If you believe Wall Street.

and labor unions.

My wife was a professional student. She started teaching right out of college and spent 35 years as a teacher and administrator. I tease her about not having a "real' job but I know all the bull scat she had to put up with over the years. She was a true professional and put the students above all else. When she lobbied for a more strenuous curriculum, she was turned down by the powers-that-be since they knew it would lower test scores. She did not belong to any union or professional organization because she felt they protect the lazy and unqualified. Now retired, she just shakes her head at what is going on. And yes, she gets a nice pension to which she contributed 8% of her pay for 35 years.

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"Life is tough...it's even tougher if you're stupid." John Wayne


Dave
Pawleys Island, SC

'79 300CD

Not necessarily. But higher entry salaries might encourage a better quality of first year teacher applicants.

Completing 4 years of college and, unless you were on a full ride somewhere or your parents had deep pockets, you're about 50-80K dollars in debt from the get go. Then, after signing your first contract, you're under the gun in most state to complete a master's degree before your certificate expires, or in many cases in as little as 2 or 3 years while working full time, this at your own expense. The notion that teachers have "summers off" is nonsense, especially beginning teachers, who typically spend summers at their own expense working on post graduate degrees. Even if not required, the only way to move up a salary scale in any school is by steps based on additional credit hours.
The beginning teacher has to figure out how to pay back college loans, pay for new coursework and keep a roof over his or her head at a starting average annual salary of about 35K bucks. Go into any school in the nation and chances are you'll find that most of the faculty is married to somebody who works in the private sector and earns more money.
One of my former students is a sophomore in college and she recently credited me for inspiring her to be a teacher. I honestly don't know whether to feel good about that or not. If I were starting out now, I'd be looking in a different direction. Too many hoops to jump thru and too many bureaucratic butts to kiss for less money than a bartender or cocktail waitress earns in a good house.
Those who go into teaching for "the money" don't last long, especially now with the high percentage of pigs' ears they are expected to turn into silk purses, but the nineteenth century attitude that teachers were supposed to be poorly paid and non-materially inspired single workaholics with no life of their own has a long way to go in this country before it dies. We want our educators to be saints, and saints don't need money and are perfect all the time.

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You're a daisy if you do.
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84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

Pumpkin .............

left the door wide open, sonny.

Many school districts pay off student loans over a period of time for new teachers. That's probably a good idea.
My criticism is not of the classroom teachers; but of administration who keep adding levels of administrators and cutting classroom teachers and supplies from the budget.
How many levels of bureaucracy do you really need to run a school system?

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

^ x2

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Jim

the parents are stupid and irresponsible. they don't read to their kids, don't listen to their kids, and don't teach them anything. easier to give them tv's, computers, gameboys (or whatever the latest things is? ps3? etc.) and cellphones. i see the results of the last 30 years of education/ society in my neighborhood, which has been overridden by these dirty hipsters. mindless consumers, addicted to whatever's "hip" and "cool". only able to assess things from a visual perspective. there will be a rude awakening when this society falls apart. (devo was right)

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"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread."

I agree. My own district used to be pretty lean. My school, a country outlier in an otherwise city district, didn't have a principal until I retired. I was head teacher for >10 years, teaching half the day and running the school and doing discipline chores the other half. I had a half time counselor and one secretary. 350 kids K-8. It went quite well until a new superintendent, someone I'd originally taught with came on board and started fiddling with us and adding those layers of admin you mentioned to the district. Asst. Supt. for Curriculum. Asst. Supt. for Special Programs, ad nauseum. As our student population began to change and we were overrun with city kids and their problems I asked for a full time counselor and was turned down repeatedly. I was bad about towing the new super's line and had a bad habit of only showing up in town 30 miles away for meetings that directly affected me or my school, and so didn't really expect to be handed what I needed. Now they have a principal, an asst. principal, a full time counselor and a hundred fewer enrolled students than I ever had, and the district pays me serious money to consult on curriculum and ELL issues.

__________________
You're a daisy if you do.
__________________________________
84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

Lets quit this thread while we are all in agreement.

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1982 300SD " Wotan" ..On the road as of Jan 8, 2007 with Historic Tags

lol

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Jim

The country should abolish all graduate programs in 'Educational Administration'. Limit degrees to teaching. Do you really need a Ph.D. to be a high school principal?

Our school employs a 'Curriculum Designer'. How can you possibly design curriculum with absolutely no knowledge of the field? It's absurd. A person with an undergraduate degree in English is qualified because of an advanced degree in Curriculum to design a Plumbing class.

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1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

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1984 300TD 1981 240D

Seems to me that there is no way for the teachers to pass along learning skills to unreceptive children no matter how much they or the school administrators are paid. You can staff a inner city school with the top .5% of teachers in the USA but when the kids dad is in loser in prison, dead or on crack and the mom is not much better (for the 5th generation) test scores are not going to rise.

When are we going to learn that you cannot teach those that are not open to learning what you are trying to teach. It actually takes alot of stupidity by the parents to put a kid in a place where he/she does not want to learn in school since all children by nature want badly to learn.

I'm all for giving parents X dollars for each child to go to school and schools then become private. If you blow the $ or buy some 22 inch rims instead of helping your kid learn then tough ***** for you and the kid. I'm sick of my (and everyone's) tax money being spend on your kid because you as a parent make the wrong choices.