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How? The rankings of our students in the USA have been falling fast when compared with those of other nations and that's in spite of much bigger spending on education here.
Quality education isn't what we currently have - or have had in the last 10-20 years.
Today over one-fifth of college graduates is functionally illiterate. A good portion cannot perform anything but basic math.
Yet those other nations give teachers higher pay than what teachers receive here.
Sure we're spending more on education, but where is all that money going?
Yet those other nations give teachers higher pay than what teachers receive here.
Sure we're spending more on education, but where is all that money going?
Special Ed programs and athletics.
Special education costs are rising at an alarming rate. Public schools spend an average of two to three times on each student eligible for special education as they do for students without disabilities (Center for Special Education Finance). In some states, that translates into as much as $30,000 a year per student
So do many other professions and according to a long term study done by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, the vast majority of teachers do not even work 40 hours/week. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf
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try to take care of and teach kids whose parents don't care about education;
Generalize much? I would be willing to bet that the parents to whom you refer make up less than 1% of the population.
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pay out of pocket for things for the classroom;
In Boston, where I live, 82% of all educational funds go to teacher benefits, retirement, and salary. That leaves 18 cents of every dollar for infrastructure and school supplies. If teachers have to purchase supplies for their classes, they have no one to blame but themselves. In fact it is the taxpaying parent who should be pissed about this.
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try to figure out how to reach all of the kids in the class; take continuing education classes.
Many professionals take continuing education classes, the big difference between teachers and other professionals is that other professionals have to attend many years of night school to take them. That's many many years of 5:30 to 8:00 pm classes, missed dinners, and no time to help the kids with the homework.
Teachers, on the other hand, have on average 4 months out of the year to do the same.
This is not a simple yes/no question. There needs to a balance between salary and benefits that form the compensation package. You can't max out on every line. Public employees seem to think that the state/city they work for has unlimited resources. If it were treated as a private company then RIF would be more common (or at least no raises and increased share of increases costs) due to lack of top line dollars.
This is not just a teacher problem. The problem came to a head in the 80's when most teachers were underpaid. Now the pendulum has swung the all the way in the other direction with high salaries in numerous big cities but without balances to associated benefits.
As to the job itself: How many public employees are required to get more degrees and more credits every single years (not just mini seminars)?How many public employees have to take paperwork home every single night that needs to be done by the next morning?
Teaching is not a simple 8 hour day (12 maybe). A teachers day starts about an hour before students arrive and ends numerous hours after their gone.
You've got to stop singling out teachers as overpaid. How about going after sanitation workers who after 5.5 yrs on the job get $68k+overtime+benefits in NYC.
America wants teachers to pay teachers $7.50 per hour...and America expects the students will get a quality education.
America's subtle anti-education attitudes will show their results in about one generation.
It’s already happened; greedy teacher’s unions (all unions) only concern themselves with money and not teaching.
We, the bosses of government jobs, want to fire a bunch of under qualified lazy good for nothing leaches and place a better system so that the children will be educated by willing "Teachers" instead of government/unions slugs whose only quest in life is to draw a check. This ridiculous system placed by the forefathers of today’s cry babies is spewing out stupid children who not only can't write a half-fast letter to a congressman but are still getting their sensitive little feelings hurt too. If unions were to focus on delivering a slightly "fair" service for the money they already make we would have twice the educated graduates now and a willing population to support a pay increase.
How about this, do your job FIRST then after we, your bosses, see you can deliver (in the form higher scores) we’ll talk about bumping up your pay.
Overall, do teachers in your area get paid too much? If so, how much should they get paid? $10 an hour, $15 an hour? $8 an hour?
They should be paid whatever the market demands.
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