Teachers Deserve More

[therepublic]

Generally speaking, this is really not the fault of the teachers, but of the law and the requirements and restrictions they place upon even the best pedagogue. There are some lousy teachers out there. That they still have jobs... well, thank your friendly union local for that. I have seen countless talented and dedicated teachers hampered and hamstrung by the administrations under which they must ply their craft. It is sickening to behold. The crap I had to deal with as a teacher in NYC you would not believe, and today I can confidently state that it is a full order of magnitude worse than it was then. Some of the things I used to do back in 84 would get me immediately fired today and possibly even jailed. It is pure lunacy, the lines they must toe. I will, however, grant you that many teachers suffer from the largely incurable disease of unionitis - entitlement mentality is pretty rife in those ranks.

The cure to all of this is to dismantle the public school system and force parents to become responsible for their issue. Parents are the ones most guilty in all of this because had they not tolerated all the social-liberal bunnies-n-light bullshit from these so called "experts" in education, we would still be educating our kids for something better than high score on net.games and learning to rap. Whoopdy friggin' doo... look ma, I be rappin'... jesus.

Well said Osan. Thank you for speaking up. Those who have been there (like yourself) are the ones we need to listen to because you have witnessed it. The media (with the assistance of the two party system and unions) deliberately try to mislead and divide. If we allow that to happen we end up fighting potential allies , and assisting the opposition.

Please continue to speak up, because if we are going to succeed, we need to stop attacking teachers, Christians, Tea Party...people in general are not the enemy, but sometimes we act like they are, and by so doing play right into the hands of those who would enslave us.

 

[osan]

How come we keep paying them more and spending record amount of money on education and we keep slipping in the standings?

Because it kills manifold birds with a single stone. The children receive zero education, though in many cases some good to even excellent training. The children are "socialized" to think as someone atop an ivory tower decides they should. The people are further bankrupted by the ever increasing per capita tabs. The revenues represent an incredible opportunity to loot the ill-gotten booty of the public coffers.

These are four major accomplishments the public system has achieved with the wildest success. A fifth is that the machinations have served the role of a safe political laboratory from which to gage public response to ever more outrageous usurpations. Being "only" the arena of education, people are far less likely to respond with anything more threatening than harsh words, thereby leaving those in power to play with the limits of tolerance. This might seem silly, but I doubt TPTB look at it that way. It is like a humongous population of lab rats upon which to try this and that to gage responses and to build statistical models for predicting behavior in more general terms.

How much do teachers ranked 14th in reading, 17th for science, and 25th for math, out of 34, with a ranking of "average" deserve?

Who is doing the ranking and what are the standards of judgment? You need to answer those questions fully before you could claim any legitimate basis for denigrating them using such rankings as cause.

The future of politics rests in the hands of the public school systems of the world, quite literally. Succeed in destroying the individual's desire and ability to question and you will be able to do as you please in terms of exercising arbitrary power.

I believe that TPTB at one point shit their pants to find just how docile and stupid the average man really is. The public school systems of the world were more wildly successful than I would be anyone could have imagined.

Looking to the teachers is falling for the diversion. Trust me, by and large the teachers are not the problem here.

 

[therepublic]

Awesome Osan...well said! Bump

 

[Nate-ForLiberty]

Saying teachers are the source of our educational problems is like saying Mexicans are the source or our illegal immigrant problems. We have setup a welfare state which attracts immigrants but then throw up a difficult process for being naturalized. Of course we're going to have illegal immigrant problems, especially when we don't defend our borders.

Similarly, we have setup an educational system based around babysitting and standardized testing which rewards fact regurgitation and penalizes critical thinking. A teacher's performance is graded by state and federal mandates as opposed to student success rate. This penalizes good teachers and promotes bad teachers. We have taken the sacred institution of the teacher/student relationship and corporatized it into a twisted version of mass production.

Mass production is great for things like cars, IPods, and blue-jeans.

Mass production is destructive for people in fields like EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, RELIGION, and POLITICS.

 

[Justinjj1]

I never understood this. Teachers seem to be grossly overpaid. They make way above the median household income in this country, they get 4-5 months of vacation per year, a killer pension, and almost complete job security after a few years.

And it's not a highly skilled job. I think most people could handle teaching kids to add or spell their name.

I'm a high school teacher, and while I have several complaints with our educational system, some of the comments in this thread are ridiculous. I'm in my 7th year of teaching and make 36k a year, I would hardly consider that grossly overpaid. I get 2 months of vacation, but we DON'T get paid for those months. Where did you get this notion of "complete job security after a few years"? Definitely not in my state, we get a new contract each year, and we can be terminated for really any reason at all. Our district is undergoing massive cuts right now and a lot of teachers are going to be laid off.

Teaching is a highly skilled job. You have to have at least a bachelor's degree, plus complete a semester of unpaid student teaching, pass a rigorous exam to get certified, then every year you have to undergo several weeks of staff development training and sometimes extra college classes.

 

[romacox]

Saying teachers are the source of our educational problems is like saying Mexicans are the source or our illegal immigrant problems. We have setup a welfare state which attracts immigrants but then throw up a difficult process for being naturalized. Of course we're going to have illegal immigrant problems, especially when we don't defend our borders.

Similarly, we have setup an educational system based around babysitting and standardized testing which rewards fact regurgitation and penalizes critical thinking. A teacher's performance is graded by state and federal mandates as opposed to student success rate. This penalizes good teachers and promotes bad teachers. We have taken the sacred institution of the teacher/student relationship and corporatized it into a twisted version of mass production.

Mass production is great for things like cars, IPods, and blue-jeans.

Mass production is destructive for people in fields like EDUCATION, HEALTH CARE, RELIGION, and POLITICS.

bump http://www.read-phonics.com/psychology-frued--bernays-constitution.html

 

[Dan710]

I'm a high school teacher, and while I have several complaints with our educational system, some of the comments in this thread are ridiculous. I'm in my 7th year of teaching and make 36k a year, I would hardly consider that grossly overpaid. I get 2 months of vacation, but we DON'T get paid for those months. Where did you get this notion of "complete job security after a few years"? Definitely not in my state, we get a new contract each year, and we can be terminated for really any reason at all. Our district is undergoing massive cuts right now and a lot of teachers are going to be laid off.

Teaching is a highly skilled job. You have to have at least a bachelor's degree, plus complete a semester of unpaid student teaching, pass a rigorous exam to get certified, then every year you have to undergo several weeks of staff development training and sometimes extra college classes.

Yeah, Florida doesn't have tenure. The only thing close is two counties where they have an automatic renewal of contracts each year. Other than those two counties the state has nothing close to tenure. It is better than states with tenure but pay is still based on years of experience rather than performance. And the starting salary here is about what you earn, which seems really low for seven years of teaching.

Teaching may be a skilled job if done successfully but the education classes at my school, UCF, are ridiculously easy. I have also heard teachers tell me the exams were a joke in the Social Science area. I wouldn't say the credentials needed to teach are difficult to attain from what I have seen.

It is difficult to generalize about the education system though because each state is still very different from the next. Some states require a Masters and some only a Bachelors. In some states the pay is low and others it's much higher but they are usually based on the cost of living in the state.

 

[Tal]

What public school teachers deserve is pink slips, all of them.

 

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

I'm a high school teacher, and while I have several complaints with our educational system, some of the comments in this thread are ridiculous. I'm in my 7th year of teaching and make 36k a year, I would hardly consider that grossly overpaid. I get 2 months of vacation, but we DON'T get paid for those months. Where did you get this notion of "complete job security after a few years"? Definitely not in my state, we get a new contract each year, and we can be terminated for really any reason at all. Our district is undergoing massive cuts right now and a lot of teachers are going to be laid off.

Teaching is a highly skilled job. You have to have at least a bachelor's degree, plus complete a semester of unpaid student teaching, pass a rigorous exam to get certified, then every year you have to undergo several weeks of staff development training and sometimes extra college classes.

Highly skilled job? I disagree but I am curious to find out:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...y-skilled-job!-The-smoking-gun-about-teaching!!!

36k is a good salary considering data available from the census. Lets take the income distribution chart available on this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

$35,000 to $37,499 7,917 3.74 61.08

You are paid more than 61% of the population (with a 2 month vacation to boot) and we haven't even factored in benefits. That is not good pay? WTH?

 

[Tal]

Teaching is a highly skilled job. You have to have at least a bachelor's degree, plus complete a semester of unpaid student teaching, pass a rigorous exam to get certified, then every year you have to undergo several weeks of staff development training and sometimes extra college classes.

Teaching a highly skilled job?? gimme a break, learning a kid to do basic reading and writing is not hard as long as you use the correct methods.

Maybe if you were teaching advanced physics or something I would concede your point but that isnt what most teachers are doing, they are doing simple stuff.

 

[BrendenR]

36k is a good salary considering data available from the census[/url]

You are paid more than 61% of the population (with a 2 month vacation to boot) and we haven't even factored in benefits. That is not good pay? WTH?

I am a software engineer with 4 years experience, I make 70k a year.

If you take into account his vacation time an annualized his salary to compensate, he makes 42k/yr with SEVEN years of experience. This assumes that he takes up a job making the same salary during his "vacation".

I don't understand how going after teachers is going to fix anything.

 

[Justinjj1]

Highly skilled job? I disagree but I am curious to find out:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showth...y-skilled-job!-The-smoking-gun-about-teaching!!!

36k is a good salary considering data available from the census. Lets take the income distribution chart available on this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States




You are paid more than 61% of the population (with a 2 month vacation to boot) and we haven't even factored in benefits. That is not good pay? WTH?

From the same wikipedia page

Persons, age 25+, employed full-time
Bachelor's Degree
$50,944


I'm not complaining about my salary, I think that I'm paid fairly. However, I was objecting to the idea that teacher's are "grossly overpaid."

 

[Danke]

From the same wikipedia page

Persons, age 25+, employed full-time
Bachelor's Degree
$50,944


I'm not complaining about my salary, I think that I'm paid fairly. However, I was objecting to the idea that teacher's are "grossly overpaid."

Does your school offer a Defined Benefit Plan? If so, how many years until one can retire? And what is the amount paid in retirement?

 

[Live_Free_Or_Die]

I am a software engineer with 4 years experience, I make 70k a year.

If you take into account his vacation time an annualized his salary to compensate, he makes 42k/yr with SEVEN years of experience. This assumes that he takes up a job making the same salary during his "vacation".

I don't understand how going after teachers is going to fix anything.

Software developers enjoy higher productivity because code libraries are refined and reused. The more code libraries one is familiar with the more productive you can be. If all software had to be developed from scratch and built from the ground up software developers would not enjoy the higher compensation that comes with increased productivity.

However in teaching people want decreased productivity (ie smaller classroom size). A decrease in productivity is going to come with a reduction in pay whether you want it to or not.

 

[jclay2]

Does your school offer a Defined Benefit Plan? If so, how many years until one can retire? And what is the amount paid in retirement?

and thats what they don't want to talk about. In illinois, teachers get basically 75% of the average of their four highest salary years. Plus, it is indexed 3% for inflation.

 

[heavenlyboy34]

Software developers enjoy higher productivity because code libraries are refined and reused. The more code libraries one is familiar with the more productive you can be. If all software had to be developed from scratch and built from the ground up software developers would not enjoy the higher compensation that comes with increased productivity.

However in teaching people want decreased productivity (ie smaller classroom size). A decrease in productivity is going to come with a reduction in pay whether you want it to or not.

Are you sure this applies in the case of education? In my experience, teachers who teach privately or to small class sizes are able to charge more because they provide a valuable service (more attention given to individual students). Plus, the smaller class sizes would use the same amount of energy (lighting and climate, water fountains, etc) and resources (chalk, whiteboard pens, etc).

 

[awake]

Teachers do deserve more, they deserve to be free to teach, not bound to the state.

 

[anaconda]

Nobody "deserves" anything. Only 30% of American kids can perform at grade level, and yet we're supposed to pretend that "teachers" rank right up there with Mother Teresa?

Agreed!

In a free market the really good teachers might very well make gobs more than they currently do. And the shitty ones would make a lot less. And the Ford Foundation brain washing would be removed from the agenda.

 

[therepublic]

Agreed!

In a free market the really good teachers might very well make gobs more than they currently do. And the shitty ones would make a lot less. And the Ford Foundation brain washing would be removed from the agenda.

bump

 

[therepublic]

I think the meaning of the original post was to make the point that it is the Department of Education and the Unions that have created the problem. We can blame teachers and all of us for not speaking out sooner But it was also intended to let teachers who are part of this movement, and trying to stand up to these two powerful organizations that they were welcome here.

It makes no sense to want to keep attacking and running off individual members ( Christians, Tea Party, and now teachers . When will this insanity stop? Some of you have reached out to stand up for members who happen to be teachers (and of other labels) , and others have behaved like down right bullies.