The problem is that research doesn't support that at all. Once you account for other factors the ONLY significant correlation between schools and achievement of students is the socio-economic status of the students...not the teachers or the school. Throwing money at educating people who can't afford basic life needs is pointless. We need societal change and economic stability/equality. Nothing else will allow educational achievement.
The problem is that research doesn't support that at all. Once you account for other factors the ONLY significant correlation between schools and achievement of students is the socio-economic status of the students...not the teachers or the school. Throwing money at educating people who can't afford basic life needs is pointless. We need societal change and economic stability/equality. Nothing else will allow educational achievement.
I'd be interested in seeing that research, because I doubt it says what you're suggesting it says. Obviously socio-economic factors will play a major role as well, but I have a hard time believing that upper-middle class students would do exactly as well if their school's budget was cut in half.
You mean like this:
Finance Equalization and Within-School Equity: The Relationship between Education Spending and the Social Distribution of Achievement
..."First, the analysis suggest that there is no relationship between any of the spendign categories adn mean school achievement for 12th graders." (the study does show that spending in earlier grade levels has some small effect based mostly on reduction of class size).
higher levels of instructional expenditures may lead to smaller SES-achievement relationships (in other words, school spending reduces (but does not negate) the impact of SES, which is the predominant factor in the first place.)
The overriding message of educational research is that SES is the biggest factor, home life (specifically having a parent whose primary role is homemaker) is second most influential. Money spent in elementary school in the classroom rather than administration has more effect than money spent in later years, but no amount of spending does more than offset the impact of the major factors.
ProfJohn
Lifer
- Jul 28, 2006
- 18,161
- 7
- 0
When you plot the fall of education scores and the rise of teachers unions you will notice that they are inversely proportional, the more powerful the unions became the lower the scores got.
Can anyone name any instance in which a union came into power and the product of their members actually improved? Unions are really good at raisings costs of their product, but totally worthless at improving quality.
Can anyone name any instance in which a union came into power and the product of their members actually improved? Unions are really good at raisings costs of their product, but totally worthless at improving quality.
I can name dozens or hundreds of instances where the rise of unions ended exploitation, abuse, endangerment, and so on. I personally think that counts for WAY more than making the rich richer.
IMO, we need to dispose of the need for a masters degree at the K-12 level (not all states require this). It simply isn't necessary.
Secondly, teachers need to be held accountable. Don't increase their pay if they aren't performing...and for heavens sake threaten to fire them if they suck (I remember especially in middle school having classes where we sat around and hardly did anything neither did the administration when they were informed of it) and give them an incentive to do better at the same time.
Thirdly, there really is a funding problem in a lot of schools. Education is a public good (as it should be) which means all children get to go to school. Now, I'm not against immigration (we're a nation based on immigration) and am not a big build a fence on the border type of guy, but there is a large percentage of children of illegal immigrants going to public schools, where the parents literally aren't paying into the system. Of course we've always had poor parents sending their children to school (this is not new), but today it is on a much larger scale.
Secondly, teachers need to be held accountable. Don't increase their pay if they aren't performing...and for heavens sake threaten to fire them if they suck (I remember especially in middle school having classes where we sat around and hardly did anything neither did the administration when they were informed of it) and give them an incentive to do better at the same time.
Thirdly, there really is a funding problem in a lot of schools. Education is a public good (as it should be) which means all children get to go to school. Now, I'm not against immigration (we're a nation based on immigration) and am not a big build a fence on the border type of guy, but there is a large percentage of children of illegal immigrants going to public schools, where the parents literally aren't paying into the system. Of course we've always had poor parents sending their children to school (this is not new), but today it is on a much larger scale.
Even if what you said was 100% true, (which it's not) that is specious reasoning. So I checked out SAT scores from 1976 to present. Average verbal score went from 530 down to 508, a 22 point decrease, while math went from 509 to 520, an 11 point increase.
So total we had about a 4% decrease in verbal, and a 2% increase in math scores. I did some simple statistical analysis on those numbers and found that respectively the standard error of those data sets was 7.5% and 8.1%. That means that deviations that small don't even merit the 66% confidence interval and therefore have absolutely zero statistical significance. Meaning...those numbers mean approximately.... nothing. Our test scores in a statistical sense have not budged in more then 30 years.
So please explain to me how these test scores have been dropping and what the teachers did to cause it? Or were you just making things up as usual?
BoberFett
Lifer
- Oct 9, 1999
- 37,562
- 9
- 81
Or maybe some of the poor are poor partly because of their attitude towards education and self improvement in general? Nahhh, we can't lay any of the blame them. It's always somebody elses fault. Poor kids don't fail math because they screw around in class and their parents don't help with their homework. It's because daddy doesn't drive a Benz. Typical victim mentality bullshit.
Mardeth
Platinum Member
- Jul 24, 2002
- 2,608
- 0
- 0
Nobody is getting rich of K-12 education, except maybe the unions... And when it comes to unions in general, it hinders competitiveness and in todays global world, that is what matters. Like it or not.
Unions used to be great, now their power is abused.
Please explain how thinking a MA in Ed isn't necessary and that teacher performance should be a factor at the same time. If I understand your post correctly, you don't think teaching needs any advanced degree but you think teachers should be the best they can be? Because the BEST teachers I know have Master's degrees. In my state, a Master's isn't required, but if you have one, you can be paid an average of 10K more.
There are components to teaching that are very complex, such as the psychology of learning, motivation, and developing curriculum. A BA in education just skims these things. Fortunately, my school district provides continuous training to make sure all teachers have the opportunity to develop their craft.
We also have Pay for Performance in my state. It is somewhat controversial, but in the end I don't think it is a bad thing. At least I get bonuses, which help me pay for all the 'extras' I do for my students.
By the way, I don't have a Master's, but the BA I earned in school was more intensive than a regular education degree. I studied developmental and educational psych. It serves me quite well in the classroom.
Interesting site, I don't don't know its affiliation so don't hit me on that.
http://www.calnews.com/Archives/1YB_I_fin.htm
Look at table #5. The percentage of teachers, school staff, and other staff. Interesting percentages. Now the question becomes, is the percentage of teachers an issue? The problem with the statistics presented it that it needs to be further broken down by cities and the surrounding counties.
I do know in my area of the country that the counties surrounding Atlanta spend far less on education than Atlanta city schools do and consisently rank higher in testing. One major area of difference is that Atlanta city schools supposedly are burdened with a higher ratio of adminstrators to teachers than the counties.
Competition is really needed in the public schools. In many areas of Europe the money follows the student. The parents decide where their kids go and only then does the money go to that school. Here its backwards and our education suffers
http://www.calnews.com/Archives/1YB_I_fin.htm
Look at table #5. The percentage of teachers, school staff, and other staff. Interesting percentages. Now the question becomes, is the percentage of teachers an issue? The problem with the statistics presented it that it needs to be further broken down by cities and the surrounding counties.
I do know in my area of the country that the counties surrounding Atlanta spend far less on education than Atlanta city schools do and consisently rank higher in testing. One major area of difference is that Atlanta city schools supposedly are burdened with a higher ratio of adminstrators to teachers than the counties.
Competition is really needed in the public schools. In many areas of Europe the money follows the student. The parents decide where their kids go and only then does the money go to that school. Here its backwards and our education suffers
lol, awesome...
As for the purpose of teachers unions? It's to protect our teachers from lazy, resentful, idiotic parents that would blame a teacher for the weather before employing a an iota of constructive and consistent parenting.
This is is just another example of conservatives attacking the "intelligencia". Resentful, ignorant pricks.
And not to mention most of them that I knew when I was going to school had jobs they did during the summer.
Originally posted by: Isla
Whenever I read threads like this I have to laugh.
How many of YOU would make good teachers? Great ones?
I get lots of love and appreciation from my students AND their parents every day, and I only make 34K. I'd like to see just ONE of you do what I do, do it as well as I do, and accept the pay that I do.
I won't hold my breath.
Excuse me.
I didn't spend 4 years in college for a B.S. in computer science to make a misley 34K a year. Therefore, I don't have any desire nor want to become a K-12 school teacher. Maybe a college professor but that is the most. But we aren't talking about that, we are talking about how fvcked up the system is.
It's your heroes that made it worse.
Thanks to NCLB there are people with the job Title of "Teachers" and they never ever teach a child. They don't even have accreditation to be a Teacher.
They simply wrote and got all kinds of NCLB Grants and the school systems have to put them on the payroll as Teachers because of NCLB.
That's your great Republican system at work for you.
I don't know the way your making it sound is not the way I went through it. Almost all the teachers I dealt with had B.S. degrees. Their teaching methods were very standerdized and sometimes we had teachers that didn't do anything. Psychology, teaching methods LOL
Well it doesn't always work out quite so nicely. Where I live, there are a large number of well educated, well payed parents. The schools are also considered some of the best in the state.
There is a Catholic high school about a mile from my home. It's very well respected and likes to flaunt the number of grads who go on to highly touted colleges/universities. They are coed, but they require uniforms. They have an entrance exam you must take to get in. If you have a parent who is an alumnus you can get a lower score, but other than that everyone needs to score a minimum on this test.
The average ACT score (this is the midwest, afterall) for the kids at this Catholic high school is in the 87th percentile nationwide. The public school district that surrounds this Catholic high school has two high schools. They both have about 2500 students vs. about 1000 for the Catholic school. The average ACT score for the kids at the public high school is in the 86th percentile nationwide.
So, even though the Catholic school is selective, they only get one more percentile than the public school does, this with kids from the same demographics. You can't compare kids from a prep school in a well heeled suburb to those at the public schools in the inner city. The gene pool (from the standpoint of average community IQ) is different, the life experience is different.
I disagree that teaching is one of the lowest paid professions. However, for the training required to be a teacher which is a Master's Degree in many places it is low on the scale for people with a Master's Degree. Plenty of professions make about what a teacher makes. If you take into account that a teacher does not work 3 months out of the year then that puts things in a different light.
There are some things I dont like about the teaching profession. I do not like how teachers get so many days off during the school year to go to conferences. This is something we need to change. Let them have their confrences in the evening or on the weekends, or during the summer or spring break or something like that.
There are some things I dont like about the teaching profession. I do not like how teachers get so many days off during the school year to go to conferences. This is something we need to change. Let them have their confrences in the evening or on the weekends, or during the summer or spring break or something like that.
The only reason why test scores drop is because our students get more STUPID within each generation. The stuff created on the SAT test 10 years ago was pretty acceptable at that time period. That time period was when we had no myspace, AIM, AOL, Internet, American Idol etc..... I believe we had TV, and it wasen't all that good.
Ugh, when scores over years are compared they are all adjusted to use the most current "recentered" scoring system, so no that is not a reason.
I hope you aren't trying to imply that on the SAT some questions are worth more then others, because that is not accurate. If you mean that they try to put a good spread of questions in their test to be able to accurately differentiate students with different levels of ability (ie. if everyone gets 100% there's no way to tell who is the best) well then... duh. They do that with every standardized test in existence.
If you want some good reasons why you can discount what I said about the SAT I can give them to you, but they aren't the ones you mentioned. You could say that the SAT isn't a meaningful test because coaching has so much effect on your score, and levels of coaching have increased in recent years. You could say that the sample size is simply too small from those dates, and so the standard error of my esimate is simply too large to effectively determine significance. (In my opinion the difference between the measured change and the standard error is so large that a reduced standard error would be very likely to change nothing though)
Don't try to say the scores are the same because every year they somehow weight things to be the same though, because that's simply wrong.
I hope you aren't trying to imply that on the SAT some questions are worth more then others, because that is not accurate. If you mean that they try to put a good spread of questions in their test to be able to accurately differentiate students with different levels of ability (ie. if everyone gets 100% there's no way to tell who is the best) well then... duh. They do that with every standardized test in existence.
If you want some good reasons why you can discount what I said about the SAT I can give them to you, but they aren't the ones you mentioned. You could say that the SAT isn't a meaningful test because coaching has so much effect on your score, and levels of coaching have increased in recent years. You could say that the sample size is simply too small from those dates, and so the standard error of my esimate is simply too large to effectively determine significance. (In my opinion the difference between the measured change and the standard error is so large that a reduced standard error would be very likely to change nothing though)
Don't try to say the scores are the same because every year they somehow weight things to be the same though, because that's simply wrong.
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