Media pundit was interviewed on the Morning Joe Show where he asserted that teachers make $120,000. This, apparently, is an outrage, showing what leeches teachers are. Apparently you can say anything on these talk shows because they are about opinions, not facts or information or knowledge.
Of course, he was wrong. Rebecca Klein writes on Huffington Post that the average teachers’ salary is $56,393.
Kudlow said he was referring to New York City’s new teacher contract, but he was wrong there too. Klein wrote: “Under the new contract, the maximum salary of teachers is $119,565 per year –- but that is only after at least 22 years of experience in the classroom, a master’s degree and 30 additional academic credits. The starting salary of a teacher in the city is $54,411.”
There should be a rule that when anyone complains about teachers’ salaries, they should be required to disclose their own income, as well as their working hours. I would not be surprised if those who complain the loudest earn many times more than teachers, work fewer hours, and add little of social value, especially if they get paid to chatter in front of a microphone. Let them have their spoils but have the decency not to criticize the pay of those who do the hard work of society and deserve every penny they get.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Great proposal! What does Kudlow make???
No one ever asks Kudlow. Time to ask.
and I want to know what degrees he holds, and what service he has given besides blowing smoke through his ass.
Or coke up his nose. His habit cost $10,000 per month. I believe in redemption but hypocrisy is so gauche. And if I just had one month of his cash spent on drugs, I could buy classroom supplies for years.
When I left NYC in 1998, forced out in my 20th year of full service with a Master’s degree, and 60 credits above it, I was making $58k. Had I reached longevity, I would have made 70K. I began in 1963 with a salary of $5,200.
I subbed for 12 years in East Ramapo NY, while I raised my kids, and when I returned to NYC in 1990, I was paid $38k.
No one goes into teaching of the money, but what is egregious is the constant lies.
This is an unchecked Orwellian society.
Let’s get a few of those pesky facts on the table. This years education budget as posted by mayor indicates the education expenditures will be a whopping 32% of the city’s total budget. Of this, healthcare and pensions represent a 72% “load” on salaries. As a businessman, i always estimated 25% to 30% for these same “loads”.
Further, the mystery savings in healthcare are a true fantasy. There is already a decent cost saving procedure in place for drugs and there simply isn’t any billion plus dollars to be saved. The UFT truly got a wonderful deal.
Question? Should 32% of every tax dollar be spend on NYC education?
Wrong question. Your facts are no t merely pesky, they are deceptive and downright lacking in empathy.
You need some enlightenment on the subject of disagreement vs disparagement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC7ANGMy0yo&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs
The question is how does the city take in enough money to meet its obligations to educate its people, fix infrastructure and provide for the common good… MAYBE by eliminating corporate welfare and loopholes that let the 1% take home untaxed wealth as money earns money but labor does not.
Facts cannot have empathy. That’s why they are called facts.
So it sounds like your solution is raise taxes, increase the education expenditures and watch New York City become Detroit.
Susan Lee Schwartz: with all due respect, I am reminded of a response by NY teacher, 5/10/2014, 12:39 PM, which ended with:
“Why would you ask such a ridiculous question? Better yet, why am I responding?”
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/05/10/anthony-cody-why-computers-cant-grade-student-essays/
Your call—I mean that sincerely—but periodically some of the commenters on this blog remind us not to feed the shills and trolls. It just spurs them on.
Let me put this another way. You are trying to respond to someone who thinks the following is encouraging not admonitory:
“He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts — for support rather than illumination.” [Andrew Lang]
But what can you expect when someone is strictly adhering to the Marxist playbook:
“The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
¿? Yes, Groucho. The famous one.
😎
Hee, hee. I like humor.
Instead posing a rhetorical question, be honest and just state your opinion, along with your reasoning. Lacking that basic honesty, you are merely teacher and pubic school ‘baiting’ and teacher ‘bashing’,
Public Schools are not a business; that is the domain of Charter schools. Public schools provide an essential and required public service: they are a ‘right’.
Teachers should be earning good salaries and receiving commensurate health care benefits that befits their central importance. Lest we forget, Charter schools are sucking huge sums of public fund from the public school budget, do not pay rent for public space and payi insanely high salaries to their executives (see, for example, Eve Moskowitz), while ripping off their teachers.
A modest proposal: public school teachers should be paid as if they worked for TFA and receive benefits commensurate with that status. Let public school teachers eat cake.
Gipper is correct – facts can not have empathy. Our response and use of those facts must have empathy, or else we are no better than an unthinking machine.
Investing in education is a tricky proposal. The money required to educate all students may seem deceptively high, and the returns aren’t seen for many years.
It should be noted, however, that money spent on education is returned many times over to the state in the form of more productive citizens and lower crime rates.
I would suggest that states should invest in education first and foremost. In Wyoming, the state has made significant investments in education (notably in teacher salary and facilities), and is enjoying an unemployment rate that is under 4%. Admittedly, there are many factors contributing to the low unemployment rate, but the elected officials have had the wisdom to invest their windfall into education to create a sustainable future for the state and it’s citizens.
Hmmm. Public schools are a ‘right.’ Hmmm. Are public schools an ‘inalienable’ right? Are public schools a right with which we are endowed by our ‘Creator’?
I’d like hear a bit of discussion justifying your premise.
Public education may be good public policy, but I wonder whether it is a ‘right’ in the sense that the enumerated ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ are inalienable ‘rights’.
“I’d like hear a bit of discussion justifying your premise.”
I bet you would love that, and THAT is why no one wants to engage with y ou because they do not need to justify observable reality.
What is “obvious” to some is not patent reality to others. What is obvious is that the earth is flat, but it isn’t ‘true.’ It is just NOT obvious that a government provided education for all is a fundamental right as mentioned in the Declaration of Independence. THREE rights are named, and there are presumably others among which Jefferson mentions and identifies those three.
The question is whether a government provided education is among the inalienable rights given us by our Creator.
It’s a real, and legitimate question for debate. We don’t disagree usually on the three rights which are named, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but it takes a bit of argument to place a free public education within the class of inalienable rights.
I don’t believe it is such a right, because to make it a right, we must take away some part of a named right, namely the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness I take to imply property rights. If the state has a duty to provide an education then it can tax the whole population to do so. The right to an education is a positive right. If it is a right, someone has a duty to provide it.
By contrast, the three named rights are ‘negative’ rights. Liberty, the right not to be imprisoned. Life, the right not to be killed. Pursuit of happiness, the right to freedom of choice of the kind of life one wants.
My assumption is that inalienable rights are all negative rights. But is that true?
It’s these matters that I want to hear discussed, and myself shown to be wrong, if I am wrong.
HU,
Come on now HU, no need to stir that “constitutional right” pot. You know that, yes it is a guaranteed constitutional right. Just because it is the state constitution that guarantees that right and not the federal constitution makes no difference as to that right. The courts have ruled that to be true on more than many occasions.
You’ve admitted as much. Unless you’re just checking to see if the posters have the “right” constitutional knowledge-ha ha!
Duane,
HU lacks a smidgen of knowledge about constitutional law. I am relieved that you assumed the onerous, wearisome task of responding to his ignorant, provocative posting. You have a good sized portion of patience.
Actually, HU wants to check our knowledge so he can show how much smarter he is. They gave him a hard time in the teacher’s room when he did his thing, and he sees us all as those ill informed teachers who would not argue with him… for good reason.
Duane, you are right about the distinction between State and Federal rights. I bring it up again because it is a difference worth while keeping in mind. The STATE constitutions provide a positive right but they could change that. They could not do so, if the Federal Constitution were to stipulate that an education is an inalienable right that must prevail in all 50 states. Thus, I argue that it is NOT a differention without a difference.
It would be best if people here would not speculate about my motives and personality. To do so SEEMS like an effort to avoid the real question through social pressure.
Diane is gracious enough to let me stay in her living room. You should not assume that I’m not serious about my questions.
To simply say, as Susan does, that something is obvious is not to engage in public discourse. I realize the main discourse on this site is emotional and strategic support for public education teachers who are having a hard time.
If people are not interested in engaging on the issues I raise, I can see that, but to reply with a personal remark is to try to have your cake and eat it too. Refutation by snarkery and mockery is not refutation. To name call was never refutation, but if you are not interested in engaging the issue, at least you might refrain from mere personal remarks.
HU , You have every right to maintain your political and philosophical preferences. Your view of education as a state-based “positive” rights versus an in alienable right merely displays your woeful ignorance of the role of the judicial branch of government and the supremacy clause of the constitution. Go back and read some Supreme Court and Federal Court law. I figure that it will make no difference to you given the nature of your belief system, but at least you will not be so palpably ignorant about the federal courts and the law.
Perhaps you could guide me to the appropriate cases. I don’t have legal training, but I do understand that Supreme Court decisions might have elevated a fair and equal education to an inalienable right through its decisions. I ask for the relevant cases because I don’t think they have actually done so.
Educate me.
Can I claim a constitutional right to be educated by you? You see what I mean about positive and negative rights? If there is a right to an education then someone must be under a duty to supply it. Obviously YOU are under no real compulsion to educate ME, no matter what I ask for. I claim the same is true of children under the constitution.
All right, so stick to the topic and put it out there, Ronald Reagan, Jr. What do you think teachers are worth? Minimum wage like Wal-Mart workers? Maybe a bit above that? Or maybe they should be paid fairly in accordance with the professionalism of their field, their education, their responsibility level and their working hours (which, BTW, are not merely 9:00 to 3:00 or whatever you might claim – if teaching is that easy, why don’t you take it up?).
Hey, Dienne, I did take it up, and worked at it full time for 42 years, summers, and evenings. Teachers are NEVER paid what they are ‘worth’ in cosmic and spiritual and psychological terms, but they can only GET what they are worth in the market, which reflects neither virtue nor effort, but only whether they are in scarce supply. It may seem like unfairness, but you know yourself that life is not intrinsically fair. They are of infinite worth, but simply cannot be paid infinitely.
I deny that teaching is a professional field, to begin with. It would be nice if we all could be paid for the number of education hours we have accumulated, but number of hours, education level, is unfortunately no guarantee of anyone’s having a ‘real’ education, a level of education where we could be trusted to practice as independent practitioners like doctors, lawyers, and engineers.
WE teachers ALWAYS require an institutional context, and school, often a government school in which to practice. The institution takes the legal responsibility for us and guarantees our responsibility.
In one sense, they are baby sitters. Baby sitters actually make more money, but they are not guaranteed the hourly work. What teachers do in the way of transmission of the cultural heritage is ‘invaluable,’ quite literally, of such importance that it cannot be valued, or priced. But anyone who can read and write and do arithmetic CAN transmit that priceless cultural intellectual heritage.
We like to think that middle school and high school teachers go beyond the basics of reading, writing, and ‘arithmetic, but I wonder if they do. The textbooks are written by specialists in biology, or government, or math, and the teachers if they are good enough learn as they teach. But anyone with a BA can do that. So the supply of teachers is as abundant as the number of college graduates.
And, since teachers do not have any really specific professional knowledge or competence, they are a dime a dozen.
Unions and tenure are designed to cope with the over abundance of supply problems. They are a kind of wage control, very much like a guild. Just because anyone CAN learn to teach, makes it imperative to control entry to the guild by apprenticeship rules. IT does take a certain amount of determination to get through four years of college, and it does take a certain temperament to survive in a school setting, and experience, but most people could do that if they really wanted to spend their lives with children and adolescents rather than other adults.
I started out at $5500 a year, and adjusting for inflation, that’s about the same as I was getting at the end of my career, or rather time. I can hardly complain. I choose it, partly in ignorance, but partly because I wasn’t educated to do anything else. I was grateful I was able to survive within the supportive framework of the school, my economic exoskeleton so to speak.
But I am not under the illusion that only I could have done what I did. I did hang in long enough in school to qualify for the job, and I do confess a certain intrinsic interest in books, so I was lucky to be able to do what I liked and still feed my family.
I was in private schools all my life, and thus was paid about 30% less than my public school compeers, but I doubt I could have survived in public schools with the class sizes and ranges of motivation you all encounter daily.
You said here on this place for teachers, on this blog in what you admit is a ‘teacher’s room, and actually IS like one where bright, dedicated PROFESSIONAL come to converse :” teachers do not have any really specific professional knowledge or competence, they are a dime a dozen” and then YOU admitted that “I was in private schools all my life” which is where he picked up this ‘FACT that teachers lack professional knowledge.
Working in private school could possibly have prevented you from observing real professionals at work, as I did. I am so proud to have worked with the brilliant, dedicated professionals that took children out of poverty and into a successful adulthood, because THEY ACTUALLY UNDERSTOOD WHAT BEST PRACTICE IS FOR THE PROFESSIONAL. I witnessed it first hand in one school, my last one, where the entire staff was professional, even the young ones, and where staff development was a genuine outcome. I was so proud to sit and talk to my colleagues on such a level. Our bio teacher had a Ph’d and hours each week figuring out how to meet the needs of students who had difficulty with the complexity of her subject.
In FACT, the only way that ‘teachers’ can ‘teach’ some populations of emergent learners is to have studied the diversity of learning styles and applied the successful BEST PRACTCE that enables it.
I would bet that people who do not know pedagogy is a profession have never read The American Educator http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2011/index.cfm
I get a subscription, and still read it four times a year. It is an eye opener when one sees what is possible, what works…. but then there are those that like their eyes wide shut, so they can continue to church their own, private ‘worldview’…which is fine… as long as they do not stand up among real professionals to deride them.
Maybe, you can move yourself from the realm of opinion you so despise in others, to the observable reality of the conversation between real professionals, whose existence of which you seem to be unaware.
What makes me genuinely sad, is that a teacher sees us as less than we are, and also, tha your perspective is so skewed and bitter, that you stand up among genuine professionals and scorn them in the name of DEBATE AND DISCUSSION… I hope this is enough discussion for you.
You may actually be right about the difference between “professional” (public school) teaching and the relatively easy time I had in my private school where all the kids were motivated to one degree or another and all the parents were supportive most of the time, and I could therefore focus all the time on the highest intellectual content I was able to muster, from Homer to Sophocles, to Plato and Aristotle, to Dante, Milton, and Shakespeare.
I apologize for coming to conclusions based on too narrow an experience, or perhaps confusing expertise in professional pedagogy with expertise in the subject matter.
More power to you and to the professional pedagogues who are actually able to adapt curriculum delivery to a much more diverse population that I have ever had to deal with. The weakest student in my school was exactly at the national average.
I stand corrected and chastened.
Your apology is accepted. It sure takes a lot to get through to you, and I was pleasantly surprised, when (after only 3 weeks of my presence in this teacher’s room) colleagues came to my defense… partly because your disruptions were known to them, and they thought I didn’t get ‘you.” I do. Your love of debate and need to connect is obvious to all, but you need to consider that THIS site is where genuine educators struggle to find ANSWERS in the face of an assault that spreads lies and propaganda.
As far as I am concerned, I do not wish to carry on a debate or to write extensive replies to conversations here. I would like to suggest to you, Harlan, that you read this link from Michael S Roth. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/10/young-minds-in-critical-condition/ It is about the way we ask students to use their critical thinking skills to analyze.
Roth suggests that “Instead of trying to find mistakes in the texts, I suggest we take the point of view that our authors created these apparent “contradictions” in order to get readers like us to ponder more interesting questions. Yes, there’s a certain satisfaction in being critical of our authors, but isn’t it more interesting to put ourselves in a frame of mind to find inspiration in them?” I know that you are dedicated to improving the critical thinking skills of your students…a Roth is… his philosophy is something to consider… and get this… I will not debate this with you… I just thought you might enjoy this possibility, and it might actually be what you did, and could do here.
I was struck by the paragraphs below, because I am exhausted from the constant battering that is the way it is when one holds an opinion that conflicts with someone’s dearly cherished worldview. I have copied below the part that caught my eye, and the last paragraph made me think of YOU!
“Our best college students are very good at being critical. In fact being smart, for many, means being critical. Having strong critical skills shows that you will not be easily fooled. It is a sign of sophistication, especially when coupled with an acknowledgment of one’s own “privilege.”
“. Taking things apart, or taking people down, can provide the satisfactions of cynicism. But this is thin gruel.” YES, HARLAN!
“The skill at unmasking error, or simple intellectual one-upmanship, is not totally without value, but we should be wary of creating a class of self-satisfied debunkers — or, to use a currently fashionable word on campus, people who like to “trouble” ideas. In overdeveloping the capacity to show how texts, institutions or people fail to accomplish what they set out to do, we may be depriving students of the chance to learn as much as possible from what they study.’ YES! HARLAN.
“In campus cultures where being smart means being a CRITICAL UNMASKER students may become too good at showing how things can’t possibly make sense. They may close themselves off from their potential to find or create meaning and direction from the books, music and experiments they encounter in the classroom.’ YES HARLAN!
“Once outside the university, these students may try to score points by displaying the critical prowess for which they were rewarded in school, but those points often come at their own expense. As debunkers, they contribute to a cultural climate that has little tolerance for finding or making meaning — a culture whose intellectuals and cultural commentators get “liked” by showing that somebody else just can’t be believed. But this cynicism is no achievement.” YES. Harlan!
IT IS ALSO UNHELPFUL AND COUNTERPRODUCTIVE AT THIS SITE, WHICH IS LOOKING FOR SOLUTIONS and finding real meaning in THE TOPIC AT HAND, not just identifying flaws in current policies and theories proposed by those who hold the reigns.
Thank you, Susan, for providing me a template for an alternative mode of interacting with the postings on this site. I will read Roth beyond the excerpts you provide. I do hope it all comes down to more than “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
My own view of my practice on this site is that in questioning the premises and conclusions of other I am attempting to engage in a search for truth, which I had assumed was the sole objective of everyone else here.
At many student rallies we see signs bearing the words, “Question Authority.” That’s all I thought I was doing. I wouldn’t go into a Catholic church and start questioning the evidence for transubstantiation, but this site is not a dogma infused blog, is it?
Perhaps I have deeply misunderstood why Diane pays for and maintains this ‘living room.’ If so, I will undertake to formulate a revised view of the site and of my and everyone else’s role here.
Good. My attitude is that we are here not his earth to learn. My Buddhist friends tell me this. and it is a tenant of my religion… learning is the key, and I am a life-long learner.
I learned more from my students then I taught them.
Truth is all around you; argument for argument’s sake has it ‘s place but not in this place. I have followed many blogs for ten years now, and I know the ones where argument is important. Oped is one. These guys and gals argue points for days. But I also read Perdaily.com. Go there and see how this brilliant man created a place to argue with the corrupt administration in LA.
read:http://www.perdaily.com/2013/11/lausd-gives-me-a-chance-to-be-a-hero-for-student-teachers-and-families.html
or this one :www.opednews.com/Quicklink/HAVE-REPORTERS-BECOME-POLI-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Media_Media-Bias_Media-Blackout_Media-Corruption-140322-673.html
I argue with Lenny on the phone, all the time, but I listen, too. He speaks 4 languages fluently and studied law, and with his almost eidetic memory he has things to tell me that I would not have thought about, but I do not always agree or come to the same conclusion as he does. BUT it is always civil with respect for the other person.
We teachers have been silenced and people like Lenny and Diane provide a place where we search for genuine solutions and speak out about injustice as I did no Lenny’s blog, where I also write.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
It isn’t, but if it was, I would still prefer that it went to public schools rather than hedge fund CEOs. Does that answer your question?
Answer: Yes.
“Question? Should 32% of every tax dollar be spend (SIC) on NYC education?”
I don’t know. Do you, “Gipper”? (Also, that’s a very revealing screen name you’ve chosen.)
What IS the “correct percentage” of revenue to spend on our public schools? (Would it be less, without the large profit margins demanded by charters and charter management organizations? Would it be less without charter salaries like that paid to Eva Moscowitz, who also takes a huge bite with her half-million a year “earnings” for running a school?)
In most states, education is, far and away, the biggest part of the budget; sometimes it constitutes a majority of the budget, up to 70% in some places. What, in your opinion, is more important as a single budget line item than education?)
Also, is there some “right number” some “acceptable percentage” that is generally accepted by most people, or are you looking for something that simply meets with YOUR personal blessing?
And, are we supposed to give you some sort of credibility for being a “businessman” when you consider healthcare and pensions to be a “load”, as opposed to something every working human being deserves in a decent society?
I also believe you are (intentionally?) misstating how pensions are paid for. The money for pensions is earned, for each worker, DURING the time of their employment; this is known as “deferred gratification”. Unless you’re breaking the law—by, for instance, dipping into those pension funds to occasionally pay some monthly bills—none of it should be calculated as “payroll” or “load” and none of it should have “disappeared” by the time those pension checks are due to be released.
If you’re going to post obtuse and uninformed opinions, and then try to then use those mendacious or manipulative claims to stir up “Hate The Teachers” sentiment among readers, you might want to go elsewhere—where people are more easily fooled and lied to without anyone raising an objection.
This is an interesting question. What percentage of our wealth should be spent on education, what on health care, what on all the worthy goals that require resources?
I’m looking at the OECD’s report on Education at a glance for the U.S.
1. In the United States, 42% of all 25-64 year-olds have a tertiary (higher education—you know, college) attainment, making it one of the most well-educated countries in the world. Only Canada (51%), Israel (46%), Japan (45%) and the Russian Federation (54%) have higher tertiary attainment levels among this age group.
2. Teachers in the U.S. spend between 1,050 and 1,100 hours a year teaching–much more than in almost every country.
3. The US ranks 28th (below the OECD average) in the percentage of 4-years olds in early childhood education, with a 69% enrollment rate. How does that translate? While the percentage of parents who have not attained an upper secondary education is smaller in the U.S. than in many OECD countries – 17%, compared to 33% across all OECD countries – the odds that the children of these parents will be in higher education are particularly low, at just 29% (odds of 0.29). These odds are below every other OECD country except Canada and New Zealand because early childhood education is not as well-developed in the U.S. as in some other countries.
4. What about spending? In 2010, the US spent $11,826 (this is an average and it varies from state to state) per full-time-equivalent stunt on elementary and secondary education, an an amount 39% higher than the OECD average of $8,401. At the post secondary level (college), U.S. expenditures per FTE student were $25,576, almost twice as high as the OECD average of $13,211. (National Center for Education Statistics)
5. How do developed countries compare on child poverty with 1 being the lowest child poverty rate and 35 being the worst? The US ranks 34th. The lowest is Finland and this country has what’s considered one of the best education systems in the world. We might want to ask if that’s because they have the smallest ratio of children living in poverty
In addition:
For a more accurate assessment of the performance of U.S. students, Tirozzi aligns the scores of American schools with those of other countries with comparable poverty rates. He shows the ranking of schools in the United States with less than a 10% poverty rate compared with ten countries with similar poverty numbers (in other words instead of comparing countries, Tirozzi compares similar schools):
For schools in the US with a poverty rate of 10% or less, the US had the highest PISA score with Finland coming in 2nd.
Tirozzi then matches schools with poverty rates of 10-24.9% and again the US has the highest PISA score with Canada coming in 2nd.
No other country tested had a poverty rate approaching 25%. However, compared with other countries, the U.S. average of 502 (PISA) for schools with poverty rates between 25.9-49.9%, was still in the upper half of the scores.
The only other country with schools that had a childhood poverty rate of 75% or more was Mexico and the US PISA average was 446 to 425 for Mexico.
http://www.schoolfunding.info/news/policy/2011-01PISA.php3
Tirozzi’s conclusion: “the real crisis is the level of poverty in too many of our (U.S.) schools and the relationship between poverty and student achievement. Our lowest achieving schools are the most under-resourced schools with the highest number of disadvantaged students.”
My Conclusion: Due to the 2nd highest childhood poverty rate, the U.S. will have to spend more money to fund high quality early childhood education programs. Does that mean Pearson will start selling tests for 3 year olds so early childhood education teachers have to teach to the test too?
And what is the solution starting with NCLB, then Race to the Top and finally Common Core? Turn your back on what’s working and test them without mercy and ignore the need of early childhood education for children who live in poverty. Instead, fail public schools and turn them over over to private-sector Charter schools that kick the most difficult kids to teach out so only the easiest to teach kids who would have been successful in the public schools anyway stay.
The results if we stay on this insane testing path while ignoring early childhood education programs: The U.S. will increasing prison populations until almost everyone who lives in poverty is locked up, and it already has the largest prison population on the planet. China is in second place with almost half the number of people in prison but more than four times the total population. Imagine the increased profits for private-sector prisons when 40 million Americans are locked up and most of the guards are paid minimum wage without company health or retirement plans. And if they succeed in getting rid of or gutting Social Security as soon as they are too old to work, they will probably end up in prison too because, for sure, there will be tough vagrancy laws that lead directly to prison.
Wrong question. The Essential Queston is the one that offers a solution.
The question is what percentage of the money that corporate entities and those people who prosper by being citizens of this great country, should give back into maintaining the people who work the land, the roads the schools, the fire departments, the police, the health and education institutions. They ride those roads, they expect the services of the fire department when the wildfire threatens their million dollar home, they want the pilots and bus-drivers to be able to think and read, but they want no part of the Constitution’s preamble to promote the common good.
And one last thing, the pilgrims did more than give us Thanksgiving… they had an ethical and moral compunction to give 1/3 of their harvest and profits to the community. It was their duty to support the community.
How much should go to education? How much should go to support the health plans and perks of congressmen so they can stay elected for life? How long should we pay for military projects that were supposed to be discontinued, but were not because Congress is owned by the death merchants.
Give us a break. Ask a relevant question.
Susan,
What is your answer to you essential question and how will you persuade folks that it is correct?
Presumably 33%, as with the pilgrims.
If 33% is the answer! we are not too far of that for federal taxes, at least for the top 1%. Add in state and local taxes and I think we have made it.
Here is my source for Federal: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=456
If the problem that they created in order to end everything for the middle class was the austerity budgets which starved every agency and institution, and if they were able to bail out the criminals who stole our nation’s wealth, and if they can continue the subsidies to wealthy corporate food and energy companies, then they seem to have enough money to pay for education and health, not to mention infrastructure.
The only way to finance fro a healthy middle class, and also show some humanity to the enormous poverty-stricken class of Americans, then we need to immediately stop talking about closing loopholes and do it, so that it is not just me and my middle class peers who give 33% of our teachers salaries to the government to finance corporate welfare… and have nothing left over for education our people which is the one and only road to opportunity and prosperity.
We cannot continue to impoverish our middle class and at the same time spin the big lie that we are picking on the job creators, which we all know is a ton of poop, to quote Peter Greene. We can no longer have talking heads who spread the big lie that it is those lazy people who won’t work, and at the same time, expect people to hold two jobs and still have to choose between food and rent… forget the doctor and college tuition.
If the issue in a budget is incoming funds, then all citizens have to pull their weight. The flying the ointment, of course is our Congress, which will not pass a bill unless it is filled with loopholes that the lobbiests can roll through and amendments which has as its only function to please some oligarch who will finance a campaign. These guys need to have limits to their terms…two years and OUT you go ( and their health benefits will be reduced, and their pension subject to change.
Your two year term limit would require a fundamental change in the philosophy of the senate, and likely increase the power of the congressional staff as the only ones that have been around long enough to understand how to get things done.
The largest loopholes are the untaxed compensation like health insurance and the mortgage interest rate tax deduction.
I agree. I was just saying, in a perfect world where a legislature represents the people. here’s a pertinent piece
Pfizer Offers To Buy Foreign Corporation In Order To Avoid Paying More Taxes
http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11864
I challenge your factuality, Susan Lee Schwartz. Please give a citation to original sources that shows every “pilgrim” (Salem?) giving a third of their harvest to the “community.” And was that 1/3 for all essential services including schools?
Lots of people pay that and more counting city, state, and federal taxes. Others pay considerably less. A 1/3 fair tax on everyone might not be such a bad idea. At least it wouldn’t be progressive. But I doubt you are advocating that.
Please do not evade TE’s question. I would hate to have to tell your grandchildren that you are a liar and dishonest debater. We older people have to set an example of virtue, direct speaking, and moderation during dialectic or be judged as non-Socratic.
Get lost Harlan.
Your attitude toward public discourse is deplorable, Susan. You make yourself a discredit to the reputation of public school teaching. I must conclude that you do not actually know what you are talking about, inspite of your many years of teaching it, and that you represent and illustrate what public schools teachers are frequently criticized for, authority without knowledge.
Not that I support any of the reform efforts which Diane so heroically combats. I don’t. It is just sad to see a mature, experienced, educated person such as yourself constitute themselves as one more nail in the coffin of public education.
HU,
Truth be told, you are a master at your style of argument. Your approach to posting wears people down and in the end it is merely provocative under the guise of seeking to be educational. No doubt you derive some measure of satisfaction from provoking a frustrated response, then attacking the poster for, essentially, losing patience and ‘giving’ up on both the substance and style of your postings.
For one brief moment shift from y from your condescending, sanctimonious approach and think about how, when push comes to shove, your modus operandi stifles and aborts discussion rather than moving it forward. This, of course, may be asking too much. No doubt you will continue to find posters who have a masochistic need to joust with you, but, alas the number deserves to dwindle.
Finally, just for the record, I am calling you out for your attack on Susan Schwartz (who I know only via her posts): it was unwarranted and mean spirited; and it served no other purpose than to vent your view from on high and hurl it at whomever you see fit. Given that you are the self anointed philosopher -in-residence for this site, your modus operandi makes perfect sense, but it does have its limitations.
Life is too short and the portions are too small to ask people to spoon feed you about education law, or for that matter any other topic, especially when they have to deal with your mandatory retaliatory posting. Do us all a favor and pick up a text and treat yourself to a bit of self education. You will be a better person for it.
No, I am not going to respond to your retaliatory post.
Thank you so much. I had a feeling that the people who write here knew this disruptive voice well, and would recognize his bad behavior. I actually knew that there would be those who would step up, because in 3 weeks of reading I saw the intelligence, and professionalism. I did not know it would be YOU, John. I would like to know more about you. Is there a page where I can leant more, lil emu author’s page here http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
Because it was a public forum and his comments were so filled with utter contempt, I felt compelled to take time to respond, because as I said in my reply,” this site got 2 million views; it was not to read what trolls post. “Confusing tirades and vituperative to promote debate is not productive on a site like this.”
This troll uses free speech as a mantra to make himself feel important. He cannot stop himself and has insulted me repeatedly in the short time I am here and does not see that it is NOT a private message but a public attack. HE chose to address me once again with utter disrespect in front of my peers. I will not speculate about this man’s age, personality (or persona family l life with people who have ‘his number’ — simply because he chose to judge me and say it out loud, here.
One last thing… sometimes, when I write at Oped, a reader will take askance with an opinion about my attitude to Common Core or some issue, and before I can even respond, a teacher (and candidate for Utah Senate) Dan Geery, will explain what I meant. He became my fan years ago. I follow him, too. What a pleasure to read his articles and thread commentary.
It is gratifying to hear intelligent people engage in argument, debate and simple discourse —conversations that seek solutions and examine problems.
I will never engage with HU again; Thank you.
I want to revise this quote: “and it served no other purpose than to vent your view from on high and hurl it at whomever you see fit.”
I suggest changing “your view from on high” to “your view from down low where the heat and smoke obscures real debate”.
Lloyd, I stand in solidarity with you…. In this case. 🙂
Someone should have warned me. I am so used to the debates and arguments ago Oped, which get heated but never personal. I do not blog, or tweet, and got caught unaware.Thanks for being who you are.
I find this a sensible and helpful reply, john a. I may take it to heart. I already yesterday pulled Volume I of my old Vernon Parrington off the shelf to see what he has to say that I have forgotten about the “Mind of the Puritans.” Puritan economics remains interesting to me, SINCE their attitudes seem to have become a template for much of American law and tradition and assumption. Parrington says that the fundamental factor was the free hold of land.
Gipper
True to your namesake, you must believe that education is the problem, not a solution. How about the pesky facts as per Susan Lee Schwartz’ post. She never said that taxes must be raised to increase education expenditures. Closing tax loopholes is all about social justice. Your knowledge and understanding of business must be pretty shaky if you think NYC draws any parallel with Detroit.
Now KTA, I really should know better. Another ridiculous question and I’m still wondering why I bothered responding. Sometimes I think we do it for the sport.
Exactly. Thank you.
BTW responding to people whose need is to disparage rather than discuss is really a waste of time. I do it sometimes for sport, too, but some trolls really have been brainwashed by the propaganda and believe what they say. They are sincere, just deluded. Some are just too limited to really make meaning from so much information and simply stay with what is familiar to them –their own world views, opinions and perspectives….BUT some are just bored, have no real life, and love to argue; but some are just in need of proving how smart they are.
I have been writing and reading the threads on Oped News for 5 years now, and I get the daily newsletter and a comment feed from people whom I fan… brilliant thinkers like Robert Reich and Chris Hedges. I always read what the publisher Rob Kall writes, especially his ‘diaries’; (diaries are like journals where one can speak in a natural voice –different then the more formal voice when one posts an article. )Then there are commentaries, long threads like we see here. I am linking to one. This piece is about TRUTH. Many writers here are brilliant people and they see what is happening in this Orwellian landscape. Rob has a series he has written about psychopaths… it is chilling.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Changing-People-s-Minds-t-by-Shirley-Braverman-Failed_States_of_Mind_Mind-Control_Narrow-Minded_Open-mindedness-140512-733.html#comment489524
Which brings me to trolls at that site. 2 years ago, as the site was becoming the number one progressive news site on the net, Rob decided to make it very hard for anyone to disrupt serious conversations for the reasons mentioned earlier. His mission statement for the site made it clear that observable reality TRUTH was the mission, and that people with strong opinions were welcome, and debate was crucial, but that everyone must be prepared to back up arguments with evidence. I believe certain really disruptive political entities , whose only motive was to cause chaos, could not post easily. Lots of complaints about free speech followed, but in the end, conversations and debate flourished it is a great pleasure to join a thread there. Heated discussions are not diminished by civil discourse.
In the link I gave here, the publisher offers commentary, too. I believe I wrote two comments there. Oh, and everyone uses his real name. All comments, articles, diaries and quick links (to articles and sites) are listed on the author’s page. Mine is
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
Readers can also leave a message for an author. That is how I came to know Dan Geery, who ran for senator in Utah, wrote a YA book, and a tv program and invented a… well go to his authors page…he was a veteran TEACHER, and he has a very similar experience .
What bothers me about that site, is that there is almost no conversation about teaching, although get between a 130 and 250 views of articles I post, and 2000 views of my essay “Bamboozle Them” but only a handful ‘talk’ about the very issues we discuss here.
That said, I am so happy to join the conversation here. I have written on many sites, and this is A number one in my book.
Argument is great, and debate is necessary and crucial, but OBSERVABLE REALITY, and an authentic voice must be the crux.
Keep talking and forget about the disrupters… they are like the kid in the back row who just want attention.They will bitch about ‘freedom of speech’ and point to the first Amendment but have a very poor grasp about the constraints and RESPONSIBILITY that comes with such a guarantee of freedom.
And have you seen this RA Animate piece on ENLIGHTENMENT.
Trust me
According to celebritynetwoth.com, Mr. Kudlow’s net worth is $15 million and his annual salary is $1 million.
kplyons1: I doublechecked your source.
IMHO, if celebritynetwoth.com is correct, then Larry Kudlow is disqualified from sneering and jeering at those whose net worth and annual pay are significantly lower than his.
But he is qualified to be the object of Henny Youngman’s observation that:
“You have a nice personality, but not for a human being.”
😎
HEE HEE….LOVE THT ONE!
Every year since 2008 in my district in Utah, I have had more students with DECREASING salary. Because of the lack of will of the legislature to properly fund education, contract days have been cut almost yearly. We now have 184 contract days instead of the 188 we had five years ago, even though the work load has increased, meaning that I spend MUCH more time in preparation and planning than I used to. I now have 260 students in 8th and 9th grade geography and history, and will probably have closer to 275 next year. We just learned two days ago that my district is freezing step increases for the second time in five years. I am just finishing my 13th year of teaching, with 60 additional quarter credit hours, and I make about $40,000 a year. As I start on my 14th year, I will STILL be on step 12, meaning I have to teach at least two more years before I can retire, if I ever CAN retire. On top of that, the district has told us this year that it is “our fault” when students have failing grades, meaning that I spend far more time in email and phone correspondence with parents than ever before.
I’d like to challenge this blowhard to try my job for a couple of weeks.
…and charged $50 to submit your fingerprints?
You must be from Utah, too! Yep! AND we have to resubmit our fingerprints every five years (because apparently they change or something), AND have another background check, AND pay the relicensure fee. AND then have our licenses threatened when we speak out about it. Welcome to Utah, where we stack ’em deep and teach ’em cheap (teachers have been saying that around here at least since I went to school).
“There should be a rule”
There was. It was called the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was a policy of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC), introduced in 1949, that required the holders of broadcast licenses to both present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that was, in the Commission’s view, honest, equitable and balanced. The FCC eliminated the Doctrine in 1987, and in August 2011 the FCC formally removed the language that implemented the Doctrine.
In 1985, under FCC Chairman Mark S. Fowler, a communications attorney who had served on Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign staff in 1976 and 1980, the FCC released a report stating that the doctrine hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
In June 1987, Congress attempted to preempt the FCC decision and codify the Fairness Doctrine, but the legislation was vetoed by President Ronald Reagan. Another attempt to revive the doctrine in 1991 was stopped when President George H.W. Bush threatened another veto.
What does this tell us–that the Republican Party believes freedom of speech means the freedom to lie without the threat of the people learning all the facts the lead to the truth.
A simple equation: Freedom of Speech + lies without the threat of being discovered by the majority of the people = GOP power
The evidence is strong that the decline of the people’s progressive democracy toward oligarchy started its journey with President Reagan, who is still worshiped by millions of middle class and poor Americans who have never heard the other side of the issues that are changing America for the worst becasue their main source of information is Conservative talk radio where cherry-picked facts, misinformation and lies are the rule where the only winners are corporations and the wealthy 1%.
And with President Obama, the final nail the people’s coffin is ready to pound in.
Well thought out and very important response. It is indeed the way of some media these days as well as advertisers. Just say what you want people to believe not what is actually true. Like naked Juice, all natural, found out it’s not but for years they got away with it. Same in politics. There are weapons of Mass destruction in Iraq, so let’s go get them. oops not there. Teachers make 120,000 dollars a year (which by the way they should) and we all look at are pay stubs that barely pay the rent and food and we wonder who is making this stuff up? And worse yet who is believing it. But since you are obviously a teacher and well informed I thank you for telling it like it is, sad though it be. I think right now the world is upside down with the crooks at the top and the good guys like teachers floundering around hoping to stay in the middle and at least be heard.
In the early ears as a teacher, my pay was so low, I took another job nights and weekends in a restaurant with a night club attached and they paid minimum wage. Eventually, over time, after earning an MFA and about thirty more college credits beyond that, I moved across the pay scale and started to earn enough not to have to work an extra job. I also often taught summer school but they pay much less for summer than the regular school year.
Truth IS the right criterion, but government (i.e. FCC) should not be put in charge of making those decisions of what is true and what is not.
That really WOULD violate the first amendment. I assume Lloyd that you do still support the 1st amendment.
Progressives are free to make their case on the radio if anyone would listen to their programs. Even though President Obama lies and lies and lies and lies, I’m not in favor of suppressing his free speech. Or Harry Reid’s. Or yours, even though all three of you don’t say the truth, in my opinion, most of the time.
Do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you.
This is what happens when an unchecked Orwellian government has all the power, and the media spits out the lies they spew.
The Gipper admits to being a businessman and the fact that this businessman uses an anonymous name linked to President Reagen should be enough to tell the rest of his or her story and thinking. These people think in terms of profit, profit, profit—as much as they can squeeze and this thinking is short term—seldom if every long term. This thinking is also built on a shaky foundation of lies and misinformation because these people seldom do their homework beyond what they hear from someone like Rush Limbaugh.
What happens when the schools are really failing? And many of them are already falling apart. For instance, I worked in a school that was making more than 20% of the staff sick due to sick building syndrome. My last few years in the classroom, minutes after walking into the room, I had a headache and started wheezing. To compensate, I would wear a industrial grade gas mask with two HEPA filter canisters until my students arrived. You can’t teach wearing a gas mask. Besides, it would have freaked the kids out.
Without that mask, a half hour after driving off campus on my way home, the wheezing stopped and the headache was gone and this had nothing to do with the students because I arrived one to two hours early every day. But because I taught one section of journalism and four of English Lit, sometimes my journalism students arrived when I did at 6:00 AM so I didn’t wear the gas mask on those days. I only wore the mask when I was alone. When the final bell rang, my room was empty of kids and the door was locked, out came the mask and the wheezing and headache were banished—as long as I wore that mask.
The schools aren’t failing yet and never have been failing but that day is coming if the privatization reforms succeed—all the facts that lead to conclusions point in that direction and an Orwellian society with more police and more prisons (probably owned by for-profit corporations in the private sector—and that is already happening) to hold those pesky people who get in the way of profit but again short term thinking since it costs about $40,000 annually to house each of those prisoners and once the public prisons are gone just like the public schools, watch the giant corporations use their influence in congress to shoot those costs sky high.
For a country that preaches often that America is the land of the free, the U.S. already has the largest prison population on the planet twice that of the country with the second largest prison population that’s almost half of the U.S. number—2nd place goes to China with more than four times the number of people. You know, that country with an authoritarian one-party government that calls itself the Chinese Communist Party, a government that’s done more to reduce poverty in the world than the rest of the world combined. Ninety percent of poverty reduction in the world since the 1980s took place in China while poverty in the U.S. increased.
What happens when the infrastructure of U.S. cities fail because the sewers, the electric grid, the streets, etc all need upgrades but the money isn’t there so people like the Gipper can make those short-term profit goals?
Wake up Gipper. Where will your customers come from as the gap between the 1% and 99% continues to grow wider and fewer people earn enough to make the rent or buy food? When the consumer class shrinks, profits will shrink too. When the infrastructure falls apart, that will also send profits down.
If tax loopholes for corporations and the wealthiest Americans are eliminated and everyone pays a fair share then every business that serves consumers will have to raise prices to compensate helping level the business field. If every working American is guaranteed a livable wage that means more people with money to spend on more than just food and rent.
In addition, this is a win-win situation because keeping the infrastructure of the schools, railroads, bridges, streets, airports, and public utilities repaired and up-to-date generates jobs and more money for working consumers to spend. It will also be a win-win situation of we keep the schools and prisons, for instance, in the public sector with labor unions representing those workers and the workers are paid more than a liveable wage becasue where do you think that money goes when those workers spend it?
On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 8:10 AM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> Susan Lee Schwartz commented: “This is what happens when an unchecked > Orwellian government has all the power, and the media spits out the lies > they spew.” >
Funny things happen when one jumps to conclusions. First my real name is Gipp and my friends called me the Gipper long before you ever heard of President Gipper. Secondly, it very wrong to paint all businessmen with the same far left paintbrush. Why such total disdain for business?
My partners and I always donated a significant percentage of our profits before taking any bonuses for ourselves and we were also paying corporate taxes many years that totaled 50% and more. And finally, i voted for Obama both times.
Now, don’t you feel silly.
No, I don’t feel silly. First, the facts you reveal about yourself were not on the table so there was no way to know them. Second, it looks as if you are cherry-picking and manipulating your facts.
Then you changed the subject and ignored many of my points in an attempt to make me look bad. Shame on you. This is a common tactic used by those who don’t play fair.
I also voted for Obama twice—shame on me, but there was no one else to vote for and at the time little was known about the man’s thinking—-that he was a neo-liberal (that fact seems to have been hidden as long as possible). The other choices were worse. Although I’m a conservative progressive in the Teddy Roosevelt tradition, I stopped voting for Republicans when Reagan ran for governor of California his second time. His first term revealed the lies he used to get elected.
As for your claim that you paid 50% in taxes:
Warren Buffet recently pointed out that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. Most Americans don’t earn enough or have the money to set up an LLC or take advantage of tax loopholes. How about you report how much your business grossed annually from the beginning, how much you were allowed to deduct due to business expenses and how much actual tax you paid compared to that gross?
Was that tax that you claim you paid based on the income you took home from your profits—what you paid yourself? And if that is correct, then why did you pay yourself so much that you ended up with a 50% tax rate that doesn’t even exist today?
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2011/aug/18/warren-buffett/warren-buffett-says-super-rich-pay-lower-taxes-oth/
In fact, it’s been a long time since there was a 50% federal income tax. The highest possible tax rate when Reagan moved into the White House was 70%. When G. H. W. Bush moved in, it was down to 28% and the national debt had skyrocketed from less than $1 Trillion before Reagan to almost $5.8 Trillion by the time Clinton move in.
And the highest federal income tax rate today is 35%. Are you saying your state income tax is 15%?
I know just what you mean Lloyd. My school is made up of all portable buildings. Flash flooding led to mudslides inside our classrooms, some genius put the buildings at the base of a small hill. Admin swore up and down nothing was wrong. I had respiratory problems I have never had before. I had parent meetings in my room to make my point. My lawyer, and several parents with their attorneys finally got us moved out of the room. Needless to say, my evaluation took a hit but they could not fire me yet. The district thinks like a business, they believe a law suit would be cheaper than repairing the school properly.
In fact, even if contract is ratified, no teacher will receive that salary for four years. Clearly Mr. Kudrow needs to take his crystal ball to the shop for a tuneup.
Salary guides are just that, guides. They don’t necessarily reflect reality en masse since so few reach the salaries posted at the end of them before they retire or before a contract is up and new guides are put in place…but then again, how would the average “Joe” (Morning or not) and his guests know this unless they’ve been paid through many incarnations of such a guide?
Anyone can use any tidbit of a “factual” statistic to support their point without understanding how the system actual works. When we give weight to facts that we cherry-pick for specific interpretation, we can manipulate a point to reflect anything we want it to reflect. This is the biggest flaw in the new evaluation system: You can weight an observed low-priority action in such a way that it makes a teacher look like either a master or a novice.
I’ve been a public school teacher in Palm Beach County, FL for 13 years and I’m making about $45,000 per year.
Yes. There seems to be a huge salary discrepancy in every state. NY starting salary is only a few thousands less of our salary after 16 years.
National averages are falsely used to represent trends. Salaries are usually commensurate with experience, credentials AND cost-of-living expenses.
In PA, my home state, 45K goes a lot further than here in NJ where many teachers are eeking by to live. And to make matters worse, Darth Christie pushed for legislation that requires all new teaching hires to live within the confines of the state with rare exceptions for those who live in state border towns. Keep ’em poor, right governor?
A lie is not an opinion. A fact is something that is objectively true. Yes, one can freely state opinions on these talk shows, but apparently one can freely lie as well. Fox “News” has set the precedent and paved the way for this kind of behavior. I fear it is only going to get worse. It threatens public discourse on a grand scale.
Fox is hardly the problem. There is also the lie of omission, of not dealing with a story. ABC, NBC, and CBS are notorious for covering weather rather than Benghazi. Public discourse is threatened by the left wanting to suppress opinions with which they disagree. What is the biggest scandal is that the White House directed the IRS to specifically target tea party organizations in order to suppress their speech. Instead of ranting about the fairness doctrine liberals should join with conservatives in defending free speech. Not to do so makes them seem akin to the Chinese government, or the Russian government, or the Venezuelan government, or the Cuban government, where freedom of speech and publishing is extraordinarily limited.
To get free speech for yourself, you have to defend it for others, even if you don’t like what they say, even if you think what they say are lies.
That’s because people differ so greatly on when a statement is a true one.
“There is also the lie of omission, of not dealing with a story. ABC, NBC, and CBS are notorious for covering weather rather than Benghazi.”
Benghazi is another distraction, nothing more to keep the focus off the neoliberal agenda of this administration. Now if you would have referenced Obomber’s ordering the killing of a sixteen year old American citizen without any judicial proceedings whatsoever then I might be inclined to agree more with your statement.
But you are correct in pointing out what is left out by the regressive neoliberal media is more important most of the time than what they do say.
You bet. Well said. You forgot to mention how much it costs to get those college degrees and those extra credits. Pesky math.
Not to mention the NYS REQUIREMENTof a masters degree.
And I forgot something else… which was mentioned here by one of you… I put in between $500 and $5000 into my classrooms. In NYC they gave us ‘Teachers Choice,” which provided chalk and erasers, some markers and paper, and little else. I replaced glass in the window in one room, bought the entire YA reading library in my 7th grade classroom and all the art supplies. I bought th paper to cover bulletin boards and to create visual displays ( that convered holes in the wall),; All the charts and visual aids I purchased at the Educational Warehouse, and was never reimbursed.
I was lucky to get a tv and video machine, but I had to buy the tapes.
So much for MSNBC being the liberal equivalent of Fox News.
Morning Joe is the one who has always pushed the charter school successes; I sent him emails 5 or 6 years ago and then I quit watching …
2011-12 National Average Starting Teacher Salary: $35,672
That’s more like it.
yesterday I had to listen while my neighbor complained that Elizabeth Warren makes too much money. I said that was in the law field because she had a specialty in the courts that is held in high esteem and the remuneration is based on that; the full professor I know in the University system earned 70000 a year before she retired; the adjunct faculty have to teach at three different campuses to earn one salary and they have to pay parking fees at all 3….. there is a lot of disinformation out there
When Christie started doing his “tap dance” in New Jersey, the daughter of my best friend would call and complain about education and teachers salaries ; she was in pharmaceutical banking and funds in an accounting firm; I told him “your teacher salary paid for her master’s degree and her living style so she could work up to that level in pharmaceuticals”…. I do feel a little self-righteous now that Christie has himself into a deep hole in terms of ethics and finances but he did an awful number on teachers the first few years and went to CA and MA to raise funds with candidates who earn a lot more than teachers ever have.
I clear $21,800/yr and have 5 years teaching including health care premiums. That’s before I shell out for classroom supplies. But I live in Ohio where they believe all teachers should be volunteers. Guess we are supposed to hunt squirrels and drink rainwater. YeeHaw. No teacher jobs available. Now I can’t remember, did I park my Benz near my mansion or at the dock near my yacht?
MathVale,
Maybe you should move to NJ and get screwed on a higher pay scale.
Best laugh I’ve had in along time NJT!
Thanks NYt!
Where is MathVale? We know he can’t afford a Saturday night out on the town.
Yup. Experience and the hard work that goes into obtaining an advanced degree gets PUNISHED with the Pen/Ben contributions bill here in NJ! I’ve never been more experienced in all of my career as I am now, and yet I’m making less than I was three years go, even with a modest salary increase. What IS my district doing with my benefits contribution anyway…paying for more tech positions and equipment to implement the future PARCC testing and more supervisors to implement the convoluted teacher evaluation system that have all been forced upon this profession? Glad I’m working so hard to fund these mandates!
MathVale: next time you’re in town, drop by Pink Slip Bar & Grille. As many mugs or cups or bottles as you like. Your choice. Socrates’ treat.
Now the Greek guy is not the type who ordinarily coughs up a few drachmas for anybody else—especially after that comment by Larry Kudlow—but when he read what you wrote above, he got his “hemlock” look on. Not a good sign; he wants to set things right. He has a fondness for teachers and teaching although you might think he is only concerned with abstractions like—
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” [Socrates]
However, he likes to joke that “filling some vessels can be a whole Mount Olympus of fun.” Bring your party toga.
If you’re lucky, Duane Swacker will also be there, practicing his ‘shot put’ technique for putting a tome of Noel Wilson in Paul Vallas’ direction [who is often lurking in some dark corner]. And Linda and Ang should be there too, although no missiles in hand, just really good conversation.
Be there or be square.
😎
And the Pink Slip is one of the few fine establishments in which you can find the “Good Doctor”.
when When Christie started doing his “tap dance” in New Jersey, the daughter of my best friend would call and complain about education and teachers salaries ; she was in pharmaceutical banking and funds in an accounting firm; I told him “your teacher salary paid for her master’s degree and her living style so she could work up to that level in pharmaceuticals”…. I do feel a little self-righteous now that Christie has himself into a deep hole in terms of ethics and finances but he did an awful number on teachers the first few years and went to CA and MA to raise funds with candidates who earn a lot more than teachers ever have.
I’d be willing to bet Kudlow was including benefits in that amount. Of course benefits don’t pay the bills.
Even so, the “average” wouldn’t be that high.
The current meme by the teacher haters is that teachers are actually “part-time” employees getting big salaries.
Seriously, if this were a motion picture, this moment in time, would you not see the deliberate conspiracy that allows such outrageous, Orwellian propaganda to continue to pollute the airwaves. He goes beyond free speech when he uses the bully pulpit of the broadcast media to lie when facts are so easily checked.
It is the same brand of slander they used to remove the hundred thousand veteran professionals that we remember as TEACHERS, silencing their voices with media slander about dead-wood.
It would be nice if we had a program where we could show the real stories of the classroom practice, and let people judge as to the worth of educated professionals who enable the emergent human mind to function and survive in the adult world. What kids “get’ from school, is a skill… the skill to acquire information and be able to do something difficult. How much is a human being worth if they can motivate children to learn and actually facilitate that learning in conditions that are abominable.
All of us were free to go into teaching or not. What we actually do is immeasurably valuable in spiritual and human terms, but what we are paid is set by the market. I doubt that its sensible to expect one’s market value to equate to one’s heavenly value.
Some of us English teachers were joshing in the faculty room about wages one day to the headmaster. He said, “I can go out on US 23 and stop the first seven cars and replace you all.”
Well, I do live in a university town. We didn’t like it, but metaphorically it was true. We never brought it up with him again.
Teaching of any subject up through high school is not rocket science. It is a delightful craft, but hardly a profession in the sense that doctors and lawyers and engineers are professionals.
We are like priests, doing holy work, but we’ve taken a vow of poverty.
“Teaching of any subject up through high school is not rocket science. It is a delightful craft, but hardly a profession in the sense that doctors and lawyers and engineers are professionals.” That is what YOU said.
Hardly a profession. YOU have just disqualified yourself from this blog, as far as I am concerned. I taught elementary school, and if it had not been for my education which included psychology and the ways in which different learners acquire skills, I would never have ben able to meet the diverse population of human beings who trusted me to show them how to learn. Not Professionals? Applying the things I learned about enabling writers from my studies on literacy was how I was able to write the curricula that I did.
Sir, I will never answer your comments again, and after that comment, I think there will be others who feel the same. Goodbye.
I’m glad you applied you education so effectively. Are you comparing your level of expertise with that of a good physician, or a good lawyer, or a good engineer? Is differentiating instruction in reading and math at the third grade really as difficult? Good third grade teachers are worth their weight in gold in some sense. One wants sweetness, literacy, numeracy, and organization. That is not beyond the capacity of any normal college educated person. I was just trying to explain why teacher pay is low (unless supported by unionization) on the basis of supply and demand. Most teachers are insulted when I point out that their work is really a skilled craft or trade, not a profession in the real sense. I think the same about priests and clergy, now that one can serve without knowing Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Rabbis may be different. It’s important for some teachers to exaggerate the status of their craft, but I don’t understand why. Susan will no longer bother with me. Are my premises wrong. Or can someone explain why teaching is a real profession on the basis of mastered science?
Learning theory changes every twenty years. That’s not science, just an attempt to regularize common sense about moving from simper to more complex tasks. Teachers take themselves much too seriously, and then pile socialism and unionism on top of it as if faulty social theory (I. E. public sector unions) some how justified their pretensions to special status because they have signed up to pretend to do what is mostly the doing of the parents in any case. Do Asian students excel because the have better teachers? No. Because they have better parents.
And so what if they did earn $120 thousand — in countries that have raced to the top their teachers pay is comparable to other professional occupations. Nobody questions a baseball player making 250 million or an out of control adolescent rock start flying is private jets, but let a teacher make over 100 thousand and the roof falls in — a testament to what we really value in America —- bread and circuses.
People all think teaching is easy. After all they sat in classrooms a good portion of their youth and it looked effortless. That is until they actually try to teach. Once they try it, and try to live on the salary and try to do the endless workload and have a family life they leave. 50% in the first 5 years quit it forever. So that is why they don’t think our salaries should be the same as other professionals. They really just don’t know what teachers do and how really hard it is.
Sexism underlies a lot of this attitude since teaching is a female-dominated occupation.
And yes, people think teaching is so “easy” because they have been in school. They have absolutely NO idea how much time teachers put in off the clock or the many stresses that go along with this job.
People claim that teaching is easy until you challenge them. Then the standard reply is, “Oh no, I could never do that.”
Here in LA no raise for 7 years and yet the supt. just got a 20000 dollar raise making his salary about the same as the president of the US. Has this world lost all sense of decency. Shame on that man for propagating propaganda. I retired after 23 years with 60,000 salary which I might add was cut drastically by yearly furlough days of up to 2 weeks to help balance the budget. sigh.. justice seems to be in Heaven not on earth for teachers and of course that is why most of us stay with it, we love to give and aren’t in it for the monetary rewards.
I taught in Rowland Unified in Southern California for 30 years and retired at age 60 with about $50,000 (a pay cut of about $25 – $30 thousand from my final school year earnings that included teaching an extra class in addition to summer school) to start with and no medical. If I hadn’t served in combat in Vietnam as a Marine, I wouldn’t have had any medical until I qualified for Medicare. I wonder how many public school teachers fought in a US combat zone so they might be qualified for medical care through the VA.
In fact, fighting in Vietnam was easier than teaching. Maybe I should have stayed in the Marines for thirty years instead. I understand they retire with full pay and medical.
As long as you stay alive. Lucky you, though. I wasn’t able to retired financially until I was 69, and by then my health really was going downhill.
“I would not be surprised if those who complain the loudest earn many times more than teachers, work fewer hours, and add little of social value, especially if they get paid to chatter in front of a microphone. Let them have their spoils but have the decency not to criticize the pay of those who do the hard work of society and deserve every penny they get.”
AMEN!
Using max salaries (in max [affluent] districts) as an example of the lucrative nature of teaching is a fool’s errand. In many districts here in upstate NY it takes 20+ years to reach the top of the pay scale. Cost averaging a teacher’s salary over a 30 year career would be more accurate. I wonder how many second jobs (painting, waitressing, bartending, construction, etc.) that he held in comparison to most teachers?
The devil is in the details, because most teachers are harassed out, long before top salary these days. And, my day started at 9 and ended after midnight, because there was never any time in the school day to plan lessons or read the writing of 120 -140 students. I worked through weekends and holidays, and in summer attended workshops, seminars, and began preparing my classroom a week before school began. I cannot begin to calculate my ‘hourly wage.’
YES to both of you! The devil is indeed in the details, but then again, the details would not allow for such generalizations and manipulation of facts to be made. Why bother letting the real facts get in the way of the propaganda?
Exactly!
I don’t care about disclosure of other people’s salaries as much as exposing the agenda. The more high-profile people cherry picking the “six-figure salary” attack on teachers know full well that most teachers will never see pay like that. I have been teaching for about 15 years in the state of New York, have had my master’s degree for 10 or so, and am still under 50K. The goal of sprinkling these selective facts is to stir discontent, disrespect and resentment-“salt the soil” in communities throughout the state/nation so that families sacrificed to the “global economy” will turn on each other and the resources around them. The “free market” as it has been operating is tyranny. Real education is a threat to tyranny.
EXACTLY!!!
Take my case, I was making 58k at 20 years, with a Masters plus 60, when they came after me. It did not matter that Harvard had filmed me as one of six practitioners out of 20,000 in the Pew funded REAL National Standards research, who had met all the standards in a unique way, or that NY State English Council had awarded me the prestigious Educator of Excellence, and that Fordham Student teachers studied my methods, or that in NYC my practice was so well-known that there were 40 children vying for every seat. After insane allegations of corporal punishment and evaporated with my filing of a 4 million dollar lawsuit, (which cost me 25k for an attorney thanks to the union’s complicity and failure to follow grievance procedures.)
When anyone tells me I just a high priced babysitter. Forget that high priced claim, I tell them that I would love to be paid at the average rate of a babysitter. I babysit 13, 14, and 15 year olds at the equivalent of 67 hours per day. If each parent paid me the $6.70 per kid for my 40 minutes of babysitting (using my flat rate of $10/hr) I would rake in $3,350 a week; that’s $134K per year! And I would still have summers off, just no need to paint houses so I cn pay the bills.
Dan McConnel has it exactly right.
How can Kudlow get away with such nonsense.
It’s the ability to lie with impunity on the greatest technological propaganda machine ever.
Here is a quote from Thomas Friedman’s essay “Square People” in today’s NY Times regarding how Turkey’s president controlled the election: ” HOW? A report from Turkey in Forbes.com Friday gives one answer: Most of Erdogan’s largely rural voting base is not on YouTube or Twitter. They “are tech-illiterate; they get their news from television,” which he controls. “Television news channels show only the damage and virulence of protest, a selection of images that ultimately give the impression of anarchy loosed upon the country by rabid troublemakers.” Putin has used the same propaganda in Moscow and Ukraine.”
I studied media and communications in college, way back in 1960, when television was barely past Howdy Doody. I read the “Hidden Persuaders” by Vance Packard who recognized the potential for manipulating people without their conscious awareness. I heard Marshall McLuan warn that “The Media IS the Message”, and I saw the ‘Mad Men’ use imagery and hidden persuaders to promote a presidential candidate for the first time… JFK.
Then, I watched over decades as journalistic constrains disappeared, and in the name of balance, television allowed every liar to take the stage which became a bully pulpit. This was never the intent of Article One. The best analysis of what happened before our current crop of mendacious politicians and pundits hit the airwaves, is Al Franken’s “Lies, and the Lying Liars that Tell Them,” which followed his book ,”Truth,” and was based on Research he did as a Harvard fellow.
I am beyond astonished, when I hear the lies that are uttered by people who wish to be head of the greatest empire in history, President of the United States. When a US congressman actually says that women’s bodies have a way to get rid of an unwanted pregnancy, and when he remains in office along with the climate deniers, then I know the end is nigh.
I see the corruption that has allowed our legislative body to become unable to create a single law that benefits the people of this nation, and passes legislation that benefits only those who already possess the wealth once reserved for nations; I am incredulous, especially when only 18% of the nation approve of their work.
When I hear the lies about lazy people who get food-stamps and I read the real figures about corporate welfare and the tax-loopholes that literally rob the wealth of this nation so it can be sent to tax-havens abroad, I am speechless. Only a controlled media can let his happen.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/john-nichols-and-robert-mcchesney-on-big-money-big-media/
I hear the trolls on all the sites talk about The First Amendment and free speech, but with the advent of television there is a need for a look at the INTENT of the WHOLE document, and its premise to promote the common good. Liberty to speak in the “square’ does not mean the intentional disabling of our government so that a privileged class can have everything, and there is nothing left for everyone else. THAT is why PIcketty’s book is so popular. Free speech comes with a responsibility to gather evidence and to go beyond selfish, ego-driven opinions.
With the Supreme court undoing the very core of legislation that enabled civil rights, women’s rights and fair elections, and with the need for $$$$$ in order to be elected, this democracy is over… and THAT is not opinion… it is observable reality, something we do not often see on television which pushes entertainment and the propaganda of those who own the airwaves. Public education was the road to opportunity, and instead of giving money to charter schools, the money could have been spent to do the one thing that has been proven to enable learning…smaller class sizes. (See Leonie Haimison’s site, Class Size Matters!) The money would be spent building more public schools, hiring top professional practitioners who know what learning looks like and how to facilitate it, and ensuring the support services that the REAL National Standards research shows is the job of the ADMINISTRATION.
I will end by recommending, again, Jerry Mander’s “In the Absence of the Sacred,” and his “Four Arguments Against Television,” both written decades ago. Lucid and entertaining, “Absence” makes it clear that those ideals that bind a society are inculcated in the family, in the neighborhood, in the community and religious organizations, all of which have disintegrated in our modern times, thanks, in no small part, to the automobile and jet plane which allowed us to move far from our roots. In the absence of the sacred ideals that were passed down for generations by the elders, so that the society could survive, has come that screen… a huge, colorful, entertaining window on the world. In that temperate controlled room, free of insects and intrusions, the stressed out victims of the financial debacle who have lost their homes, their savings and their jobs, are being fed lies, along with the bread and circuses… and the lies about teachers has reached the point where a teacher actually says on this blog, that teachers are not professionals like doctors, attorneys and scientists.
Sigh!
I agree about class size. And would add about the matter of lies, that we hear the MOST egregious lies from the current administration. Sigh, indeed.
I’m the offending “teacher.” I probably should not respond, but I do point out that one cannot be a doctor, attorney, or research scientist without a graduate degree. Not so a classroom teacher.
Reblogged this on Dolphin and commented:
“There should be a rule that when anyone complains about teachers’ salaries, they should be required to disclose their own income, as well as their working hours. I would not be surprised if those who complain the loudest earn many times more than teachers, work fewer hours, and add little of social value, especially if they get paid to chatter in front of a microphone.”
~~~~~~`
Word. For the $120k politicians make a year, and do nothing for it…they have a lot of gall criticizing teachers who actually, you know, work for a living…
Note in the comments that Larry Kudlow has a little drug habit going on– link.
And, by the way, I made $65 per day, before taxes, when substitute teaching. (Boy, do I miss the kids. They balanced my cynicism of life. )
Kudlow “had” a drug habit going on, about 20 years ago. He’s a complete ass, but that’s a low blow. Maybe you’ve never had a little drug habit or been close to anyone who has. Too bad, it’s a real blast.
Too bad, it’s a real blast.”
What do you mean by a blast and do you count alcohol as a drug?
I mean it’s very much the opposite of “a blast,” and I do count alcohol as a drug.
Relief. Good to hear.
It’s funny that you would attack me, and not MathVale, who posted the link? I just find it galling that someone with a drug habit would attack public school teachers. If he has given it up, good for him, but that doesn’t excuse his manipulative lying to destroy public teachers.
Here where I live (Midwest, in a state where charters are still pretty limited) — I check out the “teacher want ads” every year, even though I’m not really looking right now — the number of jobs posted for my fields (math / science) is at an all time high, by far. Usually at this point in the year, it’s down to the charters (charters have a hard time getting people around here and are usually still looking well into the summer) — this year, there are lots of relatively higher paying jobs still posted. I don’t think any of the districts’ salary schedules get anywhere near the $100K mark, let alone $120K.
So why don’t we set up a petition to be deliver to Morning Joe requesting an apology and setting the record correct.
Those who get paid a 6-digit in teaching profession are usually teachers who have a long experience(+20 years), excellent teaching record and service. And they certainly deserve that much for their dedication, perseverance, and commitment to students. Any financial analyst or hedge-fund manager type like Kudlow who churns out the lines of BS, days in and days out, should live on a working class wage for the pen put in his/her mouth, so that they taste the sour grapes grown from the vines of their own gaming system.
Here’s a link to a map that was published by The Washington Post that shows the average annual public school teachers pay for each state for 2013. Now, to be clear, an average means many teachers are paid less and some paid more.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/12/15/how-much-teachers-get-paid-state-by-state/
Then here’s an opinion piece by Dave Eggers that appeared in the New York Times in 2011
The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries. What does Eggers say? Here’s a pull quote:
At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary — after 25 years in the profession — is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.
So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet.
A response to HU, that addresses the dialogue here, and also, his attitude towards teachers and his personal vituperative to me… things that has no place here.
This site got 2 million views!
Diane allows open debate, and I respect that she cannot oversee the conversation, busy as she is doing what is so crucial. Yes, it is OUR choice to ignore such contempt and I will, I promise, but HU shames himself when he attacks someone like me to make a point on a public site. It is part and parcel of the incivility of the discourse in this country that allows the most outrageous lies to have a bully pulpit. It is this disrespect during argument that discredits Harlan Underhill.
RE: Our profession:
Bill Keller when the was Exec editor at The NY Times offered a narrative about what it really takes to become a genuine teacher-practitioner of this genuine profession: I wrote to him:
“Teacher colleges are, all too often, a sham, and as you explain the profession of PEDAGOGY has suffered as a result! You wouldn’t let a trained para-medic operate on you, or hire a para-legal (or even a law clerk) to defend you in court.”It certainly would help all those who aspire to teach, IF the colleges could be reformed so that it was forbidden to promote unproven cockamamie theories and absurd methodologies. Such nonsense is taught piecemeal across the nation; magic elixirs MUST be discarded in favor of real third level research… like the real New Standards (which were never, never about standardized testing). Like medicine and law, there are real studies that prove what works when the human brain is involved, and there are places that the public can visit to read real methods that work; The American Educator is one, and I assure you, that here — and NOT on Fox News or any cable ‘news’ network — are the success stories from the top educators in the country, and the world.Yes, Bill, it MUST begin with proper preparation for the people who are expected to master this complex discipline — which is called pedagogy. Professionals with talent and intelligence BOTH — not teaching robots WITH A LESSON PLAN — are needed to enable and facilitate LEARNING! ”
A crucial take-away from Keller’s op-ed essay, is the GREAT NEED to admit into the colleges, academically successful, very bright people — the kind of minds needed to practice in THE PROFESSION of PEDAGOGY! BUT WHAT BRIGHT, EDUCATED PERSON WOULD WANT TO TEACH IN A JOB, where there is no support and all the blame falls on them, and people like you treat them with utter contempt.
I wrote this to the publisher at Oped:
“IF colleges really prepared education students for a professional career, then even the brightest and talented would NOT (as I did) have to figure out when we first enter our classroom practice, how to get Johnny to THINK and to do actual WORK… you know, to apply learning… which is what the ‘work’ of school is! Habits of mind that promote work is what we teachers facilitate… as I will explain in my Speaking As A Teacher series (where I always tell the truth when I speak as a successful teacher who did it! )
. It would be impossible to say what HU said here about teachers, the utter contempt, if he had done what so many teachers who write here had done — applied the professional practice that shows the emergent brain the habits of mind that lead to the acquisition of critical thinking skills.
Yes, it is the way it is, and very sad that education theories change constantly, because it is possible to persuade an ignorant public. It is because there are 52 states and thousands of districts who can be sold ‘reform’, and those who profit from new textbooks, and new schools are always on the look-out for places where no one has heard of the science of learning. They are constantly re-inventing the wheel because they CAN!
The Pew funded THIRD LEVEL research on the authentic THEORY of Dr. Lauren Resnick’s “The 8 Principles of Learning,” proved (again) what works , but not a word is heard about it. THAT is the real problem with the profession… for profession it is. Yes, the profiteers make it easy to point a finger at a teacher and say, “Hey anyone with a little training can do your job,” but THAT on THIS SITE there is a ‘teacher’ who dare to say it, addresses exactly who he is.
It isn’t that climate change has not been proven that makes it possible to debunk it. It the loud-mouthed hypocrites who call it a mere ‘theory’. They create a ‘controversy’ when none exists in observable reality. Evolution is just a ‘theory,’ but those of us who know the difference between a theory and an opinion, are not persuaded to debate ‘creationism ‘. Many scientific ‘theories’ including brain science, cannot be proven but are accepted ‘as the way it is’ by those who understand observable reality,— truth… Quantum physics and the ‘theory about Dark Matter comes to mind. No genuine scientist says, “hey, no such thing… prove it.” one cannot see the brain do its thinking. National Geographic showed the incredible research into neural pathways.http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/product/brain-games/national-geographic-your-brain-special-issue
Yes…I meet ‘teachers’ who are poorly prepared and should never be allowed to practice… but the low salary and the attitudes and disrespect that people like HU show for all the hard work and knowledge necessary to do the task, does not attract the top.
Now I have something to say to HU as HE chose to address me once again with utter disrespect in this public forum of my peers. Yesterday, he posted for all to read, that he “will tell my Grandchildren “that I am “a liar.” he attacked again when I did not rise to this taunt and said:
“Your attitude toward public discourse is deplorable, Susan. You make yourself a discredit to the reputation of public school teaching. I must conclude that you do not actually know what you are talking about, in spite of your many years of teaching it, and that you represent and illustrate what public schools teachers are frequently criticized for, authority without knowledge.Not that I support any of the reform efforts which Diane so heroically combats. I don’t. It is just sad to see a mature, experienced, educated person such as yourself constitute themselves as one more nail in the coffin of public education.”
He concludes that I am” a discredit to public school teaching”?
Ok, but he says it OUT LOUD, here!
I came to this site to follow Diane Ravitch, for there is no one like her out there. I came to find the links to cross-post at other sites, and especially at Oped, so ordinary folks can see what is happening in 52 states. I did not come here to debate, but to read the intelligent commentary about what is going on. Yes, I do add my two sense, now and then, because I know what I am saying is rooted in reality, and I have some solid and important things to say, and I have the credentials and intelligence to say it. I am a trusted voice for good reason which this troll who knows me for 2 minutes would dispute online!
Confusing tirades and vituperative to promote debate is not productive on a site like this. This troll uses free speech as a mantra to make himself feel important. He has personally attacked me AGAIN because I refuse to debate him. He cannot stop himself and has insulted me repeatedly in the short time I am here.
I do not have to ‘prove’ what I say to the likes of HU. I have met him many times in my life and walked away, but as a new voice here, I must speak, as there is no site administrator to say, “Hey!”
If he had attacked any authentic speaker at Oped, the site administrator/publisher would have personally made it clear that such behavior was not productive on a serious site, and blocked farther personal attacks, although it would not be necessary, because the people who know my voice and my spirit would quickly known who he is and relegate him to the waste bin. I think that will happen here, too, even though I am a new voice. The teachers in this room are wonderful.
Diane allows open debate, and I respect that she cannot oversee the conversation, busy as she is doing what is so crucial. Yes, it is OUR choice to ignore such contempt and I will, I promise, but HU shames himself when he attacks someone like me to make a point on a public site. It is part and parcel of the incivility of the discourse in this country that allows the most outrageous lies to have a bully pulpit. It is this disrespect during argument that discredits Harlan Underhill.
It is a lovely day, and I am going out to buy the annuals, and then to plant them, and prepare for my Texas grandchildren’s visit. They know who I am. I know who I am, and everyone here — although I have only been in this forum for a few weeks, knows what I am… and they know WHO HU is . He needs to go somewhere else. This teacher’s room is on a professional level that he believes does not exist, and THAT is why he speaks as he does.
I don’t mean to insult you, Susan, just to draw you out. Like you, I too had to figure it out after I started teaching, and it was real work, but I gather that you did figure it out and were a superb teacher. I did too and was a pretty good teacher, at least according to several of my former students, the best they ever had.
But this blog is not exclusively a place for we teachers to massage each others egos as we lament the incredibly painful degradation of adequately resourced neighborhood public schools. I too am appalled at the loss to the nation in so many communities, especially in the inner city, of that irreplaceable resource.
Part of the loss, however, I am convinced arises from public school teachers losing support in the public arena because of abundant evidence of moronicity, of which gullibility and mass hysteria about global warming is (in my opinion) one of the prime examples. I would prefer it were otherwise, but science is not a matter of votes. Even Jerry Brown has disgraced himself by claiming the fires in San Diego arose from ‘climate change.’ Of course, Governor Moonbeam never really had any intellectual credentials. But we’re TEACHERS!!!! We’re supposed to be better than that. We’re not supposed to be union ideologues, for whom truth does not matter, only power in school systems to get and retain jobs.
MY bottom line is simply this: I’d like posters on this blog to admit that they don’t “know” something when it is merely an opinion. It may be a right opinion or a wrong opinion, but no one can claim to “know” something without being able to explain WHY.
I personally happen to believe in evolution, in black holes, in the big bang and a lot of other things, but I don’t claim to KNOW them, only hold an opinion on them. I wouldn’t aspire to being able to explain what gravity really is or why it seems to be a force that operates at a distance. My OPINION, however, is that is something like a curvature of space induced by mass.
All I ask of you Susan, is enough of a sense of humor to recognize that what you may be said to “know” and the “opinions” you hold may not always be absolutely concurrent and when they are not so.
I know you don’t like my tone or attitude. So what? That doesn’t invalidate my logic.
But if you claim to be a teacher I submit that a teeny bit of humility about the epistemology involved in our human condition is in order, even for you.
Just that small thing: being aware of the difference between our “knowledge” and our “opinion.” And as long as Diane tolerates me on the blog, I intend to occasionally try to put pepper in the pants of people who seem to me to happily and blithely unaware of the distinction.
This blog is like a faculty meeting. People sometimes say unwelcome things. But they are still part of the enterprise.
Do not for a moment take this as a sigh that I will ever engage with you. It is… well… nuts… to think that”drawing a person out” by conveying pure contempt will work. It is magical thinking to think that one can recognize a sense of humor in a complete stranger whom you vehemently insult IN cyberspace where there is no voice, and no face. My sense of humor keeps me sane, and was a trademark in my practice… oops, I forgot, when I was working at that job.
I am taking a moment to giving YOU PERSONALLY a link to a conversation about Truth at the site that I read and where I write; I particularly enjoyed this thread. The publisher joined in (Rob Kall, uses Yellow background). I do not agree with many things said on that site, but I do not challenge the arguments… too busy with a real life.
Harlan. http://www.opednews.com/articles/Changing-People-s-Minds-t-by-Shirley-Braverman-Failed_States_of_Mind_Mind-Control_Narrow-Minded_Open-mindedness-140512-733.html
I believe that you may even enjoy the kind of intellectual conversation that you say you long for. Note the level of intelligence. Many of the people who wrote in this thread are m fans… I bet you have never gone to read my articles or the commentary I have written there over 5 years or more. You would not have had to ‘draw me out,’ to know what I think about things that I consider important. links are the blue buttons after the resume
http://www.opednews.com/author/author40790.html
Robert Reich, Chris Hedges and Paul Craig Roberts and many brilliant people write and comment on this site. There are wonderful philosophers. Rob Kall is one. His radio interviews are terrific. He did a series on psychopaths you might enjoy, (the threads were fascinating). He did another on activism.
Just remember one thing if you ever decide to write here…. it IS a progressive site, and those people who present the other side of a political argument do so with facts…. links… so if one says something like: “I think the country would be much better under tea party administration because I think they might just be honest,” he had better be prepared to offer links to honest tea-partiers who are not delusional hypocrites regarding the intent of the Constitution. And do not think you can engage Kall with the kind of nonsense you write here. It won’t take a minute before the publisher will call you out.
Also, personal disparagement, disrespect and of course utter contempt will not be rewarded… trust me on that one.
Now I have something to say to HU as HE chose to address me once again with utter disrespect in this public forum of my peers.
Yesterday, he posted for all to read, that he “will tell my Grandchildren “that I am “a liar.” he attacked again when I did not rise to this taunt, and told him to “get lost,” he ratted it up a notch. and said to ALL OF YOU, not just me… as this is a public forum:
“Your attitude toward public discourse is deplorable, Susan. You make yourself a discredit to the reputation of public school teaching. I must conclude that you do not actually know what you are talking about, in spite of your many years of teaching it, and that you represent and illustrate what public schools teachers are frequently criticized for, authority without knowledge.
Not that I support any of the reform efforts which Diane so heroically combats. I don’t. It is just sad to see a mature, experienced, educated person such as yourself constitute themselves as one more nail in the coffin of public education.”
This judge of everything concludes that I am a discredit to public school teaching?
Ok, but he says it OUT LOUD, here!
I came to this site to follow Diane Ravitch, for there is no one like her out there. I came to find the links to cross-post at other sites, and especially at Oped, so ordinary folks can see what is happening in 52 states. I did not come here to debate or event write, as I am very busy. I came to read the intelligent commentary about what is going on.
Yes, I do add my two sense, now and then, because I know what I am saying is rooted in reality, and I have some solid and important things to say, and I have the credentials and intelligence to say it. I am a trusted voice for good reason which this troll who knows me for 2 minutes would dispute ONLINE! What a bully!
Confusing tirades and vituperative to promote debate is not productive on a site like this.
This troll uses free speech as a mantra to make himself feel important. He has personally attacked me AGAIN because I refuse to debate him. He cannot stop himself and has insulted me repeatedly in the short time I am here.
I do not have to ‘prove’ what I say to the likes of HU. I have met him many times in my life and walked away, but as a new voice here, I must speak, as there is no site administrator to say, “Hey!”
If he had attacked ANY authentic speaker at Oped, the site administrator/publisher would have personally made it clear that such behavior was not productive on a serious site where argument and debate follows the rule of civility; farther personal attacks would be blocked by the editors, although it would not be necessary, because the people who know my voice and my spirit would quickly know who he is and relegate him to the waste bin.
It is a lovely day, and I am going out to buy the annuals, and then to plant them, and prepare for my Texas grandchildren’s visit. They know who I am. I know who I am, and everyone here — although I have only been in this forum for a few weeks, knows what I am… and they know WHO HU is . He needs to go somewhere else. This teacher’s room is on a professional level that Underhill believes does NOT exist; he says he respects teachers here, but THAT is why he speaks as he does.
Harlan Underhill said here onTHIS PLACE WHERE REAL PROFESSIONAL TEACHER-PRACTITIONERS talk about best practice, on this blog where bright, dedicated professionals come to converse about education, in what he admits is like a ‘teacher’s room: “Teachers do not have any really specific professional knowledge or competence, they are a dime a dozen! ” AND he admits that “I was in private schools all my life,” which is where he picked up this ‘FACT that teachers lack professional knowledge.” He also said, “I doubt I could have survived in public schools with the class sizes and ranges of motivation you all encounter daily.”
Forgive me, but this is a head jam. Such hubris from a person who condemns hubris in others… but then. I get it — that there are those that prefer who their eyes to be wide shut, so they can continue to cherish their own, private ‘worldview’…which is fine… as long as they do not stand up among real professionals to disparage them, and call this derision “debate.”
Yet, I AGREE WITH THE OBSERVABLE REALITY that poorly educated teachers are a dime a dozen these days, and it makes me sad that too many teachers are trained to enter a classroom and follow top-down mandates. This is because an ed degree at too many colleges is a joke…THAT has to change. in a previous post I discussed Bill Keller’s excellent article on what has to occur for pedagogy to return to a status as a genuine profession.
BUT, I have worked full time in six schools and part time in 20 others in the 12 years when I subbed in a fine school district; I can say that MY experience was one of witnessing teachers successfully meet state and city LEARNING OBJECTIVES despite the class sizes and the ranges of learning styles.
I witnessed it first hand in one school, my last one, a magnet PUBLIC school where the entire small staff was professional, even the young ones, and where staff development was a genuine outcome. I was so proud to sit and talk to my colleagues on such a level. Our bio teacher had a Ph’d and hours each week figuring out how to meet the needs of students who had difficulty with the complexity of her subject. MY humanities colleague and I talked for hours about each unit and the best way to proceed so that critical thinking skills were the TOP PRIORITY, not just the passing of our tests… which were the only tests except for one citywide reading test.
What I witnessed in public education from 1963 to the present points to many schools where there is the successful application of professional knowledge of how the BRAIN ACTUALLY learns! I have witnessed failure and quackery, but I have seen the professional experience that long tenure in public schools allows.
I don’t know how many workshops and seminars private school teachers must attend, but my summers were busy because every district where I worked demanded I attend seminars and workshops that shared BEST PRACTICE, not ‘lesson-plans’! I met real professionals. I heard professional discussions about learning and pedagogy.I earned 60 credits above my master degree, many in graduate college courses that offered insight into the latest GENUINE research into literacy and learning.
I would bet that people who do not know that PEDAGOGY IS A PROFESSION, have never read The American Educator http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/summer2011/index.cfm
I get a subscription, and still read it four times a year. It is an eye opener when one sees what is possible, what works.
Some medical technicians are well trained, but for surgery you want experience and knowledge. Some teachers are well -trained and can do very well in small venues where the kids are able to learn thanks to early interventions in the home… BUT the reason that so many teacher-PRACTITIONERS are able to enable and facilitate learning– a complex methodology ( I hate the world ‘teach’) is because of their intelligence, their education and their experience, as PROFESSIONALS.
What makes me genuinely sad, is that a teacher sees us as less than we are, and also, that his perspective is so skewed and bitter, that he would stand up among genuine professionals and scorn them in the name of DEBATE AND DISCUSSION… I hope this is enough discussion for such a person.
What makes me sadder still, is public that hears day in and daly out, about bad teachers, and only a few films and documentaries show what real professional pedagogy looks like when LEARNING skills is the objective.
Sigh
Susan, HU’s statements hang him by his own petard: he knows ‘jack’ about public schools and public education. For your own sake, stop beating a very dead horse. There are real and vital topics to discuss, rather than HU’s ‘ bubbmeisters’, if you catch my meaning..
Forgive HU for he doesn’t know what he’s taking about.
Maybe HU is thinking from his own limited experience and perspective—all that he knows as a teacher who only taught in the private sector—and he has no real specific professional knowledge or competence compared to public school teachers who never stop learning, at least in California where I taught.
What HU is doing is comparing public school teachers to what he knows, thinking that a dozen teachers like him would only be worth a dime, and he may be right from that limited perspective.
Thanks Lloyd. I get it. read my response to John.
I do, John and I appreciate the head’s-up. I have met his type before. I just feel that such a LONG letter imitating an apology for rude behavior while revealing such cluelessness, deserved a reply. I felt sad when I read his self-explantions —the WHY he does what he does– because they showed so little self-knowledge. They also revealed what I did not know., the insulation from a real school, the ones that function… or should I say once were the way it was when schools worked.
You and I and the lucky ones who got to teach when administration supported practice, and real professionals could meet learning objects with some expectation of success. Not every teacher was professional, and not every professional could be successful.
But I will never forget Aaron Feldstein or Sean Reid, by young 26 year old humanities teammates over the years that I taught middle school, at the end of my career.
Sean was Mensa, and although I was 3 decades older than he was, I let him guide me through the years before and during the American revolution and the founding of our democracy … as HE created activities that he felt the kids would enjoy as motivation to learn a lot of information. He created games and projects, but make no mistake about what the expected them to know, and what habits of mind they would have to develop to get a high grade in his room. In my room, we read “The Witch of Blackbird Pond as Aaron read and watched The Crucible with them. Lots of language and ideas, great writing..essays and reports in his room, letters and story writing in my room.
Aaron almost walked out in his first year. The kids, in large classes of course, were mostly good kids who wanted to learn, and some were very, very bright indeed, but classroom management is learned over time in a practice, just as doctors learn in their practice. I learned how to handle 13 year old boys… I had two sons, met hundreds of them, and has studied adolescent psychology, as well as pedagogy. I showed him how to get their attention regarding the rules of engagement–the criteria .. how to enter a room, how to carry on discourse like the adults they were practicing to be.. and how to respect the rules and the teacher. He made learning fun, and kids love fun, but it had to be on his terms.
it was great fun. He took them to Federal Hall to argue the Zenger case , nine of them in robes. They were all prepared, and written briefs. With me, they were reading Animal Farm, and talking about revolution and what is needed for a real democracy to succeed.
John, I HAVE met teachers who could not teach. I have met teachers who should not be allowed to talk to children, period.
But IHAVE MET wonderful teachers who are unforgettable!
I have not worked in one place where I listened to the same voices, including the one in my head… for decades. I taught in NYC in 1963 to 1966, in three different Brooklyn schools. I taught 2nd grade again, for a year in Rockland County (East Ramapo, when the district was third in the nation… it is now failing 3 years in a row.)
I had my sons, and returned to teaching in 3 Rockland districts, and observed how learning was enabled in a really diverse number of schools.
I taught elementary grades at first, but used my art and English licenses to teach in middle and high schools. I sat in fascinating teacher’s rooms, with wonderful middle class, smart men and women. Yes! There were a few jaded veterans tired of struggling with the popular culture of kids, but few as cynical about the profession.
Some veterans get tired but most experienced guys and gals I met were still having fun being immersed in a room with energetic young minds. I remember laughter and argument in those teachers room, and lots of chatter about the kids.
Were there characters who saw me as a lowly sub and were less respectful… sure, but I was steady in those secondary schools, teaching math, social studies art and English so they could leave on jury duty and come back to find the kids on target for outcomes. That was because each teacher left very specific plans, which the sub was expected to use, if she wanted to teach these great kids.
Management was key, and I always provided motivation to behave in my presence even when I subbed, and by my third year, when I entered a teacher’s room, I was treated as the professional I was. The principal wanted me to work full-time there, but my salary was too high for the board. There, I would have earned 80k. IN NYC u pony return in my for my eight year of full-time employment, I made &38k. I was harassed out at 58k, just as i would have been eligible for a longevity raise to 70. That was then, now at my salary step it would be over 80k.
To conclude, i will tell you what the head of the art department — who had watched me teach, and for whom I had subbed,– said to me in one teachers room: “Heck, Sue, I would have you teach my own kids… you do something beyond showing them a skill… you ‘enculturate’ children.” Thank you Jack Hobart.
I tell you this because I have been in many, many teacher’s rooms… and because I am by nature a playwright, I can see that clueless man disrupting conversations for 3 decades in his teacher’s room, and I know who he is, but I know who I am, too. Character is character, after all.
verily so. begin with knowing who you are. everything follows from self knowledge and insight (einsicht). best.