Posted on 01/27/2012 8:18:12 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Arne Duncan: Pay great teachers $150K
By: Tim Mak January 27, 2012 09:28 AM EST
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said Friday that the starting salaries of teachers should double, up to $65,000 a year, and that excellent teachers should be able to make up to $150,000.
“I’ve been very radical on this. I think that young teachers, we should double their salaries [to] $60,000, $65,000. I think that great teachers should be able to make $130,000, $140,000, $150,000 - pick a number,” said Duncan on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Duncan suggested those figures while responding to a question about New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal that high-performing teachers should be eligible for $20,000 bonuses.
Both base-pay increases and bonuses were necessary, he said.
“I think we need to raise the base pay [and be eligible for bonuses], I think teachers should be able to make a lot more money based on the difference they’re making in students’ lives, and willingness to take on tough assignments,” he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
For 6 hours a day, 9 months of the year of work?
Who decides if a techer is great or not?
Why only $150K? Why not a million?
This is my 42nd year of teaching (really). Pay me the $150K today because I am a great teacher./s
The way the FED is printing money, that may happen sooner rather than later.
The job, and the government propaganda imparted to mush minds, is simply just not worth that much money.....
Here’s a radical idea: why not pay them exactly what they’re worth in an open and free labor market?
I’d be willing to accept that.
But only under the following conditions:
1) No collective bargaining
2) They pay for their own health care and retirement out of their salaries. They can cut a deal through the NEA or whatever org they want to get better coverage/rates.
3) No tenure. Ever.
4) At will employment with individual contracts only.
If they even work that much. The school my grandsons go to which is in a highly desirable district seems to have 4 day school weeks constantly. If there happens to be a holiday, like this past MLK birthday, then it’s a 3 day week. They call these 1/2 and full days off teacher service days....whatever that means.
Does that mean that we can cut the pay of, or fire, bad ones?
When everyone is able to live in million dollar homes to support a property tax base that will pay 150K per year for teachers...and the average wage is 150K to pay that property tax- then - sure - pay ‘em 150K *ugh*
This really shouldn’t be that tough. A smart high school grad could teach the public school curriculum to students coming up.
Most of the educational claptrap that teachers learn getting their requisite teaching credentials isn’t really so—and thus sets them back as teachers from how that smart high school grad would approach things.
Somehow, and I know it sounds crazy but, the moment we start paying the so-called best teachers 150 grand a year, it would turn out that every teacher would be making a 150 grand a year.
I suspect that great spelling is a sign as to whether you’ve had a good TEACHER or not. :D
>I have a radical idea. Get the government totally out of education.
>Where in the Constitution is authority given for government involvement here?
I fully support abolishing the federal department of education. However when you say ‘the government’ you do have to remember that the vast majority of education management nd funding is done at the state level, and most state constitutions do talk about education.
Thus asking for where in the constitution such a thing might be means checking your state constitution.
Now I should also mention I don’t believe in public education at all. We don’t have public supermarkets and yet parents do manage to feed their children. Schools should all be private, and then you could provide some form of grants for needy children to go to school. Public education is yet another form of middle (and upper) class entitlement.
As a non-union public school teacher, I disagree. I started at 28K my first year. That’s @35K minus the summer.
GET RID OF ALL THE 200K A YEAR PIECES OF **** AND MAYBE SOME OF THE TEACHERS WOULD MAKE MORE.
I work from 8 to 4. That’s 8 hours. I manage 80 pubescent, irascible balls of hormones.
BUT I DO GET THE SUMMER!
AMEN to that! Trying to reform an inherently Marxist system is like, pardon the expression, polishing a turd.
That’s where education belongs, at the state level.
The US government was always set up so that states would handle all the small and mundane stuff that are everyday concerns and the federal government would handle all the big stuff that concerned a nation.
You also must DEMAND that the teacher provide at LEAST a 4.0 gpa from their 4-year university. NO WAIVERS NO EXCEPTIONS
That will weed out all of them.
Let’s see the big accounting firms hire the top students at the top universities and pay around $52K per year to start, working 12 months a year for 70 hours a week. According to a study done a few years back over half of new teachers come from the bottom third of their college class.
Yes let’s pay new teachers $65K per year, makes perfect sense.
They are ALL great teachers...
“Who decides if a techer is great or not?”
The human resources bureaucrats who administer the affirmative action program.
Teachers at PRIVATE SCHOOLS, with long experience, who draw PAYING students to their school (usually because they’ve made a name for themselves as a scientist/writer/politician) already make this kind of money.
Teachers at public schools, who do the job that they are paid to do, and belong to a union, with all the protections that a union provides, deserve nothing more than union scale.
Collective bargaining is a bitch, aint it?
Adding quality to a product (school) that has no tangible way to improve cash flow to the producer (the school district) cannot possibly be rewarded with cash.
It’s hard to be a socialist while expecting the benefits of capitalism.
“Here’s a radical idea: why not pay them exactly what they’re worth in an open and free labor market?”
Institute vouchers for all students and we will soon find out the market value of a great teacher.
>>You also must DEMAND that the teacher provide at LEAST a 4.0 gpa from their 4-year university. NO WAIVERS NO EXCEPTIONS
>>That will weed out all of them.
Teachers do have to take a PRAXIS exam, which is quite difficult. I passed the English and History PRAXIS, and I’m hoping they create a Japanese PRAXIS so I can pass that one too.
The problem with teaching is the union. If you teach in the South, you have no union and the district can be flexible with teacher pay, raises, etc. If you teach up north, you are usually way overpaid. They need to kill the EPA, repeal NCLB, and dissolve all unions. They need to also localize all education, because even in a state like Mississippi, delta kids are WAY DIFFERENT than gulf coast kids.
Second, a standardized Competency Test should be administered to ALL Public School Teachers, and those that don't measure up are gone from Taxpayer-funded non-productive employment.
Third, Teacher Pay should reflect the dumbness we have being produced from schoolz today....and, Competency shall be demonstrated annually, through standardized testing of Teachers. Incompetency will NOT be tolerated, and THEN we'll consider a salary that will attract Competent replacements.
They argue against Merit pay because they can’t rate the Teachers. How do they ,now, determine GREAT Teachers?
Yes, I agree. If the government is going to do education, the state (or local) level is where it should be. Centralization doesn’t work on economics and it doesn’t work on education.
Trash the whole system. It is FUBR. Convert to an on line education system that doesn’t need overcompensated unions, bureaucrats, busing, costly facilities, lunch and breakfast programs, child care, etc. Make learning how to read, write and do arithmetic available on line to anyone who wants it. If they don’t that’s their business. Let them learn how it is trying to live without an education. The can serve as the examples.
See post number 26 for an article on cyber schooling.
I really think its the way to go.
>>They argue against Merit pay because they can’t rate the Teachers. How do they ,now, determine GREAT Teachers?
This is very true. Great teachers, however, are pretty easy to pick out subjectively after looking at classroom interaction, adherence to standards, and assessments. It might be good to just give a bonus to teachers that are National Board Certified - OH WAIT, THEY ALREADY DO!
There may be some teachers who work 6 hour days, 9 months a year, but the good ones don’t. My wife does 12-16 hour days, every week day and usually 6-8 hours each day on the weekend. During “breaks” she spends hours grading assignments and writing report cards.
Her summer “break” starts about a week after the kids get out, after she’s spent hours cleaning her room, because the janitorial staff won’t. Then she spends weeks of the summer going to re-certification and training sessions. When that’s over, she gets to spend at least 2-3 days a week working with her “team teachers” to develop the curriculum for the next year. Then, for her, school starts 2-3 weeks before the kids come back, with training sessions on all the new laws and requirements — and all the whims of the merry-go-round administrators to learn about.
And that doesn’t begin to include the parents who believe their little Johnny could never do anything wrong, and he deserves straight “A” grades, even though he hasn’t turned in an assignment all quarter. Did I mention irate parents calling my unlisted home phone number at 2AM to scream obscenities at my wife?
And after 15 years as a teacher, she earns less than I did two years out of college as a computer programmer.
Oh, and did I mention she’s required, by law, to take 3 or more credits of continuing education at a college *EVERY YEAR*. And every three or four years, she has to go pay $500 and take two days of tests to keep her license. And, if she’s ever, ever let go from a job (even for a personality conflict or just because some administrator doesn’t like her shoe color) she can never get a job as a teacher again.
So, before you start throwing that crap out, ask yourself if you’d be willing to put up with 180 kids, for what works out to about $4 an hour with the time my wife puts in.
So, do I think that every teacher deserves $$$$? No, just the ones who work their ass off and get results like my wife does. For 10 straight years, her classes have shown the biggest improvement in math scores in the state of Colorado. Yet she gets the exact same salary schedule as the teacher who’s on his fifth sexual harassment investigation, and grades his students papers by giving them full points if they turned it in.
Him you can say that crap to. Not my wife.
“We don’t have public supermarkets “
Not yet!
What can I say, I went to school in Florida. They only made about 7-8K when I was in high school.
Please watch and share:
“Here’s a radical idea: why not pay them exactly what they’re worth in an open and free labor market?”
###
First we need to get the educational system, ALL of it, out into the private sector, free market place......what’s left of it.
ML/NJ
I thought we weren’t supposed to think very highly of them because they’re all products of liberal colleges?
First off get rid of all the education departments in our universities. They should major in the subject they are going to teach. Cut out the indoctrination that comes with the degree in education.
I have no idea.
No kidding. My kids are older so it's not an issue regarding my work, but with younger children and both parents working, these "teacher planning days" are difficult.
This country is chock-full of people who are really, really great at their jobs, and who don’t earn $150K.
So many problems in our schools today, tough job. Parents need to be held accountable too.
Private school teachers are paid less (almost frightfully so) and get better results.
These "bonuses" would be tied to bogus, easily manipulated and highly political criteria.
Let’s pay the really smart kids to teach themselves.
I guess that would be the logical next step for the food stamp president.
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