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Of course it's a money issue. We pay teachers garbage for working harder than anyone else, who wants to do that job? If you got the A-types who go into finance or law or medicine into teaching you'd see a very different scenario play out. Right now it's essentially all-volunteer. People call it "a labor of love" but a double-time job paid at part-time wages is what they mean.

Teachers don't make money or have respect. I'd challenge you to do an excellent job in that scenario.

It's a parent issue first of all and can be solved without more money.

http://i.imgur.com/LglSapk.jpg

Parental involvement is the number one factor for student achievement. Followed by socio-economic stuff, like food, household income, zip code.

Make a ranked list of factors and teacher competency isn't even in the top ten. Which makes all this school reform chatter drive me nuts.

Neither is teacher salary. You are spot on in your factor rankings and it make me absolutely crazy every time people try to turn student failure into a teacher pay issue.

Part of that comic is referring to the parent but I think a great deal of it actually refers to the way teachers are treated. They are treated like garbage by parents and administrators alike. They don't get to make any decisions in the classroom, and they are screamed at or fired if anything goes wrong. Parent involvement is actually the root cause of this crisis: the wrong kind of parent involvement however, the parent who thinks the teacher is an idiot and goes into school to "set him/her straight". That's in fact what's happening in the comic.

Yes and the reason for this is that paren't "park" their kids in school and make it the responsibility of the school to not just educate their kids but to be responsible for their personal growth.

No matter what it's not a money problem. No amount of money will solve that problem. Only a shift back where parents are as responsible for their childrens education as they paren't will solve this.

If you were a CEO brought in to fix a failing company, would your first instinct be to say "The employees must suck! We need to fire all the employees and replace them with higher-paid ones!"?

Or would you say "I bet these employees are poorly managed. I'm sure they can work more effectively if we change aspects of the process."

Here's an idea that doesn't cost any money: segregate students by ability so that kids can learn at their own pace.

> Here's an idea that doesn't cost any money: segregate students by ability so that kids can learn at their own pace.

1. Don't see how you can claim that is a zero cost idea.

2. In practice this just becomes the smart kids, normal kids, idiots. Good luck once you get labelled an idiot.

If you are an idiot, it's better to recieve an idiot- appropriate education. Less calculus and Shakespeare and more how to get a steady job, handle your finances, and stay away from trouble.

It would of course suck if you just had a cold on the day of the rest and wound up in the idiot school by accident, you'd need to review performance regularly. Ideally you'd have more than three levels of schooling. Maybe five, you could label them alpha through epsilon.

Next thing you know you'll be encouraging parents to drink more so that the correct ratio of alphas to epsilons happens.

I assure you we already have all the Epsilons we need.

"The BLS reports the median annual salary for high school teachers was $55,360 in 2013. The best-paid 10 percent in the field made approximately $86,720, while the bottom 10 percent made $37,230. Compensation is typically based on years of experience and educational level." [0]

This ($57k) is right around the median household income in the US. Note that is per household, which may include multiple earners.

Tough to look at teacher salaries, which are above the median, and say that's garbage.

Yes, they have a tough job, balancing between students, administrators, and (especially) parents. But lots of people do want to do the job, and get paid an OK salary, and get lots of time off during the year.

[0] http://money.usnews.com/careers/best-jobs/high-school-teache...

Teachers aren't randomly selected from the population; they more or less all have bachelors' degrees, and generally they have further qualifications in teaching. So the appropriate point of comparison would be something more like holders of masters' degrees.

According to http://www.bls.gov/emp/ep_chart_001.htm the median salary for an individual with a master's degree in the US in 2014 was $1326/week or about $69k/year.

High school teachers are only a small sliver of the actual segment of teachers in the segment. What more they are not accurately documented because of unions, and vary greatly state to state. Here in my native state of Texas they barely get enough to cut it.

It isn't a money issue.

How does that money get spent?

In other words, it's a governance issue. (Also, I believe, but cannot prove, it's also a scale issue. Large districts should be split up. Would give parents more choice.)

A buddy was CFO for the local school district. Admin swallows half the budget. Real estate investments are poorly managed. Maintenance has been neglected.

Meanwhile, teachers are underpaid, no COL raises for years, student to teacher ratios continue to climb, they're adding "portables" because they ran out of class room space, special needs kids are neglected, programs are cut to the bare minimum.

Et cetera, et cetera.

Yes, we US taxpayers spend a lot education. No, we're not getting our money's worth. No, privatizing via charter schools (reducing transparency and accountability) doesn't help.

Meanwhile, our kids are screwed.

They are screwed in almost any public school system but not because of money issues.

The reason why charter schools work is because parents are often more involved in their kids education. The school simply forces it.

For instance:

Readling Log. Every day we have to write which book we read with our son and what book(s) he read.

Student corrections. The students are measured everyday from Green (no corrections) to yello (some and a warning) and red (paren't gets called)

Pick-up Parents line up and the teacher tells them how the day went and if there are things they need to improve.

Just a few of the things that are forcing parent involvement.

While systemic changes can be put into place that encourage parent involvement, none of the changes you cited requires it. I think there is a high likelihood that involved parents find themselves enrolling children into some charter schools. When you have classes of students whom have involved parents, miraculously the students do better.

You know there is a reason why parents who are interested in their childs education chooses charter schools.

But apparently miraculously when SA started in Harlem the parent who cared about their childs education appeared in perfect sync with the charter school. Before that they simply didn't exist.

I have lost track of what this discussion is about anymore. No one is saying that charter schools is the only way to do things. I was reacting to a claim that charter schools had advantages compared to public schools.

There is a very specific reason why the kids spend a long time in school btw but since you are more interested in miracles I will save that for another day.

I've never read anything that was so incorrect and completely uninformed... I don't want to reply with a simple down vote I want to inform you that you're incredibly mistaken. In some districts it's at an all time low when in comparison to other costs which have rose the amount invested in education has been reduced...

Nationally speaking money spent per student is at an all-time high ($11,749 according to figures from Figures in the Statistical Abstract of the United States.) Yet we are getting worse and worse results. Private schools, on average, spend significantly less per student ($7,171 according to the same source) but achieve significantly better results.

Some school districts spend almost $25,000 per student which is drastically larger than all but a handful of the most expensive private K-12 schools in the world.

Money is simply not the problem and every single statistical number I have seen shows it.