<p>I would like to know where anyone got a scholarship with below 3.0 cobrat. As most colleges require a least a 3.0 for admission to graduate programs in education, as do undergraduate ecucation programs. And I am sure you know that in our state one must major in a content area and meet all of its requirements in order to be admitted to education classes for adolescent education There have been major changes in the last two years, not to mention in the decade or so between the present and your high school graduation.</p>
<p>I guess what I am saying is that this is yet another anecdote I believe you are making up out of whole cloth. Most teachers are competent, educated professionals. If they were illiterate and inarticulate, they wouldn’t be leaving to do other things. As usual, your information is either out of date or fabricated because your little tale doesn’t factor in the impact of TFA or other such programs or the financial meltdown.</p>
<p>Teaching jobs have become so hard to get that only people with excellent resumes get to the first interview round. Which is often the first of three, with panel interviews and demo lessons being expected. People who can’t speak and don’t know their stuff do not make it through this process.</p>
<p>Zoosermom is correct. There is precious little funding for masters students in education. This goes to the very TOP candidates, not those with less than a 3.0 undergrad GPA.</p>
<p>Also, many teachers work full time and take courses in the evenings. Colleges do not award scholarships for folks taking one or two courses at a time.</p>
<p>There are some advanced degrees with fellowship funding, but they are highly competitive. E.g. Teachers College program in literacy has some funding but it is very competitive to get accepted, and to get that funding.</p>
<p>Some school districts used to offer partial reimbursement for graduate courses for their employees, but that money has largely dried up. Even 20 years ago when I did my post masters work, my reimbursement from my district was well less than 25% of what I paid for courses…and the money has been further reduced since that time.</p>
<p>This is first hand info…not from friends or cousins.</p>
<p>From what I understand, in Ohio, the retirement money for teachers is going to change in 2015. This means many teachers with enough time in plan to retire. I know that’s the case in our school and other schools in our area. I imagine it will be all over Ohio. You have a good shot to get in on the hiring at that time if you have the qualifications.</p>
<p>That said, I see what others have mentioned. If you want to get hired at ABC school, you try to do your observations, student teaching and subbing there while trying to get on full time. AND it is very political, very ‘who you know’ and that can change with the wind depending on who’s coming and going in the administration. If you’re married, and your spouse has some kind of job that the school can benefit from through the spouse’s connections, they’ll consider you over Joe-Shmoe (or Josie Shmosie) who doesn’t have any additional pull or clout.</p>
<p>I also see men in administration hire young, attractive women over older women and ones who are less attractive. Yeah.</p>
<p>Also, the teachers in our area pay nothing for their health care. Nothing. No weekly contribution, no co-pays, no deductibles. That has to be considered when taking into account what the job has to offer.</p>
<p>Also, while some people may be happy with a job that doesn’t pay much when they’re younger, as they hit middle age and have kids of their own, they sometimes wish they’d have made more money starting when they were younger.</p>
<p>Subbing in our school district is more likely a kiss of death than a foot in the door. Even subs who have been given multiple long-term assignments for teachers out on maternity leave or extended illness have been overlooked (not even an interview) when applying for full time openings. YMMV</p>
<p>Agreed. Our district did not give preferential treatment to folks who student taught at the school, or subbed at the school, or worked as paras or tutors at the school. Those folks were out in the applicant pool and had to interview (if chosen to do so) just like all the others applying. In the vast majority of cases, we did not hire former student teachers or subs. It happened occasionally, but not very often. As noted YMMV.</p>
<p>And speaking of YMMV, the VAST majority of teachers pay both a cost share for health insurance premiums AND copays for services rendered and RX coverage. And that includes MOST school districts in Ohio.</p>
<p>It is not always possible to tell a child how much you are willing to pay long before college because one doesn’t always know how much money will be available at that future date - there can be too many unknown variables.</p>
<p>Also, not every kid knows what his or her major is going to be, much less career at the time that one selects a college.</p>
<p>Our town actually loves outsiders.
One new principal who is getting rave reviews, attended the same private prep school with my D, and attended a private college in California.
Im sure she is great, but we also ( the district) are also snobs & like outsiders that we perceive have prestigious backgrounds rather than people who deserve to be promoted from within.
So it has been a toss up for quality in yrs past - getting better though.</p>
<p>" and also because she didn’t think her child would be any more likely to get a teaching job when graduating from a more prestigious school than from a state school."</p>
<p>Many of my high school teachers were Ivy or Little Ivy grads. From what I ave seen, some districts do not care where you went to school, but some districts (at least in the wealthy suburbs) hire almost exclusively from outstanding schools. Those districts also pay more.</p>
<p>I just read an article quoting that the suburbs have three million more people living in poverty than in the cities, so if the teachers do indeed earn more, they are probably spending it in the classroom to supplement supplies.</p>
<p>My friend’s ex was an undergrad elementary school education major at an East Coast directional college sometime between the mid-late '00s. I got to see her essays while my friend was dating her sometime in 2007-8 while she was in her last few years. Only thing I have to say is that her directional college had reasonably high academic standards considering the grades she received on those essays/course* and while they eventually did allow her to graduate, she did have to go on the 6.5 year plan. </p>
<ul>
<li>Still a bit generous considering the demonstrated writing level, especially considering she wasn’t a first-year just fresh out of high school at that point.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>As for the scholarship…it took place sometime in the mid-late '90s with someone a class or two ahead of me. </p>
<p>While that was a bit of an extreme case, I also knew other students at the same top-3 grad ed school who were admitted with similarly below 3.0 GPAs around the same era or a few years afterwards including a former post college roommate. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>While they made advertise that, they don’t always put that into practice. And it’s not limited to education schools as I know of some law school & PhD students at top 14 programs in their respective fields with below 3.0 GPAs even though their schools did advertise the “3.0 minimum requirement.”* However, they usually had exceedingly high standardized scores, outstanding accomplishments, and/or demonstrated “super-researcher” results to compensate. </p>
<p>Heck, I know of some colleges who were well-known in their local areas to admit students who didn’t fulfill their stated minimum admission requirements and place them in special remedial programs** because they were eager to get at their FA/tuition money or to placate local/regional political interests. </p>
<p>And these aren’t for-profit or even necessarily directional public colleges. Some were in fact schools in the top 200. However, once concerns over USNWR rankings became a priority, most in the top 200 and many below took measures to do away with such programs so that they were no longer in existence by the early '00s. </p>
<ul>
<li>One of them is a recent Elite U Arts & Sciences PhD graduate with an academic teaching post who admitted to me over a casual dinner and some beers that he was admitted to his program despite having a below 3.0 GPA from university in his home country. Granted, he did have extenuating circumstances as he was heavily involved in a nationwide political movement which eventually brought down a harsh authoritarian regime…but which caused him to be graded harshly, harassed, beaten, and even imprisoned before the regime was brought down.<br></li>
</ul>
<p>** Some childhood friends or colleagues who attended the same schools at the time noted a tendency among such remedial students to select into elementary education as it had the easiest major admission requirements and was widely perceived on campus as “easy”. </p>
<p>Upshot of all that is that there has been a long history in academia going back at least a few decades of the field of Education…especially undergrad education majors being widely perceived as a major/field for weak and/or unmotivated students. Xiggi him/herself has made some reference to this perception in several previous threads over the years. </p>
<p>Such perceptions took a long time to form and changes within the last decade aren’t likely to do much to change them among those within the greater public or if my experience with some grad students/Profs in other academic divisions on a few elite campuses and some articles in Inside Higher Ed/Chronicle are any indication…even within academia itself.</p>
<p>I live in a town of about 5,000 and the majority of the teachers who work in the city’s school district were born and raised in this town.</p>
<p>There is a larger neighboring school district that is in dire financial straits because they cannot get a levy to pass. The voting public won’t pass it mainly because their teachers also don’t pay one cent in to their medical insurance. Tax payers believe the district could save money by making changes to the teachers’ insurance and they’re not going to have their property taxes raised when many home owners have to pay for their own medical insurance.</p>
<p>Also, in our district, the administration hires relatives and friends and if you know someone on the board of ed, or someone powerful in town or the county, it helps if you want in a job. The super has hired employees from the previous two districts he worked at. Oh, not saying I like it one bit, but not much can be done about it.</p>
<p>I erroneously figured it was like that everywhere, but I guess not. Interesting.</p>
<p>Last year my town had a population of 634,535.
It is actually a little larger than what is normally considered a town, even though it can feel like one.</p>
<p>emerald, in a town like that, how many public school districtsdoes it have? What kind of student population do the schools have? What size graduating class would a school have? Just curious. The closest large city to us is Pittsburgh, PA, about an hour away. When you say it feels like a town, do mean that it seems a close knit place to live?</p>
However, the other half of my statement was that if you are able to get a job as an “outsider” then you have to be able to support yourself in that area on the first year salary. Which can be a very tough thing to do in any event, but almost impossible if you have significant debt.</p>
Miller, I live in NYC and I assumed it was very similar elsewhere. Connections are king here because there has been an official hiring freeze for several years now, with no end in sight. The sub list has mostly been closed for years, too, and subbing can be a very good choice because permanent subs work every day making good money and do receive some protections.</p>
<p>Cobrat, anything that happened to your “friend” a decade ago is not relevant for reasons I’ve posted above, even if one actually believed the story to be true, which I do not. Your stories are simply not believeable to anyone who knows anything about any topic, and you seem unable to comprehend that your experiences are in the very distant past in a world that no longer exists.</p>
<p>Xiggi actually does know what he is talking about and doesn’t feel the need to make up tales about the things he doesn’t.</p>
<p>We have one school district, most of the high schools have 400-500 students in a graduating class.
When I saw it feels like a town, I mean that it is like a Venn diagram of people that you know & work with. While I am from this area, I am constantly meeting people from across the country who tell me they work with or live next door to people they went to high school with or dated in college.</p>
<p>Give it a break Cobrat. Now we are hearing about friends of friends…and from the 90’s. Who cares? It is 2013, almost 2014. How about posting current FIRST HAND information instead of news about friends.</p>
<p>Miller, were you also born and raised in that town? You are wrong about much of what you are writing. Please stop bashing teachers, which is how your posts are coming across. The types of benefits they have, or don’t have is not relevant to this thread. </p>
<p>And as a note, you could VERY well be incorrect about the benefits anyway. I’m a retired CT teacher and I can’t tell you how many people think I have fully paid medical benefits for the rest of my life. I NEVER had fully paid benefits here. When I retired, my benefits STOPPED unless I was willing to pay the Cobra rate to continue them. When I tell people this, they don’t believe me. </p>
<p>Anyway, back to the topic. If a student wants to pursue a career in education, that is up to the student. If they choose to go to a “stellar” school, that is also up to the student and their family. Many, many students switch majors anyway. Content area degrees have become increasingly more important, with the education course layered on top.</p>
<p>I agree that one shouldn’t take out more than Stafford & Perkins loans to be an educator, but I will also argue that if their plan is to go to medical school or to get an MBA.
Students should not take out private loans as their immediate economic future is uncertain, no matter where they attended school and despite their major.</p>
<p>My DD wants to be a High School Math Teacher. She loves Math and is good in Math. She is about to graduate…she went to SUNY Binghamton. She majored in Math and will be going to grad school for the teaching part of it.I occasionally get comments like “she is so smart and she could do anything”…well I did make sure she majored in Math and not education so she has that foundation to do anything, but if she has a goal that is reasonable and that there are jobs out there for, that is okay with me.
Binghamton is a good value for out of state students and we can afford it.</p>