Unions and government work…They don’t believe in merit raises. “That might encourage employees to go off script.”

While most people have at least one favorite teacher we remember fondly, for the most part people take teachers for granted. The assumption, shared by most education schools, is that a few education courses, a bachelor’s degree, a standardized test and state certification bestow upon any schmoe the credentials to be a teacher. Unlike premedical programs, which are deliberately designed to thin the herd well before the MCATs, preteacher programs are generally pretty easy on the students. There are exceptions, of course, but you could sleep through most public universities’ education classes and still get certified.

Suppose you raised the average beginning teacher’s pay to $40K, and promised a nice raise after 1-2 years of successful teaching. Perhaps more students would be interested in being teachers, to the point that ed schools might have to tighten the requirements up to thin the herd. Maybe student teachers, and the public in general would take teaching more seriously if there were a stampede for the ed schools’ programs.

Or forget about the pay level. Just make it harder to get certified. It might convince people that teaching is not for those “who can’t do” but for those who really want to work hard to become professionals, like doctors and lawyers.

Consider this thought. We spend years hanging around teachers when we are young. Familiarity breeds contempt, to the extent that everyone figures they know how to be better teachers or run the schools better, You don’t hear the same criticism and armchair management of doctors, nurses, accountants, engineers and lawyers.

For those of you who still insist that teachers are overpaid, or paid adequately, take a year’s unpaid leave from your regular job and work as a teacher somewhere, and walk in our mocassins for a while. If you can teach math, science or a foreign language, you’d be a shoo-in. Districts would get you emergency certification and put you in front of a room full of kids in no time flat.

Failing that, pick up a book written by a teacher about his or her teaching experiences. You might gain some insights into the difficulties of the profession.

Also, comparisons with teacher pay are difficult. Yes, you can make more in the private sector, but can you make more working only 181 days out of the year? When statistics facor this variable in, the teaching profession is very competitve with many other professions. I haven’t read all of this, but it is an interesting study as it relates to teacher pay.

Is Teacher Pay “Adequate?”

Money is not the issue…we are spending more and getting less every year.

Who said I was complaining about my job? I love my job. I’ve been doing it for 20+ years, so I either love it or I’m nuts. (The verdict is not in on that last possibility yet, though.) What I AM complaining about is Anonymous’ presumption that the pay we do get is sufficient and fair. Given our duties and responsibilities, and given that everyone from parents to politicians believes teachers can singlehandedly prevent the fall of civilization as we know it, the pay teachers receive is insulting. You want excellence in teaching, but you don’t want to pay good money for it. So, we should all be monks and nuns and take vows of poverty to be teachers?

Dana said: Teacher pay is about average for college graduates.
To an extent, you are correct. The statement is not true for math and science teachers, who typically are paid $5K to $10K less than their peers who enter private industry. That disparity is one reason why it’s hard to find math and science teachers. In addition, many teachers work in situations that do not reward excellence with bonuses and hefty raises, as might happen in the corporate world. Rather, teachers receive a uniform percentage increase each year (if they’re lucky), and are rewarded for earning their master’s and/or doctoral degrees. After several years, the teacher is making quite a bit less than his peer in the corporate world. I won’t even go into the comparative lack of promotion opportunities for teachers.

The comparatively low pay, few opportunities for career advancement and salary boosts, the paperwork, administrative hassles, parental meddling, unruly kids, etc., etc., drive most young teachers out of the profession forever by their fifth year. It’s hard to find experienced teachers.

Indeed.

I suggest anyone interested in this topic read The Underground History of schooling in the US. Free online. It was written by a two-time winning Teacher of the Year in New York. He feels the system is broken and can not be fixed.

I will leave aside all the solid libertarian and economic arguments against State sponsored schooling. No time.

There seems to be a lot of misconceptions about public education and the teaching profession. First of all, they are two completely separate things. Many teachers (including myself) disagree with the model of public education that the Bush administration has pushed down our throats. No Child Left Behind is nothing more than a way to shift blame away from the policy makers to the individual schools. Sure, I’m all for school accountability, but how well can a person do their job if both hands are tied behind his back? The US model is essentially to give students the basic information, never have them apply that information to real world purposes, and then test their knowledge in an all-important standardized test in April/May to assess how well the school has functioned. Sounds fine and dandy, but when to add in several key (and often overlooked) factors, it’s clear to see that the test doesn’t necessarily give an honest reflection. What comes out of this is a single number rating the school, which politicians love as it’s “black and white.” This to me, and many of my colleagues, is the primary problem with how education is handled today.

Now, the teaching profession has taken much of the heat stemming from NCLB. When the politicians discovered that their local schools were below the “acceptable” level, the first group they targeted were the teachers. Now, in the state that I’m teaching in, the requirements have drastically been increased and are practically updated yearly. Gone are the days of lifetime credentials. I strongly feel that the new teachers coming off of the assembly line represent the best group of teaching professionals the state has ever seen. Sure, there are always idiots in any profession, and I’m sure that each school will encounter the few staff members that are subpar, but for the most part, children in public education are being taught according to state guidelines and parent wishes.

Not to make this a rant, but the topic of parents brings up an important tangent. I teach math, a topic that I love and am very familiar with. Multiple times throughout the year I will be approached by parents wishing their students to be challenged further than what is normally customary. However, for some reason, when their students actually start becoming challenged, they reappear claiming poor teaching. Why do they believe this? Two things: their student has homework that takes them more than 10 minutes, and their student may start receiving less than perfect grades. Gee, what a concept: you actually start challenging a student and they have work and receive a B+ on the test. So my beef with this isn’t that the parents complain, it’s that they equate A’s as learning. A’s mean they did well on the work, but rarely signify actual understanding of the concept, especially on those damn multiple choice tests. I’m sure each and every one of you have taken a MC test, simply guessed, and received a satisfactory grade.

As stated by wheatdogg in his final comments, you can’t expect to have excellent teachers but pay them a minimal wage. Yet, somehow, that’s exactly how the public believes it should work. Ignorance on this topic honestly hurts us more than the few bad apples in the profession.