Tag Archives: teachers

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries – how can I disagree with this?

When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates.

via nytimes.com

I really can’t disagree. I think they are right on. Of course, this is not a plan, it’s a dream. For dreams to come true, one needs a plan and some luck.

I’ve always cringed at hearing that teachers don’t make enough. They do make more than many other college graduates and in some areas they do quite well when considering benefits. The real problem is not that teachers don’t make enough across the board, it’s that they don’t make enough in certain areas. This is a funding issue that is largely cause by the ways that schools are funded across the country. Schools in wealthy areas pay quite well, maybe not enough for the teachers to live in the town, but still quite well.

I am excited about the idea of making teaching more competitive. The recent teacher crunch has done this to the small degree. There are more teachers than there are jobs, which is good for recruiting (not so good for recent graduates). Next step is to increase pay at least 50% and, at the same time, devise assessments that are difficult enough to filter (yes, many good teachers may be filtered out this way, but it is still far better than hoping the best show up). Set conditions in which becoming a teacher is competitive.

I do find it kind of interesting that the author starts out with a call not to blame teachers and then essentially states that we need better teachers. Huh?

U.S. Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status – No easy task

To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems.

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the international achievement test known by its acronym Pisa, says in his report that top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps to raise respect for the profession.

“Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Mr. Schleicher says in the report, prepared in advance of an educational conference that opens in New York on Wednesday. “Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.”

via nytimes.com

I don’t see that ever happening. Just like a junky, the US is going to have to hit rock bottom before steps are taken to improve. Not just with education, but a whole host of issues.

I guess I’m just feeling a little pessimistic today.

In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis

In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis

Wednesday 14 April 2010

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

photo
(Image: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: Jose Kevo, emurray)

There has been a long, though declining, tradition in the United States in which public school teaching was embraced as an important public service. It was assumed that teachers provided a crucial foundation for educating young people in the values, skills and knowledge that enabled them to be critical citizens capable of shaping and expanding democratic institutions. Since the 1980s, teachers have been under an unprecedented attack by those forces that view schools less as a public good than as a private right. Seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards. Underlying these transformations are a number of forces eager to privatize schools, substitute vocational training for education and reduce teaching and learning to reductive modes of testing and evaluation.

via truthout.org

I love teachers and teaching. That has to be put up front, especially since I am often quick to criticize education policy, administration, and even some groups of teachers. While I reserve the right to criticize the actions or in-actions of some, I really do respect teachers and the profession (yes, profession) of teaching.

Read the article to better understand why I worry about the profession and the teachers who make up the profession.

The Answer Sheet – U.S. public education by the latest numbers

U.S. public education by the latest numbers

Did you know:

*From 1986 to 2007, the percentage of enrolled students in public elementary and secondary schools who were white decreased from 70 percent to 56 percent.
*In 2007–08, the largest number of bachelor’s degrees were awarded in business.
*In a nation with a population of about 307 million in 2009, more than 1 out of every 4 people participated in formal education last fall.

These are some of the facts in the 2010 Digest of Education Statistics just released by the Department of Education. Here’s a look at public education, by the numbers, at least according to some of the stats released by the National Center for Education Statistics. (In each statistic, the latest date cited is the most recent for which information is available.)

via voices.washingtonpost.com

Really worth a look. Some great insight on the numbers of education (by numbers, I’m referring quantitative measures). Some of the more useful statistics are comparisons with previous years (or decades) that really make the numbers pop.

Teacher Average Salary Income – International Comparison

Check out this website I found at worldsalaries.org

http://www.worldsalaries.org/teacher.shtml# – Check out this site. Fun to look around and make comparisons.

This data really surprised me. I’m surprised that the average salary for American teachers is so high, particularly compared with the rest of the world. I would really like to see the range of salaries and regional disaggregation. If the average teacher is making $60,000/yr gross, I have a lot less sympathy for complaints about pay and workload.

The same database lists averages for many professions. Teachers rank up near the top. Professors average about $9,000 more per year. I don’t know if that makes me hopeful or not :-/

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