The geniuses of the left have come up with a way to improve education – from Yahoo News:
How would the nation’s school system be different if teachers were paid like engineers?
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan proposed last month that a significant boost in teacher salaries could transform public schools for the better by luring the country’s brightest college graduates into the profession.
Teachers should be paid a starting salary of $60,000, Duncan said, with the opportunity to make up to $150,000 a year…
Yeah, that’ll fix it. The only problem we have with education is that we’re not spending enough money on it. If we just “invest” a bit more, all will be well.
The truth is that we spend plenty of money on education – in fact, probably many times more than we need to. But the funds are misapplied because the education system – from pre-school through graduate school – is not geared towards providing education for kids, but for providing well paid positions for incompetents. Fundamental to this are teacher’s unions and tenure. Get rid of the unions and tenure, and you’ll fix education within, at most, two or three years. There will no longer be protection for idiocy, and so the natural common sense of humanity will start to take hold.
To be sure, a lot of other particular bits of reform spring to mind – such as, why do we provide loans, grants and scholarships for kids to become lawyers? We have more than enough lawyers in the United States – but not nearly enough engineers and doctors. So, cancel all loans, grants and scholarships for law degrees and re-direct the funds to medicine and engineering. But that is in the details – and such reforms will always be stymied because of the main things wrong with education: unions and tenure. Unions and tenured educators don’t want their place at the trough disturbed and so strangle every effort at reform…while on the other hand they are always quick to come up with their own “reform” efforts which invariably demand more money for the worthless education system we already have.
George Will called the events in Wisconsin the “Waterloo” of the left…it may well have been. Unions were taken head on and defeated…and the people of Wisconsin are already seeing the improvements in government finance, the Wisconsin economy and Wisconsin education. Here’s the real kicker – there is more money in the Wisconsin education budget for hiring and paying teachers, now that the unions are cut out of the loop. Once the word starts to get out that getting rid of the unions is just about a silver bullet, more and more unions will be got rid of. It will snowball.
Eventually we can start educating the kids, again…and that will do more than anything else to restore American greatness.
Blogs For Victory 
money wont fix education…
get the federal government back out of schools…they need to run the nation…the states should run the schools…when they did…US was 1st in everything…since the feds screwed it up…we are rating way back…neck and neck with 3rd world nations…
They are trying this, they have a $10,000 a year bonus for ‘nationally certified teachers’. I can personally attest that all it has done is created bonuses for current teachers who really aren’t very good. At our school only about 1 out of 7 of those who collect the money really are good teachers…another 3 out of 7 who collect the money may or may not be (due to the nature of this statement I have to be ambiguous) on teacher improvement plans which are developed for underperforming teachers….the first step into getting rid of them.
We fought a plan to have whether a teacher was national board certified to be higher on the seniority list simply because there was no evidence showing that those who got that extra money were better teachers.
No, you start paying teachers $150,000 the first thing that would happen is that every teacher in america that belongs to a union would teach until the day they die. There would be maybe a 2% turnaround the first year, up to maybe a 3% at most someday…….that won’t solve it.
At the time of university graduation, a high school math teacher in the US will have had courses which are mostly rote manipulations: geometry, calculus, a little statistics and linear algebra with perhaps a few intermediate critical thinking classes to explore the fundamental concepts in depth at the very end of the degree.
A high school math teacher in e.g. Italy will have started in her first year of undergraduate with a high level analysis of mathematical concepts. So a teachers’ first course in Europe will be more challenging than the final course of the equivalent US teacher. The teacher in Europe holds a degree in the subject of expertise with a few pedagogy courses thrown into the mix.
The teacher in Italy is unionized and paid roughly two-thirds of her American counterpart. In the end the students in her class perform at a much higher level. There is no hiding failing students: the final math exam for all high school students in scientific high schools (it is the same for the entire country) is printed in the newspaper for all to see. 10% of seniors fail.
The underlying problem is not unions or salary. It is that teachers don’t know the material, concentrate on providing daycare services or are pseudo-psychologists … On top of that is the faddish nature of University -Colleges of Education which continually ‘re-invent’ the curriculum and one sees the current US system of education.
In a lot of respects I agree, in part, with your assessment however for all of that effort and education–Italy still barely ranks above the US (15 points) on the TIMMS scale at student graduation. I would look more towards the Asian model where school is your “job” when young but you still have enough time for play. They do not require 12 years to educate a child.
The underlying problem is the social re-engineering that schools have to do here in the States–the baby sitting and other bullcrap that has no place in schools plus the school books here are agenda driven drivel a mile wide and only an inch deep so to speak. Point the finger at whoever you want but there are a great many teachers that are exceptional but restricted because of the Federal government and unions. This is just one of many issues that should be a State issue with
school choice being at the top.
I have been thinking about the possibility of starting a private school in a depressed area of my county with the best (and well-paid) teachers taking in only students with parents willing to sign a contract. Accelerated education as compared to public schools with the goal of placement into a good college. An “old school” new school that actually taught a well-rounded education instead of indoctrination that is prevalent today.
I understood TIMMS to evaluate 4 and 8th grade so would appreciate if you could point to where by high school graduation, Italy is only 15 points ahead of the US. In Europe as in Asia a student’s job is school. There is more competition in Asia but in the end Germany or Sweden produce as many quality engineers as Korea or Japan.
A sad truth is there are more African professors of math in the US than African-American professors. There are more Italian professors of math in the US than Italian-American. There are more Chinese professors of math than Chinese-American …. It’s not genetic, the non-Americans just didn’t waste years of their undergraduate life taking wider-world 101,102,103,201,202 … classes. They don’t need to since they actually learned those things in K-12.
I agree with you that the baby-sitting portion of the job is a large part of the problem. But that is largely CONSUMER choice. Parents like that there kids aren’t frustrated. They like that they are given snacks. They like that their kids are involved in 3 million extra curricular activities that take away from academics. They like the Friday night football game more than AP classes being available.
I’ve ran the gamut of the education options with my family. Public schools, private schools, home school, year abroad … There are not a great number of quality teachers available. Maybe 5% of teachers could be labelled as great.
You can start a private school and pay good money. If the teachers spent 85% of their time learning about Piaget and 15% of their time learning fractions they will not explain fractions well.
But, main thing – if you don’t get rid of the unions and tenure, you’ll never be able to reform…as long as the system is geared to provide pay for incompetents, it will never get better.
Bardolf,
It is a culmination of a semi-biased site (bias towards American free school choice):
http://4brevard.com/choice/international-test-scores.htm
and the US government (i guess the two people that can write) report (only the final set of tables):
Click to access 1999081.pdf
Maybe it was just me, or my family, but when I went to public school–you were there to learn and not to fool around. After school we had anywhere from 1 to 3 hours of additional homework before we could go outside and play until the street lights came on.
There was no baby-sitting, kids failed if they could not perform and were removed until they could keep up with the class–not the other way around. We were taught how to think and not what to think. How to approach and solve problems including doing research.
The power was with the teachers and the parents to make decisions not some bureaucrat. That is what I would like to see again.
@Mark
The private schools in the US hardly stack up against the best in the world even after avoiding the worst students. I can understand getting rid of the tenure system for K-12. I do see a need for the unions as a counterweight to incompetent administration and superintendents. The problem is of expectations of the teachers and students. The teachers need to know the material first and foremost. The students need to be failed if they don’t achieve.
@dbschmidt
I went through the links you put up and understand now the 12th grade comparison. At the end of 12th grade they ask students a bunch of questions from 8th grade math. This makes things MUCH worse for 2 reasons. One is of course that it says nothing about the tougher skills required in e.g. engineering. Two is that in many European countries by 12th grade the vocational students have been out of the math class for several years.
Again the average American is content with the system by and large. Schools are daycare providers, counselors, friends, … If you failed out students who didn’t even try, one wouldn’t need teams of security guards by high school. Of course the failed out students wouldn’t have access to jobs and would turn to crime. Once you let a system devolve into chaos it’s hard to bring it back. There are no easy solutions without painful unintended consequences.
Bardolf,
I am fully prepared to believe that the private schools are not as good as they can be…after all, they just have to be a little better than the unionized public schools, and that is a very low bar. My contention is that whatever reforms you may wish to implement will be blocked by the facts of unionization and tenure. You want better teachers? Then you have to fire the tenured incompetents and the union defenders of tenured incompetence. You want to flunk out kids who fail to perform? Then you have to get rid of a union system which has set school budgets based upon butts in chairs. You see?
Once again I believe we are on the same page with the exception of public unions. I want the ability to hire, fire and pay teachers like every other business–unlike the rubber rooms nationwide.
Americans have brought a great deal of this on themselves but the only way to correct it is to stop digging and change the attitude of some parents that school is a baby-sitting service on the cheap. I was a latch-key kid being brought up by my mom because my dad was killed defending this country. That was no excuse for anything in my household and should not be allowed now.
once upon a time…the USA had the best education system in the world…then the federal government got involved…and its has steadily been worse every year since then…
huge paychecks for teachers does NOT improve thier performance when those performance standards are corrupt…
stop pushing liberal BS…these teachers are motivated to cheat for higher pay…they dont give a shit about the quality of the lives of thier students…education should be totally controled at the city/state and county levels…the US Constitution gave NO ENUMERATED POWER to the federal government over Education, Schools…or folks who raise rabbits…(which is another issue that liberals have created, proving the stupidity of what is going on in this nation)
So when is the GOP congress which controls the purse strings going to defund NCLB, a signature piece of government overreach into education by GOP president Bush?
Why didn’t Reagan close the Dept. of Education during his tenure as promised?
Because the GOP likes to control the lives of people just as much as the Dems.
innercity demographics, busing, unions = ruination of Americas schools.
see why i call you a mental midget bardstooge…its not a political issue…its about professional conduct and federal interferrence…when you get your head out of your BEEEHIND….come back…then i will weigh the stupidity that comes out of your head…till then its nothing but bullshxt…
js
and baldork is supposedly a “teacher” at a jr college.
Maybe he went to the bwany fwank school of hairdressing and teaching with catspuke.
js
obviously the moderator is not moderating this thread
I’ll give you the juco lesson. 1. You say that the federal government shouldn’t be involved in public schools and that’s a liberal deal. 2. The GOP has no problem sticking federal $ into public schools.
The US NEVER had the best education system in the world. That’s the kind of treacle old geezers like to pull out when they want to run down the current situation.
The teachers DO care about the students quality of life. They are often not competent to change those lives. More talking points bs from the short bus crowd.
@Neo
The basket weaving and pole sitting classes are now closed. Here in the academia we don’t discriminate against people either. LOL
http://www.dailylobo.com/index.php/article/2011/08/democrats_cater_to_college_students
baldork
I was soooo looking foreword to having you as my pole sitting – basket weaving “teacher”. maybe you can get me in next semesters “class”
Maybe we should replace No Child Left Behind with Lots Of Teachers Left Behind and start testing teachers instead of students Can’t spell or punctuate, don’t know grammar, couldn’t identify a metaphor or synonym in a lineup? Get another job. Think Columbus was a racist villain and we deserved to be attacked by Japan? Get another job. Think a constitutional originalist believes that we should have slavery and woman can’t vote? Get another job. Don’t want to teach American History in depth and accurately? Get another job. Think there is actual proof that CO2 creates global warming? Get another job. Think your job is to indoctrinate instead of teach? Get another job. When we promote students for self esteem and beyond their real knowledge skills we don’t just get athletes who can’t read, we get teachers who can’t spell or have only very basic math skills and then we have the ignorant in charge of educating our young. It all comes back to the teachers. So let’s start testing them and making them qualify and paying the best teachers more which would not be allowed by unions.
I agree and the Luckees of the world will step in and fill the void.
I know for a fact that I can teach about 3/4 of the K-12 curriculum better than the teachers in my local schools can because I have had to teach it to make up for the stupidity ignorance and political indoctrination my kids have been exposed to. My math and science skills would not qualify me to teach those classes as far as I would like but I have spent enough time in study groups in my home working with my children and their friends to know without a shadow of a doubt that I can and do teach many things a lot better than they are taught in my kid’s schools. I also teach my children how to think, how to sort through things and figure things out. As a matter of fact when I started to blog here my daughters were interested and they were very good at picking out the talking points and tactics of the left leaning bloggers. You guys are not as clever as you think you are. By the way one of my daughters, just from reading your posts, thinks you are a smarmy fake. She really said you sound just like a neighbor but since she has said he is a smarmy fake who is very impressed with himself I know what she meant.
Luckee
I assume I sound like a neighbor that disagrees with her parents.
I’ll take another wild guess and say your teenage daughters know only one language, are in algebra or a watered down geometry course, have never read a piece by Walt Whitman, can’t name a single church father, have at most a passing acquaintance with musicianship and so on and so on. They have the opposite of a liberal arts education.
When her Asian friends go off to better colleges in 4-5 years she will wonder what happened. You can tell her the Asian kids are smarmy.
You can assume all you want to. What a juvenile answer. The neighbor in question may or may not disagree with his parents but as he is in his 50’s it is probably not very relevant. We refer to him as “Cliff” because he reminds us of the pompous know it all on Cheers, always telling people how smart he is and ready to tell us how and why everyone else is wrong about everything. He is also very fussy and prissy as well as very very full of himself. As for what my daughters do or do not know it seems you are projecting what you expect their teachers union teachers and public schools to be teaching them so you are making my argument for me. I understand you like to leap to very wild conclusions about people based on absolutely nothing but the voices in your head and this seems to be one of those times.
Mark,
Truth is you don’t want to get rid of incompetent teachers. You want to get rid of any teachers who don’t share your political philosophy (which I know in your mind is the same thing). You hate unions because they generally support Democrats. It doesn’t matter that many of the countries that rank above us in education have a greater percentage of union members than we do.
Casper you must work very very hard to make such stupid statements. Do you really believe what you post here? How would anyone know what political philosophy any teacher has if it never gets into the classroom? Do you think Mark would want a secret police force to follow people around and see how they vote and what signs they put in their yards? People here have said they hope you do not teach your liberal leftwing views to your students as fact and I think that is a legitimate concern but if you do not bring your personal politics into the classroom then it should be only how well you teach whatever it is you teach. It is very dishonest to invent something and then say it is the truth.
Why do you pretend that an objection to unions is hate? This is just another very very stupid and dishonest comment. What it really tells me is that your own positions are based on emotions, probably negative emotions, so you assume everyone else’s are too. Too bad for you you are so wrong. You need to realize that when you keep making these stupid statements you are just showing us how shallow and petty you are. Is it really so impossible for you to understand that anyone could have an objective intellectual reason for thinking unions are not good for the country? Isn’t it because your reasons are not objective or intellectual? And what does union membership in other countries have to do with us? I am beginning to think you can’t be a very good teacher because you sound very stupid and very biased and very emotional and very convinced that your own view of the world is right when every time you explain it or hint at it you prove it is not.
Casper,
I am not against unions in general–just against public unions and if you do not understand why by now it will do me little good to explain.
Casper,
Whatever unions might have been in the beginning, they are now no more than defenders of a corrupt Ruling Class in both the public and private sector. Walkers reforms in Wisconsin prove it – his reforms provided more money for education and yet the public sector unions – led by teachers unions – led the charge against the reforms. To oppose what Walker and the GOP did in Wisconsin requires either rank ignorance or a determination to protect the corrupt and incompetent.
The unions have to go – especially the public sector unions. We can’t implement real reforms until the unions are taken out of the loop.
This blog is not intended as a depository for nothing but insults and personal attacks. Contribute or go away. //Moderator
This blog is not intended as a depository for nothing but insults and personal attacks. Contribute or go away. //Moderator
Mark,
Casper,
“Whatever unions might have been in the beginning, they are now no more than defenders of a corrupt Ruling Class in both the public and private sector”
And your proof of this is? Oh wait, you don’t have any. Personally, I believe that you are owned by the Koch Brothers, the real Ruling Class.
“Walkers reforms in Wisconsin prove it – his reforms provided more money for education and yet the public sector unions – led by teachers unions – led the charge against the reforms.”
Actually, his “reforms” were more along the idea of taking away union rights and pension funds and giving more money to his rich masters than anything else.
“To oppose what Walker and the GOP did in Wisconsin requires either rank ignorance or a determination to protect the corrupt and incompetent.”
In reality, it requires people to oppose someone trying to take away their rights and freedoms.
“The unions have to go – especially the public sector unions. We can’t implement real reforms until the unions are taken out of the loop.”
Of course you want to get rid of unions. They are the only ones fighting for the middle class.
Casper,
I am of the middle class – just a workaday, 40 hour a week cog in a corporate machine. The Mrs, on the other hand, words at a unionized corporate machine. Want to know the difference? She gets to pay union dues plus have a union rep in the room if she’s ever about to get fired. Won’t stop the corporation from firing her, of course…but she’ll at least have the union rep there. The corporations aren’t on my side; the unions aren’t on my side; the government isn’t on my side…don’t speak to me of someone fighting for me when I can see them, with my own two eyes, in the ranks of those fighting against me (as an aside, the fact that the Mrs is a union member makes us a union household…and both of us will be voting against Obama next year).
You can trace it, Casper…when did wages start to stagnate, government start to bloat, education start to be destroyed, filth start to pollute our society? Right when Big Government allowed the creation of Big Government Unions to make a three-way partnership with Big Corporation. It is a Ruling Class which is destroying our nation…and unions are part of the Ruling Class. They have to go along with Big Government and Big Corporation, period.
Mark
You can trace the stagnation of wages to the DECLINE in manufacturing union strength. To free trade agreements with slave labor countries. To allowing corporations to move profits around the globe to avoid taxes. To turn a blind eye to immigration if it drives labor costs down.
The past is the past but there is no real desire from the GOP to see an increase in the wages. Where are the comments about allowing foreign long haul truckers on US highways?
The big problem for the GOP is that with all the regulations the job creators can’t make enough to risk investing in American workers. So we need to pollute like China, make the workplace as hazardous as India … with the HOPE the job creators will use some of their profits to hire.
This blog is not intended as a depository for nothing but insults and personal attacks. Contribute or go away. //Moderator
I really hate to chime in here but I seriously doubt Bardolf has spent any time in India with all of the regulations imposed on every enterprise. In more than one case, I needed to move computer hardware from one building to another which also happened to be across the street but in a different province. Talk about tons of paperwork and other BS–it makes “greasing the palms” of our inspectors look like a cake-walk.
Pollution, illegals and dangerous are just cute little fuzzy bullshit when the left cannot find a real solution. They are all issues that can be resolved quite easily and quickly as soon as we the people actually hold our governments accountable.
Even though I am not against private unions (just public ones) — please explain to me why union members in Indiana and Wisconsin have left the savior of the middle class at a rate of 90% ???
Unions are just large corporations, they have their own ivory towers, corporate jets, CEO’s and screw the little guy every chance they get.
Been there done that.
Today they are marxist tools and use useful idiot drones like catspuke to do their bidding.
The Bhopal disaster also known as Bhopal Gas Tragedy was one of the world’s worst industrial catastrophes. It occurred on the night of December 2–3, 1984 at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. A leak of methyl isocyanate gas and other chemicals from the plant resulted in the exposure of hundreds of thousands of people. Estimates vary on the death toll. The official immediate death toll was 2,259 and the government of Madhya Pradesh has confirmed a total of 3,787 deaths related to the gas release.
More cute fuzzy Bullshit.
Bardolf,
Sorry if you misunderstood my response but regulation overload here is a major problem. There can be middle ground where we don’t pollute or make the workplace hazardous while still allowing a competitive environment for people to risk their money in business ventures.
People are people and no matter how much legislation or regulation there will always be those that try to cut corners. Fewer laws with real teeth is the answer not more and more endless regulations.
casper, will you please describe what “rights and freedoms” Walker and/or the GOP have tried to take away from anyone. The fretting about losing some “freedoms” caught my attention—you seem pretty sure that some big meanie at least TRIED to take away some “freedoms”. Are you referring to the “freedom” to have other people pay their pension costs?
You refer to “union rights”. Perhaps you can expound on that a little, and tell us what “union rights” are, and how they became “rights”, and how they were “taken away”. Then we would probably all like to hear what pension funds were “taken away”. I know I would. Do you mean that a source of pension funding was shifted from the general public to those who will actually receive the pensions? Is that what you are whining about? About actually asking teachers to contribute to their own pension funds? Maybe you could tell us what is wrong with that and why it has you so fretful.
I know how hard you have tried to duck and dodge any effort to get you to admit to any actual political philosophy, but you manage to tell us where you stand every time you go off on one of these ridiculous rants. You can’t possibly believe that your Leftist feelings —-because they are far too vague and undefined to actually be considered ‘thoughts’—-do not show up in your classroom. You cannot possibly believe that your students have no idea where you stand.
I know they do because this is how I learned who you are and where you teach. A casual conversation with an employee of a business in Casper, which drifted to politics and my comment that I participate in a blog where a Casper teacher is always carrying on about one Leftist talking point or another, spurred questions from her about specific comments, till she said “I know that guy! My kids went to his school! I was always having to tell them that Mr. X was full of you-know-what and having to correct what he told them.” You are known to parents as a Left-wing advocate of Left-wing propaganda.
And you know it, too, because when I asked if your school board knows what you teach about the Constitution and the Founding Fathers you got very defensive and accused me, repeatedly, of “trying to get you fired”. That was a lie, but it definitely showed that you don’t want your bosses to know what spin you put on what you teach.
poor dennis
do you still have your hippy beard dennis? (catspuke)?
vee knoooo whooo you arrrrrrr
neo, casper does not have a beard, though he does have an extra chin or two. “Country WESTERN? Why would we want to do country western?”
Actually, on video casper seems like a nice enough guy. It’s only when he gets onto the computer where he can really say what he thinks that his Inner Lefty shows through and his lack of critical thinking becomes so obvious.
This blog is not intended as a depository for nothing but insults and personal attacks. Contribute or go away. //Moderator
Are you always so stalkerish, Amazona, or does casper particularly grab your fancy to make you stalk him?
“Truth is you don’t want to get rid of incompetent teachers. You want to get rid of any teachers who don’t share your political philosophy (which I know in your mind is the same thing).”
Exactly. Mark thinks doing anything other than teaching counterfactual conservative talking points as “fact” amounts to “liberal indoctrination.” It’s sad how much damage he would do to America’s youth in service to his ideology.
government has to rethink for their policy so that education run smoothly.
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