Both Obama and Romney agreed in their debate that the USA needed to do a better job of education. Isn't that interesting that they "both" agree on something. The problem is that they both agree on the fact that we have a problem, but each has a very different idea about the solution. Isn't it also interesting that they did not debate their differences on this very key point? Well, I am not so timid.
I am sure that Obama's position is that we need to spend more on education and that means higher pay for teachers. I think that I made this point in the past and that is that paying a person more does not make them jump higher. Further, I always liked to see what the person could "do" before I paid them more. Where the logic came from that by paying a teacher more would cause them to be better teachers, I have no idea, but many of us seem to have accepted it as "fact". The other thing that I feel Obama would agree with is that reducing class size would improve the quality of education. It would clearly increase the cost, but where is the double blind test data that proves this point? It does not exist.
Now, let's say that we increased the pay of teachers in Chicago by 4%. They now teach 25 kids per class. Further, let's say that we reduced the class size to just 20. We know from the strike data that the average Chicago teacher makes $85,000 per year. You know I like my 4th grade math. Now, let's look at "just" the extra cost of teachers and consider that all other cost was held constant. The starting point is the current cost of teaching the 25 kids and that works out to $3,400 per kid. Now it we assume the total cost of currently teaching the kid is $10,000, then the pay of the teacher amounts to 34% of the cost. With me on this one? Next, we give the teacher the 4% raise. That adds $136 to the cost and brings it to a total of $3,536 per kid. We have a little more to go here. Now, how about class size? Adjusting for that, we get $4,420 per kid. Now compared to the beginning cost, we have increased the cost of teaching a single kid by 30%. 30% is a very big number. What kind of increase in SAT scores would the kids now have to be able to get to justify all this extra cost. It is not going to happen.
Now for the myth of smaller class sizes. For the record, I went to a two room school that had two teachers with an average of 25-30 kids per class room. In each of those two rooms were kids from four grades. The little room went 1,2,3 and 4 while the big room went 5,6,7 and 8. Learning in that situation was not all fun and games as it now is in most of our schools. To keep order, the teachers did not put up with any monkey business. From day one there was "zero" tolerance. This meant that "learning" was what we were there for. The reason that teachers seem to want smaller class sizes is so that it is easier to maintain order. It is not because they want to have more time to teach. Think about a teacher who had 25-30 kids in one room in four different grades. By making class sizes smaller, it is a cop out way of avoiding the basic problem of maintaining order and teaching. 99% of our teachers today were raised on "Spock" and think that is the way to deal with kids. None of my teachers were raised on Spock, nor did they follow Spock in dealing with the kids in their classes. I blogged on Spock before and you can look up that blog, but his damage to this country is now every where. The rule is, "find the cause and fix the cause". Spock is one of those causes.
Rather than trying to avoid dealing with a problem, our teachers are trying to figure out a way of not having to deal with it. Sorry, but it has been my experience that the best way to deal with a problem is to confront it directly. We have become too PC and our kids have mostly been raised on Spock. I want to see a little pain for a change. If there is "no" pain, I know it is not working. Pain does not prove that something is working, but the "lack" of pain proves that it is "not".
I have traveled all over world and lived outside the USA and have sent my kids to different schools in different countries. I know for a fact that class size has little or nothing to do with quality of education. The only thing that it does that you can be sure of is that it runs up the cost of education and assures that more union dues are collected to do, "you know what". Get higher pay for teachers. It is a loop or round robin where the tax payers and the kids both get screwed. My bottom line is to not fall for the Smaller Class Size Myth. Ask for the double blind tested proof. You will not get any because just like "Head Start" it does not work.
PS-------How about that 4% pay raise for Chicago teacher over 4 years? How much is that? If they are now making $85,000, would that be 0.16 times $85,000 or $13,600? Not quite! Try 4th grade math and "compound" the 4% and what do you get $14,438. In 4 years the Chicago teachers will be making $99,438. Then what are the tax payers going to do? This raise will add $722 per kid, just for the teacher. Add this all up and it will increase the cost per kid from $3,400 to $4,972. or 46%. How are we going to catch up if we keep doing things like this? This is "not" trick math. Remember that 50% of the teachers made "more" than the average. It would be interesting to how much the top 10% earn and how much Federal tax they pay. How about "fair"?
