How about pay incentives for the kids? Kids who do well on homework and tests each week could earn cash EVERY Friday (or maybe free coupons to places like the movies, skating, McDonald’s) Let’s face it, a piece of paper with the letter A on it is not that motivational to kids.
This is a big question that bugs me a lot. A good education is the foundation of an informed electorate. An informed electorate is essential to the continuation of our country and of freedom itself. In my mind, they main goal of school is to educate a populice enough that they are willing and able to contribute positivly to our country both economically, politically and culturally. School is really really important. And school is screwing up, big time.
I’ve got a lot to say on this.
Problem 1: Parents that don’t Care When I was growing up, my mom took me to museums, bought me books, and enrolled me in summer programs. Many parents (particularly the less affluent) are either unable to do such things, or do not see the value in such things. I have met parents that would rather have their kids watch cartoons than Seasame Street. I have met parents that encourage their kids to enroll in easier classes, so that they would complain less about school. I have met parents that could not afford to buy books except for on special occasions. I have met parents that don’t have cars to drive their kids to science day camps and kids museums in. The value that an individual places on an education comes directly from one’s parents. And unhelpful parents can greatly hinder one’s sucess in school (by not providing a good studying environment, by not providing support for extra-cirricular activities, etc.)
I can’t actually blame these parents too much, though. They were failed by the education years earlier, and are only passing on the reality that they know. Some simply don’t know how important their role in the education of their children is. Others are disillusioned by a system that got them no where. What we need to do is break this cycle.
Problem 2: Not all Schools are Created Equal You could not go to Stanford if you went to my high school. You could get straight As in the hardest classes possible, participate in every activity possible, and have stellar SATs, but you could not get in to Stanford. I think we had one kid do it in ten years, even though every dedicated student (of which there were many) applied.
Some kids go to school in palaces. Others go to schools in shacks. These kids do not choose the areas they grow up in. These kids do not vote on bonds or pass property tax cuts. Their education is determined by economics which they have no control over.
A kid in a school with honors classes and electives is going to have more success than a kids in a school that offeres only basic classes. A kid in a school with climate control is going to do better than a kid that studies in hundred degree un-air conditioned heat. A kid in a school with debate clubs, newspapers and honor societies is going to do better than a kid whos school offers minimal after school activities. A kid in a school with a well stocked library is going to do better than one who’s school is full of Readers Digest condensed books. A kid in a school who sees their consuler regularly is going to do better than a kid who only sees one once a year. A kid in a school where good teacher flock is going to do better than a kid in a school that teachers stay away from because the conditions suck. A kid in a school with a theater, computer lab, music room and gym is going to do better than a kid in portable trailers.
There is vast inequality in our public schools. Kids from poor schools simply can’t compete. Even bright, hard-working students from these schools start out with so many strikes against them that it is virtually impossible to succeed. They have to work ten times as hard than kids from better schools. Kids in poor schools see this. It’s despririting. They give up. They get sick of fighting for every little thing that would be handed to them on a plate in a better school. This is not the land of opertunity. Your options are limited the moment you step foot in kindergarten. Things are not going to get better until every kid is given access to the same quality of education.
Problem 3: Teachers and Students get no respect I know lots of kids that have considered going in to teaching, but decided against it. Money is an issue. Teachers go in to a life of financial hardship. It’s not the sort of life you want after you’ve spent so much time and money on a college degree. But there are other factors, as well. Everyone thinks they know your job better than you do. People who have never been in a classroom and know nothing about education vote on bone-headed measures that only make things harder for you. Parents get mad at you for doing your job. Administrators work against you. It’s no fun. Education majors are the ghetto of most universities- the people that go into them are the people that could not cut it in other majors. This has to change.
Students have it no better. Schools are run like jails. Kids are treated like animals- and accordingly they act like animals. We don’t give students a chance to develop responsibility because we regulate them to death with demeaning rules. They have no say in their environment. Their concerns are dismissed instantly. We treat youth like non-entities, a problem at best and a menace at worst. Of course kids school as something foisted on them. Of course they see teachers as the enemy. Bright kids leave school in drove- why? Because they are sick of the absurdity of raising their hands every time they want to go pee-pee. We need to find a way to involve students positivly in their schools and treat them with the kind of human respect neccesary to facilitate a learning environment.
Answers I have a plan which I think has some merit to it. First, we treat teaching like we do the armed forces. Both, I think, are equally important to our nation (maybe education more so)
We recruit students from poor high schools to teach (much like we do now with the military). We pay these kid’s way through college, and then send them back out to the schools for a certain amount of time.
This will help with problem number one by stopping the cycle for a few people. These people will have access to an education that they previously would not have had. Hopefully, they will teach their kids the same. They will bring education in to poor areas and help foster a community that values learning. We already do this in a small way by paying off student loans for people who teach in poor areas. By extending it to a free education up-front, we will reach more of those who would not otherwise get an education.
Secondly, schools should receive equal funding. Sure, I know you pay more property taxes for better schools and all that, but the system isn’t working. I don’t know how we can value equality of opertunity (if not results) when education, the very foundation of oppertunity, is so unequal. Kids don’t have a chance to change their situation. They have no way to choose where they go to school. We need to commit philisophically and financially to each one of those kids equally. Everyone suffers when generation after generation gets a cut rate education.
Finally, we need to get off of this ultra-dicipline kick. More rules arn’t gonna fix things. There really isn’t much more to say here. Treat students and teachers with respect and dignity and I think you’ll be surprised at what you get.
Teacher Unions have been successful in getting better working conditions for teachers. I do not agree with everything unions do. I believe they protect union members in so doing, they make it extremely difficult to get rid of very bad teachers. Without teacher unions there is absolutely no telling what we might be required to do. For instance, in my state they made schools give teachers a “duty free” lunch. Can you imagine working all day without a lunch break? That was the case when I first hired on as a teacher. So…unions are good and bad but I belong to one because I believe they are necessary.
As for whack a mole’s comments about the hours teachers work, you are wrong. The people I work with are very devoted. Most if not all of us spend countless hours preparing, studying, grading etc. Once I figured my hourly wage…it came out to 60 cents an hour. I do not put in those kinds of hours year round but for about four or five months I spend around 60 or 70 hours a week at school or on school related activities.
Are teacher salaries the answer to the problem? No, but I bet the quality and quantity of teachers will decrease in the very near future.
As for the comment about refrigerator repair…do you have kids?
We touch the future. But maybe we would make more money if we just kept the beer cold.
That’d make a good bumper sticker.
Oh dear, it looks like I got a scolding from Whack-a-Mole. [giggle] Well, the reason I say folks might be playing around with numbers is because it’s so easy to do. Just because you get a national average for teacher salaries doesn’t mean that all teachers make that salary or that even that national average OR the salary that teachers actually do make is enough to make ends meet. Things are just a bit more complex than all those nice neat little averages let on.
Check out the article at: http://www.edweek.org/ew/ewstory.cfm?slug=16gaines.h20
In it Gale Gaines discusses how tricky breaking down teacher salaries can be, and whether or not you agree with the accuracy of his/her numbers, I think that this person is right on target in terms of pointing out what kinds of questions we should be asking about all these numbers that are being bandied about. Salaries vary within states as well as between states. It’s difficult to judge whether a teacher who has more seniority makes more or less than some other teachers due to where they work or how few dependents they have to support, blah, blah, blah. State and by relation national salary averages can be affected by the percentage of teachers who’ve retired, the economy, and/or the number of new teachers who are hired at lesser salaries. I think someone in this thread was looking at pension and benefits that teachers earn in addition to their salaries, but that doesn’t really add up either. I can’t tell you how many teachers I’ve talked to who tell me they’ve had to dip into those pension/savings plans to meet some emergency. Their dipping into those pension/savings plans reduces the amount they can retire with and in many cases prolongs their stay working—not necessarily in the teaching profession—as they attempt to build up their retirement again. The point is that there are so many factors that go into determining teacher salaries that it really is difficult to figure out who is making what where and if it is enough. For example, I decided to play with DC teacher salaries. Mind you, I’m terrible at math so I’m sure I’ve got some glaring errors in here. But anyways, depending on where in cyberspace or IRL you go, you just might get some different numbers for who’s earning what where and how. One thing that folks need to keep in mind too is that in a lot of these studies, though they’re dated recently, they’re probably analyzing figures from a year or more before the actual date of publication of the article/study so the figures may not really reflect what’s going on right here and now.
According to http://www.nea.org/nr/nr02408.html
The average salary of US public school teachers = $43K
and
According to http://resource.educationamerica.net/salaries.html
DC’s average teacher salary is $48K
Now, although it would appear that DC school teachers make above the national average salary, that may not necessarily be the case.
According to some number crunching doo-hickey on the Yahoo Career salary calculator:
http://swz-yahoo.salary.com/salarywizard/layoutscripts/swzl_compresult.asp?zipcode=NullString&metrocode=192&narrowcode=ED01&geo=District+of+Columbia+--+Washington&narrowdesc=Education&jobcode=ED03000011&jobtitle=Teacher+High+School
In Washington, DC the
Lowest high school teacher pay = $37 K
Average high school teacher pay = $47K
Highest high school teacher pay = $55 K
However it doesn’t really tell us what percentage of teachers make what salary, and it doesn’t really tell us if this is gross or net pay. I’m thinking it’s gross, which means that teachers are actually taking home less than this after taxes, social security, and who knows what else is deducted. Still, I’d imagine a good percentage of them gross between $37K and $45K. Here’s more anecdotal stuff that you may take with however many grains of salt you’d like. A friend of mine tells me that in DC many teachers haven’t gotten pay raises in the last year or so because the places that process the paperwork or key in the information into the computers are understaffed. For whatever reasons, these places don’t have the manpower to process the paperwork, and/or mismanagement of the budget may well have cut into any bonuses/raises many DC teachers were expecting to earn. I have no cites for this, but it sure wouldn’t surprise me as jacked up as DC’s school system is. But let’s think a little bit more about cost of living as opposed to what one actually earns.
The bare minimum it takes for a 1 parent 1 child family to live from paycheck to paycheck is $37K according to the EPI at : http://www.lights.com/cgi-bin/epi/budget.cgi
This data is from 1999 so we’ll have to up the cost of living a few thousand. Let’s say that in 2002 it costs $43K to barely make ends meet. That’s just my guess. Feel free to correct it.
According to http://www.esj.com/careers the average salary for folks who work in DC is $70K. Even at the highest salary, school teachers get $15K below the average salary that DC folks get. It’s not cheap to live in DC. Say you want to live in a relatively safe neighborhood, eat out once in a while, buy groceries, deal with emergencies, pay for transportation, pay utilities, put some money away in savings, and support a family—forget about taking a vacation somewhere, though–it’s difficult to stretch $43K out.
Whether or not you agree with these figures, whether or not these figures are accurate, and considering the very real possibility that I’ve missed a step somewhere or added something wrong, I think that there is a real problem as far as how much and how well teachers are being compensated for their work. I just have to wonder why, if teachers are so well paid, folks who say they are opting to go into industry or more lucrative fields aren’t flocking to the lucrative salaries that are supposedly available to teachers. A minor digression, but isn’t there some loan incentive program offered by some banks now that targets teachers specifically and offers them reduced rates on mortgages so they can attempt to buy a house on their vastly reduced salaries? Well, whether or not banks are actually doing that and whether or not some schools in some parts of some states are offering lucrative salaries, I certainly know from personal experience that salaries for teachers at public institutions are ridiculously low. I recently turned down a job at a school that was trying to hire me, despite my years of experience in the field, at $17K below the average salary for that job in that state as well as in the nation! Much as I’d love to teach there, I can’t work for poverty level wages because I have bills that I have to pay, and I don’t think I’m going to win the goddamn lottery anytime soon. Based on what I’ve seen and heard talking to other teachers, veterans and newbies, rather than looking at some numbers on some spreadsheet somewhere, I think that it must be awfully difficult to live on what teachers generally earn, and it gets ever more complex if teachers have families or other folks they’ve got to support.
But, as folks have noted in this thread, it’s not just the laughably sad salaries that are the problem, it’s the lack of support that teachers get. Even if I were being paid an exorbitant amount of money to teach, I wouldn’t teach in a place where I wasn’t getting any emotional or financial support. Say I opt to teach science on the high school level, but the school is so strapped for resources that it can’t give me a budget to get basic science supplies—we won’t even go into the more expensive types of things like micropipettes that can cost hundreds of dollars for just one–or even upgrade the 5-10 year old science textbooks allocated to the class? On top of that, I’m still required to teach the students and get them ready for the end of the year science exam that has on it all this new material that the outmoded textbooks don’t offer and that I can’t afford to expose my students to because I have no science budget, and I don’t have the time or the energy to surf the net to find supplemental material for the class. It’s pretty difficult to teach students about gel electrophoresis without the proper equipment. An internet picture of the machine that handles that kind of function isn’t the same as having and using the machine in class. Or, even getting down to the actual marketable skills that students could take away from the class and apply in real life. I’m a science idiot, but I know how to use a micropipette. There are jobs out in the science industry that pay well for folks to just sit there and use a micropipette all day. With no science budget to get equipment and teach students how to use that simple tool, I can’t even provide them with practical skills! Now if we’re talking about merit pay for teachers who’ve gotten creative/innovative or just impacted students so by teaching them well, well I’m going to have a difficult time making the cut so to speak when I’ve got no resources to work with. Yet, I’m going to be penalized for something that isn’t my fault in the first place. I’ve met and talked to science teachers and students who’ve voiced their frustrations about the very scenario of having no science budget that I’ve described, and I’ve seen plenty of science teachers leave the field and go work in industry as a result and plenty of students rule out science careers altogether because their teachers couldn’t really teach them much science at all, and they realize just how sadly underprepared they are when they get to colleges that require them to know a little about the latest innovations and at least some of the basic concepts of science.
I’m going to talk very briefly about standardized tests, and then I really must get back to my own work. One of the basic, common sense approaches to thinking about tests is validity. Does the test actually test what students have been prepared for? If you design a test that tests for property B, but the curriculum in the schools due to poor budget, substandard texts, overworked teachers, teaches students property A, is that test fair? Is it valid? Keep this in mind when you think about and look at these standardized tests that folks are putting out. The last time I looked students go to school to learn not to take tests. If every time I turned around I had a test to take, I sure wouldn’t be focusing on the process of learning. I’d be studying for that damn test, and all thoughts of the joy of the process of learning would be relegated to the fringes as the focus of the test score I need to make to advance takes center stage. We don’t go to school to be tested, nor do we go to school to be babysat. We go to school to learn how to apply knowledge and to learn to think critically. Requiring standardized tests really sends a jacked up message about what schools are prioritizing; it says that learning isn’t about discovery but rather accountability to some arbitrary standard that not everyone is capable of meeting or even wants to meet and support/respect for the authority and ability of our teachers takes a backseat to the so-called objectivity of a standardized test. I could go on, but I don’t have time. You know the more I think about how jacked up the education system is and by relation our priorities for letting things get as bad as they have gotten and will continue to get, the more I think perhaps I ought to investigate the opportunities to be had in keeping beer cold. [sigh]
My statements regarding the inability to “teach to” a (standardized) test are opinion based on (student) experience and common sense. It’s would be impossible for an instructor to teach to a test provided the test was confidential and kept from instructors.
With regards to science and social studies; There are too many facts/dates that are required to be memorized. It takes the whole school year to learn the curriculum that would/could show up.
With regards to english/mathematics; I’ll state again you either get it or you don’t. I can’t imagine an instructor saying, “OK class this week we’re going to cram for writing skills, spelling and grammar”. Same goes for math.
If you can keep standardized test answers like these out of the teacher’s lesson plan, it is impossible to teach to it.
jawdirk, I’m not sure that the “most important purpose” of public education is “to match the capabilities of graduates to the requirements of jobs.” I definitely agree that there should be more vocational classes offered–God knows, I wish I’d taken a typing class or two–but I don’t think that every course should have job-preparation as its ultimate goal.
I’m a historian and I firmly believe that American students need and deserve better knowledge of their nation’s history. As I can testify, this will not land you a job anywhere. However, a good grounding in the fundamentals of history makes for a more informed citizen with a broader perspective.
The main goal of public education should not be to produce tractable workers but to produce thinking citizens.
Apples and oranges. Since no one as adequately refuted Whack’s 20% factor for annual teaching hours vs. other professions hours I think it would be fair to restate the above figures quoted as [ul][li]The average salary of US public school teachers = $52K []DC’s average teacher salary is $58K []School teachers get *4K* below the average salary that DC folks get.[/ul]Please consider the unfair guilt heaped upon local taxpayers from other professions (who work 50 weeks per year) by the entrenched eduaction establishment who are constantly bemoaning inadeaquate salaries. If education union members really wanted to score points, they'd call for a 50% reduction in administrative staff and outlays resulting in plenty of to divide up amongst the teachers.[/li](Editors note: The $70K average DC salary {Isn’t DC one or the most depressed urban areas of the nation?} is greatly inflated due to the large number of overpaid lawyers and lobbyists residing there that leach off the system)
Perhaps, but even if we grant that claim (and I’m not prepared to do so), school isn’t just about preparing someone for employment. Among other things, it’s also about learning basic skills that are required for life outside the workplace. For one thing, I’d rather have voters who have fairly well-rounded educations, as opposed to those who only learned enough to survive and to handle a job.
What about science or engineering, then? I would never recommend that someone pursue an engineering career by focusing simply on the expected job requirements. A competent engineer should have a broad foundation to build on, even if this means that he never gets to use many of these skills directly. Ditto for attorneys, writers and artists.
Are you saying that spell-checkers have eliminated the need to spell properly? With all due respect, I heartily disagree. (More on this in a moment.)
Guess what? Given a choice, I would never hire a physicist, engineer or programmer who could not perform intermediate-level computations in his head. After all, calculators aren’t always faster, and they’re not always at your beck and call.
I think that your examples presume that schools only need to teach us what we need to survive. Once again, I heartily disagree. They are supposed to help the students strive for excellence, not mediocrity. Sure, spell-checkers may make life easier, but the person who is not dependent on their availability will have an edge over those who are.
**If education union members really wanted to score points, they’d call for a 50% reduction in administrative staff and outlays resulting in plenty of $ to divide up amongst the teachers. **
I am not a big fan of school administrators but I think it would be a mistake to reduce administrative staff by 50%. I think some of them add value to the sysytem. I think a good strategy to consider would be to require 60% of any school’s administrative staff to teach at least one class. My school does something like this. I think it keeps the administrators close to the craft of teaching. It definitely improves teacher moral. I think it reminds everyone of what the primary focus should be…student learning. In a high school of 2300 students and staff of 140+ there are many “administrative” tasks. You have curriculum, maintenance, safety, discipline, supervision, transportation, athletics, fine arts, clubs and organizations, attendance, and other departments or concerns that require leadership and or accountability.
A word about teacher unions…I think they are a necessary evil. I look at some of the things they do and I cringe. But, I once worked for the biggest jackass on the planet. He really tried to hurt my program and my career. The union gave me some leverage and I was able to survive long enough to get out of there. If I were making a list of things that damage the effectiveness of schools, teacher unions would not be in my top ten.
Would you agree with the conclusion though that perhaps some of the things that damage the effectiveness of schools (which may be in your top ten) might be a direct consequence of the union’s activities? Like the difficulty of firing an incompetent teacher? Or the everyone-gets-the-same-percentage-increase rules?
I’d agree that the teacher’s union (like all unions) has provided positive benefits to the system. I think the pendulum has swung too far and some of the union stranglehold on rules to “protect” the teachers are now effectively hurting the system.
celestina, I enjoyed your entire post, but these two snippets resonated with me in particular. Thank you for posting your thoughts.
If my high school classmates were any indication, money would merely be an incentive to cheat, rather than to excel.
Occasional rewards may be helpful. Ultimately though, the students need to learn to value the education and the grades themselves.
Algernon, sweetie, thank you. I’m glad you at least got something out of what I posted. [sigh] Most of the time my colleagues and I feel like we’re just talking to ourselves or to the walls or something. No one really wants to listen to what us teachers are trying to say because it is daunting. We’ve got a real big mess to clean up. Still, I guess it’s easier to look at spreadsheets and lay blame any place you can find it rather than deal with reality. I’ve just gotten so pessimistic lately. I think our lack of prioritizing education so that we can produce productive citizens really is going to come back to haunt us in ways we can’t begin to imagine. The first most tangible way, of course, is already happening; it’s in the rapidly increasing numbers of teachers. And it is just a crying shame because I know some wonderful teachers who’ve just been driven completely out of the field, and I’ve just don’t like to think of those poor students who could have benefitted from what those teachers could have offered them.
This topic deserves a thread of its own. There is an excellent book called Punished by Rewards by Alfie Kohn. I strongly recommend it to anyone who has an interest in raising children, teaching students, or managing workers…
In essence, Kohn argues that the reward and punishment system legacy of the behaviorist movement (B.F. Skinner and others) doesn’t work. We dangle goodies (like grades or other incentives from candy bars to cash) in front of people in the same way that we train the family dog. Rewards only work for temporary compliance. He makes a strong argument that most bribes to elicit a certain behavior (like grades and gold stars for example) are counter-productive to true learning… or more importantly, counter-productive as motivation to get children to want to learn.
And in keeping with much of what this thread has been about, namely teacher’s salaries, Kohn states that money ranks well down the list of desired characteristics in a job (as I mentioned in an earlier post in this thread). While there are a few “wealth addicts”, even in those cases the money is a placeholder for something else, especially if the need is insatiable. For most people, they just want to be paid fairly and adequately. Fairness is often more important the the amount itself (unless of course it is so low that it doesn’t allow one to purchase basic necessities.) Excellent teachers would flock to the profession even without any increases in salary, if the other demotivating frustrations were removed. However, given the multitude of frustrations that exist with the system and the associated pressures, it is no wonder that teachers are saying “you’ll have to pay me more to put up with this nonsense.”
I’ve heard Alfie Kohn a couple of times as a speaker, and his perspective is compelling, even though his arguments run counter to the logical, commen-sense, and nearly universally used reward system. Regardless of whether or not you agree with him, I believe it is important to understand the possible limitations of behaviorism.
[Bolding mine.]
celestine, I don’t intend to nitpick trivial mistakes, I just want to make sure I don’t misunderstand. I’m assuming you meant a rapidly decreasing number of teachers. True? In our local school system the number of teachers is decreasing not so much because the teachers are self selecting another profession, but rather because the cutbacks in funding are forcing the elimination of classes. It is a depressing sight.
:o
Algernon, thanks for catching that. I don’t mind if you nitpick at my inability to get mathematical concepts right or to proofread more carefully to make sure that I complete my thoughts in my sentences. [giggle] The last part of that sentence should have read: . . . it’s in the rapidly increasing numbers of teachers leaving the profession. Would you believe that I actually made A’s in math all in high school? [sigh] Now I can barely add to ten without using both hands and feet. 
Wow. That’s really jacked up what’s going on in your school system. In my school system, the problem is that there aren’t enough teachers to teach the students. One of our many problems is that we can’t retain new teachers because sometimes they get assigned the most difficult students when they first get into the classroom and can’t deal with the discipline problems or the reality that many of them have been passed along even though they haven’t mastered certain concepts.* Most of the experienced teachers are swamped too so there’s not much time or incentive for them to mentor the new teachers. And of course, as I and others have said before in this thread, there’s not that much support from the school administration for the newer or older teachers.
*My mother, when she was teaching, sometimes would catch flak from the powers that be because she wouldn’t pass failing students on to the next level. She felt, and rightly so, that those students would benefit from being held back a year so that they could learn the skills they would need for the next grade, and in many cases they did benefit from her holding them back.