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I've always been confused on why it takes a masters degree to "teach" 2nd grade math. My MIL has a masters and works as a librarian, logging books in and out. That's something a temp employee making $8/hr can do without any sort of advanced schooling.
I can see teaching HS students requiring maybe a four year degree but below that? Seems like over kill that adds uncessary burden to applicants.
Teaching is not like most professional jobs. Most of the corporate world is not comparable.
That's right We don't get TENURE in 3 years like Teachers still do in 33 States.[/color]
Quote:
Originally Posted by redguard57
First - a lot of the job is not in the teacher's control. She can put in 20 hours of prep on a particular plan...if the students don't do the reading, she is screwed, had to improvise. If students don't eat a good breakfast or get a full night's sleep on test day, she is screwed, test scores are going to be worse than they should be.
A Utility Linemen's job is is not in his control either and they'll work longer under worse conditions then any Teachers.
Tenure is an irrelevant thing. For one not all states have it. Then even some of the states that do, it's mostly semantics. There is massive misinformation about it based on particular states like CA.
If the budget gets cut teachers get laid off, tenure or not.
It actually is possible to remove an underperforming tenured teacher, most administrators are just too lazy to do it, they just have to build a case that proves the teacher is not holding up their end of the contract. That means the administrator has to actually pay attention.
Tenure protects against random situations like personal grudges.
Last edited by Oldhag1; 04-07-2018 at 08:47 AM..
Reason: Fixed formatting
I've always been confused on why it takes a masters degree to "teach" 2nd grade math. My MIL has a masters and works as a librarian, logging books in and out. That's something a temp employee making $8/hr can do without any sort of advanced schooling.
I can see teaching HS students requiring maybe a four year degree but below that? Seems like over kill that adds uncessary burden to applicants.
In most states it's a bachelor's. In my state most teachers have a master's because most universities added 6 months to the teacher certification process and call their 1-year program a "master's."
For one, that is only part of their job description. A 2nd grade teacher is in charge of managing twenty-five 7 year olds for an entire day. They probably need subs at your local elememtary, you can try it for yourself. There are things you need to know besides arithmetic.
You've never done hiring? Good luck trying to screen responsible and capable candidates with the only criteria being "knows 2nd grade arithmetic."
I keep coming back to the apparent contradiction between low teacher compensation and the soaring costs of education. As one poster pointed out, health insurance is one reason. The reticence of the taxpaying public to sign up for ever higher taxes to fund public education in large part stems from rational expectations. We taxpayers have come to expect that incremental money somehow is siphoned off before ever making it to a teacher's paycheck.
Public education is not the only place this occurs.
Let's take subways. The first New York City subway opened around 1900. Its price tag is the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $100 million/kilometer today. New York's recently built 2nd Avenue Subway costs about $2.2 billion per kilometer, suggesting a cost increase of twenty times. Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen subways cost about $250 million per kilometer, almost 90% less. Yet even those European subways are overpriced compared to Korea, where a kilometer of subway in Seoul costs $40 million/km (another Korean subway project cost $80 million/km). This is a difference of 50x between Seoul and New York for apparently comparable services.
I find subway costs particularly telling, because we're building a 19th century system using 21st century technology -- huge boring machines that dramatically cut labor costs. And other countries still know how to do it for costs orders of magnitude lower than ours in the USA.
In healthcare, the typical worker paid about 6 to 10 days of their total annual compensation for health insurance back in the 1960s; today that number is about 60 days.
In the past fifty years, K-12 education costs have doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars, college costs have dectupled, health insurance costs have dectupled, subway costs have at least dectupled, and housing costs have increased by about fifty percent. US health care costs about four times as much as equivalent health care in other First World countries; US subways cost about eight times as much as equivalent subways in other First World countries.
And this is especially strange because we expect that improving technology and globalization ought to cut costs. In 1983, the first mobile phone cost $4,000 – about $10,000 in today’s dollars. It was also a gigantic piece of crap. Today you can get a much better phone for $100. This is the right and proper way of the universe. It’s why we fund scientists, and pay businesspeople the big bucks.
But things like K-12 education, college and health care and public infrastructure have still had their prices dectuple.
Patients can now schedule their appointments online; doctors can send prescriptions electronically, pharmacies can keep track of medication histories on computer systems that interface with the cloud, nurses get automatic reminders when they’re giving two drugs with a potential interaction, insurance companies accept payment through credit cards – and all of this costs ten times as much as it did in the days of punch cards and secretaries who did calculations by hand.
Last edited by SportyandMisty; 04-07-2018 at 08:55 AM..
In most states it's a bachelor's. In my state most teachers have a master's because most universities added 6 months to the teacher certification process and call their 1-year program a "master's."
For one, that is only part of their job description. A 2nd grade teacher is in charge of managing twenty-five 7 year olds for an entire day. They probably need subs at your local elememtary, you can try it for yourself. There are things you need to know besides arithmetic.
You've never done hiring? Good luck trying to screen responsible and capable candidates with the only criteria being "knows 2nd grade arithmetic."
When you increase job requirements solely to reduce your workload with hiring is where you lose me.
Lowering job requirements serves two functions, one it allows you to lower costs/salary because the qualifications are lower which requires less investment on the applicants part and two it opens up a bigger group of prospective employees. Having a degree doesn't make one better able to manage kids. Or teach second grade math of 1+1=2.
Maybe a shorter community college associate degree would be a better fit. It's a lot cheaper too. Spend two years and a couple thousand $$ to teach kids through junior high, starting pay in the 40's with a pension? Sounds like a win/win.
I keep coming back to the apparent contradiction between low teacher compensation and the soaring costs of education. As one poster pointed out, health insurance is one reason. The reticence of the taxpaying public to sign up for ever higher taxes to fund public education in large part stems from rational expectations. We taxpayers have come to expect that incremental money somehow is siphoned off before ever making it to a teacher's paycheck.
No Child Left Behind resulted in a direct shift of funding patterns: previous to NCLB (from 1920 - 2016) the administrative percentage of the average district budget was between 3.5 - 4.4%, after NCLB it has morphed into between 6.7 - 7.9%. But, if you really want to know where the money is going, in the 5 years after NCLB was a massive shift in the percentage of funds going to outside programs - from between 6-8% to 16 -17%. In 2014 it had climbed to a whopping 19.74%, it’s hard to say how much more it is now.
As of last year the direct additional costs to just teach technology to students runs between $290-679 per student, depending on district and state. Another thing in which the percentage of the budget has increased is transportation. Special education percentages have gone through the roof, and keep climbing.
Want to guess what the one area in which in every single state the percentage has decreased, including in dollars adjusted for inflation? Teacher salaries. The other area that has seen a decrease, at least in quite a few states, is expenditures for sports.
__________________
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When you increase job requirements solely to reduce your workload with hiring is where you lose me.
Lowering job requirements serves two functions, one it allows you to lower costs/salary because the qualifications are lower which requires less investment on the applicants part and two it opens up a bigger group of prospective employees. Having a degree doesn't make one better able to manage kids. Or teach second grade math of 1+1=2.
Maybe a shorter community college associate degree would be a better fit. It's a lot cheaper too. Spend two years and a couple thousand $$ to teach kids through junior high, starting pay in the 40's with a pension? Sounds like a win/win.
There is way more to teaching some children that 1+1=2 than just knowing the answer. Additionally, the mandated paperwork alone would be a disqualifier for many of your potential bargain basement teachers.
So... you want someone teaching your junior high child algebra who struggles to do it themselves? Or, how about someone trying to teach your child of any age to write who neglects to use capitalization or even appropriate punctuation most of the time? Where I live clerks at Walmart and Aldi’s start at over 25 cents more an hour than teacher’s aides. This results in being forced to hire retail clerk rejects, other than mamas who want limited hours, as instructional aides and that will be your hiring pool for the actual teacher with your suggestion.
__________________
When I post in bold red that is moderator action and, per the TOS, can only be discussed through Direct Message.
There is way more to teaching some children that 1+1=2 than just knowing the answer. Additionally, the mandated paperwork alone would be a disqualifier for many of your potential bargain basement teachers.
So... you want someone teaching your junior high child algebra who struggles to do it themselves? Or, how about someone trying to teach your child of any age to write who neglects to use capitalization or even appropriate punctuation most of the time? Where I live clerks at Walmart and Aldi’s start at over 25 cents more an hour than teacher’s aides. This results in being forced to hire retail clerk rejects, other than mamas who want limited hours, as instructional aides and that will be your hiring pool for the actual teacher with your suggestion.
If someone with a HS diploma cannot understand 1+1=2 or when to capitalize our current crop of teachers needs to be let go in mass or a rewrite of standardizations needs to happen.
Actually you miss the point. You assume the ones left applying are retail rejects as you put it. Yet what would happen is an overall total increase of appliants including the ones who currently qualify. And many more who didn't want to put in four years and tens of thousands of debt. There are high quality workers out there who are being pushed away from the profession due to (the unnecessary) high costs of obtaining current qualifications.
I've seen this in my industry but in reverse. Qualifications skyrocketed due to government regulation, the applicant pool went down, salaries tripled, but applicant quality has plummeted.
If someone with a HS diploma cannot understand 1+1=2 or when to capitalize our current crop of teachers needs to be let go in mass or a rewrite of standardizations needs to happen.
Actually you miss the point. You assume the ones left applying are retail rejects as you put it. Yet what would happen is an overall total increase of appliants including the ones who currently qualify. And many more who didn't want to put in four years and tens of thousands of debt. There are high quality workers out there who are being pushed away from the profession due to (the unnecessary) high costs of obtaining current qualifications.
I've seen this in my industry but in reverse. Qualifications skyrocketed due to government regulation, the applicant pool went down, salaries tripled, but applicant quality has plummeted.
Teachers started being required to have a post high school education since the late 1800’s. I believe Pennsylvania was the first state. Since the 1920’s a teacher without attendance and graduation from a special post-secondary specialized teaching program has been the rare exception.
__________________
When I post in bold red that is moderator action and, per the TOS, can only be discussed through Direct Message.
I keep coming back to the apparent contradiction between low teacher compensation and the soaring costs of education. As one poster pointed out, health insurance is one reason. The reticence of the taxpaying public to sign up for ever higher taxes to fund public education in large part stems from rational expectations. We taxpayers have come to expect that incremental money somehow is siphoned off before ever making it to a teacher's paycheck.
Public education is not the only place this occurs.
Let's take subways. The first New York City subway opened around 1900. Its price tag is the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $100 million/kilometer today. New York's recently built 2nd Avenue Subway costs about $2.2 billion per kilometer, suggesting a cost increase of twenty times. Paris, Berlin, and Copenhagen subways cost about $250 million per kilometer, almost 90% less. Yet even those European subways are overpriced compared to Korea, where a kilometer of subway in Seoul costs $40 million/km (another Korean subway project cost $80 million/km). This is a difference of 50x between Seoul and New York for apparently comparable services.
I find subway costs particularly telling, because we're building a 19th century system using 21st century technology -- huge boring machines that dramatically cut labor costs. And other countries still know how to do it for costs orders of magnitude lower than ours in the USA.
In healthcare, the typical worker paid about 6 to 10 days of their total annual compensation for health insurance back in the 1960s; today that number is about 60 days.
In the past fifty years, K-12 education costs have doubled in inflation-adjusted dollars, college costs have dectupled, health insurance costs have dectupled, subway costs have at least dectupled, and housing costs have increased by about fifty percent. US health care costs about four times as much as equivalent health care in other First World countries; US subways cost about eight times as much as equivalent subways in other First World countries.
And this is especially strange because we expect that improving technology and globalization ought to cut costs. In 1983, the first mobile phone cost $4,000 – about $10,000 in today’s dollars. It was also a gigantic piece of crap. Today you can get a much better phone for $100. This is the right and proper way of the universe. It’s why we fund scientists, and pay businesspeople the big bucks.
But things like K-12 education, college and health care and public infrastructure have still had their prices dectuple.
Patients can now schedule their appointments online; doctors can send prescriptions electronically, pharmacies can keep track of medication histories on computer systems that interface with the cloud, nurses get automatic reminders when they’re giving two drugs with a potential interaction, insurance companies accept payment through credit cards – and all of this costs ten times as much as it did in the days of punch cards and secretaries who did calculations by hand.
Administration.
The district I graduated from has fewer and fewer students but no problem hiring more administrators.
Pay disputes are always about what to pay the teachers, nobody pays attention to administration.
To a degree it's special education as well. When I started school they had all those kids in a classroom with one teacher and one aide. When I graduated each one had their own personal aide following them around daily.
In college it was the same thing. Teachers are without a pay raise for years while administration is getting their yearly raises. They're laying off teachers, hiring administrators. A lot of these people serve no purpose or are redundant/lazy. I listened to two of them once just gossip for an hour straight.
I don't vote no on school budgets because I'm against public education. I'm very much for it. I vote no because administration needs to be addressed but nobody pays attention to that. Schools are about educating the young ones, not supporting an administrative bureaucracy.
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