Teachers -- "What do they make?"

[Kathie in Thorp]

I found this interesting. You might, also. (Excuse some of the language -- I didn't make this video.)

http://front.moveon.org/the-most-aggressive-defense-of-teachers-youll-hear-this-year/

 

[jw]

WOW! Actually something good from Moveon. WOW!

 

[Kathie in Thorp]

I try to toss something fairly intelligent into the pit once in awhile.

 

[Jogeephus]

Over the last six months I heard several high school graduates praise a certain teacher that I knew in passing but didn't really know. He recently retired and I bumped into he and his wife at the grocery store and told him what the children had said and told him I appreciated his efforts. About two months later he died of an unexpected and massive heart attack. I think it was divine providence that put me in the store on that particular day and hour. He definitely did make a difference.

 

[Kathie in Thorp]

Over the last six months I heard several high school graduates praise a certain teacher that I knew in passing but didn't really know. He recently retired and I bumped into he and his wife at the grocery store and told him what the children had said and told him I appreciated his efforts. About two months later he died of an unexpected and massive heart attack. I think it was divine providence that put me in the store on that particular day and hour. He definitely did make a difference.

Jogeephus -- I had the privilege of meeting an exceptional local HS shop teacher here a couple of years ago, because his wife was looking for big, tall, wheel-chair accesible pots that he could use to pursue his gardening passion after a stroke at age 52 or so. I had a bunch of big, black, nursery tree pots, and found many bags of styro peanuts to fill up some space in the bottoms, plus some fertilizer from our cow lot, so that they were able to set up veg gardens along their sidewalk, both sides. He lasted just over another year, before he had the major stroke that took him out. And it was very sad because he was a much loved educator. Teachers make a huge difference! But I think it deplorable that many parents think its totally up to the educators to teach children what parents should be teaching. JMO.

 

[gimpyrancher]

Kathie,

> But I think it deplorable that many parents think its totally up to the educators to teach children what parents should be teaching.

Don't blame it on the teachers, (I know you're not) they aren't offered a choice. Blame it on the school district administrators. The failure is always at the top. God Bless our teachers.

PS: Should have added: If they aren't allowed to fail a student, they can't do their jobs. :deadhorse:

 

[greatgerts]

Kathie,

> But I think it deplorable that many parents think its totally up to the educators to teach children what parents should be teaching.

Don't blame it on the teachers, (I know you're not) they aren't offered a choice. Blame it on the school district administrators. The failure is always at the top. God Bless our teachers.

PS: Should have added: If they aren't allowed to fail a student, they can't do their jobs. :deadhorse:

From what my wife has told me recently, the "No Child Left Behind" is either no more, or will be no more. Not sure of all of the exacts.

 

[Jogeephus]

The parents need to do the primary part but unfortunately there are many who think their job ends when they spit the little devil out. I'm glad to hear the no child left behind thing may be over. This was silly. Every child is not equal and we all can't be winners. We may all be winners in our own way but everyone shouldn't be awarded a trophy for calculus. We also should reward and recognize those children who really do excel in their classes instead of not recognizing their achievements and scholarships at graduation for fear it might offend someone. I think Dr. Spock was a much better character on Star Trek than he was at raising children.

 

[CKC1586]

Good one.

 

[backhoeboogie]

Don't blame it on the teachers, (I know you're not) they aren't offered a choice. Blame it on the school district administrators. The failure is always at the top. God Bless our teachers.

We have to help the teacher too. Fro instance, if a teacher does not know the difference between a turkey's waddles and his beard, google, print out the infor, get pictures, and send them in. The teachers appreciate it and feel like a fool for not knowing.

No one knows it all. Talks with your kids (grandkids in my case) can be revealing.

 

[JSCATTLE]

Some people make great teachers and some don't. We are having a problem with my sons first grade teacher now . We are very involved with our kids and their homework / school work . This teacher won't return calls or emails .my son is learning to ad and subtract now . Small stuff like 4 plus 5 etc. he was having a hard time so my wife tought him to draw dots and add them up . He does fine at home but we found out yesterday he gets in trouble at school for using this method . The teacher wants the kids to memorize the answers but hasn't tought them how you achieve the answer . So today the wife and I have a meeting with the principal . Hope everything goes well and I can stay calm .

 

[melking]

:hide: :hide: :hide:

 

[TexasBred]

Nothing against teachers but a huge majority of public school teachers come from the bottom 15-20% of the class. Sad but true.

 

[angie1]

Nothing against teachers but a huge majority of public school teachers come from the bottom 15-20% of the class. Sad but true.

Show me where you find this information. I have been in the public schools for just over 20 years, and I am impressed again and again by the high level of competence in the staff I work with here in Mn.

 

[TexasBred]

Nothing against teachers but a huge majority of public school teachers come from the bottom 15-20% of the class. Sad but true.

Show me where you find this information. I have been in the public schools for just over 20 years, and I am impressed again and again by the high level of competence in the staff I work with here in Mn.

There are good teachers..no doubt about it...but my experience with them (including 2 in the family) is that they nothing about much of anything except their field of study and are only average in that. I've know some very brillant, ethical, attorneys as well but they are the minority. ;-)

Tons of people use a McKinsey report as the reference for the statistic of teachers coming from the bottom third of colleges. That report just uses a quote saying that:

"We are now recruiting our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college…" (p. 19)

It uses as its citation "Tough Choices Or Tough Times" , a report issued by The New Commission On The Skills Of The American Workforce in 2007.

So I went there. The link in the preceding paragraph only leads to a downloadable summary, which just stated the same statistic with no citation of a source. So, I went to Amazon, downloaded a Kindle Reader for my PC, and purchased the whole report.

That report uses as its source a "Report From The Department Of Education, National Center For Education Statistics, The Condition Of Education 2002." It quotes the report as saying:

"A report by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2004 said that the profession attracts a 'disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability.' And, college graduates whose SAT or ACT scores were in the bottom quartile were more than twice as likely as those in the top quartile to have majored in education."

 

[gimpyrancher]

No one knows it all.

Obviously you don't have teenagers.

Not all teachers are created equal. That is why some are charged with crimes against our kids and others are praised for a lifetime of meaningful service. To condemn all for the actions of a few is shortsighted. Even the worst teacher is less of a threat to this country's future than the administration of their own districts.

Schools don't need more money. They need to get rid of the district level administrators and send their budgets directly to the individual schools equally. Without the administration keeping them from teaching and the increase in money and supplies the classrooms need, we'd all when. Far fewer politics would meet the kids.

We need a good educational system. What we have now is a funded system that doesn't support our teachers. Look where all the really meaningful jobs are going.

Where I live, near an Intel facility, they import so much of their talent it is eye-opening.

Do we really want to blame our teachers? :hide:

 

[backhoeboogie]

Not all teachers are created equal.

No they are not. We had a 7th grade math teacher throwing desks because he could not cope with 7th graders. My daughter had never made anything less than an A until he was her teacher. She brought home a C. I went up and met him and immediately understood.

They throw me in front of 50 plus engineers and technical people regularly. I am dealing with Type A, B, C, and D personalities and trying to connect with all of them. It aint easy. Anything less than an 80 is failing here. These folks are mostly in their mid 50's on average. Set in their ways. I'd much rather deal with 7th graders.

You have Islam foreign professors in college telling women they need to stay at home and be mothers. A case in point is UT Dallas and my daughter was an engineering student there. Most women there change their majors and no one questions why. It aint easy for women who have to deal with that culture.

You have school teachers who are awesome. You have the others who hang on to their shirt tails with union protection. Some simply need to go and the administration has very little power. About all they can do is wait until their contract expires and do not renew it. Offer long term contracts to the really good ones.

 

[larryshoat]

Nothing against teachers but a huge majority of public school teachers come from the bottom 15-20% of the class. Sad but true.

Show me where you find this information. I have been in the public schools for just over 20 years, and I am impressed again and again by the high level of competence in the staff I work with here in Mn.

There are good teachers..no doubt about it...but my experience with them (including 2 in the family) is that they nothing about much of anything except their field of study and are only average in that. I've know some very brillant, ethical, attorneys as well but they are the minority. ;-)

Tons of people use a McKinsey report as the reference for the statistic of teachers coming from the bottom third of colleges. That report just uses a quote saying that:



"We are now recruiting our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college…" (p. 19)

It uses as its citation "Tough Choices Or Tough Times" , a report issued by The New Commission On The Skills Of The American Workforce in 2007.

So I went there. The link in the preceding paragraph only leads to a downloadable summary, which just stated the same statistic with no citation of a source. So, I went to Amazon, downloaded a Kindle Reader for my PC, and purchased the whole report.

That report uses as its source a "Report From The Department Of Education, National Center For Education Statistics, The Condition Of Education 2002." It quotes the report as saying:

"A report by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2004 said that the profession attracts a 'disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability.' And, college graduates whose SAT or ACT scores were in the bottom quartile were more than twice as likely as those in the top quartile to have majored in education."

I don't know what it's like in other places but in Ohio before a teacher gets a license they must pass a series of tests called Praxis. Plenty of students that "majored in education" are never able to get a license to teach.

Larry

 

[greatgerts]

Not all teachers are created equal.

No they are not. We had a 7th grade math teacher throwing desks because he could not cope with 7th graders. My daughter had never made anything less than an A until he was her teacher. She brought home a C. I went up and met him and immediately understood.

They throw me in front of 50 plus engineers and technical people regularly. I am dealing with Type A, B, C, and D personalities and trying to connect with all of them. It aint easy. Anything less than an 80 is failing here. These folks are mostly in their mid 50's on average. Set in their ways. I'd much rather deal with 7th graders.

You have Islam foreign professors in college telling women they need to stay at home and be mothers. A case in point is UT Dallas and my daughter was an engineering student there. Most women there change their majors and no one questions why. It aint easy for women who have to deal with that culture.

You have school teachers who are awesome. You have the others who hang on to their shirt tails with union protection. Some simply need to go and the administration has very little power. About all they can do is wait until their contract expires and do not renew it. Offer long term contracts to the really good ones.

When I was in 5th grade, the students in my class always thought something was going on with our teacher. One day, we had a sub and she was there the rest of the year. Came to find out that our original teacher had been having "fun" with himself during class. Then the sub did not like the boys in class. I was an honor roll student all through elementary and high school, other than that year. All of the girls received awards for top grades and everything else. I only received one for perfect attendance. It took until the awards were handed out for my folks to believe me, because they took the side of the teacher the entire time. Sure wish I knew what being sexist was then...

 

[angie1]

Nothing against teachers but a huge majority of public school teachers come from the bottom 15-20% of the class. Sad but true.

Show me where you find this information. I have been in the public schools for just over 20 years, and I am impressed again and again by the high level of competence in the staff I work with here in Mn.

There are good teachers..no doubt about it...but my experience with them (including 2 in the family) is that they nothing about much of anything except their field of study and are only average in that. I've know some very brillant, ethical, attorneys as well but they are the minority. ;-)

Tons of people use a McKinsey report as the reference for the statistic of teachers coming from the bottom third of colleges. That report just uses a quote saying that:

"We are now recruiting our teachers from the bottom third of high school students going to college…" (p. 19)

It uses as its citation "Tough Choices Or Tough Times" , a report issued by The New Commission On The Skills Of The American Workforce in 2007.

So I went there. The link in the preceding paragraph only leads to a downloadable summary, which just stated the same statistic with no citation of a source. So, I went to Amazon, downloaded a Kindle Reader for my PC, and purchased the whole report.

That report uses as its source a "Report From The Department Of Education, National Center For Education Statistics, The Condition Of Education 2002." It quotes the report as saying:

"A report by the National Council on Teacher Quality in 2004 said that the profession attracts a 'disproportionately high number of candidates from the lower end of the distribution of academic ability.' And, college graduates whose SAT or ACT scores were in the bottom quartile were more than twice as likely as those in the top quartile to have majored in education."

TB, I would really like to wow you with an articulate, well thought out response backed by research, but I seriously don't have the time, if I wait until the weekend it will no longer matter (to me, at any rate) and it looks like Larry covered 2 of my bases already (thanks Larry!).

In preperation for my Wow factor response, I researched your first quote from the TCoTT report and found it to be incomplete, the actual quote is:
"We are now recruiting more of our teachers from the bottom third of the high school students going to college than is wise."
The last 3 words were, in my opinion, intentionally left out by the authors of the first article you quote. Including them makes the statement a nonsense statement, and does nothing to make their point.

I looked into getting the NTCQ reports, but there are several reports from 2004, and I don't have the time to sort through them (I am thinking you must either be the boss or be retired!). I would also add that teaching certification qualifications have and continue to change, becoming more stringent. While that is a very good thing, it makes statistics from 2004 nothing more than interesting.

Quite honestly, the information I was requesting was where you found the numbers for your first quote "a huge majority of public school teachers come from the bottom 15-20% of the class." ~ the response that prompted my reply in the first place.

Lunch is almost over, but I want to reiterate ~ I have been in the public school system a long time. I regret that you have poor examples in your family and maybe in your experience as a student or parent of students. As I stated earlier, I am impressed again and again by the intelligence of my colleagues, by their comittment to continuing their education, their knowledge in their field (personally I don't care if the teacher teaching my kid to write an essay can figure out what "25% off" means), their ability to discuss current local and world events responsibly and intelligently with students (an ability I find lacking in too many adults these days) and their commitment to student achievement, demonstrated on a daily basis.

Probably will wish I had said more or less or different, but lunch is officially done so I am too! :tiphat: