33 years ago when I started teaching I knew what the job was and the salary schedule was. 10 years ago I did not know I would go this long without a raise and near doubling my insurance costs with tripling the out of pocket costs of insurance. Non educators dictating education mandates has increased tenfold. This debacle planned at Indy is less about money than it is to get legislature's fingers out of the mandated tests. You know and I know legislature pockets get $$$$ for picking one test format over another. We are told of new mandates and given dates to comply without warnings or ability to react/act. Two years ago legislature decided all students going for general diplomas wouldn't count as diplomas! ? ! Thus our school's graduation rate went from 93% to 40 something. Now they have overturned that decision BUT our school is being visited and on a program due to our low graduation rate! What??? So a lot of it is just bull**** from Indy towards student populations via testing.
Dollars and days, you all went to school so you are experts on teaching/teachers and schools so I won't go into that debate.
My school has cancelled for the 19th due to not enough subs to cover teachers putting in for leave. Me, I'll be at home cutting and splitting firewood or hauling manure. I will be at school the day they require us to be there to make up for this cancelled day.
Coach is very articulate and I agree with his post.
I agree about the mandated tests. They're mostly bull**** as far as I can tell. It seems teachers mostly teach for the test because that's what they're evaluated on. Ideas, good intentions or not, have unintended consequences. One of the unintended consequences of "no child left behind" is the artificial creation of the test market, and whatever corruption or cronyism goes along with that.
About the "experts", I'm not a teacher, I'm not an expert on teaching, but I can tell an effective teacher from an ineffective teacher. I think the effective teachers deserve to make more than the ineffective teachers, because the effective ones have more value. And that's about all I have to say on that.