Should We Pay Teachers Based on Subject Matter?

SportsMama · July 12, 2011, 1:03pm

“If a elementary teacher wants to take Italian classes to prepare for a future vacation in Italy, that’s great, but I don’t see any good reason for the taxpayers to then bump up the teacher’s salary for irrelevant or lower-level classes.”

arabrab, I agree. Random classes would not help the teacher become a better educator. The kindergarten teacher I was referring to (35 years experience with a Master’s degree plus an additional 45 semester hours) teaches in a district where teachers are required to write a professional development plan that must be approved by the district. The hours that are taken must connect to the goals written in the plan.

emeraldkity4 · July 12, 2011, 1:08pm

I agree that some privates are more comparable to public schools in terms of class size & amount of funds for curriculum.( some privates actually have less funds than public) The only difference seems to be that the privates still can have more “buy-in” from parents ( & students) which can translate into better attendance at school & school functions.

Re: pay, it is fact that some subjects are difficult if not impossible to find qualified educators in, which is why I encouraged both my kids to get a BA in a subject other than education because I think it will give them more flexibility in the job market.

It is true that quite a few teachers in the private schools did not have an " education degree" per se. However, it didn’t mean that the hiring process was not rigorous enough to examine their skills in that area & it didn’t mean that the teachers did not undergo additional training and education after they were hired.
( again this was at, an " elite" private school)

I do believe the hiring/seniority process in the public schools needs work. I am not a big fan of collective bargaining, although I understand the purpose.

I do believe that teachers in hard to fill areas should receive additional enticements otherwise we run the risk of lowering our standards in order to fill the slot.

My daughter( in public) was unable to take AP Spanish for example, because her third year class was taught by substitutes ( substitutes are not required to have certification in the subject)

Special education classes in our district have been supervised ( illegally) by aides, who may not even have a college degree. ( & just because you have a IEP, doesn’t mean that you do not deserve the chance to work towards a meaningful diploma, or will not attend college)

We ( the district) hired consultants from the university to assist classroom teachers with science/math instruction, but would not hire the consultant to teach in the district ( even though they had been teaching at the univ level), but when budget cuts came around- they cut the consultants, leaving the classroom teachers on their own. ( which showed up in test scores)

I appreciate the point that was made earlier about the demands on art teachers. Our district has been moving programs around & often does not give PCP ( Art, PE, music) teachers a classroom & parents even expect the teacher to go from school to school without much support. ( when I was in elementary, we didn’t have a gym/cafeteria & we only had itinerant art/music/pe teachers- it was a brand new building in the suburbs, but now a school would never be built without those things)

My daughter who attended public school was very fortunate to have attended a school that had an arts focus & had two full time art teachers ( it was K-12), as well as a music, theatre & dance programs.
( the private school also had a strong art program as well as music, theatre & dance, but for the money- you would expect that! )

I believe all subjects are equally important, art is at least as important as reading - but earnings in the world outside education are not necessarily going to be the same for someone who can teach Mandarin as someone who can coach soccer & I don’t know if we can afford to keep increasing overall teacher pay high enough to retain skilled math/science teachers.

MiamiDAP · July 12, 2011, 2:06pm

“And might it be that those (private) schools send every single student to a 4 year college because they can select their student population,”

-Actually opposite. So expensive that go after every single child that applies (implicitly, can pay). I personally knew one that had tremendous difficulty somewhere else. Tiny private prep. school can and will work with every single child because they can afford it in classes of 15 or under. My D’s senior class was 33 kids, not 500. They went after her after she applied to 9th grade.

EPTR · July 12, 2011, 2:12pm

Arabrab,
In my state teachers move up the pay scale (or across columns is more accurate) when they reach a master’s degree or the equivalent in college credit. Because our state also requires that teachers receive or be enrolled in their master’s degree at the five year mark after starting their teaching position, it pretty much ensures that the courses that the teacher takes are relevant to their job. My state requires that teachers write an Independent Professional Development Plan every five years. This plots out the professional development that is planned by the teacher. Eighty percent of those credits have to be in our content area and the rest in pedagogy. It wouldn’t be impossible for me to take a class in Italian but i wouldn’t really be able to count those credits toward my IPDP. This process guarantees that teachers enroll in and complete courses that will bring deeper meaning to what they teach and benefit the students, thus ensuring the legitimacy of the tax payers expenses. I don’t know what state you are in but I would be shocked to find out that they do not have such guidelines and requirements in place.

I am currently completing my masters and will move across to a new pay column in the fall. I feel that it is right and good that I will be compensated for a higher degree of learning.

MiamiDAP · July 12, 2011, 2:19pm

" am currently completing my masters and will move across to a new pay column in the fall. I feel that it is right and good that I will be compensated for a higher degree of learning. "
-None of it is happenning in private industry. You can have many degrees, it does not matter. NOBODY is "moved across to a new pay column " just because they completed successfully 10 more degrees in Grad. schools. NOBODY!!! This is exactly the base of my opinion, one of the most important points. You get increase, if you perform, you get fired if you do not, you stay the same if you are OK, you can go down in pay if times are tough and company is holding for their work force despit of tough times (the best companies are doing that)

EPTR · July 12, 2011, 2:31pm

Private industry doesn’t generally require its employees to pursue higher degrees of learning and give them a deadline to do so…paying for it, for the most part, out of their own pocket.

Having said that, I agree that teachers should be retained or let go based on their performance and I am not opposed to the idea of merit bay as long as it can be done fairly and is not based solely on the test scores of the students.

MiamiDAP · July 12, 2011, 2:46pm

Higher degree of learning does not make a better teacher. You cannot convince me otherwise, nobody could, that is why my D. ended in private schools after much older S. went to publics. These 2 experiences just proved me that I made correct choice. 2 kids from D’s private HS went for 1 year to publics, they were back, despite the fact that parent kept them at other schools for whole year. The reason - according to them, teachers, all of them, every single one awesome teacher at their private school. They truly missed them, they did not see themselves getting educated at HS without them.

momma-three · July 12, 2011, 2:57pm

agrisomnia…Think about it this way. A really good special education teacher has the ability to actually take a “future ditch digger” and turn them into a kid who has far more choices. I am not knocking the ditch digger and I am not saying that every kid is destined for college but every kid deserves the best education that our tax dollars could afford.

Like I said earlier in the thread stop paying for small districts to have their own administration and merge services.There is no reason in the world that superintendents are getting paid close to $200,000 a year when they are in charge of 5 schools. That is the biggest waste of money yet it goes on in the state of New Jersey. I would love to see the tax payers say this is not happening anymore. I know the superindendent in my district has been seen taking two hour lunches. How do I know this…I was in the restaurant and saw him. He was not engaged in a working lunch he was having a social lunch…a long social lunch on my tax payer dollars. Get rid of top administration by merging services and districts will be able to provide more money to the teachers.

For those who think the elementary school teachers do not deserve to be making the same salary as highschool teachers…you are missing the whole idea of educating the whole child in all of the basics. These are the most important teachers in your childs life. These are the teachers who will mold and shape the kids that go on to be the college grads.

Every great teacher is indespensible…now we just need to figure out a way to reward those who are. Test scores are not the answer.

EPTR · July 12, 2011, 3:16pm

One of the things that is interesting to me about the discrepancy in perception of elementary vs. secondary teacher is the issue of gender bias.

The majority population of teachers at the elementary level is female. As you go higher in the grades that trend shifts to perhaps 50/50 male to female teachers. (I’m guessing)

This is important for several reasons. I have taught both elementary and secondary levels as an art teacher. Teaching elementary is more demanding than teaching the upper grades. Aside from the fact that young kids are demanding in ways that older kids are not, the job itself asks more of the elementary teacher than it does of the secondary teachers. The teacher equivalent of me at the high school teaches 5 classes each day, has one prep, may cover one study hall and will have a lunch break. At the elementary level a specialist can be asked to teach 6 classes a day. My experience has been that demands are put on elementary teachers that would never be asked of High school teachers. I think the reason is gender based. Males are perceived as being more assertive. They are not expected to nurture and give up their own time in the same way that female teachers are. We are made to feel, in a subtle way that we are not good “mothers” to our students if we don’t sit back, do everything that is asked of us, whether it is reasonable or not and refrain from complaining. I don’t think that this form of sexism is a conscious one but, rather, a deeply rooted belief about gender roles and children.

arabrab · July 12, 2011, 4:37pm

Unfortunately, there is also ample evidence that teachers graduating with an elementary ed degree – pretty common for K-5 or K-6 teachers – enter college with the lowest SAT/ACT scores compared to students entering other majors, take less rigorous course loads, and those pursuing graduate work in education (often required to get a teaching credential) achieve markedly lower scores on their GRE exams than do students applying for graduate work in other academic disciplines. A transcript review of elementary teacher candidates will often show little to nothing in the way of substantive science or math or C.S. classes offered by those academic departments, and even more rarely any classes in STEM fields at an upper division level. Lot’s of elementary school math teachers admit to not liking math, and not being very good at it.

The average verbal SAT score for someone who takes the PRAXIS exam is 515, and the average math score is 506 – rather hard to look at that too enthusiastically. I don’t see it as a gender issue – secondary teacher applicants are tremendously more likely to present with an undergraduate degree in a non-education major, having taken much more substantive coursework.

dheldreth · July 12, 2011, 4:41pm

-None of it is happenning in private industry. You can have many degrees, it does not matter. NOBODY is "moved across to a new pay column " just because they completed successfully 10 more degrees in Grad. schools. NOBODY!!!

Miami DAP, this just isn’t true. I worked in a hopital laboratory before I started teaching, and those with associate degrees (medical laboratory technicians) were paid less than those with bachelors degrees (Medical Technologists). And better pay is one of the reasons associate degree RNs go back to school to get their BS RN. In many fields increased education is associated with increased pay. And I don’r know where Arabrab is from, but in my state, your extra courses outside of a degree do have to be graduate courses in areas related to what you teach, not just anything.

momma-three · July 12, 2011, 5:08pm

^ arabrab… That does not surprise me. However, the elementary school teacher does not need to be an exceptionally high scoring person but they do need to have their own gifts which include the ability to get information across to young children. Do you need to be high scoring to do that?

aegrisomnia · July 12, 2011, 5:10pm

No. His point is that there is a larger applicant pool for Elementary Teaching jobs… ergo, they should be paid less. I believe the underlying principle on which this argument relies is known as “supply and demand”.

rutgersmamma · July 12, 2011, 5:34pm

dheldreth, your statement reminds me of a man who ran for school board in my town who said he didn’t understand why teachers should make more money for years of service…“A fourth grade teacher’s job is essentially the same year after year. Why should they make more money just because they’ve taught 5 years?” He didn’t think they should make more after earning graduate degrees, either…Guess he was using the business model…

My thought—teachers are so underpaid; this is one way to level the playing field as compared to the business world…Until you’ve done it, you can’t understand what it takes to be a good teacher…

Can’t imagine the problems that would come from paying some subjects significantly more than others…

fauxmaven · July 12, 2011, 6:20pm

I would think results are an important factor . How do students test…a good teacher inspires a student to want to learn !

arabrab · July 12, 2011, 8:15pm

There are not too many enterprises where we value outcomes highly where we are unable to reward the top performers, but teaching is definitely one of them.

Great teachers deserve great salaries. Unfortunately, just raising them across the board sends a whole lot of signals to mediocre teachers – of whom there are far too many – that they ought to stay in the profession. In reality, they should get better or find a job for which they’re better suited.

It really pains me to see an outstanding first grade teacher who consistently does a great job helping all her students become strong readers, maintain a calm yet happy classroom environment in which kids want to behave appropriately, and where kids on IEPs or under Response to Intervention plans get the support they deserve, paid exactly the same as the less competent teacher next door who routinely sends several kids a week to the office and who complains bitterly about having kids in the class with special ed needs. And yet it happens, every single day.

And then there are teachers like the school media specialist who told me she got burned out in the classroom and didn’t like teaching kids anymore, so she figured that by taking the small handful of classes needed to become a media specialist that she could get a pay raise and not have to do a lot of work directly with kids until she could retire in a few more years.

hops_scout · July 12, 2011, 10:16pm

So I guess you also monitor when he shows up for work in the morning and when he leaves, too? You know that he takes nothing home with him when he goes home? Or when he spends the weekend in the office? And I guess those dang school board meetings are during his 9-5 job time too, huh?

momof1 · July 12, 2011, 11:07pm

Wow, what incredibly stereotyping responses here. I teach second grade/third grade. I have a BS in Liberal Arts, but I have taken (and yes, passed) physics, chemistry, calculus, biology, anthropology, and my second major was in Secondary Science Education. I have a Masters in Educational Technology Leadership from The George Washington University and have completed the work and assessments for my National Boards. My MAT’s were in the 98th percentile and my old, unrecentered SATs were high enough to get me admitted to the honors college.

I teach primary because there are way more jobs in elementary than in secondary and after teaching at a Montessori School in Italy it was very easy to get my Alaska State Licensure in K-8 education. I was horrified at first, but quickly learned that I can do an enormous amount of building at this age, and I know that there is no time to waste, since I know how far they need to go. My kiddos routinely score 80% advanced, 20% proficient and no below or far below proficient kiddos in a public school. We test Reading, Math, Science and Writing.

The reason for advancing on the pay scale for every year of experience? That’s just it, experience. We do not do the same thing every year. Every year there are more mandates, the curricula change, the required technology changes, and, most importantly, the students change. Experience gives you more to draw from, more tools, more perspective, and a greater ability to address the needs of the students you have now.

Think about the labels, expectations and stereotypes that are being placed on teachers in this thread, and then think about what the reaction would be if this type of discussion were entertained with regard to skin color, religious denomination, or gender. Is it any wonder that it is difficult to attract the best and brightest to a profession where there is such universal disdain and, yes, actual contempt?

And yes, there is deadwood in the profession, and teachers all know who it is. You want to get rid of bad teachers? Get rid of tenure, but then also find a way to get rid of bad administrators before they destroy a school in order to remake it in their own philosophical image.

end rant

EPTR · July 12, 2011, 11:18pm

You said it, sister!

arabrab · July 13, 2011, 12:28am

I’d buy the notion that teachers are willing to get rid of “deadwood” if I hadn’t seen the union go to the wall – every single time – to defend retention of teachers and seniority rights over ANY measure of competence. I’m also pretty unclear as to why so many other industries operate just fine without seniority being the determining factor on who stays or goes or gets a new position.

And in terms of experience, there is no evidence that I have seen that experience makes a positive difference in student outcomes once you get past four or five years of teaching experience – paying a teacher more because they’ve taught for 12 years vs. 9 years doesn’t provide any bang for the buck.

And face it – everyone’s job changes every year. Teachers are not special in that regard. RNs today deal with much different technology and demands than did RNs fifteen years ago, programmers work on software and with development systems that were unheard of ten years ago, and accountants deal with massive changes in tax laws all the time.

The kids who are most adversely affected by the current rigid system? Poor kids. They get the least experienced teachers (and first year vs. fourth year makes a huge difference,) present the greatest challenges for the teachers they do have, and have turnover rates that make it very hard to build a program year over year. Given the choice between getting the same pay for working in an inner-city school in a challenging neighborhood or working in a more affluent school with a lot of support, and you routinely see migration of teachers from the challenging schools into the less challenging schools. It makes sense. But to my mind, it makes even more sense that those inner-city schools should be able to offer truly premium pay to teachers who are capable and willing to successfully take on the challenges of that environment. And with minor (and largely financially nominal) exceptions, it doesn’t.

Should We Pay Teachers Based on Subject Matter?

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