Rotating Header Image

Pay Teachers More or Reward Them?

Apr 8th, 2008
by Drew Tatusko.

http://www.bbbskw.org/site-bbbs/media/kitchener/Alphabet%20Chalkboard.pngJohn Mark Reynolds asks if paying teachers more will provide more incentive for better students in teacher education programs.

The best way to improve the quality of schools is to improve the quality of teachers. Vital reforms are needed in teacher education programs. This is a subject about which Paul Spears will have more to say in the next few months, but even the best teacher education programs cannot work without good students.

Too often teacher education programs do not attract the students who were, in college, actually the best students. While there are many brilliant education majors, the best and the brightest do not often pick teaching as a career.

While I am not sure that teacher education programs do not attract excellent students (some of my close friends in college who are now teachers graduated either summa or magna cum laude, my sister and another friend have master's degrees in teaching from rather prestigious institutions as well so I am not sure if this bears out), the issue of pay inequality is surely in the ballpark.  Poorer school districts need to continually find incentive just for good teachers to get in the door.  But will a flat pay hike increase teacher quality?  I am not sure that is it either.

Here is an analogy for you.  What are the most successful sports teams, especially over the long haul?  Is it those organizations that draft like mad during free agency to pick up accomplished "star" veterans?  Or is it those teams who are creative with the salary cap, recruit well, and develop[ talent to work with excellence within a system?  Look at the last six or so Superbowl champions, how the San Antonio Spurs keep winning, or really any of the teams before free agency.  They all find people who will work well within a system, develop them to work there, and reward them for when the perform well.  Businesses do the same thing when they hire.  They all develop talent and find ways to keep that talent in the company.

Public schools do not reward excellence or really offer sufficient programs to establish excellence in teaching.  They also do not do anything to negatively reinforce mediocrity.  Unions do not allow for it.  The public system also does not allow open competition with other alternatives.  It is a mutually reinforcing monopoly between the whims of the state and the teacher unions.  A teacher can be hired, tenured, and vested with a track record of performing at a rather mediocre level over a ten year period.

Charter schools are successful because they link wage increases to performance and take teacher development very seriously.  They also tend to take student-teacher bonding seriously.  Better teaching is rewarded and better relationships with students are part of that structure.  That is a win-win situation for the student.

Related posts:

  1. are professional ministers toxic assets?
  2. why the pcusa ordination exam is not a good assessment

Posted in: Education, Society.

←
→
  • Alan
    This piece has provoked a few thoughts:

    Not only do teachers need to be well compensated, they need R-E-S-P-E-C-T! That would go a long way to creating greater status and attracting talented and motivated people into the field.

    Giving principles more authority to hire, promote and dismiss teachers based on their subjective assesment would be a big improvement. Rather than move a teacher around the system (the worst ones end up where talent and motivation is needed the most!) move them into another line of work. Of course, there do have to be protections for the teachers, but unions do excert too much influence, especially in government empolyment.

    My wife has had the unusual experience of being able to directly compare American and Chinese (Taiwan) education. "My years in America school were the happiest of my life. Chinese education is stiff, rote memorization. There is no room for the discussion of stimulating ideas or individual creativity. It is all technical, by the book. The environment was not conducive to either creativity or individualism and any attempt to express opinions or thoughts are frowned upon as if they are a threat to the institution. My experience in Chinese school was miserable."

    Piaget said that whenever he talked about the learning stages that children go through to an American audiance, he was always asked what he called the American question: How do we speed this up and get past the begining stages faster?

    Americans seem genuinly commited to education, but we are commited to education for all, and we genuinly beleive that somehow, someway everyone should be educated and all should excell. In some cultures only some are expected to be successfully educated, and only those who do well are advanced.
  • Just an observation:

    The generation of 40 something and 50 something Taiwanese Ph.d. scientists and engineers that I interact with mostly were brought up in very large classes in Taiwan. Junior High classes with more than 80 or more kids were normal, while the teachers' education wasn't particularly sophisticated. Relational education? I don't think they could comprehend the idea.
  • I think the value is there, it's just directed in the wrong way. The feds have funneled all of it into standardized testing rather than on building relationships between parents, teachers and students. There is so much research on the effect of relationships on learning that it is a fact, not just a theory anymore. So we need to build rewards for teachers to do this kind of thing and find ways to get parents more involved with the process so that when a kid goes from school to home and back there is a continuity in the transition and the adult leadership is always there to guide development.

    In higher education, this is why student affairs divisions were developed - the teachers stopped being that adult presence to guide student conduct and behavior to enhance learning.

    Teaching and learning is relational. That's why I build a lot of one on one time in classes so that students will not feel ashamed if they seek it out.
  • I'm wrapping up my master's in education this summer and we've discussed this many times over the last two years. My personal take is that our education problems in the US are not tied to teachers or districts but to our society. America holds education in such low esteem that kids achieve what is expected of them, namely very little. The only students I see who achieve have intrinsic motivation to do so and are unlike the majority of their peers who only care about music, drugs/alcohol, sex, and their friends. All of the federal, state, district, and monetary changes won't be effective, at least in my opinion, until US society as a whole changes it's value of education. I just don't see it happening unfortunately.
  • That post I rather like. It isn't often I hear some rumblings about the teachers unions. The next step is comparing education systems outside of the US which are successful.
blog comments powered by Disqus