US 8th-grader's math skills have declined nearly twenty-eleven percent when compared to those of many of our global competitors

Heh.

Sir Not Sure The Unscannable: Am I the only one that is sick of this "gotta be #1" mentality that is ceaselessly pounded into the heads of American's from day -10? Seems to me that from my work experience and school experience, problems are never solved by "the best" in the group, always from a concerted effort of all involved. If you apply this to worldwide problems, we're better off training kids to recognize their own skills and develop them, along with recognizing others', rather than perpetuating the competition.

Go back to Russia

TheBeastOfYuccaFlats: Rent Party: TheBeastOfYuccaFlats:
I can tell you that in IT it is *routinely* the case that companies underbid, basically because they can then justify an H1B. I watched my own company need but not hire anyone for an Oracle DBA position for 18 months because they didn't want to pay the going rate for someone with the skillset required.

If I'm operating that business, and I have an open rec for 18 months, it would make me question the need for the position in the first place.

It was a situation where the existing people could do station-holding on issues basically forever, but it required someone with a more advanced skillset and prior experience to move forward. I have no doubt that there was a business impact in terms of new project progress.

YEP!
"we don't need a QA or support team. the engineers can do that too."
6 months later: "hey engineering, how come you haven't built any new stuff."
engineering: "we're overworked. At least let us hire some more people."
management: "look, I can't give you a hiring budget, because you haven't been productive for the last 6 months. Take sales for example! They really make things happen!"
engineering: "well, they sold all the crap that didn't exist at the time and still doesn't because we're too overloaded with support work to build it..."
management: "ok, fine, I'll hire some trained monkeys to do support work."
6 months later: "you told me those trained monkeys would solve the problem"
engineering: "well no, we told you we needed some more support people, not trained monkeys, actual people...."
management: "you're even less productive! Look how good these trained monkeys are though! They're escalating tickets faster than ever, and you guys just sit on them"
engineering: "yeah, that's because the monkeys don't actually work the tickets. They just instantly escalate them to engineering, so then we have to do the support work while putting up the guise of training the monkeys who are in fact untrainable...."
management: "screw it, you're all fired. get me some trained monkey developers for less than half the price. Then I'll change the sales guy's title to 'Architect' and have him lord over the monkeys."
support monkey: "ticket too hard, escalate to engineering monkey"
engineering monkey: "ticket too hard, escalate to 'Architect'"
architect monkey: "delegate ticket to support monkeys, send emails letting management know that I'm on the case and stuff's about to get done"
infinite loop

ok, sorry I'm having one of those days and this was a good opportunity for catharsis.
We're actually hiring engineers again. People finally realized the monkey pyramid scheme was a bad idea.
But they only replaced the engineering piece of the pyramid sales and support are still morans.

OnlyM3: With positive results like this, obviously, teachers deserve a raise

Maybe they do.

Imagine if we valued teachers enough to pay them well. A lot more people would see teaching as a viable career option.

Fark_Guy_Rob: I really don't see the argument for teacher's being underpaid.

I'm guessing you've never been a teacher.

TofuTheAlmighty: FTFM:

Not true. US student test scores have improved across the board over the past few decades. The US isn't ranked as relatively high anymore because other nations are doing better economically and, most importantly, alleviating poverty while they're at it. Poverty is by far the number one correlate of poor student performance. The reason why the US is falling behind in education (relatively) is that more Americans are going to bed hungry.

Yes, we've improved internally, because we have focused on passing the particular tests the U.S. has standardized on. Poverty? Are so many U.S. students suffering that it is allowing other countries to surpass us?


And this is laughably false. The US churns out Ph.D.s like crazy. I know, I'm one of them. In the biomedical sciences alone, 7000 Ph.D.s are minted in the US every year yet there are a grand total of 20000 tenured biomed faculty positions. We could replenish the tenured faculty every three years.

That's just an illustration. My generation was told to work hard, get an education, and you'll have a good career. Well, there isn't funding and thus jobs for everyone getting an advanced degree. Those of us in the sciences have been sold a bill of goods because the US is decreasingly spending resources on science (and complementary engineering) because TAX CUTS ÜBER ALLES and corporations now only care about quarterly earnings reports.

I intended "PhD's" to be tongue-in-cheek, I thought that would be obvious as it followed "hipster". However, there are PhD's in fields other than biomedicine. We are falling behind in degrees in engineering. We have a 50% drop out rate for engineering majors. Why? Plenty of reasons. Business degrees can easily pay better.. Engineering isn't "sexy". Engineering is hard, people get into it without the proper foundation and find out they can't catch up. There are lots of reasons. There are jobs available for people with those degrees that can't be filled.

vogonity: According to subby It's only one kid, so I'm not that worried.

heh, nice catch.

Fark_Guy_Rob: Insatiable Jesus: Lionel Mandrake: OnlyM3: With positive results like this, obviously, teachers deserve a raise

Maybe they do.

Imagine if we valued teachers enough to pay them well. A lot more people would see teaching as a viable career option.


---------------------------

What nonsense. Anybody who understands economics knows that the only people worth offering a monetary incentive to are CEOs.

I really don't see the argument for teacher's being underpaid.
[i.stack.imgur.com image 841x1500]

When you consider the number of days actually worked each year - teaching is a very well paid job. That's just the salary though, the benefits are what really sweeten the deal. And, you have to remember that the salary for a teacher doesn't include the higher-earning jobs teaching leads into, like being a principal or superintendent or any of those administrative type positions.

I tend to agree with the sentiment that 3 months of vacation is a damned good perk that teachers overlook. The "I'm still 'working' over the summer. I go to conferences and stuff and evaluate textbooks, so it's not really a vacation" argument is a laughable copout that I used to agree to until I started working. shiat caught fire while I was skiing with the parents for Christmas so I spent a couple hours every evening in the Starbucks on my laptop. My mom--seriously the hardest working teacher ever--asked me why I even brought my computer on vacation, and that's when I realized she and other teachers are working on a skewed definition of the word "vacation". For any real job, there's still obligations when you're on vacation, just less of them. Teachers tend to think a vacation should be an absolute lack of work, but that's just not realistic.

But by no stretch of the imagination is teaching a "well paid job" compared to the other options for smart folks. Good math and science teachers are generally also qualified to be good engineers, so you force them to choose between $50k with 3 months vacation, vs $125K with 4 weeks of vacation. gee, tough choice. I can buy more happiness in my 4 weeks than you can even imagine during your whole summer.
Let's pay teachers a competitive salary AND give 3 months vacation, then hire the best possible people and fire the duds.
And crush teachers unions who want to equalize pay across all subjects. Teachers' pay should be based on what jobs they'd otherwise be qualified for outside of teaching, not some feel good sensitivity about wanting to make the same as their colleagues.