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Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

the74million.org

81–90 of 209 posts

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please not get into the homeschool flame war here again? Every time it comes up it turns into a pointless war of anecdotes, because the data on outcomes simply isn't strong enough for it to be anything else (trust me, I've tried).

I disagree with your comment. When I read the GP I thought "oh that's cool", without thinking. Then parent's reply brought the reality of the situation back to me (that it's more complicated).

I didn't intend to get the parent's comment downvoted to hell—two anecdotes is fine for illustrating the complexity, but these threads usually devolve from there into enormous flame wars nested tens of comments deep. I was just trying to preempt that after one round of anecdotes.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can we please not get into the homeschool flame war here again? Every time it comes up it turns into a pointless war of anecdotes, because the data on outcomes simply isn't strong enough for it to be anything else (trust me, I've tried).

contrary O....during WI defense hired people that came up with the first IQ test for soldiers...that data shows home schooled people at less IQ than those who went through public schools at the time...actual real data...

And for every study that shows that there's another on the other side. Homeschool outcomes are incredibly diverse by nature and the numbers involved are so small that it's hard to have a study with any reasonable amount of power.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#83
The school district I went to had a policy that the teachers are required to have a related masters degree in the subject they’re teaching. It was a great school district since the teachers were all formerly non teachers at one point. My social studies teacher was a lawyer before, physics teacher actually published some papers as a physicists. The downside is the property tax ballooned out of control but I got a great education.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#84
post #49

Underlying problem: people don't want to pay teachers enough.

Compensation is a vector. Teachers who are government employees receive their cash compensation, paid leave, summers off, job security through formalized tenure, generous pensions, generous health care benefits, and some lifetime benefits if they reach retirement age.

Looks like a permanent rentier gig these days - how many teachers are earning enough money to buy their own home in the community in which they are teaching? If that's not a plausible outcome, if living in a rental unit your whole life is part of the job description, then it's not an attractive deal.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#85
post #9

With working from home getting popular, even fewer people want to be a teacher. 5 days a week starting at 8am. Not going to happen.

Maybe in the future, to entice people to become public teachers, or at least to stem the bleeding of current teachers, they'll allow teachers to work less. Instead of one teacher teaching a class/subject (like math) 5 days a week, two teachers will rotate, one teaching math 3 days per week, and the other teaching 2 days per week. But then, that would require them to double their supply of teachers, which seems unlike…

work less? in my state they are contractually obligated to work just over 900 hours a year - a typical FT employee is expected to work more than twice that (1920 - 2000 hours) depending on vacation benefit.

I don't think teachers pay is all that low (at least in my state), when you factor in they only work 50% as many hours - on an hourly basis, teachers (except perhaps the brand new ones) make pretty good hourly rate, full benefits, and are usually able to retire a lot earlier than regular folks, and with a defined-benefit pension and full healthcare.

Make them work even less? No thanks.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#86
post #5

Makes sense to me. I attended public school all my life. Everyone I knew more or less had the same out look on formal education, means to an end, can I just get the spark notes, thanks. In college I interacted with a strange life form called a "homeschooler". Almost without exception they were smarter, better read, and had a desire to learn. Educating children seems to be far more than degrees, licenses, and CE credi…

all the best teachers I had in public school were people who got into teaching after having an actual career because they had actually lived in the real world. Most of the "teaching" is just stuff mandated by the government and taught via lesson plans created by the book companies. another issue is that teachers get promoted based on years in the system or by getting more useless degrees, rather than on how well they…

[deleted]

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#87
The long-term impact is much more ambiguous to measure.

I paid particular attention in school when a teacher would explain why they were trying to teach us something. I noticed the same patterns of teaching among different teachers in the same school system, and how it all worked together to reinforce the skills we needed. (Note: many of my peers experienced the "extra" work as pointless, because they didn't understand the long-term implications).

Teachers who don't understand educational theory can't work as part of an educational system without additional training. In the meantime, their students miss out on long-term skill building.

This situation makes me think of technical debt. A short-term fix with long-term, ambiguous problems that are difficult to unravel.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#88

I am very close to obtaining an elementary school teaching degree (46 of 49 credits completed), and as of this year I am a full time teacher at a private school (which doesn't have to care whether I officially have a license). My masters program is considered among the best in the state. Unfortunately, I don't have many good things to say about my masters program. The majority of my classes have been interesting but…

But you were given "information about categories", Anything under 3 should be an auto-reject because it does not meet the standard.

"standard" usually implies that it's an outside rule from a regulatory body/certification agency that you need to conform to.

It's such a weird question to ask in the first place.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#89
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compensation is a vector. Teachers who are government employees receive their cash compensation, paid leave, summers off, job security through formalized tenure, generous pensions, generous health care benefits, and some lifetime benefits if they reach retirement age.

Looks like a permanent rentier gig these days - how many teachers are earning enough money to buy their own home in the community in which they are teaching? If that's not a plausible outcome, if living in a rental unit your whole life is part of the job description, then it's not an attractive deal.

thats not just teachers - thats about 70% of the population right now - fix the inflation and interest rate problem, and that problem will get better over time.

Re: Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

#90
post #19

I'm sceptical, isn't the take from this we should have that we need to improve the education needed for educators. In my childhood, the only teachers that did not make life hell for me where the ones that actually had decent education, and was not just extra hires.

That's literally the opposite reading? The teachers who got better education didn't perform that much better, so the education needed does not need to improve. Based on that article the argument would be "if you want to raise the bar for teacher education you need to improve the level of what and how it is being taught".
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