Posted on 01/06/2014 6:27:31 AM PST by Timber Rattler
I recently published a post with various answers to the question: How hard is teaching? Here is one response I received by e-mail from a veteran seventh-grade language arts teacher in Frederick, Maryland, who asked not to be identified because she fears retaliation at her school. In this piece she describes students who don’t want to work, parents who want their children to have high grades no matter what, mindless curriculum and school reformers who insist on trying to quantify things that can’t be measured.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The point is, not all public schools are sewers. Some do their job very well.
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In some communities the public schools are essentially private school because of demographics and socioeconomic status. I live in a town with lousy public schools but my taxes are about 4K per year. Two towns over have an excellent public school system which is essentially a private school system and the taxes on what I have would be about 12-14K per year. So moving there I would pay 8-10K tuition annually. We have had a few large families in our time move there temporarily to get their kids through that system, and move back to our lower tax base once the kids are all out. Me, I homeschooled, so it didn’t really matter what the school was like.
Reporting for duty.
We recently had a family with 4th and 2nd grade daughters enroll the kids in our private school. After the kids shadowed the classes for a day, the parents asked them how it went. The older daughter, with an amazed expression, said: “Dad! The kids there - they BEHAVED!”
That will not get rid of union control, will it?
I went to a decent public school as well. It was a large rural district and my teachers were members of the community. In many cases, those teachers were the same ones who taught my parents.
However, today the place is an absolutely politically correct social experimentation disaster and the teachers are fully indoctrinated marxist clymers.
Just should have said...”I can’t fix stupid”, and moved on!
I went to a decent public school as well. It was a large rural district and my teachers were members of the community. In many cases, those teachers were the same ones who taught my parents.
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There were many decent public schools until the leftists took over completely. I do not understand any conservatives who have their children in Public Schools at this time, even the “good” ones. They are all leftist and leave a mark on the kids.
Yep, you got it.
My siblings and I went through one of the best public school systems in the country during the 60’-70’s. We even had a Rifle team. BTW -it was and is “Union Free” because they pay more than any union scale could afford.
Lots of big families back then. They would all move out soon after all the kids finished school.
Property taxes based on property values in that school district today are over $20,000 per household, with many wealthy families paying over $75K per year. No rifle team, drugs all over and all-out America-hating liberals running everything.
The property taxes are deductible for Federal purposes so it is actually more like tax-free, private school tuition.
Socio-economic fracturing. Wealthy families can afford to keep away the pathologies of poverty. Online education will be providing solutions to many of these issues in the very near future.
All children deserve a chance to become productive, responsible and self-reliant citizens.
I'll bet you could find replacements for far less than what they currently earn.
Other professions seem to allow for credentialing without unionization (doctors, lawyers, etc.).
I would look to retired boomers that had real world experience.
She’s a whiner.
When State run education quit teaching students “how to learn” and instead opted for indoctrination the end was near for the most literate populace the world had ever seen.
If you live in the right place the public school can be good but the questions you should ask is for the same money could a private school do it better.
No matter how well run the princpal problem remains. For a government school, the government is the customer and the kids are the product.
Aevery_Freeman: I'll bet you could find replacements for far less than what they currently earn.
cripplecreek: Here in Michigan we have teachers choosing to take 5 figure salary cuts to work in better equipped, cleaner, and safer, charter and private schools. (post 27)
Professionalism:
Aevery_Freeman: Other professions seem to allow for credentialing without unionization (doctors, lawyers, etc.).
cripplecreek: Combine it with right to work and the unions will collapse over time whether the school is private or not. (post 27)
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I don't know whether to laugh (wryly) or to cry (for lack of historical depth) over these postulated benefits.
I don't know what your time in history was, but in the late fifties I was training to be a science teacher. Public education was based entirely on well-trained teachers who considered themselves professionals. In my state, high school teachers with a bachelor's degree could obtain a temporary license, but permanent certification could be obtained if the required master's degree in education was attained in no more than five years.
In the communities throughout the country, teachers were held in some awe for their professionalism and commitment to excellence. No unionism was on the horizon.
In my state, the State Board of Regents kept the teachers' qualifications and professionalism on course, as well as uniformizing a high level of the performance of the students. Not to have a Regents Diploma was equivalent to "no college for you, pal."
Also, any teacher new to a different school had no security of tenure until his fourth year contract was signed. Until then, your employment could be terminated without explanation, and you would have to find work somewhere else. But after that, you could work there as long as you desired. So the School Board and administrators watched your first three years very carefully, because their final commitment was non-negotiable thereafter. This helped to ensure teacher stability, reliability, and schoolroom product.
However, there was a proverbial "fly in the ointment", so to speak, and that was an almost uniformly nationwide poor regard for teachers regarding compensation. Where school budgets were presented every year, voters simply would not agree to pay teachers according to common standards prevailing in other equivalent professions. Here is the thought imbedded in the community conscience:
"Them than can, do; them that can't, teach."
That is, the farmer or auto salesman or bank clerk did not see teachers as providing a visible product; and as a further insult, they didn't see the teacher as working a full year when school was out for the summer.
In fact, in the day when most families depended on one bread-winner, the teacher often had to moonlight at a second job during the school year just to keep his family afloat; and a summer job to get them through until fall. And this got worse when more and more homes trended toward having both husband and wife working, making it more competitve for the one-job teacher to survive.
Well, finally the unionists heard the teachers' cries, and got a foothold in the cities, thus the AFT made rapid advances. NEA, originally a professional society in my time, and well-organized, saw the things to come, and kept that organization alive by following suit into unionism.
Very frankly, it's interesting to see the argument that privatizing will get better teachers at less salary. Well, the problem has come full circle. The local communities have gotten just what they deserve, for neglecting the art of teaching as a profession (which isolates and minimizes the bargaining power of the individual teacher), and forcing teachers to assemble as a union (to get the power through numbers for a decent wage). Of course, their union leaders have way, way overdone it; but the administrators have worsened the issue through poor negotiating.
I know there are other factors in play, but the refusal to pay teachers a living wage in the first half of the 20th century has left us where we are now. And--No--privatizing is too simple a solution. It won't work. It is not going to result in better teachers at lower pay.
(And retired "boomer" business men, engineers, etc. have not as a group cultivated the art and skill sets needed for teaching. They are already marked as poor achievers in downsizing of their own specialties; that is, if they are still young enough to keep up with the energy of teenagers.)
This is not a criticism, just an observation. To get a better picture, you need to find someone who looks at this with the eyes of a teacher from the past.
Bump
“No matter how well run the princpal problem remains. For a government school, the government is the customer and the kids are the product.”
Yeah, can’t argue with that .Ideally, the parents should be the customer (parents pay) and as you stated the kids should be the product. If the teachers unions could be eliminated though, local school boards could truly represent the wishes of their constituents (taxpayers/parents) and run their schools as intended. But, wishful thinking on my part. Barring that, vouchers might be the only way to have real competition in K thru 12. But, that’s probably wishful thinking too.
These days when a teacher tells the students he is going to show them stuff, you better call the cops, because the perverts are running the asylum.
BTW- How dense was he to think that reading a daily lefty rag was going to make anyone smarter?
“(And retired “boomer” business men, engineers, etc. have not as a group cultivated the art and skill sets needed for teaching. They are already marked as poor achievers in downsizing of their own specialties; that is, if they are still young enough to keep up with the energy of teenagers.)”
I don’t agree with your above statement. I know of several professionals, engineers and financial managers and such, who after retiring would live to teach in public school. And, I can assure you that after many years of supervising and managing people they have excellent interpersonal skills. Btw, education hours and a teachers certificate are not necessary to teach at the university level. Requiring them is merely a ploy of the teachers unions to protect their turf.
I do seem to see more and more stories of charter schools popping up and clearly out performing their government counterparts. That said I don't think we can truly correct education until we remove federal funding (and even stat funding) from the process. In any case, if it is possible to pull America out of it's death spiral, taking our kids back from government indoctrination would be a good place to start.
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