I think if I extend this further, I’ll be taking it into full-on hijack territory. I’ll just say here that a 50% is a failing grade, and I do think someone deserves a failing grade for doing nothing more than having a pulse.
Here’s the NEA’s report on school statistics:
Page 24 gives salaries for instructional staff. North Carolina is in position 47. The next page is specifically teachers, where we’re a little better–38.
Page 44 is the money shot: it shows how salaries have changed, in constant dollars, over the past ten years. NC teacher salaries have dropped by 5% over that time (which is a little misleading, since we had enormous drops from 2010-2014 as well). But that actually puts us on the better end of things, around the national average. New York’s at an 8.5% drop. Florida’s at an 11% drop. Wyoming and Michigan dropped around 16%.
This is a national crisis, but it’s worse in some places than in others. In NC, it’s very, very bad.
Where I am, there’s an annual raise. You can also earn more money by gaining National Board Certification, or by getting in a time machine and going back in time and earning a master’s degree before 2014, when they stopped paying for advanced degrees. (Life hack: if you have a time machine, there are better ways to make money). There’s a movement to replace this annual raise approach with an approach that pays teachers more when their kids get better scores on standardized tests, which is IMO absolutely toxic.
I don’t think it’s fair to blame politicians for keeping education down. Most people are stupid fucking morons and are content to stay that way. You could make education free (and these days there is plenty of free or nearly free sources of education) and most people would not only never take advantage of them, they would actively fight against anything that contradicts what they already “know” in their dim moron-view of the world.
First of all, education from K-12 IS free in this country. And it is in most of the world - even places like Tanzania have compulsory education through 8th grade or so.
But people have always been dim fucking morons and for every Abe Lincoln educating himself on the floor of his log cabin by candlelight, or Phyllis Wheatley, learning to read and writing poetry under the conditions of slavery - at at time when white women tended to be poorly educated, there are thousands of dim fucking morons who resent having to learn anything. But, for periods of time, we’ve been able to overcome that, by valuing education as a society. Part of that is recognizing that education is part of what moves a country forward - “gets man to the moon” and in order to do that you need teachers who are talented professionals. And getting talented and professional teachers involves paying them a living wage. While a certain percentage of the population is autodidactic and curious and will consume Khan Academy and good YouTube and read books covering history or philosophy or science, that’s always been a minority - and most need to be guided through lessons. And politicians are part of setting policy and funding that and - well, being statesmen - inspiring a population to move forward.
You’ve read about some crazy right-wing nutjobs lying about what certain researchers are looking for when they talk about equity in mathematics education; or you may have read about a tiny reference in a long document to culturally responsive mathematical pedagogy. There’s a vicious and dishonest and pretty well organized movement of right-wingers who hate the idea that we consider cultural responsiveness and equity when we teach students, and they do everything they can to caricature and smear people doing the work.
View any such claims with a supremely skeptical eye, and find the primary source material yourself.
As for the 0%/50% debate, I got rid of all of that in my class through having my students build a portfolio of applying the math they learn. There is no partial credit; if they get a 3 out of 5 points then I work with them until they get the 5 points then they move on to the next activity. If a student completes their portfolio they have 100% in the class so effectively the only way to get a 0 is to not do the work.
I have 2 cousins that are teachers. The cousin in my state, Washington is retiring at the end of this school year after 32 years of teaching. She said she cannot give her students the education they deserve. Her 5th grade class for the 22-23 school year had 37 students, 6 of those students were disabled in some manner. She was expected to give those 6 the same education as the rest but she said it was more like baby sitting. One was blind and non verbal. Another had the mentality of a 2 year old but was in her 5th grade class because of his age. 2 were in diapers, by law she should not be changing the diapers but the school had no one on staff to do it. Instead of letting the kids sit in crappy diapers, she changed them anyway. Those 6 student took her time almost half of each day. That was time she wasn’t giving to the other students.
My other cousin has been teaching in Florida for over 35 years. She is quitting because of the political climate of the state. She was told under current law, she could be arrested and fired for stating she has a wife. They are moving to Oregon this summer.
That sounds like an excellent idea. Every term or every year or whatever reasonable interval, a student can opt to have their worst grade excluded from their average. But just one.
One has only to consult that great font of wisdom Conservapedia to realize that there is indeed a “conservative version” of a great many subjects. For example, global warming doesn’t exist and is a conspiracy by leftists to roll back industrialization, the theory of relativity is all wrong, the cause of homosexuality is our sinful nature, and obviously the “theory” of evolution is bunk – all of this is literally in the current version of Conservapedia, I’m not making it up.
Not all conservatives believe this stuff, of course, but this is the kind of “conservatism” embraced at least in part by many contemporary American Republicans, where it can be said that while conventional education seeks to impart knowledge, their brand of it seeks to impart ignorance. The advantage of the latter is that it can done really cheaply!
There are 10000 Mexicans trying to cross the border. Each border agent can stop 50 of them. How many border agents do you need so Biden only gets 8000 more illegal votes.
vs.
The unemployment rate is 4.2%. 80% of the workforce goes out and gets a second job. What is the new unemployment rate?
I think it only fair to point out that in that thread, just like in this one, it was generally acknowledged that teachers were underpaid and deserved better. That was never the point of contention there. But please let’s not digress this one.
Like I said it was a joke, but to the point of this thread it is distressing how many of my peers in my district are forced to take side gigs rather than unwind, plan curriculum, have family time, etc. just to pay bills.
On a brighter note, in the right political climate (Europe and Canada, for example) teachers can be fairly compensated and also look forward to a comfortable retirement. All it takes is the political will. I’ve long been impressed by the scale of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan …
My wife was a teacher in a medium-sized school district in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her pay was actually reasonable. But there were some issues. For one thing, that school district did not cover health insurance for its teachers, so they had to pay full price, or find alternative coverage. (This shows that it is NOT true that all teachers get great benefits.) And of course they had to pay for school supplies themselves. And she always hated how parents would email her to nitpick her every decision.
She quit teaching during COVID for various reasons. First, she found teaching elementary school over Zoom was a miserable experience. Second, she developed a significant health issue that would have required her to take several months off anyway. (Fortunately, she is now fully recovered.). Third, she and her principal did not get along at all.
After a few years out of work, she got a new job as a TK para in a different school district. Although the pay is much less, she’s much happier. For one thing, this new district does fully cover her health insurance. She’s much less stressed since she isn’t the official classroom teacher so she doesn’t get all the parent emails. And she gets along fine with her new principal.