Bucks? I believe Bucks would not permit bad teachers. :)

It seems quite inappropriate to demonize 80% of the hundreds of thousands of teachers in this country as incompetent hanger's-on based upon the opinion of two people about their own personal situations.

And it is completely pathetic that we consider $45K a good salary for one of the most important and respected jobs in the (rest of) the world. No wonder all school districts are getting are people that would be better suited to working behind the counter of the local convenience store. People can't raise a family on $45K.

Smart, educated people are going to get the best careers they can, both mentally and financially rewarding. And teachers have always been rather terribly paid for what they do, and now being actively demonized as evil. Who will go into teaching now in the US?

Meanwhile, in some other countries, teachers are considered important, smart, are revered, the profession is very respected - the smartest and most dedicated are recuited - and are paid very, very well for it.

You get what you pay for, and the United States is cheap and lazy.

Since there are no mathematical or scientific methods for measuring a teachers success or ability, the word of co-workers is really all we have. Perhaps the lack of this method is the reason the union proliferation is so grand in that profession.

True. It turned disastrous. Obama immediately halted it in like the first month after he was elected. But I fear he is going too much to charter schools, which puts it right into the hands of privateers. Yes, Obama is very Republican in many ways.

In other words, you're going to keep making assertions as factual that you have simply pulled out of thin air about hundreds of thousands of teachers in the US.

Well, okay: then I say 80% of the teachers in this country are terribly dedicated and yet grossly abused and underpaid.

I did forget to mention that 45K is starting and the reason they think it is all the money in the world is because "they are fresh out of college and live with their parents." It is an excellent starting salary and if that is what you make perhaps starting a family is not the best idea.

You are entitled to believe that if you choose.

If you think, in 2011, that $50-60K is a decent salary for a lifetime of raising a family of 4, when real wage value in this country has done nothing but fall precipitously over time, you don't have a good grip on what has happened in this country over the past 40 years.

Yes, $45K is a tremendous amount of money in my mind.

Except when it costs $2000 a month for housing, food, car, utilities, and student loan payback is another $500 a month, and retirement savings is 10% of take home. Then add in those that think evil teachers unions are destroying this country, so don't give them healthcare at work, take that away! Or make them pay $250 a month for it!

Yes, raise a family on what's left out of that $45K after the above.

Nobody deserves free money. They of course have to earn it through their competence no matter their profession or job.

But this country is in very, very deep trouble, we are no longer an elite first world country, and that problem was not caused by teachers unions.

We have " ... A republic - if you can keep it". I have serious doubts about the future of the next 50 years of this country.

No, sorry. I prefer reality-based opinions.

Perhaps (again) raising a family is not the best thing for you if that is your salary.

If you are unable to talk about the subject matter you brought up in an intelligent and objective fashion, don't degenerate to silly ad hominem attacks.

Tell us - what annual income do you think is sufficient to raise a family of 4 nowadays?

And I wanted to ask you, as you said:
What do you call measuring percentage of students that advance to the next grade, the results of standardized testing on state, national and internation levels, percentage of students graduating and gaining admittance to which colleges, etc?

That is completely based on where you live. In Denver, my current home, 60-80K should be plenty, you will not be in high cotton but will be comfortable. In the area of NJ I grew up in 45K puts at the top of the earnings list for sure. In the next town over in NJ you would need 100-140K to be OK. In Kentucky or West Virginia or most rural areas in the mid-west I would think 50-60K should be fine.

Those are methods for measure a schools performance. These results are very skewed based on location, income of the district, working parents (both, one or neither) etc. And I think they are the standards of the No Child Act.

What percentage of teachers within the city limits of Denver, Colorado, earn $80K a year?

As incomes for families of four?

It's easy when you guess, isn't it ;) What you said previously is that $45K for a teacher was a good enough salary to raise a family of four. But even you say it is not, above.

Then you said that is just a starting salary. So how many teachers in that town in NJ earn 100-140K? or 60K in West Virginia?

Look: you think 80% of teachers are freeloading incompetents, with great salaries and benefits, and teachers unions enable it. You said teachers unions have destroyed the majority of schools in this country. I say that's wrong. We should just leave it at that.

Master +30 past step 7 so probably in the neighborhood of 50-60% of Denver public school teachers.

I never felt I made enough money to support a family of four and maintain the lifestyle I enjoy, therefore guessing is my only option since my wife and I have chosen not to parent without the money to back it up. I know the following as fact; what I was raised on and where, what my employees that have families get paid, I know what I pay them and where they live.
The Denver numbers are based on facts.
The NJ numbers are based on friends with families and their estimated (or actual in some cases) salaries since I know what they do for a living.

Show me. I have said over and over if that is your salary perhaps you should choose to not have a family.

And this is ME, posting:

Again, what do my personal circumstances have to do with teachers being overpaid freeloaders or not? :zz:
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And this is me, too (I'm not on my own computer)

Yes, but those individual tests measure a child's performance. And a teacher's performance can be measured upon the success of their students that they teach. And yes, such results can be skewed.

You said such measures don't exist. I am simply pointing out they do.

The particulars of the measurement as stated above allow for far too many variables to transfer the success or failure onto the teacher, this makes it very hard to consider it either mathematical or scientific.
I was a A-B student for the most part (I was an extra-ordinary test taker though) , I learned more from the better teachers but I was going to test the same either way. One example but there are plenty of really smart kids who cannot test at all.

"You" and "your" was referring to the collective "you" (those teachers that make 45K).

I don't think that assessing teacher performance is any more difficult than assessing the performance of other professions. The position that teacher performance is simply impossible to assess objectively doesn't hold up. If you have two classrooms in the same school, both teaching third grade math using the same textbooks and cirriculae, and one classroom of students scores consistently better on the same tests than the second classroom, you bet the first teacher should be considered objectively better.

But my point, going back to the original discussion, remains that I think that demonizing the vast majority of teachers in the US as incompetent and useless overpaid union thugs is absurd.

That meme is simply the current stated political ploy of the Republican party via ALEC and the RGA on the state level, since last year, in order to attempt to de-unionize school districts and thus privatize them.

People won't give up local control of their school districts unless they are convinced that the current situation is untenable. This is how the RGA, ALEC are trying to convince them.

The proof lives in example, Wisconsin is a good one: the unions agreed to every budget cut necessary, but the Republican governor still busted the union.

It's not about budgets and deficits. It's about union-busting as the first step.