Posted on 06/17/2013 6:32:52 AM PDT by MichCapCon
Gary Abud is a commodity experts say is in great demand around the country. He's recognized as a highly effective science teacher and was named the 2013-14 Teacher of the Year in Michigan.
However, the Grosse Pointe North High School Science teacher ranked 477th out of 595 teachers for salary in his own school district, according to data acquired in a Freedom of Information Act request. Abud made $56,876 in 2012-13, which is about $21,000 less a year than the district's average salary of $77,969 a year. The average teacher salary in Michigan in 2012 was $62,631, according to the Michigan Department of Education.
That's because Abud's pay has been based solely on his seniority and education level.
House Bill 4625 would change that by making teacher performance the primary factor in determining pay. The idea has been opposed by the Michigan Education Association, which prefers the current system based on seniority and education level. MEA officials didn't respond to requests for comment.
Abud said in an email that although teacher attrition was happening at an alarming rate, there is more that can be done to keep teachers happy than just increasing compensation.
"It is not what goes into a teacher's wallet, but what comes from their heart, that guides their decisions about classroom practice," Abud said. "Blows to the hearts of teachers, such as negative public rhetoric directed toward Michigan teachers will propagate a seemingly hostile professional environment that discourages the best and brightest from entering and remaining in the field."
Abud said that he didn't think seniority or advance degrees should be the only factors considered in determining a teacher's effectiveness or compensation. He said performance pay could work if it was structured properly.
Abud said he would rather see teachers rated on "objective criteria as the yard stick for student growth" and not endorse any particular assessment. He said educators need to be included in how performance compensation is handled and that they shouldn't be identical for all districts.
"Because students achieve growth in a variety of ways that match their learning needs," he said. "Ultimately, effective teaching should be evaluated and compensated using a multi-faceted approach determined at the local level with educators at the decision-making table."
The current salary system is not effective and teachers who excel, particularly in high need areas like math and science, should be properly compensated, said Michael Van Beek, director of education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
"Research clearly demonstrates that high-quality teachers can have a huge impact on whether students learn," Van Beek said. "Every school should be clamoring for these types of teachers, and Michigan's best teachers should, therefore, command the highest salaries. Unfortunately, this isn't the case as unions and school boards have historically agreed to ignore teacher effectiveness altogether when determining salaries, favoring instead to pay all teachers the same regardless of how well they teach students. This had led to, among other things, Michigan's best teachers being grossly underpaid."
Christian Fenton, deputy superintendent for business and operations for the Grosse Pointe Public School system, said the teacher's contract that was ratified in March would include teacher performance pay. Fenton didn't have the specifics of how performance pay would work and the district hadn't put the contract on its website.
Grosse Pointe Public Schools Superintendent Thomas Harwood said in an email that Abud made less than the average teacher's salary because he was a newer teacher and hadn't reached the higher salary steps.
"Yet we still attract the very best teachers because they see the potential for growth as well as the non-monetary benefits of working in a high-performing district," Harwood wrote. "In Mr. Abud's shorter period of time in the field of teaching, he has accomplished a great deal. He is an inspiration to many through his learning and instructional methods that meet the individual needs of our students. We as a district are a learning institution and he shows the highest expectations we hold for all of our teaching and support staff."
The unions will NEVER allow performance to be a factor to determine pay because one of the primary reasons for existing is to keep crappy teachers in the classroom and paying dues.
I know of several retired professionals (engineers, doctors, accountants) who would VOLUNTEER to teach, but the unions FORBID it. There is NO reason that you NEED a "Teaching Certificate" in order to teach in a school. How many of those parents who homeschooled the winning spelling bee contestants had "certificates"?
A teacher is nothing but a sheep to the union. Collecting the union dues is the main job of the union. Teachers with masters degrees aren’t capable of negotiating their own contract without having a lesser-educated union thug negotiating on their behalf. As for the teacher, with the time-and-grade pay system there is no incentive to do a better job and work harder for advancement. So much for the argument that “it’s for the students.” It’s always for the union!
$56,876 a year is about right for a 9 month year.
$77,969 is way to much for public school teachers
since the government only hires the unemployable and
public school teacher is third level welfare.
...so in order to increase performance... we should cut the top teachers pay to be in line with the best performing teachers. And if that doesn't increase their performance, then we cut it again, since obviously we didn't cut it enough in the first place.
Putting teacher salaries as the primary consideration of our education system has shown that it does NOTHING toward educating our young. If you are a person who puts in less than 100% for your employer if you "feel" that you are not paid enough (i.e. unions), then you, and the majority of our teachers, are a BIG part of our problem.
If our country was REALLY serious about the future of our young, then it would ELIMINATE government funded welfare. There is a large percentage of the student population in our country who know, from personal experience, that you can have a good middle class lifestyle WITHOUT EVER HAVING TO WORK. With that knowledge, why would they put any effort into their education?
The AVERAGE teacher makes $62,000 a year, for about a 195-day workyear.
Contrast to normal full-time employees, who work 250 days, the equivalent salary would be $79,487. That’s the AVERAGE salary, not the highest. And that doesn’t include benefits.
Teaching is a pretty easy profession, one which has a lot of people who want to do it, and most are successful if they go into the field. As such, they are remarkably well compensated.
First of all, “teacher of the year” is a rather subjective measurement, and picking ONE is like a celebrity contest more than an accurate measure of effectiveness.
Second, while I support the concept of paying the best people the most money, teaching is an inherently hard place to accurately make that determination.
For example, you would really want to find your best teachers, and then assign to them the worst students, because those are the students that need the most help. So you really would love to measure the IMPROVEMENT of the students year-to-year in a subject to determine whether a teacher was effective.
But it is hard to measure before/after. Also, problem kids may simply not improve as much anyway. If you had a class of excellent students, they might well do a great job of learning even if the teacher was an idiot.
Frankly, a lot of teaching really is just presenting lesson plans. We could do this to some degree by finding the 10 best teachers in the country, recording them doing their lectures, and then use THAT over the entire country, and have the in-class teachers do the one-on-one and interactive stuff.
I mean, if there is a teacher who is “the best” at making a piece of information understandable, why not use THAT teacher for every one of the classes in that subject? We are duplicating effort at an alarming rate for something that should be relatively standard.
That is true in ALL Public Unions (which should be BANNED; taxpayers are cheated out of removing none-productive and ludicrous compensation/benefit packages cannot be voted on).
Private Unions are nearly the same non-merit/Seniority-rules scams, too. That's what moved manufacturing off-shore for the USA.
I was using a negative logical progression, the reverse of the one that says to increase teacher performance we have to increase pay. It was an attempt at biting humor.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.