Posted on 02/22/2011 8:22:54 PM PST by Space Moose
I was thinking about it and decided to come back with a response we can all use.
I have a lot of respect for teachers who sacrifice to teach, however, this email/post is so full of logical flaws, bad math, and the lack of basic knowledge of economics and business, it is no wonder why in Wisconsin, for example, has 38% illiteracy rates in middle school. Let’s take a look at just a few of the basic flaws here.
First, comparing hour per hour salary of a teacher to a baby-sitter is flawed. Removing the job each one does, they are two different job types. (Let’s assume in this example we are referring to a professional babysitter and not a teenager who does it from her home.) A teacher is an hourly or salaried employee who does not need to provide her own classroom, advertise for students, handle HR issues, and often, not even clean. A baby-sitter is contract labor. For every hour of work, they may spend ten hours preparing. They provide the location, pay their own insurance, either clean and prepare the location themselves or hire someone to do it for them, pay for all advertising, answer the phones, and more. The independent contractor baby-sitter does the job of the teacher, HR, janitor, building services, and district PR person.
A professional baby-sitter is also paid a premium for service for a flexible time at often a minim amount of time. Instead of a 40 hour week of hourly salary, they may work 40 hours of work or more per week for ten hours of paid contract work.
Next, a flaw in both basic math and basic economics is multiplying the salary by the number of students. With each student, you do not increase your expenses. Instead, major expenses such as the building, your insurance, support staff, etc, stay the same if you have one student in your classroom or 10. The greater number of students, the lower per share of each’s cost goes toward expenses. For example, if your classroom’s rent is $100/day. If you have one student, your expenses per student are $100/day. If you have 10 students, the building expense per student is only $10/day. Multiplying your salary as though you were a contract laborer, by student instead of by hour worked is improper math and bad business.
Next, looking back at the Department of education’s statistics regarding success in the classroom in Wyoming and using the baby-sitter analogy. If the baby-sitter failed in her job for a client, she would lose that client so she would not have a recurring payment from them. If they want to use that analogy, then the teacher should lose the hourly pay of all failing students, not continue to add it to her base. In most businesses, that failure/error rate would result in termination.
Maybe if teachers would get back to teaching and less demanding or complaining, they would learn something themselves and turn around our failing schools.
(This is just a sample of the flaws in this post. I could probably write ten more paragraphs on this, without even touching the grammatical errors in the original post.)
This person mentions baby-sitting 3 times. That’s all you need to know about her “dedication” to her students.
i think the point that they’re making is that, they should be PAID EVEN MORE than a baby sitter. Baby sitting is the minimum part of their job requirement. So apparently $100k per year is still too little
Thanks. I ended up posting this response:
Assuming that teaching 30 kids is actually 30 times more work than teaching one. If teachers view their job as glorified daycare, then why didn’t they just go into daycare? Also, does this mean that if we don’t have any kids using the schools we shouldn’t have to pay for them?
I could’ve added more but didn’t want to fire all my bullets at once.
They’re being paid to provide a service - education - not for piece work - if they really think they can get $500/day for babysitting 30 kids at a time, maybe they should quit teaching and open a private babysitting business.....
It was posted by several of my younger FB “friends’ yesterday. Touching as can be.
man, I’d like to lay that stat on my lib co-workers! Do you have a reference?
remember to correct any mistakes in my post. I know theres tonnes of typos in it
This is the best argument.
Private schools are can do it for much less, and they don’t need the extra ‘helper’.
The value of what she has to offer has to be compared to what others have to offer.
I understand what you’re saying but babysitting is zero part of their jobs. If they’re teachers then they need students to be in the classroom anyway. What does a babysitter do? Put the kid in front of the tv, eat what’s in the fridge and then call her friends after she puts the child to bed. This teacher is the worst kind of teacher; she thinks it’s all about her.
The other thing is that you aren’t paying *just* for the teacher. You’re paying for the administration, for the janitors, for the counsellors, everyone in the building. That’s all overhead.
I’m tired of whining teachers. If they don’t feel appreciated, they should get the hell out of teaching.
Especially when a masters degree in education is the most reliable indicator that the person lacks intelligence you could ever find. Nothing will make you dumber and of less use to society than a masters degree in education. All it says is "look at me I went to a school that taught me useless crap, just so I could get paid more to do the exact same job the exact same way; or slightly worse".
Are you saying that “Construction Paper & Paste 505” is not more valuable than “Construction Paper and Paste 101?”
LOL, I’ll have to show that to my wife who has a Master’s in Education (and used it to start her own business after she got sick of public school politics). :p
What a crock. I really liked the part about needing batteries for the calculator to do simple math. I and everyone else was expected to do either in our heads or with a #2 pencil and a Big Chief tablet. My apologies for the big chief reference. Not PC. Heep sorry.
Put another way, $19.50 per day X 180 school days per year is only $3,510 per student per year — or $105,300 per year for a class of 30 kids. Considering the state already spends more than 3X that amount per student each year, we should logically cut teacher’s pay and benefits by 65%, right ?
Or maybe teachers should stop using ridiculous arguments like this and start questioning their whole system as to where all the money is going. If WI offered school vouchers for $5,000/yr per student, it could cut taxes in half and the good teachers could open their own schools accepting the vouchers and earn a $150K/yr salary.
Imagine if we all used the same logic and divided our daily salaries by the number of customers we serve.
Let's see now:
I hypothetical supermarket clerk earns $100 per day and serves 80 customers. That's $1.25 per customer--ungrateful slobs!
And the noble supermarket clerk has to put up with parents and their screaming kids, keep shopping carts in line, memorize the daily specials, count out change, make sure no one with more than 11 items goes through the express lane, and sometimes even do clean up on Aisle 5.
All for a mere $12.50 per hour! Just so you can hear a cheery voice ask "paper or plastic" as you swipe your credit card.
Oh the indignity of it all. It's nothing less than slave labor! Yet these poor supermarket clerks work selflessly day in and day out, just so you, the unappreciative masses, can have the convenience of purchasing all your food at a single place.
and now look......teachers went from being a "vocation" to being a govt job....
So this teacher wants to have a commission instead of a salary?
I’ll go along with that!
And, by charging the parents around $20 per day, those in town who don’t have children in school wouldn’t have to pay - property taxes would fall - I’ll go along with that.
If the teacher on commission wants to teach in a classroom they would need to pay expenses out of their commission for building expenses, lease, mortgage, operating expenses etc. Much like a hairdresser who rents a chair in a salon.
They would not be protected under a union and would need to secure their own health insurance, retirement and pay quarterly taxes. I’ll go along with that.
If the child did not learn, much like a hairdresser that gave lousy haircuts - the parents could go elsewhere easily.
If a teacher needed remedial help in the classroom, they could pay for it. If they wanted a bus to deliver students to them they could pay for it themselves.
I’m liking this more and more.
I think it’s fabulous!
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