they make pretty dang good money now...don't believe the hype about the "poor" teachers...
One of our overseas friends started as a primary school teacher when she f graduated from HS. We used to produce thousands of well educated teachers from are Normal colleges. What happened? Do you really need a masters to be a good teacher?
I wonder if the problem is less that our student's can't learn STEM, and more that our teachers can't teach STEM anymore.The teachers are also a product of the last generation of university education, too.
-PJ
I see this as an arcane question. I don't fault anyone for failing to notice that 3/5 is 12/20, and hence the largest. Math rules.
Reflect upon the fact that college instructors do not need an education degree, they just need to know the subject.
For the shortage of high school STEM teachers, I would just change the rule to: if you have taught the subject at college for two years, then you are automatically qualified to teach high school classes.
Sure, there are bad schools that use these types of ‘teachers’, but the WONDERFUL public schools my kids go would NEVER, EVER, consider using those people. Why my wonderful public schools only choose the brightest to teach my kids, and I know, because that’s what they told me (...and besides, they’re free, so why give a damn who’s teaching there anyway)
Paging Betsy DeVos. Would like to hear what changes she has made & when will she end common core??
My oldest son went to a private middle school. Three of my daughters went to a private Christian school.
Both of these schools paid teachers around 25% of the salary of local public school teachers, and both of them had between 30-60 applicants for any vacancy.
The idea of universal, diverse public school education through Grade 12 is an idiotic fantasy. Until we give it up, nothing will get better.
Yes, obviously, you would have better teachers if you staffed the "system" with subject matter experts. You would have better letter carriers if you hired only English majors (I was an English major, and a letter carrier).
But how many capable subject matter experts do you think would be willing to work under the conditions that obtain in most public schools today? There are 3.2 million FTE public school teachers as of this Fall.
People who take this on face a sullen, restless, hostile group of adolescents who neither want to be there nor are willing to comply with minimal organizational requirements.
And you think you can get three million people who are better than the current crew to subject themselves to this?
The problem is not how to organize a proper school. They know how to do that in Borneo, and in Pakistan. The problem is not what makes a good teacher. They know that in Swaziland, and in Latvia.
The problem is massive resistance to compulsory high school education by students with IQs of 85 or less who are physically mature and unafraid of what passes for discipline, and until you fix that, the issues of spending, buildings, curriculum, and teacher standards are like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
My high school Physics teacher was a former Navy SH-3 Helo pilot. His former career REQUIRED an intimate understanding of 'Applied Physics'.
College Educational Departments are simply Arthur Murray Dance Studios for instruction in the NEA Minuet.
My guess is that these are questions that an eighth- or ninth-grader with a good education ought to be able to answer.
Gimme a break, these are 3rd grade questions.
Yup. Buffalo, NY.
Been going on for decades.
The high school teachers could not pass the basic literacy tests high school students are expected to pass and their immediate reaction was cries of *racism*, which everyone else in the Buffalo area laughed at because the minute that charge was leveled, we KNEW which group of teachers was failing.
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This is a good article and a better thread. So let me ask the very bright people assembled a couple of questions:
1. What does victory look like?
2. How do we get there?
Somewhere north of 85% of parents choose to accept Aid For Dependent Parents and put their kids in the government schools. The remaining 15% private school or home educate. I don’t see how a political solution fixes this when 85% plus of parents have opted into the government school paradigm.