Huh. Can’t help but wonder if this:
Across the country, districts are struggling with shortages of teachers, particularly in math, science and special education — a result of the layoffs of the recession years combined with an improving economy in which fewer people are training to be teachers.
… has anything to do with this:
Righties constantly lecture me about the virtue of markets in efficiently allocating scarce resources: if there’s a shortage of apples the price will rise, prompting farmers to grow more apples, until supply eventually meets demand, and all that. And yet oddly, not once in this article about the scarcity of teachers does anybody ever mention the idea of paying teachers more money. Weird, right?
My mother was a school teacher, but if my own daughter came to me and said she wanted to be a teacher too, I’d do everything I could to talk her out of it. Because why would I want my daughter to work so hard for so little money and such utter disrespect? No, not disrespect. We don’t just disrespect teachers these days. We vilify them.
You want to attract more great teachers to the profession? Pay them more. And stop threatening to punch them in the face.
[Cross-posted at Civic Skunkworks]
Not paying dues to an organization that spends money in opposition to one’s beliefs = more money.
@1 Oh, go fuck yourself.
“Because why would I want my daughter to work so hard for so little money and such utter disrespect?”
Aptly describes the current situation for law graduates, too.
@ 3
If Goldy were to read the article and click on one of its links, he would learn that there are 8 coding schools in Seattle, and that the positions these schools train enrollees for are jobs paying six figures to start.
The whole premise of article Goldy chooses to ignore is that enrollments in programs that train students to be teachers fell when demand dropped during the Great Recession and the subsequent Recovery Summer! years that weren’t, and now that the economy is – finally – growing again, teaching programs face competition because STEM-inclined students have better opportunities in other fields.
“Because that’s where the money is.” It’s a reasonable answer to more than bank robbery.
Or, you can choose to believe Goldy’s 7 second video sound bite, which he apparently thinks is sufficiently useful to employ in two separate posts.
@ 3
Aptly describes the current situation for law graduates, too.
The situation facing law graduates is that their field is massively oversupplied. You’ve got bottom-tier law schools closing. You’ve got other law schools, like Rutgers, merging and cutting faculty, sometimes claiming financial exigency to do so. You’ve got law schools lying about how many jobs await their graduates. You’ve got graduates suing law schools because they claim they were misled about their post-graduation prospects.
IOW, the employment prospects for law school graduates are the opposite of employment prospects for students graduating with teaching credentials.
You got it backwards, Legal Eagle.
“The situation facing law graduates is that their field is massively oversupplied.”
Yeah, there’s nothing like having the AMA around to keep the supply of physicians low, jacking up the salaries of radiologists to $500K/Year.
If I were a teacher, I’d start every day with a lesson on what happens when people in a democracy can’t be bothered to get off their asses and vote. Everything of value is being destroyed by the morons who don’t vote. But they sure as fuck can complain.
@ 6
Medical field is undersupplied and will be for some time. Something else that attracts STEM students and competes with teaching programs for enrollments. No nose-punching required.
Throwing a bunch of money at the VA because of waiting times does little other than assuage anger over the situation. It takes a long time to increase health care staffing to deal with suddenly-acknowledged increased demand, and more money thrown at the problem doesn’t change that a whole lot.
Obamacare means many more patients, which will require many more health care providers. That, also, will not keep pace with demand. Unless we import them. Or offshore the work, as can be done with imaging interpretations, for expediency and to reduce professional staff costs.
The jobs will pay well, at least. Perhaps Goldy could encourage his daughter to go into medicine. If not for the AMA’s support, there might not be an Obamacare, after all. One can acquire medical training and then shill for the Left, possibly without having to pay union dues in the process. What’s not to like?
@ 7
How not to do that:
http://www.theblaze.com/storie.....out-obama/
“suddenly-acknowledged increased demand”
Iraq, Afghanistan, and aging Vietnam vets. Geez, who could have guessed? Not Republicans. If we want to get a handle on future VA costs and demand, I’d suggest fewer senseless wars like, say, the one Republicans want to start in January 2017 with Iran.
@ 10
Iraq, Afghanistan, and aging Vietnam vets. Geez, who could have guessed? Not Republicans.
Not Eric Shinsheki, either.
Honestly though, Goldy, while I don’t think teachers are necessarily overpaid, I do think they have alienated a lot of people.
The typical tactic is to walk out at the start of school in the fall. Teachers know this creates a problem for working parents who don’t have daycare, who then pressure school boards to settle quickly.
Teachers say the strikes are about the kids, but few people believe that. I don’t believe that. I don’t even see them making much effort on behalf of young new teachers, who truly are struggling and underpaid. I see the teachers at the top of the scale, making more money than I did as a state lawyer, striking to get more money for themselves.
And these strikes don’t cost teachers anything, because the missed days are made up at the end of the school year, so the teachers don’t lose any pay for the time they’re out on strike.
I’m not saying they don’t deserve more pay. But given our dysfunctional tax system, and the free ride it gives to the rich and big corporations, there isn’t enough money to go around and everyone in the public sector has to make do with limited resources. For years, teachers have come across as demanding and getting more than their fair share of those limited resources.
Here in Washington, the legislature typically has given school districts more money for teacher pay by taking it away from state employees. The result is that state workers are punished for not striking, while teachers are rewarded for striking. I’m not against teachers, but given that in the larger and better paying districts such as Seattle where top-end teacher pay was significantly more than I made as a state lawyer, it was hard for me to feel they were striking for economic justice. It did have a certain feel of greed to it.
But I also want to make it clear that from my point of view as a public servant the Republican Party, which institutionalized the vilification of public workers in our politics, was and is a far more egregious and culpable adversary than “greedy” teachers.
I don’t share Gov. Christie’s attitude toward teacher unions. I strongly support the labor movement and union workers, and that includes teacher unions. Unions are about much more than just pay scales; they’re also about working conditions, having a grievance process, and keeping managements from riding roughshod over workers. Teachers need those protections as much as any other category of workers. In the bigger picture, unions created America’s middle class, and with the loss of union jobs in the economy, we’re now losing the middle class.
So, I continue to believe that unions, on balance, are good for America and I continue to support the right of teachers to organize and bargain for salaries and working conditions. There is no teacher I want to “punch in the face.” Chris Christie will never get my vote. But I do see our local teachers unions as somewhat selfish and as blind and deaf to the just claims of other public workers, especially state employees, on our constrained and overstrained public resources. It’s not hard to measure these things. If teachers are going on strike and consistently getting larger percentage COLAs than state workers who aren’t allowed to strike and don’t strike, that’s out of kilter. What you have there is one group taking from another group, and both groups need to look at such a situation and think about in terms of what is fair for all.
What we really need, more than anything else, is for teachers, state employees, and other public sector workers to be united in opposing Republican attacks on public servants. They treat all of us like shit, and that has to stop. We all need to work together and shove their crap right back up their asses. Even if teachers and state employees agree on nothing else, we MUST cooperate on that. We’ve GOT to defeat these bastards at the polls.
And we’ve also got to stop taking their kicks lying down, and fight back against their evil ideology of demonizing those who choose to serve the public interest instead of their own self-interest by working in the public sector instead of the for-profit private economy.
@8,
I can’t help but note how utterly unconcerned you are with these workforce shortages resulting from low compensation.
So are we to conclude that you’d rather spend even more money on criminal courts and prisons? I’d point out that your thinking currently runs contrary to most of your prospective Presidential nominees as well as your Congressional leadership. They’ve finally had enough of more spending for more incarceration. Even privatization hasn’t helped, since most of the private corrections programs have cost more in civil liability settlements than they ever saved. So if we don’t hire teachers, and we don’t hire prison guards, and we restrict access to family planning services, how do you plan to deal with all the low income children? Elect Johnathan Swift?
@4 You know, Bickle, if you’re really a doctor (and I’m giving you the benefit of doubt on that), then you’re probably a pretty smart guy, although there are stupid doctors. I’m not saying you’re necessarily one of them, but you post a lot of stupid shit on this blog.
The bottom line is that society needs teachers and lawyers to function. If everyone trains to write code we won’t have a functioning economy or society. The answer is NOT to tell young people, “Learn to write code.” The answer is that we need doctors, lawyers, accountants, dentists, teachers, nurses, social workers, dental hygienists, car mechanics, aircraft assemblers, truck drivers, repairmen, janitors, and so on. The answer is that anyone who shows up to work, puts in a full work week, and gets the work done and does it right, should earn enough to live on. We’re a rich enough society that we can afford that.
Get your head out of your ass.
@5 “The situation facing law graduates is that their field is massively oversupplied.”
That is correct. Law schools are cash cows. Many of the come-lately institutions that have gone into the legal education business only care about the revenue that law schools generate and don’t care what happens to their students after they graduate. Some are dishonest to prospective students about what the job prospects are for new lawyers.
The solution is to close some law schools, produce fewer law graduates, and for the remaining law schools to teach law students the skills they need to get jobs in a changing legal marketplace.
Our society and economy need a certain number of lawyers to function. In an ideal world, demand would align with need, the supply of lawyers would match the demand, and those going into the field would be the individuals with the aptitude, temperament, and other traits that make them well-suited for this occupation. There will always be a need for good lawyers, just as there will always be a need for good journalists. Society’s responsibility is to train them and figure out a way to pay them. The students’ responsibility is to choose fields for which they have aptitude and in which there are job prospects, although the latter can get quite slippery and you want to be careful how you think about that; for example, just because oil companies are laying off petroleum engineers right now doesn’t mean we have too many petroleum engineers or should stop training new petroleum engineers, because we’re likely to need them in the future.
In the real world things usually are not as cut-and-dried as people whose thinking is guided by bumper sticker slogans and Fox “News” sound bites tend to believe they are.
@5 What did I get backwards?
@6 It sure helps to have a powerful union getting your back, doesn’t it? Not to mention socialist medicine and government bureaucrats signing your billing vouchers.
@7 I would submit that the morons who don’t vote are much less of a problem than the morons who do vote.
@8 “It takes a long time to increase health care staffing to deal with suddenly-acknowledged increased demand …”
Yeah, well, that’s also true of lawyers and teachers. If the economy changes in such a way that you suddenly have a bunch of technology startups supplying jobs for all those code writers, and their revenues depend on protecting their intellectual property, well it so happens that patent lawyers don’t grow on trees and take a long time to train.
As for teachers, what is the Republican approach? What are Republicans actually doing in states where they have pretty much a free hand to run things as they please? In some places, they’re replacing teachers with what amount to untrained minimum-wage workers. How do you suppose that’s going to work out?
@9 Not disagreeing with you on the principle, but that cuts both ways.
http://www.liberalamerica.org/.....d-taliban/
@11 GONG! Wrong answer. You’re off the show. Only an idiot would need this explained.
@8 “Obamacare means many more patients, which will require many more health care providers.”
Nah, we’ll just train people to write code that can do what radiologists do now, and do it cheaper, faster, and better.
@12,
I really can only marvel at the enduring implication of excessive power wielded by teacher’s unions. Isn’t the real reason we find teacher strikes so troublesome is because they are so hard to break? I’d submit that a garbage strike is about as disruptive to civic life. And yet, as most of the large waste companies have learned, they can be broken. Plenty of American cities have experienced garbage strikes. But we don’t engage in very much hand wringing about excessive power of the unions representing garbage collectors.
So what do we learn if we examine the difficulty of breaking a teacher strike? I think we learn that even under the best of circumstances there is always a relative shortage of qualified replacement workers. Some of that is owing to state laws (probably not bad laws either). But most of it is owing to BFOQs. Unsubstantiated rumors not withstanding, most unemployed college graduates are not qualified to fill in even for a day or two.
So if we acknowledge that a master teacher, with 25 years of experience, multiple advanced degrees and professional certifications, employed in a well funded district is “generously compensated” then why do you suppose the profession is struggling to attract applicants? Could it possibly be starting pay and working conditions? And why does it naturally follow that low starting pay and poor working conditions arise from senior incumbents screwing the new kids? If they were lawyers, we’d probably conclude that the senior share holders of the firm generally earned much more than new associates because they are worth more to the firm. And proposals to improve starting pay and working conditions at the expense of senior partners are balanced against value to the firm, usually with new associates coming out the losers. So how do law firms resolve this? By driving billings. Which in this context is about the same thing as raising taxes.
I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but I have a freind who just moved to Florida with his wife and newborn Son. His wife was a teacher here in the Northeast prior to having the baby.
I was able to see them before they left for good. They went down and bought a new house then returned after a couple of week for their final belongings. I asked his wife if she was going to start work again, as a teacher, soon because the son would be about 3-4 months old or 2 (maternity leave would be over and it was the summer time, so she would be starting in the fall assuming she did find a job as a teacher). Her response was that teachers in Florida don’t get paid that well, and it was better to staty home with the baby (I guess meaning that it wouldn’t be worth working if after daycare costs the added money didn’t amount to anything).
Kind of sounds like welfare (you can make more money staying home than working a 40 hour week).
Not much incentive to work if you don’t get paid well for it, or well enough to make it worhtwhile.
@23 Teachers are not generously compensated. CEOs, bankers, and lobbyists are generously compensated.
Speaking of CEOs and bankers, a bank CEO says his (highly profitable) industry can afford to, and should, pay its tellers, interns, and mail room clerks a minimum of $15 an hour. Three-fourths of America’s tellers earn less.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/on.....nimum-pay/
Yet another example of stupid, brainless, racist profiling. I hope he sues. This crap has to end, and the way to end it is by making people who do it pay big money, so they’ll think twice before doing it again.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hu.....ccusation/
Looks like both parties are on board with the idea that in the Republican dash to cut public spending, society went too far in shifting more of higher education costs onto students, and now we need to provide students with tuition relief.
Here in Washington State, in this year’s legislative session, GOP legislators came up with a plan to reduce tuition at our public colleges. Today, in New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton will unveil her plan to do that nationwide.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/hi.....lity-plan/
@18 The morons that do vote every time are older, right wing Republicans, i.e. White, racist and rural. They don’t want to pay for schools. They don’t want to pay for anything that might benefit anyone but themselves. And at least they have the sense to know the importance of voting. That’s a point in their favor.
@8
“Obamacare means many more patients, which will require many more health care providers. That, also, will not keep pace with demand. Unless we import them. Or offshore the work, as can be done with imaging interpretations, for expediency and to reduce professional staff costs.”
I thought Obamacare was a jobs killer?
You mean there will be a net loss of jobs because of Obamacare? After more doctors and Insurance company people are needed because of more people getting proper care, or is it because Obamacare will create healthier people who should require less expensive medical care?
@30 “I thought Obamacare was a jobs killer?”
It only kills the jobs that Republicans care most about — part-time fast food workers and restaurant servers. Maybe they care about those jobs because those are the only jobs that a Republican-managed economy creates. It’s fine with the Bickles of the world if socialized medicine creates more doctor jobs and/or higher pay for doctors. He’s not complaining about that.
Let’s replace stupid laws and social mores with reasonable medical decisions that cost less and are better for patients and their families.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/10/.....index.html
Why should a CEO who decides to pay his company’s workers a minimum of $70,000 a year have to defend that decision?
http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/0.....index.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: I guess he feels it’s necessary because Republicans have spent the last 35 years (ever since Saint Ronnie) convincing the American public that workers are public enemy #1 and any wage, however low, is a form of stealing.
In Sweden today, a madman with a knife killed two people and severely injured a third at an IKEA store.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/10/.....index.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: There’s a lesson for Americans in this. Imagine how many more people would be dead if he’d had access to an assault rifle with a drum magazine holding 100 rounds of high-powered military ammunition, like virtually anyone can buy at retail gun shops here in the States.
An intelligent commentary — far more than anything Bickle’s posted — on the disruption of Bernie Sanders’ Seattle event.
Teachers should give the private sector a try to compare government employment with private sector employment. They may realize that, generally speaking, government employment is better than working in the private sector.
If only all the victims had guns but wait.. that’d mean the madman more likely than not would be packing too and even more people would be killed and maimed aping what is now becoming a daily occurrence in this country.. the good ole USA.
Nevermind…
“…unless we import (doctors).”
Hold that thought for a minute, and consider the possible implications of normalized relations with (and easier immigration from) Cuba.
Help Wanted Dep’t
President Obama needs a new legislative assistant.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/10/.....index.html
Roger Rabbit Commentary: That’s a strange way to throw away a glamorous $125,000-year job. Oh well, there’s always waitressing to fall back on. The problem is it doesn’t pay as well and you have to wait on dicks like Stefan Sharansky The Waitress Hater.
@36 I once knew a teacher who quit his teaching job, started a toy importing business, and now lives in a $2.4 million mansion. Another teacher I knew married an investment banker and now lives in a mansion and rides around in a Porsche. No one makes that kind of money in the public sector. ALL the rich people are in the private sector. But here’s a friend Jack assuring us that public workers lead cushy lives compared to folks in the private sector. I suppose that’s true if you’re working for a Republican’s idea of a minimum wage.
The NRA and GOP want every yahoo to have a gun. This is what happens when they do.
http://www.king5.com/story/new...../30903483/
Remember Chris Christie’s debate remark that Gee-Dub appointed him U.S. Attorney the day before the 9/11/01 attacks? Seems like a remarkable coincidence, doesn’t it? It’s fiction.
http://handbill.us/?p=58332
Roger Rabbit Commentary: What else his Christie fibbed about? His involvement in Bridgegate? What will he lie to us about if he becomes president? Some pissant country he wants to invade (Nicaragua?) acquiring yellowcake? But the polls say he isn’t going to be president, so I guess we shouldn’t start worrying just yet.
@39 I wonder why CNN felt her salary was important to the story.
Why didn’t CNN post the picture and salaries of the secret service members who have fucked up? Maybe for security reasons?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/03/11/.....ite-house/
Actually from this video they show an animated version of the car crash and the two animated guys in the car appear black.
Why do people have issues with the teacher’s union? http://teachersunionexposed.com/protecting.cfm
According to the pro-education reform documentary Waiting for ‘Superman,’ one out of every 57 doctors loses his or her license to practice medicine.
One out of every 97 lawyers loses their license to practice law.
In many major cities, only one out of 1000 teachers is fired for performance-related reasons. Why? Tenure.
Why do the HA DUMMOCRETIN heads allow the early onset senile schismatic IDIOT Wabbit to pollute every thread with nonsensical non-thread BULLSHITTIUM; creating a toilet in every thread?
Puddybud,
If “Waiting for Superman” is where you get your information then you clearly don’t know what you are talking about.
First of all what exactly do you think “tenure” is? There is no tenure in the state of Washington — and there are many states in the US that don’t even have teachers unions (because they are illegal…those states also lag significantly behind in education funding and performance by the way).
In Washington state any new teacher can be fired for any reason at all in the first 3 years of employment. So districts have 3 years to decide, and then fire someone, without any reason at all. This is known as the “provisional” period. After three years of demonstrated satisfactory performance teachers are no longer provisional employees and prior to dismissal they are entitled to a chance to improve their performance.
In Washington state once the provisional period is over, and a teacher has been deemed unsatisfactory, they can be fired in the same year, but usually it takes place over two school years. Year one is when the deficiency is observed, year two is when the teacher is working to correct the problem and either fails or succeeds. If they fail they are fired.
These are just the provisions that govern dismissal for performance reasons there are obviously other methods for dismissal including various discipline issues.
Lastly, keep in mind that a lot of teachers quit teaching. It would be interesting to compare turnover rates in education with medicine and law. I wonder if law firms and hospitals experience 20+% turnover every year. I am guessing not. So one reason for the low numbers cited in your (clearly not at all biased) link might be that other factors are not taken into account in order to try to exaggerate their point to influence people like yourself to believe something that isn’t really true. That way unions can be done away with along with their organizing power and money they donate to political campaigns. This frees up billionaires like the ones who funded “Waiting for Superman” to ensure politicians are on their payroll instead.
Just something to think about.
Why I Can No Longer Teach in Public Education
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/.....74784.html
“The amount of time lost to standardized tests that are of no use to me as a classroom teacher is mind-boggling.”
“And if I were continuing my way up the pay scale but had to deal with asinine mandates, that would be one thing. But having to comply with asinine mandates and watching my income, in the form of real dollars, decline every year?”
What is wrong with American culture that we are hellbent on destroying public education?
Another thing to consider is that many children grades 1 thru 12 are not ready to develop computer programming skills. Yet, they still need teachers.
Maintaining class discipline and not getting complaints from parents about it is the actual standard that administrators use to judge the effectiveness of a teacher. If there’s anything that administrators hate more than administrating, it’s having to deal with actual students.
We need stricter guidelines for administrators, production quotas for them, and a Toyota-like system for weeding out all of the expensive deadwood.