quote:

Originally posted by 46and2:
An appalling ruling by any objective standard...

One- no one is going to stop me from speaking out against using my taxes to murder babies. It is immoral and no better than NAZI genocide.

Two- our tax money is being used to poorly educate kids now. I have no problem with the parents using the money to find a better educational environment for their children. If they do, we all benefit in the long run.



.

quote:

Originally posted by tanksoldier:
Spent on what? Until you know what public school has to provide and pay for that private school doesn’t... often certified teachers, for example... you can’t compare.

I spent 8 years auditing school district's financials and back then 80% of expenditures were payroll. The first year I did it, I was shocked how much teachers made. A first year teacher made more than me as a a first year accountant. We had similar education requirements. Not only was the base salary higher, it was based on working 193 days vs. 280 days for me. If I put 6% of my pay into my 401k, my employer would match 2%. The my 6% came out of my pay check. The teachers on the other hand, had 12% of their pay put into the state teachers retirement system. That 12% was on top of their salary. I paid 50% of my health insurance. The teachers paid nothing while also receiving vision and dental which I did not. Teachers get automatic raises every year because they move up the pay scale. They can also get more education and get pay raises by moving across tbe pay scale. The districts paid for the teachers to get more education. I had to cover that cost myself. It's been 20 years since I've audited a school district, but back then a teacher with 13 years and a Masters +30 credits would get between $85,000 and $96,000 base salary depending on the district.

Besides my auditing experience, I was married to a teacher whose parents were both teachers.

Over $20,000 per year per kid in my county is obscene. A little competition with a school choice program could bring that number down substantially.

Our state has a voucher system, which we qualify for, so all of our kids have gone to private school (no way we could have afforded it otherwise). Our oldest just graduated 6th grade, and their school only goes that high, so we had already planned to homeschool him starting next year.

My daughter just finished third, but she's had different teachers than he did, and she's been struggling with the classroom environment. Having them all home for the Covid really drove home the idea of homeschooling her, too, since she did much better working at home than she did in school. So next year we will have a 7th and a 4th grader homeschooling at home, and a 2nd grader and Kindergartener at the private Christian school.

We'll see how it goes, but my wife was homeschooled growing up, and also pretty much homeschooled her younger brother at the same time (he's 10 years younger), so she has a decent idea of what she's getting into. It's going to be a lot of work, but I think it'll be worth it in the end.

quote:

Originally posted by trapper189:

quote:

Originally posted by tanksoldier:
Spent on what? Until you know what public school has to provide and pay for that private school doesn’t... often certified teachers, for example... you can’t compare.

I spent 8 years auditing school district's financials and back then 80% of expenditures were payroll. The first year I did it, I was shocked how much teachers made.

I found the union contract for the suburban Chicago school district I grew up in and was shocked as well. Then I found a website that publishes all Illinois teacher and administrator salaries under the freedom of information act. I looked up teachers of mine and sure enough my high school guidance counselor was making over $130,000 a year after 30 years on the job. And this was like 15+ years ago. I had believed the constant whining teachers about low pay and never considered the job, but they were doing quite well.

On top of the shortened school year and tenure, they got 75% of final salary for life as pension after 30 years on the job (that could be as young as age 52), but when they declared their retirement 2 years in advance, they got 10% kickers each year, meaning the retired at 95% of what they made when the decided to retire.

Then let's talk about the EdD degree. Doctor of Education. Is has the lowest requirements for any doctorate, and is basically like another masters. it is not a PhD, not even close. It was invented solely to give teachers a "doctorate" for the pay raise.

The present value of a teacher salary when you take job security, time off, pensions, lifetime heath coverage, and everything else is rather high, which is why very few public school teachers actually quit - the attrition is very low despite claims of teachers "leaving the profession in droves".

Anyway, Unionized public schools are a government jobs racket pure and simple. Like any government jobs racket, administrators reproduce like rodents, continually increasing their numbers with more and more "consolidations" and new layers of bureaucracy. There is an inverse relationship to the size of the administrative bureaucracy and educational quality.

If our schools suck, and other countries are doing better, you think we'd benchmark their schools and do what they do. Except that would mean admitting that the shit public school constantly preach about how to improve is completely wrong and they've been talking out of their asses for decades.