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Obama Wants $1 Billion For "Master Teachers Corps"
theodp writes "The White House has unveiled a proposal to create a national elite teachers corps to reward the nation's best educators in science, technology, engineering and math. In the first year, as many as 2,500 teachers in those subjects would get $20,000 stipends on top of their base salaries in exchange for a multiyear commitment to the STEM Master Teacher Corps. The Obama administration plans to expand the corps to 10,000 nationwide over the next four years, with the ultimate goal that the elite group of teachers will pass their knowledge and skills on to their colleagues to help bolster the quality of teaching nationwide."
I'm tring to work out from TFA whether this is aimed at recruiting new teachers, or developing existing ones. If it's the former, then there have been various similar schemes (or perhaps it's a single often-rebranded scheme) in the UK over the last decade or so. The focus hasn't always been so narrowly on the STEM subjects, but it has tended to be on "difficult" subjects, where recruitment and retention of teachers is usually difficult (and where pupil uptake and performance has been fastest to decline).
In fact, I have a friend who works in teaching who got into it via the scheme in one of its various guises. He's fairly open about both its strengths and drawbacks.
In terms of strengths, he quite openly admits that the salary supplement (which was less than the GBP equivalent of $20,000 when he joined - closer to around $8,000 equivalent) was a very attactive consideration, given that he was graduating with a fair old pile of debt. None of the other career options he was considering would have made it possible for him to move away from the parents and live independently in London quite so quickly. He's also noted that he (and others like him) actually know his subject (maths) to the extent that they can actually field questions from students that go away from the narrow syllabus. He was horrified by how many of his older colleagues were dependant on being allowed to stick to a very narrow syllabus.
On the other side of the coin, a lot of his intake to the graduate scheme dropped out relatively quickly - within the first year in many cases. The scheme was highly focussed on underperforming schools - which largely tend to be those which have the most severe discipline problems. It's no secret that many classes in those schools are more about crowd control than education. As my friend is the oldest of 6 siblings, he came to this with a natural advantage. By contrast, those who had gotten onto the scheme on the basis of academic ability often simply couldn't cope with the levels of misbehaviour, abuse and violence that are endemic in our less impressive schools and dropped out.
The other problem revolved around the reactions of other teachers - and particularly the teaching unions - to the scheme members. This is a profession where pay and career advancement had long been (and is still largely expected to be) determined by length of service, rather than performance or potential. Having a bunch of "bright young things" on additional pay and a fast track to Department-head and other management positions went down in most staff-rooms like a cup of cold sick. At the same time, the unions (membership of which is not mandatory, but is widespread) did everything they legally could to make life unpleasant for them. If you find yourself on a "Fast Track" scheme like this, you need to be prepared to be a bit of a staff room pariah.
So yeah, it's not a bad idea in theory, but expect results in practice to be mixed.
Obama has been looking for ways to release money into the economy as stimulus. I would much rather see it given to teachers than spent making and expending explosives where brown people live.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
almost every "smart" kid at school is that way mostly due to parents making sure he does his work and understands everything
This country is already overrun with literate smart people.
We don't need more wasteful spending. We need to spend this money bombing, uh, (throws dart at map)..
Madagascar.
More money for our corporate masters. That's the Amerikun way.
I agree. America really needs to give the Chinese and other Asian countries a chance to catch up in the education department
They are not rejecting 'Critical Thinking' (or implied 'Logic'), they are rejecting HOTS and OBE which fundamentally change learning techniques. There is discussion in the education profession whether HOTS/OBE is advantageous to all/some students over traditional education . The Washington Post article is very poorly written and misleading.
Of course the vast majority of that debt was spent while Republicans were in power and getting the US involved in very costly wars. Not all, granted, but a majority I am sure.
Obama is trying to do something to improve the lot of all Americans, obviously the Right can't have that, only the quality of life for the very rich and powerful should be improved. The Republicans seem bent on opposing anything that might improve the US at the moment, so that no credit can be given to Obama and the Democrats. This is counter productive and a disservice to your country IMHO.
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
Wait, the lefties at the Washington Post said that their opposition on the Right is nuts? Crap, it must be true! If we apply the same logic, that means FOX News has been right about the lefties all along!!
Get a grip.
What about English? Teach that better, motherfuckers.
It's so much fun spending other peoples money, isn't it?
We are 15 TRILLION dollars in debt yet they keep spending like drunken leftists. Why worry, they can print all the money they want.
And these teachers go on to brainwash the young to be good little socialists such that they vote for more and more big government spending.
We are truly in deep shit if we do not trow these tyrants out of power in November.
Vote Romney for president and conservative in all other offices on your ballot.
Wake up drones!
Yes, the whole program could fund another four days of the US presence in Iraq
Hey, dumbass. Are you aware that fully half of the deficit is due to the Bush-era tax cuts? You know, those ones that were put in place when Republicans claimed that deficits didn't matter? The ones that turned a budget surplus into a deficit? Yeah, those. The endless money we spend on foreign wars accounts for another 1/4 of the deficit. Spending stimulates the economy, not austerity.
Forgive me for asking, but wtf are HOTS AND OBE? As far as I know, one is a passing crush, and the other is a British knightly order. I fail to see how either has any relevance to education, apart from someone having hots for their teacher who was knighted by the Queen...
Please. As a conservative, methinks you're talking out your ass. We have no problem with public school teachers. What we have a problem with is unions that continue to protect teachers that are poor performers or don't adapt to new teaching techniques, which is exactly the reason why we're in the sad state we are, these days. The point is that as teachers reach tenure, some, not all, can become complacent, and just use their job for a paycheck, while others go out of their way to create interesting, stimulating lesson plans. Who gets rewarded more? In most cases, the complacent one, as they've achieved tenure, they get greater raises and it's nigh on impossible to fire them. As a realist, I think this program is a step in the right direction, incentivizing good, young teachers to excel and actually TEACH their students, rather than just read out of a book. ON the other hand, nothing the federal government ever does ONLY costs a billion dollars.
I can think of many things which would improve the quality of public schools without raising taxes:
1. Tort reform. Serious, hardcore tort reform at the state level which takes an axe to all of the areas where frivolous lawsuits can be brought would eliminate the argument for any policy that is grounded in the fear of what some idiot might sue over.
2. End zero tolerance under pain of imprisonment for anyone who punishes a student for acting in self-defense.
3. Remove any student who is constantly disrupting class. If they become a problem (and don't have a documented mental handicap), simply expel them and kick them out onto the street.
4. Establish a general policy of erring on the side of pacing the class to the speed of the top 50% of the class, not the bottom 50%. If the bottom cannot keep up, offer them tutoring; if they fail objectively, fail them for the year.
But if they're not going to get rid of the bad teachers then they're just pissing in the wind. Not to mention pissing away a billion dollars.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
The term "corps" gives it away. Once they have signed they will realise that they have signed for military service, and due to a change of plans are due to be deployed in Iraq.
Of course the vast majority of that debt was spent while Republicans were in power and getting the US involved in very costly wars. Not all, granted, but a majority I am sure.
Obama is trying to do something to improve the lot of all Americans, obviously the Right can't have that, only the quality of life for the very rich and powerful should be improved. The Republicans seem bent on opposing anything that might improve the US at the moment, so that no credit can be given to Obama and the Democrats. This is counter productive and a disservice to your country IMHO.
Keep drinking the kool-aid.
There are no loopholes. It's either legal or it's not.
If there was any indication that Romney and his cronies were not "tyrants" who would exhibit the same degree of fiscal insanity as the current crop of politicians, I might consider voting for them.
The Geroge W. Bush era clearly demonstrated that we have two parties of big government in Washington DC. There is no longer genuine political opposition on a policy level. The two parties are just fighting over who gets to play Santa for the next few years.
Vote for Gary Johnson, Jill Stein or whomever. The only wasted vote is one cast for Democrats or Republicans.
Stupid doesn't mean uneducated.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Parents can make their kids work, but if it's not their subject, it wouldn't really be much more than carrot/stick. A teacher is the one who helps most of the kids to understand and develop themselves in the subject.
So they oppose Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) and Outcome-Based Education (OBE). The real issue for the Texas Republican Party is that these programs might lead children to question their parent's religion or politics. Personally, I think it's a sign of weakness to fear questions.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Actually, you're wrong. The national debt was roughly $10T when Bush left office in 2008. It's now pushing $16T, three years and six months into Obama's term.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-57400369-503544/national-debt-has-increased-more-under-obama-than-under-bush/
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
2. End zero tolerance under pain of imprisonment for anyone who punishes a student for acting in self-defense.
Eh? Are you saying that there is currently zero tolerance of punishing a student who is acting in self defense (with imprisonment as a sentence) and you want to end this? Seriously I don't know what you'r saying here
Maybe someone has the HOTS for OBE Wan Kanobi?
They "will pass their knowledge and skills on"? Uh, how? Why?
The other teachers will be sitting in their own classes. They won't be watching the better-paid one. Teachers have work assigned to them, and after they finish they want to go home to their families or run off and get drunk. They are human.
Getting decent teachers requires two main things. First, the long-term (decades) pay has to look OK. (this isn't long-term) Second, the discipline problems must be solved. A couple bouncers in every classroom might do the job, as long as they actually do drag the disruptive kids out of class with a bit of minor violence.
The washington post article may not be telling the whole story, but the reasoning and explanations are right in the document. If the texas government was opposed to it because they thought it teaches poorly or has something wrong in the curriculum I could sympathize, the republican party's actual platform documentation specifically states the issue with the programs is "Challenging the students fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority". Quite simply, they oppose the idea of teaching kids to think for themselves instead of blindly following what their parents or other authority figures tell them.
The problem isn't just on the spending side of the books (incidentally, funny how conservatives NEVER criticise wasteful spending on defence or subsidies to business who don't need them). There's a cashflow problem, due to falling tax revenues, due in part to drunken idiots on Wall Street crashing the economy, and drunken idiots in Congress voting for goodies like tax cuts that nobody can afford.
Sounds like a REALLY big version of Greece if you ask me. Too many arseholes sticking their hands out for free money, and not enough people with brains explaining how it's all going to get paid for.
Ever heard of the No True Scotsman fallacy?
"There is discussion". Now there is a loaded phrase. You could also say, "There is discussion that the bleeding Virgin Mary statue is a harbinger of End Times" but that doesn't mean it should be taken seriously.
That's the new way the Right is attacking anything science-based: "There is discussion" or "There is a controversy in the field...". Yeah, except the controversy is mainly on the pages of NewsMax just above the story about how eating soy products will make you gay.
If you actually look at the "critical thinking" curricula that this whole "controversy" is about, it's pretty reasonable: "Test hypotheses" is basically what it comes down to, but that's just a bridge to far for the belly-scratchers who call themselves "conservatives" these days.
It's a good thing that I took the time out to ask a teacher about this "Critical Thinking" curricula that is driving the Right crazy, or I might have thought this was some sort of post-modern education-theory drivel and moved on. It's not. It's basic, Isaac Newton-stuff. Problem is, that if you get a kid testing hypotheses and thinking about what he's told, he might end up wondering how God put all those phony dinosaur fossils in the Earth just to fool us into thinking that we revolve around the Sun instead of the other way around. Or something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
As long as they don't teach critical thinking.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
I'm guessing you're safe for a teaching position.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
It was in the PDF available from the Texas GOP website.
They have since tried to distance themselves from it, but left it standing, because somehow they can't go back and remove it because of "rules."
The thing about the platform document is not just the critical thinking paragraph, it's the xenophobia and outright tinfoil haberdashery and millinery in the rest of the document. The opposition to critical thinking fits right in and completes the document.
I suggest you read the Texas GOP platform document itself. It's a laugh riot. You can't download it from the Texas GOP site anymore, because I guess someone figured out that actually publishing your stupid ideas and people identifying them as stupid leads to a backlash.
So let's go with this.
http://www.tfn.org/site/DocServer/2012-Platform-Final.pdf?docID=3201
Read. It doesn't disappoint. It's even more crazy than the 2008 platform.
Be fuckin' amazed that people actually think like this.
--
BMO
From everything I've read about successful education systems, the best systems have one feature in common: world class teachers who are valued, and paid accordingly.
I think, given what we know right now, this stands a reasonable chance of being a stunning success.
I think it's a disgrace that teaching isn't as prestigious and hard to get into as law or medicine, given it's extreme importance to the way our societies work.
Obama is trying to do something to improve the lot of all Americans
With Other Peoples' Money, which has a cost to all US residents. This program seems relatively high value for the money spent, but it still might not outweigh the costs.
It's also worth noting that this program puts money into so-called "high need" schools, which I gather is a euphemism for poorly run public schools. That seems to me a rather poor use of public funds and good teachers. I don't have a good solution to the poorly run public school problem except to get the students out of the school, say by paying them vouchers to go elsewhere.
It's not going to work with conservatives. They want to punish all teachers, although bad teachers especially. Rewarding good behavior isn't in their MO... Only rewarding greed and selfishness works for them.
But the STEM teachers must be greedy and selfish, otherwise why would they be attracted to the $ bonuses, pay increments, and promotion prospects? You don't think they're like other teachers, who impart their knowledge/ignorance out of love[*] of doing so...
[*] For positive and negative values of love.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Okay this is actually a really good idea however what is being done about the teachers who don't care and can't teach? Smart kids derive from good teaching, parents, homework and peers have a role but over all good teaching will win out all the time. I think there should be a second committee to fire all teachers who aren't able to teach.
Our Founding Fathers never envisioned a Federal role in public education. Public education is and should be managed on a local/regional level. These attempts to overreach Federal powers need to be stopped.
Ron Paul 2012 - (even if I have to write him in)
When a drunken sailor runs out of money, he has to stop spending.
Or he can wait in an an alley, mug a passerby and buy another drink.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
We need to get rid of the lot of them and elect conservatives
Where is the conservative who I can actually vote for in the real world again? Mittens Romney is what a conservative looks like in the US today. Denying this is nothing more than an Only A True Scotsman fallacy.
is our children learnings? is our children learnings?!
i thought so not so much
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One billion to give 2500 teachers a $20K stipend. So it costs $400K per teacher to provide that $20K raise?!!!!
A valid point. That does not mean we should keep spending, however.
Speaking from my personal standpoint, if I was 100k dollars in debt, spending 10 dollars on some sunglasses is really of no impact to my debt. That still doesn't mean that I should continue excess spending and instead of working toward resolving my debt. Small steps are often the most effective way to shift policy in the appropriate direction. In reality it probably does NOT matter, since this ship is so far off course it's unlikely to be righted anyway.
FWIW, this may be a very well thought out, effective program that will greatly benefit everyone. Being from the government, I find that highly unlikely.
And to head things off at the pass, no, I'm not a Conservative, or a Libertarian, or any other stupid labels.
Just another ignorant American.
Well, really the problem is on BOTH sides of the books. We are spending like drunken fools, all while the income dwindles.
I honestly think that most people at this point are just hoping the system stays alive long enough for them to not have to see it implode.
Just another ignorant American.
Gov. Snyder just revealed a plan similar to this for Michigan.
create a national elite teachers corps
Doesn't the world have enough "elitists" already? I don't think the world can survive much more of them.
This is really just a payback from Obama to one of his core constituency. Not that it might not do some good but the purpose is to pay back teachers for their past votes and to show the teachers that he's in their corner and they should come out and vote for him this election.
Quite simply, they oppose the idea of teaching kids to think for themselves instead of blindly following what their parents or other authority figures tell them.
So we should teach children to challenge authority. How wonderful! I look forward to another generation of children who believe every one of their arguments actually means something. Just make sure to teach kids to challenge all authority. Starting with yours.
As long as they don't teach critical thinking. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/texas-gop-rejects-critical-thinking-skills-really/2012/07/08/gJQAHNpFXW_blog.html
I'm guessing you're safe for a teaching position.
I guess you haven't read the actual Texas 2012 GOP platform, have you?
The only people who don't understand that the document is expressing opposition to fake methodologies that focus on making the students feel good and are ineffective at teaching, are those who evidently went to a school teaching these methodologies.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Let's see who kills it first: the democrats, quietly after the elections, or the republicans, loudly and with much grandstanding.
Every time I see something like this I have to wonder what the person in charge is actually thinking. Then I remind myself that they aren't.
Group psychology will tell you that rewarding some at the expense of others only makes the rewarded outcasts. It will do the exact opposite of what they are trying to accomplish.
As my boss is so fond of saying; "Reward the behavior that you want to enforce." If you want better teachers, then reward them for bringing their classes up to par. Give them time to do their jobs. Get rid of silly practices like "No child left behind" and let the teacher actually teach.
Teachers know how to make learning fun, but they are not given time to do it because of all of the standardized testing. This testing is what they must teach the students how to master. It doesn't help the student one whit. Just because I can rip an algebraic equation down in thirty seconds doesn't help me a lot. Sure I use it in my job once every blue moon, but guess what? I don't need 6 semesters of math to be able to do it.
The second issue is that we need to quit treating little Johnny like he is exactly like Bill, Doug and the rest of the class. Little Johnny has an IQ of 80. Why are we holding back the folks who have an IQ of 112 just so little Johnny doesn't get his feelings hurt? Suck it up. Little Johnny is going to find out when he hits the employment market that no one gives a care that he can't figure out how to turn on a faucet and mop the floor. They will fire him and move on. So why are we pandering to try and make everyone equal when we know full well that they aren't? Sure, it's a sad situation, but don't punish those who can for the sake of those who can't.
We need full education reform. The system we have in the US is horribly broken and nothing is going to fix that with a major overhaul.
Tax cut == handout.
Any questions, wingnut?
Teaching is becoming a nasty job. The pay is low, and constantly under political threat. Socially teaching is looked down upon ("those who can't, teach", and "they get the summer off", "they are ruining our kids"). Teachers are under all kinds of pressures: "Teach to the test, even at the expense of your own curriculum!", "Handle larger numbers of kids at a time!", etc. Not to mention the sick urge to over-evaluate and fire teachers, sometimes on crazy-town metrics (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/05/nyregion/in-brooklyn-hard-working-teachers-sabotaged-when-student-test-scores-slip.html?pagewanted=all).
Becoming a teacher means embracing low pay, constant criticism, an ever increasing workload, and a political environment aching for more ways to fire you. Ask yourself this: Would you leave your job to teach? As a college student, would you risk making a career of teaching? Would a potential $20k annual bonus in exchange for a multiyear commitment to more work change your mind?
And anyone who even a little bit honest with themselves have to admit they have seen both types of teachers when they were in school.
But...this program won't work. It is doomed from the start simply by virtue of it being sponsored by the very same people who destroyed the current system.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
...that one of the most reliably-Democratic demographics is teachers?
http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.php?id=D000000064
http://www.followthemoney.org/database/top10000.phtml?topl=1&topnum=10000
NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
- #1 Contributors to state-level campaigns, political parties, and ballot measure committees in 2007 and 2008
- donated 2:1 to Democrats over Republicans in state races.
- donated 25:1 Dems:Repubs in national races since 1990 (the charted dates, but it's been a mainstay of DNC contributors for much, much longer)
-Styopa
Please. As a conservative, methinks you're talking out your ass. We have no problem with public school teachers. What we have a problem with is unions that continue to protect teachers that are poor performers or don't adapt to new teaching techniques, which is exactly the reason why we're in the sad state we are, these days. The point is that as teachers reach tenure, some, not all, can become complacent, and just use their job for a paycheck, while others go out of their way to create interesting, stimulating lesson plans. Who gets rewarded more? In most cases, the complacent one, as they've achieved tenure, they get greater raises and it's nigh on impossible to fire them.
^^^ This. I'm also a conservative (though I will most likely be voting for Obama), and indeed the problem is not public school teachers, but how many unions (not all, but many) protect under-performing teachers. There are vested interests to keep the status-quo.
However, the other side of the coin to be fair is that many in the current conservative echelons attack the teaching profession, think privatization and education budget cutting (think Gov. Rick Scott) is the solution of everything, and worse, they pander to creationists (which is one of the reasons I will not be voting GOP in these coming elections.)
There is a lot to blame on both sides of the political fence. The important thing is to move past the blaming game, pick and plan and work from there.
As a direct reply to the AC, whenever someone says "conservatives X" or "liberals X", it is almost certain that one can ignore his/her words without significant loss of information. Generalizations are the bread and butter of the feeble minded fodder for the identity politics cannons.
As a realist, I think this program is a step in the right direction, incentivizing good, young teachers to excel and actually TEACH their students, rather than just read out of a book. ON the other hand, nothing the federal government ever does ONLY costs a billion dollars.
I agree. I think there will be significant problems, and unfortunately the current GOP leadership that panders to the far right will cry havock just because the plan was proposed by dark-skinned-socialist-with-muslim-sounding-name-who-of-course-is-a-manchurian-candidates-for-the-chinese-and-satan. There will also be elements in teacher unions
No plan is ever perfect, which is why there should always be opposition, negotiation, compromise and reconciliation. But one cannot wait forever for the perfect plan. We pick one and we move from there. We fix, keep or drop pieces accordingly.
However imperfect this might be, and regardless of the problems that will occur (and they will), at least in spirit, this is a move in the right direction.
I assume you've never heard of the Peace Corps? Corps is just a designator for some body of people.
I don't know about your parenting style if you are a parent, but if I tell my son to do something and he asks why, that is encouraged and a reason is given, things are explained. I don't subject to the "because I said so" mentality of parenting. Sometimes you let them do stupid things to learn and see the consequences. If a parent can't give a good reason for why something can or can't be done, perhaps that isn't a rule that needs to be enforced. Now there are time and places where asking questions isn't a good idea, but those are not as common. IMO if you explain to a child the reasoning behind something, he will make better decisions when no-one is around to tell him not to do something, and while I have his best interests at heart, sometime in his life he will find an authority figure that does not, maybe a crappy boss trying to take advantage of him, maybe a teacher is actually teaching incorrect facts, maybe I'm actually wrong about something. If my son can present me a solid case for why a rule I have is unneeded or wrong I will look over what he gives discuss with him any errors in his logic and possibly adjust the rule. He's allowed to "question" whether I am right all he wants, and if he finds a reason I am not right, then things are adjusted fairly.
You are confusing terms and methods and using them interchangeably to your personal agenda. This behavior is neither conducive to understanding any particular given topic nor aiding in further understanding of that topic. The only benefit we get from your brand of interpretation is your personal view of unrelated topics that were not solicited.
What about arts, communication, sports, social services, medicine, solidarity, civic rights, law? Why hard sciences are the only "valuable" topics in this age?
Got to love this circular logic:
Driver Licenses - We propose that every Texas driver license shall indicate whether the driver is a U.S.
citizen. No such license shall be issued to anyone not legally in the country.
Wouldn't having a drivers license by default mean that the holder was a US citizen?
$1B in wooden paddles is what's really needed.
The number of STEM degrees combined are not even half of the graduates who walk out with a theater and performing arts degree.
Makes me really sad.
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
They voiced their objections, nothing about them lacking substance, being ineffective or anything of the nature. It isn't a fear of it not doing anything, it is a fear that it may cause the student to second guess what he believes.
What a waste of money since it is little more than window dressing and will not solve the problem of the failure of the school system.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Um, no. Why do you think it takes citizenship to get a license? People who move here and are in the process of gaining citizenship? Do you think that everyone here on a work visa is walking or taking taxis? Foreign exchange students?
There have been lots and lots and lots of studies on how to improve education. Out of all of these, there are two measures that bring substantial gains, while reducing costs:
- Fire incompetent teachers. You don't even have to replace them - just fire the worst teachers and put their students in the other classes.
- Reduce regulation and administration. Let the teachers teach, instead of dealing with bureaucratic idiocy from adminstrators and government regulators.
Of course, the first is opposed by the teacher's unions, and the second is opposed by administrative empire builders, so neither of these is likely to happen. In particular, of course the government wants another governmental program to interfere in education. When, in reality, the federal government has absolutely no business meddling in any educational system outside of DC.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
There are plenty of people who are legally in the country without being US citizens.
1 the average teachers pay will go DOWN (or not increase with inflation)
2 its possible that some teachers will (via admins) bribe their way onto this program
3 if you can't control the students then you are sunk
4 will this also include a mandate to actually EDUCATE the students or will this be another Teach The Test and 70% Of Our Students are above Average!! (even if you just look at our school(s))
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based ducation (OBE) (mastery learning)
Outcome based eduction is widely known to be ineffective and useless. This is where 2+2=5 came from.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So then...that would be a Critical Thinking fail.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Agreed. I went to a highly specialized magnet school in NJ that focused on marine biology and marine systems engineering. We had some amazing teachers, but we also had some bad ones. One particularly poor teacher that still sticks out in my mind was my sophomore geometry teacher. I'd never gotten a B in math in my LIFE, but here is this teacher, telling me that I'm not working hard enough, and that's why I'm getting C and D grades on tests. Meanwhile, I was doing all the homework, going to her at lunch for extra help, staying late for extra help, and studying my butt off. It wasn't until she threatened a student and was fired, did we have the AP calc teacher take over. Once he took the class, I instantly started an upward trend, and I ended the year with a high B average, because he actually TAUGHT the material in a way that was understandable, rather than just reciting what the book say, and yelling at students that didn't understand.
I'm guessing you don't have a fundamental grasp of English. Because he sentence in question clearly states that the opposition is to programs that masquerade as HOTs, but are actually just feel good OBE.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
So long as the same can be applied to people who use libtards, tea baggers, etc, since I don't like those terms. I don't have mod points every day and don't seem to get comments that contain those key words when I decide to meta mod so we need an automated system to make me happy. I am sure I could find some more terms that could be politically offensive and demonstrate that one is really just a political hack that should also be added.
Time to offend someone
As I read that document I find a LOT of good, common sense ideas that I agree with. However, there is just too much crazy dogmatic crap going with the good stuff to even think about endorsing them.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
Sure you may be. But you're wrong.
Note, for the record, that the budget comes from Congress, not the President.
Technically, it comes from the House, but that part of the Constitution has been ignored for most of the existence of the USA, so we'll ignore that.
Now, go back and check out control of the House and Senate since the New Deal (I pick that time, since the explosion of the national debt began then, and has continued for all but one year since (the debt actually went down one year in the 1950's, it hasn't since, in spite of "Clinton balancing the budget").
One of the things you'll find is that the Democrats have controlled the House for all but about 16 years of the last 80. And they've controlled the Senate for all but about 20 years of that same 80 years.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
I have to tell you, your dickish behavior here is not winning him any votes.
Obama has been catering to public unions his entire term and this is just another example of it. His solutions to high unemployment over the years has been to expand the public sector. Besides the political deception that he is "creating jobs", that translates to higher taxes for the rest of us which we can ill afford.
I live in New York state and the reason we have the highest state taxes is public unions. They hold too much influence in state government and there are too many lawmakers sympathetic to the public unions. Fifteen years ago there were 10 private sector jobs paying for every 1 public sector job, now it is 4 to 1 which has been pushing up taxes. This worsening ratio continues because 1)businesses are leaving the state taking jobs with them and 2) the state keeps expanding the public sector at the expense of the taxpayer. State pensions is another driving force behind high taxes (state employees don't even pay income tax on their PENSIONS). Many state citizens are leaving and soon I will join the exodus. In the last twenty years, only one new business has set up shop in New York state. One!
There are too many parallels between NYS and Obama's public sector policies. Obama has proven that he is hostile to the private sector by broadening regulations, and the reason businesses are reluctant to hire is because they have had to employ resources just to ensure compliance with the new regulations! Four more years of Obama and businesses will be leaving the country. Obama just doesn't get it and he never will.
The solution is not to throw $$$ at the problem. The solution is to get the parents involved in their childrens' education.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
If public schools cared at all for the students the first thing children would be taught would be how to learn. How to study.
Public schools are there to indoctrinate. They are "taught" about how teachers care for them and their parents are bad people for not wanting to give the teachers more. They are encouraged to "strike" for their teachers.
I think what Texas is doing is stupid.
I see their point though. While I think that encouraging children to question and apply critical thinking is awesome.
I also believe that what would actually happen is that children would just be indoctrinated into that districts way of thinking.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Why not pay all teachers a reasonable salary, so good ones wouldn't leave just to find a job with fair pay, and so there'd be better teachers available to replace the ineffective? Because this thing will play well, particularly in an election year, but won't cost much. $50M? Pffffft.
IMHO, this is typical B.S.. "Oh, let's identify 2,500 teachers as 'the best' and give them a bonus. Then we'll quadruple the number." Why? As any good teacher of engineering will tell you, you can't make a baby in one month by impregnating nine women. So what's the goal here? Not every teacher can be a Richard Feynman or Carl Sagan. Can you really quadruple the number of "best" teachers without lowering the standard?
But gee. .what's another billion or two down the sinkhole that is edukation in the US? More money is thrown at and wasted upon schools, teachers and ....gasp... yes the children and what is there to show for it? NOTHING. 60 years of NOTHING. Class sizes are up to 50% smaller, many in the low teens. Effect? ZERO. Electronic teaching 'aides', internet, laptops, tablets... Effect? ZERO. Teacher salaries and benefits into six figures? Effect? Richer teachers.
Test scores are flatline and have been since the 1960s. But yeah, just keep tossing money at it because there is clearly a 'problem'. If I had the dough I would open a school with a curriculum and teaching practices based upon that used in the 1920s to 1940s. Shocking how the grups can actually do simple math in their heads, write a coherent sentence, are well read and even know quite a bit of world history.
While that's a valid point, you're equating this program to being a luxury. There are others who see educational system improvements as a necessity, and this program *could* improve our educational system. Of course, it could also have a negative impact -- I haven't done enough research on it myself to form an opinion either way, having just heard about it for the first time from this summary and the linked articles. I just want to challenge your implied assumption that this program equates to "sunglasses."
Hey dumbass did you actually know that 100% of the debt is because congress passes bills and the president signs it (or has their veto overruled) that spend more than the treasury takes in.
All joking aside the problem is really that income to the government isn't matching expenditures and each party seems to have their preferred method of solving that problem but either one will result in some portion of those in congress being voted out so our elected representatives vote in their own enlightened self interests which is to keep doing what we currently do.
Time to offend someone
If you look at the debt breakdown by the CBO, you can see that almost all of it came from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and Bush's tax cuts.
The best teacher in the world cannot teach in a classroom with no discipline. I taught school for 10 years. I was so beaten down from trying to teach with no support that I had to decide whether I wanted to just babysit, like so many of the other teachers were doing, or do something else. I am now doing something else.
The fundamental problem is that education is not valued in this country anymore. For some reason many people seem to wear "stupid" as some sort of a badge of honor. Many parents don't particularly care about their child's education. Just like administrators, they talk a good game, but when it gets down to it, they don't want to be bothered about their kids not behaving or learning in class. It's easier to go to the school and yell at the teacher for a few minutes than to do the work of parenting and teach their children how to behave and insist that they pay attention in class.
You could give these teacher $1 million over their salary, but that doesn't fix the fundamental problems.
Acronyms usually equal a bullshit passing fad. Not always as in LASER. But when bureaucrats pull out the acronyms I call BS. Modern education has a single flaw, little real measurement; lots of fake measurement. You rarely hear of a school system doing a double blind test of the "New Math" and then comparing the results. They buy into some education guru's new magical thinking in the same way that eating bat wings will help you fly better and buy millions in new textbooks. The teachers go off on a "Knowledge filled weekend" and somehow come back ready to teach (gooder). Then when the few OK measures such as the SATs come along the students bomb yet nobody blames the "new math" or whatnot they just quietly move onto the next fad.
The one fad they avoid like a plague is to measure teacher/administrator performance and fire the bad ones. Great teachers will succeed with almost any crap system. The bad ones will destroy students regardless of how good the system is as long as there are no consequences for their lousy behavior.
Basically, there's a lot of people who want to use education as a way to brainwash children under the guise of "critical thinking" or "education".
Left-wingers were forced out of economics departments, because Marx and Keynes are evil (just ask Senator McCarthy). They switched to education and english, where they came up with stuff like Postmodernism and Outcomes Based Education. They became masters of obscurism and sophistry, because they couldn't publicly say what they meant without enraging the anti-socialist lobby (which is still pretty powerful).
There's right-wing education movements too, but they come from other quarters than mainstream academia.
So basically, students get told to learn weird cryptic left-wing stuff (which is designed to be incoherent enough to fly under the radar), and a bit of right-wing propaganda which gets forced in by the right (i.e. intelligent design).
What I want to know is how will the Obama Administration actually pick the top 2,500 or 10,000 teachers for the program. What criteria or measurements will they use to select them? Is it a subjective measure? We've had fights in all 50 states about measuring teacher performance, But the Obama plan seems to gloss over that problem. I could see whatever process used to select the cream of the crop also used to justify salaries for the n - 2500 teachers.
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
Obama's love of corpsemen and women extends to education, and will probably have another union all their own.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ZlKIfzoC8D0
Somebody needs a hug!!
I imagine other teachers thinking the following: "I work just as hard as that teacher, why should he get a 20k bump in his salary? Besides, he isn't going to teach me enough to be better than him, it would cost him $20k!" I suspect it would be easier to up the standards for teachers and follow the model used in Finland.
These Master Teachers are actually in charge of Obama's socialist indoctrination of school students! Boogaboogabooga!
Quick, somebody flesh that out on Conservapedia.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You may be right, but if you look at it from the angle that we are outspending our resources dramatically, it would certainly appear that this is less critical than many parts of infrastructure that MUST be paid for. Medicare, social security, infrastructure, etc. When you have no money, anything that is not directly related to survival is, by definition, luxury.
I am far simplifying a complex concept for the purpose of quick discussion, and I realize that. There is more to this from every angle, I'm just putting out a counterpoint. I do believe that education is absolutely critical to this country and needs improvement, badly. My concern is the fact that we spend more money year over year for falling quality, and this program seems like another example of throwing money we don't really have to spend, into a hole.
Just another ignorant American.
Outcome based eduction is widely known to be ineffective and useless.
Is answering questions like "Which fallacy does sycodon use in his argument?" part of traditional education or would this require some evil OBE magic?
And to keep costs down the new science text books will be supplied an no cost by the Gideon Foundation.
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
I'd rather have children that ask, "why?" as opposed to just asking "how high" when someone commands them to jump.
There are a lot of things out there pretending to be authorities, when in reality, they are at best propaganda machines, at worst scam artists. Giving kids a sophisticated bullshit detector is crucial if they are to succeed in today's world.
This applies to so many facets of life.
If you believe your arguments mean nothing, why are you even living in a democracy?
Crazy...I had this idea about 2 months ago. Glad to see it put into action. (I hope he does it well.)
Yes, because it's surprising that the debt would increase during a worldwide recession.
As soon as they nut up and either start demanding massive carbon sequestration research programs, massive atmospheric geogeneering projects, killing off 90% of the human race or conquering the world to ensure emissions levels stay low, then sure. Until then all I'm seeing are calls for a bunch of ineffectual bullshit that won't even appreciably slow things down, let alone stop it.
Climate scientists have no authority to submit to as a teacher might.
Hey dumbass did you actually know that 100% of the debt is because congress passes bills and the president signs it (or has their veto overruled) that spend more than the treasury takes in. All joking aside the problem is really that income to the government isn't matching expenditures and each party seems to have their preferred method of solving that problem but either one will result in some portion of those in congress being voted out so our elected representatives vote in their own enlightened self interests which is to keep doing what we currently do.
No shit, Sherlock. I was responding to the troll. If you look at what happened at the turn of the century, we had a SURPLUS. This was quickly eaten away by the rich-man's welfare known as the Bush-era tax cuts. Then Bush invaded two countries (only one possibly justified) two erode more of this surplus. These were actions of Republicans. The troll was blaming the deficits on liberals, so I pointed out his faulty logic.
Because I vote for the people who do make the valid arguments and grant them the authority to make those arguments.
But the teachers unions constantly insist merit pay is impossible because you can't evaluate performance (apparently the one job in the universe whee this is true). How will they know which teachers are "masters"?
So we should teach children to challenge authority. How wonderful!
This is a valid point, but the Parent takes it a bit too far. It's not a binary proposition, where the kid will either reject all authority and guidance of parents and teachers, or blindly accept everything they say as gospel. As a parent of a 4 and 3 year old, I know how important it is to instill a deep sense of respect for authority. But at the same time, if a person is to learn they have to be able to challenge assumptions and ask their parents and teachers hard questions. I don't know everything, and some things I tell my kids may be wrong. I want them to use their brain and critical thinking skills to take what I or their teachers are telling them, digest and deconstruct it, and examine it for truth, not just accept it as fact. If they get used to accepting what their teachers tell them as fact, then they will do the same when a Democrat politician tells them that we need to pump more money into failing schools, or a Republican politician tells them that we need to deregulate banks.
It's not an easy row to hoe. It's a delicate balance, and the emphasis (I think) should be on respect and adherence to authority in the earlier years, with a shift to more challenging stance in later years. I want my kid to be the one sent home with a note from his physics teach that he is disrespectful because he came up with a cogent argument on why Pluto should be considered a planet.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
Labeling something you disagree with a fallacy is the fancy way way of saying " nuh-uh".
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Based on his track record with government handouts I predict that this $1B will get frittered away. We all know that the teacher unions won't go for anything that is merit related. They always balk at that. So the entire premise is BS. Look - we all agree that we need better teachers and better pay for good teachers but until you get the powerful teacher unions out of the picture it's just not going to happen. Every attempt at real reform has been squashed by the unions. Merit based reward goes against everything they stand for. They want everyone treated equally. Everything is based on seniority (i.e. tenure) rather than skill and dedication and results. Personally, I think one of the reasons that we don't see more engineers go into teaching is the unions. They don't want to belong to one. They don't like the idea of paying dues to protect the jobs of some that ought to be fired. Engineers are trained to gauge the success of things based on actual results, not just showing up. They are used to the idea of getting raises and promotions based on how well they meet their goals. In other words, it's merit based.
(Yes I am focusing on Monotheistic religions here)
1 We have radical religious folks who choose to disbelieve science.
2 We have religious folk who can deal with science and religion, they take the bible more in terms of stories to teach a lesson and less about it being fact
3 We have religious folk who believe in a higher being but can attest that they could be wrong.
4 We have the people who are agnostic.
5 We have atheist who do not believe in a higher being but attest that they could be wrong.
6 We have atheist who choose not to believe in a higher being. (But respect religious people)
7 We have radical atheist who choose not to believe in a higher being, and seem to make a point to discredit all beliefs based on lack of evidence.
Now group 1 and group 7 are often the most vocal. Their fighting tends to urge people with closer numbers to radicalize too.
Both tend to give very week arguments.
Group 1. the Bible Thumpers who whole argument is based on a book that has been compiled from thousands of years of vocal tradition, then translated multiple times. Then use circular logic to explain its accuracy. Aka. This book proves God exists and is correct because God will keep it that way.
Group 7. The Angry Atheists discredit a supernatural entity based on lack of natural evidence. There cannot be a God who created the universe and its rules, because by following the rules of the universe it doesn't show an entity the breaks the rules.
Now there are a lot more religious people then atheists. The more they try to discredit religion, the more protective religious people are going to get, so they will more likely side with the extreme.
If you let the more moderate groups use science to disprove something, then you give more credit to the idea. So for example the Catholic church (Bla Bla Sex abuse Scandal , jokes about alter-boys... ), actually uses science to discredit a lot of proposed Miracles that happens all the time, now the Catholic church motives for this are varied, mainly because they don't want people faking Miracles so they can get attention and distract from the churches teachings. The Catholic Church is actually a rather moderate religious entity (The left wing, things it is too right wing, the Right wing thinks it is to leftist) but if they show with science and debunk something, it isn't viewed as an attempt to abolish faith or an attempt to ignore science. Thus you keep the moderates well in the moderate span.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As international test scores indicate, America's children are the recipients of an increasingly rotten education. Meanwhile, the focus of their education becomes a football between elite establishment groups.
America's families and children are becoming pawns and worker bees to be manipulated through social engineering. The goal is to manufacture peaceful, docile citizens of a world corporate state. The individual is to be subsumed into the collective.
The same two ostensibly state government-associated groups (NGA and CCSSO) developed Obama's "Race to the Top" (RTTT ), as well as America 2000 under the Bush 41 administration that morphed into Goals 2000 in 1994 under President Clinton. Goals 2000 and that year's reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act combined for the first time to require that states and school districts comply with federal standards listed in Goals 2000 in order to receive federal education dollars. Those standards include expanding government schooling into the preschool years and a much greater emphasis on the mental health or social and emotional aspects. Many would rightly deem this psychosocial meddling indoctrination, instead of what parents want and expect as the traditional academic aspects of education - reading, math, history and civics.
Grassroots education activists were told that local control of education would be improved by George W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind", that the hated Goals 2000 would be repealed. The summary of the bill states: "The proposal would remove all references to Goals 2000, outcome-based education, School-to-Work, Workforce Investment Act, and higher order thinking skills."
What is Goals 2000, you ask? It is an education dumbing-down package passed in 1994 during the Clinton administration after it failed to pass under former President Bush in 1991. It was supposed to "harmonize" the relationship between government and education by mandating watered-down, dumbed-down education standards that included a national curriculum, national test and national teacher's license.
Passed at the same time as Goals 2000 was HR 6. That bill stated that "voluntary" stipulations of Goals 2000 were mandatory if states wanted federal money. Thus, in essence, the feds would control education in all states.
While current politicians talk a good game, the fact is every Goals 2000 mandate was reauthorized in "No Child Left Behind," then reauthorized and strengthened in RTTT under the Obama administration.
The only things these bills improve are the power of the establishment and the disempowering of the states and individuals and the dumbing-down of American children.
Education grassroots activist, mother of three and physician Dr. Karen Effrem of MREC stated recently that "Goals 2000 has nothing to do with academics." She believes that eventually the federal leviathan will control the entire education system, which will include private and home schooling.
From Professor Allen Quist:
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Here is the wiki friend but from what I've read of it frankly i gotta go with the GOP. This thing smells more like Scientology than the three Rs, with way too much technobabble and it seems designed to make it difficult to measure whether it is working or not.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
He's not using a fallacy. OBE is bullcrap, pure and simple. It's been lambasted for years everywhere outside leftist academia as nothing more than "feelgood" teaching that actively prevents students from learning. It's excellent at making children into entitled leftist brats though.
All the Texas GOP document is saying is that the new, more fancy-sounding renamed OBE is still OBE, but with a new fancy-sounding name, and they still don't like it, even with it's new fancy-sounding name.
This rename of OBE is the same bullcrap Leftists pull ALL. THE. TIME. They don't actually change any of their ideas ever. They just "Rebrand" them until they find a name that spurs articles like this about their opposition: "The Other Guys don't want Critical Thinking!!!11one!"
Of course, stupid people who feel instead of think (Like the kind that were raised in OBE settings) fall for them over and over again.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Outcome based eduction is widely known to be ineffective and useless.
Is answering questions like "Which fallacy does sycodon use in his argument?" part of traditional education or would this require some evil OBE magic?
The fallacy you are implying he is using is an appeal to common opinion (which depending on which "traditional education" you are referring to, may or may not be taught, and also may or may not be taught in OBE), which is only a fallacy if it is common opinion among those who are uneducated in the field: since most of those people don't even know what is meant by "outcome based education", he obviously didn't mean it that way and was instead meaning it to be an argument by authority, which is commonly (well aware of the irony here) and historically considered the weakest form of argument, but is perfectly valid (this is the reason people can actually use scientific consensus as a valid argument, but again, it is still the weakest way to argue. It's also one of the easiest, hence why it is so common especially on the Internet).
You, on the other hand, were (actually ironically) committing a fallacy by implication.
Now, whether sycodon has a valid argument or is correct, I don't know.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
HOTS and OBE.
Both are feel-good ways to make sure that our undereducated "educators" aren't held to any real standard.
Obama's plan, BTW, is a good one. The U.S. has a serious shortage of engineers* partially because people who want to be K-12 teachers (that is, people satisfied with living their lives as underpaid workhorses) generally have no scientific background at all.
Even our science teachers -- at least here in Vegas -- are often former English majors borrowed to teach directly from a textbook "temporarily."
(*I realize that some people -- particularly Republicans, for some reason -- deny this shortage exists. But having spent the better part of last year trying to hire some decent engineers, I know it's true.)
Such as.....?
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I don't trust the Texas Republican Party further than I can spit a two-headed rat, but I don't support the educational weenies produced by academia's Schools of Education either. I've had the misfortune to teach a few of these potted plants, it isn't any wonder Johnny and Sally have the attention span of gnat and cannot solve problems without needing a self-esteem booster shot.
If public schools cared at all for the students the first thing children would be taught would be how to learn. How to study.
The term for this in higher ed is "information literacy." It's absolutely vital, but something few are ever taught, even at the college level.
I want my children to think with their own heads. That's why I explain to them the reasons behind I tell them to do this or that. I don't start ordering them around like some sergeant. If I did that, at the first opportunity they had, they would do the opposite.
I'm trying to raise my children to become independent and self-confident adults, not fearful, obedient drones.
Worthless comments without supporting documentation.
Give him a break. He learned how to write in a US school.
And all that is fine, for an adequately sophisticated parent.
Unfortunately, we also have a great deal of parents who aren't terribly articulate.
These are decent people who lead good lives, but in terms of raw intellect, or being able to explain rules in a way that children will appreciate, well, they fall short.
These people lead decent lives because they live by a vast cultural heritage, with thousands of unspoken mores and customs, that allowed the creation of the nation we have today, and enabled them to succeed to the extent that they do.
Their children need to learn these same lessons, and be imbued with the same general cultural practices and mores, until they are independant and mature enough to reflect on them.
That is why "Because I said so" needs to remain a valid option, and why parents (and teachers) need to be able to impose discipline on children.
No, the results of effective parental authority will not always be perfect. They will not measure up against some imaginary flawless standard method of child-rearing (that exists nowhere). Mistakes will be made. Feelings will be hurt. A minority with especially depraved parents will come out worse for the matter.
On the balance, though, society benefits from parental authority, and using 'because I said so' as a necessary method.
The rules of society are not built for those with 80+ percentile knowledge and verbal skills. They're built for everyone.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
How about the politicians that fund their research (and want excuses for more tax revenue and authority), or their own egos (which might like a more prominent role in world affairs.) ?
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Please. As a conservative, methinks you're talking out your ass. We have no problem with public school teachers. What we have a problem with is unions that continue to protect teachers that are poor performers or don't adapt to new teaching techniques, which is exactly the reason why we're in the sad state we are, these days.
As a conservative also, I notice that there hasn't been a single proposal from the Republican party on how to hold teachers accountable, or how to fix the problem. We know that privatization hasn't produced the promised outcomes, so what now?
... incentivizing good, young teachers to excel and actually TEACH their students, rather than just read out of a book. ON the other hand, nothing the federal government ever does ONLY costs a billion dollars.
Smart, competent people are in demand. You incentivize those people to become teachers by paying them what they'd make elsewhere, plus a little more. A conservative would see good pay as a required first step for fixing the system. Republicans do not. From their perspective, government employees should be paid as little as possible, so that they'll go out and find real jobs in the private sector and shrink government even further. The well-being of the country takes a backseat to realizing some bizarre fantasy that a country can be strong without decent education as its cornerstone.
So as conservative, I like this Obama plan. It's not much, but it's something, which is more than we've seen in my lifetime on the education front.
The nutters who won't let them teach evolution, the nutters who claim education is 'elitist'. Is it any wonder teachers don't vote for the Republican nutters. You can pretend its because Obama spends on education and Republicans don't, and I'd agree with you, but there's lots of reasons not to vote for Republican nutters.
OK fine not everyone is capable of teaching children that, but seriously are you going to tell me it is wrong for others to teach the child to think and learn why the instructions are given?
The only people who don't understand that the document is expressing opposition to fake methodologies that focus on making the students feel good and are ineffective at teaching, are those who evidently went to a school teaching these methodologies.
With careful reading between the lines, it is possible to understand what they are really trying to say. Still, for a fundamental platform document, it should not be necessary to "read between the lines" and tease out what the authors meant. What I took away from skimming through it:
1.) The authors of the document were not in control of their emotions at the time they put words to paper. Not good when they're in leadership positions.
2.) Many statements only make sense if you consider certain terms to be "code words", functioning as a short-hand notation for a previously-established pool of beliefs and ideological positions centered around that term.
Either the authors were too immersed in their own cultural circle to communicate with outsiders, or -- more likely -- the document was intended for internal-use only (in which case, it's contents should have been issued in some other document than than their official platform declaration).
Now be honest, the Democrats in Congress voted - UNANIMOUSLY - against the President's budget as well. The House (who is supposed to originate spending bills) has passed several budgets - and the Senate, led by Harry Reid (D) has refused to even allow debate, let alone a vote, on the budget.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
But hey he knows what hot means now. Hey junior everything in the room is hot! *child immidiately freezes into a statue. Joking aside, kids aren't actually too stupid to put things together from 1 answer. Teaching children to think, means them actually learning. Unless the child in this example hasn't heard of a dentist, a pretty simple I need to get to a dentist appointment, would be sufficient,
Giving kids a sophisticated bullshit detector is crucial if they are to succeed in today's world.
Unfortunately, that's exactly the OPPOSITE of what HOTS and OBE are designed to do.
OBE conceals and perpetuates the number-one crime of the public school system — the failure to teach first graders how to read. It's committed to the "whole language," word-guessing method rather than the phonics method. Teachers are cautioned not to correct spelling and syntax errors because that could be damaging to the student's self esteem and creativity.
Those promoting OBE and HOTS are perfectly content to have the schools turn out quotas of semi-literate workers who can be trained to perform menial tasks under supervision in order to serve the demands of the global economy.
Consider what Thomas Sticht said:
Functional literacy competencies (beginning in 4th grade) are defined as an ability to read a map and a bus schedule. Sticht was a member of the Secretary of Labor's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) and, as Associate Director for Basic Skills at the National Institute of Education, promoted similar techniques called "competency education" and "mastery teaching" (the don't mean what they sound like - OBE is just re-packaging of the proven failure "Mastery Learning").
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
if I tell my son to do something and he asks why, that is encouraged and a reason is given, things are explained. I don't subject to the "because I said so" mentality of parenting. Sometimes you let them do stupid things to learn and see the consequences. If a parent can't give a good reason for why something can or can't be done, perhaps that isn't a rule that needs to be enforced.
I really try to do this to, but it is so hard.
Me: Get in the car. ........
Child: Why?
M: Because we have to go to school?
C: Why?
M: Because you need to learn things and play with other kids, and Daddy has to go to work?
C: Why?
M: Well, social development is important and I have to make money so we have a house and food to eat?
C: Why?
M: Why what?
C: Why we need food to eat?
M: If we don't eat we will die.
C: Why?
And this doesn't end. He will keep going until I either say, "I don't know" or "Just because. That's the way it is." I hate saying it, but I don't know how to break the cycle. I'm trying out other options such as, "I don't know, why do you think we will die if we don't eat?"
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
I am not sure in this day and age that school is even relevant up to the high school level.
With an internet connection and a smart phone it is more important to me that my children understand that ignorance for more than 5 minutes on any subject is a choice. I have personally taught my children how to do useful internet searches and how to vet the information they come across. They have been taught by me to seek out contradictory views on information they find via the internet. How to form their own informed opinions.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
This behavior needs to be encouraged.
The brains of a chicken, coupled with the claws of two eagles, may well hatch the eggs of our destruction.
Survey any elementary, middle, high school, Jr. College or University.
Run by, taught by those who call themselves Democrats/Leftists/Progressives.
To deny that is to deny reality.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I would like to know where you are so I can go teach there. Here the class sizes are going up (I've got around 40 in class at the moment), I don't get a laptops or tablets (though there is a projector and one computer for the teacher in SOME classrooms), and I WISH my salary was six figures. I'm lucky if I make six figures as a total of several years of salaries.
I guess different states, counties, districts are different, and of course there's differences between high school and post-secondary. But in my area, ALL of it is low paying and low prestige. So where are you that things sound so nice? Or is that just what you think school districts are doing?
The problem is I honestly don't think it will help because the same ones deciding what is "good" and "bad" are the same ones that have created the mess in the first place.
What we need is teachers that can really motivate, but sadly those type are usually run out for straying too far from the course material. In junior HS we had a truly wonderful history teacher for about a year and a half. now most would think American history would be just spewing dates, that's how most taught it, but he instead used a "Six degrees of Woodstock" as he had a theory that there wasn't a single thing in American history that couldn't be led back to Woodstock. man we would pour over the books looking for obscure events in American history just trying to find a way to stump him...never did though. But in the end he got run out by complaints from other teachers about how he was straying too far from the material, not to mention a few of the old fuddy duddy types weren't too happy about him showing Woodstock in its entirety the last week of class.
So while I agree we need testing frankly as long as they aren't simply teaching to the test I don't care how they get students motivated to learn as long as they are. To this day I'll see some "this day in history" and start trying to figure out how I could connect it to Woodstock with 6 degrees or less, which of course means you have to actually think about the various events and how they impacted society. He truly was a great teacher.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Obama's plan, BTW, is a good one. The U.S. has a serious shortage of engineers* partially because people who want to be K-12 teachers (that is, people satisfied with living their lives as underpaid workhorses) generally have no scientific background at all.
If the US has a serious shortage of engineers why aren't salaries going up? They are only going up for very, very small niches.
The reality is you can't find decent engineers at the wages you are willing to pay.
Where were you when I was growing up?
Well I'm not going to pretend to be an ultimate expert on parenting or anything, just saying what works for my family but it also takes knowing when your kid is just messing with ya. There's a pretty big difference between asking questions to things that they honestly don't understand, and the game where you just say Why? to whatever the parent says and see how far they go and watch them get frustrated. In the case with my son if it is clear he actually is trying to understand things, I applaud it, when it is clear he is uninterested in the answer and just pulling it as a game, depending on my mood I'll either let him continue the questioning in the car or just tell him to stop clowning around.
The ones that turned a budget surplus into a deficit?
Whilst we had a "budget surplus", we were, in fact, still running up the debt. The national debt has not decreased since the Eisenhower Administration, back in 1957. So while many decry the whole "deficits don't matter" statement, the fact is actually true - a budget deficit or surplus is immaterial, as you can run a surplus on budget and still have your debt increase.
Source: National Debt to the Penny
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I agree that Unions forcing bad teachers to be shifted around rather than moved out is bad.
How much of the budget do you think actual classroom teachers actually manage?
How much of their own money do you think actual classroom teachers spend each year?
Once again, the obsession with the technical amid the ignorance of the practical. Why no "master teachers" in English? Or in computer/online basics? Oh, that's because it's hard to learn languages likes algebra, trig, and Java, but easy to learn to use English well -- hey, everybody does it, check out the comments bin on most any weblog! Everybody knows how to communicate just fine, right? Um...right?
As I've said many, many times: teachers (and certainly not unions) aren't the problem with education. Choice is. Teaching anything more than single-variable equations or elemental earth sciences to HS kids is, from a societal perspective, a vast and nearly incalculable waste. Primary education divorced from real life is not education. I recall asking my kid once, when she was in 10th grade: "what are they teaching you at school about being safe and smart online, with dangerous stuff like Facebook?" She said, "nothing, but I've got advanced algebra and chemistry. And there's a computer lab we can use." "But no teachers in using the computers?" I asked. "Nope," she said, "just monitors." This is at a large, big-city public school.
Again: as long as we as a society choose to teach college-level stuff in high school, we will crank out kids into the real world who are stressed out by quadratic equations and otherwise have little or no skills for life.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
The problem isn't just on the spending side of the books (incidentally, funny how conservatives NEVER criticise wasteful spending on defence or subsidies to business who don't need them). There's a cashflow problem, due to falling tax revenues, due in part to drunken idiots on Wall Street crashing the economy, and drunken idiots in Congress voting for goodies like tax cuts that nobody can afford.
In constant dollars, the Federal Government is receiving approximately the same funding today as it did in the "hey days" of the late 1990s (1997/1998). And over twice per capita - again in constant dollars - as back in the golden years of the 50s (about $6600 per capita today, versus $3000 in the late 50s).
It's really not a revenue problem, and it's not really a spending problem - is a scope issue. The Federal Government is attempting to do so much more than it has in the past, and thus spending is massively increased - and revenue demand by this much larger Federal Government is well beyond historical levels.
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In the interest of diversity, I'll take it.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Kind of like how creationism became "intelligent design"? That kind of relabeling and misinformation?
Conservatives spent more money during the Bush administration (2001-2007) then President Obama did in his entire term in office.
Just to clarify. You're complaining that in 6 years spending was higher in one Administration than in 3 years of the subsequent Administration.
How is this surprising, really? Now choose any 3 year period between 2001 and 2007, and compare it to any 3 year period of the Obama Administration...
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We could take a page from the military on this one. If you use a government-backed student loan to get your degree in a STEM subject, you are required to spend a minimum number of years "paying back" as a teacher. You would be salaried at the same rate as any other teacher of the same experience. The difference is that you took a Government loan to get your degree, so you should pay back the nice taxpayers by teaching that subject for X years.
Assuming the loan is for $80k to begin with, we can give those out "gratis" up front with the understanding that the payback is in teaching time. That would cost the same as what is proposed, but anyone who takes the loan would be under contract to teach for X years. In the end, you're addressing the availability of STEM degrees, availability of student loans, and STEM teacher supply all in one program for probably the cost of just the proposed program. It's just as voluntary, and has the added bonus of (possibly) increasing the number of students going into STEM fields. Throw in merit-based granting and you've got people competing to get a "free" education in STEM, so you know the teachers on the back end should be decent too.
Of course, the carrot has to have a stick. Something like, if you take the loan and switch degrees out of a STEM field, then you're on the hook for repaying the full cost of the loan. If you can't do the full x years of payback teaching, then you have to repay the loan on a pro-rata basis, etc. This is how military scholarships work, why not do it with STEM as well?
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Well, gee, this is the same Republican Party of Texas who, at least through 2004, had on their official website, as part of the official party platform, that they wanted to change the Constitution and officially make the US a "Christian nation" (as opposed to the opinion of the Founding Fathers and the first Congress - see "Treaty of Tripoli", article 11).
mark
The biggest problem I see is that America's credit cards are already maxed out. We can't keep spending money we don't have. First we need to get the economy moving.
Since when is "public safety" the root password to the Constitution?
It does not matter.
The money is given to the school system. They spend it badly.
Private schools could compete and give better education for less money.
We need to stop listening to the unions and take 75% of what we spend on a student and give it as a voucher.
Let the parents decide and save money.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Ya, I'm with you in that regard -- we're spending more than our current resources allow for, and the best way to fix that is to spend less and acquire more resources at the same time. This is a lot of money for something that will only (even potentially) improve teachers of four subjects. It's a great idea but it's a lot of money for an experiment, and we definitely won't see a direct recuperation of this money, even if the experiment goes well.
I have to admit, I would never even consider becoming a teacher, partially due to the shitty salary involved.
Of course, there is also the idea that I would have to teach people who aren't interested in learning and who I still have to tolerate in my class because I'm the state-mandated babysitter.
I understand that kids need to almost be forced to learn certain skills, because by the time they are adults who understand why they will need those skills, it will be too late to learn them. However, the one size-fits-all program is not one that works well, especially in at-risk school districts. There is nothing more detrimental to learning than inability for students to concentrate on the subjects they are interested in learning.
You want more and better teachers, give them student bodies that are there to learn and pay that is commensurate with their abilities. While I can certainly see how a union could benefit educators, we also need a way to reform them so the unions become more about quality teaching than keeping their members in jobs no matter what.
Remove any student who is constantly disrupting class
When I went to school, we had this thing called detention. You are separated with the other troublemakers in a room where you just do assignments with a teacher watching you. Some students were always in detention. If you had a constant disrupter they'd presumeably be doing all their work in detention without any interactive instruction. The social isolation of that was enough to make most people try to avoid it. What happens if you talk out or otherwise disrupt the detention room? Suspension I suppose. Expulsion is an even more serious process, and probably got you into a military-style "reform school". There was one kid in our neighborhood who got a year of that. He was lucky the cops didn't shoot him. That was an exception though. Our neighborhood was generally "nice". If 20, 30 or even 40% of the kids were like that, then well... maybe we end up with a lot of kids drilling in uniforms behind barbed wire in conjunction with their studies. Anyway, I digress. There are already procedures for dealing with troublemakers.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If it doesn't matter why specifically slam teachers? Blame the school administrators, not the teachers.
I'm not sure what private schools you're referring to that could actually do anything cheaper. Please explain how it would be cheaper.
"That does not mean we should keep spending, however. "
If I have 3 or 4 other sunglasses, yeah, it's a luxury. If I get them because I'm a cabdriver, perhaps not.
So, politics aside, do we have other programs that are working|!working, tried|!tried?
Is this a luxury or a necessity?
sr
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
OBE is not the same thing as the critical thinking curricula.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"Stupid doesn't mean uneducated."
Well said! And the contrapositive of that statement must also therefore be true:
Being educated does not necessarily mean you're smart.
There's a feedback loop of critical thinking failure at the heart of this.
Part of the problem with a lack of developed critical thinking skills is that in such a cultural environment the mere act of questioning something makes that something look bad. Defective questions are often taken to be equivalent to good questions. Questions can be left unanswered but still carry dire implications that become accepted as truth. A question is then a tool to make a statement without requiring any evidence to back it, and without exposing liability for slander or libel.
In such an environment, where the questions themselves have significant negative impact, the act of questioning something becomes quite harmful. Wholesale thought control can be achieved through the direction of carefully-crafted questions designed to instill emotional response. This leads to questioners in turn being attacked by questions of their political propriety, patriotism or moral character as a riposte in the duel for control of the message. The end result is a disastrously adversarial political system paralyzed by continual assaults of defective questions and information media that value impact and sensation more than truth or substance, reinforced by a public that lacks any objective tools to discern questions from truths, much less judge quality of questions or evidence.
What a lot of people fail to realize is that values and truths can be reinforced by answering questions. A leader can be proven to have integrity by withstanding criticism and scrutiny. An idea can be proven to have merit by having its results measured, and the idea can be refined by diligently seeking its defects.
When children are taught to unquestioningly believe what they're instructed by the "appropriate" authority, what happens when a megalomaniacal politician, con artist, cult leader or abusive partner manages to establish grounds for seeming appropriate? One insular creed can be supplanted by another, even one in diametric opposition, given the right emotional impetus or illusion of authority. A healthy dose of critical thinking may result in more fluid interpretations of values that are inclined to wander and evolve over time, but if that foundation incorporates reason then it is less likely for an emotional event or charismatic individual to induce a sudden and dramatic—potentially catastrophic—shift.
You may want to take some time to educate yourself about how congress works; the budget only requires 51 votes to pass in the Senate. So at any time in the past 3 years the Democrats could have passed any budget they wanted, even Obama's proposal.
But in the liberal mind the fact Obama's plan have received 0 votes in the last 2 years and the Dem's have put forward zero proposals of their own while the Republican's have passed their own budget proposal through the House of course means it is the Republican's holding up the process.
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
I blame the unions.
The unions get their money from the teachers.
The teachers pay the unions, the unions use that money to pay off the politicians, the politicians throw money at travesties like fucking CALPERS.
The politicians negotiate the terms of the union contracts with the people paying to keep them in office.
If the teachers put a stop to it it would halt. They do not. They say they give a shit about the kids. But that is not as important as
a years pay for a few months work, full benefits for them for life and tenure.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
I blame the unions. The unions get their money from the teachers.
That's a fair statement. But I'm sure some teachers couldn't tell you anything about their union or their talking points.
If the teachers put a stop to it it would halt. They do not. They say they give a shit about the kids. But that is not as important as a years pay for a few months work, full benefits for them for life and tenure.
A few month's work? That's the second time you've mentioned that. What's the deal?
You do realize that there are many teachers on 12-month contracts and that those teachers work year-round right?
I am sure there are.
Here in California the vast majority are not.
Those that are get more money still.
As far as the teachers being ignorant of what is going on in the union...
This is not a good excuse.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
There is no real shortage of engineers. There are, however, a shortage of companies that want to (i) pay engineers properly, and (ii) hire senior engineers for senior positions, as opposed to trying to fill a position for a senior engineer with an entry level engineer, or pay a senior engineer what an entry level engineer gets. There is also a shortage of companies willing to relocate people as well.
So you get what you're willing to pay for, what you're willing to invest in, etc. Don't complain when you don't want to put up.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
I remember a really brilliant science teacher in high school. He could not maintain order in his classroom. I also had a "coach" who taught science. He maintained strict discipline in the room. While he was not on the same academic level as the first teacher, the learning environment was much better.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Well, the original poster listed HOTS/OBE as if they are the same thing or always connected. They are not.
People who actually know about these things can argue over OBE, but the war against HOTS is part of the overall conservative war on science and war on expertise.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The ones that turned a budget surplus into a deficit?
Whilst we had a "budget surplus", we were, in fact, still running up the debt. The national debt has not decreased since the Eisenhower Administration, back in 1957. So while many decry the whole "deficits don't matter" statement, the fact is actually true - a budget deficit or surplus is immaterial, as you can run a surplus on budget and still have your debt increase.
Source: National Debt to the Penny
However you want to do the math, the fact is that a budget DEFICIT increases debt faster than a budget SURPLUS.
if I tell my son to do something and he asks why, that is encouraged and a reason is given, things are explained. I don't subject to the "because I said so" mentality of parenting. Sometimes you let them do stupid things to learn and see the consequences. If a parent can't give a good reason for why something can or can't be done, perhaps that isn't a rule that needs to be enforced.
I really try to do this to, but it is so hard.
Me: Get in the car. Child: Why? M: Because we have to go to school? C: Why? M: Because you need to learn things and play with other kids, and Daddy has to go to work? C: Why? M: Well, social development is important and I have to make money so we have a house and food to eat? C: Why? M: Why what? C: Why we need food to eat? M: If we don't eat we will die. C: Why? ........
And this doesn't end. He will keep going until I either say, "I don't know" or "Just because. That's the way it is." I hate saying it, but I don't know how to break the cycle. I'm trying out other options such as, "I don't know, why do you think we will die if we don't eat?"
How about: I don't really know, but I have a good idea where to look for the answer. Then go hit the local library (grasp!!) for books on basic human biology.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
I have, on a couple of occasions, shown my 4 year old that if I don't know the answer to his question I can look it up on Google. I don't think he get's it entirely, as he thinks the "internet" is the thing that let's him watch Power Rangers on Netflix.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
But that's not their objection to critical thinking.
Their objection is the questioning of authority. It's right there in the statement itself. Way to fail reading comprehension.
--
BMO
Professional, Personal and political beliefs don't influence how someone performs their jobs? Especially when they are in charge of forming policy?
Go figure.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The budget surplus in 2001 was higher than in 1999, yet the national debt increased more in 2001 than in 1999. The problem is people believing "the budget" has anything to do with reality.
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You realize that the majority of the debt in the Obama administration was from the wars that the Republicans launched and didn't put on the budget, right?
Citation? The Iraq War cost was $780 billion, or - to put it in modern terms - about 6 months of an Obama deficit. A full 8 years of war is exceeded by 7 months of current deficit spending.
And you do realize that national debt piles up whether items are on-budget or not?
Of course, you're the guy who wanted to compared 6 years of spending to 3, and make the conclusion that we were wasteful during those 6 years and tight during the 3 because the spending in 3 is just under the spending in 6, so...
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And this just demonstrates the union problem further. Members see anything new and different as a threat to their traditional power and union bosses push to remove any teacher that works outside the preconceived model of teaching. A better idea is to allow teachers to teach as they see fit, provided they're covering the mandatory material. I've had some teachers that taught in...interesting ways, but they've always been able to meet the state mandated curricula for their subjects. Heck, I had a biology teacher that took us on beach walks, at least once per week. Were we learning about genetics during this time? No. Were we witnessing cranes, fish, crabs, beach grasses, etc, in their native habitats? Yes. I took more away from the beach walks than I did doing punnet squares, but I'm still able to do a punnet square, fifteen years later.
I got my PhD in Electrical Engineering. I taught lab sections, quiz sections, and served as the sole instructor (effectively the Professor) for a graduate course on neural networks.
But I'm "unqualified" to teach math anywhere in K-12. In 5th grade I knew things my math teachers didn't, but after a PhD and teaching graduate level work, I still can't replace the teacher I knew more than when I was in 5th grade.
The teachers unions are destroying lives, one child at a time.
This, exactly.
Of course the vast majority of that debt was spent while Republicans were in power and getting the US involved in very costly wars. Not all, granted, but a majority I am sure.
As other repliers have noted, a bit over a third of that debt as a fraction of GDP was accumulated during the Obama administration over the past few years. That's a huge amount. We could attribute it to generic Democrats or Bush's activities (which did contribute considerably to the first years deficits), but it mostly comes from the Obama administration. Further, the US Federal Bank has effectively printed somewhere in excess of three trillion dollars during the Obama administration for "quantitative easing".
As a result, every bit of spending has to be seriously tested. It's not enough to "try to do something to improve the lot of all Americans" when every dollar of such spending is borrowed or printed. The cost/benefit of such actions needs to be seriously considered.
Looking at this program I see another problem. Namely, the high cost of the program's overhead relative to the amounts actually paid to teachers. For example, Obama currently expects to pay $100 million to deliver up to $50 million to targeted teachers (2,500 @$20,000) this year. Over the next ten years, the program is expected to target 100,000 teachers over ten years. If each teacher gets a commitment of the full $20,000 for four years, then that is roughly $800 million of money received per year once the program gets into full swing. What's the billion dollars going toward next year? I guess mostly overhead of administrating the program, perhaps both at the federal and local levels.
So here's my concern. We may be borrowing several dollars per dollar received to send our best teachers to schools where they might be least effective ("high need" mostly meaning incompetent and poorly run IMHO). It might be an interesting experiment to run perhaps at a lower spending level say like $100 million per year perhaps at the state level, but I don't see the point to committing to an unproven program at least several billion dollars a year over the long term when the US has desperate financial problems.
Would You Believe It's Barack Obama?
No, and that's after reading the article. The article ignores that Obama was responsible in FY 2008-2009 both for the second half of TARP and ARRA, which is somewhere around 800 billion dollars of spending combined. And he's backed the quantitative easing that the US Federal Reserve has been doing, which is another huge influx of spending, well over three trillion dollars since 2008.
I actually have no opinion on OBE. This article is the first time I heard about it and it is not used in education in my home country. So I neither agree or disagree with your conclusion that it is "ineffective and useless", I have no idea. My comment was about your piss poor reasoning skills.
The budget does have something to do with reality (except when Bush kept his war spending "off-budget"), but the timing of borrowing affects the actual debt level at one moment. Saying the budget has nothing to do with reality is just sticking your fingers in your ears and going "nyah, nyah, I can't hear you."
You play with semantics all you want, but this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CBO_-_Revenues_and_Outlays_as_percent_GDP.png picture shows that REVENUE exceeded EXPENDITURE until the Bush-era tax cuts changed the picture.
Yes, it's not like something like 9/11 and the Clinton recession affected revenues in that 2001-2002 timeframe. And the Bush tax cuts certainly weren't responsible for the uptick in revenues shown in 2003-2006 in your own graph... Or that you want to keep things in "percent of GDP budget" rather than actual debt dollars. Curious!
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acronyms=(LASER, BS, OK, SAT);
if(acronyms.size()>3){ironic=true;}
Fiscal years run October 1st to September 30th; you need to look at the fiscal year, not calendar year.
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How can Obama be responsible for FY 2008-2009 when he wasn't even inaugurated until January 20, 2009?
It makes more sense to express the National Debt as a percentage of GDP. Were the figures you referred to even adjusted for inflation?
leads me to believe just one thing: the USA is buggered. They've gone so far down the road of partisan wankery, where no-one can ever admit they're wrong and anyone who thinks differently is an enemy, that they're incapable of doing anything.
Have another civil war and be done with. Just do the rest of the world a favour and leave us out of it.
Clinton recession? What? He presided over one of the biggest economic booms of our times! Yes, 9/11 happened, which makes the Bush-era tax cuts look even stupider! It's not "my graph" - it's from Wikipedia. The point I was making was that Revenues exceeded Outlays until the Bush tax cuts took place. That is true whether it is shown as percent of GDP or not. When Revenues exceed outlays, there is a surplus and the debt can be paid down - or welfare for the rich can be enacted, since "deficits don't matter" when the GOP is in office.
How can Obama be responsible for FY 2008-2009 when he wasn't even inaugurated until January 20, 2009?
January 20 is only a third through that year. In other words, he was president during most of that fiscal year and he approved the spending which I mentioned.
QE is more than just spending, its stealth taxation, devaluing your money and relocating it's value to the state.
I agree, but my reason for the more limited claim was that the story claims that Obama isn't a huge spender. The degree of dishonesty here is breathtaking, such as claiming profits on TARP (when the actual amounts paid out through TARP, QE, and other stimulus attempts are many times the actual return payments received) or jobs "created and saved" which are invented out of thin air. There's some massive shell games being played.
20k stipend from the govt is just enough to make an existing teacher more content, but far from enough to attract highly qualified college graduates to consider a career in teaching versus going to Wall Street. Compare this to a similar non profit program Math for America. The program gives up to 100k stipends, requires the applicants to take a relatively brainy test and eligibility is geared towards applicants who have never taught in classrooms before. I find this program extremely compelling, and put it in one of my list of supported charities.
I think the $1 billion for "master teachers" could be obtained by cutting the pay or simply getting rid of the bad teachers.
I am aware that the Constitution allows Congress to do so. That doesn't make it an incredibly bad idea.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Just another political sop to try to keep the support of public unions. Obama's proposal is just more of the hot button words strung together to get votes. If he is re-elected and this doesn't go through - he will blame others. If it goes through - what happens when the money runs out? The local school systems have to pick up the burden,
You want to improve education? Then educate. Stop with all the self-esteem oriented programs and stop having special programs to prevent dropping out. Spend the money on real motivated students. You can have a night school, like Conway NH's Eagle Academy, to give the dropouts a way back in when they realize that $12 an hour job is not nearly as sweet as they thought it would be.
a Ghost told me.
And? How does that counter the fact that the entire cost of the Iraq war is about 6 months of the current Administration's annual deficit?
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The Clinton recession.
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Hilarious! You call it the Clinton Recession. Wikipedia does not! He presided over gigantic boon times then one stinking year of "mild recession" as wikipedia puts it. And then you blame him for 2001-2002 and use 9/11 to give Bush a free ride. You are too damn partisan!