"Teach all kids the same is why the public schools are failing"
You missunderstood. I meant that all publicly-funded schools/systems should be required to provide an education to children. All children should be treated the same in this regard.
I agree fully well with your point that the details of this provided education should not be the same for all students. Different kids do need different learning environments, and this is helped when the traditional public school system is reformed and diversified to include charter schools, vouchers, and other options (such as the military academies you mention).
That's nothing. The biggest dent the Constitution took in ages was when a law was passed to criminalize the act of speaking in opposition to people in government. The Dems were the ones pushing the most for this, and Bush was pretty quick to sign it too (McCain/Feingold)
The $70k number should include benefits. These are part of compensation.
"You are also assuming that the education results are the fault of the teachers and teachers only"
At the beginning of the class year, students showed up in Detroit but the teachers could not be bothered. This is par for the course. I've seen tenure in my own experience keep the "poor" ones on the job. Getting rid of it is a good idea, because in practice, firing for political reasons is extremely rare, and it does make it way too hard to get rid of the bad ones.
"First of all, the process to suspend and/or expel a student in a public school is a very lengthy, time consuming process."
I saw one kicked out in a matter of days.
"First of all, students have a right to their public education"
Too bad it is not a right to receive a good public education. I also have YET to meet any "opponents of public schools".
"If you have evidence that private school teachers are indeed of "better grade" please provide"
I've known both types personally. The "what's in it for me?" attitude is much more prevalent among the public school teachers. The ones who get $52,000 per year with 3 months paid vacation but they want MORE no matter who it hurts. I'm all for "ensuring that public education is the best it can be" which is why I want to expand public education options, such as making the choice to go to a better school easily available for all. Yes, traditional public schools do have all of the "disadvantages": school boards that don't have to care since they'll get students no matter what, teachers unions that work to destroy everything, and a tenure system that keeps the bad ones in the classroom. There is a problem that has to be fixed. Anyone who looks at the system can see that it is broken. The fact that it fails so many, expecially in places like Detroit (mentioned elsewhere) means it is not working. There's no excuse for this. Either we reform public schools so they don't have the problems, or we let the kids go to private schools with publicly-paid vouchers. After all, what is the most important? Maintaining an existing government bureacracy, or making sure the children get educated?
"Advanced degree holders (which most teachers are required to be) earned an average of $78,093, or more than $30k more than the average teacher."
Detroit Public school teachers, who do a rather bad job (as shown by the education results they produce, and the incident at the beginning of this school year where most were too lazy to even show up when classes started), make just over $70,000 a year. This is rather close to $78,000. There are some teachers elsewhere in that same state who DO make much less than $70,000 and also do a much better job than the teachers who are paid a lot more.
It is still all apples and oranges. Different professions with different standards. How many of those other advanced degree holders have a tenure system which protects them even when they are lousy? The wage earners in the other sectors for the most part have to be good at what they are doing.
"And where would the students turned away go? Are we not going to educate them? Or do they go into another school? If they go into another school are we going to compare that school against the original one? And if we do, we've got exactly the situation we have today. "
That's a good point. Schools receiving public money (either traditional public schools or vouchers) should be required to teach all kids the same.
4. Private schools are not overseen by any citizen entity. Public schools report to the school board, who reports to the local voters. This allows the local community to set standards and oversee the progress of the district.
The caveat to this is thanks to school choice reformers, many areas DO have options so parents can choose to send their students to better schools instead of having to throw up their hands and accept inferior public schools. There are now charter schools which provide alternatives. They also provide real competition: I've noticed my local school board and the traditional public schools making more of an effort to do what they should have been doing all along(serve the students) since, with competition, they just can't get by slacking off anymore. Everyone wins.
"Actually, private school teachers are different, not necessarily better. Private schools are allowed to higher anybody, for any position. Public schools are required (through state laws) to ensure a minimum qualification level of all teachers."
Actually, private schools are encouraged to hire better teachers because they have to in order to attract students. Thus, they tend to hire good teachers and fire bad ones. The traditional public schools, with the tenure system, keep the bad teachers and even reward them for being bad (by paying them the same as the good ones). The NEA even comes into the mix in another explicit example of how the NEA works against quality education. They try to prevent merit pay, and to prevent bad teachers from being fired. Why? Bad teachers pay the same NEA dues as good ones do, so the NEA does not care at all how good a teacher is.
I do not really HATE the NEA, and do not want it banned. I support teachers and their rights, and would like to see NEA membership to be voluntary. Let each teacher choose. Same with the AFT. Most likely, the good teachers (who would be paid more than the others anyway) would not join the NEA, and the bad ones would join the NEA so it could fight for mediocrity.
"What does the NEA want? They want good pay (just as any employee and/or employee group)"
I've been listening mostly directly to the NEA itself. I've also listened to many dedicated professionals who have been harassed and bullied by the NEA for daring to put the children first. What does it want? They already have good pay (more than that, even). What they want is to get the most pay for the least work as possible. Isn't it obvious that both of these are destructive to the mission of education? Regardless of their rhetoric, they do not really want "small class sizes and newer supplies/equipment": every pay raise victory means larger class sizes and fewer supplies.
If you still doubt what is most important to the NEA (greed, not education), look at the "critical lists" they publish every year in the last summer. What schools end up on the list? Which schools are problems? No, it's not the schools that are having trouble meeting education requirements. It's the schools where the school board is refusing to overpay the NEA even more.
"And like I've said before, the system is not broken"
Why of course it works fine if you are white and happen to go to a good school. But what about the others? How about, for example, the Detroit public school system? "In a report from Education Research Center, Detroit Public Schools ranked last among 50 large school districts for the percentage of students who receive a high school diploma on time." The NEA also badly ravaged this one recently too: the employees (is it even worth it to call them teachers?) went on strike in the Fall of 2006. As a result of the chaos of supposed teachers who were too lazy to teach, 25,000 students who would have gone to school never showed up again. Median pay in that city for teachers is over $70,000. This is well above the Michigan and national average. These teachers are the ones who struck to be paid even more. Do I respect teachers? Yes. These are the ones that crossed the picket lines.
"Vouchers will not allow children to choose better schools"
I'm not sure I ever said that. If I did, what I meant to say is that vouchers let parents choose better schools.
"For one thing, all parents have the option of sending their kids to private school, they just have to pay for it (kind of like most things in life). "
That's fine if you are rich, but what about the poor who cannot afford to go to better schools? Must a decent education be denied to the poor? Class sizes would still be smaller in private schools "post voucher". In fact, as private schools actively competed for student voucher money, they'd compete to advertise as having the smallest class sizes. More voucher money would mean more money for more teachers. They'd also have little of the problem like in Detroit of having to spend over $70,000 for every teacher in the system (good and bad) including those who are too lazy to show up to teach class at the beginning of the year.
"Personally, I don't think vouchers will do anything to change education, with the exception of enriching private schools at the cost of public schools"
There would be no cost to public education, as the private schools (through the voucher program) would become, in a way part, of the public education system. Only now you'd have more money/students going to good schools and fewer forced to go to the badly run ones. It's a transfer of money that would have a great benefit to society.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with the public schools at all, as long as you are not a minority in a "bad area". I guess "those people" don't count, do they?
Who really needs this? The only ones who are excited are likely the adslingers, looking for a new way to slide, pop, fade, or otherwise "extense" advertising windows at us.
Looking forward to more crashing browsers and garbled pages due to the new stuff. There's a LOT that can be done with standard HTML, even if it is tedious to do so, without turning it from something elegant into a whopper of a monster.
"If you want diversity, you don't put things into a marketplace because those with the biggest pockets usually have similar interests"
So you want a "diversity" that is forced and created by government? You claim in the sentence above that, given a choice, the people would not have it at all.
"That's why I think public radio is awesome. You turn it on and it's something you might actually want to hear, versus the same 12 songs on every other station"
That's your personal choice. Guess what? Most of the public really cares very little about it.
"...but it seems like both have just become ways to shove products down peoples' throats"
It is impossible to do this via radio. All they do is present information, which I am free to ignore.
"Whenever any decent music gets popular I usually deem it to be a "despite the media" type of thing instead of with the help of the media"
Who decides what is "decent!"? You or the public? Media that the public thinks is decent is what succeeds.
"Exactly. Hence the salary negotiations to keep the teachers. If the district (i.e. the taxpayers) actually thought the money was being poorly spent, they could get rid of the teachers and hire a new staff. But, most of the teachers are worth it to retain."
Actually, for schools with milleage votes, I favor putting the teacher pay levels as an explicitly defined part of the package put before voters. This gets rid of the need to negotiate, and the voters get to vote on it every once in a while. The public is less likely to waste money to push the upper crust deeper into the upper levels of income.
What if you have been trying to "fix it" for decades, but are blocked at every turn by anti-education interests such as the NEA, no matter how much more money you throw at it? How many generations of school children do you let pass through the broken system? Why not instead give them an "out" ? Vouchers which let children choose better schools (private AND public) do this.
"In other words, if you were to take all of the children being educated today, and stick them into private schools, the net result would be that the student's would not perform better"
They would perform better, for two reasons (for starters): the schools would be competing against each other (no complancency of the monopoly) which encourages them to improve themselves to attact students. For another, the class sizes tend to be smaller. There's also a better breed of teacher, as the private schools tend more to pay for ability, instead of rewarding teachers for being bad through the tenure system.
"I feel that when the government performs a service poorly, that service should be changed. But if the service isn't poor, or at least isn't worse than any other option being considered, well, then it's stupid to change it.
Then you should not be worried about a voluntary voucher system, correct? If none of the public schools are poor, the vouchers won't be used at all, right? If what you say is true, nobody would use the vouchers anyway. Let's put this idea to the test and see what the parents (who know the most about it) think. If there are no bad public schools, no problem, right?
"It's not apples to oranges. You are saying teachers are overpaid"
In such districts, they are. If they would work for much less, they are overpaid.
" If I want a raise at the end of the year, does that make me obsessed with being richer? No, it means I feel I deserve the raise"
What if you are already amply compensated, and know that this pay raise will have to be paid for with increased class sizes and cuts in education? Then you are being nothing other than greedy. Putting yourself first.
"The fact that programs are cut for it are not the teachers fault."
If the teachers ask for more money, knowing that it has to be cut from somewhere else, it is the fault of the teachers that do this. Nobody else is involved at all.
"And guess what, if any employer does not budget appropriate wages for employees"
In this case, thay've budgeted inappropriately high wages already.
"but it isn't "stealing it" like you are trying to imply teacher's salaries are"
I never used the word "stealing" or implied it. I'm just pointing out the naked greed of those who are well paid and beg for more money without regard to the damage it causes.
"And who says the teachers are being greedy and the wage hikes are unearned? "
It can't be anything other than greed if they are already hansomely compensated, and the money they beg for comes from cutting education. The ones who are greedy like this (and demand unearned wage hikes) are taking money out of the school system. Every dollar that goes to them so they can buy another jetski or jacuzzi comes directly out of money that is used for supplies, programs, or something that has REAL educational benefit. That's my priorities: I think that books in the classroom are more important than cushy perks and overcompensation for school employees.
Most districts are quite amply funded (not "most school districts are woefully underfunded"). I can't believe anyone can look at the ever increasing amounts and claim any sort of underfunding. The problem is with what is done with the money. I don't want anything "free": I just don't want money wasted in overpaying both "teachers" AND adminstrators that is MUCH better used elsewhere. You said "There are classroom supplies like books, paper and writing utensils. There are costs such as electricity and heat.". That is the best point you have made so far. These costs should be the priority, not pushing upper-crust deeper into the upper crust. Pencils on the desk or jacuzzi on some employee's deck? How can you possibly choose the latter. If the public sends more and more money to the schools and it is all sucked up by selfish "public servants" with their hand in the cookie jar, you cannot blame the public here.
I have an in-depth knowledge of how the process works, and how those with the wrong (selfish) priorities destroy the system. I have a severe bias in favor of teachers. Those ones you defend who are already upper class and focus their effort on taking even more money out of the system no matter who it hurts? They are teachers in name only; they certainly don't care about the children. If they did, they would not take from them. With friends and family members who are on school boards and administrators, and are public school teachers, I've seen the damage done.
It's pretty clear from this thread that you are uninformed about public schools and the especially what the main mission should be. You think that mission 1 is for employees get rich, instead of to provide an education. Since my opinion is based on facts, the only thing that would change it would be if the situation changed, and anti-education special interests (the teachers' union) were shut out of the process entirely.
I wasn't thinking of the Blair government as socialist. Nor, for that matter, is Bush a "neocon". He's a regular ol' conservative, not any sort of "neo-"phyte.
"The Star Trek universe is actually filled with non-humanoid life; it's just that humans tend to make contact with humanoid life and not interact much with any other life forms."
I thought of mentioning that, but figured I'd leave it at the more superficial level of Trek, rather than deep Trekkiedom. You know, where the public knows "Star Trek" as a show where starships travel around the galaxy and interact for the most part with aliens that are nothing other than humans with forehead bumps.
We do only have a sample of one single biosphere to work from. The attention paid to Jupiter and Titan, which are other chemical cauldrons, has been so little as to not even count.
"Intelligent life on other planets at a similar stage of development to ours is likely is bipedal, warm blooded, has eyes like humans"
I'd bet you (if I had the money and the millenia) that the first "advanced" life form we have will resemble those "flashy light things" that they used in Trek when they wanted to save the budget, or red amoebas the size of Alcatraz, or something even more bizarre. It is so limited to think "yeah, they'll be like us". So limiting. Examples of how limiting this is are even found on Earth: Look at the canny, dextrous, octopus with its advanced eye. It's easy to see this type of life form going farther.
"A Big Question in science is : Is the apparition of life on Earth a common event in the Universe or is it a unique and almost impossible event? "
Is that really such a question? Given that there are a bazillion (heh, scientific, I know) planets out there, there's a huge number of Earthlikne planets as well, making it likely that there is something similar elsewhere life-wise. Also, once we look past our "Star Trek" prejudices, there's the likelihood of even more different types of life in a variety of other environments.
In other words, it seems rather probably that there are other planets with a biosphere, so that answers your "big question". The bigger question is how common it is and what it is like. For this, we can only make the wildest of guesses, since it is impossible to generalize from a sample set of one.
"And how does the $51k salary compare to other college educated wage earners in your area?"
That doesn't matter. The school should pay enough to retain and keep the good teachers, and no more. When you already have a huge pool of applicants trying to be teachers at the place, to be paid at the lower level, the pay is certainly quite adequate.
" In my area, the best paid teachers are paid much less than the average for college educated individuals"
So? Why compare apples and oranges? If these highly-paid teachers really wanted to be even richer and are obsessed with that, they should probably leave the profession. It's not like they are so dedicated to it in the first place.
"You are also talking about a 4% increase that comes generally once every few years (other years are lower), which overall, does not beat out inflation."
That's a 4% increase that HAS to come from somewhere, and it typically is paid for by cutting programs and increasing class sizes. The greedy demand for uneanred wage hikes (gimme! gimme! gimme!) do force schools to cut programs. They are basically taking money out of the school system. The voters and taxpayers have already voted to very amply fund the schools.
All of which has nothing to do with a voucher system in which private schools that want voucher money pretty much have to accept all (including non-elite) students.
And where there be oceans, there be pirates. And where there be pirates, there be buried treasure! Hoist up the sails, me hearties, and set course to Marrrrs!
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"Teach all kids the same is why the public schools are failing"
You missunderstood. I meant that all publicly-funded schools/systems should be required to provide an education to children. All children should be treated the same in this regard.
I agree fully well with your point that the details of this provided education should not be the same for all students. Different kids do need different learning environments, and this is helped when the traditional public school system is reformed and diversified to include charter schools, vouchers, and other options (such as the military academies you mention).
That's nothing. The biggest dent the Constitution took in ages was when a law was passed to criminalize the act of speaking in opposition to people in government. The Dems were the ones pushing the most for this, and Bush was pretty quick to sign it too (McCain/Feingold)
The $70k number should include benefits. These are part of compensation.
"You are also assuming that the education results are the fault of the teachers and teachers only"
At the beginning of the class year, students showed up in Detroit but the teachers could not be bothered. This is par for the course. I've seen tenure in my own experience keep the "poor" ones on the job. Getting rid of it is a good idea, because in practice, firing for political reasons is extremely rare, and it does make it way too hard to get rid of the bad ones.
"First of all, the process to suspend and/or expel a student in a public school is a very lengthy, time consuming process."
I saw one kicked out in a matter of days.
"First of all, students have a right to their public education"
Too bad it is not a right to receive a good public education. I also have YET to meet any "opponents of public schools".
"If you have evidence that private school teachers are indeed of "better grade" please provide"
I've known both types personally. The "what's in it for me?" attitude is much more prevalent among the public school teachers. The ones who get $52,000 per year with 3 months paid vacation but they want MORE no matter who it hurts. I'm all for "ensuring that public education is the best it can be" which is why I want to expand public education options, such as making the choice to go to a better school easily available for all. Yes, traditional public schools do have all of the "disadvantages": school boards that don't have to care since they'll get students no matter what, teachers unions that work to destroy everything, and a tenure system that keeps the bad ones in the classroom. There is a problem that has to be fixed. Anyone who looks at the system can see that it is broken. The fact that it fails so many, expecially in places like Detroit (mentioned elsewhere) means it is not working. There's no excuse for this. Either we reform public schools so they don't have the problems, or we let the kids go to private schools with publicly-paid vouchers. After all, what is the most important? Maintaining an existing government bureacracy, or making sure the children get educated?
"Advanced degree holders (which most teachers are required to be) earned an average of $78,093, or more than $30k more than the average teacher."
Detroit Public school teachers, who do a rather bad job (as shown by the education results they produce, and the incident at the beginning of this school year where most were too lazy to even show up when classes started), make just over $70,000 a year. This is rather close to $78,000. There are some teachers elsewhere in that same state who DO make much less than $70,000 and also do a much better job than the teachers who are paid a lot more.
It is still all apples and oranges. Different professions with different standards. How many of those other advanced degree holders have a tenure system which protects them even when they are lousy? The wage earners in the other sectors for the most part have to be good at what they are doing.
"And where would the students turned away go? Are we not going to educate them? Or do they go into another school? If they go into another school are we going to compare that school against the original one? And if we do, we've got exactly the situation we have today. "
That's a good point. Schools receiving public money (either traditional public schools or vouchers) should be required to teach all kids the same.
4. Private schools are not overseen by any citizen entity. Public schools report to the school board, who reports to the local voters. This allows the local community to set standards and oversee the progress of the district.
The caveat to this is thanks to school choice reformers, many areas DO have options so parents can choose to send their students to better schools instead of having to throw up their hands and accept inferior public schools. There are now charter schools which provide alternatives. They also provide real competition: I've noticed my local school board and the traditional public schools making more of an effort to do what they should have been doing all along(serve the students) since, with competition, they just can't get by slacking off anymore. Everyone wins.
"Actually, private school teachers are different, not necessarily better. Private schools are allowed to higher anybody, for any position. Public schools are required (through state laws) to ensure a minimum qualification level of all teachers."
Actually, private schools are encouraged to hire better teachers because they have to in order to attract students. Thus, they tend to hire good teachers and fire bad ones. The traditional public schools, with the tenure system, keep the bad teachers and even reward them for being bad (by paying them the same as the good ones). The NEA even comes into the mix in another explicit example of how the NEA works against quality education. They try to prevent merit pay, and to prevent bad teachers from being fired. Why? Bad teachers pay the same NEA dues as good ones do, so the NEA does not care at all how good a teacher is.
I do not really HATE the NEA, and do not want it banned. I support teachers and their rights, and would like to see NEA membership to be voluntary. Let each teacher choose. Same with the AFT. Most likely, the good teachers (who would be paid more than the others anyway) would not join the NEA, and the bad ones would join the NEA so it could fight for mediocrity.
"What does the NEA want? They want good pay (just as any employee and/or employee group)"
I've been listening mostly directly to the NEA itself. I've also listened to many dedicated professionals who have been harassed and bullied by the NEA for daring to put the children first. What does it want? They already have good pay (more than that, even). What they want is to get the most pay for the least work as possible. Isn't it obvious that both of these are destructive to the mission of education? Regardless of their rhetoric, they do not really want "small class sizes and newer supplies/equipment": every pay raise victory means larger class sizes and fewer supplies.
If you still doubt what is most important to the NEA (greed, not education), look at the "critical lists" they publish every year in the last summer. What schools end up on the list? Which schools are problems? No, it's not the schools that are having trouble meeting education requirements. It's the schools where the school board is refusing to overpay the NEA even more.
"And like I've said before, the system is not broken"
Why of course it works fine if you are white and happen to go to a good school. But what about the others? How about, for example, the Detroit public school system? "In a report from Education Research Center, Detroit Public Schools ranked last among 50 large school districts for the percentage of students who receive a high school diploma on time." The NEA also badly ravaged this one recently too: the employees (is it even worth it to call them teachers?) went on strike in the Fall of 2006. As a result of the chaos of supposed teachers who were too lazy to teach, 25,000 students who would have gone to school never showed up again. Median pay in that city for teachers is over $70,000. This is well above the Michigan and national average. These teachers are the ones who struck to be paid even more. Do I respect teachers? Yes. These are the ones that crossed the picket lines.
"Vouchers will not allow children to choose better schools"
I'm not sure I ever said that. If I did, what I meant to say is that vouchers let parents choose better schools.
"For one thing, all parents have the option of sending their kids to private school, they just have to pay for it (kind of like most things in life). "
That's fine if you are rich, but what about the poor who cannot afford to go to better schools? Must a decent education be denied to the poor? Class sizes would still be smaller in private schools "post voucher". In fact, as private schools actively competed for student voucher money, they'd compete to advertise as having the smallest class sizes. More voucher money would mean more money for more teachers. They'd also have little of the problem like in Detroit of having to spend over $70,000 for every teacher in the system (good and bad) including those who are too lazy to show up to teach class at the beginning of the year.
"Personally, I don't think vouchers will do anything to change education, with the exception of enriching private schools at the cost of public schools"
There would be no cost to public education, as the private schools (through the voucher program) would become, in a way part, of the public education system. Only now you'd have more money/students going to good schools and fewer forced to go to the badly run ones. It's a transfer of money that would have a great benefit to society.
Yeah, there's nothing wrong with the public schools at all, as long as you are not a minority in a "bad area". I guess "those people" don't count, do they?
Who really needs this? The only ones who are excited are likely the adslingers, looking for a new way to slide, pop, fade, or otherwise "extense" advertising windows at us.
Looking forward to more crashing browsers and garbled pages due to the new stuff. There's a LOT that can be done with standard HTML, even if it is tedious to do so, without turning it from something elegant into a whopper of a monster.
"If you want diversity, you don't put things into a marketplace because those with the biggest pockets usually have similar interests"
So you want a "diversity" that is forced and created by government? You claim in the sentence above that, given a choice, the people would not have it at all.
"That's why I think public radio is awesome. You turn it on and it's something you might actually want to hear, versus the same 12 songs on every other station"
That's your personal choice. Guess what? Most of the public really cares very little about it.
"...but it seems like both have just become ways to shove products down peoples' throats"
It is impossible to do this via radio. All they do is present information, which I am free to ignore.
"Whenever any decent music gets popular I usually deem it to be a "despite the media" type of thing instead of with the help of the media"
Who decides what is "decent!"? You or the public? Media that the public thinks is decent is what succeeds.
"Exactly. Hence the salary negotiations to keep the teachers. If the district (i.e. the taxpayers) actually thought the money was being poorly spent, they could get rid of the teachers and hire a new staff. But, most of the teachers are worth it to retain."
Actually, for schools with milleage votes, I favor putting the teacher pay levels as an explicitly defined part of the package put before voters. This gets rid of the need to negotiate, and the voters get to vote on it every once in a while. The public is less likely to waste money to push the upper crust deeper into the upper levels of income.
"Then you fix it."
What if you have been trying to "fix it" for decades, but are blocked at every turn by anti-education interests such as the NEA, no matter how much more money you throw at it? How many generations of school children do you let pass through the broken system? Why not instead give them an "out" ? Vouchers which let children choose better schools (private AND public) do this.
"In other words, if you were to take all of the children being educated today, and stick them into private schools, the net result would be that the student's would not perform better"
They would perform better, for two reasons (for starters): the schools would be competing against each other (no complancency of the monopoly) which encourages them to improve themselves to attact students. For another, the class sizes tend to be smaller. There's also a better breed of teacher, as the private schools tend more to pay for ability, instead of rewarding teachers for being bad through the tenure system.
"I feel that when the government performs a service poorly, that service should be changed. But if the service isn't poor, or at least isn't worse than any other option being considered, well, then it's stupid to change it.
Then you should not be worried about a voluntary voucher system, correct? If none of the public schools are poor, the vouchers won't be used at all, right? If what you say is true, nobody would use the vouchers anyway. Let's put this idea to the test and see what the parents (who know the most about it) think. If there are no bad public schools, no problem, right?
"It's not apples to oranges. You are saying teachers are overpaid"
In such districts, they are. If they would work for much less, they are overpaid.
" If I want a raise at the end of the year, does that make me obsessed with being richer? No, it means I feel I deserve the raise"
What if you are already amply compensated, and know that this pay raise will have to be paid for with increased class sizes and cuts in education? Then you are being nothing other than greedy. Putting yourself first.
"The fact that programs are cut for it are not the teachers fault."
If the teachers ask for more money, knowing that it has to be cut from somewhere else, it is the fault of the teachers that do this. Nobody else is involved at all.
"And guess what, if any employer does not budget appropriate wages for employees"
In this case, thay've budgeted inappropriately high wages already.
"but it isn't "stealing it" like you are trying to imply teacher's salaries are"
I never used the word "stealing" or implied it. I'm just pointing out the naked greed of those who are well paid and beg for more money without regard to the damage it causes.
"And who says the teachers are being greedy and the wage hikes are unearned? "
It can't be anything other than greed if they are already hansomely compensated, and the money they beg for comes from cutting education. The ones who are greedy like this (and demand unearned wage hikes) are taking money out of the school system. Every dollar that goes to them so they can buy another jetski or jacuzzi comes directly out of money that is used for supplies, programs, or something that has REAL educational benefit. That's my priorities: I think that books in the classroom are more important than cushy perks and overcompensation for school employees.
Most districts are quite amply funded (not "most school districts are woefully underfunded"). I can't believe anyone can look at the ever increasing amounts and claim any sort of underfunding. The problem is with what is done with the money. I don't want anything "free": I just don't want money wasted in overpaying both "teachers" AND adminstrators that is MUCH better used elsewhere. You said "There are classroom supplies like books, paper and writing utensils. There are costs such as electricity and heat.". That is the best point you have made so far. These costs should be the priority, not pushing upper-crust deeper into the upper crust. Pencils on the desk or jacuzzi on some employee's deck? How can you possibly choose the latter. If the public sends more and more money to the schools and it is all sucked up by selfish "public servants" with their hand in the cookie jar, you cannot blame the public here.
I have an in-depth knowledge of how the process works, and how those with the wrong (selfish) priorities destroy the system. I have a severe bias in favor of teachers. Those ones you defend who are already upper class and focus their effort on taking even more money out of the system no matter who it hurts? They are teachers in name only; they certainly don't care about the children. If they did, they would not take from them. With friends and family members who are on school boards and administrators, and are public school teachers, I've seen the damage done.
It's pretty clear from this thread that you are uninformed about public schools and the especially what the main mission should be. You think that mission 1 is for employees get rich, instead of to provide an education. Since my opinion is based on facts, the only thing that would change it would be if the situation changed, and anti-education special interests (the teachers' union) were shut out of the process entirely.
I wasn't thinking of the Blair government as socialist. Nor, for that matter, is Bush a "neocon". He's a regular ol' conservative, not any sort of "neo-"phyte.
"The Star Trek universe is actually filled with non-humanoid life; it's just that humans tend to make contact with humanoid life and not interact much with any other life forms."
I thought of mentioning that, but figured I'd leave it at the more superficial level of Trek, rather than deep Trekkiedom. You know, where the public knows "Star Trek" as a show where starships travel around the galaxy and interact for the most part with aliens that are nothing other than humans with forehead bumps.
We do only have a sample of one single biosphere to work from. The attention paid to Jupiter and Titan, which are other chemical cauldrons, has been so little as to not even count.
"Intelligent life on other planets at a similar stage of development to ours is likely is bipedal, warm blooded, has eyes like humans"
I'd bet you (if I had the money and the millenia) that the first "advanced" life form we have will resemble those "flashy light things" that they used in Trek when they wanted to save the budget, or red amoebas the size of Alcatraz, or something even more bizarre. It is so limited to think "yeah, they'll be like us". So limiting. Examples of how limiting this is are even found on Earth: Look at the canny, dextrous, octopus with its advanced eye. It's easy to see this type of life form going farther.
" Which is why I think that the government's job should be to ensure the best education for all. This means a public education system."
And what do we do when the government's "public education system" is doing a bad job in many areas?
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"A Big Question in science is : Is the apparition of life on Earth a common event in the Universe or is it a unique and almost impossible event? "
Is that really such a question? Given that there are a bazillion (heh, scientific, I know) planets out there, there's a huge number of Earthlikne planets as well, making it likely that there is something similar elsewhere life-wise. Also, once we look past our "Star Trek" prejudices, there's the likelihood of even more different types of life in a variety of other environments.
In other words, it seems rather probably that there are other planets with a biosphere, so that answers your "big question". The bigger question is how common it is and what it is like. For this, we can only make the wildest of guesses, since it is impossible to generalize from a sample set of one.
"We have a real problem in the UK that government departments have faith-based policies sold to them by the armies of lobbyists"
"Faith based" is a pretty good description for socialism. It's based on entirely imaginary assumptions.
"And how does the $51k salary compare to other college educated wage earners in your area?"
That doesn't matter. The school should pay enough to retain and keep the good teachers, and no more. When you already have a huge pool of applicants trying to be teachers at the place, to be paid at the lower level, the pay is certainly quite adequate.
" In my area, the best paid teachers are paid much less than the average for college educated individuals"
So? Why compare apples and oranges? If these highly-paid teachers really wanted to be even richer and are obsessed with that, they should probably leave the profession. It's not like they are so dedicated to it in the first place.
"You are also talking about a 4% increase that comes generally once every few years (other years are lower), which overall, does not beat out inflation."
That's a 4% increase that HAS to come from somewhere, and it typically is paid for by cutting programs and increasing class sizes. The greedy demand for uneanred wage hikes (gimme! gimme! gimme!) do force schools to cut programs. They are basically taking money out of the school system. The voters and taxpayers have already voted to very amply fund the schools.
All of which has nothing to do with a voucher system in which private schools that want voucher money pretty much have to accept all (including non-elite) students.
And where there be oceans, there be pirates. And where there be pirates, there be buried treasure! Hoist up the sails, me hearties, and set course to Marrrrs!
"Wash, rinse, repeat unnecessarily"
Dude, your SIG sort of contradicts your message.