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
Hip hip hooray for Deb8!
The accepted structure is always the noun first followed by the pronoun: "My collegues and I ..."
Do you say "eggs and ham" or "ham and eggs"?
When a football team has three yards to go in the second down, do you say "three and second" or "second and three"?
Both may be technically grammatically accurate, but there is a proper stylistic way to say it and reversing it makes you sound ignorant just like saying "I and my wife" instead of "My wife and I."
Unless someone is truly exceptional, if you are poor and don't get a first rate primary education, then you don't get to go to a first rate college. It isn't fair and it isn't pretty, but those are the facts.
As a whole to include all schools, property taxing isn't functional. IMO it is preferable to eliminate this problem and allow the market to decide the location and value of education.
But, the bad places don't exist anymore.
We have solved that problem with a massive dose of finances for education, restructuring, housing, and affirmative action.
Don't tell me there are bad places for teachers, for they don't exist anymore.
Right?
I'd compare NYC to Scarsdale. NY is losing a ton of teachers to the burbs, where salaries are higher and the risk of physical injury is less. Conversely, and oddly, NYC is gaining teachers from places like Georgia and Texas, where the salaries are low...
I disagree.
It's not functional only for those who can't afford it. For those who can afford it, they seem to think it's functioning just fine.
Well, Georgia doesn't have "low" salaries. Maybe lower than NY, but most are lower than NY. Also, when they get there and find the cost of living and the physical dangers I'd bet they'd reconsider.
What's interesting -- from my limited experience with teachers from out of state...is they come to NYC and have a blast for a couple of years. They get "the system" to pay for advanced degrees at Columbia or NYU and then marry well and move to the burbs where they increase their salary by 20% or more.
I agree that student performance could not ever be a valid or reliable indicator of teacher effectiveness.
My disagreement was with another part of the post that said Art wouldn't help with math (or some other subject?). When done right, it can and should help other content areas.
I'm not arguing the correlation between income and intelligence. I've read The Bell Curve and it's spot on. And thank you for noting that I am an "exception." My point is that children live in communities based on their parent's income and that correlates to property taxes. So the best and worst teachers in Alexandria, Louisiana make the same. The do-nut example is that teachers in Northbrook, Ill make much more than those in inner city Chicago. More K-12 teachers are in schools like Alexandria than Northbrook.
Universities are totally independent of property values. If they perform well (merit) as in the case of Harvard, then people from everywhere want to go there. The cost for tuition goes up (free market) and they pay their profs more. Profs will move from LSU to Harvard if they have the chance but few would move from Alexandria to Northbrook to teach English I.
Heck, around my neck of the woods, the latest trend is building performing arts theaters for high schools. What a waste.
Hello, Hooray!
We have pumped a large dose of finances into "public" education since 1964 and with this all we have achieved is an ongoing discussion via concern as to how to better finance "public" education to make it better.
When does the rampant spending for education finally get scrutinized and be deemed as a failed cause?
When it comes to education (in the public form) it's ALWAYS taken as a lack of funding when it comes to it's deficiencies and never a cause by Government policy.
Why is that?
LOL - That would have been awesome!
I haven't read The Bell Curve, so I don't get the reference. Also, I don't understand the system in La...they don't have counties, but parishes, etc. A little confusing for a NY'er.
And yes, you probably are an exception -- either brilliant or clever.
Our school board bought many dollars worth of computers that stayed in their boxes for years. No one had a clue as to how to set them up.
If you're from NY you have probably heard of Bronx HS of Science. They have the best teachers in the city. Their salary is the same as the teachers in the other Bronx schools. That's my point. BTW, those of you who are familiar with Bronx Science, please give my regards to Mr. Ed Sodikow.
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