American education system

[Shalot]

affected is spelled with an a, not e

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

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?

[SleepyWitch]

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

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 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