[geeks] One of the things I love about America

[Joshua D Boyd]

On Thu, May 02, 2002 at 02:00:18PM +0000, wa2egp at att.net wrote:

> Sounds like the government ;->

Yes, well that is another argument that could be had.  But I'll skirt it for
now for the sake of preserving some shred of sanity.
 
> I would agree.  Being a building rep, it would be expected that I would be 
> against some of these things but in reality, I have no problem with these 
> alternatives, IF they give the student a good education.  In the urban 
> district where I work, the mayor was putting in charter schools left and 
> right.  Unforch, his pride and joy charter school was an absolute failure.  
> Only 1.2% of the students passed the state standard tests.  The worst 
> public primary school did at least 20 times better (still pretty crappy).  
> Here, it doesn't work.  Who gets hurt?  The students.  (BTW, these tests 
> are not a good measure of what students have learned but they are what the 
> state requires and most people use as the measure.

Here in PA, homeschoolers routinely outperform public school kids, and the
amount of supervision that homeschoolers are required to have is a joke.

Charter schools are a fairly new phenom here.  The highest profile one (a
cyber-charter school, oohhh, ahh.  Computers, must be good) is in the middle 
of a major scandel now.  I don't care for cyber-charter schools.  Too many
people think of it as homeschooling, but easier, which it isn't.  I haven't 
heard anything about test results.

True, it is the students that get hurt, assuming they really are being hurt.
But, I think kids should be raised to be more resiliant than to be badly
hurt by a few years of bad schooling.  But, being force to stay in a bad
situation certainly doesn't help.

But then, where I live, I know a lot of people w/o college degrees, and even
a number of highschool drop outs that are doing quite well.  My mother knows
people who never went to highschool at all who are also doing quite well.
 
> Not true.  You do not have to be a member of the union to teach, but in 
> many districts you may have to pay a percentage of the dues since "you are 
> benefiting from the contract negotiations".  My district, there is no such 
> rule.  We do not have a closed shop, although they would like it to be 
> that way.

I thought in most places membership was required.  Obviously I can't make 
sweeping statements about the whole nation though.

> Griping about teachers and the teachers' union is the American way, 
> especially around election time.  Heck, the union does things which make 
> me scratch my head.  Keep in mind that we are paid less than most, if not 
> all, other "professional" jobs with the same required education.  When I 
> started, my salary was $13207 and my wife started at AT&T the following 
> year for $24000.  That was 22 years ago.  I caught up four years ago. 
> (My pay scale is not linear so she still has made more total money than I 
> have)

I go to a university that specialises in its teaching program.  From the 
people I meet, it is hard to respect most new teachers.  Quite a number of
people here seem to have picked it because it looked like the easiest way to
a degree, and hey, you get a 3 month vacation every year.

Of course, these are hopefully the people who quit after a year or two of 
teaching.

But anyway, I've noticed that private schools seldom pay teachers as much as
public schools, but in a lot of cases private schools are better (again, 
nothing is universal, and there are sucky private schools).  This says to me
that raising teacher pay isn't going to fix anything.  What probably will
fix things is empowering teachers to do things like hand out real punishments.
Further, moral seems to be one of the most pressing problems, and I don't think
that more money ever goes far towards fixing moral.
 
> Remember this, the National Education Associating is the largest union in 
> the US.  Be afraid......be very afraid.  ;->

Whatever.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd