This may be the first time I have agreed with you, but when you are right, you are right. The reason we don't have great teachers is that teacher's salaries aren't even close to competitive with the market. The best people are sucked up by corporations and with the dwindling of public research funds (that used to go to the universities), even R&D people are taken out of the educational market in favor of corporate riches. Starting salary for high school teachers should be somewhere around $40k.
And before everyone defends teachers.. I know some are great, but I had some absolutely HORRIBLE TEACHERS... and we need to make it where those ones can be fired.. I know teachers who were horrible for 30 years, and people complained about them every year and they still kept their jobs.
Apparently in cyfair isd for instance, you start at 36k a year now with no experience etc... work a few years and you are making 40k a year....that's not horrible for days worked etc.
on your analysis about people who work longer being paid more...that wasn't true when my wife was teaching. they increased the starting salary for teachers while not changing those who had been there. people who just started teaching were making more than she was though she was in her 5th year and was the "team captain" of her grade level.
If the biggest influence is culture and family. How could that culture be changed? Not by throwing more money certainly.
AS someone who currently teaches at a 100% title 1 school I can tell that basing pay on the scores of children won't work, and will hurt the impoverished students that need the most help. The first reason is that in poorer neighborhoods and schools you have a larger transient population. You have students who show up from a village in another country and have never been to school before in their life, and don't speak the language yet they have to be tested. Their scores will not be up to par, and you will be punishing the teachers who are willing to put in the extra time, and work required to bring those students up to snuff. Secondly all the best teachers would then transfer to the richest schools that have the most advantages so they could get the best pay. That would in turn leave the neediest kids with the bottom of the barrel or most inexperienced teachers. Thirdly it encourages cheating. Texas had shown remarkable improvement with kids tests scores, only to find out recently that there had been wide scale cheating because of tying funds and bonuses to test scores. In addition teachers that might not cheat will be pressured by administrators to do so. I wouldn't have said this except that it has already happened. I am all in favor being able to get rid of teachers who are poor teachers. I know some, and I think poor teachers in the past are responsible for a lot of the beaurocratic mess the plagues schools now. Rule after rule after program after program was put in to place because some teachers weren't getting their jobs done. The teachers at underpriviledged schools with English language learners have to put in more hours and work harder, but will see less results than other teachers. Yet it will be the other teachers that get paid more if we tie pay to the test resorts. As for teacher's union I belong to one. I belong to 3 unions currently. Actor's equity is kind of lame in my opinion, and doesn't do that much to help most actors. Screen Actor's Guild has its strong points and weak points but has done some good things. I would say it is in the middle of the road. The teacher's union here is absolutely wonderful. They have done things that actually don't just look out for teachers and try and make their jobs easier for more money. They have put in a code of standards that teachers must live up to. They raised the standards and made them uniform for students to live up to. Teachers must live up to the standards and all curriculum must be tied to the state standards. Anyway, this union is actually very concerned about making education better. Yes they look after teachers benefits too, but it is really a great factor in education. I'll talk about different ideas for education later. The game is about to start and I have to go.
madmax. I dont know everyone, but we were discussing it in class the other day about the fact that its basically totally done by how many years... at one point there was a chart online about how much teachers are paid by each year experience in the district.. I know my sister is being paid more after working there a few years than are the entry level teachers..
franchise. there has to be someway to base teachers pay on their ability. the fact that a horrible teacher is paid the same amount as a great teacher makes no sense.. Someeway to do it can be worked out. I've heard proposals where you base it on how much the kids are improving from the year before. In that instance, teachers are actually at an advantage by having the poorer kids because there is more room for improvement. As long as teachers pay is not based on performance at all, I think we will have problems. Like I said, there are many good teachers, but there are a lot of ones that are horrible and seem to be able to keep teaching forever without being fired or facing a pay cut
I dont care if its done on test scores or what, but I think in every school people figure out who are the best teachers... whether its by personal evaluations, or whatever I don't care.. the principals need to figure out who there best teachers are and pay them more than the worst ones. Give some reason for teachers to work even harder to be one of the best. almost every other job in america can figure out who their best workers are, a school can too
OK that makes sense, and I don't think I'd have any problem with that kind of thing at all. We do have evaluations which can get teachers fired if they have two unsuccessful ones in a row.
From the AFT Also, keep in mind these averages include the Northeast, Claifornia, and other high cost of living areas. Texas is by far one of the best places to be a teacher, despite the majority of the school systems being pitiful. Just for cost of living. Max, I am of the opposite opinion with reagrds to our school system. I don't think it is overblown, I think it has been given fake lip service about it's faults but nobody takes it serious enough to actually work on improving anything. Instead, horrible schools like my HS alma mater are propped up as "miracle schools" because they cook their books. Why fix the problem when you can fix the records!
i'm not doubting that story. i just know there was a long period of time where they were offering much larger starting salaries to new teachers than they were to teachers who had been there 5 years or so, because they were having such a hard time attracting new teachers.
i'm thinking we would see it play out more then. people have bene complaining about our education system for years because of how we tested relative to other countries. we still innovate like a mother...we still have a super productive economy. i'm not saying you don't fix problems...i'm just saying i don't think the problem is as dire as many think it is...with the exception being inner city schools. but that doesn't make up the entirety of public education in this country.
madmax.. that probably is the way it is in some places.... the only way to attract teachers is sometimes to jack up starting pay a lot. which im sure annoys the people that have been there a while.
