But if it doesn't work, that will suggest that great teachers are not the answer. Great to have, but not the answer.

If you take the workload of an AP, distribute it among 7 teachers, and take the salary of an AP and distribute it among the same 7 teachers, have you increased their salaries? Or are you just giving them more money for doing more work?

The idea, I suspect, is to see if by attracting better people to the field of education they can improve the performance of the educational system. Higher pay for teachers overall means better people coming in to teach. In theory.

Sorry, but I disagree that money makes better teachers because high pay isnt what makes great students.

Maybe we should pay the students large sums to find out =)

"The idea, I suspect, is to see if by attracting better people to the field of education they can improve the performance of the educational system. Higher pay for teachers overall means better people coming in to teach. In theory."

Yes.

You can't scale this up because not every school can have the top 0.01% of the teachers. You can't scale this up because not every school can have the top 0.01% of the teachers. Nor can you conclude that wildly high salaries will attract hordes of great teachers who are currently working in higher paying areas. There's no way of knowing that.

You see, this is the sort of insightful analysis that keeps me coming back here. You hit the nail on the head. There are only so many teachers in the world and once you use them all up they're gone. Offering teachers more money will not encourage more smart people to become teachers. There's no way of knowing and no way to find out.

What we really want to know is what it takes to produce large numbers of great teachers from our existing pool of college grads, and this experiment won't tell us.

It can't be higher salaries. No way. Offering people money never changes their behavior.

Perhaps the purpose of the experiment is to prove that paying high salaries does not improve outcomes. This justifies cutting teacher salaries.

Low-income Hispanic families?

They should try single-parent black students.

From what I see here in NC, a one-parent home, combined with a subculture that glorifies lawlessness while deriding education, are the problems.

correlation vs causation, only one data point, etc. :)

You do seem to have seized on the narrowest and most rigidly unscalable conclusion possible there, Kevin. The article makes no reference to 0.01%. The experiment might simply be to emphasize talent more generally, or even just to test if performance of this type can be driven from the supply side.

Maybe you can scale this up. The new charter school plans to fund high teacher salaries by cutting out assistant principals and employing fewer social workers than normal. If you read the NYT article, it seems as if the underlying approach is to cut back on everything that most public schools try to do outside the classroom, and concentrate on academics. The school is likely to provide less social support, the teachers will work harder, and all students will study music and Latin. That sounds pretty good to me.

I think that schools are highly bureauctratized and full of unhappy teachers who long to become assistant principals or principals. It would be nice to get away from that.

On the societal level, there are plenty of unhappy lawyers, businesspeople, etc., who might make excellent teachers. At $125k/year, they might make the change, but not at $45K.

There are only so many teachers in the world and once you use them all up they're gone.

Except that in a world of free will, the pool of potential teachers and, by extension, potentially good teachers is much larger than the present supply of teachers would suggest. In other words, higher salary may have a direct effect on current teachers in improving morale, motivating them, etc. But its primary purpose is to attract people to the profession who otherwise wouldn't be teachers. I can tell you from firsthand experience that there are plenty of smart college grads out there who just sort of default into the lawyer- or doctor-track, not because they're passionate about the profession, but because these are lucrative sectors to be in, and even Ivy League alums are at their core overwhelmingly risk averse people who simply want a stimulating, stable job with predictably high pay. If we can offer them that lifestyle with teaching, then we've just expanded the size of the pool of "good" teachers significantly.

There are only so many teachers in the world and once you use them all up they're gone.

What nonsense. Teaching is not a genetically determined trait. Teaching is a career choice. It would be the same to say that there are only so many computer programmers in the world - were that true, the dot com explosion never would have happened.

Offering teachers more money will not encourage more smart people to become teachers.

How do you know? The reverse is certainly true - offering low salaries and poor working conditions certainly keeps smart people from choosing to teach - so why shouldn't it be true that offering more will encourage more teachers? Doesn't economic theory revolve around the whole issue of incentives? Let's see what happens when you put some real incengtives behind choosing to teach...

British public schools (really private) achieve better results than British state schools. The classes in public schools are considerably smaller than in state schools, so why not spend the money on smaller classes. BTW, most of the teachers I know do it because they love the job, while most of them would appreciate more money it is not what drives them!

As a gloss on what Sally said at 8:04, I work at a university with education master's students. While they show the best will in the world, many of them are dunderheads.

Kevin--You are right on scalability but for the wrong reason. It is theoretically possible to attract the top 0.01% of people into teaching (from the entire population, not just the existing teacher pool). I have no doubt that if teachers made $125K college students would be much more likely to choose that career option. But, I seriously doubt taxpayers would approve the tax increases needed to pay such salaries. To me, that is the scalability challenge. California is currently cutting education funding!

better pay = better talent. That's as certain as gravity, baby!

The new charter school is an innovative approach to education. It is not an "experiment" in the sense of the school system trying it, but rather it is a charter school using it. Nonetheless, to the extent it is viewed as an experiment for others to review the results, it is valuable because it will add to the information available to figure out how to improve education.

Kevin's criticism reflects a lack of either knowledge or confidence in the economic market. Significantly higher compensation would draw more people to teaching, help retain quality teachers, and expand the universe of high quality teachers. This program will help people value the effect of better teachers on education and, thereby, help people value the benefit of paying higher compensation/drawing better teachers (as well as the other components of the school).

As a gloss on what Sally said at 8:04, I work at a university with education master's students. While they show the best will in the world, many of them are dunderheads. Posted by: @Sally on March 9, 2008 at 8:18 PM | PERMALINK

A friend runs the sciences portion of the Liberal Arts curriculum at a university. They have special, watered-down classes in Physics and Geology for the people in the program. Almost all of them are looking to become primary school teachers, and liberal arts is the easiest, fastest route to a credential. When I asked him why they have the watered-down classes instead of making them take the regular classes, he said when they did, it drove down enrollment in the program.

It certainly means that if a teacher doesnt produce results they can be fired and there will be a lot of potential replacements. One school doing this for a short period may not give a lot of information.

Steve

Colin,

That was sarcasm.

"You see, this is the sort of insightful analysis that keeps me coming back here. You hit the nail on the head. There are only so many teachers in the world and once you use them all up they're gone."

Under normal circumstanes I would assume that this comment was sarcastic.

However, given that this preposterous position seems to be the crux of Kevin's post here, I'm not so sure.

To risk belaboring things: the point of the experiment is to find out whether paying a lot more for teachers produces results that justify the cost. If paying teachers that much proves to be economically feasible then you paved the way for drastically expanding the available pool of people who might be willing to teach.

I'm interested in teaching, but if I felt confident I could get six-figures to do it, it would sure make my decision easy.

Perhaps my foreign schooling shows, but why is it a big deal that the school will have no other employees but teachers? Who else apart from teachers do you need in a school except for the maintenance workers? And why do they need social workers?

Weird.

While I fully support better pay for better teachers, I just don't think you'll get real results until you also get better parents. A great teacher CAN change a child and overcome a horrible home life (I'm certainly proof of that) I'm just not convinced that in 2008 a great teacher can overcome inattentive parents, video games and cyberbullying. I wouldn't want to be a kid growing up today for anything.

And Fred in NC is right - try this with black children immersed in a culture that thinks learning and education is "acting white" and see if it flies.

Its not that theory is wrong; it makes economic sense but the test is likely to be useless. One school in one city in one state. There is no reason to think that results from any one charter school would apply to all charter schools. And certianly not all public schools.

The problem with this approach is its miniscule scale. While this school will undoubtedly be able to attract the absolute cream of New York City teachers, it will not address the larger problem of overall quality and quantity of teachers.

If EVERY SCHOOL offered to pay teachers $125,000 a year, then more potential high-quality teachers might be attracted to the profession. But having seven teachers at one school paid that well is not going to convince masses of intelligent college students to suddenly switch to education majors.

The structure, pay and job responsibilities of this offer are so different from a normal teacher's job that I don't see how you can make any predictions at all about this. There's no way that the best teacher at Dalton is gonna jump ship on a flyer like this, so the idea you'll attract the cream of the NYC crop is just wrong.

A lot of people won't want to go to Washington Heights to work. A lot of people won't want a 30 student classroom; one the reasons many of the best teachers are at lower paying jobs in private schools is the facilities and, the low pupil teacher ratio and the quality of the students.

The idea that there are "great teachers," which is what the founder says he is looking for is malarkey. He says he'd rather have a great teacher in a 30 kid classroom than a mediocre one in a 20 kid classroom. That's a nice supposition, but do great teacher skills scale?

This is a good experiment. Teachers constantly complain about the bureaucracy they have to operate under and the limits on their creativity imposed by lesson plan requirements.

So let's see what happens. My guess is that they'll do better than average, because they'll have parents more motivated than average who get them in.

It means that more money spent will result in better education. Who cares if it attracts better teachers. Maybe, just maybe it will attract intelligent, competent people to become teachers. Because, right at the moment, I am none to pleased at the level of competence on display in America's public schools. Of course, NCLB really is a horrible law that screwed up the public school system.

I believe the idea is, as others have said, that better pay will attract better teachers. While the normal response to this type of article is to go all kumbaya about how teachers are unsung heroes, the truth is most teachers deserve what they get or less.

Smart, talented people flee that world in droves, because it's a hellish combination of bureaucracy, stress and outright stupidity. Totalitarian administrators and petty, unprofessional and horribly educated coworkers are the norm. Most students first exposure to a subject matter is through teachers who do not have a solid education in anything except education.

One of the dirty little secrets of our university education departments is that they tailored to the bottom rung of students. Classes are easier than pretty much any other major, students are drawn from the lowest performing undergraduates and the results show it. Graduate teaching programs are worse.

If the profession paid a professional wage, it would attract professional teachers. If the profession paid a living wage, but relaxed the petty bureaucratic tyrannies, they would attract and keep idealistic teachers. As it is, they actively discourage professionals in a subject matter in favor of education majors who often lack the skills and ability to do anything else but teach.

I know I'll catch hell for this, as it is very impolite to point out the reality of teacher education in this country. I'm sure someone will point out a heroic teacher. For me, the fact that it takes an act of heroism to perform as a teacher with competence and professionalism is an indictment of the entire system.

For the record, homeschooling is much, much worse. All the knowledge in the world cannot compensate for a lack of basic socialization.

plus the whole 17 kids in a class isn't gonna hurt. i'm pretty sure my sister (1st grade/ kiderngarten teacher) would committ grievious bodily harm to be guaranteed only 17 kids in a class.

Well, they sure got a lot of free press anyway.

Cutting administrative fat is the low-hanging fruit that all schools -- public, private and charter, K-12 and college -- should be picking.

But paying teachers $62,500 to teach classes of 15 would no doubt be more educationally effective, if not more media-attractive.

"Nor can you conclude that wildly high salaries will attract hordes of great teachers who are currently working in higher paying areas."

I sit here, my mouth agape, unsure of what to say. Very few propositions have more study and empirical evidence available to inspect.

Ok how about this:

"Nor can you conclude that cutting the price of a Toyota Camry in half will attract hordes of car buyers."

*

"Cutting administrative fat is the low-hanging fruit that all schools -- public, private and charter, K-12 and college -- should be picking."

Cutting the administration would require a major retooling of the teaching professional career path. In today's school systems, becoming an administrator is the capstone of a teaching career. Teachers are paid more for getting graduate degrees in education and education graduate programs are designed to turn teachers into administrators.

This is the reason that virtually every principal is also a "Dr." As Ed.D. programs tend to be of much lower rigor than traditional Ph.D. programs, it's function is not to produce thoughtful educators, but to act as a gatekeeper for upper level education administration jobs.

Plenty of people have mentioned it already, but I'm surprised this isn't obvious.

Because salaries for teachers are so low, and working conditions are so bad, the quality of the pool is terrible. Schools can't be choosy about who they hire, and they hire some pretty awful teachers, while people who have the ability to be excellent teachers do the math and take jobs in office parks.

We'd have the same problem with neurosurgeons, if neurosurgeons could get hired on licensing-waivers with a 2.5 college GPA and you paid them $30,000 a year.

mhr reminds me of another problem with education. As a huge number of the critics of public schools are right-wing morons with sketchy motives and racist agendas, it's easy to fall into a false sense of identification with public schools systems. It's important to realize that the real issue is ensuring the quality of education needed to provide our nation with active, engaged citizens.

There's no need to experiment. That's already been done. The results are decisive. All we need do is adopt curricula that have been shown to work. See here, here, or any number of similar sites.

For some strange reason we haven't done so. I blame the spiritualists who "killed" behaviorism. Chomsky would be a the head of the list, followed by thousands of touchy-feely educators who don't want to deny the "minds" and "souls" of our students.

To them I say "Get modern. Minds are as bogus as gods. Let's go with what works."

If I were running a school, I would have the teachers assess the students in the first few days, looking for the ones who were not prepared socially, cannot listen and concentrate, cannot get along with others, who lack curiosity, etc. Then I would separate those students out and put them in a separate program and leave all the motivated students behind with the regular teachers, who will think they are in heaven and have the easiest year of teaching they ever had.

In the meantime, I would have hired the gentlest, kindest teachers I could find (think Mr. Rogers) and the main requirement would be that they loved to read. I would have them read aloud to the children. The first books would be the classic picture books that devoted parents read to their children when they are very small. The teacher would read one book aloud with understanding, humor, emotion, etc., and set it aside on an empty shelf. Then the teacher would read a second book and put it on the shelf next to the first. There would be no tests allowed of any kind. But, if a child asked a question, the teacher would kindly answer it.

If, after a few days, some of the children were still restless or acting out, I would send them away for short periods of one-on-one reading aloud sessions with a teacher’s aide or a volunteer reader, who would also be someone who loved to read.

Back in the read-aloud classroom, the teacher might ask, after a few days, if anyone would like to hear a book read aloud for the second time. (In other words, let the students identify favorite stories.) Eventually, over time, the books would get longer and longer, requiring the students to pay attention and keep track of the plot and characters. But, still there would be no quizzes or tests.

To critics who might see this as a waste of time, I would say that the students would be learning lots of vocabulary words they probably had never heard before, plus their imaginations and interest in stories and ideas would be awakened. They would, also, be using and developing a part of their brain (according to many researchers) that was never stimulated before—especially, if they had been spending years sitting in front of a TV set.

But, most of all, they would be sensitized and socialized by a caring adult who was filling them up with good stories. In a few months, many of them might be ready to be mainstreamed with a regular class—a few at a time.

Finally, I would pay teachers in both kinds of classes a TON of money, because it is one of the most important careers that a person could pursue. I predict that teachers would FLOCK to teach in such a school.

...adding to my comment above, there are some excellent teachers who bite the bullet and take low-pay, no-support jobs because teaching is what they want to do, or they think it's important for society, etc. But there are upwards of a million teaching jobs out there, and not enough competent altruists to fill them all.

Once you run out of them, you gets what you pays for.

Kevin, charter schools in my area have been abject failures. No appreciable increase in test scores or academic achievement, poor management, bankruptcy, embezzlement, you name it...

After all, why would anyone want to be a teacher these days? Low pay, long hours, unmotivated students, having to take endless amounts of shit from morons like Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Limbaugh, et al. I sure as hell wouldn't want the job. Conservatives have done a nice job of destroying public education, and the U.S. is well on it's way to being a Third World country as result.

It means that more money spent will result in better education. Who cares if it attracts better teachers. A hot debate is taking place at Richromances.com now among hollywood celebrities. Many guys said they were super-excited about it~

A few observations:
(1) I once read that the most important (overwhelmingly so) factor in student achievement, was the students peer group attitude.
(2) The second most important factor is the household he/she is from.
(3) Probably third is the quality of the teachers/school.

Often charter -and especially private schools can do well because they are allowed to be choosy on the first two items. Judging the effectiveness of such experiments is difficult because of a substantial placebo effect. The students, and teachers feel special, and try harder. Unfortunately the placebo effect doesn't survive replication.

And of course better pay would attract smart successful people to the profession. I've considered doing it as a late career preretirement thing, but the need for secure investments that can survive low pay means it keeps getting put off. Not that smart successful people are going to be the best teachers. Sometimes the person who had to struggle to learn a subject is better placed to understand how to help a struggling student than the wizzkid who can't understand why the kids just don't get it.

Schools, a McKinsey report says, need to do three things: get the best teachers; get the best out of teachers; and step in when pupils start to lag behind.

Begin with hiring the best. There is no question that, as one South Korean official put it, “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.”

Teach the teachers. Singapore provides teachers with 100 hours of training a year and appoints senior teachers to oversee professional development in each school. In Japan and Finland, groups of teachers visit each others' classrooms and plan lessons together.

Lastly, the most successful countries are distinctive not just in whom they employ so things go right but in what they do when things go wrong, There is a pattern in what countries do once pupils and schools start to fail. The top performers intervene early and often.
http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9989914

I began a teaching career at age 42 after working most of my career as a management scientist in a federal agency. I followed my wife's career to a new state which led to the career change. So I've seen life in and out of the teaching profession. And having done it for a year now I have some ideas of what it takes.

First salaries. teachers don't need $125 grand/year but they do need a professional wage if you want to keep them around. Teaching is tough enough that teachers shouldn't have to moonlight to make basic ends meet.

Second, prep time. Most teachers I know would be able to significantly improve their teaching with an extra prep period a day. The typical teacher has one free conference period/day which is usually burned up in meetings, dealing with parents, paperwork, etc. Teachers really don't have adequate time to prepare great lessons, especially new ones who don't have a lot of canned material ready to go. My teaching would probably improve if I could take my existing student load which is spread over 6 periods and redistribute it to 5 periods. I'd take the class size/prep time tradeoff any day.

Third, the isolation. Teaching is the most isolating profession I've ever been in. I think it's a prime reason young teachers burn out. The average teaching day is so busy and hectic that I rarely ever have a chance to interact with other adults more than just a hello in the hallway. People who haven't taught have no idea how isolating it is to spend 99% of your professional life without adult contact other than email. Schools should make a bigger effort to allow collaborative work between teachers.

Fourth, scale back the high-stakes testing. It really kills the teaching environment. We have to spend so much time doing test prep these days to ensure that all kids can get through the exams and graduate. At schools here in Texas the school year is really only 7 months because at least a month is burned up doing test prep prior to the big TAKs tests and after that the students are so burned out that not much gets done the final month of school.

Finally, move to a year-round school schedule with summers spent doing intensive electives. Summer is the perfect time to take students in new and interesting directions while remaining in the school environment. The summer vacation is really a throwback to a 19th century agrarian age. There's no excuse for not having year-round schools these days with a few extended vacations scattered throughout the year.

As for schools of education? They are becoming less relevant every day. Here in Texas over half of all new teachers are now hired out of alternative certification programs rather than traditional education programs. I went through an alternative teaching certification program that was quite good after already earning BS and MS degrees in biology years ago. I have met a lot of interesting and talented individuals from all walks of life starting new teaching careers in alternative certification programs. That's really where the action is these days.

Some government jobs pay low if you're honest, but super high if you're a crook.

If a low pay government job can be a gold mine for a crook, and if money attracts talent, then the top talent lined up for such jobs will tend to be, on average, crooked.

If a government job cannot be turned into a gold mine, such jobs will tend to be held by those who are more honest, but less talented.

emmarose's idea is an interesting one...I'm a middle school teacher, and I would indeed FLOCK to such a school if I could be the teacher in the room with the motivated students only. The read-aloud teacher? No thanks. The kids in that room would be the kind who watch movies like SAW IV and regularly stay up til 2am on a school night...no amount of expressive reading is going to interest them in appropriate grade-level literature.

I have been teaching for 20 years...what Kent said. That and keeping class size down would do wonders for the education.

Typo corrected (I'm so uneducated):

Is it really worthwhile to educate the lower orders above their station in life? They'll certainly never be happy. And then they'll have to make like Alice Adams and settle for life in the steno pool (at best).

They'll be much happier chained to a sewing machine in a factory doing piecework for the rest of their lives. And America's industrial output will be much improved.

Instead of filling up their heads with airy-fairy philosophy and "ideas," they can sit there and chat with their friends about "American Idol" and Britney.

The school referenced in the NYT article would run for 2 extra hours a day and will expect teachers to work 60 plus hours a week.
The high salary is only fair for that amount of work in high cost of living upper west side Manhattan.

In 2002/3 [latest data on my book shelf] the median teacher salary was $48,152 for NYC as a whole. In that same year median salary was $91,052 in Scarsdale NY and over $75,000 in many other rich suburbs of NYC for a 30 hour school day teaching well behaved upper middle class students.
How else are we going to give urban kids access to teachers of the quality that Scarsdale parents have obtained for their kids?

KIPP and Achievement First are replicating their successful schools.

How many great teachers can be attracted to and then succeed in schools serving low income urban neighborhoods ?

How many good teachers can KIPP and Achievement First schools develop into great teachers?

We will never know unless we try.
Trying is a moral imperative.

Enough studies have been done to prove that there are 3 crucial changes that could reform our education system as we know it.

1) Class size. It has been studied and I personally have witnessed it. Classes with 30+ kids? Too many fall through the cracks, teachers spend too much time just trying to control the room. But a student to teacher ratio that is 15:1 or less? It's a totally different room.

2) parent participation. I used to live in a district that proved this-- most of the kids were pretty poor but the school got parents involved with their kids, with activities and connected to the school itself. It relied on students and parents feeling connected to their schools, to their communities. However, this doesn't work AT ALL if you don't have small class sizes.

3) teacher salaries need to be strong enough to keep the best teachers or help the ones who want to be better to become better. This is HIGHLY dependent on 1 and 2 being implemented as well. If you have both of those AND decent teachers salaries, then you have overwhelming successfull reform.

Small class sizes is the lynchpin for the other two. Unfortunately its not something that is talkied about very much.

Small class sizes is the lynchpin for the other two. Unfortunately its not something that is talkied about very much. Posted by: zoe kentucky on March 9, 2008 at 11:47 PM | PERMALINK

Because no one wants to pay for it much. It's one of the appeals of "No child left behind": it's a free fix. Just ratchet those expectations up, and watch those kids perform, like dogs jumping for a bone held up high.

Ever notice how all boondoggles are based on the "something for nothing" principle?

Class size has a much higher correlation to high school graduation than teacher pay.

emmarose's idea is an interesting one...I'm a middle school teacher, and I would indeed FLOCK to such a school if I could be the teacher in the room with the motivated students only. The read-aloud teacher? No thanks. The kids in that room would be the kind who watch movies like SAW IV and regularly stay up til 2am on a school night...no amount of expressive reading is going to interest them in appropriate grade-level literature.

Koneko, I got the idea for reading aloud to reluctant students from several sources. First of all, Jim Trelease’s book, The Read-aloud Handbook, is a great resource for the importance of reading aloud to children from three months through high school. Half the book consists of suggested titles that work.

Secondly, I read an article in the NY Times once about a teacher in a reform school who wanted to teach the boys in his class to write a children’s book. First, he read them the classic children’s book, Millions of Cats, by Wanda Gag. He was amazed to discover that these hardened kids loved the story and were intrigued by the fact that the shyest and quietest cat was the one selected by the old man and woman. It was a concept that they had never encountered before.

Finally, years ago I taught high school classes to reluctant students and often read aloud to them. (They all told me that they had no memory of ever being read to by their parents before they started first grade.) At first, they thought that what I was doing was stupid. But, by the end of the year, they loved it. It calmed them down and you could see the wheels spinning in their eyes as they processed the content of what I was reading. I got a lot of grief from other teachers, who wanted these students to just do work sheets. But, I thought they should at least have a chance to get a taste of what many middle- and upper-class children have experienced and take for granted.

This school is doomed to fail. For one thing, it won't attract all the best teachers, and even if it did, how would it sort through all the applications to determine who the best teacher were?

For another thing, teachers need support. The computers, phones, grading system, disciplinary system, physical building, etc need to be kept up. If you get rid of assistant principals, then those things generally don't work.

For another thing, the class sizes are thirty students. That's too many, even though some places are worse.

The solution is to admit how much money it costs to run a school. I am a public high school teacher who gets paid over $100,000 per year and gets support. Almost all the money comes from local taxes approved by referenda. It is still a struggle to provide a decent education to our students, because educating a large number of people well is always a challenge. If the budget for the school is too small, then skewing the budget to overpay for one thing and underpay for everything else won't change the fact that the budget is too small.

Of course this will work! Only 17 kids in a class is the biggest reason it will work.

AND if salaries were even $80,000, I would go back to school to be a teacher now.

You are not 'exactly' correct when you say "You can't scale this up because not every school can have the top 0.01% of the teachers."

That is probably true but if you were to raise the pay of teachers to $500,000 a year then you would get a lot more people in other professions decide to give teaching a try and you could then have the 'average' teacher far better than today's teachers.

Of course, I doubt that raising teacher pay to $10 million a year for the best teachers would be the best use of funds but you have to admit that it would attract more people to the teaching profession

Way back in the late 1800s the medical folks did an experiment to see if the practice of bleeding the patient really was still a good idea. They found out it wasn't. I don't know if the idea came from that but the idea of "first do no harm" is an important one for medicine... and for education too.

The Central Offices are the main cause of trouble in the schools today. Standardized Testing being their main incursion into the job the teachers and principals are trying to do. Here in Nashville the teachers complain that they have no time to teach. They are so beset with mandates from the central office, all pointed at raising test scores, that they have no time to teach.

Standardized testing in and of itself is ok, but when it comes to drive the curriculum as it has, then the dark side has come to control in the schools.

It is the teachers and principals who deliver the product and they know best how to do so. Yet the central office cannot keep their hands to themselves. It almost resembles that line from Blazing Saddles... "We've got to protect our phony baloney jobs here."

Raising salaries and lower class size are good beginnings. More autonomy in the classroom is a biggie too. And time to connect with the parents... especially in inner city situations. I found that the parents there oftentimes don't know what to do with their kids viz education. A call from the teacher guiding them helps immensely. To paraphrase Reagan... get the central office off the teacher's backs.

To do so, I think the goals and objectives of every central office employee, from the superintendent to the secretaries ought to contain one line... "My job is to support teachers." In fact it ought to be carved into the lintel above the entrance to the building. I think that mindset change would go a long way to improving the schools. When you want a good performance from someone, you care for them and see what they need... you don't badger them and weigh them down with pointless work... work that doesn't take the task of education of the kids forward.

Ed

Good students make good students. Teachers and schools can make a difference, but as long as libs don't hold students responsible for their performance, we will see no change.

Teachers and police departments seem to be the two holy bureaucracies that are rewarded for poor performance. The more crime and the poorer student performance the more people seem to want to reward these bureaucracies. Here we have a case of poor Hispanics who do poorly in school because of their lowbrow culture, so the answer is to reward teachers with six figure salaries for part time work? LOL

I hold a Ph.D. in clinical psychology; I work in part-time private practice and full time in research. I'd consider changing careers for that kind of salary. Isn't the point of a program like this to attract more people to teaching as a career?

Investment banks run on the principle if you pay people more, you attract better graduates. Law and medicine work on the same basis.

I see no reason why education should be different.

Increase salaries, you will attract better people to teaching (there is probably a tradeoff with eg smaller class sizes-- it's hard to test).

FWIW private schools are not necessarily easier to teach at-- the challenges are just different. Parents are very demanding re what they expect the schools to deliver in terms of academic and athletic success and involvement, and they blame the school first, if that is not forthcoming.

The problem for this NY scheme comes because there is no way inner city school districts can pay that kind of money to all their teachers.

A related problem is that kids in inner city schools typically need a lot of support (like social workers, medical workers etc.) because they are coming from family situations where the traditional parental roles are absent: parents, if they are even present, work long hours, and may have their own relationship, alcohol, substance abuse issues. Plus no healthcare and no supportive learning environments: no books, no educational TV, nowhere quiet to study, no fixed family hours, regular meals may not be possible.

This is less true of immigrant families, of course, but still the same patterns are present. And English may not be spoken at home.

Schools nowadays, even in affluent suburbs, take on roles (eg sex education, after school etc.) that parents once took on.

So the 'charter school' thing is something of a bust. You can't pay Peter, without robbing Paul.

I have read that on the island of Manhattan, something like 70% of white kids attend private schools: only the private schools can pay the kind of money that attracts good teachers, with a cost of living like that paid by NY City commuters.

ps Bel Kaufman wrote 'Up the Down Staircase' in the 1950s, based on a New York high school.

I doubt anything has significantly changed. I still remember the nurse who couldn't give a child a bandaid, because that would be contravening school board rules. So when kids came in, beaten black and blue by their parents, she would make them tea.

*that* is not something that paying teachers more, in and of itself, can change.

Well my mother worked in the education department of a local undergrad, state school, and said the education majors were almost uniformly hopeless in terms of figuring things out for themselves and meeting deadlines.

You can't scale this up because not every school can have the top 0.01% of the teachers.

You assume "teachers" are a fixed quantity. Every school can have its teachers pulled from the top fraction of a percent of people who could be teachers, and the better the pay and job conditions are for teachers, the more likely the best potential teachers won't either be burned out (and become worse teachers) or simply choose to work in some other field -- and the more likely that any given school will be able to pull its faculty from the top of the field of potential teachers.

Well, I sure hope they hire some better math teachers, because according to the math I learned in grade school, 120 students and 7 teachers works out to approx. 17 students per teacher, not 30 (480 divided by 28 produces the same ratio). I hope these are the correct numbers, because I think even the most stellar teachers will find a class of 30 middle-school students, all from low income families, and presumably some with langauge issues, more than a little daunting.

The article doesn't say it, but they probably are hiring four standard teachers, a music teacher, a Latin teacher, and a special ed or gym teacher. Alternatively, the four standard teachers specialize in math, science, English, and social studies.

There's another population of teachers worth noting. Every university and community college draws on massive numbers of part-time adjuncts, almost all of whom have graduate degrees in their subjects.

As someone who used to be part of that world, I know that these teachers work for low pay, no benefits and little job security. They do so not because they are not talented, but because they enjoy their subjects, the belonging to a community of teachers, the freedom to teach as they want and the prestige that comes from being a college instructor.

Quite a few of these instructors fled from the world of K-12 and none would go back. Their stories of working in high schools and under are horror stories - stories of a world where a huge percentage of teachers have bladder problems because they cannot use the bathroom when they need and everyone has to "volunteer" to coach a team after hours.

As oppressive as schools can be for students, they are even worse for teachers. Principals are trained in control and discipline and carry that mindset from student to teacher.

Are charter schools, with or without high paid teachers, better? Better meaning quieter, having better student outcomes, happier parents or what?

Looking at the student outcome part of better we can learn something:

Given the difficulties in comparing public schools (they take all comers and can’t kick out the “rotten apples” to charter schools (they pick who they want and toss out students who are not working out) it is imperative to look at the independent research (omitting both the pro charter school research and the pro teacher union research) in this area: The latest study (August, 2006) by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) found that charter school students performed worse than public school students in both the reading and math parts on the highly authoritative National Assessment of Education Progress test. Moreover, the US Department of Education in November 2004 notes that charter schools did poorly compared to public schools in 5 case studies. People can quibble with all the studies to date but the notion that charter schools are superior to public schools has not been “proven” by any means, in fact the opposite seems to be the case.

Thought experiment: Take the worst performing school you can find. Keep the same teachers and administrators. All current students ,however, are tossed out and told to reapply. Then select the ones you want. In a year's time--presto,superior school.

Moral-- students make the school. What makes them? their families, their economic well being, etc.

How about we just find a school that consistently gets "excellent" ratings and copy that? Like my kid's suburban elementary school, enrollment 500 kids.

Looking through our school directory, I see 22 classroom teachers, 4 specialists (art, music, gym and library), and 23 support teachers/staff:
1 Counselor
1 Gifted specialist
2 ESL
4 Intervention specialists
4 Special Ed teachers
1 Speech-Language Pathologist
1 Occupational Therapist
8 Educational Assistants (classroom aides), and
1 School nurse.

That's not counting the principal, assistant principal, the cafetria and custodial staffs, the bus drivers, or the support provided by the school system's central office (for starters, bookkeeping and other financial duties, like scouting out health insurance policies for everyone).

Just because your school experience was one woman standing in front of you and your classmates, doesn't mean that's all that you need to run a school. It means that a kid's-eye view of something is a kid's-eye view.

The New York Times LOOOVVEEESSS anything to do with school privatization. I figure the higher-ups have a lot invested in for-profit ed ventures. (You do know that for-profit higher ed is one of the most profitable sectors right now, don't you? Lots of people are salivating over the day that's true for the grade-school sector).

I have had many a college professor who was an expert in their field but could not clearly convey their subject matter to their students. Intelligence and knowledge do not necessarily equate to excellent teaching. (Yet, marginal students rarely make exceptional educators).
The very best teachers have a talent that they are born with and work very hard to develop after years of practice, reflection, and self correction. Exceptional teaching is a skill that is much closer to an art than a science. Offering a significant starting salary would certainly invite a generally better qualified core of teaching candidates. It would also help adminsitrators cull the ineffective teachers they are now forced to give tenure to simply because there is not a long line of very highly talented candidates waitng for a job. It is not a magic bullet, but in my opinion a step in the necessary direction. I get the feeling that for many new teachers, public education is a default career; very few view it as a service job and have no real plans for making it a career - instead just a way-station before the next occupation.

Its the labor market, stupid. One of the most underappreciated barriers to major improvement. We have to have a system that gets extraordinary results from regular folks.

Maybe...the universe of the top .01% of teachers would grow if offered a benefits package comparable, competitive with, maybe in the near neighborhood, of benefits packages offered in the private sector?

I would just like to thank Ohio Mom, Kent and other commentators for providing real world, at the coalface commentary, when it's pretty clear many of the opinions expressed here about school (including mine) come from what we experienced 20 or 25 years ago (longer in my case).

Thank you

How about just paying for a few senior teachers to support the new hires? From what I've heard, the teachers who stick with it are the ones who had good mentors.

Also stop trying every teaching fad, stick with one method and make it work for the whole school district.

Don't make the whole school district do something. Respect the profession of teaching and allow good teachers to teach.

I'd also like to thank OhioMom. The "social workers" category can be integral to keeping many children "mainstream," giving them a chance to hang in. Not so expendable unless you have a preselected population of students who are basically already academically successful.

Noriko

Here are my thoughts about US (and British) schooling based on anecdote of my nieces and nephews in both continents, plus friends with kids at this stage.

Successful high school students (anyone over aged 8, basically) come in 2 flavours:

- middle class professional/ white collar parents with stable family lives (even if divorced) and strong emphasis on achievement and learning

You get plenty of bad apples, hyperactive boys etc. even so. But you have strong reinforcement re homework, discipline, low disruption, timekeeping etc. from the parents, and direct parental involvement.

One problem is many of these kids have been syphoned off into private schools, particularly in economically mixed areas.

- immigrant families with strong cultures of academic performance: for example Asian-Americans, Indian-Americans, Armenian-Americans etc. Dad may be a janitor but if Dad thinks his children should be doctors, and the family unit has stability, then the kids are likely to be attentive, respectful of authority, etc.

- often present in parochial schools-- parents from disadvantaged or lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who work and dream of a better life for their kids

The problem comes because (at a guess) 70% of the kids in the American public school system, and 90% of the kids in inner city American public schools, don't have anything like that background, or at least not all of it: we have broken homes, mothers ans fathers with their own issues (unemployment, irregular employment or long hours at menial jobs, poverty, divorce or domestic conflict and violence) or simply families where learning, books etc. have never been a priority: TVs in the kids bedrooms etc.

Middle class kids are malleable because their parents, and their peers, have bought into the system of learning and academic achievement leading to a better college, better job, better life.

What used to be the domain of our parents: sex education, study habits and hours, control over going out and substance abuse, etc., is now left to the school. We and our wives are at work, even if we are caring parents. For this reason, 4pm is the peak hour of adolescent sexual activity-- the bedroom has replaced the car as the centre of American sex education (at least from one survey I read).

The schools have a much greater 'in loco parentis' role than they ever did. Plus the stakes are higher, in terms of academic achievement. And the students have less home exposure to books and learning and reading than they ever did.

Hence the need for social workers and other 'support' teams.