61–70 of 92 posts
Numerous studies show that education majors is the US have among the lowest composite ACT and LSAT scores of any major. http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2006/02/ranking-sc... There have been various explanation for this phenomenon which started in the 1970s and grew since then. Among the most interesting hypotheses is that traditionally smart women went into teaching as one of the few careers available to wo…
I think it's interesting to tie this to recent news about Khan Academy. According to various talks by Sal Khan, many kids used the free videos to educate themselves about math etc. to a level better than most kids achieve in a school. Better eduction, without teachers, for free. If you look at YouTube's numbers for how often those videos are watched, it's in tens or hundreds of thousand of views. I assume that most o…
Numerous studies show that education majors is the US have among the lowest composite ACT and LSAT scores of any major. http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2006/02/ranking-sc... There have been various explanation for this phenomenon which started in the 1970s and grew since then. Among the most interesting hypotheses is that traditionally smart women went into teaching as one of the few careers available to wo…
I just got a part time job teaching college algebra at a school that mostly teaches nursing and massage therapy. The pay is ok. The reason I got the job is that the state and regional accreditation boards require that anyone teaching college level courses must have a Masters degree and at least 18 graduate credit hours in the subject. The previous teacher they had to let go has a bachelor's in math. I've got an M.S.…
A friend of the family, an ex-engineer, in retirement decided to teach to give back to the community. She was teaching the remedial students at the local high-school. Her students did better on the standard tests than regular students, her first year. She was called in, and told to stop making the other teachers look bad or be fired. She quit. This same high-school gave the teacher of the year award to which ever tea…
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Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher? Only your ingrained cultural expectations suggest this. Can you strip those out and suggest any objective reasons that lawyers are worth more? Do they train for longer? Is their work more important? Do they need better school grades?
>Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher? Apart from governemnt lawyers and academics everybody is in private practice or working for a company. Their employers/clients have them to deal with money problems. Whoever is close to the money gets to keep some. Also, teachers have tenure, great pensions, work only 9-10 months a year, and within a few years of being hired, work under 40 hours a week on average. >…
No teacher I've met works under 40 hours a week. My parents are both teachers, as well as at least one friend. They may be "on the clock" for less than 40 hours a week, but consistently have to work up to 60 hours a week to satisfy all of their responsibilities (including meeting with students and parents, grading assignments, attending meetings, etc).
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What's a fair way of measuring performance though?
Just because it's difficult to find out doesn't mean we shouldn't try. No performance system is perfect but by at least trying to figure it out we'll have a better system than we have now. I, for one, know which of my prior teachers have been good and which haven't and most of my classmates would agree. Asking former students may be one idea although it's a pretty slow feedback cycle. You wouldn't be able to ask stud…
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There's a better merit->pay feedback cycle. A good lawyer will get repeat business. When am I going to take a class again?
You're kidding right? College students in particular are always trying to get into sections of classes taught by professors they know are good either through first hand experience or word of mouth recommendation.
I never understand why people get overly emotional about teacher salaries but not other public positions like fire, police, military, etc. While I empathize (my mother and 2 sisters are teachers), they do only work 9 months out of the year, and less than 40 hours per week. And teachers insist on remaining unionized, basically ensuring bad (non-criminal) teachers can't be fired once they get tenured after 2-3 years in…
"I never understand why people get overly emotional about teacher salaries but not other public positions like fire, police, military, etc." Firefighters and Police were notably excluded from the recent anti-union legislation legislation they passed in Wisconsin. My guess is because if they had included the Police then who would have kept order in the capitol building? The police would have been out there on strike w…
Second, the difference in treatment contained in the bill is that public safety employees can collectively bargain on hours, working conditions, and wages, whereas general municipal employees can only collectively bargain on wages. I'm no expert, but perhaps a firefighter sleeping in the firehouse so he can hop on the truck at 2AM faces different concerns than the secretary to the tax collector.