It would be wonderful if we knew more about teachers such as these and how to multiply their number. How do they come by their craft? What qualities and capacities do they possess? Can these abilities be measured? Can they be taught? Perhaps above all: How should excellent teaching be rewarded so that the best teachers””the most competent, caring and compelling””remain in a profession known for low pay, low status and soul-crushing bureaucracy?
Such questions have become critical to the future of public education in the U.S. Even as politicians push to hold schools and their faculty members accountable as never before for student learning, the nation faces a shortage of teaching talent. About 3.2 million people teach in U.S. public schools, but, according to projections by economist William Hussar at the National Center for Education Statistics, the nation will need to recruit an additional 2.8 million over the next eight years owing to baby-boomer retirement, growing student enrollment and staff turnover””which is especially rapid among new teachers. Finding and keeping high-quality teachers are key to America’s competitiveness as a nation. Recent test results show that U.S. 10th-graders ranked just 17th in science among peers from 30 nations, while in math they placed in the bottom five. Research suggests that a good teacher is the single most important factor in boosting achievement, more important than class size, the dollars spent per student or the quality of textbooks and materials.
Across the country, hundreds of school districts are experimenting with new ways to attract, reward and keep good teachers. Many of these efforts borrow ideas from business. They include signing bonuses for hard-to-fill jobs like teaching high school chemistry, housing allowances ($15,000 in New York City) and what might be called combat pay for teachers who commit to working in the most distressed schools. But the idea gaining the most momentum””and controversy””is merit pay, which attempts to measure the quality of teachers’ work and pay teachers accordingly.
This is a good article, though it only talks about and promotes “merit pay”.
Until society is willing to aproach the problem without bias against what worked in the past, there will be no solutions for the future.
Don
[blockquote]The state with the highest average teacher salary was Connecticut, at $57,760. California was a very close second, where the average teacher salary is $57,604.
http://www.employmentspot.com/employment-articles/teacher-salaries-by-state/%5B/blockquote%5D
Pupil/Teacher Ratios: CT is 14.5, CA is 20.8, & NJ is 12.4.
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/stateprofiles/
[blockquote]Between 21 and 23 percent of Americans (40 million) are functioning at [b]Level 1 literacy rating[/b], defined simply as “not having adequate reading skills for daily life.” [b]The rate for California is 24 %.[/b] These are people who cannot read, must struggle to read, or cannot cope with unfamiliar or complex information.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_literacy_rate_of_California%5B/blockquote%5D
[blockquote][b]Twenty to 23 percent of the adults in New Jersey demonstrated skills in the lowest level[/b] of prose, document, and quantitative proficiencies (Level 1).
http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:5pHU0cmhnJAJ:nces.ed.gov/naal/pdf/state_summaries/NewJersey.pdf+literacy+rate+new+jersey&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us%5B/blockquote%5D
[blockquote]In a [b]1985[/b] survey conducted by NCES, the [b]national average adult illiteracy rate was 13%. [/b]
http://search.cga.state.ct.us/dtsearch_lpa.asp?cmd=getdoc&DocId=12682&Index=I:zindex1994&HitCount=0&hits;=&hc=0&req;=&Item=2340 [/blockquote]
Today, the national illiteracy rate is around 23%
[blockquote]A five-year, $14 million study of U.S. adult literacy involving lengthy interviews of U.S. adults, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government,[17] was released in September [b]1993.[/b] It involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in twelve states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that [b]21% to 23%[/b] of adult Americans were not “able to locate information in text”, could not “make low-level inferences using printed materials”, and were unable to “integrate easily identifiable pieces of information.”
A follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in [b]2006[/b] that showed [b]no statistically significant improvement in U.S. adult literacy.[/b]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy%5B/blockquote%5D
The illiteracy rate has actually [b][i]increased[/i][/b] while teacher salaries increased and student-to-teacher ratios decreased. Throwing more money at the problem is making things worse. Unfortunately, that is as far as the thinking of some people goes…take money from the industrious [through taxation] and throw it at a problem. The reasoning seems to be that there can never be “enough” money spent on the problem and if only we spent more, we might somehow fix it. Think how bad it would be if we cut spending [defined as not increasing it as much as we were going to]. Some people are amazingly liberal with other people’s money! Utterly shameless!
We home school. Over 1.1 million of us are doing so. We also pay extremely high taxes [property taxes] to pay for the State education cult, and things continue to get worse.
[blockquote]More than 90 million adults (51%) function at the two lowest levels of literacy (reading at or below a fifth-grade level) — far below the level needed to earn a living wage (According to the National Adult Literacy Survey). http://www.greaterhartfordreads.org/facts/facts.php4 [/blockquote]
[/blockquote]In Hartford, it is estimated that 41% of the population, aged 16 and over, fall into Level 1, the lowest level of literacy; and, another 32% fall into Level 2. These estimates of literacy rates show that considerably more Hartford residents are in these two lower levels of literacy than in Connecticut as a whole and in the nation:
………………..LEVEL 1…LEVEL 2…TOTAL
HARTFORD……..41%…….32%……..73%
CONNECTICUT…16%…….25%……..41%
NATION…………22%…….27%……..49% [/blockquote]
Oops…this got left out by mistake:
New Jersey teachers make approximately $56,635 per year.
http://www.employmentspot.com/employment-articles/teacher-salaries-by-state/
I am so fed up with articles like this. There was a system of “merit pay” for teachers in England in the 19th century (prior to the 1870 Education Act). It was called Payment By Results!!
The biggest obstacle to teachers’ abililty to teach, and teach well, is parents who don’t parent. In many cases, including my own, teachers are expected to provide discipline and structure for disinterested, and undermotivated children, whose parents “can’t do a thing with them”.
BTW, I started my teaching career in one of North Carolina’s “better” school districts, and left because of the administration’s obsession with test scores, and making the district superintendent “look good’.
I’m now making $18, 500 at a private school. The challenges haven’t changed, but at least I don’t have to teach to that damn test!!!