LAST EDITED ON Mar-15-17 AT 00:58AM (MST)[p]A bit of background to qualify myself, other than that I have a pulse and I have two boys who have gone through the public school system. One is now an adult working on a college education, and the second is in 8th grade this year.
My wife is a Special Ed teacher with a Master?s in Special Ed and 20 years of experience. We graduated together from different schools of the same university.
I have quite a diverse background, with two years of very intense and very technical military training and a 20 year Navy career. I also have two Bachelor?s of Science degrees--one in Education and an MBA. I have a number of computer certifications, and my 2nd BS is in Network Security. Suffice to say I have both a great deal of time in classrooms as a student and a good knowledge of education theory and learning styles.
And all of this after I myself had to have something of an intervention on me when I was in 3rd grade, where I was taken out of my regular classroom part time for intensive resource center phonics instruction. Fortunately for me, somebody recognized something wasn?t right with me, and the phonics instruction must really work, because it took. By 6th Grade, I was the best speller, the best reader and a pretty good writer. But back in 3rd grade, something still wasn?t right, so they had a psychiatrist interview me. He figured out that I was so near-sighted that I couldn't see the board. There is a lot I'm NOT telling here for brevity, but also because it's very private stuff. So keep that in mind if you have comments or questions like maybe why didn't I speak up.
My thoughts on Jager?s question?
First, how about knock off the Common Core BS and all of the experimentation, and allow teachers to not only TEACH, but to foster a love of learning in kids?
This next is probably not popular with many teachers, but how about rescinding tenure and give financial incentives to those teachers who perform well? Bear in mind, this also means you need a very fair and thorough method of assessing student learning. Most of what's in use today is probably crap.
How about a dedicated campaign to rid our schools of drugs and drug dealers and other thugs who make life difficult or downright hell for the average kids who just want to get an education?
How about give Principals the power to hire AND to fire both poor performing AND bad behavior teachers (drunks, child molesters, embezzlers, etc.), in addition to ensuring that the latter are criminally prosecuted? Sure, let them have their union lawyers; everyone?s entitled to a fair trial in this country, otherwise we revert 240 years to how the British treated our ancestors here before the American Revolution. But FIRE them and then PROSECUTE them to the fullest extent of the law. They should NEVER be allowed to sit around in some cushy lounge for laid off teachers paid for by the school district, forced by the teacher?s union of course, and work a side real estate business that pays ten times their teacher?s salary WHILE CONTINUING TO DRAW their teacher?s salary.
Just as a for instance, in my job, contracts lay out labor categories that have a pay RANGE. It's not a perfect system and occasionally over-restrictive. An exaggerated example is they might specify education and experience requirements of a Master's degree in a relevant discipline and 15 years of experience leading a team, and then have a salary range of $24k-$48k. Good luck with that!
But it does give my employer the latitude to pay better performers more and to give bonuses for exceptional achievements. Occasionally there is someone who must be paid more than the contract allows because the contracts and acquisition people sometimes don't have the first clue about the going rate for a particular education and skillset. That results in the contracting employer taking a loss on that person in order to win or to maintain the contract that is profitable overall.
Someone mentioned supply and demand. Right now, there is very tight and cutthroat competition among contractors for people who can do my job, from entry level to senior task lead. This is because there aren't enough of us to go around, so there is constant poaching of employees by competitors. It's a very stressful job that demands integrity and has quite strict education, experience and credential requirements, as well as the ability to get and to maintain a security clearance. It is also almost entirely administrative, so many who have the knowledge and certifications prefer to be hands-on and don't really want to do this job. But the contracts and acquisition world has not caught up with the real world to recognize they need to adjust the pay ranges for the labor categories that we fill.
In this article, I find it ironic that 75% of school districts report a teacher shortage when at least 75% of districts have had to lay off teachers because they don't have enough $ to keep them on the payroll.
How about fix THAT problem? You have to be getting a teacher's PAYCHECK to get this tax break, DUH!
When teachers leave the profession and when teachers get laid off, the result is increased class sizes, more stress and longer hours for those who remain. Lay offs also result in repossessions and foreclosures and career changes for those who get laid off. The truly sad part of that is that it's the kids who suffer because teachers and teacher?s aides get laid off, rather than a slew of useless bureaucrats and the superintendent's five secretaries (One for every night of the week? Did I say that out loud?)
And those teachers who get laid off are often the youngest and least experienced, who aren't paid a heck of a lot in the first place, and haven't reached tenure yet. So the district has to lay off a larger number of those teachers to balance the books.
The younger teachers then say "SCREW THIS!" and go on to another field, even if it pays less or requires more education, but especially if they have a degree in a math or science discipline. I forget the numbers, but they keep an appallingly small percentage of new teachers, many of whom felt they weren't prepared to handle discipline issues in today's schools where useless bureaucrats ON those school boards are more afraid of lawsuits than the students are of their parents when they get home!
I see some pretty negative comments here from some folks who understandably don't want to pay any more taxes than necessary, and who have blamed here only the teachers and the teacher's unions. For those folks I would say I think this can be fixed and put more money into classrooms and into teacher's pockets without raising taxes. I think there is a lot of waste in bureaucracy and union goon driven perks that get agreed to by corrupt politicians whose only concern is getting into some political office and staying in some political office.
The school Principal where I went to grade school was known to spank some of the "bad" kids, but I was more afraid of what my dad would do to me when he got home if I ever got in trouble in school.
In both cases, those days are long gone. Are we really better off?
At the other end of the spectrum, my wife got laid off from a district a few years ago even with 17 years of experience, because she changed districts and gave up her tenure to work closer to home. That district then "discovered" a multi-million dollar shortfall mid-year and laid off a bunch of teachers at the end of the school year. My wife was among them.
Then she worked as a substitute teacher for over a year and went on multiple interviews during that time before she was finally picked up by a local HS district, which is desperate for credentialed Special Ed teachers. We heard through the grapevine that several of the districts who interviewed her hired brand new teachers for those positions, because they are at the bottom of the pay scale. In contrast, my wife is very expensive to them with her Master's Degree + and now 20 years of experience. Some of those districts were interviewing again within six months for the same position after hiring that brand new teacher right out of college, when they basically ran away screaming "No more! Make it stop!"
Someone coined a phrase--"The iPod Generation". Some of the older guys here certainly understand this.
Many of the teachers in my wife?s shoes have decided to retire as soon as possible and go be Walmart greeters or something rather than deal with the roller coaster ride of a school system run entirely by lawsuit averse school boards, corrupt politicians, and their labor union handlers.
We could talk another day about what some of those teachers could do to help fix the system by staying engaged and moving up in the pecking order.
Darth Vader was a sap.