We're #3, We're #3........... in running out of smart people.

[ZYX]

They do....Just talked to one over the snow break.....

Is that implying that snowdays are "free"...?

[Breadburner]

Is that implying that snowdays are "free"...?

She was free....

[ZYX]

I agree in saying that you should just leave the conversation. You are not contributing anything positive.

[Breadburner]

I agree in saying that you should just leave the conversation. You are not contributing anything positive.

You are not making any sense with silly questions......

[Hoss]

They do....Just talked to one over the snow break.....

Likely not an Oklahoma teacher.  Try going back to pictures.

[Breadburner]

Likely not an Oklahoma teacher.  Try going back to pictures.

Yup...She was.....Known her for years....

[RecycleMichael]

I'd agree.  You think the teacher's unions would go for that?

/Edit: Actually, that's probably the best solution of all as far as outcome and increased teacher pay, unless a year round work schedule is deemed as a negative to potential candidates.

Yes. Surveys of teachers in other states show that the majority of teachers would prefer year round schools. The multi-month break just forces them to start all over again in so many ways.

Oklahoma City is going to year-round schools next year. Salt Lake City is stopping it next year and going back to a traditional calendar.

The year-round calendar has four breaks three or four weeks long instead of a ten week summer and two weeks off for Christmas and half weeks off for spring and summer.

Year-round schools also allow flexibility so that some teachers only teach one or two sessions and work elsewhere the rest of the year.

[waterboy]

Likely not an Oklahoma teacher.  Try going back to pictures.

I'm sure there are teachers who break 40k per year. In fact that may be the average but that is not the median. Just like other businesses once you start to make a decent salary you have a target on your back by management. They know they can hire two employees for your pay. Without tenure they will do just that wasting valuable trained resources in favor of cheap, hungry, unquestioning newbies. Tenure also protects against the politics used to railroad teachers who may be proficient but not palatable to the latest whim of the torch bearers.

Nonetheless, BB would like to ignore any effort at understanding the big picture of the job discussed above, relying in fact on his bumper stickers and his zipper for guidance in these matters.

[Red Arrow]

You entirely miss the point of compensation discussion.  It's been trotted out how poorly teachers are paid vs. their peers with similar education levels and time on the job.  That's a red herring if there ever was one.  It's not a matter of pay period.  It's a matter of days worked when comparing if a teacher is paid close to their peer group.  I just posted with benefits and all calculated in a teacher is paid about $211 per day.  Take out the basic bennies $179 per day (vs. $195/day for their peer group).  Certainly if we go to year round school there should be a commensurate pay raise.  I wouldn't work significantly more hours than I agreed upon for the same money.

So if we spread their work over more months you would pay them more? Then your argument that its all about compensation seems even weaker. First, their pension plan is not all that secure or that lucrative. I had better in a corporate setting. Their insurance sounds on a par with mine at a lowly retail store. Compared with the jobs I've had, and I do have a BA, they are poorly paid. I never had a job that required so many different skills till I got into sales. Not surprising that the best salespeople are often former teachers. Its not about compensation, its about what duration that compensation is paid.

I got the impression Conan was talking about more days worked, not spreading the existing days over more months.

[waterboy]

I was trying to flesh out that even if teachers were to work year round that few legislators would support higher compensation for them. They are already considered overpaid and under producing. That would infer that the real issue is not their pay, but their pay over a 10 month period rather than 12.

I use 10 months for this reason. People throw around the days worked, 183, 240 etc. Truth is that school starts in August and ends in May. That is 10 months. The teachers actually start preparing for each school year a month earlier without pay and usually stay until mid June to finish up. (I live a half block from a grade school and the teachers park on our street). Its not the plum job people make it out to be.

They do get 8 weeks (unpaid) plus a break between semesters and spring break but the corporate world is not as hardworking as people might think. For instance, this forum would be half its size if corporate workers didn't post during company time on company computers. Sick pay, personal time and vacation time accrue and are widely abused by office workers. We have all done it and companies know it. Hell, they wrote the rules that allow it.

When we respect common education, by funding it at a similar level as other states, the same way we do other professions, I'll consider that the real discussion here is about compensation. Teachers will work year round if required to. Then you'll find the opposition to education will focus on "outcomes". The target will always shift because those are not the real reasons for the persecution of public education.

[Red Arrow]

I was trying to flesh out that even if teachers were to work year round that few legislators would support higher compensation for them. They are already considered overpaid and under producing. That would infer that the real issue is not their pay, but their pay over a 10 month period rather than 12.

One of the "benefits" of losing local control of our schools.

I use 10 months for this reason. People throw around the days worked, 183, 240 etc. Truth is that school starts in August and ends in May. That is 10 months. The teachers actually start preparing for each school year a month earlier without pay and usually stay until mid June to finish up. (I live a half block from a grade school and the teachers park on our street). Its not the plum job people make it out to be.

One of my aunts was a teacher, long ago.  I remember her and my uncle visiting and she had to work on grading papers, lesson plans etc.  I know that teaching is not a clock-in, clock-out job.  Not many professional jobs really are.

They do get 8 weeks (unpaid) plus a break between semesters and spring break but the corporate world is not as hardworking as people might think. For instance, this forum would be half its size if corporate workers didn't post during company time on company computers. Sick pay, personal time and vacation time accrue and are widely abused by office workers. We have all done it and companies know it. Hell, they wrote the rules that allow it.

My employer went to Paid Time Off (PTO).  It includes sick time, vacation, doctor and dentist appointments, long lunches, fishing, golf, anything you want.  It's available in 0.1 hour increments.  There is a maximum amount of PTO allowed per year depending on how long one has been employed.  Excess vacation is use it or lose it.  There is no long term accrual of sick time since it doesn't exist.  One of the justifications was that, assuming you got occasional raises in salary, you would be taking time off at a higher salary than the salary you earned the sick time. The transition from the old system to the new was brutal for some.  Many lost hundreds of hours in accrued sick time.

Any employer that expects you to be 100% productive 100% of the time will probably not retain too many employees.  Restroom breaks, coffee and smoke breaks, need to get up and walk around breaks are part of most work places.  Sometimes things are busy and everyone works their tails off.  Sometimes things are slow and "we" can make a few posts on TNF. 

When we respect common education, by funding it at a similar level as other states, the same way we do other professions, I'll consider that the real discussion here is about compensation. Teachers will work year round if required to. Then you'll find the opposition to education will focus on "outcomes". The target will always shift because those are not the real reasons for the persecution of public education.

Education needs to be funded to produce a desired outcome, not just to match our neighboring states.  Part of that funding is attracting good teachers.  Salaries should be regionally adjusted to allow a similar standard of living.  I don't know what those exact numbers would be. 

[waterboy]

I like that PTO plan. It makes sense to recognize human nature and give an employee a chance to manage their own life yet gives the employer the ability to plan. I wish there were more of that.

You are moving towards what I think are the real issues with public education k-12. Control, cost and quantification.

I remember having these discussions in my high school Bus. Law class as far back as 1969. My teacher had a masters degree and was married to a local lawyer. By today's standards she would be a high performing instructor but wasn't paid any better than a featherbedding instructor. It didn't matter to her. She wasn't teaching for the money. She initiated a conversation with our class of college prep path students about pay based on student performance and measured by grades and test scores. It was hot discussion then as well. She asked how do you accurately compare teachers' performance when there are so many variables involved. And who sets up, monitors and evaluates that performance? A scientist can control those variables and then measure results. But with human beings it is far more difficult.

Don't get me wrong, we have always set standards for schools and should keep altering them to match the changing world, but to say some teachers should be paid more because they perform better is cross culturalization. It is taking  business world practices and applying them to an institution with different goals. As a former commission only salesman, I learned that the territory or category of prospects you are presented with is the main determinant in your success. That's fine with me cause I like a challenge and I'll work that territory to improve it, but it is hardly fair to compare my final results with another salesman who snags a better territory, is lazy, ineficient and stupid but ends up with more sales. Thats the way business works, not education.

Her next question was to ask us what the ramifications of designating some teachers as superior and paying them more than others. She said, "think like your parents". That was easy. No one wants their kid to be taught by the low pay teacher. In college or the real world that manages itself. Good managers attract the better employees from the rest of the company. In college the word gets around quick who the good profs are, where to get the gravy grades and who prepares you the best. Their classes fill up while others languish. In k-12  now, its gossip among parents and a fight to get in the "right" class. If you de facto quantify that gossip you eventually just have to make everyone mad or fire a lot of functionally good teachers. Then the best evaluated go to private schools anyway. Its lose/lose and its based on faulty assumptions of what high performing consists of.

Once I graduated and BTW was designated as a magnet school many of our teachers from the downtown CHS moved to BTW and IIRC it was for little or no extra pay. Some humorously requested "combat" pay. The reason they did move was for the challenge and to be a part of something they thought was going to improve education in general and the social fabric of the city. Those teachers wouldn't have been graded as superior by today's standards because CHS had lots of poor performing families feeding into the school. Not many college bound seniors. TPS looked for racial tolerance, personality, attitude, drive and sociability, all hard to measure factors. They succeeded and the school became a leader in scholastics and athletics.

Cost- a lot of complaining about public education stems from private school parents resentful of having to pay for both systems. I understand that. I do believe there should be a tax deduction for those parents much like we allow mortgage deductions. But not a total exemption from helping to fund those not able to afford private schools.

Control- What are they teachin' them youngun's at school?! Local control, and private schools can keep their kids from learning about things they consider politically wrong, spiritually wrong or just plain wrong. Unfortunately the world doesn't conform to any one outlook on life and we fail our kids when we shield them from competing views. Ever meet one of those kids that don't even know what evolution is? Ever watch an Iowa focus group, with educated adults, insist that Obama is a Manchurian Candidate Muslim? That's scary.

I'm sorry this post is so long. But I know that you will read and understand my words where some around here wouldn't do either no matter how short it was.

[guido911]

I know things are not as they were when I was a kid but.....
we almost always had 30 to 32 kids in a class from 1st grade through high school.

Me too. Heck, I had a general science survey class in college that had nearly 200 students. Law school classes in excess of 50.

[Breadburner]

I'm sure there are teachers who break 40k per year. In fact that may be the average but that is not the median. Just like other businesses once you start to make a decent salary you have a target on your back by management. They know they can hire two employees for your pay. Without tenure they will do just that wasting valuable trained resources in favor of cheap, hungry, unquestioning newbies. Tenure also protects against the politics used to railroad teachers who may be proficient but not palatable to the latest whim of the torch bearers.

Nonetheless, BB would like to ignore any effort at understanding the big picture of the job discussed above, relying in fact on his bumper stickers and his zipper for guidance in these matters.

If I wanted any lip off you I would peel it off my zipper....

[waterboy]

If I wanted any lip off you I would peel it off my zipper....

You're always so....imaginative. I suppose I should be honored to be a part of one of your fantasies, but alas, I'm straight.