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"Most parents and taxpayers consistently share the beliefs of most teachers about what needs to be done to improve our schools. An August Gallup/Phi Delta Kappa survey showed respondents agreeing with teachers that the largest problem with schools is a shortfall in funding, that the major issue with teacher competence is support for retraining and keeping up to date, that the biggest problem with recruitment and retention is abysmal teacher pay. A McKinsey & Co. report released this month noted that many nations with excellent schools attract 100 percent of their teaching force from the top third of their college graduates with salaries of up to $150,000. The United States, with some of the lowest salaries for teachers, attracts only 23 percent of its faculty from the top third."
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Hi,
Clearly Rhee was a showboater in D.C. Too bad.
When I go to my kid's school (public, about 1/5 of the kids in my county are below the poverty line) the physical plant is in poor repair, the teachers are for the most part extremely hard working and giving, the teachers are poorly paid and there are several kids per class who are disruptive, disrespectful bullys.
What seems a factor missing from these reports is that a huge factor in having a good class is having good kids.
Get a class of 25 with 2-3 who talk back to the teacher, pick on other kids, are disruptive, etc., and they can pull down the class like a lead balloon.
These kids typically (essentailly always at my kid's school) have parents in jail, parents with abuse problems, parents with several jobs who are never home.
Every graph I could find with a quick google search showed the dollars per student spent in the US to be among the highest in world. For example this one:
http://tinyurl.com/yevnmt
But looking at, for example, proficiencies, only spending more doesn't seem to be the answer:
http://tinyurl.com/r82ho9
I have little doubt that if teacher salaries were higher and being a K-12 teacher was a position with more societal respect that things would be better.
But a couple of issues raised for me by these articles:
- How is it that we spend so much in the U.S., yet teachers are so poorly paid?
- It's too bad, but when kids show up at school with 6 years of terrible parenting they are really not ready to be there. And it is the 'eager to be there and learn' kids who suffer their presence. This needs to change.
- I did some searching and could not find a single country like the ones listed in the article where "many nations with excellent schools attract 100 percent of their teaching force from the top third of their college graduates with salaries of up to $150,000." Which countries do this?
Kids are up. That's my 2¢ in a world where pennies are outdated.
As a teacher, I have to at least slightly disagree. Working conditions are as big a factor as pay (although deficiencies in the two often go together). Large class sizes, lack of administrative support, lack of material support, inadequate maintenance, cleaning, etc. Businesses understand that details are important, education administrators and school boards often do not.
The countries where teachers are drawn from the top of the class include some toward the bottom of your list. Absolute dollars mean very little if you don't scale them by the median income in that country or know what fraction of those dollars end up in the classroom.
For your list, compare Austria and Switzerland. The Swiss perform almost as bad as the US, and their median income is well above ours. (Poorly paid teachers, despite high tax rates?) The Austrian schools perform much better than ours, and their median income is well below ours. (Relatively better paid teachers?)
I can also tell you that the US used to be very different. In my youth, most teachers were drawn from the top of the class (women in the 1940s and 1950s still had few other good career choices), most of the resources went into the classroom (my old elementary school has much more in the way of support staff today), and discipline was not only allowed, it was encouraged rather than prosecuted.
CCPhysicist makes a good point: historically in the U.S. gender discrimination resulted in women with high academic achievements going into teaching due to a lack of other options. Now, with reduced gender discrimination, some highly talented women who would have formerly been teachers are going into more lucrative / higher status employment.
Not that I'm recommending bringing back discrimination to get cheap, good teachers. Just another reason we should be increasing teacher's compensation.