UT opinion article on SB 1021 and Prop 30

[no_such_reality]

IMHO, the single biggest proof that money won’t fix the problem is LAUSD. When you look at the actual total expenditures across all funds and categories (i.e. icluding building new schools), over the last two decades, they’ve been spending close to $20,000 per pupil each year.

LAUSD is, IMHO, broken. Horribly broken in spite of many dedicated and competent individual teachers. They are sadded in a system that strips them of resources, saddles them in bereaucracy, structurally creates a hostile employee/employer relationship and tolerates mediocrity and covers-up failure in denial and cares more about politically correct talking points than accomplishing anything concrete.

And anecdotally, the schools will have no problem hiring at current compensation levels. Much like LAFD, they get too many candidates. There is zero need to increase teacher compensation, the recent grads are literally beating down door, smoozing everybody in every school they can find trying to get one of few openings.

If you can’t find math instructors, you raise compensation for math qualified instructors, not raise compensation for all instructors.

[an]

[quote=CA renter][quote=AN]

[quote=CA renter]And could Preuss get the same outcomes from students with low IQs, SES, etc. if they threw all this money and all of these resources at them? No, they could not. They’ve tried that already and failed.[/quote]Proof? I thought SES + demographic backgrounds are highly correlated to IQ? I’m getting lost trying to follow your contradiction.[/quote]

Again, not exactly sure about what you’re asking for here, but if you’re questioning the experiment with throwing money at poor schools, read this:[/quote]Nope, not just throwing money at the problem. Have Preuss open more schools and fail?

[an]

[quote=CA renter]Again, there is no evidence that private schools or charter schools perform better than public schools once these variables are taking into consideration. The vast majority of studies show the opposite, that public schools outperform private schools.[/quote]First, we have to define what’s better. To me, cheaper and smaller class size is a great start. With those 2 metrics, private school and some charter school have shown to be better than public school.

[an]

[quote=livinincali]If you want proof of why socialistic systems fail, just look at public education. It’s probably one of the most socialistic institutions in the country and it continues to get poor results because they refuse analyze these policies and change them.

They refuse to look at administrative costs. They refuse to do meaningful performance evaluation. They promote kids based on feeling rather than knowing the content. They refuse to split kids up by ability and let those at the top succeed.

The successes of the Preus school should be a model for public schools. Hey maybe we should segregate the high IQ kids and give them some teachers that can allow them to succeed. Instead that is deemed unfair (The number one phrase in the socialists playbook) and so we stick all the kids in the same room and teach to the left hand side of the bell curve. Everybody on the right side of the bell curve is bored and those are the far left still aren’t getting it.

We just have to accept the fact that everybody isn’t born with the same ability. Life isn’t fair. Let’s try to get those that can really succeed ahead and those that really struggle the basic life skills they need to function in society. They need the ability to read, write and do mathematics. Put them through classes that focus on real life skills and let them skip physics, chemistry, advanced history, etc. Stuff that they don’t need to function and stuff that they can always learn by READING if they are interested in it.[/quote]Couldn’t have said it better myself. This is exactly what I’m trying to say w/ Preuss. I wasn’t trying to say all kids should have the same outcome. But all kids should have the same opportunity. I guess that’s exactly what’s different between political parties today. One think outcome should be normalized while another think only opportunity should be normalized.

[ocrenter]

CAR, I’m sure you would agree there are bad teachers out there that do not care, who would just check “profection” straight down the report card, essentially just clock in and clock out.

We do not seem to have an effective system in place in dealing with this group of apathetic teachers.

Before we spend any more money to improve compensation, do you have any recommendations to remedy the above that would not get push back from the union?

[paramount]

[quote=CA renter]

I can’t think of any other job (other than politics) where a person has more wannabe bosses and where everyone from the POTUS to the local mom who never graduated from high school (and everyone in between) wants to dictate exactly how they need to do their job.[/quote]

I agree with this statement, and for some reason these school moms/groupies annoy the hell out of me.

Unless there’s some issue I let my kids teachers do their jobs and stay out of the way.

And then there’s the other group (often the school mom’s/groupies) who are constantly lobbying someone in the school to get just the right teacher.

Real life doesn’t work that way for the 99ers; kids have got to learn how to survive when things don’t go their way exactly.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=livinincali]If you want proof of why socialistic systems fail, just look at public education. It’s probably one of the most socialistic institutions in the country and it continues to get poor results because they refuse analyze these policies and change them.
[/quote]

I don’t know…socialist countries such as China, Russia, India, Singapore, Sweden, Norway that have central control seem to do a a pretty good job at public education up to university level.

Public education in America is not socialistic. It’s a patchwork of local autonomous publicly funded organizations. Some are run more like publicly funded churches. A lot of patronage and politics at the local school board. Multiple that by thousands of school boards.

[CA renter]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter][quote=AN]

[quote=CA renter]And could Preuss get the same outcomes from students with low IQs, SES, etc. if they threw all this money and all of these resources at them? No, they could not. They’ve tried that already and failed.[/quote]Proof? I thought SES + demographic backgrounds are highly correlated to IQ? I’m getting lost trying to follow your contradiction.[/quote]

Again, not exactly sure about what you’re asking for here, but if you’re questioning the experiment with throwing money at poor schools, read this:[/quote]Nope, not just throwing money at the problem. Have Preuss open more schools and fail?[/quote]

Money, resources of various sorts, tutors, exceptional educational infrastructure, special technology, varied curriculum; whatever you want…they’ve tried it and failed. And it has nothing to do with teachers’ unions.

Preuss succeeds only because of three things:

1. Students who have already proven themselves to be high achievers.

2. Parents who are mandated to participate in their child’s education on a variety of levels.

3. Fairly unlimited funding and resources (relatively speaking) from both public and private sources.

*Any* school would have wild success if they could select for these variables. Regular public schools do not have this option; they are mandated to educate every single child who lives in this country, irrespective of that child’s willingness or ability to learn, or of a parent’s willingness or ability to help their child(ren). And they have fewer resources than Preuss does.

[CA renter]

[quote=ocrenter]CAR, I’m sure you would agree there are bad teachers out there that do not care, who would just check “profection” straight down the report card, essentially just clock in and clock out.

We do not seem to have an effective system in place in dealing with this group of apathetic teachers.

Before we spend any more money to improve compensation, do you have any recommendations to remedy the above that would not get push back from the union?[/quote]

While I agree that there are some teachers like this, they are very few and far between. There are far, far fewer bad employees in teaching than there are in the private sector, based on my experience in both situations. Trust me, there are far easier ways for these people to make money. Teaching is one of the toughest jobs out there.

As for my suggestions to fix this? I do support a base salary plus merit pay that is based on a variety of inputs: academic improvement of the same group of students over time,* administrator evaluations, and peer teacher evaluations.

*Difficult to measure improvement over time in some circumstances, usually in urban schools, where you can see student turnover rates of 50% or more over a school year. These are often the very students who don’t often have support at home and are often handicapped by a lower IQ and/or well below-average work habits. You cannot compare the results of a class like this with the results of a class in an upper or upper-middle-class neighborhood where the kids (usually with higher IQs) come from intact families and stable home environments with lots of support from well-educated, highly intelligent parents. There is just no comparison.

[CA renter]

[quote=AN][quote=CA renter]Again, there is no evidence that private schools or charter schools perform better than public schools once these variables are taking into consideration. The vast majority of studies show the opposite, that public schools outperform private schools.[/quote]First, we have to define what’s better. To me, cheaper and smaller class size is a great start. With those 2 metrics, private school and some charter school have shown to be better than public school.[/quote]

Proof? Don’t forget to include ALL funding sources, like church subsidies in the case of religious schools, and parent funding in the case of most private schools (usually much more fundraising, outside of the regular tuition costs, in private schools than in public schools, especially in the “elite” private schools).

[CA renter]

[quote=livinincali]The problem with giving schools more money is that it’s never used for the things they say it will be used for. Say we gave SDUSD a 10% increase in the budget. Anybody want to bet that least than half of that increase is going to give the existing teachers and administrator raises? They might use 2% of that money to hire new teachers and make a big spectacle about how they hired those new teachers but the vast majority of that money is going to the existing employees in raises. Not only that but the biggest portion is going to go to those people that have a short time left in the classroom (i.e. nearing retirement) or those already not in the classroom (Administrators). Why should we give money money to schools when we know the money isn’t going to be used to improve the education experience. The existing administrators and teachers are the ones that are failing and giving them all 10% raises isn’t going to suddenly make them better teachers or administrators.[/quote]

Again…evidence, please!

[CA renter]

[quote=no_such_reality]IMHO, the single biggest proof that money won’t fix the problem is LAUSD. When you look at the actual total expenditures across all funds and categories (i.e. icluding building new schools), over the last two decades, they’ve been spending close to $20,000 per pupil each year.

LAUSD is, IMHO, broken. Horribly broken in spite of many dedicated and competent individual teachers. They are sadded in a system that strips them of resources, saddles them in bereaucracy, structurally creates a hostile employee/employer relationship and tolerates mediocrity and covers-up failure in denial and cares more about politically correct talking points than accomplishing anything concrete.

[/quote]

LAUSD has problems for a variety of reasons, but the teachers’ union is not one of the reasons. Because it is such a large district (second largest in the nation) in such a diverse state, and because it’s always under the spotlight, it tends to fall victim to the politicalization I’ve mentioned above where everyone from the POTUS and other federal politicians…through the state and municipal politicians…to the private sector technocrats and capitalists (looking to get their own piece of taxpayers’ money)…to the PTA mom…who all have their own agendas and will do everything in their power, often in very public ways, to get what they want. The teachers get caught in the middle of all this, and that can definitely get in the way of their ability to do their jobs properly.

It is ugly.

————–

As for this part, whether it’s a job with the fire department or the local school district…

[quote=no_such_reality]And anecdotally, the schools will have no problem hiring at current compensation levels. Much like LAFD, they get too many candidates. There is zero need to increase teacher compensation, the recent grads are literally beating down door, smoozing everybody in every school they can find trying to get one of few openings.

If you can’t find math instructors, you raise compensation for math qualified instructors, not raise compensation for all instructors.[/quote]

The number of applicants has nothing at all to do with the number of **qualified** applicants. Everyone in education knows that a teacher’s first year (at least) is going to involve a very steep learning curve. About 25% of teachers leave within the first three years, and 40-50% leave within the first five years.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w14022.pdf?new_window=1

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/05/16/kappan_ingersoll.h31.html

Keeping good teachers in the classroom is a major challenge for most school districts. In addition to the fact that beginning teachers are less effective than more senior teachers, districts have to spend major resources on recruiting, hiring, and training new teachers when there is a high turnover rate.

That being said, I do agree that teachers who are in higher demand should be paid more, and I also think that teachers who work with more challenging students (behaviorally and academically) should be paid more.

——

BTW, how many people show up for an acting job? How many would line up if a company publicly advertised for their CEO position? I can assure you the lines would be very long, indeed! Does this mean that actors and CEOs (and many others, as there are long lines for just about any job out there) should be paid less? How much less?

[CA renter]

[quote=no_such_reality][quote=CA renter]Here’s the salary table for SD Unified’s teachers. Under no circumstances are teachers overpaid.

http://www.sandi.net/cms/lib/CA01001235/Centricity/Domain/94/salaryschedules/teachers.pdf%5B/quote%5D

I like page 6. Page 6 is for a 227 work day year, close but not quite equivalent to a typical private sector work year.

Salaries range from $49,594 for a first year, BA level person, to $102K qfor 17 years, MA and 90 credit units of ‘training’.

That 183 work day calendar an pay rate does not include paid holidays nor any accumulated vacation, sick time that they are paid. See the following school schedule calendar

Private sector workers start with a 260 work day year. Anywhere from 6-10 holidays, So 254 to 250 ‘work’ days.

Apples to apples 183 days not including holidays maps to ~250 work days in the private sector. We need to compare total comp per day ‘worked’.

Per attached schedule, they have 13 paid holidays which results in 7% more money for those 183 days. So that $39,982/yr pay schedule first year, BA only teacher, not including sick time, vacation, is getting $233 per day worked (in annual pay) or, equivalent to the private sector person making $233/day for their 250 work days or $58,443/yr. Not a bad entry salary.

Likewise that 17 year, BA only teacher, equates out to $92K/yr for 250 days of work. The heavily credentialed 17 year vet is making the equivalent of $120k/year of the private sector.

That’s assuming the private sector persons sick time, vacation time and benefits are on par. LOL.[/quote]

I didn’t work for San Diego, so not sure about them, but we did not get paid vacation time where I worked. We only got *unpaid* days off during regular breaks, and many of those days were spent planning, grading papers, and buying materials for which we were not reimbursed (easily in the hundreds of dollars per year, if not over a thousand). Couldn’t find my own paperwork, but checked online where they show 10 sick/personal leave days, total. Not sure about holiday pay, but don’t think we got 13 paid holidays, either.

That calendar does NOT include days spent doing prep work, grading papers, attending CE classes (usually unpaid, often mandated, though districts will often pay for the classes themselves), etc.

Another thing you need to consider is the fact that teachers are “always on” when they are working. There are no coffee breaks (recess is almost always spent dealing with students) and you are interacting with people 100% of the time. You don’t get to check your e-mail or check your favorite blogs or chat with your nearest coworker. There is no downtime. In my old school, we only got a 30 minute lunch break during which we would have to escort our students to the lunch area; deal with shoelaces, missing money/tickets, etc.; try to eat our own meals; and use the single-stall teachers’ bathroom which always had a line because it was often the ONLY time you could use the restroom during the workday.

I’d say teaching is like working a convention or acting in a live play (as a character who is always on stage). You always have to be cheerful, cannot ever utter a wrong word, no matter how freaking horrible some students can be (you could easily be fired, or even have your name in the local newspaper if you don’t act in the most politically palatable way!). You always have to stay on script…can’t lose your cool or say what you really want to say, no matter what’s going on. You have to keep smiling and being pleasant…all the while keeping everyone motivated and learning, even though they all have different abilities, drives, work habits, focus, etc.

If you’ve ever hosted a birthday party with 20+ kids and you were the only adult, imagine having to control and teach them at the same time (you have to keep them constantly motivated to learn, and make sure they pass those standardized tests with flying colors, too!)…all by yourself and under the watchful eye of some of your biggest critics. And imagine that some of those kids are extremely violent, the kind who throw desks and chairs across the room, or stab other students with pencils they’ve sharpened to a fine point, or shout “fuck you” on a regular basis (but don’t lose your temper, you must never do that!).

If you think that these teachers are overpaid, can you show us an example of another profession where people regularly earn less after 17 years in a position that requires a master’s degree and where they have the kind of responsibility and stress that teachers have to deal with on a regular basis?

I could tell you so many truly hellish stories about teaching, both from my own experience and from situations I’ve seen with other teachers. You cannot even begin to imagine what some of these teachers have to deal with.

I worked in corporate management before becoming a teacher, and I had to work those 80-100 hour weeks with deadlines and a never-ending stream of problems that had to be solved. While it was tough, it was also exhilarating. I did my job very well, and got plenty of praise, money, and promotions — started out as a part-time, temporary receptionist (can you get any lower?) and left as the Director of Operations in charge of over 300 people and millions of dollars in product that we sold every month. It was stressful, but nowhere near as stressful and exhausting as teaching was. As I’ve mentioned before, even if you’re the very best teacher in the world, you cannot promote without leaving the classroom. It is a very different kind of job, and I think that most of the people who criticize teachers haven’t a clue about what teachers do for a living.

FWIW, I was a very good teacher, known to be one of the best disciplinarians (which is why I always got the toughest students) and one of the top reading teachers, and I always got excellent reviews from parents, administrators, and other teachers; but the amount of energy and work that had to go into this would not allow me to do it for 12 months a year. Teachers might work fewer days on paper, but they expend far more energy and do more work than most people do in those 250-260 days per year. As much as I hate to say this, I don’t think I’d ever want to teach again, especially given the political climate and the attacks from the privatization movement.

[an]

[quote=CA renter][quote=AN][quote=CA renter]Again, there is no evidence that private schools or charter schools perform better than public schools once these variables are taking into consideration. The vast majority of studies show the opposite, that public schools outperform private schools.[/quote]First, we have to define what’s better. To me, cheaper and smaller class size is a great start. With those 2 metrics, private school and some charter school have shown to be better than public school.[/quote]

Proof? Don’t forget to include ALL funding sources, like church subsidies in the case of religious schools, and parent funding in the case of most private schools (usually much more fundraising, outside of the regular tuition costs, in private schools than in public schools, especially in the “elite” private schools).[/quote]
there are plenty of private schools in SD that’s not religiously related. Just go the their site, look at their tuition and their stated class size. I’ll point you to one to start, Mission Bay Montessori. As far as fund raising, there are huge fund raising at good public schools as well, so that’s a moot point.

[ocrenter]

[quote=CA renter]

While I agree that there are some teachers like this, they are very few and far between. There are far, far fewer bad employees in teaching than there are in the private sector, based on my experience in both situations. Trust me, there are far easier ways for these people to make money. Teaching is one of the toughest jobs out there.

As for my suggestions to fix this? I do support a base salary plus merit pay that is based on a variety of inputs: academic improvement of the same group of students over time,* administrator evaluations, and peer teacher evaluations.

*Difficult to measure improvement over time in some circumstances, usually in urban schools, where you can see student turnover rates of 50% or more over a school year. These are often the very students who don’t often have support at home and are often handicapped by a lower IQ and/or well below-average work habits. You cannot compare the results of a class like this with the results of a class in an upper or upper-middle-class neighborhood where the kids (usually with higher IQs) come from intact families and stable home environments with lots of support from well-educated, highly intelligent parents. There is just no comparison.[/quote]

We must be REALLY REALLY unlucky to have encountered 2 of these type of VERY RARE teachers in my daughter’s 5 years of schooling starting in kindergarden.

NPR had a segment in 2012 where an experiement was done in a struggling school district. They gave bonuses to all of the teachers at the beginning of the year, if the teachers do not meet certain academic criteria, the bonuses would have to be returned. This is compared to teachers that were promised bonuses if the same acadmeic criteria was met. The result showed if the bonuses had to be returned, the students ended up doing much better.

http://www.npr.org/2012/09/19/161370443/do-scores-go-up-when-teachers-return-bonuses

So the question is would unions actually say yes to something like this???

[Author]

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