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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?"
Before the more libertarian posters start chewing up the teachers' unions (not that I'd disagree), I'd like to ask the question: What level of respect do teachers deserve, and in what manner should we as a society ensure they get that respect?
There is a job to be done, a job some would consider a somewhat sacred task: Ensuring that an entire generation can learn and grow in the best way we know how to do it. That is not an easy task.
We currently have a very limited number of people put into that formal role, and they collectively are not doing what we would consider an acceptable job at it. What should our response be? If our response is to punish and cut resources from that role in general one way or another, then we will be left with even fewer people to fill that role, and those that are left will have an even harder job to do. More than that, the level of respect for these teachers will continue to fall. This isn't such a bad thing, if collapse of such a system is an acceptable result, except that there will be much of an entire generation of children in the lurch.
The recent response to this issue is to push for very strict testing as a way to punish the teachers with the weakest 'performance'. That does improve the measured response, but it has also changed the way we measure the result. I would assert that by doing this, we have left behind the idea that we are trying to truly teach a generation the best way we can, but instead have minimized what we teach in order to assure high scores on a system we invent for ourselves, all in an effort to find someone to punish.
So, is this the best way to get the job done? Is this the way we respect our children's need for education, and the people who are put into the role of opening doors for the children?
Ryan Fenton
"Singling out a few teachers for a salary bonus, we did not believe is fair," said Kentucky Education Association President Frances Steenbergen. "We believe that the preschool teacher on up to the 12th-grade AP physics teacher deserves huge increases in salaries."
Okay, let me get this straight. The preschool teacher is worth the same amount as the person who busts her ass to study and then teach Physics? Even if the AP Physics teacher has an advanced degree?
WTF?
Gah. Certain people need to be whacked with a cluebat. No, miss preschool teacher, you are NOT worth the same as an AP science teacher (Physics? Are they kidding???). If you want the same salary, then GO AND GET THE SAME QUALIFICATIONS and TEACH THE SAME MATERIAL. If you can't do it then you aren't worth it. People need to be paid on their merits -- otherwise there is little incentive for people to do the work to gain that expertise in the first place (and Physics IS an ass-breaker -- otherwise everyone would be doing it).
Yes, skill-based compensation appears to be a radical concept in the halls of academia...or at least the public school variant thereof. Of course, we are talking about PUBLIC schools and teachers' UNIONS. Perhaps we are not in a dialog with a bastion of capitalists. ;-)
n /oped/articles/2006/03/29/taking_on_the_teachers_u nions/
;-)
Some are trying:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinio
Perhaps my favorite line from that article is:
Catherine Boudreau, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, predictably criticized Romney's proposals as ''inequitable, divisive, and ineffective." The MTA denounced the proposal as ''uniquely designed to destroy collegiality in a school," ignoring the fact that performance pay is routine in such other professions as medicine, law, and engineering, not to mention in the Commonwealth's first-rate universities, including those that are unionized by the MTA.
*sigh* Some folks need to leave the castle every now and again and see what life is like on the outside.
On that note, I have a couple of friends who are teachers. Yes they work hard and shape young minds. Granted. Good folks. That said, their stress level is about 1% of mine (working in a s/w dev field). Are they paid less? Yes, but their pay is not abysmal. Both make mid 50s...for a job with three months off in the summer, a holiday and spring break, a half dozen snow days, etc. Sure...they bring work home...and so do I. In general, they seem happier and more satisfied with their career choices than my friends in IT. So they make less. It's a choice.
We pay folks what we need to in this society. It's a fairly complex equation, but factors include skill sets, time to acquire those skills, desirability of the work, career potential, quality of life, and...yes...supply and demand. If we need better math and science teachers, we should pay for them. These are critical skills...and we should not let the grumbling art teacher get in the way of giving our children what they need (and deserve). Perhaps the economics and civics teachers should hold a brown bag on one of the snow days. They could discuss how autoworkers unions contributed to the quality of the American automobile industry...and how competition from the Japanese did nothing to help motivate the Americans to improve quality...and then discuss sarcasm.
BTW, I loved my art teacher.
People ALWAYS say this and it's crap. That's not how the real world works.
I've worked in both and I'm currently working in the public sector. It DOES NOT work the same way in the private sector as it does in the public. People here do absolutely nothing but wander around complaining how busy they are. As I've said twice in recent memory including on the last thread about this topic, the only thing that the vast majority of public sector workers are good at is pretending they're busy.
These people would not survive for 10 minutes where I've worked in the private sector. They would fucking die if they had a 30 minute lunch break and two 15s that were mandated by schedule. They would seriously break down in tears if they were evaluated on hard data instead of gut feeling about their success rates. "Oh wow, I only converted 8%? It really felt like 80%. Something must be wrong there with that data."
Sure you can say "gut the Teachers' Union", but that simply isn't a practicable solution - it simply isn't going to happen, not in the real world.
That's exactly what 11,000 air traffic controllers were thinking back in 1981.
At least California has a governor that's packing enough brass to make this practicable, assuming he wants to gamble essentially all of his political capital on this move.