re: Give teachers a raise....Nah.

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If you mean that K-12 is a socialist system from top to bottom and doomed to follow the fate of any socialist system, then yeah.

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This is what I mean. The next question is how to introduce free market. Merit pay would be good but there doesn't seem to be an effective way to implement it in K-12 public schools.
Colleges are not run by a city or county school board of elected officials. They have more freedom to pursue the better profs for the departments they deem more important than others.

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They get off at 3pm.

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Ok, so I know a lot of teachers. I have some in the family, a few friends that I grew up with that because teachers, and the neighborhood I live in is in close proximity to the town schools so many of my neighbors are teachers.

They do get a lot of the things you claim, but "off at 3PM"? I personally do not know a teacher that isn't at the school after 6:30 AM. I also don't know one that leaves the school before 4:45PM.

Yeah, especially after Covid they do get a lot of extra perks like "virtual days" that should've ended when the Covid hysteria ended for most of us... But stay accurate, man.

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Why pay a minimum 6 figures for a 4 year degree for a job that pays $24/year out the gate when you can start working for Amazon at $20/hr in my area?

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Teachers are paid for working 3/4ths of the year.
If they start at 48K, that's for 9 months. If they worked the full 12 months they would make 60K or $30/hr. My argument is that why should a teacher have to have a 4yr degree. My wife is a kindergarten teacher, but her degree did not teach her how to lead or manage a classroom. It simply checked the required boxes and allowed her to get the job. THEN she had to learn to teach. She is forced to follow the approved "teaching guidelines/requirements".

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I've said this several times, but I am totally against any teacher salary increases until they ditch their public sector union.

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Here’s what happened locally last October:

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"Fresno Unified and the Fresno Teachers Association have reached a tentative agreement that we will be signing this morning right here in front of Historic Royce Hall at Fresno High," said Superintendent Bob Nelson.

The announcement drew applause from teachers, students, and community members in the crowd.

"This is absolutely a historic deal, this is probably the most historic deal in our association's history. Ultimately, the students win,” said FTA president, Manuel Bonilla.

The new contract is expected to increase salaries by 21% over 3 years.

The agreement also calls to reduce classroom sizes and offer comprehensive special education caseload guidelines.

Additionally, students and faculty will see an investment in Arts education, as well as the social and emotional well-being of students.

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Here’s how it’s going as of last week:

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At Wednesday's Fresno Unified School District board meeting, members discussed their budget. School leaders might need to make some cost-cutting decisions. The Fresno Unified School District faces budget cuts, which could impact non-teaching staff and certain programs.

The board approved resolutions to consider eliminating and reducing classified workers, such as office staff or custodians.

Henry said there are several reasons why the district needs to cut costs. Such as lower attendance, cuts in state funding, a decline in enrollment, and accommodating the deal it made with the FTA union last fall.

"It's a very tired narrative," said Manuel Bonilla, the president of the Fresno Teachers Association. "It seems to blame the teachers for administration expanding the number of positions that they've had."

Bonilla said the cuts could be disruptive for students if they do happen. Especially if certain positions are not filled.

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The shortfall is $40 million dollars.

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School choice won't save it.

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But it will improve it for some kids. The DGAF crowd can't be helped by any system, but if we can improve the current offerings for families that care that's a positive move.

A knee jerk reaction would be to support the capitalist system and go all private. I have to send my kids to private school because of the problems at the local public school. But if they did that, it would mean vouchers and then the problem kids end up at the private schools and or the good private schools need to price out the vouchers some how. That would increase the cost of private schools and I know property taxes aren’t going down. So in the end, I’m fine with the system we have in place as the most economical for my situation. Is it good for society as a whole, no. But no one is going to address the real problems so this is the best we can do for now.

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Lots of government workers. Only they don't get 16 weeks off every year.

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Name one.

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How do you feel about the administrators and the School Board personnel?

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Administrative bloat is ridiculous. But the school boards here in Missouri are all volunteer positions.

My sister and my bro in law are both teachers in Cobb County public schools.

My sister is 34 and makes $70K working 10 months out of the year with all government holidays and a week off every few months. She has tremendous benefits. When she left Atlanta Public Schools after four years because it got so bad and she admitted the kids there were hopeless and a lost cause (that was tough for her), APS cut her a check for $15K for unused sick and vacation pay. She leaves work everyday at 5 but she’s the last one to leave; other teachers make fun of her for staying late.

My bro in law is a football coach and he also makes $70K a year. He doesn’t really teach; he’s an assistant teacher in a class for kids with learning disabilities and goes around the class helping kids one on one during class. But he does work his arse off. He has June off but otherwise he works 11 months a year. In fall and during spring and summer workouts he comes home late, like 10, 11, midnight, over in the morning. He works 7 days a week, breaking down film on Saturdays and meeting with coaches on Sundays for game planning. When not in football season or workouts he has it easy and leaves by 4.

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The next question is how to introduce free market.

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Personally, I don't think that's the next question.

The assumption in almost all of these replies is that we have to find a way to make the current model work, and that's an erroneous assumption IMO. Matter of fact, I don't think there's anything that anyone can do to make the current model work.

The first thing that has to happen is that the system has got to stop forcing people to send their children to school. Besides almost certainly being unconstitutional, children whose parents do not care or are actually antagonistic toward schools, teachers, administrators, etc. should simply not be required to go.

Forcing them to go doesn't force them to learn. Around 1/5 of high school GRADUATES are functionally illiterate. It does absolutely no good to have children who have no intention of learning anything in school. It drives up the costs, it demoralizes the teachers and other students, and that population is almost certainly overwhelmingly responsible for the nonsense that those trying to work on education have to deal with now.

Once school is no longer compulsory, then schools can actually set and enforce rules of conduct and performance. If you aren't behaving or aren't performing, we no longer have to keep you. So, goodbye.

At this point the population of the schools has declined significantly, so fewer teachers are needed and classroom size has decreased. Less money is needed for overhead.

If we were to really get serious about saving money, we'd change 7-12 to a system in which students only came to school to get tutored when they ran into a learning logjam and otherwise learned online at home.

Someone somewhere in this thread mentioned teachers having to have a teaching degree as an impediment to improvement. As someone who actually has a teaching degree (although I have never taught in a school setting apart from my student teaching role; I have taught many professionals in seminars), I would agree with that assessment.

Teaching is all about anticipating what someone else doesn't know enough about to ask, and supplying that information for them before they realize they need it. In other words, anticipating the need for and providing the correct context for understanding.

And that ability—IME, at least—seems to be something people are naturally aware of and good at, or they aren't. My teaching degree didn't improve my ability to confer knowledge to another person one tiny bit. My experience is that a person intuitively understands the need for that and how to do it or they don't, and classroom instruction about it does little to no good.

But if you're going to divorce education from meaningless requirements and regulations, you know what that means...it can't be run by the government. Circling back to your original statement, I think "introducing free market" to any degree significant enough to matter means going private.