What is this supply and demand concept? Let me see if I have this right–if the supply is greater than the demand, the cost goes down. But if the demand is greater than the supply, then the cost goes up. Is that the way it works IRL? Or just in theory?
I’ve noticed a surplus of politicians in my area, and yet the cost of their labor hasn’t gone down any. It seems few of them ever run unopposed, thus indicating that there are more applicants than there are positions.
If the supply of teachers continues to go down to the point of needing long-term subs in math positions or putting 40-50 kids in a room built for 25, what will happen? In theory the salary of qualified teachers should increase, but to do so would require an increase in taxes.
Sooo, everyone’s an idiot but you? Well, if it makes you sleep better tonight…
And you’ll notice the debate’s continued in a civil manner, no one’s been called a douchebag or asshole yet. That’s because, although people might not agree, when you offer respect, you get respect. Think about it, sparky.
But onward and upward…
Or are given the time and resources to do more. Teachers unions aren’t just about negotiating for more money and better benefits, it’s about getting smaller classes through staffing ratios. Obviously you can’t negotiate for more parental involvement, but not having this extra help, in addition to larger classes, is the main reason public school teachers are at more of a disadvantage. Doesn’t mean private teachers worker harder, per se. They’ve got more help and less students. And you know what? They’re probably mentally healthier than their public school counterparts as a result.
Which brings us to pay…
No way. This is not the business world. I believe this has already been covered in this thread. Trying to bring education into world of basic supply-and-demand economics gets us ab-sol-lute-ly nowhere.
Somebody earlier (I think Cheesesteak) said that the people with purse strings know that many teachers will do the work no matter what, and administration uses this ‘higher calling syndrome’ to their advantage when negotiating. He’s right. They know they’ll maintain a decent enough pool of teachers no matter what they toss at them for reimbursement and work conditions. They know at the end of the day, at the end of the year, for the most part, enough of these dedicated souls will suffer through anything because of the kids. This does nothing to optimize the teacher pool, however. Public officials (from the very top on down to the districts) are putting the bottom line ahead of optimizing the teacher pool. If they put more resourses into teachers, maybe our public schools would offer a better, more quality education, on par with the privates.
Anyway…Business people do not view their clients as a teacher views his or her students. If a stellar ad rep, or salesman, or broker leaves his job for financial or mental health/stress reasons, the company suffers, and his clients might wish he was still there, but so what? There’s no anguish. And if enough of these stellar people leave the company, the business folds. If a stellar teacher leaves his or her job for financial or mental health/stress reasons (which happens a lot), the school suffers, and the kids pay the price. If enough of these stellar teachers leave, the consequences are a lot worse than if a business folds.
Forget supply and demand, it does not work here. There’s too much supply-and-demand economics in it right now, and that’s one reason public schools (and public school students) are hurting. Offer more, you’ll get more. From the looks of a couple posts in this thread, good teachers are even leaving the country to get more respect, better conditions and a better lifestyle.
What’s it gonna take to make people realize that we have to offer our teachers more to attract them to, and keep them teaching in, our public schools?
Sooo, everyone’s an idiot but you? Well, if it makes you sleep better tonight…
And you’ll notice the debate’s continued in a civil manner, no one’s been called a douchebag or asshole yet. That’s because, although people might not agree, when you offer respect, you get respect. Think about it, sparky.
Or are given the time and resources to do more. Teachers unions aren’t just about negotiating for more money and better benefits, it’s about getting smaller classes through staffing ratios. Obviously you can’t negotiate for more parental involvement, but not having this extra help, in addition to larger classes, is the main reason public school teachers are at more of a disadvantage. Doesn’t mean private teachers worker harder, per se. They’ve got more help and less students. And you know what? They’re probably mentally healthier than their public school counterparts as a result.
Which brings us to pay…
No way. This is not the business world. I believe this has already been covered in this thread. Trying to bring education into world of basic supply-and-demand economics gets us ab-sol-lute-ly nowhere.
Somebody earlier (I think Cheesesteak said that the people with purse strings know that many teachers will do the work no matter what, and administration uses this ‘higher calling syndrome’ to their advantage when negotiating. He’s right. They know they’ll maintain a decent enough pool of teachers no matter what they toss at them for reimbursement and work conditions. They know at the end of the day, at the end of the year, for the most part, enough of these dedicated souls will suffer through anything because of the kids. This does nothing to optimize the teacher pool, however. Public officials (from the very top on down to the districts) are putting the bottom line ahead of optimizing the teacher pool. If they put more resourses into teachers, maybe our public schools would offer a better, more quality education, on par with the privates.
Anyway…Business people do not view their clients as a teacher views his or her students. If a stellar ad rep, or salesman, or broker leaves his job for financial or mental health/stress reasons, the company suffers, and his clients might wish he was still there, but so what? There’s no anguish. Big deal, that’s business. If a stellar teacher leaves his or her job for financial or mental health/stress reasons (which happens a lot), the school suffers, and the kids pay the price.
When objectives are not being met in a business, money is not being made. When objectives are not being met in the schools, kids are not getting educated.
The business world and world of education are not comparable, they’re apples and oranges. Government agencies are not in it to make a profit, they’re there to serve the public. The public is not being served in many of our public schools.
Forget supply and demand, it does not work here. There’s too much supply-and-demand economics in it right now, and that’s one reason public schools (and public school students) are hurting. Offer more, you’ll get more. From the looks of a couple posts in this thread, good teachers are even leaving the country to get more respect, better conditions and a better lifestyle.
What’s it gonna take to make people realize that we have to offer our teachers more to attract them to, and keep them teaching in, our public schools?
Sorry for the double post, the sumbitch kept timing out. Thank heavens for copy and paste. I added stuff to the second one, so that’s the one you should pay attention to.
I claim that private schools compete amongst themselves and with public schools for the dollars of parents. It is competition. Parents make a choice like they do for any other product or service.
This is true. I debate the “whole helluva a lot of money” part, but this is a good point.
First off, they get plenty of respect from me, and as I described earlier they get my help as well. Just ten minutes ago, I helped in one class with a quick math lesson, and did some fishtank maintenance in another.
Second off, I’ll be the first to admit that I’d have trouble doing a teachers job.
But that doesn’t change my opinion – an opinion that’s based on seeing first hand what teachers do from several sources, and holding numerous jobs to compare them to – that a public school teachers job is not the most demanding job out there, and is actually pretty cush in many ways.
However, all that is really secondary to the question at hand, notably whether teachers are paid enough or too much, and whether they should be able to strike. Supply and Demand work for everybody else, but teachers are paid above what the market bears. Teachers wages are artificially high due to their unions and the unreasonable stick (the strike) that unions wield.
I’ve read; I’ve talked to teachers; I’ve worked with teachers. What I said is how I see it. A teachers job is not the sort of job you worry about at night, concerned about deadlines weeks or months or years out.
We’re lucky, yes. I don’t get that lucky though.
There are two organizations that support the schools in our area. One is the PTA, which I’m sure most areas have as well. But we also have a private organization in our area called the Saratoga Education Foundation (http://www.saratoga-sef.org/), that raises money (alot of money; over $1m this school year) and spends it on the schools in the area. They have paid full teachers salaries, bought materials, built play structures, etc.
I should mention that because our school is in a well-to-do area, that the state actually pays less (alot less) than they do for schools in poorer areas. Alot of people in the area are upset about that unfairness, but personally I think it’s a good thing, that poorer areas should get a lot more education money than they do.
Exactly. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, but a little fear that if you don’t perform you won’t have a job is a good thing in my book.
Funny, that brought back a memory: in 7th grade, a fellow student was giving a teacher some lip and said something to the effect that he would get her fired. She responded that she couldn’t be fired because she had tenure. Granted, the student was a jerk, but what she said really stuck in my mind, enough so that I researched what it meant and a bit into free markets. Now that I’m the one shelling out tax money the whole concept of tenure really bugs me.
Teachers have an important role in our society, yes.
But they’re really not that much more important than everyone else. They’re really not that much less expendable than any one else. If a teacher is lost and the kids get a replacement teacher for the remainder of the year, it’s not the end of the world that you’re making it out to be.
And they’re not so important that they need to be paid above market rates.
I’m sorry. Teachers are important. But they’re not that important.
She didn’t understand what tenure means, then. Lots of people have some mistaken ideas what tenure in a public school system means. It does not mean that the teacher cannot be fired. In Pennsylvania, tenure means that you cannot be fired for no reason and without due process. Here, a teacher can be fired for any of the following:
Inadequate Performance
Neglect of Duty
Failure to Fullfill the Statutory Duties of a Teacher
Insubordination
Failure to Comply with Reasonable Requirements of the Board
Immorality
Use of Alcohol and Drugs
Conviction of a Felony or a Crime Involving Moral Turpitude
False Application Information
Incapacity
Failure to Keep Certificate Current
Certificate Revoked
When a schoolboard wishes to terminate a teacher for any of the above, due process must be followed. They can’t simply send you a letter saying “you’re fired for ________.”
I suspect the teacher in your anecdote knew all this and was simply indicating to the kid “I know what I can be fired for and you ain’t it.”
I’m not aware of any school system where tenure means a teacher simply can’t be fired.
I’m sure she did. I also knew what she meant and what it meant. But the most important aspect of tenure isn’t on the list of things you mentioned.
The most important aspect of tenure is that it is a system that puts those with tenure less prone to being laid off than those without.
And that’s wrong. Lay offs are sad all around, but when one is necessary, the least qualified teacher should go. Not the one that’s been there the longest.
Precisely.
Miserable, angry, burned-out teachers or professors cannot provide quality education. Then they either leave the profession (which they probably excelled in at one time) or else continue the downward spiral.
I’ve seen colleagues in higher ed work on two to four campuses per semester, driving their lives away as freeway flyers, because they can’t make ends meet on a p/t’s hourly rate if they teach on only one campus that doesn’t pay much. They cannot serve their students well if they are scrambling and juggling all the time.
For those who say, “Well, you should have known what you were getting into,” I’d respond, “I wish I had. I wish I’d known that the districts would rather keep a huge, flexible, revolving-door pool of part-timers rather than hire more full-timers. I wish I’d known that it can take years to negotiate anything at all.”
I’m fortunate to be able to manage at just one campus now, and to be able to give my full energy and attention to students. Our union* spends a great deal of time trying to negotiate things that will benefit students as well as faculty.
*I would also point out here that the phrase “the teachers’ union” should not be used to refer to every union out there and to tar them all with the same brush. Some are good, some are bad, some are so-so.
Tenure doesn’t dictate who loses his job during a staff reduction. That is a matter of seniority. Tenure and seniority aren’t the same thing. During a staff reduction, the least senior teacher is the one to be furloughed. Whether that teacher has tenure or not doesn’t matter.
When I was layed off, I was least senior science teacher and didn’t have tenure. Two other teachers were layed off with me and, IIRC, at least one of them had tenure.
But they role they play is. A society with top-notch stock brokers, or businessmen, or garbage men, or atheletes, or mailmen, or librarians, or lawyers is not going to be as good or intelligent or enriched without top-notch teachers.
And how do you think those other professions got to be top-notch? They were taught, by teachers, from K through whatever their highest educational level was.
This might be, however, the point where we have to agree to disagree.
Who’s more important, a teacher or a policeman or a CEO or a movie star?
I dunno. How do you measure such a thing? You could poll everyone, I suppose.
But I do know who’s more valuable. That’s not as subjective; we already have a way to measure it. We just compare what the job pays. Sad to say, society ranks movie star as more valuable than teacher. Appropriate? I dunno. Just and Fair? Absolutely. The market spoke, and the market holds no bias. And the market isn’t some nebulous concept; it’s all of us speaking in harmony with our money.
Teachers are very important, you’ll get no argument from me there. But to hold them above the standards of everyone else isn’t reasonable. I’m sorry, it’s not.
Also, in fairness, “top-notch” people start off with an education, true. But what really got them to be “top-notch” wasn’t the quality of their kindergarten teacher as you say. Any other kindergarten teacher or none at all, and it’s highly likely they would’ve ended up just as top-notch. Top-notch people get their high notchediness after they leave the education system, in the things they do later.
Well, I think it should be based on ability. Granted, that’s not a pure thing to measure, but you can try your best.
You can measure such things as:
grades of students on some formalized test
improvement of students on some formalized test
grade of teacher on some formalized test
rating as given by peer teachers
rating as given by parents
rating as given by students
extra points for leadership sorts of things with peer teachers
extra points for relevant extra curricular sorts of things
The goal should be to keep the best teachers and eliminate the worst. The process of ranking by seniority does not do this.
BillH: No. What you refer to as “competition” is one organization (public schools) trying to out do another (private schools). As I pointed out, private schools can refuse to accept anybody that they want to. Especially special education kids. Public schools, on the other hand, must accept every student that shows up with their paperwork in order. Are you intellectually honest enough to see that this is not competition in any meaningful sense of the word? Plus, private schools can (and quite often do) cut their losses with a given student who has become a bit of a behavior issue. Public schools have to document everything that this same student does for some time before they are able to expel him (or, her, I’m nothing if not flexible). Plus, when you write:
You are either willfully obtuse, or you have no concept whatsoever of how public schools are financed.
Good on you. I can tell you, though, that what you consider “respect” is not considered the same by a single other teacher that I have ever known in my life.
Yeah. So would I. Difference being, I see daily what being a teacher is all about. You don’t. So g’wan, give it a try. Like I said, you would develop a healthy respect for what they do. And this “respect”, unlike that referenced above, would adhere to a definition that teachers could get behind.
What sources?
Name one job that you think is comparable to that of a teacher.
“Cushy” in what ways?
Once more, the market doesn’t contain the answers to everything. Sounds like you have a really difficult time with this.
Bullshit. As has been pointed out previously (and I’m as surprised as anyone that this thread has gone on as long as it has): teachers don’t strike for the hell of it. And if you think that they do, you are being much thicker than is necessary.
No, you haven’t.
Yes it is. Deadlines from way out? No, not so much. Ongoing concern for a kid that is on the knife’s edge? You betcher ass. Worry about what might happen to a given child in the future? Absolutely. Again, you’ve not picked up a damned thing. Not from this thread. Nor from any casual contact you may have had with teachers in your life.
And therein lies the problem. Did you get the crap beat out of you by a teacher when you were a wee lad? Were you the smart-ass who was told he couldn’t get the teacher fired? I figure it’s gotta be something along these lines.
I know teachers who would blow you in Macy’s front window for that sort of support.
No, you’re not. False modesty is not becoming from you. And I was specifically thinking of private schools that have fired teachers because they went out for a drink (and tipped miserably, sheesh! I used to despise teachers when I waited tables).
So, what happens when you teach special-ed? How does that formalized test work then? And how can you show improvement when you have a classroom full of kids who have plateaued?
“Grade of teacher on some formalized test”? Do you know what someone goes through to become certified? The continuing education required?
“Peer teachers”? I got no problem with this.
“Parents”? Here I gotta problem. See, too many parents are as ignorant as you are about what a teacher does.
“Students”? Man, I woulda wished for such when I was in public schools. Problem was, too many of those teachers I despised at the time were the best damned teachers I ever had.
“Extra points for extracurriculars”? You are outta your cotton-pickin’ mind, boychik. “Mrs. Smith directed the school play, so she gets 10 extra points.” Oh, you’re precious.
And neither does your idea of how things oughta be. “Extracurriculars”. Heh.
Actually Bill, on this point you’re wrong too. Again I can furnish you with literally hundreds of journal articles (if your inbox can take it) about how standardized/high-stakes-testing is probably one of the greatest problems facing public schools today.
I don’t know how to put it any plainer than I have. Private schools compete for students. Public schools do not. Competition makes for higher quality.
Do you perhaps not know the meaning of the word? Here it is:
Private schools are forced to engage in a contest where the winner gets the students and the associated dollars. Public schools do not.
I’m sorry; did you just say that you haven’t taught either? Then you have no business telling me that I can’t know how hard their job is without living it. And if on the off chance you’re right that I can’t know, then you have no business defending their position when by your own logic, you don’t know how hard their job is!
Well, the most obvious and prominent is that they have huge and numerous vacation breaks.
I don’t know how to break this to you, but saying this really demeans your position. It’s the equivalent of looking at mathematical problem and saying “math doesn’t hold the answers to everything”.
Basic economic theory isn’t some fuzzy thing you can wave away. And trying to do so really makes one sound silly.
Duh. they strike to derive unfair advantages for their members.
Not all that much to summarize. Standardized tests are one of the least effective means of gagueing student progress and teaching to the test is one of the worst practices.
