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No, you can NOT teach critical thinking (sort of). It took me some time to find it again but this was an interesting read:

https://www.aft.org/sites/defa...

From what I remember, critical thinking is not a skill in itself but is very much context dependent. You can't teach it in general and it does not transfer from one subject to another. Studying a specific liberal art means you can think critically about that liberal art but not necessarily other liberal arts and definitively not humans in general. You need subject knowledge to engage in critical thinking or all statements are equally plausible. Most modern issues require specialist knowledge that we do not possess and therefore we replace the real question with a simpler one like "what do my friends think", "which opinion would make me cool, edgy or popular" etc. Afterwards we rationalize it and claim that "raising taxes does this and that" even though we almost never have supporting scientific evidence. Thinking critically is not even on the map.

The only subject I would recommend for everyone is behavioral psychology since it is the study of actual human behavior (and all the imperfections). It is better for understanding both the present and the past than traditional social sciences or history lessons (imho). The only thing it doesn't do much for is understanding the hard sciences so study those as well.

By the way, behavioral psychology is neither liberal nor artsy but rather technical and detail oriented.

I read this as whining that an administrator just doesn't want to do any friggin' work as part of their job (namely: document and prove that a teacher is negligent). Here is a study on when unions are more involved in hiring/firing of teachers, and the result is that they are far more aggressive about firing teachers than administrators.

"Nonetheless, CTs [consulting teachers] rose to the challenge - not in all cases, but at a much higher rate than principals - and when necessary, they recommended nonrenewal... The result was that out of 88 new teachers who were in the program in its first year, 11 (12.5 percent) were not renewed for employment... In the year immediately before PAR [peer assistance and review], only three teachers out of a teaching force of almost 3,000 were not renewed."

I've also seen this kind of thing first-hand. At my current job observations are done by fellow teachers (sit in my class for an hour, fill out a detailed 7-page report, have a sit-down conversation with me after I read it, every semester). At my prior job observations were to be done by the assistant dean (bagged it off for 3 years, I begged and pleaded to get something on file, he sat in on an introductory computer class for 5 minutes, wrote down a notecard-sized piece of garbled nonsense totally unrelated to the class content). In summary: Administrators are pretty lazy about doing their job.

Glad to hear your comments on that, but I do disagree; I don't think the problem in this case is centralization -- in fact, really the opposite, as the U.S. is among the most non-centralized countries when it comes to education policy. The fact that the federal government can't set education goals is almost unique among modernized countries, and is among the first things I would point to that seem really oddball.

The countries that are currently the top performers education-wise have nationwide education policies and very well-respected national unions cooperating to shape those policies (considered equivalent to doctor and lawyer bars). Among the advantages are that the university education programs can actually focus on the content everyone will have to teach (as opposed to here in the U.S. where they can only talk about it in the abstract, because there's no telling where you'll land and what you'll have to teach). The canonical example most people point to these days is Finland, but there are others.

http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/spring2013/sarjala.cfm

"Critical thinking" is this mantra that has come to signify almost nothing. A peculiar CS-person fugue seems to be "education is never abstracted enough to satisfy me". People cannot think in the abstract without first thinking about something concrete. Lots of specific knowledge is what allows connections to be made.

"Knowledge comes into play mainly because if we want our students to learn how to think critically, they must have something to think about." [Daniel T. Willingham, American Educator]

Current issue of American Educator has an interesting article -- 10-year study in Philadelphia, comparing rich and poor sections of town, in libraries where a multimillion dollar grant allowed them to provide equivalent resources in books and computer learning software. The results seen by those researchers are that the rich kids were guided by their parents in using all of those things, while the poor kids without any assistance or background knowledge failed to use them successfully. End result: poor kids actually fell more behind the rich than when they started out.

"Over the 10 years we spent in these two libraries, the gap in the amount of time adolescents spent reading increased substantially. Regardless of technology (books or computers), reading tends to predominate in Chestnut Hill but not in Lillian Marrero. After years of technology improvements, there is now a larger gap between these two communities in the amount of time spent reading than before. In fact, our rough estimates indicate that 10- to 12-year-olds at Chestnut Hill were reading more than twice as many words as their peers at Lillian Marrero." [p. 23]

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2012/Neuman.pdf

These are dedicated researchers studying the issue for 10 years. This is not the head of OLPC pitching questionable and unverifiable extraordinary claims, in the quest for more funding (“If it gets funded, it would need to continue for another a year and a half to two years to come to a conclusion that the scientific community would accept,” Negroponte said, FTA).

Ten posts in, and I already see the guy chomping on the high-salary-bit modded at +5. Before that becomes the focus of these posts, let me add something to reflect on.

There is not only a very strong negative correlation between the percent of a school's low-socioeconomic-status students (measured by a school's free-and-reduced lunch rate) and test scores*, but there has proven to be causation as well. Now, urban Chicago has some of the highest poverty rates in the state of Illinois. Creating a system where half of a teacher's evaluation (and, ergo, the chance they keep their job) is based solely on test scores is simply setting up teachers to fail. Teachers know this; when they (or anyone else, for that matter) are put into a position where their evaluation likely will be poor, due to circumstances far beyond their control, resulting in dismissal from their job, it will negatively affect their performance in the classroom. Then, with high teacher turnaround, the quality of new hires will just suffer precipitously.

This evaluation system was never meant or designed to improve teacher performance. It was designed to set schools up to fail. And Chicago Area Teachers have every right to stand up and stop it. Anyone who tries to complain about salaries is merely throwing a red herring into the discussion.

* source: The Star Tribune. It appears that, sadly, they removed the free-and-reduced lunch data from this year's test results. In previous years, I ran simple correlation calculations between a district's free-and-reduced lunch percentage, and the percentage of students who were proficient on the tests. The correlation coefficient was -.87 for math and -.92 for reading.

A strong argument can be made that nations currently outperforming the U.S. have (a) a single national common curriculum structure, (b) teacher training in college which is focused on the specifics of teaching that curriculum, (c) textbooks in support of that curriculum, and (d) ongoing support and mentoring for a professional class of teacher.

With the history states rights in the U.S., of course, you can't have a common curriculum, and schools of education can't dig into the specifics of any particular subject matter, so it's pretty much all lost in an abstract cloud (of which some Slashdotters will sing praises, but it doesn't work too well in practice). And teachers are mostly thrown at the wall like cannon fodder (I think the turnover rate in the first year teaching in the U.S. is like 50%).

Is a common, nationally-supported curriculum possible in the U.S.? Possibly not. And we tend to be more accepting of a lottery-like structure to our society with some huge winners and a lot of hopeless losers.

http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/winter1011/index.cfm

Now, look within a school district, and compare students who do well, vs. those who do poorly (excluding those with learning disabilities), the better students, in general will have parents who have more concern with their kids education, and play a more active role.

I have on numerous occasions studied the correlation between free-and-reduced lunch percentage data per school (a good indication of what percent of students are from low-income and improverished families) and school test scores in states that allow open-enrollment (parents can enroll their children in schools located outside their home district). The correlation coefficient has always been strong, and particularly strong within large municipal areas. Impoverished and low-income families are much less likely to instill within their children the skills they need to be successful in school.

What "philanthropists" like Bill Gates don't understand is that the skill set necessary for success that most school "reform" pushers are ignoring is not academic in nature. (It's well documented that intelligence is fairly independent, though not completely mutually exclusive, from environment.) It's rather a social skill called "self-regulation" which is instilled at the home, not at school. Self-regulation is the ability to control and plan emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. Students who can self regulate are the students who can keep their emotions from impeding success (a.k.a. perseverance), who can look at a problem or a set of problems and determine a step-by-step approach to solving them (a.k.a. problem solving & task management), and who can determine an appropriate reaction to a given stimulus depending on the setting they are presently in (a.k.a. good behavior). And studies have documented that self-regulation is taught most successfully in the home, but is not taught as successfully in low-income and impoverished homes.

The academic divides that currently exist within the school setting are more a symptom of a deeper social problem that needs to be addressed. Beating up on schools will not solve the problem when the problem is in the home, not the school.

(A more in-depth article on self-regulation can be read here.)

"Knowledge isn't worth as much as people seem to think; at its heart, it's just trivia. What matters is the ability to think, and that doesn't change from generation to generation."

Disagree. For example, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes about this a lot -- the evidence is that critical thinking and deep domain knowledge go hand-in-hand. Knowing the details about what you're researching give you more vocabulary, greater context, and more connections to see the "big picture". That is, thinking has to be thinking *about something*, and the more practice in the details of any given problem domain make a big difference.

"There's no such thing as critical thinking 'skills.' There are strategies that aid critical thinking—but these can only take one's thinking to the precipice, no further. Then what? Critical thinking depends on knowing relevant content very well—and thinking about it, repeatedly, in critical ways." -- Intro to "Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?" (http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2007/index.cfm)

This is one of those things that seems so glaringly obvious, I don't know how anyone can separate knowledge from thinking. It makes me cringe every time I hear about kids being taught how to think and be creative instead of "just knowledge". It's like trying to design a Lego castle without having ever felt a block in your hand.

"Knowledge isn't worth as much as people seem to think; at its heart, it's just trivia. What matters is the ability to think, and that doesn't change from generation to generation."

Disagree. For example, cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham writes about this a lot -- the evidence is that critical thinking and deep domain knowledge go hand-in-hand. Knowing the details about what you're researching give you more vocabulary, greater context, and more connections to see the "big picture". That is, thinking has to be thinking *about something*, and the more practice in the details of any given problem domain make a big difference.

"There's no such thing as critical thinking 'skills.' There are strategies that aid critical thinking—but these can only take one's thinking to the precipice, no further. Then what? Critical thinking depends on knowing relevant content very well—and thinking about it, repeatedly, in critical ways." -- Intro to "Critical Thinking: Why Is It So Hard to Teach?" (http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2007/index.cfm)

I've been a school teacher now for seven years, going on my eighth. Not only am I a math teacher, but I'm also the technology coordinator at our small rural school. And as I'm reading through the posts, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one here who believes that technology is no savior to the classroom.

I was about to respond with my own post, but I'd rather reply to the idea started with the parent comment:

What's the goal? To improve the education process or to make sure that Laura Ingalls cannot recognize it as a school?

This should be the ultimate goal of teachers everywhere, to improve the education process. And if computers do exactly that, then let's put them in the hands of every student. But do computers really do that? If so, where's the proof? I've seen computers in the classroom now for fifteen years, and I was there with them in the classroom for four of them. If they were so fantastic, wouldn't we be seeing positive gains by now?

Sadly, there is little proof. Technology has changed so rapidly, there has been little opportunity to draw a positive or negative conclusion about a particular technology before society labels it old-school. (In fact, few thorough studies have actually been done on educational technology. There is a really good article here that discusses this further.)

So, to anyone who says that classrooms haven't changed in 100 years, I say to them this: has the human brain changed in the last 100 years? What's different about the way the brain learns now as opposed to 100 years ago? As a third grade teacher at my school once said, "It's amazing how much a child can learn when you hand them a popsicle stick dipped in molasses." I say stick to the field trips, the classroom projects, the crayons, and the Elmer's glue. Let a child experience our world, rather than just view it through a monitor.

Higher tech for the sake of higher tech is the worst thing you can do with technology. It's a scam. Examples:

(1) My home state of Maine gives every kid in school in the state a laptop. It's a scam so someone can say "look, we're hi tech". Teachers waste time on discipline problems, tech breakdown, being forced unnecessarily into using tech-driven instruction so as to not waste the laptops. I'm told that every day there has to be a UPS delivery to every school in the state from Apple with replacement laptops.

(2) Dean at prior college (non-union-strong) had a meeting where he demanded instructors use overhead projectors because of the expense of installing them, so we could show off how high-tech we are. If I put it up to a student vote ("Do you like PowerPoint instruction, or not?" -- "Do you like group projects, or not?") they usually decline. Scam.

Unfortunately, higher education is plagued by the need of education experts/PHDs to make careers/publication by "some new thing", anything whatsoever. That's why you get ridiculous churn in methods, teaching styles, group work, hands-on, technology, etc., etc. And it works hand-in-hand with book publishers who use the same as a reason to churn new book editions every so years, so that old editions can't be re-used.

Here's a completely crazy idea -- base decisions like these on research as to whether it helps students (and not on just whether it makes some salesman/budget-administrator cream in their pants). Does such research exist? Consider this article in the last issue of the AFT's American Educator:

Can research provide any guidelines as to which classroom applications are most effective?... The studies on these point to two conclusions. First, the mere presence of technology in the classroom does not necessarily mean that students learn more. Second -- and, perhaps, a corollary of the first conclusion -- using these technologies effectively is not as obvious as it might seem at first. [American Educator, Summer 2010, Daniel T. Willingham, "Ask the Cognitive Scientist: Have Technology and Multitasking Rewired How Students Learn?", p. 26]

http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/summer2010/Willingham.pdf

In short: The "hi-tech uber alles" fetish is, mostly, another in a long series of time & money-wasting scams perpetrated on the education system. There's little or no evidence that it helps student learning, and there is evidence that the time required to manage/prepare/leverage technology resources is directly lost from the educator's other existing duties of teaching, assessment, and feedback.

The artiicle is The Early Catastrophe

It's well-known, and also my experience, that administrators don't really care about the quality of the teaching in classrooms. To them it's just a product, and as long as the "sale" is being made, job done. Consider the same dynamics in a helpdesk, phone support situation; what is more profitable?

Consider my sig. First, I had a college teaching job where the union was non-functional and reviews were given by a dean. Result: I had to beg and plead for an assistant dean to come into my room once, ever, for the supposed required review; he stayed for 5 minutes and scribbled something utterly nonsensical about the CS lesson, "Dan's great", that's it. Now, I teach at a school where the union is strongly involved, and every semester I get a rotating series of fellow professors sitting in my classroom for a whole hour, writing a 6-page report, and having a discussion with me about my classroom management, in a very detailed and sometimes picky manner.

American Educator magazine, Fall 2008, had an issue about the effects of teacher governance and peer review. One interesting finding: When the union and teachers are involved in reviews, they are FAR MORE likely to fire teachers than administrators or principals. Teachers care about the profession, and the students, and their reputation; just like doctors or lawyers or engineers. But administrators have other priorities.

Read the article here ("Taking the Lead", p. 37): http://archive.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2008/index.htm

Look, in the last two decades there's been a concerted Chicago-school-type program to wrest control away from teachers and corporatize schools, reducing teachers to low-paid, unskilled at-will labor. Full-time teachers have been replaced by part-time contingent faculty to save costs (example: community college instructors in 1997 were 54% tenured full-time, now just 43%). The majority of funding increases go to grow administration jobs, not in-classroom teaching (growing 41% between 1997 and 2007). Source, AFT State of Higher Education Worforce: http://www.aftface.org/storage/face/documents/ameracad_report_97-07for_web.pdf

In a software company, the PHB's tend to want to take decision-making away from the engineers, and the result is an inefficiently run company (but in the short-run, profitable for the bosses). The exact same thing is happening right now with the PHB's of the school system trying to squeeze out teacher peer review and shared governance, for the same reasons, with all available data showing the exact same end-results. The more they squeeze, the more students will slip through their fingers. But like a lot of American social issues, the evidence can't get through the wild-eyed tea-party propaganda.

Teachers on average make less than $50,000/year doing one of the most publicly scrutinized, emotionally demanding jobs in the USA.

Wrong link. You meant to point to this page, I think. (Your page addresses the salaries of probation officers, agricultural inspectors, and lots of other jobs, but not teachers.) The AFT's numbers show that schoolteachers, on average, make -slightly more- than $50,000/year. While I agree they're badly underpaid, one should also bear in mind that they don't work year-round and get much more vacation than most workers. They do work long hours, but so does everyone else.

Again, I agree their pay is abysmal when compared to their responsibilities and the qualifications we need from them. I can't help but feel our schools'd be in far better shape if we fired, say, 80% or so of the administration and gave their salaries to the teachers.

I'm a teacher. I don't get paid what I deserve. I do not get summers off. We have to attend professional development courses to keep our licenses current -- paid for by us. We have to get ready for the new year and the new classes. The summer is full of work-related stuff: course preparation, reading new texts, developing new lesson plans, getting the technology in place and ready to go the first day students sit down to it. In short, yes there are lot of other people who work long hours, but I challenge any one of them to my 11 hour day, then another 2/3 hours of grading most evenings. The grading continues into the weekend. Don't forget the teachers who take on the added responsibility of summer school. Sorry, you're "don't work year-round" statement hit a button.

According to AFTTEACHERS make an avarage of $50k a year. This puts TEACHERS in the top half of our nations earners. That makes their pay average at worst. When you factor in the three months vacation a year that they get, their hourly rate makes them paid quite well.

So, no, evil adminstrators do not explain how every single teacher makes less than the average teacher salary.

Teachers on average make less than $50,000/year doing one of the most publicly scrutinized, emotionally demanding jobs in the USA.

Wrong link. You meant to point to this page, I think. (Your page addresses the salaries of probation officers, agricultural inspectors, and lots of other jobs, but not teachers.) The AFT's numbers show that schoolteachers, on average, make -slightly more- than $50,000/year. While I agree they're badly underpaid, one should also bear in mind that they don't work year-round and get much more vacation than most workers. They do work long hours, but so does everyone else.

Again, I agree their pay is abysmal when compared to their responsibilities and the qualifications we need from them. I can't help but feel our schools'd be in far better shape if we fired, say, 80% or so of the administration and gave their salaries to the teachers.

This is just a retarded question. Teachers make piss for money and now someone is complaining that they are actually doing something to compliment that? Teachers on average make less than $50,000/year doing one of the most publicly scrutinized, emotionally demanding jobs in the USA. They got a 2.6% increase last year but their buying power went DOWN according to the AFT Public Employees
.
We should be applauding these teachers for finding good ways to pass around good teaching material, not bitching that "the taxpayers pay you to teach so we own all of your creative works and you can't ever make money off of them".

For the record, NO I am not a teacher. I just happen to think that we should be doing everything we can to make sure our teachers succeed. Obama talks a big game and I hope he comes through for them but at this point it's been talk.

Piss off theodp and rtb61.

We are over http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htmpaying http://www.aft.org/salary/our http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary teachers!?

I don't think so... Mods can clean up my html...

Here's an article on these issues from the AFT union magazine, "American Educator", last fall:

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2008/goldstein.pdf

A primary problem is that principals want to fire people at-will, without evidence. The union demands legitimate documented evidence, and many principals don't have the time or interest in following that up, and therefore simply drop that responsibility.

One thing that has been tried in places is putting teachers and the union on a renewal panel with the principal, including a regular review/evaluation process. Lesson: The union members are far more aggressive about removing bad teachers, so as to protect the quality of the profession (similar to doctor & lawyer bars). The example in the article saw an increase from 1% of teachers fired to 12% in the year that union-involved renewal boards were established. Principals are quoted as being enormously grateful for the confidence given by such oversight. (See article above, p. 10/37, item #6, "Increasing Accountability for Teaching Quality".)

I've taught at community colleges in two states, one with a weak union and one with a strong one. I know the strong-union institution (CUNY in New York) has far more regular, and far more rigorous observation/evaluation practices, by fellow professors. At the previous job it was entirely one assistant dean's responsibility to oversee everyone, he didn't really care for it, skipped it the majority of the time (and only sat in for 5 minutes after I begged him to give me the contract-required review), couldn't understand the proceedings in the class, etc.

"They are tenured. Protected by powerful unions."

This is largely a misconception and propaganda. Union rules do demand concrete *evidence* before allowing a teacher to be fired. (Principals can't pull a PHB and fire a teacher arbitrarily, just because they don't like them personally.) The problem is that most principals are too lazy or busy to do any evidence-gathering in a case like this, and choose to do nothing.

Here's an article from American Educator magazine last year, pointing out that when unions are given a position on hiring/firing boards, they are *far more aggressive* than anyone else about getting rid of bad teachers, because it makes the whole profession look bad:

http://www.aft.org/pubs-reports/american_educator/issues/fall2008/goldstein.pdf

I'm with you, AC. I would challenge MikeRT to teach in a rural school system like both of my parents did and see how well he likes the "pretty penny." This "most districts" stuff is completely unsupported by statistics. How about some hard numbers: http://www.aft.org/salary/2005/download/AFT2005SalarySurvey.pdf Read the forward.

Wait... are you actually suggesting that teachers are over-paid? In most places that I've been or even heard about, teachers barely make a livable wage.

Nearly every single human being on the planet thinks their job sucks and they don't make enough money, but let's look at the facts. High school teachers make, on average, $47,602. Straight from the horse's mouth. And I know that this same page claims they need more money. It's a union, that's what they do.

Now let's put that number in perspective. The median personal income for all people in the US over 25 is $32,140. The median for people with only a bachelor's degree is $43,143.*

So teachers not only make more than the average for people with a bachelor's degree (which is what most HS teachers have), they get that for a job that comes with full government benefits, gives approximately three months of vacation each year, and in which the average workday is approximately 8-3.

I know there are aspects of their jobs that suck, but pardon me if I'm not exactly drowning in pity for the poor teachers.

* Wiki Page with all the statistics used above and links to original stats from US Census Bureau.

Really? Then you and your wife are at the low end. This from the AFT page. "... the average teacher salary was $47,602."

They then state they would like to see a 30% pay increase.

I'm really tired of the 'teachers are paid a pittance' meme. If you look at the numbers: http://www.aft.org/salary/2006/download/PECompSurv ey06.pdf (page 12), the median teacher salary is $46,500. That's right, they earn more than chemists, accountants, and nurses. But they only work for 9 months of the year. Yes they do work hard. Yes they have to put up with alot of bullshit. But their salaries are certainly enough to live on.

Actually I got my info from the American Federation of Teachers. Sorry, it's a pdf.

I thought I knew that to be false since i thought teachers were poorly paid.

http://www.aft.org/salary/2004/download/2004AFTSal arySurvey.pdf

When I searched to post that, I find that yup- you are correct, they make about 8% more than the average worker.
However, they have been losing ground ever since 1996.

However, their benefits are apparently stellar (and include a couple months vacation vs 2-3 weeks, excellent retirement benefits, excellent health care benefits).

On the flip side, my friends who were high school teachers have to put in a lot of unpaid overtime (working basically 8am to 10pm a few days a week) before they quit the field.

Because standardized testing NEVER existed before the Bush administration. Seriously, though I don't disagree with you, I remember taking standardized tests years and years before Bush's reign of stupid began.

Nice strawman. Standardized testing certainly existed, but No Child Left Behind takes the idea to an absurd level, and goes to the extent of financially punishing schools that don't meet its requirements. Now, combine that with the fact that the act is only funded ~50% (which parent poster mentioned, btw) and you have an educational disaster.

It forces test score goals on schools, then doesn't give them the money to meet those goals. What the hell do you think is going to happen? Why do you think the state of Connecticut is suing the Federal government over it? Do some critical thinking, man.

So all the skilled people become doctors and lawyers and only the unskilled become teachers? What a load of crap.

Is that so? Are you telling me that given the choice between being paid $60k a year doing what you've learned to do, and $50k a year teaching other people to do what you've learned to do, you'll take the $50k one?

Will you personally be applying for the highest paid job you think you can possibly learn?

The vast majority of people do exactly that. Many people go to college to learn whatever the "hot" profession is. A considerable number grow up not knowing what they want to do, and are guided by others along the career path.

Trying to use someone else as your ancedote to prove the other guy's point wrong is foolish, especially when you're trying to use the person who's making the point. For all you know, he believes that as he becomes more skilled, he deserves a higher pay for his talents, and most certainly WOULD apply for the highest paying job in line with those skills.

A married teacher couple makes enough to put them in the top 20% of American households in terms of income. This for working 9-10 months of the year. I agree it's not a way to get rich, but neither are 90% of the typical middle class jobs out there. The middle class is currently fighting a losing war in this country. The best bets are to get completely out of debt and start living within your means. I admit that's a damn hard thing to do in this country, but it's necessary. I just don't think teachers have it better or worse than anyone else out there on average. It's an illusion. BTW, my mom is a high school teacher.

see these
http://www.aft.org/salary/index.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_t he_United_States

The fact is, for a college educated professional (the very definition of middle class) - [150K a year is] an average salary with a decades or so experience.

In certain industries, perhaps. But look at the salary stats for say, teachers, or veterinarians (two established middle-class professions which require college educations). Way less than 150k.

Seriously, if you think 150k is an average middle class salary, you're leading an insular existence. In fact, if you look a the historical stats on income from the US Census Bureau, you'll see that you're coming in at the lower limit of the the top 5 percent. Now, unless you're going to argue that only people in your income bracket are truely solidly middle class, and so redefine the problem away, you have to admit that you are, at the very least, upper middle class.

Heh, this is almost fun.

Nope, this is just your usual dictatorship FUD; keep the population poor, afraid and ignorant.

Poor:

An Analysis of the Presidents Who Are Responsible For Excessive Spending
Bush Borrowed More Than All Previous Presidents Combined, Group Says
Surplus? US Debt Pushes $6 Trillion
U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK (this is a very interesting one, in my humble opinion)

(hint: guess whose taxes are going to pay for that)

Afraid:

U.S. Department of Defense News About The War On Terrorism
The War On Terrorism
AMERICA'S WAR AGAINST TERRORISM

Ignorant:

Education Not a Bush Budget Priority, Representative Miller to Testify
Bush Budget Slashes Education, Other Domestic Programs
$2.5 Trillion Budget Plan Cuts Many Programs
Bush administration Cuts Public School Funding to Pay for New Private School Voucher Scheme

And you complain about China? I'm afraid you have the same problems in your country (assuming you're American).

I think you mean the American Federation of Teachers (AFT ). Believe it or not, teacher's unions have typically opposed bonuses based on above average performance. The thinking is that every dollar of bonus paid to top teachers takes away from the teachers who are below average or average, but who make up a voting majority within the union.

Unfortunately, for all their rhetoric, the NFT as an organization is more interested in lining their pockets than in improving education in the US. Because of their selfishness, common sense remedies to the appalling state of the American public school system such as pay for performance are politically untenable.

I imagine you've got more room in your ass, after pulling those numbers out - especially since they're much larger than reality.

Table 1 at http://www.aft.org/salary/ shows salaries from a year or so ago (so the data's not *too* out of date). About half of the country averages below $40K for teachers, and below $30K for starting teachers. In case averages are beyond comprehension, that means that, for every teacher making $60K, there's one making $20K

Thank God that is sarcasm. The average starting schoolteacher's salary is $30k according to http://www.aft.org/salary/2003/download/2003Table2 .pdf.

The average salary of a teacher is about $44k, according to http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos069.htm. Not bad for a job where the outlook is good to excellent, with employment in most locations and a high measure of job security and decent benefits. Plus there are three months of vacation.

Quit listening to the libertarians. Those people are regular neo-cons. Hell, the Republican party is more liberal than the libertarians.

As an American I think we'd have a better program if the school system wasn't controlled by the government.

Really? Well, keep in mind that there is already an extensive network of non-public schools that you could go to if you have the money. How exactly does it solve the problem?

Do you think a for-profit private school would have wasted their budget money like this?

Yes. If the money was earmarked for buying network equipment, which it was, they might as well get all the network equipment they could possibly want. If I give you 10 million dollars for the sole purpose of upgrading your internet connection, wouldn't you try to spend it all? Possibly on stuff you will never need?

But Unpossible, how will poor kids go to private schools?

Quit deluding yourself. Private schools have no interest in letting poor people attend. So they will most likely simply disallow them. As in Brown vs. Board of Education.

And if you want to know how well for-profit public education works, read this.

Those that have good parents and want to be educated will be educated.

Do you think some poor kid in an inner-city ghetto is going to have good parents and the drive to succeed? Hell no. Maybe if you weren't so ignorant you would know why most civilized countries, including the US, have mandatory schooling.

You know, lots of people need to be paid more. But the average teacher's salary in 2002 was $44,367. Meanwhile, the median household income in 2002 was $42,409. Further, you have to, as the previous post stated, put this into the context of the number of days per year actually worked. This yields an adjusted salary of about $60,000 (via a back of the envelope calculation).

I'm not saying that this isn't commensurate with their value to society. Money is a horrible indicator for actual value. What I am saying is that based on the job, it's really not horrible money. Read more here.

Many unions today are not healthy. By that I mean they do not represent their workers. They represent their interests. Kind of like a big government tends to represent it's existance instead of the people that pay for its existance.

jason

OK, ellem, how do you substantiate your "not true"?

I just googled for "class size value" which seems like a relatively neutral term, I found that in the first three pages of results every reference to academic class size came in agreeing that smaller classes are better, except for one page citing the general opinion of citizens unrelated to any research.

US public schools are not, in general, poorly funded. See this report, particularly the international comparison of spending per student in table 4. The report concludes that "What distinguishes U.S. education from other nations is not how much or how little it spends. Thousands of schools district make the U.S. unique. Education costs and personnel compensation vary tremendously. School districts operate free of national education standards and national salary schedules. The U.S. has forged a structure of long school days, busing, and school lunch programs to support a system of large schools. Consequently, noninstructional spending is a larger portion of school costs."

I'm to do all of this with just a piece of chalk,a computer, a few books, a bulletin board, a 45 minute more-or-less plan time and a big smile, all on a starting salary that qualifies my family for food stamps in many states.

Although I agree with many parts of this rant, I was really surprised by this comment on teacher salaries. Yes, they've historically been a major complaint about teaching, but I was under the impression that things were getting better. So I did a little web research.

First of all, starting salaries are starting salaries. You don't make much when you start in most careers. According to this page at the American Federation of Teachers website, the average starting salary for teachers in the U.S. was $27,989 in 2001. The average salary in general was $41,820.

Now, that isn't spectacular pay, but it's not exactly horrifyingly low either. The average pay is almost exactly the national median ($42,148), in fact. Yes, there are some states which are lagging on teacher salaries, but of course there are some which are ahead as well.

Why do I bring this up? Maybe so that people won't be completely scared off from teaching? :)

Poverty level? According to this report, which was done in December of 1994, and this table within, teachers are NOT at the poverty level.

The fact, if you trust the report, is that the starting salary for primary teachers in the U.S. is about $22K per year. This figure is comparable to, and even above most western nations. It also is very close to the average per-capita GDP. At mid career, they make about $34K.

The point being, these people are FAR from starving, and the fact is, my fiancee and I barely make a combined income that matches the starting income for a teacher.

I should also mention that teachers get excellent benefits.

One could also note from the report that teachers in the U.S. work an average of 185 days. If you take a mid-career teacher making $30K, divide by 185 days, is $162/day, or $16/hour if they worked 10 hours a day, or $20/hour if they work 8.

So don't give me this crap about teachers not making enough money and that they are at the "poverty level". I make $12K a year, and I damn sure aren't living in "poverty." I go to school, I pay my bills, I eat, and I even get to build a new computer every now and then.

I WILL concede that the report concludes that teacher pay is low relative to the amount of time spent with each pupil, and number of pupils per teacher, compared to other western nations.

I will also concede that teacher pay isn't comparable to most other jobs that require a masters or doctorate degree, and therefore don't attract more qualified people.

I will NOT concede that they are starving and living in poverty.

As far as your other issues are concerned, I don't know much about them.

Poverty level? According to this report, which was done in December of 1994, and this table within, teachers are NOT at the poverty level.

The fact, if you trust the report, is that the starting salary for primary teachers in the U.S. is about $22K per year. This figure is comparable to, and even above most western nations. It also is very close to the average per-capita GDP. At mid career, they make about $34K.

The point being, these people are FAR from starving, and the fact is, my fiancee and I barely make a combined income that matches the starting income for a teacher.

I should also mention that teachers get excellent benefits.

One could also note from the report that teachers in the U.S. work an average of 185 days. If you take a mid-career teacher making $30K, divide by 185 days, is $162/day, or $16/hour if they worked 10 hours a day, or $20/hour if they work 8.

So don't give me this crap about teachers not making enough money and that they are at the "poverty level". I make $12K a year, and I damn sure aren't living in "poverty." I go to school, I pay my bills, I eat, and I even get to build a new computer every now and then.

I WILL concede that the report concludes that teacher pay is low relative to the amount of time spent with each pupil, and number of pupils per teacher, compared to other western nations.

I will also concede that teacher pay isn't comparable to most other jobs that require a masters or doctorate degree, and therefore don't attract more qualified people.

I will NOT concede that they are starving and living in poverty.

As far as your other issues are concerned, I don't know much about them.

I'd like to be free to keep more than 50% of my income, without having it all go to taxes to support dubious socialist programs that I'll never make use of, because I *work* for a living.

Certainly Canadian taxes are too high. But please don't assume the beneficiaries are lazy bums living off the government. Many are the working poor. So in a sense, the Canadian government is subsidizing industries that depend on low-skill labor!

I'd like to be free to drive on roads without jackasses talking on cellphones reversing on freeways because they've missed their exits.

Yikes! And I thought the drivers in SiliValley were bad! Still, I have to point out that traffic enforcement counts as a restriction on freedom.

I'd like to be free to live in a country where I can pay for health care that doesn't leave me sitting in an emergency room for three hours ...

Well, we Americans are free to buy our health care if we can afford it -- but a growing number of us can't. At least half of the US has to go to our version of that ER, and do so subsidized by the paid users of the system. You call it "socialized medicine," we call it "cost shifting".

Most of all, I'd like to be free to go outside without fearing for my life for 5 months of the year. I don't define quality of living by habitating in a place where you can die simply from going outside without a jacket on.

So you want the government to stay out of your life, but control the weather? That's just a little inconsistent....

And finally, I'd like to be free to post this comment without being moderated down by someone who simply disagrees with me; rather, I'd like to be moderated down if I've said anything untrue about Canada.

You know, that's sort of funny. Slashdot is really a kind of experiment in applied Libertarianism. Taco and company don't tell us what to say. We're free to yell "penis bird!" and "first post!" at each other to our hearts' content. Or, if we desire a more adult level of conversation, we can voluntarily use the moderation features, which themselves are driven and regulated by our own volunteer efforts.

Yet it always seems to be the most Libertarian-minded folks who scream loudest when they get "unfairly" modded down. It never seems to occur to the Patriots of Freedom that the only system that never makes a mistake is a dictatorship. The moderation system, like any system of voluntary self-government, works imperfectly, and is at its best when everybody participates.

Speaking of which, have you meta-moderated today?

__________________

Don't let the facts get in the way of a good rant.

If you want to see real data on teacher salaries, look at this page, whick contains the results of the AFT 1998 salary survey. The 1998 U.S. average teacher's salary is $39,347, which is more than most people make.

Many public school teachers (and administrators) are overpaid, incompetent and should be fired.

Moderation on Crack: part MMVIX

I just checked the website, aft.org. The average teacher's salary is $39,347 according to this chart. Table I-1 Average Teacher Salary in 1997-98, State Rankings
Why is the one person who tried to contribute facts to the discusion moderated as flamebait? Mississippi teachers do not average 40k a year as the original poster wrote. They average $28,691.