Young Workers Not Saving Article

[laurence]

Hmmm, I would like to see their sources, as the web page hosting this data has an obvious agenda (turning red states blue, take back our schools from commie god hating teacher's unions etc.). Not to say the data is incorrect, but I didn't see any source data or links during my (albient superficial) search of the site.

My mother is a teacher in the Los Angeles school district. She has a Ph. D in Chemistry, and is a year from retirement, is department chair, top of the salary scale in all categories. She is making somewhere in the 70's right now, and growing up in her house, I know she worked way more than 40 hours a week x 9 months. She started lesson plans a month before school started in the fall. Then there were workshops, conferences, continuing education etc.

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor! He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair. He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep. Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed. 4 day weekend every week! No wonder ER is not on his radar.

 

[haha]

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor!  He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair.  He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep.  Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed.  4 day weekend every week!  No wonder ER is not on his radar.   

You said a mouthful when you referenced the union. Public employee unions are unbelievably powerful. That is why this guy is so egregiously overpaid.

Schools are mostly a boondoggle, though, on any level. I just read some info from my old school district in Cincinnati. Cincinnati schools are almost entirely black, except for a college prep school named Walnut Hills. Every year for at least 80 years, it has sent lots of graduates to the Ivies, Stanford, Cal-Tech, MIT, etc.

From the POV of the school district, this is a bad thing, because Walnut Hills pulls up city wide achievement levels, thus messing up their grab for more federal funds. The goal is to have the entire city declared "Special Education".

So what to do? What they did was to fire a bunch of excellent, high achieving teachers, and turn the school into a Charter School. It is being litigated now, but I would guess the city will pull it off. In this case, either the union rep wasn’t very good, or he got taken care of.

There goes Walnut Hills, and there also go the last academically qualified teachers in the city. They would not fit into the culture in the other "schools", and I would doubt that the pricipals and other staff would feel comfortable with all that intellectual horsepower anyway.

Probably the older ones will retire, the young ones seek other employment

Ha

 

[laurence]

You said a mouthful when you referenced the union. Public employee unions are unbelievably powerful. That is why this guy is so egregiously overpaid.

Schools are mostly a boondoggle, though, on any level. I just read some info from my old school district in Cincinnati. Cincinnati schools are almost entirely black, except for a college prep school named Walnut Hills. Every year for at least 80 years, it has sent lots of graduates to the Ivies, Stanford, Cal-Tech, MIT, etc.

From the POV of the school district, this is a bad thing, because Walnut Hills pulls up city wide achievement levels, thus messing up their grab for more federal funds. The goal is to have the entire city declared "Special Education".

So what to do? What they did was to fire a bunch of excellent, high achieving teachers, and turn the school into a Charter School. It is being litigated now, but I would guess the city will pull it off. In this case, either the union rep wasn’t very good, or he got taken care of.

There goes Walnut Hills, and there also go the last academically qualified teachers in the city. They would not fit into the culture in the other "schools", and I would doubt that the pricipals and other staff would feel comfortable with all that intellectual horsepower anyway.

Probably the older ones will retire, the young ones seek other employment

Ha

Hmmm, as with all things, the issue are not clear cut:

"I'm going to tell you flat out, there are some excellent teachers at Walnut Hills, both black and white, but the worst teachers are black," he says. "They can't show up on time for class. They were ill prepared, unprepared and most of the time the children, the students, were more intelligent than the teachers."

http://www.citybeat.com/2004-06-23/cover.shtml

Sounds like a private school that gets public funding. Sounds like there are some serious racial tensions in the area, too. There are probably legitimate points to be made on both sides, but things have gotten too ugly at this point for either to be heard fairly.

 

[sgeeeee]

I did a little googling to see if I could get some independent data on teacher salaries. Most of the data I found was a little dated, but well below the figures being tossed around here.

http://www.special-ed-careers.org/career_choices/employment.html

"Average Salaries of Public School Teachers 2000-2001

. . .
Rank State Average Salary
10 Illinois 47,865
. . ."

http://news.surfwax.com/education/files/Education_Association.html

"Nation's largest union sets goal of $40,000 starting salary for teachers Jul 4, 2005
LOS ANGELES The National Education Association says the typical starting salary for teachers should be 40-thousand dollars. It's a lofty goal. (WPRI, RI)"

http://www.collegeboard.com/csearch/majors_careers/profiles/careers/106175.html

"Compensation
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the 2003 average yearly earnings of teachers (not including special education teachers) by educational level taught:

Kindergarten: $43,530
Elementary school: $44,960
Middle school: $45,600
Secondary school: $47,810"

http://www.aft.org/salary/index.htm

"2003 Survey & Analysis of Teacher Salary Trends

The latest AFT salary survey shows that efforts to make education salaries competitive with other professions face a stiff headwind—in the form of skyrocketing costs for health benefits. The 2002-03 average teacher salary was $45,771, up 3.3 percent from the previous year, and average beginning teacher salaries rose 3.2 percent to $29,564 for the same period. But those gains are dwarfed by staggering increases in the cost of health insurance benefits—which spiked an astounding 13 percent, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports."

 

[haha]

Hmmm, as with all things, the issue are not clear cut:

"I'm going to tell you flat out, there are some excellent teachers at Walnut Hills, both black and white, but the worst teachers are black," he says. "They can't show up on time for class. They were ill prepared, unprepared and most of the time the children, the students, were more intelligent than the teachers."

Laurence, I know you to be a fair person. But the comment you picked to illustrate your link was the only one that mentioned race in a very long article.

I graduated from this school. In my class of 285, only one woman did not go to college. 75 students went to first-tier elite universities.

The only way in is a difficult examination. When you fail a year, you don't repeat- you drop down to a less elite school. (At least that is the way it was.)

The student body was fully 40% Ashkenazi Jews, in a city with a Jewish population proportion nowhere near this figure. There were African Americans- many were in fact Africans, the children of visiting professors at University of Cincinnati.

There was absolutely no prejudice. There was absolute meritocracy. In these same years, Yale University restricted its undergraduate population to less than 10% Jewish. So you can see that a meritocracy was not real common. It is impossible to have an elite school with a proportion of African Americans similar to the surrounding community, unless it is in Greenwich Connecticut or similar. Like CCNY, Walnut Hills was in fact an elite school, open and free to working class and middle class people. But you did have to be smart; and you did have to work much harder than most high school students are willing to work.

When I got there I was astounded to find that the smart kids, including girls, instead of having to hide their wits were respected for them.

I am sure that racial shenanigans, which seem to have a role here, will ruin Walnut Hills, just as they ruined CCNY (now a SUNY branch.) But if we hope to compete in a very competitive world, children will have to be educated in ability groupings, even if the high groups are disproportionately Asian and European.

We don't expect African-American athletes to play with a “proper” proportion of whites, just so whites can be properly represented. As you know, the good players play, the wannabees take PE or play at lower than varsity levels. And in major sports, most of the good players are black.

Everyone shoud be educated, but if you want to ruin a school, go for the lowest common denominator. Of course, that is what has been done in public education in America, and our chilfdren of all races are paying for that.

Ha

 

[saluki9]

Hmmm, I would like to see their sources, as the web page hosting this data has an obvious agenda (turning red states blue, take back our schools from commie god hating teacher's unions etc.). Not to say the data is incorrect, but I didn't see any source data or links during my (albient superficial) search of the site.

My mother is a teacher in the Los Angeles school district. She has a Ph. D in Chemistry, and is a year from retirement, is department chair, top of the salary scale in all categories. She is making somewhere in the 70's right now, and growing up in her house, I know she worked way more than 40 hours a week x 9 months. She started lesson plans a month before school started in the fall. Then there were workshops, conferences, continuing education etc.

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor! He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair. He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep. Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed. 4 day weekend every week! No wonder ER is not on his radar.

I would never suggest that teachers don't work. As I said before, I have a brother in law who teaches at one of the schools at the top of the list. It sounds like a school very similar to the one in Philadelphia. It has a 99.9% graduation rate, something like 98% of kids go to college, and it has the highest SAT and ACT scores in the state.

It's all relative though. I never said all teachers in IL are highly paid, just in this area. I happen to live in a very affluent area. If it weren't for my entire family and my job being right here I would live somewhere with a lower cost of living.

 

[Mr._johngalt]

Hmmm, I would like to see their sources, as the web page hosting this data has an obvious agenda (turning red states blue, take back our schools from commie god hating teacher's unions etc.).  Not to say the data is incorrect, but I didn't see any source data or links during my (albient superficial) search of the site. 

My mother is a teacher in the Los Angeles school district.  She has a Ph. D in Chemistry, and is a year from retirement, is department chair, top of the salary scale in all categories.  She is making somewhere in the 70's right now, and growing up in her house, I know she worked way more than 40 hours a week x 9 months.  She started lesson plans a month before school started in the fall.  Then there were workshops, conferences, continuing education etc.

You want to talk about overcompensation, talk about my step-dad the junior college professor!  He holds a Masters in physics, and is department chair.  He gets paid six figures to teach two classes and be the union rep.  Classes are tuesday thursday and office hours are wed.  4 day weekend every week!  No wonder ER is not on his radar.   

When I was single, I dated a couple of teachers. I never taught, but it sure
looked easy to me. Big money and short hours. One was a high school
English teacher. Very little prep, she just phoned it in. If she was really feeling lazy she would show them a film which would eat up most of the class time
and then ask them to write a paper on it.

Teacher shows a movie. Students buy Cliffs Notes. Not a pretty picture.

JG

 

[laurence]

Laurence, I know you to be a fair person. But the comment you picked to illustrate your link was the only one that mentioned race in a very long article.

I graduated from this school. In my class of 285, only one woman did not go to college. 75 students went to first-tier elite universities.

The only way in is a difficult examination. When you fail a year, you don't repeat- you drop down to a less elite school. (At least that is the way it was.)

The student body was fully 40% Ashkenazi Jews, in a city with a Jewish population proportion nowhere near this figure. There were African Americans- many were in fact Africans, the children of visiting professors at University of Cincinnati.

There was absolutely no prejudice. There was absolute meritocracy. In these same years, Yale University restricted its undergraduate population to less than 10% Jewish. So you can see that a meritocracy was not real common. It is impossible to have an elite school with a proportion of African Americans similar to the surrounding community, unless it is in Greenwich Connecticut or similar. Like CCNY, Walnut Hills was in fact an elite school, open and free to working class and middle class people. But you did have to be smart; and you did have to work much harder than most high school students are willing to work.

When I got there I was astounded to find that the smart kids, including girls, instead of having to hide their wits were respected for them.

I am sure that racial shenanigans, which seem to have a role here, will ruin Walnut Hills, just as they ruined CCNY (now a SUNY branch.) But if we hope to compete in a very competitive world, children will have to be educated in ability groupings, even if the high groups are disproportionately Asian and European.

We don't expect African-American athletes to play with a “proper” proportion of whites, just so whites can be properly represented. As you know, the good players play, the wannabees take PE or play at lower than varsity levels. And in major sports, most of the good players are black.

Everyone shoud be educated, but if you want to ruin a school, go for the lowest common denominator. Of course, that is what has been done in public education in America, and our chilfdren of all races are paying for that.

Ha

You are correct, it was the only racially motivated comment in the paper, it just stood out at me and I wanted to hear if you had a take on it. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles (like, you know, for sure) and at that time it was transitioning from white to hispanic and black. A lot of the other language in the article reminded me of the thinly veiled racism going on there at the time. This comment inserted towards the end sort of crystalized what was seeming familiar. But like I said earlier, you can make an argument for both sides. Obviously there is a failure to provide equal education under the law here, but that shouldn't result in tearing down a good school.

MRGALT2U, I'm sorry that you only dated the bad apples. Those who "taught" the way you describe your dates are held in the lowest contempt by those teachers who actually do their job. But every work place has their losers.

 

[riskadverse]

Laurence, I know you to be a fair person. But the comment you picked to illustrate your link was the only one that mentioned race in a very long article.

I graduated from this school. In my class of 285, only one woman did not go to college. 75 students went to first-tier elite universities.

The only way in is a difficult examination. When you fail a year, you don't repeat- you drop down to a less elite school. (At least that is the way it was.)

The student body was fully 40% Ashkenazi Jews, in a city with a Jewish population proportion nowhere near this figure. There were African Americans- many were in fact Africans, the children of visiting professors at University of Cincinnati.

There was absolutely no prejudice. There was absolute meritocracy. In these same years, Yale University restricted its undergraduate population to less than 10% Jewish. So you can see that a meritocracy was not real common. It is impossible to have an elite school with a proportion of African Americans similar to the surrounding community, unless it is in Greenwich Connecticut or similar. Like CCNY, Walnut Hills was in fact an elite school, open and free to working class and middle class people. But you did have to be smart; and you did have to work much harder than most high school students are willing to work.

When I got there I was astounded to find that the smart kids, including girls, instead of having to hide their wits were respected for them.

I am sure that racial shenanigans, which seem to have a role here, will ruin Walnut Hills, just as they ruined CCNY (now a SUNY branch.) But if we hope to compete in a very competitive world, children will have to be educated in ability groupings, even if the high groups are disproportionately Asian and European.

We don't expect African-American athletes to play with a “proper” proportion of whites, just so whites can be properly represented. As you know, the good players play, the wannabees take PE or play at lower than varsity levels. And in major sports, most of the good players are black.

Everyone shoud be educated, but if you want to ruin a school, go for the lowest common denominator. Of course, that is what has been done in public education in America, and our chilfdren of all races are paying for that.

Ha

It's a small world HaHa - my brother, 2 sisters and I, all went to Walnut Hills.  I only attended 2 1/2 years before we moved(1960).  The school was unlike any other I've ever seen.  It partially inspired me to become a teacher (a career I changed shortly thereafter when I bumped up against the realities of our educational system).      

 

[haha]

It's a small world HaHa - my brother, 2 sisters and I, all went to Walnut Hills.  I only attended 2 1/2 years before we moved(1960).  The school was unlike any other I've ever seen.  It partially inspired me to become a teacher (a career I changed shortly thereafter when I bumped up against the realities of our educational system).  

Small world indeed! I would have been there at least part of the time you were- remember Jake Skilken? Miss Hutchison? The Boomer in advanced math? Whitey Davis?

Very fine place, and certainly different from the school I transferred from.

Ha