"So what kind of teachers could a school get if it paid them $125,000 a year?"

nysmile · June 7, 2009, 1:53pm

momof2inca, thank you for expressing it more clearly than I did.

As far as the teacher that got caught stealing money (this was found out by an audit), the punishment was an agreement made between between the parties. This is also a woman who likes to use “racial discrimination” as a threat. This reason combined with her strong position in the teacher’s union made “swiping it under the rug” an easier outcome than making the incident more public to the local community. The information can be found in the online notes of the latest board meeting (located on the school district’s website), but the majority of the parents don’t take the time or effort to search for this information.

Teachers are wonderful. They have the ability to change lives. They work hard. Unfortunately, tenure also allows for mediocrity as well as subpar performance to remain in the system for far too long–sometimes long enough to effect a generation of students within a district.

sybbie719 · June 7, 2009, 2:01pm

This just reinforces the fact that there is poor/lazy administration at your school. 
Poor administration/management whether it is in a public or private environment will lead to a poor staff (as people are going to get away with as much as they are allowed to).

Racial discrimination has nothing to do with fact that this person stole money. her crying to the union that she is being discriminated against has nothing to do with stealing money 9unless people are trying to railroad her with false charges). I think you need to place the blame where it lies, with your administration who made a conscious decision to “sweep it under the rug”. This has nothing to do with tenure.

We had teachers who used to come late to school or chronically absent (yes with days in their CAR) and thought nothing of it. Our Ap starting putting letters to file and had revolving door meeting with the teachers in question and the union rep. Guess what? we no longer have an attendance/latness problem at our school. Teachers used to turn in grades late. AP started documenting, putting letters to file and began U rating teachers and this is no longer a problem.

We had a teacher who made a comment on his blog that he wanted to blow our principal’s head off. Guess what? Principal called the cops about the threat, cops came to the school took the teacher out in handcuffs. Teacher is out.

ICargirl · June 7, 2009, 2:03pm

I think discussing what salary or benefits teachers deserve for the work they do is almost a moot point. I doubt that many of us think that top professional athletes, however skilled they may be, deserve twenty-five million dollars a year for playing a game. However, team owners realized that to remain competitive in the race for top talent, they needed to offer large incentives.

The question we need to ask isn’t how much money teachers should be making, but how much money - within limits, given state budgets - or, barring that, what incentives districts need to pay to attract and keep quality educators. In the private sector, what someone’s labor is “worth” is defined by what someone is willing to pay. Why do we hold teachers to a different standard? If we want good teachers, we have to compensate them at a more competitive rate.

As for homeschooling, I know some kids who have had very fine homeschooling experiences, but it isn’t an option for everyone. If both parents need to work, or if the parents aren’t highly educated themselves, or if the parents decide that the child’s social development will suffer from being out of school, homeschooling ceases to be a viable alternative - part of the reason only a very tiny percentage of students do it. Homeschooling isn’t going to reduce the need for teachers anytime soon.

tom1944 · June 7, 2009, 2:43pm

The jobs that you mentioned are public - yes, even the Wall Street jobs with our bailout money. If you take a public job, then your job is subject to public scrutiny.

BC- I never said there were not subject to public scrutiny. I said if they are so good go get one.

ucsd_ucla_dad · June 7, 2009, 3:15pm

That’s the way it should be and is the way most businesses deal with professionals in order to stay competetive - hire the better people and pay them competitively and get rid of the low/non-producers or trim the costs as-needed.

So what is this ‘excessing’ really? Is this where they warehouse teachers they don’t want to teach but can’t actually layoff so these people get paid for doing nothing? If so, this is crazy. It ends up costing the taxpayers a lot more money, costs the decent teachers from getting potentially higher salaries if the districts didn’t need to pay non-producing ex-teachers, and must cause some animosity among teachers.

Pea · June 7, 2009, 3:19pm

Momof2inca: Your post was really good. It’s not that you can’t get rid of someone with tenure, it is that it is really hard. In the private sector the decision to keep someone or not is made at the management level based on performance reviews and once the decision is made it is done. No excessive documentation is needed, the manager gets rid of them because they aren’t doing their job. Getting rid of someone with tenure is hard and you can’t do it because a teacher is burnt out. When I think back, I had some teachers who had difficulties with teaching. They didn’t give great lectures or they were hard to understand, but at least they were trying. I didn’t have a problem with them, I struggle with many things I do too. It’s the ones who don’t even make an effort, they don’t prepare for class, they would just blather on without wondering if they are teaching well. You could feel the boredom emanating from them, inside and outside of class. They don’t have the decency to leave, they stay to coast into retirement and tenure keeps them from getting fired. Fortunately they were the exceptional case and I’m not saying that tenure should be eliminated, just pointing out one of its pitfalls.

nysmile · June 7, 2009, 3:33pm

sybbie, yes, the administration has to take some of the blame. As far as the “racial discrimination” threat, this woman was not being railroaded. As a matter of fact, had an audit not been mandated, there is a very good chance that this behavior would have continued. It had nothing to do with her race and in this instance, she did not bring it up as a “defense” but I’m sure it was in the back of the minds of the administration and school board. She was famous for using it during her discussions when she was president of the teacher’s union. Based on the Board’s notes, her punishment doesn’t even include restitution.

There are small school districts similar to ours throughout the country. It’s great that you have a strong administrator willing to go up against the teachers. This is rare. In small districts like ours, it’s all about the politics and relationships within the community. Here, if an administrator comes in that shows any sign of threat to the teacher’s current level of comfort, they will not be in the district for long. They will be pushed out and their contract will not be renewed.

Momof2inca, I totally agree with everything you have written. There are wonderful teachers in the public school system and kids are blessed when they are lucky enough to be assigned to these classrooms. Around here, it’s who you know that gets your kid assigned to that lucky classroom while other kids get assigned to the classrooms taught by teachers of less quality. It is too difficult to fire a teacher and this is why they linger within the system for decades.

I’ll back out of this thread now. After working side-by-side with teachers and seeing for myself what goes on within the walls of a public school elementary school, nothing will change my mind that tenure needs to be removed or changed.

epiphany · June 7, 2009, 3:42pm

If you don’t consider a negative, the failure of the student to reach, let alone exceed, modest grade level expectations (such as reading competencies, reading comprehension competencies such as inference, sequence, logic, paraphrase, vocabulary, summarizing, interpreting, evaluating, and more), then you and I do indeed run in different circles.

No “study” can be held up as a “positive” across the board if one is comparing apples and oranges, or better yet, vegetables and fruits. Homeschooling is only as good as the ingredients. The “support” you mention is helpful only if those seeking the support know how to use the support. Again, in every example I can think of in my region, competencies (not spelling bee or other contests) have best been reached when the material (child + parent) made that possible. When a parent is not all that educated himself/herself, the results are poor (but again, no poorer than at the institution, and often slightly better).

Think of the parallel of an Independent Study major at the college level. When the student is enterprising, creative, thoughtful, and disciplined, and already grounded in a variety of competencies – and is matched with a compatible advisor with those qualities and more – the results can be marvelous and liberating. However, students lacking direction often resort to a traditional major which provides the structure that may be needed, depending on the academic maturity of the student.

In my region, homeschooling works for a very small minority of families, and an even smaller minority for an extended period of time (K-8, and even less, K-12).

momof2inca · June 7, 2009, 3:43pm

Exactly, pea. Tenure makes it impossible to remove these people from their jobs, especially in subjects where it is already difficult to find qualified teachers, such as math and science. And there are many, many people like this in teaching. Not horrible, not evil, just lazy and resistant to change. I know a science teacher who has taught at the same school for 15 years and still uses the same lessons in the same order, six times a day, week in and week out, year after year. He is a big-time union man and when teachers at the school tried to do something innovative that would have affected his class schedule (gone from 45 minute periods to block 90-minute periods) he made sure that didn’t happen by politicking hard behind close doors, even if it would have been better for the students overall. Everything was about “the contract.”

Tenure protects the lazy. (It also protects those who are willing to speak out against corruption and wrong-doing, so there is some good to it, but overall, I believe it to be the number one school-side contributor to unsuccessful programs).

sybbie719 · June 7, 2009, 4:15pm

A school will excess for a number of reasons;

In NYC each principal now has an operating budget in which to run their schools. If you go over budget, then the DOE is not giving you any extra money to fill your short fall. I have a friend who is a GC and when her school went over budget, they eliminated all of the GC positions and relegated the duties to grade advisors and a social worker who is at the school 2 days a week in an effort to save money.

If a school is in a phase out or restructuring, the first step is to take no more 9th grade students. Because there are less students, you now need less staff so staff is excessed. Most of the time people are staffed according to seniority in title. the 2 people I mentioned in my earlier post were excessed because the principal decided to do away with their positions, at the same time taking 2 6-figure salaries off of their budget.

One of the biggest problems facing excessed teachers is that another principal may not want to pick up the salary of a tenured teacher when s/he could hire a new teacher from the outside for a fraction of the cost.

You are right principals/administrators were hiring new teachers while the DOE was still paying teachers with satisfactory ratings and schools did not want to pick up their salary. Right now there is a hiring freeze in the NYC DOE.

All teachers who are not certified in their license area (about 4000 people) by June 30 will lose their jobs on July 1. (The quickest way to get a tenured person out is to pull people who are not certified in their license).

In addition if a new school opens in a building where there is an old school being phased out, 50% of the positions must come from the most senior staff of the phase out school.

Right now, you cannot hire any one from the outside unless you cannot find a person in the ATR (absent teacher reserve). Under the terms of the ATR agreement, schools that hire one of the educators in the ATR pool after November 1 of each calendar year will receive two subsidies. The Department of Education (DOE) will pay the difference between the ATR’s actual salary and the salary of a starting teacher, and then, in subsequent years, will continue to pay the difference between the actual salary and the subsequent steps on the salary scale. For example; if a tenured teacher makes 85k and a new teacher makes 45k, the school will pick up the 45k and the DOE will pick up the balance (40k).

This subsidy will terminate once the excessed employee has been in the position for eight years. The DOE will also give schools that hire an ATR an additional lump sum equal to half of a new hire’s salary.

Sometimes it can be a catch 22 because you cannot force an ATR to accept a job. For example: If I were excessed from my school, I have to be placed in my title in Manhattan High School. They cannot force me to take a job in the bronx (if I choose to take a job in the Bronx I can but they cannot say "Sybbie, we are assigning you to Podunk H.S. in the Bronx).

hope this helps

emeraldkity4 · June 7, 2009, 6:29pm

From my viewpoint- it isn’t the money that could attract better teachers- but more autonomy & support from administration/district.

We have a district that is strictly seniority- with a superintendent whose background doesn’t really include working with unions.
As a longtime community volunteer and education advocate , I have seen one thing that can make a huge difference in success and motivation of students and teachers.
Hiring principals.
Once a principal is hired into the district ( which should be a more rigourous process than just being satisfied they have the right papers)- they should be allowed and encouraged to stay in a building for at * least* 4 years, if not longer.

Currently our district moves principals around, some every year, a few never find a good fit but the district can’t fire them so they move them into administration,( Administration of our district is 40% larger than comparable districts) a few they do manage to get rid of, but we often have to give them " severance packages" when we should have kicked them to the curb years ago.

Schools depend on a strong principal- it makes such a difference.
My daughter attended a school where for her first couple years the principal had been there for two decades. Never intending to spend her career at an alternative school, she found a challenge in the environment and managed to keep it going strong ( despite threats of closure from district) through her tenure. When she retired, I was on the principal hiring committee & was very disappointed in our candidates. ( Part of the problem I believe is that she didn’t announce her retirement until very late in the school year- and we were forced to run interviews in the summer, when others already had positions)

We chose an enthuastic young woman who was eager to be principal of an urban high school. (We were an alternative K-12 . She moved to a more urban high school three years later- She did begin a great steel drum program, which the school managed to hang onto until it’s closure this spring.)

However- without prior experience or much support from district, during those three years, the parent group and teachers struggled to keep the school on the path that the previous principal & community at the had established.
It is difficult to do so- without a strong/experienced leader.

I again was involved in selecting a principal ( & the committee promised to listen to me more- since I apparently was the only one who had picked up at the original interviews that the outgoing principal wasn’t interested in being at our school long term).
Unfortunately the district told us that they didn’t have * any* candidates and would have to install a temporary one, until they could do a broader search. The interim choice did her best to dismantle long standing programs, throw a wedge between groups in the school that had formerly cooperated, and generally wrought havok.

After she left (ending up in district administration) the school struggled through a change in principals every year or so , weakening the school until the district could now close the program and grab the building ( which the parent group had spent money to improve) for their own ideas.

While I was originally attracted to the school( when my oldest was approaching kindergarten) because of the programs led by teachers, over the years the programs depended more and more on parent time and money- partly IMO because the teachers children were no longer in the classrooms and as they became older they had less energy for them, but mostly because the principals disregarded the history of the school and discounted student experiences.
While my daughter chose to attend another high school, the foundation of experiences during her six years there, made her later accomplishments possible.

I saw teachers go from being interested and involved, to overwhelmed by district requirements ( which were vague and contradictory at best), and discouraged when administration did not value what the community found important.

Buildings need strong leaders, that the district has enough confidence in to allow to do their job without moving them around every couple years .
If the district finds that they made a mistake in hiring a principal- then work with the union and get rid of them- the cost of paying them through retirement, just because the union has guaranteed their position won’t cost merely in dollars, but in the confidence and accomplishments of the teachers and students in that building ( or lack thereof.)

BCEagle91 · June 7, 2009, 7:07pm

“I never said there were not subject to public scrutiny. I said if they are so good go get one.”

Why? The list of jobs that you provided isn’t interesting to me.

BCEagle91 · June 7, 2009, 7:08pm

“As for homeschooling, I know some kids who have had very fine homeschooling experiences, but it isn’t an option for everyone. If both parents need to work, or if the parents aren’t highly educated themselves, or if the parents decide that the child’s social development will suffer from being out of school, homeschooling ceases to be a viable alternative - part of the reason only a very tiny percentage of students do it. Homeschooling isn’t going to reduce the need for teachers anytime soon.”

The point that I was making was not that homeschooling is for everyone but students (not all) don’t necessarily need a teacher to learn.

younghoss · June 7, 2009, 7:34pm

We’ve all heard it a thousand times. The big money draws the best and brightest. We’ve heard it from auto CEO’s, and bank managers. hmmm how well did that work out?

BCEagle91 · June 7, 2009, 7:53pm

Let’s say that the student doesn’t know how to read by the time they
are 12 but then have an explosion of interest in reading. Or math and
algebra. Or writing. Or let’s say that they spend a ton of time in
math in their early years and little time in writing or reading. Yes,
mass production education expects certain milestones to be met at
certain times. Is that optimal? Perhaps it is for the group.

I would agree that there are parents that don’t use the resources
available to them. They might be suspicious of groups or they might
not be able to use the help for whatever reason.

Can the child do more than what the parent provides as material? Sure.

And can the parents teach themselves the material on the fly?

Venus and Serena Williams have dominated US tennis for the last nine
years. Their father coached them from about age 10. To my knowledge,
he had no training as a coach and wasn’t a player himself. They came
from Compton, LA which isn’t the best of neighborhoods. How does such
a person raise two daughters to world dominance in their specialty?
Yeah, he and his ex-wife homeschooled them too.

Homeschooling approaches vary widely from the free-thinking and
liberal unschooling approach to the conservative formally structured
school-at-home approach. I’ve seen wild success with both
methods. I’ve also seen parents move in the opposite direction when
the approach that they’re using doesn’t work.

What is your region?

epiphany · June 8, 2009, 12:35am

Again, anecdotes – yours or mine – are not enough to provide an accurate or comprehensive picture. For example, you’ve seen “wild success” and I’ve seen only disasters with the extremely unstructured unschooling you hail. It’s left students without skills or confidence, and often dangerously illiterate. Homeschooling is not for the un-serious and unskilled, no matter how sincere.

And as for the Williams family, athletic coaching is not parallel to a comprehensive academic education from K-12. (You spoke of the father’s coaching.) As to his ex-wife, I have no idea how thorough she was or wasn’t (nor do you) in the academic product for which she was responsible.

You clearly don’t believe that education requires any expertise whatsoever. Based on my life experience, as student, parent, and educator, I cannot agree.

galoisien · June 8, 2009, 1:33am

Um, teachers aren’t asking for 875,000 dollars a year here. 125k isn’t big “big money”.

Notably, 70,000-80,000 would be a better average salary.

Plus, most finance people never continue on with their education, so their income is disproportionate with respect to the amount of education they have received. Not the same with intellectually-motivated teachers.

BCEagle91 · June 8, 2009, 8:03am

You were the first to bring up anecdotal evidence so you opened the
door to anecdotal arguments. Homeschooling usually requires a
considerable amount of work and effort. But not always.

I’d say that athletic coaching is a lot harder than the academic
education part. That someone could do it with no training in it
whatsoever and no expertise in the sport himself is quite remarkable.
Many of the best players go to training camps, sometimes all year
long. These training camps also provide school instruction.

I believe that they used a pre-packaged curriculum. There are hundreds
of thousands of kids using these materials and they predated the boom
in homeschooling. Calvert has been around for quite a while and they
have a pretty good reputation in providing a distance learning product.

I didn’t have any particular expertise in education when I started
other than a natural ability to tutor. I’ve seen many other parents
without particular expertise successfully (sometimes wildly)
homeschool their children. It clearly isn’t for everyone but educating
your kids without teachers is certainly possible.

Pea · June 8, 2009, 10:15am

Epiphany wrote:

“For example, you’ve seen “wild success” and I’ve seen only disasters with the extremely unstructured unschooling you hail. It’s left students without skills or confidence, and often dangerously illiterate.”

Thankyou Epiphany, that is all I have ever seen either, except in the cases where the students were gifted or had learning disabilities. The school system couldn’t give them the special attention that they needed.

BCEagle91 · June 8, 2009, 10:41am

This is more than an academic exercise for us in NH as homeschoolers and legislators are working on determining whether more or less regulation is appropriate. Legislators and superintendents generally agree that the vast major of homeschoolers are doing a fine job but they are concerned with the few that don’t - especially when those that don’t return to the public school system and affect the schools’ state testing results.

A committee was set up to survey superintendents and they met last week. Homeschoolers presented a set of objective questions to ask superintendents. A legislator came up with a set of subjective questions to ask superintendents. Everyone is hopeful that this will go forward so that we will get some hard statistics, from the point of view of district superintendents, as to how well homeschooling is working in New Hampshire. There was mention of a similar survey in another state where homeschoolers did very well. I don’t remember the state as there have been hundreds of emails coming through on this project.

New Hampshire is a state with few minorities, an educated populace and an economy that’s usually outshines the rest of the New England states. The taxation rate is pretty low too which makes it easier to afford private educational materials.

The best example of extremely unstructured unschooling succeeding is a family with daughters. One of them represented the US in the international math olympiad where the US won. She went to Harvard and is either at Princeton or Oxford now. I have argued for and against unschooling and am familiar with the arguments. I lean towards more structured approaches but I can’t deny the successes that I’ve seen with completely unstructured approaches.

"So what kind of teachers could a school get if it paid them $125,000 a year?"

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