Not sure where we are headed as a nation for public education. https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trumps-first-full-education-budget-deep-cuts-to-public-school-programs-in-pursuit-of-school-choice/2017/05/17/2a25a2cc-3a41-11e7-8854-21f359183e8c_story.html?utm_term=.54f999646dcc It appears that public education is taking a hit and it already is losing it's appeal for our youngest and brightest teachers. My 31 year old son just accepted a job in the private sector for a 50% raise in salary and he was a great teacher at the high school level here in Florida with a masters degree in math from USF. He has a young family and who can blame him for leaving the noble profession of teaching our youth in favor of having enough money to effectively raise his two young daughters. In this country we just don't place any priority on education and it's reflected in the quality of our teachers and in the international ranking of our students. These numbers should be very alarming to all Americans.... http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/15/u-s-students-internationally-math-science/ 38th of 71 in math and 24th of 71 in science. And Trump and his Ed. Secretary are taking steps to Make America Great Again??? For whom? The top 1% who can afford the best private education has to offer??
That's it, we don't spend enough on education. If we just threw more money at it, it would be so much better. But.... http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/ Perhaps we should look elsewhere as to why our snowflakes know nothing about our history, government, math or science but do know all about alternative lifestyles, climate change and social justice.
"The United States spends more than other developed nations on its students' education each year, with parents and private foundations picking up more of the costs, an international survey released Tuesday found" I think the amount spent privately on after K-12 studies at colleges and universities skews the numbers. I agree though that it seems kids in more impoverrished countries seem more driven to success than our "snowflakes" as you put it. But losing teaching talent because of low salaries and cutting public school budgets in K12 will be a detriment to an already abysmal situation.
almost every single public school teacher that I've ever known sent their kids to private school. What does that tell you?
Um... My step kids both go to public school... and their mother is a teacher. Your private schools must not be like ours - no teacher I know could afford them.
You can drive the entire state of New Jersey in anywhere from one to three hours depending on which direction you are pointing. Yet we have 561 Public school Boards of Education in our little state. That is not a misprint. I pay taxes to two BOEs in my litlle town of Howell. The average teacher in NJ public schools earns $67,000 per year. Many teachers earn over $100k per year. The average public school administration looks like the Board of a large company. There are layers of admin in evety school. My property taxes include almost $8000 per year in school taxes or 73% of my total tax bill. Of course I have not had a child in an public school since 2000. Like the rest of the nation, our test scores and graduation rates sink on an annual basis in an inverse relationship to teacher salaries. In this state, public school teachers earn much more than private school teachers while the results are the exact opposite. NJ has negative population growth while public school costs skyrocket and results plummet.
Thoughts; In my medium-small county of 125,000 population we have 14 public school districts (okay, some of them overlap with other counties but at least 6 of them are completely in our county)...that's 14 Superintendents, Assistant Superintendents...and other administrative positions out the wazoo. Just one district has a "Director of School Improvement", "Chief Academic Officer", "Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources and Communication, and "Campus Director." Oh, but those positions were all created based on recommendation of the Ohio Department of Education. Heck they can't even consolidate bus systems...we have 14 separate bus systems. A little consolidation would be in order...will never happen. My mother was a dedicated high school teacher and never felt underappreciated or underpaid. Her STRS was (and is) much better than the Social Security that the rest of us are required to pay into. My Dad still benefits from that. We try to solve problems in education like we do everything else...finger pointing.
Florida is more like most states where teacher salaries lag seriously behind those of their peers in the private sector. Republican Rick Scott has made sure that teacher salaries have remained stagnant during his years in office. My son was making 40K and he has a math masters degree. Now he will make 65k which is more commensurate with that type of degree. It's not NJ down here in the sunshine state.
In New Jersey the private school teachers earn far less than their public school counterparts. This probably due to the teachers union which is incredibly strong in this state. Of course the results in the classroom are the exact opposite overall. Before you are too hard on Rick Scott, understand that with the high salaries and comp plans we have unfunded long term liabilities that we can never ever hope to meet. NJ is in enormous debt.
The percentage of Florida's population is becoming more and more retirees who lived in neighborhoods in other states, payed school taxes and raised their kids. It made sense because well supported schools usually helped property values. But now they live in communities where schools are not important to the people who buy homes there. Retirees living on fixed incomes just don't feel like paying school taxes. We're talking about the same people who haven't had COLA raises in Social Security in 2 yrs. They're not thrilled about higher taxes.
I lived in the Grosse Pointe, Mi. school system for 27 years and the residents there never once turned down a millage increase for public education and yes we saw that reflected in great home values for all of those years.... except of course when I had to sell my home in the teeth of the recession in 2009 after moving to Florida to replace my loss of job in Mi. .