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Author Topic: Schoolteachers and Tenure  (Read 3381 times)

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Thad

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #40 on: November 03, 2010, 12:18:30 PM »

In my Data Structures class, we had to actually design and implement data structures from scratch before we were allowed to use the ones built into the language.
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Shinra

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #41 on: November 03, 2010, 01:38:53 PM »

The average salary of a teacher is between 40,000 and 50,000 dollars /yr, and work an average of 36 hours a week for an average of 38 weeks a year. That's 32 dollars an hour, on average, and an average monthly pay of 3,750 dollars. They make substantially more once they get tenure.

Show me your source so I can determine whether it's wrong or you are.

Here:

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary
http://www1.salary.com/High-School-Teacher-salary.html
http://www1.salary.com/Teacher-Elementary-School-salary.html
http://www1.salary.com/Public-School-Teacher-salary.html
http://www.employmentspot.com/employment-articles/teacher-salaries-by-state/
http://www.collegegrad.com/careers/proft56.shtml#ear

source for hours worked:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ib_05.htm

Note that none of those numbers for salary include benefits, which should account for about an extra 25,000 dollars a year.

Also note that this is just page 1 of google, so I can keep going with sources if you want.
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Thad

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #42 on: November 03, 2010, 01:57:40 PM »

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/All_K-12_Teachers/Salary

Oh, the one that says they make less than half as much per hour as the number you gave.

http://www.employmentspot.com/employment-articles/teacher-salaries-by-state/

And the one that points out, four sentences in, that they don't make enough money to pay rent.

source for hours worked:
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/ib_05.htm

In other words, you took numbers from the third-highest-paying state in the country and assumed they were representative of the nation.  Hey, it's an easy mistake to make, as the phrase "in New Jersey" only appears in that article nine times.

But thanks, you definitely answered my question: it's you.
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TA

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #43 on: November 03, 2010, 02:07:13 PM »

If you think a teacher is only working the hours they're physically in the classroom in front of students, you're either completely ignorant or blindingly stupid.
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Thad

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #44 on: November 03, 2010, 02:09:49 PM »

Yeah, that too.
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Burrito Al Pastor

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #45 on: November 03, 2010, 03:33:16 PM »

Although it's also generally true (as I understand it, anyways) that the number of hours that they're working doesn't correspond to the number of hours they're paid for, either.
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Pacobird

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #46 on: November 03, 2010, 03:52:55 PM »

They're on salary.  Whether they work 90 hours a week or 2 has nothing to do with their paycheck.  Honestly, comparing hourly and salaried wages is apples and oranges.
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Classic

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #47 on: November 03, 2010, 11:07:38 PM »

There is also something to be said for the technical skills involving teaching. As in, they are significant. Teaching is at least as difficult as writing efficient algorithms, and teaching well goodly is harder than that. Requiring amongst other things, a knowledge of child and developmental psychology.

Teaching is not just day-care.

Though, Shinra, I do agree with one of your points to a degree: if you don't or can't find teaching rewarding beyond the money, you shouldn't do it. Of course, I do my best to apply that to every aspect of human endeavor (to varying levels of success).
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Büge

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #48 on: November 04, 2010, 04:06:41 AM »



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Thad

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #49 on: November 04, 2010, 09:07:20 AM »

Though, Shinra, I do agree with one of your points to a degree: if you don't or can't find teaching rewarding beyond the money, you shouldn't do it.

He's also given us an excellent example of how schools don't do an adequate job of teaching reading comprehension, critical thinking, or statistical analysis.

Also note that this is just page 1 of google, so I can keep going with sources if you want.

Oh, and that statistic about how the US lags in understanding but leads in confidence.
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Brentai

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #50 on: November 04, 2010, 09:47:44 AM »

This is why people disagree with you on principle, Thad.
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Thad

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #51 on: November 04, 2010, 09:51:04 AM »

Because I save the smug condescension for occasions when I've actually read the half-dozen articles I'm using to support my argument?
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Brentai

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #52 on: November 04, 2010, 09:55:59 AM »

Nnnno you really don't.
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Brentai

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #53 on: November 04, 2010, 10:10:03 AM »

The reason I'm not getting on Shinra's bulge about it is of course because I don't care if he can't get through to people.
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Rico

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #54 on: November 04, 2010, 11:15:59 AM »

Woefully late to the thread but there are a couple of things I felt like chiming in on.

Surgery is largely a matter of physical capability.  While the job of surgeon in this country requires a lot of education, the Simpsons episode with Lisa shouting directions to Dr. Nick and it working is closer to reality than I think a lot of people would be comfortable thinking about.  You can be dumb and be a good surgeon.  You can be a bad doctor and be a good surgeon.  Teaching is HARD.

I work in retail management, and I deal with a large number of issues every month due to people not having basic math skills.  Even with calculators and adding machines in the count room, and good POS systems with giant touch screens and easy inputs, people fuck up all kinds of numbers that knowing basic arithmetic instead of treating it like a magical computer program that tells you the right answers would fix.
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Thad

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Re: Schoolteachers and Tenure
« Reply #55 on: November 04, 2010, 02:30:45 PM »

Nnnno you really don't.

I can only think of three cases in the past year or so where I've gone off half-cocked and spoken with authority on something I was wrong about: state ID's ARE a valid proof of citizenship under 1070, the guy who flew his plane into the IRS WASN'T a right-winger, and Opera NO LONGER allows text-only zoom.  In all other cases, I am fairly confident I have used my full cock.

Anyway, my criticisms of Shinra WERE one little extra kick, but they're also perfectly germane to the discussion.  I believe the general population is deficient in the ability to read a source, evaluate it critically, and understand the data it provides, and I believe that's a failure of American schools -- perhaps the single most important one.  Paco brought this up a little earlier.

Trouble is, "critical thinking" is nebulous, tough to gauge with a multiple-choice test, and, not to put too fine a point on it, charter schools are at least as bad at teaching it as public schools are.

Now, a multiple-choice test COULD have given you samples of those articles, asked what the average hourly salary for a teacher in America is, and then evaluated your answer -- but teaching the skill to answer correctly (or hell, even just in the ballpark) is trickier, and finding the flaws in a given interpretation is trickier still.

Woefully late to the thread but there are a couple of things I felt like chiming in on.

Eh, not THAT late.

Surgery is largely a matter of physical capability.  While the job of surgeon in this country requires a lot of education, the Simpsons episode with Lisa shouting directions to Dr. Nick and it working is closer to reality than I think a lot of people would be comfortable thinking about.  You can be dumb and be a good surgeon.  You can be a bad doctor and be a good surgeon.  Teaching is HARD.

While you can't ignore that manual dexterity is integral to being a good surgeon, I can't really agree with your dismissal of the intelligence involved.  Not just the large amount of knowledge of anatomy and pathology, but the ability to make split-second decisions -- and the temperament to deal with failures that have serious consequences.

Teaching IS hard, though, and Lord knows I dealt with plenty of people over the years who weren't very good at it.  The ones I remember most fondly, I remember for their passion more than their teaching methods -- but having just one or the other is insufficient.  (On the whole I'd argue that, if I had to choose either kindness or competence from an instructor and couldn't have both, I'd choose the former for K12 education and the latter for college.)

I work in retail management, and I deal with a large number of issues every month due to people not having basic math skills.  Even with calculators and adding machines in the count room, and good POS systems with giant touch screens and easy inputs, people fuck up all kinds of numbers that knowing basic arithmetic instead of treating it like a magical computer program that tells you the right answers would fix.

On the one hand, hell yes it's important to understand basic arithmetic and it's reasonable to expect adults to have their multiplication tables memorized.

On the other, in the scheme of things I think American education overemphasizes mathematical precision and rote memorization compared to other types of knowledge.  I know plenty of guys who are good at solving math problems but don't have a firm grasp of the fundamentals of Aristotelean logic, and really there's no excuse for that given the similarity of the principles.

I went to high school with kids who didn't know what Vietnam was.  A friend of mine had a neighbor, as a freshman in college, who thought Alaska was next to Hawaii.  This kind of shit isn't on the SAT, and if it were, it would crowd out some other important piece of information, because you can't realistically test people on every basic piece of information they should know over the course of a few hours.

Anyhow, I feel like I've veered a bit here.  Point being, there are a lot of problems with American education, but I'm pretty confident that reducing teachers' salaries and job security will not actually result in a huge number of highly qualified people clamoring for jobs in the profession.
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