The $100,000 Teacher

'The $100,000 Teacher' is a book that I ran across in hopes to find some alternatives in the way that the public school system is being run. I think that Brain Crosy highlights some interesting ideas.

"The country that houses the world's best universities also boasts a third-world kind of kindergarten through 12th grade (K-12) public education system."

"Much of public education is on automatic pilot. So many teachers are zombies, taking out the same list of study questions, the same chapter test year after year. Once a test is done, there is little analysis of what went wrong, what should be the next plan of action. The assembly line never rests, it constantly moves, and teachers push on regardless of results."

"The system must respect its teachers before society can. It must release its stranglehold on teachers in the classroom and give them their freedom. Emancipate them."

"Why are teachers hesitant to share lesson plans or work together? The answer is simple: they aren't used to doing that. Nothing in the daily work schedule provides or fosters such collaboration. . . . What ends up happening is that teachers remain cocooned in their classworld, with only student results offering feedback on lessons."

"Teaching is a good gig, and those who wish to take advantage of its weaknesses can do so throughout their careers. . . . Once administrators decide to retain a teacher after the first few years, that's it. The district has that teacher for life--and so do the students. Well, the gig is up."

"Too many teachers are from the bottom rung of college graduates. The average SAT and GRE scores of teachers are lower than for other professions. Some colleges allow candidates with GPAs as low as a C- to enter teacher preparation programs."

"How shameful is it that so many teachers do not know the subject that they teach? What could be more basic than that?"

"For too long the education establishment has been willing to accept less than stellar talent. This is reflected on teacher evaluation forms that give principals only two options to check: "satisfactory" or "unsatisfactory," "does meet expectations" or "does not meet expectations." No other options are available, not "outstanding" or "exceeds expectations," which is precisely the point. If the system does not expect its most important employee group to excel, then what should students expect?

"Teachers need to trade job security for professional integrity. . . . There needs to be a real threat to teachers that they may lose their jobs if they don't meet minimum standards."

"Polls all across America show that people believe the best way to improve student learning is through improved teacher quality."

"When done well, teaching is a highly demanding, mentally exhausting, stamina-draining, energy-depleting activity. Teachers are performers working to engage their audience every minute of every day. It's all "live" with no TelePrompTers and hardly any time for rehearsal."

"Teachers are not viewed as independent thinkers. Instead, they are looked down on as people who are best dictated to, told when to shop up for work, what forms to fill out, what meetings to attend, when to turn grades in, where to go at what time. Teachers should be more like partners in a law firm rather than clerks in a department store."

"The most important component in the classroom to make a true impact on the student is not the 2.0 gigahertz Pentium IV computer; it is the well-paid and much more thoroughly trained teacher."

"Good teachers deserve $100,000 and more if public education is to serve its customers, the students, well into the 21st century. Increasing teachers' salaries significantly is the best way to markedly improve the state of public education."

"A six-figure salary shouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for an exceptional teacher. The key is earn--evaluated on criteria demonstrating exemplary teaching ability. Not all teachers deserve that kind of money; in fact, many deserve a pay cut."

"Teachers in high-demand fields, such as math and science, should be paid more."

"Offering to pay a public school teacher $100,000 may shock some, but talented people want to be paid what they're worth, and too many have chosen other, more profitable professions. With the worst teacher shortage in public school history looming, isn't it about time that something dramatic is done to attract more and better people into teaching? How often do city officials say they need to "attract the best people" or "remain competitive with the private sector" when rationalizing six-figure salaries for their employees? Why don't the same standards apply to hiring top-notch teachers?"

"The best teachers can expect to do is to double their beginning salary during the course of their career if they have an advanced degree. . . How can a salary schedule like this motivate teachers to continue enriching their teaching practices when there is no financial incentive to do so?"

"It is the expert teacher who has the greatest impact on a student's learning, who handles the delivery system of education to the student. And those who deliver the goods deserve just compensation."

"If society as a whole, and parents in particular, want the United States to have an exemplary K-12 system, then money is going to have to be spent on hiring higher-quality teachers."

"Taxpayers should expect a link between pay and performance, but teachers should demand it; it's their quickest ticket out of their professional ghetto."

"Career ladders need to be established to motivate teachers to better themselves, giving them opportunities to pursue higher salaries and prestige."

"Teachers are the Rodney Dangerfields of the professional world: They get no respect."

"As nice as it is to have Day of the Teacher and Teacher Appreciation Week proclamations, the fact that these Hallmark moments exist at all speaks volumes about the teaching profession's lack of prestige."

"When's the last time you were handed a business card from a teacher? Have you ever seen a teacher's license hanging on the wall in a classroom? What prevents the teaching profession from attaining the same level of public respect as law and medicine?"

"The daily working conditions of the teacher need upgrading. Teachers should not have to do secretarial work such as answering phones and photocopying."

"The classroom environment is interrupted frequently by intercom announcements and phone calls, destroying the carefully constructed learning ambiance."

"Society shovels students and teachers into cramped quarters that any mid-sized business would be ashamed to invite clients to."

"Educational buildings look the worst: less money goes into designing and building a school than a city hall, courthouse, or even a prison. Not only are these buildings the least appealing to the eye, they are also the last on the list to renovated or replaced. It's estimated that the average age of a school is 40 years old."

"If schools were office buildings and housed only adult workers, Congress would pass a law denouncing the conditions, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration would draw up guidelines to clean them up, closing some schools down."

"States and districts need to provide teachers with ample supplies in the most stress-free way possible; offices with reliable, up-to-date equipment; a team of support personnel whose main job is to be there for the teachers; whatever they need to perform their jobs at a high standard of quality in the classroom."

"To reform teaching, teacher training needs to gain status. The quality of teachers will not improve unless the quality of teacher education improves first."

"Hiring people who haven't taken one course in teaching methodology, or delivered one lesson to real students, makes a mockery of all those teachers who have taken all those courses and delivered all those lessons."

"There's no such thing as an emergency license to cut someone's hair, so why should there be shortcuts to educating a child?"

"Let's face the hard-to-swallow truth: There are simply not enough smart people in the field of education, and the smartest people are not necessarily in charge. Remember, if a majority of teachers have average SAT scores, so do the administrators running the schools."

"When a mediocre teacher becomes a mediocre administrator, who then hires new mediocre teachers, a cyclical effect occurs where mediocrity reigns supreme."

"Unions need to stop protecting incompetent instructors. In their pursuit of contracts that follow the Three Musketeers' motto--all for one and one for all--they have failed America's parents and children by allowing the proliferation of mediocre teachers, granting them tenure few people in other professions enjoy."

"The American people think unions serve a role, but they want bad teachers to be fired, not be given a lifetime job without the possibility of a termination."

"Unions need to mature and move past their blue-collar perspective to that of a white-collar professional group. The dynamics of the teacher/district relationship resemble those of labor/management. In this factory model, the district is clearly in charge, and the teachers hold no authority. This has to change."

"Unions have had a positive impact on teacher salaries and working conditions in the past. . . . Now, however, their goals need to reach to a loftier level. . . [they] must come to realized that their future depends on strong teachers leading the fight toward professional pay and working conditions."

"Politicians act as silent partners in the classroom, deciding which textbooks to place in the teacher's hands, which laws to post on the teacher's bulletin board, and even which writing standards to put on the teacher's chalkboard. They need to let the teachers do the teaching."

"At a time when politicians are demanding accountability, and state education departments want new standards, teachers can't get supplies, phones, books, or clean rooms. If legislative bodies spent their time working on these issues, then teachers could concentrate on teaching to their students. Politicians need to leave the teaching to the teachers."

"The taxpaying public deserves to see results from schools, but not at the expense of real content-embedded lesson plans. Smart teachers are better off paying lip service to mandated testing, and doing what the best teachers have always done about each new fad that's supposed to cure education that comes crashing down on them: close their doors, rollup their sleeves, and get on with the gritty business of true teaching."

"A hard fact must be accepted: There simply are not enough talented people in today's teaching force to ensure that the vast majority of America's 53 million school children are receiving a quality education. However, that could change if steps are taken to elevate the professionalism of teaching to pull in higher-caliber people."

"Teachers should know (and be held accountable for knowing) the subject area they teach."

"Politicians have to relinquish taxpayers' money earmarked for special programs, be it Title I or Internet connections and pool the money to create a legitimate professional pay scale."

"Teachers are going to have to be trained in a body of knowledge specific only to the teaching field so that, like law and medicine, teaching evolves into a highly selective, specialized field that the majority of people are not capable of succeeding in."

"Until the applicant pool is enlarged to attract more talented individuals from more lucrative fields, the most critical job in America will remain in critical condition."

"No one stops to think about the possibility of giving teachers--you know, those people who are with the kids all day long, the people who are trained to educate--the power to decide what's good for the kids, what might be useful to try, or what resources might be needed to maximize kids' learning potential."

"For teachers to collaborate, they must be relieved of teaching time. . . . Lawyers have paralegals. Teachers need parateachers."

"Teachers would not be in the classroom on Mondays. Parateachers would be in charge of the students, so that teachers could undertake a variety of activities to strengthen their instructional time with the students."

Won't work.

When we moved from Trumbull, CT (Fairfield County) in 1992, the average teacher was earning $ 52,000 in salary (not including benefits or the short work year).

I have no idea what it is today but after 11 years, it most surely is higher.

I can guarantee you there has been no improvement whatsoever in any objective standard of the student body.

Also, when we left in 1992, Trumbull was in excess of 10K per student. Others, such as Westport & Greenwich, were even higher.

If someone has the time & the skills, check out the improvement in the past 11 years. I've done exercises like this in the past and I won't waste my time again.

Remember to discount today's SAT scores as they were "renormed" about 10% a few years ago.

I'll agree that the seniority thing sucks! However, this is our first year in public school, and it was much better than private Christian school.

The kindegarten teachers worked as a team. One of them focused on academics, and the other one focused on the arts. At the end of the year, they sent home a journal that the kindegarten students had written and drawn pictures of throughout the year. For each student, they made a book with pictures that the kids had drawn throughout the year. The pictures were a self-portrait, pictures of parties and field trips. Glued onto the pictures were photographs of each kid. It must have taken hours to put together, and it is beautiful!

One of my daughters has a severe speech problem due to brain damage. She did not know all of her letters or sounds, and her writing was very sloppy. Well, she now can read better than my gifted child did after he finished a private Christian kindergarten. She also can write a complete paragraph (not just a sentence). Her drawing abilities have improved immensely. She was also in the kindergarten play, and said 2 lines in front of over 100 people. (Big accomplishment for her) She felt great about herself.

My other kindergarten daughter is reading chapter books. She's writing great paragraphs with lots of details. The teachers didn't just focus on the slow kids, they focused on each kid.

My third grade son also had a fantastic teacher. He's gifted at math, and she always challenged him. He was weak with writing when he started the school, and now he's writing better than me.

The moment money is stolen from parents, in order to finance government schools, the parents are infantilized, in their own and their children's, because taxing money away for schooling says that the parents are incapable of spending the money wisely on an education THEY control.

So, the first step to reform is to abolish government funding of schooling, and government running of schools.

Once parents, grandparents, and charitable individuals are paying for education, and parents are in control, all the problems discussed in this article, and every other article about education, will disappear.

You will appreciate knowing that people like my daughter do decide to become teachers in the public school system. She was accepted at several Ivy League Schools, but chose a conservative Presbyterian school, because there were no co-ed dorm, strictly enforced rules regarding drinking and drug use on campus, and it had an excellent reputation for academic excellence in her undergraduate major.

She aced all of her NY Regents exams in high school, and was a National Merit Scholarship finalist. She loved mathematics, but was an excellent allaround student, and class valedictorian.

She graduated summa cum laude as a Math major, with a minor in Education. She chose to teach at a city high school in Western NY, and fits the description of a good teacher posted above...

"When done well, teaching is a highly demanding, mentally exhausting, stamina-draining, energy-depleting activity. Teachers are performers working to engage their audience every minute of every day. It's all "live" with no TelePrompTers and hardly any time for rehearsal."

She puts in 12 hour days, develops new curriculum in the summer, and takes further courses in math and education. She has never had a "summer off", in spite of not being in the classroom.

She doesn't manage to motivate every single kid in her classes, and she agonizes about that. Most of her kids do very well, and respect her. They are well prepared and do very well on the final state-wide exams.

There are really great teachers out there in the public schools, but there are some real jerks also.

I am so very proud of her... particularly her dedication to a very tough dmeanding job...

The "funny" thing about her choice to be a teacher is that when she was in high school, she had some really good teachers who were great role models for her, but when she told them that this is what she wanted to do with her life, they were shocked, and told her she could be anything she wanted to be (Dr., Lawyer, Indian Chief), and sorta discouraged her from going into teaching. No money, No prestige, etc...

We told her that money and prestige do not a happy life make, and that she had to follow her heart. We are glad she did, and take great pleasure in thinking about how many young lives she will touch and influence in a positive direction.

The problem with the teachers' union is that there is no incentive to do a good job. The lousy teacher gets the same salary raise as the good teacher, which ought to irk the good teachers. The union doesn't guarantee students get the good teachers as they protect the bad ones, therefore they will allow a poor teacher to teach (or not teach) your child. The union's interest is solely in the teachers, who may hit the $60,000+ mark, while the union bosses are in six figures. The union's interest isn't in quality education for the students.

Good teachers deserve $100,000 and more if public education is to serve its customers, the students, well into the 21st century. Increasing teachers' salaries significantly is the best way to markedly improve the state of public education." "A six-figure salary shouldn't be out of the realm of possibility for an exceptional teacher.

Several years ago (1998 or 1999), the Rhinoceres Times in Greensboro, NC ran a list of everyone in the Guilford County school system making $50,000 or more. It was a long list and only three or four of them were teachers.

Education is extremely top-heavy with administration. The Guilford County superintendent at the time, Jerry Weast, made around $200,000. He left to become superintendent in Montgomery County, MD for even more money.

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