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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?"
"Shockingly 40% of mathematics teachers in California are not fully qualified in the subject "
Wow, only 70% are fully qualified?
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.
Is there a solution to the woeful lack of qualified mathematics teachers that the Teachers' Union will find acceptable?
I don't see why paying people based on merit (versus seniority) is unacceptable. That's how most of the real world works.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Gutt the union? They're preventing progression and have become too in control. We're letting them run the show.
What's more important? A perception of equality between teachers of all subjects, or setting the salaries at the level required to attract teachers qualified to properly educate children in each subject?
"Is there a solution to the woeful lack of qualified mathematics teachers that the Teachers' Union will find acceptable?"
No. Because among the Teachers' Union's membership there are 40% of mathematics teachers who would become unemployed if a solution were found. A good solution would help two groups of people: Qualified people who are not currently teachers, and students. Neither of those groups is a part of any Teachers' Union.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
Nah. If capitalism has taught me anything, it's that it's easier to force someone else to be educated and do all the thinking for you. That way you can be ignorant of actual effort required to do a particular task and solve all problems with a whip.
See how easy that is? In mathematics it's called reducing the problem. The Americans are *behind* in education. Any attempt to catch up by improving the education system would necessarily require a period where the Americans admitted somebody else was better than them. Solution: build bigger and better bombs and enslave weak, intellectual societies.
Hmmmm. I think they need to invade smarter, more advanced countries though. Time to get out of Canada, I guess.
"Please describe the scientific nature of the 'whammy'" - Agent Scully
Human beings are simply not equal, no matter what you wish. Pay more for people who are willing to become qualified and more will become so. Insisting that everyone receive the same... Well it doesn't exactly encourage excellence, now, does it.
Deleted
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
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.
The government can't save you.
The English teacher wrote a 3-point essay against the proposal.
The History teacher did some research and cited precedent against it.
The PE teacher punched the legislators and sat on their heads.
The Art teacher committed suicide in an ironic statement.
I, for one, would definitely like to keep control of the schools away from the federal government.
Look at the No Child Left Behind debacle? Slowly, county by county, districts are telling the Department of Education to "shove it". My county is among those who have done so, and I'm proud of that.
For now, the federal government only funds like 2% of school budgets, so schools can defy the feds relatively painlessly. But what if the federal government provided 20% of the funding? 80%? You'd get the same mess we are in with the highway funds. As it stands right now, all congress has to do is tell a state, "Change XYZ state law for us, or you can build your own damn roads." I don't want to see that happen with education.
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
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.
Instead, I went to grad school and am now a corporate staff scientist.
I really wanted to teach, but giving up nearly half my potential income was simply too much. The kids lost out. I met plenty of other students in grad school who felt the same way.
Education 8mar07
I think the reason American students are falling behind in subjects like math and science is not because teachers aren't getting paid enough, or is it because of a lack of funding. The problems students are facing are far more elemental. They're not being taught basic responsibilities. They're not being taught a work ethic. And they're not being taught to respect anyone or anything.
Instead educators are trying to turn education into entertainment. Lessons are reduced to wacky fun facts. Everything has to be packaged into bite-sized chunks. It isn't just the curriculum. Compare what schools do in the US compared to schools in Asia, for example.
When I was living in Taiwan I observed that school and academics virtually encompassed a student's entire life. It's not like here when kids are looking to get out of school at a nice early hour to go play. First of all, students arrive at school at 8am, if not earlier. Again, unlike the US where some schools have delayed opening until 9am to let students sleep later.
More importantly were the responsibilities Taiwanese students are given. They spend the first half hour, maybe longer, cleaning the school. They actually have them sweeping the floors and cleaning bathrooms. They didn't necessarily do a good job but rest assured that they were much more reluctant to engage in vandalism knowing that they would be cleaning up the mess the following day.
Imagine the uproar if a school tried that sort of thing in the US. I'm sure lawyers would sweep in with their claims child labor laws were violated. But the fact is that this instilled a sense of responsibility in students.
And it's something that followed them through the school day. They often got out of school late in the day, 4pm or 5pm. And many, mainly those in high school would then go to cram schools in the evening to study for graduation exams.
The problem is, if the schools aren't reinforcing the value of education nobody else will. They sure aren't going to learn anything on the streets. Kids in the suburbs can be as bad as those in the cities. And I know people who've experienced these kinds of problems first hand. It's just that wealthy communities are better at sweeping problems under the rug. But there's a very big distinction. Regardles of what those kids in the suburbs do they're constantly exposed to people who are successful. Eventually it gets drilled into most of them that they need to take school more seriously. So it's the environment outside of school that is one of the biggest factors why many more kids in the suburbs go on to college and end up doing reasonably well.
The lack of interest in some subjects comes down to a lack of work ethic. No amount of money or salary increase is going to resolve these problems. The US already spends money on education than any other developed nation and students in those countries still outperform American students.
Sure, teachers should probably make more money across the board, but the idea that you pay somebody with a highly marketable education the same as somebody who doesn't have nearly as many job prospects simply doesn't work in the real world. I'd be more than happy to consider teaching math or science as a career. I like teaching, I'm reasonably good at getting ideas across, and I have the technical background. As it stands, though, going into teaching could cost me tens of thousands of dollars per year in lost income. That's just too big of a jump to make, so I don't consider it a viable option.
An interesting anagram of "BANACH TARSKI" is "BANACH TARSKI BANACH TARSKI"
Yeah, I don't make much money. I've got a math degree and a master's that I'll be paying off for quite a few years to come. And my math friends who decided not to become teachers make significantly more money than I do with significantly less schooling. Should math & science teachers make more money. Sure. A shortage in applicants means you need to increase the pay. That's pretty simple.
In spite of that, it's not the low pay that bothers me. It's the hours and the working conditions. I get to school at 7:15am. I leave at 5:15pm. If I've had 20 minutes to sit down and have lunch, I'm lucky. Most days I get absolutely no break. And I take homework home every weekend.
I just want fewer students and fewer preps. I want to get to know my students. I want to be able to talk with them. I want to know what they know and what they need to learn. I want to help them when they're struggling, and lift them up when they're having a bad day. I want to get in their face and challenge them. I want them to see that failing is not okay.
I want control over my curriculum. I want my students to decide what's important to them and study math through their ideas. Any curriculum abstracted away from the individual, any curriculum standardized to what some corporate suit things is important will fail to inspire the majority of students. Give me that job. I want to inspire my students. And I have an idea how to do it. But your all-important testing is holding me back.
That's what I want. I'm okay with the money. I'm not okay with the huge number of disengaged students and marginalized teachers.
Paul Grosfield - the quicker picker upper.