What is a “good” teacher worth?
The New York Times on Wednesday published a full page ad, featuring an apple with a worm in it, and a call to the public to buy out America’s worst teachers. The Center for Union Facts is going to pay the ten worst union-protected teachers in America $10,000 apiece to get out of the classroom - for good. The Center contends that Union Labor laws make it impossible to fire a bad teacher.
At the same time, a charter school in New York is opening in 2009 that will pay its teachers annual salaries of $125,000 and up in the hope that the higher salaries will attract better teachers.
So what makes a teacher “good”?
And how much is a “good” teacher worth?
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March 21st, 2008 at 6:23 pm
A good teacher is one that the student thanks years later for changing their life for the better.
A good teacher is priceless in two ways, first in that you can’t put a dollar amount on changing someone’s life for the better, but second - you literally can’t put a dollar value on it.
The challenge in putting a dollar value on a teacher is that their output - literate, well adjusted, tax paying, and law abiding citizens - is not sold on the open market. As a result, the only way to put a dollar value on a teacher is to see what the sellers (teachers giving up their time) are willing to bear as the lowest bidder.
The bad news is that many people are willing to give up money in exchange for the chance to change a young life for the better, as this can be far more satisfying than say, attaching the right fender to cars going down the assembly line.
A more open market would make salaries more competitive for better teachers but then you have questions of equity - what happens to the kids who can’t go to good schools and get the crappiest teachers? That leads me to a question back to you - is the purpose of public education to give everyone the best education they can get, or to make sure all children meet a baseline of competence?
April 10th, 2008 at 10:41 am
The purpose is BOTH! First off, all teachers are required to teach every child a baseline of competence in their discipline, known in my district as the Boston Public Schools standards, which also cover the National standards mandated by the US Department of Education. Additionally, of course, every child must pass the MCAS tests in each discipline in order to graduate. The challenge of course is that not every child learns in the same exact way or even tests in the same way (tactile, visual, oral, written…many have individualized education plans that by LAW we must adhere to…where each child is developmentally…and there are cultural or socio-economic influences on a child’s ability to learn in a North American Boston Public School…) SO “making sure” every child meets the baseline in a class of 20-30 learners requires…well that’s the essential question, isn’t it? What makes a “good” teacher able to do all this? Is teaching an art, or a skill? Is it inherent, or learned?
April 10th, 2008 at 10:48 am
ALSO, (sorry I just cut myself off there…that’s kind of pathetic, isnt it?) not every teacher TEACHES in the same way…the objectives are required, the standards are set, but each teacher teaches them in different ways. Just as students have different learning styles, teachers have different teaching styles. Its all quite entangled…