Advancing The Education Of America'S Children - Knox County: Fill & Download for Free

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Sorry Anon User but you don't reconcile the simple reality that middle class jobs, salaries, benefits, etc. are in decline and that correlates to the decline of unions here. In a perfect, world, teachers would be treated like SOME other professionals (lawyers, doctors, etc.) and all they'd need are memberships in professional organizations. But unlike those other professions, teaching and nursing were and are female dominated, and we are a long way off from the point in time where the country treats female employees the same as male ones.As to point by point, you're pretty much wrong or misinformed on all counts. There are in fact workplace abuses and safety issues galore. In NYC alone just in recent years, there have been instances of PCB contamination in school lighting systems, air quality issues that came from coal burning heat sources to improper upgrades to oil burners that use inferior heating oil. There have been school lunch related issues, personal safety issues requiring the installation of metal detectors, semi-annual shootings, etc. In all cases, it was typically the teacher unions out in front of these issues long before other groups.Wage abuse is a relative term. We can argue til we're blue in the face as to whether teachers are paid sufficiently but I have yet to meet anyone in 30 years of teaching who went into the field because it was lucrative and if you compare salaries to other jobs that require 2 or more degrees, you'll typically find K12 teachers at the bottom of the list. Benefits help but there's been an attack from all sides on those as well. When the economy rebounds in a year, or five, or ten, this nation will undergo a teacher shortage the likes of which it has never experienced, especially at the middle and high school level where more subject specific expertise is necessary.Before unions, female teachers were fired upon becoming pregnant, married or not. And we still have no national plan for allowing teachers to transfer pensions between school districts in different states which certainly is exploitive given the reality that some states are better for teachers than others.Of course teacher unions' primary purpose is to protect their members. But rarely are the goals of teachers truly in conflict with what's best for their students despite claims to the contrary. Most teachers genuinely like children and went into this field to make the lives of children better. When unions fight for lower class size, it's more for the children than the teacher. Teachers simply reduce their efforts per child when class sizes get out of whack because they're already taking too much work home with them. And class size issues make it impossible to give children the individualized attention they need to thrive. Competitive salaries are simply so that teachers can stay in the profession and gain the experience necessary to become good at their jobs. Nobody goes into teaching because they're greedy about money and even the best paid teachers in the $90K to $130K range are struggling to retain a middle class lifestyle and typically work an extra job or are part of a two income family just like everyone else. And it takes 15-25 years and 2-3 degrees to even get to those numbers which are typically in very expensive areas where such salaries are not out of line.Unions want due process for their members. And it's particulalry important because their clientle are, let's be honest, not always truthful. I've seen more than my fair share of teachers vilified by students making claims that they later recanted, often too late to stem the damage. Even a veteran teacher with a history of awards and stellar service is one deceitful incident away from destruction because a kid and 2 or 3 friends got a lousy grade or seek retribution. That the process for removing a truth bad teacher drags out is as much the fault of administration and budgetary restrictions as anything else. What's rarely made public is that 75-90% of investigations typically go nowhere. Without teacher unions, a lot of hard working innocents would be destroyed because few teachers would have the financial resources to mount a proper defense.The bottom line is I'm not a big fan of teacher unions but if anything, they're needed more now than ever thanks to a concerted attack on the profession by the media, the politicians, and a group of rich individuals who see education as a potential source of massive profits once public education is sufficiently destroyed. I'd like to see some reforms among teacher unions but if anything they need to become tougher, and MORE militant, not go away.

As a nation, our education system does have its faults. We have the greatest inequities of any nation, no doubt. Not only are our poorest schools underfunded, but our teaching training programs and continuing professional development investments are dismal and getting worse. Much of this lack of funding is because education is a long-term investment, yet we live in cycles of 2 or 4 years. Politicians rarely want to invest more because it hurts their chances for re-election.BUT THIS IS CRITICAL…Our education system is one of the best in the world—not just because it is extremely efficient with scarce funding, but because as a society, we accept the responsibility that EVERYONE has a right to a good education.The PISA is an international assessment that is considered to be one of the best independent indicators of education success. Look carefully at the rankings. For the most part, countries ahead of the U.S. only test college-bound students.If you were to look at ONLY the results of college-bound students in the U.S., the U.S. would be AT or NEAR the top in the world.But the reality is that the U.S. tests ALL of its students.We don’t measure our success solely on the education of the gifted or the college bound or the elite or rich. We measure our success on the education of ALL.The world knows it. That is why our high schools and universities continue to be prime destinations for international students.