Chicago teachers strike

[Hyperion]

Teachers on average should be making $70,000 after a decade of commitment - nationally. That said, our standards for who becomes a teacher should also be raised. The absolute worst usually leave within 3 years, luckily.

We spend more per pupil on education, but teacher compensation is one of the lowest in the developed world. In South Korea a good teacher can expect to make the equivalent of $75,000 - and get treated out for dinner by parents instead of mocked, criticized, degraded.

Lol at the remarks that teachers work "7 hour days, 9 months of the year." People who have never taught are so ignorant about teaching. It's just like how so many people who have never spent a month in med school complain about doctors. In our school we are fortunate to have a very efficient and hard-working copy lady. We drop off our paperwork into separate folders depending on the time of submission. It ranges hourly from "6 AM - 7 AM" (school starts at 8:15) to "Oh Crap Why Am I Still Here?" (Anything after 6:00). You guys complaining about lazy teachers are clearly ignorant.

Outside of socio-economics, which our country does a terrible job addressing, the largest influence on a child's success is his or her teacher. There's districts in the South that pay teachers $30,000 a year and then complain about educational achievement. Ridiculous.

[Hyperion]

[PoS]

[Fishstyx]

[Darkhorse]

[Dylan]

I get hte evaluation issue though. it's pretty hard to measure how well a teacher is doing in a fair and standardized way, especially w/o creating bad incentives for teachers (who are self-interested, just like everybody else) to game the evaluation system in one form or another.

Hyperion so you're saying teachers are often at work around 6:00 am and sometimes have to leave after 6:00 pm? That is a lot of hours, especially if you're making in the 40K to 50K range. A lot of teachers do work pretty hard, IME. But it's still a bit silly for these particular teachers to be striking, given how well paid they are. I understand the concerns re job security that stem from evaluations, but lots of us work hard in atmospheres w/ little job security and ambiguous, relatively inaccurate evaluation systems. That's not unique to schools (though I readily admit in the educational context it's perhaps harder to evaluate a precise evaluation system).

[Darkhorse]

I agree that evaluations are a challenge and I don't think test scores are the way to do it, but I refuse to believe that teaching is the only profession that cannot be evaluated.

[Dylan]

[uebermann]

[Dylan]

To (sadly) get back on topic, Romney and Ryan put Obeezy in a tough spot on this issue. First savvy move I've seen from them in ages.