[quote]Headhunter wrote:
Expecting professionals to accept ‘K-Mart clerk’ pay, and here’s what you get.
[/quote]
What’s minimum wage now, $7.00 an hour?
K-Mart clerks would jump for joy if they got paid even what a starting salary is for teachers…let alone having summers off, and winter break, and spring break, plus extra days off.
God I’m fucking sick of teachers whining about their pay. Hey, if you don’t like how much you get paid take your top notch skill set out to the public sector and see how much you can get. If you’re unwilling to do so, then shut the fuck up.
Or the students don’t speak English very well because they haven’t been in America very long. Or they have mental disabilities. Neither of which are accounted for in NCLB.[/quote]
This is untrue. NCLB just makes sure you are actually trying to teach kids with limited English abilities and kids with disabilities. You are held accountable for their education just like everyone else’s. My students are 90% migrants with limited English, under the old system that was an excuse for failure. Now it isn’t.
[quote]unearth wrote:
What’s minimum wage now, $7.00 an hour?
K-Mart clerks would jump for joy if they got paid even what a starting salary is for teachers…let alone having summers off, and winter break, and spring break, plus extra days off.
[/quote]
This is stupid. Clerking doesn’t require any skills. All one needs is the ability to work at least one apposable thumb and fog up a mirror.
If teachers don’t get paid at least a minimum (market price) to teach they won’t waste their time becoming teachers. If clerks got paid what teachers did–I’d quit my job and become a part time clerk and leave the stress of academia behind.
And yes, No Child Left Behind is a poor peice of legistlation. We waste so much time prepping for tests, and then administering them, that it leaves little time for anything else.
This is EXACTLY why it sucks.
No creative thinking, no critical thinking, just teaching to bullshit tests that mean next to nothing.
I remember high school AP classes, and having teachers cut off discussions about Dostoyevsky or about writing theory because, “It wasn’t on the AP test”… so it obviously wasn’t important.
Fucking bullshit.[/quote]
Happens all the time.
The programs that politicians propose are simply made to make THEM look good. They want to claim how they’re TRYING. “If only we could root out those evil teacher unions and get rid of tenure!!”
How about paying a teacher what an Accountant fresh out of college makes, about $44,000 with a BA? Surely the children are worth at least what an accountant earns?
If we keep underpaying a profession, its not going to be viable long term. You can’t expect to attract top people for $27,000 to start, with about 150 ‘smiling’ customers to teach every day.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
This is stupid. Clerking doesn’t require any skills. All one needs is the ability to work at least one apposable thumb and fog up a mirror.
[/quote]
No shit. I didn’t make the claim teachers got paid what K-Mart clerks do, headhunter did. Teachers make considerably more money than K-Mart clerks do.
[quote]
If teachers don’t get paid at least a minimum (market price) to teach they won’t waste their time becoming teachers. If clerks got paid what teachers did–I’d quit my job and become a part time clerk and leave the stress of academia behind.[/quote]
And yes, No Child Left Behind is a poor peice of legistlation. We waste so much time prepping for tests, and then administering them, that it leaves little time for anything else.
This is EXACTLY why it sucks.
No creative thinking, no critical thinking, just teaching to bullshit tests that mean next to nothing.
I remember high school AP classes, and having teachers cut off discussions about Dostoyevsky or about writing theory because, “It wasn’t on the AP test”… so it obviously wasn’t important.
Fucking bullshit.
Happens all the time.
…
[/quote]
It is called teacher laziness. Trying to do the minimum to get by. If there were no tests these would be the teachers that would not cover anything.
The teaching profession is full of lazy people like all other professions. The difference is if your kid is stuck with a crappy teacher there is not much you can do about it.
If the restaurant has bad service you don’t go back. If the mechanic fucks up your car repair you find a new mechanic. If your kids teacher isn’t teaching him you can sell your house and move to another district, pay for expensive private schools or demand testing and accountability. NCLB demands testing and accountability.
[quote]FightinIrish26 wrote:
I remember high school AP classes, and having teachers cut off discussions about Dostoyevsky or about writing theory because, “It wasn’t on the AP test”… so it obviously wasn’t important.
Fucking bullshit.[/quote]
I have the same complaint about my AP US History course right now.
Whenever we get off on a “tangent” discussing something relevant to the time period we are studying, we are cut off because we are “wasting time.”
I don’t know how many days of class we’ve wasted “practicing” writing essays to get ready for the test, even though we are way behind where we should be in our textbook. All it does is hurt us
The teachers worry about the test itself, and not the material its on (if that makes any sense).
Or the students don’t speak English very well because they haven’t been in America very long. Or they have mental disabilities. Neither of which are accounted for in NCLB.
This is untrue. NCLB just makes sure you are actually trying to teach kids with limited English abilities and kids with disabilities. You are held accountable for their education just like everyone else’s. My students are 90% migrants with limited English, under the old system that was an excuse for failure. Now it isn’t.[/quote]
My school sent four immigrants to other schools across the island because they were first-year-in-America students who could n ot pass the English Regents if their very lives depended on it.
Thats bull.
Give them a few goddamn years at least. And being mentally disabled IS an excuse. If you can’t hold a goddamn pen, under NCLB you still count as a failure towards your schools total.
Thats just wrong.
The idea, holding schools accountable for bad teaching, is a good one. The system, based on flat numbers instead of percentages, giving no leeway for the disabled and the encouraging of stupid children to drop out as a result, is just plain bad.
[quote]Cunnivore wrote:
Backlash79 wrote:
No Child Left Behind is a terrible piece of legislation.
Yeah, expecting students and teachers to be able to demonstrate their knowledge sounds like a bad idea. What we were doing before was working fine.[/quote]
It was implemented in a terribly unplanned manner. As it has been fixed and adjusted over the years, it has begun to be implemented in a much more proper manner. It holds schools and administrators responsible for the education of every child under their watch or funding disappears, and for that reason, it works. Like it or not, it has been much more effective in the last two years. I’m an NYC HS teacher (who is “highly qualified”) and can tell you that while it creates more work for me in a way, it is also nice to see the schools having to track down and hold themselves accountable for those who are in danger of slipping through the cracks. We are terribly behind several nations in our quality of education, which in itself should be embarrassing. Like or hate Bush, at least the guy took some steps to try to begin fixing it.
[quote]burntfrenchfry wrote:
FightinIrish26 wrote:
I remember high school AP classes, and having teachers cut off discussions about Dostoyevsky or about writing theory because, “It wasn’t on the AP test”… so it obviously wasn’t important.
Fucking bullshit.
I have the same complaint about my AP US History course right now.
Whenever we get off on a “tangent” discussing something relevant to the time period we are studying, we are cut off because we are “wasting time.”
I don’t know how many days of class we’ve wasted “practicing” writing essays to get ready for the test, even though we are way behind where we should be in our textbook. All it does is hurt us
The teachers worry about the test itself, and not the material its on (if that makes any sense).[/quote]
AP tests are bullshit. They’re run and supported by the same company that owns Newsweek. Even most of the colleges don’t want them anymore, unless a student gets a 5 (they’re scored on a scale of 1-5). They’re a year of information with no real thinking involved based on a test. Advanced HS students would be much better off with college courses offered at the school and getting a head start on their credits. AP’s don’t even give you real college credits, they just qualify as core courses so you have to take something else to cover the credit.
[quote]unearth wrote:
Headhunter wrote:
Expecting professionals to accept ‘K-Mart clerk’ pay, and here’s what you get.
What’s minimum wage now, $7.00 an hour?
K-Mart clerks would jump for joy if they got paid even what a starting salary is for teachers…let alone having summers off, and winter break, and spring break, plus extra days off.
God I’m fucking sick of teachers whining about their pay. Hey, if you don’t like how much you get paid take your top notch skill set out to the public sector and see how much you can get. If you’re unwilling to do so, then shut the fuck up.[/quote]
Jesus Christ, here we go again… I don’t hear any of the teachers on this site whining about their pay. I only hear people bitching about us whining about it. Go ahead. Find an example.
AP tests are bullshit. They’re run and supported by the same company that owns Newsweek. Even most of the colleges don’t want them anymore, unless a student gets a 5 (they’re scored on a scale of 1-5). They’re a year of information with no real thinking involved based on a test. Advanced HS students would be much better off with college courses offered at the school and getting a head start on their credits. AP’s don’t even give you real college credits, they just qualify as core courses so you have to take something else to cover the credit. [/quote]
They were useless when I took them over 20 years ago.
[quote]kroc30 wrote:
Advanced HS students would be much better off with college courses offered at the school and getting a head start on their credits.
[/quote]
True, but more expensive.
[quote]
AP’s don’t even give you real college credits, they just qualify as core courses so you have to take something else to cover the credit. [/quote]
They counted as credits where I went to school, as did my IB credits.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
kroc30 wrote:
Advanced HS students would be much better off with college courses offered at the school and getting a head start on their credits.
True, but more expensive.
AP’s don’t even give you real college credits, they just qualify as core courses so you have to take something else to cover the credit.
They counted as credits where I went to school, as did my IB credits.[/quote]
You got lucky, then. Very few colleges take anything less than a 5 on the exam anymore, if they accept them at all. I don’t know about by you, but a couple of the colleges up here (St. John’s and Syracuse both have excellent programs that include several NYS districts) offer their courses at about $70 per credit, with fairly easy waivers for those in need, so they’re almost as accessible as any HS course.
[quote]nephorm wrote:
kroc30 wrote:
Advanced HS students would be much better off with college courses offered at the school and getting a head start on their credits.
True, but more expensive.
AP’s don’t even give you real college credits, they just qualify as core courses so you have to take something else to cover the credit.
They counted as credits where I went to school, as did my IB credits.[/quote]
You got lucky, then. Very few colleges take anything less than a 5 on the exam anymore, if they accept them at all. I don’t know about by you, but a couple of the colleges up here (St. John’s and Syracuse both have excellent programs that include several NYS districts) offer their courses at about $70 per credit, with fairly easy waivers for those in need, so they’re almost as accessible as any HS course.
[quote]kroc30 wrote:
Jesus Christ, here we go again… I don’t hear any of the teachers on this site whining about their pay. I only hear people bitching about us whining about it. Go ahead. Find an example.[/quote]
Uhhh…did you happen to read the first post in this thread?
The guy that started this thread (headhunter) began with bitching about how teachers only get paid what K-mart clerks get (an obvious bullshit exaggeration as even entry level teachers get paid far more than K-mart clerks).
[quote] Headhunter wrote:
Expecting professionals to accept ‘K-Mart clerk’ pay, and here’s what you get.
[/quote]
Also, I don’t feel like digging them up, but there have been large threads with almost nothing but teachers complaining about how low there pay is.
