Ah, some common sense here.
But we have NCLBy…
The problem that I have with that is that entrance into better schools has always been accomplished, in other countries, by using test scores. And then you automatically get a higher salary when you come out of school, which gives a strong incentive for focusing on teaching the test rather than in teaching critical thinking.
If you did it based on personal interviews, and teacher recommendations, I would approve of such a system by quite a lot, but a test-based system I think tends to be a net negative to overall education.
I love this idea, I can just see it now with all the drug dealers in my neighborhood. Now all these poor kids will have money to buy drugs. Perhaps it’d work in some areas, but in my neighborhood, every dollar would go to drugs
Should doctors who specialize in geriatrics be paid less because more of their patients die?
Do you really want to assume that teachers of students with lower test scores are not good teachers? What about those who volunteer to teach fundamental classes? Special education classes? Autistic children? In the same building there are teachers who teach honor classes and AP classes. Do you evaluate them as if they were teaching students with the same abilities?
When I visualize the concept of “no child left behind” and think about what little control I actually had over the basics of each student’s life, I know that the idea is unrealistic. The teacher is only a small part of what drives that student to keep up.
But most importantly, I agree with Left Hand of Dorkness on every point that he made. I would love to see him teach.
IMNSHO looking at teachers and education accomplishments without considering the greater picture is missing, at least, half the problem.
It’s all very well to talk about increasing compensation for teachers, or to reduce class size as general goals. I don’t even think that these are necessarily bad ideas, either. They can and should be considered part of the solution.
But ignoring that part of the problem for many of these failing schools is going to be tied to the environmental factors the students are facing is always going to leave us with half measures that only half work.
I’m going to speak, now, about my local situation: the Rochester City School District has a four year graduation rate of 46%. Going up to almost 60% when you get to the six year figures. That means that of all the students who started the ninth grade in 2005, 46% of them graduated in 2009. Rochester, taken in isolation*, is a grindingly poor city, with large portions of the population below the poverty line, and many of those including families with children.
I have my own issues with the School Board, the administration, and the Teacher’s Union locally. But whatever problems I see there, I can’t ignore that, when a kid is worried about whether her family will be evicted again this month, or whether tonight is going to be another night of stone soup for supper, it’s going to be hard to motivate the child or teen to actually care about school.
No educational reform plan is going to work unless it accepts that the schools do not operate in a vacuum, and that if society is failing these kids outside of their school hours, it’s unreasonable to consider it shocking that these kids will have their same problems affecting them within the school walls.
What’s the solution? I really can’t say. There’s a part of me that wants to suggest going to a residential school program, where the students could be assured of getting three square meals a day, in clean vermin-free housing. But the reality of that is that I’m even more frightened by the potential for abuses within that scenario than I am by the current situation.
I’m stifling a lot of my knee-jerk reactions, because I know they’re not rational. I don’t think I can usefully help formulate solutions (At the very least, showing up to school board meetings with a tar pot, and several feather pillows would not be conducive towards constructive problem solving.) but I do feel competent to point out that anyone who focuses solely on teacher quality is missing the boat. Badly.
No, I don’t want to assume that but we had a school superintendent who couldn’t speak English. He went on huge spending spree to build new schools. He grossly overspent his budget requiring another huge tax bond, and then moved on to a higher paying job. :rolleyes:
We need more Escalante type teachers who know how to push their students to succeed.
Paying people for attendance, grades, tests, etc would constitute as extrinsic motivation. (Research shows) Extrinsic motivation in education is bad. You want the people to be internally motivated. A big part of that is the teachers’ job. Part is the parents’. Empowering teachers to teach this way and not getting in the way is the administration’s job.
Some research backing this up. (warning: pdf)
fail… wrong link. correct cite here
Washington DC has a program where they pay students for attendance and completing homework (you don’t even have to get any of the answers correct, you just have to complete it). I think you can earn up to $50/class/month (or semester, I forget which). This has had a effect on attendance and graduation rates, it has also had an effect on behavioral issues (you forfeit the incentive if you start trouble).
Sure in the end you want every kid to be inspired and develop a love of learning but a lot of inner city schools are just not fertile ground for inspiration and developing love of learning.
IMO, you are not thinking into this deeply enough.
You are an urban city kid. You are dubious about education. However, you have eyes and a brain. People TELL you education is important…but people lie. So, how do you decide yourself if education is important?
Well…it’s easy. Look at the representative of ‘education’. That is…the teacher. Is the teacher successful financially? Is he respected in the community? Would hot chicks want to date him if he was a teacher? 
The answer is obvious. Teachers are relatively poor. Teachers don’t really have any respect in the community. Hot chicks avoid single guy teachers like the plague.
Conclusion - people lie. If education was really important then the representatives of education would show that. they don’t…so it isn’t.
If teachers brought down million dollar salaries and pro basketball players brought down teacher wages…you would see a change.
So, while you see this as 2 separate issues…I see it as joined together. A major reason there is no parental support of education is that the parents don’t see it as important. Why don’t they see it as important? See above.
Can you elaborate on the effect that it had? Just saying it had an effect doesn’t give much insight into the situation.
If a lot of inner city schools aren’t fertile ground for developing a love of learning then that’s the problem you look to fix with social policy. Extrinsic motivators like bribes don’t provide meaningful results long term in education.
But if that logic were absolutely compelling, it would apply equally to more affluent environments, too. Perhaps even more so: For those kids, they’ll see a lot more direct examples of successful people, almost none of whom would be teachers. The difference is that they’ll see a lot of people who have benefited from their educations, even if they don’t work in that field.
I have no objection to improving teacher’s salaries as part of a coordinated plan - but if that’s all you’re going to do you’re just throwing money down the drain. Rochester City Schools already spends about 150% of the national average per student. And performs well below the national average for school results.
Per this site, which I can’t guarantee is 100% accurate, but seems legit, for the year of 2007-2008, the lowest five percentile paid teachers in the Rochester city school district were being paid an annual $39,668 salary. Which I grant isn’t exactly great pay. But in a city where the annual median family income is $31,257, it seems to me that a teacher in Rochester is starting off more successful than many of the other people here.
One of the recent stats that came out this year was a comparison between the RCSD, and that of one of the most affluent suburbs: Pittsford. From a results standpoint, there’s no comparison: 46% four year graduation rate for RCSD, compared to a 97% four year gradation rate for Pittsford schools. What’s more impressive to me, however, is a comparison of the per capita spending for the two school districts. I’ve seen one breakdown of the numbers as: $18,184 for RCSD, while Pittsford is spending $17,772. Again, the more successful school district is spending less per student than the failing school district.
Money, alone, is not the solution.
Though, I’ll admit, you lose me when you use as part of your argument the idea of reversing the relative salaries between sports figures and teachers. As a practical solution that makes my idea for boarding schools look completely feasible.
Just a point.
You can possibly bribe unmotivated students to learn. At the end you’'ll have unmotivated people that at least know something.
Or you can NOT bribe them. And at the end you’ll have stupid unmotivated people.
One is IMO obviously better than the other, all other things being equal.
IIFFFF we had decent parents for most students we wouldnt have to even make this choice. But given that it looks like we do, I’d take half a solution over no solution anyday.
That’s a false choice. There is research that shows how you can make up for the lost ground poverty creates in schools (for example), but there needs to be a concerted effort to follow the research and not this nclb/rttt crap that has no basis in anything but some policy-maker’s imagination.
You do realize that you can test critical thinking don’t you?
The effect was that more kids showed up and shut up in class. I know thats not the ideal but it created an environment where the more motivated kids could learn without the other kids being overly disruptive. Perhaps it helps that along with this measure, DC teachers can also make upwards of 100K/year but in the end, we have been getting higher graduation rates and more students going to college.
When my kids gets good grades, I lavish them with praise and I am far more likely to do indulge them when they want my permission for something or when they want me to buy them something. My neice just got an itouch for getting good grades in school. Whether you like it or not, a lot of kids get positive reinforcement for doing well in school beyond the thrill of learning.
You don’t need long term meaningful results, you only need to get kids used to the ida of doing well in school and if society no longer values educatrion as much as it claims (and kids pick up on this stuff), then perhaps it isn’t a horrible idea to jump start kids interest in education and maybe for some of them that interest will stick.
What test does that?
I agree. I never said, or at least certainly did not mean to imply that those were the only two choices. I was just saying bribing kids to learn, while certainly not optimal, is PROBABLY better than doing nothing.
So teachers make about average salary…and that is supposed to motivate these urban studentsand their uneducated parents…how? Education is supposed to be the way out…so people say. Average is not going to impress these kids and these parents.
Sports salaries was silly, I admit. However, what you need is for people to respect teachers. In America Pay=Respect. Average or slightly above average is not respect.
I mean…come on here! I am not making some extreme point. Why would any bright person want to get a college education so that they can have a stressful, low status job where, if they stay with it and after many years…can attain the exalted status of slightly above the median wage and no opportunity to increase it unless they leave teaching?
As another poster said - you get the idealists who burn out quickly on the stress, low status and wages…and you get the ones where barely making it through college gives them an opportunity to make the best wage they can which is teaching.
You say throwing money isn’t going to help. I say it really hasn’t been tried.
DOUBLE the teachers salaries. Keep it up for a generation. I bet you see huge results. Let those urban kids see teachers showing up in Lexus’s and where there are wearing nice clothes 
And if they were to implement programs and/or methods to address things like unstable homes, inconsistent meals, absent/uncaring parents, etc - they’d be setting them up with life-long skills as opposed to conditioning them to expect a reward and praise for culturally expected and acceptable behavior.
Public schools aren’t just about cranking out educated persons. They’re responsible for producing well adjusted, contributing members of society. If you want to create vapid, entitled jerks who expect to be rewarded for just doing what they’re expected to do, go ahead and bribe their way to better behavior. If you want to create good well-adjusted citizens who participate and feel connected to society, that’s not going to cut it. Research backs that up.