George Will Wants Belt Tightening On Education, Undermining It
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George Will would like for those stupid ass teachers to chow down on a crap sandwich and quit asking for money in exchange for their jobs. He argues in favor of educational belt-tightening, in that way that conservatives who think everyone has the option of private education does.
Here’s a crazy idea: Let’s cut wasteful spending in areas like the military and other segments of the government in a way that won’t undermine American education aka our future.
But I’m just some liberal.
43 Responses to “George Will Wants Belt Tightening On Education, Undermining It”
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© 2000-2011 Oliver Willis
Well if the teachers spent more time educating kids than worrying about their pay and benefits this wouldn’t be an issue. Take for instance, New Jersey. Average salary for a teacher in NJ is $63,000. They’re spending nearly $24,000 per student in Newark, yet for a graduation rate that is absolutely pitiful. Every other area has had to deal with some budget cuts, let the teachers and the twits who run the unions cut back some as well.
Um, American school districts have been cutting back due to the Bush/Republican Recession for years now. There are hiring freezes in many districts and the teachers I know routinely spend out-of-pocket for classroom necessities.
Working adults have every right to protect themselves and get basic things like health insurance and a yearly pay-raise. If the teachers’ unions over-reach sometimes to protect bad teachers, so be it. Just because you’re a teacher doesn’t mean you have to be a chump and just accept pay-cuts, bad working conditions, and over-sized classrooms.
Everyone’s supposed to work for free except conservative pundits
unlike Obama, who wants to cut down on those silly doctors salaries, but still wants them to take care of the medicare recipients…..
Uh, seems since you know these numbers so well it’d be pretty easy to link to some sort of citation.
And $64,000? That’s too much to you? Really? How much should teachers get paid?
Lil Georgie should stick to writing shitty books about baseball.
Yea, because there aren’t other problems in Newark that would hinder the student’s chance of learning. Starve the teachers, now that will up those graduation rates!
Then again Jaim, if you were as stupid as most conservatives exhibit here, wouldn’t you resent teachers?
Yes, let’s cut education funding because conservatives don’t like teachers, that couldn’t possibly have any long term consequences at all.
So … wasteful spending in Education is a GOOD thing?!?
Public employee unions should be illegal and public employee pensions should be done away with.
As for teachers and belt tightening…in one county in Georgia they have instituted 4-day school weeks in an effort to fill a $1 million budget shortfall. The results:
“Test scores went up.
So did attendance — for both students and teachers. The district is spending one-third of what it once did on substitute teachers, Clark said.
And the graduation rate likely will be more than 80 percent for the first time in years, Clark said.”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_four_day_school_week
Funny how conservatives like SF don’t ask similar questions about military spending, G-d forbid we cut the money flow from the taxpayers to the like of Halliburton, lets’ bitch and moan about education instead.
Hi — 3 year member of New York’s UFT –
The fallacy here is that because paying teachers well hasn’t produced good results, we shouldn’t pay teachers well. (The other fallacy is that $63K is a lot of money for a college graduate living in the NY metro, but that’s been covered).
If you don’t pay teachers well, you attract well-intentioned suckers and lazy people who like the idea of not being able to be fired. Are these the role models we want in front of our classrooms?
Wasteful spending is never a good thing, but before you whine about the budget I’d refer you to two wars that your buddy Chimpy started and couldn’t finish.
“public employee pensions should be done away with.”
Why do you hate cops, fire-fighters, and soldiers so much?
The results in one county in Georgia is hardly enough to make a case for the position you outline william.
Besides, without any pension or allowing them have pensions, you’ll probably end up hiring teachers from India to teach via one of those Cisco thingies from there to here as the only affordable education option left.
Wrong Jay! Highest starting salary for teachers is $40,000, most districts start teachers at $35,000 (and that’s after graduating with a degree. Also, now the teachers have to qualify to remain teachers by renewing their license every two – three years, and by taking classes for advanced degrees, which the teacher is responsible for paying for. Unlike the corporate world, these teachers are not compensated. Often, the supplies that the teachers provide for classroom instruction is paid for by the teacher, and they do not get reimbursed. The salary goes up for supervisors and administrators who must have at least a Master’s Degree. The tuition for Graduate School is not provided by the Board of Education, the individual must pay for it. In the corporate world, returning to school is paid for by the corporation. Also, the decline in graduation rates is a direct correlation to the economic conditions of the districts. If a student’s family has lost a job, then there is not health insurance. Without health insurance children who need glasses or hearing aids do not get them. If the family has lost their home, then they are living in shelters or conditions that are less that ideal for studying, homework, and even remaining in a single school for an entire year, not to mention the lack of adequate nutrition.
But, as usual those that wish to prevent the education of others to keep them as a permanent underclass never base their argument on facts.
If you had read the entire piece, you would have seen that this has worked for many rural communities across the US.
As for pensions…what’s wrong with a 401K like the rest of us in the private sector? It was once the case that public sector jobs offered generous pensions in leiu of lower salaries compared to the private sector, but that’s not the case any more. Public sector salaries are as high or higher than than in private business. The tax payers just shouldn’t be expected to pay a public employee 90% or more of their salary & benefits for the rest of their lives.
It’s interesting that the notion of a 4 day school week is not popular in the independent schools. When you are teaching primarily to the test, and not teaching a child how to learn and prepare for college, the course work is not challenging and they are taught how to learn, therefore easier tests. My son goes to an independent school that I wish he had six days of school instead of five to cover the amount of information that he must learn, and the level of education he is receiving. He is reading texts that I read in college, and the levels of papers he must write are comparable to a college level student. The public schools in the economically advantaged school districts give the same type of education but the child must live in the district to attend those schools. And those are the areas where the average home costs over a million dollars. In most states and cities, the budget for the schools are determined by the tax revenue from property taxes. Less property tax on homes worth $70,000. Also the more affluent school districts hold fund raisers to supplement the budgets and get supplies for the classroom or add additional instructional aides. In the less affluent communities the “bake sale,” is no match for the “School Auction.”
sorry for typo, line should read, “NOT, taught how to learn,” NOT, “taught how to learn.”
Wrong again. The amount of education spending by state & local goverments has increased 30% over Bush’s 1st term, even after adjusting for inflation. (Source: NCES)
Public sector salaries are as high or higher than than in private business.
For teachers that translates into working for piss-poor salaries in the private sector.
As for police, firemen, etc, how could you fund a 401(k) that would provide benefits to a policmans’ or firemans’ widow/widower if their spouse died in the line of duty after 2 or 3 or 10 years of service.
OTOH, why not 401(k)s for those who serve in the military?
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
“As for police, firemen, etc, how could you fund a 401(k) that would provide benefits to a policmans’ or firemans’ widow/widower if their spouse died in the line of duty after 2 or 3 or 10 years of service.”
That’s called Life Insurance.
“The biggest blow to unions’ public support has come from revelations about jaw-dropping compensation and pension benefits. Police have received unwelcome attention for budget-busting overtime and the manipulation of eligibility rules for “disability pensions,” which provide higher benefits and tax advantages. Other government employees, particularly managers, have been called out for “pension-spiking:” Using vacation time, sick pay and the like to boost income in the last years of employment, which are the basis for calculating retirement benefits.
Such gaming of the system boosts starting pensions to levels that can approach, and even exceed, employees’ salaries. Some examples from the reporting of the Contra Costa Times’ Daniel Borenstein: A retired northern California fire chief whose $185,000 salary morphed into a $241,000 annual pension; a county administrator whose $240,000 starting pension was 98 percent of final salary; and a sanitary district manager who qualified for a $217,000 pension on a salary of $234,000. At a time when most Californians anticipate an austere retirement (if they can afford to retire at all), government pensions are a source of real voter anger.
The harm to the credibility of public employee unions from these excesses is made far worse by the unions’ attempts to hide them. The revelations about pay and pension abuses have surfaced only as a result of lawsuits. (Disclosure: The First Amendment Coalition has been a plaintiff in several of these cases.) Public employee unions, rather than taking the lead to stop abusive compensation practices, have vigorously opposed disclosure of individual employees’ salaries and pension amounts.”
http://calcoastnews.com/2010/06/taxpayers-going-postal-over-public-employee-pensions-perks/
You do understand that the figures you linked to ended in 2006 and therefore prove nothing, yes?
I can tell Connie is a teacher or knows one personally because no one who isn’t a teacher would know this! My friend, a former teacher, groused about this: NJ will not hire you as a teacher without this certificate. This certificate must be maintained by taking expensive college education courses. If you’re unemployed how do you pay for those courses? If you can’t afford them you lose your cert, and you cannot work as a teacher again — so say goodbye to any value from that education degree you spent the money to get! Needless to say, my ex-history-teacher friend is now working in a financial service company (where, BTW, he gets better health benefits than he ever got as teacher! kinda puts the lie to all the “teachers get more lavish benefits than anyone” crap, doesn’t it?)
“That’s called Life Insurance.”
Yes, and I’d hate to imagine the cost of Life Insurance for someone in a job with the risk factors involved in being a cop or fireman.
And what kind? Term, universal, whole life, or endowment?
The only way it would be cheaper is with term, and term requires payments throughout the life of the policy, which is to say, the life of the individual being covered.
As for your suggestion of 401(k) that wouldn’t have helped in this case:
Link
Anyhoo, you don’t have any similar figures showing teachers getting as much as they did when they were employed, why is that?
The corporatocracy doesn’t want an educated, critically thinking electorate. We must keep this in mind as we sift through conservative drivel. The OTHER George was right:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
You don’t have to share Carlin’s resignation to know his premise was correct.
Just had to resign my job in the education system so that I could further myself professionally and be in the classroom. In December, I will no doubt look for one of those plush jobs in education that DON’T EXIST and be forced to do something else besides my passion. Maybe it is bad timing but the idea that educators are NOT tightening their belts makes me want to spit! My small school district has been better than most and it has gone through massive furloughs, teacher cuts, benefits cuts etc… There is one fundamental argument that the right refuses to speak to loud lest they never want a place in government again, and that is a belief of all people having an opportunity for a good education. Increasingly, more of the right just can’t be bothered with EVERYONE getting a good education.
“If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense!”-shorter George Will
Conservatives are against education because an educated electorate votes democratic. That’s also why they have tried, and have been fairly successful at, destroying the middle class.
I’m not a teacher. Nor do I know any personally, yet I already knew most of what Connie noted.
It’s called “being informed”.
The United States spends more on its military budget than the rest of the world combined. When George Will writes about that, I’ll believe he has something of value to say about the belt-tightening.
Conservatives have never favored public education. Their whole shtick comes down to, “Why should I have to pay to educate someone else’s kid?” Guys like George Will don’t get the benefit of the doubt when it comes to how much money for schools is enough. As smart as he thinks he is (and no one has ever been that smart), Will is never going to understand that.
Also, would anyone but a card-carrying simpering ninny upbraid a child for not using the subjunctive tense?
90%?? A public sector pension is more like 50%. Sure, there are some who manage to game the system and pad their pensions to the ridiculous level, but that is the exception, not the rule. I knew one fellow who managed to retire with a pension that was twice is salary. He did it by working every overtime that was offered to him. But he put in time, working 16 hour days nearly every day for two years to build that pension, and all through that time, 10% of what he made was taken out of his paycheck to go into the pension fund. Its not like he didn’t earn it. Nevermind the time spent away from his family.
As for overtime, we were begging the elected officials to hire more people to cut down on the OT, but we were told it was cheaper to pay overtime than to hire more bodies, due to the costs of healthcare.
Those poor, poor teachers…
Won’t SOMEONE think of the Children?!?
Yes, god forbid we pay a teacher the salary of someone who runs a corporation or what the Feds pay private contractors in Iraq or Afghanistan, the nerve of some people…………….
Farris, I used to think you were an idiot, but now I realize that you take a single example and use it to make vague, meaningless generalizations that can be used to attack any situation involving teachers.
And now I don’t think you’re an idiot any more.
You’ve got an issue with using single examples, eh?
Why aren’t you also chastizing your good friends Rheindhard (“my teacher friend can’t get a job!”), Jaim (“my teacher friend has to pay for her own materials!”), OlFroth (“my friend got paid, but he had to kill himself working overtime to get it”) and White Whale (“I had to quit because I wasn’t smart enough”) for using their own personal sob stories (without the requisite backing documentation) as single examples to argue for THEIR political points?
If it’s good for the goose…
SF, all you have is one blog entry(since you apparently can’t do original research yourself) about a teacher who has a monstrously large salary, unlike the vast majority of teachers in this country.
In other nations, they don’t bitch and moan about the costs because they see education as an investment in the future. Here in CA we’ve cut education funding since Reagan was in office, and the results are plain for all the world to see.
If it’s good for the goose…
If you could find and post the objective figures about how much teachers make in New Jersey, what ever hapless state of the Union you live in, and CA(mean, median, quartiles, you know what I mean, right?), that might be more useful than hawking a few anecdata you’ve come across that aren’t more useful because they aren’t personal.
You know, I’m not the sort who assumes that any particular form of compensation is a given. If willie and Farris think we ought to do away with public employee pensions, well anything’s up for discussion.
But what I don’t get is the sense of outrage that comes along with the suggestion. It’s not like we’re talking about bank robbery here. Policemen, firefighters, teachers, or whoever bargain for a contract that includes a pension. That’s not outrageous, that’s called negotiating.
Mind you, these are the same folks who get all up in arms when it’s suggested that hedge fund managers should be required to pay taxes on their salaries just like the rest of us.
SaveFarris:
I can understand your animosity towards teachers; had you been taught sound reading skills, you wouldn’t have just made a fool of yourself for the nth time. Oh, sorry, was that last bit my “out loud” voice?
I had to quit because I wasn’t smart enough”) – Farris
This is where you really should stop talking. See some jobs require you FURTHER your skills to suit your customers(students). Do you suppose people in the tech industry should stop furthering their skills? You can’t possibly believe that sort of nonsense. I am willing to have more negotiating power in salary talks but the private market(the Godly invisible hand of the market, hollowed be thy name!) doesn’t pay teachers for what they are worth. A teacher in NJ has an exorbanent salary? All teachers are worthless money grubbing whores!
You merely take an example and extrapolate an absurd generality. If you think I am quiting my job because I wasn’t smart enough, well I guess I can question your sacrifices for a profession. Its sucks that teacher jobs are being cut out across the nation but I will make ends meet in a different matter. Try to think beyond your computer screen and tell me what discouraging education does for our populous.