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Higher Pay for Math and Science Teachers
Coryoth writes "Following up a previous story, it seems that the Kentucky effort to provide increased pay to teachers with qualifications in mathematics, physics, and chemistry has been gutted. Teachers objected to differential pay, and that portion of the bill was removed. At the same time California has just put forward a similar measure, with differential pay for teachers qualified in mathematics and science. Shockingly 40% of mathematics teachers in California are not fully qualified in the subject — a higher percentage of unqualified teachers than any other subject. Is the Californian effort any more likely to succeed, or is it destined to be similarly gutted? Is there a solution to the woeful lack of qualified mathematics teachers that the Teachers' Union will find acceptable?"
Perhaps not surprisingly, California ranks almost dead last in education.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Seeing as it was the teachers unions that helped to create mazes like this when trying to remove a bad teacher, i think you might have a really good idea.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
It's just asking for personnel issues, and it's creating a teacher economic hierarchy where none currently exists, and none needs to exist.
But It does need to exist. The problem is that the teachers union sees them all as the same thing: teachers. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that it's a hell of a lot easier to teach 3rd graders to spell than it is to teach 11th graders calculus. What kind of idiot marxist do you have to be to insist that Nancy Twinkletoes with her Ba in Child Development be paid the same as Jane Poindexter with a PhD in Mathematics? They both teach children? So the fuck what! The similarity ends there. It makes as much sense as demanding equal wages for NASCAR drivers and bus drivers because they're both just drivers.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Er, California's governor already gambled much of his political capital on a battle with public employees unions, including the teachers' unions and lost once. I don't think he's going there again. Whatever else you might say about him, he hasn't yet had something blow up in his face and then repeated the exact same thing again.
My wife is a high school Physics and Biology teacher in California. Believe me, I had similar acid opinions to those expressed in this thread, until I got to see the reality from the other side.
These teachers really work their ass off. I used to think they were all cozy working from 8 AM to 3:15 PM, but that's just the visible portion. Tutoring after school and during lunch time, parent conferences on evenings and weekends, and virtually endless papers to correct. No time to go to the bathroom (no kidding).
They have virtually no resources and many times we end up spending lots of money from our own pocket to get the right materials for the labs. All while the administrators make tons of money, BTW.
But what really doesn't fit in my head is the student population. It doesn't matter how "fun" you make the classes, they just don't care. There is no interest in science and math. As a computer engineer, I can't understand people who wouldn't be moved by the beauty of math and the sciences, but it's freaking everywhere. And I'm talking about Silicon Valley...
Parents are so busy, working 2-3 jobs, that they simply don't have control over their own kids, and kids know it and abuse it. Of course, when things don't work out, they blame the teacher.
You cannot optimise two criteria simultaneously, not without deciding on a tradeoff between them. For example, if Kentucky develops an innovative new maths program, and (a big if) if it actually helps, that will damage uniformity for decades until the innovations reach the most backward school districts. The complications don't stop there. If the new program is a success, are those teaching it permitted to make further improvements, or must they wait for other teachers to catch up? Are you for such innovation (pursuit of high quality), or are you against (serious pusuit of uniformity).
Realise also that chosing one particular goal does not uniformly promote all policies that tend towards the attainment of that goal. The choice of a particular goal tends to push society towards the policies that most easily achive the chosen goal, with forseeable and sometimes unfortunate implications for lesser objectives.
If we chose uniformity as our goal, we must expect to see uniformity being produced in the easiest way. It is hard to improve a poor education system and easy to degrade a good one, so the pursuit of uniformity is likely to result in leveling down.
Meanwhile, similar reasoning applies to chosing excellence as our goal. It is hard to see how to improve good schools, one imagines that they are good exactly because they already employ the best techniques. On the other hand one may hope to improve poor schools simply by copying what the better schools do. An explicit goal of excellence is unlikely in itself to cause an improvement in every school: there is a huge gap between chosing your goal and knowing how to achieve it. Nevertheless an explicit goal of excellence is likely to lead to a levelling up because that way of raising the average need not wait on the creation of new knowledge about how to teach.
Since we must chose between uniformity and excellence, let us chose excellence: the pursuit of excellence has a built-in bias to uniformity. And let us reject uniformity: the pursuit of uniformity has a built-in biase towards failure.