for completion grades. With high school kids, it has to be completion. I grade about an assignment right/wrong once a week, a quiz once a week, and a test about every three. If I drop out completion points, the average grade loss is about 5% at the end of the quarter. A half a letter grade strictly from getting rid of compleition stuff.

Other classes are like this too. Binder checks, note checks, journals, etc....it never ends. It used to be that kids would do the assignments because they understood it would make them better at the work, help them perform better on quizzes and tests, and so on. Now it's just about doing some slop to get some points.

The natural solution? No homework points at all and grade based on graded assignments, quizzes, and tests. (more like college) In the end? Good luck getting that through administrators and parents.

[Passacaglia]

Just wondering. Where and if your HS rank in the Newsweek survey?

My kids aren't in HS yet, but if they were, they would be at #337.
America's Top Public High Schools | Newsweek Best High Schools | Newsweek.com (http://www.newsweek.com/id/201160/?q=2009/state/501)

In case anyone is curious, this survey is completely flawed. Here's their entire methodology:

We take the total number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests given at a school in May, and divide by the number of seniors graduating in May or June. All public schools that NEWSWEEK researchers Amy Novak and Dan Brillman and I found that achieved a ratio of at least 1.000, meaning they had as many tests in 2008 as they had graduates, are put on the list on the NEWSWEEK Web site, Newsweek.com.

[Edward64]

In case anyone is curious, this survey is completely flawed. Here's their entire methodology:
Is there another ranking system that you can point to? I would be interested in it.

[gstelmack]

I just disagree that our socialized PS education is "it is clearly flawed to the point of being a failed system".

The problem is how many of those kids who make it through are actually "educated"? Remember the issues in Florida a decade or so back with kids who could not read graduating high school? You have entire school systems flat-out cheating on the NCLB tests. States are allowed to set their own standards (and NC has pretty low standards and is struggling to meet them).

The only reason our system looks like a "success" is it is still possible to educate yourself, and you can learn enough basics to survive off of it. Kids get educated in spite of the system, not because of it.

As for fueling the recent booms and busts, you need to study how many of the key players were public-school educated and how many were private-school educated.

[Edward64]

As for fueling the recent booms and busts, you need to study how many of the key players were public-school educated and how many were private-school educated.
I am not able to find that specific statistic. If you can please share.

I would hypothesize ... for the Financial/Insurance mess, I think that there are more private educated students running the show in the Financial institutions. However, I actually think the IT folks were more normal public school students.

[ShaqFu]

The teacher salary thing is interesting, something I fell many people misunderstand. A high school might start at 8 a.m. and end at 3 p.m. That is a 7 hour work day. Throw in a 30 minute lunch period and (depending on the school) a 10 minute brunch, you end up with about a 6+ hour day. However, that is just student contact time. Districts typically require teachers to be on campus 15 minutes before the first bell and to remain on campus until 15 minutes after the final bell. That is 30 minutes tacked on. We're back to a 7 hour day.

I knew very few teachers that fall within the parameters of the 15 minutes before and after school. Teachers often will stick around 30-60 minutes are more in either direction. This is purely prep time, time to connect with parents, hold detention, and so on. So, at the very least, it's reasonable for a teacher to be on campus for a full eight hour day.

That eight hours does include prep time, when a teacher gets a free period. This free period is not a break from work and not always a break from student contact. Teachers typically use prep time for IEP/SST meetings, meetings within their departments (common preps are becoming more and more popular), meetings with admins, parent meetings, and of course prep time (copying, grading, etc.).

A teacher's day does not end when they leave campus for the day. Many teachers still have plenty of work to do at home, in order to fully prepare for the next day. There are papers to go over, lessons to plan, materials to prepare. This is the work that was not finished during the prep time and before/after school while on campus. You need to include these hours.

As for how many months a teacher works, this is changing. One of the latest trends in education is the adoption of what is called a modified traditional schedule. School would start around the last week of July/first week of August. There would be a single quarter, followed by a two week break. There would be a standard Thanksgiving holiday (Thursday/Friday off only). The second quarter ends at Christmas, followed by a two week break (as always). Third quarter takes you to Spring Break (now two weeks instead of one). School ends around the second week of June. That means there are only six weeks off in the Summer, which really is not six weeks. Why?

The six weeks off really could be reduced to no more than a month. Teachers typically need a few days after school lets out to clean up/tear down. Teachers get a few weeks off to unwind, but sometime in that summer they will have to begin planning. This is especially true if there is a new curriculum or if a teacher has an assignment change (teaching a different grade level). Even though school begins for students, teachers typically arrive on campus 2-3 days before. In some districts, they are there even sooner. Teachers need to set their room back up. Some teachers participate in another new trend - Round-up. This is when students arrive about a week before school starts to finalize registration (fill out all that paperwork that used to be sent home on day one), get schedules, get books, take pictures (for ID and yearbook), and so on. Have you ever seen a teacher in Staples or Wal-Mart during BTS time. They need supplies too, much of it at their own expense.

Teachers do get the extra three weeks off during the year (two weeks at Christmas, one at Easter has always been there). In any job you automatically get two weeks of paid vacation. In any professional job you always get to bank those vacations and could potentially have a whole month off, maybe more, if you choose. The breaks cover that for teachers, so it really becomes a wash. Even so, during those breaks, teachers usually are resetting things for the next quarter. FWIW, the typical deal is one week off, one week for school stuff. Right away you can snap three weeks off.

Which leads me to this. A teacher works 10 hours a day. We will give this teacher a month of none-work time (bearing in mind that two weeks of this is the standard two weeks paid vacation). We will keep that $56K average. I will only factor this as work time (48 weeks).

$56,000/48 weeks = $1,166.66 per week/50 hour week (conservative) = $23.33/hour. That for a professional job, requiring a minimum of a BA and Credential (which are actually becoming more and more difficult to obtain). A MA typically will earn you no more than $1,000/year extra. Some districts will not even pay you for this until you have X number of years in.

Now, for a starting teacher, the salaries seem to be high 30s, no more than $40K. I'll say $39K. Hourly wage = $16.25.

Does that seem right to you? Now, a good teacher is not in it for the money. Teachers teach for the joy and gratification of it, to respond to what is nothing less than a true calling. Still, when I hear that teachers are overpaid, I cringe. I am not necessarily saying they are underpaid, but they certainly are not overpaid.

I do not want to answer the reform question in total, but I have a few ideas:

-- Smaller Learning Communities, breaking up schools into thematic groups, with very low Teacher:Student ratios. The ability to form relationships is vital.
-- No NCLB
-- More local control, with teachers as leaders.

Have a few more, but now I'm spent thinking about it. I'll come back later. What about Charter Schools?

[Edward64]

Have a few more, but now I'm spent thinking about it. I'll come back later. What about Charter Schools?

Sunday editorial I read today on Charter schools. I would have thought Charter schools would perform better than PS schools but maybe not ... can anyone with more knowledge comment on the validity of the study?
Report casts doubt on charter schools 071209 - The Columbia County News-Times (http://newstimes.augusta.com/stories/2009/07/12/opi_540472.shtml)
An analysis of test data by the U.S. Education Department during the administration of George W. Bush showed that charter school students generally did not perform as well as those in regular public schools. The federal study said charter students scored significantly lower than regular public school students in math, while in reading there was no statistically significant difference.

"It must be acknowledged that charter schools have a very mixed record," said Tim Callahan of the Professional Association of Georgia Educators, one of the state's largest education groups. "Some do better than public schools, some do worse. Most do about the same. This is hardly a transformational change."

[gstelmack]

I would hypothesize ... for the Financial/Insurance mess, I think that there are more private educated students running the show in the Financial institutions. However, I actually think the IT folks were more normal public school students.

And I'll bet you that most of the IT folks learned what they learned at home messing around or in college. Again, they succeeded DESPITE public education, not BECAUSE of it. Sure, I know more about history and subjects like that because I went to school, but most of my working knowledge came from messing around with a computer at home and from the university (and even that was maybe 25% useful, classes like physics and calculus).

The most I got out of my public education was when they let me work ahead; I spent my fourth grade english year in a fifth grade classrom, and did 7th and 8th grade math plus some 9th grade algebra while in 7th grade. Letting you work ahead is a dying technique; around here there are plenty of complaints from parents I know about kids getting bored in class and either being told to sit there quietly or help the kids around them rather than moving on to the more advanced subjects they can handle and being challenged.

The best thing I got out of my high school years was the one semester I spent taking a COBOL class at my local junior college in the evenings. That even helped me land my first co-op job.

But as we push kids more and more to the center, there is less and less opportunity to branch out and work ahead of the norm or to take side classes to help advance your education.

[JonInMiddleGA]

In case anyone is curious, this survey is completely flawed. Here's their entire methodology:

Yeah, I saw that one mentioned locally recently after a couple of schools in the area made the list. And then I dismissed it after comparing their supposed ranking with their AYP results. 1/3rd of the school can't even pass the laughably easy tests administered by the state but a handful of students on the upper end take a lot of AP tests each and somehow this makes it an upper echelon school.

Considering these schools are in the only county I've ever heard of that has a poverty rate so low that they aren't even eligible to participate in the federal Title IX programs (that's the free lunch one, right? Can't always keep the numbers straight), I'd think they ought to have enough raw material to avoid having essentially the same results as schools in considerably worse circumstances.

[molson]

I think most teachers are overpaid, though if it were easy to fire teachers to bring in more talented ones, I'd be all for raising their salaries.

With higher salaries must come more competition, more accountability, and greater requirements to get those jobs. And of course, a 12-month work year. It should be a highly competitive job - people falling over each other to get into the best education programs, and stressing over class ranks, knowing that if they don't crack the top 25-50% or whatever, they're looking at longshot job prospects. From my total anecdotal experience knowing a lot of teachers - it's really not that hard to become a teacher. I mean, it's hard in the sense that there's a lot of work involved, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of people who set out to be a teacher and don't accomplish it. I'd love to see education be a more rigorous discipline in that way, and higher salaries is the only way to do it.

[molson]

As always, I must correct something here. Teachers are not paid for 12-months. Our salaries, just like anybody else, are for the time we work. Do we receive a paycheck year-round? Yes...however, that is not money we are earning for sitting around. It is money we have already earned for doing the work we are contracted to do.

I know. I'm just saying that I'm all for increased salaries, and for teaching to become a more prestigious, competitive profession. For that, I think a 12-month job isn't unreasonable, considering those positions would be more competitive.

I realize teachers work during the summer, and aside from bell to bell, but that's really no different than any other professional job.

There are a lot of great teachers out there, and a lot of shitty ones. The great ones should be paid far more, and the shitty ones should go away. The only way they can be replaced by better teachers is higher salaries (and a legal way to cut them loose).

[JonInMiddleGA]

Most research says that 33-50% of teachers are out of the profession within the first five years they teach.

Considering that (as of a few years back at least) the major is the state university system of Georgia with the highest percentage of students in remedial studies was {drum roll} education, I'm not going to mourn the absence of a lot of those teachers.

is it not better to have a body in the classroom than nobody at all?

Actually one of the rare things that gave me a slight hope for slight improvement was reading just last week about the continuation of an electronic campus here in Georgia. Results from the first couple of years were mixed but the prospect of being able to reduce the number of buildings needed + the ability to essentially job share teachers (there's actually two different programs run by different groups doing this) from around the state
seemed to have definite positive potential.

Yeah, I know that's not what you meant, but that's what it made me think of.

[rowech]

Sunday editorial I read today on Charter schools. I would have thought Charter schools would perform better than PS schools but maybe not ... can anyone with more knowledge comment on the validity of the study?
Report casts doubt on charter schools 071209 - The Columbia County News-Times (http://newstimes.augusta.com/stories/2009/07/12/opi_540472.shtml)

I don't know about that particular study but in most of the studies done, charter schools are a waste of money. I'm one of the few teachers who supported their use but the more time they are given, the less value they are showing to have.

[wade moore]

I jump into these discussions as a general rule as my wife is a teacher and I find a lot of these discussions interesting.

I think that molson is being far too harsh, at least from my experience, about the number of poor teachers there are. That being said, I agree with his general premise - that there needs to be a better system of evaluation of teachers that includes the ability to remove poor teachers.

The problem becomes - how do you evaluate that? I've had many a lengthy discussion with my wife and I'm not sure the answer - so I'd be curious as to what molson thinks. How do you evaluate teachers?

[King of New York]

I jump into these discussions as a general rule as my wife is a teacher and I find a lot of these discussions interesting.

I think that molson is being far too harsh, at least from my experience, about the number of poor teachers there are. That being said, I agree with his general premise - that there needs to be a better system of evaluation of teachers that includes the ability to remove poor teachers.

The problem becomes - how do you evaluate that? I've had many a lengthy discussion with my wife and I'm not sure the answer - so I'd be curious as to what molson thinks. How do you evaluate teachers?

I think you have to use a combination of evaluative methods--each one of them may be flawed, but if they all point in the same direction, then you can be fairly confident that you are getting accurate feedback. We should use:

1) Parent and student evaluations. By themselves, they do not tell you everything that you want to know. Those who get low grades tend to give their teachers low grades; some parents and students are apathetic and/or dumb as sticks. So you also need

2) Classroom evaluations by administrators and good teachers from outside the school. Those do not tell you everything that you want to know either, because teachers have a tendency to rate the quality of their peers according to how closely those peers' teaching methods resemble their own. So you also want to look at

3) How students score on standardized tests. Those scores need to be part of the mix, but because those scores tend to reflect the child's innate ability and home environment far more than what any teacher has taught him or her, they do not tell you that much by themselves.

[wade moore]

2) Classroom evaluations by administrators and good teachers from outside the school. Those do not tell you everything that you want to know either, because teachers have a tendency to rate the quality of their peers according to how closely those peers' teaching methods resemble their own. So you also want to look at

Hmm.. I've never heard the peer evaluation mentioned - and I like it. I think one of the big concerns with administrators evaluating is that as bad as some teachers are, many administrators are very out of touch with current teach practices.

My concern with evaluations, though, is do we really get a real picture of how a teacher teaches? As evaluations go now they're scheduled, formal, etc. Teacher has time to get their ducks in a row - and I know for sure of teachers that are TOTALLY different when they are being evaluated.

Ok, so you do it impromptu, does that work? The teacher is stressed out, they still teach differently because someone is in the room, they just may be caught unprepared and show they don't plan ahead with nice plans, etc.

I've suggested that there needs to be a "secret" way of monitoring. I am a Help Desk Manager by career. When I've managed larger Help Desks, we could remotely monitor Help Desk calls without the technician knowing. This gave the truest sense of how they really work.

I would, seriously, advocate hidden cameras. Even if it is one camera that you move around in off-hours, etc. My wife goes nuts when I suggest this - but I'm not sure how else and administrator gets a true picture.

[rowech]

There is no way a union would ever allow hidden cameras. Ever. They mostly won't even allow unannounced evaluations. Quite simply, you have to stick with what is currently done...administrators doing the work. Your boss evaluates you. That's just the way business works.

Peer evaluation won't work because of time needed to actually conduct the process.

Outside evaluators is really the only real solution that deviates from what is currently done.

[wade moore]

There is no way a union would ever allow hidden cameras. Ever. They mostly won't even allow unannounced evaluations. Quite simply, you have to stick with what is currently done...administrators doing the work. Your boss evaluates you. That's just the way business works.

Peer evaluation won't work because of time needed to actually conduct the process.

Outside evaluators is really the only real solution that deviates from what is currently done.

Well, Virginia doesn't have a teacher's union.

[RainMaker]

I agree that it's no different that any other professional job. However, it's never seen that way. You don't really believe that based upon some of the things you said in your previous post.

Your comment about people seeing out to teachers being easily able to accomplish it. Do they get their degree? Yes. Do they stay in teaching? No. Most research says that 33-50% of teachers are out of the profession within the first five years they teach. So while you say people easily get the degree (and I agree because education classes are a joke) the truth is that people don't see that part of things.

You will get no argument from me about cutting crappy teachers loose. I'd love nothing more to see some of the teachers in this country say good-bye. Then who are you going to replace them with? Say you have a crappy math teacher and you are in a below-average district...is it not better to have a body in the classroom than nobody at all?

Do you know what grades that statistic is for? I do know that a lot of people teach in college as a stop-gap before moving on to more prestiguous careers. My brother is teaching chemistry classes at a major university but is only doing so because it helps him get his phd. So would he count as leaving the profession within the first 5 years? Because a lot of people do that.

[wade moore]

Do you know what grades that statistic is for? I do know that a lot of people teach in college as a stop-gap before moving on to more prestiguous careers. My brother is teaching chemistry classes at a major university but is only doing so because it helps him get his phd. So would he count as leaving the profession within the first 5 years? Because a lot of people do that.

I would assume, based on previous stats I've seen, that it is based on K-12.

[RainMaker]

I think most teachers are compensated more than fairly. They receive a fair salary for working 9 months out of the year. They are given extended breaks during all holidays, health benefits, as well as a pension in some cases. I know teachers in the North Suburbs of Chicago can get over $50,000 a year in pension once they retire. When you factor that into time actually worked, they are getting paid quite well.

It's not a knock on teachers as their jobs are important. But unfortunately, the standards aren't particularly high. These are typically not people who majored in very difficult stuff in college and are not held under the same microscope as other professions.

[wade moore]

I think most teachers are compensated more than fairly. They receive a fair salary for working 9 months out of the year. They are given extended breaks during all holidays, health benefits, as well as a pension in some cases. I know teachers in the North Suburbs of Chicago can get over $50,000 a year in pension once they retire. When you factor that into time actually worked, they are getting paid quite well.

It's not a knock on teachers as their jobs are important. But unfortunately, the standards aren't particularly high. These are typically not people who majored in very difficult stuff in college and are not held under the same microscope as other professions.

It's pretty simple to me, as others have put it. If teachers are compensated well, then why are very few of the "best and brightest" teaching? Sure, they are compensated "ok". But if you really want good teachers, the compensation is not nearly enough.

[gstelmack]

My dad used to mow lawns during the summer to help fill in the salary gaps. And I can promise you he worked a lot more than 40 hrs/week during the school year.

[sterlingice]

There is no way a union would ever allow hidden cameras. Ever. They mostly won't even allow unannounced evaluations. Quite simply, you have to stick with what is currently done...administrators doing the work. Your boss evaluates you. That's just the way business works.

Peer evaluation won't work because of time needed to actually conduct the process.

Outside evaluators is really the only real solution that deviates from what is currently done.

Seriously, tho- who else has a hidden camera to evaluate their job? I guess if we knew, it wouldn't be hidden, but you know what I mean. Sure, there are security cameras all around the building I'm in, but they are for the purposes of protecting the equipment and people, not doing job evaluations. Who on this board that isn't a police officer (and those are basically for the purpose of "who watches the watchmen") has cameras evaluating what they do?

SI

[JonInMiddleGA]

Well, Virginia doesn't have a teacher's union.

For which the general population of Virginia should get down on their knees and thank God for on a regular basis.

[AENeuman]

I think most teachers are overpaid, though if it were easy to fire teachers to bring in more talented ones, I'd be all for raising their salaries.

I think the reason it is so popular to say teachers are overpaid, bad ones should be fired, etc, is the traditional methods of dealing with incompetence is not available: competition and suing.

typically we have a choice in our products and services. k-12 public edu does not give parents much choice. The other weapon used, particularly with professional services is the threat of being sued for incompetent work, also not an option.

one big problem, besides unions, is the lack of universally accepted expectations. many parents do not care, or really want there child to be college ready. they certainly do not want to see it as being their responsibility too.

finally, if we live in an economy where most people will be working retail, why should k-12 be judged on how well they prepare students for college?

i think the absolute lack of any rigor required in community colleges (basically turning it into 13th grade) has done just as much damage as poor k-12 teachers. cc colleges are great ways to teach vocations and provide a cheaper alternative to 4 year schools. however, they have become re-education institutions for the lazy and bored, and they seem to be fine with that. btw, i teach at a community college program for high school students.

[wade moore]

Seriously, tho- who else has a hidden camera to evaluate their job? I guess if we knew, it wouldn't be hidden, but you know what I mean. Sure, there are security cameras all around the building I'm in, but they are for the purposes of protecting the equipment and people, not doing job evaluations. Who on this board that isn't a police officer (and those are basically for the purpose of "who watches the watchmen") has cameras evaluating what they do?

SI

Well, I gave a specific example where I have seen remote monitoring of employees for evaluation.

Every time you hear a "your call may be recorded" message this is what is happening. The only difference here is it includes video.

[wade moore]

For which the general population of Virginia should get down on their knees and thank God for on a regular basis.

That's the impression that I get. I'm not sure, to be honest, exactly what concessions these unions are able to achieve in other states - but it seems that the Teacher Lobby still has a fair amount of influence.

[panerd]

To address the recent topics in this thread I wish more teachers would be open and honest like the teachers are willing to be on this board. We know who the great teachers and really shitty teachers are at our schools and the NEA is doing nothing to reward the good ones or not block getting rid of the bad ones. I attribute most of this to how a typical union is set-up. The guys that are in the high offices and doing the negotiating are life time teachers either close to the end of their careers or at least 15-20 years in. So they don’t see a problem with their peers and friends making $80,000 to ride out a paycheck while a ten year teacher circles around them for $30,000 less. (or even worse a 1st year teacher is getting paid a quarter the salary and often obtaining similar results.)

I am not sure what the solution is but it just isn’t right. There is always going to be a negative to any proposal but not to even consider some of them? I am tired of the direction NCLB is leading public schools and equally as sick about the NEA’s indifference to that destruction.

The government/school boards across the country agree to turn their back on incentive/merit pay while the union agrees to put up with NCLB whose end result sadly is going to leave a lot of talented and smart students behind of where they should be. The schools cater and spend a completely disproportionate amount of money towards the families that don’t attempt to raise their kids and away from the parents who do raise their kids but want us to challenge them in ways they can’t. A dad might want his son to take geometry to a level that he never could achieve and the school district instead will teach all the kids rote computational skills because some of the subgroups won’t do well on the state tests and a little more practice can’t hurt anyone. Can you imagine if we applied this same logic to any other field?

[AZSpeechCoach]

I'm not really interested in getting into a huge debate tonight (despite my choice of occupation), but to share how evaluation occurs in my district:

It is supposed to be a surprise. Sure, you have some administrators who let you know to be prepared, but for the most part, an administrator just shows up at your door on some random day. They stay for a bit, take some notes, and leave. Some of them want you to jump to and immediately interrupt what you are doing to print out all of your lesson plans for the immediate past and future, but most of them just want you to keep working. The formative evaluation happens for 30 minutes minimum, and then you have an evaulation conference within 5 days.

Every 5 years, we have a summative evaluation where we are judged on many specific outcomes and scored from "Does not meet minimum standard" to "Exceeds." It is supposed to be every 5 years, except that the administrators just removed that from our agreements, because it is too difficult to get around to do all of their evaluations as it is...now the summative is done at will...you may have one every year if an administrator doesn't like you, or you may never have one again.

For awhile, the prevailing theme in my district was "No teacher is adequate." Every evaluation had to include a poison pill that could be held over your head. I once received a comment that my classroom management was "too strong" because one student told another to stay on topic because I would get mad if they started talking about something else. This past year, my evaluation was off-loaded onto some random district office person because the assistant principal didn't want to do her evaluations. Turns out that the district person was a former debater herself, and so spent more time talking to me about debate in the classroom than actually evaluating the class.

The major issue with the evaluation document is the vagueness of the language and objectives. Fact is, teaching is more of an art than a science. The way that I deal with specific classes or specific students varies according to the day, the lesson, and the mood of the class. If 4 different administrators were to see the same lesson, they would probably have 4 different opinions. One of them would be upset that I didn't ask leading questions to make the students participate more(rather than make the students think and search for the answers on their own); one would look at the posted grade sheets and decide my worth as a teacher based on the average class grade; one would be upset if I didn't include seek to better reach my students and try to understand that they are all suffering and can't be held accountable for things like behavior and attendence; and the last would look at everything and decide that it is just fine.

You can usually tell who is an exceptional teacher, but that can be faked. Sometimes teachers are popular because they let the kids get away with murder rather than really educating them. Other teachers are unpopular because they hold the kids to such an exacting standard and don't like to babysit the kids who don't want to learn. Those in the very upper end, and those who are completely incompetent are a small part of the whole. In reality, most teachers fall somewhere in the middle.

For those who equate teaching with manufacturing and only want to look at test scores, a good teacher may bring a kid who is 4 or 5 years behind up 3 years...the kid won't pass a standardized test, but the teacher did some good work. A percentage of the class may decide not to come to school, or may choose not to work due to issues outside of school (home life, pressures, needing medication). The popular teacher who gets Honors classes but doesn't really do much with the kids will have a high passage rate on the tests, but that is due to the nature of the kids, parental involvement, etc. In the end, it comes down to how buddy-buddy you are with the administration.

I believe I need some sleep. That came out way too long and ranty. Sorry...

[Barkeep49]

Other teachers are unpopular because they hold the kids to such an exacting standard and don't like to babysit the kids who don't want to learn.

This was a truly exemplary post. I'll just take exception to that statement there. Those are bad teachers. If you don't care about kids you aren't a good teacher. Caring and standards are independent of each other, as I know many a teacher who is extremely demanding and yet who is well regarded by parents, teachers, and students because they care.

Like I said though AZ really hits a lot of nails on the head in that post. It certainly rings true to me.

[AZSpeechCoach]

This was a truly exemplary post. I'll just take exception to that statement there. Those are bad teachers. If you don't care about kids you aren't a good teacher. Caring and standards are independent of each other, as I know many a teacher who is extremely demanding and yet who is well regarded by parents, teachers, and students because they care.

Like I said though AZ really hits a lot of nails on the head in that post. It certainly rings true to me.

Like I said...it was late. Point taken. How I meant to communicate the message is: at my school, if you don't allow ipods, gum, texting, and tardiness, then you are unpopular as a teacher. It is possible to care for the students and want them to succeed, and still not like to spend more time on behavioral issues and prodding refusing learners along than on guiding all of the students to where they need to be. In a class of 34, when you have 10 students who choose to be a problem and keep other students off topic, it becomes very difficult to provide everyone with the necessary attention.

[RainMaker]

It's pretty simple to me, as others have put it. If teachers are compensated well, then why are very few of the "best and brightest" teaching? Sure, they are compensated "ok". But if you really want good teachers, the compensation is not nearly enough.
The problem is that teachers don't really get paid based on how good they are. So if you raised salaries to attract better teachers, you'd still be paying shitty ones more than they are worth.

[Barkeep49]

I think teachers, in general, don't have a level of professional respect that say doctors or lawyers do and I would argue the sociatal good provided by teachers is about the same as doctors and greater than lawyers. If you want to attract top notch people that professional respect is the key. Having a high salary is just a simple signal of that respect.

[AZSpeechCoach]

The problem is that teachers don't really get paid based on how good they are. So if you raised salaries to attract better teachers, you'd still be paying shitty ones more than they are worth.

The crux of the problem is how to quantify a good teacher. Is it by test scores only? See my above post. By student survey? All you need are a few yahoos to drag down the average. Parent survey? So many parents are apathetic and wouldn't respond (even if they could speak the language, but that's a debate I don't care to get into). Administrative evaluation? See my above statement.

Because of a law passed a decade ago in Arizona, we have "Performance-Based Pay." Which equals a potential $2000. Some districts tied the money to the completion of "projects" as assigned and judged by the administration. In an attempt to make things more objective and less about whether or not you are well-liked, my district tied it to several factors, including dropout rate, graduation rate, student attendance, parent survey, student performance on state standardized tests, and teacher attendance. The only thing that I have any real direct affect on is my attendance. I cannot compel the students to attend, I cannot directly influence dropout of graduation, I teach the students after they take the standardized test (they take it in 10th grade and I teach 11th), and good luck getting the surveys back, even when I tie it to participation points. Yes, I have some impact, but so many more things influence the students.

Life is not like the movies, where one teacher comes in and makes an entire school whip into shape. You see the students one hour a day. Mind you, I am speaking from an inner-city public schooling environment. And, I've been ranting again. I go back to the classroom 2 weeks from today. I spent a good chunk of June working with the students who went to Alabama for the National Speech and Debate tournament, spent a week at Nationals, spent time in Tucson with my newborn niece, worked on yet another course proposal for the fall, worked on the Junior english curriculum, worked on stuff for the Speech Coach Convention in the fall, and I am about to take a week in San Diego to clear my head before I have to go back to the grind. Yippee!

[ShaqFu]

There are some great discussion points being shared here. I again will stand my ground that teachers really are not paid enough, when you start factoring in per hour calculations. There are few districts left that give three months off in the summer. Maybe two months, but certainly not three. Factor in the time being used during off hours and breaks, a teacher really ends up working close to or more than the average 40-hour/week worker.

The issue of teacher firing is a tragic one. In any other profession, if you are inept, you will be fired. You may have some provisions to protect you, to require due process, but the reality is that if you do a bad job, you're fired. If it is a wrongful termination, you sue. If it was proved wrongful, you might be entitled to compensation. In New York City, there are special places setup for bad teachers (and certificated educators) to go. They get paid a full salary while awaiting a due process hearing. Some reports are that teachers have been in this process for seven years. Why go anywhere else, when you can get paid a full salary for doing nothing all day? This should not be happening.

Evaluations differ from place to place. Some of the best efforts involve administrators making random drop-in visits. These visits might last just a few minutes, enough to just jot down a note or two. These visits might go longer, but they are otherwise completely informal. The administrator may or may not provide feedback/constructive criticism. These visits get documented and tie into the more formal observations. They help create a focal point. The idea is that the evaluation is not just an issue of keeping your job, but a chance to coach/develop teachers. For younger teachers, this is critical. For the most part, the standard I have seen is two observations during an observation year, sometimes three. The first typically is announced. The second is not, though the union contract typically specifies that "does not have to be" since some admins will advise teachers of all formal visits.

Peer evaluations tend not to be popular in more traditional schools, but in smaller learning communities and charters, they are quite popular. In these non-traditional academic settings, there may or may not be a traditional administrative team. The idea is that the teachers are the leaders. Teachers observe each other, provide critical feedback, and gather data used in deciding who stays/goes.

It should be noted that charters typically are non-union. Some unions have attempted to infiltrate charters, only to be shot down, on the basis that the union is not needed. This tends to be accurate, as charters typically have a higher rating of teacher satisfaction in general.

Student evaluations also are another possibility. This is again popular in the charters/SLCs.

I am not a fan of teacher unions in general, because I feel that they do not have the interest of the students in hand. They tend to protect the upper echalon, nothing more.

If you think about it, bad teachers have no incentive to improve, because they have nothing to lose. Worst case, they get paid to do nothing, as in the NYC case. Veteran teachers have every reason to fight salary cuts, because pensions typically are based on an individual teachers highest two years of salary. A teacher making $40/K this year could make $100/K next year as an administrator. They could work as a principal for two years, return to the classroom for their $40/K salary. When they retire, the pension is based on the $100K. It pays to become an administrator, even if only for a few years. This probably is why you do not hear too many administrators balk when asked to return to the classroom. Those close to retirement age can finish out their last few years, than collect a nice check in the end.

Speaking of administrators, they typically work on a year-to-year contract. Unlike teachers, they can be terminated at the end of their contract. No tenure.

[gstelmack]

I think teachers, in general, don't have a level of professional respect that say doctors or lawyers do and I would argue the sociatal good provided by teachers is about the same as doctors and greater than lawyers. If you want to attract top notch people that professional respect is the key. Having a high salary is just a simple signal of that respect.

I may have to start a thread to find out who the most important folks / jobs to our society are, thinking along the lines of "without these where would our society be"?. I'd say the top of the list involves (but not necessarily in this order):

firefighter
police
doctor
nurse
soldier
teacher

Only one of those is paid commensurate with their value to the society as a whole.

[wade moore]

The problem is that teachers don't really get paid based on how good they are. So if you raised salaries to attract better teachers, you'd still be paying shitty ones more than they are worth.

I agree that with a raised salary should come a more stringent review process.

[Malificent]

We're sending our daughter to private school (a Waldorf school) and one of the most interesting changes in philosophy for me is the fact that teachers stay with their students from 1st-8th grade. My daughter will have the same teacher until she hits high school. It lets the teacher really get to know the kids, their strengths and weaknesses. Downside is that the teacher has to be really broad spectrum to teach across the range and if for some reason my daughter really dislikes her teacher, she's out of luck - although that's a life lesson in and of itself, I guess.

[RainMaker]

We're sending our daughter to private school (a Waldorf school) and one of the most interesting changes in philosophy for me is the fact that teachers stay with their students from 1st-8th grade. My daughter will have the same teacher until she hits high school. It lets the teacher really get to know the kids, their strengths and weaknesses. Downside is that the teacher has to be really broad spectrum to teach across the range and if for some reason my daughter really dislikes her teacher, she's out of luck - although that's a life lesson in and of itself, I guess.
That's a really unique way of doing it. I see a lot of pros and cons. My biggest issue besides the broad spectrum you proposed above is that the kids could get too comfortable with the same teacher. If you spend 8 years with the same teacher, high school could be a big shock having to deal with 5-6 different teachers and different styles.

[molson]

I see people comparing teacher salaries to other "professional" jobs, but that's a meaningless comparison, unless the the professional job is also public service. Government pays less, in any field.

Teachers make as much as government lawyers, and in some cases, more. Starting prosecutor/public defender/civil attorney jobs are in the 30s and 40s (Even in NYC it hasn't broken $50k for Assistant DA positions), and you get north of 50 in maybe 5-10 years, and then the growth pretty much slows to cost-of-living adjustments. Obviously the top government attorney jobs make way more (District Attorneys, Attorney Generals), but those salaries are comparable to the top education administrators. Lawyers for the federal government do better - but that's such a tiny relative number of jobs - comparable to top eduation policy jobs in the federal government, which I'm sure pay very well. And government attorneys, especially the lower-level ones, work far more hours than teachers (even when liberally trying to strech teachers' hours to something resembling a 40 hour work week).

To me, it kind of balances out because while law is a more rigorous discipline and law school is more difficult than a education master's degree (and far more expensive), there is a glut of qualified attorneys in the market place right now, and it's much harder to find a good teacher than a good lawyer.

So for teachers to be considered underpaid, someone in public service needs to be considered overpaid. And who's that? I don't think there's much room to go down for anyone. While some teachers deserve to make more than the average government lawyer, the thought of ALL of them doing so kind of makes me ill. There's definitely situations where I could make more teaching government to high schoolers than actually being an attorney in government, which seems off. If that disparity continues, I'd try to make the jump - just for the better pay, hours, and vacation time.

[QuikSand]

I may have to start a thread to find out who the most important folks / jobs to our society are, thinking along the lines of "without these where would our society be"?. I'd say the top of the list involves (but not necessarily in this order):

firefighter
police
doctor
nurse
soldier
teacher

Only one of those is paid commensurate with their value to the society as a whole.

Public sector employees -- teachers, public safety, hell even garbage collectors -- all undoubtedly perform very valuable services. And without them, we'd all suffer. Little disagreement from anyone there.

The thing is, you need a lot of these people. So, in practice, you can't have standards that are so high that we'd build in a shortage of "qualified" people. We nominally want teachers to get fully certificated and to carry a masters degree... but the reality is that for this to work with the sheer number of people we need to have serving as teachers, we are obliged to dumb down the degree so it's accessible academically to a rather wide swath of people, many of whom simply aren't really "advanced degree" material in general respects.

So, why not pay them more? Basically, you're asking taxpayers to invest $100,000 into a position when you can get "someone" for, say, $60,000... or something along those lines. In some limited cases, this is sellable to the taxpaying public, but in general, it simply isn't. The market for public sector jobs is not a perfectly functioning one, but it's not a total misfit, either. If the voters/taxpayers really demanded exceptional schools that can recruit and retain outstanding and highly qualified teachers... they can do that. In some case (mostly with the benefit of a high tax base) it happens. But in general, the people don't really want that. They want lower taxes, or other public priorities. And we reach a certain equilibrium that way... and that means that if you offer compensation of $60K for a rank-and-file teacher, you get enough applicants and at least some of them are nominally qualified, and some turn out to be really good. And on the whole, we judge that to be "good enough," as evidenced by the lack of protest in the street over the state of teacher compensation/qualifications.

Pretty much the same story goes for most other public employees. We need lots of them, so we can't be all that demanding in their skill sets or qualifications. And once you drop most of the barriers to entry into the profession (rigorous schooling, high proficiency in select skills) then you place yourself into a labor market where you don't have to pay all that much. We get plenty of police trainees for our opening salary offers, we get plenty of future firefighters with what we pay there, and we get plenty of applicants for street-sweeping or trash-hauling or road-grading jobs in the public sector. And again, nobody is protesting that these htings are being done so poorly that we need to reform the system.

It's possible that if we made a national commitment to improve teacher salaries wholesale, we'd see more of the elite and promising students commit to that career path, rather than seeking to become investment bankers or corporate attorneys or astronauts or whatever else they do now. And maybe in the longer haul, that would be great for our schoolchildren. But in the short term, it would essentially mean taking many of the same mediocre teachers we gripe about today, and just paying them more for their same mediocrity. Tough sell.

[Malificent]

That's a really unique way of doing it. I see a lot of pros and cons. My biggest issue besides the broad spectrum you proposed above is that the kids could get too comfortable with the same teacher. If you spend 8 years with the same teacher, high school could be a big shock having to deal with 5-6 different teachers and different styles.

Yeah, although she will get some exposure to other teachers. They do music, sculpture and handcraft work, plus learn two languages, so she'll get exposure to other teachers for that stuff, just most of her primary stuff from the same teacher.

There's no standard testing required and the kids make their own textbook. It's definitely very different from the standard public school setup.

Their high school is a little more traditional, since students will have to eventually take the ACT/SAT. Most of their high school teachers are people formerly working in the "real" world, doing early retirement and wanting to teach the subject to kids. Their math teacher is a former NASA engineer, for example. It's a cool (but I imagine not cheap) way to get more teachers - grab from the end of the career spectrum rather than at the beginning.

[Edward64]

Past couple weeks, 2 items related to this thread.

School chief willing to negotiate on mass firing of teachers - CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/03/03/rhode.island.school.firings/index.html?iref=allsearch)
CNN) -- The Rhode Island school superintendent who last week fired all the teachers and staff from a school whose students were performing poorly said Wednesday she is willing to negotiate now that the union has agreed to support changes.
:
:
Gallo's statement came a day after the Central Fall Teachers Union recommended a number of changes, including increasing instructional time for students, enhancing their support and increasing teaching quality.

Last week, the school board approved Gallo's plan to discharge 93 people -- classroom teachers, administrators and other personnel -- at the high school. The school is in a low-income area, and many of its students are Latino with English as their second language.

The firings, which were to have become effective at the end of the school year, came after the district failed to reach an agreement with the teachers' union on a plan for teachers to spend more time with students to improve test scores.

[Edward64]

More interesting is this Newsweek article.

Why We Must Fire Bad Teachers - Newsweek.com (http://www.newsweek.com/id/234590)
Nothing, then, is more important than hiring good teachers and firing bad ones. But here is the rub. Although many teachers are caring and selfless, teaching in public schools has not always attracted the best and the brightest. There once was a time when teaching (along with nursing) was one of the few jobs not denied to women and minorities. But with social progress, many talented women and minorities chose other and more highly compensated fields. One recent review of the evidence by McKinsey & Co., the management consulting firm, showed that most schoolteachers are recruited from the bottom third of college-bound high-school students. (Finland takes the top 10 percent.)

At the same time, the teachers' unions have become more and more powerful. In most states, after two or three years, teachers are given lifetime tenure. It is almost impossible to fire them. In New York City in 2008, three out of 30,000 tenured teachers were dismissed for cause. The statistics are just as eye-popping in other cities. The percentage of teachers dismissed for poor performance in Chicago between 2005 and 2008 (the most recent figures available) was 0.1 percent. In Akron, Ohio, zero percent. In Toledo, 0.01 percent. In Denver, zero percent. In no other socially significant profession are the workers so insulated from accountability. The responsibility does not just fall on the unions. Many principals don't even try to weed out the poor performers (or they transfer them to other schools in what's been dubbed the "dance of the lemons"). Year after year, about 99 percent of all teachers in the United States are rated "satisfactory" by their school systems; firing a teacher invites a costly court battle with the local union.

[Edward64]

Here are responses to the Newsweek article.

Schools Matter: Boycott Newsweek Disinfomercials (http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/03/boycott-newsweek-disinfomercials.html)
Schools Matter: Ravitch on the Newsweek Disinfomercial Against Teaching (http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/03/ravitch-on-newsweek-disinfomercial.html)

The key argument that I got from the Newsweek article is there are a bunch of bad teachers but they are protected. However, the tone of the Newsweek article was pretty harsh.

Overall, implement a performance management system and do remove/retire the bottom x%.

[Marc Vaughan]

One thing I've never understood is most countries (happens in England as well as America) is the unwillingness of goverments to promote the link between getting an education and getting ahead.

I come from a fairly poor economic background and know a fair few people back home who've stumbled through life after getting poor grades, they're happy enough but work poorly paid jobs - because this is the 'norm' for them they pass their attitude towards education onto their children (eg. No point learning trigonometry you won't need it in the 'real world' - that sort of thing).

This means their kids don't feel the need to focus on homework or learning and thus the family cycle of low educational achievement continues.

The 'strangest' thing for me in this is that these people aren't unintelligent at all and indeed I'd rate some of them as being more intelligent than I am, just that their life experience has given them a skewed view of the world where they see people acquiring better jobs as being 'lucky' rather than other factors.

This view is reinforced by the media who repeatedly promote people as being instant successes rather than showing the reality which is that most people achieve success through education and hard work combined.

IMHO until you educate the less achieving sections of society that education IS important there is only so much that any teacher can do without support from the families involved.

(sorry that turned into a bit of a ramble)

[JonInMiddleGA]

Past couple weeks, 2 items related to this thread.


I'll add a third, as Beach HS in Savannah, GA will dismiss all 200 teachers & administrators at the conclusion of this school year. The school has been in the state's bottom tier of performance for 7 straight years. Can't be ignored though that the move will make them eligible for up to $6m in additional federal funding.

Struggling Georgia school firing entire staff *| ajc.com (http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/struggling-georgia-school-firing-404386.html)

[JonInMiddleGA]

One thing I've never understood is most countries (happens in England as well as America) is the unwillingness of goverments to promote the link between getting an education and getting ahead.

Not sure what unwillingness you mean, unless you're talking about a balls-to-the-wall mass media ad campaign or something.

The link between your future job/earnings prospects and education is something that's pretty much drummed into kids from a fairly early age.

[ColtCrazy]

Okay, just reading this last page has been interesting.

I am a teacher, I teach elementary education which makes me a bit of a rarity around here being a male. I love my job and find it extremely rewarding. The recent education bashing by my governor (Indiana) and some media types has irritated me some.

Anyway, about some of the points listed on here....

I find it ironic that the state and the federal government preach higher standards in education, yet one of the first places to get cuts seems to be education. I remember Indiana initiating the lottery as a way of paying for certain things in the state, one of which being education. I wonder where that money as gone to.

My particular school is rural and is in the state's 3rd poorest county. We don't use that as an excuse, my school is consistently in the state's top 20% of schools and we've ranked as high as 44th in the state (out of roughly 1300). The rest of the district is a mixed bag, and things seem to get progressively worse as you work your way to high school.

Our district announced cuts of 9 teachers for next year, several I know are good, young teachers. There's strong indication that they'll be 9 more before next year. 18 teachers would be roughly 12% of our district's teaching staff. This would mean increased class sizes for the rest of us. I really don't care if I end up with 20 kids or 35 kids (I've been on both sides of the spectrum in my 12 years of teaching) but how is that fair to the kids?

There are a lot of great teachers in the county, but of course there are some that have tenure that really ought to go. This is where the unions are flawed (for the record, I am not a member of the teacher's union as I find them to be useless in negotiations). The union also seems to get bent out of shape over the slightest change in "working conditions".

I know my economic struggles aren't because of my salary scale, but more to do with the fact my wife graduated with an education degree in the middle of this miserable recession. My salary is good, but the cost of living here is low. We are regarded as well paid in an area where the median salary is considerably lower than ours. During discussions of recent cuts, more people complained about closing the old basketball gym than complained about cutting teachers. Never mind the old gym is located in the old middle school which is not being used and maintenance for the gym is over $90K a year.

That said, teacher salaries need to go up to draw in teachers to the cities, where standards of living are higher. I wouldn't mind a small increase in salary, but I'm also in the minority because I favor stronger teacher evaluations, etc.

As for 12 months of school, that won't happen anytime soon. teacher salaries would have to go up considerably, and there's no money for that type of overhaul. Try to extend the calendar with that, and you'd have a mass exodus of teachers. Teaching is stressful, and there's a surprisingly high burn out rate, especially for primary and special ed positions. That would increase with a 12 month school year. Also, the students need some sort of break, at least a month, between grades. Students get surprisingly burnt out as well by the time the school year ends (at least they should be if you are teaching them!)

With so many cuts nationwide, I think we are heading for some particularly rough days in education. Scores are going to fall across the board in places that had significant cuts, there's no way around that. It'll be interesting to see how politicians respond to that. Blame the teachers, and that will just make things worse.

[sterlingice]

One thing I've never understood is most countries (happens in England as well as America) is the unwillingness of goverments to promote the link between getting an education and getting ahead.

I dunno- every single politician says it because it's cheap, easy points. Every President I can recall has always wanted to be thought of as an "education President" and especially in the last decade or so, there has been a lot of talk of needing to go to college to get a good job, etc.

Later on in your post, you were talking about the media and who they glorify and that's a whole other matter. Particularly when you have a large group of under-educated in the populace and thus a market, there's going to be a demand and that will be filled by companies catering to the lowest common denominator.

SI

[Marc Vaughan]

Not sure what unwillingness you mean, unless you're talking about a balls-to-the-wall mass media ad campaign or something.

I do indeed mean a "balls to the wall" media campaign in the same way which is frequently done for things like anti-drugs campaigns etc.

The link between your future job/earnings prospects and education is something that's pretty much drummed into kids from a fairly early age.

You'd 'think' that - but what I've personally seen is that this is only generally the case in some families, normally those who have more educated/aspirational parents.

In families which lack this aspect education is almost a dirty world - if you doubt this consider the amount of negative connotations within working class society for people who are talented academically (swot, teachers pet etc.) .... you don't see those sorts of terms being applied to people gifted in sports ;)

[JonInMiddleGA]

I do indeed mean a "balls to the wall" media campaign in the same way which is frequently done for things like anti-drugs campaigns etc.

Thanks for clarifying, I wasn't sure what else you could/might have meant.

You'd 'think' that - but what I've personally seen is that this is only generally the case in some families, normally those who have more educated/aspirational parents.

I don't "think" that, I "know" that it's been a part of the discussion with not only every private school I'm familiar with but also every public school I'm familiar with as well, covering at least the last 30 years. YMMV of course, but it's definitely around in some areas, often pretty bluntly.

[Marc Vaughan]

I dunno- every single politician says it because it's cheap, easy points. Every President I can recall has always wanted to be thought of as an "education President" and especially in the last decade or so, there has been a lot of talk of needing to go to college to get a good job, etc.
Possibly thats true in America generally (apologies in that case I haven't seen anything along those lines in Florida much, just continued cutting of the education services) - in England little is done to promote the link at all.

[Marc Vaughan]

I don't "think" that, I "know" that it's been a part of the discussion with not only every private school I'm familiar with but also every public school I'm familiar with as well, covering at least the last 30 years. YMMV of course, but it's definitely around in some areas, often pretty bluntly.

Fair enough - it just amazes me in the schools here locally that such a huge percentage of kids are being 'held back*' in grades and their parents really don't seem to care.

The problem is that while the schools are aware of this and undoubtably try and encourage the students (some of the best teachers I've ever met have been based in American incidentally, I've met teacher here who are amazing - my daughters High school program especially has some fantastic educators in it) ... its the students parents who have a huge influence on the kids attitudes and whether they aspire to achieve.

The kids with parents who interact with the school will generally be those are care about education already (so you're preaching to the converted) - its the ones who don't interact with the school, turn up to PTA meetings etc. which need to be converted imho.

*There was a child in one of the schools here who'd been held back twice already at the age of 12, something which to me seems inherantly wrong - surely when he's 14 and in a class with 12 year olds; not only will his social development be skewed poorly but his hormones will be wholly innappropriate for his peer group.

[JonInMiddleGA]

Fair enough - it just amazes me in the schools here locally that such a huge percentage of kids are being 'held back*' in grades and their parents really don't seem to care.

It amazes me too ... but only from the standpoint that there's actually a school system left in America that has the courage to avoid "social promotion".

Guessing from the location in your profile, are we talking about the Brevard County, FL school system?

If so, it's interesting (to me at least) to note that they're consistently rated as one of the top systems in the state of Florida over the past several years and were #3 statewide (behind St. John's & Gilchrist) in terms of student achievement scores overall.

And that's even more impressive considering that, according to one online database at least, there are almost the same number of private schools in the district as there are public schools, with roughly 20% of ostensibly high performers skimmed off the top before they're even measured.

Of course none of that is even slightly relevant if I'm guessing wrong about what system you're referring to ;)

[flere-imsaho]

Not sure if this was already posted, but I found this fascinating a few weeks ago in the NYT Sunday Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?ref=magazine

[JonInMiddleGA]

Not sure if this was already posted, but I found this fascinating a few weeks ago in the NYT Sunday Magazine: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Teachers-t.html?ref=magazine

Interesting read, although I have to say that it puts faces & a few figures to what I realized quite a few year ago: that for all the blame that the education establishment tries to put in as many places as possible, there's a portion that comes straight back to their own doorstep. That's a 500 pound gorilla in discussions with most educators that I've encountered & rarely have I seen any progress in a discussion that tries to include it ... but there can be no real progress without including it either, which helps bring us to our current sorry state.

I think the most interesting thing was the study from more than 20 years ago that highlighted the problems with how teachers were (or weren't) being educated but in spite of that acknowledgment & so many people in positions of authority over that process "signing on" to at least some of those findings, we still see the same problems today.

Ultimately though, I wonder if it actually starts to come down to the same dilution of talent that we've seen with, say, MLB pitching staffs or sports officiating. More slots = a lower standard. More kids + smaller class sizes = more teachers, meaning the amount of mediocrity is almost certain to rise no matter what we do.

[Marc Vaughan]

It amazes me too ... but only from the standpoint that there's actually a school system left in America that has the courage to avoid "social promotion".
Could you possibly explain what you mean by 'social promotion' as I'm not familiar with the term.

(do you mean holding kids back from their natural age range if they don't succeed educationally? - if so then its something which is very 'new' to me, but doesn't intuitively seem right to me for the reasons I've indicated, however I'll readily admit my exposure to it is limited having grown up elsewhere)

Guessing from the location in your profile, are we talking about the Brevard County, FL school system?
You're correct that I'm talking about Brevard county - again don't get me wrong some of the schools here are great.

And that's even more impressive considering that, according to one online database at least, there are almost the same number of private schools in the district as there are public schools, with roughly 20% of ostensibly high performers skimmed off the top before they're even measured.
There are a LOT of private schools here you're right about that - we sent our kids to one initially after emigrating (a Catholic school which was fantastic) because it was much smaller than the public schools and more akin to what they were used to back home.

They're all now in the public school system and are at very good schools and doing very well, please don't take my comments as being against any countries educational system - its more a statement that without parental support educators are always going to struggle to succeed ...

[JonInMiddleGA]

Could you possibly explain what you mean by 'social promotion' as I'm not familiar with the term.

"Social promotion" is essentially the practice of allowing students to advance from one grade to the next in spite of academic failure in one or more subjects (i.e. outright failing, doesn't pass the class with at least a 70 or even a 60 in some cases) in order to keep them with their age group.

It was fairly uncommon in the US, at least as far as I'm aware, until probably somewhere in at least the 1970's but fairly quickly became commonplace.


You're correct that I'm talking about Brevard county - again don't get me wrong some of the schools here are great.

Based on the publicly available numbers that I found, it looks as though most of the schools in the system are in the highest tier in the state, and not a single school in the system graded out lower than a B in the past several years, which looked to relate to being somewhere around "average" to "a bit better than average". Now as with the case here in Georgia, sometimes being among the best is still akin to damning with faint praise, I'm not as familiar with what the average or median caliber in Florida really is one way or the other.


They're all now in the public school system and are at very good schools and doing very well, please don't take my comments as being against any countries educational system - its more a statement that without parental support educators are always going to struggle to succeed ...

No worries with me on that score, you aren't likely to find too many harsher critics of public education in the U.S. than me.

[Marc Vaughan]

"Social promotion" is essentially the practice of allowing students to advance from one grade to the next in spite of academic failure in one or more subjects (i.e. outright failing, doesn't pass the class with at least a 70 or even a 60 in some cases) in order to keep them with their age group.
It was fairly uncommon in the US, at least as far as I'm aware, until probably somewhere in at least the 1970's but fairly quickly became commonplace.

Wht disadvantages do you see with this system out of interest compared to simply having different 'ability strands' in a common age group (which is how its undertaken in Europe - for instance in my high school in the UK the 200 or so students were split up into (approximately) 9 classes for each subject with 3 definite ability groups between them).

No worries with me on that score, you aren't likely to find too many harsher critics of public education in the U.S. than me.
I think there's generally good and bad in all systems; when a situation is complex (like education) its impossible to have something which is fool-proof for all people passing through it.

The US setup is very different to what I'm used to back home; but I'm trying not to just react in equating a difference = scary = bad.