Teacher Pay

[Have At You]

Should public school teachers be paid based on performance (as reformists prefer), or (as the teachers' unions prefer) based simply on what level they're teaching and how long they've been employed?

In other words, as the Washington Post asked a little while ago, should a stellar elementary-school teacher earn less than a mediocre high-school teacher?

[Go? Fencing?]

Teachers should be paid based on their worth, their performance. Too many good teachers are discouraged from teaching because of the low pay, so the jobs are filled by less-qualified teachers. And besides, teaching is the most important job there is: teaching the youth that one day will rule the world.

[kalivor]

What's a good metric for teacher performance?

Performance should certainly be a factor in compensation, as should seniority and the difficulty of the subject being taught. The current system recognises the difficulty of setting broad teacher-performance metrics, and rewards teachers based on other measures.

Rewarding teachers based on performance is a sound principle, but without a meaningful system with which performance can be quanitified, it's nothing more.

[swordwench]

[TIRADE]I taught high school for the first few years after college. I had always wanted to teach. What I found was that on a beginning teacher's salary, I couldn't afford my rent, my tiny car payment, and my student loans. I sold out, yeah - took a job with much higher pay and upward mobility, but it's nothing resembling what would make me happy.

My absolute biggest complaint about the insanity that is employment in public education (besides inept administrators)? Tenure. Tenure sucks, and must go. Tenure means that any idiot who has it can keep his job unless he's fired for some extremely bad behavior, and even then it's a hassle dealing with the union. Tenure means that good, fresh teachers will be the first against the wall when the cuts come, leaving the jaded old-timers in place. Now, don't get me wrong - the vast majority of seasoned teachers are highly skilled and good at what they do. But there's a LOT of dead wood out there, too, and they're untouchable.

As for merit pay... In the real world, you earn what you are worth - or what your employer and you can agree on as your worth. (I made a killing on merit pay.) You earn raises depending on the funds available and how you've worked to complete your goals. You don't just get a raise because some union creatures decide that everyone gets x amount this year, across the board. In the real world, you are an employee at will (at least in this state), which means you can be let go at any time without hassle. I have fired several pieces of dead wood in my time, and never regretted it. Elementary teachers should be earning the same as high school teachers, no question. The skill set is different, the milestones different, but both are equally important in the education of a child, and teaching Johnny how to read is as important as teaching him calculus. I now see what goes into fulfilling my kid's kindergarten curriculum, and it's more work than you might imagine.

Pay teachers more - based on what they're worth, not only on how long they've been teaching. Kill tenure. Hey, maybe kill the unions![/TIRADE]

[keith]

Its true that tenure is a problem for 'public' education at all levels.

There is of course a solution - you pay people they going rate for their qualifications. In which case no one would teach at a public school.

This has been trialed out at the research intensive private universities/colleges - tenure is only a title at these institutions since the salary of the tenured academic must be raised from outside the institution. So you have one NIH grant to pay your salary and a couple more to keep the minions busy.

Of course one of the things used to entice individuals into this environment is that the salaries are substantially larger than at public institutions.

Of course when you have an organisation like the NIH to do your 'appraisals' for you life is easy - no worries about departmental or other politics affecting promotion/retention. So how exactly are you going to assess the ability of a high school teacher independent of the institution at which they are teaching?

[ReverseLunge]

http://media.skoopy.com/vids/vid_00762.wmv

[MyrddinsPrecint]

this poem goes out to those of you who are teachers......

http://www.taylormali.com/index.cfm?webid=13

[Peach]

I have a CD of him performing this poem at Def Poetry Jam. It's awesome.

It's an extraordinarly difficult job. Hardest one I've ever had, and the most interesting, and the most consuming. Even after thirteen years, I work 60-hour weeks, including nights and weekends, because every year I teach I add something new to my repertoire and something new to my responsibilities.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

i have two of his cds and have seen him in person. i was roughly 5 to 10 feet away from him at the time.....