<p>And paying a reasonably high salary should be commensurate to the experience and academic preparation of the teachers. </p>
<p>Fwiw, the requirement of “sending your kids to school prepared” might be the reason why the performance of teachers drops tremendously as soon as parents are no longer able to complement what is not taught in school with at-home help. That is why the US is a world leader in elementary school, an average performer in middle school, and an abject laggard in high school.</p>
<p>As far as the OP’s question, our education system should have a lot more teachers with a degree in the subject they teach and a lot fewer of those generalists produced by our abysmal colleges of “education.” One way to accomplish that is to reward the competent and well-educated.</p>
Who says these are really college classes? Yes, they can be taken for some college credit theoretically if one does well enough in them and if the particular college accepts them but there’s nothing wrong with upping the game some in HS and if the USA doesn’t then the USA will be left further behind than it already is. I could easily argue that taking a CS course can be more useful to many students than yet another largely redundant HS English course or a 4th or 5th year of a foreign language or an elective art course. There are some HS that don’t offer these courses simply because they don’t have any teachers qualified to teach them.</p>
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It seems that they should be paid more and - aren’t they usually in order to attract and retain them? (I don’t know the answer)</p>
<p>“I think that offering e.g. Physics K-12 teachers more money is a good thing, not because of any kind of “hardness” metric but because there’s probably a shortage of qualified people competing for these (unattractive) jobs.”</p>
<p>Yup. This.</p>
<p>“aren’t they usually in order to attract and retain them?”</p>
<p>A great teacher in my opinion does not need to be an expert or hold a degree in a given subject area but they do need to love learning enough so they will make it their business to teach that subject area. Take a K to 5 teacher…Do they need to have certification or hold a degree in math to teach basic math?..same with history…etc…</p>
<p>A teacher on the highschool level must and needs to be certified in a subject to trully ensure their mastery in a subject. These teachers may know their subjects but they are not always great at getting the subject matter across. Thats why teachers are born and not made. It takes a special skill to be an amazing teacher. There is no amount of money that could be paid for the natural born amazing teachers. I don’t think it matters what grade a person teaches. </p>
<p>One of my sons still remembers his 7th grade social studies teacher and says she was by far the best teacher he ever had. One of my other sons had a science teacher in 6th grade that made him love science more than any subject he had. I have four kids yet only two of them remember only one specific teacher each that trully had the all time something special. The interesting thing about both of these teachers is that each of them had called my sons when they graduated highschool to wish them well in college. They remembered my sons and although they never saw either teacher throughout highschool these teachers remembered them and that they would be graduating. That was amazing and indeed special.</p>
<p>ucsd-ucla-dad-----No unfortunately they are not paid more. They should be because a day of work in that environment requires not only knowledge of subject area, but psychology, pathology, and special techniques for learning. They are trully under paid especially the trully talented teachers. I guess the question should be how do you pay someone who is really that good. This garbage about basing it on test scores is grossly unfair to a special needs teacher and will do nothing but breed and foster contempt.</p>
<p>That is a poor analogy. College professors can be great teachers or … great researchers … or great fundraisers. </p>
<p>On the other hand, K-12 teachers only do one (or should do) one thing, and that is teaching. Not all people who are educated in math or physics will be great teachers, but it is doubtful that the generalists who attended a college of education and struggled in such subjects would be a decent teacher in the same subjects.</p>
<p>Yet, our education system believes that the mastery of subjects is less important than pure pedagogy.</p>
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<p>And that is why we are sinking deeper and deeper. We spend more than most countries and compare to countries barely above the third-world. Our students have horrendous results on international tests, but shine in one aspect: they have a high self-esteem. </p>
<p>We are simply looking for excuses to justify the past six to seven decades of complete erosion in the talent and dedication of our teachers.</p>
<p>OP’s premise is an interesting (and not so uncommon) proposition. Seems to be terribly complicated though…Who would decide which subjects are more difficult? Music, phys ed, art, home ec are also very important in my opinion. </p>
<p>“We are simply looking for excuses to justify the past six to seven decades of complete erosion in the talent and dedication of our teachers.”</p>
<p>Xiggi, not sure what you mean by the above statement. Are you suggesting that teachers should be specialists and not be required to have any pedagogy training? Seems we should have a balance of the subject matter AND pedagogy. </p>
<p>Improving the system is such a complex issue…</p>
<p>I’ll reverse the question. Why would entrust the education of hard subjects such as math and sciences to people who have chosen to become teachers to avoid passing such subjects in college? </p>
<p>By the way, the issue in this thread is about salaries. We keep hearing about the need to increase the salaries of teachers and the need to attract more of the young and better qualified to the teaching profession. Since you cannot remove the incompetent teachers that would be part of your example, the answer is to freeze or reduce their salaries and pay more to the ones with degrees. Fwiw, having the right degree could be replaced by having to pass a competence exam. </p>
<p>In other words, a reversal of the practices of rewarding seniority over competence that are so cherished by the teacher unions.</p>
<p>I did not suggest to remove the minimum requirements to enter the profession (pedagogy and training) but tp limit the scope of activities for teachers who entered with minimal qualifications. </p>
<p>Teachers without a subject specialization should be limited to K-4, which could remain open to generalists who only possess a teacher’s certification.</p>
<p>Ziggi…I will give you an example. Should a teacher of Special Education who wants to teach special needs kids get a degree in psychology and education or should that teacher have a degree in a specific subject area? Remember this is a teacher of special needs kids…perhaps working with children who have Downs or severe learning disabilities? Of course this is just an example of where having the subject area degree for elementary school does not make sense IMHO.</p>
<p>How do private schools handle these questions? I mean the top private “prep” schools that prepare and send students to top universities?? Locally, we have private elementary schools, and some of the best teachers there do not have all of the qualifications of the public school teachers who are required to hold degrees and certificates to teach in the public system. But my student never went to a private middle or HS that was considered competitive.</p>
<p>Again, why would we entrust kids with special needs to a person who is not specialized in this area. I hope you did not think I would want someone with a Math degree or Physics degree replacing a competent Special Ed teacher just because the former has an advanced degree.</p>
<p>Well as far as I know (knowing a LOT of teachers) many (most?) of them do have subject specialization. Otherwise it’d be easier for them to get jobs!</p>
<p>Well. I hesitate to even get involved here because my blood pressure started to rise before I even finished reading the title of the thread but…</p>
<p>I am an elementary art teacher (I guess that should make the lowest paid sort of teacher?)</p>
<p>I have a BFA and will soon have an MAT. I am, according to my state “Highly Qualified” meaning that I have a great deal of schooling in my subject area and in pedagogy. I am a practicing and exhibiting artist and I work my butt off to provide a quality art program to a huge number of children. I also try to bring value to my job by serving on committees and designing initiatives and programs that deepen the art educational experience of my students. I assess every piece of art made by my students and designed the rubric that my system uses in its assessment of elementary art students progress. In my opinion, my school system is getting a bargain with me. Everyday, however, I see teachers who are not such bargains. Teachers who get paid on the same pay scale that I am on, who arrive late, leave early and don’t grade a thing. Some of these teachers teach those “hard” subjects.
( I have to laugh at that description…people are always telling me how magical the art process is and how lucky I am to be so “gifted” and yet, they would be the first to say that art is easy and physics is hard).</p>
<p>I get the concept of higher pay for teachers that are in short supply but i worry about two consequences of that. One would be attracting people who are text book smart and teaching stupid, simply because the pay is seductive to them. The second issue is that the lower paid teachers would diminish in supply, put off by the failure of society to value them and by the lower pay. Soon you will have other subject teachers in short supply, as well.</p>
<p>Gosh, I don’t know what else to say except, honestly, I have been doing this job for a long time and I am truly sick to death of feeling undervalued and dismissed. Sorry, had to vent a little.</p>
<p>The training required to become a music teacher is significantly more rigorous than the training for a physics teacher in my area. Simple 1st and 2nd year physics is all that can be taught in high school (with only 1st year basic physics being commonly taken), while music/art teachers are working with tons of kids that have worked in those areas for several years. We also have 3 band directors for ~230 kids and 1 choir director for ~80 kids. </p>
<p>It’s no question some subjects are harder than others: computer science, physics, calculus. It’s no question some subjects are more useful than others: english and math vs. gym and art. I’m not talking about the Lebron James or Kobe Bryant here. It’s a given that some students will excell at gym and art. But someone tell me why we shouldn’t pay teachers more if they can make students master a difficult subject.</p>