In my experience, and I guarantee I know the personal backgrounds of more teachers than you do, most teachers went to college for their subject and education, then went right into teaching as their first career. They didn’t fail in the private sector as they were never in the private sector. Their career trajectory never led there, and really, how would it? How many private sector options are there for a history major, or an art major, or an English major? Teaching is a good option for liberal arts majors.
Some teachers are idiots who don’t know their materials and aren’t good at conveying it. Some are amazing and gifted and their students learn a lot. Most are somewhere in the middle. You’re painting with a broad brush here that makes me wonder what axe you’re grinding.
Seriously, it’s not a “lack of understanding the material.” That’s a rather absurd accusation, considering. When I see bad teachers, what I usually see is lack of motivation, either due to burnout or boredom. Usually the teachers most disliked by the kids and/or least effective from my POV are completely lacking in charisma, or are 2 years away from retirement. Lack of brains usually is not the problem. It’s ennui, getting in a rut. What can be done about that? I don’t know. Merit pay would probably help.
I’m not saying that money shouldn’t be a factor – of course it is. But most people tend to feel that teachers should be motivated primarily because of love of teaching, not because it’s more money than they’d make selling cars. It’s simiar to the way most people would be discomfited by an MD that said he had never really had any interest in alleviating pain or helping people, that he just wanted to make bank.
A teacher primarily motivated by money is going to be even more inclined towards going along to get along. Teach to the test? Sure, whatever. Give easy A’s? Makes parents, students and administrators happy, so go for it.
Mind you … that’s pretty much the way it is now. But when you have bright-eyed idealists doing it, we at least occasionally have the nerve to actually say that Billy is ignorant. When people are lining up to get those sweet-paying teacher gigs, there will be waaay more pressure on teachers to lower standards to please people.
I graduated from college in 1981 (Univ. of Rochester, not a bad school) with a B.A. I then went to law school (McGeorge (Univ. of the Pacific, again, not a bad school), '86). I then worked for some 11 years as an attorney. I started out in 1986 making $32,000. By the time I stopped working in 1997, I was making $85,000+
After a few years deciding what to do, I went to work for Dillard’s Dept. Stores as a department manager. Starting salary for this position that didn’t even require a BA? $30,000. That’s right, almost as much in 2001 for doing that job as I had gotten in 1986 to be a starting attorney. Guess what starting attorneys were making in 2001; it wasn’t anything like the same $30K. And that $30K became a MINIMUM of $40K when you bumped up from Asst. Mgr. to Mgr., which usually was a wait of about 6 mo. or so. This is in Toledo, Ohio.
Now fast forward to 2008. Having just finished two years of full time college to obtain a license to teach, I’m working in South Carolina, at a high school just across the border from Charlotte, NC. Starting salary for this position teaching mathematics? Yep, you guessed it: $32,000 (rounded). So, I’m making as much as a TEACHER as I was making as an assistant manager in a clothing store. And for what it is worth, starting salaries for teachers in NW Ohio were not much different; a little higher if you wanted to work in the inner city of Toledo, but otherwise, pretty much level with what I’m making in South Carolina.
Folks, the bottom line is this: teachers are not being paid enough in starting salary to attract the college students who are the better students. Those students stay in other programs. The ones in the College of Education at Bowling Green St. Univ. (Ohio’s flagship teaching college!) are almost uniformly students who have switched majors as a result of academic difficulties with their first love. I was astounded at the lack of understanding that most of my fellow mathematics teaching candidates had of basic mathematics. Students who struggled to get C’s in basic calculus courses, who had to be taught upper level math in specially designed “teachers” versions of the courses (probability and statistics, linear algebra, and advanced/abstract algebra for example). And when I went and took my abstract algebra course in a summer course at Kent St., I found out that there were even WORSE students in the system; they barely were able to understand simple abstract algebra theories. And these were the people who were being released to teach our young people.
Yes, there are some very fine teachers who teach, despite the low starting pay. And yes, there are some nice fringe benefits to teaching, including decent pensions (for as long as that lasts), good health benefits, two to three months off in the summer, two weeks off at Christmas, a week off at Easter, etc. I most certainly am not complaining, but then I knew going in what the deal was. But if we intend to improve the quality of teaching, one of the things we can certainly do is increase the starting pay of teachers, to reflect the fact that we expect them to be trained professionals.
Someone mentioned reduced class sizes, and yes, that would be nice, too. But I’m only teaching classes of 21 or so this year, so that’s fine. Some places, it’s much worse. But even if your class sizes were 15 students, how much good will that do if the people doing the teaching are not capable of doing the work WELL?
Someone else said that, in states where there is an ample supply, you don’t need to pay more. This is complete nonsense. Just because there are ample teachers in Ohio, for example, doesn’t mean that those teachers are as qualified as they could or should be. It simply means that there are ample numbers of people willing to do the job at that price. If those people are not highly qualified, what does it matter that there is an over-supply of them?
Are there places that pay teachers more? Yes, of course there are. I could walk across the state line into North Carolina and get an instant raise. But then, the cost of living in Charlotte is higher, so what does that matter? I could make a ton more money in the Bay Area of California, but so what? The real question remains: for college students in a given field, where are they going to be able to make a better living? As a teacher? Or as something else? If it isn’t as a teacher, you are taking the single, most valuable asset for education and putting a restrictor plate on it. :smack:
And a reminder: this isn’t “sour grapes.” I’ve got plenty of money so that I don’t need to make more money as a teacher (else I’d have gone to some place that paid more!).
Absolutely. However, lemme give you some book-larnin and some anecdotes.
Book-larnin: one of my intro-to-teaching textbooks suggested that in a survey of college professors and high-school counselors, there was a strong tendency to steer academically gifted students toward non-teaching careers, and academically-challenged students toward teaching. Counselors and profs seemed to do this based on the idea that, if the student could get a job that paid better than teaching, it was their obligation to steer that student toward the superior job. How would you feel about our medical system if students gifted in science and logic were steered away from medicine, while students with difficulties in these areas were steered toward medicine?
Anecdote: I’m a book-larnin kind of guy, and I write good paper. I had two different college professors, in the education department, ask me what I was doing there, try to get me to continue past my teaching certificate to get a doctorate so I could become a professor. How would you feel about medicine if professors at teaching hospitals tried to convince their best students not to become doctors?
Yeah, we don’t want teachers just making bank. But we do want to attract people to the field who are bright. Most people are going to choose the career that’s best for them. Wouldn’t it be awesome if it were possible to support a modest family off a single-teacher income, as it’s possible to support a wealthy family off a single-doctor income? If we had a system with that in place, we’d attract a lot more qualified folks into the profession, I think.
As opposed to some of my fellow students in two different college’s teaching programs, including:
-The girl who introduced herself the first day of a literacy class by saying, “I hate to read.”
-The girl who, when asked to say a fact about the Revolutionary War, replied, “I don’t know ANYTHING about the Revolutionary War…who was president then?”
-The team of students who gave an end-of-semester presentation on four countries: Italy, Jordan, Columbia, and Africa. There are no typos in that sentence.
I’ve never been to medical school, so I don’t know: maybe the high salaries and steep admission requirements fail to weed out imbeciles there, too. But I can’t help but wonder whether we could eliminate morons like the ones I encountered from teaching if we paid more and had stricter admissions requirements.
Keep in mind that the folks I mentioned above (except for “I Hate Books” girl, who I heard was persuaded to take up social work as a major instead) are all gonna be considered, under NCLB, Highly Qualified teachers, due to their possession of a 4-year degree in education.
My plan for improving education:
Lower class sizes drastically. I mean really drastically.
Increase teacher pay to put it in line with other professions that require equivalent levels of schooling.
Increase the amount of schooling and the difficulty of the PRAXIS exams, such that they’re equivalent in difficulty to the Bar.
Allow teaching professional organizations to be self-regulating in a manner similar to how the ABA is self-regulating.
I didn’t say “teachers were overpaid.” I said that as a group, they were not underpaid; and that some would make much less if forced to fend for themselves in the private sector. As for what else they would do … well, I’m an English teacher. Probably my best alternative, given my skills, aptitude and temperment, would be something like copyediting. The pay for that is similar to teaching. I’m actually giving serious thought to going into counseling – ditto for that. I’ve also though about being a librarian. Hmmm… all those numbers seem kind of close. Do you think there’s a message in there about what my skills are worth?
Thise are just the first few hits I cam up with google.
Adjusted for inflation, we spend more than four times as much on a per-student basis than we did fifty years ago, and twice as much as we did 30 years ago. (cite) How’s that working out for us?
It does not follow that spending is utterly irrelevant in all situations. But the idea that spending equals better schools is a myth.
That’s a fair question. If you compare educational achievement of all students from 1958 to all students from 2008, what do you get? Please be careful that you don’t just get middle-class white students from the late fifties. Please consider that the US economy in the fifties was a manufacturing/agricultural/homemaking economy, whereas today we have much more of an information-based economy.
I’d be curious to see results in areas such as general skills tests (again, please compare all students, not just students in privileged late-fifties schools), graduation rates, college entrance, etc. For skills tests, ideally there’d be some way to account for different skill requirements by the students entering their workforce–for example, a test of modern students must include testing the ability to manipulate a computer proficiently.
I really don’t know what the result of such a test would be.
It is possible to support a modest family on ~$45k a year. My brother until recently did just that (three kids, stay-at-home mom), and so can anyone else that has a mind to. It means a lesser standard of living than the people with two incomes (used cars, fewer cellphones, smaller vacations, wal-mart shopping), but that’s the choice you make.
Sure it’d be nice if teachers made $100k. And it’d be nice if librarians and counselors and social workers and nurses got it, too. And in related news, it’d be nice if I had a pony.
Keep in mind the level of increase you are talking about here. Roughly speaking, you’re talking about doubling all teacher salaries, and giving teachers ~$80-120k incomes. We’ll assume that everyone is cool with that much more property tax; after all, it’ll be worth it to make our schools as good as those in Europe, right?
Of course, we already pay teachers more than most of Europe (yes, that’s adjusted per-capita), but hey …
True: this is a stupid part of NCLB. In my experience, formal education training has only a loose connection with actual teacher skill.
Which means you have more teachers, and more bad teachers.
You are principal of a school with 100 students and 10 teachers. Your assessment of your faculty is that you have two great teachers, two good teachers, two OK teachers, two bad teachers and two screaming incompetents. What is the optimal class size to best benefit your students?
It is. Please tell me what else I could be doing with my MA in literature that pays way over 50k. No fair comparing me to people with degrees in science or math or hard shit like that, nor in business or finance or boring shit like that. Given that I like thinking and reading and talking and philosophizing and arguing, and given that I tend not to like close supervision nor intense deadline-type pressure, what else should I be doing to make more cash? Gimme a good answer, I’ll send you 10% of my first paycheck. I am not joking here at all.
I disagree with the schooling part of this, agree with the practical exams.
I have no idea what this would look like.
I’d be curious to see results in areas such as general skills tests (again, please compare all students, not just students in privileged late-fifties schools), graduation rates, college entrance, etc. For skills tests, ideally there’d be some way to account for different skill requirements by the students entering their workforce–for example, a test of modern students must include testing the ability to manipulate a computer proficiently.
I really don’t know what the result of such a test would be.
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The chart I gave was not middle-class white students; it was all students. And the change in the economy is why I didn’t go back to the 1920s, when we spent 1/10th as much.
Look – we’re spending 50% more per-pupil than we did just in the late 80s. That’s post-integration, post-computer. 50% more. Do you think there has been a 50% improvement in education since then?
You can google as well as I can. I’m not going to bother because
I’m going to bed and out of town in the morning.
There are few if any truly objective educational measurements, certainly not over decades of time.
It’s absurd to think that any such objective criteria would indicate a 50% nationwide improvement over the last two decades. Unless you are saying that, it’s a moot point.
Actually, I have found that most elementary teachers have had degrees in education, but most secondary teachers have had degrees in science or liberal arts with an emphasis on specific majors other than education. They still have been required to take the core education curriculum if they wished to prepare for certification, but the degree itself was not in education. YMMV
More than what? Ivy League schools are not necessarily ranked the highest in teacher education. Here are the current rankings. The first two are in the same damned order they were in when I graduated from Peabody in 1969. I don’t know whether we have ever been ranked above Stanford. Peabody graduates are much sought after including in the Northeast.
But in most school systems, the Peabody graduate and the graduate from the state college will have their salaries determined by a negotiated salary scale. If they are both beginning with a BA or BS, they will be paid the same amount.
Your point is well-taken that a better educated teacher may choose to teach where she or he gets the better pay.
I didn’t have any difficulty getting work with the newspaper, in publishing and in advertising with just three years of college (with a major in English) before I got my degree. Being literate still counts for something.
I agree that teachers should be paid more. They don’t even earn a babysitter’s wages as it is. But the pay had very little influence on why I was there. They couldn’t have paid me enough to do that job.
Ever taught in a country that teaches by rote memorization? The kids learn a lot, but suck at applying it to anything. I have had overseas students who have a vocabulary like the GRE, but who are hard pressed to answer “What did you do this weekend?” There is a reason why America continues to lead in innovation and ideas, and that is because our schools actually teach us how to think. 100% of American teachers abroad agree. Trust us, the US way of teaching is not so bad.
Recreational teacher bashing always amazes me. Why do we never complain about how inept our tax collectors are, or how overpaid the local mailman is? And bashing on education classes always baffles me, too. Don’t we want our professionals trained in their chosen field? I went into teaching with very minimal teacher training, and I do realize there are some huge gaps in my abilities because of that. Now, I do think that I would not have been well served by a full-on education major, but a year of school or having had an education minor would probably do a lot to make me a better teacher.
Well, my mother has nothing more than a high school diploma, but she has been slowly working her way up the ranks of a local state government agency and is now making more than 60k, with excellent benefits, good security and a nice retirement. She could no doubt make more in the private sector if she so chose.
As a regular, run-of-the-mill cog in the machine, she’s making more than if she had gone ahead and finished college, gotten an MA and become a teacher (and doesn’t have the loans to pay off!)
That was me, but that wasn’t what I said. I said that if you were satisfied with the quality and quantity of your teachers, then pay them less. If you aren’t, compensate them more (and it doesn’t have to be pay–there are a million ways districts could make teaching less onerous.) I tend to agree that we aren’t getting the quality we want hardly anywhere, so we need to increase compensation. My point is that the discussion shouldn’t start with “what do teachers deserve?”. Deserve is meaningless.
To change the subject, rather than smaller classes, I’d be a fan of fewer classes. In this area, most teachers teach six out of seven sections a day–which is ridiculous. It’s virtually impossible to be active and emotional for six periods in a row: how many six-hour long one-man shows do you see?
Cost of living varies dramatically across the country. Here in NC, starting teachers earn slightly less than $30,000/year. (This may have gone up very slightly over the last FY–if so, it’s just slightly more than $30,000). It takes many years before you reach $45,000.
And in our two-income family, we already have tiny vacations, used cars driven until they drop, and only one bottom-of-the-barrel cell phone used primarily for emergencies; we shop specials at the supermarket that we can walk to instead of driving to Wal-Mart. Thanks for the education on what a frugal lifestyle looks like, though: I appreciate it!
Could you possibly be less relevant? I gave reasons for suggesting increases in pay; “it’d be nice” wasn’t one of those reasons.
First we establish that it’s a good idea to do; then we tackle whether it’s feasible. I agree that it’d be a very hard sell. I think it’s worth it to attract better teachers.
More teachers, of course. More bad teachers? Are you speaking in absolute or proportional terms? I mean, I know you’re an English major and all, but you should be able to see the difference. Besides, decreasing class size is one part of my proposal, not the whole proposal.
Optimal? Six students per class, fire the four bad teachers, hire thirteen new teachers, train the okay teachers to improve their skills. Practical? Fifteen-sixteen per class, fire the four bad teachers.
That’s absurd, because not everyone finds math and science hard (compared to literature analysis); where I work, there’s pretty intense deadline pressure (turning in weekly lesson plans, report cards, SST plans, etc.–and I’m not even in an EOG grade). And yes, I have worked in the for-profit world. In the for-profit world, deadlines IME were more negotiable than they are here.
The problem is that teaching attracts a lot of incompetent people, because competent people with strong financial motives go for higher-paying professions, unless they’re called to the profession. I don’t think there are sufficient folks with a calling to fix what’s wrong with our country’s system: we need to pull on the self-interest of folks who would be good teachers but who currently can’t afford to be teachers.
Start by having professional organizations get a major say in educational initiatives. And yes, I mean the big scary terrorist lovers over at the NEA–ooooh! Give licensing privileges to the professional organizations, just like you do for the AMA and the ABA. Give them the privilege of revoking licenses for unethical behavior. Make teaching a semi-self-regulating career in the same way that medicine and law are.
Huh? You linked to a chart about costs, and I asked about results. Why do you think your chart addressed my questions?
Heh–yeah, this is important. My Teacher Show starts at 7:45 am. At 10:40, I get a 45-minute break to prepare the materials for the later lessons in the day, unless there’s a meeting scheduled during my planning period. The Teacher Show resumes at 11:25, and goes nonstop until 2:30 (closer to 3 half the time when I have bus duty). It’s hard enough to keep the energy up when I have my planning time; when I don’t have that time, it’s all I can do to keep my smile on in the afternoon.
(And no, my workday isn’t over at 3, of course; I need my headlights on when I drive home).
The argument that you get what you pay for is crap. The financial experts with advanced degrees just got done looting the system for all it was worth. Now they are looting the taxpayers.
Some people are just good teachers and the profession suits them. Some should be in a different line of work, but if you spent years training yourself for the job it is hard to walk away.
People do not really work for money. If they give you a big raise at work will you suddenly do your job better? Will you suddenly become more dedicated?
Are you kidding? That’s not the argument people are making: we’re saying that there are people out there who’d be great teachers, but who don’t do it because they can also do other jobs that pay better.
I had a friend (okay, actually, the awful wife of a friend) who was in med school, and she told me that in one of her classes, the prof asked how many of the students would continue in medicine if they knew they’d earn less than a six-figure salary. Wanna guess how many hands came up? Not one.
I’d like the teaching profession to have some of the pull that the medical profession has.
Even Sven, maybe you are a naturally gifted teacher. Nothing trumps that. Professional development courses and keeping up with the latest research should make up the difference once you are actually on the front lines.
Now that you mention it, maybe it would be good for the medical profession to have some of the sense of calling/vocation that the teaching profession has. Maybe reduce the pay but make it easier to become a doctor, by removing some of the obstacles that have nothing to do with becoming competent and qualified (like the high cost of medical school). I wonder if the quality of medical care would go up or down if the extent to which people were in it for the money decreased, relative to other, less financial, motives.
Which part is absurd? (Although I did overstate the median houshold income a little).
I believe you are correct though that the current teachers salaries do not attract the best and the brightest out of today’s colleges. But does it need to?
I believe the high cost of malpractice insurance and HMOs has effectively reduced the profitability of being a doctor.
I believe the market is the best judge of what to pay people. If you aren’t getting the caliber of people you want, you need to increase your incentives.
There is an easy way to determine if teachers are paid enough, and it’s the same way you determine whether engineers or doctors or truck drivers are paid enough. You only have to ask one question:
Can you find teachers of the appropriate qualifications at the salary you offer?
That’s it. In no other industry, other than closed shop union jobs, do people make more money than the company needs to pay in order to attract the candidates it wants. Bottom line.
If you want better teachers, raise the standards, and offer merit raises. Then you’ll know what you need to pay them once you offer $50,000 per year for a Ph.D and find that no one will apply for the job. Offer pay based on merit, with transparent rankings of teachers, and you’ll soon find out how much the good ones are worth - offer $40,000, and see what the average ratings of your candidates are.
If teachers were held to account like other jobs, a teacher applying for a job would have to provide references and evidence of teaching ability. Maybe some parent references of kids they’d taught in the past, or references from their peers and principal, so the school thinking of hiring could determine how the candidate stacks up against others. And if the pay were open and negotiable, the best teachers would command higher prices.
So… Are there school districts that have open teaching positions they can’t fill? Does every education grad find a job immediately? Do teaching candidates find themselves in the middle of bidding wars for their services?
If the answer to any of this is no, then teachers are paid appropriately for the level of education and experience the job demands.
You can never compare occupations to see if one is paid too little, because pay is only one part of what motivates people to take a certain job. For example, I’m a software developer. A friend of mine who has the same education and is the same age teaches computer engineering technology at a junior college. I make significantly more money than he does - probably 30-40K per year more. But he loves his job. He’s turned down offers to apply at my company for higher pay. And why? Because teaching is less stressful, there’s no travel, he’s set up for a good guaranteed pension, he doesn’t have to write software every day, and he’s got tenure, which means he’s set for life. I, on the other hand, could lose my job tomorrow. All of this translates into market conditions that pays these sorts of teachers less money than equivalent professionals in other fields.
Likewise, a laborer on an oil rig in Alaska will make far more money than a laborer doing an equivalent job in Des Moines would make.
If anything, teachers are overpaid, judging by the number of education grads that can’t find jobs, and the number of applicants that open teaching positions receive in most places. That would be because they are generally paid by the state and have powerful unions supporting them.