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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
The thing is, if a teacher wants a higher salary there is a wide range of schools just throughout the US, some public, some not. Mobility requires skill, experience and education. But there is a higher range available in that job market.
 
code1211 said:
Before the advent of the Department of Education which has evolved into a Union office for the NEA, the USA ranked near the top in spending per student and test score averages.

Following that and in a pretty well documented progression, the spending has increased over that of the other industrialized countries and the test performance has declined relative to the rest of the world.

It is very supportable that the spending per student is not a corollary to the quality of the education that is taken away by the student. Even domestically, the average parochial school and private school student costs less to educate, but scores higher on the tests that peg the result of the education.

Increasing the cost of anything does not automatically increase the quality of that thing.

You are a victim of liberalism and the resulting mind set. We need to work smarter, not bigger.

As the distance between the spending decision and the decision maker increases, the effectiveness of that decision decreases.

U.S. Students Still Lag Behind Foreign Peers, Schools Make Little Progress In Improving Achievement

U.S. Education Spending & Student Performance vs. The World Infographic | MAT@USC | USC Rossier Online
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I'll bet the US spends more on education than the rest of the world combined.
 
Teachers in this country are extremely overpaid.
 
Personally the moral precepts of teachers is wearing thin with me. They are no more moral than anyone else and I am tired of many trying to prop them up as being superior above us all. In my state I often find them to be a greedy bunch of son of a b!tches. Their unions protect their sorry arses when they don't perform adequately. And if you want to remove one from our school districts it takes years of legal battles and lots of money on the taxpayer's dime to do so from kindergarten to universities. My state gives out Cadillac healthcare plans to teachers along with other benefits. Their spouses often don't bother with healthcare from their employment because the coverage under a teacher, here, is so sweet. Personally I am tired of this phony precept that somehow teachers deserve such special treatment. If the teacher is worth their weight then pay them well...if not show them the door
 
Zariak said:
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?
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Look at successful policies that have worked around the world. Mostly, these other countries treat their teachers with respect, and trust that they should have a hand in policy decisions within the school since they do actually work with children for a living. Why would anyone want someone who doesn't have a clue calling the shots? It's illogical.
 
Bob N said:
mak: I know some folks like that, but the vast majority of people--I've seen at least--go for better pay and benefits--especially if they're raising kids.
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How many people do you know that would give up a steady job with mediocre pay to try to chase possibilities of better pay (especially people with kids)? If it's more than a handful, then you know some exceptional people.
 
FederalRepublic said:
How many people do you know that would give up a steady job with mediocre pay to try to chase possibilities of better pay (especially people with kids)? If it's more than a handful, then you know some exceptional people.
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Than I know some exceptional people. :shrug:
 
American said:
I'll bet the US spends more on education than the rest of the world combined.
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Yea, but the overwhelming majority of this money never sees a teachers paycheck.

Administrative costs have crippled our schools.
 
Starbuck said:
Yea, but the overwhelming majority of this money never sees a teachers paycheck.

Administrative costs have crippled our schools.
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When education decides they want to really educate our children, and become world class.....I might consider more funding. But right now I wouldn't add a penny.
 
Krystov said:
I'm a software engineer (fresh out of school albeit) and I don't come close to that, yet my profession is arguably much harder and requires a far more in depth working knowledge of the subject matter.
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I think that's a pretty dangerous line of thought right there.

I'll not argue that being a software engineer is a difficult job, but I don't think it's safe to say that your job is "arguably much harder or requires more depth" than a teacher.

I've dealt with a lot of stuff and I'd say that human beings are by far the most difficult things to deal with, I think arguments like this really do a lot to undermine what actually goes on in an effective classroom.
 
American said:
When education decides they want to really educate our children, and become world class.....I might consider more funding. But right now I wouldn't add a penny.
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I actually agree.

Thats why we, as a policy, don't donate money to the school. We will, without question, give them books or other physical supplies, but never cash. I know full well that 90% of that cash will go to useless admin costs & goodies, with very little going to the actual education of kids.
 
clownboy said:
The thing is, if a teacher wants a higher salary there is a wide range of schools just throughout the US, some public, some not. Mobility requires skill, experience and education. But there is a higher range available in that job market.
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The wage depression of teachers in public schools has also provided opportunity for private institutions to depress wages as well.

If a private university wants to cut costs, why would they pay more when talented educators are willing to work for well below standard, just to escape extremely low paying jobs in the private sector. It's a vicious cycle, really.

"After 25 years of teaching French at Duquesne, the university had not renewed her contract. As a part-time professor, she had been earning about $10,000 a year, and had no health insurance."
 
Bodhisattva said:
Everybody "can" do something... stupid statement. Stupid boss? I don't know.
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It's not really intended to be a blanket statement for each and every profession, it's more of a statement saying if you can't cut it in your profession you wind up teaching. Only a few of my teachers were in the field at the same time they were teaching and they presented relevant material, but those who've been out of the field and teaching for 20 years were teaching older concepts not necessarily still valuable, and not enough in itself to allow a graduate to excel at his or her profession. In my case, software engineering requires constant training, and I was only presented with fundamentals in school, not the "right" way of doing things nor the most efficient way.
 
Starbuck said:
I think that's a pretty dangerous line of thought right there.

I'll not argue that being a software engineer is a difficult job, but I don't think it's safe to say that your job is "arguably much harder or requires more depth" than a teacher.

I've dealt with a lot of stuff and I'd say that human beings are by far the most difficult things to deal with, I think arguments like this really do a lot to undermine what actually goes on in an effective classroom.
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That is not to say that education and skill is not required to effectively teach students. I had some really good high school teachers that did a great job of making things stick. But I would argue that a history teach only needs to know a pretty general, rarely changing set of things about history to do his or her job. History is history, all you need to do is memorize the civil war to tell it over. It doesn't involve dynamic problem solving and in depth analyzation of complex material - unless you're talking about college education, which I don't think is the primary focus of this discussion. I was under the impression that K-12 was the focus.
 
VanceMack said:
...
Education is such a complex picture. Great teachers can work their butt off in some schools and see minimal results because the education climate is just so very bad. Lack of parent involvement both in the schools and at home is probably the greatest predictor of success in the schools. No salary in the world is going to fix that.

If you want real change and quality education, you have to be prepared to make radical changes. Make school attendance beyond a certain grade a privilege to be earned. Create tech high schools, kick people out that dont belong in school. Lots of changes.
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Sounds like what I say every time this topic comes up, and since you're doing a fine job discussing it, I'll just say thank you, and let you handle it.
 
Starbuck said:
I actually agree.

Thats why we, as a policy, don't donate money to the school. We will, without question, give them books or other physical supplies, but never cash. I know full well that 90% of that cash will go to useless admin costs & goodies, with very little going to the actual education of kids.
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We get a list from local teachers of items they need, buy them, and give them directly to the teachers. No cash donations. No tax deduction that way, but that's not the reason we give.
 
Zariak said:
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?
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No. For the simple reason that currently we do not pay (by and large) our teachers for quality of the education they provide, but rather for the number of years they have been teaching. I am strongly in favor of merit pay for teachers based on demonstrated quality of education.
 
Bodhisattva said:
That can work in a lot of situations but the fact is that there are many kids that don't care about education... this would negatively impact some teachers that are forced to teach the lower level classes and special edcaution.
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But isn't it part of the job of the teacher to instill their students with a love of learning? Lots of employees don't care about the job but it's the responsibility of the manager to make them perform well. Same deal.
 
Gipper said:
No, I'm not saying that 10% of children will get "touched". I'm saying that if the child succeeds, the teacher should get about 10% of the credit, whereas the child itself should get 90%.
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10% of the value of a child climbing out of poverty and dependence is quite a large contribution, is it not?
 
Cephus said:
A lot of them, I don't think are. I'd be entirely fine if teachers all made the same amount of money and, either on a quarterly or once a semester term, they were eligible for raises or bonuses based on the demonstrable improvement in their classroom. I'd love to see students required to take a standardized exam at the end of every single year of school, those scores become the starting place for the next teacher and on some interval, they get a bonus (quarter or semester) or a raise (annual) for beating some objective standard. If they don't make it, they don't get the money. We just need to make sure that the teacher is actually teaching and the kids are actually learning, the teacher or the school isn't just gaming the system.
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Before tying teacher compensation to student achievement, we first have to come up with a better measure of achievement than the standardized multiple guess sort of measure we're using now. Those tests simply aren't accurate measures of progress.
 
Dittohead not! said:
Before tying teacher compensation to student achievement, we first have to come up with a better measure of achievement than the standardized multiple guess sort of measure we're using now. Those tests simply aren't accurate measures of progress.
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I agree, but we still have to come up with some objective measurement standard where good teachers get rewarded and bad teachers get weeded out. The job of a teacher is not just to show up every day, it's to instill their students with a love for learning and to objectively educate the kids in their classroom. That is the expectation. Now how do we get it?
 
Cephus said:
I agree, but we still have to come up with some objective measurement standard where good teachers get rewarded and bad teachers get weeded out. The job of a teacher is not just to show up every day, it's to instill their students with a love for learning and to objectively educate the kids in their classroom. That is the expectation. Now how do we get it?
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That is the real question, isn't it?

Don't expect the Washington bureaucrats or the denizens of ivory tower central district offices to come up with an answer any time soon.

Decentralize the schools. Let parents choose their school. the teacher who brings in customers will be a valuable asset to the school. Maybe that idea will be a start.
 
The Washington solution to poor education is to throw money at it. That's been proven to be ineffective. Schools need the tools to teach children and that does cost money but too often money thrown at education is intercepted by teachers unions that institutionalize mediocrity.

Teachers should be paid fairly but they should also be accountable for their work product.
 
On the subject of teachers.

When you look back at high school, what kind of teacher stands out as somebody you learned from?

Was it a straight forward no-nonsense teacher, or the politically corect kind that phoned it in?

Note: This question is not for Young people. You have to have at least 20 years out of school to answer this.

For me it was the no-nonsense type that told it like it was and got through to me. Most of the others I don't remember the subject matter nor their names.
 
Mason66 said:
On the subject of teachers.

When you look back at high school, what kind of teacher stands out as somebody you learned from?

Was it a straight forward no-nonsense teacher, or the politically corect kind that phoned it in?

Note: This question is not for Young people. You have to have at least 20 years out of school to answer this.

For me it was the no-nonsense type that told it like it was and got through to me. Most of the others I don't remember the subject matter nor their names.
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It was the straight forward, no nonsense teachers who believed in me despite my adolescent foolishness.

No one heard of PC back in the '50's anyway. That was the era when Eisenhower's campaign against illegal immigration was officially called "operation wetback."
 
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