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Pay Teachers More

nytimes.com

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Re: Pay Teachers More

#81

Post by maxharris »

dangoldin wrote: post #79
maxharris wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the future generations of doctors who had poor teachers and won't make good doctors? Teachers are not the only source of drive or inspiration to learn. Michael Faraday had almost no formal education (and he came from a poor family), yet he rose to become one of the most influential scientists in history. [He was apprenticed to a bookbinder, which allowed him to read a lot. His interest in science was inspi…

Of course not but I think Faraday was an exception and it would be rare for someone in this day and age to be an innovative scientist without having a strong academic background. It's hard to break into academia without going to college and it's hard to go to college without going to school. Of course it's possible but it's just not easy and without the proper motivation many people would give up. Even before Faraday…

it's hard to go to college without going to school

I basically went to college without going to school first. I had a D average in high school, and something similar in grade school (I was far more interested in making trouble than anything else!)

I didn't need preparation to go to college (and I went to a midwest public ivy); all I really needed was a clear idea of why I should do so. That I got from reading Issac Asimov and Ayn Rand, not from any teacher forcing me to sit still in their classroom.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#82

Post by [deleted] »

jim_h wrote: post #49
yummyfajitas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the BLS, the average full time teacher works slightly less than 40 hours/week (see Table 2). This includes time at the workplace, at home and at another location. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

While the typical office workers averages 40hrs a week in the office, how many hours are they really productive? If they had to record only the hours that they're productive at tasks, would it come close to 40hrs?

[deleted]

Re: Pay Teachers More

#83

Post by [deleted] »

jim_h wrote: post #49
yummyfajitas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the BLS, the average full time teacher works slightly less than 40 hours/week (see Table 2). This includes time at the workplace, at home and at another location. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

While the typical office workers averages 40hrs a week in the office, how many hours are they really productive? If they had to record only the hours that they're productive at tasks, would it come close to 40hrs?

[deleted]

Re: Pay Teachers More

#84

Post by maxharris »

dp1234 wrote: post #65
drblast wrote: post #26

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.…

That is one thing I never understood. There are less requirements to teach at the college level than to teach high school. Most people don't realize that most college teachers have never actually had any education courses, they just happen to have attained advanced degrees.

I think that the requirements should be lowered for K-12 teachers.

The reason things got so bad is that there are a lot of education majors that go into K-12 education because it's easy. These are people that couldn't pass introductory science courses, let alone teach them to undergraduates. And there are lots of them, so they try to differentiate between themselves by getting masters degrees in easy (as opposed to chemistry or physics) fields such as education. Over time, this must have ossified to the point we are today, which is that this puffed-up "educational" arms race between teachers has translated into an institutional requirement.

One of the reasons I didn't respect many of my grade school teachers is that they didn't actually know anything, and I could tell.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#85

Post by jshen »

chrismanfrank wrote: post #72
jshen wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some tiny fraction of kids teach themselves and you're implying that teachers aren't important? That's a non sequitur on a few different levels.

I don't think kj is saying teachers aren't important, just that there might be a better way. And remember, only a 'tiny fraction' of people were on Facebook at some point.

A better way than teachers? Isn't that saying teachers aren't important? Also, it seems wrong to come to that conclusion based on some tiny fraction of kids.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#86

Post by maxharris »

defen wrote: post #80
maxharris wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think this is a problem, at least for some students? It was for me. I was an awful student all the way through high school (graduated with something around a D average). I blossomed in college with a near-perfect GPA in a natural science major. (What I had to go through to get into the university I did is another story, and beside the point.) The important difference between these two environments is that I…

Oh I completely agree - the current system is horribly broken, and for the vast majority of students is really a Lord of the Flies-meets-babysitting kind of situation. I was just trying to say that pmorici's analogy, which was already stretched in trying to apply the way a lawyer/doctor gets repeat business to the way a college professor gets "new business", completely falls down when applied to primary school teache…

I think parents would try to get the best teacher for their money if they were free to choose where and how their children were educated. While what we have today is far from choosing a lawyer, there is no reason why primary education couldn't or shouldn't be a market in the future.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#87

Post by juiceandjuice »

maxharris wrote: post #84
dp1234 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one thing I never understood. There are less requirements to teach at the college level than to teach high school. Most people don't realize that most college teachers have never actually had any education courses, they just happen to have attained advanced degrees.

I think that the requirements should be lowered for K-12 teachers. The reason things got so bad is that there are a lot of education majors that go into K-12 education because it's easy. These are people that couldn't pass introductory science courses, let alone teach them to undergraduates. And there are lots of them, so they try to differentiate between themselves by getting masters degrees in easy (as opposed to c…

I think one thing that would help is that teachers should actually have a real degree with a minor in education, instead of the other way around, and that the pay would incentivize away from teachers just picking communications and getting away with that.

Imagine if your history teachers had a history degree, your english teachers had an english degree, your kindergarden teachers had a sociology degree or (a more rigorous) early childhood development degree, and that the pay was competitive, if not more than what they would expect otherwise (for english and history majors, this wouldn't be so hard) Right now, teachers have every incentive to get in the 5 year Masters program in education and not learn anything about what they are teaching, but learn how to teach.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#89

Post by rick888 »

Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #50

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…

One of the bi-products of unionized teachers. It also makes it impossible for parents to go to another school (the school is funded through taxes no matter, even if they do decide to send their kids to a private school). Crappy teachers also get to stay and are defended by the unions.

People wonder why the schools are so terrible in the US, but refuse to think that it could have anything to do with the stranglehold the unions have on our education system.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#90

Post by Lost_BiomedE »

rick888 wrote: post #89
Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #50

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…

One of the bi-products of unionized teachers. It also makes it impossible for parents to go to another school (the school is funded through taxes no matter, even if they do decide to send their kids to a private school). Crappy teachers also get to stay and are defended by the unions. People wonder why the schools are so terrible in the US, but refuse to think that it could have anything to do with the stranglehold t…

A lot of best case solutions to problems like these are known but are blocked by those with interest. It reminds me of the telecoms, and how badly they mucked up the '96 telecom act. The solution was obvious to those who understood the industry and how it was built, run it as a utility.

Once in university ethics class I commented that an ethics structure is broken if you won't give up an advantage in order to follow the ethics system. The class was totally silent, even the prof. A lot of problems are caused by not yielding to what, even by the parties involved, consider right.

Honor is a lost art.

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