leff@smu.UUCP (11/19/83)
#N:smu:12200002:000:5838 smu!leff Nov 17 17:09:00 1983 "Sure, we don't want mercenaries teaching our youngsters, but all the best teachers I ever knew were as active outside the class room as in to tutor, to advise, or just to talk. But survival comes first and teachers must be able to survive with their profession if they are to be the most effective. Ken Kretsch * Amesbury, Mass.; I'm not afraid to name names 'cause the nuts on the school board and finance committee deserve all the ridicule they can get (They never did teach me to spell!) /* ---------- */" "/***** smu:net.cse / cbscc!fran / 2:04 am Nov 15, 1983 */ Bullcookies! For many teachers, the sincere desire to work with kids is only effective while they can support their families in the manner they feel they deserve. You don't get this on a teacher's salary. In many person's minds(?), the teacher is still either a part-time mother, supported by her husband's job, or a girl marking time until a Man comes along to take her away from all this." You ignored the main example in my original comment, ministers. Many of the ministers and potential ministers I spoke to had wives and families to support. And they are in a worse position financially than teachers are. /***** smu:net.cse / cbscc!fran / 2:04 am Nov 15, 1983 */ "There are competents and incompetents. As long as the money is not there to squeeze out the incomps, they will find places to fill the needed teacher jobs. Look around your own area. Does one town pay more for teachers than most of the others? do they have a better reputation in education, in teacher quality?" New York City has one of the highest pay scales for teachers. It doesn't have a reputation for good teacher quality. There are a few good schools that are the magnet schools that attract good teachers and pay the same as everyone else. The teachers go there because of the rewards of teaching good students with better laboratory facilities, etc. and some because they don't want to mugged by the students. You also may be reasoning post hoc ergo propter hoc. Quality schools with good tax bases have more money to pay teachers. They may be attracting good teachers because of a good tax base because of middle class or upper middle class achievers. They have more money to pay in taxes and produce better students by a statistical margin. There is also a tendency for quality and prestigious institutions to display their prestige by paying their people more in a manner similar to conspicuous consumption. "I'm bothered by the lack of some sort of merit pay arrangement, until I look at where the program would be administered. In my town, one of the better ones in ohio, the plan would probably have the administration recommending merit increases to the board of education, which must approve all funding measures. The board consists of a mixture of ax-grinders, representing the various parts of the communities, including the back-to-basics, the lets get a better football team, and the lets keep the pennies counted factions. They would probably only reward the non-innovative AK-ing representatives among the faculty. If there were a teacher, superior in every respect, but also demanding of better pay, working conditions, support from the board, etc., no way would they reward that teacher." The only merit pay program that could possibly work would be one where a random selection of the voters of the school district were on the committee. This would eliminate administrators supporting teachers who didn't complain, etc. Such a merit pay program should include as part of the bonus an unrestricted grant to be used for furthering the children's educations. THis could be used to get a paraprofessional to provide assistance in tutoring, laboratory equipment, money to take the kids on trips or any legitimate curricular or extracurricular purpose. This would be administered by the teacher solely with only an audit to prevent kickbacks or use for personal purposes. Also a teacher who regular ranks high should be freed of administrative interference as long as that ranking is maintained. I. E. plan books don't have to be handed in, more curriculum autonomy, etc. Yes, in some localities teachers would get knocked down for teaching evolution or a fair evaluation of communism or for being homosexual. However, I don't see a teacher who feels very strongly in evolution being taught being that effective in a place that is fundamentally Christian. THe parents of the children would undermine his authority and he would get no respect. As another note, private schools and parochial schools which usually pay less than the big city school systems are assumed to have better quality education. As an interesting aside, in a test of basic skills given to teachers, 25 percent of the teachers in Houston cheated! Houston is relatively high paying with the exception of some school systems in elite small towns. The president of the union said on television that if the exams weren't well proctored what could be expected. And yes, he did not expect the teachers to have higher moral standards than the students! As another aside, the Corsicanna school system developed a curriculum plan whose sole goal is to get the students to do well on the standardized tests. They have a scheme of prepackaged lessons involving drill, drill, drill.It is very effective in getting the tests up. The weak teachers love the system since it frees them from the responsibility of deciding what to teach and they get the scores up which is how they are rated in the first place. The good teachers hate the system because they are forced to drill the better students past any reasonable educational point just to help get their skills up. Besides many good teachers enjoy the autonomy of deciding what to teach and how to teach it.