Good article on college grade inflation

[Suudy]

I’m absolutely in favor of your desire to volunteer, engage in your community.

That's not what I meant. I meant the elimination of bureaucracy to make it easier for volunteers to engage as teachers. I get the background check requirements and am fully supportive of some sort of references to teach some material. But a teaching certificate seems over the top.

If you’re in Washington, just enter one online teaching certification class and you’re “Making progress toward a teaching certificate.”

First, entering a teaching certification class costs money. Not only an application fee, but one must enroll in a class and pay tuition. To volunteer? That's too high a barrier for most people. Second, it isn't a permanent solution. If one flunks/drops out, one is eliminated from eligibility. One must provide evidence of satisfactory progress toward the certificate. All to volunteer? Not only is the volunteer giving up time to help out, but having to pay for the opportunity.

Bring proof of enrollment and a certified transcript to the School District with the approved background check and have admin sign the request for Emergency Certification.

To what end? I'm not seeking a certified position at the school

Now, apply for the open teaching position. You’re eligible.

Apples and oranges. The volunteer isn't seeking a full or part-time teaching position with the district. Open positions--if any--are regular paid employees of the district. This is completely outside the scope of that.

I’m not sure when you tried this. Ten years ago this pathway did not exist. Today? It is bureaucratic, but pretty easy to accomplish if you’re motivated.

I don't think you are understanding the point. This isn't about becoming a part-time teacher at a school. It's offering to teach 1 maybe 2 classes on some special topic that isn't offered. Perhaps 3-6 hours of classroom time per week.

What we offered was some of our time away from our regular jobs to come in and teach some material that is no currently offered. Becoming staff isn't the goal, nor should it be required.

 

[Suudy]

I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I did reach directly to WA OSPI and asked if being certified is required to teach a class.

They confirmed: "Washington state requires any educator independently teaching a class hold a valid teacher certification to do so, regardless of the number of hours taught. If you are only wanting to 'volunteer' as a teacher, the district may be able to have you in as a guest lecturer to a pre-existing computer science while the normal instructor remains in the classroom, but this would depend on the individual district’s policies related to parent volunteers/guest instructors, and if they are currently offering classes which would be appropriate for you to guest-lecture to."

So, a few conditions:

1. Must hold a certificate to independently teach a class.
2. Without a certificate, another teacher must be present in the classroom.
3. The "guest lecture" must be in a class the school already offers.

Quite the hurdle to volunteer to teach material, not just on the volunteers but on the school.

 

[Stretch 74]

I apologize, but don't know the Randi reference.

I'm not sure what you're smoking, but you've totally misrepresented the time commitment of teaching, which I find odd since I thought you said your wife had been a teacher.

I looked up the Tahoma School District contract and it very explicitly states teachers have to be on campus for 7 hours per day (exclusive of lunch) and they have 186 required days. Starting salary is also less than $70k. It also states that their salary covers lesson planning, workspace prep, lesson planning, grading, record keeping, communication with staff and parents, conference, open houses, meetings (of which there are all sorts; staff, department, building, grade level, parent, etc.), as well as committee work. Let's be real, most of these things happen outside of the normal school day. Their actual annual hours worked is probably more along the lines of 1600-1700 hours and the starting wage more like $40 per hour. Which I find super reasonable for a job that requires a bachelor's degree and state certified and in an area where a house costs $750k. I'd say you provided a beaming example of sophistry though.

At a minimum, better working conditions for the teachers would translate into a better product for the students. It was ridiculous that for years teachers were provided a paltry salary that only covered the hours school was open, and no consideration was given for the mountain of work they do outside of school hours. It sounds like your wife must have filed a bogus grievance at some point that the union didn't pursue and it forever clouded your vision as to the value they provide. Since the union literally is the teachers, it would be common sense that they should be able to give input into what schools and the education system looks like.

Okay, here we go…..



Randi Weingarten is the head of the AFT(American Federation of Teachers) and is a POS that did everything she could to keep teachers at home during Covid.

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/03/...ngarten-finally-said-the-quiet-part-out-loud/



You are correct, my wife was a teacher. Close to 40 years total, and you would not be able to find a better, more dedicated teacher. She loved her kids, all of them, and literally gave her life for them. More on that later. She was one who did always bring home papers to correct and doing planning/prep for upcoming lessons. She was so good at her job that she was recruited from elementary level to the junior high to plan, implement, manage, and teach a new program for at risk kids. She worked her ass for them, doing everything she could to teach them, guide them, even rescue them. She shared her personal cell # with them with the instructions to call her any time of the day or night when they were in a situation that they needed to be rescued. I will tell you that there were quite a number of times that she/we went out to get one of those kids, some middle of the night, some quite a ways away, one to bring in her student and three siblings to our house for 4 days over Eater weekend because the parents were beating the shit out of each other and the deputies had nowhere else for the kids to go. Yeah, she worked her ass off for those kids, and she had plenty of insight to many of the other teachers that were skating through.

My wife retired 15+ years ago, so it is possible, but highly unlikely that practices have changed since she was there. Yes, the school day is a contracted 7 hours, but if the contracted arrival and departure times are not enforced (which they weren’t), the slackers will take advantage of being there less time than they are being paid for. And to your point about all the extra work done at home and after contracted time, my wife was usually the last to leave and she said that very seldom did she see other teachers taking work home. When they have time before 1st bell and after dismissal, PLUS a contracted 50 minute planning period every day, not a lot for most of them to do after that when they teach the same lesson every class period. BTW, when teaching the at risk kids she had the same kids all day so had to prepare lessons for every subject!

Washington State dictates that every school district must have 180 days per year of instruction. There used to be only 2 days prior to the start of instruction that teachers were required to be at to prepare their rooms for the coming year. Of course, with no students those days, long lunches were common. And browsing through the TSD official schedule, you can easily see that at least one day per month is lost due to early releases every single Friday. All that has been bargained for by the union over the years and ends up hurting the students due to the loss of actual instructional time with the teachers. The contract says that there are 4 planned “make-up” days. I assume that this is how you come up with 186 days, but that is a misinterpretation because it is not 4 additional days of instruction, it is simply to account for power outages, snow closures, etc. And you know what-as someone that worked a 2080/2088 annual schedule, I also had many hours of work done at home or after normal work days. So I ain’t going to cry a river for teachers that might have to grade a few papers at home. Something I actually did for my wife once in a while. Ha!

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1694129011/tacomak12waus/jfuzsvrfdvl3geiamqle/CertificatedSalarySchedule.pdf

Per the TSD TEA Certified Salary Schedule, you are correct about the starting salary being under $70,000. But that is misleading, since the base of $68,665 has a Professional Responsibility Stipend (for work at home?) of $3090 added to it, so the actual starting compensation is $71,755. In addition, by doing only 28 hours of professional development the starting salary then becomes $73, 227. So even if you allow an average of 8 hours worked per day for 182 days (which is extremely unlikely), everyone will do the 28 hours to max out their rate, which then means the average pay per hour is still just over $50 for the 1456 hours that I will allow for arguments sake, even though very few of the teachers will actually be working that many hours. Remember, that is omitting all those 90 minute early releases on every Friday, plus half day releases prior to vacations and holidays. In reality my previous # of hours worked will be a lot less than your claim. And I say that a salary that works out to over $50/hour worked for a start is pretty darn good.

Now for this part I will try to control myself a bit, but no guarantee on that as I go through a response to your suggestion of a “bogus grievance”. I mentioned above how my wife gave her life for her students, and it is actually true. See, back in the late 1990’s she became very ill. Turns out that the incompetent management in the district had allowed toxic mold to permeate her building and after a few years it really got her. She ended up being bedridden for a long time and suffered the effects of the mold exposure bad enough that she was off work for two years. If you question how bad it could be, go ahead and look up the effects of toxic mold, especially stachybotris, the black mold. I guarantee you would not want anyone in your family to be exposed to it. She suffered the after effects of that mold exposure even after “recovery”, as it was not ever a complete recovery. So due to the effects of the mold, and how poorly she was treated by the district, she had to retire early, meaning we had to purchase tens of thousands of retirement credits to get the full benefit. Those lost two years made a big difference. And you know what? That union did not do a single ****ing thing to help her or to push the district to protect the other employees OR the students in that building. They didn’t give a shit at all, but hey-at least the members are getting paid and are giving the local union and NEA a bunch of money that they could use for lobbying! Yea!

And it is not a story of “All’s well that ends well” either. And then 6-7 years after retiring, she had pneumonia and then was diagnosed with another lung disease. So then it was all downhill, as it became more and more debilitating for her. There was no cure, all you could do was try to be as comfortable as possible, which I did the best I could as her caregiver. She died at age 70 in 2020, and with parents that passed away at 92 and 97, how many years of life do you think she was cheated out of by the incompetence of that school district that cared for their buildings so poorly? Yes, quite a few and I certainly have a bunch of bitterness in me towards that district, the union, and the WA L&I program. **** them all!

 

[95coug]

Okay, here we go…..



Randi Weingarten is the head of the AFT(American Federation of Teachers) and is a POS that did everything she could to keep teachers at home during Covid.

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/03/...ngarten-finally-said-the-quiet-part-out-loud/



You are correct, my wife was a teacher. Close to 40 years total, and you would not be able to find a better, more dedicated teacher. She loved her kids, all of them, and literally gave her life for them. More on that later. She was one who did always bring home papers to correct and doing planning/prep for upcoming lessons. She was so good at her job that she was recruited from elementary level to the junior high to plan, implement, manage, and teach a new program for at risk kids. She worked her ass for them, doing everything she could to teach them, guide them, even rescue them. She shared her personal cell # with them with the instructions to call her any time of the day or night when they were in a situation that they needed to be rescued. I will tell you that there were quite a number of times that she/we went out to get one of those kids, some middle of the night, some quite a ways away, one to bring in her student and three siblings to our house for 4 days over Eater weekend because the parents were beating the shit out of each other and the deputies had nowhere else for the kids to go. Yeah, she worked her ass off for those kids, and she had plenty of insight to many of the other teachers that were skating through.

My wife retired 15+ years ago, so it is possible, but highly unlikely that practices have changed since she was there. Yes, the school day is a contracted 7 hours, but if the contracted arrival and departure times are not enforced (which they weren’t), the slackers will take advantage of being there less time than they are being paid for. And to your point about all the extra work done at home and after contracted time, my wife was usually the last to leave and she said that very seldom did she see other teachers taking work home. When they have time before 1st bell and after dismissal, PLUS a contracted 50 minute planning period every day, not a lot for most of them to do after that when they teach the same lesson every class period. BTW, when teaching the at risk kids she had the same kids all day so had to prepare lessons for every subject!

Washington State dictates that every school district must have 180 days per year of instruction. There used to be only 2 days prior to the start of instruction that teachers were required to be at to prepare their rooms for the coming year. Of course, with no students those days, long lunches were common. And browsing through the TSD official schedule, you can easily see that at least one day per month is lost due to early releases every single Friday. All that has been bargained for by the union over the years and ends up hurting the students due to the loss of actual instructional time with the teachers. The contract says that there are 4 planned “make-up” days. I assume that this is how you come up with 186 days, but that is a misinterpretation because it is not 4 additional days of instruction, it is simply to account for power outages, snow closures, etc. And you know what-as someone that worked a 2080/2088 annual schedule, I also had many hours of work done at home or after normal work days. So I ain’t going to cry a river for teachers that might have to grade a few papers at home. Something I actually did for my wife once in a while. Ha!

chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://resources.finalsite.net/images/v1694129011/tacomak12waus/jfuzsvrfdvl3geiamqle/CertificatedSalarySchedule.pdf

Per the TSD TEA Certified Salary Schedule, you are correct about the starting salary being under $70,000. But that is misleading, since the base of $68,665 has a Professional Responsibility Stipend (for work at home?) of $3090 added to it, so the actual starting compensation is $71,755. In addition, by doing only 28 hours of professional development the starting salary then becomes $73, 227. So even if you allow an average of 8 hours worked per day for 182 days (which is extremely unlikely), everyone will do the 28 hours to max out their rate, which then means the average pay per hour is still just over $50 for the 1456 hours that I will allow for arguments sake, even though very few of the teachers will actually be working that many hours. Remember, that is omitting all those 90 minute early releases on every Friday, plus half day releases prior to vacations and holidays. In reality my previous # of hours worked will be a lot less than your claim. And I say that a salary that works out to over $50/hour worked for a start is pretty darn good.

Now for this part I will try to control myself a bit, but no guarantee on that as I go through a response to your suggestion of a “bogus grievance”. I mentioned above how my wife gave her life for her students, and it is actually true. See, back in the late 1990’s she became very ill. Turns out that the incompetent management in the district had allowed toxic mold to permeate her building and after a few years it really got her. She ended up being bedridden for a long time and suffered the effects of the mold exposure bad enough that she was off work for two years. If you question how bad it could be, go ahead and look up the effects of toxic mold, especially stachybotris, the black mold. I guarantee you would not want anyone in your family to be exposed to it. She suffered the after effects of that mold exposure even after “recovery”, as it was not ever a complete recovery. So due to the effects of the mold, and how poorly she was treated by the district, she had to retire early, meaning we had to purchase tens of thousands of retirement credits to get the full benefit. Those lost two years made a big difference. And you know what? That union did not do a single ****ing thing to help her or to push the district to protect the other employees OR the students in that building. They didn’t give a shit at all, but hey-at least the members are getting paid and are giving the local union and NEA a bunch of money that they could use for lobbying! Yea!

And it is not a story of “All’s well that ends well” either. And then 6-7 years after retiring, she had pneumonia and then was diagnosed with another lung disease. So then it was all downhill, as it became more and more debilitating for her. There was no cure, all you could do was try to be as comfortable as possible, which I did the best I could as her caregiver. She died at age 70 in 2020, and with parents that passed away at 92 and 97, how many years of life do you think she was cheated out of by the incompetence of that school district that cared for their buildings so poorly? Yes, quite a few and I certainly have a bunch of bitterness in me towards that district, the union, and the WA L&I program. **** them all!

I’m going to stray from the central point here…

First, sorry to hear what you and your wife went through. Nobody expects or deserves to go to work and have it sicken or kill them. There really are no words.

Now, my PSA -
In spite of stories like this - and there are more than a few - there is still no legal protection from mold exposure. It’s recognized than many species of mold - especially black, and including Stachybotyrus species - are toxic, but nothing has been done at any level to protect employees, tenants, or even children from exposure. There’s no trigger level where something has to be done, there’s only recommendations that if there’s visible contamination it should be treated. Problem is that by that point, the spores and particles are already airborne and impacting people. Politicians won’t move on it because it’s expensive, and because there’s too much science - too many species, too much variability between people. So instead they do nothing. If some people get sick, it’s because they were susceptible. Unless the walls are furry, it’s not seen as a problem. This is actually a situation where they need to do something - even if it’s not enough. Some protection is better than none, which is where we are now.

 

[Stretch 74]

I’m going to stray from the central point here…

First, sorry to hear what you and your wife went through. Nobody expects or deserves to go to work and have it sicken or kill them. There really are no words.

Now, my PSA -
In spite of stories like this - and there are more than a few - there is still no legal protection from mold exposure. It’s recognized than many species of mold - especially black, and including Stachybotyrus species - are toxic, but nothing has been done at any level to protect employees, tenants, or even children from exposure. There’s no trigger level where something has to be done, there’s only recommendations that if there’s visible contamination it should be treated. Problem is that by that point, the spores and particles are already airborne and impacting people. Politicians won’t move on it because it’s expensive, and because there’s too much science - too many species, too much variability between people. So instead they do nothing. If some people get sick, it’s because they were susceptible. Unless the walls are furry, it’s not seen as a problem. This is actually a situation where they need to do something - even if it’s not enough. Some protection is better than none, which is where we are now.

Thank you for that. I appreciate your thoughts.

Too bad Washington's leaders haven't taken action on this. Inslee, Gregoire, Lowry, Ray, Caper Milquetoast have all punted.