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Geezus! I agreed with you on the Masters part as far as there is no direct correlation between having one and seeing student's grades rise (I don't need to re-read your post). What you made clear was that you don't believe a Masters make a better teacher based on student performance, I guess. But that possible lack of direct correlation does not mean they are not better teachers. It just may be an intangible that can't readily be measured. I think most of the general public, including yourself, over simplifies education and the challenges therein.
These education issues are relevant here in that this is about unions, and their supposed worth. If the unions don't keep better teachers (a fact we don't know) then maybe they are not useful. If they do protect better teachers, then the cost may be worth it. How on earth do you know whether they do or not?
So are OK with paying them more just because the got their Masters?
If it doesn't make them better teachers, what use is it?
"But that possible lack of direct correlation does not mean they are not better teachers". I disagree as posted in my example. IF they can prove they are better by having the kids they teach get better grades then give them a raise.
Do teachers get a Master's to be better teachers or just to get more money?
That is ALL I am talking about. We are talking about taxpayers money and how to best utilize it. State are broke. The dollar spigots have run dry.
One, and this is only one, way to help the states financial situation is stop giving raises, thank you unions, just because you have a masters UNLESS you can prove it has worth.
Unfortunately teachers don't want to be evaluated in any way. They always come up with all sorts of defenses as to why you can't evaluate.
I feel that I must ask you how much on average you have had to pay toward your pension. Here in Kansas my wife just retired from 39 years of teaching in high school, same school, and will get quit a bit more than I have been getting since about 1990 when I started drawing after 28 years of teaching. HOwever, she has been putting in about $150 per month the last 20+ years and I am wondering just how near that you of the union states get to pay in toward your pension.
I know that those teachers in Wisconsin haven't paid much up to now, but they act like they really think the taxpayers owe them some real money just because they are unionized.
Lets get the opinions of educators as to the reasons for why passing rates are where they are. The rest of us who are not in the profession, or studying it, have no real ideas of our own as to the reasons for the state of education being where it is. So to avoid sounding stupid and closed minded, we ought to keep our opinions to a minimum.
I do a fair amount of reading on the subject and am married to an educator. Does this qualify me to assess education? Not really. But it does make me believe that putting all the blame on the teacher for the decline in American education is short sighted at best.
I don't know about shortsighted but I do know that NCLB has done far more damage to education than good. My wife has been teaching the past 25 years and says that all the foolish paper work that came with NCLB has done more to make her job tough than the rules that come from the federal government about keeping kids in good states of mind about their self-esteem.
I started teaching in high school in 1958 and can tell you that by 1986 when I left the field there was so much difference that i couldn't believe it. I remember the first two years when I could ask essay questions on history tests and expect nearly every kid to answer with real attempts. In the second year I had a boy who never managed to learn to read enough to read high school textbooks and his mother read every homework assignment to him. He wasn't capable of much but he earned the Ds I gave him and he functioned on his own after he graduated. Today he would have been shunted off to special education long ago and would never have learned anywhere close to what he learned since there was no special ed back then.
The federal government has been putting in too much strings attached money for years and now the states have to go back to paying their own costs. However, they were doing this before I got out and I knew it would result in real losses for education.
My state pension is less than $1000 per month and my wife's will be way over $2,000 but I was in a very weak teacher's retirement system for over 11 years so mine isn't so very good. Kansas is a right to work state so the teachers' union doesn't have so much to do with things as in Cali, Wisc and some of the others
Do you honestly believe that only 1/3 of WI students are not intellectually impaired?
Again, the majority of students are not intellectually impaired. Many more should be able to meet bare-minimum grade-level proficiency standards. They do not.
Here's what some former educators have to say about the problems they've seen...
Foreword (http://www.waragainstexcellence.com/foreword.html - broken link) Angry Parents, Failing Schools
I saw a lot of very good things in your links but this seems to me to be the most important part of any of it is to be found in these words.
Belief in the overriding value of students achieving equal educational outcomes.
Belief in questioning the value of individualism.
Belief in the supremacy of the group over the individual.
Belief that advanced students have a duty to help others at the expense of their own needs.
Belief that competition is negative and must be eliminated.
These words say so much about what the left is pushing today that have done so much to cause public education to take a back road for some time. I got out of teaching just in time because I just couldn't see forcing better students to help the others get their work done. That kind of crap has caused many of the poorer ones to be even worse because someone will always have to help them. My wife took it as long as she could stand it and now has just up and quit because of it. I think that many of the lefty prepared people she had to work with had a lot to do with her taking her 39 years of experience with her, also.
You know darned well that there was no debate over Health Care. Of course, when the Nasty Nancy said that they had to pass it to find out what was in it she was just keeping Republicans from debating it. There was no debate in the Senate after Dirty Harry, Andy Stern, and the other non-Congressmen met to write it in DHs's office behind locked doors.
Do you really not know what debate is? You don't know that there was no debate in committee or on the floor of either house. I really don't believe you know about what happened and how it happened.
If it had been put to a vote the health care bill would have failed because the productive people of this country are smarter than the liberal idiots who live in some dream world where everything is roses and unicorn milk. At some point some conservative people have to step in and hand out a dose of reality then clean up the problem. That'll take place in 2012 once we wipe these mongrels out of the White House for a while. The health care debate was lost by the left and they still pushed it through against the will of the American people, why do you think so many lefties were sent packing in 2010?
You do remember 2010 righ? When the left lost all the power it squandered in the first place?
The only debate about health care was about whether there should be one. There was no debate about the bill as the Dems passed it with their majorities in each house. Lets not be nice to them and make it sound like that bill was debated.
Looked like a bunch of sore losers degrading what appeared to have been an otherwise honorable event. So much for self respect, eh?
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