December 28, 2006--Getting What You Don't Pay For
At a time when everyone knows we have a crisis in public education that will doom us in the long run and that the best way to begin to overcome the problem is to hire qualified teachers for every class, the NY Times reports that average teachers’ salaries increased by only $1,000 per year between 1993-94 and 2003-4. (To see article go to NYTimes.com and click on Education and then on the posted graphic.)
Though not everyone agrees that higher pay would guarantee better teaching, everyone agrees that it is one essential component of attracting better-qualified people to the profession.
In the “old days,” when public school teaching was considered to be “women’s work,” and when women who became teachers were either “trousseau teachers,” those teaching to keep themselves occupied and to make some small amount of money before getting married, or “spinsters” who were living at home with their parents and didn’t need that much money, there was little need to pay them a “living wage.” And since there wasn’t much opportunity for “career women” to enter other professions, teaching attracted many very talented people.
But times have dramatically changed. Woman have many more occupational options and since everyone needs to work to support a family, how much one is paid for teaching is a big part of the equation for anyone considering this profession.
Sad to say, since teacher salaries have not kept pace with other forms of work, one consequence is that most classes in our poorest schools are taught by under-certified, poorly trained teachers. And we know the results—by every measure our schools are among the lowest performing worldwide and fully one-third of our public school kids are in dysfunctional public schools.
If we look at the Times graphic, we see just how little America values its teachers—in literal dollar-terms. The average annual salary for teachers is about $46,500. Full professors, on the other hand, average about $95,000.
Who’s more socially valuable—a full professor who teaches one or two classes per semester and works 28-30 weeks a year and then gets full-paid sabbaticals to research and write about the Kwakiutls (nothing wrong with them), or an inner-city second-grade teacher struggling to teach reading and writing to 28 children who come from homes where English isn’t spoken?
Who’s more socially valuable—an accountant who earns on average $55,000 per year to help people like me cheat on my taxes, or a teacher in a El Paso high school attempting to teach chemistry in a lab where there is no running water or gas?
About the professor the answer is obvious. About my accountant, however, I’m a little less certain.
Though not everyone agrees that higher pay would guarantee better teaching, everyone agrees that it is one essential component of attracting better-qualified people to the profession.
In the “old days,” when public school teaching was considered to be “women’s work,” and when women who became teachers were either “trousseau teachers,” those teaching to keep themselves occupied and to make some small amount of money before getting married, or “spinsters” who were living at home with their parents and didn’t need that much money, there was little need to pay them a “living wage.” And since there wasn’t much opportunity for “career women” to enter other professions, teaching attracted many very talented people.
But times have dramatically changed. Woman have many more occupational options and since everyone needs to work to support a family, how much one is paid for teaching is a big part of the equation for anyone considering this profession.
Sad to say, since teacher salaries have not kept pace with other forms of work, one consequence is that most classes in our poorest schools are taught by under-certified, poorly trained teachers. And we know the results—by every measure our schools are among the lowest performing worldwide and fully one-third of our public school kids are in dysfunctional public schools.
If we look at the Times graphic, we see just how little America values its teachers—in literal dollar-terms. The average annual salary for teachers is about $46,500. Full professors, on the other hand, average about $95,000.
Who’s more socially valuable—a full professor who teaches one or two classes per semester and works 28-30 weeks a year and then gets full-paid sabbaticals to research and write about the Kwakiutls (nothing wrong with them), or an inner-city second-grade teacher struggling to teach reading and writing to 28 children who come from homes where English isn’t spoken?
Who’s more socially valuable—an accountant who earns on average $55,000 per year to help people like me cheat on my taxes, or a teacher in a El Paso high school attempting to teach chemistry in a lab where there is no running water or gas?
About the professor the answer is obvious. About my accountant, however, I’m a little less certain.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:17 PM
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