One might also note that it is the Oregon School Board Association who opposes the creation of a statewide pool of teaching employees for health benefit purposes, which would hopefully have the effect of reducing health benefit costs.

Not the Oregon Education Association.

The School Board Association.

Russell--

I also say this as a teacher who went through a four week strike in the fall of 2005, thanks to the idiocy of a lawyer recommended by the OSBA. Our current school board has little nice to say about him now. We settled our last remaining issues this fall, after the Board got rid of the lawyer.

I'm a special ed teacher, who's involved on the district committee to monitor our compliance with IDEIA (the newest version of IDEA)as interpreted by the State of Oregon. What I find sadly amusing is the degree that the new regulations--supposedly designed to reduce paperwork time and amount of paper we handle--add to the paperwork we need to complete throughout the school year because we have to do more and have more papers on file to document our compliance with the new requirements.

Fourteen years ago my son started out as a kindergartener in special ed (speech services). He continued through most of his k-12 career. I have seen sped paperwork grow from a few pieces of paper to massive quantities of documentation, year after year.

The catch-22 is that neither IDEIA nor NCLB are fully Federally funded, but districts have to do every bit of the paperwork to keep what little funding they do get from the feds. And, as ODE informed us this fall in a regional training, if ODE doesn't ensure that we are in compliance, then the state loses the funding it gets from the Feds.

Fortunately, I have an excellent special ed director and great central office support that runs a check on all paperwork I send in to ensure that it's correct. Our district is probably one of the better ones in the state for special ed documentation and management.

Most school board members haven't a clue about the complexity of the paperwork involved not just with special ed, but with English Language Development programs and Title I programs.

Can someone tell me why public employees and school teachers, in particular, get such great benefits compared to the average private sector worker? Why, also, are they singled out for preferrential treatment to get to belong to a union? I don't understand why there is a disparity and that it is expected by these workers. Do they come from a priveleged class or something?

Greg: Why do public employees get such great benefits compared to the average private sector worker? Wrong question. Real question should be, "Why do private sector workers have such poor benefits, period?" Most teachers are members of a union. Only something like 12 percent of private workers are unionized. Teachers fought for representation like maybe you should.

Does this help at all?

Ben

Not really the answer I was looking for. Sounds like communist thinking, to me! I'm an I.T. contractor. It's kind of hard to "fight for representation" when I work for myself! Besides, the trend is to outsource this type of work to foreign workers in India and China. How can I possibly compete with that? Becuase I speak better English and am there "in person", that's how. Teachers and public employees have no competition, ask for the moon, and get it. The rest of us have to toil away while the public employees live a life of luxury. Not fair, in my opinion.

--GREG--

Your work is outsourced and mine is insourced and it's not fair. OK. I agree. But you propose to take away from other's employees because you as a business are getting squeezed? Now what I want is the damn illegal employment stopped, not for everyone else to get dragged down to us. Welcome to the world of plutocracy, some of us have had its foot on our neck for some time.

Hello Russell,

Your comments in italic my responses in bold

This is not a reason to avoid appropriating more money to public education. It is an argument for the urgency of health care reform because this problem is not limited to education or public employees. The increasing cost of health benefits is a problem for the public and private sector alike.

If the case is being made that the additional money would be used to reduce class size, it certainly is a reason to avoid appropriating more money. The question then becomes, what is the better use of public resources, lowering class size or, increasing teacher's health benefits.

priorities ought to be in each school district, the actual negotiations more often than not reflect the wishes of the teachers and school board in each individual school district.

With what appears to be only OEA 'recommendations', is it any wonder most people feel apprehensive about throwing money into a pot that can be subdivided 300 different ways? Do you see the problem some may have with accountability?

If teachers feel co-payments and deductibles mean a substantial loss of real income because those costs must come then come from their take-home pay, then they might trade larger class sizes for health benefits. But of teachers in a particular school district feel classes are so large they cannot teach effectively, then they might trade changes in health benefits for more money for new hires to reduce class size. As things work now, those decisions are made school district by school district and those negotiations will come after the Legislature makes a decision to appropriate additional money to public schools.

It'd be interesting to see statistics on how often teachers forgo money to lower class size. Do these decisions really depend on a sort of consensus of the teachers by school district?

And that is really what galls many Republican legislators. They cannot understand why public school teachers cannot be told they will simply have to accept reduced health benefits, and the very real wage cuts they represent, just like private sector employees. Many Republicans resent the fact that public school teachers get to sit down and discuss these tradeoffs with the school board because teachers have a union to do it for them.

So, you're really saying here that the teacher's are going to opt for the increased money -- not lower class sizes.

For the last 16 years, Oregon Republicans really believed that if the legislature simply refused to give education more money, the teachers would eventually accept what private sector employees have come to accept. The Republicans lived in Fanstasyland.

What is the subject of the first sentence of this paragraph? What is it that teachers would eventually accept?

That is not going to happen without the repeal of Oregon’s Public Employee Collective Bargaining law, and Gov. Kulongoksi or any Democratic governor would veto any such attempt.

What's not going to happen? I think you lost me in the last paragraph.

This is the reason that Oregon public employees cling to union models that “sophisticates” regard as relics of the Industrial Age. It also explains why Republican candidate Ron Saxton, who suggested firing all public employees and hiring them back at lower wages, lost in usually conservative counties like Marion -- which also has the largest concentration of public employees in the state.

It'd be interesting to see the make-up of Oregon's voting population, what percentage are public employees?

rightoregon.org

So. I see the right wing, no respect for teachers, whiner crowd has popped up overnight. Figures.

To Greg Tompkins: Teacher pay is hardly enough to guarantee anyone a spell in the lap of luxury, especially for young, beginning teachers who have school loans to pay off. The luckier ones are the mature folks who come to teaching as a second career, or who have a spouse earning the primary income because they do have a second income. Others struggle. My hourly income (when I figure it out) is less than that of most construction workers. Yeah, I've got the benefits--but hey, benefits don't put food on the table. Benefits don't pay the rent or mortgage. And the benefits we have--the health insurance being the biggest--are those that larger private employers (such as the one my spouse works for) routinely supply their workers (and, in fact, my spouse's benefit package and the share he pays is equivalent to what it would be if I picked up the family benefits myself). Additionally, private workers are often eligible for bonuses and incentive payments that public sector workers do not get. Private workers get merit raises in addition to yearly step raises (I've worked in the private system, I know the drill). If those don't count for bonuses, then I don't know what does.

We have fought for our benefits at the bargaining table, and sometimes even hit the picket line to make it happen. I am a teacher's child, and I remember enough of what it was like pre-1973, growing up without the benefits that we have now that at that time many, many other people had and took for granted at that time. Health benefits, retirement benefits--my mother went from no health insurance to trying to figure out how it worked, and her retirement monthly check was only a few dollars higher than her Social Security check.

I also notice that you raise the old bugabear of Communism. Gee, haven't you noticed, it died a long time ago? Only a few deluded sorts raise that specter.

Geoffludt: You asked if teachers had ever forgone money to lower class sizes. To some extent, that is what Portland Public school teachers did a few years back, when they almost went on strike and it took Katz and Linn to keep things from blowing up. They gave up 8 days of pay. Worked for free for 8 days. How many private sector workers would do that?

I have yet to meet a teacher or public employee I would consider "poor". You bring up the point about school loans. I have student loans, too, and you don't hear me groveling about them! I would advocate for people having a greater variety of choices for their children instead of the old worn-out status-quo we have today. I would say it's time to level the playing field and smash the bureaucracy. Oh wait, that might be considered too progressive.

jrw,

Stop throwing the label of "right wing" around to anyone who questions you. This is not a classroom full of impressionable children who has to sit and listen your ideas.

Second, have you ever wondered that you get paid less because you have the summer off? I don't see any private sector workers getting the bulk of June, July, and August off. Also, how much time and schooling did you put in to get that salary? Doctors and lawyers have to go to school almost a decade to earn the high bucks whereas K-12 teachers do their little 4 years, get their certificate, and then get raises based not on merit, but on mediocrity AKA seniority.

Can someone tell me why public employees and school teachers, in particular, get such great benefits compared to the average private sector worker?

I realize that my niece and nephew got good jobs with major corporations after they graduated from college and are thus not "average private sector workers". But among their benefits when he was promoted and transferred out of state were help with moving. And I think one of them is reimbursed for healthy activities like taking exercise classes.

I wonder who computes the benefits of "average private sector workers" and if that sort of benefits are part of the calculation. Or is this the sort of "no public employee should have pay and benefits the average secretary, construction worker, or sales clerk doesn't have" rhetoric by those who think we'd all be better off with the labor laws of the 1950s?

When people complaining about "private sector workers" start talking about the pay packages of public administrators (our school district has 3 administrators in the central office doing personnel work, and each makes around $100,000) then I will start taking them seriously. If we put the public employee labor laws back to the 1960s, what would that do to administrative pay packages? Or isn't that the point because management deserves whatever the market will bear as they are more deserving than front line workers?

LT,

I am not saying that we should devolve labor laws. Public employees mostly teachers start the debate when they go to the picket line or sit near me at the restaurant and bitch about their low pay. This in turn, leads to scrutiny of their employment status. If I worked 9 months out the year and got paid $40k with full health benefits, I would do my best to shut the fuck up and thank God for blessing me with job where I can sit in the same position for years without annual review by my peers and still get cost of living increases without earning it.

Young Oregon Voter:

Your ignorance is showing.

Oregon teachers today must earn at least a Master's degree in the subject they are teaching in order to get their first teaching certificate. Then they are required to continue taking classes, including the possibility of working toward more degrees, to renew their certificates on a regular basis. Many teachers spend their summers taking these classes--at their own expense (unlike lawyers and doctors, who can frequently either have an employer pay for their license renewal courses, or who can write off the expense on their taxes). Either that, or they're working a second job in the summers or during the school year. I can assure you that I've spent much more than four years to get my certificate (furthermore, lawyers only put in three more years past the bachelor's degree for a JD, and having worked as a paralegal in the past, I'd sooner teach than work in a field with the mores of the typical downtown law firm).

Your ignorance of evaluations in teaching is amazing, as well. All teachers are evaluated at least once a year by their administrators (if they aren't, that suggests something about the ability of the administrator). We are not evaluated by our peers; as far as I know, no one in the private sector is evaluated by peers but by their superiors. We are expected to set yearly performance goals and discuss them with our administrators.

Our employment status is year-to-year. We work 10 1/2 months a year (for pay; frequently most teachers are in the classrooms preparing for the new year at the beginning of August, for free).

And 40k plus benefits? Don't make me laugh. Are you aware of how many years it takes, and how many license renewals and courses/degrees it takes a teacher to reach that level on average? No teacher starts at that level. No one.

I know of corporate workers with comparable education who start at that level. Start at that level. With bonuses available. No further education required. Part of teacher advancement (and certificate renewal) demands that the teacher take college courses on a regular basis.

Furthermore, grow up and taste the coffee. You don't like the label of right wing--then don't espouse the rhetoric of someone who deserves it. Go away, small-minded right winger who can't seem to spell, punctuate, or properly conjugate a verb. All you seem to be about is telling people who disagree with you that they need to shut up, or shut the fuck up.

Young, I am the niece of a teacher, the cousin of a teacher, the aunt of a teacher and the granddaughter of a teacher. Maybe my niece has made $40,000 (although 6 years out of college maybe not, and she lives in another state), but I'm not sure the others did. Working conditions are another matter, esp. in older buildings where repair projects have been put off in districts with barely the money to get through the year (remember the Doonesbury cartoon?). And public school teachers must teach whoever shows up, often without help for students needing extra attention or have different learning patterns (I was above grade level in reading, below grade level in math--and kids today often have more problems than that).

There are a number of books about what actually goes on in schools like the one (was the author Kidder?) where the author stayed with a 5th grade class for a year, and an old book---but some of the issues are still present--called UP THE DOWN STAIRCASE. Kids are kids, they are not spare parts for a widget factory--they are individual human beings.

Karen Minnis never went to parent groups in districts like Hillsboro to explain her views on school funding (search Karen Minnis using the Google window on Blue Oregon--I think the most revealing one has a title like "Backstage with Karen Minnis"). If a party wants to have an anti-union ideology, they should feel free to do so, but shouldn't expect support from people who are teachers or have family/ friends who are teachers (or members of any other union.

When Republicans controlled the legislature, they did attempt to roll back the labor laws. The end to teacher tenure bill (no contract can go for longer than I think it is 3 years) was milder when it finally passed than the original bill which didn't seem to require any reason to be given for firing a teacher. There were a number of bills a few years ago which never got out of committee. One of them would have made it illegal to discuss certain working conditions in collective bargaining (HB 2982 in 2003). No discussion of restrictions on administrative packages--why is that?

Are you saying every teacher in Oregon has been on the picket lines, or are you just generalizing from a particular experience? Do you know for a fact that whoever it was who "sat near me at the restaurant and bitch about their low pay " makes $40,000 and does not live in one of those districts where a budget crunch forced them to work days without pay at the end of the school year? In what private sector job could professionals be required to work days without pay?

More than 10 years ago I had a debate like this with an older friend who lived alone--he was convinced teachers arrived at 8 AM and left at 3pm. Then he married a woman with school age children and wrote me about attending a parent teacher conference at 7:15 AM and how amazed he was about how awake and intelligent the teacher was at that hour.

I don't believe in stereotyping any group of people, incl. "all young voters......" or "all bloggers....". My experience substituting in over 60 schools over 15 years was not one of being able to stereotype teachers--I saw excellent ones and I saw lower quality teachers. But what profession has all members operating at top quality at all times?

You might want to do some research on things like administrative salaries. If you don't like teachers making $40,000, what do central office administrators deserve to be paid? http://news.statesmanjournal.com/state/sk_salaries.cfm

Check into how long it takes to get a teaching certificate, how much it costs, what is required to renew teaching certifcates. Don't say they "have the summer off" unless you know how many either teach summer school or are taking classes to renew a certificate or add an endorsement.

Read about current laws on school personnel here:

http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/342.html

That doesn't begin to go into the bureaucracy in certificate renewal--what many teachers groan about more than money is the dread they have every few years going through the process to renew certificates. Sometimes legislators have to intervene to get straight answers out of the Teacher Standards and Practices bureaucracy.

Russell is right. Now, if some Republicans want to campaign on "school administrators deserve whatever pay package they can negotiate, but teachers are overpaid", they can take their chances with the voters. There have been some retired teachers elected as Republicans, but they were not of the Minnis variety.

LT--

thanks for your excellent comments. As for an illustration of the certificate renewal bureaucracy--TSPC changed the rules on me. I got my Initial license (three year) during the period that they were revamping the Continuing License (either five or seven year, I can't remember now).

In any other profession, you'd be held to the rules in existence at the time you got your initial license. Not so for teaching, at least in Oregon with TSPC. I planned my training so that I could go straight from an Initial License (which is what my current license is) to a Continuing License. Now I am told that what I hold is an Initial I license, and the only option I now have for renewal is an Initial II license, which is also only good for three years. I meet all the qualifications for a Continuing License save one--the number of years I've taught.

The cynic in me looks at the cost of the license and wonders if collecting the extra fees for the shorter license period is a factor in this change.

Nah. Can't be. Our educational bureaucrats wouldn't do that to us now, would they?

Riiiight.

jrw---in any commercial establishment (at least the ones I have worked for) anyone who sassed a customer/client over the phone or in person would be disciplined--if they still had their job. Your first comment describes people who have gotten their first certificates relatively recently. My first certificate was back in the early 1970s and instead of having a library endorsement on my original certificate, it was called "library norm". Only a 5th year required back then (I came to Oregon with a degree and having student taught in kindergarten in another state), not a Masters. But the flip side of that is not fitting into a simple category of renewal and getting tripped up by some of the rules about people with older certificates.

The last time I renewed my certificate, I studied carefully what classes I should take to renew. As I recall, that included visiting the TSPC website, calling TSPC, and probably also talking to the college (although sometimes talking to a college about such stuff can be almost as frustrating). Then I took the classes.

Then I called TSPC with one small question "now that I have taken the following classes..." and a very snippy person told me I had taken the wrong classes. Of course, as a substitute, I didn't have a dept. head or principal to intervene. But I had been in email dialogue with a state rep. who wrote about that time, "I hear TSPC is getting better..." and I wrote back a polite version of "Wanna bet?". Next thing I knew, he asked for documentation and I went to his office with documentation incl. a letter I had written to TSPC protesting the attitude of the person who had been snippy on the phone.

Some days later there was a phone call "Hello, I have a letter here from the director and another from Rep.---, how can I help"? Upshot was I was told exactly what to do, what boxes to fill in, and of course those were the right classes.

Next renewal year, I hadn't had much work as a sub and had been earning more in what was then a weekend retail job. Part of that was lack of school funding, I'm sure---one classified job I'd applied for was cancelled after the results of Measure 28. I couldn't get a straight answer from TSPC either by phone or email, and spoke to my newly elected state rep. who called the head of TSPC and got me a straight answer--and I decided that it was too costly to take the classes needed to renew (since I didn't have enough work experience in the life of the certificate).

I'd taken enough classes over the years (mostly summer school, some Spring Term late afternoon classes) to qualify for Standard Certification in Social Studies--except I didn't have the work experience because I couldn't land a full time job--too many applicants for too few jobs. I remember one summer being happy for a friend in summer school who had been subbing in 2 different districts and finally landed a full time job in one school. In my life I have interviewed as far away as Winston-Dillard, Prineville, and Astoria. I know how hard it is for teachers to find full time work. So when people like Young Oregon Voter start mouthing off about how all teachers hit the picket line and complain in restaurants about their salaries, I get really ticked. Thanks, jrw, for all you have said above.

A quick question for the teacher's in here.

How does compensation for private school teachers and public school teachers stack-up?

I'm not trying to make a point, I just want to know if anyone knows the answer and, what that answer may be. If you can back it, even better.

Many thanks,

geoffludt

Geoffludt--

My knowledge is old--at least 10 years old (from when my son was in parochial school and I was on the Parent Club board).

However, it depends upon whether you're talking Catlin Gabel or Oregon Episcopal or the neighborhood Catholic school as to salaries. My current parish is different from the one I describe below.

10 years ago the Catholic school salaries (at my particular school) were 10-15k lower than the neighboring public schools. Few to no benefits (unless you count free attendance at the school as a benefit worth 2k per kid). That was also one of the poorer Catholic schools in Portland, and it'd admit just about anyone.

However, teachers were not required to be licensed in the state of Oregon, and some of them were pretty dismal (at least one of the best ones was teaching parochial school until she finished her teaching license, and then she escaped to public school once she had her credential in hand). Some were outstanding. Some behaved in ways that would have gotten them fired in public school.

Quality of the education? Considering what we paid, very poor in the areas of science and math. My son had to spend a year catching up when he went to public school in those areas, and it was a good thing we were trying to supplement his learning through science camps. Social studies--so so. Reading--okay, but my son was a strong reader in 1st grade (he has a disability but it's not academic but Asperger's Syndrome). No music. No foreign languages. No labs for science. Minimal computers.

Classroom sizes were small--15-17 kids in the grade per year, but teachers complained if you asked for accommodations because they had "so many students" (many public school teachers would kill for those class sizes, and they accommodate just fine with 10-15 more kids in their classes). Discipline was awful, with, again, the complaint that there were just too many kids (150 kids k-8 in the school!). I gulped the first time I heard that complaint. I couldn't believe I was hearing it.

When we finally left this school for Portland Public, I was much more pleased with the quality of the teaching, the dedication of the teachers, and I never, ever heard the complaint "but I have so many students" when asking for an accommodation. Even with higher student loads.

My current parish pays a little bit better, and draws a higher quality of teacher, as well as trying to provide some benefits.

Private schools often depend upon legacies, ideological dedication, and former students to come back and teach, based on my observations. It certainly isn't the pay, and I don't think that parents are always getting what they think they're getting out of private schools if they're looking for academics--again, unless they're at the top dollar schools such as Catlin Gabel, OES, Jesuit, St. Mary's and so on. But those schools require tuition payments in the 15k range, or so I've heard--and that doesn't count massive parent fund raising.

Private school accountability is not always what you think it is, either. Parents can hold a public school much more accountable than they can a private school, and if parents in a private school rock the boat, they risk it being taken out on their kids. We were told that our role as Parents Club board was simply that of fundraising--we had no oversight role, no advisory role, and we were expected to keep our mouths shut and just bring in the cash.

I was shocked the first public school PTA meeting I attended where the principal got up and explained scores on statewide testing, how money was being spent at the school, and other accountability issues that I'd been told previously were off limits.

LT,

Quite a litany. The fact remains that teachers still get the summer off and still get a cozy salary, full health benefits, an enviable pension funded by the taxpayers, and raises based off of mediocrity AKA seniority. Oh, I forgot they also get winter break too.

I will give the new teachers a break in that they do spend an inordinate amount of time crafting curriculum. Give them 5 to 10 years and they will have it down like the back of their hand giving them time to enjoy those 3 summer months and winter break.

Your whole section on certificate renewal is the price the education system pays for being public and not-for-profit. The inherent problem in not-for-profit systems such as public education and hospitals is that excess funds are usually given to those at top AKA figurehead administrators. We agree on that.

Maybe we should stop this blame game of who cut funding for who and start thinking realistically about charter schools funded by parents for the sake of the children and not some administrator's want for a new mercedes. Yet, that invokes the ugly specter of corporations and people immediately become squimish.

What would be better than community or neighborhood ownership? Yet, the perennial question which dooms creativity and fosters adherence to old ways, is where do we get the funds?

My issue is that the kids in the classroom are the "beneficiaries" of trickle-down funding. Everything, but educating kids in classes gets paid first.

To that end, I really don't care if: 1) Every $100K admin gets cut 2) We pay teachers $250K a year Just spend some money on the kids.

When Teddy K tells us a 20% upside in revenues won't change student/teacher ratios, but rather pay for benefits, I am just a bit incensed.

Yet no one in the government or teachers union has a solution besides patching up the same old house-of-cards financing and yelling at taxpayers for being greedy.

As far as teachers losing 8 days of pay, two things: 1) They got an upside in benefit contributions 2) I worked at Intel and twice took 10% pay cuts for a year (25 days/year or 50 days total) so we could keep the company going without cutting heads.

As far as universal health care being the solution, I really doubt if the union given the choice of: 1) Lousy medical insurance they don't get charged for (the hope) 2) Great medical insurance they pay very little for (now) Will do a give back. It is not in their nature.

Sorry, the people who pay the salaries (taxpayers) see their great jobs/benefits leaving and yet they are stuck with higher taxes and worse schools.

Great, lets wave a wand and make everyone's job better, until then, asking public employees to do a giveback so that children can get a better education is not unreasonable. Welcome to the new economy.

"When we finally left this school for Portland Public, I was much more pleased with the quality of the teaching"

OK, who do you think would do better on PSATs the average PPS student or Jesuit/CentralCatholic student? I think you know that answer. I'll just surmise that the waiting list to get into these schools is enough.

Y'know, we can all help raise the average parish school salary if we allowed tuition vouchers. Just a thought to improve the life of others.

"What would be better than community or neighborhood ownership? Yet, the perennial question which dooms creativity and fosters adherence to old ways, is where do we get the funds? "

Young, given your age, perhaps you don't realize that schools were locally funded until Measure 5, and there were small local districts (like the elementary school district where I had my first job after college) before Speaker Campbell pushed through the district unification bill in the 1991 session. Now each district has to be K-12, not an elementary district and a secondary district. If you don't like that setup, it isn't because of how teachers are paid. It was due to actions of the Measure 5 sponsors (McIntire the most famous) and Speaker Campbell.

What creative solutions do you offer, YOV, or are you just complaining? Do you think that if each individual school did their own curriculum, personnel, etc. they would be better schools? What are your views of Do you advocate year round schools?

Let's hear your solutions. If you don't want teachers to have a summer and winter break, do you advocate they work 50 weeks a year? Doing what? Should students be in school 50 weeks a year?

Should we dispense with TSPC, and if so do you believe in teacher certification?

Or are you saying you don't want to propose solutions, just air grievances?

In Portland, when the Baby Boomer Generation was enrolled in the Portland Public Schools system, class sizes ranged from 30 to 40 students each, half-day kindergarten through high school. Classroom space was at a premium. Yet, Baby Boomers now head up large corporations, hold top elected offices and have been the backbone of today’s work force. Without a good education, these positions could not have been held. Now, when this generation is about to retire, many of the backbone working people soon to be on fixed incomes, they are being asked to support primary grade classes that are a third the size of when they were in school, and smaller classes through out the education system. This is bunch of political claptrap. It is financial tax rape of the populous. While private industry is working towards getting more productivity from each worker, educators and politicians are working in the opposite direction. Instead of a seniority pay structure, if teacher’s pay was based on the number of students taught and producing results, class sizes would not even be an issue. The students coming out of school today already expect instant gratification and to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Good work ethic is becoming a thing of the past. If small class sizes do become the norm, then too should yearly educational tax refunds to Oregon baby boomers who had to work through the rigor of larger class sizes to receive their education. Baby Boomers should not have to pay for what they never received.

LT,

Don't patronize someone who may be paying for your retirement soon. Here are my propositions. I expect to see yours.

If Oregon public schools converted to year round, then teachers would be justified in their pay, benefit and pension package. That would be one way. I don't see that happening anytime soon.

The other way would be to make more charter schools and private schools via a voucher system paid 50-50 between government and teachers. This will lead to issues of equity, but I do not know of any states or communities where a voucher system has been in place a decade or longer for adequate comparison.

A final way would be to make for-profit high school trade schools. These would be schools with stockholders where students costs are paid for and they are given apprenticeship with automatic journeyman status granted at graduation. Then the students would have the obligation to pay that back once they start working.

One huge problem with the public K-12 system is that it assumes a one size fits all for students. I am speaking of a middle sized city high school and a small town high school. I cannot speak for inner city schools where there are compass schools (correct me if I am wrong), but the 2 places where I went had no vision of themselves for the students. It was a broad, vague, all-encompassing mission about teaching that in the end, related to nothing. No specializing in languages, sciences, trades, etc. Just one monolith, institutionally reactionary beast that was there to employ teachers, not necessarily to be the best it can be for the students.

Hoo boy. Do we ever have the ideologues coming out of the closet here.

First of all: Young Oregon Voter says:Quite a litany. The fact remains that teachers still get the summer off and still get a cozy salary, full health benefits, an enviable pension funded by the taxpayers, and raises based off of mediocrity AKA seniority. Oh, I forgot they also get winter break too.

Officially, Young Oregon Voter, those times are NOT vacations. We are not paid for that time. This is a mistake that many people make. Teachers do not get paid vacations. If we want paychecks over a 12 month period, then we take a reduction in our monthly check to reflect a 12 month period rather than a 10 month period.

I am still educating my spouse that I have NO vacation times other than the times school is not in session. Depending upon the district, teachers may have to take sick days to deal with personal issues involving house repairs, medical appointments and the like. Or take the day off without pay. Just like many people in the private sector except--oh yeah, some corporations give you floating holidays and personal days.

Additionally, most teachers are not taking the summer off. Go to your local college campus and check it out. Or look at the number of teachers working as summertime house painters. Some of the oldtimers in my district have a regular paint crew going.

And just how the hell do you get off on attributing seniority and mediocrity? Not even corporate mavens are that stupid--in fact, quite the opposite.

Additionally, Young Oregon Voter, you say the following: The other way would be to make more charter schools and private schools via a voucher system paid 50-50 between government and teachers.

However, I will point out that test results do not justify the performance of charter schools. Public schools are scoring higher--go look it up for yourself. Charter schools and private schools are not required to employ certified personnel.

So. You had a problem with your schools, personally, so you want to rip the entire system up. You might want to gain some further experience before you wax so ignorant of the details.

(And, by the way, thanks to wise choices by my spouse and myself, I'm not dependent upon you for my retirement--a good thing since I don't expect one heck of a lot out of it)

TR writes: While private industry is working towards getting more productivity from each worker, educators and politicians are working in the opposite direction. Instead of a seniority pay structure, if teacher’s pay was based on the number of students taught and producing results, class sizes would not even be an issue. The students coming out of school today already expect instant gratification and to have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Good work ethic is becoming a thing of the past.

So children are nothing more than industrial widgets? There is a major issue with merit pay; it cannot be done fairly. Specialists in areas such as special education, music, PE, art, CAREER EDUCATION, TECHNOLOGY and health, while contributing to the value of a student's education, do not necessarily produce quantifiable results, especially in the one-size-fits-all No Child Left Behind assessments.

Now some will dismiss all those specialists as unnecessary and useless. I wonder what the same folks think about their school's athletic teams?

As for productivity from individual workers, today's teachers are expected to teach more, parent more, monitor students for abuse issues and supervise more students than the teachers of the baby boomers. Unlike the boomers, parents of an earlier era donned more responsibility for their children including the job of teaching mores, teaching personal hygiene, teaching responsible behavior, and so on and so forth. If the boomers and subsequent generations have problems with the work ethic and attitude of the current generation, I suggest they bloody well go look in a mirror to see who's responsible. It ain't the teachers, it's the parents.

Steve writes: OK, who do you think would do better on PSATs the average PPS student or Jesuit/CentralCatholic student? I think you know that answer. I'll just surmise that the waiting list to get into these schools is enough.

Y'know, we can all help raise the average parish school salary if we allowed tuition vouchers. Just a thought to improve the life of others.

Steve, I notice that you're careful to specify PSATs and not the SATs. I find that interesting. I'll also see your bet and call you, while pointing out that in Portland Public, there is a wider ability variety of student taking those tests than at Jesuit and Central. It is not an issue of Jesuit and Central necessarily doing a better job of teaching; rather, the issue is that Jesuit and Central skim the cream of the crop (except for athletic recruitments) while Portland Public takes all comers. Apples and oranges. Jesuit and Central can reject students with disabilities. Portland Public can't. That's a matter of fairness and discrimination. If you notice, the Archdiocese and all other Catholic schools very carefully leave out "disability" in their antidiscrimination statements that they publish yearly.

Public schools are mandated to provide a free, appropriate public education to all comers. Until and unless voucher schools, charter schools, and private schools are required to operate under the same rules, they should not receive taxpayer dollars. Period.

One reason that educational costs have risen is that parents of kids with disabilities have risen up and demanded that their kids have access to learning. It is fair. It is their civil right. Not all disabilities are academic. For many students, if provided the appropriate accommodations, specially designed instruction, and assistance, they can function in school and learn to be contributing, independent members of society rather than institutionalized drains on societal resources.

The drawback is that teaching these students is expensive.

Additionally, these days, it is determined that students must obtain training past high school--usually determined to be college in some form or another--and getting students with disabilities to perform at that level takes time, attention and money, when in the past a student could make a reasonable living with just a high school diploma. Societal expectations have risen, but at the same time, many people don't want to pay the price for those expectations.

Oh well. I suspect I'm just preaching to the choir here.

The best way for school funding is to cut the salaries of middle management, administrators and superintendents in half. No human being is worth the amount of money they make in over-inflated salaries and not-really-needed perks.

Don’t just cut the salaries of middle management, cut the salaries of top management too. In Portland, Superintendent Vicki Phillips earns five to six times the median income, has a highly paid Chief Operating Officer and a top heavy administration to assist in her in her work. Instead of streamlining administration, she has closed well performing schools in working class neighborhoods that have little or no clout while at the same time maintaining schools in wealthy neighborhoods keeping them open and dumping tons of money into continual low performing schools like Jefferson High. Not only is Ms. Phillips overpaid, but she appears to practice middle class discrimination too.

"is that Jesuit and Central skim the cream of the crop (except for athletic recruitments) while Portland Public takes all comers. Apples and oranges."

Very sensitive - children are like pieces of fruit. Fine, hand pick a population (disabled or not or whatever) leave them in a public/private environment and I'd put Jesuit/Central against them in any measure of performance.

Sorry, I've had too many friends who take their kids out of public school and transfer them to a Catholic school and, woila!, the kid does better.

On tuition vouchers, if you want to give disabled children 2x or 3x the normal voucher like in public schools, I am sure there are private schools that would take them.

Now if we can get the public teachers union to stop running away from any competition we might actually improve the school system. The union has always fought any objective means of measuring teacher performance and insisted on merit raises.

jrw,

Wow, that is low. I am done with this thread. This has degenerated into personal attacks from internal stakeholders. Have a good day now.

Thank you Eric and TR.

jrw is right.

If someone can design a merit pay system where something other than standarized test scores could be used, they might get somewhere. The most excellent teachers in our high school were measured (not officially, but by how students remembered them even decades later) not only by the intellectual rigor of their classes but how they inspired people.

In one case, many of my friends and I took World Lit. our senior year in high school because the teacher demanded college level work and the class was seen as good preparation for college. In Sr. English, we memorized lines from Shakespeare, read other literature, and had a final exam for one of the terms where we were given a premise about the way various treated virtues and vices (defined in the question) and told to write an essay on how the various authors treated those virtues/vices.
One of the boys in my Sr. English class said at the 25th reunion that he'd been planning to be an optometrist, but our Sr. English teacher was so great he became inspired to become a teacher. (BTW, when we went back for 25th reunion, we discovered that teacher had gotten fed up with public schools and gone to teach at the local prep school. Was he paid more, or just given more respect and less bureaucracy?)

For that matter, to graduate from 8th grade, state law in California said we had to pass a Constitution test which included questions on the US Constitution, writing out the Preamble longhand on the test paper, and ability to name our member of Congress, both US Senators, all the Justices of the Supreme Court.

That was back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Long before No Child Left Behind, or for that matter PL 94-142 which first allowed handicapped children in public schools. I suggest Young Oregon Voter read the book KAREN. I think the author's name is Killelea, although the spelling of that name may be wrong. Karen was a child with cerebral palsy (I believe that is what it was) and confined to a wheelchair. The local public school had steps to the door and said no one could attend if they could not climb the steps.

More recent court decisions have said schools are responsible for educating even children unable to feed themselves. If an autistic child is part of a family that moves into a rural district, that rural district is required to have the staff to care for and educate that student. That's a result of federal law. YOV--if you object to that law, say so.

When vouchers were on the ballot in Oregon one year I saw an advocate for the ballot measure in the lobby of some building I was visiting and asked a question. "Under vouchers, would all schools participating be required to enroll students in wheelchairs?". The response was "I sure hope so". Truth is, many private schools can reject such students, and can expel disruptive students (look into the power of public schools to expel disruptive students, YOV).

The reason the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed was that lack of accomodations made life very difficult for people with limited mobility.

I suggest that Young Oregon Voter find the Chalkboard website and read their suggestions. They were not funded by the teachers' union but by foundations. As I recall, they list librarians under the classification "money spent on direct classroom instruction".

Then I would suggest YOV visit some schools never visited before, public or private, and let us know what most impressed YOV. Should high schools have technology programs, career programs (auto shop, wood shop, agricultural programs in rural areas) or only the basics? What about foreign languages--from European languages to Asian languages? Are counselors and special ed teachers part of a good school? Should schools have athletic programs? Or just "basics"?

Then YOV should research merit pay and try to find ERIC (an education research article search site now online which used to be on microfiche in college libraries). Find copies of the magazine of ASCD, Assoc. of Supt. and Curriculum Directors---think it is called EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP---and read some of those articles. Find out where merit pay was tried and later disbanded. Find out if there is a current system of merit pay (wasn't Colorado in the news about this?) and how it is working. Read about evaluations. Find out if administrators are evaluated under the system or only teachers.

This may seem like a lot of work, but in the process YOV can learn the sort of research teachers do in summer school classes in order to pass what (at least in the case of the college where I renewed my teaching certificate) were mandated classes in order to renew a teaching certificate.

Then YOV can go find a school board candidate and campaign for that person to push the views YOV expressed here, or lobby legislators.

Unless, of course, all that YOV wants to do is complain.

Thanks, YOV, for revealing a greater political involvement than some might have guessed from the screen name. How many young people use terms like "internal stakeholders" unless they are political professionals of some kind?

LT--you picked that up on YOV too? There were a few other clues for me as well. My take is that said person just couldn't come back with any other response. But if YOV thinks what I said was low...pretty thin-skinned. Guess they want the right to call teachers names without being called on it.

You're also right, the book KAREN and FROM KAREN WITH LOVE details the experiences of the Killilea family raising a bright girl with cerebral palsy. The author was Marie Killilea, Karen's mother (and yes, I read both books at a fairly impressionable age). School issues were a major, major problem as this was the era where, according to one of my profs who had a disabled brother being raised during that time frame, the only education most kids with significant disabilities got was whatever crumbs parents could beg, borrow or plead out of providers both public and private.

Steve--I can quote you circumstances where exactly the opposite happened, where students were moved from Catholic schools to public schools and voila (the correct spelling!), things got better.

I know too much about Jesuit and Central to say that they'd outdo a school like Lincoln, Centennial, David Douglas (to mix up the districts a bit) if they were required to educate the same group of students.

The only way I have known private schools to start catering to students with disabilities (especially the high incidence disabilities such as learning disabilities and ADHD) is when they start losing students within their normal population (as in parish families) to the public schools because the private school doesn't serve them.

Additionally, you state the following: Now if we can get the public teachers union to stop running away from any competition we might actually improve the school system. The union has always fought any objective means of measuring teacher performance and insisted on merit raises.

Evidence, please. As I recall, it is not the union but the school board who approves or disapproves the formation of a charter school. I seriously doubt any union has the power to force any school board to vote against a charter school--rather, I suspect the Board itself prefers not to have the competition, especially since the State money then goes to those schools. You might want to take a look at those education bureaucrats who would quake in their boots at the thought of teachers running schools themselves--why, there might be a few administrative positions cut! And look at the school boards.

"Objective means of measuring teacher performances" Excuse me, but evaluation and observation methods are part of every negotiated teaching contract. Fact is, some administrators are diligent and fair about observing and evaluating teachers on a yearly basic, and some aren't. Some use evaluation (as do private sector supervisors) to force out teachers with whom they have disagreements. Performance evaluation processes are part of any union contract, not just teachers.

Teachers are expected to meet specific criteria when being observed in the process of teaching, including the use of methods, engaging student attention, maintaining classroom order, and the lesson plan itself.

"Merit raises"--now here, you're just wrong. Teachers do not get merit raises. We get cost of living raises, and if we take enough college class hours to improve our skills, then we move up the pay scale. If anything, teacher unions oppose merit pay because there is no fair way to determine who does and doesn't get it.

It might be interesting for someone to tabulate the educational levels, majors/grad degrees, and educational paths of the people WE choose to represent us in Salem. I am suspecting it might be eye-opening. And to help us first understand why our legislators behave as they do, as well as how OUR electoral decision making may not be guided by the principles that we believe. We might have a chance at fixing things if we do a little more self-examination first.

Excellent post Russell.

Good post Russell. I think it might be a good moment to remind readers that there are economic forces driving up the cost of education and other services that should be expected to continue to rise. Briefly manufacturing can increase productivity nearly perpetually. Intel is always producing better cheaper stuff just by investing more. Teaching can't do that. You can't teach more people faster every year. Intel competes to hire the same professionals that might be good science teachers so education salaries and benefits must continue to rise to keep teachers from taking factory jobs. This trend means we must expect to spend less and less of our income on goods, (DVD players are really cheap compared with VCRs and make even more profit for companies) and more and more on services. Dentists, teachers, lawyers, and other services will take a bigger and bigger percent of your income in the future no matter how much cost containment happens, just because productivity is limited compared to manufacturing.

People who use rhetoric like "if we can get the public teachers union to stop running away from any competition we might actually improve the school system" seem to forget there are human beings involved in the process. There were human beings involved in the process 100 years ago when teachers were very often unmarried women. Failure to specify where a current merit pay system is successful anywhere in the US is the problem of people who make such remarks, not the fault of ordinary hard working teachers who may or may not be active union members.

People talking about merit pay don't want to talk about how to evaluate special ed teachers. Lots of people would rather talk about that evil union than talk about the very real problems of very real students which would exist even if there were no collective bargaining for teachers. There are still people in the 21st century who make snide remarks about special ed students, and no amount of union bashing can blame those remarks on anyone but the people who say them. This was in today's Oregonian.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/news/116891971466170.xml&coll=7

Special-ed comments are target of censure Respect - A metro-area school board takes offense at a member's take on a special-needs students

Tuesday, January 16, 2007 KIMBERLY MELTON A Portland-area school board member faces censure tonight from fellow members critical of comments he made in December about special-education students.

Ron Chinn, a member of the Multnomah Education Service District Board, during a meeting last month referred to special-education students as "a bunch of slabs -- slow, low and belows." The comments prompted the board to draft the resolution condemning his "derogatory and discriminatory remarks."

During the Dec. 19 board meeting, Chinn made reference to a speaker at an educational workshop attended by board members. The woman had told her story about being considered a special-education student because of a physical condition................

One last word for those with opinions like Y.O.V.

Just now I read a job description for "sales associates" with a national retail chain. Here is part of the text:

".........you are paid for your performance. Our compensation plans provide opportunities for Sales Associates to earn an hourly base rate and the opportunity to earn commission and incentive pay on personal sales. "

What "merit pay" proponents don't seem to want to talk about is what specific incentives they would pay--added bonus for high test scores? for teaching in the most difficult schools, or hard to reach students?

There are privately funded efforts (like Salem's Crystal Apple Awards) to recognize excellent school employees. But merit pay proponents don't seem to want to talk about the logistics.

There was a guest opinion in the SJ today from Chamber of Commerce people talking about the need for students to learn teamwork and problem solving skills. Others have talked about the need for creative and critical thinking. Such things are not taught by teachers evaluated on the scores of multiple choice standardized tests like those required for NCLB.

OK, I give up you all are right. I have learned from this exchange that: 1) Any idea the public employees union doesnt like is flawed and never should be tried since private education can never be fair. 2) On tuition vouchers - Only rich kids should be allowed to go to OES, Catlin, Jesuit and poor kids get so much better an education at PPS they don't need it. 3) We should keep the status quo and pray that every time there is a 20% upside some might go to kids in classrooms and not all go to teacher benefits.

I apologize for the mis-spelling and even thinking there is an alternative to the existing education system. Foolish me for trying to be progressive. Lets keep hoping we get those 20% increases in budgets!

geofludt asks:

"How does compensation for private school teachers and public school teachers stack-up?"

As the parent of an OES student, I can tell you what the tuition is, and what the OES Board tells us each year when they raise tuition another 5-7%. My daughter is in the 8th grade. Middle School Tuition at OES is currently $18565 and the highschool tuition is currently $21500. I say currently because next month the new tuition rates will appear for 07-08 and will increase another 5-7% as they've done every year for the past 10 years. Each time they raise tuition, they tell us the following 3 things:

-tuition only covers 85% of the total cost of educating the entire student body.

-salaries are set to remain comparable to "comparator" schools around the country (Andover, Miss Porters, Catlin, etc)

-salaries are always supposed to be higher or at parity with the Beaverton School District, the district in which OES would be geographically.

-competition is ferocious for quality teachers, especially in the upper (high) school.

For comparsison, St Mary's Tuition next year will be $8865 and Jesuit about $10,000. We know because our daughter is looking at them plus Riverdale as an alternative to OES.

So, except for the Catholic schools, which receive diocesian support as well as parish level support, the tuition, benefits, and pay of private school faculty equals at least that of the Beaverton School District. As for the Catholic High Schools, I think their salaries are fairly competitive as well; otherwise Jesuit and St Mary's Academy couldn't keep the extraordinary teachers they have. Their tuitions are kept low because the Catholic community subsidizes the cost for students whose parents already belong to a local catholic parish. Moreover, like OES and Catlin, both Jesuit and St Mary's have huge endowments - all larger than PSU's for example - to cover building costs, scholarships and, if necessary, the costs of higher additional teachers or money to avoid "flight risk" of exceptional teachers.

Anyone who wants to compare private school tuitions and expenses with the public schools is in for a real surprise. If you complain that the per capita cost of students in the PPS is high, look around at the private schools today. The tuition and subsidy make the PPS tuition look like a positive bargain.

Mr. Fearless 47--thanks for the OES data. That really is the cream of the crop, and it's good to know this information.

Steve: all we've done is ask you to back up your opinions. If all you are going to do is make broad opinion statements that are clearly incorrect, then, yes, you're going to get called on it.

Do you have anything to back up your broad statements? Or is this retreat because all you have to offer are opinions?

Any idea the public employees union doesnt like is flawed and never should be tried since private education can never be fair.

Steve, I have never belonged to a public employee union. For 10 years I was a substitute teacher with a weekend retail job on the weekends---so I do know what work life is like both in the public and private sector. Also, I substituted in a Catholic school where I saw wonderful teachers, better working conditions than some public schools (great office and teaching staff, support by other staff in a variety of areas incl. discipline, no district level bureaucracy to deal with) but much like some rural public schools.

I could go on for some time about arguments I have had with people who worked in unions, both public and private.

But that doesn't change the fact that you have not answered the points I made in Jan. 16 comments.

Which only leads me to agree with jrw's most recent comment. You don't sound like you are proposing specific solutions, just hitting that "public employee union" tarbaby one more time.

OK solutions: 1) Put a cap or giveback on school employee benefits until we can get money into the classroom instead of benefits. Right now, the benfits are well above those offered to the average taxpayer, so I am only asking for parity. 2) Allow tuition vouchers so that everyone can take advantage of getting what they think is the best education for their children (public/private.) I mean Mr Fearless thinks so highly of the public education system he sends his kid to private school and he gets PERS. Why shouldn't we allow less fortunate children to take advantage also.

Believe it or not, my main point is not so much to bait you, but we got a huge upside in budget and it won't change student/teacher ratios or as far as I know trickle-down to better classroom conditions for kids. Unless you worked for the public school system and then you send your kids to a private school, which is not a ringing endorsement of public education.

You can tell me what the solution to this is since we won't be seeing 20% upsides forever. I just keep hearing leave it alone and make sure we keep sending kids to public schools. Try to avoid using the line of logic that education is different and it just goes up faster than inflation because and there are no efficiencies we can put in place.

So, I'll leave you alone since I don't think either side is coming up with solutions acceptable to the other.

Steve writes:

"I mean Mr Fearless thinks so highly of the public education system he sends his kid to private school and he gets PERS. Why shouldn't we allow less fortunate children to take advantage also."

To set the record straight, mrfearless47 has ONE child in private school. His older children went through the public schools from kindergarten to college. It was the older kids experiences in the public school (one pre-Measure 5 and one post-Measure 5) that convinced us that we couldn't afford to send another one to the public schools, especially an adopted child from a 4th world country. As for mrfearless47's PERS, indeed he does collect PERS and I earned every penny of it and a lot more. I won't spend a second more justifying it except to say what I say to everyone who goes there: "bite me!". Prove I don't deserve it instead of just asserting it.

I wish my kid could go to the public school, but they can't compete with what my kid gets: 15:1 student teacher ratios; assistants in every classroom; every middle schooler with his/her OWN computer (iBooks if you want to know). That's what you're paying high tuition for. The teachers want to work there. The pay is great and benefits are just as good as Beaverton School District. The retirement system is just as good as the NEW PERS is, so when you criticize the PERS system, be sure you know what system you're talking about. There are 3 different groups of PERS members all getting different levels of benefits. Only Tier 1, which was closed to new members on January 1, 1996 is germane to your discussions and Tier 1 members are now outnumbered by members of all the other Tiers.

Steve: You write: Put a cap or giveback on school employee benefits until we can get money into the classroom instead of benefits. Right now, the benfits are well above those offered to the average taxpayer, so I am only asking for parity.

1.) Now I notice you're using the words "school employee." Am I correct in assuming you mean both teachers and classified (secretaries, aides and everyone else) in this blanket statement? Because if you are, you're incorrect in this statement. Classified employees do not always get the same level of benefits as certified (teachers). It depends on their contract.

2.) Define "average taxpayer." I know plenty of "average taxpayers" who are getting more and sometimes better benefits than the typical school teacher. Granted, these are employees of large corporations and not self-employed persons or minimum wage workers, but all the same, we need to know which group of taxpayers we're talking about.

BTW, remember that teachers, by paying taxes on their wages and upon their property, are also paying a part of their salaries as well. So how many non-self-employed private sector workers can say that?

Sorry, couldn't resist:

"BTW, remember that teachers, by paying taxes on their wages and upon their property, are also paying a part of their salaries as well. So how many non-self-employed private sector workers can say that?"

Most employed people pay 7.5% of their income to FICA and if they are young won't see a good-sized % of what they could get if they invested that money on their own while the state makes PERS contributions on behalf. In addition, at least state employees get some of their taxes back as pay unlike a lot of non-state employees who pay taxes and may see only a small % back in services.

As far as continuing this discussion, I gave a solution which you don't like - you give me yours.

My point again is that every upside in revenue will prob go to benefits and not the kids based on the latest increase in revenue.

So we disagree and I wasting your time, but I am willing to listen to anything that gets more money in the classroom.

Steve I noticed nobody has called you on the voucher idea. I wonder if it is such a good idea for education, why is it not used for other critical government services? Why don't we have vouchers for police and fire protection, or water and sewer services? Why not make all roads toll roads then issue vouchers for people so they can choose which roads are best and let them compete? Why not issue vouchers for defense. Sure some money would go to right wing militias, but we probably wouldn't be bogged down in Iraq. See my point? Education is so critical for a functioning democracy that messing around with vouchers ought to be tried and proved effective in some other area first.

Competition is fine, and no one type of school will work for every student, but I don't want my tax dollars going to the local radical islamic or radical christianist school - even through a voucher system. So the cure for schools, 20% raise in taxes, just so the teachers keep their benefits, and another 10% for smaller class sizes. Services like schools, government in general, medicine, and personal trainers are going to take a bigger and bigger slice of your income for the rest of your life. Get used to it. You want more money in the class room, well that means paying more money.

I don't know about teacher pay scales but I worked for the State for awhile. The pay was about 75% than I made in the private sector, the benefits were not as good, a two year salary freeze was in effect so I had no hope of any increase in pay, no potential for a bonus, the only upside was job security. Yeah, it was one of the 40k/year jobs with "great benefits" but that was after I had 10 years experience and two masters degrees. I went to work for a local non-profit at a higher salary with better benefits and never looked back

"why is it not used for other critical government services? "

Why not? If I live in unincorporated Mult county and had the choice of Mult county and Sandy police OK. If there was a govt service where they would re-imb my money and let me choose between a private contractor and govt supplied service OK also as long as the govt didnt force the private guy to raise his rates.

However, we have a chocie now in schools and a lot of public school teachers send their kids to private schools like Mr Fearless because they think it is better than public schools. With vouchers at least we can give lower income people the same choice.

Thank god, I can drive out tomorrow since I am driving everyone nuts.

IOW, Steve, you have no real solution other than ideology, you have no desire to do your own research other than spouting off privatization services (not progressive at all; not really), and now you make the claim that "a lot of public school teachers send their kids to private schools."

Data. You seem to be lacking it.

Steve, by "school employee", what do you mean?

"Put a cap or giveback on school employee benefits until we can get money into the classroom instead of benefits. Right now, the benfits are well above those offered to the average taxpayer, so I am only asking for parity."

If you mean starting with the Supt., the "Director of Employee Staffing" and all the other central office administrators, that is one thing. Some of those administrators make more in salary than most of us will ever see (over $95,000).

But if you only mean unionized school employees (esp. in districts where some of them worked without pay a few days due to a budget crunch) that is something else entirely.

Steve observes incorrectly:

"public school teachers send their kids to private schools like Mr Fearless because they think it is better than public schools."

I am not and have never been a public school teacher. I am a retired college professor and administrator from PSU. And were that our only income, we wouldn't be able to send our child to private school and we'd tough it out in the public school. If you really want to vent some steam, I'll add that my wife is a physician who does NOT work for a public employer. And, I'll further add that her retirement makes PERS look like welfare with food stamps. And she works in that vaunted PRIVATE sector you so worship. So be careful with your generalizations. We pay a boatload of money to support the public schools and we never complain about it. I've voted for every tax increase that would benefit public schools. We WANT the public schools to be successful. We don't enjoy sending our child to a private school, but we do because the public schools are expected to be everything to everybody without the resources to anything very well. I have nothing against public school teachers or their benefits. But when the government (federal and state) mandates so m¨ch without funding it, you can hardly blame the teachers for asking for wages and benefits proportional to the expectations placed upon them. Go teachers!

I'm starting to notice a common thread. The government in this state cannot take care of the basic needs (i.e. educating the children, housing the homeless, fixing potholes, congestion on the freeways, etc.) but seem to have unlimited budgets with regards to public art that people don't appreciate or vandalize, trams, and light-rail. The self-serving government employees live high off the hog and don't care about the level of service they provide and complain about needing more money. Must be nice to live such a luxurious lifestyle and still complain about it! Shame on you!

"Data. You seem to be lacking it."

OK, I’ll try to re-state. My assumption is any fact you didn’t like would be something ginned up by a right-wing (or whatever the last name calling is) group. Anyways: 1) Gov Kulongoski’s statement that we have a 20% higher budget and that most/all of that increase to education will go to pay benefits. 2) I know 12 public school teachers and 5 send their kids to private school instead of the public school system. They have no intention of sending their kids back into the public system. 3) PPS pays about $900/month towards insurance for teachers. This would allow a policy for a family of 4 with a pretty low (<$500) deductible and co-pays. Most other private employers have both higher deductibles and higher co-pays based on friends who work at Intel and Nike. Small businesses – You’re on your own. 4) Currently only those with a high enough income can afford to attend private school, this shuts out lower income people. Tuition vouchers would allow lower income people to send their children and have some choice.

So based on the above, my assumption is that most increases go to benefits and not students.

Moreover, private schools seem to be worth enough that parents will ignore a “free” public system and pay extra to send their kids there. As an alternative, I think putting everyone on a more equal footing regardless of income with respect to school choice is fair via vouchers.

My worry is when we get back to the usual 1-5% budget increases. If benefits chew up a 20% increase, what is going to happen to children in public schools then? As far as universal health, since it would be less that what public employees have now, I am certain they would get a carve-out or exemption. Unions would not allow a give-back and they are the most powerful political force in this state.

I hear a lot of don’t do this or do that, but no real active solution. The solution in this state has been to leave the existing system alone and the only way to get more money to kids in the classroom is to pay more taxes or else. Unfortunately, based on history, this is what is probably going to happen now and in the future. This just seems to be the pattern is that the chartered services are the bottom of the list priority-wise and it is troubling.

So give me a solution that doesn’t involve a tax increase and preserves benefits. OK, I’m done.

Steve writes:

"Moreover, private schools seem to be worth enough that parents will ignore a “free” public system and pay extra to send their kids there. As an alternative, I think putting everyone on a more equal footing regardless of income with respect to school choice is fair via vouchers."

The cost of private schools bears little resemblance to the actual expenditures needed to educate the children. The cost is high in the Portland area because, comparatively speaking, there are so few private school competing for students. This means that the classic laws of supply and demand apply. Virtually no private school in the Portland area is underenrolled, and applications usually far exceed openings. As a result, tuition rises with demand. There are approximately 4 times as many private schools in the Seattle area, and their average cost is quite a bit lower than those in Portland. Vouchers have virtually no chance of working in Portland, even if they were desireable, because there aren't enough private school seats to handle the current demand for them.

Why even vouchers? If we had a voucher system some liberal might get upset that his money might (gasp) end up at a religious institution! But never mind that some of my money ends up being used on all sorts of crap that I would never support: abortion, offensive public art, the list goes on and on. I would advocate for doing away with the public education system entirely. If someone burdens society with kids, then they need to pony up and pay for them to get educated however they see fit. Time for some personal accountability. I'm single, yet why should I have to pay for some other person's spawn to get educated? NOT MY PROBLEM! Besides the public education system is an outdated institution which needs to go away. Kids would probably be more motivated to learn by sitting in front of a TV or on the Internet. Let's start with some progressive ideas - alternatives to the bloated, inefficient and non-accountable public education system.

--GREG--