Scandal in education? Perhaps not so directly — certainly my education-issue alarm bells didn’t go off when I first heard of the controversy about pay and spending in the California State University system (see San Francisco Chronicle story here).
Matthew Davidson, a philosopher at Cal State San Bernardino, makes exactly that claim, however, in a letter to Brian Leiter. CSU trains about half the teachers in California. If that system is broken, it will indeed have national ripples.
Leave a Comment » | 
Education, Education blogs, Ethics, Public education, Teacher Pay | 
Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
I would dearly love to have Michael Perelman’s views on teacher pay and teachers’ unions. Perelman is an economist at California State University at Chico who does not mince opinions. His blog is called Unsettling Economics.
He doesn’t post a lot. Maybe he should post more.
Leave a Comment » | Economics, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Last week Texas voters in Texarkana approved a pay raise for local teachers, according to the Texarkana Gazette.
Louisiana’s recent $1,500 annual teacher pay increase gets a ringing endorsement from Lafayette’s Daily Advertiser. In the editorial, the board lamented the poor ranking Louisiana has for teacher pay among all the states, and among states in the southern region, and said:
Such rankings have cost us good, experienced teachers who moved to other states to earn a decent living. They also have kept many bright young people from entering the teaching profession. It is more than coincidence that in conjunction with trailing Southern states in funding for education, Louisiana has led them in population loss. Through the years, the pitiful national ranking has convinced companies considering locating here that education is not a high priority in Louisiana.
The Tahoe Daily Tribune spotlights the controversy over raising teacher pay in the Lake Tahoe Unified School District, with the story of an experienced teacher simply unable to make ends meet while living in that district. While the teacher pay levels are about double those in Louisiana, the costs of living around Lake Tahoe are much higher, too.
Teacher pay continues to be a national problem, one district at a time.
Leave a Comment » | Education, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
In Palestine, that is; the Associated Press has a story in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.
Education is valued world-wide; delivering education is a problem, world-wide. Students suffer wherever education troubles proliferate.
Leave a Comment » | Current History, Education, Public education, Teacher Pay, War | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Teachers in Detroit may not be in class when school opens on the day after Labor Day — tomorrow. They are striking for higher wages and better use of classroom resources; the district is asking for $88 million in cuts to salary and benefits. Here is a summary of the issues from the Detroit Free Press.
Detroit’s troubles demonstrate, simply, that education reform is not easy.
There are test pressures:
“We don’t want to disrupt the education environment of our students,” said Lekan Oguntoyinbo, spokesman for the district. “We have MEAP exams coming up in a couple of months here. We’re striving to be more competitive. Every day is important.”
District officials plan to replace 9,500 teachers and other union members with 250 administrators, to manage the 129,000 students.
Parents want good teachers in the classroom:
Kizzy Davis, whose 5-year-old daughter is to start kindergarten, said putting non-teachers in classes concerns her. “I wouldn’t send my child to school” without teachers, Davis said. “I’d put her in another school district.”
Superintendent William F. Coleman III had promised to hold classes whether teachers showed up or not. And about 250 teacher-certified administrators attended orientation sessions so they’d be ready to hit the classrooms Tuesday. But Saturday, Coleman said the district might reconsider.
Delores Smith Jackson, whose grandchildren attend King Academic and Performing Arts Academy, said schools shouldn’t open if they don’t have enough administrators to fill the classes.
“It would just become a warehouse,” Jackson said.
But she said if school went on, “I’ll be right there, doing whatever I can to assist.”
Teachers and administrators go in completely opposite directions on the salary negotiations:
The sides have been negotiating for months. The district says it must cut $88 million from teachers’ salaries and benefits to help account for a $105-million deficit. The union has asked for 5% pay raises over the next three years.
District officials said they don’t have the money to meet teachers’ demands. But union officials said teachers haven’t had a raise in three years and insist the district has the money but that it’s mismanaged.
Teachers want more than money, too — they are asking for enough resources to make the classrooms places of learning:
“It’s not just the money we’re striking for,” said RaQuel Harris, an English teacher at Central High. “It’s really a matter of how they are spending the money. We don’t have supplies we need to educate the students. I only have one set of novels for my students to read, which means the students cannot check the books out and take them home.”
And the Detroit district is a model for voucher advocates –– it faces stiff competition from alternative methods touted as ways to improve foundering districts like Detroit, and foundering schools like many in Detroit. Charter schools and the ability to transfer students out only rob the district of money it needs to keep going, however, far from sharpening any competitive ability:
District officials had feared that if schools don’t open, even more parents would enroll their children in neighboring school districts or charter schools. Detroit has lost about 50,000 students over the last several years. In Michigan, public school funding is based on enrollment, and the exodus of students has fueled the district’s financial crisis.
Federally-mandated testing accompanied with no funding to fix classroom deficits or increase teacher salaries probably do more damage in this situation than help. Bumper sticker solutions — “give kids a choice;” “students don’t have a prayer;” “what kids need is a moment of science” — don’t even produce a smile in Detroit.
Solutions will take time. Every year sees another 10,000 students sent off without the education everyone says they need to have; this is not the first year of such crises.
What would it take to get you to sign up to teach in Detroit?
Update, September 7: Here’s an example of anti-teacher bias at two or three.net that clarifies my views: The teachers are probably right in demanding more money. A pay range of $36,000 for a college graduate, topping out at $70,000 for a Ph.D. with 30 years of experience, is an insult to humans, to education, and especially to any teacher with the guts to teach in Detroit. It’s a pay scale designed to scare away the best and the brightest. (Those who answer the call are saints.) I hope the school system can figure out a way to get the money to meet the teachers’ demands, and I fear that the anti-public education people are winning the fight to kill Detroit’s schools, and Detroit.
Update, September 14: The Education Wonks have a related post, “Dept. of Ed. retreats on teacher quality. Tip of the scrub brush to the 84th Carnival of Education at Current Events in Education.
13 Comments | Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), Charter schools, Education spending, No Child Left Behind Act, Public education, School vouchers, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Our local paper has been full of interesting stuff the past week — as it should be.
On August 30 the Dallas Morning News editorialized in favor of more men in teaching — citing a study that found men in the classroom improve the academic performance of male students. (The newspaper said it is a study by economist Thomas Dee at Swarthmore, but it provides a link to a Hoover Institution magazine that does not mention the study . . . [grumble].)
For anyone looking for new arguments to get more men into the classroom, it’s tempting to hold up the new study as a manifesto. Could more men teachers help stem the hemorrhaging dropout numbers for boys? Or reverse the dwindling percentage of boys headed to college? Are more single-sex schools the answer?
The study is certainly not the last word on the matter; the author hopes it could be a jumping-off point for fine-tuning how schools entice youngsters into absorbing information. We hope so.
We also hope the study could be an enticement for the next young man to hear that calling to the classroom. And the next. And the next …
There should be no mystery about how to attract qualified male teachers. How about we start by paying a competitive wage? Teaching is a profession where one can take time out, spend seven or ten years getting a Ph.D., and then get a job that pays roughly what a garbage collector would make had he started collecting garbage at the time the teacher starting the march to the graduate degrees. A recent graduate of our local high school spent a few months’ training with the Army Reserve, and upon return has an administrative job with a local police department — at a salary equal to a degreed teacher with a few years’ experience. Cops on the beat don’t make enough, either — but someone who spends a decade getting ready to teach should do better than a rookie cop not on the beat.
In contrast, MBAs at accounting firms start out around six figures. They often have less education and less experience than the teachers — and they are expendable (look at how many are weeded out by the firm in the first three years). But with that kind of salary offered, a kid might make a well-reasoned calculation that two years of graduate business school and a life in accounting would be better than a Ph.D. and a life teaching in public schools. I think it patently unfair to say that teaching then gets the leftovers — but it makes one wonder, doesn’t it?
Public schools are the only enterprises where we demand higher standards for the employees, and then hold salaries down until the employees reach the standards. In every other line of work, the market raises wages. We might learn a lot by observing (was that Stengel or Berra?)
For those conservatives who ask that education be treated more like a free market — do they really anticipate what would happen were that to occur? A good teacher is easily worth as much as a starting accountant. Why not use market devices to improve education? Raise the wages.
More men, and more highly-qualified women, will pursue teaching when we let the salaries float to levels comparable to other industries with similar demands and education requirements. I read Milton Friedman — vouchers or no vouchers, he makes the case that education will be mired in mediocrity until we spend the money to attract the best people possible to teaching, and to keep them there.
6 Comments | Business, Business Ethics, Economics, Education, Education spending, Public education, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
. . . we would value teachers, and take care of them.
Do we?
This blogger, Trisha Reloaded, a veteran teacher (outside the U.S.), gives her Ten Reasons Why I Hate Teaching. She’s teaching in Singapore — but if she didn’t say, could you tell whether she’s teaching in your town?
TexasEd notes that teacher turnover is scandalously high, and wonders what are the costs of such turnover on students and on student achievement. We focus on student drop-out rates — perhaps we should focus on teacher drop-out rates.
1 Comment | Education, Education blogs, Public education, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
No sooner did I note the Nevada State School Board’s request for more money, mostly to increase teacher pay, than today’s editorial in the Las Vegas Review-Journal started shooting at the proposal, saying it has no chance to pass.
The editorial board wrote:
That the board would make such an outlandish demand is not surprising. Leading into each legislative session over the past decade, the board has prepared budgets that far exceed the state’s ability to pay. Of the board’s 10 members, six have ties to education, either through teaching positions or retirements from schools and colleges. From their perspective, schools can never have enough money, no matter how much they pull from your pockets.
The earlier story noted that the slide to the current average classroom size took several years. From the appearances of the earlier story, the state has not kept pace with funding needs in education. If the state board’s recommendations are not met one year, and they recommend full funding the next year, the recommendations will begin to look “outlandish.” As the needs continue to be unmet with funding, the need for funding grows — and usually such growth is not linear, but is instead exponential. Ten years of budget failure does not indicate that the current budget proposal is too large by any means. It would be the logical result of a state sliding in education capability. Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | Classroom size, Education, Education spending, Harry Wong, Public education, State school boards, Teacher Pay, Teaching | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Nevada’s State School Board Saturday voted to ask the legislature for an additional $1.1 billion, mostly for increases in teacher pay, but also to add 2,000 teachers. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported the story in Sunday’s paper:
The Nevada State Board of Education voted Saturday to recommend that the 2007 Legislature increase spending on public education by $1.1 billion over current levels.
The proposal, if approved by lawmakers, would boost Nevada’s education funding by 50 percent and consume more than the $1 billion in additional general fund tax revenue that Gov. Kenny Guinn has said will be available for all state agencies in the upcoming budget.
Guinn estimates that state government will receive $6.9 billion in tax revenue for the 2007-08 and 2008-09 budgets, compared with $5.9 billion in the current two-year budget.
The board, which approved its education spending recommendation in a 9-1 vote, wants to increase teacher salaries 3 percent each year over the next two years. It also voted to reduce the current ratio of 21.4 students per teacher to 19.65. That ratio last was achieved by Nevada public schools in 2001-02.
Reducing the ratio would require public schools to hire about 2,000 additional teachers.
In the current two-year budget, the state spends about $2.2 billion on public education, or $4,600 for each of the 404,000 students. The proposals backed by the state board would increase state spending to $3.3 billion and raise the per-student allocation to $6,244.
(story reported by Ed Vogel of the Review-Journal’s Capital Bureau in Reno)
In Nevada, all but about 10% of local school funding comes from the state government. Nevada is the state among the continental 48 with the highest percentage of land controlled by federal agencies, way over 50%. Most of that land is unpopulated, but the state has experienced explosive growth around Las Vegas and Reno. New schools pop up with amazing frequency around Las Vegas. Budget issues in Nevada education may vary from other states.
The vote on the proposal was 9 in favor, one opposed. The one opponent to the budget recommendation explained her vote in a way that may pop eyes in other states:
Barbara Myers, the only board member to vote against the budget request, said she opposed the plan only because she wanted to reduce the student-teacher ratio even more.
Leave a Comment » | Education, Public education, State school boards, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Mississippi proposes to raise teacher pay 3%. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger editorially supports the pay raise, but notes that Mississippi has spent so long talking about teacher pay raises that the rest of the nation has moved on — a pay raise will keep Mississippi out of last place among the states in teacher pay, but just barely. Mississippians had hoped to raise their ranking.
But salaries are a moving target; the benchmark was the average in place in 2001, not 2006, and certainly not 2007 and beyond. While Mississippi was giving incremental raises, so were other states in the Southern Regional Education Board area – some larger than Mississippi’s – so, the funding gap remains.
Five years ago, Mississippi’s average teacher salary was $31,954. For 2006-07, without a new raise this year, the average salary will be $41,413. But, among SREB states, the average for 2004-05 (the latest figure available) is $42,333. The national average salary was $47,808.
As a result, state Board of Education vice chairman Bill Jones has noted: “We’ve been talking about meeting that goal of the Southeastern average for 25 years. And we’re 47th. We’re only $150 away from being 50th.”
Woe be to any state that slips below Mississippi. The Clarion-Ledger closes with this:
Mississippi not only must catch up, it also must keep up with competitive teacher salaries in the region. Otherwise, the state will continue to fall behind.
Salary levels should not be a one-shot deal that comes around at election time.
The newspaper is right, at least if one assumes Mississippians want a solid economy, good jobs, and they love their children. Those are fair assumptions.
Especially interesting: The Clarion-Ledger’s on-line forum on teacher pay, and opinion editor Sid Salter’s blog, in which he supports teacher pay increases, but goes further to urge increases for all government employees in Mississippi. (There are no comments at the blog — if you teach, or know a teacher, why don’t you pipe in?)
1 Comment | Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Super teacher Paul White blogs at Arianna Huffington’s site. In a post titled “Public Education: America’s Most Under-Reported War,” he argues for radical change in the school system.
Sample comment:
While the War in Iraq will progressively require less financial support, no amount of funding for public schools will ever be enough until its inept leadership changes. Local school districts should actually be given less money and not more, until they agree to hire competent financial professionals to handle their budgets, and stop funneling all their funding increases into unwarranted administrative bloat. The only school budget item which does justify an increase – teachers’ pay – is the one area where school leaders refuse to spend a dime. This counterproductive action both drives out good teachers and prevents strong candidates from entering the profession.
“War” is an over-used metaphor, certainly — White’s background, teaching in some of the most difficult situations, gives him license to use it. The comparison between our nation’s efforts to secure legitimate peace in Iraq and our efforts to improve schools is a stretch.
But consider my view: Schools make the nation.
(Please continue below the fold) Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | Education, State school boards, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
Earlier I noted what appears to be support from Utah State Board of Education member Tim Beagley for increasing teacher pay. Here’s an editorial from BYU.net, a feature of Brigham Young University, which tends to support the idea. When the conservative end of Utah politics pushes for more money for teachers, can teacher pay raises be far behind? It’s a situation worth watching.
Utah once led the nation in education attainment, and that lead made it an interesting candidate for a tech boom. Rapid growth in the state in the past 15 years led to entirely new problems, including a slow erosion of the strength of the public schools. Utah stumbled. Watching attempts to recover will be interesting. The demographics of the state in the past made Utah examples inapplicable to other states or cities to some policy makers, but the growth made Utah more diverse. It’s worth watching to see if we can learn from Utah’s experience and experiments.
A technology-literate state school board — I also discovered that another member of the Utah board has been blogging for much longer than Mr. Beagley: Tom Gregory has a blog, alt-tag.com. The board has 15 members. I wonder whether other states have a higher percentage of members who have taken to blogging — do you know of any in your state?
Update: Gregory responded at his blog, noting that only two of the Utah board are bloggers, that he knows of. The idea of public officials actually using the internet to discuss policy, seriously, is a bracing idea.
Update July 27: Shut Up and Teach, a blog about education and policy in Arizona, points to a news story in the Tucson Daily Star that average teacher salary in the U.S. fell in the past year, while average superintendent salary rose. Acerbic comments accompany the story.
Leave a Comment » | Education blogs, State school boards, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
A member of the Utah State Board of Education has started his own blog. If I understand the politics correctly, Tim Beagley’s up for reelection this year. A blog, in that case, could be quite an exercise in bravery. It could also be an exercise in stupidity — maybe both at the same time.
In his first post he laments that Utah has fallen behind in spending, but he rather stops short of calling for a lot more money: http://kcmannn.bravejournal.com/index.php.
Utah was the most highly-educated state population in the nation in the not-too-distant past. The line I used to insert into speeches was Utah had an average educational attainment of more than 12 years in school — high school graduation — and that was not only higher than most states, it was remarkable because Utah had a significantly younger population than other states.
Education funding is a key place to improve results, if the money is spent wisely. My view is that teachers’ salaries in almost all cases need to be increased, and in most cases, increased a lot. Teachers are still the front-line workers in education, the people who make all the other delivery system improvements work (or don’t make them work), and the people who really influence children.
Any attempt to improve education without raising teachers’ salaries might be compared to an attempt to improve safety in the airline industry while freezing pilot salaries. We might get the results we want, but it will be despite our gross errors in judgment, not because of them. Let me rephrase that, trying to be more clear: The quick way, and lasting way, to improve education results is to raise teacher pay; we may get better results without raising teacher pay, but it will cost a lot more money to overcome the difficulty of making the system work when the front-line workers are not the best we can get.
I spent my last years in public schools in Utah. I had a handful of great teachers who coached me to do my best. On their efforts I won a National Merit Scholarship. Certainly the administrative decisions to keep our academic day short, and to keep calculus out of the high school curriculum, did nothing to help me achieve. I suspect that is true for most people.
It would be good to see an advocate of increasing education spending declare that openly, and win.
Postscript: I am not in the business of advising candidates for profit any more, but were I , and were he to ask, I’d urge Mr. Beagley to hustle himself to a good portrait photographer right away.
Hat tip to Lavarr Webb’s Utah Policy Daily, at UtahPolicy.com.
1 Comment | Education, Teacher Pay | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell
You are currently browsing the archives for the Teacher Pay category.
Ed Darrell on Texas's Colorado River
Come on in, the water's fine. Come often: Cleanliness is next to godliness.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 