is any grade school teacher worth $125 grand, plus bennies?

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I have seen some wacky things here in the Apple, but paying grade school teachers that much, as a new charter here proposes, while skimping on everything else, seems to take the cake. </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/nyregion/07charter.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>of course good teachers are worth their weight in gold–especially if they can get through to low-income, non english speaking kids. it just seems to me that the place will attrat a lot of people interested in the money, and the young principal won’t really know how to determine how gifted an applicant’s teaching really is. what is he going to do to find that out? how can he? </p>

<p>also think its sort of sad, on a philosophical basis that his answer to everything–including the tutoring service he started–is just to throw money at it. money helps, god knows it does. but if all those expensive teachers are just going to teachthe same typical watered down nyc curriculum (and as a charter i hope they don’t), with 30 kids in a class, it seems a tremendous wate. </p>

<p>but as they say, its an experiment. we shall see. any thoughts?</p>

2

<p>As a starting salary it seems like a lot - especially since it seems to be at the expense of class size. That said, I believe that the Kindergarten teacher mathson had was making over $100,000 when she retired. She was wonderful. She managed to differentiate education in that classroom without anyone feeling bad. He loved her so much she was the only teacher who got birthday cupcakes from him every year.</p>

3

<p>Most people are attracted to money. How does anyone really assess a teacher’s skills until they are in a classroom? Our district made mistakes. Some teachers look good on paper, but then there are problems once hired. I don’t find the salary outrageous if the teacher has experience. Salaries in our school district are not much lower for someone who has 25 years experience. I think that with 120 students, one does not need an assitant principal. The teachers here will be expected to do a 1.5-2 jobs, and they are being compensated for it. The school actually saves by not needing to pay bennies to yet another employee to do things required to run the school outside of the classroom (teacher is doing that). Administative costs are being streamlined. This teacher will be giving up their moonlighting job for this, so they deserve the extra compensation. They will be working morning, noon, and night.</p>

4

<p>“That said, I believe that the Kindergarten teacher mathson had was making over $100,000 when she retired. She was wonderful. She managed to differentiate education in that classroom without anyone feeling bad.”</p>

<p>The sad thing is that all the sub-par teachers in the surrounding classrooms with the same number of years experience were making the same thing.</p>

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<p>fundingfather, absolutely correct.</p>

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<p>The long term elementary school teachers where I am can make over $100,000. But I don’t know if that’s quality – just that the teacher was awarded tenure a hundred years ago.</p>

<p>One of my sons had a young second grade teacher who literally was always working from 6 am to 6 pm. Somehow she could spend hours with an individual parent or kid if necessary and really understood the children. She definitely deserved to be kept at any cost! But I don’t know how you know a teacher is worth that much until you’ve evaluated their performance for a year.</p>

7

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<p>These teachers are not rewarded with higher pay for what they do. It really gets me, that we pay the same or more to our tenured teachers who do not teach as someone that you just described. Experience, degree, and years of teaching determine the pay scale. We also have teachers that run out the door at 3pm, because they have to have a second job to make ends meet (tutoring, paid coaching position, or even working as a security guard). Some need to run out to pick up their own children from school, or daycare. They are not willing to stay longer without compensation, and I don’t blame them. The teachers’ contracts request that they stay 15 minutes after school lets out, and that is all that they are required to do.</p>

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<p>NY is a very expensive city; and first year associates in law firms (with zero experience or track record apart from going to law school) are starting at $160,000 +. If you want smart kids to choose teaching in NY as a career, you have to be willing to pay them for it. Paying by seniority is a way to avoid favoritism and unfair bias.</p>

9

<p>First, that first year law associate had to be good enough to be accepted into law school and then put in additional 3 years of schooling and then pass the bar exam. Secondly, that law associate, if he doesn’t pan out will find himself on the street. He/she does not have nearly the same job security as the teacher. Finally, that law associate will be subject to the same possibility of bias and unfairness in his/her attempt to keep his/her job or to become partner. He/she does not get to fall back on seniority as a means to save his/her job or further his/her career.</p>

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<p>My step-niece, without an M.A., has been making 20% more than that on the North Shore of Long Island for the past 5 years as a math teacher. It is not an experiment.</p>

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<p>There are many problems with teacher’s compensation in NY. Once a teacher is tenured - it is almost impossible for the teacher to get fired - unless they commit a crime or something similar happens. Another problem is that teachers retire and have very generous pensions and health benefits that the taxpayers of the town have to pay through school taxes. I live in a suburb of NYC where school taxes are astronomical - over $10,000 and this doesn’t include the other half of taxes, which are local property taxes. Many of my neighbors are moving south. One such neighbor, who is a teacher, recently moved to NC and told me that teachers are govt. employees there and don’t have most of the perks that she had in NY. The teacher’s union in NY and elsewhere is also responsible for high school taxes and unproductive teachers IMO. Don’t forget that these teachers have 3 plus months of vacation a year!</p>

12

<p>Paying by seniority may indeed be a way to “avoid favoritism and unfair bias.” </p>

<p>However, it’s also about the best possible way to reduce the incentives to excel. </p>

<p>Why should a teacher who does no more than the minimum necessary to hang on to her job be rewarded at the same rate as the one who does a truly outstanding job and yet never stops trying to improve? </p>

<p>What the legendary baseball executive Bill Veeck said about paying professional baseball players applies here as well: </p>

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<p>Every study I have ever seen of classroom quality says that teaching quality peaks in the 3rd year of teaching, and then experiences slight declines every year thereafter. </p>

<p>But the average teacher lasts slightly less than five years.</p>

14

<p>Wow. That is so contrary to my experience!</p>

<p>While I certainly had some good young teachers along the way, most of the really great teachers I had, throughout my education, had at least 15 years of experience, often more. I think it’s fair to say that about my kids, too. Each of them had at least a couple really young teachers who made a big difference to them. (That was not so true for me, except for one history PhD who I got in his first year of trying to teach high school. But he was about 30 and had a fair amount of college teaching experience, which was not so different from teaching an honors-type class to seniors at a competitive prep school.) But, for each of them, their most important teachers in high school were, in fact, past retirement age.</p>

<p>My mother was a high school and then college teacher starting at age 23 (but only intermittently until she was 30). Judging from the intensity of her students’ regard for her, she probably peaked twice – once in her early 40s, and then again around 60 (4 or 5 years into her university career).</p>

<p>That’s not to say that there aren’t some very experienced duds and burn-outs in classrooms. But I think really good teachers have an arc like really good wines: you can tell they are great 3 or 4 years out, but their peak may not come for 20 years.</p>

<p>How do they measure “teaching quality” in these studies, anyway?</p>

15

<p>“But the average teacher lasts slightly less than five years.”</p>

<p>I don’t know where that statistic comes from but I doubt that it is true in NJ. Just about every teacher that my son had had far more than 5 years experience. It is very difficult to get a teaching job in NJ - all of the teachers know that they have a good thing and are holding on for retirement.</p>

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<p>First, the school is from 5th through 8th grades. Middle school teachers are the hardest to find, given the difficulties of shepherding kids through puberty and the social issues that arise at this age. I know excellent teachers who wouldn’t touch middle school for more money than is proposed! </p>

<p>Second, the teachers aren’t unionized. That eliminates at least one layer of “job security protection”, allowing for more ease of firing ineffective teachers. And it allows for more merit-based pay scales - a teacher can be paid more because he/she does more.</p>

<p>Third, do we know if there even is tenure at charter schools in NY? In MA, charter schools are allowed to bypass tenure. That avoids the issue of non-performance as well.</p>

<p>I think it’s a great thing to try.</p>

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<p>The study was published in Phi Delta Kappan and summarized in Education Week. When I get a chance, I’ll run down the cite.</p>

18

<p>how much do other pubic servants in NYC get paid?
Cops, Fire fighters, nurses, medics?</p>

19

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<p>NY charter teachers, including many in tough urban neighborhoods, have no tenure. Also no building representative from a union to protect them, on days such as my last when an impulsive first grader shoved me hard, off-balance, as I stood at the tippy-top of a long flight of concrete steps. I looked at the bottom of that stairwell and decided I’d rather see my own grandchildren.</p>

<p>Rather than send me help, the principal put me on employment notice for failing to keep the children in line (literally, her sole expressed concern was the line-orderliness of children).</p>

<p>My 25 six-year-olds watched their teacher hurt, with no assistance sent nor the removal of the child, whom I was not allowed to send to the office. I had no choice but to continue with all to the next scheduled lesson. </p>

<p>I was put on employment notice, and in response I resigned.</p>

<p>The principal REALLY didn’t like me! </p>

<p>Had I been in a unionized setting, I could have called for a building representative, who would have ensured my safety and that of other children protected. The same union building rep would have accompanied me at day’s end to the principal’s office to fill out an assault report, so a superintendent could have reviewed the incident.</p>

<p>My performance would have been evaluated properly, as a teacher with 8 years of experience. My tenure earned in another NYS district would have carried over and I would have been treated with respect.</p>

<p>I was the kind of “cupcake” teacher described above.</p>

<p>There are other teachers ready to work for a few thousand dollars less, so in the charter setting I was one of the highest paid initially ($50K annually). With such extreme salary pressure as is currently in NYS charter schools, there will always be pressure to replace teachers of any experience to save a few thousand dollars.</p>

<p>It is a revolving door of inexperienced teachers, and newly minted teachers, who apply and work a few years in urban charter schools of upstate NY.</p>

<p>If Mr. V can improve the level of faculty experience, he may find some teaching excellence and be in a position to inspire great teaching.</p>

<p>The protection of teachers’ physical safety, minus a union, does concern me, based upon my own experience.</p>

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<p>Mini:</p>

<p>It may just be that the broader the study the less meaningful the data (or the conclusions that may be drawn from them), but this seems nonsensical to me - at least in regard to great (or even good) teachers. </p>

<p>Great teaching is an art. It is extremely difficult to do well. (It’s not for nothing that Freud called education one of the “impossible professions.”) To suggest that a great (or even good) teacher will somehow “peak” in her third year is to trivialize the nature and challenges of teaching. Almost by definition, a great teacher will continue to grow and develop as the years go by - as would a lawyer, a doctor, a therapist, a musician, a journalist, an actor, etc.</p>