Posted on 03/07/2008 7:48:16 PM PST by Amelia
A New York City charter school set to open in 2009 in Washington Heights will test one of the most fundamental questions in education: Whether significantly higher pay for teachers is the key to improving schools.
The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.
The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality — not star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives — is the crucial ingredient for success.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I'm trying to figure out which schools raise the national average of teacher pay...I'm not there yet...
Yeah, that’s it. Throw money at it and it will be better.
The answer is NO!
THAT"S been proven over and over, a thousand times over.
Only higher pay for GOOD teachers matters.
why teachers should be compensated so much above social workers, police, counselors, cpas', etc is beyond me...they work 1/2 a year in reality....
Pay should be based on success as it is in the private sector. If that is the case then we will see either colossal positive change or collosal failure. Should be an interesting experiment either way.
Prison guards in California make that kind of money. “Pay me now or pay me later.”
“The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers”
It works in the business world; why not education?
Sorry, as a teacher I disagree. The calender year may show only 190 days...but most private-sector people only work 240 days a year.
The days may work out to be less, but the hours certainly do not, I (and most other teacher’s I know) spend about 12 hours a day between work, planning, and grading.
Trust me we (at least the ones who care) work the same hours every year just in fewer days. The whole time we have to deal with dead-beat parents and incompetent administrators.
I don’t disagree that some teachers are overpaid or a waste of space. However, there are many more who do a lot of work and really are not well compensated compared to the private sector.
Also the teachers will work longer hours and assume more duties than the normal NY teacher, and the students will tend to be from the lower socioeconomic levels.
It certainly would be a good start.
My school district has just over 1500 students with over 12 administrators making over $70,000 a year. Meanwhile the average teacher makes about $33,000 and have gone two years without ANY raise, while admin get a 4% raise every year.
Maybe they should also try requiring that for that kind of pay, teachers must have been at the top of their college graduating class instead of the bottom as the majority of the teachers in the U.S. are.
You didn’t read the article. See post #11.
Not all teachers have an education background in college.
I am non-traditional, it seems to be that elementary teachers are dumb, while high school teachers are very strong on academically, especially on their content area.
To label all teachers as ignorant is simply ignorant.
Yes, exactly the idea. I hope the paper will continue covering the school...I’m interested to see whether or not it works.
This overhead drain is a BIG problem. Local school boards would be wise to tackle this first an foremost.
Hey Babe! I got news for you. Most of us work 24/7 x 365 paying the morons produced by the public school system and being forced to give them benefits and worker’s comp.
We pay our taxes quarterly and our own benefits. Gov’t jobs are cush compared, try running your own. Everybody deals with a** holes no matter where you go. The populace is getting dumber and dumber as years go by but our property taxes are going through the roof, all to pay for “the education of the Children”. Somebody hand me a barf bag!
We work our asses off so that our kids never have to darken the door of a public Government school.
There are eight public school teachers in my life. Every single one of them sends their children to private or paroichial school.
What does that say?
It’s just the facts.
Actually I did read the article but more importantly, I understood what I read.
“only those scoring at the 90th percentile in the verbal section of the GRE, GMAT or similar tests need apply”...
I don’t care what they score on a single test. If they skate through college and then score in the top 10% on a test, they should be rejected. I witness teachers everyday who are on autopilot and not taking their responsibilities seriously. There are enough of them in the public schools and giving them more pay is not going to solve anything.
How you apply yourself during your ENTIRE time in school is more reflective of how you will conduct yourself at your job and should be the determining factor on if you get the job. Show me a student who gave 100% of themselves in high school and then in college and I’d be willing to pay them six digits to teach.
To me, it says you live in a liberal urban area in either the Northeast or California.
Am I correct?
YO!
My school district had its budget voted down on the first run (passed on the second) two years in a row. Caused the gay superintendent who had gotten a sports car and other benefits for his live-in partner to leave in shame. No one was happy with the school board for that nonsense.
Actually make that a small town poulated by the nouveau riche.. but no matter. It’s like that all over N.E.
Then the solution is:
Less bureacracy so that less paperwork is needed
Books that don’t change nearly as often, so less cirriculum planning is needed
More scantron tests
“it seems to be that elementary teachers are dumb, while high school teachers are very strong on academically”
Your bias is showing.
Twenty seven states x 32 years + witnessing thousands of teachers = first hand knowledge. And trust me, even though I was not the one to use the word ignorant and you were, there are a lot of ignorant teachers in America. Mostly, there are a lot of lazy teachers in America.
Forget the engineers, we would be better off bringing in teachers from India.
Teachers spend more time with students than their parents. If you don’t have the heart to teach, the students results will not be changed by merely money. Kids always know what’s real and what’s not.
Okay, you read the article, but you still think teachers who are willing to take larger than average classes of low-performing children, who must undergo multiple "telephone and in-person interviews" as well as "three live teaching auditions," and must also "submit multiple forms of evidence attesting to their students’ achievement and their own prowess" are probably "on autopilot" and are being judged on their performance on a single test?
These folks are clueless, and worse, they are dangerous.
Unless there is an incentive pay scale, this is nothing more than a different way to extract more money from the taxpayers and transfer it to teachers pockets. At the children’s expense.
So they are going to only take the top 10% as measured by testing? Big friggin deal. How about getting someone from industry who knows the subject at hand? How about getting teachers who have proven they can teach? No, lets keep selecting teachers they way we’ve been selecting them for decades.
BECAUSE, this is about setting up a PC school that “caters to the poor people”, not to those who can excel.
This kind of feeling instead of thinking is why the United States school system is an unmitigated disaster.
How long have you been teaching?
You’ve never actually held a job in the real world, have you?
Do me a favor, go ask any U.S. Marine if jumping through those “interviews, auditions, and multiple forms” for a six digit paycheck would be an ordeal. When they are through laughing at you, come back here and buy a clue for $100.
“Teachers spend more time with students than their parents.”
Cow dung.
Almost 15 years.
You’ve never actually held a job in the real world, have you?
Actually, yes, I have, for about the same period of time I've been teaching. It paid a lot better, but the intrinsic rewards were much less.
Have you ever taught school?
Do me a favor, go ask any U.S. Marine if jumping through those “interviews, auditions, and multiple forms” for a six digit paycheck would be an ordeal. When they are through laughing at you, come back here and buy a clue for $100.
So are you a U.S. Marine? And would you consider teaching at this charter school?
Read the full article and get back with me.
To label all teachers as ignorant is simply ignorant.
Well. All of that quote belongs to you. I'm sure, with your immense brilliance, you'll have no trouble explaining the contradiction.
You’ve never held a job that required you to wear a beeper, have you?
Try being beeped 24/7 x 365 days a year. Yes, that’s right, even on vacation. Because when the multimillion dollar computers go down and none of the idiot middle managers back at the office know what to do and heaven forbid some teacher might miss their flight for their latest junket and complain to their congressman, someone has to be there to unscrew things. And guess what? That someone is definitely not making six digits, nor do they have premium health care, or a golden retirement package.
Oh...please...don’t talk logic!
Please put me on the public school list...
Having worked in both public & private sectors and as both an individual contributor and a middle manager, I’d say there are slackers in both environments, but it sucks for everybody below V.P. level.
Oh for Gods sake, they compare a teacher wages to an orthodontist?
Surely they aren't trying to make us feel sorry for the teachers are they? No one who has two brain cells buys that kind of comparison.
And then, they are going to select their raw materials based on skin color?
NOT ONE, I REPEAT, NOT ONE private sector industry would risk a 'new', expensive, venture on such an foolish model. But then, this is 'new' only in the sense that they can sell it as such.
Some articles don't need to be read, you can sense the idiocy in the excerpt.
Thank you! So true...and since I spend much of my time undoing all the garbage that liberals have been feeding them about US Gov’t and US History, I am truly earning my keep...and putting in many hours on nights and weekends grading, tutoring, and planning my class sessions.
BTW, I get paid less than a third of what this guy is offering...I’m in my 50s...
Let’s look at this way...who brings more value to our world...a good teacher or a bad lawyer? Now which one gets paid more.
The defense rests.
But they ARE being paid what they are worth.
If they want more money, go to the private sector and earn your worth there.
Our Founding Fathers set up an unbiased system to measure our value to the country. As a teacher, you should know that.
“PRIVATIZE THE SCHOOL SYSTEM. GET THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE EDUCATION BUSINESS.”
That deserves to be in caps.
BTW, I had a career in the private sector for years...this is a second career...I’ve never made as little unless you count my first job, and have never felt what I was doing was more important.
We all know there are lousy workers out there, and of course the NEA has been protecting the bad ones for ages. Many of us go into a private school...not because the money is better (most of the time, it isn’t...no tax money, and no union) but because we believe what we are doing is critical for the world.
Now, I don’t know how this guy is going to measure “success”, but if he is going to apply the capitalist idea of better pay for better performance, this forum should support this. What we are ALL skeptical about is whether they will properly assess “work performance.”
As for privatizing...GOOD teachers love merit pay...for the public schools, the unions will NEVER allow it.
Hopefully, my private school will implement a master teacher program next year.
Time for the "I have a Dream..." speech.
Seriously though, I know that the government run school system is a sacred cow - but if we just got the government out of the schools we'd improve the product. The consumers would talk with their wallets. Good teachers would get rewarded, students that wanted to learn would be in schools with other students who wanted to learn.
Other ancillary benefits: In California we spend $38 Billion a year on the K-12 school system. Cut that out of the budget, and we could zero out the property taxes -- so that people could really own their property and not be serfs to the state (i.e, obliged to the state to pay taxes or lose their homes)...
And here is the way to do it - see my post #6 on this thread...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1982339/posts
If all teachers were forced to uphold standards at this level, the system would winnow out quickly those that are really unqualified to teach and leave those that are the brightest and the best as the instructors.
It will be interesting to see if this works.
No, it won't, cause everyone would like to earn that kind of money so everyone will be applying.
What's needed it to get rid of tenure and make sure that teachers understand that if they don't put out, they're out of a job, not promise them that if they tough it out for a certain number of years, they're set for life regardless of how they do as a teacher. Anyone can last long enough for that kind of job security.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.