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Pay Teachers More

nytimes.com

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Re: Pay Teachers More

#71

Post by dantheman »

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…

Private schools, which generally have much better results than public schools, pay their teachers less than public schools -- so it seems pay isn't the deciding factor.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#72

Post by chrismanfrank »

jshen wrote: post #63
kjksf wrote: post #45

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 o…

Some tiny fraction of kids teach themselves and you're implying that teachers aren't important? That's a non sequitur on a few different levels.

I don't think kj is saying teachers aren't important, just that there might be a better way. And remember, only a 'tiny fraction' of people were on Facebook at some point.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#73

Post by chrismanfrank »

patio11 wrote: post #66
Lost_BiomedE wrote: post #50

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 tea…

My quick Rosetta Stone for inexplicable school behavior: assume the goal of schools is to employ people and that educating students is an industrial biproduct.

"The goal of any system is to perpetuate the system." Someone smart said that, but I can't remember who.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#74

Post by brg »

nitrogen wrote: post #67
barry-cotter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher? Apart from governemnt lawyers and academics everybody is in private practice or working for a company. Their employers/clients have them to deal with money problems. Whoever is close to the money gets to keep some. Also, teachers have tenure, great pensions, work only 9-10 months a year, and within a few years of being hired, work under 40 hours a week on average. >…

...work under 40 hours a week on average.... No teacher I've met works under 40 hours a week. My parents are both teachers, as well as at least one friend. They may be "on the clock" for less than 40 hours a week, but consistently have to work up to 60 hours a week to satisfy all of their responsibilities (including meeting with students and parents, grading assignments, attending meetings, etc).

Exceptional teachers work more, and provide much more for their students. However the vast majority of teachers are not exceptional.

As a thought exam think about what are they doing off the clock? Most likely grading or setting exams. The best and youngest work over their pre-packaged lesson plans and augment them to the best of their ability. However these are the best, the top few percent. The scan-tron crew do none of this.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#75

Post by zdw »

kjksf wrote: post #45

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 o…

I'd disagree with the conclusion.

Khan made a really good set of tools to teach with. His model is great if you're looking at replacing textbooks with something better, which is sorely needed.

The problem is that teaching isn't about delivering information as much as it is about evaluation, answering questions, and having soft skills. Khan does none of those things.

(While I like what I've seen of Khan, I generally avoid "screencasts" (which is pretty much what Khan's things are) and other learning materials that have a typically low information/time ratio - I feel I can learn faster if something was written out in longer form as I'm a fast reader.)

Re: Pay Teachers More

#76

Post by cafard »

dantheman wrote: post #71
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…

Private schools, which generally have much better results than public schools, pay their teachers less than public schools -- so it seems pay isn't the deciding factor.

Private schools have three great advantages. First, by definition, they have the backing of the parents. Second, they can expel students who are not doing the work or who are sufficiently disruptive. Third they can go by common sense rather than by the rule book in cases where it is called for. The better of them have a sound curriculum and are resistant to the fads that come out of the teachers' colleges.

In fact some teachers may be willing to settle for the worse pay at a private school in the knowledge that they have the administration's and the parents' backing, and so a more gratifying task. But I am here to tell you that the private schools hire some turkeys--incompetent, idle, with a bad attitude, slipping unnoticed over into dementia, I've seen cases in my own and relatives' experiences. Yes, you can replace them more easily, but you may have shot a school year or a semester before you do.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#77

Post by barry-cotter »

nitrogen wrote: post #67
barry-cotter wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher? Apart from governemnt lawyers and academics everybody is in private practice or working for a company. Their employers/clients have them to deal with money problems. Whoever is close to the money gets to keep some. Also, teachers have tenure, great pensions, work only 9-10 months a year, and within a few years of being hired, work under 40 hours a week on average. >…

...work under 40 hours a week on average.... No teacher I've met works under 40 hours a week. My parents are both teachers, as well as at least one friend. They may be "on the clock" for less than 40 hours a week, but consistently have to work up to 60 hours a week to satisfy all of their responsibilities (including meeting with students and parents, grading assignments, attending meetings, 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

*stolen directly from yummyfajitas

Re: Pay Teachers More

#78

Post by yummyfajitas »

Anechoic wrote: post #57
yummyfajitas wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I had read the article and read that section, but it doesn't answer my question - all that says is that teachers on break weren't included in the study, that doesn't say whether or not the data taken from the teachers included in the study were averaged across a (working or school) year just across the interviewees. But thank you for your respectful response.

In the ATUS, interviewers collect data in a time diary format, in which survey participants provide information about "yesterday."

So no, it's not averaged across a year (unless the teacher worked a full year).

Re: Pay Teachers More

#79

Post by dangoldin »

maxharris wrote: post #58
dangoldin wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about the future generations of doctors who had poor teachers and won't make good doctors? I don't think it's a zero sum game - the world changes and different skills are required at different points. New industries are constantly born that require a whole new set of people. The population of the world is always in flux as well - does that mean every additional person has to split the limited resources? I think…

What about the future generations of doctors who had poor teachers and won't make good doctors? Teachers are not the only source of drive or inspiration to learn. Michael Faraday had almost no formal education (and he came from a poor family), yet he rose to become one of the most influential scientists in history. [He was apprenticed to a bookbinder, which allowed him to read a lot. His interest in science was inspi…

Of course not but I think Faraday was an exception and it would be rare for someone in this day and age to be an innovative scientist without having a strong academic background. It's hard to break into academia without going to college and it's hard to go to college without going to school. Of course it's possible but it's just not easy and without the proper motivation many people would give up.

Even before Faraday there were tons of self schooled mathematicians who would just write letters to each other with their problems and solutions but I just don't know how common that would be these days.

Re: Pay Teachers More

#80

Post by defen »

maxharris wrote: post #56
defen wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Don't you think this is a problem, at least for some students? It was for me. I was an awful student all the way through high school (graduated with something around a D average). I blossomed in college with a near-perfect GPA in a natural science major. (What I had to go through to get into the university I did is another story, and beside the point.) The important difference between these two environments is that I…

Oh I completely agree - the current system is horribly broken, and for the vast majority of students is really a Lord of the Flies-meets-babysitting kind of situation. I was just trying to say that pmorici's analogy, which was already stretched in trying to apply the way a lawyer/doctor gets repeat business to the way a college professor gets "new business", completely falls down when applied to primary school teachers.
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