Couldn't agree more. I also think we need a better method of assessment than testing. Higher quality accreditation seems like a great start.
Jeff, My mom is a teacher. She makes nearly 80k per annum (before withholdings). Now, I live in California which I hear is a bit more expensive than Texas, but she is able to own her own home, purchase new cars, and had she not gotten caught in the credit card web, would be debt free. She also sent one of her sons to a private high school and both to a private college (with a lot of financial aid and student loans). I don't think teachers are rediculously underpaid at all. In fact, I think teachers make what the market will bear. If they didn't, very few people would chose to be teachers.
According to this article, you're Mom's making about $25k more than the state average. She's the exception, not the rule.
If that is the case with high school teachers in Cali, then I need to move. In Texas, they start at under 30K per year.
One of the big problems in the public school system isn't that teachers do not get paid enough. Rather, it's that GOOD teachers do not get paid enough. When people say, "Teachers get paid decently considering what the skill requirement is for the job," they are correct ON AVERAGE. That's the key. Raising teacher wages across the board will help, but that is hardly an efficient method of improving the education system. If we could move away from rigid pay scales and give larger wage increases to teachers who are better at what they do, then that would create incentives for talented teachers to keep doing what they're doing (and other talented folks in other fields to move into the teaching field). I'm not sure what metric we could use to determine who is a good teacher and who isn't, and I personally don't think any particular accountability test will do that, but it certainly is clear that good teachers need to be rewarded better for the future. I think this is something that both conservatives and liberals can agree upon. Liberals want to see more money going to education. Conservatives see the appeal in the idea that a market mechanism is [efficiently] determining the wages of the teachers (if your marginal product is higher, that is, you're a better teacher, then you should be paid higher wages... the basic premise behind a labor market). The beauty of it is, on balance, we may not even have to pay teachers more, but the fact is, our money will be spent more effectively and efficiently, our schools will be filled with better teachers, and our kids (can't speak for myself yet) will be better off.
While the state minimum requirement starts at under $30K, I don't know how many districts actually start that low. None of the ones around here start that low. Every one I've seen (through my gf who is looking for a job) start at over $30K, many have been near $40K to start for a first-year teacher. As Jeff alluded to, though, the high end of the scale for teachers with a lot of experience isn't all that high (though I know someone who's worked for Air Liquide for over 20 years and she doesn't make $40K per year. I don't even think she makes $35K) and neither is the bump for having a masters degree... even though many districts start teachers out with good to very good starting salaries (none of the people I graduated with this last time around makes as much as a first-year teacher in the school districts I know of in the area).
Here's an example of the juggling districts have to do in Texas, even in the relatively "rich" city of Austin, in order to provide a semblance of what should be taken for granted... quality schools. This budget crisis is being brought about in Austin by "Robinhood", a mechanism by which districts have millions, about $19 million in Austin's case, taken from their collected taxes and redistributed to poorer districts. Why? Because the funding levels that used to be provided by the state have been severely cut over the last several years. Why? So the Governor, Lt. Governor and the Legislature can run for election and reelection claiming, "No new taxes! Hell, we're gonna cut them! Ain't that grand??" This has been done knowing that the burden would fall on the local governments and would result in cuts of services, vitally needed services, and in the quality of our schools. Typically cynical manipulation of an out of touch electorate who wakes up one morning and wonders why their local taxes are through the roof, their schools are cutting back on basic quality education, and services for children and the elderly are slashed. Check it out... Doing more with less Budget cuts meant hectic schedules, more students for art, music and physical education teachers this year. By Melissa Ludwig AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Tuesday, June 8, 2004 It's been a rough year for art, music and physical education teachers in Austin elementary schools. Hoping to save about $3 million in last year's budget crunch, the district eliminated 66 of those teaching slots, increasing class sizes and forcing many to teach at more than one campus. "This year has been the worst year I have ever had," said Cynthia Bennett, a 20-year veteran who teaches art at Baranoff. Like many teachers, Bennett said her classes, which grew to more than 30 students, were less about learning than discipline. "Can you imagine having 30 5-year-olds with a pair of scissors in their hands?" Bennett said. School trustees and a budget task force made up of community members are considering a district proposal to restore a few of those positions to aid the most crowded schools, but many teachers and parents say it is not enough. "There are a lot more severe cases out there that they are not going to be treating," said Lurinda MacNamara, who serves on the budget task force and has three children at Barton Hills. The proposal, which would cost $295,000, would give 11 elementary schools another teacher for half the day. Casey, one of the district's largest elementary schools, also would get another full-time teacher. The district is scheduled to approve a final budget in late August. Denise Collier, the district's curriculum director, said officials would like to reduce all class sizes, but there is only so much money to go around. Still, Trustee Robert Schneider said he would like to explore restoring the number of so-called special area teachers to 312, the number before the cuts. "The special area teachers are taking the brunt of the hit we are having to do financially," Schneider said. "Cuts are necessary to make ends meet . . . but I am not convinced this is the right way to do things." In kindergarten through fourth grade, last year's cuts resulted in maximum class sizes increasing from 22 to 29. For fifth- and sixth-graders, that number went from 28 to 37. Eight schools, none of which would get any teachers back under the proposal, weathered those cuts with donations from parents and by prioritizing their budgets to keep teachers on campus full time. Parents at two of those schools, Lee and Bryker Woods, are already raising money for next year. But not every school's community can do that. At Zavala, for example, several parents said they cannot afford to raise money or to send their children to private art or music lessons, another way to make up for the lack of instruction in the schools. "The teachers don't have enough time for all the children," said Cruz Benitez, 61, whose grandson is a third-grader at Zavala. In gym classes, more students also can mean sharing equipment and playing games in shifts, not to mention the risk of more injuries. Irma Yturri, a 49-year-old physical education teacher at Baranoff and Casey, said with larger classes, more students knock heads and run into one another. "You feel like you are not doing the quality teaching you used to do," she said. And the cuts have affected more than just class size: Teachers who had to take on classes at a second campus have less time for after-school programs and other projects. For example, Terri Dyer, an art teacher at Barton Hills, was one of about 50 teachers who took on classes at a second campus last year. Dyer, who does not speak Spanish, was assigned bilingual classes at Cunningham, where she taught in a hallway. On days when students were taking standardized tests or community members were voting, she lost her hallway. On top of that, Dyer said, she didn't have time for an after-school art enrichment program she used to hold at Barton. Deborah McLouth, who split her time teaching art at Zavala and Hart, said she scrapped a schoolwide art project for Dia de los Muertos at her home school, Zavala, because of her hectic schedule. Having a full-time employee who does not split time between campuses "should be a basic part of the school's staff," she said. "There are enough kids and enough work to do." mludwig@statesman.com; 445-3620 This liberal Democrat has a serious problem with Robinhood. My son is in a magnet middle school and is an honor student who's in choir. He's gone to the Regionals, a big deal, and loves it. He got started in choir in the 4th grade at his elementary school. That choir program, which my daughter has been excited about joining, has been eliminated due to budget cuts. My wife and I are not happy, to say the least. Folks, we are currently faced with the worst state government in my memory, and I've been around awhile. The leadership, from the Governor on down through the Legislature, is abysmal, without a doubt, and frequently corrupt, in my opinion. This has to change before it gets any worse. If you feel you must vote for Republicans, for god's sake, look deeply into their stands on the issues. Look past the soundbites and slogans, the wrapping themselves up in the flag and proclaiming allegiance to whatever fad seems to have traction. Vote some honorable people into office, if you can find them. And good luck doing it.
She has been a teacher for a long time and took a lot of night classes to increase her pay. That doesn't make her unique though, starting teachers make well under the average in the article. Older teachers just have their pay increase over time. That is what creates the average. andymoon, She is actually a 5th grade teacher with 20 years experience and about 75 units beyond her teaching credential. I don't think the pay scale is any less for high school teachers though. The catch is an increased cost of living.
When you offer more money to teachers, you offer more options to college graduates. As it is, you can choose a job in sales that has the potential to pay you $150K if you do a good job or you can choose a job in teaching that pays you $35K if you do a good job. The school system in America simply does not compete on a competitive wage scale with other businesses. As for testing and assessment, it is impossible to assess kids with testing and have it be close to accurate. Kids all learn differently and have different skill sets. You cannot assess a teacher or school performance by how well they take the exact same test. Kids at an arts school may be brilliantly talented, but not score well on something like the TAAS because their skill set is different. In our world today, we are loaded with specialists, yet we ask kids to be generalists. You wouldn't want a plumber doing your taxes any more than you'd want a lawyer fixing your transmission. That is the key to testing. Understanding that kids are different and you cannot just blanket them with the same questions and hope for accurate results. And, for teachers, you need accurate quality assessment based on observation, which, of course, takes time and money, something the school districts have little of on both counts. If you want schools to improve, here's how you get started: - Offer better wages to teachers to recruit the best. - Make the student to teacher ratio MUCH smaller. Reducing classroom size to half of what it is now or less would be a great start. - Eliminate blanket testing. Some schools spend as much as 60 or 70 percent of classroom time teaching how to take tests like the TAAS and TAKS. Recent studies have shown this leaves kids unprepared for both college and the workplace. It is just a convenient way to quantify budgeting and it doesn't work. There are a hundred more things to go on the list, but each of those would go a LONG way towards making the education system better.
