American education system

[JaneB]

do you think the American education system is failing the future generations, if so why and how is it failing them?

[papayahed]

Is this a homework question?

[Koa]

I have no idea because I live in another continent, always have, probably always will :lol:

[JaneB]

Is this a homework question?

yes and i would love to hear what you all have to say.

[papayahed]

Well, what are your thoughts on the issue?

[JaneB]

this is part of my essay:

The American education system has declined due to negligence by some of our school officials. Leaving some children left with no future and directly affect the future of America. The declined educational system is not only effecting America as a whole but it is also effecting on the individual basis; leaving those left behind with insufficient skills to face the “real world”. America was once the world lender when it came to technology, service industry, and education, but its overconfidence and lack of insight has caused our great nation to fall behind the rapidly growing world market with regards to education. The parents and the teachers are quick to point the finger at each other but in reality this dilemma is only driving the attention away from the real problem which is the child’s academic life. Only through compromise between the two parties can this problem be resolved.

but i would still love to hear what you have to say about this topic.

[Dreadnought]

I wrote on an essay on this and posted it in the General Writing thread just yesterday :o

Read "Room of 12 Moons" to get my opinion ;)

[Virgil]

without really getting into it, I do think the American public school system is mediocre at best. There is no competition and the teacher's unions prevent any meaningful reform.

[Shalot]

School is less about academics and more about socializing.

I think the second sentence in your excerpt is a fragment and I would revise it.


The American education system has declined due to negligence by some of our school officials. Leaving some children left with no future and directly affect the future of America. The declined educational system is not...

Consider:

The American education system has declined due to negligence by some of our school officials leaving some children with no future....

Also, instead of saying the "declined" educational system in sentence three, I would pick a different word. Maybe deteriorating (or maybe declining but not declined)

Also, what specifically did the school officials do to contribute to the overall deterioration of the educational system? Can you pinpoint when it started? We can all look around and agree that the system is not working as well it could, but I would like to hear someone's thoughts on when it started, and what set it off.

[JaneB]

Thank you all for your insight it was very helpful :p :thumbs_up

[SleepyWitch]

affected is spelled with an a, not e :D

[jon1jt]

Can you pinpoint when it started? We can all look around and agree that the system is not working as well it could, but I would like to hear someone's thoughts on when it started, and what set it off.

i would say the question is not about the deterioration of schools but rather the deterioration of the American mind (of which the school house is a mere microcosm). the origin of deterioration began roughly in the late 1800s to early 1900s with the concept of mass production as commodity. the transition occurred rapidly over many decades and had the effect of uprooting the individual from his/her natural (agrarian) setting to one in which linear (assembly line) thinking was rewarded. human knowledge is both aesthetic and analytical, and this development dealt a blow to each. what followed historically completed the job. :(

[RobinHood3000]

I agree with Virgil, although I don't know enough to speak on teachers' unions. In my eyes, the education system suffers most at the hands of those who place student self-esteem above a quality education. Did you know that there are actually people who want teachers to stop using red pens to correct papers, because it's too negative a color??

[Nightshade]

I agree with Virgil, although I don't know enough to speak on teachers' unions. In my eyes, the education system suffers most at the hands of those who place student self-esteem above a quality education. Did you know that there are actually people who want teachers to stop using red pens to correct papers, because it's too negative a color??

What that hasnt happened in the states yet??
Here in my old school they could only mark in green. But thier reasoning had somthing to do with colour psychology , red being an angry colour.

[SleepyWitch]

I agree with Virgil, although I don't know enough to speak on teachers' unions. In my eyes, the education system suffers most at the hands of those who place student self-esteem above a quality education. Did you know that there are actually people who want teachers to stop using red pens to correct papers, because it's too negative a color??

well.. aside from t he colour, the problem is that highlighting pupils mistakes rather than what they got right drags less confident kids down.
i'm not saying mistakes should not be marked, but it only makes sense to mark them if you are going to discuss them later.
marking in itself, has no educational value because pupils will just glance at their test briefly and not think about what they could have done better. If you only tell them what they wrote is "wrong" (and personally I think some things are definitely wrong, not "creeative" as some whacky hippie educationalists like to call it) but don't ask them to look for the right solution, the learning effect is zero.

[JaneB]

I agree with Virgil, although I don't know enough to speak on teachers' unions. In my eyes, the education system suffers most at the hands of those who place student self-esteem above a quality education. Did you know that there are actually people who want teachers to stop using red pens to correct papers, because it's too negative a color??

there is actually a few schools who don't use "fail" or "failure" because its to negative. they replaced those words with "deferred success"

[papayahed]

there is actually a few schools who don't use "fail" or "failure" because its to negative. they replaced those words with "deferred success"

Holy Carp. I went to catholic school and I could just imagine trying to get those nuns to say "Deferred Success". it's anathema to their very being. At least lo those many years ago.

[JaneB]

:lol: :lol: :lol: ya i couldn't believe it either when i 1st read it

[genoveva]

do you think the American education system is failing the future generations, if so why and how is it failing them?

Yes. If you want to research this subject more, see Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities and The Shame of the Nation. Also, John Taylor Gatto is a good read.

Some reasons why I think the American education system is failing:
Teachers who do not know how to teach well
Grades (what do they really mean?)
Standardized Tests (does this really reflect learning, or how well one can take a fill in the bubble test?)
Standards (who makes these up, anyway?)
Lack of teacher-parent communication
Lack of parental involvement
Same age classrooms
Assuming all kids learn at the same pace
Teaching dumb, boring stuff that has no real world application

...just a few...

[Koa]

What that hasnt happened in the states yet??
Here in my old school they could only mark in green. But thier reasoning had somthing to do with colour psychology , red being an angry colour.

what????? :eek:
i had never heard of this one! to me the colour of correction is and will be red! if i do language exercise and have it corrected, i want it in red, if im correcting (in class or with solutions) i do it in red myself, to highlight the corrections...i learn so much better from mistakes....

[Virgil]

What that hasnt happened in the states yet??
Here in my old school they could only mark in green. But thier reasoning had somthing to do with colour psychology , red being an angry colour.


what????? :eek:
i had never heard of this one! to me the colour of correction is and will be red! if i do language exercise and have it corrected, i want it in red, if im correcting (in class or with solutions) i do it in red myself, to highlight the corrections...i learn so much better from mistakes....

I agree with Koa. That kind of stuff that Night describes sounds like the kind of junk that's ruining American schools. It's useless psychobabble.

[Nightshade]

Not really Virg, I know personally there it is awful to get back work where every ebntace there is read in and then scrawled all over it is NOT good enough do it again...its still awful when its in green but it tends to be slightly less harmful because the people sitting on the opposite side of the room cant see the marks quite as clearly...

[SleepyWitch]

yep, I don't think using green ink is to blame for the decline of the American or whatever other school system...
having your mistakes marked is not a problem for A students but you have no idea what it does to kids who have dyslexia or who are slow learners for some reason. rather than encouraging them to try harder it convinces them that they are failures.
I'm not saying mistakes shouldn't be marked, but it has to be clear to the pupils that they are not idiots. you have to explain to them why what they wrote is wrong and help them get it right next time.

[kilted exile]

Ok, I cant answer specifically for the US system having no experience of it. However.....

1) I have no time for multiple choice tests, a lot of the time they are poorly created and test more recognition than the ability to apply knowledge to a given situation

2) I believe in a nationally set curriculum, together with national exams ~ this is the only way to enure all students are being taught to the same knowlegde base. As an example I did my high school in Scotland & my college in Canada, something I noticed is that students from different high schools did have a similar knowledge base and therefore people had to sit through some classes while explanations were given that some previously knew.

3) I believe parents attempt to be too involved in the school, the pace at which the class moves is what is best for the majority ~ if it is either too slow or too fast for little Johnny, then look for private tutoring as an addition to what is being taught.

[RobinHood3000]

I think the pen colour debate, although not responsible for American educational mediocrity, shows where people's minds are regarding what's important. People are frightened to death that their children aren't destined for godlike success, and seek to blame it on the most inane things rather than any problem staring them dead in the face.

[Virgil]

Not really Virg, I know personally there it is awful to get back work where every ebntace there is read in and then scrawled all over it is NOT good enough do it again...its still awful when its in green but it tends to be slightly less harmful because the people sitting on the opposite side of the room cant see the marks quite as clearly...

Oh, Night I wasn't thinking about dyslexic students. But I don't quite see what difference it would make if it were green or red. I assume a teacher is aware that a particular student has an extra burden and must try to teach and administer with that student's needs in mind. I was talking for the typical student.

And yes I do know what it's like to get back a paper full of red ink. It was in my freshman college year and I thought I was a hot shot student based on my highschool achievements and I submitted my first paper in English class. The teacher returned it every sentence marked in red. The paper glowed with red ink. :lol: When i sat with the teacher and asked him how bad it was, he said that this was typical for a freshman. :D He was brutal. But it forced me to bukle up and I did learn and it showed how poorly I was taught in highschool.

[mtpspur]

When my children were in the school system--last one out was 2004 my concerns with the scholl system was the increasing dimimished attention between teacher/student. My two boys were definitely trouble-makers and it seemed that suspension was THE answer rather then a concerted united attempt at rehabilitation of behavor. I guarantee the message given to the munchkins was that school just wasn't that important if they were going to just boot you out every little and not so little thing. A far cry from the 60s where a teacher/principla made it their personal crusade to get you at a passing level. Now it just seems to be processing them thru. Taking (limited) corporal punishment out didn't help either. Students have no fear of retribution/accountablity for their actions.

Just saying.

After the boys got out--by way of GEDs hitches in the Army were a greta wake up call and my second son Daniel is well on his way to a degree now. Jim is maturing as well.

[Petrarch's Love]

I noticed a few people here attributing the problems with American schools to teacher's unions, and while there may be some problems with unions, I'd like to suggest that the core of the problem is just the reverse of blaming teachers. I think one big problem is that teachers are simply underpaid as compared with comparably educated professionals. There are many good dedicated teachers out there despite the low pay, but I think there would be many more similarly dedicated people attracted to the profession and those already teaching might become more motivated if they thought they would be paid an appropriate professional salary. If you want the best and the brightest professionals going into teaching, then, bottom line, you have to treat them with the respect due educated professionals, beginning with the salary. If a company underpaid its engineers it wouldn't have to go around wondering why its products weren't as good as the competition. Why should the teaching profession be any different?

[Nightshade]

Oh, Night I wasn't thinking about dyslexic students. But I don't quite see what difference it would make if it were green or red. I assume a teacher is aware that a particular student has an extra burden and must try to teach and administer with that student's needs in mind. I was talking for the typical student.


Well dyslexia is always noticed /diagnosed ...take me I started school at the age of 3 ( 2 if you include nursery) and I wasnt diagnosed till I was a few months short of 16. I suppose at this time its beacue green has less negitive connotations in time it will get them and theyll move onto a new colour one assumes

[Virgil]

I noticed a few people here attributing the problems with American schools to teacher's unions, and while there may be some problems with unions, I'd like to suggest that the core of the problem is just the reverse of blaming teachers. I think one big problem is that teachers are simply underpaid as compared with comparably educated professionals. There are many good dedicated teachers out there despite the low pay, but I think there would be many more similarly dedicated people attracted to the profession and those already teaching might become more motivated if they thought they would be paid an appropriate professional salary. If you want the best and the brightest professionals going into teaching, then, bottom line, you have to treat them with the respect due educated professionals, beginning with the salary. If a company underpaid its engineers it wouldn't have to go around wondering why its products weren't as good as the competition. Why should the teaching profession be any different?

That was me, and I guess I'm in the midst of another controversy. ;) :D

Ok, if you want to get paid what other professionals make, then let's stop the crap of not being able to fire tenured teachers, or getting a year's sabbatical, or working eight or nine months out of the year. In fact, no other profession is unionized. And what is the retirement age for most teachers? Is it comparable to other professionals? I don't think so. When you factor all that in, I don't think teachers make less. They have traded salary for these benefits, and yes that's because of their union.

[Shalot]

affected is spelled with an a, not e :D

yeah, I didn't even want to touch that one because it confuses me so much that I restructure and reword my whole sentence just so that I won't have to choose between effected and affected. (it's because I was educated in America)

And Jane, I realize that I may have been very rude with my revision suggestion and I do apologize. I compulsively reword sentences and I couldn't resist, but it is rude to correct someone just out of the blue like that and I am sorry. I guess maybe you were asking for ideas and not so much a sentence tweak.

Hope your paper is coming along nicely.

[Nightshade]

affected is spelled with an a, not e :D


I won't have to choose between effected and affected. (it's because I was educated in America)
.

I thought they were 2 differant words, as well as being different tenses(??) of the same word?:confused:

[SleepyWitch]

I thought they were 2 differant words, as well as being different tenses(??) of the same word?:confused:

yep, they are two different words,



af‧fect S1 W1 [transitive]
1 to do something that produces an effect or change in something or in someone's situation:
the areas affected by the hurricane
decisions which affect our lives
Trading has been adversely affected by the downturn in consumer spending.


effect [transitive]
formal to make something happen:
Many parents lack confidence in their ability to effect change in their children's behaviour.
! Do not confuse with the verb affect (=to have an effect on something).

i can see why they are easy to mix up. the only difference in pronunciation is that the firt 'e' in effect is pronounced like i in 'bit', while the 'a' in affect is a very week sound like the 'e' in 'mother'... they are very similar.. their articulation is distinct, but they both occur in unstressed syllables in English.

[Petrarch's Love]

Ok, if you want to get paid what other professionals make, then let's stop the crap of not being able to fire tenured teachers, or getting a year's sabbatical, or working eight or nine months out of the year. In fact, no other profession is unionized. And what is the retirement age for most teachers? Is it comparable to other professionals? I don't think so. When you factor all that in, I don't think teachers make less. They have traded salary for these benefits, and yes that's because of their union.

Well, we could debate all day about whether teachers have it good or not (and possibly never agree), but the heart of my argument is actually much more pragmatic. The point is that school districts are continuously complaining about the shortage of really top notch qualified teachers available and regardless of how unfairly wonderful you or anyone else think the benefits you name are, they don't seem to be enough to persuade many of the people the profession needs to go into teaching. In my own experience I have known several people my age who have the intelligence, talent, and caring to be really good teachers, but who either decided not to go into the profession or started out and then quit after a short time. The two reasons I always hear cited for this are the low pay and the ridiculous amount of work created by the educational bureacracy. These are the reasons I myself did not consider going into highschool teaching more seriously.

I think it's pretty much a supply and demand issue. I suspect that part of the problem with the shortage of really good teachers is coming from the same place as the shortage of well qualified nurses that occured over the last few decades. In the past both these professions were pretty much the only option for educated women who wanted a career. In the past few decades, as the older generations have retired and the younger generations of women have had more professional options, both these professions have seen a decline in the number of top notch talent coming into them (note, for those teachers reading this, I am not suggesting that there are no gifted and talented people in the teaching profession, just that there are fewer than in the past). Nursing salaries and benefits like time off have gone up in recent years in reaction to this social shift. The problem is, how do you continue to attract people to a profession who now have the option of being engineers, accountants, doctors, professors etc.

What I can never figure out is why the education system, when they have the same demand they always did for good teachers and are faced with a shortage in the supply of the best and brightest talent, generally reacts in two ways. One is that they give more money to educational theorists to come up with new tests, training in the latest theories, and ideas like not marking with a red pen to improve self-esteem. All this bureaucracy does little to help the students and creates more work (and more headaches) for teachers, which in turn deters the people they want to attract from going into teaching. The other reaction to this educational problem is to complain about the teaching unions, and try to attack benefits like summers off and tenure, but without any serious talk of a substantial salary increase. This tactic, again is unlikely to attract many of the best and brightest to the profession. If we cut out a lot of bureaucratic salaries (which are, incidently, usually much larger than teaching salaries), cut out large amount of money going toward testing etc, and instead invested more money in what we pay our teachers and gave teachers more time to teach we might see an increase in the number of gifted young people interested in going into teaching, and an increase in the quality of teaching going on.

If you can explain to me how attacking the unions and threatening to take away benefits like tenure and summers off--usually the only reasons we get the talented teachers we do have--will help things, I'm willing to listen. It just doesn't make logical sense to me though. If the benefits were that great, there wouldn't be a problem attracting people to the profession.

[stlukesguild]

Well... I haven't posted here in some time but I just could not stay away from this post. As a teacher I offer some of my insights as to just what is wrong with public education in America. I am glad to see Petrarch's Love still here... and offering something of a voice of reason... however I will still offer a few of my thoughts. Perhaps I should start with a list of just a few of the problems I feel we are facing with education today.


1. No true Federal Department of Education establishing national standards, expectations, etc... :

Thomas Jefferson attempted to establish nationalized public education for all children but was voted down. The very notion of free public education for all only became a reality in the last century... largely supported by the American industries who felt the need for proper preparation of the future workforce. The manner of most American schools: students in rows, the bells, walking in lines, etc... was part of the so-called "Industrial Model" intended for proper preparation of tomorrows industrial workforce. Still public schooling has remained largely a local and state concern. As such there are no set common standards, expectations, curriculum, study guides... nor an established expectation as to funding, supplies, class size, etc... As a result there is a great deal of confusion and disagreement about what is being taught and how and where the money should go. Ther is also a great disparity between schools. Wealthier districts often have not merely the support of wealthier taxpayers but also parents who are well educated themselves and have high expectations of their children's education. The gap between the funding and the resources of staff, materials, supplies, etc... in such schools and that in available in the poorer districts in a national embarrassment. I have a friend who taught art in a wealthy girls only school. The student body was comprised of children of very well-off parents who have taken their children to the art museums and galleries, who buy art, who send their kids to New York or Washington during spring break to visit the huge art collections there. He had an average of 8 students in a class. With 5 classes a day he saw 40-45 students a day. His yearly art budget was $4500 which was often supplemented by parental donations. The last year he taught there this included a $9000 cash donation and a new kiln. I teach art in an inner-city school. The building is over 100 years old and should have been demolished years ago. My classroom is in a basement store-room without windows. I see 6 classes a day which vary from 18 to nearly 40 students. The student body is around 500 students. My budget for teaching art to these students is exactly $0.00 and has been so for the last 6 years. Out of my so inflated salary I need to purchase supplies for the students... or scrounge around and ask various friends/acquaintances and local businesses for any sort of cash or material donation possible. The parents of my students are largely uneducated and live at the poverty level. Many of them have little use for education outside of it providing a free child-care service. Many of them are single parents (no father) and many of them are alcoholics or drug abusers. This is the reality of the disparity in American schools and the apathy of the federal government.

2. Inadequate funding:

Obviously I touched on this above. However, I do know that many will bring up the fact that many successful suburban schools and private schools get by on less per-pupil spending than the big urban districts. This is indeed true... but it avoids many facts that effect this reality. Private schools have the option of rejecting any student requiring special services: behavioral problems, hearing impaired, learning disabled, etc... These students are left to the public schools. Essentially the private schools select the best (and easiest as well as least expensive) to teach. Public schools do not have this option. Public schools in high poverty areas are often faced with larger-than-normal numbers of students with various disabilities or special needs due to alcohol fetal syndrome, drug abuse during pregnancy, malnutrition, abuse, neglect, etc... It must also be expected that students in high-poverty districts lack parental examples of reading and other intellectual activities at home. They often come to school without the experiences of their wealthier counterparts who have often read with parents, gone to the zoo, the orchestra, the museums, taken part in crafts activities, etc... Many such students have parents who imagine that TV and video-games are a great babysitter and as such they have virtually no ability to sit still and focus on the slower pace of the classroom. Certainly there is also waste and graft in education... especially in the large urban schools... but this takes place at the top at the administrative level and every teacher would be thrilled to see proper oversight of these persons and prosecution of those found guilty of such theft.

3. Lack of respect for teaching and education:

Part of this is a result of the poor salaries afforded teachers. At the college level education is not seen as an attractive option for many of the best and brightest when they consider their future... their needs... and the student loan debts they will be facing. As such, the education departments in most colleges and universities maintain student GPAs well below that of other professional departments. Colleges also spend far less on the education department than upon others. many colleges see it as a cash cow. Whereas science and engineering demands that the college provide students with the latest technologies, the education majors are often relegated to whatever room is empty at the time and the supplies are limited to Xerox hand-outs. It comes as no surprise that colleges and universities continue to lobby law-makers for increased requirements of further studies for teachers in order to maintain their licenses... such classes cost next to nothing and are a guaranteed source of revenue. The lack of respect carries over into the actual career. Wealthier parents often look down upon teachers as having gone into a rather "unchallenging" career that pays far less than they earn. Parents in many of the urban districts convey a different sense of disrespect or contempt. Many of them did not do well in school themselves or even dropped out. To them teachers are one of the authority figures that has oppressed them. And students? How many professionals with 7 years of college have no office, are relegated to a windowless basement storeroom, are expected to keep records on computer but have no operating computer to do so, are expected to provide their own supplies to do their job, and daily are expected to diffuse heated arguments and physically break up fights? How many must continually smile while being insulted and having every possible profanity directed at them by children... and their parents?

4. Lack of Continuity:

This is a complex issue. It includes the fact that in most poorer urban schools a teacher can rest assured that by the end of the school year nearly 1/3rd- 1/2 of the students he or she started the year with will be gone and replaced by others. As an art teacher seeing the entire student body I find at least 2 or 3 new students every week and 2 or 3 who have moved out. Continuity also includes the individual teacher's assignments. A teacher in the 5th grade this year may find him or herself expected to teach 8th grade the next year and 3rd grade the year after that. This demands an entire new curriculum be learned over the summer vacation (when we don't do anything) and certainly guarantees that the teacher will not have mastered that curriculum. Such switches in assignments frequently occur in the middle of the school year. In my school a second grade teacher was moved to the 4th grade after about 3 weeks, and then a month or so later she was moved to the 8th grade while her 4th grade class was added to the other 4th grade teacher's roster effectively doubling her class size. In the worst instance a kindergarten teacher was moved after 3 months to a seventh grade position... in spite of never having taught above 2nd grade. These moves are not undertaken at the whim of the administrator but rather dictated around November by the state when they decided to move people around based upon enrollment. One may also add another great act of inconsistency promoted by most state boards of education. At the state level of the Department of Education there are any number of PhD’s who must maintain some semblance of necessity. As such they are continually revising and rewriting curriculum and the text books/work books to be used. Almost like clockwork, every two years teachers are directed to throw out an old program and learn a new one. Any one of these programs might have had the chance to succeed... but they are never given the chance. Just when teachers have begun to become familiar with them... to have worked the bugs out... and to have mastered them... along comes the next one... complete with a huge expense of training the entire staff in the district.

5. No Child Left Behind:

The mere notion of GWB as our education president is comic to say the least... but I'll leave that where it lies. The concept behind NCLB was good: the establishment of national standards for education, however its implementation was a complete fiasco. The federal government backed off of establishing any national standards leaving these instead up to the individual states. The reality is that the government mandated a new series of standardized testing complete with consequences for not meeting the standards... but then did not fund the mandate. This was left up to the states. Rather than assisting schools that fail to meet the standards or expectation the mandate penalized such schools making success even more highly unlikely. For example, if a school falls short of the standards they may be required to provide (at their cost) additional tutoring for the students. This of course means less money for the yearly school budget. If the school continues to fall short parents can get vouchers to send their children to a private school. This money will be subtracted from the school budget, while the public school will continue to be required to provide transportation for such students. There is reason to suspect that part of the idea behind NCLB was simply a means of dismantling public education and turning it over to the private sector... perhaps Halliburton might doe a bang-up job:p As such, schools are pushed toward "teaching the test" or focusing solely upon what will be on the test and how it will be formatted... often at the expense of a broader educational experience. many schools and administrators are even tempted to cheat, realizing that their very job depends upon the outcomes of such tests.This covers just a few of the major issues facing public education today. Obviously these issues are complex and intertwined and demand a greater commitment at the national level if they are to be overcome. Such is truly a necessity for of national security and continued survival. We are no longer living in the Industrial Age when we can simply assume that the masses who cannot make it in school will simply be tomorrow's blue-collar laborers. Today's workforce and the workforce of the future is highly technological and demands certain skills.

In closing I feel I should deal with Virgil's comments:

Virgil writes: Ok, if you want to get paid what other professionals make, then let's stop the crap of not being able to fire tenured teachers, or getting a year's sabbatical, or working eight or nine months out of the year. In fact, no other profession is unionized. And what is the retirement age for most teachers? Is it comparable to other professionals? I don't think so. When you factor all that in, I don't think teachers make less. They have traded salary for these benefits, and yes that's because of their union.

I agree that incompetent teachers should be fired... but I might note that while the process is far too convoluted, it is not an impossibility. Of course any teacher engaged in an activity that is seen as grossly unethical or illegal faces certain loss of his or her license and job. How rapidly do the medical boards or bar associations strip away the licenses of incompetent, negligent, or even criminal doctors and lawyers? As for year long sabbaticals... what school are we talking of here? There are no sabbaticals involved in any public school I know of unless it is part of a board-approved educational study program at another school out of state or out of the country. I certainly may take a voluntary leave of absence for medical purposes... without pay, of course, and some schools offer the option of an unpaid sabbatical at such times as the school board is looking to cut teachers and save money... but a paid sabbatical? Get real! As for the 9 month work year this amounts to an 11 week summer vacation. Nice, certainly... But then again, my friend who works unloading trucks at UPS gets 5 weeks and my daughter who works as an accountant gets 6. And then we must consider the work that many teachers do during these "off months". There is a constant demand that our licenses be renewed... only after continual studies. This summer I'll be required to take 2 rather useless college classes to keep my job. As I mentioned above, teachers also often find that their jobs will change from year to year. In other words a teacher teaching 5th grade this year may be expected to teach 7th next year and need to learn an entire new curriculum. Even if he or she remains in the same grade level, he or she will undoubtedly be confronted with a new body of educational programs, books, curriculum to be taught at the end of summer. As for the retirement age. Try an average of 30 years and out. How is this less than other professions? Even when the benefits and the hours are figured in teachers are nearer to the bottom than the top of the professional pay scale... especially considering the educational demands. Those college courses that we are expected o take are NOT paid for by our employers (unlike CEUs the doctors and lawyers must take... at some resort in Florida or Hawaii... with their entire family). Many states now require a Master's Degree (as well as the continual CEUs) after so many years. I have 7+ years of college education and can assure you I make nowhere near what someone with 7 years of schooling and an MBA, a law license, a degree in accounting, computer science, engineering, or many other fields earns per hour or per year. All in all the unions remain a necessity demanding that all public schools employ only properly educated and licensed teachers (unlike the charter schools), that they properly teach ALL students (not merely the best and brightest) and that the teachers are treated like professionals... not penalized for moral lapses such as having a drink or dancing during one's
off hours... or getting pregnant. As ridiculous as this may sound, such "lapses" could and often did lead to termination as recently as my own lifetime