What's wrong with education today?

[kombat]

A good solution would be school tax exempt for anyone who home-schools or pays for private school.

What about those of us who have chosen not to have any kids at all? We're also not burdening the public school system - can we have our school taxes back too?

 

[kombat]

And yes I do work 80 hour weeks.

Nobody here believes you. Nobody could keep up such a schedule for 5 years straight. You're being creative with your numbers. You don't get to count the time you spend in the morning shaving, showering, eating, commuting, etc. We all do those things, and they don't count as "work hours."

 

[Leithoa]

Except, of course, for those two entire months you get off every summer.
And a week or two around Christmas.
And another week in March.

Not sure how it works in everyone's school district but in mine spring break in particular is a planning/grading break, while I'm sure time through the holidays is not entirely spent grading/planning part of it is.
As far as summer break goes this is an unpaid break. You can arrange with payroll to have money withheld during the school year so you continue to get a paycheck through the summer but by default it is an unpaid break.
Also you have a couple weeks after the session to get grades input, evaluate, and complete various administrative tasks. Then a few weeks before the next session you have to do get everything ready for the new term.
During the 2 month break if you want tenure you are expected to complete 'continuing' education either through college courses or approved workshops. The costs of which may or may not be reimbursed.

So sure every job has it's down periods but it's far from the mai tai's on the beach many imagine.

should locals be forced to pay for it if they have no say at all in the curriculum?

Again I'm not sure how it works in your state but in mine you(the general voting public) do have a say in the education curriculum. My state has a bill waiting to be voted on that would withdraw our state from Common Core curriculum and make some vague changes to the curriculum. It is within my ability to write my representatives, and voice my opinion. I can get my friends to do the same.
More directly for my district and more likely to succeed, I can go to school board meetings which are open to the public and voice my opinion(founded or not) about the curriculum being taught. If I have the time and inclination I could even run for school board and have a direct vote in the curriculum.

What makes you think that 99.99 % of parents are remotely qualified to set up a curriculum?

What makes you think that only 0.01% are? I'm not saying everyone will know the best way to accomplish the goal of actually teaching it but it doesn't take an aerospace engineer to know that you need an engine, wings and fuselage to make an airplane. My point being that education is a system not only to educate children but the train them to deal with modern society. People of all walks of life will have valid inputs on lessons they wish had been taught to them at an early age. While they may be able to teach these lessons to their children, wouldn't we all benefit if they were taught to every child?


PS there's an edit function so you don't have triple posts.

 

[grathan]

In Massachusetts a mayor complains that the students have graying hair and wrinkles on their face, but the gov't says they aren't allowed to verify illegals age.

http://cnsnews.com/news/article/pen...l-aliens-graying-hair-enrolled-public-schools

Do these people have a right to a free education?


Do %90 of illegal California students have a right to free lunch program on top of the 10 billion it already costs to educate them?

 

[Homercidal]

This is a friendly reminder that this forum is not a debate forum. Please keep your differences of opinion, and your statements of fact civil. Be nice to each other or at least civil with each other.

Otherwise the thread will be closed or moved to the debate area.

 

[jhoneycutt]

It is not that simple.

The value of your home is tied directly to the quality of your public schools, so even if you home school, private school or have no kids in school, the taxes that you pay for school benefit you and your community directly.

This isn't true at all. You should see all the multimillion dollar homes where I live and then see the worst school system ive ever experienced. I'll start with the building is tiny and decrepit buft at least had a fresh coat of paint at the beginning of the school year. Then the entire school administration is the absolute laziest ive ever met in my life. After three weeks we yanked our daughter out and enrolled her in a private school. Because of this I do work 80 ever week and havnt had an off day in over three months. And, a friends daughter goes to a very good school out in the middle of nowhere that only has one well off family. Majority of the people live in mobile homes there...

 

[grathan]

This isn't true at all. You should see all the multimillion dollar homes where I live and then see the worst school system ive ever experienced. I'll start with the building is tiny and decrepit buft at least had a fresh coat of paint at the beginning of the school year. Then the entire school administration is the absolute laziest ive ever met in my life. After three weeks we yanked our daughter out and enrolled her in a private school. Because of this I do work 80 ever week and havnt had an off day in over three months.

That sucks, you shoudln't have to pay 2x.

I think if people got a housing tax break for private schooling, it would make private schooling more affordable. There is no question that private schools do a better job of educating.

As more private schools would be built there would be less reliance on the public school system, and as enrollments go down they would close the schools and place less burden on the tax payers without children.

 

[Dopeybrew]

Nobody here believes you. Nobody could keep up such a schedule for 5 years straight. You're being creative with your numbers. You don't get to count the time you spend in the morning shaving, showering, eating, commuting, etc. We all do those things, and they don't count as "work hours."

Creative with my numbers? Hmm let's see:
I get to school at 7 am every day. I leave at 6pm (sometimes later) so there is 11 hours a day
11×5=55 hours.
Then there is the time spent at home grading, planning, and researching.
There is 4 to 5 hours a day (let's go low and say 4)
4×5=20
20+55=75
That's just Monday through Friday. The weekend is good for at least 5 hours reading papers, grading, and trying to adjust my plans for the next week depending on what we covered in class.

In regards to my "vacations". You must mean the time where I have to continue my education, make sure that I'm up on the latest research, make adjustments to my curriculum based on the changes to the requirements, and knock out administration bs. Yea those are nice 20 hour weeks. Yes I do get time off, but nowhere near the amount you think it is.

I'm not complaining, I love my job. I went into this career knowing what I was getting into. I enjoy teaching. But it is by no means an easy job.

 

[smcinco]

There is no question that private schools do a better job of educating.

As more private schools would be built there would be less reliance on the public school system, and as enrollments go down they would close the schools and place less burden on the tax payers without children.

Where do you get your data? If they do indeed do a better job, surely it wouldn't have anything to do with selection bias or also not having to deal with no child left behind BS, correct? Too many cooks in the kitchen generally offering very facile solutions that are eaten up by idiots who didn't take education seriously in the first place. Ironic.

 

[CreamyGoodness]

There is a basic, bedrock issue at play that I simply dont have an answer for. Not all students are created equal, and every student should have an equal opportunity to avail him or herself of a quality education provided. If you are a brilliant student, or if you have multiple learning disorders; if you listen to the instructor or if you think your job is to turn a classroom into a circus- you have a right to an education. Thats good. Very good in fact. However, it means teachers and administrators have to find teaching solutions that benefit every student. One-size-fits-everyone-poorly.

This is different from the Japanese model (which everyone loves to site when speaking of education). If a student doesnt tow the mark by high school... he doesnt go to high school. Instead, he interns in a trade or vocation. Absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, now you have Japanese high schools full of the very best performing students with the underperformers no longer affecting the statistics.

When I was in high school we had a nucleus of students who wanted to learn, lazy students who could pull a B without reading (like myself) and an unhealthy spattering of rednecks and inner city transplants who wanted to be anywhere but there. One effect of this, was Mrs. Roman's totally worthless British Literature class. A bored, exhausted teacher (she was also a moron but I digress) trying to keep a class full of hooligans in their chairs and not breaking anything. Nothing else whatsoever got done, and the frew of us that wanted to learn had to fend for ourselves.

Thesis: if you find some just way of seperating those who want to learn from those who dont want to learn, the need for Common Core will go away... and so will the arguments that we need to go back to drilling the desks into the floor so they dont move and that all we need is to go back to "sir and ma'am" and all the other nonsense.

 

[kombat]

I get to school at 7 am every day. I leave at 6pm (sometimes later) so there is 11 hours a day
11×5=55 hours.
Then there is the time spent at home grading, planning, and researching.
There is 4 to 5 hours a day (let's go low and say 4)
4×5=20
20+55=75
That's just Monday through Friday.

4 hours per weeknight? Let's back up a second. You said you leave at 6:00 PM, how long is your commute? Let's say you get home at 6:15, drop your bags, make/eat a quick supper, throw the dishes in the sink, kiss your wife, and you're at your desk by 7:00 PM to start your "second shift." 4 hours takes you to 11:00 PM. Assuming you save all your other tasks for the weekend (dishes, groceries, laundry), there are still many things that have to be done through the week (do you have kids of your own? Pets? A spouse?). Assuming you spend 0 hours a day on any of those things, and you instead hit the hay right at 11:00 PM sharp to get up at 6:00 AM the next morning, that's only 7 hours of sleep a night.

I'm sure most people could do that for a week or two, but there's no way that's your life for 5 straight years. It's just not sustainable.

Look, I'm sure your job is tough, and I'm sure you work more than 8 hours a day. But when you dramatically overstate your effort with this kind of hyperbole, it draws attention away from the point you were trying to make and instead people nitpick something which ultimately doesn't matter anyway. It hurts your credibility and adds unnecessary noise to the discussion.

In regards to my "vacations". You must mean the time where I have to continue my education, make sure that I'm up on the latest research,

Yeah, I'm so glad I picked the field I did (computer science) where I never have to bother continuing to learn new research or technologies. /sarcasm

So you have to keep learning to stay valuable at your job? Join the club, Bud. Only the rest of us don't get 2 entire months off in the middle of the summer to do it. We have to do it in our spare time, while still working our regular jobs and tending to our families.

make adjustments to my curriculum based on the changes to the requirements

That takes 2 months?

and knock out administration bs. Yea those are nice 20 hour weeks. Yes I do get time off, but nowhere near the amount you think it is.

20 hour weeks doing "administration bs?" Dude, come on. Allow me to come clean: My mom was a teacher. My mother-in-law still is a teacher. Both my grandmothers were teachers, 2 of my aunts and 1 of my uncles are teachers. You can't fool me. I know the truth. Teaching is a stressful job, but it's certainly not due to "80 hour work weeks." It's because kids are a**holes. And for putting up with them, you get the best 2 months of the year off, on top of every holiday, a week at Christmas, and another random week in the spring just because. Sure, maybe you go to a "conference" for a couple of days during that week, or you have to fill out some paperwork while you're at the cottage in the summer. Whoop-de-doo.

I enjoy teaching. But it is by no means an easy job.

Few jobs are. You're not that special. There are many, many harder jobs that don't pay as well nor have the kind of generous benefits yours does (pay, time off, medical benefits, pension, job security, etc.).

 

[Pappers_]

Ok, this has gone completely off the rails. I thought about moving this to the debate forum, but honestly, I think its just best to shut it down. Back to conversation about brewing beer . . .