Posted on 04/28/2005 12:21:28 PM PDT by MikeHu
If we want to 'fix' our education system, cut 80% of the administrators and give the money to teachers. And I don't even want to hear that the districts need all of these Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents, Principles, Vice Principles, Assistant Principles, Assistant to the Vice Principle etc etc.
Each and every school district in the US is overburdened with 'administration'. In the past we did a damn good job of educating our children without all of this dead wood.
Climbing the 'administrative' ladder is a vocation now, and it's a good ole boys club.
Rant/
Your presumption is that when things change, everything stays the same -- which is what the defenders of the status quo want you to believe.
Real change however, changes everything; so while the monetary compensation may be the same, people will change jobs to do what they enjoy doing, or are really good at rather than having made a career choice based just on the money -- to condemn themselves to a lifetime of misery for which they feel cheated, and have made sacrifices so that they say, "I gave my life to that thankless job, therefore, the company (society) owes me this debt that can never be repaid." In the world of the future, people take responsibility for their own actions.
There're a lot of people who have gone through education -- more than those remaining in education. So it's not like it's a big secret why people don't remain in it. They would prefer to be treated like grownups themselves.
Bottom line:
Teachers, treat your peers fairly.
Show some class!
The principal reason is to boost the salaries for the long serving teachers in order to maximize their pensions when they retire in the near future. This practice is common in school districts with a large population of teachers with many years service!
In other words (and correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth) "The idea will work, it just hasn't been tried by the right people yet".
Well, yes. But that is another thread. We are in basic agreement except for our differing positions on labor unions. You maintain they are necessary in today's society, I don't. I look at labor unions in GB and the the US, and how Iron Pants Maggie and the Great Communicator dealt with them, and the aftermath. The two respective countries did not fall apart; The mine workers and the traffic controllers moved on.
One segment of society should not extort from another segment, is just isn't manly.
What I hear..."Seniority means everything, afraid I'll lose my job, to lazy to retrain, hate my job and afraid it is the best job I can get, everyone else has to wait on me..Yada yada..
Don't like you job? Join the crowd and buy a Johnny Paycheck album. Or get promoted, or a job that you like. If you do it for money you will never like it and it folly to think your employer should pay you more for just sticking around without adding to his bottom line.
I'm self employed, so my experience is from the side of an employer.
I've been wondering since this thread began, where did you get these lofty ideas?
No, that's the business model for every successful and growing enterprise -- and then once they are flourishing, the unions move in and want to impose their kind of workers on the business -- and thence they go into a lifelong decline.
The public schools are prime examples of how it takes twice as many people and ten times more money to get less results -- so they can go to the legislature and demand more money because things aren't working.
We know in the growth sectors that prices go down and performance goes up. We shouldn't keep throwing money into enterprises, products and services that double in cost with half the results. That shouldn't be what a modern education is all about, or how we do anything any more. Your assessment that we have the wrong people doing the job is spot on.
And yet everyone, newby and experienced alike, gets paid the same under your scenario. Seems to me that's been tried once on a very large scale.
Then I said:
In other words (and correct me if I'm putting words in your mouth) "The idea will work, it just hasn't been tried by the right people yet".
Then You said:
Your assessment that we have the wrong people doing the job is spot on.
In conclusion: Rush often says (paraphrasing) Liberals believe Socialism just hasn't been tried by the right people yet". Seems to be the case here.
No, I'd want the best and the brightest to be among my colleagues and peers. That gives my profession credibility and viability. That's why the esteem of the teachers is so low; they're hiring only those willing to be exploited by those already in the profession. You like to think that those coming out of the schools are even better qualified and equipped to do the jobs -- and not that they're still producing the same kind of teachers they were 25 years ago -- as though whole worlds of new information haven't made today's teachers, or doctors, the state of the art. Your whole mentality is wrong.
Do you see how the adjustment is self-correcting?
I'm not buying the $500 computer of 25 years ago -- I'm buying the $500 computer of today.
But the union wants me to buy the $500 computer of 25 years ago for $5,000!
That is the cause of inflation.
Eye-opening, isn't it?
For all their talk about workers being exploited by management, or their corporation, the greatest exploiters are the union's own of their own.
Well, in this case they seem to have given that impression to the Census Bureau.
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