Schools cant be run like corporate america. Teachers cant choose their students, the students just sign up - they can great, average or awful students. It's a roll of the dice. Its not the teachers fault.
Imagine if companies didnt have a say on who they hired?
Thank you Bavarde! I think your post is wonderful as it illustrates the issues for good teachers of which there are many. I think and hope what Jobs was speaking to was the unfortunate fact that so many in education just plain do a terrible job. It happens both at the administrative side and the delivery side of the business. Yes it is rooted at the legislative level also.
The pay no way justifiably compensates the best and way overpays the worst. I'll focus on the worst because I think it is a bigger problem. As proven by the number of teachers we have lots of people will work for the pay. The pay along with the security and the pension is enough to have attracted millions. Now that we have a system that attracts many how do we weed out the poor performers. Currently we are stuck with them and every school has some. Jobs is right to point out who of quality wants to aspire to manage a group when their tools to manage prevent rewarding excellence and punishing poor performance.
I live 20 miles from a state border, MA-CT, that divides a pay variance of major proportions. A short commute can offer a 50% pay increase. Yet we still attract and retain excellent teachers. So money alone is not the problem. The big thing here is not offering permanent contracts to new hires as a tool for administrators to release poor performers. That is of little use with all the long term employees.
My fear in giving more tools to the current administrators is that we have lots of poor ones that fear the best teachers. These great teachers have the kind of power that most principals can only dream of, they are loved, wanted, respected and valued.
I for one see a problem and the only solutions I can envision will bring short term upheaval and fear. We have to accept that the problem is bad enough to warrant the turmoil of change that can bring about a better situation. Unfortunatly some great people are bound to get hurt in the process. Is the current pain bad enough that we are willing to risk the pain of change.
Bless Jobs for speaking up. Let heads roll as our kids deserve better than what we are giving.
I disagree with your assessment and I find that what Steve Jobs had to say in regards to teachers unions is correct . Teacher union are fast becoming the number one boondoggle of American education because of one simple fact . The union is not interested in teaching american kids , many of the NEA leaders are interested in indoctrinating american kids to their political point of view in spite of the objections of a lot of competent , non-political teachers in their rank and file . Correct in if I am wrong , but isn't there dozens if not hundreds of articles in US newspapers that complained about bright HS graduates that went to college and failed to even finish their first year because their high school education was very much inadequate for them to tackle college courses ? I think that is what Jobs is talking about and throwing more money to the problem as a temporary fix will make things worst .
Here are some of the solutions I think will help American education
1) Change the way how people enter into the teaching profession . To do this , prospective candidates entering into the college of education should be a college graduate with a degree mathematics , sciences , literature and sciences and had gained experience working in the real non-education world for at least three years in their respective fields or for those people who did not have a degree and wishes to enter the teaching college should have actual and verifiable work experience ( and should be highly regarded by his or her peers) for at least 5 to ten years pertinent to the subjects they wish to teach.
2) Do away with fad teaching solutions , teach using methods that work time and time again and avoid using school children as experiments for some newly develop and politically loved school theory .
3)Leave your politics and beliefs in your house when teaching students . Indoctrination whether political , religious and others have no room in the classroom.
4)Restore old fashion discipline in the classroom by having the teaching staff , the student body and their parents create a school that will not tolerate real wrongdoing by any teacher or student .
5) Remove the government from the school system gradually , but surely .Nothing creates more waste of money than having the Federal and State heaping more useless non teaching bureaucrats to the already bloated school system,
6) Let union members decide where their union dues should go and teachers who refused to be a member of the teachers union should not be threatened with losing their jobs .
7)Teachers are required during summer to attend workshops/expeditions pertinent to the subject that they are teaching and take CEUs in order to renew their teaching license.
8) After school or summer English classes are mandatory to non-english speakers for a small inexpensive fee . They will be taught English grammar , spelling ,speech by teachers or volunteers to help them cope with their American counterparts.
you should also have parents engaged and in the halls, helping to some extent. plan days off from work to volunteer at school. nothing helps the students more than seeing parents engaged and watching out for them.
In my state, tenure gives poorly performing veteran teachers the right to a 3-month remediation period and a hearing. If such teachers don't get their act together within those 3 months, their fate is in the hands of their bosses. Administrators who really want to fire bad teachers most certainly can do so. It's just a matter of them following through.
Most teachers I work with do quality work and do care. It's the minority of bad teachers who give the quality ones a bad name. And yes, lack of good parenting and lack of respect are very real problems these days.
Also, kids have waaaaaaaay more distractions now than previously. Cell phones/text messaging, the Internet and all that comes with it (YouTube, chat rooms, and other time wasters), video games, hundreds of television channels, just to name a few...And speaking of television, what I saw on TV during the 1980s was pretty tame compared to what kids are exposed to now.
I've noticed over the years that people think that having been a student in a school at one time automatically qualifies everyone as being an expert on education. By that logic, having been a child raised by adults at one time would automatically qualify everyone as being an expert on parenting. Mr. Jobs, being a rich CEO does not automatically qualify you as an expert on education. Students are human beings going through sometimes volatile development stages. They're not electronic gadgets rolling off an assembly line.
Teaching in a public school classroom is not the same as something like coaching. A coach can hold tryouts, make cuts, and keep the worst players who make the team on the bench. A public school teacher cannot choose which students he/she has a in a class, drop a poorly performing student on a whim, or choose a "starting lineup" of students to take the standardized tests that our country has become obsessed with as a result of the badly flawed No Child Left Behind law -- a law that labels an entire school a failure when students in just one subgroup (e.g. low income subgroup, special ed subgroup, Hispanic subgroup, African-American subgroup, etc.) don't perform up to snuff on one standardized test. And don't get me started on the fact that my state requires special ed students to take the ACT, of all things (yes, you read that correctly) along with regular ed students. The ACT is also used as part of the criteria for deciding whether or not a school is "failing" under No Child Left Behind. But I digress...
Concerning the idea that using public taxpayer money to send children to private schools via the use of vouchers will magically result in higher achievement...Hogwash! Private schools educate students they choose to admit, and the students they admit primarily come from families who value education very highly. Parents in those types of families keep after their kids when they go astray. Public schools accept virtually ANYONE, including expensive special education students who they're required by law to educate (special education classrooms require more staff than regular classrooms do). Frankly, public schools are even more open than Ellis Island ever was. There's no such thing as an entrance exam to be admitted to a public K-12 school, and private schools don't have the litany of other government mandates that public schools do. Therefore, judging the quality of a private school teaching staff against the quality of a public school teaching staff based on standardized tests given once a year is a badly flawed approach.
Please try to keep the above in mind before ignorantly bashing public school teachers. Teaching is hard enough as it is, and continually attacking teachers will likely 1) drive good ones away from the profession and 2) discourage talented people from changing careers to enter the teaching profession. Currently, 50% of teachers already leave the profession by the end of their 5th year. If teaching is so easy, why would this be the case?
Whoever thinks teachers are underworked and overpaid, please feel free to jump in and become full-time teachers yourselves to see what it's really like. Then we'll talk.
currently there is very little incentive for good people to turn to teaching.... in this country there is too little respect for teaching and the paid is too little to lure enough good people to do it...
we'll drop millions of dollars on bombs and the military, but are unwilling to pay teachers a decent salary.
When I have kids you can be sure that they are not going to be in the US public schools which with a few exceptions are a disgrace....
we've created an environment that ends up being an outlet for many people that graduated from university but were not great students themselves and then we give them a job that we can't fire them from for low performance....
Honestly, I've had some excellent teachers who I respect a LOT.
BUT the overwhelming majority of teachers were mediocre at best and made me dumber at worst.
I'm sure anyone that's been to university can attest that practically none of the best students ever choose to become teachers
I agree partly with your statement.
My wife is a public teacher, she works in a great wealthy district in Southern California and has been doing it for over 14 years. Her salary is very good for a teacher but new teachers just make nothing. (public teachers pay is based in the amount of years worked on the same district, if you move from one district to another you lose most of the years worked and go back to zero, At least in California) They have little support from the government and few years back she got a Mac from school and they never helped her in using it. Thank god she has me so I could help.
I think Steve Jobs should shut up his mouth in this one. The problem here is not the teachers but mostly of our school system, government and lack of better salaries, support and infra structure in many schools.
I believe teachers are our heroes because they have to endure such a suck situation and they prepare the next generation with a bad salary and no respect.
Plus on top of that the benefits for teachers are just getting worse, Health care that use to be 100% paid is not 50% paid and the quality got worse, Salaries don't raise as much as used to be and lack of support from the school board is just a joke. Hey, I am talking about a wealthy good district that my wife works. Imagine in a poor bad district.
Sure there are "bad" teachers out there like in any professions there are bad apples, but the majority is just trying to survive and do their best. I believe most teachers are good, they just lacking support so they can't do a 100% job. If you want to fire a teacher then raise drastically their salaries and make it a corporation management style school system. IMHO, I don't think this will be any better.
Hopefully one day our government will invest billions of dollars in the education instead of spend it in killing people abroad. Until then, we should salute the people who try to make this country better everyday. Teachers!
I am in my first year out of high school so I have a fresh opinion on this. There are some downright horrible instructors in our public secondary education system, but also there are the few that inspire students to live up to their potential. Honestly, it depends on your demographic. My family moved many times during my k-12 years so i was able to experience several demographics ranging from predominantly amish and middel to uppermiddle class white al the way to the majority being very underprivaleged minorites. The inner city school teachers are the worst. If you are one, I don't apollogize. Stop letting kids fall through the cracks. Your apathy and your "Oh well, we can't fix these kids" attitued is getting old and causing our literacy rate to fall. It's pathetic and frankly, why aren't we fed up with it? I can name at least ten teachers in the inner city school system i attended that should have had their pink slip fed to them by a rabid dog. On the other hand, all of the instructors in the rural areas I lived in (sans a spanish teacher and my second semester 9th grade English teacher) cared about the students. I strongly believe that despite the fact that it's been nearly 40 years since the beginning of the Civil Rights movement of the sixties, that at least 60% of inner city teachers are subconsciously and or consciously racist or racially prejudiced. In my years in the inner city school I attended I was able to observe other schools around me. I was in all the honors/AP classes or whatever you will call them. Do you know what I noticed? Not one black male. Excuse me, my Senior year the grandson of Ellie May Daggett transferred into my high school. He went on to get a full ride to Cambridge University. Other than that, the only minorities in my AP classes were females. African american males seem not just to slip through the cracks, but forced down through the cracks by inner-city teachers. To say that my overall feeling on this matter is one of apall would be a grave understatement.
I apologize for how winded that was.
Not only do bad teachers need to be fired, but inner city education needs to be redone. Not reformed, redone. Start over. Fire them all. Have the teachers' unions absolve their memberships or something along those lines and fire them.
Maybe you should investigate other districts. My friend gets the same paycheck all year round.
We get the same paycheck all year round, but it is prorated. If I take an unauthorized (I have 2 personal days a year) day off, I am docked 1/184 of my salary. Also, I have no paid holidays.
I don't think I am the exception. I am in Maine and really only know about New England schools. My daughter teaches in MA. The salaries are better there, but nothing like what you are describing. Maine recently mandated at least $30,000 as starting pay, but did nothing for those at the top.
The lack of respect is the real problem. Teachers are not respected by sociey and therefore they are not respected by the students. It is a myth that teachers cannot be fired. They do have to be fired for just cause and that requires documentation. The principals, who are REALLY stuck in the middle and are underpaid, do not have the time to do that. They have to deal with discipline and paperwork. NCLB has added an incredible layer of bureaucracy to the whole mess. Just to meet "qualified" status many teachers had to go back to school. It was mostly because in a middle school teachers often teach 3 or more subjects. No one has a college major in all 3. How humiliating to be told you can't teach 7th grade math because you only have 18 college credits!
To answer a little bit some of the other points on the thread--- Good teachers are leaving. Many are retiring early (like me) because the stress is too much. The new teachers coming in are a product of the same system that needs to be fixed!!!
The solution is certainly not a simple one. Telling teachers they are the problem will not work. We won't be scapegoats anymore. This is a NATIONAL issue, a societal issue. Hopefully the next president will be one who can see colors other than black and white.
You are right that respect from students and parents are a big part of it. That might return if you had the power to discipline in the classroom, instead of categorizing them with psychobabble. However, I get "respect teachers' sacrifices" rammed down my throat daily. I'd make the claim that they are respected even more than those who put their lives on the line; police, military, etc. Our society worships education.....the more letters you have after or before your name, the more important you are. How much more respect can society really give? At least congress and the media don't daily threaten to undercut your very mission and livelihood.
I'm sorry if the NCLB made a few teachers feel "humiliated." But if they aren't qualified to teach because they don't have the right credentials, then that is the way it works I guess.
I'm going to be a little harsh here; forgive me ahead of time. I'm going to make a small leap here and guess you are pretty liberal. You take on the mantra of a "victim." You blame the NCLB act for all the troubles...but looking past its faults it is not much more than an accountability measure and it is working ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Chil...vor_of_the_act ). You blame the current presidential administration.....which at least has made a substantive attempt fixing the system, more than ANY previous administration has done. You strike me as a typically self-centered, condescending liberal, thinking that if only everyone "looked up" to you more (respect, avoid accountability, and never ever do anything that might challenge a teacher's pride), threw more money at the problem (more pay, more benes, more more more), and thought just like you....then we'd have a magically perfect system. 1 room schoolhouses with multiple grades and 1 teacher did a far better job than today's system, without 10% of the tools granted today.
Again, forgive me for being harsh, and I do have the utmost respect for your years of service to our future; but I don't have the share your opinions.
I think that engineering, business, and CS program skew those averages. Social science academia is a whole different game, especially if you're not dealing with a tier-1 research institution.
I dunno but $74K seems pretty decent to me and "close" enough to 100K given the average US salary.
And yes, AVERAGE implies that some folks make more than 97K and some folks makes less. These numbers show a $30K spread at the full prof level for different fields throwing out the two outliers: Law vs Theology. Presumably the latter will reap their rewards "later" while the former head for "warmer" climes.
The average for a full prof at a community college is $66K but for any 4 year college you're a least in the 70K range again.
No, I didn't go to the AAUP to verify these numbers or looked at their survey methods but one hopes something as "peer reviewed" as salary reports is reasonably well done.
Starting salaries in 8 districts of maryland are now $40K. Yes, K-12.
In what, the 8 districts with the highest cost of living? In those districts, it's probably impossible to get an apartment, eat, and make car and college loan payments for $40k without scraping by. And for what, to work 10-12 hours/day, know that you might get terminated in a year or two before you get tenure, and clearly have no respect from people that you're getting paid what you deserve?
Wow, there's a dream job for you.
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My father was a prof that retired a decade ago with at 70K salary at a so-so uni teaching education...not CS. AVERAGE salary at PUBLIC doctoral insitutions are $97K at the full professor level. $127K at private.
Heck...there are COMMUNITY colleges that pay 80+K AVERAGE for full profs.
As well "educated" as you are evidently you can't use a research tool as simple as google.
Average university pofessor salaries are around $65,000. You really should take a lesson at learning to use Google yourself. And good grief, there are about 1600 community colleges out there, so you use a web page that tells you there are ONLY 14 that pay over $80,000 to make a point (the average pay is actually around $52,000)? And once again, those schools are almost all in places where the cost of living is high.
And what's your point bringing up university salaries anyhow? To show that teachers make half what they do? So it's OK to pay teachers squat to teach kids during their most formative years?
Next I'd suggest you Google how much teachers make in other countries. What places like Germany, Japan, etc. pay teachers (in particular at the high school level), make the pay in the US look like a joke.
I'm going to be a little harsh here; forgive me ahead of time. I'm going to make a small leap here and guess you are pretty liberal. You take on the mantra of a "victim." You blame the NCLB act for all the troubles...but looking past its faults it is not much more than an accountability measure and it is working ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Chil...vor_of_the_act ).
Well wikipedia is not an authoritative source and second I'm conservative and I think NCLB was a dumb idea. Teaching to tests was the obvious predictable result and just dumb. The primary advantage that the US has over "better educated" countries is that we are a bit unstructured and willing to step outside the box.
That doesn't come from teaching to the test.
In any case, NCLB is kind of a contract...one the administration reneged on the funding side. I also thought it was us "conservatives" that didn't like federal dictates to states anyway.
With respect to the military and related issues I believe that belongs to AppleOutsider but I shan't deny myself the comment from the conservative side that any current damage was inflicted by the conservative and not liberal side of the fence. A self-inflicted wound so to speak. You can't also decry victimization and then play the same card (wah evil liberal congress threatening funding...wah wah). Well, I guess you can with our current "conservative" leadership.
When he came back to Apple, he was firing people by the bushel. He's an autocrat. Fine, for making beautiful things to use.
Turning out young minds, however, is a different thing. Firing people more easily might be one thing you could go for, and if Steve ran a school system, maybe he would fire the right people for the right reasons. But teacher's unions have no choice but to make it more difficult to fire people. Principals may fire dead wood in one school, or fire good people to hire friends in another; or fire people arbitrarily in another.
In retail, or manufacturing, you can see productivity day to day. If somebody's no good, there are objective criteria. You've got a lot harder job at a school. As "No Child Left Behind" proves, trying to make schools better by supplying these criteria just makes kids into test-takers and many principals into liars. Nobody wants their school declared a disaster zone.
He's on much firmer ground, however, when he talks about eliminating textbooks. Textbooks are a massive boondoggle for stupidity. Much cheaper to give each kid a computer, and set up a statewide lending library of, you know, real books. Give the kids research projects in their chosen fields. They can research on the net, and take out books that come the next morning (I can dream) like Netflix. The computerization of education is the right way to stop the mechanistic idea of school as a factory.
Well wikipedia is not an authoritative source and second I'm conservative and I think NCLB was a dumb idea. Teaching to tests was the obvious predictable result and just dumb. The primary advantage that the US has over "better educated" countries is that we are a bit unstructured and willing to step outside the box.
That doesn't come from teaching to the test.
In any case, NCLB is kind of a contract...one the administration reneged on the funding side. I also thought it was us "conservatives" that didn't like federal dictates to states anyway.
With respect to the military and related issues I believe that belongs to AppleOutsider but I shan't deny myself the comment from the conservative side that any current damage was inflicted by the conservative and not liberal side of the fence. A self-inflicted wound so to speak. You can't also decry victimization and then play the same card (wah evil liberal congress threatening funding...wah wah). Well, I guess you can with our current "conservative" leadership.
Vinea
Bush isn't the best conservative ever, and I'm not a fan of the Feds dictating to the states, but at least the NCLB act was a stab at something; again, more than ANYONE has done to date. You can talk about how Bush didn't fulfill his end of the bargain, how it is too "inside the box," and etc etc....but at the end of the day, if more children are reading better and doing math better, then I'm perfectly happy to "teach to the test." It'd be one thing if it was a 10 question test and we only gave them 10 facts, but we're teaching them skills here.....if "teaching to the test" means imparting useful skills, then I'm all for it.
In what, the 8 districts with the highest cost of living? In those districts, it's probably impossible to get an apartment, eat, and make car and college loan payments for $40k without scraping by.
Oddly, I managed when I wasn't making the "princely" salary of today. Yes, obviously the 8 districts with the most money and the highest costs of living. How many other professions start out much higher than $40K?
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And for what, to work 10-12 hours/day, know that you might get terminated in a year or two before you get tenure, and clearly have no respect from people that you're getting paid what you deserve?
My wife never regularly worked 10-12 hours per day as a teacher but I do as a developer. And programmers never get tenure.
Both her parents were teachers (one community college and one K12). They sure weren't pulling 10-12 hour work days.
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Average university pofessor salaries are around $65,000. You really should take a lesson at learning to use Google yourself. And good grief, there are about 1600 community colleges out there, so you use a web page that tells you there are ONLY 14 that pay over $80,000 to make a point (the average pay is actually around $52,000)? And once again, those schools are almost all in places where the cost of living is high.
Because the AAUP is going to make up salary survey results? And $97K was for full professors...which after 30 bleeding years teaching I hope one could make that leap from associate to full.
Average for community colleges were $66K for a full prof. Yes, they use fewer of those with a lot of adjuct profs and instructors.
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And what's your point bringing up university salaries anyhow?
Because the previous poster was obnoxious and talked about the salaries of his parents who were professors to refute someone else. Maybe reading the quoted text is sometimes useful to determine the context?
If you read any biography or his history he has a disdain for unions, whether they be in tech, business, China, or government. He is a CEO why would he like any union???
On this nice presidents day weekend, I am happy to hear Steve Jobs mention 1 of the thousands of problems in education in the U.S.
I agree that there are a lot of bad teachers out there and unfortunately the good ones give up because they bust their ass every day while others ruin it for them.
I am a band teacher of 10 years that used to teach in a private school and moved on to a public school when I changed states. I have no intentions of quiting, but honestly when you look at the money per hour (which they don't do), we would be better off financially working for MacDonalds.
I have always told myself that I didn't become a teacher to become a millionaire, so the money thing doesn't bother me, until I can't afford to live comfortably.
Here is my list of things that might "IRRITATE TEACHERS", causing them to loose their passion for the job:
1. CONTINUING EDUCATION RULES - I have no problem with going back to school, taking tests to update my certification, but college costs a lot of money. Just when you think you are starting to get ahead of your student loans, you find yourself sinking further into debt.
Many people see this as being the same as Doctors continuing on in education, but I highly disagree. Let's say a doctor makes $200,000 and a teacher makes $50,000 a year. Either way, 1 CREDIT at any given school is going to cost the same amount for any student applying. So if a teacher takes a continuing education course, it costs $500, and the doctor goes to a convention and takes a class costing the same amount, who is really paying more? The doctor has this taken care of his continuing ed class in the first three patients he sees that next morning. A teacher will eat a third of their paycheck that month just to cover the cost of the one class.
So, I am not saying doctors are overpaid or anything like that. I feel they are miracle workers, but there needs to be something done to help cover teacher costs for continuing education. When is a teacher supposed to start saving for his children's education?
2. CONSTANT STATEWIDE TESTS - When I went to school, you had two tests that you cared about if you were going to college, the SAT and ACT tests. Some schools only needed one or the other. Everybody isn't going to go on to college or trade school after high school, it's a fact. No matter how much we shove state tests down the throats of students, they are only going to learn if they are ready to learn. Survival of the fittest (smartest). Nature works things out on it's own. The world needs ditch diggers too. Anything I missed?
Stop wasting money on tests. In the state of Washington, they spend nearly $1,000,000 per question on their WASL test. This includes coming up with the question, approval of the question at multiple levels, printing of the questions, keeping the question a secret, administering the question, and grading the question. Total crap. Total waste of money. It's not making kids any smarter.
3. PARENTS NEED TO SUPPORT TEACHERS - Parent these days enable their kids to get away with doing anything. Instead of letting their kids get in trouble, or accept the F for cheating on a test, they go in there like they are lawyers. They start talking about personality conflicts with the teacher. I hope I have a personality conflict with most teenagers since I am twice their age. These are parents trying to get kids into the best college or for some ANY college, but don't realize, they are really just helping develop poor life skills.
The statistics show more and more kids going to college, but they are not showing the number of kids that drop after the first semester because they couldn't hack it.
BACK TO STEVE JOBS FOR A MOMENT:
I agree with him 100%. I think bad teacher should be fired, or there should be a series of checks an balances throughout your time at the job. The problem with the statement is, there becomes this expectation that every science teacher is going to go in and jump around like a circus monkey blowing things up or constantly entertaining the kids.
In this unbelievably sophisticated/technological world we live in, kids are just overstimulated by everything they have. It is hard to keep up with something that keeps doubling in speed every year (computers, video games, etc.).
When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to go home and try to beat Maniac Mansion on my Commodore 64. It was on my mind constantly. NOW compare that to anything that is available now... hell... most calculators are more exciting now.
The job of a teacher has changed significantly since STEVE JOBS has been to school. It has become EDUTAINMENT rather than education. Half the battle is just getting kids to stop texting on their phones in class, listening to their iPODS in class, putting test answers on their iPOD for class, texting test answers to one another on their phones.
Sure... take away a kids property and you are looking at a meeting with a parent, now multiply that meeting by the average class size (30+) and multiply that by 5-6 class. Now find time to teach, grade, give positive feedback etc.
If you don't teach, YOU DON'T KNOW. Trust me.
Now, the PROBLEM WITH CEOs of CORPORATIONS is, they don't have UNIONS, they have FAT WALLETS, so they can feed their FAT FACES, while paying FAT LAWYERS, to take care of their FAT EMBEZZLEMENT/STOCK OPTIONS PROBLEMS so they don't get thrown in prison and have their FAT A S S E S taken advantage of by a FAT CELLMATE. Let's not look at teachers for the world problems. If anything they are the ones that care.
Happy President's Day. I hope all of my fellow teacher friends enjoyed their day off.
Jobs had me until the encyclopedia Wikipedia bit. Wik is a joke and should be kept as far away from students as possible forever.
It's hearsay history and bogus.
Wooo, wooo, WOOOO.
Wikipedia is the greatest thing that has ever happened in the advancement of information since the original encyclopedia.
It is up to date information, coming from numerous different sources. All overseen by a large group of people. It has become my #1 research site for all my projects and anything I just want to know.
Plus what Steve was pointing out was not using wikipedia but wikischool more to say. Think of the amount of money that would be saved on text books and it would always be up to date. Though for wikischool to succeed there would need to be a subscription or overseen by the government.
Now about teachers getting paid some of you guys have good points that teachers work lots after school, but that is assuming they are one of those 'good' teachers. I have plenty of teachers that do nothing, and all the grades are now done by scantron machines. Heck his keynotes came with the book. We just keep flipping pages and going through the book page by page. Really Mr. Kelly does not have any what of a hard job. He is not even a nice or good person.
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Imagine if companies didnt have a say on who they hired?
The pay no way justifiably compensates the best and way overpays the worst. I'll focus on the worst because I think it is a bigger problem. As proven by the number of teachers we have lots of people will work for the pay. The pay along with the security and the pension is enough to have attracted millions. Now that we have a system that attracts many how do we weed out the poor performers. Currently we are stuck with them and every school has some. Jobs is right to point out who of quality wants to aspire to manage a group when their tools to manage prevent rewarding excellence and punishing poor performance.
I live 20 miles from a state border, MA-CT, that divides a pay variance of major proportions. A short commute can offer a 50% pay increase. Yet we still attract and retain excellent teachers. So money alone is not the problem. The big thing here is not offering permanent contracts to new hires as a tool for administrators to release poor performers. That is of little use with all the long term employees.
My fear in giving more tools to the current administrators is that we have lots of poor ones that fear the best teachers. These great teachers have the kind of power that most principals can only dream of, they are loved, wanted, respected and valued.
I for one see a problem and the only solutions I can envision will bring short term upheaval and fear. We have to accept that the problem is bad enough to warrant the turmoil of change that can bring about a better situation. Unfortunatly some great people are bound to get hurt in the process. Is the current pain bad enough that we are willing to risk the pain of change.
Bless Jobs for speaking up. Let heads roll as our kids deserve better than what we are giving.
I disagree with your assessment and I find that what Steve Jobs had to say in regards to teachers unions is correct . Teacher union are fast becoming the number one boondoggle of American education because of one simple fact . The union is not interested in teaching american kids , many of the NEA leaders are interested in indoctrinating american kids to their political point of view in spite of the objections of a lot of competent , non-political teachers in their rank and file . Correct in if I am wrong , but isn't there dozens if not hundreds of articles in US newspapers that complained about bright HS graduates that went to college and failed to even finish their first year because their high school education was very much inadequate for them to tackle college courses ? I think that is what Jobs is talking about and throwing more money to the problem as a temporary fix will make things worst .
Here are some of the solutions I think will help American education
1) Change the way how people enter into the teaching profession . To do this , prospective candidates entering into the college of education should be a college graduate with a degree mathematics , sciences , literature and sciences and had gained experience working in the real non-education world for at least three years in their respective fields or for those people who did not have a degree and wishes to enter the teaching college should have actual and verifiable work experience ( and should be highly regarded by his or her peers) for at least 5 to ten years pertinent to the subjects they wish to teach.
2) Do away with fad teaching solutions , teach using methods that work time and time again and avoid using school children as experiments for some newly develop and politically loved school theory .
3)Leave your politics and beliefs in your house when teaching students . Indoctrination whether political , religious and others have no room in the classroom.
4)Restore old fashion discipline in the classroom by having the teaching staff , the student body and their parents create a school that will not tolerate real wrongdoing by any teacher or student .
5) Remove the government from the school system gradually , but surely .Nothing creates more waste of money than having the Federal and State heaping more useless non teaching bureaucrats to the already bloated school system,
6) Let union members decide where their union dues should go and teachers who refused to be a member of the teachers union should not be threatened with losing their jobs .
7)Teachers are required during summer to attend workshops/expeditions pertinent to the subject that they are teaching and take CEUs in order to renew their teaching license.
8) After school or summer English classes are mandatory to non-english speakers for a small inexpensive fee . They will be taught English grammar , spelling ,speech by teachers or volunteers to help them cope with their American counterparts.
you should also have parents engaged and in the halls, helping to some extent. plan days off from work to volunteer at school. nothing helps the students more than seeing parents engaged and watching out for them.
In my state, tenure gives poorly performing veteran teachers the right to a 3-month remediation period and a hearing. If such teachers don't get their act together within those 3 months, their fate is in the hands of their bosses. Administrators who really want to fire bad teachers most certainly can do so. It's just a matter of them following through.
Most teachers I work with do quality work and do care. It's the minority of bad teachers who give the quality ones a bad name. And yes, lack of good parenting and lack of respect are very real problems these days.
Also, kids have waaaaaaaay more distractions now than previously. Cell phones/text messaging, the Internet and all that comes with it (YouTube, chat rooms, and other time wasters), video games, hundreds of television channels, just to name a few...And speaking of television, what I saw on TV during the 1980s was pretty tame compared to what kids are exposed to now.
I've noticed over the years that people think that having been a student in a school at one time automatically qualifies everyone as being an expert on education. By that logic, having been a child raised by adults at one time would automatically qualify everyone as being an expert on parenting. Mr. Jobs, being a rich CEO does not automatically qualify you as an expert on education. Students are human beings going through sometimes volatile development stages. They're not electronic gadgets rolling off an assembly line.
Teaching in a public school classroom is not the same as something like coaching. A coach can hold tryouts, make cuts, and keep the worst players who make the team on the bench. A public school teacher cannot choose which students he/she has a in a class, drop a poorly performing student on a whim, or choose a "starting lineup" of students to take the standardized tests that our country has become obsessed with as a result of the badly flawed No Child Left Behind law -- a law that labels an entire school a failure when students in just one subgroup (e.g. low income subgroup, special ed subgroup, Hispanic subgroup, African-American subgroup, etc.) don't perform up to snuff on one standardized test. And don't get me started on the fact that my state requires special ed students to take the ACT, of all things (yes, you read that correctly) along with regular ed students. The ACT is also used as part of the criteria for deciding whether or not a school is "failing" under No Child Left Behind. But I digress...
Concerning the idea that using public taxpayer money to send children to private schools via the use of vouchers will magically result in higher achievement...Hogwash! Private schools educate students they choose to admit, and the students they admit primarily come from families who value education very highly. Parents in those types of families keep after their kids when they go astray. Public schools accept virtually ANYONE, including expensive special education students who they're required by law to educate (special education classrooms require more staff than regular classrooms do). Frankly, public schools are even more open than Ellis Island ever was. There's no such thing as an entrance exam to be admitted to a public K-12 school, and private schools don't have the litany of other government mandates that public schools do. Therefore, judging the quality of a private school teaching staff against the quality of a public school teaching staff based on standardized tests given once a year is a badly flawed approach.
Please try to keep the above in mind before ignorantly bashing public school teachers. Teaching is hard enough as it is, and continually attacking teachers will likely 1) drive good ones away from the profession and 2) discourage talented people from changing careers to enter the teaching profession. Currently, 50% of teachers already leave the profession by the end of their 5th year. If teaching is so easy, why would this be the case?
Whoever thinks teachers are underworked and overpaid, please feel free to jump in and become full-time teachers yourselves to see what it's really like. Then we'll talk.
this is two fold....
1) yes they should be allowed to fire teachers
2) teachers should be paid more.
currently there is very little incentive for good people to turn to teaching.... in this country there is too little respect for teaching and the paid is too little to lure enough good people to do it...
we'll drop millions of dollars on bombs and the military, but are unwilling to pay teachers a decent salary.
When I have kids you can be sure that they are not going to be in the US public schools which with a few exceptions are a disgrace....
we've created an environment that ends up being an outlet for many people that graduated from university but were not great students themselves and then we give them a job that we can't fire them from for low performance....
Honestly, I've had some excellent teachers who I respect a LOT.
BUT the overwhelming majority of teachers were mediocre at best and made me dumber at worst.
I'm sure anyone that's been to university can attest that practically none of the best students ever choose to become teachers
I agree partly with your statement.
My wife is a public teacher, she works in a great wealthy district in Southern California and has been doing it for over 14 years. Her salary is very good for a teacher but new teachers just make nothing. (public teachers pay is based in the amount of years worked on the same district, if you move from one district to another you lose most of the years worked and go back to zero, At least in California) They have little support from the government and few years back she got a Mac from school and they never helped her in using it. Thank god she has me so I could help.
I think Steve Jobs should shut up his mouth in this one. The problem here is not the teachers but mostly of our school system, government and lack of better salaries, support and infra structure in many schools.
I believe teachers are our heroes because they have to endure such a suck situation and they prepare the next generation with a bad salary and no respect.
Plus on top of that the benefits for teachers are just getting worse, Health care that use to be 100% paid is not 50% paid and the quality got worse, Salaries don't raise as much as used to be and lack of support from the school board is just a joke. Hey, I am talking about a wealthy good district that my wife works. Imagine in a poor bad district.
Sure there are "bad" teachers out there like in any professions there are bad apples, but the majority is just trying to survive and do their best. I believe most teachers are good, they just lacking support so they can't do a 100% job. If you want to fire a teacher then raise drastically their salaries and make it a corporation management style school system. IMHO, I don't think this will be any better.
Hopefully one day our government will invest billions of dollars in the education instead of spend it in killing people abroad. Until then, we should salute the people who try to make this country better everyday. Teachers!
I apologize for how winded that was.
Not only do bad teachers need to be fired, but inner city education needs to be redone. Not reformed, redone. Start over. Fire them all. Have the teachers' unions absolve their memberships or something along those lines and fire them.
Maybe you should investigate other districts. My friend gets the same paycheck all year round.
We get the same paycheck all year round, but it is prorated. If I take an unauthorized (I have 2 personal days a year) day off, I am docked 1/184 of my salary. Also, I have no paid holidays.
I don't think I am the exception. I am in Maine and really only know about New England schools. My daughter teaches in MA. The salaries are better there, but nothing like what you are describing. Maine recently mandated at least $30,000 as starting pay, but did nothing for those at the top.
The lack of respect is the real problem. Teachers are not respected by sociey and therefore they are not respected by the students. It is a myth that teachers cannot be fired. They do have to be fired for just cause and that requires documentation. The principals, who are REALLY stuck in the middle and are underpaid, do not have the time to do that. They have to deal with discipline and paperwork. NCLB has added an incredible layer of bureaucracy to the whole mess. Just to meet "qualified" status many teachers had to go back to school. It was mostly because in a middle school teachers often teach 3 or more subjects. No one has a college major in all 3. How humiliating to be told you can't teach 7th grade math because you only have 18 college credits!
To answer a little bit some of the other points on the thread--- Good teachers are leaving. Many are retiring early (like me) because the stress is too much. The new teachers coming in are a product of the same system that needs to be fixed!!!
The solution is certainly not a simple one. Telling teachers they are the problem will not work. We won't be scapegoats anymore. This is a NATIONAL issue, a societal issue. Hopefully the next president will be one who can see colors other than black and white.
You are right that respect from students and parents are a big part of it. That might return if you had the power to discipline in the classroom, instead of categorizing them with psychobabble. However, I get "respect teachers' sacrifices" rammed down my throat daily. I'd make the claim that they are respected even more than those who put their lives on the line; police, military, etc. Our society worships education.....the more letters you have after or before your name, the more important you are. How much more respect can society really give? At least congress and the media don't daily threaten to undercut your very mission and livelihood.
I'm sorry if the NCLB made a few teachers feel "humiliated." But if they aren't qualified to teach because they don't have the right credentials, then that is the way it works I guess.
I'm going to be a little harsh here; forgive me ahead of time. I'm going to make a small leap here and guess you are pretty liberal. You take on the mantra of a "victim." You blame the NCLB act for all the troubles...but looking past its faults it is not much more than an accountability measure and it is working ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Chil...vor_of_the_act ). You blame the current presidential administration.....which at least has made a substantive attempt fixing the system, more than ANY previous administration has done. You strike me as a typically self-centered, condescending liberal, thinking that if only everyone "looked up" to you more (respect, avoid accountability, and never ever do anything that might challenge a teacher's pride), threw more money at the problem (more pay, more benes, more more more), and thought just like you....then we'd have a magically perfect system. 1 room schoolhouses with multiple grades and 1 teacher did a far better job than today's system, without 10% of the tools granted today.
Again, forgive me for being harsh, and I do have the utmost respect for your years of service to our future; but I don't have the share your opinions.
I think that engineering, business, and CS program skew those averages. Social science academia is a whole different game, especially if you're not dealing with a tier-1 research institution.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/03/06/cupa
By discipline (new assitant to full prof)
Engineering - 68K-107K
Business - 80k-102K
CS - 68K-98K
philosophy - 46K-82K
liberal arts 47K-74K
I dunno but $74K seems pretty decent to me and "close" enough to 100K given the average US salary.
And yes, AVERAGE implies that some folks make more than 97K and some folks makes less. These numbers show a $30K spread at the full prof level for different fields throwing out the two outliers: Law vs Theology. Presumably the latter will reap their rewards "later" while the former head for "warmer" climes.
The average for a full prof at a community college is $66K but for any 4 year college you're a least in the 70K range again.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2006/04/24/salaries
No, I didn't go to the AAUP to verify these numbers or looked at their survey methods but one hopes something as "peer reviewed" as salary reports is reasonably well done.
Vinea
Students are human beings going through sometimes volatile development stages.
Oddly...so are programmers...
Vinea
Starting salaries in 8 districts of maryland are now $40K. Yes, K-12.
In what, the 8 districts with the highest cost of living? In those districts, it's probably impossible to get an apartment, eat, and make car and college loan payments for $40k without scraping by. And for what, to work 10-12 hours/day, know that you might get terminated in a year or two before you get tenure, and clearly have no respect from people that you're getting paid what you deserve?
Wow, there's a dream job for you.
My father was a prof that retired a decade ago with at 70K salary at a so-so uni teaching education...not CS. AVERAGE salary at PUBLIC doctoral insitutions are $97K at the full professor level. $127K at private.
http://www.insidehighered.com/workplace/2005/04/25/pay
Heck...there are COMMUNITY colleges that pay 80+K AVERAGE for full profs.
As well "educated" as you are evidently you can't use a research tool as simple as google.
Average university pofessor salaries are around $65,000. You really should take a lesson at learning to use Google yourself. And good grief, there are about 1600 community colleges out there, so you use a web page that tells you there are ONLY 14 that pay over $80,000 to make a point (the average pay is actually around $52,000)? And once again, those schools are almost all in places where the cost of living is high.
And what's your point bringing up university salaries anyhow? To show that teachers make half what they do? So it's OK to pay teachers squat to teach kids during their most formative years?
Next I'd suggest you Google how much teachers make in other countries. What places like Germany, Japan, etc. pay teachers (in particular at the high school level), make the pay in the US look like a joke.
I'm going to be a little harsh here; forgive me ahead of time. I'm going to make a small leap here and guess you are pretty liberal. You take on the mantra of a "victim." You blame the NCLB act for all the troubles...but looking past its faults it is not much more than an accountability measure and it is working ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Chil...vor_of_the_act ).
Well wikipedia is not an authoritative source and second I'm conservative and I think NCLB was a dumb idea. Teaching to tests was the obvious predictable result and just dumb. The primary advantage that the US has over "better educated" countries is that we are a bit unstructured and willing to step outside the box.
That doesn't come from teaching to the test.
In any case, NCLB is kind of a contract...one the administration reneged on the funding side. I also thought it was us "conservatives" that didn't like federal dictates to states anyway.
With respect to the military and related issues I believe that belongs to AppleOutsider but I shan't deny myself the comment from the conservative side that any current damage was inflicted by the conservative and not liberal side of the fence. A self-inflicted wound so to speak. You can't also decry victimization and then play the same card (wah evil liberal congress threatening funding...wah wah). Well, I guess you can with our current "conservative" leadership.
Vinea
On Apple's time Steve Jobs should propose methods and procedures Apple is capable of bringing to the challenges faced by members of EDUCAUSE.
What ever his personal philosophies may be that influence how he prefers to spend his own money I wish he'd check them at the door.
Steve was invited to showcase Apple's vision for the education market. He was not invited to quarrel with or slander attendees.
On this day he was part of the problem, not part of Apple's solution. He needs to keep these Bad days to a minimum.
Turning out young minds, however, is a different thing. Firing people more easily might be one thing you could go for, and if Steve ran a school system, maybe he would fire the right people for the right reasons. But teacher's unions have no choice but to make it more difficult to fire people. Principals may fire dead wood in one school, or fire good people to hire friends in another; or fire people arbitrarily in another.
In retail, or manufacturing, you can see productivity day to day. If somebody's no good, there are objective criteria. You've got a lot harder job at a school. As "No Child Left Behind" proves, trying to make schools better by supplying these criteria just makes kids into test-takers and many principals into liars. Nobody wants their school declared a disaster zone.
He's on much firmer ground, however, when he talks about eliminating textbooks. Textbooks are a massive boondoggle for stupidity. Much cheaper to give each kid a computer, and set up a statewide lending library of, you know, real books. Give the kids research projects in their chosen fields. They can research on the net, and take out books that come the next morning (I can dream) like Netflix. The computerization of education is the right way to stop the mechanistic idea of school as a factory.
Well wikipedia is not an authoritative source and second I'm conservative and I think NCLB was a dumb idea. Teaching to tests was the obvious predictable result and just dumb. The primary advantage that the US has over "better educated" countries is that we are a bit unstructured and willing to step outside the box.
That doesn't come from teaching to the test.
In any case, NCLB is kind of a contract...one the administration reneged on the funding side. I also thought it was us "conservatives" that didn't like federal dictates to states anyway.
With respect to the military and related issues I believe that belongs to AppleOutsider but I shan't deny myself the comment from the conservative side that any current damage was inflicted by the conservative and not liberal side of the fence. A self-inflicted wound so to speak. You can't also decry victimization and then play the same card (wah evil liberal congress threatening funding...wah wah). Well, I guess you can with our current "conservative" leadership.
Vinea
Bush isn't the best conservative ever, and I'm not a fan of the Feds dictating to the states, but at least the NCLB act was a stab at something; again, more than ANYONE has done to date. You can talk about how Bush didn't fulfill his end of the bargain, how it is too "inside the box," and etc etc....but at the end of the day, if more children are reading better and doing math better, then I'm perfectly happy to "teach to the test." It'd be one thing if it was a 10 question test and we only gave them 10 facts, but we're teaching them skills here.....if "teaching to the test" means imparting useful skills, then I'm all for it.
In what, the 8 districts with the highest cost of living? In those districts, it's probably impossible to get an apartment, eat, and make car and college loan payments for $40k without scraping by.
Oddly, I managed when I wasn't making the "princely" salary of today. Yes, obviously the 8 districts with the most money and the highest costs of living. How many other professions start out much higher than $40K?
And for what, to work 10-12 hours/day, know that you might get terminated in a year or two before you get tenure, and clearly have no respect from people that you're getting paid what you deserve?
My wife never regularly worked 10-12 hours per day as a teacher but I do as a developer. And programmers never get tenure.
Both her parents were teachers (one community college and one K12). They sure weren't pulling 10-12 hour work days.
Average university pofessor salaries are around $65,000. You really should take a lesson at learning to use Google yourself. And good grief, there are about 1600 community colleges out there, so you use a web page that tells you there are ONLY 14 that pay over $80,000 to make a point (the average pay is actually around $52,000)? And once again, those schools are almost all in places where the cost of living is high.
Because the AAUP is going to make up salary survey results? And $97K was for full professors...which after 30 bleeding years teaching I hope one could make that leap from associate to full.
Average for community colleges were $66K for a full prof. Yes, they use fewer of those with a lot of adjuct profs and instructors.
And what's your point bringing up university salaries anyhow?
Because the previous poster was obnoxious and talked about the salaries of his parents who were professors to refute someone else. Maybe reading the quoted text is sometimes useful to determine the context?
Vinea
It's hearsay history and bogus.
I agree that there are a lot of bad teachers out there and unfortunately the good ones give up because they bust their ass every day while others ruin it for them.
I am a band teacher of 10 years that used to teach in a private school and moved on to a public school when I changed states. I have no intentions of quiting, but honestly when you look at the money per hour (which they don't do), we would be better off financially working for MacDonalds.
I have always told myself that I didn't become a teacher to become a millionaire, so the money thing doesn't bother me, until I can't afford to live comfortably.
Here is my list of things that might "IRRITATE TEACHERS", causing them to loose their passion for the job:
1. CONTINUING EDUCATION RULES - I have no problem with going back to school, taking tests to update my certification, but college costs a lot of money. Just when you think you are starting to get ahead of your student loans, you find yourself sinking further into debt.
Many people see this as being the same as Doctors continuing on in education, but I highly disagree. Let's say a doctor makes $200,000 and a teacher makes $50,000 a year. Either way, 1 CREDIT at any given school is going to cost the same amount for any student applying. So if a teacher takes a continuing education course, it costs $500, and the doctor goes to a convention and takes a class costing the same amount, who is really paying more? The doctor has this taken care of his continuing ed class in the first three patients he sees that next morning. A teacher will eat a third of their paycheck that month just to cover the cost of the one class.
So, I am not saying doctors are overpaid or anything like that. I feel they are miracle workers, but there needs to be something done to help cover teacher costs for continuing education. When is a teacher supposed to start saving for his children's education?
2. CONSTANT STATEWIDE TESTS - When I went to school, you had two tests that you cared about if you were going to college, the SAT and ACT tests. Some schools only needed one or the other. Everybody isn't going to go on to college or trade school after high school, it's a fact. No matter how much we shove state tests down the throats of students, they are only going to learn if they are ready to learn. Survival of the fittest (smartest). Nature works things out on it's own. The world needs ditch diggers too. Anything I missed?
Stop wasting money on tests. In the state of Washington, they spend nearly $1,000,000 per question on their WASL test. This includes coming up with the question, approval of the question at multiple levels, printing of the questions, keeping the question a secret, administering the question, and grading the question. Total crap. Total waste of money. It's not making kids any smarter.
3. PARENTS NEED TO SUPPORT TEACHERS - Parent these days enable their kids to get away with doing anything. Instead of letting their kids get in trouble, or accept the F for cheating on a test, they go in there like they are lawyers. They start talking about personality conflicts with the teacher. I hope I have a personality conflict with most teenagers since I am twice their age. These are parents trying to get kids into the best college or for some ANY college, but don't realize, they are really just helping develop poor life skills.
The statistics show more and more kids going to college, but they are not showing the number of kids that drop after the first semester because they couldn't hack it.
BACK TO STEVE JOBS FOR A MOMENT:
I agree with him 100%. I think bad teacher should be fired, or there should be a series of checks an balances throughout your time at the job. The problem with the statement is, there becomes this expectation that every science teacher is going to go in and jump around like a circus monkey blowing things up or constantly entertaining the kids.
In this unbelievably sophisticated/technological world we live in, kids are just overstimulated by everything they have. It is hard to keep up with something that keeps doubling in speed every year (computers, video games, etc.).
When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to go home and try to beat Maniac Mansion on my Commodore 64. It was on my mind constantly. NOW compare that to anything that is available now... hell... most calculators are more exciting now.
The job of a teacher has changed significantly since STEVE JOBS has been to school. It has become EDUTAINMENT rather than education. Half the battle is just getting kids to stop texting on their phones in class, listening to their iPODS in class, putting test answers on their iPOD for class, texting test answers to one another on their phones.
Sure... take away a kids property and you are looking at a meeting with a parent, now multiply that meeting by the average class size (30+) and multiply that by 5-6 class. Now find time to teach, grade, give positive feedback etc.
If you don't teach, YOU DON'T KNOW. Trust me.
Now, the PROBLEM WITH CEOs of CORPORATIONS is, they don't have UNIONS, they have FAT WALLETS, so they can feed their FAT FACES, while paying FAT LAWYERS, to take care of their FAT EMBEZZLEMENT/STOCK OPTIONS PROBLEMS so they don't get thrown in prison and have their FAT A S S E S taken advantage of by a FAT CELLMATE. Let's not look at teachers for the world problems. If anything they are the ones that care.
Happy President's Day. I hope all of my fellow teacher friends enjoyed their day off.
Jobs had me until the encyclopedia Wikipedia bit. Wik is a joke and should be kept as far away from students as possible forever.
It's hearsay history and bogus.
Wooo, wooo, WOOOO.
Wikipedia is the greatest thing that has ever happened in the advancement of information since the original encyclopedia.
It is up to date information, coming from numerous different sources. All overseen by a large group of people. It has become my #1 research site for all my projects and anything I just want to know.
Plus what Steve was pointing out was not using wikipedia but wikischool more to say. Think of the amount of money that would be saved on text books and it would always be up to date. Though for wikischool to succeed there would need to be a subscription or overseen by the government.
Now about teachers getting paid some of you guys have good points that teachers work lots after school, but that is assuming they are one of those 'good' teachers. I have plenty of teachers that do nothing, and all the grades are now done by scantron machines. Heck his keynotes came with the book. We just keep flipping pages and going through the book page by page. Really Mr. Kelly does not have any what of a hard job. He is not even a nice or good person.