OT-Union Business

But think of the phenomenal education that public school kids are getting! Our students are rated in the top 200 countries in the whole world! Our future leaders are in good hands.

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The average teacher in the US earns $47,602; in NYC, it's $71,470. Half of the difference is COL, and the other half is combat pay.

What would you do to improve education, Tom?

"Tom Gardner" wrote

According to this, 25% of Indian (not American Indian) children are honor students, which is more children than are in our entire school system. Lots of interesting things in there, probably some are Snopes candidates, but hey, I just post them.

SteveB

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10

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Give students better parents.

Different value system?

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Aha! There's a man who understands the most important reality of all about today's education.

Here's a relatively minor one: The US has scored pretty low in international tests (although there are some good arguments that, corrected for demographics, we actually do quite well). I'll accept that we're scoring well below the average for developed Western countries, let alone Asia.

The OECD's recent comparison put us at 19th among OECD countries. Question: Of the 18 who scored above us, how many countries have local school boards?

I think you can guess. d8-)

Well, there's that. And kids who know if they don't learn something and earn a living, there's no chance of living in Mom and Dad's basement brewing beer, playing video games, and chillin'.

SteveB

Heart surgery pending? Read up and prepare. Download the book $10

Judging by at least half the calls to my business phones, these students have bright new futures in telemarketing and/or computer programming/website design!

-- That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you've understood all your life, but in a new way. -- Doris Lessing

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Does anybody spend more money per student?

We made huge batches of wine in our dorm rooms...stunk like hell! It was pretty good...after the first pint or two.

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PPP or exchange rates? As a percentage of GDP? Normalized by percentage of school-age citizens?

Our expenditure/GDP is exactly the same as for developed European countries (EU19) on the average -- lower than the UK, lower than Portugal,, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. In other words, we spend slightly less for primary and secondary education, as a percentage of individual incomes, than those countries do. Since our percentage of the population that is of school age is higher than most of those countries, the percentage of GDP that we spend actually is less per student than the percentage of GDP would imply.

If you want PPP, etc., you're in for it. There are several ways of calculating PPP. You can find exchange rates without much trouble. But here's something with which you can entertain yourself for a while. It's in Excel, so you can normalize for percentage of populations in school, if you want:

Fewer Televisions?

Carla

You had it right before when you said "better parents".

I don't believe that any reasonable amount of money will correct the influence of p*ss poor parententing. Kids w/o that special gene that causes them to drive themselves out of the cesspool they live in are doomed.

Wes

The gene is normally a coach or teacher. Not always. There are many mentoring programs around but they aren't very big.

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NO SHIT !!! My wife is a teacher , and the students that are the biggest problem also have parents that don't discipline and support the kids , plus they often blame the teacher for their kids problems .

Sounds like bullshit to me - anyone bothered to check the source for this? - (or even do basic math) how come you lot are so gullible?

Andrew VK3BFA.

A life spent sucking on Mountain Dew.

I assume you read source referenced. Why don't you try to check the source?

Union contracts are whatever is agreed to. I have worked at sites where workers did union business during work hours and were paid by the company for the time they used on union business. But the time the workers spent on union business was fairly small. Maybe a couple of hours going to an arbitration once a week.

It does sound like only teaching one class and still getting normal pay and benefits is excessive.

Dan