I don’t know much about the certification process for public K-12 in Texas, but what little I have heard has kept me away. I will stick to college level.
It seems confusing to get one and expensive from what I have heard from others trying to get it. I think it might be easier for those that get it as part of their undergrad college education degree, but everyone else, not really. Thus someone like me - teacher as a second career - makes it a turn off for the low pay and political pain in the backside of school and political administration. I have 10 years teaching and am now getting a degree in education which will mean little if I wanted to do K-12 from what I gather. Unless of course, I tack on another year or two plus lots of money to get certified.
I have a friend of the family that was a very successful teacher for decades in another country, but when she moved back to the US, she had a hard tie getting one and it was very expensive for her to get it (relative to her income upon returning).
The system needs a severe overhaul if it wants to bring in competent teachers. Something not limited to the traditional high school - to BA in education - to teaching.
I am a teacher. I teach developmental special education. Low functioning kids. Lots of paper work. I love it. I left the private sector as a sales manager and retail manager for 15 years. I will say that the teachers getting into the field are leaving fast. And the ones that can retire are doing it a lot. I have a 7 teacher department at the high school I work at with roughly 15 assistants. 9 assistants are not coming back next year. 2 teachers are retiring. 1 is going back to general Ed. This is an annual dilemma.
My district has roughly 120 openings still for this school year. That is 120 classes merged, subbed and tossed around full of kids because there is not enough folks to fill the positions. This is only 3 position average per school, but that turns into how many kids with a shaky classroom setting at best.
Let me tell you about the ‘pension’. I put into social security at a maximum rate many years. It will subsidize my pension. I will take my 3 highest years salary average, I will then take my teaching years say 20, multiply it by 2.3 and that is the percentage I will receive. So let’s say it is 60k. So 46% of that is my annual pension. 27600 a year. Before taxes. Before I pay for healthcare.
And for the unions in Texas…I love this. They have zero…ZERO negotiating power, no collective bargaining and are nothing but loud angry out of touch lunatics. Here is how union membership for teachers happens in Texas. You get a letter in the mail. They ask for $120 and you get a legal help if you are terminated. They sell it as legal aid.
Now the original post is another reason 36% of registered republicans did not vote for Abbott. Because he is ridiculously out of touch. Superintendents, as one poster said was elected?, are CEO’s of districts. They should be paid well. They have thousands of employees. They should be on a task force. But to have 2 classroom teachers only. Abbott saw the error only after the backlash and assigned 24 more through his cronies at the tea.
Also to answer the task force on why people are leaving. STAAR, TELPAS and no child left behind. The first two are money machines. The last sounds so good, who would ever want to leave a child behind? Some kids need to fail.
Did you know you aren’t supposed to teach backwards. If a third grader is having problems with multi digit subtraction, a second grade TEK, and he was ‘not left behind’, then he is to be taught multiplication and division in third grade. With or without the foundation from the previous grade. Then in fourth grade he just needs to learn fractions. But he still can’t subtract well. So you give him the rest 7 times, making it a little easier each time until he passes and goes to fifth grade. Imagine how well he does in high school. In one large district only 24% of seniors are on level in math (Cy fair).
There are so many problems in our schools today. The USA Today article above hits the nail on the head. Not only are teachers not respected by the students, they are not supported by administrators. They are so afraid of being sued by parents that discipline in schools has gone out the window. I live in Sienna. I moved here and paid the stupid high property taxes for the schools. I’m appalled at what I see. There are almost daily fights at school. They happen in the hallway, lunchroom, gym, and even the classroom. Teachers do not send the kids to the principal’s office because they know there will be no discipline. Teachers’ hands are tied by the school administrator and the school administrator’s’ hands are tied by the district. It’s awful.
Last October/November, my son was a victim of a vile anti-Semitic attack in school by 4 kids. The teacher tried to cover it up and downplay it as kids just being kids. Yelling “Heil Hitler” at a Jew is not just “busting chops”. It took 8 days for the school to move those kids into another class. The policy is to do it immediately. It took almost 3 weeks to finally discipline those kids. I can’t tell you how many phone calls and emails I had to make. It was to the Assistant Principal, Principal, members of the district all the way up to the Superintendent (I’m still waiting for her to respond to any email). All I got was talk and no action.
The point of this story is there is absolutely no accountability in the schools. Maybe it’s just FBISD, but I doubt it. From my perspective, the administrators are there to collect a paycheck and cover their butts. It’s no wonder it’s hard to find and keep teachers. There is no support at any level. I’m a conservative Republicans and I can’t wait for the day Abbot and Patrick are out of office. They have been an absolute disaster for public schools.
There are good admin. Lots of them. But what is pushed down from the TEA onto school boards, through the districts is what causes all of this. So let’s get the TEA to create a task force to find out why people are leaving and parents don’t trust the process anymore so they can say we need more money or something like that.
Hey I would t pass up more money, but I also don’t want to pay more taxes. But riddle me this.
An elementary school is supposed to have legally have no more than 22 kids in a class. Routinely there will be 25-30. One of the things that have happened are specialists. Reading, math and science specialists. These are teachers that have no classroom kids but pullout 5 kids at a time. Most schools have up to 10 of these so when you take student enrollment and divide them by teachers you get a low student to teacher ratio. Why do we have specialists. To help with STAAR. So instead of actually having a low student to teacher ratio and teach kids we have pullout sessions all day long disrupting routines. Also, show me that test scores have increased. They haven’t because the majority t of the day the classrooms are filled to capacity and the teacher cannot effectively teach that many elementary school kids. This is then the foundation on which the high school kid builds on. How is that good?
Abbott and his Republican buddies have been made to feel there are insular, do whatever they want they’ll vote for us regardless mentality Resulting in bad policy made on narrow purient interest not for the people. That’s the danger of having a one party state. I’m a firm believer a state be it national or local gets the Politicians they deserve.
I have heard your local and state union leaders speak at national meetings, they are hardly a bunch of lunatics.
Are there a handful of local lunatics out there in the teachers unions? You bet. I know exactly where they are.
They are not anywhere near the State of Texas. Thank the Good Lord, nowhere near me either.
Seriously, in the Teachers unions, at the States and National level the crazy have zero clout. They may have a little bit of control over a few tiny school districts in places that you would normally expect.
I am a delegate at those 2500, 3000 people events and if the lunatics are 20 in total, that would be a lot.
These events are recorded and covered by the press, no secrets here.
As far as collective bargaining in Texas for public employees that would be a game changer but let’s not go there, that would change the nature of this thread.
I’ve had good experiences with teachers’ unions and their representatives. I’ve only dealt with a few, but they seemed very professional and level-headed. Their job is to look out for teachers just as an electricians’ union is supposed to look out for electricians. Of course, decisions about the work of electricians don’t affect kids. That and politics are really why teachers’ unions don’t have the same high approval rating as other labor unions.
What the opposition will do is portray them as being the majority. Why it’s almost impossible to build consensus on anything in this country. Besides opposing Russia and China
As a teacher I would probably leave the profession if we had to pay union dues. That is just my opinion. I don’t think we should ever put ourselves in a position where we purposely can harm education. If I am in a trade, sure, but as a teacher I could never see using kids, my product and customer, as pawns. I hate that people not in education think we are some big super union and we didn’t want to teach and we weren’t in the classroom last year and that we want remote only because San Fran, Chicago and New York did that. I know people that are still surprised when I say I teach in person, have been since last fall and 4000 kids come to my high school every day.
The teachers unions have been calling for safe reopening since day one. The teachers unions understand more than anyone else that remote education is a terrible idea.
