Current Events > Jesus Christ, is the state of education in America really this bad?

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://np.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/2rj1r1/i_really_want_to_be_a_teacher_but_im_afraid_of/cngetgc/

Your environment will be the least of your worries if you are considering studying to be a teacher right now. When it comes to students and environments, not only do you get to love the kids in most places and EARN respect if you're actually a decent teacher, if you really don't fit in a place, you can find another job; this is not the "good ol days" where teachers never moved; right-to-work idiocy has contributed heavily to the kind of teaching where you never really get tenured or established in one place unless you really, really want to.

What you SHOULD be worrying about is the absolute annihilation of the professional nature of teaching at all, especially if it's going to be five or more years until you begin. In 2014, I ended a ten-year teaching career, and I advised my students strongly against entering the field. It was hard for my generation, yes, with the whole NCLB issue (which was ratified while I was in college) and the massive restructuring of all educational funding around quantitative data. That was our burden to carry, but the burden your generation of teachers will carry? It's almost too much to ask anyone to deal with. You will be required to become very proficient in your field, spend exorbitant amounts of money on education and training, and then, with new nationalized curricula and districts and principals desperate for money, you will be given no academic freedom to implement what you know, unless what you studied was statistics. Students are no longer individuals with individual needs; they are an aggregate of data that determine whether a school will receive operating funds or not. The past few decades have stripped away every vestige of professionalism from teaching. Your work will far more closely resemble that of a number-crunching accountant or a Wal-Mart associate working from a script than that of a Masters-degree holding professional allowed to create a unique learning environment suited to your students based on your analysis.

Moreover, the educational bubble is going to blow soon. I worked successfully for 10 years, have never bought a new car, or owned a home, but the $35,000 salaries I never exceeded were simply not enough to pay off the $40,000 of college debt I incurred. I will default on them this year. This nation has made a deliberate attempt to defund primary and secondary education over the past few decades and the business of education can be summed up as such: you're expected to be a professional, but given neither the freedom nor the compensation or authority to justify such a position; you, your school, and your district will be so desperate for money and resources that you'll feel like you're living in the third world, and the division of parents between those who have truly given up on education and those who will helicopter the shit out of their brats out of entitlement and desperation has become complete. There is no happy middle that I have seen.

Man, there are no upsides to being a teacher unless you are a St. Sebastian kind of martyr, and things are going to get WAY worse very soon before they get better. Your question is a common starting question. I have worked everywhere from the inner-city, metal-detector school in northern PA to the podunk, 300-person middle school in rural Florida. Forget your superficial concerns, the whole discipline you're considering is on fire, collapsing and destroying the lives of a huge number of people involved in it. Pay and respect have never been lower, and the sheer amount of sidework has never been higher. Only martyrs teach now in America.

O_o
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At my work today I had to explain to someone what a niche was.
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pinky0926 posted...

Only martyrs teach now in America.

martyrs, fools, and those who know they're not going to be working in the field for long and will later be stay at home parents. it's an accurate assessment.

many states have eliminated major draws to the field like defined-benefit pensions, free tuition for going into the field, etc

it was a cost-cutting response to the surge in college attendance and a surplus of people willing to work in the field. they are being chewed up and spat out.

this is what happens to workers who train for a labor market smaller than the labor pool. adjunct professors and postdocs live in a similar hell.
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Darkman124 posted...

pinky0926 posted...

Only martyrs teach now in America.

martyrs, fools, and those who know they're not going to be working in the field for long and will later be stay at home parents. it's an accurate assessment.

many states have eliminated major draws to the field like defined-benefit pensions, free tuition for going into the field, etc

it was a cost-cutting response to the surge in college attendance and a surplus of people willing to work in the field. they are being chewed up and spat out.

this is what happens to workers who train for a labor market smaller than the labor pool. adjunct professors and postdocs live in a similar hell.

I can't imagine anything more degrading than training to a high level of academic skill only to be treated like a checkout chick at walmart.
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pinky0926 posted...

I can't imagine anything more degrading than training to a high level of academic skill only to be treated like a checkout chick at walmart.

i can!

going deep into debt training to a high level of academic skill only to be treated like a checkout chick at walmart.

the american economy is all about predicting the best choices and making them, and not having the market change on you ever.

petroleum engineering was the hot thing 4-5 years ago; now there are way too many grads in that field who can't find work.

the guaranteed path to success is the security clearance-required work, which means giving up on enjoying drugs, even if they're legal in your state. by design the labor pool for that work is smaller than the market.
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So I tried to read this article but it's got that distinctive "read a paragraph seven times and still not know what it said" quality that grade school reading material always had.
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Holy hyperbole Batman!
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Americans are extremely stupid. It has a lot to do with an anti-intellectual hedonistic culture.
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Education used to be important to conservatives, but as they've lost their grasp on the younger American demographic, it seems like Republicans are lashing back at the education system in spite.
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Darkman124 posted...

pinky0926 posted...

I can't imagine anything more degrading than training to a high level of academic skill only to be treated like a checkout chick at walmart.

i can!

going deep into debt training to a high level of academic skill only to be treated like a checkout chick at walmart.

the american economy is all about predicting the best choices and making them, and not having the market change on you ever.

petroleum engineering was the hot thing 4-5 years ago; now there are way too many grads in that field who can't find work.

the guaranteed path to success is the security clearance-required work, which means giving up on enjoying drugs, even if they're legal in your state. by design the labor pool for that work is smaller than the market.

This is shown by one of my favorite theories I learned from back in college: the economic cobweb model
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobweb_model
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We do need education reform badly, but it appears the current administration isn't really interested in that.
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lmao my GF is a middle/high school art teacher and get $90k/yr with tenure. Its all about finding the right districts and going the extra mile for your kids.
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PostCrisisJ2 posted...

We do need education reform badly, but it appears the current administration isn't really interested in that.

Oh there'll be reform. Betsy Devos plans to treat it like Uber, apparently.
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DancinShoesJone posted...

lmao my GF is a middle/high school art teacher and get $90k/yr with tenure. Its all about finding the right districts and going the extra mile for your kids.

That's fantastic for her, but when talking about the general state of things it sounds like she's very much an outlier.
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'lmao anecdote' doesn't change the state of the industry at large, nobody to now had denied exceptions and you can't squarely place the fault on the majority of teachers as though they don't try to secure better jobs or care for their children

furthermore, the larger point is that you shouldn't have to shop districts to pick one that suits/benefits you, that simply feeds into the neglect of schools already worse off, which is the ultimate problem
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pinky0926 posted...

you're expected to be a professional, but given neither the freedom nor the compensation or authority to justify such a position

This hit me in the gut because that's what I'm facing now.
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prettyprincess posted...

furthermore, the larger point is that you shouldn't have to shop districts to pick one that suits/benefits you, that simply feeds into the neglect of schools already worse off, which is the ultimate problem

the problem is driven by how districts are funded (property tax)

rich neighborhood = rich schools = richer neighborhood = good for teachers

poor neighborhood = poor schools = poorer neighborhood = bad for teachers

IMO, better solution would be for property tax to go into a state bucket that is then disbursed school by school

ultimately though most kids at poorer schools fall behind during the summer, not the school year, because their parents don't have the time to push them to continue to learn when not in school.

which also tells you that those 90k/year teachers in rich neighborhoods aren't actually much better than the teachers in poor neighborhoods.
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Though it's also important to remember that Bush tried very hard to kill poor schools.
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it's going to get a lot worse with the new head of education Trump chose lol
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After teaching for 10 years your salary was $35k? What?

I was an intern teacher but I left after just 6 months and returned to engineering but I made at $56k as an intern teacher...

Darkman124 posted...

this is what happens to workers who train for a labor market smaller than the labor pool. adjunct professors and postdocs live in a similar hell.

exactly this. and exactly why we need to change what we tell young people.
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My girlfriend is a teacher, so this topic hit home for me. It upsets me to know how hard she has worked for her credentials, yet they don't do shit for her salary! She has a masters degree, a gifted endorsement, and a few other certifications yet she makes crap money, and doesn't expect her salary to ever go up unless she becomes a professor or an administrator (which she is totally against). There's also this new standardized test called the FSA, which is way harder than the original FCAT testing we grew up with. We're from Florida so I don't know what you guys do. Anyways this new test is going to cause a lot of kids to be held back which don't necessarily deserve to be. Their questions are so hard that even my girlfriend doesn't know the answer to them. She teaches 4th grade btw. Also a lot of parents are complaining, because they cant help their kids with their homework due to the new system.
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pinky0926 posted...

https://np.reddit.com/r/teaching/comments/2rj1r1/i_really_want_to_be_a_teacher_but_im_afraid_of/cngetgc/

Your environment will be the least of your worries if you are considering studying to be a teacher right now. When it comes to students and environments, not only do you get to love the kids in most places and EARN respect if you're actually a decent teacher, if you really don't fit in a place, you can find another job; this is not the "good ol days" where teachers never moved; right-to-work idiocy has contributed heavily to the kind of teaching where you never really get tenured or established in one place unless you really, really want to.

What you SHOULD be worrying about is the absolute annihilation of the professional nature of teaching at all, especially if it's going to be five or more years until you begin. In 2014, I ended a ten-year teaching career, and I advised my students strongly against entering the field. It was hard for my generation, yes, with the whole NCLB issue (which was ratified while I was in college) and the massive restructuring of all educational funding around quantitative data. That was our burden to carry, but the burden your generation of teachers will carry? It's almost too much to ask anyone to deal with. You will be required to become very proficient in your field, spend exorbitant amounts of money on education and training, and then, with new nationalized curricula and districts and principals desperate for money, you will be given no academic freedom to implement what you know, unless what you studied was statistics. Students are no longer individuals with individual needs; they are an aggregate of data that determine whether a school will receive operating funds or not. The past few decades have stripped away every vestige of professionalism from teaching. Your work will far more closely resemble that of a number-crunching accountant or a Wal-Mart associate working from a script than that of a Masters-degree holding professional allowed to create a unique learning environment suited to your students based on your analysis.

Moreover, the educational bubble is going to blow soon. I worked successfully for 10 years, have never bought a new car, or owned a home, but the $35,000 salaries I never exceeded were simply not enough to pay off the $40,000 of college debt I incurred. I will default on them this year. This nation has made a deliberate attempt to defund primary and secondary education over the past few decades and the business of education can be summed up as such: you're expected to be a professional, but given neither the freedom nor the compensation or authority to justify such a position; you, your school, and your district will be so desperate for money and resources that you'll feel like you're living in the third world, and the division of parents between those who have truly given up on education and those who will helicopter the shit out of their brats out of entitlement and desperation has become complete. There is no happy middle that I have seen.

Man, there are no upsides to being a teacher unless you are a St. Sebastian kind of martyr, and things are going to get WAY worse very soon before they get better. Your question is a common starting question. I have worked everywhere from the inner-city, metal-detector school in northern PA to the podunk, 300-person middle school in rural Florida. Forget your superficial concerns, the whole discipline you're considering is on fire, collapsing and destroying the lives of a huge number of people involved in it. Pay and respect have never been lower, and the sheer amount of sidework has never been higher. Only martyrs teach now in America.

O_o

That person needs to learn what the availability heuristic is.