A picture to summarize the idiocy of American politics and partisanship

[MovingTarget]

Teachers making more money = smarter children??

I dunno whether to laugh or cry at your stupidity.

When you apply the same logic to the teaching profession that you do in corporate America these days - better paid teaching positions would attract more talent - and hence, a better quality of education would result. So yes.

For the job that teachers are expected to do, the pay is horrendous. Maybe once our nation finally gets far enough behind will we finally take education seriously...

 

[JS80]

When you apply the same logic to the teaching profession that you do in corporate America these days - better paid teaching positions would attract more talent - and hence, a better quality of education would result. So yes.

For the job that teachers are expected to do, the pay is horrendous. Maybe once our nation finally gets far enough behind will we finally take education seriously...

Actually economists say higher pay for teachers will just attract more bad teachers.

If what you say is true there would be a correlation between $ spent per student and school testing. The reality is that in fact there is an inverse correlation.

In fact, I think that negative correlation is the same in executive pay.

 

[jonks]

Teachers making more money = smarter children??

I dunno whether to laugh or cry at your stupidity.

Whose stupidity? "Studies have shown that the quality of one's teacher is probably the most important factor in determining a student's educational success."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/08/those_who_cant_teach_teach Though he also points out that, specifically in NYC anyway, the unions/tenure system would frustrate increased pay from drawing new and better talent.

But you knew that since you cite to what "economists" say a few posts down. If you correct yourself for that statement or post something that backs up your position maybe you'll be worth arguing with, but your posting history does not fill me with confidence that this will be the outcome.

Actually economists say higher pay for teachers will just attract more bad teachers.

Which economists exactly? That's a selective quote at best. Higher salaries will attract not "just more bad teachers", it will attract more of everyone. What's needed is overhaul in hiring practices, but you still need the higher salaries to draw intelligent prospects into the pool:
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2009/03/raise_teachers.html

Even the "con" recognizes that higher salaries are instrumental, if merely not the only variable.

 

[Patranus]

I would bet that most people who rated the book a zero didn't even read it.

Scan the "reviews" to see cookie cutter answers.

Probably happened on both sides, I don't know, but Amazon lets anyone review a product, not only people who actually bought that product.

 

[fskimospy]

The two parties have gerrymandered themselves into very rigid districts and don't really have to fear anyone but their base, appeals to the center aren't necessary for re-election.

I see this here a lot, and it has gerrymandering exactly backwards. Political parties do not gerrymander districts to make members safe and therefore beholden to their base. In fact, gerrymandering accomplishes the exact opposite. The goal of gerrymandering is to give your party as many seats as possible in the legislature. In a situation where the vote was split 50/50 in 10 districts, a real gerrymander would engineer them so that your party won 9 of the 10 districts by say a 55-45 margin and your opponent would win the 10th district 100%-0.

Because you are trying to spread out support into many narrow victories as opposed to a few large ones, representatives that owe their seats to gerrymandering are (as a general rule) less secure in their seats than they would be otherwise. This is one of many reasons why Tom DeLay's district went blue after he was indicted. He was so strong that he felt comfortable watering down his partisan ID numbers during that epic Texas gerrymander in order to to help other Republicans near him win.

The decreasing number of competitive House seats in America has far more to do with self sorting mechanisms than it does with legislatures redrawing districts.

 

[JS80]

Whose stupidity? "Studies have shown that the quality of one's teacher is probably the most important factor in determining a student's educational success."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/08/those_who_cant_teach_teach Though he also points out that, specifically in NYC anyway, the unions/tenure system would frustrate increased pay from drawing new and better talent.

But you knew that since you cite to what "economists" say a few posts down. If you correct yourself for that statement or post something that backs up your position maybe you'll be worth arguing with, but your posting history does not fill me with confidence that this will be the outcome.



Which economists exactly? That's a selective quote at best. Higher salaries will attract not "just more bad teachers", it will attract more of everyone. What's needed is overhaul in hiring practices, but you still need the higher salaries to draw intelligent prospects into the pool:
http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2009/03/raise_teachers.html

Even the "con" recognizes that higher salaries are instrumental, if merely not the only variable.

I would love to sift through my notes from econ undergrad and find you the exact lecture and the study the professor referred to, but I just don't care enough to do so.

Good job using the googles and finding that article. It's great that in theory that it increases the "talent pool" with both good and bad candidates. But in reality due to the structure of the public school system, higher teacher salary = wasted money. They will have to increase pay on the bad teachers already hired but can't fire, and there will be more bad/worse teachers hired along with better teachers, and there will be zero increase in "smarter students." And once you put that in place and figure out it doesn't work, you can't "reset" to lower salaries - now you're stuck with a more expensive and equally bad (or worse) school system.

Great concept to use though when starting a private school.

 

[Red Dawn]

I would bet that most people who rated the book a zero didn't even read it.

You're probably right, I doubt anybody who isn't a drooling mouth breathing idiot would spend their hard earned cash on it.

 

[Darwin333]

Actually economists say higher pay for teachers will just attract more bad teachers.

If what you say is true there would be a correlation between $ spent per student and school testing. The reality is that in fact there is an inverse correlation.

In fact, I think that negative correlation is the same in executive pay.

I would like to see those studies. Teacher pay is pretty darn low for the job requirements. While I agree that we need an overhaul on how we spend money on our educational system I can't imagine that raising teachers starting salary and adding long term result based incentives would result in worse teachers. I know a guy that drives a garbage truck who makes more than entry level teachers around here. You really think the guy who is responsible for picking up my trash time is more valuable than the person educating our children?

Personally, I think we should completely end tenure (if you suck your fired, fuck that "you can't fire me" bullshit). Drastically increase starting pay. Come up with a common sense, performance based system for pay raises and possibly even bonuses (perhaps using current standardized testing so it is difficult to game the results). And perhaps institute some sort of national program to advance science and math programs although I doubt that would be possible with our current partisan politics (I can already imagine the amendments on evolution alone).

Of course we really can't afford much of anything now so its all pie in the sky thinking.

 

[bfdd]

I would of given it higher than a 1 if it had more porn and less gibberish.

 

[JS80]

I would like to see those studies. Teacher pay is pretty darn low for the job requirements. While I agree that we need an overhaul on how we spend money on our educational system I can't imagine that raising teachers starting salary and adding long term result based incentives would result in worse teachers. I know a guy that drives a garbage truck who makes more than entry level teachers around here. You really think the guy who is responsible for picking up my trash time is more valuable than the person educating our children?

Personally, I think we should completely end tenure (if you suck your fired, fuck that "you can't fire me" bullshit). Drastically increase starting pay. Come up with a common sense, performance based system for pay raises and possibly even bonuses (perhaps using current standardized testing so it is difficult to game the results). And perhaps institute some sort of national program to advance science and math programs although I doubt that would be possible with our current partisan politics (I can already imagine the amendments on evolution alone).

Of course we really can't afford much of anything now so its all pie in the sky thinking.

See post above (#31) on explanation why increased salaries/spending is futile.

We can debate all we want and come up with a pretty damn good plan but it is useless. Politically it is impossible to change the public education system.

But there is one proven thing that does increase student test scores in almost any education system without spending a dime - the parents giving a damn. Parents give a damn = higher test scores. And it's not something government has control over.

 

[jonks]

You're probably right, I doubt anybody who isn't a drooling mouth breathing idiot would spend their hard earned cash on it.

Especially since you can't vote zero (1 is lowest) and that the majority of people who rated it 5 probably didn't read it either.

 

[bamacre]

Too bad so many people here see only half what the picture says about American politics. The obvious of course is the face-palming support for Palin from the Right, but what most fail to see is that so many on the Left apparently give her more attention than they give their own president's policies.

 

[wwswimming]

I assume many of these people haven't even read her book. You have the Palin supporters giving it 5 stars and the Palin haters 1. I expected something like this when I looked at the reviews but not so comically divisive. Probably the only people who really read it were the 10% in the 2,3,4 crowd.

that reminds me of Newegg customer ratings.