Send those whiny taxpayers to Afghanistan with a new draft that only takes idiots- we have way too many to take however. Just cut off all “services” resulting from “government” to the whiners for a week, like roads, sewer, water, electricity, schools, hospitals, police, fire, traffic signals, airlines, trains, doctors, nurses, mail (like your medicine deliveries), cell phones, television, radio(flush Rush!), timber, coal, oil, uranium, beef, lamb, wool, cotton, tobacco, fruit, corn, wheat, medical research(even the corporations use government funding) – but you’d benefit from plague, salmonella, poisoned air and water, death on the roadside if you have an accident, and of course- lock those doors and get your gun out,’cause nobodies there to stop the “madding crowd” from taking what you “got”.
Collective bargaining only ensures that the worst teachers keep their job and the best teachers are under-compensated.
We all remember the teachers that inspired us and also the teachers that were totally inept. Why should they receive the same pay? Why should it be so hard to get rid of the inept ones?
Compensation should be based primarily on merit. It’s not rocket science.
I think if we tried just a little it would not be too hard to come of with a successful formula. Obviously several factors should be taken into account.
Objective measurements such as test results, socio-economic factors, region or state averages, rate of improvement/decline, etc.
Also, subjective measurements from students, parents and peers. I’m sure every one of you could add another factor that could be added to ensure fairness.
Think of your last job review. There wasn’t one measurement, but probably at least 20 in which you were ranked 1 to 5 based on your last year. Some of them were subjective, some objective.
And how many of those who have made pronouncments here about what goes on inside the teaching profession have ever been inside the teaching profession?
TCL; Not at my high school. There was a clique of popular teachers, an english teacher who was also assistant principal, his wife (a french teacher), his buddy (a chemistry teacher) and another english teacher. They mingled into virtually every popular activity in school, looked hardly older than the students they were teaching and that’s part of what made them popular. It was a shallow, merciless hierarchy like the one among the students; the jock, the queen bee and her court.
If their pay depended on their popularity, they would get the biggest pay while others who were older or who just weren’t into improv, proms and stuff like that but knew the subject they were teaching would get virtually nothing.
Go ahead, Redeemd. Develop the criteria for measuring the better teachers. We’re waiting. After that, establish who should impose the criteria: the principal? Administrators are often failed teachers. More schools are poor schools because of poor administrators than because of poor teachers.
After that, establish the pay scale between the “good” teachers and the “poor” ones. How many gradations should the scale have? How will you replace all the poor teachers? Can a teacher appeal his/her evaluation?
There are many other questions. I’d love to see you make this so easy.
Redeemd, you could never be a public school teacher. You quit really easily.
Some parts of the solution: Take the best aspects of charter schools, namely waiving the necessity for all teachers to have education degrees or certification.
As teaching is more of an art than it is a science, create master-teacher positions to help new teachers. Pay experienced & good teachers & administrators to work in economically disadvantaged schools.
Increase funding for HeadStart, which had shown great results before Ronald Reagan cut it to the bone.
Lower student/teacher ratios in economically disadvantaged schools.
Impose property taxes on church property & property owned by other religious buildings and pour that money into public education.
Cut central administration, and give teachers more control of their schools.
Industry AND government pay more for “skilled” people with advanced degrees- thus the “special schedule” for hiring political appointees at top federal posts (with generally no experience). Yet if we want EDUCATORS who are the best, and KNOW their fields, we’re supposed to pay them LESS??? Now if you can make more AS an engineer, than TEACHING it, who’s going to teach?
^There’s no correlation between more money and better education. If there were, we’d be the best instead of the worst. “Just throw more money at it.” has been the same inane response Democrats have been spouting for the last 40 years and it hasn’t worked.
Some of your suggestions are good, but mainly because they have to do with reducing bureaucracy and increasing competition. Exactly the opposite of the typical liberal agenda (note the D.C. schools debacle).
Redeemd, one can never use Washington, D.C., as an example of anything but an occupied city. The Federal Government refuses to permit it complete autonomy & representation. Try again.
^^”Conservative agenda” remove all competition in defense contracting, give Haliburton control of running Iraq and Afghanistan, with Xi (Blackwater) and other “free market” sources– yeah, that’s really worked well.
When the “free market” enters the “you get what you pay for” realm, not hardly– just check the gas pumps.
From the abstract to Zigler & Muenchow’s Head Start: “While Head Start’s budget remained intact during the Reagan years, the program’s quality was eroded by increasing the number of children served with no increased funding, and decreasing hours and services. ”
Although Ronald Reagan increased Head Start’s budget in 1984, he cut it in 1986 (http://caheadstart.org/HeadStartHistory.pdf).
Furthermore, Reagan mandated that Head Start class sizes increase with no increase in funding, while ending Head Start’s relationship with university’s early childhood ed. programs, so Head Start became less effective.
Although “cutting to the bone” was hyperbolic, Reagan was no friend to Head Start. Zigler & Muenchow have a chapter called “Surviving the Reagan Years”.
Calm down, Chur. We needn’t argue about this. Ronald Reagan was kinder to Head Start than he was to most of the War on Poverty. He helped create the world of indigence and hungry children enduring under the shadow of huge budget deficits and immoderately low taxes for the wealthy in which we still live today.
Head Start has shown great success and should be furthered as part of improving public education. Would you disagree with that?
WarBush about 13 years ago
Let’s shut down the government. That’ll solve all our problems. We could go back to the day of the old wild west.
Dtroutma about 13 years ago
Send those whiny taxpayers to Afghanistan with a new draft that only takes idiots- we have way too many to take however. Just cut off all “services” resulting from “government” to the whiners for a week, like roads, sewer, water, electricity, schools, hospitals, police, fire, traffic signals, airlines, trains, doctors, nurses, mail (like your medicine deliveries), cell phones, television, radio(flush Rush!), timber, coal, oil, uranium, beef, lamb, wool, cotton, tobacco, fruit, corn, wheat, medical research(even the corporations use government funding) – but you’d benefit from plague, salmonella, poisoned air and water, death on the roadside if you have an accident, and of course- lock those doors and get your gun out,’cause nobodies there to stop the “madding crowd” from taking what you “got”.
Jason Allen about 13 years ago
WHO is the man? What’s happening in WI was started by politicians with an agenda. Those protestors also happen to be tax payers.
Redeemd about 13 years ago
Collective bargaining only ensures that the worst teachers keep their job and the best teachers are under-compensated.
We all remember the teachers that inspired us and also the teachers that were totally inept. Why should they receive the same pay? Why should it be so hard to get rid of the inept ones?
Compensation should be based primarily on merit. It’s not rocket science.
CorosiveFrog Premium Member about 13 years ago
^ i’m with you on this. There is a difference between a popular and an efficient teacher.
Redeemd about 13 years ago
I think if we tried just a little it would not be too hard to come of with a successful formula. Obviously several factors should be taken into account.
Objective measurements such as test results, socio-economic factors, region or state averages, rate of improvement/decline, etc.
Also, subjective measurements from students, parents and peers. I’m sure every one of you could add another factor that could be added to ensure fairness.
Think of your last job review. There wasn’t one measurement, but probably at least 20 in which you were ranked 1 to 5 based on your last year. Some of them were subjective, some objective.
walruscarver2000 about 13 years ago
And how many of those who have made pronouncments here about what goes on inside the teaching profession have ever been inside the teaching profession?
CorosiveFrog Premium Member about 13 years ago
TCL; Not at my high school. There was a clique of popular teachers, an english teacher who was also assistant principal, his wife (a french teacher), his buddy (a chemistry teacher) and another english teacher. They mingled into virtually every popular activity in school, looked hardly older than the students they were teaching and that’s part of what made them popular. It was a shallow, merciless hierarchy like the one among the students; the jock, the queen bee and her court.
If their pay depended on their popularity, they would get the biggest pay while others who were older or who just weren’t into improv, proms and stuff like that but knew the subject they were teaching would get virtually nothing.
BrianCrook about 13 years ago
Go ahead, Redeemd. Develop the criteria for measuring the better teachers. We’re waiting. After that, establish who should impose the criteria: the principal? Administrators are often failed teachers. More schools are poor schools because of poor administrators than because of poor teachers.
After that, establish the pay scale between the “good” teachers and the “poor” ones. How many gradations should the scale have? How will you replace all the poor teachers? Can a teacher appeal his/her evaluation?
There are many other questions. I’d love to see you make this so easy.
Redeemd about 13 years ago
^^^ ^^ You’re right, it’s too hard. Let’s just leave things as is and remain the most expensive/worst educated modern country on earth.
BrianCrook about 13 years ago
Redeemd, you could never be a public school teacher. You quit really easily.
Some parts of the solution: Take the best aspects of charter schools, namely waiving the necessity for all teachers to have education degrees or certification.
As teaching is more of an art than it is a science, create master-teacher positions to help new teachers. Pay experienced & good teachers & administrators to work in economically disadvantaged schools.
Increase funding for HeadStart, which had shown great results before Ronald Reagan cut it to the bone.
Lower student/teacher ratios in economically disadvantaged schools.
Impose property taxes on church property & property owned by other religious buildings and pour that money into public education.
Cut central administration, and give teachers more control of their schools.
Dtroutma about 13 years ago
Industry AND government pay more for “skilled” people with advanced degrees- thus the “special schedule” for hiring political appointees at top federal posts (with generally no experience). Yet if we want EDUCATORS who are the best, and KNOW their fields, we’re supposed to pay them LESS??? Now if you can make more AS an engineer, than TEACHING it, who’s going to teach?
Redeemd about 13 years ago
^There’s no correlation between more money and better education. If there were, we’d be the best instead of the worst. “Just throw more money at it.” has been the same inane response Democrats have been spouting for the last 40 years and it hasn’t worked.
Some of your suggestions are good, but mainly because they have to do with reducing bureaucracy and increasing competition. Exactly the opposite of the typical liberal agenda (note the D.C. schools debacle).
BrianCrook about 13 years ago
Redeemd, one can never use Washington, D.C., as an example of anything but an occupied city. The Federal Government refuses to permit it complete autonomy & representation. Try again.
Dtroutma about 13 years ago
^^”Conservative agenda” remove all competition in defense contracting, give Haliburton control of running Iraq and Afghanistan, with Xi (Blackwater) and other “free market” sources– yeah, that’s really worked well.
When the “free market” enters the “you get what you pay for” realm, not hardly– just check the gas pumps.
BrianCrook about 13 years ago
From the abstract to Zigler & Muenchow’s Head Start: “While Head Start’s budget remained intact during the Reagan years, the program’s quality was eroded by increasing the number of children served with no increased funding, and decreasing hours and services. ”
Although Ronald Reagan increased Head Start’s budget in 1984, he cut it in 1986 (http://caheadstart.org/HeadStartHistory.pdf).
Furthermore, Reagan mandated that Head Start class sizes increase with no increase in funding, while ending Head Start’s relationship with university’s early childhood ed. programs, so Head Start became less effective.
Although “cutting to the bone” was hyperbolic, Reagan was no friend to Head Start. Zigler & Muenchow have a chapter called “Surviving the Reagan Years”.
BrianCrook about 13 years ago
Enrollment fell because of the cut.
Calm down, Chur. We needn’t argue about this. Ronald Reagan was kinder to Head Start than he was to most of the War on Poverty. He helped create the world of indigence and hungry children enduring under the shadow of huge budget deficits and immoderately low taxes for the wealthy in which we still live today.
Head Start has shown great success and should be furthered as part of improving public education. Would you disagree with that?