Someone on fb made a statement that teachers paid plenty (based on the fact that some teachers are the highest paid in America) and we are not getting what we pay for (we pay taxes and the dropout rate is high and increasing). This hit a button of mine and I downloaded. Since I wrote so much, I figured it should be copied into my lj for a record.

Sorry, I don’t thing that “some of the highest paid” equals teachers not getting paid to little. Given what we expect of all teachers and the value they have in our society which sets education as a requirement for success, I think there are a lot of teachers that get paid too little for what they produce.

I think of the big reasons we don’t get what “we pay” for is the limitations we put on some of the good teachers. We expect no child left behind which means not being able to focus on the kids that are far ahead (so some drop out because school is too boring) and we mainstream problem students (behavior and learning problems) which cause the entire class to not advance well in learning. We teach to standardize tests instead actual learning. We are cutting back on education budgets so that we have larger teacher to student ratios which cause slowed learning and lack of supplies. There are a lot of cases where parents aren’t supporting teachers and making the teacher responsible fir Johny failing in school when Johny isn’t doing his homework and the teacher has done everything they can to engage the parents (I have actual evidence for this scenario multiple times over).

Yes, some teachers get paid well and may not be giving back the type of results desired. That would have to be looked at on a case by case basis. To average all results for all teachers and say we aren’t getting what we pay for and claiming their are getting paid plenty by looking at only a few is making a poor argument.

I would be interested in seeing how much money we are paying for teachers. Just because we pay taxes (and almost everyone thinks they pay too much in taxes), how much of that is really going to education for the results we are getting. I have a feeling there are a lot of other places that give a much poorer ROI than education.

A point that is under my skin lately is the true value of education. 60k is not a lot of money. I make that amount and all I do is push PowerPoint around and some graphics which is a hell of a lot easier than teaching. A teacher is responsible for the behavior and education of x students. To me this is a very valuable commodity in our society. But it is not valued as such. Football players, singers, actors, hedge fund CEOs, so many people that make things people like get paid multiples of a teacher’s salary and we don’t blink. For what a teacher is responsible for, the results of their effort and work, is not respected enough, IMHO, and they are not paid enough for what we are getting.

I know a few teachers that left the field because it wasn’t worth the pain and suffering. A lot of teachers don’t do it for the money. They do it for the love of teaching. The drop out rate hurts them as well. I bet a lot of them if not most of them would be interested in taking a salary bump in the form of funds to spend on supplies, support, equipment, experiments, some other way to help them achieve their own goals in teaching.

I also acknowledge there are teachers out there taking up space, doing just the minimum they need to in order to cash a paycheck or get their pension. I just think there are a lot more out there that are really invested in making things work. I don’t think throwing more money at our teachers is going to fix anything. If we are going to throw more money at the issue, I think there are a lot of places that money could give us better results because we are so deep in the hole already. Teachers are already willing to work for their too small pay. Give them what they need and can use to improve their results. The system is pretty messed up and needs work.