Excellent article on teacher pay and conditions

[Bravus]

http://www.bravus.com/blog/?p=2324

[CoAspen]

Bottom line, in the USA we talk about education and then when it comes to budget reduction, schools come first! I have co-worker whose husband is a special education teacher and basketball coach with out a pay raise in three years.

Yep, we pay those teachers way too much!!!

Tis a complicated subject, but as usual, it is politicized to avoid actually working on a solution!!

[Bravus]

One of the things the article points out is that we actually do *know* what works: the countries with the most successful education systems do a lot of the same things, and high pay and high respect for teachers is high on the list. Standardised testing and punitive policies don't really feature.

It's why the 'Waiting for Superman' movie got it exactly wrong.

[Tom Wetmore]

"...exactly wrong" -- Please elaborate. I did not see "Waiting for Superman", so I do not know much about it.

[cricket]

So, were the teachers in our schools NOT in the top tier of their peers when they were educated; or, were these teachers the only ones who were at the top of their class, but didn't care about a higher salary? If the former, then no wonder we're not ahead of these other countries in standardized performance tests; if the latter, then aren't we already doing the very best that we can--with teachers who are the brightest of the bunch AND have a heart for it?

[Dottie]

I cannot verify this, but have heard that those who go into education in college are low scorers on the SAT, and those who go on to a Masters' are low scorers on the GRE.

Not always, but on the average.

[Bravus]

'Waiting for Superman' in many ways blames the teachers - and particularly the teacher unions - for the problems with education, and suggests union-bashing and charter schools as the solution. It turns out that the claims of gains they made with these strategies weren't even real:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/06/michelle_rhee_lyons

Cricket, I'm not so sure about the US situation, though the original article linked suggests it's similar, but in Australia we do get *some* of the top students into teacher education - our department has quite a few - but also some lower on the scale. It's largely about supply and demand, and with relatively poor salaries and a huge amount of pressure, the demand drops. Universities still need to fill their courses, and schools still need teachers (check the turnover figures in the original article), so we end up taking who we can get.

Of course, grades are not the sole arbiter of who will be a good teacher - there's a lot else going on. But certainly better salaries would mean smarter teachers on average, I don't think that's controversial. The most able teachers are also easily 'headhunted' out of the classroom if salaries are low and pressures are high.

Certainly money is not all of it, and massive social demands, and politicians who find it convenient to bash teachers to gain political advantage lead to reduced public esteem for teachers (ironic when we consider the source).

Obviously I'm passionate about this, but it's really kind of common sense: you don't get better results out of people by beating them, you get better results by having high expectations and supporting them to reach and exceed those expectations.

[CoAspen]

Quote:

...you get better results by having high expectations and supporting them to reach and exceed those expectations.

And that is exactly what the US head of Teacher Unions, don't remember her name, said had been learned from study of successful schools systems from around the world. Support the best, encourage those struggling, with real help, and then weed out those who can't 'cut the mustard'. Even in the higher income neighborhoods, schools still have all kinds of 'gimmicks' to raise funds for educational supplies, etc. Schools need to be looked at as education centers and not Babbie sitting centers. Get involved, know the teachers, the staffs, demand the best of admins and support the efforts of those getting the job done. you get better results by having high expectations and supporting them to reach and exceed those expectations.you get better results by having high expectations and supporting them to reach and exceed those expectations.

[abelisle]

As a retired NYC HS English teacher, I'd like to chime in.

1) Once we acquiesced to the business model as the new education philosophy, we went the way of charter schools and union-bashing. As a UFT member, I fought this continually. It was all about preparing student for the workplace - to be competent workers. The idea of an education tied to an appreciation of our culture and for creating people with a sense of civic responsibility and personal morality wasn't a concern. That's why we ended up with Ivy League grads working for outfits like Enron with no qualms about destroying people's lives.

2) Sadly, I agree that a fair proportion of my colleagues weren't well educated in a holistic sense. They knew their subject area but beyond that, not so much. I tried to encourage cross-discipline teaching in my school. I had physics teachers coming into my A.P. classes and Bible as Lit. elective to lecture on a subject they're were interested in for example.

3) The main issue that was a deterrent to teaching was, sad to say, the parents. Read this excelent article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/magazine/mag-10School-t.html

4) Finally, I must give major "props" to my teacher's union(UFT) who continually fought for better working conditions and worker benefits. I was a member of my school's executive committee despite the church's negative feelings about unions and I'm proud of my experience helping my peers.

Alex

[cricket]

Read this excellent book: Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother

[phkrause]

As a retired NYC HS English teacher, I'd like to chime in.

1) Once we acquiesced to the business model as the new education philosophy, we went the way of charter schools and union-bashing. As a UFT member, I fought this continually. It was all about preparing student for the workplace - to be competent workers. The idea of an education tied to an appreciation of our culture and for creating people with a sense of civic responsibility and personal morality wasn't a concern. That's why we ended up with Ivy League grads working for outfits like Enron with no qualms about destroying people's lives.

2) Sadly, I agree that a fair proportion of my colleagues weren't well educated in a holistic sense. They knew their subject area but beyond that, not so much. I tried to encourage cross-discipline teaching in my school. I had physics teachers coming into my A.P. classes and Bible as Lit. elective to lecture on a subject they're were interested in for example.

3) The main issue that was a deterrent to teaching was, sad to say, the parents. Read this excelent article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/10/magazine/mag-10School-t.html

4) Finally, I must give major "props" to my teacher's union(UFT) who continually fought for better working conditions and worker benefits. I was a member of my school's executive committee despite the church's negative feelings about unions and I'm proud of my experience helping my peers.

Alex

Excellent points ab

[Flyboy]

Yes, it's true that, generally speaking, GRE acceptance scores for graduate education programs in the US are lower than, say, English, Physics, or many other mainstream subjects, but part of the reason is that 1) SO many schools offer education programs, even if they offer only one or two grad programs often these are masters in education programs. Thus the number of positions relative to the number of applicants is much closer than the number of applicants vs positions in programs such as the ones mentioned above. Of course, it's also true that in English, a student MUST do well on the English section of the GRE, in Physics, they MUST do well in the math sections. There is no education section.

But I would also suggest that a person with average intelligence will typically relate better to children and teenagers than one with high intelligence due to the fact that most children and teens are average. Thus it's a case of like minds working together. My opinion is that it's good to have average, i.e., normal, people working as teachers. Teachers need to be inspirational, not geniuses. Can any of you think of a favorite teacher you had? Was he/she your fave because they were smart *or* because they cared about you, or were funny, or somehow inspired you in another way? I'd wager most for must of us it wasn't because we thought of them as smart.

As for pay, do you really want your kid's teachers doing it for the money? I certainly don't want my kid's role models (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) to be someone who is only doing their job for money. On the same token we do need to pay teachers better, particularly in Adventist schools where the pay band is quite narrow, a difference of perhaps 15k a year for a first year teacher vs a 30 year veteran. In the public system the difference is much greater.

The issue is the politics. If there were less politicization of education then there would be more money to fund programs and pay teachers better. But it's also true that you can't have your cake and eat it too! Knowing that, in reality, we must work within the confines of political interference, if you really do want to provide better benefits to teachers and more programming to kids, you will have to restructure the tax code, OR you will have to raise taxes under the current tax code. The jukebox won't play if you don't pay.

As for the Tiger Mother, her style of education is very much the norm here in Asia. Chinese (and Asian generally) parents think of childhood as a time to exploit the hidden talents so that the child is ready to succeed (read money). Western kids play. That's what they do. They play and as a result they create. It's no surprise that Asian countries don't produce many new inventions. It's also no surprise that most of them are not good athletes, because they don't really get active until after they are grown professionals.