One reason teachers leave is that classes are extremely overcrowded. I.E. : some teachers have over 150 students a DAY- often 35-40 students in classes- usually the arts and sports. In classes these large it is nearly impossible to give each student the individual attention they need. Also, teachers burn out with classes this size.
Thank goodness that most parents aren’t like that lady. She is part of why people want to leave the profession when they are accused of all the fake culture war lies she is pushing. Teachers want your kid to learn, so get out of your own way, lady.
How dare any senator say they are spending too much!!! Spending has NEVER caught up with the actual needs of schools! I keep buying materials for my students so don’t tell me funding is adequate.
The motif of inadequate funding was pervasive throughout the hearing: teachers are often underpaid, the work conditions are often poor, and the available resources are often minimal. If anything was lacking in the hearing it was the connection between teacher certification processes, including college debt, and the classroom.
It amazes me how unhinged the last witness was. We're in more trouble than i thought if she's representative of your average concerned parent in America.
She is terse and fast-talking but her main point that administrator’s priorities are indicated by how they budget, not by what they say in policy documents or school codes.
She was extremely nervous, watch her body language and the back of her chair, but she was intelligent, very informed on the subject matter, and advocating hard for something she believes in whole-hardly. I think she should have paused and taken a deep breath once or twice to slow herself down, but otherwise I applaud her courage. Speaking in front of Congressional leaders is not easy. Could any of you done better?
@@CatCaretakerIDI had to rewatch her speech to make sure we were even talking about the same person. Are you talking about Ms. Neily, the mother who thinks teaching social acceptance is why students' grades are in decline? Yes, she used statistics in her argument, but never drew a connection between them and her conclusion. You should have realized how unserious she is by the time she mentioned "woke kindergarten."
Teachers should make no less than 100,000 per year. Their value should be reflected in their pay. It would also make the field more competitive, drawing in high quality educators.
the issue in the US is that teaching is not a high status job, I have no doubt a pay increase would be good, but the biggest issue is that too many people don´t give teacher´s the respect they deserve. It´s not just pay, it´s that they are increasingly very micromanaged, many parents don´t have any respect for how difficult the job is and how hard it can be to control a room of teenagers. There´s also much less of a culture of accountability than there was, teachers increasingly get blamed for behaviour problems in school. Now sometimes the teacher could have handled it better, but it should always be on the kids to behave. We´ve lost that now.
@@Minimmalmythicist Increasing their pay recognizes the level of respect that should be demanded by the position. That's part of why it should be raised...
Wow, Bernie, this really casts a light on what our organization has been sharing with the Atlanta community. Mr. Keyes gives us an example of ONE pathway many teachers take to ensure they use their talents for the good of students. When they get there, teachers then pay out of pocket costs for educational and organizational items INCLUDING food and personal hygiene items. All while needing to have a partner, like Mr. Arthur, who can provide a salary with a living wage. Senator Cassidy, your data is correct, but I'm not sure if the data analysis is. Just because we spent more with lower outcomes doesn't mean that the money was ill spent OR that teachers have any control of what the money is spent on; those decisions are made by districts and local principals. I would love to see the emerging evidence around phone use, inside AND outside of the school house and how it changes brain pathways and social standing. Let's keep this conversation going!
I’ve noticed Sen. Cassidy fusses about Bernie having chaired the hearings he has so far and now Sen. Cassidy is fussing about Bernie not having this hearing sooner. I myself appreciate all the work Bernie does and every hearing he has chaired has been important.
Thank you, Bernie 💗 You're one of a kind. As a daughter of a teacher/principal, I've always asserted that teachers are our second parents, we owe them so much yet, like you said, they're incredibly underappreciated, from the government all the way down. Keep fighting for us 💪
Sen Cassidy provided a graph that shows spending relative to learning outcomes in math and reading. He commented that recently (since 2013) spending has gone up but outcomes have gone down. Thing is you don’t buy better outcomes, you invest in building a structure that then has to grow them. In the five years before 2013 Sen Cassidy’s graph on spending seems entirely flat. As many speakers mentioned, the turnover for educators is about five years. That dip Sen Cassidy is objecting to isn’t a consequence of spending in the same year, it’s a result of differing incentives and maintenance for five years prior to it. The loss of the best teachers and institutional memory because of that deferred investment likely had impact. And about five years after spending went up, things may have started improving (according to that graph)-but it takes longer to turn a curve up than down. And COVID hitting about that time had a cost also.
Big surprise that Louisianna doesn't want to 'throw more money' at the problem. What are they.... 42nd in the nation for education? Has it gone down further?
I became a teacher later in life. I dropped the education program early. It was expensive crap that was not preparing me. I instead got the cheapest bachelor's degree I could and am latteraling in. Last year was my first year.
The argument that children aren't learning has been made for decades. Pay teachers a living wage and give them support for those students that have learning challenges. Where is the study to show how the effects of the use of phones, tablets and other screens on a child's attention span? Why continually blame teachers when the conditions under which they work has so drastically deteriorated? I retired after teaching for 20 years and would not become an educator under today's present conditions.
EDUCATION needs to be the priority for all of the States in America! Stop letting the children of the USA down! The USA is failing the next generations ! Wages must be a living wage with full benifits!! NEED TO HAVE A TEACHERS UNION.
As someone from Louisiana who sadly has Seanor Cassidy as one of my representatives, he's being very dishonest (as usual). He mentioned there are federal food programs for low-income districts, but his own state's Gov turned that away this year to instead focusing on having the 10 commandments required in each class room.
Need competent staff and reliable administrators. Leadership at every level is critical. Faculties need to work as a team, teamwork is particularly important and makes a big difference. When teachers are only concerned with their own class, and not with the school, with each of the student grades, as a group, and not for each other, the schooling doesn’t work.
It's not the salary for me, it's the workload! I work 60+ hours per week as a special education teacher. It's affecting my health and no amount of money is worth that! I'm not sure how much longer I can do it. Before someone says that I get summers off, I only get two weeks off this summer.
Good point; how can you simplify your classroom tasks so that your after school work: grading papers, preparing lessons, calling parents can be shorter?
@fredwelf8650 You are correct; a lot of those things you mentioned take place after school hours, but writing IEPs is a huge portion of a special education teachers job. It usually takes place in the evenings and on weekends for most teachers. An IEP can take anywhere from 4 - 8 hours or more to write, and then you have to conduct the meeting and finalize everything. I'm not the only special education teacher with this complaint. The workload is not sustainable long-term. The only teachers that I know that aren't super stressed are the ones cutting corners.
I was trying to make it to AOC and your gathering today but unfortunately, as a working person, I gotta work six days a week not to make my bills, but I’m gonna try to get there
Just close public schools already. They're so underfunded they may as well be. They're not failing, they've failed & it all started with the creation of the Department of Education in the 80s. Send all these teachers to private institutions or create their own depending on the pay situation there. Better yet, parents need to return to homeschooling.
Didn't get through the whole video but I'm going to imagine that student behavior was probably not addressed at all as one of the reasons that teachers leave the profession. Don't get me wrong the increase in pay and reduction in the workload is a huge plus but the teacher shortage won't be fully fixed until the elephant in the room is addressed.
When the end comes you will wish you would have listened. This man has common sense the American people are happy with working 2 jobs. Guaranteed they will work 4 jobs. He has the voice
People get food stamps and being teachers?? I can't even get food stamps while having a regular job. Where I live all of us parents buy the kids their supplies. Only one year I had a teacher ask me to write a $50 check and she would get the supplies. I live in Alabama.
In US, school funding comes from local taxes, meaning lowest funding in poorest neighbourhoods. In Canada, every student is funded equally from larger tax base. Teacher unions are strong and teachers can make $100,000/year. I had to earn two degrees to be certified for high school teaching (BA and B.Ed) and now teach university (have Masters and a PhD). We still have issues with under-funding, more challenging work conditions and classroom over-crowding, etc. (complex reasons) but much less than the States. We also don't have the same safety issues as have gun control.But have same issues with being required to play more roles with high rates of behaviour issues, learning disabilities, ADHD, mental health issues, ESL, etc. and need more support from administration in holding students accountable for their work/behaviour. As for reading levels, screen culture is working strenuously against this no matter the teaching.
What crisis, the state of Vermont just increased the property tax to 13.8 % to pay the education, this alone is going to cause people losing their homes, being rental or privately owned, along with business taxes, causing lost if jobs. The teachers have ever Holidays, weeks and months vacation. During COVID-19, teaching at home, teachers received full pay, while given the children one hour computer time a day. What did the state in local school district do with all the Covid money? They didn't use it to improve the schools builds, ventilation. I don't and having received any benefit, but yet my taxes are paying their salary. I see the teachers being greedy.
That second senator totally misses the point. We do need to course correct as a country, but good luck doing that when the average teacher is going to college so that they can make half of what they could make elsewhere. Stop saying that throwing money at the problem won’t solve anything when you turn around and fund billions into national security and the military.
I think the problem with funding is more how the US has a weirdly localised funding system for schools, compared to other first world countries. Public schools in fairly wealthy towns are often really well equipped, but in poorer neighbourhoods, they´re really struggling. It´s also that the US has lots of really counterproductive policies, i,e No Child left behind means schools get financial penalties for poor results, and in a poor area it´s obviously much harder to get good results than in a wealthy, stable one.
I remember when the towers fell in 5th grade and watched an already small budget school get ripped out. Not only did the quality of education go down as class sizes increase. So does their ability to deal with my special needs brothers. Simply sending them home if they smacked their heads in frustration I absolutely feel for every American put through it and working for it. But I don't think this country has taken education seriously in decades.
The US has a virulent anti-education mentality reflected in the basic divide of one-third of adults with the BA and two-thirds without. But, everyone recognizes the importance of getting at least the high school diploma - no one rejects this! So there’s a baseline of values. The critical issue is ‘results’ of education. Too many schools do not produce results for most students. Consider the addiction to sports by most schools; what are students doing? Learning or playing games?
Support staff and bus drivers need more pay. You have parents who can't control their kids while driving 3 yet we expect bus drivers to drive safely and manage behaviors at the same time. Behavior is the biggest reason teachers are quitting, though. (and the abuse from certain parents)
If you keep forgetting about the suffering of already retired teachers, then that also deters teachers from staying in education, because they see what their predecessors are going through, and what awaits them.
@@fredwelf8650 they are forced into abject poverty, from a once lower middle class existence, to struggling to afford the most basic needs on a severely low pension in retirement, after devoting their lives to educating the nation's youth, you would think they at least earned a comfortable existence when they retire.
@@soundmind1705 I am a retired teacher with a pension, social security and an annuity from savings over the years. I am not in poverty. I am skeptical of your claim although I recognize that many states pay teachers peanuts. This was a main theme in the hearing. But, abject poverty? That seems like a leap.
@@fredwelf8650 Texas doesn't allow retired teachers to collect social security. They refer to this as "double dipping". Pensions here are very low. Please refrain from dismissing another person's experience simply because it's not your experience, and be thankful you are blessed to have retired from a state that values their teachers.
Where's everyone else in congress? This is why no one should be team red or team blue. Be team people! ✊🏼 Too many adults are poorly educated. This is the goal of the GQP to get votes.
I think paying the teachers more won't help much IMO, although it will serve as a band-aid of sorts. The Internet needs to be cleaned up because it is over exposing people to too much non-sense and erroneous behaviors that make new patterns of such and any new corrections will not be able to keep up. At least, that how I look and hear it anyways. Too much focus on money, and not much focus on the source. Is paying them more so they don't have to work 2-3 jobs better, yes. I think the source problems need to be corrected though. IDK.
Better pay would definitely help, I think the problem though is Teaching doesn´t have high enough respect culturally in America, unlike in Asian countries.
@@Minimmalmythicist It's not about respect, the rich try that all the time throwing Wealth around; it's about Real World Education. The rich could never give that given my measure of their faces in the positions they hold IMO. IDK really, but I don't think the main population would like those facts.
The problem with education is school choice, annual state testing and poverty. There's only one money pot to fund our schools and it's now split between traditional public school, charters and the scam known as vouchers. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out if you rob Peter to pay Paul, neither do well. Charter school and voucher proponents need to find another way to fund their agenda so traditional public schools, which still educated 90 % of American school children, can be funded properly. Annual state testing is a waste of money when we already have a perfectly good test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress or aka The Nation's Report Card. Annual state testing results in narrowed curriculum taught to students. Smart parents should opt out of it in protest. Poverty has the greatest negative impact on learning. We need to reevaluate how we fund schools. Property taxes in impoverished areas will keep our schools in those areas impoverished. Those schools need more money.
All our traditional public schools could have small classes, highly educated teachers, sufficient support staff and everything children need for success if they were properly funded. Eisenhower threw money into education because he knew if the US was going to complete in the space race, the US would have to have highly trained students in science and technology. US schools became the envy of the world. Schools were well funded right up until the Reagan administration. Reagan immediately cut school funding by 20% and it's been underfunded ever since and funding is now split with charter schools and vouchers. We must properly fund our traditional public schools and pay our teachers and support staff well.
Teachers are also laden with collecting data on every student and give the annual state test and constant district testing. We need to let teachers teach. Under-funding our traditional public schools results in fewer counselors, nurses, librarians, before and after school programs, teacher aids and special needs programs and support staff for them. This underfunding results in teachers taking on other responsibilities that should be done by other school staff. Charter schools and vouchers have got to be funded by something or someone else and leave public school funding for our traditional public schools.
@@ninabishop8634 School funding is a disaster. Today property taxes pay for schools. Some wealthy school districts charge their homeowners over $30,000/year in property tax. Somewhat less elite districts charge around $20,000 in property tax per homeowner. In my district, I have to pay almost $10,000/year in property taxes. Then, its a big mystery how much each school gets per student. For example, someone on this panel mentioned Douglas Academy in Chicago that charges $68,000 per student, none of who could “pass” the SAT. But this is erroneous because the school is budgeted for 935 students but only 35 attended - 900 absentees! Plus, no one passes or fails the SAT, each test taker receives a score. The question is why were so many absent from this school - well take a look at the neighborhood! It’s dangerous!! The entire funding situation is catastrophic: why should some students get huge outlays and other students get a meager per-student handout. It requires trying to skimp on teacher salaries, get the teachers with longevity to move on (to suburban districts) and hire the inexperienced. Lastly, the para turned certified teacher knows full well that there are loan forgiveness programs for teachers in Title One schools, and in certain subject areas. But, complain about the loan anyway because who wants to commit to teaching students from the poorest neighborhoods?
Deal, so Sen. Cassidy is gonna pay back the gas money that got him the education to take up that seat. and we're all square. Adjusted for inflation of course.
I dont disagree teachers should get paid more but you do get 2 months off. Mean while since 1986 the national average of students and teachers has only gone up by 5% due to homeschooling and private schools. The administrative staff has gone up by 85%. Like most government run/ supported agencies you grossly over spend and run to the well looking for more money. If you are a teacher and disagree I suggest you pop the hood on your district's budget and see where your pay is spent.
Do you know why they get more time off, because the job is frigging stressful, the only people who have a similar level of stress in their work or higher are (in no particular order): 1)Medical staff 2) People in the military 3) People who do dangerous jobs like working on oil rigs or as fishermen 4) People who work for emergency services, i.e police officers or firefighters 5) Social workers
He is correct. Maybe you are tracking the wrong statistics on your graph. Spending is too big a category and should be broken down into smaller categories. Perhaps then you will see where the biggest problem lies. Those apprenticeship programs should be supported nationwide. Train Guidance Counselors better. I and 7 of my siblings had the same guidance counselor and she was totally useless, absolutely no help whatsoever. Train these people better. Just so this committee is aware, other people with college educations are in the same boat as teachers. I have a Bachelor of Science degree and a graduate school education, and I never made more than $34,000/year. I often had to work one and sometimes two additional jobs. I worked hard, I showed up and did my job well and usually to a higher standard than many around me, but that did not equate to higher pay or to promotions. The problem you are seeing in regard to teachers being under appreciated and underpaid is a real one, but it is not limited to the teaching profession in this country. Corporations do not show their respect, nor acknowledge their dependency on good workers by giving those people raises, unless those people are in the upper echelon of management. Applaud and acknowledge the teachers who are teaching using methods that engage and demonstrate the concepts being taught. Recognize that not all students learn in the same way. Focus on reading (so important), writing, STEM, *how our government works and possible threats to our government and how they can leak in*. Also, classes teaching real life skills (age appropriate) like understanding compounded interest, how credit card companies rip you off unless you can pay your balance off monthly, how to speak and negotiate in difficult situations. We also need to include manners and respect as aspects of a child's education. I worked in a public library for 10 years and I saw a lot of young people in the library and those who entered the workforce lacking an understanding of how to work in a shared environment, how to perform basic skills. I've helped adults at computer stations who lacked even basic writing skills. Believe me, this is not a new problem I received a good public-school education, I paid for my college education. I entered school in 1960 and I am now at retirement age and don't know how I am going to finance my retirement. In fact, I am going back to work beginning this week. Working since I was 17, and having to work multiple jobs throughout most of my adult life I worked paycheck to paycheck like many Americans are doing today. When you are earning above the poverty level, but not earning in that pay scale which leaves you with money after paying your monthly bills, you are stuck in a loop almost impossible to get out of. You scrimp and try to save, but saving any amount takes a long time and just when you get a $1000 in the bank something happens like an unexpected car repair or medical bills, and there goes your savings. This makes saving for retirement a monumental feat. Recognize that students today are dealing with an enormous amount of stress. More than I did in the 1960's. They are heavily influenced by the political climate of today, Money is great, but it has to be applied in the proper places. Identify the school polices getting in the way of teaching and remove them. Libraries are an additional resource. Today's public libraries offer so many services, resources and items for children and families to use. If you haven't been to your local library recently then check it out. New services such as 'Library of Things', digital, and special programs. We can do better as a nation and if we don't the future looks bleak.
How come teacher's salary is a federal issue? Teachers are not federal employees. Bernie is a socialist, for him it is. But so many positive comments... Are we ready for socialism? And what about the rights of states to establish their own educational policy? Everything is Federal now? Please note that I do not argue for or against raising teacher's salary.
Deal, so Sen. Cassidy is gonna pay back the gas money that got him the education to take up that seat. and we're all square. Adjusted for inflation of course.
