[geeks] OLPCs for sale...

[wa2egp at att.net]

> I'm not making blanket statements, I'm talking about local government  
> jobs, not the overall market.
> 
> You changed the subject and mentioned AT&T, a private sector job.
> 
> I mean a teacher and a hydraulic engineer both start in my town.  The  
> teacher will get more pay, and does *NOT* have more education.

OK.  But my original premise was people with same education.  Does that
hydraulic engineer actually have more education?  I'm making the
assumption from the name that engineer means basically a BS or BA.
I know I can be wrong on that.  Although things have changed, at one 
time a garbage man started at a higher wage than a teacher not including
overtime.

> Also, I don't agree with education is a metric of how much you should  
> get paid anyway.

Agreed.  It should be on what you do and how well you do it.  Some jobs
have greater responsibility, work load or danger.  It makes sense that
they should get paid more as well as those who do their job well.
 
> The job should pay what it is worth.  If a man with no education does  
> a good job, he should get good pay.
> 
> Likewise a PhD that sucks should have to eat out of the garbage.

Oh definitely.  I've seen both in government and private sectors.
 
> If you ignore that some jobs are government, you are ignoring the  
> primary reason why teachers are underpaid in most areas.
> 
> Some jobs actually pay well in the government, but not a lot of them.
> 
> Just about all city government workers are underpaid, no matter what  
> they do, at least around here.
> 
> Or let's put it this way, if they actually did the job competently,  
> they would be underpaid... :)

Yeah, somethines the underpaid begin to "underwork".  Sometimes you
get what you pay for.

> The irony is that because they get so many bad people, the cities  
> likely lose more than they save by being so stingy.

In teaching, cities tend to pay more than suburban communities because
they can't get teachers to go into the 'hood without paying more.
 
> I've done that before, but only within reason.

Well, I believe little money is better than no money. :) 
 
> I'm personally not convinced that some of the tests they use are a  
> very good measure.

Same here.  There are good test takers.  The accreditaion is more than
tests.  It involves all aspects of the school.  My school did fail once
because the school building was too small and borderline dangerous.  It
forced the BoE to get us a new, larger building.  We've passed ever since.

> At some schools where their rating is stellar and the students all  
> make As, nearly all of them are historically ignorant, innumerate,  
> border line illiterate, and geographically lost.

To borrow a line from a TV show, "B is the new C."

> Loss of accreditation these days could actually mean the school was  
> good.

Rarely.  It's more than test scores.  That's the problem with NCLB.


Bob