Almost certainly. As Dennis Miller once said, the people in charge of our children's futures should not be worried about whether they can afford genuine Ho-Ho's or only stale generic knock-offs.
But while higher teacher pay will undoubtedly be necessary in my fantasy school-world, until there are major institutional reforms, it won't do any good. Teacher pay is, like foreign aid, a necessary but not sufficient condition. The world will not eradicate polio without spending a lot of money on the task. But that doesn't mean that the first order of business is to raise a bunch of money, and then hand it to doctors to figure out what to do with. The first thing you have to do is build an organization that is capable of using the money to good effect. Otherwise, you'll just get what you get out of most foreign aid efforts: richer government employees.
I have no problem with richer government employees. But I do not think that the primary job of government is to enrich them. The government's job is to obtain we, the taxpayers, good value for money.
The school system is dysfunctional on all sides. On one side, you've got a bureaucracy so terrified that a teacher will make a mistake that it sets up "everything not compulsory is forbidden" rules. I'm not talking about forcing people to do things that they may not want to do, but which actually further the institution's goals, like implementing Direct Instruction. I'm talking about detailed rules specifying how many bathroom breaks a teacher can take. And the fact that each school is complying with so many state, federal, and local regulations that it's a wonder they can ever take a break from filling out forms to teach a class. We're treating educated professionals like they're would-be criminals who need to be watched every second lest they steal the chalk.
On the other side, you have an equally bureaucratic union, and a set of job protection rules that make it virtually impossible to fire anyone for poor performance, or reward them for good. I don't think anyone who has actually gone through the school system thinks that length of service is a good measure of teaching effectiveness, but that's how they're paid--seniority, and accumulation of usually thoroughly worthless educational credentials. And unless they start molesting their charges, it's basically impossible to fire them.
We need to start treating teachers like professionals. We need to start paying them like professionals. And we need to start holding them accountable like professionals. Doing one or two out of three won't improve anything, except perhaps some teacher bank accounts.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
What do you think about Obama's plan to raise the baseline but reward excellence/enforce accountability?
As Dennis Miller once said, the people in charge of our children's futures should not be worried about whether they can afford genuine Ho-Ho's or only stale generic knock-offs.
But in my opinion, Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls are both tastier than Ho-Ho's and half the price. I know it's a controversial stand, but I'm taking it.
Before generalizing about how teacher's salaries should be higher, it seems to me we should look at how much teachers' salaries actually are.
In some parts of the country they are higher than others - quite high, for a job with two weeks off at Christmas, a week off in the spring and 2 months or so off in the summer. I looked into how much I would make with my educational level and experience in this new area into which I just moved (in the Southeast), and I'd make around 65K. Not bad.
(And yes, yes I know about professional development time. I've been a teacher. But still. All of that time off is a lot different from your typical job that might start off with two weeks' vacation for the whole year.)
And then the kink in the teachers' salary argument is that in many areas, the salaries of Catholic (and other religious) school teachers are lower than the public school rate (although some systems are trying very hard to bring the Catholic school rate up to the public school scale) and they tend to have better teachers who (and this is important) stay in the system longer.
It's complicated.
Public school teachers are well-paid. Many are overpaid.
We need to start treating teachers like professionals. We need to start paying them like professionals. And we need to start holding them accountable like professionals.
I couldn't agree more. But moving from a union-dominated government-worker regieme to the regime of at-will employment, performance-evaulation-driven pay that private-sector professionalls live in will not happen spontaneously. Vouchers would do it, but are a political non-starter on any large scale. Charter school are probably the most realistic way there.
We need to start treating teachers like professionals. We need to start paying them like professionals. And we need to start holding them accountable like professionals.
Well, about professionals. It's also pretty hard to disbar lawyers and get doctors de-licensed. Luckily, medical schools still have some admissions standards.
Going further with Margaret's comments, we need to examine how much teachers make in cash AND benefits per hour they work over a lifetime before we can say if they're underpaid.
Not only do teachers work only 180 days or so per year (vs. an American average of about 245) they work fewer hours. According to the BLS teachers work about 6.5 hours per working day -- even when you include grading homework and preparing lesson plans and guiding extra-curricular activities (which generally makes them extra money).
Multiply that all out and you get that teachers work about 1,170 hours per year. That's 42 PERCENT less than the US average of 2,000 hours per year. The discrepancy is even greater if you compare teachers to other professionals, who tend to work more than average not less.
The next thing to consider is benefits. The health packages and other fringe goodies that teachers get are way better than their private sector equivalents and add thousands of dollars to their actual annual pay. These benefits further increase total compensation per hour.
The final thing to consider is years of service and retirement pay.
Perhaps things are different elsewhere in the country, but in NJ, teachers can retire at age 55 with not only a pension that starts off at something like two thirds the average salary they earned in the last five years of teaching (the pension is then increased annually to over account for inflation) but also a platinum health insurance plan.
Both of those stay with them till they die, on average, about 30 years later. That's 30 years of pretty good pay in exchange for no effort whatsoever -- and you have to find some way to account for all that money when you talk about what teachers make.
If you add all that stuff in, I think you'll find that teachers make more per hour than almost any other profession and way, way more per hour than most Americans.
"We need to start treating teachers like professionals. "
But instead we treat them like assembly-line industrial workers. And for too long they accepted that, because they came out of blue-collar families and that was the model of worklife they grew up with.
And we treat them like lawsuit targets and let every crank with a kid in school take shots at them from every angle on the ideological spectrum, instead of insisting on some kind of adult form or dispute resolution, and they react by closing ranks against even parents whose kids they are blatantly and obviously neglecting or abusing.
We treat them like maiden aunts and underpay them like maiden aunts (please don't come back with some bullshit about the time they get off - half of that is taken up with training and the rest of the time they still have mortgages to pay along with all the same bills as the rest of us.)and expect them to babysit and feed the kids lunch and have Kleenex on the end of their desks and report child abuse to CPS under pain of prosecution. They respond by forming women's spaces where a male teacher walks on eggshells and male pupils are taught how evil they are for being male and the cause of all wars.
Suggestions:
1) Rigorous implementation fo Affrimative Action - Goal: 50% percent representation of men at all levels of teaching. Deadline: Three years out.
This won't solve anything but it will shock the system into a sense of crisis.
2) Vouchers. These are gaining in inner cities here and there. They are not the non-starter they once were. Failing that:
3) Easy movement from one school to another, and from one district to another.
All that said, there's no just amount to pay teachers or any other profession. We should adjust their pay till raising the pay doesn't improve the quality of candidate enough to justify the extra expenditure.
My reason in going through the long explanation above was to do my tiny bit to dispel a myth that prevents many smart people from getting into teaching. I think we already pay enough to attract good candidates -- but for the fact that most college students have no idea how much we really do pay because people like Megan repeat silly lines about teachers having to buy generic junk food.
Teachers should be paid more and less.
The highly paid ones will be the ones who design the courses and videotape their great lectures and distribute both far and wide.
The low paid ones will supervise a class of 25 or so and complement the prerecorded teaching.
BTW, I have taught many years in both public and private schools.
"According to the BLS teachers work about 6.5 hours per working day -- even when you include grading homework and preparing lesson plans and guiding extra-curricular activities (which generally makes them extra money)."
Who? They are on crack - 6.5 hours is a normal school day in the first place, and it can't possibly include preparation and grading homework, at least not for elementary school teachers.
"The health packages and other fringe goodies that teachers get are way better than their private sector equivalents and add thousands of dollars to their actual annual pay"
Yes, in the same way that wages in the US are inflated compared to Third World sweatshops. Private sector benefits are pathetic and everyone knows it. Private sector equivalents? You mena private school teachers? The way they get paid, you need a husband to support you to be able to live on those salaries.
Let's say over the weekend, you raise every *current* teacher's salary to 100,000 K effective immediately.
How does your teacher feel now that they can buy a nice place, nice car, and shop @ whole foods and farmer's markets, like the rest of us professionals?
What then changes in that classroom?
What then changes in that lesson plan?
Is the money inspiring her to think of new ideas to reach her kids?
Is she going to now recognize kids who aren't learning as well?
Is she now going to be free of the emotional/mental burden of paying bills, so she can now craft new strategies?
Is that really what would happen?
It's also pretty hard to disbar lawyers and get doctors de-licensed
True, but the tort of educational malpractice doesn't exist (and people have certainly tried).
Speaking of disbarment, a recent 3-year suspension in my bar journal contained the marvelous sentence: "He did not expose himself on this occasion."
Oh, not this occasion? OK then.
"Not only do teachers work only 180 days or so per year (vs. an American average of about 245) they work fewer hours. According to the BLS teachers work about 6.5 hours per working day -- even when you include grading homework and preparing lesson plans and guiding extra-curricular activities (which generally makes them extra money)."
LOL, you must not know any teachers.
The paperwork of teaching ontop of grading papers means a considerably longer work day. Add in the fact that many teachers now work summers, and much of your argument falls apart.
A question I have always wanted to ask: why do you think raising teachers' pay is a good idea? Or to put it differently: resources are limited, so why should "we" use those resources to induce people to chose a teaching career?
Jim,
Yes, the school day is 6.5 hours, for kids. Union contracts stipulate that teachers get a lunch and at least one period off. In some places they get two. Most teachers use that opportunity to do all their grading and other extras so they don't have work to do when they get home.
As for private sector health coverage, I mean for all jobs, not private school teachers. I don't know any public school teachers with $2,000 deductibles or $60 drug co-pays or no-pay maternity leave. But those are the sorts of things we other professionals have to deal with.
Scoop writes: "My reason in going through the long explanation above was to do my tiny bit to dispel a myth that prevents many smart people from getting into teaching. I think we already pay enough to attract good candidates -- but for the fact that most college students have no idea how much we really do pay because people like Megan repeat silly lines about teachers having to buy generic junk food."
Good luck attracting talented math and science majors to a profession where salaries peak well below $100,000. And that 1170 hours per year argument is a total joke when you're talking about GOOD teachers, as I would bet that anyone of much competence puts in much more time than that.
One more point: You'd have to pay math and science teachers more than English and Social Studies teachers. Nothing wrong with that, but it would make the others holler, and it will not happen.
As it stands now, I know of one elementary school teacher who teaches his students to add fractions by adding the numerators and the denominators, so 1/4 plus 2/3 comes out 3/7. Informed that this produces wrong answers, he countered by saying it was easier for the kids to do than figuring out the right way. Some teachers are indeed overpaid.
After watching Sarah Palin on ABC, I have come to the conclusion that we have to pay Alaskan governors more. She's a brain-damaged dipshit.
I've suggested (only half-joking) that we pay teachers less, so that way we get only the dedicated ones.
I agree with WestIndianArchie. Simply raising the pay won't improve schools in the slightest. A healthy merit bonuses program? That has promise.
But if we're going to throw money at the problem...Why not pay parents bonuses for children who are well-behaved and high performing? The general consensus seems to be that parental involvement is the overwhelming factor in kids and school performance. Let's put the money towards where the problem lies.
Alan Gunn writes: "As it stands now, I know of one elementary school teacher who teaches his students to add fractions by adding the numerators and the denominators, so 1/4 plus 2/3 comes out 3/7. Informed that this produces wrong answers, he countered by saying it was easier for the kids to do than figuring out the right way. Some teachers are indeed overpaid."
And some overpaid administrator hired that idiot. But let's face it, there are many, many schools in this country that aren't going to be able to attract good teachers even if you double the salaries. Exactly how many people want to teach in war zones?
My apologies on relying on memory. It deceived me. Actual per year total hours worked is 1314, which means that teachers only work 37 percent fewer hours per year than normal folks.
Still, that doesn't hurt my point much.
Let's have some fun with numbers. The median teacher salary (not including benefits) last year was just over $49,000 -- which means that teachers earn $37.29 per hour, which isn't riches but it's not shabby either.
And it doesn't really illustrate how good teachers have it. Multiply those 1314 hours per year by the 34 years teachers put in before retirement. 44,676. Now multiply the 2,080 that most people work by their 44 years. 91,000.
That's right over the course of their lives teachers will work LESS THAN HALF AS MANY HOURS as the rest of us. And while they won't be rich, they'll never have to worry a day in their lives about running out of money (because pension checks keep coming) or not being able to afford health care.
That's pretty good compensation for the fact that they'll never get rich. School districts should do a better job advertising this. They'd have a lot easier time recruiting.
I took a look at one of the union's salary reports. I don't think teachers are underpaid now. When you factor in job security, benefits and the labor union instituted work rules, the pay is actually nice.
I remember when I graduated from college there was a restaurant chain that paid extremely high salaries. They had a very hard time attracting applicants even though the salaries, benefits and working hours were very attractive. The social status of the job just wasn't there. I think we have a similar issue with teachers. If you're a hotshot at a good college, you don't go into teaching. You have to change your major into something that locks you into a teaching career exclusively. Then you have to mostly leave your hotshot social circle behind. Even if teaching were to pay more, you lose some social status. Ironically, there was probably better talent in teaching when our society was more sexist. A lot of very talented women ended up being teachers because that was the best career available to them. Now, they have many more opportunities.
My personal take is that teaching and education are ripe for lots of deregulation. Charter schools and vouchers are just first steps.
As Scoop says, there is no correct amount to pay teachers. Or anyone else. What is the correct pay for a bus driver or Senator?
Are teachers professionals? We can't be sure because the term is malleable. I don't think "professional" will tell us much about improving public schools.
It is true that lawyers and doctors are responsible for malpractice. But, frankly, so is a plumber. The trick is to prove the damage and the cause. Saying we must make public school teachers responsible is baloney.
We aren't going to get a good public school system by cheering teachers up, or respecting them, or paying somewhat more.
We might try lengthening the very short US school year; our kids simply go to school less. We might try encouraging parents to turn off the TVs and XBoxes and Internet games during the school week. Perhaps actual homework could replace funwork for an hour or so.
And teachers are not in charge of our children's future. Would any sane parent agree if a teacher told them "we are in charge of your children's future."
I disagree.
As I understand schools get state funding but also rely on municipal levies and what not for funding so obviously poor places don't get their levies passed and those schools fail. This levy system should be removed and school districts should be sufficiently funded on a per full time enrollment basis by the state.
The teachers getting more pay thing irritates me though. Is it set by school district or state? Because the teachers I know do extremely well for themselves and one is enjoying a 1.5 yr mat leave right now, with complete job security to return to.
Add in the vacations, the inability to lose one's job but for sexual/physical abuse of children, the benefits, the lack of revnenue generation,and the most secure retirement plans in the country as well as healthcare and no, I absolutely disagree that they should be paid more.
A lawyer gets about 7 yrs of education at an unbelievable cost, then has to pass a bar exam, and article well enough to keep his or her job, and avoid lawsuits, and plan for retirement, and provide healthcare if self employed. And take on the risk that if they are shitty at their job they will have no clients and be left with just student loans.
Teachers pay in the max out around 80K range plus insane benefits is more than appropriate.
One more thing. I went to an underfunded Catholic school which also had really low tuition, supposedly is staffed by inferior teachers and I consider it to be the best school in my town. I completely disagree that throwing money at teachers and operating budgets is the way to improve education.
Also merit based bonuses? No. That is akin to the lawyer who only takes fees on what he wins for you in court - he will never take on the file that has a slim to none chance. The teachers will all abandon the more challenging schools, they will all "teach to the test", try to transfer poor performing students. I don't claim to know the answer, I just don't think throwing money, merit based bonuses are it either. At some point education also needs to be service to one's community and if they really want the big bucks take on some risk and enter a different field. Oh God, I just thought of something else, so many of these people after retiring at 55, collect a paycheque for retiring but also get rehired on as consultants, by the school district they retired from. No, teachers do not need more money.
I became a teacher at 40 and have taught for 15 years. I graduated from what's considered an elite university and have received uniformly excellent evaluations for work in the classroom. I mention these things to show that, at least in my opinion, I don't have a particular ax to grind. I think it's a hard job to do well. The main reason to raise pay, from my perspective, is simply to attract better people to enter the profession - that's just the way America works. It would take a while for that effect to kick in, and that would drive some people outside education nuts. Merit pay, to me, is unworkable. The "yearly assessments," in my field at least (English), are hardly worthwhile, let alone reliable. Call me "Obama", but I think real change in education will only happen from the bottom up: better teachers, better parents, better neighbors - a better culture. I understand why nobody seems to think of it that way - practically speaking, what's a politician or administrator to do? But that's still my take on it.
Teacher compensation, and teacher education, should be upgraded to the level of doctors and lawyers. They are professionals and need to be treated as such. In all regards.
Teacher compensation, and teacher education, should be upgraded to the level of doctors and lawyers.
I can't speak for doctors, but there are a goodly number of lawyers making $40-50k a year (far more, in fact, than are making $150k), and a number of ex-lawyers doing something else because they couldn't make that much. Not everyone is a Skadden partner.
Aside from that, it's really, really easy to fire a lawyer. You pick up the phone and say "you're fired." Granted, that person doesn't stop being a lawyer, but he stops being your lawyer. Not clear how you're going to get that level of accountability with teachers, even without worrying about unions and civil service rules.
it's really, really easy to fire a lawyer.
You're assuming that everyone who dismisses a lawyer has made a rational decision. I question that.
The point is is simple: People who teach our children are arguably as important as lawyers and doctors and should be treated accordingly.
As for accountability, if you are paying a tutor to teach only your children, then they are only accountable to you and you can fire them at will. If you are paying a tiny fraction of their salary, then they are accountable to you only in equal proportion.
Megan,
I really appreciate you trying to have an opinion on this subject that makes sense, but the truth is having a national educational opinion is almost pointless for an experienced teacher. The unbelievable variety at building, district, state and regions (let alone the ever changing national laws and bureaucrats) means that the system is so Balkanized that to speak about "education" as a national problem is insane. It would be like calling "crime" a national problem. Of course it is, but there are all kinds of different statutes, levels of effectiveness with regards to enforcement, demographics from city to city.
We are also talking about the education of grades pre-K to 12. Which grades are effective? What about the curricula? What about the state curricula? I'm barely scratching the surface.
So, no offense, but for you to pretend as though you are even forming any kind of educated opinion is incredibly condescending. Particularly considering the view you take of others commenting on economic policy in a similar vein.
For the record I am a student teacher at a district that has over 50% free & reduced lunch, has a lot of ethnic/linguistic diversity for the region and is 65% military. I know just enough to know that I know next to nothing, so it is hard to see someone else gloss over these things.
Teacher compensation, and teacher education, should be upgraded to the level of doctors and lawyers. They are professionals and need to be treated as such. In all regards.
Professionals are paid by merit, as determined in the competitive market, and can be dismissed by those who pay them at any time. Without cause. Just because the client prefers to move to another professional.
Let's start there.
Shall we mention the teachers' unions reaction to those ideas?
Teacher compensation ... should be upgraded to the level of doctors and lawyers
NYC public school teachers now have top pay exceeding $100,000 ... for a 180-day working year ... with a sabbatical year off with pay ... with pension and medical benefits far above private sector levels ... with job security such as produces a "dismissal for poor performance" rate, rounded to the nearest tenth of a percent, of 0.0%.
As to their level of education, it is dicated by the union through its subordinates in the legislature, requiring graduate level Ed School ( ... surely you are not implying that's not as high quality as other graduate schools for other professions?! ...) to limit competition and the supply of teachers.
So if you have any problem with that, take it up with the union.
By the way, if anyone wonders how the ducks are lined in the public education area in NYS, which has the nation's largest public school system in NYC ...
Yesterday State Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver won his primary and thus effectively his re-election.
His victory party was held at the headquarters of the United Federation of Teachers.
justcorbly says: Teacher compensation ... should be upgraded to the level of doctors and lawyers.
Doctors and lawyers aren't payed what they are because they are such very worthy people. They are payed what they are because of supply and demand. When (A) parents decide that they are willing to pay $100K for a year of teacher time and (B) they can't find teachers willing to do the job for less than $100K/year, then teachers will be paid $100K/year. Please note that both (A) and (B) are necessary.
I was amused to find your comment just after I wrote this comment on another post: ...the people who say this don't see wages as signals regulating supply and demand. They see them as some sort of cosmic reward that should be bound up with the justness and greatness of your occupation. We always end up talking past one another. So we will probably end up talking past one another. But I tried.
You're assuming that everyone who dismisses a lawyer has made a rational decision. I question that.
I assume nothing of the sort. Many clients are idiots who do stupid things.
As for accountability, if you are paying a tutor to teach only your children, then they are only accountable to you and you can fire them at will. If you are paying a tiny fraction of their salary, then they are accountable to you only in equal proportion.
If you're dissatisfied with a teacher, you can't just move your kid to a new class like that. Indeed, if you got all 25 kids' parents to agree that a teacher should be fired, you still couldn't do it. So the modern teacher isn't accountable to the parent's in any fraction at all.
Megan, it seems like a contradiction to me to complain about very specific rules that dictate how many bathroom breaks teachers can take, and also be in favor of direct instruction- which dictates which words for how many minutes the teachers will use.
I can feature that direct instruction works. But it would also not be treating teachers like professionals.
I think when teaching happens well it is because a relationship has been established between teacher and student, a relationship in which the student is motivated to learn what the teacher presents. It is very difficult to come by objective criteria that will determine under what conditions that will happen (aside from the obvious lack of abuse and adequate logistics). It is hard even to measure if it HAS happened. And to implement it on a federal level? Laughable.
Our educational system is local. Locally run, locally funded. National solutions for the problems it faces are non-starters unless you are going to federalize control and funding of the whole system, and I can think of a lot of reasons that that will never, and should never, happen.
Nobody has cited credible sources contradicting Scoop's figures. It seems the "generic Ho-Ho" meme is false.
It is easy to say "we should pay teachers more". But who is "we", and how much is "more"? Perhaps teaching is not worth so much as everyone seems publicly obligated to assert. Blah, blah about the importance of children as our future, but is teaching--as practiced by an average-skilled person to an acceptable level--really all that hard?
If "we" want to pay exceptional teachers more, lets have them work at a private school with exceptional tuition. Then "we" becomes "you". Now how much will you pay? Maybe average is good enough.
Or maybe average is all the public should be in the hook for. Like the lawyer comparison, we don't pay Johnny Cochran rates for public defenders or assistant deputy city prosecutors* who handle the bulk of the work. It just ain't worth it.
*unless Cochran-level players take voluntary pay cuts, like Cochran did.
john writes: "Call me "Obama", but I think real change in education will only happen from the bottom up: better teachers, better parents, better neighbors - a better culture. I understand why nobody seems to think of it that way - practically speaking, what's a politician or administrator to do? But that's still my take on it."
We have two many "Johns" around here, but this one makes sense. Almost everything I read about systematic changes in education smells like horseshit to me, but not his comments.
Right now a huge segment of America is lionizing a marginal idiot named Sarah Palin and pretending she's capable of running the country. There's an epidemic of stupid raging out there.
Why can't Johnny read? Maybe it's because he's staring at electronic games all day and he lives in a house with no books and parents who think Iraq was behind 9/11 and Bill O'Reilly is a genius who has it all figured out.
But making it easier to fire teachers without knowing how to start finding better ones is a good plan. Yeah, sure. I'm glad the dingbats who come up with these plans aren't running my beloved Red Sox.
"We have two many "Johns" around here, but this one makes sense."
Why, thank you, Moe, and you've emboldened me to add something else: I woke up in the middle of the night last night with one figure blaring in my head - 6.5 HRS/DAY! Where did that come from? I teach six hour-long classes a day, four preps, averaging this year 25 students/class. Five of these are writing classes, which would leave me 7.5 minutes per day to plan each class and attend as well as I can to the writing needs of 125 students. I don't think so. Also, I teach in a poor rural district where many kids come to school with a host of very real socio-economic problems. If you go into a classroom of 30 teenagers, any number of which at any given time may be weirdly hormonal, uncooperative, unmotivated, maladjusted, or occasionally even downright hostile, without a pretty good idea about what you are doing - trust me, it will be one of the longest hours of your life. An entire bad day (and after 15 years I am far from immune to them) will leave you feeling like the shavings the cat had kittens in.
Finally, and I hope I don't sound like I'm whining - this actually feels pretty good - I don't know how many commenters here have actually coached a school sport team (I've coached about 20), but if you think it's less than a three-hour a day commitment, not counting away games, which usually are about a five-to-seven hour time commitment, you are mistaken. I've coached teams for as little as $500 per season and never more than $2500. One year in a budget crunch, like all the other coaches at my school, I did it voluntarily.
I've got a Master's Degree and 15 years experience and this year I'm making $59,000. Call me spoiled, but I don't feel overpaid.
John Glass:
I've no issue with merit pay.
My state has a chronic teacher shortage, both in urban areas that pay above the national scale and in its many rural areas that pay far below the national scale. Fewer students are enrolling in university education programs, both here and across the country.
Why? Because more money can be made doing something else. Many students are aware that many school systems deliberately fire beginning teachers before they become eligible for their first pay raise in order to reduce costs. The same thing can happen if and when they move to another district. What student wants to choose a profession knowing that his or first employer can't afford the salary for more than one or two years?
If we want to attract better teachers, we need to improve their status and their compensation. Simpe as that. People are not going to do it out of the goodness of their hearts.
And let's stop expecting teachers to spend out of their own pockets to buy basic school supplies. That's a disgrace.
There are ways to attract more people to the profession beyond simply increasing pay. I think there could be a much stronger effort to attract college students (many of whom have no idea what sort of profession they're interested in), who often have a negative perception of teaching. There are a lot of positives to the job - it can be very rewarding, lots of vacation time, good job security. And while a teaching salary seems very low if you're in NYC, it's a pretty decent salary in many areas with lower standards of living.
Clearly, other measures are needed to improve retention rate of teachers - mentoring programs, better support from the school administration, etc. I'm just not sure that the most efficient way to improve the attractiveness of the job is to increase the pay.
"Nobody has cited credible sources contradicting Scoop's figures."
Because they are irrelevant. He is equating classroom hours to hours worked. If he is on that level, there's no point discussing anything with him,.
Dear Ms. M.,
You've won my colleague Ghettoputer's heart, and I concur you're very persuasive on the topic. However, "to obtain we value?" One is tempted to note your third-grade grammar teacher was evidently overpaid...
I kid, I kid,
The Œcumenical Volgi
Because they are irrelevant. He is equating classroom hours to hours worked. If he is on that level, there's no point discussing anything with him,.
No, he didn't. Here's the quote:
According to the BLS teachers work about 6.5 hours per working day -- even when you include grading homework and preparing lesson plans and guiding extra-curricular activities (which generally makes them extra money).
I'd like to here someone challenge it. Frankly, it sounds low to me, but his assertion pointedly did not equate classroom hours to hours worked.
What no one ever considers when they trot the tired meme that teachers, fireman, and policeman are paid to little is the unbelievably generous pensions and retirement benefits that they receive. Try and find something similar in the private sector anywhere. Do you know what kind of portfolio you would have to hold to replicate them?
Both my parents are teachers.
The government's job is to obtain we, the taxpayers, good value for money.
I wish someone would mention that to the government.
Where a dispute involves a matter of taste, a competitive market will satisfy many different tastes, while a monopoly must inevitably create unhappy losers. Where a dispute is a matter of fact, where "what works?" is an empirical question, a competitive market or, in the case of government schools, numerous small local monopolies with interdistrict choice and local determination of curriculum and compensation schedules, will provide more information than will a State-wide monopoly. There are no economies of scale at the delivery end of the education industry as it currently operates.
Ken Burns is probably the best History teacher who ever lived. I hope he made millions from his series on baseball, jazz, and the civil war. Even so, he was probably underpaid.
It makes no more sense to pay all teachers the same just because we call them all "teachers" than it does to pay bicycle mechanics, auto mechanics, A/C mechanics, and jet engine mechanics the same just because we call them all "mechanics".
Uniform pay schedules mean good teachers of important subjects are underpaid in unionized government schools. Abusive or ignorant teachers or even good teachers of trivia are overpaid with their first dime.
It does not take 12 years to teach a normal child to read and compute. Most vocational training occurs more effectively on the job than in a classroom. Government provision of History and Civics instruction is a threat to democracy, just as government operation of newspapers would be (is, in totalitarian countries). The education industry is not a likely candidate for successful government operation.
justcorbly - Re: "People who teach our children are arguably as important as lawyers and doctors and should be treated accordingly."
Since when has pay had anything to do with the overall importance of the job being done? Garbage collection is more important than dunking basketballs but bench warmers in the NBA make a lot more than any garbage man. Pay isn't, and SHOULDN'T be about the overall importance of the job, its a function of supply and demand for the labor in question.
Just because we should pay teachers more does not mean we should pay *these* teachers more.
The problem with the system is this: The teaching profession used to depend upon discrimination against women in other areas of the workforce to force quality candidates into teaching. With that discrimination significantly reduced (and some high-paying fields, like law and medicine, now have more female than male entrants) quality people don't go into teaching.
Elementary Ed has the *lowest* average GRE score for intending majors of any discipline - and by a huge margin.
We now have schools that are in many cases full of incompetents - and we have a union system where we cannot fire them, or increase the salaries of new ones.
MLaJ,
Dudes, we don't have somebody that "runs the country". If we did, I'd either leave, or join the revolution.
Or were you talking about Mugabe perhaps?
Megan, I have you RSS'd...you are refreshing to read! Thank You for your honesty and spunk...keep it up.
You obviously may not get to read my little two cents here since you already have ten tons (at least) of comments already...how do you do that?
My little obversation relates simply to this: it occured to me today that as I read our local newspaper, or view online news sites, that if we spent minimally as much time, effort, and money on talking about learning and education as we do about sports (professional, college, high school) might we (America) be doing better for ourselves and our global community?
Think about it...the large-fonted headlines about SPORTS, SCORES, STANDINGS, STAR PLAYERS, $$$$$, every day and every week...everywhere in print, TV, radio, and on line.
Why not do the same for EDUCATION, ART, LEARNING, every day, every week...everywhere in print, TV, radio, and on line.
Pay teachers (the good ones) the same as sport coaches!!!
Regards and Thank You!
Alright, I'm well aware that posting here now is essentially "dead letters sent to..." no one, but there's something I want to get off my chest. In an earlier post, I sort of spontaneously included "better neighbors" in my idea of what it would take to improve American education. I have realized since that what I find so irritating in discussions like this is that people not actually in education seem to believe they are simply observers and objective critics outside the system, not participants in it, and my question is: How many commenters here, how many Americans in general, have asked kids not in their immediate families: "So what'd you learn in school today?"
There are a couple of excellent reasons to do this, and they don't include gathering information about the status of American education (although I don't mind at all if that's part of it). The best reason, in my opinion, is to show kids that you care about the kinds of things that are taught in school - that lessons about science or government or literature may in fact be intrinsically interesting to you, as an adult who doesn't have to go to school. A second terrific reason is that you may be provided with a "teachable moment," you may have something really heartfelt and interesting to say about Lewis and Clark, or amoebas, or pi. It would really help.
Finally, you may be able to fill in a blank - help a kid who is slipping through the cracks in terms of developing a curious and inquiring mind (and that still is the fundamental reason to "be educated" - however much we have been reduced to staring at test score results and droning on and on about "so you can get a good job"). It doesn't bother me to admit that I'm not meeting all the intellectual needs of all my students - I deal with 150-200 students a day - sometimes I'm not sure I'm even meeting the needs of any of them. Maybe you can be the person to point a frustrated kid in a direction of inquiry that will work for him or her.
If it weren't counterproductive, or oxymoronic, or sinful, or something, I would say I really hate Republicans for hating Hillary Clinton so much that they were compelled to ostracize her book "It Takes A Village...," thereby effectively ostracizing the notion that we all really are involved in the upbringing of the next generation. It's a very valuable concept.
Working 6.5 hours a day? You have got to be kidding me. Maybe for high school teachers who leave right as the bell rings, but certainly not for elementary teachers. I arrived at work at 7 AM and rarely leave before 5 PM. Also, a "planning time" is not mandated. For example, on my Tuesdays, I am with my students all day except for the 30 minutes of lunch (that after I take my students to lunch, and wait with them while they go through the line turns out to be about 20 minutes). The 20 minutes that I would love to plan, but at some point, teachers need to eat, too!
Hey, I have chosen this career, and I am not here to complain, I love teaching, however I just wish people would get their facts straight and stop making assumptions.
Also, this past year my students had a 98% passing rate on their end of the year standardized tests (given because of No Child Left Behind). Of course it would have been great to receive a bonus (especially when the teacher across the hall from me got a 81%). However, it is not practical.
As an example, two years ago I had a struggling student (I teach 3rd grade, and he came to me on a kindergarten reading level). I tutored him for free, sent home my personal classroom books because he didn't have books at home, I did everything I possibly could to help this child. But when those standardized tests came, he did not pass.
What if next year I have a whole classroom of "this type" of student? I would not be monetarily rewarded although I poured my heart and soul into teaching these students. However, a couple miles away at school in a more prestigious area, all students arrive to school "on grade level" and the teacher has to do practically nothing to get her students to pass. If teachers are paid strictly on child performance, you will have very few teachers who are willing to teach those struggling students. Although struggling students are the most rewarding (not monetary) to teach, I have bills and a mortgage to pay, too!
All in all, although it my seem like the best option is to pay teachers based on performance, who will be the person assessing teacher performance? Standardized tests are not, and never should be, the assessment tools for a teachers dedication to her students.
Laura - You won't find to many people suggest that teacher be paid purely on performance, partially for the reason you point out. Teacher performance, at least fine distinctions between performance levels can be very hard to define. A really large difference in performance is likely to be reasonably obvious to principals, other teachers and students. But you can't base all pay for all teachers just on the large differences, because in many cases the differences will be smaller.
It seems to me that your looking for an entirely objective measure of performance, and finding any candidate you can think of, as wanting. Well performance evaluations in most other areas of the economy are not entirely objective. Some part of the evaluation could have subjective elements. And if the principal gets the evaluations wrong, well he would be hurting his own evaluation. When he discourages or pushes out better teachers (most likely pushes them to other schools with more reasonable evaluations), he will eventually wind up getting worse ratings himself.
And there would be a large amount of base pay, or pay based on other criteria. You would be unlikely to have huge variations in compensation determined solely by the evaluations.
Maybe you get base pay, pay based on the principals evaluation, pay based on the children's performance, and pay based on improvements in children's performance.
The third factor would discourage good teachers from picking poor schools where they might be needed most, but the fourth factor would mitigate against this, and also the pool of fund that the principal has to give to teachers who get better evaluations might be larger at schools that have more disadvantaged students (my one concern about that is that it become and encouragement not just to teach people who actually have problems and disadvantages, but to make sure that students get labeled as having a disadvantage of some sort).