Javelin wrote: All of those teachers would be fired by the Union and there's nothing they could do about it. We're in a right-to-work state and the same thing would happen to us. (See my above post on all modern Unions sucking and needing to be killed off)
That's been my stance for years: You have every right to organize for collective bargaining. You have no right whatsoever to require membership as a condition of employment.
4cylndrfury wrote: merit based pay for the teachers...youre an educated professional. You need to figure out a way to succeed at educating. If youre a teacher and your pupils get bad grades, short term: lose pay/dont get raises. Long term: your sorry ass is fired.
So how would my wife get paid? She works at the alternative high school where they send all of the dropouts, lazy kids, behavior problems, and criminals to try and get them to pass. Should her pay be based on the same metrics as her friend who teaches the honor students at the magnet school? And just what would be considered "good" output? Kids passing the class, passing a standardized test, or actually having knowledge? She's taught many a kid who never had a hope of graduating (20 year olds with 4 credits are downright normal coming out of juvy) but if she can teach them skills so they can get a productive job and maybe pass a GED she's done her job. Too bad in your scheme she'd get canned.
xd wrote: If it stops the charter bullE36 M3 more power to them.
Yeah! KILL THE EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS!!!!!
I hear they are striking to ban pitbulls as a condition of employment!
Javelin wrote:MadScientistMatt wrote:All of those teachers would be fired by the Union and there's nothing they could do about it. We're in a right-to-work state and the same thing would happen to us. (See my above post on all modern Unions sucking and needing to be killed off)carguy123 wrote: That's just the way Unions work. The Teachers may not want to strike but they have to.If most teachers were against the strike - what would happen to the union if the majority of the members refused to follow its decision and came to work anyway?
Javelin wrote:4cylndrfury wrote: merit based pay for the teachers...youre an educated professional. You need to figure out a way to succeed at educating. If youre a teacher and your pupils get bad grades, short term: lose pay/dont get raises. Long term: your sorry ass is fired.So how would my wife get paid? She works at the alternative high school where they send all of the dropouts, lazy kids, behavior problems, and criminals to try and get them to pass. Should her pay be based on the same metrics as her friend who teaches the honor students at the magnet school? And just what would be considered "good" output? Kids passing the class, passing a standardized test, or actually having knowledge? She's taught many a kid who never had a hope of graduating (20 year olds with 4 credits are downright normal coming out of juvy) but if she can teach them skills so they can get a productive job and maybe pass a GED she's done her job. Too bad in your scheme she'd get canned.
please see the comment you conveniently left out where I mentioned the actual grading scale for educating being as yet undefined. Perhaps theres a scale measuring her specific impact - it may be hard for her to get a graduation rate of 80% in a particular school based on the demographics of the student body. Therefore, because her student body sucks ass, rather than being evaluated on grad rate, if she is able to show that her students have improved in her respective subject over their performance in that subject their previous year, then she gets a good evaluation, and gets better pay. Its her responsibility to impact the learning of her students, so she needs to figure it out, and succeed.
If John Q. Public said [whine] but its too hard to make really good widgets, cant we just make sh!tty widgets instead, and still get paid, and still be in business anyway? c'mon guys, pleeeease?!?! [/ whine], you would punch them in their face with their pink slip. Remember the outrage over ZOMFG OBAMABAILOUTS? Remember how angry everyone was that companies who willfully underperformed, and knowingly made craphole decisions, still got extra cash, just because? Why is educator income somehow different? If your widget is student learning, why shouldnt you be expected to perform well? Why should you get a pass just because youre a teacher? Why do you get a bailout when youre not producing quality education?
Im not saying that Mrs Javelin doesnt do a good job, Im sure shes a very good teacher, but there are many who are not, and those are who I am wagging my naive finger at
xd wrote: Here is my problem with them. They keep all the kids till the district count day then boot out the kids who don't fit there Idea of a good student and keep the funds received from the state because the kid was actually enrolled on count day it does not matter if they were removed the next day the charter still keeps the money. Where do those kids end up? The public schools who received nothing in the way of funding for the kids they are servicing.
Hmmm. Here, the charter schools get paid by the district they are part of, AFTER THE FACT. There's no "keeping the money" - the money follows the student. Sounds like your laws are badly written.
Shall I get started on the district that got tired of being outscored by its local charter school, and started delaying funds in a variety of underhanded, bureaucratic ways? With plausible deniability all the way down the line, they eventually created enough of a cash flow problem that the charter school couldn't pay its teachers on time and had to fold.
So now instead of SOME kids getting a decent education there, NO kids do. Was that constructive?
Oh, and yeah - most charter school teachers are nonunion. Coincidence? I think not.
<<Just graduated from college without any debt thanks to hard work, smart spending, and a generous father paying for about 25% of it, along with my auto costs. I was this close to taking a job with CPS, I have friends that teach in CPS, and I went to one of the 3 best schools for education in the nation (if those rankings mean anything)--I wasn't an education major, but I was in a lot of classes with education majors and looked into changing my major two or three times.
mguar wrote: Friend of mine is a new teacher this fall. She leaves the house at 5:30 in the AM and gets back at home at 7:00. Nukes left over spaghetti and sits down to correct homework.. She works with special needs kids. (Problem kids) which she needed a Masters degree to qualify for. With luck her student loans will be paid off in 15 years.. (and most of her books and tuition were paid for because she was a straight A student) She starts out at $45,000 a year. Assuming one of her problem kids doesn't seriously injure her (or worse) she needs 7 years of issue free teaching to qualify for Tenure..
If most of her books and tuition were paid for, and she's going to take 15 years to repay her student loans, she is either a moron who spent money frivilously, or really smart and realizes that she is making a better return on the market than her loan is costing her. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it is the latter.
If she is good at what she does (I'll assume that she is), she'll be able to cut that extra time down to nearly nothing in a few years. At most schools, teachers get 3 free periods (one is lunch) for planning, grading, etc. Those that don't usually get more money, because they're teaching more classes.
I really wish I could start out at $45,000 a year. It probably won't take long for me to get there, but it'd be nice now.
Datsun1500 wrote:Javelin wrote: Also, the average numbers are grossly skewed by the top 5% of educators that have been in-system for 20+ years, have Masters+ degrees, National Boards, etc. The mean wages are a crap-ton lower (at least in our districts).Define crap-ton. 1st year, starting teacher with a Bachelors degree, starts at $50,577 plus benefits in Chicago. First year, right out of college.
That's not much money. I wouldn't do it for any money, so I'll mostly stay out of this discussion that's obviously between people with a ton of experience at teaching and running an effective educational system. But I will say that $50k for a person with a bachelor's degree is low pay in Chicago.
dculberson wrote:Datsun1500 wrote:That's not much money. I wouldn't do it for any money, so I'll mostly stay out of this discussion that's obviously between people with a ton of experience at teaching and running an effective educational system. But I will say that $50k for a person with a bachelor's degree is low pay in Chicago.Javelin wrote: Also, the average numbers are grossly skewed by the top 5% of educators that have been in-system for 20+ years, have Masters+ degrees, National Boards, etc. The mean wages are a crap-ton lower (at least in our districts).Define crap-ton. 1st year, starting teacher with a Bachelors degree, starts at $50,577 plus benefits in Chicago. First year, right out of college.
No, not really. It is good money. Not great money, but a decent living. More than most of the jobs I was looking at in Chicagoland (EDIT: I'm a math major, business minor, econ minor). You won't be living in Lincoln Park, but you can live in a good, safe neighborhood for around $600-$800 a month (assuming roommates).
It should be noted here that a CPS teacher is required to live in the city. The exceptions to this are those that are grandfathered in so they don't need to, and those that are in high need area's--math, special ed, possibly science, and possibly physical ed. These folks can get a 3 year exemption, and then reapply for another 3 year exemption, and live in the suburbs.
As someone who is paying back student loans, and has no employer based retirement plan, whatsoever, Im not sure Im allowed to post the adjectives I want to that describe someone who complains about $50k+ a year, 2+ months off, and a ridiculous benefits package, including a pension, all while not being held accountable for their quality of work.
here's the deal.
If you want crappy teachers, pay them poorly, and provide them with really crappy benefits like no pension. Be the opposite of how industry rewards their good candidates. $50k a year average seems like a lot, but choose between that and a degree that pays a lot better than that, say engineering, why would I choose to limit how much I'm compensated?
then give them some arbitrary measure of how good they are, so that they now teach to a test instead of educating. I think I'd rather work in an industry where the quality of the output to the customers matters more than some arbitrary measurement. (say, making sure they are ready for college, trade schools, or other trades vs some test)
And since thats the general way we seem to progressing, is it really any wonder why the school system is imploding on itself? There are so many better ways to have a carreer. Many of your plans will never get the best and the brightest to be teachers....
makes me happy that we don't have kids. don't have to deal with the crap you tea party nit pickers really want to push on education....
alfadriver wrote: here's the deal. If you want crappy teachers, pay them poorly, and provide them with really crappy benefits like no pension. Be the opposite of how industry rewards their good candidates. $50k a year average seems like a lot, but choose between that and a degree that pays a lot better than that, say engineering, why would I choose to limit how much I'm compensated?
1) Keeping the conversation on CPS, it is $75k a year average, $50k starting.
2) Engineering (or Accounting, or Actuarial Science, or Biochem) is a much harder degree to complete.
In reply to alfadriver:
que?
No one wants crappy teachers, and no one wants to pay them poorly. We want to reward good teachers, and ditch the crap ones. We want teachers to take responsibility for the work they do, and not "get by" because the union decides they shouldnt have to perform well to get paid. We want to define "quality", which is a grey area, so we can measure success. We want less administrative costs, which have little to no direct impact on the output (education) of their operation, so that the money can go where the real work is done - the teachers in the classroom...but importantly, to those who deserve it because theyre doing the best work.
Please, point out the "crap" above.
About education costs: here in SC the Legislature allowed the creation of a state lottery tied to Powerball only if the proceeds were used for education.
The money goes NOT to the schools that need it, such as the Corridor of Shame schools, but instead to the universities such as Clemson and USC. Those schools IMMEDIATELY raised their tuition. So lottery funding didn't help where it was sorely needed but it sure helped pay for a lot of construction projects with bigwig's names on them.
Yeah, that sticks in my craw.
alfadriver wrote: here's the deal. If you want crappy teachers, pay them poorly, and provide them with really crappy benefits like no pension. Be the opposite of how industry rewards their good candidates.
Ummm, hello? I know you're a big union fan and all, but take off the rose-colored glasses for a minute, and you'll realize you just made our point for us.
The current "union method" is NOT to tie pay to effectiveness, but to seniority. If industry rewarded good candidates with better pay, we wouldn't be having this berking discussion . We'd live in a merit shop world, and many of us would bitch a lot less.
Instead, what we have is a teacher's union that makes the teamsters look like Bob Costas, and who keep underperforming teachers in the same box as they keep the great ones. The highest paid teachers in the union model are not necessarily the best teachers, just the ones who stay employed the longest. And since said union has made firing almost impossible, you are in fact gaming the system against the highest-paid, longest-lasting teachers being the good ones.
Because the GOOD teachers are the ones who will get fed up with the non-merit system and who will bug the berkeley out when they just can't stand it any more.
mtn wrote: At most schools, teachers get 3 free periods (one is lunch) for planning, grading, etc. Those that don't usually get more money, because they're teaching more classes.
Sorry bub, but not for us. SWMBO's class has 20 computers and 25 total seats. Her average class size is 27. She gets 1/2 of a period for prep and 1/2 of a period for lunch, which she hardly ever gets to eat. She's required to do about 2 hours of additional work, daily, that is not in her contract and she doesn't get paid for. Her unions will do nothing about it. I dunno what schools you know of, but I damn sure would like her to transfer there!
4cylndrfury wrote:Javelin wrote:please see the comment you conveniently left out where I mentioned the actual grading scale for educating being as yet undefined. If John Q. Public said [whine] *but its too hard to make really good widgets, cant we just make sh!tty widgets instead, and still get paid, and still be in business anyway? c'mon guys, pleeeease?!?!* [/ whine], you would punch them in their face with their pink slip. Remember the outrage over ZOMFG OBAMABAILOUTS? Remember how angry everyone was that companies who willfully underperformed, and knowingly made craphole decisions, still got extra cash, just because? Why is educator income somehow different? If your widget is student learning, why shouldnt you be expected to perform well? Why should you get a pass just because youre a teacher? Why do you get a bailout when youre not producing quality education?4cylndrfury wrote: merit based pay for the teachers...youre an educated professional. You need to figure out a way to succeed at educating. If youre a teacher and your pupils get bad grades, short term: lose pay/dont get raises. Long term: your sorry ass is fired.So how would my wife get paid? She works at the alternative high school where they send all of the dropouts, lazy kids, behavior problems, and criminals to try and get them to pass. Should her pay be based on the same metrics as her friend who teaches the honor students at the magnet school? And just what would be considered "good" output? Kids passing the class, passing a standardized test, or actually having knowledge? She's taught many a kid who never had a hope of graduating (20 year olds with 4 credits are downright normal coming out of juvy) but if she can teach them skills so they can get a productive job and maybe pass a GED she's done her job. Too bad in your scheme she'd get canned.
First off, you're assumptions are wholly incorrect. You can NOT make someone care about something. If little E36 M3s have no interest in learning, there is ZERO the teacher can do. There is only so interesting education subjects you can make.
Also, inherent in public systems is catering to the lowest common denominator. How do you raise people's abilities when you are trying to teach the notsosmart ones?
The answer is a standardized testing system that pushes kids into schools designed for their abilities and skills. Of course, that's discriminatory...
Javelin wrote:mtn wrote: At most schools, teachers get 3 free periods (one is lunch) for planning, grading, etc. Those that don't usually get more money, because they're teaching more classes.Sorry bub, but not for us. SWMBO's class has 20 computers and 25 total seats. Her *average* class size is 27. She gets 1/2 of a period for prep and 1/2 of a period for lunch, which she hardly ever gets to eat. She's required to do about 2 hours of additional work, daily, that is not in her contract and she doesn't get paid for. Her unions will do nothing about it. I dunno what schools you know of, but I damn sure would like her to transfer there!
Come to Illinois. (Really, don't. It sucks here for a variety of reasons.)
mtn wrote:mguar wrote: Friend of mine is a new teacher this fall. She leaves the house at 5:30 in the AM and gets back at home at 7:00. Nukes left over spaghetti and sits down to correct homework.. She works with special needs kids. (Problem kids) which she needed a Masters degree to qualify for. With luck her student loans will be paid off in 15 years.. (and most of her books and tuition were paid for because she was a straight A student) She starts out at $45,000 a year. Assuming one of her problem kids doesn't seriously injure her (or worse) she needs 7 years of issue free teaching to qualify for Tenure..If most of her books and tuition were paid for, and she's going to take 15 years to repay her student loans, she is either a moron who spent money frivilously, or really smart and realizes that she is making a better return on the market than her loan is costing her. I'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume it is the latter. If she is good at what she does (I'll assume that she is), she'll be able to cut that extra time down to nearly nothing in a few years. At most schools, teachers get 3 free periods (one is lunch) for planning, grading, etc. Those that don't usually get more money, because they're teaching more classes. I really wish I could start out at $45,000 a year. It probably won't take long for me to get there, but it'd be nice now.
Ok I will definitely agree about the student loan thing. There is no way it shouldn't take 15 years to pay of a student loan if your tuition and books were payed for (I had full tuition but I had to take a loan for living expenses and books for the last year of college and I payed in a year.) But I disagree with the part about 3 planning periods. SWMBO works at a school in KY and she gets one a day and has to help monitor lunch most day. She also takes home exactly half of what I do with not nearly as good benefits and she has to deal with the BS at school. That doesn't equal great pay in my mind.
my state (nebraska), educates kids for a little north of $10,500 per year per student.
last month i checked with all the private schools in town. the highest one was just over $8,000. if you had more than one child attending, they even gave you a $1,000 discount. they posted their latest grad rates and average SAT scores on their website, on that basis it seemed like they were doing a good job.
my shooting from the hip response to that is, maybe we need a voucher system?
HiTempguy wrote: If little E36 M3s have no interest in learning, there is ZERO the teacher can do. There is only so interesting education subjects you can make. Also, inherent in public systems is catering to the lowest common denominator. How do you raise people's abilities when you are trying to teach the notsosmart ones? The answer is a standardized testing system that pushes kids into schools designed for their abilities and skills. Of course, that's discriminatory...
If no one ever tried to overcome adversity in their field, we'd all be scratching our asses in caves with little fires to warm our tootsies. Good for us, people figure out ways to overcome the pitfalls which lie before them.
In my job, if theres a problem preventing me from achieving my goal, I figure out a way to solve it, overcome it, and move on. Youll never convince me that theres a mode of employment where this ideology fails.
There is always a solution waiting to be found. Unfortunately, its often easier to look for an excuse instead.
In reply to 4cylndrfury:
It's really hard to teach kids that never show up to school at all, like from day 1. 
dculberson wrote:Datsun1500 wrote:That's not much money. I wouldn't do it for any money, so I'll mostly stay out of this discussion that's obviously between people with a ton of experience at teaching and running an effective educational system. But I will say that $50k for a person with a bachelor's degree is low pay in Chicago.Javelin wrote: Also, the average numbers are grossly skewed by the top 5% of educators that have been in-system for 20+ years, have Masters+ degrees, National Boards, etc. The mean wages are a crap-ton lower (at least in our districts).Define crap-ton. 1st year, starting teacher with a Bachelors degree, starts at $50,577 plus benefits in Chicago. First year, right out of college.
It's FAR more than i make currently.
It's when numbers like that get thrown out that i start to doubt my decision to stop pursuing my teaching degree. (Was a year away)
So basically, the government is telling the teachers that they will have to take students who come from cultures where first of all education isn't valued, secondly they don't trust the dominant culture in our society and finally violence and confrontation is an acceptable and even preferable solution to any and all problems, and train them to pass a test of basic skills in math, English and reasoning. Failure to do this will result in termination of employment. Let's not even mention the fact that these students do not respect poorly paid teachers and put them below rappers, pro-ball players and drug dealers on the role model scale. Yeah. These are kids who would rather smoke crack and watch reality TV shows than do their homework every single night in order to pass the beforementioned test.
In other words, they want these teachers to solve some serious social problems for 50K a year in a town where the high real estate prices will guarantee them little more than a modest apartment with a couple of roommates for that kind of income. Needless to say that the best of them will escape to the suburbs where the kids they teach all speak English, don't belong to street gangs, have both a mother and a father and whose parents actually give a damn and make sure the homework gets done. The worst of them, who cannot get hired in the suburbs, will hang on by a thread for a year or two and then get fired only to be replaced by new graduates with no teaching experience and little experience with the ghetto culture who are desperate for a job and don't mind living in a modest apartment with two roommates, who will work a couple of years until they get fired etc. etc. wash rinse repeat.
Yeah. That's going to work.
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