Just yesterday in the Hempstead SD on Long Island there was a teacher protest because earlier this week a middle school teacher was physically assaulted and knocked out cold by a teenager and a family member, not sure whether mother or aunt. So many teachers care, so many teachers go above and beyond what is expected and required and yet many risk their own health and well-being every day.
There was a young man arrested last year in NY for a particularly violent assault on a fellow student and the teachers who had taught this young man were interviewed or perhaps sent letters to the NY Times (cannot recall exactly) about all the interventions the student and his entire family had been part of since kindergarten, IEP’s, one on one counseling, inclusion programs, pull-out programs, push-in programs, social workers in-school and home visits, nutrition and parenting counseling and so on… the best special ed counseling and instruction that the NYC DOE could offer…
Younger d is teaching yoga in an after-school enrichment program at a charter school in Brooklyn that is considered highly desirable. So first semester there was an evening event/performance in which all the enrichment classes got to either perform or show off their work. While there were many proud families with flowers and taking pictures, we all know that there were children and these are middle school students in which not one human being in that student’s life could come to take part or cared to do so. She said it was heartbreaking to see. Second semester she was with 5th graders (all girls) and because their daily school day is so regimented and they get demerits for numerous infractions- crossing the line while walking, untied shoelaces and so on, they were absolutely wild in after-school and could not function as a group at all. The building administrators are so harried themselves by this time of day, they are practically non-functional.
No matter how committed a teacher, no matter what resources there are in the school or lack of, these kids come to school with so many problems from their daily lives, it is difficult to overcome. For a young inexperienced teacher, it is easy to burn out.
How do you know? I don’t think you went to school here, did you? Would you care to elaborate further?
Well, gosh, I don’t know. What is the average salary PLUS BENEFITS for a college graduate in Milwaukee? What is the average salary plus benefits for a person with a Master’s Degree plus, say, 15 years on the job in Milwaukee? What is the average seniority of teachers in Milwaukee, and how many have advanced degrees?
Frankly, I don’t care enough to look it up. But I question your stats.
This is fascinating to me, because I have a great-niece in the G&T program in what seems to be the second-best public elementary school in the Bronx/Riverdale, and they live in a less ritzy part of Riverdale. They are culturally upper-middle class at least, have comparatively wealthy families, and she is the only white girl in her class, apparently. (She was waitlisted at Fieldston. Made the huge mistake of doing stuff with her parents, both of whom are in the arts and have unconventional schedules that meant care wasn’t required, rather than signing her up for Fieldston pre-k.) The idea that this is “the hood” is pretty ridiculous, but I don’t think the public elementary school population mirrors the Riverdale SES.
@4thfloor, be aware that that advantageous financial situation does NOT apply to teachers in most parts of the country.
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xiggi wrote: One local foundation suggested that the average cost to the community in Milwaukee exceeded 100,000 per teacher. Despite challenges from the streetwalkers and organized factions, the data was correct as it was culled directly from the MIPS presentations. Simply stated, the average salary plus benefits exceeded $100,000 per year. Guess what the average salary is in Milwaukee!
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Well, gosh, I don’t know. What is the average salary PLUS BENEFITS for a college graduate in Milwaukee? What is the average salary plus benefits for a person with a Master’s Degree plus, say, 15 years on the job in Milwaukee? What is the average seniority of teachers in Milwaukee, and how many have advanced degrees?
Frankly, I don’t care enough to look it up. But I question your stats.<<<
What part of my stats do you question? I am not used to misquote facts but anyone might make an error. Did I spell 100,000 incorrectly because the number is surely accurate. Or was accurate before courageous leaders brought an end to the follies of extorted CBA that added as much as 74 % of the salaries in the form of benefits, or about three times what private sector workers received.
I’m sorry, I was unclear.
I don’t question the salary plus benefits you quoted, I just don’t think that it is relevant to compare it to the “average” salary in the city as if the two were necessary equivalent populations. A I said,
The comparison as you stated it is pretty much meaningless, IMHO. About as relevant as comparing the average police compensation to that of the average HS graduate in Milwaukee.
@MiamiDAP wrote: “First, schools in the USA used to be good. One option is to go back to the very old academic program, very very old”
Yeah! Let’s go back to the way we taught school a century ago, back when nobody dropped out, no children were ignored by the system, and we had 100% literacy rates!
Seriously, I question the statement that K–12 education in the US “used to be good”. Please provide evidence—and non-anecdotal evidence, please.
I do not think that the evidence goes much beyond the romantic and nostalgic view of what school used to be. The visions of bringing a red apple to Mrs. AlwaysgivesanA and kids walking or riding a bus to school is the image. That an the sandlot summers in the bucolic suburbia Shangri-Las with cars that one only see in La Havana nowadays.
Perhaps we could assume that the schools were good. The rich and connected surely got an education that appeared more rigorous in the early 20th century, but the reality of a segregated community before the MLK days surely challenge the idea that schools used to be good.
Setting all that aside, the real issue is that the US, despite spending more than about every nation of earth on a per capita basis (nor a GDP percentage) has not stopped the descent in relative mediocrity. We are going the opposite direction from the rest of the industrialized world. If we maintain a lead in tertiary education, that is often a proxy for having very rich private universities and colleges and a dedication to funding research with public and private funds.
And the biggest issue remains the long term survival of the current model that marries a free K-12 (or purportedly free) with a tertiary education that saddles families with ever growing debt. In both cases, the education world is one that has been spending freely and without much restraining forces based on the belief we can always borrow ourselves out of reality.
It does not matter if the education used to be better; what matters is how we climb out of this planned mediocrity where the lesser talented is tasked to educate the next generations and where doing the least for the biggest rewards is the motto.
I’m mostly with you on this, @xiggi, but I question one of your underlying assumptions, where you say that the US “has not stopped the descent in relative mediocrity” in education [emphasis added]. With regard to primary and secondary education, has the US ever really led? (Also, perhaps more importantly, how would one define that, precisely?)
DFB, I agree on every count. I am not sure that the US ever lead, but the assumptions is that most Americans would truly believe it ever did, let alone believing it still does at the K-12 level.
Fwiw, I included the word relative to qualify the mediocrity as it refers to the comparisons with the ROW that, I believe, is still progressing and not stagnating.