I remember how it was -- JR
Do teachers deserve higher pay?
In the article excerpted below, Roger A. Reid, Ph.D. puts up an eloquent argument to say that they do and I guess we would all like to see that. He omits to mention some relevant things, though.
The biggest is that teacher salaries already take a big slice out of state and local budgets. Even a small increase in salaries would therefore add up to a huge hit on the relevant budgets. Multiplying an increase by the large number of teachers makes a salary increase very difficult.
The other thing he overlooks is that a teaching certificate is no guarantee of anything. One hopes that certificated teachers are better at the job than someone who merely has a relevant degree but it is not always true. The school principal should be free to decide that after observing the candidate teacher in action. I must admit a personal interest here. I taught High School with very good results even though I had a degree only, no specific teacher qualification.
So I think the policies adopted by Governor Doug Ducey are reasonable. Not only are eased qualifications reasonable but even the resort to larger class sizes can be reasonable. The research generally shows little correlation between class size and educational outcomes. Putting a large number of pupils before a good teacher can have better resuts than putting smaller classes under mediocre teachers
So, sorry, Roger. You are being too one-eyed about this
The job teachers do today determines the quality and condition of tomorrow’s world.
It’s a foundational component of predicting how well we’ll get along with others. It also influences how many young people decide to pursue a particular profession. And that’s in addition to imparting a minimum level of proficiency with math, reading, and a general understanding of how the world works.
It’s a big responsibility.
And you’d think someone with the credentials, experience, education, patience, vision, and perspective to perform this job would be at the top of the list of professional compensation — similar to a doctor, lawyer, or the CEO of a major company. Because a teacher’s paycheck is more than compensation. It’s an investment that pays future dividends.
But that’s not the reality.
The reality is a sad mix of budget cuts, low salaries, and unsafe working conditions that essentially say, “Why did you become a teacher? We don’t value you or your contribution.”
Why such a discrepancy between the importance of the job and the compensation?
State legislators say they don’t have the money.
That’s a lie. They don’t have money for teachers. Conversely, they have plenty of money for pet projects, political grandstanding, and funding agenda-based projects that buy votes, seniority, and tenure.
The result? Teachers are leaving — walking away from an honorable, vital, and necessary profession because they can’t financially support themselves and their families.
To put that into perspective, let’s compare the compensation of two professional groups. The median compensation for a public school teacher is just over $51,000. By comparison, a family doctor can expect a median income of $ 197,000.
But wait! Certainly, a doctor’s job is much more important than a teacher’s, right?
If you believe that, ask your family doctor what inspired her to pursue a medical career. Ask her how important her teachers were in motivating her to become a doctor.
If compensation is any indication of how much we value the profession, teachers might as well pack it up and hit the road. Because frankly, it’s pathetic — an embarrassing reminder of how much we take teachers for granted.
Seems like a teacher shortage would be enough to motivate legislators to re-consider their budgets for public education. And it has. But not in the way you might think.
The answer coming out of Arizona isn’t in favor of higher wages. No, instead of paying teachers what they’re worth, the intellectual brain-trust that is the Arizona legislature has decided the answer to the problem is to lower the hiring standards — to be less scrutinous when hiring those who perform the most important job in the country.
In a nutshell, Arizona Governor Doug Ducey recently signed legislation that creates exceptions to laws that previously required traditional public school teachers to have a college degree and/or to have completed some form of supervised, in-classroom training.
And that means the current generation of Arizona parents can now anticipate a less qualified individual taking over the responsibility for the education of their children.
https://medium.com/publishous/roger-reid-teaching-is-a-thankless-profession-e9771e4943d
*******************************************************With Schools Ditching Merit for Diversity, Families of High Achievers Head for the Door
Alex Shilkrut has deep roots in Manhattan, where he has lived for 16 years, works as a physician, and sends his daughter to a public elementary school for gifted students in coveted District 2.
It’s a good life. But Shilkrut regretfully says he may leave the city, as well as a job he likes in a Manhattan hospital, because of sweeping changes in October that ended selective admissions in most New York City middle schools.
These merit-based schools, which screened for students who met their high standards, will permanently switch to a lottery for admissions that will almost certainly enroll more blacks and Latinos in the pursuit of racial integration.
Shilkrut is one of many parents who are dismayed by the city’s dismantling of competitive education. He says he values diversity but is concerned that the expectation that academic rigor will be scaled back to accommodate a broad range of students in a lottery is what’s driving him and other parents to seek alternatives.
Although it’s too early to know how many students might leave the school system due to the enrollment changes, some parents say they may opt for private education at $50,000 a year and others plan to uproot their lives for the suburbs despite the burdens of such moves.
“We will very likely leave the public schools,” says Shilkrut, adding that he knows 10 Manhattan families who also plan to depart. “And if these policies continue, there won’t be many middle- and upper middle-class families left in the public schools.”
A National Battle Over Merit
The battle in New York City is an example writ large of a high-stakes gamble playing out in cities across the country – essentially a large experiment in urban education aiming to improve the decades-old lag in performance of mostly black and Latino students. By ending screened admissions that segregate poorer performers and instead placing them in lottery schools with higher achievers, the theory goes, all students benefit.
But the research cuts both ways on the academic impact of mixed-ability classrooms, and many New York City parents say they don’t want to roll the dice on their kids’ education. If a large number of families do exit the city’s public schools in 2023, it would mean another financial blow to a system that has already lost more than 100,000 students since the beginning of the pandemic. Yet some of these parents may decide to remain in the public system and augment their kids’ education with advanced after-school classes, a common practice.
“When desegregation policies have been adopted in other cities, some parents who object stick it out and adapt,” says David Armor, a professor emeritus at George Mason University who has extensively researched integration policies. “But I would expect some degree of middle-class flight in New York City given how the lottery is going to change the academic composition of the middle schools.”
Diversity advocates – school educators, local politicians, and progressive nonprofits and parents – dismiss the threat of an exodus as scaremongering while they score wins. In Park Slope, Brooklyn, an affluent, progressive NYC neighborhood, it was parents who led the charge to end selective middle schools several years ago in a prelude to the citywide policy shift this fall. But Park Slope isn’t representative of the more moderate politics of much of the city like Manhattan’s District 2, where most parents at a recent series of community meetings strongly backed selective education.
Nationwide, about 185 school districts and charters in 39 states have adopted integration policies, ranging from redrawing school boundaries to preferential admissions for low-income and black and Latino students, according to the Century Foundation, an advocacy group. A quarter of them have been implemented since 2017.
“Students benefit educationally and socially from racially and economically integrated schools,” says a report from New York Appleseed, an advocacy group that lobbied for the removal of admission screens. “Society and our political systems benefit from the reduction in racial prejudice.”
But advocates don’t win them all, suffering a remarkable setback in progressive San Francisco in 2022. After the Board of Education angered some parents, particularly Asian Americans, by shifting Lowell, the city’s premier selective high school, to a lottery system during the pandemic, a grassroots campaign formed and successfully recalled three members in a landslide vote. The new board voted to keep screened enrollment at Lowell.
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SGO Raises $1.7 Million for Students to Attend Christian Schools
Beginning with its launch just nine months ago through the end of 2022, the Ohio Christian Education Network Scholarship Granting Organization (OCEN SGO) raised $1.7 million for student scholarships to attend Christian schools. Thanks to a surge of Ohioans taking advantage of a new state tax credit for a gift to OCEN SGO, thousands of students will receive financial assistance for the 2023-24 school year that provides access to a life-giving education at the Christian school of their choice.
The state tax credit is granted to OCEN SGO donors on a dollar-for-dollar basis up to $750 per individual or $1,500 for a couple filing jointly. So a gift that blesses worthy students essentially costs the donor nothing, as their tax liability is reduced by the amount of their gift.
“When we launched OCEN SGO, we had a vision to make Christian education affordable for every student in our state. The first year of giving toward this vision far surpassed what we had originally hoped for in year one,” said Troy McIntosh, Executive Director of the Ohio Christian Education Network. “The way people across the state generously responded indicates just how strongly they believe in the importance of Christian schools in today’s culture. At OCEN, we believe providing students an education that is rooted in a biblical worldview is among the most powerful strategies to win the hearts and minds of our children for God’s kingdom.”
OCEN SGO plans to make 2023 an even bigger year, with more participating schools, more scholarship funds, and more student recipients. Contributions to the scholarship fund can be made by visiting ohiocen.org/sgo. Donors may select the participating school of their choice to benefit from their gift, and a worthy student attending that school will be the recipient.
“We believe every student in our state should have access to an education that teaches them to frame their thinking with a biblical perspective. The great problems of our day will only be solved by a new generation who knows how to apply Christian thought to those problems,” said McIntosh.
From ocen@ccv.org
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