Education in the US

AssHatZombie said:
But it's the answer when getting the best and brightest into the financial sector? Remember when all those financial people even got their bonuses after the meltdown? Why isnt it the answer in education? Because you say so?
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It doesn't work. Clearly, based on results, the "best and the brightest" are also not there. If just handing out money gave us better results we'd be far better off now, wouldn't we?
 
Damocles said:
Right. We agree, this "barely scraping the surface" analysis is beyond silly. "Pay more" isn't the answer it is what we have done in the past and it hasn't improved crap. We keep on saying the same thing is the solution, we keep doing it, we keep getting the same result. At some point we must either say we are the stupidest people on the planet or we should change the approach.

Other nations are spending less per capita publicly for better results, we need to see what they are doing. If it causes some administrators to lose their jobs so we can pay teachers more then so be it. However, just "pay more" isn't the answer, it hasn't been the answer, and it isn't going to be the answer.
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It is a big part of the answer to "How do we attract the best and the brightest college graduates to teaching?"
 
Damocles said:
It doesn't work. Clearly, based on results, the "best and the brightest" are also not there. If just handing out money gave us better results we'd be far better off now, wouldn't we?
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But somehow you're not as vocal about it there. Somehow the argument is completely different.
 
NigelTufnel said:
It is a big part of the answer to "How do we attract the best and the brightest college graduates to teaching?"
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I honestly think we are all in agreement, just arguing from different views.

Does anyone disagree with any of these...

1) We need to pay teachers based on their ability, hence, if we want top quality, we need to recruit the best universities have to offer and pay them similar to what they would earn in the private sector.

2) We need to cut the waste in the administrative side of the department of education

3) We need to end the pay based on seniority system

4) We need to be more selective with tenure
 
Damocles said:
And yes, AssHat, stop providing "free" education for those who are here illegally and we'll likely save some money and get better results.
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Im not talking about foreign students.

Im talking about replacing teachers with foreigners.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2008-09-14-importing-teachers_N.htm

States hire foreign teachers to ease shortages
By John David Mercer, AP

Physics teacher Michel Olalo, of Manila, clears the chalkboard at the end of the school day during her summer school class at Foley High School in Foley, Ala.


BAY MINETTE, Ala. (AP) — The school system in coastal Baldwin County — 60 miles by 25 miles of Alabama farmland framed on two sides by waterfront towns — was short on teachers, especially in courses such as math and science.
So short, in fact, that district officials went around the world last year, with expenses paid by a teacher recruiting firm, and brought back Michel Olalo of Manila and 11 other Filipinos to teach along the shores of the Gulf Coast and Mobile Bay and in the communities in between.

That raised some eyebrows in Baldwin County, where nine out of 10 people are white, just one in 50 is foreign-born and, as the county's teacher recruiter Tom Sisk noted recently, "Many of our children will never travel outside the United States."

Yet school administrators throughout the U.S. are plucking from an abundance of skilled international teachers, a burgeoning import that critics call shortsighted but educators here and abroad say meets the needs of students and qualified candidates.

"All my friends were applying," said Olalo, hired through San Mateo, Calif.-based Avenida International Consultants to teach physics. "I thought, why don't I try it? Luckily, when I was lined up for an interview, it was people from Baldwin County."

The U.S. Department of Education doesn't monitor how many foreigners are working in American classrooms, spokeswoman Elissa Leonard said, but a federal survey released in May confirmed the dearth of math and science teachers, chiefly due to retirement by baby boomers.

As far back as five years ago, the National Education Association estimated that up to 10,000 foreigners already were teaching U.S. students in primary and secondary schools, mainly to fill vacancies in math, science, foreign languages and special education.

The largest single sponsor of foreign teachers, according to the NEA, is Chapel Hill, N.C.-based Visiting International Faculty, which claims it has 1,500 teachers from more than 55 countries in districts in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland and California. The firm has placed teachers mostly in the South as it branches out from its Chapel Hill base, spokeswoman Leslie Maxwell said.

Critics view the international teacher market as a quick fix that can frustrate students and foreign hires alike.

If foreign teachers "are recruited into schools and communities lacking the kinds of support that all new teachers need, they may not stay," said David Haselkorn, policy research director at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation in Princeton, N.J., which recruits recent college graduates with education degrees and professionals from certain fields to teach in low-income communities.

Janet Lipscomb, president of the Parent Teacher Organization at Foley High in Baldwin County, said the students liked the Filipino teachers but some experienced a "communication gap," particularly when students used slang.

"The students cut up a lot. Some of that may have been misinterpreted by the teachers," said Lipscomb, a substitute teacher at the high school.

But Chris Fredrick, an 11-year-old at Cedar Grove Middle School in Decatur, Ga., enjoys the earth science class taught by Uzma Masood, who was recruited by Georgia-based In-talage Inc. to come from Hyderabad, India.

"I like her. I like what we do in class. We're active in the class. We're not just sitting there all day," he said.

On a recent school day, students were highly responsive to Masood as she constantly walked around the classroom and encouraged students instead of just lecturing them.

"I like her class because sometimes if we don't understand something she'll break it down for us," said Pedruna Adams, also 11.

Masood, 32, wearing black pin-stripe pants, a turquoise Indian tunic and a black hijab on her head, spoke with an accent as she conducted activities that got students up out of their seats in the classroom, which looked typical for 6th grade. Big block letters cut out of blue construction paper were across the front, above the white board: EXPLORE THE WORLD THROUGH SCIENCE.

"I always introduce myself on the first day and tell them I'm from a different country and explain that I have an accent and they can ask me if they don't understand something. Usually within two or three days they get used to it and don't have any problems," Masood said.

"She is a wonderful teacher," said Agnes Flanagan, principal of the school. "I don't understand some people's philosophy of not wanting visiting teachers. I wouldn't mind having a building full of them. She's very dynamic and the kids love her."

Philippine Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said the Philippine teachers hired for U.S. classrooms are those most proficient in English and who look at America as "a second home ... it's not like a strange place."

"These teachers, they all grew up reading American books," he said.

Proponents note that international teachers typically have a higher level of subject expertise in the classroom and can expose young students to a new culture.

Also, the pool of candidates overseas is much bigger than locally.

"We interviewed 180 applicants in five days" in Manila, Sisk said. In the U.S., he did not meet that many candidates on visits to 20 or 30 colleges.

Immigration officials say the temporary work visas used to hire foreign teachers create no path by themselves to permanent U.S. residency, and teachers have no advantage over any other group seeking the visas.

For foreign teachers, the U.S. job market offers much better pay than at home. Lapus said the starting monthly salary for a public school teacher there is about $300 a month. In Alabama, the starting salary set by state law is about 10 times more — a minimum $36,144 for a teacher with a bachelor's degree and no experience.

"This is the global rule of the game now," Lapus said in an interview in Manila.

He said the hiring of Filipinos for U.S. jobs is a testament to their competence and is a loss, but not a large one, to the Philippine education system, which has 500,000 public school teachers and some 30,000 new ones taking the licensing exam each year.
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Somehow domestic markets are absolute for some, and others should have their labor market destroyed by importing workers.

I wonder what the real critreria is for which is which?
 
We should have shopped the world for bankers to import instead of paying their bonuses from the public coffer.

Something stinks here.
 
AssHatZombie said:
Not really. It's arguments about getting the best and brightest.
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You're reaching. If you want to talk about banking, post in a thread about banking. If you want to stretch it to cover everything, then create a thread about your disconnected thought stream.

We agree about one thing, it is time to stop promoting that illegal immigrants bring whole families by giving away "free" education.. It costs too much to constantly ignore the laws and give away "free" stuff.
 
Damocles said:
You're reaching. If you want to talk about banking, post in a thread about banking. If you want to stretch it to cover everything, then create a thread about your disconnected thought stream.

We agree about one thing, it is time to stop promoting that illegal immigrants bring whole families by giving away "free" education.. It costs too much to constantly ignore the laws and give away "free" stuff.
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It not really reaching at all. Grow up. Learn to think slightly more abstractly and critically.

And i was talking about importing teachers, not about illegal students. Read the above article.
 
Damn Yankee said:
What's really funny is that you think a BA in chemistry is superior to a BS in chemistry because the BA comes from a university with ivy growing on the walls.

Or you can't admit that it isn't, which is more likely since you failed to answer my question. So again, Tom, did you use your BA degree to go on to an advanced degree, or are you working in a field where a science degree isn't required?
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What's funnier yet is Tom equates his "university" days to the era when young adults were dropping acid and chanting: "flower power". Timothy Leary would have adored being his mate.

'splains a lot. :palm:
 
NigelTufnel said:
It is a big part of the answer to "How do we attract the best and the brightest college graduates to teaching?"
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What makes you think the best and the brightest would want to teach? The best and brightest want to make their mark. With unions protecting mediocre teachers and paying them just as much as the best teachers, why would a sane person want to work as a teacher? Why would a sane person want to languish in an environment where their worst performing peers have the same material gains? Where would their incentive to work hard come from? Answer: there would be no incentive to work hard.

the best and brightest understand the dynamics and that's why they steer clear of teaching.

Those who can, do... those who can't, teach
 
Damn Yankee said:
Of course there's a difference:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Bachelor-Degree---BA-Vs.--BS&id=272581

Since you weren't able to handle the tougher curriculum, it doesn't surprise me that you wouldn't know the difference between the two degrees. :)
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There's two schools of thought for that. The BS has a more demanding technical curriculum and the BA has the more well rounded program. In my case my BA in Human Biology was more difficult then the BS as, at my school, I not only took all the required science programs of the BS but took extra course work in liberal arts studies. That hurt me neither in getting into graduate school (I was excepted before I even completed my degree) nor finding a job.....though I must admit my Masters is a Masters of Science degree but I obtained that after I entered my current field of work. I took my undergraduate degree as a BA not because it was easier. It wasn't, wasn't particularly harder either, I just had to take more classes then for the BS but I took the BA on the advise of my academic counselor. Yes, some companies may want to know if you took the tougher classes but many other companies prefer the more rounded BA as more well rounded people tend to be better leaders.

As for Chemistry....it's not Engineering Bubba. It's harder to earn a BA in Chemistry then a BS because you have take a year or two of foreign languages. How good is your German? A BA in chemistry is definitely more difficult to earn then the BS because of the foreign language requirements. I know quite a few Chem majors who dropped their BA to BS cause they were doing poorly in their German language classes.
 
Damn Yankee said:
What's really funny is that you think a BA in chemistry is superior to a BS in chemistry because the BA comes from a university with ivy growing on the walls.

Or you can't admit that it isn't, which is more likely since you failed to answer my question. So again, Tom, did you use your BA degree to go on to an advanced degree, or are you working in a field where a science degree isn't required?
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God, you are really fucking dense.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
There's two schools of thought for that. The BS has a more demanding technical curriculum and the BA has the more well rounded program. In my case my BA in Human Biology was more difficult then the BS as, at my school, I not only took all the required science programs of the BS but took extra course work in liberal arts studies. That hurt me neither in getting into graduate school (I was excepted before I even completed my degree) nor finding a job.....though I must admit my Masters is a Masters of Science degree but I obtained that after I entered my current field of work. I took my undergraduate degree as a BA not because it was easier. It wasn't, wasn't particularly harder either, I just had to take more classes then for the BS but I took the BA on the advise of my academic counselor. Yes, some companies may want to know if you took the tougher classes but many other companies prefer the more rounded BA as more well rounded people tend to be better leaders.

As for Chemistry....it's not Engineering Bubba. It's harder to earn a BA in Chemistry then a BS because you have take a year or two of foreign languages. How good is your German? A BA in chemistry is definitely more difficult to earn then the BS because of the foreign language requirements. I know quite a few Chem majors who dropped their BA to BS cause they were doing poorly in their German language classes.
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The only reason that Lancaster gave BAs rather than BScs was that it was copying the Oxbridge system. I don't know if that's still the case, I will have to ask my youngest son as he will probably be going there this year, You are right though, we did have to do German as well but we were allowed dictionaries in the exam. As for the technical content, the syllabus was exactly the same as any other BSc course at any other uni.
 
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