Texas: The Education Sector Is Full Of Idiots

there is a world of difference between a bachelors degree and a phd lol

I bet there is. but the point is, you don't need to be "that" motivated to get it. you can take forever in getting one.

You don't seem to know much about PhD programs.

PhD programs are requirements of higher education work. There are plenty of fully accredited PHD earned professors who aren't taken seriously, and tossed away. If it takes you an obscene amount of time in any field to get your PhD they'd have thrown you out by then.

Graduate level work is no joke either.

feel free to enlighten me then

For starters, they're incredibly competitive. As such, taking too long to complete one is going to result in you getting shown the door. Masters and PhD programs typically have different protocols regarding their students. Bachelors programs will take virtually anyone for as long as the failure of a student pleases, because they are a business first and foremost. If higher education programs want to stay accredited, they're must produce results, not English majors who don't feel like stepping into the real world quite yet.

you're right, but the majority of people going for their phd's take 5+ years to complete.

It depends on the field, and the subject of your dissertation. Some research takes longer to complete than others.

Yes, but that's based on the workload. If you're taking disproportionately large amounts of time, that's something entirely different and incredibly noticeable.

The long and short of it is that if you're completing a PhD program, you're incredibly motivated, and you have a strong handle on the subject.

Does that mean that you're at all intelligent, or particularly knowledgeable about any other subject? Not in the slightest. Does it mean you're going to actually utilize everything you learned as it pertains to the area your pursue? Again, no. The latter is how we end up with crackpot reformers and vocal, fringe specialists.

I went to a "rich", white-flight, teetering on the edge of suburbia and rural Texas school in HS. The district was very well funded and always had exemplary status in state ratings. I breezed through AP, dual credit, and college release while in HS. Grades...SMOKED THEM every six weeks! You could basically sleep through your courses done at the community college here, and still an A.

I had a rude awakening when I took college level Calc. Yeah...AP Calc in HS...It may have well been me skipping through fields of daisies. Basically, our teacher in HS only taught us a portion of the entire book, so I was pretty much stuck only being prepared for the basics. That semester was agonizing! Needless to say, I had to re-take it in college.

Like Weakness and Slip mentioned earlier, funding!!! Also, teachers here are miserable for the most part because of fact that they must teach to TAKS (Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills). When Slip, Weak, and I went through it was still TAAS (which was easy as pie). I think Volk is the only one who could give us the low-down on TAKS. Either way, performance on these tests determines some of your school's funding. This state will start stripping district funding each year for poor performance. Schools that consistently perform horribly over a certain number of years will be simply closed down.

Most of my friends who went into education have either been booted from massive teacher lay-offs, have quit, or just begrudge their job. Oh yeah! Kids are little shits too! I know I've dumped this on some thread, but a buddy of mine from college had her wrist broken while defending herself from one of her hellion students this May, and she teaches middle school!!!

and also if any problem's/roadblocks come up

Generally you meet with your pHD committee regularly and they determine if you're making reasonable progress or not.

There are also usually preliminary exams to your oral exams that you can fail and get kicked out.

Since usually they're paying you to get your pHD, they don't like keeping you around unless you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. It's like a job for which you're significantly underpaid, disproportionately miserable, and for which you get a degree at the end.

Then the adviser to the phd candidate is aware of it. If you have nothing to show and no reason to not have anything after a year they'll kick you out then.

There are certain issues for which they'll be understanding. A friend of mine working on her pHD lost her ability to do research for several months due to pesticide contamination (the supplier's fault) in the food for the insects she was researching. They're cutting her some slack while she gets the colonies back up.

I had the lame privilege to take both the TAAS and the TAKS test.
TAAS = cake walk.

The first year of the TAKS was kind of a pain in the *** when it was introduced. The math section was basically if you knew your ***you get the answer right, if not, you could always guess (yay multiple choice 1/4 chance to win)
There was a reading and writing test along with social studies and science.

The reading part, basically had you read essays, passages, short stories then have you compare and contrast them and find grammatical/spelling errors etc.
The writing portion had you write a few short answer questions based upon 2 to 3 articles/essays in which you had to compare and pretty much think outside the box and know the deeper meaning behind the story.
There was an prompted essay included. Which usually ended with the majority of the students to write 3 full pages.

The social studies section was a breeze if you knew your stuff.
The science section was probably the hardest part, because it dipped into a bit of everything, chemistry/biology/physics. But over all, if you paid attention in class, took notes, studied and got decent grades then the TAKS wasn't bad. but there are people who completely fail this and are forced to take it again. And in the state. you can't graduate from HS unless you pass the TAKS test. (the latest they can hold you is to 21 if i'm not mistaken)
>_> got commended status on all tests btw

I'd be opposed to this but Texas (mainly Rick Perry actually) did a lot of stuff at the college level that I was skeptical of at the time and got results in a big way. Dollar for dollar I'd bet Texas universities are now the highest quality in the nation because of those changes. I say give it 5 years and see if Texas k-12 is as top notch as their universities have become.

Zah is 100% correct.

Teachers really have a rough time of it. My stepmother is a kindergarten teacher, though she's also taught first and third grade. The pay is pretty bad, especially for the amount of work outside of the classroom the teachers need to do. Planning and preparing lessons, grading homework and papers, keeping track of parent requests and conferences-- it doesn't sound like much, but it adds up.

Add to that the stress of not being able to force children to learn or make them listen coupled with the knowledge that if the children don't score well on tests, the teacher is fired. You can't discipline a child for disrupting class besides keeping them in at recess (which drastically cuts down on the teacher's chance to prepare the next lesson, make copies, eat their own lunch, go to the bathroom, and take a breather) because the principles don't actually enjoy having kids sent to their office for misbehavior and there's just nothing else acceptable to do as punishment.

Also toss in parents. The only thing worse than kids is parents. Parents today tend to really not give a darn whether or not their kid needs help with their homework, or even whether or not their kid does the homework at all. That sets everything back because when one kid doesn't do the homework and doesn't understand the next day, the whole class has to be held back to get that one kid caught up. And if the kid just doesn't care to be caught up, well, then they will get a bad test score and the teacher will be fired-- and there's nothing the teacher can do to prevent it.

My stepmother has had parents come in screaming at her for their children's bad grades in front of other students and faculty, has parents consistently just not show up to scheduled conference times, and has even had parents tell her that they expect her to teach their child manners and behavior, which are things that need to be taught at home by parents.

Teachers really do have a rough time of it. They are expected to babysit, raise, and teach children in horribly overcrowded classrooms. I'm sorry but if there's 20 kids in a kindergarten class your child will NOT be getting quality individual attention because the teacher simply doesn't have time. The funding cuts cause fewer teachers which causes bigger class loads for remaining teachers which cause less attention per student which causes poor quality learning which causes bad test scores which cause funding cuts which cause fewer teachers.

Anyhow, sorry, /end rant. The education system in this whole country (not just Texas, lol) needs a drastic overhaul and improvements.

It's not just the US either, it's the same over here. In some cases the parents are actually worse than the students. Screaming at the teachers because they gave their kid a bad grade, knowing full well their child deserves that grade. If parents don't care how are the schools supposed to do their jobs. Education begins at home.

This is my current situation, lol.
Then I took the AP English exam.
*** that. Only like three out of 20 passed that test.

You can't really lump all teachers into one pile... some have great schools, students and compensation as well as a competent staff to back them up...

I know a couple of teachers personally that make over 100k a year teaching... Pay usually seems to be better in public schooling... Many get gauranteed raises and if you take on any additional responsibilities such as a coaching position it could mean thousands of more dollars added on to your salary... Many professions don't have that... They also have short years... You work maybe 9 months out of the year and don't really even have to put in 8 hour days... some argue the work you have to do after class makes up for that but from what I've seen after your first year things like lesson plans and testing and such get much easier...

20 kids is a small classroom... if you can't handle 20 kids then you should exit the profession because that is a dream class for many teachers...

I'm not saying that teachers are better or worse off really... every profession has its ups and downs but they're not really hurting across the board as some would like you to think... and like every profession there are those that are good at their job and those that aren't and the ones that aren't seem to talk the loudest...

I'd become a teacher before I even approached many other fields... take for example call centers... you really don't get good pay... everyone hates you and you probably get yelled at all the time by unhappy people...

Edit: public school system, here at least, is HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE about employment practices... it really has nothing to do with performance... I mean there's literally some teachers who walk into class and check out for the day... exteremely hard to fire too... Some of the weight is on the students and their parents but it is also on the teachers as well...

No matter what field you're in you're going to deal with *** so while I feel for em I also don't see how it's much different from most other places...

So? Jesus, people will have conflicting ideologies. Descend your testicals and deal with it. If you depend on the public school system to teach your children about sex, you have bigger issues than pop soc. Try talking to your child.

And on "education sector", change that to public. Texas has some major uni's that are well respected for law, medical, and business.

Edit: Also, 90% of those statistics fail to recount that TX gives free education to children of illegal aliens.

Maybe it is just in my experience then, Flavin. And 20 high school students isn't bad, no, but 20 kindergarteners? Oh god have mercy on that poor teacher's miserable soul. In the past few years, 20 students has been about the average of her class sizes, when the optimal range is about 12-15 for the best individual attention and quality learning.

Although admittedly quite a bit of my stepmother's pay problems she kinda brings on herself. She's lived in 5 different states and has lived and taught in a couple different towns in each state. She's not a young woman, she's nearing 60 years old with over 20 years teaching experience so frankly new school systems don't want to hire her. They'd have to pay her too much for experience. So she agrees to a pay cut to get a job because she needs the job, but then fusses about the bad pay. Well, if she'd stop moving she'd build up pay in one school instead of having to start over at every new school she teaches at. I'm not saying it's a good thing, but she has brought a lot of her problems down onto her own head and I do understand that.

Edit: Oh, and she teaches summer school too (also her own decision) so the whole "only work 9 months of the year" thing doesn't really apply to her.

Because most parents know the fine details of sexual education or want to go into gritty detail of human genitalia with their children? Those that do are the exception, not the rule.

Advocates of teaching sex-ed do so precisely because most parents know little about sex ed and because it's best to assume that most parents haven't had "the talk" with their offspring. Why is it best? Run some polls.

Two of the AP exams (Bio and Calc) landed on senior skip day. Not too many will show up for that. I only tested out of English, US History, EU History, and Art History. Wish I would have taken the Calc so I knew what was coming. :/

Good that you were trying to knock them out though. I would recommend knocking out dual-credit and classes offered in community college so you have a nice GPA buffer for the unexpected.


Same complaints from some of my friends who teach or taught.

One of them just decided to quit after maternity leave. She broke down one night, I don't know if it was still hormonal, but she just sobbed and sobbed. There was no way in Hell she was going back. She decided that she would just go into social work, which is depressing all on it's own, but she is more satisfied with that than she was with teaching. She still gets to help children, and it makes her happy. All and all, good choice for her!


The US and UK seem to be neck and neck with every societal problem.

Your base salary is for the 9 months only... if she chooses to teach summer school, and maybe this is just here, you get paid more money... therefore its like taking on an extra job and getting compensated for it... I personally think 20 is still a good sized class for kindergartners... you can get up to 40 or 50 here sometimes in the city... 20 is almost unheard of in HS... 30 is usually an average class in a decently populated school... you're never going to have perfect conditions... With moving around that much I'm surprised she can steadily find work these days... I never thought it would happen truthfully but as we all know teachers are taking a hit in the employment department...

Parents are definitely on the kids side more so these days but some of that is from misinformation provided by the student... kids come home and spin tales lol... other parents are just beligerant though...

Iirc, something my wife read a while back said, the average age kids learn about "sex" is 6 or 7. So if you don't talk to your kids, then someone will and it probably won't be in the best way. It's not always fun but I find that parents who have an open line of communication with their kids are far better off and the kids do better when they have knowledge to prepare for social encounters.

School does little to prepare you for life though. It's too bad.

As for Texas and science classes in Texas public schools, since I'm half-assedly playing catch-up, our lessons in evolution and labs were proceeded by the, "If you have a problem with evolution, you can just step outside. Be aware that your grades will reflect your choice." My Chem and Bio teachers were pretty strict about excluding faith from science, and my Bio teacher was ultra-mega Baptist. I don't know if that's actually how they felt, or if they were trying to deter an enormous disruption.

... Holy ***. You're actually argueing against the birds and the bees talk with your offspring?

And what the hell is the "gritty detail" about human genitalia? It's this very same mentality of shame (gritty? really?) that the parents in this article are coming from. Be ashamed and never talk about it. I'm pretty sure I'm qualified to answer about 90% of my kid's questions as their very existance qualifies me as an expert owner. If there is a specific question my kid has about their junk that I can't answer, do you honestly think I want them talking to a teacher who's only qualification over my own is that they took a test one time about the subject matter in which they were going to recite to a class full of zombified teenagers over a qualified doctor?

They learn what it is and how it works. They learn little to nothing about STDs and what not.

If I ever have a kid they get the talk at age 8... If parents were giving it I'd say it should be something for parents to teach not schools but as it is I don't know a single person whos parents went to give it to them before the age of 17.

I remember a girl pulling a Ken doll out of her cubbie, and pulling down its pants. Oh the giggles! Then you find out later that poor Ken is actually missing a couple important bits and pieces.