Published: Jul 3, 2005 LOS ANGELES (AP) -The typical starting salary for teachers should be $40,000, the head of the country's largest education union said Sunday, pledging a renewed fight for higher pay.
Posted on 07/03/2005 2:20:12 PM PDT by TheOtherOne
Nation's Largest Union Sets Goal of $40,000 Starting Salary for Teachers
Published: Jul 3, 2005 LOS ANGELES (AP) -The typical starting salary for teachers should be $40,000, the head of the country's largest education union said Sunday, pledging a renewed fight for higher pay.
But the National Education Association's challenge is enormous. Not a single state pays its new instructors an average of $40,000, with the U.S. average hovering close to $30,000 for beginning teachers, according to the American Federation of Teachers, another teachers union.
NEA president Reg Weaver, speaking to reporters at the union's annual meeting, said his officers will work with their state and local chapters to lobby state leaders and school boards.
Weaver, poised to begin his second three-year term as the union's president, said higher pay for veteran teachers and classroom aides will also be a political priority for the NEA. No cost for the ideas was given, but they would likely require hundreds of millions of dollars or more.
"The issue is where the money is going to come from," Weaver said. "And to respond to that, my answer is I don't care. I don't care where the money comes from. Because when this country thinks and decides that something is important, they find the money."
Teacher pay has long been a point of contention within education. Salaries are often seen as an important reason why schools struggle to hire and keep teachers, which is particularly true for young instructors, men and minorities, Weaver said. But an increasing number of states and districts want to make classroom performance or student scores a bigger factor in teacher pay.
Overall, teachers were paid an average of $46,752 last year, a slight raise that did not keep pace with inflation, the NEA says. Pay is usually based on teacher seniority and education.
The pay proposal is part of a broader NEA priority list to close the achievement gap between white and minority children and reach out to minority communities. The NEA push comes as it is at odds with the Bush administration. The union has sued the federal government over Bush's No Child Left Behind law, arguing that it puts unfair financial burdens on states and districts.
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On The Net:
National Education Association: http://www.nea.org
AP-ES-07-03-05 1627EDT
Talk about a joke... I make less than that($38,000) a year at my job and I have a business degree.
Time to look for a new job.
That's true with most unions.
The senior employees exploit the junior employees while claiming the entry-level pay is inadequate to attract people at the high end of their salary schedules from moving into teaching (or whatever group is trying to make the labor supply scarce).
It would seem that for collective bargaining purposes, there would be the same pay for everybody -- and deviations from that median could be individually adjusted by individual merit. The seniority system kills merit and innovation.
Interestingly, unions can be set up with a fair distribution of pay if their members desire it -- along with fair layoff rules, etc. They could be models for the fair and equitable treatment of their members -- towards each other. But lacking that sense of fairness, produces an even more brutal and unjust exploitation of a few senior members of all the others. Those unenlightened preferences of a few over the others is not management preferences. Management would prefer to keep the best and the brightest.
The seniority system of the teachers unions regards that as the greatest threat to the continued job security of those with the most seniority -- not necessarily the best and the brightest. For that they blame the Board of Education or the Legislature or the Governor, for not valuing the best and the brightest. That's the union's preference -- and nobody else's. That's why they get no respect. They have to earn it even in their own eyes. Respect is not about money -- but that's all the teachers seem capable of understanding. Those should not be teachers -- they're just bad examples.
oh, that's NOTHING .. the head of the teachers union in D.C. is not on trial for having embezzled MILLIONS during her tenure.
I've been a public school teacher for 30 years. I've heard it all. The problem is simple. The American K-12 model is a socialist one. Think of it this way. The best teacher you ever had in your life and the worst teacher you ever had in your life made the same salary. That's right out of the USSR.
The college model in America is much more free market. A physics prof at Yale makes 5 times the salary of a PE teacher at Florida A&M. That's why foreign students want to study in America at the college level.
A merit program to reward good K-12 teachers and punish the bad ones would require the abolition of tenure and the NEA. Then, allow supply and demand to dictate salary.
We have that model now -- a history teacher in a "good neighborhood" with a high tax base makes significantly more than a teacher in a "bad neighborhood" with a low tax base. Not surprisingly, the teachers in the "good neighborhoods" tend to be better qualified.
So, all teachers do not make the same.
But you don't choose your neighborhood the way you choose your college. You're talking about the do-nut principle and that doesn't apply to most school districts.
People choose their neighborhoods exactly the way they choose their colleges. Young couples moving into a neighborhood will always ask what the school system is like, average SAT scores, etc.
But you don't choose your neighborhood the way you choose your college. You're talking about the do-nut principle and that doesn't apply to most school districts.
How about allowing the market to reward and punish good or bad teachers? It works in University as you noted.
Simply make education competitive. In lieu of property tax, charge tuition. This is obviously problematic WRT poverty kids, but we've already got some really bad problems. The poverty thing can be worked with just like lunches or similarly.
jmho
I strongly disagree with this. But before I go further, let me say that I agree with your assertion that assessment of teacher value is not gonna work for so many reasons.
Go to any neighborhood where the average price of a home is $700,000 and up. Then go to a neighborhood where the average home is $200,000 and down. Compare the schools, the quality of the teachers, salaries and the resources made available.
After the predictable comparison - then what?
I don't know what you mean by "predictable comparison," but you'll see more teachers with advanced degrees, higher SAT test scores and better equipped schools in the high tax bracket communities. This isn't an accident. Those communities are able to attract better teachers. It's the free market at work.
The remainder of my post was gonna be something like...
The comparison seems to indicate that tying school funding to local property taxes is not working. Why not make them compete for students? Don't you find some great univesities in poor neighborhoods? They aren't funded by local taxes.
Clara, I would assess them the same way the boss at any company would. Without tenure I'd fire the ones who weren't as good as the ones who were applying for a job. The main reason there is no free market in K-12 is tenure.
If the boss (a principal) is an idiot then his school will eventually suffer and he will be fired in a free market. Just like at any business he/she will be interested in hiring the best. The point is it must be subjective. There is no objective test for merit based pay. So let the free market work.
Durasell,
People do NOT choose their neighborhoods the same way they choose colleges. I was born poor. I was raised in a poor neighborhood. I went to a below average public school. But I worked my tail off and got over 100 scholarship offers. There is a difference between money and merit.
At the K-12 money determines where you can live. At the college level merit comes into play.
It's more than money. Frequently, "bad" places to teach pay much, much better than "nice" places to teach. But the bad places still have trouble finding qualified teachers.
To wit: Dekalb County or Fulton County Georgia.
Pretty strong words coming from a "tar pit". ; )
Tying schools to property taxes is working just fine for wealthy communities. It's the middleclass and poor communities who can't afford to keep up that are being hurt. But again, that's the free market. You get what you pay for...and yes, you see good universities in poor neighborhoods, but the students who attend don't typically come from those neighborhoods, i.e. like Parsons or Columbia.
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