Slashdot Mirror
Are Teachers Headed For Obsolescence?
dstates writes "One Laptop Per Child reports encouraging results of a bold experiment to reach the millions of students worldwide who have no access to primary school. OLPC delivered tablets to two Ethiopian villages in unmarked boxes without instructions or instructors. Within minutes the kids were opening the boxes and figuring out how to use the Motorola Zoom tablets, within days they were playing alphabet songs and withing a few months how to hack the user interface to enable blocked camera functionality. With the Kahn Academy and others at the high school level and massive open online courses at the college level, are teachers going the way of the Dodo?"
Yeah, you try to implement something that threatens teacher jobs and just WATCH what happens, sparky. I was once part of an effort to design some online courses (just a few, mind you) for a local school district and learned the hard way to watch my step when treading anywhere near teachers. Unfortunately, my superiors made the STUPID mistake of pitching the program to the district as being a potential money-saver (since fewer teachers would be needed to oversee the online courses than traditional classroom courses). The teachers mobilized like a fucking Roman Legion.
Now, for those of you dumb enough to think that teachers are sweet old schoomarms with low salaries and little power...well, you just keep thinking that. But I know that they broadsided us like the a school bus. Suddenly, those sweet schoolmarms were on every newscast, decrying the courses as a poor substitute for classroom education, something that "cheated the students," as Satan incarnate basically. Their union was all but threatening to break legs. School district elected officials were told in no uncertain terms that the sweet schoolmarms were ready to bend them over and do bad things to them with a slide rule at the next election. We learned the hard way what happens when you threaten the schoolmarms' jobs in ANY way.
Needless to say, our online course plan was SIGNIFICANTLY modified. Most notably, provisions were added to make it clear that the online courses were to be treated exactly like classroom courses, with a teacher getting assigned to each one just as if he/she were in the classroom each day teaching it as a traditional course (even if they basically had to do nothing)--complete with the same class size limitations as a traditional course. Even though this all made no sense with online courses, it's what we had to do to get them implemented. Not a single teacher job was to be lost, nor salary reduced, nor workload increased (only significantly decreased).
Teachers and their unions are masters at playing the emotion card. And they are PR masters too. We're talking teachers, some of whom were making north of $80k a year in this district (and this was in an area with a relatively low cost of living, mind you), who were able to convince everyone that they weren't getting paid enough and needed raises (4-6% annual raises, EVERY YEAR). You fuck with them at your own peril.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
No.
The idea that pieces of software and one way communication videos can compete with responsive human beings and solely provide first world education is laughable.
The idea that a third world nation can spend little and utilizes said technologies is critical to their economic success and transitioning to second and first world status.
Yes, these things will successfully replace teachers where there were no teachers in the first place. Everywhere else they are important as augmenting tools on the path of education but the place where they will make the most progress for us is where they need teachers but have none.
My work here is dung.
Slashdot's obsession with the disaster that is OLPC is laughable, as is the conclusion that it could replace teachers.
Is an OLPC better than nothing? Yes. Is it better than a proper teacher and resources? Heck no.
Siri will replace all teachers in the future.
where are you that teachers make $80K? That does not jive with national salary rates.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
A good teacher is more than a textbook-reader. It's someone who sees in a kid, where it has strong points, where there are weak points. What the kid really gives shiny eyes in terms of interests and hobbies. He know if the kid has parents who are in a divorce and will anticipate on it. He will ask a normally happy kid that all of sudden is all down, what's wrong. So no, you can not replace a good teacher. A good teacher is a source of inspiration and a safe haven.
Asimov wrote a short fictional story about this in 1951. It' about a kid who finds an old-fashioned paper book in the attic. In the story, there are no classrooms, kids all learn from computer terminals.
Free Martian Whores!
So the article cites the example of launching an app (Playing alphabet songs) and navigating some menus (blocked camera functionality)? Yes, if that was what teachers gave to students, then the intuitiveness of tech has made them obsolete.
The same logic at my school. If students can navigate tech, then they are "ready for the future".
I was basically going to post this very thing but you beat me to it.
Unionized government employees do not simply step aside gracefully and change jobs or learn new skills. They fight tooth and nail to maintain the status quo, with increasing ferocity the more obsolete they become.
Home-schooling, especially in the mid-western states, is a greater threat to teachers than OLPC.
They help shape the character of kids, which is more pertinent these days as most parents are spoiling their brats silly.
Good luck attempting this with gadgets.
Disclaimer: I am not a teacher, nor am I involved in the education industry.
are teachers going the way of the Dodo?
1. See Betteridge's law of headlines.
2. No. But the current methodologies of teaching are. Unfortunately, teaching methods do not adapt fast enough, and this in turn causes a lot of trouble, e.g. kids not having enough and up-to-date knowledge and information about certain fields so as they can properly choose their further study fields, which can even result in badly planned and chosen careers (yes, this is a bit on the extreme side, but true nonetheless).
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
Suddenly, those sweet schoolmarms were on every newscast, decrying the courses as a poor substitute for classroom education, something that "cheated the students," as Satan incarnate basically. Their union was all but threatening to break legs.
[citations needed] All I've seen and heard from friends who are teachers is that these videos are amazing resources for their children and students to utilize in better understanding the material. Surprise surprise the kids that don't want to learn ... DON'T GO HOME AND TURN ON KHAN ACADEMY! So guess who still has to teach the students?
Don't mess with teachers unions. If their jobs are threatened, then expect some serious concequences, such as taking away the OLPC hardware.
Within minutes the kids were opening the boxes and figuring out how to use the Motorola Zoom tablets, within days they were playing alphabet songs and withing a few months how to hack the user interface to enable blocked camera functionality.
Just imagine what they could do if they had electricity.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Anyone who has had to learn outside of a classroom understands that sometimes it's necessary: training manuals, certifications, just learning for personal enjoyment. Sometimes time and money are a factor. However, if you've ever struggled with a concept, you understand how much simpler it is when another person is involved imparting their knowledge in a personalized way to help you learn.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
where are you that teachers make $80K?
Europe . . . ?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Having spent a lot of time in traditional education, and a lot of time teaching myself new things on the Internet, no, just throwing computers at kids is not going replace classroom education. The main difference between the two is depth and breadth. With a classroom education, you are confronted with topics that you are unlikely to have ever considered on your own, sometimes out of lack of interest, sometimes because the Internet tends to focus on certain aspects of various topics while ignoring others. You just can't get anything approaching a comprehensive education in any field just by reading things online.
Perhaps even more importantly, a good fraction of education lies in not just learning facts, but in doing: in learning how to research a topic so as to produce a compelling argument, in learning how to solve problems, in learning how to perform laboratory experiments. These experiences are irreplaceable.
But perhaps most crucially: most people just aren't self-motivated enough to educate themselves. And even for those that are, it isn't easy to do it yourself.
Hey Samzenpus, when you hit rock bottom, STOP DIGGING!
Sure, I can see it now. 2000 kids in high-school, no teachers.
After the break, can monkeys be employed as caretakers for banana plantations. Next week an in-depth look at the results of giving the lunatics the keys to the asylum, test case: slashdot.
For those who are terminally stupid/libertarians, most people need oversight at least part of the time. Give kids a tablet and they will indeed use it, just as easily as my generation used a dictionary. To look up dirty words and hitting other kids with.
Yes some kids will indulge in self-study without encouragement, these kids need teachers most of all, to stop the other kids from beating them up.
A tablet is not anymore a teacher then a TV is a baby sitter.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I'm stunned that this is the first place this conversation went. The article is about the ability of a digital device to do the job of a teacher and the first thing people can think of to say is that they're overpaid and too politically entrenched to remove. It really is election season isn't it...
A computer might be able to teach anyone how to program, math, English, etc. if they have the desire to learn, but it's the teachers job to give them that desire, and to assist, control and monitor the children.
If a child has a problem, then a teacher can easily help, especially if the child needs another way to look at the issue.
It's the teachers job to control the classroom and to make sure they don't start to beat up each other; another hard job at 2pm on a Friday.
It is the teachers job to monitor the children and to know if something is wrong with one of them. A teacher can be the only person a 12 yr old can go to and ask for help.
A lot of teachers are also more educated then most other professionals, with Masters degrees at least, and several years of experience before they are handed a classroom of their own.
And the most important thing: They have to deal with elected officials telling them how to teach, when the officials only qualification is "my kid goes to school".
Ya, we need to hand a kid a computer and tell them to teach themselves. It will be porn and WoW only within a couple of weeks.
teachers are going to end up like adjunct professors, at least if the Republicans get their way.
But others do. A kid who has someone who can understand his thought processes and teach accordingly will come out better than if left alone (talking about the average kid here, not Mr G&T who'll be a physicist no matter what). So, I guess good teachers will always be needed, bad teachers have always been obsolete.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
SanFran, LA, Chicago, Seattle and NYC to name a few.
Try New York City, for one. You do need to eat if for a few years and get your Masters degree, but the pay does become quite good.
Particularly when you consider that it comes with a three month vacation. And before you start with how teachers are doing work during the summer, date a couple of teachers, especially the lower grades.
Which is amusingly ironic, considering how Slashdotters lay down and whine like helpless mewling pussies when they can't find a job, blaming offshoring, ageism, non-degreed-ism, and affirmative action.
Don't like dealing with teachers' unions, just move to Wisconsin.
They didn't all make that (I believe the average is $52k in my state). But quite a few of them did. You can imagine what 30 years of 4-6% yearly raises and bonuses for tons of other stuff (incl. a $9,000 a year bonus for becoming nationally certified) would get you to from an already generous starting salary. Teachers were actually some of the better paid people in the county I was in.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Yet another good reason to make public sector unions illegal at from the federal level down. Local politicians aren't in any position to negotiate because in most local elections the union is the greatest political power in the district.
Say what you want about Scott Walker but scorched earth is the only tactic that will work against entrenched union interests.
Look up Chicago. _average_ salary is 76k. Starting salary is north of 60k.
With video we can have great lecturers present the topics and even have streams where things are presented different ways so that individuals can select the stream that present things the way the learn. These can be covered at whatever rates the indiduals like.
Teachers then can provide more individual help with problem solving.
More like Hong Kong, I suppose. :-) Or Taiwan, if the teacher are extremely unlucky!
Ezekiel 23:20
Unfortunately, while there is a subset of people who legitimately learn well simply from reading or viewing something, this is not the way the vast majority of people learn. I, and my entire family, are involved in the education sector at every level from K-graduate school. There simply is no substitute for hand-on interaction for most people. You can sit a perfectly brilliant student down with a history book or history website, and he/she is likely to retain almost nothing of what they have just read or viewed. Sit this same student down in a properly-managed classroom environment with a good teacher and discussion-style learning, and suddenly that student is learning and enjoying it. It isn't something that we can just "change", this is hard-wired human nature. If you fall outside the norm then that's great for you, but don't try to insist that the majority of people begin learning that same way.
I don't get it. If you're going to replace them with babysitters to make sure there's a warm body in the seat looking at the monitor and not throwing spit balls, why do you even care if teachers scream bloody murderer? Their jobs WILL be replaced. They are "old technology".
In places where cost of living is so high you need that to afford a decent place in a shitty neighborhood and put food in your belly.
What really sucks is being a teacher in the south... you get shit pay and cost of living is going up, so you're practically poor.
I know Slashdot loves to pull up these kinds of articles every time they're available. TED is susceptible similar lectures as well, so we who have actually worked in education have to keep our eyes open before the "computers will solve all our complex problems" crowd runs away with an invaluable source of social evolution.
Before the average Slashdotter writes off brick-and-mortar schools in favor of online learning with justifications like, "I was always bored in class", "I was smarter than my teacher", and "Just be open to change!" consider this: Is your average Slashdotter ANYTHING like your average American student?
The answer is that they simply are not. Slashdotters likely grew up in smaller than average social groups with access to technology. We adapt to new technology with little issue. We understand the underlying concepts of nested menus and function taxonomy. We are nerds and geeks who thrive on learning.
The rest of America's children do not thrive on learning and providing online education will not change that.
Having worked in middle schools, high schools, with community college transfer students, and then the resulting university undergrads, I have to say: If the general population doesn't HAVE to learn something or if there isn't something someone sufficiently passionate to help them learn something new regardless, they won't bother. Humanity is curious about the universe in that we consistently have some extremely smart people come to global acclaim for their works, but most people just want to live easy, have sex, and do so as long as possible.
It's the role of the educator to affect everyone, regardless of station or passion, and get them the minimum (plus) standard of knowledge and analytical capability so that they can learn more things and more complex concepts at the next level. This is something a computer with programed or limited responses cannot do.
Yes, OLPC can get kids excited about new things. Those children will NOT be starting hospitals in their villages with simple access to online education. They will not become cultural philosophers through online education. They will not begin building Motorola Zoom tablets with they learned via online learning. The concepts required to do any of those complex actions cannot be taught in a single plug-and-play manner. It requires a talented individual and as social an environment as possible to adjust the content to the user, to adjust the lesson plan to the person that day.
The only way teachers will ever go obsolete is if we are ignorant to assume that computers will ever substitute for the adaptive human mind.
The thought that children will be able to learn anything by watching a video is just laughable...
I teach middle school math, and the level of apathy and carelessness in work is very high. There is no substitute for students being in a classroom, actually doing work.
However, if all you want to do is compare a LECTURE to a VIDEO, then sure, "teachers" can be replaced. However, "Teacher" in that context really is just "Lecturer".
There's a lot more to teaching than being on a stage and talking at people. Anyone who says otherwise is ignorant, selling something, or both.
Yes, as soon as the printing press was invented, teachers became fundamentally unnecessary and put on the road to extinction, decreasing in number every year.
[/sarcasm]
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Teachers will go the way of the computer. They'll stick around in essentially the same role as ever, but will do much less of some things they used to do a lot of, like writing notes on the board or reading punch cards, and more of things of which they currently do too little, like coaching individual students or simulating protein folding. This will mostly be great, and education will change, just not quite as much as some people expect.
Canada My teacher friends in Toronto (in their early 30s) make 70-80k. Toronto is an expensive place to live, but I was still kind of floored to get this news. I have been told by friends in the local school system (in our small city about an hour outside Toronto) that a handful of senior teachers in our city are making over 100k. Yeah, that's more than most of the developers I know (including myself).
Please correct this. "withing" -> "with in"
And if you asked the Unions, they would say, "Hell No!"...
They would add...
"You always need teachers to provide "that human touch."
Yeah, you try to implement something that threatens teacher jobs and just WATCH what happens, sparky. I was once part of an effort to design some online courses (just a few, mind you) for a local school district and learned the hard way to watch my step when treading anywhere near teachers. Unfortunately, my superiors made the STUPID mistake of pitching the program to the district as being a potential money-saver (since fewer teachers would be needed to oversee the online courses than traditional classroom courses). The teachers mobilized like a fucking Roman Legion.
Now, for those of you dumb enough to think that teachers are sweet old schoomarms with low salaries and little power...well, you just keep thinking that. But I know that they broadsided us like the a school bus. Suddenly, those sweet schoolmarms were on every newscast, decrying the courses as a poor substitute for classroom education, something that "cheated the students," as Satan incarnate basically. Their union was all but threatening to break legs. School district elected officials were told in no uncertain terms that the sweet schoolmarms were ready to bend them over and do bad things to them with a slide rule at the next election. We learned the hard way what happens when you threaten the schoolmarms' jobs in ANY way.
Needless to say, our online course plan was SIGNIFICANTLY modified. Most notably, provisions were added to make it clear that the online courses were to be treated exactly like classroom courses, with a teacher getting assigned to each one just as if he/she were in the classroom each day teaching it as a traditional course (even if they basically had to do nothing)--complete with the same class size limitations as a traditional course. Even though this all made no sense with online courses, it's what we had to do to get them implemented. Not a single teacher job was to be lost, nor salary reduced, nor workload increased (only significantly decreased).
Teachers and their unions are masters at playing the emotion card. And they are PR masters too. We're talking teachers, some of whom were making north of $80k a year in this district (and this was in an area with a relatively low cost of living, mind you), who were able to convince everyone that they weren't getting paid enough and needed raises (4-6% annual raises, EVERY YEAR). You fuck with them at your own peril.
You know what else goes up every year, without fail, much in part due to public services?
Taxes.
Fuck with the average taxpayer's taxes too much, and it won't matter how much power you think you have.
And believe me, the attack on teachers or the current education system won't likely happen at the high-school level. Where this will take place is at the college level, where everyone is already tired of paying those fucking rates. Good luck to the professors there, for that 4-year piece of paper that everyone strives for is hardly worth the effort to get out of bed these days, let alone pay someone six figures for it.
How to install windows http://windows-explorer.blogspot.com/
where are you that teachers make $80K?
Europe . . . ?
If I would get paid $80k a year for teaching in Europe I would move back immediately. When I left I barely got half of that a year.
If the Republicans take control of both the Senate and the Presidency (they already have the House) then I guess Teachers will be made redundant.
After all they only want Preachers, not teachers. If its not in the Bible its not real..
'withing a few months' speaking a Saxon dialect. Maybe they would discover the spellchecker 'withing' a few years.
to err is human, to forgive is divine, to forget is... umm...
Then it would be 80k €, no? Would be weird to use $.....
With max years experience, and a PhD, they make a little over that where I live, and I live in an average cost of living area.
We definitely have some earning that, but probably less than 1 in 100.
they start at 36k for no experience and a bachelor's.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
My experience, in the U.S., is that when teachers complain about their pay, they generally give the amount they make for the school year. For arguments sake, say that's 9 months. So a teacher that claims to be making $45K a year would make $60K a year if they worked 12 months. Me, I would take the three months off, and the reduced pay, if I could at my job.
Now, in my opinion good teachers are under paid and under appreciated, The problem is that there are a lot of bad teachers out there. When I was in 9th grade, my Social Studies teacher let us watch NFL Films every Friday instead of him teaching class. The problem is that everytime a teacher complains about pay, I have the image of this guy kicking back and reading the paper every Friday.
You know what they say the three best things about teaching? June, July and August.
Unions are simply a group of individuals meeting together and deciding to all walk out of work on the same day if they don't like the conditions. You cannot make unions illegal without violating the right to free association that all Americans have. You can only bar the state from engaging with these unions in collective bargaining, institute a "right to work" law, and/or fire anyone that tries to organize.
For what it's worth, the fact that a country with a much greater dedication to organized labor than the US, namely Finland, is currently the envy of the developed world for its educational achievement in public schools, the existence of teachers' unions per se is clearly not the problem here.
Teachers in Chicago make nearly that yet their students' score poorly on standardized tests.
And the rest of the humans also, hee hee. Deep Blue.
where are you that teachers make $80K? That does not jive with national salary rates.
In my school district (Santa Clara, California) elementary school teachers make an average of $78k. Many make more than $80k. If you live in California, you can use this site to see what teachers in your district are paid.
canadian $ != american $ though
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Teaachers here make $100K in UPSTATE NY. The tech guy at the local highschool makes twice what I do for the same work. The reason: Oh think of the children. Same thing at the local library, and we are ALL in the same union.
The "teachers of today" are headed for obsolescence. Nothing really replaces the personal attention of a human being. Just that today, the focus of teaching is where a person stands in front of the class and generally dictates knowledge and fact. What teachers need to do, is inspire and teach "learning." The love of learning and the tools that a person needs to equip themselves with to learn throughout the journey of life.
If you have a shiny gadget, people will happily learn how to use it themselves, as illustrated here. However there are many things that we learn from teachers that we always think of as boring, but which are actually useful. I used to hate history at school, but that may have more to do with the way it was taught as I now find it a fascinating subject, and one which actually is very useful in certain circumstances. Also it's quite hard to learn interpersonal skills if you're only learning via a gadget, whereas a structured, formal learning environment can be great for this. In this day and age where we can have instant access to information, the discipline of being part of a class and having to put your hand up if you want to speak, and then wait your turn, are very useful life skills. I'm not saying these are the most important aspects of a school environment but they are certainly an important part of learning.
Then there are the science experiments that, due to health and safety legislation, must be performed by a 'responsible adult'. I have my views on whether the legislation has the right balance here, but if we are constrained but such regulations then we will always need a teacher for this to happen.
[citation needed]
In the district my taxes go to, teachers start at $39,400, plus salary credits for experience, retirement contributions, 85% medical coverage, and tuition reimbursement. So maybe there are a couple first-year teachers making south of $40k. This is not a good or rich district - below 50% graduation rate and 80+% students on free and reduced lunch.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Chicago
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
If the story conforms to reality, this is great news, not only by its entertainment value. It throws an optimistic eye upon what human beings can do, are willing to learn and can adapt to. No, teachers are not going to be pushed into obsolescence for a long time yet, the interesting part of this story, to me, is with these Ethiopian kiddos. Who would not, anyway and prolly, have been reached by any teacher for quite some time.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
This reminds me a little of "The Diamond Age: or A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer" by Neal Stephenson.
Chicago
Okay, but cherry picking the highest standard of living places (major cities, California, New York) doesn't mean "all teachers are making too much". Garbage men in NYC get $60K/yr, IIRC.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
True, the Canadian dollar is worth 0.000371$ less than the US dollar. What a significant difference that makes.
He was clear enough: public unions, which even FDR was against.
A public union is an absurd idea in the first place, who is supposedly 'oppressing' these teachers? They are working for the government, who is this 'evil capitalist' that is oppressing them?
Also who is paying their salaries, is it the politicians that they are negotiating with? NOPE. It's the tax payer and the tax payer is the one who is getting screwed on this deal, he is the sheep that 'participates' in the decision what's for dinner, except the other two sides at the table are 2 wolves (politicians and the public unions).
MY OTHER COMMENTS
I am Becky Ofori, an Ethiopian. Happily I received this laptop to tell you about my special situation. I am contacting you in respect of a family treasure of Gold deposited in my name by my late father who was a gold and diamond merchant. As a well known business man, and a strong politician...
...
On the contrary, if you are a potential buyer, then a fresh agreement would be reached in respect of this transaction. I am looking forward to hear from you in respect as soon as you receive this fax.
yup i figure when you get to 50 WOOT you can fire them all as they are idiots
So... you consider 80k to pay for living in NYC quite good pay, when you got a Masters degree?
You got to be fucking kidding me, that is low pay for a tech flunkie.
And you contract yourself, how many teachers for lower grades got a Masters degree?
My bet is your a republican by the ease by which you select among several made up statistics to combine in a non-existing entity which you claim to represent everything.
Proof me wrong, become a teacher if the pay is so good and the vacations that long, you would have to be an idiot not to switch. So why haven't you? Because you know you are pulling stats out of your ass?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Although it is possible to learn a great deal from a computer. Its hard to pick the focus the topic without help. Bringing what
is learned together it is hard. Its also difficult to come up with technique without a teacher. A video can provide so much
and without challenging or the ability to ask questions it is not an easy medium. You still need a teacher or someone
like them them to create the material in the first place. A computer can't tell you oh your doing it wrong! on certain subjects,
and even if you did come up with the right answer, did you use a method that actually works all the time?
K-12 education really needs teachers for kids to have a good base knowledge. College level independent learning is possible on
some topics, but without interaction might not get the same depth of knowledge. Math proofs are fussy things.
1 Canadian dollar = 1.0003 US dollars
Things are a bit more expensive in Canada and don't forget the taxes. On the other hand, teachers have a great pension plan.
Since when are Americans free to associate? That's just a librul myth.
I drank what? -- Socrates
where are you that teachers make $80K? That does not jive with national salary rates.
Senior teachers. Average teacher pay is no where near 80k, and starting teacher pay is less than half of that. But if you can get a job in teaching and stay in the profession for 25 or 30 years you can get up to 70 or 80 in big cities.
One of my highshool buddies is about 65k, and that's after 10 years. His cost of living makes that not really a great salary for the area, but it's not bad.
I'm a teacher (university). I'm afraid that I often use a rather antique method in teaching: the Socratic method. Since I teach philosophy, most often one-to-one or one-to-two, perhaps it isn't such an inappropriate method.
If you can get a machine to do the teaching nearly as well and as inexpensively (although it isn't an inexpensive method), have at it.
Best wishes,
Bob
Given the 70-80k range, the 0.03% (not 3%, 0.03%) difference is meaningless.
Online teaching is really just one step removed from tech support. That's not real teaching any more than a video game is real life.
What if you don't care if they walk out? How hard is it to hire a couple thousand baby sitters to make sure the children are sitting in front of their seats doing the online training? Heck, some day we'll just say keep your children at home. No need to even have the school buildings. When teachers try to cry bloody murderer, just say "oh well, sorry, no more job".
That does not jive with national salary rates
That don't jibe neither, honky! ;)
TFA is about an OLPC deployment in Africa. So maybe teachers in Africa and other developing nations are more replaceable than their unionized counterparts in the US and other industrialized, or should that be de-industrializing, countries? I see the Orwellian possibilities of replacing skilled or moderately skilled teachers with government minders whose only job would be to ensure that the kids are using the tablets in the prescribed manner. Obviously there would be holes in the most locked-down product, but gadget-based learning is easier to administer or manage.
I know there are evil unions. But in a world where there are evil corporations, that sort of evens up things a bit.
doesn't mean "all teachers are making too much".
The GP didn't say "all". He said "some".
Unions are simply a group of individuals meeting together and deciding to all walk out of work on the same day if they don't like the conditions. You cannot make unions illegal without violating the right to free association that all Americans have. You can only bar the state from engaging with these unions in collective bargaining, institute a "right to work" law, and/or fire anyone that tries to organize.
For what it's worth, the fact that a country with a much greater dedication to organized labor than the US, namely Finland, is currently the envy of the developed world for its educational achievement in public schools, the existence of teachers' unions per se is clearly not the problem here.
I suppose you could always hire a few Pinkertons...
> (4-6% annual raises, EVERY YEAR)
Am I the only one who thinks a 4% annual raise -- that's ~1.5% annually above inflation -- is a perfectly normal rate of increase? I would hope that a year of experience would be worth a 2% raise. That's going from $50k salary to $51k salary, with inflation adjustment. Not exactly Goldman Sachs.
You missed an opportunity to call me a jibe-ass turkey.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Here is what I anticipate something along these lines in the next 10+ years.
1) Students are required to learn via computer.
2) Reduce the number of Course hours by 2 and extend Art, Music, Sports, Ect time by two hours.
3) Students who progress test poorly via computer are forced to have extended after school tutoring with 4 kids per teacher for two hours extra of school per day of your grades slip below a B or you TEST anything below a C.
4) The hours that students report to tutoring is in blocks. Teacher has 8 blocks allowing for 32 dumb students.
5) Kids that get an F require 2 Hours of EXTRA tutoring 1 student per teacher.
Kids are motivated to stay in C+ range because they don't want to be required stay after school later and miss out on sports or whatever they do at home.
Teachers are still on staff for tutoring basis but not as many and hopefully only the ones that work well with students who have learning issues.
If a student wishes to OPT for Tutoring they can do so.
There is not a single state in the U.S. where average teacher's salary is below $40,000 a year. Not only that but the starting salary for teacher's in every state is in excess of $30,000.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Unions are simply a group of individuals meeting together and deciding to all walk out of work on the same day if they don't like the conditions. You cannot make unions illegal without violating the right to free association that all Americans have. You can only bar the state from engaging with these unions in collective bargaining, institute a "right to work" law, and/or fire anyone that tries to organize.
For what it's worth, the fact that a country with a much greater dedication to organized labor than the US, namely Finland, is currently the envy of the developed world for its educational achievement in public schools, the existence of teachers' unions per se is clearly not the problem here.
No one has thought to make work stoppage illegal (except those employees with careers related to safety) but what they have toyed with was not making the unions a de facto government sanctioned requirement (which is what happens when union dues are required to be paid automatically by all employees).
The existence of a union is never a problem. The existence of a number of rules within and related to the union that basically makes hard work and excellence irrelevant IS the problem. It is the problem in a nutshell.
None of those are "in an area with a relatively low cost of living, mind you"
Chicago, for one.
I taught myself how to program in BASIC at the age of six. In 6th grade I switched from BASIC to the more structured way of programming in Turbo BASIC. Then a year or two later I taught myself C++ using Turbo C++. I even accidentally discovered how to do a recursive descent parser along the way.
However, it wasn't until I went to university and began to learn formal algorithm theory (from teachers), programming language theory, and computational theory, compiler design, that I was really able to put it all together. I could hack code before, but after being taught, I could actually produce something useful. I had formerly almost discovered recursive descent parsing, but my education taught me how to do it right, how to do error recovery, how formal grammars work, how to do other forms of parsing (and lexing). I was taught how to pick appropriate data structures, and how to use them. All of these things I do on a fairly regular basis now.
Could I have learned all that online? Perhaps, but having a real human to even answer questions and share experiences is invaluable.
Despite these kids learning how to play alphabet songs and unblock the camera, did they truly learn anything about software development, or how a computer actually works? Or really anything that could lift them out of poverty?
Ironically, here in N.A. where we generally don't have crippling poverty and everyone has a computer, laptop, phone, or tablet, and very few people know how they work. So maybe none of what I said matters. In some ways technology is returning us to a guild age, and our technology may as well run on magic. We don't care, so long as it does our bidding. I used to wonder how a civilization could lose knowledge and fall back into a primitive state as many a science fiction story relates. But now I realize how it could happen very easily.
Cool logo today... the old VGA font is available on any linux system as console8x16.pcf (Console). Or "Perfect DOS VGA 437.ttf" downloadable on the internet.
A masters degree is almost required to get a permanent job teaching in Canada now. How many MBAs do you know that make only 80k?
As senior teacher should be making as much if not more than a developer. We programmers like to think we're the shit, but what we do is really quite unimportant when compared to what a teacher does.
Not a f***ing hope!
If a child is taught to be resourceful, pretty much anything they want to learn can be found online. I did not learn the way teachers taught and was getting "F"'s because homework was 80% of my grade. I aced all my tests but failed the class because I got bored doing the same thing over and over as homework. "Why do i have to do 50 of the same math problems over and over.
In life I have decided to do many things restoring cars, Rvs, Building electronics, repairing stuff I have never heard of before. A quick google search and a little research and I am doing stuff I never went to school for never studied.
Now I agree there are things that can't be taught and that we need teachers for. But I think computers can replace at least 50% of teachers.
Rochester, NY.
I was watching the news and they of course covered it; The teachers were striking because they only make $72,500 a year. The average medium income for Chicago is 41K/year. So next time you say "teachers don't get paid enough" think of Chicago. An dont forget. They only work 180 days a year.
Admittedly i know little about teachers salaries but if that Chicago is any example you being fed a line of crap.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
Current issue of American Educator has an interesting article -- 10-year study in Philadelphia, comparing rich and poor sections of town, in libraries where a multimillion dollar grant allowed them to provide equivalent resources in books and computer learning software. The results seen by those researchers are that the rich kids were guided by their parents in using all of those things, while the poor kids without any assistance or background knowledge failed to use them successfully. End result: poor kids actually fell more behind the rich than when they started out.
"Over the 10 years we spent in these two libraries, the gap in the amount of time adolescents spent reading increased substantially. Regardless of technology (books or computers), reading tends to predominate in Chestnut Hill but not in Lillian Marrero. After years of technology improvements, there is now a larger gap between these two communities in the amount of time spent reading than before. In fact, our rough estimates indicate that 10- to 12-year-olds at Chestnut Hill were reading more than twice as many words as their peers at Lillian Marrero." [p. 23]
http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2012/Neuman.pdf
These are dedicated researchers studying the issue for 10 years. This is not the head of OLPC pitching questionable and unverifiable extraordinary claims, in the quest for more funding (“If it gets funded, it would need to continue for another a year and a half to two years to come to a conclusion that the scientific community would accept,” Negroponte said, FTA).
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Don't forget, the teacher's union got teachers awesome perks.
Retirement, bonuses for continuing education, health benefits, etc ... all paid for by the school system.
- Mother was an accountant for a school system.
It's like the cops who complain at the crappy pay they get, but what you don't hear publicly, is all the perks and shift differentials, holiday pay, and also an awesome retirement. If a cop works a Sunday night that is also Christmas, he'll make a weeks pay in one night - and all he has to do is pull over drunks.
Both of those professions allow you to retire after 20 years with full pay. So, you're out of college at 22 or HS at 18 in the case of a cop, and you're "retired" at 42 - pretty young. Ready to go off for a second career to retire at 65 with TWO retirements.
Being a teacher can be a sweet deal: less than 40 hours a week, Summers off, holidays out the yin yang,.... I'd do it but I hate children: they should be eaten and not seen.
Dey tuk err jerbs!
But it will take you 10x longer than having someone who knows what they're doing teach you.
It's just not efficient.
Which is amusingly ironic, considering how Slashdotters lay down and whine like helpless mewling pussies when they can't find a job, blaming offshoring, ageism, non-degreed-ism, and affirmative action.
True dat.
The difference is that only government employees can use the state's taxing power to enforce their demands on the rest of the population. The most everybody else can do is bitch about it.
I've heard it two ways. Do you prefer it as a tetrameter quatrain or as heptameter couplet?
within days they were playing alphabet songs and withing a few months how to hack the user interface to enable blocked camera functionality.
And within a year they had a better grasp of English spelling and grammar than the editors at Slashdot.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The bigger problem is that people don't recognize that these devices AREN'T replacing the teacher. They can make the teacher way more effective. Think of the classroom like an assembly line for a moment. Traditional teaching has one person working (the teacher) during lecture and the other 30 are relatively inactive. Now, we can let the kids consume the lecture on their own, at their own pace, and they can come to school and do examples, and problems, and there are 30 students in the classroom actively working. They can ask each other questions, and can escalate questions to the teacher. Right now, we let them be inactive, and then send them home where, often, there isn't a person they can ask questions of, to do their homework. If they are completely lost, they wasted a full day, and have to wait until the next day to ask questions, which often means they are behind for the new day's lecture as well.
Pull out the Jump to Conclusions (TM) mat!
Actually, they have tried to make teacher strikes illegal in certain cases. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2012/0912/Chicago-teachers-strike-Illegal-under-Illinois-law
Of course not. The problem a lot of people have with unions isn't the union but rather the effects caused by the presence of the union.
Typical Issues
1. The inability to cull weaker performers.
2. Wage increases above a COLA increase to bottom line performers.
3. Overemployment. The very first post is a prime example of this (requiring a teach for each online course). The auto companies are usually running around 133% employees to what they would actually need to cover for #1.
Tom originally marketed his phonograph as a revolutionary education tool. Said it would turn schools upside down. Made the same claim for his invention of motion pictures twenty years later.
I wish my university classes contained only myself or one other student.
Do you actually _know_ any teachers? Teachers do get some vacation in the summer, but they also have to prepare their lesson plans for the fall. They work long hours during the school year because they have to grade papers and be prepared for each day's lesson. Imagine teaching from 8am to 3pm every day—that's five hours of teaching. How much time would you want to prepare? Now add in correcting tests, quizzes and papers. How long does that take? Yes, they get two and a half months off in the summer, during which they may spend time doing useless things like taking professional improvement courses to keep up with new material. But the notion that they are getting an incredible deal is simply untrue.
My upstairs neighbors until recently were school teachers. They do not get $80k/year—if they did they would be buying a house, not renting, and driving a BMW (or maybe a Prius), not a tiny econobox. They certainly wouldn't have put up with their upstairs neighbors for six months (yelling, swearing, loud music, doors slamming, garbage in the basement). We only put up with it because we knew we'd be moving into the house we were building on our geek salaries and parental largesse.
The idea that people should don a hair shirt in order to do useful and important work for society is deeply fucked up.
Show me the piece of hardware or software that can push a child to reach their full potential. If every person who feels like teaching is such a great deal had to do the job themselves for a year or two there wouldn't be so many people making those statements.
Standardized tests are a great way to tell if a student is good at taking standardized tests. They are a very poor measure of teaching effectiveness.
Perhaps on statewide averages. My wife is a Kindergarten teacher and makes 22k a year, with no benefits. That's with a Bachelor's and certifications in 3 separate states as well as multiple subjects. And she's quite good too, her students from last year averaged 2nd-3rd grade reading level at the start of their first grade year.
So move to another school you say? We've tried, no luck for 5 years running getting in anywhere else. Pretty sad that she earns less than 1/3 of my salary with a 4 year degree and multiple certifications when I have no degree and no (current) certifications.
FWIW, we live in a city of 300k people, in Indiana, with a decently stable local economy (as stable economies go in the US right now, anyway).
Just another ignorant American.
> Did you come to me because you are a teacher( university). You're afraid that you often use a rather antique method in teaching: the Socratic method. Since you teach philosophy, most often one-to-one or one-to-two, perhaps it isn't such an inappropriate method. If I can get a machine to do the teaching nearly as well and as inexpensively( although it isn't an inexpensive method), have at it. Best wishes, Bob?
I moved away from the Bay Area because it was so damned expensive to live there. $80k is better than a lot of people there make, but you are not buying a house on that—you are renting in a fairly crappy neighborhood.
66 teachers heading for the way of the dodo 99
Dooooooh-DO the kid from outer space. [cue groaning]
Having been through this myself a few years ago, I was looking at $22,400/yr starting salary, plus another $2K/yr bonus for a "high demand" field.
Oh, this was Brevard County, Florida.
$100K here in Ontario, but we're now broke because of it. (The premier's wife is a teacher)
http://www.ednewscolorado.org/2011/10/03/25456-achievement-of-online-students-drops-over-time-lags-statewide-averages-on-every-indicator
I think the problem with questions like this is that it seems to underrate the complexity of learning and teaching. I was homeschooled until college and the vast majority of my learning before college involved me working through books and watching video lectures alone, but individual comprehension efforts are only one part of a holistic learning effort and you still need peering or someone to ask questions along the way.
Before college, I would say this isn't as important due to the ease of learning pre-college concepts, but at the college level I think peering is important for developing deep, thorough comprehension. You simply need someone to converse with in a natural, humanistic way that is able to provide more insight in to a topic whether this person is a teacher or a fellow peer. So unless human level AI is developed, we can't fully expect to replace the concept, but I think we can certainly change the way learning and teaching is conducted.
Lastly, sometimes I wonder if teachers are needed at younger levels like grades 1-5 as anything more than just facilitators or babysitters. It would seem like technology could replace a teacher at this level simply because of the nature of the concepts being so simplistic. I could see children in the future going to school (or heaven forbid working from home) and working in some holistic learning sim for 3-4 hours a day with maybe 1-2 teachers overseeing progress for like 150 kids. My wife used to be a 5th grade teacher and the amount of fluff time spent trying to get a class to learn a simple concept or fact was just mind blowing to me.
so, let me see if get this:
If you work as a teacher in a "big city" for 25 or 30 years I can hope to make a living wage.
Or almost a living wage. In 25-30 years, $75k isn't going to buy cat food.
No, thank you.
-- Sig under construction...
Of course Chicago has been using the Charter School initiative as a tool for union-busting. Senior teachers with those nice $80k/year are getting fired for cause from the main system and then rehired in the Charter system for half what they were making, with less benefits. And while you can do pretty well on $80k/year in Chicago, it's not exactly mad money. You _might_ be able to afford a condo somewhere decent, if you are frugal.
The majority of parents are extremely fearful of any change that could in the slightest way harm their kids chances of getting into a top college. A few years back the parents of he Disney created futuristic town called Celebration forced the schools to shed their experimental new educational methods and return to traditional teaching for this reason. Which was silly because Celebration's civic charter was to be the Experimental Community of Tomorrow.
Therefore I doubt any broad change. there will always be adventurous parents more interested in getting the best education rather than the best colleges (not necessiarily conflicting). So Montessori, Khan Academy etc will survive.
in college get rid of the ones who just read from book and the big lecture classes
Yep, in order for teachers to be obsolete, first you need students who are interested in learning.
Personally, I think the goal of having every child educated to the same level is noble but utopian - there's no real need for it since they don't retain knowledge of subjects they're not interested in anyway.
Also, disruptive students make it harder for teachers to do their job and for kids who actually want to learn. If they don't want to be in school, send them home. It's that simple.
The idea that teachers should have to do new lesson plans every year is something that I keep hearing. Unless the programs are changing drastically every year, this should be done once centrally and used by everyone.
Unless you live in an insanely cheap area, why are you complaining about this? I made more than this (in 1984 dollars) my first year out of school, with neither a high school diploma or a college degree. Why is it that it's scandalous when teachers make decent money after all the education they had to pay for just to get their foot in the door?
He was just describing what was sitting behind the OLPC worker.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
Slashdot is dominated by anti-intellectual morons these days.
Plus there's the whole teacher's strike in Chicago that's fresh in peoples' memory. And all the incredibly one-sided reporting that was done on it, of course...
I would tend to agree. The biggest problem with the teachers' union in the US is that the goals of its leadership are not aligned with with the goal of educating children.
$80k a year in New York. Given cost of living there, that's not surprising, or terribly impressive.
Here in Ohio, the average, last I checked was between $45 and $50k. Not bad, but not particularly great either. My job is a hell of a lot easier, requires less education and pays significantly more, and I'm at the low end of the pay scale where I work.
Every teach I've run into has had to take classes over the summer, to keep up to day, maybe more so in the higher grades than the lower grades, but the higher grades also tend to get the better salaries. I.E. that 3 months isn't all vacation. Add to that they typically have more than a 40 hour/week job during the school year (lesson planning/grading), and that three month vacation isn't as impressive as you think.
Oh, and the schools often only fund part of the extra education they need to keep certifications.
Call me nuts, but it seems more likely you were dumped by one of those teachers, and are bitter, and so this is just a way of taking it out on them.
That being said, online courses are useful, but without an individual to provide feedback to the student an help clarify things in different ways, the education received will be of lower quality. Will the number of teachers needed be reduce - yes. This could help fewer teachers leverage larger classrooms and/or provide more personal attention.
The idea that teachers should have to do new lesson plans every year is something that I keep hearing. Unless the programs are changing drastically every year, this should be done once centrally and used by everyone.
They are. Different districts, different principals, different rules that change by the year/mood of the administration.
Administrator gets a bug up their ass to try some New And Awesome Teaching Method, demands their staff use said method, and there you go. New lesson plans.
Add to that, kids are different every year. What worked for one group of kids may not work for next year's group, and teachers need to adapt just like everyone else.
On Wednesday, in Idaho, voters are going to the polls to decide whether or not to repeal State laws changing how education works in Idaho.
Some of the requirements of the new laws
1. Merit Pay for Teachers
2. Parental input into hiring/firing of teachers
3. Elimination of Tenure
4. High School students required to complete two on-line courses in order to graduate
5. Laptop Computer for each high school student
6. More dual credit classes for high school students, so they can complete more of their general education college requirements while still in Idaho
National Education Association has dumped millions into the No campaign so far.
You're kidding, right? The evil capitalist who is oppressing them is you, demanding that teachers do incredibly hard work for crappy benefits and crappy pay. Just because someone is working a government job doesn't mean that there's no price pressure. The price pressure is actually worse, because jerks like you think it's perfectly fine to just keep cutting their pay year after year, and moreover think that they shouldn't be entitled to complain when you do.
Khan always gets dragged around town like a magic solution to everything. /wrong/*.
But it seems that nobody of those doing the dragging ever tried it... or didn't have any actual intelligence in the first place and therefore couldn't tell...
but Khan is *really bad*, and often *plain
Which should already be obvious, just by looking at his qualifications. Or rather the lack thereof.
Sorry, his physics explanations are often so not right that they're not even wrong anymore. Meaning the result is right, but for all the wrong reasons, since the path of getting there is utterly nonsensical, and shows a blatant lack of understanding.
Basically he thinks like a memorization monkey, where he thinks that being able to come to the same conclusion as your teachers, by robotically following a (very wrong path), equals having understood the subject, and then is too full of himself, to even question any of it. (That too would require a level of intelligence he obviously doesn't have.)
All in all, Khan fails so bad, that to actually learn the topics, you not only have to un-learn the nonsense he "taught" you, but re-teach your mind what it means to *actually* understand something. (Not just "Khan 'understand'" it.)
The only thing that's true, is that school is even worse, since school doesn't even hide that it only tries to make a obedient memorization monkey non-individual out of you.
For public schools in Calgary, the lowest salary is $48,025 and highest is $98,938. Prinicpals make more.
http://local38.teachers.ab.ca/SiteCollectionDocuments/Local38.teachers.ab.ca/Documents/ATA%20LOU%202011%20Rates.pdf
If teachers complain about classroom size or lack of resources I'll listen. But try telling me you're underpaid (especially when you consider that salary is for 10 months work, not 12) and I have no time for them.
Only if you're one of the apparatchik.
What really sucks is being a teacher in the south... you get shit pay
Average teacher pay in Georgia is $52K a year (in a state where the average salary is about $42K). That's hardly "shit pay." Teachers in GA generally start in the mid-high 30's and can go well into the 80's.
What political party do you join when you don't like Bible-thumpers *or* hippies?
Virtual teachers (think of souped up wii or xBox instructors) will bring home schooling/private tutoring to everyone. Will 7 year olds still need adult supervision? Of course. But the end of public schools is at hand. It's about f**king time.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
They're also a very good way of encouraging a school environment where teachers train students for standardized tests.
Here in Canada teachers can easily make over $100K, in fact my fiance's uncle makes exactly that for teaching physical education.
A competing online academy run by Sal Khan's jewish cousin?
Brick and mortar classrooms are becoming increasingly archaic. Tenure too, most likely. Online learning. Online chat and questions. Face to face video. There's just not that much gained by physical presence when learning something like history or math.
The only "brick and mortar" that makes sense are physical science labs and testing centers. As for the latter, an ongoing schedule of competency tests, taken by subject, would allow students to scale their own education according to schedule and need rather than pursuing the arbitrary goal of a "degree."
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
I know a lot of teachers and not one of them does professional development during the summer. I know a number who spend a lot of their time in their gardens babying their tomatoes and some that do a lot of hiking and other outdoor activities.
As for preparing lessons, the first few years, yes, teachers have more work in that regards. However, after a couple of years, their plans just need updates/tweaking so that burden lessens (no pun intended). Again, I speak from experience of knowing a lot of teachers.
In the IT world, I'm expected to work 8 hours a day, sometimes more. I expect teachers to work the same number of hours.
nonsense, the public unions are an abomination, they are not established to be on another side from an 'evil capitalist', there is no 'evil capitalist' on the other side. On the other side there is the public, isn't there? Actually the other side is not the public, that's the problem, the 'other side' consists of politicians. The public, the actual public that pays for all of the bills doesn't have a say in the deal between the politicians and the public union.
The politician gives the union whatever the union wants and the union votes for the politician, thus re-electing the politician, so the public is cut out of the decision how much money is spent on government and who is the politician in government, because the public union creates all that support for the politician that plays ball with the union.
---
The side that gets screwed is not an 'evil capitalist', it's everybody whose pay is cut every time a public union gets a raise. The other side is the public, whose pay is cut every time a politician, supported by a public union gets his way and helps himself and his friends.
When you say: "jerks like you think it's fine to keep cutting pay year after year", you are talking about the people whose MONEY goes towards the government.
You are right, many people are TIRED of paying the government, year after year, more and more, that's right. Those are the people that have to WORK and their MONEY, their LIVES are being bled by the politicians and the public unions.
Yes, if the public wants to CUT money that goes towards government, the public must be able to do it! The public must be able TO FIRE politicians and TO FIRE ANY government worker, including and up to all teachers, that's right!
It's actually their absolute right, the right of the public to decide that they are not willing to pay for it and they are then not interested in that service.
If you hire a gardener, it's your right to fire the gardener. If you go to a store to buy food one day, it's your right to go to another store or not to go to a store, but to go to a village market somewhere or to grow your food yourself. Nobody is entitled to your money, including the politicians and the unions.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Having worked in middle schools, high schools, with community college transfer students, and then the resulting university undergrads, I have to say: If the general population doesn't HAVE to learn something or if there isn't something someone sufficiently passionate to help them learn something new regardless, they won't bother.
I absolutely agree, as someone who has also been an educator for well over a decade, at various levels from secondary education up through university teaching.
The rest of America's children do not thrive on learning and providing online education will not change that.
I agree. On the other hand, I think we may need to ask why that is so.
My experience with my own kid and with very young kids (up to age 3 or so at least) is that they do actually thrive on learning. But at some point -- whether due to no one challenging them, parental attitudes or actions, attitudes of their peers, attitudes of teachers, curriculum or classroom environments that aren't engaging, society priorities in the U.S. in general, etc. -- the vast majority of kids in the United States begin to view further learning as boring or as a burden or (perhaps most importantly) as something different from "living," in the same way most people refer to "work" as chores they must do, while the rest of what they do is "their life."
The challenge of any type of teaching method is to convince most students that learning is interesting and worthwhile, despite most messages in our society that don't value it. Or to fight the messages that only emphasize it as a direct means to an end (e.g., "if you go to college, you can get a higher salary," rather than "if you go to college, you can understand the world better and have new perspectives that would provide skills and experiences to deal with a greater variety of problems and situations... which could also potentially allow you to go into a wider variety of careers and jobs").
A good teacher can find ways to engage students and revive those innate learning tendencies that every toddler has. A series of bad teachers could shut kids down for good so that they thoroughly believe societal messages that say that school is pointless or only something that "nerds" enjoy.
Electronic resources can do the same -- they can facilitate learning in some circumstances, but in other cases, like a bad teacher, they will be woefully inadequate.
Unless we change our societal attitudes about the value of learning, we'll always be fighting an uphill battle. Real human interaction with actual teachers can be valuable for many kids, if the teachers care and can engage the students. Electronic resources alone would probably not be sufficient unless we can completely change our perspective on learning, and even then, a computer is not going to replace the real-time adaptability of a skilled teacher in targeting the needs of individual students any time soon.
Agreed, teachers can do important work (i.e. really make a difference in dozens of lives). How many of them try to make a difference? Probably most of them (at least when they start). How many actually succeed in making an important contribution? hmmm
Anyway, my point wasnt to denigrate the work of teachers or to say that programmers are special. I was merely pointing out that the salary reality is the opposite of what you would expect. What most people expect is well-paid developers and poorly paid, much-abused teachers.
Have you tried these online courses?
A business executive was once asked what is the best word processing program and responded by saying a good secretary.
Nothing will replace a good teacher. A good teacher helps you learn faster with more depth. That is not to say that computer based education is pointless because this type of education can help especially in areas of low resources, covering areas that might not be covered, or for basic knowledge.
So computers may help and may even be good alternatives in some cases, but just as there is no replacement for a good secretary, there is no replacement for a good teacher.
Of course everybody knows that. That's why they have to resort to such hysterical propaganda to keep everyone distracted from this obvious truth.
$80k is better than a lot of people there make, but you are not buying a house on that
... if only one spouse works. But if both spouses work, and both are teachers, that is an annual household income of $160k. Even in San Jose you can afford a (modest) house on that.
Argument by anecdote. Whatever. The teachers I know do spend time in the summer on professional development, but that's probably because I live in a progressive state where the state is willing to pay for things like that. If you live in a state where they try to milk the teachers for as little money as possible, it wouldn't surprise me if after a while they stop caring and just spend the summer in the garden.
In the IT world, you probably expect to get paid a decent salary, and if you're like most IT people, you have on times and off times, and during the off times you do a lot of stuff that would be hard to characterize as "work." Teachers are on every day they are in class, and they are on whenever they are grading papers. There are no slack times.
Ha, Ha, NO!
Now it might not be teachers standing in front of a classroom, but you STILL NEED TEACHERS! Somebody has to make those Kahn Academy videos after all. having kids with learning problems, the Kahn videos are nice, but they are quite BAD at teaching.
That said, teaching in lower grades is more about the science and art of TEACHING and not the individual classes. I think that is one thing that could be changed with technology. Choosing teachers best for the individual group of students, and pull the technical details from various online places for consistency of the programs.
The problem isn't the rate of increase, it's that the people paying for it don't have a choice in the matter.
Those of us who don't work for the state can't bribe our bosses with our votes to threaten to steal our neighbors' houses if they don't give us what we want.
I'm seeing most comments referring to High School. As a high school teacher (and, full disclosure, a member of local union leadership), HS is the area most likely to be replaced.
But that's about the extent of it. MS will never be replaced (TRY and get hormonal teenagers to do things consistently without some structure...
and as for elementary... good luck with that.
The answer is no. Here's why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines
Masters or MBA? They are not the same thing.
In any case, how many people with a master's degree do I know that make less than 80k?
Answer: most of them
Speaking as someone who got their masters in CS recently, it is by no means a path to career success! Sometimes I suspect it might even be a negative (in hiring).
Oh so NOW you're listening to FDR. Isn't interesting how you listen to him when he says something you think supports YOUR position?
Why are you cloaking yourself in the authority of another? What's up with that?
He said "even" FDR. Basically he's saying this idea is accepted across different ideologies, even ones which he is against.
There is one enemy there, and you're attacking the wrong party. It's not the teachers you should blame, it's the politicans. Who you're responsible for electing.
Actually, roman_mir/udachny doesn't live in the US (so he says), or any of those evil socialist nations in the West (so he says). He avoids the state whenever possible. So he's not responsible for electing those politicians.
But that is precisely why he is ignored by the politicians. He can't threaten the politicians. He can't vote them out, since he can't vote period. The politicians can get into power without and despite of him.
So he blames the voters, the teachers, the unions, the liberals, the socialists, etc. But it's the same thing: he poses no threat to any of those people. He's practically on the other side of the world.
Yeah, I pay taxes too, and I'm not a teacher. And yes, I think people who want to cut teachers' salaries to the bone are jerks and skinflints. These kids are going to be supporting you in your retirement. You need them to get a decent education. It's no joke. You are the evil boss here—you see them as a cost center, not a profit center, and so you want to minimize the cost, regardless of the long-term results. And you'll be whining twenty years down the road when there's nobody qualified to provide your health care, and nobody fixing the roads, and all the other things you decided were too expensive to fund with your precious tax money.
I was not complaining. I was refuting the AC's claim:
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
In the 3rd world this is the model for how education will be done in the future. How many Stanford professors would be willing to travel in person to the African continent to conduct lectures? Not many I'm willing to bet. But prerecorded lectures could be easily available on cheap tablet computers. The main problems with university education is logistics (you have to travel to the class) and cost (it's too expensive - even for 1st world students). Prerecorded lectures are not ideal but they are a heck of a lot better than what is available to them now. And they can be delivered 1000 times cheaper than in person lectures.
Because of the unions, and the political implications of campaign contributions, this is going to be difficult tower to topple. Universities are already starting to provide distance learning, partly to keep up with places like University of Phoenix and partly because of the sheer economics of it. Recorded lectures are way, way cheaper to provide. Eventually it will be like the news broadcasts - you have attractive actors reading from scripts. Presentation will become more important than content and content will become a commodity. One day you might see professors working as independent contractors and selling lectures by the download.
However, as someone that has worked in Higher Ed I can tell you that things change there very slowly. If they are not careful the new technology will simply leapfrog over them.
It's coming. Fast. Technology will supplant this rotten system with better results at prices affordable for all. At first rich kids will have virtual tutors which will give them a greater advantage. Then the price of these systems will drop and affordable schools will pop-up all over the place. The evil that is the present day public schools are coming to an end.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
I teach math at university, and the level of apathy and carelessness in work is very high.
Maybe. If you can scrape together the downpayment while renting. I had a house in San Francisco back when prices were about half what they are now, and paying the mortgage, taxes and insurance was pretty painful. That was on $100k/year. I guess on $160k/year you could do it, but it wouldn't be a comfortable, carefree living—you'd be living on the edge, wondering when your next pay cut would drive you over it.
Think of the classroom like an assembly line
And that's the problem right there.
These kids are going to be supporting you in your retirement
- that's where you are wrong.
The kids don't have money and don't have jobs to support anybody. The people who are getting the entitlements paid to them now (SS, Medicare), paid 1/10 to 1/3 of what they are getting out of that system and they were the people that supported the politicians that set that system up, which obviously was never sustainable. Now that's a mathematical certainty. Of-course the old folks, who are getting those benefits, are often the folks who have their own savings, have less to no debt, own their houses, they paid much lower taxes in both, absolute value and as a percentage of their earnings.
Those were the people who were getting paid in money that was much more valuable. Just in the last 40 years the paychecks lost 98% of their purchasing power due to inflation and that doesn't even take into account all the new taxes and all the debt that is now upon the young.
The public funded debt, the unfunded liabilities, the 'insurance' of all kinds, be it to the bank account holders (FDIC) or to student loan creditors (gov't guaranteed student loans) or to mortgage creditors (FHA and F&F and now the Fed itself). More and more is piled up upon the young.
It's a huge wealth transfer from the young and the poor the old and the wealthy. The sad part is just how blind the young and the poor are not to understand it. But by the time they will get it, it will be so late...
I don't believe that the young will want or will be able to support the old in just 10 years time. The lucky ones will leave in search of a better life, just like their predecessors did when they came to America.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
It is actually worth more than American dollars. Read the sign.
1 Canadian dollar = 1.0002 US dollars $10k Canadian is worth $10k + $2 American.
Let me write a program that writes programs, and will see if you move or lazy ass or not.
If you think the most everybody can do is bitch, then you're doomed to fail.
Where do you think the state and thus gov employees gets its taxes? From everybody else.
Stop playing the victim.
Slashdot has become the haven of anonymous morons. It's a shadow of its former self.
One does not simply misspell great websites.
Then it would be 80k €, no? Would be weird to use $.....
Not all of Europe uses the Euro. Like: Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, the UK (England, Scotland, Wales) . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I see the following
1) A lot of changes like you said
2) Many students fail and teachers get sued by stoopid parents.
3) All students back to the teacher, because we can not have different levels of knowledge.
4) Kids are not motivated at all.
They must all be the same and have the same knowledge, except when it comes to sports where there can only be one winner and all the rest are losers.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I work at an educational software company and we think teachers are very important. I assume most kids can self-educate to a certain degree, but 80/20 kicks in an you need a teacher to push them up and beyond what one can learn on their own.
I'm not American, so I don't live in any state. If you look at my previous post in this thread you'll see that the teachers in my province/city make a more-than-decent wage ($48,000 - 98,000). In fact, their starting wage is ~$10,000/year more than what starting wages in IT are in my area.
Not sure where you work, but we don't have a lot of downtime - not like where everybody gets two weeks at Christmas/New Year and another week for spring break and 12 professional development days throughout the year . If we had that much downtime, they would cut a position.
WE did the same thing and had ZERO problems like you did. There was two differences...
1 - Private School.
2 - No Teacher Union.
Public schools have these problems, Private schools don't.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
80k Hong Kong a month?
80k US a year?
As a local teaching in local schools or a foreign expat teaching in private schools?
My sister in law teaches at one of the local schools with a masters degree. She clears 2.5k US a month, maybe. And she still picks up grading during the public exam months for extra income.
We live in a heady world where we can superscale everything; 100 Million iPads, Khan Academy etc. We see both of these as pretty much the same thing. We can make more widgets, we can make more educated people.
The problem is that true education doesn't scale. We really, really want it to, so we have set up a scenario where we are testing to learn. We build elaborate online systems that allow people to do better on standardized tests, and call this a success. It is a self-reflective argument that does nothing to actually improve cognitive skills beyond the narrow confines we have set out for ourselves.
The ugly truth is that a profound, sea-change in someone's life that comes about from experience can't be replicated in a super scalar education system.
Experience is expensive. We want it to be so cheap as to be almost free. It is expensive not in terms of online learning, but in the commitment of time it takes to be truly proficient at something. We can teach people to do well on tests. But it is much harder to have students apply this knowledge to unique and novel situations. It is hard to teach lateral thinking. It comes from practice, which a online "one size fits all" course isn't going to supply. There simply is not enough resources and time to evaluate every students own contribution. It is up to the student to decide if they are successful. It is up to the student's support infrastructure (parents, teachers, peers) to help push them along, to get in the habit of asking questions and seeking answers.
OLPC is a technocratic solution. We throw technology at students and let them figure it out. It has been a failure because there is little actual pedagogy to go along with it, because pedagogy is not sexy - it is not wrapped up in a tablet computer or even a bright green laptop. This has been the case for almost 100 years now. We are hopelessly stuck in a rut. This story illustrates that. We throw tablets at kids - and guess what - they figure them out. it speaks more about good software design (the tablets are intuitive to use) and less about actual learning outcomes that allow for scaffolding of knowledge. I believe that this scenario is actually doing students a grave disservice - a bait and switch. Instead of getting a quality education, they get tablets and online learning.
I am not saying that online learning is bad. It is successful when done well. But it is akin to a diet of mostly vitamins - it can only supply so much that a student needs to be successful. Students need soft skills, they need the ability to move beyond compartments of knowledge into the bigger world. The best minds work this way - and I believe it is a teachable skill.
Eventually, we will pay teachers so little that either one of two things will happen - we will get exactly the education system we are willing to pay for, or everyone will have to take ownership for their child's education, for the system itself will not be able to offer much help at all for those that fall through the cracks. If you don't do well on standardized tests, it is a failure of the student, not the educational system.
And rents in non gang raped neighborhoods are at $2500.00 a month.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You are right, They actually value education and educators there.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
A three month vacation? Pardon me but uhmmmmm no. What you get as a teacher is a three month layoff without pay. Yes they might receive paychecks but that is money withheld from their "in-session" checks. As for working during the summer, yes teachers do. Even if it's two weeks it's still two weeks without pay.
load "$",8,1
Well it is the biggest barrier to the use of the technology.
I've worked in the medical device industry as well... and... probably the biggest problem there as well is the various professional organization and unions. We could do healthcare much cheaper and much more effectively if we were allowed to. This is especially true in the diagnostic area.
It's the same with teachers. A large part of what they do can and should be automated. Lessons plans, presentations, tests. Now many would argue... but that loses the individual attention... and my response is simple. You average teacher simply does what is in the textbook or the common lesson plans anyways. That's just how teaching is. There are thousands of schools and thousands of high school teachers... and really... and most classes teach the same thing. You're not that special as a student... and the teacher is really not that special.
Now could there be a super amazing teacher who is able to captivate their students? Quite possibly. But there's also some horrible teachers that probably hurt their students. Automated and digitized teachers will provide *good enough* and *consistent* and *affordable* education to students.
This is in the same way as automating much medical work will provide *good enough* and *consistent* and *affordable* healthcare to people.
This is stuff what should have happened to education a decade ago. So the only thing newsworthy in the article is to talk about the barrier to its implementation, which is the teacher union and their perverse power in society... as are most public sector unions.
and they have Poutine!
http://members.shaw.ca/kcic1/poutine.html
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Can you give us a source for the "4-6%" yearly pay increase? You also say "an already generous starting salary", which also seems like speculation. Both my parents were teachers in Michigan. They said that Michigan was one of the better states to teach in because of how much they paid their teachers. My dad (34 years of teaching, nearly had his PhD) never earned anywhere near $80k.
Why do so many people continue to use the word "jive" incorrectly? If you're going to use a word, at least know what it means. That is a pet peeve of mine.
This is the way I feel about most unions now. Long gone are the days when people were risking their lives, working in the mines doing 16 hour shifts. Most union positions end up having ridiculous numbers of sick days, outrageous pensions unheard of in non-union positions, and inability to get fired even for extreme incompetence. These are the only things they have to ask for anymore because most of the old health, safety, and working hours problem have been dealt with through actual laws that keep everyone safe, even without a union. My local transit authority went on strike a few years back and one of they things they fought for was allowing the drivers to drive ungodly numbers of hours. That's right, the union was actually trying to make things less safe by allowing drivers to drive 70+ hours a week so the employees could make tons of money on overtime.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Yeah, I'm not getting how a starting wage that lets you survive without having to panhandle, and raises that bump up pay at a rate slightly higher than inflation, coupled with a decent enough pension that you'll be able to retire in moderate comfort (certainly not luxury) are reasons to hate teachers or teachers' unions.
Unless we're all jealous because almost most of us have been (have allowed ourselves to be) fucked out of those things, and many of us won't be able to retire at all unless we spend our last few working years making very, very high wages and/or win the stock market lottery, so we'd rather bitch about teachers holding on to the rudiments of a respectable wage and pension than fight for it ourselves.
Look up how much money you'll need to live the kind of lifestyle that $50,000/yr gets you now, in 2050. It's scary shit. That's assuming we fix the outrageous rates of increase in healthcare costs between now and then, too; if not, we're super fucked. We're headed either for developing nation status with a massive poor underclass, or some major social policy reforms along the lines of the New Deal.
New Jersey.
My district starts teachers at $50K/year, and we are not that unusual. That's $50K for a first year, non-tenured teacher.
Link: Hopewell Valley Regional School DIstrict teacher contract - skip to page 40 for the annual pay levels.
Ken
Hello? I'm a teacher in New Mexico, and we haven't had a raise of any kind, including COLA, in 4 years. Starting salary $30k, final salary after 30 years, with a Masters, is $55k. Are you kidding me?
Who is 'oppressing' these teachers?
Administrators who suddenly decide to have a 3 hour meeting at the very end of the work day. Administrators who fire qualified teachers and hire their unqualified good buddy for the same position. Administrators who refuse to purchase enough text books for the number of students in a class. Administrators who don't plan man-power properly and have 40-50 kids in a classroom built to hold 30 max. Administrators who give performance reviews based on the attractiveness of a teacher. Administrators who maintain physical environments that are not condusive to learning (too hot, too cold, dirty, depressing, interruptions to class time). Administrators who assign extra duties that interfere with student's education, at no extra pay. Administrators who create a schedule that does not allow for even a lunch break, much less a restroom break for the teachers.
All of these examples are things that actually happend in the district that I worked for, and had clauses in the contract that were added, negotiated by the union and the school district.
Yep, in order for teachers to be obsolete, first you need students who are interested in learning.
And so it goes. Failure.
Kids don't want to learn and that's cultural. When they are taught that school is a simple means to an end and they have no love of learning then whatever you do is going to fail.
In other words... stop linking education and job training.
That's great, so let the administrators then pay for all the union wages and respond to all of their demands. Oh, wait, that's 'unfair', right? How come the 'administrators' get to do whatever you say they get to do, but the public gets the bill from the unions and the public gets the screw from the unions when the unions support another politician that will play ball with the union, and then the politician gives the unions what they want, but also the politician gets himself and his friends everything he and they want?
So where does the public come into all of this? Oh, I forgot, there always has to be a sheep at the table when 2 wolves decide what's for dinner.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
OK, how many students in the Chicago Public School system can read at grade level? Are at grade level in math? What is the graduation rate? Pick your metric, any metric, and the Chicago Public School system sucks, but the teachers are very well paid.
Ken
And if your wife/husband/partner is also a teacher, you suddenly are rocketing towards the top 3% of all earners in the country with $160K/year, with guaranteed pensions and job security.
Ken
"some" is still ambiguous enough that, given how it was used, implies a still large number. But guess what... 1% is still 1%, even if that 1% is made up of say... 100 schools. If 99% of school teachers are getting paid 20k a year or whatever, then guess what... you can't just throw around "some school teachers get paid 80k a year, so don't worry, the job market is perfectly fine". It's like saying "Some people working at X company get paid 7 digits, so it's a very high paying place to work" when the CEO gets paid 7 digits, and all the bottom-rungs are at minimum wage.
You sir, made one big mistake in your calculation - teacher salaries are not stagnant.
Teacher take-home pay increases every year, between 2-4%, and, I don't want to shock you, but sometimes two workers will choose to live toghether and pool their income, giving them an annual take home pay of $150K...
Ken
Teachers in many California districts can make more than most engineers, and the majority of them get lifelong pensions. Talking about public school teachers, mind you. I agree with the thread starter. The teachers WILL take heavy casualties as the information age blossoms and is more offreely distributed, but it will take a long time because of said teachers union. I suspect the only way for it to happen is for self studiers of unaccredited online courses to enter the workforce without massive student debt, and for his to catch on.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
A masters degree is almost required to get a permanent job teaching in Canada now.
That seems stupid when you consider that there is no significant difference in either student test scores or subjective evaluations between teachers with masters degrees, and those with only a BA.
I agree, however I do not have a problem with the concept of voluntary unions per se, only when the unions get special treatment by the government, only when unions get special laws that protect unions, give them automatic entitlements and put all the obligations upon the employer.
Of-course at the end, the unions sow the seeds of their own destruction, as eventually and almost inevitably they turn the company uncompetitive, similar to what a parasite does to its host, but as the host dies, so may the parasite (*it's unlikely he'll be able to jump to another host, especially if all other hosts are also dying off because of their own parasites*).
But people shouldn't be prevented from associating voluntarily as long as they cannot pressure others into it and as long as government is not giving them any special privileges. Because what ends up happening in that situation, is a monopoly on labour, because most people forget: labour is a product (or a service) itself, that employers buy.
Since an employer is just another person going to a store to pick up something (some labour in case of an employer), he should be able to choose based on his own criteria, including the price. He should be able to leave the store, so to speak, he should be able to go to another store.
He should be able to do what he needs to do to stay competitive and thus to stay alive as a business.
An employer may find it efficient to negotiate with a union under some situations, but an employer shouldn't be forced to negotiate with it and other current or potential employees shouldn't be forced to join that union.
Under those conditions everybody's wishes are satisfied and it's done voluntarily, nobody is forced into anything. Unions are not antithetical to free markets, just like joint ventures (partnerships) are not.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
"Make the teacher way more effective" translates to needing fewer teachers in the long run. Why do you hate America?
They should move to a school district that values their teaching skills. If they are unable to find a new job in a better-paying district, there's a good chance their teaching skills aren't all that phenomenal.
Mediocre teachers deserve mediocre pay, just as spectacular teachers deserve spectacular pay.
Ken
You wouldn't imaigne the new developments year in, year out, in Algebra, History, and English are staggering.
Imagine the innumerable hours of prep time that were worked re-working astronomy classes once it was determined that Pluto is no longer a planet...
In my district, teachers are paid $50/hour for curriculum development - teachers don't willy-nilly re-work curricullums every year, that's insane.
Ken
It's easy to find teachers in North America making $80k. Sometimes that's just handling cost of living in an area like New York, but frequently it comes from a trick education "reformers" have pushed over the last few decades to gut the unions.
1. Offer teachers per student overage fees to handle larger than normal classes. Teachers agree because, hey, the district is going to screw us on class size anyway, might as well get paid for it.
2. Lay off/make redundant/fire every second teacher, dumping those students on the first teacher, who now makes not-double their salary, but quite a lot more. Bitching and moaning ensue, district makes noise about saving taxpayers money, parents who voted in Republicans say "at least our taxes didn't go up..."
3. Wait a couple years.
4. Run for office on a platform of cutting teacher's salaries and point to the gym teacher making $90k/year because he's got a class of 60 students. Cue outraged parents exclaiming "why does my kid's teacher make more than me! I'm a manager!"
5. Salaries are frozen, or experienced/high paid teachers are laid off, and inexperienced teachers hired in their stead who don't get the overage fee originally negotiated.
Unions are the front lines of the class size debate. Every administrator wants to increase class size to economize on the number of teachers. Teachers want to keep class sizes sane so they can actually teach as opposed to doing crowd control. The union negotiates class size limits. This is how districts con the union into breaking class size limits, and it's a trap.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Actually spending ten minutes checking, since I have Internet.
One of my School Districts out here in Central California tops out at $88,000 pa.
But the big salaries are in School Administration. Much more that #88k, much more.
Please, share the other side of the story - as best as I can tell they had over-paid teachers working too few hours and the children were among the poorest-performing in the country. When the Mayor increased the school day, and also increased the amount of work each teacher had to do, the teachers insisted in a proportional pay increase to maintian their status as among the highest-paid in the nation.
Ken
Standardized tests are a great way to tell if a student is good at taking standardized tests. They are a very poor measure of teaching effectiveness.
Standardized tests correlate more strongly than any other measurement with later academic success, college graduation rates, and later life success. They may not be perfect, but they are best thing we have.
It is easy to criticize, but I never see opponents of standardized testing propose anything better.
Why are you so upset about teachers making 80K (and paying tax on that) while saying nothing about executives and the rich making tens of millions per year while paying little to no tax? It's like complaining about losing a few cents while hundred dollar bills are flying out the window.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
So don't you shut the hell up and DO something about it?
Near 40% of public school teachers send kids to private schools. I don't believe 40% of the rest of the public can afford to do that, since they are the ones that are paying the taxes that go towards public schools already, and once that money is taken from them, they can't afford to pay for a private school yet another time. But teachers, whose pay is higher than an average pay of a private worker, can afford to and does.
Maybe this has something to do with the fact that students are just not learning things in public schools.
People should be able to take their money and instead of handing it over to any politician, to any union, to anybody, they should be able to take their kid and send him or her to a school of their choice and pay for it with the money that they would not have to pay in taxes for the pathetic level of 'education' their kids would be getting publicly.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
I'll quote Noam Chomsy:
"Do you make someone a biologist by taking them to the Harvard biology library?" Of course not! Sure all the information is there, but nothing else.
Teachers are there to help you put information into some kind of a framework. To help you learn ideas you struggle with by presenting them in different ways to help you understand. To show you how broad themes and ideas tie many fact together in interesting ways. Also to support you generally during your learning experience, which is hard work. I think it's great that PRESENTING technology has gotten so much better thanks generally to computers, the internet etc. Things like Khan academy are doing what we have aways wanted to do - help kids progress more efficiently at different rates and not be left behind or held back by the rest of the class. Subjects can be presented in increasingly rich ways and all kids will have access to the best lectures. But you don't become educated by sitting down with the internet for some amount of time. I think the less teachers have to spend most of their time purely lecturing new material, the more they can support each student with areas where they struggle, engage the class in experiments and activities and, as many have alluded to, more time can be available for shop classes, art, music, practical arts, and physical activities. Teachers will never be obsolete so long as there is anyone who needs to learn!
So we will always need "teachers". :)
According to the census, the median income in Georgia was $49,347 between 2006-2010. That is the average of households with only High School education levels all the way to the PHD level, which drags it even lower. Whereas a teacher needs a Bachelor's degree and to make the high level of income you quote they need a PHD. Comparing average income of everyone to the average income of a profession that requires a college education is disingenuous. It would be more meaningful if you compared those with a college education to the average income of teachers.
Maybe. If you can scrape together the downpayment while renting.
Doesn't everyone do that? How many people go straight from college dorm to home ownership?
You are forgetting to include the teachers pensions and health care benefits. This, by itself, more than doubles a teacher's pay assuming a 20+ year retirement.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Let me introduce you to the "step" system.
Teachers contracts have a number of steps defined, in my district is it 1-18. Each step corresponds to years of service - there is no achievement required other than remaining in the district. When you hear about 4% pay raises what you are really doing is increasing every number in the "step" chart, but a teacher that is step 1 will be step 2 next year and so on. The actual increase in an individual teacher's pay is more like 6%.
Here's a link to my school district contract, this was sold as an average 2% pay increase going forward, but the actual take-home increase is over 4%.
Ken
More than 80% of students in Chicago public schools are poor enough to qualify for free lunches. Try improving the test scores of a group of kids living under the poverty line.
My wife teaches at an inner city high school. She has kids who skip school to work fast food jobs because their parent is a junkie and they're the only one bringing money in; students who skip to watch siblings while their single parent works; students who can't sleep because they hear sirens all night; students whose parents didn't teach them to wash with soap; students whose parents get drunk and trash their textbooks because they're offended that their kid might try to be smarter than them; students who haven't eaten in days, or whose only meal is the free lunch.
She had a student approach a speaker she brought in on bullying (afterwards), and tell him that he was being raped several times a week by a group of boys in the school.
Every problem to do with poverty shows up in the public schools. Among the many idiocies of standardized tests is that poor kids require a ton of effort just to get them to focus on being in school. You can't even start educating them until you've mitigated the worst of their circumstances somehow. You can't even start on test scores until you've solved basic social issues with poverty that are far out of your scope as a teacher--and in Chicago's public school system, that's a majority of the kids.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I strongly suspect your statistic relates to UNION teachers - I have two nieces that both teach in North Carolina - one in a union district, one in a non-union district. The niece in the non-union district barely makes a livable (as opposed to "Living") wage, the one in the union district is better compensated (under $40K starting).
Ken
You know some terrible teachers. First of all, teachers are required by law to engage in professional development. Usually they have to fulfill a certain number of credits, or their teaching certificate will not be renewed. Where I live it's about the equivalent of a semester of college. It is not paid for either, at least not in my state. Also, while lessons may get easier as teachers go along, you ignore the fact that teachers very rarely teach the same thing year after year, especially in smaller schools. Secondly you forget about grading, which is a huge task especially for teachers who have to grade a lot of writing. Consider a High School teacher can have anywhere from 100-150 students, just giving a light week of homework and in class assignments along with a test can be hundreds of pages of grading. Most teachers do work more then eight hours. After all while they get off early, they also have to be to school earlier then the average job. Here it's at 7:30, school ends at 3:30 and teachers are supposed to stay in their classroom until 4:00.
The right will use this argument to cut public education as much as possible. Meanwhile, kids from affluent families will continue to go to private schools with about a student-teacher ration of about five-to-one.
Of-course at the end, the unions sow the seeds of their own destruction, as eventually and almost inevitably they turn the company uncompetitive, similar to what a parasite does to its host, but as the host dies, so may the parasite (*it's unlikely he'll be able to jump to another host, especially if all other hosts are also dying off because of their own parasites*).
No, it is actually very likely parasites jump to another host.
Look at say... Russia. Before, the parasites were feeding off of the juggernaut called the USSR. USSR ended, and a new Russian government was created. But who's the Pres of that government today? A former KGB, a parasite of the old host.
Or look at China. The CCP is still in charge, despite the turn towards a more capitalist economy. There's still a huge number of parasites, especially if we count all public workers (that would include the PLA, the largest standing army in the world)
Parasitism in human societies is just like parasitism in nature: it happens, it persists, it simply works. If it didn't work, all parasitic species would have went extinct, but they didn't, and they probably won't in the foreseeable future.
Of course, even if current parasites die, chance is good that new parasites (new types, new species, etc) will emerge. Evolution does not care for liberty.
Hate to break it to you, but when your nominal income is down 10% or more, your real income is even less, and your expenses have gone up, you have to evaluate your cost centers AND your profit centers, to see where you can cut.
Word.
There are some fundamental misunderstandings in here. First of all, what it means for the young to support you in your retirement is that they will be doing the work that puts food on your table, gas in your car, and so on. You will not. How this gets paid for is an interesting discussion to have, but if it gets paid for at all, they will be doing the work. So it's important that they be able to do the work.
As to your claim that the system isn't sustainable, this is typical poor-mouthing, and it's nonsense. The United States is a very wealthy nation, and we very definitely have the ability to pay for a modest retirement for every citizen. The reason we have such a big deficit is because we are not levying taxes, not because we are poor. Closing the social security gap is a simple matter of raising the self-employment tax cutoff up to $250k; this would have a modest impact on high-income Americans, no impact on low-income and middle-class Americans, and would be quite fair, given the problems with income distribution that you've alluded to.
What you've repeated above is a series of talking points that are used to perpetuate the current income disparity and taxation disparity in our country. It isn't true, and it's actively harmful to our country. It pains me to see people who should know better repeating this propaganda as if it were true.
OK the biggest problem we have in amongst current teachers is lack of training. Some of those teachers have done no followup training since they graduated from college 20 years ago. My daughter was give and F on an art project because, and i quote her teacher, "Art done on the computer is not art." Funny, my sister makes 85k a year doing art on the computer.
The unions are the problem. We cant fire those who failed to keep up on their training. Your in school 180 days of the year. That leaves a lot of extra time for training. If we ditch the unions the teachers will either be forced to train or be replaced by someone who does have the skills required by modern students.
--- Always remember. 99.36% of all statistics are inaccurate.
(Good) games tend to be able to keep the kids controlled (starring at the screen) and continuously challenge them.
Of course there's already a market for educational software, but none of them AFAIK try to replace teachers
But... maybe that should be explored? Investing into developing educational games that can replace teachers?
Not all teachers will be replaced. Some staff may be required to be like GMs and moderators in MMOs
[Citation] Every salary study I have ever seen has confirmed that $80k for public school teachers. You do know that when they say "Average" salary, that means that there is as much money above that line as below it, right?
Either yo count teachers pay by the year, or you count it by the hour. Talking about their yearly salary, and then switching to hourly by calling the 3 months of a 'layoff' is simply lying. If we count teacher's salaries by the hour, they are in the top 75% of earners in the country.
I disagree with your statement that all that 3 months isn't vacation.
I'm a software engineer, and I'm constantly acquiring and reading books about new technology, and I don't get 3 months off in the summer to fuck around with. All jobs are basically the same, shitty pay, too many fucking hours, so on and so forth. The only reason teachers get singled out are "OMG, think of the children.". Don't get me wrong, I love my job, and a lot of teachers love their jobs too. That's why they do it. Hell my sister is a teacher, she gets three months in the summer, a week in the spring, a week in the fall, 2 weeks during the winter. Plus she gets at least a week vacation to take during the school year, (it might actually be two, I swear everytime I turn around she and her husband are on vacation during the school year), plus sick day (which I'm not complaining about, teachers get sick a lot, I understand that, too many parents that can't keep sick kids at home, passing shit on to other students, and the teachers). Teachers really do have it pretty easy, compared to other professions. No, they don't make a bunch of money, but they do pretty good by the time you figure in all the time off they have.
21st Century Renaissance Man
Business and economics are the new dominant religion and somehow have usurped the major religions; and not just a few of them but only a few mindsets within those fields dominate. It is really not far off from the days when the majority of people believed the King was placed in his position of power by God.
1) Union protected salaries declined slower than the others; government employee unions are largely the only strong ones left. The pay was always lower than industry but with some better benefits but the stability and altruism made up for that. Societal decline has lead to money inflating without match wage increases across the board (except at the top) and you have everybody else GOING DOWN but the union workers are protected against the gradual downward spiral ultimately being forced to go down slowly. Today we have people resenting the higher paid union workers for maintaining more of their pay and benefits due to the power of the union and instead of duplicating their success they attack them out of resent. Divide and conquer, plain and simple. Wages at the top go up and wages for everybody else are slowly taken. Do some research, the long term trend is not mistakable. After about 40 years, people are finally noticing the results (slow boiling of a frog, but the human form.) Also, teachers start out quite low; the baby boomers are retiring and they were the highly paid group raising the average-- in my area they've all retired and the average shot down, the new ones are jerked around with part-time games from industry.
2) Intrinsic motivation was a big factor. Now we have this new business belief system imposed on all aspects of life. It doesn't even fit with old business, these new MBAs are all wrong headed and narrow minded. Teachers used to care; many still do despite the idiocy and system attacking them. Teaching is a STRESSFUL JOB, manual labor's physical stress has nothing on this kind of emotional stress; but it is worth it for the intrinsic altruism -- if you maintain that, many today are crushed and stay in job because it is a job. Success itself is not being properly defined. The whole culture has been engineered and most people are just unconscious slaves to their culture; with more science, clever people will learn to master manipulation of culture. Wrecking intellectual and creative development will greatly lower the number of real threats to the status quot. You don't need to make a brain dead test regiment to evaluate a good teacher; what you need to do is create an environment which supports and produces good teachers. Even old-school business thinking applies better than what is done today. Why should I care if the students don't, the school doesn't, the society is clueless and I only have time to jump over some demeaning bureaucratic hurdles? It takes energy to go against the current.
3) Education is not business. never will be. Wrote learning sucks but is great for online learning. Kids need teachers as task masters at the minimum; most kids will not do well on their own. Hell, many parents view school as free daycare and actually do little in raising their kids. Online learning and computers are fine for wrote learning and job training for worker drones. Some people are fine on their own; I am mostly self taught but I'd only have done things I liked if I wasn't forced into the other topics by a teacher. Don't forget modern kids have an even harder time with delayed gratification, the consumer culture runs counter to education. ADULTS often forget that they are ADULTS and kids are not tiny adults nor should they be made to be. Wrote learning and "for dummies" books are fine for most jobs. Competence at one's job isn't that big of a deal to people anymore... and why should you care? your boss will fuck you over 1st chance, or the CEO will.
I'll end the rant early. The problems are systematic and cultural with long time trends slowly degrading and the "solutions" tend to be futile as the whole domain of thought is constrained.
There seems to be a corrolation between Slashdot posters and incompetent teachers. According to NCES the national average for teachers salaries is $56,069. Given all of the Slashdot posters who claim they are, they are related to, and know teachers making less than $25k a year, you might have to consider that your dad just might have been lying to you.
Damn uppity teachers thinking they should make enough to rent in a fairly crappy neighborhood.
That is the lie that gets dragged out when it is proven that teachers are not in poverty. You could argue that you think teachers are worth more than they are paid, but when you are earning above average wages, claiming that their pay is "shit" is a lie. Of course, saying that "Teachers make more money than over half of you, but we should raise taxes, (or we shouldn't lower your taxes) because they are worth more than you." doesn't work as well on a billboard.
While the curriculumn for some courses does not change, the Teaching methods have changed. A good teacher takes time to improve every year. Look at what they have been doing and finds ways to do it better. Student change with the times, and teachers need to do so also. Not to mention that States often redo the State Standards. Math in Arizona has been redone every couple of years. You also might get different subjects to teach every year and often 3 or more different subjects you have to prepare for.
Typically the 4-6% annual pay increase figure is actually pay AND BENEFITS. With insurance prices jumping every year, how much does that leave for actual takehome pay increase?
That same NCES report says, "...the average salary was about 3 percent higher in 2010–11 than in 1990–91." That really seems to contradict the "...4.6% yearly raises..." for 30 years.
I know ./ has gone the way of flaming headlines for a while now, but this has to be the most stupid of headlines. We're not replacing a good teacher anytime soon. That said, there's tons of room for E-learning. Not until we're able to electronically download data into our head and somehow program muscle memory and everything else associated with learning a task. There's more to "learning" than we completely understand and a good teacher is worth more than that, they seed and encourage interest in a subject which no flashy visuals will ever accomplish.
Sure the information is out there in books, wikipedia, and in online courses. But teachers help you understand the information and what parts that are important for your understanding. It may seem really easy to learn things when you already know it but getting to that point takes longer than you think. Teachers will go away just the day after all support desks are automated and changed to Microsoft help pages.
Very well said, friend.
Artificial intelligence can do a lot of things well. But I don't want my 4 year old daughter sitting in front of a screen all day, only interacting with her peers via video chat. I'd rather have her in a classroom with other kids where she can learn to make friends, deal with conflict, and start to be independent. I think learning these things are more important than learning to read and do math.
The public is involved in electing the school board members, and running for school board. Of the school board members I've met, I don't think I'd identify them as politicians. More importantly, the pubic is sitting in front of the teachers deserving an education by a qualified teacher who is allowed the resources to do the best job that they can for their students. I understand you don't like taxes. But if we're going to complain about how our tax money is spent, I'd much rather not have my taxes used for sending my former students to foreign soil to get their brains blasted out, the same brains I spent several years putting information into at tax payers expense. The money used to kill, maim, or otherwise damage my former students in pointless wars consumes 60% of the federal budget. You don't like taxes, let's take a chunk out of the biggest consumer.
Teacher unions are a large part of problem but teachers need some form of motivation to teach and not just teach the test. This, along with the economy and international relations/defense should be the President's priority whoever the President happens to be.
The average teacher in Chicago leaves the system withing 3 years. Which is less than national average 5 years. If that job would be that great, they would be staying.
That leads me to very related question: if the teachers jobs are that great and union guaranteed them such a good conditions, how come most sin US stays in the job 5 years and then find something else to do? When I have a great job, I tend to stay.
So, I, by coincidence, just did a cost of living analysis for where I am versus the nearest big city.
A 55k/year income has the same spending power as a 75k income an hour and a half away. If you compare two cities, like San Fran and San Antonio you have almost a factor of 2 difference, housing in San Fran is about 2.5x the cost of San Antonio, but cars aren't 2.5x as much, etc. etc.
Also, I was trying to be informative, not commentary. Different places have wildly different costs and pay, you can't peg down a single number. I agree, teaching is not very lucrative - because teacher pay tends to bind all teachers with 4 year degrees to the same pay, even if one is in Drama and the other in computer science. For the Drama major teaching is far far far more lucrative than they could get on average anywhere else, for a CS grad it's probably a 35 or 40% pay cut, all else being equal. And teaching is becoming a shitty job, there's this nonsense perception that teachers are vastly overpaid, which as you point out, they aren't, and then there are the complexities of managing bigger and bigger classrooms etc.
So sure, teaching isn't for me, but you *can* make a living wage as a teacher, assuming you get full time, and assuming you can stick around for a few years. It's not as good as being a web developer, but you get more job security, usually a better pension, you get vacation at all the right times when you have kids etc. I tend to favour the 'web developer' option, but I can see the appeal of the other choice.
Before you come at me with the usual 'talking points' line, maybe you should read some of my previous comments and if you find too many things that other people say as if those things are some 'talking points', then come back and call me, cause I would be interested to see them.
You wouldn't imaigne the new developments year in, year out, in Algebra, History, and English are staggering.
Biology, chemistry, physics, electronics ....
If your science teacher didn't keep up with new developments, you might not have heard about this amazing new device everybody is using -- it's called the transistor. It may replace vacuum tubes.
Science teachers have to work pretty hard to keep up with the field. I know middle-school science teachers who subscribe to Science. That's pretty heavy reading. Science has many articles about new ways to teach science -- and what the important concepts are.
It looks pretty easy to give a 45-minute class on, say, the immune system. But in order to give a 45-minute class, that teacher has to go through ten times as much information, to pick out the stuff that's important, understandable by students that age, and interesting. Science teachers are educating their kids not for today's science, but for the science of 20 and 40 years from now.
I imagine there are lazy science teachers who don't bother to update their knowledge, and teach the same class over and over again. But I don't know of any evidence that's a problem.
(BTW, you don't seem to understand that history keeps going on. 9/11, the Iraq war, the health care debate, are now history. History teachers have to learn how to teach it. Or would you prefer to have teachers just get up in class and teach their own personal opinions of George W. Bush?)
BS. First, kids are not changing that much. Second, if they were changing that much and teachers were adapting, they wouldn't be able to make the lesson plan before they met the students anyway. Thus, only an incompetent teacher would be making lesson plans in the summer.
No, what we have is a bunch of half truths that get stapled together into one big lie. Teacher A has to take a summer course and it gets added to the list. Teacher B has to grade essays and thus works more hours. That gets added to the list. Teacher C takes a summer job and that gets added to the list. Teacher D is brand new in a low cost of living district so gets a low starting wage and that gets added to the list. Teacher E lives in a high cost of living district, so their housing cost is high and that gets added to the list. This goes on and on until you have a picture of abused teachers living in shacks working 365 days a year just to put scraps on the table.
So many smart people on Slashdot. Why they no use their "Google-Fu"? http://www.teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state/
#!/Jerald
We've had distance learning a long time : it's called books. If that didn't eliminate teachers, the things mentioned won't either. You can get personal interaction over a distance, but the number of students an instructor can handle is still very limited.
San Francisco literally has the highest rent prices in the nation. Unfortunately, EVERYONE is screwed in San Francisco when it comes to housing prices. That is why most people that work there live outside of the city.
The National average for teachers is $56k. This is higher than the national average for the general population. If teachers are in poverty, then the nation as a whole is in poverty.
then teachers can actually focus on teaching the more complex and intricate subjects. The stuff good teachers would rather be teaching anyways. So will teachers be outmoded in the future. Maybe for some of the things teachers teach now, yes. But others teachers will always be needed.
Standardized tests correlate more strongly than any other measurement with later academic success, college graduation rates, and later life success.
Not true. According to Diane Ravitch, former assistant secretary of education under GHW Bush and Bill Clinton, the one factor that correlates most strongly with achievement on standardized tests is family income. This is the consensus, unchallenged by people who follow the data.
Some standardized tests are validated, like the NAEP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Assessment_of_Educational_Progress However, the NAEP measures aggregate scores for groups of students (and for small subsets, it isn't valid). It will tell you how well the school system as a whole is doing, but it can't tell how well individual teachers or students are doing. It doesn't have statistical power to evaluate individual teachers and students. That's the best test we have.
The standardized tests that are used for rating teachers are not validated. That's the big argument against them. A science teacher at Stuyvesant high school ran some standardized statistical tests on the NYC teacher tests, and the tests reported literally a random distribution. Principals were complaining that the tests were giving low rankings to teachers that were doing an excellent job, that they wanted to rehire the next year.
Standardized tests are worthless for rating teachers. They're worse than worthless, because they're used to fire perfectly competent people and reward people who are at best skilled at teaching to the test. How would you like to be a principal, and have a system that removed 5% of your teachers at random every year?
Standardized tests give the greatest rewards to teachers and principals who cheat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelle_Rhee#Test_erasures
Why is that the conclusion? We're complaining that our teachers aren't effective enough. This may very well be the thing that gets them to "enough".
You are 100% correct. They are Administrators who.....wait for it.......work for the government. In other words, they "administrate" for the government on behalf of the taxpayers.
Why don't you try again and start over from the beginning.....
So your point is that posts that were (IMHO rightly) modded "Troll" or "Flamebait" serve as proof that you genuinely hold these opinions, and that they are not "talking points?" That's bogus. Just because you think they are opinions that you arrived at independently, that doesn't mean that they aren't talking points that you've internalized and decided are your "opinions." That's how opinions form, in the absence of critical thought. That's not to say that you didn't critically think out these opinions; my point is simply that the fact that you can rant at length about your opinions doesn't mean that they aren't talking points.
Not just Finland. Most of the countries that outrank the US on international tests have unionized school systems.
You can even compare union schools to nonunion schools within the US. Union schools (mostly in the north) outrank nonunion schools (mostly in the south).
In fairness, union school systems aren't entirely to blame. Those places where school systems are unionized tend to have unions across the economy.
The main factor that affects student achievement is family income. Unions give families higher incomes (and job security). So it may be that unionization of the entire society is responsible for higher educational achievement.
Not a surprising. Everyone prefers to be valuable and wants stability as producers(as workers). They do not wish to be obsolete. They do not wish to be put in a place of vulnerability. The desire of consumers for better goods and services and the incentive for innovation that brings is always pushing producers into that uncomfortable state of changing to better suit preferences of society. When society is not the driver for a particular industry, when the state has granted an employment resource monopoly to a union(which is far more devastating than a producer monopoly given that in the case of monopoly on production, society can use substitution for goods and services unlike employment monopolies which have no substitute), when unions use violence of state protection to control the market, the drive for quality by demand from consumers is absent.
Teachers cannot be made obsolete so long as consumers have no choice in the matter. State granted monopolies on labor (not to be conflated with purely voluntary collective bargaining of peaceful unions) prohibit this.
First, kids are not changing that much.
Yeah, but human beings have this nasty habit of wanting continuous improvement. Even when things are peachy, they still want to look for ways to improve.
They don't succeed all the time of course. Things might even backfire, but they keep trying anyways. Personally I think it's cuz people believe there's ALWAYS room to improve, there's ALWAYS unmet demand out there (a demand for "better" education in this case), and it's up to the free market capitalism loving American to find a solution to meet that demand and make himself rich in the process (and everybody, even the unionized stated-funded teacher, thinks they're that American)
Second, if they were changing that much and teachers were adapting, they wouldn't be able to make the lesson plan before they met the students anyway.
No, they are quite able to plan, despite the volatility. It's something human beings have done since the dawn of time. Nobody knows for sure if a plan, even the best prepared plan in the most ideal conditions, will work. Most humans do not have psychic powers to predict the future.
The thing is, for most humans, having a plan that *might* work (and at the same time might be irrelevant and fail) is better than having no plan at all.
First Year teacher in CT here. I make 37,000 per year.
To those of you who have no idea what teachers do every day, and could care less? Fuck off.
Most teachers easily work 60 hours a week, compared to your 40 hour a week for double the salary at your corporate job.
Standardized tests correlate more strongly than any other measurement with later academic success, college graduation rates, and later life success.
Not true. ... the one factor that correlates most strongly with achievement on standardized tests is family income.
This doesn't contradict what I said. If "A" correlates most strongly with "B", that does not imply that "B" correlates most strongly with "A" rather than some third factor.
So if I want to predict test scores, I will look at family income.
If I want to predict future academic success, I will look at test scores.
Pretty much everything that government is engaged in today is illegal and highly immoral as well.
Nope, it's the most moral thing, because government and politicians are making good profit from doing those things, and we all know that profit motive is the best and most moral motive
As to legal... well, since the government makes the laws, that's not a problem either.
Of-course that's the real reason that the Occupiers went out there, but they are far from understanding the problem, that's why they can't deal with it.
You don't understand the problem either. You seem to think the government is the problem. It's not. YOU are the problem.
The problem is that you (and the Occupiers and all the other people) are weak. It's survival of the fittest: the strong live, the weak die. The Occupiers and libertarians and free individuals are weak. The state and the collective is strong. It's inevitable that individuals will be trampled over. It's not a matter of "if", it's a matter of "when".
Test scores don't predict future academic success as well as family income.
I don't think there's even evidence that the standardized test scores (the ones used to evaluate teachers) predict future academic success. They've never been validated.
That same NCES report says, "...the average salary was about 3 percent higher in 2010–11 than in 1990–91." That really seems to contradict the "...4.6% yearly raises..." for 30 years.
Are you serious? The average teacher salary isn't going up 4.6% per year, the pay of individual teachers are going up by 4.6% per year. Do you really not understand the difference or are you just trolling? And that 3% higher is 2011 statistic is certainly inflation adjusted (the 4.6% raise isn't).
Professions should rarely see a significant increase in their inflation adjusted pay unless there is a major shift in the industry (such as needing a Bachelor's degree when previous workers were uneducated).
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
> What you get as a teacher is a three month layoff without pay.
Teachers are paid an annual salary. HOW it's paid out is irrelevant. If you can't budget getting paid for 10 of those months, who's problem is that?
> Yes they might receive paychecks but that is money withheld from their "in-session" checks.
See my comment 2 lines up. "Layoff" and "withheld" are simply not accurate terms when discussing how teachers are paid.
Remember, it's only a problem when unions screw over the public. When corporations do it, well, that's just capitalism, right Ronnie?
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
I moved away from the Bay Area because it was so damned expensive to live there. $80k is better than a lot of people there make, but you are not buying a house on that—you are renting in a fairly crappy neighborhood.
I remember reading an article in the San Jose Mercury News back in 2000 about full time public school teachers living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford the rents there. This may have changed, but damn! what a way to treat your teachers huh?
Um... what?
FDR was never against public unions. The closest FDR EVER got to being opposed to public unions was a comment about how he opposed federal employees going on strike. He actually supported the formal organization of government employees to present their needs and desires to their employers(the government).
I think what you mean to say(unless, of course, you're using entirely disingenuous rhetoric to simply make your point) is that FDR firmly opposed strikes against the government, and was wary of transplanting the traditional methods of collective bargaining. He felt that collective bargaining would be difficult since generally the government's role was to oversee such things, but there could be no objectivity where a union of public employees is concerned. He supported the notion that the people were the true employers, and that they decided through their elected officials what the appropriate laws and policies were with regards to public employees.
What's more, that one quote from which most people attain their vitriolic interpretations of FDR's stance is with regards to Federal unions. That is to say, for instance, while there is a Federal teachers union(The NEA), they largely do not handle collective bargaining issues. That is performed by local and state unions(e.g. the UFT in NY, or the CTA in CA). The NEA represents teachers on larger issues, but teachers are still state employees; their income is meted out by the state, as well as their benefits. NEA lobbies against things like the No Child Left Behind act and the like, broader issues and matters that are generally decided upon at a federal level. You'll notice that teachers the nation 'round did NOT go on strike when that act got passed, because that's not what they do.
Teachers Unions are just an example, but the point is that at a state level FDR offered no real opinion, only at a federal level. And at a federal level he still clearly recognizes the right for unions to exist in the second and third paragraphs of his statement. Whether or not he was correct, his opinion is neither relevant to this discussion nor accurately represented by your statements.
That depends on the state; it's certainly not the case in California. Where, by the way, state university instructors haven't seen a raise since 2007. (And the state supposedly has some of the strongest teachers' unions in the country).
And you're how old that you have this flimsy an understanding of government and education?
Oh yeah? Well what I do, is I take a little bit of asbestos and sprinkle it on my hamburgah. It taste kinda funkay!
FYI 8AM to 3PM is actually 7 hours. (I don't think teachers are overpaid)
Not only that but the starting salary for teacher's in every state is in excess of $30,000.
Too bad they didn't pay your teachers more, they might have found a couple who were competent at teaching, since they very obviously failed you.
Free Martian Whores!
Compare and contrast:
http://readwrite.com/2012/10/23/readwriteweb-deathwatch-one-laptop-per-child-olpc
Funny how that one didn't make Slashdot.
The point is that obviously you use the moniker 'talking points' to disregard an argument you disagree with. This jives well with your opinion that the comments were moderated 'troll', none of them are. Now if somebody moderates a comment as a 'flamebait', well, if they are truly under impression that I am 'baiting the flame' somehow, then the moderation point is understandable, even though it is a misplaced notion, but I do not troll. Your insistence that those comments are 'troll' and 'talking points' shows that you are dismissing the argument with prejudice, not based on any rational argumentation, that is the point, nothing else.
Or maybe you just can't recognize an opinion when you see one, maybe that's because you have never actually observed people having opinions, that's also a possibility.
Really? How is that? I didn't know I had such power. I better look into it.
If a corporation 'screws over the public' with the help of government, then it's the same type of a problem. Without governemnt involvement any corporation 'screwing with the public' is a private matter that does not involve people who are not voluntarily participating. Only the government can force people into participation, companies cannot. As to the actual behaviour of a company that is 'screwing the public', if it's criminal, that's what criminal code is for. If it's breach of contract, that's what contract law is for. Other problems are all private, just like 2 people can have issues with each other, it's the same situation. As long as the right of private property is preserved, there shouldn't be any larger problems that are of concern to other parties, who are not involved.
barring a selected few, they better be going the way of the dodo, they don't teach they repeat, i always had the impression a lot didnt even really know what they were teaching ... like the venn-diagram for instance, the deeper philosophical meaning, or are you supposed not to burden younger kids with that since they learn too fast ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
Teaching is like carpentry. Most people can figure out how to use a hammer, saw, nails and some planks to make a useable chair. Making a Windsor chair is a different thing. Or, a more slashdottian example: most people can learn how to make a "Hello world" by reading a book, but it takes a bit more to write kernel modules for Linux.
Technology probably (not scientifically proven yet) has quite a bit to offer in the field of teaching, but its not a replacement for teachers. If you want to know what works (scientifically proven) , try John Hatties metastudy of metastudies, "Visible Learning". He shows that feedback and more importantly, feed forward and feed up, are key elements of improving learning in the classroom.
Now the world has gone to bed, Darkness won't engulf my head, I can see by infra-red, How I hate the night.
The national salary rates for teachers (and most other public workers) are extremely skewed. Public workers (cops, teachers, ...) are needed in all locations in the US, even the poorest areas of the Appalachian and places like the Mid-West and even though there are virtually no jobs in those areas and the average incomes are near the poverty line (I've lived there for a while). There still is a need for the same amount of public workers as in the middle of affluent suburbs (you still need an English teacher and a Spanish teacher and a math teacher and a postal worker and a police etc. etc.) even though class sizes are relatively small (small for the US where some center-city classes have almost a hundred kids).
I lived in a town where they didn't even have their own police force (it was basically state troopers checking in once in a while) but they still had a K-12 school with dozens of teachers.
I'm not saying it's a bad thing those areas have decent schooling available and the kids don't have to sit on a bus for 3-4 hours every day but they drive down the average salary rates enormously across the country. I've worked in and around education for the last decade and yes, most teachers make an average salary for the areas that they're in and some old-timers make more than that and they get a pretty sweet packaged deal as well if they're union. The teachers that don't either move around a lot or are brand new, the first 2-3 years as a teacher, the salaries are indeed abysmal but that's for any ol' job, if you start out in IT tech support you will only make 20-30k regardless of your location, if you can move on from there after a year or two into actual IT work, you can easily make more than the average income.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Depends on who is in the driver's seat, and how things are done.
See, the biggest 'advantage' that teachers have in their clout / ability to stick together when striking / resisting change. That typically forces people to negotiate with them. But that is also their biggest disadvantage -> the teachers have a well known reputation for sticking together and resisting change, which when it comes to important changes, like learning how to use a computer, other options begin manifesting themselves, including the nuclear equivalent of simply replacing them.
Think of it this way. If you are a country that is well known to have an outstanding military that crushes others, when someone decides that it is time to implement a change that would result in you using that military, they are going to plan for the eventuality of having to annihilate that military. It's called automatic escalation.
And here in is the problem. No one has hit the nail on the head yet how to use technology to properly increase a student's ability to learn. If / when that time does come, teachers / professors will need to make a carefully calculated decision how they will react to it. In one scenario, teachers / professors embrace it, talk about and use it as another tool in their line of work, and up until its widespread adoption, use it opportunistically to bank on those performance bonuses that their peers may not be aware of; you go with the change, realize that it cannot replace you, but it can make your life easier. Or you can fight it, dress it up in horns and paint it red, declare it a war on your way of life, and attempt to negotiate in your contracts a ban on its use in the school district; to do so is to give into your fears that you are replaceable, that you having nothing to differentiate yourself from a well-tuned machine, and that others would come to a similar decision; it screams of fears regarding job security, and that your motivation is more towards your own ends than the futures of your students; it also says that you prefer the status quo.
If it's the former, you make out like royalty for a few years, up until Congress realizes that the 'performance-based teacher's encouragement fund' is quickly draining dry, but by then, you'll have a few tends of thousands of dollars socked away in your saving's account. Even after they are phased out, your students will be doing much better, so the chances of closing a previously poor performing school are somewhat limited. Now, it can make things more difficult in that suddenly, there may be less differentiation between a 'good' teacher and a 'bad' teacher, but I expect that in the years between point A and point B you will have thought of a solution to this problem, even if it means spending a little of that extra money to pick up an inexpensive Master's degree from a local university; but then, you are still coming out ahead. Masters degree + more money, plus the more money that a Master's degree itself commands = a win over the status quo. Other possible good news is that less time is spent learning (but more is learned in that time), so a Chemistry class may spend less time learning about how a mole is a unit, and more time trying out an exciting experiment that day.
Thou has a choice, to embrace the unknown, or to fear it. The former grants opportunities, but comes at the cost of having to learn what those opportunities are; the latter is simply a means to its own end (fear generating more fear).
I am John Hurt.
The curriculum doesn't change every year, but your ability to present it does - after a class, you look back and see what worked and what didn't and think about ways you can improve it. Teach For America's research on effective teachers came to the conclusion that their best teachers were those constantly changing their methods as they learn more about the craft. After 5 years of the same curriculum, your lesson plans might be fairly well polished, but there is also likely to be a major textbook or curriculum shift that requires core most relatable demonstrations likely differ in urban vs rural areas. The centrally planned lessons that generally accompany teachers' editions of text are only used heavily by the weakest teachers.
BS. First, kids are not changing that much. Second, if they were changing that much and teachers were adapting, they wouldn't be able to make the lesson plan before they met the students anyway. Thus, only an incompetent teacher would be making lesson plans in the summer.
Tell that to the teacher who gets the 'gifted' class one year, the sack of potatoes the following year, followed by the class of kids whose primarily language is not English, followed by the class of batshit insane kids whose parents refuse to medicate. Teachers get WILDLY different groups of kids year in and year out. Furthermore, they get their tentative class lists well in advance for good reason - woe to the teacher who doesn't at least do SOME prep work beforehand. Waltz into the first day of school thinking you're going to be able to teach a brand new class with the same schedule and plan as last year, and you'll get a very rude awakening very fast. It's very true that a teacher will still have to do some alterations once they meet the kids, but if you think they can get away with doing nothing all summer, you're out of your mind.
No, what we have is a bunch of half truths that get stapled together into one big lie. Teacher A has to take a summer course and it gets added to the list. Teacher B has to grade essays and thus works more hours. That gets added to the list. Teacher C takes a summer job and that gets added to the list. Teacher D is brand new in a low cost of living district so gets a low starting wage and that gets added to the list. Teacher E lives in a high cost of living district, so their housing cost is high and that gets added to the list. This goes on and on until you have a picture of abused teachers living in shacks working 365 days a year just to put scraps on the table.
And the picture of teachers only working 9 months out of the year, getting out of work at 3 and doing no work outside of class is also completely false. Teachers have to put in a TON of work outside the classroom, and many principals/other administrative folks can be as bad as any PHB when it comes to making up inane busy-work for their staff.
Just because success on standardized tests strongly correlates with family income, doesnt mean it is NOT a valid test.
Just because something turns up data that is non-PeeCee, doesnt mean it is WRONG.
Common sense check:
People who come from wealthier homes, tend to do better in school, and be better educated.
Well, DUH! This is because the schools they go to are better, and the parents are more involved, leading to better achievement.
If this fact bothers you, and you want to do something about it, then the first step to correct it, is to measure the difference in achievement . The next step is to then take new measures to improve achievement in lower-income areas.
You MUST HAVE proper measurement of results, if you wish to determine methods of meaningful, effective change! This is basic science!
If instead, you throw out tests results that you dont like, because they somehow don't sit well with your politically biased beliefs... then you are a zealot on a mission. A mission whose core goal is "pretend everyone is the same", rather than *ACTUALLY HELP CHILDREN*.
PS: the claims of "randomness" are completely bogus. What they might mean is, "they dont match up with the criteria that we, the school board, decide to claim as being 'the best teachers'".
As a parent, however, the material on the tests, exactly corresponds to my definition of what my child should be learning.
Math skills. Reading comprehension.
If the teachers are "teaching to the test".. well, good! they are then teaching my child useful skills, rather than most of the utter garbage in the current curriculum.
Does my child need to learn how to make cute little paper-mache buildings? NO, TEACH THEM HOW TO DO MATH AND READ, for #$#@ SAKE! Not to mention logic!
And yes, I am a real parent, with 3 children, this is not some "hypothetical child" argument.
It's because they don't teach children proper math and comprehension skills, that the majority of voters are a bunch of idiot sheep who are easily lead into voting for dumb and dumber.
Seems like Slashdot posts every education story at 9:00 AM when teachers are busy working. Wouldn't want any teachers to weigh in would we?
Khan Academy as a substituted for me? I wanted to post on the last story about Khan because it is ridiculously bad, but again, 500 posts and the discussion started at 9:00 AM. Anyhow, the world might "be flat" but pushing all k12 online or with computer courses will be an unmitigated disaster. I'm not worried about it.
. Among the many idiocies of standardized tests is that poor kids require a ton of effort just to get them to focus on being in school. You can't even start educating them until you've mitigated the worst of their circumstances somehow.
That in no way renders standardized tests as "idiocy". that merely points out that poor kids have a terrible time being able to learn in school. The standardized tests are *accurately showing* that the poor children are learning less.
You can't even start on test scores until you've solved basic social issues with poverty that are far out of your scope as a teacher--and in Chicago's public school system, that's a majority of the kids.
Properly speaking, your argument should then be, "inner city schools should be held to lower standards of achievement". If you want to make actual change happen, you should be validating the test scores, and pointing out, "here is WHY the students are scoring lower", not trying to get rid of a valuable tool that proves the children there need more help.
You know some terrible teachers. First of all, teachers are required by law to engage in professional development.
blah blah blah...
For most teachers: that is to say, elementary and middle school teachers, who are the majority in question here... professional development is about as useful as the "breadth requirements" in the average 4 year college degree. Possibly useful for people who still have no idea what their degree is going to be after 3 years.. but for people who know what they are going to be doing as a job, they are a total waste of time and money.
Elementary and middle school teachers are not teaching modern electronics. Nor are they teaching modern history. They teach subjects that have not changed in decades.
We don't need standardized testing, beyond the minimum that already existed, to know that poor kids do badly in school because they're poor. There are hundreds of indicators demonstrating this without taking away from limited teaching time for yet another standardized test.
Another issue with standardized testing is that it's the backbone of merit pay arguments for teachers--increase standardized scores, get a raise (or don't get fired). But with poor kids, the teacher can't start working on increasing test scores without mitigating the effects of poverty--in other words, the poor kids who need great teachers the most, are abandoned by the great teachers because they can't get the raises they deserve because the circumstances preventing an increase in test scores are out of their control. The thing test scores are supposed to measure--the quality of the teacher--just end up endlessly reflecting what everyone already knows, that poor kids are doing badly in school because they're poor.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
Even if the course material doesn't change and if the methods of teaching don't change, you would have to have the same students year in and year out to not have to adjust the materials. And even then if all those things change, you still end up having to change the materials because if you're students are literally as dumb as rocks, you have to keep trying.
I keep hearing people make these sorts of ignorant statements, how about you go teach for a few years before you badmouth the teachers? Even with something like math at the grade school level which is effectively constant you still have methodological improvements that you want to use. Not to mention an ever changing array of standards that the state and federal government want you to use.
There's also the issue of style. What works for me in the classroom isn't necessarily going to work for anybody else. The one size fits all approach is why students are so bored in class that they aren't focusing. What's more, what do you do when the standard lesson isn't very good? Do you keep doing it or do you fix it?
Unions have nothing to do with private sector vs government.
Unions are created because a single indivdual dealing with a comparitatively much more powerfull and bigger entity is shit-oughta-luck whenever that entity decides to screw them over.
Whether that much more powerfull and bigger entity is a governement department or a private entity is irellevant.
The big problem with government vs union stems from the fact that government don't care a with about budgets (a governemnt spending more then they take in is the rule not the exception), and polititians all like to promise people stuff as that gets them votes.
Tests have to be validated to make sure they measure what they're supposed to measure, to make sure they're statistically valid, and to make sure they don't have any of the well-recognized problems of tests.
The NAEP is validated. The standardized tests used by schools to judge teachers are not validated. Even the testing advocates admit that.
If you want to do basic science, have scientifically validated tests.
The New York Times had a story about a probationary teacher in a middle school. Her students did very well, they were getting into New York's specialized science schools, their grades were good, and the principal wanted to rehire the teacher.
Yet, in the standardized test, she had been rated in the bottom 5% of all teachers. Under city rules, the principal couldn't rehire her.
However, her 5% score had a confidence interval between 0 and 52%. That meant she was either one of the worst teachers in the school, or in the top half.
How are your math skills? Do you know what a confidence interval is?
I worked a half dozen years in the private sector before becoming a teacher. I work a hell of a lot harder now. And I use to have to work on New Years Day (Year End) etc. while working insurance. Still not close, teachers work harder.
PLEASE calculate our salary hourly. As I'm staying up grading tonight and writing tests over the weekend and grade finals over Thanksgiving I'll keep that in mind. There is no way we are payed in the top 75% of the country if you calculate our actual hours instead of your perceived hours; but we are educated higher than 90% of the country.
25K is a bit low in MI but not by much for a first year teacher.
Mean or Median for teacher salaries? You should know that mean is easily skewed higher. Anyhow, I see absolutely no contradiction. Think about starting salary verse the maximum contract rate 15 years in. The mode salary for an NFL player is $285,000. The median salary is 770,000. The mean salary is 1,400,000. Math is good, you should use it.
Try teaching the School Board Presidents kids who won't do any work and then decided if you want some union protection.
Teacher salaries aren't stagnant. Everyone in my district took a 10% pay cut.
Every contract that I've looked at has a different class size limit for gym and music.
...they are trying to educate niggers. Anyone with half a brain knows that niggers are not capable of much learning.
Have you ever tried to walk past striking union workers to do the job they abandoned? They will threaten you with physical harm, damage your vehicle, and even follow you home so they can threaten your family, and the "unionized" police look the other way.
"No one has hit the nail on the head yet how to use technology to properly increase a student's ability to learn. If / when that time does come, teachers / professors will need to make a carefully calculated decision how they will react to it. "
Something I wrote over five years ago: http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html ...
"Ultimately, educational technology's greatest value is in supporting "learning on demand" based on interest or need which is at the opposite end of the spectrum compared to "learning just in case" based on someone else's demand. Compulsory schools don't usually traffic in "learning on demand", for the most part leaving that kind of activity to libraries or museums or the home or business or the "real world". In order for compulsory schools to make use of the best of educational technology and what is has to offer, schools themselves must change.
So, there is more to the story of technology than it failing in schools. Modern information and manufacturing technology itself is giving compulsory schools a failing grade. Compulsory schools do not pass in the information age. They are no longer needed. What remains is just to watch this all play out, and hopefully guide the collapse of compulsory schooling so that the fewest people get hurt in the process."
See also:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/post-scarcity-princeton.html
http://www.pdfernhout.net/towards-a-post-scarcity-new-york-state-of-mind.html
That bottom line: modern schools were designed in Prussia in the 19th century mainly to dumb people down and destroy their individual initiative to fit the needs of the Prussian military and the Prussian economy (see John Taylor Gatto). Give them more resources and they will only do that obsolete mission better.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
REALLY!!!?!?! Where are they making that much? I'm gonna apply there tomorrow, because I'm not even making half that now.
I'm sorry, which part is a lie? I never said their pay was poor, just that comparing it to national or state averages is a bad measure. Nothing I said was factually incorrect. Median income that doesn't take into account education level and is comparing apples and oranges. It would be like saying that doctors are overpaid because they are paid four to five times what the local janitor makes. Pay does not exist in a vacuum, it is based on value and training. The average doctor makes 146,000 a year compared to a national average income of 50,000. Of course that's meaningless because to become a doctor it requires a higher level of education then most other jobs. We have no problem taking that into consideration, but when teacher salaries are considered anything above average is considered being overpaid. This is despite teaching requiring a four year degree, despite the job being difficult enough that it's hard to keep people in the profession. Turnover of new teachers is startling high; 46% of new teachers quit within the first five years and go on to other jobs. After that the rate which teachers leave the profession to do something else is at 16.8%. The media likes to attack teachers for having easy jobs. Romney even insinuated teaching wasn't a real job. But my father, who almost thirty years ago left his job as a Petroleum Geologist for Marathon Oil Company to be a teacher because he felt like he could make a bigger difference there, almost quit his first year of teaching. He'll tell you it was the hardest year of his life and he wasn't sure how he survived it. Now he's a great teacher nearing retirement, earning a Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science several years ago. But even he considered leaving the profession because of classroom environments much rougher then he expected and lack of support from parents and administrators. I don't see anyone claiming that teachers are in poverty. That isn't the issue.
That is correct, but no country in Europe uses the $ symbol for their currency, so there's that.
Switzerland: CHF
Norway/Sweden/Denmark/Faroe Islands: kr
The UK (England, Scotland, Wales): £
No one has hit the nail on the head yet how to use technology to properly increase a student's ability to learn. If / when that time does come, teachers / professors will need to make a carefully calculated decision how they will react to it.
I agree and disagree with this. There are many hands-on tasks that require a teacher. On the flipside, there are many professions where teacher obsolescence is already happening -- PLENTY of software engineers out there with no degree. Then there are various shades of difficulty for automating the learning of other subjects. Math is probably one of the easiest to automate, where literature-related majors would be close to impossible. Technology such as Watson is making this possible, but we'll need to have Watson on our desktop before we can come close to automating lit.
In the meantime, there is much to learn if you want to learn. I mentioned the information age earlier because I see it as a revolution, one that's more important than the literacy revolution that Gutenberg sparked. With fewer barriers to information than ever in history, any motivated individual can pull their way out of virtually any miserable hole that they're born into. (and yes, I was born into a fucking hole compared to my current "average" lifestyle, so sorry if I'm overly passionate about the subject)
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
I see the classroom of the future becoming something very much like the average grocery store over the last few years; a bunch of automated service 'stations' overseen by a central observer who comes over when there's a problem. Or like that 'spacebowl' that Spock was in during the Trek reboot, tho a little less bowl-y I think.
Is this Season 4 of 'The Wire'?
We are all teachers. Even when we give a kid a tablet. We give them direction by the choice of tablet we give them and what it contains.
The Canadian dollar is worth more than the American dollar right now
The first comment I clicked on had been moderated -1, Troll, which indicates that several people with mod points thought it was a troll. You're right that it could be an opinion that you formed independently, that just seemed trollish to a few moderators. I called your "opinions" talking points because they are Republican talking points. Maybe you arrived at them independently, without listening to any Republicans, and without watching Fox News. But how would I know that?
By downtime I mean that when you are doing IT, sometimes you're in a crunch, and sometimes you aren't. When you aren't, there's a lot of across-the-cubicle-wall chatter, a lot of surfing oh, say, slashdot, and a lot of other stuff like that. During a big crunch you are constantly working, either fighting fires or grinding on a big project. I guess there are IT jobs where this is the case _all_ the time, but that's not normal, and for a reason—it's very hard to maintain that pace continuously without periods of slack; organizations that are tuned to keep things at that level of intensity either burn out their employees with great frequency, or simply fail to achieve their goals.
As for not being an American, congratulations. The salaries you're reporting sound pretty decent. But it sounds like you think they should be cut, because they aren't "working hard enough" to merit that kind of pay. So essentially your thesis is that the more money you earn, the more your life should suck; if someone's life doesn't suck as much as yours, they should be paid less. Do I really need to spell out how dumb this argument is?
FTFY.
Feh, only in pesky parts of the world with 24-hour days instead of sensible 20-hour days. :)
But that's not a fair comparison. First of all it's a distribution thing with teachers, teachers who are new are not well off, those who've been around a while are doing ok.
But teachers have to have 3 or 4 year degrees from university + education training (so 4-5 years of post secondary education with decent marks), amongst their peer group, which would be engineers, writers, managers, editors etc. they're sort of middle of the road. Compared to generic english degree they're doing very well, compared to generic CS or Engineering degree they're doing poorly. That's problematic because if you want people to be educated in useful (high paying) things you need to find people educated in useful things willing to take a big pay cut for the privilege of teaching, and it's not really that appealing.
If you ever take engineering or CS in university you'll see that easily half the professorship are immigrants, and many of them have terrible english. Most of the domestic students don't even want to go into grad school let alone onto a professorship, it just doesn't pay well enough to warrant that choice. For a foreigner though it's a great way to get immigration and a steady job you can raise a family on. Our undergrad programme is 80% or so domestic (in many cases second generation, so it's full of indians and arabs and chinese guys who were born here), but our grad programme is about 85% foreign. Teaching, even university level teaching, has its advantages. But it's not nearly as lucrative as going off into industry if you have the skills, and if you don't have the skills (including the basic language or social skills) it's a very appealing career choice.
The post is interesting but I think he misses to point of modern public education.
Daycare for kids while adults work.
I know that statement may seem insulting to the field of primary and secondary education
but it becomes clear when, kids are unable to attend school, that parents are normally more concerned
with the lack of available warehousing than the lack of education.
If there were no question in parents minds about the importance of learning, the
public education budget(s) for primary and secondary education would have doubled until the system
was actually functional (much like military spending).
As is most public schools limp along and scrape money together from all and sundry.
I once heard someone quote a study regarding adding more money to the school system
not showing any improvement. My observation was that if you say you're doubling the rice
you give to the starving it sounds magnanimous, but if you're only giving each starving person
a resulting 2 grains of rice they are still going to starve.
If education were about teaching or learning, 25 percent of GDP would be spent on that.
Slashdot's obsession with the disaster that is OLPC is laughable, as is the conclusion that it could replace teachers.
Confirmed OLPC Deployment: 1.84 million units. [2007-2011]
Deployments of over 100,000 units: Uruguay, Peru, and Rwanda.
Deployment in Asia: Less than 30,000 units.
For almost all practical purposes Rwanda remains the only significant, successful, deployment of OLPC outside of the Spanish speaking countries and cultures of central and South America. One laptop per child
Teachers that work in the summer get pay in addition to their regular 9 month salary. They can make a crap load of extra money doing summer school or other activities.
Schools should embrace the new technology available to them. We are now able to produce interactive educational experiences with portable devices, created by the very BEST teachers. Students are able to use the devices at their own pace, studying a concept over and over until they really "get" it. Why have students together, learning at an artificial pace, studying curriculum created by someone who is merely average?
.
.
.
Of course, the technology I refer to is the Gutenberg Press (ca. 1440), and the interactive educational experiences are mass-produced "textbooks".
Or it is the postal service and correspondence courses (ca. 1900), Or radio and broadcast education (ca. 1940). Or television and televised courses (ca. 1960). Or mainframe computers and computer-based learning (ca. 1975). Etc. etc.
I think until we have artificial intelligences advanced enough to understand human thought, preconceptions, and learning as well as a well-educated human, actual human teachers with (real or virtual) classes will remain an essential part of education for most people in most subjects. While I am a teacher, I came into the profession through an alternative route, and held these opinions before I ever considered teaching.
Talking points have to be something that other people use on daily basis when asked about stuff to avoid critical thinking, it's a predetermined response to some external stimuli, designed to minimize the effort, needed to bring their idea across.
You still missed the point. If you look at the comments that I leave, they are not something that you would hear as talking points. I gave you links to my comments, you looked at the first one and you thought that comment represents a talking point?
So tell me, whose talking point is:
"real austerity is not supposed to be about increasing taxes on people, but it is supposed to be cutting government spending because government cannot be afforded" - is that exactly what is used as a talking point? The talking points on austerity today are something like this: "austerity cannot be afforded during economic downturn" or: "people are against austerity measures, such as increasing taxes".
Another part of that comment was that Greece does not necessarily have a claim to foreign earnings, USA or Canada taxes foreign earnings. Does Greece? Well, I checked, until 2007 it didn't. Starting from 2007 it taxes foreign earnings of its domestic corporations, but not individuals.
You see that as a talking point that people use?
Let's look at the second comment, I am describing what the Rule of Law is, explaining that socialism requires discriminative treatment of different people to achieve the same economic outcome, and this is contrary to formal law.
So you hear this often?
Third comment: I explain that if a tax or a fine is handed out as a percentage of earnings, then a person of moderate income is taxed on his consumption money, the person of high income does not see any decrease in his consumption pattern, because if his income is taxed or fined as a percentage of his earnings, then he has to dip into his investment pool.
A person earning 10,000USD is fined 1%, that's 100 bucks. This comes out of his consumption.
A person earning 10,000,000USD is fined 1%, that's 100,000USD. If he generally spends 2% of his earnings a year on himself and reinvests the rest, 100,000USD represents 50% of his spending, thus he must go to his investments and use them to pay the fine, and this reduces the economic activity, because investments create economic activity, jobs all the stuff that creates products and services in the economy.
Is that a talking point you hear too often?
The next comment explains that collectivism is as repulsive as murder of a hundred million newborns, and this is even less disgusting than the truth, because in reality many hundreds of millions were killed by collectivists of all types just in the 20th century. I guess you hear that as a 'talking point'.
Well, I do not hear any of this, I do not listen to American news media, that's not where I live or why I came to the conclusions that I hold.
---
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Nope. Teachers are paid by the school day. No students. No pay. I exclude benefit days such as sick days. A teachers contract calls for a set number of days and pay is based on those contractual teaching days.
load "$",8,1
I addressed this above. I'll do it again since I'm already here. A teachers contract is a contract for a number of instructional days plus prof. development etc. Those days are the days that the pay is based on. Anything outside of those contractually obligated days (or hours during a day) is gratis. Think about those teachers manning the football games. Yep.... they have to be there, and no they aren't paid. As for you claim of accuracy you are spot off. Wrong. I taught for ten years before going back into the private sector (I was an award winning teacher by the way). My terms are entirely accurate, and you should probably learn a little about what you're talking about before painting with such a broad brush. There might be some districts that do things a little differently, but by and large you are mind boggingly wrong.
load "$",8,1
Talking points have to be something that other people use on daily basis when asked about stuff to avoid critical thinking
Which describes your endlessly recited mantras to a T.
So tell me, whose talking point is:
"real austerity is not supposed to be about increasing taxes on people, but it is supposed to be cutting government spending because government cannot be afforded" - is that exactly what is used as a talking point? The talking points on austerity today are something like this: "austerity cannot be afforded during economic downturn" or: "people are against austerity measures, such as increasing taxes".
While you might be the slashdot user who makes that particular statement the most frequently, it is very commonly heard from other members of your religious order. It very likely is derived directly from a statement from your cult leader himself; I would wager if we dug through enough of your comments we can find you linking to a youtube video of him saying something very similar (if not identical) to that line.
Let's look at the second comment, I am describing what the Rule of Law is, explaining that socialism requires discriminative treatment of different people to achieve the same economic outcome, and this is contrary to formal law.
So you hear this often?
Yes, from you and others of the religious order you subscribe to. In other words, it is recited frequently here on slashdot.
A person earning 10,000,000USD is fined 1%, that's 100,000USD. If he generally spends 2% of his earnings a year on himself and reinvests the rest, 100,000USD represents 50% of his spending, thus he must go to his investments and use them to pay the fine, and this reduces the economic activity, because investments create economic activity, jobs all the stuff that creates products and services in the economy.
Is that a talking point you hear too often?
Yes, it is recited very frequently in the US where people are forever trying to justify making what is likely the world's most regressive taxation system even more regressive still. You're just applying fantasy math to it.
The next comment explains that collectivism is as repulsive as murder of a hundred million newborns, and this is even less disgusting than the truth, because in reality many hundreds of millions were killed by collectivists of all types just in the 20th century. I guess you hear that as a 'talking point'.
You've replaced a straw man with a straw baby... Still the same old mantra, though.
Well, I do not hear any of this, I do not listen to American news media
The second part of that statement may explain the first part. How can you call yourself an expert when you don't listen to anyone other than your religious leader?
that's not where I live or why I came to the conclusions that I hold.
If you don't live there, then what qualifies you to tell the people who do how to run their lives?
There is not a single state in the U.S. where average teacher's salary is below $40,000 a year. Not only that but the starting salary for teacher's in every state is in excess of $30,000.
The district I teach at started at $29k...three years later and I'm only making $30.5k. So yeah, there are places that pay less than $30k to start. And I work at a low income, high need district so it's not a cushy job either.
Try this http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/news/fcps_salaries_12.htm
When I was at school, we had something called RSA Mathematics. how it worked was that you had many hundreds of cards each containing a complete coverage of one concept, with about a dozen test (on average) which between them caused you to give wrong answers to the bits you have not understood properly (like regression testing tests).
these were then organized into clusters of related concepts, and each child would pick one of the cards from the cluster which they had not done yet, read it, do the tests, self mark it from the answer card, and then present the results to the teacher.
because the teacher did not have to lecture, and some kids were faster than others, the kids learned at their own rate, and the teacher was free within the lesson time to give one to one tuition to every child in the class, knowing from the answers the child got exactly which bits they had failed to understand, and being able to point them to the right card in another box which focused specifically on the area of weakness.
Every child in this class made progress, the teacher had the time to do one to one tuition, and the kids actually enjoyed learning.
also, there is nothing in this process which could not move online. any lecturing to the class could be done via youtube videos, the cards could be automated with online forms, and the one to one tuition could be done either via webcam, or by live chat.
while not every subject can be slit up quite as easily as maths, every school subject has to be split into about 45 minute lesson plans, some of which is wasted with the teacher basically doing a lecture to the class.
this is not about down with good teachers, it is the same as in business, about working smarter and more effectively with less resources to get better results, and this is a technology which won't go away. the teachers have a choice, get on board or get out of the profession. the only question is how long it takes to move to this model.
roman_mir, you should know by now to cite your sources: ...
http://www.foxnews.com/ http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ http://www.your.ass/
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
where are you that teachers make $80K?
Europe . . . ?
That's about GBP50K. In the UK a lot of head teachers (i.e. senior management) in schools don't earn that, never mind actual teachers who are just teaching.
I'm sure if you're Head of Something at Eton you do better, but that's hardly the point.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, it would appear that you had at least one.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Teachers in many California districts can make more than most engineers
Which teachers and which engineers and whereabouts? On the face of it, that is remarkably unlikely.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Wasn't he on holiday when they did the survey?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If the national average for teachers salaries is $56K then if GP's dad was a teacher in a low paid part of the country he could presumably have been earning $40K or so, which is indeed not anywhere near $80K a year.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think Finland pays their teachers an insane amount, because they place a large emphasis on education.
where are you that teachers make $80K? That does not jive with national salary rates.
In my school district (Santa Clara, California) elementary school teachers make an average of $78k. Many make more than $80k. If you live in California, you can use this site to see what teachers in your district are paid.
But for us non-Americans (never mind non-Californians) what is the average salary for other jobs compared to teachers?
In Santa Clara, what is the average salary for a cop, bank manager, hairdresser or plumber?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
But it sounds like you think they should be cut, because they aren't "working hard enough" to merit that kind of pay.
That's not what I said or implied. I can't control what you read into things with your own biases. My point was that teachers where I live make good money, have good vacation time (and professional development time) and therefore I don't think they need to be either exalted or treated like martyrs for choosing their profession.
The National average for teachers is $56k. This is higher than the national average for the general population. If teachers are in poverty, then the nation as a whole is in poverty.
Yes but the national average for the general population will include people working as part time cleaners, on minimum wage in McDonalds, and so on.
A more useful comparison would at least be the national average for graduates in full time employment.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Poutine is a French-Canadian food that (very) slightly resembles American Gravy Cheese Fries
As it appears to be fries in gravy with cheese on top, that's not really surprising. But I'll pass on both, thanks.
Here in the UK, when you're drunk and need to eat something to stop yourself vomiting up your actual stomach lining, the acceptable non-kebab options are cheesy fries (mostly in the South) or Chips with gravy (almost entirely oop t' North). Mixing them is just barbaric.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
What the fuck have you got against teachers?
As this is slashdot, I'm guessing that they all failed to recognise your blinding genius at school, and plotted against you so that you left with only poor exam results.
Or was your mother a teacher and you have unresolved oedipal problems?
They should move to a school district that values their teaching skills. If they are unable to find a new job in a better-paying district, there's a good chance their teaching skills aren't all that phenomenal.
Mediocre teachers deserve mediocre pay, just as spectacular teachers deserve spectacular pay.
Being valued is not all about high pay, you superficial twat.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
To be honest I'm amazed they bother having teachers in Georgia at all. It's not like there are any jobs there where you need to have any book learnin'. Nobody never got a PhD in cotton pickin' or whatever it is you do there.
That is the lie that gets dragged out when it is proven that teachers are not in poverty.
So a profession that requires a degree, some sort of post graduate training and a high degree of dedication is overpaid because they earn more than someone at McDonald's?
You're weird.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The difference is that only government employees can use the state's taxing power to enforce their demands on the rest of the population. The most everybody else can do is bitch about it.
If they were that powerful, surely the unions would have all their members on $1m a year for 10 hours a week and a guarantteed 110% final salary pension?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You must have been one of those very keen pupils who was ahead of their classmates and found school a bit of a bore. As did I. It's a common complaint on slashdot, but it has zero relevance to 99% of teachers and kids.
If you let most kids free on the internet or whatever to learn for themselves, they'd just spend all day looking at YouTube and come to school the next day knowing nothing except the lyrics and dance moves to some crappy new Korean song.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I've worked in the medical device industry as well... and... probably the biggest problem there as well is the various professional organization and unions
Or what are also known as "medical professionals rather than cost accountants and managers".
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
> (4-6% annual raises, EVERY YEAR)
Am I the only one who thinks a 4% annual raise -- that's ~1.5% annually above inflation -- is a perfectly normal rate of increase? I would hope that a year of experience would be worth a 2% raise. That's going from $50k salary to $51k salary, with inflation adjustment. Not exactly Goldman Sachs.
What are you, some sort of communist? Goldman Sachs are hard working free market risk taking studs with giant balls of polished brass, not friggin' hippies.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The problem isn't the rate of increase, it's that the people paying for it don't have a choice in the matter.
Those of us who don't work for the state can't bribe our bosses with our votes to threaten to steal our neighbors' houses if they don't give us what we want.
No, no you're doing it wrong.
What you're supposed to say is that all Taxation is THEFT based on the underlying THREAT of violence and ultimately MURDER as it is always taken at the BARREL of a GUN.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
They said that Michigan was one of the better states to teach in because of how much they paid their teachers. My dad (34 years of teaching, nearly had his PhD)
That clearly wasn't it.
WE did the same thing and had ZERO problems like you did. There was two differences...
1 - Private School. 2 - No Teacher Union.
Public schools have these problems, Private schools don't.
There should be no private (UK public) schools, simple as that. I do not see any justification for your parents' wealth allowing you a better education. It just perpetuates the class divide which Americans naively assume doesn't exist in the US, and allows stupid (but well connected) people to get on in life.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Why are you so upset about teachers making 80K (and paying tax on that) while saying nothing about executives and the rich making tens of millions per year while paying little to no tax? It's like complaining about losing a few cents while hundred dollar bills are flying out the window.
Teachers are employed by the government. The government is evil. Therefore teachers are evil.
Teachers are organised by a trade union. Unions are evil. Therefore teachers are evil.
Teachers do not measure their success by the size of their annual bonus. Therefore teachers do not believe in the free market. Therefore teachers are evil.
Teachers work in a profession designed to help other people. This is altruism, which is evil. Therefore teachers are evil.
Etc., etc., etc.
Basically, teaching as a profession does not fit in well with the libertarian me-me-me ideology that seems to be all the rage here.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
A public union is an absurd idea in the first place, who is supposedly 'oppressing' these teachers? They are working for the government, who is this 'evil capitalist' that is oppressing them?
So what happens when a rightwing government gets elected and wants to slash government workers' salaries and rights?
The idea that "the government" is one monumental socialist monolith designed purely to rob from poor tax payers is just a disgusting rightwing fantasy.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
In this economy it is not uncommon for an MBA to be working at a retail store or something equally not related to their field of study. I have a good friend making less with an MBA than I make as a college dropout (no I'm not one of those .com millionaire dropouts, I make ~40k which is fine where I live).
Most union positions end up having ridiculous numbers of sick days, outrageous pensions unheard of in non-union positions, and inability to get fired even for extreme incompetence
If unions were ever allowed to negotiate unaffordable pensions for their members (as I believe people claim happened in the US car industry) then that is the fault of the stupid employers for agreeing to those demands.
You wouldn't agree pay rises which guaranteed you perpetual losses, as this would also lead to the company going bust. The point is, it's not the unions' job to know everything about the financial resources of companies, although it would be better if everyone followed the German model and they did.
But in your precious "free market" model, companies have only themselves to blame if they redistribute too much of their profits. They're the ones that control how they are distributed.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
There is not a single state in the U.S. where average teacher's salary is below $40,000 a year. Not only that but the starting salary for teacher's in every state is in excess of $30,000.
But if the average is, say, $60K then for every teacher earning $80K by definition there must be at least one earning $40K.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Here in the USA we have to because A - public schools are nothing more than daycare. and B - I dont like my daughter raped daily by gangs in the bathrooms.
And yes, I am dripping in money... OOOOOZING it... That is why I drove a 1988 junker the entire time my daughter went to school. Because I am one rich mofo!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Last I checked, many districts we're still trying to adopt putting all grades online and learning yet another software package
for grading that wasn't written by a teacher (and didn't work), all forced down their thoats by NCLB (hope you know what that is - if you don't then get educated!)
Teachers will ALWAYS be needed and any thought of replacing them with an iPad is proposterous - the same was said of encyclopedia's placed onto PC's and it killed the books, and now no one uses one (great, we get more stupid).
Teachers, like doctors, deserve the pay they get - and if it's so easy to place the blame on teachers
then folks ought to look at what parents are sending into school these days. Kids are coming to school wanting to TXT every other second, and when the phone is taken or hospital-like cell tech is used to block them, parents are the first to roar (don't use the %^&* phone in class, moron) - and of course, it's always the fault of the teacher when the kid comes to school without a good breakfast, no lunch, and not prepared for the day
School is a mirror of what work will be - so perhaps we should start firing students!
In actuality, many classrooms have and do use many PC/tablet packages to help the kids learn - but this is only part of the overall education picture.
This article, unfortunately is only opinion slopped out there - and offers no truly educated, researched or un-biased review of the
subject matter.
Grade = F
Accountability and ownership over education isn't just about the teacher, it's about the relationship with the student and what they bring
to the table (and who do the kids learn from the most, the parents)
Teachers (IMO correctly) see themselves as the last line of defense, protecting an ancient tradition of simply having people in your community who are dedicated to the structured improvement and guidance of children. Of course their paycheck factors in, and can be the only factor for some teachers or certain issues. But teachers have always borne the weight of the next generation. People become teachers mostly because they want to improve the next generation. They want a say in how people turn out.
It's possible we'll eventually find out that the one-to-many classroom model is far inferior to self-guided study for the bare mechanical act of learning; but without a social context, intellectual context, or just confirmation that learning activities don't exist in a vacuum, quality of humanness degenerates. Both guidance (on what to learn) and context (on what it all means) become clannish affairs. Society becomes ingrown. The student is the only person he or she sees improving him- or herself. Humility, regard for others, the expectation that others can contribute, any training in the exchanges that add to the learning (or other growth) processes ... wholly self-guided (or automaton-guided) students lack all this, and their brains physically model around this lack of support, lack of regard, and lack of context.
In short, I'm a non-parent / non-teacher and a college dropout, but you can pry my community's teachers from my cold dead hands.
Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
"The emotion card" isn't a card, you smug philistine. It's the demonstration of skill at human contact, something most software developers and others who reflexively apply game theory to everything as a matter of course are profoundly handicapped in. At least as handicapped as the average 50 year old teacher is at committing a patch to a OSS project.
See what I did there? I used something called "empathy". Look into it.
Well, that is all well and good, but in the majority of states, the starting teacher's salary is greater than $40,000 and in every state the starting teacher's salary is greater than $30,000. Which means that there is no state where "most" teachers are making south of $40,000 a year.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm a teacher in Idaho, I'm only making $31,000, and have only had 1 raise in my 3 years of teaching.
It's hardly surprising that, when given a challenging, fun gadget, kids respond by figuring things out.
What this `experiment' doesn't tell us is whether or not the children are learning the basic skills we expect from quality education. We should be extremely cautious here, as every single rigorous (and randomized) evaluation of OLPC-style interventions has found close to no impact on long-term learning.
We're also ignoring several other factors: how long do these devices actually last? What's the average cost versus a teacher? Given that there's no exogenous variation in who receives these devices, it's going to be impossible to determine whether or not there's a lasting impact.
Laptops will not replace teachers. They introduce another problem when they are incorrectly used.
There was an incident in 14 Ontario, Canada elementary schools last year where industrial Wi-Fi had been installed so laptop computers could be used anywhere in the school including classrooms. Students reported racing hearts, headaches, dizziness, trouble sleeping, memory loss, and psychosomatic medical complaints.
The School district had failed to provide protection for a little known problem discovered when it caused mental breaks for office workers in 1964. Engineers solved the problem with the office cubicle by 1968.
In Australia there have been three psychotic break suicides after a seminar that uses a classroom situation for ten hours daily three or four days. One company operating here, Landmark Education, has warned participants in their self help seminar that a small number of people have an episode resembling a single Bipolar episode during or just after the 30/40 hour classroom experience.
TOO-CLOSE SIDE-BY-SIDE SEATING in classrooms replicates the situation where Subliminal Distraction was discovered. Concentrating students subliminally detect movement near them to cause repeating subliminal failed attempts to execute the vision startle reflex, defined in first semester psychology as a subliminal distraction. With enough SD exposure there will be psychiatric symptoms from the subliminal appreciation of threat due to the failed attempts to startle. The problem is unknown in mental health services.
Anyone with a computer at home in unprotected workspace should be aware of it. That includes readers of Slashdot.
Classrooms, not the computer, are the problem. A pair of safety glasses with wide temple arms blacked out to block peripheral vision would stop the classroom exposure and any psychiatric symptoms connected to classrooms, ADD and ADHD.
Pictures used to illustrate the problem for Canadian news stories are available linked at the top of the Home page, VisionAndPsychosis.Net.
I'm a 4th year teacher, making roughly $48k a year. My mother is in her 16th year, has a Masters, and makes $53k. A friend of mine who's an administrator with 7 years classroom experience makes $51k. You'd be surprised how little those raises are (not to mention how rare they are). You also have to remember that 15, 20 years ago, the starting pay, at least in my city, was around $24k. It's gone up greatly (I started at $46k), but it's not that much of a hike when you factor in inflation. I'd love to see a raise every year, but we only see that raise if we move to the next "bracket." And they keep changing the brackets. Over the summer, the changed them from 1-3, 4-8, etc., to 1-4, 5-10, and so on. So since they changed it before I hit that bracket, I was S.O.L.
When I was twelve, I told my mom I wanted to be a teacher. Her response? "I hope you're ready for a life of poverty." She was joking, but the point was that we don't get into this for the great benefits and the summers off (actually, we get a bit over two months, with our pay escrowed so that we still get a check in the summer). Personally, I became a teacher because my K-12 teachers sucked. They did it wrong. Did I have shitty teachers here and there? You bet. I dunno, maybe they were just so bitter about the shitty pay.
*steps off soapbox*
I doubt it, but their roles will change. If lecture can be handled by Khan Academy or the ilk, the teacher role will have more mentor/tutor aspect than lecturer. Khan Academy has tried being the 'lecturer you listen to at home' and the teachers are at school where you 'do the homework' using the teachers as the mentors and tutors for a more customized education.
My daughter teaches 5th grade in TN. She is a mentor / tutor / lecturer / disciplinarian / academic planner / counselor / 'parent buffer' and so many other obvious (to non-teacher like me) rolls. We can automate and allow kids to learn on their own only up to a given extent. Beyond that we need to know enough about each student to help customize their learning opportunities. Much of that can be 'automated' and 'remote', but in the end the fine tuning is one on one and customized to each student.
Teachers can teach, but it is up to the student to learn. For few of us will even an interactive computerized classroom inspire us to learn and stretch our learning.
But that is just my opinion.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
Learn to play soccer while sitting on a chair and using a tablet
Potty train your 2-year old while they sit on the couch using a tablet
Learn how to drive while sitting in bed using a tablet
Learn how to have sex while sitting on a chair and using a tablet
Learn how to behave properly around others with your avatar inside your tablet
Learn how to dress by using the front-facing camera and using your tablet
Learn how to fish, camp, build a fire, and live in the outdoors by using your tablet
Um... no....
Stupid article that defies common sense and logic
LMAO
Did you just come off the street or from a gang?
Electronic should and will never replace human intervention - long distance learning has and was
a big bust when video/vid cam came into being, just as it an issue protecting data in the medical field
from being "private and only between you and the doctor"
Can they help yes
Can they assist with certain tasks yes
Are they human and can they react based on my facial expressions, the change in my voice, or
any other factor (no)
and they never will....
at best, an aid and another tool to use - and will never replace a teacher - just like they
won't replace mom or dad, or your favorite dog
moron
While you are correct, you need to remember that these people truly believe that their skills and abilities make a difference in the lives of the kids they work with. And they find it hard to see that life-changing influence in a computer.
The biggest opposition is that it was completely legislated without teacher input, and without a clear plan of how any of it would work and whether it would be funded 3 years from now. I'm a teacher who is opposed to it on those grounds, but not entirely opposed to all of the ideas. It just reeked of dirty business (like the way the online classes have to be done). On a side note: student motivation has always been one of the biggest hurdles for any educational system. If students can be motivated to take online classes, they very well may work, but that's been one of the biggest advantages of in-class lessons, is that the learning time is set aside, and there is someone there to help clarify concepts.
What is a starting salary of $30,000? Is that fantastic?
It is a pretty good starting salary in the states where teachers start at less than $40,000 (but more than $30,000).
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Which means that there is no state where "most" teachers are making south of $40,000 a year.
Not necessarily. The ratio of above-average and below-average pay may not be 1-to-1
For example, there's one teacher making 70k, but two teachers making 40k. The average end up being 50k
But what if one teacher makes 100k, and three teachers making only 33,333.33~. The average is still 50k
As to the majority of states starting above 40k, a quick google says 27 out of 50 states do so. Technically yes that is a majority, but it's not a huge gap. And we aren't taking into account of other factors such as cost of living and benefits (do all teachers from all states get the same benefits? Honest question for anyone to answer)
I live in Brazil (one of the worst countries in the world when it comes to education) and would like to weigh in with my conclusions:
- Self-learning requires students that are actually motivated to learn by themselves. Most students here aren't: even though they have internet access at home and/or at school, they only use it for social media, porn, etc... and will scoff at the thought of anything that requires them to actually read and understand stuff - they will only read a book if they are forced to, and even then, they will do it while whining endlessly.
- Schools are worse: underpaid teachers (a teacher here makes less than a dishwasher in the USA or in Europe) which will get scolded (or fired) for telling a student to shut up and pay attention or for failing someone that never participated in class. Completely destroyed schools, in no small part due to gangs which destroy them as a demonstration of power and to ensure a next generation of children/teenagers entering crime.
- Throwing technology at the students? Has been tried with mixed results: while it significantly increased interest, one of the schools had to keep their OLPCs on a heavily locked room to avoid thieves; you do not dare to send a kid walking home with theirs, lest someone rob them and trade for drugs.
In short: teachers are not headed for obsolescence in any way, at least here; if you want to obsolete yours, we will be very happy to accept them.
They're there in their room. You're on your own.
I have been following OLPC ever since the Give One Get One promotion they did a few years ago. I own one of the original laptops from that program, and have written software for it. One of the distinctive things about OLPC is that it is focused on learning, not teaching. They are trying to figure out how kids learn, and they have a philosophy that the kid needs to take a more active role in his own education. The name of the project "One Laptop Per Child" should remind us that each kid gets his own computer, as his own property to use for his own purposes as well as the school's, and he shares it with nobody. There are Activities for the laptop that any child can download himself and use whether his teacher asks him to or not. There are many thousands of free e-books the child can easily download as well. There are some success stories where this approach has been used and other stories where the kids don't get possession of the laptops and just get to use them in the classroom for a few hours a week.
I don't think teachers will be obsolete, but that isn't really the question. The question is what role a kid should take in his own education. OLPC's experience is that the kid can and should take a more active role. This latest trial suggests just how far that could go. It doesn't mean it needs to go that far everywhere.
I wish I had an XO laptop when I was a kid, even though I went to good public schools with reasonable class sizes and decent teachers.
Many OLPCers have been inspired by Neal Stephenson's book The Diamond Age, where a poor girl gets an educational device originally intended for a girl from a wealthy family and it changes her life. We aren't there yet, but we may get there in time.
An old principal once said: "Teacher and pupil suppose each other. Learning supposes neither of them"
They're right.
Just look at the constantly rising percentage of children who need psychotropic drugs to get through the day. Something life-changing is going on in those insitutions, that's for sure.
My sister is a teacher and she complains about the lack of teacher input
My response was "When was the last time a group of teachers proposed an overhaul of the education system". What I meant by that was I hear a lot of complaining from teachers about how things are, but the only suggestions I usually see revolve around "pay use more" and "smaller class sizes". Both of which add up to more money.
Idaho has a Constitutional Requirement to balance their budget every year. Because of a lawsuit by school districts a few years ago demanding more funding by the State, resulting in a Court ruling, the State Government is responsible for the majority of school funding now. That was the main reason for the switch from Property Tax at the local level to Sales Tax at the State level as the primary funding mechanism.
Because of the economic slowdown, there just isn't anymore money at the State Level to pay the teacher's what they want. Every other State Agency, including welfare and medicaid, had their budgets slashed dramatically before Education was cut $1. Because of the changing in funding, unless a local school district can get a levy passed, they don't have any flexibility in how they pay teacher's either. They just don't have the budget they used to have. They rely heavily on the State money.
What I saw was a bunch of people trying to brainstorm how can we improve education with less money than we used to have. They also took a big swing at Union Busting with this law. Removal of Evergreen Clauses, removal of tenure, limiting negotiations to pay and benefits only (working conditions off limits), allowing reductions in pay/benefits all are directly aimed at the Unions. Some of the districts in the State have got themselves wrapped in all sorts of provisions in the Union contract that have them spending way more money per pupil than other districts.
I have my doubts about the "laptop" per kid, because I am familiar with the smaller districts. At best, they have a teacher who is a part time system administrator. They aren't trained professionals. There is no desktop support. Their wireless networks are pretty rudimentary. All of a sudden we are going to dump 500 mobile users, onto them. It is overload. I did see the announcement that HP got the contract, and it includes installation of Enterprise class wireless networks in the schools that need them. It also includes 3% extra laptops per school and 4 year warranties on the laptops. It is possible, using students, to setup an exchange program to manage the repair process. I am a little more comfortable about it now, but I think that our local schools haven't made the paradigm shift necessary to really take full advantage of the capabilities. Small example, the teachers I know, have no intention of allowing students to submit assignments via email. The school was even considering requiring the laptops be left at school every night because it was "too risky to let kids take them home, they will break them".
I carpool with one of my local school board members, and another one is a close friend. They are both going to vote yes on 1 and 2, and no on 3 (the laptop for every kid plan)
Many dentists decry fluoride because
it is so effective at reducing the need
for dentists the same applies here...
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
SFr., kr, £... Still no $. :-)
NEWSFLASH! crazyjj discovers that when you threaten a person's job, they act all pissed off 'n stuff!
THINK! It's patriotic
The teachers WILL take heavy casualties as the information age blossoms... but it will take a long time because of said teachers union.
The fact that some people NEED or learn better from an actual person will have no effect? (There are a lot of high functioning people who have learning disabilities. Don't think because you don't see it, that it's not there. I hosted a Japanese exchange student who swore up and down there were no mentally retarded people in Japan. When he went back he did some research and found that there are plenty, but Japanese society keeps / kept them out-of-sight)
THINK! It's patriotic
The average teacher salary isn't going up 4.6% per year, the pay of individual teachers are going up by 4.6% per year. Do you really not understand the difference or are you just trolling?
I don't know if he does, but I don't. Maybe you could explain it to me. Thanks.
The average, correct me if I'm wrong, is made up of individuals, and would exclude those in the extremes. Unless, of course, one of those extremes contains most teachers (either being paid very well, or very little).
THINK! It's patriotic
Standardized tests are a great way to tell if a student is good at taking standardized tests. They are a very poor measure of teaching effectiveness.
That may be true, but if you define the job of a teacher to be that of teaching of students, then what else can be used to measure their effectiveness?
The culture in which we live demands measurable standards to define performance. If the teacher cannot be held responsible for their students performance (as a group, not individually), who is? If a teacher's students (as a group) perform exceptionally, the teacher should be proud, both of the students and of him/her-self, and often (occasionally?) receive recognition (being held responsible) as an exceptional teacher. I assume there is nothing wrong with that? So why shouldn't teachers who's students consistently perform poorly also be held responsible (receive recognition) as a poor teacher?
I'm not aware of another industry (with the exception of Chief Executive Whatever's and politicians) where they believe they should only be held responsible for the good things that happen under their control / responsibility, but be exempt from responsibility for the bad.
THINK! It's patriotic
Yes, that is true.
But even performance in tests in general are not necessarily an indication of real learning or performance in real-world situations, but tests have been accepted (for hundreds of years) as a legitimate proxy for real learning. Mostly because if there's a better system out there, people are being awfully tight-lipped about it.
Testing is used both despite the fact that large percentages of people are affected by performance anxiety, and partly because performance anxiety is not limited to tests nor excluded from real-world situations.
Is there a better solution? One that can stay inside current funding limitations imposed by voters? One that can be employed on a large scale, so that you are comparing apples-to-apples when you compare inner-city New York grades to those in rural Kansas?
It's nearly an impossible job, but we use the tools that we can.
THINK! It's patriotic
http://www.ledflashingfan.com
Properly speaking, your argument should then be, "inner city schools should be held to lower standards of achievement".
What an absolutely horrible idea.
And not just a very good way to not only get student's believing that they're not worth the effort, but also probably the most effective method to get both the students and their parents believing that there is a conspiracy among the right (Oops, freudian slip! I meant to say the rich, but both are probably just as correct) to keep them poor.
THINK! It's patriotic
Wooo! Burn!
THINK! It's patriotic
Every contract that I've looked at has a different class size limit for gym and music.
Different than what? Other classes? Each other? Or different from other / last-year's contract?
THINK! It's patriotic
It's a very pleasant and reassuring vision that you have.
But, what happens to the students that don't learn well (like I was) from the computer screen?
2) Reduce the number of Course hours by 2 and extend Art, Music, Sports, Ect time by two hours.
We live in a results oriented world where people say "What's the use of a general education? Teach kids to fill jobs, not their minds." Where is the motivation for this sudden(ly renewed) interest in creating a well-rounded person going to come from? Sounds like you are seeing the future of the rich, not public schools.
3) Students who progress test poorly via computer are forced to have extended after school tutoring with 4 kids per teacher for two hours extra of school per day of your grades slip below a B or you TEST anything below a C.
You're still going to have to compete with non-school related priorities. Students working jobs to support / help support poor families. Sex, drugs and abuse. I fail to see how poor children will be motivated any more than they are now. Plus you'll have students/parents claiming/pointing out that the family NEEDS the students after-school income, and the family can't afford to have them loose work / jobs to stay after school. They already make those same arguments about after-school detention.
4) The hours that students report to tutoring is in blocks. Teacher has 8 blocks allowing for 32 dumb students.
Now how is that helpful? A learning disability / trouble at home / absent or abusive parents / bullies / crime does not make a person stupid. Though it might be a fit description of those who use the word.
5) Kids that get an F require 2 Hours of EXTRA tutoring 1 student per teacher.
Or they drop out and become a drain on society (certainly NOT becoming an asset). Maybe resorting to theft or pushing to feed themselves / their families.
THINK! It's patriotic
Sorry about the lateness of the response. Sandy and all.
Um, yes, that's very good. I SENT that link to you.
I established that FDR opposed strikes from public unions. It's right there in my writing. It's right there in HIS writing. There's literally nothing to debate here.
The statement you made was, more or less; "even FDR was against public unions."
That was the general statement you made. It was wrong.
FDR said: "Organizations of Government employees have a logical place in Government affairs." That is a clear declaration of support for the existence of said unions. He does not believe they should be given sufficient power to strike, given the stakes of a nationwide strike on something as necessary as the work public employees perform. Whether or not that statement is fair to make, it is not a condemnation of the existence of public unions. Whether or not you feel the union has a point without strikes is immaterial.
But for the record: you're wrong about that, too. A union allows a collection of employees to articulate their concerns en masse and present them to their employers. Whether or not the threat of a strike is on the table, it opens communication between employee and employer and allows the two to, theoretically, work together towards a compromise both can be pleased with. A union can also arrange to support its employees through legal assistance in such cases as wrongful termination or a whole littany of other issues(depending greatly on the job in question). A large collective can perform any number of functions that an individual cannot. And yes, sometimes that includes striking. Not always, not even often, but sometimes.
If it is your supposition that the only arrow in the quiver of the union is striking(implied by your statement: "without the ability to strike, the union has little teeth and no purpose but to pay dues and create a monopoly in labour"), then you assume that the employer has no reason to listen to or even consider the opinions of the employee without it. If so, then what protection is afforded employees from their employers outside of assembling in a union? Or is it your position that employees should be happy with whatever their employer should see fit to give them, even if it is, say, an unlivable wage or heavy and illogical restrictions on their work?
I know Slashdot loves to pull up these kinds of articles every time they're available. TED is susceptible similar lectures as well, so we who have actually worked in education have to keep our eyes open before the "computers will solve all our complex problems"
What? Don't you remember how computers gave us the "Paperless Office"? How dare you doubt technology?
Philistine!
THINK! It's patriotic
Unless [and until] we change our societal attitudes about the value of learning, we'll always be fighting an uphill battle.
You make me think of my favorite Carl Sagan quote (and my email tagline):
"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." - Carl Sagan
Still (unfortunately) very true.
THINK! It's patriotic
Well Crazyjj has admitted to his degree of mental competence by his choice of name. He was surprised, apparently, that someone with little or no experience, motivated only by the quarterly profit report, might be less than welcome telling a group of professionals what they were doing wrong. Try walking into a hospital and telling the doctors how to run their ship.
Thank god teachers aren't compliant "schoolmarms". If they were, the greed-driven advocates of privatization might already have destroyed the system.
Teachers and their unions are masters at recognizing the vultures trying to feed on the all too limited resources in our schools.
They taught him a valuable lesson; "fuck with them at your own peril":. Teachers are among the last defenses against the creeping negativism eroding all the great institutions of our society. And their unions are strong because they have the moral support of some millions of the hardest working and most dedicated people in the world.
We don't need standardized testing, beyond the minimum that already existed, to know that poor kids do badly in school because they're poor.
You've got the correlation right, but you've got cause and effect back to front.
The way it works in reality is this:
Some people are born cleverer than others. The clever ones (most of them) do well in school, pass exams, get into professional and managerial jobs, and accumulate wealth. They move to affluent neighbourhoods and have kids. Those go to schools that are full of the kids of other clever people. The schools get a reputation of being "good" schools, but really they're just schools full of clever kids who inherited their cleverness from their parents.
Meanwhile, the less clever ones (most of them) do badly in school, finish early, and wind up in low skill, low wage jobs or unemployment. They don't earn enough to live in affluent neighbourhoods, so they congregate in the less salubrious parts of the city where property prices are lower. Their children do badly in school because they didn't have the luck to inherit clever genes.
Wealth does not cause cleverness, and poverty does not cause the lack of it. Rather, cleverness and the lack of it (as well as other talents and their lack) cause individuals to be rich or poor.
This is how the correlation is caused.
Wait, so if the population who elects the government, elects people that promise to cut government spending, you are saying: they should not be able to do so, because that's 'disgusting'?
Fuck you, you piece of totalitarian tyrannical waste of skin.
I enjoyed this comment. =D
The parent post I was replying to, made a blanket statement, "Standardized tests are worthless for rating teachers. " This should be obviously false. I can believe there are bad tests out there. That does not mean, however, that the concept of using standardized tests to rate teachers, is bad. Perhaps what is needed, is to stop attempting to "rate teachers", and instead focus 100% on "rate the student's educational progress". That is the real thing that matters. Basic principles of business, and similar: reward based on the factors that actually matter, rather than side issues.
Your post would be more repugnant if it weren't so laughably wrong, Mr. genetic determinist. Regardless, the causation I was addressing is circumstantial, not genetic (poor diet, not poor genes), and is well documented, so I'm neither wrong, nor have the polarity of the correlation reversed.
If you want one reason you're obviously long, look up "regression to the mean". Applying it to the heritability of intelligence is left as an exercise for the reader.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.