DUELING PROPOSALS MISS THE POINT
S.C. Superintendent of Education Mick Zais wants to give teachers in government-run schools letter grades based on how well their students perform on standardized tests. And Palmetto State teachers are livid about it.
Meanwhile S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley’s appointee on the State Board of Education is siding with the liberal S.C. Association of School Administrators in supporting a much weaker assessment plan. In fact last month Haley’s appointee – banker Michael Brenan – argued in favor of including this weaker assessment in a performance evaluation system set to take effect during the 2014-15 school year.
Why doss this matter? It doesn’t.
As we’ve noted on numerous occasions, government-run accountability in our state’s government-run schools has been nothing but an increasingly costly exercise in failure. In fact earlier this year we learned the Palmetto State’s chronically under-performing public schools failed to even reach the dumbed down goals set for them two years ago – the most recent lowering of academic standards.
Do we really expect this latest circle jerk to be any different?
Grading teachers in government-run schools won’t do anything to fundamentally improve academic outcomes in South Carolina. How do we know this? Because grading the schools – something our state has been doing for over a decade – hasn’t improved them. In fact our government-run schools are worse than ever – and continue to fall further behind the rest of the nation.
South Carolina doesn’t need another measurement showing how the government sector is failing its future generations. What our state needs is a marketplace that gives parents options outside of the failed government-run system.
Universal parental choice has been a part of the South Carolina “Republican” party’s platform for several years now – yet the state’s “Republican” governor and “Republican-controlled” S.C. General Assembly refuse to pass it.
Until they do – until they break up the failed public sector monopoly on education – all the government-run “accountability” in the world isn’t going to do a damn thing to improve our state’s academic outcomes.
UPDATE: By way of clarification, Brenan tells FITS that he had “only one vote on record and that was ‘no’ on the resolution the Board passed in an attempt to get Dr. Zais to support something other than the process he is using to determine the best evaluation system.” Brenan adds that he has “stated publicly that the only thing I disagree with Dr. Zais on is letter grades for teachers. Business and industry would never evaluate an employee in that manner.” Finally, he says that SCASA’s alternative plan is worthy of “being on the table.”
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74 comments
Oh, Lord.
Here come the Howard-Rich-fixated crazies to start yelling at Will.
Wait for it…
Grade the teachers? Oh crap! Here we go again. When is this state going to catch on to the fact that, when it comes to academic performance, teachers play a minimal role. That’s right, a minimal role. Some dude at Johns Hopkins University, not to be confused with South Carolina State University, did a study on students who excelled in high school. He found that it was parent to pupil ratio, not student to teacher ratio that was important. He also found that the number of hours spent watching television was inversely proportional to academic performance. The more the kids watched, the worse they did. Finally, a faith based component was common among students who excelled in academic pursuits. None of these factors are controlled by the government. At least not yet. The idea that giving letter grades to school teachers will somehow improve education in this state is simply laughable.
Let’s try a pilot program! Let’s grade the professors at SCSU and see if they can produce students who can use cutlery and chew with their mouths shut. Prove that it works there, and then we can implement the program throughout the state
It’s hard to make up for lack of parent involvement. Hard for teachers to assume the role of father in these situations
There will be be none of this factual propaganda shit around here. So cease with the valid points and stick to the established bullshit necessary for revenue. The HR check mut be earned.
Teachers can only work with what they are given in terms of students.Some students come from dysfunctional homes,lack parental supervision,and are in constant “survival ” mode.
I have seen first hand the extra hours put in by faculty / staff on behalf of the at risk students.Some students respond, most do not.However, to imply it’s all on the teachers is simply obsurd.
“Let’s grade the professors at SCSU”
The several I’ve met were excellent, though they were in the sciences and engineering.
After 34 years of teaching I will tellyou this. You teach three kinds of students, those that learn because of you, those that learn in spite of you and those that have absolutely no desire to learn no matter who the teacher may be. Education in S.C. is a dismal failure because of the system, not the teachers.
davis;
Appreciating that you state you’re a teacher, and I’ll say you’re the best that ever was, making a blanket statement that ‘It’s not the teachers fault’ is ludicrous.
There are many teachers that just don’t give a crop about the results they produce. Right now I’ve got a teacher pissed off at me because I won’t address her with the title of Doctor. I don’t care if you have a doctorate. This does not make you a Doctor. I have spent 30+ years in the construction industry. If USC offered a degree in my field, I would surely have a doctorate, but I would not be a Doctor. Childish.
My son’s third grade teacher was in the class room at Bethel Hanberry Elementary on the Parent/Teacher night. Whatever it’s called. Go in and meet the teachers, yada yada. She was dressed as though she had just come from a regae concert, flip flops and hair a muss. Her first words to us were ‘Sorry. I’ve been on vacation all summer and my flight just got in tonight.’??
She said she had been teaching this grade for about 10 years. I’m thinking awesome and asked for the class syllabus. Didn’t expect college level stuff. Maybe 1/2 page (ABC’s, Math addition and subtraction 1-10, stuff like that) is all I expected to see. Nothing. 10 years teaching the same grade at the same school (puportedly, as with EVERY school in SC, the best in the state) and you haven’t had time to write a 1/2 page syllabus for parents to see that you are at least putting some kind of effort in to your job.
Carpe is 100% accurate in his statement and offer of evidence. Teachers are not teachers. They are introducers. If the parent is not involved the child will fail. AND HELL YES A ‘C’ IS FAILURE.
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
take a bath you stinking Indian
Merry Christmas TATA NANO
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
After 32 years as a teacher in SC, let me say that Davis is indeed correct, except for the part that teachers play no role in this. As with any profession, there are people that have no business reproducing, let alone be left alone in a room with someone else’s children. It starts with the bashing of public education by politicians and the media. Will, where did you go to school by the way? Don’t know you, but you seem fairly educated. Then you have parents who are either absent or devoid of any parenting skills let alone affection for education. Then you have academic leadership that is anti what they are supposed to be administrating. Then you have kids who don’t want to go to school PERIOD, let alone be in class.
If you break down who attends public school this way you may have 10-15% of students who will excel no mater what, 10-15% of students who can’t excel no matter what and the rest that get passed on despite what they do or do not do as long as they attend and earn enough credits to get a diploma. What happens to them after that simply gets passed on to other agencies.
And Will, again for the 1000th time, when are you going to get it there already exists a “market-driven” option for all parents. How do you plan to educate your kids? Where will they go to school? You ask that of public officials, what is your response?
Well put. You have “been there and done that”.I know for a fact i could not even begin to do a teachers job. APPRECIATE ALL YOUR EFFORTS !!!
My wife has been a teacher for 7 years in SC and GA. She’s taught at some “high-performing” schools and some bottom-feeders. Her experience has been that it doesn’t matter what the school’s ranking is. The students who are self-motivated to excel, and the students whose parents play an active role in their child’s education, are the ones who are more likely to succeed.
She is also a big proponent of evaluating teachers based on student performance. What she is not a fan of is evaluating performance based on factors outside of her control. If she has a 7th-grader who reads at a 3rd-grade level, should she be evaluated based on whether or not the student can pass a standardized test? If she taught reading or English, sure. She doesn’t. For her to be downgraded because little Johnny has been socially promoted despite his inability to do the work is not right. It would be like grading Nikki Haley based on Amazon’s profit margin.
Soxinsc
I have to agree. Your wife should be graded on her ability to teach the subject and grade level that she teaches at. If the child can not read, rite, rithmetic at the grade level he/she is in, that child should not have been advanced.
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
Will they be graded on their teaching ability or marksmanship? Lets put a good teacher in every gun shop.
When the state pays the full $16,000 required to attend Heathwood Hall and Heathwood accepts every black applicant and every applicant with a learning disability I will support “universal choice.” Until then, your country club schools will have to survive without this disguised government subsidy and bailout.
Then they can be “country club schools” like Allen University and Benedict College. Great solution!
Will never happen.
The whole point of school choice is segregation.
A state constitution that mandates a “minimally adequate” education to every student has no place for vouchers. If a parent wants a better education for their own child at the expense of others they need to get out their checkbook with no help from the state.
On the other hand a state constitution that mandates and funds a quality education for every student remains an unobtainable goal because some just can’t stand the thought of their kids in a school with kids of a different color.
South Carolina is last in the nation because of largely self inflicted wounds. It will apparently remain that way for the time being. The pain has not been great enough yet.
“South Carolina is last in the nation because of largely self inflicted wounds. It will apparently remain that way for the time being. The pain has not been great enough yet.”
Hear! Hear!
The teachers can get test grades if Zais gets a breathalyzer test.
My best teachers smiled a lot. I give her an A+.
If the lady in the photo is a real teacher, she gets an A+++. Hope she is teaching sex ed.
tits ain’t big enough
A form of school choice, charter schools, was going to solve everything as I recall it being sold by its proponents. The academic results of the SC Virtual Charter School are among the lowest in the state. So much for simple solutions to complex problems…
There are many issues that make public education a diaster. Even with that, public education is still better than the education provided at most of the private schools.
First problem is believing that all kids learn at the same pace. Bottom line– a dumb ass at 5 is going to be a dumb ass at 18.
Second problem is believing that kids will have self-esteem problems, if they are placed with other kids that learn at the same pace they do. We need to separate our best and brightest from the rest and push them to excel in math and science.
Third, not all kids are destined for college. Some need to start learning a trade as young as 12. Brick masons and plumbers around here do better financially that teachers.
Fourth, Jesus doesn’t help you learn math or science.
True; sad but true.
I recently visited a local public high school. The lowest level classes are called “College Prep”. What’s with that?! Many students don’t plan to go to college and may likely do better in life without a college education.
BS LD. Not even close. Unless you have some sort of mental problem that prevents you from learning. Every other child is more than capable.
I will agree with at least some of your point about there being a need for labor. Unfortunately out society has turned into one big service industry. Very little is created, actually produced, in the US.
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
I have been actively involved in the Richland Dist 1 schools. It is a race based system. My child had one teacher (black) who gave all the black students in the class “A’s” and the white students, “C’s” two quarters in a row. Ask Dr. McClure if you do not believe this is true. If he says it didn’t happen, call him a liar to his face. I will provide proof upon subpoena. As long as Vince Ford runs RC Dist 1, you will have problems. Call names and get specific, Mick, if you want real change.
Propping up one group over another is just wrong no matter how you look at it.We have become dellusional to the point of absurdity.Case in point Richland 1 school district.Some teachers have a personal agenda , and will bend,twist,break every teaching standard to achieve higher test scores for the “disinfranchised”.
The problem rests solely w/ the parents.Success requires sacrifice. Teachers, for the most part have done MOST of the sacrificing. PARENTS IT’S TIME TO STEP UP AND DEMONSTATE TO YOUR CHILDREN THE MEANING OF BEING ACCOUNTABLE, AND STOP MAKING EXCUSES !!!!!
So let me get this straigh, everyone who thinks it is a bad idea to force the people of this state to help parents pay to send their kids to South Carolina’s worst in the nation private schools is crazy.
If the private schools want state money they should have to take enrollment on a first come first serve basis, i.e. every taxpayer must have an equal shot at enrolling their child in the school they are subsidizing.
Jan;
Please consider what you post. So someone wants their child to be trained as a micro surgeon. Therefore my child should only attend the best schools. The fact that my child has Downs or Turrets is meaningless. He must be allowed to attend the best school with only the best teachers because I knocked on the door first.
Jan you make this stuff to easy. You just look for open doors to walk into all day, don’t you?
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
Frank,
Jan’s point, which went completely over your head, is that if she is PAYING for a school, she has just as much right to have her child attend it, as anyone else.
Uh, no. Jan is quite clear in her post. And please do remember that Jan is highly intelligent. Most likely much more so than you or I, vic. She is after all a small business owner that owns a healthcare consulting firm.
She states quiet clearly
“If the private schools want state money they should have to take enrollment on a first come first serve basis, i.e. every taxpayer must have an equal shot at enrolling their child in the school they are subsidizing.”
Now, let’s break these statements down.
“If the private schools want state money…”
Not stated in the article anywhere that any private school is asking for state funds. Nor have I heard of any private school requesting state funds. That’s not to say it doesn’t happen. I don’t know. But this is certainly not related to the article at hand.
“…they should have to take enrollment on a first come first serve basis…”
This states pretty emphatically that all private schools that receive public funding should take students on as they walk through the door. Please see my previous post for further explanation of this contentious and controversial point of view. And again, how students are enrolled in school has nothing to do with this article.
“…every taxpayer must have an equal shot at enrolling their child in the school they are subsidizing…”
Um, no.
1. The chances are that most are in fact not subsidizing their child’s education at either private (if they ever request or are forced to accept gubmint monies) or public schools. This conclusion can be easily understood with one simple fact that most libitards don’t want to accept. The majority of citizens in These United States of Amerika don’t pay taxes. If you don’t pay in, you aren’t subsidizing anything.
2. Please see my previous post for further explanation. It would be moronic to send someone with Downs syndrome to Johns Hopkins to train them to be a brain surgeon.
In summation vic, there is not one word in this article about the government giving money to private schools. Nowhere does it state anything to the effect of ‘Take government money/taxpayers money and give it to ACME Private Schools of Amerika’. Thank God for that.
There is mention to some Republicrat platform that has never seen the light of day while the Repuklicrats have been in charge for … 10-12 years now?? Based on historical votes, it never will. This mention is an aside to the entire article. This article does not espouse providing public funds to private businesses (Which I will state here is an ongoing task for the Demlicans and Repuplicrats alike, i.e. HEALTHCARE)
Just in case you missed the irony [sarcasm?] here I will go into detail for you. Jan owns a healthcare consulting firm, as noted above. Every business that is related to healthcare receives gubmint subsidies in some fashion or another. Let me take the liberty of using as an example of the receipt of gubmint funds by Jans (and please do correct me on the particulars Jan) healthcare consulting firm.
Jan’s firm consults hospitals on what patients should pay for the services they receive. Jan’s firm collects fees from the hospital for her labor. All hospitals receive gubmint subsidies. Now I don’t do that BS fuzzy math. Similar to Planned Infaticide saying they don’t use gubmint money to kill babies. The gubmint money only buys the office paper we use to track the murder of innocents.
I think, vic, that Jan being the intelligent bright caring small business owner that she is quite capable of expressing her thoughts and I think she did so quite concisely. Nowhere in Jan’s post does she state that SHE is paying for the education of her child. It is only intimated to that SHE is subisidizing that education, assuming SHE is a taxpayer. Personally, and humbly (just in case your one of those libitards that likes everything PC) I would suggest you use a little critical thought behind your analysis of any further articles or comments you care to rebut. Further I would think that it’s very sexist of you, and absolutely not at all very PC (read Marxist libitard comradish) of you to call Jan a SHE. Welcome to the WWW. Anonymity is king. I think I had a male friend named Jan as well ?~?
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
Forget about grading teachers and vouchers – the graders will give the teachers all A’s, and private schools don’t want your kids if you can’t afford it.
Just stay bogged down in your failed system – my kids escaped, because I can afford it. They got a great education in PRIVATE schools, and are now kicking ass in the PRIVATE sector, while their loser friends wait tables and pull for the Gamecocks.
So you paid to have your kid taught by someone who doesn’t even have to be certified to teach? Nice move…
Far more people who graduated from public schools are kicking ass in the private sector than kids who graduated from private school.
Chances are you waisted your money, and your kids would have been doing just as well today if they had graduated from a public school. But hey, its your money to waist. I just don’t want you waisting my money on SC’s crappy private schools.
Also, there is always bigger fish and a bigger pond, so I am sure there are quite a few people out there who would consider your kids losers.
Waste. QED.
We choose to send our kids to private school because we don’t want the government in charge of our kids. Before we decided on private school, we looked at the local public school. Among other things there was a nice young man working at the school whose job was to make sure the teachers were “teaching to the test (P.A.C.T.)”!? HUH? Private Schoolis expensive. However, we, as well as the school administrators do NOT want government vouchers. With gov’t money comes gov’t intervention.
You can say touche’ although I was taught the difference between waste and waist during the first 8 years of my education when my parents sent me to a small private Christian school. I also do not typically proof my posts here, even though I probably should.
XX, I agree with you completely!! I think Private Schools should operate on private money, and they should be free from government scrutiny. One of my children went to private school in Virginia. The other chose to go to public school here. Both are doing fine.
Time to be held accountable, I like it. Just like any other occupation. Quit complaining, you get summers off.
Teachers are only paid for the days they teach, you moron— 190 days! They aren’t paid for the summer, dolt!
Well with that thought line they are paid on the order of 75 k-90k annually. Sure you don’t want to re think that statement beach?
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
If you don’t like it, then go back to school or get another job. Quit your bitching.
teachers are paid a daily wage X 190 days based on years of experience and degrees held. You wanna pay me to teach 200, 210, 230 days, sign me up. Most Americans do indeed put in more days (not necessarily more time) and thus are compensated more. I understand this and chose to teach. Its what I do. People like Todd want great schools and teachers for his kids, just like many other people, he wants someone else to pay for it.
Don’t get me wrong, as a teacher I value my time off but would gladly work more days but I am not going to do it for free.
Todd, any time you want to teach my classes for a week, I will be glad to arrange.
Absolutely not, Frank. with most teachers having master’s degrees plus many extra course hours they should be paid much more for the time that they work! I assume that you have not been in a public school since you were a student. maybe you should spend a week volunteering in a school so that you can see first hand the inner workings of our educational world!
Rick – WRONG – Teachers are NOT paid by the day or the hour. They are paid by the YEAR just as other professionals are paid. BTW, I do hope you are not an English teacher… “Its what I do” should be “It’s what I do”.
Excuse me, Todd! I am not bitching. Teaching. is a service career that brings with it a self-fulfillment for you and your students that those who are not or can not receive the joy a teaching day are cheated. I am not bitching. merely pointing out the facts. If you feel we are overpaid– take a Look at S. Spurrier ‘s salary–there is definitely a case of disparity there when compared with those who are responsible for educating the future leaders of our world!
beach;
I don’t particularly care how you try to slice it. I would not pay for a masters degree. I would pay for performance and production. That is how the vast majority of this country earns a paycheck. Why should someone with a degree earn more than someone without one just because of the paper. That’s typical libitard union BS. I will agree that someone without a degree would not likely garner as much pay up front, but performance and production do and should rule the day. Unfortunately gubmint has decided this is unfair (read marxism is king).
As a matter of fact I do try to volunteer whenever possible. I ask and they usually refuse. They like to go about things in a very inefficient mannner. When I try to offer suggestions as to how they could improve performance I am usually turned down flat.
I volunteered for my sons cake sales thing for band. When I showed up to help collect and count money the band teacher, an extremely nice man, was setting up. As I began offering to take money and slips from the students and place them in the appropriate area he stated ‘I’ll do it. I know the kids and how the money should be sorted’. This was first thing in the morning and there were just tons of kids running to and fro. I thought that it was very rude of him to ask me to help and then effectively tell me I wasn’t needed.
As to Spurrier, He is not a teacher. He is paid to play a childs game. I’m not a big fan of football. It is not a school subject. That said, he’s paid to perform and he does. How about you? What was your average class grade this year? And how do we verify that?
@rick
Dead Wrong.
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
Spurrier is paid based on his product. It brings millions to the school and therefore he is paid a high salary. I don’t understand the comparison. Really it’s simple, if your product (test scores) suck, then you failed to do your job. It’s just like any other carter. Now you will have to adapt and work harder to improve your product just like any other job. Accountability, I dig it.
Thankyoubeddymuch!!
Have a Great Day!! :) There won’t be many left with the Demlicans and Republicrats in charge.
Frank Pytel
What does Spurrier’s salary have to do with this? He’s not a teacher – he’s in the entertainment business. People in this country get to choose their careers. No, the “playing field” is not fair – some pp are smarter, more athletic or simply have more self-discipline. BOOM!
You can tell that photo is NOT of a SC public skool class room. That there is MATH…
Where is BIN when you need them most.
Thanks for asking about us, stfu.
Our staff is here and monitoring sic(k) willie’s ongoing support of Howie the Voucher Clown’s voucher scam and his attacks on S.C. public education.
Vouchers are a scam because they would do nothing for those who need help the most except leave them further behind.
Howie the Voucher Clown knows that, and sic(k) willie knows it. General Zod and all the other voucher clowns know it, too.
They just don’t care.
http://www.corridorofshame.com/
Dump Zais. Every Conservative GOP school teacher I know thinks he’s nuts making them accountable for others work. Great plan to throw chaos into the public school system. I guess those talk show hosts who demonize dedicated teachers by calling school “scrawel” got their answer with the noble self-sacrificing actions of teachers in Newtown.
Het Albert Einstein,
It’s actually the physics of electrostatic interactions and the organic chemistry is “made in South Carolina”:
The lower left molecule is nonsense since carbon atom 4 (C4) has 5 bonds and no charge associated with it.
I’m used to this in SC – in other places kids in high school figure this one out.
And just to be complete: carbon atom 3 (3C) is under bonded with only two coordinations and the wrong hybridization – minor details but indicative of the attention given to details on this web site.
Thanks Dr. Fail.
My chemistry teacher had a mustache, but she knew her stuff…
I’m glad she allowed you some insights into the power of knowledge.
The power of ignorance is more at display these days. “bread and games” as the Romans called it.
Cute chick. Please post pics w/ T&A in future.
Ben Zweig – an example of not being able to look beyond the T&A!
Universal parental choice would eventually cause the bad schools to close down. Each parent could choose any school whether his child is zoned for it or not. That in turn would force principals in the “bad schools” to fire the bad teachers and hire good ones. If not, the “bad schools” would simply close down.
You all know the three biggest reasons to be a teacher, right? June, July, August.
You know that college classes are a little harder since you actually have to come up with a syllabus, but anything below that, you can pretty much bullshit your way through, especially if you’re in a “low rent” neighborhood.
It’s a social engineering/demographics problem in our state. Some districts are resigned to low performing, SC State College educations, depending on where you live.
Thank god for Mississippi.
Oh come on, all of us who went to college know the Education Majors had lots more free time to go to Tigertown Tavern.
I did say it was a “little harder”.
sic(k) willie,
It’s not smart or nice to ignore Mother Nature or a post from BIN News. Where is our last post?
Another thing, then I’ll shut up.
Charter Schools. I have “family” in charter schools. What a fucking waste. “Student led instruction”? What the fuck is that? Goddamn liberal bullshit, I say. If they don’t want to do math, no one forces them. The three R’s are required, don’t matter who you are. If you can’t do it, it’s the short bus for you, get the fuck over it. I just don’t say anything since I’m too old to matter.
Give ’em uniforms, get them out of the “style conscious” mindset. Make them focus on what they are there for, education. Work their asses off, they won’t have time for social bullshit.
I know, it runs deeper than that, but I think uniforms will go a long way.
I wish parents could be graded, too. There’s the real problem. Baby Momma’s don’t have much of a chance to help and the baby daddys don’t give a shit. All the baby daddy’s want is a fresh piece of pussy.
You all may think I’m being crude, but, that’s just the way it is. As long as there are no consequences for the baby mamas or baby daddys, nothing changes. Race doesn’t matter. I have it in my own “family” and I’m white as the fucking falling snow.
I like the way ths motherfucker writes!
btw, before anyone takes me to task for grammar errors, I’m staking a claim to arfuckingtistic license.
XX,
You are correct about the It’s vs Its. As far as daily wage vs yearly salary are concerned, in the district I work in, we sign a “Data Sheet” at the beginning of each year that, among other things,it lists our yearly salary based on years experience, degrees, etc broken down by how much we earn each day. Take your salary on the pay scale and divide by 190 to arrive at the daily figure. When I retire in a few years, I will be paid my current daily wage X the # of leave days I have remaining. I will also receive the money the state is holding for me under TERI. And then, even though it may not be as much as you and others will receive in the “private sector”, I will begin collecting my state pension. Like anyone else, I would like to be paid more for what I do, but in all my time teaching, I have never complained about what I have been paid. If I wanted to make more money, I would have become an administrator, but I never had the desire to do that, I am a teacher.
The overwhelming majority of teachers are contracted for 190 days, some for 200, some for 205. Administrators at the school level are contracted from anywhere from 205-230 days. with 230 being considered year round. Some contracts are negotiable – football coach, athletics directors. So it is a matter of perspective.
Honestly, I think a restructuring of the salary system would help, although I have no idea how. The only people who are getting jobs as teachers these days are those who want to teach or the ones who can barely get it together to meet the requirements. Anyone who has the ability to teach in South Carolina can get much better pay doing something else.
This problem makes it so that you end up with really good people who only teach for a few years after they realize they can’t live on the income they are provided with. This is especially so once they realize that most districts now fire the “retired teachers” who are drawing retirement and getting a salary to continue to teach, which is basically the only time teachers in this state make enough at one time to save for their retirement. Why work somewhere that doesn’t support the people who have been with them for years?
So you end up with three types of people. Those who teach just long enough to learn how to do it correctly and leave for greener pastures. Those who have no incentive to be better either through pay or the fact that no one else wants the job. And lastly, the kind-hearted people who continue to excel at a job that provides no real substance for their future other than the gratification they received knowing they help children. Sadly, the latter is becoming rarer, and we can no longer depend on them to carry the weight anymore.
Restructure the teaching side of the business all you want. If you don’t focus on the fundamentals, you’re barking up the wrong tree. All that happens when you do that is the teachers learn how to work the system so they can make the most money or gain the most letters by their names possible. Students don’t get a whole lot from this. Teachers become self aggrandized assholes with their noses so far up in the air they’d drown if it rained very hard. I know some of them. They loathe talking to me.
Teach basic shit until the kids learn it. Over and over and over. Haven’t you all heard of “repetition is the mother of all learning”?
First, teach the three R’s. Until they either get it, or have to go to remedial studies. (read short bus) Over and over and over.
Second, teach them life skills. Things like, how to understand basic finances. Do this from the beginning and every year, over and over and over, until they get it. Repetition. Make them do it. Over and over and over. I know, I’m repeating myself, but you should be getting the point right about now.
By the time they get out of high school, they should at least know how to live without being a boomerang kid.
Forget the stupid “self confidence” classes. Those breed the type of self confidence that has no basis in reality and it crumbles in the harsh light of day. Competence begets confidence.
I’ve done good not using the F word. I get fussed at all the time about it by my fucking wife, goddammit.