[skimbrel]

Really? Please don't blame the teachers for this.

This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits? The solution isn't to cut them off at the knees; the solution is to raise everyone else up to the same standards.

If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized testing, and then penalizes them for it when they do poorly, creating a vicious cycle where a failing school can never become successful because it loses more funding each year. Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980 in the name of the free market. We forgot what happens when corporate influence runs unchecked; we're learning again, and we're learning the hard way. The American experiment is dangerously close to failure.

[anamax]

> This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits?

Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security.

We blame them because they have a huge effect on who gets elected, which directly affects how much we have to pay for them.

> If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized testing,

What's your method for determining whether children are learning? We tried trusting teachers and schools - that didn't work.

> Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980

Education spending steadily increased (after inflation) during that time, so if services went down, it wasn't because of spending.

Note that the US Department of Education was a shadow of its current self in 1980, so if you're going to argue that the federal govt has dismantled itself wrt education, you get to explain why it's much bigger wrt education.

The US govt collects about as much in taxes per person as the "high tax/high services" countries. (The US actually collects significantly more per person than Canada.) Yet, we don't get the services. More money can't solve that problem.

Before you start about rates, they're not the only term in the equation. The US collects a smaller fraction of its economy, but it has a larger economy (per person). And, even with much higher rates, the US has never collected more than 22% of the economy in taxes. The sustainable max appears to be around 20%. (People "adjusted" to the 21.9% and got the number back to 20. That's going to happen when the tax code is used to encourage/discourage.)

[krakensden]

> Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security.

Good benefits yes, good salary, not so much: http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/degrees/education

for instance. I really have no idea how people complain that teachers are overpaid. It beats picking lettuce, but consider the opportunity cost of a bachelors and a teaching certificate. They could be making a lot more money if they were doing anything else.

[jbooth]

Yeah, that's one of those "believe it because I want to believe it" things.

I mean, do these people actually know any teachers? Why aren't they teachers themselves if it's so great?

I know for a fact that I'm not a teacher because the pay is shit and I'm not a good enough person to sacrifice my lifestyle for it. At least I can admit that.

[anamax]

"public employees" != "teachers".

> They could be making a lot more money if they were doing anything else.

And we also know that they're getting things that they value more than said "extra money". (The alternative is that they're incapable of evaluating their own utility function.)

That said, I'm willing to pay more to get more. Of course, that means paying other folks, because current salaries are adequate for the current teachers. (You don't want to argue that they'd teach better if they were paid more.)

However, "get more" requires some proof, not a "you'll get better people" argument.

So, how do you propose to measure the benefits that you expect to get from these new teachers? (Surely you're not willing to pay for something that you don't get....)

[skimbrel]

> Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security. We blame them because they have a huge effect on who gets elected, which directly affects how much we have to pay for them.

So you're saying public employees are one of the few segments of the US population who have enough input on how they're compensated (via electoral control of their bosses). If private-sector workers are unable to negotiate comparable compensation for their work, then maybe we should blame labor practices in the private sector. Unionized industries aside, compensation is almost entirely at the discretion of the employer. Isn't that a little screwed up? Again, what I am saying here is that the solution to "hey, those public employees have a better deal" is not "take it away from them", because nobody wins in that case. Instead, demand the same deal from your employer. It really wouldn't hurt their bottom line that much.

> What's your method for determining whether children are learning? We tried trusting teachers and schools - that didn't work.

I will admit that I don't have a real answer to this. But I am a fairly recent graduate of the public education system (finished high school in 2006) and I can tell you that 90% of my graduating class managed to pass the tests but were still complete idiots who couldn't think for themselves. (Sadly, I could say this about at least a few of my fellow UC Berkeley 2010 graduates as well.)

Mandating testing gets you graduates who are good at passing tests. Tests are not the real world.

> The US govt collects about as much in taxes per person as the "high tax/high services" countries. (The US actually collects significantly more per person than Canada.) Yet, we don't get the services. More money can't solve that problem.

Okay, then how do we solve it? For one, we could stop spending a trillion dollars per year on our military. Beyond that, we could probably eliminate a lot of bureaucracy. My high school had a principal and three assistant principals for 900 students. Probably a little unnecessary.

Teachers are not the ones to penalize here, dammit. When I have kids, I damn well want their teachers to be well-paid and happy with their jobs. Forty hours per week for thirteen years is a huge amount of time, and there's a lot that can be done to screw up a kid in that time.

[anamax]

> So you're saying public employees are one of the few segments of the US population who have enough input on how they're compensated (via electoral control of their bosses).

There's a big difference between CA and Ford - I can choose whether I want to take the risk that Ford is doing something dumb.

> Instead, demand the same deal from your employer. It really wouldn't hurt their bottom line that much.

Ah, yet another expert who isn't putting his money where is mouth is.

If you're correct, the consequences (better for you, better for your employees, worse for "bad employers) are pretty close to a moral imperative.

Yet....

> I will admit that I don't have a real answer to this.

Then how do you know that the existing system isn't an improvement?

Note that "{x} is bad" doesn't imply "{y} is good", or even that a good {y} exists.

> But I am a fairly recent graduate of the public education system (finished high school in 2006) and I can tell you that 90% of my graduating class managed to pass the tests but were still complete idiots who couldn't think for themselves. (Sadly, I could say this about at least a few of my fellow UC Berkeley 2010 graduates as well.)

You're talking about folks who could read. I'm concerned with folks who graduated despite not being able to read.

> Tests are not the real world.

Neither is anything else.

> My high school had a principal and three assistant principals for 900 students. Probably a little unnecessary.

Actually, a huge fraction of the money disappears before the school. How much educational benefit do you think that it produces?

> Teachers are not the ones to penalize here, dammit. When I have kids, I damn well want their teachers to be well-paid and happy with their jobs.

I do too, but we're pouring enough money into the system. If you can't make sure that it gets to the right place, you're out of luck.

Why are you more upset with the folks who are unwilling to waste more money than you are with the folks who are wasting the money? The latter are stealing from your (future) kids....

[matwood]

I would be interested if that salary included only teachers or also administrators. Some districts have nearly a 1:1 ratio of administrators to teachers. To me that sounds really high.