Let's bail out the teachers

Great Debates
61

You know, this ‘being a teacher is hard’ routine gets a little old. You’re the one that chose the job - presumably because there are things about teaching that you like enough that you’re willing to do the job at the salary being offered.

I don’t dispute that the job can be hard. MOST jobs can be hard. All have their drawbacks. For example, as an engineer, I have to stay current in the field - on my own time. I don’t get six weeks off where I can take professional development courses - I do it at night and on weekends. I often have to travel for long periods of time on short notice. A factory goes down somewhere, and an engineer is on a plane to work the problem. It’s not uncommon for me to be given one or two day’s notice that I have to leave my family for a week.

Near the end of the development cycle, we’re often behind schedule, and the ‘death march’ begins, where people are working until midnight every night to hit a deadline.

And of course, we’re responsible if we build something that hurts someone else, and will be held to account for it. So there’s always pressure on you to do the right thing. You second-guess yourself all the time. And of course, we’re always only one bad employee review away from being on the street or at least knocked out of the line of promotion. Or we could lose our job because the industry is volatile - the average software engineer will have something like 6 job moves in his career.

But I’m not complaining. I actually think I have a very good job. But when teachers talk about how hard they’ve got it, it just makes my eyes roll. You get paid less because you have a job that is safe, that doesn’t require physical exertion, that doesn’t require travel, that isolates you from the vagaries of the market and the demands of competition, that gives you plenty of time off, and presumably allows you to be employed in something you love doing. So please, stop with the complaints.

Again, I’ll agree that teachers are underpaid if you can show me that your school has teaching positions they’ve been advertising and they can’t find suitable applicants. But if there are lots of applicants with the qualifications you are looking for, by what possible justification can you say that they should be paid more money?

62

I think you have a good point. But, I thought part of the premise of this thread was that, at least in many areas, there aren’t enough good teachers, and that it would be easier to remedy this if we pay them more.

Note that having enough “qualified” teachers is not equivalent to having enough good teachers. A qualified teacher is one that has the required certification; but that’s no guarantee that they’re effective or hardworking or have the right attitude or temperament for the job.

And the problem with “If you aren’t getting the caliber of people you want, you need to increase your incentives” is that there’s such a gap, in the case of teachers, between the people doing the wanting and the people in a position to increase the incentives. The students themselves certainly aren’t in a position to raise their teachers’ salaries!

63

A point that is, what’s that word? Oh, yeah, moot. Fifty years ago, schools didn’t have to teach every single student that showed up. Nor was that the case thirty years ago. And as usually happens in education threads, people start throwing out per pupil figures as if they were writ from on high in gilded letters on solid granite with an adorable little curlicue that nobody else seems able to pull off. Per pupil figures are, at best, misleading. Or, to go with a term that I’ve discovered works really well, outright bullshit. Per pupil figures are an average, not an absolute. If you wanna talk about actual figures, okay. But they’re not going to haul a lot of water in this particular discussion. Left Hand of Dorkness already pointed out some of the uselessness of comparing figures from two generations ago to contemporary figures, and continuing to act as if they meant a damned thing in any sort of comparison between public school and public school is more than disingenuous, it’s lying. Now, if anyone wants to do a side-by-side comparison of college grads, or grads from private schools, I think there’ a goodly amount of insightful info to be gleaned from same.

64

If you had read what I wrote, you’d see that it said “their subject and education.” Used to be you’d get your bachelors in your area of interest, then get your MAT and teach. That’s what I did, sort of. Got an undergrad degree in something else, got an MA in English and an MAT in Secondary Ed in English. But things have changed since you were in the profession. NYS requires you have to have taken education courses as an undergrad, then a Masters within 5 years, in order to qualify for certification. Here is the list of required coursework.

That’s because Ivy League colleges don’t even HAVE teacher education programs, or they didn’t when I went there. 10 years ago, Cornell did not have an MAT program. Why? Because who in their right mind would fork out for an Ivy League education only to take a job that starts at $30,000? If teachers got paid more, I bet the better schools would start taking an interest in offering teacher education programs, but as it stands, it’s a bad economic decision. State schools are much less expensive, and you don’t get paid more depending on the US News and World Report College Ranking of your alma mater.

How selfless of you. I personally need money, since I support myself on my salary. It’s an unfortunate reality that, in today’s economy, $30,000 doesn’t go very far. But what do I know, I’m not actually a teacher anyway. :wink:

65

Private schools in Michigan like Catholic schools,pay much less for teachers. I know some Catholic teachers and I can not believe how badly they are paid. I do not believe they go in every day and do not try just as hard.

66

I agree with this. The population is more diverse, but I think if you looked at literacy rates, number of years of education completed by students, and number who go on to college, you’d see that those numbers have risen since 1960, especially for women and minorities.

I only have anecdotes, which are of dubious value in a debate, but our district does have a hard time filling positions in all areas. There has been a long-term sub filling in for the Family and Consumer Sciences teacher since September because they can’t find anyone. When we did a search for an English teacher this summer, we had 4 applicants. We were rejected by our first 3 choices, and wound up having to hire our 4th choice applicant (who is a great guy actually, just a bit weird). I was surprised by this because 10 years ago, it was tough to find a job in Ithaca teaching English because everyone wants to live in this town. We had similar problems finding a librarian, and had to do two searches and two rounds of interviews before we found someone who would actually take the job once offered. Our last librarian is a close friend of mine, and she left to move to Rochester, where she got a $5,000 pay bump from our district. Tells you something right there, doesn’t it?

67

Maybe, just maybe, there’s differences in the working conditions?

68

Yes, no and sometimes. Answering these questions doesn’t accomplish a thing. Besides, your second question, if answered, “no” doesn’t track. Accursed software developers and their vain attempts to use english to get points across!

But seriously, so what? It’s not like these questions would be asked in a vacuum, anyway. Just because there are no school districts in and around Paducah, KY with open positions doesn’t mean that there are no open positions in Portland OR. Or that teachers get snapped up in WY, whereas they hustle and sometimes fail in AL. So claiming that your questions adequately address a given situation is nonsense. And your clumsy attempt at blaming the teacher’s unions for the current situation is noted and will now receive the amount of attention it deserves.

69

Pay attention, Sam. I wasn’t complaining that the job was hard. I was saying that job performance suffers under these conditions.

Similarly, your canned rant about teacher pay doesn’t address my points. If you’re satisfied with the quality of teachers currently in our schools, then sure, all your comments about the job market apply. I’m not satisfied. I think that competent teachers who enter the field do so despite the salary, not because of it, and that incompetent teachers enter the field because of the salary. I’d like to price the incompetent teachers out of the field, attracting better candidates. That’s basic market economics right there.

If all you can do is look for key words in my posts and respond with canned rants that don’t apply, please feel free to skip my posts in the future.

Daniel

70

I’m not satisfied, but if you ask me, you’re looking for the wrong solution.

Why are there so many bad teachers in the school system? Because they can’t easily be fired, and are not punished in salary for being bad teachers.

In any other profession (well, the non-unionized ones, anyway), you see a common pattern - a lot of people take entry-level jobs, but if you look at how many people who started in the profession are still there after 20 years, you’d be surprised at how high the attrition rate is.

I’ve been with my current company for almost 10 years. When I started, I was one of about 100 engineers in my office. Today, we’ve got about the same amount, but only a half dozen or so have been there longer than I have. The rest are gone. They found jobs they liked better, or found their performance ratings were poor and therefore they didn’t get raises and eventually priced themselves out of a job. That opens the door for lots of new engineers to be hired each year, of which we’ll retain the best and the others will find something else to do. THAT is how you create an excellent work force. You reward the best ones and make sure you keep them, and hold the door open for the ones who can’t cut it.

Now, if my company had decided to just double the pay of everyone there, and given everyone equal raises each year regardless of merit, we’d all be making more money. But do you think the average quality of our workers would be higher or lower? It would be lower. Much lower. Because the bad ones still wouldn’t be able to fnd work elsewhere without taking a major pay cut if we paid them above the prevailing wage, so we’d be stuck with the lemons and wouldn’t be able to try out new engineers.

But in unionized jobs, seniority matters, and not much else. So every year that you stay creates a greater incentive to keep on staying. And since you can’t be paid on merit, there’s actually a perverse, reverse incentive - the good ones, the ones who work hard and are innovative and really care, find themselves stifled by the system, and because they are high-quality workers, can find jobs elsewhere to suit their talents. The bad ones have their power grow merely by occupying a desk over time, and soon are earning a wage higher than they could ever get elsewhere with their skill sets, personalities, or work ethics, and are incentivized to stay in a system where they are doing no good.

If we got rid of the teacher’s unions, and opened up the school system to competition, and treated teachers the way we treat engineers and lawyers and accountants and other professions, it would be easier for new teachers to find jobs, because there would be more turnover in the field. And the schools would be able to pay new teachers less on the promise of advancement if they excel. The best teachers would be paid what they are worth, and the bad ones would find themselves no longer welcome in the school.

That’s how you improve education. Throwing money at teachers under the current system will probably make the problem worse, because it will result in even less incentive for the bad teachers or the ones who hate their jobs to leave the profession.

The only thing that works in improving performance is accountability. Make the teachers accountable to the parents and principal, and make the principal accountable to the school district. Make the taxes paid to the school district be just enough to carry the minimum expenses, and give parents vouchers for the rest and let them reward the schools who do the best job. Let the schools set their own prices, and tie the wage rates of teachers to the total school funding, so that a good teacher ultimately brings more money into the school. Now principals would have a positive incentive to get rid of the weak ones, and to pay extra money for high quality teachers.

We can nitpick how much money should go to each school, how much the vouchers should be etc. But the principle is the same - if you want better teachers, you have to be willing to pay for excellence and sack the poor ones. There has to be a system of incentives that rewards excellene and punishes failure. Until you do that, you can throw all the money in the world at teachers and it won’t make a damned bit of difference. Or it will make the problem worse.

71

Let me make it clearer for you, then: If there are bidding wars for applicants, it would be an indication that there is an under-supply of applicants, and that would be an indication that overal wages should rise.

Right. And that would suggest that teachers are paid appropriately in Paducah, and not paid enough in Portland. But hey, that’s just Software-Developer thinking. We’re cursed by an abundance of knowledge in subjects like mathematics and logic.

Ah. Can’t stomach the criticism, huh? Teacher’s unions are sacrosanct, and must not be questioned? Because their efforts have created a model education system that everyone is proud of?

Unions always couch their language in terms that are politicaly correct. Nurse’s unions always claim to be all about public health. Teacher’s unions claim that they care about nothing but the quality education of the kids. PATCO claimed that they were on strike not because of greedy wage demands, but because they wanted to make the skies safer, and paying air traffic controllers more was just a means to that end.

In the end, if you examine the union’s action, it’s always suprising how well better education, safer skies, or public health seems to be directly correlated to higher pay, more job security, and more benefits for the union members. Funny how that happens.

I’ll believe the Teacher’s union is looking out for the interests of the kids when they come out and say, “You know, we really should fire the bottom 10% of our teachers and make room for all the education grads who can’t find teaching jobs.”

72

So according to your theory, in areas with right-to-work laws and ineffective teacher’s unions, the quality of an education should be higher, right? I’d certainly love to see teachers treated as lawyers are treated.

Note that I’m fine with getting rid of tenure, and when teacher’s unions function to maintain job security, I’m not on board with them. The NEA’s big issues, though, seem to be improving pay, decreasing class size, and getting a national education initiative that’s not as mind-bogglingly stupid as NCLB is.

Paying teachers more for performance is something I also support: in NC, for example, board-certified teachers (who go through a grueling year-long process of videotaping lessons, writing essays, submitting lesson plans, etc.) get a 15% pay raise, and that’s a great idea. But even then, they’re paid less than folks in other professions are, and I maintain that this means we don’t attract as many qualified folks to the profession as we otherwise would.

I’m not saying we don’t need a stick. I’m saying we also need a carrot.

Finally, your suggestion that teaching has low turnover is bizarre. It’s got crazy-high turnover. If you think it’s a low-stress occupation, think again, and look at the stats while you do so.

Daniel

73

I’m not sure you are an expert in this topic, Sam.

The attrition rate for teachers is pretty damn high, and costly. You aren’t willing to pay teachers more, and you think they stay in their jobs too long, but obviously the opposite is true, and it’s a problem. Attrition rates can be attributed, in part, to low salaries. This does seem to run counter to your claims.

74

I think you all are missing the point (unless I missed a post or two). I live in a large city with high property taxes and we send 100’s of thousands of dollars to our schools every year. Our schools suck. Apparently much of that money isn’t going to teachers salaries, or from what I’ve read elsewhere, supplies. It looks like it is going to the same place as the big money for those car makers and banks - the upper administration. Until someone figures out how to get money to the folks that are actually doing the work, throwing more money at the education system isn’t going to help.

And whoever came up with No Child Left Behind? Needs to be fired.

75

First, they need to be force-fed a book on basic statistics. Then fired.

As for money going disproportionately to admin, I admit I’ve wondered the same thing. This summer I did some computer work for the system, creating spreadsheets, and I was paid nearly double my regular hourly salary. Not that I’ll turn down the money, but good lord!

Daniel

76

I didn’t understand the construction of “their subject and education.” I think I understand what you were wanting to convey now. I find the Masters and MAT a little puzzling. But as you suggested, things have changed since I was in the classroom. (I will always be a member of the profession.)

Posted within the same post:

I don’t know about Cornell ten years ago, but they did have a graduate education program as far back as nine years ago. And they certainly offer one now. The other Ivy League schools have been offering programs in education as long as I can remember. Columbia has been particularly outstanding. What kind of university does not honor the profession of teaching? It is self-referential.

Harvard Graduate School of Education

Yale Teacher Preparation and Education Studies

Brown University Education Department

Penn’s Pre-Doctoral Training Program in Interdisciplinary Methods for Field-based Research in Education

Dartmouth: The Department of Education

Princeton University: Teacher Prep

Cornell University Department of Education http://cornell.edu/

Columbia has one also, but I couldn’t make the link work.

77

I am posting because I don’t want anyone to think that I have abandoned the thread that I started. I have very much enjoyed the discussion.

Full disclosure: I am a member of the National Education Association and am a heavily involved in the Texas affiliate of NEA. However, Texas is a right-to-work state, so unions are weak here. Right now, I am in Austin for a weekend of meetings at TSTA headquarters. I am about to go to bed so that I will be up early in the morning to get back to it.

I wish I had time to comment on the many points raised in this thread. One thing, though, I cannot let pass at the present time. Sam, you have several times mentioned merit pay. How can teachers be properly evaluated?

Please take a moment to define the following terms:

“Good teacher”:

“Bad teacher”:
Largely missing from this discussion has been students and parents. There is a difference between students and parents in affluent areas and students and parents in less affluent areas. Yes, kids are kids. The resources available to them vary widely – and I don’t mean resources like fancy computers and such. I mean resources like two-parent households or adequate nutrition. However, this thread isn’t about ways to solve the inequities in our society.

How do you fairly evaluate teachers for merit-based pay? If that is the solution, how is it done?

How?

G’night, y’all.

78

Double post. Sorry.

79

We’ve always been accountable to the parents and the principal. The parents need to be accountable to the teachers and the school system in general. If that student is not in school or isn’t doing his homework, I hold the parent accountable until the child is eighteen. I cannot teach him if he isn’t there.

Also, hold the principals accountable to the teachers. Why are they failing to enforce the policies of the Board of Education? Why are they removing students from my room on a daily basis to work in the front office? Why do the principals not present a united front in backing the teachers when we are enforcing their rules?

I don’t mind being held accountable at all. But I don’t want to waste my time being accountable repetitiously. And along with accountability must come more control.

Ultimately, hold the STUDENTS accountable.

80

You can find it as puzzling as you wish, but I couldn’t teach with just an MA because I needed secondary education courses and student teaching, and just an MA in English doesn’t provide that.

Seems that you are correct, but when I was looking for programs in the late 90’s, there wasn’t one. I have never actually met a Cornell MAT student. They must not student teach in my school. I’ve met SUNY Cortland and Ithaca College interns, but not Cornell, so I assumed they didn’t have a program. I stand corrected. But I was probably wrong about this and have a puzzling set of Masters degrees because I’m not really a teacher. Right? ;):wink: