Paying Teachers is Not the Answer
Sunday, March 7, 2010
, Posted by JD at 10:18 PM
I ran across a story in Newsweek about why failing teachers SHOULD be fired. This article, written on the cusp of a controversy in Rhode Island where teachers who were making, on average 74K a year, balked at spending additional time with students. The superintendent threatened to fire them.
From what I can discern, he did the right thing.
Teachers don't have it easy. I think most of us know that. But overall, teaching is still a cushy enough job that people who can't decide what to do with their lives choose it as a fall back plan. I can't tell you how many of my friends who couldn't make it in their respective industries, or couldn't decide on a job path to pursue, "settled" into teaching citing benefits, job security, and summers off as perks.
People typically don't voluntarily 'settle' into truly shitty careers--even in a recession. Okay you have to stay late and spend time at home grading papers. I get it. But how many of the rest of America stays late at their jobs and takes work home on weekends? I'm not sure why we expect teachers to be different, especially in an increasingly competitive society.
I look back on the time spent in public schools and it amazes me how woefully underprepared I was for college. It didn't surprise me when a former classmate of mine informed me that 50% of students in my hometown end up dropping out of school.
I heard someone hypothesize that the reason teachers are so shitty today is because teaching was a job traditionally held by the smartest women in a community. But nowadays those same women who would have taught have gone on to climb the corporate and government ladder. I think there's some validity to this. Can't you just imagine Hillary Rodham Clinton teaching a class of 5th graders had our country not progressed enough to handle a female Secretary of State/Presidential candidate? This is, of course, a very harsh way of saying "those who can't do, teach."
It's also only part of the issue. The unfortunate fact is that the difficulties with education in America is not the fault of teachers. America as a whole does not place a priority on education. However, every time I see teacher's unions, political candidates, and education experts talking about pay and performance, I wonder why there isn't more of an emphasis on fixing curriculum and quality of life at work. Surely, those types of fixes would make teachers a lot more comfortable in the long-term. Liking your job and feeling appreciated and successful means more than money to most people especially if you've entered a field that you love.
All in all, I can't support throwing more money at teachers. Teaching doesn't happen in a vacuum...so while money may pacify individual teachers who are doing as good a job as they can within an extremely flawed and limiting system, it does nothing to prepare our nation's children for future success over the long haul.
Have to respectfully disagree.
Hear me out please: I teach at a private school. Why? The environment at the school is way better than the public schools where I taught before, and they didn't require me to get yet another teaching license (three states in 4 years = I'm not spending any more time in education classes. I love teaching and can't understand why the classes don't prepare us better for the classroom. But that's another comment).
In the interest of full disclosure, pay is one of the main reasons this will be my last year teaching; I'm going into nursing. Same hours per week, you leave work at work by law, and the pay starts at nearly double the rate. There are more risks, but it's worth it to me.
As a teacher, I have yet to make $30K in a calendar year. Yes, that's teaching full-time, summers off. But that means I have to work (tutoring, summer school, waitress, cashier) during the summer to have the standard of living/retirement fund/savings that everyone else has in this competitive economy. And I work an average of 50 hours per week when you include lesson planning, after school events, and phone calls from students on top of the grading of papers that is standard. In this situation, you might see that quite a few teachers actually DO need to be paid more.
I agree that the superintendent in that particular case was probably correct to threaten as he did.
However, we have to look at that $74K as an average; and that means that some people earn more, and some earn less. It's a stretch to look from that one situation to say that teachers are pulling the value of their work. I still say most aren't even close.