Yeah, really jeffo. The concept of "social value" in labour as determined not by the market but by an overseeing authority (government) was addressed/defined by Marx in Capital III (IIRC). It IS a Marxist/socialist (Marx/Engels) concept...literally.
Quote:Quote:"The obvious question then becomes why WE aren't emulating the practices that are working better than our current standards and practices. It's certainly not because the parents or public would object, and in many (most?) cases it's not because teachers would object, AH YES!! it's because the government and the unions object."I call BS.
Okay... what precisely are you calling BS on? Do you think we ARE emulating the practices of successful systems elsewhere? Do you think the parents or public would object? Do you think that unions and government ARE instituting those policies?
Quote:Quote:"The number of people who are able and willing to take, or who attempt to get a particular job determines what the job will pay and ultimately even what the job conditions will be to some degree. It's simple supply and demand (paying attention here jeffo?)."
Paying attention. Still waiting for an intelligent answer. How does this apply to pro athletes?
I thought the debate was about education, but if you would like a short side trip into basic economics I'll oblige.
Sports teams make a lot of revenue by entertaining the public.
Pro athletes wannabes compete with each other for a very few places on teams. There are not a whole lot of people capable of the performance required, and knowing that, most of us don't even begin to pursue it. That intense competition raises the standard needed to be a successful candidate, since the best candidates set the standard.
The teams compete with each other as well, not only on the field but for revenue and to sign up new promising players. In order to win on the field (and increase revenue) they need to hire the best players possible. Simple supply and demand allows the successful player to negotiate a higher price. His higher price sets the standard for work conditions of players of lessor skills as well as his own. That higher price paid spawns more intense competition for positions (pay), not only among those trying to break in to the game, but among those already in it. Supply and demand.
Quote:Take 3 months off? Let's rephrase that is a more realistic light- 3 months off unemployed! Most teachers teach school 9 months and go find work at a boys and girls club, private tutor, or some other low-pay job for the remaining 3. For many it is not an option to not work. If there is not money coming in every 2 weeks, there is no way to pay the bills.
Oh man, I didn't realize having three months off a year was such a hardship, or that teachers were of such low skill levels that they'd only qualify at low paying jobs outside of education, or that teachers were so poor at arithmetic they couldn't budget for the summer. Here all this time I have always heard that taking off 3 months out of the year was a benefit and only now do I learn that it's an extreme hardship.
Quote:We're now realistically at 10.5 hours worked each day. If we input that figure into your equation it comes out to $18.71/hour.
Okay, a starting teacher in the Gilbert school district makes $18.71 an hour, a Gilbert median teacher makes 23.81hr and a median Intel software engineer makes 28.57hr.
And your point is?
Do you really think there should be parity between a top flight software engineer working at one of the best paying corporations in the country and an elementary public school teacher? REALLY?
Quote:This data aside from being out of date looks incorrect. We can just look at the verified salary scale I posted a page or two back to see a realistic average salary for a school teacher. We know based on the actual living document I posted of my current 20009-2010 salary that the middle of the salary scale is $45,000ish. Those are teachers that have 12 years of teaching experiences in their current district and have a 4 year degree and more often also went out and got a 2 year Masters degree to get them to the $45,000 level. Now compare that $45,000 number to an average employee at Intel that has the rank of engineer- 4 year degree no more (we know there are several diff types of engineers, none require more than a 4 year BS degree). What is the average salary of an engineer at Intel?
The data is absolutely correct, it's from the United States Department of Labor. You are back to mixing apples and oranges again. First, (this may come as a shock to you) there at least 49 states other than AZ (some say there are 57
). The figures I provided are national, and the table you provided is local. The graph is for the pay scale of one of the most sought after professions and is for a single high paying corporation.
In addition, a "4 year degree" is hardly descriptive. The degree for computer engineering will almost certainly include several disciplines of higher mathematics and hard sciences, computer programming languages, hardware architecture, database administration, etc, etc, all very difficult subjects. Being comprised of primarily "hard" science subjects, fewer people will try to get the degree, either because they know they can't pass the course material or because they don't want to expend the extra effort needed to pass it. Of those that DO enroll in those classes a higher percentage will fail or drop out because of the difficulty involved.
With a growing demand for that employment classification and few qualified candidates to fill the demand, wages and benefits will go up. Simple economics.
Teaching degrees on the other hand are primarily comprised of the "soft" subjects, especially in primary school education. That not only means there will be a larger number of people able to pass the classes, there will be a larger number of (low achievers) people taking them because they are the "soft" classes.
The result of both situations above in a given student population is that those that gravitate towards teaching will generally tend to be from the lower quartiles of academic ability. That's not speculation or opinion and it's nothing new. It's been well established fact at every college and university in the country since the beginning of teaching programs. It's probably where the old saw "Those that can do, those that can't teach." came from. Teaching has always been a "job of last resort" for many who can't cut the mustard in the hard stuff.
For instance, a graduate degree of just about any type other than education normally requires a GPA of 3.0-3.3 with some fields and schools requiring as high as a 3.8 GPA for consideration by the selection committee. A typical education masters requires a GPA of 2.5-2.75 (when did a 2.5 GPA get to be even a passing grade?).
However, that's not the end of the story. A number of studies have shown a decline in average teacher aptitude since about '60. It's not that teachers have become "dumb", it's that while the lowest quartile remains at the same academic level (you can't get lower than the lowest), the number of candidates entering from the highest quartile of achievement has dropped off precipitously.
In other words, the "bad" teachers today are no worse than they ever were, the median teacher is only a little worse than they used to be, and the best are still every bit as good as ever. The problem is that there are considerably fewer of the "best" going into teaching since the advent of the unionized "the worst gets paid the same as the best" system has developed over the last 45 years or so.
That has brought the average teacher quality down. Not bashing, not opinion, objective fact based on research.
Here's abstracts from just a few studies.
Pulled Away or Pushed Out? Explaining the Decline of Teacher Aptitude in the United States
December 01, 2003
Authors: Caroline Hoxby, Andrew Leigh, Harvard University
This study by two Harvard researchers finds that the perverse teacher pay system used in public schools, which does not reward superior performance but does reward attributes that have been shown to be unrelated to classroom performance (credentials and years of experience), has been the major cause of significant declines in teacher quality since 1960. Improved opportunities for women in the broader labor market are a much less important factor.
The Declining Quality of Teachers by Darius Lakdawalla
NBER Working Paper No. 8263*
Issued in April 2001
Concern is often voiced about the declining quality of American schoolteachers. This paper shows that, while the relative quality of teachers is declining, this decline is a result of technical change, which improves the specialized knowledge of skilled workers outside teaching, but not the general knowledge of schoolteachers. This raises the price of skilled teachers, but not their productivity. Schools respond by lowering the relative skill of teachers and raising teacher quantity. On the other hand, college professors, who teach specialized knowledge, are predicted to experience increases in skill relative to schoolteachers. Finally, the lagging productivity of primary schools is predicted to raise the unit cost of primary education. These predictions appear consistent with the data. Analysis of US Census microdata suggests that, from the 1900 birth cohort to the 1950 birth cohort, the relative schooling of teachers has declined by about three years, and the human capital of teachers may have declined in value relative to that of college graduates by as much as thirty percent, but the teacher-student ratio has more than doubled over the last half century in a wide array of developed countries. Moreover, the per student cost of primary school education in the US has also risen dramatically over the past 50 years. Finally, the human capital of college professors has risen by nearly thirty percent relative to schoolteachers.
Long-Run Trends in the Quality of Teachers: Evidence and Implications for Policy
Sean P. Corcoran
Nearly all modern research on the subject finds teacher effectiveness to be among the most important school inputs into student achievement. Yet recent literature, including my own work (Corcoran, Evans, and Schwab 2004), finds evidence that the quality of teachers has steadily eroded over time. In particular, the likelihood that a high-aptitude female pursued a career in teaching dropped precipitously between 1960 and 2000. In this article, I summarize these and related findings, review some of the most common explanations for the trend in teacher quality, and discuss policies that have been advanced to attract talented graduates to the teaching profession.
The academic quality of public school teachers: an analysis of entry and exit behavior Michael Podgursky, , Ryan Monroe and Donald Watson
The authors investigate how the labor market decisions of recent college graduates, new teachers, and employers affect the academic quality of the teaching workforce in public schools. They use a rich longitudinal data set of Missouri college graduates and public school teachers to examine the behavior of college graduates concerning an initial decision to secure certification and teach in a public school, and subsequent decisions as to whether to continue. They find that college graduates with above-average ACT scores tend not to select into teaching, however, the effect is most pronounced for elementary school teachers. At any level of academic achievement, women are far more likely than men to teach, however, the relative aversion of high-ability women to teaching is at least as great as that of men. High-ability men and women who do enter public school teaching are more likely to leave than their less talented counterparts. Examination of non-teaching earnings for exiting teachers finds little evidence that high-ability teachers are leaving for higher pay. The results also highlight very different mobility patterns by teaching field. For both men and women, the attrition of math and science teachers with high ACT scores is greater than in other teaching fields. Finally, peer group effects may be a factor explaining female exit behavior. Controlling for own ACT, high-ability women who work with low-ability colleagues are more likely to exit.
Quote:What is the motivation to do good? Is it possible some teachers do good because they believe it's the right thing to do? Ethics, pride in your job, that sort of thing. Not all teachers do it just for the money.
Are there people who are not interested in the money, don't care about the time off in summer, took all the hard science classes etc, and still have chosen to be teachers because "some people gravitate to working with children because they feel they can do the most good for society in this manner"?
No doubt there ARE. Those would probably fall into the top quartile of graduates. The problem is that while there are still plenty of new teachers from the lower quartiles, there are fewer from the top quartiles.
Are there very many as a percentage of the total? For sure not as many as there were 45 years ago.
YOU may measure success or "high achievement" by some esoteric metric that doesn't involve money or advancement within your field, but I can assure you you are in a minuscule minority. Industry, schools, and parents, certainly want more of their idea of "high achievement" and success taught.
I also suspect from your (and other teacher's) posts here regarding teacher pay that it just ain't so.
If you guys don't measure success and achievement at least to a great degree in terms of money, then why are we even mentioning teacher salaries, particularly as compared to anybody else's salary?
Quote:There are perks with just about every job. Please do not act like teachers get the best perks.
Not exactly (and Intel is hardly representative of the American workforce). Again according to the
department of labor: "State and local government workers" (which includes public school teachers) DO get better benefits than the average American worker (those darned facts keep getting in the way).
* Medical care benefits were available to 71 percent of private industry workers, compared with 88 percent among State and local government workers. About half of private industry workers participated in a plan, less than the 73 percent of State and local government workers.
Employers paid 82 percent of the cost of premiums for single coverage and 71 percent of the cost for family coverage, for workers participating in employer sponsored medical plans. The employer share for
single coverage was greater in State and local government (90 percent) than in private industry (80 percent).
Among full-time State and local government workers, virtually all (99 percent) had access to retirement and medical care benefits. Of full-time workers in private industry, only 76 percent had access to retirement benefits and 86 percent to medical care.
Sixty-seven percent of private industry employees had access to retirement benefits, compared with 90 percent of State and local government employees. Eighty-six percent of State and local government employees participated in a retirement plan, a significantly greater percentage than for private industry workers, at 51 percent.
Paid sick leave was available to approximately two-thirds of workers. Nearly 90 percent of State and local government workers had access, significantly greater than the approximately 60 percent of private industry workers.
The incidence of employee benefits varied by worker characteristics and by establishment characteristics. For example, private industry workers in service occupations have less access to medical care benefits (46 percent) than private industry management, professional, and related workers (86 percent). Also, patterns of incidence varied between private industry and State and local government. State and local government workers in service occupations have less access to medical care than in management, professional, and related occupations (81 and 90 percent, respectively). The disparity between these two occupational groups is larger in private industry (46 and 86 percent, respectively).
Access to paid holidays and paid vacation leave was greater for professional and related workers in private industry (85 and 83 percent, respectively) than in State and local government (51 and 37 percent, respectively). This is due in part to the fact that in State and local government, teachers make up a larger percent of the professional
and related occupations than in private industry. Teachers and other employees in educational services are commonly employed on the basis of 9-month contracts, and often do not receive formal paid holiday and vacation benefits.
Quote:Curriculum is decided upon at a state level. No school board decides upon core subject curriculum- reading, writing , math, social studies, science. Curriculum is decided upon at by the state department of education.
Not exactly, not even in AZ. Remember
this one?
That aspect of the curriculum, presented to sixth-graders, had drawn concern from parents who felt that the information was too advanced for students at that age. “We’re talking about teaching sixth-grade kids stuff we should be teaching them at grades nine, 10, 11 and 12,” said district parent Sudeep Mehta at the Kyrene board meeting in which the changes were adopted.
In any case the point was union fear of a controling authority (such as say, the Texas School Board) changing curiculae.
Quote:Are all the government based job also going to move to some kind of a merit-based pay or do we just want to select public education? Postal workers, forest service, game & fish, state social services, our state and federal congress men- let's be fair.
Yeah it would be "fair", but let's not get too cozy with the idea of comparing other government jobs as justification for anything in education. Those folks in the post office/fire department/DMV/etc are not in charge of my children 8 hours a day.
You had best believe that if you are around my kids you WILL be under intense scrutiny. If you don't LIKE the increased scrutiny, you should have chosen another profession.
Quote:This "can't be fired" thing is a myth. Actually, so is tenure by its definition. Every contract that I've ever heard of defines a process to get rid of bad teachers, or good teachers who do something bad. It's called "just cause", or, more commonly, simply "cause".
Here's an article in Time on
tenure from a while back.
This is from
Education World: ..."first I asked, Is it possible to fire a bad teacher who has tenure?” The answer was a rousing and unanimous “Yes!” It’s harder, I was told, to fire a tenured teacher than a non-tenured teacher, but it certainly is possible."
The problem though IMHO isn't that there are a whole bunch of bad teachers. The bad teachers aren't any worse than they ever were, it's the system itself. If the system tells Scott to teach fractions to his 6th grade class and he does an excellent job of it, he is a good teacher.
The system has deteriorated as can be clearly seen because the standard used to be that 6th graders were learning basic algebra.
The lowering of standards is not a reflection on teachers, but on the government and the unions that influence the government in the establishment of curriculae.
The question of poorer quality teachers getting paid the same as the best teachers is troubling only to the extent that it influences potentially good teachers to not want to enter the profession.
How do you determine good teachers and bad? You use tests and test results, and of course it will not be perfect. How else do we make determinations of quality (about anything) except by testing?
In my opinion the whole thing is just putting bandaids on cancer though. We need to privatize the system and get it back into local control. The first step in that process (that may have any success) is doing as much as possible to kill the teachers unions.
Quote:How absurd and ignorant can people be? When people get so entrenched in their fundamental belief that they can not even look objectively at another viewpoint- they are lost in my opinion. They are travelling down a road and no longer have any brakes.
I could not agree more. It's especially sad when people won't accept objective reality gleaned from factual data because it doesn't comport with their "viewpoint". I know, it's really irritating when facts keep getting in the way.
"I believe that what's wrong with our schools in this nation is that they have become unionized in the worst possible way." Steve Jobs Feb 2007
