Paying for Better Math and Science Teachers

Coryoth writes "While California is suffering from critical shortage of mathematics and science teachers, Kentucky is considering two bills that would give explicit financial incentives to math and science students and teachers. The first bill would provide cash incentives to schools to run AP math and science classes, and cash scholarships to students who did well on AP math and science exams. The second bill provides salary bumps for any teachers with degrees in math or science, or who score well in teacher-certification tests in math, chemistry and physics. Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"

Comments

May backfire

[crow]

Depending on how this is funded, it may backfire. If the state is paying the salary difference directly, that may work, but otherwise school districts will avoid hiring teachers who qualify for the extra pay to keep within budget. The system already makes it quite difficult for experienced teachers to get jobs; my wife was once told by a principal that he would love to hire her, but the superintendent said he would only approve up to three years of experience.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:Teacher shortage?

[Coryoth]

You know, one of the proponents from the original article makes that very point:
"He pointed out that an English teacher doesn't have to be a great writer to teach reading and writing, but that the same is not true of high-end math and science courses." I think this is an important point. It can be overstated, but real fluency in mathematics can make a great deal of difference to how well it is taught. Most students can appreciate the value of learning to read or write, but will more often tend to question the value of mathematics. It takes a teacher with good mathematical knowledge (often well beyond the level they are teaching) to provide the extra depth to mathematics that can help engage students. Finland noted this around 2000 and set up a series of reforms that saw strong encouragement for elementary school teachers to take advanced math classes. The result is that Finland is now ranked among the very top countries in the world with respect to the achievements of their students in mathematics.

Of course, at the higher levels of English, having a teacher well versed in literature can make all the difference with regard to engaing students in studying Shakespeare and the classics. I don't think you should sell short the value of a well educated English teacher - it is just that that value tends be increase later in schooling rather than earlier.

Re:We have a winner!

[bendodge]

Teachers are not teachers anymore, they are babysitters.This sentence was not only relavent to the issue in the article, but is characteristic of so many of the problems with our education system right now from parents expecting schools to raise their kids and teach them values to our failing grades compared with the rest of the world. I don't think that its just the bureaucracy of structured classes, but with the teachers' lack of ability to control a classroom. Of course, that's a whole other can of worms. Yes, that is a huge can of worms.

My father has been a teacher for almost 20 years, and describes the life cycle of a teacher like this:

1. Someone becomes a teacher, not for the pay, but in order to better the world.
2. They are very enthusiastic, and spin their wheels with enthusiasm.
3. About 5-10 years into it, they get cynical. But with that many years behind them, they are not going to switch careers. He also discussed the government programs issue:

1. A program is created and deployed with high hopes (except for the cynical teachers who have been through the last 3 programs.)
2. It generates a lot of (fake) steam, then is loopholed and "special-ed"ed out of commission, at which point everybody forgets the name.
3. The program is about to expire, and everything will go back to traditional mode. This creates a lawsuit hazard, as tens of thousands of students suddenly must pass a test or miss their diploma.
4. A new program is hastily implemented to keep the scores inflated and keep to the students rolling through (read: no lawsuits). Another problem is "special ed". Here is the story behind 85% of the students in special ed:

1. A student is ultra-lazy and isn't passing.
2. Parents roar at the teacher, and send their kid to the school shrink. At this point the student pays attention and dons his worst intellect, in order to pass the evaluation.
3. He is assigned a monitor who is specially responsible to keep an eye on his school (read: make sure he passes).
4. The student has a lot less work to do (the basic package is 1/2 the homework, and it gets worse as you go along), and the teacher is given a dossier (they have some politically correct name for it) on the kid's "condition", and he is required to tailor his lessons for that child's benefit. (There is naturally no way a teacher can tailor the class for a dozen individual kids.)
5. The student passes with good grades, and gets his diploma. He got by with minimal work, the parents are happy, and nobody got sued.
5. Since you can't discriminate against the handicapped or retarded, the diploma has no mention of the fact that the student didn't actually do the work, or that he has any condition. Now, the program does do much good for the truly handicapped people, but there are very few people who have anything wrong with them, except for their work ethic.

As for classroom discipline:

1. You cannot touch or search a kid without getting sued by the parents or the ACLU.
2. You cannot dock their grade without the parents getting zealous.
3. You may only send them to the office, where the overworked principle (who spends "half his time making sure we comply with regulations") tells the student to behave or face staying home from school (sounds silly, but it really irks the parents, who suddenly have a kid to babysit).
4. If the teacher saw the kid's drugs, the principle calls the students mom to come (no way will he tell the kid to drop his pants for a search without a parent present). The kid is then sent to the school police officer, and I don't know what he does with him.
5. There isn't much else to do. It is a general case of lazy kids, a lawyer-happy ACLU, terrible parenting, and staggering bureaucratic overhead.

Re:We have a winner!

[AK Marc]

I can attest to the fact that the rigmarole educators are put through today is a major turnoff.

I graduated from Texas A&M. Because I was in the electrical engineering program before changing to computer science and there was one non-overlap math class, I actually have more math than needed to be an electrical engineer (and that, I believe, ties for the most math needed for any degree, after math majors of course). So, when I was looking at possibly teaching, I found out that I would have to go back and take some remedial math classes. Sure, a couple semesters of differential equations won't help me with algebra, but to go back for remedial math after having taken years of calculus and applied math just turned me off. I can pass any test they can give me about the subject matter. But unless I go back for the remedial math classes, I can't teach it. What is needed is an easy path for professionals to enter education after years of gathering experience in the real world. Until that path is easy, I'm not going to go back to school for 2 years just to be able to apply for the jobs. They should be seeking me out, not putting up hurdles.