3 ms·

I am much less interested in why MS schools are doing so much better - which don't get me wrong, is great, and I hope studied and modeled in better-funded state

• cyberlurker 1y ago
  What if the reason is external to the school? Hmm, what has changed between 2004 and 2024? We have devices and experiences that are medically classified as addictive. It can also be home life stuff, it’s kind of a difficult time for a lot of people. We could have the best trained and supported teachers in the world, but they are up against completely different challenges. I’m not saying we can never fire anyone. But you suggesting that if we don’t like an outcome we get rid of someone without understanding the entire problem is plain dumb.
  • pc86 1y ago
    That could very well explain the decline in Maine's scores. Do we see that decline elsewhere (other than Mississippi at least)? Maybe we can add this to the multi-page list of reasons to ban phones in schools bell-to-bell.
• mrguyorama 1y ago
  I can tell you why with reasonable certainty. When my mom became a Maine teacher in 1990, the starting pay was $28k, for a part time position. By her first retirement in 2022, she was making $48k, for full time work, in a more expensive school district, with more responsibilities (including creating the entire lesson plan and running the department). What was inflation during that time frame? So basically, Maine can't afford any teachers. It's been coasting on the same 65 year old teachers it had back then. The few new teachers you DO get in rural Maine are the ones that aren't smart enough to notice that they're getting fucked, or are morons screaming at 12 year olds that the vaccine is poison and masks will kill them, or are literal sociopaths who write 17 page (not exaggeration) manifestos full of spelling mistakes and grammar errors due to a perceived slight. Despite that man being an obvious wacko, the administration we spend so much on left my mom high and dry to fend for herself, and it could have destroyed her career and reputation as one of the best teachers in the area. A school in the Kennebunkport area convinced her out of retirement with a cool $80k a year and strong agreements towards getting her (state program) retirement fully funded. Everyone in the US loves to harp that "oh we've spent so much on education" but we have not. We have spent immensely on paying a bunch of MBAs to "administrate". Superintendents are politicians, and do not do anything useful for schools. That superintendent spent tens of thousands of dollars on "smartboards" while the teachers used VHS tapes bought in the 80s to teach things. Teachers want supplies, not gimmicks. But don't worry, that Superintendent will use his political connections to assure everyone that the millions a dirt poor community has handed to him totally isn't a waste, and that buying a heated turf soccer field in fucking northern maine wasn't a waste, and the local numbnuts will continue to blame "woke liberals". It definitely has nothing to do with talented teachers who worked their asses off for 40 years getting jack and shit while their bosses drive Mercedes and buy their third house.
  • pc86 1y ago
    I think you touched on a key component to this and I'm curious if you agree with me or not. The level of effort expended by teachers in instructing their class varies wildly from teacher to teacher. I'm sure everyone remembers their best teacher and their worst teacher, and the delta between those two is often staggering. Wouldn't schools be better off if we could easily get rid of those bad teachers? I would love to pay great high school teachers $150k/yr, and I would love for the worst teachers to be able to get fired. Unfortunately teachers' unions care more about seniority than skill, and any aspect of teacher accountability or evaluation is painted as "you just want to fire the expensive teachers."
    • mrguyorama 1y ago
      Ah yes the famous "If only unions didn't prevent administration from firing bad workers everything would be peachy" excuse. 1) Any union employee can still be terminated with minimal documentation demonstrating incompetency or any other issue. All you have to do to fire someone in a union is take notes that they failed in their job duties, email them about it, take notes that they didn't improve. Unions cannot prevent you from firing workers for cause. The vast majority of "benefits" teachers unions in the US provide is a phone number for a lawyer. If you can't convince a judge someone should have been fired, why are you paid anything at all? 2) The fact that the administration does not do the above is because there are zero teachers to replace them with, because nobody wants to be a teacher. They also don't do the above because they are woefully incompetent and utterly incapable of telling you which teachers are good teachers. Note that, no, students aren't good at telling you who are good teachers either. Administration and students alike often love teachers who are wildly incompetent and don't do their job, and just as often hate very competent teachers who aren't willing to jump when they say so. 3) The administration is incompetent and unable to fire teachers based on merit because they are politicians, not educators. They weren't hired for their competency as an educator, or skills as a manager, or experience dealing with children, but because they have enough clout in the small community to parlay that into a $250k a year job where he wastes taxpayer dollars on absurd projects. Property taxes are less than half one school district over, and their system isn't any more competent. If an administrator is unwilling to do the paperwork necessary to do their job, like fire someone who has union backing, means they should not be in administration, a job defined by paperwork. They get paid that insane sum of money to administrate a school district that has 500 kids in 3 schools which already all have their own administration staff. Meanwhile, they utterly refuse to support teachers trying to keep problem students (you know, that thing everyone always hates for holding their kids back and wasting everyone's classroom time) out of the way, and consistently bow to parental pressure to not punish misbehaving students because their job is political. Teachers want to get rid of misbehaving assholes, but the administration does not put in any effort to do so. This is all because every rural small town in America is dying. Anyone with any financial literacy, capability, or valuable skill ran away. All that's left are the people who had no life plan, who flunked out, who wasted their youth, and have not grown up emotionally from their highschool days. They coalesce and form your local "good ol boy" network, and tend to take over local politics. This superintendent had the job for decades despite continuing decline in outcomes. Hows that for not firing underperformers?