Government schools, for good or ill, are here to stay.
Much as I might prefer free market solutions to education, today the vast majority of students are being taught in government schools. As a conservative, I am no revolutionary and do not expect ever to live in Utopia. Our government schools struggle to attract and retain good teachers.
Since tax payers have decided on socialized education, we must pay for it.
Teaching future citizens is vital for society. Parents are the primary educators for children, but in our system are forced to give a large amount of tax dollars to the government system. This system is mediocre compared to what it could be.
The best way to improve the quality of schools is to improve the quality of teachers. Vital reforms are needed in teacher education programs. This is a subject about which Paul Spears will have more to say in the next few months, but even the best teacher education programs cannot work without good students.
Too often teacher education programs do not attract the students who were, in college, actually the best students. While there are many brilliant education majors, the best and the brightest do not often pick teaching as a career.
The quality of life afforded teachers in many government schools is too often poor. Teachers are not given enough autonomy or the tools to do their jobs. Many school districts are plagued with numerous highly paid administrators and too few highly paid competent teachers.
Many good classroom managers move into administration, and away from students, due to the lure of (relatively) higher wages for administrators.
This is not right. Just as nobody goes to a football game to see the coach, so nobody sends their children to government school hoping they see the principal. The best teachers should be the best paid people in any district.
The simplest way to attract better teachers is to increase the wages of the profession across the board. The average teacher made about fifty-thousand a year in 2006. (California, with a higher cost of living, is about sixty thousand.) While this sounds pretty good, when compared to the average wage of a college graduate in 2006 it is only average. Government educators often receive good benefits packages so this helps, but they are also required to receive extensive education after the bachelor degree. Many of the highest paid teachers (who up the “average”) have earned masters or doctoral degrees in order to receive the higher wages.
In Los Angeles, new teacher pay lags behind comparable professions.
Shouldn’t teacher wages be far better than average?
While higher wages to the present group of teachers will not immediately improve the quality of education, it will produce an incentive for the next generation of college students to consider teaching. When an accountant in Orange County has greater income potential than a highly skilled teacher, the system is not going to encourage students to consider education.
Of course pay is not the only problem. Teachers are respected and have (relatively) high social status, but too many people misunderstand their work. Teachers have difficult jobs and work very hard at them. However, many people operate under the illusion that government school teachers work short hours and have long vacations.
While it is true that teachers have more vacations than some private sector jobs, they also operate in a very intense “public performance” job for most of the year. This sort of position can be very draining.
The skills required to be a good teacher are not common. They include the ability to communicate well, know a great deal about important subject areas, and the ability to handle the intense bureaucratic atmosphere of any government agency while maintaining the Socratic streak necessary to good education. Bluntly, if we want uncommon skills, we should pay uncommon wages.
In addition many “breaks” are consumed with the daunting paper work and training that comes with modern education. Most government school teachers I know do not complain, but work very hard.
Of course teaching is a “calling” as well as a career and nobody wants to see teachers who are motivated only by money. However, the present system with its (relatively) low wages is not free from those who are motivated by gain. The difference is that the greedy of the present system are those unable to beat the competition in fields made more competitive by higher wages.
Usually a call for higher wages is met by a demand for more accountability. This is good and proper. The best people to bring accountability are tax payers who should have the right to fire workers in failing schools. However, if tax payers refuse to pay for proper schools, it will be difficult for them to blame those asked to make bricks without straw.
Higher pay must come with broad reforms of the system. The more competition and free market forces can be introduced the better, but the dream of the ideal must not prevent any reforms from being implemented.
Taxpayers must accept that if they will not privatize schools, something voters reject in California, then they must pay for first rate schools. While many Los Angeles schools demonstrate that “more money” is not the total solution, more money is needed in some front line areas and less money should be spent on administrative functions.
Local districts should be given maximum flexibility to experiment and try innovative ideas. Charter schools should be encouraged. The declining number of students in California that attend private schools reflect the expense. One can only dream that taxpayers be allowed to use their tax money more flexibly to “opt out” of the government system, but this has been rejected overwhelmingly by voters up to now.
We are stuck with the system we have.
Voters, the only real check to waste if we must have government schools, must be given greater power in holding failing schools accountable.
Too often pay increases do not reward outstanding effort . . . a consistent weakness in any socialist system.
The extremely partisan teacher’s unions that block merit pay are another part of the problem, but are correct that over all pay is too low for all teachers. Relatively low starting pay is a huge deterrent for outstanding students, who often have large students loans, to choose a career in education.
Since many student loans are government loans, “forgiveness” programs should be made even more aggressive for students who teach in our government schools.
Of course, there are many reasons for school failure. Spending more money will not help a school with students from homes where education is not valued and where too many parents are not doing their job. Spending more money on any service that does not directly touch the lives of students is imprudent given the already high number of administrators American schools have compared to European systems.
Should we pay teachers more?
Reluctantly, this taxpayer says, “Absolutely, under certain conditions.”
Teachers are the front line of education and a long term investment in attracting good ones is worthwhile. This conservative, despite his irritation with the teacher’s unions and socialized education, supports higher over all pay and very large merit pay increases for teachers. The best teachers in any community should be amongst the highest paid professionals in that community. These aggressive raises should be supervised at a local level by parents, peers, and administrators and tied to the educational accomplishments of students.