<p>True. I apologize then.</p>
<p>“Honestly too many people tout free markets and democracy too highly.”
I suspect that very few people in nondemocratic countries think you can tout democracy too highly. </p>
<p>And, again, who should determine “the value people add to society?”, especially now that you say you believe democracy is overrated? You rightly praise healers, but how will you determine which healers should be paid what–to keep it simple, just give us your formula for determining how much to pay the nurse; the doctor; the orderly; the researcher who discovered the medecine; and the people who manufacture it.</p>
<p>Have you ever heard the quote “Democracy is the absolute worst form of government, except for all the others”?</p>
<p>Well it’s true. Democracy is much better than communism, monarchies, dictatorships, etc. on it’s own. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. And too many people think it is. That’s why most democracies (the US too) are actually democratic republics. In a real democracy is 51% people said “let’s take all the wealth from the other 49% of people” that would be just peachy according to pure democracy.</p>
<p>And honestly, I can’t determine specific values. I can tell you teachers deserve more than athletes and CEO’s I can’t tell you whether a cardiologist deserves more than a pediatrician.</p>
<p>Close enough. Peace. (But remember that, beside the scummy CEOs, there are the CEOs who made the decisions to fund the research that lead to the development of most of the innovations that you feel contributed to society).</p>
<p>mimk6- I am sure there are teachers hired sight unseen- they will not get tenure for 3 years and 1 day. Plenty of time to observe and remove them if they are not satisfactory.</p>
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<p>Teachers often have the same starting pay as police officers. If you are comparing the two, it should be apples to apples. I live in an affluent suburb, and the top teaching salary is nowhere near six figures. </p>
<p>But that’s all I want to say on this subject. The jobs are not comparable.</p>
<p>I have a question…for those of you who did NOT enter teaching (but do like the pay, “vacations”, etc)…why did you choose the profession you chose rather than enter teaching?</p>
<p>I was a teacher for a while after I finished my PhD, but I went into practice and worked as a psychologist for quite some time. I don’t think I value either one of the positions higher, but I was good with adolescents and there is a lack of good adolescent psychologists out there, always. I felt it was where I could do the most good. Teaching was a lot more fun, to be honest. But, the best psychologists teach (not saying I’m the best, just that there’s a lot of teaching involved in it, anyway.)</p>
<p>Great question thumper. If teachers have it so great, why dont more people go into the profession? Bottom line is, no one goes into teaching to become independently wealthy. After 10-15 years, most are comfortable, but never well-off. </p>
<p>I do have to agree with those who question the wisdom of the union pay scales, though. As someone pointed out above, the lack of performance based pay is troublesome. I gotta believe that the principal in a school knows which teachers are better/worse than the others. Sure, theres a potential for favoritism, but frankly, if a leader gives better raises to the lesser employees, it will affect their own performance over time, so they are motivated to recognize and keep the best. Which leads to another point. W is a teacher and each year she sees many of the best young teachers leaving the profession because they can do better financially in other businesses. The pay-for-performance model works in many industries, and would work in education as well. </p>
<p>One other point, anyone whos ever coached youth sports recognizes how hard it is to keep 12 kids engaged for 2 hours doing something most kids think is fun. I cant imagine needing to keep 25-30 kids engaged for 6-7 hours in a classroom.</p>
<p>pageturner, very few jobs are directly comparable. That doesn’t really have a lot to do with it. The relevant point is that teacher salaries depend on what the community will pay. There was vocal opposition, followed by voter-booth opposition, to a large increase in our school operating budget from people in professions (including other public employees) who feel–rightly or wrongly–that teachers don’t ‘deserve’ more than them.</p>
<p>Teachers will have to convince the taxpaying public that they deserve more. </p>
<p>Personally, I think some deserve more, but I think others should have been fired before my kids got stuck with them.</p>
<p>tom, sometimes teachers seem OK when they get tenure, but then they get burnt out, or bored, or tired.</p>
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<p>thumper, that’s an excellent question. I hope some of those who have posted here will reply. I would add a second one: how many of you are encouraging your college age kids to go into teaching?</p>
<p>I’ve got a D who I think would be a fantastic teacher. I tell her so all the time. Of course, I wish they had merit raises and pay for performance, personally, and I think the union hurts the really fantastic teachers, at this point, but I think she’s the type of person who would really enjoy teaching. I know I did when I was doing it.</p>
<p>Tom, there may be time to observe and get rid of a poor, untenured teacher who was hired sight unseen (although I’m certain in my kid’s high school no one is getting regularly observed), but that still means that some students had a teacher who was not up to the job during that period of time. </p>
<p>Also, sometimes there is a teacher who is okay in one subject but assigned to teach another subject because there is no one else who can do it. The teacher may be qualified for, say, math but really fall down on the job when assigned to teach AP Physics, but because there is either no funding for an AP Physics teacher or no one who is actually qualified to teach it, the kids have a substandard teaching experience. I’ve seen this kind of thing happen.</p>
<p>Pageturner, in affluent suburbs, I actually believe police officers are routinely overpaid relative to teachers and vastly overpaid relative to city policemen. In suburbs where there is no violent crime and policemen are never injured on the job, it is still common for them to earn $100,000 with overtime, all of which pads their pensions. These are jobs which often require political pull to obtain.
Thumper, my mother was a public school teacher most of her career. I chose not to follow her because I saw how her path to advancement was repeatedly blocked by tenured incompetents; her greater skill and dedication did not result in greater compensation than her peers just going through the motions because of union rules; and teachers and students were harmed by the bureaucrats above them.<br>
I was also prepared to make the personal sacrifice and take the risk of a fast track, “up or out” job in the private sector.
You mention teacher “vacations” as if they are not truly vacations. Most of us in the private sector would laugh at at and counter with private sector “weekends”. Life in the private secor for most people with non-clerical type jobs now involves 70 hour weeks in the office; lugging a Blackberry and cell phone around everywhere so you can be instantly available 24/7 and spending more time in your home office than your backyard.<br>
Just before reading your email, I saw the front page of the NY Times, with the story: “Still on the job, but making half as much”, which is about the people who are NOT among the millions of private sector people who have been laid off, almost none of whom receive teacher-level pensions and post-retirement benefits.
In short, Thumper, let’s turn your question around: how many teachers on this forum–all of whom I respect and value–have wanted to move into the private sector in the past 2 years?</p>
<p>Plenty of time to observe and remove them if they are not satisfactory.</p>
<p>What an interesting idea that has little basis in reality, or at least what I have observed in an urban district.
Many schools have teachers that may be in a building for ten or fifteen years but the principals are in the building, one, two maybe three years before they are transferred to another building. ( to one that is under performing- if they seem to be a decent principal, to one that was doing well, if they need to coast on that for a while)
Principals do not take the time to observe teachers for any length of time, they do not want to document parent complaints or take on the union.</p>
<p>They are concerned about their own jobs and their own tenure with district- not many principals are interested in being stars that buck the system and improve the profession unfortunately.</p>
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<p>I encouraged my daughter (who graduated from a top Ivy League college) when she wanted to join Teach for America, and I am encouraging her to do a third year so she can get a clear credential in our state and keep the option of teaching open over the course of her lifetime. I think she will stay in education. I think she’ll go back to school for another degree, but I think she’ll remain involved in education – probably not in the classroom long-term but in the reform movement, or running a charter school or something like that down the line. She’ll never make much money regardless or what direction she takes in this area, but it’s important to her to feel that she is making a difference.</p>
<p>my college age daughter is a teacher-
She has always enjoyed working with children- and is a natural at getting them to work together- she got a biology degree from her LAC, but has been leading an afterschool science program that is housed in several schools in Portland, and has also been working with classroom teachers on how to help their kids with learning challenges ( that is one of her areas of interest)</p>
<p>However because she is not a district employee, she doesn’t have ins, or even sick leave & she makes less(per hr) than her work study job in college.</p>
<p>I seriously thought about becoming a teacher, I tutor a good bit and have volunteered in the schools for decades- even quitting my job so I could be in the school everyday, when they were having some personnel issues.</p>
<p>I like the flexibilty, the security and the pensions, but I have dyspraxia/dyslexia and it is difficult to communicate in spoken word.
But maybe I could teach courses online ;)</p>
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The meal was delicious, except for the one item that had poison in it. Even if the good teachers do make up for the bad, why does that mean we shouldn’t complain about the bad ones? I still remember my psycho fourth-grade teacher with loathing–and my memories of her are much more distinct than those of the nice third and fifth grade teachers. I didn’t need therapy because of her, but she shouldn’t have been teaching.
As far as pay, I think teachers should be paid well, because what they do is important. Would higher pay attract better teachers? I don’t know–most of the teachers now are pretty good. I think higher pay might attract more teachers with degrees in their subject areas, which might or might not result in better teaching.</p>
<p>My husband still gets upset when he thinks about his 2nd grade teacher who ridiculed him in front of the class often.
Verbal abuse, can be even more damaging than physical IMO, because we can repeat it over and over * ourselves in our heads*.</p>
<p>Don’t try to tell me that more money would have made that teacher better- & its possible that some children thought she was a good teacher- , isn’t everyone relieved when the bully finds someone else to pick on?</p>
<p>I didn’t have any teachers who ridiculed me, but I also didn’t have any that took a special interest - although I did have some good teachers when I transferred to an alternative high school. However, my learning disabilties were never diagnosed and I never graduated from high school.</p>
<p>The police officer vs. teacher salary posts piqued my curiosity, and I did some internet research on salaries in my town. We live in a fairly affluent suburb that doesn’t have a lot of crime, and our police salaries range from roughly $50-70,000. Teacher salaries at D’s public high school are higher, and I was totally shocked to find that salaries for individual teachers are posted on the internet!! Of the teachers my sophomore D has actually had, salaries ranged from $58,000 for a young, new teacher to $120,000 for a teacher in her 40’s with an advanced degree. Half of D’s teachers made over $100,000. For teachers D hasn’t had, the highest salary I saw was well over $150,000 and the lowest was about $50,000. I wouldn’t want their jobs, but they’re making decent money. My BIL, who has a PhD from an Ivy, is a non-tenured assistant professor at a well respected northeast University and he makes less than most of the teachers at my D’s high school.</p>