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Emergency-hired teachers without degrees as effective as licensed educators

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

#111

Post by zdragnar »

bitzun wrote: post #55
argiopetech wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on how you felt unprepared? My experience doesn't mirror yours.

My observatiom has been that a lot of unschooling families have parents who do it because of their own neuroses and are otherwise ill equipped as parents. Conspiracy theories and fringe religions are common. Emotional manipulation and abuse is common. Isolation and poor social skill development is common. Important childhood experiences are restricted. Often these parents don't want their children to succeed and leav…

Prior generations had more of that, but the more recent trends have lots of support groups for home schoolers, where you get more socialization and support from other families.

Parents are increasingly opting for home schooling to get away from bad or ineffective schools, rather than for purely religious or psychological syndromes.

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

#112

Post by dchichkov »

syntaxing wrote: post #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 grea…

A state or a small country can afford maybe a few schools like that. You need state sponsorship, endowment money or a district where property values ballooned out of control. And with a lot of money at stake, it's very likely that school administration compensation will be ballooning instead.

Connecting schools with a university system could be a more viable option. Make it easy to teach in a nearby school, pay reasonably for tuition and a university can be a source of PhD students and postdocs that could get some easy pocket money as guest lecturers. I think, it's also refreshing for PhD students and postdocs to give classes to younger kids.

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

#113

Post by s1artibartfast »

throwaway421967 wrote: post #88
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #39

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.

I dont think standard usually means codified. It is also frequently used to mean typical, or within expectation.

It this example, outside law or regulation on standard creativity and utility seem pretty unlikely.

There is also a pretty big difference between standard (singular) and standards (plural), where the latter is more likely to imply a set of minimum requirements.

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

#114

Post by graemep »

iaw wrote: post #104
bitzun wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I jumped in because I hadn't seen it before. I agree it's difficult to generalize at this point, I just chafe at the suggestion that homeschooled kids do better overall since I've heard it my whole life and my experience was so different.

I think the only conclusion I've been able to draw from anecdotes about homeschooling (having experienced it myself) is that outcomes are more varied than traditional education, whether there's a bias in that variance is not something anyone can speak to (as of yet). A very smart student has the opportunity to get much farther ahead whereas a poorly crafted education plan and/or an unmotivated student has the potenti…

I has to disagree about the "education plan". I did not plan very much, and my kids have done very well academically. The advantage is you can try stuff and do what works.

It is also more motivating.

It is possible to mess it up, but schools mess up too. On the whole kids seem to usually do better than comparable kids at school (at least in the UK) and there are studies that back that up.

The data is biased by many things that need to be corrected for. For example (at least in the UK) a lot of kids with SEN or mental health problems are home educated because in many areas schools do not have adequate provision. On the other hand if you have a home that encourages academic achievement (i.e. the sort background that leads kids to do better in school) they will probably do a lot better than at school

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

#115

Post by zdragnar »

syntaxing wrote: post #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 grea…

Entire states are like this, and it doesn't work out that way at scale. Teachers get degrees to teach, and are buried under a mountain of debt while not being paid for it. On top of that, they need to take "continuing education" credits, which ostensibly is a way to stay on top of teaching trends but is really a racket for the teaching-adjacent industry.

I don't think my state required the masters degree, but pay scales definitely were weighed in favor of it. It certainly didn't make for better teachers.

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

#116

Post by graemep »

zdragnar wrote: post #111
bitzun wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My observatiom has been that a lot of unschooling families have parents who do it because of their own neuroses and are otherwise ill equipped as parents. Conspiracy theories and fringe religions are common. Emotional manipulation and abuse is common. Isolation and poor social skill development is common. Important childhood experiences are restricted. Often these parents don't want their children to succeed and leav…

Prior generations had more of that, but the more recent trends have lots of support groups for home schoolers, where you get more socialization and support from other families. Parents are increasingly opting for home schooling to get away from bad or ineffective schools, rather than for purely religious or psychological syndromes.

It is also a lot easier than it used to be. The internet hugely improves access to materials. There is a vibrant online community to discuss and get help.

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

#117

Post by wharvle »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #70
gbacon wrote: 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.

Have no fear, the requirements to receive the benefits is rising; such as 30y teaching not before 68yo. When my SO went full time as a public school teacher her salary only modestly contributed to our retirement, healthcare costs, and covered childcare for the kids too young for school. Our bank account didn't receive enough money to cover the other bills when I was briefly laid off. She considered teaching a net los…

My wife taught for about 10 years. Can confirm, at least in our state, the benefits are not the “cushy” state employee benefits that many suppose exist (actually, our state employees have trash benefits, too—you go federal if you want good bennies in that sort of job, here). Only way to have decent benefits in education is to go into admin (supers and assistant-supers get totally different, and far better, benefits in many districts—go figure)

She left teaching for WFH, a ~40% total-comp increase, and a far better work environment. Turns out the skills and experiences a good teacher tends to accumulate are really valuable to companies.

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

#118

Post by dan-robertson »

derefr wrote: post #35
germinalphrase wrote: post #4

As a former high school teacher, I am in favor of reduced requirements to enter the profession; however, I taught in two states that supported these types of on ramps, and they didn’t seem to make a notable impact on applicant numbers (that is, out of the hundreds of educators I worked with over the years, I knew only one who came in via a non-traditional pathway after working in a different field (engineering)). Tha…

Teacher pay is too low for anyone to want to take a teaching job when they have professional qualifications that would allow them to work a much better-paid job. (Especially when getting those skills also involved paying hundreds of thousands in student loans to a university. You need to earn your way out of that hole, and not working the best-paying job you can would be prolonging that debt!) But I think the article…

How much approximately do you think a teacher gets paid? Obviously it depends on specifics so maybe say whether you’re imagining a city centre / suburban / rural school, and whether the state/district is wealthy and whether it’s a high school or whatever.

I have some guesses in my head for something like ‘high school teacher in moderately wealthy Chicago suburb’ (I haven’t written the number here because I don’t want to anchor you) though I don’t have a great sense for how many jobs like that there are in the US. Above base pay there can also be more for helping with extracurriculars, potentially a defined benefit pension, and after settling in teachers will have a lot of free time/vacation not spent planning lessons. The amount of pay may not excite you if you’re a professional software developer at a well-paying company in the US, but I’m not sure that a more typical professional job would be “much better-paid”.

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

#119

Post by sgnelson »

Those few who are willing to go take a low salary to go deal with all the issues of the modern education system are just as good as those who are willing to go take a low salary and deal with all the issues of the modern education system, but have to jump through a few more hoops. I'm shocked.

Let's face it, those who are willing to teach, and are probably leaving decent careers to do so, have a decent chance of being an okay teacher, because they probably have an idea of what they're getting into, and are willing to work hard. ie they WANT to be teachers.

Of course, if we just paid teachers more, you'd probably have a higher number of qualified candidates, but that seems like that's too hard of a thing to do?

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

#120

Post by [deleted] »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #39

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…

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