The top-paying jobs requiring an associate degree are air traffic controller (median pay of $108,040), construction manager ($83,860) and radiation therapist ($74,980). Jobs requiring a two-year degree are growing rapidly, lead by health care jobs.
A skills gap? Try paying more
December 3, 2012 by
Manufacturers say they can’t find enough skilled workers for high-tech jobs, a “skills gap” touted by President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney. So why not raise pay? Employers are offering $10 an hour to start — $15 with an associate degree — to people capable of running multi-million-dollar machinery.
Students at a Tucson community college can “sprint” to a two-year degree in one year.
LA study: New teachers get worst students
November 20, 2012 by
In Los Angeles Unified, new teachers get the weakest students, reports a six-year study by the Strategic Data Project.
The study also found “significant disparities in effectiveness among the district’s elementary and middle school teachers, as measured by students’ standardized test scores,” notes EdSource Today.
Researchers found that the difference between a math teacher in the 75th percentile – those whose students performed better than three quarters of other students – and a teacher in the 25th percentile was the roughly equivalent benefit to a student of having eight additional months of instruction in a calendar year (technically one quarter of a standard deviation).
New teachers hired through Teach for America and the district’s Career Ladder program that helps aides become teachers were more effective in math than other novice teachers by two months for TFA and one month for former aides. However, most TFA teachers leave after two years, while Career Ladder teachers usually stay for the long haul.
Forty-five percent of laid-off teachers ranked in the top two quartiles in effectiveness, the study found. All layoffs are based on seniority.
Los Angeles teachers with advanced academic degrees earn more, but are no more effective, the study found. However, “teachers with a National Board Certification outperform other teachers, by roughly two months of additional math instruction and one month of additional ELA instruction over a year.” Most board-certified teachers in Los Angeles work in high-performing schools.
CC presidents earn $167K — more for minorities
November 16, 2012 by
Community college presidents average $167,000 in base pay, but blacks and Hispanics earn more, probably because they’re more likely to run urban campuses, which offer higher pay. Women earn slightly more than men in base pay, slightly less in total compensation.
Chubb: Get serious about high-quality teachers
November 10, 2012 by
Today’s teachers “don’t come close to meeting the academic standards being set for students” writes John Chubb in The Best Teachers in the World.
A proficient score on NAEP reading or math translates into at least a 600 on the SAT, or about a 1200 overall. The most generous estimate of the aptitude of new U.S. teachers recently estimated SAT scores of 515 in critical reading (formerly verbal) and 506 in math, or 1021 overall.
Once on the job, teachers rarely are held accountable for their students’ performance, Chubb writes. And “by international standards teachers are not highly compensated in the United States—at least one factor that determines the quality of individuals attracted to a profession and willing to stick with it.” In short, “U.S. education policy is not serious about high-quality teachers.”
The U.S. needs to recruit high achievers to teaching and give them “work that is less menial and more expert, less prescribed and more responsible,” Chubb writes. Using technology to improve productivity would make it possible to raise pay to attract top talent.
Teaching is not an art, to which some are born and others are not. It is an intellectually demanding endeavor that can and should be guided by research-based practice. Teachers should be trained, both before they take charge of a classroom and thereafter. They should not be trained, however, in the schools of education that predominate today.
Finally, high-quality teaching requires high-quality principals, who “create the working conditions that help determine whether great teachers remain.”
Chubb’s new book is The Best Teachers in the World: Why We Don’t Have Them and How We Could.
U.S. can afford smart teachers
November 8, 2012 by
High-scoring countries recruit teachers from the top half of students, which means paying them well enough to compete with other careers open to high achievers, writes Marc Tucker in Ed Week. That could be affordable, if it reduces high turnover rates, he argues.
….In the United States, the typical teachers college graduate has left the teaching profession after five years. The international evidence shows that, if you raise wages, raise standards for entry and improve working conditions, new teachers will stay a lot longer in the profession and the state will save a fortune on teacher training, because of the reduction in teacher turnover. Maybe you could pay for a big raise for teachers with the savings from reduced turnover.
Teachers’ colleges want to keep standards low, even if it means producing more graduates than there are teaching jobs, writes Tucker. Unions prefer higher standards and higher pay.
Teacher quality is too important to keep ignoring, Tucker argues.
No one believes that high SAT scores or ACT scores, or high high school grade point averages by themselves guarantee that a candidate will be a good teacher. Everyone I know believes that a passion for teaching and an ability to relate well to young people are very important characteristics of good teachers. But these are not mutually exclusive qualities. The record shows that countries that recruit their teachers from a pool of people who score high on their college entrance exams, had high grade point averages and also show a passion for teaching and an ability to relate well to students produce higher student achievement across the board than countries that leave out one or more of these qualities when they are recruiting their students.
What’s stopping us? The “costs here come out of one pocket and the savings will be realized in another.”
I’d add: Teachers won’t make substantially more unless salaries are linked to effectiveness — measured in some credible way — and their jobs’ degree of difficulty.
A new generation of teachers
October 30, 2012 by
“For the first time in memory, a majority of teachers have fewer than 10 years of experience,” write Celine Coggins, Bryan Hassel and Emily Ayscue Hassel in Expanding the Impact of Excellent Teachers in Education Next.
As the Teach Plus report Great Expectations: Teachers’ Views on Elevating the Teaching Profession shows, early-career teachers want clear standards of excellence, performance measurement, and overhaul of compensation and tenure. They also want to get out of their classroom walls and collaborate with peers to meet student needs in flexible instructional groups.
Schools must create an “opportunity culture” to develop, retain and deploy excellent teachers, they write.
The deal on the deal in Chicago
September 22, 2012 by
The proposed Chicago teachers’ contract moves the district in the right direction with “a step back here and there,” concludes the National Council on Teacher Quality. However, “some of the most positive changes like the longer school day predate the contract and are a result of state law or previous negotiations.”
Among the unknowns: How well the new evaluation system will be implemented, whether the union will keep under-enrolled schools open and whether the district can come up with an extra $295 million over four years through ”COLA reduction, step and lane compensation, and savings in layoff benefits, sick day compensation, and a new wellness program.”
Chicago teachers earn more than most urban teachers, but about the same as suburban teachers in the area, says NCTQ.
Teacher Beat has more on the question: Where’s the money coming from?
Los Angeles shortens school year again
June 19, 2012 by
As Chicago lengthens the school day, Los Angeles keeps shortening the school year. A deal with the teachers union would cancel up to five instruction days in the coming school year and reduce teacher pay by 5 percent. “This would bring to 18 the number of school days cut over four years,” reports the Los Angeles Times.
There is, in fact, a strategic advantage for unions in taking furlough days and shortening the school year. The salary cuts that result are temporary; they expire after one year and must be renegotiated every year.
In the process, teachers avoid making permanent concessions on pension or health benefits. L.A. Unified employees still pay no monthly premiums for health insurance for themselves or family members. And teachers still receive raises based on experience or additional education.
Shortening the school year also “could generate the outrage needed to build public support for boosting state funding,” political analysts say. ”You’re not going to mobilize nearly as many people by warning them about the need to renegotiate pension and health benefits,” said Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse Unruh Institute of Politics at USC.
“Democratic lawmakers in Sacramento recommended legislation this week that would allow districts to cut up to three weeks off the next two school years — on top of the five days already approved, if voters fail to approve a tax initiative on the November ballot,” reports the Times. They’re going to kill puppies and kittens too.
How to stretch the school-district dollar
April 23, 2012 by
Stretching the school-district dollar is a must in tough times, writes Fordham’s Michael J. Petrilli in a new policy brief.
“Aim for a leaner, more productive, better paid workforce,” he advises.
In the last two decades, school systems have hired all manner of instructional coaches, teachers’ aides, program administrators, support staff, counselors, psychiatrists, specialists, and so forth. Redefining these roles—and those of classroom teachers—provides great opportunities for increased productivity. None of this is easy, but districts should consider:
Asking classroom teachers to take on additional responsibility in return for greater pay. Can they do without aides? Handle larger classes (or student loads)? Take on mentoring roles along with classroom instruction? Where these additional responsibilities enable the system to operate with fewer staff (even if that means the remaining staff work a longer year), the system can justify higher pay while still realizing savings.
Districts also should rethink special education, Petrilli writes.
For example, if a district uses a “co-teaching” model with regular teacher and a special education teacher in the same classroom—which is hugely expensive—could it try a pull-out approach instead? Or if the best model has these students staying in the classroom, could the extra services be provided over the summer, or after school?
He also suggests a more aggressive salary schedule that lets teachers reach the maximum base pay more quickly, prioritizing salaries over benefits and “thoughtful” integration of technology.
Recent Comments