Anonymous wrote:
You can't pay your bills with you pension and health insurance PP.


Have you seen how much health insurance costs an FCPS retiree ($$$). Compare that to what a retiree from Arlington pays.

Anonymous wrote:You can't pay your bills with you pension and health insurance PP.

Anonymous wrote:
http://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-gap...ind-pay-of-comparable-workers/

I also object to your statement that we have more teacher work days. Yes, we have tons of them but what do you think we are doing during teacher work days? Not doing our own work. Out of the 10 or so we have every year, one of them is mine to do what I need to do in my classroom. One out of 10. The rest of them are non-stop meetings. Most of them are held at other schools not near my own school. I do my own work (lesson planning, grading, etc) in my own time. Even 2 or 3 out of 5 planning periods per week is taken up by meetings. Schools are run more like businesses these days so the testing gives us the constant streams of data. When do we crunch the numbers? During our planning periods.
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In response -
The publication you cite is a non-peer reviewed article. It is based on averages for the whole country. It does not take account of the supplemental pension benefits in FCPS. These deficiencies make it worthless to support the assertion that FCPS teachers are underpaid. Relative to the surrounding counties, FCPS teachers' total compensation exceeds all of them - and the Superintendent's budget is calling for an additional 6%+ raise. Even in retirement, the ERFC benefit is increased every year by more than inflation (up to 3%). New teachers will not have this benefit. And note that the standard contract is for 194 days - approximately 80% of the time that most workers toil on an annual contract. This is not to disparage teachers or their pay - good ones are worth a lot - but the facts should be clear in any discussion. Note that Randi Weingarten (President of the American Federation of Teachers) is on the Board of EPI,and approximately 30% of their funding comes from unions. This report is advocacy - not a serious economic analysis - and certainly not accurate re: FCPS.

Anonymous wrote:And therein lies the problem. This was posted from experience. But maybe had I had the mindset that it couldn't be done then maybe I wouldn't have been able to do it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

I’m a Gen-exer too and yes, the financial pressures are much worse for millennial teachers than they ever were for our generation.

Maybe, for you. But, I am a certified Baby Boomer--and, believe me, we had more financial difficulties than the current new grads.

What we did NOT have was all this testing and busy work that is put on teachers today. But, we also did not have all the teacher work days and not nearly as many holidays. Summer vacation was longer, however. No question that there are far more professional pressures on today's teachers. But, financial--not so much.

http://www.epi.org/publication/the-teacher-pay-gap-is-wider-than-ever-teachers-pay-continues-to-fall-further-behind-pay-of-comparable-workers/



I also object to your statement that we have more teacher work days. Yes, we have tons of them but what do you think we are doing during teacher work days? Not doing our own work. Out of the 10 or so we have every year, one of them is mine to do what I need to do in my classroom. One out of 10. The rest of them are non-stop meetings. Most of them are held at other schools not near my own school. I do my own work (lesson planning, grading, etc) in my own time. Even 2 or 3 out of 5 planning periods per week is taken up by meetings. Schools are run more like businesses these days so the testing gives us the constant streams of data. When do we crunch the numbers? During our planning periods.

Anonymous wrote:

I’m a Gen-exer too and yes, the financial pressures are much worse for millennial teachers than they ever were for our generation.

Maybe, for you. But, I am a certified Baby Boomer--and, believe me, we had more financial difficulties than the current new grads.

What we did NOT have was all this testing and busy work that is put on teachers today. But, we also did not have all the teacher work days and not nearly as many holidays. Summer vacation was longer, however. No question that there are far more professional pressures on today's teachers. But, financial--not so much.

Anonymous wrote:

I’m a Gen-exer too and yes, the financial pressures are much worse for millennial teachers than they ever were for our generation.

Maybe, for you. But, I am a certified Baby Boomer--and, believe me, we had more financial difficulties than the current new grads.

What we did NOT have was all this testing and busy work that is put on teachers today. But, we also did not have all the teacher work days and not nearly as many holidays. Summer vacation was longer, however. No question that there are far more professional pressures on today's teachers. But, financial--not so much.

I’m a Gen-exer too and yes, the financial pressures are much worse for millennial teachers than they ever were for our generation.

Anonymous wrote:I am the parent who asked the question. Thank you for your answers. I used to be very pro-neighborhood school and no shopping around for “better” schools, but now I don’t know. I come into the classroom to help the teacher work with small groups. It is mind boggling how the reading levels in our 2nd grade classroom vary from K to 5th grade. I don’t know how it is possible to be effective with so much differentiation.
The school tried its best by shuffling kids between leveled reading and writing groups. But it creates chaos and there is not much consistency, because your main teacher has one style, your RTI/enrichment teacher has another.
It makes me think it would be better to have kids who are struggling in one school or at least one class (with tons of supports), and the rest in other schools or classrooms. It is almost impossible to cater to both ends of the spectrum.
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You are basically talking about having special needs kids all together and at least for those with some learning issue on the milder end, the research supports inclusion. That said, it doesn't mean there should be 5 different grade levels of reading in one class. One of many, many issues, is some parents don't want their child to have an IEP and/or some schools don't want to let parents know it's an option, so there are kids who need more support who aren't getting the level they could qualify for.