| I still think a bad teacher is absolutely terrible and that teaching is not easy. I don't look at teacher salaries and think they are too high at all. I think we are bad at measuring what makes a good teacher. I just know it is not based on standardized test scores. When I was a teacher, I had zero power to remove a disruptive or inattentive student from my class. I had 9th graders who could not deal with negative numbers being expected to do well on state Algebra tests that are of arguable quality. Even if they made substantial progress, they would not be to grade level. I can still remember one student who after nearly a year of not being bothered to pay any shred of attention in class, during the final review, paid enough attention during the last steps of solving an equation:
Me: Alright, and combining like terms, what is 10x - 18x?
Student, suddenly paying attention: But wait, you can't subtract a bigger number from a smaller number! I can't stop the class on nearly the last week of 9th grade algebra to help this student understand negative numbers. And they are not interested in coming in to get help outside of normal class. Parents were not interested in making sure this kid got through school. Not so fun fact: at this school, less than 4% would go onto any post-secondary education. Of them, about 2% would go on to finish a degree. Something like a 90% transitory rate (meaning that most students who started 9th grade at this school would transfer to a different school before graduation, if they made it that far). I could go on, but there was an underlying cultural issue that did not value education. That trend is hard to buck: I had third generation gang members, kids raising their siblings because parents (often a single parent) were working multiple jobs, kids dealing with daily violence, one kid was stabbed to death right off of campus. The majority of these kids and their families have no experience seeing what an education can do for their prospects. Add onto that a tough employment market (inner city San Bernardio!), and those who did have siblings who did get a degree, they often couldn't find a job. All this to say, I don't think lowering salary of teachers would help. Maybe lowering the cost of administrators would help. At this same time, there were more administrative personnel in the district than teachers, something I could never understand. |