Teacher layoffs

[april47]

I have a close relative that may be layed off by the school district near by.
It will be tough to find a teaching job with the whole state cutting back the school budgets this coming year. The big problem is that she is already a financial trainwreck. She is a single mom of a toddler and is in her early 40's. Her child has had health issues that has caused financial problems and daycare is already a challenge. She has humongous student loans that have already been deferred twice. No child support. Moving in with family is not an option. No house to sell, lives in an apartment. Yes, she obviously has made a lot of mistakes but is a nice person with a good education. Where on earth will she even start to get through this?

[zibazinski]

I also avoid the train wrecks, especially now I have always lived frugally and anything extra went for my kids. It's now not so much of an issue but I'm still careful. I go shopping with friends and they buy and buy and I don't. I meet them AFTER lunch because I don't want to spend 15-20 on lunch.

[Deleted]

Hopefully she won't be layed off. How many years has she been teaching? Can she bump someone with less seniority?

[cubefarmer]

Teachers here are being laid off right and left. There will be no new teacher job openings for anyone who gets laid off. Districts are actually paying teachers to resign. Your friend will just need to get some other kind of work.

[zibazinski]

But there are teaching jobs if you move. Places are still having children like there's no tomorrow.

[commentator]

We have a societal problem that is screwing a lot of hard working teachers. This country, on average, does not place a high value on being well educated. The result is and will be a reduced capability for the U.S. to compete in the world economy which leads to (among many bad things) even more jobs being off-shored.

Unfortunately, because of the loud mouthed dishonesty of tea partiers and their ilk, a quality education system requires tax revenue to create and sustain.

[phil5185]

The result is and will be a reduced capability for the U.S. to compete in the world economy which leads to (among many bad things) even more jobs being off-shored.

True - we cannot fill our technical jobs with US grads, we must recruit from offshore - or site our plants offshore.

of tea partiers and their ilk, a quality education system requires tax revenue to create and sustain.

I see the opposite. The wrong-headed Edu Administrators use esteem based methods, permissiveness, and protect nonperforming teachers (only a few but that contaminates the norm). Over the past 25 yrs, adding money has only enabled the wrong-headed factions to move faster. Look at the numbers - the highest per capita student budgets have the lowest student performance - reverse correlation.

Learning is hard work - and teaching is hard work - and it is not happening these days.

[tea4me]

Apr 9, 2011 10:52:12 GMT -5 cubefarmer said:

Teachers here are being laid off right and left. There will be no new teacher job openings for anyone who gets laid off. Districts are actually paying teachers to resign. Your friend will just need to get some other kind of work.

And yet, there are people going to college because they want to be a teacher. WTF? Especially the ones that are not willing to relocate.

I know someone that got a teaching degree over a year ago and now her parents are supporting her. She is not willing to relocate or take a job in a different field.

Do people that pursue a degree in education think they are an "exception" and schools will hire them?

[zibazinski]

Honestly, I swear they either thought it would be an "easy" job and then the reality hit that they have to work twice as hard as a normal worker and not get much money for it. Or they were "starry-eyed" and thought they could "make a difference." Then reality hits them.

[Deleted]

Honestly, I swear they either thought it would be an "easy" job and then the reality hit that they have to work twice as hard as a normal worker and not get much money for it. Or they were "starry-eyed" and thought they could "make a difference." Then reality hits them.

I also think they are the product of the "upcoming teacher shortage" that we keep hearing about. That shortage is only in certain fields (math, science, and special education) in most areas. Meanwhile districts are cultivating "alternative" methods of certification, which puts people in the classroom while they are taking courses. So there is a surfeit.

It's like substitute teaching. So many people want to do it in these times that many school systems have closed their lists. But we get a lot of people who don't belong in a classroom. I had one that administered a vocabulary test and gave the kids the answers. I guess that was his way of showing he was smarter than the average tenth grader . (I hadn't left them.)

[commentator]

Apr 9, 2011 13:50:36 GMT -5 phil5185 said:

... Look at the numbers - the highest per capita student budgets have the lowest student performance - reverse correlation. ...

Assuming your assertion regarding negative correlation of costs per student and student performance is accurate, I remind you (or inform you) that correlation does NOT imply causality.

How about providing a link to the "numbers" you want me to look at?

[jkapp]

Apr 9, 2011 19:02:13 GMT -5 @commentator said:

Apr 9, 2011 13:50:36 GMT -5 phil5185 said:

... Look at the numbers - the highest per capita student budgets have the lowest student performance - reverse correlation. ...

Assuming your assertion regarding negative correlation of costs per student and student performance is accurate, I remind you (or inform you) that correlation does NOT imply causality.

You mean like:
"a quality education system requires tax revenue to create and sustain."

Taxes for schools have increased every year - dollars going to schools have increased for decades. Where is the better quality?

[zibazinski]

It's going to fat cat administrators and bs programs but also the number of special needs children has skyrocketed. Most used to die at birth but now with technology advancements, they live and are entitled to education at taxpayer expense until age 21. Used to be 26. One of my friend's serves (for free) on a small school board and that school system ended up with 8 special needs children to the tune of almost a half million per year. They ended up using cabs to transport them because that was cheaper than providing a bus. The school system does not have busses, it's that small. One HS, one Middle, one El. Kids walk, ride bikes, or get driven to school but the feds demand all sorts of care but send no money to provide it. She's concerned because no one in the system has gotten raises for 3 years now and says anymore major expenses and they are in big trouble.

[phil5185]

How about providing a link to the "numbers" you want me to look at?

I googled and got this one. The outlier on the scatter graph seems to be DC - big $ per capita but one of the lowest graduation rates. As you say, correlation is not causation - in DC many of the students are in private schools, so only the low income students are counted in the scoring.

edmoney.newamerica.net/node/36914

In my post above, I mentioned that when we interview for american HS grads to fill our technical jobs, we get few acceptable candidates - so we look offshore.
A correllary is that, these days, you can't get hired for even the lower skilled jobs w/o a college degree. That, too, is a result of poorly prepared HS grads. Ie, we either look offshore - or we pay BS level salaries to hire college grads to do the technical work.

[Mad Dawg Wiccan]

[gawgagranny]

Hey, try being a new grad trying to get a teaching job...DS2 is about to finish his Masters' in Ed. degree next semester as he couldn't find a teaching/coaching job last spring when he was finishing his undergrad degree, so he went on into grad school for better credentials. Now, he can't find a job as he is "overqualified" for a beginning teaching job! Since when did getting an advanced degree mean you were less attractive to hire for a TEACHING job??

Oh and BTW, this is the same son who is currently in a back brace due to multiple fractured vertebrae in his mid-back after an ATV rollover accident 3 days ago....

[zibazinski]

This is old news. You were told NEVER to get a masters or any higher level degree until AFTER tenure because you'd be fired as the system did not want to pay higher salaries.

[gawgagranny]

Apparently so. Unfortunately, my son is learning this the hard way.

[commentator]

Apr 9, 2011 19:44:45 GMT -5 jkapp said:

Taxes for schools have increased every year - dollars going to schools have increased for decades. Where is the better quality?

Not in my part of the country. School budgets from pre-K through university grad school have been trashed by the anti-education do nothings for years. Over time as education recovers part of its losses, they trash those budgets again.

[commentator]

Apr 9, 2011 20:42:17 GMT -5 @toughtimes said:

This often happens, and was especially common during the days when people got doctorates to stay out of Vietnam.

Credible citation?

[zibazinski]

Plenty of people went to college to avoid the draft. As that war "lingered" on, of course, they stayed in school. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. Let's see, stay in school or go to war? I know which one I'd take.

[zibazinski]

Why do you think there was a disproportionate amount of poor and minority in the armed forces then?

[zibazinski]

I've seen/met some of the people that lived and/or fought in those times. I must have met just the "messed up" ones. Pretty sad and the harassment they received was unworthy of Americans. They didn't want to be there and were burned in effigy for going.

[zibazinski]

I'm wondering if that is why home ownership will start to dwindle. I admit I have liked the freedom of renting here in Florida. First place didn't deliver bang for the buck so I moved, to a better and less expensive place. Now I am moving again to Tampa for DD to live there while she finishes college. Then we also have a place in FL to come to to get out of the yuck of Michigan. But after she finishes I will get out of Tampa. Between the traffic, the beggars, and the crime, no thanks.

[Deleted]

This is old news. You were told NEVER to get a masters or any higher level degree until AFTER tenure because you'd be fired as the system did not want to pay higher salaries.

a

It depends on the state. In Alabama the district hires you, but the state provides the funding for your salary. So districts that pay only according to the state's matrix are fine if you have a master's. It just means the state sends more $$$ for your salary.

In fact, it seems like about half of the new grads actually are what is called "fifth-year" students. They got a college degree and then got a master's/teaching certificate afterwards. Some of this intentional and even cheaper. I have a student teacher who says her school has a four-and-a-half-year teacher's ed program. She's sorry that she didn't simply do a fifth year program now; it would have saved her money.

[zibazinski]

Yup.

[gawgagranny]

Apparently sad but true, Snerdly....just hard to watch DS2 go thru the experience. He does have other options with his combination of degrees and experience, but jobs are tough to find in general these days, it seems.

[Deleted]

Gawgagranny . . . does that stand for Georgia? They are always saying here that Georgia schools are hiring what with the lottery for education and everything. Is it that he simply doesn't want to relocate? My first job was at a small mill community. The kids' parents all worked at a paper mill. It got me some experience, though.

[zibazinski]

Until we actually can put some discipline and control back into our schools and throw out the touchy feely programs that DON'T work then we will have a nation of un-educated children whose parents view school as free daycare. Civilize your children and send them to school ready to learn and they can be taught. That's why parents try to get their kids into private, charter, or any kind of school that isn't a holding tank for future problems. Any wonder why teachers are discouraged? salaries were always poor but teachers were treated with respect. Since that no longer exists, at least they want money.

[jkapp]

Apr 10, 2011 10:33:59 GMT -5 @patstab said:

Don't feel to bad about our school systems failing, though of course they should not. I blame a lot of it on the parents, no structure, no discipline, to many distractions. Won't allow discipline in school, can't teach that way. Have to have willing teachers and willing students.

You know people think India is the big system doing so well. There was a big write up in the WSJ. Almost 80% of the college graduates there cannot do the work they were supposedly trained for. It's corrupt, many are just paying for grades and not learning the subject matter.

They gave an example that they have all kinds of outsourcing wanting to come there. This company needs 3000 workers but they can't find them. They do not speak english well enough to comprehend and cannot write it, like we aren't aware of that, yeah right. So India with billions of people is now outsourcing the outsourcing coming into them to places like the Phillipines. It was a big surprise to me but they said unless they can do something about their educational system they will never attain the growth they could attain. Interesting

A lot of that can be attributed to the fact that education in a certain field does not exactly translate to application of that education in the field.

Pefect example: I have a colleague who is finishing her 4-yr degree in Accounting with high honors...but she can't seem to translate her education into practical application at her job. She is great at the book learning but terrible in the application of it.

She is great with consistently performing A+B=C, but when the formula changes and she has to to find B by taking C-A she gets lost.