The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries

[proud2BlibKansan]

WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

And yet in education we do just that. 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. This will take some doing.

more . . . http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html?_r=1

[Davis_X_Machina]

1. Less than one household in 3...

...has kids in school.

The two-thirds of the country that don't, don't care, so long as their taxes go down.

They don't care.

Property taxes, and to a lesser extent, state taxes, since state aid to local education's a big slice of a state's budget.

That's the education debate.

That one-in-three, and not test scores, or teacher salaries, is the single biggest number in the education debate.

[jp11]

5. Hi, I have no kids in school and I care about kids getting a good education,

teachers being treated fairly as well as being paid well for their service to our society in educating and caring for our society's children.

[Davis_X_Machina]

7. Great. But there aren't enough of you to swing an election. n/t

[Odin2005]

10. I hear that selfish shit all the time "I don't have kids in school so I don't wanna pay for it".

I want to punch those selfish pricks in the face.

[proud2BlibKansan]

12. Please don't

But if you do, don't call me for bail.

[Odin2005]

13. LOL, it's a figure of speech!

[RC]

2. *+1

* To read later

[n2doc]

3. I know they are trying to butter Obama up...

But this is just tripe:
from the article-
If any administration is capable of tackling this, it’s the current one. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan understand the centrality of teachers and have said that improving our education system begins and ends with great teachers.

[Curmudgeoness]

4. I like the way you think. The truth in what you say is astounding.

And yet, no one is seeing it that way.

I have a teaching degree. I taught for a while. I moved on for better pay and less hassle. They say that over half of the people with teaching degrees do not teach. This will get worse if they continue persecuting teachers, and fewer people will pursue teaching degrees. I never understood why one of the most important jobs in our society was so trivialized.

[Hannah Bell]

14. i read some huge % of new teachers, maybe half, leave the profession within the first five years.

[proud2BlibKansan]

17. 60% leave within 5 years

Close to 80% are gone within 10 years.

But hey, it's okay since TFA is here to save the day. :)

[tech9413]

6. Nice analogy

Having worked around education most of my working life, I've seen the problem first hand. Most of the teachers were as dedicated as I and put in at least as many unpaid hours. The problems I saw were school boards, superintendents, and administrators that could waste the salary of their entire staff without losing a minutes sleep.

The higher in the food chain, the more they could waste without question. Most was done in construction/renovation projects. I worked for a contractor that worked with architects and engineers that proposed and sold these concepts. In almost all of the projects I worked on there was collusion, deception, or overselling the need. It always oversold what was needed. In reconstruction, simple repairs could have been made instead of total replacement. Proper evaluation would have required on-site analysis, but that required labor and that was the first thing to be cut from the bid to get the job. The same held true for installation labor. If the sales force thought they had to cut the bid to get the job, the first thing cut was labor.

If we couldn't make it work with the allotted labor, they would find some reason to do change orders that would cost above the original bid. If the sales people and engineers screwed up on the system design or equipment needed, that would be another change order and the chance for more profit.

The administrators were easy. They just didn't spend much time doing there job. The best I dealt with were serving in the poorest communities. Of the hundreds of schools that I spent long hours in, there were only a handful that were there when the custodians started in the morning or there when I left long after quitting time.
My fondest memories were with administrators in Perth Amboy having long discussions on philosophy or enjoying a cup of Cuban or Spanish coffee.

My worst memory is having a principle telling me I should take my tools with me when I left the company.
It didn't seem to matter to him that they were owned by the company. His response, "That's just the way the game is played". Sorry fool, I don't play by those rules.

Sorry for the long response but this is a subject that really gets me fired up an my outside view should give another perspective.

PS: I had a few co-workers who went to work for school districts as support staff to support equipment and review bids only to provide a few hundred million in savings over about ten years.
I could have taken a job with Newark, NJ BOE but I was still too comfortable where I was.
I haven't worked in the profession since '02 and don't think I'll go back. Electronics repair is a joke and that is what I really love.

I offered my services to a few local school districts to try and save them money, they weren't very interested. I wonder why that would be?
BTW: I'm not currently living in the same area. My current job is caring for my 90 y/o mother.

[Igel]

8. Silly article.

"We do teachers a disservice by blaming them for crappy outcomes. If we have crappy outcomes, we don't automatically call the teachers crappy."

Fair enough.

"So the solution is to get rid of the crappy teachers by using higher salaries to attract *good* teachers. Voila! No more of the crappy teachers we have now."

Eh. Fail.

[demtenjeep]

9. Our district wants us to take a day off withouth pay

so that we can save money


yet we have been at 2008 salaries forever

[proud2BlibKansan]

18. Kansas is in crisis.

I can feel a revolution coming on. The tea party has taken over the state house and the people aren't too pleased.

[Taitertots]

11. Teaching is viewed differently from any profession

Even if we assume that teachers are the problem (they are not) than how would pay cuts and job insecurity cause better suited people to go into teaching?

In any other situation, how does less money and more problems cause people to do better work?

[jp11]

15. Fear to keep a job, fear that their field will be 'lowered' to allow just anyone in to compete and

keep them from having a job, at least that is part of the theory some greedy people have. They of course neglect the fact that many people will not touch said field despite having a passion or talent for it because it has been decimated. We all then lose out on those people who won't shoot themselves in the foot for the privilege of being abused as employees.


If it such a great idea why aren't all jobs so blissfully attacked like this, cops don't need unions, soldiers don't need benefits, politicians don't need healthcare or pensions *if* anyone really wants/cares to do a job it won't matter how horribly we pay them or take care of them right?

It makes no sense to view one employment group like this but not them all, so why is it we don't decimate CEOs/executives/musicians/actors/athletes, lower their pay, cut their perks. Surely the well paid 'elites' will all do much better jobs if they have to 'compete' for their positions against more people with less required experience/education/training. Oh wait, those people all deserve and earn that money, they need to be attracted, lured, kept for competition because if they aren't so handsomely rewarded they'll go somewhere else, another position where they get paid 'right' or another field. That sort of thing can't happen with teachers though, only the 'bad' ones would leave and only the best would stay, same with most public sector workers.

I think the people with the screwed up POV would argue that less money and more problems gets better work through forced efficiency and competition. If people want to stay in that field they need to be 'better' they need to get costs down and be more efficient. One might use manufacturing moving overseas as an example if a US company wants to compete they need to ramp up efficiency, lower costs, and make superior products than what their imported competition delivers, innovate etc.

That is all easier said than done and really that is the point because this shift is the point, to open up new opportunities for people to enter a previously 'closed' market/system and capitalize on the opportunity. To drive another business/industry out of business while building up your own on their backs and increasing the profits they got by doing it their way when you do it your way that guts that industry/field. It is simple greed, money is being spent on workers and in these people's POV it should always be siphoned to the top at the maximum possible yield.

[proud2BlibKansan]

16. What frustrates me is this is what I was told as a new teacher 30 years ago

In college we were told that we would likely end up making pretty good money since everyone knew teachers deserved to be paid more.

And here we are, not only still complaining that teachers are not paid enough, but handing out pay cuts.

Just ridiculous.