Is the U.S. behind in the sciences?

[reanjr]

B.) Most parents are more than willing to pay more taxes for education. They are our voting base in our local bond issues. It's folks without kids in school who don't like to pay teachers.

Not in my experience, and for good reason. Throwing more money at the problem is a case of diminishing returns. Taxes need to be better appropriated, not increased.

Think of the following scenario:

We abolish almost all taxes related to education and semi-privatize the entire system (the only economic control is that schools support an income-progressive system). A very low-level core curiculum is mandated covering only the basics of what are absolutely necessary skills in life (arithmetic, reading, writing [but not creatively or analytically], scientific method, and possibly some life skills). Anything else is up to the individual school and/or parent. Public state schools are set up with the remaining drastically reduced budget to teach only the core curriculum, and to supply learning materials (books, computers, internet, whatever...) for independent study.

Now you think that those (economically) poor parents are all about putting more money into a public education system that consistently produces high school graduates who can not read above 4th grade level? I don't think so.

From my discussions with parents, the combination of the following two conclusions would be the majority, especially among the poor who higher taxes hurt the most:

1. I can save a lot of money by keeping my child home and schooling her myself.

2. I want what's best for my child, but let's be realistic; he's gonna end up working in a factory anyway, just like his mom and I, and his grandfather, and so on. The state run school will be good enough. If my son is smart, then he can independently study anything else he wants while he's there and really make something of himself. Meanwhile, I can save some money to better provide for my family those things that are ACTUALLY necessary, and maybe even save up a bit for my son's college, which I would never be able to afford if I sent him to a non-state school, no matter how good he does in school.

(by the way, I don't want to take credit for this idea; I am merely espousing the ideas a local politician had in the last election)

C.) Back in Colorado, there is an entire class of teachers who quit after several years becaus e they simply could not afford to teach and had to get a better paying job. Insurance companies advertise in my teacher union magazine for exactly that reason, to recruit people.

I'm a bit incredulous. People teach because they want to teach, not to earn money. Unless you are telling me they absolutely could not afford food and shelter, then they probably weren't the kinds of teachers I'd want teaching my children anyway. As I said before, this doesn't mean I disagree with increasing teacher salaries, but I have never heard of a public school teacher who actually could not afford to teach (I know I had several teachers that commuted over an hour each way to work because the school was in an area they could not afford). Were these private school teachers, perchance? I know I've heard of some of them making $15k/yr.

Most jobs are paid for with money. Some with prestige. A few with power. Teachers (policemen, fireman, etc.) are paid with the opportunity to make a difference.

 

[Desdichado]

I have always heard complaints about the low pay of teachers, but I have never had a clear picture of just how much money it is that teachers make. Without that it is tough to tell whether or not their pay is "fair". Some folks would consider $40,000 chump change and insufficient to pay the bills. Others would consider it a "pretty good job". The same could be said of $30,000 or $70,000. Give us some numbers here? I can't see paying somebody $150,000/yr to teach 4 year olds to spell C-A-T, but if there are guys teaching Calculus to 17 year olds for $6/hour that's probably silly too.

It depends on the region. In the Detroit suburbs, teachers can make upwards of $60-70k. Otherwise, though, nobody would do it, because they would get a UAW job on the line of Livonia Transmission Plant or somesuch and make that money for less work and stress. Salaries are inflated across the board in Detroit.

 

[Rel]

d20 fool,

I'm not going to debate the voucher thing with you. You'll have to take my word that I'm capable of debating it but this isn't the place for it.

Suffice it to say that we have wildly differing views about the idea of dumping additional taxpayer dollars into a system that is (IMO) deeply flawed and underperforming. I have every interest in my young child (3&1/2) getting a great education in the years ahead and I hold out hope that I'm able to accomplish that within or despite whatever educational system that I'm able to afford.

I wish you luck in your career as a teacher and I hope that you're able to figure out a way to reconcile your desire to teach and your desire for a decent income.

Regards,

Rel

 

[GentleGiant]

There is another problem, though, that our system does well at addressing. What do you do with all the highly educated people that would come out of a better system? It's bad enough that people with higher degrees can not work in their respective fields. If the average high school student came out with Bachelor's level education (which is quite possible, though probably would not be as specialized), the problem of over-education would only get worse.

Although only a tangent off of this, the above reminded me about an interesting fact, which I found when I was researching the possibility of bringing the Danish student aid with me to study in the US.
It turns out that I wouldn't be able to get the student aid for the first year of college in the US. Why? Because our equivalent of a high school diploma here in Denmark (roughly 12th grade) is considered academically on par with finishing the first year of college in the US...

Also, I wanted to comment on the comparison between US and European schools. You can't really compare them. Not because one system is inherently better or worse, but because the systems in place vary from country to country. Sometimes even wildly so.
I've heard that elementary schools in the UK are among the poorest (and have been given some examples, e.g. a definitive lack of basic knowledge in e.g. basic European history), while the Finnish schools are considered to be among the best.
This is based on various tests, like reading and math level etc.

 

[Daalbar]

I have a couple of friends who went the teaching route... both in high school level math and sciences (biology & Calculus) at a school just outside Toronto.

If you ever think your working life is frustrating and beset with barriers to prevent progress, talk to a teacher... you will feel much better about how things are going, and it's cheaper than therapy!

Both women were (are) very bright and went into teaching anticipating a promising long-term career. By the middle of their second years I started to see the fraying.

Yes, they would talk about long hours (grading papers and such into the night, preparation for their classes the next day... all this outside of class stuff meant they were working at least 10 hour days and putting in some time on either Saturday or Sunday -- part of this obviously was due to being new to teaching and putting together lessons from scratch). They would also complain about inattentive and disruptive students and a lack of respect and oftimes, a general lack of support from the administration when trying to deal with these sorts of situations (nothing violent, mind you -- some teachers may have to face this as well), but in general, there were relatively few complaints about the students, other than that running a class was often like trying to herd cats.

What they saved their real venom for was administrative red tape and actual interference with how they conducted their jobs. Pointless meetings that achieved little of use were one thing, but I found one anecdote particularly enlightening...

In her second year, one of my friends was teaching a new Mathematics class (I can't recall what level). She gave the first test of the term, thinking she had designed a fair but challenging test -- a mix of questions of her own devising, some straightforward, some more difficult, but nothing that would have been unfamiliar from the lessons. She was surprised when the class mean for the test was only 42%... but she was more surprised when the Principal approached her and told her he had had complaints and that her test must have been too hard without having bothered to look at it. I guess the logic was that too many kids had failed the test, so it must have been too hard. So for the next test, she went the other way (in part, to try to prove a point). The second test consisted entirely of questions taken directly from the textbook's problem sets... about half of which had actually been questions that had already been assigned as homework. She held two review sessions, during which, as examples of the kinds of problems that would be on the test, she actually included several of the very same questions that would be on the test the following week. The result of all this spoon feeding? An average somewhere around 58%...

However, that wasn't an accross the board improvement. It was simply an effect of one-third of the kids showing a marked jump in their scores. Presumably those were the ones who spent some time actually looking over their notes (who knows if they actually studied).

Apparently that wasn't good enough for the Principal, despite her evidence he still accused her of making tests that were too difficult.

In later years, they both started counting down the days to summer break even moreso than the students. After 4 years, one left to go work at bank for a drop in pay... she was never happier, it was a vast reduction in stress. The other learned to be less idealistic and cut back on her effort and time investment. She is still teaching.

Seems to me this is often the real reason for the type of attrition that is seen among new teachers. They either get hammered down or leave the profession.

 

[Rel]

Seems to me this is often the real reason for the type of attrition that is seen among new teachers. They either get hammered down or leave the profession.

My experience has been much the same as yours. I have a sister and at least three friends who were teachers at one point or another. My sister is now a waitress, one friend went back to school and became a surgeon, one quit and started her own business as an interior decorator, one is still a teacher. She teaches an elective (High School Art) so I think that contributes to a slightly better overall environment since her students choose to be in the class.

Every one of them has said that the administration is an utter pain in the ass.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

My wife is a 4th grade public school teacher. She has a Master's in Elementary Education. She has not been teaching long as she changed from her science career to teach. She had always been interested in teaching, but could not reconcile that with the low pay. After she was laid off from a great paying job that she did not enjoy, we decided to have her go back to school, get her Masters and become a teacher. It would be a bit of a financial hit, but with my job we would manage. She earns around $40k. She cannot earn extra by participating in other activities, other than becoming a mentor for new teachers, which gets you a whopping $600 a year.

As for whether the pay is too low, just right or too much, consider the following:

A good early education teacher is not just teaching children to spell C-A-T, they are teaching the fundamentals of learning, how to learn, how to think, how to act socially in an appropriate way. They are often the first line of defense in recognizing a child with a possible learning disability - and early intervention is extremely important in that. They are responsible for so much. In higher grades, there is more to teach, but there are other issues to deal with as well.

Hours: Anybody who thinks teachers have it easy since the school day is only 6 hours long on average has no clue. Those six hours are for teaching. In addition there is the planning, the grading, and the adminsitrative work that must be done. My wife always brings work home, and many times for the sake of actually being able to spend time together, I assist in grading objective tests such as spelling and math.

Summers off: Yes, teachers get about 2 months off during the summer. Of course part of that time is usually spent preparing for the next school year, and taking required Continuing Education courses.

So does that all equal the pay they get? For the importance of the job they do, the pressure they have to deal with and the amount of work they actually do, I would say no. Unfortunately, like police officers, firemen, military personnel and many other public servants, they do not "earn" money for a business who can turn it back on their employees, they are at the mercy of the public tax system, and let's face it, nobody you ask is going to jump up and down and volunteer to pay more taxes.

With all that I would agree that just "throwing more money" at the schools is not the ultimate solution to the education issues in the US. Smarter use of the funds available is also needed. Throw more money at a wasteful school and all you'll get is more waste. Figure out how to make the system work best and how much money is needed realsitically to make it happen - it will be more that is the current average in the majority of schools.

 

[DaveStebbins]

Teacher Pay

Two data points.

My (now ex-) wife had a master's degree as a teacher of the deaf and hearing impaired and several years experience. She was working at a school for the deaf. I was an engineering student about to graduate college with zero real-world engineering experience. My first job offer before graduation was almost double her salary.

So we moved to where my new job was. After working for near-minimum wage in child care for a year, she got a job as a first grade teacher in a private school. A couple of years later we had our daughter. When looking at child care options, we did the math. She would have had to pay over 70% of her take-home pay just to cover the cost of child care.

Teachers who stick with it and don't burn out can eventually make good money late in their careers, but the attrition rate is high. And, with a professional degree, they can always, ALWAYS, make better money working in a corporate environment. Heck, just off the top of my head I can think of two former teachers in the semi-small circle of people I know at work.

-Dave

 

[drothgery]

Teachers who stick with it and don't burn out can eventually make good money late in their careers, but the attrition rate is high. And, with a professional degree, they can always, ALWAYS, make better money working in a corporate environment.

That's not really a valid comparison, though. Teachers have, for the most part (and yes, I'm generalizing here), a humanities undergraduate degree and teaching certification (in most states) or a Masters in Education (in states that require it, like New York). Almost no one gets money just of undergrad that's comprable to what engineers and computer scientists can often get. A hard science undergrad degree qualifies you for a low-paying lab tech job, or possibly teaching high school (well, physics and math majors can get snapped up for programming work when there aren't enough CS majors available). And a humanities or social science undergrad degree isn't a prerequisite for anything except grad school.

 

[Impeesa]

I think we (and by 'we' I mean "Canada, which is close enough") aren't too behind yet, but we'll see more and more slippage in the future. The school system just isn't set up right, and it's apparently gotten worse since I was in it - and I could tell it was messed up when I was in it, right from day one.

An entertaining aside: I got suspended on my very first day of kindergarten. The teacher had us all sitting around the edge of the rug. "Stand up," she said, and we all stood up. "Sit down," she said, and down we all went. This repeated a couple times. "Stand up." She looks at me. "Why aren't you standing up?" Little me shoots back: "Because you're just going to make me sit down again." You know that Simpsons episode where the teacher is pushing the "Independant Thought Alarm" button under the desk? When I look back, I imagine something like that taking place shortly afterwards. She told my parents I could come back when I was ready to behave.

Anyways... I'm just going to throw some tangentially related observations out, here. Take them as you will.

The bar has been lowered for school performance. Not only has it been lowered such that anyone can meet it, it's been lowered so far that those who were previously capable of meeting it are tripping over it.

The system seems almost deliberately designed to destroy the minds of the most capable students, bringing them down to the lowest level present. I was very nearly a lost cause in grade 6. I have a pair of siblings who were headed down the same path. Our mother decided to homeschool them this year (their grade 7 year) because she was so thoroughly dissatisfied with the system.

More fun stories from grade 6: Our science textbooks were 20+ years old. I don't recall the specifics, but it was old enough that it shorted either Saturn or Jupiter by about 10 moons. I recognized that just reading through it, and let me tell you, that inspired a world of confidence in the education I was receiving. That, and the fact that I got away with doing a single question on each math assignment and 'marking' it myself for about 6 months.

Not too long ago, I had the pleasure of working at a summer science camp. It was aimed at teenagers, with the mandate of steering more students towards post-secondary sciences. It was created and partially run by a chemistry professor who is active in promoting the sciences to younger kids. He's also our provincial NDP candidate (left-wing socialists, for our foreign friends), and he has his eye on the position of Minister of Education specifically because he, like many others, thinks the school system needs drastic reform.

Another fun fact: I don't recall the specifics (see a pattern here?), but I learned somewhere during my experience with the science camp that most kids (especially girls) have decided they're 'not smart enough' for science before they even make it to high school.

Why?

Going back to the lowering of the bar, I think we've created an educational system where kids are taught that it's okay not to think too hard. I've touched on this before in this thread, so I won't elaborate too much here.

Suffice it to say that I've thought myself in circles - the dumbing down of the system serves a dual purpose - to promote the incapable past their capabilities without challenging them to improve, and to quash those with the greatest potential. The end result is a vast shortage of motivated, inquisitive, and generally knowledgeable individuals - exactly the people who drive scientific advancement.

QED, or something like that.

--Impeesa--