Tech vs. Teaching in Public Schools

Sorry Jobs, Scoble has it right. It’s great to see the tech bloggers getting into important social issues even if the original note was laced with tech.

If you want better schools, pay teachers $80,000 a year or more, AND give the staff power to get rid of bad apples (bad pun, given the cause of today’s post, I know) and you’ll see school quality turn around in an instant.The problem is that the political system here won’t allow politicians to increase taxes to pay for higher school wages and the unions won’t allow reforms to get rid of bad teachers. Instead we get stupid patches to the system like the “no child left behind” initiative which tries to improve results by mandating tests (most teachers I talk with say that initiative is a disaster).

About the Author, Dan Cameron:

I'm the owner and solution engineer at Sprout Venture, a web solutions company that specializes in web development including WordPress.

I started my first blog in 2003 and transitioned to WordPress in 2004. Since moving to WordPress I've written a few plugins and themes for public consumption. Lately I'm busy engineering/building/coding and have only been able to share a few code snippets.

If you're in need of some web development, web design or custom WordPress plugins and/or themes contact me, I'll be happy to discuss it with you.

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  • Dave Z
    As a former teacher, it is super easy to teach to pass a mandated test.
    The schools have so many problems due to problems of our society -
    divorce, immigration issues, poverty etc. It is overwhelming for most
    teachers.
    The pay is higher now in many many districts.
    Some teachers I know personally earn over $ 100,000 per year working their 10 months.
    Whenever I think about teaching again it only takes a few minutes to reject that notion.
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