The wisdom of rewarding Montgomery’s school employees (Washington Post)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of DCUMers are in the top 1%- 5% percent income bracket. If you don't like your child's class size or feel they are not getting enough related arts enrichment, enroll them in private school or tack on an extracurricular activity. Please leave my middle class teacher salary alone.

Thank you.

We'd be happy to leave it along. It's YOU who want it changed.

God you're an idiot.

Without raises, we continue to lag behind. And as the PP above stated, the middle class is shrinking. With such pathetic salaries, whom do you expect to teach your children?

Hopefully, you can either homeschool, of which I doubt you're capable, or you have enough to pay for private.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of DCUMers are in the top 1%- 5% percent income bracket. If you don't like your child's class size or feel they are not getting enough related arts enrichment, enroll them in private school or tack on an extracurricular activity. Please leave my middle class teacher salary alone.

Thank you.

We'd be happy to leave it along. It's YOU who want it changed.

God you're an idiot.

Without raises, we continue to lag behind. And as the PP above stated, the middle class is shrinking. With such pathetic salaries, whom do you expect to teach your children?

Hopefully, you can either homeschool, of which I doubt you're capable, or you have enough to pay for private.

Lag behind whom exactly, as a whole group?

Feel free to leave, other good candidates will come. Problem is not attracting candidates, it is retaining them when they realize seniority counts more than actual performance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of DCUMers are in the top 1%- 5% percent income bracket. If you don't like your child's class size or feel they are not getting enough related arts enrichment, enroll them in private school or tack on an extracurricular activity. Please leave my middle class teacher salary alone.

Thank you.

We'd be happy to leave it along. It's YOU who want it changed.

God you're an idiot.

Without raises, we continue to lag behind. And as the PP above stated, the middle class is shrinking. With such pathetic salaries, whom do you expect to teach your children?

Hopefully, you can either homeschool, of which I doubt you're capable, or you have enough to pay for private.

Lag behind whom exactly, as a whole group?

Feel free to leave, other good candidates will come. Problem is not attracting candidates, it is retaining them when they realize seniority counts more than actual performance.

Well, that is true. Good point.

[Anonymous]

Your "controlled presses" almost certainly rely on automated systems that probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and require at least one IT person to run. For the "auditing and checking constantly" you mention so casually, you're talking about 2-6 trained people who do NOTHING but focus on these statistics. I'm in research and I earn 6 figures, and DH is actually in statistics and he also earns 6 figures. That's the kind of operation you're talking about, with anywhere from 2-6 (or more!) IT people and statisticians dedicated to these statistics.

Let's compare to MCPS! We're talking about paper reporting, at least at the initial stage, by some multi-tasking person in some school or MCPS office who has a dozen other more pressing tasks besides one. Somebody else who has to enter the data. We're also talking about some number-cruncher who also has a real job besides hounding others to (a) report their data and (b) resolve inconsistencies. We're talking about MCPS administrators who probably have more pressing tasks than this one, and although they do take too may junkets, I for one am glad they haven't made this particular worm hole a priority. So the 2010 data probably doesn't exist yet, for all the reasons I've listed.

I am not the researcher who pointed out that raises being a response to retention was a bogus position because the data doesn't support that retention is a problem aligned with pay freezes. However, I do know that it doesn't take 2-6 people and an IT person to calculate the annual turn-over percentage. Geez, this is simple stuff that an intern could do.

The raises are politically motivated. Montgomery County is not the area to do away with math acceleration and curriculum 2.0 will be a huge political problem for the school board. Its a pretty big deal with all the hyper educated folks in this area. I already know three families who were planning to leave DC for MOCO but decided to go to VA instead because they heard about how bad math was under 2.0. Starr and the school board can not survive with both the union and the parent population voting against them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of DCUMers are in the top 1%- 5% percent income bracket. If you don't like your child's class size or feel they are not getting enough related arts enrichment, enroll them in private school or tack on an extracurricular activity. Please leave my middle class teacher salary alone.

Thank you.

We'd be happy to leave it along. It's YOU who want it changed.

God you're an idiot.

Without raises, we continue to lag behind. And as the PP above stated, the middle class is shrinking. With such pathetic salaries, whom do you expect to teach your children?

Hopefully, you can either homeschool, of which I doubt you're capable, or you have enough to pay for private.

Lag behind whom exactly, as a whole group?

Feel free to leave, other good candidates will come. Problem is not attracting candidates, it is retaining them when they realize seniority counts more than actual performance.

again - revolving door

If you prefer this method of teaching - where teachers may change from year to year, never fully mastering the practice - then so be it. But there's something to be said about experience in this field - continuity.

But you're obviously not capable of understanding that, are you?

So when new teachers enter the classroom with few mentors to nurture them or when they leave within 5 years, whom will you blame?

The public school system is a sinking ship, and you'd know that if you read all the articles on reform and kept up with educational reform organizations popping up each year.

Start saving for the $30K yearly tuition!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of DCUMers are in the top 1%- 5% percent income bracket. If you don't like your child's class size or feel they are not getting enough related arts enrichment, enroll them in private school or tack on an extracurricular activity. Please leave my middle class teacher salary alone.

Thank you.

We'd be happy to leave it along. It's YOU who want it changed.

God you're an idiot.

Without raises, we continue to lag behind. And as the PP above stated, the middle class is shrinking. With such pathetic salaries, whom do you expect to teach your children?

Hopefully, you can either homeschool, of which I doubt you're capable, or you have enough to pay for private.

What other school systems in the area is Montgomery County lagging behind in salaries?

[Anonymous]

none

But why is that an issue? We're the largest system and one of the most diverse systems, too - if that matters to you.

Despite differences, I think ALL teachers should receive salary increases. Again, if education is NOT your priority, don't expect a successful future for the majority of our graduates.

I did not sign up for martyrdom when I switched careers, and this is my 18th year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of DCUMers are in the top 1%- 5% percent income bracket. If you don't like your child's class size or feel they are not getting enough related arts enrichment, enroll them in private school or tack on an extracurricular activity. Please leave my middle class teacher salary alone.

Thank you.

We'd be happy to leave it along. It's YOU who want it changed.

God you're an idiot.

Without raises, we continue to lag behind. And as the PP above stated, the middle class is shrinking. With such pathetic salaries, whom do you expect to teach your children?

Hopefully, you can either homeschool, of which I doubt you're capable, or you have enough to pay for private.

What other school systems in the area is Montgomery County lagging behind in salaries?

[Anonymous]

Why are we so worried about teachers making their meager salaries when we have Police Officers and Firefighters in Montgomery County making 2-3 times what they make (with overtime).....

[Anonymous]

Why is that an issue? Because someone, in the immediately preceeding post (and in the midst of a slew of gratuituous insults), made the claim, as justification for the raises, that Montgomery County teacher salaries are "lagging behind," and are "pathetic." It appears that isn't the case.

And once again, I reject the notion that if one questions these raises, in your words, "education is NOT your priority, don't expect a successful future for the majority of our graduates." Teacher compensation is often used as a proxy for "caring about education," but it's a facile argument. No one's talking about stripping these funds from the school budget - rather, we're suggesting they could have been spent in other ways to improve Montgomery county schools - hiring additional teachers, technology, support - the list is endless. To suggest that this constitutes "not caring about education" is disingenuous, and absurd.

Anonymous wrote:none

But why is that an issue? We're the largest system and one of the most diverse systems, too - if that matters to you.

Despite differences, I think ALL teachers should receive salary increases. Again, if education is NOT your priority, don't expect a successful future for the majority of our graduates.

I did not sign up for martyrdom when I switched careers, and this is my 18th year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The vast majority of DCUMers are in the top 1%- 5% percent income bracket. If you don't like your child's class size or feel they are not getting enough related arts enrichment, enroll them in private school or tack on an extracurricular activity. Please leave my middle class teacher salary alone.

Thank you.

We'd be happy to leave it along. It's YOU who want it changed.

God you're an idiot.

Without raises, we continue to lag behind. And as the PP above stated, the middle class is shrinking. With such pathetic salaries, whom do you expect to teach your children?

Hopefully, you can either homeschool, of which I doubt you're capable, or you have enough to pay for private.

What other school systems in the area is Montgomery County lagging behind in salaries?

[Anonymous]

So when new teachers enter the classroom with few mentors to nurture them or when they leave within 5 years, whom will you blame?

My SIL was an elementary school teacher. She and many of her co-workers would leave after 5 years but it has nothing to do with raises. The issue is lack of affordable childcare and childcare that fits a teacher's schedule. Teachers are predominantly women and many get married and start having kids within their first five years. Childcare in this area is extremely expensive and the models out there do not provide any options for only 10 months of care. Teachers also don't have the flexibility to work from home or take an afternoon off for a kid's doctor's appointment.

If there were affordable quality childcare options, childcare that would run only 10 months, and more teachers so that they could take more flextime then you would see more teachers staying in the profession past 5 years. Some teachers will still decide to stay home but many would keep working if it wasn't so logistically problematic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So when new teachers enter the classroom with few mentors to nurture them or when they leave within 5 years, whom will you blame?

My SIL was an elementary school teacher. She and many of her co-workers would leave after 5 years but it has nothing to do with raises. The issue is lack of affordable childcare and childcare that fits a teacher's schedule. Teachers are predominantly women and many get married and start having kids within their first five years. Childcare in this area is extremely expensive and the models out there do not provide any options for only 10 months of care. Teachers also don't have the flexibility to work from home or take an afternoon off for a kid's doctor's appointment.

If there were affordable quality childcare options, childcare that would run only 10 months, and more teachers so that they could take more flextime then you would see more teachers staying in the profession past 5 years. Some teachers will still decide to stay home but many would keep working if it wasn't so logistically problematic.

Does your SIL live and teach in MoCo? Yes, historically the vast majority of teachers were women, and probably this continues to be true. They weren't all childless, and they managed to find childcare. I don't think this argument is logical.

[Anonymous]

FWIW, Kindercare offers summers off. You just register to hold a spot for September. There are a lot of teacher moms at my child's day care. Rockville.

[Anonymous]

But what is "affordable child care" any way, but child care that you can afford on the salary you have. There are 2 ways to go at this: federally-subsidized child care or ... higher teacher salaries.

To the poster who says it takes an intern to calculate a percent change - no sh!t, Sherlock, but that's not what anybody here was talking about. If you had bothered to read just the last few pages, you would have seen a description of people tasked to report data more frequently, people tasked to follow up on the cases of bizarre reported numbers, and all the rest. Is ignoring facts and practical matters part of your rhetorical strategy?

[Anonymous]

My SIL was an elementary school teacher. She and many of her co-workers would leave after 5 years but it has nothing to do with raises. The issue is lack of affordable childcare and childcare that fits a teacher's schedule. Teachers are predominantly women and many get married and start having kids within their first five years. Childcare in this area is extremely expensive and the models out there do not provide any options for only 10 months of care. Teachers also don't have the flexibility to work from home or take an afternoon off for a kid's doctor's appointment.

If there were affordable quality childcare options, childcare that would run only 10 months, and more teachers so that they could take more flextime then you would see more teachers staying in the profession past 5 years. Some teachers will still decide to stay home but many would keep working if it wasn't so logistically problematic.

I'm familiar with a lot of research that studies teachers and teacher education as part of my job. While it is true that up to 50% of new teachers leave the field within 5 years, it is roundly concluded that there are many reasons for leaving and the majority of those reasons have to do with working conditions, school governance, and compensation over time (though this last one is not the top reason most leave the field.).

While affordable childcare is an important social issue, it is not listed as a reason teachers leave the profession, so unless you have a recent study that uncovers this new phenomenon, I'm guessing you are just generalizing from your SIL's experience and cannot possible draw the conclusions you do about teacher retention and childcare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

My SIL was an elementary school teacher. She and many of her co-workers would leave after 5 years but it has nothing to do with raises. The issue is lack of affordable childcare and childcare that fits a teacher's schedule. Teachers are predominantly women and many get married and start having kids within their first five years. Childcare in this area is extremely expensive and the models out there do not provide any options for only 10 months of care. Teachers also don't have the flexibility to work from home or take an afternoon off for a kid's doctor's appointment.

If there were affordable quality childcare options, childcare that would run only 10 months, and more teachers so that they could take more flextime then you would see more teachers staying in the profession past 5 years. Some teachers will still decide to stay home but many would keep working if it wasn't so logistically problematic.

I'm familiar with a lot of research that studies teachers and teacher education as part of my job. While it is true that up to 50% of new teachers leave the field within 5 years, it is roundly concluded that there are many reasons for leaving and the majority of those reasons have to do with working conditions, school governance, and compensation over time (though this last one is not the top reason most leave the field.).

While affordable childcare is an important social issue, it is not listed as a reason teachers leave the profession, so unless you have a recent study that uncovers this new phenomenon, I'm guessing you are just generalizing from your SIL's experience and cannot possible draw the conclusions you do about teacher retention and childcare.

Finding childcare is a pain in the ass. Try a 2-income household with two high school teachers who work 10 months. We are lucky in that we share a nanny who is willing to split her time btw us and our good friends. But we pay her well, which is a financial drain at times. How many nannies would be willing to do morning care - two schools - by arriving at 6:30 in the morning so that two teachers could be at work by 7 am. And that's b/c we have easy commutes! She'd have to arrive earlier if that weren't the case.

And then b/c we have summers off, if we used an institutionalized daycare, we'd have to pay for those spots over the summer, as it's rare to find a childcare provider who would overlook those 8 weeks.

I've had many conversations with teachers who have a hard time finding care. It's easier at the elementary level, where start times are later. But to see my colleagues with young children rush to drop off, fight traffic and then rush to school is pathetic!

So you can do all the research you want, PP. I know more people in this situation than you do.

It's not easy.