Bagster
Posted on 05/03/2018 3:25:54 AM PDT by ImaGraftedBranch
The latest screamfest from the various teacher's groups is that they're "grossly underpaid."
Well, no.
First, let's not forget that teachers are paid for 12 months but work 9. Indeed the "standard" school year is 180 days. The standard man-year of work is 2,000 hours -- 40 hours across 50 weeks.
But 180 days is 1,440 hours, not 2,000, or 72% of a standard work-year.
And before you talk about "overtime" do realize that professionals don't get paid overtime. I never did as a professional writing code or building networks for other people. It's a professional job, and is exempt -- just as is being a teacher.
So that "horrible" $40,000 salary (which, I remind you, typically comes with 100% health care coverage for the entire teacher's family, an expense that is nearly always over $10,000/year) is actually $50,000 / 0.72 or approximately $70,000 in salary.
That's underpaid?
Uh, no. It's grossly overpaid, especially considering this:
Earlier this month, the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, aka The Nation's Report Card, was released. It's not a pretty story. Only 37 percent of 12th-graders tested proficient or better in reading, and only 25 percent did so in math. Among black students, only 17 percent tested proficient or better in reading, and just 7 percent reached at least a proficient level in math.
Leave the racial disparity behind for a minute.
Exactly why would anyone get paid anything if only one quarter of those who were the "product" of that work met the objective requirements to be considered acceptable?
Why is not that the question put to these "teachers"?
Is there some "reject rate" acceptable in any production of anything? Certainly. Some percentage of parts made in a factory fail to pass inspection, some percentage of wafers in a fab don't make it into the final output as a computer chip, etc.
But if your success rate is only 25% on the basic facts that define the ability to function as an adult in society, say much less understand the physical and economic world around you then you have no right to be out pounding the street demanding more money.
You ought to be cleaning toilets with a toothbrush and the taxpayers should be taking up arms at the rank theft you demand from them to produce defective output on an everyday, every year basis -- and have been for decades.
This is not a new problem. When I ran MCSNet after a series of bad experiences with so-called "graduates" with nice, polished resumes who couldn't make change for a $20 without a computer telling them exactly how much it was it became obvious that (1) they didn't write their own resume and (2) they were functionally illiterate and innumerate.
Yet they had in their hand a credential that said they (1) could read and write and (2) could perform mathematics both at a 12th grade level.
Those credentials were lies.
I instituted two tests before you could get an interview; when you came in and presented a resume you were shown the conference room and given a pencil, piece of paper and the two tests; nothing else was allowed inside. The first was a request to write a basic business letter informing a customer that his account was disabled because he hadn't paid his bill, and to please remit the balance to continue service. The second was a four-function (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) mathematics screening with 20 questions on it. You needed a 90% on the math to pass and the letter had to be grammatically correct and formatted as a reasonable business letter.
90% of the applicants failed one or both and more than half failed screamingly, either being completely unable to compose a business letter that could be read and understood as reasonably correct English or failing to get even half of the math correct. More than a few applicants literally walked out leaving behind two blank pieces of paper for "answers", unable to do any of it. A couple actually wrote things like "**** you" on the test before walking out, clearly unable to do any of it.
Most-alarmingly was the fact that more than a third of those who claimed to be currently enrolled in college, including at UofC, applying for a part-time job while in school, were unable to pass these screens.
I kept every single test and associated resume in a large horizontal file for what I expected would eventually be an inevitable allegation that I was "discriminating" in some form or fashion. This was downtown (2 Prudential Plaza) Chicago. Let me point out that of those who were unable to write said business letter not one of them could have possibly also written their own resume and as such they had already lied in the application process (and thus were not going to get hired) before coming in the front door.
The enabling liars who issued these people their diplomas are the same people pounding the streets right now. They were the ones who gave out the "As", "Bs", "Cs" and even "Ds" to these students -- but passed them instead of handing out well-deserved "F"s for years from one class to the next without actual achievement having taken place.
These very same teachers are openly and publicly being paid to commit fraud upon the taxpayer and the US marketplace on a literal daily basis. Three quarters of those who they deem "competent" through a 12 year cycle of fraud are in fact not competent and this number includes high-achieving areas.
In most major cities I assure you that the actual percentage of incompetent "graduates" is at or above 90% because it was in the 1990s and this report's statistics make clear that it still is.
Think about this folks because everyone's excuse is that oh, there are a few bad teachers, but most are good.
What are the odds of someone getting through 12 years of schooling, the first six or so taking place with one or two teachers for the entire year, then in the subsequent six year or so with a half-dozen teachers each, 75% of said students are incompetent when they graduate, and it is not true that basically every single one of them is guilty of fraud?
Let's put some math to it -- if three out of four students are incompetent at graduation then with a single teacher for a single year a minimum of 75% of all teachers must be committing fraud by certifying acceptable performance when it is not true.
That is, only 25% are performing honest work with a single year of experience -- that is, a single trial.
But it's not one year. It's 12 years, and for roughly six of them the student has a half-dozen teachers each year, not one. So we have 6 instances in the first six years and then 36 more over the following six, for a total of 42 instances, any one of which could fail said student and prevent them from going forward.
What are the statistical odds of running that gauntlet where only 25% of the teachers do honest work against 42 trials?
The answer is in scientific notation and has 25 zeros to right of the decimal. To put not-to-fine a point on it you're more likely to be hit by an asteroid while getting your mail this afternoon, then struck by lightning on the walk back to your house by a factor of several orders of magnitude than to encounter a string of honest teachers given these rates.
Bluntly: Essentially all are guilty of fraud upon the taxpayer and the public.
This is one of the largest and longest-running frauds perpetrated against the American population and taxpaying citizen ever and anyone in this profession deserves to be consumed by a rabid coyote.
Not only should every one of these "teachers" be fired they should all be criminally prosecuted and tossed in prison; the United States would be better off if the kids of this nation spent an hour a day in the library doing whatever they wanted instead of attending school.
Terrible article
Ping!
Bagster
Salaries are less of a problem than pensions and health bennies.
Teachers, no matter how good, have become unaffordable.
For later.
I remember sitting in a 9th-grade math class in 1974, and the idiot teacher could not get formula-type algebra (basic stuff) across to the group. We were supposed to spend no more than three weeks on this chapter, and move on, with a big test. At the end four weeks, less than sixty percent of the group were grasping this. We wasted another two entire weeks on the subject, with only three-quarters of the group understanding this. The teacher just gave up, and skipped a chapter or two for something else.
The next year...different school....different book...different type teacher. We were simply handed the book, and advanced on our own speed. The book was well-designed and made sense. At the end of each chapter, we tested, and proceed on. The teacher was just there to answer one-on-one questions.
I put a great deal of the fault in the marginal skills upon poor math books and individuals who should never have been math teachers.
I watched a German documentary ten years ago...a baker trying to hire 15-year old apprentice kids. Like this guy mentioned....the baker had gone to two tests. One was about proportions and adding/subtracting. The other was a 10-question current events test. Out of fifteen kids who applied, and he could have hired five....he had only one kid with appropriate math skills (something you need as a baker), and that one kid marginally passed the current events test.
The whole system has turned into a failure...it’s just a baby-sitter service that hands out certificates.
Chicago, Chicago, that ‘codding’ town.
The author’s two tests reminds me of requiring a standard company job application had to be completed by the applicant on site, no take homes IOW. The jobs were definitely blue-collar but still needed some level of literacy to understand work instructions and blueprints.
FACTS...can be such a horrible truth.
Why is it a terrible article? Does the truth hurt?
My son is a High School History teacher. He admitted to me that while his Major in History served him well, a degree in education is worthless.
>>The other was a 10-question current events test. Out of fifteen kids who applied, and he could have hired five....he had only one kid with appropriate math skills (something you need as a baker), and that one kid marginally passed the current events test.
I don’t know that anyone could pass a current events test these days.
I don’t watch the tv news (haven’t in over 10 years) and haven’t even watched anything on the national or local networks in that time either.
I don’t read any daily print edition newspaper. I may thumb through 2 copies of them in a year tops (waiting at someone’s home while visiting or at a doctor’s office).
I skim and read and reply on FR most days.
But the articles that make it to FR are not the headlines that I see pimped by MSN.com (default page on browsers at work so I see it “land” there numerous times on dozens of systems in a day) or by Facebook (what latest DNC spawned “outrage” headline they are pimping as trending).
Mix in a rejection of the myths and money of the man-made global warming scam, the rejection of the bad science of “we are all poly now”, and the rejection of the “Trump and his supporters are literally Hitler and man-in-the-clouds believing Pence is even worse!” news, I would probably fail most any “current events” test an employer would make me submit to.
I teach and my insurance costs $250 a month, just for me. If I were to include my family in my insurance plan it would be a little over $950 per month. I’ve never heard of teachers getting 100% free insurance. Would I like to be paid more? Of course. Who wouldn’t? I’m not protesting at the state capital though. We don’t unionize in my state either. so the notion that all teachers are beholden to the NEA is also false. For a site that is about individual liberty and responsibility a lot of people sure love to lump all teachers into on big group to be hated.
Who’s hating? Public unions are a menace. Either teachers are ignorant of this, in which case they’re too stupid to be teaching, or they’re on board with extorting taxpayers, in which case they deserve what they get.
Actually ... no. They are paid for the months they work but that pay is distributed over 12 months. In Texas, they have the option to be paid only during the school year, but I don’t know any who choose that option.
I agree in that the unionized, do nothing, know nothing teachers with bennies out the wazoo are mostly in BLUE states; namely public schools.
My son has a math degree and teachers certification for the People’s Republic of NY. All the old teachers won’t leave as it is similar to congress critters. They can take unlimited sabbaticals and still expect their job to be there when the return.
My daughter in law teaches at a PRIVATE school and there is a world of difference!!
That’s assuming they work only an 8 hour day and no more. This doesn’t take into account the teacher work days (required) during many of the days through the year when students don’t go to school, evenings and weekends spent grading papers, summer workshops, after school tutoring (required), etc.
ROFLOL!!! Benefits for Texas teachers are so horrible that my wife always denies it and we cover her under my employer’s plan.
In the teacher’s defense, I’m sure they would start teaching the kids with all the vigor and enthusiasm you would expect of teachers if we just paid them another $5,000 per year.
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