No Excuses -- Step Four: Pay Starting Teachers More
I have identified 5 steps Utah should take to improve K-12 education.
STEP 4: Increase beginning teachers' pay. The Legislature typically appropriates a chunk of money to the local school districts. The local districts, then, negotiate with the Unions to determine how that money will be spent. Most of the money gets pushed to the more-established teachers at the top of the pay scale and very little goes to starting teachers. As a result, beginning teachers make very little money, and that hurts efforts to attract and retain good teachers.
Rather than appropriate all the money to the districts in a chunk, we should specify that part of the new money must be weighted more-heavily toward boosting new-teacher salaries.
STEP 4: Increase beginning teachers' pay. The Legislature typically appropriates a chunk of money to the local school districts. The local districts, then, negotiate with the Unions to determine how that money will be spent. Most of the money gets pushed to the more-established teachers at the top of the pay scale and very little goes to starting teachers. As a result, beginning teachers make very little money, and that hurts efforts to attract and retain good teachers.
Rather than appropriate all the money to the districts in a chunk, we should specify that part of the new money must be weighted more-heavily toward boosting new-teacher salaries.
posted by steve u. at 11/01/2005
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10 Comments:
This is a must. I personally know a number of people that would be fantastic teachers that steered away from or left the profession simply because they couldn't afford the entry level pay. These folks don't want to be rich, but they need a survivable wage. I'm grateful for good teachers that have stuck it out and made it through the meager years, but we need to fix this problem.
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Amen!
I couldn't agree more. Utah has to be able to compete with surrounding states especially for new teachers and we've got to be able to attract good people into teaching.
I think a key component is the point that the legislature must mandate how some of the allocated funds are used, or the districts won't put it into new teacher salaries!
Since there are "No Excuses" let's make sure we hold school districts accountable for every dollar given them.
Step 1: Stop lying to the children that they are required to pay any income tax.
"In his book, Schiff provides evidence consisting of key U.S. tax statutes and Supreme Court decisions that enable people to legally assert their income is zero (0) because the high Court has repeatedly, and consistently, defined the legal term “income” (as used in the Internal Revenue statutes) as a “corporate profit or gain” upon which an excise tax applies and further, that there is no law that actually creates any legal liability for the payment of income taxes."
http://www.givemeliberty.org
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Who are you Anon? I have some friends at the IRS who would just love to make your acquaintance. We all have to pay taxes. Can we keep on subject.
I don't know that I agree that higher pay is the answer. I see people every year that make very healthy earnings (most of my educator clients fall into this category) who still complain that their earnings are too low. It is easy to through more money at a problem, but too often you just end up with a more expensive problem.
To be honest I personally feel that the higher salaries should be reserved for the more-established teachers. Starting beginning teachers at a lower pay requires a lot of dedication from entry level educators. I feel paying teachers in this manner is a sound means to weed out those who love teaching from those that just need a job.
Pramaphil,
I don't think your logic works about low entry-level pay ensuring that we only get people dedicated to teaching instead of those who want to make a buck. How can you tell whether an individual's decision to take low pay is saintly dedication or lack of other options?
While I think you're right that most teachers teach because they want to do good things for students, I disagree that it is desireable to use low starting pay to screen out those who factor in other motivations like making a living to support a family.
Also, I agree that little is improved by simply throwing more money at it. That is why increased teacher pay is coupled with other factors to promote better teaching and teachers, such as differential pay and increased ability to terminate bad teachers.
Steve --
I see your point. I’m not up to speed on the average salary of entry level teachers across the state, if the wage they get isn’t fair in comparison to entry level salaries in other fields than they need a raise. Understand that a lot my point of view does come from the Ebenezer Scrooge-accountant in me. However, I strongly believe that pay increases should be focused mostly on rewarding the best teachers, once the basic living needs of the entry level teachers have been met.
The idea of differential pay does have a lot of potential. I do wonder what would be used as the criterion, but if a fair objective system of giving pay bonuses to teachers who have students that are succeeding is developed – I say go for it.
Starting teachers must be paid more. To put some numbers to this discussion, "Public Education Fingertip Facts 2005" lists Utah's average teacher salary to be just under $39K, about $7K below the national average.
Starting teacher salary is somewhere around $25-28K. This number must include benefits, because when I ask new teachers I'm acquainted with what their starting salary was, they consistently respond with a number lower than $25k. Our teachers are certainly worth more than that.
Many of the beginning teachers choose to teach for between 3-5 years to put spouses through college or until they can afford to be stay at home parents. Throwing more money at beginning teachers will not encourage them to stick around any longer. Instead, it will discourage teachers who won't see any increase in pay after they lose their "new teacher" status.
Recent legislative proposals to give new teachers more money, although well intentioned would have actually resulted in pay cuts for teachers moving from their 3rd to 4th years in the profession. Talk about a downer!
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