<p>The “other 2/3rds” has been quoted before in many sources to cite that in this country, the teaching profession is made up from the bottom 2/3rds of university grads. The top 1/3 tends to not go into teaching - in this country.</p>
<p>In other countries, allegedly, teachers tend to come from the top 1/3 of grads.</p>
<p>Surely, there is a status issue of teaching. Not everyone can be a great teacher, many can be good teachers, just as many can be horribly, ineffective teachers. Depending upon the state, the certification to become a teacher are wildly different. The training process is also varied. </p>
<p>I am going out on a limb, but I think many who aren’t sure what they want to do decide to become teachers, not because they originally intended to do so when they started university. They like the subject matter and decide that they can share the material with others. </p>
<p>Put a lawyer, a doctor, a teacher, an engineer in a room for a dinner party. I would venture to say that most people, when the conversation comes to teaching will think that they, too, could do that job…easily. The lack of respect for the profession is definitely part of the problem that is perpetuated in this country.</p>
<p>Educating youth is a noble cause, but one that doesn’t get as much respect as it should.</p>
<p>The elephant in the room is the increasing, and I mean ever increasing, number of parents who care little about education and are not involved in the lives of their children. Throw into the mix that many of these children come from single parent homes with all sorts of turmoil, and the schools simply have a very, very difficult task. </p>
<p>The problem is manifest. We are now seeing the results of generations of sexual irresponsibility (and having children without being able to take care of them is irresponsible) and a lack of a work ethic. Teachers and schools at troubled schools have very challenging raw material to work work with. Ask a competent teacher who causes a group of kids to improve two grade levels. These same kids go back to their homes over the summer and lose most of the progress they obtained. I have talked to many just in this situation. And this fact is difficult to talk about because so many children afflicted with low levels of achievement are black or hispanic, two demographic groups which really suffer in terms of achievement. In any event, very few of us professionals in other fields would be able to put up with this kind of frustration. </p>
<p>By and large, teachers are competent or better. Administrators, well, they seem adept at getting more money out of the system, guided by a false shibboleth that money would solve problems. We are finding out more money doesn’t always solve problems - although money spent wisely is helpful. The elephant in the room again is the culture of the homes from which challenging kids spring. I consistently wonder why the experience of the Kansas City Schools - where billions and billions were spent via court order to improve school performance - with the result that the academic results became worse, is not cited more often. </p>
<p>I think there is a lot of unsubstantiated negativity thrown at teachers. Talented people get burned out working with difficult students - and it is folly to labor under an illusion that teachers can routinely perform miracles. Don’t get me wrong, good teachers make a difference, but really, the problem is demographic in nature. This film doesn’t address this key driver. Charter schools are an unfortunate interim necessity because poor or lower middle class students with ambition must turn to them to be decently educated. </p>
<p>Rather than making a broad and sweeping generalization about unions, one criticism is very valid. Unions make it unduly difficult to fire truly bad teachers. And yes, we can listen to the bromides about how teachers deserve representation, and how administrations don’t do their jobs. But the impact that a terrible teacher can have on students is significant, and the unions are frankly acting against their interest in supporting these kinds of employees. It undermines their credibility tremendously.</p>
<p>One can usually tell if a teacher is truly bad within the first year or two. Then it’s pretty easy to let go. But all too often you have Johnny’s mom demand that his third grade teacher be fired for discilpining him in class.
If you were a public school teacher, and held this as your professional career; you would probably appreciate represenatation as well.</p>
<p>Thanks, mama1959, for bringing up the lack of parental involvement. I think its incredible that no one really mentioned the elephant in the room until page 7! Really teachers unions? Bad teachers? The curriculum? Of course these are all factors in the failure of some public schools, but why hasnt there been as much attention paid to the home environments of these kids and the lack of commitment by their parents?! The best teachers in the world with the best curricula at their disposal are still no match for parents who do not value academic success and who do not promote education at home. </p>
<p>I am currently attending college part-time to get my teaching certification to teach high school science. So far, the biggest surprise to me has been the very high level of achievement and dedication of my fellow classmates. (I guess Ive subconsciously been buying into the teachers arent that smart myth.) And according to my adolescent psychology class last semester, the best predictors of student success are still the relationship between child and parent and the parents beliefs about education.</p>
<p>Scout–good for you! I wish you all the best in your endeavor. As I’ve written here before, my H, a former physician, went to a post-bac ed program and now teaches HS biology. I think he’s fairly bright–he graduated from a very good undergrad school with a high GPA and an Honors degree in Bio and Philosophy and graduated in the top ten percent of his medical school class. One of his fellow science teachers at our local (Title One) HS has a Ph.D in microbiology. They both work hard at being good teachers, and I think they make a difference. As do many of their fellow teachers.</p>
<p>But, as you say, you can’t change the lives the students go back to every day; you can’t make parents be involved if they don’t want to be (or stop being too involved, as in threatening to sue over anything that makes little Johnny’s life difficult, like an IEP, for instance.) A teacher can’t fix the poverty that makes the most well-meaning parent in the world not be as involved as they’d wish.</p>
<p>The problem I have with charters is that they are a way to avoid fixing the societal issues. Cherry pick out a few kids with involved parents, call that a success, and leave the rest behind. Despite all claims to the contrary, it is cherry picking, because the families self-select. And because the schools nudge out those who don’t conform, back to the public school. Just because a student may not have involved or available parents to do so, doesn’t mean education is not important to/for that student.</p>
<p>Within the classroom, the main drawback is often the one or two troublemakers, the kids who keep everyone else from learning, who drain the energy of the teacher and slow down learning. How about a plan which separated out those with serious issues, and let everyone else learn, rather than picking out a few to put on lifeboats (which are sometimes leaky ones, btw–charter schools on average don’t do any better than their equivalents). Outside of school, the enemies are poverty, crime, health issues, family problems, etc. We can choose to address these, or we can continue to jump on the next trend-of-the-year, which right now is charters.</p>
<p>I actually think the next trend isn’t charters – for better or worse they are here to stay – but with teacher union bashing. </p>
<p>Unions aren’t perfect. Unions need to change with the times. But am I really the only one who connects the decline of America’s middle class to the decline in unions? In this society unions are THE ONLY entity trying to protect workers. Look what happened, without them, in corporate America: workers are paid poorly – management makes MILLIONS. Per year. With bonuses. My dad is a retired VP from a legendary American company. Had a private elevator that took him to his offices. The difference between his salary, and a middle managers was something like ten-fold. Today, that difference is maybe thousand-time-fold. </p>
<p>I’m sorry, but I want qualified, passionate professionals in my kids’ schools. And getting rid of the union that guarantees these qualified passionate professionals get paid a LIVING WAGE only ensures that talented individuals will be permanently scared away from teaching.</p>
<p>yea, right xiggi: the education system is dysfunctional and needed of an overhaul ONLY BECAUSE OF UNIONS</p>
<p>Inequality in funding, faddish curriculum, under-parented children and bloated administrative budgets ARE ALL THE FAULT OF THE TEACHER’S UNION. </p>
<p>Bust that and we’ll all experience educational nirvana.</p>
<p>Unions protect teachers in many ways -
they allow for a collective bargaining contract and protect their wages and livlihood from fickle taxpayers. You know, those who want to pay one year but not the next.</p>
<p>these contracts not only assure teachers of a wage with which to pay their mortgage, but prevent them from being fired when your neighbor-with-a-grudge gets elected to the school board.</p>
<p>they protect teachers from parents and students who wrongly accuse them by providing them with legal representation. Most teachers I know can’t afford a high priced attorney.</p>
<p>xiggi - how do you equate your disdain for teacher’s salaries with comments on here by others that claim teachers come from the lowest denominator of college grads.<br>
If you want a professional to teach your children then treat them like a professional.</p>
<p>I work in a school, and I have zero respect for our Teachers Union. Z.E.R.O. They are clearly more interested in making sure NO ONE can get any benefit that everyone else doesn’t get and that everything is “fair.” Their definition of fair is completely based on seniority. I cannot stand the attitude that “simply because I have been breathing the air in this building longer than you have, that I should have first dibs on any plum assignments and be more protected against layoffs.” We have laid off some fabulous teachers in the past 3 years, while some who would be fired if they were this disorganized and lackadaisical in private industry linger on, taking up space and wasting kids’ time until they retire. (My D had one of these for English, she was absent about 1/4 of the time, didn’t have lesson plans, handed out assignments she didn’t collect, and didn’t return assignments she DID collect. Total waste of a year - and everyone knows this teacher is like this. She’s been this way for years). OTOH we have some terrific teachers who work very long hours and demand only the best from the kids and from themselves. They go out of their way to help kids - one even took in a foster kid who was about to be moved to another town so she wouldn’t have to attend her 4th high school in 4 years. Yet there is no pay differential, no job security benefit to these great teachers over the crappy or mediocre ones - it’s 100% seniority based.</p>
<p>Two years ago, the administrators agreed to take a pay freeze to save teacher jobs. The cafeteria workers (lowest paid workers in the district), custodians, and secretaries all voted immediately to also take a freeze in order to save teacher jobs. Who didn’t want to take a freeze to save teacher positions? That’s right, the Teachers’ Union. Their president claimed teachers were different than everyone else, that they were somehow special and it would impact their pensions if they took a pay freeze (like it wouldn’t impact everyone else’s???) After dragging his feet for MONTHS, they finally voted and passed it - then expected big congratulations and pats on the back for their “sacrifice.” Meanwhile, all the grandstanding left a sour taste in everyone else’s mouth, including the voters, who refused to pass a budget increase the next year to save teacher jobs. Good job, Union.</p>
<p>Try to do anything creative to help kids, or save money by rescheduling, and we run smack into the wall of the Teachers Union. They tried to de-rail a scheduling change in our high school that allowed us to lower average class size from 30 kids to the low 20’s. </p>
<p>Step One to reforming our schools - either get rid of the Teachers’ Union, or convince them to scrap the Seniority-is-the-be-all-and-end-all and Tenure systems.</p>
<p>Does this reply have something to do with what wrote? </p>
<p>My question was "Is it because of the “decrease” in teachers’ welfare that many consider our education system to be dysfunctional and need of an overhaul? "</p>
<p>At least it would give the truly good teachers a chance for recognition and reward ($$$) and the crappy ones could get fired or at least believe the warnings that they need to shape up. And I honestly do not think it would lower salaries - we are still competing with the same other districts and their payscales to hire good teachers. In some cases, I think we could offer truly exceptional teachers who have specific skills/knowledge MORE money than we can under the Union guidelines. (example - our district wanted to add Chinese as an offering at the high school. We couldn’t find anyone qualified to teach it except people already teaching it at colleges for more money. If we could have offered to match the college’s salary we could have hired someone - but that was outside of the union’s negotiated payscale. And heaven forbid the union allow us to do something extra for someone with a needed skill.)</p>
<p>I am afraid you’re confusing my positions of teachers’ remuneration with someone else’s, or not really knowing my positions on the roles and recognition of teachers.</p>
<p>Lafalum, I sure hope you’re right. I worked for years in television news, where unions used to play a big role. In many places that’s long gone. The result: producers are called the new 20/20: you hire twenty year olds, you pay them twenty thousand dollars a year, and you work them twenty hours a day. In non-unionized stations, it’s a revolving door because once you get past the age of, say, 28 you just want to be treated well. So if you think that ambitious, smart, well educated people will want to teach without decent pay or benefits instead of going into professions where they will have more of both – you’re less cynical and far more optimistic than I am.</p>
<p>BTW: that is a beef I have with many charters, even the outstanding, nationally renown (non-union)charter my son attends: the teachers are young idealistic and cheap. And every year brings a new batch of them to replace the exhausted batch that quit due to burn out the year before. This does not bode well for the entire FIELD. If American teachers aren’t exactly respected today, just wait how well you’ll respect the ones who willingly enter the revolving door in the non-unionized future. They will have all the respect we accord to part-time seasonal retail help. Cheap, disposable labor. Yea, that’s what I want in my education system.</p>
<p>I don’t think they’d be “cheap, disposable labor.” I do think we’d have less problems with the few who know they pretty much would have to assault a student - in front of witnesses - in order to be fired, and are “retired in place” for the next 10 years. If they knew they could be fired - or at even disciplined - for poor performance, they might be motivated to upgrade their work efforts. As it is, the administration has very few options for dealing with bad teachers with tenure, and the teachers know it. </p>
<p>We had an elementary teacher who was notoriously awful - a poor teacher, boring assignments, and absolutely cruel to students. Kids in her class would complain of stomach aches every Sunday night, and come home in tears. New students were always put into her class, because their parents didn’t know enough to complain and get their kids moved until it was “too late.” The other teachers even hated her. Nothing was done for YEARS… until a new principal came in, AND the teacher called a student a f*<em>king *</em>*hole when a parent was in the room. The parent reported it and the teacher was suspended - with pay, of course. After 3 months the School Board decided that under the terms of the contract the teacher had to be rehired. The Principal said, “She goes or I go.” They ended up paying big bucks to buy the teacher out. Why? Because she was on the negotiating board of the Union. That teacher had been terrorizing students and sending them on to middle school woefully underprepared for at least 10 years.</p>
<p>OTOH, I know many absolutely wonderful teachers who put in countless unpaid hours. They get paid the exact same as the crappy teachers. Many of them don’t get any rewards - like picking which school they will work in, or teaching honors classes - because someone with “seniority” is ahead of them.</p>
<p>Until the Unions begin to recognize the value of merit, they are more of a hindrance than a help to education.</p>
<p>Again – if that’s what you believe, Fine.
I will stick to what I’ve seen in other fields where workers lost union representation… and what I see today in charters where there is no union.</p>
<p>BTW, you DO know that the main teachers union endorses pay-for-performance, right?</p>