Even though teachers unions fight for teachers need to not be graded they have to be graded. Not grading teachers would be like not evaluating bankers and eliminating the poor preforming so our money can be safe.

Interesting JP I have not noticed any bankers or hedge-fund mangers losing their jobs or being graded for anything they have done. Sure they were brought before congress for the dog an pony show but nothing happened other than some water downed regulations. They still received huge bail outs for bringing down the economy.

I don’t see how this relates to the people who go into teaching. They take jobs with a starting pay of about 30k a year work a lot more hours than people are aware of and those summers off are not for vacation they are for taking courses to keep their licenses and working towards a masters. Which most school systems require after a few years. Then they have to deal with school boards, the politics, the parents, and then the students. Some of whom are very dysfunctional.

Anyway this show is not about the performance it’s about layoffs. It is interesting that people on the right blame the teachers and their union for everything that’s wrong with the education system in this country.
It’s not so black and white. There are good teachers and there are bad ones just as in any other profession.

Our public schools are failing miserably. It’s time to give parents a “choice” as to what schools they send their children to with states and the federal govt. promoting charter schools and paying for school voucher programs nationwide.

Why should the public sector be immune from macroeconomic forces?

Only schools and teachers that are afraid that they will be exposed as subpar performers are against Charter scholls and vouchers. If a school is already performing at a high level, why would they care? As for the layoffs, you will see that the layoffs are from predominately under performing and highly financed districts. What is truely interesting JP is that the people on the left rarely talk about the student’s performance. Why is that? Why do the emotions always seem to run high on people on the left when talk turns to reducing tax money to certain districts and teacher layoffs? I rarely hear any outrage when student performance is the subject.

Jeffe: The financial services sector – including banks and hedge funds – has lost over 500,000 job since the recession began.

And if existing teachers were willing to accept a wage freeze (not even a reduction which many private sector employees have experienced), there would be no need for layoffs.

Simple facts.

Just when we need education most, we are laying off teachers and voting NO on school spending referendums in a fit of anti-tax zeal.

It’s OK though, because the well-to-do in America can either afford to send their kids to private school or keep a parent at home to homeschool their little darlings.

The decline of America continues, accentuated by the growing gap between the haves and have nots.

I read that that Charter Schools are really funneling money to Wall Street through their “creative financing” rather than to supporting the students.

Once more America is being sold a bill of goods.

With our horrendous deficit economy, with teachers being laid off, how can we justify the bloated Pentagon “defense” budget of more than a trillion per year? I suspect war profiteering corporate windfall spending is a reason.

Mark are you talking to me…
Of course student performance is part of the equation.
The layoffs are based on the economic downturn.
In case you have not noticed we are in the middle of the worse recession since the Great Depression.
This is what this show is about.

Of course you guys want to blame the unions, taxes, and everything else. By the way do any of you who support the charter school idea know if these work as well or better than public schools? Do you know if they are accountable as the public schools are? Vouchers are an interesting idea. Vouchers for what? I’m not against the idea of charter schools I’m just asking how people can blindly say they are better and if so what is the data that supports this. Here in Boston a fair amount of the charter schools failed or have been shut down due to bad student outcomes.

Public education is a great idea. Unfortunately it has been destroyed by politics bad school boards, corruption and a huge increase in dysfunctional families.

I look back to my own education, which was not perfect but at least I know when and with whom the American Revolution was fought. The founders were all for public education and taxes to fund civic minded institutions.

It is all about economics. We have to educate our next generation; for that is the only hope we have of having resources to live on in our old age. Drastic change is needed, not just a few simple changes but a complete overhaul.
Why vouchers aren’t the answer. Any system that creates filters (divides groups) and that can measure only one side of the filter will show false improvements. Allowing money to leave public education for charter or private and religious schools will leave the public to fund education for special needs students and the very poorest of our population. That doesn’t fix the anything, it only changes what is measured.
Merit Pay as a place, but it should start with administration not teachers. Have teachers vote on how to apply merit rewards with a way to divide it between administrators and other resources for the school. It doesn’t have to be a large sum but it would help make administrators accountable to the people they supervise.

The other thing we must change is physical activity in school.

This is the most radical change I advocate. I would add an hour or more to the school day and use that time in physical activity; students should prepare their meals and clean the facilities. I would have students supervised during this time by non-teachers and give teachers a full hour off for lunch.
Finally, I would have all graduates spend two years in public service (like the CCC) and part of those graduates would assist in schools.
I would pay them a stipend and give monitory credit toward higher education, it will help with unemployment and make a better student in higher education and a better worker in life.
All of this takes resources but not doing it will cost us more than we can afford.

he financial services sector – including banks and hedge funds – has lost over 500,000 job since the recession began. These were not the CEO’s with whom I was alluding too. This job lose was a result of the people they worked for. The teachers did not create the economic downturn, wall street, and the banks did.

By the way we don’t need hedge funds to survive as a nation. We need schools.

I would hope that public workers would accept pay freezes or 5% pay reduction in order to prevent laying off teachers.

Local governments are too willing to cut teachers before they reduce the pay and number of bureaucrats sitting behind desks since the voting public would not agree to tax increases to continue to overpay the unnecessary public sector workers but they will be willing to pay more for teachers.

The Dept. Of Education received 96 billion dollars last year to support teacher salaries and prevent layoffs. Where did that money go?

Great discussion:

It all comes down to choice: As our nation cuts education, taxpayers will pay $746.8 billion for Total Defense Spending in FY2011, which could have funded 11,436,753 Elementary School Teachers for One Year.

We’ll lose ground for an entire generation: new teachers and educated, intellectually curious students. Such a shame.

jeffe,

CEO’s should not loose their jobs for having bad employees, rather the bad employees should be fired. It only makes sense that a large number of the 500,000 financial sector jobs that were eliminated were people that failed at their job and lost the company money. This is the natural cycle of cleaning that must occur to make the sector healthy again.

Priorities. Are school boards more concerned about the chances of a generation of uppity little creatures (assuming anyone from the elites use school choice to get away)?
I heard a program yesterday saying that post-slavery, the American black population did not achieve the kind of property that could establish a family with resources to even things out and sustain members generation to generation — the way established non-black families did. Oh, I am skeptical. I don’t believe in property/homeownership as square one for successful citizenship. That’s another story.
But it seems the shadow of separate but equal, the idea that we can gut the public schools and expect equal participation in democracy. (I attended public schools with class sizes of 50, minimum 40, so I know it doesn’t produce what the economy needs, nor the culture.)

I have been teaching for 14 years. My salary increases by about 2.5% each year, disregarding adding degrees etc…When I began teaching in Illinois, my salary was was approximately $22k. The same-year graduates in other fields (and by the way, I graduated Magna Cum Laude with my B.S. in biology with 166 total credit hours) were making 2x what I was making, out of the box.

14 years down the line, my pay is fine, not nearly what others with two college degrees would make in other professions. I don’t complain about my pay. I do complain about the fact that we retain teachers based on the broken tenure system we have. Sure, it protects competent teachers from wrongful firings, but it protects incompetent teachers as well. The fact that our system is driven by tax dollars and whipped from behind with the scourge of NCLB, means that anyone who toes the line and socially promotes and passes as many students as possible will be just fine. Meanwhile, the talented, well-educated, enthusiastic young teachers face the attrition of lay-offs.

We fired 100 teachers in a 700 teacher district this year and we are facing a $10M deficit. We are cutting budgets, increasing class sizes, cutting staff and yet the superintendent of a 7400 student district makes $268k a year.

And still the public complains about taxes and education. Illinois is ranked 50th in the nation in equity in funding for schools. You have districts like East St. Louis spending less than $7k per student, to districts like Niqua Valley spending close to $40k a year per student.

Until we get our spending priorities straightened out, you will not fix the funding.

Education is given lip service in this nation, because we are now educating the children of some of the worst students in history. They hated schools and now they blame teachers for their own students’ failures. The only retaliation they have is at the budgetary level. They are tightening their belts and they feel the schools must as well…yet keep the same standards of education.

Jeffe: Almost 2,500 hedge funds went out of business in 2008 and 2009. I’d guess most of their ‘CEOs’ lost their jobs.

At least we are not suffering any budget problems due to educating the children of illegal immigrants. The political elites have told us for years that the illegal immigrants don’t cost us a dime.

I think all the focus solely on the education side of it is missing the point: the reason all these states and schools have such large shortfalls is because the biggest slice of the local budgets is untouchable. Retirement benefits are the sacred cow of local politics and these entitlements are destroying our future.

Politicians found it very easy to promise inflated entitlements as means to buy votes since the people that would have to pay for those benefits couldn’t vote. That is the fundamental unfairness in the system that nobody seems to want to address.

Maura S,

While defense spending is high and likely too high, it can not be totally cut nor can it be cut quickly.

The easiest thing to cut would be to eliminate the unspent stimulus money and spend it on education. Only about 45% of the stimulus money has been spent so far so we wouldn’t miss it if we took the $180Bln and moved it to eduction.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/18/stimulus.spending.chart/index.html

It borders on incredible, if not insane, to not advance education and increase teachers not reduce them.

Education is the way America will lift itself out of a morass of clumsy thinking, materialism and blind abuse of the environment notwithstanding the spiritual and physical health of each and every citizen.

A trillion dollars spent in foreign wars that lead to nowhere? After billions of dollars and over 4000 Americans and countless others dead, the Vice President has to go to Iraq and nursemaid and hold the hands of the factions to prevent conflict from breaking out. Please spare me.

And now Afghanistan the war that will not end and cannot be won.

There was a point in the Iraq War when, if the money had been spent on domestic education, every public school teacher in the United States would have received a justified increase of their salary of 14,500 dollars.

Respectfully,

Webb Nichols

The caller from Iowa almost speaks of envy for the benefits of teachers. This just creates a race to the bottom. Rather than complain about the benefits that teachers receive, they should ask their employers for reasonable benefits.

The problems in education are the fault of parents. The education system is a reflection of their values. Parents need to get involved to make their local school systems better (including being willing to pay more taxes). You get what you pay for.

Abdul Al’Mussad,

I hope you are not a math teacher since there seems to be a problem with some of your math. if you started working as a teacher for 22K 14 years ago and have an effective raise of 2.5% per year you would now be making $31.2K. The average salary of a teacher in IL is about $48K and I would think that 14 years of experience would be around average.

Because of this error in your statement, I am not sure if I can believe anything else you wrote.

In the United States, children are our greatest rhetorical asset, but they are not a real priority. People happily pay for ever-more luxuries and support stratospheric pay levels in certain professions (such as finance, management, and sports). The current crisis is not a fluke; the recession was induced by those who thought the private sector could do no wrong, with the specific intention of strangling the public sector.

James Hayes-Bohanan,

Who are you speaking of that intends to strangle the public sector?

Personally I would really like to have back some of the approx 300+ billion we spent on the war in Irag. That could have paid the salaries for a lot of teachers. I am sure educating immigrants amount to a drop in the bucket in comparison. I think cutting education endangers our country a lot more than cutting the defense budget would. The Federal government should continue to step in and fill the gap at least for the next few years then we probably should raise the retirement age and repeal the tax deduction for home owners. For the past decade as a society we have invested in all the wrong things and now we are paying the check for an empire we couldn’t afford.

Almost 2,500 hedge funds went out of business in 2008 and 2009. I’d guess most of their ‘CEOs’ lost their jobs. Good, they went out of business because of the risk they took and lost, it’s part of that territory.
Again, we don’t need the hedge funds to survive as a nation.

IT”S NOT THE SAME AS EDUCATION. Do you get it?

Those strangling the public sector? That would be those of who look at interest payments on our debt (to China? To Saudi Arabia?) for the next several generations. Talk about Independence. That would be those of us who look at money bleeding into military adventurism — we think our imperial pretensions belong in the 19th century. Post Cold War does not mean we won and get to lord it over everyone. Post Cold War means we get to start to cooperate.
The rest of the public enterprise we’re not so skeptical of. Pay taxes up front so we don’t mortgage the next century. Pay teachers so that we have a future — a rational future. By all means.

I think we have to be very careful in dealing with this topic. I am a 40 year educator, now a guidance counselor of 37 years. I love my job and my profession. I feel so lucky that I have the opportunity to touch the future in the way that I do. But when I talk to young people who want to go into teaching they look at the low salary in comparison to other professions and now the lay offs and the really bright ones go another direction. Many of these students have to go into significant debt to get a college education and then they can’t pay it off on a teacher’s salary without living a very meager lifestyle.
Many of the teachers I know are getting ready to retire and we need our best and brightest to become the teachers of tomorrow. Our country depends on good teachers.

I just heard about a poll that showed over 40% of the people polled did not know why we celebrate July 4th. I believe the respondents were in the 18-49 age range. What does this say about our education?

The high deductible health insurance plan for teachers in Wisconsin is voluntary and the vast majority of teachers in Milwaukee, the largest school district in the State, do not have the high deductible plan.

Roxanna is noy being completely honest.

I work for a design build architectural firm.
My cost of health care is $8,588.58, the cost for my employer is $17,823.06. Total health insurance cost, $26,411.64.

I do not have a matching 401K or pension plan.

Teachers in my municipality are retiring with full pensions and lifetime health care insurance in their early 50’s.

The caller from Cedar Rapids complained that he did not have the benefits the public school teachers have. This is sour grapes: if you want benefits in your job, organize! Teachers often make a significantly lower wage than comparable professions in the business world, so that trade-off of benefits v. wages is a way to make the profession a viable avenue for many very talented people who could be doing something else. The business model for public schools (and for private schools, too) is often an illogical template–those who complain that teachers aren’t doing enough to raise student achievement are frequently failing to consider all the other factors that come into play (in particular, lack of parental involvement in education.) It is a very stressful job with all the stress-related illnesses, and Cedar Rapids man wants to take away health insurance. Education is a collective good, a collective endeavor, and sniping at benefits will not make things better.

How much are we spending to build schools in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I don’t mean to strike a negative note here, but it seams that discussing cuts to education without talking about why the money isn’t there is like discussing the oil spill without mentioning lax government regulation. Looking at taxes and tax rates and effective tax rates is confusing to we non-economists. To me I say, “Follow the money.” Even the most anti-tax types would have to agree that tax rates for the wealthiest have gone steadily since the 1960s. During the same time, the wealthiest Americans have become vastly wealthier while the rest of us have more or less stayed even. (Remember when a household only needed one wage-earner?) Even if you don’t make it a cause-and-effect relationship, the fact remains that the money has flowed upward to the top. So it’s in that context that we should look at the cuts in services like education. If we were to increase taxes on the wealthiest 1% it can be seen as a tax restoration rather than a tax hike. So, instead of cutting more services to the middle class, I say restore the taxes on the ones who can readily afford it.

Large urban districts deal with a plethora of societal problems.

In Milwaukee, a very large percentage of children are in special education.

Given a falling tax base, lower home values, and yet ever increasing property taxes every year how long will it be until the system gets worse.

A great deal of school funding in urban districts goes to those children with very special needs and coming from great societal deficits.

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It is sad when you think of the amount of money the insurance companies spent lobbying for healthcare… it could have used that money for education

An excellent school should be balanced with new and veteran teachers. Don’t assume that the “young” teachers are the ones fresh out of college with new ideas. There are many of us that went into teaching as a second career; we’re not in our early twenties with no life experience – we are parents raising our own children and we come with a wealth of experience – and, have gone back to school to obtain teaching credentials — AND, we are just as excited and energetic about our new lease on life as the new college grads (we may have more wrinkles than them, though!).

Yes, we need higher taxes, and we need to stop letting the wealthy sneak off with loopholes! Americans need to learn to do with less, smaller houses, less flat screen t.v.’s. This country is going downhill fast, education with it, and we have got to wake up and decide what we really want for our country. If we want humane classrooms we are going to have to pay for it. End of story.

You mentioned that the educators looking for jobs are going to be eligible for jobs before the young people currently or just graduating from the field. However, this is not necessarily true. I graduated with a elementary degree two years ago and since have subbed in various districts. I feel I’m losing my edge without being in a school which offers continuing ed in order to keep up with changing education trends, where as new graduates are fresh off the chopping block. The longer I do this without finding a job where I have my own classroom and the benifits of a supportive administration, the less marketable I am. I have a NYS state certifaction, and a SUNY degree that wasn’t cheap, and I feel like I’ve wasting all that time and money. I’m sure I’m not the only one in this boat. Who was an A and B student, but that’s not good enough in a this very competative market. We told to go to college to be able to get a good job. I did that, so where’s my good job?

Our public school system is asked to do an enormous task, with mandates that keep growing. Amazingly, this locally run, state and locally funded, nation-wide system somehow manages to care for, educate, and often feed 80 million American children each day during the school year. My hats off to all of the professionals and volunteers who make this possible.

However, there are structural problems that stymie greater achievement and efficiency. In my town, Watertown, MA, the school board, town Council and faculty have done a very good job of balancing. Nonetheless, our teachers earn on average around 63K per year, get 13 weeks of vacation (including all the unnecessary, mid-year weeks off with older burned out teachers hanging on at the high end and younger, enthusiastic teachers getting laid off.

Perhaps if the teacher’s union would conceded to a longer school year, more even salary and benefit distribution and maybe we aim to have kids done with high school curriculum by age 16, the end result would be overall better and less costly.
I actually think that we should go to a longer hours, four day week across the board to boost family time, personal entrepreneurship, and getting kids into responsibility at an earlier age.

Thanks for tackling this very important topic — I am with a union based in Hartford that represents thousands of non-certified education support staff — paraprofessionals, classroom aides, nurses, custodians, food service workers — in schools across Connecticut …

The crisis isn’t just impacting teachers. It has been straining the support staff that work with them and are the “engines that keep our schools running.”

Our members have been proactive and reached out to school officials in districts across Connecticut to build partnerships to weather the storm. Just last week, for example, school workers in the small rural community of Hebron moved their Board of Education to redirect resources and prevent all but one of more than half a dozen support staff layoffs planned in the new year’s fiscal budget.

Their message was “education services first.” When parents, taxpayers, and residents added their voices, the district’s elected officials responded and proposed a better way forward for this economically challenged district.

The reality is that school employees understand the tough budget choices facing local officials. But they also know that the education experience for the children they serve will be harmed by laying-off front-line non-certified school workers and teachers.

Steve why are you complaining? If you don’t like your work situation change jobs. By the way did you go to public school? You are complaining about your personal work situation which was your choice. You knew going into it that your company did not offer matching 401K. 401K’s were never meant to be complete retirement funds they were to be part of pensions and SS. The three were meant to give people a well rounded retirement. This was destroyed in the 80’s if I’m correct and we are now seeing the error of that short sighted idea.

Most pensions are not 100% of the salaries earned. They are subject to the years you have worked.

If a teacher is retiring at 50 something most likely they have worked at least 20+ years or more. If they started right out of college at age 22 and retired at age 52 that’s 30 years. You also are dealing with a very high stress job, which can lead to burnout.

It is a fallacy that more spending leads to better education. This myth has been proven false time and time again. Since I don’t have time to list every study and example that shows this, just look at the D.C. school district. It is been consistently one of the highest per pupil spending districts in the nation. Yet, it is one of the poorest performing districts. This is not an exceptional example by any means. You will find this is consistent across the country. So, why is it that we see bad schools and almost immediately say we have to spend more? That is just wrong.

JP,
I think you need to think of what creates an average before you critize Abdul. I sure hope you yourself are not a math teacher. 31K for 14 years of experience is crap for the amount of time and work that goes into educating various ungrateful students with attitude probelms and think education is a joke until they get into the world.

Jeffe,

Do the math. Teachers retiring in their early fifties will on average collect those pensions for 20 plus years. Meanwhile, new teachers have been hired to take their place. So, everytime one of these teachers retires, the taxpayer pays for an additional teacher. We pay full salary to the retiree and a starting salary to the new teacher. Get it?

Everyone should feel the current economic pain. We’re in the worst depression since the 30s…..how can anyone in good conscience suggest that teachers should be spared. A couple of salient points: 1) Teachers always argue that we will hurt our kids if we cut back the educational budget. Interestingly enough, the previous NPR broadcast had a PhD economist discussing, amongst other things, how the educational system is failing. So, pouring money into schools ISN’T the solution. Using dwindling resources more effectively IS the solution. Or, to put it another way, emulate private industry….i.e., do as much (or more) with less. Having worked for over 30 years in a large corporation, I never went through a layoff where the organization said the output can change. 2) One of the main reasons, aside from their “holier than thou” attitude, there is animosity towards the educational system and teachers is the unions. Unions are, in most cases, an anachronism today….useful in the mines and factories earlier in the last century, but too greedy today. It’s amazing to me how teachers, who profess to be educating our little darlings (out of love) can be so strongly represented by unions. Today, unions seem focused on making leadership rich and getting wages and benefits that are not deserved (indeed, not available) in a competitive environment. And why tenure???? So they can espouse radical political views instead of teaching??? It’s an outmoded concept and has to be ended. So, I hope the towns and states continue to take a firm stand on this issue and cut budgets while demanding even better performance.

Vouchers?!?! How much does it take to send a kid to private school? (Rhetorical). The Conservatives trot out this little idea periodically, and they never mention that even the least expensive of private schools will be $10,000 a year. Vouchers are a way to siphon off money from under-served public schools and give a break to upper middle-class families. If you want to send your child to private schools, have the government pick up half the tab so you can still maintain that vacation home. If you are poor, however…sorry, can’t pick up half the tab for your child to go to private school? Go to those bastard public schools, and be glad there are no work houses!
And charter schools are replete with problems! Bush-era political fodder floated the idea of giving each household a $5,000 voucher to send their children to private school. I see its the old “new” grist of the conservative spinner. Whom will this help?

Could public schools be more abominable? I keep begging my friends with kids to please research the pathetic, insulting graduate level programs that somehow lead to a degree in “education.” A friend of mine who earned a PhD in American history was interested in becoming a teacher but then convulsed and withdrew when he discovered what he called the “insufferable Mickey Mouse PC courses” required to enter the field.

In my public high school, we have 4 useless staff under the title of “Dean of Students,” all making near $100,000?
Does anyone know what a “Dean of Students” does at a university, never mind a high school? Eliminating these union hacks over 10 years would save us 4 million dollars? But no–let’s lay off teachers and increase the class size to benefit the union scorecard. Does anyone know why public schools are paying over $100,000 for a vice-superintendant? Is the vice-superintendant’s value that he would be ready to step in to the job immediately in case of the unexpected death of the superintendant? How much money would the elimination of this union sinecure save over 10 years?

Let’s say you walk up to any American high school graduate and ask them the following questions regarding some of the more prominent historical sagas:

Do you see any paralells between the Palestine/Israel conflict and the Ireland/Northern Ireland conflict?

Do you think the average American hight school student can find Palestine on a map? The high school graduates I talk with can’t find China on a map if you give them 3 months to do so?

How do you learn about significant historical events from “teachers” who know nothing but the feather-weight PC current events program currently found in our teachers colleges?

Why aren’t public school teachers selected irrespective of their seniority? Isn’t education more important than seniority? In our universities, which are the best in the world, promoting educators according to seniority doesn’t enter the conversation and no one lowers himself to use seniority as a card to exploit. Are we shocked at the incompetence of public schools? Not me.

If you get a chance, I recommend you read Diane Ravitch’s scholarly books on the sad history of American public schools. Ms. Ravitch is a prominent education scholar who worked for both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

To those opposed to educator’s wages and benefits…

Will you be happier when 80% of Americans make ten bucks an hour with no benefits or prospects for retirement?

You are SO bothered by a teacher being able to retire in their 50’s, but seemingly have no problem with 5% of Americans contolling 75% of our wealth and assets.

I applaud and envy educators and their unions for holding on to some sort of respectable compensation for themselves.

This country will become a scary and potentially violent place when most of us are disenfranchised and realize we have no stake in the game and nothing really to lose. There aren’t enough police or even soldiers to keep order when we reach that tipping point.

Mike Hains SR,

I’m not sure I agree with you about unions being anachronistic.

1. Jobs shipped overseas
2. Falling wages
3. Extinction of the pension
4. Benefits disappearing
5. Wage depression caused by illegals

This sounds to me precisely the environment that organized labor was born to combat.

My guess (and it is only a guess) is that you are middle class or better and just don’t want to pay taxes. I don’t know a lot of $10 an hour people who feel the way you do.

“Megan Fox, movie hottie?” Regardless of what you think of her talents, I think you should probably call her an actress in the course of casual dialogue.

As I listen to the discussion, I get more and more frustrated regarding the firing of so mmany teachers sweeping the nation. All the individuals speaking for school districts (administrators) have not mentioned how many administrators have been fired. I work for the Los Angeles Unified School District and no where have I read or heard of any District office administrators being laid off. They may claim that they are laying off administrators but what they are doing is that they bump these people back into the schools and then you have the chain reaction occur. Our district is not only losing teachers, we are also losing nurses, custodial staff, cafeteria workers, and secretarial staff as well. These people keep our children healthy, safe and secure. Without these individuals, schools can’t run efficiently. I can’t quote a figure but the number of administrators to teachers is high. I’ve always asked myself and everyone I speak to “What do these people do?” And this question extends to the schoolboard as well. I’ve watched many a schoolboard meeting, and some of the discussions that go on drive me crazy!! Until our society decides that educating its citizens must be as important as defending our country, and taking care of our elderly and less fortunate, we are going to continue seeing cuts in public education until one day we will be back to a two tier system of education- one for the rich and one for the rest of us. What then?

1. Eliminate baubles, bangles, and beads: Here in Columbus, Ohio, the schools are scraping for dollars, too. But heaven forbid we shouldn’t have spent Lord ony knows how much on Red, White, and Boom-Boom fireworks this past weekend. With full media coverage and up-to-the-minute traffic reports afterwards, no less to encourage our batch of stimuus-package rookie cops. So break out that mimeograph machine gathering dust in the closet, kids, because we can’t afford to xerox your worksheets. Maybe that’s a bonus in disguise; go back to having them copy their worksheets from the blackboard. Penmanship does count.

2. Respect what you have left: Yeah, the building needs repairs and updates, but where do you get off vandalizing the place, kiddo? Why should any taxpayer in any economy buy you all the latest and greatest gizmos when you can not or will not take care of what you already have?

3. It’s not the teacher’s fault that classes are cramped: So, knuckle down and do you best to work with the program. You have no business denying anybody else his or her educational opportunity by acting up in class. There’s too much to get done and too little time to cover it all, so belt up and pay attention.

4. Be an example: Take your kids to the library this summer. Pick up a book yourself and read it. Enrich your own cultural ife at home so that you walk into the classroom with something share, not just to take.

5. Contain and reorder your own costs: You don’t need designer jeans and hair weaves to go to school. You do need a ring binder, pens, pencils, paper, a ruler and compass, and maybe a highlighter. Stop wasting your supplies and worry more about what’s going into your mind than onto your butt.

6. Register to vote: Then show up at the board of education meetings to let them know that you’re watching them, too. Civics class in action, it’s a real education.

I was heartened to hear some discussion of our less-than-perfect ways of evaluating students, but I would have liked to have heard more about it.

Too much of the “testing” infrastructure that the Cheney-Bush regime instituted under NCLB is riddled, by design, with inherent biases to ensure that historically disadvantaged students are continually ranked as performing worse than their more advantaged counterparts. Then, these results are used to justify further redistribution of much-needed public dollars from those historically disadvantaged areas to those historically more advantaged/oppressive ones.

Many in our teaching community recognize this, but their voices have been sadly, but not surprisingly, marginalized.

We need to do at least three things to revitalize public education in this country:

1) Discard testing regimes that guarantee the failure of the historically disadvantaged, and thus further reify age-old divisions. Instead, devise an evaluative mechanism that measures diversity of experience as an asset.

2) Redistribute public education spending, by sending more dollars to those historically disadvantaged areas. Give students from those areas a legal right to attend some of the “elite” educations of higher learning in this country, to break the stranglehold that the historically moneyed classes have held there

3) At the youngest possible age, educate students thoroughly everyday about what is possible if they work diligently, in order to inspire them. To this end, students at all levels should read some segment of “Dreams of My Father” or “The Audacity of Hope” aloud, as a community, every day, and then ruminate over the meaning.

If all three of these policies are enacted, I think we will move as a country toward a more just, workable public education system.

It was an interesting show but I was disappointed that the school officals and teachers did not offer any funding solutions. They seem to live in a world with “economic blinders” on. A good start would be for the various education unions to recommend dropping the idea of universal pre-k, smaller classroom size, free breakfast, lunch, summer free breakfast, lunch programs. Charge for the free bus rid some kids get to school. A salary cap for school administrators that ensure they are not paid more than highest paid teacher in their district. Rent out the schools at night, weekends and during the summer to private companies. Additionally, the unions should lobby for the government to enforce the existing immigration laws and arrest and deport more illegal immigrants.

Many people are ignorant of teacher’s salaries, which are far far far away from any bachelor’s or masters degree holders-people earn in their respective professions. As a matter of FACT… teacher’s salaries have been frozen for a year, or more in some districts. There has also been a hiring freeze for several years in my district (NLMUSD). The state gives teachers a 2-3 % raise in GOOD years, this year their IS a pay reduction of -3/8 %. when y0o0u think about getting a 1 1/2 percent raise for a decade, teachrs are not the problem with District’s budgets. Check out the proportion of teachers vs. administration cutbacks, the numbers are overwhelmingly skewed toward more administrators, who make twice that of teachers, and Superintendent pay, which is over $200,000.00 per year. Teachers must work for 28 years to get to the top of the union scale. 28 YEARS!!! I worked for Southern California Edison before becoming a teacher and it took three years to reach the top tier of pay. That is ridiculous. Furthermore, when do parents get evaluated for not supporting their child’s education or the teachers who work with their children? teacher’s are for one year, yet many students are continually not meeting goals. Their parents are their first and last teacher. From birth to death (of parent) parents are the push behind the students learning and responsibility to complete assignments and BEHAVE in class, and SHOW SOME RESPECT for the underpaid teachers who are now going to have more students, with less support, and less supplies to do the job… but we NEED more Administrators to get kids to learn? Students, Teachers and parents will pay the price, not the Chiefs, but the Indians.

Do the math. Teachers retiring in their early fifties will on average collect those pensions for 20 plus years. Meanwhile, new teachers have been hired to take their place. So, everytime one of these teachers retires, the taxpayer pays for an additional teacher. We pay full salary to the retiree and a starting salary to the new teacher. Get it?

Mark that’s not how pensions work. You don’t collect 100% of your salary. They also earned it being that they contributed to the fund over the 30 years they were teaching. By the way most teachers do not retire at 50. If they started out of college they would have put in close to 30 years. The hiring of new teachers is not part of this. What you seem to be saying is screw the teachers after 25 or 30 years of service of teaching. Is this what your saying? It seems to me that you have this thing ass backwards. Do the math, what nerve.

I also take issue with the anti tax stance you are advocating. The teachers took these jobs with contracts.
They work hard and have to put up with people like you how are antagonistic too them and are parents, as well as students who are belligerent.

The reason tax payers end up footing the bill is because states have not met their required contributions.
Also health care cost. If we had a good single payer system we would be paying half what we now pay for this. It’s the largest cost of the pensions.

http://teacherportal.com/teacher-salaries-by-state

jeffe, maybe I’m an idiot, but don’t pensioners get Medicare once they are in retirement? I know I hear about how I’ll need Medigap from a regular insurer on top of Medicare, but I’m hoping for some relief in medical costs thanks to effectively Single Payer (Medicare) once I hit 65.
Does this not apply to teachers too?
I have tried to contact Social Security and Senior Centers whose job is to explain this, but they won’t do any explaining until I am a month short of 65. Talk about advance planning!

Don’t look for teacher sympathy here. My daughter started school knowing how to read thanks to Mom. We had to put up with the asininity of many so-called teachers who should have been fired years ago. Let the employed teachers renegotiate their contracts down to bring back the newbies…or better yet, repeal the tenure laws, dump the unions and see how many applicants who want to teach are really out there. I dare you!

Take care.

Of course it doesn’t really matter…teachers are hittin’ the bricks and it ain’t gonna change. Nobody complained when those wonderful tax revenues paid by those crooked banks were flowing in from Wall Street to underwrite the state worker pay hikes. Party’s over. Suck it up.

Call your Mom tonight.

The teachers unions don’t care about educating students. The teachers unions are only concerned with keeping bad teachers from being fired and funneling money (through union dues) to the democrat party.

Teachers have been under paid for years every teacher knows its not about the money. So any post retirement remuneratoin is no different than any other position with 4-5 years of education and continuing ed each summer after aschool year of 10 hour days and sunday at the desk or preparing a classroom. If any of you want to see where yuor taxes really go put national security under the scope IT WILL HURT. Also ask what your communities have spent on fire departments and police staions scince 9-11. Next understand that the more we short the educational aspect the less we can expect later on. Please think about it

hello,

I am dismayed at the numerous UMs and AHs of Alyson’s report. This reporter needs to review her on air representation. It is highly annoying to hear someone reporting on education that does not respect and/or reconsider her own professional field of clear reporting.

mary aldrich

I used to be a teacher and am very sympathetic to the cutbacks and layoffs and have personal issue with education of children as a priority. Unfortunately, in my case, the education of my child has been terminated because of administrative decision to save money. My daughter is a special needs student and formerly was placed at a therapeutic residential program and worked hard to move on to a less restrictive residential program. I acknowledge that this is at huge expense to the school district but the law provides for an appropriate education and the TEAM decided what was appropriate. A new special education director came to the district and saw a way to save dollars and refused to fund the IEP and thus my daughter was not placed at the school that was formerly determined essential and she has had no education while she has been left at home.

Mary–

That was rude. I thought it was a fine report.

Why is it that we are bailing out Wall Street, bankers etc. and not teachers, that is OUR CHILDREN, and the middle class?

There is no more money. The school districts have no more money. Property taxes are too high. People who work in the private sector do not make as much as teachers make, on the average. There is no more money. Pensions are too high. Salaries are too high. Benefits are too high. Local property owners have to pay all of these costs. They are out of money. It is time for the public sector to share the pain. They want to be innoculated from the economic downturn. There is no more money. Retired teachers in NYS do not pay State income taxes on their pensions. Why? Is this fair? There is no more money. Over the past 4 decades, the schools have taken on more and more social problems and have instituted more and more programs. There is no more money. The problems are in the homes and no one has the courage, leadership, or will to state the obvious. Ineffective teachers are never fired. It costs school districts upwards of $100,000 to fire a teacher. School districts avoid these types of proceedings. They are protected by the public sector unions. Teachers in NYS have the cadillac, the bentley, the rolls royce of health care plans. Why? Is this fair? NYS teachers have defined benefit plans instead of defined contribution plans? Why? Defined benefit plans are practically unheard of in the private sector today. Some teachers have no co-pay, no premiums, free health care. Why? The schools have not changed. Now the hammer is coming down.

I’m a future teacher. Two years of grad school and I’m on the market.

I’m not so scared about the job market at the moment (partially because i have two years of grad school ahead of me) but what I am afraid of is the privatization/business model approach to education.

They’re going to tell me that they absolutely “need” me (being a new teacher), while at the same time paying me less, forcing me to work more, and evaluating me based on arbitrary and counterproductive measures (standardized tests)?

And they want to take away tenure, which isn’t a “job guarantee” but rather a right to due process before some cocksure principal fires me over these inane tests?

Why should I want to become a teacher?

It seems when institutions starting failing for whatever reason, it is an opportunity for re-examination. I believe up and coming educators and existing school systems could benefit from a joint collaboration. Teaching time for the student under the tutelage of experienced teachers in exchange for introductory pay and college tuition credits. A reduction in teacher to student ratio AND an opportunity to get new teachers in the classroom and begin their careers or decide before a longer term investment that teaching isn’t the best fit.

I believe the United States need to re-prioritize their priorities in terms on money usage. What I would like to know is how much money is spent on military costs and if a small percentage of that was put towards education, what changes could be accomplished. After all I was always taught to tackle arguments with my brain and never with my fist.

Why did we bail out general motors instead of our teachers. Their cars suck anyways.

Coming from a family of teachers, mother and two sisters, I have heard a many a tale. Decades ago the special needs children had special Ed class. The rest could then move at a faster pace. The lawsuits arrived and the special needs children were placed in with the rest. The logic was sensible at the time,but it slowed the pace of learning down. Then we entered the era of protecting the feelings and self esteem building instead of the ABC’s and everybody is equal.
Still, in my state, 62% could not pass the entrance test to college.
As one guest mentioned, the number of classes given to teach English in their area.
Has anyone determined the added cost of teaching English to students from other countries?
48% of the births in America last year was to Hispanics.
Considering these kids come from poorly educated parents and different cultural systems, what is the added cost to the Educational system????
Time is money, if the system is swamped with poorly educated children and parents from less developed countries, how much will this impact our system???
Does it have an additional cost effect on the system???

The problem has nothing to do with education. The real problem has to with why americans are so fat compared to the rest of the world. When you can figure out why americans are so big and fat, in general, compared to the rest of the world you will have solved your problems with education and learning

Hi Tom,
I am an art teacher. I am in a catch 22! I just finished my 5th year in the school system/4th year teaching fine arts as a teacher. My certification for being an art teacher requires me to take six more courses covering IEP/504 students. Plus expectations to pass the PRAXIS I and PRAXIS II. I have a BA and an MBA; however if I apply at a jr college or a university, I can be classified as a certified teacher. On contingent of my finishing 6 hours of among the six courses; I have lost my job. I got laid off. I have not been able to finish into the six hours among the six courses. I was laid off in 2008 of February. Called back August 2009. Then laid off again June 2010. Salary dropped and insurance taken away! HR Dept. informed me not renewing contract for 2010-2011.
I was assigned to two schools for fine arts. It was impossible for me to teach at two locations and take courses before the deadline dates per state regulations. A lot of the finest new teachers are not certified yet. I came to the education profession by way of corporate america. I was a substitute teacher while I was working on my MBA. (Mortgage and living bills to pay)There are probably a good percentage of us in the catch 22.

A voucher system, where parents choose their child’s school, would be a nightmare. I’m sorry, but many parents in our country lack the education, knowledge, and maturity to pick out a “good” school. And what happens if parents make their choice but their child doesn’t do as well as the parent expects them to – do they pull their child out and try another school? What if the parent doesn’t agree that their child needs to be disciplined for poor behavior choices – will that irate parent pull them out and go elsewhere, again? What happens if the parent likes the first grade teacher, but not the second grade teacher – do they switch schools for that, too? After a couple of months, what if the parent decides the teacher is too easy, too strict, too old, or too inexperienced?
Don’t think this doesn’t happen! Many of today’s parents want their kids to go to school and have fun and not complain at home about school so as not to interrupt the parent’s cellphone chatter or manicure or ballgame on tv. It’s so much easier than honestly taking responsibility for their child’s education and behavior; much easier than actually talking with, reading to, or doing something of substance with their kids during the few hours between getting home and bedtime every night and during every weekend.

Another thought: Where is the money going to come from to bus all these kids across town or to a nearby town to school everyday? What about kids that want to stay at their school three towns from home to get extra help or be in the school play? Will there be late buses, or will parents be responsible for driving 20 minutes away to pick up their child (on time!)?

PS Teachers don’t get their “full pension”, or if they do, they have to pay a lump sum to get it (a friend had to pay $11,000 after teaching for 30 years to get 85% of her pension when she retired at 63; another friend that taught for 35 years and retired at 65 paid $7,000 to get 85% because she took 5 years off to stay home when she had her children). Employees without pensions will get Social Security when they retire; it’s taken out of their salary while they work and they get it back when you retire – how is that different than a pension? What about mid-career teacher-newcomers? They start where the new college grads start salary-wise; there’s no negotiating for a higher salary because they worked for 15 years in another field. So those teachers – fresh from going back to school and getting their teaching credentials, full of new ideas and energy – those teachers won’t retire with 30+ years of service. If they get 20 -25 years in and retire at, say, 63 or 65, they’ll get about 60% of the average of the highest three years of their teaching salary (they will not collect SS that they paid into the system while working previous to taking their teaching job).

one more thing . . . “tenure” is an old term and not used today, at least in MA. In MA, teachers that meet all state and district educational requirements and have three successful years of teaching with positive evaluations and the recommendation of their principal get “professional status”.

Tom,

Perhaps if you had guests who spanned wider range of opinions than the typical liberally biased NPS list your listeners would get a truer picture of a major the cause
of the teacher layoff problem. Please see WSJ editorial commentary below:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704535004575348980568232888.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion

Tom Conway

The one thing I found most striking is that the layoffs were based on seniority. Seniority seems like the most useless criterion to use when determining who you want to keep. For all of the flaws of the proposed ways of evaluating teachers any one of them must be better than seniority. Of course we have the teachers’ unions to thank for this mess. Once again the unions are contributing to the destruction of our education system.

In some non-unionized schools (e.g. some charter schools) contracts are negotiated year-by-year between the administration and the teacher, just as in private industry (charter schools are public schools in most states). Now, this may be a bit intimidating for the teachers but at least it allows the schools the flexibility to keep their most talented teachers when faced with cutbacks. It’s no surprise that this is another reason unions hate charter schools.

To all the people who believe teachers should make as much or then they do, should have the best healthcare insurance while paying very little for it, and be able to retire 10 to 15 years earlier then most people with practically full income and healthcare,….DO THE MATH!

The main reason most states are in the econmic mess that they are in is because of the Public Employee union’s contracts that the spineless politicians continue to agree to. Many states were already on their way to economic ruin long before the recession. There is no way taxpayers can continue to fund these people at the current levels. Their wages, benefits and pensions are eating up more & more of state’s budgets. I know, some people are already thinking that I am some kind of kneejerk anti-union scoundrel. Call me what you want, but it is just simple math. You cannot stick your head in the sand forever. This is not about being anti-union or certainly not anti-public school teacher. All you have to do is read something that does not automatically fit your world view and you will realize that I am right.

Ellen Dibble everyone over 65 is eligible for Medicare.

Mark while you are entitled to your opinion I’m not going to let the all the misleading information you post here go unchecked. First you generalize about the health insurance benefits. If you listened to the show Roxanna Bornemann, district school administrator in Antigo, WI, said that the teachers in her district paid premiums and deductibles.

Also you seem to lump all of the states together into one big pile of sameness. Easy to make your argument as most people don’t understand how unions work or how contracts work with each union. Here in Boston we just had an absurd deal made with Fire Department and their union. I hated the result. However I wont lump them into some big pile of Public Employees as you are doing.

The state next to Massachusetts, New Hampshire does not have any state income taxes and funds the schools with property taxes only. They have some of the worse schools in the country and some are threatened with closure not because of the teachers but because the buildings are falling apart.

You are right about one thing, we are in trouble and with this I am in 100% agreement with you. We can’t go on like this. However we spend almost 50% of the Federal budget on the military and that includes the contractors such as Halliburton. There is no oversight or accountability on how the money is spent. Seems to me that while your anger is justified, it seems misplaced.

First of all, I am not angry. Please don’t characterize me as such so that I sound irrational. I am being very rational.

Second, I didn’t say this is the problem for every state. I said ” The main reason that MOST states are in the economic mess that they are in”. I do not unfairly generalize or lump unrelated states together.

Third, you seem to assume that New Hampshire’s school buildings are falling apart because of a lack of overall taxpayer money. I don’t know if this is the case. Could it be that the tax money that is available is being misspent? Could it be that the wages & benefits are to high so that everything else suffers? It is rarely the problem that there isn’t enough money.

Fourth, who is talking about the Federal budget? I thought we were talking about state budgets and the amount spent on teachers. I am confident that you don’t believe that the Federal gov’t should takeover all K-12 education. That would be crazy. I’m sure you would agree.

My original concerns about state budgets stand. You can choose to make any argument you want, but the numbers do not lie.

Many teachers make way too much money.
Unions are to blame.
In the Chicago suburbs the salaries are outrageous.
Six figure salaries are commonplace.
There is a couple where I live, the mother is a middle school history teacher and the husband is the high school varsity football head coach.
Between the two of them, they make > $200,000!!! TO COACH FOOTBALL!!!
Many teachers work 9 months a year. I’d like to get 3 months off each year.
Then there’s the pensions. They are bankrupting Illinois.
And there’s tenure! They can’t be fired!!
And, of course, if they are lazy, teachers can just haul out the same tests/quizzes/homework from the year before and sleepwalk through the whole year. There are plenty of them that do that.
There are Kindergarten teachers here making > $80,000!!!.
It makes me sick. And then all of these teachers and bleeding heart liberals go on about how important education is, like we should just be blind to the financial problems and throw more money at them.

Hard to feel a lot of sympathy for laid off teachers in particular. Where were they when manufacturing was being moved to Asia and machinists and line workers were being laid off left and right? Or when hundreds of thousands of foreign workers were being imported while U.S. engineers and computer scientists were being laid off or having their wages cut.

Education jobs have been immune from global pressures for a long time. But trade deficits and runaway illegal immigration has caught up with state budgets, and now it’s the teachers turn. No one is immune from the crushing pressures of competing against countries like China that don’t even have basic environmental or worker rights. Until that changes everyone is vulnerable.

In some states, such as Connecticut, teachers DO NOT get any Social Security benefits. Neither my husband nor I will be eligible for any SS benefit. We do not even have access to the SS benefits we gathered while working jobs outside of education. We were also late starters in becoming teachers, so right now, in order to receive benefits that we can live on, we will need to work/teach until we are in our late 60’s to early 70’s. Additionally, there is no guarantee that the money we have put aside through the state will even be there upon our retirement. Connecticut teachers have fought long and hard to make sure we have what we saved. Thank goodness some of us are smart enough to put money away in different accounts. Who knows what will happen to our money if the state has their way.

I am all for freezing my pay or taking concessions as long as my money goes to keeping teachers in the building. More often than not, however, the money I have given back to the district winds up in the hands of the town or city and is used for other projects. That is not what I give up my pay for! I want teachers to stay. None of us can teach effectively when we have 30-40 kids in a room. It’s impossible.

Teachers ARE NOT the problem. Nor are parents the sole problem. This is a gray area problem. We need to, as a whole, support and VALUE education. As far as I can tell, right now, we value, consumerism and all things tied to consumerism. Give me my iPad, my Blackberry, my Wii system, my big screen television, and my huge SUV, but don’t make me pay for education.

We will see, in the future, that we will get what we pay for. You want top quality education where students graduate with skills to be competitive in a global economy? Well, you’re going to have to pay for it somehow.

Additionally, for all of you who like to report that “teachers have it so good”, come spend a few weeks in my shoes. You wouldn’t last a day. Guaranteed.

Tom–

Sorry, could you post a link to something other than a Wall Street Journal site? My browser is set to prevent sites that contain racist, capitalist, and generally exploitative ideologies.

Re: Why should the public sector be immune from macroeconomic forces?

If that’s the case, shouldn’t we do away with the military and put all of national defense out for bid?

I understand there are lots of unemployed mercs (mercenaries) looking for jobs. I.e., former soldiers for the Soviet Union, S. Africa, etc. They’ll probably work for a lot cheaper than what it’s costing us for all the generals in the Pentagon.

>;-)

PS – I’m a vet. USAF, specifically.

Much as I enjoyed this program (my wife and I are both teachers – she’s at the K-5 level; I’m at a community college) I’m afraid the wrong questions were being asked.

- What is the nation doing to the next generation of workers? Or will they be replaced by better-prepared people from China, India, Russia, etc.?

- What is the nation doing to itself?

- Why aren’t parents screaming for those who profit most off the nation’s wealth to better support the nation? Instead, they get major tax breaks and golden parachutes.

- Speaking of tax breaks, what about the huge tax cuts Bush et al. pushed through? Weren’t they supposed to create more jobs here in the US? If so, where are all those jobs?

Here in SC, the maximum sales tax on any auto purchase is $300 – no matter if it’s a used Ford Focus or Maserati. While I realize SC is hardly a paragon if fiscal sanity, who’s really benefiting from that bit of largesse? And this cut was done “in the name of saving taxpayers money.”

Meanwhile, the same pattern is repeated again and again throughout the nation. Crucial services such as education and law enforcement are cut back in the name of “reducing waste,” while tax cuts flow again and again to those who benefit most from society’s riches.

Tom–

Sorry, could you post a link to something other than a Wall Street Journal site? My browser is set to prevent sites that contain racist, capitalist, and generally exploitative ideologies.
Posted by Yolanda, on July 7th, 2010 at 7:44 PM

Hilarious.

Mark The Federal government funds all public education in part. The state and local government make up the rest.

New Hampshire does not have a state income tax. The reason the schools are in such bad shape is directly tied to how the state raises revenue.

Mark lets do what I perceive you are saying, cut education to the bone and live with it. I can’t image it getting any worse, but I suppose it could.

Steve can I suggest some anger management.

Jeffe,

Yes, the Federal gov’t does contribute a minor percentage of education funding. The vast majority comes from within the respective states. That is where the control should be, at the state level. Do you know how much money is spent per student in New Hampshire? Do you know how that compares to the rest of the nation? I don’t know the answers to those questions, but I am not ready to assume that people aren’t being taxed enough. Why is it that certain people automatically believe that when a problem arises, more taxpayer money is needed to solve it? Sometimes we have to dig a little deeper and think a little more before we reach into everyone’s pockets for more money.

A belated response to JP, regarding the strangulation of the public sector. Grover Nordquist — one of the architects of the neocon movement — famously said,

“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

From this mindset has flowed years of attacks on everything public and adulation of everything private. A shocking number of people, for example, believe that government spending is inherently non-productive, and that private-sector spending is inherently efficient.

Doubly maddening is that the privatization movement in education, prisons, and the military sectors has allowed many of the very same neocons to get fantastically wealthy from PUBLIC spending.

The amount of emotion and diversity of topics introduced here says much about how education is viewed. School have become the convenient bucket in which is placed all of society’s quick fixes. Drug problems? Introduce a DARE program. Teen-age pregnancy? Introduce a teenage pregnancy program. Anger management issues? Include it in the character education unit. All of these things that used to be taught at home, or the character building that used to be the parents’ domain, has now been transferred to the jurisdiction of the classroom. No wonder there is less time to teach the basics.

Public school teaches are paid from state and national funds. You have a bulk of money and decide where it goes. When military needs are at the top of the list, there is a huge dent in what is left to spread around.

Finally, a personal note to those of you that espouse getting rid of older teachers in favor younger, more energetic ones. The more children you see, the greater your understanding of “why Johnny can’t read” or make friends or do his homework or any other of the myriad tasks that comes with the territory. Yes, I agree that older teachers slow down some. I am one of them. Think of it this way: you know those birthday parties that you have for your child when the whole class is invited? You know how exhausted you are at the end of the day? Add on to that the prep work of making sure there are enough games to keep the kids amused, that you have enough materials to do the tasks and that the allergy-ridden child isn’t exposed to nuts. After your 1 or 2 hour party is over, now imagine the parents that call you because their child’s feelings were hurt, you didn’t have the flavor cupcake s/he likes, and the child whose parent doesn’t pick him up after the party is over because s/he hasn’t been able to find child care.

Aren’t you tired? Try it on for size 6-7 hours a day, 180 days of the year, for 10 years or more. Yup, older teachers can slow down but, in my humble opinion, it’s the nature of the job.

As I read through the comments, there is some erroneous information. I can only speak to California’s system.

1. The term tenure is no longer used. We now are classified as permanent. This only affords teachers with due proccess. If administration does their job through observations, evaluations and actions plan, a teacher can be fired if they fail to improve.

2. In Califonia teachers do not collect SS. and if we worked outside of teaching and contributed we face the SS offset.

3. Teachers in our district will need to work until 60 because we only receive health benifits for 5 years or 65 which ever comes first. we then get Mdeicare but that is because we pay into it.

4. Education is a partnership between the child, the parents, the administrators and the teachers. Remove one of these groups and education will suffer.

5. The comparsion between private and public should be looked at a liitle closer. As a public school teacher I took less money, no mobility up or down on the pay scale (except for the 500$ or so a year increase until I reached 12 years) or movement from district to district, for job security and benifits. The benifits have droped significantly as the premiums increase. Once a teacher has been in their district for 5 years or more they are likely to take pay cuts and loss of years of service (not towards retirment) so we are pretty well married to the district. We only receive pay increases if the state gives a COLA and we can negotiated an increase. So I haven’t seen a pay raise in 3 years and as most Americans making less now. In the private sector people have much more mobility but their benifits are more expensive and there is much less security so they take a risk. Regardless of all the arguments, our founding fathers, notably Thomas Jefferson, knew that to maintain democracy all Americans needed to be provided a free education.
My issue is not money. My issue is that anyone who went to school thinks they are an expert in education. Teachers just want a seat at the table and to be listen to when nonteachers want to reform educatio.