Finding the Next Generation of Teachers With "Innovative Microsoft Ads"

theodp (442580) writes "Back in 2011, the U.S. Dept. of Education delegated teacher recruitment to Microsoft (RFP, pdf). 'The decision to turn over TEACH to [Microsoft] Partners in Learning serves to expand the already outsized influence Gates and his fortune have on public education,' wrote the Washington Post at the time. So, 'what happens when a public institution in a democracy — the US Department of Education — outsources its goal of recruiting good teachers to a private industry?' Well, in addition to Teach.org and redundant social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube, the U.S. is now relying on 'Innovative Microsoft Advertising to Recruit the next Generation of Teachers'. From the press release, 'The Ad Council and TEACH have formed a unique outreach campaign with Microsoft's Advertising team in an effort to recruit the next generation of teachers who will drive innovation and redefine teaching in K-12 classrooms. Microsoft donated over 125 million impressions across Xbox 360, Windows 8, and MSN in order to encourage consumers to rediscover teaching through interactive ad units. This media effort is an extension of the Ad Council and TEACH's public service advertising (PSA) campaign, Make More...Throughout March, consumers were able to engage with TEACH "NUads on Xbox", via gesture, voice or controller on their Xbox 360 consoles...Most recently, Microsoft leveraged their Windows 8 platform to provide a unique experience to consumers, enabling them to navigate through a series of questions to help "discover their true passion," along with the opportunity to play challenging mind and word games, such as a word scramble and tangrams.' Check out the demo of the Windows 8 platform experience [YouTube], in which a person is advised 'You'd Make a Great Science & Tech Teacher,' on the basis of a 'Personality Quiz' consisting of five dragged-and-dropped photos."

Comments

Gates wants your children

[globaljustin]

M$ shouldn't be allowed anywhere **near** children.

Gates is trying to end public education with his charter school fund.

This stupid, reductive, publicity-focued initiative is just another in an expensive line of turds M$ has dropped in the education punch bowl

Get these data-gathering, exploitative, anti-user businesses AWAY FROM OUR KIDS

As a former teacher, the problem is that people want to spend money on ***EVERYTHING*** other than what will help educate children: public schools with the highest-paid, best trained teachers in the world

Without the above, no ammount of tech, "social media" or "big data" will ever make even a dent in the problem

Re:Gates wants your children

[Anonymous Coward]

Check your math, 60K for a teacher for 9 months work, means no money for 3 months.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Anonymous Coward]

Most teachers spend the summer teaching summer school, or attending conferences or continuing education, a lot of summer related educational expenses are also unpaid. I know one or two teachers every year (our of the hundreds I deal with) that take a two+ month long holiday, but I'll be that those numbers are the same for most people in most industries, with the difference being that you can expense your educational conferences and continuing education in the non-public teaching realm.

60k is good but not great and if you're intelligent enough to be able to teach my child, you're intelligent enough to know you can make more for less work in a field that doesn't subject you to abuse a good portion of the time.

Re:Gates wants your children

[stms]

As a former teacher, the problem is that people want to spend money on ***EVERYTHING*** other than what will help educate children: public schools with the highest-paid, best trained teachers in the world

That's good for the few who can afford the best trained teachers in the world. Good teacher are unfortunately an inherently limited resource. You're right that in the short term big data will probably not help our children to learn much. In the long term however I think that it can help students by understanding their needs better than their teachers ever could. Check out what CGP Grey has to say about this.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Anonymous Coward]

You may want to watch the following video from an *actual* teacher...
    So You Want to be a Teacher? -- Time

It is only one of his "So You Want to be a Teacher" videos that give an insider's perspective on the teaching profession for those of you who think teaching is a normal 8a-4p job, I have never heard of another job that requires so much mandatory, unpaid, extra-curricular work in my life.

Just ask yourself if you would take this job for say... $60k/year.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Anonymous Coward]

Before I met my wife, a teacher, I might have assumed the same thing you did -- 9 months of pay, with 3 months vacation (actually it's only 2 plus a few extra days; school years usually start in late August here now). She works 3-4 hours, on average, extra each day -- getting up super-early to get supplies (she teaches TWO 'prep-heavy' classes -- horticulture and art, since no one wanted to teach hort and she had to revive the school's program single-handedly). It's like every class is a science lab. Then she stays late to do more prep that she won't be able to get to the next morning.. organizing field trips with reams of paperwork (at our school board the teachers have been getting more and more of the paperwork duties, admin used to do it but now the board is in full CYA-mode after some field trip incidents -- oh did I mention she had to get her school bus license since they cut all of the drivers?)

She pays for snacks out of her (our) own pockets a few days each week, so the kids have something before lunch as many of them don't get a good breakfast -- they are impossible to teach otherwise. None of this gets her any overtime or time-in-lieu or counts against her yearly class budget. Honestly with all the extra time she pulls she has legitimately banked up that 2-month vacation.

Teachers should indeed be paid well. Or, get many, many more teachers so the workload isn't a total burnout, and the teachers can work regular hours. Either way, more needs to be spent (in the RIGHT places, not administration or 'metrics' bullshit). If the paperwork, workload and class sizes were reduced, perhaps teachers could be you know, teachers.

In Canada BTW.. I can't imagine how it must be in the US.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Anonymous Coward]

How highly do you want them to be paid?

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

Well; if you want to have decent people then the answer is much more than that. Currently the average IT person is probably earning about $100k. This is someone who can barely communicate and often doesn't have a higher degree. Certainly not someone who you would want in charge of the future of your country, educating it's children. Then let's take the hell which is being a teacher and having to deal with the demands of the various parents and the risks that some mad people are going to come around blaming you for leading the children into witchcraft. I certainly wouldn't teach in a high school for less than 50% extra on top of my normal salary. Let's say that we go for people who are more "service oriented" and actually like the idea. We still want to pay around $130k as a minimum.

If you pay peanuts you will get monkeys. If you pay $60k you will get the current lot of whiners Simply put, the market says the minimum reasonable price for a teacher is at least double what it is currently.

Re: Gates wants your children

[loufoque]

Meanwhile, in the real world, 50k is already a pretty good salary.

Re:Gates wants your children

[cascadingstylesheet]

Ah, /. Where you get modded down for posting facts.

Re:Gates wants your children

[cascadingstylesheet]

Mind you, that's three months in the summer ... plus two weeks for Christmas, one week for Spring Break, a four day weekend for "mid-Winter break", oh, and every other conceivable holiday, and some that aren't conceivable.

My point was that they are well paid. They aren't underpaid. I posted facts - the actual average salary. That's a good salary for twelve months, let alone less than nine (counting all those breaks).

Re:Gates wants your children

[Intrepid imaginaut]

You start running into the gold rush problem then. Pay too well for a job and you get people interested only in the pay, not doing the job well. This is especially true in jobs where it's difficult to measure performance.

In any case the best teachers in the world are usually the child's parents. There's a direct correlation between how well kids do at school and how much time and effort their parents put into helping them at home, not to mention the general happiness and security of the home.

If anything funding should go into making parents aware of this and giving them time off work for example to help their children succeed academically.

Re:Gates wants your children

[93 Escort Wagon]

I have friends who are teachers - most summers they aren't doing anything education-related, since the CE requirement is on the order of once every 3-5 years.

Some of them just take the summer off. One guy I know works construction in the summer.

Decent teachers deserve to make decent pay; but at least in my state (Washington) they actually do make a good salary nowadays. The stories about poor starting salaries are from 20-30 years ago. However, like most of us, they still would like to be paid more than they currently make.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, some states pay well for teachers. However, the national average is $53k and the average for my home state (NC) has finally increased to a whopping $45k. The 2013-14 salary schedule (PDF link below) indicates that entry level teachers (0-2 years of experience) are paid only $30,800/year. In the same state, CS graduates with no experience can expect to be hired by Cisco, Fidelity, IBM, and other local big companies for no less than $60,000/year. You'll note on the same salary schedule that after 36 years of teaching experience, a NC teacher with a Bachelor's degree would still be paid only $53,180 at today's rate.

I absolutely agree that teachers are very well compensated in some states. However, it cannot be ignored that teachers are paid abysmal rates in some states. It irritates me to no end when I hear people in NC talk about how overpaid teachers are -- the same people are usually surprised to hear the reality of just how little NC teachers are actually paid.

I don't know what the solution is, and I don't think the USDoE is in a position to talk about federalizing a nation-wise education system as a solution in its current form, but what we have today is terrible broken. The differences between states is rather astounding, and to use one state's context as a justification for sweeping nation-wide policy comments is disingenuous at best.

As promised, the NC 2013-14 Salary Guide: http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/fbs/finance/salary/schedules/2013-14schedules.pdf

Re:Gates wants your children

[frisket]

I don't know what the fuck your teachers do during the "vacations" but in my country they do stuff like accompanying educational visits with their pupils, marking exams, preparing the next year's syllabus, getting up to date on their subject, doing all the paperwork they didn't have time to do in term-time, and — if they can afford it — actually having a vacation of their own.

Maybe I'm wrong; maybe US teachers just sit on the porch and drink beer all vacation long. I doubt it. The violent jealousy you show toward their "3 months of no work" perhaps shows how little you know about the educational system. If you want to fix it, get your politicians to change the school system so that classes go on all year, just like regular work does.

Re: Gates wants your children

[frisket]

BS. 50k isn't even peanuts.

Re: Gates wants your children

[lymond01]

Salary is very dependent on where you are. $60K for an entry level CS job was the going rate in Boston in 1993. In California near the Bay Area, high school teachers are paid in the $70k-$80K range for 9 months.

Re: Gates wants your children

[loufoque]

50k is the median household income in the US.

Re:Gates wants your children

[HornWumpus]

Cause subjects taught in K-12 change yearly. /sarc

Preparing the syllabus is copying it. Tests are graded before grades are issued. Educational trips with students are paid.

Teachers usually work a summer job. They are generally adequately paid. If they weren't, there would be a shortage. See economics 1.

Science and math teachers are underpaid, but politically it is impossible to pay them fairly without overpaying the rest.

Re:Gates wants your children

[HornWumpus]

There is no group in the world that bitches and complains as much as teachers. Take it with a huge grain of salt.

Re:Gates wants your children

[HornWumpus]

Theoretically a great teacher is worth more. But to get their we would start by firing all the current teachers.

You have to remember that teachers hold education degrees, not real ones. There are exceptions.

Re:Gates wants your children

[phantomfive]

Get these data-gathering, exploitative, anti-user businesses AWAY FROM OUR KIDS As a former teacher, the problem is that people want to spend money on ***EVERYTHING*** other than what will help educate children: public schools with the highest-paid, best trained teachers in the world

Wait, so as a former teacher, you don't want them to gather data that might discover the best teaching practices, and the only thing that could possibly work is to pay teachers as much as possible? Seriously?

Not that you're biased or anything.

Re:Gates wants your children

[sootman]

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

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

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

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

Re:Gates wants your children

[exomondo]

As a former teacher, the problem is that people want to spend money on ***EVERYTHING*** other than what will help educate children: public schools with the highest-paid, best trained teachers in the world

And exactly how much do teacher salaries have to be in order for them to properly educate children? I constantly see this crap bandied about that the only way to solve the issue of education is to throw money at the problem and pay teachers more...oddly enough this comes from teachers or former teachers or spouses of teachers. Throwing money at the problem is not the solution!

Re:Gates wants your children

[Uberbah]

Throwing money at the problem is not the solution!

Neither is repeating a talking point that was baseless 30 years ago.

And exactly how much do teacher salaries have to be in order for them to properly educate children?

How much would you want to be paid to have a teachers job? Tens of thousands in student loans to get a masters degree, 50+ hour work weeks, playing babysitter/parent/disciplinarian/counselor/doctor for a bunch of kids before even starting the teaching part, putting up with shitty parents and administrators, spend your summers continuing your education, and finally be judged on student performance when the #1 correlation for that is what kind of home the student goes home to at the end of the day. Something you have no control over whatsoever.

Not one of you snobby snots would take a teaching job for less than six figures.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Uberbah]

You start running into the gold rush problem then. Pay too well for a job and you get people interested only in the pay, not doing the job well. This is especially true in jobs where it's difficult to measure performance.

That's the most imaginative reason I've heard of yet for continuing crappy teacher pay. But that must extend to other professions, no? Better cut the salaries of software engineers to $35k a year, stat, before the greedy people hear about it!

Re:Gates wants your children

[exomondo]

How much would you want to be paid to have a teachers job?

That's just throwing the question back because you can't answer it. The suggestion was that the answer is to increase teacher salaries so naturally I'm asking how much they need to be at for the education system to be fixed.

Tens of thousands in student loans to get a masters degree, 50+ hour work weeks, playing babysitter/parent/disciplinarian/counselor/doctor for a bunch of kids before even starting the teaching part, putting up with shitty parents and administrators, spend your summers continuing your education, and finally be judged on student performance when the #1 correlation for that is what kind of home the student goes home to at the end of the day.

Yes all jobs have shitty aspects to them, some more than others so obviously those that don't make up for it in some way (and no, not everybody's job satisfaction is rooted in their salary) will have fewer people willing to work in them. Effectively what you're saying is the system is fine but it's the teachers that are the problem and need to be replaced so increasing the salary will bring competent teachers to replace existing ones.

Not one of you snobby snots would take a teaching job for less than six figures.

Not one of who?

Re:Gates wants your children

[exomondo]

Now that makes sense! Job satisfaction isn't all about how much money you make (well for some people it is I suppose) so funding that rather than this "highest paid teachers" idea makes a lot more sense.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Locando]

To you and the GP: don't know about other states, but in California it's just a hair over two months off during the summer, not three. (There are of course winter and spring breaks as well.) It's very common for teachers to have their paychecks spread out across 12 months rather than 10, but it's the individual's choice how to do it.

Also: when you see the averages, take into account that they include both teachers a year before retirement and those fresh out of college. From what I've seen, the pay is usually quite all right when you start off, especially if you enter with a master's (not uncommon these days), but the raises are laughable. When you consider that high school teachers effectively work at least 50 hours a week (unless they've been teaching the same subject for at least ten years or so), pulling in $50k/year or less gets old pretty fast, especially if you're living in an area with a high COL that leads to much higher private sector salaries for the highly educated. Doubly so if you're teaching at a crappy, dangerous school in the ghetto or its suburban equivalent, which is where the vast majority of job openings are in said areas. Stress in the tech sector simply cannot compare. Two months off seems like the only humane option come June when that's the case.

(Smaller cities and rural areas are a whole 'nother kettle of fish, I know. But I don't think I hear as much complaining about teacher salaries in those parts, at least not in states where teachers are unionized.)

Re:Gates wants your children

[Uberbah]

That's just throwing the question back because you can't answer it.

That's you projecting because your stance is unjustifiable. This isn't hard: attracting top talent requires good pay, same as any other profession, and students perform better with smaller class sizes and more teacher-hours per pupil, instead of more pupils per teacher. Which requires....wait for it...more money than skinflint social darwinists have been willing to spend.

tl;dr you get what you pay for

Yes all jobs have shitty aspects to them

Yes and again, you wouldn't touch this shitty job unless it paid six figures.

Re:Gates wants your children

[cascadingstylesheet]

Hmm. Well, somebody sounds violent here, but it ain't me ...

I'm making a reasonable mathematical adjustment to their already nice (though not as nice as mine, if you must make this personal; I wasn't) salary. That's all.

You can doubt it all you want, but the only summer school I've ever seen around here (major metropolitan area) is maybe two or three weeks, a joke. Maybe one or two teachers stick around even for that. Better not forget anything in the building, because you'll be very lucky even to get a maintenance person to let you in during the summer.

Sure, maybe they all go work in a secret school district coal mine in the summer, hitting the books between shovels full ... in fantasy land.

Re:Gates wants your children

[exomondo]

That's you projecting because your stance is unjustifiable.

Wrong, I'm not projecting anything and I don't know what you think my "stance" is.

This isn't hard: attracting top talent requires good pay, same as any other profession

So the problem is the teachers, not the system.

and students perform better with smaller class sizes and more teacher-hours per pupil, instead of more pupils per teacher. Which requires....wait for it...more money than skinflint social darwinists have been willing to spend.

Yeah it's totally not like they spend over a trillion dollars on education per year...but you just blame the teachers while demanding they be given more money rather than considering that perhaps there is a lot of mismanagement going on.

Yes and again, you wouldn't touch this shitty job unless it paid six figures.

Wrong, unlike you I'm not totally driven by money. But obviously that's what you are totally consumed by which is why the only way you can come up with to fix things is to give more money to the teachers which you have already suggested are the problem anyway.

Re:Gates wants your children

[DocHoncho]

The real question would be what kind of transparency is there about this data? What are they collecting, exactly, and what do they do with it? I can't think of anything Madison Avenue, or wherever the marketing firms lurk around in, would love more than a huge trove of child behavioral data, especially if there's even a hint of it being personally identifiable.

Much data is likely already gathered by the government run schools, but the constant push to completely privatize schools raises the same issues as other large corporate databases, specifically the ability of those private schools to monetize that data to pad the bottom line.

Re:Gates wants your children

[colinrichardday]

Maybe your acquaintances are the exceptions.

Re:Gates wants your children

[colinrichardday]

But to get their we would start by firing all the current teachers.

To get their what?

Re:Gates wants your children

[colinrichardday]

Pay too well for a job and you get people interested only in the pay, not doing the job well.

Do you include CEOs?

Re:Gates wants your children

[phantomfive]

Why don't you go find out instead of speculating? Your post is essentially useless because it lacks information you could go gather if you weren't a sucky, lazy bum.

Re:Gates wants your children

[Intrepid imaginaut]

CEOs often get paid largely in stock options rather than cash, and so are incentivised to make sure the company does well in the short term at least. Which leads to its own set of problems, but the headline grabbing corporate salaries are often not what they seem.

Re:Gates wants your children

[davydagger]

>Where's your perspective coming from

citizen of a suposed free democracy.

what MS/Apple/etc want to teach, vs what we should

[Anonymous Coward]

MS, Apple, Facebook, etc: "Buy from our stores! Don't mind being locked in! Don't dare to want freedom and openness, it's scary and not good for you!"

They all want to teach kids to grow up to be good little consumers. Spending all their money at the locked-in store. Giving all their personal information to the company. Develop an app of your own? Too bad unless you want to give 30% to Apple and be under their control for whether you can even publish it or not.

Why can't we just teach openness, freedom, and having control over your own computing experience? A TRUE social internet, not the data-mined and controlled garden those companies all want us to have, so people get locked into their marketing and advertising engines, and their ecosystems.

Apparently Bill Gates wants to make money.

[Futurepower(R)]

Apparently Bill Gates is still doing things to make money. When you have $70 billion, you still need more?

Re:Apparently Bill Gates wants to make money.

[plopez]

The percentage of income the wealthy give to charity is miniscule compared to the middle class.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/4872514...

Re:Apparently Bill Gates wants to make money.

[houghi]

For the super rich, money isn't something you use to buy food, chelter or the like. It is merely an indicator if you are doing well. If you have more then yesterday, it was good. If it is less then yesterday, you are doing something wrong.

It is like points in a computergame. You don't stop playing when you have the highest score. You try to be even better then you already were and get even more points.

How about

[rsilvergun]

finding the Next Generation of Teachers with more financial ad programs, better wages and an actual career path? Seriously, I know a lots of teachers and unless you're willing to drop what you're doing and hall ass to another state whenever the budget cuts come you're in for a pretty lousy time. Oh, and no, they don't take summers off. Most of them spend summers either tutoring for extra money or getting yet another degree (Masters, Doctorate) in a desperate attempt to earn a little more money :(.

Re:How about

[Nidi62]

Oh, and no, they don't take summers off. Most of them spend summers either tutoring for extra money or getting yet another degree (Masters, Doctorate) in a desperate attempt to earn a little more money :(.

I work for a major airline, and a lot of our seasonal summer help (working 40hours/week all summer) are actualy teachers looking to make some extra money. Can make over $4k and you get flying benefits for the year.

Re:How about

[plopez]

Some of my HS teachers worked construction over the summer.

Re:How about

[Ultracrepidarian]

Perhaps you have put your finger on the problem.

Re:How about

[phantomfive]

finding the Next Generation of Teachers with more financial ad programs, better wages and an actual career path?

Out of curiosity, what kind of career path do you have in mind?

whatever they're doing..isn't working

[kcmastrpc]

my wife is enrolled in one of the top four colleges known for their educational programs and is currently the top of her class (4.0gpa). she has yet to be contacted by any type of recruiter or school district, and it looks like she's going to have to work for a semester for free before she can get her license (teacher certification).

Re:whatever they're doing..isn't working

[kcmastrpc]

she's been studying for middle school (5th through 8th, i think). we like where we're at though, (nashville, tn).

Re:whatever they're doing..isn't working

[Ultracrepidarian]

I think those first years are the most critical. A couple good teachers at the start can immunize your kids against several turkeys down the road.

Re:whatever they're doing..isn't working

[HornWumpus]

Where I went to school the average GPA in education was a 3.85. They also had the lowest average SAT/ACT and HS GPAs of any school.

Take the 4.0 in education with a big old grain of salt. I knew one who drank to falling every night and carried a 4.0.

Re:whatever they're doing..isn't working

[drinkypoo]

I think those first years are the most critical. A couple good teachers at the start can immunize your kids against several turkeys down the road.

I think they're all critical. Without some good teachers in high school I might not be here today at all. Too bad nearly all the ones I had in my first high school (Harbor, in Santa Cruz) were shitheels or useless. Either they contributed to bullying or did nothing about it, which is itself a kind of contribution.

Linux and Apple users need not apply

[RotateLeftByte]

Isn't that the obvious ploy of this move.

Embrace the education establishment
Extend the curriculuim so that ONLY MS tools can be used
Extinguish all non compliant teachers as being obsolete

Barriers to teaching

[trinaryai]

As someone who has spent his career in IT, and actually acquired a Master's Degree in Education while working IT full time, I can give a couple things that have kept me from completing the transition. The biggest, number one reason is student teaching. While I qualify to become a teacher in every way, it is impossible for me to enter a classroom in that role unless I completely give up all working for four months. I've done pretty good putting money away for emergencies; but the return on investment simply isn't there to give up an income for four months. A few places offer in-service student teaching, but the list of qualifications for those programs is very long, targeting a very specific subset of the population. One of the reasons there is such a barrier to becoming a teacher is the teacher's union. There may be some states where it's different, but the ones I know about force all registered teachers to pay dues to the union whether they want to join or not. Because education is compulsory, all taxpayers are held hostage by the union's demands. There is no option to lock out the union, no option to balance negotiations. Hiring decisions, training decisions, and certification requirements are all heavily influenced, if not completely determined, by the union. The existing status quo cannot change until either the attitude of the union changes, or the law changes to weaken the union's power.

Re:Is the US becoming a corporatocracy?

[Stormwatch]

>becoming
>implying it isn't already

kids suck

[steak]

the ability to put up other people's worthless ass kids is a calling and if it's not your calling you're going to do a shit job and the kids will continue to be worthless. there, their, and they're!

order of magnitude more

[globaljustin]

How highly do you want them to be paid?

you're splitting pennies for one of the essential functions of human existence: teachers to our young...

however we just pass MILLIONS$$$ and BILLIONS$$$ around when discussing business executive pay or defense contracts

it's absolutely ridiculous, from a free market capitalist perspective, to expect to get the best people for a fraction of what they typically can earn in other fields

Re:order of magnitude more

[exomondo]

you're splitting pennies for one of the essential functions of human existence: teachers to our young...

however we just pass MILLIONS$$$ and BILLIONS$$$ around when discussing business executive pay or defense contracts

Nobody is "splitting pennies", you think they should be paid more so he's asking how much they should be paid, very simple. And you can stop crying poor in comparison to defense spending, the US spends more on Education annually than it does on defense, in excess of $1 trillion in fact.

Re:order of magnitude more

[rtb61]

Well that is down to stupid management practices much like the US's dysfunctional law enforcement. Instead of managing these once at state level, with Federal funding simply going direct to the state to distribute. You have this idiotic broken up model, with management repeated again and again and again and well, hundreds even thousands of times at county level, with those same management costs spent, again and again and again. Want to fix it, start taking more stuff out of the counties hand and pushing it up to state level management. Stop the high cost of distributing Federal funds to each county, thousands upon thousands, with all the monitoring and auditing that is required and repeated yet again by state's with state funding and simply pass federal funds to 50 state departments of education which then manage all public schools in the state. Private schools should not receive funds as, they are private and exclusionary, for them to accept government funds, they should be forced to accept all students within their catchment area and should not be able to exclude any ie take public funds then you are required to be accessible by all of the public, want to be private and exclude students by reason of IQ, race, religion, or bank balance of the parents than be private and fully privately funded.

Re:order of magnitude more

[globaljustin]

the answer is (still) in the subject line:

"order of magnitude more"

do you know what "order of magnitude" means?

just in case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Re:order of magnitude more

[cascadingstylesheet]

you're splitting pennies for one of the essential functions of human existence: teachers to our young...

Huh, I am? I don't run a school district or levy taxes.

Growing and selling food are essential to human existence too, and not everyone who works in that field makes upper 80K/year. So are driving ambulances, being a police officer, and countless other occupations. We don't pay all of them based on emotional outbursts either (well, not consistently - sometimes we try for awhile, until the city goes bankrupt).

Re:order of magnitude more

[exomondo]

the answer is (still) in the subject line:

"order of magnitude more"

And how exactly will that help? Is it that all existing teachers are just bad at their job and need to be replaced with competent ones? Is money the only driver here?

Re:order of magnitude more

[globaljustin]

i already addressed this...

it's absolutely ridiculous, from a free market capitalist perspective, to expect to get the best people for a fraction of what they typically can earn in other fields

you pay teachers more for the same reason you pay NBA players or Goldman-Sachs VP's...you fsking moron...this is the end of this conversation...I've proven you wrong

Re:order of magnitude more

[exomondo]

i already addressed this...

it's absolutely ridiculous, from a free market capitalist perspective, to expect to get the best people for a fraction of what they typically can earn in other fields

you pay teachers more for the same reason you pay NBA players or Goldman-Sachs VP's...you fsking moron...this is the end of this conversation...I've proven you wrong

Bullshit, you demonstrate your utter ignorance by suggesting the only way to get better people is to increase wages, this is patently false you braindead imbecile, obviously you have no experience in the realworld so your suggestion that this conversation is over and that you fuck off is a pretty good idea. Improving wages will not necessarily result in getting better teachers just as corporate VPs with larger salaries aren't necessarily any better than those with lower salaries, but of course you think the higher paid somebody is the better they are at their job.

Improving working conditions and reducing work load so that teachers are not so over-worked will have an impact, not increasing wages, overworked teachers with higher salaries is not going to improve the education system one bit, but obviously you think everything is driven by the dollar and simply giving more money will result in a better system.

Re:order of magnitude more

[cascadingstylesheet]

the answer is (still) in the subject line:

"order of magnitude more"

do you know what "order of magnitude" means?

just in case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...

Why stop there? Why not some sort of asymptotic curve, since money is apparently no object in your unicorn land?

Want A Job? Buy an XBox

[Bob9113]

Microsoft donated over 125 million impressions across Xbox 360, Windows 8, and MSN in order to encourage consumers to rediscover teaching through interactive ad units. This media effort is an extension of the Ad Council and TEACH's public service advertising (PSA) campaign, Make More...Throughout March, consumers were able to engage with TEACH "NUads on Xbox", via gesture, voice or controller on their Xbox 360 consoles.

Masters in education, good experience in other districts, just moved to the area, you may be a good candidate. Now, if you really want the job, go out and buy some Microsoft products, and then we'll give you a shot. You should also probably make sure you have created a rich and carefully crafted demographic footprint on each of the incumbent cloud surveillance networks:

Well, in addition to Teach.org and redundant social media efforts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Instagram, Linkedin, and YouTube,

Prostrate yourself before the oligarchy or be unemployed! Our nation cannot afford to have teachers who have any awareness of the value of attenuating corporate rule or pervasive surveillance! Young minds must be formed only by those who do not question the oligarchs!

Sounds like MS is trying to get government money

[Karmashock]

Who is going to pay for all this crap? Remember, LA Unified school district just shelled out something like a billion dollars for ipads. So there is big money to be made here.

The danger for the public is that it might not accomplish anything.

If all the promises of the technology pan out then its money well spent. If not, then its an unforgivable waste of finite public resources.

So You Want to be a Teacher...

[Anonymous Coward]

So You Want to be a Teacher? -- Time

Just one in a series of videos about the realities of the teaching profession.

I think schools like this one should be nominated

[bobstreo]

http://www.linux.com/news/feat...

Welcome Oligarchs!

[mspohr]

This is just another instance of oligarchs taking over government functions "because they know better". There is also more profit in it.
The oligarchs and their Republican enablers have been transferring public assets and functions to the private sector for years and the result is fewer public resources and higher costs for everyone.
All hail the Oligarchs! Capitalism triumphs!

Donations linked to schemes to make money.

[Futurepower(R)]

You missed the point. Yes Mr. Gates gives money away, but he also links those donations to schemes to make more money, it seems obvious to me.

Re:I think schools like this one should be nominat

[rrohbeck]

Oh no! Neither MS nor Apple? What has the world come to? How are the students going to be good software consumers? They might even begin to write their own programs! Heavens, they'll al become evil hackers!

Pay highly effective teachers more

[jacksdl]

My wife has been teaching for 32 years in downstate Illinois. One of two National Board Certified teachers in the district (meaning she meets the "Highly Qualified" standards for NCLB). She just past the $60K threshold last year (although with the supplies she buys it is still below that). We recently increased her monthly Salliemae payments so they will be paid off by retirement.

Research shows that highly effective teachers (teachers whose students regularly make more than 1 year of academic progress per school year) make a large and lasting difference in outcomes. More so than technology.

So identifying, rewarding and developing highly effective teachers should be a national priority. The economics of moving the median up for students would mean a huge gain for the economy.

As for Gates influencing our national education policy with his wealth, it shouldn't be possible. He can contribute to the discussion and do Foundation research, but that effort should be swamped by the dollars and attention the subject of education reform is getting. If he has too much influence, it just shows he is focusing on education while most of the rest of us aren't.

Need Security, Not Marketing

[eepok]

There are plenty of people who have just graduated high school who want to be teachers. There are plenty of people in college whose collegiate experiences inspire them to teach. The problem isn't finding teachers (or good teachers for that matter), but making sure they don't get lost in the complicated morass of certification, continuing education, and the bureaucracy of tenure. They also are, typically, willing to accept the likelihood of lower wages, but need to have proper support, small classes, and the guarantee of an good benefits and retirement plan.

Pay now or pay later. But you have to pay.

increase wages AND reduce work load

[globaljustin]

you can do **all of those things** you moron

1. raise salary
2. reduce workload

I ADVOCATE FOR BOTH

you're using teacher's own idealism to **justify paying them less**...it's bullshit and it's ruining education

you can pay more AND reduce workload!

Re:increase wages AND reduce work load

[exomondo]

Raising salaries won't do anything because the teachers are not the problem, the workload and class sizes are the problem.

DO BOTH

[globaljustin]

you can still do both increase pay dramatically AND reduce workload & class size

and you can cover your ears and say "la la la" all day, but **paying teachers what they deserve** (an order of magnitude more) is the way our economy has always shown the value of a position

simple/complex is different than easy/difficult

the solution to our education woes is simple...but that doesn't mean it is easy! first we have to shut down morons like you forever!

stop denying teachers the pay they deserve in the name of doing *other* things they *also* deserve

WE...CAN...DO....BOTH

Re:DO BOTH

[exomondo]

You say the existing teachers deserve it (I'm not disputing that, though I think 600,000-800,000 is a bit hefty) but why would they do any better job just because you pay them more? Do you do your job to a capacity determined by your salary? Do you do a better job if you get a payrise? Or do you just do a crappy job until somebody gives you more money?

Increasing salaries will only work to attract talent if existing teachers are all just doing a shitty job, but reducing class sizes and workload increases the appeal of the job and increases job satisfaction so funding more positions rather than fewer positions more highly is obviously the preferable route. If we could give everybody an order of magnitude pay rise that would be nice but you know that's idiocy, nurses, paramedics, taxi drivers, garbage men, etc... have to deal with a lot of shit and aren't very highly paid at all. But I guess you have an interest in teachers having higher pay and don't care about anybody else or where that money should come from.

tax magic unicorn reality 1950

[globaljustin]

have you looked at executive pay or defense contract figures?

look at the tax rate on those executives...and on those military/industrial complex corps

all we have to do is take tax rates back to 1950 levels

it's a simple fix...not *easy*...it's difficult...simple but difficult...because of jerk-offs like you

Rich Republicans bitch more

[globaljustin]

Rich Republicans are the bitchiest people in human history...

they pay next to nothing in taxes and then yell and scream 'fraud!' at Pell grants or Medicare