web analytics

JerseySmarts.com

What I Hate the Most About the Start of a New School Year

Posted on by

Don’t get me wrong by the title of this entry. I’m essentially a professional student and I love the feeling of the last few days of summer just as much as the first few days of school. I know that’s a rarity, but there are some folks out there that love the whole idea of learning and increasing one’s knowledge, etc. Needless to say, this is a fun time of the year in my book.

However, there is one thing that I absolutely hate about this time of the year and you can find it on Facebook. That’s right, an anti-Facebook message on JerseySmarts.com!

What I hate is when all of these teachers and education industry people get on their Facebook accounts and complain that they have to go back to school. WHAT?! You’re complaining that you’re dreading going back to school!?! First of all, what balls to say that in New Jersey where there are thousands of laid off workers who only wish they were going back to school!

Second, it’s your JOB! Sure, I bitch about my commute quite often and yes, I might get annoyed at one of my managers from time to time, but you’ll NEVER catch me (or anyone with any common sense) complaining that they have a job to go to tomorrow. That’s utterly ridiculous!

And, without fail, the same bevy of complaints come in from teachers and education industry people that are in near-comatose states of mind because they’ve spent the last three to four months sitting around doing as close to nothing as possible. Get real, people! The entire world is out there working everyday of the summer and teachers have the gall to complain that their three to four month vacation is coming to an end? Shut up!

Complain about your commute, complain about your bratty little kids that you teach, complain about the extremely overpaid administrators in your districts…but don’t complain that you have a job to go to and don’t complain that you actually have to work for a living. Good grief! And people wonder where this entitlement mindset comes from with some of these teachers?! Then again, it was no surprise to anyone with a year-round job (i.e. 90%+ of the entire workforce) that teachers complained about having to pay into their healthcare system. I wonder if the teachers heard that collective laugh when they started complaining about the 1.5% or 2% (I don’t remember what it was) that they had to start contributing.

A final thought – I’m a guy for education reform at all levels. For example, teachers should absolutely pay more into their retirement system, but they should also receive an increase in pay (not necessarily on par with the money that they’re paying into the system, but some small increase to bring them closer to a living wage). That said, teachers are government employees – plain and simple. When the government has no money, then teachers should not get raises. It’s part of having a government job.

However, one of my favorite education reform ideas is increasing the school year. Think about it – we prepare our students for the real world by telling them, “You’re on vacation from the end of June through the beginning of September – go have fun!” Completely ridiculous. What does that prepare them to be in life? Well, I guess you could argue that it prepares them to be teachers, but we have enough of those already! I bring this up because imagine the complaints coming from the teachers and education industry if summer vacation was reduced from two and a half months to two or three weeks!? Ha!

The New Jersey Education Debate – Reality vs. Fiction

Posted on by

As my time in Chicago quickly draws to an end, I want to continue the education reform entries for this week on JerseySmarts.com. Again, as I trolled through the archives of information that I wanted to share with you fine folks I came across this entry which had quotations from a variety of sources talking about the great education debate in New Jersey. Let’s hear it from their own mouths.

Christie told the The Associated Press in an interview that he will offer more state aid to all school districts whose teachers agree to a wage freeze for the 2011 fiscal year.

There you go. Anyone who says that Governor Chris Christie isn’t trying to work with those teachers and local unions that are sharing in the sacrifice is lying. Now you know that so when you hear someone saying how Governor Christie is attacking the wrong people (teachers instead of bureaucrats in Trenton), you know that the person saying that is a liar.

The offer won’t cost the state any more money. The Republican is offering to give districts all the money the state would save on Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes as a result of the wage freezes.

Sometimes the best solutions really are the easiest ones to accomplish, huh?

Already teachers in several districts, including in West Essex, Boonton, Montclair and Metuchen, have voluntarily offered to freeze wages.

And no one, by any means, who is in favor of education reform in New Jersey thinks that the teachers or the local unions are the problem. A great big “congratulations!” goes out to the teachers in these districts. They are changing education in this state for the better. Thank you!

But if teachers agree to wage freezes, districts could see more than a 7 percent increase in aid. For example, a district that saves $1 million in salaries as a result of wage freezes would receive an extra $75,000 in state aid.

“Maybe that helps to fund another teacher position or two, or a sports program that they might otherwise had to cut,” the governor said.

Are these programs not worth saving? As a former student athlete, I think that they are worth saving and I would hope that local teachers’ unions put their money where their mouths have been (literally) and take a one year pay freeze to support the programs that support their students.

“Gov. Christie is a very shrewd politician, and he’s using crafty political tactics to impose his agenda on the state,” NJEA President Barbara Keshishian said recently in a statement. “But when he turned his attack machine on teachers and school employees, he really stooped to a desperate new low, because our members are not the problem.”

Ms. Keshishian, your teachers are not the problem… the leviathan that your organization has become is the problem. Disassemble the NJEA now and allow countywide and local teachers’ unions to represent the true interests of their members. The time has come for the NJEA to stop getting in the way of the education reform that New Jersey so desperately needs.

Just a Reminder About The Facts in New Jersey’s Great Education Debate

Posted on by

While I’m in Chicago searching for new ways to enhance New Jersey’s charter school industry, I hope that you’re doing well in New Jersey or from wherever you’re reading this blog! I was scanning through my archive of information that I’d eventually like to post on this blog and I came across the video below. What strikes me in the video is the discussion about money. What the hell does the NJEA do with all of the money that it collects from its members? In a state where charter schools aren’t even funded equally on a dollar-for-dollar basis, but the vast majority achieve higher academic results than their district neighbors, I think the taxpayer has a right to know where the $130 million that the NJEA collects in dues goes each year.

Listen up, particularly, around the 1 minute mark when Governor Christie starts talking about the truth about the “it’s about the kids” argument. In the Governor’s own words, “It’s easy to say it’s about the kids when…” Watch the video below to find out how the Governor finishes that line!

Enough is enough of the same old crap in New Jersey’s broken education system. The time has come to fully fund charter schools and to break the unnecessary (and, frankly useless) statewide teachers’ union. There’s no need for a statewide association when countywide and local teachers’ unions are the source of the state group’s power. Break the NJEA now and save the future of education in New Jersey!

Do Something Different After High School Graduation

Posted on by

This is the time of the year when almost everyone is involved in a graduation ceremony either as a guest, a relative or friend of a graduate, or someone who is walking up the stage to get their diploma. And, at most of these gatherings, the guest speaker will stick to some tried and true topics including how a college degree will get you further in life than no degree at all.

I really hate when people say that because it’s an oversimplification of a very real, complex economic situation. A college degree, in and of itself, does not advance a person’s earning potential or professional advancement opportunities. In fact, anyone who believes that simple statement probably would like to buy some beans that I picked up the other day…

What a college degree does do is grant a person access. It is this access that is the most important part of receiving a college degree. The piece of paper that your degree is written on is good and might help you to secure a larger raise or a higher starting salary, but most importantly it gives you access to professions and organizations that you might not have otherwise been able to access. This, of course, doesn’t mean that those folks who decide to stay away from college cannot attain the same level of access. Not at all. It does mean, however, that the person with the college degree might find a more favorable way through the employment door and a more attractive compensation package, though.

The New York Times published an article about this topic yesterday and this portion of the text caught my eye:

Among the top 10 growing job categories, two require college degrees: accounting (a bachelor’s) and postsecondary teachers (a doctorate). But this growth is expected to be dwarfed by the need for registered nurses, home health aides, customer service representatives and store clerks. None of those jobs require a bachelor’s degree.

Professor Vedder likes to ask why 15 percent of mail carriers have bachelor’s degrees, according to a 1999 federal study.

“Some of them could have bought a house for what they spent on their education,” he said.

Now, with all of this being said, I still want to make the point that going to college at some point (maybe not the first year after high school) is still a great thing for people to do. In fact, the New York Times article from yesterday agrees with this passage:

There is another rejoinder to the case against college: People with college and graduate degrees generally earn more than those without them, and face lower risks of unemployment, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Even those who experience a few years of college earn more money, on average, with less risk of unemployment, than those who merely graduate from high school, said Morton Schapiro, an economist who is the president of Northwestern University.

“You get some return even if you don’t get the sheepskin,” Mr. Schapiro said.

He warned against overlooking the intangible benefits of a college experience — even an incomplete experience — for those who might not apply what they learned directly to their chosen work.

“It’s not just about the economic return,” he said. “Some college, whether you complete it or not, contributes to aesthetic appreciation, better health and better voting behavior.”

It’s a proven fact that a college degree helps people along, but my spin on the story is that it helps by granting access. Benefits don’t magically appear to those with degrees – you still have to work hard to achieve success.

Unnecessary Complications: Dealing with the Pampered Generation

Posted on by

Finals are over and some of my students are getting ready to walk across the stage during graduation this week. It’s pretty cool to say that I’ve now taught college graduates. However, with the end of the semester comes a bit of a pain in the ass. You see, I’m one of these professors that puts out a syllabus and then (gasp) sticks to it. In other words, when the syllabus says, “Cell phones use is not permitted in the classroom,” that means (get ready for it) that you can’t use your cell phone during class. Shocking, right? When I write that not participating in class discussions can negatively impact your class grade by dropping it more than a full letter grade, guess what that means?

That’s right! It means that if you opt to have a blank stare on your face during the entire semester then you get pretty close to 0 of the 25 points allocated for participation!

Let’s face it – many of today’s college students were whisked through high school and really not properly prepared for the rigor of college-level study. To make matters worse, these students were typically pampered all of their lives by hyper-protective parents, teachers that opted to teach plain vanilla course content as opposed to creating an engaging classroom, and an overall failing educational system that doesn’t mind giving students a higher grade for their “effort.”

That crap doesn’t fly in the real world. If you miss a deadline for your company or submit work that is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, you get fired. Period.

You might say that if it is the job of the secondary education system to prepare students for the rigor of college study, then it is the job of the college system to prepare students for the rigor of higher level occupations. That’s my job as an adjunct professor. In fact, I believe that my job as an adjunct professor is to bring outside experience into the classroom and show my students what happens in the real world through the scope of the course that I’m teaching. It’s a tricky game, but I enjoy doing this type of work because I see the quality of students coming out of most colleges and they’re just not prepared to be engaged employees. It’s a damn shame, really.

To some degree, I think that for most students I unwillingly represent the exact opposite of what they’re used to from their high school teachers. I stress “unwillingly” because I don’t think that I’m doing anything outlandish or crazy in my grading. I think that when a student does not engage herself in class discussion because she is clacking away on her BlackBerry device for the majority of the semester in a class that places 25% of the final grade on participation, then the best that student can hope for is a 75 in the class. Okay, maybe if she engages in a few discussions throughout the semester, she can find herself with a 78 or 79.

Too often, the pampered generation of students expects that if they receive a B average on their written submissions and have spotty attendance and no participation, then they’ll just get the B average. I’m not sure on what planet that would make sense, but it doesn’t work in my classroom. I create a grading matrix in an Excel spreadsheet and detail for each student how they can receive an A in the course. In fact, I give them a copy of the spreadsheet so they can track their grades throughout the semester. I also suggest to the students when/if they need to be more engaged in class discussions so they can get some participation points. There’s not much more that I can do to help these students other than resemble some of their pampering high school teachers and I’m not interested in that at all.

Thus far, about 15% of my students have questioned their final grade and I’ve suggested that they lacked on the participation requirement. None of the questioning students have responded to my replies on their participation, but I expect that in a generation that has rarely been told, “no,” or “bad job,” that a few of them will lash out at my responses. Unfortunately for them, I don’t have to worry about getting tenure or receiving any type of accolades from my students since I’m given teaching assignments when/if the college needs help.

If you’re a college student out there contemplating complaining about your final grade, I would suggest that you get out your syllabus and look at how your grade is calculated. If participation is 15% of your final grade, then ask yourself if you participated in each class session. If not, then do you think that you deserve those 15 points? If you answer, “yes,” to that question, then you’re probably the result of a pampering system that doesn’t teach you in the context of the real world. If you answered, “no,” to that question, they you probably wouldn’t complain about your final grade anyway.