Public Schools Will Suffer From Voucher Expansion, Critics Say: GOP Plan Reduces Public School Cuts, Sets Voucher Schools Up For A Larger Slice Of State Ed Money

Walker wants to make it where everyone with a 4-year degree can get a licence(sic) in their field, with no schooling in how to actually teach!

Meh, whatever. We don't pay our teachers enough to get good ones, so I can't get too worked up about us making it easier to get cheap bad ones.

I was, by all accounts, a pretty good teacher. Master's degree in Education, work experience before I began teaching, solid non-teaching background, solid informal and formal teaching background. But I was treated like an incompetent child, paid shit, and essentially had to grant fund the replacement of 10 year old textbooks that were falling to pieces. I got about $2 per kid per year in funding, and like others have posted, spent my own (very limited) money on shit for my classes.

I left teaching for (after another degree) waaay more pay, being treated like a functional adult, lower stress, and a higher quality of life. If I could have happily stayed a teacher, I would have. But it was absolutely impossible for me to do.

Until we're paying people with 6-7 years of post-secondary education what they're worth, compensating them for their shitty working environment, and giving them the appropriate level of funding to do their job, I can't get upset about hiring more unqualified people.

Look, I want qualified people to be teachers. I want our kids to have the best education they can get. But we're not willing to pay for it, so there's no reason to get upset about us making it easy for incompetent people to be teachers.

It's no different than getting mad that illegal immigrants are picking our crops. As long as we demand the lowest price for produce, we need the cheapest people available to pick them. Same for education.

Want to keep unqualified people out of our schools? Pay entry level teachers $40k-$50k, and pay 20+ year teachers $80k+ and you'll have well qualified candidates banging down the door. But start your entry level teachers with a Master's degree at $28k, and cap 20+ year veterans at $70k, and you're not going to get good candidates. Most of those people can hop to the private sector and make more money, have better benefits, and a better working environment.

As you say,

Funding cuts piles shitty teachers on shitty parents and the kids are the powerless victims.

Pay teachers what they're worth, and the unqualified masses won't have a chance when they apply. Pay teachers shit, and the unqualified masses have a shot, because nobody qualified is showing up for the job interview.

/r/wisconsin Thread Parent Link - pr.org