First- While, like anyone, I'd like to be paid more, that isn't what I was trying to say in my argument. I teach because I like it (most of the time ). My argument is that the profession won't draw too many of the best and brightest into the field until the pay is the equivilent of what that person can earn elsewhere with their intellect.
Exactly. I have no problem with that. My issue is that many MANY people seem to think that the success of private schools has something to do with the instruction. They think that by allowing every student to go to private school that it will solve everything. It won't. It will only move the old problems into a more ritzy building. Agreed for the most part. I had a soccer player this year who was failing Spanish 2 miserably. I was getting on his case about being lazy, and found out that his Spanish 1 class (at the parochial school down the road), spent the whole year teaching them how to say psalms in Spanish and nothing more.
I don't think it's many many more schlubs. I do, however, think it is close to 50/50. It's pretty depressing. Trust me, nobody gets more frustrated at the lazy teachers than the teachers who work their butts off. Unfortunately, plenty of the administrators are just lazy teachers with career ambition. There is just so much red tape and nonsense that needs to be cut out.
From what I've seen over the past two years, it's frequently the parents driving the grade inflation. Many of them don't care whether their child actually learned anything. They only care about whether the kid will get whatever magic letter will send them to college. I suppose they will just harass the college professors when the kid starts failing that, too. Some kids need to sink before they figure out how to accomplish anything. 1ST- The quality of the retirement really depends on the state. 2ND- It's 10 months work, and, if you're one of the teachers who busts their tail, it's 10 LONG months (work comes home every night and weekend.) 3RD- I don't feel that teachers are generally underpaid by a large margin. I DO think that they are drastically underpaid when compared to the types of jobs that attract the best and brightest. My point is that if schools want to attract the top graduates in high numbers, they need to offer more than the "be a teacher and make a difference" line that only really hooks pie in the sky, foolish optimists like myself.
School choice is the best way to increase pay for the "best and brightest". The problem isn't that teacher pay is too low, but that it is too uniform and rigid. Good teachers are underpaid, crappy teachers are overpaid. One need look no farther than the Montgomery County Public School budget to imagine what could be accomplished.
Right now private education is available only to those wealthy enough afford it or to parochial institutions willing to subsidize it. If Government were to get out of the business of Education and simply fund the moral obligation you'd have a host of private institutions filling the void… to the benefit of teachers, students, and the nation. I'm confident it would fix problems rather than move them.
The problem with this and your last post is that it is looking at education as some sort of constant. It sounds fantastic to pay "good" teachers more and "crappy" teachers less, but who determines who is good from who is crappy? Testing shouldn't do it. My favorite class this year is a group of students who are all at least 4 years below grade level in their reading. They will likely bomb any one of the high school standardized tests, even with all of the progress they've made this year. If they tied my reputation as a teacher to the test scores of THAT class, it would be skewed. Teachers would fight even harder to get away from the students who need good teachers the most. Until a viable method of determining the quality of instruction is invented, the rigid pay system is our best bet. As far as the idea that schools would improve by doling out the money individually, please read the numerous posts that already explain that money is NOT assigned out per student. By dishing out equal shares of funding, you would again be hurting the group of kids that needs the most help.
Who determines which teachers merit pay increases? Why the market of course. You really believe that students, parents, administrators, and other teachers don’t know which teachers are effective and which aren’t? An open market would reward the gifted, not the tenured. I’ve already addressed those complaints without anyone bothering to counter… feel free to rebuke my comments.
What about entry vs. exit testing combined with student, coleague, administrator and parent evaluations? Would that be suitable? BTW, if a student kicks ass on an entry test they should be allowed to skip that class and/or grade. Holding kids back for the requisite 13 years is counterproductive, especially when dealing with the most motivated. I know personally that one can spend their last two years of high school roasted off their ass, learning nothing but passing everything, and still getting into the schools of their choice. Now, I believe I wasted tens of thousands of dollars of the state's money. Money that could have possibly gone to someone who needs it more.
You're damned right I believe it. I see it every day. It goes back to the idea that a large portion (and increasing every year) of involved parents care more about the grade than they do about the education. At my school, Mrs. H is a ball-buster who keeps the kids on task and really gets them ready for 11th grade. Mr. Y is the football coach who lets his students watch Sportscenter during class and shows movie after movie. His students usually struggle when they get to 11th grade. Mr. Y's classes are nearly twice the size of Mrs. H's. Want to know why? Because in the first few weeks of the school year, students and parents called in and demanded schedule changes to put their child in the easy A class. The parents are just as giddy to accept an easy A over a hard-earned C as the students. Now comes the really interesting part- You would think that the administration would like Mrs. H, right? She has the high standards. She makes them work. They leave her class prepared. She must be the favorite, right? Dead wrong. Administrations exist to prevent controversy/waves. Parents call and complain when their lazy kid is failing from a lack of effort. The administration loves Mr. Y. His students and parents are thrilled. Everyone gets an A. In all honesty, I don't know if the parents and students can differentiate between an effective teacher and an ineffective teacher. What I do know is that for a majority of parents and an overwhelming majority of students, they will gleefully choose the ineffective teacher handing out free A's over the effective teacher handing out the grades that reflect the actual standard. I love the simplicity of your idea. It sounds like it should work. Unfortunately, with the reality of the educational world being what it is, it just won't work. I'll look for that post tomorrow, though I have to tell you that I'm not holding out high hopes. You seem to be completely averse to the idea that education isn't some corporate puzzle that can be fixed with one or two bright policy ideas.
Who is going to handle all of this added paperwork and testing? What would prevent teachers from teaching to the test? Again, sounds like a great and simple solution, but it's not practical nor would it work. All it would do is shift the current problems in a different direction. A lot of that really depends on how you view education and it's academic AND social benefit. Kids that are truly phenomenal do get the opportunity to skip ahead. If the student is not WAY ahead of his classmates, it's better to keep that student with his peer group for social development.
According to your link, the private schools scored signafantly higher in almost everything. Did you read before linking?
sure they can they just don't want to. Now here's the thing with school choice. Schools that want to teach and average kids get C's and B's will recruit those teachers who require that, and they'll market their school as such. However there will be schools that hire a bunch of Mr. Y's who give all their kids A's. And they'll be popular for a little while. But when all their kids start scoring 600s on their SATs (or whatever is below average with the new 3 part test) and 16s on their ACTs and colleges find that they're way under prepared, then kids who go to those schools aren't going to get into good colleges and parents who want their kids to go will have to move their kids to schools that demand more.
Yes I read it. You didn't, though. Specifically, you stopped reading each section before the authors factored in the confounding variables. "Signafantly." That's rich.
The test would anly be a component. So if a teacher doesn't want to focus on teaching to a test, they can spend time developing relationships with parents and students which would carry heavy weight on it's own. The paperwork will be handled by the various principals and subject chairs and their staff. If they need more staff, I would gladly pay for it to ensure at least a smigin of accountability. I can tell you that my peer group socially degraded from 10th grade until graduation because of the redundancy and boredom. Let the student develop socially on their own if they have achieved the educational requirements of the school system. We will be alot better off as a society if our most motivated are not cooped up in an unproductive system
Spelling smack, awesome! So ********er, let's get real, even with the "variables" your guys didn't fare so well in many areas. By the way, ********er, let me ask you this: do you always quote sources sponsored by people in the NEA? The funny thing is, your public schools are failing our children, that is a fact, the NEA is a large part of protecting that failure. It's a shame you choose to protect people who are hurting our kids. Nice job.
You're clearly an asshat, and your posts contain enough weak rhetoric, spelling errors, comma splices, digressions, misreadings, and hysteria that, if were you, I'd reconsider whether it's wise to criticize other people's education.
The main problem with education is that people go into it without knowing anything. They learn to "teach" but don't learn how to think. They push multicultural rubbish and one-world mumbo-jumbo intead of math, science and grammar. That's in between comlaining that they're underpaid for doing a crappy job. But if we paid them more they'd magically be tranformed into effective educators. It's the pay that's making them worthless. And they've got a union, bitches.
This is partially true. In two years, I've met plenty of people from either end of the intelligence spectrum. I've met some of the most intelligent people I know at work (we have really dorky literary discussions, but that's a good thing ). I've also met people who needed three cracks at a class IN THEIR CONTENT AREA before they were able to pass it. This is part of the problem. There aren't enough teachers in some content areas, and standards have lowered to meet the demand. I am the only 9th grade teacher (out of four) at my school who puts an emphasis on grammar and sentence structure. In that area, I agree with you. I do see a need to diversify the curriculum, but that diversity should be added where it makes sense. We include works by Chinua Achebe but exclude slave narratives, which had a much more important impact on our cultural and literary history. If that was a dig at my earlier post, it's unfounded. Like I said earlier, while I wouldn't turn down more money, I do my job because I enjoy it. My point about money is that if teachers earned more, then the field would attract the same level of applicants seen in other comparable fields (engineering, business, law, etc). The idea is that, over a generation, the ineffective teachers would be replaced by a higher quality corps of new teachers. One that is, in very many ways, completely useless. When I was hired two years ago, I decided not to join the union until after my first year. I wanted to look closely at what our union actually did. After watching and asking around for a year, it turns out our union here does 3 things: -They get us a (small) discount on Verizon. -They offer "oh shit" insurance in the event you are arrested for canoodling with a student. -They send all of their members a nifty keychain once a year. All of that for $2700 per year. After those observations, I had to decide whether or not to join the union this year. Since I already have a good deal on a cell phone, have no interest in canoodling any of the walking masses of ignorance that pass through my classroom door, and already own way too many keychains, I said no thanks.
The real problem with education boils down to this: In 1957, your folks were competiting with the kid down the street. Basically, this kid came from your background, had access to pretty much the same resources and was pretty much your peer. By 1987, you were compating with the kid across town. There may have been some differences in economics, but by and large, you had the same options available to you. By 2007, our kid is competing with the kid across the world. And it's no contest. He or she has access to the same Internet that we have. But what he or she has is the resources of the parents, grandparents, other odd relatives and a government pushing as hard as possible for him or her to "make it", with a cirriculum designed to teach relevant skills. Here, well, you've got two overworked parents more interested in padding the college application with "interesting and unusual acheivements" than in making sure little Johnny has the skills and, more importantly, the sharp elbows to compete in a world where precious little will come easy. Sachin