Category Archives: economics

Presidential Debate Number One

Posted on by nerdgirlfromcamelot

I haven’t been very active blogging this semester, because it has been so busy, but I made time to watch the debate and now I’m making time to reflect on what I saw and heard there before I listen to other analysis (which I suspect may skew my initial thoughts). I think that being aware of the issues in election season is an important part of being an informed, involved citizen, which is why I watched the debate tonight even though I’ve already decided who I’m voting for. There were a lot of things the candidates said that I disagree with, but the thing that jumped out at me the most was Mitt Romney using the phrase “disabled kids” while talking about medicare and medicaid. As a future teacher and special educator, I expect that a person in his position of power and influence would use people-first language, saying “children with disabilities” to acknowledge that children with disabilities are children first, regardless of their level of ability. From a cynical viewpoint I would expect politicians, who should be well aware of the power of language, to know about people-first language and use it out of respect and to avoid alienating an ever growing segment of the population.

Aside from that, my main criticism with the debate doesn’t have to do with anything the candidates said, but with what was never mentioned. The debate questions failed to include any questions about women’s health or workplace equality, even though the first half of the debate was entirely about economic issues and many of the talking points related to Obamacare. How is it that in a time when women are still earning 80 cents on the dollar and make up the majority of swing votes the presidential debate on domestic issues does not mention women’s issues at all? No questions and no candidate comments related to women’s healthcare or economic situation. The closest we get is discussing healthcare for senior citizens, who are mostly women, due to women’s tendency to live longer but less healthy lives than their male age-mates. It disappoints me.

Education, of course, was touched on and talk of investing and hiring 100,000 new math and science teachers was bandied about. My thing here is that more teachers won’t necessarily help make our students more successful. The best predictor of future success is not the quality of your math teacher. It’s your social and emotional intelligence; something we are not focusing on in our schools because of the push for more rigorous academic work. But that is an issue for another day. As for the investment in teachers and education; I’ll believe it all when I see it. We still have a very negative climate in this country where teachers are being vilified and criticized for all sorts of things beyond the control of any individual.

I hope that the next debate, which will be town hall style, is better. This one fell apart because the moderator wasn’t holding them to their time limits, asking real follow-ups, or calling them out when they didn’t answer the question. I also hope that women’s issues will be addressed, and I feel fairly optimistic that may happen, since there will be a female moderator for a change.

What Are Teachers "Worth"?

Posted on by nerdgirlfromcamelot

All statistics in this post are from The American Public School Teacher by Darrel Drury and Justin Baer.

A question for the ages: What are teachers worth? I would like for you, dear reader, to seriously think about it. On the surface it’s a simple question – as with any worker – teachers are worth whatever they can get an employer to pay them to do their job. However, I believe that the question is more complicated than it initially appears. In order to answer it, first consider these questions:

-What do teachers do?
-What do teachers actually make?
-How much time do teachers really spend working?
-Without teachers and public education, how would American society function?

What do teachers do? They teach, inspire, motivate, care. They teach students about areas of content knowledge – Math, English, Sciences, Health,History, etc. They teach students skills lie literacy, or basic computer use.They teach students how to interact with each other in a civilized manner – how to follow rules, how to deal with people they may not have anything in common with. If you really think about what it is that teachers (good ones, anyway,but the question of good vs. evil educators is too big to be considered today)do for their students and by extension the communities they work in, I think the “worth” of a teacher is substantially higher than the salary they are paid. The way I see it, any one teacher has the ability to make an impact,positive or negative, on anywhere from 25 to 125 (give or take, in some districts this number is probably higher) students a year. Each of those students will go on to become something else outside of school; a technical skilled worker, a high school drop-out, a line order cook, an innovator, a designer, the next Steve Jobs (after all, he had teachers, right?), a postal worker, a stock broker, and on and on for all the possible careers and positions in society you can think of. I believe that teachers can make a difference, maybe change the path students are on to send them in more prosperous directions. When you think about the power teachers have to change a student’s future, to inspire and motivate – or to depress and deny dreams –aren’t teachers really worth so much more than the salary they are paid? Even if you can’t look at“worth” as independent from economics; good teachers are surely worth hundreds of thousands of dollars of future income for their students.

So, teachers wield colossal power; they shape the minds of tomorrow’s citizens. But what do teachers make, and how much time do teachers spend working? Ladies and gentlemen, for the first part of our question, may I present to you Mr. Taylor Mali, educator and poet:

Sidenote A: If you, like me, happen to be a certain kind of Nerd Girl (or Guy, or person, whatever, we don’t need to pigeonhole each other into social constructs here), you’ll want to check out several of his works. Since I’d like to be able to say I warned you: IT WILL DESTROY YOUR PLANS FOR PRODUCTIVITY. If you have stuff to get done, watch the video later.

Sidenote B: Are there any other jobs you can think of where people have to defend their profession at dinner parties?

In terms of starting salary, teachers make, on average, a little under $50,000 a year. In New Jersey, that is what it takes to pay the rent and put food on the table. Where I live, 50k is just barely surviving. But, you say, it isn’t all bad, they don’t have to work 9 to 5, right? As I’ve heard said, “They get out at 3 and have summers off, too!” While technically true that they “get out” of the building at 3, teachers work an average of 47 hours a week during the school year  as opposed to the 35 hours of 9 to 5 employees (teachers in other developed nations work an average of 39 hours a week). So there’s a lot more time invested than you may have realized. In addition to working almost 50 hours a week and making just enough money to get by in suburbia, 46% of teachers have a second job, and I don’t mean during the summer (that percentage is slightly lower, at 37%). So they spend all day in the classroom and then on their afternoons/evenings/weekends, they go to work somewhere else to make ends meet.

What kind of society claims that an education is vital and all children must have access to a free and quality one, then pays the educators so poorly they need to then go out and get second jobs to pay all their mortgage/car/grocery/electric bills? What kind of person asks someone, “Why are you going into teaching, there’s no money in it” and then credits his teachers with the success he has achieved?

In that society (reminder: we’re talking about America. As in, “We’re number one! USA! USA!” Also as in, “land of the free, home of the brave.” I hope you see my point about the attitudes we as a nation have fostered about ourselves and our place in the world) what are teachers worth? As a future educator, I would absolutely love it if you said teachers are worth millions of dollars, that we should pay them more, that we should invest in creating clean, safe, positive work environments for them (may I point out, that would also be an investment in clean, safe, positive school environments for our children). Take a moment and realize: teachers have the greatest influence on our next generation of American citizens.

What are teachers worth? More than we pay them, far more than we acknowledge.