American Teacher

We just finished watching the movie "American Teacher". They even have a website setup.



It was eye opening for me. While I can write a lot of my thought process, what I actually wanted to ask is

Should teaching profession stay as a financially non-lucrative? In the sense people seek the profession not for financial benefit but instead people who are purely in to it for non-financial reasons?

Or should state involve in this and raise the salary/monetary aspect of it to attract the top guns from top colleges to the job?

This thought process is to understand whether attracting people who otherwise are totally in to law, surgeon, etc will result in best teachers? Or will there be a conflict of interest?

Note: I don't intent to hurt anyones' feelings. Please don't take it personal. Honestly teaching is one of my dream and I chose a different line of work purely because I had seen lot of poverty while growing up and I wanted to become rich!

 

No job, requiring the level of education that teaching does, should be paid near poverty. Education is too important. That being said, there is no reason to compare teaching to being a lawyer or doctor, they are completely different, and require much more education and I'd say intelligence to acquire the required skillsets. ( not that many teachers couldn't become doctors or lawyers ) I would rather the best and brightest go into being doctors and scientists, myself.

If you want a job paying big bucks, then get a job that does so, or find a way to make your own.

I may have said it poorly, but not every job needs to be a means to a very comfortable lifestyle. There's nothing wrong with being able to pay the bills, and having a retirement plan... Lots of jobs don't have that, unfortunately.

 

Another aspect to consider in regards to teachers is the cost that they spend a lot of money just to CONTINUE to teach. Just this year for licensing I have easily spent $200 and will be spending at least another $75 within the next month. This does not include the continuing education credits that we are required to acquire every few years. Depending on the state some teachers are required to gain a minimum of 6 credits every two years. At the current cost between $50-$500 per credit hour. Teachers are also required to maintain certain other certifications such as Crises Prevention Interventions (CPI) which if not gained through a local school district can run about $1000 and expires every 2 years. They are also required to maintain CPR and First Aid certification which can range between $50-150 and needs renewal every two years or so. Adding these all up means that the average teacher could incur costs running at about $1500 every year. Granted this may not seem like a lot to some but many teachers that I know also spend a lot of their own money to purchase school supplies for their classrooms. They may receive a tax credit for these but they do not get a refund for them unless the school chooses to do so. Many schools won't refund teachers for these supplies anymore because the school districts are being choked by lowered state and federal funding.

Personally, a small increase to compensate for the loss of benefits that many teachers experienced in the last year would be nice. I am not sure (even though I am a teacher) that I would encourage schools to compete with other businesses for jobs. Most people who do an average job outside the education industry would not have the patience to deal with whiny kids on a day to day basis and would not stay long in the teaching profession. This would mean that we would loose those highly qualified individuals quite quickly and the cost of keeping the other teachers could break our schools financially. I DO believe that schools should receive more state and federal funding. Pouring that money into our classrooms to make teaching easier and possibly pouring it into helping teachers to STAY qualified, would be a better investment than just raising their income.

 

I believe they should get a tax credit and a refund.
I think teachers have it harder now than they did 20 years ago not only cause of the increase in prices but the way some kids act in school. Its my option that some parents don't care how their kids do in school but its more of a babysitter. They expect teachers to not only teach kids how to read, write, etc... but to teach them how to act and teach them manners. When I was a kid and I acted a fool it wasn't pretty when I got home cause my parents said that I was a reflection on them. I think teachers should make alot more money than they do. Not only are they teaching the next generation but they have to deal without the bs and buy their own supplies. I think that for every year of teaching they should get a getting percent raise for dealing with things and give them some sort of encouragement for returning the next year.
I also agree with the statement above that the schools should get more funding than they do.

 

If I had any say in the matter, teachers would be well paid.
But it won't happen, here's why:
Professionals are paid accordiing to the revenue they generate, that's why CEOs of billion dollar companies get million dollar salaries. Hourly workers are paid for production. While they may get a small increase here and there, their greater compensation comes from the extra hoours they get because they are more productive that their counterparts.

teacher offer, insight, inspiration, motivation, education, aspiration, etc. None of those things gererate production or revenue, and the benifits are years into the future. These are things that are difficult to compensate so we compensate test scores, and even then only on par with an average hourly worker.

P.S. please don't say doctor and lawyer as though they are the height of intelligence. We have all met idiots in both professions.

 

You all made excellent points.

Teachers aren't paid enough for all that they must deal with. Many schools are inner city, full of impoverished children, and the parents are children. I have, on more than one occassion, met with a parent who was a mere children themselves. There is so much more to it than just teaching Reading and Math. We settle arguments, teach manners, teach social skills, make sure they are fed, break up fights, and on top of all that, we must teach a child to read, write, do math, learn history, and science.

Teachers spend a great deal of money out of pocket too. We buy supplies and books and many other things that we use to aid our students. There's also an overwhelming amount of paperwork from administrators that bog a teacher down.

Where I live, teachers are one of the lowest paid in the United States. I became a teacher because I wanted to make a difference, I didn't do it because of the money. Teachers aid in the education of doctors, lawyers, judges, and all the other high paying jobs. Yet, we rank at the bottom of the pay scale. What's wrong with that?

 

Right, Baraka. My sentiments, exactly. Here's what I was about to post before you said it for me;

Teachers generate the production of people who are worth living amongst in the years to come and often times the benefits of extending a hand to someone, without money being put into your pocket to do so, is felt immediately by both parties. Teachers instill values, accountability, responsibility and critical thinking skills, that a lot of people do not ever get because their disconnected parents spend their lives chasing ego-gratifying empty dreams of making bank. Show me a successful lawyer/ doctor and I'll show you a teacher who put them there.

The best and the brightest would not realize any dreams without teachers.

 

its remarkable the extent to which the united states does not really value education: http://gizmodo.com/5671062/there-are-5000-janitors-in-the-us-with-phds

well, maybe it isn't. it's remarkable the extent to which universities continue admitting people into graduate programs so they can feed the cheap temporary labor pool that teaches about 2/3 of the university courses that are offered even as the number of actual tenure-track jobs keeps dwindling. but university administrations keep expanding. o well. it's remarkable that people in graduate school aren't taught teaching, that it's seen as secondary still to research that no-one will read published in journals that no-one can get outside the academy (i run research databases that contribute to this problem to the extent that individuals cannot subscribe, so there's open access so long as you have an institutional affiliation and that institution pays the quite considerable subscription fees)...it's regarded as something you just kind of figure out, or, worse, as the object of remarkably ineffectual "pedagogical theory" in the context of the lame "training programs" that you have to go through in order to get access to teaching writing---which is also something that you don't have to pay attention to, really, so you aren't necessarily prepared to deal with writing because, mostly, it's a medium and not a craft. but i digress.

i taught university for a long time. i figured that after doing that it should be simple enough to transition into high school---but it's actually a very different thing, dealing with different rafts of developmental matters in addition to idiocy like standardized testing and reactionary parents who want factual material to be shaded so their reactionary politics can still appear viable etc etc etc. so i admire what teachers in primary and secondary schools do---it's not easy and they aren't adequately supported or compensated. this point to a quite deep cultural and political Problem in the u.s. of a.

 

The only problem I could see with inflating teachers' salaries is a lack accurate evaluation tools. I wouldn't care if someone was only in it for the money as long as they do a good job. It's not like there aren't any doctors who are just in it for the money. It's just that with doctors there are rigorous (and accurate) evaluation processes and very clear indications of success and failure. Even if you're a complete asshole you can still be a great doctor.

The same cannot be said for teaching. I don't know of any way in which to do it. Standardized tests are lousy because they fail to take into account the natural abilities of individual students. Any individualized measure of students would almost certainly have to be implemented by the teacher themselves and as such can be easily manipulated by the very person it's meant to evaluate.

I don't think it's necessarily the case that people who would make good doctors or lawyers would make good teachers. Not that I think that's what you meant, but it makes me want to repeat something that I've had several people who teach say, which is that the 'best and brightest' often make pretty crappy teachers. People for whom learning comes very easily often cannot inspire learning in anyone who struggles with it, it's like they operate in two different paradigms that conflict. It's also been my experience that (outside of the business world) the more accomplished and able a person is the less personable they are and personableness is something important for teachers.

 

Do we have actual data on teacher pay? I live in NY state and last time I remember seeing numbers from our local school district the pay did not look bad. Lots of folks in the 60K range, some quite a bit higher. I understand it probably varies a lot state by state and even district by district.

 

Our firm does a lot of work for Broward Teachers Union. The pay scale listed on the recruitment website ranges from mid $30s to about $75k for teachers with 24 years or more.

 

From an outside perspective, I think the entire American primary/secondary education system needs major restructuring and reform.

Ignoring the utterly appalling nutrition requirements and food classifications for meals served by the schools, and the idiocy behind slashing funds for educational institutions: there is a huge problem with the current setup of taking 12 school years and not even reaching pre-university levels of knowledge.

The two-year General Education curriculum of American universities is unique to your country. The entire General Education portion of college has been gone through in other countries (especially European ones) already in the high school years. Obviously there is no point in a repeat of material that was just studied, so the only option remains that freshmen and sophomores of college simply didn't the material prior to college.

I've argued on this with an American biology professor once and she defended it as a philosophy of enriching students' general knowledge and helping them make more educated decisions based on a wider range of information available to them.

The fallacy here? That's what high school is for already. Having done the same material.

With the current structure, there is no wonder when American high school graduates don't even compare to European ones. Further, with American colleges only providing 2-3 years of degree-specific information to their students, the students of European colleges receive 3-5 in the same subject and thus graduate more knowledgeable than their American counterparts.

The question I have: why on earth did you adopt such an unbelievably inefficient system for the education of your nation's future?

 

theres two different things that are being conflated. there's a range of freshman-specific courses that have ended up---too often---being remedial because the idiotic testing system imposed by conservatives under no child left behind under the guise of providing some "measurables" has resulted in high schools more or less having to teach the tests---so critical thinking and analysis is not at a premium---and since you can't write an analytic paper unless you cultivate those skills--which amount to a relation to information---then it has become necessary for universities to teach those skills. but this is quite different from the general education requirements, which are there to encourage students to get what is understood as a breadth of education. this high school does not cover.

personaly i think there are bigger problems. that students typically go to university at 18---problem. that the tuition system works as it does---problem. that primary & secondary schools are funded by property taxes so public schools are strict mirrors of the class system---problem. the idiotic reliance on standardized testing---problem. the fear of teaching critical thinking skills---problem.

that secondary schools do not teach philosophy seems to me a problem, but that's my personal view.

 

This, this and this.

To borrow a phrase, secondary education is about 'stamp collecting', memorization of a large collection of facts which may or may not (usually not) be useful. There is very little taught relating to critical thinking and analytical skills. Schools need to be teaching people how to learn and (to borrow another phrase from my undergrad philo. dept head) think about thinking. Philosophy is a great tool for that, even in the hands of a mediocre teacher.

 

Exactly what you have the Academic Writing and Expository Writing courses for. Though, analytic writing is taught in European secondary schools and expected knowledge by the universities there.

Disagreed. My point was that primary and secondary schools should be the venues to teach general knowledge, develop the basics of academic/scientific knowledge and teach a wide variety of subjects to the students. University should be the advanced specialization phase of a person's development.

Take two examples: Germany and the International Baccalaureate. German schools require students to study 12 subjects in the years 5 till 11, providing a thorough and far-reaching basis of general education.

The International Baccalaureate only requires 6 subjects, but has a one-year-long group project (mostly in the area of natural sciences) as well as a "General Education" class called Theory of Knowledge a.k.a ToK (which discusses in-depth philosophical questions, logic, critical fallacies, religions/ideologies and social sciences); both of which are mandatory for eligibility to graduate.

Agreed on all points, except on standardized tests. It's something I completely support.

Then you'll love to know that a large chunk of ToK class concerns itself with the major schools of thought of philosophy, critically analyzes the different rationales and compares them. You'd probably love even more that there's a bunch of schools in the US that offer the IB Diploma.

EDIT: I believe this discussion would be of interest for bobGandalf in particular, since he was a teacher for a long time.

 

Pay, does vary greatly depending on the location. In our area the starting teacher is lucky to get anything more than $30k a year. This rate of pay does not increase very quickly either. In Wisconsin, the teachers took up to $12k cut (possibly more)due to an increase in required input on the teacher's part into their health insurance. One teacher that I know of still pays more than 50% of her Dr's costs as well. Substitute teachers are even worse off in our area and are lucky to make $10/hr - most of them have the attitude that they're just babysitters and rarely teach anything.

Teaching to the test is a major flaw of having standardized tests. On the other hand it can be difficult to examine a teacher's abilities and success without any standardized marking system. I think we should look at other options of adding to teacher evaluations besides just using standardized tests. I do not think we should throw out the standardized tests.

One source of trouble that we are still enduring the repercussions from is the mentality behind 'real math' and similar policies. When the teacher is restricted from telling the student that an answer is 'wrong' because someone is afraid that you will hurt the student's feelings... A teacher cannot teach. We are still struggling to readjust our mentality and curriculum after that trend wrecked our education system.

A major flaw that causes students to perform so poorly in elementary and high school is the parents. For example: In Asian countries there is a large emphasis on a student earning good grades. There is a lot of shame and pressure associated with poor grades so consequently the students try harder. There is more parental support at home to make sure the children do their homework and study. In the U.S. we have a very entertainment focused culture and our children are playing video games and watching TV for a major portion of their free time. A teacher has little recourse when a student comes in without work done or fails a test because he/she did not study. They can fail the student or they can pass them. Then, if the students perform poorly on a standardized test, in some cases, the teachers can actually loose their jobs. This is not a fair system for the teachers when their measure of success can be so directly related to a parent controlled aspect of education.

Just speculating here - if parents had to pay more on their taxes to support the local schools, maybe they would work harder to make sure their children would learn more? Is there a way that we can motivate parents?... Just thinking in type.

 

I think it's a variety of factors that play into students' academic performances and education-related attitudes.

One would be the nation's culture. My cumulative general impression of American society, is that knowledge is not exactly valued highly by the general population. Should this be true, it immediately provides grounds for lack of self-motivation by the students, as parents fail to raise their kids with ambition to do well academically and to further their knowledge. As Chris Rock said about American parents telling their kids they can be anything they want to be:

"Yeah, I know. If I study hard, I can be anything I want to be. You know what? Even if I don't study hard I can be anything I want to be."

Second would be the lack of quality education provided to primary and secondary school students. I don't see the fault on the teachers, as I believe they make the best out of what is given to them. In my opinion, it is the very irresponsible slashing of funds for the education system by the federal and state governments.

Germany, for example, has always heavily defended funding for the education system to the extent that it would rarely happen, it would be the last government institution to have funds slashed, and even then funds would be decreased only by the absolute minimum amount required. A German high school teacher of the highest school type (Gymnasium) makes ~40,000€/year when they start and usually rises to ~60,000€/year by the 15th year. Consider too, that German teachers are exempt from paying income tax (not sure if American teachers are as well).

Lack of funding has very far-reaching implications for schools, the education they provide, materials they can afford for their students, and the resources available to advance both elite and bottom-end students (academics-wise).

Third would be a too-complex bureaucratic system with all sorts of regulations for all sorts of areas within education. The way I perceive it, the American and Australian governments have a relatively high degree of bureaucracy and bad organizational planning (with Australian government planning being a complete fuck-up).

It may seem odd when stated by a guy from the country with the most laws in the world, but the difference here is that the German government has done very well in streamlining bureaucratic processes to include all the regulations and provide a clear and logical overview of their applications to the average layman. I doubt the same can be said about either the American or the Australian government.

On the topic of standardized testing, I can see the negative perception of it from the teachers' perspective but can't agree with it. Teaching to the test does not cultivate the right academic attitude in most students to pursue educational advancement out of self-motivation rather than to score X out of 100 in order to get into a good university and make better money later. It also severely restricts the teaching methodologies of teachers, which may or may not be better than the general teaching prescription. However, standardized testing is absolutely essential in order to provide a real, national comparison of students' performances without regard to their respective backgrounds or how prestigious the school they come from is. Universities will have no incentive to favor students from one school than from another.

Of course, if some schools receive much better funding than others in poorer areas, this would affect how well students do in the final exams but that is something the government must be blamed for, not the testing system.

EDIT: Man... how my high school friends would look at me, if they knew how I (major high school slacker) am assessing education systems and student academics...