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Again, it isn't the only federally mandated cost on the schools. IDEA ( Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), while laudable, puts a high cost on schools. If you are in a smaller district with minimal funds with these kinds of increases on costs are of concern in addition to other revenue sources and costs.

http://www.nea.org/home/19029....

The current average per student cost is $7,552 and the average cost per special education student is an additional $9,369 per student, or $16,921. Yet, in 2004, the federal government is providing local school districts with just under 20 percent of its commitment rather than the 40 percent specified by the law, creating a $10.6 billion shortfall for states and local school districts.

Over the past 10 years, the number of U.S. students enrolled in special education programs has risen 30 percent

Also, the decline in participation has an effect on the schools revenue. The school has to bear the cost. Since the program is by district and not by school this can cause problems for needier schools in the same district.

If you are a school faced with all these costs and are no longer financially secure, any revenue source must be looked at regardless whether you like the strings attached or not. Directly answering your question, no but when you add in the other federally mandated expenditures for financially struggling schools it becomes more and more like it.

When is Plumber Day?

April 25th.

Car Mechanic Day?

November 15th.

Kindergarten Teacher Day

Teacher day, may 5th and 6th.

It's hard to take an 'appreciation day' seriously. I do my job, I get paid. I don't feel unappreciated. Pie day is cool, because pies taste good.

http://www.nea.org/home/rankin...

When you talk about overloaded classrooms you're talking about STEM classrooms.

We have plenty of teachers. In fact, we could fire a lot of them and still be below 18-20 per class.

The issue is that we specialize in worthless teachers who collect full paychecks with empty classrooms because they're not competent enough to step in and teach a STEM period or two. As if the standards for becoming a K-12 math teacher are even particularly difficult.

As a bonus for firing a lot of worthless teachers and actually having full classrooms, we can give significant raises to the teachers we actually need. Which will in turn attract a lot more competent teachers who can solve other issues.

I already pay a small fortune in school tax

You are quite right to curse. The per-pupil spending has quadrupled since 1960ies (inflation-adjusted). And that's just national average. The locales with high population density — where you'd expect economies of scale to provide for lower per-pupil costs — actually pay even more. But the quality of education has remained level at best — 70% of 8th-graders can't be said to read proficiently!

No one in their right mind would willingly pay 4 times more for the same bad (and worsening) service, if they had a choice. Thus, it is not surprising, the teachers' unions have made ensuring, you have no other choice, one of their top priorities.

Are you sure about your figure? According to http://www.nea.org/home/2011-2... it's $44,370 for NY.

[Academic year] salaries for full-time faculty averaged $73,207. By rank, the average was $98,974 for professors, $69,911 for associate professors, $58,662 for assistant professors, $42,609 for instructors, and $48,289 for lecturers. Faculty in 4-year institutions earn higher salaries, on average, than do those in 2-year schools. In 2006–07, faculty salaries averaged $84,249 in private independent institutions, $71,362 in public institutions, and $66,118 in religiously affiliated private colleges and universities

Source: Department of Labor, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

By comparison, median personal income is $32000, so those are actually clearly all middle class or above (yes, even taking into account median vs average); keep in mind that the above academic salaries are for 9 months, not 12 months, of work.

Furthermore, faculty salaries have slightly increased over time in constant dollars; they certainly haven't decreased, so teaching college is no less of a middle class job now than it was 10 or 20 years ago.

http://www.nea.org/home/34399....

And for every faculty opening, there are usually dozens of applications, so there is an oversupply of people willing to do this job.

Finally, if you want to earn more money, do something more demanding than teaching French literature, like tax preparation or accounting.

> The average teacher salary in Michigan, for example, is in the
> 60Ks, for nine months of work (and so really in the upper 80Ks
> adjusted for working nine months).

Where did you get that number from? This page says it's only $35k for Michigan. Feel free to point me to a better source.

And as for the old "summers off" bullshit, 1) teachers often go to conferences or work on their curriculum during the summer, or come in to do admin work (due to budgets always being cut) or move the library around etc., and 2) I've never met a teacher in my LIFE who worked just 8 hours per day. So yeah, multiply to account for 2 extra months off, and then divide to account for workdays that are typically 10-12 hours.

As for "how highly do you want them to be paid"? Well, given what CEOs and anyone in the financial sector earns for continually robbing the country and fucking everything up; and given what we pay actors, entertainers, and fucking ATHLETES; and given what we're actually asking teachers to DO, I can't think of any reason that teachers should earn less than doctors.

It was and still is.

I had an outstanding science teacher who resisted nonsensical, counter-productive standardised testing in Rutherford, NJ, and had the statistics to back up his contention. He could have caved in to the educrats and sold out his students, but he had the exemplary integrity to fight instead at considerable personal and social cost.

The school board tried to throw him under the proverbial bus, but he sued and eventually won. Without strong teacher representation he'd have been fired and many kids would have lost out both to the testing regime and by missing a stellar teacher.

http://www.nea.org/home/41892....

You should read this article in the current Thought & Action magazine -- http://www.nea.org/assets/docs/HE/TA2013Rosenthal_Schnee.pdf

Summary: For the first time in 40 years, the City University of New York (CUNY) has started up a new community college, dedicated to novel teaching techniques. As part of that, they've refused to hire or grant any tenured faculty at all, not implemented departments or department chairs, not given faculty a vote in committees or any faculty senate structure, etc. The article writer is a long-time professor of math at another CUNY school, who was so excited by the prospect of trying new teaching techniques that he jumped ship anyway, despite concerns from colleagues. End of the story is that administration took away all their initial promises and there was nothing the faculty could do about it (for example: promise of 40% concentration on math studies, and one-on-one contact time between students and faculty, replaced by peer tutoring). This formerly excited professor is one of several who have now left the new community college and gone back to their old jobs.

Who will care more about the integrity of the academic discipline: Faculty or administrators? The former are the people who have some direct personal contact with students, and have some likelihood of defending their interests as people. The latter are just PHB's looking to increase the bottom line. Shifting power from the former to the latter is one sign that we're not really serious or respectful towards real learning in this country.

A professionally trained, well-paid human teacher eh?

If this is true, then how come our schools are so awful?

We the people have been throwing more and more money at schoolteachers, and requiring ever-increasing levels of training and education to maintain their license to teach, yet the educational achievments of our students have been flatlined for 40 years, and have even fallen dramatically in some districts.

this is a MYTH.

this is nothing but a red herring argument foisted by fiscal conservatives to continue to destroy the public school system and to concentrate resources in elite public schools. for a nation whose economic engine relies on advanced knowledge and high literacy, we should be treasuring our teachers. teaching should be one of the highest-paid professions, and people should be beating down the doors to try to become a teacher.

instead, people have bought the line that teachers are "overpaid" and don't bother to realize that teachers earn incredibly low salaries for the education and professional level of their work. that is insane.

at the very least, please stop repeating the blatant lie that teachers are overpaid. there could be nothing farther from the truth.

National Education Association: http://www.nea.org/home/54597.htm

National Center for Education Statistics: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_083.asp/

Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm

The last one is particularly good in that you can pick any state off of the map, and it will give you a chart that includes both the average wage for all jobs, as well as those for public school teachers.

Someone is lying about how much they make. I'm not saying it is your wife, but if she is making less than an average wage in your state, then some of her peers are making a lot more than she is.

I REALLY think we in the US should have a hard look at Finland's education system - #1 in the World.

And we need to get away from this "school is to educate workers" mentality that American business sneaked into our collective conscious.

Our education system was for having an educated electorate - not for free training for Wal-Mart and McDonald's.

That mentality has to change and we need to basically tell American business that if they want trained workers, THEY need to do it themselves and stop passing their costs onto the public.

They bitch and moan about taxes and then bitch and moan about the education of the populace - American business has the this horrible case of entitlement and have the nerve to put the blame on the average citizen when THEY have the power to change things.

American business has little loyalty to American people. Outsourcing, shipping manufacturing overseas, begging for increases in H1B visas, it's all there for people to see, yet so many "Tea Partiers" and "Libertarians" love to back the party that bends over for this stuff. In the 1970's a CEO of a large multinational collected a low-end 6 figure salary and sent his kids to public schools. Now they all get 7 or 8 figures, from pay and incentives (stock options, bonuses) and do you think they'd send their kids to a public school, even the best ones in the country?

I REALLY think we in the US should have a hard look at Finland's education system - #1 in the World.

And we need to get away from this "school is to educate workers" mentality that American business sneaked into our collective conscious.

Our education system was for having an educated electorate - not for free training for Wal-Mart and McDonald's.

That mentality has to change and we need to basically tell American business that if they want trained workers, THEY need to do it themselves and stop passing their costs onto the public.

They bitch and moan about taxes and then bitch and moan about the education of the populace - American business has the this horrible case of entitlement and have the nerve to put the blame on the average citizen when THEY have the power to change things.

This very morning I listened as NPR recited one email after another from angry listeners complaining that NPR had given air to Stanford University research (funded exclusively by the University) showing `organic' food provided no health benefits over conventionally produced food. Enraged foodies are letting it be known that they won't tolerate `anti-organic' research.

Other Stanford research shows no correlation “between the dollars spent by districts or schools and the outcomes of their students" and that reforms must precede new spending if there is to be any benefit. The same warmist educrats that would have Al Gore's AGW propaganda playing on a loop in classrooms (but for parents) don't hesitate to reject those results.

Closer to home we have slashdot readers expressing no small amount of skepticism about CDC research on rates of autism. Another way to induce irrational anti-science behavior around here is by pointing out the correlation between vehicle size and safety; warmists indulge a lot of magical thinking trying to deal with that one.

People resist results they don't like.

Why is this modderated +4? Its sources are crap.

"Poorest Paid Professional? Google: http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state/ [teacherportal.com]"

  Yeah, here is a group I am going to trust. Who owns the site? Oh an ad company. What three colleges are on their site, oh, on-line for profits. Yeah, no bias there to drag the numbers up.

Heres one to try: MYTH: Teachers make just as much as other, comparable professions. It says:

"FACT: According to a recent study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the teaching profession has an average national starting salary of $30,377. Meanwhile, NACE finds that other college graduates who enter fields requiring similar training and responsibilities start at higher salaries:

        Computer programmers start at an average of $43,635,
        Public accounting professionals at $44,668, and
        Registered nurses at $45,570."

Don't like that? Try this:

"The average salary for full-time public school teachers in 2010–11 was $56,069 in current dollars (i.e. dollars that are not adjusted for inflation). In constant (inflation-adjusted) dollars, the average salary was about 3 percent higher in 2010–11 than in 1990–91. " nces.ed.gov

"Average HOUSEHOLD income? Google: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]"

Now for Google, yeah lets look at that average Household. in 2003 (horribly old as shit data) Households with a person with a professional degree was $100,000 so our average teacher has a spouse making ~$44,000 which means in general the spouse has either a Bachelors or a Masters. What a shock, two college educated people make good money - the horror

"And 6-8 weeks of PTO?"

This old saw? Try 6-8 weeks of unemployment where you are STILL doing your job to get ready for the next year.

"As an IT PM, 50-70 hours. 15-20 days PTO + 10 holidays."

No wonder you are so confused, you are sleep deprived.

"BUT COME ON, "consistently one of the least respected, poorest paid professionals... longest hours of anyone"? BULL! Go see a few episodes of Dirty Jobs."

I don't know the show but do they have lots of PROFESSIONALS on dirty jobs? I had no idea.

You do realize that, and this changes from state to state, schools spend so much more money on teachers and their various benefits than they do on administrator salaries, right?

You do realize that, and this doesn't change from state to state, there are around 45 teachers for every administrator (principals and superintendents), and around 140 for every superintendent?(Sorry that's a couple of years old, it's the best I could find with quick and dirty research.) To me, it makes complete and total sense that 140 people's salaries would cost more than 1.

Let's say the ratio is more 1:1 - increasing the number of superintendents. So, if there are 140 teachers in my area, they average a combined salary of $4,900,000 (the average teacher salary for my area is 35,000 - yes, the average salary is that low), compare that to 140 superintendents, with a combined average salary of $13,650,000 (the average superintendent salary is 97,500 for my area).

13,650,000 > 4,900,000?

The point that I'm trying to make is that you can't say that they deserve to make more money because they're on call all the time. So am I - it's called being an educator. You can't say that they're the only people that work more than 5 days a week, more than 7-3:30. If you show me a teacher that only works those hours, I'll show you a terrible teacher. I'm also trying to drive the point home that your first paragraph doesn't make a damned bit of sense - of fucking course districts spend more on teachers and their "various benefits" (I like to call it health insurance) because THERE ARE SO MANY MORE TEACHERS THAN ADMINISTRATORS.

If we can't give teachers merit pay for doing their jobs well, how can you defend paying students for doing their jobs (learning) well?

What surplus of money do you propose we pay these students from? If there is no surplus, what programs will you cut to fund this reward system?

fueled by the educational system (which is running out of money).

If you look at nea.org info (nea.org PDF), you can see a number of interesting things.

First, that many "states" that rank quite high on "expenditure per pupil" (page 55)-- DC for example, which is #1-- do not coorelate to better education. In fact, DC is the top spender, and you will find MANY lamenting how bad schools are there.

Second, the total revenue of schools (page 68) has RISEN significantly over the last 10 years. Crying about constantly running out of money as you get more and more each year is perhaps an indicator that the money needs to be used more widely.

Third, if you look at "performance per dollar spent per pupil" (here) (2006), you can see that there isnt much of a correlation. NJ, NY, and DC are the top spenders, and are at the absolute bottom of the barrel in student SAT scores. Conversely, the top 15 or so scoring states all spend roughly 50% of what NJ, NY, and DC spend.

If you need another example, perhaps this article would be enlightening.

This is the same system that is demonizing teachers as greedy, unqualified babysitters

Perhaps the problem IS those teachers which are greedy, and unqualified, and have some ridiculous politically driven objection to merit-based pay (ie, if your 9th grade students consistently get awful grades in later years or dont go to college or get rejected from college, perhaps you suck at preparing them for later years), as well as ridiculous objections to vouchers (not really clear what possible grounds there are for objecting to them).

If your teachers are requesting ever more money, and yet we can see that there isnt really a correlation between "more money" and "better results"; and they also refuse to be evaluated in any meaningful way on how well they do their job-- and it absolutely CAN be done without people teaching to the test (which, dont get me wrong, I hate as much as the next person)-- forgive me if I think that the problem MIGHT not be the funding.

The National Atmospheric and Science Administration has been a clearing house for all things 'science' since the 70's. Being related to space or aeronautics is not a prerequisite. If you want funding and it can be made to sound vaguely sciency, head to NASA!! Climate 'research', or something, is just the latest piglet with a tit.

Killing manned space flight has been a part of Obama's platform since he entered the national scene, regardless of subsequent back-peddling. Grownups know this, which is why those Congressmen with a direct stake in this are actively opposing this guy.

What might have been a credible future for space exploration is going to the NEA, and what is left of NASA will belong to Hanson.

Enjoy.

Monopolies should not be allowed to stand. IMHO any person who sends a child to a private school, or even a neighboring government school, should be exempt from the School Tax for that year (with the tuition receipt used as proof). They should be allowed to keep the money they labored to earn for themselves, and direct it to whatever school they choose, rather than have to pay TWO tuitions.

There has been some "grassroots" demand for the implementation of vouchers, which are similar to what you describe. The idea can be summarized by saying that the money follows the student instead of making the student follow the money. The most powerful and successful opponent of vouchers has been the NEA, who are incredibly influential among various politicians. This page describes their arguments against it.

I agree that this is a monopoly and I don't view it as fundamentally different from any other. I believe that no matter what the stated justifications may be, the simple pattern is that organizations won't support a measure that might diminish their interests. Like that nea.org link, they will often present a multitude of reasons for this, of course. Invariably these situations are political in nature, because the controversy involved makes it appear that there are multiple ideal options rather than the reality of conflicting interests.

I haven't been to an Indian school, but I suspect that they don't engage in this: http://www.nea.org/home/ns/30045.htm

I am a non-union Administration/Support person (IT Manager) for a public school system in Michigan. I am also a member of a group whose goal is to educate K-12 CIOs on the benefits of Open Technologies (you can find more information out about us at www.k12opentech.org). I find the "factoid" that the author of the note includes stating that the NEA receives funding from Microsoft and is thus influenced by Microsoft laughable. Here is a link to the NEA's positions on Technology in schools: http://www.nea.org/technology/index.html I am sure Microsoft gives money to the NEA (I have no idea if they do or don't), but in my experience the classroom teacher has never been the problem with adopting Open Technologies in K-12 education. In fact, Open Technologies are almost always adopted from the classroom up in sort of a grassroots fashion. Classroom teachers (and the NEA) want one thing - access to more technology in a classroom. Ask any teacher if they would rather have 3 Windows or Mac machines or 6 OSS machines and they will always ask for the latter. In my opinion the roadblock is always the federal, state, and county leaderships. My state, Michigan, seems to have some freakish, unbreakable alliance with EDS and Microsoft. Every solution that they push on us always seems to require some sort of Windows box. Another example, look at Maine. Their 1:1 legislation was basically authored by an employee of Apple at the time, Mark Whesten (now works for Dell). Of course, you could say the same thing about Indiana's INACCESS program, but this is more about the economics and not the application. I do not know what is going on in Texas (of course Dell is in their backyard), but this story contradicts everything I have witnessed nationally in the classroom.

Well excuse my bad math, I went to public school. The proposed budget for K-12 '08-'09 is $48,344,575 (http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/agencies.html) Yes that is a big number, and unfortunately I can not find a reasonably accurate number for public schools in CA... SO I have not done the math.

So, you are aware that you have no clue as to how much schools get, yet you are parroting the same old line that they don't get enough.

I understand that the state collects more taxes, it has a very high income tax. It also has an extremely high upkeep for its infrastructure.

Yes, and these things scale linearly for the most part. So, more population means more infrastructure cost and more taxes to pay for that infrastructure. This isn't a difficult concept.

What I would like to know is where are you getting that there is a Myth about under paid teachers and under funded schools.

How about:

National Education Association
National Center for Education Statistics

The average number of school days per year is 180.3. The average school day is 6.7 hours. That means 180.3 days X 6.7 hours = 1208 hours a year. Now divide the average yearly salary of $57,876. So, $57,876 / 1208 hours = $47.91 an hour. Now, I'm not saying that $47.91 an hour is going to make Bill Gates change careers, but it is certainly reasonable pay for a part time employee.

I have a relative who teaches history in Greenfield CA, he makes less than $40k a year, that includes the summer classes he teaches.

This is how the myth of the underpaid teacher gets perpetuated. Lets do the simple grade school math on this. $40k a year including summer school classes. Assuming that the 25% of of the year that he is teaching summer school accounts for 25% of his 40k salary, that means that his regular salary (which is what the above numbers are calculated from) would be $30k. So, doing our simple math, we get $30,000 / 1208 hours, so that puts him at $24.83 an hour. The average hourly wage in California is $22.11 That puts your relative $2.72 an hour into the TOP half of California wages. Now, even though your reletive is in the top half of wages, he is still $23.12 an hour below the avarage FOR TEACHERS. Now, at this point, you have to ask, 'Why is your relative making close to HALF what other TEACHERS are making?'.

Is your relative lying to you?
Is your relative 'deceiving' you by using creative accounting to make his wages look so low?
Is your relative in an unusually poor area? (Which would mean that cost of living is less)
Is your relative incompetent?
Is your relative a statistical anomaly, and gets trotted out as a way to deceive the public into thinking that his far below avarage wages are normal?

His school has also had to cut programs due to lack of funding.

Good! If schools stopped dumping money into play, they would be one step closer to offering a quality EDUCATION with the largest budget in California government.

In the US most teachers have a Bachelors, Masters, and teacher cert.

http://www.nea.org/newsreleases/2006/nr060502.html

TFA leaves out a lot of pertinent information. The "fat legs" and "Teacher Sux" case in Pennsylvania, was MUCH more than that.
In an article that I found searching for "teacher sux" case, I discovered:
http://www.nea.org/neatoday/0101/rights.html
where it stated more facts about that particular case:
        Web page titled "Teacher Sux." There he posted a vicious attack on his math teacher, Kathleen Fulmer, and principal, Thomas Kartsotis.
        For starters, the student created a picture of Fulmer with her head cut off and blood pouring from her neck.
        Accompanying the illustration was the question, "Why Should She Die?" under which he wrote, "Take a look at the diagram and the reasons I give, then give me $20.00 to help pay for the hitman."
        The site was rife with profanity, displayed a photograph of Fulmer morphing into Hitler, and showed a likeness of Kartsotis being hit by a cartoon bullet.
        Word spread, and 234 visitors viewed the site. The Web page shook up the entire school community, particularly Fulmer. The threats caused her serious health problems that ultimately led to her retirement after a 26-year career.

Of course this teacher felt unable "to go out of the house and mingle with crowds." This was basically a threat on her life! Why wasn't this mentioned in the story.. that's what I'd like to know..
I wonder if the person who wrote this particular article was a student who had no respect for his teachers, because he certainly didn't learn how to do his research and tell the whole story. Unless, of course, he did this maliciously.

Kris

Web page titled "Teacher Sux." There he posted a vicious attack on his math teacher, Kathleen Fulmer, and principal, Thomas Kartsotis.

        For starters, the student created a picture of Fulmer with her head cut off and blood pouring from her neck.

        Accompanying the illustration was the question, "Why Should She Die?" under which he wrote, "Take a look at the diagram and the reasons I give, then give me $20.00 to help pay for the hitman."

        The site was rife with profanity, displayed a photograph of Fulmer morphing into Hitler, and showed a likeness of Kartsotis being hit by a cartoon bullet.

        Word spread, and 234 visitors viewed the site. The Web page shook up the entire school community, particularly Fulmer. The threats caused her serious health problems that ultimately led to her retirement after a 26-year career.

Web page titled "Teacher Sux." There he posted a vicious attack on his math teacher, Kathleen Fulmer, and principal, Thomas Kartsotis.

For starters, the student created a picture of Fulmer with her head cut off and blood pouring from her neck.

Accompanying the illustration was the question, "Why Should She Die?" under which he wrote, "Take a look at the diagram and the reasons I give, then give me $20.00 to help pay for the hitman."

The site was rife with profanity, displayed a photograph of Fulmer morphing into Hitler, and showed a likeness of Kartsotis being hit by a cartoon bullet.

Word spread, and 234 visitors viewed the site. The Web page shook up the entire school community, particularly Fulmer. The threats caused her serious health problems that ultimately led to her retirement after a 26-year career.

"[He created a]...Web page titled "Teacher Sux." There he posted a vicious attack on his math teacher, Kathleen Fulmer, and principal, Thomas Kartsotis."
"For starters, the student created a picture of Fulmer with her head cut off and blood pouring from her neck."
"Accompanying the illustration was the question, "Why Should She Die?" under which he wrote, "Take a look at the diagram and the reasons I give, then give me $20.00 to help pay for the hitman." "
"The site was rife with profanity, displayed a photograph of Fulmer morphing into Hitler, and showed a likeness of Kartsotis being hit by a cartoon bullet."
"Word spread, and 234 visitors viewed the site. The Web page shook up the entire school community, particularly Fulmer. The threats caused her serious health problems that ultimately led to her retirement after a 26-year career."

Yeah, part time. Let's see, 7:30 AM to 3:00 PM, then extra-curricular duties, lesson planning, grading papers, and taking the continuing education courses required of them at their own expense. Yeah, any job that takes only 70 hours a week out of 168 is definitely part-time. Then, of course, there's the three months of the year the kids are out. Only one and a half to two and a half months of which are, for teachers, typically taken up by meetings, room setup, conferences, and often teaching summer school. So they really only work that 70 hours about 45 weeks a year after you figure in breaks during the school year. Nobody else gets vacation, personal days, holidays, and sick days of course.

Then of course there's the fact that it's wonderful to deal with disrespectful pukes in the classroom, parents who think the school should favor their kids over order and education, crony school boards selected from the parents of the students with little or no training in education as bosses, and administrations willing to sacrifice any teacher's career to keep the district from getting a bogus lawsuit filed against it.

Hell, for $45k that's cake!

</sarcasm>

Jay P. Greene's little yellow article only accounts for time spent in the classroom. Who the fuck do you think does all the work for a teacher outside the classroom? Nine months at seven hours a day is only the time the teacher spends instructing the kids. Do you really think they just show up and wing the whole thing? He also has a nice little blurb about retirement benefits being so nice. Hell, I interviewed for a teaching position, and I'm sure I'd have plenty of retirement money saved after 40 years or so considering the district requires the teachers to place 11% of their pay directly into the fund. Where he sees over $30 an hour someone who knows any teachers personally can easily see about $14-$17 an hour, which is quite competitive with managing a shift at McDonald's but not so much with the nuclear engineers he's talking about. Oh, and since when does it take a Master's to fight fires? Most school districts require one or a set amount of work towards one of beginning teachers or require one within a few years of starting.

The nationwide average starting pay for a teacher with a Bachelor's degree is about $31k, BTW, if you can find a district that accepts a Bachelor's without at least 12 additional credit hours.

For a little more realistic picture, try on for size any one of these pages. This blog post at Education and Technology is especially nice for the comments.

Oh, and at what point are most programmers, opticians, radiology techs, factory workers, and biologists regularly responsible for the health and safety of 30 minors (whom they often are not allowed to even discipline) at a time?

But that requires superior education. At the moment, the US spends $50 per person per year on education. This doesn't seem to be a whole lot. You'd certainly never reach the level of enlightenment required for a stable democracy.

The spending figure is easily proven to be false. The remainder of the argument is simply non-sensical. Has per capita education spending, on any reasonable basis, decreased since the founding of the country? Is the U.S. lagging the western world in education spending? (No)

NEA data

48,132,518 students in K-12 education (2003-04)
$7580 per student median spending (2002-03)
301,200,000 people in the U.S. (2007)

Yields a level of around $1200 per person excluding anything relating to college, graduate schools, professional schools, adult education, and the like. It's not even clear whether those numbers include private and parochial schools. That's an embarrisingly far cry from $50 per person per year.

I'd imagine the people who didn't think she was professional enough felt bound by the NEA code of ethics. Specifically, an educator "Shall not assist any entry into the profession of a person known to be unqualified in respect to character, education, or other relevant attribute." My guess is they consider drunken pirates to be of unqualified character. To bad there's not a line in there requiring a sense of humor. I'd imagine that's a pretty "relevant attribute" when your dealing with snotty-nosed brats that can't tie their own shoes.

While I find this case pretty stupid, the parent in me was wondering what my child would think if he saw his teacher drinking at a party. Then I remembered I'm not a puritan and will probably end up taking my kid to at least one party where I get hammered in a pirate suit. So he'll probably just think, "Oh look! Ms. Snyder has the same hat as daddy!"

What does the NEA http://www.nea.org/index.html or textbook Lobby http://www.associatedcontent.com/ think? Yep, those are the experts you should be asking.

in general i agree with you, but i have to take issue with the pay. the national average is typically less than the average teacher salary. also, remember the typical school year is 9 months, most people work 12. holidays? teachers get 'em all. in-service days? from my personal experience very little gets done. health care? typically fully covered. retirement? excellent. lets not forget our good friend tenure.

Let's say each school is completely independent. You can open as many schools as possible but each school must accept all applicants up to its capacity in its region. In cases where capacity is full, applicants are accepted based on proximity or a lottery

Thanks again for your reply.

I'm afraid I'll have to get my kid "enhanced" just so he can keep up in school.

Not to worry. With the way the powers that be seem to be bent on lowering school standards, you just might be called on to "de-enhance" your kid, instead.

You poor, sad, horribly-mistaken individual....snipped rant on the travails of teaching...

I have no sympathy when I hear these pity fests for teachers. The teachers are the ones who let the NEA (National Education Association, a national teacher's union where membership is mandatory for those who do not live in right-to-work states) walk all over the teachers who want to do good, and the NEA and education bureaucrats/administration have more say over the quality (or lack thereof) of education than the teachers. The execrable state of the NEA and education bureaucrats/administration would not exist if the status quo wasn't supported by a majority of teachers. The teachers may have shitty working conditions, but the bulk of them brought it upon themselves by consistently voting as a powerful bloc for the legislation and systems that brought about those very conditions in the first place. I'm a rabid free market advocate, but the situation is so bad in the U.S. that even I would compromise on just allowing school choice. Convert to a system like Belgium's where the students and parents get to pick the school, the public funds follow them to that school, and teachers allowed to be free agents, and you will see the good teachers and schools rewarded commensurately.

It gets even worse at the high school level. I went to a small, private school and even there, we had students who simply refused to put any effort into a given class...

You simply went to a private school that cared more for the tuition bucks than actually upholding their standards (and letting the tuition bucks take care of themselves...there is always a ready market of parents willing to pay a fair amount for high-quality education). I went to a private school as well; the kinds of troublemakers you saw in your school were treated differently where I went. They were given appropriate warning(s) depending on the severity of the infraction, then kicked out. The threshhold of the number of warnings was quite low. An expectation that students knew what was flat-out not tolerated was considered sufficient warning.

Caught with pot? Very strong words. Wrong attitude during the lecture? Out on your ass. Caught with hard drugs? Out on your ass, no warning. Caught disrupting other students during chapel services (this was a parochial school, but the religious education was very limited...yes, evolution was taught)? One kid did that two times to others and me, had a lecture after each time, then the third time he tried was summarily yanked out of the middle of chapel service and kicked out the same day. There was a long waiting list for empty spots, and very grateful students and parents willing to take those spots whenever they opened up. My school had no hesitation in weeding out the troublemakers. Even legacies (students whose parents were alumni, and often quite generous donors) were not exempt from disciplinary action and dismissal; the school finances were conservatively managed, and took donations and endowments without those sorts of strings. Tuition and board was a low five figures per year, so while high it wasn't like the elite schools like Andover-Exeter. Despite its lack of an elite status, it was still no problem for the school to attract and retain students with no discipline problems.

Note from TFA, for example, that the issues cited by the article were,

There was some debate about how to explain the 12th-grade declines. Assistant Secretary of Education Tom Luce said they reflected a national shortage of fully qualified science teachers, especially in poor regions, where physics and chemistry classes are often taught by teachers untrained in those subjects.

and

...the problem is not that universities are failing to train sufficient numbers of science majors or that too few opt for classroom careers, but that about a third of those who accept teaching jobs abandon the profession within five years.

Speaking as a physics teacher, I fully agree with that assessment. Young teachers who are motivated and talented hit brick walls like "I can't actually afford to buy a house" or "the administration cares more about paperwork than learning." As result, they leave the profession before they ever develop their teaching effectively.

By contrast, young teachers who stick around for five years or more will often be those whose strengths are paperwork rather than teaching.

In other words, the bureaucracy functions unconsciously as a filter that weeds out teaching talent and maintains mediocrity.*

I should note that the article is incomplete, in that it focuses only on teachers -- much of the problem also lies with students and parents. But almost none of the problem can be properly blamed on "Intellgent Design."

* Since I've been around for 14 years, one might suspect me of being mediocre. I hope that "determined" is a better description...

Teachers: "Can we have more than a .3% raise? Cost of living was five times that last year."
State: "No."
Teachers: "Well, ok."

The quality of teachers in the country relates only to their wages. Nobody wants to teach because you go to school for 6 years (student teaching, remember) and end up getting paid $25,000. You can't raise a family on that. Heck, you can't even buy a house on that. I went to school for two years, and came out making $36,000. And I don't have papers to correct every night at home!

All your base are belong to the NEA: http://www.nea.org/

I love teachers, but I detest the NEA and any union that gets too powerful for its own good. Teachers should be able to choose their union, not be forced into one.

Actually it is not "this administration" but this is the guilty party http://www.nea.org/index.html Untell totally incompetent teachers like the won who tought me how to spell can be fired on the spot we have nothing to fear from ... uh what was the topic again?

My father was threatened with being fired for not promoting a kid to the 9th grade after failing his social studies class. The reason? The principal "wanted to get rid of the troublemaker".

They aren't required to have an array of skills and experiance.

A typical path in the US is a BA in English or Communications or something else light and Liberal Arts.

Heres a list for the University here in Portland Oregon for the General Middle Grade program

"Candidates must have a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university and a strong academic record; in most cases, a 3.0 cumulative GPA is necessary. They must also submit passing scores on a basic educational skills test and a subject area test. Admission to the GTEP is selective and competitive. High value is placed on interpersonal skills, experience in working with children, academic achievement, course work preparation, potential to meet the needs of pupils, social development, and motivation."
http://www.ed.pdx.edu/ci/gtep_prereq.shtml

"Early Childhood, Early Elementary, and Middle School (multiple subjects):
Prerequisites:
Psy 311 - Human Development
Art 312 - Art in the Elementary School
Mus 381 - Music Fundamentals
Lib 428 - Children's Literature
Mth 211, 212 - Foundations of Elementary Mathematics (8 credits minimum)
Passing scores on:
ORELA* and
CBEST** or PPST***
Highly recommended:
Ed 420 - Introduction to Education
CI 432 - Computer Applications
Middle School (single subject) and High School Education:
Prerequisites:
Psy 311 - Human Development
Academic Advisor Review Form
Passing scores on:
Praxis II Subject Assessments and Subject Area Test(s) in the area you wish to teach and
CBEST** or PPST***
Highly recommended:
Ed 420 - Introduction to Education
CI 432 - Computer Applications

Teachers should only be paid very well if they bring a set of skills into the Classroom and can teach. High saleries aren't going to fix the problem, a fundamental change in how K-12s work will fix the problem.

The other big problem is the National Educational Association here in the States.

"The National Education Association recently had its annual convention, where it called for President Bush to withdraw our troops from Iraq, vowed to defeat the Central American Free Trade Agreement, and resolved to educate about the need for debt cancellation in underdeveloped countries."

http://www.nea.org/annualmeeting/raaction/nbi.html

Number one item for discussion..."New Business Item 2 (Revised)
NEA affirms and supports the decision of the Executive Committee to participate in the national Wal-Mart Consumer Education Campaign initiated by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. Further, NEA strongly encourages state and local affiliates and individual NEA members to participate in this campaign."

Thats going to help Billy read won't it?

So THIS is what happens when the government orders things but doesn't say how to fund them! It's all so clear now!

Thank goodness they don't do this with important things, such as education.

Until the P2P-sharing of the lecture recordings begin to hurt the education industry and the NEA begins to sue us and have us arrested.

I'm a high school senior and I would love to have software like this.

There are times in my high school calculus course where I would love to be able to see practical applications of the things I learn in class. Or get extra help on a difficult concept I didn't quite understand in class.

I've tried to use recouces like wikipedia, open course ware (though MIT is a bit out of my leauge), and Sparknotes; but, its hard to learn a concept without a good explanation and instruction.

In conclusion, software that could achually teach or at least tutor math would be a godsend to me and thousands of other confused math students.

P.S. Please don't complain to me about getting better math teachers - thats an issue you'd have to take up with the union. Also, bad students isn't always their fault.

Seems to depend on what you're teaching, and where:

Shortage areas by skill and geography and year
NEA has a whole section on shortage
Article for administrators on the shortage and need to attract teachers
Same source, saying how some disagree in view of low pay, but some districts are increasing pay
State of FL forgiving student loans for 04-05 for education students
more on where and in what areas teachers are needed

That's just with a quick Google search, and the only reason I bothered is because I live in the DC area, where schools last year were increasing pay and offering signing bonuses in the VA suburbs of DC. DC itself has trouble holding on to teachers, but that's because it's a hellhole.

This is the problem, people do what the television tells them. Who raises the money, who gives the money, why, how, and so on are the merest minutiae compared to the real problem. The average voter is a moron who can be swayed by 30 seconds of TV.

Which party controls the educational agenda that produces these morons? Which party has dumbed down the population in order to create people stupid enough to vote for them? Which party enjoys the chauvinistic fealty of the NEA? Which party controls the colleges?

It ain't the Libertarians. It ain't the Republicans. Inarguably, the Guilty Party is the Democrat Party. They've created millions of Dummycrats!

That's because the other NEA has destroyed American education.

But the schools do turn out plenty of stupid Democrats, who empower the "education lobby" NEA, who make more stupid Democrats, who empower the NEA, who make more Democrats.

"You can thank the voucher opponents for this, while saying that the payment is not enough they actually fight to reduce it."

By phrasing it like that, you make it sound like it's established that vouchers are a good thing and anti-voucher groups want to gut voucher amount. It is not, however, established that vouchers are a good thing. The desire is not to give vouchers worth less money; actually, anti-voucher people fight to avoid vouchers altogether and find an alternative to fixing public education.

"One infamous case is where the NEA fought against teachers in Syracuse who took the iniative themselves to tutor students on the weekends."

I couldn't find this anywhere...got a link?

"Do you happen to have something that shows...Before$ > After$"

No, I don't have an analysis to prove or disprove that, except this article is pretty good: http://misleader.org/daily_mislead/Read.asp?fn=df0 5122004.html. My point was that he campaigned on certain amounts, then across the board provided less than he promised. Then he still demanded all the changes that were originally to be funded with the original amounts, but now won't pay for them. How does he expect that to work?

"the NEA which opposes them solely because private school teachers are not forced into the NEA."

Many organizations have multiple reasons for doing things, and I'm sure the point that private school teachers aren't forced to join the NEA is one small concern. But there's an entire list of their completely valid arguments against vouchers here, so don't let a little politics void a whole bunch of good reasons. Not to mention that the NEA is not the only group with good arguments against vouchers.

"I have no respect for political organizations whose power lies in coercion and theft (forced political contributions by members"

No one's forced to contribute to the political side of NEA, the legally distinct, separately budgeted NEA PAC. So stop believing those lies about forced political contributions.