Cyli wrote:

On 15 Apr 2005 06:17:02 -0700, "Wayne Knight"
wrote:

(snipped)


You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.


but if you take the local pot luck of schools and
teachers, you _will_ wind up with some people teaching who have not
proven to have knowledge of their subjects and are teaching only out
of a lesson book.


....well lessee here...new teachers with a bs degree start at 26k...do
you really question what the smarter and more capable people usually
choose to do? hint...they don't remain in teaching in the public
schools. raise the salaries...you'll get better quality generally.

jeff

"Wayne Knight" wrote in message
...
"Bob Patton" wrote in message
...

//snip//
not get me started on how we were treated by the local police.

Not defending the police - just trying to make a point about some social
inequalities. There's a cop in SWMBO's school who is a very special person.
I know that's not always true.

There are some good teachers; there are a lot who don't care very much. Most
work for public school administrations run by politicians and entrenched
bureaucracies who have to worry more about being criticized for teaching
something controversial than about whether their kids can do quadratic
equations. Fortunately, in my wife's case she doesn't need the money - if
she did she wouldn't teach.

I work for a big bank and thought I knew something about bureaucracy. But
the education bureaucracy is something else again.

I've noticed in my work that some of the people who at the end of the day
are best at what they do aren't really motivated by money. There's some kind
of intangible reward that they get from doing a good job and being respected
for that. People who advance to high levels in search of more money have
different skills. And you can read about some of them in the newspapers -
and see some of them on perp walks - almost every day.

What do you suppose would motivate college students to consider becoming
teachers instead of, say, bankers?

Bob

"Bob Patton" wrote in message
...
What do you suppose would motivate college students to consider becoming
teachers instead of, say, bankers?


Not everyone can be a banker, nor can everyone be a teacher. Sometimes its
the education that trips them up, sometimes its a desire, what makes folks
want to be divorce lawyers or groundskeepers. I am not attacking teaching
per se, just this noble profession bs and noting that the pay, while it
could be higher is not as bad as it is made out to be.

My daughter recently graduated from Michigan State and was accepted into a
top flight medical school. Over wine and along the Manistee River as we were
talking, I noted some hesitation in her voice when talking about it, after a
couple of hours she it came out that she had applied because of the earnings
level and a perceived pressure from me. She's not going to med school now,
but considering some more to her liking. BTW, after he relevation, she
considered teaching but guess what *they* wanted g.

Cyli wrote:
"Wayne Knight" wrote:

You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.

Good idea. When my daughter and I were doing a year of home schooling
for my grandson, I thought it might be easier all around if I got a
teaching certificate. So I took the test for practice. With no study
and half an hour left at the end of the test, I'd easily made a better
than passing grade.

Let's say a district or state decides to "raise the bar" by 1)
requiring a Masters of all new teachers and 2) instituting a teaching
certificate test say 5 to 10 times more rigorous than the current one
(to ensure "real knowledge on a subject").... but it keeps entry
salaries the same. What are the chances that even one more highly
qualified candidate will enter the applicant pool?

Raising the bar, by itself, does nothing, I think. Raise salaries,
though, and you can raise the bar to good effect.

JR

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 06:58:20 -0400, Jeff Miller
wrote:

Cyli wrote:

On 15 Apr 2005 06:17:02 -0700, "Wayne Knight"
wrote:

(snipped)


You want to raise teacher salaries? Raise the bar to get in.


but if you take the local pot luck of schools and
teachers, you _will_ wind up with some people teaching who have not
proven to have knowledge of their subjects and are teaching only out
of a lesson book.


...well lessee here...new teachers with a bs degree start at 26k...do
you really question what the smarter and more capable people usually
choose to do? hint...they don't remain in teaching in the public
schools. raise the salaries...you'll get better quality generally.

jeff

That and the bureaucracy that gives them the job security that some
go to it for. You'd get some more of dingbats who'd have to go away
sometime, but you might have less of the "This is the lesson plan I
was given. This is all you will learn here." type who don't _know_
anything more than the lesson plan calls for. Make sure that the
arithmetic teacher knows arithmetic and in higher grades that the
chemistry teacher knows something more about chemistry than what he /
she learned in the one hour a day for one year they took it in
college.

Many of the teachers I had were, uh, not too bright, which I was,
fortunately, too young and ignorant myself to realize at the time,
though I sometimes wondered what was wrong. When my kids were in
school they were getting more teachers who cared about the kids and
their mental well-being, but there were still some of the kind from my
years around. And the new wave didn't seem to be much more
knowledgeable than the old teachers. My grandchildren got teachers
who were even more concerned, but for educational qualities, my older
daughter had to pick which schools they went to very carefully. My
youngest trusted in the system, which failed, so we did the home
schooling for a year and after that my older daughter inherited the
grandson, who was showing, even in a good school system, that he was
way ahead in education.

Now we did home schooling about the same way I fish. Whenever we all
felt like it and whatever looked interesting, though we did try to
stick to math lessons. And the kid still came out way ahead in
knowledge. Hmmmm.

This means a lot less of government oversight needed for teachers to
be free to be hired and fired and to teach away from the blasted
pre-ordained plans. Like I can see an end to that....

Cyli
r.bc: vixen. Minnow goddess. Speaker to squirrels.
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless.

http://www.visi.com/~cyli
email: lid (strip the .invalid to email)

"JR" wrote Raising the bar, by itself,
does nothing, I think. Raise salaries,
though, and you can raise the bar to good effect.


i reckon you are right about that. for $40k a month, i will teach oral
hygiene in bedford-stuyvestant.

yfitons
wayno (well, for a year or two, anyway)

Cyli wrote:


Now we did home schooling about the same way I fish. Whenever we all
felt like it and whatever looked interesting, though we did try to
stick to math lessons. And the kid still came out way ahead in
knowledge. Hmmmm.

and i have a nephew-in-law who was home schooled to age 16; he's barely
able to read...

so, how do we recognize, attract, and reward quality teachers?

In article OLi8e.3183$Zr.991@lakeread08, d
says...

so, how do we recognize, attract, and reward quality teachers?



It's a non-trivial problem. As a college professor, I see the
results of the local school systems. A great many of the students
have shockingly poor math skills, which they often blame on the
terrible math teacher at their high school. I also see other
students with excellent math skills, which they often credit to
those very same teachers. I've been around here long enough
that many of the teachers are former students of mine, so I
have a pretty good idea of what they are like. We are fortunate
that the math education program here is controlled by the math
department and not the education department, so we have pretty
good quality control.

It's funny what you here about the teachers from their students
sometimes. I once happened to be with a group of teenage boys
who were talking about their math teacher like she was the
wicked witch of the west, so I asked who she was. I had to
laugh when they told me, because she was a former student of
mine. She was an outragously beautiful, blue-eyed blonde
Scandinavian beauty. By now she has probably reached the ripe
old age of 35, so I can't imagine she's too much worse for the
wear.

Kevin
(and she knew her math, too.)
--
reply to:
kevin dot vang at minotstateu dot edu

"Jeff Miller" wrote in message
news:OLi8e.3183$Zr.991@lakeread08...
//snip//...

so, how do we recognize, attract, and reward quality teachers?

Offer salaries and working conditions that make young people want to be
there. Then raise the bar on certifications and require continuing education
so that people who work there have peers that want to be there (as opposed
to having no alternative) because they're intellectually and professionally
stimulated. Rehabilitate or eliminate burnout cases.

Don't "punish" kids by suspending them and sending them home to empty
houses. Find things that need to be done at the school and make them do
that. For example, make them clean the bathrooms - with toothbrushes if the
offense is bad enough.

Bob

Kevin Vang wrote:

It's funny what you here about the teachers from their students
sometimes. I once happened to be with a group of teenage boys
who were talking about their math teacher like she was the
wicked witch of the west, so I asked who she was. I had to
laugh when they told me, because she was a former student of
mine. She was an outragously beautiful, blue-eyed blonde
Scandinavian beauty. By now she has probably reached the ripe
old age of 35, so I can't imagine she's too much worse for the
wear.

Maybe she's Glenda, the good witch. Now click your heels together and
say ...

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.