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RE:  USA Today Article on Education Courses

I wonder how many of the degrees awarded are graduate education degrees. These are the cash cows of universities, online and private alike. Teachers take these usually low-quality programs to move up the pay scale. I can’t blame teachers for this because this is the way the incentive structure is currently aligned. 

Ideally, I would like to see any incentive structure that is not based solely on graduate degrees and years of experience (though they certainly should have a role). More consideration should be given to subject taught (a science/math/special education teacher should make more than other teachers, basic supply and demand), the type of school (a teacher should make more if they are teaching a hard to serve district, and also student gains (measured by testing, student surveys, but also anecdotal data). I would love to hear what else should go into a pay structure…

I think the overall low quality of schools and programs, especially those outlined in the USA Today article is one of the major reasons why the teaching field is disrespected today. We need to recruit and produce stronger teachers. Typically, we recruit our teachers from the lowest half of SAT scores (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_128.asp), this is simply unacceptable. Maybe the pay changes outlined above will encourage our strongest performing scholars in high school and college to enter our most important field. 

Unions are not cool because they provide their members with benefits: health, vacation, sick pay and a real wage.  My!   Such impropriety.  Such foolishness.  Heavens we can get workers a dime a dozen and when we don’t need the anymore, we get newer, younger, less informed workers and wear them out too.
This is a great country…with such a short and confused memory.  Union activity could have prevented the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.  Union activity created child labor laws.  Union activity prevented poverty level existence for miners.
What we have become is lackadaisical and more than complacent.
We get our history from a film made for propaganda purposes and the POST covers it!
Nuts!

MERIT PAY??????

Give it to the principals, teachers, and staff of the schools that do well NO MATTER HOW MANY “NEEDY” STUDENTS the DOE PURPOSELY places inside these particular schools.  BIGGEST story of the year – DOE admits to dumping NEEDY students into failing comprehensive high schools to keep the BOUTIQUE small schools at A and B ratings.  NOW, the state stepped in and it’s going to change.

What the hell is going on with the press here?  This is the story and it’s not even out there.  This is DISGUSTING!!!

Give these staff members the merit pay - of the schools that were closed and are closing due to SET-UP PROCEDURES.  The DOE has gotten away with murder with  this one and no one really cares.  Where the hell is the press on this story???

Let’s take all the “NEEDIEST” kids and put them in _____________ H.S. and watch it fail, while keeping the mini schools inside the builing thriving WITHOUT these type of kids.  NICE JOB DOE!!!  It’s kool though, no one cares and you know it!!!

Johnny King steps in and now you’re really going to see it hit the fan.  In a few years, every high school will be a C or a D, unless certain high schools are spared of “NEEDY” kids.  What a SCAM!!!  Dear Parents, you guys are MORONS!!!!!

From the NY1 story:  ”Experts say the issue is not the special needs of individual students but the concentration of so many needy students in one school.”

Mary — the above-sentence, and the story itself, talks about “schools” and not “classrooms,” but is “the concentration of so many needy students in one *school*” a problem because it necessarily leads to the segregation of “needy” students from “non-needy” students on a *classroom* level?  If so, what’s the answer to whether “needy” and “non-needy” students should be in the same classrooms?  Many experts seem to say yes and many others seem to say no.  And I can’t really wrap my mind around it because there are so many variations and degrees of “special needs.”  Obviously I’m not well-versed in this area, but I’m interested.

So should elementary school teachers make more than high school teachers, after all if a kid can’t read, she can’t learn.  Are English, Art, and PD teachers to be paid less because these subjects are not as “important” as math and science? In my experience, all teachers in a school collaborate to make the school great.  It’s hard to tease out the individual contributions of each teacher because all teachers have an impact.  It’s hard to tease out the cumulative effect of the teachers who have come before you on a child’s academic performance.  You may think there’s a star teacher who deserves more pay, but for every star teacher there’s a typical hard-working teacher quietly doing his job.  I don’t think teaching has ever been a greatly respected field because the complexities of teaching have never been truly understood.  Today you have policymakers with a lot of respect for their own opinions, and no understanding of teaching, making decisions about a profession they don’t truly understand.

You claim to be a UFT Chapter Leader? You must be one of those people who ran to pad their resumes to become an Assistant Principal.

The answer can be found in the recommendations PFSA submitted to Governor Cuomo last month,  
“Make mandatory/enforce enrollment of a cross-section of Level 1-4 students in all non-specialized/community high schools (middle schools), ending the practice of “warehousing” students who require remediation – and who happen be the neediest and most academically challenged.”
Through the years “failing” schools have been forced to enroll students needing remediation – the system (from NCLB to RTTT to Mayoral Control, etc) created this situation which many now term, “Failure By Design.”
Concentration is the key to it all.  It is simply not possible for a school to “succeed” (percentages/numbers-wise) if within its walls each child (ie – all 1400) isn’t able to learn/master the curriculum (lets not get started on that).
This is when someone at Tweed will cite Truman HS in the Bronx (that’s another “reply”).
Children with Special Needs fall into this category as well, they are part of the example above and often have IEPs that have been tailored to their specific needs.  I am not a Special Education Expert, but I side with many of the moms I know all over NYC when I express the deepest concern for children who have learning disabilities…now more than ever.

Thanks, Mary. 

That is a fair critique. Maybe you don’t compensate based on ability, but on hard to staff subjects and and difficult to serve schools

Sprinkle Its all about the compensation and splitting the union and you say your a union rep. So some people should be paid more then others. Someone said it above “making decisions about a profession you really don’t understand”.

I think those are valid criticisms of using the SAT metric. The trend holds true for the GRE as well, unfortunately.
 
The more important point is that we need to get the strongest applicants that we can possibly get into the profession. Schools of Education (especially graduate schools of education) are cashcows for their universities that accept basically everyone. For example, a student most keep a 2.75 at Stony Brook, certainly a low bar.

The larger question is how can we recruit the strongest applicants into the field so that those from top tier universities find teaching a desirable field and are willing to stay longer than the 2/3 year TFA commitment?

I do not think all great teachers need to graduate from great universities. Some of the best teachers I know in NYC went to CUNY schools. In fact, I see more teachers from ivy league schools wash out and leave teaching in NYC than teachers who went to run of the mill colleges/universities. Pedagogue theory taught at prestigious grad schools is all fine and dandy. However, inner-city teachers need to have that sense of “kid/street smarts” that many times is either an innate skill or something that is developed from experience working with or growing up with inner city kids before one becomes a teacher. That is not to say that that many ivy leaguers are not or can’t become good teachers. However, the real day to day skills of being a NYC teacher are never going to be able to be taught in any college classroom or university. There is an old saying that veteran cops tell rookies: “Don’t believe everything you learned at the academy”.

“Schools of Education (especially graduate schools of education) are cashcows for their universities that accept basically everyone.”

That’s probably true of most areas of graduate study.  As long as student loans are available and there’s not a faculty shortage (as there is in nursing), there seems to be no limit to the number of schools willing to take students’ money.  The more relevant question is how many of these students can find a decent job after graduating.  I imagine it’s tough going out there for new teachers.  But it’s probably better than being among the ocean of PhDs that get spat out of America’s top humanities graduate programs each year, compete for the 12 tenure-track positions available, and then, uncertified and having spent their student loans studying Derrida instead of taking education courses, queue up to apply for teaching jobs at private schools.

Unfortunately you are not going to find many young people who are thinking of choosing a career that pays less than many other professions, and is not really held in highesteem by many people in the country, especially those students themselves.
I know when I graduated HS in 2000 I thought that a teaching career was for mediocre students for whatever reason, that was why I went into engineering. My past self would be.shocked.to learn that I now teach HS math and feel that teaching is incredibly hard and worthwhile.

PSprinkle, not a persona attack but if you truly are a UFT CL, I will find it incredibly entertaining if you raise your hand at a delegate assembly and speak to some of the points you’ve posted here. I think you’ll quickly realize that your E4E group, though heralded by the rich powers that be in the media, is really an inconsequential and insignificant teeny tiny group.