Teacher compensation is a serious concern in nearly every part of the country. After I read Zen the Art of Public School Teaching, I became keenly aware of many of the compensation and esteem issues that come with teaching public school. In my view, John Perricone put a spotlight on the issue. His intense need to tell the world about his profound experiences as an educator made me wary of his intentions. His egocentric views on teaching demonstrated to me that the field is female dominated, lacks respect, and is poorly compensated.
Teacher’s Cost of Living Matters More, by Matt Moore and friends primarily focused on the elementary teacher pay. It also focused on the actual pay; the “adjusted cost” as they referred to it. The “adjusted cost” is simply focusing on the spending power of each salary in its respective city. The study is fascinating. Though Nashville, TN didn’t make the list, its unadjusted pay would put it fairly low on the list; however, Nashville’s cost of living is low comparatively. I bet it would have moved fairly high on the “adjusted” list.
The K-12 pay is comparable with community college compensation so I will comment on how the pay has impacted Columbia State Community College. Because the pay is, for most of the faculty at Columbia State, 50 percent less than what we could make in the “real world”, employee turn is high. The nursing and technology departments have an average employee turnover of roughly two years. Let’s take a look at a specific example. The nursing department requires its faculty to hold a MSN. Most folks who have such a degree are worth roughly 80K-100K in the “real world”. These instructors take students who, in many cases, have no work history through a 24 month program and put them out in full-time jobs making about 40K a year. What’s so bad about this? The instructors are making, in some cases, less than the brand new nurses. It is humiliating and frustrating. What happens? The nursing department turns its faculty over every other year. Why is this bad? Students receive poor and inconsistent advising; the nursing department starts getting a bad reputation, and that starts to impact the school’s reputation and its ability to place it graduates.
When teacher pay is low, schools will always struggle to attract the talent it needs to succeed and thrive. Additionally, the current compensation structure does not reward quality instructors for good work. It is strictly pay for time; this, in my view, cannot continue. According to an Internet article, “For states that want more bang for their education buck, a recently released report advises, raising teachers' salaries generally isn't the most cost-effective way of raising student achievement. The authors speculate that the traditional compensation system rewards both high- and low-quality teachers. According to the study, spending money on lowering pupil-teacher ratios in the lower grades, providing widely available prekindergarten programs, and providing teachers with discretionary resources for the classroom are better uses of education dollars, particularly in states with disproportionately high numbers of minority and disadvantaged children. “
Teacher compensation is a tough topic and a challenging one to tackle. In my opinion, pay should be determined, not for length of service, but for good work, measurable student outcomes, student reviews, and supervisory reviews. Take a look at some of the comments of workers in Iowa, a low paying state.
"Many teachers are leaving Iowa to teach where the pay is higher."- "Low pay keeps some potentially (usually smarter) students from even considering teaching..."- "A profession that requires a degree to begin - and requires ongoing education ... to stay in - deserves a higher starting salary!"
Teacher salary nationwide is a serious problem and deserves national attention. If schools want to attract good people, it will have to start paying a wage that's comparable with work in the "real world".
http://www.education-world.com/a_issues/issues111.shtml
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090816/OPINION03/908160317
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Your perspectives from CSCC are very enlightening and you make some quite valid points. The impact of faculty turnover (and in fact, employee turnover in any industry) is quite high and leaves some serious gaps that need to be filled. The credibility issues that arise from changing faculty is definitely a concern. Until a time arises when faculty are paid at a more competitive wage, I am afraid that they cycle will continue.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you teacher compensation is a tough topic. Take for example if teachers got paid more if their students did well on certain tests, what are we telling the teachers? To me some would just teach how to pass the test but there are others that would not do that. What if a teacher got a lot of studets who did not want to try no matter how hard he/she tries to teach them. What do we do then. I am not sure! So again I say teacher compensation is hard to determine.
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