American Morning
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October 8th, 2009
03:00 PM ET
We Listen – Your comments 10/8/2009
Editor's Note: Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush's education interview garnered the greatest response from American Morning’s Thursday audience. Teachers’ pay was hotly debated by teachers and those in the private sector, some of whom claimed educators were overpaid.
- First Grade Teacher: In reference to your morning coverage about education with Jeb Bush: A crappy doc still gets paid, so I believe that it is an unfair strategy to say that teachers should get paid based solely on results. (Can anyone imagine if we paid the presidents on their performance?) Remember that teachers cannot change the parents and the parental involvement! Extending the day will not change the home life, the learning problems, and the motivation of students, parents and students accountability and so much more, let alone provide the resources, man power and materials to support the students that we have to make the needed changes that everyone expects. Mr. Bush and other lawmakers, when was the last time that you were in the classroom working, teaching, planning, dealing with the children and parents that you are talking about? Not just listening to other peoples experiences or looking at data?!? What is the compensation for playing the parental role in the classroom before being able to teach? I am a teacher. I get up at 4:30 every morning to be at work 2.5 hours before I am required, and stay at least 1-2 hours after work, take work home to work on PLUS I am going to school for my master’s degree, which I pay for because I am REQUIRED to have it in order to keep my job. People wonder why we don't have effective and fantastic teachers in the classroom. I am a social worker, parent, care giver, then an educator. You have to do this job out of the goodness of your heart! Three months off – HA! I spend my summer in required conferences, preparing my classroom and materials for my students, going to school, and sitting in meetings among so much more… plus try to have a home and a family. This coming after I spend nine months working 12 plus hour days every day, every week. I would love to see the majority of the lawmakers be as effective as they expect in the classroom in the conditions that many schools are currently in. I would enjoy seeing and learning from their greatness because obviously, I'm not doing the best job. Don't worry about considering the given that the students, expectations, requirements, peanuts and lack of appreciation I receive!!! Please be careful to make huge changes, demands and unrealistic expectations without preparing and supporting the ‘ineffective' teachers that are crazy enough to put their heart and soul into this job, doing the best they can considering. Along with your expectations, please expect to put LOTS of money into the education system (and not all for our pay) to support the needed accommodations to produce the results you are referring to. 26 six-year-olds to 1 teacher…I guess I need to be a magician. Please look at whom and what teachers are starting with and realistically set expectations. I work hard for often the small gains the students’ produce, but the life they are living is often the biggest barrier, and teachers have NOTHING to do with that aspect and can not change that!
- David: Teacher's Salaries: The comparison of teachers salaries to lawyers and doctors salaries is absurd. How many teachers have advanced degrees? Compare teachers salaries to the average salaries of other college graduates and you will see teachers are well paid for the 9 months they are in session. They earn every penny and should get more based on their productivity, just like the rest of us.
- Mick: Bad comparison regarding teacher salaries. The $43,000.00 is for a 180 day contract & a B.S. Edu. degree requiring only 12 hours in the discipline you teach. Hardly a fair comparison with the advanced degree programs, internships, residencies & liabilities of medicine & law. But why be fair?
Can private sector jobs be compared positions in public education? Are you a parent who believes your school’s teachers should be paid based on the performance of the children they teach?
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Dear Kiran,
I like watching American Morning with you and John and respect that in most cases you are trying not to express your personal opinion on subjects for discussion. Your interview with Jeb Bush, unfortunately, was, in my opinion, very poor piece of work. You provided very misleading information in regard to salaries of teachers, layers and doctors. Stating that the size of teachers’ salary is the reason for the bad USA education ratings comparing to other countries is completely inaccurate. Actually, both statements, from you about teachers’ salary and from Mr. Bush about paying salaries base on performance, are very misleading. I hope that you did not suggest that because of low salaries, teaches intentionally provide bad education. In regard to a salaries size, not only your numbers were incorrect, but you also did not compare years of education, size of debts for getting such education, work hours, vacation time, availability of pension and other benefits, possibility to be sued, requirement to obtain and pay for continuing education and etc. By the way, there is another statistical number very much worth mentioning, suicide rate for doctors is 3 times higher than national average rate. Than means doctors commit suicide 5 times more often than the rest of us. You did not analyze any of that. As an anchor of the National News Channel you must do much better job, because, you create public opinion on such important issue as education, probably the most important issue in our country today.
I am not an expert on the subject, but just looking at countries where kids get much better education than in the USA, one would realize that it is not money spent on school reconstruction or teachers’ salary that make the difference. For the most part it is parents who install work ethics into kids from very early age. Unfortunately, many parents in the USA do not make necessary efforts. It is also our culture and media is the main factor in steering kids from importance of education by create fetish with people who in many cases do not have even high school education but make a lot of money. Teachers’ quality is another very important factor, but just paying them more is not going to help. Think about it and try to make a difference, because, you have power and you can.
How many public schools did Jeb Bush attend?? Teachers should be paid more. They give a service much more needed than lawyers. Without teachers there would be no lawyers. I'm a RN who teaches in a college. We have to take thousands of dollars in pay cuts to teach RN students. Public schools are not well funded and should be. Teachers spend a lot of their money in their classrooms. Just like in all professions, there is good and bad. Lets reward the good teachers and hold the bad ones more accountable. Regardless, they need to be paid a lot more.
As a Florida taxpayer and husband of a Master Special Education teacher with 30 years of Public School experience, I can honestly say Jeb Bush was disasterous for Florida's educational system.
No one ever considers that a public school gets roughly 17% of a student's time every year... the rest of the time they are in the care of their parents.
If a parent is working two jobs or more to keep their family's heads above water, they don't have much time for teaching their children important basics.
Schools and teachers can only work with what they get for raw materials and if a child has not learned discipline or respect, it's extra hard to teach them rocket science!
Hey guys,
Lots of breaking news this morning, but none comes even close to this one:
Kiran Chetry has HAIRY LEGS !!!!
Creepy but true!
Thanks Jay Leno for showing us the truth!
PS: is there a nobel prize for this?...
Jeb Bush has no clue what he was talking about. I am a product of Florida education and I can tell you that it is lacking. The No Child Left Behind Act does much more harm than good. It takes teachers and turns them into trainers because they have to teach to the test. They are underpaid and given what they do, regardless of how long they are in session, they don't get appropriate respect they deserve. Teachers should be one of the hardest jobs to get. Instead, we give it to anyone with a degree and a teaching certificate. Is it really any shock that we place so low in the world? Our teachers don't understand education and how to teach. They certainly aren't given the chance to learn either due to NCLB.
The topic of debate should not be how much to pay teachers, but what kind of resources are we putting into the American school system. We've neglected the quality of resources that teachers can use to raise ther productivity in the classrooms. That's why are math and science scores are so low. That's why so many of our children are illiterate. If we took some of the wasted billions of dollars out of this useless, imaginary war we're supposedly fighting in the mid-east and put that into new and updated literature for our teachers to use, maybe our educational system (which is supposed to have high standards for the richest nation in the world) wouldn't be so piss poor and a laughing stock to even third-world nations.
David and Mick must not know any teachers...The only teachers I know that do not have a Masters degree are those who just finished their Bachelor's degree and they start their Masters degree immediately. If David and Mick were married to teachers they would also know that we spend some of our salaries on our classroom on items that have been cut from our budgets for our students. They would also know about the hours we spend after our students leave school, sitting at our desks, grading, planning, and worrying about those things we can't change. What type of toll does your job take on your mental health? Do you worry about those children going home to no dinner, no place to sleep, to wander the streets, to parents who care but have no job, about the child whose parent committed suicide, or that child whose mother is dying of cancer....do you worry about your fellow workers as much? How do you rate that in productivity? Perhaps you feel that is not being productive and we should not be paid for that. Who is going to teach the next generation to worry about these things? I teach Math and work very hard teaching every student my subject. They are not computers, they are 12 years old and they come to me at different levels. They are supposed to learn what I am told to teach, on that day and to remember it until we give them a test at the end of 9 months that then determines how I did my job. Regardless of their cognitive development. Regardless of their having no dinner the night before, regardless of their living in conditions that we wouldn't let our dogs live in, regardless of mom's and dad's health conditions. Everyone in America does not live the way these people in suits think they live. I will admit that there probably are some bad teachers somewhere, just as there are bad doctors and lawyers, and other professions....I just think that alot of excellent teachers are being driven away from this profession because of this rhetoric . By the way, most teachers do not teach for the money.....or for the praise.....