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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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caniff
Joined: 03 Feb 2004
Location: All over the map
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 Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 8:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Senior wrote: |
Detroit is next. |
I suppose one could make the argument that governmental mismanagement has destroyed not just Detroit's schools, but pretty much the city itself. |
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Steelrails
Joined: 12 Mar 2009
Location: Earth, Solar System
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| Posted: Wed Mar 17, 2010 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Steelrails wrote: |
A bad school is one that serves as a glorified daycare/holding cell. Schools need to get rid of the kids that aren't there to learn and put them to work in manual labor. Then bring them back to school. Those that get the hint and stick in school can keep on going. Those that prefer manual labor should stick to it.
I think more than anything the peer environment at school determines the "success" level. If students are surrounded by other students who want to learn and achieve academically then that will be the vibe of the school.
Get the students out of there that don't want to be there or don't value learning/ I'm primarily speaking of H.S. students but this could even be extended to Middle School. |
What age group would you begin this process with, exactly? And what standard would you use to judge which children to remove? Test scores? |
Somewhere in the Middle School-High School range. Probably High School. Maybe 8th grade, but probably not. Obviously elementary aged kids should have compulsory education. After Middle School I feel you get seriously diminishing returns on kids who don't want to be in school in relation to the amount of learning they take in.
Of course part of this would involve an increase in Technical schools, Military Schools, Apprenticeships, and other forms of 'Practical Education' to encourage continuing education. Also child labor laws should be changed to allow people aged 14 and up to work later and in more dangerous jobs.
I think our society has made a grave mistake in regarding people aged 14-17 as 'kids'. I believe that this has caused a decline in responsibility and maturity in that age group.
Admittedly this is all high on conception low on execution.
As for criteria it would be primarily voluntary with the decision in the student's hand and not the parent's. Only students who couldn't pass a basic standardized comprehension test or maintain a C average would be denied entry. Of course they could always repeat their grade and take the test again.
But yes, given the fact that many a High School across the U.S. is a glorified day care/holding cell there needs to be a change. It's not the teachers. It's not the funding. It's not even the parents (although education is ultimately the responsibility of the parent, not the government or the school). The problem is the students. |
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Mr. Pink
Joined: 21 Oct 2003
Location: China
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| Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 3:11 pm Post subject: |
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| Reggie wrote: |
I'm not trying to denegrate teachers. I've taught English in Korea, my mother was a public school teacher in the US for decades, two of my uncles were, and my father was a public school teacher for a while so he wouldn't have to go win Vietnamese rubber plantations for tire manufacturers.
Here are the reasons why I think teachers are overpaid:
For starters, they work from from 8 until 3. A seven hour day is already short. Now, take into consideration that they get three months off during the summer. Annualize that and you come up with 5.25 hours they actually work per day when you spread it out over the course of a year. It really is a part-time job.
My mother worked other jobs during the summer and my uncles and father farmed all year since their teaching hours were so short. The whole summer is a wide open opportunity for any teacher to make money if they have any work ethic whatsover. Why should taxpayers have to pay teachers to sit on their asses all summer? Don't they do enough of that on the job? 
My mother and many other teacher had what is called "tenure." For lack of a better description, tenure is where a teacher can't be fired no matter how poorly they perform, as long as they don't do something way over the top such as using the "n word" or having sex with a student. Are there ANY jobs in the private sector where employees get tenure??
Comparing teachers who work in air conditioned rooms for seven hours a day and get three months vacation to people in the private sector, often in grueling conditions, is comparing apples to oranges.
Around here, the only people in the private sector who make comparable salaries to teachers are coal miners. Some of my friends when I was a child had dads who were miners and their dads had back problems, black lung, and had to take blood thinning medications. One of my great grand-fathers died in a mine collapse and those sometimes happen to this day.
I think many if not most of us who work in the private sector are either on call or have been on call around the clock at some point. When I worked in lower management in a trucking company, I was getting called at all hours of the night and had to get up the next day (assuming I ws able to go back to bed) to work my regular shift. I didn't have tenure. If a driver was on an automotive load and his truck broke down, I had to find another driver who could get the load to the customer on time or my company would've had to have paid the car plant the labor costs of all of the employees at the automotive plant while the plant was shut down waiting on the JIT shipment of parts and my ass would've probably been fired.
After eight years of that shit, I got burned out on that and moved to Korea and became a teacher and only had to work eight hours a day and never got called in the middle of the night over some shit. Teaching is an easy job even when you give it all you've got. But most of the teachers I had growing up sat around with their thumbs up their asses because they didn't care. They were getting paid regardless since they had tenure.
I always hear that doctors are overpaid. My twin brother is a doctor and makes around $200,000 a year. His job offers included Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University and a host of other prestigious hospitals. Whereas I was able to goof off in college and graduated when I was 20 on the same day as Peyton Manning who also finished our joke of a college in three years, my brother had to study his ass off and maintain a phenominal GPA unlike me, Peyton, and aspiring public school teachers. In order to be a doctor, my brother had to sacrifice what could've been several years of income in order to study, and there were tuition costs as well. Fewer than one percent of the population could've gotten the job offers he received, whereas anyone with a pulse and an average IQ could be a teacher. Whereas I can teach, being a doctor was never even possible for me because I just wasn't born with enough intellectual capability among other numerous shortcomings. It blows my mind to hear so many people saying doctors are overpaid and teachers are underpaid. These people are either ignorant or out of touch with reality.
How many of us on here are fluent in a language other than English? I'm certainly not, even though foreign language is a requirement in the public schools in the state of Tennessee. Actually, the only American I've ever met who was bilingual was one of my ex-girlfriends whose parents were immigrants from Colombia and I'm 99.99999% certain she learned Spanish at home and not in our public schools. The Spanish teachers in my high school were an absolute joke. I would've much rather been taught by one of the Mexican migrant workers from one of the local farms than our crappy Spanish teachers who would pop the movie "Stand and Deliver" into the VCR and think that would teach us Spanish.
Former NFL star Dexter Manley graduated from a public high school in Houston, TX and attended Oklahoma State University for years before moving on to his career. Imagine this guy getting a high school diploma and getting passing grades in numerous classes at an American public university when he was ILLITERATE!
When I was a freshman at the University of Tennessee, I sat beside of a UT football player during a biology final exam. This was a very easy class and, as far as I know, was a requirement for all majors. The exam consisted of 20 fill in the blank questions and 80 multiple choice questions. The first 20 questions were very easy. They would show a picture of something on an overhead projector and we would have to write down what it was. For example, if they showed a drawing of a cell, there would be an arrow pointing at the mitochondria and we would have to write down "mitochondria." When they got done showing the first 20 questions, he didn't have ANY answers written down. Fast forward three years later. This player who sat to my left during the biology exam was a senior and was the starting running back going into the football game against the University of Florida, a game UT lost and it also cost Peyton Manning the Heisman Trophy. A few weeks later, against the University of Georgia, a freshman running back and future NFL star named Jamal Lewis shredded UGa for 232 yards and all of the fans were blaming the coaches for not playing Lewis ahead of the senior running back. The senior was soon kicked off the team and kicked out of school because of "academic issues" even though there is no way in Hell he didn't have academic issues the whole time he was there! And this was at the flagship public university of the state of Tennessee. That speaks volumes about the sad state of affairs in the public schools in Tennessee.
The bottom line is that our public school teachers work what is basically a part-time job for full-time wages in an air conditioned environment. They produce very few students fluent in two languages and often produce students who aren't literate in any language. It's a failed system, yet we reward these people. It's almost as ridiculous as the way we reward Goldman and AIG for being failures too. |
I work at an American accredited international school and I have been reading a lot of material that comes out of America regarding education.
I am a Canadian certified teacher, and by all accounts it looks like our certification process is a lot better for having teachers ready for when they actually get a job having their own classes.
I disagree though with the notion that teachers are overpaid. In Canada, like many states we have unions which ensure that teachers are paid pretty good. In Canada we are paid MUCH better than in the US. I don't see how you can claim that in the US their pay is great. Most states have horrible pay for their teachers...there is a website out there that lists the avg starting pay for teachers by state, and then the pay for 10 year veterans. I was shocked at how many states never get above $50,000 a year for someone with a master's degree and 10+ years of experience.
My buddy is teaching in New Mexico atm and he has a master's degree and taught in Korea for 10 years or so. He starts at the bottom which is like $28,000 or something equally insulting. He works his ARSE off. In 10 years, he'll top out at 45-48k because his state is poor and that's the way it is.
I have started to think a lot of what we see as poor performance or "easy workload" comes from LAZY teachers. I saw this in Canada and I see it at my current school. There are a lot of them out there. I sort of see myself sometimes as lazy, but that is just because I don't want to work until 10pm every night. Most times though, I work non-stop from the time I get to work until I leave. If I was working at a private sector job, I would have 2 15 minute breaks and an hour for lunch. I work through my lunch everyday except when I have to supervise at lunch time...and that is work too isn't it? I come home and do work when I am done. I do work on the weekends as well. You talk of holidays...I worked through half of my Christmas holiday doing prep and marking exams and assignments. I worked through half of my Chinese New Year holiday doing the same thing. Many of my colleagues did absolutely no work during these holidays...as I said, some strive to educate and do the best they can, others are lazy.
Is the pay that great when you look at the actual numbers? When you start talking about the summer, that shows that you don't know what the deal is. Teachers are paid for 10 months of work. We get two months off in the summer (typically). Some schools and school boards divide your yearly salary into 12 months instead of 10 months. Those payments teachers get in the summer are for work they already DID! If your relatives weren't working after 3pm, what can I say? If they were, if they worked at home or on weekends, that all counts and adds up. I wonder if your relatives would agree that they were over paid?
Now let me add a bit about what it means to be a Canadian teacher. Our governments regulate education a lot more than most US states do. Thus, someone with a BA cannot be a teacher. Unless one goes through a teacher preparation program (B.Ed), they cannot be a public school teacher. The competition to get into those programs is pretty insane, as everyone reads the newspapers and gawks that teachers make so much money. So, for most of our programs, you need a really good GPA. Thus, we have to invest 5 years worth of time and money into university. After that, since there is such an abundance of new graduates, no school is going to hire a fresh grad unless they are absolutely amazing and have impressed the crap out of someone they did their practicum with, or they have relatives who are principals or superintendents. Thus supply teaching occurs. Most teachers do this for years before they get full-time work. Supply teaching pays crap. Then when they do start, the salary is around $40,000 Canadian. That might seem high, but when the gov't comes and takes most of it, it really isn't.
So, the average teacher invests 5 years of time and money into their profession, plus another 2-3 years supply teaching. Let's say that is an 8 year investment. That is what doctors and lawyers invest, no? Lawyers in Canada start at over $50,000 a year and the sky is the limit for where they can top out. What I want you to realize is it takes YEARS to get back the lost earning potential of those 8 years before starting at the BOTTOM. We can add another year if the teacher does an MA/M.Ed.
New teachers have to make all new lesson plans and are also scrutinized way more than older teachers, thus they earn that 40k...every penny of it. Is it too much to expect that by year 11 when they make 90k that some of that money was earned on previous work done? I am not saying they should stop making lesson plans or trying to be innovative, but there needs to be a reward for working so hard. Doctors, lawyers, accountants and other professionals make a lot from working hard early on and getting ahead. Teachers, really don't come close in comparison...it seems everyone jumps on the bandwagon that teachers are overpaid and shouldn't be. If education was privatized, I bet they would be paid higher, as the best would excel and the worst would be fired. Think of hawgwons in Korea: the ones that specialize in Korean subjects. We hear of Korean teachers making over 10mil won a month...they are obviously a good example of the best getting paid well for what they do.
I will leave this debate with this: there is too much politics in the system atm. People are appointed principal or superintendent without the necessary skills or education to do such jobs. This has a top down impact which if you get a bad administrator, everything under them is going to likewise be bad.
I'd get rid of the way school boards are run before I got rid of the unions of the teachers. (Though I am not a fan of the unions either as they keep lazy teachers employed.) |
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Moldy Rutabaga
Joined: 01 Jul 2003
Location: Ansan, Korea
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| Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 5:54 pm Post subject: |
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I will chime in again and try to offer my ideas. Again, I cede that others here know more about economics. Mr. Pink has more direct experience than I do and his post makes clear sense to me.
I again think that the impulse to see free markets as the best arbiter of all things can mislead us. With many products, yes. But I resist the idea that education is a product which can easily be quantified or measured. That doesn't mean we don't try, but it does mean that there are long-term and broad benefits which don't easily fit on a cost sheet.
The second problem with free-market education is that to me it seems financially improbable as a business model. Without government subsidization, there simply won't be many people sending their children to school. Many won't be able to afford it, and for those who can, the costs will be prohibitive and temptations to skip it or replace it with some nebulous home-schooling great. We could end up with community or church organizations who compensate with their own systems and pool resources, but this would simply duplicate what the government does and with fewer economies of scale.
Having taught in Korea and in the USA, I tend to agree with the analogy that Korea has bad schools and good students, and the USA has good schools and bad students. These are of course generalizations, but overall I was impressed with the teachers who taught my daughter, in Las Vegas of all places, where strippers are more respected (and paid better). They were not treated well, they were hampered with too much bureaucracy, and they weren't supported by parents. Everyone praises teachers in the abstract; but every individual teacher is lazy, is holding back my Johnny in class, jumps on every harebrained teaching fad...
The cliche is that the liberal blames everyone but the criminal; we also blame everyone but the student. Again, we need to foster changes in our society which make students and parents value what they do in school. I think the unpleasant corrolary is that people who don't value school and undermine classes need to be kicked out, and that not everyone needs to be or deserves to be in university.
I do agree that some aspects of the free market could be applied to schools, such as more school autonomy in hiring and management (but with a standardized curriculum), and perhaps incentives for innovation. Charter schools sometimes unfairly do well because they self-select motivated students, but also because they often don't have to fill out seventeen forms for every new idea and pass it by boards of government administrators. |
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Senior
Joined: 31 Jan 2010
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| Posted: Thu Mar 18, 2010 6:08 pm Post subject: |
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Moldy, just a quick point about your post. Personally, I have nothing against schools being subsidised. Some people genuinely can't afford to send their kids to school, and it would be bad for society if those kids didn't go to school. However, it is the govt administration of schools, that I have a problem with. They have undeniably cocked the whole thing up. It costs $14,000 a year to educate a kid in the states. Surely we can do better than that?
To me, the solution is to attach the money spent on schools, to the student, rather than building a school and forcing kids to go there. If students and parents can choose which school they go to, the best schools will naturally rise to the top, whilst the bad ones fail and there assets will be bought up by the good ones. AKA a voucher system.
If the govt wants to administer schools, they still can, but they will have to rely on merit, and receive no additional funding (yea, right). |
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