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Higher Pay for Math and Science Teachers
Coryoth writes "Following up a previous story, it seems that the Kentucky effort to provide increased pay to teachers with qualifications in mathematics, physics, and chemistry has been gutted. Teachers objected to differential pay, and that portion of the bill was removed. At the same time California has just put forward a similar measure, with differential pay for teachers qualified in mathematics and science. Shockingly 40% of mathematics teachers in California are not fully qualified in the subject — a higher percentage of unqualified teachers than any other subject. Is the Californian effort any more likely to succeed, or is it destined to be similarly gutted? Is there a solution to the woeful lack of qualified mathematics teachers that the Teachers' Union will find acceptable?"
"Shockingly 40% of mathematics teachers in California are not fully qualified in the subject "
Wow, only 70% are fully qualified?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
What's more important? A perception of equality between teachers of all subjects, or setting the salaries at the level required to attract teachers qualified to properly educate children in each subject?
People ALWAYS say this and it's crap. That's not how the real world works. Maybe that's how it works at burger king, but in almost every industry I've dealt with there are people whom aren't in their current positions because of merit. I work in government now and people constantly complain that "X person should be fired, that's the way it works in the private sector". News flash, I've worked extensively in both private and public sectors, and the same crap goes on in each. There really isn't a whole lot of difference. People know people and get promoted unfairly. Unions exist and make it hard to fire people. People sleep with their boss. People obtain cushy jobs where there work isn't noticed and do nothing all day. It happens everywhere. I'm not saying it's right, but I am saying that's how the real world works. Not this fantasy land of moving people and salaries and resources like a commodity.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
1. Someone becomes a teacher, not for the pay, but in order to better the world.2. They are very enthusiastic, and spin their wheels with enthusiasm.
3. About 5-10 years into it, they get cynical. But with that many years behind them, they are not going to switch careers. He also discussed the government programs issue:
1. A program is created and deployed with high hopes (except for the cynical teachers who have been through the last 3 programs.)2. It generates a lot of (fake) steam, then is loopholed and "special-ed"ed out of commission, at which point everybody forgets the name.
3. The program is about to expire, and everything will go back to traditional mode. This creates a lawsuit hazard, as tens of thousands of students suddenly must pass a test or miss their diploma.
4. A new program is hastily implemented to keep the scores inflated and keep to the students rolling through (read: no lawsuits). Another problem is "special ed". Here is the story behind 85% of the students in special ed:
1. A student is ultra-lazy and isn't passing.2. Parents roar at the teacher, and send their kid to the school shrink. At this point the student pays attention and dons his worst intellect, in order to pass the evaluation.
3. He is assigned a monitor who is specially responsible to keep an eye on his school (read: make sure he passes).
4. The student has a lot less work to do (the basic package is 1/2 the homework, and it gets worse as you go along), and the teacher is given a dossier (they have some politically correct name for it) on the kid's "condition", and he is required to tailor his lessons for that child's benefit. (There is naturally no way a teacher can tailor the class for a dozen individual kids.)
5. The student passes with good grades, and gets his diploma. He got by with minimal work, the parents are happy, and nobody got sued.
5. Since you can't discriminate against the handicapped or retarded, the diploma has no mention of the fact that the student didn't actually do the work, or that he has any condition. Now, the program does do much good for the truly handicapped people, but there are very few people who have anything wrong with them, except for their work ethic.
As for classroom discipline:
1. You cannot touch or search a kid without getting sued by the parents or the ACLU.2. You cannot dock their grade without the parents getting zealous.
3. You may only send them to the office, where the overworked principle (who spends "half his time making sure we comply with regulations") tells the student to behave or face staying home from school (sounds silly, but it really irks the parents, who suddenly have a kid to babysit).
4. If the teacher saw the kid's drugs, the principle calls the students mom to come (no way will he tell the kid to drop his pants for a search without a parent present). The kid is then sent to the school police officer, and I don't know what he does with him.
5. There isn't much else to do. It is a general case of lazy kids, a lawyer-happy ACLU, terrible parenting, and staggering bureaucratic overhead.
The government can't save you.
The English teacher wrote a 3-point essay against the proposal.
The History teacher did some research and cited precedent against it.
The PE teacher punched the legislators and sat on their heads.
The Art teacher committed suicide in an ironic statement.
I, for one, would definitely like to keep control of the schools away from the federal government.
Look at the No Child Left Behind debacle? Slowly, county by county, districts are telling the Department of Education to "shove it". My county is among those who have done so, and I'm proud of that.
For now, the federal government only funds like 2% of school budgets, so schools can defy the feds relatively painlessly. But what if the federal government provided 20% of the funding? 80%? You'd get the same mess we are in with the highway funds. As it stands right now, all congress has to do is tell a state, "Change XYZ state law for us, or you can build your own damn roads." I don't want to see that happen with education.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
It's just asking for personnel issues, and it's creating a teacher economic hierarchy where none currently exists, and none needs to exist.
But It does need to exist. The problem is that the teachers union sees them all as the same thing: teachers. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's a hell of a lot easier to teach 3rd graders to spell than it is to teach 11th graders calculus. What kind of idiot marxist do you have to be to insist that Nancy Twinkletoes with her Ba in Child Development be paid the same as Jane Poindexter with a PhD in Mathematics? They both teach children? So the fuck what! The similarity ends there. It makes as much sense as demanding equal wages for NASCAR drivers and bus drivers because they're both just drivers.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Sure, teachers should probably make more money across the board, but the idea that you pay somebody with a highly marketable education the same as somebody who doesn't have nearly as many job prospects simply doesn't work in the real world. I'd be more than happy to consider teaching math or science as a career. I like teaching, I'm reasonably good at getting ideas across, and I have the technical background. As it stands, though, going into teaching could cost me tens of thousands of dollars per year in lost income. That's just too big of a jump to make, so I don't consider it a viable option.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"