Making America Great

There are a lot of people that scrimp to give their kids a private school education. We did. IMHO, they do stress academics, but IMHO, the biggest differences between the public and private schools are parental involvement, and discipline. When you are stroking a check each month for tuition, you are highly likely to be involved and make sure you are getting what you pay for. Teachers in the schools that I am familiar with do not have to tolerate the same level of disciplinary issues as PS teachers. I'm sure these are not universal observations and there are exceptions, but this is what I have observed.

 

Being a product of the public school system & a single parent I can speak to the issue. Parental involvement is tough when you're working 2-3 jobs to ensure your kids have a roof and a meal. That's the reality. Also, PS teachers are paid shit to start with, they are in fact often living at the same level of the students. When a teacher has to beg for donations to get basic tools to teach there's a fucking problem. What happens is that they get burnt out, quit, or just stop giving a shit from the lack of support. You can't enforce standards and accountability in PS staff because nobody will do it for the shit pay & lack of resources.
I moved to SC with a high school senior and I had the choice of sending him to a PS system that was ranked 48th in the country at the time, or send him to private school where the class sizes were 1/4 the size of public schools.

I'm a firm believer that you CAN throw smart money at the problem and start to fix the issues. Better teacher salaries & better teaching aids will attract a higher quality educator that actually cares about kids & learning. When you offer better pay & incentives, you CAN enforce & hold them to standards. Kids will do what is expected of them, they rarely disappoint. Behavioral issues often start at the home for various reasons. When you remove the barriers a lot of the lower income parents face, you indirectly improve the child's outlook. The GED program and job assistance for parents is just fucking brilliant IMO. People that do better, DO BETTER.

LeBron's school is more about showing what can happen when the money is placed where it matters and the entire community supports & celebrates success. If living a decent life without the trappings of poverty is the trophy, then yeah EVERYONE should get one.

 

You didn't get the memo, Buck. Teachers are overpaid (most make over $100k), don't care about children, don't work nearly as hard real working folks like us (who, strangely, spend a lot of their workhours posting to a website voicing their certitude about all matters hither and yon) and spend most of the time inculcating the kids with bad, liberal thoughts. It's all well-documented, right here in the beeb.

 

National average starting salary, $38,000
National average tenured salary, $52,000

I would starve to death on those "'wages"

 

Last edited at 9:15?

What happened, Dave? Your forget a straw man in your screed?

 

Remember that's for 9 months of work, too...

Annualized $50-70k/yr.

 

The bulk of the teachers I know, and I know hundreds across the country, have 12 month contracts. It may be because I deal with lead teachers though.

 

Just because they have 12 month contracts doesn't mean they can't supplement their income while school is out. Or am I missing the point?

 

The teachers aren't the issue, what they're doing for the most part is quite admirable.....the teachers are the grunts, just like the soldiers in the trenches. The problem is who is giving them their marching orders. The administration above them. The ones that get paid the money to keep a steady stream of kids coming in and going out so they meet the state's criteria.....even at the expense of some kids not learning shit and being disciplinary problems, and detracting from the experiences of the better behaving ones.

 

Yeah but those damn asians are screwing up the insignificant statistics coming from the same poverty level, same schools, and now are being oppressed by Harvards.

 

I'm not shocked the contracts are annual. What's the pay schedule? Amortized over 52 weeks or paid during active employment hours?

 

And the mainstreaming mandates and access mandates and mamby-pambyism that keeps the miscreants and ne'er-do-wells in the classrooms, taking up the instruction time, teacher's attention and providing the shining example of zero consequences for shit behavior...

 

I think I get it now.

 

As long as actually doing the right thing negatively impacts the schools averages to the point that it affects the superintendant's bank account, what do you expect is going to happen?

 

Their hands are tied. The laws in place make it so prohibitively difficult and litigious to remove a chronic bad actor that only a serious credible threat of violence or heaven forbid, a violent act actually occurring can get the rotten shit out of the classroom.

Mo' guvmint, mo' problems

 

does that include benefits in the salary avg?

 

Those with 12 month contract work through the summer. Its generally curriculum meetings, writing pacing guides, figuring out test prep, etc.

There are three types:

Work for 9 months and get paid for those nine months @ say $50k.

Work for 9 months and get paid over 12 months, the same $50K.

Work for 12 months and get paid for 12 months, would make more than the $50k above.

point is, you can apply a blanket statment to teacher. Non-union states pay much less than union, for example.

No.

 

Let's assume a teacher can survive on the national averages.
How do you explain the lack of resources to the point that teachers have to beg parents for materials?
There are books & materials in the PS circulation that are years behind what a properly funded school has.
Looking at just the salary is such a narrow focus. A well paid staff is still using shit and tissue paper for books and other materials.

 

What the fuck do you eat?