Teachers in America
B (still looking for an appropriate nickname) forwarded this op-ed article to me this morning about how teachers are so grossly underpaid that many of them have to keep second jobs over the summer or even during the school year. The authors point out that the starting salary for a teacher with a master’s degree is around $15,000 less than the average across all professions. And with NCLB, there is even more pressure for teachers to do well, more job insecurity, but the same lousy salary. The only thing to work toward is not-getting-fired.
Imagine that scenario in the private sector. A chief executive decides he wants better performance from his company. He issues a mandate that all employees be highly qualified. Then he proposes, as No Child Left Behind does, that the staff members be more tightly controlled, that they conform closely to his top-down directives and that they be tested yearly to keep their jobs. And he wants all of this without raising salaries a penny. Who would want to work for such an outfit?
The authors then point out how rigorous demands are placed on teachers with serious consequences, yet so little respect is accorded the profession:
There’s almost something darkly comic about it all. We place the highest demands on a profession, and not just through the teacher-quality provisions of the legislation. We have unarticulated expectations that teachers be morally and ethically unimpeachable, possessed of dynamic, compelling personalities and agile minds and capable of guiding the learning, for example, of 35 hormonally charged 13-year-olds right after lunch.
After asking that of them, we pay them so little that they have to find work selling electronics and cleaning our houses. Is it any surprise that 45 percent of new teachers leave our schools within the first five years?
Why does this have to be an op-ed piece? Are these points not painfully obvious to any breathing human being? The authors suggest creating bonds to raise the necessary funds to find, train, and retain better educators. I don’t know anything about bonds, but it is clear that someone should be trying something to clear this problem up. It’s just like our government to put these laws in place without giving states the means to make the necessary changes.
Obviously, as a former teacher, it frustrates me to no end to think about this stuff. I think it has to do with the lack of respect that teachers get in this country. So many people think that it’s such an easy job, and that anyone with subject-matter knowledge can do it, and that teachers get it so great having so much vacation time. What people do not know is that good teachers need to give a little bit of themselves up every day to their students. It’s emotionally draining and time consuming. When I was teaching I worked 70 hour weeks, and that was when there were not special circumstances like exam-writing, parent conferences, sporting tournaments, or the like. I loved it, and I didn’t mind working hard for my kids, but it sure did burn when people told me that teachers should get paid less since they only work 9 months out of the year.
At any rate, I will quit with the ranting now. B is probably rolling her eyes as she reads. but hey, she started it, right?
Reading, Writing, Retailing [New York Times]
