Re. Teachers Unions: Teachers are poorly paid, driving away much of talent. Poor Urban schools are the least desirable places to teach, so they get the worst of what is willing to tolerate the low wages, lack of respect, and poor working conditions.
Why would anyone imagine that defanging the Unions, who’s mission it is to make teaching a better profession for teachers will result in better teachers in poor schools? Oh, yeah, I forgot…UNIONS ARE EVIL!!!11!!
Not true. Let us turn to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for an answer.
The linked document is the summary of the BLS’s study of total compensation across various careers. That includes benefits, vacation time, and is calculated per hour.
From this we learn that the average hourly compensation of all professional, managerial, and related occupations is $50.11/hr. Public school teachers, on the other hand, have an average total compensation of $55.69 per hour (from page 9).
Note that this only includes direct benefits, and doesn’t include things like job security, lack of travel requirements, and other benefits of being a teacher.
In comparison, registered nurses make $48.67. Financial and business managers make $57.82. And the average for all private workers was $28.24.
So how do you look at numbers like that and conclude that teachers are poorly paid?
Yeah? And the oil patch is a really lousy place to work - which is why people there make a lot more money. But in the teacher’s union, teachers in one part of the district can’t make more than teachers in another. And great teachers can’t make more than terrible ones. The system is designed to promote mediocrity, which is why you see so many mediocre teachers putting in mediocre efforts. Why should they do more, if they can’t financially benefit from it?
You seem to think that what’s good for teachers is also good for students. Yes, the teachers’ unions are advocating for better conditions and higher pay for teachers. But unfortunately, this does not help students at all. Rules that prevent bad teachers from being fired may help lazy teachers, but it really sucks for the students. Rules which prevent excellent teachers from being paid more and having more authority may help the mediocre teachers, but it sucks for the students.
Consider the Chicago teacher’s strike. They were offered 16% pay increases, and turned it down demanding 19%. They also demanded that teacher evaluations be eliminated. How does any of that help the students in Chicago? How did it help the kids when the schools shut down and turned them out onto the streets? How does it help the students or the parents of students when teachers can’t be evaluated for quality?
Indeed. And as others have pointed out to you, teachers don’t work just their mandated hours, nor do the good teachers have any reliable way of being compensated for their non-mandated hours, or for increasing their paid hours to a regular amount.
But it’s lovely of you to keep going for this dodge, and it’s even more spectacular how you bring your silly “this-isn’t-a-hate-on-for-public-teachers” hate-on into every dang thread you can find. Bravo, Sam, Bravo!
Cite? Because I don’t think either of these things are true, especially not the latter one.
So, they received what was really an offer of a 4% raise over where they currently should be (8% minus the 4% of broken promises) after four years, during which the first year they’d be paid 2% less than they should be, the second year they’d be on track, and the third year they’d be at 2% above where they were supposed to be three years ago.
They countered this insulting offer with a fuck-you offer of their own.
Not exactly the story you told earlier, Sam. Hate on with your bad self, though.
So, no, they didn’t demand that teacher evaluations be “eliminated”. Rather, they asked that the problematic idea that a student’s score be used as part of teacher’s pay be rejected, in the same way that we ought not pay doctors based on whether their patients get diabetes.
Again, though, I can’t imagine any ulterior motive you’d have for so dramatically misrepresenting the facts. Nope.
And as I’ve pointed out to you, this is a characteristic of ALL professional jobs. My wife is a manager, and she spends probably four hours a night doing work. I’m a software engineer, and when we have a time-critical issue with our software I am expected to work 12-16 hour days to fix it.
In addition, many professional jobs require a lot of travel. I’ve been on the road for over 30 days this year. I don’t get paid extra for that, even though when I’m on the road I’m working 16 hour days and weekends. It’s part of the job. How often do you get a call on a Sunday telling you to be on a plane the next day to spend a week at a client’s site?
But if you’re so worried about the number of hours teachers work, you might want to look at this data series. From it, we find that secondary school teachers work 1411 hours per year, and as a group they have mean earnings of $55,748. In comparison, computer programmers have mean earnings of $62,110, but they work 2070 hours to get it. So they make $6362 more than teachers, but it takes them an additional 670 hours of work to get it. That works out to $9.49 per hour.
But we can do better than that. Thanks again to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has looked at the issue of teacher working hours very closely. Have a read yourself. Teachers work more at home than other professions, but that is compensated for by a shorter work day.
I bring it up only when relevant. But because education is such a large part of the economy, and teacher salaries such a large part of the education budgets of western nations, it’s an important issue.
No, actually I was explaining how blacks could be of a conservative mindset, posess conservative values, and be less than bowled over by all that the Democrats have supposedly done for them all these years…as opposed to being traitors to their race and all. (Not that you’ve said that, but plenty have.) My post was alao intended to show that most conservatives by far are not racist and are happy to welcome blacks with conservative values into their ranks as both members and elected officials, and that conservative blacks, being intelligent enough to recognize to grok this obvious fact, therefore have no reason to feel they’re giving aid and support to an enemy who hates and is out to get them.
It’s all really pretty simple when you step away from the liberal hate machine and look at reality from the correct perspective.
We’re not talking about private industry jobs. You quoted government jobs; so show us the average unpaid hours worked by the jobs you’re comparing to.
Again, you are confusing the issue. Black people are not anti-conservative. In fact, in large part due to higher rates of religiosity, many Black people are more conservative than Whites. It’s not that you are considered a traitor for being conservative. It’s not even that you are called a sell out for not voting for the dems. It’s when you vote for the GOP. That’s because you are voting with a party that does not serve the interests of people who look like you, harbors vocal racists, and spend the rest of time (as evidenced by this thread) why the decisions you make are foolish and ignorant. If you feel you are more connected to GOP ideology than your race, be prepared to defend that and have other question your commitment to uplift those who look like you.
Riddle me this Sam. If you feel teacher salaries are too high, or even high enough (across the board), then why do we have such trouble finding quality teachers in many areas? If salaries are high enough, we should have no problem finding people to those positions, no?
“Teachers are paid above average for all types of professionals” =/= “teachers are well paid.”
Let me add to what LHoD says: I am a tenure-track professor at research-intensive state university. I’m pretty busy with research, writing, and teaching - but you know something? I worked more hours per week as a fourth-grade teacher in the inner city. Not only that, I didn’t make enough money during the school year to make it through the summer without finding another job (and I was single, living with three other guys in a pretty modest house in Houston). Good teachers, and teachers who are striving to be good teachers, pretty much work all the time. I remember I carved out Wednesday nights (after my certification class) and Sunday afternoons (football) for myself. Other than that, I was up at 6:25 am, got home around 6 pm, ate, graded, lesson planned, and pretty much got to bed around midnight.
As busy as I am as a professor, I am on a nine-month contract. I can not do a damned thing all summer and that’s expected (but I write and research, of course). Pretty much the opposite of my teaching life. I make enough that I don’t have to work summers unless I want to.
Anyway - back to the topic. If the Republican Party actually lived up to its promise, I would seriously consider voting for GOP candidates. I like limiting government spending (everywhere - not just social programs but also defense) and I like limited government intervention into my business (so why do Republicans care who I want to marry or what deity I worship?). But the real life GOP does none of these things. You’ve got a GOP president that started a war that has disproportionately cost the lives of poor Iraqi and Afghan people, not to mention poor and minority US military members, essentially bankrupting our nation, and somehow the economic situation is the new guy’s fault who is trying clean up the mess?
If I hear a politician make a sexist, homophobic, or racist remark (or act in such a manner), 99% of the time it’s a Republican. And guess what the response from prominent Republican leaders typically is? SILENCE. Oh, every now and then a John McCain will grow a backbone and tell Michelle Bachmann to shut the fuck up, but the GOP is the party of religious zealots who are willingfully stupid (Bachmann, Santorum) - and proud of it, racists, warmongerers who will happily send some poor, Black, or Brown person’s kid to war, but not their own, or even have served in the military (GWB and Cheney, I’m looking at you).
And there’s no moral - and I mean truly moral, not shibboleth-repeating “God America Country” “morality.” I have never heard a Republican call the behavior of any racist, homophobic, xenophobic, or sexist Republican what it is. It’s spin control, it’s “his quote was taken out of context,” it’s “well, the Democrats do the same thing.” When Michael Steele, poor confused soul that he is, tried to take control of his party from the wingnuts, what happened? He had to kiss Rush Limbaugh’s ass, and then he was ridden out of the RNC leadership on a rail.
Blacks in the GOP are a non-renewable resource. They always have one desiccated mouthpiece - Alan Keyes, Allan West, JC Watts - in the wings. None of these tokens ever have a position of leadership. Don’t come back with “But Colin Powell…” He was a water carrier for Cheney’s lies for war, and when he was uncomfortable with that… he just disappeared. Condoleezza Rice is possibly the most incompetent secretary of state in recent memory - smart lady who came up lame when it came to raising the geopolitical reality of the 2000s, instead of the Cold War-era worldview that she, Cheney, and Bush so tightly held.
Look at the conservative torchbearers like Clarence Thomas. There is probably no greater beneficiary of affirmative action than Justice Thomas, yet he rails against it at every opportunity. By any measure, he is far less experienced and demonstrably less able than most of the other justices, and completely undeserving of carrying the mantle of Justice Marshall. This is what the Black leadership of the GOP looks like.
Or take someone I know, like Rod Paige, who is the least impressive educational leader I’ve ever met, who essentially used a failed high-stakes testing policy in the Houston schools and made it national policy. (Trust me, everyone who worked in Houston ISD in the 90s knew that Paige was a fake and the “results” from the Houston miracle were all smoke and mirrors.)
I have plenty of problems with the Democratic Party. But I have a voice, a powerful voice in that party. The Democratic Convention phenotypically looked like my friends, my peers, my community. People of diverse religions, ethnicities, sexual orientations. The Republican Convention… they zoomed in on the same five Black people for the three days it was on.
I can’t see the Republicans making a credible case for my support or vote in my lifetime. They are going to have to wrest control of the party from the Ann Coulters, Michelle Malkins, and Rush Limbaughs. Whereas on my side, I’m happy to have Rachel Maddow and Paul Begala as the pop culture flagbearers.
Trouble is, no one asks them to defend their thinking and the values they hold which lead them to vote Republican. No one asks them about the racism or lack thereof which they experience in conservative or Republican circles. No, they are condemned out of hand and reviled as traitors, called Uncle Tom’s and House Niggers and, as is ridiculously the case with Stacey Dash, subjected even to death threats. The fact is, liberals don’t care why people disagree with them because they’re convinced stupidity or evil is the only reason anyone would do so. So they feel entitled to hurl vile insults and threaten people’s lives for doing more than voicing support for a major party presidential candidate that approximately half the people in the country will vote for. Utterly ridiculous.
Because there is no credible “defense”. More specifically, there doesn’t need to be a defense. That’s how they feel, and that is fine. They don’t owe it to anyone to explain their vote, and nobody owes it to them to delve into their reasoning. People will judge you on the actions you take and the company you keep. If you choose to associate with people who are considered to be bad actors, you will get judged on that perception regardless of your rationale.
Do you realize damn near every celebrity gets death threats? You point to nearly anyone with decent visibility and public opinions, and they will have death threats. Most of these aren’t credible (as in Stacy Dash’s case). That doesn’t excuse the conduct of those people to do that, but stop acting as though she has a target on her back for saying she likes Romney.
Geez. How many times do you need to be told it is not about liberals and conservatives, but rather the GOP? I don’t think there are many reasonable to vote for the GOP given they do not live up to their own standards, and harbor some of the most vocal, anti-intellectual, myopic, selfish, racist Americans out there.
They probably aren’t familiar with New Deal Democrats. 
I hope you’ll take my comments as they’re intended, HH, because I have a high opinion of you as a person. Sort of like a black, Democrat Sam Stone as it were, and for some of the same reasons. There are major differences of course, but your intelligence and reasonabilty strike me as similar.
Still, I think you’re being a tad unfair in some of what you write above. Many people have legitimate gripes about the wars and you’re certainly entitled to yours, but I think it’s a little unfair and perhaps a tad biased to suggest that the GOP started the Iraq and Afghanistan wars because they’d they’d be fought by poor minority personnel. It isn’t the GOP’s fault that the military contains a large percentage of recruits from poor minority backgrounds, people who joined for the income and educational benefits they’d derive from doing so. And while there’s nothing at all wrong with their doing that and it’s something I readily applaud, the fact remains that the primary purpose of the military is to engage in violence when called upon by its country’s government. Plus it’s not like a fair number of white Americans haven’t been killed also. So I think this particular argument for not supporting the GOP might bear a little more scrutiny.
I think you have to consider that for a variety of reasons blacks are still a relatively small number of nationally prominent office holders, and it takes time and representation through numbers to rise to the top. In other words, lots of white politicos don’t rise to the top either. But look at how enthusiastically Clarence Thomas was embraced by the country’s conservative population even twenty years ago. And how enthusiastically Condoleeza Rice was embraced by the nation’s conservatives as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. J.C. Watts was a rising star and could have gone far but he wanted off the merry-go-round and a return to family and private life. I’d bet if you took the time to look into it sometime you’d be surprised to learn just how many black and Hispanic and female candidates are being elected into various types of political office all around the country. Believe me, conservatives care far more about candidates who hold and espouse conservative values than they do about the candidate’s sex or the color of their skin.
I think the thing most liberals or Democrats don’t understand about Limbaugh and Colter, etc., is that they aren’t really racists, sexists, homophobes and so on. Limbaugh, for example, was proud and happy to have Clarence Thomas stand up as Best Man at one of his weddings, and graciously welcomed Elton John and his husband David Furnish into his home after Elton agreed to perform at Limbaugh’s last wedding. Elton himself said that he suspected if he asked Limbaugh to speak out in favor of gay marriage he probably would (this of course raises the question of why he doesn’t, but Elton didn’t speak to that).
Most of these people feel like I do that what liberals want to do in service to civil and gay rights is ultimately harmful to both the groups it seeks to serve and society itself. They abhor liberal thinking and the damage that in their opinion liberal influence has wrought in the past and will cause in the future if they get their way.
I spoke earlier about how any disagreement with liberal solutions is automatically condemned by liberals as opposition and hatred toward the groups the solutions are supposed to benefit. So when Limbaugh or Coulter ridicule liberal or Democrat solutions or attitudes toward racial issues or gay issues, they aren’t ridiculing minorities or gays, they’re ridiculing the thinking of their self-appointed liberal saviors. Each of the people you mentioned want to see social issues such as these resolved, but they (and I) have other ideas as to the best way to go about it. As I outlined upthread we think liberalism has caused huge problems for the black community over the last fifty years and are puzzled as to why blacks don’t seem to recognize this. But whether we do or not, we don’t want to sit by while they continue to try to do things that we believe will make things worse yet. So Limbaugh, Malkin, et al. make fun of and criticize the things liberals are up to, but it gets spun by the left as racism aimed at you. And believe me, it ain’t. Force yourself to listen to Rush Limbaugh for a week or so sometime and take note of how often he says a truly negative or insulting thing about a black person or a woman or a gay person based solely on their race, sex or sexual orientation vs. how often he ridicules someone or something based upon their liberal notion of how to benefit those groups (or their liberal notions, period), and I think you’ll be quite surprised to find out that the real target of his hostility is liberals rather than women and minorities.
Oh, please. Do you even know what I’m talking about? Dash spoke out in support of Romney and Twitter lit up like a Christmas tree with vile insults and more than a couple of death threats/wishes, all as a specific result of her public statement in support of Romney.
I think if you were to cherry pick a very few Republicans as a percentage of all those in the country you might come to that conclusion. But if you look at elections around the country and look at how Republicans and conservatives everywhere in the country support black and other minority candidates and government officials you’ll find that you’re being sold a bill of goods by a party and a media whose best interests and self-identity depend on convincing you that Pubbies hate you and they are your savior.
I know exactly what I am talking about. Do you honestly think Ms. Dash should be in fear for her life? Or are death threats de rigueur at this point for any celebrity on twitter who puts themselves out there. Kim Kardashian got death threats for hanging out with Justin Beiber. NFL players get death threats for dropping balls. The point is that these are not credible threats on someone’s life; it’s idiots spouting off. It’s not defensible, but acting as though poor Stacy Dash is gonna be killed for expressing her political opinions is just woefully naive and sensationalistic.
I don’t think anyone is suggested every republican is evil. But, they welcome evil people in their party on a regular basis, then use what little minority support they have to mitigate the stench that arises from accepting bigots and racists.
As I said before, please keep telling Black people they are misguided and stupid for not voting for the GOP. I am sure that is gonna serve you well. Because it makes perfect sense that Blacks from every income strata, every educational level, all over the country came to fairly independent conclusions that the GOP was not for them, and your response is that we are brainwashed. Sounds like a winning strategy.
Like I said before, answer the question asked by the OP. The question is why Blacks don’t vote for the GOP. Your response seems to be either that we don’t understand the issues, and that we have been brainwashed. Is that correct?
It’s a commentary on the ridiculous state of liberal political agitation in this country today. I’ve never seen anything like it. People in this country have become absolutely convinced by various media sources (mostly Hollywood oriented) that opposition to gay marriage and/or Barack Obama are the most evil attitudes a person can hold. Naturally the country’s self-righteous nimrods are going to seize onto that and run with it.
Do you have even a smidgeon of support for either of these allegations? Please show me any incidence where the current Republican party in any officially recognized form has welcomed evil people into their party, and/or used what little minority support they have to mitigate that practice.
(You do however raise a point I wanted to make to Hippy Hollow, which is in regard to the small number of blacks on camera at Republican gatherings. Would you stop and consider, Hippy Hollow, that perhaps the small number of blacks at these gatherings are more a product of blacks mistakenly thinking they would be unwelcome rather than their being unwelcome in point of fact? Plus, as I said before in regard to numbers, only a small number of whites make it to these gathering too. It may be that as a percentage of black Republicans the number in attendance is in line with that of whites. At any rate and whatever the cause, I don’t think any negative connotations can necessarily be drawn from the fact that few blacks can be seen in attendance at large Republican political gatherings.
I haven’t said any such thing. What I’ve said is that conservative (or Republican if you like) black voters have reasons for voting for GOP candidates that are perfectly legitimate and based on a reasoned world view that is consistent with conservative political beliefs in the main. There are intelligent, unbrainwashed people who are liberals, why can’t there be intelligent, unbrainwashed black people who hold liberal views also? The question isn’t whether there can be intelligent unbrainwashed black liberals, but whether there can be intelligent, independent, free-thinking black voters who vote Republican because it’s in line with their core beliefs and values about how life should best be lived and not because they are somehow traitors to the cause or too dumb to recognize which side their bread is buttered on and that they’re fraternizing with an enemy actively trying to do them harm. The latter is where the real stupidity lies, and it can be found among blacks and whites both.
My response is that I’ve already answered this question. Interpret it as you will. I doubt that my rephrasing it will make you any more kindly disposed toward it. But for the record I’ve spoken more than once in reply to posts claiming that blacks are intellectually inferior to whites that I don’t believe there’s hair’s breadth of difference between the two races whatsoever.
Some socially conservative positions, such as opposition to gay marriage. They support abortion though and support comprehensive sex education and the provision of birth control. Very few support fiscal conservatism, since they recognise the implications of private concentrations of power and hiring decisions. The “free market” has never been race blind. Opposition to the Civil Rights Act continues amongst the Libertarians such as the Pauls who rightly recognise that enforcing anti-discriminatory practices is an imposition on the power of the masters of mankind to dispense with land and capital.
A provision guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (veryone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.). The US is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as per article 2, section 2, clause 2 of the United States Constitution. Do you know of any country where there is no welfare and blacks have a higher quality of life than the US?
and Thomas Sowell gets endorsements from StormFront members.
The secular humanist blog does a good unpacking of the polls on this matter.
and the highest country in terms of overall happiness? Scandinavian Democratic Socialist Norway, with its generous welfare system. Besides, their average lifespan is probably higher than that of the Maine fishers too.
Cite? By wanting to see racism end, do you mean supported not instigating a race war or deporting blacks, or supported the Civil Rights Act and ending anti-racial miscegenation laws?
I know you’re posing a hypothetical here (if we, as a nation, had not pursued liberal policies, the nation would be better off). In 1952 black illiteracy was at 10% of the population, by 1979 that number had decreased to 1.6%.
(while responding to questions of Bill Clinton’s sexuality)
In response to question from an audience member.
On women protesting sexual harassment.
In response to Sandra Fluke’s speech on her friend’s contraception for cysts.