Wells Hall Off Topic Board

Well, I am pretty good at my profession and earn considerably more. Why switch? The key thing here is "pretty good". Teachers, in aggregate, are not very good. They weren't the best and brightest. They've taken on union like work ethic. And the biggest and most important thing is that they don't produce at the level their bosses expect (taxpayers). Yes, there are some good ones, and those should receive better compensation than the others. I reward my better employees and don't the low performers. As a whole though, teachers do not produce nearly the value that I expect.

I seriously thought about going back for a teaching certificate when I had trouble getting a job after I got my Master's. I landed my current job before that happened.

However, I've also realized that in a lot of ways, I may not be suited to teach in a classroom of kids. Patience is not always a virtue of mine and I tend to get easily agitated. Probably not a good mix in a teaching environment.

How do you know that "Teachers, in aggregate are not very good. They weren't the best and brightest?"

What does "best and brightest" mean and how does it apply to teachers or any profession. Are we talking astronauts?

You have the tendency to look at things in a very shallow way. The results in a classroom depend on many factors and the teacher is but one of them.

Choosing a lucrative career is associated with greed? Talk about a marxist mentality.

And I admit no such thing. I think teachers are paid too much for what value we get in the classroom. I see kids that have grown up in our system. I have colleagues who move here from abroad and without exception, they tend to be further ahead for the same age. And yes, I do agree that they don't have the potential to make what high end professionals, doctors, lawyers, etc make nor should they. They have chosen a path that doesn't lead to prosperity.

Wow this is a very simplistic view of teaching.

Sorry I meant to quote MSUx2

Not a black and white issue, like many try to turn it into. Things to consider:

1. There are a few outstanding teachers. Most teachers fall into the range of "average". There are some that are below or well below average. This is exactly how it is in any work environment. That said...

2. In a typical work environment, bad employees are easily replaced. It doesn't always happen (we all know "that guy" (or girl) that should have been replaced long ago), but it happens a lot, and the threat is always looming, and tends to keep people on their toes. That doesn't exist in public education, and it tends to make the bad teachers extremely bad teachers. That just perpetuates the stigma that "all teachers are bad".

3. Just as the bad teachers should be terminated, the exceptional teachers should be more highly compensated. However, thanks to the unions, everyone is treated the same (to see the problem with that, see point #2).

4. At least in Michigan, teachers do get compensated very well (after their first few years), especially for only working nine months of the year. It's much more than the average private sector employee makes (and no, a neurosurgeon is not the average private employee). And hardly anybody gets four months of vacation a year. Teachers have it made in the shade, in both compensation and time off.

5. Teachers are then punished by our government (who, along with our universities, has a vested interest here) by forcing them into continuing education. Very few private sector industries REQUIRE continuing education. This is very costly for our teachers, and is nothing but a money grab by the state, and a bargaining chip by unions to justify inflated teaching wages across the board (as opposed to the top educators who truly deserve higher compensation).

I've said it before, but there are SO many problems with public education, at just about every level you can possibly imagine. All parties equally share the blame here. As far as the teachers themselves are concerned, yes they have great time off, yes they get paid more than the average private sector employee (at least in Michigan), yes they get absolutely screwed on continuing education, and flattening out their pay (as opposed to rewarding/punishing the over/underachievers) is a poor process that accomplishes nothing other than breeding mediocrity.

That's without getting into the parents, the students, the administration, the state, the federal, private industry (i.e. textbook companies), and the taxpayers in general...

I don't think I would enjoy teaching?

Wow.

Hex knows there are few outstanding teachers and a lot of average ones. The state should hire him and save millions.

Hex has no clue about the 9 month thing. It was the case for teachers who had their masters and were at the top of their pay scale as long as they kept up with continuing ed during the school year but no more.

Unfunded Federal mandates now require annual updated lesson plans to be filed every year and when a school system acquires new text books or a teacher switches grades (or subjects for middle and HS teachers) an all new weekly progress lesson plan for the entire school year is required before the start of the next school year to be reviewed by the director of curriculum in each district. That's all done in the summer.

What I see is a bunch of folks who really have no clue about teaching, the BS teachers have to put up with from the parents who gripe about grades in more affluent districts to the administrators who are leaning on them to teach to the test so state and Federal aid keep plowing since much of it is based on test scores.

Maybe a bit of jealously too since they are stuck at $X per year with declining benefits and stagnant wages because the free market has given them an on the job high colonic. They have slipped into I got screwed so I need a whipping boy mentality.

Then no one likes to mention that once you are 2 or 3 steps into a system you can't move without taking a significant pay cut because although you were at step 3 with a new Master's degree no school will hire you because you cost too much. Most other professional occupations are rewarded for experience. In school systems it becomes a career sentence.

Yeah, so I was trying to defend the teachers with that statement. Most people lump all teachers into the same barrel (as bad teachers), my point was that they are just like any other professional career out there; some outstanding, some terrible, most fall into an average category.

"Maybe a bit of jealously too since they are stuck at $X per year with declining benefits and stagnant wages because the free market has given them an on the job high colonic."

Teachers get paid because of the money generated by the free market. When the participants of the free market no longer feel that the teachers they are paying for are being fairly compensated, it is their right to voice a complaint about it. But of course, I know the people like you believe that money comes from nowhere and there should be no accountability for how it is spent...after all, we can just print more. Debt is good.

Stay classy GRR. You're just as bad as the group that vilifies our public educators; your idealistic perceptions are 100% out of sync with reality, and they are unsustainable (as we're rapidly finding out).

I was referring to his view of how classes are taught. I wish teaching only took 20-30 minutes a class period and then I could rest.

As for your statement, I agree that the current way that we pay teachers is pretty screwed up and so are all of the requirements. Since I am a teacher I will use myself as the example. I have been teaching for 16 years and have finally reached the point where I finally make a decent wage. To get there, I have had to do the following:

1. Teach for 10 years and get step increases each of these years (our step increases stop at 10 years in my district). I will agree that this is probably not the best way to reward teachers, but I also believe that experience is a good thing in a classroom. I am a much better teacher now than I was when I first started.

2. Get a masters degree at my expense. My school district did not pay one cent towards my degree. Again, I agree that getting this degree did not make me a better teacher. In fact, the time spent getting this degree could have been used to improve my lesson plans.

3. Continue to get credits or SBCEUs. I am currently working on my second masters to fulfill the state requirements to keep my teaching certificate.

A lot of this has been a giant waste of time.

I wish that there was some way (I am sure there is I just have not seen or heard of it yet) to pay teachers based on ability. I hate the concept of using test scores because it does not show the true value of the educator. Again using myself as an example, I currently teach a class that I volunteered to teach that would make it impossible for me to ever get merit pay. I work with all of the 9th grade students who were socially promoted to the high school by their parents. The school recommends that they be held back but the parents have decided to send their students to high school against our recommendation. This fall I will have 22 students who failed at least 8th grade and most have failed the last few-several years of school. My job is to work closely with them on a daily basis to keep their grades up, deal with social issues, communicate with their parents, communicate with their other teachers, deal with any issues that come up with administration, etc. This is an exhausting job, but I love every minute of it. Last year, out of 20 students, 16 of them passed every subject. They may not have had the best grades, but they accomplished something that they have not done in a long time if ever. I like to think that I played a role in that. I feel that I am a great teacher who gives everything that I have to my students, but if you test these students and determine my worth based off of those test scores, I am a failure.

Just for those who are looking to bash me for being a teacher, these 22 students are not the only ones that I teach. I have 3 other classes on top of these twenty. That is at least 90 more students. Of those other classes, only one is a subject that has an MME test.

I just need an iPad, the Sand Dunes, and to pray to baby Jesus.

Standardized testing should be ended immediately. Yet another way for the state to shuffle money around without accomplishing anything. Standardized testing does nothing but force schools who perform above the standards to lower their standards and teach down to the test; conversely, for lower-performing schools, performing well on these tests is an unrealistic goal and does nothing to adequately gauge what the teachers are teaching and what the students are learning.