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Schools
- Thread Starter husker
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I'd rather have teachers making money like that than athletes making what they do...
Either way, the demands seem reasonable and the teacher's are in a bit of trouble there. I doubt there is a shortage of fresh college graduates to replace them...
Either way, the demands seem reasonable and the teacher's are in a bit of trouble there. I doubt there is a shortage of fresh college graduates to replace them...
The difference is we taxpayers have to pay all .gov employees and have a choice to attend an athletic event.
I'm always amazed that private schools pay their educators much less than their public counterparts. Yet the differences between the two are VASTLY different.
Paying public employees more than their private sector counterparts never seems to yeild the desired results.
Its a shame we can't tie a public employee salary to preformance. It seems that there are very few who actually earn their keep.
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My wife is a teacher, so I am all for paying teachers a fair wage for doing their jobs well. She has a master's degree in education and doesn't make that much, though I wish she did.
From what I read in that article though those teachers were not doing their jobs. Less than 50% of students getting passing grades, and under 50% graduation rate seems ridiculous to me.
From what I read in that article though those teachers were not doing their jobs. Less than 50% of students getting passing grades, and under 50% graduation rate seems ridiculous to me.
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Education has been so thoroughly "governmentized" that it is a mess to try to unravel step by step. I worked 12 years as a State employee and I have lots of fmaily in the education system.
The simplest way is to open it up to a competitive marketplace. There is a variety of ways to do this from getting government out of education all together, to allow use of full-fare vouchers to be used for any private school, and many other options.
One of the biggest problems is the political correctness indoctrination that trumps academic achievement. This gets back to the "closed shop" education system that allows one source of academics and book publishers to drive education policy and curriculum. Discipline and academic accomplishment takes a back seat to "social awareness" and artificial self-esteem.
While you would think teachers should earn a lot, you have to consider there is a glut of unemployed/underemployed teachers out there. Supply and demand of a free market would indicate lower wages for a profession that has an over supply of workers. It seems that the education degree is one of the easiest to acquire compared to engineering, science, business, etc.
Fundamentally it is not much the fault of individual teachers, the majority of who are dedicated, knowledgeable professionals. The problem is they are hobbled by bloated administrations whose PRIMARY objective is butts-in-seats for federal dollars; not learning. Thus discipline standards are almost non-existent. They are mandated to teach political correct doctrine and perform endless testing at the cost of less instruction.
Much of education seems driven by the latest aspiring Phd that has dreamed up yet another teaching methodology and requires meticulous testing of first graders to help prove their proffered thesis.
All of this crap would be blasted away if the government schools were simply made to compete with private schools on a level field. I envision a competive market for education would result in a vast variety of education opportunities from baby-sitting "schools" for the unmotivated to specialty schools where kids could explore and develop knowledge and skills in the Classics, or science, or fine arts, etc. Right now government schools are all trying to squeeze every kid through the same mould.
I just finished reading a book about John Adams. He did not come from a wealthy home, his father was a farmer and deacon. Most schooling was in the home and by private tutor. By the time he was fifteen he had mastered French, Latin and Greek (besides literature, writing and mathematics) well enough to be tested in those languages for admittance to Harvard. His father sold ten acres to pay his tuition. After college he languished as a teacher in a small town, then apprenticed with a lawyer.
These days a student is held to very low standards and they are neither learned in classical liberal arts (the art of research, exposure to masterpieces, and critical thinking) nor in specialties which can place them in viable work, even after college. Many of them have not even learned how to behave in civilized society, let alone their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the republic. How many can balance a check book or start a business?
Bottom line, the current education system is so infested and corrupt that there is no way to incrementally clean it up. It has to be wiped to a clean slate or dramatically overhauled to encourage free market competition. Socialized education is no better than socialized medicine or socialized farming.
The simplest way is to open it up to a competitive marketplace. There is a variety of ways to do this from getting government out of education all together, to allow use of full-fare vouchers to be used for any private school, and many other options.
One of the biggest problems is the political correctness indoctrination that trumps academic achievement. This gets back to the "closed shop" education system that allows one source of academics and book publishers to drive education policy and curriculum. Discipline and academic accomplishment takes a back seat to "social awareness" and artificial self-esteem.
While you would think teachers should earn a lot, you have to consider there is a glut of unemployed/underemployed teachers out there. Supply and demand of a free market would indicate lower wages for a profession that has an over supply of workers. It seems that the education degree is one of the easiest to acquire compared to engineering, science, business, etc.
Fundamentally it is not much the fault of individual teachers, the majority of who are dedicated, knowledgeable professionals. The problem is they are hobbled by bloated administrations whose PRIMARY objective is butts-in-seats for federal dollars; not learning. Thus discipline standards are almost non-existent. They are mandated to teach political correct doctrine and perform endless testing at the cost of less instruction.
Much of education seems driven by the latest aspiring Phd that has dreamed up yet another teaching methodology and requires meticulous testing of first graders to help prove their proffered thesis.
All of this crap would be blasted away if the government schools were simply made to compete with private schools on a level field. I envision a competive market for education would result in a vast variety of education opportunities from baby-sitting "schools" for the unmotivated to specialty schools where kids could explore and develop knowledge and skills in the Classics, or science, or fine arts, etc. Right now government schools are all trying to squeeze every kid through the same mould.
I just finished reading a book about John Adams. He did not come from a wealthy home, his father was a farmer and deacon. Most schooling was in the home and by private tutor. By the time he was fifteen he had mastered French, Latin and Greek (besides literature, writing and mathematics) well enough to be tested in those languages for admittance to Harvard. His father sold ten acres to pay his tuition. After college he languished as a teacher in a small town, then apprenticed with a lawyer.
These days a student is held to very low standards and they are neither learned in classical liberal arts (the art of research, exposure to masterpieces, and critical thinking) nor in specialties which can place them in viable work, even after college. Many of them have not even learned how to behave in civilized society, let alone their rights and responsibilities as citizens of the republic. How many can balance a check book or start a business?
Bottom line, the current education system is so infested and corrupt that there is no way to incrementally clean it up. It has to be wiped to a clean slate or dramatically overhauled to encourage free market competition. Socialized education is no better than socialized medicine or socialized farming.
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I am not sure how you figure that an education degree is easier to get than any other degree. I am pretty sure a master's degree requires close to if not the same number of credits for education as it does for anything else. I am pretty sure that the cost to obtain said degrees are going to be pretty similar if obtained from similar colleges as well. So why shouldn't good teachers get similar wages to people with similar degrees?
Teaching children how to behave in civilized society should not be resposibility of our schools. Things like personal values, morals, responsibility and generally how to behave as a human being should be learned at home, and that education should start before the children reach school age. IMHO public schools should be teaching our kids things like reading, writing, math, science, and history. Education in arts or specialized education should be for those that wish to continue to college.
A lot of people like to blame teachers for how badly their kids are doing in school, or for not making their kids behave, but that is not always because of the teachers. It's not the teacher's responsibility to make a kid do his/her homework instead of playing xbox or hanging out with thugs at the mall. If parents/students are not stepping up to their responsibilities there is not a whole lot a teacher can do. Do you think it's the teachers fault a student is failing when the kid is too lazy to do the work, and the parent tells the teacher "I can't make him do it, thats your job."? (this has actually happened to my wife on several occasions)
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Although I don't teach, I got my degree in Music Education. My son recently graduated from WSU with his degree in Music Education and has been a band teacher in the Seattle for the last two years.
He had to satisfy WSU's general education requirements, the College of Music requirements, and the College of Education requirements. He never took less that 18 hours a semester and it still took him 5 years to graduate. Those say that an education degree is easier to get don't know what they are talking about.
He had to satisfy WSU's general education requirements, the College of Music requirements, and the College of Education requirements. He never took less that 18 hours a semester and it still took him 5 years to graduate. Those say that an education degree is easier to get don't know what they are talking about.
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Yes, teachers have to get degrees that cost the same and take the same number of years. Geez. But when I went to school and watching my kids go to school there is a different degree of difficulty between the "hard" majors like engineering, chemistry, physics, mathematics and the "soft" majors like education, English, etc. I took engineering and computer classes and 18 credits would have been light. I never had less than 20 credits and that included a couple of years of labs which took a lot longer than 1 hour/wk per credit.
Regardless of whether it is easy or hard, there are a lot more education majors than engineering or science majors relative to the job market. There is a glut of of education majors right now.
Just getting a degree that cost a lot of money and took years of work does not entitle anyone to a comfy income. If they choose to get a degree that will pay less than they dream for, then why did they do it? Looking at teachers salaries I don't see they are that bad. Nine months of work (yes other professions have to keep constantly training too) with starting pay around $35K is not bad. But like most socialized professions you will not get much top end growth in salary.
I think it ironic that teachers who grumble about their pay in government run schools turn right around and vigorously resist any competition. Competition equals more upside salary for top performers. If you don;t want competitive schools then don't cry about lackluster salaries.
Regardless of whether it is easy or hard, there are a lot more education majors than engineering or science majors relative to the job market. There is a glut of of education majors right now.
Just getting a degree that cost a lot of money and took years of work does not entitle anyone to a comfy income. If they choose to get a degree that will pay less than they dream for, then why did they do it? Looking at teachers salaries I don't see they are that bad. Nine months of work (yes other professions have to keep constantly training too) with starting pay around $35K is not bad. But like most socialized professions you will not get much top end growth in salary.
I think it ironic that teachers who grumble about their pay in government run schools turn right around and vigorously resist any competition. Competition equals more upside salary for top performers. If you don;t want competitive schools then don't cry about lackluster salaries.
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I don't necessarily disagree with all your points, but not all teachers grumble about their pay or resist competition. My son went into teaching knowing full well that he was never going to get rich, He is teaching because that's what he loves doing and is good at.
I think you will also find that some of the worst laws that have been passed that effect teaching, such as not child left behind, were the result of the Ed Unions fighting so hard against any kind of performance measures that when people finally got fed up with it and forced their hands the pendulum pushed to far the other way and you now have teachers teaching to the "test" rather that spending time teaching the kids what they really need to know.
My son is in the Union because he has to be, not because he wants to be. He too is frustrated that it is so hard to fire bad teachers. It's the same with my wife. She works for Washington County and has seen people that it took 4-5 years and massive documentation to be able to fire them without the emplyee unions having a case to sue them.
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My wife feels the same way. She has told me several times that due to the union contracts a teacher with tenure would practically have to get caught having sex with students or giving them drugs in order to get fired. I get to hear all the horror stories of not just bad parents that don't want to take responsibility for raising their own children, but also the bad teachers that half *** their jobs because they know the union will protect them. Unfortunately I think that a large number of labor unions have lost sight of their purpose. Instead of fighting to protect hard working emplyees from unethical employers, some have created an environment of mediochrity(sp?) where doing the bare minimum work to keep from getting fired is expected, and in some cases encouraged. As an example I know a guy that was a union lineman for a telco. He always told stories of how he was supposed to do x number of jobs per day, and if he finished early he was supposed to report that it took the alotted time. The reasoning behind it was that if the management realized how much time it really took to do the work they would be assigned a heavier workload.
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This is exactly what I mean. The socilized education system has created so many problems we can't say "fix the teachers" or "fix the parents" or "fix the budget". It is all screwed up.
But if the education funding was changed so that private schools could compete on a level field, then all of those things would sort out. Lazy parents would seek out schools with easy standards and full-time baby sitting. Union members could work at schools wanting to be union shops, and freelance teachers could work at open shop schools. Ambitious students and parents could opt of schools catering to academic excellence and there would be much variety in offerings.
The current socialized education system drains money from private alternatives and forces everyone into a homogenous system of union shops (run for the benefit of bloated admins, not students, parents, or teachers) that promote progressive indoctrination, dumming down, student bodies over student minds/behavior, and acceptance of the least tolerable teachers and students to the detriment of the majority who want to excel.
Most of us want good students, good teachers, safe schools, and focus on academic achievement. But the government run schools have their own agenda that runs counter to our priorities and drains our pocket money to where it is difficult for most people to exercise a private alternative to govt schools.
But if the education funding was changed so that private schools could compete on a level field, then all of those things would sort out. Lazy parents would seek out schools with easy standards and full-time baby sitting. Union members could work at schools wanting to be union shops, and freelance teachers could work at open shop schools. Ambitious students and parents could opt of schools catering to academic excellence and there would be much variety in offerings.
The current socialized education system drains money from private alternatives and forces everyone into a homogenous system of union shops (run for the benefit of bloated admins, not students, parents, or teachers) that promote progressive indoctrination, dumming down, student bodies over student minds/behavior, and acceptance of the least tolerable teachers and students to the detriment of the majority who want to excel.
Most of us want good students, good teachers, safe schools, and focus on academic achievement. But the government run schools have their own agenda that runs counter to our priorities and drains our pocket money to where it is difficult for most people to exercise a private alternative to govt schools.
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EXACTLY! Look at how hard the Ed Unions worked and how much money they have thrown at defeating measures that would allow vouchers for private or Christian schools. It's ALL about the dollars, not about the kids.
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Just came across a timely article by John Stossel about this very topic:
http://newsmax.com/Stossel/HeadStart-Obama-vouchers-JohnStossel/2010/02/17/id/350094
http://newsmax.com/Stossel/HeadStart-Obama-vouchers-JohnStossel/2010/02/17/id/350094
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Great article. I laughed my head off the other day when I saw how Stossel LEGALLY got the govt to buy a golf cart for him, but when I thought more about it I just started to get angry.
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Fifty years ago teaching was a calling. Now it is a profession. No longer are they called teachers, now the title is EDUCATOR!!
Teach my kids the friggin basics and forget your agendas. I had to deprogram my children at the dinner table when the EDUCATOR spouted some lefty drivel about needing them to convince the parent to vote for raises, abortion on demand, school lunches, etc, etc,etc.
When is the failure rate of EDUCATORS and lack of producing a learned, well rounded citizen, going to determine the longevity of the job. Tenure should be abolished. Merit pay, reviews for performance, fire them if they teach to the test!!!! Greydog.
Teach my kids the friggin basics and forget your agendas. I had to deprogram my children at the dinner table when the EDUCATOR spouted some lefty drivel about needing them to convince the parent to vote for raises, abortion on demand, school lunches, etc, etc,etc.
When is the failure rate of EDUCATORS and lack of producing a learned, well rounded citizen, going to determine the longevity of the job. Tenure should be abolished. Merit pay, reviews for performance, fire them if they teach to the test!!!! Greydog.
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