Today’s Op-Ed piece in the Globe by a Finish education specialist is one of the most thoughtful education proposals that I have read in some time. I hope Arnie Duncan is paying attention. Here’s an excerpt:
Today, as the most recent PISA study proves, Finland is one of the few nations that have accomplished both a high quality of learning and equity in learning at the same time. The best school systems are the most equitable – students do well regardless of their socio-economic background. Finally, Finland should interest US educators because Finns have employed very distinct ideas and policies in reforming education, many the exact opposite of what’s being tried in the United States.
The focus on competition and paying teachers for test results has no place in an educational system. Education is not business and should not be treated as such. When we finally get educators in decision making positions rather than politicians or businessmen, then we might have a chance to move our education system forward in a way that combines both equity and excellence.
Of course it comes on the same day as yet another FRONT-PAGE slap at the BTU for (doing their job and) getting teachers good benefits to compensate them for their essential work with our most needy and challenging public school students.
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p>The bottom line message from the Globe once again: We have to start treating teachers worse so our students can do better.
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p>Wonder what kind of benefits Finnish teachers get.
I happen to share your skepticism that most merit pay systems will have a big effect on student learning (though I believe in experimentation).
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p>Some studies of Finland attribute their kids’ acdaemic success to the types of folks that become teachers.
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p>To what extent, if any, do you think this teacher selection/exclusion is a key driver of results?
I suspect Finland does not have good teaching and good outcomes BECAUSE they select/exclude, I suspect they have good teaching and outcomes, at least in part, because prospective teachers know they’ll be respected, rewarded and have the autonomy to use the approaches they know will work with students.
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p>I can’t imagine how we could imitate just that one aspect of the Finnish system to any good effect without changing all the factors that cause new teachers here to leave teaching within the first few years and cause some of the best, most experienced teachers to leave the profession early because they feel their hands are tied and can’t teach they way they want to.
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At least according to Wikipedia . . .
The elusive “n” added.
Policies in Finland are more family-friendly than in the USA this is not JUST in education.
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p>Just saying. Several Finnish-American friends moved back to Finland once they were ready to have and raise children because, in fact, both American education and the American workplace are so antagonistic to children and families.
The Globe had a look at Finland back in April (my remarks at the time are here).
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p>There’s a lot that we could imitate from Finland. Education is a highly respected profession in terms of demands, public respect, and compensation; here in the United States, the current effort seems to be to standardize it at the same intellectual rigor of being a cashier at Shaw’s. Finland also cuts down on school hours, and supports students who test at all levels, not just special education.
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p>Of course, the model isn’t fully transportable. Finland has a civic culture that highly values education and also enjoys a stunning level of socioeconomic and linguistic homogeneity.
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p>I think it’s essential to study all successful models (which the McKinsey study I recently referenced does) and see what is applicable. For the moment, what stands out is the insistence of Obama, Bush, and their supporters to do exactly the opposite of what those successful systems are doing.
Finland’s scores at Education Week. She also thought it was an indication that the U.S. was on the wrong track. Singapore, however, is more test-driven than the U.S. and is also at the top of PISA scores.
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p>America is drastically different from Finland, ethnically and economically. The quality of life for the poor isn’t very different than that of the middle-class. That’s something we can’t say for our country or even our state. The total population of Finland, which is smaller than that of New York City, is also ethnically homogenous. Ethnic diversity, which tends to accompany poverty in our country, makes education difficult. Our real educational problems are the social problems that come with poverty. Ameliorate those problems, and we’ll really improve education.
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p>There is surely much that we can learn from other countries, but I believe we would learn more by studying ourselves. Twenty years ago we wanted to copy Japan, then China, now Finland. If we focused more on addressing the educational problems of individual communities and spent less time on micromanagerial reform and surveillance by state and federal authorities, we’d be more likely to see an improvement in schools.
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p>We should also think twice about the significance of PISA results. Rankings are the simplest, but least significant, form of statistics. There’s no consideration of variability, standard deviations, etc. Participation in PISA is voluntary, about 30 countries participate. That messes up the sample of countries worldwide. The test is also different from many U.S. tests, focusing more on applying learned material to real life situations. (MCAS may be an exception to most U.S. tests).
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p>The United States isn’t likely to get and keep better teachers any time soon. Nor are we apt to earn more money. Even with alleged incentive pay, it costs too much to raise pay significantly. The teachers we’ve hired for our Springfield suburb routinely started in Springfield. Although many would tell you that the kids could be difficult, all would tell you that it is the administrative bullsh*t that drove them out. Much of this BS originates with DOE surveillance (reports, inspections, etc.) and sacntions. Work conditions drive people away from and out of teaching, and it would take a serious amount of money, more than anyone would consider reasonable, to make them stay.
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but I think there are good reasons to look at models like Finland in the current political context.
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p>Maybe not with the next Congress, but we could imitate the broader social policies of Finland and other countries that create a better quality of life for children and make it more likely that they’ll arrive at school ready and able to learn.
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p>Anybody read Charles Blow in Saturday’s NY Times? He compared the U.S. to Britain, not Finland, in terms of child poverty:
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p>Britain, on the other hand, has seen child poverty decline from 30% in 1994 to 12%. Blow’s point was that Britain implemented social policies that had a positive impact, doing things like doubling paid maternity leave, providing universal preschool, assisting with child care and allowing parents of young children to request flexible work schedules. The U.S. could too, which would likely have a big impact on educational outcomes.
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p>On the value of looking at Finland and other models, I agree with Sabutai:
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I think is local control. In most other countries the MoE or DoE has a ton of power to set a rigorous, standardized, curriculum and is led by professional educators and not the politically connected. Also they get massive amounts of funding. Here we essentially have 50 different standards of education and sometimes even many more so at the district level. We have so many different kinds of schools and try to cater to many different needs. Germany has a very standardized education system, one with uniforms, longer hours, rigorous testing, and slotting children into homogenous groupings by ability much earlier. France, the Scandanavian countries, and to a lesser extent Britain, have very powerful federal education ministries that exert a lot of control. Of course both parties, for political reason, tend to emphasize local control in this country, which is one of the big reasons we have fallen so far behind. Eisenhower as the last President to really articulate the national security rationale behind education funding and used that rationale to justify extensive federal control. Control that gradually integrated schools, that emphasized science and technical skills, and that also still allowed more classical levels of education. Bringing back strong classical, english, and vocational models, funding them strongly, and setting strong unified standards is a great start. I would also add that drastically increasing teacher pay while killing tenure is another vitally needed reform, which most European countries have already adopted. Recognizing that the 180 day school year is a byproduct of a dead agrarian past would be another. The DoE should have more power, not less.
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p>Countries have largely been decentralizing education bureaucracy over the last ten years or so, and the pace is accelerating. Britain is the latest example.
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p>While you may have a point that could excuse poor testing scores in Alabama or what have you, the elite-level scores in Massachusetts aren’t happening because we don’t have enough bureaucrats telling Bay State teachers what to do.
I am not proposing new bureaucracies, simply saying we should set national standards and curriculum and fund in a far more equitable fashion.
America values its rich more than its children – that is the problem.
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p>Not tenure.
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p>Not local control.
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p>Not standards.
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p>There is neither support for parenthood, nor commitment to safety, nurture, and education for children –
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p>When it comes to grading the USA in care for children we get a D, at best.
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p>Too bad that the areas where a college education leads to working with children and families are always the worst pay and lowest status in their professions – whether it is social work, pediatric care, family law, providing foster care – global – what we pay shows what we value, does it not?
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p>Just look at this year’s banker bonuses and wish lists and compare them with the way we starve and belittle teachers, libraries, and social workers in the USA.
for effective teachers, probably lower than what we’d wish.
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p>but starving?
Average teacher salary in Massachusetts for 2009 is a touch over $67,500.
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p>A bit lower than what is typical for a population that is entirely college-educated, many of whom have Master’s degrees.
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p>Deb never said that teachers were starving, but certainly anyone who goes into teaching takes a real pay cut over other choices.
But Sabutai is correct – I never said teachers were starving, but rather like ALL professions that serve people, as opposed to serving money, not well paid, not well respected, and not [as a function] funded as a top priority.
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p>Of course, I am not sure WHAT says that this state spends more on incarceration then on higher education.
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p>But I assure you, anyone working in the field of child welfare will earn a pitiful fraction of anyone working in, say, the field of leveraged buyouts, or hedge funds. Serving Money (Mannom?) trumps people (serving humanity).
Cannot serve Mammon i.e., the quest for every greater wealth – and serve any other goal such as children’s well being.
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p>Whatever is most important will tend to crowd out whatever is less important. It seems like in the USA making maximum money is more important than taking care of people, especially children who have the bad luck to be born to parents who are poor.
…for an all-out assault on the alleged values of the GOP. They have built their coalition on the two main pillars of corporatism and theocracy. Even Jesus says you cannot serve both God and mammon.
We seem to have reached a point in this country where our innovative thinking is limited to solutions that are free market based. If all you have is a hammer (CEO), everything looks like a nail (corporation). If you suggest anything out of that model, you risk being accused of being a socialist, anti-American, etc.
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p>We need to remember that free market capitalism is a human creation, not something handed down on tablets to Moses on Mount Sinai.
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p>Some things, like education and health care, just do not map well to free market solutions.
Nice ideas but so generally presented as to be meaningless.
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p>For instance we don’t see any improvement in teacher quality with the current regime of certification or master’s degrees. Why would more higher education improve that? It would just erect an even higher barrier to potentially good teachers trying out the profession.
If you are saying that the idea of “fire more teachers” is so generally presented as to be meaningless, I agree completely. I further agree on the regime of more and more “graduate” education. These Master’s and other programs have become so diluted to cope with the vast numbers of people required to take them that they are not only of questionable use for the actual work of teaching, but also of quickly lowering quality.
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p>Truth be told, what we have is a racket whereby unions raise requirements to make it harder to join the profession, with the collusion of teacher college administrators who seen an easy buck, with the help of the clueless politicians who want to “do something” about education but don’t have the guts to do what is needed.
the idea that certification and master’s degrees don’t improve education.
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p>First, the value of certification is well-documented. Pam Grossman is one researcher who documented it.
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p>Second, there is no proof that master’s degrees don’t improve education. Maybe “common sense” supports the studies of economists of education like Eric Hanushek, but all you get from those guys is regression analysis (correlations with multiple variables) based on flawed proxies that omit a lot of reality along the way.
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p>All that can honestly be said about master’s degrees is that researchers have been unable to establish a connection between the degrees and student test scores. On the other hand, I’m not aware of research that shows Master’s Degrees do have an effect, though there’s probably some out there.
Why? Because she cared about people, and really wanted everyone to learn and made her classroom a place kids wanted to be; that may be a kind of personal chemistry, not a particular ideology I suppose.
If the state and federal government have their way, caring and making a classroom a nice place to be will not matter.
without links.
Not!
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p>What’s the average salary in MA, $67,500 and Boston is $76,000. How much is that an hour (180 days times maybe 8 hours)…$47 and $53/hour… not bad. So if we increase pay to $90 or $100/hour we get awesome results? NFW!
…but as pointed out elsewhere still somewhat low compared to other professions requiring comparable education.
There is skill sets, market demand, actual work performed… The calculus which determines a person’s worth in the job world has many variables, each weighted differently.
requiring minimum education, GED… $50K, starting salary for Assistant District Attorney in MA after Bachelor’s degree, Law School, BAR exam, selective/competitive interview process… $33K, Starting salary for soldiers fighting Afghanistan $17.3K (officers at $32,9K).
…toll taker is that high or that ADA or military is that low. I do believe that skill set and actual work for teachers is quite high, and worth to society comparable to doctors and lawyers. Demand really shouldn’t be as much of a factor IMO. There are some things that should just be paid more in principle. If you want to do comparisons, there’s always the outrageous salaries professional athletes make for not requiring any education or providing a necessary service to society.
However, while you want to “diminish” the role of supply and demand, I think it is an overwhelming variable in the equation. The problem is when the “natural” process gets bumped. Toll Collectors should not be making $50K to start nor would they be making $50K if supply/demand were allowed to work. But this is a State Government job (ok, quasi-state) with the requirement of a political hack connection to be hired. Nobody simply applies for Toll Collector and gets it, you need to be connected. Seriously, if they started Toll Collectors at say $25K, how long of a line would there be for job applicants? Even 5 years ago in a better economy, how many people would take that job at $25K with all its other benefits (pension, healthcare…)?
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p>Years ago, nurses were in abundance to a point where Nursing Schools were closing. The drop in available nurses caused a spike in the demand and a spike in the pay for nurses. It makes sense.
…is to override the natural laws of supply and demand for those services that require consistent need regardless of the economy.
Maybe soldiers and ADAs should unionize…
“But General, we’re waiting for the union steward to make sure the hill we’re suppose to charge is safe. Plus, since we’re charging the hill after 5:00pm, we should be getting a differential rate increase, in addition the artillery called and it’s break time so they can’t start shelling for another 15 minutes. Don’t bother asking for reinforcements since the cooks are on strike and have formed a picket line across the front gates and the supply corps are honoring the picket line…”
The conservative (“reform”) credo is to fire more teachers, and to make it easier to fire more teachers.
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p>Okay. Let’s say that you get what you want, and lots of teachers get fired.
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p>If you’re not going to raise teachers’ salaries, how are you going to get “better” people to take those jobs so we don’t get more of the same? It seems a variation of the whole “beatings will continue until morale improves” approach.
But I would say we are in favor of firing “bad” teachers, firing “incompetent” teachers, firing “overpaid” teachers… get the point?
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p>I would also say part of our credo is removing procedures in place which protect “all of the above” teachers, fixing the bloated pension system of teacher’s which is choking local, state and Federal budgets.
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p>Part of your assumptions seems to be we already have the best teachers the current money can buy? I don’t think so.
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p>The second implication in this entire thread is the gross mistake (IMO) that the teachers we have are the primary reason for success and failure of the students. Until we face the real cause of education failures and success, we will continue to flush money down the toilet by hiring more expensive teachers, build new schools, buy new computers and books, rearrange educational structures and NOTHING WILL CHANGE! Magically switch the student populations of Worcester and Newton, so the Newton students would have the Worcester School buildings, teachers and books and Worcester would suddenly become the #1 performing school system in the state.
The reform movement’s heroine seems to be Michelle Rhee, who fired hundreds of teachers sight unseen. Her most celebrated case was celebrating her elementary schoolchild’s teacher based on the kid’s reports. Never bothered to meet the teacher. I am entirely for firing bad, incompetent teachers, and cops, bankers, and firefighters. But we only hear about the first, it seems. In any case, how do we identify the incompetent teachers? Results on incompetently written standardized tests? And the old rule applies as much as ever — don’t fire someone until you’re positive there’s a better replacement available. I’ve seen firsthand how often that happens not to be true.
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p>”We already have the best teachers the current money can buy? I don’t think so.” Well, capitalism suggests that if we raise salaries, we’ll get better people applying. Regardless, when a position is advertised for a behavioral/emotional special needs teacher in the Boston Public Schools, do you think they get a flood of highly educated applicants despite conservative proclamations of their excessive salaries? If we aren’t going to make a job more attractive, how do we get more competent people to take those jobs?
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p>I agree 100%. Money spent on the educational bureaucracy isn’t the key. The key seems to be to transform our civic culture into that of Singapore or Finland — exceptionally literate, prosperous, and homogeneous. Since that isn’t going to happen, what is your suggestion? What is the “real cause of education failures”, and how do we correct them?
There are essentially two ways to evaluate teachers, and no third option. First, you can have a personal evaluation by a superior; but this lends itself to favoritism, “brown-nosing” and bad reviews may be the result of various forbidden
isms. Second, you can have a purely objective evaluation based on the performance of the students; but testing requires the testees to have something at stake, and high stakes testing comes with its own list of shortcomings, as does the evaluation of teacher performance based on the results.<
p>Therefore there is no easy way to evaluate a particular teacher, which means that it isn’t really done, except in the broadest possible manner, and a tenured teacher is permanently safe except in extreme cases.
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p>Every parent with kids knows when they have teachers who shouldn’t be teaching. There is not much to be done except to suffer through the year and hope for better luck in September. We also know when we hit the jackpot; we hear about it at the dinner table and can see the enthusiasm getting ready in the morning. But, there is no way that officialdom can distinguish between the two.
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p>It is rather intensively frustrating that this problem is always greeted by the unions with a shrug, an inconclusive study, and a citation to somebody’s dissertation; this frustration accounts for much of the antipathy toward teachers’ unions in my view.
I don’t know why it struck that line through.
You’ve hit the nail on the head on the problem of evaluating teachers, and I’d agree with you 100% on that subject. I often have said that if my colleagues and I all had to write down 10 people we think shouldn’t be doing their job, our lists would have a lot of overlap. But then again, most of those names would be based on hearsay, anyway. I suppose I’m also a little jumpy as at least two administrators in my system have a habit of committing perjury (evaluations are legal documents) in order to fire people, including writing post facto observations on days when the school was closed due to weather.
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p>I do need to take issue with the idea that the unions don’t deal with this problem — problem is that they don’t publicize what they do enough. The MTA released a proposal right here. The American Federation of Teachers has done the same. This proposals are usually dismissed, however , based on their source and on the fact that they emphasize training people as well as firing them.
Sabutai:
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p>Thanks for pointing out MTA’s effort to change the discussion on teacher evaluation. We are trying to promote a positive agenda for improving public schools and to support our members through an objective, fair and meaningful evaluation system. Despite the Globe headlines we are not suppporting the use of MCAS to hire or fire teachers but as one element in a very comprehensive evaluation system. For the full report and other information about our plan vist our website at http://www.massteacher.org
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p>Happy New Year,
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p>Paul Toner,
MTA President
I know I for one would love to have your regular participation in discussing education issues.
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p>I have been meaning to do so and will try my best to be more involved in these discussions.
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p>Thanks,
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p>Paul
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p>I’m glad we can agree. I think the unions have put a choke hold on getting rid of any bad players. The funny thing is, you would think everyone, including the good teachers/cops/firefighters… would want to drop these bad players but the unions would never let it happen and so far it’s working (just think about the recent fight over drug testing firefighters).
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p>We also have the laws on diminishing returns to consider. Why do we assume if we pay more we will get better teachers? Maybe we will get smarter teachers or maybe we’ll get people who could do amazing accomplishments in other fields become teachers (such as a top notch Chemist will become a Chemistry teacher), but I don’t know if that advances the ball.
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p>I’m sure there are specialists out there which there is a shortage of. I’m also sure those specialist would love to work in school systems which have order and discipline so why would they teach in Boston Public Schools? Did you note my implicit remark about the lack of discipline in the BPS schools? It would be great to see if there is any correlation between discipline/control and scholastic performance?
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p>Don’t know exactly “what” to do. If I did, I’d probably be a rock star. Many of my critics have been about what “not” to do. The real cause of our problems is the cultural norms which have been created. Our family structure has eroded over the last few decades with single parent families skyrocketing. We have families which supply no support for their children to make sure they do homework, study and be prepared for class. Many of our kids have no support for their futures, their goals and aspirations. Role models in the worst performing areas are bad players, not the core role models which have typically driven our country’s progress. Our response in many cases to lower performance across the board has been to lower standards to the point were the masses pass, but we have lowered our collective performance. When I was growing up non-performing students were “kept back”. Virtually nobody gets “kept back” nowadays.
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p>Maybe the solution is to try a whole bunch of different programs and see what works. But I think a commonality to any program should be efforts to involve parents (or a parent) into their children’s scholastic lives. I think we need to have standards and stick to them, even if half the class fails since the working world doesn’t grade by a “curve”. I’ve talked before about the over performance of Asian-American students in our schools and how they use the same books, have the same teachers and sit in the same classrooms/building as the rest of the class. What makes them do so well?
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p>Basic economics? The general assumption is that raising pay rates makes a job more desirable, hence more people try to get it, hence the talent level of the applicant pool goes up. And for what it’s worth, a great chemist can make a great chemistry teacher, or an absolutely horrible one.
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p>I agree 100% on family involvement and support. That is the biggest missing item on this question and I see it every day. But another question emerges — do you think families that support student children to a greater extent in Newton because they love their children more than Boston families?
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p>As for the statement “When I was growing up non-performing students were “kept back”. Virtually nobody gets “kept back” nowadays.” I would say two things. I would wager there are a lot of students in public schools today that weren’t there when you were growing up. People with English as a second language, or learning disabled students, did not have the protections they do today. As I’ve said elsewhere, graduating 18-year-olds who can’t read is a bad option. So is having an 18-year-old in eight grade. So is pushing him/her to drop out. My suggestions on this agree with yours to decentralize and experiment — two things that policymakers today such as Bush and Obama thoroughly oppose.
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p>The problem is we have done this already, and all it produces are a hodge podge of different results. You are against charter schools which were designed to do just this, and some have been spectacular, and others have been criminally negligent in educating our kids. Some of the boarding school models have done great, the BU run schools in Chelsea, the UofC schools in Hyde Park, those have done great. But we know Paul Reville is a damaged name around here, due to the failure of some charter schools. So there we go.
My mother was a teacher in Detroit, Michigan. It was far more than 180 days and most days, more than 8 hours. I know; I lived in the same house!
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p>But then, she took it upon herself to find out where her second graders actually lived, and ensure they got medical care; it was a desperately poor district.
..I remember the battles over getting kids glasses so they could read. Her average class size in the second grade was 38.
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p>My mother having been orphaned and severely neglected herself, I guess she saw certain red flags and asked herself, “If not me, who, if not now, when?” Even though she taught 2nd grade some kids were visiting her ten years and more later, and sometimes for help with their homework.
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p>I admit the health care she still recieves, retired, with Alzheimers, and at the age of 93 is a life saver, though. Literally – for her and for my 98 year old father.
but my kids are in three schools in my town and I am very actively involved in the schools (I Chair one of the PTGs) and the teachers at those schools work no more than 8 hours and they work 180 days. Of course there are always a few teachers who put in more hours and a few more who go in before the year starts but the overwhelming majority of them do not. And quite honestly they don’t need to since they do a good job and the scores for the school/town are quite impressive. But my numbers are based on this first hand observations (in only one town though).
With a self-admitted “few data points” you can authoritatively speak about “the overwhelming majority”.
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p>Conservative economics…and decision-making…in a nutshell.
But my “the overwhelming majority” was referring to the ones I observe first hand, not the masses. But why not simply admit that you really don’t care about anything I am saying and will continue to believe “what you believe”? It will save all of us time.
I agree with much of what you say, I’m just dismayed that you eschew actual data. Going to a monthly meeting doesn’t make you an expert even about the district where you live. The number of teachers in your district is likely in the triple figures, but you’ve easily identified at least 60 of them individually as incompetent. The DOE site is user friendly and rich in data — back up what you say with numbers.
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p>You probably would think I’m a piss-poor teacher because I’m only at school until 5pm twice a week. That’s because you don’t visit my home on Saturday afternoon when I’m planning, the nights when I’m grading, the summers when I’m doing unpaid work on global education or curriculum initiatives. I don’t go to the meetings you go to because I go to other meetings. So it doesn’t count.
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p>In the widest sense, much of what you say about education I find quite reasonable. When the focus narrows to your immediate neighborhood, as is human nature, it becomes about personal feelings and experiences.
I never did claim to be an expert, did I? And I am at the school numerous times per week.
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p>Why don’t you get off the poor me horse and open your eyes. I am actually a big supporter of teachers. I work with them often and if you spoke to any of them who I deal with they would tell you that I support them in all ways, including money for their classrooms. Hell, one of my older kids wants to be a teacher and I think it’s great!
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p>My remarks about 8 hours/180 days is not an attack on teachers, it was estimating their relative hourly rates.
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p>Never said anything about them being incompetent either.
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p>WTF is your problem? This is so typical that you critic some bad apples in a profession and suddenly everyone is a victim. I have no idea what kind of teacher you are, although your posts are indicating someone who doesn’t like criticism and maybe a tad too defensive.
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p>I don’t expect teachers to be working more than 8 hours OR more than 180 days. I don’t care one way or another as long as they are competent teachers… they could work 6 hours a day.
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p>I’m sorry my focus on my “entire” school system was too narrow for you, just as I’m sure your focus on “just your workload and routine” was even more narrow.
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p>Sorry to don’t attend “our” meetings, the “T” in PTG stands for Teachers. We have 3 at every single meeting and their input for enrichment programs and other funding activities is priceless.
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p>As a side note but related to this subject, parents who attend the PTG meetings and events almost always have children who are outstanding students while the parents of the “students with problems” never attend. I’m not judging them since I don’t know their situations but this is consistent with what I refer to as “no/low student support” causing low perfromance.
Insulting people isn’t a great way for them to change their minds, and insulting a profession isn’t a great way to maje people such as your son want to join it. The rest of your comment demonstrates that quintessential JohnD lack of self-awareness that makes you so special. Any further conversation would be superfluous.
And I did not insult the profession of teaching but we can end it here.
Who is arguing that increasing salaries will improve achievement? Some argue that increasing salaries will increase the number of talented candidates who will, in turn, teach better and raise achievement.
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p>I agree with your economic logic. The relationship between $$$ and achievement not be straight line. There is probably an optimum where pay makes the most difference; you see the relationship expressed on one of those equilibrium tables in economics. The question is, what range of pay would be best for student learning?
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p>Keeping an optimum salary in mind, there are salaries that are too low (and unattractive to good teachers) and too high (with costs outweighing benefits). So salaries matter. As a teacher, I know I have no chance of making the money some of my friends make in the private sector. But that was my choice. I feel lucky to make what I consider enough money. I also get good benefits–retirement and insurance. My friends in the private sector have lousy insurance, 401k’s, and a lot less job security. Other parts of the country aren’t as lucky.
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p>Here’s something that appeared in the NEA magazine (not exactly rigorous, maybe even bias, but at least good for anecdotal evidence):
There’s a lot we don’t know about Swann, but if it is true that she has a $34,000 after 26 years of teaching, it’s hard to argue that that kind of money is going to attract teachers good enough to affect achievement.
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In 2009, the statewide average for Middle School Teachers was $41,290, and $43,670 for High School teachers. Of course, Sierra Vista is a pretty rural place (closer to Tombstone and the Mexican border than Tuscon), so 20% less than the average might be standard.
how bad is that salary? Or the other salaries for that matter?
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p>Rural teachers get paid less here too. Their communities tend to think teachers make a lot of money.
Let me try…
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p>Fun facts about Illinois High School salaries…
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p>1. The highest-paid public school teacher in Illinois is a physical education teacher making $191,124 per year (I’m assuming this is a 9-month teaching “year”).
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p>2. Six of the top 12 highest-paid high school teachers in Illinois teach physical education, each making $170,000 or more.
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p>3. Six state employees teaching driver education make $150,000 or more.
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p>4. Six high school teachers make more than the Illinois Governor’s salary of $177,500.
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p>5. 14,048 Illinois high school teachers made salaries of $100,000 or more in 2010, which is up 13% over last year.
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http://teacherportal.com/teach…
14,048 Illinois high school teachers made salaries of $100,000 or more in 2010
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p>That’s a “whole lotta love”!
and traced them to the Illinois state government.
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p>I’m not supporting the salaries, but they are anomalies. The average salary is more indicative of teacher pay.
Source
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This is vintage JohnD — put up some crap and hope nobody notices.
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p>Hmm — do you suppose that the physical education teacher is also the head football coach for over two decades, wrestling coach, and track coach ina school with over 4,000 students? Yes he is! Fact is, William Mitz busts his butt working hard, but since he’s a public employee, John doesn’t like that!
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p>Just as he does with police officers, John hopes that none of you are smart enough to tell the difference between “total income” and “salary on the job”. If we combine JohnD’s income from his grey-market textbook resale business with what he makes on his regular job we’d probably think he’s overpaid too!
other models, but I may be less sanguine about the practical outcomes. We already know much of what we need to do; however, given today’s politics and fiscal restraints, it’s not happening.
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p>Following an ethic of continual improvement, educational solutions should emerge organically and as locally as possible. The state’s crisis mentality assures us that it won’t.
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p>If international comparisons can help defeat the Bush-Obama hegemon, even rhetorically, I’m all for it.
I fear we miss the forest for the trees.
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p>We have become a nation that celebrates ignorance. We celebrate ignorance in our media, in our culture, in our politics, in our music, in our arts. The message to our children is clear enough, and no amount of “reform” or money is going to change the outcome so long as our culture values ignorance over all else.
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p>The same local culture that complains so loudly about any public spending (never mind education) and simultaneously spends money hand-over-fist for sporting events, sporting memorabilia, multi million dollar mansions, and the many other excesses of modern life is never going to raise well-educated children.
how a glib comparison like this quickly devolves into lamentations about the inferiority of American culture in general.
If you hadn’t noticed it, we have become a culture that kicks every problem we have down the road as if some magical event will occur to remedy everything.
If you hadn’t noticed it, we have become a culture that kicks every problem we have down the road as if some magical event will occur to remedy everything.
Can you say Immigration reform?
We all just mean different things.
Get the education piece right and a lot of other things fall into place; get the education piece wrong and other things start crumbling.
I am not an expert in education issues (IANAEIEI?), but I’d like to chime in. There was an interesting study by the anthropologist John Ogbu that suggested that the racial achievement gap in an affluent Ohio suburb could be accounted for by the “cultural attitudes” concerning education in the home of the African American families who had commissioned the study. I would like to suggest that these “cultural attitudes”–that education is the job of the school, not the parent; that hard work and academic achievement are not crucial to a good life–are a problem not just for African Americans, but for all Americans. We just aren’t as hard workers as we used to be. That’s the fundamental problem.
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p>Nor is the solution simply implementing economic policies to make poor people better off in the hopes that they will then acquire middle-class attitudes about the importance of education, because I don’t see a lot of evidence that the middle class is particularly serious about real education, either. And the upper class hardly sets a good example of motivation for hard work, with executive compensation bonanzas evidently divorced from performance.
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p>I think part of the answer lies in our communities–whether we are talking about neighborhood, religious congregations, or whatever. I’m fortunate enough to be able to send my kids to a sectarian elementary school where, by and large, the parents are really serious about educating their children. Of course, such schools can tend to be more homogenous than the population at large, but still, I think that communities and the positive peer pressure they bring to bear is important here.
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p>You can look at the Finnish model, the Chinese model, the Japanese model, or whatever, but none of that will solve the problem unless people here regain the belief in hard work that we once had.
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p>TedF
I’m not sure that’s ever happened before!
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p>TedF
This was the clincher…
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with many others on his side of the political spectrum. He’s concerned with more than just confirming his biases.
Christopher:
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p>I have been meaning to do so and will try my best to be more involved in these discussions.
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p>Thanks,
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p>Paul