Kathleen Wynne Gets It Right With Teachers

[socialist]

You wont be anything by the end of this month you have already said you Mr. Canada trolling us.

When did I say I was Mr. Canada trollling "you"? Please offer up evidence, or quit makin false, baseless accusations.

[punked]

When did I say I was Mr. Canada trollling "you"? Please offer up evidence, or quit makin false, baseless accusations.

Many posters here followed that exchange on the sidebar don't worry.

[socialist]

Many posters here followed that exchange on the sidebar don't worry.

Mo proof. Typical garbage, punked. Grow up already and quit thinking you're smart. I am not Mr. C, so stop trying to stir the pot.

[hitops]

there are more important things to be concerned about than debt and deficits,,,,,,

If you believed that then you would be quite happy with your old deal. But I'm sure in your personal finances you are of course very concerned with it. When it comes to the rest of our money though.....hey deficits are not important.

There is very little to any connection between education outcomes and teacher compensation and benefits in the public sphere. The US spends more per student than any nation on earth and has terrible results.

Edited April 4, 2013 by hitops

[Mighty AC]

The US education system is a mess and they do spend more per student than the rest of the world. However, their teachers are compensated rather poorly when compared to those in Canada.

[hitops]

The US education system is a mess and they do spend more per student than the rest of the world. However, their teachers are compensated rather poorly when compared to those in Canada.

They make the same as teachers in Korea and Japan, but Korean and Japan have far higher costs of living and therefore those teachers in real purchasing power dollars are paid less. How are the Korean and Japaneses students doing compared to American students? Finish teachers make a good 6-7K less than American teachers, how are the Finns doing?

Edited April 4, 2013 by hitops

[Mighty AC]

I'm not saying that teacher compensation equates to better system performance. However, you did imply that teachers in the US are well compensated, which isn't the case. We don't want to pay teachers too much or too little. It's an important job and we want intelligent, educated people in that field. Pay too little and you only attract those with a wealthy spouse or who can't find employment elsewhere. I think we have the pay scale set about right in Canada.

[hitops]

I'm not saying that teacher compensation equates to better system performance. However, you did imply that teachers in the US are well compensated, which isn't the case. We don't want to pay teachers too much or too little. It's an important job and we want intelligent, educated people in that field. Pay too little and you only attract those with a wealthy spouse or who can't find employment elsewhere. I think we have the pay scale set about right in Canada.

I disagree. US teachers are paid quite well, unless you are saying all teachers are paid poorly in which case US teachers still make a solid wage compared to most places. Consider the wages of teachers by country:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/11/education-compared-oecd-country-pisa

Those are stated in USD. But once you consider the significant purchasing power parity advantage of Americans over most other developed countries, it changes. GDP per capita corrected for PPP is $48K in the US vs $40K in Canada. Just to clarify, this means that if you reverse the numbers, you get the correct ratio. So in this case, it means something who makes $48K in Canada has a similar standard of living as someone who makes $40K in the US, a ratio of 1.2. Looking at that link, the US and Canadian teacher salaries therefore become equal, same with Germany (ratio 1.23).

Checking the top 6, actually the US teachers are paid more or equal to the top, except the outlier Luxembourg. So I would disagree that they are necessarily 'making less' than other countries.

Edited April 6, 2013 by hitops

[Pliny]

I disagree. US teachers are paid quite well, unless you are saying all teachers are paid poorly in which case US teachers still make a solid wage compared to most places. Consider the wages of teachers by country:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/11/education-compared-oecd-country-pisa

Those are stated in USD. But once you consider the significant purchasing power parity advantage of Americans over most other developed countries, it changes. GDP per capita corrected for PPP is $48K in the US vs $40K in Canada. Just to clarify, this means that if you reverse the numbers, you get the correct ratio. So in this case, it means something who makes $48K in Canada has a similar standard of living as someone who makes $40K in the US, a ratio of 1.2. Looking at that link, the US and Canadian teacher salaries therefore become equal, same with Germany (ratio 1.23).

Checking the top 6, actually the US teachers are paid more or equal to the top, except the outlier Luxembourg. So I would disagree that they are necessarily 'making less' than other countries.

A solid statistical argument, hi-tops. I generally dislike it when someone presents some statistic as proof of some fact. Statistics are something that have to be interpreted and often data is missing as regards correct interpretation.

Such as occurred here with a simple look at who gets paid more where.

Hats off to you!

[Mighty AC]

Well argued indeed. Hitop's, post peaked my interest about PPP though. I wonder if countries like the US with massive wealth disparities have artificially high PPP numbers.

I'm also curious about how avg wage numbers are calculated as they appear low across the board. Do they just average the salary for all grid positions or do they use actual pay data? The Ontario grid ranges from $45K for the first year low to $94K for 10 year high. Since, teachers would be at the max position for the bulk of a typical teaching career and due to demographic issues, avg teacher age is higher than normal, the listed $54k salary seems low.

[hitops]

Well argued indeed. Hitop's, post peaked my interest about PPP though. I wonder if countries like the US with massive wealth disparities have artificially high PPP numbers.

I'm also curious about how avg wage numbers are calculated as they appear low across the board. Do they just average the salary for all grid positions or do they use actual pay data? The Ontario grid ranges from $45K for the first year low to $94K for 10 year high. Since, teachers would be at the max position for the bulk of a typical teaching career and due to demographic issues, avg teacher age is higher than normal, the listed $54k salary seems low.

I don't know that much detail about the teacher salary sources. What I do know is that at least once or twice per month I say the following sentence "If only I could shop on Amazon.com rather than .ca" This is simplistic example but explains the differences I'm talking about in purchasing power. Obviously 40K USD in some Africans countries would let you live like a king. That's where PPP comes in as a useful metric.

If you want to get technical, you can check nationmaster.com which has all kinds of cool statistics. It's very difficult to properly calculate purchasing power parity because goods don't always move in the same direction vis a vis cost. Some people use the 'big mac index' or the 'can of coke' index which basically calculates how many man-hours of work it takes to get a big mac or coke in a given country. Ultimately the measure is how much do you have to work to get stuff? The reasons big mac and coke are used is because they are available pretty much everywhere. Of course, shipping costs, local foods costs etc are all different so it's far from perfect. There is not perfect way to determine this.

[GostHacked]

Capitals and grammar are education of the ancients. We are educating for

the 21st century, and that is why there is a big push for 21st century

skills. Spelling, capitals, etc., things that you think are important

aren't in today's global hi-tech world. Your type of education is stuck

in the 50s. Leave the educating to the experts, and join the peanut

gallery who know nothing about 21st century education.

Actually being involved in technology for over a decade now. I find the current use of how to spell things quite disturbing. Proper grammar and such is an essential part of communicating effectively with any language. I find it deplorable that a teacher would not want to teach the proper use of the English language or any language for that matter. You wonder why people look confused at you when you speak large words or in full sentences? This is part of the reason.

I think it would suck to live in a world where the language has been dialed down to the point of acronyms and such. I have used the newspeak leetspeak, or whatever you want to call it now and then. But in very few occasions.

You value the input teachers have, at the same time not worrying about proper use of the language.

In a word (that was a movie) Idiocracy.

Edited April 9, 2013 by GostHacked

[CliffStir]

No one cares about spelling and grammar anymore. It is not a priority in schools anymore. You need to get with the times.

No one cares about spelling and grammar anymore?

That's the problem, and I dare say, one of the main reasons that educated people (you know; the ones that can spell and put a coherent sentence together?) feel that teachers are getting paid well enough as it is.

If you are not going to teach the three R's any more than why the heck should we be paying you more?

Math is obviously not important to teachers any more either, since it should be obvious to anyone with a (old style obviously) grade 5 education that you can't take more tax dollars out of the pot than you put in. And the Politician's have allready cleaned out the cookie jar so there's nothing left for teachers.

Teachers in this province have one of the best deals going compared to the tax payer, so please stop whining about how hard done to the teachers are in this province. I ain't buying it.

That's not to say that I don't respect teachers, and it doesn't mean I don't beleive they should be paid well and fairly for the task they do. I just don't buy into the constant whining and 'woe is me' attitude Not when I see what they get back from the system.

And the Libs did what Politician's do. Rob Peter to pay Paul, then when Peter finally pushes back, they do the reverse. Hell, it's not as if it's THEIR money eh?!?

And by the way, look around the world and look at history; the better the education available to the massess the less oppression there is.

The two best ways to keep people under your thumb is to keep them illiterate and then hook them on religious superstition. cheaper in the long run than paying thugs and goons to browbeat your subjects into compliancy.

So YOU may not think that proper spelling and grammar is important, and if you ARE in fact about to become a teacher, then that's yet more proof that teachers are getting too much from the system.

Edited April 9, 2013 by CliffStir