How Much Do Teachers Make

Grading the Teachers

Cross-posted at CityJournal .

California’s public school teachers are the highest paid in the country, earning about $63,000 a year on average, along with generous health-insurance and pension plans. Their salaries and benefits are funded with taxes paid by all of us—workers, consumers, homeowners, and businesses large and small. It’s useful to think of taxpayers as owners of our troubled public education franchise, which has a statewide high school dropout rate of about 30 percent. And for many of those who do graduate from high school and go on to college, remediation is essential. Value-added teacher evaluation—a method that estimates the contribution teachers make to student’s test-score gains—is a concept whose time has most definitely come. Californians are entitled to know precisely who is and isn’t delivering the goods for their children.

The Los Angeles Times last month published a much-anticipated follow-up to its path-breaking 2010 investigation , which ranked 6,000 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests year after year. The updated rankings include data for more than 11,500 teachers. Using the California Public Records Act, Times reporters Jason Felch, Jason Song, and Doug Smith obtained student math and language arts scores for the Los Angeles Unified School District from 2003 through 2009. The newspaper commissioned Richard Budden , a senior economist and education researcher with the Santa Monica–based RAND Corporation, to analyze the data. Using the value-added technique, he converted the scores into percentile ratings, and then divided them into five equal categories from “least effective” to “most effective.”

The Times stories have exposed that what currently passes for teacher evaluation in California is useless. Currently, a principal or other administrator may visit a class several times (usually with a warning given long in advance), stay a few minutes, scribble down some notes, and leave. Union contracts generally spell out strict protocols about which administrator can perform the observations and when and how many times a teacher may be observed. The contracts also discourage unsatisfactory ratings by forcing principals to navigate a nightmarish labyrinth of costly and time-consuming documentation. Thanks to this ineffective process, more than 99 percent of all teachers receive satisfactory ratings, and after just two years in the classroom achieve tenure—essentially a job for life.

Looking to celebrate moving into the house I just purchased with a ...

Looking to celebrate moving into the house I just purchased with a special bottle of wine.?$ 100 or less. Doesn’t have to be champagne. Love big Cabs and Zins, presently on an Australian Shiraz kick. My place is on the water with lots of wildlife. It’s summer and I have a front porch swing. I’m looking for you more creative oenophiles- put it all together- I’m looking for a revelation in wine drinking. I also like deals- the $ 10 Australian Shiraz I’m drinking right now beats out most of the $ 20-$ 30 bottles I’ve been trying.

If you like big Cab, try something unusual and rare – try some cult Californian wine like Dunn or Revana, just as a special occasions. Having something very nice would bring the wonderful memory of the new house every time you drink that wine in the future.

If you like something like and smooth, nice older French Bordeaux like 97 or 98 2nd or 3rd growth or a Burgundy of similar year would be a good idea and under good budget. As long as you don’t get hot years (like Bordeaux 1995 or 2000 or Burgundy 2001), you can get a very good second growth that is tasting wonderfully, especially in a hot summer. It would serve sort of as a guide to your house wine in the future.

If I were to just drink in the hot day without too much food, try some white. A nice cold bottle of Far Niente Chardonnay or a hard to find wine such as La Sirena Muscato Azule and Pride Viognier is great for a romantic summer evening with that special someone.

One of my favorite party ideas was to buy a huge bottle of a good but cheaper wine – in Jarobaum or Double Magnum format, share it with 30 of the closest friends and have each of them sign on the bottle to remember the occasion. I bought a bottle of 3 liter Conundrum last year for about $ 100. For the same year, I opened a bottle of Double Magnum Peju Reserve Cab Franc for my birthday and had a blast having every one sign – and it sits proudly on the shelf right now.

Good luck

Answer by LP

what is a paraprofessional? how much to sped teachers make?I just got accepted to a school to receive my master’s in special ed. i have been seeing a lot of posting in this section regarding paraprofessionals. What do they do and how much do they make? also, how much do highly paid, certified special ed teachers make? is there a big demand for special ed teachers?

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