Tuesday, February 06, 2007

BRITISH LIBERTARIANS ATTACK POLITICIZATION OF SCHOOLS

The Libertarian Alliance, the radical free market and civil liberties policy institute, today denounces the new policy of the British Government to indoctrinate all schoolchildren with the lies of the global warming lobby. According to The Independent newspaper on Friday 2nd February 2006, "The plans, to be published on Monday, will ensure that, for the first time, issues such as climate change and global warming are at the heart of the school timetable. Pupils will also be taught to understand their responsibilities as consumers - and weigh up whether they should avoid travel by air to reduce CO2 emissions and shun food produce imported from the other side of the world because of its impact on pollution."

Libertarian Alliance Director, Dr Sean Gabb, says: "This is political indoctrination lifted in all but its content from Soviet Russia. Children are to be taught the at best highly questionable claims of the global warming lobby as if they were facts. They are then to be marked up or down in their examinations according to how well they can parrot these alleged facts. "To environmentalism is to be added propaganda about racism and sexism, and every other politically correct obsession.

Ten years into the creeping totalitarianism of New Labour, the final link is to be severed between state schooling and education of children in the values of their parents. From now on, the function of schooling will be to produce a new nation, created in the image of George Monbiot and Yasmin Alibhai Brown. "Our ruling class has taken to heart the old Jesuit maxim: 'Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man'. The only difference is that raising the school leaving age will give them the child till he is eighteen. "The Libertarian Alliance calls on all parents to resist the brainwashing of their children."

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$34.06 an Hour: That's how much the average public school teachers makes. Is that "underpaid"?

Who, on average, is better paid--public school teachers or architects? How about teachers or economists? You might be surprised to learn that public school teachers are better paid than these and many other professionals. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, public school teachers earned $34.06 per hour in 2005, 36% more than the hourly wage of the average white-collar worker and 11% more than the average professional specialty or technical worker.

In the popular imagination, however, public school teachers are underpaid. "Salaries are too low. We all know that," noted First Lady Laura Bush, expressing the consensus view. "We need to figure out a way to pay teachers more." Indeed, our efforts to hire more teachers and raise their salaries account for the bulk of public school spending increases over the last four decades. During that time per-pupil spending, adjusted for inflation, has more than doubled; overall we now annually spend more than $500 billion on public education.

The perception that we underpay teachers is likely to play a significant role in the debate to reauthorize No Child Left Behind. The new Democratic majority intends to push for greater education funding, much of which would likely to go toward increasing teacher compensation. It would be beneficial if the debate focused on the actual salaries teachers are already paid.

It would also be beneficial if the debate touched on the correlation between teacher pay and actual results. To wit, higher teacher pay seems to have no effect on raising student achievement. Metropolitan areas with higher teacher pay do not graduate a higher percentage of their students than areas with lower teacher pay.

In fact, the urban areas with the highest teacher pay are famous for their abysmal outcomes. Metro Detroit leads the nation, paying its public school teachers, on average, $47.28 per hour. That's 61% more than the average white-collar worker in the Detroit area and 36% more than the average professional worker. In metro New York, public school teachers make $45.79 per hour, 20% more than the average professional worker in that area. And in Los Angeles teachers earn $44.03 per hour, 23% higher than other professionals in the area.

Evidence suggests that the way we pay teachers is more important than simply what they take home. Currently salaries are determined almost entirely by seniority--the number of years in the classroom--and the number of advanced degrees accumulated. Neither has much to do with student improvement.

There is evidence that providing bonuses to teachers who improve the performance of their students does raise academic proficiency. With our colleagues at the University of Arkansas we found that a Little Rock program providing bonuses to teachers based on student gains on standardized tests substantially increased math proficiency. Researchers at the University of Florida recently found similar results in a nationwide evaluation.

Of course, public school teacher earnings look less impressive when viewed on an annual basis than on an hourly basis. This is because teachers tend to work fewer hours per year, with breaks during the summer, winter and spring. But comparing earnings on an annual basis would be inappropriate when teachers work significantly fewer hours than do other workers. Teachers can use that time to be with family, to engage in activities that they enjoy, or to earn additional money from other employment. That time off is worth money and cannot simply be ignored when comparing earnings. The appropriate way to compare earnings in this circumstance is to focus on hourly rates.

Moreover, the earnings data reported here, which are taken directly from the National Compensation Survey conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, do not include retirement and health benefits, which tend to be quite generous for public school teachers relative to other workers. Nor do they include the nonmonetary benefit of greater job security due to the tenure that most public school teachers enjoy.

Educators sometimes object that hourly earnings calculations do not capture the additional hours they work outside of school, but this objection is not very compelling. First, the National Compensation Survey is designed to capture all hours actually worked. And teachers are hardly the only wage earners who take work home with them.

The fact is that teachers are better paid than most other professionals. What matters is the way that we pay public school teachers, not the amount. The next time politicians call for tax increases to address the problem of terribly underpaid public school teachers, they might be reminded of these facts.

Source




Australia: Teacher trainees not being trained

Typical government management of supply and demand

A leaked report by a State Government working party says West Australian schools are increasingly reluctant to allow undergraduates into classrooms for the work experience they need to get a teaching degree. As the Carpenter Government battles to fill a record shortfall of more than 200 teachers this year, the report warns that some student teachers may not be able to graduate due to a lack of work experience places in the state's schools. The trend has universities worried about the next generation of teachers.

In 2005, some Victorian student teachers were unable to graduate because of a lack of work experience placements, the report says. The report, Teacher Supply and Demand and Student Placements in Western Australia, was completed late last year. It includes claims by Murdoch University that it struggled to place student teachers in schools despite using small gifts to try to entice teachers to take them. "Murdoch tries to do PR and gives small gifts and certificates, but it is stressful having to go to the same teachers time and again and fewer want to be involved," the report stated.

The severe teacher shortage facing government schools in Western Australia - the shortfall had dropped yesterday to 166 full-time and 44 part-time teachers following an urgent recruitment drive - has reached some independent schools.

Independent schools told the authors of the report that it was increasingly difficult to fill positions in rural Western Australia. And it was extremely difficult to place teachers in Aboriginal communities. Those who went rarely stayed more than a year. [I wonder why?] "This staff turnover compounds the disadvantage experienced by the schools," the report says.

Source

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

The NEA and similar unions worldwide believe that children should be thoroughly indoctrinated with Green/Left, feminist/homosexual ideology but the "3 R's" are something that kids should just be allowed to "discover"


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