Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs lambasted teacher unions today, claiming no amount of technology in the classroom would improve public schools until principals could fire bad teachers.
Jobs compared schools to businesses with principals serving as CEOs.
“What kind of person could you get to run a small business if you told them that when they came in they couldn’t get rid of people that they thought weren’t any good?” he asked to loud applause during an education reform conference.
Read the rest.
“Apple just lost some business in this state, I’m sure,” Jobs said.
I would say that that’s a safe bet.
Schools stopped buying Macs in favor of PCs some time ago.
It was a smooth move however when Apple donated computers to schools in the arly days, and gave them price breaks. It helped them to corner the market in the early days, and keep them afloat.
For the past several years my district has refused to buy Apples for any reason, no matter how much the Mac snobs beg them.
By the way, I’ll support principals firing bad teachers the day that teachers can get rid of bad students.
I don’t follow your logic, gahrie.
Dan, I hope you’re joking, and gahrie, I hope by “bad students” you mean delinquents. My dad was a teacher and I did substitute teaching for a few years. There was nothing that can destroy a class more than a few students who insist on disrupting everything. Very little learning gets done when the teacher has to discipline students constantly. School administrations either lack the ability or will (or both) to expel disruptive students. I can attest that those days the disruptive students weren’t present werethe days that the most got done.
If you really want to improve the public schools not only must bad teachers be fired but disruptive students must be expelled. Where will they go? Don’t know, don’t care; that’s their parents’ problem.
Dan:
I teach 8th grade. The year is almost 2/3 over. I have students that have been failing all year. Some of them have done literally no homework, and the barest minimum of classwork. I have students with 50 entries on their discipline screens. I have sent home 4 official progress reports, 2 official report cards and made hundreds of phone calls. I have never met many of their parents, and a common refrain from the ones I do meet is “I just don’t know what to do with the kid. what do you suggest?”
When I give these kids detention for not doing their work, they don’t show. The administration suspends them, and the cycle begins anew.
If someone was to look at just the numbers (IE the numbers of kids getting “F“‘s and/or failing the tests) they could only conclude that I am a “bad” teacher.
That’s simply not fair. For instance we have a GATE (gifted and talented) program. That means there is a class with almost all “A” students in it that another teacher gets to teach. We also have an AVID (advancemet via individual determination) program. That means there are two classes with the “A” through “C” kids are really motivated. Guess what is left for me to try and teach?
I agree with you, Mikey, but I don’t see the linkage between the two issues, unless you believe that the principals in question must consider a teacher’s worth based on some form of outcome out of context. I agree with Dell’s point that there probably is not enough competition among principals.
It seems to me reasonable that teachers would be stringent in their expectations of their colleagues. I know that in my various job situations, I resent(ed) having to work with people who slack or otherwise don’t pull their weight, and I would just as soon they be replaced.
My son Aidan has childhood-onset schizophrenia. I think that that’s taken into account when the progress of his classes is assessed.
I understand your frustration, gahrie, and I’ve no doubt that you are an excellent teacher who would get excellent results given a reasonably motivated group of students. I honor your commitment despite the difficulties. Can you say, though, with honesty, that you haven’t any colleagues who have, in effect, thrown in the towel? I mean, it’s a quagmire, after all.
Mikey NTH:
I used “bad students” because of the posts use of the term “bad teachers”.
Just to add to my post above. My school, and pretty much my district, has a no retention policy. I taught 7th grade last year, and moved up to the 8th grade this year. I have dozens of students that literally failed every class last year, and were promoted to the 8th grade. Some of them failed every class in the 6th grade also and were promoted. They know that they can sit in their classes and fail this year, and they will go to high school next year. No principal wants to keep these kids around to keep dragging their test scores down.
The district also has a no expulsion policy. Except in extremely rare circumstances, all they do is suspend the kid, and them move him to a different school within the district. One of my students is on his third school this year already.
Dan:
No you are right, there are some bad teachers, and it is frustrating having to deal with them. In a huge irony, (I don’t believe government employees should have unions, but if we do someone should be the rep and no one else was willing to do it) I am my school’s site rep, and I have had to defend the rights of bad teachers in the past. Very few of them actually stick around that long I find though, or maybe my school has just been lucky in getting rid of them.
This actually the direction we are going in. It’s already happening with schools. The NCLB act doesn’t care why a student is underacheiving, just that he is. There is an effort to move this judgement down to the level of teachers in the current NCLB reauthorization debate.
Well, then, keep up the good work, gahrie. I’m sure that not many people go into the profession of teaching with an eye to practicing crowd control or to become a de-facto social worker.
If you have children and move to a new town you need to do the following:
Find out which teachers have children of Board of Ed members. Those oare safe bets (you can’t beat word of mouth from insiders).
Sounds just like the state education sector in England. Which is why the Dear Leader, and his Secretary of State for Education, sent their own little darlings into the private sector.
I’ve noticed that we are up to our asses in PhD’s pumped out by growing Education departments. Public school administration is lousy with these newly minted ‘doctors’. Ask any one of them the name of the first planet from the sun and you’re likely to get a forty-word answer that doesn’t include the name of a planet.
I have also noticed that public systems are constantly decrying the lack of teachers at the same time universities are spitting out more and more Ed. majors.
Seems to me that something about this system isn’t working. For proof go to the mall.
The education curriculum and lots of what passes for certification has been a joke for a long, long time, burrhog.
Both problems are subsets of the overall problem, Dan. That’s the linkage. Even if bad teachers are removed there has to becooperation from the students if any learning is to take place. Gahrie points out a problem of students not even trying to learn, and students who actively try to prevent other students from learning. There will not be progress on the school issue if both are not resolved.
BTW, I wasn’t refering to your child in my description of students, was refering to those who can learn but do not want to learn and refuse to let a teacher teach or students study. With a lot of those students you can find the source of the problem (usually) if you check on the parents.
[As an aside I have a nephew who is slightly autistic, and I subbed a lot in the special ed classes. I know a lot of kids have problems not of their own making. I wasn’t refering to them.]
My husband has an employee with TWO children that are on the brink of being expelled from school. They have each flunked two grades. The common factor? Their parent, of course; the mother died, and dad is raising them alone.
I don’t know what the solution is, but I do know that throwing more money at schools isn’t going to do a damn thing. Detroit teachers rank as the highest paid (and the district is going bankrupt) – yet they have a horrible graduation rate.
I live in Detroit, and there is no way in hell I would send them to the schools here -I home school.)
It’s the system.
Government has to be fair to everyone. Thus when government runs the schools, the system, all the way down to individual schools, is saddled with the impossible responsibility of being all things to all people. Until that changes, we’ll always get the mediocrity and failure we’ve always gotten.
yours/
peter.
Nothing with the public schools will ever get fixed, because people are unwilling to do what needs to be done.
First, dump the mandatory attendance laws. You can’t teach someone who is going to class because the law says he has to.
Second, divide grades into three class levels, one for the top 20% so they can get exposed to materials actually designed to challenging them, one for the bottom 20% so they can get one-on-one attention they need to grasp the basics, and let the middle 60% get the core curriculum at a reasonable pace.
Third, make employment and pay decisions for teachers based upon weighted evaluations of student performance. Every other job on earth mandates performance standards, and education should be no different. Should I, in retail sales, be compensated upon how well-constructed my sales pitch is, or upon how many people actually purchased my product?
Fourth, accept the fact that teachers are NOT underpaid. Want a dollar equivalent of a “typical” job? Take a job in which you work “typical” hours. While teachers should be able to make a reasonable living doing what they love, “reasonable” should be just that, and should take into account that the typical teacher works about 8 months out of the year.
I don’t see even one piece of the solution as happening within the forseeable future, but there’s always hope, I guess.
What if you were told you could only try to sell your product to people who had already said they wouldn’t buy your product, had refused to buy your product from previous salesmen, had stood around telling other people not to buy your product, and had credit problems, and didn’t have the money to buy your product?
America’s education system seems to be doing a good job. Graduation rates are high and America itself is doing well (no small thanks to our public schools).
I think greed is the primary driver of its critics.
Lots o money in the “private” education game.
And the complaint game.
Say one thing for you alf, you are 100% predictable.
So are you guys, furris.
Using objective standards, which is doing better:
1. America’s public school system
2. The Iraq war
Said the product of that system.
If this is accurate, the trends aren’t looking so hot.
alf, the Iraq war has nothing to do with the failure of America’s education system.
Your suggestion that graduation rates equate in any way to a satisfactory level of education is glib.
Your clear failure to have read and understood the posts preceding your own knee-jerk contrarian contribution is typical of your approach to dialogue.
You would seem to be as ignorant of educational affairs as you have shown yourself to be of military affairs.
Still, I suppose you graduated from somewhere, at some point, so no doubt you and your parents are content.
furris,
School teachers tend to vote for and donate to Democratic candidates, so of course the Republican cheerleaders spread the propaganda that are schools are doing poorly.
It’s a pretty standard right-wing tactic.
There are those who say: “Something has to happen. You have to do something. If you want to fight the movie industry, you must build your own theater, even if it at first has only the most primitive equipment. And if you see that the children are being poisoned by what they read in school, you must begin to win children’s souls and give them the antidote.”
My reply is simple: You can spend ten years giving the antidote to the poison that is produced by a badly led cultural establishment, but a single decree from the Ministry of Culture can destroy all your work. If you had spent that ten years winning fighters for the movement, the movement would have conquered the Ministry of Culture!
Everything else is mere piecework.
– Joseph Goebbels, 1928
Movies and schools.
Hollywood and the evil teachers union.
That darn lefty culture is polluting our minds.
Vote Republican to save America!
*yawn*
That has nothing to do with the comments preceding your tedious appearance either- and they would seem to have been written by teachers who share neither your politics nor your opinions.
You ran away from the last thread leaving four blatant and easily disproved lies behind you. Why don’t you save us all some time and run away from this one now?
*yawn*
BWAH HA HA HA haaaaaaa
My God, how did I miss that?
Perfect work, maggie!
alphie: Just for the record, I am a long term Republican.
gahrie, I can be fully sympathetic to you, without in the least approving of the overall situation.
What you are arguing above, whether you realize it or not, is that metrics should be appropriate to the situation. A Maserati salesman in Beverly Hills gets, or should get, a different set of evaluation standards than one in East Los Angeles is subject to. A ditchdigger who manages three meters a day in rocky soil gets just as good an evaluation as the one who does thirty in sandy loam. If you are to be graded, you, too, should be evaluated according to the situation you find yourself in.
NCLB exists because of teachers’ union intransigence, pure and simple. Their position is, and has been since the subject was first raised, that no standards at all are appropriate—that any evaluation is inherently “repressive” (or something—I’m not up on the current nomenclature). That isn’t going to fly. If ditchdiggers and convenience store clerks can be evaluated for performance, so can teachers.
If you and your fellow teachers want to bitch that the standards are inflexible and sometimes inappropriate, you have my support, for what it’s worth (not much, it seems). If you want to insist that there be no standards—the current position of the NEA—I’m against it and will continue to be so.
Then I wouldn’t make a lot of money working on commission, would I? Of course, the effect of all those factors would be called into question if a fellow salesman’s numbers were significantly and consistently higher than mine…suddenly the onus would be upon me to demonstrate why I couldn’t sell in that environment.
How your paragraph translates into the parallel with education, however, I’m not sure. Are you arguing somehow, that no student is interested in education? Because if you’re speaking of a segment of the student population that falls into that category, then it goes farther to prove my point, because people of the exact description you gave walk into my store every day. I may fail to sell to 99% of those with that particular attitude, but it’s what I do with the other customers that puts food on my table.
And in that same vein, “No Child Left Behind” is typically translated into, “No Child Gets Ahead.”
alphie, if you haven’t actually been a teacher, then sod off you little twerp. This discussion is far beyond your meager abilities to comprehend. It is a human problem, a problem of human nature, and beyond your ability to post I have seen scant evidence that you have a share in that. The Chinese container ship argument and the ballon fence certainly sealed your reputation as a military strategist, and I am dead certain anything else you have to say on this subject would be equally as worthless.
Bugger off, a-bot.
It is indeed a problem of human nature, Mikey.
It’s hard to create something, but it’s easy to destroy something.
That’s always been our curse.
Fifth, give the teachers back the option to beat the crap out of the little twits that refuse to behave in class and when some “psychologist” comes along and says paddling is bad for kids, tell them to STFU.
Alphie,
Do you have children? Your whitewashing of the education system speaks to your ignorance about it or blind acceptance, i.e. laziness.
I have children at both ends–an autistic child with special needs that faces the “soft bigotry” of weak IEP goals to save the teachers from actually having to be creative and teach him. I have a daughter who is in the top 10% and she is given busy homework, in second grade that is too easy and boring. She is too young for homework and should be out playing. And we’re going to make a fuss about the obesity epidemic when she is stuck inside with homework at the ripe old age of seven? It’s ridiculous.
And as much as teachers loathe Bush/Teddy Kennedy’s No Child Left Behind, without it, they would bask in the “freedom” of no expectations. The government program does to teachers what the system has traditionally done to students: offer narrow guidelines, allow no room for creativity and expect a certain output. Constraining, isn’t it? With NCLB, the kids must know something or they fail. I’ve read the tests and there is no reason in hell the kids shouldn’t know the material covered in them.
My experience going through school followed the Bell Curve: 10% great teachers, 10% horrible and the rest falling somewhere in between–anywhere from above average to inept. Watching my children go through school, I’ve been pleasantly surprised. My daughter, at least, has had the top 10%. My son, alas, has suffered every year so far. But, he’s not an “easy” student either. He is sweet and smart, but learns differently. Too much pressure on the teachers who want to do the same thing for him as for everyone else.
You know, I wouldn’t mind this 50-50 result from the school system if I weren’t paying thousands and thousands of tax dollars a year. And yet, for all the money, I get zip to say about it. After a year of haggling, we finally had to threaten the school system with a lawsuit to finally do what should have been done two years ago.
Here’s my solution: give me my money and let me use it my way. Maybe then I could afford the special school for special kids that gets great results but costs $25,000 a year.
So, Detroit’s 21.7% graduation rate is a Rovian Propaganda Plot? BAA HA HAAA HAAA.
Tell me that the Detroit schools are doing a good job. Go ahead.
Carin, I don’t believe in ghosts, because if I did, I know my great grandfather, who was superintendent of the Detroit Public Schools in the early 1990’s, would be raising more havoc with the idiots on the schooldboard than Dr. Venkman could handle.
He was always a little imperious. I’m told that it was part of his charm.
And a-bot? You’re still a mouthbreather and an idiot, but I shouldn’t insult Congress like that.
Melissa,
Do you pay anywhere near $25,000 a year in taxes that go to your children’s school?
Ooooh, alphie, you are so deep.
Hey, Alphie! How many Democratic Party Congressdrones send their kids to publis school?
So I’m certainly paying a bundle for THEIR education…
You heard it, folks—alphie believes only the wealthy should be able to get their kids educated!
Quite the opposite, Robert.
Privatizing schools would probably mean no schooling at all for Melissa’s child, unless she could afford $25,000 a year.
Again – shut-up alphie. You’re out of your depth with this discussion and you’re out past your bedtime. Head back to your cave, your momma’s calling you.
Alphie,
I pay more than I’d like to admit here. But lets just say that with the tax savings, plus some extra, we would be able to handle the tuition.
But you’re assuming that the costs for private school would be the same. Part of the reason the private school tuition is so high, is because it is financially exclusive. If more people were in the market, it would drive up competition and choice and drive down costs. It’s called supply and demand.
I’m guessing that more affordable choices would be available–because my son is not so intensive that he needs all of the services of the $25K school, but it’s as close to what he needs as exists.
ey, Alphie! How many Democratic Party Congressdrones send their kids to publis school?
Guess where John Conyers (and his City Councilwoman wife) sends THEIR children? I give you one guess … and it’s the guess that costs $25,000.
Privatizing schools would probably mean no schooling at all for Melissa’s child, unless she could afford $25,000 a year
No, privatizing would mean that there could be an end to the “Two Americas” of education; the have and have-nots. Those who can escape City schools and those who can’t. THAT is the situation as it now stands.
And, not all private schools cost $25, 000. But the one that Conyers sends HIS kids to, does.
“Mile-high Pencil Eraser Berm” has kind of a nice ring to it, don’tcha think?
No. As I mentioned earlier, we have a GATE program, and an AVID program that has sucked away all of the really smart kids, and all of the motivated kids. Unfortunately, I was assigned to teach neither, so I get the kids left over. This means I have classes filled with unmotivated, underachievers. I have one class with 21″normal” kids and 13 special ed kids, and no aide. (I teach Social Studies, and they are mainstreamed for Social Studies and Science at my school)
Just for the record, I support school choice and vouchers, and see no problem with properly run and supervised charter schools.
Are you saying the rich won’t be able to send their children to private schools if we privatize public schools, Carin?
The children of the rich are always going to have every option available to them- doesn’t always lead to success, though.
I’m supportive of school choice. Right now, in Detroit, the teacher’s union has capped the number of “schools of choice” allowed in the city. Why? Because if they didn’t, the DPS system would completely empty out.
Never fear, Alphi, the teacher’s unions (with the help of Jenny Granholm) are going to insure that Detroit’s students remain mired in the hopelessness of the current system. It’s better to keep mis-educating the masses that actually DO something.
Me, I home school my kids. Did I mention I saw a dead body today? I wonder if he graduated or not?
Gahrie,
Since children all along the Bell Curve are entitled to an education, what do you feel is the solution? I’m not sure these kids are well-served even taking a social studies class unless it’s practically relevant–like learning how to read a contract or learning how compound interest works or learning conflict resolution (so you don’t get fired).
Motivation increases when a person sees personal benefit. I doubt the typical social studies curriculum seems beneficial to them.
Part of the problem with public school is the assumption that all kids have the same potential. Approximately 25% (and that’s very generous) of kids even have the ability to succeed in college. Those kids are under-challenged in school while the rest are taught topics of marginal value in the long-term.
The Wall Street Journal had a piece about this and I wrote about it here.
Having taught for nearly a decade at the university level, I can assure you that something is broken. By the time you get to college, you should be able to write complete sentences.
Too much of my time in non-honors seminars was spent trying to teach the basics of grammar.
1) First of all, there needs to be some way of compelling parents to take an interest in their child’s education. We already hold them accountable for their child’s attendance, so I’m sure something can be worked out.
2)We need to develop a vocational track. Unlike Europe, our system operates on the premise that all students need to be prepared for college. While I appreciate the egalitaranism behind the idea, it is not working.
3)In my district, we need to develop a system for the hardcore discipline problems, I personally favor a type of bootcamp.
4) The problem usually isn’t one of ability, (your bellcurve comment) but rather effort. I have had students in the past who simply weren’t very intelligent. However they worked hard, didn’t cause problems, and made the most progress they could. ( I had one of these truly blossom on me…my most rewarding case to date) I have also had truly gifted students who decided that school was their playground, and wasted their time and their friend’s time. This type in particular are pure poison.
5) I disagree completely aboput your comment about Social Studies. In my opinion Social studies is one of their most important areas of study. These kids are going to be voters one day. Remember, one of the justifications for universal education was, and is, to produce an informed citizenry and voting public.
Careful, Melissa, you’re falling into the trap that leads to where we are.
There are certain bits of knowledge that any person needs to succeed, absent individual special circumstances—we’ve all heard stories about the illiterate millionaire, but they are definitely not the norm. At the top of the list are the English language and kitchen arithmetic, but there are a number of others. Civics, learning how Government works, is one of them, but it’s more important to society as a whole than it is to individuals.
If you leave it all to individual taste and “relevance”, you’re going to lose ninety percent (which IMO is where we are now.) You are never, never going to convince hormone-ridden teenagers that percentages and compound interest are “relevant”. Giving in to that preference is how we got credit cards with 29% and larger interest rates.
I agree that relevance is important, but “relevant” and ”perceived as relevant by the student” are not even in the same category, let alone synonymous.
Regards,
Ric
Jeff:
I used to teach 7th grade Language Arts. When I began to be included in the collaborations, The other teachers were horrified to hear how much time I spent on grammar in my classroom. They nearly lost it when I suggested diagramming sentences. (at least one of them had no idea how to do it, much less teach it)
But it was all made worthwhile for me when I learned of the nickname the 8th grade LA teachers had for me. They called me Mr. semicolon, because my students were the only ones who knew how to use one, and regularly wrote using compound sentences.
gahrie,
I would simply say, thank you for hanging in there. If you accomplished nothing in your life but reducing, even by a small extent, the incidence of ballistic a’pos’trophe’s, your time was well spent.
Regards,
Ric
Alphie, you are being disruptive and therefore you must be expelled.
Gahrie,
When I asked the kid’s second and third grade teachers if they were teaching diagramming sentences, the teachers laughed. “Oh no! That’s the way grammar used to be taught.” I thought, “Well, that’s one more thing I’ll be teaching them myself.”
And Ric, I totally appreciate your point. By the time a kid gets to 8th grade though, he should have the 3Rs down pat. I’m assuming that basic knowledge. But not all kids need nor have the interest or ability to take the sciences, upper math, etc. Why force it? I think drop-outs could be minimized if respectable career tracts were woven into the school curriculum that didn’t assume college.
As far as civics goes, I have this fantastic children’s book that I bought at the George W. Bush library (signed by the Prez himself) that teaches the whole American electoral system from local politics all the way up. The kids are 7 and 9 and already get it. Plus, I take them when I vote and lecture them about it. How much fun am I as a mom?
Oh, and the civics they have received so far has been how Martin Luther King was wronged and that America used to be racist. (I have no problem with them learning about MLK, but they have zippo context yet. This is the school’s first priority?)
Oh and say no to drugs! They know to say no to drugs.
I’ve been to Georgia on a fast train, honey
I wasn’t born no yesterday
I got a good Christian raisin’ and an eighth grade education
And you got no call to treat me thisaway
In Robert Heinlein’s novel Friday, the Governor of California announces that, since a college diploma means increased lifetime earnings, every citizen is awarded a college diploma. In retrospect, that might have been a better solution than what we actually have.
Regards,
Ric
alfi’s ability to make logic leaps of interstellar proportions must have some potentially worthwhile application, surely? What with intelligent design and everything.
Maybe not.
Excuse my typing skills. My great-grandfather was superintendent in the early 1900’s. According to my mom, he was very interested in what Germany was doing, and studied their educational system, making a few trips to Germany to see it.
One of the projects he pushed was Cass Technical High School, a school that opened in 1917, where the students were educated in technical subjects in addition to the academic subjects.
Sixty years ago Detroit was one of the most progressive districts in the country (and by progressive I mean good and innovative) and had an outstanding academic and technical curriculum, preparing students for college or for work.
Mikey, I figured that was a typo. Cass tech is still considered the best in the city. But, if you look at the scores, that isn’t saying much. It’s considered a shining star, but in most communities it would just be the norm- if not a tad below.
Of course! It’s critically important that children be fully aware of America’s sins!
They’ll cover our good features somewhere around, oh, June.
Here’s a letter he left in the Century Box back in 1900.
http://www.detroithistorical.org/exhibits/index.asp?MID=3&EID=186&ID=244
I have taught 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th grades, been a vice-principal, principal, and a math and reading consultant/training specialist. I have worked in rural and urban schools that had high minority populations, high poverty, and high English as a Second Language populations. I’ve never worked in a school that would ever be mistaken for an affluent neighborhood school.
As a colleague and supervisor of teachers, I have witnessed the gamut of ineffective to simply brilliant teaching.
These are my observations. The most effective teachers had the least amount of disciplinary problems in the classroom and the highest results on proficiency exams. This happened even though they had the same population of children as did the other ineffective teachers. The least effective had the most disciplinary incidents that required administrative intervention. The most effective teachers constantly looked for ways to improve their own performance. The least effective teachers kept doing what they always did and constantly complained that the kids were lazy, the parents didn’t care, the kids were dumb, etc. etc., the list was long.
Ineffective teachers weren’t ineffective because they didn’t know their subject matter or were even incompetent. They simply didn’t belong in front of students because they refused to take responsibility for both the successes and failures within their classroom.
I might return to being a principal…the day I can tell an ineffective teacher to go look for another career.
I was going to do “Troops to Teachers” because I’ve taught classes in my Air Force career and I really do love it. Then I saw the starting salary for teachers and realized I couldn’t support my family doing it.
If you want to get rid of the unions, you have to start paying teachers better. Somehow we still don’t give that the priority it needs to be.
Aren’t teachers already paid fairly well? I have a very good friend who teaches in a medium sized city making $50,000 a year. She has taught for 12 years. The work day is shorter and the work year is shorter. Teachers just don’t work as long as most workers. Yes, their jobs are more important (even that is subjective) than other professions, but even my friend doesn’t disagree with me on teachers pay. Everybody would like to be paid more. Social workers are the truly underpaid group of professionals, imo. I guess I would never cry for teachers salaries. I admire and respect their career and think the really good ones work VERY hard, but think given the amount of TIME they actually “work”, they are paid accordingly.
$50 K is good money, TPN, but as you said, your friend has been teaching 12 years. In the district my husband teaches in, in Los Angeles county, a first-year teacher with only a BS or BA degree starts at less than $25K. That’s entry level for a secondary teacher in an area with one of the highest costs of living in the country.
It’s only after years of teaching and accumulating professional development credits that your salary begins to approach acceptable levels.
And we wonder why people don’t want to become teachers.
And I have to agree with Jeff. I teach in college too, and it is really SICK how poorly prepared students are for college. Not knowing grammar is the least of it. They do not know how to think and problem solve. Teaching to the test and “helicopter parents” do their thinking for them.
Finally, Gahrie, I am with you 100% buddy. If I didn’t know better I’d say it was my husband writing your comments. What you have said is EXACTLY his experience, too.
Congratualtions, Alph, on bringing to our attention yet another subject on which your ideas are baloney. I work in a private school. Tuition is $6600.
That is less than most public schools spend per child.
Ok, I just read through the maze of comments posted here and I see the same thing over and over again: Students are not prepared, teachers are not qualified, parents don’t care, teachers aren’t paid enough . . . the list can go on and on.
I think we are missing the point here. Mr. Steve had a chance to say it. . and maybe even alluded to it. We don’t need to fire ‘bad’ teachers or ‘bad’ students. We need to weed out the multiple levels of administration and red tape. We need to make schools competitive. A program needs to be put into place that rewards frugality in schools and does not reward overspending. If a business spends too much money, what happens? They go out of business right? What happens if a school district spends too much money? They get more! Does this seem bass ackwards to anyone else? Why not have a school system where schools compete for students? This would weed out those ‘bad’ teachers. On top of this teachers would earn more, much more in some cases. Students would be in a better learning environment and I would bet that the already too long of a school day would shorten due to efficiences reaped from a more ‘free’ school system. There would be no need for a Union either. I know all you pro-union people out there will disagree but if you know simple economics you will realize that unions are inefficient.