No one talking about the highest paid teachers in the country on strike?

[mrsleeve]

^

That. On a side note my mom has about 200 kids this year

[Cletonius]

Teachers consistently have the lowest entry scores to college and GPA's while in college. This notion that the "cream of the crop" is educating America's youth is laughable.

Should we pay them as much as Computer programmers and Engineers, when based on some of the news stories I've read, most of them aren't even capable of speaking proper English?

I'm all for paying teachers more........................as soon as we dramatically raise the standards for becoming a teacher.

This.

A bunch of my friends from HS became teachers because they were too dumb to do anything else. To teach elementary school you need only know the most basic skills, and it took most of these people more than once to pass the entrance exam to the teaching programs at college.

I have read recently that the standardized testing (fcat) scoring was changed this year and more students failed. Now there's a big to-do about it and they're talking about lowering the standard back to where it was before. Until education is taken seriously by the united states we're all pretty much fucked.

My kids are currently home schooled as they are not yet old enough to attend school. It's pretty sad that my 4 year old daughter has more knowledge than her 6 year old cousin who is now beginning his second year of school. The notes sent home from the school are laughable at best, filled with spelling and grammatical errors. How the fuck do you misspell something in a computer generated document? Spell check your shit. Hell, the HS in the town my in laws live in lost accreditation 2 years ago. You know you're succeeding when you have to get your GED after you graduate high school.

[z31maniac]

Most counties, the ones you would actually want to work in require a Masters in education to become a teacher. That's 7-8 years worth of school to start right there, for a position starting out at 35-40k. That's not a lot of money to deal with 120 kids and have your job security tied to the metric of a standardized test.

Sure, there are inner city shitholes, rural backwaters and teach for america that will hire you with just a bachelors, but most of those positions pay about 25-26k. You want to deal with the bullshit that a teacher works with for 12 bucks an hour?

-Charlie

So, the like 90% of America? Or maybe you could provide some stats on where you are required to have a masters to be an elementary teacher? Public schools here, we aren't talking about private.

I'll bet it's a minority of locales that require it.

Again, teachers in OK starts at $31k (not $25k) a year for 9 months of work. Divide that out and it's more like $20/hr to start..........not too shabby and that ignores the mostly excellent benefits.

Would I do it? Hell no. But that's a red herring.

[mrsleeve]

^

Huh.

Mom goes in at 7 leaves around 5, annd takes a couple hundred papers home to grade and record, when she calls me at about 8-9 her time when she is just finishing up. Then spends the bulk of day Saturday gradeing tests. If there is a big project that was due, Sunday is spent gradeing as well.

Its not bankers hours 9 monhs a year, there is a ton of un compensated time that goes into it all. Assing less home work you say, well the the little darlings will not learn anything will they

[Kershaw]

$31k for a bachelors degree is not going to make it a very competitive hiring environment.

This is our future we are talking about. Out future civil engineers, doctors, and lawyers. We need to be setting hire standards for teachers, that's true.

But we also need to change our entire culture, which is very anti intellectual. We need to promote learning. I remember reading a study that said 1st grade aptitude was the greatest indicator of 12th grade performance. It comes down very heavily on students home lives and whether or not their parents value education. We need excellent and outstanding teachers. But you can only lead a horse to water.

[mrsleeve]

^

For once we are not on oppsite sides of the argument.

You can't. judge a teachers performace just on if the little shits can pass a test. To much time is devoted to teaching for the test, and not for general application.

[Kershaw]

absolutely. we need to teach critical thinking, not test passing.

and yeah, i was chuckling to myself earlier. we have an issue here that we are really in agreement about.

[mrsleeve]

I will say I agree with buddy too, that we dont have the "cream of the crop" in the position of teacher in a lot of cases. I hear horror stories about it from mom with new grads. This is one place I agree with the Finns on pay them more and make it much harder to become a teacher.

Really we dont need to raise taxes to pay for them either, Schools have plenty of money thrown at them, its piss poor money management, and BLOATED way over paid administrative staff.

[z31maniac]

^Yep, way too much admin staff and exorbitant salaries.

As mentioned earlier, I personally know 4 different elementary school teachers. They all ended up there because they couldn't get 2000 level business college classes, so figured they might as well have 3 months of vacation built-in.

Same thing with the news, people complain about the piss poor quality of the news, yet they won't get a subscription to the local sunday paper to help out. When I graduated with my Journalism degree, the starting pay for a reporter at the Tulsa World was $24k a year.

Instead I went to State Farm as a claim rep for another $11k/year. I wanted to be a journalist and even co-hosted (and hosted when the host was out of town) a radio show in college...........then I realized what I'd make when I graduated and I'd have to all my own ad sales, etc.

[Kershaw]

Really we dont need to raise taxes to pay for them either, Schools have plenty of money thrown at them, its piss poor money management, and BLOATED way over paid administrative staff.

im not sure how schools are set up, but at the agency i work at, if we dont use 100% of it every year, it gets bumped down to that next year. how does that even make sense? so right now, end of fiscal year, departments are buying computers and monitors that they dont need just to be able to retain their budget.

absolutely retarded. i'd say it's a complete waste of tax payer money, but it does purchase stuff and that makes the economy go round. but i'd rather save that money and purchase frivolous crap myself.

[rwh11385]

im not sure how schools are set up, but at the agency i work at, if we dont use 100% of it every year, it gets bumped down to that next year. how does that even make sense? so right now, end of fiscal year, departments are buying computers and monitors that they dont need just to be able to retain their budget.

absolutely retarded. i'd say it's a complete waste of tax payer money, but it does purchase stuff and that makes the economy go round. but i'd rather save that money and purchase frivolous crap myself.

Yeah, that's pretty much my experience with most government agencies.

Encouragement to "protect" budgets instead of promoting cost-savings.

[mar1t1me]

I think it was in the news here last week that a school in NY lowered their passing grade to a D- so that kids would not be left back. I think that's such BS. No wonder our education level is falling behind the rest of the world.

Do not blame teachers for that. Blame administrators. Every teacher I know HATES NCLB and every other "teach to the test" program.

[mrsleeve]

^

That

[z31maniac]

im not sure how schools are set up, but at the agency i work at, if we dont use 100% of it every year, it gets bumped down to that next year. how does that even make sense? so right now, end of fiscal year, departments are buying computers and monitors that they dont need just to be able to retain their budget.

absolutely retarded. i'd say it's a complete waste of tax payer money, but it does purchase stuff and that makes the economy go round. but i'd rather save that money and purchase frivolous crap myself.

That's why my idea is to incentivize gov't to save money, my encouraging the employees.

IE, your budget is $1 million (just to keep the numbers manageable).......your dept saves 10%.............5% goes to bonuses for staff and the other 5% goes back into the general fund. Next year, you get to start again with your original budget, or original budget + inflation.

[Ryan Stewart]

what are they bitching about, their $76k a year job before benefits? Turned down a 16% increase in pay?

They didn't want to know they could be fired if they did a shitty job. Seriously, its about performance management.