Brilliant slam poetry by Taylor Mali about how much teachers really make.
I don’t make nearly as much as that. Do you?
I found that video in my news reader, mdawaffe was likely testing something this weekend, and used that video.
Although, I never saw it, this poem seems to have had an anonymous email life of its own.
Julia and I were having a conversation with her mother and aunt, both teachers, this weekend, about how intense their jobs are this time of the year.
I am still embarrassed for Don Dodge thinking that teachers are fairly compensated. He is correct that teachers do not have enough incentives, but his compensation math gets an F.
Don’s Lijit widget on this post lists Alfred Thompson’s People Who Know Nothing About Schools Telling Us How to Fix Them and he suggests the largest problem groups are:
* Government officials and the rules they lay down
* Parents and the lack of support they give education
* Students and their lack of willingness to do their part
* Voters for not supporting the needs of good education
Is there a more important job? Why do we treat teachers so relatively poorly?
3 Comments
If you look at the situation as “what they do is important” and “what they make in a year is only average,” yeah, they appear to be getting a raw deal.
But there’s more to it than that. And even in the capitalistic sense, there’s no real way to know whether or not they are treated fairly until unions stop eliminating incentives, until the government stops having a monopoly on the marketplace, and until the purchasers of the service (parents) start having direct financial leverage against the schools (and thus, the teachers).
Once those things happen, we can talk about fairness. Until then, we have no leverage to do anything, so it’s sort of pointless.
Lloyd, Funny you should mention this. I was just thinking about teacher salaries again last week.
The presidential election debates are starting up again and sure enough they all say we need to pay teachers more. Of course the president and congress have absolutely no authority or control over teacher pay…but it makes for a nice sound bite.
Is there any evidence that paying teachers more money would result in better schools, higher test scores, or better students? I mean real evidence, not intuitive extrapolations. I haven’t seen any evidence.
Perfect. This is something the Bill Gates Foundation should study. Lets answer this question once and for all. Contribute the money necessary to pay teachers 20% more or even 30% more for five years. Do it in 10 school districts across the country to make sure there is no regional bias and a large enough sample size to see real trends.
First get a baseline of teacher salaries, experience, class size, test scores, graduation rates,and whatever other metrics make sense. Once the baseline is established start paying the teachers higher salaries, and do it for 5 years…long enough to see some results. Measure the results every year against the baseline to see any trends.
My guess is there are many many other factors involved in classroom success, and raising teacher salaries would not, in and of itself, result in better outcomes.
Local school boards across the country set teacher salaries. There are thousands of school board districts and they all compete to recruit the best teachers. I would say the free market does a good job of determining fair and competitive pay. Blanket statements like “teachers are underpaid” have no basis in fact.
While I don’t believe teachers are underpaid I would like to know if paying them more would result in better student outcomes. Are there any existing studies on this?
BTW, don’t feel sorry for me…I do know how to do math…very well.
Don Dodge
Don Dodge, in your article and again here you make some very good points, but when someone makes such a blatant error it is difficult for me to focus on anything else, worse when it is the fundamental basis for your assertion.
I know you are good at math related to economics, that is why your poor math here surprised me.
You do get full marks for effort with your nice graph and references, and full marks for coming across authoritatively arm chair analysis.
Teachers work a heck of a lot more than 180 days per year! Because of the severity of the error, I will have to stand by you losing full marks and receiving an F.
You suggest I am making a blanket statements not based on fact. What does that make your assertions?
Consider the video, I think that sentiment amongst teachers is as true today. The few teachers that I talked to last year in California and here in Victoria, BC, Canada seem to be under compensated — I am talking total compensation, maybe other benefits like the long summer could further offset the financial ones.
You claim “the free market does a good job of determining fair and competitive pay”. Like me you work in the IT sector what do we know about fair and competitive pay? I dance with joy everyday that I work in an overcompensated field.
I don’t make nearly as much as teachers do. How much do you make?
You invoke the Bill Gates Foundation, and the Gates personal and their foundation’s focus on education is wonderful, but I doubt that there is not experiences in other countries that can be studied first — I wonder if that could of saved the Gates their previous expensive and negative lesson regarding school size.
I agree with both you and Mark J that they these are complex problems with many parties that need to take responsibility and work on the solutions. To say that compensation is not part of it or something that needs to wait on other parts of the problem seems ignorant.