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posted by martyb on Monday April 16 2018, @01:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the going-nationwide dept.

Common Dreams reports

Colorado's teachers' union expects more than 400 teachers at a rally that's planned for Monday at the state's Capitol in Denver.

[...] Englewood School District, outside the capital city, announced on Sunday that schools would be closed the following day as 70 percent of its teachers had indicated they wouldn't be working Monday. It was unclear on Sunday whether more school districts would be closing.

"We are calling Monday, April 16th a day of action", Kerrie Dallman, president of the Colorado Education Association (CEA), told KDVR in Denver.

[...] According to[1] KMGH in Denver, "The CEA estimates that teachers spend on average $656 of their own money for school supplies for students." The state's teacher salaries rank 46th out of 50, with educators making an average of $46,000 per year.

Public schools are underfunded by $828 million this year, Dallman told the Post, and lawmakers have said they could inject at least $100 million more into schools--but they have yet to do so.

[...] The planned protest follows a trend that was seen in West Virginia and Kentucky before moving west this month to Oklahoma and Arizona as well as Colorado. In all the states where teachers have walked out and rallied at their Capitols, teachers have reported paying for school supplies out of pocket, working second and third jobs to make ends meet, and coping with funding shortages while their legislators hand out tax cuts to corporations.

[1] For a laugh (or perhaps a deep sigh), check out all the whitespace in the source code of the page.


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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @03:50PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @03:50PM (#667668)

    "Teachers are typically highly trained"

    lmfao! if you mean they paid an absurd amount of money to jump through asinine hoops for 4 years while being taught/indoctrinated with bullshit, then sure.

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  • (Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:32PM (5 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @05:32PM (#667717)

    Hmm, while the above is worthy of flamebait I can attest there is some amount of truth in it. Getting a teaching credential requires a looot of bullshit classes with very little value to actual teaching.

    The entire school system and the teacher credentialing system need a compete overhaul.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @06:09PM (4 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @06:09PM (#667736)

      Hmm, while the above is worthy of flamebait I can attest there is some amount of truth in it.

      When I was an undergrad, I took a particular geology class just for fun. We visited spots all over the state all day every Saturday looking at rock formations and collecting fossils. It was a blast and we saw lots of interesting things. I had NO pre-requisites since I was not a geology major. Each week, we had to turn in basically a show-and-tell paper describing what we saw the prior week. I finished the class (that I had no preparation for) with a 103% since I got some extra credit.

      There a few people struggling. One young lady, struggling poorly, complained about how hard it was. She took the class because it was the "easiest class" that satisfied her laboratory sciences requirements. She was an education major in her final year. I don't think she would have fared well in my electromagnetics or thermodynamics classes.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:27PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:27PM (#667763)

        Anecdotal evidence of "teachers can't do"?

        What was the point again?

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:41PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @07:41PM (#667768)

          The point is that education majors curricula of the time was (and may still be) ridiculously free of any core skills classwork. The geology class was hardly college level work and yet sufficed for a sciences credit for education majors. I also thought about it while I was required to take four quarters of calculus and differential equations when they took none.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @11:22PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 16 2018, @11:22PM (#667845)

            Ah, well like I said comparing science/math classes to liberal arts is apples to oranges and doesn't really add much here. Most teachers get their bachelor's in something other than education though, an education major is probably going to end up in administrative / academic roles and not actually teaching children.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @12:54PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 17 2018, @12:54PM (#668024)

              ...an education major is probably going to end up in administrative / academic roles and not actually teaching children.

              You're crazy if you think a freshly graduated education major is going to waltz into a nice administrative position. They are going to substitute for a year or so and end up teaching first graders. You are going to need a master's degree in applied bullshit to get into administrative.