And because policy of for them to constantly get physically assaulted.

Looking at how Johnny can't read, spell or solve a basic math problem, they are overpaid.

My wife is basically the same situation, but makes 68k.

On one hand pay is better here and cost of living is lower.
On the other hand you have buccees and rattlesnakes.

The one way to get rid of teachers is all year school and no pay raise

Where? I don't believe you.

Why would she do that?

Pensions have been cut from what they were years ago - I’m good with that.
Year round school…not so much
Every were Labor Day to Memorial Day. Get all your required days in.  2 weeks at Christmas.  Any other vacations as can be fit in if possible.
Math, English, science, history, civic, vocation classes
Nomore teaching students right from wrong, that is the job of the parent or parents

Merit based pay ... if your students are not passing, you don't get a raise.

Shit schools will get fixed REAL fucking quick

Apparently you are in Texas... I did a quick search and found this...



So your state isn't spending what it is "supposed" to spend apparently.

But consider this. At your funding level a classroom of 25 students would be funded to the tune of $258,550 per year. Building and utilities costs for a year ought to be under $8,550 for one classroom I would think. Buying books, supplies, and replacing damaged or worn out desks and such ought to be well under $25,000 per classroom.

So, where is the money going? Even if you pay that teacher $100,000 a year you are still looking at $125,000 going to administration and other nonsense.


And that's the funny thing about bullshit spending, no matter how much money you pour into something, someone else can always find a way to spend it.

Think about it on a personal level. You know that a person can get buy living in a mobile home, with a used car, eating beans and rice, wearing Wal Mart clothes, and generally being quite frugal. If you do that you are living better than 99% of the people in human history. But if you were being supported by your rich uncle then you probably wouldn't be content to have him fund that lifestyle for you. (Maybe not you personally, I mean the average slob.)

No, you would need a real house, and a new car, and good clothes, and steak, and HBO, a computer, internet, a big screen TV, a boat... And all of those things would be desirable to have. But if your rich uncle gave them to you along with permission to ask for more money whenever you felt you needed it then you would need overseas vacations staying in luxury resorts, you would need a maid, a private masseuse, money for the strip club, a bigger boat, sports cars. Before long you would be saying that you couldn't possibly live on less than a million dollars a month.

Government bureaucracies are like that. They need that school building to have a swimming pool, a gym, basketball courts, football fields, computer labs. They need administrators, councilors, dieticians, diversity coaches, professional tarot card readers... If they don't have it now they will need it when they can get enough money.

No, there's enough money in the system to hire good teachers, pay them competitive wages, provide the kids with books, desks, and essential school supplies, and put them up in a good building. But the schools have to cut out the fluff and overhead. And they won't do that. No matter how much money they get, they will always underpay the teachers and spend the money on something else.

The problem is that we'll raise the pay and still not enforce any standards.   These people are in our classrooms pushing a perverted sexual ideology onto little kids.  Do you really want to give them more money?  How about teachers that can't even speak proper grammar?  You gonna raise their salaries?

And I disagree with getting rid of summer vacation.  The only reason to do that is for the convenience of the parents, so they get taxpayer-funded year-round daycare.

Retired JROTC Instructor here. Fifteen years in a 2K student high school.

1. I would have never started the job but for the pension. Nor would 50% of the teachers doing it.

2. Fine. There are a mandated number of days required for school attendance. Doesn't matter how they are spread out. Or cut pay. Then you would lose the other 50% of the teachers.

So if the two recommendations were enacted easily 75% of the teachers would quit. Now what?

You literally have no idea how schools work lol

The average taxpayer thinks a teacher can stick a USB drive into a kid and they’ll learn. So much of how capable the students are depends on the parents and home care. Most kids have absent parents or rely on tech outside of school. A teacher can only do so much during the day when the lifestyle outside of the building is doing the opposite

A. There are no unions in Texas

B. Salaries are determined at the district level and the "pension" system (TRS) is a teacher funded state mandated investment management organization similar to a 401k.

C. When my wife was in the classroom, she was off for 3 1/2 weeks in the summer for "vacation" between in-service and other mandated training.

My wife left teaching at the end of this school year because the pay is shit, the retirement "pension" is shit, the kids and their parents are shit, admin is shit, state mandated testing is shit, etc. She took a pay cut when she changed careers and became a teacher for idealistic reasons, and after 10 years has finally said fuck it and left.    

The last year and a half my wife was in the class room, she took a SP-ED position at an elementary school. That was the straw that broke her.

...

Teach all year? As a teacher, I would be gone..

Most teachers I know haven't left because of the vacations.

If you calculate the hourly pay, teachers actually get paid decent. The problem is all of the nonsense bullshit they pile on during and after work hours. This makes the 9 month work period stressful as hell.

We need to be honest with ourselves that K-12 can be taught by non-degrees people and it’s more or less glorified babysitting.  Ditch the K-12 model, everyone goes to grades 1-8…if your aptitude is college level or mommy and daddy can foot the bill…off you go to college at grade 9, if not..,off you go to trade/vocational school.  Teachers grade 9 through 12are largely as useless as tits on a boar.

You would have to boost teacher pay by at least 50% in order to implement your plan. Not happening

I think teachers have an imaginary view of other work.

I taught a required class for Ed majors. They were the worst students. My best students were Ed majors too but overwhelmingly the Ed majors were the worst.

Yeah I’m sure their buds are making six figures but that’s not their alternative and secretly they know that.

Whenever someone says you got to pay more to get better teachers I think maybe. What I am certain of is you got to fire more if you want better teachers

She's pocketing money away from you, man.

My girl is special Ed middle school teacher. Masters degree. She's been with the county for one year. Full time teacher for 2. She makes $64k in bumblefuck GA....she does coach basketball in the fall and track in summer.

End unions and end this small class sized stuff that has not proven to work.

The tech aspect is probably more of an issue with the tech itself and the planned obsolescence built into the devices schools buy.

I'm currently working as an Instructor at a charter school (basically an assistant teacher who deals with discipline issues, the one or two special needs kids, recess and teaching my own hours of advanced math and reading). Same budget as the local schools, but able to set its own curriculum as long as the standard tet scores pass.

I'm doing currently it because my kid goes to the school, not for the pay (my wife is an accountant) & it gets me out of the house, lets me feel like I'm contributing somewhere, and both state and school policy lets me be armed, so if (God forbid) something major happened, I'd be there for my kid.

I'd make more hourly at the WinCo down the street from me, and I was hired as a "highly qualified" candidate. And that's before they annualize out the pay to cover the summer and holidays - after annualization, it's like 10-12$ per hour. And unlike a lot of desk jobs or menial (cashier or stocking stuff), it's wire-to-wire - no breaks outside of a 30 min lunch, on your feet and mentally focused 90% of the time, and extra unpaid work necessary if not "expected"(grading and planning outside school hours).

Benefits-wise, it's also crap - no pension, a paltry 401k with next to no matching, practically worthless insurance, and 2 sick days a year. And yes, you get 2 months in the summer and each school break - but your pay is being averaged out for those, so it's not like vacation time at a regular job. Pay increases are capped by time served, not performance or qualifications.

Teachers themselves make a fair bit more (still annualized out), but also pegged to years in service, and have a hell of a lot more on their plate. They may be part of a state pension, I don't know.

Despite hurting for qualified teachers and instructors every year, they still don't "invite back" under performers and insubordinate staff at the end of the year. I'm one of three instructors in the 4-6 grade tier (out of 9 slots) actually coming back  (the rest either quiting due to pay-to-work ratio or being let go), and about 5 teachers need to be replaced this summer too. I'm actually considering looking for other work as, with inflation, even though I don't really need the position, it feels like I'm basically just volunteering and my time is worth more to me than that.

I say all this because, if you wanted to go year round, you'd have to both use an on/off track system so classes/teachers stay on the same cadence (meaning less time off but still on just as rigid of a schedule) and increase effective teacher pay (both to account for the effective annualization and for locking them into less time off with 0 flex). Possible, but likely increasing the budget between 50 and 100% if you didn't want to run off anybody remotely qualifed and dedicated.

This it’s quite frankly a super easy job with no shortage of possible employees.

if anything teachers are overpaid.

Ending public schools would lessen the effect of actually competent teachers being paid similarly to incompetent ones though.

It’s already like that but not due to the teachers.  Correlation vs causation.  Wealthy districts pay more and have better absolute outcomes, but you can only get hired if you know the right people.  City schools are a nightmare and that is where the teacher shortage is. If pay was to be tied to outcomes properly you would need baselines and to handicap it.

Our local high school has a huge expensive football stadium with a premium sound system and big ass video scoreboard.  The first thing we need to do is admit that we don't really care about teaching our kids how to compete with the Chinese.  We really just want football.

I'd bet the outcomes would go up dramatically. Kids actual learning might not go up, but outcomes within the guidelines would go way up.
Kind of like tying a CEO's pay to their profits. Company might go to hell in a few years, but that profit would be through the roof until they file for bankruptcy.

Chalkboards, pencils, and paper don’t have planned obsolescence issues.

Teachers would just cheat.  It has happened before.

Good post.  I had an English teacher that literally spoke Ebonics.

You have a point.  On the other hand, if a kid isn't going to learn no matter how good the teacher is, why bother to have a highly paid teacher who isn't going to affect the outcome?

At some point, you've got to decide whether throwing more money at the problem is going to fix it.  The US spends about a third more on primary/secondary education per student (K-12) than the OECD average, and ranks fifth out of 38.  Only Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland and Austria spend more per full time student.  We are ahead of pretty much every other European Nation in spending, plus Isreal, Japan, South Korea, and Canada.  Spending money isn't the issue - priorities and policies seem to be what need looking at if we are to improve.

Mike

That’s another issue.  I would move the athletic programs out of the taxpayer funded schools.  We have thriving youth sports here funded by private donors.  This is not a rich community.  I see no reason why that couldn’t continue through high school.

She should get that gig at Buc'ees, then.

Correct.  The professional educator cartel is very good at manufacturing results to validate their ideas.  See the wildly popular “whole language “ model of reading education, which is complete bunk, but the kids can pass the rigged tests.

We do get a pension. I have no idea what it will be. Rick Scott assured me that it was “Lavish” so I’m probably good there.

It's not another issue, budget is spent on that stuff instead of teaching.

There is no pay problem. They voluntarily accepted the contract. End of story.

I would love to see this bunch of mouth breathers teach inner city kids how to read. ?? ?? ??

I don’t mean that it’s a separate issue.  I mean it’s another valid issue to add to the pile of things school districts waste money on.

Something I recall from high school was that all the coaches were required to hold a teaching job with the district.  I suppose that was meant to keep schools from wasting money on full time coaches.  In reality it meant that many of our teachers were in it for the coaching and were not very good teaching academics.  Our history department was full of these types.

Stop taking property taxes for schools, and lets parents purchase an education for their kids in the private sector?

Never going to happen.   I like vouchers.

If they are demonstrating fisting in front of 12 yr old girls, I guess you might be onto something

Your solutions aren't simple, just mostly ignorant.



Teachers in Texas pay into the TRS....Teacher Retirement System. Where the fuck do you think Texas teachers get the $$$ that go into their retirement plan?
If you knew how poorly managed TRS is, you would love the chance to invest your own $$$ instead of letting our idiots in Austin do it.



Vacation? Texas teachers don't get a paid vacation bub. We get paid for our contracted teaching days. My current contract is for 187 days per school year. If there's a snow day I have to make up that day. My "vacation"? You mean right now while school is not in session? THEN PAY ME, because you don't pay teachers for the days they don't teach.  

If you want "year-round" school" THEN PAY ME. Just understand that has been very unpopular in the school districts that tried it. It also wasn't more days of instruction, just rearranging the calendar to cram in the same number of school days as a traditional school calendar.




I've been a teacher in Plano since 2004.........tell me where I can join one of these "unions"?
Texas state law prohibits teachers from negotiating, collective bargaining, the ability to create contracts and the right to strike. Any "teacher union" you see on TV is a glorified talking head with absolutely no power or authority to negotiate teacher salary, benefits or anything else related to the profession.

I laugh when I see the media go to AFT, TCTA or another supposed union. They represent a miniscule number of teachers. The media never goes to the largest Texas teacher group (Association of Texas Professional Educators) because it is stridently NOT a union. The sound bites from ATPE aren't libtard, therefore the media ignores them.

OP lives in Texas where we don't have teacher unions.

I don't see how pensions being taken away will change for the better. Pension contributions are paid by the employee and not the employer.  The pension system actually saves taxpayers money because when the  employee pays Social Security taxes some  of that is matched by the employer, and in this case it would be the taxpayers. The teachers retire they don't normally collect Social Security. However, if they had a job prior to being a teacher, or sometime during teaching and paying into the Social Security, every dollar, collecting from the pension would be deducted from the Social Security check and since most pensions pay more than Social Security would pays they would not collect Social Security. It's called a Windfall Provision act.

You could pay teachers enough to be the top 0.000001% of earners and wealth holders, it will not fix the problem.

It might even make it worse.

The problem is not the facilities, or the pay rate.

The main problem is that any schools of any type are allowed to take ANY tax-drived funds, at all.

If you take tax funds, that removes you from having to be responsible to the people who pay the funds. This is inherent.

The people that run taxpayer funded institutions KNOW that they ultimately *do not need to care what you think.*

Government unions are an order of magnitude worse. They are tax-funded unions. Unions that rely on strikes to pressure employers are inherently anti-worker. So a tax funded union coercively takes your money to pay them to not work.

Just barely behind those in importance are the teachers colleges. Colleges of education were and are a target for the left and have been almost universally utterly perverted to the point they cannot be fixed. They are the absolute worst of the rot, if not vying very hard to be the worst. They can only be destroyed now, and replaced later, after the systemic virus that ruined them is utterly expunged.

The last I'll mention is curriciulum. Your kid might be in a no-tax taking no-colleges of education teacher taking anti-union school, but the curriculums that are available are greatly affected by the conditions I mentioned above.

IMO teacher's pay levels is so far down the scale of importance compared to these that it's almost not worth mentioning.

In Texas, my 187 day contract is paid in twelve monthly payments.

Good rebuttal.

Now a Buc'ees thread!

Why would anyone want to? Let them fester in the hell-hole the communists created