I was reading through some information on healthcare and I found this blurb by Mark Thoma responding to an article by Michael Leachman analyzing Center on Budget and Policy Priorities data*.
Here's what I found:
Normally here I'd post a long series of paragraphs, but unfortunately in the realm of education policy I am not quite as informed. Here's what I do know: in California, there has been round after round of teacher layoffs. Primary and Secondary Education isn't consumption, it's investment, and it's the kind of thing we need to be doing now to avoid having trouble 5-10 years down the line when undereducated students begin to enter the workforce.
Funding for education in the United States is on a state-by-state basis, and most states aren't easily able to borrow money-- meaning that in these tough economic times, when education should be a crucial aspect of our attempts to revitalize our economy and train workers for the future, we are cutting back where help is needed most.
That being said, I'm not an educator or education specialist. Does anyone else know more about this field? Is this data representative? I'd like to know :0
*: The CBPP isn't partisan, but I get the feeling it's a little more leftist than rightist, judging by its focus on aid for the poor, medicaid, social security, etc.
Seeing those numbers is quite alarming as both me and my gf are aiming to be Elementary School teachers. I just hope that by the time we are out of school (3-4 years) things will being to turn around and it will make finding a job a little bit easier.
All I know is that something definitely needs to be done about this. Having classes full of 45 6th graders wont exactly be a walk in the park.
I do agree with your statement that education is an investment, not consumption.
However, I don't believe "cutting # of jobs" in education is a direct precursor to having poorly trained workers down the road. A lot of it has to do with the quality of education. If job cuts are getting rid of the "lazy union workers reading out a textbook all day" and at the same time giving better treatment to "teachers with passion and skills", then the net effect may not be what we expect.
Unfortunately, that's probably not the case here. In fact, it's probably the lazy union workers surviving the cuts. In the grand scheme of things we lose sight of the important details - by that I mean, we are influenced to instantly sympathize with the people that lost those jobs and then proceed to hate on the government. What we really need is a systematic reform in the public sector to make better use of our tax money - and that starts with reviewing the current state of unionized public sector workers.
Apologies for the slight derailment, I tend to "lose it" a little bit when it comes to quality of public education.
@L-Z: yeah.. I remember having 40-student science classes in Middle School and HS. That was really no good.
@opticalshot: oh yeah i have no idea who's losing their jobs here. But I think these are NET job losses, so even if they're firing ineffective workers, they're not replacing them with effective workers, they're just straight-up increasing class sizes / decreasing the amount of time kids are educated on a per-week basis. If they were hiring good teachers to replace bad teachers in these sorts of numbers that would be AWESOME but i'm pretty sure they're just laying off people because the states straight-up don't have the money to employ teachers.
On September 10 2011 03:12 OpticalShot wrote: Unfortunately, that's probably not the case here. In fact, it's probably the lazy union workers surviving the cuts. In the grand scheme of things we lose sight of the important details - by that I mean, we are influenced to instantly sympathize with the people that lost those jobs and then proceed to hate on the government. What we really need is a systematic reform in the public sector to make better use of our tax money - and that starts with reviewing the current state of unionized public sector workers.
Teachers and cops share the same problem: the primary focus of their unions is to protect their worst members.
@Sufficiency: neither would I, assuming they hired some new teachers to replace them. I think the issue here is they likely just fired whichever teachers were the youngest / least senior / least protected by tenure, and of course don't have the budget to rehire since we're laying people off, so... yeah. education quality down, unemployment up in the future.
A friend of mine ran for state representative (in Michigan) a year ago. His platform focused on education. He reasoned that investing in educating the future would produce better quality workers and more jobs (jobs were the key issue of his election since the county has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state). The Michigan legislature keeps cutting back on education in an effort to balance the budget which is no easy task given that the auto companies going under sunk the state economy. Education isn't the only thing getting hit, but funding for public universities went down (especially for schools whose names aren't Michigan State or U of M).
My friend lost the election. His opponent essentially said "I'm going to get you more jobs" without any kind of plan. My friend at least had a plan, but in a race with "the education guy" and "the jobs guy" it's no surprise he was blown out of the water. Age and experience also played a factor, but the point I'm making is that the public is more interested in getting paid than education for the next generation. Do I like it? No. Is it valid? Yes.
Until teachers reach the social status that they have in Norway, where they are regarded as equals to doctors and lawyers, I don't think public education in America will change its downward course.
On September 10 2011 03:33 Blazinghand wrote: @Sufficiency: neither would I, assuming they hired some new teachers to replace them. I think the issue here is they likely just fired whichever teachers were the youngest / least senior / least protected by tenure, and of course don't have the budget to rehire since we're laying people off, so... yeah. education quality down, unemployment up in the future.
We need to find micronesia. He's pretty qualified to talk about this subject.
On September 10 2011 03:33 Blazinghand wrote: @Sufficiency: neither would I, assuming they hired some new teachers to replace them. I think the issue here is they likely just fired whichever teachers were the youngest / least senior / least protected by tenure, and of course don't have the budget to rehire since we're laying people off, so... yeah. education quality down, unemployment up in the future.
We need to find micronesia. He's pretty qualified to talk about this subject.
Yeah, I guess I'm fairly uninformed. Any primary/secondary school educators in the house?
On September 10 2011 03:36 Truedot wrote: Watch the documentary "Waiting for Superman". Answer all your questions.
No it doesn't. That movie doesn't actually educate you on the state of public education in the US. It's an emotional experience intended to lead you towards a certain very specific solution to a problem that they didn't even explain adequately.
Blazinghand:
It is different from state to state but for the most part the simple explanation seems true: there is currently less funding for schools, so they are cutting teachers. This is done according to FILO (first in last out) which might seem dumb given the extreme times, but is kinda necessary since without this provision the cronyism and nepitism in schools would completely run rampant (more than it already does).
Thank you for posting that video. It was excellent, and I haven't seen it yet.
The "contracts" that have been set up with these unions are beyond ridiculous. We wouldn't have to lay off a single teacher if we had the ability to reduce pay or benefits, or at least not consistently increase them.
Here in California they don't have enough money for a $5 ring of paper for the kids, but they spend literally millions of dollars on endless advertising on television, radio, and print. When a sectors pay is dependent upon public opinion, the incentive is to spend more money on influencing public opinion than to actually produce results. I'm getting really tired of the victimization role they are trying to establish when they are demanding raises from people who are suffering under higher unemployment, reduced hours, no raises, etc. I'm sorry, but if you already have better pay and benefits than the people who pay your salary, you can't get away with the victim card.
Thank you for posting that video. It was excellent, and I haven't seen it yet.
The "contracts" that have been set up with these unions are beyond ridiculous. We wouldn't have to lay off a single teacher if we had the ability to reduce pay or benefits, or at least not consistently increase them.
Here in California they don't have enough money for a $5 ring of paper for the kids, but they spend literally millions of dollars on endless advertising on television, radio, and print. When a sectors pay is dependent upon public opinion, the incentive is to spend more money on influencing public opinion than to actually produce results. I'm getting really tired of the victimization role they are trying to establish when they are demanding raises from people who are suffering under higher unemployment, reduced hours, no raises, etc. I'm sorry, but if you already have better pay and benefits than the people who pay your salary, you can't get away with the victim card.
You understand what you're saying, right? Most teacher's have Master's Degree equivalent education, with a couple years of post-graduate studies. People with this level of education are usually well-respected in society, and the fact that any people at all are willing to become educators astounds me.
In California we don't have enough money for paper and binders for our kids because we have really poorly-thought-out property tax which has every dollar sent to schools go through Sacramento first, undercutting school budgets dramatically.
You can have good teachers, or you can pay them nothing instead of next-to-nothing. You can't have both.
Thank you for posting that video. It was excellent, and I haven't seen it yet.
The "contracts" that have been set up with these unions are beyond ridiculous. We wouldn't have to lay off a single teacher if we had the ability to reduce pay or benefits, or at least not consistently increase them.
Here in California they don't have enough money for a $5 ring of paper for the kids, but they spend literally millions of dollars on endless advertising on television, radio, and print. When a sectors pay is dependent upon public opinion, the incentive is to spend more money on influencing public opinion than to actually produce results. I'm getting really tired of the victimization role they are trying to establish when they are demanding raises from people who are suffering under higher unemployment, reduced hours, no raises, etc. I'm sorry, but if you already have better pay and benefits than the people who pay your salary, you can't get away with the victim card.
You understand what you're saying, right? Most teacher's have Master's Degree equivalent education, with a couple years of post-graduate studies. People with this level of education are usually well-respected in society, and the fact that any people at all are willing to become educators astounds me.
In California we don't have enough money for paper and binders for our kids because we have really poorly-thought-out property tax which has every dollar sent to schools go through Sacramento first, undercutting school budgets dramatically.
You can have good teachers, or you can pay them nothing instead of next-to-nothing. You can't have both.
All that video does is play the victim card, which is exactly what the guy you're quoting is complaining about. I don't think you're going to win him over with a couple of case studies from a bias source (Jon Stewart's mother is/was a teacher...)
Thank you for posting that video. It was excellent, and I haven't seen it yet.
The "contracts" that have been set up with these unions are beyond ridiculous. We wouldn't have to lay off a single teacher if we had the ability to reduce pay or benefits, or at least not consistently increase them.
Here in California they don't have enough money for a $5 ring of paper for the kids, but they spend literally millions of dollars on endless advertising on television, radio, and print. When a sectors pay is dependent upon public opinion, the incentive is to spend more money on influencing public opinion than to actually produce results. I'm getting really tired of the victimization role they are trying to establish when they are demanding raises from people who are suffering under higher unemployment, reduced hours, no raises, etc. I'm sorry, but if you already have better pay and benefits than the people who pay your salary, you can't get away with the victim card.
You understand what you're saying, right? Most teacher's have Master's Degree equivalent education, with a couple years of post-graduate studies. People with this level of education are usually well-respected in society, and the fact that any people at all are willing to become educators astounds me.
In California we don't have enough money for paper and binders for our kids because we have really poorly-thought-out property tax which has every dollar sent to schools go through Sacramento first, undercutting school budgets dramatically.
You can have good teachers, or you can pay them nothing instead of next-to-nothing. You can't have both.
All that video does is play the victim card, which is exactly what the guy you're quoting is complaining about. I don't think you're going to win him over with a couple of case studies from a bias source (Jon Stewart's mother is/was a teacher...)
Fox News says teachers have an average net income of 50k per year-- even taking this to be accurate, the average income for the holder of a post-graduate degree is about 61k according to wikipedia, and many teachers hold additional jobs during the summer.
But this is besides the point, for two reasons. Regarding the teacher discussion: Look, clearly the problem here isn't the fact that teachers get healthcare and shit-- it's that we think it's WEIRD that someone should get healthcare and have pensions.
Regarding education: I don't give a dick whether or not teachers play the victim card or not, if we're laying off this many teachers, unless we kill a bunch of children, our student:teacher ratio is getting worse. This is negatively impacting our schools.
Anyone who's gone to school in California knows what a shitty place it is, and I'll tell you now it's not because of the teachers. My teachers were great, and generally overworked and underpaid. But the way we've got things now, we'll never adequately educate our youths.
He doesn't think it is weird that teachers get healthcare and shit. He thinks it's weird that teachers think they should be getting raises when everyone else in the country is getting pay cuts.
btw my K-12 teachers were shit. I had a health teacher that smoked in class and a geography teacher that let us watch Jerry Springer half the time. Perhaps if you want to treat teachers the same as doctors then we should be able to weed out the shit ones.
I used to think all "grown ups" were super smart but then I realized that some of them were morons about when I was 10 and myself and another classmate had to explain a basic algebra problem to the class because the teacher didn't understand it. (He was actually a really good teacher, one of my best). I'd also avoid asking questions that weren't specifically in the text just to avoid the awkward situation of a teacher not knowing the answer.
On September 11 2011 13:14 BlackJack wrote: He doesn't think it is weird that teachers get healthcare and shit. He thinks it's weird that teachers think they should be getting raises when everyone else in the country is getting pay cuts.
Some previously-negotiated contracts are a little too much given the economic climate. However, remember, if in say, five years from now, the economy takes a sudden upturn, and the private sector is doing 50% better... teachers will still be stuck in the 2-6% improvement range. They are doing better in poor economic times (minus layoffs) but don't benefit as much from good economic times. It's just a slow and steady approach instead of one that fluctuates more with the market.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://www.cbpp.org/images/blog/9-2-11-stateEd1.jpg)
