Pickerington Area Taxpayers Alliance

From the NY Times editorials 6/27
June 27, 2005
Reading, Writing, Retailing
By DAVE EGGERS, NINIVE CALEGARI and DANIEL MOULTHROP
THIS is a bizarre and unsettling time in the lives of students, parents and teachers. It is a time when school lets out, and hundreds of thousands of teachers start their second jobs to keep their rents and mortgages paid. One day they're shaping minds, a moral force in the lives of the young people they teach and know, and in some ways the architects of the future of the nation. The next day they're serving cocktails and selling plasma TV's at the mall.

In your community, you might spot your son's Advanced Placement biology teacher working in the summer as a travel agent. Or perhaps your daughter's English teacher is painting the house down the street. Not counting those who teach summer school, about 20 percent of the country's teachers have second jobs (often during the school year, too), and the majority of those jobs could not be construed as enhancing universal respect for those who teach.

If you're at the Circuit City in Grapevine, Tex., you might run into Erik Benner, who teaches history and coaches the football team at Cross Timbers Middle School. His work at the school, which averages 60 hours a week, does not come close to paying the way for his family of four, so he moonlights during the year, selling stereos and digital cameras.

Mr. Benner hoped to teach summer school this year, but enrollment was low. Instead, he started using his truck to run a small delivery service, and he's picking up any available shifts at the store. He works alongside an old friend, who makes double selling electronics what Mr. Benner does teaching.

If you live in the Bay Area of California, you might find the head of Redwood High School's science department helping customers at the Plumpjack Cafe select a wine to complement the soft-shelled crabs. Skip Lovelady has not missed his Saturday night waiting shift there in 12 years. He can't afford to. If he could get more shifts this summer, he might take them. But they're not available, so he's teaching summer school.

Most teachers love teaching, but teaching is often not so easy to love. True, the profession is gaining respect: in 2003, 49 percent of adults thought teaching was a profession with ''very great'' prestige; in 1977, only 29 percent thought so.

But teachers' salaries are well below what similarly educated professionals expect. The average salary for a teacher in 2003 was $45,771. A teacher with a master's degree might get an additional stipend of anywhere from $500 to $2,000. Across all professions, however, the average beginning salary for those with master's degrees is $62,820 - about what a teacher might earn with 15 years of experience. It is no surprise, then, that in a Public Agenda study, 75 percent of teachers considered themselves ''seriously underpaid.''



By cp

overpaid two

Meanwhile, President Bush's education law known as No Child Left Behind insists that by 2006 all teachers be ''highly qualified.'' A laudable goal, clearly beyond debate. But while school districts must find increasingly qualified teachers, the legislation does not provide enough money to substantially increase teachers' earning potential.

Imagine that scenario in the private sector. A chief executive decides he wants better performance from his company. He issues a mandate that all employees be highly qualified. Then he proposes, as No Child Left Behind does, that the staff members be more tightly controlled, that they conform closely to his top-down directives and that they be tested yearly to keep their jobs. And he wants all of this without raising salaries a penny. Who would want to work for such an outfit?

This is the question on the minds of thousands of recent college graduates. Talk to students who intend to teach, and ask them how they feel about their chosen profession with this legislation putting teachers under such remarkable scrutiny. Educators must spend a greater portion of their time preparing for standardized tests, and they face reprisals for themselves and their schools if they or their students don't perform correctly. Add to that the prospect that if they're unmarried, or if their spouse doesn't make a good deal of money, their ability to buy a home or car will be limited, unless they take on that second job. It's no wonder that only 18 percent of recent college graduates say they would ever consider teaching.

There's almost something darkly comic about it all. We place the highest demands on a profession, and not just through the teacher-quality provisions of the legislation. We have unarticulated expectations that teachers be morally and ethically unimpeachable, possessed of dynamic, compelling personalities and agile minds and capable of guiding the learning, for example, of 35 hormonally charged 13-year-olds right after lunch.

After asking that of them, we pay them so little that they have to find work selling electronics and cleaning our houses. Is it any surprise that 45 percent of new teachers leave our schools within the first five years?



By cp

overpaid 3

The solution begins with fixing the legislation and carries down to each school district. Those behind the law have to recognize that schools will never attract the most talented teachers by making the job seem like a cross between a prison guard and the person who administers the written tests at the department of motor vehicles. And districts need to make a commitment to higher salaries; it is the first step in improving not just their schools, but also the community as a whole.

A few years ago, the residents of Helena, Mont., decided that their schools needed improvement. So they started with teacher salaries. They increased average pay some $8,000; pushed starting salaries to $30,000 from $23,000; and built incentives for improving performance, working on professional development and taking on responsibilities outside the classroom.

In years past, a vacancy in the Helena school system would attract perhaps a dozen, mostly underqualified applicants. Last summer, Randy Carlson, principal of Capital High School, needed three new social studies teachers. He got to choose from a pool of more than a hundred candidates.

But where will local districts get the money to increase salaries? One idea: every day, bonds are approved to build stadiums, even schools. The presumption is that the new buildings will increase the profile of a given city, thus attracting more visitors, more businesses, more families and more tax revenue, all of which will pay down the bond. By the same token, then, wouldn't it make sense to create a bond to pay for better educators?

The district would get the best teachers, families would get better schools, businesses would settle in the city with the great public schools, property values would go up, and everyone would be happy. Especially the students, who would get the best educators, gain respect for the profession and might even consider becoming teachers themselves. The talent pool would then grow ever stronger, and in 20 years we could have created the best corps of teachers the country has ever known.

Dave Eggers is the founder of 826 Valencia, a nonprofit group that tutors students, where N?­nive Calegari is on the board.Daniel Moulthrop, a former teacher, is a radio producer for WCPN in Cleveland. They are the authors ofof ''Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of Our Nation's Teachers.''





By cp

Oh Come On Now

Teachers aren't professionals! Nothing about their job approaches the standard definition of ''professional''. A professional has to be accountable for the success or failure of his work. You want examples? I'm a commericial pilot, I get to play ''you bet your career'' every six months. If I fail the checkride I don't get paid until I complete the make up. If I crash a plane I can be tried for murder. Don't laugh it happens several times a year. And of course then I'll get sued.

I also hold a professional engineer's license. If I design a bridge that collapses then I go to jail. Doubt me? Check out what happened to the architects who designed that sky way bridge in the Hyatt ballroom in Kansas City. They did 10 years apiece for manslaughter. Their firm was sued out of business even though federal law prohibits that. Plenty of doctors are in prison and even more get sued.

In 55 years I've never heard of a teacher or school system being sued for malpractise. No one has ever gone to jail for incompetence.

If you want to play in the big leagues then you have to be a grown up.

By Fantom Phred