Why do I hate Teaching?!?!

Anyone ever been threaten to be sued, or know of a colleague that has been?

I'm glad you agree. Shouldn't this be what everyone wants?

Yes, because doctors are never teaching one another how to perform surgery or make a proper diagnosis because they're in competition with one another..? The teacher grading process should be based on observed time by administrators, reviews from department heads, and a peer review. A teacher that corroborates and helps other teachers would be well regarded under this system. The teacher that gets by doing the bare minimum wouldn't. Isn't this what teachers should want?

Why can't the grading system of teachers be like every other profession? A combination of supervisor review, department head review, and peer review. It works in every other line of work. While not perfect, it is far better than the current system in education.

Do you know anything at all about current teacher review methods? The variety that exist in different districts? The vast differences in terms of the need for oversight between schools?

You seem to be assuming that there are no methods of teacher review anywhere and conflating the vast varieties of different administrative structures in schools to some strange mental picture of how a school works that at least to me seems to have little basis in reality.

16 flat guy wrote:

Do you know anything at all about current teacher review methods? The variety that exist in different districts? The vast differences in terms of the need for oversight between schools?

You seem to be assuming that there are no methods of teacher review anywhere and conflating the vast varieties of different administrative structures in schools to some strange mental picture of how a school works that at least to me seems to have little basis in reality.

Enlighten us. How does the review method in your school influence the pay structure? What sort of penalties are possible for tenured teachers who receive a poor review?

grgr wrote:

Enlighten us. How does the review method in your school influence the pay structure? What sort of penalties are possible for tenured teachers who receive a poor review?

I currently teach at a university, so my experience is not relevant. But the slightest amount of research will show that teacher review varies all over the place, from school to school, and lots of different approaches are being tried.

16 flat guy wrote:

I currently teach at a university, so my experience is not relevant. But the slightest amount of research will show that teacher review varies all over the place, from school to school, and lots of different approaches are being tried.

From all the teachers I've talked to, they amount to next to nothing. Pay is strictly based on number of years teaching in the district and the number of hours of graduate school education. That's ridiculous.

If someone has experience with a review system that directly alters their pay, I'd love to hear it.

I was chairman of the board at a Lutheran school for a while, and served on the school board for a total of 12 years. All of the Lutheran schools I know of use a step system, which in form is exactly like the public schools. Why is this? It leads to more cooperation among faculty, which is essential for a high-functioning school. Lutheran school teachers are "called", a consequence of which is that they have tenure from day one.

At our school we had a variety of teachers, all with different teaching styles, as well as a very experienced staff. We also were consistently ranked number one in the county, based on NY state exam scores. If you looked at the trajectory of our graduates, then we would still be ranked number one.

Locally there is what was formerly one of the top high schools in Western New York, which is also a parochial school. Somewhere along the line their board decided to hire a new layer of administration, and to ride the teachers real hard. Their best teachers left (I personally know three of them.) The school is now run like a business, with parents given an undue amount of leverage. Customer satisfaction is the key. The school is going down hill.

If you want to improve teaching, improve hiring and retention practices. Every bad teacher I know of was hired in one of two ways: (1) nepotism, or (2) when there was a lack of qualified candidates.

I agree with a lot of what has been said by "coach." I also think that merrit pay would be a good idea and support it. The problem is that I haven't seen a good system proposed yet. I teach lower level students and I don't feel like test scores should be used unless it looks at improvement. I teach in a lower district in an inner city. I don't believe our district should be judged by test scores but also by improvement.

Also to the person who said that most teachers were not at the top of their class. I in some ways can agree with this. However, no profession has just the top of the class. I will say that I graduated high school in the top 5% and college with a 3.89 GPA with a biology degree. I don't think I was just a C student but I wanted to go into teaching and believe that I could have been a doctor or lawyer had I wanted to be. I know a lot of classmates that I performed better than that have gone into these professions.

High employee moral is part of any successful business. It's a shame that the management ran it poorly.

When there is a lack of qualified candidates, there should be flexibility on the schools part in terms of compensation. This is particularly true is subjects like math and science, where the top prospects look past teaching to more lucrative careers. Another reason why blanket pay scales are counterproductive and against the best interest of everyone.

The fact that the other poster mentioned that there were 250! candidates for an English position, yet there is such a shortage of quality math and science teachers in the country, tells you that basic economics are being ignored to the detriment of students.

In our area we often get 2000+ applications for one position, but very few for high school physics, math or chem. The states could have easily have fixed this years ago by holding the line on salaries, while offering bonuses for people in crical areas. NY did this in foreign languages, but never in math and science. On the Federal level, the government could easily offer tax incentives to beginning math/science teachers. I know this was suggested by award-winning science teachers (including my brother), but, of course, it went nowhere.

All in all, I have no problem with weakening the strong teachers unions. But, I would hope they would be replaced with something better. The teaching profession needs protection from the masses, for previously mentioned reasons.

old college math professor wrote:

In our area we often get 2000+ applications for one position, but very few for high school physics, math or chem. The states could have easily have fixed this years ago by holding the line on salaries, while offering bonuses for people in crical areas. NY did this in foreign languages, but never in math and science. On the Federal level, the government could easily offer tax incentives to beginning math/science teachers. I know this was suggested by award-winning science teachers (including my brother), but, of course, it went nowhere.

All in all, I have no problem with weakening the strong teachers unions. But, I would hope they would be replaced with something better. The teaching profession needs protection from the masses, for previously mentioned reasons.

It's a shame those ideas went nowhere. Those are the type of common sense ideas that need to be implemented. Blindly paying all teachers the same, regardless of supply/demand of qualified applicants for the given subject, is ridiculous.

I understand that it may be difficult to quantify the difficulty of teaching one subject versus another. However, when you have 1000 applicants for a single gym teacher opening versus 5 for an AP Physics spot, that's all the quantification that you need to implement real and difference making change.

I should clarify what I mean when I say that merit pay creates competition to get better than other teachers.

It creates the competition to get better....that doesn't mean that they do get better.

There have been numerous studies that measure incentive and performance. The results are always the same. When it comes to a task that requires little complex/creative thought, a monetary incentive makes people work more effectively and efficiently. So in most factory settings or work that has a set way of being completed, merit pay would be a great thing.

However, any any tasks that require even moderate complex thought or while facing a new situation that requires independent action, monetary incentive fails almost every time to self-motivation. For example, a group of participants will be given a puzzle and told that whoever finishes it the fastest will get a certain amount of money. The other group does the exact same puzzle and researchers tell them to try and finish it as fast as possible, but with zero reward. Over and over again, the group without monetary incentive finishes the puzzle faster on average.

Now if you think teaching requires very little adapting to situations or repetitive, non-complex or creative thought, then continue pushing merit pay.

And yeah, I know I just dropped a bunch of studies without any citation, so if you don't believe me, here is a video explaining it a lot better than I can. It isn't even directly about teaching, mainly about motivation in all areas.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

or if you prefer reading about it in a shorter amount of time, scroll partway down this article until you see the picture of the candle and read from there.

http://www.scilogs.com/a_mad_hemorrhage/ceos-and-the-candle-problem/

grgr wrote:

If someone has experience with a review system that directly alters their pay, I'd love to hear it.

I believe 16 states are going to merit based pay system after taking funding for race to the top.

I would go further with the pay issue. Equal pay for equal work is fine, but in education there is rarely equal work. I think elementary teachers work very hard. I am not against them being paid very well. I also think that high school teachers that are not in core academic subjects don't face anywhere near the pressure of their peers in core subjects do. Subjects such as math, English, science and social studies, for which there is a whole battery of state exams, are high pressure areas. Business, participation in government, art, music, etc., are much easier subjects to teach.

grgr wrote:

What sort of penalties are possible for tenured teachers who receive a poor review?

Ummm in my school and in my state you will be fired..

Tenure is a joke in most Southern states. All it says is that you have to have a reason for firing a tenured teacher. Administrators can make up whatever reason they want and then back it up with evidence that they found two minutes before the meeting. There is no legal recourse in my state.

I think you are under the wrong assumption that every state treats its teachers the exact same way and pays the exact same high salary.

Not ever state is like the top 10 states in America for education.

Here is what my state has done in the last 6 years since the Republicans gained control.

1. Frozen salaries for six years. Also gave a two week notice before cutting $200 dollars from our pay check as an emergence budget fix. But hey I don't mind pay more in taxes than the average citizen.

2. New review system has done away with tenure.

3. Merit based pay scale based on one test from a curriculum that is not finished yet. Common Core is awesome

4. A brand new voucher system in a state where 90% of private schools tested behind their equivalent public schools. The stated goal of this by the state legislature was to put religion back into the schools thus paying for students to go to religious schools with no standards over a higher performing public school. Who cares if they get a good education or not as long as they learn about Jesus in the classroom.

5. Fired almost 10k teachers. Classes sizes in the state went from an average of 19 to 28. But they were able to quote some study out there that said class sizes do not matter.

You probably want believe this one. But my state has NO UNION. I bet you thought every state had a union to didn't you?

Would have left if I was under 50 but I am to close to retirement to move and start a new career somewhere else. I have a degree in Math and a masters to so its not like it would be hard to find a new job.

You can probably guess that the state I am talking about is one of the worst ranked states in education. Also only about 70% of the teaches in the state are considered highly qualified by the federal government standards. I'd say 70% of our staff is within their first 3 years and most will leave once they get the experienced and can get another job in a better state.

But hey all states are the same right.

Is it weird that if you look at the states with the best education levels in the county, they also pay their teachers the highest and have some of the strongest teacher unions. Its not hard to attract the best people in America to teach. The talent goes where the money is.

And please before you tell me to stop complaining every job has the same problems. All I am doing is defending the thousands of threads that start on letsrun about how bad teachers are and how good they have it. It always amazes me how many of these threads start and how uniformed most people are. Its easy to complain about how good teachers have it if all you look at are the top five paying states in America.

I think if we want to entice some of the "best and the brightest" to become teachers, we have to admit that people respond to incentives.

A smart, hard-working person with a BS in some kind of field of mathematics could likely do very well for themselves in finance or any number of analytical roles. If you want to entice that person to teach high school mathematics instead, you're going to have to offer something a private sector job can't.

That might be the hours outside of the schoolyear. It might be a defined-benefit pension. It might be job security. However, how can we expect some engineering graduate who might otherwise go off and make $60k a year right out of school to take a job teaching for half the pay and less than half the respect?

I think if we decide we want highly qualified teachers, we need to recognize that people respond to incentives. A vague sort of sense of duty to the next generation will only recruit so many teachers.

If we want teachers to be glorified babysitters who will work for less pay than they get now, well, ok- but you're not going to get the best and the brightest doing things that way.

If we'd rather keep costs low and minimize the importance of a free and public secondary education, ok, fair enough. I personally think that's a bad idea, but not everyone has my priorities.

Surely, though, it's fantasy to think we can trash the teaching profession, destroy a teacher's job security, slash their defined pensions, lower their pay, and... end up with better teachers, somehow? In teaching, as most things, I think we get what we pay for. Low salaries and reduced perks isn't going to entice good teachers to teach. It'll be cheaper, no arguments there. I'd rather spend the money on schools and teachers than prisons and welfare, but I don't presume to speak for anyone else.

In NY we have strong unions. Not the best of all possible worlds, but much better than no union at all. Here is the kind of high school teachers my kids have had:

12th grade literature: a law school grad.

11th grade chemistry: a chemist who retrained to become a teacher.

10th grade biology: a med school grad who decided to teach.

9th grade English: an inspiring teacher who has great

rapport with students, and is very well educated.

A.P. Biology: a chemist/biologist who is very smart, and a very good science teacher.

Calculus: a math major who probably could have done anything technical.

12th grade physics: 3.9 QPA in physics from a university, with a double certification in math and physics. Very smart guy.

The administrator is the best of all. He knows the name of every student in the high school, and has the respect of faculty, board of ed, students and the community. He spends time in between every class talking and encouraging students.

Yes, they are well paid, although not the highest in the area. The teachers also teach an extra class, but willingly do so because of the great teaching situation.

I hope Jeb Bush doesn't come to town and straighten things out. He sure would make a mess of things.

Conservatives will always point to some study that shows that paying teachers a decent wage doesn't lead to quality. They are full of baloney.

Exactly - this is why it's common sense to pay differently based on subject taught due to the varying supply and demand. You already have a glut of many types of teachers (gym, English, history) - you can lower the pay on these teachers and have little to no effect on the quality of applicant. Going from 250 applicants to 150 applicants won't change the quality of the field appreciatively. Taking the saving from those fields and allotting them to math and science, where there is a lack of quality applicants, makes all the sense in the world. You will be taking existing fund, not cutting funds, and using them more efficiently/logically. Why would anyone be against this? Why wouldn't we want to use our limited resources efficiently?

grgr, you've proven yourself to be wrong and misguided at every turn.

When will the post come that just says hey wait a second everyone has already thought of my oversimplistic criticisms, tried them out in the real world to varying effect, and maybe I need to get back to whatever it is I do and quit acting the expert about problems that I have spent relatively little time thinking about.