Pay Teachers More

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/opinion/13kristof.html?src=twrhp

by cwan • 15 years ago

42 78 15 years ago

tokenadult• 15 years ago

One of the startling factual claims in the article is that there were times in the United States, and are now places in the world, where lawyers make little better compensation than schoolteachers. Really? I recall reading in the 1990s in a book about education policy in the United States that schoolteachers are more numerous than doctors, lawyers, scientists, and engineers COMBINED. If there are that many more schoolteachers than doctors and lawyers, it would be surprising for the schoolteachers to be as well paid. Kristof makes the interesting point that one way to get teachers more pay, which does seem to be borne out by international comparisons, is to allow good teachers who can handle that to teach larger classes. When my wife grew up in Taiwan, the typical elementary school class size was sixty pupils--an especially small class might be only fifty.

alextingle• 15 years ago

Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher? Only your ingrained cultural expectations suggest this. Can you strip those out and suggest any objective reasons that lawyers are worth more? Do they train for longer? Is their work more important? Do they need better school grades?

lallysingh• 15 years ago

There's a better merit->pay feedback cycle. A good lawyer will get repeat business. When am I going to take a class again?

uuilly• 15 years ago

Lawyers make more money because teachers are willing to work for less than lawyers.

barry-cotter2• 15 years ago

>Why would a lawyer earn more money than a teacher?

Apart from governemnt lawyers and academics everybody is in private practice or working for a company. Their employers/clients have them to deal with money problems. Whoever is close to the money gets to keep some. Also, teachers have tenure, great pensions, work only 9-10 months a year, and within a few years of being hired, work under 40 hours a week on average.

>Only your ingrained cultural expectations suggest this. Can you strip those out and suggest any objective reasons that lawyers are worth more?

If you mean morally, no, it's a value discussion, and those are always boring because nobody ever convinces anybody. If you're talking about how much their labour is worth... A good lawyer makes their client money or stops bad things happening to them. This is a much more valuable service than childcare/socialisation/education to the people handing out the money. Children have no money or freedom after all.

>Do they train for longer?

Not relevant

>Is their work more important?

Value judgement; all heat, no light

>Do they need better school grades?

Yes, but that's also not terribly relevant.

bkaid• 15 years ago

I never understand why people get overly emotional about teacher salaries but not other public positions like fire, police, military, etc. While I empathize (my mother and 2 sisters are teachers), they do only work 9 months out of the year, and less than 40 hours per week. And teachers insist on remaining unionized, basically ensuring bad (non-criminal) teachers can't be fired once they get tenured after 2-3 years in most states. And the degree needed isn't difficult or technical to earn compared to laywers, doctors, engineers, etc. So I think their salaries at their current levels are justified.

mmaro2• 15 years ago

Teachers do not work less than 40 hours per week. A ton of time is spent on grading, prep, helping slow students, school meetings, complying with NCLB requirements, etc.

yummyfajitas7• 15 years ago

According to the BLS, the average full time teacher works slightly less than 40 hours/week (see Table 2). This includes time at the workplace, at home and at another location.

http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf

pmorici2• 15 years ago

"I never understand why people get overly emotional about teacher salaries but not other public positions like fire, police, military, etc."

Firefighters and Police were notably excluded from the recent anti-union legislation legislation they passed in Wisconsin. My guess is because if they had included the Police then who would have kept order in the capitol building? The police would have been out there on strike with the teachers.

ataggart• 15 years ago

First, firefighters and police were not excluded from the bill; they were explicitly included under the rubric of "public safety employees" (as opposed to general municipal employees).

Second, the difference in treatment contained in the bill is that public safety employees can collectively bargain on hours, working conditions, and wages, whereas general municipal employees can only collectively bargain on wages. I'm no expert, but perhaps a firefighter sleeping in the firehouse so he can hop on the truck at 2AM faces different concerns than the secretary to the tax collector.

spoiledtechie• 15 years ago

We could pay teachers more if they removed Tenure and Teachers that don't preform. In what other industry does it pay you for not preforming. I am tired of thinking you need to throw more money at the problem. You need to remove the biggest problem. Those that don't preform. If you remove the teachers that don't preform, not only would you have more money, but have better preforming students. I am tired of this overall. Its not a money thing. Its a Union thing. Wisconsin is right to remove the gross weight behind union negotiations.

TomOfTTB• 15 years ago

Agreed. I have a very conservative, very anti-union family and there's not one of them who isn't in favor of higher teacher pay as long as it's tied to performance. So I really don't know who would be against it

xxpor• 15 years ago

What's a fair way of measuring performance though?

tung• 15 years ago

s/preform/perform/ ?

snguyen• 15 years ago

If you're going to be strict with grammar, at least do it properly! :P

s/preform/perform/g

bugsy2• 15 years ago

Numerous studies show that education majors is the US have among the lowest composite ACT and LSAT scores of any major.

http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2006/02/ranking-sc...

There have been various explanation for this phenomenon which started in the 1970s and grew since then. Among the most interesting hypotheses is that traditionally smart women went into teaching as one of the few careers available to women who did not want to become young mothers and housewives. But this century, with more opportunities available to women, smart women become doctors, psychologists, screen writers, etc. Yet teaching is still a career dominated by women, leaving the less qualified students to take the available positions.

akashs2• 15 years ago

Why would you expect people who want to be teachers to do well on an admissions test for law school? Engineers do almost as poorly on the GRE Verbal, but does that mean they're idiots? I understand the LSAT has little to do with law, but just think of the selection bias of people in that bucket.

bugsy2• 15 years ago

That particular one has LSAT, GMAT, and GRE scores, it's a grad school study. There are also ACT and SAT studies that support it as well. I merely wanted to call attention to this data, take it for what it is.

http://www2.ed.gov/admins/tchrqual/learn/preparingteachersco...

"[C]ollege students majoring in education have lower SAT and ACT scores than students majoring in the arts and sciences. For example, among college graduates who majored in education, 14% had SAT or ACT scores in the top quartile, compared to 26% who majored in the social sciences, compared to 37% who majored mathematics/computer science/natural science. In addition, those who did not prepare to teach but became teachers were much more likely to have scored in the top quartile (35 percent) than those who prepared to teach and became teachers (14 percent) (NCES, 2001)."

He is there referencing pg 69 of "National Center for Education Statistics (2001). The Condition of Education, 2001. Washington, DC: US Department of Education" found at http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2001/2001072.pdf where you can see on the chart that education majors are more likely to be in the bottom quartile of academically qualified students than any other field of study listed. You also see there is a massive difference between those who teach who majored in education and those who teach who did not major in education. Teachers who majored in education are 27% likely to be in the bottom quartile compared to those who didn't major in education, at 20%. And as previously cited, 35% of the non-education majors who end up teaching are from the top quartile whereas only 14% of teachers who majored in education are from the top quartile academically. You can also see in the chart that the more academically qualified one is, the more likely they are to abandon teaching as a career.

I assert that this is all relevant and leave it to the curious reader to figure for themselves why this might be so.

pg• 15 years ago

That hypothesis would be easy to test.

jshen3• 15 years ago

My wife is a teacher. When you look at the economics and politics of teaching it's hard to want to be a teacher.

maratd• 15 years ago

Let's try a thought exercise. If we pay engineers more, we'll get safer buildings. If we pay police officers more, we'll get safer streets. If we pay doctors more, we'll get better care. You see how this works? More pay attracts higher quality individuals, but it's a zero sum game. Those people are coming from some other industry. So if you'll pay teachers more, you'll have a lower quality of service elsewhere. That low-quality teacher just became a doctor and the doctor became a teacher. Not good. I want the best and brightest doing the most critical work, not babysitting children.

akashs2• 15 years ago

Presumably better teachers would be able to actually, well, teach not just babysit. And if they can teach better that will produce better quality talent in the future, right? And then society can be better off. It's tough for those children to become doctors without a good education. And in the long run you'll end up with an entire society of incompetent doctors without good teachers.

dangoldin3• 15 years ago

What about the future generations of doctors who had poor teachers and won't make good doctors?

I don't think it's a zero sum game - the world changes and different skills are required at different points. New industries are constantly born that require a whole new set of people. The population of the world is always in flux as well - does that mean every additional person has to split the limited resources?

I think a great teacher is a very leveraged way of taking students and giving them passions, goals, and skills. Students who've been lucky to have had these great teachers are the ones who will be passionate and become great in their chosen fields.

maxharris6• 15 years ago

What about the future generations of doctors who had poor teachers and won't make good doctors?

Teachers are not the only source of drive or inspiration to learn. Michael Faraday had almost no formal education (and he came from a poor family), yet he rose to become one of the most influential scientists in history.

[He was apprenticed to a bookbinder, which allowed him to read a lot. His interest in science was inspired by a book (https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Michael_Farad...), not a teacher!]

kbyers• 15 years ago

Paying teachers more does not necessarily get higher quality teachers. If teachers were judged on merit and poor teachers were fired, then paying teachers more might be reasonable. But since teachers unions insist on tenure, have pay based on seniority, and make it exceptionally difficult to fire poor teachers, paying teachers more will not generally result in better quality education.

As someone else pointed out above, there are much more fundamental issues than pay--notably being able to fire poor teachers, elimination of tenure, pay based on merit/not seniority.

tassl• 15 years ago

You don't need to have the best engineers/doctors teaching. Being an expert on something doesn't make a person a good teacher, which is a more important factor than the knowledge of that person.

But a person can be a good teacher without being the best in his area.

dantheman• 15 years ago

Private schools, which generally have much better results than public schools, pay their teachers less than public schools -- so it seems pay isn't the deciding factor.

cafard• 15 years ago

Private schools have three great advantages. First, by definition, they have the backing of the parents. Second, they can expel students who are not doing the work or who are sufficiently disruptive. Third they can go by common sense rather than by the rule book in cases where it is called for. The better of them have a sound curriculum and are resistant to the fads that come out of the teachers' colleges.

In fact some teachers may be willing to settle for the worse pay at a private school in the knowledge that they have the administration's and the parents' backing, and so a more gratifying task. But I am here to tell you that the private schools hire some turkeys--incompetent, idle, with a bad attitude, slipping unnoticed over into dementia, I've seen cases in my own and relatives' experiences. Yes, you can replace them more easily, but you may have shot a school year or a semester before you do.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

Isomorphic alternate: stop padding school payrolls with overpaid, administrative, non-teaching staff.

yummyfajitas7• 15 years ago

The article's examples of other countries seem a bit cherrypicked. Finland is a wild outlier among western nations.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/12/amazing-truth-abou...

Singapore and South Korea do a pretty good job of educating Asian cohorts. But there are actually several Asian cohorts that do quite a bit better - for example, Asian Americans in Texas or Connecticut.

http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-well-do-above-...

So it looks like the huge amounts of respect and pay given to Singaporean and South Korean teachers aren't really buying a lot in terms of educational output.

drblast• 15 years ago

I just got a part time job teaching college algebra at a school that mostly teaches nursing and massage therapy. The pay is ok.

The reason I got the job is that the state and regional accreditation boards require that anyone teaching college level courses must have a Masters degree and at least 18 graduate credit hours in the subject.

The previous teacher they had to let go has a bachelor's in math. I've got an M.S. in EE. I sat in on his classes my first few days on the job; he's an excellent teacher.

So what ended up happening is this school, which can't afford to pay much, now can't find anyone with an M.S. who's willing to teach algebra full-time. (surprise, surprise)

While the board has the intention to raise the standard for algebra teachers, the rules have the opposite effect since they limit so strictly who can teach that the schools have to hire anyone who meets the criteria whether they're good or not.

It's not so much the pay but the unbelievable amount of hoops you have to jump through to teach. I'm sure a lot of smart people would love to teach part-time if it didn't take years to get certified.

dp1234• 15 years ago

That is one thing I never understood. There are less requirements to teach at the college level than to teach high school. Most people don't realize that most college teachers have never actually had any education courses, they just happen to have attained advanced degrees.

maxharris6• 15 years ago

I think that the requirements should be lowered for K-12 teachers.

The reason things got so bad is that there are a lot of education majors that go into K-12 education because it's easy. These are people that couldn't pass introductory science courses, let alone teach them to undergraduates. And there are lots of them, so they try to differentiate between themselves by getting masters degrees in easy (as opposed to chemistry or physics) fields such as education. Over time, this must have ossified to the point we are today, which is that this puffed-up "educational" arms race between teachers has translated into an institutional requirement.

One of the reasons I didn't respect many of my grade school teachers is that they didn't actually know anything, and I could tell.

grandalf• 15 years ago

Before you get worked up over this topic, realize that there are some teachers who are exceptional and others that are quite bad.

The main difference between teaching and other fields is that once a teacher is hired, it's very unlikely he/she will ever be fired for poor performance.

As a result, many schools contain both a few exceptional teachers and a few real duds. Sadly, the exceptional teachers are paid based on seniority just like the duds are, and some duds have been there a long time and are earning decent salaries and very generous pensions.

I don't think anyone would object to paying exceptional teachers more... the problem is that we all know of some really horrible, lazy teachers whom it would be a travesty to pay more.

Sure, if someone waved a wand and doubled teacher salaries, the quality of new teachers entering the profession would increase, but this would not address the vast majority of existing teachers.

It's not complicated... the only reason any firm is able to hire and retain skilled employees is because skill is rewarded compared to mediocrity. This is not the case for teachers, except in the form of non-monetary rewards (often exceptional teachers are greatly respected, but this doesn't pay the bills).

As long as we pay teachers based on seniority and other backward measures, we'll have people who are just not cut out for teaching responsible for educating our children.

I'm not advocating any sort of across the board measurement of what constitues success. This should vary by district. The important thing is that just like any other profession some people should fail to make the cut and should find work they are better suited for. As it stands, we give these people an incentive to continue teaching our children. It's no wonder they resort to trying to strengthen their union... they certainly aren't getting any rewards from being bad at what they do.

Note, I'm talking about the 20% of teachers who could be considered poor. I'm not all that concerned about the ones who are average or above average, since they are not the problem.

The issue of pay is a red herring, btw.

juiceandjuice2• 15 years ago

I really, really wanted to teach high school physics. I fell in love with physics, and I fell in love with my high school physics teachers. I've always liked kids.

My Sophomore year of high school, I really thought about getting the teaching physics degree. It was basically a teaching degree with a Physics minor. I went and talked to my high school physics teacher, and he told me this:

Don't. We went over all the salary benefits, and all the possibilities. I'd be starting at 29k (Utah), about 4k more than I would make fulltime working at a grocery store. The max salary was about 55k if you'd been there a while and had a Masters I believe. We also talked about student loan forgiveness that comes along with teaching at a Title 1 school.

He told me to do this: Go into physics. Get a real degree, maybe a masters. Work in physics, make some money, save some money, live your life, etc... He said I was a smart enough person that I won't have any problem with this (kind, encouraging words)

He told me after I did this, if I still want to teach, not only would I be in a better position to teach, but I'd be a better teacher from the real world experience.

So, someday in the future, I plan to teach. Right now, I have a degree, a job, and I'm paying off student loans and saving up money. Someday, I'd still love to teach. I got a taste of it being a TA for a bit in college. I still talk to this teacher once a year or so.

forkandwait• 15 years ago

My four point plan for decent education:

1. Eliminate credentialing programs and requirements: complete waste of time and money, plus they weed out the smart people who can't abide the thought of wasting 1-2 years of their life.

2. Eliminate tenure and fire the worst 5% of teachers about whom there is a consensus that they suck.

3. Go back to traditional curriculums: lots of homework, lots of memorization, lots of reading the classics, lots of writing.

4. Zero tolerance for bad behavior in the classroom --kick them out of school, make it the police's problem that there are thugs on the street without babysitters.

This is how good private schools do it.

kjksf2• 15 years ago

I think it's interesting to tie this to recent news about Khan Academy.

According to various talks by Sal Khan, many kids used the free videos to educate themselves about math etc. to a level better than most kids achieve in a school.

Better eduction, without teachers, for free.

If you look at YouTube's numbers for how often those videos are watched, it's in tens or hundreds of thousand of views.

I assume that most of those are from kids who watch them to learn something (I can't fathom a different reason for watching a video on multiplication).

That means at least tens of thousands of kids have been educated - the model works as a mass education medium.

I think that the current school model is broken for many reasons and lack of quality teachers is only a small portion of it, so discussing how to rise quality of teachers by paying them more misses the larger point.

We should be thinking how to fix all of the problems.

It just happens that Khan Academy model is the only realistic way (that I can see) to actually fix the system. The fix is by inverting the traditional model. Instead of one person (teacher) lecturing 20+ kids (who all differ in their current understanding of topic and how quickly they can learn new information) for an hour and giving homework assignments, the kids learn from videos, at their own pace, and teacher are there to assist when a kid reaches a stumbling block.

The above description doesn't fully convey how this works but you can find out more via videos on http://khanacademy.org. Khan Academy is already doing pilot studies with some schools and results (unsurprisingly to me) are promising.

jshen3• 15 years ago

Some tiny fraction of kids teach themselves and you're implying that teachers aren't important? That's a non sequitur on a few different levels.

chrismanfrank2• 15 years ago

I don't think kj is saying teachers aren't important, just that there might be a better way. And remember, only a 'tiny fraction' of people were on Facebook at some point.

zdw• 15 years ago

I'd disagree with the conclusion.

Khan made a really good set of tools to teach with. His model is great if you're looking at replacing textbooks with something better, which is sorely needed.

The problem is that teaching isn't about delivering information as much as it is about evaluation, answering questions, and having soft skills. Khan does none of those things.

(While I like what I've seen of Khan, I generally avoid "screencasts" (which is pretty much what Khan's things are) and other learning materials that have a typically low information/time ratio - I feel I can learn faster if something was written out in longer form as I'm a fast reader.)

jaysonelliot• 15 years ago

The core message of the column makes perfect sense.

Expensive technology and boutique classrooms don't improve student performance without great teachers.

Just like a business, you can't buy excellence with furniture and computers - you can only hire excellence with great people.

I would fully support tripling teacher pay in general, with merit-based payscales and greater accountability.

Find the money by changing the student-teacher ratio and getting rid of expensive technology in the schools.

Where would you rather have kids go to school - in a large classroom taught by Richard Feynman or Bucky Fuller, sitting at wooden desks with a blackboard; or in a small intimate setting with iPads and Cisco Telepresence systems, but taught by Gladys from the DMV?

protomyth• 15 years ago

I am a tad bit tired of articles like this that fail to point out private school teachers are actually paid less than public school teachers. So, if your doing comparisons of similar positions, government workers are making more and have better job security.

That said, I would be happy to pay teachers more for a 9 month position if they had a 4 year BS in Math, Physics, Chemistry, etc and a minor in Education. The general Education major for 7+ grade teachers is a joke and doesn't give our students someone who knows the subject.

Paying an English teacher and a Math teacher the same is also wrong. One degree has a higher market value and we need real Math teachers, not general Education people with some Math classes. I guess I'm saying I would like the Education degree removed for a minor or certificate program for High School.

Lost_BiomedE2• 15 years ago

A friend of the family, an ex-engineer, in retirement decided to teach to give back to the community. She was teaching the remedial students at the local high-school. Her students did better on the standard tests than regular students, her first year.

She was called in, and told to stop making the other teachers look bad or be fired. She quit.

This same high-school gave the teacher of the year award to which ever teacher had the most complaints against them...

Unfortunately, when I have told this story to other teachers in different districts, they have not been surprised.

This is so broken.

patio11• 15 years ago

My quick Rosetta Stone for inexplicable school behavior: assume the goal of schools is to employ people and that educating students is an industrial biproduct.

chrismanfrank2• 15 years ago

"The goal of any system is to perpetuate the system." Someone smart said that, but I can't remember who.

rick888• 15 years ago

One of the bi-products of unionized teachers. It also makes it impossible for parents to go to another school (the school is funded through taxes no matter, even if they do decide to send their kids to a private school). Crappy teachers also get to stay and are defended by the unions.

People wonder why the schools are so terrible in the US, but refuse to think that it could have anything to do with the stranglehold the unions have on our education system.

Lost_BiomedE2• 15 years ago

A lot of best case solutions to problems like these are known but are blocked by those with interest. It reminds me of the telecoms, and how badly they mucked up the '96 telecom act. The solution was obvious to those who understood the industry and how it was built, run it as a utility.

Once in university ethics class I commented that an ethics structure is broken if you won't give up an advantage in order to follow the ethics system. The class was totally silent, even the prof. A lot of problems are caused by not yielding to what, even by the parties involved, consider right.

Honor is a lost art.

nazgulnarsil• 15 years ago

the problem with a publicly subsidized education system and semi-monopolized teacher system (credentialism) is that market forces are not shaping teaching compensation. the decision of how much to pay teachers handed down from on high whether that be from unions, legislation, public policy what have you will ALWAYS be less efficient than supply and demand.

russorat• 15 years ago

it should be "Pay Good Teachers More, Fire Bad Ones"

Pay Teachers More

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