Posted on 09/08/2015 9:12:04 AM PDT by rktman
The end of summer is upon us and with same comes the Erebusic Satanic ritual notably called return to public school. Public schools since the early 1970s have served to prepare public-school teachers for comfortable retirements and prepare the students relegated to them for lowered expectations and conformity to social Marxism.
If more money were the cure to the educational malaise, public schools would be graduating entire classes of Einsteins and Socrateses. But instead, they are promoting students grade-to-grade who cannot make change unless the cash register tells them the correct amount and who are, by definition, illiterate in geography, literature and factual history.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, expenditures per student in public elementary and secondary schools from 2000-01 to 2011-12 increased by 11 percent, after adjusting for inflation. This amount peaked in 2010-11 at $11,332. The total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. amounted to $621 billion in 2011-12.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
But are they being socialized? I am told that is the most important thing.
Bullcrap. In 2005 a third section was added, also worth 800 points. Thirty years ago the max was 1600 and remained that way until 2005.
Here's my opinion, based on teachers that I have actually observed (and I am a tough grader):
10% are amazing teachers. Not just good, but amazing.
35% are good teachers. I'd hire any one of them if I ran my own school.
5% are poor teachers, and should be fired. But as we all know, that rarely happens.
The remaining 50% are what I'd call journeyman teachers. There is nothing wrong with that. These teachers are not spectacular, but they are not lazy or incompetent either. If a student wants a good education in one of those classes, he would certainly get it.
But I must add one further note. If there is even one disruptive student in the classroom of an amazing teacher, that teacher will not be able to get good results. And at least in my urban school district, such disruptive students cannot be permanently removed from a class. So that amazing teacher becomes not a teacher as much as some sort of crowd control officer.
My 14 year old granddaughter, a freshman in high school, called the other night for help with her math. The assignment on the second day of school was to graph inequalities in one and two variables.
My gd is smart so I asked her if she forgot the rules for inequalities that shhe learned in class. She said the teacher did not teach that day, she just broke the class into groups and told them to figure it out collectively. Seriously.
So I taught her inequalities and wrote a note on the one problem that was so incoherent Einstein could not have solved it indicating just that to the “ teacher”.
They are way overpaid, way over!
A part-time job at best, and they take 3 months vacation a year!
I worked at a Hallmark store some years ago. Some young girl was trying to pay for something with change; and, honestly, she didn't seem to know the difference between the actual coins. When I put together the coins that would add up to the cost of the item, she just looked totally blank, as if she could not figure out how I did that.
I remember having sheets of paper printed with the coins and their denominations, when I was in grade school (just turned 61), to help teach us what coins are worth how much and how to put them together to get certain amounts.
Do the public schools no longer even do such basic preparation for living in the world?
Long informative rants are okay in my book.
God Bless you!
Thank you. It's a shame my ex-girlfriends did not see things that way.
(just kidding, maybe)
1. We can gut school administration. You want to talk about fat, lazy, and overpaid? Feh, forget teachers and start where the real problem lies....
B. We can tie teacher compensation to performance.
3. We take the Feds out of the picture entirely, and abolish the Dept. of Education. Buncha fat, lazy, overpaid bureaucrats in DC don't know what's best, ever.
Pay teachers plenty, get rid of the deadwood and admin roadblocks and remote government meddling.....and pretty soon you'll have fine upstanding teachers guaranteed to win blue ribbons at any country fair.
While I'm at it, I'd love to have world peace, and a tree that sheds $100 bills instead of leaves.
The quality of the students is a major factor in how well they perform. ...true enough....
With merit pay you’d be paying teachers who work in the ghetto peanuts while paying teachers who work in rich areas a relative fortune ...Why can't teachers be evaluated on a location-by-location basis? As a general rule, businesses don't evaluate employees based on how their co-workers did at the other office on the other side of the country. Why can't schools do the same?
“high school doesn’t exist at all except for social functions for most American kids”
Actually, I feel sorry for some of the students. They are delusional and their delusions are encouraged by a system that passes them along.
I hired a junior college student who assured me he could do the work as I outlined it. He was getting suitable grades in business and accounting. He left one tiny detail out during our employment interviews and email communications. He had a learning disability which necessitated special tutoring arrangements and other accommodations. The emails he sent me were edited by another.
His verbal communications were fine. His problem was that he could not easily or correctly translate verbal communication into written communication. So, for example,if given a name or phone number, he had difficulty correctly transmitting it to paper. He was painfully slow and often inaccurate.
I explained to him that a small business could not afford to make the kinds of adjustments to his disability that were made at the junior college.
During the probationary employment period we discovered how skillful he was working with his hands. Since we are a small construction company, his job was to entail some field work as well as office work. He was amazing in the field. He had worked for a relative’s construction company. The things he did not know relative to our field work, he learned easily.
I encouraged him to stay with us in the field only. The pay is excellent. Our experienced installers make six figures. However, he chose to continue school as he did not want to work with his hands.
I believe the school system contributed to this false sense of his abilities and limitations. While the desire to help this young man is admirable, someone needed to give him an understanding of life in the real business world. He actually expected to hand the phone to another office employee and have her write down information for him. He tried that his very first day on the job.
Bless you for hanging in there with teaching. I know it is a difficult job if one tries to do it right. I have a friend who is a good teacher and I see it is not an easy job. She teaches at the high school level and part of the problem is parents that do not help when students are not performing. Another problem seems to be administration. And, of course, there are societal pressures and also some teachers just quit trying. I could not do what it takes to be a good teacher.
LOL! Well, if they printed such papers now, to figure out how much the coins are worth, simply turn the paper over to the blank side. Easy answer. :>}
As I noted in an earlier post, that might not be the teacher's fault. One of the latest educational fads is "group learning", where students are supposed to "discover" the correct answers on their own. The teacher is not supposed to teach, but instead "guide" things from a distance.
That might work, occasionally, in a history class. But in a math or science class, it just wastes time and often leads to wrong answers.
Such a method is mandated in my school district (I have 20+ years as an urban high school physics teacher). It's infuriating, and most math and science teachers I know take their chances and usually teach the old-fashioned way.
You are so right. Unless their degree is in science or technology, their odds aren’t so good.
I consulted, not too long ago, at a private college. Was doing some testing on their website, and so perused the "Math" Department. I've got a BS in Engineering, so I have a nodding familiarity with math. :-)
Anyway, the college's Jr. and Sr. level courses covered topics that I had in High School. First and second level integrals and differentials, simple, simple stuff. I was astounded, so much so that I asked about it, thinking that there might have been a misprint that needed fixing. Nope.
Sez me, when a student comes out of that particular college with a Bachelors in Mathematics ... and goes up against Zhang Whang, who has the same degree, but had Advanced DiffEq's written on the mobile above his crib .... well, it's not difficult to figure out who's got the advantage in the real world. Sad, because the kids with a useless education, don't even know enough to understand that it's useless.
That would still leave too many variables. Suppose you and I worked the same machine, and were given the same starting materials, and were told to make the same product. We could be fairly compared. Merit pay might make sense.
But teaching is different. Suppose you taught a first period Algebra 1 class and I taught a third period Algebra 1 class. In urban schools especially, kids straggle in. Your scores would be lower simply because of absenteeism.
Now further suppose you had even one really disruptive student. That could really destroy a class!
Bottom line: My students would score better, even though you might well be the better teacher.
I suppose it would all even out over long periods of time ( maybe 10+ years). But merit pay wouldn't have much effect if you waited that long to award it.
For me, the solution is snap observations of teachers by people competent in the subject matter. Either the teacher is teaching, or he is not. Document, then fire, those who are not teaching.
Maybe a week's worth of video? I don't know, there's got to be a way to do it.
Of course, I still think that it's a pipe dream. Success breeds expectations. Most teachers - "progressive" ones in particular - don't want their peers to be successful and raise the bar. Crabs in a pot, most of them.
Got ya! At first I thought you were arguing for merit pay based on test scores. Now I see we're pretty much on the same page.
Regards!
Fill the classroom with Einsteins and money won't be a factor. But what if the classroom is filed with kids that can't compute? That's the problem educators have when the public expects Einsteins.
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