@obi - I've been crawling around the DOE site for the last half hour and couldn't find anything on education rankings. From what I gandered though, NY is towards the top, though Cali does have a shit-ton of tests and requirements its teachers half to pass each year....far more than any other state. Here's the link to a report it may be in, if you want to dig yourself. https://title2.ed.gov/secReport10.asp

But the teachers unions are far too strong in NY for budget cuts to happen frequently, let alone salary cuts. There were maybe one or two years of austerity budget while I was in school? Here's a lovely website that I discovered on NY teachers. There is probably one on California teachers as well. I'm linking you to the pension page, so you can see the whopping $15.5 billion in teachers pension funds we have.

http://seethroughny.net/pensions/

Bo sox is sounding very Ted kazinski today.

@obi: POLI sci, not POLY sci. Political, not multiple. They won't let you graduate with that minor unless you get it right. :p

@ghug: I can understand how someone can "hate" math in the sense of hating to perform math above the arithmetic/bit of algebra level. It doesn't mean you have to hate the field of mathematics or its behind-the-scenes importance in every day life. I found math extremely boring. Once I finished high school, I said hooray, I'll never take math again, and I didn't. As bo_sox said, I got the hell out of math.

I know what happened to America. We won.

The peak of American innovation and education came in the sixties when the space race was in full swing. We had been building as a nation and becoming more prominent globally as a people for about the last fifty years. The GI Bill that paid for university for (effectively) an entire generation skyrocketed education levels. (See what I did there?) Math and science were desperately needed, and every red-blooded American's dream was to be part of the space program, even in the smallest of engineering capacities.

And then we won.

Not to mention the social unrest in the nation throughout the sixties and seventies, kids running off from university or being drafted out, a disinterest in anything "public" because it was funded by the Man who was only out to lie and kill and destroy.

Not to mention the declining acceptable levels of academic performance almost certainly inversely correlate with the increasing presence of universities-as-businesses.

Not to mention the disfavor of the classics and foreign languages in general, of which Latin, at the very least, was /the/ grammar course for English speakers. (If you doubt me, go take a Greek or Latin course. Those languages can explain English grammar better than an English textbook could ever hope to.)

Not to mention the increasing misordering of priorities by our government. The Mars rover Curiosity /could/ have been a human being. In the 90's, NASA proposed a 30-year, $10 billion plan to put a /human/ on Mars. It was shot down as too expensive. NASA is doing cool stuff today because of funding from decades ago. In twenty years, people are going to ask why we aren't doing cool stuff in space anymore, and the reason will be that the moon was only ever another battlefield. It was a trophy to hold high politically, not the greatest achievement of mankind, the only positive event in the last hundred years that everyone remembers where they were when it happened.

So what happened to our peak performance? We won.

(Now that said, there is still a ridiculous amount of immigration to the U.S. from nations all over the world and countless international students coming to the United States for a higher education. The numbers of lower and middle class people who are uneducated have never been stellar. Pick a time period and a nation and the commoners will suck, on average. I was raised in one of the most dirt-poor areas of the country. The cotton was more intellectually stimulating than the people. This test and its results are not surprising, not the least of which is because of the increasing concern over "retention," which amounts to keeping piss poor students who should go to vocational school and learn a skill, not to read Homer or Shakespeare. National levels have never been something to brag about. The travesty is not in this report, its in the people who are okay with a candidate who wants to shut down NPR and the National Endowments for the Arts and for Science as a way to trim the budget, which incidentally is [budget-size-wise] like Microsoft cutting the janitors to save money.)

The Greatest Generation really was the greatest in terms of ambition and opportunity. Every generation since has been downhill. The point is that throwing money at the problem will not fix it.

We need some sort of wake-up call to snap us out of our steep decline. Kids have no ambition because their parents have not drilled into their heads that nothing good happens without hard work and the occasional stroke of luck. Hollywood perverts have turned this nation into a cultural wasteland and opportunistic, predatory drug dealers flood the streets with poison. Teachers and staff, for the most part, don't give a crap about anything except their pensions, probably because their students don't care either. The internet means that anyone can plagiarize anything, change a few words, and get away with it. (at least at the high school level)

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

There's only one solution. Privatize the schools. Create a voucher system if necessary, but schools should have to compete in a fair marketplace just like every other industry.

If a kid has behavior problems, ship his or her ass to a military prep academy.

Gunfighter, the teachers don't care because the teachers don't make shit. In my fair state, you'll start at $37,000, if you're lucky enough to find a job. That's after the required four year degree, which these days costs quite a pretty penny. So tell me: who in their right mind would become a teacher? Hell, educators throughout the system are underpaid. A college professor is normally making a small fraction of what he or she would make in the private sector. So why is it a surprise that we have poor education when we don't incentivize bright people to become educators?

And the privatization idea won't work/doesn't work/just perpetuates and exacerbates deficits in opportunity between the rich and poor.

$37k really isn't that bad if you consider they only work 3/4 of the year. That would equate to over $49k if the worked all year. Plus, they get 3 weeks off during the school year.

@nietzshe - what good state are you from?

And gunfighter - While there are problems, I don't think the privatization of schools is the answer, since public schools worked just well enough to create the "Greatest Generation" as you said so yourself. Also, there are many anti-plagiarism programs online available to teachers. How accurate they are, I don't know.

In one word, advertising.

Actually, worship or corporatism, forgiving greed, lobbying and advertising becoming two main modes of control or of wielding power.

All states have power, the biggest have the most; the fact that it is exercised largely without violence is an imporvement in some ways (ignoring the police use of violence as an extension of state power) the fact that it uses words and money makes it harder to see who is pulling which strings.

And who decided anonymous donations to political candidates were a good idea?

How come the Man is to be blamed for dumber Americans when all the countries with the best elementary and secondary schooling (think Finland, South Korea...) have the education system based on gargantuan support from the government?

I'm from Florida, goldfinger. And abge, you're right; $37k is not that bad when you compare it to jobs that don't require a four-year degree. But it pretty much sucks when you consider that we're trying to attract talented people to the teaching profession. I would have loved to teach at the high school level, and I believe I'd be very good at it. I just couldn't live on that kind of salary for the rest of my life.

I call bullshit. From the article:

"Results show that 27 percent of eight-graders and the same rate of 12th-graders scored "proficient or advanced," meaning they developed explanations with well-chosen details to enhance meaning, presented a clear progression of ideas, chose precise words and crafted well-controlled sentences. "

Students could score up to 300 , with results scaled so 150 would represent an average score. To be scored proficient, students had to achieve at least 173. "

So proficient really means "performing well above average", and not the beautiful set of criteria they claim to use. The fact that only a quarter of students scored this high doesn't say anything about the level of education, only about the relative distribution of grades for the test.

Thank you, webdip, for measuring the scores of this test in points :)

"And the privatization idea won't work/doesn't work/just perpetuates and exacerbates deficits in opportunity between the rich and poor."

Which is what vouchers are for. That's the beauty of the free market. If the government gives a voucher to every child for X dollars, then whichever school can offer the best education for X dollars will get the most business and be the most successful.

"public schools worked just well enough to create the "Greatest Generation""

That was before education got expensive with new technology, before federal interference with education, before kids and parents became complacent and lazy, and before Hollywood hijacked our morals of hard work and respect.

@ nictsche - Its not as nice as New York teachers have it, but its still pretty nice in Florida.

http://www.teachinflorida.com/Recruitment/FloridaTeacherSalaries/tabid/77/Default.aspx
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2011/06/florida-teachers-get-nine-times-typical-pension-contribution-from-employer-sue/

So, the absolute minimum salary you can start off with while teaching in Florida is $30,000. That is the salary of a kindergarten teacher in the shittiest school district in Florida. High school teachers earn more than elementary school teachers, so you could expect more than that. On top of that, the pension benefits the state pays you is an equivalent to a 27% wage increase, so that's up to about $38,000 for 9 months of work or so. On top of THAT you have dental, eye, and health insurance, though coverage does vary by district. Still, it brings the cost of living way down.

You're worried about student loans and everything though. Say you went to Florida state and had to pay every penny through loans (no scholarships or work study or anything). That would leave you graduating $80,000 in debt. Paying that off in 10 years at 8% interest (which is much higher than current interest rates I believe) and you'd have to pay $11,600 a year in debt payment. That gives you $19,000 in disposable income in your first year on the job, working in the shittiest position in the shittiest school district.

Not great, but if get tenure, you're guaranteed to be paid over $40,000 a year in a few years (with a pension plan, might I stress) and have the school district pay for you to get a Masters, after which you'd be able to earn up to $60,000 a year, plus benefits, plus pension, plus 3 months off. Not too shabby.

goldfinger, The way you sell the product, Florida is looking good. Even if the RNC does hold their convention there.

on this topic:
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/11550-funding-teachers-doesnt-get-embassies-attacked

@dumbdell - I could piss into a cup and sell it to you as gatorade, that's how good I can pitch something lol

@ora - I hope that wasn't directed at me. I'm not against teaching humanities, or putting more money into our education system. I just want to do it in a way that will yield results. I want teacher salaries and benefits to reflect the kind of students they graduate from the system and the quality education they give. I want them to do so in a way that doesn't suck money out of the community as well. Teacher's pensions have bankrupted my school district, and puts a huge amount of taxes on an already relatively impoverished area. I think they should be paid well, just not $100,000 a year well, plus 70% salary for life after retirement.