Page 4 of 5 FirstFirst ... 2345 LastLast
Results 46 to 60 of 66

Thread: Buffalo teacher pay would rise by 11.8% in proposed accord

  1. #46
    Member Save Us's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    9,407
    Quote Originally Posted by Genoobie View Post
    Well, time will tell. Teacher education programs have an all time low enrollment. While I don't feel particularly underpaid (because I have rental property to supplement my income and live in a building with tenants), I also don't feel that I am paid "market" value. I would take any one of the suburban contracts. Buffalo teachers have an unarguably more difficult job than their suburban peers (although that is changing in the 1st ring suburbs) but are the lowest paid (including benefits) among any one of these districts.

    While a master's degree is not "necessary" to teach kindergarten, advanced coursework that forces individuals to consider complex problems may enhance their cognitive development so that they can better manage the complex classroom dynamics.

    Personally, I have considered a switch back to engineering (Solar City will likely be hiring) so you may begin to see a departure from teaching. I still love the teaching aspect, it's everything else that has nothing to do with education or student achievement (bs evaluations, extra paperwork for pseudo-accountability, etc.) that is beginning to wear on me. Additionally, I am making far less (including benefits) than my present job, even though I enjoyed this job far more until recently.
    No question that some teachers in some districts have it very difficult.. If you teach in the city then that indeed would suck in my opinion as you are expected to be the parent as well as teacher. Too many people are reproducing that should not Rich and poor. Everthing is a trade off. I tell my kids to earn a paycheck but don't let it be a reward.

  2. #47
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    3,075
    Quote Originally Posted by Save Us View Post
    No question that some teachers in some districts have it very difficult.. If you teach in the city then that indeed would suck in my opinion as you are expected to be the parent as well as teacher. Too many people are reproducing that should not Rich and poor. Everthing is a trade off. I tell my kids to earn a paycheck but don't let it be a reward.
    I love the job itself. Recently, the paperwork to *prove* that you are teaching is out of control. Nobody, as far as I know, can take students with 3rd and 4th grade reading and math levels and get them to pass Regents Exams. If someone has done this, I'd like to see it.

  3. #48
    Member Save Us's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    9,407
    Quote Originally Posted by Genoobie View Post
    I love the job itself. Recently, the paperwork to *prove* that you are teaching is out of control. Nobody, as far as I know, can take students with 3rd and 4th grade reading and math levels and get them to pass Regents Exams. If someone has done this, I'd like to see it.
    It's pretty hopeless

  4. #49
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    3,075
    Quote Originally Posted by Save Us View Post
    It's pretty hopeless
    Actually, it's not. "Fixing" education requires changing graduation requirements. Provide kids with multiple pathways for success, not just standardized assessments. The kids that are too lazy to put forth any work, despite multiple approaches, attempts, etc., don't graduate. When they realize that they will have difficulty succeeding they should be allowed opportunities to retrain or return to school. Part of the "problem" with impoverished parents is that they provide their kids with little guidence. Kids that have little or no guidance while they are young do not understand the significance of the mistakes they make and are "locked in" based on decisions they make in their early teens or pre-teen years.

  5. #50
    Member Save Us's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    9,407
    Quote Originally Posted by Genoobie View Post
    Actually, it's not. "Fixing" education requires changing graduation requirements. Provide kids with multiple pathways for success, not just standardized assessments. The kids that are too lazy to put forth any work, despite multiple approaches, attempts, etc., don't graduate. When they realize that they will have difficulty succeeding they should be allowed opportunities to retrain or return to school. Part of the "problem" with impoverished parents is that they provide their kids with little guidence. Kids that have little or no guidance while they are young do not understand the significance of the mistakes they make and are "locked in" based on decisions they make in their early teens or pre-teen years.
    The problem starts at home with their environment with parenting or lack there, you can't fix that. You may make a difference with a few but by and large the demographic trend overall is not reversable unless you get people stop having kids that they cannot properly care for on all levels or you get the ones that have kids strive to maintain a nuclear family that actually makes the effort to parent.

    How is a kid supposed to behave much less learn when there is no father, the mother works two jobs, or the kid has to cook dinner and care for a younger sibling, I won't even go into what if the parents that are there are strung out or abusing?!?. NY throws more money at the problem than anyone and it's not working, it's just delaying the inevitable collapse.

  6. #51
    Member FMD's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    5,739
    Quote Originally Posted by Genoobie View Post
    Yes, please tell me who is contracted for 365 days / year? "G"ood "F"or "Y"ou. You didn't answer my question about your chosen profession. I'm pretty sure you can FOIA the dues information if you really want it? What do you think it is? You probably think it's thousands. When I worked in the private sector I had 8 paid holidays five sick days and four weeks paid vacation. I also had full health insurance. When you subtracted weekends and vacation + sick + holidays, that was 232 days. So that's 80% but my private sector salary was definitely more than 1.24 times what I earned as a teacher.

    Again, go ahead with your agenda, you clearly have an axe to grind so what I say doesn't matter. If teachers have it so darn good, give up your chosen profession stamping paperwork or moving assets or some other "job" where you do nothing and become a teacher.

    Incidentally, taxes are levied by the legislature. You don't like paying taxes? Move somewhere else or elect officials who agree with your point of view.
    So if the private sector paid so well, why did you move into the public sector?

    Also, elections are highly rigged, as shown in congressional hearings regarding election fraud since 2000. With that being said, stating that 'you should elect people who have your veiw points' well, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but anyone who is actually paying attention to the news and events ocurring nationwide in this country will tell you that there are no 'free elections' in this country. Our 'leaders' are chosen, vthe races are nothing more than a theatrical play to keep the financial slaves from bringing out the pitchforks.

    As far as any reduction in taxes for the average tax payer and pay caps on public sector employees due to a world wide recession? Your stoned if you think it will happen. Most everyone who is paying attention and NOT drinking the koolaid realizes that the current gravy train of free flowing cash is coming to an end, and are trying to live it up as long as possible.

    The easiest, fastest non violent way to force change on any govt, large or small is to simply stop paying your taxes en mass. However people have been trained, and are fearful of the lethal threats doled out by govt, that they continue to go with out, to pay their taxes. That's the biggest problem in this country as a whole. Our govt has succeeded in dividing the people and brainwashing the people to such a degree that we no longer have rights and freedoms. We are slaves to govt.

    After all, when a govt can sieze everything you own, and give you nothing for it, and charge you with no crime, how is that freedom?

    Want lower taxes and accountability? Stop paying for it. If 1/4 of WNY residents stopped paying their property/school taxes, things would change VERY RAPIDLY for the better. Plus, with that sort of movement, the govt couldn't use deadly force as the backlash of such would be absolutely disastrous for the govt.

    Problem is, this country is full of push over slaves, who don't care. And well this is what you get.

    So let the teachers take their raise, cause you know in the end you will write your tax check like a good little slave.
    Willful ignorance is the downfall of every major empire in history.

    "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." - Mao, 1938

  7. #52
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    3,075
    Quote Originally Posted by Save Us View Post
    The problem starts at home with their environment with parenting or lack there, you can't fix that. You may make a difference with a few but by and large the demographic trend overall is not reversable unless you get people stop having kids that they cannot properly care for on all levels or you get the ones that have kids strive to maintain a nuclear family that actually makes the effort to parent.

    How is a kid supposed to behave much less learn when there is no father, the mother works two jobs, or the kid has to cook dinner and care for a younger sibling, I won't even go into what if the parents that are there are strung out or abusing?!?. NY throws more money at the problem than anyone and it's not working, it's just delaying the inevitable collapse.
    Yes, but not doing anything will not solve those problems either. At least this way the opportunity exists to become educated. In all honesty, the educational system needs to do a better job of getting people to become independent learners. There is a plethora of information out there, as far as being educated is concerned. Credentialed (the way to better jobs) is a different story. That takes money and that won't be fixed so easily.

  8. #53
    Member NY The Vampire State's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2013
    Location
    Not in a Cuomo Tax Free Zone
    Posts
    1,803
    If you want to make people independent, cut off the welfare. The education system can't "make" anyone do anything.
    Democrats & Republicans Suck Alike.

  9. #54
    Member nogods's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Posts
    9,330

  10. #55
    Member Save Us's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    9,407
    Quote Originally Posted by Genoobie View Post
    Yes, but not doing anything will not solve those problems either. At least this way the opportunity exists to become educated. In all honesty, the educational system needs to do a better job of getting people to become independent learners. There is a plethora of information out there, as far as being educated is concerned. Credentialed (the way to better jobs) is a different story. That takes money and that won't be fixed so easily.
    How much more money do we need to throw at it? Read the book Freakonomics,
    What is necessary to spend money on is Planned Parenthood. You are fighting a losing battle because that of which you speak starts at home, and you are not going to get jobs to employ people unless the environment is right to do so, with entrepreneurship at an all time low good luck.

  11. #56
    Member nogods's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2009
    Posts
    9,330
    Quote Originally Posted by Save Us View Post
    with entrepreneurship at an all time low good luck.
    More BS. It is not at an all time low. In fact, it is at the same level as before the great recession, which caused an increase in new business startups due to loss of jobs.

    In 2013, entrepreneurship rates returned to the, pre-recessionary level of 2006, which is likely due to improving economic conditions.

    As the nation's employment rate continued to improve, America's overall business creation rate fell again in 2013. According to the annual Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity, the rate declined slightly from 0.30 percent of American adults per month starting businesses in 2012 to 0.28 percent in 2013. The decline in the business creation rate to 0.28 percent in 2013 is important because this rate finally returns levels of business creation to levels found prior to the Great Recession.
    Get it? More people were starting business in the years prior to 2012 because they lost their jobs. The decrease in the number of new business startups over the last 2 years is a good thing.

  12. #57
    Member Save Us's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    9,407
    Quote Originally Posted by nogods View Post
    More BS. It is not at an all time low. In fact, it is at the same level as before the great recession, which caused an increase in new business startups due to loss of jobs.



    Get it? More people were starting business in the years prior to 2012 because they lost their jobs. The decrease in the number of new business startups over the last 2 years is a good thing.
    I understand what point you are driving at but, as the number one employer in the US I do not think that a decrease is a good thing, or that all business start ups are the cause of a weak economy.

    Regardless, 1. NY is not small business friendly, and in relation to the dialogue I have with Genoobie I do not feel that will solve our education crisis either by throwing more money at the problem or the stability of the family unit, or better parenting, but that is just my opinion.

  13. #58
    Member
    Join Date
    Mar 2007
    Posts
    3,075
    Quote Originally Posted by Save Us View Post
    How much more money do we need to throw at it? Read the book Freakonomics,
    What is necessary to spend money on is Planned Parenthood. You are fighting a losing battle because that of which you speak starts at home, and you are not going to get jobs to employ people unless the environment is right to do so, with entrepreneurship at an all time low good luck.
    I've read Freakonomics. It furthers the case that education, as measured by standardized test scores, is not reliant on funding at all. My guess, you could cut all school funding in half and see insignificant decreases in test scores. I would submit that we are measuring education incorrectly.
    We can educate people, even people with zero home support. Will we see an appreciable change in test scores? Likely not. That does not mean that they have not been educated.

    All I am asking is to be paid market value and if you compare Buffalo's teachers to the surrounding area then we are not paid market value. Now you could make the case that the surrounding areas are paid too generously, but that's a different story.

    Do I think increasing the salary of Buffalo's teachers is going to have a significant impact on outcomes of standardized testing? No. What increasing the salary will insure is that intelligent young professionals will continue to consider teaching as a viable career and will bring that intellect to address problems of classroom management, content development, etc.

    In reality, the "best" schools do no better or worse of a job educating than the "worst" schools. They simply deal with different student populations and their needs are different so too should be the education.

    I remember teaching a while ago at Burgard and one of my students had been killed running away from the police with a sawed-off shotgun in his hand. I think back and wonder if understanding the difference between meiosis and mitosis was relevant for this young man. He happened to know the difference and would have likely graduated but I think that his "education" needed to be different than the one size fits all approach that NYSED has been taking.

  14. #59
    Member nickelcityhomes's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Posts
    1,636
    All I am asking is to be paid market value and if you compare Buffalo's teachers to the surrounding area then we are not paid market value.
    You cannot shelter yourself from all market forces (unions, compulsory education) and still expect market value. You altered the supply/demand chain using government intervention and force. Live with it.
    Most of all I like bulldozers and dirt

  15. #60
    Member
    Join Date
    Apr 2009
    Posts
    4,643
    Or simply apply at one of the suburban schools. With Genoobie's wealth of experience they should be kicking in the door.

Page 4 of 5 FirstFirst ... 2345 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Similar Threads

  1. South Buffalo got screwed?? Proposed Fed Stimulus Money
    By 4248 in forum Buffalo NY Politics
    Replies: 104
    Last Post: December 10th, 2009, 09:04 AM
  2. Three projects proposed for Buffalo waterfront
    By HipKat in forum Company Watch, Master planning, Development and Policy Discussion
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: December 11th, 2007, 10:34 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •