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Pay Teachers More

nytimes.com

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Re: Pay Teachers More

#41

Post by defen »

pmorici wrote: post #29
lallysingh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a better merit->pay feedback cycle. A good lawyer will get repeat business. When am I going to take a class again?

You're kidding right? College students in particular are always trying to get into sections of classes taught by professors they know are good either through first hand experience or word of mouth recommendation.

College is so different from primary school that your stated objection is completely irrelevant. Students at the vast majority of US primary schools do not get to choose what material they learn, or who teaches it to them.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#42

Post by kbyers »

maratd wrote: post #16

Let's try a thought exercise. If we pay engineers more, we'll get safer buildings. If we pay police officers more, we'll get safer streets. If we pay doctors more, we'll get better care. You see how this works? More pay attracts higher quality individuals, but it's a zero sum game. Those people are coming from some other industry. So if you'll pay teachers more, you'll have a lower quality of service elsewhere. That…

Paying teachers more does not necessarily get higher quality teachers. If teachers were judged on merit and poor teachers were fired, then paying teachers more might be reasonable. But since teachers unions insist on tenure, have pay based on seniority, and make it exceptionally difficult to fire poor teachers, paying teachers more will not generally result in better quality education.

As someone else pointed out above, there are much more fundamental issues than pay--notably being able to fire poor teachers, elimination of tenure, pay based on merit/not seniority.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#43

Post by tassl »

maratd wrote: post #16

Let's try a thought exercise. If we pay engineers more, we'll get safer buildings. If we pay police officers more, we'll get safer streets. If we pay doctors more, we'll get better care. You see how this works? More pay attracts higher quality individuals, but it's a zero sum game. Those people are coming from some other industry. So if you'll pay teachers more, you'll have a lower quality of service elsewhere. That…

You don't need to have the best engineers/doctors teaching. Being an expert on something doesn't make a person a good teacher, which is a more important factor than the knowledge of that person.

But a person can be a good teacher without being the best in his area.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#44

Post by forkandwait »

My four point plan for decent education:

1. Eliminate credentialing programs and requirements: complete waste of time and money, plus they weed out the smart people who can't abide the thought of wasting 1-2 years of their life.

2. Eliminate tenure and fire the worst 5% of teachers about whom there is a consensus that they suck.

3. Go back to traditional curriculums: lots of homework, lots of memorization, lots of reading the classics, lots of writing.

4. Zero tolerance for bad behavior in the classroom --kick them out of school, make it the police's problem that there are thugs on the street without babysitters.

This is how good private schools do it.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#45

Post by kjksf »

I think it's interesting to tie this to recent news about Khan Academy.

According to various talks by Sal Khan, many kids used the free videos to educate themselves about math etc. to a level better than most kids achieve in a school.

Better eduction, without teachers, for free.

If you look at YouTube's numbers for how often those videos are watched, it's in tens or hundreds of thousand of views.

I assume that most of those are from kids who watch them to learn something (I can't fathom a different reason for watching a video on multiplication).

That means at least tens of thousands of kids have been educated - the model works as a mass education medium.

I think that the current school model is broken for many reasons and lack of quality teachers is only a small portion of it, so discussing how to rise quality of teachers by paying them more misses the larger point.

We should be thinking how to fix all of the problems.

It just happens that Khan Academy model is the only realistic way (that I can see) to actually fix the system. The fix is by inverting the traditional model. Instead of one person (teacher) lecturing 20+ kids (who all differ in their current understanding of topic and how quickly they can learn new information) for an hour and giving homework assignments, the kids learn from videos, at their own pace, and teacher are there to assist when a kid reaches a stumbling block.

The above description doesn't fully convey how this works but you can find out more via videos on http://khanacademy.org. Khan Academy is already doing pilot studies with some schools and results (unsurprisingly to me) are promising.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#46

Post by yummyfajitas »

Anechoic wrote: post #40
yummyfajitas wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the BLS, the average full time teacher works slightly less than 40 hours/week (see Table 2). This includes time at the workplace, at home and at another location. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

Are these data averaged across the entire year (including summers)? The summary is not clear about that, although it does include data from summer interviews. If it is averaged across summers, you can have a teacher working 50 hrs/wk during the school year, 0 hours during the summer and have the average come out to less than 40.

From the third paragraph of the article I linked to:

With the exception of chart 1, all estimates presented are restricted to persons who were employed during the week prior to their interview and who did some work during that period. Thus, a teacher who was on summer or semester break during the week of the survey is not included in this analysis.

A great way to answer questions about an article someone cites is to actually read it.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#47

Post by jaysonelliot »

The core message of the column makes perfect sense.

Expensive technology and boutique classrooms don't improve student performance without great teachers.

Just like a business, you can't buy excellence with furniture and computers - you can only hire excellence with great people.

I would fully support tripling teacher pay in general, with merit-based payscales and greater accountability.

Find the money by changing the student-teacher ratio and getting rid of expensive technology in the schools.

Where would you rather have kids go to school - in a large classroom taught by Richard Feynman or Bucky Fuller, sitting at wooden desks with a blackboard; or in a small intimate setting with iPads and Cisco Telepresence systems, but taught by Gladys from the DMV?

Re: Pay Teachers More

#48

Post by protomyth »

I am a tad bit tired of articles like this that fail to point out private school teachers are actually paid less than public school teachers. So, if your doing comparisons of similar positions, government workers are making more and have better job security.

That said, I would be happy to pay teachers more for a 9 month position if they had a 4 year BS in Math, Physics, Chemistry, etc and a minor in Education. The general Education major for 7+ grade teachers is a joke and doesn't give our students someone who knows the subject.

Paying an English teacher and a Math teacher the same is also wrong. One degree has a higher market value and we need real Math teachers, not general Education people with some Math classes. I guess I'm saying I would like the Education degree removed for a minor or certificate program for High School.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#49

Post by jim_h »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #9
mmaro wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teachers do not work less than 40 hours per week. A ton of time is spent on grading, prep, helping slow students, school meetings, complying with NCLB requirements, etc.

According to the BLS, the average full time teacher works slightly less than 40 hours/week (see Table 2). This includes time at the workplace, at home and at another location. http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

While the typical office workers averages 40hrs a week in the office, how many hours are they really productive? If they had to record only the hours that they're productive at tasks, would it come close to 40hrs?

Re: Pay Teachers More

#50

Post by Lost_BiomedE »

A friend of the family, an ex-engineer, in retirement decided to teach to give back to the community. She was teaching the remedial students at the local high-school. Her students did better on the standard tests than regular students, her first year.

She was called in, and told to stop making the other teachers look bad or be fired. She quit.

This same high-school gave the teacher of the year award to which ever teacher had the most complaints against them...

Unfortunately, when I have told this story to other teachers in different districts, they have not been surprised.

This is so broken.

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