| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Crisis in Dairyland - For Richer and Poorer | ||||
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And exposes the hypocrisy in attacking teachers for having salaries most families can't live on while describing families of 4 with 250,000 incomes as "near poverty":
These are all good points - however, saying that teachers don't get paid enough sidesteps may of the issues. The union and bureaucratic structure of the current education system produces poor results for children AND protects ineffective teachers AND makes effective teachers less effective. See "Waiting for Superman" - many teachers are amazing, but not all. Teacher's unions consistently block efforts at reform; as the movie depicts, when a particular school superintendent wanted to give pay raises to the most effective teachers, the union prevented the measure.
ReplyDeleteI don't doubt the desire of most teachers to do good; I think the system should be changed to reward that.
Want higher paid teachers? Institute an (equitable! none of this "straight test score" nonsense, but rather "change in test score" type of measured) system of merit based pay.
Brett, I would agree with what you're saying, except that Jon Stewart isn't saying teachers are underpaid in order to sidestep the issue of reforming education. And the reporters and politicians he shows aren't suggesting that we reform education in order to improve it. Instead, they're scape-goating teachers by turning them into the big, bad Other that is sucking up the tax payer's dollars and lolling about on a beach in Monaco.
ReplyDeleteIt's one thing to make budget cuts because you see no alternative. It's another thing entirely to demonize the people whose contracts are being broken by those budget cuts. And I think the worst part is that so many people buy into the myth that the teacher is done with work at 3 and then gets 3 months off.
A - many schools only take 2-month vacations to start with.
B - vacations during the school year, and weekends, and evenings, not to mention enormous chunks of summer vacation are usually spent on lesson plans and grading.
C - teachers have to stay late for meetings, go to conferences during the summer for training and in order to stay certified, and teachers often don't get off the same days students do.
D - in terms of pay, teachers do get decent benefits, but once taxes, etc. are taken out, their take home salary is very low. And while other jobs usually cover perks as "business expenses," teachers often buy their own office supplies, educational materials, etc. and they even have to pay for their own background check.
E - states routinely break teachers' contracts. My sister, for instance, had it in her contract that she would teach no more than 18 kindergarteners at once. The school added 6 extra students to bring in more funding and did nothing to compensate.
F - it is illegal for a licensed baby sitter to have more than 7 kids to take care of at once. And baby sitters aren't even trying to educate.