Is it fair to have a bad opinion of our goverment teachers?

[barnett]

Firstly, people who go into education are...well, not too bright:

-The "2000 Profile of College Bound Seniors," a report from the College Board which administers the SAT, tracked what majors 10,280 Michigan high school students chose in college. The highest SAT scorers shunned education majors, the lowest scorers chose education majors. Of the 6 percent of students who selected education as a major, their average math score was 35 points below the state average and 26 points below in verbal scores. Would-be teacher majors tied with “home economics” majors.

Secondly, they are failures:

-12/7/07 Washington Post: “The scores from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment showed that U.S. 15-year-olds trailed their peers from many industrialized countries. The average science score of U.S. students lagged behind those in 16 of 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group that represents the world's richest countries. The U.S. students were further behind in math, trailing counterparts in 23 countries.”
-3/9/11 AP: An estimated 82 percent of U.S. schools could be labeled as "failing" under the nation's No Child Left Behind Act this year, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Wednesday. "We should get out of the business of labeling schools as failures and create a new law that is fair and flexible, and focused on the schools and students most at risk," Duncan said. [translation: lower standards…again]
-12/15/10 Chicago Tribune: “As recently as 2004, a Thomas B. Fordham Institute study found that 39 percent of CPS teachers sent their own kids to private schools.”

Thirdly, teachers give 95% of their political contribution to democrats who, as a pay-back, guarantee their superior pay, benefits and pensions (which is why they became teachers in the first place):

January 2007 Manhattan Institute study (manhattan-institute.org):
-According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average public school teacher in the United States earned $34.06 per hour in 2005.
-Compared with public school teachers, editors and reporters earn 24% less; architects, 11% less; psychologists, 9% less; chemists, 5% less; mechanical engineers, 6% less; and economists, 1% less.
-Public school teachers are paid 61% more per hour than private school teachers, on average nationwide.

6/11/12 Cato Institute (http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/obama-vs-… “...the public school workforce has grown 11 times faster than student enrollment over the last 40 years. Furthermore, on a per pupil basis, the inflation-adjusted average cost of a K-12 education has gone from about $55,000 to about $150,000.”

It used to be that people went into government jobs for security and pensions knowing that they would not be paid as well as the private sector, but no more. The unions and democrat party have turned government jobs into quite something else:

-6/14/12 townhall.com: Every pay period, the Philadelphia school district puts $155 per union member into a special fund that helps educators pay their personal legal bills, which includes everything from routine legal advice to estate planning.

-2/22/12 CNN, Buffalo, NY: The sweet deal that all the 3,400 teachers in Buffalo are eligible to get under one of their insurance plan options, they are billed nothing for any plastic surgery procedure, such as botox, liposuction, tummy tucks, [hair removal, breast enhancement, rhinoplasty] and there is no deductible; Linda Tokarz teaches second grade and says she gets regular treatments. She says, "I think its great for us. I wouldn't want to see it taken away”

-8/13/10 USA Today: At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds. Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade. Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.

6/8/12 Investors Business Daily: “Private-sector jobs are still down by 4.6 million, or 4%, from January 2008, when overall employment peaked Meanwhile government jobs are down just 407,000, or 1.8%. Federal employment actually is 225,000 jobs above its January 2008 level, an 11.4% increase.”

-7/8/11 U. S. News Report (usnews.com): The actual number of private sector jobs decreased since 2008. Government jobs increased. During the worst of the downturn, the private sector was hammered with massive job losses, while the public sector held fairly steady.

Conclusion: Our education system's primary purpose is to satisfy the greed of unio

[delron72]

The dumbing down of America has achieved its objective.

The public school system is a "useful idiot" factory, churning out ignorant and gullible future criminals who will eagerly jump on the communism bandwagon as soon as it rolls into town.

I know, I used to work as a public high school teacher. It made me sick to watch kids getting churned through the communist indoctrination mill all day long.

And how well it worked.

Public schools are an example of pure democracy in action. Every parent, rich and poor, wants their kids to get a free ride. They want their kids to get good grade for free, and they want their kids to get off the hook every time for misbehaving in school. And the community has a large influence over the local school district, so a principal can get fired if too many parents turn against him/her. So the principal has to pander to these irresponsible parents to keep his/her job.

In other words, it is mob rule.

[anglesey34]

The dumbing down of America has achieved its objective.

The public school system is a "useful idiot" factory, churning out ignorant and gullible future criminals who will eagerly jump on the communism bandwagon as soon as it rolls into town.

I know, I used to work as a public high school teacher. It made me sick to watch kids getting churned through the communist indoctrination mill all day long.

And how well it worked.

Public schools are an example of pure democracy in action. Every parent, rich and poor, wants their kids to get a free ride. They want their kids to get good grade for free, and they want their kids to get off the hook every time for misbehaving in school. And the community has a large influence over the local school district, so a principal can get fired if too many parents turn against him/her. So the principal has to pander to these irresponsible parents to keep his/her job.

In other words, it is mob rule.

It's all true. If you have half a brain you will be at a disadvantage as a teacher in most public schools. The idea is almost that it takes a moron to teach a moron, and the morons greatly outnumber the rest of the students in public schools. Being "smart" or "gifted" is considered antisocial and elitist. Furthermore morons tend to vote Democratic.

[stephon14]

LOLOLOL...

you have two very good first points... and then you just try to RANDOMLY AND FOR NO REASON wrap it around into a nonsensical attack on unions?

let me straighten this out for you... EVERYONE KNOWS TEACHER PAY IS HORRIBLE FOR WHAT EDUCATION IS REQUIRED SO NO ONE GOES INTO EDUCATION UNLESS THEY CAN'T DO ANYTHING ELSE...

that's the big mystery solved...

and killing unions that fight for HIGHER pay isn't going to help... the situation isn't better in states with no teacher unions, but instead MUCH WORSE...

your "pay per hour" is a direct lie from all the friends that I know that went into teaching... I have friends in many of those other fields that make "less" according to your stats, but they're all doing BETTER than my teacher friends?

maybe it's some "only counting school hours" thing that you're doing, but that's BS if you know any teacher, at least the teachers I know...

[barraq]

It's rather irrelavent for the moment. Over the past three years because of budget cuts school distircts nationwide have laid of over 270,000 teachers. Any more you can count the number of kids in classrooms taking Education courses on one hand and have fingers left over. Besides why would a kid good in math go into Education. He can make three times as much money in Computer Science or Computer Engineering. It's a simple fact of economics especially if you have $30,000 to $40,000 worth of school loans hanging over you when you graduate.