Wages Aren't the Only Reason Teachers Are Striking (axios.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Schools in 39 of 50 states have seen decreases in funding for instructional materials for their students, according to data from the Urban Institute. These conditions have sparked a wave of teacher activism across the country. Educators have had to pay for supplies themselves to provide new materials for students at times. Teachers' salaries aren't enough to pay for materials, either. In some cases they have to pay for materials for dozens of children. Teachers are having to teach students with materials that are defective, outdated and inefficient because of a lack of funding going to state education budgets -- particularly in Republican states.

Comments

Buddy of mine finally moved to a nice place

[rsilvergun]

after many years living in a borderilne slum (cheap rent from relatives who owned the place). The first thing he noticed is he didn't have to buy nearly as many school supplies as he did when his kids went to a poor district.

In America we use property taxes to fund individual school districts. This means we've got nice, rich districts and lousy poor ones. This is by design. I've read one of the Scandinavian countries has laws about schools being funded equally to prevent just these kind of shenanigans. I'd love to see those kind of laws here in the States. As an added bonus it'd make forced busing pointless outside of specialty magnet schools.

Re:it's the party platform

[froggyjojodaddy]

Muslim here. I don't know why Joannesg got voted Troll because what he said is 100% accurate. If you go to any non-Arabic speaking country and talk to the Muslims there, very few of them will be able to speak Arabic or translate it for you.

I have nephews and nieces in the UK who have all read the Quran. A couple of them have memorized it, but if you ask them to translate a random verse into English, they won't be able to because they don't really understand what they're reading. It's a big thing in my family when someone has memorized the Quran - parties are thrown, gifts are shared etc. but no-one really cares about if the person actually understood any of it. It's just memorization.

I read the Quran when I was younger and even memorized half of it but I couldn't tell you what any of it meant until I got my hands on a version that hand Arabic and English translations side by side. That was considered 'cheating' back in the day so my parents and the local Imam were really disappointed I had to resort to finding an English translation version.

This is one of the great dangers of preachers/Imams etc. They ask a child to read some text and then tell the child what the text is saying rather than let the child figure it out themselves. What doesn't help is that most religious texts are kinda ambiguous - if you're a pacifist you can read one sentence a certain way and think, "OK, that sounds entirely reasonable. I should look to help others" whereas a maniac would read the exact same words and come to the conclusion, "God is telling me to kill infidels".

Incidentally, it was after reading the English translations that I moved away from religion.

Re:overpaid, underperforming

[Registered Coward v2]

We should also remove the special perks for teachers: they should work a full working year, with a few weeks off, get the same kind of health insurance as other people in their income bracket, and get 401(k) or 403(b) plans instead of pensions.

This whole "teachers get the summer off as a paid vacation" is a fallacy. Most teachers are paid for woking X days; where I live they can get the check only during the school year or spread over 12 months; even so teh summers are spent prepping for the next year. Anyone could have the same deal if their company offers an unpaid sabbatical leave of 3 months. They don't get overtime if the have to stay late for an event or a parent insists on their conference be held after normal working hours. As for benefits, they are average at best in my district. Yes, they are one of the few jobs that still offers defined benefit pensions, but even then the county messes with them by giving bonuses in lieu of pay raises so they don't get included in pension calculations.

Yes, there are bad teachers; and benefits vary greatly by state; but at the rate we are going the only people who will teach are those who can't do anything else or coaches.