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Do you think there is a correlation between teacher pay and quality of education?

Do you think there is a correlation between teacher pay and quality of education?

  • Yes

    Votes: 28 45.2%
  • No

    Votes: 34 54.8%

  • Total voters
    62
I'm personally disappointed with how much our educators make. IMO, they should be starting at around 100K salaries, with the due education, of course.

But, there's always the nagging thought in my head that tells me there might not even be any correlation between education quality and teacher pay.

I think we can all agree that our education system needs fixing. What do you think?

I think the pay is secondary to the place of social importance and esteem placed on the position. If we raised the requirements for teaching programs and made them more difficult to get into, then you can attract better people with the offer of increased pay. Offering some schloop that same amount of money isn't going to change the fact that he's still a schloop
 
#1 - We have also have multiple "lanes" as we call them for differing qualifications, 9 with a 10th if you count stipends for National Board Certified Teachers. I was addressing the experience portion of your statement.

#2 - You said "the vast majority of teachers are in the upper pay brackets, with 20 plus years experience." I simply provided a counterpoint that that isn't likely true, if you were to pull an experience distribution of your school system I'd bet it look similar to ours where most of your teacher population falls under the 20 year mark.

#3 - As you say, teacher can reach the top pay scale at 10 years. Therefore just because teachers on are on the top payscale does not mean that the "vast majority of teachers" have 20+ years.


>>>>

Granted, I've been retired for a little over 3 years, but I know from detailed review of the teaching staff at the board where I worked that well over 50%, almost 60%, of the teachers employed were in the top bracket both in experience and qualifications and have been there for some time - it's a prime reason why union negotiators were always looking at ways to increase benefits and working conditions because the majority of their members had nowhere to go on the grid - they'd reached the top. We also had something called a "retirement gratuity" which is a payment a teacher "earned" based on not using sick leave credits and accumulating them over the course of their employment with the board. They received 24 sick days a year and if they didn't use them and accumulated at least 196 sick days over their career, working at least 25 years, and retired with them they could receive a lump sum half year's salary payment - there were 196 teaching days in a year - if they accumulated less than that, they would receive 50% of the reduced amount. When I retired, the board had an unrealized liability in this area of tens of millions of dollars because we had so many teachers who qualified for the maximum amount.

It's a totally different jurisdiction and situation than you present so it's not possible to compare - my point was that teaching conditions, teacher pay and the basket of benefits, at least here, makes teaching a desired career and a well compensated one, as witnessed by the limited number who leave of their own free will.
 
That's national starting salary. Let's not pretend that the average teacher in America is getting paid a starting salary because we all know it isn't true.

And a salary of $35,000 at 22 years old? THAT is too low? Really?

I work in a low income district. The average teacher salary in my district is about $45,000. That's like twice the amount most people in town make.

Amanda Riley actually covors this in "smartest kids in the world". One of the major points she sticks on is that it's about prestige of the position. In many of the high performing school areas, teaching is a very difficult and prestigious field to enter, on par with medical and law schools. Naturally this amounts to those teachers making higher wages, but the better performance is based on the selection process involved in the merit system required to get a teaching degree and the social respect they can command.

She also talks about our love affair with technology and how most of these high performing schools still use text books and chalk boards (she mentions a dc school district where every student has a computer tablet). Basically, Americans tend to miss the forest for the trees when it comes to what makes better performing students.

PS
 
If the field were competitive and well paying, there would be some pleasing results.
 
Does money buy us better politicians?
 
I'm personally disappointed with how much our educators make. IMO, they should be starting at around 100K salaries, with the due education, of course.

But, there's always the nagging thought in my head that tells me there might not even be any correlation between education quality and teacher pay.

I think we can all agree that our education system needs fixing. What do you think?
In answer to the poll question...

Yes with caveats.

Yes, if you pay teachers more, those interested in the position will probably be better.
The caveats being that you must correspondingly increase the requirements for a teacher, and by that I do NOT mean academic requirements. They could have a doctorate in history, but they could still be a POS who has no business teaching children anything.

But I think the real issue with public schools (and I assume here that you are referring to public schools) is that both the school environment, and more importantly, the home environments of the individual children, are in many cases not helpful to learning, and in some cases negatively affect such.

That cannot be addressed by spending more on schools. It requires some kind of vast change in the very fabric of America, or at least in the places where the home environment is an overall negative for learning.


I think...
 
"I'll tell you something. This country is going to the dogs. You know, it used to be when you bought a politician, that son of a bitch stayed bought."
~ Roy L. Fuchs
 
"I'll tell you something. This country is going to the dogs. You know, it used to be when you bought a politician, that son of a bitch stayed bought."
~ Roy L. Fuchs


lol, that's a great quote
 
I've worked in schools as a TA and sub often putting in more effort and care than their actual teachers. I worked in urban poor and rural poor schools. Rural kids did much better because they behave better and their parents are more involved. My brightest students were from the city schools but they were an extreme few, and dealt with severe bullying, fights, gangs. I dealt with (btw this was elementary school) kids trying to stab me, kids with parents in gangs, parents hating me cuz I'm White, etc.

Both districts btw are non-union.


Nobody holds the parents accountable. I worked also subbing in a rich burb school where parents made excuses for their kids.
 
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