As Indiana’s legislative session gets underway, there is (as usual) plenty to criticize. (Senate Bill 100 –which ThinkProgress has dubbed “The most anti-LGBT LGBT Rights Bill Ever”–probably tops the list. See their analysis of the bill or Doug Masson’s if you want to understand why), but it’s certainly not the only item on that list.
In the interests of balance, however, it’s worth noting that the news is not all negative.
Speaker Brian Bosma has introduced a really good bill, one that will actually support public education in Indiana. (Given the beating that public education has taken at the hands of Indiana’s Administration and legislature the past few years, this is a really positive change.)
The idea is to incentivize young people to go into education; the Next Generation Hoosier Educator Scholarship program promises to give Indiana’s top high school students an opportunity to earn a full scholarship to any accredited in-state school of education, so long as they spend five years teaching in an Indiana classroom after graduation.
The five-year commitment is based upon research suggesting that, after five years, a new teacher is “hooked”–likely to remain in the profession for the long haul.
Although it is very early in the process, the indications are that the bill–or at least the general approach–enjoys widespread, bipartisan support.
Wouldn’t it be great if the upcoming session of the General Assembly turned out to be one in which Republican and Democratic lawmakers worked together on this and other measures to address the actual problems Indiana faces, rather than yet another iteration of the culture wars that have dominated past sessions? (Just the thought makes me tingly all over…)
Good for you, Speaker Bosma!
Now, can you bury S.B. 100? Somewhere deep?
As a long time educator I welcome Bosma’s scholarship idea to bring more young people into the profession, but as a victim of the GOP driven “education reforms,” I will be reserved in my enthusiasm until I see the details.
The GOP dominated legislature has been determined to undermine and micromanage education since Mitch took office and put Tony in control of education. I can’t believe that these politicians would be willing to give up any money to someone who wants to go into teaching without tying the scholarship to the new teacher’s evaluation and the school grade. Anyone in Education knows that the first five years are the most difficult for a new teacher and without mentoring (which hardly any school can offer) and half of the new teachers bail. So to think that the new teacher is going to be able to well in that first five years is about a 50-50 chance. So what happens to a kid that has 40 to 50K in school debt and realizes that they can’t keep the five year commitment?
The GOP legislature and the Gov just can’t resist using their favorite teacher-bashing weapons of choice, the evaluations and school grades. Even when faced with their own self-inflicted pain of ISTEP results that will be remarkably lower than in past years, they are still unwilling to take a pause in grades for schools so they can prove their point of “public schools are bad and the teachers that teach in those public schools are bad too.”
I am sure this scholarship will have lots of baggage to with it. My prediction: the new teacher will have to perform and meet specific criteria in order for the GOP to claim that giving away money was justified. The new teacher will have to have evaluations rating them Highly Qualified or Effective; the new teacher will have to work in a school that maintains a grade of C or above; the new teacher will have to commit to working in a low-performing school.
We need to do something for young people who want to be teachers, and this idea might work. But I have never known the GOP dominated legislature to do anything that is beneficial for teachers – I mean PUBLIC school teachers, and I can’t see them changing their ways when nearly half of the GOP members are sitting in their legislative seats because no one opposed them in an election.
Maybe I’m incorrect but I read an article yesterday that puts some of those same limitations on the new teachers spoken of in the above post. I’m the parent of a teacher who graduated from an Indiana university but left the state because of the negative attitudes of our state leaders when it came to the teaching profession.
“The idea is to incentivize young people to go into education; the Next Generation Hoosier Educator Scholarship program promises to give Indiana’s top high school students an opportunity to earn a full scholarship to any accredited in-state school of education, so long as they spend five years teaching in an Indiana classroom after graduation.”
This is an absolutely idiotic idea, as it entrenches worthless schools of education as the toll booth to the lectern and an anti-intellectual guild system in which students must waste tens of thousands of dollars and years of their lives in obtaining a degree that contains less intellectual content than can be gained by reading a few volumes of Mark Twain.
The better course is to remove schools of education entirely from a prospective teacher’s employment path, allowing the graduates with real degrees and real intellect to be able to teach children.
Teresa Kendall: thank you for your input on this issue as an educator. My gut reaction to this is negative because it ties education and future educators to political control which, in this state, takes public education tax dollars out of the system…how would it be financially supported and that financial support guaranteed with the current religious based political system in questionable circumstance?
I also must, as the grandmother of college educated grandchildren in areas other than teaching, whose consistently high GPAs and honors, earned full scholarship assistance which wasn’t available and are deep in debt. My granddaughter spends her 12 hour days saving lives as an RN on the pediatric heart surgery team at Riley Hospital. Always an honor student who worked through high school and breaks during her five-years of college education to reach her goal and is $55,000 in debt. My grandson, another honor student in mathematics and science with two partial scholarships (one a Presidential Award) is in his third year at Ball State. He also worked though high school and works on his college breaks to pay for his education but the family is deep in debt for needed student loans.
There are thousands who do want to teach, and I would be proud to have a teacher in my family, but want to leave this state to get away from the political/pseudo religious control of education that pervades all levels. Being a stubborn, hard-headed, German-Irish-American I will again pose the question I had yesterday as to WHY the sub-headline article “Scholarship Program” in the Star was included below the headline “RIGHTS BILL MAKES DEBUT” and above the article? The Rights Bill is slated with the “Goal is to balance LGBT concerns, religious freedom” which should have no connection to any scholarship program in any area of education. I still equate this bill with Daniels’ brainstorm of business paid-for education with the stipulation that they work for the supporting business after graduation. Educational slavery!
OMG; I just agreed with Gopper:)
Gopper’s hyperbole again but some sense, too.
Not mentioned are lay-offs and re-hires. Promise job security to the young people? I don’t think so.
I’m certain that Gopper has a real definition of a “real degree” and “real intellect”. Please share with the uninformed.
People may have “real” degrees and “real” intellect, but they often can’t teach worth squat . . . because no one trained them to teach. Universities call them professors.
Is this Bosma bill a Trojan Horse? What will it look like in final form when the Republic fan austerity corp is through amending it? What does full scholarship mean – tuition only? That’s only part of the expense, and in any event why does the bill require indentured servitude of those who participate for the next five years? That’s not a free ride – far from it.
My now deceased wife held three degrees in elementary education from the University of Illinois (Champaign-Urbana, including a doctorate) and taught at the university level for 17 years. She told me again and again that education is not an expense but an investment, so when I hear that a safely gerrymandered Republican legislature may finally want to invest in people (and not the rich and/or religious), I am more than suspicious and caution anyone reading this to withhold approval of Bosma’s effort until we see if there are Greek soldiers in this “horse.”
Remember the grotesquely misnamed “No Child Left Behind” and “The Patriot Act” statutes that were once “bills?” You can’t tell a book by its cover, the adage goes, and has application here, especially when you consider the track record of its right wing authors and publishers. I hope I am wrong with such suspicions, but I smell a rat.
Theresa! Why is there 50,000 of debt with a full scholarship?
“People may have “real” degrees and “real” intellect, but they often can’t teach worth squat . . . because no one trained them to teach. ”
Yeah, that’s not that hard, and it doesn’t take four years of made-up classes and slave-labor teaching internships to learn it.
Let’s worry about the real challenge: Making smart people. Once we have the smart people, we can “train them to teach.” Currently, schools of education crank out idiots as “graduates,” and claim they “have the ability to teach.”
Let’s make our graduates smart again, and then we can give these smart people the ability to transfer their knowledge to the kids.
I’m sure a weekend seminar at the Radisson is about all that’s needed to impart that vexing skill.
What is more important for each generation of humanity than preparing the next generation of humanity for the inevitable future?
Conservatives believe preparing only the offspring of the wealthy is sufficient. I believe that we can’t afford to waste a single brain, wealthy or poor, especially in the field of education.
That being said, I’m going to disagree with Theresa. All fields need to have standards and find ways to distinguish exceptional performers from mediocre and poor. Teachers generally shirk their responsibility in doing so I think because they are too used to operating independently in their fiefdoms, the classrooms. Because teachers generally refuse to participate they by default leave it to politicians and administrators. Too bad for everyone.
Conservatives are incapable of imagining the future. It will be based on universal rights. The right to health, the right to energy that’s not at the expense of the future, the right to live consistently with who you are, the right to opportunity only limited by your gifts. They are appalled that the right to unlimited greed is not on the list.
Their limitations will not rule the future. It will take them a little longer to get used to that but they will.
Liberals and conservatives want the same things, liberals for everyone.
Like most everyone else, I tend not to trust any pro-public education bill that would come from our current legislature.
By the time they are finished with it there would be so many loopholes to get out of paying for the education that they couldn’t possibly entice Indiana’s top high school students. Why would the top performing students want to commit themselves to a career that is at the whim of our legislature?
And, like someone else mentioned, would the scholarship cover tuition only? At this point in time I smell a rat.
I cannot comment about the quality of students that graduate with a degree in education, as I have not had any involvement in the educational system for many years.
I think that Ken’s point is that the cost of education should not be borne by the beneficiaries, all of us, but only by the parents of those educated.
That way the superior can maintain their elite status as the God of his dreams dictates.
I do feel very sorry for you being unable to maintain your status Ken and co. It must be devastating for the high born to be regarded as ordinary.
Public education has always been resisted by those who believe that kids are and should be low cost farm hands, read slaves. If it was good enough for me it should be good enough for them.
Like all things conservative that anachronism will be mercifully left behind as the people who have always created progress continue to.
Our higher education non system, like our health care non system and our energy non system and our military non system and our financial non system has mismanaged itself out of business. Time to pay the piper.
Progress can be a cruel if necessary condition. We need to help victims of mismanagement through their transition to satisfying futures.
As far as the mismanagers are concerned? Let them occupy themselves counting their money.
I agree with Pete’s comment: “That being said, I’m going to disagree with Theresa. All fields need to have standards and find ways to distinguish exceptional performers from mediocre and poor. Teachers generally shirk their responsibility in doing so I think because they are too used to operating independently in their fiefdoms, the classrooms.”
In my experience with the local school system, which includes mine and my children’s, students suffered at the hands of some teachers that chose the profession simply because it gave them large amounts of vacation and other types of time off. They did the bare minimum in the classroom. The school board members and Principals did nothing to demand a better quality education for students. Fortunately, there were good teachers who were committed to giving students the best education possible, but the damage done by those just there to do the bare minimum is unforgivable.
In addition, the health insurance benefits provided in my local school system are far outdated and beyond our ability to financially support. They still enjoy VERY low premiums in addition to $1/RX copayments and $5 office copayments. Most of us either never had it this good or lost this 25-30 years ago. Did I mention the massive amount of paid sick leave they have at their disposal?
Another benefit in our local school system is two defined pension plans along with a match to a 403B plan if they choose to participate.
As I type this I realize that I should have gone into the teaching profession when I graduated from college – the benefit package and large amount of time off would have been worth it. I would be retired by now and enjoying a pension that would allow me to spend winters in FL and the money to travel where and whenever I want to.
Politicians of the past earned our trust. Unfortunately Republicans withdrew from politics into the business of selling influence. That has tarnished all politics and politicians which was one of the products that the GOP was selling in their efforts to fully harvest democracy and America.
Should we trust the Indiana Legislature to create useful law? I don’t know. But we have to get back to functional politics someday somehow.
From the Internet:
“Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Some restrictions apply. Not valid in states with Republican Governors.
Nancy, if even hard-core liberals are seeing that public-sector employees have gold-plated lives, the problem is out of control.
We need to impose reforms on the public sector:
* Job Security Tax
* Benefits Tax
* No pensions, 403B only.
* For teachers, school vacation reassignment to other areas of the government. Instead of taking the month off, they report to the BMV and service clients.
Public-sector employees need to start paying back the excesses.
In the private sector, if you take a vacation, you’re often fired, or your job is reassigned, and you’re fired a bit later.
When I got out of grad school I got a job teaching at Cathedral. It was the first year after the Brothers gave it up. I hadn’t had any education courses and had an idealistic notion of teaching. I was quickly disillusioned. I only taught one year. Teaching was the hardest and the lowest paying job I ever had. By the end of the year, only 1/3 of the original faculty remained. I gained a new respect for the education dept. my belief is that teaching , like many other things is a skill and doing some ‘student teaching’ and taking a few courses that teach you how to prepare for a class, create a test, etc. are good preparation for educators. The notion that just anyone can be a teacher is another right wing fantasy, along with supply side economics and constitutional theocracy
Leon,
Your post is bollocks. You gave up after two semesters, and you think teaching classes would have solved your problem?
That’s not how the real world works. Teaching is a job. You get better at a job the more you do it. Like any job, some will be better than others.
Gopper. You have lived your whole life on the backs of public and private labor. You got what you paid for and more.
Leon, my experience is the opposite of yours. Sort of. I’ve taught quite a few classes at various levels in various formats and in various subjects. I have no education in education. My experience is that teaching can be fun and rewarding depending mostly on the motivation of students. Unmotivated students are tough.
In public schools we’ve generally dumped motivation on teachers and it’s a much bigger job than that.
We need to return somehow to teacher parent partnerships for motivation. That’s the broken link today IMO.
Bernie Sanders has the correct solution: > “MAKE TUITION FREE AT PUBLIC COLLEGES AND UNIVERSITIES. Last year, Germany eliminated tuition because they believed that charging students $1,300 per year was discouraging Germans from going to college. Next year, Chile will do the same. Finland, Norway, Sweden and many other countries around the world also offer free college to all of their citizens. If other countries can take this action, so can the United States of America.”
People that want to go into teaching should not have to become “Indentured Servants” to the state of Indiana.
Gopper reflects the current conservative meme that human life is too hard and we are unable to progress and need to uncivilize as fast as possible.
Can you imagine what it’s like to wake up every day with only that in your head?
Gopper’s attitude that “a weekend seminar at the Radisson” is all that is necessary to train a teacher is precisely the problem with our legislature and many others who believe that teaching is easy and anyone can do it.
I’m not a teacher, but will note that seeing a good one in action is awe-inspiring. I believe that the best truly have a talent that the rest of us do not have – but that doesn’t mean that training is not important.
Teacher education provides the teacher with tools that s/he can use in the classroom, in the same way that physicists use mathematics or musicians use music theory. The prodigies may not need such things, but even they benefit from having them as a springboard.
We expect teachers to be professionals, but allow people with no background or training to tell them what to do and how to do it. We don’t tell engineers how to design bridges, but think we are competent to dictate content and methods in education. And then we complain when the results are less than expected.
I read recently about Finland, whose students consistently are top scorers in the world in reading, math and science. Their system is nearly the antithesis of ours.
Would-be teachers are selected from the best undergrads to enroll in master’s programs – more education, not less – and then are turned loose in their classrooms, where they determine how best to help each student master the material.
Students take a test for graduation at the end of their senior year – ONE test, during the entirety of their primary/secondary education. No other tests are necessary because over the years, their teachers have taken responsibility for ensuring their students have learned what they need to, and have given them additional instruction, or arranged for other services, as needed.
And, most importantly, because of these factors and others, Finnish students are uniformly well-educated, even those who are immigrants or of less-advantaged backgrounds.
Folks, this is what “No Child Left Behind” looks like.
They value teachers. They select them carefully, train them well, and then trust them to do their jobs, in exactly the same way that a good boss treats his/her employees, with similar results.
Why do we put up with a system that is designed to create winners and losers rather than ensuring that every child gets what he or she needs to be successful?
Louis – I don’t think Bernie Sanders’ suggestion of making college tuition free is possible here. Our government prefers to spend our money on wars.
I’ve been reading the comments about teachers and the lap of luxury they’re living in, and I don’t recognize any of it. Some of you have evidently been listening to urban legends about teachers. My husband has been a teacher for over 35 years, and we ain’t lying around some beach in Florida sipping margaritas. He’s sixty years old and has no intention of quitting any time soon. For one, he loves what he does, for another, we frankly can’t afford for him to quit. He has no gold-plated insurance plan; those are for the administrators, not for teachers. Teachers generally never get to use their accumulated sick time unless they suffer some catastrophic illness. Teachers do not shirk their responsibilities for standards but that’s not under their purview. If there are bad teachers it is the job of the principals to ensure those individuals are brought up to snuff or terminated. If teachers stay in the profession these days it’s in spite of the constant chorus of denigration heaped upon them.
Gopper – I commented about public employees on a post a couple months ago. You must have missed it. County and state employees have far too liberal vacation and paid sick time. They enjoy every federal holiday plus a few extra. If our state and county governments reduced their liberal benefit packages they could reduce the number of employees needed to carry out business.
Then, there is the fact that they work 7 hour days. Hours are 8-4 in my county. They are not here to serve the public. The public exists to serve them. I also mentioned previously that my county’s employees get those jobs shortly after high school and never leave because they know they could not get anywhere near the same rate of pay or benefits in the private sector.
Public sector employees were awarded bloated benefit packages years ago with the reasonly being that they worked for lower wages. The wage level for my county’s employees has surpassed those for the private sector and they still enjoy the bloated benefits package.
You shouldn’t refer to someone as a hard core liberal when you don’t really know everything that they believe or stand for.
Rosemary, I was speaking only about my local school system.
Yes, local teachers definitely use sick time here to add to their vacation time. I know of one teacher that was allowed to use 2 months of sick time to take an extended vacation to Europe.
For decades our teachers have retired at the age of 55 and many many enjoy winters in FL or have lake homes for the summer. Financial stress has not been an issue for them.
Apparently my local school system created a superior employment situation for teachers that does not exist everywhere and that is why I only spoke about the school system that my taxes pay for.
Bless you Leon for telling your story. Teaching is both an art and a science and very difficult. Indiana is losing teachers right and left due to political micro-management of education from people who have never tried to manage, let alone teach, classrooms of 35 hyper little ones or adolescents with raging hormones. Dealing with one or two teenagers is difficult enough. I can’t imagine dealing with 180 per day.
Sheila is right about this bill. It’s LONG overdue. Indiana passed similar legislation to deal with physician shortages years ago. Teachers have no hope of making the salaries of physicians on a teacher’s salary. The average teacher salary is $35,000 which means many receive even less. Given the current teacher evaluation legislation and years of school budget cuts, teachers have a real fear of staying at that salary forever. Schools have no assurance of more funds so an occasional raise is often considered a bonus and not built into the salary base. I don’t know how anyone can pay off their college loan, buy a car and a professional wardrobe, furnish a household, or start a family with such little pay and little promise of compensation growth.
As salaries have stagnated, politicians have required reams of additional testing, data collection, and record-keeping for teachers – enough for each teacher to need 2 secretarial assistants but of course teachers don’t get secretaries. They must enter, organize, and map their own data for standardized tests in which teachers have little or no confidence.
Before teachers were crushed with this additional paperwork, teachers worked a 12 months equivalent of hours in 9 months time. Now even young teachers increasingly need medical attention and medication for blood pressure problems – at the same time that school systems require teachers to pick up more of the premium for their health care coverage.
Contrary to public perception, teachers receive no paid vacations. Summer is a mandatory layoff even though teachers spend their summers doing research, evaluating data, preparing lesson plans, collecting materials with which to demonstrate lessons, and doing their own professional development since the state no longer funds that either.
I applaud Speaker Bosma for his legislation to provide tuition free college educations for those who go into teaching. That will definitely help schools with recruitment problems. But much more needs to be done so that young teachers will STAY in the teaching profession.
Interesting exchange.
Here’s how free markets work.
If you think teaching is easy and teachers are over compensated here’s the good news. You can become one. When supply consistently exceeds demand, adjustments will be made.
That applies to virtually all careers. So, stop whining and start doing. Instead of trying to wreck the plans and dreams of others, start your own.
A very short, very entertaining, very true video vis a vis teaching. I posted it yesterday too. Do yourself a favor and watch it.
http://youtu.be/2zMbspRhqJc
Nancy, pinning down those stories about How Wonderful Teachers Have It (TM) can be pesky but I’m willing to try. Where is this munificent school system of which you speak?
Nancy Papas –
I must disagree with you about teachers not receiving paid vacations. Not only do the teachers in my district have 2.5 months off in the summer, 2 weeks off at Christmas, Fall Break, and Spring Break, but they absolutely do receive paid vacation in addition to those breaks. So, when teachers take vacation time off, in addition to sick days, during the school year it adds up to a lot of days that substitute teachers (babysitters) are in the classroom. My district pays subs such a low amount that they had to give up requiring 60 hrs of college credit many years ago just to get people to sub. They are willing to take anybody that is breathing (as long as they pass a criminal background check). This takes away from time that should be spent teaching the students.
I have never known a teacher or administrator that did extra school work during their summers off. In my neck of the woods the teachers make it very clear that they truly enjoy their summers off and school is not a part of them.
$35K is the starting salary for teachers in my district.
I’ve known many teachers over the years, including a few relatives, and they have never worked the equivalent of 12 months work in 9 months. They do complain periodically about spending occasional evenings grading tests or papers. Most of us that have had salaried jobs must spend 9-10 hour work days and don’t get any extra pay. We also don’t get the extended time off that teachers get. And, we certainly don’t have any job security.
I remember my father-in-law- complaining many years ago about being “laid off” for a month in the summer “without pay”. My husband thought it was crazy that his dad enjoyed this amount of time off as a well-paid administrator and had the nerve to complain about it. I can’t remember how many years ago it was that teacher and administrator pay schedules were changed to be paid year-round instead of only during the school year – due to the constant complaining about no pay in the summer. Some just didn’t want to have to budget their income to save back for the summer.
I do support the role and value of teachers and I volunteered in classrooms many years ago when my children were young. However, I cannot support the thought that they should continue to enjoy the premium defined retirement and health insurance plans and I find it hard to be sympathetic when they complain about spending more than 7 hours at work.
Nancy, I didn’t read in your rant a solution.
How about hiring the homeless to teach school at minimum wage and have kids spend 12 hours a day in school year round graduating from high school at 10 years old.
Rosemary, I will not divulge on this blog where I live. However, I can assure that I know every detail about the benefits and retirement packages in my school district. I personally met with the Asst. Superintendent to obtain the details of it all because my property taxes were rising at an alarming rate and the bulk of it goes to the school district. Having friends and relatives that are teachers who frequently bragged about their premium health insurance and how little it costs them was not a pleasant thing to hear.
And, at that meeting the Asst. Superintendent told me that many times he has had to remind teachers to stop complaining about needing to occasionally spend a little extra time at their job when their typical work day is 7 hours.
And please read my previous post regarding my school district.
Pete, did it make you feel good to type such a ridiculously childish and sarcastic post?
Solutions have started to be put into place. Teachers hired in the past several years are part of a 403B plan. The defined benefit plan was financially unsustainable.
Just recently, the self-insurance plan for healthcare was so deep in debt that they started charging administrative and teaching staff an increased rate to repay the debt, since they can’t raise taxes to pay it off. The employee part of the premiums had not been raised in decades, even though the costs increased every year. That was one of the benefits that the teachers union successfully fought to save every year.
Finally, as a taxpayer I am very aware of the damage that Mitch Daniel’s property tax caps have had on the public school systems. While it has caused school systems to stop spending money like there was no end in sight, it has reached a point where costs cannot continue to be cut.
The very wealthy Hoosiers are the ones that benefited the most from the property tax caps. Mine didn’t fall enough to make a dent in them. However, people with homes worth $500K and up were paying $0 in property taxes when it was implemented. Yes, I said $0. I haven’t checked to see if their taxes went up much over the years. The plan is so convoluted because it is tied to incomes. It assumes if you live in a more expensive home that you are also earning a greater income and pay more income taxes, which is not necessarily true. I called Purdue and spoke with the Ag Econ Professor that is known to be the expert on this. It is extremely complicated.
Interesting information shared today. As a former public service employee, I didn’t make that much money nor did I have medical benefits or vacation that has been described above. Most of my colleagues that left the city I worked for, got better paying jobs, doing the same work with better benefits. That’s why they left in the first place. Who wants to work for public service jobs when you can double your money in the private market? And if I’m not mistaken, don’t teachers in Indiana eventually have to get a master’s degree to continue teaching? There is no way I would get a master’s degree and allow 35k a year salary. Come on! That’s ridiculous!
In addition Pete, I do not agree with the way the republican legislature has treated our teachers and I have also commented to my state rep and senator about being against vouchers. I firmly believe that we should be spending resources to improve struggling public schools instead of taking money away from them.
I know they recently passed a new school funding formula that gave some schools more money and took money away from others. It didn’t cause much of a difference here and I am not aware of the impact to other districts.
Tony Bennett and Mitch Daniels caused a lot of damage to our public school systems that will take a long time to overcome.
Nancy, it’s a well known fact, and has been for decades, that the US can’t afford our health care. Simple truth.
We can spend our time making sure that that fact impacts everybody equally or attack the problem.
Medicare for everyone like the vast majority of developed countries have is the solution. Until we have it it will continue to eat away at society and our economics.
Other than that, you diss my proposal without offering an alternative.
AgingLGrl – I think the Masters Degree requirement was dropped. If I’m not mistaken, people might qualify to teach with something called a Certificate. I don’t know what that entails.
At one time, public employees and teachers used to work for lower pay but had fabulous benefits – at least where I live – and that was supposed to balance out the difference between the public and private sector pay. Salaries for teachers in my area that have been teaching for several/many years have had mediocre annual pay increases, but they still enjoy a much better benefits package than the private sector. The public sector employees in my county have enjoyed equal or higher pay than the private sector employees for several years and still enjoy the much more lucrative benefits package.
Wherever you worked as a public sector employee years ago, they obviously were not as generous as my county is.
Much whining about taxes is displaced anger about the real problem – all the money going to executives and equity holders. It’s not that taxes are going up it’s that compensation for the creators of wealth, workers, is stagnant. That’s not because the economy is not growing but the profits from a growing economy are not rewarding those growing it but those who steal it because they can and want to.
WTH Pete! No need to get so shitty!!!
What solutions have you proposed? Do NOT demand that I come up with all of the solutions to our educational system when you haven’t offered any! Just who the hell do you think you are?
Nancy:
“The public sector employees in my county have enjoyed equal or higher pay than the private sector employees for several years and still enjoy the much more lucrative benefits package.”
Evidence?
And again WTH are you talking about – much whining about taxes? Then you go off on the problem being all of the money going to executives, as if none of the rest of us knows about this. Stop thinking that you are the resident educator to the rest of us!
Nancy. I’ve addressed the real problems: unaffordable health care and executives rewarding themselves and their bosses, shareholders, instead of those who create prosperity, workers, public and private.
What solution have you proposed?
Debate doesn’t work if you take things personally or if you have no solutions.
Pete if you want evidence then go to your county commissioner board and inquire about the benefit package that employees receive. As for salaries, those are always public information. Don’t expect me to do your work for you! I actually DO my homework to find out the facts, but feel NO obligation to present the details at lenght to you.
Wait a minute — you attack me personally and then tell me not to take it personally? As I said before, stop thinking that you know more than the rest of us and feel the need to continually preach to us. Your Medicare for all position is one I’ve had for years.
Furthermore, you didn’t address the real problems – as you so proudly stated. All you did was state what is wrong and is obvious to all of us. Read your posts to recognize this.
There is no debate here – you are behaving like a toddler that is demanding to have your way or you will continue to throw a tantrum. I will not acknowledge your tantrum anymore.
Pete:
Your 1:49 is a waste of time. Nancy is talking about Indiana, and you’re talking about who-knows-what just to stay in the discussion when you have nothing to add regarding Indiana public employee benefits.