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America is losing its teachers at a record rate

I've already pointed that out. If my small rural school had to pay greater wages for teachers......it'd have to close. It was the same with my first school.

I like teaching at the same kind of schools I started out with as a child. (later in life I ended up in very large schools in other states) You make allowances in life. I get the kind of work environment I want. I live with less money. I'm fine with that.

The Republicans have nothing to do with my life choices.

Things cost what they are worth normally. When you place a low value on your labor and services, it is you who are at fault. And if you buy the line that your employer cannot afford to pay you, perhaps your employer should seek a different line off work as they sound woefully incompletely to provide the service that they pretend to provide.

The Constitution of the state of Arkansas says this

Arkansas
“Intelligence and virtue being the safeguards of liberty and the bulwark of a free and good government, the State shall ever maintain a general, suitable and efficient system of free public schools and shall adopt all suitable means to secure to the people the advantages and opportunities of education.”

Sounds to me like they are doing a poor job and you are enabling that by serving in a system which does not pay decently or have benefits worthy of an educated professional. But then, if so lowly value your own services, that is on you and not me.

States with the best (and worst) schools

Arkansas is #42.

It looks like you get what you pay for.
 
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Things cost what they are worth normally. When you place a low value on your labor and services, it is you who are at fault. And if you buy the line that your employer cannot afford to pay you, perhaps your employer should seek a different line off work as they sound woefully incompletely to provide the service that they pretend to provide.

The Constitution of the state of Arkansas says this

My "employer" is a school district. I've worked at this one for 13 years. They really can't afford to pay me more than they do. We're short teachers now.

My fault I don't make more money? You're right about that. I could have gone to larger schools that paid more. I would have gotten more kids and a greater work load. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want.

I did a cost benefit analysis. That's not what I wanted. I want what I have. I am as happy as I've ever been in my life.



Sounds to me like they are doing a piss poor job and you are enabling that.

They're doing the best they can with what they have. This is an old community with old family names. Many of the teachers here are from this area. Our test scores at my campus are better than the larger schools near us. We're doing our job.

I'm proud to be part of this.
 
My "employer" is a school district. I've worked at this one for 13 years. They really can't afford to pay me more than they do. We're short teachers now.

My fault I don't make more money? You're right about that. I could have gone to larger schools that paid more. I would have gotten more kids and a greater work load. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want.

I did a cost benefit analysis. That's not what I wanted. I want what I have. I am as happy as I've ever been in my life.





They're doing the best they can with what they have. This is an old community with old family names. Many of the teachers here are from this area. Our test scores at my campus are better than the larger schools near us. We're doing our job.

I'm proud to be part of this.

If you fail to understand that you are helping to continue a system that is not living up to its constitutional responsibilities - that is on you.
 
My "employer" is a school district. I've worked at this one for 13 years. They really can't afford to pay me more than they do. We're short teachers now.

My fault I don't make more money? You're right about that. I could have gone to larger schools that paid more. I would have gotten more kids and a greater work load. There's nothing wrong with that if that's what you want.

I did a cost benefit analysis. That's not what I wanted. I want what I have. I am as happy as I've ever been in my life.





They're doing the best they can with what they have. This is an old community with old family names. Many of the teachers here are from this area. Our test scores at my campus are better than the larger schools near us. We're doing our job.

I'm proud to be part of this.

I did my student teaching at a small rural school in Arkansas. I loved it. :)
 
If you fail to understand that you are helping to continue a system that is not living up to its constitutional responsibilities - that is on you.

We’re teaching our children the state standards. That is our responsibility.
 
I disagree. First off, tests for lower primary grades don't have to be hours long. Second the purpose of testing is not to keep children amused or keep from being bored, it's to evaluate if they, individually, have achieved the learning objectives established for their grade level. Assessing school performance from a joint effort hides both star performers and those needing additional work.

IMHO, teaching children a little perseverance and self-discipline in the face of daunting or boring tasks is a benefit.


I understand the drawbacks to multiple choice but subjective group assessments is, IMHO, not productive or informative.
Most likely there are a lot of people who would agree with that. they all have one thing in common: lack of experience. What sounds good on paper often doesn't work in the classroom.

Multiple choice tests are simply not the way to assess individual student achievement. I'm not sure how many of those you've taken, or if you've ever administered and scored any.
 
Teachers are indeed leaving for a variety of reasons. I think that there are many factors unrelated to pay and benefits that make teaching more difficult than it used to be: gangs, out of touch bureaucrats calling the shots, too many children from dysfunctional families, more responsibility for the school and less for the parents, there are many factors behind teachers' decision to find another career.

No, the garbage pay, the terrible hours, the constant bureaucratic meddling, out-of-touch politicians who make it harder for them to do their jobs --sure, the fact that most children are bastards is not helping. But my teacher friends/family all have told me the worst part is the former.

I mean, the biggest issue in American education is that the teaching methods are outdated (and thus everyone has a very negative opinion of schools) and no one takes school seriously anymore. It's just one more vital system that we are choosing to let crumble. Like there's literally nothing less satisfying than teaching students for hours, and then having no one take you seriously and treat you like garbage. Teaching students is a lot of fun (I've only ever done it at the university level), but absolutely no one in administration takes you seriously.

The bureaucratic bloat and self-aggrandizing of administration at public schools and (both public and private) universities is a serious issue. Within the next 10 years, we're also going to find that it's going to become a lot harder to find professors at the university level, too. It's the natural direction of the decay in our education system. We could choose to make our school systems a lot more like Finland (ban private schools, remove "choice" so all schools are treated equally, nationally fund schools rather than locally fund them, pay teachers a good wage and take them/their intelligence seriously, let teachers collectively set standards, and remove standardized testing). It would go a long way, but since Americans have fetishized literally everything that does not work for a functional public education system, it's a hard sell.

What's depressing is that most corporations and universities now treat the H1 visa as a drop-in replacement for the total brain-drain that is America. I'm literally the only American-born person in my department. I can count on my hands the number of native-born Americans on my floor. I love listening to conservative pundits talk about how they hate paying for the education system --they're literally pissing away their children's future and are slowly turning native-born Americans into a minority in STEM. And STEM, as it turns out, is what you build superpower nations on. It's a great time to be born into the middle-class in India or China though.
 
No, the garbage pay, the terrible hours, the constant bureaucratic meddling, out-of-touch politicians who make it harder for them to do their jobs --sure, the fact that most children are bastards is not helping. But my teacher friends/family all have told me the worst part is the former.

I mean, the biggest issue in American education is that the teaching methods are outdated (and thus everyone has a very negative opinion of schools) and no one takes school seriously anymore. It's just one more vital system that we are choosing to let crumble. Like there's literally nothing less satisfying than teaching students for hours, and then having no one take you seriously and treat you like garbage. Teaching students is a lot of fun (I've only ever done it at the university level), but absolutely no one in administration takes you seriously.

The bureaucratic bloat and self-aggrandizing of administration at public schools and (both public and private) universities is a serious issue. Within the next 10 years, we're also going to find that it's going to become a lot harder to find professors at the university level, too. It's the natural direction of the decay in our education system. We could choose to make our school systems a lot more like Finland (ban private schools, remove "choice" so all schools are treated equally, nationally fund schools rather than locally fund them, pay teachers a good wage and take them/their intelligence seriously, let teachers collectively set standards, and remove standardized testing). It would go a long way, but since Americans have fetishized literally everything that does not work for a functional public education system, it's a hard sell.

What's depressing is that most corporations and universities now treat the H1 visa as a drop-in replacement for the total brain-drain that is America. I'm literally the only American-born person in my department. I can count on my hands the number of native-born Americans on my floor. I love listening to conservative pundits talk about how they hate paying for the education system --they're literally pissing away their children's future and are slowly turning native-born Americans into a minority in STEM. And STEM, as it turns out, is what you build superpower nations on. It's a great time to be born into the middle-class in India or China though.
The scariest part of that is I think you're right on target.
Here in California, teachers are still paid pretty well, but the other things you mention are still problems.

It seems we have a populace that isn't willing to do the grunt work, so we import illegals to do that, and isn't able to do the sort of work you're talking about, so we import STEM grads from abroad to do that. Meanwhile, the in between jobs are being automated.

What is left for Americans to do?
 
The scariest part of that is I think you're right on target.
Here in California, teachers are still paid pretty well, but the other things you mention are still problems.

It seems we have a populace that isn't willing to do the grunt work, so we import illegals to do that, and isn't able to do the sort of work you're talking about, so we import STEM grads from abroad to do that. Meanwhile, the in between jobs are being automated.

What is left for Americans to do?

They could stop talking about rationalism like it's an intrinsic personality trait and instead start practicing rational, evidence-based policies that are in the interest of the US as a whole. And rather than acting like neurotic, illogical individualists who think that they are temporarily set-back millionaires, they could actually try to start realizing that they need to do what is important for the country because that is what is good for them.
 
They could stop talking about rationalism like it's an intrinsic personality trait and instead start practicing rational, evidence-based policies that are in the interest of the US as a whole. And rather than acting like neurotic, illogical individualists who think that they are temporarily set-back millionaires, they could actually try to start realizing that they need to do what is important for the country because that is what is good for them.

Like that would ever happen!
 
And landing teaching jobs is much harder than landing most jobs that pay the same as teachers. I have several friends with Master's degrees in teaching who couldn't get hired as a teacher anywhere and instead went in different professions that pay the same or better than teaching. One guy is in the Tech sector for about the same or better pay then he would make as a teacher, another guy master's in teaching and working as a conductor for Northfork Southern Railroad, another guy I know working as a truck driver and he has a Master's in teaching, another guy I know Masters in teaching couldn't land a teaching job so instead he works as used car salesman. Another guy I know Master's in teaching and couldn't land a teaching job after like 30+ interviews and his teacher he did student teaching with said he was too stupid to be a teacher so he went on and got his MBA from a top 20 business school and now he makes over $100k a year working in sales.
 
And landing teaching jobs is much harder than landing most jobs that pay the same as teachers. I have several friends with Master's degrees in teaching who couldn't get hired as a teacher anywhere and instead went in different professions that pay the same or better than teaching. One guy is in the Tech sector for about the same or better pay then he would make as a teacher, another guy master's in teaching and working as a conductor for Northfork Southern Railroad, another guy I know working as a truck driver and he has a Master's in teaching, another guy I know Masters in teaching couldn't land a teaching job so instead he works as used car salesman. Another guy I know Master's in teaching and couldn't land a teaching job after like 30+ interviews and his teacher he did student teaching with said he was too stupid to be a teacher so he went on and got his MBA from a top 20 business school and now he makes over $100k a year working in sales.

Supply and demand of teachers is cyclical. Teachers can't find teaching jobs, so fewer students take education classes, so fewer teachers graduate, so the ones who do find jobs plentiful as fewer students are graduating as teachers, so more students begin to take education classes and on and on.
 
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