Dad Confronts Warren On Student Loan Forgiveness: ‘Can I Have My Money Back?’

So additional money is not going to help especially if it is just teacher salaries.

 

No, money won't help in the least. It will probably do more harm, in fact.

 

it most certainly will help. Maybe your a saint that will work as hard as you do for 15 and hour than you would work for 20 but I certainly was not. If you advertise a job for 45,000 or 60,000 you will get better candidates at 60K. Now getting better teachers is only one thing. But getting more of them so that they are not teaching algebra to a class of 27. What will take even longer in training parents to be good parents. So that 3 kids in every class are social miscreants. And those 3 kids are dealt with in a manner that is fair to them and the other 17 kids in their class.

parents for child that attends any non performing school for 3 years will get a subsidy from the gov/ 1/3rd from local state and fed to attend any school of their choice as long as that school is non discrimitory.

 

Well you said it wasn't the teachers it was the parents now you saying the teachers would do better if we paid them more.............which is it and where has that additional teacher pay manifest itself into better outcomes? Why do we have so many bad parents? I look back at my school pictures in elementary school and there were 30+ students and in the third and fourth grades we went double sessions, ie you only went a half day because the schools were so crowded and we all got a good education. And no teachers are not working 20 hours a day and I have known lots of teachers and have been party to their conversations about how they were going to spend their off times during the summer to travel or even work a summer job to earn even more money.

 

The problem is NOT with schools and teachers. They do an amazing job, mostly. So much so that any kid who is determined to do well will be fostered and supported to do so. Teachers will do everything in their power to see the child reaches his/her goals.

The problem is the never ending apathy of parents .. and thus their kids. Self-discipline, responsibility, duty, etc are no longer taught in the home. The raw material that walks in the school gate cannot be built upon by teachers .. it's quicksand.

 

I do not think the majority of teachers do an amazing job. some do, the majority do a fair to good job. and 10% like in any office anywhere should be replaced. And I agree you entirely on the parents sharing the blame. The ones that spend time with their kids doing their homework shows the kids that school work is important. Sending your kid to his room for an our to do their homework means little, it shows the kid that you don't value what he is doing to be involved. I raised two kids, and worked 65 hours a week including commuting time and still found the time to help my wife with the kids homework.

 

I am saying that most people work harder the more money they are paid. You get paid min, you might show up one day or you might not. you get paid 15 you want to keep that job as you don not want to lose it and get paid min. I would not want to work for 45,000 as a Science teacher. when I could work for 70,000 in the field. the added benefits of being a public employee would not make up for the 25, 000 grand diff. but bring it up to 60, and yes only losing 10 grand, makes it more attractive.

There are states where you don't even need to be competent in your field. In Mississippi all you need to get is a 21 on your ACT (which is the average in the state of Mississipi for a high school grad) to be qualified to teach math. Your average high school grad has the required math skills. WTF. What kind of bar is that. In Mass, you have to have at least 6 semesters of college level coursework in the subject and pass the Praxis,

Now paying that math teacher who scored a 21 on a ACT another 15 grand is not going to do ****, she should not be teaching math anyway.

 

In Australia that may be true, maybe (you're Australian, right?)

Here in the US teachers run the gamut from great to awful, dedicated to apathetic. And then there are the propaganda pushers..... we've had some teachers out themselves as exactly that, right here on this board.

But parents are also a crucial part of the equation ---- and for the reasons you mention.

But it's not so black and white as "teachers and schools good" vs "parents bad". We've got crap teachers and good ones; we've got crap parents and good ones. If either side of the equation is "crap", the kid is going to have an uphill battle.

 

In my experience we had (for the most part) very good teachers, only 1 teacher in my recollection fell short of expectations and that was largely a massive language barrier combined with just bad teaching skills. This applies to myself, my spouse, and my kid so that spans 3 different districts and decades. In no instance was the district considered a "high paying" one.

It most certainly helped that we were talking about mostly middle class well behaved children, (My parents specifically moved to get into a good school system when I was young, and I did the same thing when my kid was born, its was one of my primary considerations when I bought my home)

I can count the "bad" or disruptive students in my entire school of 1,000 kids on one hand. Now if you start putting in a few disruptive students in each classroom, and have limited ability to remove them then you are inviting problems. Yes the really outstanding and well behaved students will suffer somewhat but not overall because they will block out the disruptions and learn anyway, but those that are average or slightly above/below it can fall apart quickly.

When the media and politicians talk about failing school systems, low graduation rates, etc, they generally are not talking about the middle class suburban districts, they are really talking about the inner city schools dragging down the rest but they tend to be very careful not to point out that specific aspect, they lump all districts together like its a problem everywhere. Anyone can feel free to correct me if i'm wrong.

 

So it is the teachers then? And I have been in management throughout my career and in practice and in management course you learn increasing wage is about the least successful path to increase performance and outcome.

 

My wife was a teacher for 10yrs before slipping into administration. Their pay is not bad at all when accounting for time off and summer. And she rarely worked more than I did. And when you add in what you can hustle in those off months, it’s not a bad living. Are you getting rich? No. Can you take care of a family of 4? Not really. But it’s not why you get into it. Teachers teach. They do it because they love it. Anyone who doesn’t love it, burns out.

You want to do very well teaching? Get a masters or PHD and go rack up a salary in a good college. That’s an excellent career which eventually affords you complete immunity from stress or accountability once you get tenure.

You can get paid to teach kids about how to succeed in the real world without ever having to actually succeed in the real world. Quite the set up.

 

That's why I used the term "mostly". There are always one or two duds, but even these will not stop the kid who is determined to succeed. That kid will drag the lazy teacher's help out of them.

 

In my country it's the other way around. Our inner city schools usually have a much wealthier student body than suburban schools, and the kids are more 'upper class'. But the quality of a given school when measured in academic outcomes (the only measurement which matters), is not contingent upon wealth. Cultural attitude to education is the primary informant, and if that attitude is right then money doesn't factor into it. Some of our top schools have some of our poorest students.

 

I think the winning political position in the current world is populism. Sanders is the only populist on the dem candidate list. I would turn populist if I were one of them.

 

And I have that increasing the pay attracts a better candidate. I have over 30 years of exp in a someone "management" role of having 2-5 people reporting to me. you offer $45,000 grand to someone with a bachelors degree the people you attract or hold onto are on the bottom rung. If you don't attach targets to the raise that is the fault of management. You give the guy a 10% raise and this is what needs to be accomplished for you to keep that pay grade. In this case the money hast to be given up front as teachers have been promised more help that they have never received.

 

So the teachers we aren't good enough. We have LOTS of current teachers with LOTS of degrees and the results we are seeing are not satisfactory do we fire them all and hire new better ones. Where are they going to come from. Again in my youth teachers had basic teaching degrees in elementary school and we all got a good basic education. Now they graduate college and can't do basic math, write a paragraph, list historical events and have to take remedial classes in college.

 

I don't know any teachers that suffer from that. I was the president of my oldest boys PTA back in the early 90s in a poor urban school district. all the teachers were qualified but 25% of them were checked out. Where did you get that I said the teachers we had were not good enough. I said that 10% of them should be replaced as in any organization that is looking for continuous improvement. I don't know anyone who a bachelors degree that can't do basic math- by that I mean arithmetic and not lower level Algebra/Geometry/Trig. I got a terrible education, mostly it was my fault but the schools suck where I went and still do.

I can not even compare the education that I got in school to the education that my two boys received when we moved to an affluent suburb. My algebra class went to exponents and basic functions solving for one variable.
I read maybe 4-5 books a year and my kids read closer to that number every term. My kids got the choice of 12 AP subjects. AP subjects did not even exist, The most advanced math class taught was right angle trig, not even conic sections! Compared 1970 to 2003 and 2012 it is not even close. I have a better understanding of English lit, as in Shakespere as that was drilled into us. My Junior year English could have been called the works of Shakespere. While my kids probably only read 4 or 5 throughout all high school. What I was more educated was in Civics and Economics. History not even close, a caption picture of the trail of tears and the notation that slavery was not considered wrong by 50% of our population 100 years previous was all that was mentioned. Indians were not wiped out in a quest of economic exploitation by the Spanish but by euro diseases like syph and small pox. At least my kids learned the truth. Hell we were taught both sides of integration like there were actually two right sides. Foreign languages not even close. Bio and chem, again not even close.

 

California pays the second or 3rd highest salaries for teachers in the country, yet they rank 25th in education level. I'm not seeing the correlation.

 

I think with Cal is the amount of students with English as a 2nd language and the number of immigrants who come here to work. You see many kids of high school age working extended hours while attending school. I am not talking 12-15 hours for gas money but more. What would be more telling is teachers in more affluent suburbs making much more that teachers in urban districts. Teacher salaries by itself is not going to be a panacea for what ails public education, but it is a contributing cause.
Parent ownership of the child's education is the root cause of the failure of public schools, not the teachers, not the administrators- but the parents, they don't check homework, they don't do homework with the kid, they send their kids to school hungry, without enough sleep, they don't teach the kid to behave. If you want to argue it is throwing good money after bad- fine. But to argue that more money does not get better candidates or increase morale is just putting your head in the sand.

 

Chinese and Indian kids put the lie to that theory. They almost always excel.

Let's be honest about this. It has nothing to do with being a migrant, or having poor English skills, or money, or geography. It's entirely a function of terrible parental attitude to education.

 

It's all endemic of a sanctuary state run by Democrats.

 

then what accounts for pretty much the whole paint it red south student assessment performance lagging the blue states, I don't understand how Massachusetts can have the most liberal politicians, universal healthcare, the best public schools,Top shelf hospitals if progressive politics leads to ruin.

 

....and the absolute highest taxes in the nation.

 

demographics