Actually, not too many people on this site are advocating for public schools, TC. There are a lot of Europeans on this site that know firsthand how well private schools work.

@TC

Teacher don't get paid in the summer. Average salary for a teacher is around $40,000. If you adjust that to a job that would work through the summer, their salary would be around $53,000. Still not great.

Instead of fucking the teachers over, they should be scrapping the unions, which waste everyone's time and take money off the top.

@tettletons chew
Teachers are important, and if you think being a public school teacher is a luxurious job you're wrong. Yes you get lots vacation but the money kind of sucks. Personally it does seem like an easy job, but I would never do it because there just isn't enough money in it and you have to ignore the perks. Private schools would be great, but there aren't enough of them and the small amount that there are in the US only some are decent. So before you start ranting about how great it is that the teachers don't get this or that think about being a teacher and put yourself in their shoes.

Denis, Students are what is important.
I've taught before so talk about something you've done that I haven't.
The money doesn't suck actually when you take in the family medical, pensions, and retirement age.
If you are 20 something and single the money sucks, but no one with a family gives a hoot about single, twenty-somethings. They are cannon fodder.

You getting hysterical about teachers having to contribute to their own pension plans doesn't surprise me at all.
Also you posting the standard diatribe about teaching that pervades Welfare State websites on the web, but that is factually inaccurate and intellectually indefensible also doesn't surprise.

Taking a school district from almost half a million annual deficit to a surplus is great because.
It's all about children Denis. Children like you.

Abgemacht, I don't have problems with private sector unions. I do have problems with union only shops. I also have problems with unions using dues for political purposes without member approval. I have no problem at all with strikes and collective bargaining. I also don't have problems with scabs who cross picket lines.
Let it all happen.
Public sector unions should be entirely against the law. Police, Fireman, Teachers, should not be represented by unions.

Teachers in the LAUSD can make $134,000 a year in salary and that is before pension and lifetime medical benefits for their families.

Here is a link to the salary tables.
http://www.teachinla.com/whyteach/salary.html

Table G with a Masters Degree is the 134,000 table.

Gunfighter, I simply began this thread to show that taking the simple step of having teachers contribute to their own pension plans when they didn't contribute a red cent before could take school districts out of budget deficits.

I'm an advocate of public school vouchers personally.
If you can afford a private school more power to you.
The problem in education is bad teachers.
Public school vouchers would put the schools with bad teachers out of business manana.
It would also allow inner-city families to escape the horrible campuses that can exist there. Some of the worst campuses in LAUSD serve some of the lower economic quintile families that need education to prosper the most.

@TC

Table G is for administrators, not teachers...

Abegemacht, That's even worse.

I don't disagree.

But, you can't talk about teachers and supply evidence for administrators.

Table L,
$75,890 top out with an 15% for national board cetification and $1168 for a PhD.

$88,441.50 with full family medical and pension. Also not counting what you get paid in the summer or for any ancillary work done beyond your union designated teaching hours.

the problem is bad teachers... good thing Tettleton doesnt teach anymore

Posted a statistic from a Chronicle of Higher Education study that showed Michigan university had 50% more administrators than permanent faculty. Talk about administrative blight in higher education. I know one website where you can go online and find out the salaries of professors. Last time I checked Lynn Hunt in the UCLA History department made just below $300,000 before benefits and pension.

I make more than that with just an associates degree (and almost 30 years experience) and don't live in LA where the cost of living is through the roof. In LA, my salary would be $120-125 K. You're not helping your case, TC.

@ TC

No. Too much inertia and bureaucracy in the system to really make public school vouchers work. It would be better to throw out the whole system and start over with the private sector.

we need to get rid of the private schools. it benefits the rich who can afford to send there children to those schools. tettleton knows nothing about government or money!!!

Shut up, 1brucben

Public schools are a complete failure. You better stop being a Michael Moore parrot if you want a serious argument with me. I refuse to fight an idiot's fight.

But Gunfighter, who will allow the whole system to be thrown out? At least if you use school vouchers it will start the destruction of the system and allow you to scrap the whole thing eventually.

No. Public school vouchers would not work because the good schools would get overcrowded and the bad schools would collect dust.

Public schools are broken ONLY if you measure their success by an outcome that is not attainable.

The students who attend public school come in all shapes, sizes and abilities. There is nothing public school can do to make sure they ALL have an EQUAL outcome. Some will pass, some will fail. The true problem is that there are too many failures, as deemed by some, and rules/excuses are made up that allow students to claim: discrimination, learning disablity, medical disablity, socio-economic disadvantage, etc. To make education "fair" different groups of people are given waivers from truely achieving. No where else in society are such things taken into consideration. While I believe all children can learn, I also believe that all do not learn the same way nor to the same degree as others.

@gunfighter
Nor would vouchers work because the good schools would not recieve anything extra for being good. When you have a finite product (in this case x number of seats in a "good" school) and the price everyone pays for that seat is the same, what would make the good school take on additional students?

When a band sells out a concert and there are more people who still want to see the show, tickets are sold above face value. In public education there is no scalping to get students into good schools.

I disagree Czech. I'll trust the parent's judgment on this one. If parents complain about their schools and their teachers they should be free to move them to another school. Granting teachers unions and school administrators monopoly power of education funding is not a viable model for success.
Introducing competition to the model through school vouchers shouldn't bother any competent teacher or effective administrator. School vouchers only scare corrupt administrators and incompetent teachers.

School vouchers would shut down bad schools, eliminate bad teachers, and shift funding to new school administrations and new teachers.

The current system is a monopoly. When is a monopoly a good thing?

"The students who attend public school come in all shapes, sizes and abilities. There is nothing public school can do to make sure they ALL have an EQUAL outcome. Some will pass, some will fail. The true problem is that there are too many failures, as deemed by some, and rules/excuses are made up that allow students to claim: discrimination, learning disablity, medical disablity, socio-economic disadvantage, etc."

I agree. Private schools can solve those problems. If the private school fails to teach the kid, than the parents will take their kid (and their money) to a different school.

@ Tettleton:

"In Appleton, Wisconsin the local school district faced an annual deficit approaching half a million dollars."

How did the deficit arise in the first place?


"The schools are for the kids not for the teachers."

So, you think the teachers should not be paid? How are the teachers supposed to support themselves and their families?


"You never hear teachers complain about getting an entire summer off with their job waiting for them in the fall."

Teachers get quite a high holiday allowance yes, but there's a straight trade-off for that, in terms of the fact that by necessity they can only take their holidays at prescribed times of the year. I get less holidays per year than a teacher does, for example, but I have some control over *when* I take them. I'm not sure I would appreciate being in a job where I had no choice over when to use my holiday entitlement. In addition, I believe Abgemacht is right that some teachers don't get paid during summer vacation.


"Public sector unions should be entirely against the law. Police, Fireman, Teachers, should not be represented by unions."

Why? How are those workers to defend themselves if their bosses treat them poorly? Why one rule for private sector workers and another rule for public sector workers?


"Table L, $75,890 top out with an 15% for national board cetification and $1168 for a PhD."

But very few schoolteachers have a PhD in my experience. What's the AVERAGE pay for a teacher in Appleton, Wisconsin? That would be a more relevant figure.

While I don't support collective bargaining rights for certain public unions (especially not across professions like firemen striking in support of police), I do believe they have a need to redress grievances that only a union can properly give them. But instead of having collective bargaining that can actually shut down a city, they should have class-action suit capabilitiy with swift response when brought by a union (swift meaning in the holding of the first hearing, not in a rush to judgement) so their voice is heard and in a timely manner.

"While I don't support collective bargaining rights for certain public unions (especially not across professions like firemen striking in support of police), I do believe they have a need to redress grievances that only a union can properly give them. But instead of having collective bargaining that can actually shut down a city, they should have class-action suit capabilitiy with swift response when brought by a union (swift meaning in the holding of the first hearing, not in a rush to judgement) so their voice is heard and in a timely manner."

Draugnar + 1

I know in some places, teachers are paid their ten month salary over twelve months, so their income is steady over the year, rather than non-existent when they aren't working.

I know it's a secondary (maybe even tertiary) point, but I wanted to get it out there.

Somehow I don't believe that anything in this topic has anything to do with "common sense saves schools". Once again, misleading thread TC.