Posted on 03/26/2025 5:21:12 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Quite the statement, eh? Let me explain. I’m well into my 60s and for my entire adult life I’ve heard that public school teachers are underpaid. It has been repeated as a mantra for decades.
Ignoring for a moment whether it is true or not -- and the answer to that is generally, it depends -- let’s accept the mantra and analyze why public-school teachers are still underpaid after all these years.
It’s not spending. As most voters know, it seems that every stinking year there is some ballot initiative or measure or legislative move to increase spending for our woefully underfunded public-school systems. It never seems to end. There doesn’t seem to ever be a point of “we’re good.”
Total nationwide spending on public K-12 education is approaching a trillion dollars! In most states, public K-12 education consumes around 50% of the entire state budget. Nationwide, we now spend an average of $17,000 per student per year. In New York it is $33,000! Yet teachers remain underpaid.
The Department of Education’s spending has gone from just under $11 billion in 1980 to a high of almost $193 billion in 2010 to last year’s spending of $158 billion. Yet teachers remain underpaid.
The number of administrators versus teachers has exploded -- “The number of district administrators in U.S. public schools has grown 87.6 percent between 2000 and 2019 compared to student growth at 7.6 percent and teacher growth at 8.7 percent.” And many (most?) of the administrators make more than teachers. Yet teachers remain underpaid.
Remember when technology was going to transform public education? We’ve spent billions on classroom technology and what have test scores done? At best stayed flat, in many cases they went down.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Yes! You have it exactly. We taught our kids to read when they turned three years old. We checked their homework right through high school. Our kids are OUR responsibility.
You know, I think I understand our clash. Calculators should definitely not be used in a mathematics class. But, they really need to be used in an engineering class.
The teachers in our midsized city make over a hundred grand and for what?....limited work days short work days,fantastic benefits and early retirement and they can’t be fired...and yet the kids remain low achievers.
It started with 5he draft for Nam...a lot of guys got into the teaching industry to avoid the draft.
I had a few great teachers..mostly nuns..and one leftist teacher in hs that really made you think critically.
I agree. My point is the use of such tools before achieving the required proficiency often prevent true learning. I’m not against using the tools I’m against using the tools during the learning process, when you first must master the application. Primary education has been using calculators and PCs to mask poor educational practices and results. Most students will not master the fundamentals when provided an easy way to avoid the knowledge and skills, that is just human nature.
I know that teaching was a deferment but I don’t think it accounted for a lot in numbers or in affecting education, for one thing white males with college degrees would be smart and capable, not stupid, and the draft wasn’t for Vietnam, it had been going on for decades without interruption.
As it was, I was in the Vietnam War Army with a Canadian teacher who volunteered for the American army.
You and I turn out to be congruent. ;-D
I don’t buy that for a minute. Not with their big screen TVs, their cell phones, all those hair coloring treatments and all that other stuff they seem to able to buy.
I do need to point out about a calculator especially like graphing ones many students will just know how to put in the variables, punch a button and see a graph wiyh no understanding of why the equation gave the result it did. Such calculators do indeed allow a student to not achieve the required knowledge of the functions to gain a result.
LoL nice turn of a phrase!
You must be in Massachusetts.
The median salary for teachers in the US was $65,220 in May 2023.
Oh, those things! Yeah, poison in a math class. I'd push back really hard on those as well.
Now, after all of this, you might find this funny: My weapon of choice is a Casio fx-115W. It handles a lot of functions, but it can't graph or integrate. I use it more like a slide rule of convenience.
While there are reasons of financial ability to purchase a lap top, I would argue that perhaps a primary reason early on is sameness. Everybody has the same computer and teaching how to use that specific computer with the specific same software is important.
My grandson began to learn about computers at school in the fifth grade. The school provided them and they were used at school when there was instruction being given. They were stored on the shelf the rest of the time.
In high school he provided his own computer used in lots of classes and often to replace books. I’m not sure if all had computers but just dealing with school in general was accomplished on the internet and a computer.
During covid, the computer was school
In my day, SRA was the rule.......slide rule accuracy. Even in college ,there were not yet calculators. We carried the slide rule in our back pocket, except for EE’s, they always fastened them to their belts..... a source of derision.
We are indeed aligned. I allow nothing more than something like a Casio HS-4G basic functions and limited memory, easy to clear after an exam, 2 for 7 dollars 😁.
Oh, that is for anything Algerbra 1 or earlier. After that I am all onbard for the fun tools and software like Maplesoft.
Let's say that a school system with 2,000 pupils determined that a Dell Inspiron 15 3000 laptop was to be the standard (retail price around $329.99). The school system could setup a GPO (group purchasing organization) and commit to purchasing 2,000 of these laptops for a huge discount from Dell. Now the laptops will cost more around $200-$225 for parents purchasing through the GPO.
If you got 5 kids and you got to buy 5 laptops at $200 each, it is not going to happen...and that is a fact.
I am not disagreeing with you about the other stuff, but they are simply not going to buy the computers for the kids and many other families wouldn’t either.
Yeh well ok.....I’ll buy that thought
Without unions there would not be a single conservative or christian in 99% of the schools. There are plenty of loony teachers but I suspect most here wouldn't last a week in most classrooms today. My wife had a couple brothers in a sixth grade class, one killed the other and was back in the classroom in a week.
We expect teachers to do what we won't or can't do don't do as parents. Want better teachers send them better kids you know like the ones that don't threaten their parents by calling CPS on them when they don't get a new phone. Also you do know kids have their phones in the classroom right? They would never text answers or porno texts to the other kids. The boys would never take the condoms they were issued and pound their puds in class either. If a teacher is lucky they may have a couple good, bright students in a class. I retired 24 years ago when a new LGBTQ vice principal started all the woke cr@p and I had 7 stents installed.
If you really want good schools give up football and bring back neighborhood schools.
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