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Higher Pay for Math and Science Teachers
Posted by
samzenpus
on Thu Mar 08, 2007 04:27 PM
from the thank-the-union dept.
from the thank-the-union dept.
Coryoth writes "Following up a previous story, it seems that the Kentucky effort to provide increased pay to teachers with qualifications in mathematics, physics, and chemistry has been gutted. Teachers objected to differential pay, and that portion of the bill was removed. At the same time California has just put forward a similar measure, with differential pay for teachers qualified in mathematics and science. Shockingly 40% of mathematics teachers in California are not fully qualified in the subject — a higher percentage of unqualified teachers than any other subject. Is the Californian effort any more likely to succeed, or is it destined to be similarly gutted? Is there a solution to the woeful lack of qualified mathematics teachers that the Teachers' Union will find acceptable?"
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Paying for Better Math and Science Teachers 660 comments
Coryoth writes "While California is suffering from critical shortage of mathematics and science teachers, Kentucky is considering two bills that would give explicit financial incentives to math and science students and teachers. The first bill would provide cash incentives to schools to run AP math and science classes, and cash scholarships to students who did well on AP math and science exams. The second bill provides salary bumps for any teachers with degrees in math or science, or who score well in teacher-certification tests in math, chemistry and physics. Is such differentiated pay the right way to attract science graduates who can make much more in industry, or is it simply going to breed discontent among teachers?"
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wow (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, only 70% are fully qualified?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
hm. (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
one of the reasons for this is a.) competitive pay, b.) suitable work conditions. I actually considered going into teaching ( BS in architectural engineering) The process involved taking a rather intensive multi discipline test. A test that dealt with college level concepts in everything from math, to the arts, to humanities. You also have to be enrolled in a teaching program. So in order to be a teacher in California you have to a.) have a degree in some field of study. b.) pass the qualification exams (se
Re:Education (Score:5, Funny)
See how easy that is? In mathematics it's called reducing the problem. The Americans are *behind* in education. Any attempt to catch up by improving the education system would necessarily require a period where the Americans admitted somebody else was better than them. Solution: build bigger and better bombs and enslave weak, intellectual societies.
Hmmmm. I think they need to invade smarter, more advanced countries though. Time to get out of Canada, I guess.
Parent
Not a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at the No Child Left Behind debacle? Slowly, county by county, districts are telling the Department of Education to "shove it". My county is among those who have done so, and I'm proud of that.
For now, the federal government only funds like 2% of school budgets, so schools can defy the feds relatively painlessly. But what if the federal government provided 20% of the funding? 80%? You'd get the same mess we are in with the highway funds. As it stands right now, all congress has to do is tell a state, "Change XYZ state law for us, or you can build your own damn roads." I don't want to see that happen with education.
Parent
Empathy (Score:3, Insightful)
The federal government may only directly fund 2% of the average school budget but through their control of the distribution of money they can influence the other 98%. All money (well, a vast majorit
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Education (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, teachers should probably make more money across the board, but the idea that you pay somebody with a highly marketable education the same as somebody who doesn't have nearly as many job prospects simply doesn't work in the real world. I'd be more than happy to consider teaching math or science as a career. I like teaching, I'm reasonably good at getting ideas across, and I have the technical background. As it stands, though, going into teaching could cost me tens of thousands of dollars per year in lost income. That's just too big of a jump to make, so I don't consider it a viable option.
Parent
paying based on seniority encourages laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see why paying people based on merit (versus seniority) is unacceptable. That's how most of the real world works.
Re:paying based on seniority encourages laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:paying based on seniority encourages laziness (Score:5, Interesting)
I've worked in both and I'm currently working in the public sector. It DOES NOT work the same way in the private sector as it does in the public. People here do absolutely nothing but wander around complaining how busy they are. As I've said twice in recent memory including on the last thread about this topic [slashdot.org], the only thing that the vast majority of public sector workers are good at is pretending they're busy.
These people would not survive for 10 minutes where I've worked in the private sector. They would fucking die if they had a 30 minute lunch break and two 15s that were mandated by schedule. They would seriously break down in tears if they were evaluated on hard data instead of gut feeling about their success rates. "Oh wow, I only converted 8%? It really felt like 80%. Something must be wrong there with that data."
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Test scores? Student evaluations?
The problem with comparing education to the "real world" is that education is not a business. Teachers have to take every student that shows up in their class. Businesses get to define their own market.
Re:paying based on seniority encourages laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not a matter of "merit" or "fairness." It's a matter of acknowledging that most people who leave serious technical jobs to teach incur a serious opportunity cost. Limiting your candidate pool to people who would do the job at any price is not really a good idea.
Parent
Re:paying based on seniority encourages laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
But you don't understand. The schools aren't about the students, they are all about the teachers unions. In exactly the same way the big three automakers slowly morphed from being about making cars into social programs for union autoworkers. It is what unions do, and when it is a union in control of a government monopoly like education it gets insane. The schools now exist for the benefit of the teachers, students are at best a useful prop for lobbying for more money. Reality has long been divorced from what goes on inside government schools. Untested fads by fashionable marxists intellectuals get rolled out into classrooms nationwide without any sort of testing, political correctness runs rampant, etc. Accountability is almost non existant. Unless a teacher gets caught in a politically incorrect belief or having sex with a student their odds of being fired for malpractice isn't measurable.
And yet the beauracy is so wretched that no sane person wants to teach even with the fairly good pay (and it IS fairly good pay in most states for the hours worked and the level of education required) in most states and the all but certain job security mentioned above, A doctorate in math or science is not good enough to qualify one to teach unless you can first endure a couple of semesters of mind numbing 'teaching' courses designed to both indoctrinate politically correct views and raise an artifical barrier to entry into the profession.
Parent
Re:paying based on seniority encourages laziness (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have worked in the private sector, government, and academia. In
Re:paying based on seniority encourages laziness (Score:5, Insightful)
1) "But you don't understand." - Sophistry.
2) "The schools aren't about the students, they are all about the teachers unions." - Opinion.
3) "In exactly the same way the big three automakers slowly morphed from being about making cars into social programs for union autoworkers." - Exaggeration and opinion. The Big Three are having issues for many reasons, one of which happens to be the unions.
4) "It is what unions do, and when it is a union in control of a government monopoly like education it gets insane." - Opinion.
5) "The schools now exist for the benefit of the teachers, students are at best a useful prop for lobbying for more money." - Opinion. Sorry to hear you feel this way.
6) "Reality has long been divorced from what goes on inside government schools." - Opinion.
7) "Untested fads by fashionable marxists intellectuals get rolled out into classrooms nationwide without any sort of testing, political correctness runs rampant, etc." - Opinion. While you might have the basis for some sort of legitimate argument here, I'd argue you've got the same thing in most corporations. What's the latest management fad or catchphrase these days?
8) "Accountability is almost non existant." Groundless opinion. You have almost no idea what you're speaking of with this one. Read up on NCLB and learn some.
9) "Unless a teacher gets caught in a politically incorrect belief or having sex with a student their odds of being fired for malpractice isn't measurable." - Opinion, although close to reality. More of the problem with teaching comes from the fact that teaching and administrative jobs are often political in nature, which is the heart of the problem. Most good unions will work with administrators to get bad teachers out of the classroom, but they will insist that the administrators do it the right and legal way. More than a few administrators, though, because they're incompetent political hacks, don't know how to build a case to fire a teacher. Before a teacher receives tenure, he's got little protection, and administrators should do a better job of culling the bad ones sooner.
10) "And yet the beauracy is so wretched that no sane person wants to teach even with the fairly good pay (and it IS fairly good pay in most states for the hours worked and the level of education required) in most states and the all but certain job security mentioned above," - Opinion. I'm quite sane. I enjoy teaching. I love my job despite some of the stupidity that goes on. However, I hear similar complaints from friends and relatives in the corporate world, so it's a wash. I will not argue that the pay is bad because it's not. Still who wouldn't want to be paid more for what they do?
11) "A doctorate in math or science is not good enough to qualify one to teach unless you can first endure a couple of semesters of mind numbing 'teaching' courses designed to both indoctrinate politically correct views and raise an artifical barrier to entry into the profession." - Opinion. Terribly misguided opinion. Just because you know "math" doesn't mean you know how to teach it. Just because you've got a PhD in Molecular Biology doesn't mean you should be in a classroom with special education or ESL students. A few semesters of 'mind-numbing teaching courses' along with some child/adolescent psychology can do wonders for adults who have never worked with children before.
You've written nothing that petulant high school students haven't written before (all you needed to include was "boring teachers" and you'd have pegged yourself as a 17-year old whose Republican or Libertarian daddy filled his head with ideas about evil unions and abolishing government.
Parent
Hmmm...capitalism not all the rage in academia? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some are trying:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion
Perhaps my favorite line from that article is:
Catherine Boudreau, president of the Massachusetts Teach
Solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Gutt the union? They're preventing progression and have become too in control. We're letting them run the show.
Sure you can say "gut the Teachers' Union", but that simply isn't a practicable solution - it simply isn't going to happen, not in the real world. It might be reasonable to suggest measures that weaken the clout of the union, but one way or another you're going to have to work around unions if you actually want to provide a pragmatic, practical, solution that you can can reasonably expect to see implemented and have noticeable results. One proposal in California would see student loans waived for math and
Re:Solution (Score:5, Interesting)
That's exactly what 11,000 air traffic controllers were thinking back in 1981.
At least California has a governor that's packing enough brass to make this practicable, assuming he wants to gamble essentially all of his political capital on this move.
Parent
It's a question of priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
What's more important? A perception of equality between teachers of all subjects, or setting the salaries at the level required to attract teachers qualified to properly educate children in each subject?
I think a more pertinent question is who is more important, the teachers, or the students? Ultimately it is the students that are losing here and it appears that, based on difference in demand (apparently qualified math teachers are very hard to come by in California), the most effective solution is going to be incentives to attract more qualified math teachers. What is needed, apparently, is some way to manage to sell that to the unions, or, at the least, a way to muzzle the union on this issue. The forme
Re:It's a question of priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
Is the perception of equality more important? Or is the education of our children more important?
--
Parent
Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you rank the "usefulness" of someone's study? By time spent in school? Well then my Ph.D. in Linguistics is more "useful" than your MBA. Just because you're good at differential equations doesn't mean that the world needs to pay more for math and science than art. I can influence the masses a hell of a lot better with good writing than with a carefully deduced s
Two types of teacher (Score:3, Insightful)
There are certainly plenty of "those who can't", but there are a small subset who believe in the importance of what they are doing to forgo industry and take the lower pay. I was lucky enough to have a few of them in my high school and it probably encouraged me to head into the field i'm in now. One of our math teachers taught us advanced courses that covered things like Number Theory and Abtract Math; he had us demonstrate how to implement and break RSA encryption and why it could be done in a reasonable time. Our two man chemistry department was entirely staffed with Ph. D's, my favorite Physics teacher could at least explain the basics of quantum theory.
I'm not convinced that salary is everything. It'll certainly solve the "we need more science/math teachers" problem, but it'll probably entice people who were otherwise going to become teachers to specialize in teaching a different field.
This kind of effort will surely cause rifts in the teaching staff, but offering slightly more money isn't going to entice any experts away from industry or tertiary academia.
Re:Two types of teacher (Score:5, Insightful)
2. They are very enthusiastic, and spin their wheels with enthusiasm.
3. About 5-10 years into it, they get cynical. But with that many years behind them, they are not going to switch careers.
2. It generates a lot of (fake) steam, then is loopholed and "special-ed"ed out of commission, at which point everybody forgets the name.
3. The program is about to expire, and everything will go back to traditional mode. This creates a lawsuit hazard, as tens of thousands of students suddenly must pass a test or miss their diploma.
4. A new program is hastily implemented to keep the scores inflated and keep to the students rolling through (read: no lawsuits).
2. Parents roar at the teacher, and send their kid to the school shrink. At this point the student pays attention and dons his worst intellect, in order to pass the evaluation.
3. He is assigned a monitor who is specially responsible to keep an eye on his school (read: make sure he passes).
4. The student has a lot less work to do (the basic package is 1/2 the homework, and it gets worse as you go along), and the teacher is given a dossier (they have some politically correct name for it) on the kid's "condition", and he is required to tailor his lessons for that child's benefit. (There is naturally no way a teacher can tailor the class for a dozen individual kids.)
5. The student passes with good grades, and gets his diploma. He got by with minimal work, the parents are happy, and nobody got sued.
5. Since you can't discriminate against the handicapped or retarded, the diploma has no mention of the fact that the student didn't actually do the work, or that he has any condition.
As for classroom discipline:
2. You cannot dock their grade without the parents getting zealous.
3. You may only send them to the office, where the overworked principle (who spends "half his time making sure we comply with regulations") tells the student to behave or face staying home from school (sounds silly, but it really irks the parents, who suddenly have a kid to babysit).
4. If the teacher saw the kid's drugs, the principle calls the students mom to come (no way will he tell the kid to drop his pants for a search without a parent present). The kid is then sent to the school police officer, and I don't know what he does with him.
5. There isn't much else to do.
Parent
What about language? (Score:3, Insightful)
Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Because among the Teachers' Union's membership there are 40% of mathematics teachers who would become unemployed if a solution were found. A good solution would help two groups of people: Qualified people who are not currently teachers, and students. Neither of those groups is a part of any Teachers' Union.
Re:Short answer (Score:5, Insightful)
It might also provide incentives for the 40% that aren't qualified to take the courses necessary to become so.
Parent
My fiancee was a math teacher in california (Score:3, Insightful)
They can hire an intern for half the price and just get rid of them every year or what they do is put in a permanent sub and recycle them just to meet quotas so they don't get sued. Its disgusting.
The problem really is paying more for math and science teachers. If the schools must pay more for these teachers then they will fire them to save money and use interns.
So why should a teacher get a credential in a subject that could damage his or her career?
Also whats great about unqualified interns is that they do not have to comply with no child left behind. They can claim they could not find enough qualified teachers to fill the position and the schools will no longer have to be held accountable.
As a result she plans to teach in Texas next year. Pay is only a few thousand less a year and the bean counters do not run the schools and do borderline illegal things like what I described above or putting 50 kids to a class room and then change all the teachers in October so they can get away without paying teachers salary for 1 whole year. My jaw dropped when I heard about that.
The Union is hardly the problem (Score:3, Insightful)
In a nutshell, the way you get elected in those parts is to deliver relatively cushy government jobs to your friends and supporters*.
Since funding for schools is already pitiful, the usual strategy is to have lots of low paying teacher jobs, rather than fewer good paying positions. If you pay less per job, you create more porkbarrel positions that will bring you votes.
Kentucky really isn't interested in spending more on schools, and is just using teacher unions as a convenient excuse.
* or hand out fifths of whisky on election day. Or indulge in good old fashioned vote buying. [newsbank.com]
Pay people more, they'll become qualified (Score:5, Insightful)
The task of teaching (Score:5, Interesting)
There is a job to be done, a job some would consider a somewhat sacred task: Ensuring that an entire generation can learn and grow in the best way we know how to do it. That is not an easy task.
We currently have a very limited number of people put into that formal role, and they collectively are not doing what we would consider an acceptable job at it. What should our response be? If our response is to punish and cut resources from that role in general one way or another, then we will be left with even fewer people to fill that role, and those that are left will have an even harder job to do. More than that, the level of respect for these teachers will continue to fall. This isn't such a bad thing, if collapse of such a system is an acceptable result, except that there will be much of an entire generation of children in the lurch.
The recent response to this issue is to push for very strict testing as a way to punish the teachers with the weakest 'performance'. That does improve the measured response, but it has also changed the way we measure the result. I would assert that by doing this, we have left behind the idea that we are trying to truly teach a generation the best way we can, but instead have minimized what we teach in order to assure high scores on a system we invent for ourselves, all in an effort to find someone to punish.
So, is this the best way to get the job done? Is this the way we respect our children's need for education, and the people who are put into the role of opening doors for the children?
Ryan Fenton
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The Objections (Score:5, Funny)
The English teacher wrote a 3-point essay against the proposal.
The History teacher did some research and cited precedent against it.
The PE teacher punched the legislators and sat on their heads.
The Art teacher committed suicide in an ironic statement.
The reason they're protesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Any even more endangered position (such as being known to be worth less salary than others), is much too close to the low-end job market to be comfortable. So - the union isn't protesting just to spite us. It doesn't prefer inefficiency without a cause. It just has to fight for the very future of its members.
Us relatively high paid IT guys, who haven't seen the poverty line from below in most cases, and who can always train themselves something new, tend to ignore how soul-crushing the lack of a professional perspective is. You know what? The job market isn't free. There are huge barriers to entry, especially for people who are, neurologically, too old to learn a new profession. So what the union does isn't protection of assets, it is fight for survival. You need not respect that, but you'd gain insight into their actions by understanding that.
The solution? Why, on-job qualification programs for teachers, of course. But that's a long-term solution. We don't do that unless re-election is certain.
They think they're all worth the same??? (Score:4, Interesting)
Okay, let me get this straight. The preschool teacher is worth the same amount as the person who busts her ass to study and then teach Physics? Even if the AP Physics teacher has an advanced degree?
WTF?
Gah. Certain people need to be whacked with a cluebat. No, miss preschool teacher, you are NOT worth the same as an AP science teacher (Physics? Are they kidding???). If you want the same salary, then GO AND GET THE SAME QUALIFICATIONS and TEACH THE SAME MATERIAL. If you can't do it then you aren't worth it. People need to be paid on their merits -- otherwise there is little incentive for people to do the work to gain that expertise in the first place (and Physics IS an ass-breaker -- otherwise everyone would be doing it).
Why does the union have to step in here? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hate to see unions kill the 'free' job market for everyone and keeping our children dumb. You get paid according to your results, not according your title (although that ideology reverses itself throughout higher management). 'Think of the children', anyone, now you DO have a reason to and you don't.
And I would also like to see (more) practical mathematics in school. Currently most students get it shoved down their throats as a merely theoretical 'boring' lesson while mathematics has much more interesting and practical uses which during my time in school, I never or barely got to see (I got to see them a little in my practicum for electronics, but that's about it).
I almost became a high school science teacher (Score:5, Insightful)
I really wanted to teach, but giving up nearly half my potential income was simply too much. The kids lost out. I met plenty of other students in grad school who felt the same way.
The problem is not lack of money. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the reason American students are falling behind in subjects like math and science is not because teachers aren't getting paid enough, or is it because of a lack of funding. The problems students are facing are far more elemental. They're not being taught basic responsibilities. They're not being taught a work ethic. And they're not being taught to respect anyone or anything.
Instead educators are trying to turn education into entertainment. Lessons are reduced to wacky fun facts. Everything has to be packaged into bite-sized chunks. It isn't just the curriculum. Compare what schools do in the US compared to schools in Asia, for example.
When I was living in Taiwan I observed that school and academics virtually encompassed a student's entire life. It's not like here when kids are looking to get out of school at a nice early hour to go play. First of all, students arrive at school at 8am, if not earlier. Again, unlike the US where some schools have delayed opening until 9am to let students sleep later.
More importantly were the responsibilities Taiwanese students are given. They spend the first half hour, maybe longer, cleaning the school. They actually have them sweeping the floors and cleaning bathrooms. They didn't necessarily do a good job but rest assured that they were much more reluctant to engage in vandalism knowing that they would be cleaning up the mess the following day.
Imagine the uproar if a school tried that sort of thing in the US. I'm sure lawyers would sweep in with their claims child labor laws were violated. But the fact is that this instilled a sense of responsibility in students.
And it's something that followed them through the school day. They often got out of school late in the day, 4pm or 5pm. And many, mainly those in high school would then go to cram schools in the evening to study for graduation exams.
The problem is, if the schools aren't reinforcing the value of education nobody else will. They sure aren't going to learn anything on the streets. Kids in the suburbs can be as bad as those in the cities. And I know people who've experienced these kinds of problems first hand. It's just that wealthy communities are better at sweeping problems under the rug. But there's a very big distinction. Regardles of what those kids in the suburbs do they're constantly exposed to people who are successful. Eventually it gets drilled into most of them that they need to take school more seriously. So it's the environment outside of school that is one of the biggest factors why many more kids in the suburbs go on to college and end up doing reasonably well.
The lack of interest in some subjects comes down to a lack of work ethic. No amount of money or salary increase is going to resolve these problems. The US already spends money on education than any other developed nation and students in those countries still outperform American students.
Re:How Bout Higher Pay for Teacher's Not in Unions (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How Bout Higher Pay for Teacher's Not in Unions (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:How Bout Higher Pay for Teacher's Not in Unions (Score:5, Insightful)
In spite of that, it's not the low pay that bothers me. It's the hours and the working conditions. I get to school at 7:15am. I leave at 5:15pm. If I've had 20 minutes to sit down and have lunch, I'm lucky. Most days I get absolutely no break. And I take homework home every weekend.
I just want fewer students and fewer preps. I want to get to know my students. I want to be able to talk with them. I want to know what they know and what they need to learn. I want to help them when they're struggling, and lift them up when they're having a bad day. I want to get in their face and challenge them. I want them to see that failing is not okay.
I want control over my curriculum. I want my students to decide what's important to them and study math through their ideas. Any curriculum abstracted away from the individual, any curriculum standardized to what some corporate suit things is important will fail to inspire the majority of students. Give me that job. I want to inspire my students. And I have an idea how to do it. But your all-important testing is holding me back.
That's what I want. I'm okay with the money. I'm not okay with the huge number of disengaged students and marginalized teachers.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I dont have access to the current figures but isn't the U.S. ranking someone around 20th worldwide in education quality?
Something like that. Perhaps this is what you were thinking of [usatoday.com]? Of course there are various criticisms of that study, so we shouldn't put too much stock in it. Still, it is notable that the top country, Finland, invested significant money and effort in encouraging as many elementary school teachers as possible to take extra math courses. The reality is that, because mathematics is a layered subject, each new topic building upon understanding of the last, falling a little behind can easily lead to an endles
Re:Well, maybe it SHOULD be gutted. (Score:5, Informative)
It's just asking for personnel issues, and it's creating a teacher economic hierarchy where none currently exists, and none needs to exist.
Parent
Re:Why math and science? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent