K-12 Education Discussion

Please don't take this as disrespect, because I really do respect the job done everyday by teachers like yourself. But the work schedule that you're describing is no different then the work done by many other salary and exempt workers in other professions and industries. Often with less pay than what a teacher earns.

Any teacher making under $45K a year is under paid in my opinion. And the salary growth potential does suck for a tenured teacher not looking to become a counselor or principal. My wife is a semester away from finishing her masters in counseling, so thats her planned route. But I see how someone interested in focusing on teaching can become frustrated with thier pay after a while.

 

That might be too simplistic a view. I don't think you will disagree that having 5 science teachers to teach 100 kids would have better results than 2 teachers for the same class. Perspective can easily be changed when progress is made. If we want the kids to give a rat's ass about education, we as adults have to show that we do care. If we are saying that education is priority one, then our budget should reflect this.

 

In your breakdown, you subtracted the 2 week vacation that most paid professionals get, but it looks like you forgot to add back Christmas and Thanksgiving break.

 

cant deny your points either but it starts from home and the parents. Parent's need to emphasize and teach their kids properly from a young age. With out this how would the kids know whats important and what's not? Which is why it's also too simplistic of a view to simply say it's purely just an economic issue when in reality it's not.

 

Have the parents take Chinese parenting classes. Then they'll come back and actually care about their kids' education.

 

Also, I absolutely disagree that throwing more money at education works. in Hong Kong and in UK, I went to extremely different schools, a state-funded school with its own curriculum, and a posh boarding school respectively. The latter cost far, far more the state school, but I didn't feel like I learnt any faster, quicker, or better at either place. It really comes down to the teacher, and the kids own expectations of themselves, which is derived from their own upbringing and the friends around them.

 

Considering I know several individuals who make $600-900/hour, and whose actions make the 'world a bad place' vs. the potential benefit of an excellent teacher on society, I'd say your wife and most Houston area public school teachers are underpaid.

I liked BetterThanI's post. Taxes should be increased and money better spent so that teachers get paid more. I believe places like South Korea and Finland have the highest teacher salaries. For the US, given the importance of education to our country's power, public school teachers should make 75-90k.

 

I totally agree with you about education starts at home. To say that the parents are not stressing education enough which causes kids to not care is very simplistic.

Why do these parents not care? You don't need to have a college education to understand that people with good education generally have better careers. I am most certain that most or majority of parents care that their children have a good education regardless of your current financial situation. Something must have influenced their view of our standards for education to the point where they place a low value to it.

Economics is a one of the biggest hurdle that we face with education and it is not just in the K-12 level but also in college. Lots of people can't attend college due to it and to the ones that do, most are burdened with debt before they even get their first paycheck (if they ever get a job).

There is a reason why folks send their kids to private schools and spend all that money for it. They know their kids are going to get educated because the school has enough resource and money to provide a healthy and desirable environment for kids to learn.

Hypothetically, if you were to tell these individuals(parents who don't care) that their children can go to private school for free, you think their perspective will change?

 

This is preposterous considering the low entry barrier for teachers and the low standards they are held to.

 

I am sorry to hear that you did not get what you paid for. Siting your one example does not make it untrue. Statistics show private school kids score higher in standardized testing.

Yes, there are public schools (lots of them) that provide the same level of education as private schools. But what do these public schools have in common? They are well funded because they are located in affluent neighborhoods.

 

There's an unintended consequence that occurs by dividing grade levels of children by age. This is particularly true in the lower grades (K-6) since classes are taught at a pace that incorporates the entire class. As a result, classes have to be taught at the pace of the slowest students, leaving the kids who are ahead academically feeling unchallenged and bored.

However, the flipside to this poses an obvious problem. If we were to hold students back, they will they will lose confidence and thus interest in academics early on in life. By advancing high achieving students, they will be around older kids who are naturally more developed physically and socially. An example of this, is putting high achieving 3rd graders with low achieving 5th graders in a 4th grade classroom. Its a recipe for disaster on both fronts.

However, how do we fix this problem of schools teaching at the pace of the slowest students? This does not sound very efficient to me. In the current age of PC, where parents protest about just about anything, school has turned into a place where "every student needs to feel good about themselves" rather than a place of education.

 

To be fair, I'm also sure the culture of instilling education inside those homes of the various schools you mentioned are drastically different as well.

I also know that there are many poor students, with good upbringing in their homes, that managed to get into good colleges and ultimately good careers. It's not all economic. You can bring a horse to the water but you can't make him drink it. A good education system can only go so far, if the students aren't interested in learning.

 

If you continue reading the thread (I know it's a lot), you'll see that those dates were brought up and I acknowledged that teachers do get significantly more time off than some other careers. However, my main points were:

1. Summer vacation isn't 3 months anymore and teachers are working a significant portion of that time, so the whole "three months off in summer" thing is a fallacy.

and

2. For the perk of having that time off, you are in return paid quite a bit less and work longer hours than most.

Teaching is a great job. I wouldn't do it if I didn't feel it was worth it. But it's definitely an underpaid and undervalued career.

 

I should've made it clear. If there were a major public education overhaul, with many of the things discussed by BetterThanI, then the goal would be to increase the barriers of entry and have high standards for teachers.

I've been to some countries where being a teacher is very well-respected. If you pay them 75-90k after the reforms, that is decent compensation to attract talented people.

 

I would eradicate state tests. Eradicate them. Kids nowadays are thought to think in a certain way, instead of thinking freely.

I help my nephews with their schoolwork sometimes and the amount of homework they have (3rd grade) is ridiculous. These schools put so much pressure on these children and it adds up.

Hell when I was in school (long time ago) we were encouraged to think freely and my teachers had the freedom to incorporate their own lesson plans. I remember we had speakers come to our class to talk about financing, and we did a lot of hands on learning.

The education system today is sad.

 

Waiting For Superman is a depressing documentary.

 

At the schools I work at and know of, teachers differentiate their teaching giving more in depth work and learning to high achieving students and additional aid to struggling students. At least that's what's supposed to happen. Either way all students are supposed to meet the same standards. High achieving students may be working on something that gives them a deeper understanding but even in the same classroom the struggling students should be learning the same standards.

Classrooms aren't really a one size fits all type of environment.

 

Maybe not realistic, but I think it useful to start with the solution you know would work, and go backwards. If the primary indicator of a child's success is his parents' success, then that's probably the lever you want to pull. But, we can't make all parents successful. If we can't control the primary driver of children's success, how do we fix the problem? Is there some reform that can be made to make some other driver that we can control the primary? Breaking the family link is too extreme (though parents have often done this voluntarily with boarding schools), but something should be done to keep the parents' struggles and shortcomings from handicapping their children if you want any hope of fixing the outcomes.