Do Republican policies attract good teachers?

[Disir]

Are teachers in it for the money and the bennies and screw the kids? I think that's your point. What happens if ...gasp...teachers have to contribute to their own retirement ? Will they quit in droves and find another job that gives them the whole summer off? Don't make me laugh.

They are. At least the experienced ones are.

You get paid for x amount of days. Now, you have 2 choices. You can take your pay in whole for those days and ration it out yourself over the summer or you can have x amount paid out to you so that you receive that income over the summer. If it is humanly possible, many teachers try to work through the summer for those districts that have summer school in order to deal with the time out.

As far as I know, and I could be wrong, teachers actually have a portion taken out every check that contributes to their retirement. The bad thing is that many may find themselves in not being able to control what is being taken out. Like so: Let's take 1.5% is withdrawn from the employee towards their retirement but because of the way it is set up that money goes to an account where "financial wizards" are allowed to gamble with your money.

This means that you are prohibited from saying: I don't want to gamble with my money. I want to enter it into a strict savings account---you are prohibited from doing so.

that sounds like a good plan.

 

[barry1960]

Get the illegals out of school and reduce class size. That's a good way.

One of the worst obstructions to education isn't the size of the class. It's the disruptors in the class, the special ed students who act out and are uncontrollable, the kids who think it's fun to start fights and beat up students and teachers alike. Those are the greatest impediments to class education not class size. It's just not PC to point that out.

Special ed kids who act out or uncontrolable? You must be kidding.

 

[Jackson]

Rich Scott of Florida was on Morning Joe boasting about his 1.7 billion dollar cut from Florida education.

Gov. Rick Scott's proposed education budget: $1.75 billion in cuts

How he was able to end tenure for new teachers and make schools more efficient by increasing class size per teacher. Will the attacks on teacher's unions and teacher's salary attract good teachers? Will anyone want to be a teacher after this?

Other reports say he used that 1.7 billion to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Florida Governor Rick Scott Would Cut Teachers’ Pay To Fund Tax Breaks For Corporations And The Wealthy

Will these attacks on education to create more revenue for the wealthy "work"? Is this good for America? Will children learn more in larger classes? What is the Republican goal for education? How will their plan help children? Do they even want to help children?

Teachers don't go into the profession to get rich. There is a movement to fix education and that is to END the unions and INCREASE the teacher's salaries across the board or through merit pay.

Unions protect the bad teachers. I was a union rep and know of what I say!

The president of the unions once said the Unions weren't there to help the children and wouldn't be until they could pay the dues.

 

[techieny]

Rich Scott of Florida was on Morning Joe boasting about his 1.7 billion dollar cut from Florida education.

Gov. Rick Scott's proposed education budget: $1.75 billion in cuts

How he was able to end tenure for new teachers and make schools more efficient by increasing class size per teacher. Will the attacks on teacher's unions and teacher's salary attract good teachers? Will anyone want to be a teacher after this?

Other reports say he used that 1.7 billion to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

Florida Governor Rick Scott Would Cut Teachers’ Pay To Fund Tax Breaks For Corporations And The Wealthy

Will these attacks on education to create more revenue for the wealthy "work"? Is this good for America? Will children learn more in larger classes? What is the Republican goal for education? How will their plan help children? Do they even want to help children?

Well you progressives do such a good job...

 

[AquaAthena]

Tenure was just a way of rewarding the worst teachers at the expense of the good ones. Teachers should have no more security than any other employee. If they do a bad job, they should be fired. The salaries of teachers should reflect their actual working hours. Of all workers in the country, teachers work the fewest hours. Yearly, they would be described as part time. To republicans the government does the best job when it does the least.

As I have mentioned before, a former husband had an M.A. in music ed. and began teaching in an Oregon school, in 2002, at a sweet salary of $47K a year ( lol ) plus great perks, for 8 months a year. It gave him time to play music internationally, where he ( the band ) picked up a platinum album from which he will always receive royalties, as well as many other songs he perfomed with bands. Teaching worked out well for him as he could pursue his true love, which was, playing instruments.

 

[Zander]

If only we could pay teachers more money...schools would be better then!! If only we had smaller class size, kids would learn more!!

We've done all that all across the country and it doesn't work! Smaller classes do nothing to improve education results, and teacher salaries have risen steadily for 40 years as the results have gone down. But why??

Simple. Public schools have no competition and no incentive to do a good job. Private schools must provide a superior education or they would fail to attract students. We need competition in education.

 

[Jackson]

...
How he was able to end tenure for new teachers and make schools more efficient by increasing class size per teacher.
...

Has anyone ever noticed the correlation between the consolidation of schools and bigger classes and the decline of the American education? Smaller classes allow teachers to teach students. Smaller classes allow the teachers to get to know the students, what their strong points are, what their weaknesses are, and gives them a chance to grow. Large classrooms are impersonal and the fringe students are marginalized and tossed away. New and bigger is not always right.

I have not noticed that correlation. The low performing public schools here have small classes. The marquee public and private schools pack them in.

There could be various reasons for your observation.

1. Students with learning disabilities are generally in smaller classrooms.

2. School choice, vouchers account for many of the best public school students going too private or charter schools. That sometimes leaves the less desirable students in the public school. By that I mean, disciplines problems (are dismissed from private and charter schools) and lower achievers. Yes, private school classes size can be elevated at times.

3. Parental involvement is a an important part of a student's success in school. Parents who are not involved in their child's education most lkely would not take the time to seek other educational choices for their child, leaving them in the public school. Again, the student may not be successful as he could possinly be if he doesn't have the active support of his parents or guardians.

 

[Smartt33]

If the current government (dictated by the current president) would stop spending so much money on killing babies nationally and internationally, and use that money for educationj, we might be succeeding. However, with that said, please don't allow this ignorant president dictate how the money would be used for the education of our young.

 

[Katzndogz]

Money won't help and that's been proven. It was proven in Kansas.

Money And School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment

In Kansas City they did try. A sympathetic federal judge invited district educators literally to "dream"--forget about cost, let their imaginations soar, put together a list of everything they might possibly need to increase the achievement of inner-city blacks--and he, using the extraordinarily broad powers granted judges in school desegregation cases, would find a way to pay for it.

Because the judge had no expertise in devising a plan that would both desegregate the district and provide a quality education for the students, he asked the state and the plaintiffs each to come up with a remedy and he would chose between the two.

The state took the aggressive but (as events would later show) not entirely irrational position that most of what was wrong with the KCMSD had more to do with crime, poverty, and dysfunctional families than it did with the failure of the state to meet its constitutional obligations. Under the circumstances, the state argued, all that was legally required was a little reroofing, patching, painting, and carpet repair coupled with curriculum reform and emphasis on better teaching.

The plaintiffs, on the other hand, encouraged by what they saw as the increasing sympathy of the judge for their position, decided to "go for the moon"--to ask for far more than they thought they could ever get.

The choice for Clark was a stark one--he could go with the state's plan, which in the words of Harvard researcher Alison Morante was "laughably insufficient," or he could go with the plaintiffs' plan, which was basically a wish list of everything they had ever wanted. Given the choice between doing hardly anything and giving the plaintiffs the moon, Clark decided to go for the moon.(14)

Once Clark decided for the plaintiffs, he didn't ask them to do things on the cheap. When it came time to fill in the plan's specifics, he invited them to "dream"(15)--to use their imaginations, push the envelope, try anything that would both achieve integration and raise student scores. The idea was that Kansas City would be a demonstration project in which the best and most modern educational thinking would for once be combined with the judicial will and the financial resources to do the job right. No longer would children go to schools with broken toilets, leaky roofs, tattered books, and inadequate curricula. The schools would use the most modern teaching techniques; have the best facilities and the most motivated teachers; and, on top of everything else, be thoroughly integrated, too. Kansas City would show what could be done if a school district had both the money and the will. It would be a model for educational reformers throughout the nation.

When estimates of the cost of the initial version of the plan came back, the lawyers and education activists who had designed the plan were shocked at their own audacity.(16) The $250 million cost was a staggering amount in a district whose normal budget was $125 million a year. But that was only the start. By the time he recused himself from the case in March 1997, Clark had approved dozens of increases, bringing the total cost of the plan to over $2 billion--$1.5 billion from the state and $600 million from the school district (largely from increased property taxes).

With that money, the district built 15 new schools and renovated 54 others. Included were nearly five dozen magnet schools, which concentrated on such things as computer science, foreign languages, environmental science, and classical Greek athletics. Those schools featured such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room; a robotics lab; professional quality recording, television, and animation studios; theaters; a planetarium; an arboretum, a zoo, and a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary; a two-floor library, art gallery, and film studio; a mock court with a judge's chamber and jury deliberation room; and a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability.

The ratio of students to instructional staff was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.(19) There was $25,000 worth of beads, blocks, cubes, weights, balls, flags, and other manipulatives in every Montessori-style elementary school classroom. Younger children took midday naps listening to everything from chamber music to "Songs of the Humpback Whale." For working parents the district provided all-day kindergarten for youngsters and before- and after-school programs for older students.

This plan failed. There was no improvement in scholastic achievement.

 

[Samson]

You know rdean, if you could just get your head out of your ass ......

Never gonna happen.

 

[FurthurBB]

Money won't help and that's been proven. It was proven in Kansas.

Yeah, this is true, the school I was talking about early is in an upper class area. People who live close but don't go there think they have all sorts of really fancy stuff when in reality, they probably have the least of any school in the area. They got A/C last, just got smart boards, still have roll around TVs, never build new schools and rarely upgrade the ones they have other than to add new classrooms. They are super cheap and spend most of their money on books and teachers.

 

[initforme]

"The salaries of teachers should reflect their actual working hours. Of all workers in the country, teachers work the fewest hours. Yearly, they would be described as part time. "

Those who are critical of teachers could never do the job. I know I could have never done the job. I also know that some teacher with a salary of $45,000 per year has ZERO, LESS than zero part of the economic problems of this country. Yet they have been cast out as demons. As a small business owner for the past 30 some years, I never understood americas vendetta against teachers. If you dont like the school then educate your kids yourself. I dont know of too many people envious of a teachers salary. What a joke. Yes there are bad teachers out there and yes they should be gotten rid of but there are alot of really good ones too and they have been demonized. Its really sickening. I've never met a rich k - 12 teacher.

 

[editec]

Typically when I was teaching in HS, I carried 120-150 students.

That's a lot of paperwork, folks.

Of course my students got less from their teacher than they might otherwise have gotten had my student load been less.