What's wrong with public education, how do we fix it, and how do we pay for it?

Great Debates
21

JBW: *Average private sector / civil servant employee: 40Hrs x 50 weeks = 2000 hrs.
Average Teacher (My area of the US) 35Hrs x 40 weeks = 1400 hrs. *

Well, according to the Fair Teacher Pay Association claims that you dismiss as “propaganda”, the average American teacher actually works 2108 hours per year. It’s true that I can’t find any cite for that figure, but you don’t give a source for your figure of 1400 hours/year either. And I have to wonder, if a public school teacher’s workload is so light and the benefits are so great, then why is there such a widely deplored shortage of qualified teachers? You would think that huge numbers of people would be attracted to teaching, and schools could afford to be very selective about teacher ability and qualifications. Either the old law of supply and demand is simply not functioning here, or you have a mistaken notion of how much work teachers actually do.

22

Here’s one cite: (text quoted below is from this link)

Doesn’t look too bad in my book. Perhaps I was mistaken in my impression that teachers deserved to be paid more (I always forget that they work only 9 months a year). Thos teachers that choose to work with students in extracurricular activities are paid for that extra work as well.

In case you are thinking that source somehow biased here’s the NEA’s estimate:

That $41,724 figure jibes very closely with Heartland’s assessment above for Illinois. Adjust for work hours per JBW’s numbers and you get a yearly salary of $59,600 which I think is quite respectable. Add in benefits which I’ll guess as worth 20% over salary and you get $71,520.

In this article, The Truth About Teacher Salaries and Student Achievement, the author makes the following observation:

Sounds like a nice notion to me but guess what is standing in the way of much of this? You get an ‘A’ if you guessed unions.

23

Generally speaking, celestina said everything I would have.

I’d like to address a couple of points, actually.

Yes, teachers do not work 12 months a year, and they get planning periods, but I think you’re dead wrong when you say that free time is plenty of time to grade papers and plan lessons. Maybe it is if you’re not going to put any thought into it. But grading papers is an intensive process if you do it right, as is planning lessons. I am not a teacher but my experiences as a tutor and as a TA opened my eyes to how difficult and time-consuming these aspects of the job are. This is why many teachers put in extra time beyond the school day and school year.

I also do not believe that benefits are “lucrative” nor are sick days plentiful. It can be incredibly difficult for a teacher to take a sick day. Handing off a lesson plan for your five or six classes to a substitute isn’t simple, and the end result is that you end up having to work twice as hard to help your students make up for a lost day. It’s incredible disincentive to take a sick day, even if your contract allows for many of them.

Even if their hourly pay can be recalculated to look better than it seems via your math, I still say they are not paid enough. Day in, day out, teachers play a huge role in shaping the future of the world by educating kids and preparing them for life. That’s not worth $30,000 a year? Hell, I think it’s worth $100,000 a year. Which is also, by the way, what daycare providers and nursery school teachers should earn.

24

Oops…I just noticed my numbers are a bit wrong. The Heartland Institute study speculates total work hours for a year at 1,295 which is somewhat lower than JBW’s numbers. If we re-calculate that to an estimated 2,080 work hours for most professions (I got that 2,080 number from our HR department which is what they use to calculate hourly rates from yearly salaries) we get:

$67,018 per year. Assume 20% beyond that for benefits (which is conservative…it is likely more) we get an annual compensation equivalent of $80,422.

25

These figures come from http://www.issues2000.org/Background_School_Choice.htm

Presumably these figures are as of 2 years ago.

[quote]
[ul][li] Public school spending is $5,200 per student, staying about even with inflation. [/li][li]Parochial school costs $4,200 per student, not discounting church-provided buildings & other subsidies. [/li][li]Private school costs $8,500 per student, not discounting scholarships or other financial aid.[/ul] [/li][/quote]
The same cite says,

26

[QUOTE]
Originally posted by JohnBckWLD *
**
[li]Average Teacher (My area of the US) 35Hrs x 40 weeks = 1400 hrs*[/li][/QUOTE]
I’d also love to know where you get this statistic, as I know of no teacher who works only 35 hours/week during the school year.

In fact, in my area, a few years ago, instead of going on strike, a few teachers cut down to working 40hrs/week (the hours their contracts required). According to the students, there was a very apparent difference in the quality of instruction.

27

You’ll note in my post above the Heartland Institute also made an assumption of a 35 hour work week (7 hours per day) for teachers. That teachers work more than this is not surprising but I hardly feel bad for them. I’m a salaried employee and my employer assumes a 40 hour work week when they need to calculate my hourly wage (for billing among other purposes). I can’t remember the last time I put in only 40 hours in a week. Some weeks might be 45 hours and others 60+ hours depending on business but I promise my salary doesn’t change one iota for that ‘extra’ work nor is it ever a consideration when I am up for a raise. My employer pays what they think is fair and expect me to do whatever I have to in order to get my job done. I don’t believe this is particularly unusual in the business world these days so while I can commiserate with teachers I don’t feel they are being unfairly treated in this regard.

I have no idea what the sicktime deal is with teachers but I’ll grant it is hard for them to be away from their class. Nevertheless I believe teachers do get good benefits that are at least a shade better than the average out in the business world. Their pension scheme for one thing is usually superior. I don’t know if it is still true but I also believe that teachers are able to take advantage of retirement savings plans open only to their profession (IRA’s???).

28

December, those numbers are fuzzy. It amazes me what statisticians can do with numbers. I’ll stay in NY state. I’m assuming your numbers were nat’l average of public vs. most expensive (not median) tuitions nationally.
[ul][li]In NY state the average spending per pupil (in FY 2000; before even more money was used to extinguish the flames of the public school debacle in 2001/2002) is $10,300 cited by NYC schools chancellor (wasn’t Hitler’s title Chancellor too?).[/li][li]Re parochial schools, in the South Bronx the vast majority of educational options for families outside of the public schools are the Catholic schools, where tuition averages $1,800 a yearas cited by the gray lady herself (not a voucher advocate by any means). Granted a 4 year old figure, but a far cry from your $4200.[/li][li]I can’t find any private school tuitions in my state. But look atA cite by a pro-voucher grassroots Colorado coalition[/ul] [/li][ol][li]$8,000 per student spending[]47% spent on instruction & 53% to the tune of $3 billion on support services[]$2,800 median tuition price in non-public schools[/ol][/li]

Sorry, call me heartless & stingy; I don’t think teachers are worth $100,000 ($120K using whack’s hourly conversion figure) how much should society pay[ul][li]Cops - Who’s mantra is protect & serve[]Firemen - Who bravely rush into burning buildings to pull children out of blazing infernos. []The US Military & Coast Guard - Who put there lives on the line to protect all of us and our society?[/ul] [/li]

The 3rd ‘R’; 'rithmetic refutes that figure. If you concede a teacher works 40 weeks a year (12 weeks vacation for summer break, holiday (Xmas), winter & spring (Easter) recesses; that comes out to 10 1/2 Hours, 200 days per year. To that I say BS, no teacher works over 10 hours per day for base pay compensation. (Five periods x 45 minutes is only 3 3/4 hours…where do the other 6 3/4 come from; grading tests?) I guess those are NEA stats…it’s no wonder why the kids they teach can’t even make change for a dollar at 7-11.

Thank you Whack-A-Mole, for the insightful cites. Hopefully (but doubtfully thanks to NEA & UFT propaganda) it will breathe some common sense into the “how much $” question with regards to public education.

29

the primary purpose of the educational system is to psychologically condition children to be subservient to authority. then teach you enough to get a job. they don’t want you to know enough to have any POWER.

i suggest we create a recommended reading list of INFORMATIVE, RELEVANT BOOKS so anyone can self-educate at his or her convenience.

Machiavelli said there were three kinds of people. “Those who could learn without help, those who could learn with help and those who could not learn.” VCRs and computers did not exist in Machiavelli’s day so the percentage of people in each caregory should be different today.

Dal Timgar

30

It does have something to do with the high needs students- the average cost per student for a district or school is not the same as the cost per average student. It also has to do with other things. My kids go to a small private school.There is no such thing as remediation or resource rooms. No transportation, no lunch program (not even aides),no guidance counselors,nurses,security or assistant principals. You can manage without the guidance counselors and assistant principals in a school this small (only ten classes and fewer than 300 students) , and you can manage without paid lunch aides or security if the parents volunteer to supervise lunch or sit at the door. Can’t necessarily do those things in a much larger school.
BTW- private schools cost per pupil is not necessarily the same as tuition. According to my kids’ school budget, the cost per child is about $3000 (total expense/number of students). I only pay $3500 in tuition for both of them. The remainder is made up by the subsidy from the parish and fundraising.

31

This is a very simplistic response but I think it bears mentioning. Kids MUST be taught that learning is fun. Of course, by the time they are in school, it is possibly too late. It really is the parents responsibility and I wish I knew how to make better parents.

My parents taught me that reading was a great thing. I learned at a very early age and as a result, the library was one of my favorite places to go. The idea that anything you wanted to learn was in a book somewhere fascinated me. Children need to not look at it as a chore but as a wonderful activity.

The other thing is that kids need to be taught how to learn. Why is it that this is so often overlooked? If you don’t understand something, you break it down into small enough pieces that you do understand, make sure you comprehend the basics, and go from there. In this way, you are always seeing your efforts pay off. Unfortunately, too often kids are told to memorize a bunch of stuff they don’t understand, retain it until they are tested, then forget it forever. That is standard practice and in the end, you didn’t really learn anything.

Education must start at the home. Then, when a child gets to school, he needs teachers that will motivate, encourage, and be strict. In a perfect world, there would be enough good teachers that we could start replacing the bad teachers, who are just going through the motions. But until teachers are paid what they are worth AND held accountable for the success of the students, we are going to be stuck with what we have. For the record, I think teachers should be making twice what they are making. They are contributing far more to our society than a football player.

I’ve rambled enough…

32

I’d love to hear an honest reason why private schools need approximately 1/2 the money public schools do to turn out worse prepared students. I think it has very little to do with their favorite scapegoats; the developmentally disabled and high-needs students.

One obvious reason that comes to mind is that as a public school we educate or attempt to educate the students that show up on campus. There are some systems in place that allow public schools to select the students who will attend but the vast majority of our students attend our school because that is where they are zoned.
Another reason private schools operate on fewer funds is that they usually pay teachers much less, health insurance and retirement are not funded properly.
I disagree with your statement about “our favorite scapegoats”. However, I think that many private schools are attended by students that generally get more parent support. Many of these parents are college educated. Many of these parents have had positive experiences when they were in high school. Many of these parents make school an important priority.
You would probably be shocked if you knew how many of my kids in my 8th period have parents or family members in jail or prison. I am not saying this makes success for these students impossible. But what I see is a great deal of mistrust. These kids don’t believe in teachers. They are negatively focused and very skeptical. So many of them do not believe they deserve an opportunity. So many of them are focused on limitations, not possibilities. They lack discipline and emotional maturity. So HELL YES…THEY ARE VERY NEEDY. OUR FAVORITE SCAPEGOATS!!! Your statement implies that we are searching for someone to blame. I don’t show up every day looking for someone to blame for my failure. Every single day I look for ways to make a difference in the lives of my students. Some days, I miss my mark. But…once in a while really magical stuff happens.
SCAPEGOATS…

33

I believe starting pay for private school teachers is much lower than starting pay for public school teachers. The reason, as I understand it, is that they like private schools more and are willing to take a smaller pay to have better students, smaller classes, and (no small thing, I’m sure) ideological purity that many private schools offer.

34

This sarcasm is very frustrating to me. We can have different viewpoints, surely, without one side being talked down to as if we are idiots.

I myself would have a hard time believing that teachers work 10 1/2 hours a day each day. Having lived with a teacher I would know. I’m going to come back to that, because I don’t have to be a wily lying statistican to challenge that number.

First, it is unfair for you to snidely assume that all teachers do with their time is “grade tests”. You must have had some lousy, test-happy schoolmarms in your day.

Teachers spend time each day reviewing material that will be covered. If you had to give five presentations each and every day, material that you would be accountable for your audience absorbing and remembering, would you not plan this out? Teachers also construct learning materials and strategize how best to accommodate different learning styles and abilities. They might review supplemental materials. They would look over papers, or grade quizzes, or grade tests (depending on recent assignments), and then consider the sum total of the class performance and decide what that reflects on how the class is going. Then they’d strategize accordingly. Then there is the paperwork for attendance, for disciplinary problems, for special needs students (the documentation requirement on these students in the state of Michigan is staggering), for ordering materials. Then there is the nitty gritty stuff like photocopying, designing bulletin boards, etc. Some of this is small stuff, yes, but it adds up. And it is all necessary to be a good teacher.

Incidentally, it might be helpful to consider that college professors work 60 hours a week–that’s pretty well established by a number of reputable scholars (not just a union). I am sure the number is less for schoolteachers. However, it is reasonable to assume that teachers, like college professors, do not confine their work to class days. They do a lot on the weekends, as well. Thus, it is inaccurate to only consider 5-day weeks in your denominator which leads you to declare the NEA is saying they work 10 1/2 hour days) Sure, that’s a ridiculous number. Only the NEA didn’t say that–you did. College faculty, FWIW, are also on the receiving end of critics who add up four classes a week and come up with a low number, but that simply does not reflect all the work that goes into the job.

I too am a paid professional and when I have to stay past 6 pm, I don’t count every minute and demand I be paid more on the basis of that alone. But if I were taking work home or staying late every single day, I’d certainly take umbrage at someone saying I didn’t work very many hours a day.

35

No ammount of money will fix our systems. Even the richest schools would suck if the students and parents are apathetic about learning.

I have several teachers in my family. Each teaching in different states. And every one of them is the type of teacher that will spend every second of free time with a child to help them learn. And every one of them says that the children who don’t learn, are the children who either don’t care and/or their parents don’t care. And they all agree that they have seen an increasing number of these kinds of students as the years go by.

36

I think that one of the things that this debate needs to address is what will happen in the next few years in terms of the sheer number of teachers who are retiring- isn’t it about 50% of the workforce that is up for it within the next 5 years?

I feel like schools will be concentrating on getting bodies in classrooms more than reform. What I would like to see is more money for teachers- the appeal of higher-paying jobs where you’re not responsible for little Johnny is one of the key reasons people aren’t going into the field.

37

andygirl has a good point. For most of the 20th century, teaching was one of the few professions open to women. Now that women have other career options, fewer and fewer of them are taking low-paying, low-status, high-stress jobs in public schools. In my job as a museum educator, I work with students. I really enjoy it and get a lot out of it. However, there is no way I would teach in the public schools. I’ve talked to too many teachers who are just overwhelmed with red tape, discipline problems, working as de facto counselors as well as teachers, etc, etc.

38

I think you need to read some of the earlier posts in this thread. It seems that the NEA/AFT propaganda is working because when you look at the numbers teachers aren’t paid all that badly. You won’t become rich being a teacher but you can certainly live a comfortable, middle class existence on a teacher’s salary.

Here is another web page I found with some very good comparison tables. In the interests of not violating copyright I won’t post all the info here. As it is I feel I might be pushing the boundary (NOTE TO MODERATOR: Not that you need my permission but please edit this post as you see fit if you feel I’ve broken the board’s policy on posting copyrighted material.) Anything in italics is my personal commentary/notes.

The link has a few other tables that didn’t seem relevant or useful but visit the link and decide for yourself.

Over and over again I am showing that teachers are fairly well paid professionals. If you consider that these are all averages it is worth noting that teachers in wealthy school districts can get paid very well indeed. I know around Illinois some of the better paid teachers can earn $70,000+ per year without too much trouble and this doesn’t count the school administrators who can earn in excess of six figures. I’ll grant that there aren’t a ton of those well paying positions available but they do exist so even a teacher can have hope of a very well paying job if they are good enough.

39

Whoo! I’m going to have to make this quick, as I’ve got work I need to do, but, um, JohnBckWLD and the other folks who’re up in here having fun playing with numbers [shudder], y’all can call me on this if you want to, as I’ve not really looked closely at the numbers cited and I really don’t keep track of how many hours I put into planning, preparing for, teaching, and evaluating classes, in addition to extra time spent working with students outside of class, but let me respectfully submit that y’all need to put them statistics away. I don’t how many hours some website supposedly says teachers work, the point is you can’t really quantify or put a price on how much work it takes to teach a class. I’m with Cranky on this. You can number crunch until the cows come home, but you won’t get an accurate sense of what teachers actually do unless you get your tail in the classroom and try to teach. Your attitude is exactly what I was getting at in one of my points about how one of the biggest problems is that we have folks who don’t know what the hell they talking about making decisions about teaching. Hmphf.

If I get a chance today, I hope to get around to responding to what andygirl mentioned about the upcoming mass exodus of teachers.

40

I am well aware of the Tyranny of Numbers and how people can take the same number and spin it to suggest the sky is falling or that Utopia is just around the corner. Nevertheless I think the numbers cited are reasonably fair especially considering that many of the numbers used are from studies performed by the NEA itself. Maybe the places I gathered my info from have an agenda to push and are twisting the numbers. I think it is safe to assume that the NEA certainly has an agenda to push. Nevertheless feel free to provide your own cites or call into question the numbers I have used so far if you think they are misrepresenting the truth. That’s what this board is for afterall but so far no one supporting the notion of paying teachers more has provided so much as one stat to support their rhetoric.

I think one must quantify and put a price on how much work it takes to teach a class. That’s how everyone gets paid afterall. Considering that teachers salaries come directly out of my and other tax payers pockets I also think I have more than sufficient claim to ponder the compensation of teachers and call it into question if I see fit.

A guy comes over to fix your refrigerator which you know nothing about. Are you suggesting it is appropriate to pay him whatever he asks for because you simply don’t have a clue as to what his work fully entails?

Additionally, many people do have at least an idea of what teachers do. Most of us have spent some 20+ years of our lives in front of one. I myself have a sister-in-law and her husband who are teachers. I also read articles by educators and other professionals who make it their business to pay attention to what teachers are doing. Do I have a complete sense of what a teacher does day in and day out? Certainly not but I do not feel as if I am discussing the ins and outs of brain surgery either.

FTR I have the utmost respect for teachers and feel they do a hugely important job. I also feel for some of the crap they have to put up with. Parents who demand little Johnny get an ‘A’ no matter how much of a moron and goof-off he is and endless state intrusion into the classroom. Nevertheless I do not feel that throwing money at the problem is the solution…it rarely is. The Teacher’s union needs to be taken down a few notches to allow meaningful reform to start taking place. I’m not suggesting any single remedy but ratehr an environment where experimentation can start taking place. Just as in the business world some ideas will work and some won’t and everyone can borrow from the good ideas as they toss the bad ones.

The alternative is higher spending while maintaining the status quo which amounts to stagnation.