I laughed with delight at your honesty here. I certainly feel that way about my son’s daycare providers. I’d rather be a garbageman than be in charge of toddlers and preschoolers all day.
Of course, as a garbageman I’d make a lot more, too.
I used to jokingly wonder if my previous daycare provider, an avowed former hippie, got stoned after we dropped our son off. I told my husband that on one level I certainly hoped not, but on another I’d have to completely understand. LOL
Mace, some of the things you say are staggeringly idiotic. Teaching is “cushy”? Do you even know a teacher? You’re blithe commentary on the flexibility of teaching hours, your portrait of carefree teachers joyfully clubbing their way through a round at the course each day, is illustrative of a profound ignorance of the profession. Your ever present “market” explanation is equally telling - your words indicate that you are among the mass who does not “value” the teaching profession. And as for vouchers and competition - I was not aware that educating children to become fruitful members of society and capable of reaching their potential was a matter of market competition. If you believe an admirable social goal is to end up with a select, privileged few who have received a quality education because their school system has out-competed (whatever the hell you think that may entail - they recruit the best students? the richest parents? the most public funding? corporate sponsorship?) the rest, then you have a truly warped sense of priorities and skewed view of society. What vouchers actually do is a) signal that we have given up on public education; and b) accept inequality of educational opportunity as a given. Furthermore, do you really think the elite private schools that voucher-toting poor kids would want to attend would be willing to accept a flood of, in their opinion, substandard students? And if you legislate that the private schools must do so, then those schools have every right to say, “Well, if we have to do what the government says, we should get some government money to help us do it.” CONGRATULATIONS! You have just changed a private school into a public school. Oh - or did you plan to just give the money to the private school and not try to enforce any standards?
Kwildcat: FYI, I don’t respond to personal attacks such as the one you posted above. If you’d like to debate, I’m with you all the way. If you want to sling mud, you’ll do it solo. Enjoy your day.
I agree with a few of the points made here:
Cut administrative costs. Not just firing administrators, thats a given, but cutting down on red tape, non-educational paperwork; i.e the need for administrators. That, probably, is one of the areas nationwide wherein teachers salaries could benefit the most, not just in freeing up money to pay them but cutting down on required non-educational time spent they have to deal with. I would also say that taxes being raised is unpopular with many because so many know that money could be freed up by first firing at least half the administrators. Why raise taxes when you can fire administrators/trim fat? First get rid of all non essential personel, then see how much money you need and if taxes are still necessary.
I disagree that education funding is largely funded by the rich. Education funding is largely property taxes, yes. Well, everyone who rents is paying the property tax of the owner of their property. Everyone pays property taxes, even those who own no land.
I think it pretty much works out over time; each of us pays for the education we wanted to get when we were young, for the rest of our lives. You cant teach someone who doesnt care to learn. The poorest person who goes to school and doesnt pay attention and/or put any effort in, and who ends up working a low wage job their whole life and paying low rent in crap apartments, is paying for exactly what they got out of their opportunity for free education for the rest of their lives. Its ones own choice.
Im not a fan of vouchers, but I am a fan of competition amongst state schools. I think the way educational moneys are now dispersed is stupid; it pretty much stays within a district. A rich district (i.e high property values) will have well funded schools, a poor district wont, no matter the number of students in each.
Before school competition could be implemented, one first needs to make sure that more students = more money, rather than higher property values = more money. So I think educational money should be dispersed to districts based on the number of students attending. 1 student = x amount of cash. Then and only then could a market based, school choice system work. I think this funding and choice system should first be implemented only amongst public schools; only after years of its existance, if the need were still there, it could be extended to include private schools with a voucher system.
Vouchers in an environment of ‘private schools get x mount of cash for each student while public schools get x amount of cash depending on property values’ would result in a very skewed outcome. And yes, there is the point that private schools would soon be treated like universities; any university that has any student attending using public funds is subject to federal and state educational standards. The same would eventually, would pretty much have to, happen to private k-12 schools as well. Catholic schools could conceivably be sued for teaching religon when, by accepting students who use public vouchers, they must follow public educational guidelines.
As for kwildcats post of:
If you believe an admirable social goal is to end up with a select, privileged few who have received a quality education because their school system has out-competed (whatever the hell you think that may entail - they recruit the best students? the richest parents? the most public funding? corporate sponsorship?) the rest, then you have a truly warped sense of priorities and skewed view of society
First, if you are a teacher wildcat, I would have a problem with my kids being taught by someone who thought in terms of ‘admirable social goals’. Teachers need to keep their personal agendas to themselves just as politicians do. I would be just as pissed if you taught my kids what in your opinion are admirable social goals as I would if you taught my kids creationism.
Im not sure how someone can reach their full potential without market competition, perhaps youd like to explain that? What other yardstick is there, except for the achievements of others? Somewhere along the line you have to compare a students performance to others, and that my friend is market competition.
If you believe an admirable social goal is to end up with a select, privileged few who have received a quality education because their school system has out-competed
First, this thread isnt about admirable social goals, as those can only be a matter of personal opinion and nothing more and thus irrelevent to a discussion affecting taxpayers money. What this thread is about is teachers pay, and thus the implied practical impact that may have on the tools our kids are given in order to be able to compete and succeed effectively as adults. Since competition is nothing if not natural, and since they will be competing as adults, its rather stupid to have an educational environment that tries to shield students from the realities of competition, both good and bad. It just makes it that much harder for them to adapt to the real world when they enter it.
Second, you seem to be under the impression that competition is something that ~ends~, resulting in, in your mind only, an elite few. But the schools that would be able to succeed in a competitive atmosphere are only those that could/would attract the largest number of students, based on any number of criteria that parents choose to go by.
This is not something that would result in any kind of ‘end’; as the educational outcome of overcrowded schools declined, parents would put their kids in less crowded schools; as the school population declined in overcrowded ones, their educational outcome would improve. There would be a constant shifting and innovating amongst schools; in competition, there is no ‘winner’ or ‘loser’, only transient states of more or less success as differing approaches are tried and either kept or abandoned.
Not that this point is a huge deal in the overall debate here, but I think you are wrong on that point. Of course renters pay into property taxes thru their rent, but they still generally pay less. If we make the assumption that people pay mortgages or rent roughly in proportion to their income, then clearly the top 50% pay much more in property tax than the lower 50% even if they all pay some property tax.
Add to that the fact that the wealthy send their kids to private school in a higher proportion thn average, and you also have a subgroup of the wealthy paying a good chunk into the system and not availing themselves of the service directly for their kids.
I don’t know if data is actually available on this (esp if you want to figure out how much property tax a renter effectively pays), so we probably don’t have a way of resolving the matter that way, but I can’t see any kind of argument that one could make that would say everyone pays roughly the same amount in property tax in a society such as ours which has a pretty broad range of income groups and housing options.
One of my professors once told us in fundamentals of education his theory:
More money doesn’t mean that a school will be better.
But LESS money WILL mean that a school will be worse.
Make of that what you will.
I am a former teacher who left teaching primarily because of the money.
The pay was sh$t and I became tired of it after 6 years.
I am a former teacher who left teaching primarily because of the money.
The pay was sh$t and I became tired of it after 6 years.
I was a darned good teacher to, if I may say so myself 
Shouldn’t all teachers know ACCOUNTING?
So they can insist all the students know it.
see: RICH DAD, POOR DAD by Robert Kiyosaki
His father was teacher in Hawaii
Okay, I make that it’s self-contradictory.
I don’t doubt that more money WILL usually make a school better. The question is, where best to spend that money?
Thirty years ago, teaching was one of the few choices for careers for educated women to go into. Now there are more choices. Aside from salary considerations, we treat teachers and schools badly. The school district where I live will be bankrupt soon. Across the nation, many teachers spend their own money on school supplies. People complain that teacher’s get the summer off so they should not get paid so much, but we expect teachers to spend time outside of the classroom everyday grading papers, writing lesson plans, helping with afterschool activities, and in time they used to have in planning periods, more and more ofthen they must monitor a study hall. In some places the planning period was removed completely. We are spending less on education generally, partially due to the property tax freezes or limits in much of the country.
I remember reading that in times of cutbacks teacher’s salaries are frozen and classroom size is increased, but when the budget increases, the administrators salaries are raised. I don’t have cites for the general trend, but that is what happened whem more money was given to IMSA here. The legislature gave them extra funding and they were appalled that the administration of the school refused to spend it on teachers. Over time we are seeing that teachers are paid less than they were in light of inflation, and spending on the classroom has also decreased, but the spending on administrators has increased.
Also, it was woman’s work, woman’s work traditionally pays less. The pay scale was not set in the beginning to support a family and buy a house. It was set to support a woman until she got married and had kids.
Teachers are in an odd situation when it comes to paid leave or sick days. If you work in corporate America and you have a doctor’s appontment at 2:30 pm, you can come in early, work through lunch, or just take two hours of comp time. In our school, you really need to take the entire day off. Otherwise you will have to ask other teachers to take their conference period to sit with your class. Some districts pay teachers to cover during their conference period. Our district does not follow this policy.
Several posters have commented regarding the amount of time in which teachers are not actually teaching. We get one 50 minute conference period and 30 minutes for lunch each day. During this 50 minute conference period we are expected to do a multitude of tasks. There is very little time left to evaluate student work and provide timely feedback to students about their work. Teachers have between 140 - 180 students. We are required to record at least two grades each week. Teachers have less than two minutes per student each week for grading, providing feedback, calling parents, recording grades, administering make-up tests, etc. This leaves no time within the work day for planning, collaborating, running copies, setting up your board, etc. During my conference period, there is a “floating” teacher in my classroom which makes it even more difficult to work. Recently, our network printer was out of toner. Anything that needed to be printed had to be printed somewhere else in the building. So, that means a three minute trek down the hall into the east wing and back. During the first six weeks of school, we ran out of paper… completely out. We get funding for the school year mid-October. There was no money for paper. Teachers were going to Office Depot to buy their own paper.
The time we get during June, July, and August doesn’t come close to making up for the 10 and 12 hour days + weekend work we do.
I am pleased with my salary. Like everyone, I would enjoy making more money. What irks me is the misinformation regarding work load. In my school, there is no such thing as a work day. There is only work. I predict a significant increase in teacher salaries. Fewer and fewer people are interested in this career. Newbies are getting out quickly after finding out what is really expected and what it is really like to be a teacher.
Based on its internal errors, I guess I have to agree with the OP:
If we paid them more, would they teach Wheel to spell? Proofread? :dubious:
Um, I thought that guy was supposed to be a major nutbar? Didn’t we discuss him before?
Wheel already offered an apology for the screwed-up thread title. See above.
I forgot to stress that in every district I’ve worked in (three, at this count), teachers were not paid $X for 12 months, with 2 months off. Teachers are paid $X for 180 days (from 7:30 - 3:30 with half an hour for lunch) of teaching. Maybe that’s semantics, but to me, what that means is all the extra work I do after school, on the weekends, during holidays, and over the summer is free. If I were working only the contracted hours, I would have to consider myself very well paid indeed. My per diem (actually per hour) amount last year was nearly $30, but that only covered time on the clock in front of a classroom. Not time I spent planning lessons, researching materials, troubleshooting technical problems for myself and colleagues, calling parents after school, making sure students had ride homes after four o’clock, providing a warm, adult body for the volleyball team so they could practice while their coach was out sick, coordinating a ceramics lab with the town’s adult ed extension, copying tests, grading homework, cleaning up my classroom . . .
Voodoochile, you need to get used to the idea of teachers bringing social agendas into the classroom. It’s part of our jobs. It’s described in whatever state standards, frameworks, or school district Expected Student Learning Results we have. They range from “be careful when crossing the street,” “obey school rules and laws,” “treat the people and property around you with respect,” and “ask for help from the people who can help you.” If we don’t apply our social agendas to our classes, we end up with a Lord of the Flies scenario, and really, you don’t want your kid in the middle of that.
As for possible reforms, here’s what I’d suggest (at least so far as the financial end of things):
completely revamp school financing. Most of it is based on property taxes supplemented by Federal grants. Inevitably, the schools in the poorer districts get shafted, and they’re the ones with more financial needs than the rich districts. It costs them more for campus upkeep (thanks to crime and vandalism), employment to keep teachers and staff willing to work in scary areas, and student support. This is one area where I think Federalization would be a good idea. Work out an amount that covers the basic needs of each school district for physical needs, administration, and employment. From there, school districts can supplement their schools if they like, but there should be a bar that no school will go below.
Create pay differentials for teachers. Base those differentials on things like job supply and demand (for instance, an English teacher like me would get paid lower than a higher-in-demand teacher like a special ed or bilingual teacher), location (more pay for locations that have a hard time getting or keeping teachers), and ability (teachers that have proven their abilities in front of a class room, mentor other teachers, and take more difficult populations of students).
if you decide to go with vouchers, then all private schools must meet independent accredidation requirements, and then get rid of the public schools. Otherwise, you’re opening up a can of worms that will grow into an enormous boondoggle.
All of the voucher programs I’ve seen proposed provide significantly less for the voucher than for the average cost per student. In CA recently, the proposal was 50% of school funding per child. The equation is that if one child leaves the system, only 50% of the money allocated for him goes with, hence there is more money per child left in the system.
The typical response to this that infrastructure expenses aren’t as easy to spread around (the school costs xyz dollars to build and maintain, even if there are fewer children). Frankly, I don’t see that as a legitimate argument because: 1) fewer children means schools won’t have to be constructed as frequently or as large, and 2) all infrastructure improvements (in CA at least) seem to be financed by bond measures (hence more taxes anyway).
To put the numbers in perspective, if 50% of the children leave a school because of vouchers, the budget will go down by 25%. Hence, the per-capita spending of the children in that school will increase by 50%.
As difficult as it is to do, I think you are underestimating politicians. The idea is that if some kids leave for other schools, they both win as long as the private schools are doing the job. For the the conservative idealist, they can stimulate competition in the private sector while improving education–it’s a win-win in their view.
Firstly, if there aren’t plenty of schools within a reasonable distance, then the school won’t see many students leave, hence we’ll have status quo. Hence there shouldn’t be opposition to the idea.
Secondly, the motivation to take children in a private school is the money, plain and simple. There are groups which specifically cater to the “lost” kids which do well, and the public schools don’t have the greatest record handling everyone (to wit: my coworker who has Tourette’s Syndrome who was shut in a closet for many a school day with earphones on his head playing classical music to treat his “hyperactivity” in a public school).
So make the rules dictate that to get the money, they have to take anyone who can afford it.
Why is that surprising? They pay their taxes like everyone else, but then pay on top of that to send their kids to a school which works.
And don’t get the idea that all private schools have coat-of-arms jackets and take only rich kids. Many middle- and low-income families choose to send their kids to private schools no matter the cost. Some simply for better education, others so that their kids can learn without having to deal with classmates having sex in class, face violence in the school, or have an otherwise inappropriate learning environment.
That calculation only works if students already attending private schools are not eligible for the vouchers.
This is a common response to people raising the issue of the public schools having to take everyone and functioning under rules that don’t apply to private schools. I wonder if the private schools in my area are much different from those in other areas. I know my son’s current school would not participate in a voucher system that required it to accept anyone who could pay the tuition. I doubt that the high schools he’s currently applying to would participate in such a voucher system- if they only cared about the money, I wouldn’t be worried about which one would accept him. And I know that the one private school in the area that has a reputation for taking anyone who can pay the tuition is the one I wouldn’t send my kids to, precisely because I won’t pay tuition to send them to a school with the same problems that exist in public school- including violence and unearned passing marks.
Good point. The CA statistics show that private schools account for a little under 10% of the total enrollment. So if the current proposals (funding for vouchers equal to 50% per-capita spending) that would add 5% to the education budget, or remove 5% from the existing public budget.
So if 50% of the children leave a school, the school would have roughly 70% the funding (instead of 75%). And the per-student spending would increase by 40% (instead of 50%).
Yes, I realized that wouldn’t work about 10 minutes after submitting the last post.
But even public schools don’t accept everyone. My brother was expelled his last semester in high school and got a GED instead. I’d love to see statistics on how many people are rejected from private (or public) schools and the reasons.
Well, this is way late, but I ran across this today and thought hey, why not inform a part of this debate about which there still were questions?
The NCES did a study (and compiled stats from a few other sources) on teacher’s working conditions in the early 90s. At that time, the average teacher was required to be at school for 33 hours a week (for teaching, meetings, other duties). The average teacher worked an additional 12 hours before and after the schoolday, and on weekends, on activities with students, parent meetings, grading, lesson planning, etc.
They taught an average of 5.6 classes per day, 23.2 students per class.
They also did a salary comparison but it’s awfully dated now. They noted that teachers earned less than workers with similar “literacy skills” (that’s a new one on me). The statistics they went on to cite compared the average teacher salary in 1991 to the average of “others who earned a bachelor’s degree who were employed full time.” The teacher average was 32.5% less.