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Looks like those master's degrees are not being used to better educate our children, all they do is allow a teacher to claim a bigger paycheck.
Looks to who? Not the studies that I am reading. Now we can sit here all day comparing studies, assuming that you know where to find them, have read any of them, or understood what you read to begin with. But that would be a side issue.
The point is many school boards require a master's degree particularly for math and science teachers. If you are going to attract the best and brightest into our kids classrooms (thank god mine has already graduated from a school run by a sane liberal school board) you are going to have to pay, and you are going to have to pay more for those that hold those advanced degrees. If you want your children taught by bright and engaging individuals many of whom are graduating with undergraduate degrees that have left them holding a debt equal to the GDP of some third world countries, you are going to have to pay. If that is tyranny, so be it. You want to argue about living in a capitalist society, well folks be they public or private have a right to sell their labor for as much money as the market will bear. If you want dumb stupid people teaching your dumb stupid kids, then so be it. Just don't ***** about not being able to find a employee that can count over 10 without having to take their shoes off, or the clerk who can't figure out your change even though the register tells them the amount. AND for god's sake don't ***** about some company outsourcing their IT work to so Pakistani with a master's degree because a U.S. firm can't find anyone to do the job for 3 times as much.
I think there is a tendency to focus on the under-achievers and help them. There is also a tendency to believe that the smart kids don't really need help.
Why that belief, though? It's crystal clear from the declining results of the top and middle kids that EVERY kid needs an appropriate education. That requires ability/skill level grouping with appropriately adjusted curriculum. Instead, we've had DECADES of the lefties insisting on "leveling the playing field" with a one-size-fits-all education. So... since below average is the level at which most students can successfully achieve, everyone receives a below average education.
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When I lived in Switzerland, the policy there was to push the academically less gifted to trade and technical schools rather than University. The apprenticeship system.
Lefties won't allow that here in the U.S. As explained above, they've intentionally dumbed down the U.S.
Why that belief, though? It's crystal clear from the declining results of the top and middle kids that EVERY kid needs an appropriate education. That requires ability/skill level grouping with appropriately adjusted curriculum. Instead, we've had DECADES of the lefties insisting on "leveling the playing field" with a one-size-fits-all education. So... since below average is the level at which most students can successfully achieve, everyone receives a below average education.
Lefties won't allow that here in the U.S. As explained above, they've intentionally dumbed down the U.S.
Well, I don't think that one size fits all. I can only speak to two educational systems from experience and those are the UK and Switzerland. I don't really know the US system for a number of reasons.
In the UK, schools moved away from selection at 11 years old and towards a comprehensive system with schools serving a geographic area. What that has led to is a flight from public education towards private education by those who can afford to and by those bright enough to get a scholarship. It has also led to the phenomenon, that we also have in the US, of the good school district. Instead of paying for education via fees, you pay for it through property prices and local taxes.
In Switzerland (Geneva), they never abandoned selectivity although it happens closer to 15 and 16 than at eleven. The academically gifted kids go on to "college" (high school) and, if they get through that, to University. The kids who do not make college go into the apprenticeship system with day-release to technical schools. Needless to say, there is no significant private sector for Swiss kids.
My brother-in-law (in Boston) was never academically inclined. But he is a very good mechanic and makes an excellent living fixing cars. It would have been a total waste of his time, of money and resources to have tried to push him towards an academic college.
All that said, I think we are shooting at the wrong people by blaming teachers for the failures of our educational system. Politicians and parents are equally to blame IMHO. Can you imagine the reaction of parents when you tell them their kids are not good enough to go on to High School Like politicians, you get the schools and the teachers you deserve.
Can you imagine the reaction of parents when you tell them their kids are not good enough to go on to High School
Could be exactly what we need to get parents to take more responsibility in their child's education, no? They want their child to get a good education? They have to prioritize their and their child's efforts to achieve that goal.
It appears to me that we are suffering badly from a form of collective tyranny by public employee unions. I keep wondering just who is in control of our state and federal governments. Surely public employees all work for the people of the body governed but for some reason their unions which weren't even allowed till 1959 since people like Franklin D. Roosevelt believed as I do as to who should be in control of governments.
Most vocal among the state's 300,000 public employee union members are protesters from the 98,000-member teacher's union, who are now paid, on average, more than $75,000 in wages and benefits. Wisconsin parents should be protesting against these teachers, too many of whom are clearly motivated more by tenured job security rather than improving student performance. According to the latest federal education data, pathetically less than 40 percent of 8th grade students in the state's government schools meet basic requirements for math and reading performance, even though the state spends more per student ($10,791) than any other Midwest state. In Milwaukee, where the average teacher compensation package exceeds $100,000, the graduation rate is under 50 percent, and for black children it is below 35 percent.
Should these teachers all be tenured based on time in the profession? I would like to see them be tenured on ability and the knowledge their students gain, only, but that is not how it works in Wisconsin and most other states that allow tenure to exist.
I'd leave that up to the school district and school board to determine measureable results based upon many factors and in a number of areas. Additionally I believe teachers should have to undergo approved continuing education in teaching methods (problem based learning & emotional intelligence), testing in subject knowledge and professional standards, and that their rankings of testing and merit should be fully transparent to parents of district students.
But the teachers also pay tax and often their spouses do too.
While I was teaching and up to now when my wife is still doing it we got to pay taxes along with about $150 per month for pension savings. As for the health care that the taxpayers of Wisconsin get to pay for their teachers we got that only for single care or we had to pay for our kids on family plans. Of course, we live in a right to work state so unions don't have a lot of power. Even the teachers' union has very little say about anything.
Yess, they may pay property taxes and state and federal income tax but they don't get to pay any of their pension money. I really think you need to look into public employee unions and what they pay. In Wisconsin the taxpayers get to pay it all and the union members pay nothing.
I think there is a faction in this country that has an interest in making sure we DON'T have an educated populace...
I will have to say PELOSI to that. I spent 28 years in public education and was always more interested in helping kids learn something than in my own welfare, but then I only belonged to the NEA for a short time till they admitted that they were a union, and then I got the hell out of that thing.
Fine, then hire idiots to teach your idiot children. Problem solved. Turn the country into a the Home of the Brave and the Land of the Idiots.
Student achievement is a direct result of the socio-economic class of the parents.
The Federal Government did a nationwide study when I was in Grad School, hoping to prove that the more cash you poured into education, the better the achievement of the students. Unfortunately, it proved the above.
Everyone in public policy, government and education used to be aware of this study.
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Like politicians, you get the schools and the teachers you deserve.
