Of course we have bad teachers. The state of America's youth is just appalling. They are rude, lazy illiterate brats, with arrogant, irresponsible parents. Teachers get no respect these days and the pay is lousy, so who would want to be a teacher? Maybe someone who couldn't hold a job anywhere else.
I'm sure that there are some good teachers too, but how they ignore all the negative aspects of their career choice is completely inexplicable. I love to teach, but only in a setting where there is some interest on the part of the student to learn. I place most of the blame for our poor educational system on the parents. With both parents working or single parent families and the TV as the baby sitter, what would you expect? What we have here is a generation of young hoodlums that will not be educated with any amount of money, technology or legislation.
Unions, as pointed out in the speech, were formed when employers were abusing workers. They have outlived their usefulness at this point in the industrial and technological revolution.
Yes, because workers are no longer mistreated/abused.
Oh please, every job you have to "work up" to success. I started out in a crappy gig making less than $10/hr.
If you want to get technical about numbers, I make closer to 1/3 (which is considerably less than 1/2) of the contract rate....so if after a few years experience, one can make $75,000.....close to the 1/2 the contract rate for babysitting? Its not exactly a "rip off" salary.
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
Sigh. This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions out there. Most teachers work 10 months out of the year - they have a lot of meeting before and after the end of the school year. AND, in those 10 months, they work more than most Americans do in 12 months. My fianace works on a average day from 7:15 till 5:30 at school and them comes home and grades papers a couple of hours every night. Then, throw in extra-curricular activities like track coach or drama.
Some math:
10.25 hours at school + 2 hours grading = 12.25 hours/day.
Since he spoke in Texas a few issues coming from a Texas and Poli Sci major:
1. Texas schools are teetering on bankruptcy
2. We have a teacher shortage, what's worse, fire the bad ones or have none?
3. Teachers are underpayed as it is, the last pay raise they got was federally mandated
4. State legislature is trying to do away with public schools in exchange for vouchers.
5. Governor beleives cutting taxes will solve ALL education problems.
Sure unions can overstep, but in the case of Texas teachers they are all that's keeping the schools from being a tightly wound, non-interactive prison for kids.
What I'm seeing in Texas are horribly underqualified teachers being hired simply because they can speak Spanish as opposed to teaching the students to speak English.
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
I see you've never taught and never known anyone who did. As someone who's taught kids and adults and whose parents are both teachers, I believe I can say with some authority that you haven't a clue what you're talking about. You're describing university professors here when you say that starting salaries are decent and you can work your way up to a damn good one. You're also partially wrong about this; only in CS are salaries as high as you describe. My parents are in the humanities, and they started out at closer to 30K; 30 years later, they're making nowhere near 100K a year, and they both constantly publish and get on the Excellent Teachers List every single year. I know a lot about academic politics and I can confidently say that college profs who make more than $100,000 a year are few and far between, and they're likely in CS or they're really famous, or both.
But we're not talking about university professors here. We're talking about K-12 education, and that's where pay rates have stagnated. The starting salary for teachers is often closer to 20K a year, and few teachers ever break 60K. Also, because of byzantine internal politics and absurd testing procedures, the best teachers don't get consistently rewarded for their efforts. The stated goal is to prevent a cold war of sorts in which teachers hide their teaching techniques to prevent their "competitors" from stealing them and becoming just as good while doing less work, but this policy really just results in the mediocre staying mediocre and the good having no financial incentive to further innovate.
It's also a myth that teachers have a lighter workload because they only work 9 months out of each year. The difference is this: teachers take their work home regularly and mandatorily, and I felt the sting of this growing up when my parents couldn't pay attention to me because they were spending hours bludgeoning themselves against the deluded ramblings of beer-swilling frat boys whose academic ambitions were as small as their brains. At a normal 9 to 5 job, you're finished when you come home. Sure, there's overtime and work you have to do at home, but most of the time you you get paid for this! Teachers get paid precisely zero dollars for the literally countless hours they spend grading homework and preparing lesson plans. As for the summer, there are usually a couple weeks of mandatory meetings and planning sessions. On top of this, many teachers are required to take training classes, and many who don't do so voluntarily at their own expense. Sure, many don't, and they tranish the profession and help spin the myth that teachers are lazy and overpaid. Teachers may only technically work 9 months a year, but those months are filled with much more unpaid work than your average profession.
The real problem is that K-12 education is a dead-end career, and everybody in it knows this. Most bad K-12 teachers are bitter because they were once aspiring academics who couldn't make the cut for college work. They know they have few opportunities for advancement, and they know they're going to be poorly paid for the rest of their lives. The good teachers are the ones who are cognizant of these facts but don't give a damn because they genuinely love children, teaching, or both. It's these teachers we should be working on rewarding.
Sure, good principals not being able to fire bad teachers is a problem in K-12 education. So are bad principals bullying good teachers. And ballooning class sizes. And politically-motivated curricula. And aging teaching models outdated by modern technology. And crumbling infrastructure in urban schools. And kids with discipline problems whose parents don't give a rat's ass if they do poorly. Jobs articulated just one of many problems that schools face, and if the issue is going to ever be solved, drastic action must be taken on all fronts.
Yes, because workers are no longer mistreated/abused.
Idiot.
In panzy-America we have today, I don't think there is a single serious "mistreatment" left; especially with our society being as sue-happy as it is. Wake up to a real existence.....6% unemployment is considered soup-line now, there are countless labor laws and organizations that put businesses through all sorts of headaches.....you can't hardly get a scratch on the job or put be forced to work 30 minutes extra without massive investigations.
We've come a LONG way from the hard labor of mines with grossly negligent employers who don't care if one gets killed.
Even a rough job now is a labor paradise compared to 40-100 years ago.
The educational system in America is BROKEN beyond belief. Everyone is to blame; bad parents, bad teachers, endless money pit of a bureaucracy, no accountability, the blame goes on. However, he is totally right about bad teachers, because they can't ever be fired. The educational system rewards mediocre performance with steady pay raises and eternal job security; where's the incentive for a teacher to succeed and impact his/her students to the best of their ability?
Canning the No Child Left Behind, throwing more money, throwing more technology....none of it will ever work. The fundamental errors have to be repaired.
And as far as teachers aren't paid enough, give me a break. My best friend's wife is a teacher; she has a masters degree and teaches the after school program and makes nearly $75,000 yearly while working 2/3 of the work year that average Joe Public works, is guaranteed the exact same time off as her kids.....PUH-LEASE, don't give me this crap.
I just retired after 36 years of teaching. I have a BA in French and English, have an MAT in French, and am also certified in Spanish, Social Studies and English as a Second Language. I don't know exactly how many credits I have past my master's, but I received credit on the salary scale for 30 additional hours. My final income was $56,000. I started at $5000. Where can I earn $100,000? I'm only 60; I'll go back to work. In my final year I had 110 students a day. The students changed every 10 weeks. I taught 4 sections of Exploratory French and 2 sections of Introduction to culture.
Now, with my education and experience, what other profession pays $57,000. As to the 184 days a year that I teach. Most jobs have certain paid holidays. New Year's, President's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. That brings teachers up to 191. Most people after 28 years at the same job would have at least 4 weeks paid vacation. That brings us up to 211.
Regular job--48 weeks x 5 days - 7 paid holidays = 233 days. Gee, that's only 22 days difference. What about the pay differential?
Finally, education deserves respect. This country doesn't respect it. Until the respect for education is returned, no amount of money or legislation will help.
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
Yeah, and teachers don't spend hours every day preparing lessons and marking school work, nor attending teacher training courses out of term time, nor have to worry about misconfigured school computers popping up porn and then spending 40 years in jail ...?
I agree that bad teachers should be fired, or have extra training to bolster their skills.
But good teachers should be rewarded and have job safety, and the quality of education should never be compromised in the name of reducing expenditure. This is what unions should be fighting for, instead of protecting bad teachers.
I can't understand how a country's populace can be so willing to sacrifice the future of the country so easily. Well educated children will be the money makers of tomorrow. Ill educated people are no good for anything but shelf stackers and cannon fodder (and there'll be enough of them with a good education system, never mind trying to make more).
When the USA spends such a lot of money on offence whilst neglecting its citizens you have to wonder what's going on. Oh, wait, war is big money for friends of (any, not just Bush's) government, and 'free money' to boot, from taxation. Defence and inland security just aren't as big money spinners as a remote war.
Watch out....I have no problem agreeing that educators are under paid, but I draw the line at the military reference.
You only have the freedom to post this response because of the sacrifice made by the military over the years.
RB
That may have applied back when swing music was all the rage but not today. We no longer have accountable, respectable, honorable military leadership. It's all about the big military contracts today.
Of course we have bad teachers. The state of America's youth is just appalling. They are rude, lazy illiterate brats, with arrogant, irresponsible parents. Teachers get no respect these days and the pay is lousy, so who would want to be a teacher? Maybe someone who couldn't hold a job anywhere else.
I'm sure that there are some good teachers too, but how they ignore all the negative aspects of their career choice is completely inexplicable. I love to teach, but only in a setting where there is some interest on the part of the student to learn. I place most of the blame for our poor educational system on the parents. With both parents working or single parent families and the TV as the baby sitter, what would you expect? What we have here is a generation of young hoodlums that will not be educated with any amount of money, technology or legislation.
m
You shouldn't lump all of "America's youth" into one category. My younger sister has always been a good kid, she's 20 now and is not a "rude, lazy illiterate brat". The few cousins I have and the many my wife have do not fit your narrow definition of "America's youth", nor are their parents "arrogant [and] irresponsible". According to your description nothing could educate anybody that is younger than you or whatever your definition of "youth" is. Try taking a breath before you write a statement like this, it is really vague and useless, it's equal to people blaming "Hollywood", a city in California, for bad movies, instead of the writers, production company and financiers for the movie, it removes blame from those committing the acts.
On a side note, teachers in Michigan, whether good or bad, can make between $75k and $100k after teaching for ~10 years. I've seen tax returns to support my statement.
Sigh. This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions out there. Most teachers work 10 months out of the year - they have a lot of meeting before and after the end of the school year. AND, in those 10 months, they work more than most Americans do in 12 months. My fianace works on a average day from 7:15 till 5:30 at school and them comes home and grades papers a couple of hours every night. Then, throw in extra-curricular activities like track coach or drama.
Some math:
10.25 hours at school + 2 hours grading = 12.25 hours/day.
My buddy's wife is a very good teacher and she structures her time efficiently. She makes use of teacher in-service days, she uses strategy's of homework and class participation that minimize massive every night grading, her principal is good and keeps meeting to a minimum.
Even so, if a teacher works hard during the week; she gets every 3-day weekend imaginable, 2.5 months off in the summer, 2-3 weeks at Chrismas, 1 week at Easter, PLUS the usual personal time, sick time, and vacation time.
I call shenanigans on your numbers....they don't match up with my friend's at all.
Oh please, every job you have to "work up" to success. I started out in a crappy gig making less than $10/hr.
If you want to get technical about numbers, I make closer to 1/3 (which is considerably less than 1/2) of the contract rate....so if after a few years experience, one can make $75,000.....close to the 1/2 the contract rate for babysitting? Its not exactly a "rip off" salary.
The problem is that's not the case everywhere. In my district, the teachers start at about $20,000 and after 30 years of teaching make about $85,000 at most.
Bad move Jobs... The education sector is where you want to plant your seeds first, to grow more customers.
I don't agree with what he said, as there are some very good teachers who would be let go if it weren't for unions. But with any union, you win some and you loose some.
Now, the real solution to the problem, is put some more money into the education sector. He's right, technology won't "Cure" the classroom, but if our government would put more money into the education system (and repeal the "No child left behind" act) then our classrooms would be benefiting our students a great deal more. I live in a state ranked 48th for per-pupil spending, and my mother is a teacher. I know our systems need an educational upgrade, especially in today's globalized market.
But again, bad move Jobs... don't attack the teachers nor the principals. If you want to attack, go for the government, and set up your own "Education Fund" or bolster what you already have to show that our education systems are in dire need of an upgrade.
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.
I just retired after 36 years of teaching. I have a BA in French and English, have an MAT in French, and am also certified in Spanish, Social Studies and English as a Second Language. I don't know exactly how many credits I have past my master's, but I received credit on the salary scale for 30 additional hours. My final income was $56,000. I started at $5000. Where can I earn $100,000? I'm only 60; I'll go back to work. In my final year I had 110 students a day. The students changed every 10 weeks. I taught 4 sections of Exploratory French and 2 sections of Introduction to culture.
Now, with my education and experience, what other profession pays $57,000. As to the 184 days a year that I teach. Most jobs have certain paid holidays. New Year's, President's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. That brings teachers up to 191. Most people after 28 years at the same job would have at least 4 weeks paid vacation. That brings us up to 211.
Regular job--48 weeks x 5 days - 7 paid holidays = 233 days. Gee, that's only 22 days difference. What about the pay differential?
Finally, education deserves respect. This country doesn't respect it. Until the respect for education is returned, no amount of money or legislation will help.
Comments?
I applaud you for your sacrifice; you have obvious dedication to the youth of America. I respect education.....not endless administration and mediocre performance.
However, you are the exception....not the rule. I invite you to check out some school districts in the central valley of California; another friend of mine makes more than you with only 10 years of experience and no extra credentials.
I find it funny that he makes this comment in Texas.
Teachers are not unionized in Texas. You can join a "union" but it's hardly what most would consider a union. It's a scare tactict so you have lawyers in case you get sued.
Teachers don't do collective bargaining or anything in Texas. The state sets a minimum salary and school districts are free to add to this.
The problem is that's not the case everywhere. In my district, the teachers start at about $20,000 and after 30 years of teaching make about $85,000 at most.
$85,000 is VERY respectable. That's well within the top 25% of wage earners.
Do you realize that purely as an average, the average American tops out in the $40-$50k range sometime in their 50s?
How many of you who are saying teachers don't get paid enough and only work 9 months of the year actually personally know a teacher well?
When they work for those 9 months they WORK! Most of them go to work at 7:15, get home around 5, grade papers for a few hours, create lesson plans. Then in the summer they still have to go to meetings, and get ready for next year. They have to prepare for any special ed students they might have (which seems to be an increasing amount btw) and learn next years curriculum if there have been any changes.
And then they have to get supplies. They don't have much of a budget for supplies, and most end up spending a few hundred of their own money each year on supplies. How would you like to go to an office to work and then realize you have to buy a computer, and if anything goes wrong with it, pay for it to be fixed and maintained? That's how it is with teacher's supplies.
What I have generally discovered is that the good teachers are the teachers who want to make a difference on kids lives. The ones who work hard with that one person so they can learn that one math technique. The others just don't care. I know a teacher who IM's her boyfriend all day long and puts history movies on and expects the kids to learn? She can't be fired though, oh noooooo shes way too important. I know one who is sexist and racist and if you don't agree with her your wrong. There are a lot of bad teachers out there that can't be fired.
For the most part, I agree with Jobs that principals need the power to fire bad teachers.
Comments
I'm sure that there are some good teachers too, but how they ignore all the negative aspects of their career choice is completely inexplicable. I love to teach, but only in a setting where there is some interest on the part of the student to learn. I place most of the blame for our poor educational system on the parents. With both parents working or single parent families and the TV as the baby sitter, what would you expect? What we have here is a generation of young hoodlums that will not be educated with any amount of money, technology or legislation.
m
Unions, as pointed out in the speech, were formed when employers were abusing workers. They have outlived their usefulness at this point in the industrial and technological revolution.
Yes, because workers are no longer mistreated/abused.
Idiot.
You only have the freedom to post this response because of the sacrifice made by the military over the years.
Are you for real?
$157,500 ÷ 2 = $78,750.
$70,000 is still a lot more than $40,000.
Oh please, every job you have to "work up" to success. I started out in a crappy gig making less than $10/hr.
If you want to get technical about numbers, I make closer to 1/3 (which is considerably less than 1/2) of the contract rate....so if after a few years experience, one can make $75,000.....close to the 1/2 the contract rate for babysitting? Its not exactly a "rip off" salary.
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
Sigh. This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions out there. Most teachers work 10 months out of the year - they have a lot of meeting before and after the end of the school year. AND, in those 10 months, they work more than most Americans do in 12 months. My fianace works on a average day from 7:15 till 5:30 at school and them comes home and grades papers a couple of hours every night. Then, throw in extra-curricular activities like track coach or drama.
Some math:
10.25 hours at school + 2 hours grading = 12.25 hours/day.
8 hours/day * 4 weeks of meetings = 160 hours
12.25 hours/day * 180 days teaching = 2205 hours
160 + 2205 = 2365 hours/year
vs.
45 hours/week * 50 weeks (52 - 2 weeks vacation) = 2250 hours/year
2. We have a teacher shortage, what's worse, fire the bad ones or have none?
Are you kidding me?
3. Teachers are underpayed as it is, the last pay raise they got was federally mandated
Too bad, they want to make money, then they should have become doctors or lawyers. No reason not to do a good job.
Since he spoke in Texas a few issues coming from a Texas and Poli Sci major:
1. Texas schools are teetering on bankruptcy
2. We have a teacher shortage, what's worse, fire the bad ones or have none?
3. Teachers are underpayed as it is, the last pay raise they got was federally mandated
4. State legislature is trying to do away with public schools in exchange for vouchers.
5. Governor beleives cutting taxes will solve ALL education problems.
Sure unions can overstep, but in the case of Texas teachers they are all that's keeping the schools from being a tightly wound, non-interactive prison for kids.
What I'm seeing in Texas are horribly underqualified teachers being hired simply because they can speak Spanish as opposed to teaching the students to speak English.
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
I see you've never taught and never known anyone who did. As someone who's taught kids and adults and whose parents are both teachers, I believe I can say with some authority that you haven't a clue what you're talking about. You're describing university professors here when you say that starting salaries are decent and you can work your way up to a damn good one. You're also partially wrong about this; only in CS are salaries as high as you describe. My parents are in the humanities, and they started out at closer to 30K; 30 years later, they're making nowhere near 100K a year, and they both constantly publish and get on the Excellent Teachers List every single year. I know a lot about academic politics and I can confidently say that college profs who make more than $100,000 a year are few and far between, and they're likely in CS or they're really famous, or both.
But we're not talking about university professors here. We're talking about K-12 education, and that's where pay rates have stagnated. The starting salary for teachers is often closer to 20K a year, and few teachers ever break 60K. Also, because of byzantine internal politics and absurd testing procedures, the best teachers don't get consistently rewarded for their efforts. The stated goal is to prevent a cold war of sorts in which teachers hide their teaching techniques to prevent their "competitors" from stealing them and becoming just as good while doing less work, but this policy really just results in the mediocre staying mediocre and the good having no financial incentive to further innovate.
It's also a myth that teachers have a lighter workload because they only work 9 months out of each year. The difference is this: teachers take their work home regularly and mandatorily, and I felt the sting of this growing up when my parents couldn't pay attention to me because they were spending hours bludgeoning themselves against the deluded ramblings of beer-swilling frat boys whose academic ambitions were as small as their brains. At a normal 9 to 5 job, you're finished when you come home. Sure, there's overtime and work you have to do at home, but most of the time you you get paid for this! Teachers get paid precisely zero dollars for the literally countless hours they spend grading homework and preparing lesson plans. As for the summer, there are usually a couple weeks of mandatory meetings and planning sessions. On top of this, many teachers are required to take training classes, and many who don't do so voluntarily at their own expense. Sure, many don't, and they tranish the profession and help spin the myth that teachers are lazy and overpaid. Teachers may only technically work 9 months a year, but those months are filled with much more unpaid work than your average profession.
The real problem is that K-12 education is a dead-end career, and everybody in it knows this. Most bad K-12 teachers are bitter because they were once aspiring academics who couldn't make the cut for college work. They know they have few opportunities for advancement, and they know they're going to be poorly paid for the rest of their lives. The good teachers are the ones who are cognizant of these facts but don't give a damn because they genuinely love children, teaching, or both. It's these teachers we should be working on rewarding.
Sure, good principals not being able to fire bad teachers is a problem in K-12 education. So are bad principals bullying good teachers. And ballooning class sizes. And politically-motivated curricula. And aging teaching models outdated by modern technology. And crumbling infrastructure in urban schools. And kids with discipline problems whose parents don't give a rat's ass if they do poorly. Jobs articulated just one of many problems that schools face, and if the issue is going to ever be solved, drastic action must be taken on all fronts.
Yes, because workers are no longer mistreated/abused.
Idiot.
In panzy-America we have today, I don't think there is a single serious "mistreatment" left; especially with our society being as sue-happy as it is. Wake up to a real existence.....6% unemployment is considered soup-line now, there are countless labor laws and organizations that put businesses through all sorts of headaches.....you can't hardly get a scratch on the job or put be forced to work 30 minutes extra without massive investigations.
We've come a LONG way from the hard labor of mines with grossly negligent employers who don't care if one gets killed.
Even a rough job now is a labor paradise compared to 40-100 years ago.
Jobs is SPOT ON!
The educational system in America is BROKEN beyond belief. Everyone is to blame; bad parents, bad teachers, endless money pit of a bureaucracy, no accountability, the blame goes on. However, he is totally right about bad teachers, because they can't ever be fired. The educational system rewards mediocre performance with steady pay raises and eternal job security; where's the incentive for a teacher to succeed and impact his/her students to the best of their ability?
Canning the No Child Left Behind, throwing more money, throwing more technology....none of it will ever work. The fundamental errors have to be repaired.
And as far as teachers aren't paid enough, give me a break. My best friend's wife is a teacher; she has a masters degree and teaches the after school program and makes nearly $75,000 yearly while working 2/3 of the work year that average Joe Public works, is guaranteed the exact same time off as her kids.....PUH-LEASE, don't give me this crap.
I just retired after 36 years of teaching. I have a BA in French and English, have an MAT in French, and am also certified in Spanish, Social Studies and English as a Second Language. I don't know exactly how many credits I have past my master's, but I received credit on the salary scale for 30 additional hours. My final income was $56,000. I started at $5000. Where can I earn $100,000? I'm only 60; I'll go back to work. In my final year I had 110 students a day. The students changed every 10 weeks. I taught 4 sections of Exploratory French and 2 sections of Introduction to culture.
Now, with my education and experience, what other profession pays $57,000. As to the 184 days a year that I teach. Most jobs have certain paid holidays. New Year's, President's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. That brings teachers up to 191. Most people after 28 years at the same job would have at least 4 weeks paid vacation. That brings us up to 211.
Regular job--48 weeks x 5 days - 7 paid holidays = 233 days. Gee, that's only 22 days difference. What about the pay differential?
Finally, education deserves respect. This country doesn't respect it. Until the respect for education is returned, no amount of money or legislation will help.
Comments?
Teacher don't need to be paid more. Do you realize how much money most teachers make, even those just starting out? Most make 40k starting out and then get up close to 100k when they retire or even sooner than that. And the fact that you get to work only 9 MONTHS OF THE YEAR? Wonderful if you ask me. No need to pay them anymore than what they get.
Yeah, and teachers don't spend hours every day preparing lessons and marking school work, nor attending teacher training courses out of term time, nor have to worry about misconfigured school computers popping up porn and then spending 40 years in jail ...?
I agree that bad teachers should be fired, or have extra training to bolster their skills.
But good teachers should be rewarded and have job safety, and the quality of education should never be compromised in the name of reducing expenditure. This is what unions should be fighting for, instead of protecting bad teachers.
I can't understand how a country's populace can be so willing to sacrifice the future of the country so easily. Well educated children will be the money makers of tomorrow. Ill educated people are no good for anything but shelf stackers and cannon fodder (and there'll be enough of them with a good education system, never mind trying to make more).
When the USA spends such a lot of money on offence whilst neglecting its citizens you have to wonder what's going on. Oh, wait, war is big money for friends of (any, not just Bush's) government, and 'free money' to boot, from taxation. Defence and inland security just aren't as big money spinners as a remote war.
Watch out....I have no problem agreeing that educators are under paid, but I draw the line at the military reference.
You only have the freedom to post this response because of the sacrifice made by the military over the years.
RB
That may have applied back when swing music was all the rage but not today. We no longer have accountable, respectable, honorable military leadership. It's all about the big military contracts today.
Of course we have bad teachers. The state of America's youth is just appalling. They are rude, lazy illiterate brats, with arrogant, irresponsible parents. Teachers get no respect these days and the pay is lousy, so who would want to be a teacher? Maybe someone who couldn't hold a job anywhere else.
I'm sure that there are some good teachers too, but how they ignore all the negative aspects of their career choice is completely inexplicable. I love to teach, but only in a setting where there is some interest on the part of the student to learn. I place most of the blame for our poor educational system on the parents. With both parents working or single parent families and the TV as the baby sitter, what would you expect? What we have here is a generation of young hoodlums that will not be educated with any amount of money, technology or legislation.
m
You shouldn't lump all of "America's youth" into one category. My younger sister has always been a good kid, she's 20 now and is not a "rude, lazy illiterate brat". The few cousins I have and the many my wife have do not fit your narrow definition of "America's youth", nor are their parents "arrogant [and] irresponsible". According to your description nothing could educate anybody that is younger than you or whatever your definition of "youth" is. Try taking a breath before you write a statement like this, it is really vague and useless, it's equal to people blaming "Hollywood", a city in California, for bad movies, instead of the writers, production company and financiers for the movie, it removes blame from those committing the acts.
On a side note, teachers in Michigan, whether good or bad, can make between $75k and $100k after teaching for ~10 years. I've seen tax returns to support my statement.
Sigh. This has to be one of the biggest misconceptions out there. Most teachers work 10 months out of the year - they have a lot of meeting before and after the end of the school year. AND, in those 10 months, they work more than most Americans do in 12 months. My fianace works on a average day from 7:15 till 5:30 at school and them comes home and grades papers a couple of hours every night. Then, throw in extra-curricular activities like track coach or drama.
Some math:
10.25 hours at school + 2 hours grading = 12.25 hours/day.
8 hours/day * 4 weeks of meetings = 160 hours
12.25 hours/day * 180 days teaching = 2205 hours
160 + 2205 = 2365 hours/year
vs.
45 hours/week * 50 weeks (52 - 2 weeks vacation) = 2250 hours/year
My buddy's wife is a very good teacher and she structures her time efficiently. She makes use of teacher in-service days, she uses strategy's of homework and class participation that minimize massive every night grading, her principal is good and keeps meeting to a minimum.
Even so, if a teacher works hard during the week; she gets every 3-day weekend imaginable, 2.5 months off in the summer, 2-3 weeks at Chrismas, 1 week at Easter, PLUS the usual personal time, sick time, and vacation time.
I call shenanigans on your numbers....they don't match up with my friend's at all.
Oh please, every job you have to "work up" to success. I started out in a crappy gig making less than $10/hr.
If you want to get technical about numbers, I make closer to 1/3 (which is considerably less than 1/2) of the contract rate....so if after a few years experience, one can make $75,000.....close to the 1/2 the contract rate for babysitting? Its not exactly a "rip off" salary.
The problem is that's not the case everywhere. In my district, the teachers start at about $20,000 and after 30 years of teaching make about $85,000 at most.
Bad move Jobs... The education sector is where you want to plant your seeds first, to grow more customers.
I don't agree with what he said, as there are some very good teachers who would be let go if it weren't for unions. But with any union, you win some and you loose some.
Now, the real solution to the problem, is put some more money into the education sector. He's right, technology won't "Cure" the classroom, but if our government would put more money into the education system (and repeal the "No child left behind" act) then our classrooms would be benefiting our students a great deal more. I live in a state ranked 48th for per-pupil spending, and my mother is a teacher. I know our systems need an educational upgrade, especially in today's globalized market.
But again, bad move Jobs... don't attack the teachers nor the principals. If you want to attack, go for the government, and set up your own "Education Fund" or bolster what you already have to show that our education systems are in dire need of an upgrade.
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.
I just retired after 36 years of teaching. I have a BA in French and English, have an MAT in French, and am also certified in Spanish, Social Studies and English as a Second Language. I don't know exactly how many credits I have past my master's, but I received credit on the salary scale for 30 additional hours. My final income was $56,000. I started at $5000. Where can I earn $100,000? I'm only 60; I'll go back to work. In my final year I had 110 students a day. The students changed every 10 weeks. I taught 4 sections of Exploratory French and 2 sections of Introduction to culture.
Now, with my education and experience, what other profession pays $57,000. As to the 184 days a year that I teach. Most jobs have certain paid holidays. New Year's, President's Day, Memorial Day, July 4th, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. That brings teachers up to 191. Most people after 28 years at the same job would have at least 4 weeks paid vacation. That brings us up to 211.
Regular job--48 weeks x 5 days - 7 paid holidays = 233 days. Gee, that's only 22 days difference. What about the pay differential?
Finally, education deserves respect. This country doesn't respect it. Until the respect for education is returned, no amount of money or legislation will help.
Comments?
I applaud you for your sacrifice; you have obvious dedication to the youth of America. I respect education.....not endless administration and mediocre performance.
However, you are the exception....not the rule. I invite you to check out some school districts in the central valley of California; another friend of mine makes more than you with only 10 years of experience and no extra credentials.
Teachers are not unionized in Texas. You can join a "union" but it's hardly what most would consider a union. It's a scare tactict so you have lawyers in case you get sued.
Teachers don't do collective bargaining or anything in Texas. The state sets a minimum salary and school districts are free to add to this.
The problem is that's not the case everywhere. In my district, the teachers start at about $20,000 and after 30 years of teaching make about $85,000 at most.
$85,000 is VERY respectable. That's well within the top 25% of wage earners.
Do you realize that purely as an average, the average American tops out in the $40-$50k range sometime in their 50s?
When they work for those 9 months they WORK! Most of them go to work at 7:15, get home around 5, grade papers for a few hours, create lesson plans. Then in the summer they still have to go to meetings, and get ready for next year. They have to prepare for any special ed students they might have (which seems to be an increasing amount btw) and learn next years curriculum if there have been any changes.
And then they have to get supplies. They don't have much of a budget for supplies, and most end up spending a few hundred of their own money each year on supplies. How would you like to go to an office to work and then realize you have to buy a computer, and if anything goes wrong with it, pay for it to be fixed and maintained? That's how it is with teacher's supplies.
What I have generally discovered is that the good teachers are the teachers who want to make a difference on kids lives. The ones who work hard with that one person so they can learn that one math technique. The others just don't care. I know a teacher who IM's her boyfriend all day long and puts history movies on and expects the kids to learn? She can't be fired though, oh noooooo shes way too important. I know one who is sexist and racist and if you don't agree with her your wrong. There are a lot of bad teachers out there that can't be fired.
For the most part, I agree with Jobs that principals need the power to fire bad teachers.