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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?"
>...or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?
Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding!
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Either that, or enslave post-grads for a few years and FORCE them to work at public school wages. That'll work... Yeah.I hate "IS/OR" questions like this. The answer to both is YES. Pay which is competative with industry will attract science grads to teach. It will also cause "discontent among teachers" who somehow feel that all teachers should earn the same -- regardless of education/demand for certain skillsets.
Queue the teachers union to strike/protest.
This proposed system to get better math and science educators and educations sounds like a meritocracy approach, which may be a foreign concept to some in the heavily union-controlled teacher community. It would seem that something as important as the education of our children the most important goal would be to fund and organize the most effective educational system possible.
While I don't know the intricacies of the teachers' unions, I've had enough discussions with my sister, a teacher, to suspect the best interests of the children are rarely in play in decsions around who should teach and how much those who teach should be paid. If this is really true, it is probably the wrong approach.
A central tenet of the school pay system appears to be their main stumbling block: FTA:
There's a certain insanity to the notion that different demand-disciplines (in the market workplace) should not help guide salary distribution in the teaching systems. High-demand, high-pay disciplines should drive high-pay teaching positions. If an English teacher's 50% cut to a Physics teacher's pay bothers the English teacher, he (she) need only get the necessary background to qualify to teach physics. It seems like a simple equation... it's kind of (not exactly) how it works in the job market.
I'm all for a meritocracy for teachers, and not just in the math and sciences. Unfortunately, from past observations, as long as government runs educational systems, and unions govern teacher selection, the "finest education" for the children is likely the last result we'll see.
Want to place odds on whether Kentucky pulls off getting these bills passed? And, if passed, want to double down on the teachers' unions' resistance? That said, good luck to Kentucky... I hope they pull it off.
(it's on the welcome signs as you enter the state)
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.
Even better, why dont we stop comparing our entire populations abilities to the abilities of only the best of other countries.
Heck even better, why dont we just accept the fact that a lot of people are just not cut out to being college grads and help them better themselves in a industrial field like other countries do.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
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?
Why can't it be both?
Teachers face the same hurdles that you may experience in the IT field. Most of us have been in the position where you ae looking to take on a job that you are more than qualified for. You get the "We think you are overqualified for this position", which translates to "You are bound to want too much money". The same applies to teachers.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
We already spend a shit load of money on education and the results are poor at best. So what do we do? Spend more money of course! I think the US needs to look at other cultures to see how its done. We're obviously missing something and it definitely isn't money.
gasmonso http://religiousfreaks.com/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?
More competitive pay may attract science grads who could make more elsewhere, but I'd argue that it's worthwhile to avoid breeding discontent by giving all teachers that same raise. They certainly deserve it for all the extra hours a teacher puts in grading, preparing lessons, and other "homework." Counting all that, my teacher friends put in more hours in a nine-month school year than I do in a twelve-month sysadmin's year, but they make half the money. Besides, if extra money will improve the applicant pool for science teachers, won't it do the same for english or history teachers too?
I'd like to be a teacher. Some of the greatest influences on my life have been teachers. I like teaching kids science and computers, and I've got a talent for it.
But I'll never be a teacher under current systems.
I'm not patient with kids who don't get it and insist on me walking them through everything. None of my favorite teachers were either. I'm not respectful of authority either, unless it's earned that respect. None of my favorite teachers were either. And if parents insist that little Taylor or Brittany didn't earn the C they got on the test, I'll tell them where they can shove their complaints. And I'm not about to waste my time teaching kids for a test. Some of the best lessons in life can't be tested. I'd reward kids for creativity, an inquisitive nature, the questioning of current thinking, and for making me look dumb. All the kinds of things my favorite teachers rewarded me for.
I feel that, in this current climate, I wouldn't last a year as that kind of teacher. In fact, two of my favorite teachers got fired after I had them because of complaints and friction with the administration. And they were replaced with robots designed to make more robots. Indeed, most of the teachers I remember fondly only lasted as long as they did because they produced results despite friction with the administration and parents.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
Pay is a serious issue with teaching (I won't even get started on the rest of the issues).
"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?"
Science and Math are good starting points. But don't stop there!
The entire United States Educational System needs a complete overhaul.
Teachers should teach because they enjoy it. Being "attracted" into it isn't going to make them be good teachers. In fact, it may turn out like college where you get the really bright mathematicians and scientists teaching, but they can't relate worth a darn to the students.
Money is also a good start. Really talented people end up leaving the profession because they simply can't pay the bills. Making the pay more competitive will keep more of the good teachers. Fixing some of the other problems will also retain teachers, but getting the teachers in, paying them better and teaching (or allowing) them to be good teachers is what needs to happen, nation-wide, not just Kentucky or California.
The overhaul must start somewhere, and if they look at pay first, that's great. You can eventually weed out the poor teachers, keep the good teachers and our children will finally have an education they deserve!! (Without having to move overseas to truly educate them well.)
So, it's a start. But it can't stop there. Yes, there will be discontent among teachers but once the ball starts rolling and things improve for one and all, then everyone wins.
My thoughts as an ex-teacher,
Kris
Remember when Windows were washed, mice were trapped and UNIX guarded the harem?
How about basing teacher pay on performance?
And who judges performance?
If it's the school administration, then you risk the principal's favorites getting paid just because they're the favorites.
If it's based on standardized tests, then you just get teachers teaching kids how to take standardized tests, which is ultimately results in a lousier education.
One of the problems this will encourage is that these days parents *expect* their kids to be in AP classes even if they're not qualified to be there. I recently judged a high school science fair, and it was pretty plain that most students didn't even do the minimum, a few just checked off the boxes, and very, very few really tried to do the work required for science.
The first thing that needs to happen is that AP classes need to not be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator because of political reasons, and everyone shouldn't get a pony- we have to get back to having kids *lose* if they don't make the cut.
http://www.pauldrobertson.com
You know... Teaching used to be a very well paying and highly respected profession. Then they nationalised it.
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Because we don't have a shortage of English or History teachers. It's not a bias. It's supply and demand. People with expertise in math and science can find far more lucrative jobs in industry than they can teaching public schools, and without dealing with the kind of idiotic bureaucracy that tends to rule in them, but the same cannot be said of English or history majors. You cannot "increase the complexity of the curriculum" without expertise in the subject matter.
And the brethren went away edified.
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My wife teaches middle school science in Northern Kentucky. Just consider the following a general complaint. We're pretty disappointed with the district she works for, to the point of considering private school for our kids. A couple of reasons: The district is cutting out AP courses. Maybe it was to qualify for the cash to start a program. They are also cutting teacher positions (including science) because of a budget shortfall. Lastly, she may get shifted from science to special-ed. Why? Because she has two masters degrees and is certified in Science, Language Arts, and Special-Ed. So even though she loves teaching science, has students that write poems about what a great teacher she is, she may not get to decide what subject she teaches. If there's a shortage of teachers in any subject, it's special ed.
Oh, and she probably won't get the bonus.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
And part of the problem are teacher's unions. Most force a system were all new teachers are paid the same, with the same tenure requirements and the same raise/bonus requirements. There is little if no incentive to become a teacher of "hard" subjects like math and science when you can get the same salary and job security in one of the "soft" subjects like social science, art, music or gym. This is why most schools have a glut of "soft" subject teachers and why there are so many bad math and science teachers.
What happens is the shortage of math and science teachers forces the school to make a "soft" subject teacher teach those subjects. They end up doing a terrible job because they aren't trained in it, don't have an excitement about the subject and generally feel that they will only being doing the job temporarily. This maybe the case but only because they are sacked (not likely given our tenure system) or quit when they reach a certain level of dissatisfaction. Otherwise a school is stuck with a crappy math or science teacher until they retire.
If the research was done I bet a good causal relationship of bad math and science teachers and lower student interest/performance in those subjects could be made. Getting rid of the ridiculous parts of the union system and creating a Milwaukee, WI style school choice program will go a long way to better teachers, better schools and students that will be able to compete globally again.
In my undergraduate university, education majors were required to declare a secondary major. While it was true in general that the math/ed majors were less adept with mathematics than the pure math majors, they certainly had the passion, conviction, and skill required to teach mathematics in secondary education. I believe that they were required to take the same mathematics curriculum and they had to pass the Math Praxis before they could teach. These people were not "one lesson ahead" of grade school, but skilled in calculus, linear algebra, number theory, topology, and modern algebra - in other words, I can see some of them making excellent teaching professors at the university level (though none had the passion for research that characterized the pure math majors) if they weren't so focused on teaching in primary and secondary education.
The fact that the two groups tended to be segregated suggests that raising the pay may not necessarily attract different people to the profession (perhaps some potential professors who are more interested in teaching than research would choose K-12 instead with higher pay), but it should certainly increase motivation and perhaps encourage more dedication and creativity as a result.
I think teachers on all levels should be paid more. I don't look forward to getting my Ph. D. and becoming a professor for less than I could have made with only a BS myself (I'm a Ph. D. student in CS).
"Honestly, you should see what it takes to become a teacher, it isn't much."
It is enough to discourage people who have degrees in their fields from entering teaching. Why would I want to sacrifice at least a few years of very good pay just to qualify to become eligible to teach in the field I already have a degree in?
(In MA, at least, you need a teaching certification which requires extra schooling in education to get. Don't know what the rule is in other states.)
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
what you pay for. Well unless the unions get in the act then you get over paid shit. OOPS did I say that out load?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
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... breed discontent among teachers.
It will blow up into a big ol' envy-fest
The teachers' unions will make sure of that.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
That Kentucky (or any state in the U.S.) applies the same logic to education is no surprise, but why do Slashdotters acquiesce to determining teachers' salary by central planning and government mandate? The free market should determine teachers' salaries. The prerequisite, of course, would be to eliminate government-run schools and let private schools compete for tuition money from parents.
Yes, I am one of the tens of thousands of signatories to the Proclamation for the Separation of School and State
I work for public education, and get to visit many a classroom and the thought of putting my kid in a public school scares the crap out of me so much, that my kids don't go to public school, they attend a homestudy charter school. Both will graduate High School with upto two years of college credits, something not even offered in public schools.
.....
I've seen good and bad teachers in the schools I work in, and quite frankly, there aren't enough good teachers. Period. Like the teacher who was teaching life lessons from the master "Rikki Lake" (No kidding). Or the Social Science Teacher teaching made up crap and opinions as "fact". Or the Math teacher who didn't know the formula for the area of a circle (No kidding), Or the teacher that has four computers on his desk and that is all he does all day, instead of teaching the special education kids in his charge, or
It is pretty scary stuff, if you ask me. The scariest part is that NONE of the teachers I mentioned could be fired, because the Union says so. It is clear that the Union doesn't really care about their profession, or it would be EMBARRASSED of many of its members.
I feel really sorry about those teachers that are actually good. However, they cannot overcome the crap coming from the worst of them. Sad, but true.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
My mother is a teacher, a lot of my friends are teachers, and I worked IT at a high school. I've never seen another profession that whines and complains as much as teachers. It's engrained in their culture. It's how they socialize. They will complain about anything and everything.
I've sometimes considered teaching, but after seeing what a relative went through when earning her teaching certificate, there's no way in hell I'd do it under the current system.
At least in her classes, the students were apathetic and disrespectful. In her assessment, basically zero learning occurred.
Contrast that to what I get when I teach my kids at home. We snuggle up and read a homeschooling book about astronomy, and they actually learn. We pop in a "Magic Schoolbus" DVD rental, and even I learn stuff about human physiology, etc. My 6 year old knows multiplication table up through 7's, and reads at a 3rd-grade level.
Seeing the heartbreaking gap between what most kids can learn, and what most kids do learn in public school, keeps me from ever wanting to perpetuate that environment. I'm considering working with small groups of kids and possibly even doing some math teaching to home-schooled kids. But public schools - no way. It's mostly a waste.
I'm a teacher, and I love money, but here's the problem:
No one gets into this for the money, and no one stays for the money -- not math teachers, anyway. I did something before this that paid twice as much, as many of us do, but then I got bored and decided to try this.
So the issue is, if people aren't in teaching for the money, why do we suspect that we'll be able to attract more people to teaching with more money?
Now, there's the reasonable argument that there's some segment of the population that would like to teach, but can't because the pay is so low, but there's two things wrong with this argument:
1. teachers are never going to make as much as, say, modelers or programmers, and
2. i have some reason to believe that the sort of people who are just waiting for teaching kids to be really, really profitable might not be the crowd that we want to attract, anyway.
People get into teaching because they like teaching. People leave teaching because it's annoying a lot of the time. Here's how you attract people, in my personal fake expert opinion:
1. make it interesting. don't assign people to courses just because they're what's open, and don't make them wait for someone to die to get to try teaching calculus.
2. give them support, and help them develop. put time into schedules for conferences and bring in real lecturers, provide journals and during the day time to discuss, and fund coursework into anything.
3. throw out the textbooks. they're all shit (with the exception of harold jacobs).
4. demand real expertise and professionalism. make math teacher a job that it's hard to get. if i quit tomorrow, i could work anywhere in Maine by next week. this isn't good, rather it tells me that i don't need to be very good -- and if that's true, how good am i, really?
It's a great job, and you can't fix the shortage with money because things are so bad in terms of available teachers that you're just going to drag the good ones to rich districts and force poor schools to take whoever's left -- and you would be pretty surprised if i were to tell you exactly how bad things are in terms of expertise. The right answer is to make it a job that is attractive in all its aspects, and one that's admirable and challenging. That's all we geeks want, anyway, isn't it? A challenge, and some acknowledgement that we've got giant freaking brains?
god is just pretend.
An arts degree does not set you up for any useful function beyond teaching. They can pay art teachers squat and the only competition comes from McDonalds burger-flipping jobs.
A degreed scientist/math person has far better prospects and the schools will have to compete to attract them.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
From the Wall Street Journal (Friday, February 2, 2007), teachers actually make on average $34.06 an hour. That's a bit more than I make as a Software Engineer in the private sector. The whole reason teacher's salaries look low is that no one counts the massive amounts of time off teachers get (or all the civil servant benefits) that private sector workers can only dream about. The full article is available here: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.ht ml?id=110009612
Here's how I think education will work 10 years from now:
This would required significant investment in software, but that investment could be shared nationwide. Physical infrastructure investments could be reduced. Teachers could be paid much more and elevated to a professional level (it takes special skills to manage so many kids and that investment in training should be rewarded).
Are teacher overpaid or underpaid, or have we gotten it just right? Easy enough!
Just look at the supply of teachers - are there enough qualified applicants for an open position at the salary you are offering? If I were an administrator, I would want at least twenty serious applications for a position, of which I could interview five or six and then pick the one who fit best. Are schools getting this many serious applicants?
In most cases, yes. In some cases, they are getting far more applicants than is necessary, indicating that the salary offered is too high. A suburban school posting a job for an elementary position in any decent district will be flooded with applications, normally hundreds and sometimes exceeding a thousand. On the other hand, there are not enough qualified math, science, and special education teachers, as well as teachers willing to teach in troubled rural or urban schools. It is clear from this that any employer besides a public school would cut the pay of elementary teachers and boost the pay of math teachers until qualified people for both positions could be found.
The reason I am not a secondary science teacher today is the poor pay. I make twice as much working as a researcher at a major corporation, and have a job that shuts off at 5pm each day without all the headaches. On the other hand, few elementary or English teachers could make double their teachers' pay. Indeed, few of them could even match it in the private sector.
Colleges and universities do not pay all professors the same. They know how to do it, and prove it can be done. Public schools need to move beyond the silly "all teachers are equal" mindset they have been stuck in for decades. It is killing education.
...through life, son! Unfortunately, a large portion of my fellow citizens are doing their best to pack on the fat, reduce the quality of education, and push their religion into government.
*shrug*
They can always join the military! With Lil'Bush making noise about Iran, we'll have a deep need for people to die in the desert for Haliburton and Exxon!
(only partially serious)
Blar.
- Industry. Lots of money, but that isn't everything. In my field, just having a B.S. really limits ones upward mobility.
- Getting the PhD. This leaves me free to go back to option 1 later, but with even bigger money and all the room to grow I could want. Plus, they pay you to be a TA in grad school. For chemists, grad school pays a living wage.
- Teach. This would mean making the world a better place. Hooray! But it would also mean things like making nearly the same amount of money that I now make in grad school. That is pathetic. Add to that little chance for significant improvement in wages or conditions. Ridiculous bureaucracy to insure that no child is ever left behind. All sorts of certification to deal with. Filthy children and no room for discipline.
So I am in grad school now. And, honestly, who would ever choose to go with option 3? This is why I think most talented chemists will rarely choose to go teach (I admit I know nothing about math or physics people).This is where the problem lies...
;-)
Being knowledgeable and being a good teacher are 2 completely different things. How do I know?
Glad you asked,
I'm a PhD student in Mech. Engineering at a top 10 school working through the NSF GK-12 Fellowship program and putting in 30hrs/week at a local school. Believe me when I tell you that being smart and being a good teacher at that level are 2 completely different things and I've been decorated and distinguished as a TA from our undergrads and the department. Middle/High School is a different ball game ENTIRELY.
I've learned to keep my mouth shut when it comes to criticizing our educational system - my advise, donate your time to a local school and you'll quickly learn why you love your job so much. It's dang hard work with very little reward other than the smiles on their faces.
This was after a 3 week (50hr/week) summer intensive course on education - there are education theories out there that make a lot of sense and work. You wouldn't know this because the vast majority of my teachers haven't followed them. There is more to being a good educator then being smart in your field - it requires being knowledgeable in the theories of education also.
That said, I find that the teachers at my school to be extremely petty (maybe it's a catfighting thing) but the politics are horrible and the acknowledgements are nonexistent.
What have I learned? I love my field
Let's be honest. Math and science are more important. Period. History is a very close second. We need kids who understand the basics of the scientific method and mathematics so that they know how to solve problems. We need kids who understand history so that the ones who become politicians don't end up fucking thing up as badly as the current crowd has. So yes, math and science teachers should be paid more than the art teachers. And football coaches should be paid less than art teachers.
But really, the problem with education isn't pay-grade differences. It's actually a situation where liberals and conservatives have both come together to fuck things up. The conservatives offer Christian fundamentalist parents to put pressure on school boards to teach creationism or similar frauds, uneducated morons sitting on education boards to decide what is and isn't science and a ridiculous philosophy that free-market capitalism actually applies to education in the form of "No Child Left Behind". Oh yeah, and they have a worrisome trust for standardized test scores as a benchmark for performance.
The liberals, on the other hand, offer hideously overpowered teacher's unions that keep shitty teachers employed, an inane attitude that no kid should ever fail and an unreasonable expectation that every kid should go to college. Really, when did becoming a plumber or electrician become something so terrible? You can make a good, honest living doing plenty of trade jobs. But not every kid belongs in college, and filling colleges with kids who don't belong there sucks resources from actual higher education and diverts it to joke majors like "park and recreation management". And since every kid has to go to college now, they have to have enough majors for everyone!