re: Oklahoma teachers prepare to strike

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So why wasn't the state of Oklahoma giving raises when things were good during the oil boom of 2010-2014 when drilling and production was rocking? They could not afford it then? It was ten years ago that they got a raise before this one.

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It's funny to me how many people in education have apparently zero knowledge of what drives salaries.

It's not that complicated. If I can hire the quality and quantity I need for X, there's no reason for me to pay X = Y.

These teachers must be incredibly irresponsible with money if they cant get by with teacher’s salaries in Oklahoma. If you are having money trouble stop taking a 4 month vacation and get a damn job during the summer. Just one of them getting a job for 10/hr could get them an extra 5k in income

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The tax cuts were supposed to lead to an economic boom. Instead, they triggered a massive budget gap of about $1.5 billion each year

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Will someone please explain to me why this happens so frequently?

The answer may well be , get the government out of education altogether. Now they can still have a role in insisting that each child must attend some form of school etc etc , but with the technology and such as it is today, are government school's necessary?


Let the free market truly decide which teachers deserve more money and which deserve the curb..

If ya want those sumbitches to continue to indoctrinate other people's kids... then ya gonna have to give em a raise

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they don't seem aware that they are very close to becoming obsolete.

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I can kind of see this line of thinking if you are talking about the benefits of online education. There are some compelling reasons to believe that a few quality teachers in more advanced subjects would be better than a large group of marginal teachers. You are seeing wide spread implementation in several less taken subjects. Small schools can now have latin, french, german, programming etc..

However there are several factors that are going to be problematic as we seek to scale up. 1 will be grading. While it isn't that much harder to teach to a virtual classroom than a standard,trying to grade for large numbers of students will be problematic. And yes I realize that rather that presenting content multiple times you can record the presentation once and replay it. However if you aren't available at the time of watching to answer questions learning will be degraded. Plus I believe that presentations should be tailored by each class period.

2. Access to adequate technology simply isn't there yet. You would be amazed at the number of students who do not have access to internet with the exceptions of their phones. Only 10% of my students have a home computer with less than 20% having high speed internet access. Short of govt sponsored technology grants we are decades away from implementation at home.

3. What to do with students during the day. Technology is not at a state that most students can stay home and complete their work even if they were so motivated. That's assuming that they are old enough/responsible enough to be left alone. Do they get sent to the now teacherless schools to take online classes? I know you could potentially pay a proctor less but classroom management will be a huge issue. Putting random people in a room with no power is a recipe for disaster and will still require an adviser for every 30 or so students.

4. Early childhood- In order to adequately work in an online world students will need to be able to read and have a least a basic grasp of technology. They will need actual teachers to get them to the point that this is even remotely a possibility.

I could keep going with potential logistical problems but for right now those are big enough obstacles to render full online ed a moot point.

This is doing wonders for OK's reputation and ability to attract companies and talent.

Here is what your kids can look forward to for textbooks.

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This is a textbook from my daughter’s class. It’s a history book and the current President in it is George W. Bush. We can do better Oklahoma.

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No way they're putting the Obama presidency in a textbook.


LINK

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Yes, WAY in the future

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Define "way" in the future?

In any case. When tech is in the picture, you know what accelerates its adoption?

Comparative cost, that's what.

In any case, it's all about tipping points. If a district reaches a certain % of households who do not have kids in public school, at some point, it will be virtually impossible to pass legislation to fund those schools.

One of my favorite things to study in economics is the concept of tipping points. The graphs of the demise of things(or adoption of them) are basically never smooth. They almost always, to steal a term, hockey stick in one direction or the other. The reason is that they hit a tipping point whereby adoption in either direction accelerates exponentially.

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You're presuming quality and your ignoring that, apparently, you may be getting what you pay for, dilapidated facilities and quality teachers going to TX where they are paid more, leaving the children of the great plains poorly educated and teachers on strike.

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I'm assuming nothing. I'm speaking to the reality that you don't pay any more than X if X gets you quality and quantity you need. It was related to the post I responded to which seemed to think that just because you might have more money, you should give people a raise.

That's not how it works.

We could also address the reality that teachers are also fricked up in their approach to differential pay.

Paying the Art teacher the same thing you pay a qualified Physics teacher is stupid on steroids.

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leaving the children of the great plains poorly educated and teachers on strike.

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Dumb voters are what KS and OK leaders are counting on.