
Next Test - Value of $125,000-a-Year Teachers - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/education/05charter.html
======
granular
Yes, great teachers should be paid well. But there's another side to this
coin.

Teaching is a _brutal_ job.

Parents complaining about grades and/or teachers. Student behaviour worse than
its ever been (with administrators that do very little about it -- partly
because of outside pressures). _Every_ bit of interaction with parents, and
observed problem behaviours with students, must be documented. Dates, times,
what was discussed, what actions are to be taken.

Far too regular class interruptions for all sorts of things (ex. sporting
events, pep rallys, dances, early dismissals, awards ceremonies, field trips,
plays). Teaching gets much more difficult when a non-trivial percentage of
students are out every day, and/or class time is cut short (or gone) for other
activities.

Rubrics required for _everything_ (a teacher can't just say, "this is C work"
-- everything must be documented, and this makes the amount of grading work go
through the roof).

Unending meetings, data collection requirements (you'd be _amazed_ at how
badly administrators want to put a number on your kids). State curriculum
requirements. Standardized testing. Paperwork up the wazoo.

And I don't even need to mention that you better not need to go to the
bathroom during class, because you _can't_ leave students unattended. And
between classes, well, you've got 4 minutes between bells. Better make it
quick. And hope another teacher's not using the same bathroom you're heading
for.

Higher pay for teachers would be nice, but that ain't the problem.

~~~
meterplech
well, if they are gonna get paid 125k some quantitative accountability seems
in order.

~~~
weaksauce
I think they tried that in some districts by tying the amount of the bonus to
the performance of the children in the class. The teachers were the one
administering the tests so some of them gamed the system a bit and cheated on
the grading of the test.

~~~
granular
It's not a matter of gaming the system. The teacher _is_ the system. Just
about anything the kids learn (except for honors classes, where the kids will
sometimes learn some things on their own) is due to strenuous effort from the
teacher.

All teachers "teach to the test" to some degree. The good ones try to get the
kids to use higher-order thinking skills, and their quizzes and tests bear
this out. If you want the kids to get better _grades_ though, you _could_ just
heavily cover the material that's on the test, then make sure you use _exactly
the same wording_ on the test as was on the homeworks and quizzes (as opposed
to mixing it up a bit to get the kids to think about things a little more).

------
koepked
gaius already made this point, but I wanted to make it again as a comment
rather than a reply to head in a different direction: _Unions_ are the
problem. When crappy educators rise through the ranks to become department
heads based on literally nothing more than seniority and a union contract, the
education system has failed.

As far as salary increases, what good would that do? Because of the _unions_ ,
crappy teachers would recieve the same increase. Not only that, there would me
MORE crappy teachers; $125k is definitely enough to attract people who don't
want really want to teach. Good teachers teach for the same reason good
programers program: it's what they love to do, it's what they were made to do,
there is no other life. Money isn't everything. I'm not saying the rewards
shouldn't match the benefit given by a good teacher, but again, the _union_
prevents this.

~~~
crux_
_The_ problem?

A little less ideology and a little more clear thinking, please. You could
certainly convince me that unions are _a_ problem, but setting them up as the
source of all badness is just your way of scoring points for your
political/ideological team, rather than doing anything to contribute to the
discussion.

So, onto your 2nd paragraph. How many "good" programmers are there, out of all
programmers? One out of ten? (And that's being incredibly generous from my
experience.) How well would these superstar volunteer for-the-love-of-it
teachers do with 10x increased class sizes?

(And let's not forget all those who are thoroughly passionate about
programming (/teaching) yet suck at it.)

~~~
koepked
What do you think the problem(s) is/are?

~~~
crux_
Well, let's see here.

I'd say that the largest concrete problem to me is our thoroughly anti-
education culture.

And the largest meta-problem is that we have yet to discover a good way to
measure the success of various approaches (and no shared philosophy, however
small its kernel, as to what would even constitute success).

Otherwise, a laundry list:

\- A problem: Inflexible bureaucratic structure/procedure permeating
everything.

\- A meta-problem: Debates about education always become proxies for
ideological warfare. (C.f. your original reply, or the creationism push, or
the "Culture Wars".)

\- A problem: Parental non-involvement.

\- A problem: Pushy, over-involved parents.

And on and on it would go, if I weren't supposed to be working right now. No
wonder education here mostly sucks.

~~~
koepked
I think you're right about the fact that they're not _the_ problem; I should
have chosen my words more carefully. I also admit that I am by no means an
expert on these issues. I do believe, however, that they are _a_ problem, and
in some places, a _big_ problem. I believe that almost any organization that
does not promote or reward based mostly on merit is flawed. I'll allow for
character assessment in place of _some_ merit, but not much else. I agree with
you that this is ideology, but that doesn't mean it's wrong.

Also, of all the problems you listed, and the one I listed, I think if unions
_were_ found to be part of the problem, it would be one of the easier parts to
fix.

I hope I'm not coming across hard-headed on this issue. This is something I
deeply care about, and I am definitely open to other perspectives.

~~~
crux_
The problem with ideology is that it generates beliefs, convictions, and
orthodoxies -- not hypotheses.

As an anecdote (and counter-example), I grew up in Wyoming, where there are no
laws requiring union recognition, in a school district with no union or
association at all, and my primary education was not exactly great. Downright
poor, actually, especially when it specifically came to teacher quality.

Further, your alternative "promote or reward based mostly on merit" sounds
nice, but unless we can define merit in a measurable way, and gain consensus
on that definition, isn't it also mostly empty words?

And, even if we could clearly agree on a way of measuring merit, how well
would that survive the morass of local politics that education operates
within?

All of this isn't to disagree completely with you.

Rather, it is to say that things are rather messier than 'unions are bad';
education issues (in particular) aren't really amenable to bumper-sticker
solutions.

------
Empact
Interestingly, it may be that one could pay twice as much per teacher and
still end up with a lower cost per pupil overall, as administrator overhead
plays a large part in the regular cost formulation. $125 / 30 students ~ $4k,
a fraction of both the DC metro public and charter school cost per pupil
([http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/03/dc-vouchers-
better...](http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2009/04/03/dc-vouchers-better-
results-at-a-quarter-the-cost/)).

~~~
smanek
So, a base cost of $125K/30 kids. Add in benefits for the teacher and you're
at $150K. Liability insurance is another $50K. Rent per year for 1500 sq ft to
house the 30 kids (the classroom is smaller, but you also need to amortize the
cost the space needed for admins, gyms, halls, locker rooms, cafeterias, etc)
is at least $30K. Supplies (books, sports equipment, etc) conservatively cost
about $10K for the 30 students. And, realistically, you'll always have some
administrative overhead (tech guys, librarians, lawyers, principal,
secretaries, etc) which I can't imagine being less than $50K (amortized over a
sufficiently large school).

That brings our total cost to, at least, $290K - which is about 10K per
student. Still not too bad (although I'm still probably
missing/underestimating some expenses ...), but at least marginally more
realistic than your made up $4K/student number.

I like the idea of school vouchers and private schools too. But you have to be
realistic.

~~~
sethg
IIRC the nationwide average for public schools is about $9K/student, and that
includes areas where the cost of living is a lot lower than it is in NYC. So
if they can actually get six-figure-salary teachers and still keep costs down
to $10K/student, that would be fantastic for the profession.

------
nopal
One of the problems with public education is that it has to serve everyone.

Many private schools succeed because the don't have to deal with the same
types of children as do public schools.

I'm sure this school will have good results, but I think the most important
question is whether or not the results can be repeated.

Are there enough good teachers to serve all of the children in the U.S.? Are
they just not teaching right now because of teacher pay?

The majority of these teachers were already in the educational system. This
expeirimental school simply pooled the best of the best together.

I hope this model is successful, and I hope even more that they are able to
figure out how to increase the quality of education when dealing with a much
larger scale.

~~~
jimbokun
"Many private schools succeed because the don't have to deal with the same
types of children as do public schools."

Or with the same types of parents. A private school can always tell parents to
take their tuition dollars and go somewhere else, if the trouble they are
causing exceeds the value of the tuition they are paying.

Agreed with the question of scaling. It is easy to poach all of the best
teachers and put them into one school, and you should get good results. But is
this a solution to raising the level of education nation wide, or even in one
city?

~~~
anamax
> It is easy to poach all of the best teachers and put them into one school,
> and you should get good results. But is this a solution to raising the level
> of education nation wide, or even in one city?

It's so much better to let the trouble-kids make sure that no one gets an
education....

We can't save them all. However, we can lose them all, and that's what we're
doing by keeping good kids in bad situations.

If you really think that the presence of good kids helps the bad ones,
shouldn't you be paying the good ones for that help? After all, being with the
bad kids costs the good kids.

~~~
jimbokun
Who gets the privilege of sorting out the good and the bad kids? Just go by
GPA?

Interesting to note, that the school in the article is favoring poorly
performing students in its lottery.

~~~
anamax
I don't think that these special schools are sorting.

However, their opponents do. They argue that letting kids out of crappy
schools makes things worse for the kids who are left by denying them role
models or somesuch. This is a curious argument because the kids left behind
don't do worse when left behind.

I think that the opponents are wrong. (I'll even go so far as to say that
almost all of the kids in the crappy schools would do better in these special
schools but when you say that, the opponents figure out that you're accusing
them of defending crappy schools.) However, my point is that if they're
correct, they owe the "good kids" something for the sacrifice that they're
asking them to make.

------
misuba
The article focuses on the hiring process they went through to find great
teachers who were already teaching. The real challenge, though, is to find the
best teachers who _would be teaching_ if it weren't for the absurdly low
compensation for such taxing work. How would you do that?

~~~
kragen
Well, you could start by founding a school that pays teachers $125 000 a year
and then getting a press hit in the New York Times.

~~~
misuba
And then you go see these new teachers in their classrooms... which they don't
have yet.

What then?

~~~
kragen
Well, ideally the timeline goes something like this:

2008: announce the project; get the attention of a few of those who _would be
teaching_

2009: launch, get a press hit in the NY Times; get the attention of hundreds
of thousands more

2010: report good results and plans for expansion

2011: report good results and plans for expansion. At this point some of those
who _would be teaching_ who were entering university in 2008 are almost ready
to graduate, and others are ready for a career change.

2012: report good results and start hiring a bunch of the fabulous scientists,
engineers, etc., whose attention you've been attracting over the past four
years.

------
lyime
I was rather surprised when a family friend of mine told me that she takes in
around a a $100k yearly. She is a middle school teacher(~10 years in the bay
area). So teachers in many places actually get paid a good salary.

~~~
yardie
Teachers in many areas do not get paid well. What is good for NYC/SF/DC does
not represent the rest of the country. I believe teachers make 35k on average.
I had a friend teach a high school in the Appalachians and they started him at
24k. And they really had to scrimp, save, and beg the feds to pay him
considering the avg income for his area was less than half of that.

If you are a teacher with degrees and certificates, then 100k in a major
metro, plus 10 years would be about correct.

Additionally you didn't specify what she teaches. Science and math teachers
are harder to come by and their salary reflects that. My middle school science
teacher was plucked from a high school, which had plucked her from a local
college. She was one of the highest paid teachers in the school because she
had experience and a load of degrees. She was working towards her doctorate
when I left. She didn't come right at and tell me what she made, but the Benz
in parking lot and the neighborhood she lived in gave me a clue.

Also, this was a magnet school so the teachers tend to be of higher
qualifications than a typical high school.

Plus people seem to confuse the union with government a lot. In government you
get paid in bands. Bands are based on the type of job, your accreditation, and
your seniority. You can do the bare minimum and stay at the bottom of your
band, until you are pushed up to the next band based on some formula, or you
can do more and constantly stay in the top of your band and get pushed through
quickly. The union probably doesn't have a lot of say in how much teachers get
paid. They do have a big influence on how the workplace is run (ie. how late
they must stay, when breaks can be done, etc).

~~~
mrdodge
The average salary for public school teachers nationwide is $51009.

This is higher than most occupations.

------
noonespecial
I fully expect this to work. The kids will love school in a way that no one
thought possible. They'll learn more in a year than most pick up in 4. What
then?

Why do I suddenly picture Don Quixote raising his lance, or Wile E. strapping
on rocket skates?

~~~
hpvic03
I agree. Some people argue that if we raise teacher salaries, we'll have
people become teachers for the money instead of for the love of teaching.
However, many teachers that teach solely for the love of teaching just suck at
it. I know because I have had many of these teachers. I would much rather have
a teacher who is good at teaching, whether they love it or just like it, than
a teacher who loves teaching but is bad at it.

There are x number of brilliant and dynamic students that graduate from
universities across the US every year. Before the bust, did > 50% of these
students want to become investment bankers because of their love for working
in Excel all day? No, they wanted to do investment banking because of the high
salaries and solid career footing it provided. It's basic economics; the
higher the salary and job prestige, the more qualified the applicants will be
due to increased competition for the job.

The main problems that cause education to under-perform in the US (I think)
are bad parenting, a non-education oriented culture, and poor teacher quality.
Of these three, poor teacher quality is the only one that is most easily
affected. So how can one say that it's not logical that increasing teacher
salaries can be a solution to helping improve education in the US?

~~~
misuba
"Some people argue that if we raise teacher salaries, we'll have people become
teachers for the money instead of for the love of teaching."

There are _way_ easier ways to make $125K if that's all you want.

