NP - "What's the question... some bits about ED

[Matthew Cissell]

In lieu of greater analysis, I offer these links.

http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/teacher-pay-around-the-world/


http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2012/sep/11/education-compared-oecd-country-pisa


http://www.oecd.org/pisa/46643496.pdf


A quick look makes it clear that greater expense does not always render better results. Take a look at Luxemburg and Denmark.  Of course, I am aware that this generic use of information (graphs) is easily misused (one would have to look at so much more), still it does give one a lot to think about.

I want to add that I never disagreed with Alice about increased salaries as such, I only wanted to say that that was not the only cure for education's ailments. I'm all for spending more on education, as long as it is well and wisely spent (loading classes with tech is great but that is not the only type of investment i'm referring to).

ciao
mco




________________________________
 From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org> 
Sent: Monday, April 8, 2013 11:20 PM
Subject: Re: NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread being asked?
 

But high salries will attract and retain individuals who are smart and who also have other skills and talents, tangible and  intangible, the kinds of skills and talents that other fields attract with high salaries. High salaries won't simply attract college professor types or higher IQ individuals, the physicists, in your example, who can't teach. There are plenty of these in public schools now. 
 
You won't have to weed out anymore than other fields if you raise salries because you will attract and retain people who have the skill and talent to succeed at lots of jobs, but don't go into educaion because it doesn't pay enough. 
 
While I agree that Universities are stuffed with professors who can't teach, this is owed in large measure to the fact that most don't want to, and therefore never take the time to learn how. Who wants to teach in most colleges. Stand up in front of hundreds of young adults and lecture them about the basics? Isn't that the drudgery of graduate students? Research and publishing, working with the best graduate students, reading and sitting in an office, chatting with collegues, going places....this is the professor's privledge, not teaching. What University takes seriously the professors who teach writing, for examlple. Drudgery! Literature? Not so bad. But better yet is to avoid contact with the tuition payers and their ilk. 
 
There are countless talents out there who can blow the sox off students, and will do it for years, but won't step foot in a classroom because it doesn't pay. 
 
How can anyone pay off the debts of a good education on a teacher's salary? 
 
Teaching still suffers from Baumol's cost disease and the legacy of its staus as a female's part time job. 
 
To shake this off, salaries have to rise, not because other professional salries have rien, or because productivity can be measured, and has improved, but because it is the only way to attract better people. 



On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

I'm not sure raising salaries alone will do it.  Then we'd have smart people going into teaching with no ability to "teach."   I suppose you could weed them out at that point - hire them all and let observation and test scores tell the story -  test scores alone are stupid though.
>
>Getting the credential with high grades does not equate to being an effective teacher.   Being able to teach means being able to keep discipline and interest in a classroom of 35  13-year olds.  You don't need a whole lot of brain power to do that.    A good teacher needs a bit of charisma and energy and authority - s/he needs to know the subject,  to love the kids and the subject and get that love of it across.   S/he needs a good sensible scope and sequence - something which makes sense to the kids as well as to the material.   She needs to be able to go sideways beyond the text book - not just above it.  (I chose elementary because I wanted to teach ALL the subjects - not just one all day.  I love teaching math and reading and social studies and I enjoyed integrating them. I'd kind of thought 5th or 6th grade but I got put in Kindergarten and totally loved it.)
>
>There was a physics teacher who really totally knew his subject,  but had absolutely no teaching skills (college level so discipline was a given).  He just couldn't get down to where the students were and teach from there - he was usually completely over their heads. He wasn't organized - he added to rather than clarified the text.   This happens at the college level all the time.
>
>Teaching skills matter most at the lowest elementary levels where the responsibility for a child's learning rests primarily on the teacher and the available  resources.  Teaching skills matter most for the "slower" children.  The teacher needs to "work with" them - starting from where they are and taking the next baby step (and doing it over and over for day after day).
>
>By college level the students are expected to be far more responsible for their own learning - the teacher assigns reading and lectures on the material in his own way and speed,   the students understand and retain as best they can.  With grad work it's almost entirely on the student.
>
>Bekah
>babbling again -
>
>
>On Apr 8, 2013, at 3:49 AM, alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, if we want to attract the best prospective educators and hold on to them, we need to raise salaries. How can an educator in NYC afford to live in the city where she teaches?  So salaries were raised.
>>
>>
>> Under the current system of mayoral control in NYC salries have been raised, but not enough to attract and ratin the best people. Moreover, the loss of job security, collective bargaining power, benefits, and the assault on teachers has offset the gains in salaries.
>>
>> The US is an anti-intellectual culture, so the respect given to educators in  other nations is not a benefit here.
>>
>> I could never, not could most of the excellent educators I know, work an education for 25 years. My hat is off to those who have and those who can.
>>
>> As a professor I was paid less than entry level wall streeters. No, the salries are disgraceful. In this nation, where we pay athletes and movie stars, banksters and political crooks, millions and billions, where we waste billions on wars, we can pay our teachers better and we need to.
>>
>> Off the soapbox now,
>>
>> A
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 4:30 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:
>> "The salaries suck. Raise them and we will see the best and brightest in education." Salaries suck? compared to what? I know people that work in public education and they are not in the poor house, of course neither are they very wealthy. However, it is true that teaching is a profession whose pay has not matched the growth of other professional occupations in the 20th c.
>>       Alice, paying someone that is incompetent or unmotivated more will not change their behaviour. Have you looked at pay scales in the Scandanavian countries? They don't make more than bankers. THe big difference is that the society respects teaching and teaching is seen as something of great value so being a teacher is valued in terms of symbolic capital. There the joke about those "who don't know how teach", doesn't work. Norway and the rest get the best of the graduating class as teachers not because they offer lots of money but because teaching is viewed very differently there. When people in the U.S (and elsewhere) start to value education in itself and not as some means to a lucrative job then you will ahve the socail change that will help educators
>>
>>       As for phonics, it has its place. I use it in my ESL work. That said, to rely on phonics alone is an error. Vygotsky is an interesting addition to the study of language acquisition, check him out. Had he lived longer he would have likely had more influence than Piaget, but that is a speculative comment.
>>
>> ciao
>>  mc otis
>>
>
>> From: alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>
>> To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> Sent: Sunday, April 7, 2013 4:03 PM
>>
>> Subject: Re: NP - "What's the question about your question that you dread being asked?
>>
>> As Dewey sez, "there is no educational value in the abstract," and, by this he means that what works with 5 year old native speakers of English in England may not work with 5 year old native speakers in the United States. We can even say that what works with rich children in the Bronx, NY, USA won't work with poor children in the Bronx, NY, USA. So, if in Finland or Denmark or Norway, often the oranges compared with our apple, children start school at age 7, and this is quite successful, applying this idea to poor children in the Bronx, or even to wealthy children in the Bronx who live in a house and in a neighborhood where English is not the first langauge, would be malpractice. Phonics, as the debates and studies, often with whole language advocates, may be quite appropriate given a particular learning population. Pragmatism, as Dewey stressed in his writings on Education, is that something that doesn't suck in US education. But the workers, that
 is, the pedagogues, are being stripped of their freedom to use what they know works with the pupils they know learn best when the methods they have created for these particular students are used. That said, there are too many weak and poorly prepared teachers in the USA. The salaries suck. Raise them and we will see the best and brightest in education.
>>
>>
>> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 8:55 AM, Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Interested in your answer. Is it just that the metrics used to measure "accountability", "progress", etc. are coarse averages? I mean, for all your failing schools you're still the intellectual and scientific centre of the world, so you know, something doesn't suck.
>>
>> Also, what do you think of teaching via the "Phonics" method? Had a debate re this today.
>>
>> P.
>>
>>
>> On 7 April 2013 21:38, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> Why are US schools behind much of the world?
>>
>> This is way more complicated than tax-slashers or "accountability experts"  or "higher standards"  folks want to think about.
>>
>> Bekah
>>
>> On Apr 7, 2013, at 1:17 AM, Prashant Kumar <siva.prashant.kumar at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > What question about your field do you dread being asked? Maybe it's a sore point: your field should have an answer (people think you do) but there isn't one yet. Perhaps it's simple to pose but hard to answer. Or it's a question that belies a deep misunderstanding: the best answer is to question the question.
>> >
>> > http://www.edge.org/conversation/whats-the-question-about-your-field-that-you-dread-being-asked
>> >
>> > Various responses there; any p-listers willing to chime in?
>> >
>> > Prashant
>>
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