191–200 of 273 posts
In what way is this person the "Virginia Teacher of the Year"? The word "Virginia" never appears in the body. He was the Waynesboro (pop. 20K) Rotary Club Teacher of the Year.
In what way is this person the "Virginia Teacher of the Year"? The word "Virginia" never appears in the body. He was the Waynesboro (pop. 20K) Rotary Club Teacher of the Year.
He's a "Teacher of the Year" from Virginia. Similar to how "Florida man" is from Florida.
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Newsflash: US schools already spend the most per student in the world ($15,000), by far more than most nations, yet still perform at the bottom of OECD nations. Do you want to get your head out of your ass? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-globa...
1. I think that number includes private money. 2. Comparing salaries across countries is not that useful - teachers aren't going to go to another country to teach. But they will go to another, higher paying job near them. So the more meaningful salary comparison to make is with the amount of education and work-time a teacher needs, how much do alternative jobs in the same area pay?
No raises in six years as inflation marches steadily on is a 10% paycut. Criminal. It's a disgrace that our college-educated professional teachers are so under-valued they have to take on multiple side-jobs just to maintain their economic status quo.
College-educated means nothing unless you are talking about Africa. With all due respect, people got into education is not really the brightest bunch...
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I just moved from San Francisco, CA to the Washington, DC area. I'm currently staying at my dad's place in Alexandria, VA. San Francisco has a very good public transit system, at least compared to any other suburb in which I've lived. In San Francisco, I could be most places I cared to be within 30 minutes. There was literally a bus station outside of my apartment window, and I could catch probably a dozen different…
DC is at least as good as San Francisco for living without a car. You're having problems because you're out in the suburbs. Move into DC proper or even to a more accessible suburb like Ballston, Clarendon, Crystal City, etc or even just move a bit closer to old town Alexandria and it's very easy to live without a car.
In DC, as in San Francisco, the trains are more for commuters to get into and out of the city. They're not really for connecting within or outside of the city. The NY area is better about that. (But not great.)
If I ever moved back to the area, I would seriously consider Bethesda. Easy access to DC, and a neat town in its own right.
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Yep. The tests are there because people don't trust the schools and looking for some independent means of motivating them to get better. Unfortunately, the testing architecture isn't entirely appropriate to the task -- but scrapping it just brings us back to the core problem. The reality is that many of the schools, and many of the teachers, are just bad. This can't be acknowledged in the public debate, so it isn't a…
How can you claim that teachers as a group don't deserve a higher status? You first say that the union's structure protects bad and mediocre teachers, which impacts teacher pay. And somehow that equates to teachers not deserving a higher social status? You have to explain that.
As a population, on average, teachers simply aren't that impressive. Teaching is a noble vocation and ought to have great status. But when the average teacher simply isn't that good, people aren't going to extend much respect to the profession.
And the unions contribute to that condition by resisting efforts to improve the quality of the teacher population.
I honestly don't know how people stay teachers for more than a couple years in most places. The people who I know who are teachers not only get paid fairly poorly, they work 60-70 hour weeks, have less and less control over how they are allowed to teach and also have to deal with crazy parents (ie. parent stalking outside school, sending books/emails, because they apparently aren't teaching in a way that is pro-conse…
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If the problem is community, why not take the students/families who really do care (from all the schools in a metropolitan area) and put them all in the same school? That would at least be a start.
We do this in Chicago. We call them "magnet" schools, as they are intended to attract the best and the brightest. On the one hand, these are the most diverse schools in this heavily segregated city. They give students from rough neighborhoods a better chance to live a different life. On the other hand, they decrease the quality of neighborhood schools (non-magnet) by skimming the cream from the top, if you will. Now,…
I taught middle school science in Houston for five years. I decided to leave the traditional public school system for many of the same reasons the author makes about his experience. This was over a decade ago so it's sad to hear the same problems persist. Alternatives like charter schools have not always fared well, but some, like YES College Prep ( http://www.yesprep.org/ ), are serving low income areas and achievin…
Actually, we do have a shortage of Doctors, especially Primary Care. Caps are set in place by Medicare to limit the number of residents in an academic program. Academic hospitals would love to increase their slots but Medicare won't allow that. I think last year something like 23k students applied to residency programs and only 6k got accepted. What happens to the rejected 17k students as they wander aimlessly to fig…
My wife is a school teacher and so I see this from her constantly. She argues that people don't value her work but that it is vitally important. So my question to her is, if it is so valuable then why aren't people willing to pay for it? The answer seems to be, because they can't afford it. People with money spend egregious amounts of money on schooling and private school teachers are reasonably well paid. Publicly f…
My wife and most of my friends are teachers. Private schools are where you go when you're so sick of public schools' bureaucratic BS that you're willing to take a 1/3 to 1/2 (!) cut in total compensation to get away from it and start feeling like you're a Teacher instead of a secretary who also teaches a bit on the side.
None of my friends have done it, but every year I hear another story about one of their co-workers who did, and they always sound a bit envious when they tell it. There are tons of private schools around here, and if any of them paid even close to what public schools do 100% of the teachers I know would apply for a job at one of them ASAP.