So here we have the proposed transfer of mega-taxpayer dollars to private schools, and so the pockets of the oligarchs. Still no talk whatsoever about raising teacher wages to attract more qualified people.
Also another name thrown in to the ring: Betsy Davos
You said that no kid from a family of 4 who lives on one teacher’s salary in NYC is getting inio an Ivy League school. because they wouidnt t have the necessary education to get in because they go to public school. That was your statement.
It’s so ridiculous as to not even warrant this discussion.
Carry on without me.
Stated the in this way you may think it is ridiculous. But you have to consider the whole picture: where the family is living, the housing costs in that neighborhood, the quality of the available public schools in that neighborhood, the cost of private schools in that neighborhood. If you look at the number of middle class families that have left NYC, it is not so ridiculous.
The better public schools are in more expensive neighborhoods (like Forest Hills). A modest 3 bedroom apt. in Forest Hills costs at least 3k/month to rent and probably 600k-800k to buy. Even if we assume the teacher has an 80k salary, that would be only around 50k after Fed, NYS, NYC, and FICA taxes. If you spend 36k on rent, that leaves 14k to cover all the other expenses (food, clothing, utilities, etc.) for 6 people for a year. I think it is clear that this is not enough. So you could not live in Forest Hills. And the public schools in a neighborhood with affordable housing are likely to be much worse.
And apart from the question of getting into an Ivy League college, what parent (especially a teacher) would want to send his or her kids to a very bad public school?
Current NYC public school teacher perspective:
Just want to chime in and say that TFA is very different than being an actual public school teacher with a masters. For one thing, the pay is less. But more importantly, TFA is notorious for giving almost zero training to their fellows, and then placing them in the worst schools in the city. Of course turnover is going to be higher than someone who
You need a masters to teach in NYC, so technically, everyone lining up has one, or will get one shortly. Not sure what else counts as highly qualified.
Actually, the buying figures above sound a bit low unless you’re talking about areas so far from the nearest subway or convenient bus service that one must practically have a car to get around. They’re also so far from FH high that some students attend middle/high school in an area bordering Glendale/Middle Village areas which isn’t considered as desirable by the FH residents I know.
In the areas reasonably close to FH high and public transportation, the prices you’ve cited sound about right for a 2 bedroom. A 3 bedroom would be higher. And I’m talking about buying the most inexpensive apartments…many are more than that.
I intentionally quoted low figures so that I would not be accused of picking the fanciest house in the fanciest part of Forest HIlls. The costs are so far out of the range of a large family living on a teacher’s salary that it does not make much difference.
I thought you only need an MA in education for the higher level, Professional Certification.
Don’t beginning teachers have initial certificates, which you can get just with a BA? What about substitute teachers? Are not the requirements even lower for those? How many schools have substitute and initial certificate teachers, especially in STEM subjects?
And then there are the private and charter schools. My understanding is that you don’t need certification for those, and certainly not an MA (including the charter schools that receive public funding).
I agree that the term is not well-defined. I’d like to see people with straight-A’s in their chosen fields from top universities, with passion for teaching and excellent ability to motivate students and to explain clearly. Also people who could have gotten straight-A’s at top universities, but for whatever reason decided to go to university somewhere else. I’d like to see math teachers who could have gotten jobs at Google and Microsoft, but wanted and had the skill set to do something of greater public utility.
There could be lots of other people who would make great teachers, but I would not see an MA as an absolute guarantee. In any case, there is a big difference between an MA or a PhD in education and an MA or PhD in math or physics. When I was at Hunter High many, many years ago, I had a math teacher with a PhD in education .He was dreadful. On the other hand, all my math professors at Princeton (with Phd’s in math) were also dreadful teachers. So a specific degree is not a sufficient condition.
My understanding is that while one can start without an education Masters, the newly hired teacher is expected to get one within a certain amount of years if he/she wants to be retained/get tenure.
Most of my HS/college friends who went into teaching got their M.Eds to get it out of the way and then got hired as teachers in the NYC, Boston, and other school districts.
Some have been teaching for 10+ years like a HS classmate who is now coming up for consideration as the chairperson of her HS’s math department and others like some other HS classmates left for more lucrative and for them, less stressful professions such as Wall Street/Finance, law, or corporate exec at a Fortune 500.
If those old HS friends went into teaching right out of college, they’d have been teaching for about 17 years or so by now. Many teachers I know got their masters while they were teaching - in a variety of ways. But only a rare few took a sabbatical to do it.
That’s why school choice, a voucher system, and not paying double for public school taxes and for private school fees, is essential.
All these straight A and potential Google employee teachers will be wasted at schools where discipline and behavior, starting from the home, are appallingly bad.
You can technically be hired without a masters, but you have to be working towards one. I honestly don’t know a single new teacher at any of the schools I’ve taught at that didn’t have a masters when they were hired, though. Not sure why a principal would choose to hire someone with no MA when there are plenty of applicants with one, and who would now need to take time to get their degree while juggling a full-time teaching workload. And not sure who would want to do that.
Everyone talking about teacher credentialing and hiring should remember that the requirements for all that vary greatly by state (and sometimes by smaller jurisdiction).
Most of the friends who started teaching, especially in the NYC and Boston school systems started doing so after they graduated with an M.Ed as mentioned in the prior post…not straight out of college.
I know of a few “teaching fellows” who were hired in the NYC/Boston areas without a Masters. However, one of the stipulated terms of their fellowships was that they were expected to work on and complete their Masters within a certain period of time or lose the fellowships and prospects/time accrued towards getting tenured/teacher retirement.
School choice might work in some local situations, but I don’t see how it could work in cities like New York.
If too many kids travel out of their districts to the few great public schools, these will become overcrowded, maybe the student level will go down, and the schools will become less great. The schools that these kids left behind will become even worse. Further, I don’t think the parents who are living in the good school district are going to like all these outsiders coming into their good school. So what will these parents do? Put their kids in private school if they can? Move away? We have already seen that movie.
On the other hand, vouchers used for private school are a way to shift money into the pockets of oligarchs who invest in private schools. A token amount is given to the parents (some of whom may not even need it), and the bulk of the tax dollars go to the oligarchs who own the private schools. These private schools may well be better than really bad public schools, so the parents who can afford the private schools are probably glad to get vouchers. But private schools are never going to equal or replace the social function (the opportunity for socio-economic mobility) of good public schools. Vouchers for private schools will make the public school system even worse.
A healthy democracy needs a functioning public school system. Otherwise we are headed for total oligarchy. Historically, oligarchy has often been followed by significant social unrest.
In short, vouchers are a two-edged sword. The US needs to improve its public schools. One part of this reform should be attracting more highly qualified people to teaching.
I agree that the skill set that makes a person highly qualified to teach in a specific school situation will vary depending upon what that situation is. I also agree that the family is crucial, and that there are limits to what any teacher can do in schools with horrendous behavior problems, poverty, and broken families. My father worked for decades in a school like this. He was also the administrator in charge of discipline. He was able to limit discipline issues, give the students a sense of structure, make them feel cared for, and also to help students advance academically in some cases. Finding math and science teachers to hire with similar skills sets was very difficult or impossible. One of the reasons was that salaries were not competitive.
I do not agree that the government should just give up on the public schools and try to move as many people as possible into (for-profit) private schools. I do not agree that teachers in public schools should be replaced by online virtual instruction.
I think efforts should be made to improve the public schools – including those without major discipline issues, in which some of the potential Google employees would be highly appreciated.
Those are typically one or 2 year programs for students who go fulltime ( which was common back then in the late 90s - early 2000 when many students went right from undergrad to a fulltime masters of education with an intent to teach k-12). So if they got their masters right out of college, and were able to get job right after, they be teaching for 15-16 years. Then again, not everyone is able to get a job.
Among the people who left teaching, do you think there were highly qualified teachers who would have stayed in teaching if the salary were higher?
If your answer is yes, then this is my point.
No doubt different people have different stress points. When my son was in kindergarten, I chaperoned a class trip to the local zoo. His teacher was a 30 year vet (25 years teaching kindergarten). Kids were very well behaved that day and had a great time (so did I). They were a little loud and excited on the bus rides to and from the zoo but that is to be expected for a group of 5 year old kids. Part of that was having an experienced teacher. Other part was its a good school district with kids who tend to do well and with few problems (this particular class had more than its share of high achieving kids and fewer problems/issues over their 13 years in the district).
But on the bus ride back to school (was about 2 pm), with the kids acting like kids the teacher turned to me and said she bets I was looking forward to being back in the office the next day. I wanted to ask her if she was kidding because that day was a walk in the park (literally and figuratively). Phone wasn’t ringing. No one coming into my office asking for stuff. I didn’t say that though. I just said that I was headed downtown to my office when I got back to school. Had to get that day’s work done.
Different people handle different stresses differently. That which totally stresses one person out is taken in stride by someone else. To me, if you get totally stressed out by normal issues in any given job/career, you should think about another job/career. I am not talking about finding something with no stress at all just those that make you miserable. Pay/comp may be higher but is it worth it? Miserable comes with a high price itself. Though ultimately people make their own choices/balance decisions.
If any school district has sufficient teachers with abilities that work at any given pay/comp level, I don’t think its the district’s concern whether its teachers can afford Ivy colleges (seems to me though issue isn’t so much the Ivies with high endowments but rather other top schools which do not because the slots open in Ivies are pretty small overall but thats another discussion). Or whether they can afford to live in any given neighborhood, buy any given car, take any given vacation, etc. Now at some point, those issues may impact getting the needed number of qualified teachers. But if you are getting the number of qualified teachers you need, you are fine.
If you are not, you need to look at increasing those numbers or being able to live with fewer than you would otherwise want. Higher pay. More benefits. Increasing pay typically requires some type of tax increase which in today’s political climate isn’t necessarily a given. Are there other services that can be cut freeing up funds? Same analysis applies to other government jobs. And private sector jobs as well (though the tax issue doesn’t exist but additional funds are still needed to increase benefits).
I think its important to look at issues facing public schools. I think we need to address issues with our public schools rather than taking steps which will hurt them. And in reality, we have a lot of great public schools. Particularly suburban districts. Though in terms of money and better teachers in failing schools, I do not see that necessarily as the answer. Many of the worst school districts where I live spend more (often times up to double) per student what the strong school districts pay. And teachers in those failing districts are often very qualified, care a lot and work very hard. Issue is more with the kids than anything. Talking recently with a couple teachers in one of the worst local districts, they said there has been a significant change in the past 10-15 years. None of the kids care. None of them will listen. School reminded me more of a prison (admins walking around with whistles and bullhorns and locked dividers all over the school which make navigating the halls difficult) than a school. Spending more money won’t help. Hiring better qualified teachers (however defined) won’t help. Those teachers cared. A lot. But you could see the despair on their faces and hear the despair in their voices.
School choice is heard a lot as a solution. But from what I have seen, its not clear they work. And often times they make things more challenging on schools who are already struggling. And often times supporters are really just looking for a way of subsidizing their own kids’ private school tuition.
Impact of parents who care is huge in terms of outcomes. What to do when they do not is a significant and very challenging problem.
@Plotinus The neighborhoods with good public schools have very high housing prices, way beyond the budget of a one-teacher-income family of 6.
In NYC, in the public school system the neighborhood you live in only matters for lower school. For middle school and high school kids apply to the schools they are interested in. So you can live in a neighborhood with a lousy high school or middle school but end up going to a great school in another neighborhood or borough. Zoning only applies at the elementary school level
How competitive are the good high and middle schools? Presumably they are oversubscribed? If so, how do they decide which kids to take?
I don’t think they are oversubscribed, because the take the amount of kids they can support. In elementary, you have a greater chance of being oversubscribed, because you have to take whatever kids are in the zone and that can be unpredictable.
In terms of deciding who to take, it’s an application process, so school record, test scores, absences are factored in.