toldailytopic: Are public school teachers paid well enough?

[The Berean]

Here's an interesting article on the difficulty finding excellent teachers. apparently, academic excellent is not an accurate predictor of future success as a teacher.

 

[Town Heretic]

One has to be very careful when one uses student performance to determine if a teacher is effective or not...

You cannot reasonably evaluate a teacher without taking into account the socioeconomics of the neighborhood in which the school is located.

I completely agree. I meant to infer that in my cross check. That is, the reason for tracking students across the board is to get a sense of how a teacher is performing within a given context. If you don't do that you're going to have the best teachers staying far away from poorer areas.

 

[zippy2006]

You just killed elementary schools.

Why? :idunno:

 

[ebenz47037]

Morgan Freeman on Black History Month

Cannot give rep because I need to spread the love. But, thank you for finding that video. I agree one hundred percent with him.

 

[ebenz47037]

I agree with Buzz about needing to value teachers more. They are so important but education doesn't always get the funding it deserves. So I'll say no to the topic, in general.

That's funny because the reason I tend not to value teachers more is because I had teachers who were teachers because they couldn't find a better job. My daughter had one of those, in second grade, too. That is why she ended up being homeschooled.

 

[The Berean]

From the article I posted.

Eric Hanushek, an economist at Stanford, estimates that the students of a very bad teacher will learn, on average, half a year’s worth of material in one school year. The students in the class of a very good teacher will learn a year and a half’s worth of material. That difference amounts to a year’s worth of learning in a single year. Teacher effects dwarf school effects: your child is actually better off in a “bad” school with an excellent teacher than in an excellent school with a bad teacher. Teacher effects are also much stronger than class-size effects. You’d have to cut the average class almost in half to get the same boost that you’d get if you switched from an average teacher to a teacher in the eighty-fifth percentile. And remember that a good teacher costs as much as an average one, whereas halving class size would require that you build twice as many classrooms and hire twice as many teachers.

Hanushek recently did a back-of-the-envelope calculation about what even a rudimentary focus on teacher quality could mean for the United States. If you rank the countries of the world in terms of the academic performance of their schoolchildren, the U.S. is just below average, half a standard deviation below a clump of relatively high-performing countries like Canada and Belgium. According to Hanushek, the U.S. could close that gap simply by replacing the bottom six per cent to ten per cent of public-school teachers with teachers of average quality. After years of worrying about issues like school funding levels, class size, and curriculum design, many reformers have come to the conclusion that nothing matters more than finding people with the potential to be great teachers. But there’s a hitch: no one knows what a person with the potential to be a great teacher looks like. The school system has a quarterback problem.

A group of researchers—Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard’s school of education; Douglas Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth; and Robert Gordon, a policy analyst at the Center for American Progress—have investigated whether it helps to have a teacher who has earned a teaching certification or a master’s degree. Both are expensive, time-consuming credentials that almost every district expects teachers to acquire; neither makes a difference in the classroom. Test scores, graduate degrees, and certifications—as much as they appear related to teaching prowess—turn out to be about as useful in predicting success as having a quarterback throw footballs into a bunch of garbage cans.

 

[Vaquero45]

Morgan Freeman on Black History Month

Morgan Freeman is my new hero!
That was good.

........................................

oh, and teachers are paid plenty, and I hate the government school system. Some really dumb stuff happens in private schools too though. And, yeah.

 

[kmoney]

That's funny because the reason I tend not to value teachers more is because I had teachers who were teachers because they couldn't find a better job. My daughter had one of those, in second grade, too. That is why she ended up being homeschooled.

Not every teacher is going to be a good one.

 

[kmoney]

Is this accurate?

View attachment 16233

 

[kmoney]

From the article I posted.

How are they measuring teacher quality?

 

[chrysostom]

until we get rid of the unions
not one teacher deserves a raise in pay

 

[Town Heretic]

until we get rid of the unions
not one teacher deserves a raise in pay

Well knock me down with a feather...or better yet, an argument. lain:

 

[some other dude]

until we get rid of the unions
not one teacher deserves a raise in pay

teachers unions developed in response to administrators abuses.

 

[rocketman]

I think for the time spent in the classroom vs holidays and summer break they are paid quite well at least in CA. The teachers union is the one that should be called to task by the taxpayers. We as citizens are forced to pay into a system that has no standard of excellence due to the union. A crappy teacher can keep their job because of seniority rather than performance, it really is the hight of mediocrity. I'm for education vouchers and privatization/competition, this would take away the teachers union's teeth and allow citizens a choice of the school and curriculum they want their children to receive.

 

[Ps82]

This was my opinion while I was teaching ... but my opinion was based on the fact that I was already blessed... for I was married ... both of us were working and we had very little debt ... not many needs.

Therefore, at that time, I always felt like I had rather have had better working conditions, which would have added to my quality of life and to a better job in the classroom, than to have had a pay raise.

I was an elementary school teacher ... and my only guaranteed planning time each day was the last hour of the day after the kids were gone... but even that was often taken by a weekly faculty meeting or a grade-level meeting or some training session. Other planning opportunities were always contingent upon the weather, the health of others, or were at the whim of preemptive school wide activities.

By that last hour of the day I was usually so tired that I needed a restroom break and a short period to just renew my motivation to work more ... grade papers, do averaging, contacting parents, parent conferences, tidy the room... plan any new activities and supplies. Not to mention that 1/2 of that hour was pulling in room bus duty... and helping any students there that had questions about their work. It was not unusual for me to be at work from 7:30 a.m. in the morning to 6:00 p.m. just so I could have two hours to finish so that I did not have to take work home daily.

At report card time work always went home ... and it was not unusual to stay up until 2:00 a.m. and get up by 6 to get ready for another day's work.

I once got a big lecture from a man at a service station that saw all my teacher work on the back seat of my car. He warned me that he left his wife, because she was consumed by her work... and that I had better watch that.

But the bad thing is this: If you don't keep up with your work - you'll find yourself in a jam. Well, I could go on about the pressures upon teachers ... I'm sure it is like this for a lot of people too.

If my job could have been more geared to my success through guaranteed planning time and such ... then I would have done even better ... and certainly have had a better quality of life.

I retired as soon as I could ... because, by then, I WAS tired.

I'd be interested to hear how new teachers feel about this sort of thing.

 

[Stripe]

toldailytopic: Are public school teachers paid well enough?

Parents already give teachers their own children for eight hours a day. What else do they want?!

 

[Nick M]

This is true if and only if an education has no intrinsic value to society.

Show me the governments role is to do such a thing in the Bible.

 

[some other dude]

Show me the governments role is to do such a thing in the Bible.

Who does the Bible say is responsible for teaching children, especially in a city, especially in a city where both parents work?

 

[Alate_One]

Supplies for making tribal masks anyone? What does that have to do with developing a career and supporting a family?

School isn't only about having a career and supporting a family.

Here is some of the other stupid programs and classes I have seen while my son was in public school in Nebraska:

What grade level are we talking about here?

Womens history - what happened to plain old US history or World history?

Because most of history is the history of men. Young men and women end up with the impression that there were no women making an impact on the world.

Multicultural day.

Too many people are insulated from other cultures. I don't have a problem with a multi-cultural day.

Environmental Science class--what happened to Chemistry, Math, Algebra and Biology?

What do you think environmental science actually is? I think you're the :dunce: here . . .

There was no English or language arts class to speak of in my son's curriculum.

Maybe that explains the one page essay I received today that was exactly six broken sentences. lain:

 

[Ps82]

Unions - I'm not sure their agenda was/is to help teachers. I think they have larger more sinister motives. I just don't trust them any more either - I kept hearing rumors that some of their funds went to organizations that promoted things in which I did not agree... after 11 years don't want to quote exactly what the rumors were due to being unsure ... but thinking that the pro-choice agenda was part of it.

There are a number of groups along with the teacher unions that provide platforms of influence for the more liberal people among them to push their agenda upon our public schools... like three other groups, which I won't mention, because they even scare me! I personally watched representatives from all 4 of these groups stand before a state school board to exert their subtle pressure upon the school board members. They were so sly ... each professing to only be giving their opinion without making demands ... but each of them also reminding the board members of the money their organizations have provided for schools in the past, or of the law suits that had been brought against other school systems in similar instances, or of the unrest that a disagreeable decision would bring among their members which would affect education.

While mere parents showed up with only the power of their words. I will say this. Home schooling began to grow in my state after this. I wonder if people seeing how weak the State School board system was ... and even our legislators were in this situation as they faced off against these liberal lobbying groups with clout had some influence on its growth.

The State school board punted the ball to the state legislature ... and a legislative committee then just tried to solve things with vague verbiage... but the intent of all this maneuvering, in my opinion, was not done to help teachers, students, or parents... but rather was done to further the ideology of liberal minority groups within public schools.

Well, this is off the topic ...but was prompted by Chrysostom's comment in post 31.

I say protect our schools in some way from these types of outside pressures... which are more political than helpful. Our school board members are elected and can be voted out ... but not these power groups. I, personally, don't know how to protect our schools from them, but surely there are minds better than mine to ponder it.