Teacher, You're Paid Too Much!

The American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation have issued a report called Assessing the Compensation of Public-School Teachers in which the authors state,

...it is evident that existing public-school teachers receive wages that are at least as high as comparably skilled workers, while their benefits and job security exceed what they could earn in the private sector. Overall, public-school teacher compensation exceeds private levels by approximately 52 percent, for a total of more than $120 billion annually in excessive labor costs.

They also say that (referring to teacher training),

Years of education, in particular, is a misleading measure of teacher skill, both within the teaching profession and between teaching and non-teaching occupations. The field of education is less challenging than other academic concentrations...

Yes, perhaps (speaking for myself only) education classes are easier than astro-physics, for example. The most important aspects of teacher education, however, are the times spent working with students in student teaching, internships, summer clinics, and so on. As an education student in the 70s I spent time with children in varied settings putting in place what I learned from my "easy" classes. I am aware that there are people who believe that teaching is "like babysitting" and "you just tell them what they need to know." Sensitive readers, on the other hand, as well as any teacher, knows this just isn't true. While my class in "Methods of teaching Social Studies" might have been easier than Calculus, working with children in educational settings is challenging by any standard.

Numerous rebuttals have appeared, some of which I have listed at the end. My favorite, however, is a rebuttal which was made before the fact -- last February -- by Thom Hartman.



Other Rebuttals to the Heritage Foundation Report:

Are teachers paid too much?

The Teacher Salary Project

Teachers Make Too Much Money, Right?

Heritage Foundation and AEI Issue Report Exposing Dumb, Fatcat Teachers

Are Teachers Actually Overpaid?

And check this out...even Arne Duncan...

Teacher Pay Study Asks the Wrong Question, Ignores Facts, Insults Teachers

Sagan Day

Happy Birthday to scientist and educator Carl Sagan...



"Our own planet is only a tiny part of the vast cosmic tapestry -- a starry fabric of worlds yet untold. Those worlds in space are as countless as all the grains of sand on all the beaches of the Earth. Each of those worlds is as real as ours. In every one of them, there's a succession of incidents, events, occurences which influence its future. Countless worlds, numberless moments, an immensity of space and time. And our small planet, at this moment, here we face a critical branch-point in history. What we do with our world, right now, will propagate down through the centuries and powerfully affect the destiny of our descendants. It is well within our power to destroy our civilization, and perhaps our species as well. If we capitulate to superstition, or greed, or stupidity we can plunge our world into a darkness deeper than time between the collapse of classical civilization and the Italian Renaissaince. But, we are also capable of using our compassion and our intelligence, our technology and our wealth, to make an abundant and meaningful life for every inhabitant of this planet. To enhance enormously our understanding of the Universe, and to carry us to the stars."

-- Cosmos, Episode 8

Carl Sagan Day at the Center for Inquiry

Three from Schools Matter

Jim Horn and his colleagues at Schools Matter have three great items worth looking at.

Tennessee Teachers Will Evaluate Legislators Who Approved Ridiculous Teacher Eval Scheme

How great would it be to use a form like this to evaluate our legislators? John Kuhn, Superintendent of Perrin, Texas schools suggested that we label lawmakers. This looks like a way to do just that. Here's a tool for evaluating those who know nothing about education and who sit in state and federal legislatures making laws for public schools.

New Charter Study by Mathematica With More Bad News for Corporate Ed Reform

Arne Duncan and the Obama administration at the federal level...Tony Bennett and the Daniels administration at the state (Indiana) level, and all the other state executives who are pushing to destroy public education through attacks on teachers, increased charter schools, and, at the state levels, increased vouchers for private and religious schools, should check out this latest study on the efficacy of charter schools.

...even with all the advantages that charter schools enjoy, and even with the selective culling that took place to create the sample for this study, charters are, on average, doing no better than the public schools that the charterites want to shut down.

To improve reading in California: Let’s try the obvious

And finally, Stephen Krashen provides information about how trading libraries (school and public) for standardized tests won't improve reading skills.

The plan now is to invest in standards and tests, despite research showing that increasing standardized testing does not increase school achievement. Why do we insist on spending money on weighing the animal rather than feeding it? Why this reluctance to even consider the idea of investing more in our public and school libraries?

2011 Medley #12

The Complete List of Problems with Standardized Tests, Teach for America, Charter School Failure, Are Teachers Paid Too Much?, Corporate Reform Fails its Standardized Test: NAEP Analysis

The complete list of problems with high-stakes standardized tests by Marion Brady

Teachers oppose the tests because they focus so narrowly on reading and math that the young are learning to hate reading, math, and school; because they measure only “low level” thinking processes; because they put the wrong people — test manufacturers — in charge of American education; because they allow pass-fail rates to be manipulated by officials for political purposes; because test items simplify and trivialize learning.

Why I did TFA [Teach For America], and why you shouldn’t

TFA has highlighted their few successes so much that many politicians actually believe that first year TFA teachers are effective. They believe that there are lazy veteran teachers who are not ‘accountable’ to their students and who are making a lot of money so we’re better off firing those older teachers and replacing them with these young go-getters.

“Poor Assessment Tool” Led to Jacksonville KIPP schools failure

Isn’t it ironic though, that a charter entity – who markets itself on test data – gets burned by the very data it seeks to manipulate?

Are teachers paid too much?

There are other points in the paper, which you can read here, but perhaps the most telling is this, my personal favorite: “We should be careful not to draw strong conclusions about the wages of a single occupation from a regression such as this one.” And then the paper proceeds to draw strong conclusions about the wages of a single occupation, teaching.

The Nation's Report Card on Corporate Ed Reform Comes Home

NCLB/corporate education reform is not working....improvements on NAEP have slowed since 2003, when NCLB went into effect.

What the new NAEP test results really tell us

Since closing the achievement gap was the goal of No Child Left Behind, which went into effect a decade ago under the administration of former president George W. Bush, the NAEP results tell us that it was an abject failure.

Under NCLB, the high-stakes standardized test became supreme in school reform for purposes of evaluating schools and students — and, now, under the Obama administration, teachers as well — and still, the achievement gap remains stubborn. In fact, trend lines show that NAEP gains were bigger before NCLB.