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Post by robeiae on Dec 22, 2016 22:31:43 GMT -5
It's not poverty level, but it's not exactly prosperous. Not sure what qualifies as "decent." Not shitty? Well look, the average salary for a teacher in the State of New York is $75,000 a year. The average starting salary in NY is $43,000 a year. So that means that teachers who have been at it in NY for a while are making considerably more that $75,000 a year. In fact, the top rates are near $120,000 a year for teachers in NY. Calling that "not shitty" is ridiculous, especially as a compared to a ton of other industries. And again, the benefits don't suck at all. My uncle was a NY teacher. He divorced my aunt (my mother's sister) and married another NY teacher. They retired at 55, with a nice home on Long Island and a second home in Vermont. Are they filthy rich? No, but they did pretty well as teachers. And again, this isn't true everywhere, but it's not 1970 either , with teachers everywhere making $15 grand a year. Teachers should be well paid, imo. And the fact of the matter is that many of them are well paid, by any reasonable standard.
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Post by Christine on Dec 23, 2016 8:23:56 GMT -5
I'm not saying no teacher anywhere is well paid. But for example, someone in my town making $75k would be doing pretty good (solidly middle class) whereas that salary in NY (or even one county over from me - Palm Beach) might (would, in PBC) be significantly less well off (though not poor). Cost of living needs to be considered.
I think we undervalue the K-12 teaching profession in general. E.g., how come I can charge $185/hr to prepare tax returns and conduct audits ($75/hr if I'm working per diem for another firm), while teachers make $25-30/hour? It just seems wrong.
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Post by robeiae on Dec 23, 2016 8:51:34 GMT -5
Surgeons and some lawyers make much more than that. So do many executives.
Regardless, I am of the opinion that out public school systems are not doing a good enough job educating our children. And consistent with the writer of the piece in the OP, the money that has been poured into the system seems like a problem to me, since it hasn't had much of an impact that I can see.
A lot of people agree with the first. And there's not much of an argument out there with regard to the second, even if people don't like hearing it (people who support initiatives that cost a lot of money don't like hearing that the was nothing in the way of ROI from such initiatives).
Again, I agree that there are teachers who are underpaid (there are also teachers who are overpaid). But the idea that this is the case has been getting brought up since the 70's. And comparatively speaking, teachers as a whole are much better off than they were in the seventies. Much better off.
Regardless, I don't think that increasing teacher salaries is a critical early step in solving the problems with public education, especially given how much of an increase there has been in education spending in general (and some of that has gone to teachers, in salary or benefits), without a quantifiable impact on the education received.
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Post by Christine on Dec 23, 2016 9:10:03 GMT -5
My thinking is that there should be higher salaries in the teaching profession along with higher standards - master's degrees for elementary education, for example. I don't know what it's like to get a teaching degree, but I imagine it could be a more rigorous endeavor, especially at the Master's program level. As in, not something just *almost anyone* can get through. I also think putting a higher value on something makes it more valuable. People come to accept it, like with CPA and other professional rates.
I used my billable rate only to show the wide difference between two occupations that imo aren't that much different in terms of skill or ability. In fact, I find it easier to prepare tax returns than to teach children, though there are some *hard* parts (for example, tax laws and GAAP changing all the damn time and all the studying that's required as a result).
As far as lawyers and doctors, yes, of course, they make astronomically more, and I don't understand that either. I know an NYC lawyer (great guy and very smart, to be sure) who charges $850/hour. It's insane. Yeah, he's got an office on 5th Avenue to pay for, but Jeezus.
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Post by robeiae on Dec 23, 2016 9:31:44 GMT -5
In my experience, a lot of teachers enjoy what they do. Sure, they'd like more money. Who wouldn't? But they also like the quality of life that the profession can allow. My youngest--in 4th grade--starts school at 8:20 and gets out at 3:00. The teachers--most of them--get to work at 8 or a little after, and leave when the kids leave. If they have kids of their own, that means they can pick them up or take them to after school activities. They also have the same basic holiday schedules as their kids. That's pretty good, especially when they have spouses whose jobs don't allow any of this. Would upping qualifications improve education? Maybe. So might more parental involvement. But I think there is still a shit-ton of money being wasted, from needless admin positions to costly initiatives that don't deliver results, to extreme over-charging by companies who do business with the school system. And I think the place to start is in all of these wasted resources. Because again, one thing teachers should never be doing is going into their own pockets for teaching and classroom supplies. There is money enough to seriously upgrade facilities, as well, to get needed equipment like computers for every student. True story: I wanted to install a ceiling fan in the open-air entrance way to the elementary school all of my kids have attended. I was VP of the PTA at the time. I wanted to use PTA funds to buy the fan and I knew a guy who was willing to install it for free. I was told by the principle that I couldn't do this. Equipment and work had to go through approved vendors. If we took this route, it turned out that we would need over $5000 to have a fan installed. Seriously. And then there was this: the school built a new building around the same time. I suggested doing fundraisers to help pay for furnishings in the classrooms, stiff like bookcases and so forth. Do you know how much a short particle board bookcase cost us through an approved vendor? $800. The exact same bookcase could be had at Target for less than $100. It's unbelievable how much money is thrown away, imo. Yet whenever the issue of improving education comes up, one of the first offered solutions is more money, for one thing or another. Drives me nuts.
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Post by Christine on Dec 23, 2016 9:39:34 GMT -5
I can't disagree with any of that, Rob. The most conservative part of me, politically, is in regard to what I see as wasted money. Your points are well taken.
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Post by Optimus on Dec 29, 2016 2:33:02 GMT -5
Public school systems need to do away with agrarian calendars and antiquated teaching methods. One teacher broadcast across the internet could teach multiple schools at a lower cost and be much more efficient when test scores are considered. Aides could take up any questions students have. I believe the highest hurdles will be teacher unions and nostolgic parents. Agreed. Teacher's unions currently do much more harm than good, in my opinion. In several states, it's virtually impossible to fire a shitty teacher. The fact that primary and secondary school teachers get tenure (due to unions) is absolutely ridiculous. The entire process needs to be less focused on politics and more focused on actual education. And, nostalgic parents - along with uninformed, ideologically-driven republicans - are the reason that Common Core is such a clusterfrak in many states. Seems like since they don't know how to do their child's math homework that it makes them feel dumb, therefore Common Core = stupid. That, and the quality of teaching materials that are used (the best materials cost money, and since many teachers have to buy these things out of pocket, they go for what is cheapest - which is usually low quality). However, there already is a service that offers a high-quality education free to the world, and its notion of the "flipped" is currently being tested in some public schools with marked success. The Khan AcademyThe Khan Academy is a wonderful site and, without it, I doubt I would've passed organic chem several years ago. You can learn pretty much any subject you want to, from elementary math to high school history to college sciences all the way up to linear algebra. You can study for the SAT, GMAT, LSAT, MCAT, etc. And, you take mastery quizzes as you go to ensure that you're learning the material (the site is " gamified" so that you can earn badges and track your progress). I strongly encourage all of my students to use it for any class they're taking or will take in college. It'd be nice if more school systems took advantage of such a resource and using flipped classrooms. Unfortunately, at the college/university level, more schools are utilizing online classes as way to cut costs which is bad because evidence suggests that they're not as effective as classroom learning and, anecdotally, I've had several students tell me that they hate them because they don't feel like they learn anything from online classes. Teachers I've spoken to generally don't like teaching them, either. I'm teaching two in the spring, which will be the first time I've taught any online courses, so I guess I'll find out for myself how bad teaching them sucks or doesn't suck (I already know that taking them as a student sucks).
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