You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

A large part of the problem is that our education system is modeled on the "teachers-as-committed-and-poor" paradigm, where they were a relatively small expenditure, and thus the system could be run in a cheap-labor-intensive mode. For better or for worse, that's no longer the case, but we've kept the same model. We either find a way to teach without the well-paid pros, or we pay a lot more for educamating our kids.

Plus, as long as we're gonna mandate the mainstreaming of the halt and the drain, we're stuck counting a lot of non-educational costs as educational, which skews the conversation mightily.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

An awful lot of the budgets and mandates for special needs have nothing to do with the "halt and the drain" but are just about good teaching - teaching to kids who, for example, aren't going to learn to read in a group teaching environment but need one-on-one to address specific processing issues.

But thanks for that broad slur.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

I'm not quite sure we're at "well-paid pros" levels here.

How many people on this board could take a job at $55,000 per year (less than half what a first year makes in this town)?

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

No slur. I like broads. (Oh, wait, . . )

I wasn't speaking about what apparently is your pet peeve. I meant those who cannot function at all, and who need aides and nurses and equipment just to sit in a schoolroom with other kids, barely, if at all, able to know where they are. There are a lot of kids like that, they're very expensive to serve, but most state and fed courts have ruled that their parents have a right to mainstreaming. That's the "halt'. The "drain" are the uncooperative, disruptive, uneducable ones, who can no longer simply be expelled, who eat up tons of time and resources to no good end, and who should rightly be washing cars until they change their minds about education.

But thanks for the broad assumption.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

How many people in society in general would be happy to hit $55k? You're drawing a very warped baseline.

California Schools don't have enough money?
 

At mine (I'm looking at the "unaudited" figures online), admin is 26% of the budget. Financial aid is 13% of the budget.

annual giving supplies 11% of the revenue, and the endowment supplies 10% of the annual revenue. (I doubt your school uses too much of the endowment--most places don't like to draw it down too much, however large it is).

So, anyway, the relevant figure here is 26%, but on a higher base (presumably, as tuition covers 74% of the revenue, and tuition, as my parents remind me, is quite high).

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

So are you. Who do you want teaching your kids? You may not need law school grads but you surely don't want high-school dropouts. We want a particularly well educated segment of society.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

Sort of agree, sort of not. I want smart, empathetic people who like to teach kids. I'm not that concerned about the well-educated part. (Obviously, some undergrad degree in their subject, but no need for higher ed for anyone pre-10th-grade.) We pay cops, firemen, nurses, even physician assistants less than $55k. I think you can draw from the same groups.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

I just wouldn't characterize them as well paid professionals. That's us. They are professionals, but likely paid at the low end for their educational and professional background. Indeed, at $55,000, a good comparison would be cops and firefighters, who are often in about that same area but have more overtime opportunities and less education and training.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

I think we're quibbling over small beer. Factor in a three-season work year, and you're there.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

Hmmm. Perhaps where you live the starting salary for teachers is $55,000. Here in flyover land, the starting salary is $20,000 (statutory minimum) to $36,000.

aV

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

My kids have had rather good teachers paid whatever they're paid. The problem with public schools are in the schools that suck. Do you think they pay teachers less and that explains why some schools fail kids?

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

Right. The correlation between "good school results" and $$/child is not all that high. The most direct correlation comes with "good school results" and "percentage of kids living in two-parent homes".

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

Yeah, go read the NY Times on Sunday, which had a pretty length article on this. Among the many points are (a) no one considers themselves upper or lower class and (b) $55k is a pretty solid salary for most people.

Are views are entirely distorted by being among the upper 5% in overall education and, in many cases, the top 5-10% in annual income. If you can't live on $55k, at least in most U.S. areas (exclude, NY, SF, LA, DC, and perhaps others), you're not trying hard enough to economize. Start by trading down to a used F-150.

You have to hand it to the Catholics.......
 

$55,000 was the average in California - I assume they start below that. But, yeh, that's high, and it's well above what my mother was paid as a teacher with 30 years experience when she retired.