Comments about ‘Power struggles: Office of Education spars with lawmakers’

Since the state education department is incapable of ensuring basic levels of education, protecting our children against teacher pedophiles, ensuring schools and school boards comply with the law, or even that teachers can read and write up to grade standard, maybe someone wanting to get into politics should try and do their own job properly before becoming a lawmaker and telling other people how to do theirs. I don't have much respect for the lawmakers, but in this instance feel that a state employee who can't do their own job properly is hardly likely to do a better one if an elected official.

People of High Caliber even if they do desire to become teachers, will not become teachers in great numbers if teacher pay is not raised. We need to attract better people into the education profession.

All teacher's pay needs to be raised. Math and Science teacher's pay needs to be raised even more, simply because we need to attract people to become teachers who are capable of becoming engineers, real mathematicians and scientists. Our math education in Utah is suffering.

American education including Utah education has become seriously eroded over the past several years. I see what my kids are bringing home in math vs what I did when I was their age and I see a great decline and dumbing down.

We can not expect people with other options to go into teaching in great enough numbers, unless we make their life comfortable financially. If we don't get people of high caliber into the field, we will to see problems in education. We need to pay teachers more.

Mr. Hughes once again you show your maturity. Yes this is America and yes you need to be challenged.

Teachers need to be paid for the results of their work. Poor preforming class and students equal lower paay for teacher. Ban the vested/tenure system of a life time job for minimum work. Tenure applies to only a few and rare collrge professors

How wonderful to find that Math and Science teachers are worth more in Utah. I'm sure that the extra $3500 will have people uprooting, leaving neighboring states in droves (where, incedently they are making $10,000 - 30,000 more a year where there are).

But of course, I am just a history teacher.

Maybe I need to start looking for a state that sees a value for a history teacher. I have a master's degree in European History and am qualified to teach AP European History.

My parents are not around anymore, and this would be an excellent time to explore my opportunities in another state.

I thank the Legislature for their timing in this notification. It will give us a chance to put our home up for sale and find a new home in a warmer climate.

My wife is a 5th grade teacher, and elemtary teachers are in high demand in other states.

Good luck in creating a teacher shortage that spreads from math and science to across all the curriculum.

(Are our legislators really this dense???)

Every problem our education system has come with the fact it is purely socialist. Children are being punished by being sent to public school. Many people can't afford private school and I feel bad for them and hope I will be able to afford to send my children to private school. My years in public school were some of the worst in my life and a waste of time where I felt I learned nothing. I learned more in 2 years of private school than I ever learned in many years of public school. Politicians are all for the socialism and only make matters worse. I wish I could refuse to pay taxes that come from my money the government claims will help education. They are robbing us and making matters worse. I always felt public school was a harsh punishment in my life. It made me hate school and learning.

Surely we have not elected officials that hold our state board of education hostage simply because they are being challenged in their election.

The legislature needs to be turned over... Completely turned over. Throw the bums out! These guys play with public education every year and many of them ar making money off of charter schools and private schools. We are way to corrupt and way too far to the right. I am a republican but not an eagle forum member or supporter. Most of our legislature does support this extremist organization. Time for a change in government... Throw them out.

The call for more pay for math teachers is not a slam against other types of teachers. Utah needs to bring allteacher pay up to national average, even with the recent pay increases we are still rock bottom and we have the gall to complain about education.

However we do need teachers in math who have the ability and talent to become engineers, get a real math degree (as opposed to a math education degree), or become a scientist. A person who is considering becoming an engineer, even if he loves teaching, will not even consider it given the paltry pay that teachers currently make.

Math education has seriously eroded under the hands of people with math education degrees, we need to pay more to attract people with real talent and ability and then expect more. If we don't our national future is at stake.

The "old" teachers went for 10+ years without a raise. Now the "new" teachers are being offered higher pay and incentives that are not available to the veteran teachers. Our legislature is catering to the new teachers at the expense of education's specialists. In a few years, our baby-boomer teachers will retire, and there will be few veterans left. The teacher shortage continues.

With last year's increase, teachers in the classrooms only 1-5 years received near an 11% raise. At the 20 year level, my salary increased by around 4 1/2%. This does not include the increased insurance premiums which dropped my salary level by another 2%. Raises to older teachers? I wished!

None of those newbie educators know how to teach and enjoy teaching Romeo and Juliet and The Odyssey like I do.

Utahans have their heads in the sand, if they think science and math teachers are the only ones who deserve a specialty stipend.All educators deserve to be taken off their starvation diet, folks.

Special Education teachers would deserve their stipend. THAT is an emotionally and physically tasking profession. My hats off to you all! Most of you are saints.

How does the ability to teach math diminish the value of a degree when compared to a "real math degree"?

They pay quarterbacks more because they are worth more.

Face it the state legislature has decreed that your expertise is no longer needed. Take the hint and hit the road.

If we can drive all teachers out of state, Voucher schools will be the only option left to educate, and the Legaslators and private industry win. Money will be made by big business.

Divide and conquer.

Please run for office Margaret Bird. We need integrity in our elected officials not EGOMANIACS.

Math education has declined since I went to school, both in grade school and secondary school. I am as a citizen trying to help fix this. I notice as I talk to people with math education degrees, they deny or can't see the problem. I am not talking about teachers, but administrative types.

In the grade schools, learning of basis arithmetic has been degraded, for example many students don't know how to add fractions. The math education types don't see this as a problem, they say this can be accomplished using a calculator.

In the secondary schools, math has also been dumbed down. The problems given are simplier, and the students seldom learn why the formulas they are given work. When I went to school we were required to be able to justify or show why the formulas we were given, work as they do. I asked my sons physics teacher why he was giving the students the formulas, but not showing the students how to come up with these formulas in the first place.

He told me he used to do this but students are not as mathematically prepared as they used to be.

It's time for all the Eagle Forum Gayle Ruzika lackeys in the State Legislature to reveal how many of them own interests in private and charter schools. They will erode the effectiveness of public education until they and their cronies are the only game in town--then their dreams of millions of dollars gained by the privatization of education will be realized.

It's time to clean house! Let's get rid of all the Gayle Ruzika/Paul Mero Neo-Conservative Ultra Right-Wing demigods who bully their way through Utah politics. Throw the bums out!

Math students today are far beyond what we were at their age.

Anyone who says otherwise hasn't been in a school lately. You have 8th graders taking geometry that you didn't take until you were in 10th or 11th grade.

Get over the "this new generation is dumber than the last" idea. Every generation thinks that and every generation is wrong.

The teachers that teach math to my kids and head and shoulders above the poor teachers I had in the 70's and 80's.

What academic areas ARE Utah students as prepared as they used to be? This video-gaming addicted generation as a whole, no longer writes as well, computes as well, reads and comprehends as well, and are a far more inferior lot than when students sat in the classroom earlier this last century. Pick up a couple of 20th century books and prove it to yourselves.

Novels like A Tale of Two Cities and Moby Dick have been dropped from curriculum because not enough students are willing to put in the effort to read and gather the finer inferences of the novels. To Kill A Mockingbird used to be taught in the ninth grade---no longer. It is now a 10th grade book in Utah.

Slowly but surely, student education in Utah is being eroded quite nicely by the students themselves and their parents, for allowing the new electronics become the baby-sitters of their children. However, it is so much easier to blame the educators of the state.

Of course, there is always the truly dark side....the legislators of the state that think Great Salt Lake pumps, roads, Delta Centers, Reale Stadiums and a earthquake-proof state capital to cover their pinheads are of more worth than the quality future of our children.

I'm a science teacher and I think it is totally unfair to pay one teacher more than others based on curriculum.

You are falling right in line with what the fed.gov wants you to believe: that certain fields are more valuable than others.

We all have the same education and the same kids. We should be paid more, but paid the same based on our experience, not our curriculum.

And just how does a "math" degree differ from a "math education" degree? I'll tell you.

The math TEACHER has to not only learn the concepts of math, but has to learn how to relate them to kids who don't have the foggiest idea what the "math" person would be talking about.

Teaching is a skill and an art form that isn't learned just because you have a degree and work in the field. Too many teachers that come and go attest to that. Engineers do not necessarily make excellent math teachers.

If the people of Draper and Sandy want Hughes and his conservative caucus to run vouchers again in 2009, even though we just voted it down 62-38 in Nov. 2007, then they should re-elect him. Otherwise, they should look very closely at Margaret Bird (R-Draper), who transformed trust lands into a self-supporting tax free system that generates hundreds of millions of dollars every year for Utah's schools.