381–390 of 410 posts
I'm in NJ where we value public education, for the most part. According to National Center for Education Statistics our average teacher pay was $77,489 in 2022. This is excluding benefits/pension. Well worth it.
If you value education, why does your state have unions that force pay based on seniority and not outcome?
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The biggest risk is the status quo - kids forced to spend 13 years in failing schools is guaranteed to get the same results. Vouchers are generally used at existing private and parochial schools, who do meet state education standards, and frankly, usually vastly outperform public schools on education outcomes... and in many cases offer opportunities outside the classroom that public schools can't really match (i.e. m…
False choice. It’s not failing system vs vouchers. It’s failing system vs vouchers vs fixing system. You’re advocating for a solution to failing system, but it’s not the only one. And frankly, it’s likely it’s worse now than it was 13 years ago… i can think of one possible explanation why
Kids don't have 20 years to wait for laws to change, demographics to shift, politicians to retire and local attitudes to change. They are in school for 13 years.
> False choice.
Nope, vouchers give families a choice. Doing nothing gives no choice.
Teachers are such a fucked up system that its hard to visualize just how bad it is. Having worked in teacher support orgs in the past, I can tell you... its bad. - There are definitely bad teachers out there. The older the get the worse they get. But what's really counter-intuitive is that the teacher filter is absolutely backwards. The teachers who are smart, tallented, and trully exceptional... they end up leaving…
> 50k salaries in NYC. Even at 60k its basically poverty pay, and you need a Masters!!! While I agree with you, I would suggest there are plenty of people in NYC who are just as qualified and get paid even less. For example, grad students (who have a Masters) working in biomedical sciences in NYC are paid on avg 40K. You could argue that grad students as students aren't a fair comparison, in that case look to postdoc…
One of my former bosses realized he could just be a tech manager instead of a DOCTOR because his medical research job paid nothing.
Teachers are such a fucked up system that its hard to visualize just how bad it is. Having worked in teacher support orgs in the past, I can tell you... its bad. - There are definitely bad teachers out there. The older the get the worse they get. But what's really counter-intuitive is that the teacher filter is absolutely backwards. The teachers who are smart, tallented, and trully exceptional... they end up leaving…
Or perhaps we could try asking schools to do less. Based on my experience in education burnout in "Bad schools" comes from a handful of terror students, and in "good schools" from a handful of overly demanding parents. Students who cannot behave in an appropriate manner shouldn't be the schools problem, they should be the parents problem. Ultimately they are the communities problem, but schools aren't the appropriate…
i reject your assessment.
And she dealt with an illiterate high school kid.
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False choice. It’s not failing system vs vouchers. It’s failing system vs vouchers vs fixing system. You’re advocating for a solution to failing system, but it’s not the only one. And frankly, it’s likely it’s worse now than it was 13 years ago… i can think of one possible explanation why
> fixing system. Kids don't have 20 years to wait for laws to change, demographics to shift, politicians to retire and local attitudes to change. They are in school for 13 years. > False choice. Nope, vouchers give families a choice. Doing nothing gives no choice.
Both solutions take time. One solution injects a whole lot of the worst capitalist incentives into education (grift, hype, profiteering), the other doesn’t.
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I agree, and also very much doubt we are talking about the same side. Funny how that works.
Plenty of people were on the side of fascism in ww2 as well. It’s not particularly funny at all.
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It's not just autonomy it's putting up with poor student behavior. There's no real power or respect in the profession. Stop bending over backwards to please parents. Punish and remove students that can't behave in the classroom. Culturally reward students that excel academically.
Without a doubt all of the best teachers I know say the worst parts of their job is dealing with parents. Many of them who have talked about quitting have almost always cited the parents as the biggest problem. Also the worst parents are in the richest areas.
This is loosely related, but every time I think of public school teacher salaries my mind goes to the public school teachers I know. As a group they are… exceptionally ungifted. As just one example, I lived with two middle school teachers in Texas for a few years. They probably couldn’t pass the grade they were teaching. I have never met two professionals with so many credentials (MS in Education) and so little sense…
> Do others have similar experiences with teachers or do I just have a bad selection My sixth grade science teacher called on me and asked “if the freezing point of water is 0C and 32F, and the boiling point is 100C, what’s the boiling point in F?” I answered “212F” but she said “132F.” Then the class laughed at me which was very embarrassing. Most teachers are very nice, very dedicated, but not intellectually gifted…
Nationwide minimum salaries don’t make sense. In nearby Carroll county, MD, the median individual salary is $45,000 and about 45% of the population over 25 has a bachelors degree. Minimum teacher’s salary is about $48,000, which puts them above the median for all workers, in a county that’s pretty highly educated, but also fairly cheap and rural. By contrast, $60,000 in NYC is quite out of line with what other colleg…