A Florida teacher posted this comment. It raises the question of whether it is fair to attract people to become teachers with promises that are later canceled by a nasty, brutish legislature. The legislature passed a law called “the Best and Brightest” that awarded bonuses to new teachers based on the SAT scores they recorded years earlier. It constantly thinks about how to attract new teachers but does nothing to retain the experienced teachers it has. What this teacher describes is the perfidious work of Jeb Bush and his cronies:
I was never a money person. If I was I would never have become a teacher. I honestly believed that we were paid what they could afford to pay us. Seems stupid now but I was a kid. I was a fool. Twenty years ago I signed up to be a teacher. I wanted to be a teacher. I went to college for it. I knew I would never be able to support a family. It was ok, I wasn’t interested in having one. When I first became a teacher, I was shown a “step” system of pay. I saw that every year you’d make a little more. When you finally reached 20 or 25 years in the system the pay took huge leaps higher. Some years as much as a $10,000 increase if you can believe it. I thought I’d be rewarded for loyalty.
That “step” system has long been abandoned. Now we receive increases of around 1.3% a year. I thought the worst indignity came when I actually made less money than the year prior. The state of Florida forced us to contribute 3% to our retirement. Our yearly salary increase wasn’t even that much. This latest indignity is worse. Florida passed a new law raising the minimum teacher salary. Wonderful for new hires and attracting talent. Not so wonderful for those of us that have put the years in. Now, after 20 years of dutiful service I make $5,000 dollars more than a 21 year old, fresh out of college.
I am absolutely and totally morally devastated. The system seems to now be designed to have a perpetual series of inexperienced teachers. I need help. I need for my story to be heard. What do I do? What can I do? They don’t care about me. Now I don’t care about my job. When they showed me that “step” schedule 20 years ago, I believed it to be a nonverbal agreement about how much I would make, roughly, in the future. I was a fool. If I knew then I would never have become a teacher. I feel conned, duped, and lied to and I just can’t take it anymore.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Gates Foundation, source of so many, many really bad ideas in education, did a study years ago that said that having advanced degrees had no effect on scores on standardized tests, and, of course, because these morons actually believe that the tests validly measure what they purport to measure, they concluded (well, Bill concluded) that further study by teachers, beyond their undergraduate degrees, was of no value.
Imagine that. These idiots actually concluded that having more highly educated teachers was of no value.
And, since Bill long ago decided that he was a genius and so qualified to do the thinking for the rest of us, he made sure that $$$$$$ would flow to education “leaders” and organizations that upended traditional progressive pay scales for teachers. And, ofc, ALEC created legislation to instantiate Bill’s Great Idea.
But, ofc, all this was wrong from the start because the tests in ELA do not validly measure what the purport to measure.
Love all your comments, Bob, but don’t give the Common Core a break when it comes to teaching math. Trust us who teach it that they’re not any better than what I read from you regarding ELA.
Understood. But the issues with Common Core math are different ones. A whole can of worms, that, and outside my areas of expertise, though I have some opinions on the subject that I believe to be warranted.
Gates not only believes advanced degrees are worthless, but also that a bachelor’s is.
In fact, he believes that the SAT(arot card) tells all.
Scholastic Aptitude Tarotcard
SA Tarot card tells all
Future from a score
Tarot card’s a crystal ball
Tells you what’s in store
Degrees are worthless to Gates because he never earned one.
Oh, once again, SomeDAM, I’m not worthy!
The “MONIED” and the “CORRUPT” are destroying America.
Gates is a FRAUD.
Bill’s belief that graduate degrees don’t make better teachers is founded on the work of Hoover Institution economist Eric Hanushek.
Thanks, Diane!
Interesting. I saw several interviews with Bill in which he said things like, “We did studies that showed. . . .” Perhaps his foundation funded Hanushek’s work. Lord knows, he funds a lot of the right-wing “studies” with their foregone results (greed is good) and unexamined premises and sloppy methodologies and fallacious reasoning leading to unsupported conclusions.
I didn’t mean to suggest that Hanushek’s work was the sole source of Gates’ views. Whoever concluded that more education doesn’t matter was in the same school of thought, using test scores as the definition ogf “better.”
Yes. Understood. But thank you for sharing this info, Diane!
Gates is and has been a disaster for education in the U.S. for many years.
And, ofc, if the curriculum is entirely scripted and computerized, in keeping with the Gates agenda, then the teacher’s role is not to be the knowledgeable and capable person in the room who can pass on that knowledge and those capabilities but, rather, to make sure the computers are plugged in and working, and to point kids to the next task on the script.
But this deprofessionalization of work is ubiquitous. Increasingly, work is automated, and workers are relegated to service jobs and maintenance. And inequality grows and grows and grows and grows.
Welcome to the New Feudal Order.
and oh, the endless micromanagement
Lord yes. Teachers with respect for themselves and for their fields of expertise have to deal with a lot of this garbage. The best of them continue teaching well DESPITE what they are told to do.
In other words, if Bill has decided for you that something utterly ridiculous is true based on his numerology, uh, data–if he has decided that it makes no difference how experienced or learned the teacher is–then this is the new reality.
And policy makers fall in line.
That’s how things work in a Plutocracy.
“when I act, i create my own virtual reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—I’ll act again, creating other new virtual realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. I’m history’s malaf actor…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what i do’.” — Bill Gates
malef actor
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community
The names were changed to protect the guilty
“Seriously?” as Cameron Diaz says, repeatedly in the wildly exaggerated (but hilarious IMO) film, Bad Teacher. **
(The movie was great comedy/satire–wonder how many people–other than teachers–took it that way?) The tv version was utter trash & was, thankfully, cancelled. No one needed to see that about educators on a weekly basis.
& Jason Segal was **terrific, breaking the stereotype of a jock gym teacher–highly intelligent & great sarcasm from him.
I sympathize with this teacher.
When I was in junior college, one day we had a visiting professor who came from New York City. He told us that teachers will not make much money over a lifetime of work. Their salaries are not much but that those who go into this field are sacrificing a salary for the stability of the job.
I didn’t believe him. My parents were extremely poor and I knew that a college education was the ticket to a better life.
My salary was rotten and I was always struggling at the end of two weeks when I’d get my next pay check. My life was slightly better than that of my parents but they set a very low bar.
I didn’t receive a decent salary until I gave up and went overseas to work at an international school.
This country claims to care about education. It DOESN’T! it cares about the military and the wars that never end. It cares about spying on every person in the world. [For what it’s worth, the U.S. also doesn’t care about providing decent affordable healthcare nor social services for those who need help. “Pull yourself up by your OWN bootstrap.”]
Social Progress Index: Norway Up, US Down
As The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof writes, the latest Social Progress Index (put out yearly by the DC-based nonprofit the Social Progress Imperative) rates Norway as the global leader in its broad metrics of the quality of human life, while containing bad news for the US. “[D]espite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence,” Kristof writes, the US “ranks 28th—having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.”
The calculation, which includes data from “globally or locally respected sources,” as the group deems them—in categories like access to advanced education, personal freedom, water and sanitation, access to quality health care, and personal safety—is a blow to Americans’ sense of exceptionalism, as Kristof puts it. “We Americans like to say ‘We’re No. 1.’ But the new data suggest that we should be chanting, ‘We’re No. 28! And dropping!’ Let’s wake up, for we are no longer the country we think we are.”…
Kristof is part of the problem. In the past, he has advocated for states to include the data from their annual high-stakes tests in teacher evaluations, insinuating that “America’s economy and national well-being” depended on it
Michelle Tenam-Zemach: I agree that Kristof is not wise on what is happening in education. He is, however, knowledgeable on knowing what is happening inside other countries that are poorer than the U.S.
We are not doing well in caring for our citizens. The wealthy are greedy sorts who never get enough and they buy legislation that feeds their desires. Citizens United is a disaster.
As for the “immense wealth”: as Bernie always says, & has been saying for as long as I can remember, that “immense wealth” is in the greedy hands of the top 10%, maybe 1%.
The rest of us live in–or will soon live in–the Third World country that is now the swath of America.
My above comment was a reply to carolmalaysia’s 9:30 AM important comments.
Young, inexperienced teachers will do what they are told. And so will a generation of kids brought up on online test prep exercises, where success is all about shutting up, sitting down, and gritfully applying one’s self to the next task doled out by some unseen master of the universe, no matter how inane or alienating it is.
Perfect training for Proles in the New Feudal Order. “Will you be taking that latte poolside, Mistuh Gates?”
Will you be taking that latte Epsteinside, Mistuh Gates?”
lol
Except for an early expose in the NY Times reporting the basic facts about Gates’ meetings with Epstein, the mainstream news media have been curiously uncurious about Gates and other billionaires who interacted with Epstein.
Why would any billionaire (Gates or anyone else) want (to say nothing of need) to have anything at all to do with a convicted pedophile?
That’s an obvious question that has yet to be adequately answered. (And no, “He knew a lot of rich people” is not a credible answer)
One of many obvious questions. Another is where did Epstein get his fortune? (estimated at half a billion dollars).
What was it really all (multimillion dollar mansions, Pedophisland, Pedophilanthropy, Pedoplane, etc) about? JUST a case of a pedophile satisfying his sexual desires? Really? (If you believe that, I have some prime ocean front property for you in Arizona)
Again, no mainstream news organization has addressed these questions in any meaningful way.
Apparently, none will even touch them. Epstein seems to be radioactive. Why?
If there is one lesson of the experience of the last few years of Trump, it’s that the corruption is now totally blatant. It’s right out there for anyone to see. And nothing can be done about it because of the vast centralization of money and power. It has been months and months since the feds raided all of Epstein’s properties. They have long, long had all the blackmail materials that Epstein collected–the photos and videotapes–huge caches of them. In his Manhattan mansion, he had a whole room full of monitoring and recording equipment. There were hidden cameras everywhere. All these captains of industry and public intellectuals and powerful politicians came and went and participated, and he had it all, and this has all been buried. Don’t hold your breath waiting for it all to come out in the Ghislaine Maxwell trial. I’m not.
What was happening at the Villa Jovis? Well, that’s for the rich to know and you to forget about.
Maxwell probably has her own copies of all the tapes and may actually have set up a deadman’s switch to be activated should she be either killed or convicted.
She’s no dummy and seems unlikely to take the fall for the rest of the willing accomplices.
Because of this likelihood, i’d wager that Maxwell will eventually be let off the hook.
When I was starting college, my dad, who had an unstable career as a machinist, urged me to become a teacher. His words were, “It’s a stable career for a woman.” He didn’t mean it in a knowing sexist way. He meant it in a protective way, and he was right to some extent. My career was mostly stable, but so-called reform is pulling out the pillars of stability for younger teachers. I am sure all those black, middle class public teachers in New Orleans believed they were helping their community, and they also believed they could retire with dignity, not rich, just dignity. Being middle class is an endangered status in today’s America. So-called reform dashed these teachers’ plans and made them expendable.
Inherent in the right wing agenda is that experienced teachers are lazy and useless, and they believe this despite any evidence to the contrary. I do not believe this teacher was foolish, just idealistic, like so many of us that decide to become teachers. Teachers tend to believe that the personal satisfaction derived from teaching will offset the many challenges. Florida has pushed the negatives into the zone of demoralization.
In order to make change teachers must become political, even if it is not their nature. Teachers have two tools at their disposal, protest and voting. Teachers in Florida have been far too sheepish. If they do not reject the poor treatment, they will get more of it from an abusive, right wing legislature. After organizing and protesting, teachers must vote out the regressive dead wood, the complicit. the white supremacists and the weak in the legislature and other offices in the state. They need to vote for those that believe that democratic public education is a cornerstone of democracy.
I, too, am a teacher in Florida and I agree 100%. And what gets me is that our evaluations are based on the money that is available at each school, not on our performance. This is why only a tiny fraction of teachers ever get rated “Highly Effective.” It costs too much. The greatest indignity is that an administrator who is so far removed from the classroom and has absolutely no idea how to teach and manage a classroom, is evaluating a teacher who’s been teaching for years, and tells the teacher “you need improvement in this area.” What a joke. Everything is tied to the almighty dollar. But of course it’s not politics. The problem is that we teachers are too greedy. Yeah. Right.
I just left an urban public “early education center” that serves ages 3-6. from 7:30am-5:00pm. The new young principal never taught any of those grades. (She was surprised when I told her that some of my 3-year-olds need a 2 hour nap! God forbid they miss precious “instructional time!) A lot of teachers who had been evaluated as “exemplary” by the former principal, many with 20+ years of experience, were demoted to “proficient” or “needs improvement.” I’m really tired of seeing this happen.
I would not sign that evaluation. The first year Florida started its detrimental evaluation system I taught all 11th grade classes. I was asked to meet with the principal and the AP of curriculum (my evaluator) and was told I was a “Needs Improvement Teacher”. I was devastated because prior to that year, I had always received outstanding evaluations. I was also an NBCT teacher. Additionally, for that first year of the insane evaluation system, all teachers on campus who did not teach 9th and 10th grade were supposed to receive the school-wide VAM. I pointed out that I should have received the SW VAM scores because I taught all 11th grade students. The AP looked at me and said, “No, you have one 10th grade class.” At that point, my devil horns came out, and I asked for specific data that they based their scoring on. The principal called the district office and spoke to the one mathematician who did the calculations for each teacher. He stated that I had received that score because over the course of three years of teaching, nine of my students did not pass the FCAT re-takes. I asked, “What about the 300 other students who had passed; don’t they count?” They did not have a clue how to respond. I refused to accept their evaluation and did not sign it. The principal told me to send him an email once I had time to think about the situation, so I did. I asked for all sorts of data on those nine specific students: When did they enroll in my class?; How many absences did they have?; Are they on free or reduced lunch?… and lots more data. I received no response, but the a-holes gave me the SW VAM, and the next year, they moved me to 10th grade in an effort to set me up for failure. At the end of that year, I met with my evaluator to sign my evaluation, and she commented, “You are one of those teachers.” My defense mechanism immediately went into high gear, and I asked, “What does that mean?” She replied, “You are responsible for our A+ rating.” I had no idea because I’m that rebellious teacher who refuses to look at data; I look at the students in front of me and tell them point blank, “I will never treat you like a data point; I will treat you as a human being, and you will work harder in this English class than any other ones you have been in, and you will pass that stupid state test with no problem!!” Then I never mention the test again until a month before its administration. (I also ignore the scripted common core curriculum). Ergo, my students excelled, and for consecutive years, I earned perfect VAM scores (unbeknownst to me). I only learned about it because the department chair told me. (Again, I rarely look at the data; I always look at the child). My next evaluator consistently awarded me with high scores such as 99/100. The following year a new evaluator came on board, an academic with a doctorate in Reading, but zero classroom experience. She tried to lower my rating, but I refused to sign until she changed her scores, explaining, “Nothing has changed; I cannot help that you never came to my classroom to observe those specific activities, and I still have perfect VAM scores, so why do you think it’s okay to lower my score in categories I have always been rated as Highly Effective?” She changed my scores both years she evaluated me.
The tragedy of it all is that I had to consistently fight to get what was rightfully mine from the outset. No teacher should have to suffer such denigration and demoralization at the hands of administrators who have been given district and state directives to assign lower scores because “Too many of your teachers are being rated as ‘Highly Effective’”.
I have five years before I can retire, but my heart is no longer in it, so I will be leaving this profession and the children who I dearly love teaching. The stress that comes with teaching has taken a massive toll on my health, and I am currently on an LOA because of it. (Yes, I also had to fight for my FMLA benefit; it’s always a fight, with the district and admin on one side, and the teachers on the opposite side). It’s not supposed to be that way; we are all supposed to be on the same side, but it’s not like that here.
I have two pieces of advice for anyone thinking of going into education: 1. Don’t do it!! 2. If you really believe it is your true calling, then go straight through and get your masters degree; subsequent to that, teach in the U.S. for a minimum of three years, so you can get some experience; apply to teach overseas where your efforts will be appreciated and rewarded. Most of all, you will be respected and honored everywhere else in the world because you are a teacher.
Rebekah Ray: “…teach in the U.S. for a minimum of three years, so you can get some experience; apply to teach overseas where your efforts will be appreciated and rewarded. Most of all, you will be respected and honored everywhere else in the world because you are a teacher.”
I agree completely. I taught in Illinois long enough to get a minimum pension and then taught in Bolivia for two years and then went to Malaysia for 8 years + two years in the Peace Corps teaching in Borneo right after college graduation.
You might have to start at the bottom in schools that don’t pay too well, however. There are a number of schools overseas that have great kids and the pay is much better than what was available to me in Illinois.
This is a national problem, in the final analysis, isn’t it?
It’s much, much bigger than just the teaching profession. Productive use of capital through the engagement of labor means less to the rich now. So, labor means less to the rich now, and laborers do, too. But none of this is sustainable, ofc. The problem is that it’s almost impossible to get an individual rich person to see this, given that increasing his or her wealth is less and less dependent upon laborers.
This is all going to break unless we dramatically change the system via higher taxation on wealth AND on capital, including on inherited wealth. Also needed, tax laws that tax based upon sales in countries rather than on earnings in purported country headquarters, as well as strong international sanctions on tax havens.
It does start to look like we have social stability–in which I include a planet fit for human life, which this one may not be much longer–or a global plutocracy. But not both.
And thanks Bob.
The choice is looking more and more stark.
Bob Shepherd: Didn’t you read that George Soros is funding a civil war by the L if Trump wins the election?
Or, you could follow what my brother just sent me:
Vote Trump save the USA from the Communist Party!!
LMAO!!! I am beginning to think that I must be asleep and that this is all just an absurdist nightmare.
Also, these large multi-national corporations care less about the US than ever before. We are only 4% of the world’s population. Our value as a market has diminished. There are other, larger markets for them, the China, Asia and the EU have lots of people eager to buy their goods or services, and little production remains in America as a result of globalization. They have less of an interest in the future of the American people than they once had. The attitude is,”let ’em eat cake.”
China is now the largest economy in the world by GDP measured in terms of purchasing power parity. India is third by the same measure.
What we need is to put a relatively small number of billionaires on a one way 🚀 trip to Alpha Centauri.
That might not solve all our country’s problems but it would solve the big ones.
Elon Musk already has the 🚀.
We need to tell them there is a lot of money to be made on Mars. Maybe they will invest and leave public education alone.
Mars is far too close
It’s still within their reach
To give us all a dose
Of Gates and other leech
Nay, send them to the stars
In rocket from Elon
With shiny Tesla cars
That Gates can comment on
This is why we need strong unions or unions unencumbered by those lousy right to work (for less) laws. The only thing the economic overlords recognize is the force (non-violent, peaceful) of organized and unified labor. When will this country be free of the toxicity of the far right wing/libertarian mindset?
Yes. We desperately need a revival of the union movement in this country.
When I was a young, first year teacher, making $5,400.00 our union saved our backside. They put together really quality retirement and health/medical programs that have been a huge benefit to me. We gave up some salary increases for a few years, but it was more than worth it. I was a P.E. teacher and have had 10 surgeries, shoulders, knees, elbows, ankle and our medical benefits kept me from going broke. Long since retired, but next year a get a brand new left knee. In
’66 the Jr HS coaches went on strike because the district required us to coach but wouldn’t pay us. The union stood behind us and that changed in a year. Fresno had one of the premier Jr. HS athletic leagues in the country. Yes, I’m a union supporter, as is my wife (also a PE Teacher and a Calif. HS Coach of the Year in ’85..Womens T&F).
You need a strong union in Florida. You need to stick together and demand a livable salary and benefits.
Didn’t the FEA just sue the state & guv. deINSANEtis to keep the schools closed–& lose? (Stacked FL courts; same thing w/overturning the right to vote for convicted &, also, demanding that people pay outstanding debt{s} or some such before they can vote?)
Not to mention climate change & the hurricanes (please be safe, FL friends!). As for FL fiends…
Replies to SDP & retired teacher up there RE: wealthy people being sent to Mars.
I hadn’t seen the film Elysium , but that’s what it was about–after having ruined Earth (as we’re doing as I type), all of the wealthy oligarchs were able to buy their way onto a luxurious space station, while “the rest live a hardscrabble existence in the Earth’s ruins.”
(Matt Damon–our ed. hero, & hero in this film & Jodie Foster)
The only fictional (probably) thing about it is that it doesn’t take place until the year 2154.
Coming much sooner, to the Earth under your feet.
The difference (and it’s a big one) is that I’m suggesting they visit the stars BEFoRE the earth is ruined (by them). Amazon alone is it’s own global warming factory with it’s trucks driving all over the tar nation every day.
And the sooner people like Gates and Bezos leave the planet, the better it will be for the rest of us.
Elysium is magnificent. This is what the future looks like unless we start making some major changes now.
As you know, I’ve made a point of not “believing” in science. I got a an email from a Dem operative drone tonight about how Joe “believes” in science. Let them know what I thought and got this response:
“You believe in the process of science, or you do not. You believe because of proof and evidence, not faith. That is the difference. Without beliefs, you could not function. We believe gravity exists because we have evidence of its existence.”
Won’t post my profanity-laced response. I’ll vote for Joe, I’ll vote for Dems, but I’m done with the party. Ready to resist either way, if the Idiot wins or if Joe wins.
This was the message I sent, again, not sharing my response to the response:
“As one who is unequivocally for Joe, it distresses me that you would use the term ‘believes in science.’ Science is based on use of the scientific method, which is not a system of belief, it is a verifiable process of observation, gathering evidence, and replicable. When one uses the word ‘believe’ when referring to the scientific method, then it just becomes a rhetorical tool that puts other beliefs on the same level.
“We do not ‘believe in science.’ We accept and act on verifiable findings the scientific method. Please quit using ‘believe’ and ‘science’ in the same sentence.”
What will it take for Democratic operatives to behave like Democrats?
Good for you for standing your ground, Greg. Clearly, these hacks have no clue what makes science different from wishful thinking.
I’ll try to be as succinct as possible, in the end you are falling for the very thing they intend by leaving us older teachers behind, they wish to conquer us by dividing us against one another!
When the legislature eliminated “tenure” in Florida, that was when we lost. We didn’t stand for our younger brethren when we should have gone on strike then (regardless of us being a “right to work” State) for them, to ensure they have what WE do! While we might not make much more for our experience, would you give up your “tenure” for a little more money? I think many of these Year to Year teachers would exchange some of their money for more job security and to not constantly work in fear !
We MUST demand this law be rescinded to get ALL Teachers to be protected and represented by their Unions. Tick Tock Tallahassee!!!
I’m in the same boat! Looking back at my years of service as a teacher, seeing a span of four years that were stagnant in pay raises, I have chosen to leave, after 24 years due to the lack of integrity of my district. I have a total of 28 years in with FRS, from my years as a Graphic Artist, working for USF. It’s so sad how working as an educator has opened my eyes to how little respect educators get! I’m done! No more dog and pony shows! No more new tricks! No more kissing up!