[waynemr]

The sad and infuriating thing is that good teachers leaving public service is precisely what conservative groups strive for, in their "starve the beast" agendas. As more quality staff leave, they [conservative groups] can claim greater and greater failures in the public system and siphon more tax dollars into private voucher schools.

[jdoenejdk]

Newsflash: US schools already spend the most per student in the world ($15,000), by far more than most nations, yet still perform at the bottom of OECD nations. Do you want to get your head out of your ass?

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-globa...

[scott_s]

1. I think that number includes private money.

2. Comparing salaries across countries is not that useful - teachers aren't going to go to another country to teach. But they will go to another, higher paying job near them. So the more meaningful salary comparison to make is with the amount of education and work-time a teacher needs, how much do alternative jobs in the same area pay?

[sethammons]

This. As a teacher, I could make about $45k a year, working through the summer. Work through the weekends on lesson plans, and through the evening grading. Easily 60 to 70 hours a week. Winter vacation and spring break might allow me to catch up on grading as there is always more to catch up on. As a software developer, I make over twice that. I typically work 40ish hours a week, and have vacation.

[blister]

Why do you have to grade so often? Aren't you responsible for deciding how much work to grade? Are you certain assigning homework is the most effective way to gauge student understanding of concepts?

That's something I'll never buy about teachers. All of the ones I know complain about how much time they spend grading papers. I just want to scream "Stop assigning homework!"

Honestly, maybe what we need is new and creative teaching methods that happen in class rather than just piling on work to the students.

(Don't take this as a slam on you, I'm just curious why teachers always go the "Give them homework" route. Kids end up with hours of homework all the dang time.)

[scott_s]

Personally, by the time I reached middle school, homework was when the learning happened.

[tokenadult]

The sad and infuriating thing is that good teachers leaving public service is precisely what conservative groups strive for

I challenge you directly to find any example of a conservative person saying that they want good teachers to leave public service. Most voters and taxpayers who have considered the issue want bad teachers to leave the public payroll, to make more room for good teachers. Young people from poor families need to be taught well to help children from poor families advance in developed countries,[1] and several researchers on education suggest that simply encouraging the very worst teachers to change careers might have a huge benefit for school effectiveness for whole countries.[2]

[1] http://www.ams.org/notices/200502/fea-kenschaft.pdf

[2] http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/economic-value-hig...

[JediWing]

You expect them to come out and say it? How quaint.

Private corporations want government sponsored private education. For example, (thankfully ex) governor of Pennsylvania has made aggressive funding cuts to traditional public education, and he was heavily funded by private schools, to the point where his radio appearances on the local talk network were sponsored by "PA cyber charter school".

On top of that, traditional public schools are union, and the political leanings of unions are well known.

Defunding and destroying non private schools is an obvious goal of the conservative movement.

[debacle]

There are many wide-right libertarians who want to completely dismantle the public education system. Reducing the overall quality of public school teachers advances their cause.

[tokenadult]

That's not the same thing that I asked. Nor have you given any examples of anyone saying what I was asking about.

AFTER EDIT: I just received in today's postal mail a mailpiece from a public advocacy organization (I'm not familiar with the organization) pointing out that current union contracts in Minnesota's public schools still require that school districts that have to downsize staff (as some must do as the number of school-age children in Minnesota declines) have to lay off teachers by seniority, not by effectiveness. This organization's policy argument is that any time a school district hires, lays off, or promotes teachers, it should do so on the basis of demonstrated helpfulness to learners learning, not by the order in which the teachers were first hired. That makes sense as a way to staff schools better to help learners, which is what teachers are all about.

[panzagl]

"Starve the beast" refers to Federal government. Schools are run at the most local level of government. Conservatives disagree with the growing role of Federal government in schools, not the idea of schools in general.

[cantankerous]

While I think you're right in principle, I think the parts of the GOP and Conservative groups pushing the "starve the beast" line have completely lost control of the message. I see the same mentality applied to all levels of government in my home state, pretty much invariably in every local area.

Basically: taxes==always bad, government==bad at doing anything (on any level), private sector==always good, thus should to pay fewer taxes year after year....so it can create jobs?

It's very troubling, especially in suburban areas where community fixtures like good school programs buttress property values, when people don't understand that their private lives are very much reliant upon well-funded, and well-run civil structures that may be completely orthogonal to their lives.

[willvarfar]

For those of us not from the US, which [conservative groups] are you talking about? Republicans in general? Or some other group?

[analog31]

"I hope I live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won't have any public schools. The churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them." -- Jerry Falwell

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell

[jdoenejdk]

And how many US elected Republicans in Congress share those views?

[scentoni]

Depends on whether you're talking about party primaries or general elections. An example of this phenomenon wrt a different topic http://www.vox.com/2015/1/5/7494179/immigration-republican-p...

[hueving]

Anti-government conservatives. Republicans in general fall into this category.

[seehafer]

Don't make the mistake of confusing rhetoric with action. Republicans haven't meaningfully shrunk the size of government since Eisenhower. Nixon grew the government substantially (EPA, HHS, Dept of Education), Reagan talked small-government and acted differently, HW stayed the course and W was a "compassionate conservative" who added what was biggest healthcare entitlement in the last twenty years (Medicare Part D).

[javert]

Most Republicans are in favor of public schools and, in general, of having a much larger government that a night watchman state, including a pretty robust social safety net.

You cannot call these people "anti-government."

Look at George W. Bush. A good example of a Republican. He certainly expanded the US government, which (in my opinion) was already massively oversized.

[NateEag]

As someone who grew up in conservative homeschooling culture and still has ties to it, I should point out that many, many conservative homeschoolers are appalled at vouchers and the idea of government funding in general.

They might like to see the public school system go away, but they don't want the tax dollars.